Focus

Well, there we are. One year up in flames, and another just kindling on the hearth.

I’ve been thinking about my word for the year. For my first year or so it was Empathy, which never really gets old, at least not when you’re me. But still, in the spirit of one meditative word of the year, I had to move on. Funny, though, how spending a whole year with an eye for one word makes for an indelible image.

Anyhoo, last year I was late to the game, and it wasn’t until July that I figured it out. 2018 was definitely the year of I Don’t Know. Three words, I know, but let’s not get caught up in semantics. It fit me like a glove, and there was more learning there than I could have neatly fit in a decade.

I imagine Empathy and I Don’t Know will both be following me into the New Year like clingy yet lovable friends, but it’s time to add a new face to their growing company, and I’m not going to wait until July for the introductions.

I’m not sure what prompted such promptness in me this year, but I think it might have been my eyelashes freezing my eyes shut this morning, as I met the first sunbeams of 2019 in the four-degree morning. According to the weather app on my new phone the windchill was below zero, and according to my face, we’re in agreement. ‘Twas a chilly one. And a beautiful one. Not in any out-of-the-ordinary way–which was disappointing because I wanted a nice New Year’s picture for Instagram–but in a profoundly usual January way. It just was.

And something about the morning just being there, like every other morning, and not offering up anything overwhelmingly spectacular, was kind of overwhelmingly spectacular.

And there it was… My Word.

Again, I don’t follow rules well, so there are two words. Sue me if you must. But sometimes you don’t argue, even when coloring outside the lines is required. So, My Word(s)?

Here. Now.

That is all.

I think it’s fair to say that I stink at being present. Not all the time, but let’s just say there ain’t much in the arena of consistency.

I mean, if my only criteria were to find a word that represents something I stink at… well, we wouldn’t be narrowing the playing field too much. But the real challenge is in the listening, because what I’m aiming for here is a word (or three) that represent something I want to focus on for the year–because I’m not excellent at it, yes–but also because it’s time. To everything there is a season, right?

Well, it’s time to be more present. Time to get lost in the moment. Time to stop and look at who’s next to me. Time to put the dreams and the anxieties and the to-do lists and the lamentations in their place and focus on the Here and Now.

Because dang, the Here and Now are overwhelmingly spectacular if I can slow down enough to notice.

Here’s to fanning the flames of each and every moment in 2019…

Love from the Nexus,
KJ