Happy New Year.

We were able to spend a wonderful Christmas with family making great new memories from some really special moments. And now, with one toe dipped into 2025, I find myself so fortunate to stand at the beginning of another year, happy and healthy and ready to face what comes. I know not every year will start like this, so I’m determined to make the most of it while I can.

My year has started off with a bit of reflection courtesy of my son. He’s something of an old soul, prone to nostalgia and intense retrospection. He’s already reminiscing about the good ‘ole days of last week, the time we had that epic air hockey tournament, those amazing dumplings from that Chinese restaurant. Part of this, I know, is to be expected – the dread at the end of Christmas break, the nervous anticipation of the start of school. Part of this is also the 80 year old man trapped in his 12 year old body.

I chuckle as I write this because that’s exactly how I was described as a child. “Mature for his age,” “such an old soul,” “so quiet and brooding.” I don’t think much has changed since then, except that my age is quickly catching up to how I’m expected to behave. I was a brooder. I used to dwell a lot in the past. I used to relive memories, used to wonder what if and who knows and maybe this or that as if thinking hard enough about the past could somehow reshape the present.

I know exactly when my perception changed: it’s when I started working in medicine. I met and cared for so many people who shared so many stories about their lives, so many amazing and wonderful and touching things that it was hard to see anything positive ahead, especially when faced with disease. I worried that spending so much energy mourning what’s left behind leaves so little energy to live the life ahead.

A lot of what I do in palliative care is energy, and priority, redistribution. It’s about identifying what matters most and shunting effort and resources to help find meaning or achieve happiness or restore identity with what time remains. I think what I’ve come to realize over the past 20 years in medicine is that this doesn’t have to be an end-of-life strategy: it can be a life strategy.

All of which is to say: I’ll help my son make the most of these last few days of Christmas Break. We’ll make space for new moments, and new memories whenever and however they appear. And we’ll embrace all the exciting and slightly terrifying adventures ahead.

Here’s to all the magic and wonder and wisdom that awaits us in 2025.