Six years ago—this weekend—on a trip to Montreal to celebrate my 39th birthday, my husband Jon asked what I wanted for my next birthday, the big one. I didn’t hesitate: LASIK (corrective-vision surgery) and yoga teacher training, I told him. Each was a big investment for which I’d been saving up and holding out (till my kids were older). At the time, I don’t think I fully comprehended that my two requests were so tightly tied metaphorically.

Essentially, I wanted to see the world better. And, at midlife, I’d suddenly realized that it was partly within my control to make that happen.

That summer (between birthdays), I signed up for a 200-hour yoga teacher training (YTT), at Laughing River Yoga, spread over nine months. I didn’t intend to teach, just to immerse myself in a curriculum that might train me to enjoy life as it unfolded instead of always spinning stories of what might happen or replaying past chapters. To contain my energy in ways that were more helpful for my family. To build myself into a resilient human who could flow gracefully with whatever the second half of my life might toss my way. I was looking for a mix of movement, philosophical context for the physical yoga practice I’d developed, spirituality, tools to navigate my days more skillfully and joyfully. ALL the things. It delivered! (So did my LASIK surgery, which I had in January, a month after celebrating my birthday.)

Five years later, my YTT is the gift that keeps on giving. I’m grateful to be continuing to study yoga, to be teaching. I’m thankful my personal practice has helped me in all the ways I hoped it would off the mat. That’s not to say that I am not still fretting and frittering, even fighting with my family and freaking out sometimes. But when I stop to slow down, I am able to see things much more clearly through the lens of yoga, through the perspective that we are ever evolving and changing (yes, my physical vision will get faulty and fuzzy again), that nothing lasts forever, that our individual freedom and happiness is dependent on everyone else’s.

I now realize that the key to minimizing suffering and maximizing joy is to stop gazing at the horizon, trying to guess what ship is going to come sailing in; to quit looking back, rehashing the past. That the secret to seeing truth and beauty in everything is simply to stare hard and observe what’s right in front of our faces. Without judgment.