I’m about to do something shocking. I’m going to pick a word for myself for 2024.

I have never done this before because it seemed…hubristic. Maybe it’s something that could be done in retrospect. Looking back at a period in my life, perhaps I could tell you what the theme had been. But to try to project a theme into the future? Not for me.

Except the more I thought about it, the more I realized that what held me back was fear, the fear of not getting it. If I declared that I wanted cake, and I didn’t get cake, that would be mortifying. 

There was a season in my life when I wasn’t this afraid, when I wanted things for myself and when I pursued them. But quite frankly, that was followed by a period where I did not get the things. And it was not super pleasant.

But a few days ago, I was reading Finishing the Hat, and in it, Sondheim says of Leonard Bernstein that what he taught young Stephen was to never fall off the bottom rung of the ladder. You’re going to fail sometimes, but don’t fail small.

What on earth do I want, I wondered. What wasn’t I going after that I ought to be going after? Which of course made me think about Mary Oliver: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

So I’m doing it, folks. I’m picking a word for 2024, and it’s hungry. Because I want to be brave enough to be hungry again. To let myself admit that I want what I want. And not to be so afraid of falling that I won’t climb up the darn ladder in the first place.