Go lightly
Finding my word for 2025.
Resolution
From the Latin ‘resolvere’, to loosen or release.
Intention
From the Latin ‘intendere’, to stretch towards a goal, to turn your attention to something or to have a purpose in mind.
At the start of each year, I try to choose a word that defines how I want the year to feel, how I want to live my life. I took this idea from the brilliant Madeleine Dore and her book I Didn’t Do the Thing Today (find Dore at
). 2023’s word was self-acceptance. 2024’s word was lost to the mists of time as I slipped into the cult of busy. As 2024 bled into 2025, I wracked my brains for a word, but I didn’t want to force it.In my mind, this word is two-fold. It’s a resolution, in the original sense of the word, and an intention. It’s the letting go of something that no longer serves me and a turning towards something that feels right.
2025’s word is therefore: lightly.
It was also Dore who introduced to me the idea of holding things lightly.
‘To hold something lightly, it must be right-sized.’
— I Didn’t Do the Thing Today
The cult of busy isn’t right-sized. Productivity culture would have us try to hold more and more. It feels like trying to hold a hundred eggs with nothing but your hands and arms and the hem of your t-shirt as a makeshift basket. Drop one and you’ll make a mess. Drop one and you’ll likely drop more as your anxiety spikes. Drop them all and you have nothing.
To me, ‘lightly’ implies a gentleness, a thoughtfulness. If we step lightly, we move our feet with care and consideration. If we speak lightly, then there is joy in what we say. If we hold things lightly, we take away the weight of expectation and lean into acceptance.
I could have gone for ‘softly’ or ‘gently’, but they both miss that essential quality of joy I mentioned above. Light, as well as a weightlessness, also implies brightness. I will still have to work hard at times this year. I will still need to push myself, and crucially I want to push myself in the things that are important to me. ‘Lightly’ still leaves room for that stretching towards a purpose that an intention implies. I can still aim high, put my all into something, but I can do it without the weight of fear or the pressure of productivity.
Life is not something you can optimise - it is unpredictable. Gripping it with an iron fist suggests a misguided belief that you can control it, that if you just plan more and try harder, things will go exactly as you want them to. In reality, you’re left feeling frazzled and betrayed when plans change and you don’t get what you expect.
So, my resolution this year is not to release anything specific but to simply release. I sometimes like to imagine life is a vast ocean and I am a small, sturdy fishing boat, chimney puffing smoke, engine chugging. Sometimes the seas are rough, sometimes they’re calm, but I have to remember I’m built for the sea, that I’m built to survive it and even thrive in it no matter how it acts.
My intention then is to go lightly. I will step with both purpose and care, but I will also cultivate the brightness that makes up the things I love - stories and time with friends and moving my body. And if those things don’t go as planned, that’s okay - I was holding them lightly anyway.
Questions to ponder
What word would you choose to describe how you want the year to be?
Can you find both a resolution (something to release) and an intention (something to give you purpose) within that word?
What does the word ‘productivity’ mean to you?
What do you expect from your life?
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