Giving Thanks

Part 53 in a series by Karen A. Stevenson, President, Studio K Salon

Approaching the holidays, we start to hum those traditional songs we’ve heard for years.  Many of those songs have very deep meanings, even though we fail to recognize or pay attention to their significant intent, of peace, joy, family, love, thankfulness.

Just finishing the holiday of Veteran’s day, I had the opportunity to watch a short video of men in action in the Middle East, videos of our sons’, brothers, uncles, aunts, and even father’s as they run though fields bearing weapons, wearing uniforms, and risking their lives for you and me.  It brought tears to my eyes.  What a complicated world we live in.  How  run-of-the mill daily commitments and responsibilities of our lives seem to cause us less time to ponder the extended world around us, rather than our own four walls and immediate family issues. 

Thanksgiving is a time of pilgrims and turkey, but it’s more than that to many of us.  It is a time to stop and offer thanks for family, friends, loved ones, some that cannot be with us, some that are lost, some that sadly choose to not be with us at the table. 

With the timing of this magazine I wanted to take this opportunity to write an article of Thanksgiving.  Thanks to our lovely Woodcroft, Hope Valley, Meadowmont,  as well as other extended family for all they have done for us at Studio K Salon, our business, their support, the loving ‘atta boys’ as our salon has grown.  For the kind pat’s on the back for the articles in this very paper I’ve written, the words of encouragement from all the lovely clientele we’ve come to know, and love, as they’ve watched us grow, and gown with us. 

Thanks for all the kind words to myself, as I’ve gone through the past year of understanding the death of my own father, then immediately the death of my best friend.  The kind mention of my son who used to be one of the receptionists for our hair salon, and inquiries of ‘how he’s doing’ now that he himself is serving in the military as a Naval Nuclear Engineer with passion, integrity, and honor and will one day himself be a Veteran.

This holiday season,  I pray that each one of you will take a moment to smile and say something kind to the people around you.  That you may take a long breath and think twice before engaging into a conversation that is less than productive or positive, and that you enjoy the season rather than dread it.    I hope that each of you will be able to see the blessings each person in your life offers you, and count the ‘rights’ in your life, rather than adding up the ‘wrongs’.  Possibly a time of forgiveness as you enter into the New Year, and ponder in the midst of making commitments to exercise more, eat less, and smell the roses, that you will also smile more, appreciate communication deeper, and not stress out as easily as we can all tend to do.

Possibly we can prioritize differently than we ever have before, and take that time to be sure we’re at the kid’s soccer game, that we are present and engaging with our family members at dinnertime.  Hopefully we can work on our own selves this year and make amends to those we’ve hurt or harmed.  Maybe back down from our stand of ‘always being right!” and realize that our perceptions are not always the correct ones.  Maybe this year the kindness and compassion are more what we work on, rather than the next protein drink or the next paycheck going to our over stressed credit cards. 

Maybe interactively listening to our children and spouse rather than tuning them out and merely offering a disconnected ‘uh huh’ when they attempt to communicate to us.  Interactively listening to the point where we actually take IN the conversations they are so desperately trying to engage us in.

What if this year we can give more of our time and attention, and find faults less in others.  Maybe our impatience could dissipate as our tolerance for others’ imperfections grows.  Realizing in our fictitious world of make-believe happiness, we can actually humble ourselves and find the areas in our lives that need changing for the good.

There are so many things we could do this coming year to grow into a better place.  So much more understanding, compassion, patience, tolerance, time, changed motives,  less multi tasking, and maybe even some peace to achieve.

The holiday songs of family, passion of being with loved ones offer heart strings of inner joy.  The thought of the ‘happy life’ and ‘happy family’ bring us all into a realization that there is much work to do in this day and age of over computerized, over stimulated, game-boy IMing, myspace.com lifestyle we live in.  Our high tech world has certainly facilitated much in our lives, and many of them are positive, however, the living, breathing person next to you is there no matter what.  They are the people that live with you each and every day.  Isn’t it wonderful that they love you ‘anyway?’ 

Hopefully this holiday season, you will embrace the ‘have’s’ rather than the ‘have not’s’, and hopefully you will find peace in what life has offered you and that your time with friends and family will ring sounds of kindness, heart to heart conversations, and happy memories of days gone by.