My word for 2017

For the last two years I've selected a word to focus on each year. I chose to keep my 2015 word a secret. In 2016, I chose a German word, Gemütlichkeit. I wrote how that word related to a state of mind, a sense of belonging, a sort of friendliness, good cheer and coziness. I feel like I achieved what I was looking for by focusing on last year's word. In fact, there were times when I got a little too much Gemütlichkeit. Not that I'm complaining.

When the time to consider a word for 2017 came along, several words crossed my mind, including: Freedom, Creativity, Authentic, and Health. Truth is, there's so much I need to work on. But given certain events that happened in the world (and in my own state) last year, I decided on another word: Humility.

Humility has several definitions. The one I'm going with is: the opposite of pride. For me, this means letting go of my so-called superiority complex. Yes, I have one, as is evidenced by the five million times a day that I roll my eyes over the dumbassery I encounter daily as a blue person living in a red county just a few miles from a blue city in a red state. See, there you go, an example of how much I need some humility. Even my parents have told me I need to be more humble. And this is going to be hard for me. In 2017, I'm going to try hard to not roll my eyes so much and to stop thinking of myself as being "better" than others because I've had different life experiences and made different decisions or have different ideas.

Who knows exactly how this will manifest itself. I have no idea what's going to happen or even if I'll want to write about it. I'm going to keep track of the number of times I roll my eyes, but I'm not going to tell you. I'll just keep that metric to myself.

Happy 2017, Everyone. What are you going to work on this year?

mm
:)