Once in the way of old tradition

So I haven't forgotten.  In fact for the past few nights I've actually written...just nothing of consequence.  I am a creature too easily trapped in my complacency.

I have moved over, but I have by no means moved in.  I look at all the unpacking I still have to do, and lose all interest in actually tackling it.  I will.  Eventually.  Til then its living out of boxes and bags...and really...I'm okay with that.  Until I'm not, then I'll change it.

My birthday is coming up.  Ten days.  I'll get more specific about that in a later blog.  Closer to the actual day.

People often commented to me about my birthday being so close to Christmas.  Most assumed that it must really suck.  To tell the truth...how would I know.  I've never known any different.  My mother though, saint that she is, made sure that always...my entire life...my birthday and Christmas were separate events.  She never made it seem like a burden that both those events were so close together.

Except for one thing.

And I never minded that one thing.  In fact...I always liked it.

Every year as a kid...on my birthday, we'd load up in the car...make the drive to SLC...and go look at the lights on Temple Square.  I really enjoyed that as a kid.

Earlier this year, I came to care about someone very much.  More than I was prepared for.  More than I cared to admit.  I was surprised by it at the time.  When I allow myself to relive all of it...well...I'm still rather surprised.  Sometimes I think the best way to learn about ourselves is simply to live.  And accept.

It was late in the summer, and we were talking.  I told her about my old family tradition of going to look at lights on my birthday.  We made a date then, that she and I would do it together this year.

Alas life.  It happens.  It gets in the way of all the best plans.  It continues to teach...if we let it.  If we accept it.  It also likes to make a giant cosmic fist and thrust it as far up the asshole as possible.  Sometimes just to watch us dance funny.  So that little birthday date became impossible.

I'm still going.  I will walk alone around the grounds of a religion I no longer subscribe to.  I will look at the facsimiles of a mythology I no longer believe.  I will listen to music that every single other day of the year, drives me batshit crazy.  I will carry with me memories, wishes, and the ghosts of love.  I will walk among strangers, lost in my own imagination.  I will wish the entire time that I could be smoking.  I will avoid conversation with the inevitable missionaries that will be posted at every entrance and exit.  I will love every goddamn second of it.

I truly will.

I don't buy into all that true meaning of Christmas crap.  I don't get caught up in the spirit of the Holidays.  But that night, for that night only...I'll give into it.  I will really truly connect to all the joy, without the commercialism.  Without the cynicism.  Without the dry sarcasm and biting wit that so often defines and consumes me.  I will look at the lights, listen to the music, and remember all the things I love.

I think our traditions, no matter how silly, or hokey, or sentimental they may be, are truly important.  They are because we make them so.  They connect us to each other.  To ourselves.  To our selves.
To our humanity.  It's the traditions that connect us to our own personal history.  In my own moment of tradition...all by myself...I will remember who I was, and why that is important.  I'll get to reflect on who I am, and why that is also important.  I will...if I take the time...be able to mark the path between the two.

Tradition also gives us something to look forward to.  They are the dots that connect the past to the present. Reliable events that spark both memory and new experience all at once.

So although I no longer have any connection to the religious meaning, or concern myself with any particular significance to the holiday, this is something that will have great meaning for me.  Something that I need to do, for no other reason than it's what I have always done.

It would be grand foolishness to throw away the old me, simply because I am a new me.