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In Japan there is an old practice called kintsugi, the art of repairing broken pottery. When a bowl shatters, the pieces are not hidden or discarded. They are joined back together with lacquer mixed with powdered gold, so that the cracks are not disguised but illuminated. The repair becomes the most beautiful part of the object. The bowl is worth more, and means more, for having been broken and mended in the light. I cannot think of a more useful idea to carry into the second

There is a quiet cruelty in the idea that by a certain age your life is supposed to be finished being built. That the choices are made, the shape is set, and what remains is simply to live inside the house you have already constructed. I believed a version of that story for a long time, right up until my own life declined to cooperate with it. I rebuilt mine in my fifties. Not by choice, at first, and not all at once. A life I thought was permanent came apart, and I found mys