Yesterday I sent an old friend a happy birthday text, capping off a week where we’d texted back and forth after far too long. I’d sent her an article about a clothing store whose name we used to make fun of as exchange students in France. We reflected on how we couldn’t believe how many years had passed. I commented that I am probably still pretty much occupying that same frame of mind. To this day I wonder, what the heck kind of name is Naf Naf for a store??

And it’s true; I really do feel like I formed up around the age of 16. During that period I spent so much time occupying a half-curious, half-dreamlike state of being. “You’re sitting there and it looks like you’re about to reach nirvana,” is what my friend Izzy once said to me while I was sitting in the main courtyard of the lyceé, disengaged from whatever the conversation was at hand. That year I read a lot of English language classics in lieu of speaking French, memorizing a Shakespeare soliloquy so I could win a 2000F bet from that friend I’d be texting decades later. She wound up being a principal in the Bronx. I’m doing whatever it is that I am not doing. These days we converse as adults, yet we talk to each other like we are kids. Age 16 for me had a lot going on and I’m glad she was a part of it.

And maybe it’s not a common thing, but I unscientifically assume that most of us kind of firm up around a certain period of time. For better or for worse, mentally that space becomes a sort of reference point for everything else that follows. Sometimes I imagine that we are all ivy plants who get to climb and cling in every which way—and it all originates from whatever that place was where we first began to anchor and form a thick base.   

Like back then, I still tend to walk around in the morning and listen to the sounds of a quiet city. Watch the sunrise paint the tops of trees and buildings tangerine. As a non-participant, observe those humans who are already fully dressed and in motion— on their way to obligations that I feel fortunate to have been exempted from on this particular day. These are the balancing moments that I have appreciated since I was a kid. These flashes of time cost nothing but cannot be taken for granted, either. 

As I walk and think about it now, I do recognize that there are big differences between how I am now and how I was as a forming 16-year-old self. Perspective tends to change like offshoots of unbridled vines of ivy. Life will take you anywhere so long as you are willing to catch a hold and keep moving. I can feel that there is a difference in the density of thought that once came from a teenager walking around, and now what is resident as an adult.  The simplicity of just stepping outside for some head-clearing now comes accompanied by so much more. You carry around all kinds of stuff that is a by-product of living: what you took on but did not quite pan out how you imagined it might have when you started. Or maybe what has transpired but you’re still happy to reflect upon it. The feeling in your hip that you’re starting to suspect is an early indicator of arthritis. Whether you realize it or not, as you move throughout the world, you’re constantly picking stuff up rather than letting things go. 

While on my circuitous walk through the city, I passed a beloved water fountain that is decorated by frogs. It always makes me smile, and the nearby architecture is just as fascinating. As I left the fountain, my eye caught on an unusual deep purple that was located just to my right. It was a solitary bouquet of flowers. My eyes flicked up to the ornate iron gate and then my heart dropped. It was the embassy of Morocco. 

A card attached to the flowers was addressed to the people of Morocco. In my early morning departure, I hadn’t even recalled the events of the day before. The earthquake. The breathtaking loss of life in an ornate and storied place that was constructed on community and culture—years before seismic risk became an enduring architectural consideration.  Like so many others in the world, I thought back to the times I had shared memories with friends in that country— the Marrakesh half marathon, the Atlas Mountains Trail des Cèdres, being charmed (but not in a creepy way) by a Casablanca taxi driver. Nothing like flowers serving as a modest but powerful token of love offered to an entire group of people to jolt you back to baseline. 

I think it’s important to maintain a healthy mix of what serves us from our past with what we’ve got going on today in our lives. The challenges and hardships of the present call for a strong foundation that we know we can rely upon as individuals—whether it be through the networks of people we love, our belief system, or maybe the lessons that we first learned that are tried and true. No one of us stretched our lives out in exactly the same way, and I think it is important to honor and be frequently reminded of that. It’s what makes us all get through our days with more ease, as a collective. 

So this morning I’m just thinking about how I’m grateful to have been able to send out birthday greetings to someone who has known me for a good, long while. Since I was that 16-year-old kid. I’m also grateful for all the back-and-forth voice and text conversations that I’ve had this week following points of tragedy. Earthquake and beyond. I might enjoy walks where I can wade through the tides of my own mind, but I remember that I’ve made room for so much other stuff, and all of that makes for really beautiful days.