I need to make art that helps you feel what it means to be human

By David McElroy · October 31, 2026

I’m not trying to change your mind anymore — about anything.

There was a time when I was naive enough — and arrogant enough — to believe I was smart enough to convince anybody that I was right about anything. I thought I could lay out airtight arguments that any reasonable person would agree with.

I thought I could change anybody’s mind. And I thought it was important to “convert” others to whatever I believed. I was a fire-and-brimstone preacher evangelizing for my holy cause.

I was wrong about all of that.

My goals are simpler today. All I really want is to help you feel something.

I want you to feel something that is real and true.

I want to help you feel something human — and I want it to be something that you know in your own heart is the truth. What you do with that is up to you. Even if I’m right about the things I believe — and I do believe I’m right, of course — it’s not really my business what you decide to believe.

I want to help you get in touch with what it means to be alive — not as a consumer or a worker or a voter or a cog in a machine.

I want you to feel what it means to be a fully conscious human being.

My life was simpler back when I believed that truth could never contain contradictions. Today, I know better.

Truth can be fuzzy.

There are times when one piece of truth contradicts another piece of truth — and somehow they’re both true. This has been one of the most important lessons of my life, but it’s also one of the most confusing and frustrating.

I used to be very concerned with resolving conflicts and disagreements. In Christian theology, for instance, I wanted to take positions on all the issues that have divided believers for centuries.

I wanted a rational explanation for the Trinity, for instance. I wanted a clear and systematic explanation of the relationship between faith and works. I wanted clear and simple explanations for everything.

I wanted the same sorts of complete and rational positions about everything else, too. I wanted to have a clear and consistent set of principles that I could apply to everything, whether it was culture or politics or ethics.

About a lot of these theological issues, I’m prone today to accept that there are a lot of mysteries that I’ll have to ask God about one day. I’m not required to resolve all of the apparent contradictions and confusion.

It’s not that I don’t care. It’s simply that I care too much to pretend I can know all these things without error.

About many of these other issues in life, I’m willing to accept that the world is never going to function the way I want it to. The vast majority will never see things as I do.

More importantly, I’m willing to accept that there is remarkably little I can do about most things that I see as wrong with the world. Few people care what I think. Few people are going to change their views just because I carefully explain the truth as I see it.

I have to accept that the best I can do is to live as a fully conscious human being — someone who’s trying his best to help other humans feel fully alive and human, too.

I grew up as a hyper-rational person. I believed that being completely rational was what we ought to do. It helped us progress as a species. It made us happier and more prosperous.

But I’ve come to see that being ruthlessly rational will never lead to meaning.

So I accept that it’s incredibly important to human flourishing to be rational. But I also accept that there are some truths that my heart tells me that can’t be found through reason — and these two ways of looking at the world run in parallel.

They’re not contradictions to be resolved.

I’m not saying that truth is just subjective. Objective truth is very real, but we humans are limited in our ability to determine what that ultimate truth is. Everything that we call truth is shaped by the assumptions we bring to our observations and reasoning.

There are some things that I feel strongly enough about to say are true. Some of those things are based on physical experiences with material reality. Some of those things are based on what my heart whispers.

I don’t have to resolve those two ways of seeing the world — and I don’t have to convince you that I’m right.

For the last couple of centuries, we have slowly pushed the idea that truth should be determined by reason and by observations of physical reality. There’s nothing wrong with that idea. It has given us some amazing material things.

But it’s slowly blinded us to a different kind of truth that I think is ultimately more important to the experience of being human.

Trusting in nothing but material reality has told us life has no meaning. It’s said that there’s nothing special about human consciousness. It’s told us that we must ignore the spiritual evidence that many of us experience.

The longer I’ve lived, the more absurd that has seemed to me, because the things which give my life meaning are all things I experience with my heart — and they’re things that can’t be measured or proven.

Most people are arguing about material reality. Even many of the people who claim to represent faith are trying to shoehorn that faith into a materialist paradigm. We end up with a society of people who are all certain they’re right — and who are trying to justify what they believe in terms of material reality.

I’m going in the opposite direction.

I want to make art that helps you feel things. I want you to feel things deeply enough that you experience the spiritual and emotional reality that I’ve experienced. I want you to be able to see — through what I make — that life has meaning and purpose.

I want you to love nature. I want you to love God. I want you to love yourself and other people around you — not because you can prove any of these things make sense, but because your heart gets a glimpse of something real and true.

I want to hold a mirror up to the world with the things I write or create. I want to show you a truth that you know in your heart is real and is true.

If I can eventually do this, I’ll be doing something far more sacred and far more human than I ever could by trying to convince you I’m right about everything.

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I’m seeing a lot of simplistic and dishonest explanations right now for the current rioting in France. Those on the populist far right claim it’s all about Muslim immigrants to France disrupting the culture. Their message is that this sort of thing is going to happen in the U.S. unless “we defend the border.” On the far left, socialists and their fellow travelers claim the riots are all about wealthy people in France not paying enough taxes, resulting in cuts to government services. The truth is far more complicated, but it’s rooted in the decline of population growth in Europe. There simply aren’t enough young workers paying into the tax system anymore, so cuts in social services were inevitable. There is genuine cultural tension as more and more people immigrate from other countries, but government cuts to education and other services are even more important to what’s happening. The situation is complicated, so don’t let dishonest people with U.S. political agendas tell you that it happens to support whatever they were already promoting for partisan reasons.

Here’s another reason to appreciate the cats in your life: New research involving 93 countries found that places with more cats per person also tended to have happier people. The researchers say the finding fits with previous evidence that living with pets can reduce loneliness and stress while providing companionship, emotional attachment and social support. The study doesn’t prove that cats cause greater happiness, but it certainly adds to the evidence that sharing your home — and your life — with a cat might be good for you.

The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

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