Enjoying the Banquet of Life: How Your Thoughts Can Be Friendly Guests at Your Table
- Heather Indu Arena
- Nov 26
- 4 min read
By Heather Indu Arena
It's that time of year: a season for gathering with family and friends, celebrating life, expressing gratitude, and enjoying delicious feasts. In the US, we celebrate Thanksgiving, and many religious holidays are approaching globally.
To support your ongoing intention to live a life of balance and authenticity, I thought a holiday gathering analogy would be a fun and helpful way to explore the many thought patterns you notice throughout your day.
Your Thoughts Are Holiday Guests
Have you noticed how some of your daily thoughts are genuinely helpful while others are downright annoying? They are a lot like the guests who show up at your holiday dinner:
The Loving Guests: The kind thoughts that remind you how wonderful you are.
The Shy Guests: The quiet ones who barely speak but simply occupy a chair and consume your resources.
The Children: The chaotic thoughts that run around, some laughing and playing, some screaming, some fighting for attention.
The Judgmental Guests: The harsh inner critics that tell you to stop eating or that the meal isn't good enough.
Imagine all the thoughts throughout your day are guests at your table. The table we call life!
The Banquet of Life
Every moment is a banquet, placing different options and experiences on the table in front of you. Some you enjoy, some you don't, and some feed not only your body but your soul. Life constantly provides experiences, and your thinking mind provides the play-by-play commentary on how you should receive this moment-by-moment feast.
You have a choice:
Fully Participate: Sit down at the table of life and engage with the moment.
Wait it Out: Sit off in the corner, hoping this moment will just pass by.
Go on Autopilot: Let psychological and biological habits take the lead.
The mental thinking patterns will be there, regardless. The crucial decision is how you receive them at your table.
Decision time.
How do you interact with these noisy, opinionated guests (your thoughts)? Do you sit at the head of the table in disgust as they all speak louder and louder to be heard while you try to ignore them, or do you get so caught up in their words that you cannot enjoy the meal? Or are you willing to welcome these guests in, to partake in the feast with you?
In all honesty, they are going to keep showing up until you stop resisting them. I imagine you have noticed, through the course of your life, that when you try to stop thinking, the thoughts eventually return, sometimes more forcefully. Sometimes you like the thoughts, and sometimes they downright annoy you, just like some of those holiday guests.
The process of finding peace is not to close the door on them when they come knocking.
Peace can be found when you choose to let them sit down with you at your table and have their say. You don’t have to indulge them. That will simply feed their words. But you can acknowledge them and then accept their presence at your celebration. From that acknowledgment and acceptance comes the ability to stop feeding on their words and instead enjoy the feast of life in front of you without the constant background noise. It also allows your table to be filled and your guests to arrive while you rest comfortably at the head of the table, peacefully enjoying the meal.
The silence and peace behind all those noisy voices can become louder than the noise itself!
That is when you begin listening from a different place. You no longer receive your guests and the many different dishes through the lens of your past, but through a present-moment experience rooted in steadiness. The same goes for the emotions. You simply allow them all to come to the table without becoming disturbed.
It takes practice, and that practice is to allow for all the guests: the thoughts, the emotions, and the sensations, to be there without trying to shove them out the door. If you shove them out, they are going to keep knocking until you let them back in. Let them sit down at your table and partake in the meal of life without feeding them with your energy.
As you learn to remain steady in your seat at the head of the table, eventually, your thoughts will become steady. The more you practice observing them instead of engaging them, the less they will knock at your door, and the shorter they will stay around.
Eventually, it’s just you at the table enjoying the banquet of life as it comes to you. Thoughtful guests may come and go, but it is at your invitation, not at your expense.
Your life becomes more still, more peaceful, and much more fulfilling because you can enjoy the meal.
Happy All the Days! (or happy holidays, whichever works for you ;)
Heather Indu Arena
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