Calendar Prison: A Trap or An Opportunity Within a Cycle?

As there's never a season for disaster, one can't but help wonder why we wait all year... until the end for a "Christmas miracle" to graze our awareness... A New Year to reconcile lost connections, and to start it all over again on a clean slate... An epiphany to right the wrongs of our past experiences. Can we not change our minds part way through a story?

Quanta Magazine

What is it about seeking perfection something more that gets our gears motivated to spin once again?

Nostalgia is friends with regret, lest we forget.

While miracles seem nice, it's merely a surrender of responsibility in our own hands to do something more, leaving the "big details" to an outside greater power which we do not control.

It's at those times of year when the story comes to a close that we look inward when the calendar no longer has anything to offer us, that we finally take the time to assess how far we've come. For some, comparing it to where we feel we should be. I would know, as I raise my hand as guilty.

Giphy

It would feel cliche' and almost a trope within itself to blame the media for this never ending cycle—An emotional roller coaster of hope and tragedy that we must ride with each coming new year. Reincarnation aside, (if you believe in such things) our attachment to and expectations of the "self" and those around us are dictated by the invention of the concept of time and the measurement there of.

Social media doesn't make it easier to escape this continual rebirth, the artifacts which suggest that the majority of people are ruled by time and by comparison to others and themselves from another time.

While I remain blue-pilled and strapped tightly into my own societal cog, the spinning of such expectations leave me feeling light-headed. I peer my friends statuses over Facebook, and the multitude of photographs flooding Instagram as they scream in my mind, "Hey! Look at me, I am spending my holidays surrounded by friends and family." Diving down, I'd imagine that while these actions may arise from a purely egocentric attitude, I recall my own photos and what they meant to me as I posted them.

"Everyone is posting these, I need to do it too."

I want to remind others around me that I'm loved... Forget about doing it for who... Myself? We as humans learn from the behavior of those around us, and regurgitate into our actions a direct reflection of our experience. I posted my photo "late" but took it on Christmas day, purely as something to show others. There would be no difference if I took the photo or not—the experience does not change.

I want off this ride.

To not be the person that others want me to be, but the one that only I know.

No matter how distant and individualistic I'd like to imagine myself to be, in the beginning of each year I will want a clean slate, and at the end of each year I'll feel the need for closure. Why can this not be a normal occurrence? Do I not control my own perception, experience, and reality?

Or is this something that I should embrace?

Gifer

Cycles to prevent stagnancy. If I am not immune to this "Christmas magic, and New Year spirits..." Then is anyone? We cannot remove the calendar, but only change the perception we have of it. All experiences of the past remain and all of the regrets we hold with them. It's a Pandora's box that only opens once a year. Is it a curse, or salvation you find when you finally look inside?

It is believed that hope... was the last evil to leave the box.

I said I would tell my story backwards, and I'll make good on my word. There's one more thing that happened before this, that I'm sure some of my readers would have wanted an update on.

Until next time,
❤️ -@shello