Letter 6: On New Beginnings
Another year is over and a fresh one is upon us. But the shadow of 2021 still looms large, as does, in fact, that of 2020. Years don’t even seem like the right way to parcel up time anymore. A new sort of era began in March of 2020, years melting together as we sit in wait to emerge from this new normal and slip back into the old.
How was your 2021? I hope that in spite of everything it brought many joys and that the struggles you faced were not too much to bear. We began 2021 with a collective sense of hope, but perhaps it resented the expectations we placed upon it and instead turned out to be, in some ways, just as brutal as 2020.
Leaving aside the obvious suffering, for those of us lucky enough to evade illness and the deaths of loved ones, 2020 at the very least brought us the novelty of pandemic life: the surreal sense that every person on the planet was having a version of the same experience at the same time, the rallying together of strangers in the face of uncertainty and adversity, the collective adjustment to new routines and new cultural norms. As I write from Toronto, still heavily laden with restrictions, 2021 has been a year of monotony and dashed hopes.
What will be in store for us in 2022?
The transition into a new year carries a certain sadness. The obnoxious revelry of New Year’s Eve celebrations – the cacophony of sound and light and supposed joy – short-circuits the sensory system.
The chest-constricting weight of expectations that you place upon yourself, piling them, small at first, gently, one by one, until you’re crushed under the weight of your resolutions. Planning until you’ve poured all your energy into planning and never get around to the doing. Waiting for the right moment to begin (there is never a right moment).
The stroke of midnight, that magical threshold. But as the first minute of the new year passes, and you realize you’re still the same underbaked person you were last year, it’s ok, because the new year can actually begin now… no, now… wait, ok, now. How quickly the freshness fades. And as the first day of January draws to a close, you think to yourself, This day is a write-off anyway, the new year will truly start tomorrow. You spend your time repeatedly seeking out fresh starts until you wake up one day and it’s the middle of June.
January 1st is a terrible time for change, anyway. You’re never in strong enough form to tackle your resolutions, even if, like me, your New Year’s Eve is just a couple glasses of wine and your bodyweight in frozen hors d’oeuvres, lying half comatose on the sofa watching hysterical Americans count down to midnight.
Allow me to leave you with a tonic, instead, to ease this new year’s discomfort. Although the following quotation from legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa refers to the writing process, the wisdom it contains can be applied to any pursuit in life:
“When you go mountain climbing, the first thing you’re told is not to look at the peak but to keep your eyes on the ground as you climb. You just keep climbing patiently one step at a time. If you keep looking at the top, you’ll get frustrated. I think writing is similar. You need to get used to the task of writing. You must make an effort to learn to regard it not as something painful but as routine.”
Small steps, Reader. Small steps.
Happy New Year. Thanks for reading. See you next week.