This Time of Year

It’s ‘the holidays’ again. It can seem strange that the phrase “the holidays” refers to just two of many official days when there is no mail and businesses are obliged to give employees time off work. Now those two days–Thanksgiving and Christmas—have just passed by again for another year.

What’s so special about this time of year? Why is this a time to celebrate with distant family, when highways and airports are packed, and snow and cold make travel difficult?

Is it because we are worried about the future and being thankful for the past brings us together; that, with darkness and cold pressing in on us, being with others who know who we have been brings us closer to light we can’t find in our immediate world?

Perhaps we remember Christmases when we came into our family’s living room and there were piles of presents beneath the tree that weren’t there when we went to bed the night before. Such memories can remind us how our lives have changed–perhaps in ways we didn’t anticipate or want.

Such changes can also remind us to feel grateful that we are still here to notice them, even if it’s in the lost-and-found department of the life we are now living.

The problem with memory is that the ones I would like to hold onto keep slipping away. So, it can save a lot of heartache to recognize that it’s in the nature of life that everything is just passing through, including ourselves. Nothing lasts forever. Everything arises, lingers for a while, and passes away. As Heracles said a long time ago, “The only constant is change itself.”

But change can also be the blessing we didn’t think we’d ever find. Change can be upsetting at the time, but looking back, we sometimes see that it has opened us to new possibilities for discovery and adventure.

We seem to be fashioned in a way that causes us to stay too long in circumstances in which we feel stuck and unnourished. While at other times, we abandon our own well-being and probably hurt others in the process, because we’ve been day-dreaming that pastures on the other side of a fence are calling to us. Too late, we then discover that those pastures weren’t real.

How can we tell which vision is just a dream and which is a gift that deserves our humble appreciation?

We can do worse than pause for a day or a moment to give thanksgiving for all we have been given, including our ability to feel appreciation. And we can do worse than notice whatever light falls into our world, letting it bring to life the light inside us.