Have I told you lately that I love you? Oh, I know yours is a face I may have never seen, or maybe haven’t seen in years. I may not know your name or really anything about you. But you keep opening my little letters every week, so I know we share some things in common—the hope and aspiration that we will remember more often to be kind, that we’ll do our best to let go of mean old stories, that we’ll keep reaching for the best in ourselves, that we’ll hold on with every ounce of determination we can muster to keep faith in mankind despite the world’s evidence that mankind is a sorry lot.
It’s heart-warming to have like-minded friends. And that’s how I think of you, sitting there on the other side of this screen, hoping for words that will bolster you and make you walk through the week feeling stronger and better and maybe even happier and more at peace somehow.
I do my best, you know, to bring you those kinds of words. I don’t always succeed. But you keep reading anyway. It makes me think that you understand that we humans have our off days. We get tired. We get stressed. We catch cold. The cat throws up on the carpet again. Somebody pushes one of our crabby buttons. Yeah, you know. And so you open my email again the next week, or return here, to my blog, and give me another chance.
I imagine that you’re that way in real life, too—willing to overlook the shortcomings, to keep looking for the good, both in others and in yourself.
Anyway, I wanted to tell you that it means a lot to me that you trust me to say something valuable. It keeps me searching for scraps of wisdom that I can share, for signs and phrases that speak to the core of us and lift us up.
As I write this, Christmas is mere hours away. I confess that over the years I’ve grown more and more inclined to hold a hardy “Bah-Humbug” attitude toward the whole holiday season. It all seems so insane sometimes, the way we get swept up in some mindless effort to buy perfection, to impress. I think of my old friend, Henry, who said if he was made King of the World, the first thing he’d do is shout, “Stop it!”
But tonight, as I write this letter to you, I’m floating on a lovely wash of peace, and I have to admit that I’m getting a kick out of it all, this Christmas thing—even the mindlessness of it. I’m thinking it’s kind of wonderful, the way that people string colored lights to brighten the darkness, and how they go out of their way to entertain family and acquaintances they don’t really even like, how they spend money they don’t have to give presents because they want to say they care even when they only want to want to care. Oh, bless us all; we try so very hard!
But then there’s the other side of it, too. There’s the side that brings separated families together in a circle of love, and that opens the way for us to be charitable to those less fortunate than ourselves, that gives us a chance to say “I love you” to people without breaking social taboos, to say “I notice you” with a simple “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” You say that to the clerk you see every week in the store and all of a sudden you fall out of your roles and are just two people, connected, and wishing each other well. There’s the part of it that lets us truly wish for peace on earth and to imagine what we as a human family could achieve if our hearts truly were filled with good will for one another.
There’s no other time like it all year.
My wish for you is that you, too, will find yourself floating on a wash of peace—if only for a moment, for a day—and feel the beauty and joy and hope of it all wafting up from your heart.
Merry Christmas!
Warmly,
Susan