"Relax," I thought. "Nothing makes it harder to relax than telling yourself to relax!" I scolded myself. "Any better ideas, you know-it-all?" I shot back. "Breathe in, breathe out," I tried. "Great, now we are breathing like a machine," I mocked. With every exchange, I felt the knot tighten. I rolled over in bed. "Try thinking of something else," I advised myself. An image of the bathroom sink came to mind. The drain had a knot of its own—water was backing up in the sink. "I really need to get that fixed," I thought with a sigh. I imagined unclogging the drain. Water flowed freely through it. Clean water, soapy water, dirty water. Some of it might be unpleasant, but what mattered was that it kept flowing. And somehow, that image brought me relief. Nobody said it would always be easy or joyful, but perhaps thoughts were like water. They just needed to keep flowing. The knot loosened a little. A few minutes later, I fell asleep.

Had to unclog this one a few times—unpleasant business.

“You are older than ten?” the little girl asked my mom, wide-eyed. “Yes, older than ten,” my mom replied, amused, as she waited to pick me up from preschool. For the little girl, anyone older than ten was really, really old. She didn’t even have enough fingers to count that. Without realizing it, she had already discovered a theme that most of us struggle with for the rest of our lives. Decades feel like frightening reminders of our own ageing and mortality, with one notable exception—twenty. I guess nobody complains about turning twenty. An age that stands for youth, freedom, and energy. Today, this blog turns twenty years old, embodying those same three values for me. A place where I can explore ideas with the open mind of a young person, where I am free from the tyranny of social media mechanics, and where I have the energy to create anything I can imagine in words. A place where I can look at everything with the same wide-eyed wonder as that little girl.

Wonder where the path goes? Only one way to know.