To put love at the heart of every consideration is the simplest thing and often the hardest thing to remember, but I believe it is the only way forward. Love is the only signpost on any path worth following. It’s the answer to every question. Every decision can be made more easily if I try to feel which one will serve what I love most. Nothing is worth doing if it isn’t in the service of what is loved. When everything else falls apart, love is the only thing left standing. It’s only thing that is real.

The road I live on is a gravel road that, after a harsh winter of more precipitation than has fallen for 20 years in this area, has been pock marked for months with deep ridges, very difficult to navigate. Tonight as I drove home the road was evened out, with a thick layer of new gravel on it. I really felt the love in that. It seemed like everything that leads to this happening is, at the root, made of love.

I have really been thinking about this, and feeling it. It is hard to write about it without it sounding cliché, and it is cliché, but this simple idea may be the distillation of everything I have learned in my 58, almost 59 years. And I want to keep the realizations of it at the center of my next 58 or 59 years.