I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions. I can never keep them, so why bother making them. I’ve also never chosen a guiding word before—a word that is to be my constant reminder to help guide me in my decision making and help keep me moving forward in a positive light. But this year is different. This year I felt a very real need to choose a word that I could live by for the next 12 months. And, in doing so, I found a word that I want to live the rest of my life by. My word is wonder.
I found my word with a little help from a good running friend. We were out on the trails the other day and started chatting about what word or phrase we wanted to adopt for 2021. I told her that I was thinking of explore or discover. Then she said, “I think your word is wonder. When I think of you, I see someone who is always finding the wonderment in things. I think that should be your word.” As soon as she said it I knew she was right.
The definition of wonder is “a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.”
In my last post, I talked about how I’ve made a conscious decision to seek out the beauty that surrounds me. In doing that, I’ve discovered so many things that stop me in my tracks and make me think about just how wonderful our world is. I’m talking simple stuff here—coming around the bend in the trail to see the sun peeking through the trees …
Or seeing beautiful flowers dancing on the side of the road during a run …
Or seeing a mound of moss that somehow reminds me of the little garden gnomes from the Disney movie “Frozen” (I can’t explain it, but it makes me smile).
While there is so much that needs our attention in today’s world … so many heavy things … it is my hope that my word will guide me to view the world with a sense of wonder each and every day. And I vow to take that sense of wonder into everything I do—every word I write, every person I interact with, every bend in the trail. I hope you can find the wonder in your days, too.
Here are some pictures from my word discovery run the other day and another new-to-me trail: Blockhouse Point Conservation Park in Darnestown, Maryland. Enjoy!
