Happy New Year

A new year and soon the start of a new life in Ecuador. We just had a whirlwind tour of family Xmas festivities, GRUVER shows and New Year's bashes. We just returned from the cabin, where we had an fun mixing of Gruver friends and Denison pals for a weekend of drinking and hiking in Western Maryland and Southwest PA. On our way to the show last night, someone in the van asked what our resolutions were... mine was --as it is almost every year--to write in my journal regularly. Maybe this blog will help me fulfill that pledge...

I just read "Away from Home: Letters to my Family" by Lillian Carter. The book consists of letters from 'Mizz Lillian" to her family while she served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in India in 1966-68. On her 70th birthday, she penned a rather poignant letter to her family reflecting on her experience and perspective on life that I found intriguing. It reads:

August 15, 1968
"I am seventy years old today, and I think of where I am, and what I'm doing and why. When Earl died, my life lost its meaning and direction. For the first time, I lost my will to live. Since that time, I've tried to make my life have some significance. I felt useful when I was at Auburn, serving as a housemother for my bad, sweet K.A.'s. And I'm glad I worked at a Nursting Home, but God forbid that I ever have to live in one!

"I didn't dream that in this remote corner of the world, so far away from the people and material things that I had always considered so necessary, I would discover what Life is really all about. Sharing yourself with others, and accepting their love for you, is the most precious gift of all.

"If I had one wish for my children, it would be that each of you would dare to do the things and reach for goals in your own lives that have meaning for you as individuals, doing as much as you can for everybody, but not worrying if you don't please everyone."

Sounds like good advice to me. May that be a resolution for many.