As much as I appreciate the the Holidays, one has to admit it possess a downside: the relentless, unceasing, non-stop drone of promotions, commercials, and ads; loosely wrapped in pseudo-emotion by manipulative agencies pretending to appear as caring; with a primary objective being no more than inflating their coffers at our expense.
I do not consider all shopkeepers as greedy and soulless. Most are you and I, working their day-to-day, attempting to keep their heads above water. I also take no issue with profitability; we each must pay our bills. I am self-employed and therefore extremely aware of what it’s like to stare at the ceiling all night concerned how to pay my vendors, keep the government satisfied; and still claim some folding money for my family.
But can we be honest? After 132 renditions of the “Night Before Christmas” re-written into unusual off-tone radio commercials, can we unite hand-in-hand and admit that it wears down the psyche?
Deepak Chopra, lecturer and author, stated in December, “We are spending money we don’t have to buy things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like.”
Ouch. That kind of hurts; but “why?”
There was a cosmic event this week. For the first time in about 400 years, there was a full lunar eclipse on the Winter Solstice. If you were crazy enough (like me), you went outside around midnight and stared up at the moon, which was glowing with a faint reddish tint. (What was really a cosmic event was that it was clear enough on the Northcoast to actually see the moon!)