Holiday Buzz.
You know what it is, that overt ringing in your ears this time of year, the Holiday Buzz. It climbs on top of you the moment you step out the door, or perhaps it’s even ringing inside your house right now; the Holiday music, commercials, lights, balsam scented candles, frantic need to complete each task on your very long list of things to-do before the big day.
I find it ironic, that this is the season of peace on earth and it is anything but peaceful.
We are ever awash in a holiday flood that plugs the senses. Right down to the abundance of holiday cookies in the break room, a feast for the eyes and if you give in, taste buds too. Our mental capacities bobbing in a holiday sea; with more things to do comes stressors about time, with more food temptations at parties and gatherings, a stressor about trying to stay healthy or get healthy. An endless stream of moments of simply trying to make the right choice. On top of this cornucopious holiday pile, add expectations; about family gatherings, time spent with loved ones, not so loved ones, gifts, time, travel, time off from work. The list goes on an on.
If we let it.
Recently I’ve been of the mind frame to turn it all off when I get home. Close the door and turn off the excess lights, the phone, the internet, the TV. No text msgs., no phone calls, no reading the news online, no How I Met Your Mother reruns on TBS.
Instead, maybe a low meditative music playing in the background. One soft table lamp lighting the room. And a good book. Currently, a book about a land far, far away. Of a life I’ve never known. A life I may never have the chance to know. A life lived in the dirt and sand and sun and wild-life rich world of the African outback. A primal land built on a foundation of instinct, invisible sensory, and acute rhythms constructed between the strict unforgiving confines of life and death.
Nature is peaceful. Its rhythms soothing. It is all so much bigger than you and me. I relish the opportunity to step outside the man-powered holiday buzz that booms around us this time of year and get lost in Lawrence Anthony’s world.
Lawrence Anthony recently passed away. It is rumored the two herds of wild elephants that he rescued made a 12 hour trek through the African bush and loitered for two days outside Anthony’s compound to mourn his passing.
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