PART 2: Why Do Great Things Get Accomplished—And What Drives The People Who Accomplish Them?
G’day everyone,
There are days when I love knowing that I am the author of my own life—when I can conjure any meaning I choose. In those moments, I feel like a miniature god, free to create, to explore, to play not only in the physical world but in the boundless landscapes of my imagination. But then there are the other days—the ones when imagination turns against me, when it becomes overwhelmed by fear. And knowing that the fear is irrational doesn’t help in the slightest. It sinks, it spreads, and if left unchecked, it drags me toward despair.
The only thing that saves me in those moments is when I turn my gaze toward what I can only call the Lighthouse of Love. I see my wife, Emily, and our three children. The closer I drift toward the darkness—when those treacherous thoughts begin to pull me under—they become the light that cuts through the storm.
The longing in my chest to be near them, to hold them close, becomes my life raft. I cling to it with everything I have, through every crashing wave, until I am either carried to shore or drowned—still refusing to let go.
It is the one thing I can believe in—not because I’ve been told to, but because I feel it. It doesn’t come from storybooks or sermons. It rises from somewhere deeper, older—too powerful to be pure fiction. Poets didn’t invent love; they only described what they felt. And maybe that’s true of all emotions.
Maybe words didn’t create our feelings—it merely gave them texture and form. Perhaps it isn’t all fiction after all.
How could we have created something we never first felt? Words would mean nothing if they weren’t born from emotion. We do not choose our feelings. We do not turn them on or off. They come uninvited, ancient, and undeniable—guiding us, shaping us, reminding us that we are human. Look around at the world we’ve built—the art, the music, the dance, the beauty of it all. Ignore, for a moment, the horrors and the tragedies; they’re only one side of the coin. Focus instead on what brings us together—on the love between partners, parents, and children; on the light that flickers in the darkest night.
What is it inside us that provokes such overwhelming feelings they make us weak at the knees or jump for joy? I don’t know what it is—but I’m glad it’s there. I still believe we are the authors of our own stories and that happiness depends on the ruler we use to measure our lives—a ruler whose units of measure we determine if we can ignore the outside world.
But beneath that—the hand that holds the pen, the mind that shapes the thought—there is something deeper still. Something unexplainable. Something inconceivable. It’s the force that forms droplets out of eyes, that makes us run in fear, laugh uncontrollably, smile wide enough to bare our teeth, and feel our hearts thundering with love.
People have given it countless names—prophets, philosophers, and, best of all, poets—have all attempted to describe the same thing. Across over four thousand religions, we are still trying to name the same feeling, the same truth. And perhaps that’s my only salvation. I will likely always be agnostic, and that can be tormenting at times.
But when the storms rise inside me, I find calm in one simple knowing: that I feel what you feel, and you feel what I feel. That is real. That is obvious. And that will never leave me.
Some call it God and maybe we are talking about the same thing—I understand it as Love.
