The Holiday Headset

The end of the year serves many purposes.

It invites rest and a much needed pause from the daily grind. It can be restorative, exciting, and joyful. But have you stopped to ask how you are actually showing up for it, and what these rituals or the spaces they create actually bring up for you?

It often feels like every December, we are handed a virtual reality headset that lasts for a few weeks. We put it on, lose ourselves in the “holiday spirit” and then we’re forced to return the headset to the store come January.

What if the end of this year could serve as a gentle, compassionate guide toward a healthier start? What if we used this space not to lose ourselves in the headset, but to actually look at the room we’re standing in and the person who is inhabiting it?

The Rituals we Inherit

I didn’t realize how much I needed that question until I looked at the patterns I inherited. Growing up, our household was financially stable, and that stability required trade offs. My dad focused on building a business, making ends meet, and giving us a better life than the one he came from. He was away for long periods of time. When he came back, affection often took a practical, material form. Gifts and trips became the way we re entered each other’s lives.

We were each essentially paying an intimacy tax. A material token used to avoid the discomfort of real, unscripted connection. I don’t say this as a critique; I say it with compassion for how families pass down rituals, that were likely passed down onto them. We used distractions as substitutes for intimacy because intimacy requires effort and can be terrifying, while a gift is easy and certain.

This year, I decided to disrupt that ritual. I realized I no longer wanted to offer extravagant gifts to preserve a harmony that didn’t match reality. I was done buying my way out of the shifts that happened in my relationships this year.

So, I made a last minute run to my favorite bookstore. I chose books as gifts that felt reflective for each person. My message was simple: I see you for who you are, not for the role you play. I’m done playing the game where I calculate your value in a dollar amount just to bridge the gap of our disconnection.

Ironically, it was the year I spent the least amount of money, yet I’ve never felt more intentional. I wanted to give something that didn’t ask me to pretend.

A new Code

As I stood at the register, I noticed a small book: Rules for a Knight by Ethan Hawke. He has always struck me as a man interested in the soul behind the persona, someone who refuses to be flattened into the role of “movie star.” He is much more than that: he is an artist, a writer, a philosopher, and a seeker of the truths that most of us are too afraid to hear. I bought it as a gift to myself, a reminder that the only legacy worth passing down is wisdom.

I carried that thought with me today when I sat across from a new face at the juvie center. He was 17, standing at a brutal threshold. His father had just been sentenced to 15 years in prison. For the first time, this boy was looking at the world through the lens of a heavy, new title: “The Man of the House.” He spoke about his mother and his little sisters, and the weight of the duties he was now inheriting.

We spoke for an hour. He told me about his grandfather’s landscaping business and the ‘clean money’ he had earned there. ‘I like using my hands’ he said, describing the physical labor with pride. Then, we talked about the new hobby he took up, fishing. He explained the art of the bait, the weight of the rod, and the balance required to stay upright in the boat. When we discussed how he ended up in juvie this time around, he spoke of a code using the words: respect and justice. Someone had disrespected his family and property, and to him, justice required revenge. He was following an inherited script of honor that ultimately landed him in a cage.

Going back to his new hobby: fishing, I asked him: “What do you enjoy most about it?”. “The patience” he said. “The reward is big because you put the work in, you pay for the tools and put in the time. You can go days or weeks without a catch, but when you do, it’s all worth it.”

Here was a boy being handed a life altering role: provider, protector, man of the house before he had even reached adulthood. But as he spoke about the experience of his new hobby, the ‘Protector’ role seemed to fade away. He wasn’t just a boy in a cell; he was a master of patience, a strategist, and a fisherman discovering his own depth.

In Rules for a Knight, Ethan Hawke speaks to both the Knight and the Lady with equal measure. He reminds us that a knight is not defined by his armor or sword, just as a lady is not defined by her beauty or the grace with which she serves others. We are defined, instead, by the content of our character and the honesty with which we face ourselves.

I looked at the boy and realized that while life had handed him a shield and a sword, he didn’t have to let the armor swallow him whole. He could be the man taking care of his sisters AND the passionate fisherman.

The Knight and the Lady

We often put so much importance on our roles. Daughter, mother, son, wife, husband, provider, nurturer, etc. That we forget they are just things we do, not who we are. If those roles were shed tomorrow, if we were granted a total break from the pressure of “showing up” for everyone else, what is left?

The answer is not “nothing.” What is left is a whole being with a complete will to live, with desires, ambitions, and a heart that still has questions.

Invitation to Solitude

The holidays throw us back into the emphasis of our roles. We are surrounded by people who accentuate those titles, and the pressure to perform them is immense. But what if, amidst the celebration, we gave ourselves permission to be more than a set of functions? What if we finally acknowledged that our value isn’t found in the roles we fulfill, but in the soul that persists when the work is done? A shift from being a resource to being a human being.

I’m proposing a meeting with yourself before the year ends. Can you find a window of time to be completely alone? To remove the VR headset and sit in the silence of your own company and allow all the strange, messy, and beautiful questions to finally surface?

We can ask:

• Which of my roles have I given too much power over my happiness?
• Am I feeding the Nurturer or the Man of the House while the Artist or Fisherman inside me starve?
• What happens when I stop paying the intimacy tax and start showing up with my true, messy, whole self?

The boy at the detention center is learning that he can inhabit his duties without losing his passions. He’s learning that his “code” can be one of patience, mastery, and even fun, rather than just revenge and duty. He is learning that being a man of character means being a man who still knows how to feed his own light.

I realized that his prison had bars he could touch, while most of ours are built from the very roles we take pride in performing. We are all inmates of our own minds, often forgetting we are handed the keys of choice from the moment we wake up until the moment we lay back down.

This is not about taking a break from our roles. Instead, it’s about figuring out who you are outside of those labels. We have performed these roles enough. We have given them our time, our sweat, and our heart. But where did we leave the rest of us? If the roles were set aside, what remains of the person who exists also for themselves?