It’s the end of December and it’s time to close the book on the past year.  Some of us will have experienced great joy through events such as a wedding, the birth of a child or the start of a new career.  Others will have experienced great sorrow and perhaps loss, such as the loss of a loved one, loss of a job, sorrow from having to leave home and relocate or being faced with an illness that interrupts our life.  Finally, we may be ambivalent; nothing really great or terrible seemed to happen to us in the past year.

Whichever category you find yourself in, it is time to close the book and look ahead.  The truth is that we cannot change the past; we can only learn from it and seek the treasures that the past leaves.