I had much to be happy about. I was married to Jamie, the tall, dark, and handsome love of my life; we had two delightful young daughters, seven-year-old Eliza and one-year-old Eleanor; I was a writer, after having started out as a lawyer; I was living in my favorite city, New York; I had close relationships with my parents, sister, and in-laws; I had friends; I had my health; I didn't have to color my hair. But too often I sniped at my husband or the cable guy. I felt dejected after even a minor professional setback. I drifted out of touch with old friends, I lost my temper easily, I suffered bouts of melancholy, insecurity, listlessness, and free-floating guilt.
As I looked out the blurry bus window, I saw two figures cross the street —a woman about my age trying simultaneously to balance an umbrella, look at her cell phone, and push a stroller carrying a yellow-slickered child. The sight gave me a jolt of recognition: that's me, I thought, there I am. I have a stroller, a cell phone, an alarm clock, an apartment, a neighborhood. Right now, I'm riding the same crosstown bus that I take across the park, back and forth. This is my life —but I never give any thought to it.
I wasn't depressed and I wasn't having a midlife crisis, but I was suffering from midlife malaise —a recurrent sense of discontent and almost a feeling of disbelief. "Can this be me?" I'd wonder as I picked up the morning newspapers or sat down to read my e-mail. "Can this be me?" My friends and I joked about the "beautiful house" feeling, when, as in the David Byrne song "Once in a Lifetime," we'd periodically experience the shock of thinking "This is not my beautiful house."
"Is this really it?" I found myself wondering, and answering, "Yep, this is it."
But though at times I felt dissatisfied, that something was missing, I also never forgot how fortunate I was. When I woke up in the middle of the night, as I often did, I'd walk from one room to another to gaze at my sleeping husband tangled in the sheets and my daughters surrounded by their stuffed animals, all safe. I had everything I could possibly want —yet I was failing to appreciate it. Bogged down in petty complaints and passing crises, weary of struggling with my own nature, I too often failed to comprehend the splendor of what I had. I didn't want to keep taking these days for granted. The words of the writer Colette had haunted me for years: "What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner."
I didn't want to look back, at the end of my life or after some great catastrophe, and think, "How happy I used to be then, if only I'd realized it."
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