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

  4. Love it. So true. I’m seriously planning on starting next new year differently as well. I used to make my hungover friends climb Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh with me to start the new year with a sense of achievement. Lying in bed, cradling your head is really not the most inspiring start.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Haha. That’s awesome. I’ve done that climb before – it is no easy task even when one is not hungover. 😉 Especially when you get up to the higher bits and it gets so incredibly windy. It is an amazing view though! Glad you enjoyed this post. Thanks for sharing!

      Like

      Reply

  9. That is so true. I like you, don’t see the year, past or present as one thing. Last year was a learning, growing year whereas this year I am stretching out more using last year as my reference of what to do the same or what to do completely different.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. That’s great. I feel the same way. There are things I did wrong last year, but there are things I did wrong yesterday too. 🙂 I want to remember those things for the next time a situation like that comes up, not throw them out and pretend they didn’t happen. I hope your year of stretching is a valuable one!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  10. Great post, my word for the year is to abide. We forget sometimes that God will do amazing things through us, if only we’ll abide. We’re only a branch that draws all its strength from the vine.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Why is abiding so hard to do?! I’ve often wondered in my own life. It’s the simplest concept. Just live and move and breath resting in God’s strength and his goodness. How hard can it be? But I am CONSTANTLY finding myself somewhere off to the side. Thanks for sharing your word. I hope your year is spent growing closer and closer to the vine. 🙂

      Like

      Reply

      1. oh wretched man that i am. i find myself off the path far too often. good thing that even when we’re not faithful, he is, because he can’t deny himself. may i be found ever more faithful.

        hope you have a great year too!

        Like

    1. Thank you! I’m so glad you resonated with this. There is so much in life that just happens to us, outside of our control – all we can manage is how we’re going to respond to it. Thanks for reading and for sharing your thoughts!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  15. Oh God! When you’re scheming for the right word and saw wholehearted, I literally said, ‘Oh, Jackpot!’. Makes one think about our workaday lives. By the end of the article, I suddenly thought of the Serenity Prayer and then my childhood and then all the in-betweens. I think I’d like to do that climbing and see the first sunrise of the year. Thank you for this post ma’am, truly.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Haha. I’m glad you found the right word and I hope you are feeling inspired. Thanks so much for reading and for sharing your thoughts. Hope 2015 is full of ordinary-beautiful moments. 🙂

      Like

      Reply

    1. Thank you! I’m actually a teensy bit obsessed with Brene Brown. My concept of wholehearted was very influenced by her TED Talk and her book, Daring Greatly. I think her work is life-changing! Thanks so much for reading and for sharing this!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      4. Gah! For me, this book was so close to my own faith experience – growing up in conservative evangelicalism and then hitting a point in college and post college where I realized that the faith of my childhood didn’t fit with how I saw and experienced the world as an adult, but I didn’t want to abandon it. This book speaks to all of that so well. I don’t know what your background is, but I really hope you enjoy it!

        Like

    1. Well, I don’t want to give the impression that no Koreans go out on New Year’s Eve and party, because some people (especially young people do), but the tradition is to see the sunrise and many people do that instead. 🙂 Thanks for reading!

      Like

      Reply

      2. I have friends where one is German and the other is from Tobago their tradition is eating spaghetti at midnight.. Not entirely sure where that comes from!

        Like

      3. Haha. That’s definitely a strange one. Sometimes we just make our own traditions. My family always eats this 7-layer taco dip on Christmas Eve for no discernable reason. We just did it one year and everyone liked it so it became our thing. 🙂

        Like

    1. I feel like I’m still learning how to write a blog too, don’t worry. 🙂 And it’s really impressive that you are writing in English if that’s not your native language. I think writing well in another language is incredibly hard. The more you practice writing, the better you will get at it. Good luck to you and thanks for reading!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  26. This was extremely profound and insightful, as well as beautifully written. Regret is not something that I subscribe to; I have maybe one thing in the entirety of my life that I regret at all. So, your words really reflect my mindset. Your declaration of starting the year with intention resonates with me also. Well done!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thanks! I’m really glad you enjoyed it. It was definitely hard to narrow it down to one so I tried to choose one that had a lot of applications. Thanks for sharing your post!

      Like

      Reply
  35. Pingback: New Year: My One Word for 2015 and Why I Can’t Leave 2014 Behind | lavani32

      1. It is a great post and you’ve expressed your ideas beautifully! 🙂 And I have to say, I agree with you completely. 🙂
        It’s a bit too late to say this, but Happy New Year! 🙂

        Like

  43. Very much an amazing post. More than the post itself was the amount of readers it touched. Part of the beauty of sharing experience & perspective is how it affects others & you seem to have amassed quite the audience. Wholeheartedness is something more people need more of in this world. So refreshing to see the amount of people this piece connected with. Much love & respect. 😉

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I have also been very touched by how many people have responded. As a writer, one of the highest compliments anyone could pay me is to say that something I wrote inspired them. It makes sharing your story so worth it when you hear from people who were genuinely affected by your words. But,I am honestly in shock over how many people have responded and the number of readers who have followed over the past few months after years of quietly plugging away here for an audience of 100 or so. Only by the grace of God. Thanks for reading and for your encouragement. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a reply to lilyellyn Cancel reply