New Year, New Existential Crisis
I’ve been contemplating what to write my New Year’s essay about. My life has been tumultuous the past two years and I’ve been feeling uninspired to write something hopeful. Hope has been more evasive than it’s been in a long time.
I am in a chronic state of anticipation. Waiting for a Work Visa to be approved or rejected so I can return to Oxford. Waiting for my book to be accepted or rejected by an agent. Waiting to see if my romantic relationship will overcome its struggles. There are so many question marks, it’s hard to bear them all at once.
I turned to my old writing for inspiration. I found an essay I wrote on ‘fear’ from six years ago. Last year, my New Years essay was also drawn from this essay, and I entitled it “Redeeming Fear”. Naturally I thought that I could use this old essay again for inspiration.
The original essay spoke to me, but I was so different six years ago. I was so sure of myself and my opinions. My writing style in this essay was pastoral. I was teaching about the paradox of fear and how to engage with it. Reading it now, I felt something was missing from my little sermon. I was writing an answer to a question. The problem was that I didn’t give the question room to breathe.
I read it and cried because the answer it gave to fear is still profound and full of truth and healing (I will share shortly). The lead up to the answer reminded me of Paul the Apostle, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and other literary writers that have heavily influenced my style. It’s purposeful, mechanical, experienced, structured, confident. That is a part of who I am, but to have my first piece of writing published in 2022 to be in this style—to start off this New Year highlighting that part of me— it seems disingenuous because that part of me is currently dormant.
I started writing this not knowing where it was going. I thought I would let the destination come naturally and hope it turns out okay, maybe have a little stroke of genius near the end. My technique here is not unlike what I am doing in life right now: Going through the motions, waiting for things to turn out okay. The destination open-ended.
I know that this resonates with many others. We are two years into a pandemic which has turned most of our lives upside-down, and there is still no end in sight. We thought the vaccines were going to enable us to socialize and work and travel again, but here we still are. Waiting, anticipating, exhausted, hope dwindling, lives falling apart. This essay is for those, like me, who have lost more than they’ve gained and are too scared to hope that maybe, this year, it will be different.
The last time I had lost everything was six years ago, not long before I wrote that essay I mentioned. I had all my dreams come true only to have them snatched away. Back then it was my career, this time it was my engagement. Back then, all I had left was the book I had just started writing. Still, after everything I’ve lost these past two years, this book continues to be all I have. This story.
Then last week, this crazy thing happened. I suddenly got over 7000 followers on social media, each of them believing in this book, in me. I’m still processing it. This started to make me think that maybe this year will be different. Not because of some fate or chance, but because I’m not alone. I have a handful of strangers who are cheering me on, and it’s a familiar feeling. It feels like hope.
The answer to fear in that old essay I wrote was this:
We are not alone.
We are not alone in our fear, our grief, our disappointments, our failures, our waiting.
I find comfort in believing in the ancient promise that God is with me. What I have grown to realize since I wrote that essay is that the divine is in each person I meet. Each person who offers me help. Each connection formed is where the Great Spirit abides.
When we suffer together.
When we overcome together.
When we celebrate together.
When we help each other.
I don’t know if this year I will have more to celebrate. I’m not even going to try to convince myself that it will be different.
I am just going to remind myself:
I’m not alone.
There is something bigger than me, something glimpsed in every act of love that I give, receive, and witness.
That in itself is cause for hope.
““When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.””