First of all, thank you for reading and sending me so many nice notes about yesterday’s New York Times essay. It was so nice hearing from so many of you. On the Times site, the article attracted more than 1,300 comments, which is a lot even for them. What I take away from that is that more and more people are ready to have conservations about what ails us that welcome complexity, that look for what we have in common despite our apparent divides. The A.I. situation only makes it more vital.
Today I want to pivot from sharing my thoughts on the question of abandonment as our shared experience of modern America — to hearing all of your thoughts.
How do you experience this sense of abandonment? What do you think are the remedies? Do you struggle to find common cause with others who may also feel deserted, but for different reasons? What might make those rhymes easier to hear?
And a personal request. What has occasioned this conversation is the three years I’ve spent working on my new book, MAN IN THE MIRROR. I am beyond eager to share it with you. This work changed me and grew me in so many ways, and I hope reading it might do something similar for you. When we go deeply into the stories of other people’s humanity, we come away seeing everything a little differently.
If this conversation we’ve been having has meant something to you, I’d love for you to read the book. And if you know you want to, I’d be grateful if you ordered your copy now. Preorders make a real difference in helping a book find its way to more readers — and, most of all, it would mean a lot to know that many of you will be reading it in tandem when it comes out.
You can order a copy here. And eternally: thank you for reading, for thinking with me, and for being part of this community.
My wife and I are in Ireland today after dropping our son off at an Irish university here. He chose to study for his undergraduate degree in Ireland because he has special learning needs, and the Irish university offered the best supports. Also, we will save on tuition and give him an international educational experience that was out of our reach at a college in the states. We are very happy for our son and his chosen path. Nevertheless, I feel utterly abandoned by the institutions of higher education in America. The tuition arms race is out of control, and the opportunities for graduates are rapidly dwindling. What are we doing to our children? We need to invest in America and Americans to make it possible for our kids to stay here and have healthy prosperous lives.
I read your Times essay; it was eloquent and evocative. Many thoughts and emotions arose as I read it and the premise of the article demands deeper consideration. However, what comes to mind as I reflect, is that a sense of abandonment is a core aspect of being human. It has been with us from the beginning and haunts our lives. As a species we have tried many ways to assuage the reality of isolation and many have been effective. But they are always illusory or temporary. In the world we live in today, structures of safety and assurance have frayed and too often we reach for the closest explanation or solution. I feel abandoned in multiple ways through loss, lack of true community, feelings of being irrelevant, and more. The only antidote I have found is to have faith in my own integrity and to continuously build resourcefulness, this along with finding others to engage and connect with in meaningful ways. We have created a complicated and in many ways heartless society; I don’t know how or if it is even possible to undo the choices we have made as humans. I do believe that self reflection and self evaluation can make a difference.