The holiday season often brings with it a wave of stress. Have you ever wondered why that is? What steps can we take to alleviate the pressures that our celebrations create? Let’s explore this together.
Each holiday season is fundamentally designed to rekindle our sense of hope, urging us to reconsider its importance and offer it a renewed chance.
In fact, certain hopes are intentionally woven into the fabric of the holidays. These hopes encourage us to embrace love over hate, tolerance over xenophobia, compassion over cynicism, generosity over envy, and altruism over greed.
Sure, it may sound clichéd.
But Miracles Do Exist
Every year, the holidays remind us that miracles are possible, even if not frequent. They encourage us to harbor hope and to believe in new beginnings. Most importantly, they remind us of the power to start anew. We can aspire to be forgiven for past mistakes and hope that the world will finally embrace us with open arms.
Above all, we yearn for the chance to reset our lives—to hit the metaphorical Big Reset Button and feel revitalized. Paradoxically, this very desire for renewal is what can lead to our holiday stress.
- We hope that unhealthy patterns in our lives will resolve, past mistakes will be corrected, and that we will find healing from previous hurts.
- We value thankful moments at Thanksgiving, which can help us shift our focus from the disappointments of the past year.
- We aspire for love during Christmas to flow effortlessly, believing that the beautiful music of the season will unify us in harmony.
- We desire that the joy of sharing good food will nourish not just our bodies but also our spirits.
- We hope that the simple act of togetherness will foster genuine goodwill towards all.
Yet Fear Can Dampen Our Hope
Similar to the anxiety of missing out on life’s fleeting opportunities, we worry that the holiday magic might fade, leaving the promise of the Big Reset Button as nothing more than an illusion. Fear can suffocate hope, causing that precious reset to become obscured.
Witnessing acts of religious intolerance can make us feel justified in harboring our own biases, which creates a sense of primal fear for our safety, constricting our hearts. With trepidation we acknowledge that hope feels distant and that the gifts we receive cannot thaw our frozen hearts; the kindness we show may leave us feeling unfulfilled.
- We dread the possibility of being unloved, worse still, of being incapable of giving love.
- We fear the futility of our existence, wary that the idea of the Big Reset Button may be just a comforting myth, pushing us toward a cynical mindset, closed off from recognizing the suffering of others.
- We fear becoming a version of Scrooge.
What Can We Do?
As the Dalai Lama wisely stated, our primary moral obligation is to foster compassion within our communities. This message echoes through every major spiritual tradition, emphasizing love, compassion, and forgiveness.
This holiday season, carve out some personal time and consider two important tasks:
- Create a list of those who hold significance in your life. Reflect on what you can do to make each of them feel more cherished right now, and act on those ideas.
- Contemplate your new journey ahead. Make a list detailing how this fresh path will diverge from your current one. That, indeed, will represent your Big Reset Button.
By taking these steps, you could look back next year and say, “That was the year my life transformed, the year I truly embraced love and reset my perspective.”
