Happy New Year

I just got back from a vacation in Connecticut where I visited my family for the New Year. There is not much to say about it, it is family and that entails all of the regular family issues plus some of the issues that are unique to my family and myself which we will discuss a little bit.

Apollo is not a God who is usually perceived as holding much by way of influence on family matters, but that is because most people look at the surfce of things and tend to ignore the deep ocean of feeling and thought that accompany their familial connections.

I will give an example.

Apollo, as a God not as a mythic figure, is an influence in all parts of our lives. Like Athena, he has a special place in the scheme of things that forms the background of the totality. Thought and civility, like wisdom, are not things you do and then stop, they are things that accompany your every movement, thought, and emotion. They are the foundations of the emotional and intellectual life you build as you live. Thus when considering Apollo and the family connection there is much that he has influence in.

Before heading out to Connecticut to see my family I was excited to see them. I wanted to go, but once I got there and saw them I was done. I really wanted to leave, to get out of there, but had four days to just stew in my misery.

Why misery?

Well, it is me, not them. I am a very different person from my family. We have so little in common, and I am also a bit of a neurotic mess when it comes to being around others, including them, and I simply cannot find that connection to them that I think I should have, making it difficult. Yet, on the airplane heading home I was touched by a sense of loss at not seeing them again for what could be a year or more.

It is like my mind misses them but then can't stand to be near them all at the same time. I understand the missing them, but what about the not liking to be with them? What does that mean, and how do I let the fact that I am trying to connect to Apollo during this time influence how I proceed?

I think there is a lesson there, and that lesson is that I am allowing that part of me that is coldly intellectual, that thinks things through, too much control over my feelings. Oh, there are other reasons why I dislike being around them, I always feel like an alien around them, but the fact that I am cold inside with regard to my feelings would make it impossible for me to enjoy them anyway.

But how do I do that? How do I let Apollo's moderating influence exist in me while at the same time letting Dionysos' chaotic emotional roller coaster take me for a ride some times?

If you have suggestions, please, I want to hear them.

Happy New Year