If you were to choose a word to describe the year ahead of you, what would it be?
Many of us are in the habit of looking ahead as a new year approaches. Gym membership discounts, diet plans, new year’s resolutions – there’s an assumption that it’s valuable to make choices about a new year as it begins. Committing to a new practice like going to the gym or eating healthy meals can focus us on specific actions that we’ll make a point to do again and again, and I agree that goals with that level of specificity can be valuable. However, choosing a word to describe the kind of year that we envision finding or that we hope to contribute to is a slightly different thing.
There are stories of ancient people going out in search of wise women and men who’d made their homes in the desert. Because these desert dwellers had exchanged their complicated urban days for simpler desert lives, it was assumed that they’d drawn closer to the divine. Visitors came seeking that desert wisdom, sometimes asking to be given “a word.” These visitors wanted something to take away with them, something they could go home and think about, pray about, or sit with for weeks, months, even years to come.
Odd as it may sound to sit with the same word for an entire year, I decided last year to give it try. I didn’t visit any deserts in search of that word, but I did seek some of the wise people who came to my mind. I visited Martin Luther King Jr. in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. I spent time with Mary Oliver and Rumi through pages of their poetry. I read scripture, too – sometimes among old, familiar pages a word jumps out at me in entirely unexpected ways. There are many, many voices in our world with words to offer us if we are curious to hear them.
There are words that can comfort and those that can unsettle. I’ve found that a single word can raise all kinds of questions, and words carried around over time can disappear and reappear again at the oddest moments.
Think, for instance, about the word “Beloved.” Martin Luther King Jr. describes the kind of society he worked for as the “Beloved Community.” I wonder what it would do to my shopping, giving, voting, volunteering, planning, producing, keeping quiet, or speaking up if every person and every group of people I encountered brought with them the echo of the word “Beloved.”
It’s true that a word like this may not have specific actions associated with it. There may not be any clear way of knowing how to let this word guide our choices or how to measure the extent to which we actually live with this word over the course of a year. To friends who prioritize clear goals, actionable steps, and measurable outcomes, choosing a word for the year may seem ridiculous. There are many approaches to life, though, and choosing a word to guide our thinking or to evaluate our decision-making may have its own kind of value.
As you may have guessed, I’ve been looking for another word as a new year approaches. Is there a word you might consider taking as your companion in the year ahead?
(This essay originally appeared in the December 30, 2018 issue of the Indianapolis Star.)
Callie J. Smith 