Twenty Summers

My friend Libby and I talk a lot. Almost daily when schedules allow, and yet we never seem to run out of things to share, discuss, or help each other through. I am so grateful for our 10+ year friendship and our daily check-ins.

One topic that surfaces often in our conversations is time. Or more accurately, the time we theoretically have. This is not meant to sound melodramatic. It’s actually much more optimistic, an invitation to become more aware of this time, this day, this moment, and to live it intentionally, fully, expansively, with gratitude. Which I think inspires me (and Libby, in her own beautiful way) to say “hell yes” to a lot of adventures and opportunities that become available.

It is our mutual love of travel, adventure and learning new things that aligns Libby and I, and provides a regular thru-line in many of our conversations. The shared value of getting outside of one’s comfort zones, to experience new ways of seeing and doing. This feels like an incredibly valuable & essential use of the time we have.

I know this may also sound indulgent, and I recognize the ability to “go” is a privilege not everyone has access to (or interest in), but for me it has become essential. Frankly speaking, I have no business doing half the amazing shit I say yes to. Yet I continue to choose experience over many of the perhaps more conventional markers of security simply because that’s the life I choose to be living.

“Everything you say yes to means you’re saying no to something else.” - Ryan Holiday

This is a concept rooted in Stoic philosophy (particularly the writings of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca) about protecting your time and ruthlessly eliminating the inessential. Conversely, every time you say “no” to the inessential, you get a double benefit. You eliminate the distraction, and you give yourself a powerful “yes” to the things that truly matter to your purpose and well being. - Ryan Holiday

After an exhaustive amount of self-reflection over the years, I’m fully aware of the many lives I’ve already lived and truly grateful for each of those lived experiences. I’ve done the marriage thing (twice actually), the family, had the child (my heart and soul), bought the houses, and had the thirty-plus-year corporate career.

Every one of those chapters was essential to my growth and exactly where I needed to be in the different phases of my life. The different versions of who I’ve been.

But now? Divorced, with a grown child living on his own, renting instead of owning, surrounded by a beautiful community of friends, and doing work that allows for flexibility and prioritizes living, not simply doing.

My plate isn't empty; it's simply made room for something different. The work of building a life, raising a child, and sustaining a long career has given way to something else: a deep hunger for discovery. What nourishes me now are new places, new people, and experiences that stretch my heart, broaden my perspective, and remind me what it means to be fully alive.

And admittedly, the question I get asked (or can usually sense as the bubble thought hovering over an curious friend’s head) is:

“How on earth can you afford to live like this and go to all these places?”

My response? How can I afford not to? Honestly, truth be told, I’m amazed I pull it off half the time. But because I carry such a strong intention around going, seeing and experiencing, things somehow tend to work out. Not always in the way I imagine, but almost always in the way I needed.

And when they don’t, I take it as a nod from the universe, as if saying to me:

“Slow your jets, girl. Not this. Not now.”

Which leads me to this moment.

Perhaps it's the cumulative effect of a lifetime of "life-ing." Or the recent Super New Moon in Gemini, intensified by a week in Joshua Tree, a place that has an extraordinary ability to peel back the layers and invite radical transparency. Or perhaps it's something else entirely. Regardless, a moment of pause and perspective has found me and is requiring my full attention.

As I sit down to write with a fresh cup of pour-over coffee, I decide to create a manifestation list.

For the next 30 days (likely more), I am committing to documenting daily, with pure intentionality, what I am grateful for and clearly identifying the life I am creating for myself now. Not what I want to create, the one I am already creating - that distinction is an essential detail I am told. To imagine it as if it is already happening.

I am calling the list:

And I’ll tell you what, something about adding the words My Twenty Summers feels emotionally charged to me. It’s like the weight of my intentions is more finite. Important and purposeful.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never liked the question posed in those ubiquitous job interviews:

“What do you see yourself doing in 10 years?”

The fuck if I know? - was the thought that usually floated through my brain.

Honestly, I have never known how to answer that question. Ten years has always felt too abstract, too dependent on variables I can’t possibly predict. It seems like every major turning point in my life arrived unannounced.

Twenty Summers, on the other hand, feels somehow, radically different.

It feels poetic and inspiring, but there’s also an undeniable urgency running through it.

Like the clock is gently tapping me on the shoulder and saying: let’s get moving. (that’s full Roadrunner energy for me).

I don’t feel like I have what once felt like ‘forever’ in front of me anymore.

Suddenly, the future doesn’t feel like a distant horizon. It’s close enough to touch now and important enough to shape intentionally, even with all the variables I can’t possibly predict.

And so, my friends, this is why I go. No, more accurately, this is why I HAVE to go.

Go to new places. Have new experiences. Meet new people. Learn new ways of being and doing. Expand my world, my mind, and my heart to feel more inclusive of this life and living that we get the extreme privilege of experiencing.

“What if we spent more time and energy coming up with solutions for following our dreams rather than excuses not to?” I wondered.

We are all here to learn through experience and each other. To figure out what and who aligns with us, what needs course correcting, what our nervous system longs for, and what throws it into a tailspin. We are learning what we love, who we love enough to share this one wild and precious life with, and how to love—ourselves and others—with our whole hearts. We have an entire lifetime to learn these things, and absolutely no idea how long that lifetime will be.

So do the thing now.

“Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.” - Osho

If not now, when?!

THE SUMMER DAY

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

- Mary Oliver