What Do You Hope For in the New Year?

My email inbox is chock full of end-of-year reflection questions for 2023 and goal-setting templates for 2024. I will likely take bits from several of them and do my own reflection and planning at some point. It’s good to look both back and ahead sometimes.

But I think the best question is one a friend posed during a pre-Christmas lunch with two of my nearest and dearest. She asked,

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“What do you hope for in the new year?”

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It took us a minute. We hope for so many things, big and small. I hope to find a foundation that doesn’t settle into the wrinkles multiplying on my face. I hope to finally do the decluttering I’ve been meaning to do for 10, 15, 20, 25 years. I hope to find a way to make myself do some strength training because I am 52 and I’m starting to worry it may be too late. These aren’t resolutions. I’m shit at keeping those. But they are things I hope for. Things that make it possible to look toward tomorrow and not wallow too much in my current exhaustion and grief. They also direct my focus to “doable” things rather than the things I truly hope for (ache for) over which I have absolutely no control.

There are people very close to me who are struggling with very big things I cannot fix. These are things that I cannot research my way to resolving, nor can I think enough or worry enough to make them disappear. I hope, with everything I’ve got, that the burden lessens for these people I love so much. I hope they find a way through. I hope they find some reprieve. I hope I do, too.

Meanwhile, it feels like the world is falling apart.

Again.

Still.

I don’t know what to make of any of it — one horror after another, over and over and over again. I hope for peace. I hope those suffering the most find comfort and healing. I hope the hatred can stop. I hope we can learn to see each other as human beings.

And yet (because there’s always and yet), there is so much beauty all around, in spite of everything, in spite of ourselves. Before Christmas, I got to spend some time with my niece who lives across the country from me — what a gift! I have friends who came to drop off Christmas dinner before they even sat down to eat themselves. I take at least one photo every day of something beautiful and I never have to look very far. I was born with more privilege than some people in the world will ever know and hope I always remember that. And yet, and yet, and yet . . .

What do YOU hope for in the new year?

xo,

Beth