Letters Home #38 💌

Writing from: Banff, Alberta

I think we silently agreed at that moment that any words that came after would be forced through the narrow lens of a perspective gained when someone is fighting for their life.

Dear Ones —

Tears sting my eyes this afternoon as I sit down to write to you. They are mostly joyful, but life has this way of serving us a cocktail of emotions at any given moment. Today it feels like gratitude, joy, worry, and sadness, which loops me right back to gratitude.

It’s been the kind of week that shakes your very foundation and leaves you wondering what’s actually important and how you want to move in the world.

Recently I’ve been thinking about problems. Life presents us with many opportunities, every day, to initiate ideas or actions that may come back to us with problems we’ll need to face or fix. Life also throws us problems — sometimes big ones — that we don’t choose. We’re forced to catch and hold them, maybe even let them envelop or overtake us for a time.

Let’s be clear: I don’t think we’re meant to live problem-free. We simply couldn’t have a meaningful experience without some conflict or adversity; our growth depends on it. But what I’ve been noticing is that I want to be careful about the problems I choose. By “choose” I don’t mean to create drama on purpose; rather it’s a practical awareness of how life works, a kind of cause and effect. I can choose my problems, for instance, by whom I allow into my circle of trust, which emails I send about what and to whom, the commitments I make, and the goals I set. But when I put something out there, it may come back to me with some flies in the ointment. It’s inevitable because we’re human.

Right now, in light of the problems I cannot choose — a predicament a few of my loved ones find themselves in at the moment — I am putting everything under the microscope.

Let me explain why.