A Letter to the New Year

(Photo, Grand Tetons National Park, January 2019)

Hello, New Year!

I have a word or two to share with you. 

In you, I hope to discover the key to my happiness. 

You heard me. 

I dare to not only keep searching but actually find the key that will unlock my happiness. 

I’ve been collecting clues along the way, meeting dead ends, going back and finding a new path to take. 

Each new path is hard at first, then it becomes easier, then it either leads me to the next fork or brings me back to where I started. 

Either way, I behold beauty, learn lessons, and delve deeper. 

Who would have imagined that I would move to Wyoming? 

Learn all about what love is not, how I am all-or-nothing in a quite peculiar way, and why I find it difficult to pray? 

Never in my wildest dreams was I ever canoeing on the Green River, planning a trip Paris, or hanging up so many Christmas lights that it’s like living in a Christmas Tree! 

And yet those are all things that have happened.

I know you know what I don’t know, and you are probably laughing as you read this. 

You are a New Year, but in some ways, you are like an Old Friend. 

You know me so well and you are quite familiar to me. 

We greet one another every January and check up on one another as time plods by. 

I treasure these meetings as you lend your ear to my reflections, my hopes, and my sorrows. Allow me to lend them to you now as you walk toward the end of this book, planning the next. 

This year has been full of new knowledge, both academic and practical. I have read much of Aquinas, Aristotle, and Augustine. 

Never has my mind been more delighted than when the hyperbolas and ellipses of Appolonius have been made clear to my mind and I see lines, curves, and cones in a light that catches them just right every time. 

Learning the language of Cicero, Plutarch, and Virgil thrills my being to the core as I explore their pages and listen to them tell of the world’s sagacious secrets. 

I have learned that not all truths ought to be served immediately, but that all truths ought to be served - some truths are best left to marinate for a while to deepen their complexities, increase their savors, and highlight their progress to make them more delightful to the senses. 

I have learned that some friends are simply just good friends, that the best things are always worth waiting for, and that a cup of tea is often all you need. 

Next year I look forward to an ever-increasing wealth of knowledge and experience. 

I hope to curate a life that is simple but never easy, for I am often inclined to become soft and then regret it later. 

I hope to find work that is not work at all, but a passion that beckons me like the desirable the desirer. 

Finally, I hope to strive for gratitude in all things, so that I might find contentment in the path you guide me on, for I believe contentment to be the key to happiness. 

I long to enjoy both the good things and the struggles, to never settle for something that comforts me into denial, but to strive for what can truly satisfy. 

That is what I hope, dear friend.

Love,

Laney