April's Word: Delete

When I participated in the Word of the Year project, by April I would have forgotten my word. My new plan to choose a new word each month seems much more successful. Not a month has gone by that I've forgotten my word. Yay!

Here's a review of my first-quarter words for 2014.

January - Wonderful
February - Coffee
March - Process

And now for April, we explore Delete. A friend sparked this idea when she posted on Facebook asking how to close her Twitter account that had been hacked...an action I took last fall after my third hacking. I deleted the whole account.

Take that, hackers.

Delete is a powerful word, useful for good or evil, a word that must be used with discretion and discernment. It's one thing to delete old emails or (in old-fashioned deleting) to throw away old, ratty clothes, but it's quite another to delete a person from your Christmas list or from your life.

We've all had things deleted from our lives through no fault of our own. Friends move away, we lose files or photos on our computers, things get stolen, we get laid off, someone doesn't return a borrowed book, or worst of all, loved ones die. Rarely, we're relieved about our loss, but mostly, we're sad or angry or upset.

Deleting, in other words, is like rhetoric. It is neither good nor bad in itself, but how you use it and how it uses you definitely can have moral or emotional implications.

April is the month of spring cleaning (at least in the northern hemisphere), and that prompted me to pick Delete as its word. Good deleting. Clearing out the trash in life, the over-abundance that distracts us and clutters our homes and minds in unpleasant ways. In April, I want to delete the dross, the dregs, the dust, the dirt, the dung, the detritus from as much of my house as possible. I've already begun and am happy to report that one full leaf bag of trash has been cleared.

It's a start.

Do you need to delete stuff? Perhaps it's simple and your email in-box needs clearing out, or  perhaps it's complicated and your heart needs clearing of anger or resentment. How can you use the power of Delete for good in your life this month?