Creating Joy
Sometimes life is harder than others. For many of us who struggle with agoraphobia, depression and the like, the holidays can be particularly difficult. For those of us who are - or feel - isolated this is a season which pours salt into that wound. All those wonderful "regular" people whom we perceive as being so much better off than ourselves, are off shopping and going to parties and are generally - as we see it - just having the time of their lives. I'm broke this year and I'm alone. I love giving people presents and I feel like a fool and a failure because I can't do so. I don't know that anyone else really cares that I'm not sending packages of goodies and peculiar gifts. They may, in fact, be relieved. "Thank, God," they are whispering in their heart of hearts. "Don't have to think of something polite to say about Aunt Kathie's weird idea of a great gift." Still, giving is part of my sense of my own identity. Maybe in part because I am not so socially adept, giving is a way in which I feel like I can connect with people. I also just think it's fun. But I digress...
In many ways I think my outsider's sense that everyone else in the world is out there having a fantastic time all wrapped in the glow of trees and parties and shopping and doing is probably only a half truth. There's a frantic quality to much holiday celebration. People are tearing around spending themselves into debt. There's a lot of eating and drinking and sort of desperate attempts to be "happy." Because my own self-esteem is so low, because going to the grocery store is sometimes a challenge, I forget that just because people aren't feeling trapped in their homes as I and others like me often are, it doesn't mean that they don't also struggle with the loneliness which comes with wearing a human skin. Maybe it's cynical of me, but I think this is a painful time of year for many people. Much of the eating and drinking and partying and shopping is more like a desperate attempt to recreate childhood feelings or to live up to what we are "supposed to be" feeling than a true expression of joy.
I don't say this as a judgment on partying or shopping or eating Christmas treats. My memories of helping my mother bake Christmas cookies every year are among my happiest life memories. Life is in many ways a search for happiness, for self. It is too easy to think that because others aren't broke or housebound or don't struggle with whatever our personal foibles are, that they are somehow strolling through life unencumbered. If they are, that's wonderful. In the end, it doesn't matter how anyone else's life is (or seems to be) going. My first therapist used to annoy me with great regularity by saying "to compare is to die." It took me a long time to figure out what his point was and even once I did, I didn't much appreciate it. I may still not entirely understand it, but what I take from that saying is that the only life I know is my own and the only way that I can truly be alive is to stay with myself. When I'm busy convincing myself that the slim, beautiful extrovert down the block is living perfection, I'm dying in two ways: first, I'm negating, leaving unwrapped the gifts of my own talents and beauty and envying an illusion, the idea that I actually know what someone else's life is like, the illusion that her gifts are better than mine. In doing so I risk starving with a loaf of bread in my hand because I think someone else has a cookie. The second death of the "to compare is to die" syndrome is because when we are comparing ourselves to others, or to who or what we think we should be or what we were once or what we might be someday, we are not in the present. And the now - this moment - is the only moment in which we are truly alive. Everything else is a projection. It is the difference between watching a movie about skiing or actually putting skis on and gliding down the slopes.
Latest Articles