Call it the holiday blues, the winter doldrums, a seasonally affected disorder--this time of year is a challenge for many. In the Northern Hemisphere, shorter days and colder cloudier weather can prove too much for the mere charm of chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Layer on holidays that conjure up feelings that we thought had permanently dissolved in the summer sun and it's a recipe for blah...
But here are a few thoughts and practical ideas that may help:
It's natural. Shorter days, longer nights, less available food...our bodies naturally want to slow down and bulk up. These natural tendencies run head-on into the amped-up demands of the season, the all-you-can-eat holiday feast--so we're stuck in the crunch between "I want to eat a big, rich meal, curl up and take a nap" and "I have to hurry up and get it all done--and maintain my diet, too." Modern conveniences may help get it all done (and even add to the busy-ness) but do the math: millions of years of evolution won't be changed with an Apple software update.
Set aside the cellphone and take a nap.
It's natural, pt. 2. Much of what is touted as the warm glow of the holiday season ("The most wonderful time of the year!") is nostalgia. In terms of brain function, nostalgia is part of the natural human way of rewriting the past so that the balance is shifted toward the positive. But an honest appraisal of the past will lead to the conclusion that, in aggregate, it had its ups and downs. There was good and there was bad. And an honest appraisal IN the present tells us that we can't change the past or return to it. So even if things were better "back in the good old days", it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend time wishing we could go back. It's a waste of time. Keep in mind that one of the driving energies behind nostalgic thinking is an aversion to considering our own mortality. If we dwell in the past, we don't have to consider that we may not be here tomorrow. Nostalgia is selfish. And the sad irony of living in the past is that we then miss out on the present--and to heap even greater irony onto that pile, consider that one day, TODAY will be looked upon by someone else as the past for which they long.
Celebrate the past for what was good. Mourn the past for what was tragic and evil. Look to the future for what can be--for you and for the world.
You see, there's a reason why we celebrate when the days are short and the nights seem endless--a reason that goes beyond any historic analysis of the evolution of religion: to remember what once was and hope for what can be.
It's already begun, of course, the future! Hope dawned this morning. Did you miss it?
