Its the time of Winter Solstice, the new year is upon us and time to take stock. This year has been strange, yes I agree, but I don’t agree that its strangeness was not much to do with us. It was all to do with us. It showed us that we are not prepared mentally and physically to face the many challenges that life might through at us when things are not going great. We left our senses, filled our homes with greed caring less for those unfortunate, pilling up things that we did not need. Taking away the right from people to provide for their families, hyping up the fear to hide our own insecurities. Yes, we did all that, and we are continuing to do so.

This year has been bad, and it will take its curse to the next year and the next after that unless we stand infront of a mirror, look ourselves in the eyes and tell ourselves:

‘Maybe its time to stop projecting our problems and insecurities on to the world. Maybe its time to stop disingenuous engagements, dishonest dialogue, virtue signalling, in the pursuit of hustling attention. Maybe its time to stop blaming others for things we can change in ourselves. Maybe its time to stop taking offense by proxy, time to stop playing the game of victimhood and take charge of the reins of our lives. Maybe and just maybe its time to stop praying for chaos, wishing to see the whole world burn down because we am unable to face the failures of our own lives.’

I hope – deeply and truly hope – that we start seeing the bigger picture. The bigger picture being that we are all in this together. Stop making these little groups, making your own mosques and churches at every corner, stop dividing ourselves up by our immutable characteristics and stop assuming things about others without any concrete knowledge. We are all complex, and with it comes complex and fluctuating thoughts, allow yourself to be free to explore. We have had our fun this year, exaggerated panic over things that are manageable eventually, destroyed public property and acted like thugs and criminals, bullied people into thinking our way, protested for things we don’t even understand, made science more dogmatic, canceled people for having opinions, judged history by the values of today, made new truths and presented them as facts to fill the void of confusion in our own heads – now its time to stop. Its time to clam up, put our toys on the side and grow up.

This is an adult world. And in this world, life is not fair. Life is bitchy, life is horrible and it stabs you in the heart and twists the blade every now and then for its amusement. But we have it better than anybody before us, this is the best time to be alive as far as we know because this is the only time that we are actually alive, so lets appreciate today and work to make tomorrow better. Face our problems and work to fix them. Don’t wear them as a badge of honour. There is no honour in knowing you have problems and instead of working to fix them, you whinge and whine about them. No president, no prime minister, no leader is going to fix your personal problems or your society’s problems unless you are willing to take that step first. The point of being an adult is to learn how to become your own mother, your own father. Don’t expect others to babysit your failures. Your tears are meaningless in the sea of time.

Lets all make a life resolution, this coming new year. To lead life with love and compassion, for ourselves and for those less fortunate. To not be lazy, to not revel in negative habits, to not spew hatred at others even our enemies, to strive to be better and let all thoughts be free. Believe in Buddha, God, Odin, Yahweh, Olorun, Allah, Ahuramazda, various others or none at all – as long as you believe first that we are all one. Humans, complex humans, with different complex ideas but with a simple unifying capacity to love each other, show compassion specially where its least expected and take care of each other. Make this your truth, your defining truth.

This holiday season, I send you all, the most heartfelt of love. Those that are closest to me, those that support me, those that read and appreciate my work, those that know me from a distance, those that disagree with me and those that choose to hate me.