What is your favorite word?

Have you ever asked yourself; what is your favorite word or what is the most meaningful word in your vocabulary?  If you had one word of advice what would it be? 

 I ask this question to people often and it leads to very interesting conversations.  Love, Grace, Hope, and Happiness are my personal finalists.  There was a time in my life Money would have won hands down.  In my own grappling with this question I could not overlook Wisdom, Relationship, Beauty, Forgiveness, and certainly God.  The most commonly used word in the English language is “the” and you have to wait until number one hundred and twenty three for the first word of any significant meaning; “give.”  Intuitively a way to measure a favorite would be to look at the most commonly used words as favorites.  Surely we show favoritism to our favorite words.  Apparently not,   “no” ranks number 84 while “yes” doesn’t appear until number 486.  None of the words given to me as people’s favorites are among the top 500 most commonly used words nor did GOD make the list.  At least love at number 387 is used more frequently than money at 389, I wonder how often they are used together. 

I think we have a tendency to take for granted the importance of language and ability to communicate.  By the way I am yet to meet someone who says communicate is their favorite word.  Words have been refined over the years and a great deal of work and research has gone into developing languages.  This is not an essay on the history of languages but that seems to be a provocative topic worth appreciating. 

In thinking about my favorite word I wanted to choose a word with eternal significance and a sort of simplistic depth.  I knew I wanted a word with breadth of meaning and one that provoked thought.  As a favorite it also had to be a strong word, a sort of weight bearing wall of a word.  After much thought, BELIEVE stood out as my favorite.  Without belief we are left without anything.  The word Believe provides the foundation for who you are, where you came from, and where you are going.   A lot of us go through life avoiding the question of what we believe.  Without getting to the bottom of that question you lack a certain depth and purpose.  For most people this is a question that requires too much commitment and energy.  Most people can give you a list of things they believe as well as things they do not believe. Ultimately the word believe comes back to God.   That is one of the reasons it is my favorite. It is diverse enough to allow you to believe in something bad, but holds you accountable to believe that bad is wrong.  You have to ask yourself if you Believe in something do you not Believe in its converse.  The beauty of belief is you can believe in anything you desire.  The irony of belief is you cannot escape from what you truly Believe.    

CM Gartner