Recognition

My annual new year’s custom or practice is to identify a word of the year to use to help guide me through that coming year.  Thinking over the past few weeks about this, a word settled in fairly comfortably in my head, to the exclusion of other contenders – “recognition.”

By definition “recognition” is “acknowledgment of something’s existence, validity, or legality” or “identification of a thing or person from previous encounters or knowledge.”  As has been the case over the years, this choice is a word that can have multiple meanings.  I guess that makes sense when the word is going to be with me for 365 days – it needs to be versatile.  I suppose I settled on the word because it was easy to come up with a list of things I need to “recognize.”  That list is so long I won’t even begin to lay it out here, but suffice it to say that recognition is, I think, at its heart, realization of the truth.  I have turned sixty.  Donald Trump is going to be president.  I have aches and pains I’d rather not have. Cedar fever season is here.  (I am fairly sure the first two are related!  Well, okay, the first three.)

“Recognition” also has at its heart acknowledgment of the role of the “other” in my life, that is, other than me.  This includes recognition of the role that other people play or can play in my life, but also the role of other things/qualities that do/can – things like grace, kindness, stubbornness (assuming I ever was) or, (ahem, theoretically speaking) pride.  As I said, the list is long.  There is and will be much to “recognize” in 2017.  But hey, it is only 10:00 on December 31.  I still have about 14 hours to be self-centered and oblivious to other people and things around me!  I best get busy.

Happy New Year!