When your editor calls you and asks you to summarize the year in your author’s column—it’s quite something. The issue comes out on December 23 and there’s still a week ahead. And the last five years have clearly shown that such dear friends as Predictability, Consistency, and Regularity have long left the chat. But nevertheless.
The Black Square or the White Circle?
Lately, I find myself increasingly searching for my own notes to a) make sure it really happened; b) verify that it actually occurred this year and not several years ago. The pace of events has reached a second cosmic velocity. Looking back has become frightening. Looking forward is foolish.
If I had to assign a title to the outgoing year, I would mark it as the year of the abolition of logic. All my attempts at predictions—from the Eurovision voting to the results of the Riga City Council elections and global geopolitical decisions—have been harshly ridiculed by harsh reality. Somewhere in a damp grave, Hans Eysenck is turning over in annoyance: cause-and-effect relationships have entered a new evolutionary phase. If the two previous figures in the series are a black square and a white circle, then the third could very well be an orthopedic pillow. Or a non-binary person. Or Trump.
The phrase "by all logic" today can be equated in terms of catastrophic failure to "I don’t want to offend anyone." Each decision from every government has so many false legs sticking out from under the table that every news reporter just wants to cover their head with their hands and ask to be woken up when something becomes clear.
Sensations have become a daily routine. At this very moment as I type this text, Donald Trump is launching deck aviation into the skies over Venezuela. You might as well not even try to figure out what "deck aviation" is, why it’s being launched, and how to spell Venezuela. By the time this issue goes to print, the situation will have changed ten times. I consciously want this paragraph to remain here, in the outgoing year. As a notch in memory. As "there was an event here that could have changed history."
The Wheel of History
The year 2025 has melted that very "wheel of history." Time has finally changed its state of aggregation. It has traveled from tablets to liquid magma and has begun to flow naturally. It can no longer leave marks. This year, I made a special effort to document what was happening. For posterity. Implying by "posterity" primarily myself: a person who, in just a couple of months, will not believe that today’s events could seem significant without records.
Remember this. History has the property not only to change but also to be rewritten retroactively. Every year, we forget what those who are supposed to keep their promises have promised us. In the new year, we will again be promised things, substituting the expectation of a paid order with faith in miracles.
Experience Doesn’t Work
In the first ten months of this year, about 10,000 children were born in Latvia. 9,887, to be precise. 5,162 boys and 4,725 girls. In these two months, surely a couple of thousand more have been added. Let’s not talk about alarming trends, about the declining birth rate. Every child is enough. This is the very new person who does not yet know what was before and what to prepare for. Their brain is still open to develop according to the centuries-old scheme: with all logical chains and cause-and-effect relationships. Helping them with this is the task of parents, of course. The task of society is not to interfere.
These 9,887 Latvian infants are our main smugglers. They are bringing into our cynically polluted future pure, unclouded logic. For them, the world is still predictable: if you cry, you will be hugged; if you laugh, you will be smiled at in return. We have turned this scheme into a complex quest with double bottoms. We have unlearned to ask for help without feeling guilty and to rejoice without looking at the inflation index.
We are people, from 25 to infinity—equally twisted by the last five years. Several shells have exploded around us: informational, disinformational, segregational, populist—whatever you can think of. It has wounded everyone equally, regardless of age. Even experience hasn’t helped much: it struck suddenly and in the most unexpected places. Essentially, everyone has been cut.
In the new year, I want to wish everyone to learn to heal wounds. For themselves and for others. To try to document: where the blows are coming from and not to expose oneself too foolishly. And to protect those who have not yet been caught in the crossfire. I don’t want to think that this generation has broken—bring in the new. It seems to me that we can still be revived too. It is important to just keep in mind that we need to strive for the unspoiled, not drag them down to the bottom with us.
Let’s Be Surprised
There will be good things in the new year. There definitely will be. We must not unlearn to notice them. Remember the gopher and the bumper? Forget it.
There will be no uplifting ending, no. In 2026, I will try to take back the ability to be surprised. Not to be frightened or outraged, but to be surprised by how much humanity is still left in us, despite all this year’s efforts to dehumanize us. We still know how to empathize, we still know how to fall in love at the most inopportune moment, and we still buy paper newspapers, even though we know that by the time the issue comes out, the world will have become completely different.
I would like to say: "May 2026 be a little more boring," but good lord, who am I kidding: the Year of the Red Horse—Time for Change.
Ride on, horse, Chinese calendar.
Happy New Year. Hold on tight.
Alexey Stetyukha, journalist, blogger
