by Dr.Moira Borg MD Gestalt Psychotherapist
There is something particular about Christmas. Even though nowadays we are so caught up in its flashy commercial excitement and ‘cheer’, I believe that its true soul and meaning still lies in the ‘love one another’ spirit that He advocated so fervently more than 2000 years ago, this deep aura of genuine togetherness that every human being craves for.
There is be something even more particular about human beings. While individually we seem to yearn for love, togetherness and belonging, collectively, as a society, we seem to have lost the knack of being with each other altogether. Instead our relationships are getting more fluid (Liquid Society/Modernity – Bauman,2000) and unstable making our sense of self and belonging more fragile leaving us with an ever growing sense of loneliness and desolation.
Sadly, the ever growing individualistic obsession with ourselves and our needs only compounds this isolation and fragmentation of our world further. All we seem to focus on are our rights, our pockets and windows of opportunity giving little or no importance to the fact that we are not living alone, that we are responsible both to and for other people that make part of our existence and also to the world we live in. We feel we are the entitled generation and likewise the entire world has to revolve around us and we can split rights from responsibility with impunity. As a result we see no problem with insulting anyone who has a different opinion than us, even publicly on social media, making do without even the basic manners when we are interacting with each other and steamrolling anyone who dares be in our way of getting what we want whether it belongs to us or otherwise.
But then every last week of the year we miraculously fall deeply in love with each other again and shower each other with an overwhelming avalanche of gifts and greetings only to fall back to the same routine once the season is over. It seems that Christmas has become another social cliché like the London sales, the August Moon Ball or the President’s run even if we religiously collect money for “those less fortunate than us” and clap to the panto curtain call of “be nice to each other” every single year.
Ultimately the only way to find ourselves is to reconnect to each other and the world around us as only then we can again find the meaning of our existence. Every year, Christmas, which ultimately is nothing but a celebration of the birth of that One Individual who taught us what true love is, is a regular nudge in that one direction. Let us not close our collective hearts to it but “honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”
“No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused”
Charles Dickens – The Man who Invented Christmas – A Christmas Carol
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