Well, my word came to me. After last week’s convoluted and unstructured thoughts on a new year, and a freezing cold week with lots of snow, I know what my word is.
Simple.
I thought it might be peace, calm, or grace, but the word I keep coming back to is simple.
This word featured in this year’s first weekly quote here, which no doubt helped frame it as a word for me. “I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.” Laura Ingalls Wilder said this and oh, yes, it’s true.
I know what matters to me – that’s only become more clear in the last, dark months. I referred to radical perspective on Instagram, and I want to keep hold of that even as life returns to a more normal cadence (although, truthfully, one thing I’ve realized in the last several months that there is no such thing as “normal”).
My very clear sense of what I prize most has been a beacon in the last few months, and I want to honor that this year. I want to keep that simplicity of focus and that determination to pare away what doesn’t matter. I want to focus on those I love most and, after that, on my work and my writing.
I want to keep it simple. There’s no use in anything else, I think I already knew that, but the last months of pain and sorrow have certainly brought it home. So in 2018 I will be focusing on the simple things. They’re what matters, as Laura Ingalls Wilder says and as I already knew.
What’s your word for 2018?
I love simple, and I hope 2018 will hold an abundance of simplicity for you. I keep coming back to something equally simple: “be”. I guess it should be easy, but I think that applies only on the surface.
Love the word simple, it’s my personal mantra akin to your be here now. My word this year is dwell as in dwell completely in these days of having school aged children living at home because I know they are quickly coming to a close. I pray daily for you and your family that you find peace and comfort in the new year.
Simplicity is great. For my word of 2018, I make it “healthy”. 🙂
I’m still trying to figure out my word. Yours seems quite apt. xo
Calm. Something I hope to cultivate and experience.
Simplicity in life and appreciating the simple things. It’s a perfect, lovely word. Mine is “Self”. I’d gone through so many others and just decided if I focus on Self, the other words I wanted would fall into place. That’s how I worked it out, anyway. 😉 Happy New Year, Lindsey.
I’m still formulating my word for 2018. But your word is a guiding philosophy that I aspire to generally in my life, in all things.
I like Greg McKeown’s definition of what he calls “essentialism” as “the disciplined pursuit of less,” which I think expresses beautifully what we can aspire to.
I also like this quote:
The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.
-Hans Hoffman, abstract painter
Lindsey, thank you for sharing your deeply felt experience of life all year…from a kindred spirit who shares your sensibility. Happy New Year.
This is beautiful. I also select a word at the beginning of each year and for 2018, my word is “Wow”; reflecting all that is beautiful, wonderful, surprising, and sometimes painful in this, our journey on earth.
That is perfect.
I love your word. Mine is , True.
My word: romance (to court all things with love, to meet the mundane with awe, to bow down to the holy mystery that is life).