New Year’s Eve, 2019
Oh, the frivolity of younger days. Imagine looking toward a new year with enthusiasm and delight, making detailed lists of goals that will be accomplished, with only yourself to stop you or get in your way. Four years ago, that was me, and yes, four years is not a long time, and I wasn’t that much younger. But with a pandemic in between now and then, New Year’s Eve 2019 feels like a different lifetime. I feel like I’ve aged a million years since then, but in some ways, I feel even more carefree.
On New Year’s Eve four years ago, I wore my favorite PJs, ate popcorn and ice cream while flipping between New Year’s shows on various TV channels, and wrote in my journal. “December 31, 2019: Tomorrow starts 2020, a year of clear vision.” I was going to get a new job. I was going to write a book. I was going to do a lot of things, until that vision was clouded by the pandemic.
Obviously, 2019 wasn’t a year of clear vision, because I didn’t see the pandemic coming (and I know I’m not alone). Around Christmas that year, while enjoying my own merry making, I half-noticed news reports about a disease in China and images of people being dragged from their homes, which my brain tucked away for reasons only my inner knowing understood at the time (but didn’t let me in on). On New Year’s Eve, the only things I was concerned about were making a list of things to do in 2020, making sure the snacks lasted until past midnight, and making sure I stayed awake for the dropping of the ball on my TV Times Square.
Fast forward to New Year’s Eve 2020, after eternal March followed by AprilMayJuneThroughDecember in a blur. I think I did the same thing as 2019—PJs, treats, and TV, but I don’t remember and I didn’t write it down. Considering how life altered after stay-at-home orders (and even after they lifted, I stayed at home), I kind of remember enjoying some exotic travel—from the usual TV room to the not often used even before lockdown guest room slash office.
New Year’s Eve 2020 was the first year in recent memory in which I didn’t make a list of goals for the following year, though. Adjusting to a life-threatening and -altering pandemic, living in survival mode, accommodating the trauma and loss around the block and the world, and hoping a vaccine would come along to help me avoid the death that permeated the year (an unfortunate clear vision that remains to this day), not only squelched but eliminated the need to list goals to attempt to achieve during 2021. In 2020, for the first time in my memory, just living was enough.
And that has continued.
The pandemic brought a clarity of vision I wasn’t expecting when I made my pun about 2020. And that main lesson of the pandemic is one I heard throughout my life but that didn’t take root for me until the world came to a halt. I know people learn this lesson, if they do at all, during different trauma experiences and this one was mine. It turns out that clear vision lesson of enough remained. Living is enough. Breathing is enough. Just being is enough.
That’s the part that makes me feel carefree—everything after just being is icing on the cake. That’s the reason I think time is still flying for me, too. Looking back, I can’t believe it has been four years since I prepared for 2020 with endless clear vision puns and a list of goals to strive to achieve. And now, New Year’s 2023 approaches and will pass faster than I think and yet my goals for 2024 remain the same as they have been for the past three years: no goals. Just be.
That’s enough. ▼
Tara Lynn Johnson is a freelance writer. Connect with her at taralynnjohnson.com.
Photo credit: Tim Mossholder on Unsplash