Pagan History of Christmas, Good Friends, Finding Energy. Eight Ideas
Eight ideas I can't stop thinking about
Here are eight ideas that I’ve been thinking about this past week — to help your body, mind, and spirit.
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1. Your Friends Are A Reflection
You’re a reflection of the people you spend the most time with.
Most of us, myself included, have learned the hard way, after many years that some people are a net negative in our lives. If you’re changing, you’re growing. And if you’ve changed, but your friends haven’t, it can feel like you’re living a lie.
This doesn’t mean you should throw friends away when they challenge your views, or if they live a different lifestyle. It means you need to develop the strength of character to understand when a season of your life is at an end. If you’ve started a family and have new responsibilities, trying to keep up with your bar-hopping single friends will consume your time and energy, and pull your attention and focus from more important things in your life.
As you start the new year, take stock of the people in your life. It’s okay to part ways and walk down a different path. As with any abusive or chaotic relationship, the worst thing you can do is sink years of energy and time into someone who is destined to split off from you in due time.
2. Perspective And Creation
Watch this short video of four Disney artists in the 50s painting the same tree. This is a masterclass in the power of individual style and perspective.
We all see and interpret things creatively in our way.
3. Pagan Influence on Christmas
Christmas is my favorite holiday. It’s a wonderful time to take stock of the year, spend time with friends and family, show gratitude and appreciation, and remember why we celebrate Christmas. As a Christian, I celebrate this religious holiday to commemorate the birth of Jesus, but there is a fascinating history behind this day that can provide some context to our celebrations.
I recommend this video by Anthropologist, Robert Sepehr on the pagan influence of Christmas and the Winter Solstice.
4. If You’re Going to Try, Go All The Way
“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery—isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
-Charles Bukowski
5. Where We Find Energy
You won’t find energy in a platitude-filled self-help book or in another Netflix series you watch for eight hours straight.
We find energy in the “Zone of Proximal Development”.
Coined by Russian Psychologist Lev Vygotsky, the Zone of Proximal Development refers to the range of tasks that a person can perform with the help and guidance of others, or through practice and trial and error, but cannot yet perform independently. This concept is crucial in understanding the learning process. This is where we find the inner fire.
We don’t find it running one mile and giving up (when we can easily run three) or when we’re playing songs on our instrument we’ve already played a hundred times. We find energy in the tasks that push us beyond our capacity.
Not only does this help us to develop ourselves and our skills, but it also brings us self-confidence. We become people who understand our capacity to push beyond our perceived limitations. We develop the ability to know what allows us to grow, and what action it takes to reach our goals.
Remember this before setting resolutions and goals for the next year.
6. He Is Born
If found this artwork from X user @manachvs quite beautiful. I hope you do as well
7. A Christmas Carol
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew. 'Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
-Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
8. On Reading
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
-Ernest Hemingway
As always, thank you for reading. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year
-Joe