End of the Year Note – On Stepping Back
✍️ Author’s Note
A closing note at the end of a year marked by noise, certainty, and consequence.
As the year closes, words come more slowly. Not because there is less to say, but because so much has already been said—often loudly, often from a safe distance, often without bearing the cost of its consequences.
Wars continue. The climate warms. Hunger persists. And Europe speaks in firm sentences while drifting through a changing world it no longer commands. Somewhere between conviction and repetition, language begins to lose its weight.
I have written often this year about power, limits, and realism—not as an excuse for indifference, but as a condition for responsibility. In a world where decisions cost lives, clarity matters more than comfort. Yet clarity, repeated too often, can harden into noise.
The war on Europe’s border will end. Not because of speeches, resolutions, or moral maximalism, but because all wars do—through exhaustion, compromise, and necessity. To deny this is not idealism; it is refusal. And refusal carries its own human price.
Europe will have to learn to live with less illusion: about its unity, its influence, and its moral reach. Others already see what we prefer not to see—that empathy is applied selectively, justice unevenly, and principles adjusted to power. The world listens less to what we proclaim, and more to what we practise.
There is a time to speak, and a time to pause. For me, this feels like the latter.
The coming year will turn away from the constant churn of politics and return to quieter grounds: culture, memory, civilisation, intelligence—human and artificial—and the fragile things worth preserving when certainty fails. Not as retreat, but as recalibration.
Clarity remains necessary.
But so does restraint.
And sometimes, the most honest gesture is to step back—
and let silence say what words no longer can.
William J J Houtzager, Aka WJJH, December 2025
📌 Blog Excerpt
As the year ends, words give way to restraint.
This is not a call to speak louder, but to step back—
and let clarity return where repetition has worn thin.
In what kind of world do we wish to live 