6000 Days

6000 days. 5970 days to be precise, but 6000 days sounds more literary.

That is the amount of time it has taken me from when I left the University of Manitoba in April 2010 to coming back in September 2026. Sixteen and a half years. I have been ruminating on this number for some time.

What lesson have I taken from waiting 6000 days? What have I learned having lived a whole lifetime between starting the process of getting what I wanted and entering the last step of completing that process?

It is a substantial amount of time. A gulf of time between being a man in his late twenties and becoming a man in his mid-forties.

I'll tell you one thing that I have gained from these contemplations: an absolutely airtight defense when I tell my kids to be patient.

My son went fishing with his grandparents and was upset that he didn't catch a fish. I gave him the 6000 days speech.

He looked at me and almost immediately stopped feeling sorry for himself for not catching a fish.

I have observed waiting intimately in my wife, my kids, my friends, and myself. Waiting is tough. As people, we can handle the past. We accept the present. But an uncertain future is a real challenge.

I think about the sense of disappointment I had when I realized that I would not be able to enter teaching college.

My wife had a party for me at the end of my time at university in 2010. I felt like a fraud, sitting amongst people who were congratulating me for incomplete work. I needed to get a Bachelor of Arts before I could get the Bachelor of Education. I wasn't going to get the Bachelor of Education.

I spent years feeling like a failure.

I wanted something. I went for it. And I failed.

I wasn't unhappy with my life during those sixteen years. I had plenty to keep me busy. And the thing that will outlast me in this life, my children, are the only thing that really matters. Still, dealing with uncertainty has never been something I have been good at.

Perhaps that is why I have been thinking so much about these 6000 days.

Because uncertainty doesn't disappear simply because you finally arrive at the thing you have been waiting for.

I have entered the program I chased so many years ago, but this guarantees me nothing.

I am still at the mercy of teachers, administrators and fellow students who can trip me up. My life has a litany of other things that can cause me to stumble. While I have fulfilled the desire I had in 2010, I am no more certain about the events at the end of this process than I was about the events at the beginning.

So what do I do with that?

Humility and patience, I expect.

But there is something else I want to learn. Something I want to model for my kids.

Faithfulness to the future.

Not because I know tomorrow will be kinder.

Not because I know everything will work out.

Not because I have some secret knowledge that the thing I want will eventually be given to me.

Faithfulness to the future means continuing to do the work in front of me even when I cannot see what the work will produce.

And I can do that because, unlike the 29-year-old version of myself, I have a large and fairly firm structure behind me.

I have resilient kids who can survive independently. I have a partner who loves me and is willing to sacrifice alongside me. I have resources that I didn't have when I was 29, which makes the prospect of financial challenges significantly less daunting.

I can handle this.

The uncertainty is the worst part of it.

I can marshal resources, personal or otherwise, to solve a problem. Give me a problem with edges and boundaries and I will start pulling on threads until I figure something out.

But solving problems that are still unformed?

That is where anxiety lives.

And this is where I sometimes forget to factor in my God.

God is, for me, an all-sustaining piece of information. More than information, really. God provides the thing I need most: purpose.

I see purpose in my life.

I see purpose in waiting.

It doesn't feel good, and it hasn't been easy, but I see purpose.

I am not wise enough, in my own power, to look at the events of my life and declare with certainty why they happened. I don't think wisdom means pretending that I can see the whole picture.

But I have begun to see something that looks like purpose when I look backward.

I can see purpose in a retail job.

I can see purpose in friendships that led to other friendships.

I can see purpose in the strange and winding path that brought me from that party in 2010 to the university I am about to enter again in 2026.

I can see loose threads being tied together.

Maybe that is one of the gifts of time. Not that time explains everything, but that sometimes it gives you enough distance to see connections that were invisible when you were living them.

Over the last sixteen years, I confess, I have lost faith at times.

And when I lose my faith, I lose my sense of purpose.

That may be the hardest lesson of the 6000 days.

The waiting wasn't empty.

I just couldn't always see what was happening inside it.

An Ode to Jim- "Dont wish the time away."

I had always had a complicated relationship with Jim. He was my mother’s husband. He moved into the role my father had occupied and that made him a usurper of sorts. He felt it and I did too. It was a strained relationship at times.  I was a developing adult and the security of my maternal relationship had meant a lot to me, but I found over time he had caused that to fray.

 

God was kind, though. At the same time these relationships were changing, I was cleaving to my fiancé and making my own family.

 

I was deeply in love. I have never loved carefully. Unaplogetic and passionate could characterize me. This was, apparently all she needed. She was enthralled with my enthusiasm and from a snowy day in April 2008, our courtship concluded on a cold winter day in February 2009 where I got to marry her.

 

I was so incredibly happy.

 

My brother in law, an incredibly talented photographer, took us to some really neat spots for photos. The steps of the Manitoba Legislature were one such spot. The stone steps of the building gleamed white and the crisp echo of every step reminds you that these stones were here before you and they will be here after you’re gone.

 

I took a few photos with my fiancé and her family when Jim came in with my mom. He walked over to me and commented how he wanted $5 for parking. I gave it to him without a thought. I just didn’t care. I found out later that he was trying to make a joke. I didn’t get it. I didn’t care to get it. It was my wedding day and nothing else mattered. 

 

Later on, I was telling my mother all about how much excitement in the day My groomsmen had been wonderfully kind, looking after me with generosity and excitement. Time has carried us in different directions since then, but on that day they made me feel deeply loved.

 

In the middle of my excited rambling, I confessed something.

“I kind of wish it was all over already.”

In the distance, I heard Jims voice throw out a comment.

 

An almost incidental comment that seemed to just slink over to me in the wind of his breath.

 

“Don’t wish the time away,” he said. 

 It landed square on my heart.

 

Had I been wishing the time away?

 I had!  

 Absolutely I had.

 

What a simple and profound piece of wisdom that he likely thought nothing of. An incidental comment you make to an impetuous young man who is in love and lacks the wisdom to see that this was one of the greatest days of his life.

 

These words still haunt me. “Don’t wish the time away.”

What a lash these words left on my soul.

My soul, who only cares for the next success.

My soul that lacked the discipline to dine on the joy of the moment. 

 

This line, spoken casually, has stayed with me.

Perhaps it has left me with the single greatest lesson of my life.

 

“Dont wish the time away.” Now is now. Now will vanish away so quickly and

Now contains so many treasures and things to be grateful for.  

 

Oh my dear Jim.

How I wish you understood what that simple phrase meant to me.

 

I treasure those words.

I keep them in a safe place and I bring them out whenever I am struggling in my marriage or my children are less than perfect.

When I am facing adversity, I remind myself that struggle is a sign of life.

I remember that so much of the beauty of life is in the process and what an epic tragedy if I allow that process to disappear unappreciated. 

Forty-Five: Waking Up After a Long Sleep

Today is my birthday, and it feels like the right time to reflect on where my family is and where we're headed. To do that, I have to go back to the early 2000s.

When I graduated from high school, I was directionless. I was somewhat antisocial, and when I lost my dad, I lost one of my main connections to the world around me. My Dad was my conenction to the world and I loved going places with him and meeting the dozens of unique characters who seemed to drift through his life. His death left a tremendous void.

I tried to fill that void in a healthy way. I had always considered myself a spiritual person, but I had never really sought out spiritual people. Eventually I found them—a large group of friends, along with older mentors, who attended the same church and largely accepted me as I was. They spoke often about sharing Jesus and reaching others with that message.

I followed some of those friends to a ministry school. There, I discovered that I loved the academic study of Scripture. At the same time, I longed to share ideas that I believed could help people find a deeper sense of purpose and meaning. In Christian circles, we call that "missions."

I found a master's program in British Columbia that focused on Bible translation. It seemed like the perfect blend of my love for missions, languages, and Scripture. To prepare for it, I enrolled at Providence. Since they didn't offer a linguistics track, I completed a degree in Teaching English instead.

I've always been drawn to games, and one of the secrets no one tells you about university is that success often comes from learning how to gamify the experience. I embraced it wholeheartedly and finished a three-year Bachelor of Arts in just two years.

By then, I had immersed myself in academics, and I had fallen in love with studying Scripture. My goal shifted. I remember tearfully telling my mother that I wanted to be a Bible professor. She stood on a chair to hug me because she wanted to feel more maternal in that moment. I decided I wanted to pursue a PhD and teach at the college level.

I began a master's degree at Providence. Unfortunately, by that point I was exhausted. What was intended to be a two-year program stretched into three years, and I ultimately was forced to complete a different degree than I had originally planned. I realized I needed to spend some time in the real world before deciding what came next.

I took a job as an Educational Assistant, working primarily with students who had significant behavioural challenges. I was hired for my size and the effectiveness of that size in keeping difficult kids in line

I loved many aspects of the work. I found myself increasingly drawn to education. I wasn't certain I wanted to become a classroom teacher, but I could see the appeal of helping people learn.

One memory still makes me laugh. During recess, a group of students was throwing around a football they weren't supposed to have. A very short female teacher attempted to confiscate it, only to become the unwilling participant in a spirited game of keep-away. In her defense, she laughed about it afterward.

Despite moments like that, I also became frustrated. Much of my role felt more like caretaking than teaching, and I found the constant oversight difficult. I began looking elsewhere.

Around that time, I was also working part-time at Staples, where I discovered I genuinely enjoyed sales. Moving into electronics sales felt like a natural progression.

Then, in 2008, I met my wife. We were married in 2009.

Marriage created a new urgency. It was no longer just about finding meaningful work for myself. I wanted to build a stable future for our family.

I thought perhaps teaching was still within reach. Surely, by now, I had enough prerequisites to enter teacher education.

I didn't.

But I wasn't ready to quit. In what felt like one last swing for the fences in my twenties, I enrolled at the University of Manitoba and completed another degree.

Armed with my newly earned credentials, I applied to teacher education.

I was rejected.

My prerequisites still weren't quite right. Introductory Physical Geography counted as geography instead of science, and universities have an incredible affection for policies.

So there I sat.

Three degrees.

No teaching certificate.

And if I wanted one, I'd have to go back and take even more undergraduate courses.

At that point, I was simply done with school.

I let the dream go.

Instead, I accepted a position at Bell MTS, that I have for many years very much enjoyed. Every day brought new people through the door. I loved technology, I enjoyed teaching customers, and I liked sales. The job combined all three in ways I hadn't expected.

During those years, I still made occasional attempts to revive my academic ambitions.

I applied to PhD programs.

I was told my transcript wasn't competitive.

I tried upgrading my academic record.

The message, while more politely worded, amounted to, "You've lost your academic momentum."

I even applied to business school.

Nothing worked.

By then I had accumulated a substantial background in biblical studies, ancient Greek, religious studies, and Teaching English—but none of those qualifications really mattered in my day-to-day work.

Oddly enough, I made peace with that.

I've spent the past fifteen years as an overqualified cellphone salesman.

And honestly?

It hasn't been a bad life.

The job gave me the flexibility to be present for my children. It allowed me to provide for my family while still being involved in their lives. That's worth far more than many careers can offer.

Still, I always felt the pull toward something more.

After six months, you can learn most of what my job has to offer. I had hoped to move into management, but aside from a brief stint as interim manager, very little changed over those fifteen years.

About a year ago, I decided it was time to revisit teaching.

Not because I needed a different title.

Because I needed a different future.

I calculated that I still needed seven or eight prerequisite courses, so I enrolled with an online university to begin completing them.

After I registered, I discovered that the Manitoba government was in the process of removing the prerequisite requirements for Early Years teacher education.

I contacted the university to verify it.

They confirmed it.

Instead of spending years taking additional undergraduate courses, my existing bachelor's degree would now be enough to apply.

Given the number of disappointments I'd experienced over the years, I applied very cautiously.

Then, in April, I received the email.

I got in.

After sixteen years of waiting, doors that had always remained closed suddenly opened.

Even now, I have mixed emotions.

A lifetime of setbacks has conditioned me to wonder what obstacle is waiting around the corner. Part of me keeps asking, "Have I thought of everything?"

And yet...

Everything has gone smoothly.

My employer agreed to let me work part-time while I'm in school. Ironically, they had previously told me they would never approve such an arrangement.

Our finances are in a place where we can manage the transition.

The pieces have simply fallen into place.

My mother once told me she had been praying that, when the time was right, things would simply begin to work.

They have.

Today, on my forty-fifth birthday, I find myself deeply grateful.

I'm grateful for the life my wife and I have built.

I'm grateful for children who give purpose to every sacrifice.

I'm grateful to God that sustained us during the years of waiting.

And I'm grateful that a dream I thought had died has quietly come back to life.

Soon, I'll begin preparing for a new chapter—one I've been chasing, in one form or another, for nearly half my life.

I hope to become the kind of teacher who gives students more than information. I hope to give them courage. To help young men and women discover wisdom, ask good questions, and not be afraid of the future.

For a long time, it felt like my life had been standing still.

Now, it feels like I've finally woken up from a very long sleep.

Big changes are coming to the House of Vogt. 

 

Stranger than fiction

I was stuck in my office on a lonely day and going through my old DVD collection. Like most people in 2026, I haven't watched an actual DVD in a very long time, but I am also sentimental and I keep all my old collection. Fumbling through them I came across the case for one of my absolute favorite Will Ferrell movies. 

Sandwiched between the release of Old School and Talladega Nights was one of Will Ferrell's best movies. What kind of movie is this, you might wonder. The name of the movie is "Stranger than fiction." A beautiful little dramatic comedy that was released in 2006, staring (besides himself): Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson. This was an odd film that released during the peak of Will Ferrell's career. People were quoting his movies and he was a movie icon of the era. This is a movie that grossed $53 million on a budget of $30 million. Clearly, not a epic film. I love this film because its unusual premise.

Spoilers

The movie is about an IRS auditor named Harold Crick, who finds himself experiencing a disembodied voice of a narrator that he can actively hear. The narrator predicts his death and this leads to a selection of events where he has to reconcile the life he lived, as well as what he considers a life worth living. It is a beautiful story because it focuses on how the simple aspects of life can serve to create the most amazing stories. 

I grew up in a town, which grew into a small city in Manitoba. Manitoba- very flat, with extreme winters. This is where my town is located. The historical background of it is Mennonite. A religious group, who had pacifism as driving piece of their identity. They were also farmers and sometimes merchants. This is not the stuff of grand tales. They isolated themselves and tended to be a little more inward focus. This is my town. These are my people. 

When I was a boy, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. When I was in my 20's I wanted to be a Bible professor. When I was in my 30's I wanted to be a school teacher. I have spent my working life in retail. 

February 28, May 13, June 4, July 2, July 5, July 8, July 14, August 23, September 1, September 15, and November 19. These days probably have no meaning for you. These are the dates of anniversaries, birthdays and deaths of very important people in my life. They represent the pivotal moments of that my life orbits around. Yet, they likely mean nothing to you. 

“Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren't any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true.”
― Zach Helm, Stranger Than Fiction: The Shooting Script

 When I think about the perspective of my life, I am fully aware of the mundane. I am aware that living in Manitoba can be dreary in the winter, but it can also have amazing summers and killer sunsets. Coming from Mennonite stalk doesnt really come with a great deal of amazing stories, but I am also conscious that it is a very generous and gracious community that has deep feeling built into its foundations. I can look at my career trajectory and see failure, but I am also conscious of a litany of people I have done my absolute best to help and to teach them not to be so afraid. Finally, the dates of my life. These dates mean nothing, only if I allow it. If I can draw you in and share my life with you, you can know that my birthday is on July 2, my anniversary is on February 28 and my nephew was born on August 23-to name a few. The really brilliant thing about the movie "Stranger than Fiction" is that it left my with the distinct lesson that you really do need to enjoy your life. The miniscule, the mundane and the routine are often treasures in jars of clay that we carry and we rarely take the time to stop and take it all in. 

Following Paths of Failure

I have recently been re-reading my books from seminary. This was a unique part of my life. I met deeply unique creatures and was steeped in a culture that reveled in the Scriptures. From as young as I can remember, I loved the Bible—Old Testament and New. I loved the wisdom of Jesus, the emotions of the Psalms, the justice of the Judges. It all shone with brilliance to me, and still does, if I am honest.

I remember weeping to my mother about how I wanted to be a Bible professor. I set off to Providence in search of that dream. I completed my three-year degree in two years. This elevated track of study was exhausting, but it allowed me to enjoy languages—another passion—and to steep myself in wisdom. I continued on my track to seminary.

Seminary was decidedly different. Graduate studies had far less structure. Looking back now, I was ill-suited for it and treated it like a truant boy hoping to glide through. I did earn a master’s degree from Providence, but it was not what I had wanted. I earned a degree in Christian Studies rather than Biblical Studies because my teachers felt I was not taking my work seriously. They were, of course, correct.

This was the season when I used my student loans to buy a sword and skipped classes to play Settlers of Catan with my friends. The result was failure—rather spectacular failure. I applied to McGill University and was promptly rejected for not being competitive. I had never heard of a professor without a PhD. I tried retaking a course, but the wheels had fallen off the car, and the professor advised me to withdraw. What a blow to my hopes and dreams—and to my ego.

What is Tyler if he is not a professor?
That question stayed with me for some time. In the light of my failures, was I too a failure?

At that point, I went and got myself married to a woman who casually suggested maybe we should have babies. So here I am, fifteen years later, still thinking about failure—the deep disappointment that comes with letting go of a dream. And yet, looking at where my life has gone, I do not think I would trade what I have for what I lost.

I have found meaning in caring for people, both personally and professionally. Fifteen years of toiling in retail, with the judgment of “you could have been something” hanging in the air, does give one perspective. My life, in some respects, has been a failure. I did not earn a PhD. I did not mentor young people in a classroom. I did not travel as much as I hoped.

And yet, I do not believe my life has been wasted. I worked to keep a wife and children stable. I endeavored to care about the people I served and refused to sell out my morality. That is not to say I always acted rightly, but I sought to be better—professionally and morally. I tried to grow, to change, to challenge myself. May it be said of Gerry and Irma’s youngest son that he did not give up, either in the face of time or adversity.

As with all of this, I am inclined to ask what lessons I am teaching my children. We live in a world where our desires are treated as the fullest expression of the human experience. For a long time, I believed the only thing I had to offer was my mind.

In the course of my work, I once had a customer tell me he needed to upgrade his phone because he was burying his sixteen-year-old son that weekend. He spoke quietly of a heart defect and of doctors who failed to save his life on the operating table. I have helped bear the burdens of countless others like him.

The common nature of my work may seem to lack purpose, yet it has offered innumerable chances to bring meaning into the lives of others. A life of service may not seem glamorous or song-worthy, but it represents some of the most genuine parts of the human experience. Going to work each day is not what they will write epics about, but it is the engine of humanity. In doing it faithfully, I have come to believe that treasure is often found in unexpected places.

The lesson for my children comes from Rudyard Kipling’s If:
to dream, but not make dreams your master.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

In continuing my series, I bring to you an amazing film: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Released in the mid-2000s, it stars Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey. While it need not be said, I’ll say it anyway—this piece contains spoilers.

Jim Carrey was largely known at the time for manic comedy, while Kate Winslet was still strongly associated with Titanic. I’ve always loved artsy films—those with a degree of abstraction that still tell a fundamentally human, realistic story. This film fits that description perfectly. At its heart, it asks a simple but unsettling question: If you could remove the memory of a broken heart, would that make you happy?

The film jumps around in its structure, but it essentially follows a man who has recently broken up with his girlfriend. When he unexpectedly encounters her again, he discovers that she doesn’t recognize him at all. Over time, he learns that she has undergone a procedure offered by a company that erases specific memories—namely, her memories of him.

Feeling wounded and spiteful, he decides to undergo the same procedure to rid himself of the corresponding pain. The doctor performing the procedure has a sycophantic nurse with whom he is having an affair—an important detail that pays off later. The man is sedated and put to sleep, and while he sleeps, technicians begin the process of erasing his memories.

As the procedure unfolds, the viewer is taken inside his mind. We watch him relive the moments of the relationship: the excitement, the flirtation, the boredom, the irritation. And as he experiences these memories one by one, he begins to understand something crucial—erasing the pain means erasing everything. He panics and begs for the process to stop, but it’s too late. The procedure completes.

He wakes the next morning with no memory of what has happened.

Later, we discover that the nurse—rejected by the doctor—decides to sabotage his work. She mails each former patient the recordings and documentation of their memory erasure. As the protagonist receives this information, he also happens to reacquaint himself with his former girlfriend. With no shared memory of their past, they begin to build a new dynamic.

That’s when he plays a tape and hears himself listing all the things he finds annoying about her. Disturbed and hurt, she leaves. After a moment of reflection, he runs after her and says, “I don’t see anything I don’t like about you.” She replies, “But you will,” and begins listing the ways they will inevitably disappoint each other. He smiles, pauses, and simply says, “Okay.” The movie ends.

I love this movie—especially its innovative way of visualizing abstract ideas. What does a memory look like as it disappears from your mind? It’s not a particularly profound question, but it’s a fascinating exercise in shared experience. More than that, I love what the film says about pain.

There is a natural human instinct to avoid pain—to eliminate loss, grief, anger, and discomfort wherever possible. But in doing so, we often fail to realize that we may be discarding the most meaningful parts of ourselves. I don’t love my wife because she’s perfect. I have no illusion that her imperfections don’t exist, and I assume she would say the same about me.

I love her because my heart needs a home. I need her.

When she is open-hearted, funny, kind, and compassionate, the world feels bright and luminescent. When her less-than-fair qualities emerge, I would no more leave my house because a window leaks. I address the problem and carry on. To be clear, my world is far brighter than it is not.

When we are in a good place, I sometimes look at her and smile and say, “I don’t see anything I don’t like about you.” And somewhere, a voice answers, “But you will.”

The reality of love is that it is complicated and often painful. But those experiences shape us. The ability to taste that complexity—to live it rather than erase it—has far greater meaning than the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind.

The lessons of poetry

One of the intentions of this blog—among other things—is to produce something my children can look back on and glean why I did what I did in raising them, and what some of my broader goals were. A crucial element in a well-rounded human being is some education in art. This is not to say that art is necessary for survival, but it offers a quality of life insofar as it allows you to tap into emotions belonging to situations you may never personally encounter.

I believe art is the expression of the human experience. I believe good art reaches the largest number of people because it touches something genuinely true. Understanding art does not require a shared identity, politics, or history. The singular element it requires is empathy—not necessarily empathy for the artist, but empathy for the expression of the human condition itself.

One powerful tool for cultivating this is poetry. The modern world is more inclined to understand poetry when it is paired with melody, but a dynamic poem can carry tremendous power on its own. When I was about twenty years old, I inherited a book from my grandmother titled Best Loved Poems of the American People. I still hold it with great reverence, and its poetry has served me on many occasions.

One of my favorite poems in the collection is The Raven. My first experience with it did not come from the book itself. Like many kids in the 1990s, much of my early exposure to culture came through cartoons. In one of the early Halloween episodes of The Simpsons, they performed an abridged version of The Raven, narrated by the incomparable James Earl Jones. That was my first encounter with the poem.

At its core, it is the story of a man lamenting the loss of his wife, haunted by a bird he cannot rid himself of—a creature that continually repeats the word “nevermore.” Whether the raven represents a demon or serves as a metaphor for something else is outside my expertise. After my father died, I experienced many dreams in which I awoke and had to return to a dark reality. These were painful moments that felt very much like being haunted. While loss is experienced differently by everyone, I can understand the terror of wondering whether a deep wound will ever heal.

There are several other poems I love as well. One is A Shepherd to His Love, another She Walks in Beauty. I often reflected on these poems when I felt for the nearest crush in my younger years. They held something poetic and true—something I felt in my soul for these women. While that passion ultimately faded, it remains important to have a place where adoration can dwell.

A Shepherd to His Love includes the line, “Come live with me and be my love.” She Walks in Beauty opens with, “She walks in beauty, like the night.” Having access to such expressions gave me tools I still carry today. Understanding what you feel can be deeply challenging. Finding fragments of a kindred soul written on paper can be deeply rewarding, because it allows you to walk away with a clearer understanding of a complex feeling. The adoration you feel has words—and you are free to adapt them and carry them with you as your own.

In the truest sense, I am a collection of poems, songs, television quips, and other small tools I have shaped into a personality. My expression has been influenced by people like Shakespeare, who wrote the line I used when I first started dating my wife: “Doubt thou the stars are fire; doubt that the sun doth move; doubt truth to be a liar; but never doubt I love.” I meant to tell her that everything else in the world could be questioned—but never my love for her. Seventeen years this February, and I have kept that promise.

Ultimately, I want my children to possess personal depth. While I believe most people experience deep emotions, true depth comes from understanding those emotions—pulling at their strands, examining them, and expressing them intentionally. If you have met my children, you would likely find them to be verbose and colorful creatures. I am profoundly grateful for the personalities they bring into the world, and I hope that some of the fragments of human experience I absorbed through art have played a part in shaping them.

My hope is that they learn to engage fully in the range of the human experience—joy, sorrow, regret, lust, anger, jealousy. The fullest expression of humanity lies in our ability to share it. As people, we die alone, but we thrive in community. I simply want my children to find their place in the great village of the human experience.

This piece is the beginning of a series. In future entries, I want to return to specific poems, songs, films, books, and moments—some small, some defining—that helped me understand myself and others a little better. Not as prescriptions, but as offerings. These are the tools I found along the way.

If my children ever read this, my hope is not that they inherit my tastes, but that they inherit the habit of looking—of listening closely enough to recognize themselves in the experiences of others. Art taught me that we are never as alone as we feel, and never as separate as we imagine. If they can carry that with them into the village of the human experience, then this series will have done its work.