What’s your guiding word for 2020? Breathe? Walk? Travel? Here’s mine.
My guiding word for 2020 presented itself to me on New Year’s Day as I was whizzing home in the car after a long walk at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Every January for the past few years, I’ve chosen an annual guiding word and encouraged Tribune readers to do the same. Many people have written to tell me their choices and every suggestion is a good one.
Gratitude. Compassion. Focus. Give. Breathe. Believe. Do.
Readers have written to tell me why they chose each of those and how the nudge of a single word steered them on their New Year’s way.
But there are so many good words. It’s like being presented with a 10page menu from a five-star chef. How to pick just one?
Through the years, my own word-for-the-year choices have included “help,” “shed” and “pause.”
Help, as in: Think about how you can help other people rather than waiting around for people to help you.
Shed, as in: Get rid of those power cords you haven’t used in a dozen years. Ditto for certain attitudes cluttering your mind.
Pause, as in: Before you react, take a moment to ponder what’s really going on.
All of those words have been useful to me, at least until I’ve forgotten about them, which, I confess, usually happens by April. So what? If a word can improve life for even a day, it’s worth the work of choosing it.
But on the first day of 2020, I still hadn’t settled on my word, despite several that had been auditioning in my brain.
How about “walk”? As a believer that a walk is the cure for almost everything, I pondered that as my word of the year. But I already walk a lot, and the ideal guiding word is something you need extra encouragement to do.
“Listen”? “Look”? “Organize”? All these words were fluttering through my brain as I drove home from my New Year’s Day walk on Wednesday, and then, suddenly, there was the answer, in the form of a big, blinking roadside sign:
TOO FAST
SLOW DOWN
I glanced at the speedometer. I was seven miles over the speed limit, not because I was in a hurry — I wasn’t — but because driving fast is a reflex. So I tapped the brake, and my 2020 word shimmered into view:
Slower.
I thought about my dental hygienist, who tells me and all her patients we could save our teeth by brushing more slowly. I thought about the chiding voice I hear when I’m playing the piano, the one that reminds me I’d be likelier to learn the right notes if I didn’t play so fast. I thought about the same voice that when I’m gobbling lunch, with a column deadline looming, says, “Slow. Down. Eating fast won’t help you write fast, sister.”
My editor may not appreciate that I’ve chosen “slower” as my word for 2020. When the deadline clock is ticking, she wishes I would hurry up. But here’s the thing about slowing down: It doesn’t make you late. Only occasionally does it retard your progress. It does make you calmer.
Speed is thrilling and has its place, but much of the sped-up way we live is self-defeating. In our accelerating world, fast gets faster, and faster gets even faster. Speed becomes a contagion that infects everything we do, from how we eat to how we consume the news and react to it.
It’s tempting to think that speed is as vital to life as breath. Occasionally it is. Mostly it’s not.
All we have to do is breathe more slowly, and we know that slowing down is a way to see and hear and think more clearly. Slowing down, we make space to notice what’s going on, and noticing helps us make better choices.
I once took a driving course that
But here’s the thing about slowing down: It doesn’t make you late. Only occasionally does it retard your progress. It does make you calmer.
made the point that driving above the speed limit rarely gets you to your destination significantly sooner — but it greatly increases your risk of accident. It’s as true in the rest of life as it is in the car. Speed too often makes us anxious, sloppy and aggressive. It wastes time.
As with all resolutions, going slower is easier to state than do. But in the past few days, I’ve found the word helpful, and it called to mind a poem by Pablo Neruda.
It’s called “Keeping Quiet,” which would also be a good guiding word:
let’s stop for a second, and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together in a sudden strangeness.