Holiday Cheer: Beating the Blah-Humbugs

And we welcome you to Tuesday People, the podcast. I'm your host, Mitch Album, author of the book "Tuesdays with Moriapon," which this podcast has inspired and has been going for years now. Lisa Goyce has been there from the very start, she's my friend, Dooser, and the co-host of this program as we head towards the holidays. How is your holiday approach, your runway to the holiday going so far? Well, we've gone to a couple of holiday parties already, so that sort of gets you a little bit into the season, but I haven't done so great on the Christmas shopping. I go out, like the other day, I went out to look for presents for my niece, and I ended up with a ring and some perfume for myself. I haven't quite. Not exactly the spirit, with which you're supposed to be. No, no. I'm treating myself to my own Christmas presents, but I was like, "Ooh, this is a pretty ring." So, yeah, I haven't, I haven't, I'm not officially in it, how about you? But, yeah, I find that Christmas to me, and Thanksgiving to Christmas is a little bit like, I feel like a bowling ball, and like somebody released me, and I am just rolling on hardwood with a lot of noise, going, "Bumbity, bummy, bummy, bummy, bummy, bum, I'm about to hit these pins and everything's going to go smash." But then there will be blessed peace when it's over, and I'll go into this dark hole and get shot out, and I'll come up the other end, nice, shiny, and new, and ready for the new year. So, that is the metaphor that I have never used before, but I realize it's, I think, it's very fitting. That's how holiday season feels to me, like I'm heading for a crash. I love that, and I can actually see you doing that. Like I can see the other end of it, like I'm sure that once, once all this other stuff that you have to think about, that you don't have to. You have a lot on your mind on any given day, the holidays only amplifies that. Do you guys do Christmas decorations, is your house? Oh, yeah, especially with Nadie now, you know, with her own, and she's fully aware of it, and she just had a birthday, and so her birthday is in December, and then Christmas is in just a. So, we have to do the whole, you know, modifying a gift thing and trying not to make it all along. So, you have holiday decorations. We do, yeah, we do, and she's very happy about it, and she. She came up the other day, she just walked up the steps, carrying a backpack and a roller, and she had a coat on, and she said, "Oh, daddy, help me, help me." So, I came over and I said, "What's going on, Nadie?" She goes, "I'm leaving. I have to go." I said, "Well, where you going with all that stuff?" She said, "I'm going to the North Pole to see Santa." And she had all bags, and these weren't just empty. She packed all her stuff, her bags had clothes in it and toys, and she did this all on her own, and she's heading to Santa. I said, "Okay, how are you going to get there?" "Well, I'm going to take a plane." I said, "Okay." "I'm going to get to the plane." "Well, I'm going now, and that part was all in her imagination." Right. You know, and I said, "But we have to go to the airport, because daddy, it's pretend." Oh. I said, "Oh, okay, it's pretend." It's pretend. She has a lovely way of mixing pretend and reality, so when pretend doesn't work with reality, then she just says, "It's pretend." Oh, right. But other than that, it's real. You know, so you actually have to pack the bags, and you actually have to roll it along. But then when there's no airplane, well, then it's just pretend, which I think is a great way to go through life. Like, you just do everything that you want to do, and when you reach the point where that's impossible, you go, "Well, I'll just pretend that part, but up till then, I'm going to. " You know, so wouldn't that be great? It's like in the middle of winter, and you go, "Well, it's freezing outside. I really want to go take a vacation to the beach." So you get into, you know, your swim shorts and a t-shirt, and you walk around, and you get to the point, it's like, "Well, there's no beach. Well, I'm just going to pretend that part." Right. And you lie down, and you just think about it, and you pretend that part. But other than that, you put the clothes on, you put the, you put the suntan lotion on, you put the whole, you know, why not? That's funny. That's funny. So anyhow, I do want to say before we get rolling in tonight's topic, how much I appreciate all the people who have come out during the 33 cities that I have visited since October 4th for my new book, Twice, and people have really embraced it. They've been so kind, and have had so many nice things to say, particularly about our podcast here, but also about the book and how many people come up in line, and I think, you know, I hope you like the book. Oh, I read it already. Right. Well, why are you in line? You know, I just want to get it signed, but I read it already, and they have been saying that it has done exactly what I hoped it would do when I wrote it. It's given people hope, it's given them a chance to reflect on their own lives, and they said, "Boy, I really thought about anything that I would want to do twice in my life, but I also realized now that, you know, I wouldn't trade what I've had happen because if I had to lose lessons that I learned, which is, you know, one of the prices that Alfie pays in the book that you, you know, you don't get to learn, you don't get to apply what you learned if you keep having second chances over and over again, and it's a love story, and there's a lot of people who've been giving it to their loved ones or their, you know, their partners or the people that they know who are couples and all that. I think we're going to end up doing like a Valentine's Day thing for it because it turns out to be sort of a love story book. I've never kind of gone out at Valentine's Day for one of my books. The little liar really is it's like a Valentine's Day book, you know, but this one is, so I think we may even be doing like some Valentine's Day TV appearances and stuff like that. I love that. Well, that's a good thing for Valentine's Day because especially the love aspect, which a lot of people seem to turn to when you ask about the twice, you know, what would your twice be? And it often, you know, turns back to love. Exactly. Exactly. So, thank you everybody for that. Really appreciate it and those people who've gotten it for Christmas and it's been very kind. I want to talk about today about the holiday season in light of several things that are going on. And originally, when I planned for today's podcast, I was going to make the theme that, you know, that you don't have to force yourself to be happy that there's a lot of pressure during this time of year to achieve a level of happiness that I don't think people find natural. And I think they feel disappointed when they don't achieve it. There is a thing, I don't know how often you go to sporting events, Lisa, but if you go to like football games now, basketball games, they try to get the crowd with the big scoreboard. They try to get the crowd to cheer, you know, at certain moments, or to make noise to try to disrupt the other team. And so they put a little meter, you know, like a VU meter on the screen that kind of goes back and forth and they put some numbers up. And I don't think these numbers are really attached to anything. I think they're totally made up. But the louder the crowd gets, the higher the number goes, you know, try to get the VU meter into the red zone and that kind of thing. And I always find, you know, there's a lot of people, if I go with it, it's like, oh, cut, you know, like I don't want to scream right now. I just want to watch the game, you know, I'm all right. I'm watching the game, but now you're telling me, you know, unless I'm screaming, I'm not really participating in the game. Unless I get this loud, I'm not really being a good fan. And that is kind of a metaphor for how I feel like the holiday season can be for people. It's like there's this screen in front of their eyes that has this VU meter that keeps going be happier, be happier, be more upbeat, be enjoying it more. You should be enjoying it more. And you start to feel like you're letting somebody down by not being as joyous. As the meter, which is kind of society, we'll expect you to be for sure. It is pressure. You know what I mean? And not, first of all, every day we're not happy, right? But during the holidays, like you're saying, that bowling ball down the alley from Thanksgiving to Christmas, it's like we're forced to have to be on that train. And we really want to go into the gutter, but you're not allowed to, so you have to just keep going straight to the pins. And it creates, if you have any sort of leanings toward depression normally, or anything like that, you start feeling guilty, that you can't feel what other people are supposedly feeling. But I guarantee you a lot of people are feeling exactly what you're feeling. Exactly. Exactly. And so, stop worrying about the VU meter. And if you want to be the guy who doesn't scream loud enough to change the, that's okay. You're still a fan. You're still at the game. You're still enjoying it. And it's not for someone else to tell you that if you don't reach this level of happiness, you are not really in the holiday spirit. You know, you have people sometimes to come and say, "Well, you don't have the holiday spirit." You know, or somebody doesn't have the holiday spirit. And it makes you feel even worse. And you start to get even a little angrier, you know, and you feel like, say, "You really want to see the not-in-the-h holiday spirit spirit, keep doing it, keep talking." Well, you know what? The perfect example is kids on Santa's lap. I think we're all really like a kid on Santa's lap when you see the screaming crying pictures. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Let me out of here. Yeah. They feel how we really feel, but we aren't allowed to feel. Exactly. That was the first thing, and coming in, you know, a couple days ago, I thought, "Okay, I want to talk about that." Because I hear so many people just kind of getting down about it and getting depressed over it. And, you know, I think about what Mori said about depression. And it was very interesting because, of course, Mori had ALS. And so holiday season, which he went through, several holiday seasons, you know, suddenly we're all seen through the light of his disease. And he spoke very candidly about depression. And here it is. I get depressed, and I think, "Oh, who needs us too much?" All my feet right now is painting a lot. Who needs us, and I thought to get kind of out of it, but then I say, "I know this is not going to last longer, because I don't want it too." As long as I'm living, I want to live. Of course, depression is equivalent to death for me. If you're depressed, you're like dead. So I let it go for a day or two, don't try to fight it too much, goes away. That is a really interesting statement for someone who was dying from a terminal illness, to say that it's not the terminal illness that makes him feel dead. It's depression. Depression is equivalent to death for me. And what I think he means is, if you cannot participate in life, cannot participate in the good things of life, the joys and things like that, then you are sort of being dead, not physically dead, although when you're physically dead, you also cannot participate, right? But if mentally, you don't allow yourself to be happy, then you're almost like dead. And he elaborated on that when I said, you know, how does it go away? And this was his response. How does it go away? It goes away because there are other things in my life, besides depression. Like a lot of open heart of this compassion, thought, awareness, interesting life, things. So depression is only one small part of it. I should have taken over everything. When your life is full, it's a piece. If your life is kind of empty, then it could take a lot of space. And I assume it's not doing that because there's too many other things in my life. Now that is a really good lesson. You notice he didn't say, I don't allow myself to get depressed. Yes. No, he didn't say that. He said, I do. I find myself falling into depression who needs this disease, who needs this pain. But he recognizes that it was one emotion amongst many. Yeah. What a wonderful list, love, open heart in his compassion, thought, awareness, interesting life. He just ratted, tatted those things off. He wasn't looking up for list. But those things were so close to who he was that he was able to just sort of say that. And if we can look at our lives that way and say, okay, it's holiday season, I'm feeling a little down. But instead of saying, well, there's something wrong with me. I'm not delivering on the view meter, I'm not, I'm not clapping loud enough. You say, well, wait, this is a moment, there you look. I have reason to be depressed for a moment. Me personally, my wife personally, we lost a lot of people at this time of year. Oh, yeah. I lost her sister, my, my, you know, mother died at this time of year. My father died just before Christmas, my mother died just after the new year. You know, this time of year brings a lot of memories that are, yeah, okay. And sometimes they're just going to find their way the same way that sometimes you get an acre of pain in your back and sometimes you don't, sometimes you burp and sometimes you don't. A thought comes through your head and sometimes it's gone. It's all right to not be making that view meter move all the time. But do what Mori did and recognize that there are other things in your life. She say, well, this is my depression moment, okay, for these five minutes, I'm feeling kind of bad. But, you know, when I think about it, I have a lot of happiness. I have a lot of joy. I have, they're, I have friends. I have people, I have work that's meaningful to me. I have, you know, charities that I can evolve with where I feel good about giving. I have open-heartedness. I'm compassionate to other people. Let me feel those things just as often as I feel that depression and let me recognize that depression is just one of a, yes, one shirt that's hanging in your closet that you take out and you put on, but it's not the only shirt that you take out and you put on. That's one of them. That's the important part. And it's sort of like to, to accept it when it comes because sometimes when you try to push it away, it makes, it makes it worse. So just sort of accept it when it comes, let it flow in, let it flow out, you know, it's going to happen. That's how I deal with it, when I deal with it, you know, me too, with the Chris, you know, my mom died in Christmas Eve. So it's been, you know, it's a weird time of the year for me. And, you know, yeah, 100%. We'll be back with more Tuesday people right after this. So I wanted people to hear that and I, but then I want to add something else on before we finish because, and you pointed this out, Lisa, when we, when we first got on before we started recording. This has been a very tough weekend from a national news and international news point of view. The, I don't even know what the massacre is the best word for it. What took place in Australia at Bondi Beach, a place that I have gone to many times in my life. I've been to Australia lots of times. We have relatives in the Sydney area. I went for the Olympic Games and others and, and I, I, I, I love Bondi Beach. It's, it's as fun a place as, as God ever put on Earth. I mean, if you want to go for the ultimate party with beautiful water, beautiful beach clubs and restaurants and happy people, you go to Bondi Beach and Sydney. Yeah. And for that to now and forever be the site of a massacre. Yeah. Of Jewish people, simply because they were Jewish. And whether you're Jewish or not, to know that the kind of hatred that exists that drives people to literally open fire on innocent people, simply because they hate them. It's depressing. Yeah. And, and it brings you down and you think, God, that could happen anywhere. What does that mean? Like, I, I should, do I have to think twice about when I go to a beach? If you're Jewish, do I have to think twice about going to a Hanukkah party, you know, anything out in public where people might recognize who I, you know, what my, my faith is. And it really is sort of a depressing kind of thing and, and, and then we heard the news out of California that Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered by their allegedly murdered by their own son, stabbed to death, their own son horrifying. And Rob Reiner just so happens, first of all, I love so many of Rob Reiner's movies. Yeah. Stand by me is one of my favorite movies ever, Stephen King's A Friend of Mine, the book that it was based on. It's, of course, it's a story that Stephen wrote and I always told him, you know, that was the best. And he, he agreed that that was maybe one of the best transitions of his book to, to movie screen. And Rob Reiner did that. He did spinal tap, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. Yeah. He also did the Princess Bride, which I've shown our kids so many times, and they adored. And he just had a, he had a humanity in, in the films that he made. You know, they were all very human and they were all very emotional. And one day, I don't know what year this was. I want to say maybe 20 years ago, I got on an airplane from Detroit to Los Angeles. And I put my bag overhead and I sat down in the chair, just a guy to the left. It's Rob Reiner. Oh. In your row? In my seat. Next to me. Oh wow. Wow. And so I said, and I recognized him from the start, he was as high, you know, and so I introduced myself. He said, oh, yeah, yeah, I read Tuesdays with Mori and all that. And thanks to Tuesdays with Mori, we had a four and a half hour flight together where we just talked. Wow. I don't want anything from him and he didn't want anything from me. But I was able to tell him how much I appreciated his films. He was able to talk to me about Tuesdays with Mori. He told me about his dad, Carl Reiner, who had been on our radio show numerous times. And how he would have lunch every day with Mel Brooks and how sweet it was that they literally they would just come over, like, you know, two old men sitting and having lunch and laughing. And how he thought he should make a movie out of their lunches because they were so funny together. Yes. And, you know, when we finished, we got up and said, well, it's been nice talking to you and nice talking. And I said, well, I got a nice memory. I had an airplane ride with Rob Reiner. That's like a master class, that's the moment, man. But it was just a very human moment and to think that he's gone, you know, just and that way. Well, and gone in such a tragic way. I mean, like, you know, he was, like, let's say, you know, he was almost deity, right? So, you know, sometimes things can happen to people at that age, but not like this. And he was so vibrant. If you've seen him on any of the press things for spinal tap too, the new spinal tap, he was just, he's Rob Reiner. He was the guy, the same guy that he was 25 years ago. And nothing seemed to be slowing him down at this stage of his life. And it was probably sad in his wife and all of that. And then Brown University shooting on campus. And so these are many things that can make you feel like we are living in a very dark time. And I recognize that this happening around the holiday time is a little bit like dropping vinegar into egg hot. Yeah. Oh, you know, it's just. Perfect example. Yeah. It's just not tasty. The same anyway. Yes. So, what can we do about this? Yes. The awareness of the outside world and the news headlines are part of American life for sure. It's really hard even if you try to ignore the news because you have a phone. There are these headlines keep popping up. If you don't watch the news, you're still going to get social media and somebody's going to, did you see this? Somebody's going to tweet something. If you close down social media, you're going to be at the store and someone's going to say something, you're going to walk past a TV screen hanging up in the airport that you can't help but look at. And you're going to see a headline. It's almost impossible unless you burrow yourself in the ground to avoid the news in this country. And the news very often as it has this past weekend, we'll sat in you and depress you. But again, depression, you can't allow yourself to live in that. And so you have to make yourself small. What I mean by that is these big stories that are international in scope or national scale, they're almost like flying overhead and they change the color of the sky and they gray it and they darken it and yet they don't hit you because you are below them. You didn't know Rob Reiner personally. You didn't know somebody in Bondi Beach personally. You don't have someone at Brown University. You have the blessed ability then to make yourself small enough to go under it. You know how lucky you're in a wave in the ocean and a wave is coming and you have to decide am I going to try to ride the wave or I'm going to try to go over or what do you do? You dive underneath it and when you dive underneath it, you hear the rumble overhead but you don't get hit by it. And you have to do that a little bit with the news. You have to say I'm going to make myself small now. I'm going to go underneath. I'm going to pay attention to my loved ones, my family, my smaller little world. Not because these other things are important but because everything has its place. And if I just live up in the sky there with all that noise and all that ugliness and I'm on CNN 24 hours, I am going to be nothing but depressed. And I have to recognize that that's part of life too. Even though it feels really big, it isn't. It's just one of those shirts that hangs in the closet that you take out and you wear. And so make yourself smaller and concentrate on the small things that you have in your life for this holiday season. Your little girl coming up the steps with her backspatting her coat on. Santa in the North Pole every time I tell that story, I smile. And it's very small, it's not national news, but it makes me feel happy. And it gives me a sense of hope and purpose and counters. That bad news that we're hearing in the international airwaves. So those two things actually are not very different. What I originally intended to talk about and what I'm now talking about, they're all part of the same thing. You don't feel like you have to deliver on that BU meter of happiness. And clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, clap, or else you're not making enough noise. But also don't feel like you have to deliver on the BU meter of anger and depression and international outrage, which certainly people should have towards these events, but not 24 hours of the day. And that's not what the holiday season is about. So put everything into its perspective. Tend to your heart. Tend to your own heart exactly, and hopefully we can have a good holiday season that way. So to all of our Jewish friends, happy Hanukkah, we're in the middle of it. And again, try to focus on your families, even though this is a very, very difficult time to be a Jewish person in this world. But focus on the brave people who came forward and said, there was a couple that after that was over, they went home. And they lit their Hanukkah candles at home. And they said, we're not going to let the evil of this world keep us from, you know, they had gone out to Bandai Beach to do it. They came home and they did it at their home. And good for them. And it's a small little thing, but they did it to continue their life and not be swept up in the ugliness. And for those who are celebrating other holidays, very Christmas, Kwanza, anything else that we're, we might not list, but we're very grateful to have you in our lives and listening to our program. So thank you for that. Thank you again for your support with my book twice. And Lisa Goyce produces the program. You can find out way more about it if you'd like by going to WeTuesdayPeople.com on the web, but checking out previous shows and chat groups and all the rest. And we try to do this every Tuesday, as many Tuesdays as we can, sometimes we miss them. That's okay. We always, we always come back eventually. It's the flow of life. Exactly. And so until that next conversation on behalf of Lisa Goyce, I'm Michelle Bumsang. See you next Tuesday. Thank you for listening to Tuesday People. To be part of our conversation, join the Tuesday People community at WeTuesdayPeople.com. Subscribe to our podcast so you don't miss an episode and share it with your friends. We look forward to having you with us every Tuesday because, after all, we're Tuesday People.