“What shall I make?”

When I was a younger man, I had this little phrase that I kept close to my heart. I didn’t say it often, but I would come back to it when I felt lost in the sea of adult life—drudgery, hustle, responsibility.

“Make things beautiful and make beautiful things.”

It was a way of remembering who I was. The version of me that felt like an artist, who had big dreams, a little bit of flair, and a soul he let other people see freely and shake hands with.

Surprisingly, AI is helping bring that version of me back to life. At first, I let it create for me, and I didn’t like it. It felt hollow. It had no soul, and it wasn’t any fun. So I stopped letting it do that.

But now I use it differently. It helps me create more, and spend less time on the parts that aren’t that fun. It clears space instead of taking over.

And in a world where we suddenly have these power tools—tools to imagine, design, refine, build, and share, cheaply and almost delightfully—the biggest question shifts. It’s no longer “can I make this?” but “what shall I make?”

There’s so much I would love to make beautiful, or just make more beautiful, and more of it feels within reach than ever. My own watch straps. New variations of pizza dough. Another book. Choreography. A family cookbook. A trellis for the tomatoes in the backyard.

Tools aren’t really the constraint anymore. The limit now is more human than that—our imagination, our point of view, our ability to notice something and say, that’s worth making.

That’s why the humanities and the arts feel more valuable than ever to me. Not instead of STEM, but alongside it. We need to understand the world, the tools, and what’s worth doing with them.

If we can stay curious, be empathetic, and keep teaching ourselves, we can create a lot. But only if we have some sense of what is beautiful—or at least, if we’re willing to wrestle with that question.

That’s also why I think, perhaps paradoxically, that AI and robots might actually make us more human. Because the alternative to leaning into our humanity isn’t scarcity and poverty. It’s something worse—a kind of boredom that comes from having endless possibility, but no idea what to do with it.

Wouldn’t it be something if AI and robots ended up being the greatest catalyst for beauty humanity has ever known? It might be optimistic. But I think it’s possible.

But have to choose it. We could do a lot of destructive stuff with all of this, or we could commit to making things beautiful, and making beautiful things. And if we’re serious about that, then it becomes pretty important—for us, and for our kids—to wrestle with a deeper question: what is beautiful? Not in a shallow way, but in a way that is personal, soulful, and human.

To care for someone is an honor

We had four kids home sick over a week, and I stayed back with Emmett, whose fever breached 104 degrees. The first step in taking care of a child, of course, is to take off our armor. My heart has to be ready to care.

The armor exists because of the drudgery of the world, not because of my kids—but they have to deal with it just the same.

The first layer of the armor is anger, which keeps my kids in line when I just can’t—or just won’t. The armor is the exasperation on my face that keeps questions at bay, so I don’t have to weep during a Teams call about the status of IT projects. The armor is my cursing—at everything I can’t control—which injects a dose of illusion into the reality of how hard life is. The armor is the sarcasm that lets me talk back without admitting how sad something one of my sons said to me actually made me feel.

I had forgotten how much I was wearing, honestly.

But there was Emmett—eyes as red as his burning cheeks. He told me, so softly, with a quivering lower lip, in a mix of suffering and despondency, “I don’t feel very well, Papa.”

And the armor took itself off. It just evaporated from my chest and shoulders. I sat with him. Rubbed his legs. Even now, half a week later, I am crying as I write this—both because I remember his suffering, and because I remember the honor it is to care for someone.

—

In Hindi, there is a concept called seva. SAY-vah. Emphasis on the first syllable. The translation of “caring for someone” doesn’t quite capture the depth of what it means.

Seva is a giving of care, but it is also a giving of oneself. It is not done at arm’s length. You are there, enmeshed with someone as you care for them—as if giving them some of your care, your love, even a bit of your life force to spark theirs into healing. It is not just physical and emotional comfort, but spiritual as well.

I used to think my parents were giving me a chore when they asked me to do seva—for my mom or dad, my aunt, or my grandmother. I thought it was a task they were delegating because they had to wash a dish or cook a meal.

I know now that was precisely wrong. They were asking me to do seva—and doing seva for me when I was sick—to show me the way.

Seva is what we are here to do. It is an act that fulfills the human aspiration to grow our spirits. We do not do seva because it will be reciprocated, or even because it helps someone heal, though it does. We do it because it is the way of the light.

And that is why the tears came, as I rubbed Emmett’s legs and comforted his fever—with medicine, yes, but also with my unarmored, fully open heart.

To care for someone is an honor, and I felt its light.

To care for—and to do seva for—my child is one of the highest forms of that honor. To join ourselves to the way of the light is a gift. Seva is not a chore. It is what we were made to do.

I want to remember this.

When the armor feels most necessary. When time feels most compressed. When I feel like I have nothing left to give.

I want to remember the feeling in my chest as I cry these tears—how light it feels, how freeing.

I want to remember: when my child, my wife, my family and friends—or even a stranger who needs seva but cannot ask for it—is in front of me, I am here to care for you. To do your seva.

I want to remember that my heart can be open. That the armor can fall away. That seva is not just a chore, or even a duty—it is a gift.

And it is my honor.

The Boy Full of Joy

World Down Syndrome Day is celebrated on March 21 every year. This is symbolic: Down syndrome is the name we give when a person has a triplication of their 21st chromosome—hence the date, 3/21.

I knew none of this a year ago. Because one year ago, we had no diagnosis. We just had a sleepy kid with low muscle tone, who was born bravely and in a hurry.

He had three older brothers who adored him from the minute he was born, just down the stairs from their room. We gave him a name—Griffin—and with no diagnosis, no other “name” was needed.

Learning that there was a World Down Syndrome Day was fun and gooey at first, and then it felt like a moment of drowning.

I am finally beginning to let myself think about how hard Griffin’s life will be. He will spend more time in doctors’ offices than the rest of our family combined, and he may have already. He will face discrimination and be overlooked—by companies, schools, governments, and maybe even by some in the Church.

I don’t even know what language I’m comfortable using, but he does have “special needs,” and plenty of people who don’t know his light and inner grace firsthand will think treating him fairly is just too much work.

And, most darkly, there is the question of his lifespan. The thought—a cold, real, possibility—that I will outlive Griffin is demolishing. Knowing that despite medical advances that happen during his life, Robyn and I may have to bury our son—that our big three may have to bury their little brother someday—is enough to break a man where he stands.

Writing and reflecting is perhaps the only way I know how to put myself back together, so that’s what I have done.

I have not been able to stop thinking about two very difficult questions:

What makes a good life? Who deserves one?

What makes these questions difficult is not the answers, but the sacrifices the answers require.

A good life is pretty simple. It does not take being a multimillionaire.

It’s a place to call home. To be free and have agency in what happens to us. To love and be loved. To be able to learn and create. To care for one another and be cared for. To feel relatively sure you have a meal coming, and medicine when you need it. To be able to sit under a tree and pray. To have friends.

We all intuitively know this. We already know what makes a good life.

Before Griffin’s diagnosis, I believed that everyone deserved at least this. And that belief implies sacrifice. For everyone to have this, it know it takes paying taxes. It takes volunteering and looking after your neighbor or the other kids on the block, for no reward. It takes giving away your knowledge for free. It takes participating in civic life. It takes apologizing for mistakes and learning to be kind even when you’re having a bad day.

These, and more, are really hard sacrifices. And I have believed in making them and have tried to do so, however fallibly.

But now, for Griffing, I depend on everyone else to believe this too. Because he does have “special needs,” and I can’t fulfill them all—even if I were the wealthiest man in the world. It is a feeling of nakedness I would never have anticipated, but I have no choice but to place myself and Griffin in the care of others. I need others for him to have a good life.

Now, I can’t just believe that everyone deserves a good life. I can’t just be a small beacon that nudges the culture towards these sacrifices, without much consequences if nobody else cares.

Now, I have consequences. For Griffin to have a good life, others have to believe he does, too.

Now, my son’s life depends on others also believing in this vision of what a good life is, and that everyone deserves it—even if their needs are more “special” than someone else’s.

What I now depend on—other people’s generous and righteous beliefs—is what I probably have the least control over in the world.

When I was young, my dreams were so vivid and noble.

I wanted people to get along. I wanted to throw parties where other kids at my high school didn’t have to drink. I wanted to help people make their nonprofits effective. I wanted people who were excluded and misunderstood to be included. I wanted to write plays and stage them for free in public parks. I wanted to invent something that fixed something nobody else saw. To make it so that work didn’t have to suck, and to make government agencies super effective and virtuous. I wanted to comfort friends when they were sad and stand firmly beside them to witness their joy.

These were my dreams. deep down, they still are.

But as I’ve aged, the weight of responsibility has left me groaning. Bills. Taxes. Feeling like selling books is the only thing that justifies the time I spend writing. Hustling. The cost of organic eggs. Raising good kids and being good at my job. You know, grown up stuff.

All these things burn up all the oxygen the dreams I had as a boy need to keep breathing. These dreams have been living in thin air for so long, I wonder how long they’ll last. And now, on World Down Syndrome Day, the weight of responsibility felt at its peak.

But that boy—full of joy and optimism, untethered by responsibilities, perfectly content drinking cheap beer—is who I still am. Under all the armor and rain jackets, I’m still that guy who has faith that his dreams and sacrifices will be met with an outstretched hand by compassionate and generous strangers.

I don’t need to become him again. When I take all the heavy rocks out of my backpack, I am him. I am still that boy full of joy.

That guy is who my sons are mirroring when people say, “they’re just like you.” That guy is who they need. That guy is who my neighbors need.

That essence of that guy is what Griffin got in not one, but maybe three or four full measures. Even when he is ill, joy pours out of him by the bucketful. He may have needs that only about 1 in 700 people have, but his gift is also that rare, at least.

That gift of joy—whether it comes from his extra chromosome or not—is the spark for me to be that boy full of joy again, who dreams of that a good life and believes that everyone deserves it. Griffin’s joy sustains my faith that other people believe it too.

The Six Streams That Shape Human Life

Human beings are porous creatures. These six streams flow into us constantly.

Food.

Water.

Air.

Information.

Microbes.

Relationships.

The streams that shape human life are surprisingly easy to corrupt—and surprisingly hard to guard.

These streams shape our bodies, our minds, and the communities we build together. And unsurprisingly, each of them is vulnerable to corruption, because it’s easy to affect these flows without anyone noticing.

We ingest them largely automatically, without thinking. We trust that what we are offered is nourishing and healthy for us.

But temptation comes easily, and so do examples of corruption. Food additives can make things cheaper but affect our health. Algorithms feed us novel videos, but they can wreck our attention, our minds, and our sense of self. We can be in relationship with someone and absorb their love, but also harm that relationship when we fail to show up for them, or when we try to control them by withholding love.

We hardly notice in the moment when the big six are corrupted, and we trust that someone is watching. Surely someone is discerning whether these things are corrupted. Someone must be monitoring the air, the water, and the food. Surely someone isn’t letting the people we trust cut corners on ensuring information is truthful…right?

This is why societies build institutions around these streams. We create food safety systems, water utilities, environmental regulation, journalism, public health systems, and community norms because these inputs matter so deeply. These institutions exist to guard the flows that shape human life. But institutions cannot function on rules alone. They depend on people who are capable of noticing when something is wrong—people who can interpret signals, weigh trade-offs, and decide when the system is being bent or quietly corrupted.

And this reveals something about preventing corruption: we must be willing and able to discern.

This is not just a matter of transparency. Transparency is a precondition, but what difference does transparency make if we cannot make meaning of it? We have to be able to evaluate whether the inputs that shape individuals and society are corrupted or not.

Sometimes this discernment happens individually, and sometimes it must be collective. Any time we read a food label or look at an air quality report, we are discerning at the individual level.

But we also discern at the community level. Communities deliberate on questions like: Do we want this? and How will it affect us? Communities themselves are a kind of living organism. Just as our bodies must determine whether what flows into them is nourishing or harmful, communities must do the same.

To prevent corruption we don’t just need laws, and we don’t just need transparency—we need discernment.

Would they stop for us?

Encountering another intelligent species from elsewhere in the universe is a problem for the distant future. Still, it is an instructive one for our time.

Imagine that we had the capacity for first contact—say, through faster-than-light travel. Our interstellar flagship passes near a distant world. The first question its crew would ask is simple: Do we want to stop?

If they had the luxury of choice, they would likely evaluate that civilization along two dimensions.

First: What is their intent? Do they seek cooperation and mutual enrichment, or exploitation and dominance?

Second: What is their capability? Do they actually possess the power to carry out their intentions—peaceful or otherwise?

A civilization that is hostile and capable would be dangerous. One that is peaceful but utterly incapable might not be worth engaging. Intent and capability, together, would shape our decision.

Of course, determining either would be extraordinarily difficult. Learning to assess an alien civilization might take centuries. But these questions are not merely hypothetical.

We may create an artificially intelligent, Earth-based species in our lifetimes. But long before AI takes on physical form, we will face the same dilemma: What are its intentions? And how powerfully can it impose its will?

Yet before worrying about how we evaluate others, a more uncomfortable question presents itself.

What about us?

If an extraterrestrial civilization were passing through our solar system, how would they assess humanity’s intent and capability? Given the choice, would they stop—or continue on their way?

When I look in the mirror, and consider the history of our species up to the present, here is what I see.

I see a civilization whose intent has long been fearful and exploitative, yet has slowly, unevenly, inched toward governing itself more justly. Our past includes conquest, slavery, genocide, and monopolistic corporations. Empires swallowed continents. Entire peoples were systematically pillaged or murdered. Private power frequently corrupted public life. It is arguable that all these are still part of our reality.

And yet, over centuries, something has shifted.

Large-scale territorial conquest has become less acceptable, even when it still occurs. International institutions intervene—imperfectly, but meaningfully. Economic power remains unequal, but counterweights exist: unions, industry associations, regulatory regimes, and cultural movements that attempt to restrain abuse.

History does not move in a straight line. Exploitation resurfaces in new forms. But over long periods, the trajectory seems to bend—slowly—toward cooperative enrichment rather than exploitation. Two steps forward, one step back.

That progress matters. It suggests that, in the long run, our species has shown some capacity for moral learning. We inherit exploitative systems, but we also attempt—however inconsistently—to reform them rather than let them expand.

Our capability, however, tells a different story.

We have not harnessed the energy of our own planet, let alone our sun. We cannot survive beyond Earth without elaborate life support. We are actively degrading the habitability of the only home we have. We do not fully understand our ecosystems, our biology, or even our own minds.

Technological power has grown faster than wisdom. We build tools whose consequences we cannot fully contain. From nuclear weapons to climate systems to algorithmic platforms, our inventions routinely outrun our ability to govern them.

We are both feeble and reckless.

If I were the captain of a spacefaring vessel, I might conclude that, whatever our intentions, humanity remains a relatively immature civilization—morally improving, yet operationally juvenile. I would probably keep moving. Why risk engagement with a species still learning how to manage itself?

And yet, I wonder what we might still offer.

Perhaps our stories would matter. Homer and Shakespeare, Whitman and Rowling, express something enduring about love, fear, identity, and loss. Even an advanced civilization might find in human literature a unique window into our shared experience of consciousness.

Perhaps our experience with diversity would be instructive. Earth’s extraordinary ecological and cultural variation has forced us—imperfectly—to negotiate difference. Managing pluralism is central to our history. It may not be universal across intelligent life.

Perhaps even our physical fragility is meaningful. We are short-lived creatures, acutely aware of mortality. “Life is short” is not a cliché for us; it is a through line of how we navigate reality. For a species that lives centuries, or never dies, our relationship to time and death might offer unexpected insight.

It is possible that artificial intelligence will become our first true encounter with another form of intelligence. It is also possible that, centuries from now, we will meet non-Terran life. In either case, the same questions will apply.

What are our intentions? And are we capable of living up to them?

These questions offer a kind of civilizational north star. If we can cultivate a shared commitment to enrichment rather than exploitation—and if we can build institutions and technologies capable of sustaining that commitment—we will not only prepare ourselves for first contact.

We will make life better, here and now, for the people who already call our sacred, fragile, beautiful planet home.

A Mantra For Those Who Feel Squeezed

I think I’m at least 80% accepting of the fact, finally, that I won’t be a wealthy man. We’re blessed, and affluent by most standards, but our base budget is certainly humbled by the fact that we have four kids.

And this tension—between feeling like we’re making it but still feeling stretched—also exists with our time.

We show up for our kids and help out our family, friends, and neighbors as much as we can. But we also always feel like we’re drowning—the laundry, dishes, and daily grind are never stable. Despite the fact that we’d admit we’re doing our best and doing a decent job, it never feels like enough.

And despite all this, I still feel so much selfish guilt.

I don’t serve anyone in need whom I don’t already know, in any meaningful way, though my faith and my own moral sensibility demand it. I have let down friends—all the time, lately—it takes me months to call someone back or set up lunch, catch up over drinks, or deliver a meal to help out friends who are new parents.

We are part of the squeezed middle—we’re not living month to month with our money or time—but we don’t have enough time or money to easily trade one for the other. We’re squeezed.

And I don’t mean this as a “middle class” issue, per se, because there are plenty of families wealthier and poorer than ours, both in time and money, who feel squeezed. From investment bankers to blue-collar workers, I know families across the spectrum who feel this same pressure.

The squeezed are a surprisingly large cohort who feel stuck because they can’t trade time for money or money for time.

Leaving a Penny

I think the only way out of this is to help each other—even when it feels like no more than a penny’s worth. Little things matter. I’ve seen it in my own life.

There are a few families on our soccer team that carpool to practice. Freeing up one night per family, per week makes a difference. When other families at our school keep an eye out for our kids and we keep an eye out for theirs, it makes a difference. When someone comes with their pickup truck to help move some furniture, it makes a difference.

All these little things are like those old cups at grocery stores that said, “Have a penny, leave a penny. Need a penny, take a penny.” Little things that show up where you’re squeezed matter a great deal.

And something that feels small to us—like just giving a penny—can feel like receiving a gold coin to someone else.

For example, me shoveling my older neighbors’ snow barely registers as 20 minutes of extra work for me, but it’s unbelievably helpful to them so they aren’t beholden to unreliable help when they need their driveway clear to go to a doctor’s appointment.

Similarly, it felt very small to her when a good friend and neighbor came over to watch our kids for 20 minutes when Griffin was born and Robyn was conveyed by ambulance from the living room to the hospital—but to us, it was worth more than a bag of gold.

When we leave and take pennies, it relieves the squeeze. These little pennies are hardly worth just one cent—they’re often worth their weight in gold. “One cent” can feel like salvation when you’re being crushed.

I feel squeezed every single day of my life.

If I could afford to throw more money at problems, I would. But most of my problems wouldn’t get that much better with more money—grocery delivery doesn’t save me a trip because it’s never right, and I’d never be willing to outsource going to my sons’ soccer games, even if we could afford it.

And I’m unwilling to detach either. I’d rather live with the guilt of not meeting my commitments to my friends and people in need, rather than pretending like it doesn’t matter. Because it does. I don’t want to be less squeezed just for me, I want to also be there to stick up for those who have no penny to give.

I don’t think changing laws can help us, in the immediate anyway. I don’t think AI will save us either. The financial windfall that will allow me to gain hours of my time back is never going to come. And I’m tired of waiting for a hero to save me. We are the only heroes we’ll ever get.

The only way this works is if we help each other.

It’s good enough for it to be in small ways. These small acts of support are the only real alchemy I’ve ever seen work. Because when we leave a penny, it’s not one cent we’re leaving—we’re leaving something for someone else that’s worth its weight in gold.

So if you’re feeling squeezed, we need to stick together. Remember this mantra: take a penny, leave a penny. We are all we’ve got, and we are enough to get through this.

Griffin, a Diagnosis, and the Gift of New Eyes

When I tell people about our youngest son’s Down syndrome diagnosis, many people say, “I’m sorry.”

They don’t know what else to say.

But there’s no need to be sorry. He’s alive and well, we love him, and we’re glad he’s here.

And yet, I still understand and appreciate it when someone says, “I’m sorry.” Because even if they have never had a child with Down syndrome—or any other kind of condition that leads to developmental delays—they have some intuition that it’s going to be hard.

We all do, because we have lived in this world.

We all intuitively know that the world is not built for people like Griffin. We know it’s hard to always see doctors, and that some people will treat him badly. His life—and ours—won’t follow the “normal,” well-trodden path and that will, at times, be very hard.

The past eight months have already given me a preview of this tension: between who Griffin is and how the world is built.

Griffin is normal—just somewhere else on the wide bell curve of what life looks like. He was conceived and born as any other child. We made no alterations to him—he’s here as God made him.

Yes, he has a diagnosis. But that doesn’t mean he’s broken. He isn’t defective—he’s simply different. Just like kids with cystic fibrosis, dyslexia, deafness, or any other “diagnosis”—these kids were simply born this way. That is normal, even if different.

And this goes beyond medical diagnoses. Some kids are taller or shorter. Some are gay or straight. Some are different levels of athletic, artistic, or scholarly. All kids are different, on a boundless amount of dimensions.

All of these kids—and all of us as adults—fall into the category of “we were born this way” in one dimension or another. Made by God this way, by no choice of our own.

So there are people just born a certain way, and yet, we also intrinsically know that those same people will have to go through inevitable hardship because of how they were born interacts with the world we live in.

But it’s not all struggle. Robyn often reminds me that some things may actually come easier for Griffin—like kindness, joy, and forgiveness. He has this lightness of being I can’t explain, but I see vividly.

Still, some of the hardship just doesn’t seem right—for Griffin or for anyone else who was “born this way.” Especially the hardship rooted in having their needs overlooked or unconsidered.

Those needs show up everywhere—from schools and playgrounds to healthcare, websites, public parks, airports, road signs, and even neighborhood newsletters. These choices shape whose lives get to flourish.

Because on a planet with over 7 billion people and in a country of over 300 million, there will inevitably be so many differences and spectrums.

Every day, in small and big ways, we make consequential choices about who’s in and who’s left out.

Whose needs are considered and whose aren’t? Do we only build for people like us, or do we stretch to include those we don’t yet understand?

Of course, our lives and our world have trade-offs. There isn’t unlimited time or money. But there are a lot of smart people who care, who have time and a willingness to innovate to break trade-offs. And in many cases, there’s money we’re already spending that could be spent differently. We just have to see with different eyes.

Playgrounds are a good example of this, and something I see with new eyes now. There are ways to make playgrounds so that many different types of kids can play together. You just have to make different and creative choices about materials, structures, and things like seats on swings.

I see so much more clearly now—even if in a very small way—the ways in which people born “normally,” but differently in a particular kind of way, are overlooked because they are easy to ignore, or are less “squeaky” than I am.

And it doesn’t sit right with me. But I do get it. The more people we include, the more complex our decisions are. We have to be smarter and more creative to make a website that everybody can use well enough, compared to just what the majority can use.

But that still doesn’t sit right. I am not God, after all. Why do I get to decide who’s worthy, important, or loud enough to be included? I may not be able to break every trade-off and create some sort of prosperous utopia that works brilliantly and cheaply for everyone. But it doesn’t seem right to me to not even try—before overlooking, whether deliberately or simply because I’ve allowed myself to remain ignorant—the needs of someone in need. Which, aren’t we all, in some way or another?

Griffin’s Down syndrome diagnosis has given me the eyes to see this profound choice—who’s in, who’s out—more clearly. And more importantly, it gave me the eyes to see that I was more ignorant of my own ignorance than I thought I was.

But in addition to a realization about justice, Griffin has also helped me realize something about joy.

I can’t explain it, but Griffin has joy. And his joy honestly feels different. I don’t know why—whether it has to do with Down syndrome, or if I’m blinded by the fact that he’s our last child, or what. But his joy is different in a very special way.

Which is to say, the world would lose something extraordinary if he had never been born—or if his gifts were overlooked and never nurtured.

And not just Griffin. Every child—born “different” or not—has something extraordinary within them. Every adult too. When we overlook entire groups of people, we rob the world of that brilliance.

So, in addition to not being able to accept the injustice of deciding who’s in and who’s out, who am I to rob the world of these extraordinary things? The comfort of my own ignorance is certainly not more valuable than that.

Being Griffin’s father has already humbled me. Seeing the world through his eyes has taught me that I have a long way to grow in two important ways.

First, I ought to stretch whose needs I consider as widely as possible.

Second, I should assume I don’t understand other people’s needs and gifts as well as I think I do.

So instead of “I’m sorry,” after someone shares a tough reality, maybe it’s better to say:

“I honestly don’t understand what you’re going through. How are you all doing?”

Maybe that will open my heart even wider to understand, love, and include them.

My Karaoke Favorites

I started a “Karaoke Favorites” playlist some years ago. It’s full of songs I love to sing—whether while in the car, washing dishes, or if I’m really lucky, at an actual karaoke bar.

Here’s the link—it’s good:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ZQC5uEW7XFEgYlwPWcGPv?si=xWp8MKqoQNSDeTVvHphsHw&pi=5uZpPxqKR9W9U

It’s interesting to look at what the songs are about. Here are a few examples:

Hole in the Bottle (Kelsea Ballerini) is a fun drinking song, about unwinding— after a hard day.

Beautiful People (Ed Sheeran f. Khalid) is about the stresses of fitting in with high society, when it doesn’t reflect who you are.

Refrigerator Door (Luke Combs) is about how all the photos and notes on your refrigerator tells the story of your life and what matters to you.

Hey Laura (Gregory Porter) is a desperate, yet charming track about a man who can’t get over a love, Laura.

Need a Favor (Jelly Roll) is the song of a self-aware sinner calling on God after he gets into another bad situation.

Here Comes The Sun (The Beatles) is about the sun emerging from a cold winter—a beautiful thought both literally and as a metaphor.

My Wish (Rascal Flatts, recently re-released as a duet with Carly Pearce) is a parent’s wish for their child’s life.

All I Know So Far (P!nk) is another song written for the artist’s child, sharing bold wisdom on how to live a free, meaningful life—from mother to child.

Knee Deep (Zac Brown Band f. Jimmy Buffett) is about getting away from the world to the refuge of blue water, blue skies, and a beach.

One Last Time (from Hamilton) is about the strength and courage of George Washington choosing not to run for a third term—and how to say goodbye.

Fill Me In (Craig David) is about young, lustful love.

Extraordinary Magic (Ben Rector) calls out the invisible grace, beauty, and future the singer sees in someone he loves.

Life Goes On (Ed Sheeran f. Luke Combs) is a heartbreaking track about grieving a loss.

There are over a hundred more on the playlist. I’m biased, but they’re all great.

The rest of the songs are invariably about love, loss, friendship, overcoming struggle, or something that radiates beauty.

It’s worth noting—and the whole point of me writing this—is that the songs we love to sing—our karaoke favorites—aren’t about work.

They aren’t about celebrating tyrants or liars. They aren’t about stealing or reveling in the exploitation of others. They aren’t about that feeling when your complicated Excel formula works.

When I am in my head, overworking and obsessing about something, this is what I remind myself: nobody would write a song about the bullshit I worry about.

If nobody would write a song worth singing about it, maybe I can let it go.

Three Lessons from a Benevolent Universe

I try to remember that everyone is going through something and has gone through something.

No matter how wealthy or poor, how powerful or meek, how healthy or sick—everyone suffers. And at times, suffers brutally. Grief, loss, and addiction affect everyone—whether it's presidents or paupers.

This is the first lesson I learned about suffering: if everyone suffers, and suffers gravely, then I have an opportunity to help them mend just by treating them with dignity. And practically speaking, I can’t handle having a different MO for people who I like and respect and trust, and for people who I distrust or even find repulsive.

My soul can’t code-switch in the same way that my language can.

If I try to selectively treat some people with dignity and not others, it feels like my character splits in two—like a self-inflicted Jekyll and Hyde. I lose myself. So I try to offer the same dignity to everyone. It’s all or nothing—not because it’s easy or even comfortable, but because it’s the only way I know how to stay whole.

What to make of suffering itself, though?

I had this thought experiment in the past week—which has been the most intense we may have ever had. Our family is entering a season of tremendous challenge, and equally tremendous joy.

And as I look to the horizon ahead, I had one of those raw, reflective daydreams that stripped my heart down to naked honesty.

Let’s assume there is a higher-order being that influences our lives, orchestrating at least some of the suffering and joy we experience. Let’s further assume that this being actually does care about us and wants us to thrive.

If you are a theist, that being could be a benevolent God. If you are a non-theist, maybe you still hold space for the idea that something greater—life itself, the universe, some force beyond understanding—is trying to help us grow.

If we assume that there is a benevolent being that truly cares about our long-run best interest, and that being is intentionally influencing the suffering and joy in our lives, there must be some reason.

So what are they trying to teach us?

I can never know for sure, but I think it’s something like this—something about how we are in relation to others:

Learn to take care of yourself.
Take care of others.
And let others take care of you.

Or—
Learn to be a light.
Help others find their light.
Let others find the light in you.

Or even—
Learn to laugh at yourself.
Help others laugh.
Let others help you laugh.

Each part of the triad points to a different kind of human bonding.

To love the self is to become a vessel—open to love, radiant with light.
To love others is to offer them that light.
To let others love us—that’s the hardest. It requires trust.
It asks us to believe that we’re worthy, and that others are safe enough to let in.

Again, I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think that benevolent higher being is trying to teach us this—though too often, our actions wrongly suggest otherwise:

Learn to make money.
Take money from others.
Prevent others from taking your money.

Or—
Learn to live in the shadows.
Put others in darkness.
Fight the people who put you in darkness.

Or—
Learn to create fear.
Project fear onto others.
Shield yourself from the fearful others.

The first triad is a lesson inviting us into trust, love, and connection. The alternative traps us in a cycle of fear.

The first is an open hand; the other is a dagger at the neck.

The point is in how we are in relation to others. I don’t think the suffering and joy the benevolent being is throwing our way is to teach us to be in a state of conflict and exploitation. I think what they’re trying to teach us is to be in a state of harmony and intimacy.

Every experience of suffering and joy follows this pattern of pedagogy:
Experience love.
Love others.
Let love in.

Not one, not two, but all three:
Learn to love (an act of the self).
Love others (an act onto others).
Let love in (an act of others onto us).

We can’t graduate with just one of these lessons—we need all three. Hinduism has taught me this. So has Catholicism. Even my reflections as an indifferent agnostic in my early twenties taught me this.

Life has taught me, through all gives and takes from us, that we need all three threads of this triad, braided together.

As I grapple with the road ahead for our family, we are starting down tremendous suffering—but probably more than our fair share of joy, too. In prayer, contemplation, and written reflection, I’ve come to this conclusion again and again—including this week—and more strongly every time.

Maybe there is nothing out there. Maybe there is. Your beliefs and your guess are as good as mine. But it is helpful to think as if a benevolent being is trying to teach us something.

Because the conclusion I’ve come to—over and over—is powerful and instructive:

All this suffering and joy reminds us that the meaning of it all is to refine our relation to others—
By experiencing love,
Loving others,
And letting love in… again and again.

Hard Things, Together

I inherited the fantasy that a good life meant eventually escaping problems—but that promise was always a comforting illusion.

For most of my life, I’ve believed a lie. Not maliciously—it was a lie I inherited, one so baked into our culture that it passed as truth. The lie is that if I work hard, make smart choices, and build the right kind of life, I’ll eventually reach a point where suffering stops showing up at my door.

That dream—the American Dream, you could call it—was never about peace or purpose. It was about protection. Build high enough walls, earn enough money, surround yourself with the right people, and eventually you’ll be safe. But lately, I’ve realized: the dream wasn’t a lie because it was malicious. It was a lie because it was a fantasy.

We act like we value resilience, but our real impulse is to insulate ourselves—and our children—from discomfort at all costs.

We can try to eliminate suffering. We build moats—money, comfort, well-manicured neighborhoods, curated social circles, backup plans stacked on backup plans. Sometimes it’s the dream of abundance: a world where everything is cheap, automated, optimized—where we don’t have to worry about health, housing, or hardship.

And to be fair, this approach has appeal. Abundance and comfort make life easier. They lower the stakes. But this is just one side of the choice.

The alternative is harder to swallow but, I think, more real: we step into suffering. We face problems head-on. We stop waiting for protection and instead become people who are good at problems—resilient enough, skilled enough, and supported enough to go into uncharted territory without guarantees.

We say we want our kids to be resilient. We talk about grit and perseverance. But in practice, we often do the opposite—we smooth the path, solve the problems, shield them from failure. And honestly? Most of us are trying to do the same for ourselves.

I chased that fantasy for years—waiting for a dream like Godot—and came undone when it didn’t arrive.

I spent years believing that if I just crushed it a little harder, I’d make it. I’d arrive somewhere safe. A life beyond problems. The white-picket-fence version of the American Dream.

But that place never arrived. And I can’t believe I ever believed that it would.

We went through an emergency birth and a sick infant. Ailing grandparents. Financial strain. Political chaos. All of it at once. And somehow, that’s when peace finally showed up. Not because the problems went away—but because I stopped expecting them to.

The fantasy hadn’t been a lie—it had been a mirage. And I finally let it go.

I found peace not in escape, but in realizing that I—and we—can face the hard things together.

I started to see that what matters most isn’t protection from problems—it’s capacity to face them.

And when I stopped expecting ease, I started to see the quiet power around me: Robyn, our friends, our family. We didn’t have to be invincible. We just had to show up, help each other, and accept help in return.

That’s what I saw in Detroit, too. I moved here around the time of bankruptcy. Things were deeply broken. But people didn’t wait for a savior. They rolled up their sleeves. They imagined something better and started building.

That spirit—a refusal to wait for rescue—is what saved me.

If suffering is inevitable, then the most important choice we have is what we’re willing to suffer for.

I wonder if our national ache comes from realizing the American Dream was never a permanent solution—it was a 50-year reprieve from reality. And now that it’s cracking, we don’t know what to hope for next.

But I think the next version of the dream is clear.

Not a world without problems—but a world full of people who are good at facing them. People who suffer for things that matter.

Let’s suffer for paying down unsustainable debt. For a habitable planet. For everyone to be able to read at grade level. For institutions that work for everyone and treat folks with respect. For dynamism and companies grow because they deliver real, tangible innovations. For food and housing that meets a basic level of human dignity.

And if we do that? Maybe the next generation will get to dream even bigger—exploring the solar system, flourishing in a creative, robot-assisted renaissance of human potential.

That’s my American Dream now.

Not a fantasy of escape—but a future I’d be honored to suffer for.

Gift Giving is an Act of Rebellion

The name-dropping humblebrag makes me gag every time.

You’ve seen it—the LinkedIn post that’s technically about someone’s birthday but is really about how well-connected they are. Or the people groveling in the comments of an influencer’s post, hoping to get noticed. It’s embarrassing, but worse than that—it’s normal.

This is the epitome of how far, and how icky, “It’s not what you know, but who you know” can go.

But here’s the thing—I don’t actually think it’s who you know that matters. I think it’s who trusts you.

Because when someone asks me for an introduction, I work much harder at it if I trust both parties. And more recently, as we’ve leaned on a small network of angels in medicine when our son Griffin was in the hospital, I know that if our friends and family thought we were selfish, extractive, or poorly intended people, we wouldn’t have had the thunderous support we did.

So why do we so casually say things like, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know”—as if it’s just the way the world works?

Because what we know also matters. Don’t we want our doctors, our legislators, our airplane mechanics, and our grocers to be competent? Of course, relationships are valuable—I’ve benefited surely from knowing the right people. But should we tolerate a culture where networks are framed explicitly as tools for extracting, exploiting, and getting ahead rather than as webs of goodness and trust—trust that helps people find their talent’s highest and best use and supports them when they need it most?

Again, I know networks are usually transactional, and I know this post is akin to screaming into the void. But how can I just shrug and dish out some equally morally negligent phrase like, “It is what it is” or “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”?

Isn’t a system of tribalistic favor-trading—where relationships are currency, where access and opportunity stay locked within exclusive circles, where people are reduced to their securitized economic value to another human being—exactly what we should be pushing back against?

A Network of Gifts

My friend Elizabeth just co-authored a paper in Daedalus on the economics of care, and I’ve been stewing on how they opened the article for about two weeks now:

Imagine a group of new parents sitting in a circle, feeding, soothing, and talking to their infants. Within our status quo economy, the only way to capture “value” from these activities is if each parent passes their child to another parent and charges for the services they provide. Some kind of “transaction” must occur.

Like the authors, I don’t want to live in a world that sees relationships this way. I don’t want us to reduce, and even celebrate, networks as a means of extracting unearned rewards or normalizing the idea that a person’s worth is what they can do for you.

That uncomfortable image is what goes through my head when I hear people say, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

So what if, instead of an affirming a Network of Favors, we built a Network of Gifts?

What if we pushed back against transactional networking by doing the opposite—giving gifts instead of favors?

Not expensive gifts. Not gifts with strings attached. But gifts that are hard to price, by design, and not meant to repay in-kind—gifts that remind people they are seen, valued, and cared for.

Here’s an example.

Last week at Mass, I saw a neighbor we adore but hadn’t seen in a while. We caught up for a few minutes in the donut line—it was nice.

A few days later, he showed up at our door, unannounced, with a small bag of inexpensive Legos for our kids and a $5 grocery store coupon for diapers.

Monetarily, it wasn’t a big thing. But that wasn’t the point. It was just a visit to check on us because I had mentioned some of the health issues Griffin had been having.

His visit was a gift—one of care and thoughtfulness with no explicit favor to return formally, though we will at some point, probably with a gift of extra cookies or and impromptu visit of our own. And it wasn’t something we could put a price on. Feeling seen, cared for, and valued for just existing is quite the opposite—it’s priceless.

There are so many priceless gifts:

• When an old friend checks in on you on a whim.

• When someone covers a meeting so you can pick up a sick kid.

• When someone puts in the effort to bring people together.

• When someone gives you a real hug when they know you need one.

• When someone lends you a book or tells you a story—not just because it’s interesting, but because it builds closeness.

These aren’t expensive favors with implied reciprocity. They’re priceless gifts without a return-by date.

And giving them—especially in a culture that teaches us to treat relationships as transactions—is a rebellious act.

Because every time we give these little, priceless gifts, we prove that we are more than a favor to be called in. We prove that not everything valuable in this world has a price.

Giving these gifts, over and over again, is a defiant act that shows another way to live—a way that directly counters the favor-focused culture that “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” embodies.

If You’re Nodding Along, Do This Now

If you’ve been nodding as you read this, first, thank you.

Second, do something now. Join this little rebellion with a not-so-little action.

Pick up your phone. Text someone on a whim to say you’re thinking about them. You already care—so show them.

It’s a measured act, but still, one of generous rebellion.

And if we all do this, if we all celebrate these gifts with intention, we won’t just be screaming into the void.

We’ll be singing into the void.

And over time, we won’t just be lamenting the culture.

We’ll be changing it.

The American Dream Is Alive

It’s easy to believe the dream is dying. Many imply that it is. But it’s not. It’s alive.

It lives in the pews of the church that welcomes anyone—not just in words, but in action. Even me, someone who has never been baptized. When the priest heard my story, my journey as a spiritual nomad, the first thing he said was, “No matter what you decide, know that you are welcome here.”

It’s in the scribbled pencil and crayon of a child’s unprompted thank-you card for the crossing guard at school.

It’s in the quiet scrape of a shovel clearing snow from a neighbor’s driveway, expecting nothing in return.

It’s in the voice of a volunteer soccer coach, teaching kids to love the game the right way. And maybe even more so in the moment when a kid teaches the coach something back.

The dream breathes in every public servant who moves mountains—not for power or recognition, but simply because the person in front of them needs help.

It’s there whenever one person gives another a gift—of time, of forgone income, of a loaf of bread, of unconditional love, of a Christmas present that truly means something.

It’s woven into every play, poem, song, and film that longs for love, kindness, respect, honesty, and humility. It’s in the best stories we tell—especially the ones about the sublime, and maybe even the divine.

It’s in the kind stranger at the grocery store, who smiles as she rings you up.

The dream is alive in the small mercies of love. When your wife forgives your mistakes and your bad days. When someone asks, How are you?—and actually wants to hear the long answer.

It lives in the person who holds the door open for you, even if it means they’re now one step further back in line.

This dream—this dream to grow and help others grow, to share and live peacefully, to earn and then generously give—is alive. It hides in plain sight, its light so soft and steady that it’s easy to miss. But I see it.

And I won’t let myself stop seeing it.

Because the other option is always there. The temptation to get pulled into the fight, the game, the zero-sum world where winning means taking and shadows are cast intentionally to make everything darker.

That’s one way to live.

But there’s another way. Simpler, but harder.

Keep being a light.
Keep seeing the light.
Keep dreaming of light.

We Are All Near Misses

When I hold our newborn son, Griffin, I tell him, “I’m glad you’re here.”

I don’t know what else to say—it just comes out. Like a reflex, like an exhale, just from being close to him. And every time I say it, I start to cry. Sometimes the tears make it all the way to my eyes, but sometimes they just wiggle in my throat, staying caught there for a moment.

It’s such a beautiful and difficult thing to say.

It’s beautiful because it means something like, “Your mere presence with me is enough to bring me joy. You don’t need to be anything or do anything—you are here, and that alone brings me comfort and happiness. I love you exactly as you are.”

But it’s also difficult. Difficult because it reveals something raw in us. Because it also means, “I was, and can often feel, lonely. I was whole before you, but I was missing something. And now that you’re here, I am better than I was.”

The beauty and the difficulty of “I’m glad you’re here” both come from a place of longing.

It chokes me up every time. When I say it to my kids, or my wife. Even to our dog, or to my plants as I sing and talk to them while in our vegetable garden.

If I say it, I mean it. And when I mean it, it hits something deep and tender.

I understand why this phrase opens, but also rattles, my soul better now. Because when I say “I’m glad you’re here” to Griffin, I know in the sinews of my muscle that he may not have been.

We were lucky. When he was born accidentally at home because of Robyn’s disorientingly fast labor, there were no complications. No umbilical cord tied around his neck. No fluid in his lungs needing to be pumped out.

Had anything gone wrong, I would’ve been trying to save his life with a spatula and a pair of kitchen shears until the ambulance arrived. I thank God regularly that I didn’t have to try.

Griffin, truly, was a near miss. God rushed the process, but He cut us a break. Griffin is here. And every day, when I tell him, “I’m glad you’re here,” I feel the weight of that truth—he very easily might not have been.

And I feel it, too, when I look at my wife, Robyn. When I remember that she, too, had a near miss. She could have bled out delivering Griffin, right there on our family room floor. Instead, she was holding him in front of the fireplace, both of us the beneficiaries of a not-so-small mercy.

Near misses.

And as I traced this thought further, I realized—we are all near misses.

Some are dramatic, life-or-death moments. Others, like mine, are quieter, only revealing themselves in hindsight.

The week before COVID really broke open, I would’ve attended a community event with my old colleagues at the Detroit Police Department, but I had to travel out of town for a wedding. Turns out, it was a super spreader event, before we even had that term in our lexicon. I may not have died, but who knows what it would’ve been like to contract COVID before we knew how serious it was, with a three-month-old baby at home. Near miss.

A friend of mine was born two months early, in a town with only basic medical facilities. Even her family elders doubted she’d survive. But she’s here. Another near miss.

Almost all of us have been close to these moments, whether it was the car that almost swiped us on the freeway, the stairs we almost fell down, or the hard candy we almost choked on. And those are just the near misses we know about.

And that’s when it hit me: every single person I encounter—every stranger, every friend, every difficult person—was a near miss, too.

At some point, they almost weren’t here.

There was a homily at Mass once that sticks with me. I don’t remember what the Gospel reading was that day, but the point stuck—try to see someone as God sees them.

And maybe one way to do that is to remember: no matter who they are, no matter how annoying or rude the person in front of me is, there was some moment in time when they almost didn’t make it.

It’s easy to offer grace to someone who just survived a life-threatening event. We instinctively soften, give them space, recognize the weight of what they just went through.

But what I realized today—when I was trying to understand why a four-word sentence brings me to tears—is that everyone has brushed past death at some point.

Everyone has almost not been here.

Which means I can have a little more grace than I do sometimes.

So today, I’m trying, even for the random guy at the grocery store who tried to punk me by swiping a box of tea out of my cart while his friend very inconspicuously filmed it.

Because even though I may need a nudge to remember it sometimes—

I’m glad they’re here.

And maybe, just maybe, they’re glad I’m here, too.

How to become the richest man in the world

There’s an appeal to living life purely through arm’s-length transactions.

We agree on terms, make an exchange, shake hands, and we’re done. No recurring obligations. No one owes anyone anything. It can easily be how we operate in many situations: buying a new pair of jeans, running a garden club, working a job, or splitting chores with our wives.

A life of deals and agreements can feel in control, efficient, even profitable in a sense.

But I don’t want this.

I want my life to have strings attached. I don’t want to live at arm’s length from everyone else. I don’t want to depend on the market or a series of transactions to bring companionship, compassion, or joy into my life.

I want to be enmeshed. I want to watch my brothers’, sisters’, and friends’ kids when they need a date night out. I want to know the next time I hug someone in my family or anyone else I always hug is going to be soon.

I want to accept meals after we have a baby and reciprocate that kindness to the next ten families in line. I want my neighbors to call me when their computer monitor is broken, and I want to lean on them when I need a ride to the airport, and Robyn has to take the kids to a piano lesson.

I want to stay up later than I should to hear one more story over beers with my buddies, especially when they’re visiting from far away. I want the DCFC clubhouse to feel like our country club because that means we’re showing up for soccer practices, and cheering not just for our sons but also their teammates.

I want the gentle nudge—and the pressure—to show up to Mass or open car doors in the school drop-off line, knowing the kids and other dads notice when I’ve been MIA for a while. I want to linger places, even at work, just to ask someone about how they and their family are doing.

I want to pour my love and laughter into someone who is struggling, even though it obligates me to the scary reality that, maybe—just maybe—I’ll have to open my heart and let it in when someone notices my grief and suffering and pours it right back.

These are the scenes from a life with strings attached.

This is what I want for us. I want us all to work hard and build just a little surplus—of money, love, time, and health—so we can take that extra and give it away.

Doing that isn’t how we become wealthy. In fact, we’re probably better off keeping people at arm’s length if wealth is our goal. Why? Because it’s easier to extract money from people when we stick to the terms of the contract. Our pesky emotions and feelings of attachment won’t dull our killer instincts, so to speak.

So intertwining ourselves with others—stringing ourselves to them and them to us—may not be the best way to become wealthy.

It is, I’d argue, how we become rich.

Surplus should be shared

Friends,

The (over)simplified way I think about American politics is that it comes down to surplus. At the heart of it, we crave more than we need—more money, more time, more mental energy.

Before we dive in, know that this post—and my podcast episode this week—aren’t about taking sides. I’m not interested in dissecting policies or election outcomes here. Instead, I want to explore how we even think about politics and the core values that drive it.

Because to me, these “mega-questions” sit right at the center of our political landscape.

1) How do we create surplus?

How do we generate more money, more time, or more mental energy than we need—both individually and collectively? This question, in many ways, drives policy decisions, economic systems, and even social programs. Everyone wants surplus; the debate often centers on how best to achieve it.

2) What do we do with that surplus?

Once we have more than we need, do we keep it for ourselves or share it? Should surplus be directed toward those with similar beliefs, or should it be shared broadly to support the common good? And what about future generations? How much of our surplus should we put into investments we may never personally benefit from?

These questions echo through every political debate, as people argue over what’s fair, what’s efficient, and who deserves what. Even when we disagree, so much of it comes down to our different ideas about these same questions.

As for me, I don’t have a neatly packaged answer or specific policy I’m here to advocate for. But here’s what I do know: I want to live beneath my means and share my surplus with others.

In this week’s podcast, I share a story about Halloween on our block—a magical night made possible by neighbors who give their time, money, and energy to make it memorable for everyone. They choose to share their surplus with the community, creating something special. I admire them for it, and it makes me think about how I want to be a little more like that myself.

Here’s the link—I hope you’ll give it a listen: Halloween and Surplus.

With love from Detroit,

Neil

When in doubt, just smile

Friends,

One way to think about our relationships is to see them as falling into different circles of familiarity.

Of course, there are our loved ones—the people we see all the time, who know us well, and with whom we share an unspoken rhythm. We know exactly how to greet them, how to say goodbye, and how to laugh together.

But then, there are the people we’re less familiar with. These might be the drive-through barista we meet only once on a road trip, or the neighbor we pass while walking the dog. Even though we don’t know these people well, we still have our own kind of rhythm with them—usually more reserved and distant.

It’s easy to assume that how we treat these semi-familiar connections doesn’t matter as much as how we treat our loved ones. But I’m starting to think it actually matters just as much, maybe even more.

Why? Because how we treat those semi-familiar faces every day adds up. In many ways, the true culture of our communities isn’t just shaped by the relationships we hold dearest, but by how we treat everyone else: the FedEx delivery person, the neighbors a few houses down, the host at our favorite neighborhood spot. It’s the kindness or distance we show these people that truly defines the feel of our communities.

This idea became clear to me recently at the funeral of a young woman I only knew through small moments—she was the younger sister of one of my close friends from childhood. My friends and I were there, of course, to support our buddy. But thinking about her afterward, I realized she’d left me with a powerful lesson I hadn’t recognized before: When we don’t know exactly how to treat a semi-familiar face in front of us, just smile.

That’s the message I dive into on this week’s podcast: When in doubt, just smile.

With love from Detroit,
Neil

Eyes help us unsee

We’re often told to look people in the eye when we speak to them, because it’s a sign of respect. But this week, I realized that eye contact does more than just show respect.

When we look someone in the eye, we do more than just connect—we actually “see” them.

We see their emotions and more. Eye contact lets us feel what they’re feeling, making it easier to empathize with them and relate. In this way, the eyes help us truly see the person in front of us.

But the eyes also serve as a focal point. When we look someone in the eye, we can momentarily forget about everything else—the logo on their shirt, the color of their skin, the gray in their hair, or whether they use a wheelchair. Eye contact helps us “unsee” these external details, allowing us to connect with the person beneath them. In that moment, we’re less distracted by the things we might consciously or unconsciously judge, and more focused on who they really are.

So, eye contact isn’t just about respect—it’s a powerful tool for equality. If we want to truly see someone as our equal, we need to first unsee the distractions. And looking them in the eye is a good, practical, way to start.

How to Make Selflessness Joyful

To my friends of the mind,

Lately, I’ve been thinking about time and what we leave behind — not just for our children or our children’s children, but for those far down the line.

A generation, they say, is about 30 years. Ten generations? That’s 300 years. It makes me wonder: what could I pass on that lasts for one generation? And, more curiously, what could endure for 10?

One of the biggest lessons I learned while writing Character by Choice was this: to truly be good people, we need to think beyond ourselves. It’s not just about what we accomplish in our lifetimes, but about listening deeply to the call of something greater — something that stretches far into the future, beyond what we’ll ever see or experience. In fact, I’ve come to believe that selflessness becomes joyful when we shift our focus far beyond the present. When we know our actions aren’t ephemeral, but rooted in something that will last for generations, it deepens the sense of purpose and fulfillment. It’s this depth that sustains us, guiding us to work on things that really matter, even if we’ll never see the results.

Let’s say we’ve done the hard inner work, the kind that builds empathy for those distant future generations — the ones we’ll never meet but whose lives we still want to impact. So, what then? What do we actually do with that kind of perspective? How do we spend our time, knowing that we’re playing a much longer game?

I started asking myself this question and even opened it up to some friends on Facebook. Together, we came up with a list of ideas — some lighthearted, some heavy, but all worth considering. What I’ve realized through this process is that I want to focus more on the long game — the 10-gen stuff — instead of getting caught up in things that might only matter for one generation.

So, what might last for 10 generations? Here are some things that came to mind, from the obvious to the unexpected:

• Inventions

• Great companies and institutions that do the right thing

• Values and moral principles

• Beautiful heirlooms

• Novel, simple mental models

• The effects of unconditional love

• Trauma

• Recipes

• Wisdom

• Practical knowledge (e.g., how to can vegetables, how to lay a brick)

• Waste (e.g., plastics, radioactive material)

• Art

• Genetics and predisposition to disease

• A well-built house (or other very well-built things)

• Big beefs

• Spiritual beliefs / Religions

• Culture

• General-purpose technologies (e.g., electricity, the internet)

• The earth and climate

And then there’s the stuff that might burn bright for just one generation before it fades — things we invest time in but maybe shouldn’t overvalue in the long run:

• Inherited wealth

• Reputation / Fame

• Debt

• Status

• Most possessions

• Little beefs

• A “career”

• Incremental innovations

• Politics (for the most part)

• Pop culture

• Gadgets

• News

So, what do you think? What would you add to these lists? More importantly, do you believe the 10-gen stuff is worth striving for? Is it even something we can shape? I’d love to hear your thoughts — let’s keep the conversation going.

Always,

Neil

Audacious Dreams: The Key to True Inclusivity

Real, genuine inclusion is hard. It demands a level of effort and commitment that can feel daunting. But it’s also essential.

The Tough Reality of True Inclusivity

Creating a truly inclusive culture—whether in a society, a company, a small team, or even a family—in a diverse environment requires a special mindset. We have to believe that everybody matters and has a place if they treat others with respect. More importantly, we have to believe that it’s possible for everybody to matter.

Here’s what I mean by “it’s possible” for everybody to matter. Some situations feel like a prisoners’ dilemma, where not everyone can win. For example, multiple people vying for the same CEO position may see each other as competitors. Only one person can win, so it feels like others must lose.

Or consider children who feel they must be their parents’ favorite to feel secure and loved. This zero-sum mindset leads them to believe that not everyone can matter equally.

People who think this way might believe: We can’t have true inclusivity because there will always be winners and losers. Only winners matter. Everyone mattering is therefore impossible.

Inclusivity is hard because we must overcome this zero-sum mindset—that the world must always have winners and losers—to begin creating an inclusive society, company, or team. We have to believe that it’s even possible for everyone to matter.

Simply saying that everybody matters and it’s possible for everyone to matter can be dismissed as cheap talk. Why should we believe it’s possible for everyone to matter when the zero-sum mindset is so pervasive? A skeptic might say, “prove it.”

And to be fair, examples of true inclusivity are rare and often seem exceptional. How many spaces have you seen where everyone truly mattered? When I think of public examples, I think of the Apollo program, which brought together diverse talents to land people on the moon. Other examples include the Manhattan Project, the Toyota Production System, Microsoft’s transformation under Satya Nadella, and Southwest Airlines in its heyday. But even these examples have flaws and limitations, showing how hard it is to scale inclusivity.

Audacious Dreams

Inclusion is a complex phenomenon that’s hard to explain, but I think a big part of it is dreams. We need audacious dreams.

Inclusion is really hard. To counter the zero-sum mindset, inclusion can't be voluntary. It has to be involuntary, where we have no choice but to put aside our fears and egos and create the gravity that brings everyone in.

Audacious dreams create this gravity and make inclusion emerge. When we have a dream that matters deeply, we do anything to bring people in to achieve it. We look for the superpowers in others to help make the dream come true. With these dreams, we forget how hard it is to build an inclusive culture and just do it because we care about the dream and the mission.

I saw this when I worked at the Detroit Police Department. Many leaders, community members, and staffers—inside and outside of government—had the audacious dream to reduce gun violence in Detroit. This was audacious because for decades, Detroit had been one of the most violent cities in the country, with no data suggesting it would change.

The audacity of this dream brought everyone in. We had no choice but to include people because there was too much work to do. We had to find and involve new funders, community partners, law enforcement agencies, university researchers, and even victims and perpetrators of violence. We had to be inclusive and find ways for everyone to contribute their unique gifts because the dream of reducing violence was so challenging.

I’ve been away from this work for several years, but a lot of good work to reduce gun violence in Detroit has happened in the past decade. Audacious dreams that foster inclusivity are possible.

Guarding Against the Dark Side of Dreams

Audacious dreams create the gravity that helps inclusion emerge involuntarily. We need audacious dreams about “all of us.”

Yet, if contemplated with bad intent, audacious dreams can also be dangerous. There are many examples of people who manipulate others by sharing an audacious dream, recruiting people to help them, and ultimately pursuing an agenda of self-enrichment.

It’s also easy to use audacious dreams to be selectively inclusive—only including a chosen few and excluding others to build in-group unity.

How do we ensure our audacious dreams lead to an inclusive culture instead of a toxic one?

I think how we, as individual dreamers, dream matters. Is our dream one where the final image is of our own personal glory? Or is the final glimpse a better future for everyone? Is the dream about just us as individuals or all of us as a group?

This is hard. I’ve struggled with delusional dreams about my own advancement and personal glory for decades. I try not to be too hard on myself because our culture worships achievement, but it’s true. I’ve had dreams of being inaugurated as a senator or giving a press conference as a CEO. Even after seven-plus years of inner work as I’ve written a book - Character by Choice - which goes deep on the inner work that builds our capacity to be good people, I still relapse into dreams about moments of personal glory instead of dreams about all of us.

But this inner work is worth doing because we desperately need audacious dreams that create the gravity to bring everybody in. We need to leave ourselves no choice but to find ways for everyone to matter. I truly believe that an inclusive culture will lead to a healthier, more prosperous, and greener world in the long run. So we have no choice but to dream audacious dreams.

But like power, audacious dreams can corrupt. If we make them about just us instead of all of us, those dreams can lead to exclusion and exploitation.

We can’t have it both ways. If we want to create an inclusive culture, we have to dream audaciously. But we also have to do the inner work to ensure those dreams aren’t about just us, but about all of us.

Imagination is a Foundational Leadership Skill

I define leadership as the act of taking responsibility for something.

However, one crucial element that underpins effective leadership is frequently overlooked: imagination. From my experience, both personal and professional, I have learned that taking full responsibility for a project or goal requires the ability to vividly imagine its realization. This power of imagination is not just a lofty concept but a practical and essential skill for leaders.

To inspire a team to bring our vision to life, we must articulate it clearly and compellingly. This act of sharing our imagination is what we commonly refer to as having a vision. Whether you are a CEO, product manager, entrepreneur, artist, politician, or parent, the ability to communicate your vision is fundamental to effective leadership.

Imagination operates on three distinct levels when we take responsibility for a project. To illustrate, consider the creation of a running shoe. The first level involves envisioning the product itself. What does the shoe look like? How is it designed? What makes it unique and special? This product vision is the core of what we aim to create, whether it’s a shoe, a family, a city, or a store.

The second level of imagination is what I call the market or cultural vision. This involves envisioning the broader impact of our product or project on the world. For our running shoe, we must consider who will be using it. Are they solo runners or part of running clubs? How does running with our shoe change them as individuals? What new stories do they tell themselves because of their experiences? How do these runners interact with others differently? Envisioning this broader impact helps us understand how our efforts contribute to making the world a slightly better place.

The third level of imagination is the internal vision, which focuses on the process and team dynamics required to bring our vision to life. For the running shoe, this means imagining the manufacturing process: How will the shoe be made and designed? Who will be part of our team? What kind of culture will we cultivate within our team? What will our interactions look and feel like? If a documentary were made about our journey, what key moments and values would it highlight? This internal vision ensures that we have a clear roadmap for achieving our goals.

In essence, a leader is someone who takes end-to-end responsibility for a project or goal. To do this effectively, the ability to imagine and share what’s in our mind’s eye is essential. Without this, we risk merely replicating someone else’s vision instead of creating our own.

This brings us to two key “how” questions: How do we get better at imagining, and how do we assess imagination in others?

To improve our imagination, we need practice. However, imagination cannot be practiced in the abstract. We must engage in the act of creation—whether it’s building a custom shelf, writing a book, painting a picture, or organizing a street festival. The process of imagining often unfolds naturally as we commit to building something. We don’t set out with the intent to imagine; instead, we follow our instincts, commit to the project, and let the imagination flow.

Assessing imagination, particularly in an interview setting, is relatively straightforward. Ask candidates to share their dreams—whether for their current company, their family, or their community. Encourage them to elaborate with follow-up questions. If, within 5-10 minutes, you can vividly see what they envision and feel excited about it, they likely possess a refined ability to imagine and communicate their vision. Chief James Craig, who led the Detroit Police Department while I was there, emphasized this principle: “We have to talk about our dreams.” I wholeheartedly agree.

To ground this discussion, which may seem abstract, let’s envision a world where people are committed to making their corner of the world a bit better by bringing their dreams to life. Achieving this requires the ability to imagine and clearly communicate what’s in our mind’s eye. How do we cultivate this capability? By building things and talking about our dreams.