BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
Reprinted from the washingtonexaminer.com blog
Sitting in an easy chair, with the laptop resting easy on your lap, eating dark chocolate with a diet, caffeine-free coke chaser, just contemplating Christmas. The World BoyChoir’s rendition of Joy to the World is coming from the speakers. The tree is lit, surrounded by presents. There’s love in the room and the house is warm while outside it’s nasty cold.
Does life get any better than this? There’s no better time of year in America than Christmas, whether you’re Christian, Jew, Muslim or ambivalent.
We are deep into the Christmas season. Attitudes are changing, so is behavior. There are fewer frowns and the children, are somehow more angelic, knowing that if there’s any time of year to make an effort to be more nice than naughty, this is it.
The Christmas season is good for a lot of things, but three that stand out for me and they all begin with R. The first is rest. We all need it and we all should try to get it during the holidays.
Except for those among us whose job it is to put up with the Christmas mobs–the retail store clerks who apply make up at the cosmetic counter, the people who deliver the mail, fly the airplanes or the ticket takers at the movie theater—a lot of people are getting a breather now. It’s time to put your feet up, slow the pace of life and just give the limbs, the mind and the soul a rest. It’s a good time to slip into the Christmas cocoon, and leave the Blackberry, the iPad, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube behind, just for a moment or two. The body benefits, and so does the soul.
Doing that will give you more time for the second R-reflection.
It’s also time for another dark chocolate.
We humans spend too much time thinking about ourselves, how we look, what we feel, and where we’re going, but we spend too little time reflecting; that is, thinking about our relevance to the rest of our world, what happiness is beyond getting what we wanted from Santa, and what is truly gratifying in life. You can contemplate the meaning of life if you like, or seek out your proper place in the universe. Join Bob Ney in Tibet with the Dali Lami if that’s what works for you. Or sit in an easy chair and just think about the simple fact that the whole world, two thousand years after the fact, still celebrates the birth of a single child in the Middle East. It doesn’t matter on what you reflect, as long as you do.
We devote so much of our energy satisfying our physical needs and material desires we overlook our spirituality, what gives us a unique place in the animal kingdom. We spend more time contemplating the lyrics of a Faith Hill song than we do the great teachings of Jesus Christ, Budda, Lao Tzu, or the Prophet Mohammad.
There is no question to me that our spiritual being is superior to and governs our physical being, yet it is the latter that gets all of our attention. Maybe it’s just easier to relate to a Sony 42-inch LED than it is to our oneness with nature or what is meant by fear of God. This time of year, much of our spirituality comes into better focus, with all the attention given to goodwill, giving and religious devotion, so it is a good time to clear out the debris of daily living, most of which is so unimportant, and think about what is important, our own humanness, who and what we value and why. From Tao Te Ching: “To fully return to our root is to be enlightened. Never to experience tranquility is to act blindly, a sure path to disaster.”
Within the scope of reflection is remembrance. It is a good time to put up on the screen of your memory the faces of those no longer with us and wrap ourselves in the poweful spirit they’ve left behind. I’ve lost so many good, inspiring, guiding and loving people in my life in recent years—a mother, a father, and cherished friends like Ralph Vinovich and Dave Gribbin–all of whom left me with great memories I can take time now to enjoy and appreciate and most importantly, learn from all over again. This is a good time to embrace the memories and enjoy them rather than lament them. Remembering them reminds us too to appreciate even more the loved ones close to us, whether they live in DC or Cincinnati. We are not as individualistic as some would like us to believe. We are individuals highly dependent upon others and very much a part of community—family, neighborhood, civic clubs, workforces, schools, towns, counties, states and a nation. We are interdependent and it is the love among us that helps bind us together.
And when you’ve spent quiet time in reflection, it is time for the third R, renewal.
The Christmas season was born of a birth, the most noted in human history, so for us humble mortals, it is a good time for rebirth, for renewing the spirit with new energy, a greater capacity to change life, rather than just live it, taking on its challenges with more vigor and greater courage. It is a time to renew our commitment to those basic human values—honesty, civility, tolerance, loyalty, common sense, self-improvement, generosity and faith–that in most every circumstance can guide our words and deeds in the direction of what is right. It is time to renew friendships and relationships and a commitment to those for whom we care and those for whom we should care. It is a good time to renew our sense of what’s real and what’s cosmetic, what’s of value and what is only tinsel, what is an explanation of our behavior and what is just an excuse for it. Renewal is good, like a hot bath or a good meal. And this is the best time for it.
Christmas is, of course, a sacred time completely taken over by commercial interests and some outright greed. But we can all except that, indulge in it a bit and overcome it. I read recently that during the Christmas season last year the media that were the subjects of a study, carried more than 500 stories on Christmas related subjects and only a small percentage of them, less than 10 percent I recall, mentioned Christ or the religious core of the holidays. So be it. But we can transcend the commercialism with a little rest, reflection and renewal.
Editors’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is currently a principal with the OB-C Group.