Every year around this time, my friends and I come up with our words of the year. We each choose one word that represents our intentions and hopes for the year ahead—a reminder, a mindset, and a wish all in one.
The tradition started years ago. We’d meet for sushi and a book exchange, crammed into a little tatami room, our knees scrunched together beneath the low table, a stack of books rising between the bento boxes—our favorites from the year, to share. It must have been at one of our annual holiday lunches that we came up with the idea. Words were simpler and less stressful than resolutions, we agreed, easier to remember and act on—themes rather than obligations.
Eventually, though, work, life, and Covid got in the way, and now we send our words and books by text. My friend Carol usually starts the thread in early December—a frenzy of inspiration flashing across my phone for days, even weeks.
I adore my friends’ enthusiasm, but I can’t summon my word on demand. I need to let it steep. And while it’s tempting to “borrow” one of their ideas, I know that for my word to work, it has to come from within.
I stayed silent on the thread, waiting for inspiration. A week or so later, Steve and I went out for dinner. Seated two tables away was Claire, one of my friends from the text thread. She leaned forward to speak across the couple in between, grinned, and said, “So what’s your word?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said truthfully. “I’m letting it arise.”
Arise. Hmm. It had a nice ring.
“Arising.” I said again, trying it out. “I think that’s my word!”
Apparently last year my word was agency. Actually I had a few words, but this was the one Claire’s partner, Will, remembered at the restaurant that night. How he knew my word when I had forgotten was beyond me, but when I thought about it, agency had been a major theme of 2024. Intentions have an uncanny way of materializing.
Over the next few days, I let my word roll around like a marble inside my mind. Arising means emerging, coming into being; it’s a natural process, not forced or choreographed, nor planned or plotted. In Zen, it refers to the interconnection of everything, everywhere, all phenomena, all at once. Rising and falling, living and dying, there’s no difference. Everything is energy flowing.
Arising may sound passive, but it’s not. It takes effort to be open to what is rather than to try to control what might be. You have to pay attention or else you might miss the very thing that’s arising. It requires humility and willingness to let go of the attachments and identities we cling to so stubbornly and make room for something unexpected and new.
I thought about my word, and how I’ve spent the past two years loosening my grip on running. Arising doesn’t mean giving something up but allowing something in—like racing the Leadville 100 on my bike, gravel-riding solo around Vermont, or writing a novel. It’s a state of wonder.
A couple days later, I texted my friends. “My word is ARISING (as in, the word itself, naturally arising).” In my excitement, I forgot to share a book. For a moment, I considered choosing Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World (which really is my favorite book of 2024) but then I got self-conscious, so I went to my coffee table and snapped a picture of the next best thing:
“Adam Moss interviews artists on process,” I texted by way of explanation. I’d only read one chapter—the novelist George Saunders on the making of his brilliantly inventive Lincoln in the Bardo—but I was already hooked. In the interview, Saunders tells about having the idea in his head for years but not knowing how to write it. Finally he decides to give himself six months to experiment, and “just goof around." The result is a novel that comes through him as much as from him.
“It was all very Rubik’s cube-y. Not thinking too much, just everyday going in and polishing what I can polish and waiting for handles to show up, each part written a hill at a time.”
And then in the final months, Saunders recalls, “I just cranked. Twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day. And that part was magical. All these bowling pins just came down. Things I didn’t know the book was going to do, it started doing. I’ve never been in that mode before. That was incredible.”
There are lots of words for what Saunders is describing: flow, momentum, instinct. When a book I’m writing does this, finally, after all the thinking and not-thinking, the hours and effort, and just takes off, I call it lift. You can’t see it until it arises, and by then the story is airborne, sailing on without me. It is incredible.
As my tai chi teacher so wisely says, “flow with what naturally arises.” The possibilities are so wild and varied we can’t possibly imagine them all. We must be willing to be surprised—in art, life, and everything in between.
How wonderful is that?
Find Your Flow in the Desert!
Only a few spots left at Desert Flow Camp, Feb 12-16. Experience guided trail running, hiking, writing, and deep connection to nature in the vast beauty of Big Bend. Recharge your body, spark your creativity, and rediscover what moves you — on and off the trail!
Doubles from $2750 all inclusive. This will be one of very limited opportunities to practice flow with me in 2025!
I’ll be off the grid in Belize next week + will return with a new work in process in the early New Year.
Until then, wishing you happy holidays + many brief flashings!
xo katie
