The beauty is that you can change the way you see things by simply deciding that you are going to begin again.
As 2025 wraps up, we see another chapter closing again.
Perhaps you felt alive in 2025, but perhaps you also felt the weight of the world upon you. You may be looking around at the world and only seeing things getting worse. Or maybe you see your own circumstances getting worse.
Whatever your state may be, even though your eyes may see your present through a dark lens, there is a way to begin again.
I believe every day is a chance to start fresh, to have a new beginning. Who says you can’t see with fresh eyes and begin anew?
Before I even turned 20, I had already experienced what I have since understood as generational depression.
At 19, I was told my grandfather had fallen and was in the hospital. We all gathered there together as he lay in front of us, on a respirator, and in his last hour. Sorrow descended on some of the family members there with their glum faces and tears.
It was the first death in the family.
I had never experienced death, but I felt its heaviness in the atmosphere that day. And although my grandfather and I were not close, I still felt the weight of his death in the room and carried it with me past those hospital glass doors.
It was the end of something. A tragic book closed, never to be reopened again.
I arrived on the college campus that day as the summer’s sun beamed high above the brick buildings. I had had my bouts with depression throughout my adolescence, but had still managed to muscle my way through college.
Carrying the weight of death from that parking lot to class on a warm summer’s day, suddenly a thought came to mind. I was still alive. I had a lot going for me – I was in school, and I had a good student job. I was not dead, so that meant I could do anything I wanted to do.
My eyes were suddenly opened to everything as though it was new. The sky lit up a vivid blue, and the sun shone gloriously above me.
Yes, my eyes were opened, and for the first time in a long time, I saw beauty.
In that moment, I remembered the flaws my grandfather had. That perhaps he had many regrets. But I also remembered that I did not have to have those same regrets. That very day, I could begin anew.
Something had surely ended, but something beautiful had also begun.
As we close this year, I hope you can peer into the new year and see that you can start to see life through fresh eyes. That at any moment, you too, can begin anew.
The beauty is that you can change the way you see things by simply deciding that you are going to begin again.
I hope this next year is a time of revival, of shedding old skins, of finding beauty all over again.
What is one thing you will be doing to bring beauty into your new year?