The Longest Night

Winter Solstice 2020

This year's winter solstice will not somehow contain more night hours than any other winter solstice, but there seems to be a common feeling that tomorrow night hangs heavy as we slog through the last months of the deadly pandemic that has cost over 312,000 Americans their lives this year. 

There is also a collective remembrance that despite the dark, there is an eternal hope that the light will return. Many faiths celebrate the coming of the light in the dark times of winter- the Diwali festival celebrates new beginnings, the triumph of good over evil and light over darkness. Hanukkah is the festival of lights celebrated by the lighting of the menorah. Christmas is well known for the incorporation of lights representing stars and trees representing spring. 

Our 2020 Pandemic Tree- artificial, partially lit, haphazard decorations

Every year, I try to steel myself for the remainder of the winter, and I am generally pleasantly surprised that the solstice comes earlier than I expect it to. I assume I have taught myself to think of the solstice as being in January, so that when the pre-holiday sadness hits, I can take comfort in the fact that the days will be getting longer faster than I anticipated.  

This year, although I was still pleasantly surprised that the solstice is before Christmas, I do not have the typical feeling of relief and hope that comes by putting the longest night of the year in the rear view. 

This year, much like the sitting president, has been an unrelenting bully. I haven't seen my step kids since two months before they officially became my step kids. I couldn't celebrate my father's 69th birthday with him yesterday. I haven't seen my parents in a year. 

Meanwhile, my husband is struggling with trying to make end-of-life decisions for his father after a cancer removal surgery went sideways. We may be on the road this Christmas, trying to safely navigate from Southern California to Texas to settle affairs, trying to avoid COVID like....well, like the plague. 

What Blog is This?

Normally, my writing is focused on positivity, encouragement, excitement, wonder, and ultimately, happiness. 

 It is hard to believe so much has happened since I began this blog in November of 2019. I still stand by positivity and encouragement. We all need that right now. I also think it is important to experience all sides of what it means to be human. Self improvements starts when we look at the darkest parts of ourselves, and we realize that some of those instincts and actions no longer serve us, or the direction we want to go. 

This blog is about Sampling Life until you find the things that bring joy and light into your heart. It is meant to guide you towards your passions. I truly do want people to experience all the pleasures that life has to offer. 

I try to live my life with an awareness of fear, but not in servitude to it. As I have said before, if I am scared to do something (that isn't objectively stupid or life-threatening), I will try to do it, if only to show myself that my fear is usually worse than the thing I was afraid to do. 

This year, I have developed a rational fear based on what emotions I have seen fostered over the last four years. All of a sudden, I am wary to tell someone to follow their dreams, in case they are dreams of violence or suppression. I try to encourage people to speak their truth, but I have to specify that those truths should be born from a place of kindness, not hatred. 

I do not support hate speech. If your dreams are to subjugate women or people of different ethnic or socioeconomic backgrounds, do not follow your dreams, seek a therapist. 

What's Next, 2021?

We have become a nation so obsessed with personal freedoms that we forget those freedoms are only provided to us by means of our unity. One cannot rationally benefit from the bounty of living in a society, while at the same time trying to tear the democracy that provides those social supports to shreds. It is akin to the frog getting in the pot of cold water, turning on the stove until the water boils, and then cursing the pot and water for existing with its dying breath. It is only self-destructive and nonsensical. 

We have forgone basic human decency and courtesy because we have somehow been taught that the random fortune of being born in a geographic region or being born with a certain skin color gives us power over others, and makes us special and privileged, without earning anything.

We have reached an incredulous tipping point where half the country has doubled down against science, against social progress, against unity, and against objective facts. 

I am so sad to see this country that I love torn apart so dramatically and willfully. I have no solutions, as I seem to be lacking even a starting point to understanding where the far right would actually want this country to go. What a shame it would be to see what was once a world leader country descend into the Handmaid's Tale. 

I try to come back to the lights. Back to the promise that the sun will rise again, and the darkness will not be as overwhelming. I try to see and feel the hope that our ancestors did as they waited out the darkness of winter for the promise of a bountiful spring. 

I hope that President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris can bring to fruition the healing of the nation that they have promised to bring about. With so much hate, division, anger, and death surrounding the final gasps of 2020, they have a long road ahead of them. 

I have to remain grateful for everything I have, and to keep reminding myself that even the darkest, cruelest, longest, coldest nights in the history of the planet eventually gave way to the warming rays of dawn.