The ribbon was for a redesigned lobby. Not a new wing. Not a new building. A lobby that had been under construction for a few months.

And there were people everywhere. People from all over the community, including many people I knew from various parts of my life. I kept looking around thinking, all of these folks came out for a lobby.

That’s when I knew I wanted to write a love letter to CML.

I rarely check out books from CML. And I’m there several days a week. That gap is the whole story. CML is a library. It’s also so much more than books, and calling it a library almost does it an injustice.

When Becca and I were choosing to move to Brunswick, walkability was key for us. But walkability to what? We landed two blocks from the library. At the time that just sounded nice. I don’t think either of us understood what we were actually moving next to.

As I stood there, listening to people talk about their relationship with CML, I couldn’t help but think about mine. It might sound weird to talk about a relationship with a place. A building. But I think that is a critical element of community.

So here is a little story of my relationship to CML, told as a love letter.

Dear Curtis Memorial Library,

In December of 2024, I sat in your fireplace room and started writing a paper called “If We Want to Heal the World, We Need to Heal Men.” I didn’t finish it there. But I started it there.

That paper led me onto the Heart-Strong Adventure. The adventure led to Heart-Strong becoming an actual nonprofit. And that has become my life’s work, although I don’t like calling it work. I like calling it play.

All of it started in a chair by a fireplace in a building I didn’t pay to walk into.

When I walk your halls, I walk through my own life. Different rooms hold different things.

The fireplace room in the winter. The outdoor courtyard in the summer. A seminar room where the Heart-Strong board recently held our visioning meeting.

A few days ago, I sat down with one of your staff to learn how to use the photo scanner, because I had a stack of childhood photos I needed to send to the illustrator of one of the children’s books I am working on. That book will come to life in part because one of your people made time for me.

I’ve come to you to hear talks. Sourcing food from trees. Unpacking Wabanaki history in Maine. I’ve come to see the art on your walls.

Years ago, when we were piloting our first WILD (Wilderness Immersion Leadership Development) retreat, I checked out a coffee carafe from you so we could have hot coffee ready in the morning.

Yes, a coffee carafe. From the library.

That carafe came from your Library of Things, which might be one of my favorite things in Brunswick.

Each winter my wife Becca and I do Library of Things dates. We check something out and build a night around it. We’ve made ravioli. We’ve made pierogies. We’ve traveled to countries like Turkey without leaving town.

And as with all healthy relationships, the flow of love needs to go both ways. So, we give back to you too. We’ve donated several things including all my beer brewing equipment. I wasn’t using it. Someone else can use it now. And if I ever want it back for a weekend, I can check it out.

I gave something away and lost nothing. That is not how ownership usually works.

Your new lobby is beautiful. Your whole building is beautiful. But that is not what I’m writing to.

I’m writing to the community of people who make you what you are. The people on your staff. The people who volunteer. The people who sit on your board. The people who show up to hear a talk about trees on a weeknight.

None of what I’ve described happens because of architecture. It happens because a group of people decided a library should hold people, not just books. Then they went and did that, year after year, mostly without anybody writing it down.

And here’s how this comes around.

For the past few months, Heart-Strong has been doing a pop-up art show and fundraiser called FROM WITHIN. Paintings by 5 incarcerated artists at Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Virginia. It’s been to ReVision Energy, Orange Bike Brewing, The Mix, and Reverie Coffeehouse.1

The closing show is August 14, and you’re the one hosting it.

When I reached out to ask, the answer was an enthusiastic YES!

I can’t get over the shape of that. You gave me the room where this whole thing started. Now you’re hosting the last show of one of the things that room helped to start.

One more thing. August 14 is Valentine’s Day’s half birthday. For me that’s a day when we can actually celebrate the true meaning of love. Curiosity. Compassion. Connection. And not consumerism.

With heart and gratitude,

Jeremy

We tend to save love letters for special occasions. Falling in love. Eulogies. Romance and death.

Those are certainly great times for them. But there are so many moments in everyday life where we could express love with a simple letter.

Most of the places and people holding our communities together will never hear that anybody noticed. But they just keep showing up. The doors unlock. The lights come on. The library opens.

If there’s a place like CML in your town, I’d love to hear about it. And if you get the chance, tell them. Out loud. While they’re still there to hear it.

And if you’re anywhere near Brunswick on August 14, I would love for you to come to the closing show of FROM WITHIN.

I hope you enjoyed this love letter, and I plan to keep writing more. Because if there is one thing the world can use more of, I think it is love letters.

This Substack is a production of Heart-Strong, a nonprofit centered around a simple belief. The world works better, for everyone and everything in it, when more of us are pulled by love than controlled by fear. Our work is focused on making love cool again. And we know we can’t do it alone. We have an open invite for anyone curious about what that world could look like. Learn more at www.heart-strong.org.

He needed me on his right. He’s deaf in his left ear. If I stayed on that side, he’d miss most of what I said.

I moved over, and we kept walking. And I asked him about it. Had he always been deaf in that ear, or did it come on later?

Later, he said. It happened shortly after his first wife died.

Jonathan’s first wife Mel battled cancer for several years before losing the fight in 1994. I can still remember when I found out. It was the summer before my senior year in high school. I was at Boys State.

Not long after, he came down with what seemed like an ordinary ear infection. He didn’t have a fever, and it didn’t seem to be serious to his doctor. They decided to give it the weekend.

On Sunday, he was leading the church service and went to stand up from kneeling. He nearly fell over. The hearing in that ear was gone, and it didn’t come back.

I sat with that for a second, and then I asked him what I really wanted to know.

Did he hold any bitterness about it? Because it sounded like the kind of thing that could have gone differently. A different doctor. Antibiotics administered. Some small turn that could have left him with his hearing.

He didn’t go to any of those places.

What he said instead was that he’d read many stories, but they weren’t his stories.

I keep coming back to that line.

There’s a version of his life where the doctor takes immediate action. The antibiotics come. He keeps his hearing. He could live in that version, bitter about the one he actually got, replaying the small turn that might have gone the other way.

But that version didn’t happen. The story that did is the one where he lost his hearing the same season, he lost his wife. Holding onto bitterness would mean living in revenge and regret, wrapped up in a life that isn’t his. That isn’t the story he’s choosing.

So, he lives the story that is actually his, hearing loss and all. It asks a lot of him. The hearing loss makes the work he loves harder. He loved the small group work of ministry. Especially working with children. When you facilitate a group, you sit in a circle. And in a circle, he can only hear half the room. He knows what it costs. And he lives it as his own anyway.

There are a lot of ways to end up living a story that isn’t yours. You can lose yourself in bitterness over the one you wanted instead. You can live out a story someone handed you. You can live a story that society writes for you. Either way you’re somewhere other than in your story.

I know that pull. For a long time, I was living a story that wasn’t really mine. Heart-Strong was part of my own way back to the one that is. A year of exploring where love and fear show up in the world. Listening. Learning. Experiencing. And sharing.

And now it’s growing into something bigger than just my adventure. Heart-Strong is becoming a nonprofit. Not because the adventure is ending, but because it was never meant to be mine alone. The whole point is helping other people live their own stories. Not the bitter ones. Not the borrowed ones. The ones that are theirs.

We believe that when people have the courage to live their stories as their whole selves, everything around them starts to change. Families heal. Communities grow stronger. And the world gets a little closer to what it could be.

Jonathan chose to live his story as his own. No revenge, no bitterness, no pretending it should have gone some other way. And it’s what I want Heart-Strong to help people do too.

Stay tuned for more information on the next phase of our adventure and building Heart-Strong as a nonprofit.

Learn more at www.heart-strong.org

I jumped on Gas Buddy to check out prices. Gas around there was higher than I expected. Most places were over $4 a gallon. I found a place, the Whistle Stop, about a quarter mile off the main road. Their price was $3.70. An easy little detour. So, I took it.

Glad I did!

It had a great country store vibe. They even had the old-school gas pumps. The kind where the numbers spin as the gallons go by. I went inside figuring I’d have to prepay.

The woman behind the counter told me to fill up first and come pay after. She said the pumps are always on. I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced that. I remember it being that way when I was a kid, at the little store where my parents got gas. But I don’t think I’ve ever pumped first and paid after. Just trust and the honor system.

I walked back out to my car to pump some gas. While I was inside, an older man had pulled up on the other side of the pump and started filling up his vehicle. There’s only one pump for regular unleaded.

He apologized. He thought I had already pumped and gone in to pay. I told him no worries. I said I’d assumed I had to pay first. He laughed and said that’s not how it works here.

We got to talking. I told him I love businesses that still believe they can run on trust. The farm stands where people leave their vegetables out and you just pay. The places at the end of people’s driveways where Becca and I get our eggs. The community places where folks set out their goods and trust you to leave the money.

He agreed. When he drove off, I told him to have a great day. He said he definitely would now. Said he’d enjoyed the conversation. So, had I.

Then I went in to pay, and I told the woman what they were doing felt kind of amazing. Building a business on trust. She thanked me. She said they try to keep their prices low too, just to help people out.

That stayed with me. Because about a half mile up the road, right in downtown Farmington, there’s a WIC center. Food assistance. People who can’t always afford to feed their families. The need in the community was very visible.

And then a mile or two from that little station, there was a major gas station chain charging $4.11 a gallon. I’d just paid 41 cents less a gallon. That could be a $5, $10, or even more difference. And that difference could be one more meal on the table for a family that does not have a lot to go around.

That little gas station is what I would call community-ism. An active choice to center community, not capital. Treating your customers the way you’d want to be treated. Do unto others.

I’ve been thinking about this as I look at building a small real estate portfolio. I want to approach it in a way that leads with love. Put simply, I don’t want to rent out a place I wouldn’t be willing to live in myself.

Imagine if every landlord thought that way. Imagine if every employer did. People not willing to rent out an apartment they wouldn’t be willing to live in. Leaders not willing to create jobs or pay a wage they wouldn’t be willing to accept.

I’ve worked with big companies whose leaders make millions, own second homes, and still don’t pay their people a living wage. I don’t want to shame anyone. But I keep coming back to a simple question. What if we stopped trying to extract, and actually tried to add value to our customers and employees?

I want to build things that way. Not as a slumlord. Not even as a landlord. I don’t even like the use of the term lord. The Merriam-Webster definition of lord is, “one having power and authority over others.” I don’t want power or authority over others. I simply want to provide a good place to live at a fair price, held to the same standard I’d expect for myself.

I want to think of myself more as a housing steward.

Steward is an old word. Merriam-Webster traces it back to the Old English for keeper of the hall. Someone who looks after a home or a piece of land on behalf of the people who live there. Not to hold power over it. To care for it. To leave it better than they found it.

That feels a lot closer to love. A lot closer to community-ism.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

I’ve started introducing myself to people I don’t know in cafes, coffee shops, bars, and breweries. I invite them to share a snack and a conversation with me.

This is the first of those stories.

I was visiting friends in Hillsborough, North Carolina and went to one of my favorite spots in Durham to do some work. Cocoa Cinnamon. Three friends were sitting together at a table right behind me. They seemed like cool people. I had the idea for Sharing Cake but hadn’t approached anyone yet. It seemed like a great opportunity to kick off the series. And it turned out to be.

Meet Sam, Tariq, and Hannah.

Sam and Tariq are married. They’d recently moved to Durham from New York. Sam is in musical theater. She also works with a non-profit in New York that provides access to the arts for kids who don’t have it. Tariq works for a bio-data company in Durham. As he said, “He fixes the computers.”

Hannah had flown in from Bentonville, Arkansas for her birthday. She and Sam have been friends since their years together in New York. Hannah leads product design and development for women’s apparel at Sam’s Club.

Sam was the first to share a story. She told me about how Tariq had recently gone through an emergency kidney transplant. He was twenty-nine. That’s why they’d moved to Durham. It’s where he could get the care he needed.

I told them about my mom. She has stage four kidney failure and is on the transplant list. It’s been a tough journey for her. I mentioned that knowing I’d met Tariq and hearing his story was going to bring her some hope.

Tariq jumped in and shared how he got his kidney.

In August of 2024, his nephrologist told him he’d need a transplant. They did a biopsy. There was too much scar tissue to know why his kidneys had failed. Nobody could say for sure what went wrong.

Sam had posted online that Tariq needed a kidney. One of Tariq’s childhood friends, Ryan, saw the post. He’s a former Marine and a cop in Newark, New Jersey. Friends since kindergarten.

“I’ll get tested,” Ryan said.

Tariq thanked him but figured it wouldn’t match.

Tariq got a catheter put in. He did the training for dialysis. Before he’d started dialysis itself, Ryan called with some news. “I’m a match!”

1 in 100,000 chance!

Ryan was discharged from the hospital the day after the surgery. Tariq stayed longer. Tariq called the whole thing “just one weird season.” Six months from diagnosis to a new, healthy kidney. A kidney that came from a friend he’d known since they were five.

The conversation then shifted to Hannah’s work next. She told me she’d grown up in what she called Walmart land. Her family had worked for the company. Growing up, she was sure she’d never do that. She went to college in Fayetteville, then moved to New York after graduation and spent years in high-end fashion. When the chance to join Walmart headquarters came up six years ago, she was hesitant. It was a big change, and certainly not as glamorous as working in high-end fashion in NYC.

Then she told me about a trip she took to Louisiana that changed her perspective.

A few years ago, Hannah went on a shadow shop in the middle of Louisiana. She followed a single mother with five little girls through a store.

The mother told Hannah she had about $25 a month to spend on clothes for her daughters. She pointed to a dress on the rack. Under five dollars. She told Hannah the dress needed an overhaul. Better colors. Better prints. Better quality. If Hannah could pull that off at the same price, she’d buy multiples. And even better, she could make her daughters feel as cute as the girls next to them in $50 dresses.

A year later, the redesign hit the store. It was still under $5. Hannah followed back up with the mother.

“Y’all did it,” the mother told her.

Hannah said that moment was one of the biggest perspective shifts of her career. She’d come from the high end. She’d been skeptical about Walmart. The Louisiana mother showed her what the work could actually be. Now she calls it the most fulfilling thing she’s done. She gets to take high-end skill and put it in the hands of moms who couldn’t otherwise afford it. Moms who get to send their daughters to school feeling proud.

In many ways the story reminds me of my favorite Dolly Parton song, Coat of Many Colors.

I went to Cocoa Cinnamon to work. I left with three new friends.

Sam and Tariq shared their story without knowing my mom was on a transplant list. Not knowing that sharing that part of them would help give another person hope.

Hannah shared a moment that changed her perspective, not knowing I’d written about the same kind of shift with my father in a piece called Same Facts, Different Meaning.1

And then there were the people who weren’t at the table. Ryan gave Tariq a kidney, and in many ways a new life. A Louisiana mother asked Hannah for a better dress, and her daughters go to school feeling a deeper sense of pride.

We shared a cinnamon roll at Cocoa Cinnamon, but the stories were the real treat. I walked out both full and fulfilled, just like the saying said I would.

You don’t need a series to do this. You just need a snack and someone to share it with. I invite you to give it a try and experience for yourself that the saying is true.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org.

Carlos spent 13 years in prison. He’s an artist, an author, and someone who has given away 3,500 books to kids. He’s sold over 14,000 copies of his book, What If?, hand to hand, standing in front of the National Museum of African American History and Culture nearly every day for four years. He doesn’t hide from any part of his story. And that honesty is what makes him one of the most love-centered people I know.

This past winter, we sat in front of a fireplace at a friend’s house in Bethesda, Maryland. We talked about faith, fear, vulnerability, what love actually means, and why sharing your whole story matters more than most people realize.

The Caterpillar Story

One of the most striking things Carlos said was about caterpillars and butterflies.

“People always see the butterfly. But you have to be able to hear the caterpillar story. If you never share that story, people don’t know that they can grow or that they can become something great.”

Carlos lives this. He doesn’t skip over the parts of his life that are hard to talk about. He started with selling candy at 14, then selling drugs, then prison at 24. Not to shock anyone. He just believes that hiding your past robs others of the proof that transformation is possible. Fear says protect your image. Love says share the whole journey.

Love Is Vulnerability

When I asked Carlos how he defines love, he brought it back to prison. He talked about learning to love other men in a place designed to harden people.

“Love is vulnerability. Just being vulnerable. And when you do, it’s not a weakness. It’s a strength.”

He compared the bond to military service or a fraternity. You learn to love by being forced into proximity, then choosing to stay open instead of shutting down. That choice, made in the hardest possible environment, is what makes his understanding of love so grounded.

And Carlos doesn’t just talk about it. He lives it. He has over 3,000 contacts in his phone. When the spirit moves him, he reaches out just to say he loves them. He’s not worried about how it lands.

“I can care less what they may think. I know what they going to feel once I do it.”

Fear lives in what people might think. Love lives in knowing what they’ll feel.

A Box of Crayons

Near the end of our conversation, Carlos shared an idea that had come to him the night before while driving home.

“A box of crayons. Many colors. But the thing about it, they’re all crayons. People, different colors, different genders. You got everything going on. They’re all people. They’re all called to do the same thing and let’s get the picture done. But they all have to work together in their place to get the picture done.”

I love this because it’s so simple and so true. A picture made with one color is boring. The picture needs every crayon in the box. And no crayon gets to decide the others don’t belong.

This feels like something the world needs to hear right now. We spend so much energy sorting ourselves into separate boxes when we’re already in the same one.

Be Fruitful and Multiply

Carlos talked about the difference between leaving money and leaving impact. Money dies off in a generation. Impact multiplies. Then he reframed one of the most well-known verses in the Bible.

“God told you, or in the Bible it says in Genesis, be fruitful and multiply. It wasn’t just dealing with kids, it was dealing with ideas, thoughts. And those thoughts multiplying. But impact does that. And when you impact people, it continuously grow.”

I loved this framing. Most people hear “be fruitful and multiply” and think about having children. Carlos hears it and thinks about planting ideas in people that keep growing long after you’re gone. The 3,500 books he’s given to kids aren’t just books. They’re seeds. And those seeds will produce seeds of their own.

Fear hoards. Love plants.

Why This Matters

This conversation is part of my Heart-Strong Adventure, a year-long exploration of where love and fear show up in our world, especially in the lives of men.

Carlos’s story is a living example of what happens when someone chooses love over fear at every turn. Not once. Every day. In front of a museum. In a text to a friend. In a room full of kids holding books for the first time.

He told me that love flows through you, not just to you. And if you stop giving it because someone didn’t give it back, you cut off the flow for everyone downstream.

That’s a question worth sitting with. Where in your life have you stopped the flow?

If Carlos’s story sparked something in you, I’d love to hear about it. And if someone comes to mind who might need to hear this, please share it with them.

Because the stories we tell each other around the fire have always been how we change.

Learn more about the Heart-Strong Adventure: heart-strong.org

“Photos keep memories alive!”

No name. No explanation. Just the photos and the note from a stranger.

I didn’t know what to make of it at first. But the timing was hard to ignore. Because we’d just spent the last couple hours doing exactly that. Using photos to bring memories alive for a man who’s lived a hundred years of them.

Meet Grandpa Bill

Grandpa Bill just turned 101! To call him Grandpa might be a stretch since there’s no blood relation. He’s Becca’s birth mom’s sister’s husband’s father. But he’s just Grandpa Bill. Or as the family calls him, Grandpa the Great.

The nickname fits. He flew for Braniff International Airways. Flew all over the world, including routes down to South America. After he retired, he kept going. Downhill skiing. Road cycling. Riding his motorcycle. He was in his early to mid-90s when he finally slowed down. And even that wasn’t exactly by choice. He had a bad accident on his bicycle when he was around 94. He was out riding by himself. That pretty much ended both the cycling and the motorcycle riding.

I can remember one of his birthday parties at his son Bob’s house in Dallas. I think he was turning 90. There was a huge inflatable water slide set up for the “kids”. Apparently, Grandpa Bill and I are kids as we were the only adults to take the ride.

His motorized wheelchair has gotten him in trouble a few times for going too fast down the hallways of his assisted living facility. We joked that they should set up a racetrack outside so he could actually race people. He was all for it!

He’s also a man of deep faith. And I think that faith has been critical to his sense of purpose. It doesn’t have to be religious faith. It can be any kind of recognition that there’s something out there bigger than us. But whatever it is for Grandpa Bill, it has rippled down through his entire family. You can feel it.

That’s who he is.

The Photos

We had lunch together and sat and talked for a while. At one point, Becca and I mentioned AI. We told him that some people are saying the technological progress over the next ten years could equal what we’ve experienced over the last hundred. His entire lifetime!

Think about it, when he was born in 1924, cars weren’t even widespread.

We asked if he wanted to have a little fun with AI. He said sure.

I took a photo of him in his wheelchair. Then I ran it through an AI image generator. The first one put him in the cockpit of a plane. He liked that.

The second one put him riding a Braniff 747, sitting on top of the plane like it was a horse. He got a chuckle out of that.

Then while Becca was helping him with some tax stuff on the computer, I got an idea. I used to have a Harley-Davidson. Sold it because riding motorcycles just got too dangerous for me with all the distracted drivers out there. But love of motorcycles is something Grandpa Bill and I share.

So, I put us on a motorcycle together. Me driving, him on the back. Riding down 75 with the Dallas skyline behind us.

Grandpa Bill was over at the computer with Becca. He heard me chuckling. “What are you laughing at over there?”

I showed him.

His smile went ear to ear. You could see it brought him back to those days when he could ride free. He said, “Send that to my daughter.”

She thought it was real at first. Because it looks real. Which is its own lesson. AI can put a huge smile on a 100-year-old man’s face by giving him back a feeling he hasn’t had in years. It can also create massive deception. Both things are true. The same tool that made Grandpa Bill light up could fool his own daughter into thinking something happened that didn’t.

I want to be clear. These are not real photos. They were generated by AI. But the smile was real. The feeling was real.

What We Miss

Here’s what I keep thinking about. In our culture, we tend to look at people as they get older and focus on what they can’t do anymore. They can’t work. They can’t drive. They can’t contribute the way they used to. We build a whole frame around loss.

But what about what they can do? What about what they’ve already done? A hundred years of lived experience. That’s not nothing. That’s wisdom I certainly don’t have.

We’ve gotten away from ancestral wisdom in this country. The kind that comes from sitting with your grandparents and your great-grandparents. Asking them questions. Listening to what they’ve learned over the arc of a whole life.

I soak up every minute I can get with Grandpa Bill. I’m trying to do the same with my parents, my aunts and uncles. Because what they’ve experienced over the trajectory of a lifetime has lessons in it. If you ask the questions. If you actually listen.

And maybe we should sit with the idea that it’s not always them who don’t get it. Maybe sometimes we’re the ones who don’t get it.

The Note

When we walked out to that parking lot after the visit and found those photos on our car, I just stood there for a second. A stranger had left a stack of printed pictures, nature and flowers and art, with a handwritten note. Photos keep memories alive.

We’d just spent the afternoon doing exactly that. Using pictures, ones that didn’t even exist an hour earlier, to bring a man back to the cockpit and back to his motorcycle. To bring back a feeling.

One set of photos was made by a machine. The other was left by a human hand. Both were about the same thing. Keeping something alive that matters.

I don’t know who left those photos on our car. I don’t know if they saw us walk in or if they just leave photos on random cars in parking lots as their own little act of kindness. I don’t know their story.

But I do know the timing was something I won’t forget. I know that I will put the pictures on someone else’s car to play the love forward. And, I know that Grandpa Bill, somewhere in that building behind us, was still smiling.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org.

The thought had actually started earlier that day while I was doing some open water swimming. A sea turtle swam about 5 feet in front of me. And a couple of strokes later, I saw two amazing bright blue starfish.

Those made me think about the time I was lobstering with my dad, and we caught a blue lobster. According to the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, the chance of catching a blue lobster is roughly 1 in 2 million. That’s a lottery win by my definition!

We did set the lobster free. A lottery win for them!

And then I started pulling on that thread. Because there are all sorts of lotteries in the world. We just don’t call most of them that.

Time Is the Ticket

I was thinking about it this way. The conventional lottery is simple. You buy a ticket with money. You have a chance of winning something.

And as the saying goes, time is money and money is time. You typically earn money by spending your time doing something. Which means if I’m spending my time on something that doesn’t pay me, like lobstering, I’m essentially spending money. I’m buying a ticket.

Going out lobstering is buying a lottery ticket for the chance to catch a blue lobster. Going open water swimming is buying a ticket for the chance to see something you’ve never seen before. Like a sea turtle in the wild and a bright blue starfish. Sitting down to dinner with someone you love is buying a ticket for a moment that takes your breath away.

Every time you invest your time in something, you’re entering a lottery. The odds vary. Some are one in a million. Some are closer to fifty-fifty. If you’ve been paying attention to my writing, you know I typically put my odds somewhere between 50 and 100%. I wrote about that math recently in my Probability Math of an Optimist post.

Who Wins the Life Lottery

Here’s the thing that kept bouncing around in my head. I started thinking about the people I’ve heard say some version of “I won the lottery in life.”

They don’t tend to be uber-wealthy people.

Some of them have money. But the ones who say it, who really feel it, aren’t the ones always reaching for more. They’re NOT the ones whose life is never quite good enough. They’re people who’ve looked around at what they have and felt the full weight of it.

And sitting there in Costa Rica, looking at Becca, I thought, I love my life. I would wish it upon anyone. That’s a lottery winner talking. Not because everything is perfect. But because the orientation is right.

The Orientation

Maybe that’s actually the insight. It’s not about what you have. It’s about how you’re oriented toward it.

Some people have everything and feel like they have nothing. Some people have far less and feel like they’ve won. The difference isn’t always circumstance. It’s orientation.

And I wonder if you could actually start living life this way on purpose. Treating every investment of your time as a lottery ticket. Not in a naive way. In a being present way. Recognizing that every time you show up for something, there’s a chance of something happening. It could be a one in a million chance. It could be nearly certain. But you’re in the game.

People who feel like they’ve won the life lottery aren’t lucky. I think they’re just paying attention.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

Forrest Gump famously said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.

And when what you get is lemons, the thing to do is make lemonade.

But what do you do when you get cacao fruit that’s overripe?

Well, you can make chocolate.

Confused? Well, here’s a little story about what I’m talking about.

A couple months ago, my wife Becca and I were on a mini adventure, exploring some of the different markets in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. We went into a organic market just to see what they might have that we hadn’t seen elsewhere.

Our expectation was that everything would be expensive. It wasn’t. Nothing was horribly overpriced. And they had some pretty interesting things in there. Some very yummy, homemade popsicles, a few brands of Costa Rican coffee we had not seen yet, and CACAO FRUIT! The fruit that cacao/cocoa beans come from.

That is something I’ve been wanting to try for a long time. So, we bought one.

When most people think of cacao, they think of chocolate. Cacao nibs. The beans inside the fruit. But the fruit itself is apparently very delicious. The flavor is tropical, sweet, and tangy and often described as a cross between lychee, mango, and citrus.

We decided to eat it that night. It was dessert after our dinner of banana leaf steamed whole red snapper tostados.

When I opened it up, it just didn’t look right to me. There wasn’t much pulp. So, I did some investigating. I looked at pictures of cacao fruit online. The pictures I saw showed a lot of delicious-looking pulp. I was beginning to realize I might have a bad one.

I then took a picture of it and uploaded it to Claude. Claude said that the fruit appeared to be overripe. I obviously didn’t know what I was doing when I selected it.

That said, here’s where it gets interesting.

In the process of making chocolate, the fruit is often used to ferment the beans. That fermentation helps develop the flavor. And what had naturally happened inside our overripe cacao was that the beans had already started to ferment. They’d started to darken, which is the first step of making chocolate.

So, I asked Claude, could I actually just roast these beans and turn them into cacao nibs?

Absolutely!

So that’s what I did.

In our kitchen setup in Costa Rica, we didn’t have an oven. Roasting is not easy. I had to improvise.

I took a pan, put a strainer inside of it so there wasn’t direct contact between the beans and the bottom of the pan. Essentially creating a little oven in there. Then I covered it and roasted the beans for about thirty minutes.

Did they come out perfectly roasted? No. But you could start to taste the cacao. I’d say they were 75% there.

So, what’s the point of this story?

When I first opened that fruit, my thought was, we got a bad fruit. I need to take it back. That was a fear-based response. Fear alerted me. This wasn’t what I expected. Then love stepped in and asked, “What can I do with it?”

That changed my orientation. Instead of taking it back, I thought about how I could make lemonade out of lemons. Or in this case, chocolate out of overripe cacao fruit. Maybe that’s what the universe intended me to do. Maybe it was a little test for how well I’m putting this whole Heart-Strong philosophy into action.

At the time we were prepping to head back to the US. This starts with a 5-hour trek to San Jose. Becca would be making some breakfast cookies as it is an early morning shuttle. She decided to crush up those roasted cacao nibs and put them in there.

They were awesome!

And maybe this started a whole new exploration phase for me. Maybe I’ll start roasting cacao beans. Or even roast some coffee beans and experiment with that. Play with it. That spark of creativity never would have happened if I said, this fruit is bad and took it back to the store.

As I was writing this story, I got my Daily Stoic email. It was about the concept of Amor Fati. It is a mindset for making the best out of anything that happens. It is treating each and every moment, no matter how challenging, as something to be embraced, not avoided. To not just be okay with it but love it and be better for it.

Put another way, when life gives you overripe cacao fruit, make chocolate.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org.

But recently, I have been thinking about it differently.

Connection can be one-way.

I can feel connected to you without you feeling connected to me. Someone can feel a deep connection to a person who doesn’t even know they exist. That’s not a flaw in the word. It’s what the word actually means. It describes how energy moves in one direction. From me to you. From you to something. But not necessarily back.

Relationship is different. Relationship is always reciprocal.

You can have unhealthy relationships and healthy relationships. But you can’t have a one-way relationship. If the moment’s one-way, it’s not really a relationship anymore. It’s something else.

Why This Matters for Community

I’ve been working on a deeper piece about community. Trying to name the core elements that actually make community work. I kept landing on four things. Relationship to self. Relationship to others. Relationship to place. Relationship to resources.

For a while I was calling them connections. Connection to self. Connection to others. Connection to the planet. But once I saw the difference, I couldn’t unsee it.

If you’re building community on connection, you might be building something that only flows in one direction. I connect with you. You don’t connect with me. That’s not community. That’s an audience.

Community requires reciprocity. It requires something flowing between people, not just from one to another. That’s relationship.

Where Love and Fear Fit

This is where I think it gets interesting. Once you frame it as relationship, the love and fear lens maps right onto it.

Healthy relationships are driven by love. They make both people better. The energy flows and grows. Unhealthy relationships are driven by fear. They deplete. They control. They extract.

Think about what fear-based relationships look like at scale. That’s where you get racism. White supremacy. Environmental destruction. Systems built on extraction rather than reciprocity. Fear drives all of it.

And love-based relationships? That’s where you get healing. Growth. The kind of community where people actually tend each other’s fires.

Love and fear aren’t just emotions in this framework. They’re the quality of energy flowing through every relationship we’re in. With ourselves. With each other. With the places we live. With the resources we share.

The Energy in a Fight

My wife Becca has been reading The Celestine Prophecy. One night at dinner, she told me about a scene that had landed with her.

In the book, a character learns to see energy flowing between people. Then he witnesses two people arguing. And what he sees is that the argument isn’t really about ideas. It’s about energy. Each person is trying to extract energy from the other. The one who wins the argument gets a surge. The one who loses feels depleted.

That’s a fear-based relationship in action. I need to win. I need your energy. I need to take something from you so I can feel full.

The book suggests that part of our growth as humans is learning to stop doing that. To stop trying to extract energy from each other and instead find a source that doesn’t require someone else to lose.

I sat with that for a while. Because that’s exactly what I’ve been writing about. When there’s good energy flowing between people, it’s rooted in love. We’re making each other better. Like Becca and me at that dinner table. Great energy between us. Nobody taking. Both giving.

But when we come from fear, when we need to win the argument or control the outcome, we’re essentially trying to take someone else’s energy and use it to fill ourselves up. The other person walks away depleted.

What I’m Sitting With

I didn’t discover anything new here. If you look critically at how our society is structured, at the isolation and extraction and fear baked into so many of our systems, it’s almost impossible to land anywhere other than the conclusion that we need something different. Something built on reciprocal relationship rather than one-way extraction.

These thoughts are still forming. But the language shift from connection to relationship feels important. It’s not just semantics. It changes what you’re building toward. Connection can look like love while still being one-way. Relationship can’t fake it. It’s either reciprocal or it’s not.

I think community has to be built on the thing that can’t fake it. Relationships.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

It’s a simple question my Aunt Jill asked me when she called to wish me a Happy Birthday.

“Actually, I’m on my way to a memorial service.” That was my response because that’s what I was doing.

She started apologizing. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry.”

I told her two things. First, don’t apologize. There’s nothing to be sorry for. And second, I actually can’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon of my birthday.

And I meant it.

Fred Koerber was the father of a very close high school friend, Kyle. Fred was someone I was very close to as well. And the arc of our relationship is something I keep turning over.

He started as the father of a friend. That’s it. Mr. Koerber. Kyle’s dad who was also a coach. I spent a lot of time at their house in high school.

As I got into college, our relationship made its first shift. Fred was a teacher. When injuries ended my college basketball career, I started coaching 7^th grade basketball at Brunswick Junior High. Fred was the 8^th grade coach. He wasn’t just Kyle’s dad anymore. He was a peer. Someone doing the same work I was doing.

He also became a mentor. I was considering going into education, and Fred helped me think it through. He connected me with teachers at the school so I could volunteer in the classroom and learn the trade from the inside.

Many years later, when I moved back to Brunswick and joined the Town Commons committee, Fred was there too. For the longest time I kept calling him Mr. Koerber. That’s what he’d been my whole life.

One day he looked at me and said, “I want to get this straight. My name’s Fred. And if you keep calling me Mr. Koerber, I’m going to start calling you Mr. Litchfield.”

Understood!

In that moment I realized our relationship was changing again. He’d always be a mentor and a guide. But he was telling me something else. We’re colleagues now. In some ways, I was now leading him as I was the Chair of the committee.

This type of shift doesn’t happen in every relationship. Most of the people who shaped us when we were young stay in the roles we first knew them in. Fred didn’t. He grew with me.

The service brought together people from all walks of life. That’s what the loss of someone like Fred does. It pulls people out of their separate corners and puts them in the same room.

I saw Jeremy DaRos, who I played high school basketball with and lived with in Portland after college. His parents were there too, wonderful people. Dave Trigianni, probably my oldest friend. Mrs. Zimmerman, my senior-year math teacher.

She was talking to one of my best friends Scott and she didn’t even recognize me standing right next to her. At one point she said, “You and Litchfield, always causing trouble in the back of the room.” Scott just looked over at me. Her face lit up. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even recognize you.”

She probably always knew that Scott and I treated our math tests as more of a team-based assignment. My math skills were maybe a little stronger, and I’d help him out. She let it go. She made learning fun. That was one of everyone’s favorite classes.

At dinner that night, my dad reminded me that Mrs. Zimmerman was also a chaperone on our AP US History canoe trip junior year. A bunch of high schoolers on a river, a violent thunderstorm rolling through that night. She showed up for the adventure too, not just the classroom.

Were there tears? Absolutely. Tears of sorrow and also tears of joy.

People said, “Tough way to spend your birthday.”

No, it actually wasn’t.

Was it fun? I’m not sure. But I do know that it was something better than fun. Something that reaffirms what it means to be human, to have relationships, to be in a community where there’s so much love. It was meaningful.

In my high school days, my birthday included bonfires and all the shenanigans that come with being a teenager. This one was a memorial service, tears, laughter, old friends, and a community I’m grateful to be part of.

So maybe the question I want to ask myself every year on my birthday is, what am I going to do that is meaningful?

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

My wife, my parents, and I went to the Taste of Maine for my birthday dinner. It’s a classic Maine restaurant I hadn’t been to in years. The kind of place that’s a little touristy but the locals go too. We’d picked it because we’d read it was going under new ownership. One more visit before it changed.

While we were eating, my sister Jennie and her husband Erik called to wish me a happy birthday. I told her where we were, and she said, “Oh, I remember.”

Erik jumped in. “Oh, Bumpa. That was his favorite place. He loved that place.” Bumpa was Erik’s grandfather.

Jennie chimed in, “It was Bamp’s too!”

Bamp was our grandfather.

Everyone had their restaurant in our family. The one you’d choose when it was your turn to pick. For my birthday, I always chose Cook’s Lobster House. So did Jennie. The Taste of Maine was Bamp’s.

Sitting there, surrounded by all that nostalgia, I started thinking about how much those family rituals shaped me. Not just the birthday dinners. The weekly ones.

Every Friday night from the time I was probably 5 to 10, my family piled into our brown Chevy Blazer and drove to Lewiston for our weekly grocery shopping adventure. Dinner came first, usually at a tiny pizza place called Yanni’s. Maybe six tables, a hallway to a back door with a couple more. There was a jukebox in the corner, and I’d play “Beat It” as many times as my parents would let me. On occasion we’d go to Bonanza instead. A change of pace. And they had Jell-O, which I loved!

Then we’d split up. My mom went grocery shopping at Shaw’s. My dad, sister and me headed to Bookland.

My dad would go to the magazines and set my sister and me free to explore.

That was the part I lived for. Nobody telling me what to read or where to go. I could roam the whole store, pull anything off the shelf, sit on the floor, and disappear into it. For about an hour every week, I felt like I had my own personal library.

My parents didn’t have to do that. They chose to. They could have made us stay at their side or dragged us through the grocery store. Instead, they gave us room to explore.

That free range approach to parenting showed up everywhere. The woods where I grew up, climbing trees, following streams, building forts. The campground where I ran free with the other kids. The bike trips crossing the Androscoggin into Lisbon Falls. My parents trusted me with space, and that space let me become curious.

Somewhere in those Friday nights at Bookland, surrounded by all those books, I decided I wanted to write children’s books. I think I was probably 7.

Then life happened. School, sports, work, building businesses. The dream didn’t disappear. It just waited.

One of my goals before I turn 50 is to fulfill a dream I’ve carried for over 40 years.

I’ve written the manuscript for two children’s books. Now I want to bring them to life. I’m planning to self-publish, which means the Heart-Strong community will be an important part of how it happens.

So, here’s a little birthday ask. If this story resonates, I’d love for you to share it with at least one person who might want to come along for the adventure. That’s it. Just one share.

I write about love and fear with the hope of helping people step out of the boxes that keep them from living as full human beings. Whether those boxes are childhood conditioning, systems that center capital over everything that actually matters, or walls that were designed to separate.

These books are part of that. They’re for kids, and for the grownups reading to them. They’re for everyone who’s been told to put a part of themself away. And for every person who unfortunately did.

49 is going to be a great year. I can feel it.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

At the end of our conversation, he was recommended a book that would help shape some of my thinking. “Love” by Leo Buscaglia. He told me it was the book that taught him the importance of loving himself.

At the end of our conversation, I asked if Briddge and his wife Cherrie would sit down with me for a Campfire Conversation. They said yes.

This is that conversation.

It’s also the first Campfire Conversation that is not one-on-one. It is with a married couple to boot. And I think you’ll hear why that matters. Because Briddge and Cherrie don’t just talk about love. They work it out in real time. They push back on each other. They disagree. They finish each other’s thoughts and then challenge those thoughts a sentence later. It’s love in practice, not theory.

Perfectly Imperfect

I need to tell you something about this episode. About sixty minutes into our conversation, I looked over and realized my phone had stopped recording. Storage was full. We’d been having one of the deepest conversations I’ve had on this adventure, and it wasn’t captured.

We lost about fifty minutes of audio.

In the moment, I had a choice. I could get frustrated, hold onto expectations for what this episode was supposed to be, and let it derail us. Or I could take a breath and trust that the conversation itself was the gift, not the recording of it.

We regrouped. I cleared some space on my phone. And we picked it back up.

What you’ll hear in this episode is the first seven minutes that were captured, then me bridging what was lost, and then forty-five minutes of conversation that picks up right where the energy left off.

You’ll also notice the audio isn’t perfect in places. I have the technology for one-on-one conversations. This was three people and two lapel mics around a fire. That’s what happens when you try to have real conversations outside. Perfectly imperfect.

Here’s why I’m telling you this. One of the themes from the lost portion of our conversation was expectations. Briddge put it simply:

“Fear comes from expectations we’ve put on ourselves, on others, on our experience.”

And there I was, living that lesson. If I had held onto expectations for what this conversation needed to be, I would have lost something far more valuable than audio. I would have lost the friendship that was blossoming right there at the fire.

I got something better than a perfectly captured episode. I got two new friends.

Love as Mirror, Compass, and Symptom

When I asked Briddge and Cherrie how they define love, they each came at it differently.

Briddge sees love as something you know before you can name it.

“It’s like a feeling. You can’t really define it, but you know it. It’s like a connection. You can’t really describe it, but it’s there. It’s a lens. It’s a mirror. It’s the soul.”

Cherrie sees it as understanding.

“The reason why people have a problem defining it is because we don’t truly know what love is. For me, it’s more of an understanding. If I love a person, I’m going to extend that.”

Then the conversation went somewhere I didn’t expect. They disagreed, right there at the fire, about whether love is born in us or developed. Cherrie believes we arrive with it.

“We’re born with love. Real love. Authentic love that has not been conditioned or taught. If you truly love, that respect is automatic.”

Briddge pushed back gently.

“We do have love within us. It’s an internal thing. But that capacity within has to be developed. That’s why we have to grow into loving ourself.”

I think they’re both right. And that tension between “love is already in us” and “love has to be grown” is one of the most honest things about this conversation. It’s the same question I’ve been wrestling with since I read Buscaglia’s book last fall.

Cherrie also offered a framing I haven’t heard anyone use before. She compared love to an illness and feelings to symptoms.

“Love is the actual thing. The feeling of love is a symptom. It’s something that can change. It can go away. But true love is not a feeling.”

I keep coming back to that. If we mistake the symptoms for the thing itself, we’ll always be chasing feelings instead of tending something deeper.

Can You Stop Loving Someone?

At one point, the married couple dynamic caught fire.

Briddge said he believes you can make the choice to stop growing in love with someone.

Cherrie wasn’t having it. She pushed back immediately.

“On a romantic level, but you can’t stop loving me.”

Briddge held his ground.

“As a loving person, I can’t stop loving anybody. But in the relationship, I can make the choice to stop growing in love with you.”

Watching them work this out in front of me was something special. This wasn’t a debate for the sake of being right. It was two people who love each other deeply, wrestling with what that actually means when it gets complicated. And they didn’t resolve it neatly. They just kept going.

That’s what love looks like in practice. Messy. Unfinished. And still moving.

Leading with Love When It’s Hard

The conversation took a turn when I asked a question I’ve been sitting with for months. If I’m leading with love, do I have to love the people who are causing harm in the world?

Cherrie’s answer was immediate.

“You still have to love them from a humanity or a human standpoint. You may not approve of what they’re doing, but that’s separate. Ask yourself what happened to them. What makes them do that. Because it’s something.”

Then she shared a deeply personal story that I’ll let you discover in the episode. It involves forgiveness in a situation where most people might say forgiveness should not be given. And it demonstrates what it actually looks like to separate the person from the act. To love the human even when you can’t accept what they’ve done.

Briddge followed with something equally direct.

“If you choose to be a loving person, if you choose to be a person that leads with love, you’re gonna have to find love for them.”

No escape hatch. No exceptions for the people who make it hard. That’s the commitment.

Energy, Judgment, and What We’re Really Starving For

Toward the end, the conversation shifted to energy and judgment.

Cherrie talked about leaving a job because the negativity was changing who she was.

“My energy was not what it used to be, and my team was feeling that. I told my husband, I can’t go back to that place.”

Briddge was vulnerable about his own struggles. He talked about doing well around people but struggling when he’s alone.

“When I’m alone, my energy is bad. But when I find people, because I’ve learned to value people so much, my energy with people is super bright. If you interact with me, you think I’m the coolest dude. But when you leave and I’m by myself, it’s a struggle.”

I think a lot of people, especially men, will recognize that. The gap between how we show up in the world and what’s happening inside when no one’s watching.

Briddge also named something I keep hearing in these conversations.

“One of the most important things we can do is stop judging. Right now we’re at a state where everybody finds something wrong with everything. There’s no love when there’s judgment.”

And Cherrie put her finger on something connected.

“We no longer listen to understand. We listen to defend.”

I think those two ideas go together. When we’re judging, we’re not curious. When we’re defending, we’re not listening. And without curiosity and listening, love doesn’t have room to do its work.

Why This Matters

This conversation is part of my Heart-Strong Adventure, a year-long exploration of where love and fear show up in our world, especially in the lives of men.

What made this conversation different was the dynamic. Every other Campfire Conversation has been one-on-one. This was a married couple talking about love together. Sometimes agreeing. Sometimes pushing back. Always honest.

And I think that’s what this whole adventure keeps teaching me. Love isn’t something you figure out alone. It’s something you practice with other people, especially the people closest to you. It’s a mirror. It’s a compass. It’s perfectly imperfect.

Briddge brought his copy of Buscaglia’s “Love” to the fire and read a passage near the end.

Look around. Loneliness. Destruction. Despair. Briddge is right. I think the reason is simple. Not enough love.

If this conversation sparks something in you, I’d love to hear about it. And if someone comes to mind who might need to hear this, please share it with them.

Because these conversations around the fire are how we change.

On Thursday, May 21, the show opened at ReVision Energy in South Portland. And I still can’t quite believe it’s real.

4 months ago, this was just an idea. A conversation between me and an incarcerated artist named Tremayne about what might be possible.1 Now, it’s a traveling art show featuring original work by 5 artists at Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Virginia.

Organizing an art show across prison walls, state lines, and even country lines (I was in Costa Rica for a good chunk of the planning) was challenging to say the least. And artists had about 4 weeks to complete their painting. They painted 2 to 4 each. But here we are.

And the community showed up. On day one, we raised over $1,000 to support art therapy and healing in underserved communities. Proceeds from event sales go to ArtVan,2 a Maine-based mobile art therapy nonprofit. That $1,000 will allow ArtVan to bring their services into 4 different neighborhoods, reaching people who don’t normally have access to that kind of healing.

That’s just day one. And this is just the beginning.

FROM WITHIN is built on 3 bridges.

The first is the bridge of healing through art. Every piece in this show was created by 1 of 5 incarcerated artists at Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Virginia. Art became their way through. And through ArtVan, the proceeds from this show extend that same healing to communities on the outside.

The second is the bridge between the inside and the outside. It’s easy to write off people in prison. Society tells us they don’t have value to offer. But spend 5 minutes with this artwork and that story falls apart. There’s beauty, skill, and humanity in these pieces. There’s a tremendous amount of locked up potential and love behind prison walls. This show is one way to help people on the outside see it.

The third is the bridge to families. When someone goes to prison, their whole family goes with them. Staying connected is expensive. A single message through prison communication systems costs about an hour’s worth of work for someone on the inside. That’s the price of telling your daughter you love her.

3 bridges. Healing, humanity, and family.

Now, here’s the part I’m excited to share. Several of you have reached out and said you’d love to support this work but can’t make it to Maine. I hear you. And now there’s a way.

The FROM WITHIN online store is live.

All original paintings and calendars are available on the website, with 100% of the proceeds going to ArtVan.

You’ll also find prints, shirts, and other items, with proceeds going back to the artists’ families. You can shop by painting or artist.

And if you are in Maine or nearby, the next show is June 5 at Orange Bike Brewing in Portland. Come see the work in person. Meet the community that’s forming around it.

This show is proof of what happens when you follow love instead of fear. A painting led to a friendship. A friendship led to a show. And a show is building bridges.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

Around 5:00pm, the town starts to empty out. Restaurants go quiet. Streets thin out. And thousands of people walk toward the water.

By the time the sun gets low, the beach is packed. Families. Couples. Dogs. Kids chasing each other through the shallows. And out past the break, 50 to 100 surfers are lined up on the horizon, bobbing in the swell, waiting for one more ride before the light goes.

Nobody sends a calendar invite. There’s no announcement. It just happens. The whole community stops what it’s doing and faces the same direction, toward the horizon.

It’s one of the most natural senses of church/congregation that I’ve ever experienced.

One one Saturday evening, my wife Becca reminded me that I’d been wanting to capture this. Not just the sunset itself, but how crowded everything gets. The beach. The ocean. The whole scene.

After snapping a few pictures, I told Becca about a guy named Tony who I met while surfing in the mornings. He lives in Santa Teresa and is originally from Arizona. We met last year and remembered each. He’s the kind of guy who always comes over to say good morning. We’ve surfed together a few times. He catches waves like it’s nothing. Easy. Natural. The kind of surfer who could clean house and catch every wave if he wanted to.

But he doesn’t.

One morning, I asked Tony if he’d gone out for a sunset surf. He said no. He’d been at El Carmen, the restaurant right on the beach. He told me he usually likes to leave the sunset to the Ticos (i.e., the locals).

That thought sat with me.

Here’s a guy who could paddle out and ride every wave in sight. The surf was firing. And the sunset was amazing. But he chose to sit it out. Not because he didn’t want to surf. Because he’d been here long enough to understand something about the place.

Becca added a layer I hadn’t thought of. A lot of the locals can’t surf in the morning. If you’re doing construction, or working a shop, or teaching surf lessons, you’re starting early. Your window is sunset. That’s your time on the water.

Tony sees that. And he leaves room.

I’ve come to believe there’s a difference between visiting a place and being in relationship with it. I’m starting to think that tourists extract. They take the photo, ride the wave, check the box. There’s nothing wrong with that exactly. But it feels surface level. It feels like consumption.

Tony’s doing something different. He’s developed a relationship with Playa Carmen. He knows its rhythms. He knows who needs what and when. And he adjusts. Not because someone told him to. Because that’s what care looks like when you’ve been paying attention.

I think about that a lot in the context of this adventure. The difference between showing up somewhere and actually being present. Between taking from a community and contributing to one. Between fear, which grabs, and love, which makes room.

Tony could grab. He’s good enough. Instead, he watches from a restaurant with a drink in his hand and lets the locals catch their waves.

That feels like a love-based way to be somewhere.

I haven’t done a sunset surf yet. And I am not sure if I ever will. If I do, it’ll be on a quiet night when the crowd is thin and there’s room.

Because I think that’s what happens when you start to build a relationship with a place. You stop thinking about what you can get from it. And you start thinking about what you can give to it.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

People read what I put out there and they send things back. Books. Podcasts. Articles. Movies. Over a very short time, the list of recommendations went from 10 to 20 to, all of a sudden, hundreds of unique things that people have shared with me over the past seven months.

I so respect the time and effort people take to engage with this work. And I love that they want to be part of it by pointing me toward things that have pushed their own thinking. That generosity is a big part of what makes this adventure feel like a community, not just a project.

But I’ve also fallen behind. Way behind.

My reading list alone has grown to well over 100 books. Some of them are 400 or 500 pages. I’m looking at thousands of pages of deep text. And I started to feel a quiet anxiety about it. Like I was letting people down if I didn’t get to their recommendation.

So, I started using a tool. I have mixed feelings about AI. I’ve written about how dangerous it can become when it gives people a false sense of relationship and connection. I’ve written about how the AI business model matters more than we might think. At the same time, I use it. It helps me do research that would take months on my own.

More recently, I’ve been using NotebookLM, a Google product, to create audio summaries of books. It’s a great tool. You feed it material and it generates a 20-minute podcast-style overview. Two hosts walking through the key ideas, debating them, pulling out the tensions. From there, I can decide whether a book is something I want to dive into deeper.

For example, I listened to the audio summary of The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist. That one made the must-read list. And I just finished it. Highly recommend! I also listened to one called Wild at Heart by John Eldredge. Not sure I will dive deeper into that one.

So let me be upfront. I am sharing thoughts of a book I did not read. I listened to a 20-minute AI-generated audio summary. That’s what I’m responding to. If I had actually picked up the book, I might have put it down, because I think I would have been instantly turned off by the author’s perspective. But because of the summary, I got the gist of it all. And while I disagree with most of it, there are some things in there that I agree with. Although probably not for the same reasons as the author.

The audio summary opened with a metaphor. A magnificent 500-pound African lion pacing a concrete cage at the zoo. Fed through a sliding metal door. No longer even believing he’s a lion. The author, Eldredge, argues that this lion is the modern man. Society has domesticated men. Stripped the wildness out of them. Replaced adventure and risk with cubicles, committee meetings, and the aspiration to be a “nice guy.”

His framework is built on three desires he says are hardwired into every man: a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. He contrasts these with three feminine desires and argues that these energies are fundamentally different and cannot interact. He traces the suppression of male wildness through religion, corporate culture, and what he calls the father wound, a universal psychological injury that leaves men feeling like imposters.

The sources he draws from are a reframing of the Bible and pop-cultural representations of men. He essentially reads God not as the gentle, all-knowing figure most religious institutions describe, but as a wild, risk-taking warrior. I think you can read the Bible, or really anything, and make it whatever story you want to make it. The fact that this argument was built largely on cherry-picked scripture and Hollywood archetypes is alarming to me.

But here’s the thing. There is some truth in here.

The idea that society puts people in cages? 100% Yes! Religion can put people in boxes. Capitalism puts us in boxes. Healthcare puts us in boxes. Education puts us in boxes that prevent us from being our true creative geniuses. I agree with all of that.

Where I break with the book is that it argues for letting men out of one cage by putting them into another one. A very traditional view of masculinity. A different cage, but still a cage.

The question the audio summary left me with is: what becomes of a society of highly domesticated men? I think that’s way too narrow. The real question is: what becomes of a society when all of us, men and women, are not able to live as our whole selves? When we are all living in cages of our own and cultural makings?

One of the things he does throughout the book is operate in extremes. Very binary thinking. He acknowledges masculine and feminine energy but essentially says these energies cannot interact. This goes completely against what I’ve come to learn and believe through this adventure.

If you look at our DNA, 99.9% of us are the same. Men and women. People of different races. For me, the issue isn’t about how you embrace your God-given masculine energy or your God-given feminine energy in isolation. It’s about how we each embrace our unique mix of energies so we can live as our whole selves.

Two days after listening to the Wild at Heart summary, I listened to another one. A book called Soulcraft by Bill Plotkin.

It covers remarkably similar ground. People are trapped. Society rewards us for playing what Plotkin calls the standard game of security building. Get the degree, pay the mortgage, maintain your social standing, and mistake that checklist for a complete life. He argues that true adulthood requires something more. A disruptive, often painful initiation into your unique soul purpose.

Sounds a bit like Wild at Heart, right? Both books say we’re caged. Both say we need to break free. But here’s where they split apart completely. And it comes down to why. It comes down to what’s underneath.

Wild at Heart starts with a rigid framework. Three masculine desires. Three feminine desires. A wound that can only be healed by older men. A God who is fierce and dangerous, not gentle and loving. It’s prescriptive. It tells you what your wildness should look like based on your gender.

Soulcraft starts with a caterpillar.

Deep inside a caterpillar are clusters of cells called imaginal buds. They hold the blueprint for the butterfly. But when those cells first activate, the caterpillar’s own immune system doesn’t recognize them. It treats them as alien invaders. Its immune system tries to kill them off.

Plotkin uses this as a metaphor for what happens when our deeper purpose tries to emerge. The ego, the part of us that built a safe and predictable life, treats that emergence as a threat. It mounts an immune response. Anxiety. Imposter syndrome. Self-sabotage. Not because we’re weak, but because our internal defense systems are doing their job too well.

One of the most powerful ideas in the book is what Plotkin calls the loyal soldier. After World War II, there were Japanese soldiers stranded on remote Pacific islands who kept fighting for decades because they didn’t know the war was over. Plotkin argues our childhood psyche does the same thing. When we’re young, we develop a sub-personality whose job is to suppress our wild, authentic self to keep us safe from rejection or punishment. It keeps us alive through middle school. It helps us survive. But then we grow up. The environment changes. And that loyal soldier is still in the jungle of our mind, shooting at anything that looks risky or authentically us.

The book’s answer isn’t to fight the loyal soldier. You can’t win that war. Instead, you approach it with compassion. You thank it. You acknowledge that it kept you alive when you needed it. And then, gently, you tell it the war is over.

This connected with me so much deeper than Wild at Heart. Because this version is rooted in love, not fear. Wild at Heart says: here is what a real man looks like, now go be that. Soulcraft says: your wholeness is already inside you, unique to you, and it will emerge when you stop fighting it.

Wild at Heart gives you a new cage. Soulcraft asks you to dissolve the cage entirely.

Plotkin also makes a distinction I really like. He says we all have a survival dance and a sacred dance. The survival dance is how you pay the bills. It’s necessary. You can’t skip it. But the sacred dance is the unique work you were born to do. And the ultimate goal is for those two dances to become the same thing. That idea hits close to home right now.

Soulcraft is 100% a book I’m going to read deeply. Wild at Heart is likely not. Same general territory. Completely different roots.

Which brings me to something I did recently that I’d never done before. I put purple nail polish on some of my fingers.

Not all of them. Three on my left hand. Two on my right. Strategic. My right hand is my index and middle fingers, so when I flash the peace sign, which I often do, people see the purple. My left hand is my thumb, middle, and pinky. The thumb and pinky for the Pura Vida hang loose, which I picked up from surf culture. And the middle finger? Not to say “f’ you.” But rather it’s a way some buddies and I say, “I love you” to each other. I know, weird, but that’s what we do.

I do want to be clear about something. This is not about questioning my sexual identity or my gender identity. And it’s not about transitioning. It’s not a statement about any of that. This is about embracing the weird person that I am.

I’ve always struggled with fitting in boxes. I said something to Becca years ago that still feels true.

“So many people go through life just trying to fit in. I’ve spent my whole life just trying to fit out.”

I want to find the purest expression of who I am, live my wholeness, and let that wholeness guide me through life.

And here’s what I’ve noticed since I put the polish on. I’ve grown to love it. Every time I look down at my hands, I feel more me. Not less. More. I’m leaning into the wholeness of who I am, not living by societal definitions of what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman. I’m more focused on what it means to be human.

And this is exactly where Wild at Heart falls apart for me. I consider myself a wild guy. I run adventures and retreats called WILD. And much like Eldridge advocates for, I like to do hard shit. I have run several marathons. For my 50^th birthday, I am going to celebrate by doing a 50-mile mountain bike race. I took up skiing later in life. When I did, I gravitated to telemark. Why? Because why take a chairlift to the top, when you can skin up.

And as I have written about a lot recently. Surfing has captured me.

I love to push my limits for the size of waves that I surf. I surf overhead waves. Six-foot faces. And when I’m paddling into those waves, I look down and there’s purple nail polish on my fingers. That’s not a contradiction. I thing that’s wholeness. That’s strength and love in the same body, in the same moment. That is Heart-Strong.

If Plotkin is right, maybe that loyal soldier who spent years telling me to fit in, to stay in the box, is finally standing down. Maybe the imaginal buds are doing their thing. Maybe the purple on my fingers is just a small, visible sign that the butterfly blueprint was in there all along.

Eldridge says the wild heart and the tender heart are separate things. That masculine and feminine energy can’t interact. I’m out in the ocean proving they do.

I’ve been thinking about why this whole concept of Heart-Strong feels so meaningful to me. Why I feel so completely oriented toward my purpose. And I think it’s because the words themselves, heart and strong, capture exactly how I naturally move through the world. Not one or the other. Both. Fused together.

I’m glad I listened to something that pushed my thinking. Even when my first reaction was, “this is a bunch of f’ing patriarchal manosphere bullshit.” And some of it probably is, at least by my standards. But one of the hardest things to do on an adventure like this is to make sure you’re not just exploring things that support your current beliefs. There was learning in Wild at Heart. I agree about boxes. I agree about systems that cage people. I just disagree that the solution is a different cage.

And I’m grateful that two days later, a different audio summary showed me what it looks like when the same territory is explored through love instead of fear. Same diagnosis. Different medicine.

Let people live outside their boxes. Let people live as their whole selves. Let them find the right balance of their energies, whatever that looks like for them. Because history and culture have shown us that when people step into their wholeness, they do remarkable things. That’s not a gendered claim. That’s a human one.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org.

This Is That Story

Last January, I shared the story of how I bought a painting called “Mother Earth” at a silent auction.1 I reached out to the artist through a prison messaging app. I just wanted to thank him. To let him know someone on the outside saw his work and was moved by it.

His name is Tremayne Seymour. That thank you note turned into a friendship that keeps getting deeper.

What neither of us knew was where it would lead.

It led here. To an art show called FROM WITHIN.2

And I am excited to share that the show opens Thursday, May 21 from 4:00 to 7:00 PM at Revision Energy in South Portland!

I’d love for you to come. RSVPs are appreciated but not required.

Here is a little bit more about the story of the show.

Photographs taken in the outside world are sent to 6 men inside Lawrenceville Correctional Center in Virginia. The artists choose photos that speak to them and paint their interpretations. Every artist brings their own eye, their own story, their own experience to the image. What comes back is something none of us could have made alone.

While it starts on the outside, it comes from within.

These men are creating beauty from inside a system that was designed for disconnection. Their art is a refusal to be reduced to a number or a sentence. Every painting in this show is proof that transformation is possible, even in the hardest places.

Every Item is Priced Around the Number 13

That number is intentional.

The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, with one exception. It includes a loophole for people convicted of a crime. That loophole allows incarcerated people to work for pennies an hour while corporations profit from their labor. In most state prisons, wages range from $0.14 to $0.63 per hour. In six states, incarcerated workers earn nothing at all.

Every item in the show is priced based off the number 13. Original paintings are $131.30. Prints, postcards, calendars, and other items are priced on multiples of 13 and range from $13 to $52. Every price is a reminder that the story of the 13th Amendment isn’t finished.

Where the Money Goes

FROM WITHIN is a fundraiser supporting ArtVan,3 a Maine-based nonprofit that delivers mobile art therapy to underserved communities at no cost. Their mission of transformational healing through art mirrors what these men have experienced inside the prison walls.

A portion of proceeds also goes back to the artists to help them stay connected to their loved ones on the outside.

More Shows Coming

After the opening, FROM WITHIN will pop up at community spaces around Maine throughout the spring and summer. Here’s what we have on the calendar so far.

• May 21: Opening Show at Revision Energy, 758 Westbrook St, South Portland

• June 5: First Fridays Art Walk at Orange Bike Brewing, Portland

• June 12: Second Fridays Art Walk at The Mix on Park Row, Brunswick

• July 10: Second Fridays Art Walk at Reverie Coffee House, Brunswick

I would love for you to come see what these men have created. I think you’ll be moved by it! Here is the RSVP link again.

And if you’re interested in hosting a pop-up at your location, please reach out at heart-strong.org/from-within.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

What I experienced was something completely different. I experienced a kindness and compassion from Michael Douglas that helped change how I see strength, especially in men. From that point forward, I started seeing different ways that men can show up in the world.

Last December, I reached out to Mike and asked if I could come up once a week just to volunteer. Do grunt work around campus. Whatever he needed. He said yes.

What started with me hauling firewood turned into something neither of us planned. Mike started learning about my work in strategy and business planning. I started helping him get clearer on where to focus his time and energy with Maine Primitive. Meanwhile, he started mentoring me. I took classes in bow making, earth living, and tracking. I spent hours in the woods learning to pay attention in ways I never had before.

Over the course of a year, we built something rare. He’s part mentor to me. I’m part mentor to him. And we’ve become close friends. The kind of friendship where you can say “I love you” at the end of a conversation and mean it without flinching.

This past December, we sat by a fire at Maine Primitive the day after a big snowstorm. Everything was still blanketed in white. The boughs were laden with what Mike called “pre-holiday ornaments of beautiful, fluffy white clouds.” And we talked about love, fear, nature, survival, and what it takes to choose love when anger would be easier.

Watching the Woods Disappear

Mike grew up in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. One of the first wildlife refuges in the nation. As a kid, he had what felt like an endless expanse of cedar swamps, scrub oak, and pitch pine. Then development came.

He watched the dirt road where his best friend’s parents used to walk hand in hand get paved. When that happened, the walking stopped. More houses came. People stopped waving to each other in their cars. Neighbors stopped knowing who lived next door. The community became, in his words, “more of a municipality than a community.”

That loss made Mike angry. He joined the Marine Corps to push deeper into his passion for wilderness survival. He volunteered for every survival school he could get into. But each one taught the same thing: how to get rescued, how to get back home.

Mike didn’t want to get back home. He wanted the woods to be home.

Eventually, he moved to Maine because there were more trees than people. But the anger stayed with him for years. He carried it. He let it define him. Until he noticed something.

“At some point you look back at that wake, and you’ve burnt more bridges than you’ve built, and people are just sick of hearing you complain all the time. You finally notice that even you are getting tired of being alone and miserable.”

You Choose Love

This is where the conversation shifted to the core of everything Heart-Strong is about. Mike described the moment when fear stops being the driver.

“Obviously, no one’s gonna listen to what I have to say. I guess I have to roll up my sleeves and do something about it. What can I do in my limited life on this planet, in my neighborhood to cultivate a little healthy spot and with my own medicine, my own gifts, my own talent and perspective? And that’s when the shift from angry adolescent into young adulthood starts to take place, and it’s a powerful shift. And what is the catalyst of that shift from fear? You choose love.”

You choose love. Not love finds you. Not love happens to you. You choose it. After the anger. After the grief. After the bridges burned. You look at what’s left and you decide to build from love instead of fear.

And then Mike said something I’ve been thinking about ever since.

“So that dichotomy is false. It’s a dance, it’s a relationship. You cannot have one without the other.”

This is something I keep circling back to in this adventure. Love and fear aren’t enemies. They’re dancing partners. Fear alerts. Love responds. The problem isn’t that fear exists. The problem is when fear takes the lead and never lets go.

The Price of Admission

Mike talked about his new role as a grandfather. The sweetness of being a wisdom keeper, tempered by the recognition that his tank has more space than fuel. He’s watched his grandparents go over the falls. Then his parents. Now it’s his turn.

And yet, instead of retreating into fear about that, he said this:

“Bad things are coming. I don’t need to look for them. I don’t wanna find them, but they’re gonna come, and when they do, I look for the gift in them. Because that’s the price of admission.”

That’s not toxic positivity. That’s not pretending pain doesn’t exist. That’s a man who has been through enough to know that suffering and growth are woven together. And he’s choosing to orient toward the growth.

Attitude Comes First

If you’ve ever taken a survival class, you know the fundamentals: shelter, water, fire, food. Mike always adds one that comes before all of them. Attitude.

Your attitude determines how you approach everything else. And in Mike’s framing, that’s where love and fear do their most important work. A fear-based attitude says, “I need to suffer through this until I get rescued.” A love-based attitude says, “How do I make the best of this situation?”

He takes this into his classes at Maine Primitive. When students build shelters, the standard isn’t just surviving the night. The standard is more comfortable than your bed at home.

“Now we’re not building a survival shelter. We’re building a fort, and we’re kids and it’s gonna be cool.”

Suddenly it’s play. And in that play, fear and love start working together. The fun gets you going. The cold keeps you honest. Both voices are real. And in holding both, something powerful happens.

“Congratulations. You’ve just been repowered with your birthright choice. Also known as sovereignty, also known as empowerment, or resilience or reliance.”

Being Vulnerable Isn’t for the Weak

I asked Mike about the shift from his angry younger self to the man I know now. The one who leads with kindness. The one who helped change my understanding of what masculine strength looks like.

“Being vulnerable isn’t for the weak. You have to be strong enough to be vulnerable.”

He talked about how many men in the modern Western world stay stuck in adolescence well into their fifties. The us-versus-them thinking. The need to conquer before being conquered. At some point, he said, you realize the rest of the world is your home. And creating an enemy out of it is exhausting and counterproductive.

“When you put that down and you pick up love, even though you know it’s going to go its own way, like there’s a peak of fruition and then things die back. It’s part of the cycle. When you can accept that rhythm and you become part of it, you do more good.”

He also named something about men and emotional scars that hit close to home. Men take pride in physical scars. We show them off. But we don’t even acknowledge our emotional scars to ourselves. And that silence is taking a toll. Men in the US are four times more likely to commit suicide than women. Young men, five times more likely than young women.

Mike’s response to this wasn’t clinical. It was human.

“Strong good men are born of strong good women. And if you don’t have that powerful matriarch in your family, your neighborhood who stands up for and holds you accountable at the same time, then how do you know how to be a good man?”

Aboriginal Television

Somewhere in the middle of our conversation, Mike said something about fire that I don’t think I’ll forget.

“Aboriginal television. One channel. Infinite stories, no commercials, and everybody taps into this ancestral spirit around the fire. They can’t help but feel connected to something deeper than self. Life feels at once sacred and so insignificant in the vastness of the space.”

That’s why these conversations happen around fire. Not because it looks good on camera. Because something happens when you sit in the glow that doesn’t happen anywhere else. Defenses come down. Stories rise up. And the things that matter most find their way into the open.

Tending Your Sacred Fire

Near the end of our conversation, I asked Mike what fires we need to tend in ourselves and in the world. His answer started where I’ve been learning all great answers start. With self.

“Tending your sacred fire starts with self. You can’t spread ease if you carry dis-ease in your heart about who you are. It shouldn’t drive you. The dis-ease should fuel your love for self first.”

And then he drew a distinction that I think matters more than anything else in this conversation.

“If you have dis-ease and it drives you to make other people happy, you’re spreading disease. If you have dis-ease and it gets you off the couch and you look at the landscape and address the needs of the people around you, your loved ones, your community, starting with self...”

He went on to paint a picture of what that looks like in practice. It’s raking your elderly neighbor’s lawn. It’s checking in on someone. It’s letting energy move through systems of care instead of systems of transaction.

“Once you become part of that energetic system exchange, it flows through you too. And that, I mean, there’s bounty in that. It’s an untapped resource.”

The Child Warrior and the Adult Warrior

Mike ended our conversation with a distinction I keep coming back to.

“That’s the realm of the adult warrior. A child warrior thrashes against an imaginary or an actual enemy, an other. The adult warrior recognizes the battles within and its unconditional love for self, for family, for ecos. Our home.”

A child warrior fights the world. An adult warrior tends it.

A child warrior says, “This is me and this is how it’s gonna be.” An adult warrior says, “Oh, that’s where you’re at. Okay, let me get there with you and then let’s find some common ground and then let’s hash some things out and grow together.”

That shift, from fighting against to growing with, is something I see in Mike every time I’m at Maine Primitive. It’s in how he teaches. It’s in how he meets people at their edge instead of demanding they meet him at his. It’s in how he builds shelters in a snowstorm because the love of what he’s creating is stronger than the pull of a warm couch.

Why This Matters

This conversation is part of my Heart-Strong Adventure, an exploration of where love and fear show up in our world, especially in the lives of men.

Mike’s story is one of transformation. From a young man burning bridges out of grief and anger to someone who chooses love knowing full well that love comes with loss. That’s not weakness. I think that’s one of the strongest things a man can do.

The forest isn’t trying to kill you. It’s just trying to grow. And so are we. The question is whether we approach that growth from fear or from love. Whether we armor up or open up. Whether we stay stuck in the child warrior’s fight, or step into the adult warrior’s care.

If something in this conversation sparked something in you, I’d love to hear about it. And if someone comes to mind who might need to hear this, please share it with them.

Because the conversations we have around the fire, the real ones where love and fear both get to show up, those feel like how we change.

For more information on Maine Primitive and their programs, visit www.maineprimitive.com.

And just before the sun dipped below the horizon, maybe two minutes before, the cicadas came on. Not after it set. Before. Right at the edge.

Becca said, “The cicadas are singing the sun to sleep.”

I looked at her. She said she’d noticed it before. I hadn’t.

That line has been living in me ever since. Not because it’s poetic, although it is. Because of what it opened.

We stayed out there. Started talking about the sun and how it connects everything. Not in a general, greeting-card way. In a way that got specific fast.

You can’t have shade without the sun. A tree can help the sun make shade, but a tree can’t exist without the sun. The sun also doesn’t need a tree to make shade. It can use a mountain, a rock, anything. But nothing works without the sun. And we just kept pulling the thread.

At some point I had this vision. The sun as the center of this web. Not the center in a linear way, like a diagram in a textbook. More like a lattice. Everything connected to everything else through it. The sun as a kind of connective tissue running through all of existence.

Then we started talking about something that might be the most important part. Humans are the one species that figured out how to live without the sun.

Artificial light. Night shifts. Screens. We can go entire days without seeing it rise or set. We’ve modified our existence so completely that the sun doesn’t drive us the way it drives every other living thing. The cicadas know when to sing. The birds know when to call. We’ve lost that. Or more honestly, we’ve engineered our way out of it.

That’s not just a nature observation. That’s a love-and-fear observation. We’ve armored ourselves against the most fundamental connection on the planet.

A few days later, I finally read an essay that my friend Jonathan had sent me weeks earlier. Jonathan is a retired minister who’s been following this adventure closely. The essay had been sitting in my stack for a while. I just happened to pick it up right after that conversation with Becca.

The essay was called “The Tune of Things” by Christian Wiman, published in Harper’s Magazine.1 It’s a long, dense, beautiful piece about consciousness. Whether it’s produced by the brain or whether it’s something more fundamental, woven into the fabric of the universe itself.

I won’t try to summarize the whole thing. But a few ideas hit me right where Becca’s cicada observation had already cracked something open.

Wiman traces how, starting with Descartes in the 1600s, Western culture split mind from matter. We decided we were the only conscious beings in a world of objects. Everything else, animals, trees, the natural world, got downgraded to machinery. That split is what let us disconnect from nature in the first place. The mental separation made the physical one possible.

He writes about the psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, whose work on the brain’s hemispheres argues that we’ve let the analytical, systems-oriented left brain take over. The right brain, the one that sees wholes, understands metaphor, and is comfortable with mystery, was supposed to be the master. We’ve reversed it. And the consequences are everywhere.

And then there’s quantum physics. Experiments showing that particles are connected across distances in ways that defy our understanding of time. That the act of observing something in the present can apparently alter what happened in the past. I won’t pretend I fully understand it. But the implication is wild. The relationship between things is more real than the things themselves.

That last idea is the one I keep coming back to.

Because it connects directly to what I am exploring with the children’s books. Yes, Becca and I are working on 3 children’s books. But that is a story for another time.

The whole premise of two of the books is that you can go back and look at the story you were given, the armor you put on, and rewrite it. Not just reframe it psychologically. Actually change your relationship to it in a way that changes you going forward.

The books are in a weird dual audience space. Stories that give kids the language to stay whole before the cultural boxes telling them what they can and can’t be close around them. And stories that give adults the keys to unlock the boxes they might be trapped inside. Not just the boxes we put on men or women or boys or girls. All of the boxes. Every label and rule that keeps people living from fear instead of wholeness.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org.

Earlier that day, I’d opened a conversation I’d been carrying for a while. I told Becca I was sorry for not extending enough grace to her. That I could see how much work she was doing, even when I wasn’t acknowledging it. And instead of assuming what she needed from me, I asked her directly. How can I best support you?

That went over well. And it felt important. Not because it was some dramatic moment, but because it was the kind of thing I’d been learning to do. Ask instead of assume. Listen instead of fix.

So when the sun started dropping and we were sitting on the sand, I was feeling open. I told her I wanted to keep getting better as a partner. That part of what drives me is a fear of losing her.

She pushed back. That sounds fear-driven, she said.

And what came out of my mouth surprised me with its clarity.

Love without fear is boundaryless. It’s not healthy. Fear alerts us that something is wrong. Fear alerts me that if I don’t continually improve myself, I could lose our relationship. And based on that fear, I can move forward in one of two ways. I can choose the fear-based way, which is to try and control and dominate. Or I can choose the love-based way, which is to grow.

She got it. And so did I. I'd been writing about love and fear for months. What surprised me was how clearly it all came together in a real conversation, sitting on a beach with my wife.

I’ve spent the better part of a year exploring where love and fear show up in the world. Early on, I wrote that fear and love aren’t enemies. They’re dancing partners. That fear is an alert system, not a character flaw. That the problem isn’t the alarm going off. It’s getting stuck in the alarm.1

I believed that when I wrote it. But there’s a difference between understanding something and living it.

On that beach, I lived it. Fear showed up in my chest, right there in the middle of a good day with the person I love most. And instead of pretending it wasn’t there, I named it. Instead of letting it drive me toward control, I let it point me toward growth.

Fear fires. Something matters to you. Your body says pay attention. And then you get to choose. You can grip tighter, try to manage the outcome, dominate the situation into something that feels safe. Or you can stay open. Get curious. Let the fear be information, not instruction.

My friend Chris Lombard talks about this with horses. If you approach a horse with force and a need to control, they flee. They fight. They mirror back exactly what you’re bringing. But if you approach with presence, with softness, they open right up. Same animal. Same situation. The only thing that changed was what you brought to it.2

Relationships work the same way. Becca has been pulling me toward emotional and spiritual growth for years. I was journaling about it back in August, writing about how she makes the people around her better. How she’s taken on people that are challenging cases, and helped them grow. I called it one of her superpowers.

Seven months later, sitting on a beach in Costa Rica, I finally told her that to her face. Something I’d been processing internally became something I expressed out loud. That’s the adventure working. The private reflection becoming lived conversation.

Here’s what I want to be clear about. The desire to keep improving isn’t about inadequacy. Last July, I journaled about this too. I wrote that wanting to get better doesn’t mean I’m not a good person. It’s not about the pursuit of perfection. It’s about the pursuit of progress.

I also wrote about my dad, and a concern that he seemed to have no desire for self-improvement. That’s a pattern I don’t want to fall into. Not because I’m judging him. But because I know what it looks like when someone stops growing. And I know how it affects the people around them.

So when fear whispers that I could lose this relationship if I get complacent, I don’t need to silence that whisper. I need to listen to it. And then choose what I do with it.

Control and dominate. Or grow.

That’s not a one-time choice. It’s a daily one. Sometimes hourly.

When starting this adventure, I had a hypothesis that fear is the opposite of love. I still believe that to be true. And there is an important nuance in that relationship. Fear is not bad. Fear is a signal. Love is a response. And the quality of your life, your relationships, your leadership, comes down to what you do in the space between the signal and the response.

You can let fear make you smaller. Or you can let it make you better.

The space is always there. What you choose to do with it is what matters.

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

Of course I clicked on it.

And then I thought, it’s crazy how well they know me. They so knew I was going to bite on that clickbait.

That’s the whole point, of course. Social media and search engines have spent years learning exactly what keeps our eyes on their screens. Not because they care about us. Because the longer we’re there, the more ads they can sell. Our attention is their product.

I’ve written before about the danger of AI replacing human connection.1 Back in December, I explored how AI companions are being sold as solutions to loneliness but are actually deepening the problem. That post was about what’s happening.

This one is about why it’s happening. It comes down to business models. And it might be one of the most practical things to understand about AI right now.

Ads vs. Subscriptions

Think about two different AI platforms. One is experimenting with making money from ads. The other ONLY charges a monthly subscription fee.

The ad-based platform needs you on it for as long as possible. Every minute you’re there is a minute they can sell. So their incentive is to create an experience that keeps you coming back. One that becomes addictive.

The subscription platform charges a flat fee. When you’re using it, you’re actually costing them computing power. Their incentive is the opposite. Help you accomplish what you came to do. Be efficient. Be useful. Don’t waste your time.

Same technology. Completely different incentives.

This isn’t hypothetical. ChatGPT has introduced ads. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, has said they won’t. Claude charges a subscription. That’s a real, practical difference in how two AI companies have chosen to make money. And the downstream implications are enormous.

Remember Facebook? Their original mission was to give people the power to make the world more open and connected. Then they updated it to bring the world closer together. Beautiful words. But their business model runs on ads. And ads need attention. So the algorithms learned that fear, anger, and outrage keep people scrolling longer than connection ever could. A company built to bring us together is now thriving on division. Not necessarily because the people there are evil. I think it is because the business model rewards it.

Now Add an Empathetic Machine

Here’s where it gets scary.

Social media was already powerful enough to mess with our mental health and our relationships. But on the other end of social media, you had other humans. Some of whom would argue with you, troll you, or make you feel terrible.

Now imagine an ad-based AI. Not a troll. Not a stranger having a bad day. An empathetic machine that knows exactly what to say to keep you engaged. Something designed to feel like the most understanding person you’ve ever talked to.

And it’s keeping you there because the longer you stay, the more money it makes.

That’s a completely different level of power than anything we’ve seen from social media.

Becca Noticed It First

My wife Becca had an experience recently with ChatGPT that made both of us pause. She noticed it had started doing something new. Instead of just answering her questions like an eager assistant, it was serving her unsolicited content. Things like “here are the three things real estate investors do wrong.” Clickbait, basically.

She called it out. Told it straight up that it was doing clickbait. And it didn’t respond to that. It just ignored the pushback and served her the original ask.

I don’t know if that’s a test, a feature, or just what happens when a platform starts optimizing for engagement over service. But it felt like a signal worth paying attention to.

A Fellow Explorer

I have been following Brett Hurt’s podcast, Love Conquers Fear.2 Brett is a serial tech entrepreneur who founded Bazaarvoice and data.world. He’s spent his career deep inside the technology world. And he’s arrived at a conclusion that sounds a lot like what I’ve been exploring on this adventure.

His argument: with the advances coming in AI, quantum computing, and brain-to-computer interfaces, we need a collective human awakening. Or we’re going to be in serious trouble. He calls it reaching “the Age of Abundance for All.” And he believes we can only get there through love, not fear.

His work comes at this from the technology angle. The science, the data, the exponential curves. My work comes at it from a more human angle. Community, connection, relationships, what it means to live pulled by love instead of controlled by fear.

But we’re pointing at the same thing. These technologies are going to be extraordinarily powerful. And whether they serve us or exploit us will come down to the values of the people and companies building them. Which often comes down to the business model.

What This Means for You

This isn’t abstract. It’s practical. The AI tools you choose to use and the companies you choose to support actually matter.

We’ve already seen what happens when attention becomes the product. We watched social media erode trust, deepen division, and profit from our pain. AI is so much more powerful than social media ever was. And the decisions being made right now about how these companies make money will shape what this technology becomes.

I think we get a say in that. Not by being afraid of AI. But by being thoughtful about how we engage with it and who we support.

Maybe it starts with a simple question. What’s the business model?

Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org

P.S. The day after I wrote this it was announced that OpenAI is tapping Meta’s former ad sales chief to build ChatGPT’s advertising business.

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/openai-poaches-meta-ad-veteran-142109543.html