Philippe Lazaro
OCTOBER 2016

99.9% of What Happens

One of my biggest lessons from travel comes from seeing people close up in their daily, ordinary lives. I see people talk about improving their farms with compost, putting their kids through school, or helping their neighbors go through hard times. I also see them extend ridiculous amounts of hospitality and often incredible food to a total stranger. Me.

Seeing these ordinary moments unfold in person reminds me that the world is mostly made up of ordinary moments… therefore the world is mostly made up of this quiet simple sweetness that’s easy to forget in the face of ugly headlines.

But things don’t make headlines if they’re normal. Just exceptions.

It's 2024. Here's What's In...

Welcome to 2024! I got to celebrate the way many parent of littles do… by binging on shows and audiobooks in between my kids’ bedtime and my own, making it just across midnight, giving my wife a quick little kiss then promptly passing out.

Might be a while before New Years’ Eve is once again what it used to be, but in spite of that, I really am in one of the most incredible stretches of my life… family life, creativity, travel, career, and so on. I’m trying to savor that and let the year pass slowly in 2024.

Here’s what’s in:

In 2024… allow  generous amounts of time to do things. 

Last year, I started the habit of being more generous to myself with the amount of time I allotted to get things done. 

Can I edit a shortform video in about half an hour? Probably, but if I give myself a full hour to do it, it won’t feel rushed. I’ll enjoy the process WAY more and will probably make a better video. This simple shift takes things from being a chore to being an experience.

On top of that, giving myself a moment in between activities to transition, get in the mood, and remind myself the bigger reasons why I’m doing the thing I’m about to do really improves everything.

In 2024… give stats with the eyeball test.

In baseball, there are some players who certain statistics suggest should be pretty bad, but are absolutely scary to face as an opponent. (See: Kyle Schwarber, WAR/Batting Average)

In reforestation, there are ecologically devastating ways to plant a whole bunch of trees.

In economics, some numbers can suggest mild inflation that just doesn’t match up with people’s pain at the grocery stores.

Numbers are helpful, but don’t forget their limitations.

In 2024… seek community in real life.

I’ve missed this so much. 

Seriously, I can’t help but believe pretty strongly that if all the effort people put into building a massive online audience went towards building a strong real-life community, we’d take a huge step towards health.

(Like, seriously. Imagine if all those TikToks and Reels about hooking your audience and mastering the formula for posting frequency were about hosting game nights and book clubs!) 

This year, I’ve met way more new people than I have in a long time. Ah, I’ve got a few group texts going now, where invites to nights outs with groups are commonplace. I wish I could say yes to a lot more of them. Still. I’ve managed to get in a lot more quality time with new friends this year and there’s simply no replacement for IRL community.

In 2024… I’m fully embracing audiobooks + drawing.

I’m an audiobook guy now. Didn’t see that coming! But being able to play one while drawing and not having to choose between the two activities when I want to unwind at the end of the day has been wonderful. 

I’ve drawn a lot more and read a lot more as a result. The two activities pair so well.

Currently, my favorite recipe is to pair the library up with Everand (the audiobook platform of Scribd. Pretty strong selection!) I discourage Spotfiy for financial reasons while acknowledging I might start a book there in a pinch since Premium gives you 15 hours for free each month.

In 2024… we’re done caring about social media math.

I’ve roughly doubled my follower count last year and had a couple of posts go viral. Whenever that happens, it messes with my notifications for a while and then everything goes back to the way it was.

Social media platforms are hyper-aware of what people are willing to give up for the prospect of being seen, and while it’s hard to totally rebel against the way they’ve impacted the way our world works, we have the power to be more apathetic to their metrics.

The algorithms are too fickle and change too often to even worry about appeasing with every turn. I’m more invested in creating stuff that would be enjoyable offline that I can also release and post there as a bonus. If it does well there too, so be it.

In 2024… I’m aiming to make the most positive assumptions we can.

Whether this is your closest relationship or somebody you find yourself diametrically opposed to, it always serves us all best to make generous assumptions about other people. Give the benefit of the doubt. Allow people to be human. This year will have inevitable drama. Hold your boundaries while allowing everyone else to be a work in progress.

In 2024, I’m all about letting myself produce less work so you can produce deeper work.

I started last year by trying to aggressively cut back on my workload and I don’t regret that at all. This year is starting on a similar note. I’ve already found a way to cut back on my production schedule, and I’m excited for all the extra time that equates to. I’ll bet no one even notices I’m producing less.

It’s kind of funny, because I feel like this is a goal I take on every year, and somehow I keep finding more and more to cut back on. You’d figure mathematically we’d run out at some point, but it hasn’t happened yet, and that keeps giving me more space to take life in full

In 2024, I’m all about emphasizing the immediate benefits of climate action.

So much of climate communications is like, “save the earth now so our kids can even still have an earth.” In reality, so many things we can do right away will have an impact that’s felt right away. Walkable cities that lead to better social lives? Yes. Healthier soil to reduce food insecurity? Better biodiversity? Those are benefits that can be had almost right away.

Dr. Kate Marvel recently wrote a pretty great op-ed in the New York Times about how it’s not just about sounding the alarm bells but that the advocacy, research, and efforts by many over the past several years have paid off significantly. Yes, there’s further work ahead, but not all of that work will involve catastrophizing

In 2024, I want to keep getting back in my body.

After years of spending most of my time engaging the empirical side of my brain, it was really nice to get back into my body in a number of different ways.

I’ve been mid-marathon training right now, and the feeling after a long run is always surprisingly amazing.

This Year I...

From family life to career to travel and creative work, 2023 had some of my biggest wins:

Getting back in my body and running distances again. Tough to find the time for it and took a while to build back the conditioning but happy to be back to double digit distances.

Feeling a sense of community I haven’t really had around me in years!

Diving back into improv for the first time in well over a decade and loving it. Finding ways to grow in the craft, forging some awesome friendships, and regaining an activity that calls for being present.

Connecting my kids with their Filipino roots by going back to the islands earlier in the year, and adding a new Filipino tattoo.

Some major speaking gigs, the big one being my TED Talk in June. But on the other end of the spectrum, things like storytelling with standup at Truth in Comedy, and I love that weird wide range.

Storytelling trips to Ethiopia and Kolkata. Two places I’ve long dreamed of exploring because of all the stories they have to tell and the richness off their cultures. From mud wrestlers to church forests, I’m really happy with the creative work I get to put out.

Most of all, though, I love the little life at home I’ve gotten to build with Deanna and our three. The days aren’t easy, but we’ve made it to the other side of two and our lives are so full.

2023 Highlights

In a weird hypothetical situation where I get to Heaven and they’re all like, “due to clerical error, we gotta have you relive one year on Earth before letting you in. You won’t change anything, just relive it. What year do you want to choose?”

I might have to go with 2023.

Rationally speaking, I’d want a year where all my kids are around, which really narrows it down to just the past two years, but that aside, I think my life has felt more complete and abundant throughout the course of this year than at any other point.

I’ve gotten to talk about climate on the TED stage, then play a dracula dad on an improv stage so I don’t take myself too seriously. I’ve gotten to drink chai in India and coffee in Ethiopia, while also loving domestic adventures like taking my daughter to a cat cafe. I’ve planned camping trips and bachelor parties and explainer videos and school lunches.

Last year was a year of chaotic good.
This year was all about balance and completeness.

Our Identities Are Diverse

So many of us feel a pressure to attach our identities to one single facet. In the U.S., that’s most often a job title. But it can also be things like a personality trait, a skill we’ve honed really well, or a role like parenthood.

I love being a dad. I love my work and all that I do. But I’ve learned that your person is a bit like a garden. It benefits from having diverse components that support one another.

The City of Joy

Kolkata’s nickname is the City of Joy. When I first heard that, I thought, if it lives up to that name, it’s got to be an amazing place.

Kolkata was amazing.

And I learned about the origin of the nickname.

City of Joy was the name of a book set in Kolkata, written by Dominique LaPierre. That book is mostly set in the slum of Anand Nagar, a name that literally translates to ‘place of joy.’ The book focuses on how the people living in the slum, despite the many hardships of life in poverty, still manage to find life worth living and experience happiness.

I often think the trope of “oh they’re so poor, but they’re actually happy” can be harmful. It can get us to romanticize poverty rather than addressing its root causes.

But, especially at the time the book was written, I could see it being helpful to push back on the conflation of material wealth with happiness.

Travel Isn't Escape

The words travel and escape are so often paired together, and yeah, travel can easily be a form of escapism.

But when you interact with enough people from different places who live totally different lives just based on the circumstances of their birth, you start to realize that setting up camp in one corner of the globe and thinking of the way things happen in that corner as “normal” and everything else as different, it occurs to you that this is its own form of escaping reality.

A Visit to Banojibi

Yes, climate vulnerability is a severe issue in Bangladesh, but I was told it had so many good examples of climate adaptation that it could be a leading example of environmental resilience to the rest of the world.

Up close, that looked like eco-villages like Banojibi taking a grassroots approach to implementing solutions among the locals in very innovative ways.

The Most Difficult Jobs

Bricklayers who worked fourteen hour shifts in the Bengali heat, inhaling the dust from their construction.

Shiploaders who carried two hundred loads of coal and other materials overhead across planks from cargo ships to shores, over and over.

Metalworkers in alleyways who worked without proper protective gear to take apart the scraps of old ships.

In one square mile of Dhaka I saw all of the most difficult, laborious, and underpaid jobs being worked by climate migrants. Obviously, they wound up in this position because of one unfair systemic problem stacked on top of another.

When you see the effects of hyper consumption and a climate crisis firsthand like that, it makes you wish a direct response was a little bit more within reach. But truly, the only sustainable solution was to go upstream. To look at the root causes, and work from there. In the meantime, the best immediate action someone could take was simply deciding to take a posture of listening to their stories and perspectives.

Mangrove Products

A lot of the mangrove trees in coastal Bangladesh can be used to make candy, molassess, and other treats. With a little bit of training and support, the locals in the area can produce these items and sell them for an income. This also helps farmers to realize the value of mangroves and protecting them rather than clearing the trees. The even bigger payoff comes during storms and cyclones, when the mangroves create a buffer between the ocean winds and farmlands.

Banojibi

The people who live on Bangladesh’s coastline are extremely vulnerable to climate change. That became obvious just seeing how their farms and homes were situated.

I was invited to see Banojibi, a project of BEDS, that was an eco-village designed to help these communities bolster resilience.

Banojibi turned out to be a very holistic project. It was part training center, part regenerative farm, an energy hub, an ecotourism center, and more. This community was both equipping them with better environmental management techniques while improving their lives financially and via infrastructure.

Kolkata

Kolkata is such a beautiful and vibrant city. It’s large, but it is less driven by technology and industry than India’s other big cities like Delhi and Mumbai, which gives it a more laid back feel. Traditionally the city has emphasized philosophy, literature, and art, so there are plenty of ways to indulge these interests. The people were so warm. I loved it her

First Time in India

I’ve been to a lot of places and I’m fortunate, but India’s always felt like a huge omission from the places I've been.

Can I really say I’ve seen the planet’s diversity without it’s largest country, where 1 in 7 people reside?

So thankful I finally got a chance to step into the country and start exploring.

The Baby Phase

Somebody pretty wise once said that parenting littles is an all-day struggle to get to the point where you can put them down for bed then take out your phone and stare at pictures at them.

It’s so true.

I pretty much end every night the same way, looking over at Deanna like, wow, we really got the best ones, huh? How’d that happen to us?

Truth in Comedy, San Diego

On bucket lists, travel, and slowing down the time:

“This constant sense I have, that time is speeding away, accelerating, taking me further and further away from the ones I love… that all seemed to stop whenever I’d go off on an international adventure.

Travel puts me in a flow state. Things move in slow motion. I take in everything about my new surroundings. The irregularity of cobblestone streets. The smells of a night market. The buzz of a crowd flooding into a cafe to catch a World Cup match. Every sense gets turned up to full volume.

Within one week in a new country, it felt like I could live lifetimes. Perhaps it was my one antidote to this sense of time moving too fast. Me staying still felt like sinking. Movement brought me stillness. Maybe… I found a pause button for life.”

So thankful I had a chance to share these stories at Truth in Comedy. What an amazing night.

Kai Turns Two

Kai, you’ve got an independent nature tucked stealthily underneath some really chill vibes. I know what that’s like, and I love it.

People love to point out what an easy-going guy you are, but I got the real treat of seeing you come into your own in the Philippines this year. Walking around in shorts and a tank like the island life was the one meant for you all along.

I love your natural sweetness. I love the way you dive deep with your passions, and try to carry as many toy cars as possible in two toddler hands.

Happy birthday my dude. We’re in for some serious fun this year.

Juniper Turns Two

Juni-whoop.
Congrats on turning two.

You’re the kiddo with the most surprises and I love it. Your daring, wild energy is such a delight.

Everybody comments on how much you look like your mom, and it’s true. But I also recognize my own curiosity and attraction to chaos in you, and I love the way you double down on that combination.

I love your fondness for cats- one of my happiest images of this year was that afternoon I brought you to a cat cafe just to watch your reactions. I love your version of Itsy Bitsy Spider (itsy spider, uh-oh, cuz!) and I love your enthusiasm for life. It’s gonna take you to some wonderful places this year.

Ethiopian Tasting Notes

The Ethiopian weavers are beautiful and like many of us, they love injera.

Of all the deep and diverse cuisines across Africa, Ethiopian food has been the most enthusiastically received by international audiences. Across cities in North America and Europe, you’ll find plenty of Ethiopian restaurants that have made items like tibs and injera widely familiar.

That said, it’s such a deep cuisine with a lot to offer, so an actual visit to Ethiopia introduced me to so many new items, spices, and flavors.

I ate good in Ethiopia! I’ve never been in a country that has been so fast to get Americans to complain about the portion sizes being too large. (I also got a kick out of it when an Ethiopian friend talked about visiting the U.S. and finding those portions too small. To be fair, on a typical week, people are fasting two days!)

This post only scratches the surface… stay tuned for future dives into Ethiopian coffee, the country’s party drink, and other items.

Weather Clubs

I’m a huge fan of these weather clubs I got to visit in Bangladesh. People living around Mongla are extremely vulnerable to cyclones. They farm for a living, and their homes and farms are typically right by the river- sometimes on top of the river, on stilts.

A bit of preparedness goes a long way. These clubs enable members to activate cell phone chains to alert each other of coming storms and to activate shelter or evacuation plans. No doubt that having these networks prevents a lot of damage and saves lives.