Making Joyful Openings

Here come the holidays, already underway. My feelings are mixed. Will they be joyful or challenging? Or both?

The Holidays

There is so much energy around both the idea and the reality of the holidays. They call for joy, coming together, celebration, solemnity, eating and gifting. We walk into a world different than our everyday. Each of us responds to the holidays in our own way and our responses can vary year to year. This makes for quite a mix. The various elements of our society add to this energy. The stores go all out and market us relentlessly. We decorate our homes lavishly and light them up.

Many of us have heightened expectations for the holidays. We build them up and look for perfection. We do our best to make them as we want them to be, sometimes forgetting that others can influence our experiences and that our expectations can be flawed. Some of us dread the holidays because of our own discomfort or past experiences. We bring low expectations for the holidays and see them through a grayer lens.

Wherever we are regarding the holidays, they affect us. We cannot totally ignore them, without locking ourselves away. Their energy, good and bad, surrounds us. So, what do we do? We find a way to get through and make the best of them. We do not let ourselves become their victim.

Within Our Power

As the holidays begin, remember that we have power in how we experience them. Let’s exercise that power by creating realistic expectations and knowing what we need to get through them. We can identify what will make us joyful during them. We can identify what we will do if they begin to drag us down, so that we can raise ourselves up again.

It is within our power to make joyful Openings during the holidays. How do we do that? By creating things to do and identifying people to be with during the holidays that lift our spirits and bring us joy. We can make sure we have time away when they become too much. In doing this, we are creating an Opening to a positive holiday season.

We can create an alternative focus regarding the holidays than what we have had in the past, if it serves us. For example, we can be of service during the holidays to people who are in need and have less than us – on a physical, mental and emotional level. We can make acts of kindness for others that brighten their holidays.

Outside Our Power

We know that some things lie outside our power to control. That is true for the holidays. There is too much hype surrounding us that our holidays should be perfect. If we buy what’s advertised, we will be happy. Relationships that are challenging for us will be repaired automatically during the holidays and we will have a great time together. No one will be alone. We will all be in joy.

We have agency here. We have the option of removing ourselves from the parts of the holidays that bring us down. That is within our power to do. It will not change what surrounds us however, we will be in a different environment than the one that triggered us in the past. We can be very aware of our emotions and feelings and self-nurture –  more than in non-holiday times.

The things outside our power to control may create a need to reframe our views and mindset for the holidays. We could the holidays as both challenging and joyful, rather than as the idealized picture that surrounds us. We could intend to make the best of them as much as it is in our power to do so. We may not control the outside world, but we do control our response to it.