12/24/2017
A Different Christmas Carol
Well, it is a chilly, gray morning, the kind of Middle Atlantic winter day that is depressing if you want to work in the garden in your shirt sleeves...or invigorating if you want to sit by the fire, drink hot mulled-cider, looking at Christmas greetings, Mozart playing in the background. Like life in general, this day is composed of the sum of the thoughts one chooses to entertain about it. As Abraham Lincoln so aptly stated, "most men are as happy as they make up their minds to be." Funny how the words of a politician who lived better than a century and a half-ago can be as meaningful as those of a close friend shared earlier in the day.
I have come to believe that the more I think about what I see and hear and feel and taste and touch, the more opportunity I discover for me to influence the environment around me. I cannot control the sounds a bell makes when struck by its clapper or the registered smells as I walk past a lawn after it has been freshly cut. I can, however, control how I interpret that bell's sound -- it's so eerie, or it's so joyous -- and the meaning of the smell -- must be spring or god, how I hate mowing the lawn. We are constantly surrounded by a virtual cornucopia of sensory stimuli, but whether I perceive them as the symphony of life or a din and source of irritation, it's up to me. As Wayne Dyer once wrote, "the only difference between a flower and a w**d is a judgment."
What we think affects how we feel. And how we feel affects how we act. Some creatures on this earth may possess a disposition that is solely the result of genetics, the lovable lab or the frightening junkyard dog being examples. But we humans have been set apart from the rest of creation, the result of divine intervention or by an evolutionary quirk...although the truth be told, the former likely begetting the later. Yet, the one aspect of our humanity that is recognized above all others is our ability to think and to reason, "sentience" or an awareness of self. Yet what do we do with this gift? How do we use it to enhance our existence and, to paraphrase Emerson, "leave the world a better place?"
To focus on and only see the gloomy and horrific side of this existence we call life, seeing it as the result of some divine retribution or cosmic injustice, condemns me to a life of misery and despair. But if I choose to interpret my experiences positively, then I have the opportunity to make a difference, if only in my life. This argument could be expanded to suggest that I cannot help but make a difference in this life. If this is true, then the issue becomes, will it be a positive or a negative difference that I make? I choose the former.
I cannot prove that I will accomplish this quest, and I certainly cannot ensure that you will recognize it even if I do. All I know is that the confluence of reason and emotion can be seen in the smile on a young child's face who has chosen to watch with mirthful exuberance a puppy's pursuit of its own tail.
On this Christmas Eve, I send my warmest and most sincere wishes to you and your families during this most blessed and joyous time of the year; peace on Earth and goodwill towards all.
Dr. Robert
