Life gets sweeter when you let it ripen. There will be no mistaking if it’s ready for the picking. No bite will go unsavored. Give it exactly what it’s asking for and its peaches will grow large and its branches will blossom.

So many people I’ve been. I wonder if they’d recognize each other, if they’d be friends. All I know is that the earliest versions would marvel at what I am now. They wouldn’t know how to process, as little as I still do, that the very best things of our life came to be when I had to make choices with abandon. Teeth gritted, knuckles white. They might be dismayed to know that I’ve never become less afraid. But I walked with it, like an old friend, for a time. It saw me through just as surely as it chilled my bones. Only then did I vanquish the things I was sure could ruin me.

So fear is no longer a benchmark of good or bad in my life. I won’t turn away right as I’m approaching the middle of the tunnel. I know now that all the worthwhile things lay on the other side of a shaded path. Only by accepting our total lack of control and trusting in what we hope for can we ever hope to move past it, can we ever hope to have it. Life is sweeter when you let it ripen, when you stop trying to grow snowdrops in a tundra. Let it blossom into what it will be. And don’t turn away before it unfolds.