for several years now in late december or early january, i choose one word to guide my being through the new year (click here and scroll down to see previous years' words). this practice has really helped me refine my dreams and intentions. i love to look back during this week between christmas and new years day and see how the soul of the word manifested throughout my life and year.
for the past week or so i've been thinking about which word i want to choose for 2016. i chose an intention word for my upcoming yoga teacher training (trust), but that felt very focused on my yoga goals as compared to my whole life. so i kept searching.
one of the things i like to do to help narrow it down is look and listen for a word that is in heavy rotation in my current vocabulary and conversations. there are a few right now: wonder, precision, frontier, practice, poetry...
poetry was the word that kept lighting up in neon when it fluttered through my brain or escaped my lips. still, it felt quite mysterious and undefined to be a guiding word (unless i was to become a full time poet). then i ran across this string of words by poet and mystic rumi, let yourself become living poetry.
so it shall be words of the year for me.
for me, living poetry is:
- having a structure, the components and some guidelines for how to lay life out on the page...inspiration, imagination, rhythm, precision, choice, selection, refinement, commitment
- being able to throw all of that out the window and just live from my soul in the messy moment
- seeing beauty in the ordinary
- seeing opportunity for exploration and empathy in the un-beautiful
- using words in provocative and inquiring ways to open understanding and connection
- storytelling embodied in words, paint, dance, work, image, play, clothing, food, yoga, home, relationship
- truth, spoken plainly and kindly
- reading more poetry, discovering new poets, writing more
- staying open to the twist, to changing beat, to unfinished words put aside to rest, to acceptance, to rejection, to editing, to uncrumpling those pages littering the floor and having another look
- exploring the human heart and how it shows up in the world at any given moment
a happy, poetic year to you loves.
