The Balance

I detect a strange madness in people right now.  It may be the weather, the time of year, or sunspots; I don't know.  Better, maybe, to call it a malaise.  Tired of obligatory duty and ritual or the inability to fully participate in either, polar opposites converge.  Now people feel compelled to decide what comes next.  There is one last marker--the new year.  Fireworks and popping corks, the chasing (away) of demons.  If I, too, must choose. . . it will be the chasing. 

There are puzzles to mull, resolutions to avoid/make.  What have I done this last year that made me feel good or bad?  What was the outcome?  What should I have done differently?  What will I do? 

Half of us will choose to be more selfless in the coming year.  We will find joy, we think, in losing the ego and giving freely of ourselves to others.  We will find liberation and live more simply and openly. 

The other half will decide to focus on themselves, to have a "me" year.  We feel as if we have not been appreciated, have not been given our due.  We will spend more of our resources pampering ourselves, going to retreats or taking vacations, and buying ourselves things we have always wanted. 

other<------------------------->self

We will place ourselves somewhere on the continuum.  It could be inner/outer, here/there.  

Maybe I just know the wrong people.  Or maybe it is simply me.  But as I write this, I look at the houses only street.  A married psychologist whose wife left him and bought her own house six years ago.  They are still married, and he has not dated since she left.  An orthodontist whose wife moved out as well.  He is sad because there are no women for him to date.  He still dates his wife.  A woman whose contractor husband died a year ago.  They investigated her for murder at the behest of his two criminally insane sons.  She is childless and post-reproductive.  She spends her time walking her small dog.  A woman who married her father's friend, a pilot, many, many years ago.  He got old and died.  She lives alone.  A trust funded woman who lives with her baby daddy of two in a cloistered house using heavy drugs.  An attorney and county commissioner whose wife and mother of his children left him years ago.  He is now rarely seen.  A contractor, aging, single, who always has some gripe.  

A childless couple who have been married their whole lives, now retired.  Another couple directly across the street from them, a doctor and a lawyer, married forever with grown children and new grandchildren.  A doctor who left his wife and married a nurse.  They are always seen together.  

A woman who left her husband many years ago and never remarried and who is always friendly and seems happy.  

Etc.  

My year was divided almost completely in two, split neatly down the middle, one condition giving way to its opposite.  A bifurcated year giving over to. . . what?

I am famous for my non-choices, for letting the metaphorical river take me where it goes.  Swimming or floating?  There are many conditions to consider.  I still have a few days.  Circumstances being what they are and all. . . .