The page turns and another year is gone

The year turns the way a page does. One moment it’s December, cluttered with the remains of the past year and without really having gotten used to writing “2025.” And next it’s January, spare and white as a blank notebook and a new date to remember. We may pretend this is a clean break, but it isn’t. Nothing contrived by humans ever is.

The past year tags along whether invited or not. It comes as images but also hidden remorse: a conversation we replay in the shower, a decision that still hums faintly with what-might-have-been, a night that ended too early or too late.

Memory is not an archive; it is edited, like a photoshopped picture. It rearranges. It sharpens certain moments until they can cut us again. Regret is inevitable. But rarely heralded with fanfare. It is practical. It sounds like: “I should have called. I waited too long. I knew better.”

I find myself more resilient as time passes (perhaps the result of a bit too many hard knocks). We endured things that might have broken an earlier version of us. We learned new limits (some the hard way). We find that many fears were overblown and that a few others were not fears at all. Rather figments of an overactive imagination.

Thankfully, the past year is also replete with (often subtle) successes. Some we never quite learned how to celebrate. A project completed. A rekindled relationship. A business success. All leave us with an afterglow that follows us into our future. Sometimes we feel that “all is right with the world.”

Looking forward, the new year evokes a renew spirit – part hope, part concern. Opportunity tends to announce itself loudly. But there is always a subtle current of uncertainty. Take advantage of one, learn to cope with (and perhaps harness) the other.

We cannot avoid risk. Our apprehension is not a flaw; it is confirmation that we understand the stakes. To hope for something better is to admit the possibility of disappointment. To open your hands is to accept that they may come back empty. Mettle is simply the decision that the risk is worth taking.

That can be exhilarating. It can also be unsettling. There is a certain comfort in the familiar (even when has challenged or disappointed us. Some things hurt because they were wrong, not because they were instructive.

There is a temptation to armor ourselves – to resolve that this year we will be less vulnerable, less exposed. That is defeatist. The cost of closing ourselves off is often subtle but steep. We may feel safer, but we will also feel less. Less surprise. Less joy. Less connection. Life does not reward perfect defenses; it responds to presence

What matters most rarely submits to numbers. The relationship that didn’t end but changed shape. The ambition that dimmed just enough to make room for something more rewarding. The discipline we failed to master but finally understood its importance.

The future makes no promises about how it will treat us, only that it will demand our participation and effort. The new year does not require reinvention. But it does require our attention. Attention to what actually matters, not what shouts the loudest. Attention to the small habits (be they good or bad) that shape days and the days that shape character. Attention to the people who stood with us last year – not just when we were winning, but when we were tedious, uncertain, or afraid.

So, the ledger is mixed (it always is).

January invites a kind of accounting, but the danger is mistaking arithmetic for wisdom. We tally wins and losses as if life were a football season, as if performance could be neatly scored. Simple truth: There’s no SEC playoff berth at stake.

If there is a resolution worth keeping, it is this: to meet what comes with honesty and a willingness to be changed by it; to carry forward what was good; to set down what was heavy; and to forgive ourselves for not knowing then what we know now. The past year is finished, but it is not wasted. The coming year is unwritten, but it is not empty.

We step into it as we always do – not clean, not complete, but capable. With memory at our backs, possibility ahead, and the quiet, stubborn belief something wonderful will take root if we leave the door open.

The year begins anew. We can either “seize the day” or let it seize us. Don’t capitulate, be the person you always imagined yourself to be…and who knows what the future may hold