It’s that time of year again, when people, through a haze of starch and sugar, stare into the mirror at lumpen bodies and minds misshapen by the empty calories of influencers, and grumble, “Something’s gotta give.” Enter the New Year’s resolution, that earnest hope made with a zealot’s vow for change, that goal which will stagger under its own surety and collapse by Valentine’s Day.

Every year, people ask me what resolutions I’ve made and are often surprised when I respond, “None.”

“You? But…you know…you’re so…spiritual.”

“Oh, god, is that how I come off?”

“Well, I just mean, you’re into all this intentionality, right? You’re just so witchy, I thought you’d do some really deep resolution for the new year.”

I never cared much for the holiday. Perhaps, it’s familial. My grandfather, who went to a bar every day of his life, refused to go out on New Year’s Eve, because it was “amateur night” (St. Patrick’s was the other abstention). The change of the calendar year, after the dazzle of Christmas, always feels like a let-down, and not being the type of girl to drink for sport, I found the beglittered, ball-drop parties dull.

Nor does the flip of a number, the addition of one year to the last, inspire me to reflection and growth. There are other ways of marking time, ways to acknowledge the move forward but also the turn inwards. Time, such as we understand it, is not linear, but likely spiralic – we return to a similar point on the horizontal axis but a different one on the vertical. Every time the moon shifts from dark to new, there’s an opportunity for something else to be born. Every morning after the winter solstice, when the sun is “reborn” and begins its annual climb to summer effulgence, I think of what lies ahead, of what I’d like to achieve, accomplish, or be open to receive.

And yet, none of these feel “new.” It’s a continuation, a repetition, a ritual, a performance whose script is known but whose execution remains a mystery until that night onstage. Human cultures around the world from Tulum, Mexico, to Newgrange, Ireland, built monuments that were illuminated by the light of the winter sun, sometimes only for that solstice celebration, reminding their celebrants of change, yes, but also of what stays the same.

More than transformation – the obsession of spiritual materialism – aren’t we really seeking continuity? When things are good, we want them to go on forever. When things are terrible, we fear they will. No matter, it will be different tomorrow, next month, year, season, lifetime. Nothing lasts forever, even desire.

I’ve been exhausted by prayer, intention, affirmation, goal-setting. Bored with wanting, I think of Eleanor of Aquitaine as played by Katherine Hepburn in the The Lion in Winter.

“In fact, I wonder, Henry, if I care for anything. I wonder if I’m hungry out of habit.”

We’re inculcated through the mechanism of our economics, which are not just monetary, to desire, to want, to need, to wish for change, because change means merch, from the gross – new phone, new plug, new ear buds – to the more subtle found in the lucrative machine of so-called spirituality – new prayer, new desire, new technique to master, new practice to commit to, new community. The yearning burns with the acquisitive, with an avarice that, while not of Ralph Nickleby intensity, still desiccates the heart into the habit of desire, a longing that leads only to more longing, not to its relief.

The cycles of renewal observed in the natural world, astrological to meteorological, teach us that things are different, and they’re not; that the world revolves into something new and something we’ve seen a thousand times before; and in this observance of predictable change, our relationship to desire, itself, transforms. It loses its urgency, its youthful bite, it becomes becomes almost tawdry.

“Christ, am I really going to ask for this again?”

“I’m actually fine. What am I hoping for now?”

“Isn’t this enough?”

We’re not encouraged to rest in the enoughness of our lives. We’re goaded into desire by our culture, our communities, our spiritualities. From the longview of achieving heaven through devotion and good works to the near demonic urge for enlightenment, our spiritualities, which infect worldview and philosophy no matter how distant we like to think ourselves from them, proliferate within the human intelligence, which is a web of want. Once those lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are met, a necessary and honorable achievement, we turn ourselves towards the ineffable satisfactions of purpose, of long-shot dreams, of this year’s resolutions, tossed aside at the applied pressure of conflict, demonstrating how vain they always were.

Every day, I speak out loud five things for which I’m grateful (some people write them down in a gratitude journal, but with so many notebooks tucked into purses, drawers, nightstands, I can’t add one more to the heap), and every day, those things are never flashy – I’m grateful I got to take a walk today without my back hurting. I’m grateful I got to make baked ziti, especially with that homemade ricotta from DiPalo’s. I’m grateful my cat slept through the Zoom astrology client I had. I’m grateful I laughed with a new friend. They don’t sound glamorous or exciting, but again and again, for years now, I’ve returned to the daily experiences of life when I do this practice, which, along with the wheel of seasons and stars, has taught me that satisfaction comes not from resolutions and want, but from radical simplicity, an idea that Thoreau niggled throughout his life.

“As for the complex ways of living, I love them not, however much I practice them. In as many places as possible, I will get my feet down to the earth.” (Journal, Oct. 22, 1853)

“My greatest skill has been to want but little.” (Journal, July 19, 1852)

“Simplicity is the law of nature for men as well as flowers.” (Journal, Feb. 29, 1852)

So, in that spirit, Happy New Year, Happy Same Year.

Happy continuance of who you’ve been and how it influences the present and perhaps the future.

And happy gratitude for all that you possess in a breath, a walk, a laugh, a bite of good bread.

Happy Enough.

Join me, along with Perdita Finn and Clark Strand, on a pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Loreto in Italy next fall. For information and registration, click here and join the party.