Brave not Strong

Last week, I was struggling to choose my word of the year. I felt this invisible (non-existent? self-induced?) pressure to decide on my word straight away as it was ALREADY the SECOND day of the year and I hadn’t yet chosen the word that I would carry through the year. So, feeling this enormous pressure, I rushed to choose a word using gut instinct – an approach that usually serves me well.

Most of you reading this, I am sure, will see how ludicrous this is. (Side note: has Ludacris ruined the use of the word ‘ludicrous’? Also, how did Ludacris get a Hollywood star before Willem Dafoe? Bonkers. I digress…).

I appreciate this decision is not terribly important in the grand scheme of life yet it has stopped me from writing here. When I have clicked to write something new, I see my last post and I get a funny flutter in my chest. It is a tiny spark of anxiety. The same feeling I get when I remember I have to do a task I have been putting off or when I remember something unpleasant.

Unsurprisingly, I am rather fond of words and I believe that they carry a lot of power. And when I think of the word ‘strong’, instead of feeling buoyed, motivated or empowered, I immediately have a negative reaction. In fact, I believe it stems from the irritation I feel when we tell people to ‘be strong’. What do people usually mean by that? In my experience, they mean ‘toughen up’, ‘suppress your emotions’, ‘stop complaining’ and the overriding implication is that if you need to ‘be strong’, you are starting from a place of weakness.

(Is all this overanalysis a sign I have too much time on my hands? Perhaps).

When I originally chose the word, I was thinking of being strong like a tree. Rooted. Reassuring. Robust. I like all three of these words better than ‘strong’. But I still don’t think they quite fit what I want from my word. I suppose that this equivocation is fueled by my current state of uncertainty and therefore, perhaps I am attaching more importance and meaning to this word as a way to feel like I have something to hold on to to make me feel braver about the howling void in front of me (howling void? I guess I am feeling a little unsure at the moment). I need to remember that one woman’s howling void is another’s ‘world is your oyster’.

So I am going back to the word for the year. Re-reading my post, I used the word BRAVE and this jumped out at me. I have chosen ‘bold‘ in a previous year and that served me well. I like the word ‘brave’. It feels warm and hopeful and something I want to be. ‘Be brave’ sounds much less loaded to me than ‘Be strong’. I don’t really know why it makes a difference but it does. BRAVE is my word for 2024.