End of a year, the doorstep of another. A season for counting achievements, revisiting decisions, and holding oneself accountable. Humans are bound to the idea of beginnings and endings, framing everything within a timeline, as a contract with an expiry date, pleading for extra time once the clock runs out.
A pause, not a test
Sometimes, you need to turn the deadline into a pause: a moment to take a deep breath and allow yourself rest. To cancel all the questions, the self-doubt, the grand plans. To simply put a full stop, after the noise of words and the clutter of paths.
The achievements no one applauded
Those moments when you were both the witness and the witnessed, the victim and the fighter, the hero of a story where every character was you. They are victories no one saw, achievements no one applauded.
Because you carried them alone, perhaps it is time to be your own audience, to celebrate yourself. Place them proudly at the top of your year’s canvas, even if they stand there alone.
Catch your shining star
What seems like a dazzling star in someone’s world may dim if their world shifts. That same hero could be seen only as a victim under different circumstances. And the effort it takes you to rise and work each morning might equal winning a gold medal in a fierce duel.
We all have our shining stars, measured not against others but in relation to what surrounds and lives within us. Define your own victories, and reach for your star.
Extra time
Endings are tied to closing one chapter and opening another, to decisions and fresh plans. But perhaps you can carry your old baggage along, the same unfinished goals, the same promises you once made to yourself. Give yourself “extra time,” but call it by its true name: the time you actually deserve.
Free yourself from time, for once
Our years are not the same, nor are our circumstances. Some went through wars and still; others fought themselves, or battles unseen. Sometimes the achievement was simply bearing witness, or holding on to a job, or survival itself: a smile, an effort, a small act of resilience.
So let us, just once, abandon the rigid frame of time. Let us walk by our own rhythm, without dates, or deadlines.
An addition, perhaps out of context
I finished the article and shut down my laptop. Yet when I was about to publish, I felt it incomplete. I needed to say something, even if it broke the flow: let us not forget that beyond all these pages we close and open, the war in Gaza continues.
I will not call them “sad victories”, the things Gazans achieved this year: finding shelter, flour, a stable internet connection, and a loved one returning home safely. There is no need to dress pain with borrowed names. It is grief, and we pray for an end in the year ahead.
