Thoughts on the True Spirit of the Holiday Season

By Adi

Well, today I feel icky. It's gotten me to thinking about the holidays and what they are really about. Actually, I was already thinking about that, and you know this if you read the very first blog, but, feeling icky got me to thinking about it in a different way.

At first, I had the thought that since I feel icky and don't have a ton to say other than - I feel icky - I shouldn't write in the holiday blog today. I thought, "Holidays are happy times, community times, spreading joy times! I should not do anything but spread joy." Then I thought, "Wait, that's kind of fake. Are the holidays supposed to be about fake happiness?"

I had to really think about that. Turns out, I had to get past some conditioning I didn't even know was there. Luckily, after about one minute, I left that musty old conditioning in the dust, and I thought, "No, the holidays are not supposed to be about fake happiness." I mean, who can force themselves to be happy or in the mood to spread joy on command? Ok, it's true. Some people can, but it's not believable. You know what I'm talking about. Those times when you walk away from someone who has just puked ingenuine happiness at you and you think, "Well that sure was transparent, and slightly uncomfortable."

Anyway, I think the holidays are really about intention. Since we are so lucky in this world to have many levels of reality all occurring on top of one another, it may be one level of reality that one feels icky, but on an entirely different level of reality there could be the intention to spread joy and create community and send love out to everyone.

So, here I am, writing this blog, about feeling icky, because that's what's going on. But, also, that other level is going on. When a good friend of mine called and left a message this evening, instead of doing what I'd usually do, which is not call while I feel icky, (which sometimes means I don't call for days) I called, because this holiday season has taught me something: my friend doesn't care if I feel icky, she just wants to be my friend and hear my voice and connect, and maybe even be given the chance to spread some joy my way on an icky feeling day...;-)