All of It

I keep thinking about how eighteen is supposed to feel like something. Like you wake up that morning and you’re different. You probably aren’t. It’s just another day, except now you can sign things.

What actually matters is what you’ve already done. Real things. Actual accomplishments. Don’t spend energy regretting what you haven’t done yet. You’ve got a family that cares about you—genuinely—and that’s a real advantage in life. Just go forward with actual confidence that things might work out.

There’s a Zen teacher, Dogen Eihei, who said something that I keep thinking about. He said everything that happens to you is your life. Not the version you planned for, not the parts that worked out the way you wanted. All of it. Day and night, whatever comes at you, that’s the whole thing. And the point isn’t to reshape your life to fit the circumstances—you take the circumstances and you build something whole out of them. You use your actual life force to make it all fit together. You put things where they’re supposed to go.

Even when it gets dark, when the sky looks wrong and nothing seems right, there are people thinking about you. People who’ll show up for you no matter what. I’m one of them.

All my love.