I sat at my table this morning and did something that felt almost like a sin in our modern world: I did nothing. I didn't reach for my phone to check the headlines. I didn't look at my watch to see how well I slept. I just sat there, watching the slow, grey light of January crawl across the floor and illuminate the dust motes dancing in the air. In that stillness, I realized how much of my life is spent trying to "fix" a person who isn't actually broken.
We’ve been conditioned to treat this first week of the year like a cold, corporate performance review. We sit down with our lists - our resolutions, our new gym memberships, our tallies of flaws - as if we are pieces of software in desperate need of a patch. We’re told that to be successful, we must be faster, thinner, and more "optimized." We’re spoken to as if we are engines that simply require better fuel, rather than human beings who might just need a different way of existing.
But the "optimized" version of us? That’s the problem. Most of our resolutions are just a frantic, internal attempt to shout over the reality of who we are right now. We spend so much energy building a "better" life - some shiny, future version of ourselves - that we forget to inhabit the one we already have. This year, I’m not interested in a better version of myself. I’m interested in a more present one. I’m interested in the quiet revolution of simply being human in a world that wants us to be machines.
