2024 Word of the Year: FLOW

The stream that flows by my house.

I actually don't choose a word of the year. It's more like my word of the year chooses me. I then go about my year and realize all of the ways my Word shows up for me. Last year it was the word Freedom. I was feeling like my life was happening to me rather than being in control. In December 2022, that word Freedom showed itself to me in a variety of ways. It was like, "OK, OK! I get it! Freedom!" That's how my word came to be.

2023 gave me a new vision for the word Freedom. Freedom wasn't found in anything outside of myself. It was found inside. In the way I thought, in the way I reacted, in the way I experienced life. It was a year of being free from others opinions, others expectations, others beliefs. I felt free from the constraints I believe were put on me. But, like Glinda told Dorothy at the end of the Wizard of Oz, "You've always had the power, my Dear. You just had to learn it for yourself." 

I am thankful for a year of lessons on true Freedom.

As 2023 approached its close, I was keenly aware of a few words that kept popping up over and over. Wonder, Awe, were two of them. But there was one word that really stuck out the most. FLOW. It seemed everywhere I turned, every book I read, every video I watched, the word flow appeared to me. As I said before, it isn't I who choose the word, but it is the word that chooses me. And Flow has chosen itself to be my word of the year.

I don't know what it will bring, I have ideas, but who knows? It's all very personal anyway, right? I just know that there will be lessons along the way. Many, many years ago, I wrote in a little journal I had something along the lines of, "I will live in a small house with a stream running beside it." About 25 years ago, we moved into just such a home. Small, but perfect for our family, with a small stream that runs beside it. This year, I intend to see what lessons this little stream can teach me about flow. 

There is a book I love to read to my students when we are learning about patterns, called, "Flow, Spin, Grow: Looking for patterns in nature". This year, as I was reading it to my students this quote stood out, "Wherever there is flow, there is branching." From rivers, to the blood pumping in our bodies, to the roots and branches of a tree, flow is there. Life has flow, it meanders and moves. It branches into new growth. But, like a stream, it is never the same thing twice. Water flows from stream to river to ocean. No river is the same from one moment to the next, just like one life isn't the same. There is always movement.

So, here's to 2024 and Flow. To the lessons I can learn, and the wisdom of the stream.