Random Thoughts from a Restless Mind

Sunday mornings are quiet mornings at Casa Blanco. Re-rack after feeding the dogs, catch up with newspapers that have piled up in addition to the Sunday papers, a third cup of coffee just for the linger. Over the course of a week I collect thoughts and ideas for either musings or an eventual longer piece here, but as often as not it’s something that I read over coffee that turns up in my little Sunday piece. One fertile hunting ground is The Ethicist in the Sunday NYT Magazine, and it is here that I found my muse this week.

I have offered, here and elsewhere, that it is perfectly proper to make an enemy as long as you do it with forethought, and do it on purpose. In my long-held opinion to make an enemy by accident is the second greatest insult one can extend to another human being; it suggests that the newly formed enemy was not even significant enough to consider that they existed prior to your actions (or inactions). This leads, of course, to the single greatest insult that you could ever foment: to actively and purposely choose indifference to the existence of another.

This is a part of a topic addressed by The Ethicist on Sunday. He defines a “decent person” in part by whether or not they have what philosophers call appropriate “reactive attitudes”. In short how we react to others, and by extension how we react to what others in turn display toward us. The philosopher Peter F. Strawson mentions resentment, gratitude, and anger that we may have in response to how we perceive that others have treated us, or treated someone who we care about. Simply feeling these emotional reactions acknowledges that we feel the others are a part of our lives. They exist. They matter.

This time of year is fraught with the entire spectrum of emotions as we come into close contact with family and others with whom we have history. The simple fact that we come together means that we are not, cannot be, indifferent to either them or their feelings about us. Now to be sure there are some among us who have family members who are truly disturbed and either cannot or will not extend any type of goodwill or positive emotion whatsoever. Those, I believe, are rare exceptions, and to you who may be in this position you have my deepest, heartfelt sympathy. For the rest of us, though, in North America the Holiday season presents us an opportunity to re-boot our “reactive attitudes” toward family and friends.

Do you remember what it felt like to go home those first couple of years after you got out of high school? Remember how excited you were to see your folks, your grandparents, and your siblings? There was a buzz in your circle of friends as you conspired to sneak away and re-convene right where you left off the last time you were together. Remember? Trust me, the feeling was at least mutual (if not even stronger) on the part of your parents (and grandparents).

Families are complex and messy, but for all of that no matter what your particular story may be families are never indifferent. You could certainly take the position that we should always be connecting with family, and that the pressure of the Holidays would be lessened if we made more of an effort to be with those who trigger our “reactive attitudes” throughout the year. I’m OK with that. Actually, as a son, brother, in-law, father and grandfather I’d be thrilled with that. But here we are during Hanukkah, with Christmas a week away, so how much we see folks over the year is a topic for another Sunday.

Today, it’s time to go home.

Will you make any New Year’s resolutions this week? I probably will. Each year my list becomes smaller, but I am more successful in hitting the mark. Why? Probably because the list is small and therefore better thought out for one.

The other reason is “resolve”, the characteristic most necessary to achieving success in your resolutions. It’s a fancy word for commitment, or more precisely the conscious act of making and following through on that commitment. It’s infinitely easier to find  the resolve necessary to follow through on my resolutions if there are fewer of them for sure, but having taken a bit more time in coming up with them in the first place it also seems that my resolutions of late have been a bit more meaningful, too. Investing the time in the search for a meaningful resolution seems to reduce the time and effort it takes me to muster up the resolve necessary to see one through.

If you celebrate Christmas (or Hanukah for that matter) you probably did a bit of gift giving recently. Sure, some of it probably felt kinda like an obligation, but at least a bit of that gift giving was really more about the expression of love behind the gift. That’s the easy part, at least for me, expressing love. Whether on the gifting side or the giving side, once I gave myself permission to freely express love it really became pretty easy. Took a while to learn how to do it for sure, but with practice it became a natural thing, almost a default setting.  It was fun, too!

The receiving end of the gift thing is a lot of fun, too, of course. I mean–come on–who doesn’t like opening up gifts?! Lots of funny stuff around getting a gift, too. Think of all the funny “re-gifting” stories you have, or the last “White Elephant” party you attended. In the White house the philosophy of “it’s OK to say you probably won’t use that gift” became “REJECT THAT GIFT”! That got to be quite funny as we all tried to one-up each other in the outlandish ways we declined the gifts. Beth is still scarred from her first encounter, and she’s never had a single gift rejected!

Accepting a gift is really rather easy, it’s accepting the love behind the gift, accepting another’s love that’s a little more complex. Maybe you didn’t know how much they loved you. Maybe you are worried it’s conditional, the love, with strings attached. More often, though, the problem is that you aren’t really sure HOW to accept the love, or even if you are deserving of such a thing. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s really what you’re thinking. “They can’t possibly love me, love me that much. If they only knew the truth.” Or something like that.

Here’s the truth: they really DO know. And because of that they really, actually, truly DO love you. Most importantly there’s not even a little bit of a mistake here, and more than likely there’s not even the tiniest thread of a string attached. Not only are you loved, not only has someone in some way told you that, you deserve every little bit of that love. Really and truly. Resolve this year to believe that. Make your 2014 New Year’s Resolution to be openly thankful for that love, just like you are for that beautifully gift-wrapped present under the tree at Christmas, the one you would never reject.

Resolve to let yourself  be loved this year.

Happy New Year!