HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I wonder: when you greet someone with those words, where do you put the emphasis, the stress?  Partly, that may depend on your nationality:  I've noticed that American English-speakers stress ‘happy' or ‘new';  Brits tend to put the emphasis on ‘year'.   Few people, however, put equal stress on each and every word, thus wishing their hearers, quite literally, a ‘stress-free' new year.

Now, in case you're wondering, these aren't the idle speculations of a Rector past his sell-by date.  For isn't it the case that, as Big Ben strikes 12 and we link hands for Auld Lang Syne, we all yearn for a stress-free new year?  How can we achieve that?  Only, I think, by putting equal emphasis on each of those three words: that is, by paying attention to each of those three elements in our lives.

First, ‘Happy'.  In our New Year greeting, we take it for granted that everyone desires to be happy.  But what do we mean by that?  Dom Christopher Jamison, Abbot of Worth Abbey (the setting of the TV series The Monastery), has recently written a book called Finding Happiness.  In the Introduction he says "people are searching for happiness, but not everybody knows how to find it."  It's no good aiming for happiness if we don't know how or where we might find it.  So, the first task in 2009 to which we might profitably attend is that of reflecting on what it really means to be happy, and how we might take steps to attain happiness.

Next, ‘New'.  Year after year, it's the same old story, isn't it?  We make bright, shiny resolutions on January 1^st, and on December 31^st we look back on them, tarnished and broken as they now are, with disappointment and regret.  The ‘new year' turned out to be not a new year at all, but just the same old year under another name.  If we want 2009 to be a better year than 2008, then we have to do things in a new, and better way.  Too often, we approach problems, challenges, relationships, work, with exactly the same set of damaged and inadequate tools as we have always used - and used ineffectively - in the past, and simply hope that by some miracle they're going to do a better job this time round.  Why?  It should be obvious - but isn't - that we will only reach a new destination if we travel a new route to get there.  For 2009 really to be a ‘new' year, we have to behave in a new way, and that will mean giving up the old, comfortable, familiar ways which, despite their ineffectiveness, feel secure and comfortable to us.

Lastly, ‘year'.  This word reminds us that we live in the world of time - time which is slipping past, never to be recovered.  If we can't find a deeper and truer happiness in this coming year, if we can't discover new and better ways of acting and reacting in this coming year, then we won't have this year over again later, and it will be one year fewer allotted to us in which to live more as we yearn to live.  So, we need to address these issues and face these challenges and make these changes now.

And if we can do all that?  Well, I can't guarantee, of course, that 2009 will be 100% stress-free.  Life isn't like that.  But I think I can with no little confidence predict that it will be different, better, and that you will come to its end more fulfilled and satisfied, and less pessimistic about 2010.

So, once again, and in as ‘stress-free' way as I can, may I wish you a 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!