Starting the New Year with Lifes Simple Pleasures
The new year is not even a week old and we have all reconvened in our regular lives: returning back to work, school and our everyday activities. The decorations are being put away, the holiday cookies eaten, family has gone home from visiting, and we have settled back into normal routines.
It’s a New Year. We are hopeful.
For New Year’s, many people set the stage for the year ahead with hopes, dreams, and faith. Resolutions are set and goals are laid out. We are well meaning in our quest for positive changes in our lives. Losing weight, quitting smoking, eating healthier, exercising more, working harder, reaching for that promotion – our resolutions tend to focus on self improvement and personal growth.
As well they should! In the end, we are responsible for our own health, happiness, and advancement.
But the truth is, we can’t do it all alone.
On New Year’s Eve, just a few minutes before the ball dropped, I scanned the crowd to see what the anticipation of 2016 and the beginning of a New Year looked like. The vision was not at all what I would have thought. Instead of watching a group of young revelers imbibing and causing security to be extra cautious, I was viewing a real mix of people at different ages and stages of their lives. There were young partners in their 20s and 30s, mothers and fathers who brought their young children for the experience, grandparents who came on their own or with their families. The sea of people who were waiting for the ball to drop and the New Year to begin was not at all one dimensional. There were friends together, families excited and eager with anticipation, people in their 40s and 50s looking towards the New Year, older folks in their 70s and 80s who were clutching onto each other with love and expectancy, looking towards the change into the New Year with hope and faith and…
Love.
These were the constants that everyone shared: faith, hope and love. You could see it on their faces. There was a potpourri of races, ages, socioeconomic classes, gender identities, and sexual orientations. Nobody cared how old the other person was, where they came from or who they were kissing at midnight. Nobody was even giving a thought to the weight they said they were going to lose in the New Year! Everyone only had three things on their mind: faith, hope and love. It was a magical and eye-opening moment, trumped only by that moment after the ball dropped when everyone in the sea of people was engaged in an embrace and kiss. The hope and faith was palpable. The love was overflowing. You could feel it. You could taste it. It truly was magical.
At that moment of the ball dropping and the New Year dawning, nobody cared about politics or taxes or sexual preference. At that very moment, the only important thing on everyone’s mind was love. The people with whom that love is shared, the people who we each hold so close and dear. Those are the people who were in our arms, on our minds and in our hearts at the stroke of midnight. That was the only thing that really mattered.
Life’s most simple pleasure.
Love.
As the year progresses, and we once again become more enmeshed in our everyday responsibilities and routines, it is easy to forget that moment of magic. Life happens. There are ebbs and flows, triumphs and sorrows. The world keeps turning but the one constant that holds us together, no matter what, is the love that we share with those that are closest to us.
Love. Relationships. Human Connections.
We can survive almost anything as long as we have that.
Don’t let anything interrupt the love, relationships, and connections that you held so dear on New Year’s Eve. Keep that with you all through the year and if anything forms a wall between you and your relationships – whether it be stress, communication loss/deficit, time, or people – climb over that wall to hold them close.
When all is said and done, it’s true what the Beatles said – All You Need Is Love.
We need this glue to get through everything else:
Love. Relationships. Human Connections. Communication.
