The Crone’s Word For 2021

Some time in December, for the past 5 years, I spend time in reflection on what will be my word for the coming year. This one chosen word becomes a talisman for the intentions I’ve determine that I want to embody as I go about the year ahead.

Words have power so I am cognizant of the importance of the energy behind the one I eventually choose. I ask myself questions such as, “Who do I want to become?“, “What do I want to achieve?” and “What do I want to create?” I look at my potentials for the year. I look at the known, and probable responsibilities I may have for the coming year as well, and then I take all the information and synthesize it into the best word I can find to express my aspirations. All very technical but in the end, in truth, I really just pick a word that feels right in my gut for the coming year.

Now before I go any further, I have a confession to make. This is my second attempt at this post. I wrote and completely edited another version but held off publishing it because I came to realize that it was a personal con job, full of excuses as to why I felt I didn’t live up to my word of the year for 2020. That word was commit.

In that first draft I whined about how the pandemic foiled all my plans. I martyred on about how family needed me more than my personal goals did; I even went off about being a recovering people pleaser who fell off the wagon of self love – gag.

The truth is more personally illuminating than all of that. I did commit in fact to goals this year and achieved them too, just not the lofty ones I fooled myself into believing I wanted to realize when I first decide on my word for the year.

That’s the thing about committing to something, it has to truly be in earnest, otherwise you are just setting yourself up for a world of guilt when you eventually bail on the intention.

Still, there was a lesson here to be had. One that upon reflection, I realized that even though they were lofty goals, I didn’t fail in my commitment to them because I didn’t want to achieve them, it was more that I was fixated more on the process and the outcome than being committed to the purpose.

There are many paths to any outcome. Some get blocked along the way. Some are arduous to travel and some paths don’t even exist until someone is willing to create them. What matters most is the purpose of the journey and the determination to see it to the end.

With that long winded explanation for the outcome of 2020’s word of the year, I have decided that the crone’s word of the year for 2021 will be recommit.

Life is a journey and with out a doubt, 2020 was a wild ride and one for the history books. But that did not give me a pass on how I chose to commit to my intentions and goals, it only added blocks and challenges along my path to work around. When you know better, you do better and I now know better. So I choose recommit as my word and as a symbol for the coming year when I start off fresh once again on my own personal odyssey.

But unlike 2020, it is the purpose that I will commit to and not the outcome. Because if 2020 taught me one thing, it’s that I can never know where the road will take me but I will never achieve anything worthwhile if I don’t at least commit to a purpose for travelling on the road of life in the first place.