I know some people that determine a word of the year as a sort of new year's resolution – they pick a word they want to focus on for that year, a word they want to strive towards. Can I pick a word of the year almost ten months into it?

I want my word of the year to be grace.

To me, grace means seeing others for where they are at. No questions. Respecting needs or desires with no judgement. It is both internal and external.

There is a word I really don’t like – “closure.” I used to like this word I think. I would use it as justification to spend an inordinate amount of time to replay past experiences and ask, “what went wrong?” I would open up old wounds or go back to people who weren’t good for me – or let people back into my life who were not good to me – in the name of “closure.”

Last week, we released a piece Corey wrote about being in the "bardo,” or the term Buddhists use to describe being between two states. Our sense of time and what we consider the “future” has been fundamentally changed this year. How can I think about what my life will look like in a year from now when I don’t even really know what it could look like two weeks from now?

Bryan Stevenson, the author of Just Mercy and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, has an idea he calls “getting proximate” in order to really understand the experiences of people who are marginalized or who have experienced systemic disadvantages. Stevenson believes that “if you are willing to get closer to people who are suffering, you will find the power to change the world.”


This seems rather intuitive – but it is definitely more challenging than just reading a book like Just Mercy and saying that is enough. I know I have certainly been guilty of that line of thinking at times.