Family values often appear as care, tradition, and togetherness. At year-end, they also expose another structure: an invisible ledger that records effort, availability, and endurance. Some are asked again and again, others are spared. This produces a sense of permanent indebtedness. We explore how this ledger forms, how it persists, and how to step out of it.

December is when unfinished stories feel loudest. We sense the things we did not do, the promises we did not keep, the fractures we did not mend. The calendar invites us to write “resolutions”. Yet underneath the word sits its shadow: shame. Walking through the Gerhard Richter retrospective, these two forces were everywhere. Shame, in the form of a national past that cannot be made right. Resolution, in the form of a lifetime practice of finding a truthful relation to that pa