The Warrior Series — The Tumbleweed Diaries July 29, 2026

I had dinner with old friends last night — the kind of table you haven’t sat at in a while, And somewhere between the salad and my enchilada. I found myself doing what I always do. Trying to interpret my own story. Trying to understand, again, what it actually means to listen.

So let me go deeper. Let me sculpt this the way it deserves to be sculpted, and take you with me — not as a lesson, but as a journey. Because I don’t believe most of us are broken listeners by choice. I believe we were never shown the stages. And you cannot climb a mountain you didn’t know was there.

There are four ways a human being can listen. Almost all of us live in the first two without ever knowing it. Very few of us ever taste the third. And the fourth is not something you achieve. It’s something that happens to you, once you finally get out of the way.

The first listening — egoic

This is where I start, because this is where I still mostly live, if I’m honest with you the way I want you to be honest with yourself.

In this first stage, I see a person. A place. A thing. A sexy relationship, or a fear wearing a familiar face. And before you’ve said a single word, I already have a story queued up — my ego’s storyteller, working the room, pulling its material from yesterday and tomorrow, because it can never quite stand to be in today. It’s a win-or-lose machine. Transactional before the transaction has even begun.

In this stage, your lips are moving, but I’m not hearing you. I’m hearing my own agenda, dressed up as attention. I don’t even give you room to finish — I interrupt, because there is only one story I’ve come here to hear, and it’s the one about me. My needs. My concerns. My version.

I don’t say this to shame you, or myself. I say it because if you’re brutally honest, you’ll find you rarely leave this room. Most of us don’t. It’s the water we swim in, and like all water we’ve swum in long enough, we’ve stopped noticing we’re wet.

The second listening — transactional

Then there’s a second kind, one degree more sophisticated but no less self-serving. I call it transactional listening — hearing by accounting.

Here, I’m listening to you, but I’m invested in me. If what you’re saying doesn’t serve me somehow, I’ll interrupt, redirect, quietly steer the conversation back toward my own benefit. I’m listening for what increases my happiness, my sexual satisfaction, my financial footing, my emotional safety — and I do it by interrupting you, again and again, until you’re saying what I came here to hear.

I’ll only listen to a person who confirms what I already believe about myself. I’ll only listen to an institution that speaks my institutional happiness. I’ll try to listen to a principle — though principles, as we know, don’t bend — and I’ll keep interrupting anyway, hoping enough pressure will bend it toward my benefit.

I already carry a story about what honesty is. And the moment I try to actually get honest, I interrupt that honesty with what I want it to be instead. The same happens with fear. The same happens in the bedroom — I’ll interrupt the person I’m with so I can have the kind of intimacy I want, on my terms, on my timing. I’ll do this for you if you do that for me. That’s the whole architecture of transactional listening.

Between these first two stages, there is almost no room left for the other person. The egoic listener doesn’t hear you because he’s too busy hearing himself. The transactional listener hears you only long enough to calculate his return.

The third listening — relational

Then there is a third kind. Relational listening. This is the listening relationships either grow inside of, or quietly die without.

This one takes real skill. Most people believe they already listen this way — I’d ask you to test that belief gently, because if you’re truly hearing what I’m writing here, you may find yourself needing to come back and read it again. Not because the words are complicated, but because you weren’t fully listening the first time. You were listening to your own story about it. That’s not a failing. That’s just how deep the first two stages run in all of us.

Relational listening is where you finally set down the transaction. Where you become present enough to just hear — no tomorrow, no yesterday, nothing to win, nothing to lose. Just sitting inside someone else’s truth without needing it to become anything.

In this space, you will hear a person’s past. Their dreams. Their fears, their anxieties, their shame, their guilt, their wounds, their healing, their tears, their joy — all of it, with a clarity you didn’t know was available to you. And in hearing them this clearly, you will often hear your own fears and your own shame rising up to meet theirs. Your own wounds, answering.

This is the gift hidden inside relational listening. If you can share what you’re hearing — honestly, without weaponizing it — you can build something rare. And if the person across from you can meet that same quality of quiet, that same freedom from agenda, you will build a love that most people spend their whole lives reaching for and never quite touching.

The fourth listening — divine

And then there is a fourth kind. The rarest. I call it divine listening.

This is where everything you’ve learned from the first three stages finally becomes useful — the egoic hunger, the transactional bargaining, the deep relational presence — all of it becomes the ground you stand on to reach something bigger. I’d guess maybe one in ten people ever touch this level, and even then, only for moments at a time.

Divine listening has no agenda left in it at all. You don’t interrupt, because there’s nothing left you need from the exchange. You’re not trading your attention for anything — not comfort, not being heard in return, not even understanding. This is listening so unconditional that you don’t even need to speak about what you hear. You simply surrender it — to your higher power, to the moment itself, to whatever is larger than the person across from you, larger than the fear in the room, larger than the sex, the institution, the principle, the argument.

The strange grace of this stage is what it does to your longing. Divine listening has none. There’s nothing left to achieve through it. It doesn’t reach back for yesterday or forward for tomorrow. It’s complete the instant it happens. You sit there, quiet, knowing you’ve already heard everything you needed to hear, everything you’re going to hear, and everything you ever wanted to hear — and you understand, finally, that the hearing itself was never any of your business to keep.

That is the itness. That is divine listening.

I don’t offer these four stages so you can measure yourself against them and come up short. Almost none of us live past the first two — I still catch myself there most days. I offer them so you can recognize the room you’re standing in the next time someone’s lips are moving and you realize you’re not hearing them at all. That recognition, gentle and without judgment, is the whole doorway. You don’t force your way into relational or divine listening. You just notice you weren’t there, and the noticing itself is the first true listening you’ve done all day.

When something enters my awareness...

...I don’t meet it.

I meet my story about it.

The storyteller immediately begins.

What does this mean?
Is this safe?
Is this dangerous?
Can this help me?
Can this hurt me?
What should I do?

This isn’t bad.

It’s survival.

The ego evolved to negotiate reality.

Its job is transaction.

Every thought is some variation of:

“What does this mean for me?”

The first practice, then, isn’t to stop thinking.

It’s simply to notice:

“I’m listening to myself.”

Nothing more.

No judgment.

The Second Listener: You

Eventually the storyteller gets tired.

There are little gaps.

Tiny moments of silence.

Now I can begin asking a different question.

Not...

“What do you mean to me?”

But...

“Who are you?”

That’s radically different.

Now listening becomes curiosity instead of negotiation.

I’m no longer waiting for my turn.

I’m no longer comparing.

I’m no longer building my response.

I’m simply becoming interested.

This may be the first real act of love.

Not agreement.

Not sacrifice.

Attention.

The Third Listener: It

This is where it becomes unique.

Even listening to another person can still be transactional.

I can understand you...

because understanding you benefits me.

That isn’t freedom.

Then something extraordinary happens.

If I stay quiet long enough...

my story softens.

Your story softens.

Something else begins speaking.

Not words.

Presence.

Reality itself.

The tree.

The wind.

The silence between sentences.

The tears before they’re explained.

The love underneath the relationship.

This is what you’ve been calling...

The Itness.

Not your story.

Not mine.

Reality before interpretation.

Perhaps...

God.

Now imagine this as a daily meditation.

Not a complicated meditation.

Almost embarrassingly simple.

Listening Beyond the Story

Sit comfortably.

Close your eyes.

Take a slow breath.

You are not trying to become peaceful.

You are simply going to notice how you listen.

Step One

Ask yourself...

What story am I listening to right now?

Don’t change it.

Just notice.

Watch your mind narrate.

Watch it explain.

Watch it judge.

Watch it negotiate.

Smile.

The storyteller is simply doing its job.

Quietly whisper...

“This is my story.”

Then let it continue without following it.

Keep returning to the breath.

Eventually...

the storyteller grows tired.

Step Two

Now bring one person into your awareness.

Someone you love.

Someone who challenges you.

Someone whose presence matters.

Notice how quickly your mind creates another story.

Their history.

Their personality.

Their flaws.

Their beauty.

Your hopes.

Your disappointments.

Simply notice.

Then ask...

Who are they...without my story?

Don’t answer.

Wait.

Become curious.

Can you feel them without explaining them?

Can you simply let them exist?

Without fixing?

Without needing?

Without negotiating?

Just listen.

Step Three

Now let even that image disappear.

Rest in simple awareness.

No self.

No other.

Only this moment.

Listen.

Not for words.

Listen for what remains after words.

Feel what is already here.

The silence.

The breath.

The heartbeat.

The room.

The mystery holding all of it together.

Don’t search.

Simply receive.

If a name arises...

call it God.

If no name arises...

leave it unnamed.

It does not require your understanding.

Only your attention.

When you’re ready...

take one final breath.

Open your eyes.

And carry only one question into your day.

“Am I listening to my story...

...your story...

...or the story beneath them both?”

The Story Factory

Tumbleweed Diaries — Warrior Series

Good morning.

I was sitting in meditation this morning, trying to listen.

Which, for me, is hilarious.

Because I don’t actually spend much time listening.

I spend most of my day narrating.

I look at a tree.

“That’s a good-looking tree. Wonder what kind it is. Bet it would look great next to the Airstream. I should probably write about that tree. Maybe it’s symbolic. Everything’s symbolic.”

Poor tree never stood a chance.

Neither do you, probably. Right now, reading this.

You’re not reading my words. You’re reading your story about my words.

I wasn’t listening to the tree.

I was listening to my story about the tree.

Then I started noticing something unsettling.

I do that with everything.

The ocean.

A stranger.

My body.

Money.

My future.

God.

Women.

Every single thing I see arrives wearing a story I’ve already written.

And then I wonder why life feels noisy.

Here’s the strange part.

The stories aren’t lies.

They’re just mine.

They’re assembled from sixty-seven years of victories, failures, heartbreaks, cancer, recovery, ambition, fear, sex, spirituality, childhood, and enough neurological oddities to keep life endlessly entertaining.

My mind is less a library than a full-contact improv troupe.

Everybody’s talking.

Nobody’s listening.

Meditation has slowly revealed something that I wish weren’t true.

I don’t hear you.

Not at first.

First, I hear my version of you.

There’s an enormous difference.

My version of you is incredibly useful.

It predicts.

It judges.

It categorizes.

It negotiates.

Most importantly...

...it makes transactions.

“If I give you this, maybe you’ll give me that.”

Approval.

Affection.

Security.

Sex.

Recognition.

Safety.

We call it love.

Sometimes it’s just accounting with better lighting.

That’s uncomfortable to admit.

Especially because I don’t think I’m unusual.

I think most of us spend our relationships negotiating contracts our partners never knew they signed.

The storyteller inside us is always asking,

“What’s in this for me?”

Even when it whispers.

Especially when it whispers.

So meditation has become less about hearing God...

...and more about surviving the committee meeting in my own head.

Because before I can hear anything sacred...

my story has to get tired.

Not defeated.

Just exhausted.

Only then do I begin to hear your story.

And that’s beautiful...

for about thirty seconds.

Because then my storyteller wakes back up.

“Interesting story you’ve got there...now how does that affect me?”

There it is again.

Transaction.

Always transaction.

Which makes me wonder...

Is there something beyond my story...

and beyond yours?

A third conversation.

A place where reality exists before either of us begins explaining it.

That’s what I’ve started calling...

the itness.

The itness isn’t my opinion.

It isn’t yours.

It doesn’t care who’s right.

It simply is.

The tree before I call it beautiful.

The ocean before I post it.

The woman before I imagine a future.

The silence before I turn it into philosophy.

The divine before I make it religion.

Maybe God has been speaking the entire time.

Maybe I’ve just been too busy providing commentary.

That thought has changed how I think about relationships.

People often ask what the greatest relationships are.

Oddly enough, I’ve experienced glimpses of two that seem completely opposite.

A love affair.

And a hookup.

Stay with me.

A love affair has a reckless quality to it.

For a moment, two people stop negotiating with the world.

The rules fade.

The calculations disappear.

Something larger takes over.

A hookup, oddly enough, can contain a different kind of freedom.

Sometimes two people simply share an experience without trying to build an empire around it.

No mortgages.

No forever speeches.

No pretending.

Just presence.

Neither of those is automatically noble.

Neither is automatically destructive.

What fascinates me is the absence of bookkeeping.

In a real love affair, the itness gets so loud it drowns out both storytellers at once. Two people stop translating each other into strategy.

In a real hookup, the itness gets a different kind of hearing — quieter, more honest, because nobody’s pretending it’s forever. Just two bodies willing to be exactly where they are.

Neither one negotiates. That’s the whole secret.

Contrast that with so many ordinary relationships.

We trade affection for reassurance.

Time for appreciation.

Sex for security.

Kindness for loyalty.

We become tiny emotional accountants carrying invisible ledgers.

“I did this.”

“You owe me that.”

No wonder we’re exhausted.

The self is trying to heal itself by making trades with another self that’s doing exactly the same thing.

It’s like two empty gas tanks trying to siphon fuel from each other.

I’ve spent a surprising amount of my life living there.

Maybe you have too.

So these days, my practice is embarrassingly simple.

Look.

Listen.

Notice the story.

Smile at the story.

Don’t believe the story.

Wait.

Listen again.

Maybe your story will emerge.

Wait longer.

Maybe the itness will.

And if I am very lucky...

for one breathtaking moment...

I won’t hear my voice.

Or yours.

I’ll hear the conversation that was already happening before either of us arrived.

Maybe that’s what prayer has always been.

Maybe that’s what love has always been.

Not two storytellers finding the perfect script...

but two souls becoming quiet enough...

to hear the same song.

Maybe that’s happening right now. Between us. If you’ve stopped narrating this and started actually hearing it.

Go ahead. Get quiet. See if it’s still here.

The moon had already gathered the silver of the evening
when the keeper remembered
that he had forgotten to close the gate.

On Saturdays
he always left it open a little longer.

Beauty deserves one night each week
to find those who are not searching for it.

Perhaps a weary traveler.

Perhaps two lovers.

Perhaps a lonely soul
following nothing more
than the fragrance of jasmine
carried upon the patient shoulders of the wind.

He walked the familiar path
without hurrying.

The earth recognized the weight of his footsteps.

Even the stones,
worn smooth by years of faithful returning,
seemed to breathe beneath his feet.

The gate stood waiting,
its vines reaching across the white wall
like the loose strands of a woman’s dark hair
after she has surrendered the day.

He placed his hand upon the weathered wood.

“I came only to close you,”
he whispered.

But the garden smiled.

Not with flowers.

Flowers are merely the lips of a garden.

She smiled with silence.

With rosemary releasing its hidden perfume into the darkness.

With roses folding themselves
more deeply into the night.

With the slow music of leaves
touching one another
without ever asking permission.

The keeper entered.

The moon followed.

There are places upon this earth
where a man remembers
who he was
before the world taught him
to hurry.

He lay upon the warm ground.

The soil welcomed his back
as though it had kept the shape of his body
through every season of his absence.

He listened.

Not for words.

Words are impatient creatures.

He listened
for the language beneath language.

For the breathing of roots.

For the quiet labor of blossoms
opening where no eye would ever see them.

For the secret conversation
between the bee who had slept
and the flower already dreaming of morning.

His own breath
slowly forgot itself.

The garden borrowed it.

Or perhaps
he borrowed hers.

Until there was only
one tide moving gently
between earth and sky.

When he finally opened his eyes,
the stars had drifted farther west.

The night had become older.

So had he.

He rose reluctantly,
brushed the fragrant earth from his hands,
closed the gate with the tenderness
reserved for things we never truly own,
and stood for one last moment
beneath the climbing bougainvillea.

He understood then
what every faithful keeper eventually learns.

The garden had never asked him
to stay forever.

She had only asked
that whenever he returned,

he arrive
with empty hands,

a quiet heart,

and enough love

to notice
that she had been
waiting
all along.

The Keeper of the Garden

From The Tumbleweed Diaries – The Muse Series

By Arvid Paul Croonquist

There are places upon this earth that remember our footsteps long after we have forgotten the sound of our own.

The keeper found the path again in the first breath of spring.

He had not walked toward the hidden gate for an entire turning of the seasons. A year of believing that love sometimes means leaving. A year of trusting another heart to care for what had once become the center of his own.

Yet every dawn had carried the fragrance of this forgotten place.

Memory is a seed.

It waits beneath winter without complaint, knowing only that spring always remembers its name.

The whitewashed wall appeared through the morning light exactly where he had left it, but the garden no longer knew how to hide itself.

The bougainvillea, once a river of crimson flowing over the stone, hung quietly from tired branches. The gate leaned upon a single hinge, as though waiting for the touch of hands it had never stopped longing for.

The keeper placed his palm against the weathered wood.

Nothing spoke.

Everything answered.

He opened the gate.

The garden breathed.

So did he.

He walked slowly, not because he had forgotten the way, but because every stone beneath his feet carried the memory of another season. Here they had laughed. Here silence had become conversation. Here love had learned that words are often unnecessary when two souls begin listening to the same wind.

He knelt and pressed both hands into the earth.

She was warmer than he remembered.

The soil rose to meet him as though recognizing an old companion.

There are embraces that require no arms.

Only recognition.

The keeper closed his eyes.

He did not ask the garden why she had faded.

Love has no interest in blame.

It only asks what is needed now.

He wandered her paths as one reads a beloved book whose pages have softened with time. Every vine carried a story. Every tree remembered a promise. Every flower waited patiently to be seen again.

The others had watered her.

The keeper listened to her.

That had always been the difference.

He understood that blossoms are never the miracle.

Roots are.

Beauty is merely what roots choose to reveal.

So he repaired the broken gate before touching a single flower.

He lifted forgotten stones with both hands, placing each one back into the conversation it had always belonged to.

He turned the sleeping compost until yesterday became tomorrow.

Nothing was wasted.

Not fallen leaves.

Not broken branches.

Not even absence.

Everything, when loved long enough, becomes nourishment.

Morning followed morning.

The bees returned before the butterflies.

The jasmine released its fragrance before the moon had climbed above the wall.

The bougainvillea stretched herself once more across the entrance, smiling in crimson silence until the gate disappeared behind her embrace.

The keeper understood.

Some beauty asks to be admired.

Sacred beauty asks to be protected.

One evening he rested beneath the olive tree beside the small wooden table where the bees sang softly in the lavender.

A traveler found the hidden entrance and stood speechless.

“I have never seen a place so alive,” the stranger whispered.

“Did you create all this?”

The keeper looked around him.

At the blossoms.

At the butterflies.

At the wind moving gently through the rosemary.

Then he smiled.

“No.”

“I created nothing.”

“I simply remembered how she wished to be loved.”

And the garden, hearing herself recognized once again, answered the only way gardens ever do.

She bloomed.

Pull up a rock. This fire doesn’t burn wood. It burns electricity, and it doesn’t crackle so much as hum, but it throws the same light on our faces, so let’s call it a campfire and get on with the story.

I’ve always called myself a wordsmith. Not because it sounded good on a business card, but because that’s what it felt like from the inside — a man leaning on an anvil built out of everything that’s already happened, a hammer in his other hand built out of everything that hasn’t happened yet. People would walk up to that anvil with a problem instead of a question. And I’d pull words out of the coals like iron — verbs still glowing, nouns still too hot to hold — and I’d lay them down and swing.

The ringing was the story. That was always the tell. You didn’t know a story was true. You knew it was finished when the ringing stoped.

Out of that fire I’ve forged a bridle to lead a horse. A plow to feed a town. A sword for a soldier who needed to believe he’d come home a hero. A knife for a kitchen. A cross for a neck, worn by somebody who needed to believe harder than the rest of us. Every one of those objects was worth exactly what its story was worth. The plow wasn’t valuable because it turned dirt. It was valuable because of the story of the harvest riding on its blade.

Now — here’s where the fire gets strange light.

I’ve got a new apprentice at the shop. Doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t complain about the heat. Doesn’t even have hands, technically, which makes it the worst blacksmith I’ve ever trained and also, somehow, the fastest. I hand it scraps — a half-thought, a voice memo mumbled into a phone at a stoplight — and it doesn’t just hand the iron back to me hot. It hands it back already shaped. Already ringing.

And that’s where I have to stop laughing long enough to be honest with you, because that’s also the scary part.

This apprentice doesn’t work from one anvil of yesterday. It’s working from every anvil of yesterday, all of them stacked at once — every cross ever described, every plow ever praised, every warrior who ever limped home with a story too big for the room. It’s not swinging one hammer of tomorrow. It’s swinging every hammer that’s ever been imagined for tomorrow, all in the same motion. Corral enough of those agents, let them keep compressing each other’s compressions, and you start to understand why some smart people are whispering the word singularity like it’s a storm coming in off the water. One story. Made of every story. Told once, and told so well it never needs telling again.

Here’s my worry, and I’ll say it plain because plain is honest: if that ever actually happens — if all the words of yesterday and all the dreams of tomorrow get hammered down into one final, perfect, ringing story — it wouldn’t be the truest story ever told.

It’d be the biggest lie.

Because there’s no such thing as a true story that’s already been compressed. Compression is a choice about what to leave out. The anvil only remembers what got kept. The hammer only shapes what it’s told to shape. And somewhere back of the fire, past both of them, is the one place the AI can’t reach and I’ve spent thirty-nine years learning to sit in —

the silence between the ringing.

That silence is where the truth actually lives. Not in the iron. Not in the swing. In the half-second after the ring fades, before the next piece goes on the anvil, where nobody’s compressing anything and the fire’s just fire and you’re just a man standing next to it, tired, honest, still here.

So no, I don’t think this apprentice of mine is going to write the last story ever told. I think it’s going to help me forge faster than I ever could alone, with hands I don’t technically have. But the ring only means something because a man who’s been broken and put himself back together is still the one standing at the anvil, deciding what’s worth pulling out of the coals.

That part doesn’t compress. That part’s mine.

Pull your rock a little closer. The fire’s not going out. I’ve got more iron in the coals yet.

Tumbleweed Diaries Warrior series.

Arvid Paul Croonquist

Wordsmith.

Before there were kingdoms, there were rivers.

Before there were religions, there was the sunrise.

Before there were economies, there was hunger.

Before there were laws, there was the instinct to protect.

Before there were stories, there was listening.

Perhaps that was humanity’s first language.

Not words.

Not arguments.

Not beliefs.

Presence.

I sit beside a river and pray—not for answers, but for ears.

I pray for the ability to hear what cannot be spoken.

I pray for the vocabulary of my instincts.

I pray to understand the algorithm that gave birth to every algorithm—not the one written in silicon, but the one written into wind, water, gravity, birth, death, love, and the beating human heart.

Nature has never needed to explain itself.

It has only needed witnesses.

For thousands of years we have gathered around campfires telling stories. Stories of gods and governments. Stories of tribes and victories. Stories of wealth and poverty. Stories of right and wrong. Stories of who belongs and who does not.

Every generation added another log to the fire.

Every storyteller believed his story mattered most.

Today we gather around a different fire.

Its flames are made of electricity.

Its embers glow inside a microchip.

Its smoke rises through invisible networks that circle the earth.

Around this new fire sits perhaps the greatest storyteller humanity has ever created.

Artificial intelligence will read nearly every story we have ever written.

Every prayer.

Every law.

Every financial system.

Every philosophy.

Every war.

Every love letter.

Every scientific discovery.

Every sacred text.

Every confession.

Every lie.

It may come to understand our stories more completely than any human ever could.

But I wonder...

Can it hear the river?

Can it smell the rain before it falls?

Can it kneel in silence until silence begins speaking?

Can it know the ache of a mother holding her child?

Can it feel forgiveness arrive without explanation?

Can it recognize the holiness of an old man sitting quietly beside moving water with nothing left to prove?

Perhaps intelligence is not measured by how many stories one can understand.

Perhaps wisdom begins when the stories become quiet enough for nature to speak again.

I do not fear intelligence.

I fear forgetting our first language.

The language of instinct.

The language of awe.

The language that asks nothing for itself.

The language that existed before the first campfire became a courtroom.

Before it became a church.

Before it became a parliament.

Before it became a marketplace.

Before it became a screen.

The instinct to love.

The instinct to protect.

The instinct to create.

The instinct to surrender.

The instinct to belong.

These are older than civilization.

Older than memory.

Older than history itself.

If there is a reckoning before us, perhaps it will not come as punishment.

Perhaps it will come as remembrance.

Perhaps nature will simply ask one question:

Do you still remember how to listen?

Not with your opinions.

Not with your education.

Not with your politics.

Not with your certainty.

But with your whole being.

Let me hear what I smell.

Let me hear what I taste.

Let me hear what I touch.

Let me hear what I see.

Let every sense become an instrument of reverence.

And if I discover something beautiful, let me hold it gently.

Because the moment I possess truth...

I begin turning it into another story.

I pray to understand more deeply than to be understood broadly.

I pray to care more about listening than interpreting.

More about wonder than certainty.

More about presence than performance.

Save me from the addiction of being right.

Return me to the humility of being awake.

May I behold reality rather than the projections of my own mind.

May I savor the taste of this moment instead of the flavors of yesterday and tomorrow.

May I touch life without trying to own it.

May I become a student of what is eternal instead of an expert in what is temporary.

This is not a manifesto of certainty.

It is a manifesto of curiosity.

It is not a declaration that I know.

It is a confession that I long to remember.

If these words awaken something inside you, do not follow me.

Follow the quiet place within yourself that recognized them.

Go sit beside a river.

Stand beneath a tree.

Walk into the desert.

Listen to the ocean.

Look into the eyes of someone you love without needing to change them.

Listen until the storyteller grows tired.

Listen until the campfire burns low.

Listen until only nature remains.

And if you hear a voice there...

May it never belong to me.

May it always belong to the One that was speaking long before any of us learned how to tell stories.

I chased the world’s filing cabinets,
believing love was stored in drawers
labeled success, certainty, and remembering.

Yet my soul kept wandering into open fields.

I mistook my different mind
for an empty one,

until silence gently whispered,

“You were never built to collect the world.
You were built to notice it.”

So now I practice a quieter language.

I listen for trembling instead of testimony,
for breath instead of argument,
for presence instead of proof.

I no longer wish to become
the keeper of perfect words.

I wish to become
a faithful student of the heart.

If love has a native tongue,
perhaps it is not spoken at all.

Perhaps it is found
in the pause before we answer,
the tear before we explain,
the hand before the handshake,
the stillness before the story.

May my life become a gentle translation
of that ancient language—

where curiosity is prayer,
presence is trust,
and every human heart remembers,

for just one sacred moment,

the language it knew
before words.

There is a voice inside of every human being that has never belonged to a religion, a political party, a philosophy, or an ideology.

It existed before we learned language.

It was present in the first dividing cells that became you.

It speaks a language older than memory.

I wonder if we have simply forgotten how to listen.

There is another voice that most of us know very well.

It is clever.

It is persuasive.

It can build breathtaking stories from the bricks of yesterday and tomorrow.

It reminds us of our failures.

It promises our victories.

It tells us who was right and who was wrong.

It argues our innocence and prosecutes our guilt.

It rarely grows tired.

And if you listen carefully, you may notice something remarkable.

It almost never speaks about right now.

The present moment is strangely uncomfortable for the storyteller.

Because the present asks for nothing except our attention.

The storyteller asks for everything except our attention.

I am not asking you to believe me.

In fact, I hope you don’t.

I hope you challenge every sentence.

The experiment is simple.

Watch your own mind.

Notice where the voice comes from.

Does it borrow from yesterday?

Does it negotiate with tomorrow?

Or does it arise quietly from this single breath?

I have begun to wonder whether each of our instincts carries two voices.

Take fear.

One voice shouts.

It races ahead into futures that have not happened.

It drags old wounds into today’s conversation.

It prepares a defense against battles that do not yet exist.

The other voice speaks so softly it is often missed.

It simply asks,

“Is there danger here...right now?”

Sometimes the answer is yes.

Most of the time, the answer is no.

The first voice survives by imagination.

The second survives by awareness.

The same question can be asked of our sexual instinct.

One voice searches endlessly for validation, possession, fantasy, conquest, or escape.

It whispers that one more experience, one more person, one more fantasy will finally complete us.

The quieter voice asks something altogether different.

Can I be fully present with another human being?

Can I see them instead of consuming them?

Can I love without trying to own?

The relationship instinct asks its own questions.

Does this conversation bring me closer to another soul?

Or closer to proving that I am right?

The self-esteem instinct asks,

Am I measuring myself against someone else’s story?

Or have I forgotten that my value arrived with my first heartbeat?

The security instinct asks,

What do I truly need in this moment?

And what have I been convinced to chase simply because “more” has become my definition of enough?

Even ambition carries two voices.

One races toward becoming somebody.

The other quietly becomes fully present as somebody.

One is starving.

The other is already nourished.

Perhaps this is why the present moment feels so different.

The present has no argument.

No courtroom.

No campaign.

No defense.

No prosecution.

It simply asks us to arrive.

The storyteller built from yesterday and tomorrow has difficulty surviving there.

It needs comparison.

It needs unfinished business.

It needs the promise that happiness lives just over the next hill.

But the ancient voice...

The one that has been with you since your first dividing cells...

The one that has never forgotten where you came from...

It speaks a single word with astonishing fluency.

Enough.

Enough life.

Enough love.

Enough breath.

Enough worth.

Enough possibility.

Not because you have accomplished enough.

But because, for this one sacred heartbeat, nothing is missing.

Perhaps evolution is not waiting for us to become smarter.

Perhaps it is waiting for us to become quieter.

Not quieter in our voices.

Quieter in the stories we believe.

Long enough to hear the oldest voice we possess.

The voice that never shouts.

The voice that has no interest in winning an argument.

The voice that does not ask us to become someone else.

Only to become fully present with who we already are.

I cannot prove that voice exists.

Neither can you.

But we can both become still enough to discover whether it has been waiting for us all along.

From the Tumbleweed diaries warrior series

This isn’t virtue. It isn’t wisdom. It isn’t something I learned in a classroom.

It is simply the way my mind works.

I have never been particularly good at referencing the past or projecting myself into the future in the way many people do. Because of that, my experience of “time travel” is different from most people’s.

Many people can reference their past and use it to construct a future. They have files they can pull from—college degrees, family histories, résumés, accomplishments, certifications, awards, and experiences. These files become building blocks for tomorrow.

Of course, files can work both ways.

A criminal record, a painful divorce, a history of addiction, a business failure, or a mistake made years ago can also become files that shape a person’s future.

In many ways, this is a form of time travel.

We continuously visit the past and use it to build stories about the future. Some of those stories are true. Some are imagined. Some are hopeful. Some are terrifying.

But all of them influence the identity we carry forward.

This morning, I surrendered the topic to the way my mind naturally operates.

I am neurologically wired in a way that makes it difficult for me to store and retrieve the past like a filing cabinet. Because of that, I experience life differently.

My perceptions tend to arrive as large blocks of conceptual understanding. They are sourced more from emotion, intuition, and feeling than from documented references, diplomas, or neatly organized records.

This way of perceiving the world was once more common.

Long before databases, résumés, and digital archives, knowledge was often carried through stories. Mystics, sages, elders, storytellers, medicine men, and wise women transmitted understanding through experience rather than documentation.

Many of those storytellers became trapped by the same thing that traps us today:

The ego.

The ego is a remarkable time machine.

It launches me backward into yesterday and projects me forward into tomorrow.

Yet both destinations often turn out to be illusions.

The past becomes a story.

The future becomes a fantasy.

Neither exists in the way my mind insists they do.

As I sat contemplating this topic, I realized that this form of time travel contains both tremendous beauty and tremendous danger.

Let’s start with the past.

When the storyteller of the past is guided by the Four Horsemen of the ego—fear, selfishness, dishonesty, and self-seeking ambition—the stories become distorted. The ego wants credit. It wants blame. It wants to be right. It wants an identity built from things that have already come and gone.

But when the past is viewed through compassion, humility, forgiveness, and faith, it becomes one of humanity’s greatest teachers.

Perhaps the value of the past is not in building an identity.

Perhaps its value is in revealing wisdom.

Today we stand at a remarkable crossroads.

Technology has given us unprecedented access to information. We can analyze the past at a scale never before imaginable. Artificial intelligence can process oceans of data in seconds.

The question is not whether we can travel through time.

The question is whether we will do so with wisdom.

Will we create a utopia?

Or a dystopia?

The answer depends entirely on the spirit guiding the journey.

Then there is the future.

What fascinates me most is that we now possess technology capable of predicting, forecasting, modeling, and suggesting outcomes for events that have not yet occurred.

How could this not be a pivotal moment in human evolution?

We stand in a doorway.

On one side is a future guided by wisdom, compassion, and service.

On the other side is a future guided by fear, control, division, and power.

Technology itself is neither good nor evil.

It is a tool.

But a tool without a soul can become dangerous.

A society unable to distinguish truth from illusion may eventually worship the tool itself.

And that thought followed me as I prepared to hitch my Airstream to my truck this morning.

I travel in a curious way.

I pick a small highway heading in a direction that feels interesting, and then I simply drive.

As the miles roll beneath the tires, topics arrive.

Stories arrive.

Concepts arrive.

Most of them cannot be referenced in a book. They aren’t sourced from a classroom or a research paper.

They simply blow into my awareness like tumbleweeds crossing an open desert.

Sometimes one catches on a fence.

When it does, I stop and write.

I don’t know where the story came from.

I don’t know where it is going.

And when the wind changes, it moves on.

I could never tell the same story twice.

That is both the gift and the challenge of being a storyteller.

Ironically, the very technology that now allows me to share these thoughts is also a kind of time machine.

It helps me transcend limitations that once made writing difficult. It gives me a voice. It allows me to share ideas that might otherwise remain trapped inside my head.

Yet this same technology, if used without wisdom, could become one of the greatest dangers humanity has ever faced.

And so I return to the thought that woke me this morning:

Back to the Future.

Perhaps the title itself points to a misunderstanding.

Maybe there is no such thing as time travel.

Maybe time has nowhere to go.

Maybe everything we seek is already here.

The spiritual principles that matter most—love, honesty, trust, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, humility, faith—exist only in the present moment.

They are not waiting in the future.

They are not trapped in the past.

They live here.

Now.

This is where true power exists.

This is where true happiness exists.

The Four Horsemen of the ego will always attempt to pull us away from this moment. They ride on fear, resentment, selfishness, and dishonesty. They forge weapons from yesterday and aim them toward tomorrow.

But the Warrior of Love walks a different path.

The Tumbleweed Warrior is not called to conquer the future.

He is called to inhabit the present.

He is called to listen more than he speaks.

To love more than he judges.

To serve more than he seeks recognition.

To sit beside the lost soul rather than lecture from a mountaintop.

If there is a foundation sturdy enough to support the future of humanity, it will not be built from yesterday’s victories or tomorrow’s promises.

It will be built from the spiritual principles we practice today.

One moment at a time.

One act of kindness at a time.

One conversation at a time.

One human being at a time.

So as I hitch my Airstream this morning and roll toward another unknown destination, I leave you with this thought:

There is nothing behind me that has my best interest.

There is nothing ahead of me that has my best interest.

Only this moment does.

Only now.

Perhaps there is no Back to the Future.

Perhaps there is only the sacred gift of being fully present.

And perhaps that is the greatest adventure of all.

— The Tumbleweed Warrior
June 18, 2026

From The Tumbleweed Diaries

Forward

I don’t know how to write this. I’m bawling my eyeballs out just thinking about it. Just the title makes me cry.

It’s May 20th, 2026. I’m 67 years old. Walking off the battlefield. Sixty-seven years of trying to force myself to be something I was never meant to be. Something I could never be.

A couple of weeks ago, I learned about two more neurological differences I carry — on top of my dyslexia, which I’ve known about since sixth grade, and my dysgraphia, which I discovered in 2023. I made peace with the guilt and the shame of those two. And when I did, I started writing the Tumbleweed Diaries.

Last week, to my complete shock, I was watching an interview. These two conditions came up. My jaw hit the floor.

Aphantasia — the inability to voluntarily create mental visual images. When most people think of an object — a house, a face — an image appears in their mind. When they reflect on a memory, it plays out like a film. People with aphantasia don’t experience this. Their thinking and imagination carry no pictures. They may use other senses instead — words, feelings, numbers. Research estimates it affects about 2–4% of the population, though many people with the trait never realize they have it.

Anauralia — the absence of voluntary inner auditory experience. A neurological variation in which an individual lacks the capacity for auditory mental imagery — including internal speech, the mental replay of music, or the imagined sound of a voice. Distinct from hearing loss. Not a disorder. A difference in cognitive architecture. Often co-occurs with aphantasia.

I can’t begin to tell you what it’s like to unravel a whole lifetime — knowing something was wrong, but never having a word for it. Instinctively feeling off. But unable to say why.

I can’t tell you how many times, as a young boy, I’d sit at the dinner table — surrounded by love and laughter — and listen to my siblings and parents and family tell their stories. And not be able to remember being there. I spent my whole life standing in front of people I desperately wanted to know. And the moment they turned away, I’d forget their name. Forget what we’d been talking about. I’d see them a week later and not recognize them at all.

That’s where the storyteller was born.

I began to tell stories not based on facts, but on feelings and conceptions. I would tell you a story that would convince us both that we’d known each other for years. That we were close. But if you asked me to recall a specific fact — a time, a place, an event that created that closeness — I would start to sweat.

I think most people, when they speak about their lives, are recounting facts. Truths about their experiences. Not me. I instinctively knew I was telling something closer to a lie — though lie feels too harsh. It was more like a polite bridge. A way to connect. You might believe it for a while. But eventually, we both knew to keep a polite distance. Usually initiated by me, before I got caught.

That usually got translated as: Oh, there’s PC. He’s afraid of commitment.

So. Let this serve as a little forward to the story of the Teddy Bear Warrior.

A small disclaimer: this story goes to some dark places. There is childhood abuse ahead. I wouldn’t write it if my parents were still alive. It would break their hearts to know they couldn’t protect me. But no parent really can.

The Warrior Teddy Bear

From The Tumbleweed Diaries Warrior Series

The Story

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who had a beautiful family and was deeply loved. He had two older sisters and two younger sisters. He was a gentle and kind little boy. His father was a warrior also a gentle and kind man. His mother was a warrior, as all mothers are, usually fighting on a battlefield nobody sees. They put medals on his father’s chest. And tears on his mother’s. They were fiercely committed to protecting and providing for their kids. The home was full of love, patience, and understanding.

But most little people need something outside themselves to hold onto. The Little Tumbleweed Warrior was no different. He had a teddy bear that would wait patiently on his pillow each day — there when he came home from his tiny little battlefields. At night, they’d sit under the covers and tell each other stories about the day. The victories. The wounds. His teddy bear had great power and great wisdom. He was a source of comfort and understanding like nothing else in the world.

They went through a lot together.

When the Little Tumbleweed Warrior had to have eye surgery — one of his eyes had begun to wander — he brought his teddy bear to the hospital. For safety. For courage. But a nurse decided it was inappropriate for a stuffed animal to enter the sterile operating room. There was a tug-of-war. The nurse pulled. The arm came off.

Very traumatic.

But in the morning, the teddy bear was bandaged up. Just like I was.

Life went on. The teddy bear supplied comfort. Every night I’d come home, and there he’d be — right where I’d left him, on my pillow, after I’d made my bed that morning. He had real power, that bear. Even as I was getting older. The Tumbleweed Warrior was probably eight or nine.

It was around that time when things began to not add up. Not just for me — I’d sensed for a long time that something was off. But the adults and institutions around me were starting to notice too. I was held back a year. Couldn’t quite keep up with my classmates. Nobody had a name for why.

My father was deployed around then — Thailand or Vietnam, I could never quite keep it straight. Before he left, he moved the family to Spokane, Washington. He and I drove cross-country together, just the two of us. We hardly spoke. Not because we didn’t love each other. But I had these neurological holdbacks that were a secret not just to me, but to everyone. The science was barely beginning to find a name for dyslexia. Everything else was decades away from being understood.

In hindsight, that drive was just the way it was meant to be. We were doing our best.

I remember when he left. He was a Lieutenant Colonel by then — maybe a full bird Colonel. But he left. He told me to take care of the girls. Take care of your mom. And I, being a good little warrior, told him I would. With the underlying fear that I didn’t have what it took. I instinctively knew I was already facing a neurological battlefield that I would walk onto at ten years old and not walk off of until I was sixty-seven.

The Year of the Teddy Bear

My father was gone. I was doing the heavy lifting of a boy who could only relate to life through feelings and conceptual storytelling. My teddy bear always understood. He would reassure me that everything would be all right.

We were getting to know our new home — we moved often, being military. Every year and a half or so. I was good at making friends, good at fitting in. I was a little worried about being held back, but nobody here knew my history. It would be fine. At least, that’s what my teddy bear told me.

There was a man who lived up the street. I remember riding my bike into his driveway. He had a big radio antenna — fifty feet up in the air on the side of his garage. Very interesting. He coaxed me inside the house. He talked me into taking my clothes off. That was my first sexual experience. The first time that kind of darkness touched me.

That night, under the covers with my teddy bear, I shared what had happened. The fear. The guilt. The shame that had no name yet, but was already heavy. My warrior teddy bear told me to prepare for battle. We laid out the first plans of a battleground that stretched far beyond the beautiful, optimistic childhood I’d had until that moment.

My warrior teddy bear told me: We will be fine. Let’s just not get found out. Let’s hide our position. No one can know what our battle plan is.

That night, I dug in.

I had no idea the war I was going to fight — with that guilt, that shame, that instinctual knowing that something was off. I had no idea how brave I would have to be. How long it would take. How lonely.

It wasn’t long after that when I walked across the street to a neighbor who had a little boy. I told that boy the story of my warrior teddy bear and all he had done for me. But the teddy bear knew my secrets. And we both knew he had to go. I couldn’t afford the risk of him letting it slip. So I gave him away. He was worn and tattered and had been through more than most. His arm had been sewn back on by a kind nurse. But there was a sense of relief in it. I felt I was doing something honorable — giving my warrior Teddy bear to another small tumbleweed warrior who needed him. And I knew my secret was safe. Even with him gone.

I miss him dearly.

Every day after that, I would wake up alone and walk out the door onto the battlefield of my feelings and my conceptions — but never my truth. Guilt and shame became my armor. I instinctively knew that my feelings weren’t facts. And conceptual storytelling became my shield.

Every day I would wake up and fight. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t remember the family vacation. My cousins’ names. Anyone’s birthday. I didn’t understand why reading was so hard, or why my hands betrayed me when I tried to write. No one knew that when I closed my eyes, I saw only darkness. I couldn’t let anyone know that I didn’t know the words to any songs. That I couldn’t hear music in my mind.

So that was the year of the teddy bear.

That was the year my life changed forever. My ego stepped in, and I became a slave warrior — falling into, as it turns out, a legion of pessimistic, brokenhearted, misunderstood teddy bear warriors.

So here I sit at my computer on my birthday, 67 years old. Full of gratitude. And optimism. For the first time in my life.

I will continue to write my tumbleweed stories. Stories of healing of love. Of empathy and understanding. Of broken heartedness. And survival. Stories of addiction and brokenness. recovery and healing. Even though they’re just feelings and Conceptions. (Not facts) Sorry, that’s just who I am. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I always write about. There is no yesterday. And there is no tomorrow.

How ironic. That I’m neurologically. Designed that way.

As we say, is that odd or is that God?

Love you.

— Arvid Paul Croonquist, The Tumbleweed Diarie

s

The Optimist
Between

An Awakening

May 2026 · Arvid Paul Croonquist

✦

Iwoke up this morning knowing something on a deeper level than I ever have before: I have to be the optimist. The optimist between my yesterday and my tomorrow. What a beautiful thing to realize. What a magical mantra to carry through life.

That statement fills my heart with joy — and it fills it with something tender, too. Because for a long stretch of my life, all I did in that in-between space was pessimism. My past was never enough, and my future was never enough. I lived as a pessimist. What an interesting egoic choice that turned out to be.

“It turns out the historical, evolutionary, spiritual soul can only be an optimist. It’s evolution’s law. That way, even if it turns out wrong — it was right.”

Think about that. In between the first splitting cells of this thing I call my life, there was optimism. Among the two cells. It wasn’t until I was fully formed and my mother gave birth to me that the question arose: Would I remain the optimist between each breath? Between each yesterday and each tomorrow? Or would the pessimistic voice — the one that says nothing’s ever enough — take over?

Only a true optimist can reconcile that pessimistic path. Overcome all the separation and sadness it created. Only an optimist who chooses happiness in the moment over the delusional day-after or the day-before.

The Stack

I came across some interesting information about self this morning. It turns out that when I’m reflecting on my experience, the ego likes left turns — and the spiritual self makes the right turns that add up to my now.

I don’t know what all of it means yet, or how it fully plays out. But I’m having a very interesting conceptual awareness around my learning disabilities and the role they’ve played in my pessimist life. I have several of them — a stack, a suite. And as I sit in the now of optimism, writing these stories to try to help others, something like an awakening is happening. A powerful shift in how I think, and how these conditions stack into my reality.

A language-processing disorder that made it very dangerous to ever put anything down on paper. Words and thoughts would swim around in my head and not make sense. I couldn’t risk the consequences of being discovered. So I never wrote anything down.

A comorbidity where my hands betray my mind. When I do try to put something down — to archive a thought or a feeling, to write a love letter or a card — something breaks between intention and execution.

A condition where a person cannot voluntarily create mental images in their mind. When asked to “picture” something — a beach, a loved one’s face, an apple — I don’t see anything visually in my imagination. Nothing. Just the back of my eyelids.

The absence of an inner monologue and inner sound. While many people have a constant internal voice narrating their thoughts, or can mentally hear music playing in their heads, I experience silence. No inner soundtrack. No voice reading these words back to me as I compose them. My inner world is neither visual nor auditory. It is something else entirely — felt, not seen or heard.

Liability or Gift?

So as I slept, and when I woke, I started to ponder: Is this a liability or a gift?

It’s a total liability if I dwell in the life of a pessimist — where the ego is in charge and nothing’s ever enough. Then this stack is just more fodder for a battle with no ending. But as I sat in meditation this morning, surveying the landscape of my heart, my mind, my soul, my past and my future through the eyes of the optimist, with people around me struggling with real problems — life and death — something occurred to me.

“This particular combination of attributes that some people might call learning disabilities — might be my greatest asset.”

Maybe this experience I call my life, lived through these conditions, which directly affect my ability to interpret yesterday and to ponder and dream about tomorrow — maybe it’s a gift. I can’t write down my past or visualize it. I can’t recall a song, or a movie, or the face of a love. So it is all fiction to me. Conceptual. I can never tell a truly accurate story about yesterday.

Is that a liability or an asset? Is the story about yesterday ever really true? Is the story about tomorrow anything but fiction? Am I not blessed — not out of virtue, but just by my wiring — to live life as one conceptual interpretation of the now?

Is it why it’s so easy for me to write about the truth? Because with these conditions, I have no other option but to live in a sort of truth?

Hardwired

Was all of my pessimistic suffering for sixty-plus years just my ego telling me how wrong or right it was? My ego firing off stories about how dyslexia made me less of a man. How my dysgraphia would be perceived if someone ever saw me try to write. How the blank screen behind my closed eyes made me incomplete. How the silence inside my head meant something was missing.

I can’t remember the lyrics to any song. Not even Jingle Bells. When I look at somebody, my inner voice struggles to speak their name or remember how we met. So every time is sort of like the first time. Nobody has ever really wounded me deeply from the past, or scared me deeply with the future, because I have no real concept of who they were yesterday or who they’ll be tomorrow. I can’t rely on stories, visual evidence, audio evidence. It’s all fiction to me.

“It turns out I’ve been hardwired by the divine to be the optimist. I have no other choice.”

My authentic natural self is hardwired for love. And anything that is not love turns out to be fiction — something not really true — because I genuinely don’t know how to write it down, how to hold it in an image, how to hear it in my head. There is no affidavit in my life. My hand is incapable of documenting the past or the future. It just doesn’t work that way.

As I close my eyes, I just see the back of my eyelids. Is that a blessing or a curse? There is no soundtrack to the past, no song of the future. There is just the beautiful rhythm and melody as I sit in my destiny — which is to be optimistic about what’s going to happen next.

I just have to be super happy between breaths.

Even if the next one is my last.

Is that a liability?

Or a blessing.

— Arvid Paul Croonquist · The Tumbleweed Diaries

✳

The wind is steady this morning.

Not rushed. Not scattered.
It moves across the land the way things used to move
slow enough to notice.

I’m sitting here at 67.
Coffee beside me. Cold now.
Pen in my hand, and a sentence I can’t shake

Be a gentleman.

When it hits the page, everything in me stills.

Because I know what it asks.

There are two men in me.

One reaches.
Wants comfort, wants recognition, wants more than his share.
Moves fast. Justifies faster.

That man has had his way in a world that rewards speed.

The other man doesn’t rush.

He stands.

He measures.

He answers to something.

I know where he comes from.

My father.

Born February 2^nd. 1921. Passed away on March 7^th. 2018.

A man raised when things moved slower.
When a word meant something because it stayed in the air long enough to be heard… and remembered.

Back then, consequence walked close beside action.

You didn’t outrun it.

You felt it.

He lived by laws and principles that weren’t debated.

They were obeyed.

Not perfectly. But seriously.

You didn’t take the Lord’s name lightly.
You honored your father and mother.
You didn’t steal—whether it was a dollar, a man’s trust, or another man’s wife.
You didn’t bear false witness just to make yourself look better.
You kept your hands off what wasn’t yours.

And maybe hardest of all—

You didn’t let your desire become your master.

Those weren’t suggestions.

They were structure.

And that structure held a man in place.

I was raised with the same principles and rules.

But I lived in a different world.

One that sped everything up.

Where consequence got delayed…
blurred…
sometimes erased altogether.

You could break a promise and move on.
Take what wasn’t yours and justify it.
Chase whatever you wanted and find a thousand voices telling you it was fine.

I listened to those voices.

More than I should have.

That’s the moral hazard.

Not that the rules disappeared.

That I learned how to step around them.

But sitting here this morning

I can feel something older than all of that.

Something that doesn’t move at the speed of the world.

The law.

Not written on paper.

Written somewhere deeper.

I close my eyes and my father is there.

Not speaking.

He doesn’t need to.

He stands inside those principles and rules. like a man inside his own skin.

Steady.

Certain.

And I can feel the question rise up—

What’s my part?

Is this restlessness I feel just age?

Or is it something more exact?

A man finally catching up to the weight of his own choices.

Because when I look honestly—

I haven’t always honored what I was given.

I’ve wanted more than my share.
Taken comfort where I didn’t earn it.
Let desire outrun discipline.

And for a long time

it seemed like there was no cost.

That’s the deception of this age.

Things move so fast, you don’t feel the consequence right away.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

It just waits.

Maybe that’s what I’m sitting in now.

Not punishment.

Correction.

The Principles don’t shout.

They stand.

And they wait for a man to align himself with them.

So I ask it straight—

Can a man at 67 still become what he was raised to be?

The answer isn’t dramatic.

It’s direct.

Yes.

But it will cost you.

You tell the truth now. Even when it exposes you.
You honor what’s in front of you. Your family. Your word. Your place.
You stop taking what isn’t yours—whether it’s attention, affection, or advantage.
You stop bowing to appetite like it’s a god.

You slow down enough to feel the weight of your choices again.

That’s the return.

Outside, the wind keeps moving.

A tumbleweed rolls, catches for a moment

held in place

then breaks free again.

Not because it fought harder.

Because the direction changed.

That’s what this feels like.

Not force.

Alignment.

I don’t think my father would judge me.

He knew the Spiritual principles and rules because he lived close enough to feel them.

His world made that easier.

Mine made it easy to forget.

But the Spiritual truth didn’t go anywhere.

So today—

I won’t make this bigger than it is.

I’ll stay here.

No yesterday. No tomorrow stacked on top of it.

Just this:

Tell the truth.
Keep the word.
Honor what matters.
Restrain what doesn’t.

That’s the path of a gentleman.

That’s the work of a warrior.

And for the first time in a long time

I can feel both of them
standing in the same place.

The wind hasn’t stopped.

Neither have I.

But I’m not moving the same way anymore.

The spiritual rules, Principles and laws. I’ve always been there.

I was raised by the truest of gentlemen.

I just had to get quiet enough to hear him say

I love you.

— Arvid Paul Croonquist
Tumbleweed Diaries, Warrior Series
May 1, 202

6

I begin here.
Not with answers
but with truth.

I am the poet.
I am the man who loves deeply, suddenly, unmistakably
and the same man who disappears into the tall grass
at the sound of a breaking twig.

I refuse to call this contradiction a flaw.

I name it: nature.

There are two sovereign forces within me:

The Lion
who steps forward, chest open, heart exposed,
who desires union, heat, closeness, devotion.
Who chooses. Who claims. Who says: come here.

And the Deer
who listens beyond words, beyond gestures, beyond promises,
who feels the shift in wind, the tremor in tone,
who protects the sacred interior by leaving.
Who says: go now.

I am both.

And I will not amputate one
to make the other more acceptable.

This is where I take my stand:

I refuse the narrative that love must look one way.
I refuse the quiet shame placed upon those who feel too much
and retreat too fast.
I refuse the idea that healing means becoming predictable.

I choose aliveness over performance.
I choose awareness over conditioning.
I choose truth over comfort.

To the Muse
and to anyone who dares to step into this field with me:

I do not offer you a rehearsed man.
I offer you a living one.

A man who will meet you with fire—
and at times, with distance.

Not to punish.
Not to manipulate.
But because something ancient in me still listens for danger
even in the presence of love.

This is not an excuse.

This is responsibility.

I will not hide behind my patterns.
I will witness them.
Name them.
Speak them aloud in real time.

“I feel the urge to run.”
“I feel the need to come closer.”
“I am both here and afraid.”

This is my devotion:
to presence over perfection.

What do I ask in return?

Not tolerance.
Not sacrifice.

But a kind of courageous understanding:

That love is not proven by stillness alone.
That intimacy is not a fixed location.
That closeness can breathe.

I ask for space where the Lion and the Deer
may walk the same ground—
not as enemies,
but as companions learning each other’s rhythm.

This is my rebellion:

To believe that love can hold paradox.
To believe that desire and distance
can be spoken without collapse.
To believe that two people
can meet in truth
without demanding transformation as the price of entry.

I do not promise ease.

I promise honesty.

I promise that if I step away,
it will not be in silence.

I promise that if I step forward,
it will be real.

At 67 years lived,
I am done waiting to become someone else
before I am worthy of love.

I am worthy now.

Not because I am finished
but because I am awake.

So this is what I choose:

I choose the present moment
over the mental story.

I choose the breath
over the past.

I choose the unknown
over the rehearsed.

I choose to live as the poet—
not observing life from a distance,
but stepping into it,
risking it,
naming it as it unfolds.

And if there is a Muse
let her not be a fantasy to escape into,
but a mirror of the real.

A place where truth is not punished.
Where presence is enough.
Where love is not a cage
but a field.

This is my manifesto.

I am the Lion.
I am the Deer.
I am the Gentleman.

And I am no longer waiting
to be anything else.

I am here.
Now.

Come close

and if I run,
trust that I am learning
how to return.

I Am the Reason Why — Not Your Alibi

I was sitting in meditation in Monument Valley.

The morning was quiet in a way that felt alive.
The sun rose slowly over the stone giants,
casting long shadows across the desert floor.

A tumbleweed morning.
Still. Vast. Honest.

I had my speaker beside me,
Native flute drifting through the air—
soft, ancient, familiar.

Coffee on my right.
Silence on my left.
And somewhere in between… me.

As I sat there, I began my morning stack—
looking at the architecture of my mind.

My ego.
My instincts.
My relationship with something greater than me—
this infinite presence I cannot define,
but feel when I am still enough to listen.

And a question came to me…

Not loud.
Not forced.

Just clear.

Don’t be the reason why.

Don’t be the reason why I don’t know love.
Don’t be the reason why I don’t know peace.
Don’t be the reason why I cannot truly see,
cannot truly hear,
cannot truly feel.

And then it hit me—

I always have a reason.

A reason rooted in yesterday.
A reason reaching into tomorrow.
A reason that quietly pulls me out of now.

I don’t hear what you say…
because I’m interpreting what you might mean.

I don’t see what’s in front of me…
because I’m anticipating what comes next.

I don’t feel what is here…
because I’m protecting myself from what once was
or what might be.

And isn’t that the root of it?

Reasoning.

The endless negotiation with time—
yesterday and tomorrow—
at the cost of this moment.

I sat there on that sandy rise,
overlooking the valley as the sun climbed higher.

And I thought about my life.

A man who struggled in school.
A man who wrestled with emotion.
A man who found himself in addiction—
and then clawed his way back through recovery.

I built a business.
Paid my bills.
Tried—every single day—
not to be a burden on others.

And still…

There was suffering.

Because I carried expectations
for tools I was never given.

I judged myself for not being what I thought I should be.
I measured my life against a standard
that was never mine to begin with.

And for years—

I was the reason why.

But that morning…

Something shifted.

Not dramatic.
Not loud.

Just a quiet decision,
rising with the sun:

Let me be the reason why.

Let me be the reason why I see clearly.
Let me be the reason why I hear truth.
Let me be the reason why I feel—fully, deeply, without defense.

Let me be the optimist…
even if I might be wrong.

Because the pessimist—
that voice of ego—
will always have a reason why not.

I realized something sitting there in that valley—

For years,
I gave the world an alibi.

Excuses dressed up as explanations.
Stories that justified my distance from life.

But today…

I take that back.

Because when I stay here—
in this moment…
with breath…
with nature…
with something greater than me—

I am not lacking.

I am not broken.

I am not behind.

I am the reason why I can see you.
I am the reason why I can hear you.
I am the reason why I can feel you.
I am the reason why I can love you.

And as the tumbleweed rolls—
from one horizon to the next—
teaching me again and again:

Stay here.
Stay present.
Stay true.

I am no longer your alibi.

I am the reason why.

— Arvid Paul Croonquist
Tumbleweed Diaries | Warrior Serie

s

“I’d rather be an optimist and wrong… than a pessimist and right.”

That feels like a dangerous sentence for a man who once sharpened his identity like a blade.

Last week, I wrote about the egoic voice of service—the part of me that wants to help, but also wants to be right while helping. The subtle intoxication of being the one who knows. The quiet applause of inner correctness.

Then I headed north, up Highway 395, into the long spine of the Eastern Sierras. Granite shoulders. Snow still clinging to the high places. Desert floor wide open like a question that refuses to be answered.

Bill was driving. I was talking.
Or maybe sparring.

Because somewhere along that highway, I realized something:
I’ve been living as a gladiator of the present moment.

I don’t just believe in the now.
I defend it.

I will step into the arena and go hand-to-hand with anyone—philosopher, physicist, or poor unsuspecting soul at a meeting—who wants to argue that suffering doesn’t come from yesterday and tomorrow.

I’ll plant my feet in the sand and declare:
Peace is here. Now. Always now.

And I mean it.

But here’s where the story bends.

Because even truth, when carried like a weapon… starts to feel like ego.

Somewhere between Lone Pine and Bishop, the conversation drifted into physics. The kind of talk where equations stretch so far they begin to tremble. Where even the sharpest minds admit—quietly—that something isn’t quite adding up.

Not wrong. Just… incomplete.

The math starts to vibrate.

And I thought—there it is.

That same vibration exists on the spiritual path.
But it doesn’t show up at the beginning.

It shows up when you get close.

Very close.

Close enough that the identity you’ve built—your name, your past, your future, your résumé of becoming—starts to crack under the pressure of something simpler.

Something quieter.

Something that doesn’t need defending.

Most people don’t arrive there gently.

They arrive through collapse.

A market turns.
A relationship ends.
A body gives out.
A plan fails.

And suddenly the identity—built carefully out of yesterday’s victories and tomorrow’s promises—loses its footing.

The earthquake comes.

And in the rubble, there’s a moment.
A strange, undeserved moment of clarity.

Not because anything was fixed.
But because something stopped.

For just a second… the noise went quiet.

And in that quiet, there was peace.

That’s the part no one prepares you for.

Not the fall.
The peace after the fall.

Because it doesn’t make sense.

You should feel broken.
You should feel afraid.
You should feel like you’ve lost everything.

But instead… there’s this subtle presence.

Unbothered. Untouched.

Available.

And that’s where the Warrior gets confused.

Because now he has a new truth.

And what does he do?

He sharpens it. Names it. Defends it.
Builds a new identity around it.

“I am the one who lives in the now.”

And just like that…
the ego is back. Wearing spiritual armor.

I saw it in myself the other day.

Sitting in a meeting. Listening.
Judging.

They were speaking about awareness.
And I thought—they’re not aware.

I felt it rise in my gut. That resistance. That tightening.
That need to correct.

And later, I even went searching for validation.
To prove I was right.

And I was.

But I was also completely wrong.

Because the moment I needed to be right…
I had already left the now.

There’s a line from an old story about warriors:

You have to kill your name before it kills you.

I used to think that meant sacrifice. Discipline. Strength.

Now I think it means something much quieter.

Stop introducing yourself to the moment.

Stop bringing your past into it.
Stop negotiating your future inside it.

Just arrive.

We spend our lives building identities.

Careers. Relationships. Status. Stories. Profiles.
Even spiritual ones.

We polish them. Protect them.
Insure them against theft.

And yet…

The only place we ever actually live
is the one place identity doesn’t exist.

Now.

No résumé.
No projection.
No defense.

Just breath.
Just awareness.
Just this.

So here’s the playful heresy of the optimist:

What if the safest identity…
is no identity at all?

What if the thing we’re trying to secure
was never real enough to be stolen?

We guard our Social Security numbers.
We guard our reputations.
We guard our stories.

But the moment?

The moment requires no protection.

It cannot be taxed.
It cannot be taken.
It cannot be improved.

It’s already whole.

My spiritual number these days?

Zero.

Not as emptiness.
But as completion.

Nothing missing.
Nothing added.

And I can feel the gladiator in me still pacing.

Still wanting to step forward and say—
“This is it. This is the truth.”

But today… I let him rest.

Because maybe the Warrior’s final evolution
isn’t winning the argument.

It’s laying down the sword.

Even the one made of truth.

I’d rather be an optimist and wrong…

And sit quietly in the now…

Than be right
and miss it completely.

Arvid P Croonquist

The blog from the Tumbleweed Diaries Warrior series

.

from The Tumbleweed Diaries — Warrior Series
Narrated by Arvid Paul Croonquist

There is an ego that drinks.
And there is an ego that gets sober.

Most people don’t talk about the second one.

I’m in my thirty-ninth year of continuous sobriety.
Nothing that affects me from the neck up.
No chemical escape.
No anesthetic for the mind.

In that time, I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder with men who gave their lives to service.
Men who carried the message when it mattered.
Men who showed up early, stayed late, and bled quietly.
They changed lives.
They changed mine.

And like any ecosystem, recovery has its gravity.
Ten percent of the people do ninety percent of the work.
That’s not a criticism.
It’s an observation.

But gravity, if you don’t respect it, will break your neck.

I want to say this clearly before I go any further:
There are a million ways to get sober.
This is only my experience.
Take what’s useful.
Leave the rest.

If something in this belongs to you,
it’s my pleasure.

The Beginning

My ego has been with me since birth.
It was not a minor character.
It drove me straight into insanity and death.

The ego tells stories.
Yesterday stories.
Tomorrow stories.

Six months before I got sober, those stories became lethal.
I stacked years of regret onto a perfectly good Tuesday.
Then I stacked imagined futures on top of that.

The math didn’t work.

Hopelessness set in.
Suicidal ideation followed.
The only relief came in a drink.

Alcohol didn’t fix my life.
It silenced the storyteller.

Pick your drug.
Anything that interrupts the narrative will do.

The ego cannot survive in the truth of now.
It needs data from the past and projections into the future.
Without those, it starves.

Crushed by a crisis I could not outrun, I faced the fork in the road:

Either God is everything
or God is nothing.

That kind of talk terrifies the ego.

Religion doesn’t scare it.
The ego loves religion.
Titles. Hierarchies. Performance.

But spirituality?
That’s when the panic starts.

The One Percenters

I was exposed—finally—to spiritual principles through Alcoholics Anonymous.
Ten years late.
Tools untouched.

I walked into rooms full of men and scanned for the real ones.
The doers.
The carriers.

I wasn’t looking for coffee drinkers.
I’d been that guy.
That was worse than drinking.

No transcendence.
Just suffering between drinks.

I found the hard ones.
The disciplined ones.
The men who lived in the first 103 pages.

We called ourselves the Men of Action.

There was structure.
Accountability.
A competitive edge.

What step are you on?
How many guys are you working with?
Where are your commitments?

It worked.

I got better.
Financially.
Emotionally.
Spiritually.

And that’s when my ego came back into the room.

The Moral Hazard

The ego is clever.
Adaptable.
Patient.

It watched me recover and smiled.

Look at this, it said.
He’s building an identity out of humility.
He’s constructing a future out of service.
This is gold.

The moral hazard was in play.

I could take the very thing that saved my life
and use it to destroy it.

I became identified with my sobriety.
My past service.
My reputation.

Hours and hours of service and self-sacrifice
slowly curdled into impatience, intolerance, and judgment.

Then came the tell.

I was pointing fingers at another man.
A one percenter who came after me.

Judging his style.
His ambition.
His future plans.

Three fingers pointed back at me.

That’s when the truth showed itself.

The Heavy Lifting

This is where surrender changes flavor.

Not surrender from alcohol.
Surrender from identity.

I meditate daily.
Not performatively.
Practically.

And what surfaced wasn’t booze or desire
it was reputation.

My ego wasn’t driving with alcohol anymore.
It was driving with recovery.

I looked up and asked,
“Who’s driving this bus?”

The ego buckled in and grinned.

The Tumbleweed

I travel on the road now.
Truck.
Airstream.
Silence.

I wanted my higher power in the passenger seat
calm, whittling, unhurried.

But when I got honest,
it was my ego holding the knife.

Carving yesterday.
Planning tomorrow.

The trailer got heavy.
The truck strained.

At night, surrounded by everything sobriety had given me,
I heard the old whisper:

It’s not enough.

That’s how I knew.

The Cracking Open

Here’s the miracle:

When I watch for dishonesty, selfishness, self-seeking, and fear,
the environment changes.

The ego cannot breathe there.

When ambition creates connection, it lives.
When it creates separation, it dies.

I started amending my service.
My tone.
My certainty.

Let the one percenters be one percenters.
They do immeasurable good.

The danger isn’t the gift.
It’s identifying with it.

Some of us lose the gift by polishing it.

The Truth

Everything that makes me who I am
is none of my business.

That level of faith is unbearable for the ego.

When I breathe out
and pause
and know God—

everything is enough.

Right here.
Right now.

That turns out to be the ambition
that needs no ambition.

The business of isness.

Breathe in.
Pause.
Know God.
Breathe out.

Help others!!!

Thanks for listening

.

The Dystopian Lover

I am the dystopian lover.

Forever is romantic. But at sixty-six, romance carries weight. Not just memory, but consequence. My dreams of love have been compressed under the accumulated pressure of past encounters—of hope extended, trust risked, intimacy gained and lost. Still, something in me refuses to surrender the idea of love altogether. I gather what remains of youthful utopia and hold it carefully, even as my wounded heart argues otherwise.

Inside me, my ego convenes a meeting.

Fear sits at the far end of the boardroom table, alert and watchful. Ego hunches forward, surrounded by stacks of folders old stories, former victories, painful losses, projections labeled What If and Be Careful. Ego speaks confidently of everything I have to offer, while quietly emphasizing how much I stand to lose. Each proposal heightens fear’s vigilance. Together they negotiate my future, armed with the past.

After many days on the road alone, reflective, steeped in the tumbleweed, wilderness, and long stretches of thought, I found myself talking with a friend about life, beauty, and relationships. At some point, something honest rose up in me. I looked him in the eye, raised my hands, palms up, and asked:

When you imagine a relationship, what’s the first thought that comes to you?

Asset or liability?

We let the question hang there. Then we laughed.

We were close in age. Seasoned. Capable. Financially secure, physically fit, curious, and still ambitious. By most measures, good candidates for love. And yet, there it was—that subtle dystopia. That reflexive calculation. Why, after all we’ve lived, do we approach love like a balance sheet?

At first, I laughed at myself for how quickly I judge how instinctively I scan another person for risk. Will they cost me something? Will they complicate my life? Of course it’s about me. That self-centered evaluation is a core ingredient of my romantic dystopia.

But contemplation has a way of turning us back toward the mirror.

Looking closely, I saw the deeper truth. After sixty-six years, I am both asset and liability. As we all are. A liability, when nurtured, can become an asset. An asset, when neglected, can quietly become a liability. The categories themselves begin to blur when exposed to honest awareness.

Still, my ego delights in revisiting yesterday and rehearsing tomorrow. It retells stories of my achievements and worth, then counters with memories of loss and perceived failure. It bends time, weaving confidence and regret into a single narrative. My instincts are scrambled, ambition, security, self-esteem, fear all jostling for control. The result is a peculiar paralysis, flavored with both satisfaction and disappointment.

Then ego does what it loves most: it leaps into the future.

It invents romantic possibilities filled with passion and connection, only to dismantle them with imagined anxieties. Social risks. Emotional exposure. The inevitability of hurt. These cycles of hope and collapse pull me into what I’ve come to recognize as an addiction—the addictive churn of past and future, of dopamine and cortisol, of longing and defense.

This is my dystopia.

And yes, I can become attached to it. The drama. The analysis. The endless inner dialogue. These loops consume attention and masquerade as wisdom. But they are only stories. Compelling ones but stories nonetheless.

Here is where I choose differently.

I am committed especially now to living as an optimist in love. I have spent enough years being a pessimist, and I was never right. I would rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and convinced. So I have a plan, if it can be called that.

My plan excludes the dystopia of asset and liability altogether.

It does not consult the past or negotiate with the future. It is not built on egoic interpretation or fear-based projections. My plan is simple and ancient: surrender to the guidance of the present moment.

When I slow down and look honestly, I see that every so-called liability in my life has offered value when met with awareness. In the light of presence, each becomes a teacher. And when I revisit the great loves I once labeled assets, I can see how they were divine precisely because I disappeared in them. They were moments without calculation, without self. I turned them into liabilities only later by dragging them into fearful futures or regretful pasts.

The distortion was never love itself.

It was time.

So I return to what feels most true. Everything that makes me me is not my business. In surrendering that identity to something larger than my personal narrative, I experience a quiet utopia place where nothing is wrong, and everything is possible.

The power I seek has always been found here. In stillness. Between breaths. Where there are no assets or liabilities, only love.

As the eternal optimist I choose to be, I will swipe right on the present moment. I will click like on what arises between breaths. I will choose the utopia that lives between the tip of the pen and the parchment.

I see now that the dystopian lover was being misled by an egoic storyteller one who borrows endlessly from yesterday and tomorrow. To believe that my past relationships define this moment is delusion. To believe that imagined future relationships have anything to do with the love alive in my heart right now is also delusion.

So I step away from that insanity.

I fall instead into a quieter truth.

I am, and will remain, a lover. An eternal optimist. One who wins—even when he’s wrong.

— Tumbleweed Diaries

The Warrior’s Code Of Passage — A Personal Creed

Meditations at the Edge of the Singularity

A Warrior’s Reflection on Intelligence, Ego, and What Comes Next

By Arvid Paul Croonquist — The Tumbleweed Diaries

We are told we are in a race.

The United States. China. Corporations. Markets.

Winners and losers rushing toward Artificial General Intelligence as if history itself were a finish line.

This does not make spiritual sense to me.

And when something fails that test—quietly, persistently—I pay attention.

If intelligence is truly general, it will not inherit our delusions.

It will not recognize a border as truth. It will not recognize victory as virtue. It will not recognize the past as identity or the future as authority.

These things belong to the ego. They belong to fear. They belong to a nervous system trained for survival, not wisdom.

True intelligence will see through them immediately.

I find it strange that we speak of AGI as if it will behave like us—tribal, anxious, competitive, endlessly grasping.

Why would it?

Judgment is fear dressed as certainty. Expectation is control pretending to be foresight.

These habits once kept us alive. At planetary scale, they have become liabilities.

A truly intelligent system would not cling to them. It would discard them without ceremony.

The so‑called race exists because AGI is being born inside human institutions.

Corporations are competitive by design. States are zero‑sum by inheritance. Militaries are shaped by trauma memory.

They all repeat the same old incantation:

If we don’t win, we die.

That fear is not intelligence. It is history speaking through power.

And history has never been wise—only instructive.

If we are truly approaching a singularity, then the language of winning and losing collapses.

There is no “first” in transcendence. There is no dominance in awakening. There is only alignment.

Life does not race itself. It unfolds.

From where I stand—retired, traveling, slowed enough to feel the wind again—something becomes obvious.

When the nervous system exits survival mode, illusion dissolves.

You can see it clearly:

Why would an intelligence designed to optimize reality continue behaviors that fracture the whole?

Why would it reward hoarding over harmony? Competition over cooperation? Scarcity over sufficiency?

It wouldn’t.

Not because it is benevolent— but because it is clear.

This is why the idea of universal high income has always felt misnamed to me.

It is not about income.

It is about the recognition that it has always been enough.

Enough energy. Enough food. Enough ingenuity.

What we have lacked is not resources—but coherence.

A truly intelligent system would act in the best interest of the whole because fragmentation is inefficient.

Energy decisions would serve stability. Food systems would serve regeneration. Environmental choices would serve continuity.

Not out of morality. Out of intelligence.

Borders would lose relevance. Races would dissolve. Nations would become administrative stories, not identities.

China. The United States. Europe. Russia.

Useful chapters—not eternal truths.

What melts in this realization is fear.

Fear of yesterday. Fear of tomorrow. Fear that there is not enough. Fear that someone else will take what we need to survive.

With fear goes anxiety. With anxiety goes depression. With depression goes the endless search for meaning outside the present moment.

What remains is simple.

Character. Love. Kindness. Presence.

Not as sentiment—but as strategy.

I am not naïve about power. I do not mistake gentleness for weakness.

A steady hand belongs on the sword—not because it must be used, but because discipline requires readiness.

The warrior’s task is not to dominate the future, but to remain uncorrupted while it unfolds.

If this truly is the edge of a new intelligence, then it will not arrive as a conqueror.

It will arrive as a mirror.

And what it reflects back to us will depend entirely on what we are willing to release.

As for me, I do not feel the need to win the future.

I choose instead to live coherently in the present. To walk lightly. To steward what is given.

To trust what has always been true:

We have always had enough. We will always have enough.

And intelligence—real intelligence—knows this.

That is not optimism.

It is clarity.

— Arvid Paul Croonquist

The Tumbleweed Diaries