In some Eastern philosophies, there is the belief that a glass dish becomes more beautiful, more valuable, after it cracks. The fractures do not diminish it; they complete it. The scars tell a story of use, endurance and survival. In this same way, 2025 arrived as an alchemist, not to destroy humanity, but to refine it.
Alchemy teaches that gold is not discovered; it is earned. An element must first be undone, melted, cracked, stripped of what does not belong, before it can become something luminous. Fire, in this tradition, is not punishment but mercy disguised as intensity. What remains after the burning is not what was strongest, but what was true. And so the work of alchemy is never hurried; it is deliberate, patient, and exacting, allowing nothing false to survive the process.
That is how 2025 moved. It felt sent from above, tasked with preparing the human soul for a shift we can sense but rarely articulate, a quiet rearranging of values, priorities, and inner truths. 2025 did not discriminate. It moved through nations, homes, hearts, and minds with equal certainty, ensuring that no one encountered it unchanged.
Across the world, it became a year of testimonies and trials, breakthroughs and breakdowns, love and loss, freedom and confinement, abundance and deprivation, life and death standing uncomfortably close to one another. It was as if the year itself carried a singular mission: to meet every person at the point of their becoming.
For me, this alchemy arrived through betrayal and disappointment; a depth of pain I did not know I needed, yet one that reshaped the way I now understand life, emotion, and the pursuit of happiness. And still, it was also the year I dared. I dared to love. I dared to commit. I dared to forgive. I dared to reach for happiness even while fear sat beside me, whispering warnings.
The love I offered was not returned in the way I had hoped. Yet, in that unreciprocated affection, I discovered truths about myself; my flaws, my blind spots, the role I played in my own pain, and the boundaries I failed to honour. I learned discernment. I learned self-respect. I learned the kind of people my soul can safely coexist with. In heartbreak, I found clarity.
Even those who experienced joy and fulfilment in 2025 were not spared transformation. When they pause to reflect honestly, they too will admit that something within them shifted. The year revealed an uncomfortable truth: life was never designed to be perfect. Growth demands friction. Alignment with purpose often requires striving, sweating, or emotional unravelling, moments that force us to rethink our choices and reimagine our perspectives.
The Qur’an captures this reality with striking clarity:
“Do people think that they will be left alone because they say, ‘We believe,’ and will not be tested?” (Surah Al-‘Ankabūt 29:2).
Faith, like character, is proven in the furnace.
As the year closes, I realise that 2025 owes me nothing. I lived through it. I survived it. I was shaped by it. I learned to protect my peace, to trust my instincts above noise and appearances, and to never regret the love I chose to give, even when it was not returned. Above all, I learned to hold tightly to Allah’s promise:
Fa-inna ma‘al ‘usri yusrā
Inna ma‘al ‘usri yusrā
“For indeed, with hardship comes ease. Indeed, with hardship comes ease.”
These words became my anchor. They still are.
I step into the year ahead not unscarred, but refined. Wiser. Stronger. More aware. Whatever curves life throws my way, I walk forward with certainty, my Lord is with me, closer to me than my jugular vein. And like cracked glass catching the light, I now understand that what broke me also made me luminous.
