gift box.

I was thinking this morning about how easy it is to resent a season of life when I've tired of it, ignoring the fact that it's likely the specifics of my season that have helped shape me into the version of me that's so quick to be resentful. I began to reminisce, thinking back to the days of playing with dolls, and the day in particular when I decided I was probably too old to play with dolls anymore. I started to ignore the fun part...The imagination they helped cultivate or the fun they added while playing house with my cousin. I started to look at them from a different light, telling my friends I didn't play with dolls anymore, contemplating how to cut the ties. Eventually, I went all the way, putting them in a box and shoving it into the back of my closet. I threw the barbies in there with them, and I am pretty sure I just threw the card-board homemade baby-doll bed I had crafted strait into the trash can. And then, when I would go to the closet to get one of my more adult-like shirts from the closet that doubled as a doll graveyard, I would feel a twinge of guilt for tossing them so callously aside.

Dramatic, maybe. But it's the same kind of guilt I started to feel this morning when I felt that resentment toward the familiar lovely life I am living start to surface. It's the same life that was joyous not too long ago. Why am hating in it so quickly, and early, in the morning? Why am I rushing myself out of it before it's time for it to end?

So I dressed myself, with spunk, and climbed onto the bike I love to ride to the place I always go. I decided to put the resentment in the box instead, and chose Ingrid Michaelson on my miniature musical device to play a day dream kind of tune in my ears. My hands got cold, which made me a little happy; it's the kind of cold that wakes me up and makes me feel a little more alive, and ends before it gets too painful.

I opened my computer to read about black Friday, while watching the patrons in the coffee shop mill around to the sound of Ingrid, and I smiled at what I was watching...The young woman walking as if the isle is a cat walk and the little girls, not yet aware of why a woman would be walking that way, spilling hot chocolate on the table next to me. I smiled, also, at how quickly I forget to be thankful for the seasons that NEEDED to end, and have. I abhor the frenzy of Black Friday, and I think that I am also morally opposed to it. I have worked this lifeless holiday the past two years, at retail establishments, where the shoppers arrive really early in the morning to score a good deal! I read a columnist asking an economist to explain some of the appeal, and he likened it to a sporting event. It's not. Even. Near. The. Same. Category.

I will be spending this Friday with my family, resentment free, THANKFUL to not be on my feet helping people buy things.