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Hello,

Did you have a good New Year’s Eve?

The question seems simple. Almost polite.
And yet, it carries within it everything that separates us.

Were you surrounded by friends and family, by soft or festive music, by tables overflowing with food, glasses raised at midnight, gifts exchanged out of habit, fireworks lighting up a sky untouched by danger?

Did you feel that reassuring warmth that says that, at least for a few hours, everything is fine?

And in that suspended moment, did you think of us?
If only for a second.
A fleeting thought, almost uncomfortable, quickly pushed aside by a laugh or a toast.

Of us, whom you have made fragile.
Of us, whom you push a little further into precarity each day by piling up taxes, rules, and constraints—not out of necessity, but because you are incapable of questioning yourselves. Incapable of managing a budget without sacrificing the weakest. Incapable of taking responsibility for your mistakes. And even more incapable of admitting them.

You govern without ever asking yourselves whether you govern justly.

Did you think of us,
you who decide on war from carpeted offices,
you who refuse compromise because peace does not pay enough,
you who no longer know how to sit around a table to talk, to negotiate, to resolve.

Talking requires courage.
Negotiating requires humility.
War requires only a signature.

In the shadows of your meetings, your lobbies, your intertwined interests, the war factories must keep running, the stock must be cleared, fear must be maintained, profits must be fed—profits that never bear your name.

Did you think of us,
who do not sleep in heated homes, nor in protected hotels, nor in guarded palaces,
but under tents, under the open sky, in the rain, in the cold,
without real help, without lasting protection, without promises kept.

Abandoned while you celebrate.

Did you think of us,
children of parents who elected you, who believed in your speeches, your promises, your campaign smiles,
and whom you betrayed—slowly, methodically—
by thinking first of your personal comfort,
by voting absurd laws that push us to the edge of the abyss,
all while claiming they are “necessary.”

You change the rules when they no longer suit you.
You twist the laws when they get in your way.
You trample international law when it slows your ambitions.

You speak of values, yet you forget the value of human life.

You live in your cocoon—protected, disconnected, blind to what is happening in your own countries.
You govern numbers, not human beings.

You have created unnecessary wars instead of focusing on what truly matters: feeding, protecting, educating, caring for your people.

And yet, you never go to the front.

You do not know the sound of shells, the smell of fear, the sleepless nights.
You do not watch those die to whom you give absurd orders.

You send men and women in your place.
Ordinary people.
People who, too, would like to spend New Year’s Eve with their families.
People who simply dreamed of living, not of becoming heroes against their will.

People who will never come home.

I sleep under the bombs.
I fall asleep to the sound of explosions.
I wake up counting those who are missing.

I did not have a New Year’s meal.
Not even a simple bowl of rice worthy of the name.
I received no gifts,
except the bitter one of still being alive.

I did not see the stars shine in the sky.
The sky is too red. Too black. Too dangerous.
My only concern—like that of my parents, my friends—is not to celebrate, but to survive.

To survive in this mad world you have created.

Tell me…
Have you lost your reason?
Or is it your humanity that you abandoned along the way?

You chose selfishness.
You chose power over responsibility.
You chose to enrich yourselves on the backs of the people.
You chose to destroy rather than to build.

When will this end?

Will it have to be us, the children,
who remind you that peace is not a utopia,
but a choice?

I cannot even wish my loved ones a happy year 2026.

We are separated.
By borders.
By camps.
By weapons.

We are on the front lines.
We are in precarity.
We are waiting.

And yet… despite everything…
we continue to hope.

 

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