In a small corner of the bustling city, Emma, a young aspiring writer, found herself in her favorite café, laptop open and mind buzzing with ideas for her next story. It was her English teacher, Mr. Jennings, who had set the latest creative writing challenge: craft a narrative inspired by an overheard conversation. Emma, always keen to impress, was determined to find something unique.
As she sipped her coffee, Emma’s ears caught the drift of a conversation from the next table. Two women, engrossed in a heated discussion, were oblivious to her prying ears. They spoke of a secret affair, a hidden stash of money, and plans to start anew far away from the grasps of an abusive partner. Emma, her writer’s instinct ignited, discreetly typed out their words, her imagination already weaving the raw dialogue into a gripping plot.
Days later, with her story polished and submitted, Emma was thrilled when Mr. Jennings not only praised her work but also selected it for publication in the school’s annual literary magazine. The story, “Whispers of Freedom,” became a sensation, lauded for its authenticity and emotional depth.
However, the thrill of success was short-lived. A few weeks after the publication, Emma was approached by a woman at the café, her expression a mixture of anger and betrayal. It was one of the women from the conversation that day. She had read Emma’s story and recognized her own words, twisted and turned into fiction but unmistakably hers.
“How could you?” the woman accused, her voice low and hurt. “You turned my pain into your project. Those were my real struggles, not characters for your story.”
Emma, taken aback and remorseful, realized the gravity of her mistake. In her pursuit of a compelling story, she had exploited someone’s private life, turning real-life anguish into entertainment. She tried to apologize, to explain her intentions, but words felt futile against the woman’s evident distress.
The confrontation haunted Emma. She wrote a letter of apology, explaining her process and the lesson she had learned about ethical storytelling. She offered to have the story removed from the digital archives of the magazine and promised to advocate for more privacy-conscious guidelines in future publications.
Though the woman’s response was terse, her acceptance of Emma’s apology brought a small measure of relief. However, the incident left a lasting impression on Emma. She became more cautious in her writing, ensuring her stories were respectful to those who might see themselves in her characters.
In the end, Emma’s story about an overheard conversation did more than fulfill a class assignment; it taught her the delicate balance between inspiration and invasion, a lesson she carried into every piece she wrote thereafter, forever mindful of the echoes her words could create in the real world.
In the suburban quiet of Maplewood, the neat hedges and well-kept lawns belied the growing tension between John Green and his neighbor, Rick Dale. John, an avid gardener, cherished the tranquility of his garden, while Rick, indifferent to neighborhood aesthetics, owned a large, unruly Rottweiler named Max. This discord simmered unnoticed until the day Max tore through a weak spot in the shared fence and viciously attacked John’s gentle Beagle, Toby.
The attack left Toby gravely injured, and though he survived, the trauma was evident in his every timid step and fearful whimper. John, seething with anger, confronted Rick, demanding not just a fence repair but justice for Toby’s suffering. Rick’s dismissive response, attributing the incident to mere animal instinct, fueled John’s wrath further. He warned Rick of consequences, but his threats were met with scoffs and indifference.
John’s days and nights morphed into a timeline of plotting revenge. His initial plans of calling authorities or seeking legal recourse gave way to darker strategies as he watched Rick negligently patch the fence, leaving gaps wide enough for Max to menace through. The sight of Toby flinching at the mere sound of Max’s bark pushed John past the brink of tolerance.
One late evening, under the cover of darkness, John executed his plan. He stealthily opened a section of the weak fence, placed a trail of meat leading from Rick’s yard to the busy street nearby, and waited. Like clockwork, Max took the bait, escaping into the night. The next morning brought news of chaos: Max, found miles away, had caused an accident on a busy road, resulting in injuries and Max being captured by animal control.
Rick was distraught and furious upon discovering Max’s fate and immediately suspected John’s hand in it. Confronting John yielded a cold admission and a chilling reminder of Toby’s undeserved pain. “You never cared to secure him, so I did what I had to do,” John declared with icy finality.
This bitter exchange severed what little civility had existed between them. Rick faced hefty fines and legal trouble over the accident caused by Max, while John was left with a silent neighborhood devoid of Max’s barks but filled with the hollow victory of his revenge. Neither man spoke to the other again, each day widening the chasm of animosity between their homes.
Toby, though recovering physically, remained a shadow of his former self, forever altered by the attack. John, while satisfied with his retaliation, found no real peace in his victory. The garden he once tended with love now stood as a stark reminder of the cost of vengeance. As the seasons changed, the fence remained firmly in place, a boundary stronger and more impenetrable than ever, not just between properties, but between hearts irrevocably turned cold.
In the quiet suburb of Maplewood, the fences were high but the tensions were higher, especially between two neighbors: John Green and Rick Dale. Both had lived side by side for years without much interaction, their mutual disinterest a bridge too wide to cross. John, a meticulous gardener, took pride in his immaculate lawn and blooming flower beds. Rick, on the other hand, was the proud owner of a large, boisterous Rottweiler named Max, whose barks echoed through the neighborhood like rumbling thunder.
The uneasy peace shattered one sunny afternoon when Max managed to break through a weak spot in the fence and charged into John’s yard. John’s beloved Beagle, Toby, was enjoying the sunshine, and the intrusion ended in chaos. Toby was severely injured in the attack. Although he survived, the incident left him with lasting injuries and a palpable fear of other dogs.
Furious and heartbroken, John confronted Rick, demanding that he restrain Max and repair the fence. Rick, somewhat remorseful yet defensive, promised to fix the fence but shrugged off the severity of Toby’s injuries, chalking it up to animal instincts. The conversation ended with harsh words and heightened animosities, leaving John to stew in his anger as he cared for his recovering pet.
Over the following weeks, John watched as Rick made a half-hearted attempt to repair the fence but did nothing to train or better secure Max. The sight of Max roaming near the flimsy boundary fueled John’s resentment. Sleepless nights plotting revenge became his new routine. He imagined sabotaging Rick’s yard, lodging complaints with the homeowners’ association, or even letting Max out to get him impounded. Each scenario played out in his mind with a vindictive satisfaction.
One evening, as John sat on his porch, his plotting was interrupted by the sight of Toby, tail wagging, trying to peek through the fence at Max. Despite his fear, Toby’s curiosity about his neighbor seemed undiminished. It was then that John realized that his desire for revenge was poisoning him more than it was affecting Rick or Max. The sight of Toby, still gentle and forgiving, made John ashamed of his dark thoughts.
With a deep breath, John decided on a different course of action. The next morning, he invited Rick over for coffee. Rick, surprised by the gesture, accepted cautiously. Over cups of strong brew, John expressed his fears for Toby’s safety and his frustration with the ongoing situation. He proposed they jointly pay for a professional to reinforce the fence and even suggested they could share the costs of a trainer for Max.
To John’s surprise, Rick agreed, embarrassed by his previous neglect and moved by John’s change in approach. The men spent the next few Saturdays working on the fence, their cooperation awkward at first but gradually becoming more amicable. Max, under the guidance of a trainer, became less aggressive, and Toby slowly regained his confidence.
Months later, John and Rick, now on much friendlier terms, watched as Toby and Max cautiously sniffed each other through the secure fence. It wasn’t a perfect friendship, but it was a peace hard-earned and much preferred over the bitterness of revenge. In repairing the fence, they had also mended fences of a different sort, learning that forgiveness could be more satisfying than retribution.
Long before there was Yo-Yo Ma, there was Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor Pablo Casals (December 29, 1876–October 22, 1973), regarded by many — including Yo-Yo Ma — as the greatest cellist of all time. The recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the U.N. Peace Medal for his unflinching dedication to justice and his lifelong stance against oppression and dictatorship, Casals was as much an extraordinary artist as he was an extraordinary human being — a generous and kind man of uncommon compassion and goodness of heart, a passionate spirit in love with life, and an unflinching idealist.
And yet, like many exceptional people, he cultivated his character through an early brush with suffering. In his late teenage years, already a celebrated prodigy, he underwent an anguishing spiritual crisis of the kind Tolstoy faced in his later years and came close to suicide. But with the loving support of his mother, he regained his center and went on to become a man of great talent, great accomplishment, and great vitality.
Pablo Casals
To mark his ninetieth birthday, Casals began a collaboration with photojournalist Albert E. Kahn that would eventually become the 1970 autobiography-of-sorts Joys and Sorrows (public library) — one of the most magnificent perspectives of the creative life ever committed to words.
Straight from the opening, Casals cracks open the essence of his extraordinary character and the source of his exuberant life-energy with a beautiful case for how purposeful work is the true fountain of youth:
On my last birthday I was ninety-three years old. That is not young, of course. In fact, it is older than ninety. But age is a relative matter. If you continue to work and to absorb the beauty in the world about you, you find that age does not necessarily mean getting old. At least, not in the ordinary sense. I feel many things more intensely than ever before, and for me life grows more fascinating.
Recounting being at once delighted and unsurprised by an article in the London Sunday Times about an orchestra in the Caucasus composed of musicians older than a hundred, he considers the spring of their vitality:
In spite of their age, those musicians have not lost their zest for life. How does one explain this? I do not think the answer lies simply in their physical constitutions or in something unique about the climate in which they live. It has to do with their attitude toward life; and I believe that their ability to work is due in no small measure to the fact that they do work. Work helps prevent one from getting old. I, for one, cannot dream of retiring. Not now or ever. Retire? The word is alien and the idea inconceivable to me. I don’t believe in retirement for anyone in my type of work, not while the spirit remains. My work is my life. I cannot think of one without the other. To “retire” means to me to begin to die. The man who works and is never bored is never old. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for age. Each day I am reborn. Each day I must begin again.
For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner.
With great elegance, he contrasts the dullness of mindless routine with the exhilaration of mindful ritual — something many great artists engineer into their days. In a sentiment Henry Miller would come to echo only two years later in his own memorable meditation on the secret of remaining forever young, Casals writes of his daily practice:
It is not a mechanical routine but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being. The music is never the same for me, never. Each day is something new, fantastic, unbelievable. That is Bach, like nature, a miracle!
I do not think a day passes in my life in which I fail to look with fresh amazement at the miracle of nature. It is there on every side. It can be simply a shadow on a mountainside, or a spider’s web gleaming with dew, or sunlight on the leaves of a tree. I have always especially loved the sea. Whenever possible, I have lived by the sea… It has long been a custom of mine to walk along the beach each morning before I start to work. True, my walks are shorter than they used to be, but that does not lessen the wonder of the sea. How mysterious and beautiful is the sea! how infinitely variable! It is never the same, never, not from one moment to the next, always in the process of change, always becoming something different and new.
In the same way, Casals argues, we renew ourselves through purposeful work. But he adds an admonition about the complacency of talent, echoing Jack Kerouac’s fantastic distinction between talent and genius. Casals offers aspiring artists of all stripes a word of advice on humility and hard work as the surest path to self-actualization:
I see no particular merit in the fact that I was an artist at the age of eleven. I was born with an ability, with music in me, that is all. No special credit was due me. The only credit we can claim is for the use we make of the talent we are given. That is why I urge young musicians: “Don’t be vain because you happen to have talent. You are not responsible for that; it was not of your doing. What you do with your talent is what matters. You must cherish this gift. Do not demean or waste what you have been given. Work — work constantly and nourish it.”
Of course the gift to be cherished most of all is that of life itself. One’s work should be a salute to life.
Casals lived and worked for another four years, dying eight weeks before his ninety-seventh birthday. Joys and Sorrows remains an invigorating read — a rare glimpse into the source of this creative and spiritual vitality of unparalleled proportions.
Born and raised in the heart of Georgia, Nathan had always been surrounded by the comforting embrace of Southern Baptist tradition. From a young age, he attended church every Sunday, his faith unwavering in the face of life’s uncertainties.
But as he grew older, Nathan found himself questioning the beliefs he had held dear for so long. He yearned for answers that seemed to elude him, grappling with doubts that gnawed at his soul.
It wasn’t long before Nathan’s journey led him away from the pews of his childhood church and into the realm of agnosticism. He no longer found solace in the certainty of faith; instead, he embraced the ambiguity of doubt, finding freedom in the exploration of life’s mysteries.
Armed with a pen and a passion for storytelling, Nathan embarked on a new chapter of his life as a sports columnist for a small-town newspaper in North Alabama. It was a far cry from the religious upbringing he had known, but Nathan found solace in the rhythm of the written word, channeling his thoughts and experiences onto the pages of his column.
Week after week, Nathan’s columns captivated readers with their raw honesty and introspective insight. He wrote not only about the triumphs and defeats of the local sports teams but also about the complexities of the human experience—the joy of victory, the agony of defeat, and everything in between.
But it was Nathan’s willingness to confront his own doubts and uncertainties that set his columns apart. In a region where faith was as much a part of life as sweet tea and fried chicken, Nathan dared to challenge the status quo, exploring the intersection of sports and spirituality with a keen eye and an open heart.
His columns sparked conversations in living rooms and coffee shops across town, igniting debates that often spilled over onto the pages of the newspaper’s letters to the editor section. Some praised Nathan for his courage and candor, while others condemned him as a heretic and a blasphemer.
But through it all, Nathan remained steadfast in his commitment to honesty and integrity, refusing to shy away from the difficult questions that lay at the heart of his own journey. He wrote not to convert or condemn, but to provoke thought and inspire reflection—to shine a light on the beauty and complexity of the human experience, both on and off the field.
And as the years passed and Nathan’s columns continued to resonate with readers far and wide, he realized that his journey had come full circle. From the shores of doubt to the hallowed halls of faith, he had traversed the landscape of belief and disbelief, finding truth not in the certainty of dogma but in the uncertainty of the human heart.
For Nathan, the path to enlightenment was not found in the pages of a holy book or the walls of a church, but in the simple act of living and learning, loving and growing. And as he sat down at his typewriter each week to craft his next column, he knew that he was exactly where he was meant to be—writing his own story, one word at a time.
A person is not a potted plant of predetermined personality but a garden abloom with the consequences of chance and choice that have made them who they are, resting upon an immense seed vault of dormant potentialities. At any given moment, any seed can sprout — whether by conscious cultivation or the tectonic tilling of some great upheaval or the composting of old habits and patterns of behavior that fertilize a new way of being. Nothing saves us from the tragedy of ossifying more surely than a devotion to regularly turning over the soil of personhood so that new expressions of the soul can come abloom.
In the final years of his long life, former U.S. Secretary of Heath, Education, and Welfare John Gardner (October 8, 1912–February 16, 2002) expanded upon his masterwork on self-renewal in the posthumously published Living, Leading, and the American Dream (public library), examining the deepest questions and commitments of how we become — and go on becoming — ourselves as our lives unfold, transient and tender with longing for meaning.
With an eye to the mystery of why some people and not others manage to live with vitality until the end, and to the fact that life metes out its cruelties and its mercies with an uneven hand, Gardner writes:
One must be compassionate in assessing the reasons. Perhaps life just presented them with tougher problems than they could solve. It happens. Perhaps they were pulled down by the hidden resentments and grievances that grow in adult life, sometimes so luxuriantly that, like tangled vines, they immobilize the victim. Perhaps something inflicted a major wound on their confidence or their self-esteem. You’ve known such people — feeling secretly defeated, maybe somewhat sour and cynical, or perhaps just vaguely dispirited. Or perhaps they grew so comfortable that adventures no longer beckoned.
Recognizing that the challenges we face are both personal and structural, that we are products of our conditions and conditioning but also entirely responsible for ourselves, he adds:
We build our own prisons and serve as our own jailkeepers… but clearly our parents and the society at large have a hand in building our prisons. They create roles for us — and self-images — that hold us captive for a long time. The individual intent on self-renewal will have to deal with ghosts of the past — the memory of earlier failures, the remnants of childhood dramas and rebellions, the accumulated grievances and resentments that have long outlived their cause. Sometimes people cling to the ghosts with something almost approaching pleasure — but the hampering effect on growth is inescapable.
Of the lessons we learn along the vector of living — things difficult to grasp early in life — he considers the hardest yet most liberating:
You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you, they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.
Life is an endless unfolding, and if we wish it to be, an endless process of self-discovery, an endless and unpredictable dialogue between our own potentialities and the life situations in which we find ourselves. The purpose is to grow and develop in the dimensions that distinguish humankind at its best.
In a sentiment that mirrors the driving principle of nature itself, responsible for the evolution and survival of every living thing on Earth, he considers the key to that growth:
The potentialities you develop to the full come as the result of an interplay between you and life’s challenges — and the challenges keep coming, and they keep changing. Emergencies sometimes lead people to perform remarkable and heroic tasks that they wouldn’t have guessed they were capable of. Life pulls things out of you. At least occasionally, expose yourself to unaccustomed challenges.
The supreme reward of putting yourself in novel situations that draw out dormant potentialities is the exhilaration of feeling new to yourself, which transforms life from something tending toward an end into something cascading forward in a succession of beginnings — for, as the poet and philosopher John O’Donohue observed in his magnificent spell against stagnation, “our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning.” This in turn transforms the notion of meaning — life’s ultimate aim — from a product to be acquired into a process to be honored.
Gardner recounts hearing from a man whose twenty-year-old daughter was killed in a car crash. In her wallet, the grief-stricken father had discovered a printed passage from a commencement address Gardner had delivered shortly before her death — a fragment evocative of Nietzsche’s insistence that “no one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life.” It read:
Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life.
Lawrence Sanders was an American novelist best known for his suspense and mystery novels, often involving intricate plots and deeply flawed characters. Born on March 15, 1920, in Brooklyn, New York, Sanders showed an early aptitude for writing. Despite his literary interests, he initially pursued a different path, attending Wabash College in Indiana, where he graduated with a degree in journalism.
After college, Sanders worked in a variety of fields including magazine editorial work before being drafted into the United States Marine Corps during World War II, where he served as part of the public relations department. This experience broadened his world view and provided a foundation for his character-driven stories.
Following his military service, Sanders returned to the workforce in magazine publishing. It wasn’t until the age of 50 that he published his first novel, “The Anderson Tapes” (1970), which won him the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best First Novel. This book introduced Sanders’ skill at integrating suspense with police procedural elements, featuring a plot that revolves around surveillance technology.
Sanders was prolific throughout the 1970s and 1980s, producing several popular series including the “Deadly Sins” series, which began with “The First Deadly Sin” in 1973, a book that later became a successful film starring Frank Sinatra. Another notable series was the “Commandment” series, starting with “The Tenth Commandment” in 1980, and the “Archy McNally” series, beginning with “McNally’s Secret” in 1992, which he wrote under the pseudonym Lawrence Sanders. The latter series features a flamboyant detective and is set in the lavish world of Palm Beach, Florida.
Sanders’ writing is characterized by its detailed plots, complex characters, and a narrative style that often includes a touch of dry humor. He had a particular talent for creating gripping, page-turning stories that appealed to a wide audience, blending elements of traditional mystery with psychological thriller.
Throughout his career, Sanders published over forty novels, several of which reached the New York Times bestseller list, making him one of the most popular and financially successful authors of his time. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages, solidifying his place as a significant figure in the genre of mystery and crime fiction.
Sanders passed away on February 7, 1998, in Pompano Beach, Florida, but his legacy lives on through his vast body of work, which continues to captivate readers around the world. His novels remain popular both in print and in digital formats, attracting new fans and satisfying the cravings of mystery lovers with their intricate plots and memorable characters.
Please listen to this fabulous episode from The Poetry of Reality podcast.
Richard Dawkins was the perfect antidote for my Southern Baptist fundamentalism. I wish he’d come along when I was much younger. Sad I wasted 60 years of my life believing the unbelievable, defending the indefensible.
The Pencil-Driven Life 