We Are Simply Worn Down

We Are Simply Worn Down

21 December 2025

It is Sunday — Christmas is on Thursday. It felt as though we still had time, but suddenly it is right in front of us. The past week drove me mad with its pace, not only in traffic. Everyone is late, and I myself am running out of time. Today, miraculously, it is quiet — unmistakably the calm before the storm.

In the meantime, Jurgen has invited me as a guest on his television programme on 29 December, to analyze the year 2025. That is an honor.

I find myself reflecting on a BBC item featuring a Venezuelan journalist in Maracaibo. He described how ordinary people in Venezuela are primarily concerned with daily survival and the approaching Noche Buena: how to put food on the table, how to buy presents for their children. Geopolitics is abstract; everyday life is concrete.

That image aligns with an article published in NRC on 19 December 2025, titled Curaçao: “People in the Netherlands are more concerned than here”. Tensions between the United States and Venezuela appear to resonate more strongly in the Netherlands than on Curaçao itself. On Curaçao, attention is focused first on the here and now — on work, income, care, and getting through the day.

Meanwhile, a second oil tanker has been seized at sea. Regional tensions continue to rise, but they do not register everywhere in the same way.

What occupies my mind most, however, is not geopolitics but a shared sentiment I have encountered in recent days: exhaustion. A sense of being worn down. The inclination to look away, to avoid debate, to stop speaking out — not out of indifference, but out of fatigue. The intention to step back from the island, from politics, from the public conversation, whether temporarily or permanently.

I understand that intention. But I also know it is not an option.

That realization sharpened again when I drove to Caracas Bay to clear my head. There, you see the damage left behind by the Laman project. You see the Kunuku-man cleaning the beach, assisted by a large number of volunteers from the Netherlands. And inevitably the question arises: does the minister truly intend to “push through” with developing this area?

Sometimes silence is understandable. Sometimes it is even necessary.

But it does not absolve us of responsibility.

Miguel Goede

References (APA)

Associated Press. (2025, December 17). The oil blockade threat creates anxiety in Venezuela but people stick to their daily lives. AP News.

Curaçao: “In Nederland zijn mensen bezorgder dan hier”. (2025, December 19). NRC Handelsblad.