A Day Before Christmas
by: Ulysses Ybiernas ♦ December 23, 2010
Happiness is not measured by what fills your hands, but by what quietly settles within your heart.
Today is the final working day before Christmas, and I can feel the season lingering in the air, though not quite in the way I once imagined it would.
A stubborn cough clings to me, rough and persistent, as though something heavy and unspoken has lodged itself deep within my throat. Every breath feels deliberate. Every word takes effort.
The office is unusually quiet today. No customers. No hurried footsteps. No familiar greetings exchanged with the valued clients who normally fill this place with movement and noise.
Perhaps they are all at home now, busy with Christmas preparations, choosing gifts, planning meals, arranging gatherings, and preparing for celebration.
Life must feel lively and fast-moving for them today.
But here, time feels suspended.
As for me, I already know how this day will end.
On my way home, I will stop at the grocery store and carefully choose what little we can prepare for Christmas Eve. This year’s celebration will be simple. The household helpers have already returned to their provinces to spend the holidays with their own families.
So it will just be me and my three daughters.
Their mother remains abroad, working, sacrificing yet another Christmas away from us so we can continue moving forward financially.
And so the four of us will spend the season together the best way we can, quietly, modestly, but together.
Around me, however, I notice something else. Something that disturbs me more than the silence itself.
A few colleagues move cautiously through the office, discreetly slipping Christmas gifts from clients into their bags as though protecting small secrets.
I cannot help but wonder:
Were those gifts meant for everyone?
Or only for themselves?
Despite the bonuses they have already received, it still seems insufficient. There is a quiet greed in the atmosphere, subtle, almost normalized, yet impossible for me to ignore completely.
I do not fully understand it.
Perhaps I do not want to.
Because my reality feels very different.
I still carry debts from every direction, responsibilities that weigh far heavier than any gift or bonus ever could. Yet somehow, despite those burdens, I still find myself wanting to give whenever I can.
Just recently, I bought groceries for the three security guards who accompany me whenever I travel to the Central Bank to withdraw cash for our branch.
It was not much.
But I hoped it was enough to remind them that they are seen and appreciated, especially since they receive no bonuses like we do as regular employees. As contractual workers under an agency, they often remain invisible despite the risks and responsibilities they quietly carry every day.
And then, during moments like this, my thoughts begin to wander.
What if I had more?
Not just enough to survive, but abundance.
What kind of life would I live if financial worry no longer followed me everywhere?
I imagine traveling to distant countries with my family, seeing places I have only heard about in stories or magazines. Staying in beautiful hotels and quiet resorts without counting every expense before making a decision.
Perhaps I would buy a large piece of land somewhere peaceful, a farm far from pressure and noise, where life moves slowly and mornings arrive gently.
Maybe I would leave this profession behind entirely and trade stress for silence.
Yet even as I drift into those thoughts, I am reminded of someone who quietly challenges my understanding of wealth itself.
There is an elderly Chinese client at the bank, one of our most valued depositors. As far as I know, he lives alone.
And yet his lifestyle defies everything people usually associate with wealth.
He visits the bank almost every day, exchanging large bills for smaller denominations, always in nearly the same amounts. He rarely fills out withdrawal slips himself and never lingers long enough for conversation.
Outside the bank, I often see him walking alone through the downtown streets.
Always quietly.
Always appearing tired.
He wears nearly the same simple clothes each time I see him. In one hand, he usually carries a small plastic bag containing bananas with the grocery label still attached. In the other hand, an umbrella.
A wealthy man living as though he is just an ordinary man.
I do not understand his life, nor do I know the story behind it.
But I choose not to judge him.
Whatever burdens, beliefs, or private loneliness he carries belong to him alone. And somehow, despite the mystery surrounding him, there is something gentle about his presence, something humble and strangely peaceful.
And it leaves me wondering:
Is he happy?
Perhaps happiness cannot be measured equally for everyone.
Perhaps it is not determined by wealth, appearance, status, or possessions at all.
Maybe happiness is shaped quietly and personally according to what each person values most deeply.
Give a sack of rice to a wealthy man, and he may see it as insignificant or even insulting.
But give that same sack of rice to someone struggling to survive, and it becomes a reason to celebrate, a moment of genuine gratitude.
Happiness, then, is relative.
It changes depending on who we are, what we lack, what we value, and how we choose to see the world around us.
And perhaps that is what the lesson this day is quietly trying to teach me.
Maybe happiness should never be built entirely upon things that are difficult to attain or easy to lose.
Maybe I should stop measuring it against wealth, possessions, or impossible standards.
Because if I place my happiness too far beyond my reach, disappointment becomes inevitable.
But if I learn to find contentment in simpler certainties, my children, a shared meal, the quiet act of giving, the presence of people I love, then perhaps happiness becomes something closer.
Something steady.
Something real.
“Perhaps happiness is not something we endlessly chase, but something we quietly choose, again and again, even in the simplest moments.”
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