Jacques Brel’s Best Wishes for the New Year, 1968

I wish you an endless list of dreams, and the furious desire to make some of them come true.

I wish you to love what must be loved and to forget what must be forgotten.
I wish you passions, I wish you silences.
I wish you bird songs at dawn and chidren’s laughter.
I wish you to respect people’s differences, because the value and merit of each often
remains to be discovered.
I wish you to refuse a stalemate, or the indifference and negative vertues of our time.
And I wish you never to renounce the search, adventure, life, love, because life
is an incredible adventure and no reasonable human being must renounce it
without putting up a tough fight.
I wish you most of all to be yourself, proud and happy,
because happiness is our true destiny.