January Musings

It is raining today. A deep gloom has settled upon the town and everything seems to be perforated by silence and an even intenser melancholy. Nothing stirs, even the birds have gone quiet, retreating to whatever comfort can be found among twisted branches and crumpled leaves, or under the eave of some silent building. Cars go by on the streets and occasionally, a dog will bark, but nothing else stirs, and indeed it seems as if nothing else wishes to.

The slump after the holidays is quite normal I am told. There persists such a high torrent of hustle and bustle, carol singing, and constant parties that it is to be expected that the sudden end of such gaiety would leave a desolate feeling in most people's hearts. Even more so than in earlier years, I feel this gloom. I suppose it is because so much expectation and desire were placed upon the dearly cherished morning of Christmas, that once over we can not but consider that it was too short and the new year, with little change in circumstance, too soon upon us. 

The reader must forgive me for my overdramatic tendencies and seemingly groundless observations, but the darkness of January often has a way of stealing in the very marrow of my bones. Winter has truly set in in earnest, though sorely lacking its customary beauty, it only rains and then, fog. In truth, I do not mind it as much as might be surmised. It is more a mindset with which I have struggled to shake, and which, I am not the only one who suffers. I suppose it is the goal of such ideas as fika, colise, and hygge, which strive to provide an escape for these long winter months, encouraging the appreciation of the slow and simple, the silence and darkness. 

I do not wish this post to be a depressing one. Though few, if any, read my musings, I find it a comfortable space to speak piffle and understand the observations I have made. These are troubled times, but they are not new ones. I am often astounded by the harshness and blunt, factuality about the method of history teaching today. Everything is seen through a small scope of facts and timelines, battles, and victories. Looking upon these facts and predicting what shall then happen in the future. Everyone keeps remarking that these are unprecedented times, though they are not. The one thing that history does provide us is the proof of this, everything has happened before and will happen again. It is this idea which I wish to remind myself of. It is because of this circularity of life that one must cease to count life as a set of numbers, dates, and events. We are not a people of facts and figures who see only that which is black and white, but one, who is insatiably drawn to that which is alliterative and obscure, a taste for the dramatic and the unattainable, always reaching towards something out of our grasp while desperately examining the past in search of a purer beginning in the wake of constant cultural evolution. Thus we cannot possibly begin to describe histories with nothing but facts and evidence, for hundreds of thousands of lives were lived and lost and within each a thousand imaginings, hopes, and dreams.

I am rambling again... I suppose I wish to make sense of all the trouble which we face. I am comforted that we do not live in unprecedented times, comforted to know that people, like you and I, lived, dreamed, hoped, despaired, and persevered over and over again throughout time. God was with them then and He will be with us here, now.