I want to be engaged this year. As of this coming Saturday, I’ve been on this earth for more than nineteen years, and I think it’s about time for me to be engaged.

As the holidays role around–more quickly than expected–I’ve been asking myself this question: what one word do I want to hold true for my nineteenth year of life?

I’ve contemplated this for about a week now. Looking at myself in the mirror as I blow dry my hair, I have said seemingly meaningless words aloud to see if their meanings would hold any significance for what I want this next year to be.

I rustled up words like depth or rest or value and announced them to myself in the car, in the shower or on a run. Nothing was clicking. No word seemed to justify what I want to focus on this next year as I continue to grow as an individual.

This was until yesterday morning. A word so unexpectedly was whispered into the silence around me. It filled the air with a sense of purpose and dignity. Since then, this word has emerged in every way possible—street signs, books, and even in my daily conversations. I pushed and writhed against heaving this word be the one but I realise this word will continue to reveal itself as the next year of my life continues.

Engaged.

I know its the right word for this nineteenth year of my life because it scares me to say it aloud. I knew as soon as I heard it that it wasn’t my idea of focusing my life on upon it—I’d never ask for something so radical.

Since yesterday morning, that word keeps repeating itself in my mind over and over again to the point that I can feel it making itself at home and warming everything inside me.

For my nineteen birthday I want to be engaged, but it’s probably not what you think…

I’m as single as a slice of Kraft American Cheese. So when I say I want to be engaged, I don’t mean in the sense of marriage.

In French, the word engagement is actually translated to the verb engagér meaning, to pledge to be mindful of one or things. The Greeks who call it eúnoia (εüvoia) meaning, to be balanced in beautiful thinking, to be fully involved in others to bring kindness and to exhibit goodwill.

I want to be engaged in the sense that I’m mindful of people, surroundings, culture, and the spiritual warfare around me. I want to establish meaningful connections with the person on the other side of my coffee mug or in the booth across from me at dinner or in the passenger seat of my car. I want to lean in and connect with the stories being told. I want to actively console the sorrows being shared. I don’t want to go through conversations absentmindedly anymore.

Because after almost two decades of being distracted by tomorrow, by my phone, and by what is happening in my peripheral… it’s about damn time I was fully engaged in the moments happening now.

I just finished a book about by Joseph Loconte. It’s a book about J.R.R. Tolkien’s friendship with C.S. Lewis and how the events of WWI shaped their views on life, transformed their writing, and grew them together as best friends.

I came across a quote in one of the last chapters from Lewis about what true friendship is and he says,

“You will not find the warrior, the poet, or the philosopher by staring into his eyes as if he were your mistress. Better to fight beside him, read with him, argue with him, pray with him.”

I don’t think we’ll ever be fully engaged in the lives of others by staring at them through Instagram or Snapchat or by stalking their musical tastes on Spotify (all of which I’m fully guilty).

I think engagement happens when we turn off our phones, laptops, and TVs and fight beside the people we love and want to know more.

This engagement happens when we sit together in the silence of reading or doing a puzzle together or in the gentle murmur of conversation. I want to be engaged with this planet in my next year of life. I’ve already explored some of the most incredible landscapes of California which, is why I think I want to leave… I want to be engaged with myself and travel more. After all, I have the world at my fingertips.

But if we never take the time to stick up for ourselves, to ask for time away to rest and leave our cubicles or our workload, to instead occupy our bodies and minds with the waterfalls and mountains and deserts and cobblestone streets on this planet we call home, are we really living?

I want to engage in other cultures and environments and languages in this next year. I want to encounter more new places and faces than sticking to the social norms would allow.

More than that, I want to engage in the invisible war that’s taking place over the souls of the people around me. I want to be locked and loaded with an arsenal of grace and truth and boldness to bring positivity to those who need it so desperately.

I don’t want to be one who is too busy, distracted or preoccupied to recognize the presence of others’ in every moment.

The world has quietly and viciously crept into this our lives in a dangerous way, distracting us with empty connections and excuses of worrying about tomorrow.

One of my favorite quotes pens:

“The presence is the point at which time touches eternity… its far better to make [humans] live in the future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities.”

If I want to be engaged, if I want to spend more time being present and interacting with weary, helpless souls around me, tomorrow can (responsibly) worry about itself.

We see engagement in multiple societies and cultures in the world. Wade Davis says, “All cultures through all time have constantly been engaged in a dance with new possibilities for life.”

I do not want to get stuck in my routine. I want to dance with the possibilities that present themselves. I want to embrace change and take new opportunities.

In my perspective, life is measured by opportunities to be engaged—especially the ones you miss.

It’s my nineteenth year here on Earth. I am yet, another year older and the only thing I want for my birthday?

I want nothing more than to be engaged.