Comfortably Numb Christmas Time
Post date: Dec 21, 2017 2:29:54 AM
The world is moving at a pace faster than any mere mortal can go. Stop trying to catch up. Slow your roll and be comfortable with your own pace. I am not a runner, but I know runners and even a non-runner has heard about the importance of pacing. In a marathon or any other crazy-long-run-I-will-never-ever-run, I have heard that runners just have to forget the runner who just flew by them. They have to put him out of their mind even though their instinct is to speed up—it is a race after all. But—it’s a long race and so a runner needs to plan ahead and to know their own limits.
So, in the holiday race that is going on right now (on foot, in the car, in stores, at schools and everywhere) I just have to decide I’m going to be comfortable with seeing the bottom of a lot of people’s sneakers and their wagging ponytails. I may even sit down and take a few orange slices and a swig off that water bottle and watch a bunch of people run by. I’m beyond pacing at this point. I’d have to say I’m comfortably numb. I get it now. That line means so much more than I thought it did long ago.
I have a thought along the lines of, “Oh, I should get that or do that--” comes into my mind and then here’s where the comfortably numb part comes in: If I visualize what “getting that” or “doing that” may look like for me and if, in my imagination, I see myself exhausted or frustrated or short-tempered as a result I say, “Eh, forget it. Not worth it.” And it’s that easy. It’s kind of weird to me, but I almost feel a bit Zen about the whole thing. I’m doing what I can do and trying not to go haywire. I’m shooting for an attitude that leaves me feeling more like Pete the Cat and less like Angry Cat.
And so, I haven’t written a blog in a while and decided that I would write one tonight. This may not be the best blog I ever wrote, but I’m writing (and running) for myself—just strolling through my thoughts at the moment as I am fresh from my youngest son’s Christmas Concert where he danced like I’m pretty sure no donkey has ever danced before and I’m just going to savor that fun scene because that is definitely something worth remembering.
Tomorrow I’ll think about my list again. Hopefully I’ll still be in this sort of laisser-faire state of mind. For the most part I’m just getting things off my list (a list that doesn’t totally exist, but that is sort of like the innards of a magic eight ball floating around in my ink-filled head). When things stop bobbing up then I’ll know my list is complete but in the meantime I am convinced I am in the eye of the holiday
storm because I’m rather calm about the whole thing. It is five days until Christmas and I just kicked off the bulk of my shopping four days ago at 8:30 pm. I have to say, I was tired, but it was a great time to go shopping because it’s so close to Christmas that the stores are open late plus there wasn’t any traffic and the lines were minimal.
This world is a bit overwhelming right now with the orange hue things have taken on, but I’m trying to block most of it out and focus on my family and the short distance in front of me. That is humanly possible. Focusing on all that other stuff, well, it just isn’t. I’m waiting for people’s heads to explode or their eyes to pop out and hang from springs while making that “boing” noise from the cartoons. We’ve gotten ourselves in quite the tizzy lately and so I guess there are two roads in that forest that Robert Frost talked about and unfortunately most of us aren’t even looking at the road ahead, we’re just trusting the path to our GPS.
In terms of today’s world you can either go the path that makes your head explode and your eyes go “boing” or you can take that less-traveled path and try to stay focused on the things not too much beyond your own nose. Stop trying to catch up to the bottoms of those sneakers in front of you and allow yourself to say “Eh, forget it. Not worth it. Nobody will even remember that.” and embrace the comfortably numb results.