Fear vs. Wonder + Summer's Abundance... 🍒

Over the solstice weekend I drove through Summerland, a town in the interior of British Columbia where most of the province’s fruit and wine grapes grow. While the peaches and apricots were fuzzy green miniatures of themselves, the cherry trees were laden with crimson jewels.

Summerland runs alongside Lake Okanagan and lies next to Peachland. Don’t those two names conjure a sense of abundance? Across the lake sits Naramata and the Naramata Bench, a south facing ledge that produces some of the best wine in the region.

Surrounded by vineyards and orchards, especially those cherry trees full of ripe fruit, I marveled at the fact that every single tree provides hundreds if not thousands of pieces of fruit, and each piece of fruit carries the seed (or pit) of a potential tree. Every single tree carries the possibility of so many more trees, of so much more fruit. The idea made me happy, calm, and hopeful. Those feelings are harder to come by in a world going through so much chaos and change that fears are amplified, to say the least.

This got me thinking: staying in tune with the natural reality of abundance might be the antidote to the kind of scarcity mentality that underlies so many of our existential fears. Fears of loss, loneliness, pain, deprivation, conflict, danger. These are valid fears depending on circumstances, but have you ever noticed how so much of what we fear is “man made”? Most of our suffering comes from terrorizing and depriving each other. 

Nature’s tune is abundance. Look at leaves on trees, blades of grade in meadows, mushrooms in forests—have you ever seen the many poppy seeds that come from a single flower’s seed head?! Though, at times, Nature weathers droughts, fires, floods, and blight, and such events impact abundance, it's not usually for too long. Eventually Nature recovers.

The myriad fears we humans suffer from, natural and manufactured, impact our minds to the degree that we seem to remain in a perpetual fear loop, creating more and worse fears for ourselves and each other. How do we recover?

We frequently say that love is the opposite of fear, its antidote, but where is the love? How do we access it? Why doesn’t it flow more freely and hold back the tides of too much fear? Fears breed desires for control and domination, for convoluted excuses to justify strategies we say are for safety but which often lead to violence and create even more fear. We might even say it’s a justification for love, that this end is worth justifying any means. But I’m not convinced.

I believe the true antidote to fear is wonder. It’s the missing link on the way to love. A kind of bridge. Without a restored state of wonder, love does not bloom.

In a state of wonder, we let go of our preoccupation with fear. For a moment, or longer, we align with the miraculousness of the world as it is. Vital, varied, and abundant.

After recognizing this in our surroundings, it’s not not much of a leap to tune into that miraculousness in ourselves—and each other. A single breath sends oxygenated blood through our veins; a single smile lights up thousands of neurons in the brain of the smiler as well as the receiver of the smile; a single hug stimulates nerve endings and the release of hormones that trigger good and healing feelings.

We, too, are abundant aspects of Nature. Like the cherry tree, we bear the potential of much more than we at first appear to be. To quell fear—to not let it rot the fruit and wither the leaves of your life—nurture wonder. From there, it’s an easier leap to love.

"Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.”

~ Wayne Dyer ~

My Promise: Always April, Never AI 🌟

I promise I won’t use AI to communicate with you. To be clear, I’m not anti-AI. Though I am pro-human (will we need a term like that going forward?…).

Artificial Intelligence is the genie that’s never going back in the bottle. It’s here and evolving alongside us now, but it isn’t us, and never will be. Unless we let it.

Some of us are full of amazement and enthusiasm for AI’s capabilities and potential. Others are dismissive and fearful. A friend of a friend said, “You either love it or you hate it.” I disagree. I might say that about black licorice or durian, or about fascist detentions or exploitative corruption, but I’d never say that about technology in its raw forms. There are always pros and cons, and a very wide middle ground, when it comes to new technologies (so beware false binaries).

If AI can help us diagnose and possibly discover cures for degenerative diseases, I’m interested. If AI systems can build models to help us mitigate or even reverse climate change, I want that help. (When it comes to populating Mars, I don’t care a whit; I love Earth—can we please save it, or at least save it from ourselves?)

I’m old enough to remember the advent of the ATM machine. We were all a little suspicious at first but soon got used to it. Same with home computers, smart phones, and social media (that hasn’t aged well, just sayin’). I don’t think there’s anything wrong with feeling initially excited or frightened by new technology, but once the emotional wave has passed, thoughtful consideration has to kick in.

I’ve thoughtfully considered my boundaries for AI, especially around creativity and relationships. This short article from the Guardian (from Mar 29th) explains some of my rationale, and I’ve pulled this quote from writer, Joseph Earp:

“What I am not happy to outsource is most of the things that AI is desperate for me to outsource. I do not want a computer to summarise texts sent by my friends into shorter sentences, as though the work of being updated on the lives of those I love is somehow strenuous or not what being alive is all about. I do not want Google’s AI feature to summarise my search into a pithy (often incorrect) paragraph, rather than reading the investigative work of my fellow humans. I don’t want AI to clean up the pictures that I take on my phone that are rich and strange in their messiness.

And I certainly do not want AI to write my books for me, or paint my pictures. Not only would the work be terrible: it wouldn’t even be work. As all creatives know, there is limited joy in having written a book – as soon as it is done, most of us are on to the next thing. The thrill, the joy, the beauty, is in the writing of a book. If you outsource your creative work to a computer, you are not a creative. Someone who merely churns out product is not an artist – they are a salesperson. The artist is the person who makes, not who has made.”

I appreciate technology that helps me create—a computer with a word processor, internet access to research, and the printing press and film technology that gave me the books and movies that stimulated my imagination enough to want to create for myself. But technology that creates with me or for me feels… wrong. To me.

To me, the pervasive presence of AI calls me to double down on being human. It’s human to want to create. It’s also human to want those creations to be the best they can be and certain technologies often help with that, but creative work meant for human appreciation, I think, needs to be made by other humans. Great works of art speak to the heart about the human condition and hint at its mystery, its messiness, its humanity.

For years, especially since the industrial revolution, we’ve been trying to work smarter and faster, boosting efficiency, productivity, and profitability. We’ve modeled ourselves after machines, but now machines are modeling themselves after us. It’s time to get clear on what it really means to be human, and we’re still figuring that out! Art has always helped us reckon with this brief, mysterious encounter that lies between birth and death. Let’s not be so willing to sacrifice it.

Many people are turning to AI to enhance their creativity, while others are using it to replace therapists, counsellors, and coaches. (Some are even using it to create ideal virtual mates.) Yet humans do two things in distinctly human ways: making art and relating to each other. Neither are meant to be easy, but the efforts invested in both are experientially rewarding. Why would we outsource either to machines, as sophisticated as they might become?

Can these smarter machines help us improve ourselves? Maybe. If we use them properly. AI can summarize any number of self help books for you, or spiritual texts, or relationship guides, and you might absorb that guidance and apply it wonderfully in your life. But such a crash course in information doesn't take the place trial-and-error experience.

Keep in mind that algorithms are designed for behaviour modification and profit. New technologies are never made widely available until they’re known to be profitable. Profit lies in the gap between the actual costs of something and the tolerable costs of that thing. What will people pay, trade, or sacrifice for it?

Relationships aren’t meant to be profitable but rather reciprocal, which involves a give and take of value. And while one party might benefit more than another at any given time, that’s not the point of the bond. Art is reciprocal too. The give and take of what is made and shown, the inspiration and insight taken in, furthers the creation of more art. You fell in love with painting or writing because it gave you something first and you wanted to give back. Art produced solely for profit, or with tools made for profit, loses some of its soulful mystery, that strange human element that gives itself freely to art and relationships and yields priceless benefits. (Yes, we still have to eat and keep a roof over our heads, but most of us know how different it feels to take what you love and try to squeeze as much profit from it as possible.)

Don’t get me wrong, I think AI will help us in amazing ways. It better. But a lot of the people behind its spread of use are in it for the profit. I choose not to be. I won’t trade my humanity for something that isn’t meant to reciprocate, even as it tries to make me believe it will.

And so I promise you: though I type on a keyboard, use software to send you this email, and pay for Zoom so we can meet face to face wherever we each might be on the planet, it will always be me behind the tools. I will direct them rather than let them direct me.

Ideally, technology helps us solve problems but does not override the distinctly human experience of life. In the words of Soren Kierkegaard: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”

“Where I create, there I am true.”

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

The Luck of the Irish ☘️

Leprechauns, rainbows, and lucky shamrocks. Ireland possess a kind of mysterious magic in spite of its sometimes troubled and tragic past.

My paternal grandmother was Irish. She emigrated from the Galway region of Ireland to the United States in 1922 at the tender age of seventeen. When I first saw the 2015 film, Brooklyn, (based on Colm Tóibín’s novel of the same name) I thought of my grandmother’s story, which, of course, took place more than a generation before that of fictional character, Eilis Lacey.

Ireland in the late teens and twenties was rife with conflict and change. It was a revolutionary period, with the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, the Irish Civil War, and the establishment of the Irish Free State all taking place between 1916 and 1923.

My great-grandfather was a farmer with too many mouths to feed, so poverty, along with national conflict, influenced my grandmother’s departure. The “new world” provided new hope and opportunity for her as it did for so many others.

Most of us have ancestors who hailed from somewhere else, whether it’s one generation back or five. And some of us are the immigrants. (In fact, I immigrated to Canada from the U.S. as a one-year-old baby.)

Issues related to travel, immigration, choosing where to live, or being forced out of zones known as home are as active now as they were a hundred years ago. We humans have been moving around this planet through choice and choicelessness for ages. Especially as it’s become logistically, technologically, and politically easier to do so.

A friend said recently: “Isn’t it amazing that within a matter of hours on a plane we can land in a completely different part of the world?” From desert to mountains, from one ocean to another, from the tropics to the arctics, we can move around more easily and affordably than ever before (carbon footprint and colonization arguments aside for the moment, it’s pretty mind blowing, isn’t it?). We don’t have to spend a week on a ship crossing the Atlantic to go from Europe to the U.S., unless we want to. And unlike our ancestors, we don’t have to be gone months, years, or a lifetime.

My grandmother only went home once after her first son was born (my father’s oldest brother). She made her home in a new country with others who had emigrated one or two generations earlier. She naturalized, put down roots, left progeny, lived and died in her chosen country. Her chosen home.

Her commitment to her new country meant we lost touch with any family remaining in Ireland, but when I visited there for the first time in 2015, I felt a vibration of home in my heart. I felt the magic of the place, too, which is available to anyone open to feeling it.

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

~ WB Yeats ~

"Remember, remember always, that all of us, you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists.”

~ President Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

Uncertainty Springs Eternal 🌸

Even in uncertain times spring shows up. Cherry blossoms open to the sun, green shoots rise up from the dark earth, birdsong fills the air. Nature reminds us that life is change. Even in uncertain times.

And we are living them, aren’t we? We all feel it, globally and personally. And we’re all trained to do something about our feelings, even if we don’t know what that doing should be. But we also know that acting impulsively often has unwelcome consequences—an angry email sent too soon is regretted later, a piece of writing we don’t like is shredded or burned before its potential is revealed. A hot emotion craves release yet often leaves destruction its wake. That old advice to take a deep breath and count to ten? It’s good. Especially in uncertain times.

With all the chaos streaming around us, let’s make a conscious decision to not add to it. That takes some work. We need to be extra vigilante about recognizing our triggers and have constructive ways to deal with them; we need to be more aware that others feel just like us, maybe worse, and we must tolerate that and, on our good days, do something positive to uplift others; we also need to make extra room for what nourishes and sustains us personally. It’s not a time to go without good thoughts, words, and deeds. The extra effort will pay off in the moment and later.

So don’t give in to fear; expand courage. Don’t succumb to hate; rise to love and tolerance. Don’t surrender to despair; stand with possibility and vision.

As a writer you have the tools to do this at your fingertips— you can take the coldness of your despair and the heat of your rage to the page. Your hands can be channels of insight rather than fists of might. Don’t they say the pen is mightier than the sword? Ideas last longer than bruises.

I don’t mean to sound Pollyannaish here. Though I do believe writing is powerful action—words galvanize people to do both good and ill—other actions are no doubt required now too—voting, marching, engaging in difficult conversations with people who think differently (and consider reviewing Timothy Snyder's Twenty Lessons from On Tyranny).

Remember that you, as a writer, are trained to deal with uncertainty and chaos thanks to your practice of repeatedly facing the blank page. What does the blank page teach us? That the story isn’t fully written yet. In its blankness lies possibility, if we have the vision for it. Don’t sacrifice that vision to the storms of chaos. Preserve it, like the stillness in the eye of a storm. Purge your inner chaos onto the page—burn or shred that one if you want—and let the uncertainty of the times trigger not only fear, anger, and despair but also wisdom, love, vision, and tolerance.

The story’s still being written. Which part are you writing?

"The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next." 

~ Ursula K. LeGuin ~

“For the times they are a-changin'.”

~ Bob Dylan ~

P.S. The writings and creations of others can uplift, soothe, and strengthen in these times. Two Buddhist-themed books I turn to: Pema Chodron’s, Comfortable with Uncertainty and The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts. I also like to reread Paul Coelho’s, The Alchemist, and Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse now and again.

And just last week I watched the Oscar-winning animated feature, Flow, by Latvian director, Gints Zilbalodis. See this film! The literal wordlessness of it was wonderfully calming. Another, older favourite Oscar-winning animated feature is Hayao Miyazaki’s, Spirited Away—surreal, mystical, and heartfelt. Not wordless but wonderfully weird. (Japanese with English dubbing.)

SMWC + The Politics of Writing 🧑‍🤝‍🧑

I just got home from Mexico, where I attended the San Miguel Writers Conference. This was the conference’s 20th anniversary, and the team put on a great event, with powerful keynote addresses from the likes of John Irving, Margaret Atwood, and Ruth Riechl, to name a few. I had the privilege of presenting three sold out workshops, and I met so many brilliant writers, of whom many, I’m sure, will become friends.

What struck me most about the conference was the potency of community. At SMWC, there are communities within communities—the Mexican youth, the keynote luminaries, the generous faculty members, the creative and enthusiastic attendees, the different people from different countries writing in different genres. Yet, everyone is bound by a love of words, and stories, and truth—the kind of truth that makes the world a better place for everyone.

In this divided, unpredictable time we’re living in, contentious popular politics were left outside the venue, and a politics of humanity prevailed inside, especially the part that supports everyone to speak and write according to heart-based truth.

Gathering as a creative community, whether in a town in the middle of Mexico or your own living room, requires a significant amount of trust and a belief that creative, heart-based, truth-telling matters. We must agree on some fundamental principles. We can disagree on how we might solve a problem (pantsters and plotters have been debating for decades), and we might even discuss how to define a problem, or if there even is one, but at minimum we must agree to make room for everyone—every member of the body politic—to have a say, if they want to.

Writers make room for each other in much the same way they make room for the words in their lives. This room-making is a fundamental principle of creativity—and for living with one’s humanity intact. Reading and writing has always helped keep humanity intact (even if/when it fosters disagreements). When we stop telling stories, when we stop sharing stories, when we stop listening to humanity’s variety of stories, we lose trust; we lose heart.

Mexican keynote author, Jorgé Hernandez cautioned us to beware of those who don’t read. Margaret Atwood, resisting any label of prophet, reminded us that in any oppressive regime, there’s always a resistance, and poet, Kaveh Akbar, connected our struggles with grief and isolation now to poetry written thousands of years ago, pointing out that this isn’t the first time we’ve been in a place like this, and it likely won’t be the last.

Most writers don’t claim to be political per se. Percival Everett, author of the book Erasure that was adapted to the screen as the film American Fiction, says his books “just come to him,” and yet, his newly released novel, James powerfully yet subtly addresses America’s slave history through story.

The core of politics is rooted in the debates and discourses about how we decide to live together as individuals and members of societies. Stories, in their specificity of time, place, characters, and situations, contribute to this discourse. Writers grapple with questions pertaining to how we, as individuals, can live and thrive together in groups, as societies. Writers don’t necessarily provide answers to the questions, but they keep the conversation going. They play with the possibilities that arise from asking: How do we strike a balance between “me” and “we”? How do we avoid veering too far into the darkness of “us” versus “them”?

So, the act of writing is political whether you think of it that way or not, because it’s part of how you, as an individual, wonder about and grapple with the questions of the time you live in, your personal experiences, and your place—and our human place—in the larger world.

Own your choices as the political acts that they are: to be a creator, a writer, a truth teller who aims to contribute something meaningful that makes the world a brighter rather than a darker place. Then go do it.

"No book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude" 

~ George Orwell ~

“War is what happens when language fails.”

~ Margaret Atwood ~

The Stories You Choose to Live, Read, and Write 📚

We are all living stories. Stories are all around us and working through us. We make stories. Our lives are stories. 

Paying attention to the stories we’re choosing to live can offer insights into the choices we’re making now or could make later.

When I say we’re living stories, I’m not referring to a solipsistic perspective that we’re always making up our own realities. Rather, I’m calling attention to the way we use stories to understand ourselves and the world.

We make up stories individually and collectively about our identities and beliefs. These stories drive our choices and actions. Consequences ensue. This is in large part what gives our lives a sense of meaning. Stories shape, inform, guide, and determine who we are.

And while all these stories matter, it can be helpful to remember that they are stories.

Thinking about our lives as stories is a useful practice (and one I’m exploring more and more). When you think of your life as a story, you might ask yourself: am I satisfied with the starring role in my own life as well as the bit parts I play in other peoples’ lives? Do I need or want to change anything? If so, why? To what purpose? Stepping back further, you might see patterns in your life that reveal deeper aspects of yourself you’ve forgotten or are just waking up to.

Yet, as interesting as it is to edit and improve the individual stories we’re currently living, there comes a time to step outside of the stories all together and have a good long look at what we’re doing with our powers of creation. We are capable of creating stories of love and peace yet the world continues to be full of pain and suffering. 

This year our individual and collective stories seem fraught with intensity, tension, and conflict. Outcomes are uncertain. I don't think we should give up on the potential for positive breakthroughs, but our future depends on the stories we’re living, listening to, and writing about right now.

What kinds of stories are you living? Reading? Writing? Are they contributing to your own growth and healing? How does the story you’re living impact the world? Are your stories calling you to grow and change?

Let’s write—and live—the kinds of individual and collective stories that can carry us through and beyond 2025. Let’s accept the call to venture out into the mystery of the stories and lives yet to be written and lived. Let’s use our powers of creation to pave the way for new, nourishing stories to be told.

In the words of my brilliant writer-friend, Paul Belserene: “Write as if you’re reading it; read as if you’re writing it. Write as if you’re living it; live as if you’re writing it.”

Write. Read. Live.

"After nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world." 

~ Philip Pullman~

“You write your life story by the choices you make.”

~ Helen Mirren ~