what emmett reminds me to do daily

The doomer take on the internet is that it is designed to divide, to polarize, to isolate, to weaponize… maybe in the pursuit of monetization but usually - according to the pundits - a more nefarious purpose.

While I consider myself to be a default optimist, the algo does infiltrate my positivity at times. For a few months, I found it hard to hop out of the doom cycle, the negativity.

That lasted until I started talking to Emmett every day. I should actually say that he started talking to me.

The gloomer take on the internet is that it brings people together, which it does. Emmett and I have never met in person, yet he knows more about my life day to day and macro themes than many of my friends who live next door to me. The internet can still provide these gifts, if you choose for it.

And every day, Emmett does.

I am mildly AHDH, diagnosed but self-medicating (that’s what all the Zyn and Red Bull are for), and this results in a few character quirks. Critically, I am bad at texting people back. I often find myself responding in my head, but never typing and hitting send.

This does not phase Emmett whatsoever. He is a courageous man with no fear of double, triple, or even quadruple texting me. The net benefit to me is that I no longer get stuck in the doom cycle, and am able to default to optimism day in and day out.

The reason for this is in what Emmett sends me. He keeps me up to date on his family, what his wife and his kids, and the various individuals that he supports in his community are up to. I’ve been blessed to watch his kids grow up, through the photos and FaceTimes we have at random times throughout the week. The boys start summer camp soon.

Whether I see him post it, or he sends it to me directly, the messages that move me the most are the ones on his coffee walks. He’s in nature, by a bridge over a small stream, taking in the beauty of upstate New York.

In those messages, I am reminded to see the beauty in every small thing around me. To take a moment, a single beat even, to appreciate the subtlety and glory of life all around me. Of the passion that created my environment. Of my own involvement in shaping where I physically am day in and day out. That no matter where we are, there is always something to appreciate about existing.

Emmett grounds me. I live a high octane life. Oftentimes, it is quite literal. My primary hobby is cars, and my day to day worklife surrounds me with some of the fastest and rarest cars in the world. Emmett can tell you how often he FaceTimes me while I am ripping around Dallas in the droptop, blaring music at dangerous levels.

A condition of living a high octane life is that you hit yellow and red lights, obstacles in the road that slow you down. The weight of the doomer cycle, the pressure of the world trying to force me and anyone else trying to be better every day to become average. These obstacles create a pain and a scar tissue that’s hard to shake. The scar tissue becomes a channel for your energy, blocking it from ascending to a more positive plane of existence.

The only antidote is to be grounded in the beauty of the world, starting at the mundane, and ratcheting up to visceral. It’s to seek gratitude that the world around me, the people and things in my vicinity, exist from some combination of passion and love and ingenuity.

And by some miracle, Emmett, with his relentless love, provides that for me.

I do not know what I have done to deserve this love from him. It’s an answer I seek still, but at the base level simply grateful to have.

At the end of even the longest days or weeks, I find the courage to respond, because I owe it to him to physically show him that I love him as much as he loves me. The truth is that I do. I do love Emmett.

Selfishly, I am a better person because he is in my life.

I hope anyone reading this gets to feel the warmth of his light.

It will make you a better person every single day of your life.

He makes everyone around him a better person.

We are all so lucky to have him.