Welcome to my final Showcase in January. We’ve had many insightful stories, articles and poems to demonstrate the different types of misunderstandings and their impact on us. But this week I want to focus on the outcome of misunderstandings, mainly: what is the solution? I’m partial to a direct approach and asking for clarity on a situation, but that doesn’t always work – especially if you don’t even realise there’s a problem!

So, this week I’ve chosen four pieces and want to take you on a bit of a journey with them. Don’t worry, you’ll understand soon…

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First, a short story by Vinay. This shows us what happens if you don’t resolve a misunderstanding. You get a strong sense of the narrator’s unreleased energy, the inability to connect and the hurt occurring from this misunderstanding that’s never expressed to her son.

The Wooden Dolls

Every Navaratri, Radha placed the wooden dolls in neat rows. Gods and goddesses, animals and farmer; a village of clay and wood that filled her with joy. But not this year. Her son Ramesh had returned from New York, stiff and cold. He sneered at her rituals, at her beliefs. “You don’t even know what these dolls mean,” he snapped, knocking over a tiny Vishnu. Radha flinched. She hadn’t studied scriptures. She didn’t know the mythological stories. What she did know was the doll she’d hidden at the back: a mother holding her son. Ramesh had gifted it to her when he was five. “You’re the goddess, Mother,” he’d said back then. She placed it in his hands now, her eyes brimming. But he only stared, misunderstanding the offering as another attempt to burden him with tradition. The dolls stayed in their boxes after that.

© Vinay Jalla, 2024

Connect with Vinay on Facebook: facebook.com/vinay.jalla/, Twitter: @VinayJalla, Instagram: @vinay.jalla55/, LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/vinayjalla/ and via their website: vinayjalla.co.uk/

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Next, a poem by Amaka. This piece is about the collective, societal misunderstanding of what it is to be a man. The consequences are dire, for men and women, as Amaka depicts throughout the poem. However, she ends it by correcting the misunderstanding, and stating a simple but often hard-to-achieve truth.

To Be A Man

I come from a community where men don’t cry
a man is measured by how much he endures
their emotions tossed.
Hold it in they say ‘You’re a man’
that’s how boys grow to become men
who don’t know how to communicate their feelings.

Who are ashamed to appear weak.

I once met a boy trapped in a man’s body.
With beards stretching from the corners
of his face to his jaw.
He believes women are emotional and fragile
and men are strong and fearless.

Where I come from, men are spoon-fed toxic masculinity.
They hide it under patriarchy and society fuels the fire.

‘Boys shall be boys’ and ‘men shall be men’
but boys are little humans who grow into men
lacking accountability.

When my brother was five, a girl beat him up at Sunday’s school.
the neighbours said, how do you let a girl beat you up?
You should be ashamed.

But my brother, a sweet-looking boy
only wanted love and consolation
but was served shame for an act entirely not his fault.

Men, boys, women, girls,
we are all born of emotions and fragility.
It is safe to have emotions
and there is no shame in it.

© Amaka Felly Obioji, 2024

Connect with Amaka on X: @AmakaFelly and Instagram: @amaka_felly

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Now, a poem by Tavinder that looks at how two different people go about processing and resolving grief differently. Grief is something we all experience and express in unique ways and something that can be divisive if not expressed in the same way. Many misunderstandings have resulted from not understanding how (or if) someone is grieving, but Tavinder shows us how, with a little patience and consideration, we can find understanding for each other once more.

Misunderstanding

You run into the darkness of the dark, while I sit and meditate not to relate how to share the pain of the grief and the reef that it came into our lives.

Like ships crossing through the sea, battling the waves, trying to make sure the storm does not crash into each other, trying to ride in its direction.

You run into the dawn of the dark, while I sit and meditate on how to share the tears of the moment, the fears of the heart space.

The light comes and shows hope through the window; the season changes and our hands touch with the fleeting moment to hold.

Like a tree growing into the soil, we grow into each other after the passing of the weather to meet and grow again.

You run into my arms; I run into yours like we had before. We sit in the harmony of gathering after the commotion that nearly took us apart.

Misunderstandings of how to relate, you had to do what you did, and I had to do what I did; a journey of meeting in the middle is what grief is.

You run, but not in the darkness of the dark, but into the new dawn of the day, while I meditate to heal as we come together to share the struggle.

Misunderstandings there were none.

we knew our pain was one, like the sun and the moon, to eclipse into a new light after the sin we found a space to become and a new way of shining
together.

© Tavinder Kaur New, 2025 

Connect with Tavinder on BlueSky: @newtavinder.bsky.social

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Finally, an article by Amanda about resolutions we may end up making at some point during January (or, more likely, breaking!). Here, she shows the small but important differences in what we may resolve to do, vs what we may wish for, and how not understanding that distinction can lead to something more than just breaking your resolution. Amanda ends it with a solution for anyone and everyone. This is an inspiring thing to read at the end of January, when the cold has already crept in, the nights are still dark (but slowly getting lighter), and we may be on the brink of losing a little of our resolve.

To Your Resolve

There’s an important distinction to be made when it comes to making New Year’s Resolutions: what is truly within your control, and what is not. In some cases, the distinction is obvious. Comically so. Fair enough to resolve a vape won’t touch your lips in 2025, less so to resolve (on their behalf) that your partner, child, or friend will do the same.

In other cases, it’s less obvious. Have you ever resolved to move house, find a partner, lose weight? These things are not wholly in your control. You can resolve to save a deposit, join a dating site, join a gym; but you can’t force a sale, a relationship, or biological process that is impacted by forces outside your control. You can improve your chances – considerably so – by your actions, but ‘resolve’ in this case is meaningless. Your will is not necessarily the determining factor.

For this reason, it’s more correct to consider resolutions in that latter category as wishes. Statements of desire. Pleas to the universe. Prayers to a more powerful force. All well and good, and understandable, provided you don’t beat yourself up should the desired outcome not come to pass. It may be that no one was listening in that moment. Or the universe has a vested interest in not permitting something to happen. An unmet prayer may have as much to do with preventing greater harm as holding space for a greater future reward.

Don’t feel bad for those people, or yourself, if that’s you.

Rather, feel sorry for the unfortunate folks who unwittingly do transgress the boundary between resolutions and wishes. Wishing on a star is a special kind of cliché, but all clichés have roots in truth. I’ve collected enough cases by now to say there is definitely some correlation between the arrangement of the sky, at the point where one year tips into another, and certain groups of people getting precisely what they ‘resolved’ to do.

I don’t know if it’s the fireworks gluing people’s eyes to the sky in just the right place, or some kind of esoteric thinning of the veil, created by our collective excitement during that liminal time. But every year, some people unknowingly find that wishing star, and tell it precisely what they want.

I don’t know which one it is, or even if it’s visible. Only that it seems to hang somewhere in the east, and that cardinal direction is as close as I ever want to come to finding it.

Oscar Wilde once said: In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. This is doubly true for those wished-upon ‘resolutions,’ made to that unlucky star, that go beyond your personal sphere of control; the wishes that impact others.

Whether the issue is karmic, for taking more than one’s fair share of celestial grace, or more one of poor phrasing and the law of unintended consequences, the results are almost universally unfortunate. Relationships lacking love or fidelity, material gain at the expense of health, creativity at the expense of sanity, professional development at the expense of everything else.

Perhaps you could have been clearer. Could have specified you wanted that new car to come from a bonus cheque, not an inheritance, for example. Clarified that you would like your new partner to actively participate in the relationship, instead of just existing.

The trouble is, you could clarify, and qualify, your wish into a book-length contract (assuming, of course, you somehow knew it was going to be granted) and still not solve the key issue: control. Control over the cost of your desires and the power to change course.

That’s where true resolutions score. Those resolutions that are genuinely within your own power to effect. The ones you make to yourself, for yourself. The incremental ‘wins’ building towards the life you want. If you find the personal cost to be too much, or the changes wrought not quite to your liking, you can, of course, correct along the way. Painting not all it’s cracked up to be? Try collage, embroidery, interpretive dancing. Dating apps a horror show? Ask friends for introductions, join a club, hang around spaces dedicated to things you are interested in. That morning coffee is essential to your day? Find another place to trim your spending to reach your savings goals.

Clarity of thought: in recognising what you really want, what you are willing to do to get it, and why – that’s a superpower the universe bends to, without any of its usual tricks.

Let’s all take a moment to raise a toast to the benefits of our, very human, control.

To your resolve!

© Amanda Wynne, 2025

Connect with Amanda on Facebook: Amanda Wynne, Instagram: @ad_wynne, X: @ad_wynne, LinkedIn: Amanda Wynne and via her website: amandawynne.com

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That’s the end of Showcases for January. It’s been a pleasure to edit them for you and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading all the submissions I’ve been lucky to have pass my way this month.

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If you’d like to see your writing appear in the Write On! Showcase, please submit your short stories, poetry or novel extracts to: pentoprint.org/get-involved/submit-to-write-on/

Hear extracts from Showcase in our podcast. Write On! Audio. Find us on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Google Podcasts and Spotify. Type Pen to Print into your browser and look for our logo or find us on Spotify for Pocasters.

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