How New Year's Eve Really Works
It turns memories into inspirations for our future
When I was eighteen, attending school in Bologna, Italy, my grandmother died.
Since then, I’ve realized that massive change can happen any day of the year. It’s not only December 31st that presents us with a bridge from the past into the future.
And that’s why New Year’s Eve isn’t just a date: It’s a mindset for growth.
Let me tell you a story.
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Some Years Make You Stronger
They say what doesn’t stop you makes you stronger.
As far as 2024 goes, I’m wrapping up as Hercules. Indeed, this year tried to stop us all, over and over. My mother died. Colleagues retired. Projects cancelled. My industry faced multiple upheavals. Budgets were cut. Family plans upended. Oh, and wasn’t there an election somewhere in there, too? I’m guessing all of our change-management muscles are sorer and tireder, if not a bit wiser as well.
I suspect we’re all more than ready for the New Year.
A Thousand Memories
I was browsing through some photos on a plane this weekend.
Each image reminds me of moments that became milestones. Looking back is a kind of superpower for us all: Remember being told as a kid, think before you speak? Well, I’ve learned to reflect before I leap. Where I have been holds so many lessons for where I want to go. And New Year’s Eve is a perfect time to do some reflecting on that journey, and who it’s helped me become. As I tell my coaching clients every week:
Spend more time on your To-Be list than your To-Do list.
Looking at photos from the past year reminds me of what I loved so much — and want to do again, more, soon. With the people, in the places, that should occupy more of the journey than all the latest, noisy, scrolled distractions that get our attentions. If I want next year to be worth it, what made it worthy this year gives me direction.
The future may be unknown, but it doesn’t have to be uncharted.
Bookmarks of Wisdom
Photos are life’s bookmarks.
For a moment to become something worth saving, it had to teach me something. Flipping through photos is like refreshing the best lessons for a life worth leading. Each year, I add a few entries to a special folder; they’re more than just favorites.
They’re life rafts.
I flip through them whenever I need advice from my past. Though I have a good memory — someone called it photographic — the pictures we all keep serve as wisdom bookmarks — a visual version of the most important lesson my Mom taught me:
No matter what happens: If you’re there, you’re ready.
Back to the Future
When I was eighteen and studying in Bologna, my Nonna died.
It happened just a few days after I’d arrived from America, the first of the grandchildren to return to the country of our heritage. It was the end of a very long journey: Nonna taught me the language as a baby, told stories of the Old Country every day, and embodied what it meant to be Italian. By the time I arrived in Bologna as a teenager, it felt more like coming home than going abroad.
When I saw her for the last time, Nonna said, “You’ll see all the places I’ve told you about, all the people you’ll feel you know already. But you won’t be returning to my Italy from long ago. You’ll be arriving in the Italy of your future.”
Then she smiled in such a proud way that I burst out laughing, recalling everything my family had done to make it possible for me to go forward, not back to Italy.
It was my first New Year’s Eve in the Spring.
A New Year’s Change
That’s how New Year’s Eve works, any day of the year.
When we find ourselves stepping forward in time, we glance once more over our shoulders at what it took to get to a new starting point. The end of the year isn’t a finishing line. As the clock winds down, we recall it all— beautiful milestones and heartbreaking challenges — that fill us with gratitude and confidence for what’s about to happen:
Our future.
Even the holiday’s song reminds us about how it should work, although I’ve always felt it’s been punctuated wrong:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?
[Put an exclamation mark instead of a question mark, and you’ll see the wisdom of the message!]
The Future Needs You
When Nonna passed away, I hadn’t even had time to call her since I’d arrived. That afternoon, I sat in the garden of my host family. “I don’t know what to do,” I cried. “I can’t afford to go back for the funeral. But it’s not about the money. I don’t want to go back. She worked so hard to get me here. I feel that she waited for me to leave before she died as if she had done everything she’d meant to do.”
“Of course she did,” said my new Italian mother, Mariella. She smiled as if she had known my Nonna her whole life.
“She wanted you to have a special memory of her. Of the whole family, you alone will only have memories of her laughing and smiling and full of life. You will carry those with you forever.”
“So I can’t go back for the funeral, really,” I said. “It would spoil her last gift.”
Suddenly I understood how New Year’s Eve really worked.
“You never could,” Mariella said wisely, “but that’s the beauty of memories.”
Like you, memories aren’t stuck in the past.
They move freely to today with a single thought;
or a flick of the wrist.
Review, reflect, and recognize: they’re suddenly with you again.
A presence in the present.
And able to move you even further
into the future — where we all belong.
That’s how memories, and Nonnas and New Year’s Eve really work.
See you next year!
—M
Thank you for sharing, so grateful for all you do Matthew, Happy New Year!
Hauʻolu makahiki hou! Hope to see you here in 2025!