I recently spent some time traveling by airplane. Before take-off, the flight attendant always goes through that little song and dance that includes the following sentence: “If you are traveling with a small child, place your oxygen mask on first, and then assist the child.”

I always try to envision that. My kid, gasping for air, going blue, looking at me with terrified eyes, and me, grabbing my own air mask and putting it on first. I really can’t see myself doing that—putting my own mask on first.

Even though I understand the reasoning behind such advice, (that I am no help to anyone else unless my own situation is stable), still, it seems to go against all my instincts. It seems selfish that I get to breathe first.

So here it is, a few weeks before Christmas, the most wonderful time of the year. The hap, happiest time of the year. The season of giving. When you care enough to send the very best. When Peter comes home from college (for the 14^th year in a row) in the Folgers commercial and the whole machine of it is once again attempting to suck me into its vortex. A vortex aswirl in butter cookies and wrapping paper and One Day Only sales at Circuit City.

The plane is clearly going down. I feel the cabin pressure drop. There isn’t enough air. Only six shopping days left. Two masks fall from the overhead compartment. So now what do I do? Go shopping for those last few things on my list? Bake another batch of cookies? (My kid is turning blue. She’s gasping. She really needs that new game.) Or, do I put own my mask on first and go up to my room, close the door, and become quiet for a while.

Back before the swirling vortex of Christmas began I knew, without qualification, that nothing was more important than this period of quiet every day. Without this, I was just a character in somebody else’s video game, at the mercy of the cultural joystick, a soulless automaton. But if I spent some time alone everyday, breathing, writing, meditating, I could step out of the game and see it, and not be played by it.

But what is more, as a result of this period of self care and self nurturing I now had something to give to the crazed child, the demanding parent, the frazzled boss. Since I now could breathe fully and easily myself, I could help others don their own masks, or at the very least not add to the chaos.

So, if you want to, try this. Write down these six words on a piece of paper: Nothing Is More Important Than This. Then close your eyes and think about it. What is the one thing that when you do it, seems to give the rest of your day sweetness and balance, and when you let it get crowded out by the “shoulds” and the “oughts” you lose all sense of sanity and proportion and start to gasp for air, turn blue and get that terrified look in your eyes.

Possible answers could be your daily prayer or meditation, your daily walk, your morning alone time, or any personal ritual that grounds you, and gives you stability and ballast in your life.

Because if you are all used up and empty, how can you give anything to anyone else? When the “Nothing is more important than this” thing gets done each day, it is equivalent to putting on your oxygen mask first. Only then will you be able to share your gifts with others. Only then will you have any gifts to share.

Happy Christmas.

Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga, 10 S. Main St., Mansfield, PA 16933. To contact her call 570-660-5873 or online www.yogamansfield.com or email mainstreetyoga@gmail.com.