This is the meaning of Christmas! It means we do not have to resign our unyielding despair like Bertrand Russell suggests or try to escape into a world of comic relief as Woody Allen does, rather we can face the despair in life with the hope that our pain points to a bigger purpose and our desires point to a transcendent beauty and our life will find meaning which will echo through eternity. All because the Logos took on Humanity and transformed what it means to be human.

The Moore Bond existed to entertain, the Craig Bond lived to point us to the deeper way of love, the Christlike way of self-giving love which is the proper function of a man who lives a life worth living.

Jane Austen's lesson here is that when one is anguished with one's own personal life choice, instead of following Charolet in her pragmatic rationalism, or Lydia in her emotionalism, we can follow Elizabeth in aligning ourselves to our telos, our true end, for Christians this telos is the resurrected life. This telos is what C.S.Lewis refers to as he says that Christians of the ancient times were people who had a heavenward view of life, but in the transition to modernity we have become too focused on happenings of  this earthly life. Given this context, it shouldn't be surprising why the existentialist philosophers of the 20th century, from Albert Camus and Jean Paul Sartre, considered choice a burden than a gift of freedom! Perhaps, it shouldn't be surprising that we modern this-worldly neurotics stymied with limitless choices find Jane Austen's world quaintly attractive!

For people living in culture of compulsive productivity, solitude is so difficult because it is as unproductive as is Sabbath. The way of out of such compulsivity is to treat the practice of solitude as Sabbath. Sabbath rest is where we learn to rest in God's presence. Augustine said, "we are restless until we find our rest in Thee(God)." We come to experience true freedom in resting in the presence of Christ instead of being addicted to our compulsion to productivity. Spiritual practice of silent solitude helps us to learn to trust in the God's provision and rest Christ's love instead of being addicted to our need for productivity. 

A mind compulsively intent on self-preservation cannot look at the world from the other person’s point of view. Only when one steps away from ones addiction to self-preservation can one’s mind be freed to see the world from the other person’s point of view. Then one will stop seeing others as “tools” in one’s own project of self-preservation, making way to have empathy for the other.