A mindset for 2024

12.31.2023

As I spent the past week with spotty cell service and limited background noise of the news, I took a much-needed deep breath. Disconnecting from reality can be a useful tool in clearing your mind and gaining greater clarity on priorities. As we turn the page on 2023, I assume many of us will use the calendar change to reflect and redefine. Each year I make a foolish resolution related to working out more, eating less, blah blah. And while those both contribute to a healthy lifestyle, and are critically important, my focus on those two things has always for the wrong reasons. This year, my resolutions feel deeper, more personal and even more critical to my wellbeing.

This past year has been excruciating. Personally, I suffered my greatest loss and am navigating the uncharted waters of grief. Like the waves I’m listening to as I write this, the emotions are unpredictable. One minute you are carefree and living life, and the next you are pounded and smothered, desperate to breathe. It can be a lonely journey, but that is only because it’s impossible to anticipate. I’ve learned to speak up when I need a hug, to vent to a girlfriend or let go when I just want to cry. I’ve been told time heals the rawness, and I can see how that is the case as I’m approaching the one year anniversary of my father’s passing. Having recently watched a lifelong best friend navigate their father’s similar terminal cancer diagnosis, I revisited the scenes in my mind I had buried away. I relived the heartache, the deep and painful emotions, the despair and the fear—but from a different perspective. A vantage point that can only, and I mean only, be created through time. So naturally, I’m reminded that each day is precious. And while that sounds cliche, it’s really the only truth I can unequivocally be certain about.

The past year also encapsulated the greatest atrocities against my Jewish people since the Holocaust and that has made every day since October 7th scary and difficult. First and foremost, the barbaric acts of the savage terrorists forever altered an entire generation of Jews. Grandparents, parents and children celebrating at a music festival or enjoying a family evening on a kibbutz, just gone. Murdered, raped, tortured and kidnapped while much of the world stands by justifying these acts with uninformed chants of retribution and the need for “context.” I watch in awe as kidnapped Hersh Goldberg Polin’s mom Rachel speaks of her heartache and pleas for her son’s return with an eloquence that is nothing short of astonishing. Many people around the world are praying with her daily, but we’ve also seen how so many more are not. We’ve exhausted social media posts calling out celebrities, athletes, political figures, univeristy leadership and other minorities for ignoring every aspect of 10/7 and what it represents. I’ve read comments that the Jewish people feel as if they have been collectively sitting shiva since that defining day, like a cloud of grief follows us throughout our daily activities. I thought it was a perfect articulation. And as we turn the page to 2024, I remain hopeful that the Israeli hostages will return home, but that becomes increasingly difficult as I see the deep hatred that has penetrated our college campuses, city streets, mainstream media and daily rhetoric. As a race, I feel abandoned.

But Judaism is grounded in survival. Our approach to death is based on living. We bury the dead as quickly as possible and then surround the mourners to help them survive, to help them function, to help them move forward…to help them live. So live we MUST! Individually and collectively we have been taught to persevere. What used to feel ancient and related to Biblocal stories we learned in Hebrew school now feels current. We are living in the moment that will be taught in history and how we ensure survival falls on each of us. As we’ve said hundreds of times in the past few months, Never Forget is NOW.

AND SO IT GOES…as we head into an election year (one I am personally dreading), I ask us all to refrain from continued hate. We can have different political views and practice different religions, but that can’t equate to vitriol and disdain. We have allowed the rhetoric on everything to be polarizing and extreme. I know each of us has the ability to be better than that, to respect each other’s existence and be a decent person. As I end 2023, I am exhausted and fearful. My 2024 resolution is to be motivated and hopeful. It will not be easy, but the calendar date is giving me an opportunity to write a different story mentally. International wars and domestic political drama is out of my control, but the way I respond to it is not. Recently I read an article by Oprah about how she finally achieved her desired weight loss, drugs and healthy eating aside, she stopped fixating on the scale and started focusing on the metrics of her mind: gratitude. She opens and closes each day with a stated articulation of what she is thankful for in that moment. Obviously some days that is easier than others, but what a powerful commitment to a positive mindset. As the sun rises on a new year, let’s put more positivity out into the universe and see what we get back. Praying for peace and wishing everyone a healthy and fulfilling 2024. Xoxo