A year is Earth’s annual marathon around the Sun, clocking 940 million kilometers at 30 kilometers per second. Gravity keeps us tethered, inertia keeps us moving, and Earth spends the journey tilting and spinning like it’s auditioning for a dance competition. This relentless motion doesn’t just define time—it fuels life. Seasons shift, cycles renew, and we’re reminded that even the most “stable” systems are really just organized chaos in constant motion.

It’s a balancing act on a cosmic scale: axial tilts, elliptical orbits, and gravitational nudges syncing Earth’s rhythm with the Sun’s celestial calendar. Sure, the planet wobbles and the equinoxes drift, but somehow, it all works out. Meanwhile, humans—sitting on this spinning rock—like to think we’ve got it all figured out. Spoiler: we don’t.

For all our hubris, we imagine our actions rippling out to the cosmic scale. The truth is less flattering. Our grandest achievements amount to self-sabotage: destabilizing ecosystems, driving countless species to extinction, and reshaping our planet’s surface for worse. The Earth? She doesn’t care. Burn it, freeze it, flood it—she’ll keep spinning, unbothered, for millions of years. We’ll just be the fleeting footnote labeled “Experiment Gone Wrong.”

But here’s the kicker: knowing this doesn’t depress me—it motivates me. It’s oddly comforting to know the universe doesn’t revolve around us—literally or figuratively. It frees us up to focus on what actually matters: making life less terrible for each other. That’s all we can do. Nothing more, nothing less. So for 2025, how about we try something radical? Let’s be decent. Kindness isn’t just text on a postcard you send—it’s gravity for humans. It pulls us together, grounds us, and keeps us moving forward.

And let’s not stop there. Kindness alone isn’t enough. Racism, transphobia, inequality—they’re not cosmic inevitabilities; they’re human-made disasters, like pineapple on pizza but significantly worse. These problems persist because we let them. No, we don’t just let them, we pretend like they don’t exist. The more privileges you have, the easier it is to just sit in your happy bubble and ignore the injustices those less privileged than you suffer. Speak up. Amplify marginalized voices. Call out bigotry, even when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it’s uncomfortable. Justice isn’t some lofty ideal—it’s the bare minimum we owe each other. Silence is complicity.

I want 2025 to be a year of growth. Not the “New Year, New Me” kind of growth, but the messy, uncomfortable, do-the-work kind. It will be fucking hard for me, and that’s good. Last year, I was dumbfounded to realize just how bigoted I was myself and how much of it remains in me. It’s hard work to make things better. Growth that happens when we build better communities, challenge our biases, and stop pretending that “neutrality” is a valid stance when people’s lives are on the line.

Kindness gets us started. Justice keeps us going. Let’s make 2025 the year we all step up, do more, and suck a whole lot less.