A Tuesday Afternoon, Someday

As I turn 39, I realize I have had it wrong most of my life.

As a young person, I wondered: how will I measure my life? Will I measure up? Will my life be meaningful? Will it be important?

And then I realized that was a one-way ticket to a hamster wheel that goes nowhere. So my new question became: how do I enjoy the life I have? It was all about experiences — getting the nectar out of every moment.

And then I met Robyn. And my dad died, out of nowhere. And we had four kids.

And now I think: how does one cherish life — particularly our own, and the lives of those near us? How do we cherish that which is sacred?

I will be working on this for a while, I think — just learning to cherish life, our lives and life itself. But the next evolution will hopefully come. Where I no longer need questions to anchor on. When I need no blog post to share what I’ve grown into thinking. Where I just cherish life because it’s a Tuesday afternoon and a person is in front of me. Or it’s a Saturday morning and there is a plant to tend to in the garden.

When I am able to just be someone who thinks not of worth and worthiness, not of sensation and experience, not even of holiness — I will have arrived. When I just am, without thinking, without needing to ask a question: that will be perhaps the final stage of growth for a soul like mine.

I could have always known that asking questions like “what makes a life worth something” was a fool’s errand. What I didn’t anticipate was that the real evolution of this path was asking no questions at all — that it was just living, radiating gratitude, cherishing by simply being an open-hearted soul.