The Civil Way of Dealing With The Christmas Crowd

For some families, the Yuletide is one of the few times in the year when they will come together, and a lot of times, when there’s a family gathering, there’s bound to be some form of drama or the other.

‘Biola Ufeli reveals the secret to keep the family drama at a minimum and let the love that defines Christmas prevail.

Does anyone really know how to love? Intriguing question right? I bet there would be many diverse views on that one. I don’t know how many people have read Rebecca Well’s novel, Divine Secret of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, where the protagonist, Siddalee, receives a barbed letter from her mother, Vivi, who tells her to: “Forget love. Try good manners. Since nobody knows how to love, we must at least be nice.”

It’s a rather bleak statement, but understood. It could mean that love is a point of arrival, a goal difficult to achieve; and before we think we can love, we need basic training.

You would probably wonder why we would need training in love. The response to that is that we need training in every sphere of our lives.(check out our variety of courses here)
These three steps keep you through the season (and beyond) in good stead.

1. Discipline your ego: To maintain a peaceful and cordial atmosphere, we need to firstly, discipline our ego to look beyond the confines of its immediate needs. Most of us are selfish and we want to be happy. How can that come about when we cannot see anything beyond our noses?
2. Be on your best behaviour: I quite agree with Vivi when she tells Siddalee to try good manners. Let’s start with good manners, and then respect will come, then restraint, and then consideration. If you ask the question “what do human beings really want?” The answer is that they want to be happy and remain so; but the single most painful source of unhappiness is when our relationships with others go awry especially with family members and close friends.
3. Let kindness prevail: Think back to relationships you have had. I am sure you will find moments that you wish had never happened or that you are not proud of; moments when you realised that you had hurt someone’s feelings by being very brusque, making caustic comments, retaliating unnecessarily, or making someone suffer for a perceived wrong done to you. How do you think the people concerned felt- happy? Where are the respect, restraint and consideration? In confronting a hurtful event, we can try to activate our internal discipline and apply a positive attitude. Keeping away from others to avoid getting hurt just won’t do. In pursuing family relationships, the challenge is to keep to a minimum the hurts that they entail. Just how possible is that you may wonder. It is possible and there is a proven way to keep the hurt that comes from relationships to a minimum and that is by training ourselves to become good at being with others. If we are kind and considerate, people will want to be around us.

The author of Choosing Civility, P.M. Forni, was travelling by train to Italy with his wife Virginia, and they found themselves in the boisterous company of high school students on a day trip. He said nothing to them for ten uncomfortable minutes, hoping that they would settle down. Not a chance. They continued to disregard the presence of others. However, what brought him “close to an angry outburst” was the acquiescence of their teachers. For a moment he felt like lashing out at both students and teachers. He knew immediately he wouldn’t do so, because he knew he wouldn’t like doing it.

So he made a conscious effort to remain clearheaded. Then speaking in a quiet but firm tone, he asked the two students in the seats across the aisle to be so kind as to lower their voices so that he could have a conversation with his wife. Rather than chastising them, he made them aware of his need. He informed them but he also made it clear that with the information, came their responsibility to do something about it.

Other students and teachers overheard him, there was nervous laughter and a few mockingly accentuated hushing noises, but the remainder of the trip was substantially quieter; and when they reached Rome they all said goodbye, wishing one another a pleasant trip.

It was restraint that made possible the satisfactory resolution of the incident. Training in civility is part of our basic training as social beings. After training, there will be those who are able to love even strangers as they love themselves; and there will be those whose love will be confined to families and friends. All, however,would have learnt to practice respect, restraint, concern and benevolence to some degree.

Manners are the first steps of the soul towards love.

With the holiday season nearby, family and friends will come around. There will be visits from extended family members (some who we may not like at all, and who may not like us), but whatever this season of peace and love brings your way, learn to deal with it, with civility and grace.