Halftime

At the end or the beginning of each year, many of us sit back and assess how we’ve spent the just expired year.  I’d think that our culture might also encourage a halftime celebration to take place at this time of year. 

Our sports events have breaks.  The seventh inning stretch in baseball and the halftime of football lead me to think that we could easily integrate this line of thinking into our culture.

Halftime is a great time to dig out those long neglected New Year’s resolutions that many of us composed for January first.  We can reassess our presumed goals made around the hectic holiday season.  In the more mellow time of early July, we can take a more sober look at the resolutions and rededicate ourselves to the best of them. 

We can look at the calendar and see that life moves quickly.  These days, living is hard, there are so many tempting distractions.  Holy cow!  I can hardly believe we’re living in 2012, let alone that we’re halfway through it already.

“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”–C. S. Lewis

We’re a species that procrastinates.  Individually for sure, but collectively, even more so.  We have pressing needs for employment of our workers.  There is the worsening spectre of the healthcare crisis in the country.  The problem of climate change looms over all life on earth.  Yet we spend time bickering about political team joining.  Vested interests wish to have us postpone planning and implementation of reasonable solutions to our major problems.

We find it too upsetting to honestly look at and work on real ways to repair our broken world.  It seems so much more pleasant to just “chill out” with electronic media or eascape into consumption of goods, sports and entertainment.  After all, we believe our lives are busy and hard enough. 

Procrastination is never a good solution, but we’re really good at postponing the really important things.  Time is short. 

“People who cannot find time for recreation are obliged sooner or later to find time for illness.”–John Wanamaker

Certainly coordinated thinking and physical effort is required to toil in our workplaces.  We have family obligations, civic obligations, and world obligations.  That doesn’t mean we have to knock ourselves out.  We need refreshing breaks, during which we can just be alive, living life in the slow lane.  That is my idea for celebrating halftime.

I hope the marketing departments at retail establishments don’t hijack the idea and turn it into yet another marketing opportunity to sell us more stuff we don’t need.
We could have the halftime holiday consist of just hanging out with family, friends, and alone.  There would be no bothersome feasts, maybe just some simple potluck picnics or dinners.  But the meals wouldn’t be the focus.  There would be no obligatory gift giving nor special songs nor religious controversies over any perceived meanings of the holiday.

It might be just a time to treasure the special people in our lives.  A time to treasure our own goodness.  A time of introspection over extroversion for a day or two might be a big part of this notion.  The holiday would be a publicly celebrated, private holiday.  Some of it could be patterned after the ancient solstice holidays of our ancestors. 

I wonder if it might catch on.

Have a meaningful Halftime Holiday.

Ciao

The Blue Jay of Happiness quotes H.G. Wells, “I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own.”