Everything I Need to Know About Life, I Learned in My Kitchen

They said it would come and it did.

We got a good five inches of snow last night which I'm mentally readying myself to get my ass outside and shovel. I love how bright it is outside with new-fallen snow covering everything. It's like the world is glowing and the most ordinary things become, if only for a short time, magical works of beauty.

And then I fuck everything up by marring the perfection with my shoveling. Ah, the impermanence of it all. . .

On a completely different subject, but something I've been thinking a lot about lately. . .I know that people travel the world seeking enlightenment. They go to shrines and ashrams and the like. And I've done my fair share of globe trotting. But so far, no trip has ever been illuminated by the irrefutable clarity of some great life lesson. I seek, but I just don't find.

So, why is it that my most meaningful life moments always seem to take place in my kitchen?

It's where precisely 26 months ago I sat at our old, red linoleum table at the very end of my rope and actually decided that I was not smart enough to pull myself out of that pit. That for once in my life, I needed someone else's help.

And it was in the kitchen again yesterday that it came to me that these past 30 months of indecision, worry and searching have not been for nothing. These painful but also sometimes joyful moments and months weren't just something to get through. They were, in fact, my gift. And I also realized that the answers I've been searching for were there all along, walking beside me. It just wasn't time yet to see them.

At my darkest moment, what I needed to know sat right across from me at that old table. It looked at me, patient to wait, and wondered how long it would take for the light of recognition to come into my eyes.

The light is finally there I think. And like the glow of the newly-fallen snow, it is vibrant and lovely and so, so bright. I am happy to finally see it and surprised by its familiarity. And more than that, it feels like it lights a path in front of me and I think I finally know what it is I'm meant to do.