Systems that do not respond to what is happening in the world right now are not systems that need to be overthrown – they are already dying from their own irrelevance.

War, fascism, climate breakdown, ecological collapse, obscene inequality tearing societies apart – and the systems let it happen.

What is needed now is no longer activism, but a form of attentive witnessing. An acknowledgment. An end to waiting for change from above, believing that the solution lies within the system’s own logic, asking for permission to do things differently.

The question is no longer how we get systems to change. The question is: What do we do while they are dying?

What has begun to grow only becomes stronger. It happens in the spaces in between, waiting for a tipping point. People organize, knowledge is shared, preparations are made, care is taken of one another.

What I have learned this year is to stay. Long enough for all of this to reveal itself. To sit with my longing, with silence, with fear, and with what I know deep inside. The system constantly trains us to move away from discomfort. But what is awakened by staying, by creating distance from the system’s constant offerings of solutions – cannot be optimized or rushed. Closeness to what I actually need, to what is actually true, comes from staying with it.

So as 2026 approaches, I stop wishing forward. Wishes directed toward something yet to come, as if the solution lies in the future. As if the next election cycle will fix it. As if organizations will finally understand. As if a new technological solution will save us.

It will not.

So I will stop pretending that I do not already know.

But I will not stand here and tell you what to do. Everything that matters has already been said. We have been here before – in other crises, other societal collapses, other moments when systems revealed their irrelevance. Brilliant people have thought, formulated, warned, pointed the way.

The power already exists to be found. In texts written a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, ten years ago. In conversations already taking place in collectives you do not know. In the lived experience of people who already live alongside the system, who have already stopped waiting for permission.

The only thing I can offer is to stay here, in the uncomfortable, and bear witness to what I see. The rest – what you do with it – you already know. You have always known.

So for the coming year, I offer no promises.

Only this:

To stay.

To see clearly.

To stop waiting.

A toast to what we already know. To the courage to live accordingly.