In 2022, Michael O’Brien rode his bike from Astoria, Oregon, to the Lincoln Memorial. His wife drove the RV. Two Springer Spaniels rode shotgun.
Michael isn’t your average cyclist. He survived a near-death cycling accident and got right back on the bike. So when he decided to cross the country again for America’s 250th, this time by conversation, of course he went big.
His podcast, Whole Again, is running a series called A Perfectly Imperfect Union: at least two people from every state and D.C.
Tiffany Ryder put us together, and I got to talk about my Commonwealth.
Virginia has the Appalachian Trail and the Atlantic, and I refuse to choose. There’s a Union cemetery across the street from my house, in a town that leaned loyalist during the Revolution and wasn’t so civil during the Civil War.
We have always been bossy, rebellious, and ungovernable.
I love it here.
America is the only country founded on an idea. Not a tribe, not a religion, not a patch of dirt. An idea, pushed forward by crazy people taking crazy chances.
My husband was born in Italy and came here as a baby. He says the people who leave the old world and the people who stay are not the same - I tend to agree with him.
That wild streak is our greatest strength and our greatest weakness.
We’re all a little nuts.
The series runs on kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold so the cracks become part of the beauty.
Michael asked what I would repair.
Medicine.
Pull it out of the corporatocracy and back into an economy of healing that works with nature instead of trying to conquer it.
Every species has species-specific requirements. Real food. Sleep. Sunlight. Movement. Each other.
Almost none of us are living them, and we’re breaking apart because of it.
Then came the question from the guest before me: where am I bringing more kindness into the world?
Honest answer: inside my own head, where I’ve been brutally vicious to myself for years, and I’m trying to change that.
Once you tie the inner critic up in the cellar, it gets a lot easier to stop doing it to the people you love.
Oh and I got to leave the next guest a question: Which amendment in the Bill of Rights is your favorite, and why? Tell me yours in the comments.
Michael’s show is the best of America. Give it a watch.
It’s good for the soul.