Celebrate the Love in Your Life

I have never had a pet in my life. Growing up in Kenya, I was of course familiar with animals but not pets. Later as an adult, I gave a number of reasons to stay pet-free—I was too busy with work, I spent a lot of time travelling, pets were too noisy and messy, etc. Besides, I just never really connected with animals. Or so I told myself. So I have never known what it was like to have a dog in the home.

Until now.

Shelli was celebrating a milestone birthday recently and it occurred to me that in all our time together, I tended to give her gifts that gave me pleasure. This time I wanted to make a special gesture. I wanted to find the perfect gift that reflected who she was, something she really wanted, even if it meant making a real sacrifice myself.

Shelli loves dogs. And that's how we came to share our home—our newly-furnished new home—with a lively Australian Labradoodle puppy. And I love him.

This leads me to my last bit of advice as we head into the new year, and it may be the most important because it literally goes to the heart of who we all are. The advice is this:

Find new ways to love.

I would never have believed that I could fall in love with a dog so quickly. For that matter, I would never have believed that I could fall in love with a dog, period. But Kenya, as we call him, has revitalized my life. The experience reminds me of the early times of fatherhood—the teaching moments, the inevitable frustrations, the moments of pure joy, and most of all the incredible feeling of loving and being loved unconditionally. It's wonderful.

The irony here is that I set out to do something selfless and give a great gift to Shelli, but I still ended up doing something for myself. Which goes to show that great things happen when you act from a place of a pure love.

I hope this is something we can all remember in the days ahead. It's a sad reality of life that in our day to day busyness and pursuit of the next great thing, it is the people closest to us that we tend to take for granted. We know we love them deeply, but even love—the most powerful emotion we know—can be dulled by routine if we let it.

So find new ways to love. You don't have to add a dog to your family, necessarily. But find new ways and new opportunities to celebrate the love around you. After all, any other success you achieve will ultimately feel hollow if you are not loving the journey. And don't forget that love has the amazing property of being an infinitely renewable resource—the more you give, the more you have.

Here's to a great 2015—may yours be filled with fulfillment, prosperity, invigorating challenges, elating moments of triumph, and, most of all, lots and lots of love.


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