New Year: My One Word for 2015 and Why I Can’t Leave 2014 Behind

In Korea people don’t stay up until midnight to ring in the New Year. Instead, they get up in the middle of the night and they hike a mountain. They climb through the dark, snowy pre-dawn hours and when they reach the top they stand with their faces to the sky to greet the first sunrise of the New Year.

What a contrast to how we in the West often enter the New Year – stumbling out of bed at noon, tired and quite possibly hungover. For many, January 1st is a day of recovery. We spend New Year’s Eve celebrating the ending of something and the beginning of a new thing. We bombard the internet with reflections on the previous year. Even the less introspective among us take a moment to declare the past year, “the best” or “the hardest” or “the craziest” year of their lives.

I can never bring myself to make those kinds of statements. Because I don’t believe a year can ever be just one thing. Life is never just one thing, and what is a year besides a microcosm of an entire life?

Elaine’s comment on my Year in Review post explained this perfectly. She said she was struck by “how every year is a little life – with birth, death, family, love, travel, new things, familiar things, difficulties and good friends all swirling through it.” I thought this was profound because of what it says about the year we’ve just lived and what it means for the year ahead.

2014 had a life that is both self-contained and part of a larger whole. Entering the New Year doesn’t mean we’ve finished with the old one. We can’t discard it like a worn-out pair of shoes. We carry our past years deep inside our bones. They make up the very DNA of our lives.

The person I was as a child is markedly different from the person I am today, but I could never say I’ve left her behind entirely. You never completely stop being the person you were at 8 or 18 or 28. You carry all of these selves inside of you and they shape who you become. In the same way, we each carry dozens of lives with us –the lives we lived in our previous years – and these lives become part of our future.

But carrying the past year with you doesn’t mean you have to be weighed down or shackled by it.

In the past, I’ve looked back on my previous year and made some promises. I’ve set goals for the year ahead that were largely lists of how I would do better, be better than I was the previous year. I used to think that doing this was a way of leaving the previous year behind, but maybe all that is is a way of letting the previous year enslave me.

I don’t think we have the choice to throw out the previous year or any year of our lives. But we do have a choice about how we let it shape our lives. I can either look at the previous year and allow my mistakes and disappointments and perfectionism drive me to guilt-ridden resolutions, or I can look at the previous year and simply embrace it all, both the proud moments and the parts I wish I could undo, thank God for them, and let them be part of my story.

This year, instead of making a list of resolutions, instead of thinking of all the ways I failed in the last year or all the things I want to do better, instead of making 2015 a giant to-do list, I’ve decided to join the many people I know who choose One Word. The idea of One Word is to get rid of your list and to choose just one word to focus on for a whole year. “One word that sums up who you want to be and how you want to live.”

I’ve been thinking about my word for several weeks. At first I thought about “Belief,” because it’s something I desperately want more of – in God, in myself, in the world. And then I thought about “Present,” the practice of being fully engaged where I am instead of constantly thinking of the next thing or the last thing. Both of these are important to me, but when I really considered what summed up who I want to be and how I want to live one word rose to the top. My word for this year is Wholehearted.

Wholehearted is about sincerity and commitment. For me this means authenticity in my life and my writing. It means commitment to continue my faith-wrestling and to asking sincere questions. Being Wholehearted is also a commitment to courage, compassion, and connection. It is the courage to be vulnerable despite the risk, the compassion to love other people well and to extend grace quickly, both to myself and to others, and the choice to develop genuine connections with others. Wholeheartedness means committing to being fully present, to showing up for every day of my life instead of checking out when things are hard or boring. It means engaging with Today and believing that every day is a gift. And Wholehearted means believing that I am worthy of love and belonging – not because there is anything especially great and deserving about me, but because we are all worthy of love and belonging and because we can’t fully accept love and belonging unless we believe we are worthy of it.

This year I want to step into the New Year with intention. I want to turn my face towards the sun and say, “I’m here. Whatever you have to offer, I am fully present and ready to receive it. The births and the deaths. The joys and the fears and the disappointments. The beauty and the brokenness. The faith and the doubt. The longing and the contentment. The adventure and the mundane.” May 2015 be a step on the journey towards Wholeheartedness.

Happy New Year.

 

Image Credit: Iamidaho at Deviantart.com

1,082 comments

  1. This idea of “one word” is far better than cliche resolutions that no one ever sticks to! Everyone has been asking what my resolution is, and a week ago I decided it was to read more. Now I will ponder if “read” is in fact the one word I want 2015 to be.

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    1. READ! One of my most favorite words! I don’t know if you saw it, but I did an end of the year post about some of my favorite books this year if you are looking for recommendations. Plus I have that whole page of Books I’ve Read. I’m kind of a book nerd. 🙂 Good luck on your year of reading! Let me know if you stumble on anything great. And thanks for reblogging! I really appreciate you sharing this!

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  4. Pingback: On Life Lists and Finding my Word (s), 2015. | Prayers and Piazzas

    1. So cool, Rachel! I’m really glad you enjoyed this. Please share when you decide on a word. 🙂 And if you need some ideas you can check out oneword365.com and see what others are choosing! And thanks for the reblog! I really appreciate you sharing.

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    1. Fantastic! I feel so honored to have inspired you. 🙂 Did you link to my post? I’m only asking because I didn’t get the pingback, so the link probably isn’t working if you did. If not, no worries. 🙂

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  14. Reblogged this on F-alling Slowly and commented:
    Beautiful reflection. To me, being wholehearted is one of the most important thing I wish to establish in my life this 2015. To do things out of love and to love the people around. To be sincere and genuine, and find that quiet confidence within me where I can reach out to the lost and broken.

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  19. This struck a chord in me to realizing that there is more to us in whatever year we are in. Doing so the resolutions, that what to do listings, and in your case that one word is but normal for us to do when we embark on a new endeavor-a new year for this case-and it helps so much in giving us focus and what really is important to us not that the previous ones were of lesser or of more than. I relate to this. Every year we look forward to ourselves, our faith, our family, our friends and our loved ones. That’s the bottom line as always. I agree with that little lives comprising a whole year.

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    1. Yes, every year is kind of like a mini life. 🙂 I’m really glad you liked this post and that it was meaningful to you. So far I’ve really enjoyed the journey of focusing on one word. Happy 2015.

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  24. Reblogged this on Secret Diary of the Girl Next Door and commented:
    What an insightful article. I love the idea if climbing to the top of a mountain to see the new year in. It sounds much more magical than the drunken New Years resolutions, watching the lonely wish they were whole, the happy hope and dream for the future, the sad wish for the night to be over.

    Sometimes we forget that we aren’t all in the same place when we let in huge new year. We forget of the people who are hurting, who are using the night to be a night to forget. This isn’t just for new year; whenever I go on a night out you see these characters and I find it so sad. Our culture leads us to try and find an identity in being this perfect person and if you don’t fit it you are then a failure. This isn’t true and the Koreans do it right. Watching the sun rise seems so much more meaningful, more spiritual and positive that the traditions we have grown used to.

    I hope that one day I will do the same on new year. One of the most beautiful moments in my life was watching the sun rise at the summit of Mt. Kinabalu in Borneo, summer 2011. One day I will do that again, and I hope others will too.

    Lots of love
    GirlNextDoor

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    1. Thanks for the reblog! I love what you said about remembering that we aren’t all in the same place when we let in the New Year (or celebrate other holidays). This is a really good reminder of how we can be loving towards others in what can be particularly hard times instead of just focused on ourselves and our own happiness. I’m really glad you enjoyed this piece and I appreciate you sharing it!

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  31. Such a powerful, vibrant, nourishing word: Wholeheartedness. I love it and everything it encompasses for you and hope that you only walk deeper into its fullness as the year continues to unfold.

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      1. You’re welcome. Do you have facebook account Lily? I’d tell you that I want to force myself to read books as many as possible and have a good writing skill.
        -Wirda, Indonesia

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  34. I love the new year. It is chance to start over, start a new. I had a really bad, bad year last year. So much pain and heartache, nothing like I had ever felt before. Believe me the loss was horrible, and I have lost a child before so I am all to familiar with pain.
    This year I went out to the Atlantic Ocean and I filled a bottle with everything I wanted throw away. I did it, I threw the bottle in the ocean and it caught a wave and away they went. It was cathartic. My pain is gone. I will start over, Happy 2015 🙂

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    1. That’s beautiful, Scarlett. I’m so sorry for your difficult year and I genuinely hope this one holds many more joyful moments. I’m glad you were able to find a way to move past your pain. Sometimes those symbolic gestures can be so meaningful. Happy 2015.

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  38. Thanks for the brilliant article. What you’ve written is very true, and most of us have just not observed it. We all make new year resolutions and then break them, and next year we make the same resolutions again. It’s a never ending cycle, and we keep repeating it.

    The idea of One word makes sense. To decide what you want this year. It’s definitely much better than having a to do list. I hope your year will be good and you’ll experience the ‘wholeheartedness’ that you wish to experience this year.

    Good luck, and thanks for inspiring me. 🙂

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    1. Thanks for your kind words, Logan. I’m so honored to have inspired you. So far focusing on One Word has made 2015 less about trying to check things off an impossible list and more about taking steps towards becoming who I want to be. Thanks so much for reading!

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  39. Wholehearted is a great word to follow. It is often so hard to follow the typical New Years goals, as you explained, to do and be better. It’s repetitive and hardly ever works (at least for me). Wholehearted is a great word to live by as the word guarantees that no matter the events that take place, one will be ready to take on the good and the bad with the same passion and effort. I hope you live wholeheartedly every day this year, and I hope it inspires you to continually live it every year. Great article, and I hope to live wholehearted as well. Thank you for sharing!

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