One Little Word for the Coming Year

I have come slowly back to blogging with the turn of the year. The end of December and the beginning of January are always a time of looking back, re-evaluating, and listening for new direction. I always enjoy my sweet poet friend Irene Latham's One Little Word focus for the year, but I never seem able to settle on just a word. For me, it's generally more a feeling or sense of something in the air that I just cannot cram into a few letters on a page. Although my inner editor admonishes me that I could get that one word if I sat down and demanded more of myself.

Yes, there's an argument going on, the editor correcting, pressing while the more gracious side of me, the one I listen to others with, says be patient with myself.

It feels like it's been winter for a very long time. What I sense is the anticipation of spring, renewal, a new adventure about to begin. Of course, there is no way to know what is around the corner, beyond the bend in the road, and all the other clichés I might think of.

For the moment I am feeling a bit like Pooh Bear.

Winnie the Pooh © Walt Disney

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.”

                                                                          ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

So, perhaps I have settled on one little word after all.

This is a beautiful song called "Anticipation" from the Winter Poem album by Secret Garden.