I tell my friend who feels overwhelmed with her two toddlers. Literal Irish twins both born in the same calendar year, they are a relentless tag-team of unflagging energy. She barely nods before she’s rushing to make sure that the one who just got bopped over his head by the other is okay.

I’m not lying to her. It is a season. Those two won’t be toddlers forever. But the relentless feeling that is life isn’t transitory, and I wonder if we are perhaps doing a disservice to consider intense moments of our lives as seasons to survive, looking forward to the next season that promises more space to breath. But the thing with seasons is that they repeat–cyclical turns. They are temporary but they’ll be back. If we focus on the temporary–as a season of life to just survive to the next one–then we might forget to watch and learn in the place we are. So when that particular situation returns–as seasons do–in a different form, we haven’t brought any growth into it.

So many of us are waiting for our “real” life to start. We are waiting out the seasons we are in, hoping that the next turn of the wheel will bring us the life we imagine we are supposed to have.

I’ve started reminding myself that this is my real life. This is the life I’m living. The path I’ve worn down season after season. And I am trying to keep my eyes and heart open in this day, this week, this semester so that when this stage inevitably does shift, I have gleaned something of value from it that goes beyond mere day to day survival.