Wednesday, December 10, 2008

And yet another "holiday" season

As I age, I notice that time passes faster and faster. Still, it's nearly impossible for me to believe another year has passed and that we're in the midst of yet another holiday season. I ranted a bit about this last year so I won't do that again but I have to say that now that it has become a "holiday season" and not the Christmas season, it doesn't seem quite the same as it did once upon a time. As part of my course work in grad school (I just finished my last assignment of my first semester - hooray!) we have focused on issues of diversity and along with this, the oppression that minorities of all types have experienced as a result of their marginal position in the American culture. It has given me a new appreciation of these issues and consideration of what it must feel like to be different and ostracized, even if subtly, for those differences and to have the mindset of the dominant culture pushed down your throat, as it were. Some of our class discussions have been to consider when, where and why we may have felt oppressed. At first, as a born and bred WASP, I thought that this didn't apply to me but with thought, I was able to come up with some instances and to remember what that felt like and the impact it had on me, deeper than I've been prone to readily admit actually. It hurts to be judged as inferior, to have one's dearly held values dismissed, to be mocked and rejected simply for being who you are. What distortions result from efforts to redo oneself to fit it, to blend.

I like to express my own convictions. I like to have convictions but I'm finding more and more that I don't want my convictions or opinions to stand between myself and others, or to diminish others in any way. Life is hard and it takes everything we can muster to get through it some days - some years. Trouble can seem to slap itself on us like cockleburs on a pants leg. Adding to the burdens of others just isn't appealing to me, despite my personal rights to make my judgments heard. I find I have less and less to say about certain things these days, fewer (if that's possible) political opinions, advice for the prodigals, need to be known as a philosopher, intellectual, or a teacher. I mostly just want to observe and admire the amazing complexity and beauty of human life, despite its failings, and to gaze in wonder at the awesome creation as it continually transforms and performs its seasonal dances before me. Probably I'm just getting old and mellow. I'm glad about that actually. It seems like a gift - finally, after years of internal uproar and drama, of caring too much about too many of the wrong things. I'm finding myself more excited about what is unfolding before me than in trying to make things happen according to some plan of my own devising.

Well, enjoy your season any of you who may have happened upon this. Try to soak up some of what's real about the whole thing. Despite the commercials and made-for-television specials, this may not be all that obvious to discern or easy to articulate. There is a great deal of mystery in such things, much that is inscrutable. That's as it should be. We weren't meant to know it all. We were meant to behold.

Ever onward. Carol

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