The Things We Carry (Namely, Each Other)
The New Year is upon us. A bit dauntingly, I might add. It’s roughly fifteen degrees warmer than it should be, and the new COVID variant (with a terrifying name—who chose Omicron? Was that a marketing thing?) continues to run rampant. After the already stressful holiday season, which followed an already stressful year, it’s time for us to decide who we want to be (although it’s more often who we don’t want to be) for the next 365 days. It’s time for our resolutions: to change some part of ourselves we find unlikeable, to shed some uncomfortable skin, to shake off our own shadow.
I don’t want to.
For me, making New Year’s resolutions has never felt like a negative practice. I’ve used it as a way to wipe the slate clean and start anew. Tabula rasa, or whatever. But this year has changed many of us, and the idea of wiping the slate clean, of effectively erasing the loss and grief and anxiety the past year has carried, feels too callous of a choice to make. It’s tempting to want to forget, but I’m not sure we should try. I’m not sure it’d be possible anyway.
(To be clear, I’m not talking about the resolutions that involve showing more kindness to strangers or recycling or reading before bed. I’m talking about the ones that say, “This year I don’t want to be X, Y, or Z because being X, Y, or Z is bad.”)
It’s especially difficult to ask ourselves who we want to be when it feels like the world may not let us be that person. Queer, BIPOC, disabled, and other marginalized individuals know this well. The stakes feel higher now though, don’t they? The world we lived in in 2019 feels drastically different from the one we’re entering as of January 1st, 2022. It’s hard not to wonder what it’ll look like even six months from now. It’s hard not to wonder how we’ll fit into it, if it will have us.
This year I’m doing away with resolutions. This is absolutely not to say that you should if it’s something you look forward to, nor am I saying resolutions are bad. It’s more the fact that when I think about what I want to be and what I want to offer, it’s impossible to ignore what I’m not and what I don’t. Instead, I’m focusing on gratitude.
This past spring, when sh*t felt unbearably real, I started a gratitude journal. I’d wake up and wait for the day to end, and when it did, I’d challenge myself to find three things I was grateful for. It became second nature, building a palace of small joys. I became grateful for my discomfort. I became grateful for the pain that comes with growing. I became grateful for yogurt (don’t ask) and my neighbor’s booming laugh from across the hall. I’d trudge through the afternoon, but I’d always laugh when he did.
It’s no doubt that we’re walking into 2022 collectively carrying new anxieties, new fears, fresh grief. I’ll admit I’m carrying them personally, and I’ll admit there’s things about myself I don’t like. I might even be a little 18th century about it and say I find some of my qualities quite disagreeable and honestly borderline hysterical. But focusing on what I don’t want to be doesn’t help me sleep at night. Melatonin and focusing on the space I have to fill—the room I have to grow—does. I’m grateful for the lack. It’s made me realize it isn’t lack.
What are you carrying? What are you grateful for? If you make them, what are your resolutions? Happy New Year.
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