Wishing You
the Sun and the Moon
in the New Year
And Joy, too!
I’m starting this letter on Thanksgiving Day. It’s my favorite holiday because it’s less material than other holidays, and it’s about giving thanks, an action that gives me so much joy. I have a lot to give thanks for, and at the top of the list are you, my friends and family.
I’m spending Thanksgiving this year with my cousins, my mother’s sister Clara’s children. Aunt Clara died in October at 101, the last of that generation in my family and one of the few left alive in the world who lived through the Great Depression. In 1937, at 15, she traveled through Germany with my mother and their mother, and they saw Hitler parade through the town they were staying in. Despite, or maybe because of, those experiences, she was always grateful and generous.
This year is the first that I’ve really felt my age. The main lesson aging is teaching me is acceptance. I’m slowly learning to accept the reduction in my capabilities and ask for help. I’m also learning to moderate my ambition. As Christine Lavin sang in “Shining my Flashlight at the Moon,” “Adjust your dreams.” We are very attached to ambition in our culture and feel a need to reach higher each day. The challenge is to find satisfaction in other ways. Quite often, it’s helping or encouraging someone else, but sometimes it’s not doing something. More often these days, I find myself just taking a moment to experience the beauty of the world around me.
Of course, the year has been dominated by the new dog in my life. Having had four of the best dogs in the world, who have all lived 14 years and bookmark the sections of my life, I was a little anxious about how Bran would fare against these pillars of canine society. I’m happy to say that he is faring quite well. Like my previous dogs, he could be more obedient, but I never made that a priority. Instead, I prefer dogs who are responsible, socially adept, and bring joy to the world.
In that regard, Bran has not disappointed. He loves other dogs and people and plays enthusiastically, but chills out and doesn’t beg for attention when I have to shift my focus away from him. Unlike my other dogs, he is not a counter-surfer. It’s almost too good to be true, and now I’m lax about leaving food around, something I’ll regret when some of his more accomplished counter-surfing friends visit.
With that, I’ll wind up and wish you all the best for the holiday season. Be kind, be grateful, and make it a mission to leave everyone you come in contact with happier than they were. I hope this letter has left you happier than when you started reading it.
“I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives. I’m not talking about the short-term gratification of pleasures like sex, drugs or gambling (though I’m not knocking them), but something that will bring true and lasting happiness. The kind that sticks.”
― His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Wishing you Peace, Joy, and Lasting Happiness,
Robin McClellan 