After the Feast
The Thanksgiving feast is over. I spent the day with friends and their families. It was fun and good company. Now I am home. The house is quiet. There are no decorations for Christmas this year. I will wait patiently until December 20th and then fly to Virginia to be with my daughter and her family where I will celebrate the holiday in a well decorated house. Other relatives will join us, and I will stay until after the new year before returning to my abode.
I like my quiet unadorned home, just as I enjoy my quiet unadorned life these days. So much of what I did in the past was done to please other people, for instance, my late wife and my children. Doing and going. Now, however, I can please myself. And most days that doesn’t take much. And I don’t feel selfish either and I feel don’t the need to prove anything. I know it’s Christmas without spangling the house in lights or putting out ceramic images of the baby Jesus. After all, that’s just stuff, and I think I have too much of it anyway.
And it feels like a good way to sail into the new year. Unadorned. Unburdened. Where the new year is a sparkling plateau of light and clear air waiting to reveal its secrets if I decide to observe them. And that feels pretty powerful or empowering. Take your pick. Either way I have choices and a multitude of universes into which I can venture depending on those choices. And it may or may not be smooth sailing, but as the captain of my ship, I can set the course, and live with the consequences.