#184: Pilgrim prep.

#184: Pilgrim prep.

Dear reader, by the time you read this, I’ll have gone full Viking, walking four or six or sometimes eight hours a day with all my clothes (and books!) on my back through Norway. This will be my life for the next 21 days as I cover the distance from Lillehammer to Trondheim, on the second round of the pilgrimage [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/94-the-secret-ingredient-of-self] I began almost exactly two years ago. I’m not quite on trail yet, though I wish I was. There’s a special mix of boredom, restlessness, and anxiety that seems to descend upon me pre-trip. I think I checked my passport expiration date a dozen times before I boarded the transatlantic flight, as if maybe the first 11 times I just hadn’t read the numbers quite right. In an attempt to settle the pre-walk jitters, I looked back at the first pilgrim letter I published back in June of 2024 [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/pilgrim-letter-1-the-comfort-zone]. Turns out I was in an almost identical, irrational stress spiral then, which is comforting in its own way. I’m still anxious, but I’m no longer beating myself up about it. That letter ended with words from my friend Paul, who happened to be on a pilgrimage of his own at the time: “Let’s go and get to know ourselves a little bit better.” (Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/].) The first time I stepped onto the pilgrim path, my intention was to dredge up and release the last bits of grief over my husband’s death [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/2-why-i-wouldnt-trade-away-the-grief] eight years before. In the days, weeks, and months after Mike’s heart attack, I had been in full-blown “save the kids” mode. Grief still regularly laid me out on the bathroom floor sobbing, or the couch where I watched Star Wars movies three at a time, and I never hid my tears or pain from Connor and Kendall. But I always assumed that I had shoved some parts of my bottomless grief away out of self- and child-preservation. During the 28 days of that first pilgrimage, I cried about Mike… twice, which is about how much I cry about him in a regular month. I ended up mostly reconnecting with an even earlier version of Sue: the quiet girl who loved to be absorbed in books, or to perch on a stool at the edge of the church potlucks and just observe. The learner, the observer, the clue collector. The solitary walking took me to a part of myself I had totally forgotten existed. I could not have planned it. I could only be open to it. So for this pilgrimage, I’ve decided not to seek anything. I’ve learned over the last two years — hell, over the last ten — that having expectations often only serves to make you upset or disoriented when reality unfolds. Instead, I’ve discovered I want that reality: I want the details, the subtleties, the opportunities I can only catch when I’m fully present to what is, rather than trying to force what I want. So this go-round, I’m not setting intentions. I’m setting boundaries around the trip, so whatever is supposed to happen can happen inside it. I’ve cleared all my decks: paid my taxes, paid my bills, paid my visits to family and friends before my farewells. I’ve tied up loose ends at the treehouse, and got Kendall off and running on her internship. I’ve cleaned the house and crossed everything off the to-do list. Everyone knows: I won’t be opening my email or dealing with logistics on the trip. Don’t ask me for the Netflix log-in code. If s**t goes down, call Uncle Richie. These are the only things weighing on my mind now: sharing my location with my trip planner and freak out helper Ruben every day, then sending a screenshot to Richie, and finally posting a photo or two on Instagram as an ongoing photo diary (follow along! [https://www.instagram.com/sue.deagle]). Doing my laundry every three days or so, aka scrubbing my socks in the sink. Writing a letter to all of you here once a week. And though I’m not making plans, I know there will be days I will question my decision, and days I will question my sanity. Days I’m one with nature, and days I’m cursing rain or sneaky cows or incessant hills. And, well… that’s it. The rest will unfold. Two years ago I didn’t know what to expect. So I stuffed my rucksack full of expectations. They did the work of the blister cream and bandaids I brought but never needed: to give me a feeling of being prepared, being in control. But this time around, the uncertainty doesn’t scare me. It gives me goosebumps. The good kind. As long as I can make it to Trondheim without my damn passport magically expiring, I’ll be fine. To preparing just enough to be surprised, Sue Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/] Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com [http://theluminist.substack.com] Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle [https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle]  Get full access to The Luminist at theluminist.substack.com/subscribe [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

#183: Costco.

I was standing on one leg like an oversized flamingo, my bare foot on a wobbly disc of plywood while I tossed a rubber ball against the gym’s cinderblock wall. It was the last indignity of a balance training session Kavon had cooked up to get me ready for the pilgrim path. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. “So what is it, exactly?” I asked curtly, doubly frustrated by the man who had given me this task, and by the topic we happened to be discussing. “Please explain this Costco thing.” Kavon shook his head, disappointed in my evident disdain. As a small business owner and dad of two, he ran through a litany of things he loves about Costco: predictable pricing, guaranteed bargains, almost everything he needs for home and work. As a true fanboy, he’d even listened to the Acquired [https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/costco]podcast episode [https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/costco] that outlined Costco’s strategy and business approach, rattling off their profit margin philosophy and fair wage ethos. (Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/].) Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. As he did his Costco rendition of ‘How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Count The Ways’, I didn’t dare nod my head for fear of falling off my disc. I couldn’t argue with his logic. Yet… it didn’t feel like enough. Enough to generate that baffling Costco ride-or-die passion I’ve seen in so many men, including one guy [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/2-why-i-wouldnt-trade-away-the-grief] who is no longer here. Then, Kavon surprised me with this: “I think what I also love is the discovery element: you never know what you might find. It doesn’t feel like shopping, it feels more like a warehouse-sized treasure hunt. Will it be a kayak? A giant wheel of cheese? A sample that a hair-netted lady gives you that changes your dinner plans? Four tires for your car? It’s the land of opportunity.” Thwack. Thwack. Thwump. I dropped the ball and lurched sideways off the plywood. Of course. Now it all makes sense. When Mike was alive and the kids were young, I let him drag me to the warehouse-to-end-all-warehouses once every couple of months. Not because we needed any more toilet paper. Because Costco was Mike’s happy place. Emphatically, enthusiastically, inexplicably his happy place. He’d load our cart with collared work shirts, underwear for the kids, sheets. He’d buy our TVs and our computers. Twenty-four packs of paper towels, ten packs of dental floss, three-packs of chicken wings, a case of wine. One time, he’d loaded so many beach towels into our overflowing cart that, when we turned our backs for a second, a lady began shopping from it, deciding which color combos she wanted for herself. For the entirety of our marriage, I did not get it. Costco’s so-muchness was too much for me: floor-to-ceiling jam-packed shelves, freezer after freezer of frosted-over foods, the random middle section of giant cardboard boxes spilling over with tube socks and camisoles. My brain found the lack of rhyme or reason overwhelming. I sulked through every single trip. I never once thought to ask him why he loved it. That version of me — the early aughts to mid-2010’s Sue — was harried. Underwater and breathing through a straw. I didn’t have much bandwidth for curiosity. I was just trying to do a killer job at work, keep the kids alive and thriving, and run a household on the weekdays while Mike was away. I write that sentence now and think, well, no wonder spending hours in a place that overwhelmed my senses sent me into a tailspin. In short, I wasn’t in the right headspace back then to wonder what about Costco delighted him so much, let alone ask. But my life now is different, and so am I. I’ve pivoted from corporate to creative work [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/70-taking-the-cycles-of-life-less]. I’ve returned to my beloved childhood pastime of reading endless books, seeing the world from a new angle in each one. I have new relationships, Kavons who generate unexpected conversations and insights. And my days are spacious, allowing me to enjoy noticing [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/157-three-years-later-i-finally-understand] and sometimes even solving mysteries. Like the mystery of Mike and Costco. Costco was never shopping for him, it was an expedition. And Mike — strategic, deal-loving, optimization-brained Mike, whose family nickname was ‘Action Adventure Man’ — was built for expeditions. From my new vantage point, I can see, in those final years, how Mike was breathing through a straw, too. That Mike’s life was full of constraints, just like mine. I can see why a super-sized warehouse gave him joy, how finding unexpected things to bring to his family lit him up, like a caveman dragging home the mastodon he’s just downed. Costco ticked all his boxes, allowing him to do the thing he loved most: provide for us. These realizations give me a thrill. My relationship to Mike still gets to evolve — my understanding and love of him still gets to deepen — simply because I’m still changing. He will never be frozen in amber as long I never give up growing myself. Hi Mike. It’s nice to see you, honey. Watch out for those other shoppers, they’re eyeing your cart… To new perspectives, Sue Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/] Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com [http://theluminist.substack.com] Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle [https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle]  Get full access to The Luminist at theluminist.substack.com/subscribe [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

#182: Notes from a Book Launch.

I stood with my back to the lectern as the modest crowd disbursed, deep in conversation with my friend Kevin. “It’s way harder to do these book [https://suedeagle.com/book] talks than it ever was to speak to the masses in our corporate days,” I said to him, perplexed. Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com [http://theluminist.substack.com] Kevin has seen me do both. He was the Chief Legal Officer to my Chief Operating Officer at our $4B defense contractor. I’ve closed deals with this guy at 2am, bounced around the dust of Kuwait with him in the back of a passenger van, and, more recently, clinked glasses with him over my signed book deal. And one month ago, he was responsible for ginning up half my audience at Octavia Books in New Orleans, the last stop on my tour. No mean feat when the talk is about loss. Head cocked, he mused, “You’re not in a ballroom with a sea of faces. You’re looking everyone in the eye. And you’re not talking about revenue growth or margin expansion. You’re talking about loss.” He paused. “I also noticed everyone wants to tell you their story afterward. Is that part hard?” “Actually, no. That’s the best part. What a surprise.” Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/]. Like a coach watching last Sunday’s game tape, I’ve been reviewing the playback of the last three months: zig-zagging around Europe and the US, talking about coping dirty, ordinary magic, Bruce Springsteen, and a different kind of great. I’ve been cataloging the pleasant surprises and the sneak attacks. The plays I want to run again. The ones I want to retire. Here’s what the tape revealed: The nerves were a good sign. Speaking is one of my favorite things, and I’ve done it for decades with ease. The endless practice that corporate gave me was something I thought would port right over to these intimate settings. Nope. Because Kevin was right — this is very different than discussing revenue growth or margin expansion. It’s personal. And maybe nerves are the cost of doing something that hits so close to home. I’ll pay that toll every time. And as soon as each presentation began, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. All that gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands faded, and I was telling my story to a room of people who care. The brilliance was already in the room. I kept thinking it was exclusively my job to show up and deliver. The tape tells a different story. In Colorado, Wayne thought out loud about the moments he’d consoled best and handed the whole room new tools. In Portland, Ellie turned to a struggling stranger and said, “have you tried wailing?” — one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard in my life, and it didn’t come from me. In New Orleans, Carolyn shared books and wisdom like she’d been waiting years for exactly this room. If all I was doing was hosting a Loss Cafe where we cross-pollinate our tips and resources, that would be more than enough. My friends were in the stands. I’ve had a decade-long struggle trying to put the nail in the coffin of my Lone Ranger tendencies. And you know, I think I might have done it — during the book tour, I saw my friend’s faces at every turn. Luanne and her daughter Natalie at the Bookworm in Edwards. My Amsterdam crew, out in full force. Kevin jumping in with the first question so the Q&A didn’t start with crickets. Reviewing the footage, I see evidence everywhere that I did not do this alone. Thank God, I’m finally getting it! I was built for the stories. I knew the territory — talking about loss means you’re going to hear about loss. Yet I didn’t know how I would handle what might come my way. I needn’t have worried. For five minutes on a folding chair after every event, I listened, I nodded along, I hugged. It turns out being truly heard when life gets hard is rarer than it should be. And for whatever reason, I seem to be wired for the receiving end of it. The book went places without me. This is the part of the tape I keep rewinding. My dad finding it on a Chicago bookstore shelf. Rebecca’s dad reading her copy from his chair. Lesley-Anne holding it up against the South African mountains near her home. I wrote this book and then let it go… and it went. There’s something casually staggering about that. Like a dandelion seed floating to who-knows-where, landing, germinating, growing. I did my part, and I’ll continue to do my part. I’ll keep endlessly talking about it, speaking about it, pressing copies of it into peoples’ hands. But there’s something else I’ve learned, something a tad woo-woo: the book is on a path of its own. Reaching who its meant to reach, when it’s meant to reach them, in a way my playback tape will never reveal. And so, all the writing and revising and promoting and traveling and fretting led to this: a companion [https://suedeagle.com/book] for life’s journeys through loss, meeting people when they need it. And nowadays, that’s what I call success. In gratitude and celebration and exhaustion, Sue Subscribe on Substack [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe] to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/] P.S. I’ve made another video for the Loss Canon [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/170-the-loss-canon]: The Books that Got Me Through. If you’re into books and/or videos, you can watch it right here: https://youtu.be/AUuXFmOqZV8 [https://youtu.be/AUuXFmOqZV8] Get full access to The Luminist at theluminist.substack.com/subscribe [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

#181: Leaps.

Marco looked up at me confused. “Michelle?” he asked. “Ah, no, sorry, it’s under my husband’s name: Michael.” When you’ve intertwined your life so thoroughly with another person, and then they disappear off the face of the earth [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/2-why-i-wouldnt-trade-away-the-grief], you always have to be ready for a jump scare — at the DMV, on the phone with insurance, or when buying performance gear for a month-long hike. It was a deserted Tuesday morning at REI, and I had just been shopping for my upcoming Scandi pilgrimage, 2.0. Moments before my thoughts had sounded something like, should I have gotten these t-shirts in a large instead of a medium? Could I really count on the tiny no-spill containers to, well, not spill? How much weight would this add to my pack? The twenty-something checkout clerk, his forest green vest clashing with his Hawaiian shirt underneath, scanned the see-through bottles and Patagonia tees. “Oh, look, you have $67 in points. Wanna use them now?” Marco asked. “Oh, that’s a lucky break! Absolutely!” “I won’t tell Michael if you don’t,” Marco said with a wink. “It’s our little secret, Marco. Pinky swear?” I tee-hee’d. “Michael would see an email receipt, do you want me to print it instead to keep our secret safe?” he cracked. “Brilliant idea! Yes!” We belly laughed, delighting in a moment of conspiratorial connection, pulling a fast one on unsuspecting Michael. Who would have thought, ten years ago, that this would be my life? (Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com [http://theluminist.substack.com].) Marco doesn’t know Michael is dead. I didn’t tell him. Why would I? It was a perfect little moment: warm, funny, completely ordinary. And although I’ve had conversations with other REI clerks about loss (mostly in the shoe department), poor Marco did not need his own jump scare at the beginning of his shift. Plus I don’t want to alert corporate REI that I’ve been piggy-backing off a dead man’s member number for a decade. They might take my points! My late husband, non-earthbound as he is, is woven into my days in a fashion that baffles my black-and-white thinking. He’s not here, so, you know, he shouldn’t be here. But he’s everywhere. His name on the REI account. His password on our movie streaming service. His picture on my office bookshelf. Loss is strange that way. It doesn’t erase people, it just changes where they live. Driving home with my bag of loot, I kept thinking: this is not how I pictured loss going. I could never have imagined it would be like this. Not the convo I just had with Marco. Not the pilgrimage. Not the book I just published [https://suedeagle.com/book]. Not my new work family at Experience Camps for Grieving Kids. Not the Treehouse I was steering towards. Not the ways Mike likes to wink at me from the other side. Not any of it. We think loss makes the future unknowable, and we’re not wrong. But so does almost every other change or decision. Think about it. When we embark on the journey to parenthood, we commit our entire life to a child who doesn’t yet exist. But we do have a picture in our head: maybe they’ll have my husband’s sky-blue eyes or love Tolkien’s books or swim the 1650 just like me. Then this actual human arrives, with deep green eyes, strong negative opinions about swimming, absolutely zero interest in reading, and you think, oh! This is who showed up. And within about ten minutes, you can’t imagine anyone else. The picture you started with is completely beside the point. We do this all the time. We pick colleges based on brochures and a whistle-stop tour. We switch jobs for the promise of career advancement or a better work environment. We move cities, believing a different climate or culture or commute to work will improve our lives. All of it a leap toward something we cannot actually know. And somehow, we call that normal. But the other side of loss? That we treat as a special kind of murky darkness. Or, if we do picture it, we see a smaller, weaker, more unsure version of ourselves. Someone beaten by the game of life. Not someone giggling with Marco at the REI. We’ve always taken these leaps into the unknown, loss is just more like a shove than a jump. But there’s still possibility on the other side of it all. I couldn’t have pictured the life I’m now living in my worst moments, nor my best ones. It arrived because I kept moving forward, stubbornly believing that, just like the college freshman or new associate or out-of-state transplant, this future had something to offer me. We think we’re planning — with the dreams and goals and timelines — but we’re mostly inspiring ourselves. And while we should keep doing all of those things, don’t be surprised if you end up somewhere you never saw coming. Because the truth is, our imaginations simply can’t keep up with all the possibilities available in this technicolor reality called life. Like I said, I’m starting to pack for another month-long walk across Scandinavia. The intent of my first pilgrimage back in 2024 [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/82-vikings-pilgrims-catharsis] was to walk off the final dregs of my grief. Instead, it ended up being a return to parts of me that got buried during the grind of adulthood: the voracious reader, the insatiable learner, the patient, content observer. Grief, that sly fox, brought me home. Truthfully, I have no idea what I’m going to find this time around. But I’ve learned that doesn’t matter. I don’t have to know where I’m going to keep moving forward. Looking forward to whatever I find, Sue Subscribe on Substack [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe] to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin. P.S. I’ve made another video for the Loss Canon [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/170-the-loss-canon]: The Books that Got Me Through. If you’re into books and/or videos, you can watch it right here [https://youtu.be/MlPbSIT-bQM]. Get full access to The Luminist at theluminist.substack.com/subscribe [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

#180: I love New York?

I’ve always felt meh about New York. It’s not that I’m not a city person. London is my favorite place on the planet, and Amsterdam has recently stolen my heart [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/174-home]. But New York from the very beginning has rubbed me the wrong way. It all started in Western PA. No one from my hometown ever put New York on a pedestal. Quite the opposite. We mostly thought those people were crazy. I first actually set foot in NYC in 1979 as part of a gaggle of 5th grade girls on an Eastern Seaboard van tour with our gym teacher. My hazy memory puts us standing at the base of the Statue of Liberty, navigating the dank subway, sleeping in a church basement. But I much more clearly remember (and remember enjoying) Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and the waves of Rehoboth Beach. My next visit wasn’t much more memorable. In 1995 I took a flight north as a 27-year-old MBA student on a mass cattle call for a consulting job with Coopers & Lybrand (RIP). Our little plane from Raleigh-Durham was buffeted by thunderstorms. Airsickness bags were put through their paces. We kissed the ground upon landing at LaGuardia. My next set of memories from that weekend were interviews with the partners in their hotel rooms. I don’t recall the trip home thankfully, just that I got a call a few days later, securing a post-MBA gig. Not in NYC, God forbid, but DC. I looked forward to my leafy suburbs and limited commute. Then there were the career-building years, when my husband and I both regularly frequented New York for an investor, or board, or lawyer something-or-other. Sometimes we’d cross paths, snagging a kiss and lunch before running to our meetings. Here, I find a rare highlight of New York in my Mike memory rolodex: a 2016 viewing of Hamilton, sharing martinis in the Westin lobby post-show, reliving our favorite parts, characters, raps. That was the last show we saw together before Mike died [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/2-why-i-wouldnt-trade-away-the-grief]. But lingering on that memory, I don’t find any of my fondness for it turning towards NYC. It was about me and Mike; the setting was trivial. In the ten years since, going to New York was like seeing that loud uncle-in-law at family functions — an accepted part of life, but never, ever, a goal. Why would I choose to go to a place where the buildings were so high sunlight didn’t hit the streets? Where you could assume you were sitting in pigeon poop if you wanted to sit anywhere at all? Where the honking horns and big LCD ads made thinking an act of equal parts willpower and disassociation? (Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com [http://theluminist.substack.com].) But I had my first new thought about NYC last week, right after I got off the train. I had resignedly taken the trip north for my non-profit Experience Camps [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/133-from-farm-to-table-from-grief]’ board meeting and our annual fundraising gala. After a cozy two hours in the Quiet Car, I had scurried through the bowels of Penn Station to the modern cathedral that is Moynihan Train Terminal. The sunbeams ricochetted off every surface. The shopfronts looked like a movie set. Even the jumbotron ads looked elegant. As I lingered to take it all in, a thought pinged: Is the Quiet Car and Moynihan the best part of my NYC trips? Without even setting foot in the city proper, I was already sure I had my highlight reel complete. That’s the kind of on-repeat story I have self-righteously marched out trip after trip. Then, out of nowhere, something new arose: What a stingy thought. Ok Scrooge, everywhere outside of America people sing the praises of NYC. They share their highlight reel from their visit, or at the very least, their aspiration to someday create one. And here it is, right up the road from me, a place I have the chance to see regularly. Yet I somehow spurn it. Why don’t, for a weekend, I try to see what they all see? Why don’t I do what I say I LOVE doing, and look beyond the surly manners and historical layers of grit? Why don’t I cut the judging, and spend some time noticing [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/157-three-years-later-i-finally-understand] first? It was a nice idea, but old habits die hard. I tore myself away from the station and headed uptown, dodging tourists and suits and fashionistas as I trudged to the Times Square Hilton to drop off my stuff. Then I walked the nine blocks north to the ExCamps Board meeting, trying to discreetly plug my ears as taxis blared at each other. At least I fit in, I thought. Everyone is scowling. Once at the restaurant, I mazed my way to the back room, appreciating the sensation of burrowing my way out of the city, and walked into a group of colleagues turned friends. Last year I was still getting to know this crew. Eighteen months in, I’ve now jumped in with both feet. I co-chair a Risk Committee, co-facilitate a Caregiver Advisory Board, know the team on a first name basis. On this particular evening, we talked about public relations and AI. From start to finish the meeting had that special sauce of intellectual stimulation and emotional fulfillment, aka what happens when you’re part of a team deeply dedicated to a cause. I was already on Cloud 9 when CEO Sara shared, “The team and I were joking around that people who are helpful and kind are like poptarts: convenient and delicious! But Sue is not just a regular poptart, she’s a frosted poptart. The best kind!” Ridiculous metaphors back-to-back with convos about grief and loss — these are my people. I practically floated back to the Hilton. I always knew that New York had a rich history of nonprofit and cause-oriented work. But finally I was a part of it: passionate conversations with dry humor, loud laughter, and an aggressively can-do attitude. NYC isn’t just hard, it’s rambunctious. It’s gonna throw its hat in the ring for a good cause and, with a smile on its face, give the fight all it’s got. Even if it loses, it’ll shake hands, and be back tomorrow. Hm. Point for New York. The next morning I opened my curtains, expecting to see the sheer rock face of another hotel blocking any form of natural light. Instead my head swiveled, taking in a to-die-for vista of the city. Ancient water towers topped bricked buildings to my left. Gleaming skyscrapers stood sentry on my right. Red industrial cranes loomed in the far distance. Smaller scenes revealed racks of clothing in a fashion house window; six silent figures sitting around a conference table; a tiny atrium with trees reaching upwards far below. “Wow New York, you are PRETTY!” I literally said out loud in my surprise. Another point. I headed to a breakfast joint near Central Park. The sun was shining, the spring leaves were unfurling, the horns were honking. But this May day, they had a cheerful quality to them, like a boisterous family playing a board game. I’d just crossed 5th avenue when the green leaves of Central Park gave way to green tables and green shelves covered in… books? I had to pause to re-orient. There I was, standing in the middle of a bookstore, a light breeze ruffling my hair and flipping a couple covers open. The horns were still going off, but some dial in my mind turned the volume down as my fingers grazed the books, laying face up as if sunbathing. I picked up a current bestseller, a Rachel Cusk I’d had my eye on, then lingered at the NYC-themed table. There, a slate-blue cover with an etching of a pigeon drew me in. New York Sketches [https://bookshop.org/a/92879/9781946022738]by E. B. White [https://bookshop.org/a/92879/9781946022738]. Any book with ‘sketches’ in the title must be about observing, and since I always have my future (third) book on my mind — NODES: Noticing Odes — I figured EB could school me. How else could I justify buying a book solely dedicated to a city I definitely still didn’t like? I pulled it on top of my pile and headed to the register. For those keeping score at home…New York is up three. After a lap around the MoMa, I settled myself in the outdoor courtyard, a cold brew in hand, and pulled out my new purchase. The intro was penned by White’s granddaughter; “He was a master at finding words for the small, unforgettable moments. The small moments of wonder.” I raised my chin from the page, curious to imitate Mr White and see what I found. My eyes gravitated to a man in a black-watch-patterned blazer, black Beats headphones, round glasses, beat up sneaks, his foot tap-tap-tapping to the beat, while he knit. Looking over him like a parent checking their child’s homework was Rodin’s sculpture of John the Baptist. There’s no point counting anymore. New York wins. We all come with pre-conceptions (NYC is full of loud-mouth bullies), comparisons (London is better), and judgments (do we really have to honk this much??). Every situation we walk into, we’ll bring a sack full of those. But how do we remember to look beyond those too? To look up from our well-worn thoughts of “I like this, but not that” or “I wish it was this way, not that way”, and actually see what’s here? Because the truth is, New York never did anything wrong. I had just never given it a chance. I had this story that it was too loud and too grimy and too skyscraper-y and I would just never have a good time there. So I didn’t. But come on, it’s New York. And finally I was there with enough time and enough goodwill to actually notice. To seeing beyond ourselves, Sue Subscribe on Substack [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe] to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin. P.S. I’ve made another video for the Loss Canon [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/170-the-loss-canon]: The Books that Got Me Through. If you’re into books and/or videos, you can watch it right here [https://youtu.be/-eGg0GabxgA?si=jSC7HzCJsSc3Hfnx]. Get full access to The Luminist at theluminist.substack.com/subscribe [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]