Present Over Perfect

As I’ve stripped things out of my life—constant
traveling, overworking, compulsive activity—I’m finding
that my senses are attuned so much more deeply than
they’ve been in years. Music is reaching me with a depth I
can’t remember since my adolescence, and poetry and
nature, too.
I thought that my midlife season would be about pushing
into a new future ... and it is. I thought it would be about
leaving behind the expectations and encumbrances of the
past. It is. What I didn’t know is that it would feel so much
like recovering an essential self, not like discovering a new
one.
Hold close to your essential self. Get to know it, the way
you get to know everything in the world about someone
you’re in love with, the way you know your child, their
every freckle and preference and which cry means what.
This self—this fragile and strong, creative, flip-flop and
ponytail self—she’s been here all along, but I left her
behind, almost lost her when I started to believe that
constant motion would save me, that outrunning everything
would keep me safe.
You cannot be a mystic when you’re hustling all the
time. You can’t be a poet when you start to speak in
certainties. You can’t stay tender and connected when you
hurl yourself through life like being shot out of a cannon,
your very speed a weapon you wield to keep yourself safe.
The natural world is so breathtakingly beautiful. People
are so weird and awesome and loving and life-giving. Why,