A new year confronts us. What is it that we want from the 12 months that lie ahead? The first thing we should want is health.

This is primary. Health adds zest and savour to our years. With radiant health, we are naturally optimistic – the world lies before us like a land of pleasant dreams. Without health, everything soon turns to ashes in our mouth. All our hopes are blighted, our spirits sag, the universe takes on a more sombre aspect.

But the matter of health, you say, is out of our hands. If anything is beyond our control, this is it. But multitudes of people take the boon of health and throw it away. They drive their bodies relentlessly. They allow themselves no rest. They refuse to learn the secret of moderation. Or they are perfectionists who demand the impossible from themselves and others. Then there are those who give their appetites free rein, who eat, drink, smoke or drug themselves into the grave.

We want health during the next 12 months, but we will only achieve it if we can treat our body as the “temple of the spirit” and are prepared to accept the road of moderation and sensible deprivation.

The second thing we should want in the coming year is economic security. We need to provide for ourselves and our families. We seek recognition for our work, a fair return for our labours. We want enough to educate our children properly and to provide adequately for social and cultural activities. We want to set something aside for our later years. All of this is understandable and desirable. But here, too, there is a necessary resolution: economic security must be a “means to an end,” not an end in itself. We must be concerned as much with making a life as we are with making a living. We should pray that what we do gain should not be at the expense of others – or at the expense of our self-respect and most cherished ethical ideals.

We must never worship material possessions, sacrificing health, honour and family to obtain them. When “things are in the saddle,” they ride us; they do not belong to us, we belong to them.

The third thing we should desire in the coming year is friendship and kindness. Life can never achieve full meaning or satisfaction unless we experience the warmth, the affection, the appreciation and interest of other people. And we need friends who are sincere, with whom we are not obliged to maintain false social standards, with whom we can find relaxation of mind and spirit.

On the occasion of his 94th birthday, the late writer, historian and philosopher Will Durant was asked what piece of wisdom he would distil from a lifetime of reading and reflection. “If you insist upon one brief answer,” he said, “I say kindness.”

The person who has not learned kindness remains uneducated no matter how many diplomas adorn his office walls or the number of degrees that follow his signature.

Finally, during the coming year I think we can be most truly alive, and mature if we can achieve a sense of the “mystery” and “wonder” of life. Each of us is a finite creature, our few years, a flash of light between two dark eternities, our being merely a speck on the charts of time. The more we know about ourselves and the world in which we live, the greater becomes the realm of the unknown. This is the verdict of the scientists, no less than the poets. From the smallest atom to worlds of almost unimaginable magnitude, there is so much that lies beyond our human ken.

May 5771 fulfil our deepest longings. May it make real our innermost dreams.