Holiday Dance Card

"We all experience pain and pleasure.

We all gravitate to what's comfortable,

and have an aversion to what's not."

Pema Chodron

During the holidays, everyone is doing an emotional dance, missing a step or two, bumping indelicately into others, and yearning to be off the dance floor.  If we remain confident on our feet, we will not step into the drama or illusions of others.  

We can choose to not react to another person's tangent.  As they rant, we can mentally send them peace, love, and acceptance.  We can be a model of calm and deescalate building fear.  We can breathe in our own emotions, aware of tension, stress, or fear, and gently breathe out our feelings, releasing everything with a willingness to be free of them.  As we refrain from comment during a confrontation, we can be extending peace and calm rather than searching for resolve or acid responses.

When we remember all of us get our toes stepped on, compassion flows a little easier.  If we can look behind words and see fear, we can be present with loving kindness.  Challenge touches the lives of everyone, even though it may be dressed a little differently and responses are varied.  

Dance partner to dance partner, manage the tricky steps rather than withdrawing into the faulty comfort of a two step.  What we ignore, tends to reappear further down on our holiday dance card!