2026: The Year of the Good Eye

Happy New Year’s everybody!

In the spirit of New Year’s resolutions, I decided to make no resolutions this year, at least not any SMART ones. You know, SMART? It’s the acronym that business types use to describe goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timebound.

You see, I had begun my New Year’s review at the Greats of Craft, my local coffee shop/ bar here in NYC. During my New Year’s review, I like to think about the past year (2025), identify a few big events that happened each month, and get a bit of a general vibe check on what happened that year. Some highlights: I started the New Year in Colorado surrounded by family (who had gone to sleep already) and my partner, Cailley. In June, I moved to Long Island City, Queens, NY with Cailley and in October, we got engaged! In December, I got a big job promotion to Engineering Manager. Some big life happenings this past year for sure.

Once I had reflected on 2025 and my goals for 2025 that I may or may not have achieved, I began to think on my plans for 2026. A few categories for 2026 goals popped into my mind, such as health, family, work, financials, etc, and the possibilities began to open up. I felt excited at first, but then quickly overwhelmed with all the things I wanted to see happen in 2026 in those categories. 

As I sat in the coffee shop, reflecting, my internal conversation sounded something like the following:

“How can I possibly do all these things that I’d like to do? How will I have enough energy, enough time, enough patience to see these things through? There’s no way these are all going to happen! 2026 is going to be such a busy crazy year, and I’ll never have enough to do anything I want to do!” 

This inward spiral continued for about a minute or two before it was stopped with another thought – “What if, instead of making detailed goals in all these categories, I just chose to focus on changing the direction and force of this inward spiral?”

I quickly latched on to this thought and fed it some energy. Before I knew it, I had written a poem of sorts, (almost more like a mantra), and decided that my new goal for 2026 would simply be to “see” this mantra every day in 2026, whether I write it down, read it, or say it aloud. 

I’ll share it with you, dear reader, below, and I’d invite you to consider devising your own mantra for the new year, something which might target a specific negative tendency you know about yourself. My mantra is dedicated to undoing my scarcity mindset, which shows up as a defense mechanism for just about anything and everything.

Here it is:

This is the year of the good eye.

Today, the big country continues to break through the broken asphalt baptistry.

Today is the day of the wedding banquet, and “only a full house gonna make it through.”

Today, the ten lamps of fire are lit just beyond the ends of my ten fingertips.

Today, I choose to see these things. 

Today, I choose to see with my good eye.

There’s a number of images in this mantra – I’ll explain a few of them, but some I’ll leave up to interpretation. 

The concept of the good eye is the core of the mantra. It is a biblical concept that Jesus taught about during his famous Sermon on the Mount. Most versions of the Bible will translate “good eye” as “healthy eye” but in the Hebraic culture to which he was speaking, the idiom of “good eye” vs “bad eye” was well understood. 

A bad eye is a way of seeing the world as never having enough to provide for yourself or for others, and it is associated with stinginess, hoarding, and a self-centered perspective. If you have a bad eye, you are really just not a generous person. I often have a bad eye…

Conversely, having a good eye means seeing the world with abundance for yourself and also others. In other words, there’s enough in my personal accounts (energy, money, time, etc.), so I can be free and open with what I do have. The world is big enough to hold it all, and God or whatever higher being might be out there is good enough to provide for us in abundance.

I’d like to have a good eye, and so each of these images and phrases are directed at reminding me that there is an abundant world out there, that everyone is always welcome, and that I can become even more for myself than what I currently imagine as possible. I know it sounds a bit sappy, but aren’t all resolutions border-line sappy? 

As a note – the image of a broken asphalt baptistery was part of a poem that I never could quite finish, and the “big country” is a reference to a fantastic bluegrass song by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. The wedding banquet phrase is a combination of a Jesus parable and a song lyric. The parable comes from the Gospels and the song lyric comes from Josh Ritter’s “Thin Blue Flame.” The last line was inspired by a parable from Thomas Merton’s book, “Sayings of the Desert Fathers.” I’ve included the short excerpt from the book below, just because it’s one of my favorite nuggets I’ve ever come across.

I’m hoping that this focus on changing my eye (how I choose to see the exterior) will lead to outcomes that I didn’t even plan, but ones that are in line with an abundant mindset.

With that being said, Happy New Years! If you’re so inclined, and if you’d like to join me as I try to see the world, others, and myself with a good eye, I’d welcome you to use my mantra (if you’d like), but would encourage you to find a phrase or an image that speaks deeply to your own life and goals. If you do come up with one and care to share it with me, I’d love to hear it!

Here’s to seeing 2026 with a good eye!