Capacity
I finally found the right word for 2025
As I laid with my 9-month-old napping in the still days after Christmas, I scrolled through my phone, mostly saving the posts of “Top 10 Amazon Finds of 2024.” In the 40 minutes to an hour, I got to a post by Morgan Harper Nichols. Caption: When you’re ready, screenshot and you will have your word of the year.
I’ve never done a word of the year, at least until it’s completion. These never work for me, or maybe I wasn’t ready for the serendipitous words in the past, but this year I finally screenshot the right word: Capacity.
I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought of the word before. Mostly I think of words like peace, hope, rest, but this word, capacity, feels vague yet specific enough to stick.
I’m not sure when it started, but it might be college when I became an over-committer. Volunteering with a ministry, it felt like the work was never done. I also felt very ill-equipped and thought doing more would make up for my lack of skills and knowledge. Fast forward to now, working as a therapist, parenting an infant and continuing to maintain relationships with my husband, family and friends. It just feels like I’m never doing enough and I should have the capacity to do it all. Many days going to bed, feeling like there’s more to do, forgetting who to reach out to, and thinking of more ways to help people reach their goals, oh and now recipes of clean finger foods cut in tiny pea-sized bites to send with my daughter to daycare.
This November and December, I felt very depleted as I dealt with all of this and random disturbances kept popping up: a family member in psychiatric need, arguments around the election, a broken dishwasher, a baby with RSV. Then the pressure of Christmas and the holidays felt like Brainy from Hey Arnold was constantly breathing down my neck and I, as the proverbial Helga Pataki, was just a breath away from losing it. I normally love the glimmer of twinkly lights and the promise of a week with family at the beach, but this year everything felt just too much.
This made me think of the Titanic, “The Unsinkable Ship”, where its capacity was about 3,300 people, but when it hit the iceberg, the real capacity of the ship was only about a third of that with its lifeboats. Going along with the theme, my sister-in-law will die on the hill that Jack could not fit on the door even though it looked like there was space. The door would not be able to hold two people and still float, which is why he let Rose have it, to save her.
Which goes back to the age old truth, things and people are more than meets the eye and many people may look okay, but they are at their brim on the inside.
Capacity isn’t about what you can do. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. And just because you think you should, doesn’t mean you need to. What I’m learning is that I have to leave space to be a human. There has to be margin in our lives to just be.
I wonder what it will be like to use this word as my intention for this year. My hope is to check back in at the end of each month to see how it grows over the months to come.
Hope this post finds you in a slow and sweet start to 2025!
*Journaling prompts*
What feelings arise for you as you think about new year intentions, resolutions or goals? Do you feel relieved? Tense? Hopeful? Avoidant?
What areas of your life would benefit from you considering your capacity or threshold for stress?
Are there places in your life where you would benefit from margin or extra lifeboats?
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