Before I set intentions for 2025, I wanted to be sure I reflected on 2024. Because I don’t write my Time/Charter column anymore and last year’s roundup was so popular, I am sharing them here. 

On the night of July 4th, my mom landed in the emergency room of Elmhurst Hospital. It’s never a good time but this holiday is particularly rough, among the deadliest in America as it turns out. Ma was there for heart issues but all around her were burn victims, car accident survivors and people under arrest. 

In a neighboring bed, a man moaned repeatedly. His assigned police officer loosened the handcuffs. A nurse soothed the patient and asked if he needed meds. 

The next morning, I told the resident who had treated my mother how impressed I was with the scene. “I saw how you treat people equally.”

“If I could correct you on one thing,” he said to me, “it’s not that we treat everyone equally. We treat them as if they are important.”

I’ve thought about his framework frequently. There’s a difference in pushing for equity versus pushing for people to be treated as VIPs. The organizations that I most respect, and find myself wanting to patronize, whether a white-tablecloth restaurant or a housing nonprofit or the emergency room of a community hospital, tend to be the latter. It’s what I want to attempt more of in my work combining service with journalism: Treat people like they are IMPORTANT. 

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We wanted a Portuguese Water Dog. We ended up with a houseful of pitbull rescues.

This past year, as our longtime dog turned what we guess is about 13 years old, he stopped coming to the door. Edison’s going deaf and blind. Rather than confront what’s coming, we thought maybe we should get a second dog to help him with cues and keep him (and us) company. In a series of mixups that underscores what it means to adopt a dog in New York City right now (there’s massive need so please rescue!), we ended up juggling multiple applications, fosters and health issues. At one point, we had a foster dog named Scruffy whom we promptly renamed Maggi Noodles. She was timid and shy but also ended up being in heat and, very confusingly, there were reports of testicular remnants inside, too. So began several months of drama to figure out what was wrong with her. It turned out she had never been spayed and needed fixing, literally. 

We loved this dog but something felt off. I called my college roommate who works as a therapist and volunteers at a pet rescue outside Philadelphia to get her take. “I feel like a failure if we don’t adopt her, but also it’s been months of vets and tests and feeling like we couldn’t quite commit.” 

“You might just need to accept that you are a stop of her journey,” Lauren said. “A necessary stop but not the destination."

Her words were instantly freeing. I think a lot about people (and animals) who come into our lives seeking help. As much as we want to save them (thinking of a few friends who are homeless, many more who are jobless) and provide solutions, perhaps it’s better to think of ourselves as a stop on their journey. How can we be most helpful in a moment? 

Maggi Noodles ended up getting adopted by a lovely, suburban couple with two acres and a younger, more playful dog than ours. I am so glad we were not her final destination but that we helped her get there, nonetheless. 

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I carry baggage. It’s gotten better as I get older. Still, I hang onto grudges and they can color my assessment of people in my life and work. When you launch a business, this can get even more acute when the folks you expect to be helpful often are not so. 

So here goes the most Captain Basic discovery I made this year: Did you know that some people feel resentful toward me, too? 

This came up recently when a friend told me that another mutual acquaintance was still steaming because I never wrote about her when I was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. “Oh gosh!” I said. “I probably pitched it and it got rejected. Or maybe it wasn’t even a story. I don’t remember what happened.”

“Well, she’s been hanging onto this for more than a decade.”

This is the year that dawned on me that what Jews call the “Days of Awe” between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is really quite needed more regularly in our lives and across cultures and religions: to reflect on how we might have hurt others, even unwittingly, and seek forgiveness. 

In 2025, I’ll be trying. My deepest apologies for all slights. 

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