Postcards from Lucca

I’m sending these postcards with a heavy heart from Lucca, a night after the new attacks on Paris, hoping someone out there needs a reminder that there is still good in the world, that beauty remains as imperfect but undiminished as always. That our ways of expressing grief and compassion and empathy for others may, like beauty, not be perfect, but are human. I’m hoping that after your souls and minds have been sullied by the vitriol on social media, you’ll stumble across these images, or hear the sound of your child laughing, and remember the good things. I’m hoping you’ll remember to drink red wine, to dance, to love deeply, and make love with abandon, and that when you get short of breath and the walls of fear feel like they’re closing in on you, you’ll remember that we – despite it all – still live in the safest times this race has ever experienced. Our lives are longer, and better – even in the poorest, darkest back corners. Fewer children die from preventable causes. Fewer young men die in wars. And that means more children grow to follow their dreams, more girls will marry their sweethearts and not see them go to war.

There has always been pain, and suffering. There has always been evil and darkness. It hurts no less. But the light can be impossibly bright and blindingly beautiful when we turn towards it. I hope we’ll collectively turn to the light, to love, and away from the shadows where vengeance takes root and we start looking among the innocent for someone to blame. We are better, and bigger, than that.

I wish you all light and love and beauty, and peace. My thoughts, and the thoughts of my team at Craft & Vision, are with Paris and all those who’ve suffered violence recently, whether the news has reported them or not. I beg you to be careful of the natural tendency to divide the world into Us vs. Them, and to be aware when the red mist fogs your eyes and the anger rises, and to find a place for those feelings that doesn’t spread the hurt. Peace and courage, friends.