Catharsis – Yearly Theme 2026

For a long time I couldn’t even imagine 2026. I was so stuck in the day-to-day routines and responsibilities of 2025. So I just kept making notes about what I hoped might make the coming year different.

A lot of those notes involved deleting things. Unfulfilled dreams from my someday/maybe lists. Forgotten shows and films from various streaming watchlists. Even people who were lurking in my contacts lists long after they’d brought any joy into my life.

There was this urge to purge myself of everything that no longer had a place in my life. For a while I toyed with choosing exorcism as my yearly theme. It was perhaps too messy and religious a term. But there’s something in the idea of purification, and maybe even ritual as well, that felt right.

I’m longing to feel unburdened, open, and creative. But I know the coming year will bring burdens, restrictions, and interruptions to the creative flow.

You always know you’re onto a good yearly theme when you can feel the tension between your hopes and your expectations.

Like the cliché says, sometimes the only way through is through. There is no point in trying to avoid the uncomfortable feelings. You have to feel them. Anything else becomes a self-inflicted wound over time.

The more I paid close attention to my experiences in 2025, the more I noticed a pattern: pain and release. My body would manifest the stress I was feeling in all sorts of ways. I would seek an intervention – dental work, podiatry, acupuncture, physiotherapy, talk therapy – and find release.

In fact, there was a third part of the pattern. It was pain, release, and rejuvenation. I thought for a long time I was spiralling downwards. But towards the end of the year, I started to wonder if I was actually spiralling upwards instead. It felt like I was waking up from something. I remember saying to my therapist, “Is this what it feels like to be alive?”

It felt like some sort of catharsis.

For a year that was so fraught, 2025 drew to a close with so much calm and clarity. I felt loved and supported in a way I hadn’t in years. I knew 2026 could turn out to be hard work again. But I was ready for it.

To do that, I wanted to better understand the idea of catharsis.

The word “catharsis” comes to us from the Greek words we translate as “cleanse” and “pure”. We typically describe the release of strong emotions as cathartic. Especially when it’s something we’ve held in for a while. Something that needs to come out.

When I think of the word catharsis, I imagine myself lost amongst 96,000 fans at Taylor Swift’s Melbourne Eras Tour concert, deep in the moment, free and unashamed, singing the songs that are the soundtrack of our lives. In those kinds of moments we are fully alive. There are no walls between the parts of our lives. This is something special, spiritual, and sacred.

Seeking more catharsis runs parallel for me with craving more humanity. I feel like the way AI has been sold to us is dark, dystopian, and unrelentingly undemocratic. Humanity’s artistic output has been pillaged to “train” tools that largely don’t work and very often cause real harm. It is cultural vandalism. Human creativity has been held in contempt. And we’re expected to pay for the privilege.

Am I being dramatic? Perhaps. But my goodness, it feels good to say it.

Catharsis is always dramatic, and that is why I wondered if it was wise to choose this word as my theme for the coming year. Drama is bad, isn’t it? We should try to avoid drama. We should live undramatic lives. That seems to be the common wisdom.

Except I’ve never been a fan of common wisdom.

Drama can be a red flag. Sure. Toxic people create unnecessary drama around them. Sure. Especially narcissistic people. They use drama to coerce and destabilise, to assert dominance, or coax sympathy. Their drama is a form of manipulation. It’s a way to get other people to do things they don’t want to do. It traps people in cycles of destructive behaviour.

I’m talking about a drama we choose for ourselves. Think of it as a stage you want to walk onto. A stage you’d like to decorate. A costume you’d want to wear.

Taking your loved one to a special meal is a drama. Staging and costumes matter. You want to let the emotions out. To say and feel everything that needs to be said and felt.

Or think about that Taylor Swift concert. All those smiles. All those tears. Loving couples. Parents with their kids. Groups of friends. People attending alone because they feel safer in a crowd of like-minded strangers than anywhere else in the rest of their lives. That’s drama. The good kind of drama. The kind that brings catharsis.

Making space for catharsis is about making space for emotion. It’s no coincidence that experiences of catharsis are often associated with music and art, time in nature, religion, and acts of great service. The mix of awe and vulnerability attunes us to the wonders of the universe and fragility of our existence.

Every stage in our lives can be a space for good drama. For deepening our relationships, exploring our emotions, expressing our hopes and dreams. Maybe it’s time we stopped making our lounge rooms look as cold and clinical as a car showroom? All white walls and harsh downlights. If you want people to look beautiful you don’t put them in a doctor’s waiting room. You invite them to a flowering garden bathed in warm late afternoon light. We should decorate accordingly.

My 2025 started to turn around when I changed the staging for my nights. I bought a gazillion candles and put them around my little lounge room. No more downlights. I bought a nice warm reading lamp and set it next to a comfortable chair. I started showering early and sitting down to read in a dark robe on those cold nights. I might look like some cliché vampire in the candlelight. And I don’t care. I love it.

Increasingly, that stage brought its own small dramas. When we make room for art in our lives, reading, listening to music, watching dance, or looking at sculptures and paintings, we start to notice things. Not just in the art. But also in ourselves. Noticing awakens our senses. It turns us on. Brings us to life. Drama.

That nonsensical “common sense” about living a life without drama might be about avoiding toxicity. But I’m inclined to believe it’s got more to do with not taking up space, speaking up for yourself, orienting your life around what makes you unique. We tell children they are special, then construct a society that spends the rest of their lives telling them they aren’t special and they just have to fit into ever smaller boxes. It’s ridiculous and it has to stop.

I’m here for the drama. The good drama. Turn on the lights and decorate the stage, I say. Turn up the music and feel the emotions. Show your love, passion, and enthusiasm. Let it out. Damn the stoics, the techbros, and the podcast grifters. Give me K-pop, Swifties, and everyone who reminds us that life can be beautiful, fun, and liberatingly cathartic.

Looking Back On Previous Themes

My yearly theme for 2025 was Golden. The coming year felt like it would be challenging, and it turned out to be even harder than expected, but there were golden moments, positive memories to cling to despite the hardship. I was hoping to live a more harmonious life by finding the right patterns and cadences for things I did in life. The yearly theme reminded me to keep looking for them.

You can learn more about choosing your own yearly theme or read below for the themes I’ve used since 2108.

2025 – Golden
2024 – Frequency
2023 – Savour
2022 – Tensegrity
2021 – Imagination
2020 – Momentum
2019 – Conviction
2018 – Simple