Ashok Gupta on why the Hallmark version of Christmas creates emotional pressure, especially during hard times. He argues that repressing difficult feelings or drowning in them both backfire. Instead, notice what you're actually feeling rather than scrolling past it or pretending it away.
Often want to live up to a certain expectation or ideal. You know, we see that wonderful, I suppose, Hallmark films or something that we've seen on TV where it's this beautiful Christmas and the family are gathered around the fire and everyone's smiling and everyone looks happy. And then the realism kicks in and then the expectations, oh, I must produce the perfect meal for the family. Oh, I must make sure that everyone's really happy with their presence. So all of these other things start building above Christmas that are nothing to do with the holiday season, but they're part of just the culture which has valued our achievements instead of what's really underlying Christmas, which is that joy, that love, that happiness, that sense of community and family that a lot of us are missing out on right now. So I think the first thing to say is this pandemic Christmas, if we dare call it that, let's call it the Christmas during these challenging times is an opportunity to go deeper into the meaning of Christmas and the holidays and deeper into understanding why we are feeling the way we're feeling right now and what we can do about it and to genuinely share in those human values that we all share. And I think the first thing I want to share is this idea of a mindful Christmas. Now, what does mindfulness actually mean and how does it relate to our emotions? Well, the first thing to say is that the way that we're feeling right now, often we judge those emotions, we judge those feelings. We say, oh, I shouldn't feel like this. I'm embarrassed to feel like this. Or it's a sign of weakness if I have such and such emotion. And yet by doing that, we repress our emotions. So as a result of the pandemic, there's so many different emotions we might be experiencing, and if we push them away, if we feel embarrassed, we actually make it worse. Just like if you have a spring and you push the spring down, the more the pressure builds up within that spring, the more the pressure builds up within us. Or another way that we handle our emotions is to indulge them, to actually think, oh, no. Yes, I am feeling anxious. That must mean we are in danger. Oh, dear, things are really bad right now. So we get caught in that whirlwind of negative emotions. And either way, either indulging the emotion or actually removing the emotion from our minds and ignoring them and repressing them, either way, we cause ourselves more challenges, and that's really not what we want to do. And, of course, things have become worse in the last 10 years, down to one thing, having social media and other apps on our phones. So we know that in the last 10 years, people have become more distracted, they've become more anxious, more depressed. And a lot of that is being put down to the fact that we have this always on life. And before, we used to process our emotions, so. So if we felt sad, we felt angry, we would have time by ourselves. Whether it's in a doctor's waiting room or on a bus or sitting at home, we wouldn't be constantly distracted. But right now, when we have a difficult emotion, we can simply distract ourselves with the comfort of a YouTube video or surfing on Facebook or going onto TikTok and watching some amusing videos. They are actually genuinely funny. And that becomes a way of blocking out the discomfort that we feel within. In some ways, we've gone back spiritually in the last 10 years as a result of this phenomenon. And now it's time for us to really recognize this and see how it's impacting our lives. And so during this Christmas, can we go into a state of mindful awareness of what we're experiencing?
