When The Glass Breaks This Christmas

The Christmas season is supposed to be all about peace, right? However, peace of mind can be in short supply. My son broke a glass the other day. Through his mistake I got this little epiphany. 

Many times the lack of peace of mind is because of the high expectations we put on ourselves and others. All of us have many expectations in life. Some of those are extremely important and healthy expectations.

But how many times have you been irritated when someone doesn’t do things the way you’re used to? Or when you’ve planned something carefully and things didn’t go as you’d hoped? Or someone breaks a nice glass?

This kind of anger and irritation happens to all of us — it’s part of the human experience.

Once you accept the fact that you are only human, and that you will inevitably make mistakes too, you will be much less sensitive to the “wrongs” that others do to you. 

Here’s my epiphany: the glass is already broken.

The cause of our stress, anger and irritation is that things don’t go the way we like, the way we expect them to. The solution is simple: expect things to go wrong, expect things to be different than we hoped or planned, and expect the unexpected to happen. And accept it.

So when the nice glass you bought inevitably falls and breaks, someday, you might get upset. But not if you see the glass as already broken, from the day you get it. You know it’ll break someday, so from the beginning, see it as already broken. Be a time-traveler, or someone with time-traveling vision, and see the future of this glass, from this moment until it inevitably breaks.

And when it breaks, you won’t be upset or sad — because it was already broken, from the day you got it. And you’ll realize that every moment you have with it is precious.

Expect your child to mess up — all children do. And don’t get so upset when they mess up, when they don’t do what they’re “supposed” to do … because they’re supposed to mess up.

Expect your partner to be less than perfect.

Expect your friend to not show up sometimes.

Expect things to go not according to plan.(Which always seems to be the case for me)

Expect people to be rude sometimes.

Expect coworkers not to come through sometimes.

Expect roommates not to wash their dishes or pick up their clothes, sometimes.

Expect the glass to break.

And accept it.

Because God accepts you with all your faults.

You won’t change these inevitable facts — they will happen, eventually. And if you expect it to happen — even see it as already happening, before it happens — you won’t get so upset.

You won’t overreact. You’ll respond appropriately, but not overreact. You can talk to the person about their behavior, and ask them kindly to consider your feelings when they do this … but you won’t get overly emotional and blow things out of proportion.

You’ll smile, and think, “I expected that to happen. The glass was already broken. And I accept that.”

You’ll have peace of mind. And that is a good thing this Holiday season.