There have been an uncomfortable number of moments recently where I have felt the urge to use the hashtag #gratitude, a first cousin to one of my least favorite hashtags on the Internet: #blessed.
Don't get me wrong. Feeling this way is great. I hope my life and yours are filled gratitude and blessedness. However, when I see either #gratitude or #blessed on my social networks, I question the sincerity. I look for the sarcasm to tell me I'm reading something real. I feel jarred when I am actually moved by something enough to share with my social network with, what, a hashtag?
I haven't given in. But I'll tell you a little about what's behind this. It has to do with winter, a horrible year, and a wonderful year.
I think what brings about my unusually pure feeling of goodwill is, first and foremost, the season. For the first time in a long time in Southcentral, winter is really here. It's December. Christmas trees are in windows. Twinkly lights are strung up. There is snow on the ground. Not much, but my world is covered by a comforting layer just in time for the holidays. I'm not a child. I (guess) I don't believe in Santa. It is a relief, though, that winter in Alaska looks like winter in Alaska. It feels right.
Paused and pure
I'll go further. Even more than just feeling right like a marked checkbox, winter in Anchorage, my home, is spectacular.
Maybe this is where perspective comes in. Sure, there is constant frenzy around Christmas and holiday parties and end of year planning at work, but all of these are slowed by the stillness and quietness outside. I went running last week and saw no one on the trail. I went hiking and made eye contact from behind my balaclava with other similarly dressed hikers who crunched along on the noisy snow. Corridors of frosty trees line our winter trails. Even walking outside to start the car on a weekend morning, I see the eerie and beautiful combination of light oranges and blues in the sky.
The inside of the house is a mess, I still have 60 Christmas cards to write, and I somehow need to get to south Anchorage to do an annoying errand, but for a moment everything feels paused and pure.
I feel that gratitude thing. My life is kind of a mess, maybe. I don't have things that I should have figured out figured out. Recently I tried to make a joke involving the words "subprime mortgage" and could barely get the syllables out of my mouth. I felt like a fraud —what does that mean, and what am I talking about, really? Then again, if I learned anything this year, it's that no one really has the answers. The best people I know, to some extent, feel like they're doing the best they can with what they have, making it up as they go.
This is all running through my head. Winter is cold, sure, but it creates space to think about and experience real warmth. There's physical warmth, sure, like what I create for myself when it's cold, but also warmth from the people and places in my life.
Another way to put it is that I am finding more and more that life is about perspective. This means that although I don't get to say exactly what happens, I do have a choice about my experience.
Riot of opportunity
My husband remarked to me recently that it has been a difficult year. It took me a second to understand what he was talking about. It has, actually, been a difficult year — kind of horrible. We had two profound losses in our family; one to suicide, one to cancer (and everything leading up to that). There are family and friends we don't see nearly as often as we'd like, and that distance is challenging.
But — and this is where the bile starts to rise in my throat, because I'm not used to this level of sincerity — we are very much alive and healthy. We had strong connections with the people we loved who are gone. We had quality time with our family.
And our passion, being outside, is a riot of opportunity. We spent more time doing crazy (and not crazy) things outside this past year than many people. It teaches us things about ourselves and the world, over and over. It calms us down.
One of the things I've had to learn again and again — and that I've come to love about being outdoors — is that ultimately it's how I choose to participate that makes or breaks my experience. Not the weather. Not the gear I brought. Not how much sleep I had the night before. It's on me.
Still, some people say there are no bad conditions, only the wrong gear. I contest this. I think there actually are bad conditions. A snowless, rainy December would be tough for me to spin as something positive (although I have done it before). But I've also had terrible experiences outside under perfectly reasonable, even beautiful circumstances, when I otherwise had all the right gear. I have picked myself up to go hiking in the Chugach on a bluebird day like I'm getting dragged to a windowless office on a weekend. My experience largely depends on what's happening in my head.
To me, difficult experiences, outside and otherwise, force the issue of what is important in this big, vast world where anything can happen. For me, what — or who -- is bedrock? Who and what do I love, and have I expressed and experienced that enough?
December is a time many people spend reflecting on the year behind us. In Alaska, with the almost shocking absence of things that support life other places — warmth, sunlight, Trader Joe's — it's a good time to be part of that stillness, and see what fills it for us.
I am overwhelmed with gratitude for my piece of life; my people and place. It's almost strong enough to share using a hashtag. Not quite. Not yet. For that, I am also grateful.
Alli Harvey lives, works and plays in Anchorage.