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January is the month of agape. It is a month dedicated to loving one’s fellow man regardless of circumstance. A month of fully selfless, unconditional, and self-sacrificial love. A month for loving your enemies, your neighbours, your friends, your inferiors, your tormentors, and your haters alike. It is a month dedicated to loving all those who are unlovable and all those who don’t love you back. It is a month for loving all no matter what.

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February is the month of forgiveness. It is a month dedicated to letting go of negative feelings towards all those that do you wrong and wishing them well. It is a month for understanding, accepting, and absolving. It is a month for refraining from all forms of vengeance. It is a month for realizing that we are all imperfect, deeply damaged, and acutely mad human beings who mess up from time to time. It is a month for remembering that all those around you want and deserve to be forgiven for their trespasses just as badly as you do.

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March is the month of mercy. It is a month for abstaining from all cruelty, violence, and punishment. It is a month where chastisement and condemnation are replaced with love and care. A month for realizing that those around us are not evil so much as they are in a lot of pain due to their flawed and tragic lives. It is a month to defend all those who are without defense, be they sinners or saints. A month to see the good sides in all people, even those who may at first appear to be merely nasty or irritating. It is a month for being slow to anger and fast to love. It is a month for giving even if the receiver does not seem to merit it.

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April is the month of altruism. It is a month for selfless actions and putting others before yourself. It is a month to live for the sake of others and not just yourself. It is a month to remember our obligations to our predecessors, to our successors, and to our contemporaries. It is a month to act solely in order to bring about and maximize good consequences for everyone except the actor. At times, it truly can be our moral duty to sacrifice ourselves and our needs, or wants, for the betterment of others. It is a month for benefiting and serving others rather than oneself, for relieving the distress and promoting the happiness of our fellows, and for discounting altogether one's own pleasure or happiness when deciding what course of action to pursue.

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May is the month of charity. It is a month for the concern for, and active helping of, those in need. A month to treat the poorest with a special love and dignity and see them as fellow passengers to the grave. It is a month for controlling our egoistic impulses and urging the rich and powerful to think of their duty towards the poor and defenseless. It can be very tempting to think of the poor as evil and completely responsible for their fate but we must, nonetheless, ask the more fortunate to always imagine them as being merely unlucky and yet still worthy of a special place in the grand scheme of things.

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June the month of acceptance. It is a month to judge not, lest you be judged. It is a month to consider the beam that is in your own eye before you look at the speck in your brother's eye. You may judge and humiliate people to your heart's content if, and only if, you can be absolutely certain that you yourself have never done anything wrong, whatsoever, across any area of your life. We must see that, inevitably, we too have been foolish, vicious, needy, and cruel throughout our lives. We mustn't fall into self-righteousness. We must remember all the many stupid and evil things that we ourselves have done and how much we, overall, stand in the need of the charity and kindness of others.

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July is the month of nature. It is a month for us, as humans, to learn to consider ourselves as a mere part of something unfathomable, beautiful, and fragile, rather than the appointed masters and destroyers of its resources. We must live in harmony with nature rather than in sovereignty over it. This is a month to recall the fact that we are here to witness and look after nature, not own it. A month for us to think of ourselves as merely a tiny part of a much larger ecosystem that is sharply imperiled by our activities and needs to be treated with the utmost humility, respect, and care. It is a month for us to care about not only ourselves and each other but also the entire world around us and all the creatures that reside within it. A month to remember that it’s love, not guilt, which will transform humanity’s relationship with nature. 

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August is the month of tolerance. It is a month for allowing diversity and remembering that coercing uniformity only leads to social disorder and bigotry. A month to recognize that what you believe is simply irrelevant to your status and prospects. It is also a month to remember that you simply cannot be compelled into belief through violence, force, or threats. No threat can ever persuade someone to believe something that they think is false. They might say they agree with your beliefs to save themselves from torture or frustration, but you won't change their actual beliefs that way. We cannot just choose what we believe as a matter of convenience. Beliefs are a personal and voluntary choice.

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September is the month of ordinarity. It is a month to remember that even ordinary lives, free from extraordinary moments and advantages, can be great. Boring, lowly, and modest lives can be just as appealing and honourable as the lives of our heroes. Ordinary life is heroic in its own way because ordinary sounding things are very far from easy to manage. There is immense skill and true nobility involved in bringing up a child, maintaining a relationship, keeping a home in order, doing a not very exciting or well paid job, or preparing lunch. There are a host of things that we too often ignore and that happen to be both ordinary and good.

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October is the month of self-care. It is a month for remembering that while it is indeed immensely important to take care of others, it is also very important to take care of yourself. Self-care, as many of us fail to realize, is not selfish. It's okay to love and care for yourself. This is a month for us to have the courage and confidence to be forthright about our needs, not in order to harm or distress other people but in order to serve them in a deeper, better, and more sustained manner over the long term. Self-care, unlike selfishness, stems from an effective and unembarrassed understanding of what we need in order to maximize our usefulness and utility for others.

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November is the month of compassion. It is a month for treating others as you yourself would want to be treated. A month for working tirelessly in the effort of alleviating the sufferance and the plight of all those around us. It is a month for treating everybody, without exception, with full respect, love, justice, and equity. A month for honouring everyone as a fellow, equal human being and accepting our common humanity. It is a month for dethroning ourselves from the center of our world and putting another there. A month to love our neighbor as ourself.

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December is the month of hope. It is a month to remember that, yes, life is difficult. Very, very difficult. Things almost certainly will not be okay. It will be terrible, It will be tough, It will be hard, but, one must keep in mind that one will, nevertheless, be okay. Okay because, in the end, as Marcus Aurelius put it, "We are, each of us, stronger than we think." You can't control your situation but you can control your response to it. Things won't be fun or easy or simple but you will get through it. There is always a road to freedom. No pain is ever too strong, nor any issue too big. All can be overcome. 

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