My one-word for 2014 was MOVE. I started the year with the intention to MOVE on from past, MOVE up at work (get promoted) MOVE out of my apartment and into my own home and MOVE in the direction of my highest self…in the direction of my dreams.
While movements have been made in different areas of my life – I moved up at work. I moved out of my comfort zone a wee bit…I tried new things, I visited new places; there was always something holding me back.
The word that truly describes 2014 is “waiting”. I have existed in a state of “waiting” for a long time. I have been using the comfort of being in mourning as a crutch. It was the perfect reason for why I am the way I am lately. No one questioned it.
How could they? My mother is dead. And my life is forever changed. I am the first to say, who feels it knows it. You never ‘get over’ losing your mother…you only learn how to cope. You learn how to live with the loss. You carve out a new existence around it.
My point is…August 07th this year was four years since my mother died. I have been living with this loss for 4 years. I am coping. And I have been living. And I came to the realization that there is nothing wrong with living. That it doesn’t mean I miss her any less…only that I am striving to live a life she would be proud to know that I have created for myself.
Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life. – Anne Roiphe
MOVE was a big intention. It was a challenge. It required me to be Loud…to live up to this blog’s name. Vernette Out Loud. It required bravery on many levels. It required a vehement yes in some cases. It required stepping out of the shadow of mourning and into the light of living.
The problem was that I got comfortable in the “quiet” of mourning. And this mourning was not just the loss of my mother. I have had other losses that I have been trying to come to terms with. Death of other loved ones, death of dreams, relationships ending. I was stuck in waiting to feel better.
The thing about comfort…there is no growth. Quiet is good for a season. After all, there is a season for everything. The trick is to pay attention to the changing seasons and change with them.
I didn’t. Instead I got comfortable. I started growing roots…I was that comfortable. I was so well planted I couldn’t see that I wasn’t making a few key decisions that my head knew I had to make but my heart was resisting. Comfortable meant that I wasn’t making any decisions. Ergo, no growth, no momentum, no forward movements.
There’s no right or wrong decisions. There are just decisions. You either make them or you wait to make them. And while you are waiting, everything in your life goes on hold. – James Altucher
Re-cap: MOVE was my choice for 2014. But it has been a year of “life on hold” in reality.
Going forward: There are still 15 days left in 2014, there is still time for making a MOVE. When I wake up in the land of the living, I will set an intention for the day ahead. Baby steps. There is hope yet.
Life is a series of endings and beginnings. And it is the time in between that determines the quality of the endings and hope for new beginnings. And this is the beauty in good-bye.
As for 2015: I have shortlisted a few words – Purpose | Start | Focus | Yes | Metamorphosis
The word I choose for the New Year will the the one that will answer this question:
“What do I most want to be thankful for one year from now?”
The journey towards discovering my “One Word” for 2015, has begun.
I have a very large, very old airplane engine, and when it is finally overhauled and installed in its permanent flying ‘home’, it will spend much time moving…and waiting.
When it’s started, the oil has to warm up, and work its way through the oil passages and galleries, warming up so that it will flow freely to the bearings. It takes time. Ten minutes; perhaps more, with thousands of parts zipping back and forth, the propeller spinning, and yet the airplane itself will not tun a wheel.
Waiting and moving.
I didn’t really have a 2014 word, but I do have one for 2015, and I’m cheating, in a way…the word is a one-word transliteration of a Chinese phrase, adopted by Kusunoki Masashige, who met his end (by his own hand) after the battle of the Minato River (Minatogawa) in 1336.
The word is Hirihokenten; it means “it is important to consider debt, but unimportant to consider death”.
It edged out my second choice, which was “Dude!”
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You taught me something there. I didn’t know about Hirihokenten. I am interested to know how you decided on both words 🙂 and how you made your final choice.
Thank you for asking!
“Dude!” isn;t as flippant as it may sound. To me, it implies a shared humanity, a commonality that can be reached through a cheerful and welcoming exclamation. It’;s an outstretched hand of friendship, without precondition.
Hirihokenten won because it speaks more directly to present circumstance. They say I am dying, and I had to find something that would express the feeling that death itself is rather trivial, simply a transition.
it is so easy to get caught up in the ‘tragedy of change”, but it is really an illusion. I have lived with violent death at my elbow for much of my life (the possibility of my own abrupt demise, and the certainty of others’) that it has ceased to hold terror. I have seen the other side; I have seen the shades of my friends who have gone on.
But what we do here IS important, and I wanted to express that, as well.
Hirihokenten did just that, and it called to mind something else – the yearning of Kusunoki’;s wife, in her last letter to her husband on the eve of Minatogawa, saying that she wished time were as a spool of thread, and that in unrolling the past could become the present.
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Andrew I did wonder about “Dude!” and I get it. I think we all need to be reminded of our humanity because it is the thing we ALL have in common.
I am in awe of you. I am truly humbled that you found your way to my little patch of internet. The “tragedy of change” what a turn of phrase especially in light of all that you have been going through.
I did a quick read over at your blog and I so admire your bravery. I am looking forward to read more of your Hirihokenten journey.
Light and Love to you and yours!