Well you must be glad to have 2023 behind you!
And I smile or say “yes, thank you!” every time I hear that lately (which is quite a bit) because I understand what they’re saying—It’s been a crappy year, with lots of pain and loss and difficult circumstances and I see you, and I feel for you, and I hope you get a fresh start.
I appreciate that kindness so much.
But something about the phrase hasn’t quite sat right with me. Over the past week, while not making in/out lists, I’ve been thinking about how we give too much credence to fresh starts.
For better or for worse, we don’t get to leave the past behind, not really. We can flip the calendar page to January, we can start new chapters, we can rise from the ashes… name your own favorite metaphor here and I’m sure it works.
But who are we, if not the culmination of all our experiences, our missteps, our mistakes and failed relationships — and the learning and the growth that come from all of it.
I still think back to all the well-intentioned people who assured me after high school that “when you get to college, you can be anyone you want to be!” Lies. Utter trash. I made sure not to say anything like that to my kids. Maybe you’ll find yourself in a better friend group, maybe you’ll learn a new part of yourself you didn’t know. But you don’t get to Saltburn yourself into a totally different person.
Who are we, if not the culmination of all our experiences, our missteps, our mistakes and failed relationships.
I know I’m probably the zillionth person you know to talk about this. I mean, whenever I see a poll or a social post asking adults whether they would go back to being 18 again, most say no way in hell. Not that I wouldn’t want my 18-year-old knees back or the ability to eat pasta for dinner every night, but no. I wouldn’t go back and start over. It’s not sudoku.
I want to keep moving forward. And the only way to do that is to get comfortable carrying all my previous years with me.
Maybe that’s not even a burden. Maybe we can look at it as a demonstration of our ever-increasing, all-powerful, mega impressive strength.
January isn’t a full factory reboot. With few exceptions, we don’t initiate a hard reset of everything about our lives and become entirely new people, even if we do manage to change some habits.
We are who we are. Our lives don’t work better by turning it off and on again, even if that were an option. Our lives work better by making incremental changes that can only happen by looking objectively about what we’ve learned from the past year (or decade or project or terrible meeting) and carrying those lessons with us.
You know that Shel Silverstein poem, What’s in the Sack? That’s what I picture.
If you don’t know it, think: Less Santa, more extremely avid collector.
(Or, a ludicrously capacious bag, if you will.)
So when I flipped our wall calendar page from 2023 to January, 2024 last week, I’m said to myself consciously, I’m not leaving the year behind.
There are few people whose thinking I admire, and they have had wonderful ways to talk about this far more succinctly than I do:
“Experiencing a hard moment? Instead of getting frustrated lean into: ‘Huh, isn’t that interesting!?’ Life bumps are your teachers.”
– Tina Roth Eisenberg
“The pains and joys of our years are not left behind; they are part of us, guiding us, reminding us of the depth and breadth of our human experience.”
– Frederick Joseph
“I am realizing that all along, there was more to me, and I am now allowing myself to see it.”
– Morgan Harper Nichols
As I have mentioned here, I cry at everything — hugging old friends, making a toast before dinner, reading birthday cards from my kids, the music from Frozen, mediocre romcoms with happy endings.
(I will say I did not cry at the end of Saltburn, so there’s that.)
But I always, without fail, cry at countdown to midnight on New Year’s Eve. I think it’s because it’s evidence I get to keep going. What a privilege that is.
Liz Gumbinner is a Brooklyn-based writer, award-winning ad agency creative director, and OG mom blogger who was called “funny some of the time” by an enthusiastic anonymous commenter. This was originally posted on her Substack “I’m Walking Here!,” where she covers culture, media, politics, and parenting.