Absence of Solemnity

I remember seeing someone wish someone else a solemn…Ramzan? Eid? Easter? I don’t remember what it was but it kind of struck me as interesting to wish someone else a solemn time. I don’t think there is a solemn, sincere bounded time in modern secular existence. Religious holidays that were often meant to be sincere have been coopted into crass commercial zombies of themselves. Nothing makes me feel less celebratory than seeing that Vodafone is offering a special or the local Planet Fitness wants me to work off all that holiday weight. Capitalism just really takes a big fat shit on some beautiful things.

Now, there’s a part of me that says “Well buddy people have always mixed commercial interests and holiday, a return to traditional religion is not going to make the world more sincere” and scrolls of religious history pass before my eyes. Truly, yes, we are not going to claw back sincerity by just declaring it to be so, just like you will not fill churches by making churches beautiful.

So, how do I build a time for myself to be sincere? In some ways I do this every morning with journaling - it’s an opportunity to reflect and express, and it contains that experience into one hour of the day rather than bleeding into every hour. When we don’t contain certain human behaviors they end up ruling everything around us. Maybe if we had a more contained holiday for avarice we wouldn’t have a society ruled as much by it? I feel like when I start to talk about these things I walk down the path of the Twitter traditionalists, who always seem a bit of a joke to me.

If you ever go on a vacation and there’s one bit of it that you really enjoy because you woke up at the right time, the crowds were thin, the light was perfect and everyone had a great time, of course you’ll want to relive that again. But wanting to change your whole life to relive that moment of vacation is not really realistic. That moment was incidental and controlled by factors far beyond your control. Nevertheless, traditionalists believe they can bring back the practices of the bygone days with enough rollbacks. That’s not really how it works, time flows only forward. But at least for myself, I do need some wisdom of the past to contain the solemn portion of life.