Walk with me. Today the universe sent a graffiti message to find the birds, so we shall.

It will be the last stroll of 2025, a year full of challenges and sorrows, but also joy from unanticipated quarters.

Rather than listing the highs and lows of 2025 as do so many other retrospectives, I want to focus on one thing: let us continue to fight indifference in 2026. I know I have harped on this all year long, but it is important enough to reiterate in this last YDP of the year.

Wood Duck

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There are many meanings of being indifferent. Here are some gleaned from the Thesaurus:

• not mattering one way or another (what others think is altogether indifferent to them.)
• of no importance or value one way or another ( they talked about indifferent things.)
• being neither excessive or inadequate (hills of indifferent size.)
• being neither good or bad (in the sense of mediocre work.)
• marked by no special like or dislike (indifferent about the task they were given.)
• marked by lack of interest or concern (indifferent to suffering or injustice.)

It is, as you likely anticipated, the last option I am after, the ongoing struggle with apathy.

Kestrel

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I do not want to be unconcerned, incurious, aloof, detached, disinterested or all the other synonyms that come to mind (or appear on the Thesaurus page, as the case may be.)

I don’t want ANYONE to be that way, because we are in this TOGETHER, in need of the strength of collective action.

What is “This” I am referring to, you ask? I am thinking of a world that is coming apart at the seams, in need of accelerated stitching to prevent dissolution, moral as much as physical.

A world where some not only hold on to existing inequality, but think it is a G-d-given right, with a biblically defined hierarchy of White over all darker shades, male over female, rich over poor. A world that desires inequality to continue or even be expanded.

A world where climate change, spread of disease and death are hastened by anti-science policies, removal of aid, eugenics, greed and war.

A world where the tools of promoting differentiated thinking – education, a free press, mechanisms to increase differences of opinion, including free speech – are systematically removed and broken.

A world where diversity is despised instead of celebrated.

Indifference will make it possible for this world to exist, something we should oppose at all cost. It might be an uphill struggle, but, as Miles Davis reminds us in today’s music, “So What?”

Crow eating mouse….

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Grateful that a friend sent out the poem below. As so often with Szymborska, she uses the first person singular approach to establish a direct connection to the reader. (I had posted another of her poems like that here.) SHE has all those preferences, what about yours? SHE questions established truths and mainstream narratives, what about you? SHE made choices, isn’t it your turn?

Not only does she invite us into a mindset that alternates between the small and the large, interior and exterior worlds, the philosophical and the mundane. She reminds us that we have agency – we can make up our minds about what we believe and care about, instead of being indifferent. We have options, even if the powers that be try to convince us that we have run out of them (or our state of overwhelmed fatigue insinuates the same). There are possibilities, if we only think a little harder, accept being governed by reason, avoid being stymied by borrowing trouble.

Meadow Lark. A rare find at this time of year.

What this poem provides for me is the permission to contain sometimes contradictory multitudes, as long as I care and make choices, all of which is in my power. More importantly, it makes me aware of the need for action to follow from belief, given that she lists numerous morally consequential preferences that don’t exist in a void, but require positioning.

Let us remind each other of this in 2026.

Possibilities

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.

By Wislawa Szymborska

Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Happy New Year. Much gratitude that you all have come along for the ride so far.

Downy Woodpecker