If I change my mindset, winter joy is within reach

December presents itself in two ways:

First, it is the month of family, festival, and feast. Second, it is the month of darkness. Nights that stretch into our work and school days and nights that remind us of the cold reality that the winter solstice brings. But in the end, it is the cold that shepherds us in and brings us, pink and pinched by the December wind, around a table of loved ones. It is the darkness that hollows out space in our lives for candles and makes the warmth of lamps ever the more stark.

As of late, I’ve found myself sucked into a mindset that does not see the cold and longer nights as possibilities for winter joy.

November was a long month. And if conversations with my peers and teachers are reflective of the larger community, I know others might have felt the same way.

It was my mother who busted my self-pity party—and honestly self-important mindset—with a twist to the meditative process she often practices with me when I’m at the height of being overwhelmed.

Usually, together we list things we are grateful for at the moment. And, we keep going until the world stops spinning around my problems and centers back around reality.

This time, she introduced a new idea: don’t just list good things I find gratitude in. She asked me to list ten things that were going wrong and be thankful for them. In a bit of a resentful tone, I bit out a sentence about a French test that was très mal, to put it delicately. To this half-hearted response, my mom nodded adamantly and said to keep going. Because I really had no choice, I kept going. By the end I felt a little better, but it was no moment of large transformation.

Then, my mom told me that the things that go wrong in my life will show their purpose some time in the future. That if I changed my mindset, I changed my life.

It’s like the cold in December. If we see the cold through the perspective of a possibility for snow and rising steam off of cider, then we enjoy the cold for the warmth it forces us to find.

May this holiday season help you find joy, but moreover, may it allow for light. Sparkling, dazzling, light.

Elisabeth Dellit is an 12th Grader at Jesuit High School. She enjoys reading, writing creative stories, baking/cooking and participating in her school’s drama program.