Happy New Year 2019. Thank you! Thank you for being a part of my community. We work hard to bring you useful and entertaining material, but it would all be for naught if you didn’t take the time to read it. So, again, thank you, thank you, thank you.
What’s my message to you for 2019?
Would you like me to have a message, or are you tired of messages? Maybe you’d prefer a couple of jokes, or a reliable cure for hiccups (the reason there are so many is that none of them is reliable), or my recipe for red beans and rice, which, honestly, is to die for. I learned it when I was in medical school at Tulane in New Orleans. Mmmmm, makes me hungry just to think about it. Or maybe you’d like another photo of our new puppy, Max, now 75 pounds, only 7 months old.
But no, I am going to send you a message. I can provide all those other options in future newsletters if you’ll write to me and tell me which you want (drhallowell@gmail.com). My message for 2019 is one I am sure you have already guessed. It is terrible that I am so predictable. The sun rises, the sun sets. Taxes are due April 14. You set off fireworks on the Fourth of July. And Ned’s message? Love, love, love.
Okay, so I say connect. Because you can’t love everyone. By the way, if you are one of those people who doesn’t know how to love, I have a guaranteed way for you to learn. This method is foolproof and will work on anyone, any age. Get a dog. But coming back to love and connection, these are the absolute proven keys to everything that matters most in life. This is a solid fact. Health, longevity, happiness, it all comes back to love and connection (and a dog, or a cat if you must).
What do I mean by a connection?
Anything you feel joined to, part of, desirous of, close to, emotionally attached to, moved by, motivated by, inspired by. Anything that gives meaning or joy to your life.
- A piece of music, a work of art, a football team, a meadow,
- the restaurant where you met the woman or man you love,
- or the street where you found that 20-dollar bill when you really needed it,
- maybe it’s the boss who gave you a break when you really needed it,
- your grandmother,
- fudge,
- a funeral when it’s done right,
- New York at Christmas time,
- Cape Cod in the summer,
- oysters on the half shell,
- red beans and rice made by me,
- your children,
- the nap you take after Thanksgiving dinner,
- tears you cry on someone’s shoulder or the person whose shoulder you cry on,
- the person who shows you how to forgive or the person who betrayed you asking for forgiveness,
- it could be the light at the end of the tunnel,
- a single red geranium in a clay pot on the kitchen table there to greet me in the cottage I rented all by myself one summer week,
- heavy rain in the middle of the night when you’re in bed,
- any child looking up at you with trust,
- people over 40 who have not become cynical,
- my wife Sue,
- Tabasco,
- my memory of my cousin Lyn who died way too young,
- the sound of waves crashing onto the shore at Harding’s Beach where Lyn loved to walk,
- honeysuckles in Chatham,
- boiled lobster,
- my best friend Peter,
- playing squash,
- delivering babies,
- a straw hat with a red band,
- hoopla wherever it happens like at the Puerto Rican restaurant we ate at the other night,
- the Messiah,
- Fenway Park,
- snow before it becomes a problem,
- polite and humble people,
- all works of Samuel Johnson,
- every episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm,
- pasta,
- feta cheese,
- taramasalata,
- church music,
- Christ Church Cambridge,
- the memory of our dog, Ziggy,
- and the fact that hope still does spring eternal,
- or the works of Dav Pilkey,
- the Lincoln Memorial, and
- that we are all connected, you, and I, and all the rest of us, now and forever.
Happy 2019!
Blessings upon all of you!
Ned
He’s a beautiful, big, brown loping dog who bounds into a room like a crashing wave. If there’s a gate across the doorway, which we put up when he was smaller, now he simply leaps over it. Once in the room he jumps into whosever lap he sees first and immediately starts to lick that person. Or he’ll take the person’s arm into his mouth, not to bite, but to massage the arm with his large, white teeth.
