"Face the brutes." That is a lesson for all life-face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them.
Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us. Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.
I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.