ThanksGiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, or whatever our cultural holiday may be, brings about a time of gratitude. We reflect on our lives and those in it and are filled with gratitude. We oscillate between remorse and forgiveness towards them, to anger and fury, and then settle back to the balance of love.
Why is that? Why do we participate in this pendular behavior only around the holidays. The rest of the time in the year we may very well want to tell these same people to “ get lost” or “ F off” or “ I hate you” or a pantheon of derogatories.
What is so special about the holidays that we keep our emotions in a state of gratitude towards family members , friends, or coworkers even if it is for a day or so, yet the rest of the 360+ days it is “acceptable” for us to share feelings for them with disdain?
I contemplated on this for a while, and I realized that at least for me, I discovered that it was about falling out of grace and gratitude and dropping into old habit patterns of anger, pettiness, irritability, frustrations, and a number of other emotional volatilities.
No matter how distracting the holidays may be with frivolities, celebrations, tempered by gluttonous foods, lights and sparkling gifts, it is still a season of slowing down for even for the 24 hours of the “holy day” ( holiday ) to reflect. It is in this pause that we see the roles people play in our lives and explore the depths of gratitude of each other’s company. The rest of the time we swim in the intensity of the daily mundaneness and do not take the time to pause to observe this beautiful network of relationships.
So my practice in this season and for the rest of the 365 days of the year is to pause more, and reflect each day on ALL the relationships that I am exposed to and be grateful for them. Whether it is the close family members, friends close or distant, co workers, colleagues, the strangers at the grocery store, the driver in the next lane, the never met person on social media… anyone.
Gratitude. It is not just for the holidays. It is for and within every moment of our lives.
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I love you
