New Year, New Word

First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I went home to Alabama for Christmas, and it was nice and relaxing and all kinds of good for my soul. Writing and blogging and pretty much everything else was put on hold for heaps of family time. It's hard to do much else when you have THESE turkeys to contend with.

(How did they get so TALL?!)



Anywhoo...

Last year I implemented the idea of having a "word of the year." And it was good. So good in fact that I'm keeping the word, LOOK, and adding another word. It sounds kind of silly, but hear me out. It's "SPIRAL." And it's inspired (sort of) by a line from T.S. Eliot.

"We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

I've noticed over the past couple of months (or maybe decades) that I'm resistant to covering the same territory twice. Like driving to work by one route, but coming home another. Not wanting to retrace my steps. Thinking I've gained that understanding or seen that thing already. I want to be challenged with something new. I want adventure and exploration. Both physically and emotionally... mentally...spiritually.

And yet, I constantly find myself in circular journeys, like Eliot says, arriving right back where I've started. Only not exactly. My journeys feel more spiral than circular. More like overlapping routes that seem to cover the same ground, the same lessons. Except that they are never exactly the same because I am never exactly the same.

With each new turn I bring along a new layer of knowledge and experience that I didn't have the first or second time around. And the scenery or the instruction or the truth or whatever it is I'm supposed to be learning this leg of the journey gets pressed a little deeper. Like an artist with a painting, more color and shape are added. More detail and dimension. The picture grows clear and vivid with each new round.

And so this year, I will try and stop fighting what seems to be sameness. And I will "look" a little deeper to see what new thing there is to see in that spot or on that path I've crossed a thousand times. I will embrace the spiral journey, absorbing each new layer, allowing it to take root and be Gain. Allowing the new details to take hold and become more...me.