COLUMN: Lessons learned from 2025 and hopes for 2026 |
As another year closes behind us, it’s tempting to rush headlong into resolutions and predictions. But it’s worth pausing to ask what the year just gone has actually taught us, here in Mayo and far beyond county lines. It feels clear to me that this year, more than ever, we have had to draw on our resilience daily, and quietly, to respond to the world around us.
In Mayo, we witness that resilience in communities facing relentless pressures: a cost of living that never quite eases, health services stretched thin, devastating storm damage, ongoing energy uncertainty, and a growing housing emergency treated as nothing of the sort. Young people are trying to build futures while simply getting on with plans. Under a constant bombardment of news, at global, national and local level, it can feel like death by a thousand cuts. It does not feel like our government has a firm hand on the wheel. Local government is not even permitted to see it.
Yet communities continue to show up for one another through voluntary groups, sports clubs, schools, and small acts of neighbourliness that never make headlines but hold places together. They prove that social fabric is not maintained by policy alone, but by people who decide to care. Often these qualities emerge during crisis, but if years like 2025 have taught us anything, it is that we must notice small acts of kindness, decency and generosity, be grateful for them and amplify them. When everything feels beyond our control, we can still choose how we act in our own circles, how we carry ourselves, and how we contribute locally. These small acts remain among........