I’m feeling blessed this holiday.

I’m feeling grateful for all the amazing people I’ve drawn into my life.  I have great friends from the area who are genuine and fun.  Friends from every era of my past that I keep in touch with due to the marvels of modern technology.  Friends I’ve never met who make my day with an electronic comment.  Communities gathered together from all corners of the world to share like-minded beliefs and pursuits.  And family who try hard to bridge those inevitable dissensions among relations.

I’m really feeling the love.

It’s true that love isn’t everywhere right now, holiday or not.  You don’t have to look hard to find the darkness.  Family, race, politics, culture, caste… we’re all pitted against others.  But you know, you don’t have to look hard to find the light, either.  If you smile at folks on the street or in the stores, you’ll get smiles back from every race, gender, and religion.  And you’ll be smiling.  Creating happiness for yourself and others around you.

Fear and hate, or love and happiness.  It’s easy to get distracted from the love and happiness by the fear and hate.   That’s a choice.  I invite you to join me as I decide to make a different choice — to instead create more happiness and love.  Let’s start with smiling.  Let’s look for people as different from us as we can find, meet their eyes, and give them a great big holiday smile.  Let’s make the smile our secret symbol of solidarity.  I see you, I see that you are different from me, but you and I, we are going to stand together for love and light anyway.

Because an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind… but solidarity can create happiness that will outlast the holidays.