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Relationships, Connections & Love in the New Year

The New Year is just a week old and we have all reconvened to our regular lives – returning back to work, school and our everyday activities. The decorations are put away…the holiday cookies eaten…family has gone home from visiting, and we have settled back into normal routines. It’s not just a New Year – it’s a New Decade!  We are hopeful.

For New Year’s, many set the stage for the year ahead with hopes, dreams, and faith. Resolutions are set, goals are laid out. We are well meaning in our quest for changes in our lives: Eating healthier, smoking cessation, getting organized, exercising more, working harder, reaching for that promotion – our goals/resolutions tend to focus on self improvement and personal growth. As well they should!  We are, in the end, responsible for our own health, happiness, and advancement.

But the truth is, we really can’t do it all alone.


On New Year’s Eve, just a few minutes before the ball dropped in Times Square NYC, I scanned the crowd to see what the anticipation of 2020 and the beginning of a New Decade looked like. The vision surprises me every time I see it. It is not at all what one might think. Instead of watching a group of young revelers imbibing and causing security/police to be extra cautious, I saw a real mix of people at different ages and stages of their lives. Young partners in their 20s and 30s, mothers and fathers who brought their young children for the experience, grandparents who came on their own or with their families.  The sea of people who wait with expectancy for the ball to drop and for the New Year to begin is not at all one dimensional. There were friends together, families holding each other, people who had just met, people in their 40s and 50s looking towards the New Year, older folks in their 70s and 80s who clutch onto each other with love and eager anticipation – all looking towards the change into the New Decade with kindness and hope and faith and love.

These were the constants that everyone shared: faith, hope and love.  You could see it on their faces. A potpourri of races, religions, ages, socioeconomic classes, genders and political affiliations. Nobody cared how old the other person was, where they came from or who they were kissing at midnight. Nobody even cared about the weight they said they were going to lose in the last New Year! Everyone only had three things on their mind: faith, hope and love. Police officers on duty for New Year’s Eve all had their loved ones on FaceTime – sharing the energy and anticipation. It was a magical and eye-opening moment, trumped only by that moment after the ball dropped when everyone in the sea of people engaged in an embrace and kiss.  The hope and faith was palpable. The love was overflowing. You could feel it. You could taste it. It truly was magical.

At that moment of the ball dropping and the New Decade dawning, nobody thought about politics or sexual preference or money. At that very moment, the only important thing on everyone’s mind was love. The people with whom that love is shared, the people who we each hold so close and dear. Those are the people who were in our arms, on our minds and in our hearts at the stroke of midnight.  That is the only thing that really matters.

Life’s most simple pleasure.

Love.

As the year progresses, and we once again become more enmeshed in our everyday responsibilities and routines, it is easy to forget that moment of magic. Life happens. There are ebbs and flows, triumphs and sorrows. The world keeps turning but the one constant that holds us together, no matter what, is the love that we share with those that are closest to us.

Love. Relationships. Human Connections.

We can survive almost anything as long as we have that.

Don’t let anything interrupt the love, relationships and connections that you held so dear on New Year’s Eve.  Keep that with you all throughout the year and if anything – stress, communication loss, hearing loss, time, or people – forms a wall between you and your relationships, then climb over that wall to hold them close.

We need this glue to get through everything else: Love. Relationships. Human Connections. Communication.

A side note: a few seconds after midnight on New Year’s Eve, if you turn your back on the sparkling ball and the energetic crowd in Times Square, you will see fireworks over Central Park. The lights and revelry of Times Square merges with the beauty of the colors and sounds in the sky over Central Park.

This is proof that, no matter what happens during the year, there’s still magic that surrounds you. It’s just a matter of turning around, opening your eyes wider…and finding it!

   New Year’s Eve in Times Square, NYC

Written by New York Speech and Hearing

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