When the chill comes, and the sunflowers are bowing to the earth, I pause. Just as summer has slipped away, is life also slipping away without my knowing it? Tomorrow, we say, tomorrow I will live the life I’ve always wanted to live. But then tomorrow comes and it has become today. And so it goes, until one day you look in the mirror and you realize that you have not accomplished the many things you thought you would by now.

Leaves are drifting down from their thrones to find repose beneath the snows that will surely come. How often do we too hide beneath those things that seem to hearken peace but, in truth, slowly freeze us to the bone, until we realize that what we thought was peace was only complacency?

Peace, I tell you, is found on jagged mountaintops, the breath snatched from your lungs, your hair tangled in the hands of the wind. Peace is found in the deepest, densest valleys, where vines are mightier than ancient castles. Peace is found behind thundering waterfalls, or on an island in the vastness of the sea. Peace is found by those who are willing to seek it out, get dirt under their fingernails, stain their shirts with sweat, perhaps even risk an encounter with bandits or bobcats. Peace is in the heights and in the depths of existence. Humanity was created for adventure, because we were created for peace.

Today, then, the only day you truly have—today you must begin the climb, begin the descent, plunge through the waters, take up your oars. Because beyond the misty borderlands, the unknown, is the life you’ve always wanted to live.