A New Year

I don't know about others', but my New Year's Day was a lot like my Old Year's Day. True, from one day to the next, it became a holiday, the weather got milder, and there were even more gridiron games on the television. But the sun still came up, just like it did the year before, and I still took the dog for a walk in the wash.

In the last days of the Old Year I found myself web-surfing for Roman quotes. They fascinate me. Cicero particularly is a great source, not just because he may be the greatest statesman and orator of the Roman world, but also because so much of his writing has survived. The thoughts of two millennia ago inspire even today. No wonder the literate, Mediterranean ancients were the foundation and pleasure of Western education for most of twenty centuries.

The one Stoic thought that spun in my mind is that the goal is not a long life, but a deep one. That's a nice contemplation for New Year's, one that gave me permission to walk a little slower with the dog and take more time to marvel at my surroundings.

To Cicero is attributed the quote, "A room without books is like a body without a soul." Very likely, Cicero didn't write that, but he did write, "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."

Which, on a New Year's Day as I slowed down to move rocks and trim brush in our little acre of the Sonoran Desert, reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from Star Trek. In a flash forward in time (there's that time thing again), an aging Jean Luc wearing a broad rimmed straw hat is tending a small vineyard.

So in addition to wishing everyone much happiness for Twenty-Sixteen, I also wish all the great depth and the sense of belonging that attend happiness.

Post script: There's another Cicero quote which surely is not his, but it made me laugh loudly all the same. "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book."