Buying Peace

 Driving in to my office yesterday, I picked a playlist at random.  Some Spotify-created summer rewind playlist. 

It was all sad songs, angry songs, songs about resilience.  Songs about heart break, divorce, loss, and recovery.  The occasional bop from a Disney movie.  

It took me about half of my 30 minute drive to figure out what summer this playlist was from, and pinpoint the emotional state I was in that summer.  And then, dots connected, the songs spent the rest f my drive taking my body back to that time.  I started to feel the music resurrect the anxiety in my muscles, the sadness and betrayal in my bones.  I felt the way I gripped the same steering wheel five years earlier, when everything was entirely different.  And then I did the most important thing.

I remembered the wishes I had then, the hopes and plans I sketched out roughly in my mind while I listened to this same collection of songs in this same car on these same roads.  And I felt pure gratitude.

The peace that I have purchased over the last five years, through sacrifice and love and work and luck, is so valuable.  The woman who listened to Liz Phair's Divorce Song on repeat in between mournful used-to-love songs by The National would have chaffed in the relative comfort of the life I live now.

And so I walk these days in gratitude for all the things I take for granted now, that I was afraid to wish for a few years ago.

And I remember that the goal is to continue to buy peace, find joy, build a world anchored in love, respect, and growth.