Suleika Jaouad

I spent about a month in bed where I just couldn't drag myself out of a feeling of being doomed.

I couldn't daydream about the future because I didn't know if I was going to get to exist in that future.

And so making a plan three months out felt totally destabilizing.

And I kept saying to my doctor, like, I don't know how to deal with this level of uncertainty.

I don't know how to keep living my life when I don't know what's going to happen.

And he said to me the thing people often say, which is that you have to live every day as if it's your last.

And I took that advice to heart because I'm a good student.

I want a gold star.

I want an A. And it was exhausting to try to make every family dinner meaningful, to try to squeeze the juice out of every single moment.

It was just unsustainable.

And so I had to shift things.

to a gentler mindset of trying to live every day as if it's my first, to wake up with a sense of wonder and playfulness that a little kid so naturally does, and to shift out of trying to live for the big moments and instead...

And just seeking out the small joys and the small beauties.

And, you know, I haven't achieved it perfectly.

It's something I try to arc toward.

What a pretty way to say that, arc toward.

I like that.

Thank you.

But it's an ongoing internal struggle.

Absolutely.