I’VE BEEN going on a walk every night at sunset. That hour of dusk makes the world okay. I hear one encouraging song. Pass one smiling face. Feel the rush of cold that instills me with life, and in that moment, I know I’m protected.

I’ve been needing these walks to wake me up, get me out of my head and think bigger. These past couple of weeks have felt difficult. How are you feeling lately?

Are you feeling discouraged, confused, lost? Then you’re human, too. The good news is this too shall pass, and we’ll be better for it.

I’m still dancing through the streets, the birds are still flying and the moon’s still shining. Are you? I hope so; we can’t let life get to us.

Looking up, it’s like I can touch the moon in a sea of dusty blue. My problems seem small when I look up to you. As hard as it gets, I’ll never lose faith — in myself, in life, in the beauty of our world.

All it takes is a walk at dusk to set my heart on fire. Alone, I amble through the park, beneath the trees and sky.

It’s all lit up and empty save for wanderers like me and I wonder what they’re thinking, what we could share if our eyes could speak. The daily pain fades. Trivialities crumble. Only love remains.

What seems so important now means nothing in the end. Slow down. Breathe. Take a day to be.

How lovely are the faces, laughing in the restaurants. The rich smell of firewood burning in the air. I inhale deeply and am carried to a memory.

Nobody’s got it easy. But we’re built to walk tall. I’m here. I’m alive. Sometimes I feel so lost until I see the world from another’s eyes.

I see you feel the same. I guess that’s how we’re supposed to feel, yet we’re lost together, so what is there to find but a friend in trying times?

You’re not trying to find yourself — you know who you are. That’s becoming more clear. Think about the kid you were and take some measured steps from there. You’re growing, and you’re contending with that, and maybe it doesn’t make sense right now.

That’s okay.

If you strive to live a meaningful life, there’s gonna be pain, difficulty, challenges. That’s just part of the deal.

Everybody who’s gone on to live an exceptional life has endured such a season of hardship in one way or another, for it’s a rare person who can truly appreciate the light without understanding the weight of darkness.

I’ve made the commitment to telling my story, what it’s like not just on the other side of the fire, but dancing in the flames. So here I am, dancing, hurting, laughing, persisting.

I don’t have the answers. I don’t know exactly what to do.

But instead of looking back once I make it through, I’ll share the advice to myself as I soldier on beside you:

Just continue.

The way we retain our spirit and our fire and our love through the difficult times forges who we’ll be once we break free. Life to me isn’t meant to be this cookie cutter, middle of the road experience — not too bad, but not too good, either.

Life is meaningful because of the ups and the downs. That means it’s real. Passionate. Aglow.

wrote the American philosopher and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Looking back it will all make sense. So for now we must expand our perspective, release the weight, breathe.

The day is for doing, dusk for being — and like the day which passes calmly into night, time is our friend.

“Your task as a student of human nature is to widen your relationship to time as much as possible, and slow it down,” writes the great modern writer Robert Greene in ​The Laws of Human Nature.​

“Each stage in life has its advantages — those of youth are most obvious, but with age comes greater perspective. Aging does not frighten you. Death is equally your friend. Awareness that a year from now this current problem you are experiencing will hardly seem so important will help you lower your anxiety and adjust your priorities.”

If the road is dark, your soul must light the way. Just keep taking steps. Keep going.

Must we always do continually without the chance to be, for what is being without doing?

I think it’s just living.

It feels like I can’t let myself just live. I feel pressure from the people I aspire to be like to work harder, do more — if you want to be more. I think their life is what I want.

Is it?

Perhaps the lives we think are so perfect, so ideal, are not all they’re meant to be, either. Nobody has it easy.

We’re all battling for the success, the relationship, the body we think we want, yet the life we so badly desire doesn’t magically make the pain of being human go away. We want what we don’t have. It’s in our DNA.

Getting what we thought would make us happy rarely satisfies us the way we imagine. In the words of the French polymath Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais:

It’s the incremental progress toward a goal that brings fulfillment, not crossing the finish line. What that means is we need something to climb for.

Still, it doesn’t need to happen now.

If right now we’re struggling, then it’s meant to be, for there’s something to learn here where we are that we’ll need for the next level of our journey.

In the uncertainty lies the friction for growth; the pain calls forth strength we never knew we had.

In the journey are the days, and in the days are moments of presence — for presence is all that really matters in the end — not where we arrive, but how we appreciate the steps it took to get there.

The rain patters on the canvas above, and it feels like I need nothing more to be happy but my journal and book, fresh and curious, tucked into the shelter of a tucked-away coffee shop. I wish life could always be this simple.

Maybe it can be.

Pieces of me drip away, dripping like a ceasing rain.

I can breathe again, feel again, speak again with truth instead of sorrow.

A day like today fills me with passion — and that’s what life may be when in the pursuit of dreams, no restraint, no regret, no longing for a life not lead, and even if the end results in failure, the path would be worth it for days like today.

I find the space to take a day, put my journal and book and bandana in my leather bag and set out into the rain without a plan.

I find myself here, exactly where I’m meant to be, tucked beneath an awning in a downtown Osaka alley, content beneath the glow of yellow lights.

A blue-gray like the deep sea fills the night and the road before me, the puddle below me dripping, dripping, black and still like a pond in a valley; once again I feel it, my heart glowing red, present and warm and inside me like coals in a flame.