The Cost of the Future
Welcoming 2024 One Miracle at a Time
As December, 2023 comes to an end, I am reflecting on how hope and hopelessness coexist. Talk of new year’s resolutions isn’t easy when the normal dreams of the people around me do not exist for people like us. The future is a struggle and feeling both grateful and fearful of the future takes a toll on our mental health.
I started writing this final essay of 2023 for La Cuenta planning to share some of the reasons I am fearful of the future. I wanted to focus on how I don't see obvious places where my life fits in the United States. I’m scared of so many things. I'm scared for my family. And I’m scared for my undocumented community. And I’m scared for the children in Gaza. I started writing down all of the realistic and looming fears I am facing in the new year. It was a long list.
And then, the pen that I was writing with literally stopped working. While I was looking for another pen, I looked, instead, at my miracle jar.
Earlier this year, I was exposed to black mold and my health drastically deteriorated. I was having an impossible time finding hope in the future because the present was so difficult. I made my miracle jar so I could write down every time I witnessed a miracle. Whenever I felt particularly depressed, I could go read one of the miracles in the jar, and remind myself to keep fighting.
Instead of finding a pen, I picked a random miracle. The statement I wrote that day said, "I'm so grateful that today I don't have pain." After six months of being in pain, just one pain-free day meant so much. I have been sitting with the fact that the simple things that I used to overlook—not having pain—became my miracles. I started opening more of the papers in the jar. One said, "I'm grateful that I was able to pay an almost $4,000 medical bill." And I opened another one: “I was grateful that I talked to my Nana and my Tata today and they're doing well.”
And so, today I don't want to talk about hopelessness. I want to think about all of the times that we thought that we were not going to survive. But we did.
I want to talk about how resilient we are.
I want to talk about the dreams that we have that seem too hard to achieve, but somehow they are still happening.
I want to talk about all the everyday little miracles that we sometimes overlook.
I want to talk about the fact that I'm not laying down on a hospital bed, like I was only a few months ago. About the fact that, even though I'm in pain, the pain has decreased. I am still on a slow journey of recovery, but that too is a miracle.
I want to talk about the fact that I'm proud of my community. I’m proud of you. I'm proud of who we are. That, regardless of how the world treats us, we still show up.
I am treating 2024 as a year full of hope, a year where our fears are overlooked because our strength is so much greater than the global adversity we are experiencing.
There is so much to be angry and anxious about. I do not think this world is healing us or itself all on its own. We have work to do and I invite you to resolve to do the work of following hope and purpose into this new year.
We’ll see you in 2024!