Ants in The Pants Syndrome
The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas probably has to be the time that tests my patience the most. Two major holidays spread apart by an entire month leaves me with a lot of lag time, and incidentally I get a serious case of what I like to call “Ants in The Pants Syndrome”. In other words, I simply can’t stay still. I fill up this time in various ways, and by various ways, I simply mean shopping, and decorating while playing Christmas carols. Let’s just say that I have enough Nutcracker dolls to fill up an entire bookshelf. Nonetheless, my phone gave me a happy ding the other day, and it was my friend, asking me if I wanted to join her and her brother at the mall. Of course I happily agreed, and as night approached, I set off, passing the famous neighborhood Christmas lights lining a whole street, trees and all, only to be left driving in a perpetual stretch of night, occasionally broken by stars or a car passing by, until I finally reached the mall. It greeted me with Merry Christmas lights strewn between two light poles, little snowflakes lining the way to the parking lot. We head into a restaurant, only to find it packed wall to wall with hungry patrons, and thus we put our names in, and spent the next half hour wandering a book store, Christmas carols chiming over the aged speakers. My can’t stay still syndrome kicked into high gear, and I decided we should check to see if our tables were ready. They were, and we promptly sat down, got our food, and ate. We exchanged gifts and hugged our goodbyes for the night, only to find the mall slowly dwindling down, Christmas carols still booming, Pomeranians happily walking with their owner, the Christmas lights beginning to flicker. With this lull, I went home, only to find my cats dozing off on the couch. You see, I was a musician for several years, so of course the Christmas songs were stuck in my head for the rest of the night. And it hit me like a downbeat. Like any piece of music, a beat has two parts. The downbeat, or the doing part, and this is what we often hear, and the upbeat, the part that we don’t. This is the uncomfortable space in between, and yet, a proper beat couldn’t exist without it. In a season full of downbeats, it’s easy to neglect and ignore the upbeats, the space in between we’d rather forget about. Joy doesn’t always dwell in the doing, but in the space between.
