The problem with our lives is that we cannot solve them. We can only live them.

Kate Bowler in “We can’t upgrade our lives. We can only live them.“

My struggle to upgrade my life is a long tale. It started long before I read self-help books, thought about wellness, yoga, and running, and invested time and energy in training, practice, and prayer. Maybe it started in my confirmation class, when I was in 7th grade when I learned that God is Love? Maybe it was when I was diagnosed with Turner syndrome my sophomore year of high school. Maybe it was in religion class my senior year where I was taught to consider heaven as living in the presence of God? Maybe it started when the main curtain caught on fire during a performance I directed during my brief-dream-job-experience as a high school drama teacher? Maybe it was when I received a Ph.D. studying wide-awakeness, an existential phenomenological concept that explores the nature of human experience? (That all happened before I turned 30, 20 years ago.) Being still and knowing what I know now, Bowler is more right than I can explain. We can’t upgrade our lives. We can not solve them. We can only live them.

There is a tension between my seeker’s curious heart, my researcher’s need for informed opinion, and my existentialist’s belief that we are all the sum of our experiences. My life has been an intimate, vulnerable, crushing, exhilarating experiment in upgrading. As I see it, upgrading looks like practice, acceptance, peace, and love. It is never perfect or done. It is more like breath or seasons or tides. When I think of all the diets, races, jobs, relationships, … my head spins. That is the beautiful part. That is the part that defies the need to explain, answer or solve. That is where wide awake-ness enters in. That is real love.