All this tells us that no amount of thinking can eliminate the wonder and pain of living. No wall or avoidance or denial—no cause or excuse—can keep the rawness of life from running through us. While this may at times seem devastating, it is actually reassuring,

we’re not obliged to accept suffering or injustice as part of the inevitable order of things. But to the extent that we can stop demanding certainty that things will go our way later on, we’ll be liberated from anxiety in the only moment it ever actually is, which is this one.

I suppose that what I really wanted to say that day at my daughter’s school is that we never reach a point at which our lives lie before us as a clearly marked open road, never have and never should expect a map to the years ahead, never do close those circles that seem, at thirteen and fourteen and nineteen, so urgently in need of closing.