Pandemic Winter Solstice

We humans put so much hope into specific dates on a calendar.

Take the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. For weeks, I’ve been counting down the days til Dec 21, in the same way that I’ve been counting down the months til spring and summer. Both were part of my pandemic coping strategy to avoid the bleak despair/hopelessness of last winter.

On Dec 22, I promised myself, a bit more brightness will return, growing daily, toward brighter times (relatively speaking) ahead, from more daylight hours with their nourishment, to more social, political, and ritual gatherings outdoors with beloved friends and communities. This too was a coping mechanism: dreaming forward, even if smaller than in the “before” times.

Yet 12/21 was hard, like the several days before and perhaps many days ahead. I hadn’t accounted for the collective anxiety/dread/fatigue/(add your emotions) of Omicron coming at the world like a speeding train without brakes. I hadn’t factored in how much more collectively frayed and fragile most of us feel, hardly able to put into words how even the tiniest of mishaps or misunderstandings now feels like the sharpest of pain, of aloneness, of loss, or how trauma has become such a constant companion that it’s not so easy to shake off with a mere solstice.

Even solstice, I learned today, isn’t technically about a shift to more daylight. There will still be later sunrises and earlier sunsets in the weeks ahead, and little felt sense of more daylight. Solstice instead marks when one of the Earth’s poles is tilted the most toward the Sun.

Maybe our vulnerability, us sharing the truths of how we’re feeling and doing, versus feigning “cheer” or “light,” is how we humans tilt toward each other more, and more lovingly? How we acknowledge that we are, or could and should be, each other’s poles—there for each other, through long and short days and nights, with emotional care, grief care, material care, physical care, reciprocal care, circles of care—as labors of love, as the highest, finest direct action of anarchism?

On this solstice, may we, vulnerable and strong, tilt even more toward the pole of #CollectiveCare.