Expectations (and New Year's Eve) make me somewhat more unhappy

PalmNew Year's Eve is quite a commotion. It has nothing to do with ChristmasThose of us who feel uncomfortable during this time of year do so for other reasons, not because we have to share a table with people we only see briefly every 12 months, all wearing the same winter clothes (What do their arms look like? Maybe they have a hideous tattoo and we don't even know it). It's a jarring pause that, at least for me, always catches me off guard. The whole year is right there, on December 31st. And yet, I still feel like I'm late (like with everything else in life, for that matter). It's a passive time: it does nothing, it simply runs out, marking a countdown. And, when it does, it suddenly gives retroactive importance to everything that's happened to you that year.

It makes me uncomfortable, I don't like it. It forces me to ask myself what I hadn't done between January and November. Who likes surprise exams? I never know what to answer. I blame myself and feel like I should have studied more, done more, thought more. I want to enjoy it, I hope I know how to take advantage of new beginnings. New beginnings are a gift. I try to compensate with a I collect of the year on Instagram, with that false perception that social media serves to fix reality: if we explain it, if we show it, it seems like it really happened. I force myself to feel that it happened because, really, I don't remember even half of it. And maybe that's what hurts, that things lasted so little time that I couldn't hold onto them long enough for them to stay with me forever. Not everything can stay with us forever, and I wish it could.

The series New Year'sRodrigo Sorogoyen's film conveys exactly this dense and disgusting feelingA disquietness you can't help but want to wallow in, an immense heaviness. In this series, which unfolds over a decade in a couple's life and places its protagonists on December 31st in each episode, the years weigh like an anvil. The transition from one episode to the next is abrupt, leaving you stunned, with that background whistle still audible. A bit like when we all transition from one year to the next, bewildered, having to reposition ourselves in an instant into a new stage, based on everything we've just experienced. Without having chosen what we like best and what we want to discard, we pack up 365 days at once and send them to the back of our minds, trusting that they will take care of retaining the most important conclusions, lessons, and memories.

What do I want from this new life?

Every December 31st the world ends and begins again, but I have never decided in time what I want to be in this new life. ResetAnd I didn't make a backup. Is that it? Are we back at it again? I guess I'll choose the usual, one copy-hold Of what I projected last year, like when I have to blow out the candles and, honestly, I don't have a single wish in my head. Damn, a whole year to think about it and I've said again, "Let's leave it as it is." 12:01 a.m. on January 1st arrives and I'm completely in the dark. I drag myself, groping, among people who are already moving up their lane to enter a "Happy New Year full of prosperity."

Until New Year's arrives, I can still feel the invisible thread that unites us all in every gesture we know we make together. Buying lottery tickets, planning lunches and dinners, asking for gifts, thinking up recipes. There's a certain intimacy in sharing these mundane, insignificant concerns when we do them all at once, at the same time of year. Nothing is so decisive, so irreversible, everything is light. After Christmas Eve comes Christmas Day and then the Second Holiday. But after New Year's, the collective euphoria accelerates and spits me out, leaving me knocked out.

Ah, expectations. Nothing ever lives up to expectations. I never enjoy New Year's Eve the way it's supposed to be enjoyed. Expectations make us all a little more miserable. We expose our weaknesses to the world by striving for perfection. Nothing amplifies our fears quite like wearing new red underwear, the eagerness to eat the 12 grapes, or toasting with a bit of gold in the champagne glass. It's a day, one day ending and another beginning. But what if it isn't? A part of us doubts, we betray our insecurity. We can no longer take anything for granted. We can't take risks. So we choose to be somewhat naive and trust them, even though the possibility of being wrong makes us even more vulnerable. Because we just want to be okay, for everything to go well, or at least for "everything to stay the same."