Every time I sit down to prepare a meditation session, I feel the tug to come up with something new, something cool, some fresh revelatory way to frame what we’re doing. And I laugh at that predictable tug to do something new and interesting, because each time we’re basically doing the same thing—sitting, breathing, noticing the attention wandering, bringing the attention back.
So here we are in January, that annual festival of newness. New year, new you! New resolutions, new gym membership, new diet plan, new productivity system. We know how this goes. By February, most of these bright, shiny intentions will have lost their luster. Can’t make time for the gym because other things are more critical. The new diet will seem too complicated, too time-consuming, too restrictive. We’ll fall back to our regular habits—or never leave them—adding a layer of guilt and self-judgment.
But what if the problem isn’t lack of will? What if it isn’t a lack in us at all? What if we’re focusing on the wrong thing entirely?
The Lure of What’s New
New things attract us—literally. They grab our attention, turn our heads, make us reach for a credit card. There’s actually good reason for this: novelty activates dopamine in our brains, which helps us learn. When we encounter something new, our neurons light up with possibility. This is healthy and necessary.
Here’s where it gets tricky. That same dopamine system can turn into a hamster wheel. We get a hit of satisfaction from the new thing—the new face cream, the new app, the new relationship—and for a moment, it feels like “this” might be it! The thing that finally makes me happy or whole or acceptable or okay. When that feeling fades (as it always does), we’re off chasing the next thing. The problem isn’t that we wanted something; it’s that we tried to make that thing deliver more than it possibly could.
The psychiatrist and Buddhist teacher Mark Epstein makes a crucial distinction: the problem isn’t desire itself—it’s clinging to our desires. Desire is natural, even necessary. We feel incomplete and so desire connection. We feel restless and want ease. This longing is part of being human; it moves us forward. But clinging is what happens when we can’t tolerate the gap between what we hoped for and what we actually get. When desire hardens into demand—when we insist the object be more satisfying than it can possibly be—we’re fighting with reality itself.
Every New Year’s resolution contains this gap. We imagine the new version of ourselves—fit, organized, fluent in Spanish or Hebrew—and we want it to fix something. When January 30th comes around and we’re still ourselves, the gap becomes obvious. We may find ourselves doubling down (clinging harder) or already looking for the next new thing.
Two Kinds of New
Jewish morning liturgy includes these words:
וּבְטוּבוֹ מְחַדֵּשׁ בְּכָל־יוֹם תָּמִיד מַעֲשֵׂה בְרֵאשִׁית:
Uv’tuvo m’chadeish b’chol yom tamid ma’aseh b’reishit—
“In Your goodness, You daily, continually, renew creation.”
Every morning, we’re reminded that creation itself is being renewed, made fresh. Not that something *different* is being created, but that what “is” keeps arriving, moment by moment, as if for the first time. I see it as the Source of Life offering a life lesson.
This is very different from our usual novelty-seeking. It’s not about getting something new; it’s about meeting what’s already here with fresh eyes.
The Buddhist teacher Shunryu Suzuki put it simply: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” When we approach something as a beginner—even something we’ve done a thousand times—we’re open, curious, not bound by assumptions about how it should go. It’s the opposite of ignorance because it explicitly doesn’t ignore those things that are achingly familiar, but perhaps hard to know about ourselves.
Beginner’s mind and clinging can’t coexist. When we’re caught by clinging, we’re locked onto how we think things should be and how they should turn out. Beginner’s mind says, “I don’t know. Let me see.”
What Practice Actually Does
When I lead the Tiferet Project meditation group, there are always the same two parts to our time. First, engaging with Jewish texts. These texts are old. But we’re reading them from a new orientation—a contemplative orientation. Then we do a simple guided meditation that always includes this:
Sit any way that lets you be relaxed and alert.
Rest attention on your breath.
Notice when your mind wanders.
Gently bring your attention back.
That’s it. Same thing, over and over.
What makes this bearable—more than bearable, actually transformative—is that it trains us to be with the gap. The space between what we want (a calm mind, a sense of well-being, of awe, feeling of connection) and what we may actually get (this breath, restlessness, this familiar wandering thought, physical discomfort, boredom). Practice teaches us to linger there without immediately reaching for something to fill the gap or running away to something new.
This is hard. Our nervous system wants to automatically steer us back to familiar ground. When we feel boredom, restlessness, or the itch of wanting, everything in us says: “Do something. Fix this. Find relief.”
What if we just… didn’t? What if we felt the feeling, noticed the wanting, and let it be there without acting on it?
This isn’t ignoring. It’s not trying to get rid of our desires or pretending we don’t want things. It’s making room for the full experience—the longing and the reality, the hope and the disappointment, the wanting and the not-yet-having. When we can hold all of that without needing to immediately react to make the feeling go away, something shifts. We stop being yanked around by every passing desire. We can pause and ask: Is this a wholesome wanting, something that might actually help? Or is this me just reaching for the next distraction?
Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) understood this. הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ “Havel havalim”, the text repeats—often translated as “vanity of vanities,” but closer to “breath of breaths” or “emptying upon emptying.” Each moment is like a breath: it arises, exists briefly, and empties or pours into the next moment. We can use up our energy trying to grab and hold what cannot be held—or as Kohelet calls it, “a useless panting after wind.” Or we can let each moment come and go, meeting each one with some equanimity.
An Invitation, Not a Resolution
So here’s what I’m not suggesting for 2026: a new practice, a better technique, a shinier spiritual path.
What I am suggesting: Keep showing up to the same old practice. Sit in the same way you sat yesterday. Rest your attention on the breath in the same way you’ve rested it a hundred times before. But practice meeting it freshly. What’s it like this time? Practice not knowing how it will be. Practice tolerating the gap between what you hope meditation will give you and what it actually offers in any given moment.
This is how we train ourselves to hold habits more lightly, so reactivity grabs us less tightly. To respond instead of react. To question our tightly-held views—about ourselves, about others, about what we think we need to be happy. To get unstuck from the patterns that keep causing us pain.
And yes, there’s something wonderfully paradoxical about this. We learn and grow through iteration, through repetition and consistency, through doing the same thing over and over with patience and attention. Not through constant novelty, but through renewed relationship to what’s already here.
It’s been said that “The problem is not desire. It’s that your desires are too small.” Maybe our New Year’s resolutions fail not because we want too much, but because we’re settling for too little. A new body, a new habit, a new achievement—nothing wrong with these, but they’re not what we’re actually yearning for.
What if the desire underneath all our smaller desires is the longing to fully inhabit our actual lives? Not a marketing picture of what we should want. To be free from the constant grasping and pushing away? To meet each moment—even the boring, difficult, ordinary ones—with some tenderness and attention?
With deep gratitude to all of you who are already showing up for each other and this practice. If you’ve been thinking about it, jump in! (Make a no-resolution resolution?) No experience required, no prerequisites, nothing new you need to acquire first. Just show up. Again and again. The same old practice, new each time.
—–
May we hold our opinions and desires lightly in 2026. May we practice with humility and patience, loosening the grip of the next shiny thing, and see what “is” with fresh eyes.