Going into 2022...
Happy new year, everyone! The twenty-second year of our current millennia is finally here, and with it comes a whole new trove of opportunities and things to talk about! The thought of it is both thrilling and chilling, but nevertheless here we are!
Hey all! Happy New Year!
First off, I’d like to congratulate you if you’re reading this! You made it through 2021! Here’s a recap of what you accomplished: You survived through two years and three new variants of the Covid-19 pandemic. You survived the historic unemployment numbers that the pandemic brought with it, and then the terrible labor market that came from employers soon after. You survived through one of the worst supply chain shortages of the modern era, affecting everything from food to tech. You survived through worsening climate-change issues that hurt seemingly every corner of this planet through storms, floods, fires, and more. You survived an ever-hostile political climate that only seems to start fights and alienate us from one another. You survived your own personal struggles, whatever they may be, so that you could see another day on this earth. Simply surviving in 2021 was no easy feat, and the fact that you did it calls for celebration.
With that said, I think everyone will agree that past few years have been hard on us, both individually and as a society. I mean, just look at the paragraph above, and you’ll see that there were no shortage of issues. Many of us suffered loss, pain, or endured struggles that made looking to the future hard to do. These experiences have lead many people, including myself, to look at this new year in fear that that nothing will fundamentally change. It’s scary.
Personally, I look at 2022 and see this looming cloud of pain and sadness ahead due to personal factors that will inevitably come to expire in the near future. Housing, family, health, work… You name it, anxieties are there. To be honest, the prospect of this new year frightens me more than it excites me.
But there’s one saying that my dad told me as a kid that sticks with me to this day that helps me through it: “This too shall pass.”
Whether we wanted it or not, this new year is here, and it’ll either make us or break us. It too shall pass whether we do anything to affect it or not. To quote one of my favorite left-leaning posters, Aaron Thorpe: “There is no true refuge in the past, nor is a better world waiting for us — we have to make it.”1 With that in mind, we should do our best to make the best of whatever this new year hands us.
For me, a new year means a new chance to set goals for what I want to accomplish over the next 365 days. I’m not talking about those “New Year’s resolution” promises that usually fall to the wayside halfway through January. Rather, I’m talking about actual long-term goals for the next twelve months. They don’t even have to be immediately tangible like most resolutions are, rather just ideals that I would like to strive towards over time.
I’d like to be there for my family more often, especially as health spreads us more thin. I’d like to be a better partner to my girlfriend Bentley, even better than I am today. I’d like to strive for success in my academics over the next year. Lastly, I’d like to meet more friends who think and act as I do, while bettering bonds with my existing friends.
I suggest you come up with a few goals for yourself and write them down for yourself somewhere you’ll remember. Put them in some time capsule or something that will notify you next year, so you can look back and see how you did.
The last and most important thing I’d like to remind everyone about is that you’re not alone. Even though it may seem out of place surrounded by actual life-threatening situations, I put the “political climate” sentence in the first paragraph mainly because modern society— politics, social media, social distancing, etc.— can make us feel lonely and isolated. And loneliness is one of the worst challenges anyone can face by themselves.
No matter what society or government does, the one thing that we will always have is each other. I’ve always been of the thought that mutual aid can be and always will be superior to any external involvement. No matter what happens over the next year, take care of your circle, and your circle will take care of you.
Together, let’s look forward into this new year and make it the best that it can be.
- Andrew
- Thorpe, Aaron. “What May Have Been.” Space+Light, 28 Nov. 2021, https://spacelight.substack.com/p/what-may-have-been. ↩