A Little Bit of Christmas Spirit
At time of writing it’s about two weeks until Christmas …which is about an hour and a half in old people time. Time all runs so fast now and there is so much to avoid doing.
Anyone who knows me will be clear that I am not a fan of the festivities and have a tendency to avoid being pulled into all the craziness. However, I find myself in a much more buoyant mood than is normal for this time of year. Yes, it has been colder than usual and the rain has been doing its best to invade both of my conservatories. Yes I have two but neither is as grand as this might sound and one serves as a kitchen that is sweltering enough to melt chocolate in an hour in summer and cold enough to freeze the desire to cook anything that will take more than a few minutes in the microwave in winter.
Anyway, I have just come back from shopping. As you would expect, everywhere is alive with sparkles and coloured lights, which I love at any time of the year, and cars circling like hungry sharks on the hunt for a parking space, which requires patience that I would normally have to drag up from my boots.
It’s coming up to my 70th birthday in January and my disbelief at having lived this long and fear of the short future ahead have given way to a great sense of peace.
I don’t know how long this will last but it’s lovely to wake up on a winter morning and actually feel happy that it’s winter, happy that I live where I do, content that I still have some usefulness, delighted that I know a little about the joy of creativity, not being about being perfect but about play and exploration. I am comforted knowing I am loved by some amazing people and maybe my life doesn’t look as I might have expected when I was younger, but I am not living in a war zone and (this is very selfish) I wont be around to witness the planet finally shake us humans off so she can thrive once again.
I have regrets, but some of the worst I seem to have come to terms with and can manage to be grateful that I am where I am and it is what it is, a lot of the time.
Some things I once believed don’t really hold much meaning suddenly, which is interesting as it hasn’t been uncommon for me to be labelled ‘opinionated’ by people who didn’t like me very much.
Mmm… I have to admit, there are some things I do still get riled about, but I am finding calm in the sense of connectedness of all things. Where once I believed in an afterlife and a God, I find myself deeply comforted by the notion of Kitty just ceasing to be Kitty and becoming one with everything… which reminds me of a joke.
The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says: “Can you make me one with everything?”
Apparently even the DL didn’t get that one… which goes to show something or other. Ha! Ha!
Hope you find some joy this festive time and do try to be kind. What more can we ask of one another really.
