Day 1

Thoughts as we come to the end of the first day of 2024.

Photo by Evan Wise on Unsplash

We are coming to the end of day 1. 

364 days to go in 2024. 

This morning, my father and I did something we had talked about doing for a long time. We bundled up over our bathing suits and drove to South Street Beach to run into the Atlantic Ocean on the first day of the new year. It was a short swim. Short enough to leave the car running. A burning sensation ran through my feet and legs as I struggled to get my pants and shoes back on as quickly as possible.

Driving home, the car was filled with an air of accomplishment. If nothing else, at least we finally did this. 

This afternoon, someone asked me if I made any New Year’s resolutions. I replied that, no, I haven’t. Another friend asked me if today is special for me, or if it’s just a day. Kind of both, I said. 

One of the things that I have been thinking about on New Year’s the last few years is how the transition from one calendar year to the next means that we are saying goodbye to states of being that existed at a particular time. The change from one number to the next in the year portion of the date line creates a feeling of tremendous distance. My grandparents passed away in March of 2021, and when the calendar rolled into 2022, it meant leaving the last year when they had been alive. It is a transition that I could neither avoid nor ignore. Their passing suddenly seemed like something that happened further in the past, and that we should have been further removed from than we were.

I have been thinking a lot about the families of the victims of October 7 today. Yesterday was the last day of the last year when their loved ones were alive. This morning, when they woke up, there was a space that had not previously existed. This morning, when I woke up, there was no mention of Israel on the landing page of the major news websites I frequent. The world is moving on in 2024. 

This is a day when many of us decide, consciously and unconsciously, what we are bringing forward with us into the next trip around the sun. We can do this with fashion trends and habits in ways that largely impact only ourselves (and our wallets). But what happens, when we do it with people? What will happen to the 136 hostages remaining in Gaza as public attention turns to a blank, new page? What will happen to all of the things that changed after October 7 that remain unresolved? 

I accept that this happens. At some point, we stopped talking about Haiti, and Afghanistan, and Uighurs. I am not proposing a different standard in this case, and I accept my complicity in failing to keep those stories front of mind for myself, if not for others. 

For as much as I am not one for New Year’s resolutions, I don’t intend to repeat the mistake of allowing an ongoing humanitarian crisis to fade into obscurity when its ramifications are still being felt daily.