Last week, I shared that I was going to spend some time thinking about what I want to hold on to from 2020 - as compared to what I want to do differently. Did you join me in this reflection? I’d love to hear where your thoughts led you….

Mine took me on quite a ride! A ride filled with laughter at myself (good-natured, not mocking laughter…well…mostly).

I had challenged myself to look for a New Year’s intention of what to hold on to, so of course the first thing I did was think of something I wanted to avoid in 2021. HA! Isn’t that so often the way our New Year’s intentions go? We say there is something we want to do differently, and almost immediately we go back to old patterns.

So I laughed, and then looked more deeply at what had just happened. I had identified something that exhausted me in 2021…having to make so many more decisions, every day, about almost every step of every task on my plate. Who could visit the Farm and who couldn’t? Which activities could we do in person and which ones could we only do on Zoom, or only outside at a distance with 5 or fewer people? Which tasks made sense to perpetuate if we couldn’t do them in person and which ones was it better to drop for the time being? Who could drive the van and who couldn’t? How should we clean the van between deliveries? Would we deliver to an outlet that wasn’t insisting on masks? So many decisions.

Alright, that did get old…but what was tangled up in that? Was there some part of the constant need for “decisions” that I might want to hang on to?

I let my mind play with the question for the week, and yesterday my curiosity was scratching around the word “default.” After all, wasn’t I really bothered that my “default” actions weren’t enough in 2021…that I had been repeatedly challenged to consider anew all of my habitual responses to come up with new decisions?

Turning to the Online Etymology Dictionary, this is what I found:

default (v.)

late 14c., defalten, defauten, "be lacking, be missing," also "become weak," from default (n.). Restricted meaning "to fail in fulfilling or satisfying an obligation," especially a legal or pecuniary one, is from late 15c. Related: Defaulted; defaulting.

So, had I become weak in the process of actively making decisions prior to COVID-19? Or at least lazy? Was that why I found all of the decision-making so exhausting? Again, I laughed at myself — yes indeed, I had allowed myself to go into a form of auto-pilot around so many things. Not necessarily a bad thing when pursued in moderation, after all, there is an efficiency in doing some things the same way over and over again. But it struck me that consistently turning to “default” actions or approaches, can weaken our creativity, can blind us to alternatives and lock us into patterns that generate lackluster outcomes at best and catastrophic ones at worst (say, like a pandemic).

As much as I want to let go of the persistent need to make decisions, I think I’m going to reframe it as the opportunity to make choices. My new intention for this new year is focused on recognizing the choices I have available to me, deciding how to act on them, and then doing something in response. After all, new choices will follow, right? And I can always make a different decision. My “word of the year” has turned into two: CHOICE + DO.

What intentions are you carrying into this moment of re-set that we call a New Year?

—Judy Feldman