11:17 a.m., Manhattan Beach. Susie and I are in the back of a large yellow convertible being driven back to the airport down Sepulveda Blvd. There are 4 lanes of traffic each way on this road, and we are going 49 miles an hour. The wind is whipping through my hair and over my sunglasses.
The sun is shining, and I have a slight sunburn because we ate our breakfast on a restaurant’s outdoor patio overlooking the ocean. The French toast came with fresh strawberries and bananas. After we ate, we went down to the beach and watched young men with no shirts on playing volleyball.
“Almost every American I know does trade large portions of his life for entertainment, hour by weeknight hour, binge by Saturday binge, Facebook check by Facebook check. I’m one of them. In the course of writing this I’ve watched all 13 episodes of House of Cards and who knows how many more West Wing episodes, and I’ve spent any number of blurred hours falling down internet rabbit holes. All instead of reading, or writing, or working, or spending real time with people I love.”
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
You can scroll right easily by holding down the SHIFT key and using your scroll wheel. (Firefox users trying this will end up jumping to old Web pages until a) Firefox releases a fix, b) they change their settings like so.)