Happy New Year. You are going to die.

If that sounds like a threat... it's not, it's just a fact. Something so commonplace it becomes trite so we never have to think about it again.

If you really let that fact sink in though a lot of the new year new me come off as bargaining. As if somehow the right plan can make impermanence negotiable. 

If you’ve been around Buddhist ideas, you’ve probably heard dukkha translated as suffering. That’s close enough to get you started and wrong enough to confuse you. The image that works for me is something sort of silly but very much something we've all experienced... a shopping cart with the wobbly wheel. You want to glide into the grocery store, but instead you get a cart that rattles, pulls, and veers unless you stay alert and keep correcting. It’s loud. It’s annoying. It demands mindfulness in the frozen foods aisle, which is not why anyone came to Target.

The wobble isn't an unlucky choice of carts.. its the terms and conditions to play.

We spend absurd amounts of energy trying to build a life that won’t wobble. We chase stability. Were chasing the job, the body, the partner, the money, the recognition, the routine, the purchase, the app, the aesthetic, the cleaned-up version of "me." The promise is always the same. Once I get that, I can relax.

Then we get the thing, and it holds for a moment. Sometimes five minutes. Sometimes five months. Then the nervous system adjusts, the baseline becomes ordinary, and desire quietly reloads. You end up back in the store with another wobbly cart.

The New Year is a global ritual of desire.

Some of that desire is healthy. People want to sleep better, feel better, be more patient, stop numbing out. Good. Keep that. But a lot of what we call resolutions is the mind trying to trick itself into escaping what can’t be escaped. The reality of aging, loss, uncertainty, and the fact that you can do everything right and still get hit by something you didn’t deserve.

The alternative isn’t dramatic. It won’t look good on a mug. Which is probably why nobody has ever embroidered it on a throw pillow.

It’s practice.

Practice doesn’t mean becoming perfect. You’re a human being. You will want things. You will hurt. You will crave. You will attach. You will get jealous and nostalgic and protective and petty and tender. You will love people so much it scares you, because love is signing a contract with grief. You sign it anyway.

So what does practice look like.

It can be as simple as noticing. Noticing what you’re doing with your attention.

Your attention is your life. Literally. This moment is your life. This breath. This second. The next one.

The tragedy isn’t just that we die. The tragedy is spending huge portions of the time we have in a trance. We give our attention away like it’s worthless, then we wonder why we feel scattered and boring and restless.

You can watch this in January. People wake up, grab their phones, and start bargaining.

This year I’m going to fix everything.
This year I’m going to become someone else.
This year my kids will talk to me again.
This year i'm done eating two whole pizza's at a time.

Underneath all of that is something more honest.

I don’t want to waste my time.
I don’t want to die without doing what matters.
I don’t want to look back and realize I was never really here.
I don't want to be on autopilot anymore.

That’s the real resolution. Not lose 20 pounds or read 50 books. Those are fine. Do them if they help. That's one of my own goals, but the deeper resolution is learning to stop living like time is unlimited.

Stop letting your days get eaten by things you won’t care about on your last day. Stop performing a life instead of inhabiting it.

This is where I inevitably start thinking about the internet, because it’s both a miracle and a haunted house.

We treat it like it’s now, like it’s current, like it’s a river. It’s also an archive. A library. A cemetery. A place where people keep existing after they’re gone.

One day you’ll click a profile and realize it stopped. No goodbye. No closing statement. It just stopped. A timeline frozen. You sit there staring at the last post, the last photo, the last joke, the last song they shared, and you feel the mismatch between how alive it looks and how final it is.

In that mood, deleting everything and vanishing into the woods starts to feel like the only sane plan. I get it. I’ve had the same thought. Most of the time it’s not a calling, it’s a distraction. It’s the mind trying desperately to do everything it can to avoid the cold hard reality of life.

In those moments I find the best path is to pause and ask a better question.

What are you doing with your voice while you still have one.

What are you adding to the archive while you’re here?

If you’re going to spend time online, spend it somewhere that doesn’t turn you into a product. Somewhere that doesn’t train you to speak only when you can be rewarded.  A place where you can make something and ask, Does anyone want to look? and not feel pathetic for wanting connection.

Why not tell the truth while you’re here.
Make things you actually care about.
Be kinder and stop waiting for permission to live the life you keep daydreaming about while scrolling.

So here’s my suggestion for the New Year. It isn’t sexy.

Pick resolutions that aren’t just self-branding. Pick practices that pull you closer to your actual life.

Call someone you miss.
Make something with your hands.
Take a walk and let the silence exist.
Sit with your kid, your partner, your friend, and listen without composing your reply.
Write something honest, even if it’s messy.
Eat better .. it isn't a punishment... As cliche as it sounds it's a way to honor the body you get to inhabit.
Move your body because you want to still be here... and sure you can still have goals about looking better, but external goals are a fickle beast.
Stop feeding the part of you that needs strangers to confirm you’re real.
Feed the part of you that can witness a moment and let it be enough without posting proof.

None of this prevents death. You don’t do this to win. None of us will win. We’re all in the same canoe, and unfortunately most of us are asleep with our phones in our hands.

Happy New Year. You are going to die.

While you’re still here, you get to choose how present you are for it.