It's Christmas time again. Here in Prague things are festive, although it still has yet to snow. Normally this time of year I would be in one of two places: Heathrow Airport or JFK somewhere between europe and America. Making my way home.
This year is different though. After nearly six years of back and forth, I have decided to stay here in Prague for Christmas. That's right. No going home. On one hand, I am quite excited. For as long as I have been here, I've never actually been around for the holidays. I always missed it. So this year i decided that of all things, I really wanted to see Prague for the Holidays. It's a lovely city this time of year. Hot wine on the street corners, Roast Chestnuts, pigs roasted on sticks in open fires. It's really quiet romantic. The big tree, the lights, the gas street lamps.
Of course, It will also be lonely. I'm single and don't have family here. Christmas eve, and Christmas morning- I'll do those by myself. I'm not sure yet though, exactly what it is that I'll do. Perhaps go for a walk? Take my camera perhaps and just photograph the morning? I'm not sure. Maybe I'll sleep in, wake up, and just stare at the ceiling when the morning comes.
I will try to resist checking my email. Indeed, I'll try to resist the computer all together. Perhaps I'll read a book, or clean my apartment. That would be nice- a clean house as a present to myself.
As lonely as things can be, surprisingly, I'm not at all sad. Getting older feels
good for the first time in my life. Your life is your own and there is a huge sense of satisfaction that comes from knowing it's entirely up to you, to see how it turns out. Just because it's not 100% there
yet I take comfort in knowing that I'm pretty sure I'm on my way.
One of the things I've learned, is that happiness is something that very rarely just 'happens' or at least for me, and my type of person. Happiness is something that takes an extraordinary amount of work to achieve, as it is the process of striving that brings people joy. Like most abstract goals in out lives, happiness hardly a place we can reach. Rather it's being at peace with knowing that there must be a constant sense of spiritual movement to stimulate our dreams and senses.
This holiday, I'm trying my best to be festive. It's important. People who give up on holidays simply because they are a waste of time, or interruptions in an otherwise stable schedule, are forgetting the fact that enthusiasm for the seemingly trivial aspects of living is critical to being happy. Little things like drinking tea, boiling eggs, or decorating a tree, are the little invisible things between our real life that we can savor subconsciously.
So what do I savor? What are my little moments?
Perhaps they are as simple as a little quiet moment to myself. I've always loved restaurants and jazz clubs real late as they were closing. Hotel lobbies, and empty airport lounges. There's something special about empty social places that at one moment might be packed with people, and at another be absolutly silent and empty. I've always loved how these places attracted a certain type of people as well. There are always a couple people left over at the restaurant, staff who relax once their shift has ended. Hotel lobbies and bars late at night harbor the lost or disoriented. People from some other place, some other time. People who want more than anything to be somewhere other than the icy abyss of solitude that awaits them in their room. People who hope that somewhere someone else knows exactly how they feel. It's in these restaurants, hotel bars, airport lounges that these lonely people think: perhaps, if they could just nurse that one drink long enough, they might find a friend.
Yeah. That's my little moment. That's my Christmas. And yeah, maybe I'm not exactly happy but that's okay. I've got my whole life to work on that.
Labels: christmas, prague
