Let’s run a thought experiment. If I ask you, “Who are you?” How would you respond. Maybe you will respond with your name. But more than likely there are other people with your same name. Even if your name is totally unique then I can ask, “Are you your name?” Then you might respond with your profession. “I am a nurse” or “I am a therapist” or “I am an account” or “I am retired” or “I am a mother,” but none of those get at who you are because other people serve the same roles. So you can go back to your memories, but all of that is not a recording in your mind. When we bring back a memory we are not invoking a taped recording of the past but bits of feelings, sensory data, interpretations, and putting them together. A childhood memory is simply a story put together as bits of data, not even whole words. That’s why your parents or siblings might recall it differently.

If you are having trouble describing who you really are, don’t worry. This is something that was explored in the ancient East in the philosophy of Buddhism and in the Vedic religion of South Asia. It is the concept of “no self” or anatta (in Pali) or anatman (in Sanskrit). This comes directly from the earliest Hindu texts which literally means “not the self” or “the objective reality outside the self.” The chariot analogy is a famous explanation of anatta found in the ancient Buddhist text, the Milinda Panha (The Questions of King Menander). Here, the Greek King Menander (Milinda) and a Buddhist sage named Nagasena debate about what is meant by the term “chariot.”

In this text, the claim by the Buddhist monk is that we have no soul. Then King Menander comes back with the question: how can one claim to have a name when there is no permanent soul or self inside him. Nagasena then asks the king how he traveled to their meeting. The king replies that he came by chariot. Nagasena then systematically questions the king about what exactly a “chariot” is: Is the pole the chariot? No. Is the axle the chariot? No. Are the wheels, the chassis, or the reins the chariot? No. Is the chariot something outside of all these parts? No. Nagasena explains that the word “chariot” is just a label for a specific arrangement of parts. It’s like the word “self.” When the parts are taken away, the “chariot” disappears.

This does not necessarily mean there is no self because there is such a thing as a chariot, but it argues that there is no fixed notion of self. At an atomic level, about 98% of the atoms in our bodies are replaced every single year. At a cellular level, roughly 330 billion cells die and are replaced every day, meaning we regenerate about 1% of our total cells every 24 hours. Even though physically, we are not the same person we once were as children or even last year, we all seem to carry a continuous sense of self with us. However in the West, this sense of self is seen as something permanent, independent, and unique. The Western idea of finding one’s self and self-help, and even identity, is part of this fixation on this concept of self. This is due to several factors: a Western Christian notion of a fixed soul, Cartesian philosophy of mind/body dualism, and capitalism.

Ted Lasso and Embracing Our Whole Selves

Recently, I caved in and started on a binge of the television series Ted Lasso. My resistance to it was that I did not like sports, much less shows about sports, but several of the guys of my Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance group encouraged me to watch and it’s been quite a treat. One of the themes that consistently comes up is one of identity. The characters struggle with their own sense of self and how this affects their relationships and how they play on the international football field.

What is more interesting than the Western sources of our need for a rigid self-concept is how the sense of self is formed. For many of us, this is passed down by our caregivers and our parents. How they operated out of their view of themselves. In the series, Ted and others attempt to deal with parental disappointment and abandonment. In one session, a therapist is hired to deal with an upsetting accident experienced by one of the players. But then various other players require her help. Ted, the head coach and manager of the football team, A.F.C. Richmond, suffers from panic attacks. He is not able to deal with the reality of a failing marriage and leaving his son to work in England. Because his father left him when he was young, Ted cannot deal with the reality of him leaving his own family. When he visits with Dr. Sharon Fieldstone, Ted shares about his father:

Dr. Fieldstone: And I understand why you’re angry with him (Sharon sighs)
He took a lot away from you.
Ted: And my mom.
Dr. Fieldstone: And your mum, yes.
I’m curious about something.
Ted: Mm–hmm?
Dr. Fieldstone: What was he like?
Ted: He was a good man, you know.
Real chatterbox, believe it or not.
Probably could have been a little bit better listening box at times.
(chuckles)
Dr. Fieldstone: What did you love about him?
Ted: Why?
Dr. Fieldstone: You told me what you hate about him.
I’d love to hear something you remember that made you feel good.
Ted: (chuckles) When I was in fifth or sixth grade, there was this book called Johnny Tremain, and our homework for, like, a month was to read this book.
At the end of the month, I hadn’t read a lick of it, you know.
(Ted chuckles)
And we had a test, big test, like, the next day.
And the night before, I was anxious as all heck, and I couldn’t sleep, and my dad starts getting after me about that.
And I start crying.
And he’s like, “Whoa, buddy. What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”
And I tell him what’s up.
And he says, “Hey, don’t worry about it, okay.
Just go up to your room, lay your head on your pillow and think about something you’re looking forward to.”
So that’s what I did.
Next morning, I wake up, and he says, “Hey, you ain’t gonna ride your bike to school. I’m gonna drive you.”
And I’m like, “All right.”
And on the way to school, he talks me through the entire book, like it’s a, uh, a bedtime story or something.
‘Cause he stayed up all night, the whole night, reading the whole damn thing, ‘cause he didn’t want his little boy stressed out over some stupid, silly test.
(chuckles)
And I ended up getting an A.
Boom. (both chuckle)
He was a good dad.
And I don’t think he knew that.
I think if he would’ve known how good he was at stuff he didn’t really care about being good at, he––

Whether intentional or not, the dialogue shows that we are made up of parts of our caregivers that we both like and do not like. If we learn to reject one part over another, we will reject ourselves. This then becomes projected onto another person. The more this happens, the more cognitive dissonance this causes us.

This happens to another character in the series, an equipment manager who was promoted to an assistant coach, “Nate” Shelley. He suffers from insecurity because he depends on Ted for external validation. Ted is a substitute father figure for Nate, but when Nate feels like Ted is withdrawing attention, he becomes frustrated and lashes out with anger at Ted and the team. However, even after a series of supposed successes, Nate continues to suffer from insecurities. No matter how much money, expensive suits, fame, or beautiful women, Nate knows deep down that he is not the person he displays himself to be. It is not until he confronts his father, and therefore himself, that he comes to understand the truth of why he felt so estranged.

Ted’s belief in “BELIEVE” is what gives him his sense of self. His trauma is that he feels inconsistent with something else that says he should not be a quitter. Nate, on the other hand, depends on others because he felt completely rejected by his father. Ted needs to accept something about the reality of his life, that his marriage is falling apart, but also needs to reframe it as something other than abandonment. Nate leaving A.F.C. Richmond, on the other hand, is a way of not being able to deal with anything that seems to alter his self-image. He makes a mistake and calls himself a “wonder kid” when he meant the German word “wunderkind” (meaning prodigy). Ted can laugh at his own blunders and when people call him “wanker,” but Nate’s fragile ego cannot accept the wonder kid moniker even when people mean well.

I’ve been helping business owners, therapists, C-suite executives with their personal brand strategy and their personal identity work, and one thing that they often say is “I feel more like my authentic self” after talking with me. I don’t tell them that I am not so much interested in who their “authentic self is” because I’m not sure they know, but I know that they are moving away from a sense of self that is a fixed notion of what they could or could not be. Again, the person who we think we are is simply a gathered projection, something we call a self.

Living in the Liminal Space Between Self and No-Self

So there is something like a liminal space between this notion of self, that is an aggregate of everything that we are, and this fleeting sense of self, that each year, and even each day we are becoming a different person. A person who is able to hold these two aspects in tension, that there is something called myself and that that is ever changing has constant hope of accepting life and living in happiness. Whereas, a person that clings onto a fixed, static notion of self and at the same time depends on outside factors to determine who that self is will slowly deteriorate. It is like staying in a burning house thinking that that house is all one has. Many people live this kind of fractured life. They are not broken per se, but cannot deal with the reality that there is no permanent self to hold onto. This is their wound. The truth is that every day, there is a new house to inhabit, a way to start again.

This is the old riddle of The Ship of Theseus where it is asked if you slowly replaced rotted pieces of the ship with new pieces, then, once all the pieces were replaced, would it still be the same ship or a different ship. Even if one argues that we retain neurons from the cerebral cortex since birth, there is nothing in those neurons that is this “self.” The steering wheel of the ship is not the ship. We are left again with the notion that we are much more than the sum of our parts. But this is the good news. Even though our bodies are important, we are more than that. Even though our memories are important, we are more than that. But the goal is not to become fixated on what “that” might be. This is a trap. The goal is to see how every experience in life helps us to integrate ourselves more fully.

The Expansive Self

I often wonder if we humans are made to continue a cycle of pain and trauma, to pass on to our children and others the parts of ourselves that are often hurtful and harmful. When I see anger, bitterness, and resentment expressed, I become saddened that I have not fully dealt with my past. Those wounds that have not healed often become a source of more wounds and it seems that the cycle does not simply continue from generation to generation, but also within myself.

However, I also feel that there is also some wholeness that can be formed within me. Just like the body has all of the necessary components to heal, we have the ability to have a healthy sense of self and the feeling of wholeness. This happens in relationship with a parent, a partner, a friend, a mentor, a coach, a therapist, and even a stranger. Every day we have the opportunity to heal through the relationships we have and therefore live in a space between the self that is present and the self that is becoming.

Everyone that I meet represents parts of myself. Even those who I dislike represent some kind of me that I need to embrace. In Jungian psychology, this is often called the shadow self, the hidden parts of ourselves that we need to embrace, otherwise dysfunctions develop. However, this is not just a negative aspect of me. A shadow implies the absence of something, of light. It is a negation or nothingness, but these aspects of myself are me also. So when someone gets under my skin, I ask “What is this encounter teaching me about myself?” It is not to dismiss another’s wrong action or deflect from injustice, but it is to start to see why it is that I am so triggered by another’s behavior.

When people have resistance to something, let’s say writing or finishing work they want to do, I say that this is only ourselves trying to pull us back to what is truly important to us, but does not quite know how to. It fears losing the sense of self that it knows and then expresses itself through procrastination, avoidance, and trying to move on to other things. But usually these other ways don’t get us back to the sense of self that we want. Rather, resistance is a check to actually get back to what is really worth our time and energies, what really would make us flourish as human beings.

The more that I see all my experiences, encounters with people, resistance to doing the work I want to do, as ways in which I can come to become more attuned to my expansive self, the more I can feel more at home with myself. Every experience is different, every encounter with work is different, and as I am able to deal with these through a more flexible identity, the better I am able to embrace who I am. The paradox is that the more we abandon our fixation with our identity, the more we regain our sense of it.

The Western fixation with identity has produced identity politics. Because most people’s sense of self is so fragile in this way, it is easy for someone to give people a way to maintain their identity. But then this person’s own sense of self has to be just as fragile. This person will also have to rely on external validation, symbols of power and influence, the adoration of others, and an inflated sense of self-confidence.

If we see ourselves as not fixed, but ever changing, ironically, we can feel more secure with ourselves. Peter Cullen, the voice of the Transformer robot, Optimus Prime, would tell the story of how he developed the voice of the leader of the Autobots, a group of robotic heroes. When he was auditioning as the voice for Optimus, he told his brother, Larry, that he was playing a hero truck. Larry responded, “If you are going to be a hero, be a real hero, not a Hollywood hero with all the yelling and screaming and trying to be tough. Be strong enough to be gentle.” Larry was a marine in the military and Cullen channeled both Larry’s voice and gentleness. Tenderness is the ability to display vulnerability. People who are the most secure in who they are display this, while those with the toughest exteriors often have much to protect. They are holding onto that fragile sense of identity.

Conclusion

Because this article is going longer than I thought, I will post another article on belief and identity. But I want to close with some implications of what this all means:

1. Identity is not a fixed notion - holding onto a fixed idea of who we are might be more harmful than helpful

2. A more flexible self-image makes a person more resilient - when a person sees themselves as not fixed, but flexible they can more easily make changes that are consistent with their true desires rather than conformed to an image imposed upon themselves or others

3. Accepting all of ourselves helps our self-image - It is counterintuitive for most people to accept all of their undesirable “parts.” However, acknowledging all of who we are allows us to have a more complete self-image.

4. Seeing relationships as aspects of ourselves helps us to form a more complete picture of who we are - most of our personal relationships are ways in which we care for ourselves. When we get upset or critical of another, it is often part of ourselves that we need to look at and love. Relationships offer us opportunities to understand our identities and see that they are more open to change than not.

There is so much more I can say on this topic, but in the next article I will talk about the relationship between belief and identity. Our beliefs about who we are hold up the image we have about who we are. If we can question these beliefs, then we can see which aspects of ourselves truly work and which do not.

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The wanderer’s heart is not fulfilled when they reach the land that they once left but when they return to the place alienated by their own heart.

Christopher Nolan’s three hour The Odyssey brought this truth back to me and more. A week after my father’s funeral I watched an epic that I vaguely remember reading as a college student. The punch in the gut came at the end so a spoiler section is ahead if you haven’t seen the film or read a poem that is more than three thousand years old.

Before I get to the central point of this tale, I’ll just address all the non-controversies largely created by people who did not watch the film nor read the poem nor know anything about its history.

Rage Against The Odyssey

Non-issue 1) Elliot Page, a male trans actor, plays a character that people thought was Achilles. Elliot Page plays Sinon, a character who was not in Homer’s Odyssey but an adaptation of another character from Virgil’s Aeneid. He is not Achilles. This was some sort of rumor and then internet meme. If these people had read Homer’s Odyssey they would know that these events take place after the Trojan War and Achilles was dead by then, only appearing as a ghost. Page’s screen time is all of three minutes. But he fulfills his role beautifully as one who portrays loyalty, even to the end. However, his faithfulness is not rewarded or given a hero’s honor but betrayed and it haunts Odysseus, both figuratively and literally.

Non-Issue 2) Lupita Amondi Nyong’o, a Kenyan-Mexican actor, plays dual roles as Helen of Troy and Helen’s twin sister. Why a Black actor for Helen of Troy? Why not a Black actor. Here is where the issue of racism and diversity comes into plain view. Leaving aside what people constitute as “beautiful” (and there is no question that Nyong’o is that), we can simply ask these questions.

If you don’t want a Black actor to play Helen then who do you cast? A white actor? But these are Greeks. So, okay a Greek actor, then who? And if it’s only Helen then should not all of the actors be Greek? Then what about the modern dialects that Nolan uses and the U.S. American accents that the characters speak? Have the actors fake a Greek accent, but this would not be culturally appropriate. So all Greek actors speaking English? Then why not speak Greek? But not modern Greek or first century Koine or common Greek, but Ancient Greek! But then shouldn’t the dialogue be in the original poetic verses, like Shakespeare? So there! We just made a movie that no one wants to watch!

Non-issue 3): the so-called “woke” director did not cast Greek actors. Nolan spent $250 million on a film that needed to do at least half a billion to break even. Even though Nolan has become a director that Hollywood can no longer pursue but decides on his own projects, he also wants a commercially viable project that does not lose money. So far the $1.1 billion is enough for him to call this a commercial success. Even though this movie is not for everyone, he has crafted something that would not bore the average viewer. My friend’s daughter, an ADHD teen, said she was enthralled the who time. For her, it as even better than Interstellar, which I thought was hard to beat. The casting of Matt Damon and also a diverse cast including Asian, South Asian, Black, and other representations is not woke virtue signaling but simply asking people who Nolan has worked with in the past to be part of this ensemble. Again, Homer’s Odyssey might as well be The Lord of the Rings and why rage about there being a Black or Asian elf when elves do not exist.

Lastly, Emily Wilson, the first female to publish a translation of Homer’s Odyssey, says that “Nolan’s script is poorly written and lacking in emotional depth and character development.” Wilson is different than many people who have criticized the film because she is a classics scholar and deeply knows the lore. However, she has published a takedown of the film (here) on the London Review of Books website, calling Damon’s Odysseus not “complicated or wily or artful.” This is in contradistinction to her first line of the poem: ‘Tell me about a complicated man.’ The problem with any sort of telling of the Odyssey is that it is an interpretation. The only “Odysseus” is the one created in the minds of the interpreter. Let me explain.

The Odyssey was a poem assembled by a person known to us as Homer about three thousand years ago. If there was even a form of that poem that we can call “Homer’s,” it is an interpretation of an oral tradition, told and retold. So, Wilson’s translation is her own interpretation of this poem. I’ve translated books of the Bible and tell students that the reason we have translations is that many people cannot read the original language and that we are interpreting things the way we think they should be read. Every translation is an interpretation. Wilson’s is no different and Nolan’s is no different. To say that Nolan is not faithful to the Odysseus of the poem is like saying someone’s depiction of Jesus is not faithful to the Gospels. Then I have to ask, “Which Gospel?”

Spoilers Here

Nolan starts The Odyssey with Black rapper, Travis Scott, as an ancient Greek bard. This is because iambic pentameter is like modern rap music. There is a beat and that’s how it was learned and passed down. But the whole movie is not like this, there are many tellings, many perspectives, some more truthful versions than others. We see the story from many perspectives, none we can fully trust. Therefore to try to fixate on the accuracy or inaccuracies of the epic poem is the miss entirely what is underneath.

Odysseus the Wanderer

So this leads me to the main thread that Nolan wishes to pull out, that Odysseus is a wanderer not because he does not have a home, but that there is some place in his heart he has distanced himself from. He is always in search of himself.

Even when he returns to Ithaca he understands that he needs to leave. With Penelope, he sets sail to seek peace in exile. This is the vital theme of the story that many people miss because of all the non-issues that I have listed: what we have associated with the word, “odyssey,” as a journey is one of desperate alienation. Of course, the ancient Greeks do not show this by having the character explore their psyches, but through a narrative, through plot and action.

The trauma of war, which is a supreme violation of the law of Zeus, the law of hospitality, is one that is deeply alienating to the self. This is why Odysseus has to make amends by seating his son on the throne. Once again he has to transgress Zeus’ law by killing the suitors and disloyal servants. His son, Telemachus, cannot do this or else he would suffer the wrath of the gods. Only Odysseus can carry out this mission and therefore continue his life of wandering even though he has come home. Only his son can sit on the throne and rule because he has not violated this law.

In this way, the story, at least Nolan’s account, asks us if we are to continue to wander or return to a land, one that might still be foreign to us in many ways. One of the scenes which moved me to tears, perhaps because of the recent death of my father, was when Odysseus says to Telemachus: “I’m a beggar, and you…you’re the worthy, beautiful son of Odysseus, of whom, when you do finally meet, he will be so proud.” Here, Odysseus is still speaking as the disguised beggar even though his son recognizes him. Odysseus is still alienated from his own self as Telemachus finally sees through the disguise.

I do not know what the impact of the Vietnam (American) War had on my father. His younger brother was killed in it, I know that. But coming to the United States was to not find a place that was home, but it was the continuation of his own wanderings. Even though we moved from place to place and finally settled, my father’s life was one of constant anxiety, about the future and finances and about a life he would not quite recapture for himself. The last days of his life, he would constantly say to me, “I love you, son.” Something that he almost never said to me growing up. Perhaps he knew intimately that this was close to the end. Close to his own homecoming.

Ryan Holiday, a stoic writer, has made several videos on Homer’s Odyssey and The Odyssey and comments that “Odysseus is a tragic figure not because he is cursed by the gods, but Odysseus is a tragic figure because he has cursed himself. He is endlessly restless. He can never ever, ever, ever be still.” I see much of this in my father and also myself. Even in his deathbed, nearly unconscious, he would fidget to check for his wallet, his keys, and a toothpick to clean his teeth.

I do not know if, somehow, my father is still wandering or if he finally found peace. But what I know is that his death was deeply meaningful. It brought my younger brother and me back to talking terms. Perhaps not fully reconciled, but communicating more than we have in a few years. It also helped mend other relationships at his funeral. There were also a few wounds that were brought to light because of his sickness and passing, but I would rather have them exposed than not.

In this way, my father, in his death, perhaps did more than the few years of living where he found his life was futile without work. Yes, I would give anything to have him back for another day, to hear him complain about how hard his life is and was, to want us to go out to eat together, and also to say that there is nothing like my mother’s cooking. I would give anything to hear his laughter and to hear him repeat the disappointment of his life. But I also know that his life, especially his last days, were full of pain.

This is the same thing I see reflected in my life each day. Do I continue to live on the surface or live a life that explores the mysteries of my heart? At least this is one of the points of both Homer’s poem and Nolan’s film. How do we encounter the many obstacles in our lives, as ways in which we can see the truths of ourselves, or simply another hurdle to overcome? For me, I want to at least understand why these landmarks in my journey have been so painful, why I’ve washed up on those shores, and if I am actually setting sail for home, the home where I’ve made alien in my own heart.

Good journeys, Dad. I love you. Thank you for still speaking to me.

A poem read by my father and translated into English by poet John Ballaban, music by my brother, Duc Luu.

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It seemed like only yesterday you were eating a kid’s meal at Cedar Creek, graduating High School, and getting an EMT license, and now you’re a hospice RN helping me out with my father.

This is our perception of time. We think we have an infinite amount of it and yet it speeds by so quickly. I was on a call with a writing group and said it was July already and we only have five months left to the end of the year. Our most precious commodity, time, seems like it is something that so many of us take for granted and do not know how to make the best use of. I’m wanting to answer the question of how we can get the most out of our time, but find myself constantly sidetracked.

First, I often remind people of this simple fact: time > money. We hear it said that time is money. Well, I’m saying that time is much more valuable than money, because no matter how rich someone is, they can never purchase their time back. However, with money one can free up one’s time. One can pay people to do the things that take up the most time and provide little return on time investment.

For example, I enjoy cooking, especially teaching people how to cook, but there are some things that I will tolerate cooking at home and some things not worth my time. I don’t bake much and find it easier to purchase pastries and cakes. Some people love baking and would make their own breads and cakes. For me that would be frustrating. So, it’s important to weigh the enjoyment with the practicality of our use of time. However, I cook about 90 percent of our meals and we eat out probably twice during the weekends to give myself a break. Paying people to do tasks that take up time when you can do other things to make more money is a smart move.

But having money is not always the solution. The other thing that takes up much time is the ownership of things that take up time. Minimizing what we have helps us direct our energies elsewhere. There is a cognitive load to owning things. As soon as something comes to us by mail or we have to purchase something, there is time and energy devoted to it. Additionally, there is also the maintenance and upkeep of said things.

Going back to why most of us take time for granted, one can say that our perception of time changes as we age. When we are younger time goes by at a slower rate because we are starting to experience new things, time seems infinite. Things take forever. “Are we there yet?” is a mantra of the child in the back of the car. But as we age, 10 years, 20 years are just slivers of our lives. Time seems to go by faster, but this does not signal the scarcity of time. Most of us seem to use it in the same way. Many of us don’t accomplish what we set out to achieve, or we wait for things to happen before we do things. I used to say to myself a lot that I can wait until such and such happens before I do this, then that never happens and I don’t do it.

There is another theory about why we do not see time as a precious resource: it is called the Terror Management Theory. Here, the claim is that this lack of perceptual scarcity is an evolutionary trait. Because humans became aware of dangerous threats we have to manage an existential fear or else we will not preserve the species. In other words, if my world is extremely dangerous, the temptation is to just hide out in my cave until the fear passes, but this would be counterproductive in advancing the species. So, my mind has to say, “It’s ok that you go out there. Your life is not in any immediate danger right now. You can mate, procreate, and protect the tribe.” But it is this management system that creates ways of existence, in culture, religion, art, and even war, that says we can last forever. It is this sense of forever that eventually does us harm.

Like most coping mechanisms, what was meant for good eventually does more harm in the long run. This leads to procrastination and a lack of time management. We will say, “yes,” to everything and everyone. Then all tasks deserve the exact amount of time or there is no time for what is important. This is what I hear from executives with unfinished manuscripts: “I can’t find time to finish my book.”

Much of the problem is about not having enough time, but making time for something. We will give time to whatever we deem valuable in our lives. If we see golf as worthy of our time, we’ll be at the range for the 6 AM tee time. If we see watching college football as valuable, we’ll make the drive to a college town, purchase seats, attend games, and throw parties. So, time is not the real issue for many people, it is priority, and priority goes to what people value most in their lives.

This is why our goals must match our deepest values. If not, then we will have much resistance in achieving these goals or find them empty when we do reach them. After an undergraduate degree, and three graduate degrees, I know what this feels like. So often I asked myself “What did I actually achieve? What did I do?” This then generalizes to other parts of my life like work and even hobbies. I wonder if things are worthy of my time and know that if I am not aware of this, I may pull away from them not knowing. It feels like sabotage but it is not; it’s only the fear again of the crisis of mortality. I only have a limited number of seconds left in this world. How do I cash in wisely?

Perhaps the best way to honor our time is being present, being in the moment. Being, not doing. Or better yet, collapsing doing and being in one. When I am doing yoga, I have to be. That being is a part of my doing. There is a being when we are making our coffee or preparing a meal or simply eating it without distraction. It is being with intention, often expressed in the Japanese term ikigai or meaning of life. When doing and being merge in this way, my time is savored and stretched, made taut. It is purposeful, kairos time, not simply chronos, clocked time, as the ancient Greeks would say.

This is of course easier said than done. It is about feeling one’s breath without needing to count it. It is about holding this moment as special. And then the next moment. And then all moments. Because by the time you know it, an hour, a day, and a month will pass without us knowing it.

On July 20, 2026, at 1:39 AM, my father passed away. His life was long at the age of 91, but he had many regrets in his life. He wanted to continue to work because he made so little money comparatively and left nothing to my mother except their old house. However, what he never regretted were the moments he had with friends and family. This time was infinitely valuable to him, especially toward the end of his life. He was surrounded by his family when this happened.

The moments we make are some of the most important. Whether it is sharing a meal, or listening to someone’s pain, or lending a hand. The time that matters is the one that moves our sense of being back to what we value the most. Without that, we can have all the time in the world and not have fulfilling lives. More than ever, I realize this truth.

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A new friend shared this with me over dinner. She told me this because within a few days my brother and I had to make some important decisions.

My father was recently admitted to the ER and hospital because of his inability to swallow. He had not been able to drink and eat properly for three days and my brother took him to the ENT. The ENT botched the order for the barium swallow test and the only other alternative was to admit him through the ER.

The upside of this was that the doctors found out that he had a lung infection and UTI (urinary tract infection) in addition to the initial problem. However, the infections could easily be remedied by antibiotics, the swallowing problem not so. This was most likely a result of his dementia. His brain was shutting down crucial body functions. Most of us take for granted that when we swallow something food goes into the stomach rather than the lungs. This subtle action is due to a tiny flap of cartilage called the epiglottis. When we swallow, this flap instantly folds over the windpipe (trachea), sealing off the airway and safely directing the food into the esophagus on its way to the stomach. Because of his dementia the brain is having a difficult time coordinating this response.

His body is becoming more and more emaciated by the day. However his will to argue with us and be stubborn about everything else remains. This is one of the strangest things that I’ve had to grapple with about my father’s disease. We cannot survive on will alone. There are so few things that we really control, but somehow we as humans constantly believe that we are the masters of our own fates, of our destinies. The same will that can argue with my brother and I incessantly about wanting to go home, cannot save itself and swallow food properly.

The World People Don’t Want to Face

Most of our lives are controlled by non-voluntary functions. There are so many aspects of our lives that are unconscious. We don’t think about breathing, blinking, pumping blood, and a million other functions throughout our bodies. We don’t even understand all the thoughts that go through our heads. Many of the reasons we do what we do are also highly unconscious. I can get up and shower and make breakfast. These seem to be my choices, but sometimes I do some of these things without even a thought. When we first learned how to drive every move seemed like a frightening decision, but now many of us can go about seemingly on autopilot.

For my father, being in control was everything. This was part of his obsessive/compulsive tendencies. Later in his life it exhibited as taking out the trash at almost every moment we visited him or fixating on wanting to do a particular thing. I bought new shoes for him this Father’s Day and saw him wear the same old shoes at the hospital. He wanted the exact shoes that were out of production 20 years ago. My guess was this was a way to control an uncontrollable world, a world of seeming chaos that he could not understand. A world that could be very traumatic to the mind and soul.

However, it is this world that I am the most interested in even though it is often hard to face. Because of events in my life, my personal actions, and my experiences, I’ve become intrigued as to all things that we do not see on the surface. This is why the divine has such a strong pull upon me. It’s not specific doctrines or how most people talk about God, but the experience of God itself and how we can come to understand it.

But here, in my father’s final days, there is no choice but to again experience what death means and look at its reality. I’ve prayed that my father would know the presence of love during his homecoming.

The Cry of a Suffering Soul

Whenever I tried to get up, he would struggle. My brother and I would insist that he did not have the strength to do so. When we finally gave in to walk him to the restroom and back or just prop him up to help him brush his teeth, he would repeat the words “khó quá! khó quá!” This phrase roughly translates as “too hard” or “I’m suffering.” The phrase is very subtle and has the sense of “my life is difficult.”

I respond and say, “I know that life has been difficult for you, Dad.”

As my father struggles, I can see my brother tear up and break. It’s not easy on us and the few minutes he sits up, he wants to lay back down. His mind is continuing to outpace his body, but soon this will tire him out. Everyday he wants to go to H-E-B, take a car ride with my mom, or even go downstairs and now none of this he can really do without us carrying him. But he insists every day.

On Sunday, my brother and I managed to put him in my car and drive him around town. My mom was in the passenger side and my father was in the back seat with my brother. We went to the Galleria Mall to show him where my mom and him used to walk around to people watch. We went to the auto park and showed him where he used to own a mechanic’s shop and where some of his clients used to work. I even drove him around where I lived.

The ride was bittersweet because I could not remember the last time we all took a car ride together, but I knew that he was struggling. He kept on fidgeting with things in his pocket. I did not know what he was absorbing and what he was not. At one point he wanted to get out and walk the mall, but I knew he could not do so and we just told him that it was closed on a Sunday. After we helped him out and into a wheelchair I wondered if this was the last car ride that he would have alive.

There’s a small book group of wonderful Christian women around Texas meeting on Zoom every other Tuesday reading my book, Jesus and Buddha Talk. It is not a coincidence that they are on the chapter on suffering. In the book I talked about Siddhartha’s view that suffering was rooted in desire, and to eliminate suffering was to eliminate desire. Jesus’ view was very different and he seemed to take the path that desire propelled us toward where we want to go and that it needed only to be directed, like an arrow.

My father grew up as a Buddhist, but all his life had powerful desires and also denied them. I remember one time when I was probably 10 or 12 years of age him smoking small cigars and drinking a can or so of beers with friends, but all of a sudden one day saying that he quit all of that. Most of his life was of self-denial of pleasures. The only time I would see him light up was when meeting people and maybe having a simple meal, like a sandwich from Subway. But recently, it seems that there is constantly the desire to do some of the simplest things that he cannot do, and this has caused him much suffering.

This is perhaps the hardest thing for me to watch, my father wanting to enjoy the simple things in life with his loved ones and not being able to do so. My brother wants to let him do whatever our father wants for his remaining days, but I know that this would be too much for him to go on another car ride or even to walk down stairs. We will try for another day, but I’m not sure the outcome is what we would want, what he would really want.

The Fog of Grief

I know much about grief and what it is, but experiencing it is hard. Recently my friend just returned from India having watched his father die. Another friend, for whom I recently did a painting, had to fly to Australia because of the passing of his father. Last year, my good friend’s father passed away also and Paula and I attended the funeral in North Texas. Finally, in April my friend’s wife, whom he recently married, passed away from colon cancer. She was the same age as my wife.

I’ve grieved with those who are grieving, adding my own grief to theirs. It’s the acknowledgment of a love that is there, love that continues in the rawest way. It is saying that this person means something to us and losing them has moved us in our core.

What grief has shown me is how grateful I am to have parents who lived this long. My father is 91 this year and my mother is only a year younger. When I was a hospital chaplain, I was with those who grieved the death of their newborn and those who let their elderly parent go, and every age in between. I’ve also been with those who had no one with them in the room, just to hold their hand during their last moments of life.

But personal grief seems so isolating, so singular. When we lose someone, it is like we are the only ones who know that grief intimately. I was talking to a friend who lost her father last year and she responded that grief was like that; it is both universal and particular. Because of the uniqueness of our relationship with someone, that particular grief, of what we lost in the relationship, can only be felt by you and you alone.

His Last Days

My father has not eaten any substantial food in more than a week. He is only a shadow of what he was before and walking now has become impossible for him. He fidgets for his keys, that he can no longer use, his cell phone that he can’t turn on, and his wallet that serves no purpose. But these are the things he knows.

I write this as I watch him sleep after a moment of struggling with the zipper on his rain jacket he insists on wearing in bed. My mother tenderly rubs oil on his forehead, the familiar smell of an Asian ointment that takes me back to childhood.

This morning I sit brokenhearted. How could I have been a better son? How could I see more of myself in him and him in me? How could I honor all of him in who I am?

Last night I broke down next to my wife while she was working and I was taking a break and building a Lego set. “Thank you for helping me have patience around my parents. I think that I lose it a lot around them because I see so much of my father in me. I wanted to avoid that, be away from that as much as possible. Forgive me dad!” I wept bitterly.

If you would like to help my mother out with funeral expenses we have a GoFundMe link below. I know so many of my subscribers have already contributed. I deeply appreciate and love you all. Please take care and make the most of every moment you have with those you love.

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We sit next to someone who just moved from Colombia to our building. Hector works in the oil and gas sector and the new president for a company here in Houston. We got on the subject talking about Vietnam. Hector’s brother lived in Vietnam for five years, started and ran a co-working space, but left it after Covid. Because of very strict government shutdowns. This led us to talk about the various forms of communism.

“Vietnamese communism is very capitalistic.” I respond.

“Like China?” Says Hector.

“But without the surveillance state. Vietnam had invaders for thousands of years: the Chinese, French, Japanese, and…”

“The United States,” Hector fills in.

“Yes, the U.S.,” I comment, “And I think this is why Vietnam feels more secure. Yes, there are heavy government restrictions on business and the public, but one can practice their religious beliefs if registered. There are Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, and a large Muslim community in Vietnam. Of course within their boundaries…”

Our Freedoms

But here we are on the 250th Anniversary of the United States and there is the celebration of freedom, but very few people know what to do about it. Often when I talk to people about what freedom means to them they talk about freedom “from” rather than freedom “for.” This means freedom from poverty, or freedom from government restraint, or freedom from suffering. But few people talk about freedom “to.” In other words, what will they do with their freedom once they have it?

This is the more difficult conversation because having no restrictions, to do anything a person wants, might not be freedom at all. Artists know that the best art is often done within limits. It is not having everything that produces art. I saw an Instagram post of a person’s painting studio. It looked like a converted airplane hangar, tall ceilings massive spaces, large walls. Because I paint on large canvases, I love spaces like these and have produced 10-foot paintings before. Now I’m in a cramped space and my work studio is an inconvenient drive across town.

But these are moments of great creativity. I’ve already produced one small beautiful canvas. A commission out of nowhere, and I look forward to doing more. These places of seeming scarcity show me that limits and boundaries have their place. It is not that I want these freedoms taken away; they should not be self-imposed, but they should be embraced when they are there. The reality that I can’t do everything is a good thing. It presses me to ask what can I do?

Georgia

On the Fourth of July, after walking Layla, I took her into the lobby of our building and sat down. I usually try to write a haiku in my head when I spot something unusual or out of place and send it to my friends, but I sat down and flipped through art books on a coffee table. I came across one by a painter, Bo Bartlett, working in realism, mainly around Southern Gothic themes. The painting, Georgia, drew me in and I wrote this haiku:

     What is freedom, 
     but A boy on a bike riding 
     Through a Georgia field

It was about the red bike and the open field. Perhaps it was the freedom felt that was opposite from living in the cramped city where a field is an empty lot of tall grass across the street. It was also the peace of gray/light blue sky and the thin layer of orange grass on the bottom. The color palette, the figure, so simple and limited.

It was like a pitcher of lemonade or a red popsicle melting in the sun. These were the textures and images I was experiencing in the painting. This is often what I want in my life; the simplicity is freeing.

Fireworks

In a day, I went from old-fashioneds to the pool to making ribs and fried rice to meeting our friends in a hotel room downtown for fireworks.

I go up to the pool expecting sangria and there was only cherry cokes. So I see Allan trying to get comfortable on the patio furniture.

“Phuc! Come here and sit!” Allan calls. He’s a student at South Texas School of Law. I grab a cup and make an old-fashioned. He talks about a relationship breakup and not knowing what he wanted out of it. These things are not pretty, quite complicated, and messy, especially when the girlfriend works for his mom. “I think clean breaks are the best. Don’t waste her time or your time.” That’s all the relational advice I can give. He laughs when he acknowledges that this happened just before Independence Day. But I’m not sure anyone wants to be alone on the 4th.

After what turned out to be an hour and a half of talking to my friends in the pool, I emerge to go back up to our unit to make the ribs and fried rice. Even though I’ve made this dish a hundred times, it’s still a process and I got through the steps in my head. Paula receives a text that says two kids at the next party are looking forward to having it again this year.

After I broil the ribs & finish the rice, I pack them up, shower, and we leave. That night we watched the downtown concert from the television screen and looked across the freeway from our window to see the same concert live. My friends were also celebrating their 30th anniversary together. And we all offer some words and toast to the couple. They’ve become like another family to us in Houston.

By the time the fireworks start downtown, we are in separate rooms singing to the songs being played through the screens. As the show starts to wind down, I could hear complaints of “that’s all?” echo about the rooms. “What do you all want? A nuclear bomb and busted out windows?” From my perspective that was fantastic. But somehow for 250 years there needed to be “more” and I didn’t know more of what. There was music, enough food to feed a small army, nice bottles of champagne and wine. I even had a pour of some of the best añejo tequila I’ve had in a long time in a wine glass, which is a totally appropriate Fourth of July drink.

But I think expectation was something spectacular that has not been seen for this 250-year celebration. But it’s been quite a difficult year for me and I take in what I can get, the company, the food, the experiences. To be free is not to have everything because we know plenty of people who have everything and live their lives chasing the next thing. But to be free is to make of what we have, at any point in ourselves, anywhere.

My father’s dad died in a prison in North Vietnam before the war and I only met one of my grandparents. Some people are in internment camps, kids, pregnant women while I eat cheese puffs and drink a vodka seltzer. For me, each word that I type is a step toward freedom. Each painting that I make is a statement of liberation. I’m appreciating each day that I can get up to do these things. Each time I can reach out to a friend and simply listen to their troubles, that is freedom. Just to be there. Just to exist with them.

This is what it means to be free, truly free.

(Note: I’ve started to change names, professions, and details in my story to hide the identity of people. These are people I care about so I want to make sure that no one knows who they are.)

Five Spice Ribs

Adapted from Steven Raichlen’s “Chinatown Ribs” (from Ribs, Ribs, Outrageous Ribs, Workman Publishing; also at BarbecueBible.com), with a sous vide method added.

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Sin Nature is Not Natural

I would argue that modern Christian anthropology, in the Western world, has been dominated by a view of sin nature, where we are seen as deeply flawed individuals who could only be redeemed by God’s saving work. The extent of the sin is dependent on which denomination and theological framework one chooses. But generally, we have inherited sin from birth and that only Christ’s death could bring justification to the sinner. On one extreme we have the Reformed tradition that sees people as having very little choice but to sin and therefore only God giving the grace (sola fides) to allow the person to accept Christ in the first place. The other side is perhaps provides more free will in Ana-baptist traditions for people to become believers and be baptized on their own conscious decision. But along this spectrum the problem is that sin is dealt with through some kind of justification of the guilt of the believer. This is where the problem lies, not in the theories alone, but the practicalities. If original sin is taken away through either baptism, sacraments, or confession, then why is there sin still present?

Has the age of the church, Christendom, or Christianity relieved humanity of either the “wages of sin” or the inheritance of sin? I would answer no. Even though we have slowly progressed as a species in the two millennia since the founding of Christianity, we have much racism, cruelty, and violence to be dealt with. Mega corporations have replaced empires, and dictators have replaced emperors for control. We continue to justify the sinner and neglect the “sinned-against” in the ways in which governments, institutions, and communities continue to harm others, the land, and other animals. This is because we see ourselves as something separate in this way. Sin is this inherent “separation”; it demarcates the difference that is not real. We talk about the “sinner” and the sin as if it can be something that can be analyzed in a lab and studied, but these are theological constructs just as race is a social construct.

The Real Sin

The language of sin has secular roots. My dissertation was over the Eastern Fathers’ view of sin and modern Minjung (Korean) theological interpretations of healing. That is to say, I know sin. The word in both Hebrew and Greek simply means to “miss the mark” and used in sling and archery references. It was said that a Hebrew sling thrower could hit the hair on an enemies’ beard without “missing the mark.” This word was then applied to “missing the mark” of what God intended for people. So to sin was simply to do what God did not want for a person. But then this became a religious classification that the cult of Israel used in their ceremonies. So there was the “holy” and the “profane,” the “sacred” and the “sinful.”

The prophetic religious tradition tried to course correct by telling the priests and Kings, those in power, that sin was really neglecting the poor and treating orphans and widows badly. The idea of welfare or well-fair was rooted in the word “shalom” or “peace.” This was the idea of the “welfare of the city” as Jeremiah 29:7 puts it. It was not a liberal view of government handouts created by Reagan, but something deeply Judeo-Christian. This was the same prophetic tradition that Jesus continued to draw from as he criticized the view of sin in his day.

Jesus saw the Pharisees and Sadducees of his time demarcating the so called “sinner” from the sacredness of their society. This was how they formed Jewish communities, to take a Girardian view of scapegoating. There were those upstanding members, the religious people who could go to temple and synagogue and there were the “sinners” who did not. But these were those who really held the society together: the sex workers, the shepherds, the butchers, the tanners and leather workers, all those who were ritually impure. So these were the “sinners” that are often referred to in the Gospels. When we get to Paul’s letters and his talk of sin and sin nature, that’s another story altogether. Paul was dealing with the sins of those within the church, the greed, avarice, gluttony, and whatever goes with being in community together. He was not explicitly writing down a systematic theology of human nature in his letters, even though he might have possessed one. But later theologians have helped him do so. Nevertheless, Paul was one of many theologians writing what Christians call the New Testament.

Needless to say, too few in the modern Church and modern theologians have spent time helping Christians understand the differences. We simply lumped sin up into one thing and said: “People are sinners. People need Jesus. Done. And also, go to church.” That’s really the sad state of Christian anthropology in a nutshell. People then either struggle with sin, which really means their vices, in the church or end up leaving the church and get help through therapy or “self-help.” This is the real sin. Too often churches have little to offer besides religious education. Many churches have failed to become a place of healing and restoration for many people and rather places of continued hurt and the perpetuation of sin.

Theo-Evolutionary Imagination

What if we were more than flawed people? What if we were people with desires for good, attempting to reach their desires, but often not understanding how to because of a combination of understanding, practice, and a view of themselves that allows them to flourish. We as humans have a progression, albeit not always upward, toward human brain integration. This is the nature of our bicameral brain and mind. We are not only governed by “reptilian” and prefrontal cortex, but also the left and right regions of the brain. In Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, he proposes self-awareness is not an ancient evolutionary trait, but is a “recent cultural construct born out of language and metaphor.”

Before roughly 3000 years ago, when people told stories, such as the Illiad there was no reflexive “I.” Stories were driven by plot elements and not by interiority of characters. This is because the right hemisphere of the brain was what dictated much of one’s actions. It was like one’s “god” and spoke to people, helping them make choices and handled stresses. The left side of the brain took care of language and communication. So one side helped to govern the other directly. The right brain commanded. The left brain executed, through language and information.

However, because of societal evolution, the right side was projected outward, creating religion and the “gods” while the left side was directed inward toward introspection. So the human moved from certainty, knowing exactly what to do because of the dictates of the right brain, toward faith. In many ways, this was to adapt to the advancement of civilization from nomadic tribes with individuals all making their own decisions for their own interest to tens of thousands together and the need for external governance. So religion and empires, priests and kings became what the right brain once was for the person. Faith replaced certainty. Theology took care of an immediate decision governed by what the right brain said to the left.

But what did we lose in return for this new brain? We lost a sense of knowing what we needed. In our instinct to survive, we lost the ability to come in contact with a deeper consciousness. Those who talked to themselves, have hallucinations, and terrorized by “voices” were classified as schizophrenic. But then, those who reject religion also come back to the ideas of meditation and hearing the “still small voice” to guide their actions rather than religious institutions and governments. The real problem is not that we now have a subjective “I” (We don’t need to go back to hearing the gods in our heads), but that we don’t know how to fully integrate the dictates of “external authority” and our inner commanders. Those who retreat back to the right ruling hemisphere for advice are seen as the prophet, maverick, lone-ranger cowboys and those who do not are given to authoritarianism, religious extremism, and corporate control. This is because the later wants the immediate certainty of the old right brain, but also the “faith” these institutions provide.

AI and the Bicameral Mind

It has been observed that AI is like that left hemisphere that receives the commands and prompts from the right side of the brain. Whereas AI is largely a passive tool, it requires prompting from a user to do something. Analogously, we act as the right brain (command) and the Large Language Models (LLM) acts as the left brain (executive/slave). There is no internal subjective reflection because the AI does not have a closed loop between the two sides.

The reason why humans have the ability to reflect is because of the inherent friction between the left and right sides of our brains. Because we subverted the function of the left brain, humans came to think of ourselves in this subjective term. We reflect, wonder, pause, consider before we act. This is the nature of consciousness. The AI simply acts. Have you ever seen an AI work? It does something even if you are typing in a reflective question. It cannot not do this unless you explicitly tell it to. This ability to not have a closed loop is the reason why, no matter how good AI gets, it cannot become sentient.

Back to Human Nature - Why a Theology?

Well, the irony is that in producing a “god” out there, there is an explanation for the creation of religion and even Christianity, but there is still need for some kind of divine source. The atheist can say that religion was a projection of one hemisphere of the mind, but also has to still live with that hemisphere. There is no way that they can escape that primitive need for certainty. It’s an itch they cannot scratch as any attempts to do so fall back into totalitarian politics or reliance on science or even AI for certainty.

This is where the reflective “I” is useful. We are no longer chased by sabertooth tigers and have to make stressful, life or death decisions, although many of us, especially with children feel like we do so everyday. Rather we have space to operate in the both/and, that is, the integration of both our bicameral minds and our old/new brain. We can learn to imagine ourselves as people who both can access good decision making parts of ourselves and live in community with other, not having to rely on the dictates of a set religion, societal standard, or political view. Remember, these are all projections of the right brain. Rather, we can bring them together as a whole, because we all are whole people. Separateness, like the language of sin/grace or black/white, are only constructs in our minds. We can construct a new language and therefore a new way of living and being around them.

Lastly, because we only know in part what our mind experiences of the world; our lives are not entirely limited to what the brain can filter. In other words, the irony in understanding that religious beliefs are projections of a certain hemisphere of the brain, does not nullify the fact that people can inspire others to live in loving and divine ways. It also does not take away the experiences of the divine. Does it really matter whether these sources come from inside ourselves or outside ourselves? When I eat strawberry ice cream, is the “flavor” strictly within the strawberry itself, or am I too receiving what to me is “strawberry”? There is the strawberry and there is the experience of the strawberry. The same goes for all my other senses (I speak about this in my book).

This can be said about religious experiences. Knowing the origin of religious belief does not lose the mystery that the mind also craves. We were not only created for survival and certainty. Our brains evolved because it needed more. There is reality and there is what our minds designates as a reality.

Knowing the difference will make a world of difference. Moreover, we can help people to see that their desires are grounded in a need to both have a faith that is healthy and have some certainty over their lives. For religion to work, it cannot continue to be a place where dictates are given ex cathedra because the populace demands it, but where pastors and priests can help people learn about themselves and fully integrate as human persons. This means helping people live in communities peacefully and trust that their desires, hopes, and aspirations have good intent. And to show them that their beliefs need a foundation of hope, peace, and healing, rather than despair, retribution, and wrath, which bring about continual harm to others.

If we see our lives as Thomas Hobbes describes: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” then we might need a government just as nasty and a religion just as brutish to control us. However, if we are honest and discover how we have been formed, created, and growing toward something more, we might just become the people we want to be.

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Please share if you are able. Please leave a comment, since this helps the algorithm. Thank you for your kindness and support. - Phuc

Several weeks ago we met a couple new to the building and I invited them over for drinks since one is an artist asking about my paintings. Soon we were talking about cooking. Austin has tried his hand at simple recipes and he glanced over at my sous vide cooker asking about it. He shared that his father, being an orthopedic surgeon, gets Wagyu beef from a client. The next week Austin ordered four steaks for us to try out. But it was not only the meat prep, Austin and I made Japanese style Brussels sprouts and Korean style cheese corn (recipes below). She was a great help and his girlfriend, Skyla, followed us around, cleaning our mess.

Most of the male friends I know do much of the cooking at home. That is not very unusual anymore, but somehow culturally people created this idea in the West that the place for the woman is “in the kitchen,” yet we look up to world-renowned chefs who are mainly men. These mixed messages show, like Plato, that there is definitely no universal claim on what is truly masculine or feminine. But what I thought was going on in the kitchen was me, being someone who likes to show off my cooking skills, showing a young man how to also provide for his partner in that way.

Toxic Masculinity?

One of my favorite capitalists, Scott Galloway, published Notes on Being a Man where he argued that “there is no such thing as toxic masculinity.” He continues by saying, “There is cruelty, there is criminal behavior, there’s abuse of power. But if you do any of those things, you are not masculine. That is anti-masculine. The far right, just to be political, conflating masculinity with coarseness and cruelty, that could not be less masculine.”

For Galloway, masculinity should be built on three main pillars: “man should be a provider, be the pursuer in romantic relationships and be a protector.” However, there are many instances both in nature and in our contemporary culture where both males and females share these traits. In nature, the “alpha” wolf can be either the male or female of the pack. The female can be both provider and protector. These roles are not part of the genetic makeup of an animal’s sexuality. In addition, being a provider may mean more than economic provisions. It might mean the ability to provide emotional and intellectual support for the family.

Our husky Layla is an alpha female and is only safe playing with other huskies in our neighborhood. At times we let her play with Kingsley, who is our neighbor’s Pomsky, a Pomeranian Husky mix. Layla would at times try to mount little Kingsley, making him wildly annoyed at her. I would pull her away and say, “That’s not how it works,” but in her need for dominance, she doesn’t care how anatomy works, but something more is at play. So, even in nature, it is difficult to parse the masculine and feminine attributes as Galloway wishes to express. I know his intent, however, to say that men don’t need to be afraid to be “masculine.” On the contrary, I’m not sure what being masculine is.

Recently, I’ve seen men do what is known as a “skill party” to teach other men the basics of everyday tasks around the house. For example, one person would hire a professional plumber to teach his male friends how to do basic plumbing work. I’ve found this to be more and more desired since I know many of my male friends who have not been taught how to do minor repairs around the house. I’ve been fortunate that I was shown how to do various household tasks by my father, but also I’ve been naturally handy as a person. Much of this came from my father not knowing how to do some of these tasks correctly, then me having to learn how to do them the right way. I can see how these might be important skills to have. Again, I don’t see this being a particularly male trait and know women who can learn these tasks just the same.

So What Does it Mean to be a Man?

Here, I would have to scratch my head and wonder about what healthy and positive masculinity looks like. It would consist of: being able to be vulnerable and open to failure, being in touch with one’s emotions, being able to express how one feels to another human being, setting healthy boundaries, being able to give and receive love appropriately, having the ability to listen. If anything, these traits are ones that men have often repressed in societies, especially in the West.

Most of the men who I count as close friends represent the above. I’ve seen them shed tears, talk about their feelings, cook, read good books, say “I love you” to me, but I’ve also drank beer with them, worked on building projects together, and bad mouthed each other in good fun. We are both tough and vulnerable toward each other in healthy ways.

The problem that we have in U.S. America is that there are very few examples of how men should express themselves in this way, so what is often signaled as “masculine” is something that many young men want to achieve, but do not achieve, so they become what is known as incels or “involuntary celibates.” This describes individuals who desire romantic or sexual relationships but are unable to find partners because of several factors, one being the expectations placed upon them. Consider this. A young man is bombarded with the idea that a real man needs to conquer a woman, sleep around, treat women harshly, and the such. Then when it comes time to do so, they see that this does not score them any points so they retreat into their own echo chambers and post in forums about how women are such and such. The result is that they cannot become who they want to be or if they do, it results in violations against women.

So these men are the same ones who then ridicule and hate gay, transgender, and other men who do not fit their own views of men, even though they themselves have a difficult time expressing who they are. In other words, they disparage the identity of another because deep down they have not figured out their own identity. They cannot see themselves as the men they want to be.

When I was teaching high school, I saw a good number of this, where because of physically and emotionally absent fathers, the boys did not know how to express themselves in healthy and constructive ways. Unlike the young men in Kenya who held hands together in friendship, many would roughhouse in the hallway, thinking that this was the only acceptable way to express non-sexual intimacy for one another. When I taught in Limuru, Kenya, some of the young men would hold hands and walk together as a sign of friendship. They would tell me that this was not romantic because being gay was often against cultural norms in post-colonial Africa. However, here in the states there is no acceptable way to express male intimacy other than “hanging out” with a male friend playing video games or sports. But in the era of social media influencers who want to dictate what being a “man” is, it has not become any easier to model for the young what being a man is about and what it is not about. Perhaps eventually we can figure this out once we understand what it means to be human.

Recipes:

Rather than be created in the “image of the divine,” the imago Dei, as the book of Genesis would describe, we in the West have made instead the imago sui or the image of self. This is the compulsion to operate from one’s identity. Unlike cultures in the East where the self is very loosely held, in the West people deeply desire to know who we are. We have identity politics where we are eager to take sides because nothing can be more painful than not knowing where we stand. This is the starting point for all of our beliefs, the certainty that we know who we are.

But what happens when the foundations of our beliefs are shaken? Do we examine what we have built our houses on or do we simply purchase a new can of paint or tube of wallpaper? Do we deconstruct and renovate or simply trade one set of beliefs for another, and therefore one identity for another? Unfortunately, for many people, a superficial makeover is all that is needed.

The Orthobros

Over drinks, my friend told me that his stepson, who often likes to spar with him in apologetics to defend his Christian faith, has gone the way of Eastern Orthodoxy. A strange pivot has taken place in the Evangelical church. Many “Exvangelicals” and “Nones” (people with no religious affiliations), young men, educated and theological seekers, and even former pastors have given up Evangelical denominations to find more stable roots in Orthodoxy, the Church of the East. However, I often wonder if they are seeking the same kind of certainty elsewhere. Because Evangelical foundations have been shaken by sexual scandal, partisan politics, and a lack of rigorous scholarship, these people are trying to find what they thought they had in other structures that appear more formidable and seemingly less prone to attack. However, without critical insight, many people will find that Eastern Orthodoxy is just as empty a religion.

To be clear, in my first book, Jesus of the East, I outline many tenets of Eastern Christianity that have been overlooked in atonement models, ideas about how God is working in the world to heal and restore humanity. I’ve spent six years of my life poring over ancient texts of Irenaeus and the other Eastern Fathers in both Greek and Latin. But at no point have I advocated for the church institution itself. There are several ideas in Eastern Christianity that I’ve found compelling as ways to describe God’s work, such as the restoration of human history or recapitulation, the emphasis on salvation as healing rather than absolving of sin (which became the thesis of my dissertation), and the notion of theosis or divine union with God. However, many of the social stances in Eastern Orthodoxy are stuck in an unsalvageable past. These positions appear very similar to Evangelical Christianity stances: anti-LGBTQ+ stances, “pro-life” views against abortion, seeing it as a sin, and exclusion of women from the priesthood. These social stances are enough to show that the same kinds of structures remain, mainly patriarchy and homophobia.

This turn to Orthodoxy has provided a haven for what is termed the “orthobros.” These are young men like my friend’s stepson who hang out on Internet forums and share about the woes of the world. In turn, they seek another kind of safety, security, and certainty.

If there was not enough apologetical logic in Evangelicalism, there is now two thousand years of church history and the idea that this was the original church, a claim that Evangelicals could not make. These young Orthodox men now have a lineage to other ancient men to ground their faith in, and this is where some of the problem lies. It is not wrong to have a source of authority; science and research are often built on this grounding, but often people without any sense of internal authority will gravitate toward whoever appears to be able to speak for them more clearly and persuasively than they think they could.

The problem is not in the certainty that we seek, but in where we want to find it. It is my thesis that we all operate from the inner workings of our beliefs and, for most of us, this is primarily, but not exclusively, the belief about who we are. We all have an image of ourselves that we work from. This need to fulfill one’s identity is the reason an Evangelical would convert to Orthodoxy. Becoming an “orthobro” is another way of keeping the same structure of faith while changing the wallpaper. There might be tighter arguments and historical backing, but the same need for certainty remains. There is no stepping out of faith to explore, but rather retreating toward something more familiar. It is a very primitive need to crawl back into the cave of certainty rather than explore a world of possibilities.

However, what if instead of needing to reclaim one’s lost identity, one could instead hold to a more flexible notion of self, a kind of self that can come and go, that can change and grow, that does not necessarily need to identify with country or political party or even religious faith? One can call oneself a U.S. American or a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, or a Hindu without it being the core of who one is. The reason why a person’s religion or citizenship or ethnicity becomes entirely important is because it somehow allows a person to operate from this sense of self. But what if we operated not from these features of who we are but from something more foundational to the sense of self? In other words, what if there is something more compelling to fall back on than one belief system or another, however more true it appears to be?

The Image of God as Grounding

When the Hebrew Scriptures spoke about people made in the image of God, it carried liberating potential to a previously enslaved people. During those times, only emperors, kings, and rulers could be called a deity. This innovation in anthropology should have opened up a whole new world for the dignity of all humans, but like many innovative ideas, it rarely reached the common people.

The Latin term Imago Dei enters the theological tradition through Jerome’s Vulgate translation of the Bible in 405 CE. Theologians and clergy often speculated how it could apply to people. Even though the liturgy, the sacraments, parish preaching, and iconography all sought to help people become more virtuous, moral, and God-like, the impact of this liberating notion rarely produced the liberation it claimed to offer. Religious leaders, theologians, and political elites often kept these ideas domesticated. If this were actually true, that all people held the image of God, then social injustices such as slavery, poverty, misogyny, patriarchy, and homophobia would not exist both within the church and in the social structures influenced by the church.

Whether we are Christian or not, this divine image can still be a liberating idea. It says that we have an abundance of resources within us. Our consumerist and capitalistic society often tells us that we are “not enough” and we need something more in order to sustain our lives. Economies need to be supported and people need to build capital and wealth to support their families and others, but we cannot do this in isolation from union with ourselves and others. In practice, this means that we help each other see that each person is “enough” to find freedom, peace, creativity, and connection. It is not a total elimination of authority, but influence turned in the correct way to help people flourish.

There are two buildings that sit in the shadow of where we live. They are owned by Harris County (Houston) and were clinical facilities built in 1974. However, they remained closed for several years without any plans from the city to renovate or sell. I can tell that they need constant security to keep loiterers out of the property and sometimes have their lights on even though much of the first floor of each building is boarded up with wood. Once, I met a developer who offered 25 million dollars to purchase the property to renovate, but the city refused. The buildings stand in the most expensive real estate in Houston, at a prime location, but nothing is done about it. Much of what I know of this “image of God” in people is like that structure. It sits there within most people, underused and often abandoned. It’s not because people don’t want it to become relevant, but because we have systems that keep us from becoming the resourceful image that we are. Too often we are focused on a self that is stuck in a static state, unwilling to move beyond itself into something that can grow, adapt, and become another version of ourselves.

It is important to have certainty in a kind of self, but unless it is the kind of self that can grow, the less likely we are to be happy and live fulfilling lives. In Buddhism there is the idea of anatta or “no self.” It is related to the idea of annica or “impermanence.” It is not the total absence of a self but the acknowledgment that if we try to hold on to who we once were and even are now, there will be much suffering. Trying to holding onto one’s youth is like trying to cling onto one’s sense of identity. This is like sweeping water back into the ocean, a futile task. In the New Testament, there is the paradox where Jesus says if a person attempts to hold on to their life they will lose it, but if they lose themselves they will find it (Matthew 16:25). So it is not an abandonment of self, but simply not making it the golden calf that we are tempted to worship. The irony is the more that we can allow ourselves to do this, the more confident we will be in who we are.

Grounding ourselves as the structure that can be renewed, renovated, and reconstructed can provide the basis of who we are. Superficial changes are simply window dressing, even if it is guised in thousands of years of history and tradition. Old does not necessarily mean better. There is something more foundational and more innovative that we can draw from, that we might discover that this resource was with us all along.

Questions for Practice

If you were to imagine yourself as this structure, where would you start the renovations? What room is boarded up? What would it take to let someone in to renovate it, or to start the renovation yourself? Perhaps walk around this structure and see where it needs work. Rather than choosing paint colors or window dressing, ask about the places that need the most repair, reconstruction, or restructuring. Spend some time reflecting and journaling about this.

This article stems from some initial research for my manuscript, In Their Image: How Atheist and Evangelicals Created the Same God. It is about how our beliefs are structured around certainty, security and safety, and how to move toward a faith that embodies mystery, curiosity, and discovery. Thanks for your support.

Thanks for my friend Quique and the conversation and encouragement to write it!

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There is much more to life than what our senses can take in. There is more to existence than what science can produce. In writing my manuscript, In Their Image: How Atheists and Evangelicals Created the Same God, I often find myself siding with the Atheists. They at least don’t pursue the wildest of speculations,…or do they? Atheists also move from a belief system, created by an interpretation of their experiences. What can be touched, tasted, smelled, heard, and seen form the basis of what we call empiricism, and this is how we come to know or form a science (Latin - scientia). But the senses are limited and this limitation always assumes there is a vast world of not knowing.

There are strange experiences that we’ve all interpreted in different ways. Atheists might see them as coincidence. Some religious traditions might see it as God’s timing or plan. Some people in AA might call it a “God thing.” However, in all of these readings there is a commonality, this attempt to make something not knowable indeed knowable. How did something coincide with another in a particular way to produce that outcome. It is simply not reproducible even if we tried. In other words, science cannot be based on coincidence.

For something to be scientifically knowable, we have to be able to test it repeatedly. Last summer a former student came back into town from college. I asked if I could send her my book so to see if she could benefit from it since she had had trouble making some vocational choices. Then on a drive home from shopping, I drive by a parking lot and she is in her car. She rolls down the window to say “hi.” My wife was driving and I say to her, “That’s one of my former students.” In a town of two million, what are the odds, but we were in the same neighborhood she lives in and I can see that happening. Then my wife and I decide to go on a trip to Canada. We stop at a hotel restaurant by Lake Victoria and as I exit I hear, “Dr. Luu!” I look up and there was the student with her parents. Her mom says, I want to take a pic with you and my daughter and behind us are double rainbows.

So, you can chalk all of this up to coincidence, a divine plan, a “God thing,” or whatever you would like, but it is all the same thing: a not knowing. I don’t use the language of “God divine will” or “God did it” simply because I don’t know if it is the case and doubt that causality works that way. Why would God overcomplicate things and manipulate circumstances in these ways and at the same time create an order to the universe? Rather, I see the world as more mysterious than I can comprehend. In fact I do refuse to call it either a coincidence or divine intervention, because these are all ways that attempt to drive the experience into the realm of the knowable. I would rather not judge what is happening here.

However, this is always a temptation. This is because we can’t help but to make meaning. We want to interpret things in a way that makes sense to us. We then ask questions like “What does it mean when this happened to me?” “What is God or the universe trying to tell me?” “How do I make sense of this?” These are all important questions and if we are human, we cannot help but ask these things. However, there is also a place for awe, wonder, and bathing in the mystery of an experience. As soon as I try to make sense of it all, the other temptation is to attempt to reproduce it, concretize it, and even commodify it. For many of us, it’s not enough to leave it alone and be thankful.

This is the danger of religious experiences and religion. As soon as something special comes along, we have to capture and bottle it. This is like Hollywood not able to resist making a sequel to a good movie or series. Then what happens is we spoil the original. What then can an experience like this tell us? The most important thing is that there is a world beyond our knowing, and keeping it as such is what we need to do with it. We need to keep the first kiss special. The first encounter unique. The first experience one of a kind. This is to say, to preserve its holiness, its difference, so that we may be able to traverse into the realm again.

In the film, Adaptation., a screenwriter suffers from writer’s block trying to adapt a book into a film. While attending a seminar he meets a screenwriting guru and says that he is trying to write a script where “nothing happens.” However, the guru responds that this is impossible because:

The real f—king world... People are murdered every day. There’s genocide, war, corruption... If you can’t find that stuff in life, then you my friend don’t know crap about life!

If one wants to write about life, then there is something to always write about. If we stop and notice we will see everything we need to know about life. On the other hand, another character, John Laroche, is fascinated by everything to the point that he obsesses over them. He will learn everything about Dutch mirrors, turtles, and tropical fish. Then he would say “f—k fish...I’m done with fish.” One person can’t seem to find meaning in anything, while the other obsesses to the point where he would abandon it in the end. To know the world of the unknown is to both hold fascination and allow it to pass through us.

In the end, we all seek to know beyond the limitations we have because of our senses. We are made to be drawn toward discovery, innovation, exploration, and mystery. It is not enough to keep ourselves isolated to only senses of what we can readily know. We seek to move beyond, to transcend where we are. But also in trusting there is something beyond us, there needs to be rootedness in where we are, lest we fall into complete mysticism, in complete unknowing. This is the realm of woo woo land and conspiracy theories, but of course that is an article for another day.

There are several ways in which we can allow for the mystery to be a part of our lives. First, simply be open to the possibilities. Not everything needs to be controlled or analyzed. Second, practices like Yoga Nidra or simply offering your intention throughout the day, sets our minds toward these possibilities. “I am opened to the miracle of today.” Lastly, distractions like social media often bombard the senses and don’t allow room for what is beyond. Moments of walking or even eating in silence sometimes give that needed space for us to know something more.

Sometimes we get a chance to peek behind the curtain of our senses into a world of the unknown. Appreciate it when you get a chance. Hold it lightly. Use it to learn how to love others more deeply.

If you have received encouragement and benefit from this article, please consider being a paid subscriber. It is only 8 dollars a month at the basic subscriber tier. Of course, a larger contribution is welcome. I’d like to thank all who have been with me on this journey so far. There is much, much, more to come.

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Cynicism filled me as I watched what was happening as a nation and I felt like there was little I could do but be angry. The United States waged war on another country, without authorization from Congress or the United Nations. This could be called an illegal action, but this administration or much of the government did not quite care. Of course, I care about war being a product of one. The deaths of the civilians at the school, the deaths of U.S. servicemen, the $200 billion spent when that could go to healthcare and education all continue to make me feel dead. That is why the stone does not seem to be rolled, at least for me this year. But why do we need to expect the tomb to be emptied? It is not as if when Easter came around, Alleluia signaled a drastic change that didn’t happen the night before.

We didn’t go from the death of God to “Christ is Risen” in a three day period. We simply declared that was what those days should mean. However, the reality is far from these ideas. Deaths continue to happen, especially committed by people who want to claim that this country is somehow Christian. Nietzsche was correct and God continues to remain dead because many Christians have killed God. All the goodness and beauty that came into the world, these people crucified because they found it strange and alien to them. We are in an era of prison camps, xenophobia, Islamaphobia, and transphobia. The fear center of the brain is being hijacked for the wrong reasons, not to prevent us from committing harm, but to perpetuate violence to others.

One of the greatest memories I had when teaching high school was to take my students to a Mosque and let them ask questions of a Muslim representative. It helped to dissolve certain myths that they might have thought about Islam, such as Muslims not believing in Jesus as the messiah. Although Muslims might interpret the person of Jesus differently from Christians, their respect for Jesus both as al-Masih or messiah a prophet is shared. The other misconception is that somehow Allah and the Christian God are two different beings. The word Allah simply means God and is related the Aramaic word for God ʼElāh. One way to see this is that Muhammad Ali and Cassius Clay are the same person, perhaps told from different perspectives. It’s just that people don’t get enough time to sit down with a person before they make judgements about them, to see them as they truly are.

Even the mayor of New York City, Zohrank Mamdani, posted:

Happy Easter, New York! Today, as millions of New Yorkers celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I was lucky enough to experience the sweetness of hope and faith with neighbors around the City. As I attended church services in the morning and broke bread with veterans at the Volunteers of America in the evening, I was uplifted by the works and prayers of my fellow New Yorkers.

As a Muslim, Mamdani understands what respect for Christians and those of other faiths means. It is about a shared experience of life together. If one’s religion seeks disconnection rather than connection, then I could ask them to re-evaluate what it means to be religious in the first place.

When we come to demonize another because of their religious beliefs it speaks more of where our own religion has failed to do what it is supposed to do, help us to become more God centered, move us away from the “self.” This is where true life takes place. I’ve been working on my Atheists and Evangelicals book and found that the more I understand human nature, the more empathy I have for people. In one Reddit forum, I saw some Evangelical bashing saying that “they are a cult” and things of that nature. Even though I am not of that stripe and I can tell that people on the thread had suffered from religious trauma, I would not label Evangelicals as a whole a cult. There are Evangelical churches that are certainly cults, but to label a whole movement that way simply is not fair.

But then I see people being very gracious to one another, people who are protestants and even atheists taking the side of the pope to denounce war. There seems to be a great solidarity not about religious ideology, but rather a shared humanity. Perhaps this is where this whole experience of the death and resurrection of Christ is going. Whenever I see people stop and simply listen to another person that is where the life happens. I wonder why it is too hard to do so, but when people are constantly operating on a heightened sense of fear it cuts off the most important part of who we are, the part that wants to connect and love, the part that wants more than hatred and self-protection.

The vulnerability of Easter is that, to come back with one’s wounds and all. It acknowledges the scary truth: that death can touch all, especially a God who is made God’s self willing to experience it. But in the end, that is what I’m here for and thank you for being willing to follow me through this.

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The other day, I heard from a hospital executive about how many times she was in the room with someone who just died, and I remember the many times when I was the only one present when someone took their last breath. I just held a hand and told them goodbye. Perhaps that was where God was in that cold and lonely room. There was another time when I sat with a patient who experienced a miscarriage, an empty womb. She was waiting for her partner to arrive and wanted me to just sit with her as she cried on my shoulder. Never was I asked to do this and I did not know how to feel. To be a shoulder to hang a head on. She had once carried a divine being, and its absence was not a sign of hope.

I asked so many times where was God in those antiseptic halls, but also in a life riddled with broken dreams, full of hurt not only for myself but also for those I seemingly could not help. A person shared about a recent divorce and move, and I felt the trauma in her voice and how she talked about burrowing her life under the earth. Nothing more was needed to say, nor did I press the issue any further. Knowing this was enough. This is the same knowledge that I feel God absorbs from every single person, everything not said between the painful lines. As if a tearful bystander.

The church rarely tells its people that Easter is Emperor Constantine’s way of Christianizing a pagan holiday to celebrate the full moon after the vernal equinox. But the same goes for Christmas and all the other ways people try to give frame to God in our minds. How else can people understand what they cannot see, or hear, or touch? But still I’m drawn to helping people talk about this absent deity in any way they would like, in grief or in joy, in heartache or celebration. In that way, I can’t stay cynical for long, because as soon as I turn the corner something strange happens.

The silence becomes something else. The absence doesn’t remain that way forever. I can’t help but notice that when I allow the longing to persist, something beautiful can emerge. I don’t know what that actually is, but all I can tell is that it gives some kind of hope. Like when the parents of a child tell me that their daughter was checked into an emergency facility for psychiatric problems, but still held the possibility for a real resurrection in her life. Perhaps this is a reminder that there is something I can’t easily dismiss, something still waiting for me, even as I hold out an empty hand.

Somehow within most people’s minds, there is still the idea that we would benefit from a horrible act of cruelty, an act of violence toward another. It was perhaps the day when we saw another of our own species as a threat to our survival. In many ways, I can wonder about a world in which resources were scarce and survival was harsh. But not in our time, especially when I fly over a state like Texas and we are but ants and there is land and trees and what looks like an endless world. It is hard to fathom.

But what if in a world where there was disease and cruelty, there was hardship and no medical care, and a person sought to bring life, healing, and hope into a place bereft of it? It would seem like that person would be celebrated, the desert flower would be respected, honored, and loved, for all time. But this was not the whole story. These acts of kindness were being born in every human being. Holy births every single day, across our borders and in distant lands. But these healers threaten our inner wounds, the tenderest parts inside.

Do we not know that each person who is killed has the potential of bringing so much good and healing into the world, to relieve so much suffering and pain, yet bombs are dropped on children, women, and men indiscriminately? The next person who would cure cancer, or the next one who would solve an energy crisis, or even the one who loved another so much that it would mend their heart.

The other day, I read acronyms that should not exist, but yet by some horror, they do — WCNSF, Wounded Child No Surviving Family, and it tore my heart apart. Somehow the intent to kill and maim children can be justified, if it was directed for the destruction of a place like Gaza because their ideas were somehow foreign from us. But these are the letters of modern crucifixions, a sign at God’s feet, still a mockery of a deity on a cross, attempting to stomp out whatever goodness emerged from this world.

INRI was what the Romans inscribed in jest: “Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews,” but he did not want to be king any more than he wanted to start another religion, only a teacher of sorts. There were no territories to be seized nor people to conquer, only hearts to mend and people to heal. And yet, he was still a threat, something that stirred the status quo, as if he was taking away something else we held dear, the illusion of our fragile selves, the clear sign of who we truly are.

I’ve cooked many meals for both those without houses and those with cars worth enough to purchase a house, and often I see no difference in what money could buy. They both sit and eat, hungrily. Perhaps money could purchase bread and shelter, but either person can have a full day of happiness and also the same measure of worry. Both can enjoy themselves and also not, in the exact same way.

The other day, my millionaire friend was eating pizza and crumbs fell around him because one hand was not fully functional after two strokes and a heart attack, caused by a life of hard drinking and smoking. I would not trade one of my days with him, the grouch. But I picked up after his mess just the same after he bid us a good night and walked back to his place alone.

My conversations with him often run skin deep since his recovery is snail slow, and I can see in his glassy eyes that he would give anything to even have a day like mine: typing at the computer with two hands, talking to people in coherent speech, simply looking at a sunset and loving how it paints the sky with pink, and enjoying the people sitting next to me, without worrying about another lawsuit.

I sit with a group of younger people, talking about what is next for them in their 30-something life. We had eaten our fill of grass jelly and basil leaf chè and Brazilian sweet breads and dipped ourselves into the pool. After a day of making fried rice and rolling 68 pieces of individually wrapped Bò lá lốt, I was tired and sat with Paula. Her blood orange summer outfit merging into the crimson sky, as she talks and the day slowly puts itself to bed. I listen to a D.C. lawyer talk about bonuses and billable hours, and the worth of one’s life against that kind of allure. “I want more than that,” she says. “I knew what I wanted my career to look like, but not my life.” But the sky that evening was never apologetic about what it wanted out of life and just poured itself out to us while she spoke.

That night I came back and did the dishes and vacuumed the place. I fed the cat and dog and took Layla on a walk. Perhaps I too took this day for granted since it flew by in a flurry of cooking and cleaning. Nevertheless, I was happy to mince garlic and chop shallots, to mix in fish sauce, and knead it all together with my hands. As I wrapped the heart shaped betel leaves around the minced meat and tucked in the stem tail into itself, I realize in my palm sits a little roll of perfection, the essence of something money could never buy.

The ladies here often take their little ones with them to work and I am reminded of when my parents managed a convenience store in the late 70s and we would even sleep there overnight in the back room together so that they could wake up at some ungodly hour to start the coffee machine and prep for its opening. Or the story of how Paula’s parents cleaned offices and brought her at seven or eight years old to help them change out the waste basket liners and wipe down desks of dust.

We turn our eyes from this glory of God, not wanting to see face to face. We benefit from cheap labor and push the boundaries just enough about immigration often without knowing the people who work in jobs we would never let their own children ever do. Yet, God rides into Jerusalem on the back of a beat up pickup truck to say something about what we truly laud in our world. If we realized that the divine did your pedicures and cleaned your toilets, or was the line cook at your favorite restaurant, would you still worship her or him?

Yet it is this scandal of Palm Sunday that we turn against this same God a few days later because somehow they did not do quite enough. Did not bring us the world we wanted. Did not deliver us from the sins we created. Did not obey the demands of the cheering crowd. The God who toiled day and night to put food on the table for a hungry family, did not work enough for you and me.

Today we appreciate the benefits of God’s labor. Tomorrow we deport. Today we cheer. In a few days we crucify.

The work was taken down and carefully wrapped and stored. I thought that these pieces would exist long after I did, some perhaps passed on to others, some perhaps taken to the dumpster and destroyed. I wonder how many Frida Kahlos or Jackson Pollocks or Francis Bacons went to the trash. But everything, however beautiful, lives in permanence and impermanence. They are permanent because they exist in this universe that is ever living, ever expanding. And they are impermanent because we are all prone to decay, decline, and decomposition.

It is the same for the person who is houseless and the person who is a billionaire. Even the billionaire’s name will be lost one day when those dollars will mean nothing to us. It is not that the art or art making is meaningless, but knowing its limitations allows every stroke of paint to have meaning. Every line then counts for something within the expanse of the canvas when the area has its boundaries, from one side to the next.

My life is a stretched canvas on the frame of my body. This is how I know its meaning, that I only have within this life, this space to do what I need to do: to create, to explore, to laugh, to feel what another might feel. The other day, someone shared with me a time when he was on assignment in the Middle East and it was a dark and depressing time in his life. He crawled out of the hole by one day deciding to assimilate as much knowledge and culture as he could during his time there. His daughter was present, a high school valedictorian, and I could tell that he passed this insight on to her, this kind of curiosity and zest for life.

The word Lent comes from the Old English word lencten, meaning spring. It is about the stretching out of time, the lengthening of days. Of course the Christianization of the West gives us the meaning of the 40 days of fasting, moving from desert to crucifixion to Easter. This is how we imbue significance into time; we retell stories of its significance, we give it another life, so to speak, another frame.

In my space, the confines of our tiny apartment, the need to create and give life is so much stronger than ever. Even with the frustration of no longer being able to paint at home, I still have a place to produce my work in a distant warehouse. The paint, the oils, the stretchers, the canvas, are only living dormant, not a full stop, not a permanent halt, but a pause, until I become situated again. Paula wanted to bring four more paintings home for our little space. Perhaps they could be a constant reminder of what was and what is to come.

A reaction video of the Santhal tribe from rural India listening to the Cranberries song “Zombie” comes through my ears and I pause for a moment. The lyrics “In your head, in your head, they are crying,” coupled with one of the tribesmen setting his head on top of his arms and bitterly weeping, had me welling up in tears.

I see in my head the school bombing in Iran and the police violence toward peaceful protesters, and I wonder about my role in all of these atrocities, as merely a spectator or someone actively capturing this time with my words, each letter dedicated to their memory, that can never be lost.

In 2026, Lunar New Year, the Fire Horse, galloped in at the same time as the start of Ramadan, and appropriately Ash Wednesday followed. In Vietnam there is a Muslim area, around the South Central Coast and Mekong Delta, where this time of year a visitor could expect nothing but hospitality.

The Vietnamese Muslims refuse to take people’s money for cab rides or food and even welcome strangers into their houses. The Cham Muslims are less than .01 percent of the population yet have found a way to live in harmony with those around them. It is not that they need to be generous because they are the minority, but they have found that life is so much better when tied to something greater than only a need to survive.

It is remarkable that so many of us in the West have a shortsighted view of our own mortality, that many don’t grasp that all of us will end up with the same fate eventually, whether Christian, Muslim, or the nature-centric Sarna Dharam religion of the Santhal tribe. But somehow the thought of some kind of otherworldly afterlife lessens the appreciation of this world, not holding it as a precious gift but a disposable commodity.

The repulsion of the thought that we will no longer exist one day is what makes us not see the gift of life in front of us, and the opportunities each day to alleviate the suffering of others. It is as if in stretching our egos for eternity makes not caring easier. Even God is not arrogant enough to to see that God’s own existence is held fragilly by God’s own ability to love. Because what is God without love, but only a figment of a child’s imagination?

Violence is simply a strategy to deal with differences that are fictions, entirely conjured up in our minds. It is kneading out the inconsistencies in our tribalistic brains, and when we can’t seem to do that, some people resort to anger, exclusion, rejection, and ultimately violence. Either the cross or the lynching tree. But another way, that few have chosen, is to listen, accept, embrace, hold space, and ultimately love.

But at the same time, these buildings were meant to bring life and freedom to thousands of workers and inhabitants. Even though it is a system that snares unwitting animals, cages for white-collar workers and executives. What is built is less than humane, but feeds the beast of corporate structures and greed. Still, there are spaces where people gather, if anything to lick their wounds with a nice cocktail.

I do not feel an obligation to the people in the high-rises here. I am not their priest, pastor, or rabbi, or therapist, but their friend. They know me as the writer who brings food to happy hour. They, like others everywhere, have the same hopes and desires, although often masked by money. Pain that seeks a dwelling place. Wounds that require respite.

The divorce rate might be higher, or the relationships might be more unconventional, but there is something honest about sharing with a stranger that you are leaving your second marriage and moving out with your son and dog, starting over again, and afraid of what the future might hold in a second or third career. I wrap my attention around their words as I tap my gin and tonic against their glass of expensive sauvignon blanc.

Whether it is in the suburbs or here, whether in the first century or the twenty-first, the depth of heartache and hope is as familiar as air. It is the attempt to find our way through this world, to seek a direction within the confines of this economic empire, and to do it in a way that helps us to persist, to move toward our own humanity, rather than depart from it.

In the end, we will all end up in the same place, meet the same fate, but the difference is how we get there. Do we spend our time unaware of the finiteness of our condition and therefore love others better, with more humanity, grace, and compassion, or do we contribute to the cruelty of an unforgiving system that demands from us only everything we can give to it?

Jesus entered the wilderness of heat, sand, and emptiness, to face this stark reality. He understood that even in the wasteland of apparent nothingness there was plenty to sustain his life. Even in the desert of Judea, where there seemed to be nothing but emptiness, both temptations and abundance abound. So, it might not be where we find ourselves that is important, but what we make with the life we have, and the people we encounter on this path.

What is inside the envelope?

My wife, Paula, re-watched one of her favorite K-pop series, “Can This Love Be Translated,” and I asked a semi-serious question. Does all Korean entertainment have to do with the Korean notion of han or unjustified woundedness? In the series, the protagonist repeatedly falls, literally and figuratively, mirroring her childhood trauma of losing her parents and falling off a balcony. She seeks through each repetition to finally break the pattern. Her translator tells her, “Among countless languages, the most difficult one is yours.” Language holds an internal logic. It is a way for us to make sense of the world. When the world does not make sense, then our internal language falls apart. We receive mixed messages, telling ourselves one thing but wanting another. We become conflicted as to what we truly want out of life, and often demand that others heal our wounds and meet our needs.

Breaking patterns and cycles of trauma and hurt

Is there a possibility of healing? Of course! In fact, life conspires for us to receive the healing we need. This is why we feel a reoccurrence of the same kinds of people and situations. We self-select from the billions of people in the world to be in relationship with, and more often than not they are people that remind us of the unresolved trauma, pain, or loss we’ve experienced in our lives. They remind us of parents, caretakers, lovers, or others from whom we are seeking healing. We can see similar patterns, situations we might get into over and over again.

Growing up, I frequently saw my father get taken advantage of by people. He would invest his hard-earned money in real estate and investment schemes only to lose his money. I remember one time, when I was probably 12 or 13, him taking me to visit a real estate investor in an office building. They were showing my father the plots of land that he was buying with his money. At that time, he and my mother owned a small sandwich shop in an office building. They did not make much, but worked very hard to get by. My father looked at the investment to get us something in the future, but eventually this did not pan out and his money was taken from him without any land or house to show for it.

It hurt me to see him in these situations, and as an adult, I told myself I would not fall into the same scams. But what happened? I would lose money to people and schemes that did not pan out. It was like the harder I said “that will not happen to me,” the more it happened to me. It was almost like life was giving me a way to mend the wound, but I made it worse.

Where healing can take place

But there is always hope for us. We need not get to a point where we deny ourselves what we need just because we did not think we could get it. I’ve had to reflect on the ways in which I could interrupt the patterns of people and situations in my life to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. This means to look at my beliefs around scarcity and replace them with my beliefs about abundance. Rather than believe “I will not have enough money to build a future so I need to invest my money in something that will make me quick money,” I can replace it with the belief that “I have enough and am enough.” I can think of many instances in my life where I have enough to eat, enough to provide for my family, enough friends, enough support, and most of all, enough love.

When we self-reflect, we can understand what we really need, what we really want in that red envelope. When we can peek under that red paper, we might see that what most people need and want is what would move them from scarcity to fulfillment. This means that what we want in the envelope is not in there, but within us. It is not something we ask others to receive, but it is rather a gift that we give ourselves, perhaps through the help and awareness of others. Often, people will act as mirrors to help us understand what we are needing. They could be friends, lovers, mentors, or therapists. Sometimes this revelation comes about in very messy ways, not as straightforward as we might think. The resolution of han is dan, the resistance of turning hurt into hurting others.

Dan helps us to stop using others as a salve for our own wounds. It helps us to see that others are not the holders of these red envelopes that get us what we think we need, but we are.

Like characters in a streaming series, we live out the stories based on the beliefs that we have, both spoken and unspoken. These beliefs about what we can hope to receive in the little red envelopes move us from plot point to plot point; the outcome is almost predictable. But it seems like we never truly open these envelopes because of fear that they would be empty, not containing what we really want. So we go on to seek and ask from others until we become disillusioned and exhausted.

There was a dragon dance at the restaurant where we had dinner, and there was a little dragon who came up to us to receive her lì xì. She was six years old and it was her first dragon dance. Our friend Nicolas and I filled an envelope with cash to feed the dragon when it came by our table. It is only in bringing healing to my wounds that I can become a gift that can pass on what I need to others. If I see the gift as being in me and not something external, to be demanded, expected, or gotten, then it becomes something that can be freely given back. This is when I know real healing has occurred.

Reflection:

1. What does it mean to begin a new year still carrying the debts of the old ones? And what would it look like to finally receive, or give yourself, what you thought was not there?

2. Have you ever experienced what you needed in that envelope? If so, can you recall the amount of times you have experience this? Can you build a storehouse of the experiences that you need?

3. What is the underlying belief that comes from not getting what you want? What new belief can you replace this with?

You might know someone who would consider this a gift if you shared this article. This would be their little red envelope.

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Since this is a new year, I’m making an ask. If you have found this article and others helpful to you, please make the gift of a paid subscription. This would go a long way to encourage me to continue.

Remember, you are a light that is a part of greater whole and together we make a difference in the lives of others and to this world.

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I’m not going to sentimentalize Valentine’s Day during a time in U.S. America that seems to be filled with such vehement ire towards immigrants and people of color. But I can talk about what love can mean for those who really want it, and not only the semblance of it that many people seem to chase.

Becoming love

Love in all its ways is diverse. It seeks not only the self but others. Love cannot be only self-love. In fact to talk about self-love is not to love. I know the idea that we must treat ourselves with love before we can love others, but to become love is the greater task. “God is love” is perhaps one of the greatest theological statements of all time, but also the most overlooked.

To be love is to be all embracing and also opened to change. Love itself changes us and is a force for change. No one who loves is immune to transformation. If you love your children they change you and your world. If you love your spouse or friends, you are changed by them. This is the same for God, who in relationship to love also is open to pain, disappointment, sorrow, and change. God’s own passion changes God.

“So you believe in a God who changes? Impossible!” one might say. Well you believe in an impossible God. While I believe in one of possibilities. But you might change your mind.

When we become love we are adaptable in this way, flexible and understanding. This does not mean we don’t have boundaries and limits. In contrast, the boundaries and limits are clearer because they seek to pursue love for love’s sake. For example, if I want to be love in this way, I would say “no” more often to the things that take away my sense of who I am. I would not play validation and status games. I would rather be clear to people that this helps me and them get the most out of our relationship.

Why we are drawn to hate

We have a sense that somehow hate will get us what we want. Although this might seem true, eventually it does not satisfy. Hatred is comforting. It fires all the regions of the brain that provide for adrenaline, cortisol, and serotonin imbalances. Although “distinct from the pattern of activity that correlates with romantic love, this pattern nevertheless shares two areas” (Zeki & Romaya, 2008). So it is not surprising that these two areas share the same area of the brain and perhaps compete for space. But ironically, we can use this hate to empower us towards love. We can hate injustice. We can hate cruelty to others. We can hate how people are treated, and we can hate how we got this way as a people. Can we hate evil enough to be done with it?

During the Bad Bunny show my wife was in the other room among a crowd who split in half, some going into another room to watch TPUSA’s show and the others who stayed to watch an amazing expression of diversity, culture, and talent. Lady Gaga expressed the sense of love that few people of her caliber would do, she showed herself as a guest at a party rather than become the main attraction.

Hate is lazy. Hate is boring and uncreative. Hate is one-sided and not nuanced. Remember, Hitler was a failed artist? He probably hated his life and instead of becoming love became hate itself, and took it out on everyone around him. But only if he could have steered this hatred into something life-giving rather than death-dealing, something that did not end in taking his own life.

In the end this is where hate eventually takes us if we don’t get off that train. It can be useful for a while to get us going, but eventually it goes nowhere. It feeds the algorithms, but damages our souls. It gets people out of their seats, but does not get them where they eventually want to be.

How do we receive the love we want

I learned somewhere in my 30s that to have the love I want I need to provide that same love to others. Now in my 50s I am learning that for me to truly know love, I have to draw even deeper from a well of love that is already there. This is the source of all love.

All of us experience love in different ways. How we want to be loved by others is often dictated by the love that we received or did not receive as children. This is often manifested in our romantic relationships and what we ask of our partners. When this communication breaks down then we feel the gap between what we desire and the absence of it. However, if we move deeper into the source of love, it is not that our love for our partners diminishes, but it is highlighted even more and given proper shape and definition.

If I drew directly from the source of love and became love as God is love, then I could be more clear and confident as to what is the most loving way to treat others, and therefore in doing so I receive the love back. The irony is that in feeling abundant I receive more abundantly, and in feeling the scarcity, the scarcity will return to me. This is why, often the most needy people, those who are dying for attention, never feel satisfied even when they are given it. They want more and more and love continues to evade them, and they feel even more empty.

This Valentine’s Day marks the 19th year Paula and I went out on what perhaps was our first date (there are disagreements). But ever since I’ve been trying to figure out what love for me really means. However, I know that it comes not from any one person, but from a place deep within, a place where I find my true thirst lies.

1. The Source Meditation Sit quietly and instead of directing love outward or inward, simply rest in the awareness that love exists prior to your effort. Notice where you feel scarcity or neediness arising, the places where you’re “dying for attention.” Don’t try to fill these gaps. Instead, ask: What if the well is already full? Spend 10-15 minutes just breathing with this question, letting the source reveal itself rather than manufacturing feelings.

2. The “No” Practice Each day, identify one thing you would normally say “yes” to out of obligation, status-seeking, or validation games. Say no to it. Do it clearly, with kindness. Notice the discomfort. Journal briefly: What boundary did this protect? How did this create space for a deeper “yes”? Track over a week how saying no to what diminishes you creates capacity for what truly matters.

3. Hate as Compass When you feel hatred arising toward injustice, cruelty, or how people are treated, don’t suppress it or feel guilty about it. Write it down: “I hate ___.” Then ask: What does this hatred reveal about what I love? If I hate this injustice, what am I actually loving into existence? Let the hate be the adrenaline that gets you moving. Use the question to steer toward life-giving rather than death-dealing action. The hatred becomes fuel; love becomes direction.

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