Hyper-here
Thresholds, scruffy sentiments, and spectacular additions (to what already is)
Earlier in December, a friend and her young toddler came over for a catch up. We sat on the carpet in front of the Christmas tree and discussed impending holiday plans. The speed at which this time of year can come hurtling towards us either threatens to bury all intentionality in its wake, or, in my case, makes every little comment or action seem like a cosmic memento. A sentimental seal for the month’s end. This particular day was a very clear push towards the latter. Baby Jojo, now with the newfound ability to explore unaided on her own two feet, made her way towards the large sliding door that separates what our family calls ‘the big lounge’ (‘wee lounge’ adjacent…), from the balcony space. She set off strong: fixated on the plethora of stimuli and thrill that beckoned her to hurry outside. Then came the doorway. Followed by caution. A gripping of the frame, and a curious assessment of the scene ahead to reassure herself before lifting one foot, then the other, then off again without concern. “She’s got a real thing about thresholds at the moment”, said my friend.
At the New Years Eve gathering I attended on the 31st, a small group of us sat around an outdoor fire and took turns sharing honest answers to a handful of meaningful questions that both ritualised and challenged us. What a privilege to mark the occasion in the company of tender friends who care to patiently listen to all you’ve thought, felt, celebrated and considered in the span of a year.
In reply to another’s spoken gratitude, one of the group brought up the idea of ‘Sacred Windows.’ Those moments in time where you actually, finally, take a second to tally up how good things in your life are going, and in doing so feel a certain tenuousness. A touch of Anticipatory Nostalgia as psychologists have coined it - the sudden awareness that the present is in fact already becoming a memory. Like a weird homesickness for your own present reality. Wanting to be even further burrowed inside it - present inside presence. Hyper-here. “Feels like a series of green light runs”, another said. This is the just the most specific brand of contentment. So completely smitten and sure, but at once more aware of how temporary and changeable each season can/will be so best you grab hold! Catch it. Keep it sacred.
Now here we all are, on the other side of that big annual door/threshold we’ve been anticipating. This time around, I was much like Jojo. In the sense that, the weight of sudden change and necessary release once passed through had the potential to blow things out of the water. To be dangerously enlivening. At once desperately curious to get amongst the other side, but also wanting to stop. Take a breath, feel my foot tentatively lift, and to pay my respects to the very special collection of months that I’d, chronologically and emotionally, be moving further away from.
When we were kids, I remember my sister sharing a cheat code for the Sims with me. She’d somehow found it on the internet, and it had the potential to completely elevate our little computer worlds, while also feeding into a hilariously innocent delusion of control over the timing, relationships, and impatient boredom inherent in daily life. With the code entered, we could fast forward through all the micro nonsense - the needing to eat, go to work, sleep, take a shower. But also the macro. Newborn Sims babies no longer threatened a dip into the dangerous red zone of a character’s ‘wellbeing’ bar, because now they were crying babies for only a fraction of the time. We skipped them right on through to childhood. Childhood right through to adulthood. And straight to the good stuff where we preferred to spend majority of our free time - the ‘woohoo’, ‘kiss’, ‘embrace’ buttons that appeared above the heads of fully formed, far more exciting, grown up men and ladies.
Recalling this the other day made me consider the work of milestones. Not just the grand, individual markers that make a person, but more so, the kind we find ourselves in together right now… I never ever want the holiday season to be over. Not just because of the fun and festivities involved, but because of the same-pageness of it all. When else does a week feel so universally stretchy and time-irrelevant as the one between Christmas and New year? In my head, the end of a year feels so safe and snug and mapped out. And if I’m perfectly honest, the start of a new one - the other side of that threshold - is a little daunting. Scintillating, but with a stomach drop quality none-the-less, as we stare down unchartered months to be marked by who knows what, all split off on our own tangents and timelines until we meet ‘here’ again in December.
After the fireside confessions on New Years Eve, I drove myself into town to join the collective effervescence of jolly chaos as the countdown to midnight erupted into a grand fireworks display set off from a barge on the lake. Given my spontaneous planning and the predictable lack of parking on such a night as this, it was close shave. But soon enough, there I was running from my miracle park on the town’s periphery in a very makeshift outfit of jandals, baggy jeans and a tossed on hoodie at 11.52pm to make it to the lakefront just in time. The whole hype of limited timing was such an unusual rush, like I must run because I was running towards some portal I would otherwise lose access to - frozen in the ‘now’ form forever. Not quite in line with the calm, contemplative threshold theorising that coloured my weeks prior. And then I just burst out laughing at myself. I would reach the New Year just as everyone would. It wasn’t about that. It was wanting to be totally sure I was a part of it with them. The pathological FOMO that has followed me since a toddler. Even if I was objectively alone in the watching, I was, once again, safe and snug in the same-pageness of it all. Making my way through the crowd of boisterous adolescents and foreign speaking holiday makers a while after midnight, I found myself behind a woman who abruptly stalled her momentum to turn around and yell to her friends, “whhhhy are we running?!” before bursting into laughter.
Unbeknownst to her, she was, in that moment, this New Year’s cosmic memento. A reminder to not rush through the milestones - however big or little, universal or personal. And to find the funny in the imperfect ways you get there. To keep your own Sacred Windows, and to love feeling all these things you’re feeling for the first and millionth time.
Wishing a happy 2026 to you all! I hope the yearly threshold has so far been as kind to your curiosities and sensitivities as it has to mine. Here’s to one foot in front of the other until we meet back here again in a little long while…