Christmas is five days away.
How do you feel when you read that? I’ve been asking my patients about their plans for Christmas and it’s really interesting the different responses I’ve gotten. Some women are crazy busy with cooking and shopping, and some are just over it. One woman told me that because they did a big Thanksgiving at her house this year and her kids are older, they were just relaxing together and taking things light. I loved that answer!
But what does that mean?
I didn’t really have time to ask her for details and take care of her visit concerns, but I wondered. In my little world, I can’t quite imagine what taking it light looks like for Christmas. Maybe I’m not applying my considerable imagination here, but even if I wasn’t working overnight for Christmas this year, I still don’t know what that would mean here. My room is full of boxes of presents to wrap, I have food to cook, and the house needs some serious picking up. I’m also still working, and now I have a cold. The cold is the sign that I’ve been staying up too late and my immunity is down from lack of sleep. But look at this pile!
Who’s gonna wrap all this?
Now let me make two disclaimers: One, I know holidays with younger kids is different than with grown folk, and I’ll miss it when they’re older. And two, I have learned to take some shortcuts to make the actual holiday easier. For example, I ordered a lot of the Christmas dinner from the grocery this year because I knew I wouldn’t be here for the meal. But, my baby girl has allergies and even with the options at Whole Foods, I couldn’t order the whole thing and get her fed. So I’m going to make a cornbread stuffing for her (which everyone loves, so I’m making a big one).
So, it is what it is. Fortunately, all the gifts are here. The stocking stuffers are in a shopping bag. The food is scheduled for pick up, and since I couldn’t get my surgical cases on at the hospital because it’s so busy, I’m laying here fighting this cold. My problem is that I still don’t feel like I can rest – everything isn’t done!
I still need to cut this into cubes and dry it out for the stuffing… My daughter made it for me though!
This discomfort, this unease with resting is very familiar to me. I heard the best description of it this week, so let me share with you. You know how you can have an air conditioner or heater in the background and you don’t really notice it until it clicks off? That’s how this feeling of unease is – kind of like white noise, or an operating system just running all the time. When I meditate or get still in the moment, that’s when it clicks off. You know what I’ve figure out?
I don’t like white noise.
When my kids were small, we had a white noise machine for their room to help block out the other sounds in the house. They seemed to find it soothing. But I did not – it was irritating to me. I like quiet and dark when I sleep, so that stupid machine was never something I’d want in my room. I know lots of people find background noise very comforting, and I have no argument with that. Do what works for you! But as I’ve learned more about myself, I’ve figured out that my normal sensitivity to most things are high – light, noise, smells. And it’s a good thing, because I can pick up on signals that I might miss if I were less sensitive. But it’s a challenge because to much sensory input is exhausting for me. So when the washing machine is running and the kids are bickering and the music is on and a kid goes to bang on the piano, I feel like I want to jump out of my skin!
It’s the same with my mind.
Over the years, I’ve trained my mind to be vigilant, not to miss things and pay attention to details. This skill serves at work and often at home, particularly if a kid is trying to get away with something. But as a practice, as a way of being, it does not serve me. It promotes anxiety and restlessness, and it doesn’t feel good. If it had a purpose, if maybe I got more done because if it, then it might be work it. And sometimes I amaze myself at how much I get done! But at what cost?
Real deal…
This week, one of my best friends got bad news about her health. Now when a doctor says “bad”, that’s not normal “bad”, that’s a whole ‘nother level. We are trained to find the worst possible outcomes and try to avoid them. For a doctor, “bad” is when it looks like there might not be a way to fix it. My brain went haywire thinking of all the terrible things that might happen in the coming months. It felt like a plane spiraling down out of the sky. And then my conscious self said, “Stop that.”. It reminded me that today, right now is all we have. Whatever is coming in the future isn’t to be lived now. Living hard things in the future is a recipe for misery, because we are experiencing the hard thing that might happen, and then if they do happen we have to experience them twice. What good is that?
What may happen in the future can stay there, because we miss the moment now when we live in the future. When we miss the moment now, we miss the sweetness, the joy, the laughter, the peace that we can have right now. After I heard the news from my friend, I showed up at her door the morning of my next day off. She told me she was leaving for an appointment and I wasn’t planning to stay. She even told me not to come, probably because she thought it would be a waste of time since she was headed out. When I showed up, she scolded me first, and then cried because I told her I just was there to make sure she knew I love her, and that I’m here. I was only there for 15 minutes, but it was a moment that we will both remember. That’s what it’s about – experiencing the moments we’re given as the gift they are. Because whenever the end of this life comes, we will have lived it. So as I go into the last few days before Christmas, I am turning off the white noise and taking the moments I have with the kids, my parents, my wonderful husband and my patients as the gifts they are.
Merry Christmas!