Tonight, in the faint hush of December,
when parols bloom like small suns in the dark
and carols drift like half-remembered prayers,
I imagine a very ordinary person—
the Everyman of quiet houses in muted amber—
walking through the long corridors of the year
retracting moments once outpaced, too fleeting to hold dear.

Christmas, that old season of returning,
waits at the far end of the hall—
asking gently, as it always has,
for the courage to reconcile.

He pauses first at the doorway to his parents' room.
He thinks of misunderstandings braided loosely between them,
sentences sharpened by fatigue,
the withheld tenderness, the swallowed apologies.
He stands beside their tired silhouettes
and forgives them for knowing only what they learned.
He forgives himself for needing them to be infinite.
In the kind light of Christmas,
he feels something loosen—
a long, stubborn knot beginning to breathe.

He turns to the rooms that holds his friends—
those he has loved too fiercely,
those he has lost by accident,
those who stayed like steadfast lanterns
against the collapsing dark.
He touches each memory gently,
as though cradling a moth that could startle into flight.
He reconciles with the truth
that people wander like constellations,
yet are somehow still part of the same sky.

In the hallway, he faces an old enemy.
Not armed with triumph,
nor trembling with the exhaustion of battle,
but standing calm, as one who has learned
the long discipline of carrying his own shadow.
He forgives— not because the wound was light,
but because he is larger than it,
wide enough to hold both hurt and release.
Hatred, after all, is a fire
that burns only the hand that clings to it.

Further down the hall waits a figure he once loved—
maybe, almost, then never.
He sees now that longing, too,
loves without tether.
He thanks them for the ache,
for the lesson in tenderness,
and lets go of the weight
he once mistook it for destiny.
Reconciliation means naming the pain,
then offering it a soft mattress to rest
before sending it gently on its way.

He opens the drawer of his personal affairs—
deadlines curled at the edges,
failures pressing, speaking of his betters,
the exhaustion of school days
and the dreams half-stitched at the seams.
He smooths the relentless forward motion of his life
and pacifies the pressure,
the ache of wanting to be enough,
and finds, in the acceptance of imperfection,
a small, luminous mercy.

Then he steps outside, into the wide and aching world.
The air carries the scent of rain and renewal;
somewhere a siren wails,
somewhere a child laughs.
Around him: a country worn thin
by rising costs, fracturing storms,
the long shadow of grief and reform,
the quiet, quivering hope of those who endure.
He looks upon the trembling Philippines—
its beauty, bewilderment, disappointments—
and understands that everything is intertwined.
That nothing suffers or blooms alone.                                                                                                                    To understand is to forgive it all
As it comes back to you.

At last, he returns to himself.
He stands before the mirror
and studies the face he has carried
through all the years of trying;
the betrayals of growing older,
the victories quiet as dawn,
the eyes that have wept, widened,
and dared— oh, how they dared.
He gathers every version of himself
into a single trembling kindness.
He forgives the person he failed to be,
and embraces the person he is learning,
slowly and tenderly, to become.

And in that final reconciliation—
with life, with time,
with the unrepeatable marvel of simply being—
he finds a peace soft enough
to illuminate the heart.

On this holy, ordinary earth,
on this Christmas warmed by jangling lights
and stubborn hope,
he utters a benediction for the year gone by,
then steps forward into the next
with a determination fierce enough
to begin again.