Spending three weeks at a writer’s retreat in France — a country known for its dedication to the art de vivre — leads me to ponder the good life. What is the “good life” exactly? To me, it can be just about everything that happens beyond adequate food, shelter, and sound health. Living the good life doesn’t have to be expensive. The key is to pay attention and to take risks. As Auntie Mame, my guide in all matters spiritual, says, “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.”

Rather than pontificate, I offer some concrete examples on the good life I’ve experienced over the past few weeks:

Try new things. Oh, I know what an effort it is to get up an hour earlier or attempt a cartwheel twenty years after your last one or extract a saddle of rabbit when armed with nothing but a carving knife and instructions from the internet. It’s a pain. But it snaps you out of your groove and lets you tune in to the good life when it’s actually happening so you don’t miss it. Sure, negotiating public transportation from the Nice airport to my hotel was a challenge, especially when laid on top of jet leg, but it led to my meeting a terrific woman and having dinner at her house prepared by a sous chef from the Hotel Negresco. When life offers you this kind of challenge, see it as an and opportunity and take it. You never know where it will lead.

Take risks. Yesterday, the retreat’s dog and I wandered nearly an hour too far on a trail. I didn’t bring hiking shoes, and a storm had clouded over the distant, snow-capped Pyrenees…

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