When I was eighteen years old, I’d only read three books.

You read that right—three books.

As a new adult, I found myself in a Barnes & Noble in Summerville, South Carolina. I walked the aisles for hours, lost and disoriented. I felt like the shelves were suffocating me, thousands of spines crushing me with their strange, silent powers. I walked with my head down, praying to God no one would ask what I was looking for. I had no idea; all I knew was that I couldn’t stop looking. But then, I found it—the first book I ever truly fell in love with: Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche.

Growing up in rural Idaho, I misunderstood the nature of a book. I thought they were nothing more than long-form stories, but they took ten hours to finish instead of the two it took to watch a movie. Why bother? Why waste the time? But as I began to wade through the works of Nietzsche, I noticed he wasn’t just talking to me—he was speaking to the ideas of Aristotle, of Plato, of Schopenhauer. It felt like Nietzsche was right there in the room, and I was eavesdropping on a conversation. It was the most exciting, dangerous, and interesting conversation I’d ever heard.

Then the switch flipped in my skull.

I realized the most interesting conversations in human history are hidden in the secret lives of books, waiting for someone to come along, pick them up, and listen in. These conversations span over thousands of years and have been shaped by the most brilliant minds to ever live. I go sick to my stomach. How could I have been so foolish? How could I have wasted so much of my life without realizing such a fundamental truth?

Years later, my life is defined by a different kind of intensity. I’m a Lead Foreman in the fire-life safety industry. I spend my days navigating the guts of complicated buildings, checking critical smoke control systems designed to keep people alive in the event of a catastrophe. It is practical, high-stakes work. But in the evening, when the tools are put away and I’m home with my wife, Kristin, and our four children, you can still find me on the couch with a cup of decaf coffee, eavesdropping on the great conversations.

The setting has changed since that day in South Carolina, but the pursuit hasn’t. I have spent the last decade reading through history, theology, philosophy, and poetry—retracing the some of the steps of the greats. This blog is where I place my own words into these conversations. I write with the hope of contributing something back in gratitude for the life these thinkers have given to me.