Our friends hosted dinner yesterday. They live just down the street, and they’ve been living through a major home renovation project for the past couple of years. The whole place is getting gutted, walls are coming down, and they’re meticulously building the home of their dreams. They just finishing the kitchen, and it’s a thing of beauty - the place just feels like their home.

What’s wild to me is that they’re in the middle of talks with a developer to sell the house to them, and the developer’s just going to tear it all down anyway. “What’s the point?”, I wondered. But for them, that’s not the point at all. They’re just enjoying the act of making the place they want to live in, and seem unconcerned that it’s all going to get destroyed, maybe even in a few months.

And that’s just a great, healthy approach to life. Life’s marred with impermanence - it always feels like there’s going to be a better, calmer, happier time. “We’ll do X once Y settles down” has been too common of a phrase in our household, and I’d like to break that cycle.

“I wish there was a way to know you’re in a good old days” - The Office

We are in the good old days, and visiting our friends was a great reminder of that, and a permission to not slow down building a life just because something might change in the future.