The allure of a New Year’s resolution often lies in the promise of transformative change, a chance to reinvent ourselves and cast away the struggles of the past. A shared experience for many, however, is the realization that we set unrealistic expectations and end up with unmet goals. As we welcome 2024, it’s important to consider meaningful change when planning out our resolutions.
Honestly, last year sucked and it’s okay to say that. I lost more loved ones in one year than I had collectively in the previous twenty-two. I lost much of my sense of self that used to frame my identity. It was the worst year of my life and I was counting down the days until it would end.
As the clock struck midnight on January 1st, I selfishly expected the world to feel different; to provide a clean slate. I was wrong. Everything from the year before was still happening and it was not nearing its end. I always tell myself that a new year is an opportunity to erase the past and start fresh. I have a different approach this year. Suddenly, I’m realizing that I can’t erase the past because it is part of a learning process that I seem to have been rejecting all my life. If we could erase the hardships of our past, wouldn’t we erase our wisdom of the present?
Just before New Year’s Eve, I watched Liev Schriber’s Everything Is Illuminated expecting it to be a silly adventure comedy. Instead, I was left with a better understanding of humanity. The film has been a recent fixation of my mother’s. After much pushback from my younger sister, who begged her not to watch it for the seventh time that month, we soon had it set up and ready to go on the TV. After a rather slow beginning, the dark comedy turned into a deep tragedy and truly an indescribable film.
The 2005 film is narrated by Alex (Eugene Hutz), a Russian-speaking Ukrainian whose family runs a business that searches for Jewish ancestry around Ukraine. It follows Jonathan (Elijah Wood), a young Jewish American, as he searches for a small town called Trachimbrod that was erased from the map when the Nazis liquidated Eastern European shtetls. This unexpected journey throughout the film becomes a metaphor for the broader realization that we are not separate from our pasts. This is not an easy idea to come to terms with since the pain of the past is forever aligned with the pain of recollection and the shaping of identity. And yet, it also casts a glow of understanding onto the present; it is a time as much as it is a place.
I thought of my grandfather during every second of the film. About how he escaped the Soviet Union to protect our family; about how his past never disappeared, but how he was able to build a future for himself and for generations to follow. The lessons from his past never left him, yet he led a life with so much love and passion that no one would ever know the pain he suffered. When I think of my future, I think of my grandfather. I think of Alex and Jonathan’s grandfathers. I think of the people who lived with meaning which I can only begin to understand.
So, this year, my New Year’s resolution will not be to wake up and hit the gym at 6 AM. For the first time, my resolution will be to live with purpose, as my grandfather did. Because that is the kind of change I want to see in the world. Instead of conventional pledges of self-improvement, 2024’s biggest “in” should be living with love and resilience in a way that aligns with profound change far beyond individual boundaries.