… but here’s what i didn’t know then, still somehow naive at 35:  everything is an equation. peace in life is a matter of balance and timing, and sometimes you have to quiet your own instinctive zeal and overconfidence to figure out what you actually need. learning How to Be a Human is an endeavor of careful precision. slowness and reflection.

and mistake making.

i think i’d always been a believer that Life is the act of flinging ourselves at the most dramatic, most adventurous, most admirable, most restrictive, most terrifying opportunities we encounter. everything else is killing time. i am not inherently good at understanding the value of moderation.

we left the city because we thought it was making us weak. we were tired of nights consumed by thoughtless premium cable, of how much time we spent walled off from each other by our lap tops. i sneered at the dishwasher and blamed our lack of writing on our easy geography and the lazy complacency of a big apartment. 

we dove toward rugged simplicity and thought it alone would make us rich with fortitude and creativity and purpose. but it wasn’t simple. it was unbearable. completely complicated with unhappiness. dirty and hard and lonely and sleepless. it was too far away from where we needed to be at that point in our lives, too impractical. the distance kept your dad commuting for two and a half or three hours a day. kept me from the comfort of strangers i’d known on walks around the reservoir or down to casbah cafe. don’t ever underestimate how much we need to be a part of humanity, ok? we need each other.

- beenthinking, dear kids  [emphasis mine]