‘Tis the season to be jolly.” Or not.
It all depends on a great many factors, and for many of us, family and friends play a key role in our experiences – good, bad, ugly – during the holidays. This Christmas, however, I was reminded that being jolly or not really depends on one thing and one thing only: ourselves.
It’s not always easy to swallow, but the truth of it is that we alone are responsible for our happiness. No matter what family or friends or life in general throws our way, how we react determines how we end up feeling.
We sit down to dinner with the family, reach for a second slice of pie, and mom asks us, “Do you really need that?”
We call up a friend to rendezvous to toast the season, only to learn that she’s struggling to find time to even pencil us in.
We try and try and try, year after year to find the perfect gift for our not-so-easy-to-please significant other, and this year, we think we’ve found it. But from the reaction we get upon their opening of our gift, it’s pretty clear we haven’t.
