The Borders Within Us
It’s hard to understand the coldness I see in so many of my fellow citizens. People speak of deportation as though it were housekeeping, as if families could simply be swept away without consequence. They call them lawbreakers. They use the word illegal like a period at the end of empathy. Yet many of these people have lived here for decades. They’ve worked, paid taxes, built lives. Their children are citizens. Their roots are deep. But to so many Americans, none of that matters. What matters is that, at some distant point in time, they crossed a border unlawfully.
The Fragility of Privilege
Rights are not a gift from government. They are a claim built into what it means to be human. You can suspend them by force, fail to honor them in law, or ignore them in practice. But you cannot erase their source without denying the person who bears them. That is the heart of the matter, and one of the oldest arguments in political thought.
The Weight of Power
They left before dawn, walking east with what they could carry. The road out of their village was lined with others doing the same. Old men pushed carts, women balanced bundles on their heads, and children gripped sleeves so they would not get lost. Smoke rose behind them. Somewhere back there, soldiers were moving from house to house. The sound was distant but steady, the end of something familiar and the beginning of something nameless. They did not call it the Nakba then, not yet. They just knew they could not go home.
The Republic We Forgot
Imagine a country where the government decides what your pastor can say. Where your neighbor’s opinion becomes law. Where certain books disappear because they make someone uncomfortable. You might call that tyranny. And you’d be right.
Breaking the Chains of Grind Culture: Choosing Balance Over Burnout
In most modern workplaces, the rules of the grind aren’t written. They don’t need to be.
No one explicitly tells you that staying late will earn you more respect. That skipping your lunch will be noticed in a favorable light. That declining overtime, even when it’s optional, might cost you more than you think.
The Lure of Complexity, the Freedom of Simplicity
We often find ourselves tangled in the threads of complexity, drawn to the idea that a fuller life must be a more complicated one. It’s a deeply human instinct, this subtle pull toward filling our days with more commitments, more possessions, more friction. It’s as if complexity itself were a measure of meaning.
The Hierarchy of Truth
We live in a time when nearly every claim is presented as truth. Politicians, preachers, journalists, and neighbors all compete for authority. But not all truths are equal, and not all systems for establishing them deserve the same trust. If we are going to make sense of the world, and make decisions that preserve both life and progress, we need to think in terms of a hierarchy of truth.
When Critical Thought Turns on You
Critical thought is almost always imagined as an outward act, a way of evaluating someone else’s claims, spotting the bias in their reasoning, exposing the flaws in their evidence. What’s almost never discussed is its inward form: using the same discipline to interrogate the architecture of our own beliefs.
The Rest Goes Out with the Tide
Loss can move in both directions. We lose people, and we also lose the version of ourselves that existed with them. In Sealskin, Jeff Dworsky’s photographs sit in that space. They aren’t distant observations of someone else’s life; they are the life. His children grow. The seasons change. Work is done and undone. And then something shifts, a presence is gone, though the photographs never name it.
Forget the Rules
And sometimes it’s okay to break the rules.
I know. That sentence shouldn’t exist. Not if you believe every red correction you ever got in school. But here we are. Sometimes a rule is a handrail. Useful on the stairs. Useless in an open field.
The Americans as Cultural Revolt
When I first opened The Americans, I didn’t know whether I was more eager for Robert Frank’s photographs or Jack Kerouac’s introduction. As a photographer, I wanted to dive straight into the images. As a writer, I wanted to hear Kerouac set the tone. It’s rare for one book to pull me both ways at once.
You Were Never Meant to Be the Customer
In a system built on consumption, identity is no longer grounded in what we create, but in what we buy. The individual is not viewed as a generative force, but as a vessel for demand; a predictable recipient of ads, trends, and targeted offers. Even labor, once a mark of contribution, has been recast as a cost to be minimized. In this economy, you are not a producer. You are the market.
What Are We Actually Protecting? Why Rights, Justice, and Representation Shouldn’t Be Reserved for Citizens
We often defend rules as if they are sacred, but forget to ask what they were made to protect. If rights only apply to citizens, are they really rights at all?
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
I once believed that stability meant staying put, that consistency required routine, and that adventure was something other people pursued. But eventually, a quieter realization took hold: these weren’t facts. They were stories I had repeated to myself until they began to feel like truth. I started to wonder what else I had mistaken for reality. What other inherited beliefs had quietly shaped the contours of my life?
Relearning to See
I’m standing in front of the lighthouse on Brier Island, Nova Scotia, squinting at my cell phone screen. It’s windy and bright, the air thick with salt and the faint sound of waves meeting rocks far below. I know exactly how I want this image to feel: romantic, adventurous, the kind of photo that makes people ache to stand here themselves. But when I look at the image I’ve captured, it’s flat, just a snapshot. It’s good enough for a phone, but not enough to satisfy what I’m chasing.
Reclaiming Attention in an Age of Distraction
I pick up my phone without thinking, thumb moving automatically, drawn by a force of habit rather than any real decision. Mid-scroll, awareness returns, sudden and sharp, and I catch myself in the act. A discomfort settles in my chest. My attention, that quiet current shaping every experience I have, is slipping through my fingers. How long have I allowed distraction to dictate the rhythm of my days?
The Myth of the Big Leap
“I want to go part-time,” I say.
My manager sits across the desk, a slightly quizzical look on her face. I’ve been in a full-time position at this hospital for nearly fourteen years. I love what I do, but I’m burning out. I need more time to pursue my life.
She leans back, hesitant.
“How many hours do you want?”
“Three days, eight hours each day,” I tell her. Then I pause. “Three in a row.”
Because I know how this works. I know there will be some effort to control it, to fragment the time.
The Architecture of My Creative Life
I lean down and scratch Margo behind the ears. She squints her eyes and begins to purr. A moment ago, I was still in bed. Now I’m making my way downstairs, moving through the small rituals that begin the day: grinding the beans, filling the kettle, opening the shades to let the morning in. The windows are a little hazy and could probably use cleaning, but I’ve grown to like the way the light comes through, softened and quiet.
What If We Didn’t Need to Escape
We’ve been sold a shallow version of the good life.
It looks like a beach chair. A plane ticket. A glossy brochure offering two weeks of escape from a routine that quietly wears us down. The structure remains untouched, but for a brief moment, we are allowed to step outside it, if we’ve earned it, if we’ve saved enough, if we promise to return.