On making the hard parts of life feel easy.

It’s a Monday on Nantucket, and I’m running down the sidewalk of Easy Street while my friend Emily waits for me at the corner in front of a quaint, grey-shingled potato chip store. The bottom of my flip flops are slap-slapping on the cobblestones as I leap out of the path of yet another oncoming Jeep Wrangler.

I’ve run three blocks down Easy Street, trying to get a decent picture of at least one of the street signs. The street sign itself is quaint, charming. It sticks straight out of a thicket of hydrangea bushes.

I am coming up empty handed, my attempts lack the ease— hah— of the artful, sun-dappled photos of Nantucket that fill Pinterest.

“It’s okay,” I tell Emily, plodding back to her, the thwack thwack of my flip flops announcing my arrival before I make it the sidewalk next to her. “I think I’ve got what I need.”

It’s the idea of Easy Street, not the actual physical location. I’m interested in the idea of an Easy Street more than this Easy Street, you see: the concept that there can be an actual road you choose to take. The idea that you can simply… pick an easier path through life.

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