The New Year arrives the way it always does: a date change. A fresh page. A familiar temptation to believe that simply making it this far means we must be doing something right.

But the calendar does not absolve or forgive or reset anything. It only counts forward, clicking off days for all of us, whether we notice or not. Jan. 1 does not change who we are unless we decide to.

We enter each new year carrying exactly what we carried in the old one: old habits, including that of our attention, our ways of believing, and our willingness to notice what confirms us — and what doesn’t.

We talk a lot about resolutions this time of year. Eat better. Exercise more. Be kinder. All worthwhile. But there may be a deeper opportunity available to us now, especially in an age of artificial intelligence, 24-hour news, and algorithms designed to shape what we see and think.

That opportunity is our attention. Minding our minds may be the most important work of all:

What we notice.

What we excuse.

What we normalize.

What we choose to ignore because........

© Santa Clarita Valley Signal