Candid Conversations Newsletter—Frames of Illusion, Lenses of Isolation

 On bourbon, belonging, and bridging the distance between us

Returning to a Familiar City, Changed

It was a typical work-trip night. I left the office, hit the gym to break the day’s monotony, took a quick shower, got dressed, and headed out for dinner. I was back in Atlanta after years away. The city had changed—and so had I.

That night, I was meeting my niece. We hadn’t seen much of each other lately—life, distance, timing—but this was her city. She knew the good spots.

“What’s new?” I asked, knowing she remembered my thing for food and drink.

We grabbed burgers—my first time trying Impossible meat. Not a fan.
Then we headed to a cocktail bar in downtown Decatur. Low light, quiet music, a bar that felt warm and cozy. My kind of place. The drinks weren’t the best I’ve ever had, but they were thoughtful. They hit the right notes. Made intentional.

An Unexpected Connection Over Bourbon 🥃

By the time we finished, the room had mostly cleared out. That’s when an older gentleman walked in—salt-and-pepper hair, close-shaved, long-sleeved polo, denim jeans, well-worn Chelsea boots. He slid onto the stool beside us like he’d done it a hundred times, and that was his spot. The staff greeted him by name.
Hey Robert.

I was eyeing a bottle on the shelf behind the bar.

“Is that Old Pappy?” I asked.
The bartender nodded. “Just got it in—Pappy Van Winkle 10-Year.”

I’d never managed to get my hands on a bottle. Always sold out, often by raffle. But there it was. And I had enough per diem left to indulge.

The man beside me noticed my curiosity.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“A solid bourbon out of Buffalo Trace,” I replied.

That opened the door.

The Kind of Conversation That Changes You 🗣️

We talked.
About Atlanta. About how the city had changed over the years.
He was an architect—had been in Atlanta since the ’96 Olympics.

“So you’ve really seen it shift.”
“I’ve seen it all,” he said, “and played a role in it.”

He shared stories about his work—buildings he’d helped design, neighborhoods he’d watched transform.
I asked if he was married.
“No.”
Kids?

He paused. His head dropped slightly. The tone shifted.
“I always wanted kids,” he said. “Just never found the time to meet the right woman.”

“It’s not too late,” I said.
“It is,” he replied.
“How so?” I leaned in.

Then came the answer I didn’t expect:
“I have prostate cancer.”

Stillness, Honesty, and the Weight of Loneliness 🌒

It’s as if the air was sucked out the room.
Stuffy, still.

How do you respond to something like that?

I took a breath. “I’m really sorry to hear that. How are you doing now?”

He told me it was in remission. The treatment had gone well. But it had slowed him down.
This was his first night out in a long while.

He spoke quietly. Told me how lonely it gets.
Friends had faded. Family had drifted.
Only his nephew still came by, now and then.

He’d left upstate New York after college and never went back.
“Some families,” he said, “aren’t so forgiving when your life turns out differently than they hoped.”

We kept talking long after last call.
Chairs were flipped. The counter was clean. The bartender said,
“Take your time. We’re still cleaning in the back.”

I looked at him and said, “Thank you—for your company, for your honesty.”
He nodded. “No, thank you. No one’s ever really listened like that. Not in a way that made me feel heard.”

The Whale Question 🐋

I said goodbye to my niece and Ubered back to the hotel with a strange mix of heaviness and clarity.
There’s something that shifts in you after a conversation like that.
You don’t leave the same way you arrived.

I told a friend about it later—the kind of person who says he wants to be reincarnated as a whale. (He says they’re fierce, intuitive. Peaceful. That they know how to move through the world without always fighting the current.)

We were talking about ambition, about what we chase and why.
He asked me, “If someone offered you riches, would you take it?”
“No doubt,” I said.

“And what if it cost your health? Would you still accept it?”

I hesitated.
Still no doubt?

Kinda changes the perspective, huh?

Something about that night with Robert made me pause in ways I hadn’t before. Made the question feel heavier. Not hypothetical.

What We Trade Without Noticing 🏷️

We chase ambition.
Climb ladders.
Anchor our worth to job titles, deadlines, deliverables.
And somewhere along the way, we stop noticing what we’re trading for it—how often our identities shrink just enough to fit our résumé.

That night stayed with me.

We exchanged numbers, but we never called.
Life kept moving.
I had my own roles to fill—each one urgent in its own way, so did he.

A Culture Quietly Giving Up 😶‍🌫️

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about loneliness.

These days feel… strange.
People are more connected than ever, but somehow more isolated.
Detached, not out of indifference, but out of exhaustion.

They’re pulling away from each other—stepping back from meaning itself.

There’s a kind of quiet nihilism out there now—not because we’ve forgotten how to care,
but because we’re not sure if it matters.

For a while I thought it was the pandemic. Or social media.
But now I think those things just made it harder to ignore what was already unraveling.

Then I came across Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam.
It didn’t fix anything, but it gave words to what I was feeling.

The Difference Between Bonding and Bridging 🌉

Putnam describes a slow unraveling of America’s social fabric.
How we stopped joining things—PTAs, unions, churches, neighborhood associations.
He talks about the decline in social capital—the web of relationships and shared norms that hold communities together.

What stayed with me was his distinction between bonding and bridging capital.

Bonding is inward. The community you grow up in. The people who know your full name, your family stories, your history.

I knew that world.
I grew up in a rural Jamaican community filled with connection—school clubs, church services, community gatherings. We belonged to each other. We shared meals, laughter, and stories.
That was bonding capital. Familiar. Rooted.

Bridging is different.
It stretches across difference—race, generation, class, belief.

That night with Robert—a younger black man and an older white man sitting at a bar in Atlanta, listening, sharing, seeing each other beyond the surface—that was bridging capital.
And it felt rare. Precious, even.

Connection in a Filtered World 📱

So where do we go from here?

In a world where technology evolves faster than we do—
Where therapy is outsourced to chatbots,
Where dating happens through swipes,
Where job interviews happen over Zoom—
what does real connection look like?

Wars are waged by drone.
Friendships curated through algorithms.
Even grief is processed through filters.

As Putnam said, we are increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and our democratic structures.

We are, quite literally, bowling alone.

Hope in the Small Moments ✨

And yet—there’s still hope.

Moments like that night remind me:
Connection hasn’t disappeared.
It’s just buried beneath the noise.
And noise can be quieted.

But it takes work.
Empathy requires imagination.
And imagination needs space.

We can’t connect with what we won’t slow down to see.
We can’t care for what we never take time to feel.

So maybe the real question isn’t whether we’re alone.
It’s whether we’re still willing to reach—quietly, imperfectly—across the distance.

Because sometimes, that’s all it takes.

A shared drink.
A paused moment.
An open heart, and curious mind.

And suddenly, for a breath or two, we remember what being human feels like.

One Conversation at a Time 🤝

We’ve been trained to think in opposites:
Us versus them.
Right versus wrong.
“They’re not like us.”

But if the most basic thing we share—the need to be seen, heard, cared for—goes unrecognized,
what are we really defending?

I don’t have answers. I don’t know how we fix it.
But I do know this:

I’ll keep showing up.
Keep listening.
Keep reaching.

Because change doesn’t begin with consensus.

It begins with conversation.

One that makes someone feel a little less alone.