DE Weekly: Time, Urgency, & the New Year
Below is an archived email originally sent on January 5, 2026.
Time, Urgency, & the New Year
I sat down to think about what I wanted to write to kick off a new year, and it hit me: what a perfect opportunity to write about the new year itself. New years, new beginnings, new starts, new anythings all represent the core tenets of existentialism well.
When the new year approaches and the calendar finally turns, we tend to mull over the year that was and the year that will be. We ask ourselves, “How do I turn my ideas into actions, my freedom into good choices into meaning?”
A sense of urgency arises.
“Change your life today,” Simone de Beauvoir writes. “Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”
With a new year comes new opportunities. You get to start anew (sort of).
I imagine the existentialists would view the new year not as a “hard reset” but as a continuation of what already is, and above all an opportunity to self examine and spring into action.
It’s not a hard reset because a few things haven’t changed: the meaning in your life likely hasn’t been upended or invented overnight, and your level of freedom and responsibility likely haven’t changed.
This means a few things. First, the onus is still on you.
You are as radically free as ever to create a life of value and meaning. Thinking, “it’s just going to be another bad year, why would things ever change for me?” is a Bad Faith denial of your own agency.
The ability to change your circumstances is always available to you (and not just on January 1st, by the way).
Second, a bit of Good Faith is required on your end.
Specifically when it comes to making New Year’s resolutions, nobody can truly hold you accountable but yourself. So if what you seek is some sort of reinvention, some betterment that only you can effect within yourself, you need to accept responsibility for the consequences of your actions. Live in Good Faith and be honest with yourself.
Third, the Absurd still exists. Some aspects of life are still absurd. For example, the passing of time from 2025 to 2026 and from December 31st to January 1st changes nothing about your life in the moment.
Instead of despairing at this, however, make like Albert Camus and rebel against these conditions. Say to yourself, “You know what? This is the perfect opportunity to do something.”
It’s OK to be hopeful, even a little optimistic.
Why? Well, I would answer that the same way Camus answered the question of why we should continue to live at all.
If nothing really changes as the calendar turns to that new year, then we’re presented with a bleak image. Life continues as is, us marching through the same doldrums of life in the somber advance of the human race.
But this is not so, Camus argues. Regardless of what we are now, there is always what we could be––our Self in the future, as Jean-Paul Sartre would write.
What kind of routines do you want to foster? What kind of behaviors? What doldrums would we turn into delights if we could? That’s the beauty of the new year in a nutshell––it is what you make of it.
We can escape our view of new beginnings as an empty cycle we have no control over and create a new one, one we are hopeful and optimistic about.
We can create a life that we are excited to live, one of value and of meaning.
Not that I want to take a morbid detour here, but what I’m about to say I’ve come to understand not as morbid but as motivating; that is: each time that calendar turns over, we are that much closer to death.
Should this strike fear in our hearts? No! It’s simply a fact, and a part of life at that. Instead, let it instill in you a sense of urgency. (The good kind.)
It’s a reminder to stop procrastinating and start living. Intentionally. Now. no more putting it off.
When the ball drops and it’s 12:01 on January 1st, take the opportunity to embrace your radical freedom and begin a journey of genuine self-transformation.
"Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, 'It will be happier." –– Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
Happy New Year. It is never too late to be what you might have been (h/t George Eliot).
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