Best Wishes for 2025 and a Thought (or two) as We Enter the New Year….
By any measure, this has been a hard year and sadly, we can assume that, in many ways, the coming year will be hard as well. Uncertainty abounds in many contexts. And, it is easy to lose hope and be frustrated and concerned a wide range of fronts: immigration, tariffs, job losses, prices, healthcare, workplace culture, shootings (within schools among many locations), familial dysfunction, rising prices, falling trust, increased distrust, wars, imprisonment, death and injuries and far too common human dysregulation and meanness to name but a few key concerns.
The list (parade?) of potential horribles is long.
Despite all this, I was inspired by the last session of 2024 for Virtual Teachers Lounge (VTL) with fellow educators held on Wednesday Dec. 18th on Zoom. FYI: In Jan. 2025, we will start our 5th year; to learn more about VTL, visit us at www.vtl4today.com.
In this workshop, we shared and discussed what could be placed in 2025 Mental Wellness Tool Kits for students and educators (obviously, not necessarily the same items). And the list of proposed items (and their whys) that were shared among the attendees was glorious. Truly. We plan to write an article about all those items and what these tool kits can do to help all those in education not just survive but thrive. We gave away 2025 Mental Wellness Tool Kits to two active educators who were in attendance; these were sent off today in time for the new year’s entry.
But, and this is what matters for this blog post: there was hope in our VTL session. And many of us perceived that, in the midst of sharing ways to move forward and plentiful challenges in education and beyond, we collectively found a kind of peacefulness by engaging and sharing with each other. How powerful is that?
It is that insight and a wonderful breakfast/lunch with my co-author today that I fashioned the message below as we enter 2025. It is my hope that it brings you hope. I hope, too, that the message enables you to find health (both mentally and physically), happiness and wholeness (OK, not an H word but close). I hope you will share this message with others. And, before I share it, know that I appreciate my many many readers and their insights, perspicacity and wisdom. And know too that while there is much we cannot change in our world writ large and small, there are some choices we still can make and things within our capacities to change. These realities form the core of my New Year 2025 message.
My Message:
As we approach and enter into 2025, choose to surround yourself in as many contexts as possible with those individuals who are kind, who give to others (you included) in meaningful ways, who demonstrate grace and caring, compassion and collaboration at every turn. Choose to be around those who understand and respect boundaries and who understand reciprocity’s essence in quality relationships. Choose to spend time with those for whom generosity of spirit is omnipresent. Choose to spend time with those whom you enjoy, with those with whom you can share meaningfully, and with those who showcase with remarkable regularity their belief in the power of the possible.
That’s my wish. So, with that message in mind, let’s construct personal shared worlds in 2025 in which we surround ourselves with the very best humanity has to offer. And if we do just that, namely choose well and wisely as to who inhabits our personal and shared spaces, we will be better for those choices and we can move into and through 2025 with a spirit of hope…for all.
