Survived another one

Christmas is over. Finally. It's not that I don't like this time of year. It's just that it's typically the most difficult for me emotionally. I start struggling with depression as the days get shorter. My exercise routines get further apart and less intense. My eating habits deteriorate. I withdraw emotionally. Quite simply, I experience a sort of meltdown.

Add all of that to the insanity of the hyper-commercialism Christmas in America has become and I go into survival mode around Thanksgiving. I can't wait for Christmas to be over. My mantra becomes, "You can do this, you can get through it. Once you're on the other side life will seem worth living again."

I also dislike how disappointed I am in people during this season of "brotherly love". The pressure to outdo oneself from last year or to upstage one's friends and family seems to reduce people to a snarling pack of mutts. The selfishness is astonishing. Most seem to think that by giving another person a material object somehow makes up for being a (fill in the blank) during the rest of the year.

In spite of all of the above, I love the spirit of the season and relish the eternal gift it represents. I am especially astonished during Christmas at the love God shows us, and am humbled by the reminder that I should be more forgiving and loving myself. My hope and prayer for the new year is that I can learn to forgive myself and look upon myself with kind eyes, as Dr. Maxwell Maltz has said. That way I can forgive others and look upon them with kind eyes since my filter will be clean.

Maybe that's why I have such a hard time with the season. If I enjoyed it more, perhaps I wouldn't be reminded of how lacking I am in the brotherly love catagory.