Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.

-Lao Tzu

After my run today, I stripped off my t-shirt and socks and jumped in the pool. I floated lazily, watching the rainbows reflecting off the tile. The run left me calm and quiet, reluctant to go back inside where I knew I would start thinking about the day ahead. So to postpone that moment, I jumped in the pool.

I love running down the beach in East Coast Park early on a weekend morning. I’ve always loved morning runs. The sun looks fresh and new, sparkly, not yet limp and dull, hanging heavy with the humidity that will roll in as the day grows later. I love how the sun turns green leaves a bright yellow. The breeze that picks up on the water every morning and afternoon is a pleasure to run in; it brings the smell of salt that reminds me of childhood summers in South Carolina with sand castles, the stickiness of sunscreen, and eating my cheese and lettuce sandwich in the water.

Today I passed by a huge tree that had grown sideways, the trunk halfway between parallel and perpendicular to the ground. Some of the branches had rooted themselves to the earth, too, and the tree created a fort, an igloo-shaped dome of branches and leaves. I stopped my watch and stepped inside, wishing immediately for a blanket, book, and 20 years ago when my sister and I would have happily made ourselves a home in there and passed the day away. We loved secret spaces to curl up with a story. I still do.

Catching rainbows in the pool, I realized that I felt perfectly content. Running is the time of the day where I let my mind drift wherever it wants to go. Increasingly, my mind has found tranquility. I’ve been spending more time feeling calm, more time experiencing equanimity. I have noticed a change in my behavior and general outlook. Some of this might come from practicing meditation, but I think more of it comes from feeling comfortable with myself as a person. Comfortable being wherever I am, with whoever I’m with, and doing whatever I’m doing. This is a new feeling that I’m slowly uncovering; it’s fragile but full of possibility. It has been a long time (my best guess is fall of 2015) since I’ve felt that who I am and who I want to be might just match.

It’s a peculiar thing to realize.

Shortly after ringing in 2018, a friend and I were messaging about the holidays and providing general life updates. I mentioned that one of my hopes for this year was to fall in love again. He wished me luck with that pursuit and we moved on to discuss more normal things like education, Donald Trump, and how to take proper care of plants.

I haven’t fallen in love, but it’s been a while since I’ve believed that I can. Coming back to that state of being has been a journey, a journey that I didn’t really know I was on. And now that I can see it, I’m happy to be where I am. What has been has been, what will be will be. This is what I’m doing today. And that is enough.

In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go? -Buddha