Reflection isn’t alchemy: It doesn’t turn the dreadful into the delightful, or the other way around. But what reflecting does accomplish is that it helps us dig deep into an experience and to notice and remember the highlights, challenges, and resulting takeaways.

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But even as moving is expected at this phase of life, I’m struck, when reflecting on my experiences of switching homes and cities, by my memory of the difficulty of each relocation. I’m not talking about the physical act of packing all my things in boxes and loading a UHaul (though to be clear: I find this process 10 out of 10 on the tedious and stressful scale). Rather, I mean the emotional impacts of moving challenged me during every one of those 11 moves.

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If comparison steals joy, and gratitude cultivates it, then the path to contentment in a life that is overall marked by good fortune ( I’m not reckoning with systemic oppression, a trauma history, or any number of other major life challenges) isn’t so hard to navigate.

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I’ve embraced a few practices with life milestones to help me determine how to both meaningfully and realistically honor individual occasions.

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While a spirit of helpfulness contributes greatly to the quality of life of others, I think that it is, in many ways, an undervalued quality.

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