Last year was chock-full of positive news, yet people preferred to follow the stories of graft and mayhem—the gorier, the better.

In the age of clickbait and artificial intelligence, doubt rose to new levels of high as the term “fake news” was bandied about, especially to counter various exposés. Commentaries on political characters involved in ongoing controversies were dubbed as lies and the media outlets that released them were denigrated by those opposed to that side of the story.

How do we handle truth when it is staring us in the face?

Reports in 2025 centered on developments around the challenging political and economic landscapes, and either underreported or not highlighted were encouraging slants like how the Supreme Court and international bodies moving forward on cases linked to the “war on drugs” meant progress in legal accountability, for example.

News about the strengthened Animal Welfare Act, for another, and the ALAGA Bill that was pushed last year gave not just animal rights advocates assurance of stricter penalties for animal abusers, but it meant the long, slow road to educating people about kindness is still a fight worth waging.

On Lunar New Year’s Day, when one is urged to keep calm, writing a commentary on politics is the last thing one should do. Uppermost, still, in our minds is the uninhibited pilferage of our national coffers, which, because it is still under investigation, is already rage-inducing.

But let us not go there. Not today.

Instead, let’s dwell on the good news, the ones we chose to ignore or take for granted.

A simple Google search will tell you the world had many upbeat stories in 2025. Many of these were on science, medicine and the environment, including cancer-busting drugs and the ozone hole healing.

Did you know that deforestation has slowed “in every region of the world over the past decade?” The United Nations shared this fact, which should tell us that it wasn’t all just (Paris Agreement) talk and that an “all of planet” effort had been made to address the climate change problem. Of course, we write about the big corporations in first-world countries that are the first to abuse nature just because they can.

Renewable energy is also something to crow about. In Australia, it was announced last year that three hours of free electricity per day would be given to households in some states starting 1 July 2026 due to the “huge amounts of solar power generated in the middle of the day,” a report goes on to say.

One thing I have doubts about were reports on the decrease of crime reported here and in the US, simply from the many stories we see every day.

But imagine the great inroads mankind has made to turn our world into that cliched “better place,” and consider how we prefer to gorge on those endless tales of cruelty and avarice.

This new lunar year (combined with significant planetary movements affecting the universe) urges us to ask ourselves: What am I focusing on or filling my mind with? What future am I helping to build with every word I speak and every action I take?