One Little Word for 2014

Choosing "one little word" to focus on for the new year has been all the rage for the past few years.  I rather like the idea, because I am not the type of person to make New Year's resolutions -- I don't like making promises to myself that it's likely that I can't fully keep.  But the idea of "one little word" is broader, and I like that.  One idea representing a goal that is important to me, that I've decided to keep in both mind and heart throughout the upcoming year.

So what's my "one little word" for this year?  Simplify.  As in, try over the course of this year, to simplify my life in ways that are meaningful to me or truly helpful.  Here is a great quote I found from Hans Hoffman:  "The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."  Hans Hoffman was a German-born American abstract impressionist painter of the early 20th century.  Here's one of his works:

It's pretty fitting that an abstract artist purposely focused on simplicity in his work, isn't it?  But Hoffman's was not a random focus -- instead, he chose simplicity as a means to help him get to what is necessary, to cut through the riff-raff and find what's important.  I find Hoffman's quote deeply inspirational.

Oh, and that image of Charlie Brown and Linus at the top of the post -- that's another image I am going to keep in mind this year.  I saw the Charlie Brown Christmas special this season for the first time in several years.  I had forgotten how meaningful it really is.  Charlie Brown manages to find the spirit of Christmas in a lonely, forgotten little tree, and Linus, standing under a spotlight on a stage, cuts completely through the commercialism and materialism of Christmas by reciting a few verses from the Biblical Christmas story.  "And that's the true meaning of Christmas, Charlie Brown," Linus concludes.  Yeah, it is.

Simplify.  My "one little word" for 2014.  What's YOUR "one little word"?