Keep Your Heart Warm

Kate Chung

 There’s something looming over the prospect of 2025, and I think we can all feel it a little. And with the start of a new year, our world is bound to change. Everyone is taking on a change this winter, but no matter the month, change feels so cold. In our generation, we experience and feel the world so strongly. We have a constant craving for intel on the future, and when our world is so tense with anticipation, it is easy to lose sight of the humanity in our search. We have simply forgotten the beauty in being. The anticipation of change will only rise as we approach the winter season, and we need to find a way to keep our world warm. Together, we can be each other’s fire. 

There are a lot of factors to the season’s chaos, but nevertheless, I encourage you to find beauty in 2025 and view this message, not as phony positivity, but as an invitation to a year full of ambition and joy. I hope you seize every opportunity you are given and radiate kindness to those you meet. Allow yourself to share your voice with your peers and be quick to listen. Cherish the lunches you spend with the people you hold dear and relish every free lunch apple. Unleash your inner wabi sabi—that is, identify the beauty in every moment. Take a picture of every awful parking job in the lot and savor each Saturday morning latte, even while questioning why you’re at school on the weekend. Appreciate every cotton candy sunset from the square windows of the Tower. Smile at out-of-state license plates and play punch buggy in the car with your friends. Find the allure in the scent of fresh holiday pine and feel the glow of every candle as it lights up a room. Sculpt your conversations into art, and honor every person and moment. Make the best of every memory and we will keep the cold away. We will hold on to every photograph as we look towards 2025 because it will be beautiful.