Embarking on Eudaimonia; with Laura Pashby, author of Small Stories
An interview series on the questions we carry on the path within by Ta Hiron
Laura Pashby captures our nature-loving hearts with every photo and her words remind us of the beauty in this very moment. On her Substack, Small Stories, you will find nourishing essays and photos that capture that thing deep inside that we connect with in nature.
Her first book, Little Stories of Your Life, captured us with its appreciation of story and encouragement to tell our own. Her highly anticipated book, Chasing Fog, is now available for pre-order. I have been looking forward to this opportunity today to tap into Laura’s timeless wisdom that will no doubt continue to guide me on my journey within. Welcome, Laura.
Can you tell us about how your first book, Little Stories of Your Life and your upcoming book Chasing Fog, came about, and if there is a common thread that runs through them?
Little Stories of Your Life is about the beauty of ordinary days, and the magic that we find when we pay attention to the details of our lives. It contains everything I know about storytelling, but so much of what I understand about life and self is also there within its pages.
Chasing Fog is a meditation on fog and mist, a love song to weather and nature’s power to transform. It’s a narrative non-fiction book with elements of memoir. In Little Stories of Your Life, I showed the reader how (and why) to tell their story. In Chasing Fog, I tell my own.
If you could distil your life philosophy, what would it be?
In terms of my creative life, my philosophy is best summed up by these lines from the Mary Oliver poem ‘Sometimes’:
‘Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.’
You note that your book Little Stories of Your Life is about the beauty of ordinary days. What do you think is the most beautiful part of an ordinary day, and why?
Every day is different but I find particular beauty in light—the way that it moves around my home, creates patterns on the walls, shifts and changes and dances. The most beautiful ordinary days will always be those I spend with the people I love—my husband and my three sons. I try to never take our time together for granted.
Can you share a pivotal moment or experience in your life that sparked your passion for writing and photography and made you realise it was something you needed to pursue?
When I left home at eighteen, I spent a year living and teaching in a secondary school in a town in Thailand called Kamphaeng Phet (‘the city of diamonds’). It was the late nineties and I didn’t have a mobile phone or an email address. I communicated with my family only by writing and receiving letters. I learned so much about myself during that jasmine-scented time, and although that girl now seems impossibly far away, I often think of her, sitting on her bed in a shared room with a wooden floor and a blue dividing curtain, scribbling in her diary or writing long letters. In those moments of trying to capture everything that I saw and felt, I started to become the writer I am now.
My love of photography had already begun—on my 15th birthday—when my dad gave me an Olympus Trip 35mm film camera and made our downstairs cloakroom into a home darkroom. Years later, when my second son was a toddler, I won a photography course in a competition. This cemented my understanding of the technical aspects of photography, and it got me into the habit of taking a photograph every day. I’ve never looked back.
The Chasing Fog subtitle is, ‘Finding enchantment in a cloud.’ Can you tell us more about this?
Originally, my subtitle was ‘finding beauty in a cloud’. The change was made thanks to the book’s brilliant sub-editor, who suggested the alteration and gave me the following feedback: ‘reading this book was a path to re-enchantment, especially in the context of looking afresh at the ancient legends and mythologies of the British Isles – these lands so rich in melancholy and mystery.’ I love that phrase, ‘a path to re-enchantment’. It’s a distillation of everything I hope that readers will gain from the book.
What 3 books have been the most impactful for you to read?
This is such a difficult question to answer! These are my choices today, but if you ask me again tomorrow, they would probably be different. The most meaningful books for me are often associated with a particular moment, or a specific place where I read them:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: I read this book during my year in Thailand and I associate it with the heat and freedom of that year. It was my first magic realist novel and I loved it.
Middlemarch by George Eliot: At school, my English teacher told me this was the one true grown-up novel. I didn’t understand him, but I set it to one side. I picked it up again in my early twenties, and read it cover to cover during a few days I spent with my then boyfriend— now husband—staying in a small apartment on the Italian island of Ischia. I associate the book with eating fresh figs we picked from the tree outside.
Hera Lindsay Bird by Hera Lindsay Bird redefined my understanding of poetry. I’d studied poetry at university (I have an MA in Modern & Contemporary poetry) but had fallen out of love with it. This was the first poetry book in years that I read for pleasure. It reminded me that poetry can be funny and sad and sexy and true, all at once.
What piece of advice would you offer for navigating life's complexities?
I don’t tend to offer advice, but I often think about these words from the end of the novel Fleishman’s in Trouble (by Taffy Brodesser-Akner):
‘You were only at risk for not remembering that this was as good as it would get, in every single moment—that you are right now as young as you’ll ever be again. And now. And now. And now and now and now’
Which is, I suppose, really another way of saying:
carpe diem.
You can preorder Chasing Fog for its release on 29 August: https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/Chasing-Fog/Laura-Pashby/9781398526990
If you’re not in the UK, Blackwells offer free international delivery: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/978139852699
Laura, thank you for this rich interview. I too, loved those years we honed our storytelling skills via snail mail, posting physical letters before mobiles and the internet took hold. Thinking of you abroad on a bed, penning letters that try to capture wonder, inspires me to get back down the letter kit with matching paper and envelope. That idea of capturing wonder threads through your art in the words and images. It is so beautifully done that we feel we have become part of the wonder in that moment with you.
I loved hearing how Little Stories of Your Life is the how and why of our stories, and Chasing Fog is your own. Taffy’s words are so poignant, and I feel your work gifts us those snippets of insight that this really is magical, this… right here and now. Thank you for highlighting that in all your work, it is a gift the world is uplifted to carry within it.
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P.S. Embarking on Eudaimonia signifies a journey towards living a life of fulfilment, purpose, and flourishing.
"Eudaimonia" is a Greek term often translated as "happiness" or "flourishing." In philosophy, particularly in Aristotle's ethics, eudaimonia refers to the state of living well, achieving one's full potential, and experiencing a sense of fulfilment and thriving in life.
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Thank you so much, Ta, for your thoughtful questions and beautiful write up. I loved taking part in your insightful series.
Now and now and now......all we truly have is now. Laura, your two books, one how to tell your story, and the second, your own story sound so inspiring. That quote from Mary Oliver is one of my all time favourites - especially the middle line, 'be astonished'. I like to think toddlers and grandchildren can teach and re-teach such astonishment. Great questions, Ta.