Lately, I’ve felt more acutely than ever that my life hangs by a thread—by a fragile breath, as timid as a wavering drop of dew. It slips away from me, eludes me, whispering its elusive future with every breath I take. And rather than being terrified by my own mortality, I marvel at this world that I am still fortunate enough to breathe, to feel, to live in.
Life has never seemed so precious to me—this time on earth so fleeting, my own mortality now more present than ever. Perhaps it’s the feeling of a turning point, the one that comes with turning fifty, when youth is behind me, along with its ambitions and desires.
Yet I have never loved living more than I do now. Peace—true peace, the kind that is no longer conditioned by anything other than the living—surfaces and dwells in the wind that touches my skin, the clouds stretching across the Provençal sky, and the cries of the magpies. The summits, the peaks, are truly visible now; there’s no longer any need for emotional intensity. The landscape has broken free from the confines of a restless mind; it has spread out all around me, and I can lose myself in it.
The relief of needing nothing more than to simply be.