Enough days without a goal in sight, enough sitting around idly, enough chatting about nothing with everyone I meet. I must begin my life again tomorrow—the time for vacation is over. For a good reason, too. A life that is always on holiday is no life at all. Everything must ebb and flow like waves under the red sun in the evening. Stability is a myth, and to lie down and do nothing each day is as terrible as never stopping at all. All extremes burn those who reach them; to stay in the middle is a careful balancing act. It is also a virtue to cultivate. The good news is that we get to try every day.
At the end of the day, I sit here, still baffled by the fact—as I have been for years now—that we can be in one place when we begin a day and entirely another by the time it ends. It may seem simple, of course, given that the plane was brimming today, as they always are, but it is still a marvel and one that is not as old as one might think. It is a novelty in the history of this species to have the dust from two places with hundreds of miles between them gather on the same shoe in the span of one day. But all this is possible because the world works. Despite all its problems and errors, it works. For all the issues we have yet to solve, we have solved twice as many, and it was only possible because some people did balance it out: to work and to wonder in equal parts.
A puppy sleeps about twenty hours daily and runs and pants for four. A person has no such liberty. We must find something we are good at or at least can do and then do it, so the world works. Most people I meet see this as some sort of burden. I see it as a privilege. All our contribution is a walk on the tightrope we must learn to do daily. Most of it is some sort of work; the rest is, well, rest.