There Are No Resolutions This Year

Only a revolution.

Typically, I'm not fond of the time between Christmas and the first week of January. It's a strange in-between, a sort of no man's land where syncing with the world and aligning with oneself always feels challenging. It’s an ungrateful period where I measure myself against the world. What have I done for the past 365 days? Have I eaten well? Did I work out enough? Did I write about everything that moved me, or have I stretched myself too thin? Could I have done more? Why did I send that text? Why didn’t I send that text?

A few days ago, on December 31st, as the year drew to a close, I wrote: "Today marks the final chapter of the year, a day full of potential. In years past, this day was often filled with reflections on personal missteps, thoughts of missed opportunities, and resolutions that tended to fade within weeks. You wished for better health, more exercise, that dream job, a love story, fewer regrettable texts, and maybe some hard cash. But today, the true measure of the past 365 days is where you stood when a call for humanity was made—and how you answered.”

You saw a nation under siege, trapped, pummeled to oblivion with 2000-pound bombs; you saw images of butchered children while reputable media joined forces with your government, AGAIN, in trying to convince you it’s “war on terror” in pursuit of western safety, democracy, and freedom.

This year, the Palestinian people gave us a gift. We didn’t need to weigh our accomplishments or failures over the past 365 days. The only measure we had to live up to was where we stood when a call for humanity was made, and how we chose to respond.

There are no resolutions this year. There is only a revolution.

This week, this no-man’s land between the end of one year and the beginning of a new one serves as our benchmark against the world we inhabit.

And what is that world?

Are you the sort of person who's been trying to make sense of it—in a sea of propaganda and deception, resulting in a growing disgust not just with the power structures that oppress and tyrannize humanity, but with our entire civilization?

If you are, welcome to my platform. How can you not?

Last week, we watched in horror as the birthplace of three religions got bombed. Holy Land under military occupation. The holiest place on earth where people are prevented from worshiping.

What would Jesus do in this moment? WWJD? Surely, not support genocide.

And what will we do? WWWD?

Are we going to move beyond our emotions and understand an actual action is where results lie? Or will we stay silent, comfortable in our privilege?

I’m a white European woman who embodies Eurocentric beauty standards; I hold a dual American/EU passport, and I have this face—it doesn’t get more privileged than that. The only species more privileged than me is a white man from Harvard or Yale.

I’m a teenager of war, and yet I’m still all of these things.

What am I going to do with all that privilege? What are you?

A privilege for me is listening to Palestinian women telling us stories of their hardships, seeing Palestinian men risking their lives to protect their families and their community, Palestinian children holding a spark in their eyes despite the horrors they are subjected to at a such age; it’s a privilege for me to amplify their voices.

To have Palestinian people thank me daily for just speaking out: is the bar really that low? Don’t be a supremacist who thinks you’re better than other people, lucky to be born in a certain part of the world—was that little expected of me?

What will we choose to be in 2024? Consumers who swallow light, mindless content, discuss how much money Kim made with Skims, and scroll through Instagram in frustration over those who seem to have more money and better lives?

Or should we strive to be the ancestors our kids will talk about with pride?

The whole extra world opened up for us, and it’s the gift the Palestinian people gave us; they awakened us to a new understanding of the world, its people, stories, and realities—ushering in a fresh comprehension of our surroundings.

The question of Palestine is the biggest injustice of modern civilization, and despite everything they have lived through for 76 years; they have not relinquished. Despite the destruction, they keep rebuilding.

That’s what their occupier is attacking.

Hope.

Resilience.

That is its greatest enemy.

I recently discovered a writer Caitlin Johnstone who stated her articles are “geared toward awakening human consciousness and drawing humanity into my understanding of what a healthy world would look like.”

But this part:

“I see illusions as the only obstacle to the creation of a healthy world, which in my view would look like a movement from the competition-based models of capitalism, militarism, imperialism, and domination to collaboration-based models where all humans work in cooperation with each other and with our ecosystem toward the common good of all beings.

The prospect of a large-scale awakening of human consciousness and radical transformation of the way humans behave on this planet may sound lofty and impractical, but the way I see it our species has trapped itself in a situation where that will either happen or we'll go the way of the dinosaur.

In my analysis, I've been focusing a lot on the US government and the empire-like international cluster of allies, partners, and assets structured around it, not because it's the only evil in our world but because at this point in history, it is the driving force behind the lion's share of humanity's troubles.

The US-centralized empire is ramping up aggressions against Russia and China simultaneously and working to destroy any nation which resists its goals of global conquest, all while using its military and economic might and the most powerful propaganda machine ever devised to coerce humanity into moving in ways that don't serve ordinary people.

Because the US propaganda machine is so immensely powerful, my forceful criticisms of the empire are often met with shock and suspicion by the many people who've been indoctrinated by it.”

We’re not making any resolutions this year. I think it’s time for the world to be better.

Inhale, you belong to a multitude. Exhale, there is healing in the collective. Your humanity is bound up in mine. We can only be human together.