value – sethlewis.ie

Dream Small Trailer

Today is the day! Dream Small is now officially released and available wherever good books are sold. You can find out more on the book page. I’d also like to share with you a trailer for the book from The Good Book Company:

Life Is Precious

Last week our family attended the first birthday party of a little girl whose parents waited and longed and prayed for six long years, wondering if they would ever be able to have a child of their own. To say it was a joyful occasion is an understatement.

Also last week the Supreme Court of the United States reversed a decision from almost 50 years ago, finding that there is not actually a right to abortion in the US constitution, so individual states are free to legislate as they please on the issue. Some states have kept abortion legal, others have not. Some people rejoiced, others mourned. Some said the judgment was a gain for life, others that it was a loss for personal autonomy.

The Importance Of Not Being Original

Some things are worth saying over and over again. I’m sure that’s been said before, but it’s worth repeating. At our house, we said “sit down” and “eat your food” so often that my wife started saying those phrases in Irish, just to break the monotony. Still, we knew that saying it over and over again was the only way to get to the point of not having to say it over and over again.

But there are some things we’ll never get to that point with. There are some things that will need to be said as long as there are people on Earth. The reason for this is that us humans tend to forget basic truths almost as soon as we remember them. We work and fight and kill each other to right some horrible wrong like genocide, oppression, or slavery, then turn around and create new ways of doing the exact same things, like abortion, police brutality, or human trafficking. Each victory bleeds into a new battle, where we have to say the same old truths all over again, like “all people are valuable” and “all men are created equal”.

The Day The Phone Rang Out

The phone was ringing in his dorm room, and we all knew he liked talking on the phone. It was probably his girlfriend (he talked to her the most), but there was no way of knowing for sure. I expected him to excuse himself from our conversation, but he didn’t. He didn’t even flinch or glance away. He just sat there in the hallway, eyes focused on me, waiting to hear the rest of what I was saying.

I don’t remember what I was saying. I don’t remember what he said, either. All I remember is the moment he ignored the phone for the sake of our conversation. That moment is permanently etched on my mind.

I Miss Talking To Strangers, Part 2

In last week’s post I lamented the growing number of areas where we are losing the opportunity to interact with humans. I called it “I miss talking to strangers” because I’ve started to realise that human interaction, even when brief, is a precious thing that helps us all remember who we are. When convenient machines rob me of that, the loss is real. I really do miss talking to strangers.

In the days following the post, your comments got me thinking further: what about the opportunities that remain? Yes, our culture is shifting from conversation to convenience, but as long as there are other people, interaction will continue on some level. Is it possible that even while I’m missing the old social ways of doing things, I could also be missing chances to speak to the humans around me? It is, and I do. Too often, I miss talking to strangers, not because of machines and screens, but because I simply forget to see them.

Continue reading I Miss Talking To Strangers, Part 2

Why Nothing Matters If There’s Nothing But Matter

The longest selfie stick in the history of humanity was 4 billion miles away from home when it took a picture of us. The photo is now famously known as “the pale blue dot”, because it happened to catch our planet as a point of brightness floating in a ray of sunlight. Astronomer Carl Sagan had suggested that NASA take the picture with their Voyager I probe, and he eloquently described the result:

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilisation, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Continue reading Why Nothing Matters If There’s Nothing But Matter