A Bunch of Words Better Than “Grit”

From a roiling, fast #satchatwc Twitter chat this morning:

Many of the responses to “what one word describes your goals for 2015?” are better than the word “grit”.  Surely words like joy, sparkle, passion, intent, courage, risk, unbounded, ask, voice, compassion, stretch, iterate, fearless, empathy, uncertainty, reflective, moment, authentic, yet, create, enthusiastic, awesome, overcome, finish, empower, evolve, believe, dare, serve, learn, and grow all describe what we want for our children and how we want to help get them there, better than the word “grit”.  With all due respect to Angela Duckworth and others, I think we swallowed that word way too quickly and easily.

One more common theme of the chat: The world around us turns, work is infinite, and many of the challenges we face today will still be there tomorrow. But your kids won’t be. My kids are grown; if yours are not, here is some cheap but very important advice: I almost cannot imagine a work-related event that is more important than going to watch your kids ball game…or being home to say goodnight…or tossing a ball around…or teaching them how to weed the yard.  Work is forever; kids grow up and leave.