David Shams

I recently spent five days in Dublin expecting to find a nostalgic postcard—all old pubs, historic architecture, and the exact Ireland I’d imagined for nearly forty years.

What I found instead was a total surprise.

Dublin isn’t a museum. It’s a beautifully diverse, fast-moving city where immigration officials speak with global accents, and school kids from all over the world are leading a massive resurgence in fluency of the Irish language. It forced me to look closely at how we handle history back home in the US—and it gave me a beautiful, unexpected jolt of connection to my own Persian heritage.

My latest essay is a deep reflection on how a society can grow up, change, and embrace the future without losing its ancient soul. Read it here:

How Ireland is Forging the Future (Without Forgetting the Past) Unlike the US, where we often treat change as a violation of history, Ireland is using its past to push its future forward.