Obviously, the new year is a traditional time to start new things.
Another option is to continue something old, but look at it anew.
In Japanese this is known as 初心 (shoshin), or “Beginner’s Mind”.
初 = for the first time, in the beginning.
This is the same kanji as 初め (hajimé), meaning “for the first time”, as in the common Japanese greeting 初めまして (hajimémashité).
(Note: 初め is not to be confused with 始め, which is pronounced the same as has a very similar meaning. The difference is that 初 functions like an adverb of time, whereas 始め is more like a verb – as in “to begin”.)
心 = heart, mind
Having a “Beginner’s Mind”, viewing a situation from a fresh perspective, can lead to insight and innovation.
An example of this is the success of the go-playing AI program AlphaGo.
The Asian board game go (known in Japan as igo), is well known for having so many permutations of moves (apparently more than the number of atoms in the universe) that programming a computer that could beat a human player was long considered the holy grail of AI.
When AlphaGo eventually beat a human player, it used moves which humans would consider deeply eccentric, and at one point it made a move which no go experts had ever seen before.
What allowed the AI to win wasn’t necessarily the computational power, although this was immense. It was the fact that the machine taught itself to play from scratch, without being taught by a human who would necessarily be steeped in thousands of years of go history, culture and tradition.
Instead of going along with the preconceived narrative of how go should be played it used its own ideas with few fixed beliefs to get in the way.
Sometimes, less knowledge can be a good thing.
Calligraphy by Vicky 