The flag of the Virgin Islands. Photo: VINO

There was a time when New Year's meant imagining what the Virgin Islands could become. A regional leader in education. A place where our children didn't have to leave to find opportunity. Healthcare you didn't have to fly away from. An economy that worked for more than a few.

Those were the conversations. Around dinner tables, at church, in the rum shop. What could we build? What could we become?

I don't hear those conversations anymore.

Somewhere along the way, our dreams got smaller. Not because we wanted less. Because we learned to stop expecting anything at all.

This New Year, I found myself wishing for water. Consistent, reliable water pressure. The kind you don't have to plan your life around. The kind that comes when you turn the pipe.

I wished for roads I could drive without mapping the potholes in my mind. For electricity that stays on when the rain comes. For a government office that answers when you call.

These are not dreams. These are basics. The bare minimum of a functioning society.

And yet.

Here we are, heading into another year, and I catch myself thinking - maybe this time. Maybe the water will be better. Maybe the roads. Maybe.

What does it say about us that this is what hope looks like now? That we've been so worn down, so disappointed, so many times, that we don't even allow ourselves to imagine more?

I think about the young people who leave. Not because they don't love home. Because home stopped giving them permission to dream. When you grow up watching your parents fight for basics, you learn that survival is the ceiling. You stop looking up.

That's what hurts most. Not the potholes. Not the dry pipes. It's what they've done to our imagination. To our sense of what's possible. To the part of us that used to believe the VI could be something extraordinary.

We've been reduced.

And the saddest part? We've started to accept it.

This year, I'm not making resolutions. I'm just sitting with a question - When did we stop expecting more? And what would it take to remember that we deserve it?

Maybe that's the real wish. Not for water or roads or light bills that make sense.

But for permission to dream again.