New courses, same destination

Every year about this time—by no deliberate planning, mind you—I find myself in some version of a reevaluation of the direction of my work. Maybe my internal navigational equipment calibrates and I check not only my bearings but also my course. Is the lubber’s line true?

This of course indicates that I have a destination, as all courses arrive somewhere eventually. But what I have come to understand this last year in particular is that my course is forming behind me and that the destination is yet to be determined.

But I do distinguish one thing: that while a destination may be fluid and ever unfolding, the purpose is clear.

Thomas Jefferson said, “Difference of opinion leads to inquiry, and inquiry leads to truth.”

And that is it for me. My purpose. Through the media of writing, photography, and filmmaking, I seek wholeheartedly to incite a rigorous dialogue on matters of consequence and to do so with neither fear nor malice. To engage in inquiry. To get at the truth.

To this, I aspire.

The other thing that becomes clearer with each passing year is the numerous people with whom I have the privilege of engaging on an almost daily basis. Producing the content that I do in the media in which I do it naturally exposes me to wide variety of views. Some give rise to that rigorous dialogue I referred to, and some are just merely pleasant. Some are not.

For the most part—and I mean this with every measure of sincerity—I am consciously and actively aware that at the other end of these conversations there is a real flesh-and-blood person.

The notion of self is an interesting one. The idea that everything we do seeks to serve the self, even if it is a benevolent act, leads me to believe that when it all comes down to it, I most often have more in common with people than not. The debate lies often less in “Do any of us want things to be better?” but rather in the differences that arise in how we do that.

This time last year, I had just returned from covering a story in Colombia. I worked in an undercover capacity while a team of agents carried out a massive sting operation on human traffickers. It was quite literally one of the most defining moments of my career to date, because I realized how absolutely imperative it is to tell people—all people—just what the hell is going on out there in the world. Knowledge is power, after all.

I realized that the only way for the proverbial bastards of the world to really be held to account—and believe me when I say that there are bastards out there—is for the Fourth Estate to have boots on the ground. To me, that is the single most important duty the press has, and to that end, I cannot ever see myself laying down in that fight or even avoiding it when prudence suggests otherwise.

Getting back to the notion of common ground, while some of us may disagree about how to go about this, we all collectively agree that people in positions of power of any kind who abuse that power are bastards in need of reckoning.

But lately it is occurring to me more and more that perhaps the way to vanquish evil is to be found not only in justice but in exposing its opposite and letting the contrast speak for itself, eradicating bad by focusing on the good.

And to this, I now also aspire.

In the coming year, that is if October marks my fiscal year, I will be taking some new directions and seeking to expand the conversations I have already started as well as perhaps start a few more. Documentary work is a poignant genre with which to bring awareness to that good and contrast it with the other side, and I have taken some big steps this year in the direction of producing more of this kind of work. So while you’ll still find me in print, I hope you will consider my new work as well.

It has been a real privilege to write for all of you, engage you in text and on the air, and once in a while meet you in person. I honestly do consider my work to some degree to not so much for me but for you as well, and in that capacity, I am serving a community that I have come to not only live in but to live among.

See you out there. (I truly hope I do.)