“Fake it ’til you make it”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s a glib little saying – and it’s governed so much of my life, it’s hard to even express it. So much of what I am, I am because I basically decided I wanted to *be* that thing, and acted like it until it worked. (See also: this blog, the NARN, my career).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that’s a good thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it’s never a bigger deal than this time of year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I make no bones about the fact that I had a childhood Beaver Cleaver would have envied. I had a pretty intact family, no major dysfunctions – I have no complaints. The Christmas holiday was always a joyful memory; family, food, tradition…love. I wish everyone were as lucky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then came adult life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Without going into a whole lot of details, when my kids were little, there were certain stressors in life that made the holidays…complex. Anxious, stressful, parlous, sometimes outright tests of emotional and physical endurance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I resolved to push the happiness, the *cheer*, almost to an absurd extent – because I was hanging on to that shred of joy, happiness and family by my fingernails. And in its own way, it – “Faking” ample joy for Christmas – worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can’t speak for my kids – they’re adults, with their own lives and tradtions of their own, now – but the holidays as a general rule *aren’t* white-knuckle anxiety rides. They are good, not just because I *will them* to not be bad, but because the attitude seems to help give me the mental headspace to focus on the holiday rather than all the angst – and to actually enjoy this time of year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This flies in the face of the modern obsession with “being authentic” to how one feels – a trait with some upsides, but a solipsistic overtone that boils down to “it’s better to be ‘real’ than to be happy”. Thing is, while one can not create one’s own reality, one can change one’s perception of and reaction to that reality; sometimes, the best way to do that is to just do it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And modern society goes cynical about the holidays on the drop of a pin. I’ve related in the past my disgust for media (principally NPR) pounding a drumbeat of cynical, post-modern, anxious misery about the holidays – the stress, the anxiety, having to put up with all those *relatives* who act, and see the world, differently than you…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Modern society and its obsessions can get stuffed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hope you all have a joyful, meaningful holiday – whatever that means to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Fake it ’til you make it”. It’s a glib little saying – and it’s governed so much of my life, it’s hard to even express it. So much of what I am, I am because I basically decided I wanted to *be* that thing, and acted like it until it worked. (See also: this blog, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80361"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80363,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80361\/revisions\/80363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}