This is my first attempt at a Dp challenge, but the idea of ‘change perspective‘ sounded fun so here goes!

Relax! Its only Christmas

Time to wake up you say? That was a good sleep, but I just need to shake the dust off a bit and stretch my hoofs. That’s much better, now you can see the full lustre of my glitter coat. I can see lots of old friends around me, and a few new ones. I wonder where I’ll get to sit this time……Great a front row seat, with a full view of the room, I’ll get to see all the action from here. Not like last year when I was stuck with a side view, missing all the fun, and having to rely on others to tell me what they could see.

The people are so strange, always rushing here and there, and all the time saying how busy they are. They’re only busy because they’re choosing to rush here and there, and do a hundred things at once. I mean they could just sit down, put their feet up for a minute, and take time to admire their beautiful decorations. All the other things they feel they need to do would still be there waiting patiently, but they might be a little more relaxed.

The Mum is the worst. She tries to do everything at once. Just watch her now for a moment. She has a huge pile of Christmas cards stacked in front of her, next to her open address book. She’s busy writing little messages to family and friends, but she isn’t really giving it proper attention. How can she when she’s also speaking on her phone to her Mum about who’s cooking what for the huge upcoming feast. And she’s not even really fully listening to that because the 7 year old is standing trying to read her Santa list to her. And that’s only the stuff happening in front of her. There’s also a huge to do list constantly running through her head, each task crying out that it’s the most important, and it really needs to be done or at least thought about right now. If you look closely you can see the panic behind her tired forced smile. I don’t think she’s really enjoying this.

If only she would pause long enough to actually land in the here and now, and let go of all the things in her head which she feels she should be doing. She could sink back into that beautiful soft couch, and just for a minute look around at her lovely home. She could hang up the phone and close her ipad, and take the 7 year old onto her knee and read the santa list with her. After all in a few Christmases there will be no Santa list. If only she could enjoy this year, this unique Christmas, as it’s unfolding around her instead of being caught up in the future to-do list.

Then she could take one card at a time, without any thought for the fifty others she really needs to get written tonight so that she can get them to the post office tomorrow to be weighed and stamped, before she misses the last posting day for Australia and Canada. She could focus just for a minute on what she wants to say to this person, and on why she is sending them a card at this time. She could park everything else, just for now, and she might actually not only enjoy the writing, but also get it done quicker! She won’t though. I’ve watched her too many times. She will plough on crazily multi-tasking as though the world is about to end. After all if she doesn’t keep the whole show spinning everything will fall apart! And you know what, she really believes that.

Ah well perhaps I just don’t understand how much there is to be done at Christmas. After all I’m just a stunningly beautiful decorative deer, who gets to hang out on the Christmas tree for a few weeks every year. Trust me on this though, if you had to sleep in a dark box for 50 weeks of the year with nothing happening, you too would want to savour every moment of the precious time you had in the world. You too might look at all the people around you, living in their yet-to come futures, from their punishing to-do lists, and think them a little crazy for wasting the moments which are actually happening right in front of them.

You might even wish you could leap down from the branches of the Christmas tree and shout
” Wake up! Life is happening right now. Don’t waste a moment of it. Enjoy it as it is, because right now it’s exactly as its meant to be.”