This entire blog post that I stumbled into is wonderful, but this part in particular is amazing.
Two of my favorite people and dearest friends in all the world are two of the people who are best at bearing their full attention on the moment they are inhabiting, or the thought that is currently swirling. Kevin Kelly and Stewart Brand have retained a childlike wonder about the world partly because they regularly exercise their attention muscles. To be in their presence makes you feel present.
Kevin and Stewart have been friends for decades. Over forty years? An entire lifetime of knowing and respecting each other. During the pandemic, I was spending time with one of them and then the other, and something hit me: I have friends today that I will grow old with the same way that Kevin and Stewart grew old together. And it’ll happen with or without my attention. For most old friends, it happens without. You are young people who love each other, and then one day you are old friends who love each other. What you very rarely do — myself anyway — is imagine being old with your friends the same way you imagine being old with your spouse. But it still happens.
Hugh Howey