Resisting Resolutions

On the quiet power of a well-chosen word

I have always resisted the lure of a sparkly new resolution. They invite, almost by design, a familiar fizzling out like a New Year’s Eve firework that burns brightly for a moment before dissolving into smoke. Words, though, have always held a quieter, more durable power for me. Intentionally or otherwise, words carry energy: they can help or hinder, hold or harm, soften or sharpen. They shape attention and action. Over time, they shape us.

At the moment, I find myself circling a number of words, which feels reflective of where I am as I allow things to remain unresolved for a while longer. Some of these words have already found their way into earlier pieces here: capacity, threshold, power, space. Others remain, for now, in the pages of my journals and notebooks, held privately as my thinking about their place and force in my life continues to coalesce and condense into something coherent enough to share.

This brings me to curate.

The word curate comes from the Latin curare: to care for, to attend to, to take responsibility for. Long before it became associated with taste, selection or aesthetics, it described stewardship - the ongoing responsibility of tending what has been placed in one’s care. In that sense, curation was never about accumulation or display; it was about discernment, restraint and accountability over time.

That older meaning is still visible in the work of a museum or gallery curator. A curator does not simply decide what will be shown. They decide what will not. They choose what is brought into the light, what is held back, what is stored and what is quietly retired. Through those decisions, they shape the conditions for narrative and understanding. Meaning emerges not from showing everything, but from careful attention to inclusion, exclusion, sequence and context.

If that feels like the right lens for this moment, what does it mean, then, to curate a life?

For me, it means finding the courage and discipline to hold things up to the light and ask harder, slower questions. Thoughts, ideas, feelings, responses, decisions, artefacts: do these deserve a place in the gallery of my life as it is now? Do they add to or detract from my work in progress? Do they reflect something true about who I am - or who I am becoming? And just as importantly, are there things that need to be taken down, stored or quietly let go of because they no longer sit in alignment?

Curating in this sense is not about control or perfection. It is about attention. It requires space: the space to pause, to notice, to choose rather than react. For, as Viktor Frankl reminds us, it is in that space that our growth and freedom lie.

That, perhaps, is the quiet power of a well-chosen word. Not as a resolution to be kept or broken but as a way of orienting oneself - gently yet deliberately - toward a life that is held with care.