Best word in the English language

When our kids were flying home regularly – college semester breaks and vacation time early in their careers – it came easily to see that landed was the best word in the English language.

“Landed” popped up on the airport flight information screens when planes arrived. 

We headed directly to the screens to check plane status when we arrived at the baggage carousels, usually some minutes before our kids were expected in.

The confirmation on the screen that they had come in safe and sound meant everything to this mom, in those empty nest years, adjusting to her kids being far away.

A decade has passed since then. Landed remains a beautiful word. 

Landed, over this period, has been joined by a word also so meaningful as to prompt me to suggest it for the top of the word list. 

I believe this word shares honors with landed as best word in the dictionary. The word is received. 

To know we’re received by another puts us on firm ground. 

We’re like a jet with wheels down coming in to roll smoothly down the runway. 

In being received we feel the exhilaration of arrival which always starts with a walk through a new opened door.

There are many kinds of being received. We can be received through an act of hospitality.

Our ideas can be received through another’s listening attentive manner. The package that is each of us, in the totality of our interests, habits, needs and gifts, can also be received.

To be received, as the word connotes to me, is to be accepted, taken into or understood. The act of being received significantly influences us.

Similarly, when we receive others, through taking time and making time for them, we connect and make possible the bringing forward of the best in each of us.

We touch firm ground in the touch we give others to count them in. Received, we step up. Received, we step out. Received, we confidently step in where encouraged to belong.

Ro Giencke

January 1, 2014