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I hate to sound like
- and I hate even more to be - one of those sick, self-involved
types who moans about how these big warm fuzzy celebratory periods
like Christmas just drag him down. For one thing, I'm not really
all that down. And I really do like Christmas.
It's more like I'm
confused. Confused about stuff that should have been settled
years ago. Yesterday I found myself telling a friend that despite
the Fact that I'm nearly fifty years old, I still feel like a
kid. Well, you will say, good for you. Christmas is for kids.
But this is not such a good thing because I mean that I feel
like a kid in all of those negative kid ways, best expressed
as Powerlessness. Bad stuff goes on in the world and in myself
that I seem to have no control over. I can't make anything better
out there. And in here I frequently fail to do the thing that
should be done. Maybe that's a truth about all of us, but it's
not to deny that I could benefit from a few years of psycho-therapy.
You could probably use a bit yourself. I could also benefit from
a few years of more radical involvement with the world. It's
this monkish demeanor. I hear Dad saying, "Get outside;
get some fresh air; go run around the block." My friend
wonders why I'm so damn passive. It's very true; I am not a decisive
person. Let's wait for things to develop. Let's wait for somebody
to suggest something. I've got no answers, but I'm sure some
psychoanalysis would bring some possibilities to the surface.
But who's got the time for that? Or the money? Talk about self-involved.
Maybe I just need to spend more time in the presence of deer.
Just now I went downstairs
to check on the laundry. Off the edge of my vision out the picture
window, I thought I saw some people walking in the snow. When
I turned to look directly I saw three deer: big, medium, and
small disappearing into the woodsy shadows behind the school.
Call me crazy, but I felt a little better, refreshed, happier
even. What do they have that I don't have? What could they possibly
give me that I don't already have? Emerson says that "Nature
always wears the colors of the spirit." But that doesn't
seem especially apt in this case. Just now, Nature gave me a
little something that I didn't seem to have. Maybe Dad was right.
Maybe he didn't know how right he was.
And right now I get
a poem from a guy who's knowing something true and beautiful.
Right now. It's gonna be a pretty good Christmas. It is. Peace
to all of you.
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