How lovely to begin the New Year with you! Let’s smash a bottle of champagne across her bow and set sail. Here’s to a sense of adventure and wild, wonderful dreams.
Why not!
“Why not!” That’s a phrase I adopted a couple of years ago as my “word of the year.” Instead of making resolutions, it’s become my custom to choose a guiding word or phrase as my focus for the year. And “Why Not!” served me very well. It prodded me to step outside my comfort zone and gave me a broadened openness to new experiences.
One year, I chose the word “connection.” Friends I hadn’t seen in years came back into my life, bonds with current friends deepened, and I found myself looking into the eyes of strangers and smiling. It guided me to connect with myself more deeply, too, by helping me to remember to connect with my own heart.
Last year, I chose “Easy.” It saved my sanity many a time.
I mention it simply to offer you the idea of choosing a word or phrase of your own to guide you through the coming year. It can be anything that you want more of in your life.
But that’s not what I really want to share with you today. Instead, I want to share a line I heard in an old movie.
What Matters
“My dad used to tell me,” the doctor in the movie said to his terminally ill patient, “that you don’t measure your life by the number of breaths you take, but by the number of moments that take your breath away.”
Those are the moments of impact, the ones that pull you right out of the ordinary and fill you with awe. They’re moments of revelation, the ones that let you get in touch with magnificence, or beauty, or great calm, or compassion, or relief, or sudden understanding. They’re little instances of the profound, overflowing with a sense of life’s mystery, poignancy and wonder.
They’re what I wish for you today, as we step into this New Year—moments that take your breath away. Look for them, and celebrate them when they come along.
I don’t usually quote my own writing in these letters, but today I want to close with a poem I wrote in 2015. It’s called, “To the New Year.”
Hello, New Year, dawning over the eastern hills
with your pastel prism of light. We offer you
the wishes of our hearts, our vows
to rise higher, to love more fully, to overcome
the human failings that keep us from our paths,
to walk in contentment and peace,
to be more forgiving, to walk in compassion
for others and for ourselves, to admit
that we know so little, and, therefore,
to refrain from judging what we cannot
fairly judge. Bring us your new days,
and on each of them, let us write
what is true and good and beautiful,
in honor of the Yes that sings through all.
And when we fail, help us to remember
that you will unfailingly bring us
the light of yet another dawn.
Happy New Year, my friends. I look forward to sharing it with you. May it bring each of us ever nearer to living as our best selves.
Warmly,
Susan
Image by Gerhard Bögner from Pixabay