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

  3. Words are failing to describe how this post has made me feel. You have sent me on a quest to find a word that encompasses how I want this year to be and as I search I am learning so much. Thank you for writing such a beautiful post and for touching my heart.

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    1. Oh, what a sweet comment! You have no idea how good that makes me feel as a writer. I’m so glad this post was meaningful to you. Good luck on your quest to find that perfect word and on your year of living it out. If you need some ideas, you can check out other people’s words at http://oneword365.com Please come back and let me know what you choose when you find it. 🙂 And thanks again for letting me know how much this meant to you. It really means a lot to me to hear that.

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      1. Thank you for the well wishes. I have chosen the word Hope. To Hope for the future. Hope for love, for family, for marriage. Hope for happiness and strength through the hard things. Hope for life. Thank you again for introducing me to #oneword365 I am looking forward to Hoping this year.

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  4. Loved this. I think this year my word is ‘control’. In control of my future, in control my self doubt, my confidence, harness my creativity and run with my spontinaity. This is will be a year of being better at what I do. And working harder, more skill, more commitement to dreams.

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    1. For me the tricky thing with control is differentiating between what things I have control of and what things I just can’t control in life and that will only stress me out to worry about. And then being disciplined and focused about what I can control while trying to let go of the rest. Blessings on your year and on your journey! Thanks for sharing!

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      3. I certainly can’t speak for the world but when I started loving myself truly and not by societies ideals that I could not live up to created this feeling of failure, shame and self loathing . Im discovering a whole new world now

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  15. Hello and happy new years!!! I really find your writing style intriguing and inspiring!! I strongly agree with you on these words “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.” Please check out my recent blog on some new habits to adapt to make this year better than the last

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      1. It’s a great post! Inspirational, to be precise. I look forward to reading more of your posts! (Happy belated new year!)

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      2. That’s so kind. Thank you! I’m really glad you were inspired. And thanks for following. Looking forward to hearing more from you. 🙂 And Happy (late) New Year to you too!

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  18. I love it. I really like to mountain tradition – it conjures up the image of “facing into” the new year. My one word is going to be “real”. I’d already made that promise to myself, this post reinforced it. I’m going to focus on living “my” real life, not one of comparison. It seems similar in concept to your “whole hearted”. The idea of “intentional” resonated too. Thanks for inspiring thinking.

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    1. I’m so glad this resonated with you and inspired you in your thinking about the coming year. I love “real” because it closely aligns with one of my deepest values in life – authenticity. I love what you said about living your real life and not one of comparison. I’ve spent years feeling like I was behind – behind in a career path and financially and settling down (although I did get married young) and feeling like I needed to play catch up. It’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve really embraced the belief that my life doesn’t need to look like anyone else’s. That we aren’t all on the same path and you can’t be “behind” someone else if you’re headed to two totally different places! Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and your word!

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  32. That is very interesting, I think we have many things to learn about other cultures and how they react to the same events as us.
    Last year I started attacking new years the Mexican way, with 12 resolutions made during the 12 gongs of midnight on Dec 31st.
    With a friend we were really into it, and could manage to complete 8/12 very ambitious resolutions.
    I have to admit it made a huge change on my life and this year we continued this way with my friend and the mutual motivation is making us move mountains !

    Happy new year.

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    1. That’s really cool. I didn’t know about the 12 resolutions tradition in Mexico. It definitely helps to have a friend to spur you on and keep you accountable in your goals. Thanks for sharing this and congratulations on completing 8 major resolutions. That’s inspiring! Happy 2015!

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  38. Happy new year!! My word is emerge. In 2015, I plan to step out of current of daily busyness & emerge to be more fully the person I was created to be.

    Thank you for beautifully capturing the idea of how we carry all of our years with us.

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    1. Thank you! Emerge is a great word! I especially like it because to me it connotes something you already are bursting through the busyness and distractions of life and being able to blossom. Thanks for reading. Glad you are joining me on this One Word journey!

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  43. Reblogged this on @ Dawn and commented:
    When I wrote my post yesterday about my new theme of the year, I had no idea that I was echoing the idea of One Word 365 and Lily, a new blog friend I found just discovered. This beautifully written blog about her word — wholehearted — spoke to me… So much so that I just had to share.

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  44. Reblogged at @ Dawnand commented:
    “When I wrote my post yesterday about my new theme of the year, I had no idea that I was echoing the idea of One Word 365 and Lily, a new blog friend I found just discovered. This beautifully written blog about her word — wholehearted — spoke to me… So much so that I just had to share.”

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  46. So much relevance and also beauty in this. In living for the now you have to remember what you’ve learnt abd what you’ve done. I hope you snd every reader has a beautiful 2015
    So much love xxxxxxx

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    1. Thank you! I’m so glad you could relate to this post. I completely agree that we can’t live fully in the “now” without embracing our past. Happy 2015 to you as well. Thanks for your kind words!

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  49. I agree with you. This year especially, I’ve been wondering why we stay up until midnight and party and drink, then meet the new year groggy, hungover and tired. It’s starting to feel counter-productive. Well for me anyway. So this new year (2014-2015) I went to bed at my usual time and woke up refreshed and ready to face the day. Although it is anti-social and not what a lot of people do, I feel better to take on 2015 and enjoy what it throws at me. Next time, however, I think I am going to try out what they do in Korea. It sounds amazing waking up, climbing a mountain and facing the sun as it rises.
    Thank you for such an inspirational post.

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    1. I’m so glad you enjoyed it! We actually ended up babysitting for some friends this New Year’s so they could have a date – hung out with their toddler and baby and headed home at 10 pm – definitely didn’t feel like I missed out on anything by not going to a party. 🙂 Hope you can find a way to try out the hiking! And if not, you could at least get up to watch the sunrise. Happy 2015!

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