The Flickering Spirit of Christmas

My thoughts this year as we gathered for Thanksgiving centered around the way that our traditions as a society have morphed over the years.

As a child we are questing out understand how things are. There is an unquestioning acceptance of things as though the way things are is the way they've always been. We do see that in the past our parents and grandparents didn't have the same kinds of things that we have, less obvious is that our parents and grandparents had different types of traditions than what we have. 

The feel of the season vs. what it felt like when I was little

Distance 

Business

Agriculture and commerce vs. big business

Simple decorations vs. opulent, chintzy decorations

Expectations for our acceptance in society now vs. then

Habits that are valued now vs. then 

Corporations and commercialization has taken over the 

Authenticity

It is one of the great mysteries of life that we try so hard to predict what the future will bring yet fail so often at our predictions. Or we cannot fully see what the signs and portents of things mean and we are ever questing out to have certainty in our lives but certainty is a thing that none can have. 

I've always sought to have authentic relationships with others. To be myself and let others be themselves but there is a part of me that isn't satisfied with that. When I was young I yearned to have the acceptance of others, yet part of me wanted to control others as well. I wanted on the one hand to let others be and on the other to help them change in ways that I thought that would be good for them. So that was the paradox of my own identity, to be myself, to resist to change when others wanted me to change and yet to want to change others if I thought there was something better for them. As a mother I find that I want to help my children find their paths, yet part of me wants to stand back and let them find their paths on their own. There is a balance, how much should I interfere, how much should I try to guide. Where do I draw the line.

I see that life is not the way that I want it to be, I see society faltering in the whirlwind of capitalism, consumerism, by the will of other men and they are the ones guiding the path, they are the ones directing the choices that we can make, taking away other choices because competitors would take profits away from them. I feel the squeezing on all sides, and I look around and find a uniformity of things, a narrowness of mind and a sameness of people. What is sad is that we don't realize this, all of the world is trickery and gimmick. Perhaps it is the pattern of our brains, our hard wiring to imitate what we see and to do what we think is expected of us and to content ourselves with it. 

I seek to write more than the mundane, to be more than the tarnished image that I have of myself. To be better but not judge myself harshly.