I really am her biggest fan. Catherine Newman’s column again made me both laugh and blink back tears. She cites the central preoccupations of her life, and they sound an awful lot like mine:

“Sure, there are recurring themes: anxiety and impatience; my chaotic efforts at peace or the way I lumber after gratitude.”

She is unabashed about the difficulty she has remembering the big picture, the beauty of it all, amid the myriad challenges and annoyances of everyday life. And perhaps this is really what it all comes down to for me, too, the fundamental message in the chorus of everything I’m always talking about. How to remember how incredibly, animatedly, unreservedly wonderful this life of ours is, even beneath a thick layer of day-to-day distractions and sadnesses? How to focus on the child’s smile rather than the carpet of legos that need to be picked up? How to take a deep breath and simply remember Ram Dass: Be. Here. Now.

Working on it.