Several stores have signs up keeping me informed of the number of days until Christmas. Part of the total effort by most of us seems to be aimed at focusing on a target. Since it can be assumed that I love my family and friends and want to give them a fine Christmas, reminding me of the number of days left for a good, solid, standard American to buy everything I can to show my regard and feelings might be just the thing to do. I realize that Christmas is usually considered the biggest holiday and the cap of the year's celebrations.
It strikes me that if I cooperate with the Christmas rush notion, I can keep my mind on what seems like working for love and stressing out over how best to make everyone happy. I think it was in one of Dr. Mark Epstein's books that I read the phrase "people addicted to making life hard". This seems to be a widely used way to live: keep your eye on things that need doing and your mind won't wander into the wrong neighborhoods, where gluttony, lust, moral weakness and plain old laziness lie in wait for innocent souls. It isn't a bad idea but like many things, can be overdone.
My experience has been that guys I've known are generally willing to wander away from virtue once in a while and to question what might be high virtue and what might be its counterfeit. Not every guy, for sure, and way too many wander and don't return. More women seem in my view to complain that the big Thanksgiving dinner, the shopping for everyone, the Christmas celebration, and the New Year's celebration is a tremendous burden. It is fun to do it all the first dozen times but it only makes sense, I think, to stop and decide what could be shrunken, skipped, lessened, not just in the holiday season, but our whole lives.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
