By VERNA BROCK
Well, the busy season is upon us once again. Even as Halloween approaches, the stores are putting up their Christmas wares! If you’ve visited Walmart in Crawfordville over the past month or so, you’ve experienced some extreme cognitive dissonance.
Even as chaos swirls around shoppers during the Great Remodeling of 2025, Halloween decorations overflow from shelves and boxes. Fear not, however, because you too can get a jump on Christmas ornaments! Decorations at the ready, as soon as Halloween evolves into All Saints Day on November 1st. Even now, aisles are full of boxes of all kinds.
Items have regularly been rearranged, reorganized and hidden on a nearly daily basis. Team members are doing their dead-level best to both “remodel” AND provide good customer service. Please remember the huge job with which they’ve been tasked, and give them any moral support you can offer. I applaud all of the Walmart employees who have stood at the ready to lead lost shoppers to their quests.
I’ve had to make a number of trips to Walmart over the past few weeks, and it sure seems obvious to me that the whole remodeling effort could have been handled not only better, but with a whole lot less stress! I know the corporate plan includes bringing in extra folks from across the country, but wouldn’t it have been more logical to close the store for a week or two? Team members work across three shifts one way or the other, but focusing all efforts on the remodeling first, then having a nice Grand Opening for the public makes sense to me!
Now, off to the races! My calendar is quickly filling up, whether I want it to or not. It’s a strange conundrum, in that I love the holiday season, but hate the feeling of being on a treadmill. The challenge is to maintain a centered, in the moment kind of approach to daily life. What is gained from being swept up in spending more and more, doing more and more, if meaningful moments are lost? Part of the tonic for the epidemic of materialism is letting go of expectations, and the pervasive sense that celebrations are a competitive sport.
What’s the old saying? Simple things are the best! Let’s resolve to keep it simple this year, and pray for peace on Earth. Peace of mind, peace of heart and soul, and genuine peace across our shining blue dot as we go spinning through the galaxy.
