Winter Solstice, 2019

Many ancient peoples recognized the exact moment their dark world tilted back toward the light.

Sometimes gathered at massive stones erected in great circles constructed expressly for the purpose, they watched and waited, then together celebrated the turning.

It's easy to think these folk knew the world mostly through primitive intuition. Much like we used to believe about animal awareness - called intelligence, so to better separate us out from our animal cousins. Except intuition doesn't account for those stone circles, built precisely to purpose. As is often the case, the easy answer's wrong.

Remnants of recent stone construct are frequently ambiguous. Transience befitting purpose. If you think abandonment/dissolution weren't built right in, think again.

Modern science reveals that the day after tomorrow will gift us with one measly second of additional light. No one should blame us, if we don't mark it. We've a damnably complex compendium of critical tasks at hand, rather than spare time for to celebrate an obscurity.

Even considering science propelled by reason and a vastness of knowledge we should resolutely be using to replace old ways with new, our collective path forward appears fraught. At best, uncertain.

Naturally, uncertainty breeds fear. Populist bullshit would have you believe fear unites and through unity makes us stronger, but that's what fire tells wood until wood's reduced to ash and can no longer hear.

Social science informs us that despite seeking unity through fear, as individuals we've rarely if ever felt more isolated from the common tribe. Instead we feel alone, set adrift and left at the mercy of a cold, darkening world.

Were we at least as smart as pagans or even your average green plant, we'd intuit that it's our essential nature to collectively survive dark times by individually putting our shoulder to the wind and pushing forward until the world we've made turns back toward the light, where under its many blessings those who survive the effort might thrive.

Should we do that together, perhaps we'll again appreciate exactly what it was primitive people saw fit to celebrate, during their world's apparently darkest day.