Things have been hard this year, but I also feel like I’ve learned more from this year than I did the year prior. 2024 was an odd experience due to my not feeling equipped to handle what life was throwing at me. This past incarnation of hell on earth, the year of our Lord 2025, in some ways was more difficult, but I felt much calmer in certain situations.
I suppose you could chalk that up to growth, or, my preference, desensitization from enduring so much over the past few years.
I don’t think either of these outcomes is a bad thing. Sure, things have been tough for the past five years or so, but they also have been amazing. I have started a new relationship this year that feels like a breath of fresh air compared to the things I had been trying to force for years to happen. I have become more comfortable with myself, and I have been able to make changes in my life that, while scary, have enabled me to see more worth in the things that I do and create. Also, the Dodgers are STILL World Series Champions.
But you know what? I hate it when people gloss over the horrible things to try to make everything sound hunky-dory. I feel that was a huge breakthrough when it came to therapy and getting things right mentally years ago. It drives me crazy when others try to cheer you up while completely ignoring the horrible shit that has been falling on your head so they can make themselves feel good. That pet peeve has only grown as I’ve gotten older. Things can be both things at once, horrible and divine. I mean, look at the film The Room. It’s possibly one of the worst movies ever given a wide release, but it is one of my favorite movies of all time. Plan 9 From Outer Space can be lumped into that same discussion. I guess that’s the wonder of life; things are so complicated that the labels we tend to give singular items do a great disservice to the item in question.
This past January and February, when people would ask me how I was doing, I would reply that I was doing great, but everything around me felt like it was falling apart. My friends had deep personal issues they were dealing with, we were swearing in Trump and then witnessing the DOGE debacle that would enthrall us through most of the first quarter, and then, ICE agents around the country started making thousands of migrants disappear. This only heightened as the year went on, and by this point, I think it’s been normalized so much that it’s probably more of a surprise that places haven’t been raided. Just this past week in Tucson, there have been ongoing raids being reported, with protesters showing up while they are being conducted.
I remember when 2016 eventually turned into around 2019, and I would tell friends and anyone else who would listen that we as a country were slowly sliding toward a living embodiment of the movie Brazil, and I think in 2025, we finally accomplished that feat.
One only has to look at the opening sequence of that movie to see a mirror being held up to our reality. The idealistic melody accompanying a swarm of shoppers going about their day. A television selling the consumers of this world on upgrading their “ducts”, which is the way that everyone communicates with one another. The explosion that’s followed by the government getting on the TV and then blaming it all on an unsightly and mysterious group that is never named or confronted throughout the film. As you dive deeper into it, you see the way everyone is obsessed with consumerism and image, and how people keep dying and being “disappeared” by the government, and no one questions anything. It’s all accepted. Even Sam, the protagonist, isn’t concerned with changing his life other than finding the woman whom he daydreams about, whom he somehow comes across in his line of work. The only thing Sam cares about is escaping. Everything else comes second fiddle.
We are all Sam Lowry, in a way. If it isn’t a cellphone or a television, we do it through drugs, sex, and anything else we can get our hands on. I suppose that’s the only reason why things are the way they are. You keep thinking that things are going to get so bad that people will stand up and do something about it, but in actuality, people grow more comfortable with the things they do have. Who cares about what’s going on around the world, right? There are new movies on Netflix, and they are probably going to buy Warner Bros Discovery. By golly, that means we get all of the movies we want on our favorite streaming platform. And hell, if you do really well in your fantasy football league on Sunday, you can roll that luck into some parlays and maybe retire early, or at least go on a nice vacation.
And you know what, I’m gonna start doing the same thing, but just not have it so tied into consumerism. Sure, things suck, but things are also great. There’s good with the bad. While it’s scary to read the morning news, it’s nice to have a life with people who care for me. It’s nice to come here and write my thoughts, poems, and all the other crap I put on here.
I suppose when I look back on this year, I’ll remember it for growth through pain, which is eerily similar to last year’s lesson. Maybe that’s the point of all this? The late, great, Earl Simmons was wise beyond his years when he uttered the phrase, To live is to suffer, but to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. Or maybe that was Gordon Allport. Either way, it rings true today in 2025/2026.
