Non-Required Reading: A Christmas Card of Sorts
Christmas 2020
On a winding backroad, we passed two ancient buildings, side by side: One was dilapidated, covered in an overgrowth-cocktail of vines and weeds, chipped paint and a sunken roof. The other, stood strong; weathered but whole, solid and structurally stable. At that moment it occurred to me that very few things, if ignored, naturally improve or get better with age.
Left unattended, buildings return to nature.
Left unattended, gardens return to nature and beast.
Left unattended, humans can also return to the wild - we can fester, grow polarized, crotchety or unabated in our individualized self. “Of what use is a long life, if we amend so little?”
Left unattended, relationships can deteriorate, fester or simply fall stagnant.
You get the idea.
This year ushered in a battery of new emotions. Perhaps it’s indicative of how good of a life I have and/or how generally awful 2020 was, but for the first time, I felt an acute sense of betrayal, despair and a little dose of resentment sprinkled in every now and again, related to communal, familial and global/existential stressors. It shouldn’t be surprising that new emotions continue to be revealed in life but for whatever reason, they totally caught me off guard and my response in navigating said emotions was generally pretty clumsy.
The choices that laid ahead crystalized: I could either ignore the happenings in and around me and hope that they self-correct or I could confront them with the hope of new growth. The former is far more comfortable and natural for me. The latter requires way more vulnerability, emotional-dexterity and courage than I can often muster up. When life exists in the theoretical, it’s pretty straight-forward and tidy to address, as opposed to when you actually have to embody your ideals and confront pre-held beliefs.
As the year trudged on, it also became increasingly clear what is out of my control (most everything) versus what I can control (sometimes myself and my responses); and wisdom often starts with only controlling what one can.
Needless to say, I found myself in counseling for the first time in 13 years, which soon led to Michelle and me going to marriage counseling for the first time ever. We had long been holding onto each other as anchor points, but as waves continued to batter, we were both hitting a point of total fatigue. Being self-employed in a bruised industry with two young kids during a global pandemic is a strong case for stress, let alone when everything around us began crumbling.
As we drove to our first session, I said to Michelle that I don’t want a “new paint job” but something more akin to an oil change; some routine maintenance that is likely overdue. We hadn’t ever really stopped or been confronted with so much junk to realize that we were both running on fumes.
All of this is uncomfortable and requires a general humbling process: to acknowledge that I don’t have all of the answers, know as much as I think I do and that my feelings are often quite fallible. It requires a confrontation in order to improve, grow and acquire new tools for roads that perhaps weren’t chosen or maybe even paved, but by golly, here they are. And hey, we’re not guaranteed a pot-hole free life; in fact it’s quite the opposite.
Within a week of one another, both my brother and Michelle encouraged me to “Be gentle with myself and others”. As the two most important voices in my life, it seemed like high time to pay attention and to continue working on all of the aforementioned areas, but also to give everyone a bit of a break every now and then.
Lest I ramble or overshare further, I am challenging myself to be a more gentle, yet active confronter, so that vines and weeds are shucked away; so I can think, see and feel more clearly; so that I don’t crumble under the pressure that life inevitably brings but that a greater, more refined scaffolding is set in place.
Peace to you and yours.
Jonny