In the New Year, I must trust - #lakewoodnews

I was envisioning a visioning session when my word for 2017 became clear.

You may know that I eschew New Year's resolutions, favoring instead a word I choose (or, as I keep finding out, it chooses me) as a focus for the coming year. This is the second time my word and I found each other on a short trip out of town, and it's also the earliest my word has announced itself. Often the choosing happens between Christmas and New Year's, and once it happened well into January.

In any case, as I was preparing for a vision discussion about the coming year, I trusted that my word would soon be revealed ... and it was: Trust.

My word for 2017 is "trust," both as a noun and a verb. I will have trust and I will earn trust. "Breathe," my word for 2016, was the first verb in the five years I've been doing this, so it seems fitting that 2017's word should be both.

I trust that my endeavors in the coming year will happen in the most optimal way.

I trust that I will be worthy of the trust of others - people I love and people who love me, people I admire, people of integrity and decency.

I trust that I will be gladdened, saddened, angered, touched and moved throughout the year, and that I will handle all of these with aplomb.

I trust that I will make other people happy and that, when I inevitably anger or sadden them, I will have carefully considered the outcomes.

I trust that I'll be doing purposeful work that both affords me financial stability and does good for other people.

I trust that I will make a difference in at least one person's life, and that I will be aware of and grateful for the presence of others in mine.

I trust that new people will come into my life, and that I will meet the loss of any others with peace.

I trust that peace will come to more people and to more places on the earth in 2017.

Let me say here, as an adjunct to this last one, that you may know I am disappointed at the man the Electoral College will put into the most powerful office in the world later this month, and I'm disappointed that the overwhelming popular vote will not prevent this. The original 1700s-era rationales for the Electoral College (such as slavery) are no longer valid, but it is what it is. As a predominantly Republican voter, I nevertheless didn't like it in 2000 and I don't like it now. And yet ... I trust it will work out.

I trust that the checks and balances in our system of government will function as they are meant to, that the business of being a billionaire will not take precedence over the import of being the president, and that someone takes away his Twitter account before "Saturday Night Live" does another skit.

I recognize this is a lot of trusting, which could be a challenge because trust doesn't come all that easily to me. The New Year will have its trials, no doubt, but everything will turn out in the most optimal way.

Trust me.

Andrea Doray is a writer who is perhaps a little too trusting, after all. Contact her at a.doray@andreadoray.com.

 

 

from Lakewood Sentinel - Latest Stories http://lakewoodsentinel.com/stories/In-the-New-Year-I-must-trust,240449