Why I Wanted My Christmas Presents To Stay in The Box

My favorite part about gifts as a kid was not Christmas morning itself when we gathered to open the presents, but savoring the lead up - when the presents were there and awaiting us, but still remained infinite mysteries, each of them.

I could sit by the tree on December nights, look at the fuzzy halo in the glow of the lights, play guessing games with ornaments that hid themselves in the branches, and linger in the atmosphere.

Wrapped presents was the best part, because once the gifts were unwrapped, that was the end of it. The end of the anticipation. What I wanted, more than anything in a box, was anticipation.

I once did a visualization in which there is a box. The box is supposed to mean something, something that matters, and mine was wrapped with brown paper and a rope ribbon tied around it. It was beautiful in its simplicity.

It gave nothing away of itself. It was like I was afraid to open the damn thing, even in my visualization, worried whatever it was would be too limited. But as long as it was unopened, it could be anything.

As long as I was unopened, I could be anything.

I was, for a long time, far more enamored with the idea of open possibility than choosing something.

It makes it hard to choose anything, when you romanticize the open field of possibility. It makes it hard, as well, to choose yourself. So often a choice for me was not about what I would gain, it was about all the things I would lose just by the choosing.

It took a long while before I realized that my love affair of open possibility was not a way of making sure that I chose right or chose well, but instead an assurance that I would not choose at all.

It was a pact that I would bide my time or constantly look beyond what was in front of me for a promise of more. No matter what beauty I beheld or what majesty beheld me, there was more. No option held enough compared to my idea of possibility.

But...possibility itself could never be caught. It slipped through my fingers before it could even take form.

You can do a lot of things while you resist choosing at all. You can settle for a compromise, knowing it isn't what you are really choosing, while reassuring yourself that some day you will truly choose. You can purposely choose recklessly, knowing that you don't really mean it. Your heart's not in it, so screw it.

You can choose and not choose, all at once, in the same moment, and throw yourself into a certain purgatory of indecision about how you live your life. You can unzip yourself at the center that way.

I don't know when I became a woman that much prefers to unwrap gifts, but I am. I don't know when I became a woman that would rather grab onto something, but I am. I've found doing so only presents more possibilities.

I don't know when I realized that making a choice isn't about all the things you forgo, but whatever you allow yourself to truly touch. It's also about what you allow to truly touch you.

I don't know when I realized that being animated in your life doesn't come from holding onto all of your possibilities, or rather holding out for them, but seizing one and then letting it open up your world and take you somewhere that you couldn't foresee, especially not in the vagueness of lust for possibility.

You touch something finite to touch anything at all. Funny, that. And yet, that.

(Original writing & photos, the first me as a wee one)