Holidays reveal the great divide between the haves and the have-nots. And there are ways we find ourselves on both sides. But the fact that you’re reading this likely means you’re more in the haves category.
Somehow, though, we don’t register it. I speak for myself—I don’t register it.
The Poverty Tours
I grew up with parents who kept stressing we should count our blessings. When we were younger, my father tried to drill into us how lucky we were. He would drive us into poorer areas to expose us to what poverty looked like.
I’m not sure how effective it was. If anything, it drove home the point that I did not want to look like them. He lit the fear of poverty and loss in me like never before.
But looking back now, I see what I couldn’t then: in any of those scenarios, I could have been that person. I lucked out with the parents and situation I got. But to truly stand in someone else’s shoes, you have to take it all—the genetics, the upbringing, everything that led them to where they are.
I’m one of those who doesn’t believe people want to suffer. Sometimes we just don’t know another way.
Pema Chödrön says this best:
“True compassion does not come from wanting to help out those less fortunate than ourselves but from realizing our kinship with all beings.”
The Comparative Trap
Where I’m going with this is: I didn’t really take my parents seriously. It’s not like they said “look how lucky you are” and all of a sudden I woke up to the great luck of my life.
Actually, it invoked the opposite. I looked around at my peers and, relative to them, I often felt a whole lot less lucky. They so often seemed to have what I didn’t. We grow up in this comparative world, measuring ourselves against the people around us.
But the eagle-eye view, that 20,000-foot perspective, shows an entirely different story: we lucked out on many fronts.
One: that we got born at all. As much as this life can be suffering, the miracle of it is astounding.
Two: that we had enough love and support that we find ourselves in the 1% of people who have enough shelter and food to sustain themselves.
So what I needed to hear and learn way back then was that both can be true. Relative to the people around me, I’m having a certain kind of experience that leads me to feel a certain way about what I have and don’t have. Some of that is good—it might light a fire under my ass to get going or inspire me in whatever ways.
But without that 20,000-foot view, I can’t really receive the miracle that so much of my survival I don’t need to worry about. That’s historically almost an anomaly. We have always had to worry and fear.
Maybe that’s the hard thing to let in: no matter how imperfect your life is and how much more you want, already you are actually there. This is, as they say, as good as it may get. And there’s a whole lot of good we could probably take in.
But that needs us to slow down on filling holes. And breaks and holidays are the times we try to fill them most. It needs to look like something.
But what if you made the main aim of your break just to let yourself be as you are? That may mean you don’t feel as happy as you’d like on some days. That doesn’t mean we need to go plaster it up with whatever quick and sure fixes are out there.
What if you just let yourself be as you are, and make that a curious fascination?
Handrail #1: Contraction and Expansion
Peter Levine, the trauma healing pioneer, uses a simple demonstration with a Slinky to show how the nervous system works. When we’re stressed, the Slinky contracts—tight, compressed, stuck. When we’re regulated, it expands—loose, flowing, free.
What we really want during holidays is that feeling of expansion: relief, letting go, space.
But as Peter points out so well, as soon as we slow down or when we get time, that’s when the contraction becomes more evident. And we don’t want to go there, so we avoid it. We use all kinds of strategies to keep those feelings at bay. But all that does is strengthen the contraction.
The secret—and this is the first handrail for the holidays I want to give—is that every time we touch a contraction and let it in for a while, it will lead to an expansion.
Just the way the body works. And then expansion leads to contraction. If we resist this less, we have the feeling we were always hoping the holiday would give us: space and an ever-growing expansion that can be further enhanced by placing ourselves in natural environments.
Here’s a practice for this:
- Come back into your body
- Breathe
- Let the breath out slowly
- Shake a little if it helps
- Bring sound—hum, sigh, an “ahh,” or whatever wants to come through
- Then shake some more
- Notice what wants to contract, and let it
- Stay with it, breathing
- Feel what begins to soften and expand
Handrail #2: Boredom as Medicine
Make your goal to soften. To do nothing. And I mean nothing.
Sit there. Twirl your fingers. Think, What now?
That uncomfortable “what now” is often the doorway. We call it boredom, and it has a bad reputation. But what if boredom is not a problem to solve, but a gateway into a different mode of being?
When we stop filling every second, something else begins to move.
You might turn on music and actually listen. You might look outside and rest with the trees, or the rain. Life begins participating with you again.
A small note of kindness to yourself: any pleasant feeling you find will pass. Expect that. Let it be okay. When tension returns—and it will—you might notice yourself thinking, But I’m on holiday, I should be relaxed.
That’s the moment to step back and say:
- It’s okay. It takes time to adjust.
- My intention is to rest.
- I can learn calm again, slowly.
Imagine a holiday you don’t need to escape from. One where rest and discomfort are both allowed. Where you can be peaceful and uneasy in the same body.
Dissatisfaction often shows up here too. The ego rarely feels fully satisfied, even in beautiful places. Notice how often people look strangely miserable on holiday. We keep ourselves busy to avoid that edge.
Sometimes space itself is disorienting. Now I have time to be with myself—and I didn’t know it felt like this.
If that happens, breathe rhythmically. Sit on a balcony. Listen. Let a different story tell itself.
My Own Medicine
I’m going to take a great leap into boredom myself. It’s one of the things I struggle with most and, ironically, find most of my medicine in.
For someone like me who has spent most of his life feeling left behind and doing whatever he could to catch up, boredom is the antidote to false progress.
But who would have thought that boredom itself held clues into what real forward momentum looks like?
The catch is you have to let go of the need to move forward and actually just let yourself feel lost or disoriented for a moment. Boredom invites the great “I don’t know” moment, which is the polar opposite of where the mind wants to be. We want the known, the certain, the predictable.
Boredom can be, if we let it, a course correction. Because let’s face it: some of the stuff we do looks and feels serious but doesn’t move us in the ways we think. But it feels like direction. We’re pretending to be in control, filling the space with activity that keeps us from touching what’s actually here.
The Invitation
Thank you for being here this year.
May your holidays include rest, boredom, breath—and a little less striving.
May you touch the contraction and let it expand.
May you remember your kinship with all beings.
And may you receive, even for a moment, the miracle that you’re already here.
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