Sometimes, when you’re looking for something for so long, and it comes, it cannot possibly live up to what you’ve made it out to be. Then, there are other times. You’ve been looking for something for so long, and you find it; it happens, and it’s more incredible than you could have possibly imagined. Finally, a third moment. The one when you’re not really looking. It feels like they find you. The moments when life’s melody matches the song in your heart perfectly.
I was recently gifted one of these on an unexpected trip to Spain. Something had been brewing, marinating, waiting patiently year after year until I could receive it, and there, in a collection of seemingly tiny, unassuming moments, I entered the second act, and a chance to savor The Second Fig.
For many years, I’d done the things. All the things one is ‘supposed’ to do. Work hard. Be serious. Achieve things, work harder, rinse and repeat. I did this and did it well. Life on this cycle, as many of you might know, moves fast - running headfirst into the person we think we should be. As time passed, I knew I was missing something, but it actually wasn’t what I thought. Over the years, I’d been given sign after sign after sign about what’s important – losing loved ones, a near-death experience myself, and on. Through most of it, I could quote what I knew to be important, but my actions couldn’t be further from it, or further from or the deeper, truer truth that waited in deeper waters.
It turns out it wasn’t about missing big events, birthdays, or anything like that. I was missing something more subtle, yet more powerful, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. And oh boy, did I try: every yoga class, meditation, wellness this, optimization that, book, podcast, mantra, spirulina, you name it, I’ve done it. I could just find it, figure it out, be enough, then I would reach some undefined point, and there it would be. Whatever it was.
It was, of course, right under my nose, quite literally. I had not only found it, but I’d created it and completely surrounded myself with it - seeds planted from an insatiable curiosity, a creativity, and a lifelong search for joy. The life I’d worked hard to build was filled with exquisite moments. Singular, simple, often whisper-esce moments that had the magic, the sweetness, the richness I was looking for. Now, after one hell of a first act, I’ve realized it all comes down to moments - that allow us to connect to ourselves, to each other, and to nature. A collection of wildly simple, sometimes seemingly benign moments. That’s where the good stuff lives.
The moments when a great book simultaneously overwhelms you with emotion and leaves you feeling seen when you turn the last page. Morning light on the vegetable garden. The thump on the bottom of a homemade loaf of bread, fresh from the oven, before it meets its co-conspirators: butter and salt. The good butter. The best butter. A winter afternoon, silently reading library books on the couch next to your partner, sharing an overdue sweetness that could never be stated. Or a surprise lunch that appears seemingly out of nowhere, when an unassuming entryway becomes the portal to an afternoon you’ll never forget.
When your heart smiles, and life generously smiles back. The moments that stop us in our tracks. Remind us to breathe more easily from the place and person that we already are. Notice that the most valuable things in life often come in the smallest packages, in whispers, and often when you stop looking (usually following long bouts of trying to control everything and beating your head against the wall, but who’s counting).
These moments can feel like gold, or, more aptly, an exquisite Sunday lunch that exchanges time for joy, too good not to share, so here goes.
Maybe you’ll come along for the ride or just pop in from time to time. And maybe, just maybe, a story or poem you find might be the smallest reminder that despite the mad, mad, mad, mad world we find ourselves in, life is still full of sweetness and even a bit of magic if we’re willing to see it.
The Second Fig is the adventure of saying yes to showing up for the minute moments that make life magnanimous. It’s for the people, places, adventures, and tiny moments that smile at us, and remembering it’s okay to smile back.
So Spain? Check out Spain: The Twenty-Year Seed to find out what was waiting for me again.