In the darkness growing through December, the weather was marked by rapid shifts of extreme cold and unseasonably warm temperatures, with the cold snaps accompanied by frozen ground lightly covered with white snow. From our home, we saw many animals, including squirrels, deer, Cardinals, Blue Jays, Mourning Doves, Titmice, Chickadees, Juncos, and assorted small sparrows, scurrying for sparse food.

In the season of empty coldness when the Earth sleeps and food for hungry animals is scarce, green lichen, moss, and fern remain amongst the white of snow and brown of fallen leaves and plants. The purpose of the season, centered on the cycles of the Earth, is to turn the nonliving rock and dead plants into fertile soil for the new life of spring. For those living with the cycles of the season, it is a time of eating stored food. Our food has included cauliflower, potatoes, cabbage, onions, garlic, dried beans, pumpkins, beets, and other staples of the late autumn and winter seasons. These have been used for fortifying winter meals, including Ethiopian and Indian foods, chili, pumpkin and bean and potato soups, and canned beets, as well as a traditional New Year’s Day meal of beans, potatoes, and faux sausage and sauerkraut.

At the peak of darkness, we returned to brew our first beer since the pandemic. “Viking Winter”, a dark, complex Maple Porter brewed on Winter Solstice, aged for a year in our cellar, then opened on the following Winter Solstice while we brew the next batch. The return to homebrewing is part of my intention for the new year to reclaim the core essence of my life—the self-in-the-world called “Dasein” by German Existentialists.

With time for a whirlwind of holiday celebrations and activities made possible by my decision to leave my employer gave me time to focus on my home and family. As I became immersed in my homelife, I recognized that the greatest challenge I faced in the past decade or more was the lightning pace of my life outside our home. My thinking and feeling had largely lost touch with the essence of life—the center of hearth, home, family, and the Earth that I seek to celebrate in my writings.

The Existentialist term, “Dasein” literally translates as “The One” of the Self-in-the-World. For me, the Dasein is myself, my immediate family, my home, the Earth around us, my relationship with the Earth in the form of gardening, local food and preserving, and home brewing and winemaking, all united in what I call the Spirit in Daily Life, connecting the Dasein to each other and to the mysteriously, unfathomable vastness of the Earth over imaginable eons, itself is an infinitesimally tiny part of vast time-place of the universe. I have been using the pause in my activity to focus on my mind completely on the Dasein and to integrate myself fully into it; to reclaim it with a humble recognition that I am a small part of my family, my home, and the Earth around us so I can once again feel the gift of waking up in the season of cold darkness with gratitude of all I have in this tiny flash of mortal life.

I focused on Dasein by rereading the section on creating and maintaining a haven or a sanctuary that begins the new book, Fulfillment. In many ways, I’ve let thoughts and feelings from the outside, troubled human world invade my home, distracting me from the gifts of home and family that I have received. Thinking that I would first reclaim Dasein through working with the Earth in the long-neglected garden and our yard, I found first I needed to focus my consciousness on my wife and family. Dasein is really a gestalt of the essential core of our lives, in which I am only one, equal, member to the rest of my immediate family.

The Dasein of my immediate family, however, includes others lives and parts of the Earth, including other family, friends, and pets, that are not part of the Dasein that I share. For me to care for others I share Dasein with, I need to not just think of my relationship with them, but with my relationship to others they share their Dasein with. For someone whose narrow focus is part of a purposeful strategy to remain small and in the here-and-now, it was a shocking recognition of the complexity of loving others. Yet, within the Dasein, all is one; the happiness and sadness happening to those I share it with will also happen to me.

I realized that in the Dasein, we are each other’s sanctuary. Inside my home, I am reminding myself that “I am in my sanctuary, safe in the company of loved ones.” When we babysit our granddaughter, I realized that we are part of her sanctuary and she, her parents, and we all share a collective fate. Venturing outside of this warm home means risking bringing back the troubles of the outside human world, as so many patriarchs have done to their innocent families for millennia.

In a few short months, I will complete accreditation that will allow me to become a therapist and I will rejoin the workforce, making these few months of frequent contact with my family, most especially my wife and step-granddaughter, all too brief in our lives. Using the time to ground myself thoroughly in my home, family, and the Earth is central to our future wellbeing. In eighteen months, my step-granddaughter will begin school and her time for her grandparents will be much shorter.

Conscientiously, with deep appreciation, sharing our lives in this brief respite before time pushes her and I outside our sanctuaries is the essence of reclaiming Dasein of my family, the Earth around us, and the spirit that unifies us. It is an ironic gift of leaving an intolerable worksite that more people should be forced by fate to receive.