New Year's: Mourning What Could Have Been

Art by Trevor Pacelli

By Trevor Pacelli
​Happy New Year! Yes, it’s 2025. January is always the time to anticipate a new set of events up until December that could bring out a new you. But wait, there’s an elephant in the room to address. New Year’s also reminds you of the hopes you never saw come to fruition in the past year—the resolutions for the upcoming year that you know deep down will fail. Millions of people, including myself, face this sad reality every January 1st, throwing us all into an existential crisis almost every morning. Nobody of any background is safe from this disease, not even someone who’s paid six digits a year- they’ll always be haunted by the countless wrong decisions they’ve made in the past. Those haunting memories could lead to the conclusion that they put themselves into the wrong life. If this is you, then there are two films I’d like to recommend to you for a better sense of existential clarity.

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La La Land is the first of these films, which focuses on the roller-coaster romance between Mia and Sebastian. Mia is an aspiring actress who has been rejected at so many auditions that her hope is virtually gone. Sebastian envisions starting his own jazz club once his finances enable him the opportunity, but that requires him first to take on less-than-desirable jobs. Thus, Sebastian must join a touring band that he thinks is an insult to jazz while Mia produces a one-woman show as a last resort to getting noticed.

Nobody shows up to her show, which makes Mia give up and move back in with her parents, perhaps to return to school to discover a new purpose. Time passes, and the miracle that comes her way is one she already gave up on. Mia receives a call from a casting director who saw her one-woman show and now wants her to audition for a new motion picture, however, she’s too scared of rejection at this point to go. So Sebastian uses tough love to force her into auditioning for this part, which makes her pull through and give an audition that lands her the long-awaited role at last… with a price.

Five years after going their separate ways, Mia and Sebastian achieved their dreams- Mia is a famous actress and Sebastian has his jazz club- the dreams they sacrificed so much to earn. Are they truly happy though? After all, they didn’t end up together. Mia’s even married and has a daughter. The film's last few moments use an elaborate musical number to depict an alternate reality where the couple chooses entirely different decisions and ultimately marries one another, one where they could potentially be happier.

Here’s how this can help you out. No matter what your social status or personal relationships, you will always have a series of “what-ifs” clogging your conscience, even if you somehow achieved your lifelong dream. Would giving up the chance to own a successful restaurant have possibly avoided your divorce? Would declining that boy’s invitation to the senior prom have helped you get a better job than scrubbing toilets? I had a similar set of what-if concerns, often about my career and my deprivation from enjoying the company of a significant other. I sometimes ask myself, “What if I hadn’t started looking at those pictures of pretty girls on the internet back in high school? Would I have then become an acceptable boyfriend for someone special?” and “What if I did ask this girl out on a date when I had the chance? Would we have been a happy couple today?” and “What if I majored in something different in college? Would my books sell more copies?” For all of you who need an answer to those what-ifs, there’s another film to help you.

Everything Everywhere All at Once focuses on Evelyn, who owns a failing laundromat with her silly husband. Her lesbian daughter wants to leave the family, and her own father disowned her a long time ago. So yes, Evelyn feels she’s living her worst possible life. Then suddenly, she’s shown how to use improbable actions to borrow skills from her alternate lives across the multiverse. She discovers that had she made different decisions in life, she could’ve been an opera singer, a chef, a martial artist, an actress, a sign twirler, or even somebody with sausage fingers! Evelyn believes any of those parallel universes (well, except for the sausage one) is better than the life she’s stuck with, which is why she becomes obsessed with seeing as many of them as possible, even if it’s corrupting her spirit.

But the film’s second half reveals that her other realities are no better. Although she isn’t married to her husband in the movie star universe, the two of them are still incredibly lonely without one another. In the chef universe, Evelyn separates her coworker from his pet raccoon, Raccacoonie, and thus must fix the problem she caused when animal control separates the raccoon from his coworker. Even in the sausage universe, Evelyn struggles to connect with her lesbian partner. Plenty of these universes lack the laundromat and the difficult daughter, yet the personal issues are always there and probably make those alternate Evelyns believe they’re living their worst possible selves.

The existential crises of Mia, Sebastian, and Evelyn are universally relatable, whether for young adults who often think their dreams are impossible goals or empty nesters who now must see all their regrets lived out by their kids and grandkids. Finding a purpose for yourself involves so much trial and error that you often think you’ll just never find your niche. You keep asking yourself, “What on earth am I doing wrong?” without an answer given. Therefore, La La Land and Everything Everywhere All at Once can help you figure out not your “New Year” resolution, but your “New You” resolution. Both films address how focusing on your loved ones brings you to an ideal level of happiness. Whoever can support what’s best for you while validating your fears about the past and future can help you overcome your what-ifs to discover that New You.
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Trevor Pacelli is a young adult on the autism spectrum and the author of What Movies Can Teach Us About Disabilities, What Movies Can Teach Us About Bullying, Summer of the Fruit Virus and the illustrator of The Kindergarten Adventures of Amazing Grace: What in the World is Autism?