AND FINALLY
It’s time to count your blessings...
A NEW decade is almost upon us — how did that happen? It seems like yesterday that my mother embroidered 2000 on her new sweater and I discharged myself from hospital (severe asthma, post-Christmas) in order to host a new millennium dinner for 40 jolly people.
Our celebratory fireworks soared into low cloud — symbolic of sparkling hopes which disappear into the miasma of experience. As I remind you so often — we have no idea what fate will deal us.
So much has happened since 2000 — the old marriage ended and the new one begun, a new incarnation as advice columnist, a new passion for dogs (I was more of a cat lady back then), a new job (on the Mail), a new home and some terrific new friends.
I feel blessed and give thanks every day. It’s a good habit to start. Even if your life is not as you’d wish it to be, try to find at least one thing each day that merits a whispered ‘Thank you’.
It might be a friendly person on the check-out or a sight of the first green shoots pushing through the earth. Anything.
Looking back inevitably reminds you of losses as well as gains: the old loves gone, old friends dead, once-cherished elements of a career ditched, once-favoured people turned into irritants, and so on.
There’s no avoiding such negative changes; the secret is to avoid melancholy.
The see-saw goes up and down between the old and the new, continuity and change, elation (high) and unhappiness (low) — and all we can do is strive to keep our balance and adjust to the movement.
These quiet days between Christmas and New Year are a good time to take stock — to reflect on who you are and declare to yourself the things that matter most. If this year were to be your last, what are the things you might change, to make the most of the time left? And do you have to wait to create those changes? No!
Happy New Year.
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, london W8 5TT, or email bel.mooney@dailymail.co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.