I am always late for work. There. I've said it. And the frustrating thing is that my lateness isn't caused by traffic or some unpredictable morning disaster. Most of the time, it is entirely my own doing. I wake up and make my coffee. Then I get back into bed, which is right by the window, cross my feet, face the window and slowly sip my coffee. And when I say slowly, I mean slowly. I look at the trees. I watch the birds. I feel the morning sun on my skin. Sometimes I just sit there with my thoughts. I really love these mornings. I've also noticed something else. When I give myself enough time in the morning, my body usually does what it needs to do. A slow morning often leads to a bowel movement, which, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the must-haves of starting my day. And so I find myself wishing for more time. More time to sit. More time to drink my coffee. More time to maybe get outside and do some yoga or mat Pilates on the grass while the sun is stil...
We are obsessed with imagining what we would do if we were told we had only months to live. The bucket lists, the tearful confessions, the reckless adventures, the sudden confessions of love — they are everywhere in books, movies, and online articles. The message is clear: if death were imminent, our lives would transform in an instant. And yet, I have started to wonder: would they? I suspect that, for most people, life would continue much as it always has. Morning would come. Coffee would be poured. We would get dressed, commute, answer emails, check phones, scroll feeds, and repeat the familiar rituals of our days. Work would still demand attention. Laundry would still pile up. Small obligations would quietly persist, demanding their share of our attention. Even when faced with mortality, human life — mundane, ordinary, patterned — is astonishingly resilient. We have been told, so insistently, that our lives are miserable, boring, incomplete, that we are going about living “all wr...