Howdy folks!
Spain are World Champions! 🇪🇸⚽⭐ (and I didn’t even need any milk this time…👀 [Yes, there is an irreverent story there…])
📌 In This Edition…
- Quote
- Question
- Quick Update
⛰ Quote
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
— Marcel Proust
🏕 A Short StoryQuestion
This week, I cried over a wheel.
Of all the things I thought might make me cry this week (Golden Buzzers, Subaru commercials, dogs reunited with service members, deaf children hearing their parents for the first time, any note played on a cello)… a wheel wasn’t on the list.
I mean, sure, the wheel is one of humanity’s greatest inventions. Think about everything that would suck without a wheel attached to it: moving your trash bins, riding a bike, hauling a cooler, mowing the grass. Wheels kinda make the world go round. (That one is for you, Phillip).
But this wheel was different.
I came across an article about a dad who designed and built a hiking cart for his disabled daughter. It’s a cross between a backpack and a wheelbarrow.
The piece highlights how he grew up in an outdoorsy family in Utah, camping and hiking. He continued those traditions with his own family until his third daughter was born with a rare genetic disorder. They used a baby carrier until she was too big. And then they stopped.
He describes hitting a fork in the road, realizing they’d have to stop hiking as a family or leave his daughter at home with somebody else. The line from the article that really punched me, though, was this: “Before he knew it, almost 3 years had passed, and the family had mostly stopped going outside together.”
I read it twice.
Then I closed my laptop and stared out the window for a long time.
It dawned on me that I hadn’t just stopped hiking. I had stopped dreaming.
Every summer my social media fills up with fun family trips. Beach vacations. National parks. Family bike rides. Trailhead photos. Cave explorations.
It always seems to catch me off guard.
I have always loved the outdoors. Katie and I used to disappear on summer road trips, camping and hiking in Colorado and Arizona.
I miss making coffee on a camp stove after freezing all night, sitting together in the quiet watching the sun climb over the mountains.
Hiking is mostly just walking.
Except my daughter Izzie can’t walk. At least not yet.
It’s not even really about the mountains (well, not fully). I am grieving shared experiences with my family. Making memories. Discovering places. The gift of spontaneity.
That dad from Utah refused to choose between the outdoors and his daughter. So he built something. He imagined a future I had all but given up on. He saw something I couldn’t yet see.
Maybe I can hike with Izzie one day…
That’s why I cried.
Sometimes we don’t even realize what we’ve been carrying until someone shows us what might still be possible.
Not all grief arrives at a funeral.
We are all carrying hidden losses that rarely have names. The future we imagined. The hobby we quietly have given up on. The dream that we stopped believing was possible.
So I would be curious to hear from you:
What have you been carrying that no one sees?
Chances are, it isn’t just you. Because every person you pass in the grocery store; every parent at the playground; every coworker; every neighbor; every impatient driver—every one of them is living inside a story that you cannot fully see.
I think that’s what Proust meant by having “new eyes.”
Maybe the next great adventure isn’t another mountain trail after all.
Maybe it’s learning to see the people already around us with new eyes.
📚 A Quick Photo Update
Stay curious, my friends,
David
PS: Confessions of the Beloved is headed to formatting this month! I honestly wouldn’t be here without all of your encouragement, thoughtful replies, conversations, and support along the way.
I hope my writing—whether it’s a book, an essay, or a simple story—helps people see familiar things with new eyes.
DAVID SCOT MUSSER 