Written by: Mo Lidsky
January 1st, 2026
When I reflect on 2025, what stands out most aren’t the financial highlights or the business lessons, but the deeper reminders about what it means to stay human, aligned, and anchored in an evolving world that’s difficult to understand.
1. Tolerance requires intolerance of dogma
The most challenging lesson for me to learn was the difference between embracing the views of others and tolerating dogma. There is a very short leap from dogma into moral certainty, which then offers license to dehumanize others.
This past year made that impossible to ignore. We all watched vociferous protests devolve into threats and celebrations of harm. As a Jew, witnessing calls for my destruction in broad daylight (in cities like Toronto, London, Amsterdam, and Melbourne) it has been both sobering and deeply unsettling. Sobering for the state of the Western world, and unsettling to see hatred cloaked in righteousness.
Sadder still, as we saw in the recent Bondi Beach massacre in Australia, dangerous dogma is sustained not only by those who wield it, but by the silence of those unwilling to confront it.
Unlike personal values, dogma asserts my righteousness by denying your humanity. Those who do this aren’t demonstrating strength. They’re exhibiting a failure of imagination and courage. Blame and outrage are easy. Understanding, bridge-building, and problem-solving are hard. Too many choose what’s easy, even when it produces nothing constructive.
2025 taught me that the only way we preserve tolerance of difference is by becoming intolerant of dehumanizing dogma that rejects those differences.
2. The most expensive mistakes are the attempts we didn’t make
It’s easy to learn from mistakes we commit, especially painful ones. They leave scars, stories, and lessons we can point to. Where we struggle is learning from the mistakes we didn’t make — the conversations we never had, the risks we deferred, the time we assumed we’d always have later.
That became painfully clear this past year as my oldest child moved out. What surfaced wasn’t regret over what I did wrong, but over what I didn’t do. During her formative years, I travelled often, worked long evenings, and reassured myself there would be more time “later.” Each choice felt reasonable in isolation. Together, they quietly compounded.
There was no single error to blame. Just a series of small omissions whose cost only became visible once the season had passed. I’ve come to see that the most expensive mistakes in life aren’t the loud ones. They’re the moments we assumed we could always come back to — the changes we believed we could make “later.” And then, later never comes.
This pattern doesn’t stop at the personal. It plays out in our cities, our communities, and our institutions. Hatred rarely arrives all at once. It advances while decent people hesitate, rationalize, or stay quiet. History is unambiguous on this point: the regret that follows inaction is often far heavier than the discomfort of speaking up early. Silence feels safer in the moment — until the moment passes, and the cost becomes unavoidable.
3. How we live matters more than what we achieve
At the start of this year — and really since October 7th — I found myself living with a low-grade dread that never quite lifted. Anger sat just beneath the surface. Every news story, every antisemitic incident felt heavy. Some left me sad, others furious, and more than a few made me question humanity itself. I was more tense, more reactive, and less patient with my wife, my family, my colleagues, and even myself. It seeped into everything.
What ultimately shifted things wasn’t a change in the world, but a change in how I was relating to it. I intentionally reduced my news consumption, deepened my meditation practice, and engaged in different forms of therapy. Slowly, it became clear that while the events themselves were real and painful, much of my suffering was self-generated. I wasn’t just witnessing distress. I was repeatedly imposing it on myself. My nervous system was stuck in protection mode, which turns information into alarm, disagreement into danger, and uncertainty into constant tension.
Over time, I’ve come to see that the quality of my life rests on three interdependent pillars:
- my inner world,
- the frame through which I interpret what happens to me, and
- the quality of my relationships.
Neglect any one for too long, and no amount of success elsewhere compensates.
Fear, resentment, and anger can catalyze action. They can even produce results. But they are corrosive fuel. They burn hot and leave us hollow, uneasy, and unsettled. When we instead draw on love, purpose, and care — whether for people, for a craft, or for something larger than ourselves — we can sustain effort without hollowing ourselves out.
We may not control the chaos in the world nor the headlines. But we do control how we tend our inner world, how we frame what we encounter, and how we show up for others. Changing those didn’t make the world gentler, but it did make life livable again.
My wish for each of you…
As I look toward 2026, I have no expectations for a calmer world, though I am hoping for steadier and more conscious people around me. I hope that all of us can stand up to dehumanizing dogma, act before opportunities and relationships quietly pass us by, and live with enough awareness to choose response over reaction.
May the coming year find us braver in our convictions, quicker in our care for one another, and more intentional about how we direct our energy, attention, and love.
