Dear reader,
I remember thinking as a child that life must get easier at some point, right? I haven’t experienced that it has — been going THROUGH IT for years and years!! Have you?
Cue Adele’s “they say that time’s supposed to heal ya…”
As I near quarter-life, our fig tree is nearing the end of its harvest for this year’s summer season. This tree has been on Earth for about the same amount of time as me. And its prolific output has only been in the last five years or so, during which I’ve gotten to pick some baskets full of ripe figs.
Sweet, taut, mushy, fibrous, a flower grown inwards, sure of itself. And the fruit has never tasted better than it does today.
I gaze at the tree in wonder thinking about how it is never ruminating or plotting about making an orange, a lemon, or an apple. It is made for fig-making, for flowers blooming inward, that’s what it knows, and that’s what it does. And in its inward-blossoming, it creates a naturally beautiful outward spectacle for us to be in awe of, especially in the summertime.
The Obamas and Anne Hathaway are some people who have been inspiring me a little extra lately. They’ve managed to do some of the most meaningful work (in impact and volume) of their lives as they’ve gotten older. The Obama Presidential Center for the community. Five era-defining and genre-defying films in a year.
May the most prolific days and years of your life be ahead of you, and even if it never gets easier, may your capacity expand to exceed the challenges. And may the good times not only be a FIGment of your imagination, may they be realized. May they be filled with the fruit that only you can make. May you give yourself the time, because no one and nothing else will.
As the World Cup comes to its end this weekend, I hope we as a human race can keep the joy that abounded during the tournament in our lives and communities all the days of our lives, especially when it’s peak hard.
I see that joy and hardship grow from the same pitch, the same turf.
May we make joy the goal, relentlessly. That’s the kind of goalkeeper I want to be.
With much love & to going beyond the surface,
Anjali