Last week, I was sitting up front on the stage of the Stories We Don't Tell, a live storytelling show I co-produce. I'm usually off to the side to help with the audio recording of the performers. The host of the show, Stefan Hostetter, referred to the event as an 'experiment in empathy' and this made me think, as I sat there watching the audience watch the performers, that with the recent political turmoil, just getting up and sharing your story is a political act.

Then I thought, Oh, shit, this is bad.

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What does the Lord of the Rings and Batman Begins have in common? You’ll have to read to the end of this unnecessarily long diatribe to find out.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about change, specifically how I want to evolve and get better as a person. I don’t really need to get into what the catalyst was, let’s just say it was a series of things, big and small, that brought me to the conclusion that I need to not just change a few things about myself, but do a complete overhaul.

As many people do around this time of year, I started thinking about my diet. Again. I’ve put a lot of thought into adopting a plant-based diet. Lots of thinking, very little action. I actually tried to do this once before and quickly changed my food intake all at once. I mean, I don’t eat terribly, but the withdrawal from that experience was just too much. I was weak, well, maybe weak is too strong a word, let’s say I wasn’t ready. So, I went back to thinking about it.

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A few weeks ago, I was driving in my car and a recent unfortunate experience popped into my head. The experience was a small one, like minuscule small, so insignificant that if I tried to explain it here, I would feel embarrassed and ridiculous. But that’s the thing, I’ve probably thought of this experience no less then 2 - 3 times a day since it happened. The reality is that the other people that were present when this happened have probably thought about it zero times a day. It’s a secret shame, one that makes no sense to anyone but me, something that if I attempted to explain to my closest friend, he would probably be confused by my inadequacy of not being able to get past these kinds of things.

But then after that moment in the car, another thought popped into my head and that thought was: It doesn’t matter. And that third thought was: yes, that statement is true. And I thought about all the things and the people and the situations that don’t matter. Maybe some of these things that don’t matter to me are important to you, and I mean no disrespect, but that doesn’t matter either.

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A couple of weeks ago, I went out on a snowy and brisk afternoon to partake in the tradition of Sunday brunch with a great friend. We settled on an Irish pub down the street from me. It's a big place and we like to sit around for a couple of hours after filling our gullets, sipping on coffee refills and talking about life stuff. Three things that simply cannot be accomplished at places where the servers - understandably - want you to leave, to be replaced by other brunch-illiterati.

During about our fifth refill of coffee, we noticed the pub was getting unusually busy for such a snowy afternoon. Then someone took to the small makeshift stage where local Irish folk singers entertained the weekday customers. "Thank you for coming this afternoon," the man said. "I'm sure Cindy would have been so happy to see all of you here."

My friend and I looked at each other. We were at a wake.

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