Word for the Year: Real

Alright, alright- I know I'm late for this bandwagon. I've been meaning to write this for a while now, and just haven't had the gumption to do it. So here goes- gumption be damned. 

Most of the lovely bloggers have been talking about finding one word to revolve their year around. I was intrigued by this method last year, but too nervous to test it out. That, and I couldn't for the life of me think of one word to summarize how I wanted my next twelve months to be. 

This year was easier, it came in the form of a quote from one of my favorite childhood books: 

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand... once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

I would run across that quote several more times before and after the new year and would always keep it in the back of my mind. Letting it marinade there until it itself became real to me. 

And then I had it. 

Not in the lightning bolt moments that epiphanies sometimes come wrapped in, but in that still, small way. The way in which you least expect it, and then it's there and you wonder why you didn't notice it all along. 

My word for the year is simply: Real. 

Real-ness in all things. Relationships, surroundings, artwork, work-work. Out with old, tarnished beliefs and ways of things that no longer work. In with the true, the knowing, the real. 

The best part of living 'real'? It lasts for always.