November 14, 2025 • 59 mins
What if aging isn’t about decline, but about becoming more alive than ever?
The bestselling author and spiritual teacher Mark Nepo opens up about how surviving cancer reshaped his entire understanding of life, creativity, and purpose. He reveals the wisdom behind The Fifth Season, a time in life when the inner world begins to shine brighter than the outer one, and shares how to live and create with authenticity in midlife and beyond.
Mark’s reflections will move you, ground you, and remind you what it truly means to be present, wholehearted, and free.
🎧 Watch now and rediscover how beauty, suffering, and friendship all become part of life’s greatest art: your own becoming.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:23 The Fifth Season: Creativity in midlife
04:10 What the “Fifth Season” really means
05:28 How cancer changed Mark’s life
09:58 Facing death and finding purpose
12:00 What cancer taught him about life
13:18 Chip’s own cancer story
17:10 Realizing he was a poet
22:14 How Oprah discovered his book
24:47 Success, humility, and staying grounded
29:59 Mark’s Pirouettes poem
34:32 Creativity as a spiritual act
42:17 Aging and letting go of old identities
43:26 The tea ceremony and making lists
46:30 The poetry of friendship
51:14 Teaching at MEA
55:12 Free Fall poem
56:03 Wisdom bumper sticker
Learn more about MEA at https://www.meawisdom.com/
#MarkNepo #TheBookOfAwakening #TheFifthSeason #MidlifeChrysalis #ChipConley #MidlifeWisdom #SpiritualGrowth #MidlifeCreativity #PersonalTransformation #CancerSurvivor #MindfulnessJourney #AgingGracefully #PurposeInMidlife #SpiritualAwakening #PoetryOfLife #OprahBookClub #SoulWork #LivingFully #EmotionalHealing #AuthenticLiving
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
If I am not for myself, who willbe?
If I am only for myself, what amI?
If not now, when? I would want to just leave
people with the the constant belief in the heart as our
strongest muscle. And if not now, when?
Welcome to the Midlife ChrysalisPodcast with Chip Conley, where
(00:22):
we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time
of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful
chapter of your life. Welcome to the midlife
chrysalis. This is Chip Conley, and our
guest today is Mark Nepo. Mark Nepo has been called one of
(00:43):
Oprah's favorite poets that's living in the world.
And poetry has been considered the salve of the soul, the idea
that poetry helps you to get in touch with your soul.
He's a philosopher. He's also a cancer survivor, so
we talk a little bit about that.He's an MEA faculty member.
And more than anything, he's just a delight to be with.
(01:05):
This hour went by very quickly, and I think you're going to
learn a few things and maybe connect a little bit more deeply
inside of yourself as a result of listening to Mark.
I hope you enjoy the episode. Mark Neepo, my my fellow bald
brother. It's great to have you here on
(01:26):
the midlife chrysalis. How are you?
Are you in Kalamazoo? Where are you?
I'm in Kalamazoo at home. I just got back from a week in
New York City where I was reading and and talking about
the new book. OK, so tell us about the new
book. Yeah, the fifth season.
Creativity in the second-half oflife.
This is your How many books haveyou written now?
(01:48):
This is my 27th book published. If you would have asked me 20
years ago, this is more than I ever could have dreamed of.
And I and, and, and this does apply to so much of what we're
going to talk about. I think, you know, I've learned
over the years to get out of theway at this point, writing is
(02:10):
listening and taking notes and, and one of the things, and then
I'll talk about the new book. But one of the things I've
learned over the years is that the introspective process and
the creative process are really the same thing.
And you know that that I just happened to write it down
because that's how I learn, you know, But this is very much
(02:34):
about our journey through midlife and aging is our our
life is the work of art. You know, the soul.
I believe that the soul wants usto be as alive as possible.
And it really doesn't care how we do that in terms of, but as
long as we if care, care is to the soul what wood is to a fire.
(03:00):
The fire doesn't it doesn't matter to the fire what kind of
wood you put on it. Elm, pine, cherry.
And I don't think the soul, it matters what kind of care as
long as we're wholehearted, as long as we hold nothing back.
And so to get to, to this book, you know, I've always used my
(03:20):
life as a case study for the common passages that we all go
through. As you know, I mean, I, I don't
have any answers, but I share our examples, not instructions,
and we're all just comparing notes on what it is to be here.
So the the new book, the fifth season, because I'm in the
continent of aging. I'm 74.
(03:43):
I met someone my age 20 years ago.
I thought they were ancient doesn't seem so old now.
But you know, looking at this, I, I've really discovered just
just like how my cancer journey.I think these passages, these
transformational passages, whichdon't have to be life
(04:04):
threatening. It can be beauty, wonder, being
loved unconditionally for the first time.
But all of these passages bring into acute relief the choice
points we all make throughout our lives.
And so just as cancer did that for me, I think aging is doing
that because while this is focused on the second-half of
(04:27):
life, we're always aging from 20to 40, from 40 to 60, from 60 to
100. And, and what I've been
discovering is that which I tried to to explore in the book
is that we're invited to, to getbetter at a different set of
(04:47):
skills as we age. And, and we can explore that,
but living where our life is thework of art and we give our
wholeheartedness to it. And, and the fifth season where,
and this is another interesting thing.
You know I saved that title fromyears ago not knowing what book
it would be for. Explain what it is.
(05:08):
Explain what the fifth season isin Chinese culture.
In Chinese lore, in Chinese culture, the fifth season is
this time of year, late August, early September, where where the
light is bare and aglow when things are down to their
essentials. And early sages quickly tried to
(05:30):
make an analogy that the 5th season of life is that
integrative time, that time where we look, you know, we live
forward, but we map backwards. So we, how do we, oh, over the
decades, I didn't know these things went together and what we
put down. And, and so it's that season of
(05:53):
integration where everything becomes as clear and bare and
simple and direct as possible. And I love this chip.
They they call that turning point the heavenly pivot.
Oh, I love that. Yes.
Let's take a step back for a minute.
We'll come back to the book, butgive us your history.
(06:15):
I mean, how did you become a poet?
And how did you, how did you become one of Oprah's favorite
living poets? If not, if not her favorite,
especially with the Book of Awakening, So what?
What? Give us your story, and
especially give us the cancer story too, because then you and
I can dialogue a little bit about cancer since I, as you
(06:36):
know, I've been dealing with cancer as well.
Well, you know, I think that at an early age, I, I, you know,
before I knew what a poet was, before I knew what metaphor was.
I think my as a child, even my native language was metaphor
because even when I would be outside playing, you know, I'd
see wind through the trees and without words, it would speak to
(06:58):
me and say, OK, what am I like? What am I like?
Come on. And and then later I learned
that that was metaphor. But, you know, I started writing
in high school when the first woman I fell in love with, who
went to college ahead of me, fell in love with someone else.
I was devastated and but it in amoment, an amazing MEA moment.
(07:23):
But then I started writing to heal from that.
But I realized quickly I wasn't talking to myself.
I had begun a conversation with the universe and never stopped.
And the MEA moment is that little 2 times ago, that first
(07:44):
love, we reconnected after 55 years and she came to my week at
NBA. How was that it?
Was my. It was.
And you did not know she was coming, right?
I did know she, she got in touchwith me.
We, we connected beforehand. It was, it was incredibly
graceful and special and beautiful that it would happen
(08:07):
there. And after all that time, you
know, there we are. I you know, I've got hearing
aids. She has eye trouble.
We are in our 70s meeting after a lifetime.
And it was, it was beautiful. It was such a gift.
But back to my, you know, so in my, my early 30s, I had a rare
(08:30):
form of lymphoma that grew in myskull.
So, like the size of a grapefruit.
And, you know, up until that time, I was a young, driven
artist. I hope, you know, I hope, Gee,
if I could work hard enough, maybe, maybe I'd write one or
two great poems, you know, that could add to literature.
(08:51):
Well, you know, 31 in the hospital, upside down, inside
out. Forget writing great poems.
I needed to discover true expressions that would help me
live. Everything changed.
I went through this tumor was ananomaly.
(09:13):
It was a miracle. It vanished after months of
tests and and it was really a miracle.
And then I was spit back like Jonah out of the mouth of the
whale back into life. And 10 months later, a sister
part of that had split off and was growing on a rib in my back.
(09:37):
And that was my real despair because I didn't need another
wake up call. I was awake.
Well, thank you. Ultimately, you wrote a book of
awakening too, so we're going tocome back too.
Then let's let's go back to yourstory.
Then, you know, I discovered then I needed surgery.
I had that rib removed with its adjacent muscles.
(09:57):
I had very aggressive chemo because though there was nothing
left to find the under the microscope, it was an aggressive
cancer. So I was given very strong
chemo, which almost killed me, gave me an ulcer in my
esophagus, gave me neuropathy. Really, my hearing loss is not
(10:20):
from aging, but from the chemo. So you were having you, were you
having chemo all your whole bodyor it was not concentrated
chemo? No, it was my whole body, yeah.
Yeah, that's. Yeah, it was my whole body.
It was very, it's a form, I don't think a a protocol I don't
know that they use anymore. CHOP, which was kind of like a
powerful shotgun. I came out of that and I and
(10:42):
then when the chemo started to kill me, I had to stop.
And I've been well ever since. It's been almost 40 years and I
realized and discovered a coupleof things that really shaped my
whole life's work, You know, 1 is that I was raised Jewish.
I have a deep tide to the Jewishheritage.
But I came out of that journey chip and I was a student of all
(11:05):
paths because I was not wise enough and still am not to know
what worked and what didn't. And I think I was challenged to
believe in everything and all mywork and my teaching is as a
student of all paths. And so it's the it's the poet in
me that sees, it's the philosopher in me that tries to
(11:29):
understand what I've seen. And it's the cancer survive in
me that says it's whatever it is, it's got to be of use.
It's got to be of use in our daily, our daily lives.
And so the other The thing is that just is that I was way
(11:51):
well, I was always heart centered in my outlook before my
cancer journey. I I was up here a lot and threw
no wisdom on my part. That just dropped me here.
And ever since, my mind has served my heart.
If cancer was your teacher and you, and you've graduated, at
(12:13):
least for now, what would you say were some of the best
lessons beyond just going from your brain to your heart?
Well, I think which have informed all my work, One is
that there is no there. There's only here.
We're all kind of trained, mis trained and mis educated to
(12:35):
think that life is one of the menacing assumptions in our
modern world is that life is over there if we can just get
it, if we can chase it, if we can find it, if we can grab it,
if we can steal it, if we can achieve it.
And what great love and great suffering do is to blow all that
up. And there is no, there's only
(12:56):
here so that life is not a journey from though we on the
surface go from here to there. I fly from Michigan to to MEA
every year but once and so do other people.
And but once we're there, when we're authentic and open
hearted, we open the same eternal moment.
(13:17):
We enter it. The journey is really from in to
out, not from here to there. Yeah, they say once we're
growing up, we're growing in. And there's a growing in process
that certainly happens with cancer.
Laura Carstensen at Stanford Center on Longevity has shown
that when people have a perception that they have only a
(13:40):
finite amount of time left in their life, they don't focus on
the, the, the future nor the past.
They focus on the present moment.
And guess what? They become happier as a result.
I know for me and my cancer journey, I'm, I have stage 3
prostate cancer that spread to my lymphs and, and you know that
and it is right now either either stable or in remission.
(14:03):
But if you don't have AI had twosurgeries, 36 radiation
sessions, 19 months of no testosterone, I'm all as we were
launching our MEA campus in Santa Fe, my God, and and I was
launching a book. In fact, you know, I finished my
last of the 36 radiation sessions I had.
I had a double, double radiationsession on the same day on a
(14:25):
Friday, January 12th in San Francisco.
On January 13th, I flew to New York.
On January 15th, I was on Good Morning America with George
Stephanopoulos because on January 16th, Tuesday, my book
Learning to Love Midlife was coming out.
And then on January 17th, I was on the Today show.
(14:46):
So here I was literally within just, you know, 48 hours, you
know, just a little over 48 hours going from 2 radiation
sessions in one day, which is that takes it out of you.
And the and the later and the later radiation sessions are
harder than the earlier ones because at that point I had very
(15:06):
concentrated radiation. My whole pelvis, my, my, my
bowels, my, my bladder, everything is just so
completely. So I, you know, we're in
diapers. We're in diapers on the Today
show and, and yeah. And, and I'm Good Morning
America. So I, I just think for me, the
cancer journey has very much been one of learning how it not
(15:29):
not to be the hero's journey, not to how do I ask for help?
How do I, how do I realize that I don't have to do it alone?
How do I rethink, you know, whatmatters to me in my life?
And it has really helped me withMEA.
And we'll talk more about MEA and your involvement in MEA
toward the end, But it's helped me to create a succession plan.
(15:52):
You know, I've had two opportunities in my life to come
face to face with death, the most recent one being cancer.
But you know, I still have cancer inside of me.
And I have no prostate and I have prostate cancer, which
means that it's spread throughout my lymph system, but
it is stable at this point or inremission.
But also I had a, an NDE at age 47.
I died 9 * / 90 minutes due to an allergic reaction to an
(16:15):
antibiotic. So there's a, there's this sense
in life that why do, why do we have to have these health
journeys to remind us what's important in life?
And for you, it it seems as if your your poetry journey, what
was really deepened as a result of this.
(16:36):
And ultimately years later, you wrote the book of awakening.
How, how when talk about that book in particular, because that
was the the book in many ways that put Mark Nepo on the global
literary map, partly because Oprah, I guess, particularly
loved the book and made it one of her Oprah book called Books
(16:59):
of the year. And talk about that book and,
and your journey, including how did you, let's start with how
did you know that you might wantto be a poet?
Yes, you had a metaphorical sense of the world.
But when you were going, you know, graduating from high
school, not too many people say like, OK, I'm I want to be a
poet when I grew up. Did you know that at at age 18?
(17:22):
I do think that often it is lifethreatening or dramatic powerful
events that drop us into the depth of life and everyone will
be dropped one way or another. But it can also be wonder and
beauty and surprise. And so it's doesn't have to be
just that. I think that human beings
(17:44):
basically grow by two by willfully shedding and by being
broken open. And often a combination or one
leads to the other. But if we won't willfully shed,
don't worry, we'll be broken open.
And it does it, it kind of removes it.
How we respond to being dropped in the depth of life is the
(18:05):
beginning of the spiritual journey.
But back, back to the being a poet, you know, I knew that I
would. I was the child.
My parents were children of the Great Depression.
We had family that died in the Holocaust.
I was the first in our family togo to college, and I got to
(18:27):
college and I had this mystical experience where I went to
Cortland State in upstate New York, which is on the top of a
hill. You fall off on any side of the
hill. You wind up in a bar in the
college town. And in the my freshman year, I
was going down one of the sides of the hill.
It was spring and a wind, a hugewind, a gust of wind came from
(18:52):
behind me and I, it stopped me. And on the far side of the
valley, about a mile away was another hill.
And I just stood there and in, you know, 20 seconds or so, that
wind, I could see it goes through the trees on the other
hill. I understood the reach and I
knew I was a poet even though I hadn't written anything.
(19:13):
And the next break that I went to go home.
I went home excitedly 1819 and came in to the kitchen and said
I'm a poet. And you know, they went pale.
You know, they've they went, they were just my father who was
a master woodworker, taught at Brooklyn Tech High School in the
(19:34):
city. My mother was a bookkeeper.
Both were highly intelligent, but very literal and she wanted
me to be a lawyer. He and and I came home and so we
had that classic argument how you're going to make a living.
And I don't know where it came from in me, but I said back, I'm
(19:56):
going to live a making rather than make a living.
Oh OK, live a making OK. That was my first instruction as
a poet, which I took years to discover.
And that and that wholeheartedness, that immersing
ourselves in whatever is before us is what brings us alive and
(20:18):
in what we go to make. Because of that engagement, we
are made whole. And that has a lot to do, even
more so in aging and in midlife.How do we hold nothing back?
And, and So what you were sayingabout how cancer for both of us
(20:39):
brought us to the present. I think one of the skills I've
discovered in aging is that because there are more years
behind than the head, you know, the proper place of dream and
memory shifts. And so, you know, nostalgia is,
(20:59):
I go back 20 years to a very special moment.
And nostalgia is, oh, I wish I could be there now.
But the true purpose of memory is to revisit the spark of life
that animated me then, to see where it lives in me now,
because it hasn't gone anywhere.And the same thing with dream.
(21:23):
Just because there's more years behind than a head doesn't mean
I don't dream. But dreams, I've come to
believe, are the kindling of ouraliveness.
And so I dream forward. But then also I the skill, the
new skill is OK. What spark is now projected
forward that actually is right here in me.
(21:44):
How does memory and dream come to enliven me now?
And I think that's a new skill. Well, back to the book of
awakening. So the book of awakening, I
really wrote that on the other side of my cancer journey in
2000 took three years to write. And, and I, I wrote it because I
(22:08):
have many people in my life who are in recovery or children of
Alcoholics or addicts. And, and I noticed that day
books were like really used, youknow, they were in cars,
bathrooms, back pockets. And, and it occurred to me that
if I could fill that form with short doses of what matters, it
(22:32):
might be of help, I could give something back.
And so when that came out, it had for 10 years kind of a life
of word of mouth life of its own.
And then in 2010, you know, the the story is that one of Oprah's
assistants, who I now know is a wonderful person, had heard a
(22:55):
lot of yoga teachers use the book of Awakening and quote it
before a session. And her yoga teacher used it.
And I now know the yoga teacher too, very well.
And she so Pierre, who was this young woman, she gave it to
Oprah as a birthday present. And you know how that is like if
you're not in the right space oropen.
(23:16):
Yeah, thank you very much. It goes on a shelf.
Well, it just happened that it'swas spoke to her at a time that
she really was needed to hear it.
And the next thing I know she, you know, is who is this guy?
Can I talk to him? And and you know how that goes.
So her one of her producers calls me and and we had a great
(23:41):
extensive but I'm thinking the whole time, OK, which one of my
friends is playing a joke on me.You know, this can't be real.
But that that began our deep conversations, Oprah and I, and
she is such a authentic Bridger and she doesn't have to do that.
And and of course, you know, within 24 hours of her, her
(24:04):
belief in that book, it was all over the world.
And, you know, it was like a lightning strike.
It's nothing. Nothing, you know, nothing that
I, you know, did I just keep doing the work?
How was that for you? So let's let's do, let's this
was 15 years ago. So you were in like 59 or 60 and
(24:29):
you had been toiling away as a poet for 40 years.
You'd been successful. Let's be clear, you'd been
successful. But not had you ever had Had you
had a New York Times bestseller yet, or.
No, no, no. So then all of a sudden this
happens and the book is 10 yearsold and the the book of
(24:52):
awakening is like, well, finallythe world has awakened to Mark's
poetry. I Mark's prose.
So how how was that for you on? In some ways, it's every
everyone who's in the public eye.
Not everyone, but many people have that dream that someday
they'll be discovered. What was that like the upside
(25:14):
and the downside of of that for you?
I would say, and this goes rightback to a deep learning from the
cancer journey, you know, from almost dying.
I'm very grateful for it and it's allowed me so many
opportunities to teach, be with people in a deep way.
(25:35):
And, and it has nothing to do with the work.
And so, you know, this archetypal place that before if,
if we struggle as all artists inany field and are not known, the
struggle is to not vanish or think that your voice doesn't
matter if you're not heard. And so the image for me is that
(25:56):
you're, you know, if you're walking into a strong wind, you
got to plant your feet and lean forward and keep going.
And if you're blessed to have the wind at your back, oh, it's
the same walk. You just lean in a different
direction. You plant your feet, you lean
back so that you're stable and you keep going.
(26:17):
We have this this misguided notion that life is this climb
up a hill. And the higher we go, the more
successful we are. Well, again, great love and
great suffering flatten that outand it's all this way, it's all
horizontal and we're the same 6 inches from the gutter in
heaven. And, and So what happened to me,
(26:39):
which I'm sure you can relate toin the, in my cancer journey,
and this is a metaphor again, too.
The only way I can kind of approach describing this is that
through no wisdom on my part, you know, it's like I was
standing on a Cliff and you know, if you lean over the
Cliff, you see more. And so then I leaned further and
I could see more. And then I fell and I saw maybe
(27:01):
more than I was supposed to. And the adrenaline rush of
falling off the Cliff of life burned a lot of shit off me.
Not that I'm, you know, I have insecurities and to struggle
with everything that everybody does, of course.
But then mirac the miracle was Iwas put back on the Cliff
(27:24):
entering all of this, you know, of course, before my work was
widely known, you know, and not being known was frustrating and
struggling and all of that. But even then, because of this
experience, deep, deep, deep experience while at the human
part, you can't just hop over even then it had nothing to do
(27:46):
with the work. And so now that I'm blessed to
be on the on the other side of that, not through any wisdom on
my part, but I'm deeply, you know, because during my I don't
know, I experienced during, you know, I didn't have a near death
while I was near death. I didn't have a near death
experience. But in that near death moments,
(28:09):
I I was being wheeled into have my rib removed, you know,
fluorescent lights, you're in the thick.
And I had this moment Chip, where I dropped or was dropped
below all names into the essenceof things, which is the work of
all poetry. I mean, that's the paradox of
(28:29):
poetry's. We try to name what's
unnameable. And then coming back, of course,
I'm Mark your chip, but I forever live from the place
below all names. So to be known and and have all
this attention. Thank you.
(28:50):
You know. If you're enjoying the
conversations we've been having on the midlife chrysalis, I have
a valuable offer for you to consider.
My book, Learning to Love Midlife, 12 Reasons Why Life
Gets Better with Age, is a national bestseller, and right
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It offers stories, research and practices to help you move from
(29:12):
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life not as a decline, but an opportunity to flourish.
Claim your copy today at meawisdom.com/midlife Book.
Speaking of getting to work, let's give our listeners and and
(29:32):
viewers a poem. Let's what's a What's a poem?
I'm gonna give you a, a, a little direction on this.
A poem that you might leave on the road for someone, someone
might actually just happen upon the poem.
And it's a poem that's well timed maybe for the times we're
in right now or that or, or justa a poem or, or what's the
(29:54):
favorite poem that you would love to have be remembered by,
you know, when you leave this planet?
Well, those are a lot of different poems, but.
Or how about one that's at your fingertips?
Yeah, I mean, I would love to answer all of those, but I
don't. We don't have that much time.
Well, this is a poem because I want to speak.
It's from the, I put it, you know, in the fifth season
(30:14):
because it speaks to this human tension of moving between the
blessing and the burden all the time.
This is a poem called Pirouettes.
And, and I learned a pirouette. Well, we know it from dance, but
actually the origin of the word it's, you know how horses, they
(30:35):
gallop. There's all these different
words. A pirouette is when a horse is
on its hind legs and spins and turns around.
Oh, interesting. OK.
Some days, the simplest tasks seem weighty and endless.
Make the bed, tuck in the sheet.Make the coffee, stir, drink,
(30:56):
find the bills, pay the bills. Some weeks the days blur.
Get on the plane, get off the plane, get in the car, get out
of the car. Then I got your e-mail saying,
isn't this all a blessing? We get to make the bed and tuck
in the sheet. We get to make the coffee and
stir it and drink. I emailed you back.
(31:19):
Well, what's the difference? You called me up immediately and
said, Oh, my friend, if we can just keep falling down and
getting up, it all becomes a dance.
And so, you know, one of the things that's so important to
share about my work as a poet isthat I don't know these things
before I explore them. And if I explore something, a
(31:41):
feeling, a a notion, an image, astory, a fear, honestly and
authentically, then I'm given aninsight as a reward.
And that's where it's very much like the introspective process.
So the lesson from that poem was, no, it's not.
(32:02):
It's not the cheer me up rah rahsociety.
It's life is always both. There are days we wake up, I got
to make the bed again. And the next day, my God, I get
to make the bed. And so the question is, how do
we stay? And this, again, is so important
and more acute in aging. How do we stay in the corridor
(32:26):
of aliveness? Because part of our practice as
a spirit in a body and time on earth is to navigate both.
You know, the, you know, the proverbial question, is the
glass half full or half empty? It's always both.
No, therefore I want to hear therefore.
Oh well, Therefore this is this is the practice of being human.
(32:51):
And this goes back to aging in a, in a big way.
One of the skills is of course, in the physical plane we meet
limitations. We, you know, things are
difficult or hard and so not again, not to turn from one to
the other. At the same time, our entire
lives were deepening and expanding and becoming more
(33:14):
like, more light filled. So how do we stay open to both
so that they inform each other and right size the limitations?
There's a quote I want to It's agood time for me to say.
This is also from the book The Fifth Season.
As the years go by, our physicalveneer erodes while our interior
(33:37):
becomes more evident. In time, the inside becomes the
outside. No matter the precautions we've
enlisted to hide it, enlivened and engaged, who we are begins
to appear like a natural spring,a depth of energy bubbling
forth. And while our outer mask endures
(33:57):
the wait of ordinary hours, our interface is even more
illuminated by the inner world. The salvation of being over time
is that where the outside wears through, the inside shines
forth. Is that how you're feeling at 74
and, and, and maybe do the bridge of that to creativity
(34:19):
and, and why creativity is I I just a a quick thought in one
of, in one of our MEA workshops in Santa Fe recently, we had two
we had, you know, we have, we had men, women, you know, on
average about 6564% of the people who come to MEA are
women. Although that the increase we're
having an increasing number of men now.
We had two men in the same workshop, both of whom were
(34:42):
contemplating retirement or had retired, who had decided in
their 60s they wanted to become poets.
And so there's there was this interesting element of like one
of them had been an insurance broker most of his life.
He'd had an insurance agency that had been very successfully
sold it. But now he was a poet and he and
(35:03):
he really wanted to own that creativity.
So talk about the inside, the outside and and how in that
process, maybe creativity is oneof the natural results of being
able to go inside. Let me define creativity in a
deep, large sense as not just restricted to art forms, but
(35:25):
creativity is what comes throughus when we are working to be
fully alive and in relationship to all of life, to each other,
to ourselves and the light so that we in those moments of
(35:46):
authentic living become like inlets and life force comes
through us. And you know, the word authentic
literally means from the Greek authentess mark of the hands,
the hands literally when we're afetus, they literally grow out
of the heart. The little their, their first
(36:06):
vestiges are known as arm buds. So authenticity is when what
starts in the heart comes out through the hands.
The thousand ways that can happen is creativity.
And it's not really about producing great art.
It's about giving ourselves wholeheartedly to to whatever is
(36:31):
calling us and and that makes our life our work of art.
This was a lesson. It's interesting because my, you
know, my father I mentioned was a master woodworker.
He was a creative force, though we worked in obviously different
medium. And though now that he's gone
about 1213 years, I realize a couple like lessons that I
(36:58):
didn't realize I was touched by,but didn't have their meaning
till decades later. And one is around this.
He he built a 30 foot sailb, a catch that I spent a lot of my
youth on. And when he was in in his 40s
and you know, he started making half models, which he would get
out of, he would get actual blueprints for ships from the
(37:23):
1800s and build them to scale like 6 feet some.
And they were half because they would be mounted on a wall.
And I remember being 9 or 10 sitting in our little basement
steps. They were see through.
He didn't know I was watching, watching him with tweezers, put
thin rigging through dead, smalldead eyes and and all this and
(37:51):
that so stayed with me. I've never seen anyone so
immersed. And I realize he taught me The
Secret Life of detail. And what I've come to realize,
and it's relevant to what we're talking about, is he was so that
it's the immersion that lets us experience oneness and wholeness
(38:16):
and eternity, and the byproduct is excellence.
He was so immersed. I can see all these years later
that he was in the moment of everyone whoever built a boat.
And so when I go to the place below names and give my all, I
am in the moment of every poet whoever lived.
(38:40):
And when we share as friends andyou are there for me and my pain
immersed, we trip into the moment of everyone, whoever felt
pain and whoever held someone inpain.
And this is key to how we age and how we move from, you know,
(39:05):
it's interesting, like the insurance agent who's
wonderfully discovered his inwardness.
Well, you know, back in the in the 1600s, there was a samurai
in Japan named Mossahide. And all of a sudden, I think he
was, I don't know how well, I think he was around 50.
(39:25):
He quit being a samurai and he sought out Basho, the great
Japanese poet Basho to study with him.
I would have loved to interview that guy.
What happened, right? And his the one haiku that is
famous, which also pertains to what we're talking about from
Mossahide. He is my barn.
(39:49):
Having burned to the ground, I can see the moon more
completely. Mossahide wrote that, and I
don't think he had the experience to express that.
If he hadn't been a samurai and he wouldn't have had the depth
or awareness. To say it, if he hadn't become a
(40:11):
poet. And so across our lives, we
gather things and we seek our uniqueness to learn who we are.
And then somewhere, and there's no one point somewhere in
midlife and through aging, we put it all down to be who we
are. You've said you wrote actually
(40:31):
aging is a journey into simplicity.
Is that simplicity really about maybe tearing away the
identities, all of the, the garments we've been wearing,
like you've been wearing 6 or 7 garments and we're, it's time to
take those off. And as we get older, we learn
(40:52):
that we don't need all of those uniforms and we get back down to
something more essential to who we are.
And is that where that that allows us maybe to have the
creativity flow like a spring more naturally through US?
And there's a paradox there because letting go of all the
(41:13):
garments and facades and roles allows the creativity, but it's
also through creativity of expression, whatever that
expression is, that we let go ofthe garments.
And, and again, you know, while there's an if, if there's a
natural elemental and kind of transformational journey over
(41:39):
years, and there is the abrupt revelation of great love and
great suffering that can happen anywhere, that can happen at any
time in life. You know, there's a, in the
Japanese tea ceremony where, youknow, there's a whole religious
aspect to that. And, and the, the tea Hut is
(42:00):
purposely designed, the entranceto it narrow and low to the
ground so that whoever comes hasto take off and bow to enter.
And I think we could equate thattea heart with the, the
threshold to wisdom. And then there's a great example
(42:24):
in the history of the the tea sermon, there were two two guys
who were boyhood friends, Tycho and Ricky you.
And Tycho became an A general and an emperor, and Ricky you
became a tea master. And still, every once in a
while, Tycho would come to visitRicky you in the tea and he
would have to enter the garden, take his sword off, take his
(42:48):
armor off, get down with nothingto enter the tea Hut.
And it doesn't mean that we're that we don't live in the world.
You know, this is where for me at least, you know, so a very
practical thing we would, you know, we were talking about.
So, you know, ever since on the other side of my cancer journey,
(43:10):
you know, I'm a list maker. I, I and I'm scribble and and so
every morning I make a list of the things that have to be done
and the things I want to do. And then I have a cup of coffee.
My dog is with my wife now, but usually our dog is here helping
my study. And then I take the list apart
and say, if this is the last dayI'm here on earth, what stays on
(43:31):
the list? And it might be that I call you
up again to say I love you even though I talked to you
yesterday. So you might say, well, why make
the list? Because I live in the world.
So I make the list and then I take it apart every day.
That's part of the between the burden and the blessing.
That's the glass is half full and half empty.
(43:53):
That's the corridor. That's one way to return to the
corridor of aliveness, not to retreat from the world or hide
in the world, but to be in that that deep space and move in the
world. So much fun to talk with you
because I, I feel like you're, you're reciting poetry even
though you're not reciting poetry, but you are reciting
(44:16):
poetry. Your life is poetry.
So let's talk about the poetry of friendship because I know
this is a topic that isn't you've You've been writing about
that the last few years and the idea of friendship as being part
of a spiritual flourishing life.Give us your point of view on
this because there is so many people come to this age of life,
(44:41):
the midlife and later stages. And a lot of men have had their
friendship muscle atrophy because the last time they
really gave investment to friendship was maybe when they
were in college. And women have a much better at
friendship and they're much better at juggling.
But you know what? What wisdom do you have to offer
(45:04):
around the importance of friendship in midlife and
beyond? Yeah, thank you.
And and and to start with the word friendship comes from a
German root word that means place of high safety.
You're an etymologist. You're an etymologist.
And I'm interested in Word origins, not because I'm a word
geek, but because I've found that just like things erode in
(45:27):
nature, words erode over the centuries.
And more often than not, if we go back as far as we can,
they're more whole. They're more helpful.
And my next book coming out nextsummer is I've I've gathered a
50 years of looking at these into a book called The Language
of the Soul. It's a natural next step for
(45:48):
you. I, I, I I could be.
I could be your literary agent. Hey, Mark, it's a book that
you're supposed to be writing. All right.
Tell us about the. Tell us about friendship and the
safety. So friendship, this place of
high safety and and of course this, we learn it most with
others, but our being authentic and showing up for each other
(46:12):
also models for us how to show up for ourselves, how to
befriend. And so befriending becomes a
spiritual practice. And why do I say it?
Because it's different than conceptualizing.
Most of the things too big to understand.
(46:33):
We conceptualize when we need tobefriend them.
We need to befriend life, nature, the unknown, the soul.
Because if I befriend you, that's different than
conceptualizing you inherently. I am in, I am making
(46:55):
commitments. I'm showing up with my heart.
OK, so this is an apprenticeship.
Our friendship with each other is an apprenticeship to
befriending as a spiritual practice, as a spiritual
practice. And that is essential as we age
(47:15):
so that we are more connected toeverything.
And I think that, you know, I'verealized I don't have the poem
right here, but you know, I've, I've realized along the way
that, you know, I'd rather be a friend than a St. you know, I'd
(47:38):
rather and, and, and also it, itmeans that befriending our own
growth. So one of the things we do in
our world is we, our modern world is we often mistake
consistency for reliability. I'm a friend with I'm, I'm
committed to our friendship, right?
(47:58):
And but I'm changing and you say, well, wait a minute, you're
not the same. I don't know if I can depend on
you. Those have nothing to do with
each other. Our vow of friendship, of place,
of high safety is I can change ahundred ways.
You still can count on me and you can support my changing
(48:20):
because the true love of friendship means that I want you
to grow, not stay the same. What you've just described is a
perfect segue to talk about MEA for a moment, because people
come to MEA to be in a workshop in person in Baja or in Santa
Fe, and often in the course of just a few days together.
(48:43):
They build these deep connections with others and they
feel the permission. And the witnesses of everybody.
Around them and they have been an enlightened witness for
others to actually blossom in new ways and then they're
fearful of going home to that because of this issue that
you're mentioning, which is thismistaken belief that if you're
(49:06):
different than you used to be, you're no longer reliable or
you're no you don't know you no longer fit together with my
puzzle. I want you to fit together with
my puzzle pieces. So talk about your experience
Mark of being at MEA and leadingMEA and what you witnessed there
during the course of a workshop.And your next workshop, I think
(49:27):
is next winter, late winter in Baja, which is the your primary,
primary spot where you you do your workshops.
Yes. And I love, I love being.
There and you know, you've created it's such a a holy
container for this kind of deep work.
Everything is just supports it and the wonderful people who are
(49:52):
all there. So what I, what I experienced so
often is once we enter and, and,and this is where our work, your
work, our work, my work and the work of MEA is, you know, I feel
like I am there to open a hard space that we can enter together
(50:12):
to help people discover their own gifts and become more, more
intimate with their own wisdom. And then how to bring that back
in the world. Because when we meet like that,
it's a, a resource, not a refuge.
And so often when we come out ofthat kind of experience, and I
often have people say, well, howam I supposed to talk about this
(50:35):
when I go home? And, you know, and I and I feel
like it's not something you can report on, but you can share a
question, a story, a presence, and even in within someone's own
heart. I say, you know, we're what
(50:57):
we're because often people feel like, well, this this circle is
never going to be again. Although wonderfully we you have
so many cohorts that keep together, which I think is such
a wonderful thing. And when I invite people to say
before they leave, to say, OK, feel what you're feeling right
now, where it is in you so that when you get home like we've
(51:22):
poured it into. This container but.
When you get home, what glass can you pour it into in your
daily life? It's there.
It hasn't gone. And you know, the truth is, the
work we do, we don't give anybody anything They didn't
walk in with the first night. We've simply love it together
into the open. And boy, I don't know.
(51:45):
There is no other work I would wanted to.
Well, you are a master and a magician.
And a poet and a philosopher. And so people love their time
with you. So it, it has been a
transformative experience for people.
I want to see if you have any. I have one last question for
you, but I want to give you a chance to give another poem.
If if, if there's another poem you'd like to read, You're no
(52:07):
obligation. Yeah.
Yeah. So this is.
A poem that I often I I love to share and it's called freefall.
If you have one hour of air and many hours to go, you must
breathe slowly. If you have one arm's length and
(52:29):
many things to care for, you must give freely.
If you have one chance to know God and many doubts, you must
set your heart on fire. We are blessed.
Each day is a chance. We have two arms.
Fear wastes air. Oh beautiful, the.
(52:52):
Breathing of life from Mark Neepo.
Thank you. One last question for you, Mark.
If someone said, Mark Neepo, I want you to put a piece of
wisdom. It has your fingerprints on it.
And we now understand the importance of fingerprints and
hands. This is a piece of of wisdom.
(53:14):
You could put it on a bumper sticker.
It's got to be breathe and it has an origin story attached to
it. What might that bumper sticker
be? And that wisdom bumper sticker
with your fingerprints on it. And what's the origin story if I
we if we haven't heard it yet? Well, but actually I'm.
Going to defer to a line that's actually from DH Lawrence who so
(53:38):
if I can I I'm going to give you2 quick little things.
So one DH Lawrence in poem said not I, but the wind that blows
through me and I feel that you know, my journey through almost
dying and my love of life. You know, we are all, all
(54:00):
conduits, we are all inlets, we are all vessels for all that is
holy. And that's where I love the,
the, you know, the, the Hindu Namaste.
People say namaste. But I used the Brooklyn.
Version Namaste, which means beautifully I honor portion of
(54:21):
universal spirit that resides inyou.
So we we are ourselves and when we are most ourselves, we carry
everything that is not us. And the other is maybe the
greatest haiku that was ever written hundreds of years before
Haiku was the form and it's it is from Rabbi Hillel in the 1st
century where he said if if I amnot for myself, who will be if I
(54:46):
am only for myself, what am I ifnot now, when?
And so our our constant. I would want to just leave
people with the the constant belief in the heart as our
strongest muscle and if not now,when?
Well, this hour together has been.
(55:08):
If not now, when for me, becauseI don't get to spend enough time
with you. I just want to say thank you for
how you've shown up in the worldand blossomed in at age 74.
You continue to blossom and. I look forward to seeing you
soon. Yeah, Thank you so much.
Thank you. Wow.
(55:30):
I. Feel like I have just had a.
Massage of my soul by Mark Nepo,no less.
You know if I. Were to try to.
Summarize 3 key lessons I got from this experience.
Talking to Mark, he said something early in the episode.
He said I'm going to live a making when he was 20 years old.
(55:53):
He was not focusing on making a living.
And of course his parents didn'tthink it was very practical for
him to be a poet. So he came up with the term I'm
going to make a living. I really loved that.
The I first I didn't know what he meant, but in essence, I know
the the life I want to live and I'm going to make that life.
I'm going to befriend that life.A word that he used in the
(56:14):
episode. How do you befriend not just
friends, but befriend a life? So the idea of how do you curate
an, a, a, a life, especially a creative life, it feels like
it's got your fingerprints all over it.
Second, Secondly, he talked about the blessing or a burden.
And, and this is so true. So often in life, the thing that
(56:34):
looks like a burden turns out tobe a blessing, whether that's a
cancer diagnosis, whether that'sa divorce, whether that's a
business going, you know, going under, you know, there's a lot
of things that we don't want to have happen to us that at first
look like a blessing. I've and sorry at first look
like a, a, a, a burden. And then you realize they're a
(56:55):
blessing. And you and he talked about
staying in the corridor of aliveness so that you can see
both both the blessing and the burden.
And then he also talked later about making this list of the
things he wants to do in his life.
And then if he knew he only had a day left to live, which of
these things would he actually do?
Which of these things would he actually actualize in his last
(57:19):
24 hours? So I think this idea that life
is not black and white, there's a Gray area, and I think poetry
is learning to actually play in that Gray area.
And midlife is midlife is learning how to live with the
contradictions of midlife. Learning to become happier and
have more life satisfaction at atime on your body is not what it
used to be. And you're starting to have more
(57:39):
ailments. That's the mystery of EU curve
of happiness and that people gethappier after age 50 as their
health and their, and their Wellness may be actually not as
good. I think the third thing I, I, I
took from this, and I never heard this before, the idea of
the authenticity and the root ofthe word authenticity, which
(58:01):
comes from the heart and the, the fact that our hands when
we're a fetus and we're startingto grow into a, you know, a
full-fledged baby in the womb. What is going on is the hands
actually come from the heart. And so authenticity and maybe
even creativity is learning how to take the heart and actualize
(58:26):
it into something into some form.
Whether that form was his fatheras a woodworker working on
those, those shipping models, the ship models, or whether it
was it's Mark with his writing and his poetry.
How do you allow your heart to actually be a flame And then
your creativity channels throughyou as a result?
(58:47):
So for those of you who have been thinking about becoming a
poet later in life, I hope this was an inspiration for you and
that you will check out Mark's newest book, The Fifth Season,
which is all about learning to have creativity in the
second-half of your life. I'll see you next week.
(59:07):
Thanks. Thanks for listening to the
Midlife Chrysalis this. Show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
on your favorite platform.
If I am not for myself, who willbe?
If I am only for myself, what amI?
If not now, when? I would want to just leave
people with the the constant belief in the heart as our
strongest muscle. And if not now, when?
Welcome to the Midlife ChrysalisPodcast with Chip Conley, where
(00:22):
we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time
of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful
chapter of your life. Welcome to the midlife
chrysalis. This is Chip Conley, and our
guest today is Mark Nepo. Mark Nepo has been called one of
(00:43):
Oprah's favorite poets that's living in the world.
And poetry has been considered the salve of the soul, the idea
that poetry helps you to get in touch with your soul.
He's a philosopher. He's also a cancer survivor, so
we talk a little bit about that.He's an MEA faculty member.
And more than anything, he's just a delight to be with.
(01:05):
This hour went by very quickly, and I think you're going to
learn a few things and maybe connect a little bit more deeply
inside of yourself as a result of listening to Mark.
I hope you enjoy the episode. Mark Neepo, my my fellow bald
brother. It's great to have you here on
(01:26):
the midlife chrysalis. How are you?
Are you in Kalamazoo? Where are you?
I'm in Kalamazoo at home. I just got back from a week in
New York City where I was reading and and talking about
the new book. OK, so tell us about the new
book. Yeah, the fifth season.
Creativity in the second-half oflife.
This is your How many books haveyou written now?
(01:48):
This is my 27th book published. If you would have asked me 20
years ago, this is more than I ever could have dreamed of.
And I and, and, and this does apply to so much of what we're
going to talk about. I think, you know, I've learned
over the years to get out of theway at this point, writing is
(02:10):
listening and taking notes and, and one of the things, and then
I'll talk about the new book. But one of the things I've
learned over the years is that the introspective process and
the creative process are really the same thing.
And you know that that I just happened to write it down
because that's how I learn, you know, But this is very much
(02:34):
about our journey through midlife and aging is our our
life is the work of art. You know, the soul.
I believe that the soul wants usto be as alive as possible.
And it really doesn't care how we do that in terms of, but as
long as we if care, care is to the soul what wood is to a fire.
(03:00):
The fire doesn't it doesn't matter to the fire what kind of
wood you put on it. Elm, pine, cherry.
And I don't think the soul, it matters what kind of care as
long as we're wholehearted, as long as we hold nothing back.
And so to get to, to this book, you know, I've always used my
(03:20):
life as a case study for the common passages that we all go
through. As you know, I mean, I, I don't
have any answers, but I share our examples, not instructions,
and we're all just comparing notes on what it is to be here.
So the the new book, the fifth season, because I'm in the
continent of aging. I'm 74.
(03:43):
I met someone my age 20 years ago.
I thought they were ancient doesn't seem so old now.
But you know, looking at this, I, I've really discovered just
just like how my cancer journey.I think these passages, these
transformational passages, whichdon't have to be life
(04:04):
threatening. It can be beauty, wonder, being
loved unconditionally for the first time.
But all of these passages bring into acute relief the choice
points we all make throughout our lives.
And so just as cancer did that for me, I think aging is doing
that because while this is focused on the second-half of
(04:27):
life, we're always aging from 20to 40, from 40 to 60, from 60 to
100. And, and what I've been
discovering is that which I tried to to explore in the book
is that we're invited to, to getbetter at a different set of
(04:47):
skills as we age. And, and we can explore that,
but living where our life is thework of art and we give our
wholeheartedness to it. And, and the fifth season where,
and this is another interesting thing.
You know I saved that title fromyears ago not knowing what book
it would be for. Explain what it is.
(05:08):
Explain what the fifth season isin Chinese culture.
In Chinese lore, in Chinese culture, the fifth season is
this time of year, late August, early September, where where the
light is bare and aglow when things are down to their
essentials. And early sages quickly tried to
(05:30):
make an analogy that the 5th season of life is that
integrative time, that time where we look, you know, we live
forward, but we map backwards. So we, how do we, oh, over the
decades, I didn't know these things went together and what we
put down. And, and so it's that season of
(05:53):
integration where everything becomes as clear and bare and
simple and direct as possible. And I love this chip.
They they call that turning point the heavenly pivot.
Oh, I love that. Yes.
Let's take a step back for a minute.
We'll come back to the book, butgive us your history.
(06:15):
I mean, how did you become a poet?
And how did you, how did you become one of Oprah's favorite
living poets? If not, if not her favorite,
especially with the Book of Awakening, So what?
What? Give us your story, and
especially give us the cancer story too, because then you and
I can dialogue a little bit about cancer since I, as you
(06:36):
know, I've been dealing with cancer as well.
Well, you know, I think that at an early age, I, I, you know,
before I knew what a poet was, before I knew what metaphor was.
I think my as a child, even my native language was metaphor
because even when I would be outside playing, you know, I'd
see wind through the trees and without words, it would speak to
(06:58):
me and say, OK, what am I like? What am I like?
Come on. And and then later I learned
that that was metaphor. But, you know, I started writing
in high school when the first woman I fell in love with, who
went to college ahead of me, fell in love with someone else.
I was devastated and but it in amoment, an amazing MEA moment.
(07:23):
But then I started writing to heal from that.
But I realized quickly I wasn't talking to myself.
I had begun a conversation with the universe and never stopped.
And the MEA moment is that little 2 times ago, that first
(07:44):
love, we reconnected after 55 years and she came to my week at
NBA. How was that it?
Was my. It was.
And you did not know she was coming, right?
I did know she, she got in touchwith me.
We, we connected beforehand. It was, it was incredibly
graceful and special and beautiful that it would happen
(08:07):
there. And after all that time, you
know, there we are. I you know, I've got hearing
aids. She has eye trouble.
We are in our 70s meeting after a lifetime.
And it was, it was beautiful. It was such a gift.
But back to my, you know, so in my, my early 30s, I had a rare
(08:30):
form of lymphoma that grew in myskull.
So, like the size of a grapefruit.
And, you know, up until that time, I was a young, driven
artist. I hope, you know, I hope, Gee,
if I could work hard enough, maybe, maybe I'd write one or
two great poems, you know, that could add to literature.
(08:51):
Well, you know, 31 in the hospital, upside down, inside
out. Forget writing great poems.
I needed to discover true expressions that would help me
live. Everything changed.
I went through this tumor was ananomaly.
(09:13):
It was a miracle. It vanished after months of
tests and and it was really a miracle.
And then I was spit back like Jonah out of the mouth of the
whale back into life. And 10 months later, a sister
part of that had split off and was growing on a rib in my back.
(09:37):
And that was my real despair because I didn't need another
wake up call. I was awake.
Well, thank you. Ultimately, you wrote a book of
awakening too, so we're going tocome back too.
Then let's let's go back to yourstory.
Then, you know, I discovered then I needed surgery.
I had that rib removed with its adjacent muscles.
(09:57):
I had very aggressive chemo because though there was nothing
left to find the under the microscope, it was an aggressive
cancer. So I was given very strong
chemo, which almost killed me, gave me an ulcer in my
esophagus, gave me neuropathy. Really, my hearing loss is not
(10:20):
from aging, but from the chemo. So you were having you, were you
having chemo all your whole bodyor it was not concentrated
chemo? No, it was my whole body, yeah.
Yeah, that's. Yeah, it was my whole body.
It was very, it's a form, I don't think a a protocol I don't
know that they use anymore. CHOP, which was kind of like a
powerful shotgun. I came out of that and I and
(10:42):
then when the chemo started to kill me, I had to stop.
And I've been well ever since. It's been almost 40 years and I
realized and discovered a coupleof things that really shaped my
whole life's work, You know, 1 is that I was raised Jewish.
I have a deep tide to the Jewishheritage.
But I came out of that journey chip and I was a student of all
(11:05):
paths because I was not wise enough and still am not to know
what worked and what didn't. And I think I was challenged to
believe in everything and all mywork and my teaching is as a
student of all paths. And so it's the it's the poet in
me that sees, it's the philosopher in me that tries to
(11:29):
understand what I've seen. And it's the cancer survive in
me that says it's whatever it is, it's got to be of use.
It's got to be of use in our daily, our daily lives.
And so the other The thing is that just is that I was way
(11:51):
well, I was always heart centered in my outlook before my
cancer journey. I I was up here a lot and threw
no wisdom on my part. That just dropped me here.
And ever since, my mind has served my heart.
If cancer was your teacher and you, and you've graduated, at
(12:13):
least for now, what would you say were some of the best
lessons beyond just going from your brain to your heart?
Well, I think which have informed all my work, One is
that there is no there. There's only here.
We're all kind of trained, mis trained and mis educated to
(12:35):
think that life is one of the menacing assumptions in our
modern world is that life is over there if we can just get
it, if we can chase it, if we can find it, if we can grab it,
if we can steal it, if we can achieve it.
And what great love and great suffering do is to blow all that
up. And there is no, there's only
(12:56):
here so that life is not a journey from though we on the
surface go from here to there. I fly from Michigan to to MEA
every year but once and so do other people.
And but once we're there, when we're authentic and open
hearted, we open the same eternal moment.
(13:17):
We enter it. The journey is really from in to
out, not from here to there. Yeah, they say once we're
growing up, we're growing in. And there's a growing in process
that certainly happens with cancer.
Laura Carstensen at Stanford Center on Longevity has shown
that when people have a perception that they have only a
(13:40):
finite amount of time left in their life, they don't focus on
the, the, the future nor the past.
They focus on the present moment.
And guess what? They become happier as a result.
I know for me and my cancer journey, I'm, I have stage 3
prostate cancer that spread to my lymphs and, and you know that
and it is right now either either stable or in remission.
(14:03):
But if you don't have AI had twosurgeries, 36 radiation
sessions, 19 months of no testosterone, I'm all as we were
launching our MEA campus in Santa Fe, my God, and and I was
launching a book. In fact, you know, I finished my
last of the 36 radiation sessions I had.
I had a double, double radiationsession on the same day on a
(14:25):
Friday, January 12th in San Francisco.
On January 13th, I flew to New York.
On January 15th, I was on Good Morning America with George
Stephanopoulos because on January 16th, Tuesday, my book
Learning to Love Midlife was coming out.
And then on January 17th, I was on the Today show.
(14:46):
So here I was literally within just, you know, 48 hours, you
know, just a little over 48 hours going from 2 radiation
sessions in one day, which is that takes it out of you.
And the and the later and the later radiation sessions are
harder than the earlier ones because at that point I had very
(15:06):
concentrated radiation. My whole pelvis, my, my, my
bowels, my, my bladder, everything is just so
completely. So I, you know, we're in
diapers. We're in diapers on the Today
show and, and yeah. And, and I'm Good Morning
America. So I, I just think for me, the
cancer journey has very much been one of learning how it not
(15:29):
not to be the hero's journey, not to how do I ask for help?
How do I, how do I realize that I don't have to do it alone?
How do I rethink, you know, whatmatters to me in my life?
And it has really helped me withMEA.
And we'll talk more about MEA and your involvement in MEA
toward the end, But it's helped me to create a succession plan.
(15:52):
You know, I've had two opportunities in my life to come
face to face with death, the most recent one being cancer.
But you know, I still have cancer inside of me.
And I have no prostate and I have prostate cancer, which
means that it's spread throughout my lymph system, but
it is stable at this point or inremission.
But also I had a, an NDE at age 47.
I died 9 * / 90 minutes due to an allergic reaction to an
(16:15):
antibiotic. So there's a, there's this sense
in life that why do, why do we have to have these health
journeys to remind us what's important in life?
And for you, it it seems as if your your poetry journey, what
was really deepened as a result of this.
(16:36):
And ultimately years later, you wrote the book of awakening.
How, how when talk about that book in particular, because that
was the the book in many ways that put Mark Nepo on the global
literary map, partly because Oprah, I guess, particularly
loved the book and made it one of her Oprah book called Books
(16:59):
of the year. And talk about that book and,
and your journey, including how did you, let's start with how
did you know that you might wantto be a poet?
Yes, you had a metaphorical sense of the world.
But when you were going, you know, graduating from high
school, not too many people say like, OK, I'm I want to be a
poet when I grew up. Did you know that at at age 18?
(17:22):
I do think that often it is lifethreatening or dramatic powerful
events that drop us into the depth of life and everyone will
be dropped one way or another. But it can also be wonder and
beauty and surprise. And so it's doesn't have to be
just that. I think that human beings
(17:44):
basically grow by two by willfully shedding and by being
broken open. And often a combination or one
leads to the other. But if we won't willfully shed,
don't worry, we'll be broken open.
And it does it, it kind of removes it.
How we respond to being dropped in the depth of life is the
(18:05):
beginning of the spiritual journey.
But back, back to the being a poet, you know, I knew that I
would. I was the child.
My parents were children of the Great Depression.
We had family that died in the Holocaust.
I was the first in our family togo to college, and I got to
(18:27):
college and I had this mystical experience where I went to
Cortland State in upstate New York, which is on the top of a
hill. You fall off on any side of the
hill. You wind up in a bar in the
college town. And in the my freshman year, I
was going down one of the sides of the hill.
It was spring and a wind, a hugewind, a gust of wind came from
(18:52):
behind me and I, it stopped me. And on the far side of the
valley, about a mile away was another hill.
And I just stood there and in, you know, 20 seconds or so, that
wind, I could see it goes through the trees on the other
hill. I understood the reach and I
knew I was a poet even though I hadn't written anything.
(19:13):
And the next break that I went to go home.
I went home excitedly 1819 and came in to the kitchen and said
I'm a poet. And you know, they went pale.
You know, they've they went, they were just my father who was
a master woodworker, taught at Brooklyn Tech High School in the
(19:34):
city. My mother was a bookkeeper.
Both were highly intelligent, but very literal and she wanted
me to be a lawyer. He and and I came home and so we
had that classic argument how you're going to make a living.
And I don't know where it came from in me, but I said back, I'm
(19:56):
going to live a making rather than make a living.
Oh OK, live a making OK. That was my first instruction as
a poet, which I took years to discover.
And that and that wholeheartedness, that immersing
ourselves in whatever is before us is what brings us alive and
(20:18):
in what we go to make. Because of that engagement, we
are made whole. And that has a lot to do, even
more so in aging and in midlife.How do we hold nothing back?
And, and So what you were sayingabout how cancer for both of us
(20:39):
brought us to the present. I think one of the skills I've
discovered in aging is that because there are more years
behind than the head, you know, the proper place of dream and
memory shifts. And so, you know, nostalgia is,
(20:59):
I go back 20 years to a very special moment.
And nostalgia is, oh, I wish I could be there now.
But the true purpose of memory is to revisit the spark of life
that animated me then, to see where it lives in me now,
because it hasn't gone anywhere.And the same thing with dream.
(21:23):
Just because there's more years behind than a head doesn't mean
I don't dream. But dreams, I've come to
believe, are the kindling of ouraliveness.
And so I dream forward. But then also I the skill, the
new skill is OK. What spark is now projected
forward that actually is right here in me.
(21:44):
How does memory and dream come to enliven me now?
And I think that's a new skill. Well, back to the book of
awakening. So the book of awakening, I
really wrote that on the other side of my cancer journey in
2000 took three years to write. And, and I, I wrote it because I
(22:08):
have many people in my life who are in recovery or children of
Alcoholics or addicts. And, and I noticed that day
books were like really used, youknow, they were in cars,
bathrooms, back pockets. And, and it occurred to me that
if I could fill that form with short doses of what matters, it
(22:32):
might be of help, I could give something back.
And so when that came out, it had for 10 years kind of a life
of word of mouth life of its own.
And then in 2010, you know, the the story is that one of Oprah's
assistants, who I now know is a wonderful person, had heard a
(22:55):
lot of yoga teachers use the book of Awakening and quote it
before a session. And her yoga teacher used it.
And I now know the yoga teacher too, very well.
And she so Pierre, who was this young woman, she gave it to
Oprah as a birthday present. And you know how that is like if
you're not in the right space oropen.
(23:16):
Yeah, thank you very much. It goes on a shelf.
Well, it just happened that it'swas spoke to her at a time that
she really was needed to hear it.
And the next thing I know she, you know, is who is this guy?
Can I talk to him? And and you know how that goes.
So her one of her producers calls me and and we had a great
(23:41):
extensive but I'm thinking the whole time, OK, which one of my
friends is playing a joke on me.You know, this can't be real.
But that that began our deep conversations, Oprah and I, and
she is such a authentic Bridger and she doesn't have to do that.
And and of course, you know, within 24 hours of her, her
(24:04):
belief in that book, it was all over the world.
And, you know, it was like a lightning strike.
It's nothing. Nothing, you know, nothing that
I, you know, did I just keep doing the work?
How was that for you? So let's let's do, let's this
was 15 years ago. So you were in like 59 or 60 and
(24:29):
you had been toiling away as a poet for 40 years.
You'd been successful. Let's be clear, you'd been
successful. But not had you ever had Had you
had a New York Times bestseller yet, or.
No, no, no. So then all of a sudden this
happens and the book is 10 yearsold and the the book of
(24:52):
awakening is like, well, finallythe world has awakened to Mark's
poetry. I Mark's prose.
So how how was that for you on? In some ways, it's every
everyone who's in the public eye.
Not everyone, but many people have that dream that someday
they'll be discovered. What was that like the upside
(25:14):
and the downside of of that for you?
I would say, and this goes rightback to a deep learning from the
cancer journey, you know, from almost dying.
I'm very grateful for it and it's allowed me so many
opportunities to teach, be with people in a deep way.
(25:35):
And, and it has nothing to do with the work.
And so, you know, this archetypal place that before if,
if we struggle as all artists inany field and are not known, the
struggle is to not vanish or think that your voice doesn't
matter if you're not heard. And so the image for me is that
(25:56):
you're, you know, if you're walking into a strong wind, you
got to plant your feet and lean forward and keep going.
And if you're blessed to have the wind at your back, oh, it's
the same walk. You just lean in a different
direction. You plant your feet, you lean
back so that you're stable and you keep going.
(26:17):
We have this this misguided notion that life is this climb
up a hill. And the higher we go, the more
successful we are. Well, again, great love and
great suffering flatten that outand it's all this way, it's all
horizontal and we're the same 6 inches from the gutter in
heaven. And, and So what happened to me,
(26:39):
which I'm sure you can relate toin the, in my cancer journey,
and this is a metaphor again, too.
The only way I can kind of approach describing this is that
through no wisdom on my part, you know, it's like I was
standing on a Cliff and you know, if you lean over the
Cliff, you see more. And so then I leaned further and
I could see more. And then I fell and I saw maybe
(27:01):
more than I was supposed to. And the adrenaline rush of
falling off the Cliff of life burned a lot of shit off me.
Not that I'm, you know, I have insecurities and to struggle
with everything that everybody does, of course.
But then mirac the miracle was Iwas put back on the Cliff
(27:24):
entering all of this, you know, of course, before my work was
widely known, you know, and not being known was frustrating and
struggling and all of that. But even then, because of this
experience, deep, deep, deep experience while at the human
part, you can't just hop over even then it had nothing to do
(27:46):
with the work. And so now that I'm blessed to
be on the on the other side of that, not through any wisdom on
my part, but I'm deeply, you know, because during my I don't
know, I experienced during, you know, I didn't have a near death
while I was near death. I didn't have a near death
experience. But in that near death moments,
(28:09):
I I was being wheeled into have my rib removed, you know,
fluorescent lights, you're in the thick.
And I had this moment Chip, where I dropped or was dropped
below all names into the essenceof things, which is the work of
all poetry. I mean, that's the paradox of
(28:29):
poetry's. We try to name what's
unnameable. And then coming back, of course,
I'm Mark your chip, but I forever live from the place
below all names. So to be known and and have all
this attention. Thank you.
(28:50):
You know. If you're enjoying the
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(29:12):
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Speaking of getting to work, let's give our listeners and and
(29:32):
viewers a poem. Let's what's a What's a poem?
I'm gonna give you a, a, a little direction on this.
A poem that you might leave on the road for someone, someone
might actually just happen upon the poem.
And it's a poem that's well timed maybe for the times we're
in right now or that or, or justa a poem or, or what's the
(29:54):
favorite poem that you would love to have be remembered by,
you know, when you leave this planet?
Well, those are a lot of different poems, but.
Or how about one that's at your fingertips?
Yeah, I mean, I would love to answer all of those, but I
don't. We don't have that much time.
Well, this is a poem because I want to speak.
It's from the, I put it, you know, in the fifth season
(30:14):
because it speaks to this human tension of moving between the
blessing and the burden all the time.
This is a poem called Pirouettes.
And, and I learned a pirouette. Well, we know it from dance, but
actually the origin of the word it's, you know how horses, they
(30:35):
gallop. There's all these different
words. A pirouette is when a horse is
on its hind legs and spins and turns around.
Oh, interesting. OK.
Some days, the simplest tasks seem weighty and endless.
Make the bed, tuck in the sheet.Make the coffee, stir, drink,
(30:56):
find the bills, pay the bills. Some weeks the days blur.
Get on the plane, get off the plane, get in the car, get out
of the car. Then I got your e-mail saying,
isn't this all a blessing? We get to make the bed and tuck
in the sheet. We get to make the coffee and
stir it and drink. I emailed you back.
(31:19):
Well, what's the difference? You called me up immediately and
said, Oh, my friend, if we can just keep falling down and
getting up, it all becomes a dance.
And so, you know, one of the things that's so important to
share about my work as a poet isthat I don't know these things
before I explore them. And if I explore something, a
(31:41):
feeling, a a notion, an image, astory, a fear, honestly and
authentically, then I'm given aninsight as a reward.
And that's where it's very much like the introspective process.
So the lesson from that poem was, no, it's not.
(32:02):
It's not the cheer me up rah rahsociety.
It's life is always both. There are days we wake up, I got
to make the bed again. And the next day, my God, I get
to make the bed. And so the question is, how do
we stay? And this, again, is so important
and more acute in aging. How do we stay in the corridor
(32:26):
of aliveness? Because part of our practice as
a spirit in a body and time on earth is to navigate both.
You know, the, you know, the proverbial question, is the
glass half full or half empty? It's always both.
No, therefore I want to hear therefore.
Oh well, Therefore this is this is the practice of being human.
(32:51):
And this goes back to aging in a, in a big way.
One of the skills is of course, in the physical plane we meet
limitations. We, you know, things are
difficult or hard and so not again, not to turn from one to
the other. At the same time, our entire
lives were deepening and expanding and becoming more
(33:14):
like, more light filled. So how do we stay open to both
so that they inform each other and right size the limitations?
There's a quote I want to It's agood time for me to say.
This is also from the book The Fifth Season.
As the years go by, our physicalveneer erodes while our interior
(33:37):
becomes more evident. In time, the inside becomes the
outside. No matter the precautions we've
enlisted to hide it, enlivened and engaged, who we are begins
to appear like a natural spring,a depth of energy bubbling
forth. And while our outer mask endures
(33:57):
the wait of ordinary hours, our interface is even more
illuminated by the inner world. The salvation of being over time
is that where the outside wears through, the inside shines
forth. Is that how you're feeling at 74
and, and, and maybe do the bridge of that to creativity
(34:19):
and, and why creativity is I I just a a quick thought in one
of, in one of our MEA workshops in Santa Fe recently, we had two
we had, you know, we have, we had men, women, you know, on
average about 6564% of the people who come to MEA are
women. Although that the increase we're
having an increasing number of men now.
We had two men in the same workshop, both of whom were
(34:42):
contemplating retirement or had retired, who had decided in
their 60s they wanted to become poets.
And so there's there was this interesting element of like one
of them had been an insurance broker most of his life.
He'd had an insurance agency that had been very successfully
sold it. But now he was a poet and he and
(35:03):
he really wanted to own that creativity.
So talk about the inside, the outside and and how in that
process, maybe creativity is oneof the natural results of being
able to go inside. Let me define creativity in a
deep, large sense as not just restricted to art forms, but
(35:25):
creativity is what comes throughus when we are working to be
fully alive and in relationship to all of life, to each other,
to ourselves and the light so that we in those moments of
(35:46):
authentic living become like inlets and life force comes
through us. And you know, the word authentic
literally means from the Greek authentess mark of the hands,
the hands literally when we're afetus, they literally grow out
of the heart. The little their, their first
(36:06):
vestiges are known as arm buds. So authenticity is when what
starts in the heart comes out through the hands.
The thousand ways that can happen is creativity.
And it's not really about producing great art.
It's about giving ourselves wholeheartedly to to whatever is
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calling us and and that makes our life our work of art.
This was a lesson. It's interesting because my, you
know, my father I mentioned was a master woodworker.
He was a creative force, though we worked in obviously different
medium. And though now that he's gone
about 1213 years, I realize a couple like lessons that I
(36:58):
didn't realize I was touched by,but didn't have their meaning
till decades later. And one is around this.
He he built a 30 foot sailb, a catch that I spent a lot of my
youth on. And when he was in in his 40s
and you know, he started making half models, which he would get
out of, he would get actual blueprints for ships from the
(37:23):
1800s and build them to scale like 6 feet some.
And they were half because they would be mounted on a wall.
And I remember being 9 or 10 sitting in our little basement
steps. They were see through.
He didn't know I was watching, watching him with tweezers, put
thin rigging through dead, smalldead eyes and and all this and
(37:51):
that so stayed with me. I've never seen anyone so
immersed. And I realize he taught me The
Secret Life of detail. And what I've come to realize,
and it's relevant to what we're talking about, is he was so that
it's the immersion that lets us experience oneness and wholeness
(38:16):
and eternity, and the byproduct is excellence.
He was so immersed. I can see all these years later
that he was in the moment of everyone whoever built a boat.
And so when I go to the place below names and give my all, I
am in the moment of every poet whoever lived.
(38:40):
And when we share as friends andyou are there for me and my pain
immersed, we trip into the moment of everyone, whoever felt
pain and whoever held someone inpain.
And this is key to how we age and how we move from, you know,
(39:05):
it's interesting, like the insurance agent who's
wonderfully discovered his inwardness.
Well, you know, back in the in the 1600s, there was a samurai
in Japan named Mossahide. And all of a sudden, I think he
was, I don't know how well, I think he was around 50.
(39:25):
He quit being a samurai and he sought out Basho, the great
Japanese poet Basho to study with him.
I would have loved to interview that guy.
What happened, right? And his the one haiku that is
famous, which also pertains to what we're talking about from
Mossahide. He is my barn.
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Having burned to the ground, I can see the moon more
completely. Mossahide wrote that, and I
don't think he had the experience to express that.
If he hadn't been a samurai and he wouldn't have had the depth
or awareness. To say it, if he hadn't become a
(40:11):
poet. And so across our lives, we
gather things and we seek our uniqueness to learn who we are.
And then somewhere, and there's no one point somewhere in
midlife and through aging, we put it all down to be who we
are. You've said you wrote actually
(40:31):
aging is a journey into simplicity.
Is that simplicity really about maybe tearing away the
identities, all of the, the garments we've been wearing,
like you've been wearing 6 or 7 garments and we're, it's time to
take those off. And as we get older, we learn
(40:52):
that we don't need all of those uniforms and we get back down to
something more essential to who we are.
And is that where that that allows us maybe to have the
creativity flow like a spring more naturally through US?
And there's a paradox there because letting go of all the
(41:13):
garments and facades and roles allows the creativity, but it's
also through creativity of expression, whatever that
expression is, that we let go ofthe garments.
And, and again, you know, while there's an if, if there's a
natural elemental and kind of transformational journey over
(41:39):
years, and there is the abrupt revelation of great love and
great suffering that can happen anywhere, that can happen at any
time in life. You know, there's a, in the
Japanese tea ceremony where, youknow, there's a whole religious
aspect to that. And, and the, the tea Hut is
(42:00):
purposely designed, the entranceto it narrow and low to the
ground so that whoever comes hasto take off and bow to enter.
And I think we could equate thattea heart with the, the
threshold to wisdom. And then there's a great example
(42:24):
in the history of the the tea sermon, there were two two guys
who were boyhood friends, Tycho and Ricky you.
And Tycho became an A general and an emperor, and Ricky you
became a tea master. And still, every once in a
while, Tycho would come to visitRicky you in the tea and he
would have to enter the garden, take his sword off, take his
(42:48):
armor off, get down with nothingto enter the tea Hut.
And it doesn't mean that we're that we don't live in the world.
You know, this is where for me at least, you know, so a very
practical thing we would, you know, we were talking about.
So, you know, ever since on the other side of my cancer journey,
(43:10):
you know, I'm a list maker. I, I and I'm scribble and and so
every morning I make a list of the things that have to be done
and the things I want to do. And then I have a cup of coffee.
My dog is with my wife now, but usually our dog is here helping
my study. And then I take the list apart
and say, if this is the last dayI'm here on earth, what stays on
(43:31):
the list? And it might be that I call you
up again to say I love you even though I talked to you
yesterday. So you might say, well, why make
the list? Because I live in the world.
So I make the list and then I take it apart every day.
That's part of the between the burden and the blessing.
That's the glass is half full and half empty.
(43:53):
That's the corridor. That's one way to return to the
corridor of aliveness, not to retreat from the world or hide
in the world, but to be in that that deep space and move in the
world. So much fun to talk with you
because I, I feel like you're, you're reciting poetry even
though you're not reciting poetry, but you are reciting
(44:16):
poetry. Your life is poetry.
So let's talk about the poetry of friendship because I know
this is a topic that isn't you've You've been writing about
that the last few years and the idea of friendship as being part
of a spiritual flourishing life.Give us your point of view on
this because there is so many people come to this age of life,
(44:41):
the midlife and later stages. And a lot of men have had their
friendship muscle atrophy because the last time they
really gave investment to friendship was maybe when they
were in college. And women have a much better at
friendship and they're much better at juggling.
But you know what? What wisdom do you have to offer
(45:04):
around the importance of friendship in midlife and
beyond? Yeah, thank you.
And and and to start with the word friendship comes from a
German root word that means place of high safety.
You're an etymologist. You're an etymologist.
And I'm interested in Word origins, not because I'm a word
geek, but because I've found that just like things erode in
(45:27):
nature, words erode over the centuries.
And more often than not, if we go back as far as we can,
they're more whole. They're more helpful.
And my next book coming out nextsummer is I've I've gathered a
50 years of looking at these into a book called The Language
of the Soul. It's a natural next step for
(45:48):
you. I, I, I I could be.
I could be your literary agent. Hey, Mark, it's a book that
you're supposed to be writing. All right.
Tell us about the. Tell us about friendship and the
safety. So friendship, this place of
high safety and and of course this, we learn it most with
others, but our being authentic and showing up for each other
(46:12):
also models for us how to show up for ourselves, how to
befriend. And so befriending becomes a
spiritual practice. And why do I say it?
Because it's different than conceptualizing.
Most of the things too big to understand.
(46:33):
We conceptualize when we need tobefriend them.
We need to befriend life, nature, the unknown, the soul.
Because if I befriend you, that's different than
conceptualizing you inherently. I am in, I am making
(46:55):
commitments. I'm showing up with my heart.
OK, so this is an apprenticeship.
Our friendship with each other is an apprenticeship to
befriending as a spiritual practice, as a spiritual
practice. And that is essential as we age
(47:15):
so that we are more connected toeverything.
And I think that, you know, I'verealized I don't have the poem
right here, but you know, I've, I've realized along the way
that, you know, I'd rather be a friend than a St. you know, I'd
(47:38):
rather and, and, and also it, itmeans that befriending our own
growth. So one of the things we do in
our world is we, our modern world is we often mistake
consistency for reliability. I'm a friend with I'm, I'm
committed to our friendship, right?
(47:58):
And but I'm changing and you say, well, wait a minute, you're
not the same. I don't know if I can depend on
you. Those have nothing to do with
each other. Our vow of friendship, of place,
of high safety is I can change ahundred ways.
You still can count on me and you can support my changing
(48:20):
because the true love of friendship means that I want you
to grow, not stay the same. What you've just described is a
perfect segue to talk about MEA for a moment, because people
come to MEA to be in a workshop in person in Baja or in Santa
Fe, and often in the course of just a few days together.
(48:43):
They build these deep connections with others and they
feel the permission. And the witnesses of everybody.
Around them and they have been an enlightened witness for
others to actually blossom in new ways and then they're
fearful of going home to that because of this issue that
you're mentioning, which is thismistaken belief that if you're
(49:06):
different than you used to be, you're no longer reliable or
you're no you don't know you no longer fit together with my
puzzle. I want you to fit together with
my puzzle pieces. So talk about your experience
Mark of being at MEA and leadingMEA and what you witnessed there
during the course of a workshop.And your next workshop, I think
(49:27):
is next winter, late winter in Baja, which is the your primary,
primary spot where you you do your workshops.
Yes. And I love, I love being.
There and you know, you've created it's such a a holy
container for this kind of deep work.
Everything is just supports it and the wonderful people who are
(49:52):
all there. So what I, what I experienced so
often is once we enter and, and,and this is where our work, your
work, our work, my work and the work of MEA is, you know, I feel
like I am there to open a hard space that we can enter together
(50:12):
to help people discover their own gifts and become more, more
intimate with their own wisdom. And then how to bring that back
in the world. Because when we meet like that,
it's a, a resource, not a refuge.
And so often when we come out ofthat kind of experience, and I
often have people say, well, howam I supposed to talk about this
(50:35):
when I go home? And, you know, and I and I feel
like it's not something you can report on, but you can share a
question, a story, a presence, and even in within someone's own
heart. I say, you know, we're what
(50:57):
we're because often people feel like, well, this this circle is
never going to be again. Although wonderfully we you have
so many cohorts that keep together, which I think is such
a wonderful thing. And when I invite people to say
before they leave, to say, OK, feel what you're feeling right
now, where it is in you so that when you get home like we've
(51:22):
poured it into. This container but.
When you get home, what glass can you pour it into in your
daily life? It's there.
It hasn't gone. And you know, the truth is, the
work we do, we don't give anybody anything They didn't
walk in with the first night. We've simply love it together
into the open. And boy, I don't know.
(51:45):
There is no other work I would wanted to.
Well, you are a master and a magician.
And a poet and a philosopher. And so people love their time
with you. So it, it has been a
transformative experience for people.
I want to see if you have any. I have one last question for
you, but I want to give you a chance to give another poem.
If if, if there's another poem you'd like to read, You're no
(52:07):
obligation. Yeah.
Yeah. So this is.
A poem that I often I I love to share and it's called freefall.
If you have one hour of air and many hours to go, you must
breathe slowly. If you have one arm's length and
(52:29):
many things to care for, you must give freely.
If you have one chance to know God and many doubts, you must
set your heart on fire. We are blessed.
Each day is a chance. We have two arms.
Fear wastes air. Oh beautiful, the.
(52:52):
Breathing of life from Mark Neepo.
Thank you. One last question for you, Mark.
If someone said, Mark Neepo, I want you to put a piece of
wisdom. It has your fingerprints on it.
And we now understand the importance of fingerprints and
hands. This is a piece of of wisdom.
(53:14):
You could put it on a bumper sticker.
It's got to be breathe and it has an origin story attached to
it. What might that bumper sticker
be? And that wisdom bumper sticker
with your fingerprints on it. And what's the origin story if I
we if we haven't heard it yet? Well, but actually I'm.
Going to defer to a line that's actually from DH Lawrence who so
(53:38):
if I can I I'm going to give you2 quick little things.
So one DH Lawrence in poem said not I, but the wind that blows
through me and I feel that you know, my journey through almost
dying and my love of life. You know, we are all, all
(54:00):
conduits, we are all inlets, we are all vessels for all that is
holy. And that's where I love the,
the, you know, the, the Hindu Namaste.
People say namaste. But I used the Brooklyn.
Version Namaste, which means beautifully I honor portion of
(54:21):
universal spirit that resides inyou.
So we we are ourselves and when we are most ourselves, we carry
everything that is not us. And the other is maybe the
greatest haiku that was ever written hundreds of years before
Haiku was the form and it's it is from Rabbi Hillel in the 1st
century where he said if if I amnot for myself, who will be if I
(54:46):
am only for myself, what am I ifnot now, when?
And so our our constant. I would want to just leave
people with the the constant belief in the heart as our
strongest muscle and if not now,when?
Well, this hour together has been.
(55:08):
If not now, when for me, becauseI don't get to spend enough time
with you. I just want to say thank you for
how you've shown up in the worldand blossomed in at age 74.
You continue to blossom and. I look forward to seeing you
soon. Yeah, Thank you so much.
Thank you. Wow.
(55:30):
I. Feel like I have just had a.
Massage of my soul by Mark Nepo,no less.
You know if I. Were to try to.
Summarize 3 key lessons I got from this experience.
Talking to Mark, he said something early in the episode.
He said I'm going to live a making when he was 20 years old.
(55:53):
He was not focusing on making a living.
And of course his parents didn'tthink it was very practical for
him to be a poet. So he came up with the term I'm
going to make a living. I really loved that.
The I first I didn't know what he meant, but in essence, I know
the the life I want to live and I'm going to make that life.
I'm going to befriend that life.A word that he used in the
(56:14):
episode. How do you befriend not just
friends, but befriend a life? So the idea of how do you curate
an, a, a, a life, especially a creative life, it feels like
it's got your fingerprints all over it.
Second, Secondly, he talked about the blessing or a burden.
And, and this is so true. So often in life, the thing that
(56:34):
looks like a burden turns out tobe a blessing, whether that's a
cancer diagnosis, whether that'sa divorce, whether that's a
business going, you know, going under, you know, there's a lot
of things that we don't want to have happen to us that at first
look like a blessing. I've and sorry at first look
like a, a, a, a burden. And then you realize they're a
(56:55):
blessing. And you and he talked about
staying in the corridor of aliveness so that you can see
both both the blessing and the burden.
And then he also talked later about making this list of the
things he wants to do in his life.
And then if he knew he only had a day left to live, which of
these things would he actually do?
Which of these things would he actually actualize in his last
(57:19):
24 hours? So I think this idea that life
is not black and white, there's a Gray area, and I think poetry
is learning to actually play in that Gray area.
And midlife is midlife is learning how to live with the
contradictions of midlife. Learning to become happier and
have more life satisfaction at atime on your body is not what it
used to be. And you're starting to have more
(57:39):
ailments. That's the mystery of EU curve
of happiness and that people gethappier after age 50 as their
health and their, and their Wellness may be actually not as
good. I think the third thing I, I, I
took from this, and I never heard this before, the idea of
the authenticity and the root ofthe word authenticity, which
(58:01):
comes from the heart and the, the fact that our hands when
we're a fetus and we're startingto grow into a, you know, a
full-fledged baby in the womb. What is going on is the hands
actually come from the heart. And so authenticity and maybe
even creativity is learning how to take the heart and actualize
(58:26):
it into something into some form.
Whether that form was his fatheras a woodworker working on
those, those shipping models, the ship models, or whether it
was it's Mark with his writing and his poetry.
How do you allow your heart to actually be a flame And then
your creativity channels throughyou as a result?
(58:47):
So for those of you who have been thinking about becoming a
poet later in life, I hope this was an inspiration for you and
that you will check out Mark's newest book, The Fifth Season,
which is all about learning to have creativity in the
second-half of your life. I'll see you next week.
(59:07):
Thanks. Thanks for listening to the
Midlife Chrysalis this. Show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
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