Aren't We All In A Constant State of Recovery?
Plus: Celebrate the long drawn out search and our wanderer of the week encourages us to make life an active discovery
It’s Wednesday! Hi :) How are you doing in your little world?
I’m about to welcome home my crew from their first full day of school since last week. We’ve had a series of snow days here, even though we don’t even have an inch on the ground! (We don’t handle snow very well in the PNW.)
This week’s letter is ready for you!
Grab a little cup of something delicious and read about…
why life feels more like a constant state of recovery than any grasping for a final arrival point
how it might be time to just relax into the long, drawn-out search and forget about finding answers
and meet our Wanderer of The Week—journalist and author Maggie Jackson. Her book is a requirement for our digital age…take a peek at a few of my underlines from her book called Uncertain!
So happy you’re here!
I was thinking about my neighbor’s flag the other day, still flying at half-staff since President Jimmy Carter’s death back in December. Every time I see it, something about it makes me oddly happy.
Americans have a reputation for being proud and patriotic—obsessed with displaying the flag, staking our claim, declaring. our. greatness. But after living in a few different countries, I find myself allergic (and becoming more so!) to this we know best attitude that seems to permeate our American culture.
So when I see a flag brought down from its bold, unwavering stance, it feels like an exhale. Like we’ve surrendered, just a little, to our own frailties. Like we’ve settled into our place beside other nations rather than towering above them.
I know half-staff signals a national tragedy or a death, but I also sense a deeper meaning—it’s an acknowledgment of whispered grief, a collective pause, a rare moment of humility.
And it makes me wonder: why don’t we just leave them at half-staff all the time?
Because, honestly, there’s always something, isn’t there? Something to grieve, something to sit with, something breaking or unraveling—whether in America or in our own lives.
These days, it feels like the world rewards being loud, certain, and opinionated. The national mood—and even our personal identities— demand a high-flying, in-your-face kind of energy. It’s not sustainable. Not for long. At least for me. I do much better lingering in the middle, in that softer, ambiguous space.
Because life, at its core, is a constant recovery process. Grief, loss, uncertainty, and change are woven into our daily existence.
And maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe those waves of sorrow and surrender keep us from floating too far out into the sea of our own blind ambition. They tether us to what’s real. To each other.
A half-mast human isn’t obsessed with clambering over people to reach the top. They aren’t clinging to black-and-white thinking or luring others in with extreme, pushy beliefs. Instead, they exist in the soft, gooey, sweet center of life—the place where curiosity outweighs certainty, where connection dispels the need for conquest.
There’s no conquering spirit here. Just a relishing in our shared humanity, a willingness to explore the delicious in-between. We are wanderers, our flags happily rippling half-staff.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
Have you celebrated your not-figured-out life today? It’s time!
Be curious about…what you wish you had answers for right now?
What would it look like, better yet, how would it feel to drop all the strict timelines, abandon the drive to have everything solved and tied up with a bow?
You are here to enjoy the long, drawn-out search, revel in the mystery, and expectantly travel the millions of pathways stretching out before you!
I’ve been diving into journalist Maggie Jackson’s book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. In my most recent chapter, she discusses our tendency, especially now in our digital information overload age, to overestimate how much we actually know— the way we mindlessly accept first results as correct, and forget to walk through this internet world with the fresh eyes of a fact checker.
Oftentimes, we do the very opposite, whether in life or online “research.” We crave the short, quick answers (so Google gives it to us!), we don’t cross-check, venture into the unknown, or challenge our own initial assumptions.
Jackson writes,
“Searching and seeking are the human condition. But how we do so matters. In the virtual realm, we seem to lose the ability to sense that we don’t know, the starting point of discernment.”
We’ve all but forsaken the skill of deep learning and critical, creative thinking. We’re lazy users of the internet licking up whatever we find at the tips of our fingers as Truth. In our everyday life, we want the victory of arrival without ever wandering through the weeds.
As Jackson warns us, “Unless we honor the discomfiting work of not-knowing, we squander the potential of a perceptive mind.”
I’ll end with a favorite line from the chapter,
“By treating broken expectations as chances to investigate possibilities within the dynamic now, curious people free themselves of the entrancement with outcome that hobbles our capacities for discernment. They trade paralyzing angst for engagement and wonder. This is how we can turn life itself into a time of active discovery.”
Stay tuned tomorrow for another audio recommendation from yours truly. And as always, thank you for reading and joining me here in this space where we can talk heart-to-heart about all kinds of interesting ideas.
Keep wandering friends! It’s the best way to move through this crazy world!
