New Year’s Syndrome
Scrolling on social media in late December, a popular meme showed a group of folks very cautiously standing around the corner from a door marked 2022, trying to open that door with a long broom handle. Conversely, a less popular meme captured a character predicting that 2022 will bring flowers. When asked why, the character replied, “because I’m planting flowers.”
I understand that for many people the last two years have been an unparalleled time of loss and grief. As some have been saying, “2020 has been the longest two years of my life.” So, approaching the new year with caution may be warranted, but why do we approach the new year as such a turning point or a hard line in the sand? How is January 1st a marker to the Universe (or whatever you might believe in) to change course or somehow be different than the course we’re already on?
I call this New Year’s Syndrome. We close out the last year as a unit and open the new one with great anticipation. I appreciate that “hope springs eternal in the human breast” so we get our hopes up that “this year will be better” and I’ll finally stick to my New Year’s Resolution this time, but then it’s February and we’re no longer going to the gym, the cat is sick, and the new project didn’t come through. The honeymoon experience of the new year is gone and we’re back into life as we know it. New Year Syndrome has let us down again.
To put this in logical context, the date January 1 is no more or less special than any other date, say the first of February or your birthday. It’s like filling up the gas tank and marveling when the gas clicks off at an exact dollar amount and no cents. $28.00 on the nose. Wow! Well, that number is just as statistically possible as $28.02 or $28.51. Have you ever woken up on your birthday actually expecting to somehow feel different, a year older, or something magical, but it just wound up being like any other day? That’s because it is.
Each and every day is truly just another day. I don’t mean that in a nihilistic-Eeyore-dismissive kind of way. I mean that each and every day has the same potential to be a font of hope in the human breast, to hold the potential for great things to happen. It doesn’t have to be any particular date for you to turn a corner, start something new, or do what makes your heart sing.
We also know from A Course in Miracles and various wisdom traditions that things only have the meaning that we give them. So characterizing an entire year with one broad stroke as awful or wonderful makes it really difficult to honor the whole experience that 2020 or 2021 has been. If the majority of the year is labeled “bad” or “rough” or a “dumpster fire,” then we lose the “good,” “beautiful,” and “awesome” that was tucked in there too. We throw the baby out with the bathwater. What does a particular year, this particular unit in time, have to be to measure up and be labeled as “That year was AWESOME!!!” Have you ever really said that?
Maybe the cure to New Year Syndrome is to release the meaning we give to time. Whatever happens in 2022, it will be 365 ¼ days of living. That’s all the new year means. And, instead of associating an arbitrary unit of time with a sweeping generalization of “all or nothing” thinking, why not honor the whole experience, the shadow and the light, to be part of the bounty of living? As C.S. Lewis once said, “The joy now is part of the pain later.” Whether it’s cancer or remission, bankruptcy or a better job, a pretty sunset or a dismal day, it is all just the Divine waiting to be known all over again.
As we let go of the limitations of time and labels, we make the space to expand our expression of the Divine. Then instead of asking: what will 2022 bring me?, we have the capacity for the more empowering question: what will I bring to 2022? What qualities will I consciously foster and bring to the world? What is my intention for my life? What is my pioneering edge?
As Joseph Campbell so sagely advised, “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.” And that path can start any time you choose. In fact, you’re already on it right now. What seeds are planting along the way?