Listening Act Love Celebration Storycorps
Listening Act Love Celebration Storycorps @ Amazon.com
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Remember Charles Dickens’ opening lines to A Tale of Two Cities? “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” These words apply to more than just Paris before the French Revolution. Welcome to the holidays! If you’re older than 5, these are the days that we veritably love to hate. Depending on who you are, it’s either a time to squeeze an enormous amount of work into your already over-full schedule and pouring out cash that you may ill afford so that you may entertain humans (some of whom get on your nerves unmercifully). Or, you find yourself depressingly alone with no one to care in regards to or for. Has the Grinch got me this year? No, not really. Only, as a student of the midlife transition, I see holidays as an chance for an already difficult circumstance to become desperate. One of the primary difficulties with the holidays each year derives from the fact that people go into them without sufficient reflection. Isn’t this the same issue that lies at the heart of so much of the unpleasantness that surrounds the midlife transition? People (especially men) charge headlong into potentially stressful situations without forethought and without sufficient mental and aroused preparation. It’s all regarding your expectations, when you come right down to it, isn’t it? Somehow, you actually want this year to be ‘perfect’. You couldn’t manage to squeeze out a hearty ‘Bah! Humbug!’ irrespective of how much you want to shout it out. Because we as a culture have, for the most part, forgotten how to celebrate, we replace what ought to be celebrations with ritual indebtednesses that, if not performed ‘correctly’ cause us shame. That’s an emotion that humans in midlife may ill afford! It’s no easy matter to transform a holiday obligation into a celebration. It requires a heap of attainments that are in rather short supply these days, I’m afraid. First, it takes reflection: the capacity to go deeper than the surface, down to touch what sentiments you veritably want to experience for the duration of the holiday celebrations. Next, it takes communication: sharing with the essential people in your life your perceptivities and asking them to share theirs with you. Unless this goes beyond asking, “Whose house?” and “What time?” and “What must I bring?”, you’re not going to be competent to escape the magnetic pull of the old routine. In addition, it’s going to take creativity: having a shared imaginativeness of what you want the celebration to express and to feel like and then taking the effort for everyone to bestow her (or his) originative energies. If it’s going to be dissimilar this year, the women can’t be stuck in the kitchen while the men watch TV. Finally, it’s going to take shared responsibility: everyone doing his or her percentage with a sense of joyful anticipation to pull it all together. If you in truth want to break the mold, there has to be a spiritual aspect of the holidays – irrespective of the religious tradition members of your chosen ‘family’ come from. Saint Theresa of Lisieux wrote that if you so much as pick up a pin with love in your heart, the gesture has infinite worth. If everything that your family does to prepare for, to celebrate, and to clean up from the holidays is done with only just a little love, the drudgery and obligation of this time of year may be transformed into a real celebration. Without it, I have my doubts. One last reflectiveness on the holidays before I close. Most of the ‘obligations’ that you and I are so employed to endeavoring to live up to are all self-imposed. That saying ‘no’ may be an act of love appears as one of the hard-learned lessons of midlife. If saying ‘no’ does not save your loved ones from a difficult, stressful, even agonizing ritual that masquerades as a celebration, it will at least rescue you from that fate. Not only may you choose whom to celebrate with, if it’s veritably to be a celebration, it becomes your obligation to choose wisely and well. There is a Japanese saying that goes, “Rarely are the members of a family born under the same roof.” At midlife we get the gift of being competent to discerned our family of choice from our family of origin. Sometimes they’re the same; now and then they’re not. At the holidays, once we’ve freed ourselves from external expected values and we’ve started listening to and acting upon the expected values of our hearts, the holidays may well become transformed into the kinds of celebrations that even surpass our hopes. It could happen!
37 of 37 people found the following review helpful. We all have stories to tell. This latest collection comes out just in time for Mother’s Day. These are excerpts from interviews about mothers. These stories about moms will touch your heart. Some are told by moms. Some are told by spouses, others by children. Every story is unique. As Isay closes this collection he talks about the time he interviewed his own mother. Going into it he assumed he knew all about her, that there would not be any new revelations. Boy, was he wrong. Something about the StoryCorps Project brings out the best in participants. They remember. They reflect. They give honor. They show their grit in the face of life’s obstacles. These stories are magical. Isay’s mom told stories that blew him away. He was amazed. Prepare to be delighted and amazed by this fabulous, tender collection of stories about MOM. You gotta love it~ya gotta love your mom. Happy Mother’s Day. 16 of 16 people found the following review helpful. 10 of 10 people found the following review helpful. K |
We love our moms…