2025: Takeaways.
Monday Editions
As 2025 slowly comes to an end, it seems natural to look back at all the things we got to take away. The experiences that made us grow, the hardships, the cheerful moments – all of it has made an impact on how we will enter the next chapter that’s coming. Here are some of mine.
Some plans are made to keep us moving, not to be the definite answer to our end destination.
It’s okay to make plans and discard them at some later stage in case we realise that it’s no longer what we want. Even if we might have aligned our decisions over a longer period of time with one specific goal in mind. Even if others might criticise us for dropping a chance. Goals can be incredibly helpful motivators – but sometimes, once the future we had envisioned for ourselves and worked so hard for comes within reach, it can no longer feel like ours, truly. We’re allowed to change our minds and adapt our paths as we meet a newer version of ourselves with slightly altered needs. Changing a plan doesn’t equal giving up, it merely shows that we’re brave and wise enough to understand that we’re steadily evolving as beings (ideally, so to say).
We are so much more than just our mistakes.
Sometimes, we will fail to show up as our best selves – but that alone doesn’t make us unreliable overall, or undeserving of the good things. Even the most controlled, considerable people will have their human moments when they can’t live up to the high standard they hold for themselves, and for others. We don’t have the full aftermath of our mistakes under control, but we can always choose how to personally navigate them. It’s not the singular event where we failed to be our best selves; what much rather defines us is how we live on. And the way we choose to handle a mistake reveals more about our character than failing ever will.
Being in our head about our own self-discovery will only ever get us this far – but genuine connection is what will properly allow us to see.
Sometimes, we cross paths with someone who will be like a door opener to our own inner world. Meeting them will get a chain reaction going, one that can make us feel like we’ve involuntarily been put on a roller coaster ride. An encounter like that leads us to meet ourselves on a deeper level. Unprocessed feelings, beliefs, fears, hopes and desires – all of it suddenly peaks through the carefully maintained surface. That can be quite overwhelming, as these waves of emotion usually don’t seem to appear when we feel prepped to receive them, but rather whenever they feel like they want to make an appearance. And even though it might be hard to hold at times: it’s a deeply honest and beautiful process as it leaves us a lot truer to ourselves if we choose to integrate what we learn as we go along.
Leaving a door open doesn’t equal waiting in front of it.
Not every situation or chapter is immediately resolved, and I personally believe that closure can’t be forced. However, there’s a big difference between leaving a door open (aka: letting life unfold without the urge to control every aspect of it) and desperately waiting in front of it. I can take steps forward while feeling, still. While being unsure about how one aspect is going to play out. Trying to force closure sometimes only brings more pressure to the overall situation, and honestly speaking, that approach seems to be quite unrealistic. Life is always full of plot twists, and forcefully trying to be ahead of the unpredictable doesn’t necessarily give us the clarity we might hope to find that way.
There can be room for the maybe.
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