Essay 150: 2024 Word Of The Year

As much as I like Christmas, the week that follows also holds a very special place in my heart. 

It is a time to look ahead and decide what I want to work on, determine who I want to become and design a plan to accomplish as much of it as possible in the upcoming year. 

Part of this process involves selecting a Word of the Year, a concept that I first heard of decades ago. I don’t choose one every year but I have been giving it a lot of thoughts lately.  

The first word that came to my mind was: Service
I am not one to jump at the opportunity to serve and I admit to an inclination towards selfishness. I have worked hard at designing a life that allows me to steward my time and energy as I see fit and I am proud to have achieved this but there can be a downside. 

As much as I have suffered in my youth, the past two decades have coddled me.

Something happened recently that made this painfully obvious. My daughter joined a choir and their holiday concert was scheduled for the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Consequently, the troupe had to rehearse on Black Friday. They notified me well in advance BUT I had failed to connect the dots. When I realized that our yearly tradition of a mother-daughter outing at the mall would have to be canceled, I was annoyed. 

The children had been working hard for months and they were to sing a line up of beautiful uplifting songs during a free concert for the community and I focused on a minor inconvenience to ME. Boo-hoo. Thankfully I came to my senses quickly and honored my prior commitment to volunteer. I also decided to start a new post-Thanksgiving tradition of helping with the choir instead of shopping. 

However, SERVICE as my word of the year is still too scary for now. I’m not ready to make it the focus of the next 365 days but I hope that a future version of Sarah will. 

The next word I considered was: Giving.
Giving sits adjacent to serving BUT, in my mind at least, it affords more flexibility. 
I could give time, energy, or money. 
I could give to an organization, to a stranger, to my family, and even to myself. 
Better but still not IT. 

Last night, I was making a list of the projects I wanted to work on in 2024 and the habits I wanted to focus on. 
Things like starting a podcast, writing daily, publishing an essay weekly. 
Things like improving our website, studying the Mission Driven Mom’s Level 2 course ( I finished Level 1 this year). 
Things like exercising 5 times per week and cooking more often. 
Some big things. Many little things. 
All good things. 
All things that take time. 

I started to freak out. 

The alarm bell went off inside. Was I planning on tackling too much? Was I setting myself up for failure? Should I be focusing only on health and family and be satisfied with maintenance on the work front instead of pursuing growth? A multitude of varying emotions were swirling in my brain.
Was I being realistic or making excuses?
How to decide?
What to decide?
That’s when THE word landed in my heart.

Trust

Trust yourself. 
Trust the process. 
Trust life, the Universe, God. 
Trust that you don’t have to figure it all out, not right now, not ever. 
Trust enough to let go.
Trust and take one step. 
Trust that the next step will reveal itself. 

Because of this, none of my goals will be outcome focused in 2024. I want to focus on building good habits and see where that takes me and when I stand at a fork in the road…

… I’ll trust. 

You don’t need to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr