Boxing Day

Boxing Day. 

The past. There’s some fancy quote about it being an unknown country or such like but I can’t remember it exactly. If only it was an unknown country. For most of us it’s territory too well trodden ...poured over , wept over, raged over.  Or was it a foreign country? Well whatever it was that other one...that the past is always with us ...is equally pertinent.  It is and yet it isn’t. FB threw up (what a concept) some images this morning of boxing day six years ago as it does every now and again. It’s a controversial feature as out of the blue things you might not wish to be reminded of (bereavement, a bad night out) are suddenly thrust your direction unsolicited and unprepared for...you are completely at the mercy of the FB algorithm and it bows to no one (except FB presumably ) In this case it was a fairly innocuous photo of my kids taken in my previous temporary abode in front of a very scrawny christmas tree during their boxing day “visit”.  The other was from a year earlier...a blustery and foam drenched Newcastle promenade resplendent in winter sunshine.  If the Blogger app was working i’d post it here. I remember the circumstances of both very well...down to the feelings prevalent at the time. I hadn’t thought much about those feelings in a long while and the photos prodded the memory ball that over time and distance has formed a very hard crust. A momentary pang ...an emotional shudder...then nothing. As it should be probably. Some years back i would have rolled the ball of memories about in my head a while...disentangled a few and picked at them a bit...taken the odd sip of the pain that they would inevitably bring. Now it’s like a half echo ....a crash of something in the muffled distance and no more. No doubt if I was prepared to work at it for long enough I would be able to re kindle some of that earlier sharpness...at least fleetingly. Now i’m left with a vague sense of angst...like something you catch a glimpse of now and again at the edge of your vision...then dismiss as a shadow.  This time of year plays tricks on you. It acts like a rallying point for all the dark and painful things that for the rest of the year can be firmly shut out by the banal noise of day to day existence. At Christmas there is time to reflect...that dangerous word...and with reflection comes a dropping of the guard. In the quiet the past rears it’s head and weaponises the silence. It is not a thing of course...in that “it” does nothing. It is how we are wired...or allow ourselves to be wired. We choose our demons ...or at least we allow certain of them greater access than others. If you ask me what it is I most associate with this time of year my answer would be...dread.  I’d have given you that answer for as long as i can remember.  In some ways that dread has been the backdrop to my mental landscape since I was able to recognise the concept. Sometimes i’m not sure where the dread ends and I begin.  Dread of what you ask? I’ve no ready answer. Everything might be one...but it’s a bit of a cop out.  Fear is an interesting emotion. It’s very necessary in that it keeps us alive to some extent. When we hug it too closely to ourselves and begin to let it take hold of our emotional life however it becomes the harshest of masters. Confronting it...in its many forms...is the journey of our lives. I’ve made peace with it far too easily.  At christmas this just becomes more obvious to me. Roosevelt was partly right...nothing to fear but fear itself. But not nothing. 

Fear is enough.