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- [00:01]
Jonathan Fields
So what if, no matter your age, the most creative, alive and impactful season of your life hasn't happened yet? What if getting older wasn't just about what you can no longer do, but rather was an invitation to a profound creative awakening? These questions sparked one of the most illuminating conversations I've had about creativity, aging, and what it means to live authentically in life's later chapters. My guest today is Mark Nepo, beloved poet, spiritual teacher, and number one New York Times best selling author of the Book of Awakening. With over a million copies sold and works translated into more than 20 languages, Mark has been called one of the finest spiritual guides of our time in his newest book, the Fifth Season Creativity in the Second Half of Life. It offers this fresh perspective on aging as a time of integration, transformation, and creative revelation. What emerged in our conversation, it just kind of completely shifted my understanding of creativity and aging. Mark shares how the creative process and introspective process are actually one and the same. He also unpacks the profound difference between legacy and living authentically, offering a perspective that could really transform how you think about your life's impact. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project. Ready to order?
- [01:30]
Capital One Saver Card Advertiser
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- [01:37]
Jonathan Fields
Everything.
- [01:38]
Mark Nepo
Fire everything. The Capital One Saver card is at table 27 and they're earning unlimited 3% cash back. Yes, Chef.
- [01:45]
Capital One Saver Card Advertiser
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- [01:47]
Mark Nepo
Had a feeling you'd want 3% cash back on dessert.
- [01:49]
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- [01:51]
Mark Nepo
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- [01:58]
Capital One Bank Guy
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- [01:59]
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- [03:03]
Jonathan Fields
Goodlife Project is sponsored by Wild Cosmetics. So you know how sometimes the simplest solutions are just right in front of us. I've been thinking a lot about the small changes that we can make that ripple out into bigger positive impacts. That's what drew me to Wild Cosmetics. They have created effective deodorants that are 98% derived from nature, packaged in a beautiful reusable aluminum case that feels like it belongs in a design museum. And the best part, when you run out, you just pop in a new compostable refill. No plastic waste, no harsh chemicals. Just clean, effective protection that keeps you fresh all day. And what I love about this is how it transforms something we use every day into a choice that's better for us and better for the planet. And here's something fascinating. Each refill prevents the equivalent of 30 plastic deodorant containers from ending up in landfills. Plus, their formulas are created by expert chemists who understand both clean beauty and performance. So, ready to make the switch to a deodorant that actually works? Visit WeAreWild.com and use the code Good Life to get 20% off your first purchase. Or just click the link in the show notes and use that code Good Life. God, what is this? Your 20 something book?
- [04:14]
Mark Nepo
Yeah, I know. More than I ever imagined.
- [04:18]
Jonathan Fields
The fifth season, Creativity in the second half of life. You've really described, in a way, the fifth season as a celebration of creativity in that second half of life. So I'm curious, what does that phrase actually mean to you?
- [04:33]
Mark Nepo
Yeah, well, it actually comes from Chinese lore. And in Chinese lore, the fifth season is this time of year, late August, early September, when the light just shifts. It's kind of golden and everything seems bare and quite clear. And so Chinese sages quickly use that as a metaphor that the elderhood and aging is that fifth season where we integrate and transform and make sense if we can, of all we've been through and the many selves we've been in, the raveling and unraveling and things, we let go of everything that's not essential. And so things become bare with that kind of essential light. And they termed it, and I love this, the heavenly pivot into the fifth season. And one of the things we can explore is when I talk about creativity in the second half of life, you know, One of the things I've learned over the years is that the creative process and the introspective process are really the same thing. It's just, you know, like, for me, I happen to write it down. But that process is the process of learning and listening and wisdom and compassion and deep love and essentializing our journey. And so when we live fully engaged, and of course we'll get into more what that means in the second half of life. But really our life is the work of art and the ways in which we engage wholeheartedly, authentically. That's how we surrender to letting the greater sense of life shape us, you know, and I think it was John Ruskin, I think I might use this in the book somewhere, who said. And you know, he was an essayist and watercolorist in the 1700s in England, where he said, the reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it. And so, you know, I had an early. You know, my father and my mother are gone now at least 10 years, but my father, we've talked at other times. He was a master woodworker and. And he was so. So I'm seeing these like, lessons decades later. You know, he was a real creative force and I'm sure that a lot of that comes in me different medium. But I remember watching him, I was 8 or 9, and he was also in love with the sea. And he had built a 30 foot catch that I spent a lot of my youth on. But he would. There was a period of 10 years or more, I think he might have been in his 40s, early 50s, where he was making what were called half models. He would get plans, blueprints actually, from 18th century ships, and then he would make them to scale and they were half models because they would be mounted on a wall, so it would only be half of the ship. And I was sitting on the top step of our see through stairs in our small home in Long island and watching him one evening and he was with a tweezer Janet. And he was like pulling little threads of rigging through little dead eyes. And that so stayed with me, even though it was like magnetizing. And all these years later, I realized he was teaching me the secret life of detail. Because every detail, when engaged, wholeheartedly opens us to the universal. And he was modeling for me because he never talked. He would not have this conversation like we're having. He would not.
- [08:25]
Jonathan Fields
Different generation.
- [08:26]
Mark Nepo
Yeah, he wouldn't talk, but he modeled for me Immersion and the byproduct of immersion is excellence. So, yeah, we'll produce nice things, but unless we're immersed by his immersion, I think when he was totally immersed, like I happened to see, he was in the moment of everyone who ever built a boat. And this is where, if I am with you in your pain, I am. You and I are in the moment of everyone who ever suffered or in love or wonder or surprise. And so this depth of immersion not only allows life to shape us, it allows us to experience the common center of all life.
- [09:11]
Jonathan Fields
As you're describing your dad and the way he would just drop into this immersive state, it's almost like, you know, yes, he's creating this really cool artifact that exists after the process. And while he's doing it, he's co creating the immersive state for him to inhabit along the way. That creates a sense of almost like grace, like what somebody described as flow.
- [09:36]
Mark Nepo
Yes.
- [09:37]
Jonathan Fields
Ties in a little bit to something you write about early in the book, actually, this notion of life being about picking things up and putting things down and how what you pick up and what you put down shapes you along the way.
- [09:49]
Mark Nepo
Yeah, it absolutely does. And that's in that chapter that I call your profile in aging. And I also would say that just as I've learned earlier in life that the things we face, like through my cancer journey and most recently in the last year of my back needing back surgery, these heightened situations bring into relief the range of choice in, quote, our normal spectrum of living. They just heighten them and make them more clear and more acute. And hopefully we learn from them. And I think the same thing while I focus this book on the second half of life, because I've always tried to use my life as a case study for the common passages we all go through. Well, now I'm in the continent of aging. I'm 74. But I do feel like a lot of the things that I was coming upon and exploring are really relevant at any time of life. And so I offered, as you know, there a set of reflection portals to kind of do an inventory. Where are you in your journey? And one of them is picking up and putting down, you know, what things, what significant passages have you been asked to pick up things? And how has that shaped you? And we pick up things because we're called to it or because we feel the obligation or pressure or expectation from others, but also putting down things. And I think this is a common developmental passage in life, the first half of life, in defining who we are, we pick up a Lot of things. And we try to see how am I unique compared to others. And then through great love and great suffering or just the evolution of years, we are worn to putting things down in the second half of life, looking back on our life and saying, you know, like, each moment has its own. Its own insight, its own lesson, its own transformation. But then, as we live long enough, if we're blessed, they form a constellation and they go together in a way we didn't imagine, you know. And so even in teaching, and this is recent, just recently, you know, I've come across and written about these three things, these three rituals from different cultures over time. But only recently, in a conversation with a group, did it come together. So. And they all pertain to what we're talking about here. So the first is that in India, most of the temples, the steps that go up to them, the last step, is built twice as high, purposely that the access to the sacred requires some effort. And it's not about looking good or doing it cool. You just got to get up that last step however you can. And then a lot of the temples, once you make that step, there are two statues. One is, I think, of a snake, and the other is a dragon. But they represent attachment and fear. When you make that effort and you can let go of what you're clinging to and move through your fear, the world becomes a temple. You know, these anonymous, kind of. You, you know, wouldn't think, right. That's very relevant to aging at any point, whether it's from 20 to 40, 40 to 60, 60 to 80. And the second, it does go from Japan of the wonderful tea ceremony, which is actually an expression of a religion. And it's very interesting by design, the entrance to the tea hut is small and low because in order to enter the sacredness there, you have to take off whatever's unnecessary that you're carrying, or you won't fit. And you have to humbly get down on the ground to shimmy in, because without humility, you won't fit. And isn't this very much our journey to cross the threshold into wisdom? It's remarkable. And the third. And again, I had discovered these over the years in different books I think I've written about them, but only recently did I see them together. They really offer a set of practices in aging, which I wasn't able to get in a book because I only learned it, which is another example of what we're talking about. And this is in Egyptian culture. And this was used. It was believed that if you died and before you could cross into the afterlife, your heart was weighed on a scale against the feather of truth. And if your heart weighed more than the feather of truth, you held on to too much of your experience, whether it was grudge, grievance, worry. And if your heart was lighter than the feather of truth, you didn't experience enough. You were hidden from life. So only when your heart was balanced with the feather of truth were you allowed into the afterlife. And, of course, you know, I think forget the afterlife. That's a great inventory for living and for entering any aspect of age. So it's also lead, you know, all of these three lead to, you know, as I'm committed to do, like, practice questions for how we're living now, especially today with our society. So I think a lot of people are holding on, making their heart heavier than the feather of truth, or they're so insulated and not connecting and thinking they made the climb because they saw it on YouTube that, you know, they're not experiencing life enough.
- [15:44]
Jonathan Fields
I would agree. I think so many of us dance between those two states and, you know, really trying to figure out where do we land here and how do we. How do we feel all the feels? How do we involve ourselves in the things? How do we care about the things we care about and have a point of view and express ourselves? And at the same time, how do we live with all of that? And how do we know what to hold onto, what to let go of and when is the appropriate time to let go of? What is it like? There are all these questions around it that we just grapple with for all of our days if we choose to, or we just back away from it all and say, I'm opting out.
- [16:22]
Mark Nepo
Yeah. And I think the kinds of things that we're talking about in the outer world questions have answers. I need to know the difference between the detergent aisle and the dairy aisle and what's edible. But inwardly, every question opens a practice, not an answer. So very much what you just said, that is one of the practices of authentic living. That is one of the practices that is necessary to keep working our life into a work of art. And that is, what do I pick up and what do I put down? And this leads to will and surrender and stubbornness and acceptance.
- [17:07]
Jonathan Fields
And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Grid Light Project is sponsored by Wild Alaskan Company. So when was the last time you truly trusted seafood you brought home? For me, it used to be a total guess. I'd stare at the fish counter wondering about the quality or sustainability until I discovered wild Alaskan company so wild Alaskan company only sources 100% wild caught seafood from Alaska which means there are no antibiotics or GMOs. It's a flash free frozen to lock in that incredible taste and those omega 3s. Feels good knowing I'm getting quality seafood that supports healthy oceans and fishing communities and they deliver wild caught perfectly portioned seafood right to your door. My first box completely changed how I think about seafood. Cuts were just beautiful and the flavor of the Coho, salmon, Pacific Halibut was incredible. I've been having so much fun learning to prepare them in different ways. There's zero risk. 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The US Surgeon General warns that kids spending more than three hours a day online are twice as likely to experience depression and anxiety, and this hits close to home. Our executive producer Lindsey was just telling me about trying to balance summer plans with her young kids and she wants to stay connected and know where they are, but without opening the door to endless apps. She got her nine year old the GAB watch 3e and it's exactly what they needed. GAB has created this brilliant approach called Tech in Steps, phones and watches that grow with your child, offering just the right features at the right time. It's thoughtful, intentional technology that keeps kids connected while protecting their mental health. With back to school season just around the corner, now is the perfect time to help your kids focus on learning with a kid safe phone ready to make a change? Visit gab.com goodlife and use the code goodlife for a special offer that's G-A-B-B.com goodlife or click the link in the show notes. It's interesting. It also ties in with something else that you write about also fairly early in the book, this notion of balancing effort with wonder to a certain extent. Because I think a lot of us find effort in asking the questions and we find more effort Actually, in sitting with the questions. And what if instead of looking for answers, you could just sit there in a state of curiosity and a state of wonder about the questions themselves and say, like, I don't like. The purpose of this exercise is not necessarily to land on an answer, but to find wonder in a state of curiosity.
- [22:23]
Mark Nepo
And I think any. And rather than answers, I mean, like, this kind of inhabiting our lives brings us more alive. You know, like referring back to my father. So my father loved doing that because it brought him more alive. He wouldn't have had any of these names for it or any of the questions we're coming up with. He just knew when he was able to go down in that basement and work on that boat and get immersed, he came up, man, he was lit. And that's why he said, I want to do that again, you know? And so that's like, how do we follow our aliveness? How do we follow our aliveness? So this phrases. And this is a common, very important kind of, I guess, theme of aging that I've discovered, which I don't think is, you know, unique to me. It's everywhere, is obviously that physically the. We encounter diminishment, we encounter limitations, you know, if we. Things start to ache. And, you know, and. And I know on that side, from almost dying in my 30s from a rare form of lymphoma, you know, I've always had kind of a very black and white sense about health and illness. Like, as long as nothing's happening, I'm okay. Oh, and I realize as I'm now in my 70s, that no longer I can't do that. I mean, a lot of years I did that unconsciously, but I can't do that because not every sensation is a problem or a pathology. You know, as we get older, we're like old trees creaking. And so if I react to every new sensation that way, I'm going to drive myself crazy. So the first thing is to have a sense of exploration about what's happening. And then on the other side is that not to turn for it to. Not to counter, not to rationalize at the same time that our physical body is aging, our spiritual being and our emotional being are deepening and expanding across our whole life. And so to let both. And, you know, obviously, if we don't. And again, it's not about answers. It's about being immersed, open, having the quiet courage to enter the inner life and the greater life, then they work together. And if we don't do that, if we don't allow that to happen from inside out. Then what's happening from outside in will take over and become everything which we all know can, you know. And then our world gets really small. And then all of a sudden you need to call the plumber. And it's a big deal. It's just a phone call, but maybe I'll do it tomorrow. And we all experienced that without letting the depths of life in, we get smaller and smaller. And that's in a limiting way.
- [25:32]
Jonathan Fields
I mean, this touches on the whole notion you speak about, about the paradoxes of aging also, you know, one of the most obvious ones being physically. You know, we're watching our body and look, you can work out, you can eat right, you can meditate, you can do all the things. But eventually we're all going to experience, like, some level of diminished capacity until we reach a point where, like, we experience the ultimate diminished capacity, which is a capacity to sustain life. Yeah, it's not a. Like a problem. That is the process that we will all move through while at the very same time, as you're describing, as we experience this very natural process of diminished capacity. We are. And I think if we're open to it, another thing you explore, and we really just sit with it, we experience this deepening of wisdom, this deepening of insight, if we're blessed, this deepening of connection, you know, so they're like these two things that are deeply important to us that are moving in opposite directions.
- [26:32]
Mark Nepo
Well, kind of like centripetal and centrifugal force as the planet, you know, we have gravity pulling in, and then we have the spin of the planet pulling out. And I think it's caused me to think about that, you know, gravity, the opposite of gravity, is the emanation of spirit from into out. And we live in between because we live in the world. We're a human being, and the human is subject to gravity, and the being is subject to the emanation of spirit and the noble, messy journey of being a spirit in a body in time on Earth. It's our practice to be here and do this, you know, And I think one of the things I learned from most recent. So back up a second. So in the early part of the book, you know, I use this metaphor of the meteor and the. You know, as a meteor enters the atmosphere, very few ever reach Earth because they burn up. And so what happens is they flake off. So their physical being of the meteor gets smaller and smaller, but they get brighter and brighter till the only thing left is light. I think this is an apt metaphor for the journey of a lifetime. And so, yeah, death is not a problem to solve. We are trying to inhabit and be as much light as we can while things flake off. So last year I had a major back surgery. Well, that was a flaking off for me. Nobody likes the flaking off. And now, thankfully it was very successful. I'm well, but I'm not back, pardon the pun, to where I was. I'm discovering what the new normal is because I'm well, but I'm different. So I think growth over a lifetime. And this is help. This is a metaphor, another metaphor about, you know, I think like we grow like rings to. On a tree, you know. So when I was 20 or 25 or 30, I think I was as true as I could be to what I knew about myself in the world. And then I grew. So now I had to become as true to that as I could. So it's not about oneself being false, it's more, it's partial. And as we grow, and hopefully each time we grow, there's more a greater circle inward and outward to be true to. So one of the things I learned during this, you know, during this, there were, there were times and it was my first experience of chronic pain and over like 10 months. And oh, my heart goes out to people who don't find a way out. I was lucky. But during this time, you know, there was a time where I couldn't lift the coffee pot and the mug at the same time. Well, now that I'm pain free a year later, I kind of like lifting in one at a time. And that's part of the humility of this journey. We start out thinking that we're going from here to there, but we're really going from in to out as you're describing that.
- [29:40]
Jonathan Fields
Also there's this idea that you tee up as well, that as we age it becomes less about becoming and more about remembering. And I wonder if that's a little bit of all these really interesting juxtapositions that have sort of energies that are moving in opposite directions and. But this is instead of the same time. It's sort of like we so often spend the first couple of seasons of life in this dropped into this process of becoming. What am I becoming, what am I making? Who am I and what am I creating? And then we reach a point where becoming starts to take a backseat to remembering as you describe. And it's like, who have I always been and what has all this becoming taught me about Actually, who I've been since, like, my earliest memories.
- [30:26]
Mark Nepo
Yeah. And I think that. And this has led to an interesting insight for me, and that is that the difference between the true purpose of memory and nostalgia and the true purpose of dream. Because, yeah, when we're young, we dream forward and when we're older, we look back, but we're really living still now. And nostalgia is when I look back to a time when I felt very alive, loved whatever it might be, fully here. Nostalgia is when I think that I, in order to have that again, I need to go back there. But the purpose of true memory is by touching into when I experienced it. How can I see where that still lives in me now? Because it hasn't gone anywhere. That was one circumstance in which I happened to live it. That spark of life, it's always been there. So the true purpose of memory and the word remember literally means to put the members back together to be whole again. So the purpose of looking back, really. No, I can be nostalgic and look back to a time and say, but that's just like, you know, looking at the guy on Mount Everest. That was then. That was wonderful. It's great memory, but that's not where I live. Whatever was there is still in me. And likewise, I'm 74. I mean, I hope. I mean, you know, who knows? I'm hoping I live to 100, but there's still. Even if I do, there's more years behind in the head. And so it doesn't mean I don't dream. But in the mirror image of the true purpose of memory. The purpose of dream is seeing what I might become, how I might engage life so that I can see where it lives in me now. So the true purpose of memory and dream is to make us come true. Very often at any point in life, we work toward dreams and they don't come true and we think we're a failure. Well, it can be disappointment. But all our dreams are guesses anyway. We're the ones who, like, then carve them in granite and if we don't get them, we fail. No, we put all our effort because the dreams may not come true. But by giving our all, we may come true. And that's more important. So, yeah, how do we relate? And this is where I think that as we age, we're being asked to learn different skills. Our horizons shift. And this is one of them. How do we relate to both memory and dream that help us live more fully now? And I think I learned this quite by accident. If you Will back when, you know, in my 30s, I almost died from cancer. So that really truncated. I mean, of course I had dreams and plans, but. But not really, you know, I mean, they. Because like a boomerang, they went out there so I could see them. But because, you know, I had almost died at a. At a young age, the future wasn't guaranteed, you know, and really for any of us. So it just boomerang back to now. Okay, but maybe I won't have then, so how about now?
- [33:52]
Jonathan Fields
And I agree. I think we spend so much time living in the past and the future, and I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing to spend time exploring and also out there in the future and envisioning and doing the dreaming. And at the same time, there's a cost to that. And the cost is being present with what's going on right in front of you and within you. And I wonder if often one of the most powerful tools that you write about, you've written about this many times in many different ways over the years, is this notion of really embracing impermanence. Impermanence of you as a human being, impermanence of those that you love, impermanence of the world around you. All the physical things that you see, we as a Western culture run from that. We are like, we're just culturally wired to pretend it doesn't exist. And yet acknowledging that it does can be just astonishingly powerful. As you described, you were face to face with this very early in life. And this is something that just becomes a much more practical reality the later you get into life, as you move through life and you start to realize, oh, I've dealt with some stuff myself. Maybe I've dealt with some mysterious stuff. And then you realize people around you that you really care deeply about have dealt with stuff. And very likely they didn't succeed at dealing with it, you know, and they may not be around anymore. And the more acquainted you become with impermanence, it's been my experience, the more desire I have at least to really savor what's happening in the here and now. But there is this paradox that tells us culturally. No, no, no, no, don't go there. It's morbid. You know, it's a morbid fascination. It's a doom and gloom. Like, it's just stunningly empowering. At the same time, it is.
- [35:49]
Mark Nepo
And it's. And I think that part of what's happened in our culture, not only are we isolated, but we have kind of distorted with the inalienable rights in the Constitution, which as a social contracts were probably one of the the greatest articulations of societal freedom in the world. But it's been distorted. We're not entitled to happiness. And in running out of fear to happiness and coupling that with entitlement, we think that we have a right not to experience the full spectrum of what it is to be here. And if we do that, just like we were saying, we're offloading the process of being human. We will not experience the fullness of being here. And so impermanence. And of course we hear that and it means we're all going to die, and we will, but that makes life more precious. And impermanence along the way is often a gift, especially when we're suffering because nothing stays the same. One of the helpful things during these last year when I was going through all this chronic pain and I have a dear friend who's a doctor and he had back surgery a few years ago, more complicated than even mine. And he was so helpful because he said, you know, whatever you're feeling today, it's not predictive. It's an aspect of impermanence. So we spend a lot of time trying to say, oh, it was worse today. Is that the way it's going to be? And it is just what it is today, and it has no bearing on what it's going to be tomorrow. And this is the process of healing. And likewise, it's the process of living. You know, it was Churchill who said, making plans, planning is essential, but plans are useless. So again, our engagement is enlivening, but it's all a gas to get us into the next step of aliveness. And this goes even further back, you know, in Elizabethan times before. So there was a word that was used that came from the Latin. It went back to the ancient Greeks, daemonian. Daemonian meant an attendant spirit that could be affirming or challenging. And somewhere in the Elizabethan age, that word was split into two words, angel and demon. So now anything that's challenging is to be avoided, is even seen as evil. And of course, that thwarts our growth. And in the native American tradition, that spirit was known as the trickster spirit, not because the spirit was deceptive, but because we were welcomed almost like, you know, the Chinese koans. We were welcomed into situations that didn't make sense and dropped us into a different reality than we expected. So we were, quote, tricked out of our pattern thinking. But now, you know, we are entitled to happiness. We only want to seek the angels, the affirming side. And you know, you see we get less and less capable of meeting life.
- [39:09]
Jonathan Fields
Yeah. And are we really? Can anybody say that they're any happier because of that? They're already more fulfilled. They're satisfied with their lives because of that? Pretty doubtful there. Good Life Project is sponsored by Function Health. So we talk a lot about the good life as we get older. It's easy to focus on the surface, but what really matters is what's happening on the inside. It's about keeping the systems that matter most in peak condition. Your heart, your bones, your muscles. This isn't just about living longer. It's about living with vitality and strength for as long as possible. That's why I chose to partner with Function Health Health. It's the only health platform that gives me access to tests for over a hundred biomarkers, from hormones to markers for heart health and inflammation. It's a near 360 degree view of my health, helping me stop guessing and start owning my health. I was able to compare my function labs to recent labs from my annual physical and Function gave me better, more detailed insights that have already led me to make some lifestyle changes. And everything gets tracked in one secure place over time, making it easy to spot trends and changes. And that's why health leaders like Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. Andrew Huberman and Dr. Jeremy London Trust function. Learn what's happening inside your body just like I have, and take a big step toward your own good life. Learn more and join us using our link. Function is a near 360 degree view to see what's happening in your body. And our first thousand listeners get a $100 credit towards their membership. Visit functionhealth.com goodlife or use the code goodlife100 at sign up to own your health or just click the link in the show notes. Good Life Project is sponsored by Earth Breeze. So you know what's been on my mind lately? All those unnecessary chemicals in everyday products. When I started looking into what was actually in my laundry detergent, I was pretty surprised. Many popular detergents contain harsh chemicals that stick to clothes and can irritate your skin and the wild parts. Some of these chemicals, like optical brighteners, they aren't even cleaning your clothes. They're just creating an illusion of brighter whites. And that is why I am really glad that I found Earth Breeze. So their detergent sheets are free from optical brighteners, dyes, parabens, phosphates and preservatives. Plus they're hypoallergenic and non irritating. So instead of bulky plastic jugs. You get lightweight sheets that dissolve completely in the wash, and your clothes come out clean and fresh without harsh chemical residue. Want to try a powerful clean without unnecessary toxins? Visit earthbreeze.com GLP for 40% off +4 free gifts that's earthbreeze.com GLp for 40% off/4 free gifts.
- [41:54]
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- [42:23]
Jonathan Fields
And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. As we age, as we've discussed. Okay, so eventually there's a sense of impermanence. We will lose a lot of things, including eventually ourselves. There's diminishment. That happens. But part of the repeated invitation throughout the book, and then you actually, at one point later in the book, really get explicit about, is this notion that despite loss, despite diminishment, the invitation is to perpetually say yes to life. Say yes over and over and over. And that caught me in no small part because of the sentiment, but also because I remember reading quite a while back that Viktor Frankl's iconic book, Man's Search for Meaning, that was actually the Westernization of the title. The original German, from what I understand, translated directly, was nonetheless, say yes to Life.
- [43:10]
Mark Nepo
Oh, I didn't know that. That's beautiful.
- [43:13]
Jonathan Fields
It's this sentiment that it's like a yes and sentiment. Well, yes, and this stuff is happening that maybe I wish wasn't happening, but it's not a reason to start saying no to either that experience or. Or to keep making your life smaller and smaller and smaller. And saying no to all experience in the name of trying to avoid any further diminishment or loss.
- [43:35]
Mark Nepo
And this opens up a huge paradox that we have to inhabit. And that is saying yes to life doesn't mean that we deny how hard things are and that we have to accept and express. So, you know, when I'm going through difficulty, you know, I didn't want to have back surgery, but I needed it and it hurt and it was difficult and, you know, I wasn't every day going, oh, this is wonderful. Yes to life. But in the larger sense, I was saying yes to Life, not just because I was saying yes to the surgery, but this is at the heart of so many things. So, you know, this is at the heart of, you know, Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Broken Hallelujah. Oh, it's not someone who's seen the light. It's a broken hallelujah. You know, it's not someone who's pious and doing all the right things and seeking happiness. We're broken open and, you know, and then grace hits us or holds the brake or, you know, so a metaphor for this is you and I are on a raft at sea and then, you know, a terrific swell comes and smashes our raft and we're out there hanging on the raft, not a good day for us. And it doesn't diminish the majesty of the sea. And holding both is really, I think, at the heart of the story of Job or even the story of Noah, or even at the heart of the existentialists Sartre and Camus. You know, just imagine these guys lived through. They came of consciousness in a ruined world, literally. You know, they went out on the streets and nothing in all of Europe. So you can understand how they. The philosophy, the worldview that they came up with. But there we are, you know, there we are. And especially like Camus, myth of Sisyphus. And for those who are listening, of course, Sisyphus is this very cruel and evil king who's punished by the gods for his cruelty to roll a rock up a hill forever. He gets at the top, the next day he's back doing the same thing. And Camus really concludes, we've got to love the journey again, regardless of result. And I would offer a counter possible myth. What if Sisyphus, and this is where we can evolve this way, from our partial heartedness, the mistakes we've made, the inadvertent ways we've hurt people. But we can. What if Sisyphus was a benevolent king and the gods rewarded him by saying, you're so kind, you can roll a ball of light up a hill forever and give light to whoever you see, and you'll get to do this forever and again with picking up and putting down. That's the journey of every life. Because some days we wake up and it's a rock, and some days we wake up and it's a ball of light and I can give it away. And that's. Yeah, that's, you know, when it's a rock, we need not to forget that it can be a ball of light. And that's saying yes to life, you know, Dag Hammarskjold, the second secretary general of the union in the 60s. And he had a journal, very profound journal, called Markings. And in there he said, basically, I can't quote exactly, but he said, you know, I don't know when or how, but somewhere to someone, I said yes. And I didn't even know what the question was. And from that day forward, I knew that my life in self surrender had a purpose.
- [47:21]
Jonathan Fields
I wonder if one of the things that we also struggle to put down is not a physical thing, but is expectation. And not just our own expectation, but expectations that have been layered upon us by culture, by society, by generations of like, this is how you should be in the world. This is how a person like you operates in the world. And so much of our decisions in life are driven by this. So many of our investments and resources and actions and relationships are driven by this. And we are told that if we should ever put those down, which translates to failing to meet expectations, then we are a failure. We have failed. And yet when we can divorce ourselves from that, I feel like it's almost the ultimate letting go, which may feel like failure in the moment, but ultimately for so many, it feels closer to truth and maybe even freedom and joy.
- [48:22]
Mark Nepo
Well, and I think this is part of the journey of aging is we just, like nature, is eroded over time to reveal its inner beauty either along the way, great love and great suffering will crack us. But if we're blessed not to experience great suffering, hopefully love. But we will erode over time to that inner beauty. And so then we. This is the process of individuation where we no longer comply or resist. But we get to say, this is my true inheritance. And if I have a direct connection to it, well, then, you know, I have a dear friend who also, he just retired a few years ago from running a family sports store that his father started. And he connected to that on his own way, so that his connection coincided with his father's connection. So he wasn't just doing it out of obligation. So it's not obeying or resisting, but finding what is it that is our true inheritance, which we can only know if we work toward having our life be the work of art. And interestingly, you know, if you go all the way back to the myth about the Tower of Babel, one of the reasons that it all fell apart was it was originally thought of as the human family was getting big enough that people were starting to live more than just in one place. And if it really existed, it did Actually, they suspect it was in somewhere where Iraq is, you know, but the elders said, well, you know, we'll want to build a tower higher than anything so that if our children and our children's children decide they want to come back, they just have to look up and they'll find their way home. Not a bad idea. But it took generations to build it. So by the third generation, you have grandchildren living someone else's dream, and they're going, I don't give a shit about this tower. My grand. Well, I don't know why he granddad wanted that. I don't want to do this. And once you're building someone else's dream, then it took over a year to carry one brick to the next place. And if the worker fell, they mourned the brick over the worker. So when we lose connection, direct connection, or we build someone else's dream, we start to value things over people, and then we stop being able to understand each other. And I think as we age, as you're saying, we start to be able to choose to put down those barriers.
- [51:03]
Jonathan Fields
Talk to me about the notion of legacy. As we age, I think a lot of us hit a moment where we're kind of like, huh. I've always had a weird relationship with the word because I'm not in any meaningful way connected to it or driven by it. I've always kind of felt like, for me, the only thing that if legacy matters to me in some meaningful way, the only way it shows up in my life is have I treated those I love dearly in the way where they feel like they are loved dearly and just been a good human being while I'm here on the planet. I don't particularly care about anything else. I don't need anything physically left behind to point to to say, oh, that person existed. They did this. We have really weird feelings about legacy and often very different feelings about it.
- [51:51]
Mark Nepo
So. Well, thank you. And I so resonate with your sense of it. So legacy, and these are all connected to things we've talked about, because if we are not connected to life directly, then we seek worth outwardly, which never fills us, because it's an inside job and it's connecting to all of life. You know, if we have worth, it's because we're connected to the worth of life itself. So in my feeling, you can't plan legacy. You can't direct it. You can't manipulate it. It's not about having your name on a building. And again, I think we go to stars, and I Use this image in talking, you know, stars, when they've completely burned out of all their light, their light still is cast for hundreds of years after the stars are out. And so very much in the spirit of what you were sharing. I think legacy is the byproduct of being fully here, kind, loving, authentic, and it's not something we have to worry about or plan or try to achieve it like stars. If we give our whole being while we're here, our light will continue beyond us and it's not ours to know where and what it touches. And I think that happens all throughout literature. I mean, you know, when I connect to a poem by Tu fu from the 7 hundreds in China, it's because his authenticity is still shining across hundreds of years. And if I'm open hearted, I can touch into it. So it's not something we control or design. It's something that is beyond our, even our knowing at all, but is a byproduct of being fully here and loving and caring now.
- [53:58]
Jonathan Fields
Yeah, and I think a lot of us start to dip into that once you're later in life where you start to think, okay, God willing, I have a lot more time on the horizon. But I'm getting glimpses of the horizon maybe here and there. And we're sometimes in ways that I don't want to get glimpses. And it brings us, I think, a lot to thinking about this notion of legacy. And even if you think about, well, it's really about just how I'm living in the here and now. Sometimes we feel like, But I have so much time before this moment where I wasn't showing up the way I wished I had shown up. And does that diminish, like, if I start to be the way I am in the world now, or like be the way I want to be, or I wished I had been in the world now?
- [54:41]
Mark Nepo
Yeah, I think this raises, you know, and I always, this is another humbling paradox. Of course, being human, we go, oh, if I'd only known that 10 years ago. We're always right on time. One of the Zen little sayings, anonymous Zen sayings, is an apprentice asks his master, why is the road to freedom so long? And the master says, because it has to go through you. And you know, when I was younger, I thought that was a critical teacher, but as I've aged, I've learned, no, that was a geographical answer. Because the continent of each of us is vast because it has to go through you. And so we are always. And this reshapes, you know, the word regret, what it really means is re greeting. So of course we feel bad about things we've done that have inadvertently hurt others or whatever it might be. Or that's of course, again, like memory. The real purpose of regret is what can I learn when I meet this again? So again, to resist through guilt or feeling bad, to live in the past. But everything is an apprenticeship for now. And it could take. Yeah, we're just seeing things at this stage of life and we're right on time.
- [56:08]
Jonathan Fields
That feels like a beautiful place for us to wrap up as well. So I have asked you this question in past conversations, but it's always a few years between and sometimes it evolves in this container of Good Life Project. If I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?
- [56:25]
Mark Nepo
For me, a good life is being wholehearted when I can, listening deeply both inwardly and outwardly, being there for others without prescription or judgment. And yeah, there's no, you know, really trusting the heart. You know, my heart has been my greatest teacher. Not because it's my heart, but because by living wholeheartedly, it opens up to all of life. And then that helps to shape me. You know, paradoxically, one of the rewards for being all of who we are is then we can welcome all that we are not.
- [57:09]
Jonathan Fields
Thank you. Hey, if you loved this episode, Safe bet you'll also love our earlier conversation with Mark about resilience, learning to fail with grace, and discovering how every setback can lead us higher. You can find a link to that episode in the show Notes this episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields, editing helped by Alejandro Ramirez and Troy Young. Christopher Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did. Because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor. A 7 second favor. Share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too. But just one person? Even then, invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project.
- [58:24]
Capital One Bank Guy
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- [58:41]
Jonathan Fields
Thanks.
- [58:42]
Capital One Bank Guy
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