On the last day of 2025, an old friend and I lament that the usual resolutions like exercise more, work smarter and be a better parent are beginning to sound tired. After all, in this second phase of our lives, if we haven’t found a way forward it might pay to examine the goals rather than their pursuit.

For entertainment, I tell her that a US news network had called me that morning to schedule an “urgent” interview. I’d moved things around only to have the producer cancel without explanation. I didn’t mind the cancellation but hated the possibility that my patients could have been inconvenienced.

We jest that our reaction to the statement ‘It turns out we won’t be needing you any more’ might just be our new challenge, considering all the places it pops up – from the patients and institutions who drop us to the friends and relatives who break contact.

Unexpectedly, my first challenge of the new year is a funeral. Indians typically refer to their unrelated elders as uncle and aunty. It denotes respect but is also helps in remembering names. The uncle whose funeral is being held is the father of an old friend. Having arrived in Australia during the dying years of the White Australia policy, Uncle became the rare academic whose work reaped commercial success. But his most far-reaching work came after retirement when he and his wife poured themselves into community endeavours. Banding with a small group of like-minded people they........

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