It would be easy at this time of the year to post a curmudgeonly item laced with diatribes about this season. It would be easy to wave my hand, figuratively speaking, and declare it all to be a ‘humbug’. There is certainly a lot of that going around in various media outlets. Rather than go that route, it is my best interest to try to be positive and hopeful in this holiday period.
The best path to that is to start simply and fundamentally. It is important not to focus on the lust for things that is so prevalent at this time. It is an easy trap to fall into. Marketing is geared to make us feel incomplete and inadequate if we do not go on a quest for this season’s ‘must have’ thing. This path will never lead to fulfillment. It will always lead to a cold, incomplete search for fulfillment by the acquisition of things. There will always be a new thing. There will always be a new spate of marketing intent of making you want it, desire it, and lust for it. It is the merry-go-round of sadness.
Rather a path to happiness at this time of year is not found in materialism. For me at least, happiness starts in finding joy in the current moment. Things are nice, but if they become the center of this season’s focus the fundamental message of this season is lost. The path that leads me ‘home’, to the center of what it means to be me, begins and ends in a spirit of thankfulness. Oddly enough, it can be difficult to cultivate such a spirit at any time of the year, but in this time if you don’t already have it can be even more so. But it is an essential element for happiness both in these long dark months and the other months of the year.
Joy in this season starts with counting blessings. Any search for fulfillment that focuses on the external as some path to happiness is giving into the idolatry of materialism. Whereas starting with a rigorous inventory of the blessings already granted to you puts the focus where it belongs. This inventory helps you recognize the truth. That being this: Most residents of the industrialized world are blessed to a degree that is impossible to fully calculate or appreciate. For example, if you start by counting clean drinking water and a functioning toilet you are more blessed than several billion of the world’s inhabitants.
Joy comes in grasping the inventory, and fully understanding the geography involved. Laying hold of the notion that we are so blessed on a day to day basis, that allowing the lust for this season’s new thing to wreck that, becomes a silly notion. Understanding that the list of blessings are impossible to fully calculate leads to a place of humility. That might not sound intuitive, but it is true, at least for me.
In no small measure it is true, because any accurate inventory forces me to realize that the blessings that have accrued to me, having little to nothing to do with me. They did not by and large enter my life due to my effort and striving. They entered my life, because of the work of my creator. They entered my life not because of anything about myself. They entered my life through the grace of my God.
This realization forces me to a place of humility. It forces me to be grateful for everything that has already come into my life. It reminds me that very little of my life is about me specifically. A life lived from a place of selfishness and vain self-interest, is a wasted life. It never leads to joy. It never leads to long term fulfillment.
The inventory usually forces me to accept that when I put myself at the center of my world, I have made a basic mistake. It forces me to grasp that a life lived well, is always focused on ‘the other’ as it were. When I give my life to my creator to be poured out as a drink offering for the world in which I have been placed, I am fulfilling my primary function. In essence, we are blessed so that we in turn can be a blessing for others. It is the consistent witness of the parable of the talents. When we hoard all that we are given in service to ourselves and hide it in the earth, we fail the most primary reason we were blessed in the first place.
So the message I am fumbling along trying to communicate is this.
-Find your center and appropriately prioritize it.
-Take stock of your life.
-Count your blessings frequently and rigorously.
-Find your way to a thankful spirit.
-Understand that by and large it is not about you.
-Be the blessing to others that you were meant to be.
It may sound silly, and rather cumbersome. It is however not. It is the only path by which I have found that real joy in this season may be found. And that, at least for me, is all I am after in this life.
The best path to that is to start simply and fundamentally. It is important not to focus on the lust for things that is so prevalent at this time. It is an easy trap to fall into. Marketing is geared to make us feel incomplete and inadequate if we do not go on a quest for this season’s ‘must have’ thing. This path will never lead to fulfillment. It will always lead to a cold, incomplete search for fulfillment by the acquisition of things. There will always be a new thing. There will always be a new spate of marketing intent of making you want it, desire it, and lust for it. It is the merry-go-round of sadness.
Rather a path to happiness at this time of year is not found in materialism. For me at least, happiness starts in finding joy in the current moment. Things are nice, but if they become the center of this season’s focus the fundamental message of this season is lost. The path that leads me ‘home’, to the center of what it means to be me, begins and ends in a spirit of thankfulness. Oddly enough, it can be difficult to cultivate such a spirit at any time of the year, but in this time if you don’t already have it can be even more so. But it is an essential element for happiness both in these long dark months and the other months of the year.
Joy in this season starts with counting blessings. Any search for fulfillment that focuses on the external as some path to happiness is giving into the idolatry of materialism. Whereas starting with a rigorous inventory of the blessings already granted to you puts the focus where it belongs. This inventory helps you recognize the truth. That being this: Most residents of the industrialized world are blessed to a degree that is impossible to fully calculate or appreciate. For example, if you start by counting clean drinking water and a functioning toilet you are more blessed than several billion of the world’s inhabitants.
Joy comes in grasping the inventory, and fully understanding the geography involved. Laying hold of the notion that we are so blessed on a day to day basis, that allowing the lust for this season’s new thing to wreck that, becomes a silly notion. Understanding that the list of blessings are impossible to fully calculate leads to a place of humility. That might not sound intuitive, but it is true, at least for me.
In no small measure it is true, because any accurate inventory forces me to realize that the blessings that have accrued to me, having little to nothing to do with me. They did not by and large enter my life due to my effort and striving. They entered my life, because of the work of my creator. They entered my life not because of anything about myself. They entered my life through the grace of my God.
This realization forces me to a place of humility. It forces me to be grateful for everything that has already come into my life. It reminds me that very little of my life is about me specifically. A life lived from a place of selfishness and vain self-interest, is a wasted life. It never leads to joy. It never leads to long term fulfillment.
The inventory usually forces me to accept that when I put myself at the center of my world, I have made a basic mistake. It forces me to grasp that a life lived well, is always focused on ‘the other’ as it were. When I give my life to my creator to be poured out as a drink offering for the world in which I have been placed, I am fulfilling my primary function. In essence, we are blessed so that we in turn can be a blessing for others. It is the consistent witness of the parable of the talents. When we hoard all that we are given in service to ourselves and hide it in the earth, we fail the most primary reason we were blessed in the first place.
So the message I am fumbling along trying to communicate is this.
-Find your center and appropriately prioritize it.
-Take stock of your life.
-Count your blessings frequently and rigorously.
-Find your way to a thankful spirit.
-Understand that by and large it is not about you.
-Be the blessing to others that you were meant to be.
It may sound silly, and rather cumbersome. It is however not. It is the only path by which I have found that real joy in this season may be found. And that, at least for me, is all I am after in this life.
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