Love is the essence
How are you doing with the holidays so far?
Do you feel the need to keep up with the Jones’? Comparing your Xmas lights to your neighbors’; Gramming your season to fish for scrolling likes; seeing shades of Martha Stewart in everyone but yourself; feeling buried in shoulda-woulda-coulda’s; and chasing down every holiday sale? Whew! I’m exhausted just thinking about it.
Each time you feel insecure, fearful, lesser than….
Know that that’s not the spirit of the season you’re feeling. Stop, breathe and GET GRATEFUL.
Gratitude for all that you already have is the quick-acting anecdote to your bad-Santa situation. Practice it proactively, several times a day. Write down all the things you’re grateful for, daily adding to your list. Then, why not gift that list to loved ones? Ask them to add to it and pass it along. That’s the season’s essence.
Personally, I live by the “5 by 5” rule.
(I thank Joss Whedon for putting this gem on my radar.) If it won’t matter in 5 years, don’t waste 5 minutes on it now. Period. In 5 years, will this month’s “perfect” made-with-a-sense-of-obligation Christmas cookies matter? Will how your house’s decorations compare to your neighbor’s electricity-sucking Griswald display count? Of course not.
The season’s essence is love and gratitude.
And, not coincidentally, that is also your essence. It is beautifully incomparable and it is enough. More than enough. Nurture it and share it. That will matter in 5 years in ways that you can’t begin to comprehend today.
Happy Howlidays!
XO — Ruth & Rusty
My Rusty: Love personified
Every time I judge someone else I reveal an unhealed part of my self.
Every time I judge someone else I reveal an unhealed part of my self.
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.
Love is the essence of human experience and emotion. It is at the root of all and everything we, as humans, do. Without love, what do we have to live for?
You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
