Monday, Monday - Can't Trust That Day

Today is Monday, here in Canada - and is probably so in most of the rest of the world - except for that on the other side of the International Dateline.

Be that as it may, here, on the 3rd Monday of February (at least, I think it’s always the 3rd Monday), we celebrate Family Day - a holiday invented not so very long ago, in order to give us all a break from the hell of Winter - though Winter seems not to be much of an issue this year (at least not here), and affords families their own personal time to spend together!

It also mirrors a certain holiday, celebrated for decades by the ‘Top Dog’ living under us, which honours a couple of Presidents whose actions lifted them above the mundane to an almost God-like level (not to denigrate the other Presidents for, I’m sure there were achievements of note, accomplished by them all); almost mythical in nature, to be sure; George, I cannot tell a lie, Washington, and of course, Honest Abe Lincoln, Rail-Splitter extraordinaire!

Now, I’m all for the celebration of heroes whose lives stretch beyond the usual confines of their particular time in space and reach mythic proportions, for these are the stories, the histories that inspire us, leave us gob-smacked, and perhaps expand our ability to strive for that which seems unattainable - if George could do it, if Abe could do it, if Hercules could do it - well, you see where I’m going - Dream Big, or Go To Sleep.

Somehow, Family Day falls far below the mythic bar over which we would leap, given the chance. For me, I think it would be better to just (succinctly) call it ‘The Day Off From What Appears to be Endless Winter And We Need a Holiday In February to Coincide With President's Day and This Is IT!’ At least there’s a ring of truth to it even if it is a bit unwieldily. Maybe I’m just a cynic; maybe the holiday began simply, inspired by one person’s idea of celebrating the family. Perhaps - but it seems unlikely. 


 Whatever.

However it came about, we celebrated it in proper fashion by visiting and paying homage to someone near and dear and old enough to have possibly had relatives still living during the assassination of President Lincoln - the mind boggles.

And this is where everything gets just a little bit sticky - at least in terms of time and space and pseudo-holidays.

Just a few short weeks ago, this most vibrant of beings, underwent a certain ‘change’ in both demeanour and mental stability; it was like a switch had been toggled and the floodgates of all that came before in this life, were opened - and accessible - regardless of their location on the time/space continuum.

It occurred to me that this phenomenon reflected the ancient teachings that everything happens at once, in one given moment (okay, so maybe I made that up); that could we but open our eyes to it, everything that has ever happened in the world has happened, is happening and will continue to happen, right now - we just need to learn ‘to see’.

The afternoon was spent, ‘en famille’, listening to tales related, surprisingly, of conversations had with long-dead loved ones - and visits with those still among us who have not come to visit at all.

What are the boundaries of human intellect and understanding and who exactly demarcates that which is real from that which is fantasy or hallucination?; or for that matter, that which separates us from all the human or super-human effort, if you will, that has ever existed?

WHO ARE THE KEEPERS OF THOSE GATES?

THE DEMARCATORS?

This is what I know for certain:

It was a ‘Family Day’ indeed; spent neither here nor there but with a sense of the present and a sense of the past melding together and permeating the atmosphere; sending a message into the future - it is up to each of us to decipher its meaning.