Happy New Year!
We hope you’re all taking time to rest and connect with loved ones. The end of a year can be a time for reflection and gratitude, and we recently found a poignant inspiration for both in this Patti Davis piece on Sandra Day O’Connor and how she handled her husband’s battle with dementia. It’s about love and honesty and bravery in the face of a debilitating disease, and if you’re looking for a thoughtful and inspiring read we recommend it.
We also loved this article in AARP by Joe Colapinto that shares a series of anecdotes on how music affects the mind. The beautiful collection of stories includes one about Concetta Tomaino, who worked with Oliver Sacks at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx.
If you’re looking for a slightly longer read, we always find Oliver’s Gratitude to be a beautiful text to revisit at the turn of the year. It’s the source of one of our favorite Oliver quotes:
“I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”
We hope, at the turn of the year, that no matter what is happening in your lives, your predominant feeling can be one of gratitude.
Cheers,
The Oliver Sacks Foundation Team
Header photo by @estee_wantstoread, via Instagram
