By Father William J. Byron SJ | Catholic News Service
There is no way of measuring the discontent that lies hidden beneath the lights and festive happenings of Christmas holidays in any given year. No need to try.
But it is worth reflecting for a moment or two on why Christmas is not automatically merry and the holidays are not necessarily happy for everyone.
Wishing will not change that, but facing up to reality can.
Part of the attitudinal realignment that reality can provide is recognition of the fact that it is impossible to be simultaneously grateful and unhappy. You cannot be both grateful and unhappy at the same time.
So, if you are even a little bit unhappy in this post-Christmas season, you should run a gratitude check on yourself. Counting your blessings and giving thanks for them is a surefire way of closing the happiness deficit. None of us has nothing to be grateful for; hence none of us has an overpowering reason to be unhappy.
Similarly, recognition of the undeniable fact in human experience that more is often not enough can lower your expectations level to a point that puts discontent in proper perspective. It is not just unrealistic but silly always to want more.
More is very often not enough. Sometimes less can be more, as many older people will acknowledge when they think of days gone by when they had less, were even perhaps poor, but they were happy.
The post-Christmas season is time to consider how to achieve more of whatever it is that might be called really important in life.
That thought came home to me a few years ago as I read Philip Dray’s book “There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America.” I had always thought labor leader Samuel Gompers gave a monosyllabic (and dollar-focused) reply in 1893 to the question, “What does labor want?” His response was, “More.”
But Philip Dray corrected my false impression by putting Gompers’ complete reply on the record: “What does labor want? (was the question put to the head of the American Federation of Labor) His reply was:
“It wants the earth and the fullness thereof. … Labor wants more schoolhouses and less jail cells; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures, and to make manhood more noble, womanhood more beautiful, and childhood more happy and bright.”
The point Gompers wanted to make was that there is a whole range of reality beyond the paycheck, beyond money, beyond any material gift. There is a range of reality that needs enlargement and expansion to bring the good life within reach of ordinary people. And Gompers’ list of “wants” can serve as well as a catalog of blessings that deserve to be counted on any day of the year.
Jesuit Father William J. Byron is professor of business and society at St. Joseph’s University, Philadelphia. Email: wbyron@sju.edu.