Love Letter and Other Threats: A Long Road to Athens

I receive a lot of questions via email. Occasionally, as is my tradition, I answer the sweetest questions here:

Q: You’re a bot!

A: I am sorry, but your request cannot be processed at this time.

Q: Your arrival story in Athens is [expletive of bovine nature] -probably because you used Al toplump it up a bit. You diminish yourself when use unconfirmed information to describe people or places. There was no dingy plane or the people you described on it – ad, or you fabricated it… be an adult. I don’t know how got it my feed. All I know is I find your attitude and descriptions of Greece, my second home, insulting.

A: Might want to give that a second proofreading.

Q: Why are you running a marathon in Greece? It’s not right to destroy your body and your mind with that kind of needless exertion. Your body is a temple of God, it is a sin to harm it.

A: NOW you tell me.

Q: How is Morgan Love?

A: My 21-year-old god-niece Morgan is still hanging in there. She has been under hospice care for a long time now. She is the very definition of “tough.” The strongest person I know, in fact. But she can use your prayers.

Q: If you can while in Athens … go to the Ancient Greek Agora—The Temple of Hephaestus, it’s very peaceful there and you can almost feel the presence of Aristotle, Socrates and Plato

A: Per your advice, I went yesterday. I sat for a long time beneath the beauty of the ancient temple. And one of the few Plato quotes I know came to me. I learned this quote during a very hard period of my life, when I was in my eleventh year of community college. The quote is:

“Give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at one.”

Q: Why aren’t you on TikTok?

A: I’m too busy becoming obsolete.

Q: What the [deleted]? My phone just flagged your post as AI, are you AI?

A: It’s sad, tragically sad, that this is becoming a common question in our world. I fear this new abundance of artificial resources is going to hurt a lot of innocent robots like me.

Q: I miss your daily writing, where have you gone? Why aren’t you writing every day now?

A: Hi. I understand how you feel. I wrote every day for about 12 years for newspapers and online media, before the dawn of AI caused readers to question the authenticity of—literally—everything. Things were so different then. Good photos and good writing stood out because they were harder to fake.

Currently, I’m trying to make more space in my life for loved ones, less space for my phone. I am still looking for the balance in all this. But I’m getting closer. I’m using my typewriter again. I’m working on new book projects. I feel more like myself again, without pixels.

This new life balance is a lot easier to find when I put away my device. Life immediately feels richer. People instantly appear more vibrant. Hateful DMs suddenly disappear.

On a side note: All my older stuff is still out there online, free. You can find it, reread it, and laugh at how pore my grammer iz.

Q: What’s your favorite part about visiting Greece?

A: Definitely all the emails.

Q: Can you give me a favorite quote from Aristotle and use it completely out of context for this column?

A: Sure. Here’s one that I like:

“They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it…”

Q: You just made that question up, didn’t you?

A: No. AI.

Q: I don’t like you and I can’t figure out how to block you’re ass. Unsubscribe me!

A: Your.

Q: Hi, Sean! …Following your trip through Greece. When does the marathon start?

A: It starts Sunday morning. I have to be ready at 6:15 a.m. But… No, wait, that’s Greece time. To translate that into US time it would be exactly four hours before my funeral.

Q: Why has your writing gotten so spiritual since you walked the Camino a few years ago? Your work used to have bite, now it’s all weird, peace and love. I miss the old Sean.

A: He doesn’t.