A Valley Viewpoint Narrative
What changes when you stop long enough to notice the life you’re already living.
Have you ever lived through the best days of your life without realizing they were happening?
Is Heaven somewhere you go—or something you learn to notice? I’ve come to believe that Heaven isn’t a destination at all. It’s attention. And the difference between a living hell and a living Heaven often has very little to do with circumstance and everything to do with whether we stop long enough to see what’s right in front of us.
For a long time, my life felt like a quiet kind of hell. I was always behind—behind on my writing, behind with my family, behind with friends, behind with my kid. Always chasing the next thing. Always certain that fulfillment lived just one step ahead. It wasn’t that I wanted more out of life. It was that I never stopped long enough to recognize what I already had.
So yes, I believe in Heaven on Earth. And I believe it’s found anywhere you’re willing to look for it.
Here’s where I found mine.
I found Heaven years ago, dropping my daughter off at school. Sometimes we’d stop for breakfast—just the two of us—talking about her world and mine. We shared music, made up songs, talked about values and nonsense in equal measure. Those ordinary mornings were sacred. Picking her up was just as good. I only wish I had done it more often.
I found Heaven in friendships that began with my Xavier High School classmates and somehow survived time. There’s nothing you can hide from someone who’s known you since you were thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. People call those years “just adolescence,” as if they’re something you endure on the way to real life. But sometimes your whole life happens right there—and everything that follows is the same story, told again with different characters. Pain. Loss. Love. Gratitude. And what we eventually call wisdom. If my life ended tomorrow, I’d know I had already lived deeply. That’s Heaven.
I found Heaven in the Jesuit teachers who shaped me. The teachers of my life quite literally saved my life—sending me out prepared for whatever it was I was meant to become. Sure, there were mediocre ones, even a few bad ones, but never one who didn’t care. They gave their lives to students like me. They lit a path and let me walk it with joy.
I found Heaven in finding my voice. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the quiet tyrannies you swallow day after day, until silence itself makes you sick? Finding your voice—claiming your truth—is an act of justice. And justice, when it’s honest, feels like Heaven.
I found Heaven in the family that raised me. They taught me that how something is given often matters more than the thing itself. Heaven, for me, lived in bungalows in Rockaway, in Manhattan and Bronx tenements, and in Sandy Hook, New Jersey. It lived wherever love was present, even when circumstances were modest.
I found Heaven in learning humility—slowly and imperfectly. As a younger man, I believed everything I had achieved was entirely my own doing. No parents. No aunts or uncles. No one else. That illusion doesn’t survive adulthood. Everything I have was given. I was never alone. I was never lacking. I have always had what I needed—and I am profoundly privileged.
Grace has shaped my life, and gratitude is the only honest response. If maturity asks for humility, then middle age asks for generosity. My parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles lived their lives for me. I try to honor them by showing up for others—by helping, by being kind, by paying forward what I was given.
So thank you: Mom, Dad, Nagh, Sissy, John, Uncle Jimmy, Aunt Dottie, Elsie, Georgie, Mary and Jack, Raymie and Liz.
I found Heaven watching the little girl I once took to breakfast before kindergarten graduate with honors from Boston College—and then earn her MBA from UConn, ranked number one.
I found Heaven over the course of a career that allowed me to help friends find work, and in the laughter shared with colleagues past and present.
I found Heaven in the simple truth that the most meaningful part of working alongside the law is stopping people from pushing others around. And yes—once, memorably—I even found Heaven watching an opposing lawyer sanctioned for the sin of pure arrogance.
And finally, I found Heaven in trying to be braver with my talents and more forgiving of my flaws.
Acceptance and sadness can coexist. Sadness is inevitable—we’re human. Pretending otherwise only deepens the wound. But I accept that life is finite. I accept that our time comes sooner than we expect. And I accept that Heaven is already here.
All I’m saying is this: you don’t have to search very hard for something you’re already standing inside.
The Valley Viewpoint 