Pathwalking 104
Today I wish you love and joy, peace and happiness.
Today should be no different from any other day. Today should have no greater emphasis, no deeper meaning, no sharper focus than any other day.
Today is Christmas day. All around the world this day is celebrated in a wide variety of ways. Whether you attend Mass, have been furiously shopping the malls for gifts, or living somewhere between these extremes, the greatest emphasis that emerges from this particular holiday is love.
Cliché though it may be, love really does make the world go round. Love is the single greatest, most powerful emotion we can experience.
To spread love to a wider world, it has to begin with me. If I cannot love myself, how can I possibly share love with anyone else?
The problem is, we have become suspicious of love. We do not trust it, we do not accept it for its good, we get caught up in being afraid of its loss. But if we stay focused on the negatives, if we let fear overtake us, we cannot know love. If we cannot know love, how can we share it?
In walking my own Path, I have had to really analyze what it means to love who I am. In order to choose, know and walk a path, I have to choose to get to know myself. If the self I come to know is not someone that I love, then it is up to me to change that, and to learn what I need in order to love myself.
Today is celebrated around the world, and whether you are a Christian or not, you cannot escape the power of the intent on this day. Rather than allow our focus to be on consumerism and presents and toys and what we want to get, or for that matter on what we are giving, we need to consider love and all the other positive emotions we can.
Today should be a day of gratitude as well. We need to be grateful not just for the things in our lives, but for the people, the opportunities, the intangibles. We need to not just go through the motions of stating our gratitude, but of really FEELING it.
Most importantly – today should be no different from EVERY SINGLE OTHER DAY. We are obsessed as a society with putting the emphasis on singular days to celebrate things, but really we should celebrate thankfulness, love, peace, joy and wonder every day. We need to take our narrow focus and widen it, broaden it to be more inclusive, more welcoming, more freeing.
Pathwalking is about choice, about control, about freedom. The reason why I believe in choosing my own path is not just for my own wellbeing and happiness, it is for feeling more positive, more loving, and more grateful for all that I have and all that life can offer. I choose to share Pathwalking with you because I believe that if we ALL can find our own paths in life, and we can all be happier with who we are and what we do, this world would be a better place all around.
Christmas should not be the only day we reach out to friends and family, spend money on gifts and express love in elaborate ways. This should be an everyday occurrence.
Beyond love and gratitude, there is peace. Leaders around the world speak of peace most frequently on Christmas Day. Wouldn’t it be really great if they put the same effort into speaking about peace like this the rest of the year, too?
This one day should not be the only time this is our focus. Love, joy, happiness and peace should receive our attention every day. If we give more energy to the good, we can bring more good into the world.
This is a part of the Pathwalker’s journey – to see and to understand the importance of such positive energies. Taking a positive trek through the world to be happy with your own choices is pretty much the point.
Can you take the positive energies of this day and share them EVERY day?
This is the one-hundred fourth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Thank you for joining me.
The first year of Pathwalking is available in print and for your Kindle.
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