The High Price of a Christmas Card

A story that is not about Holidays, or mail

Strawbridge image with Bing Image Creator

One of the earliest recollections that remains in my memories is looking at sameness and deciding it wasn’t for me. I refer to everyone doing, wearing, and saying things that were similar and predictable.

I have figured out why, but that must be explained, if at all, on some other day.

Well before the age of artificial intelligence, human beings were programmed to follow patterns of popular culture. I believe it’s because modernity decreases the thinking impulse. We are to mime our way throughout the days of this existence. What is good is what is repeated as the behaviors of the dominant social classes.

It seems, however, that History tells us that the poor and middling classes are the innovators. What average people do is mocked until it is appropriated by the wealthy. Function preceded form until some trend setters invented a new spin on what was once useful. One example entered my head: cowboy hats.

That is the only example I feel like offering, because I am not here to talk about trends and fashions. Honestly, I am not sure where I am going, except that it relates to making choices and reaping the results.

Oh, okay, I am certain this story is about Christmas cards. Yep, that should become clear soon enough.

All I knew about my present and future was that I sought authenticity. Actually, a better word is genuineness. Something propelled me forward in my mission to reject the common even if that was wildly popular.

No “acid-washed” jeans for me, whatever that was. I could not get on board with 100-dollar shoes back in the previous century, and now it is more like 1000-dollar shoes. Mostly I refer to sneakers with the swoosh on it.

I rejected those weird phones that were not connected to wires and landlocked in our homes. Nope. (I admit that my anti-conformist attitudes were not always smart.) Of course, I eventually joined the cell phone community.

Who needs fast internet? If someone cannot type in their website, go enjoy a hobby or complete a task, and return to that website a bit later, then we are too rushed as a society.

I must feel silly today, but I am getting at the following truth: some decisions we make chart out a course for our lives that carry us to one place and not another one. A certain attitude or choice early in life sends us down one path that leads to possibilities less attainable than choosing some other approach to life. Some doors open, but some close, as well.

At the time, we rarely have a full understanding of what we are doing. I did not. It just felt right.

Most successful people are followers rather than leaders. Do you agree? I think I’m right, but it is a tough call to make. Because the wealthiest, top-of-the-food-chain folks, like everyone says, break molds and blaze trails. Although, I mean your standard success stories and not the ones written about in some corporate-loving magazine.

Here is a neato question to ponder: To be content (I don’t like the word happy) is it better to become a sheep or a shepherd?

As for me, an unforeseen outcome of my shepherd-like path is that I have no Christmas cards to mail (with smiling faces and a home). I never have. I see this as a grave problem.

Looking back, it was obvious what almost all other young adults were about to do. They swallowed the medicine. They grabbed the reins of the horse and began to plow, setting themselves up for a life of negotiated surrender.

It is of no use to question my strategy, because it was the only one available.

I remember a girl we will call Jane. She was a beauty and, strange for those days, actually a nice person. Locked inside myself, I had no handle on the real world and what people meant when they did or said things. I could not speak the human language.

Therefore, her flirtations flew over my head like a jet plane, and I never had any serious chance to be with her. Other scenarios like this came and went, but Jane was very memorable. This meets every definition of the word regret.

Here is a situation where aping what other people did would have been a wise move. Play the game. Be like one of those other guys who evidently had no trouble getting what they wanted.

I silently wanted it all. Many years later it is clear that a sheep-like life was there for the taking. If it were Jane or someone else, the future would have featured young marriage, children, and…career? That is the big mystery. That might have been a disaster.

Thus my longings to change the past must be tempered by my love of creativity, learning, and teaching. Those are things I picked up in lieu of what might have been. On my own, I was free to think and create lots of mediocre ideas and a few good ones. There was a marriage to someone else that did not work out.

Wow, I hate to spill this many beans. Guarded? Yes.

There is an endless debate about what one should seek in life. All I know is that around Christmas, it would be cool and comforting to have a card to send to just a few people. Not many, that is some other kind of obsession I thankfully lack.

But Christmas is just a touchstone to consider other special days. Easter is one. Really, a family can make any occasion a reason to disperse pictures that represent a bond. A family I mean.

Dear reader, you probably sense it is the bond itself that is alluring. The picture is just the icon that represents something worth having.

We are often not aware that a price is being paid. Some things in life do not come with an immediate price tag. Unlike a grocery bill, we cannot measure every transaction in easy-to-deduce numbers. Also, there is a loss with every purchased gain.

Time spent in libraries is great, dusting off books unmoved in years, reading, and doing research. Hours alone contemplating what others never do is commendable and something that increases in value. All that also costs something immediately and down the road, forever.

Like anything, one has to figure out a cost/benefit analysis. Each person has to do this work. In my opinion, every thoughtful person does so eventually. It is a question of when.

This thought just appeared in my mind. Really, just now. I wonder if one can create a Christmas card of dreams with those no longer here and those here but somewhere else, like Jane.

Certainly, it is an odd project sure to raise suspicions and probably garner a call or two asking, “Hey, are you alright?” Hmmm. That idea gets worse the more I dwell on it.

Some material things cannot be counterfeited, like a Christmas card. That is, there is no gratification in doing so.

That thought leads me to reassert something everyone reading most likely knows. There is nothing that costs more or is worthy of that cost than time. Henry David Thoreau said something on this simple commandment. He wrote, “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

These words must not be forgotten. It might seem outlandish to argue that the price of a Christmas card is extremely high. Yet, that is exactly how I feel.

Really though, the cost of such a thing is expensive whether we decide to buy it, or not.

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