A Hot Chocolate State of Mind

It’s 18:00 on December 19th. School’s out, I’m home alone and in desperate need of something to keep me occupied – a project that isn’t a set assignment with a deadline, something done simply for pleasure. Rummaging through the cupboard at the back of the kitchen, I finally uncover a box of assorted hot chocolate powders, each flavoured after a different chocolate from a box of Celebrations. There’s no need to check the best before date. I remember buying them last year, tossing them into the cupboard and forgetting about them until now. They’re definitely past their best, but I can look past that. I’m just grateful that my hot chocolate is always, somehow, there, silently waiting for a break in routine – a moment where I can focus on something for myself, something like the rich taste of cocoa that appears only at the exact right moment on winter evenings.

Soon enough, after some debate over which flavour to choose (I land on the Bounty one, something I’ve always had a surprising affinity for), my mug of hot chocolate is fully formed. As I go to take a sip, I suddenly become unnervingly aware that I cannot recall ever having a mug of hot chocolate that wasn’t made from leftovers bought the year before. I sit with the realisation that my hot chocolate has always been slightly stale, yet every year I drink it, and every year I’m thankful that there will always be hot chocolate in my cupboard – a small symbol of the significance of being slow. The noise of never-ending targets softens, and for a moment everything feels suspended, though it’s hard to ignore the creeping anticipation of what a new year will bring.

I know the pause won’t last forever; soon the rush will begin again. In a matter of weeks, my feed will be full of new deadlines and new goals but always the same outcome. The constant pressure of the ‘new year, new me’ mindset pulls me into a trance every time the year turns. I repeat to myself, ‘this is my year’. This will be the year I finally achieve everything I want to achieve.

And I know there are countless others who feel the same – those who make whispered New Year’s wishes while eating grapes under a table, who scribble the same goals year after year into a worn notebook, who spend hours on New Year’s Eve cutting and sticking together the perfect vision board. Yet the wishes, the goals and the visions rarely change. Year after year, we hope the same success will be bestowed upon us as the calendar resets. And once December comes back around, maybe some goals have been ticked off, yet the feeling of satisfaction or fulfilment never truly arrives. The cycle repeats and, from January 1st, I have a new set of aims. Maybe the restless pursuit feels easier than sitting still – easier than accepting that success might not lie just ahead if only I were to run faster, work harder, do better. But that is the very mindset that traps me, keeping me chasing until I choose to stop. And when I finally let myself imagine what a slower life looks like, my mind drifts back to the mug in my hands – the swirl of chocolate and the deflated whipped cream – patiently waiting.

Hypnotic swirls circle my mug as if nudging me to remember the similar whirlwind the new year holds, but also how I intend to move through it differently this time. Instead of a tornado of deadlines, I’ll let myself be swept up in a tide of slow moments. Not everything needs to be moving forward to matter. The quiet rebellion lies in choosing to stop chasing and choosing, instead, to live.

This year, I will adopt a hot chocolate state of mind.

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