Word Games

I love parlor games. For me, they've always been a great connector. One friend recently shared that his first memory of me, some 15+ years ago, was meeting across a table playing Beyond Balderdash. We comprised two of the 30 folks participating in a personal growth weekend workshop, where I routinely brought a game or two for down time in the evenings.

This past Thanksgiving, I played a game I'd heard about for years, but never had occasion to try: Two Truths & A Lie. I admit, once upon a time, I lied with abandon and ease; however, falsehoods don't mesh with my current modus operandi, so I struggled when my turn rolled around. Still, such a hoot to listen and guess which stories were real!

My husband's cousins hosted our Thanksgiving meal. The hostess, Nancy, who rounded us up to play, challenges herself to another kind of game every year. She chooses a word at the start of the new year, and finds ways to live into, and discover deeper meaning, about that word in her life over the following 365 days. She wrote about it in her blog, and it's quite a delightful read.

I perceive this one word beacon as a clever alternative to a new year's resolution. More akin to a mindfulness practice melded with an intention (a desired emotional experience), this "word game," that Nancy learned about from business coach, Christine Kane, sets a tone and informs direction. As decisions are made, big and small, this one word niggles in the memory bank, and guides the course.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a former client announced her word for the year. I guess this has become a thing! Who knew? For as many times as Nancy shared the benefits and curious learnings yielded from her annual experiment, I never felt compelled to participate. Yet, seeing the past client's word in print, I began to ask, "If I were to choose..." Before I could finish my mental sentence, the word "Honor" emblazoned itself upon my consciousness. Hmm...

Occasionally the word honor pops up in my vocabulary. "I feel honored to walk this path with you," or "imagine that experience earning a physical place of honor on your wisdom shelf." And still, when it flashed across my internal billboard, I wondered how it might be officially defined. This is what I found:

noun
high respect; esteem - "his portrait hangs in the place of honor"
a privilege - "the great poet of whom it is my honor to speak tonight"

verb
regard with great respect - "Joyce has now learned to honor her father's memory"
fulfill (an obligation) or keep (an agreement) - "make sure the franchisees honor the terms of the contract" or "he honored the contract"

Since the word honor seems to have chosen me, I'm playing this round in 2019. I wonder how allowing honor to permeate my being will impact my life. Reviewing the definition, I view it as a big word! Something that marries respect with privilege and fulfillment... or as I see it, manifestation... this is no small thing.

How will I treat myself with honor this year? How will I walk a path of manifestation in my relationships? Will I recognize when I am granted a privilege? Might I be willing to allow my vulnerability, out of respect for both myself and another? What will I discover, that I cannot even conceive of in this moment, about honor?

Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of "Big Magic" and "Eat, Pray, Love," plays another kind of word game. She carries around a jar full of slips of paper. On each scrap is a single word. Sometimes Gilbert plucks a word for a day, and meditates about how that word may support or relate to her. On other occasions, she'll share the jar with a friend, and invite him/her to dive into the jar, pull a square, and speak what that word means from a voice of differing experiences. This encourages a sharing of ideas, concepts, and possibilities, opening the bandwidth of perception to something greater than the data currently existing within the single cranial cavity.

Gilbert's practice intrigues me, too! I have a notion to get a jar started. While it might take me a year to fill it with words that resonate with me, I thought maybe you'd like to play along. If you were to select a word to live into in 2019, what would it be? If you are willing to share it with me, perhaps I'll add your word to my personal jar. Depending upon how this experiment plays out, I may check in with you before the calendar slides us into 2020, as I'd love to know what you learned or experienced in relation to your word selection. Are you game?

With love and play,

Joanne Lutz