So I used to live by my Google calendar. You know what I’m talking about, right? Those color-coded blocks stretching across hours and days. Purple for travel = new adventures planned. Red for birthdays. Yellow for holidays.
And I thought THAT was my life. The trip to Boston. The California vacation next month. Time was just... the stuff between destinations. The boring parts you endure until the next Instagram-worthy moment.
But here’s the thing: I was completely wrong about where life actually happens.
The Shift
Okay, so I just got back from traveling this week, and something strange happened. Usually when you come home from a trip, routine settles over you like a heavy coat, right? You’re back to the grind. Back to normal.
But this time? This time I brought something back with me.
The traveler’s eye. Except I’m not using it on foreign cities anymore. I’m using it...at home. At the office, At my kitchen table.
Stay with me here, because this is where it gets interesting.
There’s this historian, Nate DiMeo who is an amazing storyteller and he says something that completely changed how I see my own life. He says: “There’s life that exists between the plot points in everybody’s life. And in fact, that might be where life really is.”
Between. The. Plot. Points.
Think about that for a second.
Relational Astigmatism
So here’s what I realized. I’ve been living with what I’m calling “relational astigmatism.”
I can only see clearly during the scheduled moments. Date nights. Planned conversations. Those times when we deliberately turn toward each other with capital-I Intention.
But everything else? Just blur. Just waiting time until the next scheduled intimacy.
Last night was a perfect example: My wife was watering her orchids. And instead of scrolling on my phone or playing chess like I normally would, I just... watched her.
The way she moved through this ritual she’s done a thousand times. The precise way she positions the pots under the faucet in the sink to soak.
We’ve been together twenty-eight years. TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS. And I was seeing her like it was the first time.
Now, nothing was different about what she was doing. What was different was that I was actually paying attention.
And that’s when it hit me. This is what DiMeo means by “the space between the story of our lives and those lives as we live them.”
The Problem with Plot Points
Here’s the trap we all fall into. We build our relationships around plot points. The anniversary dinner. The vacation. The big decision.
But the actual texture of love? The actual texture of friendship? It lives in these unremarkable moments.
And when we only focus on the highlight reel, we create this relational scarcity. Like meaningful connection can ONLY happen during designated times. Everything else is just filler.
What a waste! What a massive waste of opportunity.
Because here’s what I’m learning now: the breakthrough almost never happens during the planned discussion. It happens in the car when someone’s guard is down. It happens over coffee when a friend says something offhand that suddenly illuminates everything.
Training Attention
My morning walk is two miles. Same route I’ve taken for years.
It used to feel like... nothing. Just exercise. Just getting steps in.
But now? Now it’s become this meditation on the incremental. How the light shifts by tiny degrees as the seasons change. How my neighbor’s tree evolves week by week. How my own footsteps have different rhythms depending on what’s going on inside me.
This isn’t some performance of mindfulness. This is curiosity as a way of life.
And it translates directly to relationships. Instead of waiting for the big conversations, I’m getting fascinated by the small ones. The stories that come out while doing dishes. The way someone’s voice changes when they’re thinking out loud. That particular silence that happens when two people are comfortable enough to stop entertaining each other.
When you’re always encountering the new…when you’re always traveling… you’re always skimming the surface. But when you commit to really seeing the familiar? You discover layers that only reveal themselves through repeated, patient attention.
The Practice
So here’s what I’m thinking about now. Here are the questions I’m sitting with:
How do I bring the traveler’s mindset to my everyday relationships?
How do I ask questions I THINK I know the answers to?
How do I notice details I’ve overlooked for years?
How do I create space for people to surprise me—even people I’ve known forever?
Because DiMeo says something else that’s stuck with me: “We are what we pay attention to.”
If that’s true (and I think it is) then I’ve been training myself to be relationally absent during most of my life.
And I don’t want that anymore.
In Closing
The adventures will continue. There will be more trips, more milestones, more purple blocks on my calendar.
But maybe, just maybe, the real journey is happening in the spaces between destinations.
Maybe it’s in those countless ordinary moments when you realize: the people in your life are still full of beautiful mysteries. Still surprising. Still worth discovering.
And maybe those mysteries are just waiting for you in the next conversation. Or the next shared silence.
All you have to do is pay attention.
Theme Song is “Light” by The Never Project
