I recently had one of my closest friends visit me to reconnect after a good year of pause in our friendship. He needed the time to examine all areas of his life, including the relationships he holds most dear. The distance helped him gain clarity on who he is outside of those relationships, and enabled him to re-enter them with sovereignty in light of that new clarity – or to leave them entirely. When I look around, the relational poverty on display especially on social media – which is used to escape the burden of addressing this poverty (me included) – does make me sad sometimes, and immensely grateful for what I consider to be one of my greatest assets: deep and enduring friendships. The kind of friendships that can withstand disagreement, distance, and dissatisfaction, simply because there exists a willingness within each party to do the work that is uniquely theirs to do, and to lend a hand where the other's steps falter. Earlier this year I celebrated my 30th birthday in the presence of some of my closest friends as well as my mother visiting me in this place I live far away from home. I truly enjoyed bringing together the threads of family and friends, which up to that point had stayed largely separate features of my adult life. In reflecting on this transition, I recognize my 20s as a long decade of discovery, exploration, travel, novelty, stimulation, and whatever other words to use to describe the general pattern of opening up to and experiencing all that the world has to offer. Conversely, I am dedicating my 30s to the general pattern of focusing, building, solidifying, and settling into what is already present in my life, be that relationships, places, identity, craft, and so on. There are general arcs to life, and wisdom consists of the proper calibration of our response to the vagaries and joys of life. Or how I put it the end of a long hike while slowly walking into the Mediterranean Sea this Sunday, "the travails of a nervous system in tuning". The older I get and the more experience I amass, the more I recognize that these general arcs are actually a critical feature of pursuing and then actually constructing a life well lived. Yes, the scripts are there to be thrown away, subverted, reinvented, and rebelled against. We wouldn't know their value in the absence of our own "trial by combat" in the arena of life. And yet, living a life without any patterns tends to end up in a descending spiral of chaos and wasted effort as we're pulled apart by an incoherent jumble of drives and desires. I know because I've given expression to my own drive for discovery to the extreme, taking me to the strangest of places and putting me in the company of questionable travelers along sections of the road less traveled to those places. I've let my desires for recognition, status, companionship, stimulation, and opportunity take me to soaring heights of joy and complete flow, only to plunge me into the depths of utter depression as I burnt up my health, disregarded warnings, and pushed through boundaries better left in place. Life no longer presents a blank canvas to me. Instead, there is a small but growing set of paintings in my collection, each with a different combination of styles, themes, motifs, characters, and motivations behind their creation. They all have their place in the arc of my art, and yet some are clearly (and objectively) better than others. What matters most to me though is that I am arriving into the kind of calm that will withstand the crying child, an absence of income, the death of a parent, or the immolation of a worldview in the face of radical change. Increasingly, as the nervous system within and the network of relationships inclusive of me experience said tuning, my mind assumes its proper role as an executor of specific tasks, or a temperer of incoherent impulses, but it certainly no longer runs an authoritarian state against the constituents in his kingdom and their representatives in his court. That kind of calm can only come into being at the long end of a competence hard won in costly experience, and the kind of faith in the possibility and worthwhileness of the good (on the other side of said experience) that comes as a gift given by the examples of personal courage I've witnessed in my parents, extended family, friends, associates, and of course the greats that transcend the ages or live in ours. Money matters, and most must make some to join the ranks of self-determined agents of their own interests, which I certainly count myself among. And yet, it has never truly been a great enough motivator of mine to throw integrity to the wind entirely, although I recognize that as more a luxury of circumstance on my part than the fruits of a labor I've heroically resigned myself to. Now that I'm starting to dip my toes, nay, plunge! into the realities of building what I intend to be a serious relationship with the aim of a family in mind, I feel immense gratitude to those that came before me and those that still walk by my side. I know that I've not always made it easy to call me a "jolly good fellow traveler", mostly thanks to the less well lit or truly dark paths I've felt it my duty to expose myself to. And although I allow room for the recognition that my own motives may not always be transparent even to myself, and although I thusly must allow for the possibility of the truly dark to live amongst the brighter ones – as all honest people must –, I nevertheless work to warrant my words, be deserving of investment, take responsibility for the load that is mine to carry, and to aim high in sight, spirit, and soul. Thanks to those among you who feel and demonstrate a kinship to the above. You know who you are. And if there comes a day that you "smell something strange" in my actions or their effects, I trust that you grant me the privilege of raising this concern with me directly, if of course you feel called to do so. Especially in this time of generative text, image, sound, and soon digital activity of any other sort, I believe this due diligence to join an increasingly important regimen of digital hygiene habits and a cornerstone of psychosecurity on an individual and collective level. Conversely, should you experience distress or need and your other avenues of redress desert you, I promise to at least hear your case (if I can authenticate your identity to my satisfaction) and direct whatever available energy I deem appropriate in your favor. From Barcelona with love, Moritz