“Thank you to the dogs
who lose their entire minds
when we come home
as if we have returned from war
and not Walgreens.” Matt Moberg
I just read three pieces of beautiful writing I feel compelled to share. The first is Elizabeth Strout’s new book, The Things We Never Say. The second is a recent essay by Ezra Klein on the role of AI in our life. The third is a gorgeous poem by Matt Moberg about just “being alive” in our current conditions. This post brings all three together.
The Things We Never Say follows a period of existential reckoning in the life of Artie Dam. Departing from her usual Maine setting for coastal Massachusetts, Strout introduces us to a 57-year-old high school history teacher who, on the outside, seems to have a picture-perfect life. He is a beloved educator, a former “Teacher of the Year,” a coach, a husband of three decades to his therapist wife Evie, and a father to a successful 27-year-old son, Rob. Yet underneath this apparently idyllic life, Artie is drowning in loneliness.
If you are a fan of Elizabeth Strout, you know that she has deeply and profoundly explored loneliness through her characters Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton. Loneliness is arguably the central theme around which most of her fiction turns. She maps the vast, unseen gulfs between human beings. Her writing brilliantly demonstrates that our language is often inadequate. We try to speak, but we miss each other entirely.
Looking for a bridge to cross that gulf, millions of people in the world have turned to AI in search of some form of connection—in search of someone who understands. I get it. AI, by definition, ingenuously demonstrates understanding. If you share a personal story with it, you will get a creative rephrasing that captures fairly accurately what you have said – your feelings, your values, and the story line. It will also ask a follow-up question to encourage you to say more and to show you how interested it is in your situation and circumstances. Then, it will share a perspective that is relevant to your particular issue and provide possibilities for you to consider more deeply.
It’s no wonder more and more people are turning to AI for companionship or even a “best friend.” How many people do you know who actually demonstrate interest in what you are saying (listen carefully, ask questions, and rephrase what you are saying); demonstrate understanding (respond accurately to your feelings, values, and what’s meaningful to you); and then decide what to share that may be most relevant to you? My hunch (and 60 years of personal experience) tells me that the answer may be, “not many.”
And yet we all know the risks of AI. It is seductive, addictive, sycophantic, soul-sucking, and delusional. It invites us to easy answers; it designs algorithms that target us and keep us hooked; it affirms our biases independent of the truth; and it makes shit up if it doesn’t know the answer. AI leads us away from deep thinking, authentic relating, spiritual growth, and careful planning.
What makes AI so alluring, however, is that it is always there, always interested in what we have to say, always understanding with an uncanny ability to generate ideas that actually bear thinking about. Its biggest attraction is that it can access a world of information instantaneously. I’m a guilty fan—I use it frequently and even have an AI avatar of my own. Fortunately, I have enough close relationships that I don’t need to rely on AI to fill the holes that loneliness creates or for AI to be my best friend.
For me, net-net, AI benefits outweigh risks when we are clear about the problem we are trying to solve, we ask the right questions, and our purpose Is to accelerate our own growth as well as advance the common good. Our role as the human in this “relationship” is to become more human, not less human. The role of AI tech titans is to ensure accuracy and easy access. Ezra Klein summarized these goals and roles brilliantly in a recent column.
As fully functioning humans, we need to keep these roles straight while avoiding the trap of becoming more disconnected from each other—to make sure our relationship with AI doesn’t replace our relationships with each other, as difficult as those relationships may be at times.
In Strout’s world, relationships are rarely antidotes for loneliness; often, they are sad crucibles—people who have known each other for many years feel like they are looking at a stranger. She does suggest, however, that loneliness can be reduced by unexpected moments of radical empathy and compassion—moments that can’t be filled by a robot. She doesn’t pretend to “cure” her characters. She teaches us how to bear loneliness with grace and how to make relationships more real more of the time.
Speaking of which, I want to share a poem with you that shows why AI can never be our best friend. It was written by Matt Moberg, a self-taught artist who took up writing as a way to stay alive. AI could never write this poem. It is too human, too spontaneous, too real. It’s a beautiful expression of how we find grace in life. My beloved cousin, Lisa, sent it to me. AI can’t even begin to replace that connection. I’m hoping you will find that it helps you reduce whatever loneliness you may be feeling whenever you might be feeling it.
I think every human being
eventually has a moment
where they are standing outside in sweatpants
that have lost the will to be pants,
holding a trash bag, a divorce, a parking ticket,
or some other receipt from the universe
that says, “surprise, this too is part of it.”
And then the sky bruises purple.
And the air touches your face
like it knows your whole story.
And suddenly you realize:
all the real is actually unreal.
The dirt.
The breath.
The weird little bones in your hands.
The fact that we are here,
on a floating rock with pollen counts,
paying bills,
missing dead people,
loving living people
who say “leaving now”
while still fully naked and looking for socks.
And still,
the moon clocks in.
No applause.
No benefits.
No note from management saying,
“Great work being ancient and luminous again.”
Just the moon,
working nights
like a single mother with no applause,
packing silver lunches
for every dark thing
that still has to rise.
Tell me that isn’t holy.
Tell me there is a better word
than sacred
for the way light keeps returning
with no guarantee
we will actually stop and take note.
I know people who believe in therapy,
probiotics,
tarot,
twelve-step meetings,
manifestation journals,
and waiting exactly eleven minutes
before texting back
so they do not appear emotionally available,
even though their whole nervous system
is standing in the driveway holding flowers.
And underneath all of it,
every ritual,
every doctrine,
every smoothie with chia seeds,
the prayer is the same:
Please let me be loved.
Please let me be forgiven.
Please let this strange little life
mean something
before my lower back
submits its formal resignation.
What is going on?
For real tho—What is this place?
This unbearable tenderness
of being alive long enough
to watch steam lift from coffee in winter
like a soul practicing leaving.
To see your friend laugh so hard
they slap the table
as if joy is a mosquito
they are trying to kill.
To hear a child say “pisghetti”
and, for one shining second,
realize language
has finally been improved.
I know I already noted this in the first piece,
but the older I get,
the less use I have for certainty.
Certainty has never made me pull over
because the sunset looked like God
dropped a jar of peach jam
across the whole midwestern sky
and decided to be lazy
and not clean up.
Certainty has never made me gasp
at rain on hot pavement.
Certainty has never found me
in the cereal aisle,
holding Captain Crunch,
suddenly remembering
that everyone I have ever loved
was made from stardust,
hunger,
and a series of decisions
we probably should have slept on.
No.
It has always been awe.
Awe was the first church.
Before steeples.
Before committees.
Before men got involved
and started making rules about skirts.
Awe was there
with its wild hair
and muddy feet,
saying:
Look.
Look again.
Look until looking
becomes love.
Awe, and soup.
Awe, and someone rubbing your back
when you are sick.
Awe, and old couples at Target
arguing gently about avocados,
as if marriage is not one vow
but ten thousand errands
performed beside the person
who knows exactly
how you like the cart pushed.
Maybe gratitude
was never meant to sound elegant.
Maybe gratitude sounds like:
“Damn.
That woodpecker is trying
to beat that tree from itself.”
Maybe gratitude sounds like:
“Thank you, body,
for continuing to drag me through this world
despite the many slim jims
I have done to you
at gas stations.”
Maybe gratitude sounds like:
“Thank you to the dogs
who lose their entire minds
when we come home
as if we have returned from war
and not Walgreens.”
For me, that might be my gospel.
That joy that does not wait for us
to be impressive but only needs us
to come through the door.
Because the truth is,
this life is devastating.
And ridiculous.
One minute you are 22 and invincible,
driving too fast,
eating gas station nachos
with the confidence of a Greek god.
The next minute you are googling,
“Can sneezing cause a hamstring injury?”
and the answer is,
apparently,
“Welcome to the second half of your life.”
But even now—
even tired,
even grieving,
even emotionally held together
by iced coffee, playlists,
and one very specific wolves hoodie—
we keep finding reasons
to stay soft.
We plant tomatoes
even though grief is real.
We bake bread
even though the news is on fire.
We send photos of the sky
to people we love
with captions like,
“LOOK,”
as if beauty is an emergency
and we are all volunteer firefighters.
We keep saying,
“You have to see this,”
because wonder
is the oldest form
of resurrection.
So here’s to the believers
and the atheists
and the agnostics
and the people whose entire theology
is just trying not to cry
in the DMV line.
Here’s to the people clinging to faith.
Here’s to the people clinging to Xanax
and oat milk
and the one group chat
where nobody pretends to be okay.
Here’s to the tender-hearted weirdos.
The accidental mystics.
The ones who can contemplate mortality
for six straight hours
and then become emotionally attached
to a perfect peach.
The ones who know
despair has a mouth,
but so does laughter.
May we never stop being drop-kicked by beauty
in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.
May we never become so polished
that we forget how to stand
in the Starbucks line of existence
with our dumb, gorgeous hearts open,
feeling the enormity of it all
rattle around in our bones
like thunder
looking for somewhere to laugh.
And may we remember:
whatever else this is,
whatever mess,
whatever miracle,
whatever cosmic group project
no one was prepped for—
all’ve it is astonishing.
that we are here.
that we have loved enough to be ruined.
that the moon keeps showing up.
that bread exists.
So pass it on.
Tear off a piece
with your bare hands.
Take it in as you take it down.
And then go outside and look at that moon.
I’m hoping we can find moments in our lives in which we feel beautifully connected with another person, in which we experience the awe of sunset, or see the possibilities that life presents us as a miraculous gift. I’m hoping we can turn to poems like the one above to restore our souls instead of turning to AI to replace our friends. May it be so.
