The Year of Fire Snake: The Year the Soul Asked to Be Felt Again

Published by Ryan Gollan / 26 June 2025

A meditation on speed, soul, and what it means to be human in a world of constant scrolls

I’ve been quiet lately. Caught up in the thick of preparing for the upcoming Sapphire Dinner - a process that’s taken more energy and stress than I anticipated. LOL On top of that, I caught a bad cold that turned into a fever, then a lingering cough. (Everyone seemed to have got sick!) So I haven’t had the space to write any blogs in a while.

But this - what I’m about to share - has been sitting with me for some time now. And tonight, I finally had a moment to write.

Hopefully, these reflections may land somewhere meaningful. If they resonate, I hope they offer a moment of pause.

A friend of mine is a Fengshui master. She told me that this is a 离火 Li Huo (Fire Snake) year. In Chinese metaphysics, this is a year of fire and transformation. It marks the beginning of a new era - where popular things rise quickly and fall even faster. Trends appear like fire - hot and bright - then vanish. Something else comes up just as fast, and it repeats. It’s a time of chaos, acceleration, and emotional volatility. And the more I read and reflected, the more I understood just how accurate this insight really is.

This shift will shape global energy for decades: a rise in digital realms, AI, rapid popularity, virtual culture, volatility, and a resurgence of feminine power (a long-overdue embrace of women’s leadership rising to the surface). It’s not just a year; it’s the dawn of a new chapter.

This year, more than ever, I feel a strange grief I can’t quite name. A blur. A fragmentation.

What Gets Seen, What Gets Ignored

Time is blurring. Days bleed into weeks. I say, “How is it June already?” but the truth is, I don’t even remember March. Since 2020, it’s been like this for most people. Life became a scroll. A performance. An avalanche of information, but sometimes very little meaning. Technology, media, and efficiency have advanced - and yet, somehow, many souls feel left behind.

I was born in the 80s. Back then, we had no algorithm feeding us content. No expectation to be constantly available. Life was slower, more human. I remember feeling relaxed.

Now we’re living in a world where humans - flesh and blood, analog, emotional, rhythmic humans - are being rewired to function like machines. Trained to swipe fast, react faster, consume endlessly. And somewhere in the past 20 years, through media, platforms, devices, and notifications… something in our collective soul got interrupted. And no matter how advanced our devices become, we still only have 24 hours a day. So everything - our work, our relationships, our joy, even our rest - now competes for our limited human attention.

And the system knows it. Media platforms are not neutral tools. They are, in a very real sense, the new gods of culture. Meta. X. TikTok. These platforms shape what people see, how people feel, what people value. They reward fast, flashy, emotional content. They suppress the slow, quiet truth.

I see this play out even in my private Instagram account, which I only share with friends. If I post a story of a luxury car or a photo with a good-looking celebrity friend (David Berry - agree? / David: don’t mind me mentioning you here lol), the views flood in within minutes. But if I share a video of a TED talk or a post on ocean conservation - something I actually care about - it gets little engagement. The algorithm trains us to crave performance over presence. Reaction over reflection.

And what does that do to us, over time?

People don’t just scroll past meaningful things - people start believing they don’t matter.

Society becomes addicted to the dopamine rush. The high of visibility. We talk about AI changing humanity, but the truth is - platforms already have. The world is not just moving faster. It’s moving shallower. And that frightens me.

Talking Without Connection

I used to be able to socialise on autopilot. Smile, chat - be engaging and respectful even when my head told me otherwise. But now, I find myself speaking with a lot of people, but not speaking to them. The connection often feels scripted. Many seem transactional. I don’t want to talk at someone. I want to talk to someone. I want to feel something when we speak. And more and more, I realise how rare that’s becoming.

Even when people speak to each other now, I’m not sure they’re really speaking. There’s an invisible screen between everyone. A performance. A curation. A flattening.

Some say I’m old-fashioned. That the world has changed, and I should adapt. But maybe it’s not about resisting change. Maybe it’s about staying awake. Being aware. Seeing what this shift is doing to us.

Are We Still Human?

We are still analog bodies - born to move, to pause, to sit under trees, to connect deeply and to love slowly. But we’re processing global digital data, 24/7, with the same nervous system that evolved for village life. That’s why society feels so overstimulated. Why time feels so fast. Why everything feels… thin.

So ask yourself: When was the last time you truly felt seen? When was the last time you gave someone your full presence, without distraction?

And what scares me most is this:

We’re building a world where “surface” wins. Where attention replaces admiration. Where presence is lost to performance. And the danger isn’t just social - it’s existential. Because the more we forget what it means to be truly human, the more we accept the emptiness.

But emptiness doesn’t go away. It builds. Quietly.

And one day, maybe in five years, maybe in ten, I think society will wake up to a deep, aching void - a longing for what was real. For what was felt. For what no platform could ever simulate.

That void will be the sound of the soul knocking.
It will be the fire, returning - not to destroy us, but to remind us:
We were never meant to live this fast.
We were meant to feel.

So whatever you build - build it with heart.
Create with presence.
Speak with truth.
Love with time.

And never forget: this life is short. Don’t live it all on the surface.

If this is the year of fire, let it burn away the noise - not the essence.
Let it strip down what no longer fits.
Let it make space for what is raw, beautiful, and slow.
Because beyond the performance, beyond the pixels and the pace,
there is a quiet place where real connection lives.
And maybe that’s where the new era truly begins.

If you’ve made it to the end of this piece - thank you. This post is about a 6–7 minute read. That’s a lot of time in today’s world. The fact that you gave me that time means more than you know.

You are incredible! :-)

I’ll try to write more when I have the time. There’s a piece coming soon about this year’s Ocean Conservation focus - and the exciting new era we’re stepping into. I hope you’ll join me for that too.