Low diatribe

The new year invites resolutions. Goals. Grand declarations of transformation.

But what I need is reset.

Not a new destination. A recalibration of what I notice. What I let dominate the frame.

I don't remember exactly when I first read Slaughterhouse-Five. Somewhere around four decades ago. The thing that stuck wasn't the time travel or the war or even "So it goes."

It was the Tralfamadorians and their choice.

They experience all of time at once. Every joy, every cruelty, every ordinary Thursday exists simultaneously. That could lead to paralysis, nihilism, or cold detachment. Instead, they do something quietly radical: they select where to place their attention. They linger in a moment worth keeping. They choose the zoo.

That decision matters more than their perception of time. Omniscience isn't the power. Selection is.

They don't deny that suffering exists. They don't pretend the war didn't happen or that death isn't real. They simply refuse to let those moments dominate the frame. Knowing all moments are equally permanent, they decide which ones deserve presence. The zoo isn't a prison; it's a posture.

This is where the idea leaves science fiction and steps directly into everyday life.

I used to believe reality is what happens to me. But I've learned it's more often what I notice. What I return to. What I rehearse. What I train my attention to surface.

Think about the color yellow.

If you decide, consciously, to look for yellow, something odd happens. You don't buy more yellow things. The world doesn't repaint itself. But suddenly yellow is everywhere: signs, jackets, flowers, packaging, license plates. It feels like it has multiplied.

It hasn't. Your attention has shifted.

The moment you choose "yellow matters," your perception aligns to reveal it. Not because you're imagining things, but because your mind is constantly filtering reality, and you've changed the filter. What was always present becomes suddenly dense.

This is the Tralfamadorian choice in miniature.

They aren't changing the timeline. They're deciding where to stand inside it.

This distinction is subtle, but it's everything. It's the difference between toxic positivity and grounded agency. Between denial and orientation. Between pretending pain doesn't exist and refusing to crown it as the only truth.

Hardship appears whether we choose it or not. But whether it becomes the organizing principle of our attention — that's a different question.

That choice compounds.

What you attend to shapes what you interpret. What you interpret shapes what you reinforce. What you reinforce becomes culture — internal or shared.

This happens everywhere. In leadership. In families. In teams. Quietly, daily, often unconsciously.

If I, as a leader, only notice what's broken, the room fills with fracture. If I, as a parent, only notice what's missing, the household hums with lack. If I only notice where I fell short, the timeline collapses inward around regret.

None of those perceptions are false. But they are incomplete.

The Tralfamadorians offer a different discipline: acknowledge the whole, choose the center.

This isn't passivity. It's responsibility at a different layer. The event may be fixed, but the narrative gravity around it isn't. Every moment of attention teaches the nervous system — yours and anyone watching — what deserves focus.

Billy Pilgrim's repeated "So it goes" isn't about nothing mattering — it's about everything already existing. The phrase drains drama from death without draining meaning from life. It refuses escalation. It says: this moment is real, but it does not get to consume all others.

That's not indifference. That's containment.

And containment is a form of care.

Choosing perspective doesn't mean lying to yourself. It means deciding which truths get to drive. Look for yellow, and the world gets brighter without changing a single molecule.

This matters most in long arcs — careers, relationships, recovery, growth. I've learned I can't endure those by white-knuckling the hardest moments. I live them by curating where I rest my gaze.

The Tralfamadorians choose the zoo not because it's perfect, but because it's livable. Because it reminds them that even in a universe where everything is already written, attention is still an act of authorship.

We all choose a perspective. The only question is whether we do it on purpose.

Because whatever you train yourself to notice will begin to feel like the whole world.

And that choice — quiet, repeated, unglamorous — is where agency actually lives.

I'm writing this on January 2nd, which means I'm two days into a choice I made deliberately.

Not a resolution. Not a goal. A reset of attention.

I'm choosing to notice what's working. To treat setbacks as information rather than indictment. To look for the yellow instead of cataloging the gray.

This is harder than it sounds. My default filter has been tuned for years to surface problems, gaps, and risks. That's useful in some contexts. It keeps you sharp. But left unchecked, it becomes the only lens you have.

The work doesn't change. I still have to do the things required to survive, to provide, to show up. The bills don't care about my attention. The responsibilities don't pause while I recalibrate.

But I can direct my attention while doing that work. Notice the movement instead of staring at the weight. The progress, however small. The pace, however slow. Not because it makes the work easier, but because it makes the work sustainable.

This isn't about ignoring the hardship. It's about refusing to let the hardship be the only story I tell myself while I'm moving through it.

The stories we tell ourselves become the superstitions we live by. If I tell myself I'm always behind, I'll find evidence everywhere. If I tell myself nothing I do matters, I'll stop noticing when it does. The narrative becomes the filter. The filter becomes the world.

I'm trying to consciously build more positive superstitions. Not delusions. But patterns of attention that surface what's working, what's holding, what's moving forward. Stories grounded in truth but oriented toward possibility.

I've been practicing this for a while now, in small ways. I stopped watching horror movies, even my favorites. The dread lingered. The tension stayed in my body for days. I've pulled back from music that feeds on angst — even bands I love, even songs that feel like home. Not forever. There's a time for catharsis, but it should be chosen, not constant. I'd rather my default state be cultivating joy than exploring dread.

These aren't grand gestures. They're tiny acts of curation. But they compound. What I let in shapes what I carry. And what I carry shapes what I notice.

So I'm choosing a different center.

When I notice myself rehearsing a failure, I'm going to acknowledge it once, extract the lesson, and redirect. When I catch myself scanning for what's broken, I'm going to pause and name what's holding. When the narrative gravity pulls toward regret, I'm going to ask: what else is true?

This is the Tralfamadorian discipline: acknowledge the whole, choose the center.

The new year is an arbitrary marker. The calendar doesn't care. But it's a useful fiction, a moment when we're culturally permitted to choose a different posture. I'm taking it.

Not because I believe everything will suddenly improve. But because I know that what I train myself to notice will begin to feel like the whole world. And I'd rather live in a world dense with possibility than one defined by lack.

The zoo isn't perfect. But it's livable. And livable, sustained over time, is how you build something worth keeping.

So that's my reset. Quiet, unglamorous, repeated daily.

Deciding where to stand inside the timeline I've already got.