Psychology

The (Holiday) Fire Next Time: Holidays in 2021

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

We’re not even through the holiday season of 2020, so I’d like to discuss the holiday season of 2021. No, this isn’t me jumping the gun like every store out there to cram Christmas and such into every mental cranny. Instead, I want to confront three facts that haunt us, the three “Ghosts of Christmas WTF” as it were.

  • This holiday season is not “normal.”
  • The next holiday season will not be “normal.”
  • The next holiday season should not be “normal.”

This holiday season is not “normal,” and it’s even less normal than we realize. We know about the obvious abnormal things – the Pandemic, economic collapse, a president in further mental and moral decline. But there are other things we may not notice because of those things.

Think of all the things that have changed because of the above. We’ve been barely seeing our friends, our exercise routines changed, our diets changes, and so forth. Many of us have come close to tragedy or have faced it. We’ve had abnormal after abnormal flung at us over and over so much we might not be able to acknowledge it.

So let’s acknowledge it and give ourselves a break. Don’t beat yourself up – or bother others – for not doing things “right.” It wasn’t going to be “normal.”

Such acknowledgment let us gear up for next year – because the holiday season of 2021 is going to be different too.

Next year isn’t just going to be Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, etc., in 2021. It’s going to be us recovering from the Pandemic and the economic crisis. We’ll be reliving the traumas of this year, on top of whatever holiday stressors we have. Too many of us will have empty seats at the table and fewer holiday cards to send.

The next holiday season won’t be “normal.”  Get that into your head, and you’ll be happier next year. You’ll be able to acknowledge the trauma you and others faced. You’ll know to go easy on yourself and others.

By acknowledging next year’s holidays will be different, that means we can deal with the fact that the next holiday season should not be “normal.”

We will have confronted so many issues about life – the fragility of it, our ignorance of essential workers, grinding poverty, political corruption, and more. We will want to rethink what the holidays mean and what we want to do in light of these unavoidable truths.

We will want to mourn. There will be so much sadness, so much death, and we’ll need to deal with it. During the holidays, sad things often come out – so let us prepare to deal with such things healthily.

We will want to dispense with some traditions.  How many holiday events are horrible mental grinds we never wanted to do anyway – and this Pandemic let us avoid them or ditch them? How many traditions don’t seem meaningful now? What do we need next holiday season – and in the years to come?

We will want to return to or elevate some traditions.  What holiday events now mean more to us than ever? What events should we make the center of our holidays in 2021? I usually did holiday potlucks, and believe me when I say I value them even more.

We will want to make new traditions.  What have we learned this horrible 2020 that can be dealt with by new practices? What deserves to be remembered, or despised, or forgotten? You’ve probably created or taken on other holiday traditions before – what should you make (or just appropriate) for next year?

Steven Savage

The Law of Conservation of Silliness

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I would like to propose the Law of Conservation of Silliness.

I do not do this lightly because I take silliness quite seriously. Be it wild cosplay or wacky humor, strange crossover fanfictions or subtle jokes, nonsense is something I appreciate. My history of watching B-movies testifies to that appreciation.

Humans need silliness, you see, much the way we need play – perhaps both needs are the same. We need that space to let our minds flow free in seemingly foolish directions, both to laugh but also to discover. We need to be silly to relax, to take a moment to not be serious in an oft-serious world, else we lose something. Any of us know the sheer power of giggling at something so foolish it might just be profound – and how we might find profundity.

When we can be silly, we also take ourselves less seriously. The world, in my opinion, needs that – and always had.

Thus we need silliness, humor, strangeness in our lives. So what happens if we do not get it? In modern times we can indeed observe that when denied, the silly side of people comes out in strange and dangerous ways.

We all know the people who take themselves too seriously. The uptight and the self-righteous, the judgemental and the hateful. We know people without joy or laughter except, perhaps at the expense of others. When they imagine, they only seem to imagine dark things and make equally dark plans against their imagined phantoms.

Thus these unsilly people build elaborate webs of hatred and conspiracy to fight. Never satisfied because they cannot enjoy, they cannot be silly, they spin silly-looking beliefs of a world against them. Their lack of silliness and humor means they turn that talent to making lists of the tiniest hatreds and elaborate conspiracy theories to explain their own pettiness.

If you do not experience silliness, then it will come out in dark ways. We use that silly side of us to make the world worse when we cannot enjoy it.

One merely has to look at elaborate conspiracy theories being spun on the internet. They are oft silly and dumb in a way that would be funny if people didn’t believe in them. Very serious people – too serious – spend time creating such illusions and making everyone else miserable.

I submit that if such people could relax, laugh, be foolish and wild, they wouldn’t spin ridiculous tales they take too seriously.

Thus the Law of Conservation of Silliness: If we are not allowed to enjoy silliness, we will turn it into believing and doing foolish but awful things.

Do I take this law seriously?

Well, there’s a good question. It does seem a bit silly, doesn’t it? But perhaps a dumb law is the best thing to explain a dark tendency of people.

Steven Savage

Thou, the Creator

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I recently heard a question that led me to understand one of the most significant drivers of creativity.

That question was, “What would your seventeen-year-old self think of you now?“

My seventeen-year-old self would be reasonably happy as I had fulfilled many of my youthful dreams, at least partially. I had worked in video games, even if I found it wasn’t for me. I had and continue to be a published writer, even if it’s self-published. I am in a happy relationship, though I have one amicable divorce under my belt. I had done pretty decently.

But that made me realize that many of my dreams were creative dreams, and what had helped me reach them in part was that I had held on to some of my youthful desires to be a given kind of person. I was the writer, the game professional, involved in IT, and so on. I had held on to the dream of being a certain kind of person, even if the hope slept for years.

That’s when I realized a core driver of creativity is identity. When you identify as something, you become that thing – if not in whole in part, if not as a burning hot dream, then a warm reality. Some youthful identities had never left me, and thus I became them, and my further readings on productivity have confirmed that.

When I looked around at successful creatives I knew, it was almost always the same – each person dedicated to being a certain someone. A documentarian who could write with lightning speed scribed books faster than anyone. A creative idolizing people like Kubrik and punk rockers who could always find a new boundary to walk across into wild art. A cosplayer who constantly created as it was simply them.

And me, a person who wanted to be a writer as a kid who just kept writing, an IT geek that did it as he liked it who ended up in Silicon Valley. All that was just me being me.

Identity drives us. It is that which we are and must be, and nothing stops us because it is us. A failure may interrupt us, a crisis may mean a delay, but we surge ever forward because it’s what we do.

Identity keeps us from distraction. When you have a choice between things, your identity helps make the decisions, minimizing distractions. Even when there is chaos and crisis, that identity helps you go around the distractions when you can. Perhaps in crisis, you even find your identity drives you to a solution.

Identity channels our energies.  It is the lens that focuses the light of our adrenaline and power and fear and hope. It tells our energies where to go, and from that, great things can result.

A person who knows “I am this” is powerful as they are something, even if they are not the best form of it – or the best form of it yet.

For you out there, the creative, find your identity, hold to it, act on it. That’s your skeleton key to life, to unlock what you want to do. I am not saying it is easy or without pain – not at all. I am saying it is what will help you make art, and music, and books, and cosplay, and more.

Let me leave you with something that helped me. Write down everything you want to be/think you are – and keep it positive. Out of these, find seven or less – even if you have to drop some that seem little relevant, consolidate others, or even make hard admissions to yourself. Find what speaks to you.

Now ask, if these are who you are and will be . . . what do you do next?

Keep asking that question whenever you need to. Eventually, your seventeen-year-old self may be quite impressed – or you’ll find they already are.

Steven Savage