P E A C E
Before dawn on the first morning of 2024, my husband and I packed up our son and drove the half hour to our favorite bit of New England coast. We arrived as the first light of the new year, diffused through some cloud coverage, illuminated the dunes and sands of Plum Island, and joined the small crowd of tourists and locals alike filling the beach. Bundled in layers of coats, scarves, and beanies, everyone spread out in their clumps of friends and family, some bright-eyed, some bleary-eyed, and some probably hungover, watching the sky turn various shades of sherbert and the waves crash against the beach. For 6:30 in the morning, the crowd was impressive — yet for the dozens of strangers kicking off the new year alongside us, the beach had a solemnity, a stillness. In that moment 2024 was a blank slate, filled with nothing but a cotton candy sky and the sounds of waves rushing up to meet us.
I used to be skeptical about selecting words of the year. They felt a little gimmicky, somehow. But in recent years, I’ve come around. Selecting a specific word has given me a lens through which to view the year ahead, a focal point in that blank slate quickly filling with new memories. I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions, but I am one for intention setting. Or I certainly try to be! A word for the year helps me with that intention setting, and setting my intentions for the year ahead helps me find that word. As 2023 began to wind down, I took some time to think and pray about 2024. I considered what I wanted out the year ahead, about those intentions. Of all the words that came to mind, one settled on my heart and took root: peace.
The last handful of years have been a whirlwind of changes and challenges, joys and sorrows, with hardly any time between one chapter and the next, in an escalating drama of life. Peace felt like a radical intention to set for the year ahead. But I didn’t set peace as my intention for 2024 because I expect life to lose any of its intensity — we have a small child who is growing and changing every day, a full-time job, a fairly full to-do list of family logistics (talk to a real estate agent, find doctors for me and Austin, apartment projects), travel to plan. None of this sounds particularly peaceful. No, what I mean by peace is being at peace. Being at peace in the chaos. Being at peace with my postpartum body. Being at peace with the questions. Being at peace when people let me down. Being at peace if I make a mistake or two at work. Being at peace with the messy dishes and piles of laundry.
There’s certainly a handful of things I want to accomplish in the new year: start the process of buying a house, work back up to my daily 5k run, try new recipes, practice photography techniques, travel abroad, work through my TBR (to be read list), build up my relationships. But ultimately, as I said, I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions. Setting defined goals at the start of the year feels like setting myself up for failure, given the way life would inevitably turn sideways at some point in the year. But I’ve come to realize that maybe I’ve misunderstood New Year’s resolutions as much as I’d misunderstood “words of the year.” Maybe these goals aren’t just about our cultural obsession with optimizing ourselves or manifesting our dream lives. Maybe New Year’s resolutions are about identifying what brings us joy and centering our lives around that as best we can.
In being at peace with the season or situation or second I’m in, I can more easily have joy in that moment. Conversely, if I can focus on something that brings me joy in the moment, I can more easily be at peace. Maybe that means taking a wintery weekend away in the mountains with my boys and my camera. Maybe it means taking the few seconds I have in a busy evening to text a friend I haven’t talked to in a while. Maybe it means letting those chores go for an hour and sitting down with my husband and enjoying a book while our baby sleeps. I don’t want to waste a single moment being too anxious or stressed or worried. That is not to say that there won’t be hard days — instead, those are the days I more than ever want to intentionally seek out what it is that brings me joy and peace.
I don’t know much more about what this year will look like than I did that first morning on the beach. But I know what I’m intending for the year. And I know it will be full of precious moments with people I love with all my heart and soul, each one such a gift.
