How to Live

I'm not kidding

Perhaps the most frequent tragedy is almost the simplest: entire lives obsessed with fending off death, and in the process never experiencing life at all. The paradox at the heart of our existence: to truly live there is no substitute for becoming more fully aware of death.

We’ve created entire cultures - economies, religions, nations - dedicated to pretending that accumulation is the goal of existence, and that somehow having more “things” (not just material goods, but the gut pleasures that derive from feeling superior) will not only satisfy, but keep us alive forever.

This is not just a lie, but it’s actually a form of insanity, denying as it does the sole thing that we all know will happen to us.

Life is not supposed to be about accumulation, or domination, retribution, isolation, purification, or victimization for that matter. Those are all stories that humans have evolved in vain hopes of bringing about peace and security. But we know they don’t work: what we accumulate rots if it is not shared, the price of believing we must dominate others is a corroded soul and the need to constantly protect from enemies, retribution-based revolution simply puts us in the place of the people we were previously oppressed by, isolation is the psychological equivalent of locking ourselves in a freezer and hoping we’ll be warm enough, the end of purification is that nobody will ever be good enough for us, and living the victimization narrative keeps us trapped in our wounds without ever letting them become scars.

The wisdom of the ages, the experience of creativity toward the common good, and the insights of everything from quantum physics to slam poetry really does point to the truth that getting out from under these stories of selfishness, scapegoating, and separation doesn’t require a change of circumstances, but a change of narrator.

Who is telling your story?

Who is telling you?

Do you believe that stories shape the limits (and ambition) of what’s possible?

Do you ask yourself what stories you tell?

Do you know if they are the most true, or most helpful versions available?

These are among the most significant questions we can ask.

They are part of the answer to the need for shelter without which we cannot survive. But true shelter is far more than four walls and a roof. Shelter, refuge, sanctuary, home: who I am, where I am, where I’m from, what I am, how I am. All stories. Mostly unconscious. Often lies.

Transforming the stories of selfishness, separation, and scapegoating requires a conscious commitment to a different lens. I call it the lens of liberation and reconciliation, imagining a story laboratory in which we can experiment with better, more truthful, more helpful stories. Another word for that story lab is, quite simply, life.

I am not merely a more or less economically productive individualised unit, but a co-creative participant in the tapestry of being.

I am not reducible to membership in a national or ethnic group, and I must reject any “ism” whose tenets cause others to suffer.

No matter who you are, the invitation is the same: there is nothing as important as the commitment to love. It must not be an afterthought, a leftover, something we can consider at the end of the day, at the weekend, when we’ve retired, when politics changes, when we’re grandparents, when we feel better, when we’re less ashamed, when we’ve got “enough” money in the bank, when we get a new job, when our bodies heal, when the time is right. So many people near the end of their lives express profound regret in this regard: they did not show more love to others; they did not let themselves be loved; they did not love the world; they did not love themselves.

There’s no blame here, and certainly no intended shaming. Part of the challenge of being alive in a world where stories of individualism and “us against them” assert themselves so loudly is that models for radical self-acceptance, courageous love, and deep inclusion are accordingly less audible. The paradox of self-giving love is that it doesn’t often issue a press release when it comes to town. I understand the impulse to humility, and there’s a way in which doing good deeds in public can be more ego than encouragement. But I think one aspect of the current crisis in how power is being exercised is permission to risk appearing arrogant or unbecoming.

This is not a time for timidity about the things that the most enlightened and bravest people teach us. This is a time to wholly commit to being truly permeated by wisdom, allowing ourselves to be made whole through opening to an experience of love that might be worthy of the name. That can happen this very second, and it will take a lifetime. But as it happens, it will expand my circle of self beyond the narrow constructions and temporary gratifications of separatism, in exchange for the spectacular-ordinary/ordinary-spectacular experience of the interwovenness of all things, from the coffee cup on the table to the recesses of interstellar space, from the pain of the world to the pain in my soul, from the magic of moonlit kisses to the mundane-miraculous act of helping neighbors build a barn. Or a peace process.

This not a time for timidity about such things.

An old acquaintance used to say that “sectarianism is like piss down the inside leg. Initially it gives a nice warm glow, but after a while you don’t want to sit in it.”

That’s a harsh analogy, to be sure, but an appropriate one.

We rarely use equally strong analogies for love, with similar words like “kindness”, “mercy”, and “compassion” often relegated to the realm of the superficial and weak. One of the solutions is to beef up not only how we embody their meaning, but in how we speak about them. I think we should risk building poetry rollercoasters, co-authoring authentic and audacious metaphors for love that live up to the brazen precision and sharpness, courage and creativity of those who have most fully lived.

The kind of love that is willing to bathe the broken body of a stranger.

The kind of love more interested in sharing than stockpiling.

The kind of love that doesn’t hide from suffering, but helps carry the suffering of others.

The kind of love that offers itself not only to those others, but to itself.

The kind of love that recognizes that my people are all people, everywhere.

One of the most captivating principles comes from another friend, who says Because oppositional energy always recreates itself, the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.

Note that he doesn’t say we should never oppose anything - just that we should be aware that even with the most necessary or even most honorable oppositions there will always be the risk of fueling the thing we are facing. One extraordinary synonym for the alternative is the truest protest is presence. Before you quote me on that, I should say it comes from the wisdom of the crowd, not me. But that in itself is another practice of the better - we’re all in this together, and where a phrase originates is often less relevant than whether or not it is incarnated. The truest protest is presence. But how to presence the presence?

I’m glad you asked. It’s the simplest and most complicated thing, it’s ancient and brand new, it’s common and cosmic, it’s everywhere you go and cannot be hidden from, although most of us are ignoring it, choosing stones instead of bread. Sometimes we’re eating the stones, sometimes we’re throwing them, sometimes we’re tying ourselves down with them. But that can stop, right now. Here’s how. Bear in mind that it’s completely straightforward and kaleidoscopically complex at the same time, it will change your life overnight and never be complete; and that I’m not an expert but an amateur which is better, because true amateurs are true lovers. Ok - here we go, a breathtaking and totally ordinary, entirely unoriginal but deliciously creative mantra for how to live:

Whether you believe you’re made in the image of God (a word that cannot contain its meaning) or come from stardust, or both, live in reverence toward the Source of all being, and let that reverence overflow into fierce and tender care for every one you meet, starting with yourself.

Let yourself be spellbound, in untamed awe before the enormity of existence, and let that awe transcend your tendency to treat life as a game, a competition, an exhaustion. Let yourself be reawakened daily by two Suns: the one in the heavens and the one at the consecrated core beneath everything. Know that beneath all anger is fear and beneath all fear is love, and that learning how to tell the story more truthfully will lead you to see, to give, and to receive such love as you have only previously dreamed, or mourned that you might never experience.

Don’t treat each day as if it were your last, but as if you were seeing things for the first time.

And beloved Porch people, please hear me: while it has always been the case that the foundation of life is to love, right now one of the things we need the most is for more of us to say so.

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The Storyteller & The Firekeeper: Reimagining Manhood - October 23rd-26th

Spaces are filling up at the men’s retreat I’m hosting in October where we’ll gather in the spirit of reimagining, renovating, and re-enchanting manhood. Details are at https://www.eventcreate.com/e/storyfire

The life-giving properties of death awareness will be part of what we explore - and if the truest protest is presence, how we might discover that presence already at work within us. If it calls to you, join us - click the button below for more information. (And please share with men in your life who know they want something like this.)

And we’ll be announcing details for our annual Porch Gathering of Transformative Storytelling soon - but you can save the dates now: April 16th - 19th, 2026.

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Finally, for now

Like many of us, I’ve been thinking about Andrea Gibson, beloved, who died earlier this week at 49 years old. Their poem Love Letter From The Afterlife, printed and read here, obviously takes on more meaning now, and is speaking to me in this the week of the first anniversary of my own mother-in-law’s passing.

Three particular moments for meditation on what has been called the life-giving properties of being aware of death:

Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive?…

Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less.

Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?”…