Friday, July 27, 2007

#567 Private Holidays

So not too long ago it was Independence Day—both for our country and for me personally.
I was struck by two things. First, how interesting it is that my personal holiday and the country’s holiday coincided and second, how deficient our holiday system is when it comes to addressing emotional states.
Think about it. We got your Christmas and your New Years. They may cause loneliness but they don’t celebrate it.
We got St. Patrick’s Day for drinkers, and Mothers Day and Fathers Day for forced sentiment. But they don’t really address a person’s personal emotional needs.
Thanksgiving kind of does. You feel thankful.
Yawn.
Then there’s Valentines Day, when touchy-feely, lovey-dovey people either flourish or bask in the depression of feeling, unwanted, unloved, and rejected.
Other than that, no real emotional-state type holidays. I’m thinking we’ve come along way here in psychological 21st century America—maybe we should start addressing it. Celebrate the differences as it were.
Like instead of, or in addition to, Independence Day, we have Co-Dependence Day. Light off a firecracker for neediness.
“I’m sorry, would you like to light it?” “No, you.” “No, that’s okay, I want you to do it.” “Did you bring any matches?” “No, I thought you wanted to.” “I left them in the kitchen where you could see them because I thought you wanted to be the one who did the caretaking today.” “That’s what I thought you wanted...” “That’s what I said, but what I meant was I wanted you to be able to do it...”
The great thing about Co-Dependence day is, it would be a lot quieter because we’d never get one firecracker lit.
Or how about OC day. You could have hand-washing parties and when it’s time to go home the host would simply ask everybody if they remembered to lock their house earlier.
Or here’s one you could roll in to an Earth Day celebration. Have talks about global warming at both ends of the earth. Call it Bi-Polar Day.
You could either have one hell of a celebration or ultimate self-inflicted carnage.
Self-inflicted carnage. Like what our cultural planetary bi-polar actions are already.
America ya gotta love it

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