For The New Year
The amazing Zora Neal Hurston once said “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” If you’re philosophically inclined, like me, there’s a mix of both in every year. The proportions of each vary from time to time, but we never really run out of questions, and we’re never really able to settle on answers. I like knowing that there’s always new rabbit holes into which I might dive. It feels strangely reassuring to me that there isn’t just one answer, and that I can always got back and revisit.
For some, however, it would be preferable to have years that neither ask questions nor answer them. I don’t know about the rest of you, but this past year especially, I’ve been sensing a weird resistance to both. If 2022 could be summed up in one sentence, it might be “I don’t want to know”, and that’s understandable, I think. Worn thin by an unimaginable two years before this one, we just want to get by. Unless you’ve grown rhinoceros skin, it’s hard to keep looking at the pile of troubles that keeps growing in front of us. Unless you’re diligent, resourceful and persistent, it’s hard to keep up with the flow of information at all, let alone dig through it to find what’s truthful and useful. Unless you’re willing to stick out and be a royal pain in the butt, it’s difficult to take action.
But here we are, standing at the start of an new year, our fingers tapping nervously beside a metaphorical reset button. I want to embrace the whimsy and prickly energy of the season and make a wish, for myself and for anyone reading this.
In 2023, and beyond, I wish you curiosity-loads of it. I wish you childlike, magical, doggedly determined curiosity. I wish you the wonderful, nagging, sparkly, fantastic kind of enthusiastic wondering that you had when you were little. I wish you a veritable parade of big questions with a multitude of possible answers, and I wish you the energy and the drive to try and answer them.
If you think your well has run dry, and you’ve little to no chance of digging deeper, here are a few of the things that have kept me humming, and that I plan to continue thinking about in the new year. Feel free to borrow a few, just to get you started.
Why is it that we hang onto ideas that don’t serve us anymore? How do we learn to let go and see what’s beyond them?
What are the ties that connect us to other humans, and to the natural world?
What does it really mean to teach and to learn?
What makes some things funny, and other things tragic?
Where do we find beauty and joy, especially in times when they seem to be lacking? Can we make them ourselves?
What if I’m not the same person I was a few years ago, or even a few months ago? What’s changed about me, and is that necessarily a bad thing?
How many ways are there to show courage?
What does it mean to be free? Is there a separation between freedom and responsibility, or are they intertwined?
I’ll warn you that the type of curiosity necessary to take on these kinds of questions runs deep, and it’s fearless. It calls on us to keep looking, even when the looking gets uncomfortable and difficult. It means we have to change our minds, and to behave in different ways. It means we’ll see ourselves and others in new ways too.
But it’s also energizing. It’s joyful. It’s a way to connect and collaborate, to learn to reach out to one another. To be curious is to be at least a little hopeful and optimistic. When you go digging like this, you do so under the assumption that there will be something worth finding. We’ve suffered losses galore over the past few years, some of which we’re just starting to understand now. It seems like a good time to check and make sure curiosity isn’t among the casualties. Practically speaking, it may be a powerful driving force in thinking ourselves out of this mess.
All of those things we wish for each other at New Year’s, like love, peace, and happiness, I think they’re all tied to curiosity. None of these things just land on us, not even in the midst of the twinkly magic of a fresh start, without us going digging for them, exploring what they are, why we want them, how to share them and sustain them. So while you raise a glass, raise a query too. Make resolutions to look closer, and to keep and open mind. Fill your new calendar with opportunities to learn from and to converse with others. If you feel you must look back, at least take stock of the times when you were better off for asking “Why?”