New year, auld you: Marking the end of something that’s not quite done

It’s that time of year: the finishing time. The time when people reflect back on the year, compile “best of” lists, honor those who passed away, and resolve to change or begin something new.

You might also, depending where you’re from or find yourself, eat 12 grapes at midnight, blow a horn, get drunk, get dressed up, wear yellow undies, eat black-eyed peas, burn a wish and then drink the ashes with champagne, wear red undies, jump off a chair, burn an effigy, ring a bell 108 times, wear polka dots, toss coins into a pan, dive into a lake while holding a tree trunk, throw an old toaster or a pail of water out the window, read a letter to your parents, give someone marzipan, smash a plate on your neighbor’s doorstep, eat a donut filled with jam or mustard, splash water on someone else, bake a tall cake and decorate it with flags, hold hands, sing “Auld Lang Syne, “hang onions, erase a grudge with a fistfight….

This year, in addition to all of that, there’s an especially raucous global chorus: the one bidding good riddance to 2020, the year that surprised and shook us, upended our daily lives, and, for the hardest hit, the year that sickened some, left others struggling, traumatized, or dead.

Like everyone, I’ve been looking forward to changing out my wall calendar for all that it might symbolically — and psychologically — do for us. I, too, have written dozens of “wishing you all the best in 2021” messages.

But even as I’ve prepared to sweep all 2020 crumbs off the back porch, I keep having a sotto voce thought: aren’t we going to wake up on January 1, 2021 and realize we’re in the same boat we were in for most of 2020? Won’t our lives on Friday morning feel, smell, look, and sound very much as they did on Thursday?

So I think, in my un-buoyant moments: maybe tone down the rhetoric of newness for 2021… for now. The crumbs, even with glitter and confetti mixed in (especially with glitter mixed in) are hard to clean up in one sweep.

Won’t our lives on Friday morning feel, smell, look, and sound very much as they did on Thursday?

Maybe if I don’t make a big deal about this year’s end, I can plod into January with better calibrated expectations. Have you heard of the third-quarter phenomenon? It’s the “decline in performance during the third quarter of missions in isolated, confined, and extreme environments, regardless of actual mission duration,” according to a study published in the Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments (2018).

Researchers have observed “changes in cognitive and interpersonal behavior, and an increase in reported negative experiences and undesirable mood states” on people in polar, space, and submarine missions.

“Not every day can be sunshine and penguins,” says David Knoff, who’s been heading up the Davis Station research outpost in Antarctica since November of 2019. “You will have bad days, weeks, months, and the highs and lows will oscillate faster and higher as the months roll on, but stay focused on the positive and have a goal in sight.” [source: “How to Deal With Life in Long-Term Isolation,” New York Times]

The goal we share right now is the end of Covid. It’d be nice if that goal coincided with the end of 2020, but we know we’re not quite there, even if, hopefully, we’re past the halfway point. So, what to do with this end that isn’t really the end? How do we lift the drag?

The answer will be different for each one of you. For myself, despite my inclination to set realistic expectations, I am looking for a reboot ritual this New Year’s Eve to lift my spirits. There are times when we need conclusions. Sometimes, we have to say something is over even when we know it’s not quite done. For sanity. For the chance to create a fresh start. For the love of life and each other. To practice, in Galway Kinnell’s phrase, a “tenderness toward existence.”

So, a strong endorsement from me this year for picking a ritual to end something that may not be quite done. Talk to your animals, watch a large multi-colored ball fall from the sky, count backwards, throw white flowers into the ocean, melt tin and pour it in a bucket of cold water, kiss someone, dive into icy waters, visit a graveyard, slice an apple in half and examine the core, decorate your home, light a sparkler.

I just emailed my block to ask if anyone wants to join me New Year’s Eve in walking my biggest suitcase around the block to ring in some hope for travel in 2021 (a Costa Rican tradition). A few neighbors already wrote back to say they’re in.