My holiday wish for you

Christmas is just around the bend and I’m not ready for it. But I have a wish. It’s a wish author John Steinbeck expressed many moons ago. So far it hasn’t been fulfilled. But let me be the one to put it back out into the world now as we find ourselves so disheveled in spirit and disconnected from the true spirit of Christmas.

This wish would make a special Christmas gift for anyone who feels they’re not enough—not accomplished enough, not rich enough, not intelligent enough, not handsome enough, not kind enough, not wise enough…whatever the not enough is.

Here’s what John Steinbeck wrote:

Once a friend of mine named Ed said to me, “For a very long time I didn’t like myself.” It was not said in self-pity but simply as an unfortunate fact. “It was a very difficult time,” he said, “and very painful. I did not like myself for a number of reasons, some of them valid and some of them pure fancy. I would hate to have to go back to that.”

“Then gradually,” he said, “I discovered with surprise and pleasure that a number of people did like me. And I thought, if they can like me, why can’t I like myself? Just thinking it did not do it, but slowly I learned to like myself and then it was all right.”

This was not said in self-love in its bad connotation but in self-knowledge. He meant literally that he had learned to accept and like the person Ed as he liked other people. It gave him a great advantage. Most people do not like themselves at all. They distrust themselves, put on masks and pomposities. They quarrel and boast and pretend and are jealous because they do not like themselves. But mostly they do not even know themselves well enough to form a true liking, and since we automatically fear and dislike strangers, we fear and dislike our stranger-selves.

Once Ed was able to like himself he was released from the secret prison of self-contempt.

I wish we could all be so. If we could learn to like ourselves even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away. Maybe we would not have to hurt one another just to keep our ego chins above water.

Well…that was Steinbeck’s wish. Mine, too. So as I go about the holiday season, I’ll keep in mind that the next jerk I run into is just some poor soul who can’t stand himself. In the Christmas spirit I’ll take pity on him and smile back at him regardless. I hope you do, too.