Month: August 2026

For much of my life, I tried to use time efficiently.

I planned my days carefully. I tracked how I spent my time and periodically reviewed whether I was using it well. If something was important, I created a goal, made a plan, and allocated enough time and energy to achieve it.

I also learned to measure progress through visible results.

How much did I accomplish?

Did I reach the goal?

Did my performance improve?

Was the project successful?

This approach served me well. There are seasons of life when we need this kind of discipline. We need to build skills, establish a career, support a family, create financial security, and fulfill responsibilities.

But I am beginning to realize that some of the most important parts of life cannot be measured very well.

How do we measure a deepening relationship?

How do we measure inner peace?

How do we measure a conversation that stays in someone’s heart for years?

How do we measure the feeling that we are becoming more fully ourselves?

There may be no number for these things.

And when we become accustomed to measuring life through visible output, what cannot be measured can easily begin to look less important.

Recently, I have begun experimenting with another way of living.

I call it signal-based life.

Instead of constantly asking,

What should I accomplish next?

I am learning to ask,

What is this moment telling me?

Sometimes the signal comes from the body.

I planned to work, but I am unusually tired.

Perhaps I need another hour of sleep.

I planned a difficult workout, but my body does not feel recovered.

Perhaps today should be easier.

Sometimes the signal comes from the mind.

A question keeps returning quietly.

Perhaps I should follow that curiosity for a while.

Sometimes the signal comes from the heart.

A conversation stays with me long after it ends.

A particular kind of writing makes me lose track of time.

Being with someone makes me feel peaceful.

Perhaps something important is growing there.

These are not measurements.

They are signals.

And the signals are often very quiet.

The external world is loud.

Responsibilities are loud.

Deadlines are loud.

Achievement is loud.

Praise and criticism are especially loud.

But the signals of inner alignment rarely shout.

Writing may quietly say:

I could stay here for hours.

Time with family may whisper:

I do not want to miss this season.

Solitude may tell us nothing at all, yet somehow leave our heart more peaceful.

And sometimes I may simply look at the sky or watch trees moving in the wind.

Nothing is accomplished.

Yet somehow the moment feels complete.

If we fill every available space with activity, these signals easily disappear beneath the noise.

Perhaps this is why solitude becomes increasingly important.

Not to escape the world, but to hear what cannot be heard while everything else is speaking.

I have experienced something similar in endurance training.

At first, we depend heavily on numbers: pace, power, heart rate, distance.

Over time, however, we begin noticing subtler information.

Breathing.

Fatigue.

Balance.

Recovery.

Efficiency.

The numbers remain useful, but we develop another way of knowing.

Perhaps life is similar.

There is also a consequence of becoming more sensitive to these signals.

We do not only notice peace, curiosity, beauty, and connection.

We also notice disappointment, sadness, and grief more clearly.

The volume control works both ways.

Perhaps that is not something to fear.

Becoming more receptive to life may mean becoming more receptive to the whole of life—both what feels beautiful and what hurts.

Signal-based living does not mean abandoning plans, goals, or responsibility.

It simply means that not every open moment needs to be optimized.

Sometimes time does not need to be used.

It can simply be lived.

For years, I learned how to read the dashboard of achievement and direct my time accordingly.

Now I am learning another way of knowing.

I am learning to receive time, listen more carefully, and notice the quieter signals of alignment.

And perhaps, instead of ending every day by asking,

What did I accomplish today?

I can sometimes ask a different question:

What felt quietly alive today?

If I continue listening carefully, perhaps those quiet signals will gradually reveal where life is already trying to grow.

For a long time, I unconsciously believed that strong faith should make emotional pain smaller.

If I truly trusted God, I should be peaceful.

If I believed that God was with me, I should not remain deeply disappointed.

If I knew that God could use every experience for good, I should be able to move forward quickly.

There is truth in trusting God through difficulty. But I am beginning to understand that faith and emotional pain are not opposites.

They can exist together.

Psalm 42 shows this beautifully.

The psalmist knows God. He remembers worship. He speaks about hope. He even tells his own soul to continue trusting God.

Yet his soul remains downcast.

He is thirsty.

He cries.

He remembers better days.

He wonders where God is.

There seems to be a conversation happening inside one person.

One voice says:

God is still here.

Another says:

Then why does this hurt so much?

One says:

Continue to hope.

Another says:

I am tired.

And remarkably, Scripture allows both voices to remain.

Perhaps this tells us something important about healing.

Emotional pain is not evidence that faith has failed.

Sadness does not mean that we have moved backward.

Disappointment does not mean that we do not trust God.

Sometimes pain is simply part of being human.

When something important is lost, changed, or broken, the heart needs time to absorb what the mind may already understand.

We can know intellectually that life will continue while still grieving what has happened.

We can believe that God is present while simultaneously feeling His absence.

We can see a path forward and still miss what we are leaving behind.

Perhaps healing requires us to stop fighting this tension.

Instead of asking,

Why am I still feeling this way?

perhaps we can say,

This is what my heart feels today.

No judgment.

No pressure to recover.

No need to transform every painful emotion immediately into a spiritual lesson.

The opening image of Psalm 42 has become especially meaningful to me: a thirsty deer searching for water.

The deer is not achieving.

It is not proving its strength.

It needs to receive.

Perhaps there are seasons of faith like that.

We do not need another task from God.

We do not need an explanation.

We simply need water.

Presence.

Silence.

Rest.

Permission to grieve.

And perhaps this is where deeper healing begins.

Not when sadness disappears, but when we stop being afraid of sadness.

Not when every question receives an answer, but when unanswered questions no longer prevent us from remaining with God.

Not when we successfully escape the difficult season, but when we discover that God can meet us inside it.

Psalm 42 may therefore be offering something gentler than an escape route.

It may be giving us permission to come before God exactly as we are.

Hopeful and hurting.

Faithful and confused.

Grateful and disappointed.

Trusting and thirsty.

All at the same time.

Perhaps we do not need to resolve these contradictions before approaching God.

Perhaps bringing them honestly before Him is already part of healing.

And sometimes the deepest prayer may simply be:

My soul is downcast. I do not fully understand. But God, I am still here.

For much of my life, I understood faith through the language of strength.

Stand firm.

Believe.

Do not give up.

Trust that God has a better plan.

See challenges as opportunities to grow.

There is truth in all of this. Difficult experiences can strengthen us. Faith can give us courage to continue when circumstances seem impossible.

But I am beginning to realize that there may be another kind of faith for the deepest seasons of life.

Sometimes the pain is too deep to transform immediately into growth.

Sometimes we do not understand what is happening.

Sometimes there is no action that can repair what has been lost.

And in those moments, even the encouragement to “be strong” can become another burden.

We begin to feel that we must suffer well.

We must remain positive.

We must discover the lesson.

We must demonstrate strong faith.

Pain enters our life, and we expect ourselves to somehow convert it into growth.

But perhaps true healing sometimes begins when we stop requiring our suffering to become useful.

The story of Job speaks differently to me when I think about this.

Job loses almost everything that normally gives a person security. His friends try to explain why it happened. They search for reasons, causes, and answers.

But Job does something much more human.

He grieves.

He questions.

He becomes angry.

He sits in the ashes.

Eventually, the story does not give him the kind of explanation he was seeking.

Instead, Job encounters God.

Perhaps there are moments when explanation is not what our heart needs most.

Perhaps it needs presence.

I sometimes imagine standing before God and slowly removing the garments I normally wear.

The garment of achievement.

The garment of competence.

The garment of discipline.

The garment of optimism.

Even the garment of being someone with strong faith.

Underneath all of them is simply myself.

Nothing to prove.

Nothing to accomplish.

Nothing to explain.

I can simply say:

God, I am here.

Maybe I am disappointed.

Maybe I am angry.

Maybe I am frightened.

Maybe I do not understand.

And then perhaps there is nothing more to say.

Silence.

This is very different from the faith I practiced while building my life.

That faith often gave me strength to move forward.

This faith asks me to stop moving for a moment.

To allow.

To receive.

To grieve.

To be present.

Perhaps this is the difference between recovery and healing.

Recovery often asks:

How can I return to where I was?

Deep healing asks something quieter:

Can I allow what happened to become part of my story without allowing it to define my life?

That process cannot be forced.

There is no timetable.

There may be days of peace followed by days when the pain suddenly returns.

Perhaps that does not mean healing has failed.

Perhaps healing is happening somewhere deeper than our emotions can immediately recognize.

I am learning that there are moments when faith does not mean holding tightly onto God.

It means opening my hands completely.

No explanation.

No achievement.

No spiritual performance.

Just presence.

And perhaps, when everything else has been removed, we discover something we could not discover while trying so hard to remain strong:

We do not have to hold everything together in order to be held by God.

For most of my life, discipline meant one thing: doing what needed to be done.

Wake up early.

Work hard.

Stay focused.

Develop skills.

Continue when things become difficult.

Set a goal and organize resources around achieving it.

This is the first discipline.

It is enormously important, particularly in the first half of life.

We need to build something.

We need education, skills, a career, financial security, relationships, and the ability to support those who depend on us. None of these appear simply because we wait patiently for life to unfold.

They require effort.

The first discipline therefore pushes us outward into the world.

We interact with people. We enter organizations. We compete. We cooperate. We succeed and fail. We receive evaluations. We learn how society works.

Gradually, we build the foundation of a life.

But I am beginning to realize that there is another discipline.

I call it the second discipline.

It does not begin with doing.

It begins with allowing.

Allowing ourselves to stop.

Allowing ourselves to receive.

Allowing sadness to exist without immediately trying to fix it.

Allowing an unanswered question to remain unanswered.

Allowing an afternoon to have no measurable productivity.

Allowing ourselves simply to listen.

The first discipline asks:

What can I build?

The second asks:

What is happening inside me?

These disciplines require different environments.

The first often needs interaction with society. It needs people, goals, deadlines, feedback, responsibility, and action.

The second often needs less noise.

Solitude.

A quiet room.

Nature.

Prayer.

Writing.

A long walk or run.

An unhurried conversation.

Not because society is bad, but because the things we are trying to hear during the second discipline are much quieter.

Perhaps the first discipline accumulates experience, while the second discipline integrates experience.

During decades of living, we accumulate successes, failures, relationships, disappointments, skills, mistakes, joy, and pain.

But experience alone does not automatically become wisdom.

We need space to understand what those experiences have formed within us.

This may be particularly important in the second half of life.

Eventually, continuing to achieve more does not necessarily make life richer.

Another set of questions begins to emerge.

Who have I become?

What do I no longer need to prove?

What gives me life?

What have I been given that can now be offered to others?

What is God quietly asking me to notice?

These questions cannot always be answered by working harder.

Sometimes we need to become quiet enough to hear them.

Perhaps this is why the two disciplines ultimately belong together.

The first discipline builds the foundation.

The second creates the inner richness that can inhabit it.

And eventually, we return to the world again—but differently.

Less to prove.

Less to acquire.

Less to establish ourselves.

More to give.

The rhythm of the second half of life may therefore become:

Build.

Make room.

Listen.

Integrate.

Contribute.

The first discipline taught me how to make things happen.

The second is teaching me how to allow life to come toward me.

Perhaps a mature life requires both:

the strength to act when action is needed, and enough inner space to receive what cannot be achieved by effort alone.

For most of my life, I thought discipline meant doing.

Wake up early.

Follow the plan.

Keep working when I am tired.

Stay focused when others become distracted.

Set a goal and organize my time, energy, and attention around achieving it.

This kind of discipline is powerful. It helps us develop skills, overcome difficulties, and accomplish things that once seemed impossible. Much of what we build in the first half of life may depend on it.

But recently, I have begun to wonder whether there is another kind of discipline that becomes increasingly important as life matures.

The discipline of allowing.

For someone accustomed to achievement, allowing can feel almost irresponsible.

If I have free time, I should use it.

If I have a problem, I should solve it.

If I feel sad, I should understand why and move beyond it.

If I travel, I should accomplish something.

Even rest can quietly become another project: recover efficiently so that I can return to being productive.

But perhaps not everything in life needs to produce something.

Perhaps there are times when the most important thing we can do is make room.

Make room for sadness without immediately trying to remove it.

Make room for a conversation without needing it to lead anywhere.

Make room for solitude without demanding an answer.

Make room for beauty without photographing it.

Make room for prayer without asking for anything.

Make room for an afternoon that accomplishes absolutely nothing.

This is surprisingly difficult.

Doing gives us control.

Allowing requires us to loosen our grip.

For many years, I thought living fully meant using my abilities as effectively as possible. Now I am beginning to think that living fully may also mean giving life enough empty space to reveal something I could never have planned.

A walk may awaken an unexpected thought.

A quiet meal with an old friend may reveal something about ourselves that years of professional achievement could not.

A period of solitude may not give us an answer at all. It may simply make our heart a little quieter.

None of these experiences are productive in the usual sense.

Yet they may be deeply formative.

Perhaps this is part of what it means to live as ourselves.

When we are constantly achieving, we can gradually become the person our responsibilities require us to be. We perform our roles well, meet expectations, and continue moving forward.

But underneath all those roles, there is still a person.

That person may need time when nothing is required.

No title.

No performance.

No explanation.

No measurable result.

Just being.

I do not think this means abandoning discipline.

Perhaps it means expanding our understanding of discipline.

There is a discipline of pushing forward.

And there is a discipline of leaving space.

There is a discipline of holding on.

And there is a discipline of opening our hands.

There is a discipline of making things happen.

And there is a discipline of allowing something unexpected to arrive.

Maybe the second half of life requires more of this kind of strength.

Not becoming passive.

Not losing purpose.

But becoming spacious enough that purpose no longer has to be forced.

Perhaps the sequence becomes simpler:

Make room. Listen. Discover. Integrate. Contribute.

And sometimes, before asking what we should accomplish next, we might ask a gentler question:

What might enter my life if I stopped filling every available space?

There are moments in life when we slowly find ourselves backed into a corner.

Not because we made one dramatic mistake.

Not because one person suddenly changed everything.

But because, little by little, the room becomes smaller.

Perhaps it is a workplace where you no longer feel trusted.

Perhaps it is a relationship where you are no longer understood.

Perhaps it is a role that once gave you life but now quietly drains it.

At first, we try harder.

We explain ourselves.

We work more.

We hope that if we prove ourselves once again, the room will become what it used to be.

For a long time, I believed that was the only faithful response.

Then one day I realized something unexpected.

The problem was not that I had been pushed into the corner.

The problem was that I thought the room was my entire world.

When we believe there is no life beyond the room, every disagreement becomes a threat.

Every criticism becomes a verdict.

Every loss of influence feels like losing ourselves.

But what if the room is not the destination?

What if it is only a place we were meant to pass through?

That thought changed everything for me.

The place that had once felt like a prison slowly became a bridge.

The bridge still had an important purpose.

I still needed to walk across it.

I still had responsibilities.

I still had people to serve.

But I no longer expected it to become my permanent home.

Something else also changed.

For many years, I measured a good finish by the size of the stage.

How much influence did I have?

How important was the work?

How many people noticed?

Then I remembered something endurance sports had quietly taught me.

After a long race, I rarely feel fulfilled because of the finish time alone.

The deepest satisfaction comes when I know I prepared well, stayed faithful to my plan, and gave everything I honestly had.

The clock matters.

But it is not what gives me peace.

Perhaps life works the same way.

Perhaps a good career is not measured by how large the stage remained until the end.

Perhaps it is measured by whether we remained faithful while the stage became smaller.

A smaller stage does not require smaller faithfulness.

It simply asks us to remember why we began in the first place.

Soon after discovering this perspective, life tested it.

Nothing around me changed.

The people were the same.

The system was the same.

The misunderstandings remained.

No one applauded.

No one suddenly recognized what I had learned.

The only thing I could control was the quality of the work in front of me.

That was the moment when the phrase “clean finish” stopped being an idea.

It became a way of living.

Not because everything became fair.

Not because every relationship was repaired.

But because I finally understood that my integrity did not depend on the room.

The bridge taught me something I had never seen before.

You do not have to wait until you reach the other side before you begin living differently.

The bridge itself is where freedom begins.

And perhaps the question is not:

“How do I get out of this room?”

Perhaps the better question is:

“What if this room is no longer my destination?”

Because the moment you discover the bridge, you stop fighting to stay where you have already outgrown.

And with every faithful step, you begin walking toward a life that is larger than the room ever allowed you to imagine.

For most of my life, I believed that the best way to achieve something meaningful was to concentrate all available resources on one goal.

Choose the target.

Eliminate distraction.

Use all of my time, energy, attention, and discipline to move toward it.

I believed that having multiple goals was inefficient. If energy was divided, progress would slow. If several interests competed for attention, none of them would reach their full potential.

This way of thinking served me well.

It helped me complete demanding surgical training, develop technical skill, establish a research laboratory. It also shaped the way I approached endurance sports.

I do not think this approach was wrong.

It was probably necessary during the expansion phase of my life.

But I have gradually realized that a life supported by only one major pillar also has a hidden weakness.

When that pillar shakes, the entire structure shakes with it.

For many years, surgery was not simply one part of my life. It was the central pillar around which almost everything else was organized. Even my sense of contribution was closely connected to my identity as a surgeon.

When my clinical role became uncertain, I initially felt that my whole life had become uncertain.

The problem was that too much of my identity had been placed on one pillar.

Recently, my thinking has begun to change.

Perhaps the next phase of life should not be built around one dominant role.

Perhaps it should be supported by several pillars.

At first, I worried that this would simply scatter my energy. But I am beginning to see that these are not unrelated goals competing against one another.

They may be different expressions of the same inner calling.

A morning run creates space for reflection. A reflection becomes an essay. An essay opens a conversation. A conversation helps another person recognize something within themselves. That experience may deepen how I mentor, lead, research, or care for a patient.

This is not necessarily fragmentation.

It may be integration.

In the first half of life, I gathered my energy to climb one mountain.

In the second half, I may need to cultivate a wider landscape.

This does not mean abandoning discipline or ambition. It means changing the question.

Instead of asking:

What is the one goal I must achieve?

I am beginning to ask:

What combination of activities allows the fullest and most faithful expression of the person I have become?

One pillar may become smaller.

Another may begin to grow.

Some may carry more weight during one season and less during another.

But the whole life no longer needs to stand or fall with a single role.

Perhaps multiple pillars are not a sign that focus has been lost.

Perhaps they are evidence that life has become large enough to hold more than one gift.