Eleven.

It’s been eleven days since I’ve seen the sun, and technically it’s not even winter yet. There’s still two weeks before we hit the darkest day. This is just the beginning.

The grey light that comes through the clouds and fog during the eight hours of day are not much for encouragement toward better things. Rather, they promote a downward gaze, so the next thing you know, you’ve been looking at your feet for the entire five-kilometer walk home.

It’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s more than just the downward gaze of your eyes. The weakened sun pushes you inward too, inward and downward. Things aren’t really going how you’d wish they’d go, are they? You expected more, and you expected differently. By now, things were supposed to be different. Any faithful patience is being drowned out by the voice of self-pity growing louder in the soundtrack of your mind.

It seems like in the middle of winter depression even a glimmer of hope would change everything.

Glimmer. Shimmer. Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells. Lights are going up; candles are being lit. There’s a festival coming and the signs of its joy are reaching out, reaching toward us.

What was December like before they celebrated Christmas? Did it feel even darker than it already is? How did people bear the months before spring?

Hope is always borrowed. It pulls from something that isn’t quite here. It’s not possessed. It’s not controlled. There in lies its strength, for it is exactly that which is not dependent upon you. It only requests that allow it to be as loud and bright and cheerful as it desires.

That part is up to you. That part is up to me.

You can’t see the lights on the rooftops when you’re looking at your feet.

 

Still Wandering,

Tony