The Primed Year

I got off a call with a friend yesterday. He'd been told this year would be hard. And it is, he said. It really is.

I put the phone down and opened YouTube. The first video waiting for me: a numerologist explaining why 2026 is a year of upheaval.

I laughed. Then I didn't.

The astrologer reads planetary cycles. The algorithm reads my watch history. Both arrived at the same moment with the same message. Neither knows my friend. Neither knows his year.

Primed, we find what we're looking for. The hard moments confirm the prediction. The good ones don't register as data. Your attention has been told where to point.

Shiva is Mahakaal. Not lord of good times. Not lord of bad ones. Lord of time itself. The same hour that destroys you is invisible to time. So is the wedding happening three streets over.

Time does not curate.

Shaivites call it leela — witnessed without preference. This too shall pass is not comfort. It is just the nature of the thing.

The question isn't whether the planets are moving or the algorithm is watching.

The question is which frame you reached for. And whether, knowing that, you'd reach again.