My wife is a teacher. Each new year when the teachers at her building return from the Christmas holiday, they share a word of the year. Each teacher offers a word they intend to make theirs during the year, which will span the end of the current school year and begin the next year. The word is supposed to reflect where they are in their life and a direction they want to head in the coming year. Not so much a resolution to get something accomplished, but a sort of direction or mindset.
Several years ago my wife read the book “Year of Yes,” by television producer Shonda Rhimes. She likes the book and made “Yes” her word for the next year, vowing to say “Yes” to things she wouldn’t normally do and that pulled her out of her comfort zone. Last year, her word was ‘No,’ giving herself permission to say “No” to some things, even some good things, so that she had time for the best things in her life, the things that really made her happy.
This year she labored over her choice of words. She had several that she considered, but none that seemed quite right.
In an effort to help, I sent her a link to a Merriam-Webster Word of the Year generator, a site that cycles through an array of words. You screenshot the generator and the word revealed is supposed to be your word of the year.
I tried it and got “Problematic.” In an effort to not have that kind of year, I quickly tried again and got “Bedlam.” No better.
Third time is a charm, right? “Bawdy.” Probably as accurate as the prior two, but still not what I was going for or particularly want for myself.
Finally, I got “Fajita.” Again, not what I was looking for, but it felt like the best I was going to get so I decided to stop.
My wife got “Powerful” and while that isn’t “Problematic” it also wasn’t what she was feeling for the new year.
In the end, she settled on “Content.” She showed her coworkers a picture of our family and said that it is all she ever dreamed of growing up was a family… and a horse.
She has both.
When told about my sizzling hot skillet word of the year, my coworkers said it was a cop out. They said I had enough issues to actually work on that I should do some work and come up with a genuine word.
Their word would apparently be “Killjoy.”
But after some soul searching and self-reflection, my word is “Everybody.”
The buzzkill brigade of coworkers have said “Everybody” is too vague, that it resembles a motivational poster that has a nebulous buzzword that cant be fully defined and certainly cant be quantified (Collaborative, Efforting, Synergy, etc.)
But I don’t think so. I think it is very specific and needs to be incredibly intentional.
I work hard to love people. Those who know me will, I hope, recognize that even though I have varying degrees of success, I really do try.
But I also realize that I could try harder. I easily love those who are easy to love. But I struggle sometimes to love those that are different than me, or that seem weird to me, or who irritate me. Looking ahead at 2024, this year has the potential to create a lot of situations and scenarios where I could easily muster righteous indignation and justify, to myself, why some people do not deserve to be loved.
But the whole point of love is that it needs to be unmerited. The kind of love that targets only those who are easy to love is cheap. The power of love only manifests itself when used without abandon for those who are unlovable.
So that’s my word. Everybody. Love everybody. Value everybody. Be kind to everybody. Respect everybody. Treat everybody as I want to be treated.
Like an annual resolution, I know I will fail. But the point is, I want to be the kind of person who treats everybody with dignity and I am going to try to be better. I am efforting.
-Mac Cordell is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.