Who doesn't love Christmas?
I'll tell you who: all those people who hate their lives.
This time of year, folks seem either especially cheerful and bright, or overwhelmed and depressed. They either dig the colorful lights and pretty decorations or they loathe them. They either participate in the season of giving or they hate it, feeling grumpy and angry inside.
Which category do you fit in?
When we are off balance - meaning our lives just aren't going the way we want and we can't seem to change them - we feel miserable inside. And when we feel miserable inside, we don't want to be around a lot of cheerful, happy people. We want to sit alone and be mad with our arms folded tightly across our chests and our lips in a pout...
Or do we?
Perhaps what we really want is to have exactly what we don't have, and exactly what we believe we can't have. Perhaps we get mad because when we are around them - all those cheerful, happy people - it reminds us of all the happiness we want but don't have, and believe we can't have. Yet there they are and there it is, staring us in the face.
We wonder: Why do they have it but not me?
And that simple question sets us into a tailspin of all the reasons why we don't have it and can't get it. We feel victimized, unlucky, cursed, and trapped. Or we feel broken, discarded, worthless and hopeless. Looking around at all those happy faces makes us feel more alone in our pain, like no one else in the whole wide world understands what we have been through, what we are going through, or what we still have to deal with.
Whew. You feel the heaviness of that?
And the sad thing is - it's all a lie. Yep, a lie. You are not alone. You are not a victim. You are not unlucky, cursed or trapped. You are not broken, discarded, worthless or hopeless. You are a child of the same Divine Source as the rest of us - my brother or sister. Family.
We all have our stories of struggle, heartache, and pain. We all carry wounds because Humans have egos, and when those egos go unchecked and get out of hand, they create a hurtful, hateful environment in which to live.
Yet we can heal our wounds and grow our inner capacity for compassion, love, joy and equanimity. These things create a safe, authentically loving environment in which to live, both internally and externally, in which we feel seen, held, worthy, purposeful, connected and happy. Each and every one of us craves such an environment to live in, whether we admit it to ourselves or not. It's our Human nature. If we didn't, we wouldn't feel so hurt or angry at not having it.
If you find yourself struggling to get through this holiday season for whatever your reasons, it is a sure sign that you are caught in the trap of a lie buried deep within your unconscious psyche. The answer is not to punish yourself by isolating and judging yourself as unworthy. Or to punish those who are happy by being hurt and angry and judging them as the problem. They are not the problem.
And neither are you. But the problem lies deep inside of you.
The answer is to make it your business to uncover the lie you are telling yourself that keeps you bound to the belief that you don't deserve or can't have happiness for yourself. Only by bringing the lie into the light can you unravel the threads of hurt that hold it in place so you can grow beyond it. There is nothing more important to your life than that, because until you do that, you will continue to suffer under the pain of the lie, not just during the holiday season but in spite of it.
If you make it your business today to uncover the lie by investing your time, energy and resources into healing it, by this time next year, you may very well be one of those people your pain is currently judging. And you will wonder why it took you so long to love yourself enough to transform yourself and claim your own cheerful, happy life!
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