Goodbye 2025!

This morning, a dear friend of mine shared a traditional Sicilian prayer for the new year, along with its English translation:

The old year goes away and will never return.
May it take with it all my melancholy,
may it erase sadness
and the bitterness of dark days.
New Year, come forward, come on—
everyone celebrates you.
Bring joy, health, and love
to all the friends I carry in my HEART.
May it be a blessed year for everyone,
even if it won’t be perfect.
May the good Lord guide us
in the new year that is to come… Buon Anno

Thank you, Nina, for bringing forth the words that for so many describe the weird year of 2025.  To this list, I would add: disappointment.

2025 has truly been brutal. For empaths and sensitives, I think this is especially true. It’s just too much to be made to wear and then process the collective trauma of all that has transpired in the last year. Personally, I have felt very much like the silver ball in the pinball machine getting continually batted around by the player who refuses to take his finger off the G.D. red button.

I don’t need to go into any detail here. We all know. (If we don’t know, we’re either not paying attention or are one of the very few benefitting from the relentless chaos and abuse of this past year.)

Is 2026 going to be better?  I know better than to offer predictions or promises.

It’s like the meme I keep seeing on social media:

“What if we all died in 2020 and now we’re living in hell?”

Somedays it feels like that – even for those of us who have spent the last many years cultivating detachment, bullet-proof boundaries, and witness consciousness. It seems no matter how much inner work we have done, or how many lessons we have mastered, we cannot help but find ourselves triggered by what is happening in the world around us and within those close to us. And if you’re a recovering perfectionist like me, we can’t help but be frustrated and disappointed with ourselves when we find ourselves triggered – and even more so when we find ourselves reacting to these triggers out of our unhealed wounds – wounds that we arrogantly believed we had healed for good. HAH!

Turns out, we’re never fully healed. I cannot tell you how much this fact hurts my perfectionistic soul. I guess I’m not the Messiah I one day hoped I would be. Neither, it turns out, do I have a foundation for my self-righteousness. To my utter despair, I’m just as irreparably flawed as anyone else.  

For me, this year has been especially hard on my perfectionistic nature, leaving me feeling deep sorrow, melancholy, and disappointment – yes, at the world around us, but even more so with myself. I’m sad for the times my wounds got the best of me. I’m sorry for those who ended up being the target of my reactions. I wish I was better at detaching from other people’s reactions and more compassionate toward their unhealed wounds. I wish I was more adept at withholding judgment and simply letting people be – especially when my discerning eye sees something that I think could be done in a better way.

As it relates to the world…..my heart just breaks. I will never, ever, ever, understand the cruelty of human beings. I will never comprehend the “need” for war. I will never understand how human beings can stand back as other human beings are starving, homeless, or living in poverty. I will never comprehend why certain men hoard wealth while turning a blind eye to the millions upon millions of human beings who are struggling just to survive. All of this really makes me truly sad and questioning the need for human beings. I often think the world really would be better off without us.

And maybe that’s the point. Human beings do not add a single thing to this planet. And yet, here we are – an experiment of some alien god to see how long it takes us to fail or an expression of another God (Love) hoping we will one day succeed in remembering who we are and find our way home?  At the end of the day, I guess the reason why doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do with this life we’ve been given. Do we choose a life of selfishness and hatred, or do we do our best to choose Love? No matter how many times that pinball paddle hurts me, I continue to choose Love – at least I try to.  

So, with this, I return to Nina’s prayer and offer it up as a prayer for us all. May it be fulfilled as we step cautiously and timidly into this new year.

With love,

Lauri