To live as we say “in the now” has been my aim for a while.

I’m an exceedingly ready person, and it’s one of the reasons I’m so physically active. To trick myself out of my head, I’ve spent my life following open roads, mountains, never-ending travel, and daily doses of physical exertion. “Go feet go,” as it were.

I’ve sought out many teachers, too, in search of this allusive presence. Taoism. Abraham Hicks. Neville Goddard. Nick Breau. And yet no human teacher compares to life itself, as it unfolds so surprisingly.

To fall in love amidst complex mid-life circumstances has been quite the test of this sprung-from-life-education. On paper, none of this is rational. I’m 41, he’s 60. We have four kids between us, we live on two different continents, and yes, we are both married, even. We have lives with people who we love and care about deeply. We want the best for all, and the way to make all this work is beyond brains.

My time with Mikael @explorerglobal is beyond any doubt the lesson in presence that I need right now. Simply, everything can wait. Writing can wait, photos can wait, and the effluent self-expression I’m addicted to, can surely wait. What’s here is this rare thing, a person who needs no convincing of who I am and why I’m worthy of love.

Last night, I awoke from sleep and I cried a good cry in the bathroom, sudden and overwhelming, and had to be released. I’ve been trying to show and tell for a long time of my worthiness to be seen and heard. Personal adventures, writings, travels, big dreams, and experimental actions, this is surely me, but none of it brings me closer to a self-acceptance that I’m learning from Mikael (a big time explorer, single father, successful at living differently) with 20 years more life to have grounded him. He needs the warmth I’m so capable of giving. Not what I do (though he’s enthralled by it), what I’ve made (our collaborative potential aside), but who I am, my ways, and how I love. And to be loved for something as automatic as that, is the gift of this relationship for me.

“We could be dead tomorrow,” he says. Though I’d say it with a bit more erudite philosophy, he’s not wrong.

Universe, figure this one out!

Photocopyright: Hannah Pierce-Carlson