I taught myself to play the piano when I was a teenager. But the thing is, I hated playing the same thing. I found it sort of humiliating to play the same song over and over.

That’s what’s supposed to make you better though.

I got older, and when I got to live on my own and make my own choices the sameness of my teenage life was shifted. I could go! I could do! I could try and experiment and see what was going on in the world.

It turns out life is full of sameness. Even when I might wish to have new experiences every day, so much of my day is exactly the same. Some breakfast most days. Some routine.

I put on the same shoes. I drive the same route.

Sometimes I think I have won the game of life, because I have tried things and decided on the perfect choice for me. THESE shoes. THIS car.

This career. These friends. This favorite restaurant and THIS dessert.

I know what I like.

And as soon as I think that, I think again. Maybe there is more that I haven’t tried that would change my life and make my smug choices all wrong.

Have I been living a fool’s paradise?

What I need is something new! That NEW shampoo. That new album or vacation.

Maybe what I really want is just a lot more new.

It’s Easter season. It’s spring. I’m listening to stories of resurrection.

New life.

And I must be born again.

Must I? Didn’t I get a few things right when I was born the first time?

Except that tempting lure of what else I haven’t tried.

I am grateful that spring comes every year to remind me to be born anew.

Sometimes it births a new version of exactly the same thing.

Brand new and different don’t have to be the same thing.

There are two joys, one in something entirely new. And also in seeing new what you have loved for a long time.