A Love Letter to Mike White, (because if I can't reach out to him, I can still reach out to the rest of the world)
I firmly believe that closed doors don’t mean words don’t matter, so here we are. This was originally going to be sent to Mr. White alone. I even created an IMDb Pro account and attempted to contact a few of his representatives — but to no avail. So, on this merry day, I reckoned, why not just share it with the world?
What began as a letter to Mike White became a meditation on storytelling, homecoming, and why we’re all just droplets waiting to return to the ocean.
Dear Mike,
I’ve been wanting to write to you for some time now — after watching the gut-wrenching finale of season 3, I thought, now it’s the time.
To thank you, maybe? To tell you how much I appreciate the artistry, the humanity, and the absurdity of life woven perfectly in all three narratives across the three seasons you have blessed us with. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be the third, it must be.
Maybe because I’ve been living in China for the last six years, and after visiting many Asian countries, I myself might have developed a similar outlook on life. Just like what the monk said: when we’re born, we’re the separated droplet experiencing duality, and only in death do we truly find homecoming.
It is especially true for anyone who lives away from home, so-called. Yet, when I return to Morocco, I long for that ocean-like embrace, and I find myself more alienated than ever. My parents do embrace me still, my sisters and their kids, in that sacred scent of familiarity I let go of — or at least I try to.
Storytelling is almost a divine endowment, isn’t it? I sit quietly every week and open myself to an hour-long succession of events (that you wrote and directed) that, on the surface, sound and look comical, entertaining, and at times tragic. And yet, under that current of artificiality that’s inherent in filmmaking, in between the EXT. and INT. of script format, the strenuous long work of the team and crew, the exquisite cast, and the relentless, unending negotiations of producers, lies a pulsing heart of a creator who is onto something. That pulsating heart was once just a little child who grew and lived life thoroughly to become the master he is today.
You’ve touched so many lives with your writing and creations, and in this profound and beautiful truth, I find my own humanity in you, in what you write and where you chose to put your lens.
I admire how you bring to the surface some uncomfortable conversations, deeply human and raw realizations that we run away from in auto-mode. It’s almost like the TV itself turns into a mirror: you’re not watching Lucius Malfoy pretending to be a Muggle adopting a North Carolina accent; you’re just watching yourself, or maybe a part of yourself that’s in denial, an ego-blind driven part of you, the part that identifies with being a breadwinner who has acted as a shield to his or her family for far too long, and that, with accessible pleasures and the nature of a cyclical lifestyle, one fears might become completely numb.
When you eye-gaze for far too long with a human being, or when you stare at yourself in the mirror (the mirror-check exercise) without judgment and without expectations, you sometimes reach an elevated state of consciousness that says, we are all one. That twinkling in the eye I see in actors comes really from their souls while enacting your words.
I don’t think it comes from any method nor from any rehearsal. It’s the same twinkling of the eye I have, and it’s the same I have seen in my neighbor and my cousin — it’s in us all. In fact, for the actors to carry such tense aphorisms you have authored, they themselves must have gone through some shadow work, conscious of it or not. I also believe that either by destiny or chance, some actors get cast as vehicles for these universal truths. It’s as if the words themselves have sprouted a will and plucked certain individuals as ambassadors to themselves, to their meaning.
The ‘pampered daughter’ is not a spoiled brat; she is anything but. She longs for an identity away from her ‘narcissistic’ family. She might be gaining some sort of self-awareness, albeit from a propagandist, skewed angle — and in that venture, she ends up finding herself, ironically away from the monastery.
It’s ironic because Buddha himself left his riches so that those kinds of monasteries could be erected. She cannot accept laying on a stained bed for a year, but she might still meditate by her bedside and light a candle back home (if they still get to keep it).
That tearful eye Saxon had, full of envy, wonder, and despair, when he watched Chelsea running towards her soulmate after his Bangkok trip. She found it: Chelsea, the key to life’s meaning. A companion, an unusual hobby — astrology, which I wholeheartedly believe in (I am a Taurus Sun, Aquarius Asc, and Aries Moon; all combinations necessary to make me a hopeless romantic or completely delusional) — and a beautiful smile on her face.
Piper might use some of Chelsea’s profound and admirable life hacks. One won’t attain enlightenment through a 10-minute breathwork exercise, as she told Saxon once, nor will it be attained by reading a library of books about spirituality. It’s a lifelong commitment; it’s a process, and like moon cycles, it moves through phases of brightness and darkness.
The trick is to wake up in that headspace willing to put on the work, and sometimes the work is to just be still and let the currents dictate their natural flow. You observe it; you don’t control it, because there’s a lot of power that comes with surrender rather than control. Resistance might be one of the many things the universe — or God — truly abhors. Resistance teaches us nothing about staying alive with the current; if anything, it only drowns us. Maybe the trick to a happy life, or at least an attempted projection of happiness, is to let go, truly, and let the currents do what they do best: carry.
Living in China, I learned to trust in the Wu-Wei. This came after I compelled myself to follow the 24 solar-term walk, similar to the Decan walk in Tarot, where 24 kinds of tea must be drunk and celebrated for the duration of the solar term. Listening to Guzheng also helped, as did learning the language and breathing in what life has to offer here.
Taoists here see life as water too, and didn’t Cymatics say that water retains memories? I am vividly reminded of this, especially during those intercut transitional moments between scenes or times of the day, when you force us to be still with the waves. Be it Tanya returning her mother’s ashes to the ocean in season 1, the territorial, toxic masculine fight between the two young male leads in season 2, or the graceful droplets leaving and returning to the water surface in season 3, water here is not just a holiday attraction by the side of a high-end resort. It’s not even an aesthetic glue that connects separate scenes.
It’s a reminder of where we are, where we come from, and where we might return. Even in the Quran, there’s a verse that talks about how everything is life from water; everything from water becomes alive.
If Gmail doesn’t introduce a word limit to emails anytime soon, my deep fascination with your shows may never stop. Being a budding writer myself, I am aware of the lengths to which our souls need to go: the self-searching, the constant observation of how ridiculous and often divine life can be, and how important it is for us to celebrate it, to recognize its patterns and all its modalities.
Your stories bring complex topics and put them into a simple and perfect puzzle — not to find out how, why, or who, because to me, you don’t ignite mystery for the sake of cheap mass entertainment; your purpose leans more toward glorifying the act of asking questions: big, difficult questions full of unresolved promise.
To remain in constant awe of what it is: what does this all mean? Why are we here, and why do we love and go through such pains? Only to find solace in acceptance and letting go, even amidst the drama. Indifference was never our skill to hone, and your vision helps us — the readers and viewers — to identify where equanimity should be, that coming together in each of the finale episodes, the epiphany that hits when you remember Shakespeare’s infamous line: “To Be or Not To Be…”
Bringing you back into the headspace of season 3 must be a chore; your monkey mind must be so focused on season 4 now, with multiple possible threads as storylines and hundreds of possible locations. I hear Marrakech might be one possible destination (my hometown), also Egypt or even Europe. It is sentimental to imagine that White Lotus 4 might happen in the city where I was born and where I will eventually return; doubtless, the idea of it fills me with excitement.
I grew up within the walls of the ochre city, its secret alleyways that lead to riads, fountains of things more than water. The story of the seven saints who hold the city together spans centuries; the fascination of the locals with the wild Jamaa El Fna square — in the bright of the day, it looks like a multicolored festival of mystic practices, crafts, music and dances, chants, and storytellers; incense and juices, an army of performers living to their fullest extent, teetering at the edge of insanity.
At night, the square becomes a vast dark background with a thousand brimming dots of lights from the same entertainers, like wild dancing stars grounded in their habit and their connection.
I hear Egypt might be a possible contender too, and I cannot help but be enchanted by how the next chapter will look: a darkly absurd dinner scene against the Giza plateau in the background, a pyramid tour where character A confronts character E, and a trip gone wrong in the temple of Abu Simbel.
I have little to no expectation that this letter will get a reply. Understandably, I cannot expect any less from a high-profile show creator with a very busy schedule, but I believe that even if it didn’t reach you, even if you didn’t read it at all, somehow it will find you in the ether, and I am glad that I am able to write to you. I am grateful that I have the opportunity to even conceive of a possible contact, and just knowing that fills me with a great sense of connection and gratitude. That connection, in and among the groups of people Chelsea spoke about, might as well be the case here.
Thank you one more time for your incredible, sensible work, and thank you if you made it this far.
Best wishes,
#mikewhite #thewhitelotus
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