Guest Post

When I was in fifth grade, I had my first geography class. I remember pointing out on the map my hometown and feeling pride. We went on to learn about the next bigger town, the capital of the region, the capital of the country, other countries and their capitals, and eventually about the towns, cities, and countries of other continents. Learning about all these places excited me.

Last year, after a routine mammogram, it was discovered that cancer cells were abnormally accumulating in one of my breasts. Cancer cells are in all of us, and throughout our body. When they cluster, but do not spread, it is pre-cancer. When they spread, it is cancer.

Following up Jeff Hamaoui’s post from yesterday: “Zach. Why are you going surfing? There are no waves… you’re being dumb,” my dad’s voice carried into the garage that early Saturday morning in March. As I strapped my surfboard to the car roof, I called down the garage stairs to him, “I just… have to.

I am writing this on Thanksgiving day. Thinking about gratitude and some of the people in my life. I wanted to share a particularly unexpected friendship I have developed over the last 7 years. Life has a curious origami to it. Ways of folding in on itself, finding unexpected edges and if you are lucky revealing an unprecedented shape.

Sometime in my mid-forties, I stopped being terrified of wrinkles. Until then, I had followed all the expert advice on how to fight them. Some rules were basic— like always using SPF. Others required a bit more investment—like sleeping on a silk pillowcase.

She was one of my best friends in my dermatology residency, the period of a physician’s education spanning three years after completing medical school followed by a one-year internship. Wickedly smart and unabashedly quirky, Dr. L had graduated from Princeton and earned an MD-Phd degree from one of the most prestigious medical schools in the United States, Johns Hopkins University.

Addison wrote this poem on Monday while participating in a Sabbatical Session “awe walk” at MEA in Baja. The ocean has a thousand moods and yet, we still trust and sit with it. The sky is not controllable and yet, we still honor it.

When I allow myself to settle into feeling how I experience Sabbatical Sessions, or “SabSesh,” as we call it, the word is joy. All the normal Baja delights and distractions are here — the clarity of the light, the sunsets, the sun and shade, ocean breezes, the whales, the workaday magic, and gathering with like-minded community.

I used to get paid to ride a snowboard. Specifically to ride a snowboard in a halfpipe. This was my job. You can imagine the cocktail party small talk. A halfpipe is a sum of its snowy parts, and exactly as advertised, the shape of half a pipe- a giant U.

Finding our life’s purpose can feel “just out of reach.” A “maybe someday” idea that we hope to fulfill in the future. But, what if your purpose is within your reach today. From the minute we awaken in the morning, we get to choose our attitude.