When Sunlight Peeks Through the Clouds: A Reflection at 58

Living on Guam can be ideal. The warm weather, year-round sun, and sea breeze make it a real paradise. There are days like today, a mix of clouds, puffy white, and the ones filled with water ready to drop at a moment’s notice. Then a bit of sunlight tries to peek through the clouds; it casts both shadows and glimmers, a story of my life.

I sit here under a sky like that, listening to an Apple Music playlist I call "contemplative." The sky mirrors my life—a mix of clarity and storm, peace and unrest. The kind of weather that makes you want to pull over, breathe, and remember who you are. More often than not lately, that's what I'm doing and taking inventory.

Lately, though, I think of that more often than not, and I think of what success means. For my parents, success was tangible: a house, a title, a piece of land with your name on it. It was about building something that stood still. For me, it’s never been that. I’ve never been built for stillness. I was the butterfly — the one always moving, curious, collecting fragments of the world like souvenirs in my head.

When I was younger, that restlessness looked like rebellion. I didn’t fit into their boxes. I didn’t see adulthood as a mortgage or a deed. I saw it as the freedom to make, to learn, to live without being owned by what you own. Maybe that’s why I never wanted a house. A house felt like a leash.

Funny thing is, now — decades later — I’m about to do the very thing I resisted. Lyn and I are looking for a place in the Philippines. A home with a café downstairs and our life upstairs. It’s not a cage; it’s an expression. The café will smell like bread and espresso. The walls will hold my photographs. The rooms above will hold peace. It’s permanence with purpose, not performance.

And this woman — she’s the calm I didn’t know I was searching for. With her, I don’t feel the rush, the butterflies, the chaos that I once mistook for love. What I feel is something like my grandmother’s hand on my back — that slow, wordless warmth that says, you’re safe here. It’s not dramatic, it’s steady. And that’s the kind of love you build a life with.

I think about my parents often. They measured life by what they could hold. I measure mine by what I can release. They built walls; I’m creating space. Maybe that’s just the Gen X in me — part analog, part dreamer, raised to fend for myself but still trying to make sense of family.

At 58, I can finally say I’m tired — not from the work, but from the performance of it. The proving. The endless measuring up. What I want now is to end this story the way it should have started: with intention, creativity, and love that doesn’t ask me to earn it.

When the clouds part and the light filters through, I think — maybe this is what peace looks like. Not the absence of storms, but learning to live comfortably beneath them.