Merry August

Let's talk about Christmas.  Because it's August, if nothing else.  Specifically, let's talk about the expressions of everything good that the holiday season evokes and how their existence is evident in the [almost - read on for my take] everyday, not just the cold days of December.

Christmas is, to be perfectly rosy-cheeked about the situation, pure awesomeness.  There is a mindful re-focus on the celebrated components of what builds and drives fulfilling lives: family, community, love, warmth, grace, kindness, humility, forgiveness, acceptance, and joy, to name a few.  It is an annual tradition where individuals reconvene to showcase these pinnacles of our society's value system.

I'd like to say that these elements are present in each of our daily journeys, pocketfuls of posies anywhere and everywhere just as long as you look for it in every situation, but nay, I can think of several cases where this simply isn't true.  This is probably because I witnessed humanity's worst sorrows as the child of a pastor and his wife.  Churches lend support to congregants in difficult times; if you're spearheading those efforts and thrown deep into the trenches of it, your children can see a lot of the ugly, too.  My parents didn’t buffer any of that.  Part of that is because they are Korean, part of that is because they are who they are, and part of that is because I am their oldest.  From too early an age, I learned that it's tricky to see the good when the bad is all around; sometimes, it's impossible because it's just not there.

  At the start of one holiday season, what would turn out to be my last home before I moved to New York.
Rittenhouse Square. Philadelphia.
2004.  12 November.

What I have learned is that in times when there is no joy to be had, it isn't always necessary to break the impossibility of the situation by conjuring something that balances out the darkness.  Sometimes, there is a great deal of merit in staying in that moment and waiting for it to pass.  Why?  Because it always passes.  It does.  And the resilience required to get to that next point is what makes the next happy moment even brighter.

I hope life is good for you all out there.  If it isn't Christmas now, it will be soon.