It’s ironic that in our quest to find the perfect present people sometimes render themselves completely ‘absent.’<\/em><\/p>\n Racing around, over-scheduling, over-spending, eating fast food instead of what nourishes us…YIKES! \u00a0How many ways can we use “creating to perfect holiday” to numb ourselves and detach?<\/em><\/p>\n I’ve run this video before but it touches me enough to repeat on Christmas Eve day \u2013 partly because it\u2019s a reminder that many of us can use every day and partly because I counted more that two dozen SPECIAL LAST MINUTE GIFT OFFERS in my inbox this morning.\u00a0 Enough already!<\/em><\/p>\n Granted, I\u2019ve been told that I\u2019m not aggressive enough with my marketing.\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m not.\u00a0 But I won\u2019t lie and call myself \u201cthe world\u2019s leading expert\u201d on anything.\u00a0 I believe in what I do and what I write. But most importantly, I believe in you.\u00a0 And I think it\u2019s just rude to smack you in the face with one more commercial.<\/em><\/p>\n So, here you go\u2026\u00a0 enjoy.<\/em><\/p>\n A man played his violin in the subway.\u00a0 He played for 45 minutes while more than a thousand people passed through on the way to work. Fewer than ten of those people stopped. About 30 put money in his case, netting him a little over $32.<\/em><\/p>\n The musician was the world-famous Joshua Bell, playing the same music he plays in concert halls where tickets sell for $100 each. The instrument he used is valued at more than $3 million. Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten was the mastermind behind the experiment. The Post received a Pulitzer for the story.<\/em><\/p>\n Weingarten\u2019s questions had to do with perception of quality, choices and priorities. People familiar with the story have also asked \u2018If we are too busy to notice a world class musician, what else are we missing?\u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n My point?<\/em><\/p>\n Are there wonderful things that are going on right under our noses? \u00a0Stop. Take a deep breath. Notice. Enjoy.\u00a0 Be more present. \u00a0That’s a gift you can give every day.<\/em><\/p>\n[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw&fs=1&hl=en_US] Sometimes our quest for the perfect present can render parents completely absent from the family life that they love. Take a moment for a holiday stress check — don’t let it disconnect you from being present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[149,230,311,383,570],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-1710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-four-foundations","tag-family","tag-holiday-stress","tag-love","tag-parents","tag-values"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1710"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreapatten.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=1710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/em><\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"