New Year's Blessings

The Thai New Year (สงกรานต์ = Songkran in Thai language) is celebrated every year on April 13 to April 15, according to Wikipedia and what folks hanging out at Mama Dang's bar told me last night.

Thus, if there are any festivities on December 31st or today, New Year's Day, it's for farungs like me's benefit.

Today feels a lot like any other day.

But I've learned that any other day is special. For instance, this post is one of my favorites and a good one to contemplate on New Years Day: "If Not On the Day I Die, Then Not Today."

Nothing outward bellows a New Year here in Phuket town as I sit in an Internet cafe where no one seems to speak a speck of English.

Yet it does feel like a new year. Yesterday I happily (not guiltily as it was my first dip in the water since I arrived in Thailand) snorkeled off the very beach that almost swallowed me up. A new chapter begins.

I leave you with a short New Year's (paraphrased) blessing that I'm passing on from a monk I met on Christmas Day:

You can have anxiety or wonder in the face of the unknown. With loving-kindness for ourselves, we would make that choice easily.

And another spoken from a true survivor as seen from the whiteboard of the Apache Bar on Phi Phi island:

Enjoy your life, Anything can Happen.

Comments

[Eve]

Your blog is so full of inspiration and sparks of creativity. I enjoy reading it and am intrigued by your return visit to Thailand. Happy new year to you and yours.