Yesterday, I had a conversation that stayed with me.

I went to see my mechanic - someone I’ve known for years - and he told me he’s closing his business.

He’s 51.

For most of his life, he’s worked hard. Built something steady. Reliable.

And now he’s walking away from it.

He said he wants to “chase the sun.”

Over the past few years, his wife has been through cancer. Four long years.

And more recently, he’s been diagnosed with Graves’ disease.

Something in all of this has shifted him.

He spoke about giving his life to God.
About no longer wanting to spend his days chasing money or more work.
About wanting to live inside the beauty of ordinary life.

There was something in the way he spoke that moved me.

Not dramatic.
Not philosophical.

Just clear.

As if something had been rearranged in him.

And I could feel it as I listened.

A quiet knowing:

How fragile life is.
And how available it is, all at once.

The day before, I had visited a friend and his partner that I was meeting for the first time.

After leaving, he sent me a text saying that he and his partner had hugged after I left - with tears in their eyes.

Not out of sadness.

But from a shared recognition of how much they value our friendship.

That something real exists between us.

Effortless. Warm. Unconditional.

And again, I felt it.

That same quiet opening.

That sense that life is not something we need to manufacture.

It’s something we are already inside of.

I’ve been noticing, more and more, that I can almost measure the level of aliveness in my life…

by how much space I give to these moments.

And how much is taken up by something else.

Technology has a way of filling that space.

Not in a dramatic way.

But gradually.

Alluring me into false comfort and distraction. 

Until the texture of life begins to flatten.

And yet, when I step back - even a little - something returns.

Awe returns.

In small ways I find it. 

A walk, without a destination.
Standing at the edge of the ocean.
A moment of prayer.
Sitting in a divine liturgy.
Listening - really listening - to a friend.
Finding a piece of music that opens something in me.
Lying next to someone I love… or even just being close to another living being.

Reading words that have carried meaning across generations.

All these are at our fingertips. 

And each one has the capacity to open the world again.

I’m beginning to see that awe is something that emerges…

when I allow myself to be here.

Fully.

And perhaps that is the quiet invitation of this month:

Not to add more.

To resist the false nourishment of technology. 

To notice what is already alive around you.

And to let it touch us.