I’ve been noticing an interesting phenomenon as I take my dog, India, for our nighttime walk.

Although I often stare at the sidewalk, scanning our next steps for paper napkins she’ll want to eat, I’ll also look into the windows of homes and apartments we pass.

It’s already mid-January, and it seems that a lot of decorated and lit Christmas trees are still twinkling in many homes.

My habit for ironic self-talk kicks in as I say to myself, “Is there a neighborhood contest for how long a tree can stand before disintegrating?” or “Did they forget where they put their storage boxes for re-packing their ornaments?”

Then I’ll laugh. I’ve been so taken by the feeling that I need to make space in my surroundings for new things that I can’t seem to wrap my head around why anyone would want to take up space with a dead (ready for the composting pile) tree and string of tiny bulbs.

The holiday is over. We’ve celebrated. We ate too many cookies and hope the evidence of our indulgences will melt away by the time we can safely socialize with each other (thanks to the Peloton or Mirror or other home fitness device that was part of this year’s haul).

It seems that Christmas decorations went up earlier and stayed up longer than in other seasons. I can understand this impulse.

So many, caught with extra time on their hands, anxious over reduced finances, recovering from illness or slow dancing with grief, have developed their own strategies for self-soothing.

While many small businesses have been forced to shutter their doors for good, liquor stores are doing well. I suppose lingering over twinkling lights against greenery and entertaining memories of better times represent a reasonable response to life at the beginning of 2021.

After I amuse myself with a stream of sarcastic rhetoric about why anybody would keep a dead tree in their living room for over a month, I stop and become very still. I ask myself, Who am I to judge?

The very question rattles me from the inside. After years of journaling to track my personal evolution, after taking the goal of achieving “the greatest good for all concerned” into much of my decision-making, after establishing conscious appreciation as my north star, I still entertain thoughts of “How could this person be so stupid?” “How could that person be so mean?”

This is always an uncomfortable conundrum for me, making room in my imagination for the unimaginable.

It’s been especially hard to think about staying in a state of non-judgment when my life feels threatened by the level of hatred and resentment others might feel towards me because I advocate some level of social safety net and police reform.

I’ve been outraged and angered by inequities in our society, by abuses of power, by failures of empathy…and, sometimes, I don’t know what to do with my own feelings and judgments.

I am not ready to give the narcissistic and self-consumed a total pass. Valuing the truth, or at least the pursuit of the truth, seems like a fundamental principle for living in a civil society.

But, beyond some basics, there are few things that are actually absolute. There’s a lot of room for different opinions, even contradictions. Why should I react, as I have, to Christmas decorations staying up until Valentine’s Day?

I would never blow my vacation budget on a timeshare condo along a golf course near Branson. I don’t think I would ever collect multiple pairs of Crocs.® I don’t think streaming movies on my iPhone will ever replace the experience of a wide screen viewing from my couch…

But, hey — that’s ME. You’re entitled to your own preferences and choices. Maybe not a mantra, still, a thought worth repeating; To each his own.

Holding space for different points of view is no small thing.