Principles

What principles define how you live?

If I had to name the principles by which I live, they wouldn’t be chiseled into marble or gilded in certainty—they’d be written in sand, rewritten by every tide that’s touched my life. I’ve come to believe, as Seamus Heaney once wrote, that “hope and history rhyme” only when we let compassion guide the pen. Compassion, for me, is the first and final rule: to meet others where they stand, even when I cannot understand them. It is the principle that steadies me in grief and in grace alike.

Humility follows close behind. The sea and the stars above me have a way of reminding me that I am small, that the world will turn whether I will it or not. I once thought wisdom came from knowing; now I think it comes from listening. C. S. Lewis said that humility “is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less,” and I’ve found that true. The more I turn outward—to people, to story, to place—the more fully I live.

Then there is presence. “The now is all there is,” John O’Donohue reminded us, and I’ve come to see how costly it is to live anywhere but here. My younger years were spent trying to outpace my own shadow, to chase what I’d lost or fear what I’d not yet gained. But the ocean, the hard work of the boats, the long walks through Irish rain—they’ve all taught me to be where my feet are. Today is the only day that will ever ask to be lived.

And finally, story. The sacred thread that ties it all together. I live by story—not just the ones I write, but the ones I inhabit. Myths, memory, grief, and grace weave through every page of my life. “After nourishment, shelter and companionship,” Virginia Woolf wrote, “stories are the thing we need most in the world.” For me, stories are not escape—they are survival.

So if I must name my principles, I will name them as quiet songs rather than laws: be kind; stay curious; forgive; tell the truth gently; and keep writing, even when it hurts. For as long as I have words, I have a way home.