More than anything else, we have to imagine a different kind of life, a different way of living. We have to reject the shiny, shallow future that will never come, and locate ourselves in the current, flawed moment. Despite what we’ve been taught, we are neither eternally blessed nor eternally damned. We are blessed and damned and everything in between. Instead of toggling between victory and defeat, we have to learn to live in the middle, in the gray area, where a real life can unfold on its own time. We have to breathe in reality instead of distracting ourselves around the clock. We have to open our eyes and our hearts to each other. We have to connect with what already is, who we already are, what we already have. We want too much. We don’t need that much to be happy. We can change ourselves, and our world, in part by returning to that simple truth, repeatedly. We have to imagine finally feeling satisfied.

From What If This Were Enough? (xvi)
Doubleday, 2018

Read-alikes:

• Brene Brown, Atlas of the Heart
• Beth Ann Fennelly, Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs
• Megan Stielstra, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life