We are now hip deep into the Holiday Season. All around us lopped off fir trees are piled in corner lots waiting to be brought into our homes and laden with electric bulbs and flammable decorations, television ads are full of happy smiling people opening boxes filled with ‘just what I’ve always wanted”, and radio stations are playing the same lame Xmas songs over and over and over and… What’s not to like?
Please note. I am not putting down holidays. Whether you are Jewish and celebrating Chanukah, Christian and celebrating Christmas, African-American and celebrating Kwanzaa, Muslim and celebrating the current Holy Month, or whatever, celebrations are good. Provided, of course, you do remember what they really are all about and provided they really do bring about the pride, goodwill, love, brotherhood, godliness, compassion, or family togetherness they were originally intended to commemorate.
Unfortunately, our society has had all of its celebrations co-opted by our deity of choice, the dollar. The nightly news is constantly comparing this year’s retail revenue with last year’s in an effort to see how well we are celebrating the holiday. Never mind whether more people are dying in drive by shootings, more homeless are out on the streets, or 30,000 more troops are heading off to Afghanistan. If sales figures are up and cash registers are chinking along, oh holy night, all’s well in the world.
It wouldn’t be so bad if the business world didn’t try to convince us of how much we need what it has to offer in order to celebrate properly. Should it be that we can only feel complete, satisfied, fulfilled, and holy by what we have, what we own? Of course not. We know that. Yet how seductive the lure of the company pitchman putting his product between who we are and who we want to be.
I can never forget the worst, most despicable example of this I have ever seen… directed at little kids and shown during daytime TV. “You can make friends,” it advised the impressionable receptive minds who had tuned in for the cartoons. “Just make some Kool-Aid.” Is it any wonder that when these innocents grow up they’ll need to buy the latest electronics, wear the latest clothes, know the latest gossip, and ingest the latest and most powerful anti-depressants to have any form of self worth or self esteem?
Happiness should not be dependent on what we own or how we are connected to the world around us, even though we are told that it is by those who stand to benefit from that belief. Surely the circumstances in which we find ourselves and the money and financial resources we have can make life easier or harder. Yet it should not be used as the measure of our true worth. Enough rich people are miserable and enough poor people are happy to prove this point.
True joy should come from within. The deeper we go, in fact, the greater the resource that is there for us to tap. The next several posts will focus on the source of this inner joy, how we can reach it, and its relationship to who we really, truly, are. It’s a journey well worth taking this Holiday Season.
peace………………….ag
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