I write on the last morning of 2025, compelled to deliver this note that will usher in the new year. I simply cannot fail to write today, to close this chapter, just as life cannot be without beginnings and ends.

 

Closing out a year feels like death, while starting a new one is always like being born. The wheel of life, with all its familiar themes, comes to mind right now. And with it, time itself, the clock that keeps ticking until one day it stops.

 

I've always been obsessed with clocks that don't work. That time frozen in two hands that don't turn, and which, by chance, twice a day will be working for an eye that happens to be passing by and consults the hands, and they will, oh, what a coincidence, show the exact time. But it so happens that I don't believe in coincidences, but rather in causality, those moments when something happens because of something else, like the one I'm mentioning: time frozen at the hour it should show, and then, a few minutes before and after, death, because the clock doesn't work. It no longer tells the exact time, it no longer moves, nor will it move for at least another twelve hours, until the cycle is completed again.

 

Would anything change in your life, dear reader, if you knew the time you were going to die? Not the day, not the month, not even the year, just the hour. Think about it. You'll probably tell me no, that it wouldn't change anything and that you'd try not to think about it. But deep down you know it would, that it would affect you, that you'd be thinking about it every day, before or after that hour, and at least twice a day, "Will it be today?" And then what? Would you change your clothes? Put on makeup? Eat something delicious? Read that book you've been meaning to get to? Kiss your children, your loved one?

Would you call someone? Every day? Or some days yes and some days no?

 

I know, this article and these thoughts are a bit strange to start 2026. I should write about the plans for this new year, the resolutions we make and don't keep, because we all truly do what we can with life, even if we try to control it. And when a thought like this one about clocks catches my attention, I prefer to share it with you, readers, even if it's not the most appropriate way to start the year. Perhaps it will leave you thinking that there's a clock in this world, stopped, marking the hour of your death. You don't know which one it is, neither do I, but there it is, in an antique shop, on a shelf, forgotten, in a storage room full of old things. And I don't know if it's important to find it or not, but what I am sure of is that being aware of death brings us closer to life. So, in a second, at the exact hour, we hold our breath. And seeing that we continue to flow, we take a deep breath and say: today wasn't our day, so carpe diem.

 

Mercedes Soledad Moresco, Writer