This year I haven’t really been feeling the Christmas spirit.  The decorative lights, the television specials, the heart-warming story of Saddam being found in a cellar, etc. haven’t moved me.  I don’t know, I’m usually pretty happy this time of the year.  The whole joy-to-the-world thing, I suppose.  By nature I would say I’m a fairly enthusiastic fellow.  Full of idealism and optimism; which can get me in trouble sometimes.  On the whole though, I haven’t regretted many decisions so I’m happy with the way I view the world.  Lately however, I’ve begun to be more cynical.  This is an odd feeling.  I’ve always had a positive outlook.  And now I’ve started thinking that the world isn’t such a wonderful place.  I guess it’s just the constant exposure to all the harsh realities of the world. 

Before, I was able to block it out or convince myself that there are decent people in the world.  That I wasn’t alone in trying to see the best in a person.  But it got harder and harder to do so. So I’ve been feeling kinda down these past few weeks. 

And now my faith in humanity is restored.  Earlier today, I lost my phone.  Not a big deal, but annoying enough to be an inconvenience.  As I was calling my provider to suspend service to the phone, I get an incoming call.  Now, my first response is to ignore the call, seeing as how hard it is to actually get through to a Sprint operator, but I answered anyways.  It turned out to be a woman who found my phone and wanted to return it to me.  I drove out to meet her, but not without taking my brother at my parent’s request.  They wanted to make sure it wasn’t some kind of setup where I would be robbed and generally violated in every sense of the word.  So I meet the woman, and she’s a kindly middle-aged mother who just saw my phone lying on the corner of the street and decided to try to find the owner.  She wouldn’t even take the money that I offered, simply saying that it was the right thing to do. 

This one act of simple thoughtfulness has made it seem like Christmas.  As I walked down my block, I noticed the cheerful lights, the festive decorations.  And it finally felt like Christmas to me. 

To anybody who wastes their time and actually reads this drivel, have a happy and safe holiday season.