Why 2025 depends on you: Transforming AAA negativity into hope and action

Published 9:10 am Tuesday, January 7, 2025

It was easy to be negative in 2024. After all, it was a AAA year, marked by enough aggression, antagonism, and antipathy to last an entire decade.

There was plenty of negative news, lots of hostile political speeches and name-calling, and a series of proposed public policies and cabinet nominations by the incoming Trump administration that makes one wonder if we will ever be able to establish a more positive direction for the country.

We still face significant problems with violence, oppression, hatred, terrorism, homelessness, and injustice. This goes without needing to say anything more.

As a result, it is hard not to be discouraged as one year ends and another begins. So, where do we go from here?

One place to start is with ourselves. Perhaps our attitudes and actions in 2025 can serve as a beginning to turn the tide from a negative AAA year into a positive one.

What would happen if we each decided to replace aggression, antagonism, and antipathy by focusing on being awake, alive, and affirming instead? That’s an easy thing to say, but what does it mean on a personal level?

For me, it begins by being awake, which is not the same as being “woke.” Being awake means being fully aware of everything that surrounds us — our environment, our relationships, and other people, and appreciating the diverse realities and traditions that are a part of the world.

It means being curious and seeking to understand more than trying to be understood. Being awake can’t be scripted by readymade formulas for how to act around others.

Instead, being awake is a spiritual discipline and needs to be intentional and genuine, so that openness replaces closedmindedness and indifference. Changing our future begins by seeing the world and others in a new and different way.

Being alive means engaging in those activities that promote well-being, supporting others who are also trying to find their way, and figuring out why we are here and what we can do to make a positive difference in the world by adding value to life rather than diminishing the beauty and richness that surrounds us.

And finally, we need to be more affirming, so that we can contribute positive energy to our families, communities, and world.

Affirmations connect us with each other and are the glue that holds our communities together. Affirmations are also what turns the tide against the other AAA way of life, based on aggression, antagonism, and antipathy.

2025 can be a positive AAA year, but that will depend on us.