I don’t know when or where you will be reading this week’s Scoop perhaps on a mobile device as you set to travelling to visit family in faraway places or sitting with a comforting cup of hot chocolate in front of a crackling fire. Wherever you may be, I hope these words find you as joyous in your anticipation of the rest, relaxation, and reconnection that the holiday season brings as I am. I simply love this time of year.
This season speaks to me most, perhaps, because it offers time for reflectionwhether around a packed dinner table of friends and family or in the pages of the “Top 10 Moments of 2017” articles that flood the shelves as the New Year approachesthe end of the calendar year provides a natural time to consider where we’ve been and where we are going. Through the eyes of a child, I imagine this may be why this time of year is also the time of wishes.
So, to borrow the frame of childhood, I offer my holiday wish to you all as we begin our vacation: time for reconnection.
Note, this is not simply a call for reconnection alone. That, it would seem, is a wish destined to be missed, relying too heavily on the magic of the season, as though it could simply happen because we say we want it to. No, reconnection is as much about the time it will take as it is the desire to reconnect. So, my wish for you is that you will find the timeand if it is elusive, to make the timethat you need first and then set about reconnecting with those people and places that restore you.
Albert Camus once wrote, “When you have seen the glow of happiness on the face of a beloved person, you know that a man can have no vocation but to awaken that light on the faces surrounding him. In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me lay an invincible summer.” It is my great hope that in these coldest days, the long overdue conversation with a cousin, uncle, or niece, or the friend who is only in town for the holidays gives you occasion to find that invincible summer because you gave yourself the time to do so.
On behalf of all of us at Belmont Day School, we wish you the happiest of holidays and a very joyful New Year. See you in 2018!
