I can almost hear someone say: OK, judgmentalness. That’s all fine and dandy, but is he willing to tackle the really difficult issues in life?
Like loneliness at Christmastime?
Yes, I am.
I had a friend text me the other day: Hermit 1 to Hermit 2. That’s about it.
Christmas is a time I can feel a lot of regret for the vocation I’ve chosen in life. Being a writer and researcher means taking a lot of time to one’s self, guarding against relationships that are simply about avoiding loneliness by frantically running from one engagement to the other, etc.
One really does end up a hermit … and there’s no time that that choice does not make itself felt more than at Christmastime.
Many people are running around shopping, putting up Christmas lights, going to parties.
And this hermit sits here avoiding it all, continuing to work, and feeling emotions that seem at times positively corrosive.
I remember Christmas as a hotel clerk way back when, making myself a steak in the hotel’s kitchen and feeling immensely sorry for myself. And a good friend dropped by because he knew I’d be alone. I was so grateful.
I remember another Christmas at Starbucks with the rest of the Christmas orphans – and still I played the hermit!
This Christmas I broke down and arranged to spend it with my family in Victoria – and Hermit 1. But, still, listening to others work their Christmas lists and hang their lights, I hurt.
I once spent six months feeling into loneliness before it lifted. I refused to go out onto the street and seek companionship and distraction. And now here I am back in the soup again.
Loneliness must be one of the most difficult experiences to endure – just behind humiliation.
I feel it, deeply experience it, make friends with it, and then let it go.
I listen to music and that lifts me.
And I start a new project, supremely challenging myself. That also chases away the Christmas blues.
And then I remember.
I remember to draw up love from my heart. And that does banish the pain of feeling alone.
And I think to myself: How ironic that I, like you, come from a higher-dimensional place and yet must go through these really difficult feelings. Did I know that this was what I’d have to endure before I came here?
How ordinary, to be unstrung by such a mundane and common condition. What a contrast it is to all the lofty subjects that also present themselves at this time of Ascension.
And what a relief to finally find the way through, back into the waiting arms of love.