Word of the year….is ….(drumroll, please!)

The word, as usual , jumped out at me without my being conscious of choosing it.

(As is typical, I could not tell you what my word of the year was for this past year until I looked it up😋… hey, 2020 has been a LONG YEAR )

Past words:

2009-Deliberate

2010-Balance

2011-Weather

2012-Motion

2013-Choose

2014-Enough

2015-Connect

2016-Change

2017-Try

2018-Mindful

2019-Focus

2020–Clarity

After this last year of Covid, (and who knows how much longer before life returns to whatever “normal” means)…the word satisfied jumped in my head, then the lyrics to Hamilton—“you will never be satisfied” and there I am—-singing to myself…. and…

…so the word wants to be SATISFIED, and it will not be satisfied if supplanted with any other word. (Hey, I don’t make the rules.)

…but, wow! What a word!

That idea may need to be turned on it’s head, to make it so that really the idea is “TO BE SATISFIED” (with life as it IS). To be satisfied with what you have—(but not so much so that you accept things as they are, IF there is a desire and ability to change, it should not come off as a fatalistic acceptance and acquiesce, either). NB. I attempted to supplant it with Appreciate, but that was a non-starter.

…it should not be a settling for, but more an appreciation for what you have….being satisfied with life the way it is because this is what we have, and well there are a lot of things one can change in one’s life, but a pandemic is not one of those things.

I have been one of the lucky ones, whose life has been constrained but not ruined, damaged or changed in any but the most surface ways…. no travel, no hugging, no visiting family, but also no job loss, no sickness, no loss of loved ones.

I have worked the entire pandemic and instead of doing things after work with friends or family, I come home to my husband and cats.

And satisfied means not being envious of bigger houses, better yards…. but loving where and what I have….