I met Faolan Sugerman-Lash on an AMA (ask-me-anything) zoom call hosted by Third Door author Alex Banayan during the first few weeks of the lockdowns.
Faolan and I have kept in touch since then, and we check in with each other every few months to discuss our overlapping interests and similar projects.
Faolan recently published his first book, Why Live?: The Beautiful and Painful Mess of Learning to Love Life.
First of all, the book was outright very good. Here’s what I told Amazon about it 👇
“This book is an excellent demonstration of what can happen when you embrace living a life true to your honest self. What happens when you are brave enough to introspect. What happens when you are brave enough to be vulnerable. What could happen if more people were as well. Full of wisdom and very motivational to find ways to grow emotionally...”
— Louis’ Amazon Review
But more than being just another good book, it was a profound social experience to read a book written by someone I had an existing relationship with.
I’m still trying to decide the long-term takeaway here, but it was one-of-a-kind in my life so far and I was deeply moved by it.
In short, I was struck by how much I could learn about someone I thought I knew well.
In hindsight it’s obvious why.
For more than two years, Faolan sat in silence and condensed his life experiences into a few hundred pages. Then, sometime later, I dedicated a few days to sitting in silence and absorbing his life story with complete focus.
Casual, unplanned conversations will never get anywhere close to matching that level of interaction and communication.
I feel more strongly than ever that most people possess an inner-depth way beyond what we give them credit for. The problem is that so few of us ever find a way to reveal the inner workings of our minds to the outside world.
I’m not saying everyone should write a book and broadcast their diary to everyone they know, but I guess I’m also not saying that people shouldn’t 🤷♂️
PS… This is a link to Faolon’s book, Why Live