Three Powerful Lessons About Love (Encore)

Summary

Modern Love Podcast: Three Powerful Lessons About Love (Encore)
Host: Anna Martin
Guest: Daniel Jones, Founder and Editor of Modern Love
Release Date: December 4, 2024

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Introduction

In the 20th anniversary episode of the Modern Love podcast, host Anna Martin engages in a heartfelt conversation with Daniel Jones, the founder and editor of the beloved New York Times column. Celebrating two decades of exploring the multifaceted nature of love, this episode delves deep into three poignant essays that have not only resonated with readers but have also profoundly impacted Daniel's personal understanding of love and relationships.

Daniel Jones: Reflections on Two Decades of Modern Love

Daniel Jones opens up about his personal journey over the past 20 years, highlighting significant life events that have reshaped his perspective on love. From navigating a long-term marriage and its amicable end to coping with the loss of his father and the chaotic upheaval of the pandemic, Jones shares how his role with Modern Love has been both a professional anchor and a personal reservoir of wisdom.

"Working on the column for all these years has given me touchstones and tools, not just for me, but for other people too. It's a churning reservoir of human experience that feeds into your veins, if you are open to it."
— Daniel Jones [04:12]

Jones reflects on how the column, initially a professional endeavor, has reciprocated by providing him with insights and strengths during his most challenging times. He likens his relationship with the column to an annuity program, emphasizing the enduring benefits of decades-long dedication.

Essay 1: "One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty" by Alicia Gorder

Summary: This essay begins with a seemingly lighthearted depiction of a young woman working in a flower shop, detailing various customers and their bouquet choices. Midway, the narrative takes a sudden turn as it reveals her high school boyfriend's tragic suicide. The story culminates in a meditation on the transient nature of both flowers and human connections, culminating in the poignant line:

"How startlingly beautiful impermanence can be."
— Alicia Gorder [14:24]

Performance: Carrie Bechet delivers a tender reading, capturing the essay's emotional depth and contemplative tone.

Daniel's Insights: Jones finds profound resonance in the essay's exploration of impermanence. He interprets it as an affirmation that the fleeting nature of love and connections is what imbues them with beauty and preciousness.

"It's beautiful because it's impermanent. The fleeting nature of any connection makes it precious."
— Daniel Jones [14:24]

Reflecting on his personal losses, including his father's passing, Jones acknowledges how the essay's themes provided comfort and a deeper understanding of the transient beauty in relationships.

Essay 2: "Nursing a Wound in an Appropriate Setting" by Thomas Hooven

Summary: Written by Thomas Hooven, a doctor with no prior writing experience, this essay recounts his long-term relationship with a girlfriend who abruptly ends their engagement just weeks before their wedding. As Hooven progresses through medical school, he grapples with loss and emerges with a redefined understanding of love, portraying it as resilient and adaptable.

Performance: Hollywood actor Jake Gyllenhaal masterfully narrates the essay, infusing it with emotional gravity and authenticity.

"Our love developed differently from any I had ever experienced before. Less like a crystal vase, more like a basketball. Our relationship is made for bouncing...
— Jake Gyllenhaal [19:41]

Daniel's Insights: Jones relates deeply to Hooven's realization that conflict and resolution are essential for deepening relationships. He admits his own challenges with conflict, emphasizing that embracing and navigating disagreements can lead to stronger, more resilient bonds.

"Fighting can bring you closer and is the only way to deepen your relationship."
— Daniel Jones [22:26]

Jones appreciates Hooven's articulation of how personal and professional growth often occur in tandem, reinforcing the idea that true love involves continual evolution and understanding.

Essay 3: "My First Lesson in Motherhood" by Elizabeth Fitzsimmons

Summary: This emotionally charged essay narrates the harrowing experience of a couple adopting a child with severe health issues. Initially seeking a healthy baby, they are confronted with the devastating news that their chosen child has significant physical ailments. Facing an impossible choice between their expectations and an unconditional embrace of their daughter, the essay explores themes of parental love and unwavering commitment.

Performance: Award-winning actress Connie Britton delivers a moving rendition, capturing the essay's intense emotional stakes.

"She loves her child. Yet we had a long, fraught night ahead, wondering how we would possibly cope."
— Connie Britton [27:36]

Daniel's Insights: Jones is profoundly affected by the essay's depiction of bravery and unconditional love. He highlights the parents' courageous decision to embrace their child despite the daunting challenges, underscoring that true love often involves making difficult, selfless choices.

"You can't predict the smooth path. You just have to walk forward and be brave."
— Daniel Jones [31:42]

Jones notes the powerful impact the essay had on readers, with many sharing their own experiences and the struggles they faced with similar choices, further emphasizing the essay's universal relevance.

Themes and Insights

Across the three essays, several core themes emerge:

1. Impermanence and Presence: Embracing the transient nature of relationships enhances their beauty and value.
2. Conflict and Resolution: Navigating disagreements is essential for deepening connections.
3. Bravery and Unconditional Love: Making selfless, courageous choices defines the essence of true love.

Daniel Jones synthesizes these lessons, identifying bravery as a fundamental act of love and life. He observes that true bravery often goes unrecognized, as many protagonists humbly perceive themselves as unremarkable despite their courageous actions.

"People's bravery has been my biggest takeaway over 20 years of doing this work."
— Daniel Jones [33:11]

Advice for Modern Love Submissions

As the episode concludes, Jones offers valuable guidance for aspiring contributors to the Modern Love column:

• Subject Lines: Crafting an engaging and specific subject line increases the chances of selection. For example, instead of a generic "Modern Love Submission," use a creative title that hints at the essay's essence.

  "A good subject line would include an attempt at a title which would be like, please, Lord, Let him be 27."
  — Daniel Jones [35:15]

• Essence of a Story: Seek humility in storytelling. Essays should reflect a genuine search for understanding rather than presenting definitive answers. Emphasizing vulnerability and presenting relatable problems can make a submission stand out.

  "The stories aren't really about answers. They're about a search for answers."
  — Daniel Jones [35:55]

Jones encourages writers to share authentic, heartfelt experiences that resonate on a universal level, fostering a sense of connection and empathy among readers.

Conclusion

This milestone episode of Modern Love not only celebrates the enduring legacy of the column but also underscores the timeless lessons about love that continue to resonate with audiences. Through Daniel Jones's reflections and the evocative essays discussed, listeners are reminded of the complex, beautiful, and courageous nature of love in all its forms.

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Credits:
Produced by Julia Botero, Christina Djose, Riva Goldberg, and Emily Lange. Edited by Jen Poyant and Paula Schumann. Mixed by Daniel Ramirez. Theme music by Dan Powell. Digital production by Mahima Chablani and Nelga Loughley. Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Caitlin, and Lisa Tobin.

Subscribe:
Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore a diverse range of topics by subscribing at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Submit Your Story:
If you have a love story to share, visit modernloveytimes.com for submission guidelines.

Transcript

[Anna Martin]

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The episode you're about to hear is from a special series celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Modern Love column. It originally aired in early 2024. We hope you enjoy it.

[Daniel Jones]

Love now and I love Love was stronger than anything you feel. I love Can I love you more than anything there's to love.

[Anna Martin]

From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Modern Love column. 20 years. Can you believe that? Two decades of essays that have made us laugh, made us, gasp, broken our hearts, reminded us of the fundamental goodness of people? And let's be honest, a lot of these essays should come with tissues. It's kind of our thing here, making you cry. To mark this big anniversary, we've got a conversation with Modern Love founder Daniel Jones. Dan has edited around a thousand essays since the first one ran back in 2004. And when you spend all your professional time contemplating human connection, that work doesn't stay at the office. It impacts you in profound ways. So today, Dan shares the three essays that have changed the way he approaches love and relationships in his own life. So it feels strange to say what I say to guests on the show, which is welcome because really, you welcomed me into this universe. So instead of saying welcome, I'm gonna say, Dan Jones, hello and thank you so much.

[Daniel Jones]

It is great to be back here.

[Anna Martin]

The Modern Love column has been around for almost 20 years, which is a long time. And I do not say this in a rude way, but that also means that you are 20 years older than you were when you started it. Is there anything that's happened in your life over those two decades that has changed your approach to the work or reframed it in some way?

[Daniel Jones]

I've gone from being young to less young over that time. Delicately put, I started the column with children who are now very much adults and have gone through their own breakups and traumas and all of that and got out into the world and gotten jobs. My marriage of 29 years came to an amicable end. My father died, and there's been a lot of tough family time since then, but I feel like my life was pretty stable during sort of the family child rearing years. And then, oddly, time to the pandemic.

[Anna Martin]

I have to say, has happened to many.

[Daniel Jones]

Yeah, it just, like, opened up, and it was like the column was saying to me, okay, you're going to experience the whole range of what you've been putting out there. And interestingly enough, I feel like working on the column for all these years has given me sort of touchstones and tools, and not just for me, for other people, too. To be able to navigate difficult times in life, it feels like this churning reservoir of human experience that sort of feeds into your veins, if you are open to it.

[Anna Martin]

I love what you said that you gave so much to the column, and now you're in this place in your career, in your life, where it's giving back to you. I mean, what a.

[Daniel Jones]

It's like an annuity program.

[Anna Martin]

It's like. Yeah, it's like a 401k.

[Daniel Jones]

Right, right, exactly.

[Anna Martin]

It's like a Roth IRA.

[Daniel Jones]

The modern love.

[Anna Martin]

That's a sexy way to say it, right?

[Daniel Jones]

Yeah. I'm withdrawing. I'm getting close to the age where I'm gonna be forced to withdraw. So that's a good thing.

[Anna Martin]

People are loving this metaphor.

[Jake Gyllenhaal]

Yeah.

[Anna Martin]

Okay, so that's where you are now. But when you were starting the column, did you see yourself as an expert in relationships or in romance?

[Daniel Jones]

I don't. I wasn't great at romantic relationships. I was like, how does this work? How does this work? I was really terrible at it in high school. I was really terrible at it in college. Still found it really hard. I hit my first girlfriend in grad school. It took you a while, but very slow learning. Very shy. But I think just the. The weightiness of romantic relationships is a scary thing. And I wasn't paralyzed with fear or anything. Like, I just. I assumed I'd get married, I'd have a family. I'd. Like. All those things were just assumptions and didn't seem all that hard to make happen, in a way, but the complications of relationships and loss and just all those big things, I felt like those were things that happened to somebody else. You know, those were. Those were out there and were these deep, dark wells that I hadn't really experienced and didn't have a sense of how to navigate.

[Anna Martin]

Hmm. How did the people in your life react when you told them, like, hey, I got a new gig. I will be covering love and relationships. The New York Times. Did people, you know, how did people react?

[Daniel Jones]

Some people were just. They were surprised that that would be my subject.

[Anna Martin]

Huh.

[Daniel Jones]

And that would be my beat, in a way. To me, I don't think of love in relationships as being a beat. I think of it as being, like the center of all life. You know, it's like, it's not off to the side. It's the center of things. Honestly, I don't like the word romance. It just feels like shallow and schlocky. Schlocky and whatever. But the word love, like, has it all. It's like that's the core of human existence. It seems to me. It's the stuff of life and loss and death and yearning and dreaming and all of that stuff.

[Anna Martin]

Have you come to that understanding of these stories about love are really stories about life? Did you enter into the column, the early days of this column, with that understanding, or has that been worked out over 20 years of. Of editing these pieces?

[Daniel Jones]

We started that way a little intentionally. We made it clear that the stories were not just about romantic relationships. It was family relationships and friendships and parenthood and the whole sort of gamut of human love and bonds. And in coming up with a title, Modern Love, we wanted an umbrella that was sort of wide enough to encompass love. And the modern part of it could mean a lot of things. To me, it meant something that was contemporary, like a way we connect that we didn't used to, a way we use technology, the way we have children that we didn't used to, all of those ways that are now. And we just thought Modern would cover that piece of it.

[Anna Martin]

Okay, so another big part of the column is that it's totally based on reader submissions, meaning anyone can send in their idea for a story and you select the ones you want to edit and then publish. Why did you go with that submission model as opposed to, like, commissioning stories from famous writers or other well known people?

[Daniel Jones]

I just thought, let's just open the floodgates and see what comes in. I didn't realize at the time what a great idea that was, because I.

[Anna Martin]

Realized later, I'm a genius.

[Daniel Jones]

I'm a fricking genius for coming up with that. But not like it's any kind of new idea, but for. For this kind of a forum, it was essential. And as an example, we published a story by a Bangladeshi immigrant who'd been a taxi driver in New York in an arranged marriage from Bangladesh, had won the visa lottery and moved here. Then they settled In Queens, they had a daughter. She became a doctor. And I asked him, what made you write this story, your love story from 30 years ago and bringing it up to now? What made you submit it? And he said, oh, I've been reading modern love for 20 years, you know, and reading it every week. And he wasn't a writer. He'd just been reading the column and thought, wow, I have a story. All these people who have stories, they read stories, they think, what about my story? And that's something I was late in realizing that it was just it had drawn stories out of people who otherwise would not have told them. It felt like a safe space for them. They thought, well, other people have done it totally. So I could do it, too.

[Anna Martin]

When we come back, Dan chooses the three essays that taught him the most about love, with a little help from Jake Gyllenhaal and Connie Britton. Stay with us.

[Daniel Jones]

Have you ever wondered what goes through an athlete's mind before their step on the field? Or about the secret, superstitious pregame rituals? Hi, I'm Isabella Rossellini. In the latest episode of this Is Not a Beauty Podcast, we speak to the barber responsible for the hairstyles of some of the world's greatest athletes to dig into how beauty shapes sports. Listen now on your favorite podcast platform.

[Anna Martin]

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[Daniel Jones]

Yeah. So this is an essay. It's called One Bouquet of Fleeting Beauty, please. And the writer is named Alicia Gorder. So this is a story that begins with a young woman working in a flower shop describing the kinds of customers who come in, the kinds of flower bouquets that they buy and for what reason. And you think you're in this sort of light, airy story about a flower shop. And then about halfway through, it takes a plunge into this really troubling backstory where her high school boyfriend had died by suicide at age 18. And it throws this, what she's talking about in the flower shop, into a whole new context. And in the end, it turns into a Meditation of what? Why flowers? Why are these the things that people rely on for these important transitions and moments in life? And comes to a wisdom at the end that has just stayed with me ever since.

[Anna Martin]

And longtime listeners will remember that this essay was featured on the podcast years ago, back when we had celebrities and voice actors read the essays. Let's hear a part of this one performed, I think really tenderly by the actor Carrie Bechet.

[Carrie Bechet]

There's a picture I took of him just days before I left for college, two months before he died. It was the summer of chips and guacamole dinners we shared. Sitting on the living room floor. He's standing in the kitchen wearing a white T shirt and jeans, one perfect half of an avocado cradled in his hand. His face is turned away, hidden from the camera, but I like to think he's smiling. I remember the song we were listening to, the chatter of frogs through the screen door, my bare feet on wood. Precious moments made all the more precious by the fact that they have already come and gone. Now I measure months by what's in season. Sunflowers in July, dahlias in August, rosehips and maple in October, pine in December, hyacinth in March, crowd pleasing peonies in May. A favorite of mine is tulip magnolia. The way the buds erupt into blooms and the blooms into a litter of color on lawns, all in a matter of weeks while its snowing cherry blossoms. How startlingly beautiful impermanence can be.

[Anna Martin]

You said that it's that ending, and in fact it's that final line that really speaks to you. Can you tell me what you learn or take away from that line?

[Daniel Jones]

It's sort of grown on me. How startlingly beautiful impermanence can be. It's not that love or connection is beautiful and impermanent. It's beautiful because it's impermanent. And the fleeting nature of any connection is what makes it precious and what makes it beautiful. And the way that she saw this, you know, in petals on the ground that are soon to dry up and go away, but the beauty is in that it won't last.

[Anna Martin]

I mean, there's this section, I think a little bit earlier than that, when she even poses the question quite directly, like why flowers? Why do we give these things that are gonna shrivel and die?

[Daniel Jones]

Throw away.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah, and I love what you're saying. It's not despite the impermanence, it's really loving because of it. Because our time is, that is the arc of life.

[Daniel Jones]

It's shortened with flower blossoms, but that Is it. It sometimes lasts a long time, sometimes a short time, but it will always feel fleeting in a way, that level of beauty.

[Anna Martin]

What does this essay make you think about in terms of your own life or your own relationships?

[Daniel Jones]

To me, it's about. I mean, it's a buzzword we always hear about, but here it really comes home to roost, is presence as being present. And it's always the hardest thing for me, for a lot of people, appreciating what you have now and not thinking about what you're building toward and what you're accumulating wealth for and what's to come, but the connections you have now that are beautiful in the moment and not fearing that you're going to lose them because you are. That's a certainty. But just being able to be present and appreciate them, and the fact that it was. It's this young woman who was able to artfully, in the midst of grief, compose such a beautiful piece that teaches that it was just miraculous to me.

[Anna Martin]

I mean, you mentioned earlier that your dad passed. Did you return to this essay then? Was it in the back of your mind as you were processing all that?

[Daniel Jones]

You know, it must have been, because I was scrolling through the archive and saw that illustration and clicked on it. And I did see it in sort of a new way. I, like, remembered how much I appreciated it at the time. But I was able to hold it together here. But when I read it aloud to a friend who was sitting there when I was rereading it, I just. I couldn't get through the final lines. I was really broken up by it.

[Anna Martin]

It sounds like this piece resonated with you and spoke to you in a different way years later, which is really powerful. Do you want to talk about the next essay?

[Daniel Jones]

Yeah. So this one is called Nursing a Wound in an Appropriate Setting. It's written by Thomas Hooven, who is a doctor. He's not a writer. But you would never know that.

[Anna Martin]

No, you would not.

[Daniel Jones]

Reading this incredible essay. And I think about this essay all the time. This was published in 2013. He describes his relationship with his longtime girlfriend before he goes to medical school. They knew each other for 12 years. They were both the children of divorce and of unstable households that were scary, and they gave each other a sense of safety. He describes their relationship as being. No, fighting. Fighting was what their parents did.

[Anna Martin]

Fighting would threaten their equilibrium.

[Daniel Jones]

Yeah, fighting would threaten their love. And so it was a sort of a flat, safe relationship. They were together for 12 years. They got engaged. He was about to head off to medical school, and then she abruptly broke up with him. I think they were only a few weeks from their marriage, three from their wedding.

[Anna Martin]

Three weeks.

[Daniel Jones]

Three weeks. Okay. Wild. And he was just devastated. Doesn't begin to describe it. And he goes off to medical school or his residency, and it's sort of his boot camp in feelings and complications and devastation and real life. Like, real life. And then after this sort of time in the wilderness in his residency and going through all this, he learns what real love is.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah, I mean, his idea of what real love is at the end of the essay is so powerful. This essay was also featured on an early season of the podcast. So here's Jake Gyllenhaal reading Thomas Hooven's essay, Nursing a Wound in an Appropriate Setting.

[Daniel Jones]

Yeah, this one is so great.

[Jake Gyllenhaal]

My ex and I are not in touch. Our relationship, so long in the making and so quick to end, was like an ornamental piece of crystal, aesthetically pleasing, but lacking resilience and, once shattered, irrecoverable. Looking back at the various romantic and not so romantic dating experiences I had afterwards, it's hard to separate my growth as an emotionally conversant partner from my development as a capable physician. Both happened simultaneously and gradually, through stretches of triumph and sorrow. There were no eureka moments, and neither ever really ended. The turmoil I experienced as an intern left me with a deeper understanding of how pain works, how it feels, how it ebbs, and how it leaves you less naive. I also learned to open up to important facets of life that my previous relationship had locked. Unhappiness, uncertainty, regret, comfort. Around feelings like these is crucial in both medicine and intimate relationships. It's the basis of empathy. I didn't understand that before my ex left me, and I learned it the hard way. By the time I met my wife, I was a changed man and a real doctor. And our love developed differently from any I had ever experienced before. Less like a crystal vase, more like a basketball. Our relationship is made for bouncing, for good and sometimes rough play that modern professional lives generate. We do have fights. Oh, yes, we do. But they do not threaten our foundation. They deepen it.

[Anna Martin]

Tell me what you take away about Thomas Articulation of what real love is. What is he saying?

[Daniel Jones]

Well, this is one of these essays that I feel like mirrored my experience in a way. Like, I didn't come from a family of turmoil, but I'm afraid of conflict, total fear of conflict. Don't like to fight, don't like to argue. My idea of a successful, romantic, loving relationship was being in a harmonious space all the time or not all the time. Sometimes you'd be bored, but you wouldn't be fighting. And so this idea that fighting can bring you closer is revolutionary to me. It still is revolutionary to me. And not only that it can bring you closer, but it's the only thing to bring you closer and the only thing to deepen your relationship. Fighting can lead to end of a relationship, definitely. But the only way forward and the only way deeper is through conflict and resolving conflicts to a new understanding of the relationship and who you're with and the person you're with and getting to know them better and all of that. And I don't know what business he has writing this well about. You're like, listen, it's not fair to be a doctor.

[Anna Martin]

You're already a doctor.

[Daniel Jones]

And I know. And also to be able to write this well about and understand love this well and loss and conflict and depth. It's remarkable.

[Anna Martin]

So are you like fighting all the time now?

[Daniel Jones]

No, I still need to learn how to fight better.

[Anna Martin]

We'll be right back.

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[Daniel Jones]

Yeah. So this is a piece that ran on Mother's Day way back in 2007. And it's yet another one that takes a really dramatic turn, several dramatic turns. And it's an essay about bravery when you didn't think you had the capacity for it. It's a couple who are having trouble getting pregnant and decide to adopt a baby girl in China. And they specifically fill out forms saying, like, we're new parents. We don't want any disabilities, any. We can't deal with anything, basically, except for just a perfect little healthy baby. And they get a baby who's chosen for them. By the time they get there and meet with the baby and are alone with her for the first time, they discover sort of alarming physical problems, a really bad rash and a scar at the base of her spine, and hear a horrifying diagnosis that the child will be paralyzed from the waist down, will be incontinent, will have serious, serious problems. And unbelievably, they talk to the agents from the adoption agency, and they say, oh, well, you know, we're sorry about this, and essentially offer a swap for a different baby.

[Anna Martin]

Yeah, That's a moment that is kind of unbelievable in this piece.

[Daniel Jones]

The view of human life in that circumstance.

[Anna Martin]

So this essay was read by the actress Connie Britton in 2016, and you can just hear the emotional stakes of this story in her performance. Let's listen to it.

[Daniel Jones]

Yeah, she's really perfect for this one.

[Connie Britton]

I pictured myself boarding the plane with some faceless replacement child and then explaining to friends and family that she wasn't Natalie, that we had left Natalie in China because she was too damaged, that the deal had been a healthy baby and she wasn't. How could I face myself? How could I ever forget? I would always wonder what happened to Natalie. I knew this was my test, my life's worth distilled into a moment. I was shaking my head no. Before they finished explaining we didn't want another baby, I told them we wanted our baby, the one sleeping right over there. She's our daughter, I said. We love her. Yet we had a long, fraught night ahead, wondering how we would possibly cope. I called my mother in tears and told her the news. There was a long pause. Oh, honey. I saw. She waited until I caught my breath. It would be okay if you came home without her. Why are you saying that? I just want to absolve you. What do you want to do? I want to take my baby and get out of here. I said. Good. My mother said, then that's what you should do.

[Anna Martin]

I mean, I'm tearing up.

[Daniel Jones]

Me, too. So the lesson in this piece to me is sort of about a test. It's really a test. It's like, what are you capable of? Like, what kind of devotion? What kind of sense of responsibility, what are you going to take on? And they have to decide in the moment, are they going to, you know, stick with this child with this horrifying set of health complications that could control their lives forever? Are they going to push that baby aside and accept a healthier baby? And then, you know, how do they live with themselves if they do that? Neither choice is an appealing choice.

[Anna Martin]

No, this essay, I mean, all of these essays bowled me over, and this one just made me. I mean, I quite literally called my mom after this. It is such a moving testament to just the completely inexplicable immediate bond of between parent and child. I just, like, I. Yeah, I'm still kind of crying. I mean, it's just. It's remarkable. Tell me what you're taking. I mean, you are a parent. Like, tell me what you're thinking about when you read this essay.

[Daniel Jones]

Well, first of all, I'm thinking, I think anyone reading this thinks, what choice would I have made? Of course, and you would like to think that you would make the choice of keeping the child. But honestly, one of the most moving things and tragic things that happened in the wake of publishing this essay is we got emails from people who'd faced this choice and made the opposite choice and either left with a healthy baby and struggled and struggled and struggled with having done that. More common was giving up on adoption entirely and just walking away, walking away from that child or any child. But she's just like, I'm gonna walk into this. Like, I'm gonna just walk forward into this, and it's gonna be what it's be. And miracle of miracles, like, within a year or so, all that stuff has gone away. They see a specialist.

[Anna Martin]

Fine, I'm going to cry again. It's like after making this decision, they go home and she heals.

[Daniel Jones]

Yeah. And she recoiled at thinking that was a reward for making the right choice. She said, it's not about that. It's not about, like, we were generous or we were good and therefore our child turned out fine. It's not that at all. It just happened that way. But it's yet another lesson in, you can't predict the smooth path. You just have to sort of walk forward and be brave. I often say with modern love stories that are, you know, really about choices and hard choices and how it's sort of ordinary people being incredibly brave. I mean, I often wonder what creates the person who can make the brave choice versus the person who shrinks from it. Like, what is that magic sauce? Or what is that childhood experience or what is the parenting that they have.

[Anna Martin]

Totally.

[Daniel Jones]

Because there is a divide. Like there is a divide often. And those circumstances that we saw in the outpouring after the essay, we see.

[Anna Martin]

Instances of bravery in all three of the essays that you've shared today. Bravery to embrace the brevity of love. Bravery to engage in fighting in a relationship. Bravery to make a choice. Would you define bravery as like a core act of love?

[Daniel Jones]

Yeah, a core act of love and a core act of life. People's bravery has been my biggest takeaway over 20 years of doing this work. It's never a person who says, I am brave. It's almost the opposite. It's people who say, I'm not brave, I'm a coward. And you believe. And the lesson just sort of, the lesson of that, like, like life, it's going to be a mess one way or the other. Like you just sort of choose your mess. But that is what it is. Like, that is life. You're not going to avoid it. There's such a school of life that is about trying to make your life as clean and tidy as possible. And it's really a struggle to do that. And I'm not sure it's well directed energy.

[Anna Martin]

What do you think we should direct our energy to? And now this is just truly me asking you because I want you to give me life advice, if not to cleaning up our life.

[Daniel Jones]

No, I'm not an advice giver, Anna.

[Anna Martin]

I know, but just please put on the hat for one second. Like, if not to direct our energy towards cleaning up our life in your 20 years of doing this work, like, what is the more worthwhile thing to direct energy towards?

[Daniel Jones]

This is not exactly new advice, but it's really the wisdom from Alicia Gorder's essay, which is be in the moment, value the people you're with now. Don't think I'm planning for 10 years from now. Get your 401k out of your mind. Contribute to it, but put it out of your mind. It's the now. It's the now that is the work, Dan.

[Anna Martin]

I love that it's the now. You know, I feel like so many listeners right now are clinging to every word you've said, trying to figure out what you're looking for in a Modern Love essay pitch. And by the way, you can send those submissions to modernloveytimes.com Dan, can you give us a few quick tips on what makes a story stand out in your inbox?

[Daniel Jones]

Well, like a bad subject line is Modern Love submission. You're like, you know, 80% of people who submit. And a good subject, subject line would include sort of an attempt at a title which would be like, please, Lord, Let him be 27. Please, Lord. I read that. Yeah, I read that subject line. It was funny, it was smart. It was vulnerable. I just prayed the essay would deliver on that promise.

[Anna Martin]

And it did deliver. We actually featured it on the podcast a few seasons ago. So a good subject line is very practical advice. But what about the essence of a story? Like, what are you looking for?

[Daniel Jones]

There harder to define quality is a sense of humility. Like, there's a sense that you're not the smartest person in the world, but you do have something to offer. And in the world of pitching and of trying to get published, there's an overriding sense that you have to act confident, you have to sell your product. You have to say, this essay is going to be perfect for you. And that's just the wrong approach. That kind of confidence is not what a hard experience leaves you with. It can leave you shaken, it can leave you wise, but it doesn't leave you cocky. And I think it's important that the stories aren't really about answers. They're about a search for answers. And they don't need to come to a conclusion, but they need to present a problem in an interesting way that makes you think about it.

[Anna Martin]

Well, now you're going to get even more submissions that can fuel the next 20 years of modern Love. Dan, thank you so much for the conversation today.

[Daniel Jones]

Thanks, Anna. That was a lot of fun.

[Anna Martin]

This episode of Modern Love was produced by Julia Botero, Christina Djose, Riva Goldberg and Emily Lange, with help from Davis Land. This episode was edited by our executive producer, Jen Poyant and Paula Schumann. It was mixed by Daniel Ramirez and recorded by Maddy Masiello. The Modern Love theme music is by Dan Powell. Digital production by Mahima Chablani and Nelga Loughley. Special thanks to Larissa Anderson, Caitlin and Lisa Tobin. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones. Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you want to submit an essay or a tiny love story to the New York Times, we've got the instructions in our show Notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.