If you are looking for some advice on how to have the “perfect” holiday, you’ve come to the wrong place. But what if it could be okay to not have the perfect holiday? What if you could take some pressure off of yourself to have the holiday need to look or be a picture perfect way, and you could accept it for whatever it is, as it is unfolding right now?
Many years ago, a mentor of mine was giving a talk and mentioned how family vacations are over-rated. He went on to talk about his own experience with his children on family vacations, which was anything but perfect. I found this refreshing and liberating to hear, particularly coming from a well-known child psychologist whom I greatly respected and admired. The message I took away was: “Oh, so I don’t have to be perfect either? We are all human and we all experience struggles and challenges as part of our human condition, no matter how educated we are, no matter how much we strive to make the right choices.” I certainly recalled this years later on my own family vacations with my children, when they would start to fight, when meltdowns would unfold, disappointments would emerge, or minor disasters ensue. Without that expectation or pressure to have the perfect family vacation, I could more easily accept these moments, not beat myself up for them, and move on more quickly.
Let’s face it: Life is messy. We don’t see that in the messages we are bombarded with from advertising and media, glamorous magazine photos and TV commercials showing us unrealistic images that we should strive for. But the problem is that when we fall short of achieving these versions of perfection – when we burn our holiday meal, or the family is feuding, or our kids are disappointed with their presents, or we feel sad but tell ourselves that we shouldn’t be feeling that way because it’s the holidays – we set ourselves up for self-blame, guilt, or somehow feeling that we have fallen short or failed in some way.
One of the misconceptions about mindfulness meditation is that it allows us to clear our minds and achieve a state of perfect peace or bliss—and if we don’t experience that, we are doing it wrong. Quite the contrary, the more I sit observing my own mind, the more I realize the clutter in my own head. Watching this and allowing it to be there, just as it is, creates a kind of space in which I can hold the good, the bad, and the ugly, all of it, with acceptance and even, at times, lightheartedness.
That doesn’t mean we don’t try to improve on the moments we have (see my post, "How to Transform Holiday Stress"), but when those moments aren’t perfect, or when they are uncomfortable, disappointing, or downright painful, we can be there for ourselves just the same.
So as an experiment, see if you might drop the story about the holidays needing to be perfect in one way or another, and instead, make space for whatever is here. You might even imagine making a space at your holiday dinner table for some otherwise “unwanted” guests: What might it be like to set a metaphorical place for your grief over the family member who recently died, or to allow a space for your annoyance at your in-laws who are always giving unsolicited advice, or to accept in your disappointment of nagging at the kids to help out yet again when you’ve asked them four times already, or to allow a place setting for your imperfection because you blew your diet three pieces of pie ago? What if these unwanted guests could be given a seat at the table just the same because you are human and there is no such thing as a perfect holiday anyway? Perhaps something in you might ease, recognizing that you are part of a much larger table actually, where common humanity sits and welcomes you in.
