Word for New Year

Remember the post about a word to describe your city?

My excellent yoga teacher was telling the class about a friend she had who chose a word for every year. She then tries to “dive in” to that word all year.

One year her word was pleasure, and she noticed pleasure in her life, or opportunity for pleasure, and dove into all the pleasure that year. I imagine it as being a year full of hot fudge cake and satin sheets. It was, my teacher told us, a happy year. Then another year her word was challenge, so she dove into all the challenges. Apparently that year turned out to be very challenging, but she grew a lot, and reported that it was a better year that the pleasure year.

I’m trying to figure out what my word for the year should be. I’m having a hard time choosing just one. Here are some of the words I am considering:

Honesty. Sometimes I feel that I am not totally honest—not that I am big liar, but that I am fragmented, or reserved, un-aggressive, that I don’t totally express myself. Synonyms to the kind of honesty I am talking about are wholeness or desire. Choosing one of the words would involve being honest with myself and others at a level I am not sure I am operating at right now.

Pleasure. A year of hot fudge cake and satin sheets—enough said. Imagine diving into every opportunity for pleasure.

Courage. Although I am making progress, I have a lot of fears: of expressing desire (see above), of traveling (although we DID drive down to NC on 95!), of dying. I would like to be a braver person.

These are the three I’ve narrowed it down to for now. While I’m at it, I’ll go ahead and list my New Year’s Resolutions. They are more like goals, things I’ve taken baby steps about lately and like to develop. I’d like to continue to do yoga on my own and continue to write in the mornings. I’d like to send my poems out to some journals too. I’d want to continue to think about building a career that involves both teaching and writing. I want to try to visit my family at least four times and stop worrying about the future (buying a house, etc).

I think any of my top three choices for words would allow me to do those things.