Mind Moves:I'm snowbound in O'Hare airport, Chicago. It's like Die Hard 2 out there; snow on the ground, freezing rain, everything at a standstill. And just when you need him most, that saviour of humanity, Bruce, is nowhere in sight.
Have you ever noticed how Christmas and travel seem so interconnected? First there was that journey across the desert that got the whole caboodle started; and ever since, people travel miles - often when conditions are least conducive to doing so - to be with their families, to be wherever feels like home.
Why do we bother? Why not just send an e-mail? Save the airfare, save the planet, stay put.
There appears to be some deep need in us to connect with the people and the places that hold memories of who we are; to experience afresh the gift of identity they gave us and reclaim our rightful pride in being a member of this particular tribe. Or perhaps, to re-experience the intimacy vacuum that drove us from that place we called home, in search of something or someone that felt more real.
Going home reminds us of who we are and the legacy we inherited. The warmth we have for others is reflected in the gentle interactions of the old and the young; tiny insecurities we feel are mirrored in faces that shaped our childhood. Echoes of what we swore we would leave behind but have never completely shaken off. We are left with a realisation that our past has made a more lasting impression on us than we ever considered possible.
When we left home we pitched ourselves forward into life determined to create something good out of the raw materials we had been given: our talents, our scars, our courage and our fears.
We did our best to put these pieces of our lives together, to make them work for ourselves and perhaps for some greater cause. And occasionally they did. And when they did, we felt good. We felt confirmed in ourselves, our life had meaning; we mattered.
However, there were also times when our storyline ran into confusion. We were not sure what steps to take next, and we just kept plodding forward into the dark night, with little consolation. And sometimes we had to sweat these times for very long periods. Going home brings back memories of all of the above.
Christmas time brings all the bewildering paradoxes of life into sharp focus: the excitement on a child's faces as his or her imagination works overtime in anticipation of Santa; the shame a father feels when he can't afford the one thing his child has asked for; the joy of a surprise reunion with an old friend; the grief in someone recently bereaved that cuts a little deeper at this time of year. No matter how brightly we turn up the lights, the darkness is impossible to extinguish.
Christmas is a time when humanity with all its nobility and with all its shortcomings shows up to the party. This is as true for the country in general as it is for each of our families.
The good the bad and the brash come out in style at Christmas. I think we get into trouble when we try to squeeze Christmas into some idealised version of what we think it should be about. It seems to me that a key message of Christmas is that human life is complex, full of contradictions.
We have a capacity for greatness but also for making decisions we live to regret; we can love but we can also be so self-centred. We become human and define our character by the choices we make in the face of these complexities, not by insisting that reality should be a much simpler affair.
Christmas - no more than the Solstice - doesn't dispel the darkness, but it reminds us that it isn't the whole story. It expresses the hope - critical to keeping us plodding on - that whatever is crazy in our lives and in our world, need not have the final say in defining who we are. Christmas is celebrated to remind us that whatever may be happening in our lives is part of a much larger story.
This is my last opportunity to wish you every blessing in the weeks ahead. Of course I hope that you will find rest, peace of mind and maybe even a little joy. And if that happens, it will probably be in those "off-camera" moments, where a kindness is shared half-way down the stairs or after the crowds have left and peace descends.
It won't last, but it may just be enough to untie a few knots and allow you to see over the mountain. To give you back some hope in your- self and in this beautiful but precarious world.
Meanwhile, here on the tarmac in O'Hare, Bruce has sorted the weather and the pilot has announced we've been cleared for take-off. Yipee Yi Yeah . . .
Tony Bates is founder-director of Headstrong, the National Centre for Youth Mental Health
