This time next week, I’ll be on a plane to Tuscany for one of my closest friends’ weddings.

One of my final prep moves was rewatching Under the Tuscan Sun. And if you know the ladybug scene, you know.

What hit me this time was the main character’s fear she bought this beautiful house that would never be filled by anyone but her.

I’ve felt that same fear in so many forms:
a blank journal I haven’t filled yet,
a camera I haven’t used enough,
a life I’m still trying to grow into.

Then the movie unveils something so humanly universal: we spend so much time mourning the future we imagined that we miss the life already gathering around us. While the protagonist in the movie is grieving what isn’t here yet, her home was already full.

The halls echoed the conversations of her contractors in every room, dusting off cobwebs and clearing years of neglect, slowly revealing the beauty that the villa had held all along. She proceeded to cook gourmet meals at her table for those contractors that she longed to be full. Life happening before the dream is “complete.”

There’s actually a research term for this mental pattern: perseverative cognition.
It means repetitive worry/rumination that pulls attention out of the present.

A study in Emotion found that anticipating future stress predicted worse later emotional well-being, partly through perseverative cognitions (Kramer et al., 2021).

I know how to dream, visualize, and plan. I do it all the time. But lately I’ve realized I can spend so much energy solving future problems that I forget to inhabit the life I already have.

And sometimes the medicine is simple:
go for the walk,
be with your people,
notice what’s already growing.

You can’t build what’s next if you’re never where you are.

Growth keeps arriving in forms I didn’t plan for. Thank goodness.

I’m not in charge of forcing growth.
I’m in charge of enjoying the process (and packing my suitcase for this trip!)