No Presents, Just Presence

"Jaime, I don't like this time of year".

She talks to me with pain in her eyes. So much pain that I don't know what to say or where to look except deeply into her eyes.

"They all start playing the music and that music reminds me of my childhood home and it is hard for me to remember that. We didn't have much. A dirt floor and shaky walls. My father drank away most of the household income. That was until the first old man offered him money for me. That was when it all started and I was only 9 years old. I didn't understand. I didn't understand even when I had the first baby."

It was a long day at her house that day. I spent most of it in silence: listening, absorbing, walking in her tattered shoes. Feeling what she felt. What she was still feeling. After all these years.

In my mind, Christmas is different. Christmas is snow and jingle bells. Pine trees and cookies in the oven. Christmas is my grandma's salami pie and my Mom decorating the house. Christmas is my Dad giving us sleigh rides and my sisters pulling socks out of our stockings.

In my mind, Christmas is carling and happy Christmas music.

It is also TV commercials and advertisements. Envy and jealous. Greed and selfishness.

And here I am, listening to her story of child prostitution, and I wonder how I could possibly relate.

I am going back this year, to New York and I know what it is going to look like. I know what it will look like on the streets on the tv screen sand on the train platforms.

I am a bit frightful, not because I do not like New York, just because my reality has changed and the culture shock never gets easier. For example, as I am writing this there is a herd of horses walking past my window and a gecko walking across my wall. Its just...different...

And the beauty of the contrast, the shock, is that I waken up a bit more to what it is that I am. You see, as creatures of habit, we fall into a rhythm and whether it is good for us or not, we keep going because we have become comfortable with it.

Just as babies, we learned to repeat what our parents said until it became a habit.
Then we grew older and learned how to get dressed and kept doing it the same way because it became a pattern.

And now, we see a world that has formed a habit of consuming. We have inflated our bellies and even more so our minds. Our egos are on the verge of exploding, and often they do, right in front of our very eyes. You can see it in our police officers, lonely adolescents and military men and women. You can see it in our children, our school teachers, even our Catholic Fathers. You can see it everywhere- the obesity of our mind: wanting more and more, never being satisfied, still not good enough, still not happy, still self-doubting, still fearful of difference- we must fill this space so we continue to consume:

the false food
the false advertisements
the bullshit

anything that seems like a quick fix to this hole that we are feeling
in our egos.

And I have nothing against gift-giving
I LOVE it actually
It's just that I don't always see the connection between the giving and the receiving.

The product has become the end goal
Instead of the relationship

And so, I see us continuing to consume, just to fill our egos and grow our bellies, instead of to satiate.
Instead of to fulfill.

Because I think that what was missing from my friend's family, from her father's life, was love and meaning in his life.
And I think I see this a lot in the world in New York, as well.

So what is missing is not presents,
just
presence. 

With anything I give or do this Christmas, I want it to be about presence. I want to put in thought and love and care in all the moments or experiences I share with my Mother and with my Father.

I lost a friend recently, right before I planned to tell him how much I appreciated having him in my life. I used to joke around with him a lot, pick on him. And I wanted to make sure he knew that all the joking was just joking and I really loved having him in Ciudad Colon, because he made this town feel like home to me; a nomad who lives geographically separate from many of the people who give me life. And then, in an instant, he was gone.

And I feel again, the importance of presence.

Truly being there with one other. Sitting there and seeing each other's souls with our eyes.
Being there for ourselves, so that we understand our beauty and also our own shadow. So that we know that we all go through voids and you cannot fill that space with alcohol or cupcakes or an iPad or self-loath. Those things will not make the void go away.

Only presence can do this.
Learning to be there for ourselves and be there for one another.

We are social beings.
We need each other.

The reality of the world we have created today is not conducive to our natural lifestyle. We have invented so many distractions that we often lose sight of our connectedness.

For this reason, I hope to set a new tradition with my family:

Of giving presence
instead of presents.

So that we have just another day to celebrate being with one another. Appreciating one another.

And as I prepare for this upcoming conscious Christmas, I find myself living each day a little more consciously. I find myself thinking about the things that might make my sister Christina happy. I have started wondering what it is that really makes my father smile. I have started paying closer attention to the things my mother says, so that I can create something that will really light up her soul.

Because these things matter to me.
And I am sure that as I pack my backpack up again to leave New York and head back to Costa Rica, I won't need space for some items that will eventually break or lose value or get stolen.

Because I'll have all the memories within me.

You see...

This conscious Christmas means a lot to me for a lot of reasons. I spent 1 Christmas in a very underserved community in El Salvador in 2011. And by underserved, I mean to say that the commuting is not as acknoweldged as other communities in the world are. And what I mean by this is that the government does not give much assistance to the people there. There is not much concern for creating equal opportunity or access to natural resources: such as water and food. It is okay in that community to beat women. It is okay to starve children. It is okay to educate some over others.

As much as we do not see it on a daily basis, we are all a part of this problem. The uncontrolled consumerism of the world has created a terrible unequal distribution of wealth. The economic system that we have become slaves to creates unfair competition- mostly in parts of the world where the people have the least amount of opportunity. For example, my farmer friends in El Salvador buy chips and soda for lunch because it is cheaper than the important grains- US industrialized farms can produce these grains at a much cheaper cost. So guess what? The farmers get fucked. If you have grown up on a rural farm with no infrastructure and no access to mainstream education, you spend most of your days learning how to farm- because that is your only option. And then, when the cost of living exceeds your daily pay- you are forced to move. I don't know, if your family was starving, would you stay on the farm in El Salvador or would you go to the place that has been glorified for the land of opportunities?

Anyways, without seeing all of this first hand, without talking to the people and walking in their shoes, we are all going to continue living the same way we live today. Because we are creatures of habit and we are not interested in putting in the effort or discomfort to change.
So those who are born oppressed and marginalised, will continue to get fucked.

If there is any day that we can decide, *choose* to be more present, to the reality of the world, then let it be on Christmas.

A Conscious Christmas is not about becoming depressed about the reality of the world we have created and actively participate in on a daily basis, it is about taking a break for a minute and acknowledging the present moment. It is about saying, "I don't need any more stuff this year. I need to learn how to love my mother a little bit more or forgive my sister."

It's not just about giving up the stuff
It's about creating experiences
Thinking about all the opportunities that arise when you can just be present with one another.
And I think this will have more power than we can even begin to believe.