When King Writes

I don’t usually do an end-of-year blog post because I never had the time to write one. The holiday season, ever fleeting and almost done as soon as it starts, always ends up not being enough for all the things I want to do and all the people I want to spend time with. But this time around, I made a conscious decision to reserve a few hours to write something that caps off what has been the most blessed 365 days of my life.

Even though I promised myself I’d write a year-end post this year, I didn’t yet know what the topic would be. But life, as we know it, eventually points us to the “right” direction through a series of domino effects. By “right,” I mean the kind of direction that is irrevocably supported by my gut instinct.

So today, as fate has ushered my way — a turn of events I wholeheartedly accept — I am going to write to you about a book I read a couple of years ago: Into the Magic Shop by James R. Doty, MD.

I don’t know who needs to read this, but whoever you are, I am willing to be the bridge between you and what you need to get out of this book.

Into the Magic Shop by James Doty is a well-known nonfiction memoir that holds a promise. According to the cover, the book is about a neurosurgeon’s quest to discover the mysteries of the brain and the secrets of the heart. Of course, that got me hooked. I picked up the book without reading Goodreads and added it to my ever-growing pile of books to read.

I’m not going to lie. Against all logic, I half expected this book to give me either some kind of deep or groundbreaking knowledge that I’ve never come across.

But long story short, the memoir, in many ways, turned out to be the kind of book that explains how the brain and heart can work together for emotional and physical well-being.

Because it is a nonfiction memoir that blends the author’s personal story (his life, the lessons he learned, etc.) and neuroscience insight (a professional role he eventually stepped into), the entire tale is presented as a tray filled with different flavors of chocolate. Meaning, the book can give different lessons to different people, but the point is, in the grand scheme of things, they are chocolate all the same. In other words, the takeaway may differ from reader to reader, but the essence of the message remains unchanged.

So for the purposes of this blog, what you’ll get out of this book is what I got out of it. And what I got out of it is that, to live a life well lived, we cannot simply ignore our own pain.

We have got to put our heart and mind together to set right whatever it is inside of ourselves that makes us feel like we’re broken. But how do you do that? How do you fix something inside of you? Doty said:

“… the wounds in our heart. We need to give them attention so that they can heal. Otherwise the wound continues to cause us pain. Sometimes for a very long time.”

In the coming year, many people usually promise to leave their heartaches behind and never look back. I get why. It’s because it hurts too much to keep carrying it, and you want more than anything to free yourself from it. While that commitment may work for others, it isn’t always the best thing to do for everyone. Because we cannot just leave pain when we don’t spend time making sense of it—the why, what, how—and tending to it.

In 2026, maybe the best thing to do is to pay real attention to whatever it is that hurts you, and by doing so, you can heal… for real. I’m struggling to find a way to explain this logic, so I’m going to lift an entry from my own journal. This is something I wrote a while back, a realization of mine that comes in handy when tied to Doty’s work:

Instead of leaving all that unresolved pain behind, give yourself a full closure this coming year. Use 2026 to dissect the pain so that one day, someday, you can look yourself in the mirror and know, 100%, that you have done the work to understand yourself, heal your wounds, and grow beyond them.

For what purpose are you doing this, you might wonder. Well, it’s not just for you. As Doty said in his book:

“If you can heal your own wounds, you don’t hurt anymore and you don’t hurt others.”

Facing the things that hurt you and using your heart and mind together to make sense of them isn’t just for you. It’s also for the people you love and love you back. Because when you love someone so much, you want to make sure they get the best possible version of you. And if 2026 is the year that helps you become that person, then what a great year this year would be for you and for those people.

Granted, some pains are so deep that it takes much longer than a year to resolve them. And in the process of healing, we may stumble some more.

“We can die a thousand times in this lifetime, and that is one of the greatest gifts of being alive.”

But perhaps the gift lies in knowing that each setback is a reset that allows us to begin again. 🙂

Lastly, I want to share this other quote lifted from Doty’s book:

“Just because something is broken doesn’t mean everything is broken… Everything didn’t have to be broken just because something was broken. I didn’t have to be broken.”

You don’t have to stay broken. With motivation, perseverance and the courage to face your pain head-on, to name it for what it really is, the world will follow after your intentions. As they say, the world has a way of bringing you to exactly where you need to be.

Keep going.