| Another
year passed already???
I
must confess that this ever-quickening sprint of days, weeks,
months and seasons has finally ceased to surprise -- I now simply
accept that Christmas arrived in what seemed like two weeks after
Halloween, that spring will pop up in a week or so and summer
will follow in a month and then another Christmas a few days later,
and so on and so forth at an ever-accelerating rate until the
holidays start running into each other, and time actually folds
in upon itself and we end up greeting each morning with a "Happy
New Year!"
At
least that is what it sometimes feels like to we who are now at
an age we once would have regarded as "Impossibly Old".
For
those of us who are Impossibly Young, of course, the days until
next Christmas will drag by like centuries -- long, long centuries
in which nothing happens and nothing ever changes.
This may go a long way toward explaining the mad delight with
which these Impossibly Young people greet Change. Any change,
really, anything different -- anything at all that shakes up the
Stagnant Status Quo is taken immediately to heart by Youth.
This
is of course the way of it, and is as it should be -- and we couldn't
change the system even if we wanted to, so there you have it.
Youth embraces change, which to them whispers seductively of a
new and wonderful world waiting just for them, even as it seems
to whisper something far more ominous to the rest of us...
For
we who have entered a somewhat less Impossibly Young part of our
lives may dimly remember feeling delight in Change, but it is
typically a fading memory only. As the earth spins ever faster
and we find ourselves struggling simply to hang on, it begins
to feel that everything we recognize is slipping away with alarming
haste. We begin to resist Change, as a diabolical agent of this
loss.
Both
points of view are, of course, somewhat illusory, but we are prisoners
of our own perception, and must come to terms with the world as
we see and feel it.
Hooray,
then, for the Holiday Season just Past! Hooray for that blessed
time when the mad pursuit of youth for change is momentarily put
aside, as they graciously allow a brief season of Tradition and
Remembrance to take hold! Hooray for a time when the long memories
of the Impossibly Old (essentially any of us above age 35 or so)
are called for, and indeed welcomed as Wisdom again! Hooray for
that magic time when Youth briefly embraces Age and the old are
young once more!
Ah,
and therein lies a good part of the secret magic of the season
-- even as it welcomes the young into a timeless realm of ancient
truths -- a "Time Tunnel", if you will -- wherein they
may briefly see shadows of Holidays long ago, so too does it rejuvenate
the old, who may employ that self-same tunnel to return to their
own days of delightful, foolish youth...
Oh
happy Time Machine of a season! Oh blessed carols that lie dormant
eleven months out of the year, only to leap out at us in December
and let loose a flood of memories long thought forgotten! As we
all grow ever older, how infinitely more dear these ancient memories
-- how precious the echoes of events and people now kept alive
only in our hearts -- and it is thus without apology that I dare
to invoke the spirit of the season once more, even as we embark
upon another Turn of the Wheel. Let us, as someone so wisely and
famously once said, strive to keep this spirit within us all year
round...
And
Happy New Year! |
