2025: What are you focusing on?

I started the new year calmly, letting go of the old in my sleep and remaining open to what 2025 will bring. When I woke up and looked at the news, the main images were of fireworks, more fireworks, a few skirmishes, and some fireworks-related accidents.

It seemed as if there was more fireworks this year than usual, as though something was in the air. Protest, perhaps. Or an attempt to reclaim something that was lost. A sense of unrest in society.

What is this expression trying to tell us?

From a systemic perspective, at least three forces are at play:

The planned future: What do we want, and what do we deliberately avoid? Where are we consciously focusing our efforts?

The living past: The certainty of what we have. Memories of earlier times: “It was better back then” or “Never again.”

The emerging future: What is coming to an end? What wants to be dismantled to create space for something new?

Then, there are two questions:

The first: What are you focusing on?

On your plans? Clarifying what you want to achieve in your life, work, and society?
On cherishing the past? Appreciating what has brought you here and going with that flow?
On letting yourself be carried along by what life itself desires, an adventure with all its unexpected twists—sometimes beautiful, sometimes painful?

The second: What does my life, my work, and society need?

More strategy and purpose? Decisive policies?
More stability and gratitude? Appreciating what has brought us here and building continuity from that?
Loving demolition of what has passed, so space arises for experimentation, failure, and starting anew?

Do you listen to your head? To your heart? To both? And what does your body say?

And what if our society had a voice, what would it say? Not as a sum of individuals or “the voters,” but as an entity – the society as a whole.

So, 2025: What are you focusing on?

~ Jan Jacob