Happy New Year!

The turn of the year provides such a beautiful moment to collect thoughts, breathe a deep breath and take a look around. I’ve always felt that there’s a little magic in New Year’s Eve—a day with plenty of room not only to consider all that I’ve written, thought about, enjoyed, mourned, lost, found, spoken, eaten, loved, let go, grabbed onto, muddled through, and all the rest of it, but also to consider all that might happen next. In this way, this day holds out a double-gift of the most valuable kind, and all I need to do is be available to receive it.

One of my favorite things to do on New Year’s Eve is to take notice of all the little bits of wise reflection offered up by friends and family through the usual channels—a text, a Facebook post, an email newsletter, a Peloton ride, even an actual in-person conversation. Resolutions for the new year, jokes about the old year, hurts, victories, hopes, dreams, epiphanies: these are tender things to share and I love them all, and I love the people for sharing them. Some friends do the same particular thing I like to do, which is to pick a single word to keep close in the new year—courage, patience, patience again, purpose, momentum and softness are some of the newly chosen I've seen so far. For me, it is a word that will serve as a new north star but that will also fold into my world well, and weave together with other words that came before—intention, perspective—like an important new character introduced into any rich and complicated story.

My word for the 2022 is choice.*

Choice comes highly-charged and fully-loaded, worthy of my great hope and expectation for a brand new year—it’s a word that’s both a sparkplug and a superpower. Choice is a privilege that I am claiming for myself. It means I decide which words to say, which words to write and which words to keep to myself. It means I decide with whom to share my time. It means I have the power to realize—even if it takes until bedtime—that the glass is half-full after all. Most of all, and most important of all, it means I have agency with respect to my own happiness—that I choose joy, maybe at first as a matter of practice, but eventually as a matter of habit. And underlying all of it sits the centering weight of accountability, to myself only, for choosing deliberately, lovingly and well.

Yesterday was a spectacular weather-day in my corner of the world. Though the real snowfall came over a week ago, the day after Christmas, it still blankets the trees and paths around our house and in the park nearby, because despite the cloudless blue sky and bright sun shining, the air is very cold. Thankful I decided to honor my promise to our dog, Charlotte, to get outside and stretch our legs, I found myself accepting the gift of this New Year’s Eve, as so many memories of all that’s happened in the last year came rushing in for consideration while we walked. On the way home, I chose a path leading to the beach, a path less-traveled, and when we came into a clearing beside the water I turned my face toward the sun—which, because of the solstice, lingered just little bit longer than it did just the day before—and let the feeling of hope for tomorrow, now today, rise all the way up in me to overflowing.

Happy New Year to all who found me here. I wish you a year full of light, love and abundant joy that is of your own choosing.

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*I want to set to the side, for now, any political things the word choice conjures up—I’m happy to discuss my views on reproductive and voting rights, probably in a different forum but definitely on a different day—and just enjoy the unpacking here of all that my word means to me.