Before we enter the new year, it is worth pausing for a moment. Our lives move fast, our days are full, and the world is loud. But sometimes the simplest questions reveal the deepest truths. Let me ask you a few of them.
Did you wake up healthy today, or at least healthy enough to live your day? If yes, you already belong to a privileged part of humanity. Around 2 billion people have no access to basic health care. More than 15 million people die every year from diseases that could be treated or prevented. Getting out of bed without fear for your life is not normal in a global sense. It is luck.
Did no bombs fall in your city, your village, your neighborhood today? If that is the case, you live in safety. More than 120 million people are currently displaced or on the run. Around 40 percent of the global population live under governments that restrict fundamental freedoms. Waking up to silence instead of explosions is not a universal experience. It is a fragile privilege.
Do you have a home, a roof that protects you, a place where your key fits? If yes, you belong to the global minority that enjoys stability. More than 700 million people go hungry. Over 2 billion people do not have safe access to clean water. Millions live in camps, in damaged buildings, in tents or open fields. The simple act of returning home is something many will never know.
Did you have enough to eat today, and do you know that you will also have enough tomorrow? Then you already live in a form of security that billions do not share. The ability to choose what you want to eat, instead of worrying whether you will eat at all, is a quiet form of wealth.
Can you read and write? Can you understand this text without difficulty? Then you have a skill that 760 million people do not have. Illiteracy limits opportunities, rights and dignity. Reading is not only a skill, it is access to the world.
Can you speak your mother tongue freely, without fear or punishment? Then your voice is protected. Many people do not enjoy this freedom. The Kurdish people know this history well. More than 5,000 people were killed in Halabja in 1988, in a single afternoon. More than 180,000 Kurds were murdered across villages and valleys during the Anfal campaign. The genocide against the Yazidis in 2014 resulted in 5,000 deaths, and more than 6,000 women and children abducted and enslaved.
More than 11,000 young Kurdish fighters in Rojava, women and men, died in the war against the so-called Islamic State (ISIS). They defended their families, their neighbors and entire regions from a regime of terror that turned cities into fire and life into hell. Their sacrifice is a reminder that normality is not shared equally. Safety for some exists because others faced danger with nothing but determination, and often with no support from the world that later benefited from their resistance.
Can you wear the colors you want, speak your mind, and criticize power? Then you live in one of the few spaces of global freedom. More than 3.3 billion people do not. In many countries, a single word, a symbol or even a piece of clothing can become a threat.
And did you receive a message today, an email, and a call? Then you are connected to society. More than 2 billion people cannot read or write. Many more have no access to digital communication. Silence is not always peace. It is often isolation.
These questions are not meant to shame you. They are meant to widen your view. Your talent matters. Your work matters. But your birthplace, your political environment, your historical moment matter just as much. Many people are born into danger, not because they deserve less, but because the world is uneven.
Psychology shows that gratitude is not sentimentality. It is a mindset that shapes behavior. People who practice gratitude tend to show more empathy, more generosity and more responsibility. Gratitude is a counterweight to the illusion that life is only the result of individual effort.
Politically, gratitude is awareness. It exposes inequalities that remain invisible to those who benefit from them. It reveals how fragile freedom is, how easily safety can erode, how quickly truth can lose ground when societies forget their own vulnerability.
Anthropology reminds us that humanity is one species. Biological differences are minimal. Cultures differ, histories diverge, but the foundations of human existence are universal. The need for security. The desire for belonging. The longing for love.
History shows how quickly societies can break. Democracies do not collapse in a single moment. They erode through fear, through indifference, through the slow normalization of inequality. Gratitude, understood as a form of political consciousness, resists this erosion.
The new year will not erase the conflicts of the world. But it can remind us that we have agency. We can defend truth. We can resist hatred. We can care for others. We can build communities that do not turn away from suffering. We cannot save everyone, but we can refuse to become indifferent.
Perhaps the new year begins with one simple question.How much luck do you carry without noticing it? And what will you do with this luck, for yourself and for the world you share?
Dr. Jan Ilhan Kizilhan is a psychologist, author and publisher, an expert in psychotraumatology, trauma, terror and war, transcultural psychiatry, psychotherapy and migration.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.