Year-End Resolutions: My Liberation—and perhaps everyone’s

Article by John Kenneth Dapitan

I choked on a firecracker, but I burst into flying colors. 

New years were always about new beginnings. We march into new chapters and follow the trails of first times and emerging relationships. However, 2025 proves that a year can end in tragic stories, heartbreak, and hopelessness. 

So instead of writing my 2026 New Year’s resolutions, I asked myself: what did I change to deserve a new beginning? 

First 4 Months of Love Not Lighting Up

Love was not as magical as it seems in the films. There is much to ask rather than experience. It is more painful than feeling warm. And it taught me—and perhaps all of us—that our flaws transform into a mirrorball because of love. We tend because we don’t want it to end; we hold on even if it means carrying them by the neck. Our loving selves carry a burden of longing that tortures people around us. The walls we built for the people to protect them end up burying them alive.

2025 helped me realize that a broken person believes in broken versions of love. But we let them because experiences nourish a gentle soul. Sometimes, lessons hardly found can only be obtained when we lose something. However, it is never because someone deserves their heart broken and tainted, but maybe it’s the universe nudging you to believe it is all you ever needed.

And as I ponder that love is not a one-size-fits-all fantasy, the next months grew hazier and awakened my sleeping soul.

May to August of Burning from Falling Short

 At the front of a mirror glows an image of a try-hard—an overcompensator, always doing the most, and the imaginative. In the busy city, being a dreamer means not receiving a kind hand. Like any college student and even adults, we will be haunted by falling short.

We could have won.

We almost did.

That should have been us. 

Because that is when we realize that our efforts were more meaningful and impactful than reality. And it taught me—and perhaps all of us—that I could see the same situations with my classmates failing to earn scholarships, friends who didn’t pass, and fellow Filipinos working hard yet riddled with corruption.

I am not the only one. So I waited for incandescent bulbs to light up our streets, and live the ‘Ber’ months in optimism.

What 2025’s Ber Months Taught the Human in Me 

In the busy streets, we subtly live the euphoria of Christmas. Jeepneys play holiday songs of Mariah Carey and Jose Mari Chan, and the streets were filled with youngsters carolling. Yet hearing those music remains a feather on our cap—a privilege to hear music without the gloom. Many Filipinos carry a burden of living a boring and repetitive life cycle behind the joyful music.

But what is great about a year ending is that we can always rewrite our stories and unlearn. It taught me—and perhaps all of us—that every person becomes worthy of a new beginning when they have the reason to fight for it and the grit to hold on. After all, what we need is not another beginning, but the courage to finish what we started. Amid flaws and disarray, we chose to believe in the beauty of the people and to show compassion to ourselves, which allows us to love again: love people, passion, and the art of becoming.

I survived a year of choking on firecrackers, but it made me fly into beautiful colors—and perhaps everyone.