I want to start the year off acknowledging what I do know and vowing to learn what I don’t. There are so many things I’ve wanted to master and never did — not piano or Italian, but the practice of patience and gratitude, an appreciation for silence, a more earnest pursuit of hope.

The writer Maya Angelou said, “This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.” I am wise enough to know that life does not last forever, and that we must hold each day the same way we hold a baby. But I am still sweating the small stuff. I am anxious over things like the dryer constantly getting stuck at one minute, or that I can’t sign in to half my accounts on the internet, or that there are days of unread emails piling up. It’s hard to be grateful for the big things when your mind is cluttered with small things.

There are miles of things to be annoyed about in our modern era. We must learn, to the best of our ability, to focus on what is sacred and important. I will work on that this year.

My husband and I are mobile critics in the car. If you are in front of us and you don’t use a blinker, we are most certainly having a heyday behind you at your expense. You’d be amazed at the impatient comments we are willing to direct toward someone we’ve never met. My youngest daughter is fascinated by our propensity to turn from mild-mannered citizens into mini Supreme Court justices when the car is moving.

The Christian author Joyce Meyer says, “Patience is not simply the ability to wait — it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.” I promise to remember that next time you forget your blinker.

I turned off the television for good in 2012, and instead of enjoying the silence or reading more classics, I became obsessed with my computer screens. I weighed in heavily on national politics, over-researched rumors and innuendo, and read opinion pieces — as if anyone in the country could know the absolute truth about anything these days. Next year, I will pursue the kind of peace that comes from thinking less and feeling more. I’ll bake bread, send handwritten notes, catch the sunset, and count more clouds. I’ve found that letting a few days of news pass makes absolutely no difference in my life. The news is often fear-based, and it’s a choice we make whether we decide to feed it.

Once upon a time in this country, people used to sit for hours — no screens, no scrolling, no sound bites. We’d just sit and rock on our porches or linger over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table for twenty minutes. There was no reading or linking to anything but our own good thoughts.

I don’t want to be that couple at a lovely restaurant scrolling on our phones instead of talking — an activity that’s become epidemic in our culture. This year, I vow to leave my phone at home more often than not. I believe that being present in the moment is a major component of mental health.

I also want to practice slowness without guilt. Our culture worships speed and output; we measure days in terms of items crossed off lists. But some of the best hours of my life have produced nothing at all — just conversation, laughter, bread rising on the counter, a walk with no particular destination. I want to allow more of those unmeasured hours, trusting that an unhurried life is not a wasted one.

There is so much I still don’t know. I don’t know how many years I will get. I don’t know what will happen to the people I love. I don’t know which plans will bloom and which will quietly fall away. But I do know this: life keeps offering us chances to begin again, and the calendar is simply one more invitation to start fresh.

So I will begin — with quieter mornings, with gentler words, with more forgiveness for others and for myself. I will try to let the day be exactly what it is instead of what I think it should be. I will look up more than I look down. I will listen for the small, ordinary miracles that are always happening in rooms with no cameras, in moments with no audience.

And tonight, before I sleep, I will simply say: thank you — for this day I have never seen before.