Holidays: Happy Holy Week

Some people are celebrating Passover right now...

Happy Passover.

I think Passover is a terrific holiday to remember, and was impressed as a child that it had been celebrated for so long throughout history. I think it should be celebrated by any nationality. It is a good thing to remember and be happy for.

Others are celebrating Holy Week...

The week of Easter.

I am one of these. I was raised Catholic, and I now raise our children Catholic.

Easter always held a special place in my heart.

Of course, as a child, I looked forward to candy filled baskets (after I got over my fear of the Easter Bunny), but my Catholic upbringing soon brought deeper meaning to the holiday.

I remember many occasions when I hear or see (in many movies) the Passion of Jesus and I feel sad and heartbroken.

I cry all the time when I hear it. Still.

Even though it took place over two thousand years ago, I still cry for Jesus' death on the cross.

Remembering this every year is important to me as a Catholic. It is, after all, the cornerstone of our faith. It is the reason Catholicism exists.

I believe that is an important thing to remember, and to teach our children.

Jesus led a beautiful, peaceful, loving life. If we all aspired to live like he did, it would be a pretty great world.

Now, people spend their lives studying world religions to become versed in them, and knowledgeable in their faith.

This blog is to acknowledge the holiday, so I don't plan on getting too religious.

The neat thing about holidays is you can make of them what you wish. You can celebrate religiously, you can celebrate with the bunnies, you can simply celebrate Spring's arrival. I love that we have the freedom to do that in my country. I like to mix them all up into one celebration.

Easter will always hold a special place in my heart. It is the reason I am Catholic.

This week I will start the celebration by making unleavened bread on Holy Thursday.

I will attend the Passion in Church on Friday, fasting as much as I can.

Saturday will be preparing for Easter morning, as I assist the Easter bunny.

Saturday night I hope to have time to attend our Church's Easter vigil celebration mass.

Sunday I prefer to enjoy the morning watching our three children, two nieces, and one nephew hunt for their baskets, enjoy the charge they get from eating sugary treats for breakfast, then have the rest of my family over for dinner. We also sneak in a luncheon and egg hunt with my in laws.

It's a day of family...

of love...

of remembrance...

of celebration of life.

Happy Holy week in whatever way you choose to celebrate!

Shower Thoughts - Happiness

The other day in the shower, I thought of happiness. How some people are very happy, and others are not. I have given the whole why-is-this-so question a great deal of thought in and out of the shower.

One time I saw a program on it that said happiness is in our genes. We are genetically programmed to only be a certain degree of happy through our lives. That thought depressed me. So, you mean, all the people in the world who are depressed on a regular basis, don’t have a choice in the matter? They were programmed to be that way? No matter what they do? Ick. And crap. That really sucks if that is so.

I am lucky I tend to be a happy person. I side on happy about 90% of my day. I get aggravated if I do not find happiness, or someone else takes the wind out of my sails.

But I don’t hold onto it.

I let it go.

Usually by the end of the day I’ve let it go. Sometimes it takes a good night’s sleep, and I wake up like I have amnesia. Everything is better.

Rarely, but it has happened, it takes much longer.

But I let it go.

I don’t know why I am like that. Some people think I am forgetful, or even unthoughtful. I don’t mean to be. I think it is my brain’s way of keeping me happy. Perhaps it is true then. Perhaps I am programmed that way. I really don’t know.

It’s not that I forget all the bad things that happen, but I forget the small ones, the details that make things sad and painful. I know I don’t want to feel sad or pained, and I think over the years my brain developed this way to avoid it.

Thanks brain.

So, am I happy because I want to be, or because I don’t have a choice? Who knows.

But this is all old happiness thoughts. I’ve had all these before. Many times.

With the steam beginning to rise, and my hair (which is too long right now) was finally getting wet all the way through, I thought of happiness again. Swirling around my head like sudsy shampoo.

Okay, some of us are happier than others. So, how do we get along? How does someone who is happy most of the time get along with someone who is not? Do they get along at all? Are not so happy people attracted to happy people or vise versa? Are we meant to mix it up for the yin and yang of life?

I find it interesting how couples stay together, and how they don’t. I wondered, in the shower, if their happiness levels are a factor? If you take two people, with two different levels of happiness, and look at their relationship, I bet you could tell why they run into problems.

Let’s take the gift giving holidays. If someone who is not so happy does something for their significant other on their own level of happiness, it may seem like they weren’t really trying to the other person who has a higher level of happiness, and therefore, would be willing to do more. Yet both feel as if they’ve done the same amount for the other.

Our holidays are filled with so much pressure to make a loved one happy by buying something. If we buy gifts based on our own happiness for someone with different happiness, there is going to be a noticeable difference there. But if everyone took into account that difference, they all might be able to avoid the crazy expectations of these gift giving holidays.

If we have no expectations, then we have no disappointment. If you get a gift, no matter the size or cost, how lovely! If you didn’t expect anything. If you don’t get a gift at all, then it’s just another day, and maybe that’s okay too. After all, you didn’t expect anything.

But more than expectation, let’s try to understand each other on a deeper level. Try to take things from each other’s perspective. Greater understanding leads to greater relationships.

Fuzzy shower thoughts are faded already.