42.

Find beauty even in ordinary days.

Today I'm turning 42. Douglas Adams once joked that 42 was the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Maybe he wasn’t far off. Not because the number hides a cosmic code, but because it’s a reminder that we keep looking for big answers, when most of life is about learning how to deal with the small, daily questions that never stop coming.

Yesterday’s Gospel used a different image: the narrow door. People will come from east and west, north and south, to take their place at the feast of God. The banquet is wide, generous, and open. But the door is narrow. Not everyone gets in, not because they’re excluded, but because many won’t make the effort to walk the road that leads there.

The narrow door offers a different wisdom. Stop trying to guarantee outcomes. Focus instead on how you walk. Because the path itself is the preparation. The narrow door demands that you travel light. You can’t squeeze through carrying ego, resentment, or inflated expectations. It requires patience, resilience, and humility.

That’s what challenges really are. Not punishments, but training. As Hebrews puts it: “When God loves someone, He gives them good lessons.” Struggles are not detours from life, they are life. They strip us of illusions, teach us gratitude, make joy deeper when it finally arrives. They prepare us to fit through the door.

The key is simple: showing up.
That’s how life feels at 42.

We often build expectations around outcomes. The career we should have by now, the recognition, the picture-perfect family, the big goals we set. And when reality doesn’t match the script, frustration grows. The higher the expectations, the harder the fall. Happiness works the same way. It's fragile, temporary, easily broken if we demand too much of it.

But the answer is not to stop dreaming. It’s to move the focus from results to process. To stop asking “What will I get?” and start asking “How will I show up?”

Because showing up changes everything.

It’s true in work. Founders don’t succeed because they guess every outcome right, they succeed because they keep showing up with clarity when things get tough, when deals fall apart, when others would quit. Progress is the reward of showing up consistently, not perfectly.

It’s true in personal growth. Discipline is nothing more than showing up for yourself. Whether to train, to learn, to build something. The effort compounds. The person you become along the way matters more than the finish line.

And it’s especially true in love. Relationships are not built on spectacular moments but on repeated presence. Being there not only when it’s easy, but when it’s messy. Not only when it’s convenient, but when it costs you something.

The friend who picks up the phone at midnight.

The parent who reads one more story even when exhausted.

The partner who stays patient in a hard season.

The colleague who quietly steps in to support when you’re overwhelmed.

Love is showing up. Again and again.

This doesn’t mean outcomes don’t matter. They do. But they’re not what give life its meaning. It’s the process. The way you walk the road, the way you keep showing up, the way you condition yourself to find beauty even in ordinary days.

At 42, maybe that’s the real “answer.” Not a grand secret, not a final destination, but a practice. To embrace challenges as lessons. To stop tying peace of mind to outcomes. To show up with energy, optimism, and intent. And above all, to show up with love for the people who matter, for the work that matters, for the life that unfolds, imperfect but beautiful, one day at a time.

The road is narrow, yes. But it leads to the feast. And 42 is the reminder that the answer isn’t something we find. The answer is something we live.