Author: letterstoleland

May 29, 2026

Today I want to talk about the rise of Marxism in the world today. Unlike most letters, I’m less certain I’m on solid ground today. I am exploring thoughts that want to be expressed, to see if I can decipher what I might be able to learn from them.

It’s difficult to pin down a precise definition of Marxism in order to evaluate what I am attempting to explore. Positive association with Marxism has increased over the course of my lifetime, particularly amongst young people. Positive attitudes toward socialism have risen even more, with young people holding slightly more positive attitudes toward socialism than capitalism these days. Marxism and socialism are not the same thing, though they are cousins. Socialism has, at times, been used to describe developed nations with large and generous social welfare programs. Marxism tends toward more rigidity, more absolutism, and more totalitarianism. I’m not sure I can give a precise dividing line, which makes this exploration all the harder. But we’ll see how we can do.

The first thing to note is that Marxism tends to define itself in opposition to capitalism. This may, in fact, be the root of my challenge with Marxism: any ideology that defines itself in opposition to something propagates suffering.

Growing up in small town Texas in the 1980s and 1990s, I never encountered Marxists, nor many ideas genuinely influenced by Marx. Though I attended a liberal arts university, that university still sat in Texas and tended toward conservatism, meaning I encountered Marxist ideology but those interactions were limited.

As I moved to the coasts I began to encounter more people genuinely influenced by Marxist ideology, which I found pretty jarring. And over the last decade or so, I’ve watched Marxism gain in popularity. I have friends who have become self avowed Marxists, and I see Marxist influence in mainstream media (not to mention social media) in ways that just didn’t exist twenty years ago.

To the degree I’ve engaged with Marxists, I’ve noticed a couple things. First, their arguments tend toward tautology: capitalism is bad plus evidence equals capitalism is bad. I’m yet to encounter Marxists who seem aware that their premise appears to rest on a foundation of faith (capitalism is bad), which leads me to suspect that Marxism tends to fill the human need for religion (or, as I discussed yesterday, the deep seated human need for a god). Second, I’ve struggled to engage in good faith debates with Marxists, and notice public figures who struggled similarly: when presented with contrary evidence, my observation is that Marxists tend to resort to ad hominem attacks. This reliance on personal attacks reinforces my sense that Marxism tends toward religious significance for the practitioner: the ad hominem attacks very much remind me of the behavior of the fundamentalists among whom I grew up. Finally, I’ve noticed that Marxist definitions of capitalism tend to load assumptions onto capitalism that, in my view, don’t necessarily belong. This observation is related to the “capitalism is bad” foundation of faith, but focuses more on how it plays out. Let me explore this for a minute.

The basic premise of capitalism is one of private ownership of capital (sometimes referred to as “the means of production”). What differentiates capitalism from other economic systems is the right of individual ownership, whereas other economic models in agrarian and post-agrarian societies tended toward state ownership of these means of production. Most societies through history have had elements of private ownership and market dynamics, and most societies have had elements of state ownership and governmental control over markets: capitalism is thus less an absolute and more a continuum over time.

From what I can tell, the Marxist tends to argue things like “capitalism is a system where all citizens rely on the market for survival”, which, while not wrong isn’t entirely distinct from other economies: in all societies people play a role in contributing to society, but also rely on others playing their role in ensuring collective wellbeing. I’ve also heard arguments like “capitalism is a system that leads to greed” which I think fundamentally misunderstands the human condition: capitalism doesn’t lead to greed; greed is embedded in each of us. Most commonly Marxists will argue that capitalism is fundamentally exploitative, causing exploitation of the powerless by the powerful. Again, I think this fundamentally misunderstands where the attribution lies: all forms of political economy suffer from ugly incidents of exploitation of the powerless by the powerful; capitalism is by no means unique in this regard. Finally, Marxists tend to bury interlocutors with evidence that bad things happened in capitalist societies, implying that the sheer weight of bad things is evidence of a broken system. And yet these same participants seem incapable of acknowledging or wrestling with the bad things that happened anywhere and everywhere Marxism has been practiced. My overarching impression from these interactions is that the Marxist desperately wants to avoid evaluating the human condition, and especially the darkness harbored in their own hearth, and clings to the unacknowledged illusion they can eliminate the darkness in their hearts by eliminating capitalism.

To be very clear: the Marxists are not wrong that lots of bad things have happened in capitalist societies. Many of the examples they cite are real and regrettable. Some of the examples might even be more prone to occur in capitalist societies than non-capitalist societies. But, so far as I can tell, because Marxists are unwilling to grapple with the darkness that rests in human hearts, they are unwilling to recognize that any political and economic system will find itself perpetuating different flavors of bad behavior precisely because of these fundamental human flaws.

I read Plato’s Republic my first semester in college. When introduced to the idea of a philosopher king (roughly, someone or a group of someones so wise and knowledgeable that the rest of us should submit absolute authority to them) I instantly thought “I want that job!” I spent the next couple weeks imagining I had the role. Someone cut me in line at fast food restaurant and I thought “when I am philosopher king, this type of behavior will be punished”. The next day someone cut me off in traffic, and I started envisioning the punishment system I would create to handle such malfeasance. Within a few days I found myself spending more and more time creating more and more elaborate punishment systems for increasingly trivial misbehavior. In other words, I was becoming a tyrant. I found this experience deeply humbling, and have had a deep appreciation for the potential for power to corrupt ever since.

My sense is that Marxists’ goal is for the rest of us to turn both political and economic power over to them, the enlightened, so that they can direct our behavior accordingly. The problem, so far as I can tell, is that they aspire to the role of philosopher king, without having done the introspection to recognize and appreciate they are not prepared to wield the type of power they wish to possess.

Pretty much everywhere Marxism has been employed at the national level has been an economic and humanitarian disaster. I’m unaware of any sincere efforts by Marxists to explore why this might be; so far as I can tell they blame capitalism using rather tortured logic. Even within the United States, the cities and states that have most employed Marxist ideology have been atrociously governed over the last decade or two. So far as I can tell, the Marxist response to these failures has been to demand more power to exert more influence and control over more levers of economic and political power, as if their failures were all created by a lack of control and power and influence.

I am familiar with this line of thinking (“I could have succeeded, if only I had possessed more power and authority”), and have pursued that line of thinking not infrequently over the course of my life. It’s seductive to believe that the solutions to my failures were a lack of power, and that if I had only amassed more power I could have generated better results.

In healthy, functional organizations (of which I’ve been fortunate to participate in several), people are conferred a small amount of power and influence. When they wield that power and influence wisely, they are rewarded with more; when they wield that power and influence poorly, they see their power and influence decline. That concept is by no means new: the Parable of the Talents suggests even God rewards who use their gifts wisely, and retracts wasted gifts. But, rather than make honest assessments of their failures and learn from mistakes, the most Marxist leaning governments and institutions seem hellbent on solving their institutional failures by expanding their sphere of control and influence…without any apparent awareness that expanding power and influence built on such a rickety foundation would inevitably lead to an increase in suffering.

It occurs to me, as I write, that my real frustration is with toxic feminine energy. My frustration with Marxists is similar to my frustration with the friends I have described going through divorce: the sense that folks are indiscriminately destroying things around them precisely because they aren’t wiling to let go of their inner demons.

One recurring struggle for me over the last several years has been precisely this idea of how to manage this toxic feminine energy. I have observed myself tempted to revert back to stereotypes, namely the use of physical force or aggression. But it’s entirely clear to me that the problems we’re watching emerge can’t be solved with physical force and aggression. Perhaps said differently: the solution to toxic femininity is not toxic masculinity. To be fair, I’ve looked for other levers to handle toxic feminine energy too: appeals to logic or emotion, appeals to tradition, or appeals to prior agreement. None have worked, not for me nor others I have counseled.

Partly what I’ve learned from these interactions is that, underlying the toxicity, is a more fundamental truth: the feminine energy is looking to redefine things. Old traditions and agreements no longer carry weight with feminine energy because (at least some of) those old traditions and agreements need to die off. As I’ve said before, we’re in a season of death, and it’s the feminine energy that will help us destroy the old in order to make space for the new. What I also understand, at least partly from my own experience, is that there are healthy and unhealthy ways of letting go of the old in order to make space for the new. My frustrations, I think, stem from a recognition that we are too stuck exercising unhealthy ways of letting go of the old.

Which brings me back to some prior ideas. Namely, that of being the light in the storm. But also that of leveraging masculine energy to set clear boundaries, so that feminine energy can do the needed work of renewal within a safe space. One of my challenges throughout this journey has been understanding that masculine energy inherently rests on some form of authority, whether that authority be born of status, strength, or enforcing past agreements. What I am starting to understand and appreciate is masculine energy can harness a deeper form of authority: one born of alignment and authenticity. That form of authority is very hard to define, and even hard to point out with precision. But you know it when you see it. Leland, actually, wields this form of authority pretty effectively at his young age: when you feel sufficiently strongly about something you speak with an authority that convinces those who otherwise wield far more power than you do to submit, or at least align. It’s honestly pretty remarkable to watch, and serves as a pretty clear reminder that one need not possess any traditional markers of power other than inner alignment and authenticity. Not everyone will submit, and that’s fine: those who are meant to will come along for the ride and experience healthier transformations than those who do not.

The next thought that comes to me as I write harkens back to the idea that the storm is no longer forming in the distance, but making first contact. I’ve spent the last few years clumsily and ineffectively attempting to warn others about the coming storm. I no longer need to issue warnings: the storm is here; everyone senses it. Many (and probably most) will not listen to my proposed solutions, and that is fine. As the urgency inevitably increases, some will. I will likely know the difference by those who demand, via their actions, that I set clear and firm boundaries. Those who invite the boundaries to be set, and then submit to those boundaries, will experience a healthier transformation than those who do not. I can focus my energy accordingly.

Directionally, I think folks are going to experience the coming storm as something like armageddon. I don’t mean to suggest that the world is literally ending, and that folks will be physically relocating to either heaven or hell. But I do mean that light and dark energy are separating, and that people are increasingly going to have to choose, and not deciding is still a choice. Those who hold onto their demons are likely to experience something akin to hell (even moreso than their current state of suffering). Those who let go are going to experience a turbulent transition (I tend to think of Moses leading folks out into the wilderness). Very roughly I think those are the only two real choices descending upon us. I actually think this is what Jesus refers to in the latter portion of Matthew 10 (starting with verse 34).

Woof. I did not expect to go in this direction today. But that is why I write: to uncover not only what I think, but the deeper truths lying underneath. I can sense I’ve let something go today, and can rest a little as a result. And so, I bid goodbye for today.

I love you both. Thank you for participating in this exercise. May you someday get at least a fraction as much benefit from these writings as I do.

Love,

Dad

May 28, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

Looking back, I’ve talked about false gods on a number of occasions. Today I want to talk about one particular false god I see complicating much of the world around me.

First, let me redefine what I mean by “false gods”. One of my theses is that none of us live fully governed by reason, and that if we interrogated our belief systems thoroughly enough, we would find areas where we place implicit faith and trust. People put faith in the scientific process or capitalism or democracy or education or Marxism, just to name a few. Most commonly, people put their faith in multiple places: it’s not hard to find Americans who implicitly trust science, democracy, education, and human intelligence, for example. These articles of faith are what I refer to as gods.

Putting faith in something is not inherently bad. Indeed, humans aren’t designed to reason from first principles, and inevitably take shortcuts in our thinking patterns. Putting our faith in something often proves a useful time and energy saver; without faith in our institutions, for example, much of civilized society would grind to a halt. What I will note is that it’s useful to observe and acknowledge where we put our implicit faith; even better, it’s useful to interrogate whether those foundations are worth our implicit faith and trust. I don’t think most people are aware of the degree to which they have placed implicit faith and trust in certain areas, far fewer have explored whether those areas deserved such faith.

Also, putting implicit faith in something does not by itself make it a false god. In my telling, something only becomes a “false god” once we begin to form an attachment, particularly a rigid attachment, to it. People who condemn those who don’t subscribe to their interpretation of the Bible, or those who scream “follow the science!”, or Marxists in general…these are examples where people form such an attachment to an article of faith that these become false gods. In the process of becoming false gods, these beliefs start to impede not only thought but also awareness of our needs and emotions and our ability to experience the fullness of life. We become blocked and, in the process of blocking new information coming into the world, we inherently block the progress of others.

The specific false god I want to explore today is what I call “secular nirvana”. On some level, I’m tracing this idea all the way back to Adam and Eve, and I think Adam and Eve resonated over the millennia because the story captures something deeply true about the human condition: that humans once lived in harmony with the world around us (and, by extension, God). Somewhere along the way our frontal cortexes developed to the point where we convinced ourselves that we could trust our own intelligence over the need for harmony with the universe. That separation has haunted us ever since.

Skipping far ahead, the Enlightenment promoted democracy and individual liberty, thus turbocharging this belief in human intelligence, and our collective ability to create a better world. America was born out of the Enlightenment, and Enlightenment ideals permeate our way of thinking to this day.

At this point I have to personalize my explanation of secular nirvana, because while I’m certain their are common elements to this belief system, I’m by no means confident in my ability to demarcate which elements are more universal vs which are more particular to me. Anyway, I grew up assuming that we Americans, along with democratic leaders around the world, were in the process of perfecting a form of government separated from religion whereby citizens could believe in whatever religion or gods they wanted, including none at all. In this world, god and religion truly would be optional, and some would consider god anachronistic while others used god and religion to bolster their sense of wellbeing…all while the levers of governmental power were safely secured away from any and all such belief systems. Within this worldview, I grew up Christian and maintained some version of my faith throughout…but also viewed that as something of a personal choice. Regardless, I genuinely believed 1) more of the world was moving toward democracy, 2) through democracy we would achieve lasting peace, 3) people would be able to pursue their interests and passions without unnecessary intervention by others, and 4) these governments would be permanently secured by enlightened technocrats elected by an enlightened electorate.

Unfortunately, I underestimated how badly people really need to believe in God or, in the absence of God, a god. What’s fairly clear to me, looking out at the world around me, is that 1) over the course of my lifetime people have abandoned religion in favor of increasingly agnostic worldviews, and 2) most folks have unknowingly subscribed to unofficial religions (take just two examples: the pursuit of wealth and it’s opposite in Marxism). Secular nirvana doesn’t account for this deeply human need to place our ultimate and fundamental faith in something and that, in the absence of a belief in God, people will find secular pursuits to fill the hole left behind.

As a result, I grossly overestimated our ability to act rationally. This affects the capacity of both the enlightened technocrat as well as the enlightened electorate to fulfill their roles. When we worship at the altar of money or the government or “the science” or education, we grow attached to a particular idea or worldview, calcifying our understanding of the world and restricting our ability to react flexibly to circumstances as they evolve. To a large degree, the increasing acrimony we see in the world today is the result of different false gods failing, causing people to react poorly and defend those false gods with increasing fervor.

In the case of secular nirvana, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we were not, in fact, moving toward a permanently enlightened world. So far as I can tell, those who held onto that view most strongly tend to blame Donald Trump and his party. To be fair, Donald Trump is very much taking a battering ram to the idea we are building toward secular nirvana. The problem is that we were never in fact building toward secular nirvana anyway. Unfortunately, those who unconsciously believe in the secular nirvana hypothesis are experiencing an assault on their false god, and are reacting accordingly. To be clear, I am not elevating Donald Trump as some form of savior, nor suggesting his party does not worship their own false gods; I just mean to highlight that Trump’s voters generally do not appear to subscribe to the secular nirvana thesis.

And so, now we watch what happens when a critical mass of society experiences their false god under attack. So far, the reaction most closely parallels that of cult followers. When cult followers find that their leader’s predictions (for example, of the world ending on a specific date) those followers counterintuitively tend to increase their fealty to the cult; their identities have become so entwined with the cult that losing faith in the cult would create an identity crisis, and so they double down on their cult identity in the face of increasingly obvious evidence against the cult’s beliefs. Similarly, the secular nirvana crowd increasingly disproves their own thesis by behaving in increasingly undemocratic and unenlightened ways, because their identities have become too entwined with their belief that we were building toward secular nirvana.

I’ve come to believe that secular nirvana is something of a modern day Tower of Babel. The book of Genesis tells a story of people attempting to build a tower that would reach heaven, and God punishes them for their effort. My interpretation of the story is that God takes exception to full scale efforts to replace God, and secular nirvana represents nothing if not a full scale effort to replace God. I don’t necessarily mean that God is punishing us as a result, more that our efforts were inevitably doomed to fail spectacularly, and we are beginning to see that failure play out.

So…what does this mean for me? I’m not entirely clear. There is only so much one can do to convince the cult member that their leader is a charlatan and that they have been duped. As far as I can tell, one can only 1) protect oneself from the cult and 2) be prepared to come to the aid of those prepared to renounce their cult association. So it is with secular nirvana: I can only attempt to protect myself, and you guys, from the ugliness increasingly playing out around us, and 2) prepare to welcome those who are willing to acknowledge they were wrong.

The good news is that people are waking up. Alas, I always wish it could go faster. The challenge, I think, is maintaining faith that everything is as it should be, that I am where I am supposed to be, and that I have everything I need available to me. From there, I can trust that my needs will be met as the situation unfolds, and that I will know what actions to take when the time is right. Here’s hoping.

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest. I needed that.

I love you.

Love,

Dad

May 27, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

During my third journey, there was a point where I sat at the intersection of light and dark. I felt a tremendous amount of tension, and recognized that light and dark were in the process of pulling apart. I understood in that moment we, each individually, were going to have to choose whether we would insist on holding onto the dark parts within us; if so, those dark parts would pull us down an increasingly dark path. The only other option was to let go of the dark parts, to let more light flow through.

Part of the solution, I began to understand, was creating at the intersection between light and dark. Letting the darkness surface would allow us to see it, recognize it, and let it go. And letting the light enable creation would unleash more beauty than we would be able to summon otherwise.

One of the primary benefits of writing these letters to you has been the implied encouragement to be my best self. An author I follow encourages writing with a specific audience (ideally one or two people) in mind. He observed in himself that when he tries to write for a generic audience (e.g. everyone) what emerges is drivel. I would struggle similarly if I attempted to write for everyone. For me, writing the two of you encourages me to write from the place of my higher self. You two don’t care about the petty inconveniences I experience. By the time you read these letters, the temporary, small, petty encounters to which my ego attaches will be long dead and meaningless. If I want the two of you to get anything meaningful from these writings, they have to capture something more timeless. Moreover, being your dad is the role that most inspires me to be my best self. So writing the two of you encourages me to put down my petty interests and focus on the things that really matter.

Part of what I wonder, as I write, is whether my attempt to write as my best self impedes my ability to access certain thoughts and breakthroughs. I honestly don’t know, but somehow feels related to something I want (need?) to explore.

I’ve alluded to this before, but I feel a strange, unpleasant energy these days. It’s part of why I’ve struggled sleeping: I feel an energy I can’t place, but don’t like and don’t know what to do with. And, as I’ve mentioned previously, I see evidence that others are experiencing similar energy all around me. To add to examples I’ve cited previously, I recently learned a close friend of ours has stage four colon cancer. Now, when someone is looking around for examples of the color blue, they will find lots and lots of blue in their lives; when they look for the color red, they will stop noticing nearly as much blue and will start noticing red instead. So my sensing an energy and being on the lookout for examples of it almost certainly becomes self-reinforcing. And yet, I’m fairly convinced something is afoot.

None of this is particularly new territory, and indeed I’m somewhat confused and surprised that I feel sorta compelled to revisit what feel like topics I’ve already covered. But there seems to be something here I need to unpack, perhaps something I haven’t seen or uncovered before.

Some of what I see merely feels like a continuation of past themes. Several times I’ve invoked the idea of a coming storm. To some degree these newer developments feel like the beginning of the storm, as the rain begins and the waves begin to surge. Unfortunately I believe we are at the beginning of the storm, and have a long way to go.

Perhaps part of the point is just to reiterate some of what I have already explored, and to suggest we appear to be right on track: the storm is arriving, and the way to navigate the storm, primarily, is to let go of the darkness within us, so that it doesn’t take us permanently down the dark path. The path to doing so, counterintuitively, appears to be steering into the storm.

I mentioned before that I have a couple friends going through the early stages of divorce. Assuming these divorces proceed, you are likely to remember them: these are families with kids you enjoy getting to see periodically. Directionally, my sense in both marriages is that the couples are being invited to “steer into the storm” and let the storm identify and rip away the things that are meant to be let go. In the process, each individual has the opportunity to experience renewal as an individual, and from that place they have the opportunity to experience renewal as a couple. In both situations, my overarching sense is that at least one party is attempting to avoid the invitation to experience renewal, and would prefer to blame the other party for whatever unhappiness they are experiencing. The outcome is pursuit of divorce rather than the pursuit of renewal. I’m pretty convinced that those pursuing divorce are, at best, kicking the can down the road: they are attempting to steer around or away from the storm, not recognizing that the storm will continue its pursuit regardless. In this context, I’m pretty convinced the internal demons fomenting divorce will continue leaving a wake of destruction unless and until my friends find the strength to surrender those demons.

And therein lies part of my struggle: my sense that, by holding onto their demons, my friends are spreading suffering unnecessarily. Whether they eventually surrender their demons or not, these folks are hurting themselves, their partners, and their kids by pursuing divorce without pursuing renewal first. [To be clear: I’m open to the possibility that these folks could experience renewal and, as a result, decide to divorce; I just don’t think that’s what’s happened in these cases.] And I think these specific cases serve as microcosms for my broader struggle: the sense that we are engaging in the spread of unnecessary suffering precisely because we’re unwilling to let go of the demons that create the suffering.

I most definitely have hope, even if I think thing are likely to get substantially worse before they start to noticeably improve. Eventually, people get tired of suffering: this has been a pretty universal theme amongst the stories of spiritual journeys I’ve encountered. This period of suffering is already creating an increase in the number of people looking for new answers in new places.

Unfortunately, most people I encounter seem to be nowhere near ready to admit their egos have failed them. Like the girl in the walkway, we have to be willing to admit that we ourselves (or, more accurately, parts of ourselves) are the problem before we can begin to identify and pursue strategies that might reduce our frustration and suffering. But also like the girl in the walkway, until we are willing to accept the invitation to change, we are doomed to experience different versions of the same frustration repeatedly. I see a world filled with different versions of the girl in the walkway, and wish there was something I could do to help.

Of course, folks initiating divorce are no longer just the girl in the walkway. The girl in the walkway appeared stuck, trapped in a prison of her own design. But beyond her expressions of exasperation, her suffering was her own. Divorce is an action that begins to spread suffering, and perhaps that is part of my concern: I am seeing folks transitioning away from suffering in isolation but beginning to spread their suffering. I very much see the current rise of communism (and populism more broadly) as born of the same energy as my friends’ divorces: internal demons hijacking individual and collective behavior in an attempt to avoid the coming storm, leaving a wake of destruction and suffering behind.

I have long known (or, at least, strongly suspected) that the coming storm would lead many folks to flee, and increase suffering (theirs and others) as a result. Now that we’re here, I find it harder to witness than perhaps I anticipated.

The good news, to the extent I have some, is that I think the solutions are pretty clear. The masculine energy in each of us has to find the will to set boundaries and say ‘no’ to bad behavior. To be incredibly clear: those boundaries have to come from a place of love, and an ability to separate the action (‘what you did was not okay’) and the potential implication (‘you are not okay’). It’s quite clear to me that most of the boundaries we try to set come from a place of ‘how dare you?’, which is just an extension of ‘you are not okay’. People subconsciously feel and know the difference between boundaries backed by ‘you are loved, but your action was not okay’ and ‘how dare you? what is wrong with you? you are not okay’. Those who can have to learn to set loving boundaries.

And then the feminine energy in each of us has to submit to the experience of renewal. We need to experience some ego death, some surrender, some letting go. We have to let our bodies and souls conspire with the universe to identify where our demons lie in order that we might let them go. When done at scale, we will see something of a mass awakening, where we will experience renewal individually, as families, as institutions, as nations, and as a species. We will process a tremendous amount of grief in a relatively short amount of time (at least by historical standards). And, as a result, we will interact with each other with far more understanding, empathy, and trust. We will release our need to control and manipulate each other, and we will begin to discover and appreciate just how much of our energy (both individually and collectively) went into controlling and manipulating each other. In the process, we will free up a tremendous amount of human energy to pursue more meaning and purpose than at any time in recorded human history.

But the experience won’t be universal. Many will cling to their egos and the internal demons directing those egos. They will continue to exist in a prison of their own making. To the extent possible, their internal demons will look to imprison others and solidify the prison’s security. They will absolutely retain their right to suffer, and to spread suffering to others. But those willing to set clear boundaries will discover the ability to limit the scope and spread of the suffering, and create safe spaces for those willing to experience renewal.

What I am describing is likely to take not just years, but decades or potentially even a few generations. What this implies is that you are likely to come of age in a world that sees more darkness unleashed than at any time in at least 80 years, and likely much longer than that. You are unlikely to know firsthand the level of ego domination that led to this spread of darkness and suffering. Your generation is unlikely to be captured by your egos to the degree that my generation (and the generations before) were. The implied good news is that the suffering will diminish as those who are controlled by their egos (and, thus, their inner demons) die off, and the generations who grew up outside of prison (or, at least, with more porous prison cells) come of age. The better news is that the old among us are by no means condemned to die in a state of suffering: I am living testimony of the potential for renewal. I am far from the only existing example, and the examples are only going to expand with time.

For me, this is largely a reminder to steer into the storm. I’m aware of this invitation, but find myself resisting nonetheless. Writing these letters is part of my conscious attempt to combat the resistance, and I’m curious to see where they lead me.

I have a friend who has an exciting business opportunity in front of him. As far as I can tell, everything is pretty well lined up for him to take action…only he hasn’t. He’s afraid, mostly for generic reasons (e.g. this particular business opportunity doesn’t appear to expose him to a lot of financial risk, even if it does expose him to feeling more alive at his job). This friend and I enjoy hearing about each others’ adventures, partly because we see ourselves in each other. I wish I could say I understood what opportunity I’m resisting as well as I understand my friend’s. But isn’t that the inevitable truth: it’s much easier to diagnose what others should do, and much harder to diagnose what we ourselves should do.

And so, though these letters only help me chip away one portion at a time, they do help me clarify my thinking. If nothing else, they appear to be decluttering my head a little, which makes space for new inspiration.

A friend of mine gave me a quote (which I think he attributed to David Whyte): if you look down and see a path, it’s not your path. There comes a point in the spiritual journey that feels like hacking away through the jungle: you have a vague sense of where you are going and why, but cannot see the path and could not explain to a skeptic why you need follow said path. That’s a little how I feel these days, and today in particular. This letter doesn’t uncover any grand insights, but it does help me hack through another step in the jungle.

I love you both.

Love,

Dad

May 21, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

I’ve not slept well the last week or so. I’m not entirely sure why. Some of it may have to do with the weather: it’s been hot this past few days, and I often struggle to sleep when the temperature is too warm. But I suspect the primary reason is probably that the Spurs are making a deep playoff run.

Even as I write this, you are both well aware that your dad is a huge fan of the Spurs. What you probably don’t know is the story of how that came to be. I figure now is as good a time as any to share that story.

I grew up in northeast Texas, a couple hours east of Dallas. My original teams in professional sports were all Dallas teams: the Cowboys, the Rangers, and the Mavericks. I’m still very much a Cowboys fan (again, as you already know). I stopped following the Rangers years ago, because my MLB fandom declined forever after the 1994 strike ended the season abruptly, without crowing a champion. That was the year my interest in baseball peaked and a season that was shaping up to be historic; I decided if neither the owners nor the players cared, why should I?

But in 1989, two things happened: my maternal grandparents moved to San Antonio and became Spurs fans, and David Robinson joined the team. At the time, I was a six-foot tall sixth grader who towered over my peers the way Robinson towered over his. Robinson blocked shots like crazy, and so did I. Robinson was an excellent scorer, and I fancied myself the same. Robinson brought elite athleticism to the center position, something I had never seen before. Other kids aspired to be Michael Jordan, but Michael Jordan was a guard and I was a center. I wanted to be David Robinson, and wore his number 50 for the rest of my basketball playing days.

I still remember the starting lineup from that year: Rod Strickland at the point, Sean Elliot and Willie Anderson at the wings, and Terry Cummings at power forward. That team was fun to watch. I still don’t understand how that team never made any real noise in the playoffs (they won 55+ games twice, but never advanced past the second round with that core group of guys). I wasn’t a mature enough fan to have a perspective regarding what was missing from that team. But I liked them, and I enjoyed following them.

Then the Mavericks fell into a historic state of disrepair. Over the next nine seasons the team averaged 22 wins, and set what were then records for most losses and worst winning percentage in NBA history. They were practically impossible to watch and root for as an adolescent, and I don’t recall any of my friends being big Mavs fans. Most of my friends just rooted for good teams. I was the only one I knew who rooted for San Antonio.

I went to college in San Antonio. The Spurs were not part of the decision, but were a happy benefit. The liberal arts school I attended (Trinity University) didn’t have a ton of basketball fans, and most students weren’t from San Antonio and thus didn’t root for the Spurs anyway. My point being: even though I went to college where the Spurs played, I was still one of the only Spurs fans I knew.

The summer of 1999 was pretty special, both for me and for my Spurs fandom. To bolster my resume with some professional experience, I got an internship working at the San Antonio branch of the Federal Reserve bank of Dallas, where I co-wrote a paper analyzing the South Texas economy. The internship was unpaid, so I got a job waiting tables at night to pay for my apartment and help me save up some spending money for the school year. My girlfriend at the time also stayed in San Antonio, along with several other friends. I was experiencing a lot of new things while secure on a foundation of familiarity thanks to the location (I had completed three years of college in San Antonio by this point) and having some friends around.

The best part of spending that summer in San Antonio, though, was getting to experience a Spurs’ playoff run in the city. I couldn’t believe what I witnessed. Downtown skyscrapers (or what pass for skyscrapers in San Antonio) hung (or in one case, wrapped their entire buildings with) huge signs reading “Go Spurs Go”. Signs and flags popped up in homes and offices all over town. Seemingly half the cars in town had Spurs flags raised from the front windows. The energy in the city was palpable.

Perhaps best of all, I was working with people who were from San Antonio, and who loved the Spurs as much as I did. The mood at work (and especially at the Fed, where more of the folks were locals) was electric. I’ll never forget when one coworker, a wonderful woman who informally took to looking after me that summer, casually said “we’re going to win it all this year”. Until she said it, I hadn’t considered the possibility. But she said it with such confidence that it stuck with me.

The Spurs had a good record that year, but it had been a strike shortened season. The league played a brutally compact 50-game schedule, forcing teams to play games on more nights with less rest than normal. The Spurs compiled a 37-13 record (good for a 60+ win pace), but it was hard to tell how real that was. The Spurs’ best player that year was no longer David Robinson, but Tim Duncan playing in only his second year. And just a few years earlier, the Spurs put together the best record in the league, only to be embarrassed in the playoffs by Hakeem Olajuwon and the Rockets. So I was by no means as confident as my coworker, but I at least took note and started looking for clues.

A week or two later I took advantage of the long Memorial Day weekend and attended a game. Back then the Spurs played in the Alamodome, a football stadium. They put a tarp roughly down the 50-yard line and assembled a basketball court on one half of the football field. They erected makeshift grandstands in front of the tarp, but otherwise fans sat in seats designed for watching football. It wasn’t a great basketball venue (despite hosting some of the largest crowds in NBA history), but it offered one critical benefit for a poor college student: upper deck tickets were cheap. I purchased $8 tickets for my girlfriend and me. We were actually stationed behind the tarp, with an excellent view of the unused half of the football field; but we were so far away that we still had an unobstructed view of the court.

The Spurs were playing the Portland Trail Blazers, the team I thought might be the best in the NBA that year. The Spurs had won game one, but weren’t giving the fans much to root for in game 2. The Spurs trailed 48-34 at halftime, and were thoroughly outplayed that half. I remember heading to the restroom while grasping for signs of hope; Sean Elliot had played pretty well, but otherwise I could’t find much reason for optimism.

The Spurs hung around in the second half and got close a couple of times, but each time the Trail Blazers responded with a run of their own. The Spurs were down six with a minute to play, a situation that felt pretty hopeless unless the Spurs found a way to deploy Sean Elliot’s hot hand.

Well, Elliot hit a three to cut the lead to three. After a stop, Mario Ellie got fouled and sank two free throws to cut the lead to one. The Spurs fouled Damon Stoudamire, who sank one of two free throws to push the lead to two. The Spurs called timeout with twelve seconds to play. At this point I had long since given up on the Spurs winning; this just didn’t feel like their day. I knew they technically had a chance, but I sorta couldn’t imagine them pulling it off.

What happened next is the stuff of San Antonio lore. The Spurs inbounded the ball to Sean Elliot who, thanks to a defender flying by, caught the ball very near the sideline. He pivoted with his toes inbounds, but with his heels hovering over the sideline: if he put his heels down, he would have been out of bounds for a turnover. But he never put his heels down. He never looked at anything other than the basket. David Robinson stood wide open at the rim; Elliot ignored him and let the ball fly.

Elliot scored, and what happened next I will never forget so long as I live. Absolute, utter pandemonium. The Trail Blazers called a timeout, and the PA system started playing a song. But the place was so loud, I couldn’t make out the song for over a minute; I could only hear the beat (the song turned out to be “YMCA”). I was high-fiving strangers in the crowd. I was delirious, and so was everyone else in the building.

The Spurs put together a smothering stop to end the game, and we filed out of the stadium in a state of bliss. I drove home past cars honking and Spurs signs everywhere, savoring one of my favorite memories as a sports fan. With a 2-0 lead in the Western Conference finals, and having ripped the hearts out of the Trail Blazers by stealing game 2, I suddenly began to believe the Spurs might really win.

Well, they did win. The swept the Trail Blazers (I really do think that game 2 loss carried over into games 3 and 4; they were too good to get swept, even by that Spurs team) and went on to beat an overachieving Knicks team in the Finals 4-1.

I was waiting tables during game five, so I knew the Spurs won but didn’t watch the game closely (although I definitely snuck into the restaurant bar, along with several other wait staff, to catch parts of the game – including the ending). After my shift I was so excited the Spurs won that I just wanted to celebrate with other Spurs fans. All I could think was to drive downtown, assuming I could find some fans on the Riverwalk.

I never made it to the Riverwalk. Once I got to downtown, the streets turned into a parking lot. Cars everywhere just honked and celebrated. I’m not sure I travelled a mile over the course of the next hour (not because I didn’t try, but just because there was nowhere to go). I didn’t care: I had found my people. It may not have been exactly the celebration I sought, but it felt perfect as it unfolded.

After college I moved to Austin, where there were few Spurs fans back then (there are more now). Two years later I moved to Phoenix, where there were even fewer. By the time I moved to Phoenix, online news articles became available. For the first time, I could read about the prior day’s Spurs games without a subscription to the San Antonio newspaper (impractical when living in other cities). I distinctly remember wasting work days each spring devouring any and all articles I could find the day after a satisfying win. I remember feeling like I could sense the years when the Spurs would win. The Spurs won three titles in a five year span between 2003-2007, and were close enough in the other two years that I can name the plays that effectively eliminated them (Derek Fisher’s shot with 0.4 in 2004 and Manu’s foul on Dirk in 2006).

The Spurs remained competitive over the next several years, with Tim Duncan aging just enough that the team slowly turned the reigns over to Manu Ginobili and then Tony Parker. By 2012 the team started getting close again; in another strike-shortened season, the Spurs ripped off wins in their first ten playoff games, sparking my favorite sportswriter at the time to start pondering where they would rank among the all-time great teams. Unfortunately, the Spurs lost their next four games to the outrageously young but talented Thunder. In 2013 the Spurs made it back to the NBA Finals against what seemed like a juggernaut Miami Heat team. What I remember most about that Finals was game 6. I was at a networking event when my phone started blowing up with text messages from high school friends that the Spurs were about to win. The Spurs had a 3-2 series lead, and were ahead 94-89 with 28 seconds to play. I started tracking the game on my phone, partially ignoring the dinner conversation going on around me. LeBron made a three, then Kawhi missed one of his two free throws; I remember this being the first indication something wasn’t quite right. I only found out later that, after an ensuing timeout, Pop left Timmy on the bench, and that Chris Bosh jumped over smaller defenders to secure a rebound, and that Ray Allen hit that incredible shot backpedalling back to the corner. At that point, all I knew was that the Heat tied the game, and that the Spurs were going into overtime.

I still appreciate that team for remaining competitive, both through the overtime in game 6, and throughout game seven. I’ll never forget Timmy missing a bunny over Shane Battier with about a minute to go in game 7. More than the miss, it’s Timmy’s reaction I’ll never forget: Miami called a timeout, and Timmy slammed his hands into the floor with all his might. He was distraught. At that point the Spurs, at least in theory, still had time to win. I don’t know if Timmy gave up, or if Timmy knew. But the air went out of the Spurs, as if they had spent every last drop of emotional reserve they could muster, but couldn’t muster any more after that miss.

The 2014 team was apparently pretty special. I say “apparently” because that was the year your mom and I moved to Singapore, and I missed almost the entire season. But to this day, sportswriters wax poetic about how that 2014 was one of the most aesthetically pleasing of all time. I’ve seen clips, and they passed and moved and shot with such pace that it really was beautiful to watch. I took a day off of work to watch the closeout game, when the Spurs exacted revenge on the Heat. At that point both teams knew the Spurs were the better team, and it was only a matter of time before the dam burst. It didn’t take long, and a game highlighted by a Manu throwback dunk (he was almost 37, after all) and an insane 90-second barrage of 3s from the bench mob unit buried the Heat for good. Just like I had a decade earlier, I scoured the internet for every article I could find that helped me enjoy my celebration of the Spurs championship.

At that point I knew how lucky I was to be following a team with such an extended run. Fifteen straight years of excellence isn’t supposed to happen in the NBA. I knew eventually the run would end, but decided to cherish what remained. I even subscribed to NBA league pass that next season to watch games from Singapore. That team didn’t have much postseason success, but I enjoyed watching the games regardless. I was on borrowed time with that team.

Sure enough, things slowly unraveled. Kawhi emerged as a great player in the league, capable of anchoring a championship caliber team. Even with Duncan’s retirement, it looked like the Spurs might pull off the impossible and remain relevant for the foreseeable future. Alas, Kawhi had some bad injury luck and decided he wanted out of San Antonio. Teams in the NBA don’t replace stars like that, and Kawhi’s departure spelled the beginning of the end for that run of excellence. The Spurs fought proudly for a few more years before admitting defeat and tearing the team down for a full rebuild.

There were some lean years but, honestly, the Spurs got about as lucky as they could have. They missed the playoffs in ’20, ’21, and ’22, but were close each time. They didn’t go into full teardown until ’23. And that’s the year that changed everything. They won a draft featuring a truly generational player, a guy that legitimately looks like he could go down as not only an all-time great, but compete for the GOAT title. It’s way too early to make projections, but the Spurs got insanely lucky landing Victor Wembanyama in the draft.

The luck didn’t end there. The Spurs managed to draft probably the best player in a weak 2024 draft with the fourth pick to get Steph Castle, and then lucked into the second pick in a loaded 2025 lottery to get Dylan Harper.

I’ve started subscribing to League Pass again, just because I want to watch as much of Wemby’s career trajectory as I possibly can. I’m old enough to know what I might be watching, and really want to watch as long as he remains on the trajectory I think he’s on.

Which brings us to this year. Prediction markets had the Spurs pegged to win 40-43 games, depending on where you looked. Assuming they stayed reasonably healthy, I expected the Spurs to beat those projections. But even I never could have anticipated what I watched this season: the Spurs put together a 62 win season (one of the best in the franchise’s storied history) while all the young talent dramatically outperformed expectations.

And now, here we are, in the playoffs again for the first time in seven years. I had almost forgotten how much the playoffs mess with my nervous system. Teams inevitably lose games, and these series are short enough that losing a single game can start to worry you that your season might soon be over.

Based on their record, one would have predicted this Spurs team to win their first two playoff rounds before losing to the Thunder. Well, so far that prediction would be on track. The team won their first two rounds (again, not without some drama) and are now locked in a battle for the opportunity to go the NBA Finals. They won game one and lost game two. Based on what I saw in those two games, if both teams were healthy I would feel pretty great about the Spurs’ chances to win the series. But multiple Spurs players are now nursing injuries that sound likely to prevent them from playing altogether, or best case limit their effectiveness. I never expected the Spurs to win in this round, but watching them win game one I suddenly realized they absolutely have the ability to win, and so now it will hurt terribly if they lose.

Of course, it would have hurt terribly either way. The NBA playoffs are like that. Your weaknesses get exposed in ways that are excruciatingly uncomfortable, and you fight tooth and nail to play to your strengths and limit or hide your weaknesses. But worthy opponents expose your weaknesses; sometimes those weaknesses come as a surprise, sometimes they have long been known and you just hope you can survive through them. Those brutal losses hurt dreadfully, but they serve as gifts: they tell teams, in no uncertain terms, exactly where they need to improve in order to get better.

This particular Spurs team was never supposed to get this far this fast. They are way, way ahead of schedule. And it’s an almost ironclad rule in the NBA that teams have to suffer painful losses in the playoffs before they can come back in future years and win. Part of what has made this team so special is they make you suspend the disbelief that they are too young to win, and that they have to lose before they can win. Maybe they do, but these guys are so good they make you wonder if they might be the first to ever break through on their first real chance; that sense of wonder and awe is worthy of gratitude just by itself.

Zooming back out, there are a couple parting thoughts I want to explore. The first is just how lonely my Spurs fandom has been overall. As I mentioned before, I didn’t grow up around Spurs fans, I didn’t go to college around Spurs fans, and other than one brief and immortal summer in 1999, I haven’t really lived among and interacted regularly with Spurs fans.

One of the benefits of social media is that you are able to find communities of people with like interests. Nowadays I often go on X to celebrate with fellow Spurs fans, scratching the itch I used to scratch by reading articles online the following morning. Only now I can celebrate immediately with a sense of community after a game, and then look into deeper analysis the next day. And my fandom has won some converts along the way. You two are helpfully rooting for the Spurs alongside me. My dear friend, whom we affectionately call Uncle Regan, roots for the team at least in part because he’s my friend and he knows how much they mean to me. And your real Uncle, though he’s genuinely a Warriors fan, roots for the Spurs when they don’t play the Warriors, again at least partly as a show of affection to me. So I have more sense of community around my Spurs now than I have since that summer in 1999, and for that I’m grateful.

The bigger question I’ve been wrestling with this season has to do with attachment. There’s a concept I’ve been wrestling with: that pretty much everything we encounter in life is a gift from God, but once we become too attached to any of those gifts, they begin to get in the way of our relationship with God and the other gifts available to us. And so, when I watch the Spurs, I find myself constantly asking whether I have found the right balance. I truly love the team, and feel like watching them has been a gift. And as long as I watch with a sense of appreciation and gratitude and love, I am doing fine at maintaining that balance. But I’m constantly checking (and, I’ll admit, wondering) whether I’m crossing the line into attachment. I am competitive and emotional, and I would be silly to pretend otherwise. One thing I am starting to understand and accept is that one can be competitive and truly want to win without being attached to outcome. That might sound counterintuitive, but I think it’s true. Here, I think, is the distinction: ultimately we have to be able to differentiate between process and outcome. If we’ve tried our best, we have to be willing to honor that effort and accept whatever outcome. If, in those situation, losing hurts, that signals how we should use the loss as an opportunity to learn and improve. If we didn’t try our best, we can learn the value of putting our best effort into something, discovering how much more it hurts to fall short because of a lack of effort.

Obviously, when it comes to the Spurs, I don’t have a lot of influence on outcomes. And yet I care, pretty deeply. I’ll be curious to know if I ever feel a sense of attachment or a call to surrender that attachment. As of now, I sense the Spurs have more to teach me, presumably about living in the discomfort of uncertainty. If I could will the Spurs to victory, I most certainly would. But I don’t think it works that way. So I try to watch my team from a place of love, wanting to see them grow and improve and reach their potential, presumably because I want the same for myself. Perhaps therein lies the learning opportunity. I’m not entirely sure, but having written this note, the places I intend to explore are how sitting in discomfort can help me in other areas of life, and how I can pursue my full potential knowing I might “lose” on occasion.

I love you both. Thank you for watching the Spurs with me. Whether you continue to follow the Spurs, or any other team, I do hope you find something you care enough about to put your whole self into, even (and in fact especially) if you risk the crushing disappointment of failure.

Love,

Dad

May 18, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

There’s a topic I’ve wanted to write about for at least a week now. Each day a different topic popped up and convinced me to write about it that day instead. Today I have no such distraction, and yet I seem to be finding different excuses not to write. I’m starting this letter an hour or two later than normal, and I think it’s at least in part because I’m procrastinating. I didn’t think this was a topic I had resistance to exploring, but perhaps I do. Let’s flush it out and see what we find.

The topic at hand is social media, and in particular X. You are both well aware that I enjoy consuming content on X, and in fact you both enjoy consuming some of that content with me: I flag content I think you will enjoy for us to watch together later. When I’m not watching with you, I use X to learn about new topics, stay abreast of what is going on in the world (I use X to keep up with news and current events the way prior generations used newspapers and the televised nightly news), and connect with other fans of my favorite teams. What changed, recently, was that I decided to become not just a consumer of content, but a participant in the discussion.

I’ve long feared the potential ramifications of engaging online, and so I stayed on the sidelines. But…ah, okay, now I am beginning to notice the avoidance. I touched on some of this last week, but this deserves a slightly deeper dive. For awhile I’ve had ideas (dreams? ambitions? visions?) of being something of a content producer. Indeed, I make these letters public so that others might consume them and benefit. I’ve had other ideas: I’ve considered starting a podcast, of creating a group in addition to Spiritual Stew that gives me more of a platform to speak. Underpinning all of this is a general sense that I have something to offer, and that there will be an audience for what I have to say if and when I can find the right combination of media and voice. I’ve written about this before, but I had one vision where I was something of a revivalist minister. Ever since that vision I’ve held the sensation that it represented some version of my future.

So, why do I feel resistance? If these are all topics I’ve explored before in this space, why am I avoiding exploring those topics today? If I were attempting to summarize, past mentions of these topics put those concepts out in some future, sometimes even expressing frustration that I felt stuck and wanted to get unstuck. I suspect the difference between those notes and today is primarily that I these ideas suddenly feel upon me, without the distance I’ve felt before. For whatever reason, things are starting to feel real, and that’s a little scary.

How does this tie back to social media? Well, I’ve always assumed I would need a social media presence to get my ideas out into the world. I’d even spent some time thinking about how I would go about creating, crafting, and cultivating that presence. Each time I thought about it, I always assumed I’d create some anonymous identity whose sole purpose was creating awareness for my content. But that doesn’t make much sense: there’s virtually no way I’ll be able to keep my identity a secret and do what I feel called to do. Ugh.

For a long while I imagined creating this online persona, and what I might do with that persona. But the complexity of it all felt overwhelming, and so I never started. My breakthrough, to the extent I’ve had one, was giving up on the idea of creating a persona and just…engaging as me. Also, rather than using social media as a platform to get out a specific message or content, I’ve just engaged with topics that interest me. The overarching impact has been to remove mental barriers and expectations and just experimenting with putting stuff out there.

I’ve learned some stuff in the process. For one thing, I’m realizing I always assumed getting attention online was easy: just write an engaging tweet and it goes viral, right? Yeah, it’s not quite so easy. Some of my favorite posts have garnered no attention, which wounds my pride and feels isolating and lonely. This highlights a juxtaposition about social media: it can create an overwhelming amount of attention for certain people and topics, but it can also drown out almost all voices, such that most folks feel pretty unheard.

Engaging in others’ posts seems to be a more effective way of garnering awareness, at least so far. I suspect once one builds up enough of an “audience”, one can probably generate attention on one’s own posts. Until then, I might be better off participating in threads created by others. We’ll see: I’m experimenting, and I’m learning.

Which makes me realize: I wasn’t ready to create an online persona and get a message out. I needed to learn how to engage and participate and attract attention before I will be ready to use social media as a distribution platform. I need some practice, and so that’s what I am doing now.

But it’s not just about the practice. I’m not just engaging for the sake of creating a brand or distribution engine. I’m engaging in ways that feel genuine and authentic to me. For one thing, most of my engagement thus far has been related to my favorite sports teams. We’re in the NBA playoff, so a lot of my participation revolves around my beloved Spurs. Mostly I’ve celebrated wins with other Spurs fans, but I’ve also complimented Spurs’ opponents to their fans, and even (somewhat unintentionally) engaged in debates with other fanbases. My goal in all of these interaction has been to spread a little brightness and joy.

Interestingly, these efforts to spread light and joy seem to be working. Obviously celebrating wins with fellow fans is pretty easy, but other efforts seem to generate their own types of wins. I responded to a post from the Timberwolves team account in which they congratulated the Spurs on a series victory; I pointed out how much respect I had for their team, and how much I feared them because I respected them so much: that post generated more impressions (17k) and likes (0.4k) than anything else I’ve posted so far. In engaging with fans for other teams, I tried hard to give every response to my posts their most generous interpretations (not always completely successfully, I must admit). I worked hard to respond with kindness and empathy, even while setting some boundaries where appropriate. In a couple instances folks who I originally thought were “trolls” softened dramatically in their second responses once they realized I was being genuine and not intending to provoke them. These interactions reinforce something I’ve long suspected: something about the medium (and short form online communication in general) lends itself toward acrimony, and trains us all to believe the worst about each other. But, at least so far, I’m impressed how little effort one need apply to turning those assumptions around and replacing contentious interactions with meaningful, connecting interactions. Those feel like wins, even if small wins with small audiences.

Unrelated to the Spurs, I found myself engaged in an interesting and thoughtful debate on energy policy; I advocated for pursuing a broad array of solutions while an interlocutor advocated for minimizing pollutants and carbon emissions. After some back and forth, we discovered that our positions were not that far apart, even if we approached from different directions.

The post that required me to summon the most courage and grace was a response to a famous media personality. This person said something (not for the first time) pretty unseemly. After making clear I was a fan, I said “healthy people don’t act like this”. I went on to encourage that person to recognize that love is stronger than anger or hate. I expressed hope that they would let go of the pain that caused such outbursts, and wished them luck and for them to experience love. I sincerely doubt he saw my response, but a thousand people did; more importantly, this felt like a healthy form of boundary setting on my part.

In several of these interactions, but particularly the last example, I have maintained the sense that I was being the light in the storm. To some degree this makes sense: social media in general and X in particular have become sources and spreaders of darkness. But they don’t have to be: they can just as easily spread light, we just have to decide to utilize them that way. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t, but my recent engagement feels in alignment; it’s hard to describe or prove, but I just sense these posts connect with the idea of being the light in the storm, my visions more broadly, and my calling (or callings) generally.

I’d love to know what it all means, and where it’s all going. But demanding to know where it’s going keeps getting me stuck. Taking authentic steps, I am learning to trust, will lead me in the right direction. Hopefully I will look back and this journey will all make sense; it does not make sense right now. But, as a friend of mine said today: the first step is understanding and accepting that we are right where we are meant to be.

I love you both. Go Spurs Go.

Love,

Dad

May 15, 2026

Dear Leland,

I had a strange experience this morning that I want to unpack. We’ll see how I do: this may be hard for me to write about.

I went to yoga today. At the end of pretty much every yoga class, we lie flat on our backs in something of a meditative state. Normally I pretty much zone out, or just focus on the different parts of my body that ache and are stretching out in this final pose. At the end of a yoga class we’re usually pretty tired, so it’s not hard to go pretty deep in a meditative, calm state. Yoga typically requires enough of my focus that my mind can’t wander, such that by the time we lie on our backs, my mind has been quieted to the point where it effortlessly remains still.

Today was different. For whatever reason (and I don’t remember how it came to be – again, my mind was likely pretty blank up to this point) I suddenly envisioned speaking publicly. The circumstances weren’t totally clear, but the nearest approximation would be to suggest I was giving a eulogy at your funeral. Someone had murdered you, and I was standing on stage, speaking into a microphone in front of an audience about you and your death.

I found myself understanding something about the task at hand, and asking the audience for support. Related to what I discussed in yesterday’s letter to Everett, I understood that I was about to open myself up and let something go, and that I needed the audience’s support, protection, and grace to do what needed to be done. This was going to cut deep, and it was going to require a full team effort.

The task at hand was forgiveness. I was being called to forgive your killer. I started off by making clear that killing you wasn’t okay. I enumerated your great qualities (truth be told: I experienced this in shorthand. I am realizing, as I write this, that you deserve to have me enumerate those qualities explicitly. I will take this as an assignment to do so.)

The purpose of enumerating your great qualities, at least in this context, was to let your killer know what he had done. What beauty he had taken from the world. The full consequences of his actions. It was very important to me that the killer understood, in no uncertain terms, that his actions were not okay, and required change.

And then I forgave him.

The act of forgiving was not the climax of the experience. In fact, I don’t really remember that part of the experience. What really sticks out is what came next.

I proceeded to explain why I forgave him. Because light is more powerful than darkness. Because love is more powerful than fear or anger or hate. Because only in the face of everything, when that which is most precious gets taken from us, do we get to show our true colors. And from that place we can shine the brightest light the world can fathom.

And so, this forgiveness was not just letting the killer off the hook. This was a call to action. This was shining the full light of God onto him, so that he might see himself in stark relief. This was as clear an invitation as one could imagine to let that light in, to let it heal the wounds that led to the despicable act of killing you, and to become the version of himself he was always meant to be.

The alternative would have been challenging. That much light, channeled in his direction, would have taken great effort for your killer to avoid. Of course, one can always run away from the light. In this case, the path of doing so would have brought himself unimaginable pain and suffering, simply by virtue of the size and brightness of the light being brought onto him.

Channeling that light wasn’t just meant for the killer. It was also meant for those in attendance. They were experiencing more light than they had before. They were exposed to what it means to channel light in the darkness, that they might find the strength to do the same when their time came. I think it was also meant to lay in stark contrast the difference between the light and the dark, to invite everyone to lean into the light while beginning to comprehend the potential costs of hiding in the dark.

When the class ended, my face was covered in tears. Someone turned the lights on as I sat processing what I had just experienced. I found myself still wanting to feel the depth of that emotion. An older woman came over to talk to me. I looked up at her, somewhat horrified at what she would say when she saw my face. She proceeded to give me some advice on how to improve one of my poses; she seems to enjoy giving advice as a way of connecting with other participants in class. If she noticed my face, she betrayed nothing; no part of her expression changed when I looked at her. I proceeded to wipe the snot away from my lips and nose with the sleeve of my shirt, and went on with my day.

What does it mean? F*** if I know. I think on some level that’s what I wanted to explore with this letter.

The one thing that seemed clear to me right away was that you are about the most precious thing in my life. I would struggle with nothing more than losing you.

[Obviously, at this point I need to interject and leave a note for Everett. The prior paragraph in no way implies that I love your brother more than you. It simply means that my relationship with Leland is simpler, cleaner, and easier for me. Your brother reminds me of your mom, but he also reminds me of my sister and my dad. I’ve been with versions of Leland my whole life, to the point where I almost feel incomplete without them. Leland looks like me, and he has a few characteristics that remind me of myself. But most of the time, Leland reminds me of people I love, not myself.

You are different. You remind me of me every day. Your energy level. Your enthusiasm. Your musicality. Your laugh. The way you swing from high highs to low lows emotionally. And perhaps most of all, the sense that you are so eager to be loved by those around you that you really struggle to know who you are.

See, the idea of losing you gets complicated. Not that it would hurt any less, but it would hurt in a profoundly different way. I would struggle with existential questions, I would wrestle with the meaning of your being and what it implied about my own. Losing you would confuse me, and I would spend a lot of time rediscovering my identity as I metabolized your loss.

My point being: for the lessons this experience was meant to teach, Leland served the better avatar. Losing you would cut no less deep, but it would require me to wrestle with my own identity in ways that would have confused the lesson I believe I was meant to learn today.

And what is that lesson? Well, if you’ll stop interrupting me, that’s what I’m trying to figure out!]

Where was I? Oh, right: Leland, there’s just something clean about my relationship with you, at least to this point. Which does make me wonder: to what degree was today’s experience meant to prepare me for what is to come? As you grow older, you are almost certainly going to need me less. And dads and sons tend to butt heads when the sons reach adolescence (as far as I can tell, this is something of a mammalian truth that extends beyond humans). Was today meant to help me say goodbye to the relationship we’ve had? I think that’s part of it, but not all.

Because that doesn’t explain the eulogy. That doesn’t explain my sense of the need to forgive, and the extent to which I found myself gaining access to a light of love in the process of forgiveness. There was a ferocity to that light, one I found immensely powerful, but challenging to access and hold, even in that state of utter vulnerability and openness.

There was something profound in that part of the experience, and I think it signified something about how we can summon the light in times of darkness. It takes bravery, it takes courage, and it takes strength. It takes some sense of protection, security, and grace (as signified by asking the congregation for support; I sensed they would form something of a protective cocoon around me while I found what needed to be said). It takes a willingness to let go of those things that might be in the way; even those things most precious to us (like the desire to have back my cherished son). It takes a willingness to go to the deepest parts of ourselves, not knowing what we will find and terrified by the possibilities. All of these things I already knew and understood, even if this experience made the understanding all the more visceral. What was new today was experiencing the ferocity of that light and love. I wonder if I am for the first time understanding, at least to some degree, what Jesus meant when he said (in Matthew 10:34) “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Before I started this journey I’d always assumed experiencing the depth of God’s love would be peaceful. Along the way I learned that the process of surrendering to God was by no means always peaceful. And in conversation with others, I’ve come to realize how common my misconception was: many people assume the purpose of the spiritual journey is to achieve a sense of peace. Indeed, peace is certainly available at resting points on the journey; but peace is by no means the final stop.

Until recently I still believed that peace was the ultimate stopping point, that once we achieved some version of enlightenment we could permanently exist in a state of peace. I no longer believe this to be true. From what I can tell, waves of discomfort continue to rock us no matter how hard we try to avoid them. One thing that has come up in several of my spiritual conversations with fellow seekers is the idea of “steering into the storm”. My idea is that we spend our lives trying to steer around or away from certain storms, but there are some storms we simply must steer into. This idea is complicated and requires discernment. Not every storm is ours to steer into; ours are the storms we most wish to avoid but inherently understand we cannot (at least not forever). Those storms meant for us keep recurring until we steer into them. When we finally relent and steer in, those storms rip away those part of us we might be tempted to hoard and cherish too preciously. And then those storms yield to new discoveries that we would not have found without navigating the storm. In this way I’ve started to think that underlying our trauma and negative emotions are our sources of inspiration (almost like gifts we’re repeatedly unwilling to accept).

I’m still not entirely sure I’ve unpacked all there is to unpack from that experience. Often I need days or weeks, and sometimes even months or years, to realize the full significance of these types of experiences. But I wanted to share this one today, while it was fresh; I wanted you to experience alongside me as I attempted to digest and make meaning of the experience, so that you could see how the sausage gets made.

What I do know is that that experience was pretty powerful, to the point that I still (several hours later) feel the fatigue of someone who cried cathartically.

What I also know is that there was some significance to the ferocity I felt when channeling as much of God’s light as I could muster. This portion of the experience yields a learning for me to carry and savor and ponder, to be sure.

The experience (I’m tempted to call it a vision, but find myself reluctant only because I was growing used to those being a thing of the past) revisits a recurring theme in my current explorations, very much related to the idea of being the light in the storm. I seem to be learning, using different methods in different forums, what it means to be the light in the storm. I lean into these experiences precisely because they seem, well, almost preordained as part of my journey. As far as I can tell, these are lessons I am invited to learn, and it is just up to me whether or not I accept the invitation. I anticipate more to come on this topic in coming letters.

Okay, I think that is enough for today. If I discover more, I will share.

I love you. I am so glad I don’t have to say goodbye to you today. We’ll see if I treat you (or experience your presence) any differently as a result of this experience. I wouldn’t be surprised either way.

I love you.

Love,

Dad

May 14, 2026

Dear Everett,

I slept poorly last night, which leaves me torn about whether to write. On the one hand, I worry I’m not up for it today. But I noticed that when I tried to nap, the idea of this letter started formulating. It gave me a bit of inspiration, but also a bit of energy. Interestingly, this is not the topic I originally intended to cover today, and the idea for this letter didn’t occur to me until shortly before I lay down to nap. I suspect my being both knew I have neither the time nor energy to cover the original topic, but was helpfully able to propose an alternative at just the right time. Here goes.

Everett, this letter is primarily for and about you. Leland will get his mentions, because big brothers just do, don’t they?

You are not a fan of movies, and never have been. Even at halfway through your ninth year, you have a visceral distrust for movies. Your brother was originally far more scared of movies than I anticipated, so at first I assumed your fears just mimicked his. But your brother willingly watched the original Star Wars trilogy with me when he was five years old, whereas you absolutely panicked when we tried to watch with you at the same age. Ever since you’ve been far more afraid movies than Leland was at the same age.

I’ve never fully understood, nor learned to predict, what upsets you when watching a movie. At first I assumed it was violence. But you got scared (or at least upset) watching the early portions of kids’ movies, so that clearly wasn’t it. Sometimes it didn’t even seem as if anything in particular was happening in the scene; were you responding to drama in the music? I honestly don’t know. My best guess is (and, truly, this is just a guess) is that you empathize deeply with the characters in a show, and are deeply worried that you won’t be able to handle the big emotions that watching a movie will stir in you.

This creates something of a challenge in the family, because your brother particularly enjoys watching movies, to the degree where I find watching movies with him to be something of a bonding experience. Leland is a much more sophisticated movie consumer than I was at his age. After watching a handful of early Marvel (superhero) movies, he observed that the villain always seemed to be one of the hero’s friends at the beginning of the movie; this was a pattern I had not noticed, but on reflection was clearly a pattern in the movies we had watched. Another keen observation he made: that the musical soundtracks of movies often set the emotional tone for the scenes we watch in ways we otherwise might miss. [I once made this same observation, but at a much later age. I’ll never forget this: on rewatching Jurassic Park, near the end the main characters are all attempting to evade the velociraptors when the T Rex suddenly appears and eats one of the raptor pack. At this point there are still multiple velociraptors and a T Rex in an enclosed space with our protagonists, and all of these dinosaurs have shown their interest in eating these humans. I recognized that my instinct was to remain alert to the threat that the remaining dinosaurs might turn their attention to eating our beloved characters. At this point, the main theme of John Williams’ score kicks in, subtly and tacitly alerting us that the danger has passed. Subsequently, the velociraptors and T Rex attach each other, allowing our characters the opportunity to permanently escape to safety. It’s a marvelous trick of storytelling, but jarring once you notice it.] My overarching point is just that your brother not only likes watching movies; he seems to have something of a knack for deconstructing and analyzing the art of storytelling, which I find really interesting (perhaps because it’s a gift I do not possess).

One category of movie seems to work for you better than others: slapstick comedies. You seem to have an intuitive understanding that the characters are not getting hurt, and that the physical comedy is not meant to be taken too seriously. In fact, you often get the giggles when watching these types of comedies, and your laugh is infectious enough that it enhances everyone else’s enjoyment. And so, this past Christmas season, when your mom and I were in the mood to watch a movie together, your mom recommended the Will Ferrell movie Elf.

For most of the movie, this worked. You thoroughly enjoyed watching Will Ferrell play an overgrown elf, particularly in the early scenes when he was surrounded by the other (much smaller) elves.

And then.

At the emotional climax of the movie, the actor playing the main character’s father lashes out at the main character. The dad yells at the son. I don’t really recall what he yelled; my rough recollection was that the dad intimated he didn’t genuinely love the son and never would (but I might be wrong).

This scene completely set you off, to the degree I wonder what you will remember from the experience by the time you read this. You began screaming “Turn it off! Turn it off!”. When I didn’t immediately turn it off, you ran over to me and screamed at me from close range “Turn it off!”. I paused the movie, but this wasn’t enough; “I said turn it OFF!” you screamed. You were trying to make it clear that you would not calm down until I turned the movie off. Finally I said “Everett, I’m not going to do that; if your brother wants to finish the movie, he should get to do that. If you don’t want to watch, you and I can go in another room”. And so we did.

We went into my bedroom, partly because it has a chair I find comfortable. I gave you a little time to calm down, and most likely (though I’m not sure: it’s been a few months and my memory only recalls the most salient details) assured you that you were both loved and safe. Once you calmed down a bit, I wanted to understand what had set you off so badly, so that we could try to address it.

I started by asking if it was what the dad said that upset you. This was a bit of a softball question (of course it was what the dad said!) just meant to find some easy common ground and establish some empathy and understanding on my part. I proceeded to ask if you were afraid that your dad (e.g. me) would ever say something like that to you. To my surprise, you said no.

To be clear: my surprise is not some admission of guilt. I don’t feel like I’ve given you reason to feel unloved or unlovable, and I don’t believe I lash out at you often. But, in that moment, that seemed like the most plausible interpretation for why you might have been so upset.

Somewhat surprised, but grasping for other guesses, I asked “are you worried you might yell at someone you love like that someday?” To my surprise, your eyes just got very wide when I asked that question. You looked directly into my eyes and held my stare very carefully. Your eyes conveyed a sense of being completely exposed, feeling totally vulnerable.

I don’t remember exactly what I said. What I remember most of all was holding your gaze carefully the entire time I spoke. You were looking for reassurance as much as you were listening for it. I reminded you that you are a person with big emotions, and I assured you that it’s okay to feel big emotions. I pointed out that we have been working on tools for helping you handle your big emotions (and I give you a ton of credit; in many ways you are more emotionally mature than I was at your age: you know when you are upset, and have reliable tools you often use to process those emotions without taking your anger out on others). I told you that, despite those tools, there would likely be times when you would lash out at the people you loved. I said that lashing out at loved ones might hurt their feelings, but it didn’t make you a bad person; it just made you someone who temporarily couldn’t handle the emotions you were feeling. I said that the goal is to try to learn from those experiences; that we can’t take back how we have hurt other people’s feelings, but we can try to understand why we acted the way we did, and to try to learn from it and fix it so that we wouldn’t do it again.

During my whole monologue you looked more deeply into my eyes that I can recall on any other occasion (honestly, I can’t remember very many times anyone has looked that deeply into my eyes). As I spoke your eyes turned red and glistened. I felt sure, in that moment, that we were speaking to something you held deeply. I felt some level of optimism that we were healing something, or at least exposing you to the possibility of healing.

I found myself shocked (in fact, I remain shocked) by the sense you were holding onto a deep sense of shame about this aspect of yourself. I interpreted that you intuitively understood your capacity to hurt others, and that you didn’t like that about yourself. In retrospect, your attempts to shout the movie off feel like an attempt to shutter that part of yourself away. It never occurred to me an eight year old could feel this type of shame. It sorta makes me reconsider how we learn to hold trauma. I had mostly assumed that trauma was something stored from our own memories. But I sincerely doubt you have any memory of hurting anyone the way you were clearly afraid of hurting someone. Was this an intuitive understanding of the potential to hurt someone? Or were you harboring trauma you absorbed or even inherited. I don’t really know the answer, but find myself open to new possibilities in terms of where our shame and self-loathing originates.

In terms of advice, I hope you remember (even if only subconsciously) how we approached that experience. In terms of how we heal, and especially how we heal those deepest wounds and feelings of shame and unworthiness: we absolutely, positively must start from a position of grace. Too often we start by trying to correct the behavior, or telling each other why and how we are bad. To be clear, this exercise has to start with ownership, and a willingness to accept accountability for any wrong actions. But once someone has demonstrated their willingness to own their actions and, more importantly, their willingness to open themselves up in a place of vulnerability, it’s critical we lead with compassion and grace. Those deepest parts of ourselves need to feel loved, and will only reveal themselves when they learn to trust that they are loved and safe. Those we consider ‘evil’, those who hurt people gratuitously: they are so deeply wounded precisely because they got hurt when opening up those deepest parts of themselves.

When I say we must lead with compassion and grace, I mean self compassion too. We can heal ourselves (I know from experience), but we have to provide ourselves the compassion and grace to open ourselves up. From that place we can let go of the pain, trauma, shame, and self-loathing we carry. As far as I can tell, that process of opening up and letting go is the only sure path to healing. The details can vary: you can do it by yourself or you can be supported by family members, friends, therapists, ministers, coaches…or any number of gentle, trustworthy, compassionate folks. We develop an intuitive sense for which scenarios are safe for opening up, and which are not; it’s important to honor that discernment, because opening ourselves up in an unsafe environment risks creating deep new wounds and delaying the healing process. To some degree, this is what I think Jesus meant when he talked about not throwing pearls before swine: don’t expose the best, most vulnerable parts of yourself to those unworthy or incapable of receiving those gifts.

Once we lead with compassion and grace, I think we give each other the opportunity to let go of those deeply held beliefs and experiences that perpetuate suffering. We let go of the emotional and spiritual trauma, and with it the need to feed that trauma. From there we kick off a process that leads to behavioral change, and we eventually start to witness the different ways we react, with more equanimity and patience and grace to situations we previously would have found triggering and too often resulting in shouting matches (or worse). And from that space, we create more healing opportunities for those around us in the world.

I am pretty convinced that what we experienced that night was pretty beautiful. It’s great if you remember it, but it’s fine if you don’t. Our memories are funny, and I’m coming to believe we remember what we need to remember when we need to remember it. Either way, I’m optimistic we healed (or at the very least opened up the possibility of healing) something in you that night. More importantly, I’m optimistic we imprinted on your consciousness the possibility of healing, increasing the likelihood you will move into adulthood with a head start on how to engage with and move through the healing journey.

I love you more than you will ever know. When you have an outburst, grant yourself some grace. Don’t excuse bad behavior, and do the work to identify and let go of the source of the outburst. But lead with grace and compassion: only from that place will you create the emotional security and spiritual space you need to open up, find the wound that created the behavior, and let it go. I know you can do it, and I’m excited to watch you (whether from this life or the next).

Love,

Dad

May 12, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wish me luck.

I love you.

Love,

Dad

May 8, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love you,

Dad

May 7, 2026

Dear Leland and Everett,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love you,

Dad