Every year, at New Year’s, I find myself thinking more or less the same thing.
We ask the coming year to be different, to bring something more, something better.

And yet, if we look closely, the new year is not really new.
It is the same sun, the same earth.
Spring, summer, autumn, and winter will return.
Things very similar to those we have already lived will happen again, and often we will react as we always have.

What if, instead of asking something of the time that is coming, we asked it of ourselves?

From tomorrow on, many of the same things will probably happen as in past years.
I will make familiar mistakes, receive familiar answers, argue with the same people.
But perhaps I can try to be slightly different myself.
To react differently.
To think differently.

This is not a wish addressed to the new year.
It is, rather, a personal commitment:
to try to change one’s gaze, more than the circumstances.

Happy New Year.

Note: this text revisits and reworks a reflection originally written in early 2018.