I am in a season of longing.
At 51, with my children in college and beginning post-college life, everything that seemed off-limits to me the last 20 years is rising up ferociously. I have loved family life and love this stage, too—all the coming and going, getting to mentor my young adult children. There is no other way I’d rather spend my time, energy, and money.
But things are changing! I had a pretty dark midlife season a couple years ago. Those of you who read this newsletter may remember my obsession with mortality! That reckoning hasn’t gone away but simply become something else—a desire to fully inhabit the years I have left. And paradoxically, a settling. A lack of urgency. A feeling that life is actually long and can contain my longing. (In my experience, this is what happens when we allow non-clinical melancholy to do its work on us—it becomes something else.)
I have joked with many of you about my 10-tab spreadsheet with categories like contribution, learning, connection, health, adventure, and hobbies. This list is FULL and gets fuller by the day. Each time I go in to add something (most recently, a silent meditation retreat at Spirit Rock, learning how to make focaccia bread, and a Civil Rights tour of the South), it becomes clearer that I have enough for a lifetime. I likely will not have the health, money, and discretionary time to do all of it before I die.
This is when I remind myself: A longing is its own pleasure.
It feels like a delicious gift to want so many things right now. Surely, I will pass through dark valleys many more times in my life, and maybe even very soon. But I have this ballooning list as proof that I am very much alive. I want more time with friends. I want to swim in many more bodies of water. I want to meet some of my spiritual teachers in person. I want to write more poetry, travel to Greece, Croatia, Scandinavia, Japan, Alaska, Oaxaca, Costa Rica, Vietnam, Austin, Nashville, Novia Scotia, and Iona. And I still have many more years of working, putting kids through college, paying bills, and replacing old cars. A longing is its own pleasure.
This time of year, there’s an influencer war going on between whether setting resolutions is good for us or not. The habit-setting business is making a lot of money off this and profiting from our angst, perfectionism, and self-criticism.
My solution to this conundrum is to honor my longings. To take care of the basics (making my own food, sleeping, low screen time, moving my body, meditating, singing, being with friends) so there is room to dream and the bandwidth to realize some of those dreams. The tradeoff is that I live with longing, which is sometimes painful. Sometimes just driving through town is enough to make me cry. I want so many things, including justice, basic human rights for everyone, and the realization of beloved community. And yes, my own happiness and aliveness. It’s hard to work for justice without that.
By now all of you know that I’m leaving for Liberia this week! So many of you have donated to The Hope Project, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. This school is going to be part of my life for a long time, and visiting is one of the things that’s been on my list of longings. Whenever I get to fulfill one of those longings, something rearranges itself in my nervous system. It calms me down at the same time it enlivens me. Life is long and it’s short, and living in that tension is electric.
P.S. On January 29, My colleague Julie Pham and her firm are offering this free goal-setting workshop about what success means to you in 2026. I absolutely love getting Julie’s newsletter and hearing her take on life and work. I’ll bet this is going to be great way to honor your longings.