This series is built on a simple idea: meaningful conversation and shared inquiry deepen our sense of connection, purpose, and well-being.

Each week, we’ll explore one or two ideas and think them through—not as a lesson, but as a conversation.

A Starting Point

This year has been full of hopping hurdles and ducking dodgeballs—metaphorically. I’ve been met with plenty of uninvited obstacles, many of which I have no control over.

When I slowed down enough to notice how I was responding, I realized I was trying to counter that lack of control somewhere else.

It led me to wonder:

When life starts feeling a little too far beyond your control, where do you go looking for it?

The Core Idea

A common remedy is to control what you can.

Maybe you change your hairstyle, your job, or your environment.
Perhaps you dive into your hobbies.
Maybe you exercise.
You clean.
Organize.
Research.
Make plans.

If I can’t control this, I’ll control that.

We know painting the wall won’t change the diagnosis.
Going for a run won’t land you the job.

Yet, we often find relief.

Why can controlling something completely unrelated make us feel better about something we cannot control?

Maybe it isn’t about control over what’s happening now or what will happen.
Maybe it’s about recovering a sense of agency—what we can choose to do next.

Control vs Agency

There are obvious ways we exercise agency:

We can’t control the weather, but we can keep an umbrella in the car.
We can’t control the outcome of an application, but we can prepare for either possibility.

Those choices make sense because they respond directly to the uncertainty.
So what does it mean when we reach for something unrelated?

A family problem surfaces and you’ve decided to rearrange your furniture.
You fail a test and now you’re painting your living room walls.

The action doesn’t need to change the situation to change our relationship with it.

When one part of our life reminds us of our powerlessness, another can remind us of our agency.

What Stood Out to Me

When I receive bad news, I exhaust every possibility of solving the problem.

I found myself facing several months this year when things were out of my hands.
I had to wait for others to do their part and hope they cared a fraction as much about the outcome as I did.

I felt a lingering shadow of powerlessness throughout each day.

Recently, I painted my bedroom and hung a blind.

I have lived in this house for two years now, and there were still several areas that felt like the previous owners.

The first night I slept in the freshly painted room, I felt a calmness I hadn’t felt in months.

The room was finally me.

I transformed the cold-gray walls into a warm clay. The newly hung woven wood shades brought nature and warmth into the room.

I started to get better sleep.
I looked forward to reading under my warm light and seeing my new, cozy environment.

Most importantly, I spent less of my evening thinking about everything that was out of my hands.

Instead, I admired the evidence of what was still within my control.

What I chose to do.

Why This Matters to The Living Conversation

We all have moments—maybe even seasons—where what happens next is out of our hands.

Conversation allows us to see the many ways people respond to the same feeling of powerlessness.

You may clean the house to hold on to your agency, your partner may binge watch their favorite show.

Perhaps hearing how someone else finds their footing gives us another place to look when our usual way isn’t available.

Maybe next time you’re faced with uncertainty and find yourself on a run, you’ll pass a fellow jogger and be reminded you’re not alone.

We may not be able to give each other control, but we can remind each other how many choices do remain.

The Conversation

When life starts feeling a little too far beyond your control, where do you go looking for it?

A Closing Thought

When we can’t choose what happens next, perhaps what we do choose reminds us that our lives are still partly ours to shape.

This week, I want to shift our focus to strong verbs.

One thing that can make writing feel more alive without making it overly wordy is choosing a verb that does more of the work.

We often add adjectives or adverbs when editing. Today, we are going to look more closely at our verbs.

A well chosen verb can give us movement, mood, and sometimes character—all in one word.

✍🏽The Practice: Take a piece you have already written, or write something new, and find 3 verbs worth questioning.

Could an ordinary verb + description be replaced by something more precise?

Be careful not to just choose the fanciest verb. Stay true to what actually happened and to the voice of the piece.

Pick the most precise verb for your sentence—even if that means rewriting it a little, or keeping it exactly as is.

I followed the train tracks that would eventually lead me to the backyard of my childhood home. I stepped from tie to tie along the train tracks that would lead me to the backyard of my childhood home. The trees were taller, the tracks more worn, but everything else still held the quiet of a small town.

My siblings and I used to play kickball in the backyard for hours. Being the youngest, one of my greatest achievements was kicking a home run the length of the yard to the train track sending the ball soaring the length of the yard and watching it bounce tie to tie. I was one of the big kids now.

The red maple on Erling Avenue signaled that I had arrived.

The front yard, where I wound up for the biggest kick of my life, was only ten feet from the tracks.

The triumphant memory that I’d spent all these years inflating popped.

-Taila Schluter, Borrowed Letters

💌Invitation

Followed → stepped from tie to tie
Kicking → sending the ball soaring…and watching it bounce tie to tie

Thinking of a stronger verb for the sentence often led to me revisiting the entire sentence. I noticed I needed to stop trying to upgrade the word and instead, get closer to the action. Be more precise about what was happening.

I even tried to revisit “held”, but every replacement made the sentence worse. Ultimately, I decided that I liked that sentence as it was.

Which verb did you question today? Did it survive?

Leave a comment

This series is built on a simple idea: meaningful conversation and shared inquiry deepen our sense of connection, purpose, and well-being.

Each week, we’ll explore one or two ideas and think them through—not as a lesson, but as a conversation.

A Starting Point

I read a post recently where the author was struggling with a version of herself she barely recognized.

She remembered being confident and fearless.
Now, she seemed afraid of everything.

She would think through what might happen, become convinced she knew the outcome, and avoid the risk altogether.

The outcome hadn’t happened.
But her mind had already experienced it.

Over time, thoughts like this have a way of changing our reality.
They change how we move through the world.

How much of our emotional lives are responses to imagined possibilities?

The Core Idea

It’s wild how much emotion can come from one simple act.

Applying for a job.
Waiting for medical results.
Buying a lottery ticket.
Sending a text.
Applying to college.
Putting an offer on a house.

One action creates a branch in reality.
Suddenly, the mind starts living ahead of the body.

When you put an offer on a house, you can mentally move into it before anyone accepts your offer.

You’ve decided where the couch goes.
You’ve imagined drinking coffee on the porch.
You’ve pictured hosting your first guests.

Then the offer falls through.
You lost something you never had.
Somehow, the disappointment is real.

The opposite happens too.
We can fear something that hasn’t happened and experience the anxiety as though it already has.

Imagination allows us to experience possibility before reality catches up.

What does our reaction to an imagined future reveal about what matters to us now?

Possibility is Not Prediction

The imagined future doesn’t tell you what will happen.
But your reaction to it might tell you something about what you value, fear, desire, or aren’t ready to lose.

Maybe imagining the new job makes you realize how badly you want meaningful work.
Maybe imagining moving makes you realize how attached you are to your community.
Maybe imagining rejection exposes how closely you’ve tied your worth to being chosen.

The future we’ve imagined may never arrive.
But the emotions it creates are happening now.

Perhaps those emotions are worth getting curious about.

Sometimes an imagined future exposes an irrational fear, an old wound, or a social expectation. Not every emotion tells the truth.

It’s a clue worth examining—not a judgment or a label.

An imagined future is not a prophecy, but it can still offer useful information.

What Stood Out to Me

I applied for a job recently. The moment I hit “submit” my mind overflowed with possibilities, to-do lists, emotions.

First reaction:
How exciting! It would be awesome to work at such an impactful company.

Everything that followed:
How would I have that conversation with my boss?
How can I prepare my current business to hire someone new?
How would working remotely look for me?
What can I do now to make sure I’m prepared and an asset if hired?
What holes are in my resume that would make them not ask for an interview?
What can I do to fill those gaps?

That is a lot generated from one simple moment.
I lived in two separate imagined futures—one if I got the job, one if I didn’t.

It immediately exposed loyalty, freedom, competence, and meaningful work.

My concern about talking to my boss revealed loyalty.
My excitement about remote work revealed a desire for freedom.
My immediate search for gaps in my resume revealed how much I value competence.
My excitement about the company revealed my desire for meaningful work.

I hit submit—I didn’t schedule an interview or receive a job offer.
I hit submit.

That alone showed me what I was excited to move toward, what I was afraid to leave behind, and what I wanted to become more prepared for.

The future was imaginary.
What it revealed about my present wasn’t.

Why This Matters to The Living Conversation

We can treat imagined outcomes as predictions.
Or we can treat them as possibilities.

Same human ability.
Very different relationship with it.

Conversation gives us access to possibilities our own minds might never generate.

Someone else might see an outcome we overlooked.
Question an assumption we’ve already accepted.
Notice that what we’re calling certainty is actually fear.

Shared inquiry doesn’t tell us which imagined future will come true.
It gives us more perspectives from which to examine the ones we’ve created.

We can’t stop imagining the future, but perhaps we can become more intentional about how much authority we give it.

The Conversation

Think of a future you've been imagining lately. What does your reaction to it reveal about what matters to you now?

I’ve opened a dedicated group chat for this week of The Living Conversation.

A Closing Thought

The future hasn’t happened yet, but what is it teaching us about the lives we’re living now?

This week, I want to tackle spotlighting.

I was reading a book recently filled with beautiful imagery.
There was so much of it, though, that each sentence started to drown out the beauty of the next.

So today we are working on letting one sentence shine.

✍🏽The Practice: Write about someone returning to a place they haven’t visited in a long time. Let one sentence shine more than all of the others.

💌Invitation

Admittedly, my first draft had one more sentence after my last line. When I reread it, I realized I wasn’t only overexplaining, but adding another shining moment.

The adolescent world full of towering trees, an emerald arena, and elated pride was suddenly so small.

This was a challenge for me! It helped shine a spotlight on some areas I could spend a little more time practicing.😉

How did your spotlight go?

Leave a comment

This series is built on a simple idea: meaningful conversation and shared inquiry deepen our sense of connection, purpose, and well-being.

Each week, we’ll explore one or two ideas and think them through—not as a lesson, but as a conversation.

A Starting Point

There were several moments this week when I found myself amazed by the things humans have created.

Right now, I’m typing thoughts into a computer in Wisconsin. Soon, I’ll press a button and within seconds you could be reading it hundreds—or thousands—of miles away.

I can look at something like wireless communication and think, I genuinely don’t think my brain could have ever conceived of this.
Meanwhile, other minds conceived it, modeled it, experimented with it, and eventually made it real.

Nikola Tesla could look at electricity and imagine possibilities I wouldn’t know how to begin imagining.
A composer can hear music that doesn’t exist yet.
Someone can walk into a disorganized space and immediately see a better system.

It got me thinking—do we all mean the same thing when we say intelligence?

The Core Idea

Intelligence is often discussed as though it were a quantity: how smart are you?

I’m more interested in its shape.

What does your mind naturally do?

Invent?
Analyze?
Organize?
Visualize?
Interpret?
Connect?
Synthesize?
Observe?

Two equally capable minds can encounter the same world and extract completely different things from it.

Perhaps intelligence isn’t only a question of capacity, but of tendency—where does the mind naturally go when it encounters a problem, an idea, or something it doesn’t understand?

Where Does the Shape Come From?

Why are human minds capable of such radically different kinds of thought?

Think of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison.

Both became extraordinary inventors, yet the way they approached invention was remarkably different.

Tesla was known as a visionary—often remembered for his ability to visualize inventions mentally before building them.

Edison was empirical—he became famous for relentless experimentation involving testing, adjusting, failing, testing again.

Both were intelligent, but their intelligence didn’t take the same shape.

Were they inclined toward certain kinds of thought from birth?
Did their upbringing and education shape those tendencies?
Or did nature and experience continually shape one another?

How much of the shape of our intelligence is inherited, and how much of it is cultivated?

What Stood Out to Me

I immediately thought, I am not an inventor.
Then I realized how familiar that sentence sounded.
Just last week I questioned another theory I carried about myself: I’m not an artist.

What I do have evidence for is how my mind currently tends to work.

I am an applied systems thinker.
A troubleshooter.
A goal-oriented, divergent thinker.

How much of these are innate?
How much of these are cultivated?

What abilities might simply be underdeveloped because I’ve rarely asked my mind to to use them?

I want to find out.

What happens if I finally feed my brain the kinds of materials and knowledge it hasn’t had much access to?

So I’m starting another experiment: Inventor for a Day

I’m going to build a “machine” whose only job is to move a marble into a cup.
The machine must perform at least four actions before the marble reaches its destination, and I can only use materials I already have at home.

The goal isn’t really the machine.

I want to know: what happens when I deliberately ask my brain to travel somewhere unfamiliar?

Why This Matters to The Living Conversation

We are limited by the shape of our own minds.

We notice different things.
We ask different questions.
We solve problems in different ways.

Conversation unlocks that.

We briefly get to be a part of someone else’s world.
Someone else’s perspective.

The goal isn’t for us all to think alike.
It’s to become curious about what becomes possible when different kinds of minds meet.

The Conversation

What does your mind naturally do?

Do you think you were always this way, or did your life teach you to think this way?

I’ve opened a dedicated group chat for this week of The Living Conversation.

A Closing Thought

We spend a lot of time asking how intelligent someone is.
Perhaps we should spend more time wondering:

What kind of world does this mind allow them to see?

I know some of the place my mind naturally goes.
Now I’m curious about the places it hasn’t learned to go yet.

You have to show, not tell.
You have to trust the reader to read between the lines.

Today’s practice is about letting the scene speak for itself.

✍🏽The Practice: Write a scene between two people where one person knows something about the other that they shouldn’t—or wouldn’t ordinarily—know.

Neither character can explain how they know it.

Let an ordinary interaction reveal that something else is happening beneath the conversation.

What I knew as the writer: Justin has been Mark’s best friend for 15 years. Riley is Mark’s girlfriend. Justin is secretly in love with her.

The challenge: Could I make you begin to suspect that without telling you?

💌Invitation

Please share your experience practicing subtlety—if you feel comfortable.
I would love to read it.

Leave a comment

This series is built on a simple idea: meaningful conversation and shared inquiry deepen our sense of connection, purpose, and well-being.

Each week, we’ll explore one or two ideas and think them through—not as a lesson, but as a conversation.

A Starting Point

Last week we noticed patterns and wondered, what happens when we test them?

Maybe we can’t think our way into every discovery about ourselves.
Some things may require an experiment.

So, we dug through our Cabinet of Curiosities and designed those experiments.

Over the weekend I followed the thread.
I started one of my experiments and discovered:

There are parts of ourselves we can’t discover through reflection alone.
They only become visible in motion.

The Core Idea

I work in the flooring industry, which has a lot of waste.
Each time a sample is discontinued, I’m supposed to toss it in the garbage to be hauled away to a landfill.

A couple of years into the job, I stopped throwing them away.
Instead, I started accumulating a shelf of beautiful discontinued tile samples with the idea that, someday, I would meet an artist who could put them to use.

“I’m not an artist.”

As I sat at my desk fulfilling my practical duties of the job, my mind would often wander and imagine all of the possible reincarnations for this tile.

Garden accent pieces.
Trivets.
Planter decor.
A stepping stone.

“I’m not someone who could do that.”

So I continued to wait and hope
that artist would show up and give these tiles another life.

Then I started The Living Conversation and began exploring what it meant to be alive.
I curated my own Cabinet of Curiosities and followed the thread.

“What if I’m just an artist for one project?”

The Parts of Us We Haven’t Met Yet

How much of what we believe about ourselves is based on actual evidence?
How much is based on a life that simply hasn’t given us the opportunity to discover otherwise?

I’m not artistic.
I’m not crafty.
I’m not someone who could do that.
I’m not good with plants.
I can’t build things.

Sometimes these things are true.
But how do we know?
Have we gathered enough evidence to know?
Or have we simply repeated the same story about ourselves long enough that it began to feel like evidence?

What else haven’t we tried because we had already cemented the idea that it wasn’t for us?

What Stood Out to Me

So I made a stepping stone. A literal first step toward testing one of the theories I’d been carrying about myself.

I have always felt creative, but not artistic.

Did it turn out how I planned? No. 😂
But I enjoyed it.

Although my end result isn’t something you would purchase at a garden center, it’s more beautiful than I thought I could create.

The small experiment left me feeling

• proud

• challenged

• eager for more

I sat on the floor moving little pieces of discarded tile around a 14” circle, trying to make them become something.

A hexagon became a sun.
Narrow pieces became rays.
Stone pieces became mountains.

As I explore my gardening and landscaping experiments, I will certainly lay this stepping stone in one of the paths as a reminder of:

who I am capable of being, and how many ways there are to be me.

I believe beauty becomes more meaningful when it bears the fingerprints of a life.

Why This Matters to The Living Conversation

Our definitions of ourselves quietly determine which experiences we allow ourselves to have.

If I believe I’m not artistic, I don’t make the thing.
So I never collect evidence capable of changing that belief.

Experiments interrupt that loop.
Sometimes experiments prove us wrong.
Sometimes they confirm, “Yupp. I hate drawing.”

Either way that’s knowledge instead of assumption.

The goal isn’t to prove ourselves wrong.
It’s to give ourselves enough experiences to find out.

The Conversation

What is something you’ve assumed isn’t “you” without ever really testing it?

I’ve opened a dedicated group chat for this week of The Living Conversation.

A Closing Thought

Yesterday I was an artist.
This morning, a gardener.
Tomorrow, an astronomer.

There are many ways to be.

Sometimes a detail does more than help us see something.
Sometimes it gives the thing we’re describing a little life of its own.

Trees doesn’t really reach for the sun.
A stubborn leaf isn’t actually refusing to fall.
The wind isn’t trying to hurry us along.

Writing lets us imagine that it is.

✍🏽The Practice: Choose an ordinary scene and describe it in 5-10 sentences. Let the things around you have intentions of their own.

What does the rain seem to want?
What is the chair waiting for?
What is the weed trying to accomplish?

Keep the scene grounded in what you can actually observe—don’t turn this into complete personification.

💌Invitation

I would love to live in your ordinary scene—or even just a sentence—if you’re willing to share.

Leave a comment

This series is built on a simple idea: meaningful conversation and shared inquiry deepen our sense of connection, purpose, and well-being.

Each week, we’ll explore one or two ideas and think them through—not as a lesson, but as a conversation.

A Starting Point

Last week we filled our Cabinet of Curiosities and looked for patterns.

We asked,

What am I interested in?
How do I move through the world?

This week I want to take it a step further.
What happens when we stop choosing activities because they fit a role and start choosing them because they express the way we move through the world?

The Core Idea

Attention reveals patterns.
Experiments test them.

Our Cabinet of Curiosities collected interests, ideas, recurring threads.
It revealed patterns in how we naturally engage with the world.

Noticing a pattern isn’t the same as trusting it, though.
That’s where experiments come in.

I want to move from,
what am I interested in?

to,
what happens when I follow my way of being into a new domain?

Instead of saying, “I’m learning woodworking”
What if we asked, “what happens when a cultivator learns to build something with their hands?”

The domain changes.
The way of being doesn’t.

Experiments let us express identity instead of trying to define it.

The idea is to follow the thread. Create tiny experiments to explore each part of how you move through life.

Essentially, explore your interests through how you engage with the world.
What happens when those small curiosities become a part of our everyday lives?

The goal isn’t to become someone new.
It’s to see what happens when we intentionally express who we already seem to be.

The Experiments

Let’s use a common interest as an example: gardening.

The activity is the same.
The experiment changes, though, depending on how you move through the world.

Maybe you’re a cultivator.

Experiment: Grow something from seed and pay attention to what conditions helps it flourish.

Ask:
What does nurturing something teach me about patience, care, and creating the right conditions for growth?

Maybe you’re an observer.

Experiment: Spend 10 minutes in a garden without doing anything.

Notice:

• Which plants attract insects?

• How does light change throughout the day?

Maybe you’re an inquirer.

Experiment: Choose one plant and follow your curiosity

Research:

• Where did it originate?

• What does it need to survive?

Allow one question to lead to another.

Maybe you’re a maker.

Experiment: create something from your garden

• Try drying herbs for tea.

• Build a planter.

• Preserve vegetables.

The garden itself doesn’t reveal who you are.
How you approach the garden does.

The same interest can become a different experience depending on the way you move through the world.

What Stood Out to Me

Personally, I have a lot of interests.
But the blend of inquiry and observation can sometimes hold me back.
I often struggle to cross the threshold and just begin.

To overcome this, I have a specific format I use.
Everyone has their own style, but this is an approach that has worked for me:

1. List of interests

2. What is 1 simple way to cross the threshold of each interest

   1. add more simple ways as they come up

3. Name the experiment

   1. because things with names are more fun

Having pages of “experiments” I can start whenever an opportunity comes about allows me to cross the threshold and actually begin.

It stops me from waiting for the right weather, the right mood, the right amount of knowledge.

Why This Matters to The Living Conversation

One of the reasons I create The Living Conversation is because I don’t think meaningful ideas are meant to stay on the page.

They’re meant to be lived.

Lived through conversations and experiments.

When we share our thoughts, ideas, challenges—we give each other new ways of seeing.

The Conversation

Sharing your small experiment may inspire one for someone else.

What small curiosity have you been itching to explore?
More importantly, how might you cross the threshold this week?

I'd love to hear what experiment you're choosing—and what you discover along the way.

A Closing Thought

We often look at big decisions when we think of how we became who we are.

They contribute, sure, but maybe these small experiments make up more of who we are then those decisions.

A question followed.
A curiosity explore.
A threshold crossed.

Maybe that’s all these experiments really are—a quiet way of saying yes to the person you already are, and the person you’re already becoming.

Sometimes the smallest gestures stay with us the longest.
They arrived at the exact moment we needed them.

✍🏽The Practice: Write for five minutes about a small gesture that had a large impact on you.

💌Invitation

What small gesture do you still carry with you today?

Leave a comment

This series is built on a simple idea: meaningful conversation and shared inquiry deepen our sense of connection, purpose, and well-being.

Each week, we’ll explore one or two ideas and think them through—not as a lesson, but as a conversation.

A Starting Point

A couple of weeks ago we explored how paying attention could help us answer who am I by noticing the conditions that help us become more ourselves.

This idea inspired me to put noticing into action.
It inspired me to create, The Cabinet of Curiosities.

The Core Idea

I’ve recently started a project I’m calling, The Cabinet of Curiosities.

The idea is to keep a small notebook, and write down things that interest you.

It could be any number of things:

Something new I want to try.
A topic I want to learn more about.
A book I want to add to my to-read list.
An idea about absolutely anything.

The goal isn’t to create a plan, or another to-do list.
It’s to create a record of what naturally pulls your attention and notice what returns.
Curiosity has a way of repeating itself.

Attention leaves clues.
The Cabinet of Curiosities is simply a place to collect them.

The Difference Between Roles and Identity

As I began filling my Cabinet of Curiosities, I expected to learn more about what interested me. Instead, I began wondering what those interests had in common.

We often build our identities around roles.

“I’m a coach”
”I’m a gardener.”
”I’m an accountant.”

Those labels describe what we do, not necessarily who we are.
The descriptions are true, but they’re fragile.

If you change your career, are you suddenly someone else?
If you stop gardening, do you stop being a gardener?

Interests come and go.
Careers change.
Roles shift.

Perhaps identity isn’t found in what we do.
Perhaps it’s found in how we move through the world.

You could be a cultivator—someone who creates conditions for others (or ideas, places, relationships) to flourish—rather than simply a coach.

You could be an observer—someone who pays close attention to the world and helps others notice what they might have missed—rather than simply a writer.

You could be a steward—someone who cares for places, people, or traditions with the future in mind—rather than simply a gardener.

Perhaps you are all of these, and many more.

These identities don’t disappear when our circumstances change—they travel with us.
The expression changes.
The way of being remains.

Perhaps identity is more verb than noun.

What Stood Out to Me

My cabinet of curiosities filled quickly.

German.
Writing.
Sports.
Gardening.
Hiking.
Philosophy.
Tea.
Space.
Nature.
Woodworking.

So what do these seemingly random interests have in common?

To answer this, I had to stop asking,
what am I interested in?

and instead ask,
how do I move through each of these?

Then the pattern began to emerge.

When I’m coaching soccer, tending a garden, or writing an essay, I’m drawn to creating the conditions for growth—in people, ideas, communities, and even myself.
I’m a cultivator.

I also noticed I don’t simply see the world around me. I pay attention to it.
I frequently find myself lingering over small details, following unexpected threads of curiosity, and asking questions that often lead to more questions.
I’m an observer.
I’m an inquirer.

I came across many other words that fit pieces of me—wayfinder, maker, pilgrim, synthesizer. Maybe those pieces are still being cultivated by me, or maybe they will remain the size they are.
But Cultivator, Inquirer, and Observer kept resurfacing.
Not because they describe what I do.
Because they match the pattern of how I engage with the world.

Why This Matters to The Living Conversation

The Living Conversation has never been about collecting answers.
It’s about collecting better questions.

Life is full of tiny experiments.
Every conversation adds another thread, another observation, another curiosity.

Over time, those threads begin weaving something larger than any single conversation could reveal.

The Conversation

Shared curiosity builds connection.

What’s one small curiosity you’ve noticed lately?
What might it be pointing toward?

A Closing Thought

Becoming ourselves isn’t about choosing an identity.

It’s a lifelong journey of following the threads that ask us to pay attention and make us feel a little spark.

We become ourselves one curiosity at a time.

I love prompts inspired by a singular word.
It’s beautiful to see all the different places one word can take us.

What it makes you think of may be completely different than someone else.

That’s the beauty of it.
Perspective.

✍🏽The Practice: Write for five minutes about whatever comes to mind when you think of the word: GUTTER

Don’t worry about editing—just write.
If you want to clean it up afterwards you can.

💌Invitation

I would love to know what thread Gutter pulled for you.
Share a sentence, an image, or the whole thought in the comments.

Leave a comment

Seasonal Theme: Aliveness

Remembering what makes you feel alive.

This quarter isn’t about productivity, direction, or discipline.

It’s about aliveness.

The small moments that remind you you’re more than your responsibilities.
The moments that wake your curiosity.
The moments that make you feel fully here.

This quarter is about those moments.

Noticing them.
Following them.
Returning to them.

Its about coming alive.

Phase One: Noticing

This phase is simple—pay attention.

Not to everything. Just to the moments that pull you out of the mundane.

The book you can’t put down.
The conversation that goes on for hours.
The song you have on repeat.

Write down those moments that:

• wake you up

• where you feel present

• melt your tension

• inspire you

This phase is about practicing noticing and naming aliveness.
You’re not trying to change your life—you’re just trying to become aware of it.

Phase Two: Following

Once you’ve noticed what wakes you up, follow it.

No need for drastic or urgent life changes. Just ask:

What happens if I lean toward what fees alive?
What happens if I take one small step toward the thing that sparked something in me?
What happens if I let curiosity pull me?

This phase is all about leaning toward aliveness, letting curiosity lead, and choosing the next small step.

It’s not about changing everything—it’s about following the thread.

Phase Three: Returning

This phase is about gentle and intentional repetition.
Returning to the things you noticed, followed, and the thing that made you feel alive.

This is where aliveness becomes rhythm. This phase becomes the work of:

• revisiting what matters

• building rhythm of aliveness

• letting your life tilt toward joy

It’s not about discipline.
It’s about returning.

Returning to yourself.
Returning to what wakes you up.
Returning to the places where you feel alive.

A Small Practice

Small, repeated actions shape how we experience our days. This quarter, focus on putting the screen away.

Actively silence notifications and remove devices during meals. Open up the space for conversation, reflection, and mindfulness.

I think every season deserves micro-happiness habits.

What would life look like if we never learned to divide the day into pieces?

What if morning was simply light,
and evening was simply dark,
and everything in between was just the stretch of being alive?

✍️ The Practice: Write about a world without clocks.

Imagine a version of your life where:

• time is felt, not counted

• your days unfold without measurement

• you move when your body says move

• you rest when your mind says rest

Write from inside that world.
Write from the version of you who has never checked the time.

🌱 Reflection

We talk about time as if it’s neutral, but it shapes everything.

Clocks tell us when to start, when to stop, when to hurry, when to worry.
They tell us how much we’ve done and how much we haven’t.
They tell us whether we’re ahead or behind.

But underneath all that measurement, there’s a quieter truth:

We were never meant to live by numbers.
We were meant to live by rhythm.

And sometimes imagining a world without clocks helps us see how much of our life is ruled by something we didn’t choose.

💌 Your Turn

If you write this, I’d love to read it.

What would your life look like
if time had never been measured—and how would you move through a day
that belonged only to you?

Leave a comment

This series is built on a simple idea: meaningful conversation and shared inquiry deepen our sense of connection, purpose, and well-being.

Each week, we’ll explore one or two ideas and think them through—not as a lesson, but as a conversation.

A Starting Point

Over the last few weeks, we’ve explored what it means to build a meaningful life.

We’ve wondered:

What creates meaning?
What distracts us from it?

This week, I’d like to ask a different kind of question.

Instead of asking, Who am I?

What if we asked:

What conditions help me become more myself?

The Core Idea

We often search for identity as though it is something we need to discover.
But perhaps identity is something we notice.

What if, instead of hunting for an identity, we just started paying more attention?
What conditions help me become more myself?

When do I feel alive?
When do I feel peaceful?
When do I naturally contribute?
When do I lose track of time?
When do I feel connected?

We don’t always find ourselves through introspection alone.
Sometimes we find ourselves by paying attention to the moments that feel most alive.

Paying More Attention

We spend so much of our lives asking:
What should I do?

But rarely ask:
What keeps drawing me back?

Attention leaves clues.

The conversations you don’t want to end.
The books you recommend to everyone.
The places you return to.
The work that energizes rather than depletes you.
The moments that make you lose track of time.

These aren’t random.
They point toward the life that’s already trying to emerge.

What Stood Out to Me

I am naturally curious and overly attentive.
Contrastingly, I also get caught up in always staying busy.

For myself, I know the answers are in the slow moments.

The walk without distractions.
The shared meal among family and friends.
The laughs that rattle your whole body.

When I stop trying to optimize every moment, I notice the world.
I gain perspective.
I find balance.
I find answers—and more of the right questions.

I stop searching quite so hard and begin paying attention instead.

Why This Matters to The Living Conversation

This is one of the reasons I believe conversation matters.

Sometimes another person's question helps us notice something we couldn't see on our own.

A thoughtful question.
A shared story.
Someone describing what makes them feel alive.

These conversations don’t give us an identity.

They help us recognize one that’s already taking shape.

The Conversation

What conditions bring out the version of you that feels most alive?

I’ve opened a dedicated group chat for this week of The Living Conversation.

A Closing Thought

Perhaps the question isn’t:
Who am I?

Perhaps it’s:
Who do I become when I’m paying attention?

There are places we stop noticing simply because we’ve seen them too many times.

The sidewalk between your front door and the mailbox.
The tree at the end of your street.
The coffee shop you visit every Tuesday.
The hallway at work.
The parking lot where your day begins.

Our eyes learn the route long before our minds do. Familiarity has a way of smoothing over the details until we no longer see what’s been there all along.

But every place has a personality if we’re willing to slow down long enough to notice it.

✍️ The Practice: Choose a place you pass almost every day and write about it as though you’re seeing it for the very first time.

Pay attention to the details you normally overlook. Notice the textures, sounds, colors, smells, and small movements that make this place uniquely itself.

Rather than explaining how the place makes you feel, let your observations do the work.

What becomes visible when you stop walking on autopilot?

🌱 Reflection

Attention is a quiet kind of gratitude.

When we truly notice something—a familiar street, an old bench, light through a window—we acknowledge that it has been there all along, patiently waiting to be seen.

Perhaps the world hasn’t become more interesting.
Perhaps we’ve simply become better at seeing.

💌Invitation

What everyday place did you rediscover? I'd love to read what you found.

Leave a comment

This series is built on a simple idea: meaningful conversation and shared inquiry deepen our sense of connection, purpose, and well-being.

Each week, we’ll explore one or two ideas and think them through—not as a lesson, but as a conversation.

A Starting Point

This week, we’re stepping into thoughts inspired by The Measure. Specifically, a question that applies to all of us:

Would knowing how much time you have alter how you choose to live?

The Core Idea

In The Measure, every person in the world receives an identical box.
Inside is a single piece of string.

If they choose to measure it, they will learn exactly how long their life will be.

There is no obligation to open the box.
There is no obligation to measure the string.
The choice belongs entirely to them.

What fascinated me wasn’t the mystery itself—it was what the mystery exposed about how we live.

The novel isn’t really asking whether we’d want to know when we’ll die.
It’s asking what certainty would do to the way we live.

Is certainty about the future a form of freedom, or a new kind of prison?

The Long & Short of It

Suppose you choose to measure the string. You now know something you can never unknow.

Maybe you discover you have decades ahead of you.
Maybe you discover your time is much shorter than you imagined.

Either way, every decision begins to change.

Would you become more courageous?
Would you postpone fewer dreams?
Would you choose different work?
Different relationships?
Different priorities?

Or would certainty become its own kind of burden?

Would every birthday feel heavier?
Would every plan carry an expiration date?

Knowledge doesn’t automatically make us wiser.
Sometimes, it simply changes the questions we ask.

Certainty reshapes the landscape of our choices, even if it doesn’t change who we are.

Ignorance is Bliss

What if you never open the box?

At first, life might continue much as it always has.

You keep your job.
You start that family you always planned.
You remain a moderate risk taker.

But eventually another question emerges.

Everyone around you is making their own choice.
Some know.
Some don’t.

Would choosing uncertainty begin to feel like its own decision?
Would you wonder whether you’re missing information everyone else has?
Would you feel pressure from family, employers, or partners to know?

Uncertainty can feel peaceful.
It can also become exhausting.

Either way, you’re still living with the choice.

What Stood Out to Me

As I read, I realized I have a complicated relationship with uncertainty.

I like surprises, but I hate knowing there is a surprise waiting for me.
An unanswered mystery has a way of lingering in the back of my mind until I finally uncover it.

So would I open the box?

At first, I think I would remain in blissful ignorance.

I enjoy my life as it is.
I’m not waiting for permission to turn it upside down.

Eventually, curiosity would begin asking louder questions.

Maybe after a serious illness.
Maybe before a risky surgery.
Maybe during a season where life suddenly felt more fragile.

I suspect there would come a day when living with the uncertainty felt more haunting than living with the answer.

Whether that would actually be true, I'm not sure.

Why This Matters to The Living Conversation

What I love about this question is that it isn’t really about a fictional box.

It’s about how we already live.

None of us know how much time we have.
None of us know which conversation will be our last.
Which ordinary day we’ll remember forever.
Which goodbye we won’t realize is a goodbye.

We are all living with uncertainty.

The novel simply asks us to imagine what would happen if that uncertainty disappeared.

Would certainty help us live more intentionally?
Or is uncertainty part of what gives life its meaning?

I’m not sure there is a right answer.

I think the conversation itself is more valuable than arriving at one.

The Conversation

What part of your life would change most if you suddenly knew how much time remained?

I’ve opened a dedicated group chat for this week of The Living Conversation.

A Closing Thought

Perhaps the most interesting question isn’t whether we would open the box.

Perhaps the deeper question is this:

If we already know our time is limited, what keeps us living as though there will always be more of it?

Right now, the World Cup is happening again.

Stadiums full.
Lives narrowing down to a single pitch.
Entire countries holding their breath together.

I find myself remembering what it felt like to be inside that kind of focus—the kind that erases everything except the moment you’re in.

✍️The Practice: Write about the place where your mind becomes quiet.

It doesn’t have to be soccer.
It doesn’t have to be sport at all.

But it should be something where:

• the rest of your life disappears for a while

• attention becomes simple

• you are fully inside the moment you are in

  ---

🌱Reflection

Most of us don’t lose attention—we split it.

We live in one moment while carrying five others.
We think about what’s happening now, what happened yesterday, and what might happen tomorrow, all at once.

But there are still places where that splitting stops.
Places where the mind settles into itself.
Places where the world becomes one thing instead of twenty.

And sometimes we don’t realize how much we miss them until we remember what it felt like to be fully inside one thing.

💌Your Turn

If you write this, I’d love to read it.

Where does your mind go quiet—and what do you notice when everything else finally falls away?

This series is built on a simple idea: meaningful conversation and shared inquiry deepen our sense of connection, purpose, and well-being.

Each week, we’ll explore one or two ideas and think them through—not as a lesson, but as a conversation.

A Starting Point

This week, we’re continuing our journey through The Meaning of Your Life and exploring the tension between ambition and meaning.

What happens when we become very good at moving forward, but less intentional about where we are going?

The Core Idea

Brooks explores the importance of having a direction that extends beyond achievement itself.

A meaningful life requires movement, but not without purpose.

We can spend years achieving goals, improving ourselves, reaching milestones, and still arrive at the question:

“Is this actually the life I wanted to build?”

The issue is not striving.
The issue is striving without clarity.

The Striver’s Curse

Brooks doesn’t use this phrase, but the tension he describes feels exactly like what I call a “striver’s curse.” It’s a tension I recognize in myself.

The ability to work hard, set goals, and pursue growth is both a skill and a gift.
It can also be a trap.

It can look like:

• measuring life primarily through tangible progress

• believing accomplishments are the only evidence of success

• living so much in the future that the present becomes something to move through rather than experience

• Achieving your goals and realizing the feeling you expected never arrived

How do we know whether our striving is moving us toward a meaningful life or simply keeping us in motion?

When Achievement Becomes the Compass

When you’re young you’re often asked, what’s next?

Modern life offers us a series of expected milestones: education, career, relationships, family, achievement.
These things can be deeply meaningful. But sometimes we pursue them because they are meaningful to us—and sometimes because they are the path we were told represents a successful life.

After the degree you chase the higher paying job.
After landing the job you chase a promotion.
After marriage comes kids—then maybe another.

We can clearly see our lives progress.

But is your compass pointing toward goals created by your own values, or toward a preset idea of what a successful life should look like?

What Stood Out to Me

Once I reach a goal, I'm already chasing the next one before enjoying what I accomplished.
I’ve created an infinite ceiling instead of one I can break through.

I’ve noticed that I often enjoy the anticipation of a goal more than the achievement itself.

Planning.
Preparing.
Imagining the outcome.

There is energy in the pursuit.
But when I arrive, my mind is already searching for the next mountain.

Am I pursuing them because they matter, or because the pursuit itself gives me temporary certainty of a path?

An Infinite Ceiling

Ambition needs direction.
Without direction, it just creates motion.
Meaning gives that motion somewhere to go.

When we reach a goal, we should sit with it.
Linger in the present long enough to see if this goal matches our values, desires, and purpose.

Was this the goal I wanted to achieve?
Does it mean something to me?
Does it support my purpose?

Why This Matters to The Living Conversation

Conversation gives us something achievement often cannot: perspective.

A lot of life rewards certainty:

• What is the goal?

• What is the next step?

• How do I succeed?

But meaningful questions are often slower:

• What matters?

• What kind of person am I becoming?

• Is my life aligned with what I value?

When we are constantly moving toward the next thing, we rarely stop to ask whether the thing we are moving toward still matters.

The Conversation

Does your ambition have direction?

I’ve opened a dedicated group chat for this week of The Living Conversation.

A Closing Thought

What if the goal is not to stop striving, but to become more intentional about what is worth striving for?

Today’s practice is about transformation.
About discovering what new meaning appears when you change the form of something familiar.

We’re going to take a small piece of your own writing and turn it into lyrics.

Not a full song.
Not a melody.
Just a few lines with rhythm, repetition, and emotion.

A different doorway into the same material.

✍️The Practice: Turn something you wrote this week into lyrics.

Choose a sentence, a paragraph, or a journal entry from the past few days.
Rewrite it as 2–4 lines of lyrics.

You don’t need to know how to sing.
You don’t need to rhyme.
You just need to shift the shape.

🤔 How to Turn Your Writing Into Lyrics

Lyrics are simply emotion distilled into short, rhythmic lines.
If you can write a sentence with feeling, you can write a lyric.

A few lyrically gifted friends of mine were kind enough to share their beginner advice. According to them, these four elements matter most:

Shorten the lines

Take a long sentence and break it into fragments.

Use repetition

Choose one phrase and let it echo.

Keep only the strongest image

Stick to concrete details—light, movement, texture. Let the image carry the feeling.

Let emotion lead, not explanation

Lyrics don’t explain. They feel. Ask: what is the emotional pulse underneath the sentence?

🌱My Turn

For my own attempt, I chose a small section of my writing from last week’s Borrowed Wisdom post:

Then, I followed the steps above to deliver the same feeling lyrically:

💌Your Turn

Choose something you wrote this week—a line, a paragraph, a moment — and reshape it into a lyric.

Shorten the lines.
Keep the strongest image.
Let the emotion rise to the surface.

If you try this, I’d love to read what you create