By Mark Mahoney
On a weekday morning earlier this month, on a dismal, rainy morning — the grass covered with icy wet snow left over from Thanksgiving — I opened the door and looked outside.
In the front yard of a neighbor’s house, I observed a little boy dragging a bulky green plastic sled up the little hill that ran from his front door to the driveway.
As the rain poured down on his hood-covered head, he sat down on the sled and rode it the 10 feet or so down to the driveway. Then he got up, tucked the sled under his arm, trudged up the hill, turned around, and did it again. And then again.
As I watched him for those few minutes, I couldn’t help but laugh a little.
I went on Facebook and posted my moment, saying there that it had renewed my faith in boyhood.
But as I think about it now, I realize it did more than that for me.
What it did was give me a small moment of joy, conjuring up cherished childhood memories of a time long ago. And that feeling has stayed with me ever since.
It seems this year that people seem a little bit more down than they have been in past years. I’m sure it’s not everybody. It’s just a feeling I have. For whatever reason, it just seems a little less Christmasy to some.
Maybe it’s the weather. It’s always cloudy or raining or cold and miserable outside, it seems.
Maybe it’s post-election stress. The whole thing took a lot out of all of us.
Maybe it’s the fact that Thanksgiving fell so late this year that it didn’t give us enough time to recover and ramp up to the next busy holiday.
Or maybe it’s just the weight of day-to-day responsibilities and strife.
Whatever it is, I feel a little sad for those who feel a damper on their Christmas spirit.
As we get older, the losses tend to pile up, and we often lose sight of joyful moments.
Our loved ones pass away or get sick, or we drift apart from our family and friends. Like the aging baseball pitcher, we lose a few miles-an-hour off our fastball and our curve doesn’t break like it used to. And that’s a little discouraging.
Holidays are a particularly tough time for a lot of people, and for some it’s not enough just to think of happier times. If you’re in crisis, don’t suffer alone. Make an effort to talk to a professional to help you through.
And if your life is grand and happy and full of family and friends and good times, good for you! Celebrate with all your heart, be glad for the moments, and keep those memories alive. Your future self will thank you someday.
In those more challenging moments, it’s important we find something joyful to grab onto.
I’m not talking about getting all Pollyanna about life here. The struggles are real, and a single moment of disconnect won’t make your troubles or problems disappear.
But for your own sake, try to find something that makes you happy and hold onto that thought. Use it to give yourself hope, and to lift you up when hope eludes you.
Maybe it’s a memory of a more special time. A time you laughed at a funny story or hung out with your friends or pushed your child on a swing.
Maybe it’s something you observed, an act of kindness or love.
Maybe it’s a time you felt something spiritual, like stopping what you were doing to watch a spectacular sunset or to suck in a full breath of clean cold winter air.
If you can’t conjure up a specific memory, maybe think of something you used to do that gave you joy and peace, and do that.
Go back to church, if that’s what once inspired you. Inhale the smell of the polished wood pews and the incense hanging in the air, and revel in the quiet solemnity.
Take a walk in the woods and really hear the sounds, even if it’s just traffic, or your own footsteps.
Hug your dog, or ask permission to hug someone else’s. That always works for me.
Watch a movie that always makes you feel good. There are a lot of wonderful Christmas movies out this time of year. And yes, you can count “Die Hard” if that works for you.
Go online and reconnect with an old friend. (Maybe avoid old girlfriends or boyfriends; that’s just asking for trouble.)
If you’re close by, arrange to meet for coffee, catch up, and chew on the old times for an hour or so.
Sit in a comfortable chair in a quiet place and read a book if you haven’t done that in a while.
Look online or thumb through old albums at photos family members posted.
A favorite uncle of mine passed away over the weekend. I found a moment of joy among the tears looking at the photos his daughters had posted online of Uncle Butch enjoying time with my aunt, their kids and their grandkids.
Do a small gesture of kindness, lifting someone else’s spirit along with your own. Whatever you have that might pick you up, seek it out.
As for that little boy and his sled, I didn’t stick around to see what happened to him later, so I don’t know.
Maybe his mother was watching him the whole time from the front window, feeling happiness and joy at how her young son was innocently reveling in his boyhood. I hope so.
But from my experience having a harried mom who was raising four rambunctious boys, I envision another scenario — of the mom hastily dragging him into the house, peeling off his wet clothes and tugging him into dry ones, scolding him the whole time about the mess and about how now they were going to be late.
Then I like to imagine the little boy sitting silently in his booster seat on the way to school, his mom glaring at him in the rearview mirror.
I envision a little satisfied grin forming on his face. And I imagine that somewhere in the back of his mind, a little voice is telling him: “Totally worth it.”
Those images, and the fond recollections of my mom and my own childhood, made me smile that day.
There’s joy in that. There’s joy to be found in life.
Do your best, in this season of joy, to seek out a little joy for yourself.
Mark Mahoney is the Editorial Page Editor for The Daily Gazette Family of Newspapers.
