[2022-11-17] Christmas wish list
Last night, I started my Christmas wish list. With one exception, all the entries are intangibles.
Three items are experiences:
- family dinner and game night at home on Christmas Eve,
- an afternoon of video games and snacks at my son's place, and
- a taste test of various products I'd like to try.
Two more items are help with advancing projects:
- assistance with digitizing photos, and
- uploads of photos stored on the personal phones of my husband and kids so that I can add them to our official photo collection.
One might ask "Can't you have these things at any time? Do you really need to ask for them for Christmas?"
Perhaps not, but what putting them on my wish list does is signal to my family members what's really important to me. It's not things (with the exception of an excellent locally roasted decaf coffee that's produced using solar energy). No, what's important to me is time with my loved ones. It's help that will enable me to make faster progress on an initiative than I could do on my own. In short, it's memories.
Wish lists are valuable for what's on them as well as what's not on them. With time and resources to buy what I need when I need it, I lack for nothing (or very little). And what I do need, I'd rather choose for myself, such as a new pair of winter boots. Moreover, since I've spent the past five months getting rid of stuff I wasn't using, I'd rather not bring more things into my life that might simply end up in a closet.
Sometimes when we say, "How about family game night?" what we're really saying is "Let's have a family game night. It would make me happy. That's all I really want." Instead, when the response we get is, "Nah, not tonight. I'm not feeling it" we say, "OK." The moment passes, and the wish—a silent, unspoken wish—is not granted.
So, if you're like me and you want something, not some thing, put that on your holiday wish list.
