Loneliness can be a party. Either you’re truly alone for Christmas or perhaps you’re spending time with people who are disconnected, dissociated, or casually cruel. You feel alone around such people. They fill the day with SMALL TALK and light joking. They see Christmas as an obligation get through, with substances or sportball. In your insecurity or your rationalizations and excuses, you concede the day. “Hey, at least I’m not alone!” you say to yourself. “Those people are the worst losers!”
If you are stuck in rationalizations and excuses for not facing the loneliness you’ve built up in your life, by keeping shallow low quality people around, then take heart and have some courage! Whose pain is it REALLY if you cut out low quality people?
- More than you realize, perhaps you’re a lot more programmed with the emotional reactions of people to whom you’re bound to by historical momentum.
Maybe some non-argument forming person in your social life told you to go spend time with a shallow family during the holidays because they have their own inadequacies. They gave you an excuse!
The truth about being truly alone at Christmas is that you are likely one giant step closer to sanity than the people who are living in their excuses and rationalizations. To get good people in your life, you need to get bad people out of your life. Higher quality people are attracted by higher standards. They are also repelled by lower standards. Perhaps you’re at a point where you know enough to not have shallow people around but not yet to where you can facilitate a loving and connected environment for others. This is a difficult middle ground to be in but if you persevere, the lonely times will have been worth it.
It is better to remain sober and alone on Christmas than to be dissociated, coping, burying under your true feelings, and listening to yet more small talk from Boomers who had their chances and wasted them. It is better to be honest than to idealize low quality people who consider you little more than an ornament on a tree.
Remember the lonely times so that you become resolved in forming your own family based in honesty, philosophy, connection, and a curious consideration of each other’s inner lives. Christmas sweater parties with peers who watch The Office won’t cut it. Christmas can only be truly celebrated by a recognition of the splendor and life of a child. Why settle for less? (The answers that come only serve those who’ve wronged you!)
