I Have No Words

Happy New Year!

So here we are. It’s January 1. The start of a new year.

For the past few years, I have set the framework for my year by doing the “three words” exercise that I picked up from Chris Brogan, in which I select three words that will guide my year. My three words for 2014 were Rituals, Relationships and Roar.

Over the last few months of 2014, I spent a lot of time planning for this year — moreso than I have done in previous years. I spent days in “planning meetings” with myself, getting clear on a vision for how I want my life to look this year, what I want to do and who I want to be.

I thought a lot about my three words. Before I left for my vacation in Israel, I had narrowed it down, and was close to finalizing them. I was counting on the distance from New York and the harried pace of my life to allow me time to sit back, reflect and finalize my intentions for this year.

So far this trip has been jam packed with activity: a family wedding, connecting with family and friends, and meeting new friends. I’ve been immersed in relationships and connecting — all great things — and that hasn’t left me much time to sit back and reflect. In truth, I was starting to feel a little anxious about not having finalized my words and written my blog post by New Year’s Day.

(Yes, I know, it’s my year and my blog, so who cares?)

This morning, during a workout on the boardwalk overlooking the Mediterranean Sea (I could get used to this), I found the clarity I was seeking. The words came to me, and with the morning haze still heavy over the water, I stopped to contemplate the coming year and write about my three words for 2015. (Yes, I finished my workout.)

Here in Israel, January 1 is just another day, and I had a full day of plans scheduled. I headed back to my hotel to shower and change, and planned to upload my post later in the day, when I returned back to the hotel.

So here we are.

It’s morning in New York and time for the big reveal. And …

I have no words

To be clear, I do not mean that my draft got deleted. This is not a tale of technology failing. The words I wrote earlier are still safely in the list of notes in the Drafts app on my iPhone, where I wrote them this morning.

The words from this morning are no longer my words. The plans that I had been crystallizing for months are no longer my plans.

Not after today.

I don’t even know where to start with this week, and this day. This entire trip so far has been a chain of days filled with magic moments. It’s been unlike any of my previous trips to Israel. But something happened — or crystallized — today that suddenly changes everything.

I’ve been speaking in Hebrew all week, resurrecting it from the abyss of my memory. As my mind spins with thoughts in two languages and my heart fills with feelings, I can hardly speak or write.

In the long run, the details of what occurred on this day will matter less than the emotions I am feeling right now. The emotions are always what is most important.

If how you spend New Year’s Day is a sign of what is to come in the rest of the year, then 2015 will be a year of blessings for me and those around me. It will be a year of love and grace. A year of divine syncronicity. A year of feeling and emotion and things that I cannot even articulate in this moment.

In this moment, watching the light fade over the horizon of the Mediterranean as the sun sets behind a haze of clouds, I only know this:

I want more days like today.

The words I wrote this morning won’t bring me to this place where I am standing right now. They won’t bring me the emotions that I am feeling right now.

An Open Heart

My heart has been full with love and gratitude all week. In this moment, it is overflowing. It is stretching and opening in a way that it has never opened before.

It feels raw, like it has been stripped of its protective layers.

It feels alive in a way I have never before experienced.

It is intense. Powerful. Penetrating. Piercing. Painful in that weird way that feels good. It is exhilarating. It is strange. Uncomfortable.

It is open and vulnerable. And yet it feels safe, not at risk of being trampled or battered.

I want to stay in this place forever. This place of this open heart that feels so intensely amazing and strange all at the same time. This place of a heart open to the miracles that surround me; this place of a heart open to the extraordinary magic of what is possible in this world.

I don’t know if I am making any sense. I am probably rambling.

As I said,
אין לי מילים.

I have no words.

I have only a heart, open and filled with love and gratitude.

Too often, I allow myself to fall victim to the pressure to put words to an experience that can only be felt with the heart. Too often, I push to meet someone else’s deadline.

Not today.

Words are irrelevant in this place, where my heart is open and full and feeling and alive. The words to guide my year to this place — the words that will help me keep it in this place — will come, in time.

Right now, I have no words.

Here in this magic city that embraces me with its magic atmosphere and its beach and its beautiful sunsets over the Mediterranean, I have only an open heart.

I don’t need words.