It was something I wanted, desperately and suddenly, to spend.

There is a difference, I have learned, between a life you protect and a life you spend, and I had spent nine years confusing the two.

A protected life keeps its resources intact, its heart unbroken, its calm undisturbed, and hands them all, perfectly preserved and entirely unused, into the grave.

A spent life pours itself out, takes the risks, loves the people who can be lost, and arrives at the end depleted and fulfilled.

I had chosen protection, and called it wisdom, and it had very nearly cost me everything that makes a life worth having.