It’s that time of year when we spend, spend, spend on holiday gifts for family and friends. According to The Conference Board, the average US consumer is expected to spend $1,063 this season on holiday-related items and $677 on gifts for others. When adjusted for inflation, holiday spending is at or near all-time highs. However, the most disturbing statistic is that a large proportion of shoppers are still paying off the debt they accumulated in 2023 to purchase holiday gifts.

I’m nearing my 60th birthday at the close of this coming summer and face a choice very similar to the choice that my parent’s generation faced in the late 1990s. I can either learn more about NLP, LLM, and what’s coming next, or I can tell myself that “I’m too old to learn something new” and be left in the dust—begging my children’s generation for the remainder of my years to help me use the avalanche of new tools and technologies that will undoubtedly sprout from today’s LLM seeds.

As a global society, let’s use the Holiday Season to reflect on how we approach interactions with our fellow cosmic travelers. When alignment is a challenge and viewpoints don’t seamlessly calibrate, seek first to understand—not immediately jump to tearing others down who don’t share our opinions or worldview.

If more of us seek to understand, we will continue to make progress toward a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive future state.