Letters to Leland

May 12, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

A particular memory has been rolling around in my head a lot lately; today I want to unpack and explore it.

First, I need to offer a few caveats. I have forgotten far more details than I remember; you will notice this as I describe the memory. I experience this memory almost as if seeing it through a tunnel: the surrounding details are almost completely distorted; only the core of the experience remains. In fact, the memory is such an odd combination of clear (in terms of the key aspects that I recall witnessing) and fuzzy (the surrounding details, which I’m normally pretty good at remembering but in this case are almost completely blurred out or absent) that I’ve started wondering whether I dreamt the original experience. I still believe this is something I experienced, but I don’t think it really matters; what I think matters is that the memory (or dream) keeps replaying in my head.

Here is my best attempt at describing the experience. What feels like 1-2 decades ago, I believe while traveling, I was standing in a fairly public space. From what I recall about the space, it was large and open and crowded, reminiscent of a large and busy train station terminal. Some people were standing around, others were walking. I presume organically, some walking corridors had emerged between pockets of folks standing and milling about.

Standing in a traffic corridor stood a young woman, probably in her early 20s. She was attempting to read something on her phone. People kept bumping into her, which increasingly annoyed her. Each time a passerby bumped her, she writhed or gestured in frustration, as if outraged by the injustice of it all. And after the writhing, she returned to attempting to read her phone again until the next passerby bumped her, at which point the cycle repeated.

I watched in stunned silence from 15-20 feet away. To me, the solution to this situation seemed entirely obvious: move to one of practically infinite locations where others are standing around, thus enabling her to read her phone in peace. Again, this is a fairly large open space, and though it’s crowded the walking paths that have emerged are limited; she could have easily found another location where she could have read without getting bumped.

For whatever reason, she doesn’t relocate. I watch as she gets bumped and angry several times in the span of a couple minutes. I find myself wondering whether she’s simply not aware that she has other options (e.g. is she wearing metaphorical blinders that prevent her from seeing the other options available to her?) or whether she really expects the people following the extemporaneous walking path to all go around her (there is enough foot traffic, and people are moving fast enough going around each other, that this seems completely implausible to me). As far as I a tell, this girl seems to want to live in a fantasy land where she can stand in the middle of this pathway and magically expect the pathway to divert around her. After a few minutes of watching this scene unfold, I eventually give up and move on. In my recollection, I even considered tapping her on the shoulder and giving her advice, but eventually decide to mind my business and move on.

I think the reason this memory keeps replaying in my head is because it reminds me of so much of what I see playing out around me in the world today. Many, many people I know (and don’t know) appear to be intentionally stationing themselves where they are most likely to get uncomfortably jostled, then getting outraged when the jostling occurs. I find myself, fairly regularly, observing someone putting themselves in repeated situations that will drive them crazy, but they keep returning to those situations as if expecting a different outcome.

For a long time I’ve wrestled with the best way to help that girl (and all her metaphorical counterparts in my daily life). I originally thought the replaying of the experience was meant to guide me to a learning about how to help her going forward. In fact, I’m coming to a different conclusion entirely.

I’m starting to realize the girl in the pathway was, on an unconscious level, seeking out the aggravation she was experiencing. She was clearly intelligent enough to find another solution; that she didn’t wasn’t due to any failure of intelligence on her part. I dare say her problem wasn’t even one of perspective: my recollection is that I concluded she wouldn’t have taken my advice, even if I offered it. Even in that moment, that girl seemed determined to remain unhappy. My rather consistent experience interacting with her successors corroborates that decision: folks in her situation rarely take advice that might solve their problems. Even when I try to outline what I consider to be all the realistic options, I am typically dismissed or ignored or even confronted.

It seems crazy to say, but I’m coming to realize that sometimes part of us just wants to be frustrated. I think this is true for all of us, but perhaps more true for some than others. I think the parts of us that want to be frustrated are the parts stuck in fear; experiencing the frustration helps reinforce our feeling of being stuck. It’s a way to reinforce the bars of our metaphorical jail cells, helping us feel small and helpless and trapped.

Why would anyone want to feel small and helpless and trapped? Well, again, these are our fears talking. Our fears are convinced that we are destined to remain trapped. A layer deeper, parts of us are aware of just how much potential we have, and are terrified of what awful things we might do if we achieved our full potential. And of course, part of us wants to justify the fact that we continuously fall so far short of what we know our potential to be. It’s not our better selves who want to feel helpless and trapped, but aspects of our ego that facilitate keeping our ego in charge.

For me, the realization (or reminder really) is that it’s not up to me to decide when that girl is ready to let go of her need to feel trapped. Her path (or at least her realistic options) might seem obvious to me, but that’s irrelevant; so long as she has an emotional and spiritual need to remain stuck, she will find ways to remain stuck. Only when she has experienced enough suffering will she finally open herself to new solutions.

And therein, I think, is the lesson for me today: it’s not up to me when or how that girl (and all the people she represents in my life) wake up. When she has had enough suffering, she will ask for help. And from what I can tell, the universe responds when we ask for help. The help often comes in surprising ways from surprising sources, but in my experience it always comes (at least so long as the ask is genuine).

As I write, I’m realizing that there are three scenarios emerging, each of which invites a different course of action, with discernment required to decide which of the scenarios is presently unfolding. I outlined one scenario in my last letter: when the storm clouds are gathering such that they are prepared to spread darkness and suffering, I am invited to be a light in the storm. Conversely, when one is stuck in frustration of their own making, but not threatening me or others, they can be left alone until they experience enough suffering to want it to stop. And for those who are prepared to make changes, I can offer whatever wisdom or help I can that might be useful.

Regarding that last scenario, one of the things your mom points out to me regularly is that I have a gift for coaching. I think she’s right. To be more specific, I seem to have a gift for identifying others’ talents and how they might be utilized; I’m also good at helping others diagnose their problems and come up with realistic, helpful, compassionate solutions. I have other talents (public speaking, for one), but coaching is among them.

To some degree, right now I am a coach without students (other than the two of you, and maybe a few friends) and a public speaker without an audience. Perhaps this letter is my way of identifying the way in which I am, in fact, the frustrated girl stuck in a trap of my own design. Whether true or not, I do think this letter serves as some small action in an effort to let go of old patterns and create new ones. Hopefully I’ll find the strength and wisdom to continue to explore this space in coming letters, as I do think there are small signs of progress revealing themselves.

Wish me luck.

I love you.

Love,

Dad

May 8, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

One final note before the weekend. No preamble today; let’s jump right in.

As part of my first vision, I saw a storm cloud formulating on the horizon. The storm cloud was slightly to the right of center, approximately one o’clock in orientation. I intuitively understood that the clouds represented a rise in darkness, or what we might commonly refer to as evil. Even in late 2021 (when I had the experience) the idea that evil might be rising would have been far from controversial; indeed, though I don’t recall it being talked about in such terms, I thought at the time we all felt it on some level.

Anyway, in response to the storm clouds forming, I raised an army and rode out to face the darkness in battle. (Afterward, I was pretty horrified at the militant nature of the journey, but it’s what happened.) Interestingly, I sorta got stuck during the face-off. I felt myself gearing up to fight, but also felt a strange tension…and almost a recognition that what I was pursuing wasn’t quite right. Perhaps said differently: my programming had me convinced that battle was inevitable, but some other part of me understood this wasn’t the way.

What happened next confused me for a long time: I ultimately sorta went around the storm clouds and continued on my journey. I took off armor that until then I had not realized I was wearing. Taking off the armor felt lighter and freeing. I sensed that I no longer needed the armor, though I found myself surprised to believe the armor wouldn’t be necessary.

Over the next couple of years I came to understand that taking off the armor would reflect (predict?) my spiritual journey. Particularly during the St Ignatius exercises, but even before, I found myself removing layer after layer of emotional and spiritual armor. The experience always reminded me of the story of Eustace in the Chronicles of Narnia.

What surprised me was what happened toward the end of the St Ignatius exercises, now a couple of years ago. In what turned out to be one of my last visions (and boy, do I miss them), I once again saw the storm clouds formulating on the horizon. This time, however, instead of raising an army I just set out to approach the storm. When I approached the darkness, I found myself again confused by what to do. I even asked: what do I do now? To my surprise, the answer came to me: “be the light”. Quick aside: this experience surprised me because I hadn’t received many messages, just visions. It’s not entirely accurate to say I heard the message, more that the message seemed telepathically imprinted in my consciousness. That may sound strange, but it’s the best I can do to describe what I experienced. Anyway, I found myself channeling my inner light. At that point, the darkness overtook me. It felt something like dark winds blowing all around, enveloping me in the storm. I started to realize that the storm seemed far larger and stronger than my light, and so I asked “what if my light is not enough”? The answer came immediately: “trust that others will show up with their light”. At this point, I looked around and saw flickers of light through breaks in the dark winds.

[An aside less relevant for today’s note: on the way out to the storm cloud I found myself passing by other, lesser storms. I found myself tempted to bring light to these lesser spots of darkness. I ‘heard’ a message suggest that I should let others bring their light to these spots of darkness, and that I should focus my light on the big source of darkness. On reflection, I felt somewhat sheepish about this experience: my ego naturally wants me to skip (or gloss) over small problems and focus on big problems. I tend to treat small problems as beneath me, reflecting an arrogance I don’t find particularly attractive. Nevertheless, the message seemed pretty clear. I’ve come to think that the overarching point is a useful one: that I will understand the problems I am meant to solve and, though I may be tempted (including by others), it is important for me not to get distracted attempting to solve problems that others were meant to solve.]

This subsequent vision seemed as if it completed the original vision, and somehow explained the confusion in the original. In the original vision I assumed the darkness needed to be fought and conquered, and the best I could do at the time was to recognize that fighting wasn’t the answer (and that I needed to remove my armor). Armor removed, I was then prepared to understand how one should face the darkness: by being a source of light. Since then, I’ve had a directional sense for what that meant, though never a particularly precise understanding.

As strange as this might sound, a large portion of my life since late 2021 has been spent preparing to face the darkness. On some level, I understood that potentially dark times approached, and that I would have some role to play in confronting those dark times. On some level I understood that I was by no means prepared to face those storms. Taking stock, I realized I was exhausted mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. This realization led (or at least significantly contributed) to me quitting my job and taking the last few years off.

I originally assumed that the storm clouds reflected something that would happen in society at large, but over time came to wonder whether they merely reflected storms that were likely to rise within me. Something changed for me when Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Kirk was an odd public figure: he was a Christian media content creator and political organizer who engaged as enthusiastically in politics as he did in matters of faith. His mix of politics and religion reflected something I had not seen before. I was by no means a follower of Kirk’s content, but I was generally aware of his existence.

For whatever reason, I felt the impact of Kirk’s assassination deeply. It seemed clear to me that something fundamental had changed in the world. Oddly, for the first time, I felt my experiences in the world reminding me of the dark clouds forming on the horizon. This sensation is hard to describe, but one I’ve experienced several times before: I get this clear sense that I am watching my visions play out in the real world, as if fulfilling a prophecy. The Kirk assassination felt precisely the same as so many prior experiences. On some level this felt like my invitation to set out to face the storm clouds.

Over the course of the following weekend, I had three strange experiences. I won’t go into the individual details partly to protect the privacy of others involved, but also because the individual details don’t matter. What matters is the overarching experience. The only thing I will say is that the three different experiences happened in different locations while interacting with different people (or, in one instance, a group of people).

In all three instances, I first felt a huge surge in energy from roughly my gut. What happened next surprised me: I felt something of an invitation to surrender to the experience. I had experienced this invitation to surrender before, but only in my meditations; this was the first time I had experienced the sensation in daily life. In all three experiences I surrendered to the sensation and found myself (and this is the best way I know how to describe it) allowing myself to say the things that wanted to be expressed. Very broadly, I felt words sorta coming to me as I expressed them in real time, without the intellectual filter I would normally overlay. I found myself, in all three instances, pretty surprised by what I said. Indeed, upon reflection I even felt pretty uncomfortable by what I had said: these were clearly not sentiments I would normally feel comfortable relaying. Generally I was speaking far more directly, emotionally, and forcefully than I find comfortable. And yet, I found myself ultimately at peace: something had clearly wanted to be expressed in those moments, and I had honored that experience; I was prepared to live with whatever outcome.

Each situation played out differently. In multiple situations I perceived something of a shift in those around me, as if something had pierced through and perhaps woken something in my counterpart. I found those outcomes deeply gratifying.

Those experiences happened in September last year, so several months ago. Since that time I’ve not had other experiences as obvious as those. I’ll admit: I assumed these would be the first of many such experiences, and began looking for them. I wonder whether I was forcing things, and perhaps even blocking my ability to have similar experiences by attempting to force the issue.

For whatever reason, I felt the need to write about this story today. Perhaps I just needed to get it out. To some degree, this is just the layer of clutter most observable today, so is the layer of clutter I feel invited to address.

On some level, it seems pretty clear to me that darkness is rising in the world today. I think many would agree with me on that count. Most of my compatriots seem determined to blame and attack their perceived enemies, whether they be spouses, children, or rival political parties. What I think they fail to recognize is that these efforts, in fact, feed the darkness and its spread. The answer, I strongly suspect, is to let go of our emotional and spiritual armor so that we might channel our inner light in the dark. In my experience, letting go of emotional and spiritual armor is not something one can do solo. Like Eustace, we seem to need help from a higher power. In my experience, as mentioned before, this comes in the form of intention and surrender: when we ask for help letting go of our armor (and the accompanying baggage, or trauma, or demons – these experiences have gone by different names in different eras), God helps us identify where we are holding onto armor, and the underlying experiences the armor was created to protect. When we let those parts of us heal, we feel lighter and freer, but we also feel a void. Eventually, something new grows in the void, and we start to understand why we needed to let go of that armor and the accompanying trauma: to make space for the new thing to grow.

I’ve started to wonder whether I am indeed meant to raise an army, though it’s quite clear that the army is not meant to do battle. I wonder whether I am meant to help others heal that they might join me in shining their light in the rising storm. The answer isn’t clear. What is clear is that I will know what actions to take when the time comes. In the meantime, I find myself attempting to clear out any and all potential blockages, that I might receive and share light with as little obstruction as possible.

I love you both. Wish me luck. I might need it.

Love you,

Dad

May 7, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

Last post I suggested I would come back and write about the topic that inspires me. My intention today was (and is) to follow up on that commitment. Now that I sit here, I notice myself feeling a little uncomfortable; I suspect that means whatever wants to come out is pretty personal.

Actually, before I dig in, by way of preamble (and perhaps stalling just a bit, or getting the creative muscles flowing) I want to share a bit about how I have experienced the last couple of days. As mentioned in the prior letter, I intentionally stopped with a topic dangling, stating my intention to seed my next letter with a specific topic. Strangely, pretty quickly after writing, I sorta forgot what the topic was that I wanted to write about. No worry, I thought, I left myself a reminder, so I’ll know when I get back to it. It’s worth noting: this represents some progress on my part: historically I’ve tried to hold ideas like these in my head and work through them. Forgetting, or potentially forgetting, an idea created quite a bit of anxiety, and I fought forgetting aggressively, using any number of tools (the healthiest is writing the ideas down, the most common but least healthy is to let the idea consume me without taking action). Nowadays I’ve learned to trust that good ideas will return if and when they are meant to, and forgetting an idea generally doesn’t trouble me anymore.

Well, when I sat down today, I found myself still a little blanked. Typically I’ve taken such blockages to mean that I’m just not ready to tackle a subject, and waiting for “inspiration” to hit. Today, my sense (right or wrong) is that the topic still wants to be explored, but that what I’m feeling is not a lack of inspiration but in fact resistance. And so I’m going to attempt to push through, mostly for the rep, but partly because I’m hopeful some useful stuff will come out (e.g. that the resistance is blocking something useful, and that pushing through will allow the useful thing to emerge).

Part of the complication of writing today comes from an evolution since my last letter of my understanding of the problem. See, what I wanted to explore two days ago was this: I am encountering lots and lots of people in pain, and I feel simultaneously drawn to help and confused (and, again, perhaps blocked) on how to do so.

Actually, let’s dig into this a bit. I’ve come to believe that sometimes a pervading energy runs through us. So when I explore my inner state, and the energy I feel flowing through my being, I often find those around me experiencing different versions of the same energy. My first experience of this was after the 2024 presidential election; the election itself caused me quite a bit of inner turmoil. What I noticed, speaking with others, was that few were as consumed by the election as I had been, but that virtually everyone I encountered was dealing with their own version of turmoil. I talked to people whose kids had been hospitalized, or whose kids had changed schools mid-semester. I encountered folks who were experiencing such family strife that police had gotten involved. The mildest form of turmoil was talking to folks who were experiencing the busiest weeks at work that they could remember over the prior several years. What I noticed, or at least thought I noticed, was that while the specifics of the interactions differed greatly, there seemed to be something deeply familiar any time two people shared their experiences genuinely.

The Law of Attraction is an idea shared by spiritualists and self-help gurus. It broadly suggests that we attract the energy we feed. Self-help gurus teach techniques meant to manifest preferred outcomes by feeding them focus, attention, and positive energy. Spiritualists are more passive, but generally believe that our external worlds reflect our internal states. I bring this up just to entertain the possibility that I observed turmoil in those around me precisely because I was experiencing it myself. Perhaps what I was experiencing was not universal, but merely the universe reflecting back what I myself was feeling. I think this is entirely possible, and unfortunately there’s no real way to prove one way or another. What I can say is that, for the time being, the idea that certain energies seem to be flowing through the concentric circles of my life seems like a useful framing for how I interact with the world.

What I’ve noticed over the last several months, and particularly the last several weeks, has been just a general sense of chaos. I’ve felt an energy moving through me that I didn’t really like or enjoy, but seemed pretty clearly planted in the current moment. What I can celebrate about that experience: though my typical temptation would have been to attach the feeling to some portion of my life and treat it like a problem to solve, I was able to recognize that the feeling was independent of my life situation, and just felt like an energy field in my awareness.

Well, the world around me certainly reflected that chaos back to me. I have multiple dear friends going through divorce (or potential divorce) right now. I have a friend who lost his job and is struggling to make ends meet. I know several folks dealing with frightening medical situations, and I know lots of folks struggling dearly with the actions of the current presidential administration. On a global level we’ve literally seen war break out between the US and Iran. Wherever I look, whether at the level of the individual, the small group, or even the nation or the world at large, I see chaos unfolding all around me.

I’m fairly convinced that the chaos is born out of a season of death. I’ve written about this before (and related ideas as well), but my sense is that many of our current ways of doing things need to die in order to make space for new ways of doing things. But we live in a culture and an era that resists death at all costs. Thus, we’re fighting the necessary and inevitable, most notably by assigning blame to and attacking each other. We are, of course, spreading the very chaos and death we hope to avoid, but we are creating far more suffering in the process by fighting the energy we feel (and feeding it through our egos) rather than accepting the opportunities to surrender our egos and false gods in order to make space for what’s new.

In some ways, all of this is an incredibly longwinded way of saying that I see people all around me in pain, suffering while they wrestle with their internal demons. Whether it be family members, close friends, people at church, or even folks further away from me (like politicians, or folks in the news)…I see evidence of unnecessary suffering practically everywhere I look. And as far as I can tell, all of that suffering is born of ego: the ego’s need to be right, the ego’s need to be in charge, the ego’s need for the rest of the world to submit to its will.

Of course, the world doesn’t work this way. The world doesn’t ultimately answer to our egos. Our egos are absolutely capable of influencing and even shaping the world. But our egos have limits on what they can accomplish, and in this era we’re butting up against what our egos can do.

Put more accurately, our egos are attempting to carry out decades (or in some instances, centuries) worth of plans. Those plans are reaching their inevitable yet unsatisfying dead ends…and our egos don’t know how to cope. There’s an interesting phenomenon in cult followers: when a charismatic cult leader predicts certain phenomena (like the end of the world on a specific date), when that prediction gets clearly proven false, the cult followers often increase their fervor for the cult. This is, of course, counterintuitive: once the leader is proven demonstrably wrong, one might assume the cult would begin to revisit everything else about the leader’s teachings. In fact, the opposite happens, precisely because the cult followers have staked so much of their identity in the cult. Questioning the leader and the cult would mean questioning their very identity, which proves too steep a hill for most to climb, and so they reconcile the cognitive dissonance by denying obvious truths and believing increasingly outlandish falsehoods.

I see a lot of similar behavior out in the world today: people denying obvious truths and believing increasingly outlandish falsehoods. And while it’s saddening when a fringe group of cultists exhibit such behavior, I am deeply concerned by the implications of watching such behavior at the scale we’re seeing today.

You might assume that my obvious concern would be to stop the spread of outlandish cult behavior. I’ll admit: my deeper concern right now is more for those closest to me. Partly this is natural concern for the people I love most. But really, my belief is that healing naturally occurs in something resembling concentric circles: first I heal me, then I help heal those closest to me, and then on an on outward from there.

What I find deeply frustrating about the current state of affairs is the degree to which I sense I have answers that could help lots and lots of people…if only I knew how to get the message out. In some ways, what I am describing represents something of a win: Christians often talk about wanting to spread the Good News, and for the first time in my life, I broadly understand what that means. Of course, my version of the Good News is slightly different from the traditional Christian perspective, but I think it’s close enough to the same that many Christians will ultimately recognize and agree with it. And for non-Christians, I think my ideas solve some of the problems that have slowed the spread of Christianity. Ultimately, I believe we all have the opportunity to connect with God (or Source, or the Universe, or whatever one wants to call it) and operate from that place, but I also believe we all have the right to decline that opportunity.

Which, I think, gets me to yesterday’s realization: I’ve been worrying too much about what other people do. I’ve been doing the very thing I watch others do with increasing frustration. Others are indeed suffering needlessly, but I ultimately don’t control the actions they take. I only control the actions I take. And the invitation to me right now appears to be one of creation. As far as I can tell, if I engage in the creative act consistently enough, those who want will find it, and those who don’t won’t. I can trust things will work out the way they are meant to, and just focus on what I can control and contribute.

One thought occurs to me as I write this week: I am throwing way too many huge topics out at a time to be digestible. One benefit of my earlier writing was my ability to tackle bite-sized topics within individual letters. On the other hand, one thing I notice is that only every few letters covered a type of building block idea that allows me to refer back over and over again. I even noticed this as it was happening: in the early days of writing I noticed how I needed to clear several days worth of smaller, more mundane topics in order to work myself up to the larger, more significant topics. I enjoy writing about both the mundane and the significant, but will admit to wanting to maximize the amount of significant writing I do. One thing I’m realizing as I write this: writing about the mundane is likely to continue to clear space for the significant. Said differently, only by writing about the mundane am I likely to reach down and identify the significant.

The other thought that occurs to me as I write comes from my third psychedelic journey. At one point in the journey I found myself continually attempting to plant metaphorical seeds, as if dropping breadcrumbs for others to discover and follow. Eventually I realized two things: 1) that I could let go of the compulsive need to drop the breadcrumbs, and 2) I could grant myself some grace for those times where I gave into the compulsion. I’ve since realized this portion of the journey seems to apply to how I’ve attempted to communicate regarding my spiritual journey: I’ve wanted to build a foundation of logic, bringing the reader along so you might follow the breadcrumbs for your own discovery. I’m realizing that there are times and situation where I just need to articulate what I know, without providing all the supporting documentation. And, on the other hand, I recognize that I am still likely to err on the side of providing too much supporting documentation. So be it.

I’m not sure I have any grand conclusion today. It feels good to write again. I intend to do more of it in the near future. My hope is that writing leads me to attempt other forms of creation. Wish me luck. I will let you know how it goes.

I love you,

Dad

May 5, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

I’m somewhat horrified to look back and realize my last letter came in September. Almost an entire school year has elapsed since then.

Not that nothing has happened in the last year; indeed, many small but wonderful events occurred that I wish I captured with letters in real time. Oddly, the gap in writing itself became something of an impediment to writing: after not writing for many weeks or months, somehow I felt as if my next letter should be sufficiently worthy as to justify the gap.

Of course, that logic is patently silly, particularly when you won’t be reading these letters for many years. When you consume these letters, you will only notice the gap insofar as you are curious to see whether and how I captured memories of your childhood. I offer this anecdote as a simple admission for how distorted my thinking became when it came to writing.

I still feel the need to justify the gap in letters by writing something profound today. What I’ve realized is that I need to give myself some permission and grace to publish something uninteresting, if only to remove the barrier to writing. My hope is that the act of writing today will enable more writing. We shall see. But I’ll admit to feeling a relative lack of inspiration in writing today, and so genuinely need some permission to write a bad letter today, in hopes that I unlock better letters in the coming days and weeks.

I’m reminded of a concept I learned from, I think, John Mayer and Ed Sheeran. If memory serves, both think of creativity as something that flows through a sort of pipe. That pipe gets clogged over time, and so needs to get unclogged in order to allow creative energy to properly flow. Their solution is to just sit and write music, fully expecting the first several efforts to be of poor quality. But by lowering the expectations (and thus the resistance), they find they are able to clear the pipe by getting out all the bad ideas. Eventually, once enough bad ideas get cleared, genuinely creative ideas begin to flow through the pipe. Let’s hope I’m doing some version of this act today.

Indeed, part of the inspiration for writing today comes from a conversation I had after church on Sunday. I was talking with a close friend, and found myself saying (to my own surprise as I was articulating the thought, as I hadn’t observed it until I said it) that I felt something of a backlog of ideas cluttering my mind, and that I felt a need to start expressing myself, just to let the ideas out and declutter my mind a bit.

You might be wondering what ideas have been cluttering up my mind. I myself found myself wondering the same. Alas, my mind doesn’t work that way. Imagine walking into a cluttered room with the express intention of decluttering. For me, anyway, at first all I see is the clutter in the aggregate. Only after beginning the process do I begin to see the individual elements of clutter, and find the awareness to identify and address each of them appropriately. So, much like how I would address a cluttered room, for this session I intend to address only those items most noticeable.

In my last letter I observed how I experienced last summer as something chaotic. Unfortunately, the pervading sense of chaos hasn’t diminished; if anything it’s grown, at least in salience.

Elements of the chaos seem positive, or at least innocent enough. The two of you have gotten more busy with extracurriculars over the last year. As a result, more and more of my time has gone into shuttling the two of you from activity to activity. Well, and not just shuttling: I’ve participated in coaching the two of you in basketball (Leland) and baseball (Everett). To be very clear: I have thoroughly enjoyed coaching both of you. Through the act of coaching I feel our relationships deepening, as I learn more about you and you learn more about me and the world.

One thing I’ve noticed about coaching: it’s an inherently emotional act. Or, at least, it is when I do it. I love basketball and baseball, and so the act of coaching stirs pretty deep emotions in me. Spiritual Stew stirs similarly deep emotion in me, and in the early days I found myself needing the entire two weeks between meetings to recover from the act of holding the meeting.

As an aside: recently I’ve thought a lot about artists, and particularly musicians. The act of creating powerful music, I’m starting to realize, is a deeply emotional/spiritual act. The artist, I strongly suspect, feels a need to ‘recover’ from the creative act: at the end, one feels deeply exposed, vulnerable, and raw. Reintegrating into the everyday world, which by comparison feels like a battleground requiring armor and weaponry, is a challenging process. I’m convinced this is one reason why so many artists struggle with addiction: alcohol or drugs serve as a way to numb the raw emotions, effectively putting the armor back on before the artist experiences too much pain in the state of vulnerability.

Anyway, the net result of all the activities, and perhaps especially the coaching, has been something of a tension: on the one hand, I’ve genuinely loved spending the time with you guys and watching you grow through your various activities; on the other hand, I’m struggling with a sense that I’m getting too sucked into your lives, and not creating enough boundaries and space to live and experience my own.

Of course, this is also something of a copout. Even after moving you guys around a lot, there are still lots and lots of hours in the day available to other pursuits. And while I’ve used much of that time for healthy activities like exercise or reading, I’m embarrassed to confront how much of that time has been spent on social media. As I write this, I’m realizing that I use social media to numb myself in much the same way I suggested an artist might use alcohol or drugs: it’s something of a defense mechanism, or an attempt to reintegrate into the world after putting some armor back on.

The irony of spending copious amounts of time numbing myself is that I feel drawn in precisely the other direction. For the last few months I’ve felt this invitation to carry that sense of expansiveness and vulnerability out into the world and into everyday situations. My experience tells me that holding and carrying that space of expansiveness is like exercising a muscle: with practice one can increase how much expansiveness one can hold, and for how long, and decrease the recovery time needed in between. On some level I suspect the goal of life is to be able to hold that state of expansiveness continuously, or at least nearly so. As I write this I wonder if coaching has served as an opportunity to practice, even if I didn’t realize I was doing it at the time. Said differently: I’ve been looking for ways to practice expansiveness out in the world, not realizing I was already doing so. That discovery doesn’t negate my desire to carry that state into other social settings, but it does enable me to celebrate a win and more accurately see the situation I’ve been living over the last few months.

Let me see if I can synthesize my frustration into one paragraph. Over the last year I’ve spent a lot of time coaching and shuttling the two of you from activity to activity. Coaching has been an act of expression and expansion, and the combination of coaching and shuttling has consumed a lot of my energy. I’ve not been entirely healthy about how I replenished that energy, spending too many numbing myself with social media. All the while I’ve felt creative energies wanting to flow, but getting stuck without an outlet for expression. And so, now, I’m feeling a bit cluttered and deeply wanting to express. Yes, I think that’s mostly right.

To be fair to myself, I’ve made some efforts toward expression. I approached a friend about creating a podcast, going so far as to test out recording equipment to prove out what tools and setting we would use for recording. I approached the minister at my church about potentially using the church on Sundays, in response to some inspiration I felt. Sadly, I positioned my plea to the minister as hypothetical, because I was not ready to really put that idea into action. Fortunately, the minister responded positively, in a way that suggests the church will support my idea if and when I decide to see it through. And far more trivially, I have started engaging on social media. The social media engagement, though trivial, helped me realize a few things. First off, I am reminded that some posts I genuinely like don’t get seen by anyone, and the resulting feeling of rejection is probably inherent in the act of creation. Second, and relatedly, creation is something of a numbers game: one needs reps getting over the disappointment of having their creations ignored, but one also needs reps in order to create the type of content that will find its audience. And finally, it’s easy to get too precious, worrying too much about how content will be consumed and not enough about creating content worthy of consumption.

Interesting. This is not where I expected today’s letter to go. To be fair, unlike most letters, today I began without a sense of what I wanted to say. But, like most days, the act of writing has helped me articulate and identify some stuff, clarifying where I am and what I should do next.

My overarching sense, having written the above, is that my goal should be to err on the side of creation for the near future. If writing the two of you is the lowest friction way to create, I should do that. If I feel an impulse to podcast or launch a Sunday event at my church, I should do that. And while my ego (e.g. my fears) will almost certainly attempt to overcomplicate any attempts to try something new, I should simplify and aim for the shortest path toward creation. Like with this letter, I should grant myself some permission and grace to produce some not great work, understanding that the reps matter more than the quality of any individual output.

And what is the topic that inspires me? Ah, identifying that is its own challenge. Tempted though I am to define it today, I’m realizing I should resist the urge to overcomplicate, and grant myself a starting point for the next letter. Hemingway, I believe, used to stop writing mid-sentence as a way to facilitate starting the next writing session. Perhaps this is my version of attempting the same idea.

Thank you for your help today. You helped me work through some ideas that had been cluttering my head and thus my life. There is more decluttering to do, but today was a good start.

I love you,

Dad

September 9, 2025

Dear Leland and Everett,

Last week I wrote to tell you about our summer. Today I write to provide an update on me. Particularly when writing about our travel experiences, I typically end on an anecdote providing some sort of new learning, spiritual breakthrough, or healing observation. I didn’t really have that type of story to share this summer, which I’ll admit felt strange while writing: my writing cadence felt off. Instead of one breakthrough or key learning, I found myself wading through a number of smaller struggles and learnings.

One thing I must admit up front: I felt an overarching sense of chaos this summer. Whether we were hanging out with our friends or traveling to Taiwan, I felt the chaos all summer. Ordinarily I can process such experiences during the day while the two of you are at school; this summer, particularly with how much time we were together, I had much less time to process my thoughts and emotions than normal, and which I found pretty challenging. Even still, I did my best to make observations as they came, and process where opportunities allowed. And with the two of you back in school, I’ve had some time to metabolize a little more.

The most pervasive feeling of chaos, I noticed, came when I felt like parents of your friends were not setting proper boundaries with their children, leading to misbehavior of encouraging the two of you to engage in bad habits. This became a recurring theme of the summer, whether it was your friend’s mom indulging your video game habits more than I would like, or friends’ parents in Taiwan letting their kids disregard instructions without enforcement or consequence. To be clear, I still believe I witnessed various parents’ reluctance to set and enforce boundaries this summer, and I suspect to the detriment of your friends’ long term development and wellbeing. That said, being right doesn’t explain the depth of frustration I felt over the matter. Upon reflection, I sense an internal desire to improve at setting boundaries myself. I noticed this specifically in my most recent Spiritual Stew meeting, when a participant sorta attempted to dominate the conversation. Though his actual infractions were small, I found the same frustration from the summer stirring. More than acting poorly, I recognized this newcomer reminded me of a regular participant who more egregiously disregards the rules I set for group. Though I’ve attempted to steer conversations back in the appropriate direction, I’ve not consistently set and enforced clear boundaries. I’m coming to understand that I want to practice setting and enforcing clear boundaries with adults, even (and perhaps especially) with those whom overstep in ways that make me particularly uncomfortable. I don’t really understand *why* I feel that desire, but trust that I’m developing a skill for future use.

My second realization is that the two of you are about to start changing, and changing in ways that I am likely to experience as an accelerating pace of change. For one thing, as Leland enters his fifth grade year, I suspect he’s about to experience a growth spurt that marks the beginning of his transition from kid to adolescent. Leland’s sheer size is likely to change rapidly, and not long after his hormones and body are going to change in pretty profound ways. Even Everett is growing up. Indeed, this thought originally hit me in the first days after we came home; I went for a walk and reminisced about the trip. I thought about what I enjoyed about the trip, and looked forward to the possibility we might do the trip again next year. My mind thought about a few times I wound up carrying Everett; sometimes because we were out past his bedtime and he was sleepy, other times because he was upset at Leland or something that happened and needed comforting, and still other times where Everett was just tired from too much walking. Though I encourage independence, I’ll admit I love holding and carrying Everett (Leland too, though Leland is now really too big to carry for longer than a few moments). Then the thought hit me: Everett might be too big for me to carry this time next year. The overwhelming sadness I felt helped me appreciate just how much I love you guys, and how much I’ll miss you being this age. But as we come home, settle into a routine, and sign you up for some extracurriculars (mostly sports so far), I can already tell that we’re going to be busier this school year than past years, which will contribute to the feeling of accelerating change. It’s coming, and I guess I’m glad to know it’s coming, even if I’m sad to say goodbye to the era we’re finishing.

On another level, I sorta feel like the summer was one big distraction and excuse for me to avoid processing a feeling of being stuck. There are always multiple ways to tell a story, just by how you select and weave data points together. One way to tell my recent story is one of feeling stuck. Somewhere around the time I quit my job, I had the feeling I was going into a metaphorical cave to heal, and that I would eventually emerge from the cave to reengage the world. I understood that I would find the cave seductive, and part of me would be tempted to remain in the cave forever; this thought surprised me because, as an extreme extrovert, I’ve always preferred social engagement to isolation…and yet here I was anticipating I would become seduced by my experiences in isolation. Sure enough, about a year and a half ago I began to understand that the dedicated part of my healing journey was coming to an end, and that I was nearing time to reengage with the world. I’ve enjoyed the last couple years, and I’ll admit I’m reluctant to leave them behind. Partly my challenge has been understanding *how* to reengage with the world. Going back to my old life doesn’t sound appealing at all, and I sense a real opportunity to walk my own path authentically moving forward, even if I don’t really understand what that means. Truth be told, I think my fast and most recent psychedelic experiences were meant, at least in part, to force the issue in an attempt to dislodge or unlock some insight on what my future path should be. Therein lies the problem: I’m trying to *force* the understanding to come, rather than get still and allow insights to flow through me when they are ready.

One fear complicating all of this: I am like my mom in that my gifts don’t have a natural home in the ‘real’ world. [This is where I envy Leland, as I see many paths likely to open for him relatively painlessly; Everett, like his dad and his Gran, is likely to find his gifts map awkwardly onto the traditional job market.] My mom struggled to find ways to maximize her gifts in the world beyond raising her children (and she really was an incredible mom). To her credit, she tried multiple things, including creating a Montessori-inspired elementary school during my childhood and, after my sister and I graduated and left home, going to seminary and becoming an ordained minister. But my sense is that my mom never really felt like she found her place in the world beyond being a mom to my sister and me, and I think she has some regrets. And so now, as I revel in my time as primary caregiver to the two of you, I’ll admit I fear getting stuck in the role, and never quite finding a way to maximize my gifts beyond raising the two of you. And I want to be clear: being your father is enough. But I sense my calling is to bring my gifts to more than just the two of you, even if I don’t quite understand how just yet.

Of course, being your father and primary caregiver is no excuse for not maximizing my gifts. Though taking care of the two of you takes up quite a bit of time and energy, there are plenty of hours left in the day, and I have plenty of energy to take on other projects. My challenge, I sense, has less to do with any supposed barriers and more to do with mental blockages.

I need to reintroduce my second vision (again, the first I wrote about), because I need to leverage some metaphorical experiences. But first, I need to explain that the vision continued to be prophetic. As already outlined, quitting my job was the plunge into darkness, and the first demon was facing a strangely crippling fear of death (partly due to my heart disease, I was irrationally but genuinely afraid I might keel over and die at any moment). Soon after I wrote about that vision, I began to understand that the three demons who emerged next were your mom, my mom, and my friend Jeff (who you affectionately refer to as Uncle Jeff). To be clear, I mean not to imply that your mom, my mom, nor Jeff are in any way evil or even malicious. What I noticed was that I found myself struggling with each of those relationships in ways that caused me to ruminate and genuinely kept me up at night. Over a long period of time (like, a year or so), I came to understand that these relationships were teaching me how to reengage in the world, and how to redefine what healthy relationships would mean for me going forward. This process taught me many things, including how to be authentic to myself when engaging with others, how to let go of any attachment to how others might receive my words or actions (particularly when those words or actions came from a genuine, loving, authentic place), how to lead with vulnerability and understanding the strength that comes with vulnerability, how to discern when to engage with vulnerability versus when others are closed off and not ready for genuine engagement, and how to meet people where they are without judging or wishing they were in a different place. In the vision, after coming to understand that the three demons were really people who were drawn to my light, those demons turned into people; in my actual life, after processing the various learnings I came to understand that each of your mom, my mom, and Jeff were showing me their ugly sides precisely because they wanted (though not consciously) to let go of the ugliness they were holding onto, and on some intuitive level understood I was meant to help them. Over the past year or so, all of those relationships have improved dramatically, and I think all of those people have let go of some pain.

I tell that story to say that I find myself still living out that vision. And in the next stage of the vision I began walking in my path. What I didn’t put in my original letter explaining the vision, but I remember distinctly, is that I could see the lit up billboard, and I could see the step or two ahead of me lit up by my light, but that the rest of the path was completely dark; I didn’t share this detail because I didn’t then understand its significance. I’ve come to think of the lit billboard as something like God’s Light, or my connection to God (or universal Consciousness or Truth or whatever you want to call it). I can sorta see it off in the distance, even if not very well defined and I can’t exactly explain it to anyone else. And I’ve come to understand that seeing the step or two in front of me reflects knowing what I am meant to do next (sorta like how Spiritual Stew came into being, one inspired step at a time, without an overarching vision created by me). Perhaps most importantly, I’ve come to understand the darkness in between as not knowing the overall path. So here’s the uncomfortable conclusions: I have a general sense of where I’m going (toward God’s Light), and at times can see the step right in front of me (which is not isolated to the Spiritual Stew experience, though it makes for the best example), but I have no overarching vision or sense of path or ability to articulate what I am doing or where I am going. I cannot possibly begin to articulate how uncomfortable I find this experience. See, my whole life I’ve been able to see my life goals out in front of me, and I’ve always been able to map out the path to obtain those goals. Now I find that faculty has abandoned me, and I sense God’s invitation to develop new faculties. I’m trying, but I’ll admit to struggling and resisting (thus the fast and the psychedelic journey, in hopes that I might skip or at least shortcut the struggle). But, like with the Spiritual Stew experience, I find I am learning how to follow the path one step at a time.

The other nugget from that journey that’s coming up now (quoting from my prior letter): “It occurred to me I would call on others to join me to illuminate parts of the path I could not see alone”. In fact, I found myself coming upon multiple obstacles. When I couldn’t see the path, I found others joining me to illuminate the path I couldn’t see. When I came across an obstacle or ravine, others joined me in building a bridge or detour or whatever was needed to overcome the obstacle and continue on the path. I came understand that these individuals who helped me find my path or build the bridge to continue on would be doing so because their paths temporarily intersected with mine, and that I would need to be prepared to let them go when the time came for us to part ways. Said differently, when we finished building and crossing the bridge together, I would need to resist the temptation to follow them on their path or attempt to convince them to remain on mine. Though I could value the relationship and cherish the experience of building the bridge together, it was important for me to prioritize remaining on my path, and allowing others to remain on theirs.

It occurs to me that I am now in the part of the vision where I perhaps need someone to join me and illuminate the part of the path I cannot see for myself. And soon I will encounter someone meant to help me build a bridge to overcome an obstacle of some sort. What I notice as I process these ideas: I trust that I have developed the discernment to know when someone is joining me who is meant to help me continue on my path. Where I find resistance: the idea that I might need to ask them for help. I find myself struggling with my codependent tendencies here, and afraid that by asking for help and relying on others, I might tempt myself to fall back into codependent habits. That said, I understand one can ask for help without forming an attachment to the response. And on some level, I understand this is the next stage in my development: to ask someone for help, knowing that they might say no, and knowing I might feel hurt when they say no. Where this gets even more confusing: I sense that I might understand they are being called by God to help me (whether by illuminating my path or helping me build a bridge), and that saying no might not only set me back (by delaying my journey), but also set them back (by perhaps delaying or even outright preventing them from finding their own true path). And yet, I also understand that I must meet people where they are (while *I* might understand they are being called to do something, *they* may think such talk sounds completely crazy), and then expose myself to the possibility they might say no (knowing how deeply that is likely to hurt, sitting so close to my true wants and needs). This is a strange and complicated idea I find myself struggling to explain, but the simple version is that I sense a coming opportunity to ask for help in a way that tempts me to fall back into codependent tendencies, but is in fact meant to help me forge a new path and new understanding of how to ask for help.

Continuing down that path, I discovered a deeper fear. To use the Moses metaphor: Moses led God’s people out of bondage out into the wilderness on a journey of healing before they could enter the promised land. In the wilderness, the people routinely challenged Moses. They routinely found themselves hungry or thirsty, and blamed Moses for leading them out of bondage in the first place. The thought I had: am I not being invited to call folks out of bondage and out into the wilderness? How will I respond when those folks become angry with me and blame me for leading them to escape the perceived security of their enslavement? See, waking up to God’s presence, in my experience, feels like a freeing experience. But the next step is not pleasant: once released from the bondage of the known, we find ourselves seemingly trapped in the wilderness of the unknown. In that place we are invited to heal and develop new faculties, but are tempted to retreat into bondage. The secret, of course, is to trust God. God led us out of bondage (not me), God led us out of the wilderness (not me), and God will provide the tools we need to survive the wilderness (not me). The journey may be difficult, and perhaps not all will make it; that is okay. We all get to decide for ourselves who and what we trust. We will always be tempted to choose ego over God; some of us will always choose ego over God, and all of us will sometimes choose ego over God. But some of us will develop an increasing capacity to choose God over ego. Somehow I sense I am meant to participate in the process, even if I don’t fully understand how.

To be fair, it’s not that I have no idea how, it’s just that I don’t exactly love talking about it. I don’t love talking about it partly because it feels so disjointed, and partly because…well, it feels very real and core to who I am. Letting those parts out is uncomfortable. But here goes.

A year or more ago, during meditations I would repeatedly see myself standing up in front of an audience, speaking. These experiences felt a lot like those that led to Spiritual Stew, so I filed them away for future reference. These visions felt further in the future than Spiritual Stew, but still felt real, as if I should expect them to become real someday. The closest way to describe these experiences would be as if I were playing the role of a Revivalist minister. Coming from the Bible Belt, I do not have a fond association with revivalism. So I dislike the metaphor, but it’s the closest description I can find. And, truth be told, I really was doing some of what a Revivalist minister would do: attempting to awaken that place within us that yearns for a connection to God. One thing I realized about evangelism as currently practiced: we tend to awaken others’ desire to connect to God and then, having created an opening, reach in and grab people in their most vulnerable places; from there, we manipulate others into doing what *we* want, not what God wants. The opportunity is to help others open up without then manipulating them. I don’t know exactly what that would look like (except that it probably looks at least a little like Moses leading folks out into the wilderness), and what frustrates me is that I have no idea how I will get there.

Although I do have one small win to celebrate. The minister at my church asked me to preach a couple weeks ago. And so I did. I found the process of preparing rather effortless; I really enjoyed it. In the moment, I felt like my message really connected with the congregation. Afterward, several people complemented me, some of them looking a little stunned (which I took to be a good sign: I think I stirred something in folks). The minister tells me he also received several compliments, and one member of the church quoted me in a committee meeting. I’ve rewatched the sermon a few times, and I see plenty of opportunity for improvement, but the experience confirms something I sorta already knew: I have a gift for speaking in front of an audience. I always have. As a kid, my peers always chose me to speak on behalf of them whenever opportunities arose. And so I had several speaking opportunities in my teenage years. Somehow I assumed those opportunities would eventually follow me into adulthood. They did not. And so, one of my gifts became neglected. I sense a calling and invitation to return to and utilize that gift. I have no idea how to create an audience that might want to hear what I have to say, but I genuinely believe attempting to awaken audiences lies somewhere in my future. Perhaps I need to be on the lookout for someone who might be able to illuminate the next part in my path. In the meantime, I’ll prepare myself to ask for the help when I sense an encounter with that person. Wish me luck.

I love you,

Dad

September 3, 2025

Dear Leland and Everett,

Summer break ended a couple weeks ago; you guys are back in school, and we are trying to get back into a rhythm with the start of the school year. This summer was pretty packed, or at least it felt that way to me. We took a pretty different approach to summer this year versus past years. Until now, summer breaks have been filled with “summer camp” type activities, where we drop you off in the morning and pick you up at either 3pm or 6pm. In other words, in past years your summers have been minimally disruptive to your mom and my daily and weekly routine, except that we have to pack you a lunch and the pickup and drop-off locations and routines are slightly different.

This summer I only enrolled you in camp for a couple of weeks. I probably would have done more, but our trip to Taiwan made scheduling camps a little challenging. We left for Taiwan midweek and came home midweek, preventing us from scheduling camps either of those two weeks. I was somewhat surprised to learn how few camps ran the week of July 4, which landed on a Friday this year. Those three weeks, plus the more than three weeks in Taiwan, plus a week visiting your Uncle and a couple weeks at summer camp…that was the summer in a nutshell.

As the summer approached I started to realize just how much time I would be spending with the two of you, which simultaneously excited and scared me. Excited because I genuinely enjoy spending time with the two of you; scared because I was a little worried that the summer would go off the rails and we would all be sick of each other by the end of it. Ultimately I found myself sorta glad to let you both experience a summer more like what I remember growing up: a seemingly endless string of days with no plans and nothing to do, except for whatever we might want. The difference is that, for my generation, looking for something to do meant going outside and finding friends to play with all day long. Adults don’t let your generation go out unsupervised (though I’m pleased to report that might be changing, slowly), and so you don’t have quite the same opportunities to explore the world and relationships with kids your age the way I did during the summers of my youth.

In some ways, during our weeks at home we managed to simulate summer the way I remember it as much as possible. One of your closest friends happened to have open weeks (e.g. at home with no summer camp) the same weeks we did. So his mom and I arranged playdates almost daily. Some days we would go somewhere and let you guys explore, like looking for crayfish under a bridge or just heading to a park (or your school playground) for a few hours of outside play. Other days we just went over to your friend’s house and let you all play together there. Unfortunately (at least from my perspective), the thing you guys wanted to do most was play video games. You guys were quite determined to play video games, to the point where I started to wonder of the desire was healthy.

Compounding my concern, an afternoon spent playing video games rarely ended on a positive note. Generally the mood descended into contention. Often Everett would feel picked on, ganged up on by the older kids. Less often but still common, your friend seemed to get disregulated, often becoming kinda mean and aggressive after a few hours of video games. I found myself wanting to (and at times trying to) nudge you guys away from playing video games and into more physically active pursuits. I noticed that your friend’s mom generally agreed with me, but had a higher tolerance for video games than I did; I kinda sense she has fond memories of playing video games as a child, and wants to share that experience with her kids. I didn’t play video games very much as a kid, and don’t have particularly fond memories of video games. And so I noticed how I seemed to have the lowest tolerance for video games out of anyone.

Fortunately, I think you both started to notice for yourselves the limitations on the joys that come from playing video games. As mentioned, Everett repeatedly came home frustrated from the feeling of being picked on. Leland had fewer negative experiences, but did notice how your friend turned kinda mean on occasion during video games. This allowed us to have some healthy conversations around why playing video games endlessly might not be as much fun as we might think. On one particular day, your friend started playing by himself. After a fair amount of time, I started to suspect he had no intention of stopping or sharing any time soon. It was close enough to the end of the day that I asked if you guys wanted to go home. You both expressed a desire to play, which prompted you to ask the friend if you could play. He responded with comments like “I just want to find this one more thing”. After a few minutes, I would inquire again, repeating the cycle. After a few cycles, Leland started to recognize for himself that your friend didn’t seem to want to share. He made a few more attempts, and eventually gave up and we left. I don’t think your friend even put the controller down to say goodbye that day; I’m not entirely sure he noticed we left, even though we made a point of saying goodbye to his mom and sisters. That day proved to be a useful learning opportunity in terms of understanding how we don’t control others actions, only how we react. We couldn’t make your friend share his video games with us, but we could decide whether we preferred to stay and watch or to leave; and so we left. I was proud of you, Leland, for coming to that conclusion on your own, and I was glad for the opportunity to discuss it with you. I hope that proves to be a useful learning experience.

Of course, the highlight of the summer was the trip to Taiwan. As you know, we enrolled you in a three-week Chinese language program designed for non-native speakers. You participated with kids your age from all over, but mostly from America. Your mom and I had three objectives. First, we wanted to give you a more intensive exposure to Chinese than you experience at home (with Saturday school). Second, we hoped to develop slightly more positive associations with learning Chinese. Before the trip, you guys seemed to really dislike learning Chinese, so we hoped that by associating learning Chinese with the joys of traveling to Taiwan, you would start to inherently enjoy the process of learning Chinese. Finally, we hoped to help you understand *why* learning Chinese was important. In America, where everyone speaks English, it can be hard to understand why anyone would want to go through the challenging and discomforting work of learning a new language. We hoped being in Taiwan would help you appreciate how valuable knowing Chinese can be by opening up your ability to speak with folks there who don’t speak English.

It’s early to declare total victory, but the early returns from the trip are clearly positive. Not only did you enjoy the trip, but you enjoyed your Chinese classes. For Leland, you were able to recognize how much Chinese you were learning, and were pretty excited about it; I’ve never seen you enjoy learning Chinese so much before. And when your mom wasn’t around (because she was working), you knew you couldn’t rely on me to speak Chinese for you. On some occasions, you served as interpreter for vendors who didn’t speak English, but could understand it well enough: they would ask me a question in Mandarin, which you would translate for me, and I would respond in English. You received several compliments for your ability to help your dad on those occasions, which I think flattered you and I’ll admit made me proud. On other occasions, you would ask if you could buy a treat at one of the night markets, and I would say yes, but that you had to order for yourself. And so you did, often in Mandarin, and I think those experiences gave you confidence.

When your Saturday school started up again, we asked them to assess Leland’s ability. They assessed you could skip two years worth of classes, jumping from from their level 2 to level 4. Partly I think you had been in too easy a class last year, but I also think what you learned, and your willingness to demonstrate what you knew, played a big role in your ability to jump two levels. Best of all, the teachers told us it was important that you go over the content in level 3, to make sure you learned any words covered there which you didn’t already know. So for the last two weeks, you have spent 15-20 minutes a night reviewing the level 3 book with your Ah Ma. You have approached those lessons willingly and without objection; I won’t go so far as to describe your participating as ‘enthusiastic’, but I also don’t think it would be a huge exaggeration had I. Taken overall, your relationship to learning Chinese seems to have changed completely, and I’m thrilled.

Everett, you did not skip two years worth of class like your brother, and that’s perfectly fine. You are two and a half years younger, after all, and you had previously been at the same level. The program in Taiwan assessed he was slightly more advanced than you, which makes sense given he’s older and had more exposure to Chinese (not least because we had him in Chinese afterschool for two years while you were still in preschool on the same campus, whereas we enrolled you both in on-campus – thus, English based – afterschool when you started Kindergarten). And, oh by the way, you have a good friend in your Saturday school this year, and you are excited to see her on Saturdays. So while we may see if we can accelerate your Chinese learning later on, we have plenty of time to do so.

Of course, the trip to Taiwan wasn’t all about learning Chinese. We arrived the Thursday before class started to give ourselves time to settle in and adjust to the time zones. Your Uncle joined us for that first weekend, which turned into a whirlwind. We saw multiple friends that weekend: my best friend’s family was there (the mom and kids spend most summers in Taiwan; indeed we got the idea from them), two of Leland’s classmates were there (one was even in the same program), and of course we have our local friends that we see anytime we come. Friday through Sunday were completely jammed with social activities, such that we were all pretty exhausted by the time school started on Monday. And so we took Monday night pretty easy, wandering the local night market for food to bring home and eat. As the week continued and we recovered from the weekend and you made new friends at school, you began to ask us to let you hang out with your friends after school. Somewhere along the way we ran into your friend with his family in the night market. We chatted with his dad while we let you guys run off to play and explore a bit. They were from London; the dad was Armenian but (by his accent) clearly grew up in the UK, while the mom was from Korea (and from her accent, she sounded like a recent expat). I’m still not totally clear why this friend was learning Chinese, but you enjoyed your time with him, and we enjoyed our time visiting with his parents.

Your Uncle left the Sunday before school started, but your Gran arrived the middle of that first week. Your Gran and I (and your mom her last week there, when she took a week off of work) explored Taipei while you were in class. I really enjoyed getting to show your Gran (my mom) around Taipei; this was my sixth trip, and I loved telling Gran all about Taiwan every time we went, but I really, really enjoyed showing her as many of the things I loved about Taiwan as I could. Gran and I went to Shifen and Jiufen, we spent multiple days at the National Palace Museum, explored at an antique shop and got massages with your mom, and of course had some wonderful lunches (highlighted by a trip to Din Tai Fung with your mom). I anticipate I will cherish sharing that experience with your Gran.

Our weeks fell into a pattern: recovering from the weekend on Mondays, then slowly building up toward the weekend with increasing levels of activity after school, finishing with a completely jam packed social calendar during the weekends. Early in the week we typically picked up dinners at the local night market; as the week progressed we often met up with friends (typically your friend from London) or went out to dinner somewhere new. One week we even attended a local baseball game, which was really fun (suffice to say that watching a baseball game in Taiwan is a completely different experience than going to a game in the US). By the weekend we were back to meeting up with friends. All our US-based friends left before we did, so we made a point of meeting up with them on the weekends when they were here. After they left, I was shocked at how much time we were able to spend with our local friends: I assumed they would have other plans, but they were mostly able to carve out time to spend with us. We explored night markets, ran around malls to get out of the heat, took in street performances (including a pretty cool diabolo, or Chinese yoyo, performance), ate pineapple cakes, took in a space museum, took in some amusement park and water park rides, took your Gran up to the top of Taipei 101, and of course played some games and ate lots and lots of delicious food. Everett was even able to join a couple gymnastics classes, which you seemed to enjoy. Leland managed to take in a movie with a friend. We made a point to hit your favorites as often as possible, so we at sushi, boba, dumplings (including Din Tai Fung), and snow ice over and over again. At the night markets you guys found games you liked to play, and you reminded us of a Taiwanese pinball game you remembered from a prior trip; our local friends helped us find a place, and you guys spent the better part of two evenings playing pinball with your friends.

The last weekend, we decided to get away from our AirBnB for a night and checked into a local hotel. I’m glad we did: we all seem to enjoy hotel experiences, particularly when the stays are short. The hotel had a pool, so our local friends joined us while you spent hours splashing and jumping in the pool together. We rinsed off and went out for ramen, where Everett managed to score a ramen in a shrimp broth (something I’d never seen before, but something perfectly designed for Everett). Of course, we finished the night with some shave ice. The next morning was Monday, but fortunately one of your friends was able to join us in the morning while we took in the hotel buffet and went back to the pool for a couple more hours of fun. We checked out and headed back to our AirBnB, where I started packing while you guys watched some TV. We met up with the rest of our friends for an active game I can’t describe, one last trip through the night market, and one last stop for snow ice. The next morning we woke up early to head for the airport.

By the end our time in Taiwan, as much fun as we had, we were all ready to come home. Similarly, by the end of the summer, you both were ready to go back to school. I took that as a positive sign; I remember always being ready for school by the end of summer, which felt like success: having had enough unstructured time and fun, I was ready to see my friends again and (if I’m being completely honest) ready for a little structure again. And so it was with you, which made me feel like we’d had a pretty great summer. I know I will remember it.

I love you both.

Love,

Dad

June 20, 2025

Dear Everett,

When we brought you home from the hospital more than seven and a half years ago, one of the first things people noticed was that you had two hair swirls on the crown of your head. As far as I can tell, everyone seems to have a place where hair swirls on the crown of their head. Most people have one, you had two. Multiple people told us your double swirl indicated you would have a temper; I believe one was your Taiwanese grandmother, and the other the Filipino caretaker that looked after you your first year. I found it interesting multiple people from different cultures came to the same conclusion about what a physical trait meant regarding your personality and demeanor. I’m tempted to say that I ultimately wrote off the predictions, chalking them up to “old wives tales”, but that’s not entirely accurate. Over the last decade or so I’ve become more curious about folk wisdom, especially ancient folk wisdom. I find Chinese culture particularly intriguing just because it’s been relatively uninterrupted for the least 5,000 years. I don’t want to suggest that I now wholly subscribe to folk wisdom, nor that I believe folk wisdom trumps science or modern knowledge. What I am trying to convey that I no longer dismiss folk wisdom out of hand as superstitious hokum. I approach folk wisdom with curiosity, wanting to counterbalance against my longstanding bias against.

Anyway, it didn’t take us very many years to discover you do, in fact, have a temper. My earliest recollection of a personal confrontation with your temper happened at our old house, the house we rented and lived in when we first moved home from Singapore. You were probably 2 years old, although you might have been 3. I don’t remember why you were upset, only that you were upset. You were getting ready to take a shower (which, come to think of it, may have been the cause of your frustration: perhaps I was making you take a shower against your will). As you started to cry, you faced directly at me and screamed at the top of your lungs. No words, just a blood-curdling scream. It’s…hard to put into words the level of force and energy you conveyed with that scream. It almost seemed to me that you had suddenly been plugged into an energy socket, and the scream was just letting off the excess energy of the moment. What I can say is that I felt that scream, and I don’t just mean the sound waves: I felt the energy you projected toward me. And it was quite clear to me that was your intention, to make me feel some of the anger and energy you were feeling.

I distinctly remember my first reaction: I interpreted your scream as an affront, as a challenge to my authority as your father. I felt a desire to come down hard on you in that moment, to punish what I perceived to be your provocation. I’ll admit I don’t remember exactly how I handled that moment, but I do remember how I handled the aftermath. Eventually (there may have been another instance before this reality truly set in) I realized this would not be our last such interaction, and that I needed to prepare myself for how I would handle future such interactions. I remember (and I’ll admit, I’m proud of this part) recognizing my interpretation that you were challenging my authority wasn’t necessarily real, and deserved interrogation. With reflection I decided that in those moments you 1) were experiencing big emotions, 2) didn’t know how to handle those big emotions, 3) felt tempted to direct those big emotions at others, and 4) needed a playbook for how to handle those emotions as healthily as possible.

As you got older, your outbursts came to include hitting or screaming at people. Particularly when it came to hitting, we set a pretty firm boundary, letting you know firmly and clearly hitting wasn’t okay. But we also talked to you about what options were available to you. I’ll admit: you internalized and implemented those suggestions faster than I ever would have anticipated. Soon, when you became frustrated or overwhelmed, you would storm off to your room. I don’t know if you screamed into a blanket or punched a pillow, but you separated yourself to give yourself room to let off steam without unnecessarily hurting other people. In some ways, you internalized the new lessons faster than I did: I sometimes followed you to your room in an attempt to talk to you; often you screamed at me, “Dad, I need SPACE!”. I recognized that you were right, and that you were merely setting a clear boundary with me not to invade your grieving process. To your great credit, since you were five years old you’ve maintained the ability to storm off to your room, process whatever emotions you were experiencing, and then return either fully recovered or ready to articulate what help you wanted from others going forward. Those are remarkable skills, ones I’m not sure I possess even today (and certainly not more than a couple years ago).

While you and I have become pretty adept at collectively managing your emotional outbursts, I’ll admit not all of your closest relationships have evolved so cleanly. You and your brother are settling into something of a pattern that I’ll admit concerns me a bit. Your brother will do something that upsets you, and (from my vantage point anyway: I often don’t see the offending incident) you immediately resort to screaming at your brother. Your brother I think finds these outbursts mildly triggering, because he resorts into a part-defensive, part-offensive posture where he alternates between antagonizing you, denying he did anything wrong, dismissing your concerns, and (when parents get involved) refusing to see your point of view or empathize with your situation. Empathy may never be Leland’s strongest suit, but he absolutely has the capacity to understand how others might feel in a situation, so I’ve come to believe Leland’s feelings are deeply hurt by your outbursts, clouding his ability to function at his best self. In those instances, he’s protecting himself from further pain, not looking to repair your relationship in the ways you would want. And so the cycle repeats. I will continue to look for ways I might nudge the two of you toward a healthier handling of those inevitable disagreements…but I’ll admit to wondering whether this is something you and your brother will need to figure out for yourselves (even, quite possibly, as adults). What I can predict fairly confidently: if you guys don’t figure out how to handle these interactions with each other, you will find ways to recreate them in other adult relationships: with your spouses, coworkers, bosses, or children, just to name a few of the most likely candidates. My point being: you and your brother will independently find ways to experience similar scenarios over and over again until you learn how to handle the pain you are both attempting to avoid underlying those experiences.

The member of the family who most struggles with your temper, however, is your mom. While your even-keeled brother can move on to the next situation pretty quickly, your mom gets particularly angry when you direct your outbursts at her. See, you get your temper from your Ah Gong. Unfortunately, your Ah Gong never learned how to handle his temper effectively. Instead, he let his negative emotions build until he eventually lashed out at his family. By then, he had so much stored pain that he couldn’t stop lashing out. His outbursts turned into torrents of vitriol that could fairly be described as verbal abuse. Your mom grew up experiencing these outbursts, and coped by attempting to avoid them at all costs. Now, after a lifetime spent attempting to avoid experiencing emotional outbursts, your mom finds herself confronted with the same temper all over again. Honestly, I feel a lot of compassion for your mom; those experiences must be hard for her.

One dirty secret complicating the situation even further: your mom inherited the same temper from your Ah Gong. To be fair, your mom is not nearly as prone to violent outbursts as you and your Ah Gong. But I’ll admit to wondering how much of that is a function of training rather than nature. Your mom came to understand very early that outbursts were not tolerated, and so found ways to suppress her emotions. And at root, the common thread between the three of you (you, your mom, and your Ah Gong) is that you feel things very deeply. Sometimes those feelings feel too big, and you need to let them out. For you and your Ah Gong, those come in the form of violent outbursts generally directed at loved ones. For your mom, the outbursts come more slowly, but like her dad, once they begin, they tend to come out in a chain reaction of anger, frustration, and bitterness. Fortunately, unlike her dad, your mom rarely reaches the stage of outright vitriol, but your mom’s seemingly endless acerbic tongue lashings are something we’ve all experienced more than we care to recount. To her great credit, your mom is doing her work, and developing tools that help her process her painful emotions in healthier ways. Her progress is slower than the rest of us might like, but (as you will learn in adulthood) it always is.

The thought hit me a couple weeks ago: you are in our lives precisely so that your mom gets another chance to experience her father’s anger. I shared this insight with your mom, and she doesn’t disagree with me. See, right now when your mom experiences your outbursts, she intuitively (and probably even unconsciously) recognizes her father’s temper, which hints at the pain she experienced from that anger. Wanting to avoid experiencing that pain again, your mom tends toward angrily and forcefully attempting to dislodge your anger, which…doesn’t work very well. The opportunity you present is for your mom to develop a new toolkit for how to manage that anger, and the big emotions underlying that anger. While your Ah Gong’s behaviors were pretty calcified by the time your mom experienced them, you are still pretty unformed. It’s harder to ascribe your angry outbursts to deep flaws in character: you are just a kid after all, doing the best you can with the skills you have. Thus, you represent an opportunity to try new things, to experiment, and to find new ways of dealing with old problems.

For your mom that likely includes practicing experiencing her own big emotions. Partly what your mom reacts to in your outbursts is the fact that she wasn’t permitted the space to have outbursts of her own. The idea that she wasn’t allowed to process her big emotions with big outbursts is so deeply ingrained that she can’t believe her own child hasn’t internalized the lesson, as if the lesson should have been passed on genetically. She’s tempted to reach back, leveraging the authoritarian tools of her own childhood, in order to impose order and ‘good behavior’ on her household. The struggle, of course, is the intuitive recognition that the authoritarian toolkit is deeply flawed, but it’s the only one she knows firsthand.

I’m reminded of last night’s Spiritual Stew meeting. The recurring theme was around the temptation (reinforced by a lifetime of habits) to steer away from the storm, but healing comes from steering into the storm. Our intuitions tell us to avoid feeling pain. In fact, the sources of our pain also represent our opportunities to heal; but only by purposely (and carefully, and gracefully) steering into the storm can we find the root of the pain, feel it through to completion, and let it go. From that place we open space to heal and grow. This is rebirth, or resurrection, which I deeply, compassionately wish for your mom these days. For better and worse, you are creating a relatively constant reminder (and opportunity) for your mom; let’s hope she accepts the invitation you inherently extend to her.

Last week, to start the summer break, we went down to see your Uncle in Orange County. You, your brother, and I made the drive down, then slowly made our way back during the work week through Santa Barbara and Hearst Castle before returning home. While in Orange County, I realized that your mom is not the only person who gets a second chance to experience their father’s anger through you. I made a point of saying to you, in front of your Uncle, that I’m convinced you are in our lives so that we get the opportunity to learn how to find healing ways to handle your Ah Gong’s temper. While I don’t think my comment was the only reason (or even the primary reason; your mom had apparently had a good talk with your Uncle prior to our trip), you and your Uncle got along much better on this trip than in prior trips. To be fair, it’s not as if you and your Uncle ever didn’t get along. But I’ve long felt like your Uncle had a bit of a blind spot toward you. Your Uncle and Leland get along famously, and I’m kinda convinced it’s because Leland reminds your brother of your mom without the temper. You always come along for the ride and enjoy being part of the gang with your brother and Uncle, but your personal interactions with your Uncle always struck me as a little less natural and organic. Often your Uncle just flat doesn’t hear what you say. When you and your brother speak simultaneously (as you often do, both vying for your Uncle’s attention), your Uncle tends to respond only to Leland. And when you periodically get upset (generally toward your brother), your Uncle proactively intervenes with a relatively unhelpful “don’t get mad”.

On the one hand, your Uncle means well: he genuinely doesn’t want to see you upset; he is a wonderfully empathetic and generous person who loves you, his precious nephew, dearly. On the other hand, your Uncle also sees your Ah Gong in you, and like your mom remembers his dad when he sees that temper emerge through you. Your Uncle also wants to avoid reliving that pain from his childhood, and so tries to smooth things over and convince you not to feel angry. Your mom and I have counseled him and/or you in his presence that it’s okay for you to feel what you feel, and that it’s important for us to help you develop the tools to handle those emotions.

To his great credit, your Uncle handled you very differently on this trip. On at least one occasion, when you and your brother spoke simultaneously, he responded to Leland first, but made it a point to circle back and say “Everett, you were saying something, what was it you wanted to say?” I don’t ever recall him circling back to you this way, so I was appreciative and proud of his progress. He was generally more responsive and attentive to you. And while he still said “don’t be mad” a few times, he took my feedback well, and showed a clear openness to try new things in order to connect with you. Overall, I’m excited for the healing opportunity you represent in his life, even if I’m sure the work will be slow, gradual, and nonlinear.

In another recent development, I finally convinced you to watch the original Star Wars trilogy. I remain surprised at the contrast: by the time I was your age, I had watched the trilogy multiple times; we recorded Empire Strikes Back on a VHS tape, and I would watch the movie after school while my mom worked in her office. Conversely, you found the movie simply too scary to watch. I finally convinced you, in part, by promising we would start with 15-minute increments. This allowed you to ease yourself into the movie. After we finished Empire Strikes Back at your Uncle’s house you astutely and maturely pointed out that we had finished New Hope and then watched the entirety of Empire on back-to-back days, informed me that was too much, and asked that we take longer breaks between episodes going forward. It was a completely fair request, and I’m pretty stunned that you had the self-awareness to recognize your need and the maturity to articulate it.

But what struck me most of all was your reaction to the end of Return of the Jedi. When Darth Vader throws the Emperor over the bridge (or whatever you call that space), and then dies himself, I remember my childhood reaction distinctly: the bad guys died, the good guys survived and won. For me, this was an unqualified success. Your reaction was completely different. Throughout the series you asked me to pause the movies in order ask questions or process particularly emotional scenes. Through that process, you understood (in a way I did not at your age) that Luke believed he felt goodness remaining in Darth Vader, and was attempting to bring his father back to the good side. Thus, when Darth Vader lies dying as Luke professes his intention to save him, and Darth says “you already have”, you were a bit of a wreck. For you, this was Luke’s father, a father he had been working to save, a father he still believed in, and a father that ultimately came through in the end. For you, the idea that Luke would lose his father then, in that moment, was a bit much to bear. I mean…you are not wrong; I just still can’t comprehend how you are already processing that level of depth. Only now am I coming to appreciate the deeper truths hidden in the Star Wars story, and here you are grasping them as a seven year old? Honestly, I am not entirely sure how to think about that.

This past week you’ve been attending an outdoor nature camp. Last night you had the opportunity to camp out overnight and sleep under the stars with your campmates. At the beginning of the week we agreed that Leland would probably go, but that you might stay home the first week (because we are doing the camp again next week, so you will have another opportunity if you decided this was something you wanted to do). On the drive home Wednesday (the day before the overnight) I reminded each of you of the plan, just to see if either of you had changed your minds. Mostly I was checking to see if Leland still wanted to go, because he had waffled earlier in the week. After Leland confirmed he wanted to go, you mumbled that I was correctly remembering the plan, but that you “really, really” wanted to go. This surprised me, and surprised your mom too when we discussed it with her, but ultimately we had no objections to your joining.

Last night your mom went to the camp’s BBQ dinner and singalong (sadly, I had Spiritual Stew, and couldn’t attend). By the time I came home, your mom was already home and had texted me that you had also come home, and that she had put you to bed and would be sleeping with you. At that point I assumed you had simply changed your mind and decided you would be a little scared or homesick to camp out overnight.

This morning as you and your mom woke me up, your mom asked you to tell me why you wanted to come home. You explained that, during the singalong, you sang a song about shooting stars. Your mom later said that the song was nostalgic and the tune indeed a little sad; she understood the shooting star metaphor to be about the brevity of the experience of the camp itself: a beautiful moment, but seemingly too short. Your interpretation was different: for you, the shooting stars represented people “leaving the Earth”, or dying. You couldn’t even tell me about it this morning without being overcome with emotion. Immediate after the song, the last of the singalong, you apparently turned to your mom and announced “I want to go home”. In the moment, you were able to articulate that the song made you sad (and it sounds like you wept on your mom’s shoulder during and immediately after). Again, it’s not wrong to comprehend shooting stars as a metaphor for the brevity of life on earth…but holy cow, what seven year old processes information that way? Honestly, I’m kinda stunned, and wildly curious to see where this side of you leads.

In the car ride back to camp this morning, I attempted to convey to you that your deeply held emotions are a burden, but they are also a gift. I’ll admit that, even as I said it, I appreciated the burden far more than the gift. You feel things very, very deeply, more deeply than most people. But feeling emotions that deeply often isn’t fun. It’s tempting to try to avoid feeling painful emotions like sadness or fear that deeply. But what I have learned, and I think the lesson of your Ah Gong shows, is that avoiding deep emotions creates far more problems than it solves. Sitting in the painful, deep feelings is hard, and indeed often even physically painful. But underneath the pain we often find inspiration, our deepest feelings of love and gratitude, and a level of wisdom completely unavailable to those who avoid their unpleasant feelings. I applaud your gift, but also your bravery and willingness to express and be with your gift. I hope you will build on this practice, and carry your gift with you into adulthood. But I can’t pretend it will be easy: the world isn’t set up to support and allow the expression of big emotions. Temptations and incentives will encourage you to bury your feelings, and pretend everything is fine, even when it’s not. And while I won’t suggest you should always wear your emotions on your sleeve, it will be important for you to cultivate a life where you can retreat to your safe space and feel what you feel, until you are ready to face the world again.

I love you kiddo. And, honestly, right now I’m a little awed by you.

Love,

Dad

May 30, 2025

Dear Leland,

About a year ago I read you and your brother The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe as a bedtime story. Early in the book, you both enjoyed the experience, and the story captured your interest. You, ever the night owl, typically wanted me to keep reading past your bedtimes. Everett, the early bird, sometimes fell asleep while I read (causing me to reread sections to Everett the following afternoon, so he wouldn’t miss out on the story). Over time, the book prompted us to talk about God; Aslan, after all, serves as something of a metaphor for God. As we neared completion of the book, Everett started asking questions about God, something he periodically does to this day. Conversely, you started muttering skepticism, saying things like “I don’t think God is real”. Part of me interpreted those mutterings as provocative, perhaps even meant to challenge me or my authority; I’m not clear if my interpretation was imagined on my part or intended on yours. Whatever the intention, I declined to take the bait. It’s up to all of us to decide for ourselves how we feel about and react to God, and I attempted to relay as much to you in these discussions.

Our discussions about God temporarily spilled over into car rides; I distinctly remember a conversation or two during school drop-off. During one of these rides you asked why I believe in God. I responded as honestly yet simply as I could: because I feel like God talks to me. Whatever my visions are or have been, they don’t feel as if they come from me, yet they (at least sometimes) seem to hold deep truths.

[I should pause here quickly to note: when I invoke God, I don’t explicitly mean the Christian interpretation of God. My interpretation is that all religions, including much “new age” spiritualism, ultimately reference the same God. God is bigger than humans can comprehend, and so God is revealed to us in images, in metaphor, and in inspiration of unknown origin. My sense is that we attempt to flesh out, interpret, and understand these experiences, ultimately creating the religions of the world. Religions, being created and interpreted by people, are ultimately incapable of fully comprehending God, but serve as potentially useful tools pointing us in the right direction. My point: whatever entity serves as the source of inspiration for the world’s religions, for much of the great art the world has ever experienced, and for the various miracles available for the willing to see…that is what I reference when I talk about God. Christianity seems a serviceable pathway to deepening one’s understanding of God, and it’s a pathway with which I am already familiar, so it’s the pathway I mostly pursue these days. What I am trying to convey is that, to me, God is something we cannot adequately describe nor convey, but we can each experience in our own way…if we allow the experience.]

A few months ago the two of you were preparing to take showers as part of your bedtime routine. Everett asked me a question along the lines of “Dad, does God….”. Sometime during this exchange you climbed into my arms. After I answered his question to Everett’s satisfaction and he turned to get in the shower, you muttered something along the lines of, “The Big Bang created the atoms in the universe. Eventually those atoms formed into stars and planets, and from that matter life formed and evolved. God doesn’t exist!” I asked you who told you that, to which you responded “no one”. The implication: this was your interpretation based on available evidence. I was struck by hearing my then nine year old son rather concisely summarizing the Materialist worldview. I’ve heard many folks articulate some version of the same philosophy, but these were always adults. You were, by about a decade, the youngest person I had encountered to articulate this idea.

I concede the possibility that someone shared with you the Materialist worldview without you remembering. But you have an uncanny ability to recall accurately and precisely where you learned things. It’s also possible that you chose not to share where you discovered Materialsm, but you are exceedingly honest by nature, and I believe I’ve developed some intuition for when you are lying or even withholding elements of the truth. Indeed, the most interesting possibility is also the simplest: you came to the Materialst worldview on your own.

See, I think it’s relatively safe to say that, at nine years old, you weren’t entirely reasoning from first principles. Perhaps said differently, it’s not as if you have dedicated years of deep thought to Materialsm. And yet, you spoke with such determination, as if you wanted to will your point to be true. The thought that struck me forcefully in the moment (and one I still believe): you picked up the Materialst worldview in the ether around you.

You wouldn’t know this as I write, but as far as I can tell Materialsm stands as the dominant worldview in educated society today. This marks a substantial change from my youth and young adulthood; then, Christianity was sufficiently dominant that Materialism (and it’s oft paired cousin, atheism) was mostly confined to highly educated contrarians, at least in public discourse. During my adolescent and young adult years, an intolerant Religious Right emerged; young intellectuals instinctively turned away, and in the process, largely left Christianity. In America we’ve long divorced our spiritual and intellectual selves, but in my adult years our spiritual selves have largely been buried. In intellectual circles, Materialism ascended to become a much more dominant worldview, and Christianity an increasingly marginalized fringe. In one episode of the television show Silicon Valley, the writers made the joke that a startup founder was nonplussed about being outed as gay, but horrified when was outed as a Christian. The joke landed, at least in part, because of how quickly it both became socially acceptable to be gay and socially unacceptable, at least in intellectual circles, to be Christian.

Where this gets interesting to me: again, somehow you picked Materialism up from the world around you. The great irony is that picking up ideas from the ether is precisely a spiritual phenomenon, and itself argues strongly against Materialism. Perhaps more importantly, you can’t prove Materialism (or, in your own words, that the Big Bang led to matter which led to people, and God doesn’t exist) any more than I can prove the existence of God. You can, of course, accumulate evidence you consider compelling…and, of course, so can I. At the end of the day, whether one believes in God, or one subscribes to Materialism, one ultimately rests one’s beliefs on an article (or articles) of faith. There are things we cannot prove definitely, and we just have to decide what we believe. What I want to stress here is the universality of faith, of belief. See, for most of my adult life Materialists have presented themselves as rationalists, and painted religious folk (often referred to collectively by the revealing catch-all term “believers”) as antiquated, superstitious, and of lower intelligence. I’m not sure why it took me until the last few years to understand that all of us, even the Materialists, ultimately rest our faith on something. But once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

What surprises me now is the degree to which others are seeing the same thing I see (which reinforces my perception that some ideas come to us, either through the ether or an inner source of inspiration). Joe Rogan, a comedian-turned-podcaster, recently quipped about how believing in Jesus makes more sense than believing in the Big Bang. A podcast series I follow called the Telepathy Tapes argues fealty to Materialism led to a perversion of scientific scholarship. I even saw a clip from a comedy special joking about how believing “nothing” created the universe seemingly makes less sense than believing God did so. Comedy’s ancient tradition is speaking truth to power in ways that 1) are unthreatening to the powerful, and yet 2) allow the rest of society to blow off steam. When the comedians are coming for you, that means that 1) you have power, and 2) that power has blinded you, at least somewhat.

Materialism retains its dominance, but somehow I find it far less threatening than I once did. I sorta imagine the Materialist as creating a very small box, holding that box tight in his fist, and then demanding I convince him God exists in the box. The parameters of the debate are just so absurd: perhaps, if one makes the box small enough and holds the box tightly enough, one can exclude God. But that world is so vanishingly and depressingly small, even compared to the universe available to us. Compared to the dimensions barely perceptible to us, that box is incomprehensibly miniscule. You are welcome to live there if you choose. I cannot imagine why one would, but again, that’s a decision we must all make for ourselves.

A few weeks after the “God isn’t real” discussion, you woke up in the middle of the night. You rarely wake up at night, so this itself surprised me. That night you happened to be sleeping in my bed while your mom slept in your brother’s. You left the room momentarily, and when you came back I asked where you went. You told me you left to tell your mom you were hearing the voices again. Um, what? I asked for more details, and you explained that you heard loud voices almost shouting inside your head. I asked if this was the first time, and you said it had happened before, but not often. We went back to sleep, but I asked a few more questions the next day. You said the voices (plural, I confirmed there were more than one) weren’t saying anything, but that it felt as if they were shouting at you. You volunteered the sense that, as the voices shouted at you, the world was caving in around you. You did not enjoy this experience, and admitted it being scary. The experience did not sound pleasant, and I’ll admit concerns me at least a little.

Whatever it is, your experience sounds like a spiritual phenomenon to me, and I approached it as such. I reminded you about how you asked me why I thought God was real, and that I told you it was because I sensed God talks to me. I proceeded to explain that this was the type of experience to which I was referring, and posited the possibility that either angels or demons were trying to communicate with you. I offered that, though the voices were scary, it might be wise not to fight them, but instead to try to understand what they are trying to communicate. While you didn’t respond, you did listen earnestly, and I sensed an openness to what I was trying to convey than I cannot imagine happening under other circumstances.

And so now we wait and see what happens next. Was it just a bad dream? Do you have a strange and obscure medical condition? I’m open to any possibility, and will respond when we get more data. For now, we wait and see. Regardless, I celebrate one small aspect of the experience: I sensed you were open to considering the possibility of a world beyond atoms, if only for a moment.

I love you kiddo.

Love,

Dad

May 27, 2025

Dear Leland and Everett

In my last post, I briefly mentioned feeling a darkness in me. I had a helpful, clarifying conversation about that sensation, and wanted to share some insights here.

First off, as I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m starting to sense sometimes we all feel the same underlying energy flows, each of us from our own unique perspectives. I first noticed this trend in my Spiritual Stew meetings, but I continue to notice similar trends in the world around me. After a Memorial Day weekend spent interacting with loved ones across several walks of life, I came to appreciate how the thread of distraction, of discomfort, of…something not quite right, permeates not just me but those I encounter.

In one particular conversation, a friend of mine (about whom I’ve spoken before; he too experiences visions) also observed the seemingly confusing signals (and lack thereof) he’s been receiving of late. Separately, he and I have both experienced the sensation that our messages were evolving (his experience was quite interesting: God literally dismantled a house built for my friend to explore his faith, and was in the process of building a new one; this tracks very much with my sense that the way I would experience things going forward will not necessarily resemble the visions I’ve had the last few years).

During this conversation our discussion turned to the feeling of discomfort or darkness we both felt. I reluctantly admitted the degree to which I’m coming to realize that I have been avoiding that sensation, and am invited to stop succumbing to distraction and face the discomfort I’m feeling.

My friend and I have worked out a metaphor for what our healing journeys have felt like thus far, and completing this train of thought requires sharing the metaphor. Some of this will likely overlap from past messages, but the metaphor expands as I deepen my understanding.

When I set the intention to heal, I often the experience something unpleasant out in the world: an argument with a loved one perhaps, a bothersome life event, or even particularly unpleasant world news. Whatever the specifics, I am drawn into old patterns of righteousness, ruminating as I see the world through the prism of good guys and bad guys. I’ve learned to take this state of righteousness as a sign of opportunity: rather than look for how to defeat the bad guys or defend the good guys, I decide to explore what sits underneath these emotions. So I take the situation into meditation or prayer. Typically I’ll discover some discomfort in my body. I’m always tempted to interpret the discomfort as a distraction, but am learning to explore it with curiosity. In the metaphor, my friend and I describe this process as coming to understand that something is stuck, rather uncomfortably, in our bodies. But rather than avoiding the discomfort, as has been our habit, we now reach in and around to grab it and pull it in front of us so that we might grant it our attention. The progress, at least at this stage, is developing awareness that something is stuck within ourselves (and is the ultimate cause of the discomfort we experience, not what is happening out in the world).

Developing awareness of physical discomfort is not enough to experience healing. The next step is to understand the underlying cause of the discomfort; to do that I’ve learned to just explore the discomfort, sometimes even asking it what it wants me to know. Eventually, when I am ready, some insight emerges. Historically that insight has been some unpleasant life experience. The implication: the unpleasant life experience somehow lodged in my body as an unhappy memory, triggering defensive behaviors meant to protect me from experiencing similar pain the future.

Typically, once I’ve understood the underlying memory associated with the discomfort, I start to see the ways the experience shaped my life. I see the different times I’ve avoided or shied away from situations in order to protect myself from experiencing similar pain again. And I start to realize how these behaviors have come to limit me, and have outlived their usefulness. At this stage I understand that it is time to let go of not just the pain, but the defensive habits I’ve created to protect the pain. Returning to the metaphor: at this point I learn that it is time for me to let go of the discomfort I pulled out of my body and now hold in front of me.

Unfortunately, at this point I realize I am holding onto this discomfort with white knuckled terror. Even though I have come to understand how the original experience and the overprotective adaptations that resulted are hurting me more than helping me, the idea of experiencing the pain is too acute to surrender. I often need a little time and space, and some compassion and grace while I built the strength to let go.

During this phase I typically attempt bargaining with God. Sometimes I might try to justify why I should keep the metaphorical armor I’m clutching. God doesn’t respond, and the silence feels deafening. Then I offer to trade my armor for something else I might want. More silence. Eventually, perhaps somewhat desperately, I ask God to at least explain what will replace this thing I clutch. Still more silence. Finally, I am reminded: I must take the leap of faith, and surrender this thing, and trust that whatever comes next will be better than this protection I surrender.

Eventually, and usually with some invocation of God’s support, I work up the strength and will to open my clenched fist and let go of the pain and the armor protecting it. Immediately thereafter I feel a sense of release, of relief, of relative peace. It’s the feeling one might experience after a particularly challenging workout, or a fight with a loved one that results in reconciliation, or any sort of big emotional release.

The feeling of peace might last a few minutes or a few hours; typically I feel a lingering calm for a few days. Eventually, inevitably, I come to feel a void. I come to appreciate how the thing I surrendered had become so embedded as to effectively become part of me. Letting go of the thing meant letting go of part of myself, and that part of myself warrants grieving. While I recognize the value of letting go of the thing, I come to appreciate that the thing, even if flawed, was a known commodity. The thing was predictable; I could rely on the thing. Even though I recognize how the thing pulled me into suffering, I lament the loss of the known. In the void left behind, I just feel unnerving uncertainty.

Eventually, something new starts to fill the void, slowly. In these moments I am reminded death comes before rebirth: I must let go in order to create the space for something new to grow. Why God works this way, I don’t know. But I’m increasingly convinced this is the way God works.

Okay, backdrop complete (and I hope that was helpful, even for its own sake), I set this metaphor to contrast slightly with what I am experiencing today. Because what I sense today is not that any particular energy is stuck in my body, nor that I’m carrying armor to which I’ve grown attached. So I recognize progress of a sort: I don’t appear to be holding negative energy and protective armor in quite the same ways. And yet, I still feel this feeling of discomfort.

At this point I’m reminded of the dream I had recently. Just a week after my most recent journey, we travelled to Yosemite for your spring break. We spent the week hiking, exhausting ourselves in the wilderness. It was a wonderful trip, though I will admit the two of you are still warming to hiking. In the lead up to the trip I told you about El Capitan, about how climbers ascend to the top, and how you can sit in a meadow and use binoculars to see climbers look like ants on the massive granite face (something we did, twice, while throwing frisbees around the meadow; these two experiences were some of my highlights of the trip). I even explained how climbers will sometimes sleep on cots anchored in the rock face, and showing you images I found online.

That night I dreamed I was attempting to sleep in a cot anchored high up El Capitan. My cot was anchored in, and all my belongings were anchored in. Whether or not I was anchored in was unclear. I wondered whether I might roll off the cot and fall. I imagined looking at my phone (why my phone?) and worrying it might fall. Each time I imagined a specific action, I was flooded with a new wave of fear.

I woke up, appreciated being out of the dream, and then drifted back to sleep. I returned right back to the dream. In fact, I woke up several times, but each time returned right back to the dream. I started to feel a little desperate and hopeless. Finally the thought occurred to me, “what if I stopped resisting this situation, and just embraced it?” Up until that point, I felt as if fear were dialed up to 100%, and all other emotions dialed down to 0%. In that moment, I felt fear dial down just a notch, offset by a small feeling of aliveness. I embraced the situation more fully, and felt fear dial down further. I found that I could, by adjusting my attitude, affect how I experienced lying on that cot. I could resist, and would immediately feel fear surge again. Or I could embrace the situation, and feel fear subside. I didn’t necessarily enjoy the feeling of aliveness, but the aliveness sure beat fear.

My sense is that I am invited to look at the darkness or discomfort I feel. My current hypothesis is that I am invited to treat the discomfort the way I engaged with righteousness: notice it, pull it in front of me and grant it my full awareness, exploring it with curiosity. What will come of that exercise, I do not know for certain. But my suspicion is that I am invited to replace resistance with embrace, and in the process feel uncomfortable but more alive. To what end, I have no idea. But I at least have a sense of where I’m going, if only a limited one.

I love you both.

Love,

Dad

May 21, 2025

Dear Everett,

When you read this, you will almost certainly remember taking piano lessons. What you may not remember is why you started taking them. Last summer we visited some friends, and their teenage daughter practiced her piano recital music for us. You walked over to me from across the room and crawled into my lap, all without taking your eyes off of your friend playing the piano. You looked transfixed. I asked if you wanted to play the piano like that. Without taking your eyes off of her, you nodded. A few weeks later, another family of friends came to visit; seeing our piano, their teenage son sat down to play. Same reaction: you walked over to me and crawled into my lap, and when I asked if you wanted to play the piano like that, you nodded without taking your eyes off of what you were witnessing.

It would be hard to overstate how mesmerized you seemed in those moments. The first occurrence felt like something I could chalk up to novelty; you had never seen anyone play the piano, after all. The second occurrence, playing out almost identically to the first, felt like a sign, either from you or the universe, and something to which I should respond. I reached out to parents of your peers to find out if anyone had piano teachers they recommended. Through that channel we found you a piano teacher, and you’ve been taking lessons for most of the past school year.

You’ve advanced quickly. I never played the piano, so don’t have much frame of reference. But the context clues seem pretty compelling. Your teacher, who though quite friendly does not appear the type to doll out praise frivolously, compliments your progress regularly. She overestimates how much you practice based on how quickly you’ve learned. Your Gran, who did play the piano, periodically seems pretty impressed with how fast you are learning. And your mom, slow to praise lest her kids get cocky, once stopped what she was doing in the kitchen to walk over and watch you play. The relative complexity of your play had caught her attention, and she wanted to see it. As she walked away she raised her eyebrows; she was surprised and, reluctant though she would be to say so, impressed.

Recently you’ve complained about going to piano lessons. I’ve found the complaints confusing and surprising: you clearly enjoy playing the piano (you generally practice without being reminded, and you invariably play songs you know whenever you see a piano, be it in public or at someone’s house). You only complain when I pick you up for lessons, which initially made me wonder if you felt like you were missing out on time with friends at after-school. Your lessons are in the late afternoon, which made me wonder if you were tired and hungry. When you complain, I typically remind you that we don’t make decisions to stop something on the way to that thing; if we want to stop taking lessons, we need to talk about it in advance.

Yesterday when I picked you up for piano lessons, per recent custom you started to complain. I reminded you that we don’t make decisions en route, and suggested that if you wanted to stop that we should talk it over with your mom after lessons that night. You asked me to remind you. I tried asking some clarifying questions. Was it your teacher? Was it the timing? I told you that I thought you liked playing the piano, and was reluctant to see you stop doing something you liked, but that we could look into adjusting it so that you would enjoy it more.

On the way home from the lesson you reminded me that we should talk to Mom about stopping lessons. I said okay. You then proceeded to complain that your teacher was giving you material that was too advanced, and that you wanted to play things that were more appropriate for your age. (I found this line of reasoning pretty entertaining, because I have no idea how you would know what is appropriate for a seven year old on piano). I asked, “Is it that you don’t like playing piano? Or that you don’t like your teacher? Or is it that her lessons are too hard?” You responded pretty quickly and instinctively, “Too hard”.

We proceeded to have a conversation about hard. I told you that one of my favorite quotes comes from a basketball team (the recent NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks), “everything you want in life is on the other side of hard”. We talked about how the biggest difference between those who succeed in life and those who come up short is that successful people are willing to do things that are hard. We talked about watching the NBA playoffs (something we do every couple of nights these days), and how all the teams and players left have to embrace the fact that what they are doing is hard; no one can become an NBA champion without going through hard. I proposed you embrace an identity as someone who embraces hard, because it will help you succeed in life. A little while later, while we were all sitting down to dinner, I said “Everett, is there something you wanted to talk to your mom about?” You said, “No”. I took this to mean you were prepared to embrace hard, at least for today.

This morning it hit me: I needed that talk just as much as you did. I was talking to me as much as I was talking to you. Don’t get me wrong: I have the ability to do uncomfortable things. When I look back on my life to date, and see where I am versus where I started…one cannot make that transition without the ability to navigate challenging circumstances. I have the ability to focus, I have some grit, and when I know what I want I’m pretty good at making that happen. But part of navigating this stage of life is recognizing the parts that have been neglected and overlooked, and adjusting. In yoga, my eternal metaphor, it’s quite clear which parts of my body have been overlooked and neglected. While parts of my body are strong, others are quite stiff and weak. Recently I’ve noticed small evidence of progress, particularly in the form of muscles engaging that frankly, haven’t been. It feels new and exciting, but also foreign, because I don’t have a frame of reference for what it feels like to engage these muscles. It’s uncomfortable, and a little demoralizing: the progress feels so small relative to the time I’ve invested in making the progress. Said differently, I’m struggling with hard.

I wonder sometimes whether I under-appreciate how much progress I’ve made, and whether having proper perspective would help me maintain motivation. You are my example here: clearly you have made rapid progress, and it seems rather clear to me that you struggle to recognize and appreciate how far you’ve come. This is part of the job of the coach, teacher, or parent: help kids see how far they’ve come, so they might appreciate their progress and maintain perspective. Otherwise the familiarity of the discomfort tricks us into believing nothing has changed, and that we’re stuck in the same struggle in perpetuity.

Admittedly, I worry that I’m deluding myself, and fear the progress is too slow, and that I’m ultimately wasting my time, money, and effort. In those moments, I try to remind myself of the objective signs of progress I’ve made, and the people who have given me positive feedback along the way. Those moments keep me motivated to keep going, but I’ll admit, right now is still hard.

So it is with my spiritual journey as well. I wrote you recently about my third psychedelic journey. One element of that experience that continues to resonate: the idea of letting the darkness out of us. Since that experience, I’ve generally maintained an unsettled feeling. I’ve not enjoyed that feeling, and frankly tried avoiding it. I eventually followed up with my guide, admitting that I’ve generally avoided revisiting the experience (part of the “reintegration” process that’s pretty critical to retaining benefits from the experience). Her intuition was that the thing I am looking for is sitting in front me, if only I can get still enough to find it. A week later a friend said to me, unprompted, “I feel like the thing you are looking for is looking for you”, suggesting I only needed get out of my own way. Again, I’m struggling with hard.

I sense a feeling of darkness sitting in (or perhaps more accurately, attempting to rise out of) me. At the same time, I see darkness rising in others all around me. I see your mom struggle in waves, battling with darkness in her. I see it in my church, as we oscillate between accepting the invitation to let go of one trauma and battling with the next (with the battle winning out more often than letting go these days). And of course, I see evidence of our collective struggle all around me in our news and current events. Based on my psychedelic experience, I sense a call to support others in letting the darkness out…and yet I’ll admit to being completely befuddled in terms of how to go about doing so.

Your mom has been helpful. The last couple weeks we have gone for walks together. On the first, when your mom asked how she could help and offered some ideas, I found myself suggesting that I felt drawn to tackle some things on my to do list that had been hovering over me. I asked for some support, in the form of some grace: these were projects that felt daunting, because they felt like things I was bad at. I committed to trying my best, but asked for some grace to do the jobs poorly. Your mom, helpfully, granted me that grace. I almost wanted her to decline my request: part of me wanted to remain feeling stuck, but now I felt compelled to tackle some long-neglected projects.

The next week was pretty productive, if uncomfortable. The projects in question had a couple common characteristics: they all required working with a vendor, and they were all projects where your mom was likely to care about the outcome at least as much as I would. I didn’t like the feeling that I couldn’t control the outcome (precisely because I was working through someone else), and I really, really didn’t like the idea that the outcome would provoke a big argument with your mom. Fortunately, I was able to solve all the problems I set out to solve last week, and with less time and money spent than I anticipated or feared. I strongly suspect the success had something to do with the approach (accepting the discomfort and uncertainty, and not being attached to outcomes), but of course I can’t prove that. I won’t say I enjoyed the week, but I’m glad I did it, and sense I grew from the experience (though to what end I don’t have any idea).

Last week we went for another walk, and your mom let me brain dump all the ideas rattling around in my head, in terms of what direction I want to take my life and vocation: all the ideas, all the places I felt stuck, all the places where I felt overwhelmed in perceived complexity. Through that process we were able to separate out a couple different threads I had jumbled together, and create an opportunity to pursue both independently. Separating the threads allowed me to simplify the potential solutions such that next steps became relatively clear, and I no longer felt overwhelmed by a perception of interconnected complexity. I’m still uncomfortable, but have a bit more sense of direction.

This week I’ve noticed my home to do list growing, at a faster rate than normal. I’ve struggled to decide what to do each day, such that I’ve often defaulted to “very little”. I’ve napped, which I frankly count as a positive (sleep is not what I do best, so I’ll take it where I can get it), but I’ve frittered away a fair amount of time. I’ve restarted my meditation practice after a few weeks off (part of my recent tendency toward avoidance), which is also a positive. And today I’m writing this note, which feels like a win (any day I write, especially to you and your brother, feels like a win).

I was tempted to say next “but I can tell I’m avoiding something”. But that’s not quite right: a more positive (and accurate) framing is that I’m working up to doing the next batch of uncomfortable things. Napping, meditating, and writing are activities that bring me energy; I’m investing in those activities in anticipating of leveraging that energy to tackle the uncomfortable things I want to do.

Another way to frame my recent experiences: I’ve been avoiding hard. But I recognized my avoidance, and started confronting it. I’ve not embraced hard as quickly, completely, or effectively as I might have liked. But I’m attempting to tackle hard in ways I’ve avoided for decades, so I deserve a little grace. I tackled some hard last week, and am working my way back to tackling some more hard this week. Like I suggested to you, I am hopeful that I am able to practice embracing hard, such that I get better at it and am able to sit with it more often. If nothing else, doing so would mean setting a good example for you, which seems like the most important things in the world I can do. Wish me luck, and let me know how it turns out.

I love you kiddo.

Love,

Dad