For all the festivities and joyfulness found on Thanksgiving tables and in Christmas stockings around the world during the holidays, there exists a counterpart: silent, looming anxiety and depression.

You're proud of where you are --- in a career, with a family --- but you're sad to bid farewell to the ground you've covered and the people you've left behind. You can't help but relive the year (or decade) as you place your favorite childhood ornament close to the top of the tree, remembering who you were at different times in your life, wondering who you are becoming.

I especially remember the Christmas holiday 10 years ago when my father lay in the intensive care unit of the hospital, unconscious of his family. Twelve days after bringing in the new year, he passed on --- to a place I can only hope is filled with the joy and gaiety of Christmas, not the sorrow.

In his book "Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be," Lama Surya Das, the American lama, writes about spiritual detachment, a primary principle of the Buddhist faith. He crafts an approach to change and loss, an enlightened way of confronting change and impermanence.

According to Buddhist teaching, spiritual detachment --- from relationships, jobs, goals, politics, beliefs --- leads to true happiness.

As a practicing Catholic, I eagerly clutch to the basic tenets of my faith. I need the framework of Christian beliefs as a consistent thread to sew the many chaotic and colorful pieces of my life together. However, I could use a lesson or two from the Buddhist masters on how not to depend too much on the past, or on people and things that are here and gone: professional accomplishments, material acquisitions and even friendships and relationships that are nurturing.

Too many holidays I am haunted by the ghosts of Christmas Past or Christmas Future, unable to appreciate Christmas Present.

This year I can't help but recall in some way the painful days surrounding the death of my dad a decade ago. I would be less than human if I didn't need to grieve it again and again.

But if I really want to make new, joyful memories as my children tear through the wrapping job that my husband no doubt will have invested too much time in, then I have to let go --- adhere to the words of the Buddha, when he speaks about living in the moment:

"Do not pursue the past. Do not lose yourself in the future. The past no longer is. The future has not yet come. Looking deeply at life as it is in the very here and now, the practitioner dwells in stability and freedom. We must be diligent today. To wait until tomorrow is too late."

Therese J. Borchard is a columnist with Catholic News Service.