New Year

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books. All the books we own, both read and unread, are the fullest expression of self we have at our disposal. ... But with each passing year, and with each whimsical purchase, our libraries become more and more able to articulate who we are, whether we read the books or not. I hope you meet someone who thinks you're wonderful If you have, I hope you will cherish them at a new level. And don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself. Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday. I believe that mankind's destiny lies in their decisions. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it's aerodynamically (Not otherwise) impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there's a cat in a box somewhere who's alive and dead at the same time (although if they don't ever open the box to feed it it'll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with wise even though uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read scriptures in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever does not resonate with the Plan of Happiness, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. Finally, John Lennon said "Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears." It's all in the perspective. That's what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count. And Abraham Lincoln said "And in the end it is not the years in your life that count, it's the life in your years.” Happy New Year friends!