As the year draws to a close, the term “your year wrapped” surrounds you wherever you go. Whether it is Spotify telling our music age based on the music we heard throughout the year, YouTube categorizing our watching habits, or even ChatGPT summarizing the year we had based on all the unhinged questions we tend to ask it. Everyone seems fascinated by the idea of compressing twelve months of living into organized, well-defined, shareable summaries.

Along with these recaps also comes reflection. We may find ourselves attempting to label the year as productive or a year full of lessons. We try to fit our experiences into perfectly shaped and labelled boxes, convincing ourselves that growth must always be visible and measurable.

Social media too, at this time of the year especially, is flooded with milestones of weddings, trips, and celebrations, all of course in perfect lighting and shape. What is equally fascinating, though, is what we choose not to show.

Nowhere do we see the other half of the story. Nobody seems to have failed. Nobody talks about the attempt that didn’t work out, the dream that quietly collapsed, the relationship that died after years of effort, or even friendships that simply wilted away. We don’t see the nights spent caring for a sick loved one, the grief that sat heavy in the chest, or the moments when someone felt crushed under expectations they never asked for. We don’t see the tears.

Perhaps because pain, unlike joy, does not fit perfectly in our social media grids. We celebrate in public and suffer in silence. Pain is messy, uneven, and often wordless. It does not ask to be reacted to or commented on. And so, we tuck it away quietly, not out of shame, but out of dignity. Not every wound needs an audience. Not every grief needs validation. There is dignity in choosing what to reveal and what to keep to yourself.

So when you think of your personal year wrap, do not dismiss this side of life. Do not forget the moments you endured rather than celebrated, the days that taught you patience and butchered your pride, the months that built you, taught you, and gently groomed you. And now, as the calendar prepares to turn again, January will arrive full of resolutions and performative ambitions. However, if you find yourself welcoming the year with a sense of fatigue born from years of promising change and falling short, of wondering whether this “fresh start” is just another loop in disguise, or of fearing that you too are stuck in the Chakravyuh with no way out, remember that these very moments carry wisdom that no highlight reel ever could.

Growth usually happens, in survival, in choosing to show up again and again , even after falling each time. We must realise that a new year is not just a new digit we shall enter while writing the date but it is also a kind of permission to pause, to loosen our grip on the past, and to set down the emotional baggage we’ve been dragging around.

The setbacks of the last twelve months do not have to define the next twelve. The slate becomes clean only when we accept that the yearly wrapped stories need not be all bright and beautiful. It may also be a lesson for the coming year to set the grief, regret, and failure aside. It may be time to keep aside the person we were so we can make space for the person we are becoming, inclusive of our lessons, flaws, and all.

So this time, let’s lower the volume. Let’s resist the urge to chase all that seems loud and flashy. Instead of striving for unprecedented changes, let us choose the quiet rebellion of small steps. Let growth be slow, imperfect, and deeply human.

We don’t have to conquer mountains this year. We only have to keep walking.

Here’s to the unglamorous, unseen, deeply honest work of beginning again, softly, imperfectly, and with compassion for ourselves.