A new year’s wish

As my children lay asleep upstairs and the bush wakes up outside my window, I sit with my laptop in bed, relishing the calm and quiet. I love when I’m the only one awake in a still-slumbering house, it’s one of those simple things I’m most grateful for.  The year creeping to a close has enhanced, for me, the importance of embracing simple joys and pleasures, and the older I get, it seems the more I can appreciate this.

At the train station where I get off for work every day from Monday to Thursday, there’s a billboard advertising a company that offers “dream” experiences, like driving a speed car, or hot air balloon rides. The ad popped up before Christmas, the idea being that giving something like this to a loved one would surely trump other mundane gifts. But to me it suggests something else: do we really need to experience a hot air balloon ride to feel alive? I don’t think so, I don’t subscribe to the notion that a big-ticket experience once a year (or a lifetime?), while you drag yourself through the days the rest of the time, is a recipe for happiness.

I prefer to savour small pleasures every day, and be grateful for them. A coffee in bed on a Saturday morning, with a book in my lap. The sound of my kids laughing together upstairs. Hearing those raucous kookaburras outside. The little library at the back of my house. Perhaps the books I write—particularly my next one, about the ways our late loved ones continue to make themselves known to us—have also given me perspective. People lose the ones they love. It’s something I think on a lot at this time of year, since so many of my interviewees (all of those in the upcoming book) would be having a harder time than most during the festive season.

Cherish your loved ones and those tiny everyday pleasures. What are some of those small things you’re grateful for? Thank you for your support throughout 2012—in 2013 I’ll deliver the new book to my publisher and I’m hopeful it will be a worthy successor to Spirit Sisters and Where Spirits Dwell. In the meantime, I wish you and your family peace, good health and joy for the new year, and beyond.

One of my biggest little pleasures: my home library.