I’d like to start by apologizing for yesterday’s rambling, incoherent post. I’d slept really poorly the night before, and got overwhelmed with family news so my brain was quite scattered. But hey – happens to everyone, right? We’re only human. Thanks for coming back & giving me another shot.
Every year for as long as I can remember, my siblings and I ask our Dad what he’d like for Christmas, and his reply is always, “world peace.” We eventually got to a point where we thought he was being cheesy, or the expected answer itself was like the punchline to a dad joke, but really, in growing older myself and considering my dad’s background, it makes a lot of sense. My Dad is basically a simple person; he buys himself clothes from Costco, likes sweater vests and once in my four + decades of life splurged on a fancy car. But otherwise, he doesn’t wear jewelry, belts or watches. He likes baseball caps and going to the movies; he makes a good living, but he turns all of his income to supporting his large family. Kind of a funny personality trait, that he shows his dedication by providing material needs, when he himself doesn’t really prioritize material objects or possessions.
Via Dad’s Irish Catholic, upbringing, Christmas is supposed to be about celebrating the birth of the Savior, who will bring peace to all of mankind. Sadly, the holiday has become more and more commercial, to the point where I barely recognize the spiritual aspect of it anymore. (This isn’t just a societal shift; the child abuse scandals in the Catholic church and the inflexibility of some of their doctrine have made being a regular church-going member difficult for my husband and I. It’s also challenging to participate regularly when you don’t find the priests particularly inspiring.) This past Christmas was the first in over a decade that I didn’t have to work. I think I mentioned before that working in retail makes me cranky around the holidays. It irks me that holiday decorations are in stores November 1, holiday music is playing for six straight weeks, and the sales seem to be ongoing. Working in retail, there is a huge amount of pressure to work a ton, and very often, there isn’t any reward. No holiday bonus, and everyone is too wiped out by the end to even feel like attending a work party or celebrating together. Last year I organized a secret santa at the shop, and everyone complained about their gifts for months afterward. What grinches.
Actually, maybe the Grinch had it right. Didn’t he want to dial down the commerciality of Christmas? I don’t remember his motivations, but I wish I could de-commercialize Christmas, and bring the focus of the holiday, (everyday!) to world peace. Instead of everyone rushing around, trying to get the best deal, spending money they can’t afford to, for material wealth, I wish we were all more focused on being better to each other. World peace would be amazing. We could achieve so much if we weren’t fighting about whose belief was correct or who deserves money, whose basic human needs are met or denied, who should work what type of job, what we think their skin color, sexual identity or preferences mean about the person behind those things. For us to have world peace, I think we really need my gift wish – for everyone to be more empathetic.
It would be an incredible gift for everyone, I think, if there was a way for us to look at another person and be able to get an instant read of their life & overall happiness. I’m envisioning a little battery hologram floating alongside their head, with a charge level reflecting how they’re feeling that day, and a color indicating overall how their life experiences have treated them. There would be some magic program that tabulated emotions, worked out averages from weeks, and we could assign points to different life events. Got married? +10 points! Had a baby +10 points, – 2 sleep rating. (Baby has colic? -8 sleep.) People’s daily emotions could be tabulated into their color, because if democracy or the American medical system has made any one point stand out, it’s that going purely by fixed, calculated averages is always going to leave someone out in the cold. [This is kind of reminding me of the good/bad tallying that happened in The Good Place.]
Anyway, the point is, you could see someone’s battery and have an idea of a) how their life has been overall and b) how that particular day is treating them. Then, you could reconfigure your approach to them based on that broadcasted information. And on the other side, they might give you some leniency, realizing your charge was low, so you probably didn’t mean to come off as harshly as you did. I know – just because the information is there doesn’t mean people are going to pay attention to it. Some of the smartest people I know don’t always read all the words, (yes, this also happens to me sometimes!) Or, we bring our own experiences & current mindset to how we interpret the words. But I can’t shake the notion that if we just had an idea of what other people were going through, we would all behave much better toward each other, with more patience, kindness and acceptance.
We have these expressions, like “Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” “Everyone is going through something,” or “judge not lest ye be judged.” Heck, it’s THE BASIC GOLDEN RULE – treat others how you’d want them to treat you. Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone saw you waiting for a parking spot at the end of a long day, with your baby wailing in the back and dinner needing to be made once you got inside, and they gave you a spot instead of taking it themselves? Or, if someone saw that you were distraught at the doctor’s office or a bill paying service, they took a sec to give you a tissue and some water? I know life is hard. But why should we all crap on each other as we go through it? Why can’t we be kind to one another and help each other through? Yes, we are the only unique version of our self going through this world, but so many of our experiences are universal. We would all better weather them if we had more support from each other. Then we could move on to bigger, more inspiring, incredible things like finding other life in the universe or curing cancer!
The greatest gift someone could give me, it turns out, is world peace. My version of how we could get there is with more understanding and acceptance of each other. I may have a goofy, sci-fi idea of how we could achieve that, but at least I have an idea. Maybe it will inspire some gifted child somewhere to develop a system. Maybe this post will just make you smile, or give you a small moment of peace, which will then let you take a deep breath tomorrow and not yell at an employee. Maybe you’ll have a little more resilience when family gets overwhelming. To use another well-worn expression, “pay it forward.” Small things make big differences. Start with yourself, and how you treat other people will affect how they treat someone else.
We’ll generate a ripple effect of kindness, and who knows, maybe world peace is just around the corner.
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