*16 Vision Questions for the New Year | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | December 26, 2025*
One evening this week, when I opened Netflix’s home screen, a line appeared that I hadn’t seen before. You know the way Netflix sorts content, for example into categories like “Comedy tv shows” or “Family Movies”? Alongside those, a new category appeared for me. It read: “Series That Will Make You Believe Everything Will Be Okay.”
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There were shows there like Young Sheldon and One Family and even Barbie.
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What wasn’t there was the Korean series I watched recently, When Life Gives You Tangerines. Probably because this is very much not a series that makes you believe everything will be okay. Even though it tells a beautiful love story spanning an entire lifetime in South Korea, those lives are saturated with poverty and hardship and backbreaking labor and bitter losses. And if that weren’t enough, it made me realize how much guilt lives inside families. In Korea too. In Korea too.
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Maybe that explains why my eyes were immediately drawn to the title “Series That Will Make You Believe Everything Will Be Okay.” A show like that wouldn’t have hurt, I thought.
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And maybe it was also the headlines, which have returned to being belligerent and warlike, or the Christmas announcement by Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who said something like: the past year was hard? That’s nothing compared to the year ahead, which will be even harder and more terrible. Believing that everything would be okay is what I wished for myself this week.
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So I did what I tend to do in moments like these: I turned to the wisdom of the crowd on Facebook and asked, what makes you believe everything will be okay?
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Almost immediately, someone replied: “What’s not okay? The cafes and bars are full, Ben Gurion Airport is packed, the currency is strong, concerts are sold out. What’s not okay?”
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And for a moment, I almost believed this was an internal problem of mine.
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But then hundreds more responses poured in, from women who feel like I do, and who, at the same time, offered so many points of light.
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Some analyzed the word “okay” itself. For example, Yifat wrote: “I simply agree that everything that happens is okay, meaning that it is meant to be or to happen, according to the order of things.”
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Some rely on the everyday. Like Irit, who wrote: “I focus on ‘okay for now’ and find a long list of what makes the now okay in my small life: the garden in the days after the rain, students who come to class consistently, children busy with their own lives, an abundance of different foods, a rich cultural life. There is a state. I don’t know if ‘it will be okay.’ I hope that if it is okay now, even though so much bad exists alongside it, then it will be okay.”
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Some rely on history. Like Harela, who wrote: “Because throughout life, whenever things weren’t okay, afterward they were. not only terrible things, nothing lasts forever”.
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Some leaned on the words of the wise. Like Michal, who wrote: “A car stopped in front of me at a traffic light with a sticker showing a photo and a quote from a soldier who was killed in the war. If anyone recognizes the soldier, I would love to know. I drove as close as I could and still couldn’t see clearly. His words were: ‘Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, but about learning to dance in the rain.’ I realized that I am no longer waiting for things to ‘be okay.’ I am learning to live with things not being okay, and hoping we will learn how to manage within it.”
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Some wrote about the lesson learned from crisis. Like Naomi: “During this dark period, I discovered emotional strengths within myself that I previously didn’t seem to need. Life was too simple, hardships came naturally. But in these past two years, normalcy wasn’t enough, and I discovered that I have the ability to feel, think, and act at levels far beyond what I knew. I think this happened to many people. What they have drawn out of themselves during this time is astonishing and dramatic, and it gives me a sense of being wrapped in a massive blanket of protection and love.”
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And some relied on imagination. Like Shiri: “I imagine an image of a distant, beautiful future, and it helps me hold the present. A house on the banks of a river, quiet and calm, a happy family.”
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Which brings me to the list I wanted to offer to you to end this yearr and the beginning of another. A list of questions a friend once told me about. Every few years, when the calendar year ends, she sits down and answers all of them with great focus. Because they hold a vision. And since many of the things she wrote in her lists came true, I tried it too. In hindsight, it worked for me as well. Some of the things happening in my life today, I wrote down fifteen or twenty years ago. I wrote them with full intention. Without any understanding of how they would happen, I wrote them and truly saw them happening in my mind.
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So this is not a promise, but it is a practice of intention and imagination. It is always good to hold a vision. And it also helps one believe that everything will be okay. And besides, it worked for two women in the world.
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*Vision List*
Try to describe, in the present tense and with as much detail as possible, the life you are asking for yourself in five years (and you can also choose ten years, fifteen years, and so on).
1-What kind of home do you wake up in in the morning?
2-What does it look like inside?
3-What is outside the window - what view? What place?
4-What are you wearing?
5-Who else is in the house - children? a partner? dogs? hamsters?
6-How do you earn a living?
7-What is your relationship with your money?
8-How much money, property, or investments do you have?
9-Are you in a romantic relationship? Describe in detail what it looks and feels like.
10-Do you have friends? Describe your relationships with them.
11-How does your body feel? What does it look like? What do you do for it?
12-What brings you the most joy?
13-What fills you with pride?
14-What protects you and serves as a safety net during challenging times?
15-What have you not given up for yourself that fills you with gratitude?
16-What is the thing you do that fulfills your purpose in the world?
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This can take time, but it is worth it. Writing it out fully helps me personally believe that everything will be okay. And after you finish, fold the page and place it somewhere. When you open it again in a few years, perhaps a surprise will be waiting for you.
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And I will end with two more of your quotes. The first, from Ya’ara: “My grandmother, ten days before her death at the age of 103 and a bit, said (and luckily my cousin filmed it): ‘Whoever looks for the good will have good. That’s how life is.’” And the second, from Talia: “In our family we say: in the end it will be good, and if it’s not good yet, then it’s not the end.”
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So in this spirit, may it truly be very, very okay in the new calendar year,
and may we all have a Shabbat Shalom,
*Maya Tevet Dayan*