Reflection and Redirection vs Resolutions

I hope that one and all have survived the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012. Many of you seem to have had a not so glamorous 2011, a not so glorious end of the year and a not so fantabulous start to the new year. I can say I am one of the many. Most of us make resolutions to offset that unhealthy balance. I can say I am not one of the most. I believe resolutions don't get done. At least not for me. It is easy to slide further and further away from the intent of a resolution. It is not as easy to run away from a reflection (unless of course you are a vampire ;-).

I like to take the end of the old and begin of the new to be more like the God Janus. Janus has the ability to look in two directions at once; both forward and back. Janus represents this time of year as we can look back over the old year and forward towards the new. When we make resolutions we tend to feel guilt at not completing them. We tend to berate ourselves for not being able to live up to our lofty ideals. We tend to feel we are less than instead of better. We are all human. We are going to slip and fall.

 I like to reflect on what I did and did not like about myself, my year, my actions and my life. Instead of making point blank specific must do's I like to redirect my actions to see if I can avoid repeating what happened before.  We are going to eat that cake, date that wrong person, buy that overly priced non necessary item and do what ever it is we should not do just because we feel like it. It is human nature to do what feels good even if it isn't what is the right thing to do. Reflection on what you've done and how it made you feel might however help you to see the connection between the events and allow you to redirect your energies in a more positive manner.

Some may say that reflection and resolution is just a way of making a resolution but it is in a more abstract form. That is possible but I do know that once I chose this path versus the hard lines of resolution my waistline got thinner, my workplace happier and my general out look more positive. Give it a try. You never know what might happen. Happy New Year! Here's to an even more beautiful you in 2012.

Boxing the Day after Christmas

Hopefully we've all survived the decadent desserts, delightful companions, and dangerous sales. We should all be content in our homes or back about our daily business anxiously awaiting next weekend's ringing in of the new year. Some of us however still have a holiday to share. Hanukkah continues tonight. Kwanza began and today is of course Boxing Day. We all know about boxing day here in the USA. It's a greatly celebrated holiday..oh wait we just call today the Day After Christmas.

Ever Wonder about Good King Wenceslas and the Feast of Stephen?

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel
When a poor man came in sight
Gath'ring winter fuel.....

 Well, that song is about the tradition celebrated practically everywhere around the globe of Boxing Day. A day when employers treated their servants to boxes of goodies from the GOOD stores at hand. Imagine an entire holiday dedicated to sharing what you have with those who have not. Imagine if we did that on a regular basis. What a wonderful world this would be. http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/Xmas/boxingday.html 

Dung on a Twig

Mistletoe kisses are common at this time of year. I never questioned it when someone cute was hanging out ready to offer a quick smooch. It's fun and a great way to enjoy time with close friends and of course the one you love. It does make you wonder though how these holiday berries became "seeds of Love".

Those into word etymology  might not be surprised to learn that mistletoe seems to translate into "Dung on a Twig". Hmm, knowing that, I am not sure I would want to be kissed while standing beneath bird dung. Kissing under the mistletoe is one Christmas tradition that at least seems to be more readily traced back to it's origins than others. It happens to have a very cosmopolitan past which works well with the idea of good will towards man. A tradition of peace, good will and pleasant kisses is just fine by me.

 Go get some Mistletoe and have some fun.Happy Kisses Everyone!
http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/mistletoe.asp

Holiday Songs and What Not

Around this time of year no matter how hard you my try to escape, one way or another the music of the season will get to you. We all sing them whether intentionally or subconsciously. I am talking about Christmas Songs (even Hanukkah has catchy tunes these days). We deck the halls on Holy Nights near shining stars and drummer boys. We Jingle bells and Fa la la la la while having a Holly Jolly Christmas. We even dedicate 12 days to gifts that make no sense at all.

Think about it. If your true love gave you a partridge in a pear tree how long would that love stay true? I am not guessing it would last a lifetime if these were the perks. I also wonder, has anyone ever stopped to figure out why we even have 12 Drummers Drumming, 11 Pipers Piping and so forth and so on. In 5th grade my teacher challenged us to figure out the cost of these daily gifts. It was a great game. He never however asked us to find the origin of the gifts. I have spent time of late discovering origins of information we just blindly accept and use. Ask your self do you know where "O K " comes from or why we say it's spic and span when everything is super clean? Most of you I am sure will not know. The same goes for many of our traditional songs.

Of all the Christmas melodies this one is the major mystery. There was a belief that it was a coded religious key to allow those being oppressed to speak freely. The only problem with that is if you were singing this at any other time of year I am rather certain the code would be broken. So what does it mean? No one is 100% certain but our friends at Snopes have wrestled with this question as well.http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/music/12days.asp

By the way if your true love gives you 12 drummers drumming,  I am thinking that is a message to you personally and has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas.
Merry Christmas!

To Gift Card or not to Gift Card

So I am doing my Christmas shopping and I have the usual suspects covered and then I have the annual problem to solve again. There are some friends that no matter how well you know them they are difficult individuals to figure out when it comes to presents. You don't always want to ask "what do you want?' as that kills creativity and then there's a gift card.

Personally, I love gift cards for places that I know I go. I have point blank told friends should you want to get me something please nothing I have to dust. As time has gone by the need to display items and have items has greatly passed. You discover that stuff is exactly that. The bounty of my world is the friends I have collected along the way but that doesn't mean that you don't enjoy a good gift. Enter the gift card. It's a wonderful invention but not appreciated by all. They make me feel rich. They allow me the opportunity for impulse purchases and they let me shop where I want to shop. I think of them as little magic cards to be used at anytime during the year.

Many people however feel the gift card is greatly impersonal. They feel like there is no effort or thought put into this kind of present. This could be true if it's just a generic visa or american express card. OF course there's a target audience for those too. As long as you take the time to find the perfect gift card and the perfect person to go with the card you are doing well. If the person you are shopping for hates to shop that would Not be an ideal candidate for a gift card. If however, the individual has very specific tastes and tends to return or regift that would be a perfect mate to give the gift of shopping.

Deck the Halls with Pepper Spray

Words I never expected to hear as part of the news, "A search is on for a woman accused of Pepper Spraying a crowd in order to get a deal on an X-box." Black Friday has gone from people injured by over zealous shoppers who push, shove and even trample (bad enough) to people being beaten up, threatened and yes now pepper sprayed. Shopping by any means necessary is an aspect of reality I can deal without.What has happened to the "Holiday Spirit"?

Stores have been enticing us to shop since the Sear's Catalog  first showed up in houses along the Prairie. I am all for proper marketing but I am not all for the mass exploitation of each holiday that seems to be part of our current culture. I hate that I cannot fully appreciate and celebrate each individual holiday without the next looking at me from aisle three. I hate that we not only cannot just appreciate the holidays for what they are and truly mean but that my inbox is inundated with ads telling me where to shop, what to buy and when. I hate that it's all about getting the best deal on the most poorly produced products instead of about investing time in the people we love.

I know I am not alone in how I feel. There have been posts everywhere depicting Santa in a most unflattering light vs a Thanksgiving Turkey. Nordstrom's has made a point of informing us that it will not start any Christmas talk til the 30th. Various other businesses are trying to follow suit. Should we as the consumer sit idly by as innocent individuals are destroyed by the gluttony of others? Is saving a buck worth losing a limb? Can we not take to Cyber space and end this mass consumerism in deference to the human and humane element of the holidays? There has to be a better way to get "deals' on these supposed "must have" items which doesn't involve pepper spray.

Thanksgiving is on a Thursday in November and yet all the stores have been prepared for it since well before Halloween. Christmas isn't until the 25th of December but at the same time as Halloween there were aisles in many stores dedicated to Christmas cards, plastic trees and decorative lights. The Monday before Thanksgiving the news analysts were already predicting spending for Black Friday, which somehow has become an unofficial official event. All morning today the term "Cyber Monday" has been bandied about as today is the onset of online deals which will help further stimulate the economy. None of these conversations are about peace, love or family. None of these conversations are about being thankful for your health, work and  general welfare. None of these conversations are about anything of true value.

Beep Beep!

The coyote hears "Beep! Beep!" and he's off to chase the roadrunner. His hunger, much like Pavlov's dog, is triggered by a sound. So too is our world controlled. It was simple at first. We awoke to the sound of an alarm clock. We waited for the sound of the beep for the answering machine to record our message.The novelty of quick cooking created the microwave whose beeps alerted us to the finished food. From there, we moved on to car alarms which honked or should I say beeped the car's horn to alert us that someone was too close to our vehicle. Pagers and cell phones were next on the scene; Convenient devices which control us with the sound of a beep. Beeping, incessantly loud beep, beep beeps surround our lives on a daily basis.

Not only are we inundated by this sound but we are controlled by, slaves to and victims of it as well. How many times have you caught yourself hearing a beep and wondering if it was you? How many times have you said "Was that my phone or yours?", during the course of a conversation? How many times has a car door being opened by the remote triggered you to check your phone? How many times have you ignored the person with you to check the mechanical device beeping at you just to see who it was and if a message or text was left? How many times have you shushed a clerk, waiter, waitress or other service person doing his or her job so that you could answer the call of the beep (ring or other tone for that matter)? We are all guilty of doing all of the above to some degree. There are individuals more guilty than others but for the most part we are all now giant experiments trained to respond to a beep.

We lived without the beeps for years. We answered calls and others received a busy signal. If it was really important an operator would actually break through.  We now are oddly aware of little noises signalling an incoming message. We jump to our phones like good little doggies. We hear car doors and automatically check our purses, packs and pockets to see if it was for us. Now we are all trained that the sound of the beep must be instantly answered and the flesh and blood individual with us is somehow less important than whoever sent a text, left a message or called.

Like every interesting science fiction film we must learn to break our programming. We must return to a world where people and manners matter. We must learn that whomever we intentionally chose to be with that day has priority over the caller at the end of the beep. We must remember that the person waiting on us, behind the counter or helping us in any form is the correct individual to engage in conversation and not the mechanical device attached by blue tooth or other means to our body. Keep in mind, the coyote was often hurt along the path of following the beep. He never learned. We can change our story. Beep, Beep!