What's Your Word?

I'm re-reading Elizabeth Gilbert's brilliant book, Eat, Pray, Love.  I just read it at the end of last year but I fell in love with her writing and humor and decided to indulge my urge to read it again.

I read a section last night that I thought would be interesting to blog about. When Liz is in Italy, she has a conversation with an Italian friend who tells her that every place has its own word. Rome's word, for example, is SEX. Sex is what everyone there is thinking about and influences daily how people eat, dress, shop, talk, walk, and make friends. Liz declares New York City's word to be ACHIEVE and Los Angeles's word to be SUCCEED.

She then moved into contemplating what her own personal word might be and that got me thinking about what my own word would be. It's easy of course to come up with words I wish described me: PEACE, LOVE, HOPE, JOYFUL, ENCOURAGING...  But I think my actual word would be something closer to: EXPLORE, WISH, ADMIRE, ACHIEVE, EGO, or LAUGH.  Not bad words, but perhaps not quite the Zen-master word list one might hope for.

The good thing is your word can change as you change. But how 'bout it? If you had to pick one word today to encapsulate who you are, what would that word be?