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. I absolutely love the idea of the One Word year. This is something I want to do for myself as well, and you’ve provided the inspiration for it. Best wishes as you embark on being wholehearted this year.

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  4. I just hit the reblog button! This one-word-thing has got me thinking; what would be my word for 2015?… This calls for some peace and quiet “me” time. Thanks for awakening in me the urge to see the beauty of the past. Happy 2015!

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  7. Bravo! what a wonderfully written article, a piece of work full of both introspect and retrospect thus offering something for every reader. I especially liked the part about “belief”, where you, the writer had courage enough to include your desire to please God while at the same time sharing your strengths and weaknesses with your audience, that takes talent. Keep up the good work of words!

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  8. Reading this post, I felt like its my supconcious talking to me. You totally spoke my mind out! Thank you.
    I like celebrating new years to join the togetherness of thousands of people for somthibg that’s cheerful and hopeful for a change! I also love watching the fireworks at midnight and we do a pretty good job here in Dubai with that. At this point of my life it think I am totally over the partying part though. I like the Korean style much better actually, I might try it next year and maybe on my birthday!
    I am a list kind of person, so I’ve always had resolutions, even knowing that they might be hard to keep. Also at this point of my life I am starting to question, what really is point the point of that? If I had to pick one word to live by this year it will be “here”. I kind of need to stop being too busy planning for the future, worrying about what I don’t have and what hasn’t happened yet, and start living in the here and now more often.

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    1. Thanks for sharing this! I’m also a list person, so I always really got into making my list of things I was going to do in the upcoming year, but I almost always ended up just having a record of my failures and short-comings at the end of the year. I think “Here” is a great word. I also struggle to live in the present and to fully engage with where I am today. I’m a planner and I’m always thinking about what comes next, but when we spend our whole lives that way we miss what’s in front of us! Blessings on your year of being “here” and Happy New Year!

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  11. Great post! I had a particularly difficult year myself in 2014, what with the decision to move my family across the country to Canada’s Northwest Territories in order to pursue my dream of becoming an author. I started a blog about the experience to keep myself sane and perhaps even inspire others to follow their dreams. Although I am a freelance journalist and love telling other people’s stories, I have struggled with being so open about my own journey. Therefore, I have commited to “honesty” as my New Year’s resolution. I think being more honest on my blog will help keep me honest with myself and prevent me from getting off the path of reaching my goals.

    Happy New Year!

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    1. Well, it sounds like you’ve already got “Courage” and “Determination” in spades. “Honesty” is a great word for a writer. It’s hard. Sometimes it’s really hard. But I hope you will find (as I have) that people respond really positively to your honesty. It’s something we really admire in others and it draws us to people. The world is waiting for more honest, authentic voices. I’m excited to see what happens as you start to share more of yours. Good luck and Happy New Year!

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  14. Thanks. Very well thought out and modestly stated. My word, now you have prompted me, would be Attentive. Attentive to the people around me, to myself, to the environment I move in, to the culture around me. Regards from Thom at the immortal jukebox.

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    1. Thanks, Thom. I like your word. Attentiveness really requires us to be less self-focused – to look outside of ourselves and really observe and care about the world around us. That’s definitely something I could stand to do more of myself. Thanks for sharing your word and Happy New Year!

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  15. Pingback: Forgivness is my word (haibun) | Traces of the Soul

  17. Beautifully written! I’d love to spend New Year’s like they do in Korea. I don’t care for fireworks, drinks and empty promises. I want peace and quiet and contemplation, and beauty. By the way, I really like this part:

    “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?”

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    1. It’s true that our lives are made up of all the individual moments, so we can’t expect to live a full life unless we commit to living fully in each individual moment. Glad you enjoyed this post. Happy New Year!

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  28. What a fantastic read! You sum up in so many ways, what i feel of the new year in both the positive and negative perspectives. Happy new year!

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  50. What a great thought to share. I think you’re so right in saying that we carry all our selves with us, which makes us who we are. Excellent post- well deserved to be freshly pressed!

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