“Lucky me, too.”
Most mornings, before the noise of the world has a chance to settle in, I sit with a warm cup in hand and have quiet conversations with a circle of old companions—Thich Nhat Hanh, Ryōkan, Lao Tzu, the psalmist, Thomas Merton, Hanshan, Danna Faulds, and other poets and mystics who have become like soul-friends over the years.
They don’t seem to mind if my mind is restless or my heart heavy. They meet me exactly where I am—patient, faithful, kind.
When my despair for the world grows—and lately, it grows more often than I’d like—when headlines overwhelm and the din of the world feels relentless, I grumble to anyone nearby or pour myself a glass of Shiraz and sit for a long while on the front porch.
Now and then, I remember to set my meditation timer for 20 minutes and just sit. Not to achieve anything—not enlightenment or transcendence—but simply to stop. To breathe. To re-center.
There are days I long to disappear into the quiet, to slip away and join Ryōkan in his humble mountain hut. He once wrote, “My life is like an old run-down hermitage—poor, simple, quiet.”
Yes, Ryōkan. That’s the kind of life I’ve reached for again and again—sometimes clumsily, sometimes with clarity. I’ve left one world in search of another, a quieter world, where “the only conversation is the wind blowing through the pines.”
That longing has never quite left me. I’ve carried it most of my life—a deep yearning for stillness, for the gentle hush of presence, for a simpler, slower way of being. And when I touch it, even briefly, I find I’m more grounded, more tender, more whole. I become a better partner, a more patient father, a truer friend.
Wendell Berry speaks to this sacred return when he writes:
“I come into the peace of wild things…
I come into the presence of still water…
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
Oh Ryōkan, show me again how to find that still water—that quiet life tucked beneath the rush.
And Wendell, thank you for the reminder that it’s never too far away.
Even in this imperfect life—this cluttered house, this aching world—I catch glimpses.
And when I do, I whisper, “Lucky you.”
And then, with a smile and a full heart, I add, “Lucky me, too.”
