On Christmas, I spent a few hours with my family having dinner and my daughters got me a number of grand gifts but MY Christmas present was making and eating Christmas brunch with them.
I went to bed on New Year’s Eve at 10:00 and slept well that night. On New Year’s Day, I took a 3 hour nap and spent a few hours just reading.
I have had many sad and painful sessions with people lamenting the holidays because…..they were alone.
Personally, I think this a matter of perspective and maturity. Would I like to celebrate Christmas in a beautiful house (AKA, Downton Abbey), have a 10 ft. Christmas tree, go to Vail Colorado and ski on Christmas Eve, bring in the New Year with group of young and beautiful friends with champagne and caviar and kiss my 6 ft. blonde girlfriend at the stroke of midnight? Yes, of course. Are these things going to happen (I am holding out for the 6 ft. blonde girlfriend!)? No…or I highly doubt it.
Why am I not sad and despondent? Perspective and Maturity.
Perspective: I have what I have and don’t have what I don’t have. I could focus on what I don’t have and have focused on this in the past. What I got when I focused on that was……depressed. You recall that saying your mother or father used to say…something like “Count your Blessings”? Well, I have learned it is true. When I focus on what I have and can reasonably obtain, I am happier than when I have focused on what I didn’t have and told myself I needed to have.
Maturity: Someday I am going to die. Do I want to look back on what I didn’t have and obsessed about or what I had, and shared and took pleasure from? Obviously, the latter. It is my belief that those who obsess about what they don’t have and continually strive for never think about their mortality….the fact that they will someday die and will, in a short amount of time, be forgotten. It is not that I am morbid or negativistic. It is that I am realistic. This death will come for us all. I am only recognizing it and deciding how I want to spend the time I have today…by taking a (3 hour) nap, reading a book I have been looking forward to (instead of doing a lot of other quasi-necessary housework) or simply accepting what I have and making the best of it (instead of obsessing over what I don’t have and feeling miserable).