Category: Words To Live By

It most definitely feels strange to be experiencing Christmas this year in such a different way from prior ones.

Coming home after a long Thanksgiving vacation down South to a completely unlit and empty yard with only our outdoor garage and side porch lights on felt very odd. Odd compared to the typical Clark Griswold display I normally would put up every year well before mid-November even arrives.

Seeing our now cold and dark yard brought out feelings of both relief and sorrow. Relief that I didn’t have thousands of lights to ensure remained on for the next month or so, but sorrow over how lonely my yard looked, especially when so many of our neighbors had holiday lights and decorations adorning theirs. As I took all that in though, something came to me I never quite saw before, and that’s how far I’ve grown away from what I feel the meaning of Christmas is meant to be.

The meaning of Christmas over the past bunch of years for me was more about making my house look amazing and then showing it off on Facebook and to friends. Christmas was always more about outdoing myself from prior years with my decorating. The pressure I put on myself to do so took far more precedence over the true meaning of the holiday season, which I believe to in the sharing unconditional love with everyone. As a kid, I didn’t experience that either.

While Christmas wasn’t so much about putting up huge holiday lights and displays, it still was very superficial in that our family did incredible amounts of holiday shopping and spending. That behavior carried well into my adulthood where big and lavish gifts meant lots of love. When I finally moved away from the gift-giving side of things for the holiday season, it became more about engaging in another aspect of holiday superficiality, in my decorating. Without that whatsoever this festive season, I clearly saw how most of my prior Christmas holidays have constantly been focused on one ego-aspect or another.

On average, if I was to guess, I probably spent close to $500 or more on my decorating during prior holiday seasons, which honestly is no different than now much I used to spend on gifts as well. That’s a big reason why this year I chose to do neither and instead simply focus on just being more unconditionally loving.

Having a completely Christmas-free home has surely helped with that because I haven’t been focusing on all those ego-based aspects of the holidays. Making my home shine so brightly in years past where you could see it from several streets over was definitely more about ego than unconditional love. The same can be said of many of the gifts I bought for former partners, friends, and family in holidays past.

Of course, it always felt good to have neighbors compliment my outdoor Christmas displays and see cars driving by slowly taking pictures. It also consistently felt good to see people’s jaws drop after opening the lavish gifts I once bought them during the holidays. But all of that was me just trying to outdo everyone else. Ego. Ego. Ego. And when so much ego is present, it’s pretty hard to focus on the true meaning of the holiday season.

So I’m glad that I have a dark home this year without all that ego in action. It’s very much helped to shift my thinking and place my focus more onto what should have always mattered during every prior holiday season. Because at the core of each holiday season, whether one is religious or not, believing in Jesus or not, is the desire to share unconditional love with each other, something that becomes very difficult to do when the focus becomes more about overly spending on gifts or outdoor displays and trying to outdo everyone, including even myself…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

I read just recently about a guy that got caught smuggling copies of Netflix’s hit Korean series The Squid Game into North Korea. He was sentenced to death by firing squad! Reading this made me realize I probably have a lot more freedoms living in the United States than I ever would in plenty of other places around the world.

Take my sexuality for example. There are places in this world still that just for being in a same-sex relationship I could be arrested and even put to death. 69 countries in fact have laws that remain in place that criminalize homosexuality. Or take the many different types of religious practices I’ve participated in over the years that range from Pagan to Buddhist to Christian. There are places where I could be arrested and even put to death for some of them. 187 countries in fact have laws that remain that support religious persecution. After doing a little more research on the many freedoms I have as an American, I can honestly say I was surprised, maybe only because I often focus more on all the travesties continuing to happen within our borders. But truly if I look beyond that, there is a considerable number of freedoms I still have here that I wouldn’t elsewhere and I’m sure is precisely why so many refugees flee here.

Take for example how interesting some of the names we give our children in this country. Here you could name your kid “Firecracker” or “Dynamite” if you wanted to, but countries like Germany, Japan, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland you are limited on what you can name your kids. Or how about the fact that we can wear what we want when out and about like a person I once knew who regularly wore a squirrel tail around for cosplay purposes. In countries like North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, Sudan, and France, wearing the wrong thing can be a punishable offense. And consider the fact that ending relationships and starting new ones through divorce or otherwise in our country is all the common these days, but in places like the Philippines and Malta for example, there are severe restrictions in place that prevent such a thing causing people to have to remain in relationships even if they don’t want to anymore. Even things down to hairstyles is a freedom here, where I’ve seen countless interesting hairdos over the years, but in Iran for example it’s a punishable offense to have a mullet or a fauxhawk! Oh, and I mustn’t forget that what I view on the Internet here is far more expansive than in other countries such as China or Russia who severely restrict what people see on it. And there are plenty of other freedoms that I rarely, if ever, think about as well that range from my ability to chew gum when and where I want to, to my right to defend myself, where doing the opposite for in some places in the world could be considered criminal acts.

The bottom line is that for as much as our country may still have its fair share of problems, as evident in unfair trials and blatant acts of racism that often seem to go unpunished, I still consider it a blessing to be living in this land versus many of the others around the world where many of my freedoms I have wouldn’t be present.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

One of the biggest questions I have asked myself over the years is what’s most important to me in my relationships, whether it’s with a partner or with friends. A long time ago that answer would have resided on the physical level, all because of addiction still running my life at the time. These days, not so much. What’s most important to me now resides more on the emotional level and most specifically, it’s to be heard, accepted, and unconditionally loved.

I used to ONLY look for partnerships and friendships with those I had serious attraction to. In all honesty, my whole world was once built upon nothing but physical attraction. What that translated to was that if I didn’t find you attractive, I tended not to see you. I feel very different from that nowadays. While I do have a partner and some friends whom I find attractive, I don’t specifically look for only that anymore. What I seek now are people I can connect with on an emotional level, because it’s the very thing I never had much of growing up.

Growing up, I wanted my parents to listen to me, especially on those difficult days. But my Dad was always so busy with work and my mother always so busy with her drinking that I really don’t remember ever having a healthy conversation with either where I truly felt heard, accepted, and unconditionally loved. The only person who ever took the time to really listen to me as a kid was a man with a hidden agenda that eventually molested me. Therefore, it’s an amazing blessing to me today when someone asks me what’s going on in my life and then truly listens to what I share, where when the sharing is done, I feel supported in just being simply heard.

This is precisely why I feel now that one of the best gifts anyone can offer me, partner, friend, or otherwise, is that of listening and offering non-judgmental love and non-biased support. Sometimes all a person really wants in life is just to have someone listen to them. Most people don’t know how to do this. They listen with judgment, thinking of what they need to offer as advice, tending to listen with a biased ear and using things like the Internet to find answers and solutions, hoping to fix the other person’s stuff, when sometimes the best level of support for anyone is just to listen, offering nothing, except silence and maybe words of encouragement afterwards, such as “I appreciate you sharing this with me and I love you.” It’s what I long for in my relationship with my partner and in each of my friendships as well, and it’s what I strive for personally in how I am with others too.

Presently, most of my sharing with others is about the brokenness I continue to face with my health and how frustrating my life has become because of it. Most don’t know how to handle this and get frustrated hearing me constantly talk about it when they ask how I’m doing. It’s why I sometimes I just say all’s good now and listen to them instead about what’s going on in their life. Because when I tend to share about what I’m going through for the millionth time, most end up judging me that I’m not doing enough, that I’m wallowing in my pain with self-pity, that there’s others worse off out there, and that they have a solution I should try. None of this ever makes me feel better. All of that reminds me of how it was as a kid. My friend Cedric is the only one in my life who really does an incredible job listening without bias and judgment and I always feel so much better after receiving his unconditional love through that. I have no idea how long my suffering will last and I’m doing my best to work through it and accept it, which is why having people in my life to listen to my pain, even if it’s all I have to share, means more to me than anyone will ever know.

So, what’s most important to me today in all my relationships? It’s to develop emotional connections with others, where I’m heard, loved, and accepted, just as I am, where I’m not given advice or guidance, or judged after sharing, and where the only thing that matters afterwards is letting each other know how much they’re loved unconditionally, including all flaws and imperfections, and everything in between.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson