Author name: Joseph Arnold

As a young boy, I often struggled to make sense of the world and my place within it. There were simply so many perspectives on life, art, relationships, and everything else. What made this so confusing and difficult was that the people in my life from whom I sought guidance—parents, teachers, friends, favorite authors, political figures, and others—spoke so compellingly and with great confidence, as though they held the one truth about what’s most important in life. The trouble was that, despite their confidence, the perspectives they espoused often contradicted what others said, and so were a source of conflict. Inhabiting this complex and confusing landscape, I sometimes felt like a helpless billiard ball, bouncing from one perspective to another as I sought to make sense of it all.