Paris 🥐 + Dublin 🍺

Greetings from Paris! This is my first time back in the city since 2019. So much has changed since then-- both in my personal life and the world at large. Paris is the same... but different, it seems. Or I've changed, so I'm experiencing Paris differently?... 

But let me back up a bit. 

The reason I'm in Paris for a bit of fun is because I was first in Dublin for a workshop. I co-hosted Stories to Live and Die For, Seeing Your Life Through the Lens of Story with Sabrina Gorlitz. It was five days of existentially challenging yet deeply insightful explorations into the connections between living, writing/creating, and dying. 

I think the experience helped us all prepare a little for the inevitable end and offered fresh insights and new perspectives on why we feel an urge to create and how we might go about doing it in the coming months and years. (An exploration of regrets was a particular highlight.) I'm in awe of each intrepid participant who crossed the pond and dove into the deep conversations that may have seemed a little strange at first but turned out to be nourishment for our souls. May your creative visions flourish from the fertile ground of our time together in Dublin.

Dublin is also a special place, with a slight hum of "home" for me (I have some Irish roots, one quarter through my paternal grandmother; I wrote about her here). It's a city full of literary history, music, and lots of Guinness. (And that lilt of the Irish accent melts my heart every time.) Though it wasn't my time to be a tourist, I enjoyed getting to know the neighborhood around the workshop location, the Irishtown Chapel of Ease. And a bunch of us were regulars at the friendly Cat You Café.

Speaking of cafés... The sun is shining in Paris and I really must get out and skip along her fabled streets. Though much has changed inwardly and outwardly these past six years, this beautiful city continues to be a place that makes my heart happy. In many ways, Paris will always be Paris, yet I feel more willing to embrace the truth that nothing in life stays the same, objectively or in terms of personal perception. I think the workshop in Dublin drew back another nearly-invisible veil to reveal more truth of "how life is" in a way both sobering and tender. I know I'll be unpacking more of that experience throughout the fall.

For now, I'm grateful to have had the freedom, motivation, and opportunity to travel to two such literarily rich cities, and I'm happy to have them both be part of my living story right now.

“There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris."

~ Ernest Hemingway ~

Love your coffee (or tea) AND your life! ☕

Do you love your morning coffee or tea? Do you anticipate it, revel in, feel nourished and sustained by it as you begin your day?

I think our attachments to our small rituals in the morning are symbolic of our attachment to our deep love of life. It’s hard to contain such a big love, so we hold onto it and express it in smaller ways. Ultimately, it’s this love of life that must be our anchor as we live though our strange modern times.

Most people feel overwhelmed by—even afraid of— the 21st century’s “unprecedented” changes in technology, politics, and climate. With recent profound and disturbing leaps in AI technology and extreme climate disasters, not to mention rising racism and misogyny, it’s more than understandable. Some of us are asking, “Where is the love?”

Every generation makes the mistake of thinking their existential challenges are somehow new and different—unprecedented. But go back and read articles or listen to talks from the 60s (I’ve been listening to Alan Watts’ talks lately) or the early 80s (ie, Joseph Campbell interviews), or the 20s or 30s, or writings from the mid to late 1800s (Henry David Thoreau, anyone?), and you’ll find thoughtful speakers and writers saying the same sorts of things we’re saying: We are living in unprecedented times; Technology is changing so fast and making us so anxious; We’re longing for something calmer, softer, or more peaceful.

It’s sobering to realize every generation feels this. “But this is different!” we all say. “Never has XYZ happened!”

While the specific challenges of each generation are indeed different, the fact that each generation faces challenges is not. The specifics matter, of course. Our generation must take up our responsibilities to address extreme climate changes and leaps in emerging AI technology, and we must do our part to rein in racism and sexism. Future generations will have to take up their responsibilities, which will be impacted by what we do—or don’t do—now. Because we all inherit the actions—or non-actions—of the past, and that results in the specific content we have to deal with.

We can torture ourselves with the what ifs about the past: What if we’d done more to protect the environment in the 70s and 80s? Where might we be now? What if Oppenheimer hadn’t invent the atomic bomb in the 40s? What if XYZ?… 

Or we can rise to the challenges of the what ifs about the future: What if we don’t stop using fossil fuels? What if we do? What if we don’t regulate and humanize AI tech? What if we do?  What if we don’t impose limits on cruelty based on sex and skin color? What if we do?

The fact is: If the specifics of the past had been different, then the specifics of the present would be too. So, the details do matter, because what we choose to do now results in the specifics others will have to deal with later. And we should all care about that and align our actions to our values as best we can to manifest better visions of the future. Existential challenges will persist, but we can do our small parts right now to affect the scope and content of those challenges.

Starting with your morning coffee or tea…

Use this doorway of small pleasures in your life to reconnect with the great unfathomable love you have for life in all its wonder and complexity. When you find yourself asking: Where is the love? Recognize it’s in each one of us. Right here. Right now. Stay connected to that love when you ask your “what if” questions.

See yourself as part of a greater whole making your difference in some small way. Align with love from your first sip in the morning until your head hits your pillow each night. Trust you have a role to play in the the much larger scheme of existential reality.

And remember: as a specific element in your time and place you matter. So make something—of your life and your art—that you believe will make the world a slightly better place for others now and in the future (including yourself).

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

~ Mary Oliver ~

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." 

~ Margaret Mead~