Happy holidays

Holidays provide time for the break - an opportunity to refresh  and to rethink our lives. They are often a time for activity too - the chance to do something quite different. For some people it is a time to think about life - and to decide on changes. So I hope that our families had a good break. (I also hope our senior students did some work - but not too much!)

One word associated with all this holiday activity is recreation - or re-creation.

I guess we are all always involved in the process of developing and growing - but usually we are caught up in the process of work and the expectations of others. When holidays roll around that pressure comes off and we can make more time for ourselves and the things that will make us happy. The things that fulfil us.

The break gives us time for all the "re-words": recreate, re-energise, renew, rejuvenate.

Re-juvenate is another word that means a lot in holidays. The word "juvenile" is from the same base word - so re-juvenate means to make yourself young again. For young people it probably means to do some care-free things. But older people like me see it literally as a chance to reclaim some of our youth.

Holidays should be times to do some of the things that make us happy. Different people have different things that begin to fulfil them - but there are common elements. 

American psychologist Abraham Maslow believed that once we take care of our basic needs for things like food, water and shelter - and once we feel safe - what we then look for is love and belonging. That fits perfectly with holidays.

Maslow wrote that once we have developed settled relationships, we need to develop self-respect by becoming good at things. Only then are we capable of what he called self-actualisation (or self-fulfilment and personal growth) - in other words becoming the person we were created to be.

We work hard to help our young people take seriously the task of becoming the person God created them to be. They can only make a beginning on this life-long task at school - but we each need to start, so now is a good time. 

When Jesus spoke of bringing us life - and the fullness of life - this is what he was talking about. He came to help us become whole people who are mature in all aspects of our humanity: our relationships, our self-knowledge, our intellect, our spirituality. 

Each time we re-create ourselves, we acknowledge steps along that road. And our holidays are an important time for recreation.