TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

I don’t have a five-year plan. I’m not sure there was ever a time in my life when I did.

In five years, my youngest will be 18 and getting ready to leave home. My oldest will be 22 and getting ready to begin her adult life. I suppose one version of a five-year plan for me is supporting my daughter through college, and supporting my son through high school. But then what? What’s next for me?

The honest answer is: I don’t know. I have five years to think about what I want out of the next stage of my life. Five years to think about my priorities, and what might make me happy and fulfilled, and how I might want to use my time and talents.

What are my hopes? I hope, as a writer, I’m still lit up by new ideas. I hope I’m in love and building something lasting. I hope that with the freedom of becoming an empty nester, I’m traveling, and spending time with friends, and having adventures that were previously more difficult to manage. This is a wishlist, though, not anything near a plan. 

And I think that’s okay. I want to stay flexible and open. I want to focus on how my life feels on the inside, not how it looks from the outside. I’ve been talking to my daughter about this, too, as she finishes high school and starts to think about college. Where will she go? What will she study? What kind of career might she have later?

All of these are good questions, and questions that are natural to ask when we’re on the precipice of big changes. But I keep asking her other questions, too: What do you want your days — and therefore your life — to feel like? I want her to be able to breathe. I want her to enjoy her life — where she lives, and with whom, and how she spends her time. It doesn’t matter how prestigious a college is, or how good a class or activity looks on her transcript or resume, or how well-paying a career might be, if she doesn’t feel good about those choices. 

I want her to trust me on something: that what she wants in life can — and will — change, because she will change. No need to have all of the answers now. I certainly don’t have them. Not yet, not ever.

Today’s poem is such a beautiful meditation on knowing ourselves, and knowing what we need to be at home in our own lives.

Poem to Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things
by Donika Kelly

Observe the baby hippo,
early born in hay over concrete,
stumbling and new in its enclosure:

Taut skin and fat and awkward steps—
it stumbles under a fluorescent sun
and nearly into the white walls.

Hippo baby, little river horse,
you should be in a river.

O Donika, you should be in love.

"Poem to Remind Myself of the Natural Order of Things" by Donika Kelly from THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS © 2025 Donika Kelly. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Graywolf Press.