The 15-Minute Holiday

The 15-Minute Holiday

  

Holidays are funny to me. Think about it. All they really are is a testament to the fact that humans underappreciate the important things in their daily lives. We set aside days like Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, and even Christmas to help us remember to do things we should be doing all year—things like being thankful for our loved ones, for those who have fallen in the struggle for our freedom, and for the birth of Christ.

Now, in a way, I consider setting aside holidays a subtle expression of humility, however inadvertent. Because we understand that our minds just aren’t powerful enough to perfectly accommodate memories and thoughts of all we have to be thankful for every single day. So, before I go any further I want to say that this is NOT a holiday-bashing piece. I love Christmas. I love breaks. I love gift-giving. I love dedicating deeper levels of thought to the beautiful things in life. I love celebrating my family and people who have inspired me.

This is the point—holidays often bring us much joy, a greater capacity for personal reflection, and a more refined and tangible sense of what is truly important. They cause us to slow down or perhaps “speed up” other things that have slowed down in the wake of our busy work schedules. The specifics of what holidays do for each person are different, but one thing I notice is that people tend to function at a higher level when they give themselves time to receive the things mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph.

So, this is my challenge—what if we implemented 5, 10, or 15-minute “holidays” into every day of our lives? How many things in our lives would change if we started off our days with focus on what brings us the most joy, and took a little time to reflect on the kind of people life is shaping us into and how that lines up with the people we really want to be, and honed in on the things we know to be of utmost importance? Would it change how many hours we put in at “work,” avoiding tough, yet inevitable, conversations with family members? Would it change the amount of time we spend simply decaying in front of a television? Would it increase the amount of phone calls we give our grandparents? Would it help us if we actually had oxygen to breath in the midst of “marathon” days?

Take my advice. Take a 15-minute holiday every morning, and think about what matters the most. Read. Journal. Think. Pray. You might just find yourself a little more thankful, a little less tense, and little bit happier.