Greetings for the New Year!

Social media in the last 10 days or so has been flooded with New Year Greetings. Not just Christmas Greetings or Seasons Greetings, but New Year Greetings. It occurred to me that the world was in a bit of rush to ring out the old and ring in the new! The greetings, mostly, seemed to be about thanking life for being nice and kind, being hard and difficult, for just being life – that every moment gone by, good bad or indifferent, was a lesson to be grateful for. There was a message for not just happiness and prosperity in the new year but peace, safety, good health … an interesting commentary on our times.

I do not like to greet in advance. I do not like to tempt fate if I can avoid it! But I do like to have my greetings planned! So I knew what this blogreeting was going to look like when it got posted in the New Year.

And  then I got this mail from the Daily Post … serendipity!

‘In response to The Daily Post’s weekly writing challenge: “Ice, Water, Steam.”‘

 Obviously I have remained the same over the years – I would like to greet you all NOW … when the new year has been rung in somewhere on earth. Not a moment earlier.

Lately it seems that what my childhood and the people in it taught me is what I cherish and value the most. The truths in there are emphasized over and over again. Unchanging like the tides that come and go. Unceasingly.

My grandmother’s wise words often come back to haunt me like misty vapours … her soft voice rings in the recesses of my soul. “What you don’t learn at 5 cannot be learnt at 50”. “Good manners not inculcated in private cannot be successfully ‘put on’ in public”. “Sleep is the luxury of youth”. “A moment wasted is a moment lost forever”. “Eat a mouthfull less than your hunger demands” … All fluid ideas. All icy, hard truths.

It is interesting that the past has flowed into the present … that it has gone to influence my make up in so many ways. What seemed old fashioned and often an issue of the infamous “generation gap” are the building blocks of my today. Of my likes and dislikes. Of my courage and cowardice. Of my dreams for my future.

Where strength of mind, good humour, patience and tolerance in times of trial are the virtues I would like to see in myself. Where every moment of time is respected and thus never wasted. Where the people in my life are cherished for who they are and not for what they can do for me. This is what I would like to be at …

 

And this is what I wish for all of you all too.

Happy New Year!