The holiday season is a great buffeter of persons. This is an equal opportunity situation and no one is exempt. Sooner or later fatigue, demands/expectations of others, overly scheduled time combined with lapses in various disciplines, and whammo. It all reaches critical mass and you've become crisp around the edges, at the very least. You've seen the brittle people, the strained expressions, the frozen smile, the furrowed brow. Maybe you've seen this face in your mirror! Ouch. Hopefully the goal then becomes modified to include a return to some kind of discipline including more rest, silence and prayer plus a deliberate quest for joy. Not the razzle dazzle kind of glitz which passes as joy for some. But that's fake stuff and tiring! It also leads to a feeling of emptiness...not what you're going for at all here.
Personal truth is more than just a code of conduct, but that's a good place to start if this is a new concept for you. A guy with Toltec ancestry became an MD and lived in the world of modern medicine until something led him back to his Toltec roots and he wrote a book entitled "The Four Agreements". He also morphed back to his origins and I'm not sure if he even practices Western medicine at all. In order to glean the most important stuff in the book, you don't have to buy it, or even read it. Here are the agreements in their totality:
(1) Be impeccable with your word; (2) Don’t take anything personally; (3) Don’t make assumptions; and (4) Always do your best. Wow! Really something, right? Elegantly simple, unique in their purity and total distillation of the best common sense around. A perfect foundation to build your own personal truths upon or an anvil on which to craft your own core inner beliefs as your Personal Truths. See, this is about YOU, yourself and how you deal with "incoming missiles" from others, especially when your stressed...your response in the things you tell yourself about who you are and how you live. While the wonderful words of Jacob in Micah 6:8 are a great beginning ("He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God."), I think we need more specifics broken down to be able to apply it to specific everyday circumstances.
Well, just some hopeful words after a trying day. Remember...this season is an equal opportunity stressor :-) Hope this concept is freeing, enriches your life and give you a context to help process the various flotsam and jetsam that gets flung in your direction every day. Enjoy! And work on getting more silence and prayer woven into your day. Give it a try!
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