My One Wish for You and My New Hobby

Thousands of people are lining roadsides in freezing temperatures, and they’re not waiting for a concert or a protest. They’re waiting for Buddhist monks. Some cry, some just stand there, quiet. And I can’t stop watching.

That’s my new hobby: peace scrolling. I’m obsessed with this group of Buddhist monks walking across America for peace. They’re on a 2,000-plus-kilometre pilgrimage to Washington, D.C. and somehow it’s become the calmest thing on my screen.

Everywhere they walk, crowds show up. Not for a spectacle. More like they’re turning up for a feeling they can’t quite name. And the monks meet them with small, practical kindness: a flower, a blessing, a few gentle words.

The lead monk, Bhikkhu Paññākāra, is joyful and funny. He jokes that his name is hard to say (why is that so so relatable?). At one gathering, he warned people not to spend the last hour of every night and the first hour of every morning with their lover. You could hear the crowd gasp. Then he smiled. ‘I mean your phone.’

Wherever they go, their blessing stays the same: ‘May you and all beings be well, happy and at peace.’

The monks share a practice so simple it almost annoys the overachiever in me: every hour, take one minute. Stop, breathe and come back to the present moment.

In an eight-hour day, that’s eight minutes of peace of mindfulness. Not aspirational, but practical and doable.

So that’s my new hobby: peace scrolling. Not because I’ve cracked serenity, but because I’m trying to interrupt the constant mental noise with something quieter. Some days it works. I’ll catch myself mid-scroll, remember the monks, and just… stop. Breathe. It’s small, but it’s something.

And my one wish for you is the same as theirs, offered without fanfare:

In 2026, may you be well, happy and at peace.