Apparently, You Hoomans Have Been Planning This

Hello hoomans, Hugo here.

Apparently we are planning a party. But no one told me about a party. My hooman asked if you all were working on plans for when that special day comes. They did not say what “it” was but this does not seem to be a problem for anyone but me. It is interesting that you all know what my hooman is talking about. And it is also interesting that you are already prepared for celebrating a special thing unsaid.

Turns out there is a LOT of champagne sitting in refrigerators across North America. There is also Prosecco, Cava, Dom, red wine, tequila, single malt and at least one Labatt Blue. One of you has two bottles of bubbly ready: a cheap one specifically for shaking and spraying over the deck and a second bottle for actually drinking. Now that is someone with seriously high executive functioning.

There is also a playlist ready to go, a huge layer cake planned, and balloons destined for someone’s yard. Someone has fireworks in storage. Someone has an outfit picked out for dancing in the street. I ask myself, can I wear an outfit and dance in the street when this party gets started?

Apparently one household is training its cats in parade formation. I apologize if I sound rude, but that is just a little bit ridiculous. That would be like trying to train dogs to write Substack articles. AS IF.

So. Much. Dancing.

I can also confidently confirm that with or without special outfits, there will be dancing in the streets, parking lots and neighbourhoods. It was mentioned so many times that I think us dogs need to start planning alternative walking routes for this special day.

There will also apparently be a LOT of noise. There will be screaming, whooping, cars honking, fireworks, pots and pans, hugging, singing and at least two outdoor performances of the Hallelujah Chorus. One of you pictured the final dance scene from Footloose, except with 99 percent of the planet participating. Another compared it to scoring a last-minute goal in the Stanley Cup. Someone else imagined the biggest block party in the country.

There were also quite a few plans involving funny substances that hoomans ingest to be silly. I will leave most of those between you and your respective governments, but I feel compelled to mention the reader who quit smoking marijuana in 1979 and thinks this might be the occasion to take it up again: Dear hooman, 47 years is almost 10 dog lives and is a very impressive streak. Maybe have a cookie instead? But I do not know if a cookie is enough celebration for this thing the hoomans are planning to celebrate.

Relief

Some of you said you would cry but I am guessing it is happy tears? Others imagined one enormous sigh. One person simply said “Breathe.” And an extraordinary number of you said that what you really wanted was a good night’s sleep. Whatever this thing is, it must be something very bad that is going away rather than a good thing coming.

Is this related to the Trump Tax that my hooman just wrote about? Where hoomans are paying a tax in attention, worry, checking the news, commiserating, and lying awake at night? I know what this is like for hoomans. I have lost count how often a perfectly good walk gets wasted when hoomans start to discuss politics instead of things like trees, and clean smells and suspicious activity in bushes. So perhaps what many of you are imagining is the day you finally get a Trump Tax refund? Is that it?

One Big Exhale

Exhale was a very common word used. And I noticed most of you are doing physical things when the news arrives, like crying, sleeping, breathing, dancing, yelling, hugging, popping a cork. I have been observing hoomans for a long time and these are ways to release things you are holding inside for a long time.

One reader remembered the day the 2020 election was finally called. He felt an urge to go outside and dance, and when he did, he discovered two neighbours outside who apparently had exactly the same idea. The three of them danced together in their cul-de-sac and then went back inside and watched spontaneous celebrations happening elsewhere.

There is actually a hooman concept for this. The sociologist Émile Durkheim called it collective effervescence: The unusual emotional intensity people experience when they share an important moment with other people. You see it at concerts, sporting events, demonstrations and those rare historical moments when thousands of strangers suddenly pour into the streets because they all feel the same thing at the same time.

I think that’s maybe what you are imagining. You went through a bad thing together and now you will exhale together when it’s over. You will want to call your friends. You will want to hug your neighbours. Then you may briefly wonder if you should have hugged THAT neighbour. And you will want to go outside and discover that everyone else has come outside too.

Not Everyone is Planning a Party

There was another group in the comments too, and I think they’re important. Some said this unspoken thing will not change everything. Or maybe not change anything. The same problems will persist, there are so many things lost, and getting back lost things will be hard.

These hoomans are right, of course. Whatever this thing is it cannot be magic. Nothing makes everything right suddenly. But as several of you said, you need to celebrate, take a breath, and then get back to work.

This seems perfectly sensible to me. Dogs understand this well. When I catch a ball, I celebrate catching the ball. I do not refuse to enjoy it because my hooman is throwing it again. There is always another ball. Celebrate this ball that you have caught.

Maybe when things are very bad for a very long time, it can feel frivolous or wrong to celebrate anything that is not a complete victory. There’s always another danger, another election, another bad actor, or another reason why we cannot relax. But if you wait until every problem has been solved before allowing yourself to feel joy, you’re going to be waiting a very long time.

Anticipation

Hoomans cope with difficult things partly by being able to imagine themselves on the other side of them. You count down to vacations and retirement. You make plans for what you’ll do when the renovation is finally finished, or your chemo is done, or your children are finally launched. You imagine how wonderful it will feel when some difficult period in your life is behind you. The anticipation itself reminds you that the difficult present isn’t permanent. And when you can enjoy that lovely better future in your mind for awhile, it gives you a little break from present.

My prediction

So after reviewing all of your responses, here is my official forecast for The Big Day. There will be champagne, fireworks, dancing, crying, car horns, phone calls and some extremely busy group chats. And somewhere a 47-year streak of sobriety from marijuana may be in jeopardy. Somewhere else, several cats will discover that parade formation was never covered in the original terms of their employment.

But I think the biggest event will be much quieter that the brouhaha above. Millions of people will exhale. And then a lot of you are going to have the best sleep you’ve had in years.

The next morning, the problems won’t all be gone. There will be an enormous amount of work still to do. But I don’t think that means you have to skip the party. You don’t have to picture a perfect future, but just picture yourself on the other side of worst ever.

Thanks for Reading!
Canada Resists