Secretly, ashamedly...
Yesterday was Imbolc.
Imbolc is a Gaelic tradition that marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox.
An in-between time.
Here, the days are getting longer, though it snowed for the first time only yesterday.
My weather app reads a chilly 29 F, though I've just finished signing the kids up for spring sports and put reminders for summer camp registration on my calendar.
Did January actually happen? Sequestered as we've been with nearly endless illness since Christmas, I still notice a subtle panic that the year is *already* 1/12 over.
I wonder..."What do I have to show for it?"
Now...if I was to speak those words of my subtle panic out loud to...probably anyone...they'd tell me to stop being so hard on myself, and highlight all the ways I was wrong.
And, logically, I'd know they were right.
Because of course, our worth is not based on output.
Of course, our value is not determined in $$$.
Of course, our contribution is not measured by what we cross off on the to-do list.
Who we are as human beings is not so easily quantifiable.
I know these things. We know these things.
And yet, that knowledge doesn't stop the subtle panic we have to feel first. It doesn't erase the years and generations when we did think those things.
(And sometimes, perhaps secretly, ashamedly, still do).
And therein lies the tension.
Constant and taught.
The tension between what we know and what we feel.
The dissonance of the changing seasons.
The pull to constantly plan for the future while trying, and often failing, to pay attention to the present.
There is no cure for this, as far as I know.
No way to get rid of the tension.
It's here. To stay.
And yet.
I'm not sure...but I think...that though we can't get rid of it...we might be able to ease the tension a bit...when we stop pretending it's not there.
When we access that liminal space where we understand...it's all contradictory.
That the things that can't possibly appear to be true at the same time, in fact, are.