I spent most of my New Year’s Eve thinking about death.

Tatiana Schlossberg, JFK’s granddaughter, had passed away the day before, so I finally read her essay A Battle with my Blood about her cancer journey.

The essay is well-written and moving in so many ways. I recommend reading it alone since you may cry. I also do not recommend reading it on New Year’s Eve – despite my efforts to plunge it out of my mind, it hyperactively remained at the forefront of all my thoughts as 2025 came to a close.

One of the most devastating parts of Tatiana’s essay is her desperation to hold onto her memories:

Sometimes I trick myself into thinking I’ll remember this forever, I’ll remember this when I’m dead. Obviously, I won’t. But since I don’t know what death is like and there’s no one to tell me what comes after it, I’ll keep pretending. I will keep trying to remember.

When I think about 2025, there were a lot of moments that weren’t so great. From those, I did my share of learning and introspecting, and I have zero interest in reliving them.

But never once, even with the painful moments, did it register in my mind, “What happens if I forget what happened?” I could choose to forget or move on from the painful moments. I could choose to revisit whatever I wanted to, with a nonchalance of having my memories intact tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Most of you reading this will be like me – privileged beyond belief. Able to want things, able to choose things. And for those of us living in the United States, we are especially fortunate to live in the best place to dream and see our dreams become reality. The bigger the dream, the better. As Paulo Coelho writes in The Alchemist, “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” That’s what we all have at our fingertips, with few real worries and few real excuses for not realizing our potential.

The opportunity to move with full agency is something to be urgent, happy and deeply grateful for.

To not let life pass by.

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LATERAL THINKING & LIBERAL ARTS

LONG-TERM GAMES WITH LONG-TERM PEOPLE

KEEP THE FAITH

ESCAPE COMPETITION BY BEING MAXIMALLY YOURSELF

PLAY LIFE IN OFFENSE. DON’T LET IT PASS YOU BY

GIVE IT 150%

MANIFEST DESTINY

TELL YOUR PARENTS & FRIENDS YOU LOVE THEM

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These are some of the things I’m taking into 2026, and I hope to see you there.