Anticipation
How much of Christmas is about anticipation? It is a day for many which represents so much sentimental investment and memory. Inevitably it disappoints on some level because the past, even when revisited with presents and feasting, is still the past, immutable and haunting.
Anticipating an imagined future which is idealistically drawn in the mind is a masochistic exercise. Life is not compliant with human ideals or fantasies based in ego. Life is a chaos of happenstance, animal instincts and failed experiments.
Perhaps it would be healthier to teach small children to relish the total unpredictability of life at Christmas. Rather than coaxing them to materialistic greed by gearing them to their wants, it may be more compassionate to use the holiday to teach them something about life's unpredictable nature. Rather than making Christmas an entertainment, it may be better to use it as an opportunity for enjoyable learning about the realities of life.
The focused mind does not attend to anticipation. The focused meditative mind attends to the moment with assurance that attending to the moment will bring the best of the future to light in a process of gratifying personal evolution. This is an essential element of practice.
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