There is a particular kind of patience you learn when you wait for turtles. The air carries salt and expectation. The sand feels blank, almost indifferent, until the first movement arrives. Soon, the shoreline becomes a slow unfolding of intention. A body shaped by maps older than any border pulls itself forward. Suddenly, you are no longer the main character. You are a witness to learning discipline without being asked. The ritual continues with steady determination, uninterested in your calendar or your urgency. She has done this before. She will do it again. Your presence changes nothing about the outcome. Somehow, this is the first relief.
I have been thinking of this feeling as 2025 closes. It names a truth we resist: we are rarely in charge in the way we imagine. A phrase found me this week that gave language to the unease behind so many conversations, a collective narcissistic injury, a bruise to our self-image as a species. It arrives when the story of control collapses, our tools outgrow our wisdom and nature stops negotiating. This feeling unsettles us, leaving us hungry for certainty, making us search for anything that makes us feel large again.
This year kept saying no again and again. Many felt it in the blue light of our screens during our sleepless nights, watching Gaza become a map of grief on our screens, lives and homes reduced to updates that arrived faster than the heart can hold. Helpless witnessing sat alongside a wider sense of a world out of balance. We saw the climate tilt in ways that defied ancient rhythms. Prices climbed until necessities felt like luxury. Our connectivity only served to highlight our powerlessness. It is no wonder we felt so tender.
The strange part was how ordinary the heaviness looked from the outside. People went to work, coffee still steamed and roads still filled. Yet everyone seemed to be carrying a second weather inside them: a small vigilance, a shortening of patience, a softer threshold for tears. Even the celebration came with a double awareness. In this atmosphere, the injury stops being a theory. It becomes a daily encounter with limits and a choice about what we do when we meet them.
When this year felt heavy, I kept returning to my grandmother, whose hands knew scarcity and the art of the mend. Modern life teaches us to discard what fails and search for a version that works. However, 2025 taught us that there are no replacements for this world. We are being drawn back to fundamentals, learning the slow, jagged art of repairing bruised egos and broken certainties. Healing asks us to release the illusion of mastery. Humility becomes craft. Repair becomes the way we honour what cannot be replaced.
2026 must be a year of repair. We need less spectacle and more proof. We need public language that tells the truth about limits and trade-offs. We need decisions that treat climate, conflict and the cost of living as one shared reality. We can design for what holds and refuse what merely performs.
The beach was never only a metaphor. The turtle finishes its work and turns towards the water. It does not wait for applause. The sand holds the story for a moment, then the tide arrives and softens every line. The tracks fade, and still the effort mattered. This is the lesson left behind. We do not wait to feel powerful before we act. We choose care over certainty. We build what holds, knowing that responsibility, not control, is what lasts. If 2025 brought us to that edge, then 2026 is the year we step forward.
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