Merry and Morbid

I always miss my dad on Christmas. 

My parents got divorced something like five or six years ago, and every year since I've almost always spent Christmas with my mom. 

Well, I don't know. Maybe that's not true. But it feels true, and I guess that's what matters. 

Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not bitter or sad on Christmas Day. In fact, I'm as excited and ecstatic as a person can be on Christmas. I positively bathe in all the joy and love that I feel every winter season when I go and visit my family. I feel like I'm practically swimming in all of it. All the smells of Christmas, the sounds. The immense gravity of the world that I feel when I step outside during a snowfall. It's wonderful... I look forward to it all year. 

But it's funny. 

Christmastime is as close to perfect as it gets. I always get to see my family, who I miss daily. I eat incredibly well, breakfast lunch and dinner, and there's just some aura that surrounds me... Some magical something that I can't quite explain. 

Maybe it's not Christmas, per say. Perhaps it's just the familiarity of consistency, the traditions that seem so ingrained in our minds that they may as well had just been carved there at birth. Maybe it's just the combination of family, good eats, the harmonious singing, the giving, the receiving... 

You get the point. 

But even though I look forward to Christmastime every year, and cherish it when it comes, there's an element of bittersweet hidden among the wrapping paper. 

I always miss my dad on Christmas. 

It's never going to change, I'm always going to miss him. I'm always going to wish that he could be here, or that I could be there. But it never ruins Christmas. It never puts a damper on my excitement. 

So perhaps joy and sadness are two separate entities.

We often think of our lives as a constant graph of happiness. Much like the waves, our level of happiness coexists with our level of sadness, the pull of the sea competing with the momentum of the surf. 

But maybe it's not like that. Maybe we feel elated as we can simultaneously feel dejected. We are constantly reacting to thousands of different sensual stimulants that spark emotional responses. How can we feel one thing at one time when we live in a whirlwind of catalysts?

Life isn't a constant tally of happiness points. We shouldn't be so distracted with our level of joy that we miss out on what's right in front of us. Instead, we should accept that we feel things on a level of complexity that matches the intricacies of our emotional system. You don't have to choose whether you're happy or sad at one given time or place because you can feel both.

So feel joyful, elated, dejected, sad, happy, jealous, morbid, depressed, ecstatic...

And have a Merry Christmas!