Sitting by the water, I reflected on some of the ideas I’ve been wrestling with for years. In particular, the paradox of trying to free myself from the very ego that’s trying to free itself (of course, from itself).

At one point, I laid my hoodie over my head, surrounding myself with darkness. In this shroud of blackness, I was visited by Kali, the Hindu goddess associated with time, death, destruction, and ultimately liberation.

It was as if the face of death was showing itself to me, yet I was unafraid, for she said that in order to be free, I must be willing to die.

After our brief tête-à-tête, I pulled the hoodie aside, and light flooded my eyes once more.

It was that simple.

A small voice whispered, “The light was always there; you merely had to pull the cover away to see it.”

Plastic Parade

I had a dream
I was marching in a plastic parade.
We sucked on colorful candy,
and wrappers littered the streets
as we went merrily along.

The crowd looked happy
Until the sun grew too hot
and smiles began to melt
like runny makeup.

The streets softened beneath our feet.
Plastic boiled, black smoke billowed,
and soon the sun disappeared
behind what we’d made.

Only darkness remained.

Then Kali,
mother of destruction and death,
rose through the smoke
and laughed—
this is what she intended after all.

I was cold.
I was alone.
I was afraid.

Then the winds came,
and the smoke began to clear.
Slowly, the light returned.
I stood alone
in a sea of melted plastic.

Kali approached,
curved sword in hand.
Death glinted in her eye,
and I knew my time had come.

I closed my eyes.
The blade fell.
But I did not die.

Something split—
not flesh,
but a shell so close to me
I’d mistaken it for myself.

Piece by piece,
it fell away.
I hadn’t realized
how much it weighed.

And there I stood,
a boy again,
like Eustace Scrubb
beneath Aslan’s claws,
freed from the dragon’s skin
he could not shed alone.

I’ve spent so much effort trying to hold on to things. Not just physical things, like money or possessions, but experiences, insights, and moments of peace.

There’s a peculiar irony in trying to hold on to a spiritual experience. The moment I try to preserve it, I’m no longer fully present. I’m clinging instead of embracing; tensing instead of relaxing.

So, while sitting beside that beautiful reservoir, I decided to let it all go.

If I remembered the insights, wonderful. If not, that was fine too. After all, forgetting is just another opportunity to remember, right?

Perhaps all this clinging isn’t just stressful; it’s counterproductive! Like trying to lift oneself up by one's bootstraps. Inspiring in theory, but physically impossible and outright exhausting.

In that moment, I felt like Eustace Scrubb in The Chronicles of Narnia, after becoming a dragon and trying desperately to scratch away his dragon skin. Only when he submits to Aslan and allows the lion to (albeit painfully) tear away the layers does he become a boy again.

It seems no matter how hard I try, I cannot remove the erroneous layers on my own.

I’ve spent years trying to scrape away the layers of my surface personality, only to realize that the very effort to free myself was part of what kept me bound.

Maybe all I need to do is surrender and let God remove what I can't.

As I sit here writing this, I don’t feel quite the same profound sense of peace that I felt on that day. But I’m not worried. I don’t need to recreate the experience or hold on to what it gave me.

I just want to be here, with whatever life is offering in this moment.

And that’s enough.

It will always be enough.

Love,
Shane

Why do I scroll, even while I’ve experienced how deeply satisfying silence and stillness (along with how unsettling mindless scrolling) can be?

There are probably different angles from which we could explain this.

There’s the concept of dopamine addiction that’s intentionally exploited by social media. The hope for those endorphin hits encourages us to pay our attention to the slot machine screen.

But attention isn’t exclusively consumed on social media. It could be spent reading the news, seeking creative cute pet video avoidance, or just plain daydreaming.

Ever been in a social situation where someone (possibly you) sparks a relatively pointless and surface-level conversation, solely for the sake of breaking (tainting) the silence? I don’t think that was you; I think that was the mind surfacing its desire for activity.

I think the mind is a pig. The metaphorical kind, not the cute animal kind. It clearly doesn’t want to stop eating, and it has so thoroughly persuaded the body to indulge its appetite that we continue feeding its frantic whims.

Since the mind is the medium through which the ego persists, if the mind stopped, would the ego dissolve?

I don’t think our ego wants to find out, and it does a pretty good job of making sure we don’t as well.

So we keep on (and on, and on) thinking. I think it’s an addiction. Thinking is an addiction. And apparently I’m hooked.

We could blame our phones and technology for giving us a consistent supply of psychological cocaine, but technology is just the paraphernalia. The drug has always been there. We’ve merely evolved its availability and administration mechanism.

What used to come as a once-a-day drag from the newspaper boy has become an all-access pass to a continuous digital mainline. Phones are the needle, social media is the juice, and tech giants are our (somehow legal) drug dealers.

Which, by the way, did anyone hear about the recent federal court ruling that social media IS legally considered addictive? Now those drug dealers will finally (hopefully) be held accountable for their work on intentionally designing it to be addictive!

Is it bad that I read that on social media?

But let’s not lose focus on the real culprit.

It’s not the paraphernalia. It’s not even the drug. It’s the underlying desire.

The root of suffering is desire, after all. A drug, like any weapon of violence, is only as powerful as one’s craving for it.

The issue, then, is that the craving doesn’t need to be very intense to inspire action. It just needs to rouse a little movement of the arm, thumb, and eyeball.

It’s so easy to grab my phone and hop on social media when I don’t wanna do something harder, or when I want to “kill time” (as if time were a thing that could be killed).

What’s even scarier is the near-unconscious behavior that calls me to do it so frequently.

It seems I’m addicted to doing (which I’ve known for a while), and when the doing isn’t physical, my mind picks up where my body left off. I could be sitting on the couch, stuck in such a flurry of mental doing that I forget how to be a human be-ing.

My mind simply refuses to shut off (voluntarily).

And like any addiction, the growing deficit surfaces how little it’s giving me and how much it’s taking away.

While media may be cocaine for the mind, thinking seems more akin to morphine.

Thinking in general appears to dull life all around me. When mainlining a steady drip of thought, I don’t hear the sound of the leaves rustling. I don’t smell the fresh-cut grass, nor do I feel the wind brush my hair or the sun kiss my skin.

When I’m high on the drug, that’s all there is. Thought. I’m not living in reality; I’m living in imagine-ality.

And when I’m not seeing Life, I’m not seeing anything clearly—even my precious thoughts.

For isn’t it true that some of our best ideas come to us at the exact moment we’re not thinking about them?

And haven’t you noticed that we think most clearly when we’re not thinking at all?

It’s as if problems seem to solve themselves when surrounded by silence.

Therefore, can it be said that thinking makes us dumb? Or that, ironically, thinking has taken away our ability to think?

It depends on how you look at it, I guess. But can you truly look if you’re too busy thinking?

A recent lesson in A Course in Miracles reminded me that I never truly see things as they are because I project the past onto them.

And as J. Krishnamurti reminds us, how can one truly experience the moment if one lets the fingers of the cold, dead past reach out and touch that aliveness?

This perspective is not new, of course; I spent a year being reminded of that same idea while studying Vedanta in India. But that’s in the past now, too, so is it even worth remembering?

I wouldn’t have to be reminded if I didn’t forget so often. Then again, I wouldn’t have to drink water if I weren’t alive.

So I keep drinking. Because what else is there to do?

Here’s a short poem I wrote on the subject. Inspired by Descartes.

I think

I think, therefore I have no fucking clue what’s going on.

I say “remembering” because I’ve found that most deep truths in life are not learned; to be learned, one would have to start from a place of lack. To gain knowledge, one must begin without it. And while it’s possible to learn and accumulate knowledge in a worldly sense, I deeply believe that spiritual understanding is our birthright.

Therefore, how could we possibly gain what we already have? It is experienced, not learned, and experience is an internal phenomenon; it can only come from within, never from without.

While learning often requires effort, remembering is effortless. Truth needs no explanation because it is self-evident. When one hears truth, it is like the resonance of a tuning fork in the presence of its designated frequency.

The content of the Course itself is in line with the Perennial Philosophy; that evergreen wisdom that can be explained in a thousand different ways and a hundred different languages, but at its core is the same.

Thus, nothing in the Course is new or revolutionary (though it is revelatory). I find that most of what I read nowadays is simply the same teacher adorned in different threads.

The ego might look at that and rejoice; after all, that means it already knows everything there is to know about enlightenment. And if there’s one thing the ego loves, it’s knowing everything.

Or it might cause the ego to scoff, for to spend time learning what one already knows is but a tremendous waste of time.

But, thankfully, I choose not to listen to the ego, for to stop reading simply because I’ve heard this message before would mean I was focused on learning. To stop reading would be to miss the whole pointless point; the beauty of discovering all the different shades with which the truth can be painted. And oh, how beautiful that painting can be when we no longer limit ourselves to such a narrow range of colors.

I recognize now that this reflection is not about A Course in Miracles, yet is simultaneously only about the Course. For A Course in Miracles is simply a way of perceiving that which is right in front of us, if only our eyes could be clear enough to see it.

It’s the same course I took in India; it’s the same course I started the moment I first stepped out of the way and let my perspective open to what Life was trying to show me.

It is the course we all signed up for by being a part of this transient, worldly existence, with all its self-inflicted suffering. Only by experiencing and moving beyond the limited world can we come to know and appreciate the unlimited existence (God) underlying it all. After all, can one know light without having lived through the dark?

And, despite its profundity (or perhaps because of it), it’s a Course I find myself starting over and over again. Because though my soul loves attendance, my mind often has other places to be. Thank God my soul is patient.

It’s interesting because I’ve found that the more attention I give to the teachers of the Perennial Philosophy, the more I yearn for even higher doses of its life-giving perspective. Even though Eckhart Tolle, for example, only ever talks about one thing (presence), I rejoice every time I’m reminded of that one thing, for it is the door to all things.

It’s like the addiction that dissolves all other addictions. The search that ends all other searching—re-membering with who I am—the knowledge which is our birthright. Because ultimately, what is an addiction besides a deep, aching desire to connect with oneself, ananda, the bliss of Being?

Fortunately, as all addicts come to realize sooner or later, it’s impossible to find oneself outside of oneself. Yet still, that seems to be a wall I enjoy banging my head against.

Although I understand, on some level, that nothing outside of me will ever bring me everlasting peace or happiness, my ego holds on to hope. I try, and I try, and I try, and I try; but I can’t get no satisfaction.

This has become ever more apparent as I’ve jumped headfirst back into Western living, with all its desires, aversions, pursuits and ploys. Thankfully, the Course is a steady reminder that underneath all that change, there is something eternal, unchanging.

It reminds me not to fool myself with acts of forgiveness, for true forgiveness is seeing no separation between myself and those who need forgiving. For only in separation can there be an act of violence from one to another.

It’s reminiscent of the Isha Upanishads, which remind us,

“What delusion, what sorrow can there be for that one who sees the unity of all things?”

It also reminds me that the Atonement is not something to be attained.

The Atonement is a gift we have been graced with, if only we are willing to accept it. That’s a difficult thing for a mind to grasp when that mind has been raised on notions of effort and achievement.

Like the ancient seers of time immemorial, it reminds us that wisdom is inherent and love is our birthright, yet both are often veiled by ignorance. Can we simply pull the veil aside and finally let the light of the Son, which has been there all along, shine through?

My teacher in India once said, “Seeing is immediate.”

So I asked him, “If seeing is immediate, why do we spend so much time studying to see?”

He replied with one sentence. “Because forgetting is immediate too.”

So I’ll keep reading. Because as I read, I re-member.

I’ve been quite busy over the last few months. I started a business with a longtime friend and mentor of mine and began working on another business project on the side. The slow living of the last few years has been speedily replaced by SOPs, KPIs, P&Ls, and whatever other BS business acronyms you care to use.

More than anything, I feel like I’ve officially re-entered the West. Fast-paced, goal-oriented, and greedy.

The question now is if I can bring the intentionality and spirit of the East with me as I participate in this race of rats we oh-so glorify.

I started “The Unhurried Life” blog as a way to journal about my attempts to remediate these two seemingly conflicting energies. Although I imagine a bystander looking at my schedule would say my life is anything but “unhurried.”

But is my schedule the only measure of my stillness? While our external life may mirror the goings on of our internal world, is outward stillness the only indicator of internal peace?

As I sit here in the woods, writing that sentence, a hummingbird flies but a few feet from my face. I smile, for it has graciously answered my question.

Though the hummingbird’s wings beat with a rapidity that the naked eye sees only as a blur, I do not sense an ounce of franticness or anxiety. It floats through the air with a calm grace — an apparent juxtaposition to its rapid movements.

But the eye can only see what’s on the surface. As always, I must look deeper.

It reminds me of something my teacher in India once said: “There can be immense stillness amidst intense movement.”

I’ve been contemplating that a lot these last few months as I cram work and productivity into every corner of my day. Can I maintain a background of stillness while engaging in a flurry of work?

By no means has the practice been perfect. In fact, I’m starting to believe that it will never be perfect. Many a day I catch myself with an increased heartbeat and a subtle rush of adrenaline as I work to get one task done after another.

I find it especially poignant when working on a screen. The brain engages in demanding work while the body has been relegated to its glorified pedestal. The body floods with hormones to increase mental acuity, but the body has no means to expel the excess adrenaline.

It’s stressful, for sure, but not necessarily with all the negative connotations. An increased focus and heart rate, but for work that I enjoy. One might say it’s the “good” kind of stress (if there is such a thing).

It’s a bit of a thrill, to be honest. I think it tickles that part of me that’s addicted to efficiency.

In small bursts, that intense focus and increased energy levels are not only enjoyable, but they can be wildly productive.

The “problem” enters when it’s sustained over the course of an entire day. Or the entire week. Or the entire (cough) month.

This last month in particular has caught me edging closer and closer to the shaky ground of franticness.

Thankfully, I see it happening, so it doesn’t necessarily take me over. But awareness can be a double-edged sword, for with awareness often comes guilt, shame, or frustration.

I catch myself getting off balance, getting frantic, even though I “should be better” by now. What have I been exploring spirituality for? What did I go to India for? What did I take a three-year sabbatical for if not to have more control over my internal state?

When will I finally learn that control is an illusion? Because undoubtedly my frustration at being off balance inevitably creates more suffering than the initial stimulus that caused me to wobble.

“Whether you go up the ladder or down it, your position is shaky. Only when you stand with your two feet on the ground will you truly find balance.”

- Lao Tsu - “Tao Te Ching”

It’s like trying to stop yourself from feeling sad or angry or anxious. The mere attempt at suppression only ever seems to enrage the emotion.

Yet, my foolish mind still attempts to suppress. Whether through mental manipulation, breathing, exercise, or distraction, my mind still believes it’s in charge.

(It’s not.)

I was reminded of this recently when I was listening to a recording by Eckhart Tolle. As always, he speaks to me at the perfect time (Now). He was discussing how, on the human level, we will never be perfect, and the mind’s attempt to force perfection on our inherent imperfections only causes more suffering.

So what, then, can we do, Eckhart?

Just bring awareness to the thought or emotion. Rather than desiring to let it go, we can let go of the desire to let it go.

There’s nothing we have to do. Perhaps there’s nothing we can do. And that to me is quite comforting. That to me is peaceful.

So I’m gonna do the best I can to stop trying to re-enter the West as some grounded Yogi. I’ll stop suppressing my passion or excitement about something because “that’s not how an enlightened person would act.”

More importantly, when I inevitably act unconsciously, I’ll do my best not to let that same unconsciousness beat me up for letting it take over.

In essence, I’m going to stop trying to change who I am and how I engage with this world. I am who I am. Or as God put it in the Old Testament, “I am that I am.”

No place to be, no one to be, nothing to do.

But even if there is something to do, it doesn’t have to be at odds with being.

For what else could there be than Me, right Now?

And maybe that’s (I Am) enough.

Maybe I need to stop searching so hard. Here’s a poem I wrote about that:

On Your Head

I’ve searched the house from room to room,
Under the couch, the sink, the broom.
I’ve questioned the dog, interrogated the cat—
“Where are my glasses? Do you know where they’re at?”

I storm and pace with growing dread,
Till someone points, “They’re on your head.”
And in that moment, the joke’s on me—
What I sought so hard was plain to see.

Isn’t that how we all tend to live?
Chasing a “someday” that life won’t give?
We pack our bags for a future place,
While missing the miracle in our face.

We think peace is hiding, just out of reach,
In a mountain retreat or a guru’s speech.
But Being can’t be bought or achieved,
It waits right here—quietly, unperceived.

The mind looks forward, the heart looks back,
But the present stands, untouched, intact.
It’s the glasses resting upon our crown—
The treasure we seek while looking down.

So stop the search, sit still instead.
Enlightenment?
It’s on your head.

I first heard this line while I was in the middle of a summer sales job, working hard to reach my goals and make money.

I was listening to an audio recording of The Book of Nothing, and this line, among many others, was threatening to flip my world upside down. I recall letting out an exasperated “fu**” as I found myself in the peculiar position of heading to my next sales call while contemplating the futility of goal-setting.

I think most people fear death of the physical body, but this was the first time I recall fearing an ideological death. What I had believed in my entire life, my guiding principles, were being laid out to dry right in front of me.

Setting and achieving goals, self-development, and striving towards excellence had defined my childhood, teens, and early twenties. But here I was, in the middle of rural Pennsylvania, doubting if my compass was truly pointing north.

“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” This sounds nice in theory, but I was confronted with the ugly reality: in that moment, those words didn’t feel like freedom; they felt claustrophobic.

And that was just the problem; how could a line in a book be this scary? Because this new perspective on goal setting felt like the truth. It resonated so deeply with me that it shook the foundation of my prior beliefs. If it hadn’t rang the resounding bells of reality within me, I would have written it off or completely ignored it and moved on to other passages that might be more belief-affirming.

But that’s what makes it scary sometimes; that’s the destructive power of truth.

That’s what Donald Shimoda, the mesianic hero in the book Illusions, knew. He understood that truth would shatter the illusions of belief, and, more aptly, that people don’t like having their beliefs shattered.

That was my dilemma: would I react violently to the truth, and protect my beliefs by diving deeper into ignorance? Or would I choose to let my old beliefs die, allowing the fertile soil of my mind to clear out, making room for new possibilities?

I think the reality was a bit more subtle.

It didn’t immediately shatter my glasshouse of ideologies. I kept making sales calls and working towards my goals. However, it did leave a tiny crack. And over time, that crack would spread, enabling the whole house to come tumbling down during the doctrinal wrecking ball that was my time at an ashram in India.

“The master’s only desire is to have no desires.”

This line in the Tao Te Ching reminds me often of that line in the Book of Nothing. They continue to serve as reminders; beacons, even as the sociological collective mind tries to rebuild its tidy box of concepts and notions around me.

Like many other granules of Eastern Philosophy, they’re simultaneously paradoxically mind-bending and clear as melting ice.

On an intellectual level, I’m not sure if I’ll ever truly understand the balance of navigating the world, with its rollercoaster of desires and aversions, while staying grounded in the immovable peace that is our birthright. How could one possibly reconcile the seemingly opposing worlds of inner tranquility with external striving?

Thankfully, understanding is only for the mind. For I have had glimpses, however minor, of the living reality behind the conceptual ideas.

Of course, I cannot accurately (and should not) explain those experiences, because they are of “the peace that is beyond understanding.”

However, for the sake of enjoyment in reflection, words are all I have access to at the moment. So here we go:

What if the ancient Masters weren’t advising us not to set goals in the world? What if they were simply reminding us not to seek our sense of self in their attainment? Or, more generally, to not seek our ‘selves’ in the world at all?

Regardless of spiritual or philosophical belief, most people agree that we live in and experience the world of physical phenomena. To deny that reality is just as detrimental, or even worse, than asserting its absolute reality.

The Book of Nothing puts it, “To assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality; to assert the reality of things is to miss their reality.”

So perhaps the fool who renounces the world in an attempt to denounce its hold over him is just as lost as the fool who finds his entire existence attached to materialism and opulence. They’re simply two zealots who find themselves at opposing extremes of the balance beam.

Does true renunciation have anything to do with the external act of letting go, or is it the internal act of letting go that liberates us?

I went from being consumed by the world to attempting to deny it. Both were mental prisons in their own right.

Now, I find myself accepting my current situation. There is a computer in front of me. There are people who will read these words, and there are many others who won’t. There’s even a slight desire to want more people to read. There’s a business I get to continue building after this post, and a wife who chooses to love me despite my flaws. There are friends, activities, and, God willing, future scenarios I have yet to participate in.

And yes, there are even certain versions of those scenarios that I would prefer to play out over others. There are things I want to experience and things I’d rather avoid. And yes, sometimes I might even write those things out and visualize them happening.

But if they don’t happen, that’s okay too. For my identity is no longer invested in their attainment.

Besides, how could Life get any better than it already is? Circumstances? Sure, circumstances could get better, subjectively. But Life? I don’t think so. Life is perfect just as it is.

What if that line wasn’t meant to read, “the wise man strives to no goals,” but ”the wise man strives to know goals”? To understand the hidden reality behind the world of likes and dislikes. To know that it’s fine to work towards intended outcomes, so long as they don’t define you.

For if I know myself beyond name and form; If I continue to connect with that reality behind the materiality, then what does it matter if I fall short of my goals?

And what would it matter if I reached or surpassed my goals? For once I know my Self, nothing I ever do, don’t do, accomplish, or fall short of could possibly add or subtract from who I am.

“Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Therein lies the peace of God.”

If it’s all a play of form, then we are free to play.

But living this out is anything but easy. Maybe it comes from our parents, our friends, our own karma, or just the society we live in. Many of us struggle with the daily anxiety that we must produce something meaningful for our lives to be meaningful.

When I write it down, it sounds crazy. So why does it still run so much of our lives?

About 10 years ago, I became increasingly aware of an entity that seemed to live inside my head. It’s judgmental, it’s harsh, and it always has something to say about what’s going on. Sometimes it likes what’s happening, but most of the time it just complains. No matter what, it ends up unhappy; either trying to hold on to what it likes or running from what it doesn’t.

For a long time, I thought this voice was me. Even now, in weaker moments, I still fall for that trick. But over time, I’ve started to see it for what it is: just the ego mind.

The ego sprouted up from a sense of separation from life. In the Bible, this is how I interpret the story of Adam and Eve. We became self-conscious, self-aware, and therefore separate from God. And in that separateness, we became afraid.

It wasn’t that God punished us for eating the fruit. The fruit itself was the punishment. Knowing good and evil is the heart of duality, and duality can only exist when we feel separate. Anything cut off from its source will suffer.

But that sense of being separate wasn’t a punishment. It was merely a consequence of losing touch with the source of life. Suddenly, we saw how small we were in a big world, and fear took over. From then on, we’ve been fighting and struggling to survive.

Of course, in the physical world, that voice in our head does serve its purpose. To navigate life efficiently, it can be helpful to categorize, label, judge, and interpret.

The problem isn’t having an ego. The trouble starts when we think we are the ego. It gives us bad advice, tells us lies, and we keep listening because we think it’s us. Michael Singer calls it the roommate in our head who never stops talking.

Sometimes we catch a glimpse of what’s behind the ego. But letting it go completely? That feels impossible. And honestly, I think it is, for if you look closely, who is it that’s trying to drop the ego? None other than the ego itself.

In this way, the ego is the ultimate trickster. It’s made a job for itself that never ends, because it keeps creating its own work. Eckhart Tolle gives the example of a police chief searching for an arsonist, not realizing he’s the arsonist himself.

Why does the ego do this? I think it’s always trying to prove it matters, so we won’t get rid of it.

Life made us, and it will go on without us. We made the ego, so we can live without it. But the ego can’t live without us. Thus, it keeps trying to show how important it is. Like any successful parasite, it feeds on its host without the host realizing it’s even there.

And therein lies the problem. When we identify with the ego, which is constantly trying to assert its importance to survive, it’s no surprise that we exhibit the same unhealthy patterns. To the ego, relevance is required for its existence. So, of course (though not naturally), we feel the same.

That’s also why fighting the ego never works. Who is it that’s fighting? It’s still the ego. That’s why fighting just makes it stronger.

Then what do we do?

Ignore it. An ignored guest doesn’t stay for long.

But even that is easier said than done. It’s hard to ignore something we think is us.

Therefore, to be free, maybe we have to let go of who we think we are, so we can recognize who we really are.

Perhaps that’s why Eckhart Tolle told us that, “The secret of life is to ‘die before you die’ — and find that there is no death.”

The scariest part of my journey was realizing that everything I believed—even who I thought I was—wasn’t true. That moment was simultaneously terrifying and liberating.

This poem came to me during one of the intensives at the ashram in India where I lived.

We had been talking about death in all its forms. I was sitting outside the Satsang hall, watching the leaves on a tree, and suddenly this poem burst out of me.

It was the first poem I ever wrote, and it’s still my favorite.

The fall

I am beginning to brown, my time has come. All used up, I’ve served well. 
But I fear the fall, I’m not ready to go. 
So I cling hard to this branch, it’s all that I know. 

But to struggle is futile, of this I am sure. 
What’s left is to relax. 

Release. 

And as that gentle breeze comes, it finds me ready. To fall is so natural. 
And only once I’ve landed do I realize—  
I was the tree all along.

So, back to the original opening of this reflection. How do we free ourselves from attachments to results? Perhaps to be free from attachment has nothing to do with letting go of results. Rather, it has to do with letting go of the false identity that believes it has to do in order to be.

Perhaps freedom is realizing that I’m not a lonely leaf. For though the leaf might seem separate, it’s only in appearance. In time, it comes from, and inevitably returns to, its source. How could it be anything but the tree itself?

The Upanishads remind us, “What delusion, what sorrow, can there be
for one who sees this oneness of all things?”

Do I have the courage to die to my past and to any notion I’ve had of the future? Once who I think I am dies, then perhaps who I Am can shine through the opening.

Love,
Shane

We all know about the diseases of the body, and we tend to put a lot of effort into fixing them. More recently, we’ve begun discussing diseases of the mind, and it’s becoming more common for people to put effort into healing them as well.

The lesser-talked-about disease is the disease of the spirit.

That’s the one we tend to put the least effort into healing. Ironically, I believe it’s also the foundation of our healing.

Many people would argue, and there’s evidence to show, that the diseases of the body are often linked to diseases of the mind. Stress, for example, has been clinically proven to cause numerous chronic diseases.

But where do diseases of the mind come from?

Of course, it’s important to acknowledge the possibility of hormonal and chemical imbalances in people. There are many psychological or physiological ways to approach this topic, and I wouldn’t say any is better or worse than the approach I’m reflecting on today.

This philosophical approach is just one shade of a multicolored picture. I think the reason I gravitate towards the philosophic approach is that it leaves space in the color palette for the other shades as well.

What is a disease?

There are various ways to define it, but I tend to think of it simply: existing outside of equilibrium.

You can even split the word up: dis, meaning ‘separate from’. And what are we separated from? Ease, of course.

Maybe it’s because I studied biology in college, so my mind gravitates toward the natural state of balance we find in nature, a scale that always seems to correct toward the center. Or maybe it’s because I read the Tao daily and resonate with the simple, yet powerful approach that Wu Wei encourages.

However you define it, I think we can all agree on one thing: disease is unpleasant, and therefore it’s a state most people try to avoid.

Which, to be fair, is quite reasonable. It’s why so many people dedicate their efforts to living a life of harmony and ease.

But here’s the irony: any struggle is unpleasant. So the struggle to be pleasant is… unpleasant. The fight for peace becomes another form of war. The chase for ease becomes another form of tension.

Which brings me to the point I’m learning to dance with: there are certain “solutions” that look like cures, but subtly deepen the sickness. They promise relief while keeping us hooked on the same inner mechanism that brought about the suffering.

Our inner mechanisms can vary person to person, as we all struggle with different things in this life. However, there are some universal struggles that will sink their claws into us all if we’re not careful.

One of the most dangerous socially promoted traps, for me, is the disease of ambition.

Ambition isn’t all bad, of course, so it might sound extreme to call it a disease. But looking to ambition to solve my state of dis-ease is a fool’s errand… because oftentimes it’s my relentless ambition that put me in that state to begin with.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know I recently returned to the US after a nearly three-year sabbatical, a good chunk of which was spent in India—partly in an attempt to heal my “Western mind.”

Now that I’m back, it’s become an ongoing practice: watching old habits return, and seeing if I can stay conscious enough to let them pass without falling under their spell.

I’ve realized that the moment I stepped back into “normal” life, the mind immediately started yearning for outcomes: about momentum, about making up for lost time, about “getting serious.”

In essence, I’m entering back into the game, while desperately hoping that as I play, I will keep remembering it’s a game.

Of course, the hardest part is that most of the people I interact with day to day don’t treat it like a game.

I’m not blaming them. I’m responsible for my own reality. But there is something inherently difficult about maintaining lightheartedness when society at large does everything it can to stress the absolute importance of our material existence. As if our value is proven by our output, status, pace, and ranking.

And the most dangerous part is, ambition doesn’t always sound outwardly selfish.

It’s not always a roaring hunger for power. Instead, it often sounds noble: discipline, excellence, self-improvement, “providing,” making a difference. It promises that if you do enough, become enough, achieve enough… then you can finally relax.

But “then” is a moving target.

Like Forrest Gump, I just want to run. I don’t need the rest of the world to time me or tell me how I rank compared to everyone else.

Because sooner or later, that replaces the joy of running with the striving to win. It replaces the process with the output. And one can only be so happy when all their satisfaction lies in fleeting moments of worldly victory.

Before leaving for India, this insanity was becoming increasingly apparent to me. In fact, it left a disdainful taste in my mouth that had me walking around as a judgmental cynic. Even then, I didn’t like the way that felt. I could tell I was using judgment like a shield: if I condemned the game loudly enough, maybe it couldn’t seduce me anymore.

But that wasn’t wisdom, it was just another form of agitation.

So I was grateful that, throughout my sabbatical, my cynicism softened and eventually gave way to a sense of compassion. Though sometimes, if I’m still feeling judgmental, the compassion comes across more as sorrow for the state of the world (and particularly for the people in it).

But for the most part, I recognize that everybody is on their own journey, and that’s a wonderful thing. It’s simply the human condition: craving, striving, comparing, fearing, and calling it normal.

Yet, however “human”… the addiction burns.

Because ambition works, at least in the short term. It can build impressive things. It can create comfort and stability. It can even help people.

The problem is what happens inside the person who’s using it as a substitute for peace. The mind gets trained to chase, and our attention gets rented out to tomorrow. The soul starts living as if life is a résumé, something to be evaluated, rather than an experience meant to be inhabited.

That’s why ambition can feel like an addiction to me. Not because building is wrong, but because the mind turns building into a way to avoid being here. Now.

I think about this often. That’s probably why this poem came to me during our travels.

(In) Sanity

People thought I was crazy, they called me insane
When I said “no thank you” to their corporate game
I thought it’d be fun to climb up the ladder
But why should a game leave you scarred, bruised, and battered?

I’m not one to say that commerce is bad
For we need food, clothing, and a roof over our head
The problem isn’t business, it’s man’s folly of greed
We take more of the pie than we actually need

Business is about future, it’s rarely in the now
Plan for success and work by the sweat of others’ brow
Abandon all else, we must secure our nest egg
Sacrifice in pursuit of glory, so be it if you break some legs

Is this really the point? If it is, then I’ll stand alone
God is dead, and Capitalism has taken the throne
The boss says we serve others, but that’s a load of crap
When goodwill becomes coverup for pursuing a treasure map

I thought I could dabble, that I would keep my head
But the drug’s too addictive, and it took me to bed
So I had to step out, maybe some day I’ll return
But that thought truly scares me, for the addiction still burns

There must be a way that we can do this thing right
Business can be a joy, where gain is measured by delight
The world will not end if we stop buying things
It’ll give marketers more time for the joy family brings

It’s not crazy to question norms, it’s insane to be a sheep
Stuck in a loop of consumption, where real dreams fall asleep
Needing wealth to be happy is to fail life’s biggest test
A prison made of gold is still a prison nonetheless

To really serve the world, we must end all our greed
This Earth is abundant if we only take what we need
So let them call you crazy, it’s fun to be insane!
What could be more psychotic than trading your life for a game?

When a society praises those who take more
All balance has gone, and our spirit becomes poor
Virtue and integrity have been reduced to a concept
Is it crazy to be content? Yes, when materialism’s a precept

You see, the Rat Race is a game that no one wins. When the whole world around you feels insane, I hope you are able to remain (in)sane

I don’t want to pretend I’ve “outgrown” ambition. I haven’t. I just want a healthier relationship with it.

So, since I spent most of this reflection talking about the negative sides of ambition, what about some of the positives?

When ambition is balanced—when it’s grounded in self-worth and rooted in the unmistakable, unshakable goodness of life—it can lend itself to a wonderful game. It can be creative play. It can be devotion. It can be service that doesn’t need applause to feel meaningful.

But that’s just it.

It only works if I can keep remembering what it is: a game. A temporary one. A beautiful one, sometimes. A brutal one, other times. But regardless… not the measure of my worth.

Because the moment my peace depends on the scoreboard, the addiction has won.

So I’m writing this as much to remind myself as anyone else: I don’t want to be ambition-driven. I want to be LIFE-driven. I want ambition to be something I use when it’s helpful—not something that uses me.

And if I can hold that line, gentle but firm, then maybe I can return to the world without losing myself in it.

Love,

Shane

I will always love adventure, and I hope I get to go on many more in my lifetime. However, I also recognize that life appreciates equilibrium, and, as an extension of life, I was beginning to feel misaligned once again.

I left my career and my home because I had spent so much of my early adulthood on the grind, yearning for the standard societal definition of success. I went on sabbatical because I needed some balance in my life. I had been lucky enough to recognize that I needed a pause, to take a big deep breath and reassess who I wanted to be and how I wanted to live.

That breath had taken me to India and all over Asia and Europe. It had taken me to deep and fulfilling moments with my family, and now on this journey in the wilderness. But now I could feel the pull calling me back home.

However, before we moved back into our house, Toriya wanted to take one more visit to her parents in Japan. We figured since we were making the long flight to Asia, we might as well make the most of it, so we added one final victory lap to our travels. We spent a month in Japan, another month in Vietnam, and then in Thailand.

Even though I was excited to get home, I was still able to be fully present with those places. However, one thing was different this time around.

During our stint in India, I made a point of not thinking about what I wanted to do for work when I returned home. I knew that my frantic mind would be clawing and scratching at every idea and opportunity to build another career and acquire wealth. I was leaving to distance myself from those old mental patterns.

Now, at the prospect of returning home and taking responsibility for a mortgage again, I knew that it was time to live from the equilibrium that I had been seeking for so long. It was time to learn to be in the world while still recognizing that I am not necessarily of it.

Could I pursue a career and make money without it consuming me? This was the question that poked at my mind.

While in Japan, I considered various options for my next career. I was trying to find something at the crossroads of what I was good at, what I was passionate about, and what would serve other people (whatever that means), or, at the very least, do no harm.

I’ve always loved writing, so I decided to start a Substack (welcome!). I didn’t have many intentions of making money from it, though I was open to the possibility. I knew, however, that it would not be my main squeeze, so to speak.

Then one morning, while I was working out, an idea struck me.

During my ten years in sales, recruitment, and leadership, I found that the activity I loved most, and where I often made the biggest impact, was coaching people one-on-one. What if I became a full-time coach?

Coaching is one of the few activities where I lose track of time. It’s one of the few things that leaves me feeling lighter when I finish than when I started. I loved it enough to do it for free, but it was also a service I was paid well for.

That made it a pretty compelling candidate for my next career. Still, I knew I wanted to build something, so coaching felt like only part of the picture.

I began developing an idea for a platform—something a bit like YouTube but closer to MasterClass—where people could access curated material from vetted professionals rather than being misled by self-appointed gurus. The platform itself would be free or inexpensive, and its main purpose would be to connect people with the coaches and experts they resonated with. It felt meaningful. It seemed to blend my interests with something that could genuinely help people.

So I started working on a business plan. I began networking, started designing the website, and even reached out to people I had coached before to gauge their interest.

But while all this was happening, something felt slightly off. The idea felt good; great, even, but something was missing.

In my life, when the right path has come into view, I’ve usually known it, without doubt. A calm sense of certainty has appeared only a few times at the more important crossroads of my life, but when it does, I recognize it.

This idea felt close, but not quite there. So I kept experimenting with it while staying open to what I might be missing.

Then, while we were in Vietnam visiting Ninh Binh, I spoke with an old mentor of mine. He was the first real boss I ever had in college, when I worked at his startup, Tuition Specialists.

Through a mutual friend, I heard that he had been buying small businesses since 2019. Not only had he bought his own, but he had helped a few other people, including his wife, do the same. It intrigued me, so we scheduled a call.

During that first conversation, as he explained the process, the benefits, the risks, and the basic model, the lightning bolt struck.

This was what I wanted to do.

Not just buy a small business for myself, but help him help other people do the same. At first, I couldn’t fully explain why it resonated so strongly, but I think a lot of it had to do with him.

Will is one of the most sane people I know.

He’s one of the few people I’ve met who plays in the material world, has done well professionally and financially, and yet has remained deeply grounded. That’s not to say he never gets stressed, but he handles life with a humanity and authenticity that I trust. It felt like the kind of energy I wanted to be around.

I was afraid to get back into business, especially after coming from such a hustle-driven environment. I’m still sensitive to the diseased quality that often surrounds ambition, money, and status.

I feel a bit like a recovering addict—wary of putting myself back into an environment where the temptation to fall into old patterns might be overwhelming. I knew that if I wasn’t careful, I could easily slip back into my old rise-and-grind mentality and lose the perspective I had fought so hard to gain.

Because of that, I felt I needed one of two things: either to work for myself and carefully shape my environment, or to find a person or company that aligned closely with my values.

I do believe those companies exist, but I have yet to run into many of them.

So it seemed like the better choice to pair my interest in entrepreneurship with the gap in availability of conscious businesses, and just start one myself.

When I approached Will with the idea of building something together, he responded with similar enthusiasm. He was still involved in another company he had started, and thus had expected this to remain a side project for a few years. But with me on board, we could move up the timeline.

This was the feeling I had been looking for. It felt right.

That calm certainty returned, the same kind that had guided me through other important turning points in my life, and I was ecstatic. I was so excited, in fact, that I had trouble sleeping for the first few nights. Parallel to all the previous moments of calm clarity in my life, I remember calling my mom from the mountains of Ninh Binh and telling her I had found what I was supposed to do next.

And it wasn’t just excitement about working with Will. The deeper I looked into the idea, the more tangible it felt.

I had spent years investing in the stock market and in real estate with modest returns. Enough, at least, to help fund this three-year sabbatical. But small-business investing seemed like a different category altogether.

The return potential was far greater, but so was the risk. That was what made the idea compelling: if we could help reduce that risk, we could open access to an opportunity that most normal people never get to participate in. I

thought of my sisters and their families, my mom and stepdad, and close friends. People I care about. People I would love to help.

Then the vision expanded even further.

In addition to helping people buy small businesses, we began imagining a system that could help manage them as well, further reducing risk and improving the quality of the investment. Someone could invest in a business without becoming a full-time operator or sacrificing their job or family life.

Because of Will’s background in systems and operational management, we had a real path toward building that.

I apologize. I realize I’ve been ranting for a while now, but as you can see, I’m still quite excited.

We’ve been working on the idea for a little over four months now, and it’s really starting to come together. I’ve been searching for a business to invest in for myself and have been building the systems and processes to do so at scale for others.

However, while being my own boss and having what I consider a very healthy partner to work with, I’ve still noticed old tendencies creeping back.

There have been days when I’ve caught myself frantically trying to check everything off my to-do list. Old habits die hard.

Even though I’ve been moving the mission forward steadily, that old part of my brain interjects, “You’re not doing enough. Move faster!”

But I catch those low-frequency thoughts faster now. Instead of having that unstable energy dominate entire months or years of my life, it might dominate an afternoon, or sometimes only an hour.

I still set aside time for three sittings a day and for other aspects of my spiritual practice. And whereas I used to voraciously read business and self-development books, I now spend most of my reading time on spiritual texts and philosophical contemplation.

I’m definitely not out of the woods by any means. After all, the ego is trickiest when you think you’ve got it beat. My biggest concern is that if I get overtaken by the insanity of the world again, truly overtaken, then I will be unaware of it. So I’m doing my best to remain vigilant.

It’s a razor-thin line I’m attempting to walk, and I fear I might fall. In fact, I know I will. I just hope I’m conscious enough to get back on it when I do.

I chose to re-enter society not because I don’t care deeply about self-realization, but because I felt called to bring that practice into daily living.

I felt called to build a homestead and have a garden again. I felt called to start a family, and I still felt called to experiment with business. Only this time, I sincerely hope I can carry my breath with me as I toe the line of twilight.

I am not a candle meant to be burned at both ends. I recognize that my worth and value do not come from my achievements or output. Whether I can remember that as I step back into society, only time will tell.

The end of one adventure is simply the beginning of the next.

I got to be there for the birth of my nephew, Jack.

Spending my birthday in Japan with Toriya’s parents, Todd and Rachel!

Enjoying a beautiful sunset in Ninh Binh, Vietnam.

When I was 18, all I wanted was to go out on my own. Now, all I want is to be with my family.

It can be seen in the entertaining musings of Alan Watts or in the deeply profound yet imperturbably lighthearted talks of Eckhart Tolle. And that’s just scratching the surface of modern teachings.

My overactive mind tends to perceive life much too seriously. If I’m not careful, my days get covered in a heavy blanket of solemnity. This is why I seek reminders that lift my heart and prompt me to recall that even the things my mind has deemed important are not all that serious.

There are many reminders for this, of course. We can look to the Stoics for the relieving breath of our mortality.

We can look to Jesus to remind us that worry never adds a day to our lives and that only one thing is truly important.

Siddhartha Gautama’s own story of discovering his buddhahood shows us that there’s not much we can “do” to bring about enlightenment.

The Tao keeps everything profoundly simple, and don’t even get me started on Chuang Tzu’s playfulness.

While I was studying Vedanta under a teacher in India, a concept that had started as an “interesting idea” began to creep its way down from my mind into the depths of my experience. The idea that this world we take so seriously is not the deepest reality of our being, it is simply the surface phenomena—a play of light.

Kind of like a movie screen: what we see on it may be compelling, but that doesn’t make it real. The story may draw us in, cause our hearts to race, our eyes to well up, and our emotions to swell, but it’s simply a trick of the light.

Previously, “moving pictures” was just a roll of film through which light passed to project images onto a screen. Now, that process has been digitized, but the concept remains largely the same.

If there’s a fire on the screen, the fire may appear to destroy the dancing images brought to life by the light, but it does nothing to the screen on which it appears. The floods may wash away the story’s characters, but the screen will end up no wetter.

This aligns shockingly well with the Hindu’s concept of lila, the divine play. It’s the idea that life is more like a theater performance, only in our case, the actors have gone so fully method that they’ve forgotten their true identity outside the character they are playing.

I imagine the Rishis of old would have been giddy to use modern movies as an analogy for life. And comparing life to a movie doesn’t eliminate the drama; it provides for it. After all, if a movie doesn’t have some drama, who would want to watch it?

For those of a more scientific mind, one need only dip into the quarks of quantum physics to discover that scientific theory is not too far behind the ancient Eastern seers. Or you could take a crash course in relativity and start loosening the bonds of time.

If Einstein’s theories or quantum physics are too heady for you, this theory by evolutionary biologist Donald Hoffman (you can check out his TED talk here for more context) will prove the point as well.

The point is essentially this: we don’t really know what is going on, and we can’t trust our senses to be giving us the full picture. Our senses evolved to help us survive, not to discern objective reality.

This is a rabbit hole that only seems to get longer the deeper you dive.

But let’s bring it back to practicality for the moment. Philosophy is fun, but it’s only useful if we can apply it to daily living.

If both science and spiritual philosophy say that reality isn’t as “real” as we believe, then what can we believe?

We can believe in the consciousness that is behind the experience. One thing we can be certain of is this: regardless of what is (or isn’t) happening in my perception of the physical world, there IS still a perceiver.

Just as Eckhart says, “We are not our thoughts; we are simply the observer of our thoughts,” we can apply that perspective to the world at large.

In practical terms, this helps us maintain space between our internal experience and the performance happening on stage. Like watching a drama, we can get emotionally involved in the performance, but at the end of the movie (our life), we get to walk out of the theater and back into the sun.

And just as the protagonist’s challenges are a dance of light, our own challenges are simply the light of experience playing with the shadows cast by the world. The projection might be frightening, for it is subjectively real to us, but that doesn’t make it objectively real.

I believe that when we see this reality behind reality, the truth behind the shadows, we are free.

The hero of the light


A boy stood trembling at basement’s door,

Afraid of what the dark might store.

“Replace the bulb,” mother did say,

“And take this torch to light your way.”
​

His mother’s voice, an assuring tune,

Placed in his hand a silver moon—

A flashlight’s beam to pierce the night,

A fragile sword against his fright.
​

Down the creaking stairs he crept,

The basement yawning, dark and swept.

The flashlight’s glow cut through the black,

He must go on, no turning back.
​

But shadows danced on concrete walls,

Twisting shapes in ghastly sprawls.

Each box and broom, a looming beast,

His courage wavered, fears increased.


Coat and hanger become ghostly shape,

With charcoal maws and abysmal gape.

His heart raced faster; he froze in fright—

Were these shadows alive, or tricks of light?


Then it struck him: shadows aren’t real.

They’re not something to fight, nor even feel.

They stem from objects caught in between,

Obstructing a light that still gleams unseen.


His flashlight shone steady, unwavering and raw,

Revealing the forms he thought that he saw.

The coat was no menace, the broom was just wood;

Once darkness dissolved where brightness now stood.


With trembling hands, he reached for the chain,

And pulled it once—light bloomed again.

The bulb above now bathed the room,

Dispelling every trace of gloom.


He stood beneath its steady glow,

And wondered at the truths to know:

Was this the light held in his hand?

Did all light share a common strand?
​

Is it the flashlight, the bulb, or the day,

Or something far greater lighting the way?”

The boy smiled softly, his fear undone—

For he saw that all light comes from the sun.
​

No gloom lingers, no darkness stays,

Where the source of all light forever plays.

So rather than fight the shadows we meet,

Shine the light within, and darkness retreats.
​

He thought of sunbeams far away,

That bathed the earth and lit the day.

He smiled then, no longer small,

Knowing that light is within us all.

Thank you, as always, for being on this journey with me.

Love,
Shane

The solitude was delicious. The crisp mornings where only the birds broke the silence, or the evening chorus of crickets and nocturnal creatures, provided many reasons to rejoice. I anticipated that the people would be mere obstacles to my yearning for communion with nature.

Turns out, nearly all my fondest memories from the trail are tied to people. There were Trail Angels along the way; those strange and wonderful saints of the footpath, but the real magic happened amidst the intermingling of my fellow hikers.

On long trails, people often go by “trail names.” They’re nicknames, usually a little ridiculous, and often far more fitting than the names our parents gave us.

Sometimes you earn one because of something you said or did. Other times, the name appears out of thin air, as if bestowed for no reason at all. Either way, once you have one, that’s who you’re known as.

In many cases, you have to hike with someone for quite a while before you even trade real names. So the people in this story will be known as they were known out there: by their trail names.

I began my journey with a family friend, Joe. I’ve known him most of my life. He grew up near us, and at one point, my mom even tried to adopt him. Because we started together, neither of us had a trail name yet. We were still civilians.

I couldn’t have asked for a better person to begin that journey with.

Joe has worked in construction and concrete most of his life, so whenever we passed an old building or stone structure, he’d stop in quiet reverence and start giving me 12 fascinating facts about the masonry. He sees the world like a builder. I see it like a philosopher. It made for a good pairing.

Those first weeks on the trail are especially humbling. Hiking a mountain all day sounds romantic until your body realizes what all day truly means. It’s brutal, with almost no time for your body to rest and repair. But the human body is resilient, and eventually, your legs adapt.

At first, though, even 13 miles can feel like a death march. Joe and I became each other’s morale officers. When one of us wanted to quit, the other stepped in and carried the spirit for a while.

It was fun starting with him because I got to bumble through all my trail firsts with someone familiar beside me.

My first hitch into town. My first public campsite. My first dispersed campsite. My first rounds of fumbling with gear like a man trying to assemble IKEA furniture in the rain. And there was comfort in knowing that if I failed spectacularly at hanging my hammock, I could always crawl into Joe’s tent and preserve a little dignity.

Which makes me recall our first truly bad storm.

Freezing rain came down in sheets, and the trail had turned into a crude combination of creek and practical joke.

Around lunchtime, we came off the trail and found a lone restaurant by the road. It was closed, which only added to the humor, but it did have an outdoor tiki hut. So we ducked in there to escape the rain long enough to make lunch.

The wind was blowing so hard that the rain came in sideways, so we ended up building a tiny lean-to inside the tiki hut just so we could light our stoves. My hands were so cold I could barely work my gear. We were soaked, shivering, and laughing our asses off. We couldn’t stop grinning. Some situations are too ridiculous not to become funny.

The shower at our next hostel probably ranks in the top 5 best showers of my life.

Then we met a fellow hiker from Colorado named Seeker. We walked and talked with him for a couple of days, eventually meeting his wife in a town we passed through. She brought snacks—we loved her immediately. Food is any hiker’s love language.

Seeker is the one who gave me my trail name: Poet, earned likely because I kept sharing poems during our conversations. It’s strange being called by a different name, of course. But like with anything, you get used to it.

After about two weeks, Joe left the trail to head back to work. But not before he received his trail name: Pecos Bill (on account of his striking resemblance to a tornado).

My first few nights alone were a bit more “spooky” than I anticipated.

It was just me in the woods, with only a thin layer of hammock fabric between me and the great, dark theater of nature.

You never realize how much noise little creatures make until everything else goes quiet. In the woods, everything sounds big.

Birds and squirrels sound like deer, and deer sound like moose. It wasn’t until much later, and much farther north, that I learned what a moose actually sounds like. The woods were not exaggerating their size.

But like many things that frighten us, it became easier once I stopped resisting it. Then, eventually, it became something I loved. I was living out my Davy Crockett fantasies.

I thought it was the beginning of the solo portion of my journey.

It wasn’t.

Even when I hiked alone, I was rarely alone for long. On a trail like the AT, you start seeing the same people over and over; the ones moving at roughly your pace. You pass them, they pass you, you leapfrog each other for days, sometimes weeks. Familiarity forms almost by accident.

Then one day in New York, somewhere past Bear Mountain, I met a young couple from Maine. They were in their early twenties and moving at a solid clip. Since I no longer had Joe there to keep me pushing, it felt natural to fall in step with people who could.

Their names were KT and Caboose.

I ended up hiking with them for about 2 weeks. Our conversations covered everything from philosophy to the stock market to favorite video games and TV shows. The profound and the ridiculous, just as all proper friendships should.

I loved hiking with them.

They pushed me to put in more miles than I would have on my own—we were averaging 20-plus-mile days by then. But more than that, they met a need I hadn’t fully admitted to myself. Solitude was nourishing, yes, but so was company.

Caboose was there to photograph me after I slipped on rocks and fell into a river, gear and all, while trying to cross upstream to avoid getting my feet wet (the perfect little parable for human suffering).

KT was a master planner. She found cool hostels and stops I never would have discovered on my own. She was also a vegetarian, which made snack-sharing far less complicated and immediately made her one of my favorite people.

We settled into a rhythm: wake up early, hike all day, stop at a good campsite, wash off in a nearby creek, and, when fortune smiled, build a fire before dark. It was a simple life, and a rich one. In our own dirty, underfed way, we were living well.

Eventually, we parted ways in Hanover, New Hampshire.

Looking back, though I spent many days alone on that trail, some days felt like I was part of a moving village.

Another memory comes to mind.

It was yet another rainy evening, and I had planned to stay at one of the official AT lean-tos so I could avoid dealing with my hammock tarp. When I arrived, I found that six other people had already had the same idea; all of them were hikers I’d come to know.

So there we were: seven filthy hikers packed into a tiny shelter, laughing, telling stories, and fogging the place up with the underprocessed diet of trail mix and dried foods.

Two of us had hammocks, so we rigged them from the rafters above the others, who were spread across the floor on sleeping pads. We joked that if the sketchy rafters didn’t collapse under us, our collective fumes would finish the job anyway.

There were many more encounters like that. Too many, really, to fit into one post. Some people were with me for days, others for only an hour, but the memories remain.

I came to the woods looking for solitude.

And I found it.

But I also found something I wasn’t looking for, which is often where the best things hide.

I found community.

First small group of hikers we spent a few days with: Seeker, me, Rooster, and Silly

At our first in-town restaurant stop after our first week. Seeker’s advice: “Eat as many calories as you can.”

The infamous “lunch lean to” we set up in the middle of a freezing rain storm.

One of the many historical structures along the trail.

Some new hiking friends: KT, Caboose, me, Thing 1, and Thing 2.

Caboose’s mom drove down from Maine to pick us up and take us into town for a resupply.

Saying goodbye to KT and Caboose in NH

7 stinky hikers in one small lean-to

I’ve heard everything from “it will bring a new era of humanity” to “it will bring the end of the world.”

Like most things, I don’t think even the experts can accurately predict what will truly happen as it continues to evolve and embed itself within human culture. Only one thing’s for certain; it’s here to stay. As for what that might look like in the next fifty years, all we can do is speculate and observe.

This is simply my contribution to a series, in which my friend, , will explore the technical side of AI’s evolution, while I’ll approach it from the human psychology and philosophical side.

I’ll first acknowledge that I’m an eternal optimist, so there are undoubtedly angles and nuances to which I’m blind and won’t touch on here.

I’m in no way an AI expert, just an avid user and proponent of exploration and experimentation. What I can claim some expertise in, however, is how to utilize positive human psychology to navigate uncertain situations effectively.

I won’t spend much time listing my credentials in this area, lest this article devolve into self-aggrandizing horn-tooting.

Nor am I asserting that this approach is one-size-fits-all; it has simply helped me stay sane and lighthearted through many of life’s curveballs. You’ll either resonate with what I say, or you won’t; simple as that.

For those who don’t, I hope it at least remains entertaining. And if you do, and it helps you with perspective to navigate an uncertain future, that’s nice too.

Let’s start by finding some common ground. I’ll assume that most reading this live in a country guided by a mostly free-market, capitalist-driven economy. If we can rely on past patterns of how technology is regulated—take social media, for example—it’s safe to say regulations outside of major safety concerns will remain reactive at best. Digital technology has been, and will likely continue to be, the Wild West.

Secondly, we can probably all agree that AI, like most technological advancements, will continue to grow and develop at an increasingly rapid rate.

Where the speculation begins is in its implications for human livelihood. One of the most common concerns I hear about AI is job security.

Like many automations before it, AI has already begun replacing human-based roles, and this time, it’s not limited to so-called “low-skilled” jobs. I could list examples, but doing so would risk turning this into a novel. Suffice it to say, more jobs will likely be affected than not.

Ideally, political leaders will recognize this and create preemptive safety nets for citizens. Universal basic income has been proposed as one such measure, but I’m not equipped to speculate on how it would look in practice.

I’m no political pundit, nor am I in a position to influence policy, so I cannot offer any research-based alternatives. I think we will eventually figure it out. My concern, however, is that things may get out of hand before they get better.

That brings us to the real question: What can we, the average person, do about it?

My philosophy is simple: take total responsibility for your life. This doesn’t mean blaming yourself for what happens; it means owning how you respond. Blame hands away your power. Responsibility restores it. Be response-able.

It might sound like this: “I wouldn’t have chosen this situation, nor do I particularly enjoy it. But I accept that it’s here, and I’ll do my best to adapt.”

To the untrained eye, that might look like giving up—but it’s the opposite. True acceptance is the ground from which change can grow. New ideas, creative solutions, and empowered action arise only in those aligned with reality.

Marcus Aurelius put it best:

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Or as modern Stoic Ryan Holiday reframed it, the obstacle is the way.

That’s why the advent of AI is both exciting and concerning. It’s exciting because we don’t know what will happen—and, for the same reason, concerning.

We can either sit back and complain or accept what’s coming and move forward. The fast-flowing current of progress can drown us if we resist it, but if we swim with it, it can carry us farther than we ever imagined.

Whether it’s using AI as a partner to increase the quality and quantity of your work or lowering the barriers to entry for entrepreneurship and allowing you to work for yourself, the opportunities hidden within any challenge are endless. One just has to keep their eyes open to look for them.

I know I’m oversimplifying here, and the reality could very well turn out to be much scarier than I’m implying. Ultimately, however, I’ll continue to encourage this perspective: every new problem provides a new opportunity to solve it. And solving problems is a great way to make money.

Job security, however, is only one of the concerns. The creative arts are another hot AI topic.

When it comes to writing and art, I want to revisit an idea from my piece Lessons from a Flower. For those who have the financial means to write not for income but for joy—for expression, reflection, or release—there’s no need to fear AI.

Art, like many of life’s gifts, is best given freely, without strings attached to any outcome.

A great writer doesn’t demand a masterpiece; they fall in love with the process of creation, from which a masterpiece might emerge on its own. Just as a piece of music isn’t written as a rush to the final note, writing exists for the process, not the product.

If a writer writes for themselves, then AI threatens nothing. It may write faster, perhaps even better someday, but will it enjoy it as much as I do? Until it becomes self-aware, I’m not sure it can.

And even if one day it does, what has that taken from me? Nothing.

Does another’s abilities detract from my own? What can possibly be taken from something that’s already self-fulfilling? If anything, AI can serve as a partner, removing tasks I don’t enjoy so I can spend more time immersed in what I love.

There’s potential for both benefit and harm in nearly everything, AI included. Once again, I acknowledge that I’m oversimplifying, but maybe it’s not such a bad thing to overlook a few overcomplications. Intentional optimism, after all, seems a much more enjoyable way to live.

Pandora’s box is open, and there’s no shutting it.

But perhaps the question isn’t what AI will become, but what it will reveal about ourselves.

Frodo was afraid. All he wanted was to be a nobody again, safe in the Shire. But fate had other plans for him. It’s a story as old, if not older, than the Bible.

It reminded me of a meditation intensive I did in India. During a session, the teacher referenced the Matrix movie, noting that Neo had no desire to be special, which was part of what made him “The One.” I spoke on this topic recently in my post On Being Nobody, so I won’t go into detail here.

What I will say is there’s something both powerful and awe-inspiring in the archetype of the unassuming hero. We praise them for their courage (not fearlessness), while still appreciating their sincerity and true humility.

With the ever-present shadow of darkness looming over our global politics, I often wonder if I have what it takes to be a light in the world. Can I be courageous? Or do I have too many ideas in my head of what a hero is supposed to be?

Reluctant Courage


When kings debate the end of things

and warriors speak in steel;

When maps are marked with certain doom

and every fate feels sealed



There, from the edge of assembled might,

a small voice rose through the gathering night,

breaking the silence that held its sway:

“I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.”



It needs no strength nor iron will

to boast before the start,

reluctant courage makes its home

inside an ordinary heart.



And in a room of humming light,

where truth was bent by code,

a man who doubted destiny

refused the chosen road.



He did not glow with prophecy,

nor hunger for a throne.

When asked if he believed the tale,

he said, “I’m not the One.”



Yet when the air began to tear

and bullets split the skin,

he died—and love called back to him

what he could not believe within.



Those who yearn to matter most

are rarely those who rise.

The hunt for fame and louder praise

clouds once-clear, untroubled eyes.



But those at ease with being small,

unknown, unseen, uncelebrated

are often the reluctant hands

by which the world is fated.



Despite their fear and clinging doubts,

they step when others stall—

not for glory, not for name,

but because the moment calls.



For courage is not forged in fire

nor born of certainty.

It grows in those who doubt themselves

and act reluctantly.

I once heard that leadership is lonely. I believe courage can be lonely, too. The courage to stand when everyone else is lying down. The courage to speak up when all others are silent. The courage to stay true when the pressures of conformity cave in.

It’s not about a show of confidence or display of bravado; it’s the trembling “yes” amidst deep despair.

This is the type of courage I hope for.

I’m reminded of what the Oracle told Neo, ”You got the gift, but it looks like you’re waiting for something.”

Perhaps she’s right, for I’m not sure how to respond.

On the AT, I didn’t read much at all; the paper was a weight I didn’t care to carry. But I did listen to many books. In addition to various lectures by Eckhart Tolle and Alan Watts, I re-read the Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, and a small handful of Stephen King novels.

But this post is not about that part of the quote.

One of the reasons I was excited to hike the AT was the solitude. I, of course, like most humans, enjoy good company. I love spending time with my wife and close friends. But I also do not find myself afraid to be alone.

When I did my first silent retreat in India 7 years ago, people always asked if it was difficult. Didn’t I go a little crazy not being able to talk with people?

On the contrary, it was the most sane I’d ever felt. Embracing silence and solitude comes somewhat naturally to me. It’s in moments of quietude that I tend to feel the most at home—the most myself.

I also find that solitude, and particularly silence, tends to encourage spiritual enrichment and connection. There’s a line in the Tao that describes it well: “Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.” It’s hard to feel alone when you’ve got the entire universe as a companion.

And then the Bible, in a moment of powerful brevity, reminds us to “be still, and know that I am God.”

I did not have a big reason for hiking the AT. I was not trying to prove anything or escape from anything. I was just interested in a hike and in connecting with nature.

Therefore, the last thing on my mind was meeting and connecting with people. If anything, I was excited to get away from people. I enjoyed hiking the first two weeks with my friend Joe, but I was also quite excited to go solo when he left.

There’s nothing like an extended period alone with nature to rekindle the spirit and recharge the batteries.

That’s why I was surprised by how social the AT turned out to be. I think there was only one day out of 75 when I didn’t see anyone. Sometimes it felt more like a group event than a solo hike.

At first, this bothered me. I got annoyed when I had to share a campsite. It was not about the people. Most were friendly and respectful. But I had come into this trek with the idea of solitude rooted firmly in my mind.

And that’s just it, isn’t it? When we have an idea about the way something “should be,” it’s hard to see or accept reality in any other way. And that’s a recipe for perpetual suffering, because how often does life perfectly conform to the concepts we hold in our minds?

For a while, I held on to what I wanted instead of being open to what was unfolding. When I did not get what I wanted, I complained.

Eventually, I saw that this was not helpful. I decided not to let my thoughts ruin my experience.

That is when things started to get fun.

Instead of just tolerating the times I met other people, I started to enjoy those moments. Looking back, those moments I shared with people on the trail are among my fondest memories. It’s funny what happens when we say yes to life.

Thus, I began incorporating everyone I met into my spiritual practice. They were no longer an intrusion in the environment; they were an integral part of it.

There are essentially two types of people you meet on the AT: trail angels and fellow hikers.

Trail angels are people who are not hiking but go out of their way to help hikers. The amount of generosity I encountered each week was astounding. And usually, it came at the exact moment I needed it most.

Sometimes I’d be low on water and come upon a cooler planted near a trail crossroads with drinks and snacks. It felt like discovering a treasure chest.

Other times, it wouldn’t just be a cooler of food; someone would park their car or set up a table to say hello and give snacks and encouragement to people along the way.

One morning, I was crossing a river with no bridge (a frequent occurrence), and I fell in.

The smart thing to do would have been to get my feet wet and walk through the shallow part. Still, I was stubborn and tired of wet feet, so I tried my luck with a leap of faith between two large rocks a bit upstream from the trail. I made the jump, but the rock was slippery, and I ended up in the river, pack and all.

Thankfully, my sleeping gear was in a waterproof sack within my bag, so it stayed dry, but everything else was wet. Not the most ideal situation.

Ten minutes later, as I’m trudging up the trail, I stumble upon a trail angel with the trail name of Spineless Cougar. He and another hiker had carried a generator, table, and supplies deep into the woods and were making pancakes!

While my gear and I dried out, I enjoyed homemade pancakes and fresh fruit and charged my devices. I even left an earbud behind by accident, but Spineless Cougar found my Instagram, messaged me, and mailed it to my mom so she could include it in my next care package. He asked for nothing in return.

Another time, I was in a town taking advantage of a community center deal for hikers—$10 for an all-day pass to the shower, sauna, gym, and camping in their park. A man saw my backpack and asked if I wanted a ride into town for anything at all. He then drove me all around town so I could do my grocery shopping and resupply.

Some of the most exciting moments on the trail weren’t actually on the trail; they were when I’d find myself in a town for a resupply. Among the numerous kind strangers I met along the way, many hosted me in free or dirt-cheap hostels. I’d get to sleep under a roof, get a shower and a bed, and oftentimes a warm, home-cooked meal.

Countless times, I’d be hiking into a town, and without sticking out my thumb, someone would stop and ask if I needed a ride.

It didn’t always work this way, of course. Like life, the trail pushed my limits and encouraged me to be resilient, self-sustaining, and resourceful. I could have made the trek without the support, but the physical and emotional support made the journey much more special.

And every once in a while, fellow hikers become trail angels.

When I was in the 100-Mile Wilderness of Maine, I kept running into a group of girls doing a section hike up to Katahdin. We ended up summitting Katahdin on the same day.

When I saw them on top, I struck up a conversation and mentioned I needed to find a way back to DC so I could catch a train to Harpers Ferry.

Without hesitation, one of them said, “I’m from DC, and I’m going back there. I’ll drive you.”

Just like that, life solved a logistical problem effortlessly. Not only did I make it to DC, but I made new friends along the way.

I didn’t go to the trail to learn anything, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have anything to teach me.

As a Type A personality, I tend to focus on tasks rather than people. And if I’m not careful, even the people themselves become tasks.

But the trail reminded me that when I embrace the moment, including its people, not only will tasks get done, but they will often be done faster than if I were alone.

And at the top of the mountain, I won’t have simply gained elevation or crossed miles off my list; I will have enriched my life with friendship and human connection.

Finding one of these is like finding a treasure chest.

Often, people would stop what they were doing to help. Curt drove me all over town to help me resupply.

Nothing better than a hot, home-cooked meal in the middle of the woods. This was one of my favorite lodges to stay at!

Spineless Cougar set up a pancake stand in the woods. Few things get thru-hikers to stop for long, but this sure was a show stopper

Modern living enables us to effectively ignore many of life's dirtier aspects. We live inside and take short, curated stints to venture outside.

Sitting in the warm embrace of a sofa, in front of the television’s glow, it’s easy for one to fantasize about Davy Crockett-style adventures. However, a few weeks into hiking the AT, the novelty of “roughing it” was slowly turning into the reality of roughing it.

I’m going to put a disclaimer before diving into this post: I loved my hiking experience and will likely find myself on others like it in my lifetime. That said, this reflection will likely focus on the less enjoyable aspects of the hike. The shit parts to be precise (yes, pun intended).

I mentioned in my last post, titled The Long Walk, near the end of my second week, my left knee was shooting pain, specifically every time I descended.

The tough part about climbing mountains is that if you’re not climbing up, you’re usually climbing down, so descending happens often. I knew if I didn’t address the pain, it could very well take me out of the game.

Thus, when we approached the Delaware Water Gap, I found an AT alumnus who offered injury therapy sessions. I was passing through on his day off, but after hearing my case, he offered to do an emergency visit.

After the most gruelling hour of physical therapy I’d experienced since my high-school cross-country running days, my knee felt immensely better. He then asked if I wanted to top it off with Chinese cupping therapy. I had never done cupping before, and I’m all for experience, so I said why not.

It’s a strange sight to witness, let alone take part in. Don’t fret, I’ll post a gnarly picture below. I think it may have helped, but it also left my knee numb to the touch for the next month. Which, to be honest, was a welcome reprieve from the stabbing pain it had been used to.

I then took my first zero day (rest day) and relaxed in town to let my knee heal. It was strange to be sedentary after two weeks of nonstop movement.

This was also where my hiking partner, Joe, left to go home and back to work. Thus began my journey alone.

With my knee recovered and some advice and stretches on how to keep it healthy, I was off to the races. Before long, my “hiking legs” developed, and I was clocking in 20-30 miles every day.

For probably a solid month, I thrived at that pace.

I felt like an athlete again. I was competing with myself, seeing each day if I could beat the distance and elevation change of the previous day.

At the end of every day, I’d race to eat my dinner and set up my hammock before the sun set. Headlamps are fine for a late-night pee, but I tried to avoid cleaning up my camp in the dark if I could.

Unfortunately, even the novelty of the grind eventually wore off. It became an actual grind: wake up, eat, poop, walk, eat, walk, eat, sleep, repeat.

Once the excitement evaporated, the complaints rolled in.

My pack felt too heavy because I was carrying too much food, but it was easy to justify when I was eating at least 5,000 calories a day. My trips to the grocery stores in town were less about “what would I enjoy” and more about “what has the highest caloric density?”

My sleep was shit because I’d wake up at least 2 times a night to pee, and then another 5 times because of discomfort or leg cramps. Despite eating well, my race to the finish deprived my body of adequate rest to heal and strengthen.

My muscles were in a perpetual state of tear and not enough repair. I knew my body was unhappy with me, and it made sure to wake me up and remind me of its discontent often.

Speaking of my body being unhappy, there was rarely a time when something didn’t hurt. If it wasn’t my knee, it was my back. If it wasn’t my back, it was my arches, or shoulders, and so on and so on.

And don’t even get me started on the blisters. I managed to get through the first few weeks with only a few minor hot spots, but Leukotape saved me from full-blown blisters.

That was until the rains started. I’m sure I could dedicate an entire post to the sheer amount of liquid sunshine I experienced in those 75 days, but I’ll spare you the details.

There were stretches of days where I was either walking through mud or just straight up streams. Literally, it rained so often that the trail would transform into a creek for days at a time. Day hikers in New York reminded me often that “this is the coldest, wettest summer I’ve seen in years.” Woopie!

How my attitude handled that is a different story, but my feet could only stay wet for so long before my skin gave way. One and a half months in, and I was getting blisters as if I’d decided to hike while breaking in new dress shoes. I now have a new, healthy fear of trench foot.

And this would be a good time as any to talk about the buttholes. I don’t mean people, thankfully, most people I met on the trail were exceedingly nice. Weird, like me, but nice.

No, the butthole I’m talking about is the poor fellow between my cheeks who, for 2.5 months, didn’t have a fighting chance at a regular poo.

I know this may seem like a strange topic to include in my post, but trust me, if you walked with anyone for more than a day, you would exchange data on your bowel movements. A hiker once told me, there are only 3 things to talk about on the trail: what you’re eating, what you’re using (gear), and how you’re pooping.

Needless to say, not only was the consistency strange (probably because of the sheer amount of nuts and dried fruit I consumed in a day), but the location was always less than desirable.

When it’s time for business, a hiker usually has two choices: dig a hole yourself or use one of the many pre-dug holes provided as trail privies. Many of them were actually new builds and relatively nice, but that doesn’t negate the fact that you’re still just adding to a heaping pile of... you know.

Oh, also, you get really good at wiping twice with one square of t.p. Desperate times call for desperate measures. But that’s still better than the alternative of grabbing a random leaf and hoping you don’t have an allergic reaction. The indoor and private porcelain throne (ideally with a bidet) is truly one of the greatest inventions of mankind.

Ok, I’m done with the #2 tangent. I’ll save the bugs for a later post, I guess. Perhaps if I ever write about the 100 Mile Wilderness in Maine.

With all these complaints constantly flooding my awareness, the purpose of every day became reduced to a single focus—walk as far as I could to chip away at the remaining distance between Katahdin and me.

In Eastern philosophy terms, everything I did was Karma, an action with its focus on an intended outcome. I wasn’t living for the moment; I was navigating that moment to get to the next one.

It doesn’t take a spiritual Master to know that doing anything solely to finish it is a recipe for dissatisfaction. What was intended to be my post-sabbatical adventure in nature, before returning to work, had become an obsessive race to complete it and return to worldly comforts.

One of the final straws came when I stayed at a lodge that sat on a beautiful, secluded lake in NH. The lodge had free canoes to explore the lake, but I didn’t want to “get behind” on my mileage goal for the day by spending the morning kayaking.

“Why didn’t you just slow down, relax, and enjoy shorter mile days?”

That’s a great question! Probably because my overachieving ego wouldn’t let me.

In the prison of my mind, I had two options. One was take the days slowly, rest and relax, and potentially enjoy myself more, but drag out the journey and be away from Toriya for longer. The other option was to power through the pain and get to the end so I could go home.

You see, even though I was in paradise, surrounded by captivating and life-affirming nature, I was stuck in my head. I didn’t see the elegant trees with my eyes, but projected them as obstacles with my mind. The rocks stopped being fascinating time capsules of geologic history and became mere tripping hazards.

Even the streams, with their cool, refreshing waters, were just a pain in the ass to cross.

One day, as I was walking alongside a stream, I saw a small inlet leading to the perfect swimming spot. It seemed like a good place to stop for lunch.

After I finished and tightened up my pack to head out, the thought crossed my mind, “It would be a nice day to swim,” which was immediately overruled by the oppressive, “I don’t have time.”

And I believed that tyranny. Then, about 100 feet down the trail, I stopped. Not because another tree had snapped and was downed, blocking my way (though that was highly likely), but because something in me had snapped.

What the f*** am I doing? How could I let myself believe that the final step of this journey could possibly be any better than the one I was taking right now?

And time—I didn’t have enough time? Time was ALL I HAD!

So I went back to the spot, dropped my pack, stripped down to my underwear, and jumped in. The water was delicious. I sat and bathed myself, then lay beside a rock and soaked in the sun while the cool stream cascaded over my body.

I heard the water gurgle and flow, listened to the birds carry on their heated debates, tuned in to the buzz of insects whirling about, and watched the clouds float lazily overhead.

It was around this time that I began crying. The salt from my tears mixed seamlessly into the fresh water stream, and my eyes were born anew. I could finally see again.

It was in that moment that this poem came to me:

Paradise

You have placed me amidst paradise,
Yet I ignore it
For my mind sees not
When it is determined to be elsewhere.


I rush through,
Not with the elegance of your waters,
Nor the grace of your wind,
Rather with the ignorance of one
Who is seeking comfort in a promised future
Knowing all the while it will never come. 


In doing so, I have reduced your mountains
To a mere check mark,
A task to be completed,
A path to be conquered,
An obstacle overcome,
Placing the desire to finish 
Above the ability to witness.


And for this I am ashamed.
I am sorry, 
To the trees I have dishonored,
To the rocks I have scorned,
To the insects I have cursed,
And to the sunset I have forgotten—


For though you have placed me in paradise,
I have not seen it,
Because I was too busy trying to get there. 

I’ve been reminded time and time again during these last few years that whether I’m at an ashram in India, touring the ancient cities of Europe and Asia, or hiking through the Appalachian Mountains, I’m always still there.

On the surface, there’s nothing profound about that. Of course I’m still there! Wherever I go, there I am, where else could I be?

But I don’t just mean that my physical body is there. My mind, and all its history and tendencies, come with me. Just because I moved to the jungles of India didn’t mean my neurotic thoughts would disappear. Just because I was hiking in nature didn’t mean that my desire to achieve and dominate would melt away.

On this lifelong journey of self-discovery, I’m not saying an environment can’t have qualities that are either conducive or hindering, depending on one’s perspective. But is the environment itself responsible for how we behave within it?

The AT wasn’t demanding that I push through 20+ mile days to reach the finish. It wasn’t demanding anything.

My suffering, as usual, was entirely self-created and self-sustained. Whether it’s in an ashram, on a trail, or in a boardroom, I alone am responsible for my experience. The face I show Life will surely be the face I get in return.

Yet again, I found myself disappointed when an external journey didn’t match the internal experience I was yearning for.

And yet again, what I sought was right in front of me the entire time; I was just too busy searching for it to notice.

Maybe one day, I’ll stop burning my hand on the same stove. But I think I’ll need to get really rich, mature a bit more, and move to South America before that happens.

Just kidding ;)

My poor feet

Told you it was weird…

Hey NH, am I going for a hike… or a swim? Make up your damn mind.

Me, searching for a lost pole after I ate it trying to cross a river up stream from the trail so I didn’t have to get my shoes wet. Jokes on me, my whole bag got wet…
Photo courtesy of Caboose.

One of my favorite privvies. Panoramic views

Days started to look more and more like this

He and his wife have a nice big house, fancy cars, a beautiful baby girl, status, fulfilling jobs, and a healthy marriage. They’re both wonderful people and generously hosted Toriya and me at their compound for 10 days.

While I was enjoying their company, I noticed an unwanted guest had followed me there.

No matter how much I seem to “practice detachment,” the comparison bug always seems to find a way to burrow back into my mind. It was particularly prevalent here because, in an alternate reality, I have this life of material wealth.

I met this particular friend in my old sales job, where we pushed each other for years as fierce competitors. We were neck and neck in the race towards “success” for most of our relationship.

Then he left that sales company for another, more lucrative sales opportunity, and I left that sales company to go to India. That is where our worldly competition seemed to end, for while he went on to build an organization that made him millions, I became voluntarily unemployed.

At the time, my decision felt right. Frankly, it still feels right, which is why I think I’m a tad frustrated that the comparison bug has come knocking on my door. I didn’t go to India to achieve anything; I went because I felt called.

However, my mind might say otherwise. It would argue that I went to India very much to achieve something—the end of suffering. And it’s not entirely wrong.

Most of my life has been spent in pursuit of greatness. Since early childhood, I learned the art of setting and achieving goals. When I was a young swimmer, I was taught the power of visualization and would picture my gold-medal performances before I ever hit the water.

In school, I sacrificed sleep to excel academically and athletically. To a degree, it worked. I didn’t go to the Olympics, but I was named valedictorian of a graduating class of 500+ and won St. Louis’ student-athlete of the year award.

But still, I didn’t go to the Olympics. No matter what I accomplished, it was always quickly sullied in the shadow of those who were “better.” No matter what I did, there was always something more to do. I lived in a constant flux of pride and disappointment, with hints of contempt and envy.

My life was one metaphorical mountain peak after another. And while the views from up top were always grand, my sights (and happiness) inevitably sought out the next highest peak.

When I went to India, those thought patterns that had dominated most of my life seemed to loosen their grip. Living in the jungle, where life is stripped to the bare essentials, had a transformative effect on me. I dive more into that journey through the numbered posts on my publication, The Unhurried Life. The healing waters of the community I was a part of helped to calm the embers of my desire.

Although I’d like to say I was cured completely, old habits really do die hard. Given the right breeze (and the temptation of a shiny object of desire), those unresolved embers spark back to life. Especially when the “shiny object” lets me stay in their guest house.

While I may not have improved as much as I would have liked during my sabbatical, I do think I’m becoming more aware of the problem.

Previously, when around my triggers (wealth, success, etc), I would have been overcome by craving and let that unconsciously fuel my ambition. Now I at least notice when the greenness of envy overtakes my vision. It may not be a total victory, but it’s progress. In that noticing, I have space to choose a different reality.

It’s important to note here that I don’t think any path is inherently right or wrong. Thus, if pursuing wealth and status seems like the right path for someone, wonderful. This reflection is not about demonizing the pursuit of material riches. Who knows, I may find myself on that course again one day.

One thing I’ve been learning on my journey is to disregard any judgments my brain has about others’ journeys. One of the most beautiful aspects of life on Earth is its diversity. Diversity of backgrounds, religions, race, diet, and even thought.

That also includes diversity in life paths. I’m a believer that all roads lead to the same end; they just might offer different scenery along the way.

The real challenge for me doesn’t seem to be restraint from judging others’ paths, but from judging my own.

As one of my old mentors used to say, “You can’t determine the moral of a story before the story is finished.” Yet my mind is always seeking either validation that I “did the right thing” in dropping out of the Rat Race and moving to India, or it’s seeking to berate me for losing my “position” in the race. Either way, the mind is never happy.

But maybe that’s the entire problem; I’m still identifying with my mind.

While in India, my teacher there talked often about how “we must become completely ok with being a nobody.” He referenced the Matrix movie and how Neo was the One only because he didn’t think he was, nor did he really want to be. He was special by virtue of being completely unabsorbed by the idea of being special. There’s a similar parallel with Frodo in The Lord of the Rings.

I, on the other hand, cried when I heard the Les Brown motivational talk “I’m the One,” because, despite what the other listeners may think, he was clearly talking about me.

That may be why, as I began working on the idea of being a nobody, it became a rather appealing new identity to my ego.

Instead of being a somebody, I could be the person with the potential to be a somebody, but who overcame the urge and broke free from the Rat Race to become content with being a nobody, thereby making me superior to all those somebodies out there who succumbed to said urge. Phew, take a breather. Pretty spiritual, am I right?

My mind will either think I’m special because I’m somebody, or it will think I’m special because I’m detached and enlightened enough to be a nobody. So basically, I’m f***** regardless.

But that’s just the nature of the mind, isn’t it? F***** regardless? I’m constantly reminded by these reflections that there may be no fixing these thoughts; my only hope is to not give them so much weight.

That can be difficult, however, when you live in an environment that is constantly promoting the idea of standing out and being special.

The advertising industry has spent trillions of dollars on ensuring that, from a young age, I’ve believed I can only truly be myself when I stand out; when I mean something; when I’m important.

If you’re sad, angry, confused, or downright depressed, “more” is always the answer.

I recently cried my way through the Avicii documentary. When he became one of the most famous DJs in the world, he saw an American news report, “Avicii makes millions and retires at 26.” He laughed and said, “That’s such an American way to think about it.” He wasn’t retiring from making music; he was trying to distance himself from the business of music.

He later went on to say, “I was a lot happier before I was famous than after I was famous.” Greed has a way of creeping into any positive experience and turning it sour with its necrotic touch.

I cannot say I personally understand his experience, as I am (thankfully) not world-famous. But I did get a taste of ‘fame within a bubble’ while being a record-breaker and top producer at my old company. It changes the way people treat you. Interactions seem to become less about people wanting to make deep connections and more about how associating with you can improve their own status.

I know this experientially, so why does a part of me still want it? It’s both baffling and eternally frustrating. I guess I’m just not healed of that ancient disease called “not enough.” And the only prescription humanity seems to promote as a cure is “more.”

Though we all secretly know it never works.

So, I will continue experimenting and feeling my way towards the one prescription I do believe works; the light of Presence—of the One, of the Universe, of God—whose fundamental law is “there is always enough.” In the meantime, these reflections help.

I wrote this poem over a year ago. Ironically (or coincidentally), it’s a haiku. I call it ironic because I think one way my old patterns of “more” tend to show up is in my writing, specifically, through wordiness.

I always seem to have a lot to say. Haikus are, therefore, inherently a pretty difficult artform for me. After all, I need a large word count to say anything of substance. Right?

Thus, I couldn’t think of a better way to end this post.

No body

I am nobody
The world thinks, I’m nothing. Good.
I am no body

My brother from another mother, Joe, had told me he’d start with me and hike as long as he could be away from work. Although I was excited to test my mettle out on my own and live in that fertile silence of self-discovery, I was also grateful to be starting off with a friend.

After a day’s drive from my mom’s house in southern IL, we arrived in Harper’s Ferry, WV, for the Flip-Flop kick-off meeting. After some free coffee and snacks and a few talks on how to respect the trail and fellow hikers (and stay alive and Lyme disease-free), we were let loose. Most people stayed for breakfast and a formal sendoff the next morning, but I was itching to get moving, so we began hiking around 2 pm.

Before I go further, I don’t think I’ll go into detail on each mile of the trail in this journal. I kept a pretty thorough video journal, so I don’t feel called to share every daily detail of the adventure. What I do intend to use this journal for, as per usual, is a place for me to emotionally process and reflect. And I think this reflection will be on physical pain and suffering. So buckle in.

From 2-5 pm, we covered seven miles to our first campsite, and I distinctly remember how sore my shoulders were. I was one day in, and already I felt like I could use a massage and a chiropractor.

I wasn’t overly concerned, however. I figured it was going to take a while for my back to get used to carrying between 30 and 50 pounds. While I later found out that many of my fellow hikers kept their total bag weight under 30 pounds, I had a base weight of 20 and carried roughly 30 pounds in food and water. In comparison to most others, I took way more than I needed. My brain said it was out of practicality, a healthy fear of starvation or dehydration.

To the undiscerning adventurer, this sounds reasonable. However, the AT is one of the most popular long trails, passing through around 57 towns, ranging from small to large. That means many opportunities to stop in a town every few days to resupply. I was of the mind that it ultimately would slow me down to stop in every town to stock up, so I figured I’d carry enough to last at least a week at a time. A few extra pounds isn’t that big a deal after all?

Yes. Yes, it is a big deal. Especially when you’re traveling hundreds of miles up and down mountainous terrain on foot.

It also didn’t help that, as a vegetarian, I was concerned I wouldn’t get enough proper food to eat in some of the smaller towns, so I had my mom ship me a care package every two weeks. I am very intentional about getting my macro and micro nutrients daily, so I had scientifically planned these foods out before leaving.

That meant that for the week after receiving a care package, I was carrying nearly two weeks’ worth of the foods she sent; things I couldn’t easily supplement at small local grocery stores (freeze-dried veggies, protein sources, veggie broth, 7lbs of homemade green drink powder, etc.).

In addition to an overabundance of food, I also commonly carried way more water than I needed. Despite using an app that told me how many more miles I had until the next stream, I figured it would be easier and save me time to just brute force carry enough for most of the day. It’s just water, right? If I just muscled it on my back, I wouldn’t waste precious seconds planning and stopping at every stream to refill.

Does that sound stupid to you? Because now, in hindsight, it sure does to me. You see, I weigh around 150 lbs. So when I’m carrying between 30 and 50 pounds on my back, I’m lugging around an extra one-third of my body weight. That would be fine for a mile or two, maybe. But not 20 per day with 5,000–7,000 feet in elevation gain.

Even though, as I mentioned in my last post, “Carry only what matters,” I was beginning my crash course in essentialism, it would take me a long time to realize that overabundance—even in life-sustaining resources like food and water—isn’t necessarily beneficial.

Even weeks later, when I understood that most other people had way lighter packs than I did, I rationalized. My fear-based mind said, “What if something bad happens and I’m injured or stuck? I’ll need the extra food.” So my body paid the price of that fear-based overpacking.

Needless to say, I’ll save the culmination of that lesson for a later time. In the meantime, I was just finishing up my first day (half day, really), when the imminent thought that you can never truly prepare for entered my mind: this was going to be much harder than I ever imagined.

I had walked 7 miles, and I was exhausted. Only 1,177 miles left to Katahdin. Setting up my hammock and tarp that night on the ridge we had chosen to sleep on, with the wind constantly blowing away my progress before my amateur fingers had a chance to properly tie their knots, I knew I was in for an adventure.

I had done plenty of hard things already in my life. When I was 18, I moved out of my home and became financially independent. When I was 20, I helped found a startup company. When I was 21, I started selling educational systems door-to-door for 80+ hours a week during the summer with the nation’s oldest direct-selling company, Southwestern Advantage. It’s often called one of the most difficult selling programs available to young adults, and though, like most people, I had wanted to quit the first week, I thrived there. Later, I quit my high-paying job as a sales manager at the same company to leave behind all our worldly comforts and move to India with my wife to pursue my spiritual path.

This wasn’t my first physical or metaphorical mountain, so to speak. As I mentally prepared for this adventure, I assumed it would just be another notch on my belt of crazy life choices.

What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was how physically demanding it was going to be. I was an excellent high school cross-country runner and generally maintain good physical condition. When I was around 24, I ran a marathon with minimal training and finished in 3 hours and 36 minutes. Even today, I wouldn’t say I’m in peak physical condition, but I eat quite healthily and stay active.

I know this all likely sounds like a subtle brag (and let’s be real, it kinda is), but I’m bragging for a reason. Prior to starting the trail, I would have considered myself to have great physical prowess and an affinity for endurance activities. Hell, I hike 14ers in Colorado for fun.

But none of this seemed to prepare me for the reality of lugging an overweight backpack through 1,200 miles of hot, tick-infested wilderness.

In addition to the strain on my back from the extra weight I was carrying, my knees immediately took a brutal beating. I had prepared for this before the trail, doing knee strengthening exercises fairly consistently for the months leading up to my start date. But I just think that no matter how much prep one does, the human body is not built to withstand the constant physical demands of hiking every day through the mountains with your life’s belongings strapped to your back.

The body needs rest after physical stress in order to heal and repair. But on the trail, you hike, sleep, and then get up and hike some more. There’s only so much repair the body can do under those constraints.

“Hey, dum dum, why didn’t you just slow down and have shorter mileage days?” Why? Because the human mind is a bit insane. At least, mine is. I’ll get to that more in a later post.

The first week was tough, but it was really the second week that broke me.

During a particularly long day (I think Joe and I ended up doing 27 miles, which was not ideal for how “green” we still were on the trail), I cried for most of the last mile. Partly because every step downhill felt like being stabbed in the knee, and partly, probably, out of sheer exhaustion.

Every step shot pain up my leg, and I remember wondering if I would be able to heal from it, or if it would eventually turn into an injury that took me out. That thought scared me more than the pain.

At the end of that day, we ended up in a town and got to eat in a restaurant for the first time since starting. I think in modern society, we often take food for granted, but not on the trail. There’s something extra special about a meal you didn’t have to carry on your back and prepare in a small pot on the dirt floor outside your hammock.

That veggie burger and fries tasted like earthly salvation. And the restaurant owner was kind enough to let us sleep behind the restaurant that night. This may sound like an unusual gesture of kindness to some of you, and at first, it was to me, too.

But I quickly realized that people who live and work along the AT really enjoy taking care of hikers. I have countless stories of “trail angels” that blessed me with compassion and generosity along the way, but I’ll save those stories for another post.

I recall going to sleep that night under the soothing effects of the Advil the restaurant owner had given me. As I lay in my hammock, thinking about how difficult the day had been—and how, just hours before, I had been crying from pain and frustration—I remember feeling a sense of determination.

This had been a gauntlet day. I had been to this place before, and I knew that when I pushed through, I not only came out stronger, but I also came out more resolute. I was going to figure out how to help heal my knee. I was going to make it to Katahdin.

Little did I know that many more gauntlet days lay ahead.

Some may call it morbid. Some may think it dark and depressing.

But I beg to differ.

I find the moments that I’m most connected to my mortality are when I’m most alive.

I’m no expert on death; I haven’t died yet (at least, not in this lifetime... that I can consciously recall). However, I’m intimately aware of the beauty that meditating on death has brought into my life.

I remember being terrified of death when I was a young child. So full of life, yet I feared the eternal thief was always waiting in the shadows, ready to steal everything I loved away from me. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and start crying because I was worried my mother would die.

I recall sobbing on multiple occasions because I was sure something was wrong with me and I was dying. One time, I fell down in the woods, saw a mushroom near me, and was certain a piece of it had flown into my mouth, that it was poisonous, and that I was going to die.

Thankfully, I wasn’t there at the time to tell myself that it’s true, I am going to die. Just not as soon as my little worried mind was telling me.

Then, as I got older, I only thought about death when it was right in front of me. I developed young person’s invincibility and did so many stupid things that, quite frankly, I’m a little surprised I didn’t die.

Now, like most things in my life, I’d like to think I’m feeling my way towards the middle. I don’t dwell on death constantly, yet I’m always aware of it in the shadows. However, I no longer look at it like a thief, waiting for its right moment to strike. That image arose from viewing death as the opposite of life. But really, death is merely the opposite of birth. Life has no opposite.

As much as I’d love to take a stroll down the ‘philosophy of death’ road, how it’s part of a circle more than the end of a line, what matters here is less about the ideas and more about how remembering death changes the way I live today.

This reflection is simply about my experience of living with the constant awareness of my impending death. This is not a unique experience for me, of course, for everyone is blessed with the promise of death.

“A blessing?” I hear some of you ask.

Yes, a blessing. For if we weren’t given the promise of an end, would we appreciate the middle? Isn’t the idea of non-existence necessary to understand the value of existence?

I think most of us understand these concepts, intellectually. The challenge, as always, is how to bring that understanding down into the heart of daily living.

I’m not one for “techniques” or “how to’s,” for who am I to tell you how to do something? You’ll have to look for the “10 steps to accept death” somewhere else.

Thankfully, there’s not much to do here anyway. Death is coming, whether you like it or not, so all we can do is consciously embrace that fact.

The stoic practice of memento mori, the contemplation of death, is one way to put it. Having moments each day to contemplate death is a wonderful way to bring lucidity into living.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons I love spending time in cemeteries. My wife, Toriya, and I love going on walks whenever we can. And wherever we travel, cemeteries are often a terrific, quiet place to walk, undisturbed by the noise of traffic or busy sidewalks. We prefer the dead quiet, one might say.

It was in a cemetery near London, after watching a large, jet black crow perch on a headstone, that this poem came to me:

Dead space

A stroll among the stillness, leaves crunching beneath my sole. Dead silence all around me, neatly resting in a row.
A memento for the living, unwilling to let go. A love once had, now buried deep below.

Ground shivers with delight, preparing for man’s final embrace, while the crow finds his place in this still, dead space.
A lifetime reduced to a date and a name; just words on a stone, they all look the same.

We fear this tale, a journey unknown, to go to a place our mind’s never flown. So we clutch our clocks, as if to slow their hands. Grasping, clawing desperately at these fleeting sands.

Yet here among the graves, the truth takes hold—in death’s quiet shadow, to live feels bold. But the earth is accepting, silent, and serene. No ticking clocks, no tasks undone, no more sights to be seen.

For what is death but a closing door, a remembrance of what lies before?
The stillness hums, the crow takes flight—an empty grave that’s full of light.

To die before we die is the secret untold. Our hearts break free, a soul unsold.
Death is not a foe, but a shadowed friend, whispering promises of freedom, where earthly bonds end.

A grave is not a prison; it’s a key—
Accept your end, and you are free.

To die before I die, for only then am I truly able to live. I believe this, with all my heart. Only those who have accepted death in all its forms, who are unencumbered by fear of an unknown future, are free to live fully.

(Of course, only the body and personality can die. But that’s a reflection to be saved for its own post.)

I take such solace in knowing I will die one day. Death is the ultimate equalizer. No matter what you do (or fail to do) on this earth, we all end up in the same place.

Knowing that takes the pressure off living. There’s nothing I have to do! There’s no one I have to be! Nothing to accomplish, for time will inevitably wipe the whole slate clean. It’s utterly fantastic!

Recently, I’ve realized that my challenge now is less about accepting my own death and continuing to embrace the fact that death will likely transform many of my loved ones before it gets to me. The thought of losing my mom still terrifies me; the thought of losing my wife devastates me.

But I also recognize this as simply an indicator of what I still have yet to embrace.

Some might argue that it’s good to be attached to our loved ones. While that may be true in some senses, I don’t want my love to be bogged down by the weight of attachment. Fear of loss is a condition I don’t want tainting my devotion. To me, that’s how I can approach the possibility of truly unconditional love.

Like embracing my own death, knowing and accepting that my loved ones will die helps me appreciate them all the more in the moment. Every time (I’m not exaggerating) that my wife goes somewhere without me, even if it’s just to the grocery store, and especially if she’s riding or driving in a car, I remind myself it might be the last time I see her. That awareness usually encourages me to give her one kiss, one extra wave, and the patience to sit and cherish her presence as she pulls out of the driveway.

Death provides life with perspective. When we live knowing we have an expiration date, it helps us treasure the moments we have. Everything becomes more meaningful, not despite impermanence, but because of it.

Awareness of the finish line also helps me gain perspective on my life’s choices.

It’s very common that if I’m struggling with a decision in the moment, I practice memento mori to give clarity to the situation, however big or small.

I imagine myself on my deathbed; for if hindsight is 20/20, then that is the ultimate position for hindsight. Lying there, I know that the things I will care about most from my life won’t have anything to do with business/financial success, social media followers, or any external results for that matter.

I imagine I’ll care about:

• Was I true to myself?

• Did I love people?

• Did I have fun?

Because if we’re not having fun, really, what’s the point? We know this meal is going to end, so why not learn to savor it?

You stand there, looking at a backpack, and realize you have to fit your life into a 70-liter bag (which was later swapped for a 55-liter one). I’ve traveled quite a bit, but never with these constraints. No bringing extras of anything “just in case.” Everything you pick is something you have to carry on your back as you hike up and down extreme terrain while enduring fierce weather. I’d been living out of a suitcase for 2 years by now, but it was time to drop luxuries like carry-on wheels and overhead bins. Even that extra pair of underwear might qualify as opulent.

My typical comfort items were quickly looking less like “nice to haves” and more like dead weight.

Toriya and I had purged a lot before our sabbatical. We set up our house for Airbnb, moved our things into storage, and got rid of what felt like a responsible amount of clutter. I thought being a wandering vagabond for the previous few years had already prepared me for living minimally.

That’s exactly why it was slightly alarming when I started preparing for the trail and still felt surrounded by too many things.

The situation was no longer: what should I bring to Europe, and more: what do I need to not die?

After watching a few YouTube videos, I kept hearing the same thing: aim for a 20-pound base weight (that’s before food and water). Twenty pounds for clothes, toiletries, sleeping gear, first aid, all the little ‘just in case’ items, including the backpack itself.

It wasn’t a game of pounds anymore. It was a game of ounces.

When you get into ultralight gear, you find out that every ounce you save costs a lot more money. Suddenly, you find yourself comparing things you never realized mattered: a rain jacket or a poncho; which is lighter? Paracord or “Zing-It” cord? Because apparently my paracord is entirely too heavy.

You start weighing your toothbrush. You start looking at every object, asking whether it deserves a spot. And one thought keeps returning:

Yes, this would be nice… but is it essential?

At some point, somewhere between comparing gear lists and questioning whether a single extra shirt was an unnecessary indulgence, it hit me:

This was the start of a lesson I’ve been circling for a while.

Essentialism.

I’ve always been fascinated by “less is more.” Probably because I’m naturally the opposite. I recall, as a young child, watching interviews with Travis Barker, my favorite drummer, and being impressed not just by his drumming but also by his quiet presence and soft-spoken nature. His quitude wasn’t underconfidence, it was cool. I remember watching clips and trying to be like him at school the following weeks. I failed miserably.

I’m realizing more and more why I’ve always been so attracted to minimalistic approaches to things, even when I struggle to live them myself. It’s not about anti-consumerism or about identifying as an enlightened being—unattached to all things. Instead, it’s about giving one’s time, attention, and energy to what matters, rather than wasting them on everything else just because you can.

But the mind has a problem with essentialism.

My mind rarely forgets to remind me that I can always do more. I always have more options, more tasks, more work to do, more goals to achieve. More… everything.

But is more always better?

Clutter has been a frequent companion in my life. I grew up in it physically, and, paired with my personality, I think it became my default operating system. For a long time, I couldn’t understand why people would waste money on nice food or expensive trips when they could buy a new gaming system or gadget instead.

Even at a young age, I was very interested in making money. I didn’t have a target amount in mind; I just knew more was better.

One could say I was a fairly successful product of American consumerism. I’m sure I made those hardworking TV producers and advertising agents very happy.

But now I see it was the onset of a mental disease. And it didn’t just show up in material stuff. It showed up everywhere.

My high school jazz band teacher always told me, “Less is more,” when I played drums. Since I got tired of hearing it, I’m certain he was tired of saying it.

In college, I was drawn to fraternity life, which fed another version of “more is better.” More women. More social status. More… whatever it was we were all trying to amass back then.

Even my writing has historically been cluttered. If it doesn’t feel that way, it’s because I work hard to edit and trim the fat. Yet, it’s still more wordy than I’d like it to be.

So this isn’t a new theme for me. It’s an old belief I’ve lived by, and, like many beliefs that have helped me accomplish a lot, it may be time to let it go and evolve.

Because I’m finally realizing that quantity does not equal quality.

But just because I’ve realized it doesn’t mean I live it consistently yet. When I started Substack, my old patterns took over. How can I “blast the algorithm?” The goal was to write as much as I could. I told myself I should produce at least two full posts a week.

However, a thoughtful post can take me three to five hours of focused time to write. And post-sabbatical, as life fills up with responsibilities, ten hours a week, plus the follow-up engagement like replying and commenting, started to feel less like journaling and more like a part-time job.

I enjoy Substack… but I don’t want to live here fifteen hours a week.

So, my solution was to “optimize.” But eventually, I realized I was becoming something I didn’t intend to: a content machine.

It happened slowly, the way most compromises do. First, I used AI to fix grammar. I believe this step was innocent, and I still use it in this way. However, it opened the door to more reliance than I intended. I began writing in a stream-of-consciousness style and uploading it to ChatGPT to shape the story and flow.

Eventually, I started writing bullet points and having AI turn them into a post, which I would then adapt to fit my voice. And at my lowest, I was basically writing detailed prompts, letting it write the post, and then lightly editing after.

And that’s not even to mention the copy-and-paste daily notes I had it generate. Unfortunately, I didn’t see this as a problem at first; I saw it as industrious. And it worked in the sense that it produced output. But it also took away the whole point of my writing.

Then I revisited my first post ever, Starting out in the open, and the cracks in my integrity finally brought the full weight of my facade crashing down on me. I began this journey as a way to journal in public.

As I write, I realize.

Writing gives me time to think. And if I’m lucky, time to not think and just write. New thoughts and realizations arise in the process.

When I relied on AI too much, I lost that process. AI was doing my reflection, my exploration, and I was just a witnessing bystander, checking the content schedule off the list.

I want to be clear here: I’m not condemning or judging this strategy as wrong. I think people should be able to do whatever they want so long as it doesn’t forcefully and clearly impede on others’ lives. ChatGPT can be a wonderful tool, and occasionally, I find AI’s creative hallucinations quite fascinating. However, this was not the game I had initially set out to play.

Thankfully, it lasted only for a few posts before my conscience put an end to that silly charade. It came as a feeling and as an uncomfortable question:

What kind of content am I truly interested in producing?

At that time, the evidence would suggest my answer was: more.

But if the post doesn’t carry the quality of my heart, is it something I want to put my name on? That was a question I began to give serious consideration.

Coincidentally, as I reflect upon this, the process is guiding me to a deeper understanding. If I really distill down to the essence of this exploration, it seems there was one driving factor in my pursuit of (over)abundance:

A belief that if I do more, I am more.

Somewhere deep down, I believed I wasn’t enough, and if I did more, I’d become more. I believed significance comes from the time and effort invested, rather than from the value created. I believed that if one sentence isn’t enough, then three more will make it worth something.

I imagine that’s why essentialism feels so hard, and at the same time, so crucial for my practice. Not because owning less is difficult, but because it challenges the identity of excess on which it was built.

Perhaps essentialism isn’t just decluttering your life; it’s about decluttering your ego.

That’s probably why I’m so drawn to spiritual teachings like the Tao Te Ching. I mean, it’s hard to get more essential than 5000 words to encompass a manual on how to live life. Give me 5000 words to teach anything, and I’ll have just finished the introduction. If that.

All this exploration of whittling down one’s activities reminds me of the 80/20 rule—the Pareto Principle—I learned during my years pursuing business excellence. For those who are unaware, the rule is simple: 20% of our actions produce 80% of our results. Even before leaving for my sabbatical, I had been exploring this topic for a few years.

Applying the 80/20 rule to work is an obvious example, but I don’t think it stops there; I think it applies to almost every part of life.

I’d bet most people, including me, regularly use maybe 20% of what they own. And I don’t mean just physical stuff. Most of our apps are unused. Most of our time commitments likely aren’t essential. Most of our ‘important’ tasks are just noise on the calendar.

The crazy part is, the more I pay attention to trimming the fat, the more fat I find to trim!

And I don’t believe I’m alone here. Clutter is normal in our culture. Preparing to hike the trail just made it impossible to ignore, because when you carry everything on your back, the only real question is:

Is this essential… or is it just comforting?

I want to tread lightly here, however. It’s easy to get extreme about any concept that feels “right,” and I’m all too aware of the dangers of swinging the pendulum too far to the other side. Essentialism is about getting rid of what we don’t need, not getting rid of everything.

Thus, I don’t think this exploration was simply about “bringing less,” for on a trail like the AT, minimalism can get you killed.

It would be foolish to “let go” of warm layers and hope that the “universe” will insulate you. There’s a reason people obsess over gear, just as there’s a reason you don’t gamble with your sleep system. It’s your responsibility to bring what you need to survive.

So I’m realizing that the lesson isn’t “strip everything down.” It’s discernment.

Carry only what matters, but make sure you know what that is. “Carry,” of course, is also a metaphor here.

Because sometimes the difference between “non-essential” and “essential” is the weather. And sometimes that’s the difference between a hard day and a dangerous one.

I recognize that I started this reflection on my preparations for the AT, but thankfully, it turned into so much more. After all, it’s never about the journey for me, but about who I get to become in the process. I haven’t actually read the book Essentialism yet, but it’s high on my list; partly because I’m interested in minimalism, but mostly because I’m interested in freedom.

I don’t mean “freedom” as in the ability to do anything I want. Freedom, as in being free from the compulsive need for more.

In that sense, the trail didn’t just teach me how to pack, it showed me how often I’m carrying things I don’t need—physically, mentally, emotionally. It led me to drop the notion I had picked up somewhere along the way that “more is safer.”

Security is a fabulous idea, but when your back is the bank account, you learn quickly: Too much doesn’t make you safer.

It makes you slower.

It makes you tired.

It makes you less present and less able to enjoy the beauty of life all around you.

And the strangest part is, when you finally carry only what matters, you don’t feel deprived—you feel light. In more than one sense of the word.

It makes me wonder how much of my life I’ve spent carrying things that were never essential.

“Is this essential?” is my motto for the year (and hopefully the rest of my life). And now that I’ve started paying curious attention to that question … it’s hard to unsee the answers that are arising.

Our attention.

It’s become increasingly clear to me over the years that where we place our attention shapes our thoughts, emotions, decisions, and even outcomes. In Total Responsibility, I explained how taking ownership of our response gives us our power back. This is a similar idea, just from a different perspective. Instead of asking what we can control, we can ask what we are focusing on.

Whether we are raising a family, leading a team, or just trying to navigate a noisy world, one thing stands out: we don’t just experience reality—we shape it by what we pay attention to.

Your subconscious is a search engine

Imagine you open Google and type, “Why is everyone so awful?”

Google doesn’t reply, “Are you sure that’s a helpful question?” It doesn’t ask, “Do you really mean everyone?” It just does what it was built to do: Scan a massive pile of data, rank results by relevance to your query, and serve up answers that match your question.

You’ll get articles about toxic relationships, betrayal, narcissism, and why everything is falling apart. Not because it’s the truth, but because that’s what you searched for.

Now imagine your subconscious works in a similar way. Under the surface, it’s taking in decades of memories, stories, impressions, and emotional residues. Then, all day long, your conscious mind tosses questions into it:

• “Why do I always screw this up? What’s wrong with me?”

• “Why do I always feel tight on money?”

• “Why is this client such an idiot?”

• “Why is my life so problematic?”

Your inner search engine doesn’t typically answer, “You know, you actually don’t always screw this up. Let me show you the nuance here.” It just dutifully pulls up “evidence” to match the query.

Ask, “Why do I suck at this?” and the search results will feature every botched attempt, every weak presentation, every awkward interaction from middle school to last week. Ask, “Why is this impossible?” and your mind will gladly compile a list.

It’s not personal. It’s just following instructions. Which raises an uncomfortable but useful question: If my mind is this good at proving me right, what kinds of questions am I feeding it?

This does not mean we need to use affirmations we do not believe. Instead, we can ask better questions, like:

• “What might I be missing here?”

• “What did I do well on that call?”

• “What can I learn from this?”

• “How could this actually be working for me?”

Same search engine. Different search terms.

Over time, small changes in the questions we ask start to change the answers we get, and that shifts how we feel and act. For example, throughout my life, I’ve been somewhat of a perfectionist. Not in a clinical sense, but I pay very deliberate attention to detail, and I’ve had a history of putting my self-worth on the same line as my outcomes. In some ways, this has served me by motivating me to be hardworking and diligent in everything I do.

However, that’s also a recipe for constant anxiety and stress. I don’t want to lose the strengths that come along with attention to detail, but I’d be happy to drop the obsessiveness that comes along with it. Like most people, I’m my own harshest critic, so while I appreciate the self-reflective feedback that comes along with it, that’s often where the anxiety arises as well.

That all began to change when I started paying attention to how I handled my self-reflection sessions. Instead of asking questions like, “How come I keep making the same mistake over and over?” I started asking myself, “This has happened before. Do I still believe it could work, or is it just an old autopilot taking over? What gets to change?” It’s not personal; it’s just an opportunity to discover what lies in the gap.

Of course, as I’ve learned to handle my own feedback in a healthier way, my ability to offer helpful feedback to others has improved as well.

Algorithms, engagement, and confirmation bias

Now add a second layer. Think about social media algorithms. Most of the time, they’re not designed to show you a balanced view or all sides of an issue. Their job is simpler: Keep you engaged.

The algorithm “watches” what you click on, how long you linger, what you like or share, and then infers: “Oh, you like this. Let me show you more.”

Watch a few videos about how the economy is collapsing. Your feed will obligingly turn into a 24/7 catastrophe channel. Click a couple of “rise and grind” hustle clips? Suddenly, it seems like everyone else is waking up at 3:47 a.m. and owning seven companies. The algorithm is not asking, “Is this healthy for you?” “Is this balanced?” “Is this true?”

It’s asking, “Will this keep you here?”

Our minds run a similar “algorithm.” What we focus on with our thoughts and fuel with our emotions gets marked as important by our brain. Our mind then brings us more of the same. Skim past ten compliments and obsess over one criticism—your inner feed will keep replaying that one line for days. Tell yourself repeatedly, “People don’t really change.”—your filter will lock onto every example that confirms it, and conveniently ignore the counterexamples.

This is confirmation bias in action: We don’t just see and then believe. We believe, and then we see accordingly. It’s why people can read the same book, watch the same movie, listen to the same speech, hear the same news story, and end up with entirely different takeaways. Ever buy a car and then notice how many other people have that same car? Yeah.

It also happens when two people sit through the exact same meeting and walk out with completely different stories:

• One leaves thinking, “People are impossible. No one follows through.”

• The other leaves thinking, “That was challenging, but I saw a handful of folks really leaning in. There’s something to work with there.”

Same room, same words, same faces. Different inner algorithm. The more we focus on a story, the more it shapes our thinking. On the one hand, encouraging diversity of thought is one of our greatest strengths as a species (if we learn how to use it properly). But if our thoughts create a negative, painful reality, you may be getting cut by the wrong edge of the sword.

The garden of the mind

If algorithms feel too abstract, let’s go outside for a minute for one of my favorite analogies (because it’s about plants).

Imagine your mind as a garden. Thoughts, beliefs, images, and emotions are the plants. Some are fragrant flowers: gratitude, curiosity, compassion, grounded confidence. Some are prickly weeds: resentment, self-loathing, envy, chronic scarcity. Water, therefore, is your attention.

Where you pour your attention, things grow. It does not happen immediately or perfectly, but it does happen. As the gardener, we are constantly watering, so where we water matters. Stare all day at grievances and imagined slights, and those thorny bushes get bigger, and your path narrows. But if instead you spend time noticing tiny moments of competence, connection, or beauty, even on hard days, then those flowers start to take root. Oftentimes, they even begin to push out some of the weeds.

This does not mean the weeds are bad. After all, a weed is just a plant in a place we do not want it. We all carry anger, fear, and insecurity within us. These are part of being human. The question isn’t, “How do I eradicate all the weeds forever?” The question is, “What kind of garden do I want to live in?”

It can be even more powerful when we bring a tender gardener’s touch to it: “Of course, that bramble of self-doubt is here. It grew from years of experience and internalized messaging. I don’t need to hate it, but do I want to keep feeding it?”

Attention is not just passive noticing; it can be an active practice. When we repeat a story to ourselves, even if we are trying to “solve it,” we are usually feeding it. That does not mean we ignore what is painful, for sometimes we need to deal with the tough parts: pull some weeds, trim what is overgrown, and see what is there. But there is a difference between addressing the problem and focusing on it all the time.

One way I’m experimenting with handling negative thoughts and difficult emotions is through mindful acknowledgment. I recognize what I’m feeling without judgment and allow myself to be present with it. Another approach is journaling, which can be a helpful tool to articulate thoughts and emotions. By writing them down, we create a space between us and our thoughts, allowing for reflection and understanding. These practices do not eliminate the challenges, but they empower us to handle setbacks with greater compassion.

Regardless of “techniques” or practice, the question is always the same: “What am I watering?”

Inner and outer: what we focus on, we live in

So how do these examples and analogies truly affect our lives? Some people explain this in the language of the Law of Attraction: simply put, the idea that what we consistently think and feel tends to draw into our lives. You might resonate with that, or you might be skeptical. Personally, I go back and forth. Either way, there’s a simpler, less mystical layer that’s hard to argue with:

Our beliefs and habitual thoughts shape our perspective.

Our perspective shapes what we notice, how we interpret it, and how we respond. Those responses, over time, shape our results and relationships. Even if there’s no metaphysical “magnet,” there’s still a very practical one: behavior.

If I see the world as fundamentally hostile, I’ll move through it defensively. I’ll be more likely to withdraw, attack first, or assume the worst. People will feel that and respond accordingly. Over time, my belief will become increasingly “true.”

We don’t just see the world. We project onto it. We don’t just take in reality; we add our own meaning, as if we are putting labels and subtitles on everything that happens. Then we watch events as if those subtitles are part of the original story.

A classic little parable illustrates this. Two travelers arrive at the edge of a town. The first asks an old man sitting by the gate, “What are the people like here?”

The old man replies, “What were they like where you came from?”

“Terrible,” the traveler says. “Selfish, unfriendly, always looking to take advantage. I’m glad I left.”

The old man nods. “I’m afraid you’ll find them much the same here.”

Later, the second traveler approaches and asks the same question. The old man gives the same reply: “What were they like where you came from?”

“They were kind,” the traveler says. “Not perfect, but generous, helpful. I’ll miss them.”

The old man smiles. “You’ll find them much the same here.”

Same town, with the same people. Drastically different internal subtitles.

Some might think the old man is being mystical, but he just understands attention. We usually find what we expect, and we act in ways that make our beliefs come true.

So what do we do with all this?

I’m not saying we should try to control every thought or act like we’re on a mission to eradicate negativity. That usually backfires, creating more pressure.

Instead, I see it this way: rather than using all my energy trying to change other people or the world (which usually doesn’t work), I’ll focus on the one thing I can actually influence: my perception.

If my mind is a search engine, can I ask better questions? If my inner world runs on an algorithm, can I be more intentional about what I click on, dwell on, and share? If my mind is a garden, can I notice what I’m watering and experiment with watering something different?

Here are some ideas we can all practice in our daily lives:

Identify recurring thoughts or feelings that trouble you. Start by noting them down over a week to recognize patterns.

Whenever a negative assumption arises, pause and reframe it. Ask yourself, ‘What evidence do I have for this thought?’ or ‘What new perspective could I consider?’

Set a daily or weekly intention to focus on the positive aspects, be it in thoughts, emotions, or actions. Notice small victories and the things you appreciate.

Engage in reflection or journaling. Spend a few minutes each day writing about what went well and what you learned. Maybe even share these insights with a trusted friend or colleague, exchanging experiences and supporting each other’s growth.

By incorporating these steps, you leverage your attention and gradually shift your inner and outer experiences toward a more constructive way of living. After all, if we want to make a positive impact on the world, it may help to stop wasting our energy obsessing over everything we find “wrong” with it. More fire will never help calm the flames.

As Richard Bach wrote in Illusions:

“The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

The world may not change overnight. But the one who’s looking at it can.

What I did know was this: I didn’t want to rush into the next thing just because it seemed like a good idea. I was waiting for a particular feeling.

It’s hard to describe that feeling exactly, but the best way I can explain it is with a puzzle piece. There’s some tension at first as you turn it around, wondering where it goes. You may test it in different spots and even try to force it into places where it almost fits. But when you find the right place, it just settles in easily. No strain. No doubt. Just a soft ah… There it is.

I’d felt it before—when I moved from Illinois to Colorado for college, when I became a sales rep for Southwestern Advantage, and when I met my wife, Toriya.

At the time, I had a few ideas in my head, but none of them had given me that sense of a perfect fit yet. In the meantime, I needed something else to move toward.

My spiritual studies were and still are important to me, but without the ashram’s structure, my practice no longer filled my whole day. Suddenly, I had a lot of free time. Long walks and writing poetry are wonderful ways to spend time, but even those can start to feel a bit empty when there’s no substantial experience grounding them.

While we were in Switzerland, we visited some family friends of Toriya’s from Japan whom she hadn’t seen in over 20 years. During one conversation, her friend Marshall said that now that he was retired, he was looking for a new sense of purpose. He had started training on his bicycle, hoping to eventually ride across America. That was going to be his ikigai, his reason for getting up in the morning. Riding a bike across America sounded crazy—my type of crazy. It planted a seed.

I’ve always liked the idea of doing something intense and physically demanding, something that takes mental endurance and emotional grit. The thought of riding a bicycle across America began to take hold. It would give me a goal, challenge my body, and give me plenty of time alone to let my next steps reveal themselves. The idea felt good, but not quite right. It was like another puzzle piece that almost fits.

And then it arrived.

It showed up unexpectedly as a documentary titled The Game Changers, about vegan athletes. One of the athletes was trying to break the speed record for running the Appalachian Trail. I’ll admit, though it’s a tad embarrassing, that I had never even heard of the AT before. If you’ve been living under a rock like me and don’t know what it is either, it was the first continuous walking trail in the United States, stretching 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine through the Appalachian Mountains.

As I watched him move through the forest, mile after mile and tree after tree, I felt it: that quiet, internal click. I didn’t want highways or bike lanes. I wanted dirt, trees, and silence. I wanted to be surrounded by nature.

“That looks cool,” I told Toriya. “Maybe I’ll do that instead.” So I let the idea simmer.

As we traveled through England, then Greece, then Bulgaria, I kept coming back to the thought. I was more than intrigued, but I kept hedging my words. “I’m thinking about maybe possibly considering…” Of course, I was simply afraid to commit, afraid to say it out loud and make it real.

That changed in Bulgaria when we visited my friend Vasil. He’s a runner and loves gear, and when I mentioned I was thinking about the Appalachian Trail, he lit up. He started sharing gear suggestions and training ideas, and then began telling our friends that I was doing it. Not just thinking about it—doing it.

And because I have a habit of following through on what I say I’ll do, I knew I couldn’t keep avoiding it. It was time to decide. That was in January. I planned to start at the end of April. That gave me three months to prepare.

Getting my body ready was one thing. I already eat well and enjoy exercise, but I wanted to make sure my joints, especially my knees, could handle the extra weight day after day.

Getting my gear ready was another story. I don’t enjoy shopping, and I thrift when I can. But when you’re about to live out of your backpack for months, it’s not always smart to cut corners. So I spent a lot of time researching, making lists, and slowly checking things off.

When I returned home to Illinois after our travels, I caught up with an old family friend named Joe. He was our neighbor when I was growing up, about ten years older than me. Because he had a tough childhood, my mom had tried to adopt him. Even though it never officially happened, he’s always felt like a big brother.

When I told him I was planning to hike the AT, he stared at me with disbelief. He then proceeded to tell me that he’d been slowly collecting gear himself, hoping to do the hike someday. He didn’t know how long he could join, but he said he wanted to start the hike with me for at least a couple of weeks.

By mid-April, I had most of my gear, a partner to start with, and I was eager to begin.

Through it all, Toriya was incredibly supportive. Before ever committing, we talked about it a lot. If you’ve read my earlier posts, you’re already familiar with the process; my bringing her outlandish ideas isn’t new. She asks thoughtful questions, challenges me when needed, but never shuts me down.

She told me she’d miss me, of course. But she also said that if I was going to do something like this, now was the time. Our house was still rented, our lives were set up to accommodate it, and she knows I don’t like living with the risk of future regret. So she encouraged me to go, even though she personally wanted me to stay.

Then I asked if she wanted to join me. To which she promptly replied, “No.” That was a good choice; she would have been miserable.

My start date was April 27th. I planned to do a flip-flop: start in the middle, go north, then fly back to the middle and do the southern portion. Supposedly, it would help me avoid the crowds (which turned out to be true) and, theoretically, provide more favorable weather (which turned out to be wildly false). I didn’t commit to finishing the entire trail; I planned to walk until I decided to stop. That was intentional. Follow-through is one of my strengths, but it can also trap me if I’m not careful. Many people make this a life goal and plan for years; I had only learned the trail existed a few months earlier.

I wasn’t doing this to prove anything, to myself or anyone else. I was doing it because I wanted another adventure. Because I love the outdoors. Because I wanted time alone. Because I wanted to have fun! And if I’m honest, it was because I needed space for the next chapter of my life to reveal itself.

As I wrote in my last post, Going back without going backwards, I was being careful not to jump back into work too quickly and let my old, stress-driven ambition take over again. This felt like a soft landing, a buffer, and a way to stay close to what I’d been learning.

Soft landing, my ass; It turned out to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.