New slate

Today, we have literally thrown away the past. What remains of last year’s calendar is now lying with egg shells and empty pineapple cans. Later, it will be picked up by a garbage truck and piled alongside other remainders of yesterday. Soon, it will be incinerated together with other objects that were once part of us. As the pile burns, it will scatter fumes that will mix with the air we breathe. And until we have inhaled every last bit of it, it will remain hanging below the sky, waiting.

Today, we will continue to receive greetings from friends and family wishing us a great year ahead. Our timelines will be flooded with pictures of colorful fireworks with inspirational messages on them. And while we are struggling to somehow grasp the idea of what they truly mean, we will see variations of “Happy New Year” hash tags. They will prod us into deeper thinking of how gestures can be so profound yet so empty.

Today, we will continue to make promises to ourselves that we know we can’t keep; we will say that this year we will eat less, read more, spend less, travel more. After a few weeks, we will find ourselves confused as to which ones we will do more and which ones less. But we make our lists, anyway—maybe because there’s a certain comfort in thinking that we have a plan, or maybe because we are secretly hoping that this time, we will be able to go a bit further than what we have previously accomplished. Or because while we write down our resolutions, we feel in one of the few moments of absolute self-belief that we can do them.

Today, we say we will start over. It is about clean slates, if not new beginnings. We paid our bills before the old year ended. We emptied our closets of the things we no longer use. We cleaned our rooms from corner to corner. We shared thoughts we wouldn’t normally share. We apologized and forgave. We sang and danced harder than ever. We tried so hard to start the year right.

Today, we are spending the first days of a very long or a very short year, depending on what we do, how we do them, and who we do them with.

Jepoy Panti, 23, is a banker.