Balancing the scales in favor of joy

Happy holidays!

I don’t know about the rest of you, but the holiday season is still a magical time for me. It goes back to when I was a child, waiting and watching for the first snowfall. How beautiful the trees looked in my northeast Ohio town, with snow covering their limbs like white ermine and the glitter of ice diamonds along their branches!

Just as eagerly anticipated was the Sears toy catalog. I couldn’t wait for that huge book! Everything I could possibly want (and many things I didn’t even know existed but wanted the moment I laid eyes on them!) could be found on those pages. In those days long before Toys R Us, it served as my reference book for my list to Santa and a conversation starter to bring my parents’ attention to what I wanted that year.

While I didn’t get everything I wanted each December 25^th (the horse, alas, has yet to materialize!), I still approached each December with a sense of hope and anticipation, of believing that dreams could come true and that holiday magic would change my life for the better. And, truth be told, I still feel that way.

Admittedly, it’s been more difficult some years than others to maintain that sense of possibility—the first Christmas after my mother died or those times when, unlike the Cratchit family in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, I let financial worries overwhelm me. And this year, with all the economic upheaval and jobs in jeopardy, I would guess that many of us are finding it well nigh impossible to say “Ho! Ho! Ho!” without more than a touch of bitterness or fear in our voice.

It’s hard to be joyful when you don’t know what the future holds. It’s hard to celebrate without feeling like a member of the orchestra on the deck of the Titanic. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done—maybe not in the way we used to do it with big parties and a mountain of presents under the tree but in the way it really matters: by recognizing what “gifts” we have been given throughout the year that went unnoticed, unrecognized and unappreciated.

This year, as my gift to you, I offer you the opportunity for you to remember what is good, important, and positive in your life. In a sense, it’s a gift of balance—of taking that life scale that we feel is heavily weighted with negatives on one side and adding life joys to the others until we reach a state of emotional and psychological equilibrium.

• Let go of what you want. So much of our unhappiness comes from wanting what we don’t have—or more of what we already possess. While there is no harm in wishing for a more financially secure future, better health or more love in your life, there is danger when your desires blind you to what is already yours—what “assets” (for want of a better word) exist in your life right now.
• Focus on what you have. Make a list of five positives that are part of your life—the people you love and who love you, the parts of your body that are still up to par, the food in your kitchen (even if it’s just peanut butter and jelly), the abilities that you possess. Tomorrow, add five more items, and the next day, five more. My guess is that, although the first five or ten may have taken some time to identify, it gradually became easier to enumerate the blessings you have.
• Give what you believe you can’t spare. For some, that might be the twenty dollars earmarked for savings. For others, it might be the hour at a soup kitchen that was scheduled for job-searching. Or maybe the “donation” takes the form of an emotional gift: forgiveness (toward another or yourself), acceptance of life’s ups and downs or love with no demand of being loved in return. When you give with no strings attached or expectation of reward or appreciation, you yourself are enriched.