“One of the Best and Most difficult lessons you can learn in life is that no one owes you anything and you owe yourself everything.” – FofF twitter
We have started to get close to the crescendo of the holiday season. I see it in my family and I see it in our stores. I see it in the local restaurants and I see it in my neighbors’ faces. There are parties after parties, food overloads/comas, last minute stresses, shopping and shipping fiascos, final exams, and on a personal level, our family spent most of yesterday on a wild trek/scavenger hunt for the last, decent, real Christmas tree in our part of Florida. (we found it, thank goodness!)
Over Thanksgiving, our 18-month-old Labrador dog, Ralphie, was a frenzied mess. We had 16 people in our home and a lot of those people were teenagers who liked to swim with him, in our pool. He was ecstatic and on total sensory overload. At one point, someone made the comment that he was like a toddler who was beyond exhausted and just didn’t know what to do with himself. With his long tongue sticking out, he aimlessly started pawing at everyone and everything with a wild, blank expression on his face. I think that this is the state that a lot of us get to at some point in the holiday season, and I think that it is starting right now.
It is at this point in the season, that it is so important to stop, pause and just breathe. Nothing is as important as we have built up in our heads or that our stressed bodies are making it feel like. Everything that is truly important will get done. Everything that is meant to happen, will happen and all will be fine. All is well.
I love the opening quote because sometimes during the holidays, often us females particularly, try to do so much to make the holidays “perfect” with the hidden expectation that if we do everything just right, Santa or someone else is going to make the holidays “perfect” for us. Deep down though, we know that this is not how it works. As we are finishing up the season, we must bring the focus back to ourselves. We must remember that no one can fill up our mind, body, spirit needs except us, and that “trifecta of filling up” is our biggest responsibility, to ourselves so that we can be there for others. Today, we need to be honest with ourselves about what we need. Those needs should be on the top of today’s holiday “to-do” list.
“Slow down. You’re too important. Life teaches you how to live it, if you live long enough.” – Tony Bennett, on what advise he would have given to Amy Winehouse
