Metanoia: 2026 Word of the Year

Each January, instead of resolutions, I choose a single word.

Resolutions focus on what we do. A word, however, sets the tone. Like a tuning fork, once struck, it shapes how we hear everything else — how we see, judge, and respond.

In recent years, those words have named what felt most absent in our civic life.

Listen to this here. ⬇️

Agape in 2022 when the common humanity that binds us together and gives purpose to our public life, collapsed into tribal loyalty.

Ataraxia in 2023, when public life became perpetually inflamed, and equanimity became so vital.

Last year, it was Dignity, when contempt spilled into everyday discourse, and the inherent worth of people, and public service, had to be reclaimed.

In each instance, they are words I felt that spoke into the fractures and longings of the times.

This year, the word is Metanoia. A moral turning.

We’re living in a time where many feel something is fundamentally broken—not just in politics, or the economy, or in institutions, but in the very fabric of how we live with one another. And what is needed now isn’t simply another policy, strategy, or funded pilot project but something deeper.

A change in how we see, how we relate, and how we prioritize what matters.

That’s what Metanoia offers.

Metanoia is a Greek term that means a change of mind, but not in the casual sense. It names a profound interior turning: a reorientation of how we see ourselves, one another, and the world, which then reshapes how we live.

In the classical world, philosophers understood this kind of change as essential to freedom. Not the freedom to do whatever one pleases, but the freedom that comes from seeing clearly—shedding illusion, loosening the grip of ego, and aligning oneself with reason and the common good.

Marcus Aurelius put it this way:

“What is not good for the hive is not good for the bee.”

It’s a deceptively simple line. But it carries a radical moral claim: we are not self-contained units. We are formed for relationship. Our well-being is bound up with one another’s. To damage the whole is to damage ourselves.

Socrates made the same claim even more starkly. He argued that to harm another is not strength but self-corruption—that injustice deforms the soul of the one who commits it. In other words, wrongdoing is never merely external. It always comes home.

Metanoia, is the moral and spiritual capacity to recognize where we have gone wrong—personally and collectively—and to begin again on different terms. Not through denial, but through truth, responsibility, and a renewed commitment to life together.

For the early Christians, this word carried even greater weight. When Jesus called people to “repent,” he wasn’t invoking guilt or punishment—he was inviting metanoia: a complete change in how people saw power, justice, enemy, and neighbor.

Tertullian and other early thinkers framed it as the turning point of a life—from domination and hierarchy to humility, love, and mutual responsibility. The point wasn’t just personal salvation—it was social transformation.

And that’s what makes metanoia so urgently relevant today.

In Greek mythology, Metanoia was not a goddess of might or vengeance. She didn’t wield thunderbolts or wage war.

She walked quietly behind Kairos, the god of the opportune moment. Kairos flew by quickly, with wings on his feet and hair only on his forehead, so you had to grab him as he approached. Once passed, the moment was gone.

Metanoia followed in his shadow. Cloaked. Thoughtful. She was the spirit of realization—of regret, reckoning, and mercy. She appeared not to punish those who had missed the moment, but to ask:

"Now that you see what you’ve missed, will you turn and transform your ways?"

She is the one who waits, and then walks alongside those ready to live differently.

The Reckoning Before Renewal

And we are in that moment now.

We are coming to see—perhaps slowly, perhaps painfully—that the way we’ve been living is unsustainable. That we have normalized beliefs and behaviors that are quietly destroying the social order, human well-being and life as we know it:

• That might makes right.

• That relationships are transactional.

• That the winner takes all.

• That truth is malleable.

• That speed is more important than wisdom.

And we see the consequences all around us.

Crumbling infrastructure is not just deferred maintenance—it’s a symbol of relational neglect.

Fractured public trust is not simply a political problem—it reflects a deeper breakdown in how we value honesty, transparency, and mutual responsibility.

Rising mental illness, loneliness, addiction—these aren’t isolated pathologies, but symptoms of a disoriented culture.

Even our institutions reflect this decay. In city halls and local governments, we see good people overburdened by systems that prioritize performance over what is right.

Planning that rewards short-term gain at the cost of long-term wellbeing.

Budgets that cut where we are hurting most—public health, community programs, essential infrastructure.

We’ve mistaken movement for progress. Performance for leadership. Consumption for meaning.

And now, Metanoia asks: Will you turn? Are we ready to transform our ways?

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From Shadow to Renewal

After the Second World War, Carl Jung warned that the greatest danger facing humanity wasn’t external—it was the refusal to confront our own shadow.

He believed only a global metanoia—a shared turning of heart and perception—could interrupt the cycles of destruction we had become so skilled at rationalizing.

We face the same crossroads now.

The shadows are different in form, but not in kind. We’ve normalized domination as leadership. We’ve replaced wisdom with expediency. We’ve made peace with the belief that power justifies anything.

And we are living with their consequences: shattered trust, broken infrastructure, fragmented communities, a public square that feels more like a battleground than a commons.

As systems thinker Peter Senge once put it: “Structure determines behavior.” But he went further: without vision (metanoia), we can’t even see the structure. We keep reacting to symptoms, blind to the deeper architecture we ourselves have built.

That’s where metanoia meets civility.

Civility is not just politeness—it’s a cultural operating system built on mutual regard, responsibility, and the belief that we live in a shared world.

And leadership, at its root, is the act of shaping culture. That means it’s not enough to react. We have to re-orient. And that reorientation begins with a change of perception.

Metanoia is the inner transformation that makes civic renewal possible.

Without it, we fall into just managing dysfunction. With it, we begin to restore what’s been lost: we begin to renew the civic culture, the environment that makes good governance and human flourishing possible.

This is the deeper invitation behind the Global Civility Summit: Leading Through Uncivil Times, taking place April 16, 2026.

This year, we’re bringing together an extraordinary group of civic leaders—people who are practicing civility on the front lines of public life, often under intense pressure.

Alongside them, we’ll be joined by renowned thinkers whose work has shaped how we understand culture, dignity, dialogue, and democracy itself. We’ll be in conversation with:

Mark Kingwell, Canada’s leading philosopher of civility, whose work reminds us that democracy is not sustained by procedures alone, but by character, restraint and a commitment to the common good.

Donna Hicks, whose research on dignity has helped leaders around the world understand why humiliation is so destabilizing—and how restoring dignity is essential to peace and cooperation.

Kim Scott, New York Times best selling author of Radical Candor and Radical Respect, who brings hard-earned insight into how truth-telling and care can coexist in real workplaces and communities.

Josiah Ober, a leading voice on civic education and democratic capability, reminding us that democracies fail when citizens forget how to practice citizenship.

And Seth Kaplan, whose work on fragile neighborhoods shows how social breakdown begins locally—and how renewal must begin there too.

Over 3 focused, carefully curated hours, you’ll hear how to diagnose civic dysfunction before it becomes crisis-level. How to recognize when systems, workplaces, or communities have normalized unhealthy dynamics. How to reset patterns of interaction that erode trust. And how to strengthen civil discourse in real-world settings—where stakes are high and patience is often thin.

You’ll be able to submit your questions, and leave with a practical roadmap for renewing civic culture in your own sphere of influence—whether that’s a local government, a school, a nonprofit, a workplace, or a neighborhood.

Registration is now open, and already a quarter of the seats are filled—which tells me something important.

People are ready to see differently. To lead differently. To begin again on wiser terms.

🎟️Seats are limited. Secure your ticket today.

➡️REGISTER HERE: KalenAcademy.com/civilitysummit

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And now, a final word….

We can’t fix what we won’t face. And we can’t face what we refuse to name.

Metanoia is a name we’ve forgotten. But we need it today.

So this year, may we see clearly. May we act justly. May we choose to walk differently—together.

Let’s not miss the moment.

Join us at the Global Civility Summit! And let’s make 2026 a year of Metanoia.

Civility Summit Explainer Video (3 min)

Global Civility Summit 2026 is brought to you by Kalen Academy and proudly supported by the Municipal Association of South Carolina (MASC), the Victorian Local Governance Association (VLGA), Municipal World and our co-host Chris Eddy, local government executive and broadcaster of Australia's number 1 local government podcast Local Government News Roundup.