July 16, 2025 • 59 mins
What happens when one of the most thoughtful voices in public life hits a wall?
In this deeply personal conversation, Krista Tippett opens up about burnout, walking away from success, and rediscovering joy in midlife. From letting go of exhaustion to falling in love again, she shares the hard-won wisdom that’s reshaping how she lives, works, and loves. It’s a moving reminder that it’s never too late to begin again, so don’t miss this one.
Subscribe for more powerful conversations that spark reflection, reinvention, and real change in midlife.
Timestamps:
00:00 Welcome and Setup
00:46 Introducing Lee and the Unique Cast of Guests
01:52 What Makes a Great Interviewer?
06:12 Interviewing John O’Donohue
09:57 Thresholds and Transitions
12:58 Krista’s Childhood and Upbringing in Oklahoma
17:40 The Bible as Her First Text of Imagination
20:00 Interviewing Richard Rohr and Men’s Spiritual Lives
23:36 Krista’s Midlife Reflections
27:06 Midlife Chrysalis and Personal Transformation
30:53 Building a Life Around Love and Friendship
35:36 What She’d Regret Not Doing
38:09 What Brings Joy Now
42:03 Defining Wisdom and Growing Wiser
46:26 Staying Grounded Through Rituals and Attention
51:43 Rethinking Retirement
54:29 The Aging Brain and Synthesizing Wisdom
57:46 Wisdom Bumper Sticker
Learn more about MEA at https://www.meawisdom.com/#MidlifeWisdom
#OnBeing #KristaTippett #MidlifeTransformation #SpiritualGrowth #LifeAfter40 #InnerLife #FindingPurpose #EmotionalResilience #WomenOver40 #BecomingWise #SoulfulLiving #PersonalGrowthJourney #AgingWithGrace #DeepConversations
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I knew a lot of women my age whospent their life force on
relationships that were not good, worthy of them.
And I made this decision at somepoint because I didn't want to
be alone or this idea that I don't want to grow old alone.
This is also part of why it's sorelaxing to grow old that also
(00:22):
we're not as motivated by novelty, but we're more in
wonder at the ordinary. Like you're able to just really,
I really enjoy the everyday and the ordinary and I feel that.
And again, that is just such a relief.
Welcome to the Midlife ChrysalisPodcast with Chip Conley, where
we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time
(00:45):
of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful
chapter of your life. Welcome to the midlife
chrysalis. This is Chip Conley, and boy, am
I excited for this episode. It was with Krista Tippett, who
is famous for being one of the best interviewers in the world.
(01:06):
Her podcast and show On Being, which was on NPR and then became
a podcast, is legendary. And Krista recently joined us
here at the MEA campus in Santa Fe, where she and I Co LED a
workshop on becoming wise and the art of living.
This is a recording of an interview I did of Krista in
(01:30):
front of that cohort, that workshop cohort.
So it's very unscripted and in the moment.
I hope you enjoy it so, my dear.Is this the first live podcast
recording you've done? No, we've done it.
We did a live podcast with MariaShriver.
Oh, you did? And Rich Roll and Michael Fronte
in this room. So, yeah, so we've done, we've
done some of them and I probably, I may have even
(01:52):
forgotten one, but but yeah, I mean, the podcast has only been
out for less than a month and it's already in the top now
probably half percent of podcasts in the world, which is
not saying a lot. I think there's a lot of
podcasts, but it's actually pretty impressive.
It's you know, so you know what this is all about.
So what does it take to be a great interviewer?
(02:19):
Because I, I need to learn from you.
Gosh. I've never, I've never thought
about it that way. Well, one thing is I think I
don't really think of doing an interview as much as having a
conversation. You know, I'll just say a few
things. One thing I've, I felt like I
learned a lot after. It took me a little while to
learn this, but at some point I realized couple of things.
(02:44):
I think court hospitality is a core value for me as it is a
core value for you. You've said that listening is a
form of spiritual hospitality. Listening, yes.
And like I try to create a hospitable space.
I mean that's something I want to do everywhere.
And this really is something we've had in common.
And I think to create a hospitable intellectual space,
(03:07):
spiritual space. And that has meant, and you got
this right too already. That starts before the
conversation begins, right? That's that's in the spirit in
which the invitation is extended.
You know, my producers, my audioengineers were always especially
I saw this really come to life during COVID when people are,
(03:29):
you know, suddenly we're interviewing people in their
homes, in their basements, you know, and you know, everything
being held in a spirit of warmthand just wanting to make it a
comfortable experience for the person.
Do you need a glass of water? I said just before this I was
(03:52):
offered a snack and given a feast, and I'm sure I'd have
room for lunch left. So yeah, So that.
And then I think another thing Ilearned is that, well, also I
think the point of preparation is also hospitality because we
(04:12):
encounter each other at a bodilyanimal level before any words
are spoken. And I think we know just within
minutes whether this person is genuinely interested in US or
whether they're there's asking curious sounding questions
(04:34):
rather than being curious or whether we need to kind of have
our guard up. And I think our a lot of our
culture is kind of that I need to have my guard up feeling.
So, so these days we kind of walk around like that.
So you actually have to activelydispel it.
And then the final thing I'll say just that comes to mind that
I've learned is I think also thepoint of the preparation, yes,
(04:57):
is to is to is to transmit this feeling that I get you like I
have taken time. Like first of all, I want you
here. And that's another thing.
If we meet somebody and we have that feeling, I don't have to
explain or represent or defend you, just your whole body
(05:19):
relaxes and that makes a lot possible.
And I think also the point of the preparation is, you know,
when I know I'm going to interview someone, I obviously
have a set of questions in my mind at the beginning.
But often a lot of those questions fall away when I do
the preparation. And I realized that's because
I'm I'm asking questions that are going to be interesting to
(05:41):
them rather than just what is interesting to me.
Those are a few things. Yeah, are.
Yeah. Are your questions serving them
as much as they're serving you and the audience?
And Yeah. So here's a question that I hope
serves you OK. One of your most poignant
interviews ever was with John O'Donoghue before he passed,
(06:01):
right before he. Passed on being greatest hits,
yeah. Talk about talk about John
O'Donoghue sisters don't know John O'Donoghue poet turned I'm
sorry, a priest turned poet, butphilosopher and and religious
says any past at age 52 in the middle of the night and very
(06:21):
flukish Irish descent and spoke quite a bit about the inner
landscape of beauty. So which is so perfect for Lee
who just walked in because Lee talks about tracking and all of
you heard Lee talk about tractor, which is sort of an
inner landscape of beauty. What was your experience being
(06:42):
with him? Did you ever meet him?
I never met him. Because he did, he did get out
to California a lot in those years.
So, yeah. So John O'Donoghue was a poet.
He was former Catholic priest, so and theologian.
He was a poet, he was a philosopher and he was kind of
an just an Irish storyteller. And that interview took about 2
(07:05):
1/2 hours because I was sitting in a sitting person with him
because every single question heanswered 5 different ways,
right? We got the poetic answer, we got
the Irish storyteller, we got the philosophy, we got the
theology, we got the former Catholic priest.
So it was kind of interesting to, because I remember that it
was, it was delightful and it was a lot of work.
It took about an hour longer than it would have because I was
(07:27):
trying to get an ending and he Icouldn't land it.
But then what happened and and it was beautiful and he was
beautiful. And then what happened was kind
of mysterious and magical because so that I think the
interview was like November. It's like kind of pre Christmas
turn of the year. So it's January when we get
(07:51):
around to producing it. And actually that week we were
in production and this one was on public radio.
So things were much more formalized and we had deadline.
You had to get it up by noon on Wednesday.
And suddenly we get word that, you know, he's 5253 when I met
him, he's in the. He's.
Totally healthy, young and we get news that he died.
(08:11):
He had a stomach aneurysm. Who's heard of that?
I know. And so then it turned into just
organically, we're in the flow of it and it turned into an
obituary show. And, you know, I, I knew of
people in Los Angeles who the day that it came out that it
(08:32):
aired, there were actually traveling who had known John,
who were traveling to a memorialservice for him.
And suddenly he comes on the radio and they said it was
perfect, John. But he would basically like, you
know, inject himself into his own and memorial service.
But what happened with the show altogether is that a lot of
(08:54):
people met him for the first time through this interview.
It kind of became this vehicle for keeping his voice alive in
the world. I've never had an experience
like this. And I there's just something
more precious about it because of that and just really because
it was all happening at the sametime.
(09:16):
Yeah, well, thank you. Thank you for keeping his memory
alive. His work is very profound for us
here at MEA. There's a later this week.
I will. I will do my best job of quoting
or speaking his poem for A New Beginning, which I think is one
of my favorites. Thresholds is something he
(09:38):
talked about the idea of thresholds.
And we're actually, you know, after our session here, we're
going to go right into talking about transitions and
thresholds. And one of the things I took
from your interview with him andjust from, you know, reading him
his work, was just the idea thatin a threshold, in a transition,
you are welcomed into leaving behind a routine or a habit and
(10:04):
to maybe starting to ritualize your life differently.
Do you have thoughts on that? Yeah, you know that that
particular inside of his I carrywith me all the time.
And you know what he points out?And sometimes it's so useful to
have things point pointed out that are so that we know but
don't say and don't name and then therefore don't actively,
(10:27):
attentively enter into. So he says life is full of
thresholds. Some we choose, most we don't.
And the question is how to crossthis threshold worthily.
And I just, I just love that whole thing.
I love the word worthily becauseit's not a word we overuse.
(10:48):
And it's a word that makes you really think deeply about what
what you know, like you could send days.
What what would what does worthily mean?
Yeah. How does it look?
What what were the components ofa worthy crossing of this
threshold? Hmm.
And he's also about the, the, yes, the inner landscape of
beauty and also the visible world and the invisible world.
(11:10):
And of course, he's Irish. Now, the other thing I have to
say about John O'Donoghue is with that accent, everything you
say sounds even better. So if you're wise, you sound
wiser, especially in an Americanear.
But he comes from that Celtic tradition.
And they have a beautiful understanding in that culture
(11:31):
of, you know, what are they thin, thin places in time.
And that there's a veil between the temporal and the
transcendent. And at times and in places that
veil becomes very thin and, and thresholds are often those
(11:52):
times. And then to really stand
reverently before that and take from it what it would give us
this. Those are great.
You know, those are such important moments in life.
But it's also possible to speed past them and not become aware.
I want to go back to your originstory.
So you were. So we're as the group knows, but
(12:15):
our listeners on the podcast don't know.
We were born 9 days apart. You're you're in November 9th,
baby 1960 and I'm a Halloween baby.
We're both Scorpios from the year 1960.
What was it like growing up in Oklahoma?
Oh, gosh. And you know, in the 60s in
(12:35):
Oklahoma even more. But but you know, and how did
you, how did you become who you are today with that origin
story? Yeah, Where did you grow up, by
the way? I grew up in Long Beach, CA.
I mean, I, you know. Yeah, so the 1960s came to Long
Beach, CA it. Did not come to.
Like most of the things you think of in the 60s, they kind
(12:55):
of got there by the time I went to college, maybe.
Wow. But you know about them, you
heard about them. Nobody was burning their bras
and Oklahoma, that I know. I mean, I think about this so
much now because I really think the seeds of now were starting
(13:17):
to be planted in the 60s. And there was a lot of progress,
right? There was a lot of creativity in
that decade and, and some of thethings we started then, you
know, what we're, what we're living with now is what we
didn't quite carry through all the way, right.
(13:37):
Like we made big advances in civil rights and we kind of
stopped at some point and thought that because we changed
laws and we'd integrated schools, the work was done.
And the way I see it, because ofthe way I see the world is and
not just me, like I have teachers like Isabel Wilkerson,
you know, we didn't do the work inside ourselves, right?
(13:58):
We didn't, we changed the laws. We didn't change ourselves
there. And laws are fragile and laws
can be can be undone. And so now I think we are faced
with the work we have to do or we we don't get there.
But so, but, but also when I think about the 60s, you know, I
think of all the things that people think back on, you know,
as a child growing up a little bit far from the action,
(14:23):
watching the news, it, it was a it was a decade of violence.
You know, I was born, John F Kennedy was elected.
My father was big Oklahoma Democrat and almost everybody I
knew in Oklahoma back then was aDemocrat.
Just take that in, you know, Really.
Elizabeth Warren's from from Oklahoma and.
(14:45):
I know Republicans, they don't exist.
And then so my father always told me that I was John
Kennedy's good luck charm and his assassination.
You know, people tell me I may be making this up because I was
three years old, but I don't think I am.
Like, I remember the soap opera playing in the background, which
a few years ago I learned was actually the one playing in the
(15:07):
background. It was in Texas, which was very
close by. And so I actually thought, what
did I do wrong? Like my good luck charmness, you
know, really failed here becauseso, you know, it was Kennedy, it
was his brother, it was it was Martin Luther King junior.
And I remember, you know, bodies, body bags coming home
(15:30):
from the war in Vietnam. And some of them were people
from young men from my town. And and also my father was a
political operator, Dick Fish ina small pond.
And he got he got helped get a Democratic governor elected.
This was right around the Watergate era, who was greedy
(15:53):
and like it was a good guy and then wasn't a good guy and a lot
of people went to prison. He went to prison Sky David
Hall. So it seemed like that kind of
Watergate phenomenon of actually, but in this case a
really idealistic progressive figure really failed people and
really failed that idealism. So all of this is in it for me
(16:16):
when I think about like, this world we've come to now.
Yeah, I didn't really get the win the I didn't really get The
Beatles. Were you a first class noticer?
I I have the sense that you werean observer.
You have you observed things very well at a young age.
(16:36):
I think that I really, what I had to work with in terms of
imagination and literature and thinking was the Bible, right?
I mean, we went to church 3 * a week, My grandfather's Southern
Baptist preacher and I truly, there weren't a lot of books in
my house. The Bible was what I had.
(16:58):
It was what was being introducedto me.
And actually, the Bible is much more complicated and high drama
than it was being taught to me. And I and I was enough.
I, you know, I think I was, I did, you know, delve into all
the richness and contradiction there.
And that was a lot to be to be getting on with.
(17:21):
How do you see the Bible as foundational for you today?
So, you know, I went, I ended upgoing to divide it.
I ended up going to Brown, whichis very flukish, everybody.
Oh my God. And my grandfather was OK with
it just because Rodger Williams was a Baptist, but he would have
been appalled if he knew anything about Rodger Williams
(17:43):
morality. Yeah, I think that then I well,
I ended up after that and ending, ending up in divided
Berlin and my 20s and becoming very political and then going to
divinity school and then learning at a whole new level
about the richness and complexity of that text, of
(18:06):
that, those many texts and a lotmore about the Hebrew Bible in
which there are no heroes. It tells it like it is.
And it can get pretty horrific, right.
So I, I value the biblical text so much.
And I think most of us, even most of us who went to church a
(18:28):
lot, haven't gotten an introduction to it.
MMM. You know, Richard Rohr is just
down the road here and, and he'staught here in this very room.
And you know what? Do you have a an any impression
of Richard or? You know, I did interview
Richard, yeah, once. And I, it was specifically about
(18:48):
it was like, he's hard. He is hard because he knows what
he has to say. Oh, he wouldn't.
Oh, so you so you couldn't crackhim open?
Well, yeah, you, it's hard to get it to be conversational and
interactive, but I interviewed him about specifically about his
work with young men and the desire for, for spiritual life
(19:13):
and the fact that, you know, he's, he's worked with a lot of
I don't know if he's doing that so much anymore, but at one
point. He's not doing it anymore in
prison. He did a lot of men's retreats.
Yeah, and that men haven't felt addressed or so much included.
They come at, you know, we don'tlike to make generalizations
about gender these days. And it is a spectrum, but it's
(19:35):
also true that our religious andspiritual institutions
especially, you know, certainly churches were kind of, they were
kind of run by women. Actually.
This part of the reason they're falling apart is because it used
to be Once Upon a time that you had the congregational leader
who was for a long time a man also in a synagogue.
(19:56):
And you had this army of volunteer women before women
worked outside the home. And now you've got this lonely.
Leader who's supposed to do everything and the structure
doesn't make sense anymore but yeah so there is kind of been
set up for women and women's spiritual orientation and he saw
(20:18):
this deep deep binding. And if you think about our world
now and how this crisis of masculinity and young men who
are filling their hearts and their spirits with with a lot of
toxins, you know who are open tothat because they haven't been
offered more. Yeah, yeah.
(20:40):
My favorite book of his is The Falling Upward.
Has anybody read Falling Upward?Yes, sounds like lots of people.
I think that was the one I really liked, yeah, when I was
getting ready to. The spirituality for the
second-half of life and it's just it's a an exceptional book
about the threshold back to the threshold of midlife.
He's, he says things like, or writes things like the primary
(21:05):
operating system for the first half of life is your ego.
And it's around midlife that your primary operating system
becomes your soul. But nobody gave you operating
instructions and, and, and that you can just feel it.
And I think I feel it. We talked last night about the
fact that I'm an ex. I'm, I was an introvert and an
expert and back to the introvertagain.
(21:25):
And there's a sense of like, oh,it's because that inner
landscape, there's so much, likethere's so much to explore in
here. And so I just, I, I, I credit
Richard for helping me years agowhen that book came out, before
I knew him at all. That book helped me to
understand, oh, there's something happening around
midlife. That would be such a good book
(21:46):
to discover at that point. Yes, yeah.
It's it's just really helpful. So yeah.
Yeah. Well, tell us about midlife for
Krista Tippett. I mean, we define midlife quite
broadly here, 35 to 70. 5 Like your expansion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're still at 64 and you're
still in midlife, but what is you know, what is, what's been
your journey in during your 40s and 50s and now early 60s?
(22:12):
I mean, you're asking me that ata moment which I'm really living
it and reflective about it. And what I'm reflecting on now
is how I, I lived on the edge ofexhaustion for 20 years.
You're still there. No, no, I'm not.
You're not. OK, good.
It's only only yesterday. OK, only yesterday.
(22:33):
OK, I got. It and how that was a badge of
honor right like I grew up thinking you just push yourself
as hard as you can and I, you know, always had to like justify
my existence in the world and. Where?
Where did that come from? Oh, it partly came from my my
family, my father. He really needed to be proud of
(22:54):
me, but he needed me to do things that he would have done
to be proud of. And so, you know, I had a real
cheerleader. You had a success script.
Yeah, well, he really liked. He was really a surprise and he
really liked what I did in my well, he, you know, he when I
came to him and said, I want to go to this place called Brown
(23:14):
just because I'd gone to the bait camp the summer before and
met my best friend there, want to go to Brown.
I never heard of it. And then her husband called
Brown. So I was like geographic
affirmative action. And I got in and she didn't
because there were fifty kids from her high school flying.
But, you know, when I did that, I think he was.
But. But in the end, he liked it.
It was he saw that it was an impressive thing.
(23:36):
And then I was working in politics and journalism.
He liked all that. He never liked.
He didn't like it when I went todo an high school, when I did
anything with the show. So I I had a really terrible
kind of rift with him. That's a long story.
You can talk about it if you want, but, you know, we have
time. Yeah.
He well, he was a really he was really he was a person who was
(23:59):
adopted when he was four years old and what we know now.
And also I think he never, I think he was terrified of, I
think of those maps as ancient, you know, those maps where it
said there be Dragons at the endof the map.
That always felt like his childhood was like that.
He just didn't really have normal emotional.
(24:19):
He wanted to and he tried, you know, he was narcissistic in the
way a four year old who's been abused as narcissistic.
They just can't see beyond theirWhen we get on to that, well,
let. Me.
Yes, Sir. Well, because I'm a good
interviewer. Where are.
We where is. It no.
So do you think there's some like for you?
I mean you, you can say no, no. Please my father right so.
(24:40):
The generation's trauma. Is there something like Oh my?
Gosh, don't you? I don't know how are you?
I just feel the older I get. It's just astonishing how we are
always, always, no matter how long we're in these bodies,
reckoning with our earliest years and these relationships
(25:01):
with our parents. And it's just it's kind of, I
sometimes feel embarrassed by it, but I was everybody else is
in the same. They're all nodding in this
room, so yeah. So yes, so you, you know, I can
go down that rabbit hole. And so did you have a midlife
chrysalis that in the last 10 years, 20 years, that was your
(25:22):
transformational time that said like I need, I need a
metamorphosis and, and talk about that.
I think that for me has been thelast few years I, you know, I
did make a huge turn. It's just how I got to my father
from like I really was on this politics, journalism,
(25:45):
geopolitics track in my 20s, like on this fault line of the
Cold War world. And I just turned away from
that. I was, I was at the very last
year of in Berlin. I was working as a chief aide in
Berlin to our ambassador to WestGermany, who was a Reagan
(26:06):
appointee and a nuclear arms expert who's 38 years old.
And I thought he was old, but wow, I was 23.
But now I realize just how younghe was.
I ended up sitting around these tables with him and his peers
who are nuclear arms experts, and they were literally moving
(26:28):
weapons of mass destruction. They were, they were planting
weapons of mass destruction in the name of defense.
Right? But still on the earth and I had
this experience that I really didn't know what to do with
because on the one hand I was having an exhilarating,
thrilling, you know, ego, ego tending experience.
But they these men who had huge careers, huge egos, expertise,
(26:56):
huge egos, like huge accomplishment.
I would be with this ambassador or watch him give a brilliant
speech about nuclear warfare as a human being.
He was about 13 and he was like a really immature 13 year old
boy. And most, not everybody, but
most of the people I met at thatlevel were like that.
(27:16):
And so I get to the end of this experience and I'm like, is
this, is this what? Like if I grow up to be this,
these are the people I'll be spending my time with.
And only on the one hand, I'm like in my late 20s, I had this
incredible resume. I was so confused.
And of course, you know, there are root, there are seeds in
that of what I ended up doing that at that point, you know, I
(27:38):
just knew that I had a great resume and I didn't know how I
could live with continuing to build it or doing what it would
have me do next. So that was, I would say, you
know, what I like about the, theyoung people now they talk about
the quarter life crisis. Like that's going to be, that'll
be another expense. Well, we have we're getting a
workshop on on that in January. So yes, and.
Also, I love how the the youngermillennials and the older
(28:03):
millennials have their own generation gap and I've heard,
you know. Sorry, boomers, I mean you we're
we're a little bit we're definitely.
Different. I don't know.
Then I I just. I mean, there's some, some of
those new rooms. We have to be careful because
older boomers like, I mean, I like you, yes, I'm, but I'm
different than you. Identify as a boomer.
Yeah, Yeah. But also like elder millennials,
(28:23):
I've heard some of them describethem.
So I think I had maybe 1/4 life crisis.
I didn't have that language. Then I got married very
impulsively and lived in Englandfor a year and didn't and wrote
fiction and then I had children and, and all of that.
And I went to divinity school, but I didn't know what I was
(28:44):
going to do with divinity school.
And so then, you know, then verygradually ended up starting
this, getting to this. This is on doing, not on being I
guess. But then when I got back into
having a professional purpose, Idid kind of default to that, You
know, I have to justify my, my, my existence and, and do it
(29:08):
right. I mean, it was a passionate
project, right? Do it right.
But I, I look at my own children, I look at younger
people now and I don't want themto think that you have to make a
choice between professional success and just your personal
vitality. I don't want to live in a world
where I think that's a necessarychoice.
(29:29):
But I definitely did that. And, you know, I raised my kids
and I, and I, and I was divorcedfor a long time and was pretty
much single parent. That's hard, right?
So building this big thing and, and attending to my children and
I was really kind of 20 years ofmy life.
But then the, the midlife Christmas threshold, the
(29:53):
chrysalis was, you know, well, probably pandemic.
I don't know. I'm, I like to think I would
have ended up in the same place.It might have taken me longer to
think that it was OK for me to think this way.
You know, Ben's been around and watching this and he saw some of
the transition. But I just gradually realized
(30:17):
that I just didn't want to be caring what I was carrying.
Care carrying as opposed to caring, Yeah, I mean, but it's
both a little. It is both, Yeah, it is both.
But I, I think part of the discernment was I, I didn't ever
stop caring. Yes, but I can be who I am and
(30:37):
do what I do in a way that is life giving and not depleting.
And I do think that one of the gift of aging, but maybe one
that's hard to bear, is you get to a point, or at least I did.
And I know I see a lot of peoplewhere you simply can no longer
(30:58):
lean into the depletings. So sometimes people, you know,
when I took this off public radio in 2022, it's like in a
world in which everybody wants more platforms and I kind of
gave the biggest one up and people said, oh, you're so
brave. But I couldn't not do it.
I just, right. I couldn't not do it.
So it doesn't feel brave to me. It was just.
(31:19):
And the reason you couldn't not do it is because you were
exhausted to the point of just. It was too much.
I it was, it was a life of deadlines, which for those for
more of that most of those 20 years, I was, I was perfectly
comfortable with. I mean, you know, we do, we do
what is necessary for our work. And but what I started to think
(31:42):
about and care about was what amI not doing because I am living
this life of deadlines, what it's like any some of these
decisions. And I at the end of last year, I
really gave up a lot of the organization.
So there's, there is an organization now, but it, you
know, it's like down from a $6 million budget to a $1 million
(32:05):
budget. So just that like the constant
raising of money. There's a question I want to ask
you related to what you just said a moment ago.
One of our favorite questions atMEA is 10 years from now, what
will you regret if you don't learn it or do it now?
Partly because anticipated regret is a form of wisdom on
(32:25):
the idea. And frankly, at 20 years old,
you don't have anticipated regret.
You got a long runway out of you, but at 50607080, Jack here
in the room, happy birthday to you.
You don't have as much runway. So there's a sense that you need
to have a catalyst. When I, when I moved to, to
(32:47):
Baja, I said, I, I, I'm never going to learn Spanish.
I was 56 years old. I, you know, even though you
know, that that was the languageand I'm not going to learn to
surf. But then when I put it in the
context of 10 years from now, at66, will I regret that I didn't
learn Spanish, that I started learning Spanish and learning to
surf. What about you?
What, what might you regret 10 years from now if you didn't
(33:08):
learn it or do it now? I.
Loved writing and I, you know, I've, I've for most of the last
25 years, I felt like I was, youknow, I was like an interloper
doing radio podcasting that I've, I felt like I would be a
writer when I was younger like that I would write, but then
then I didn't. I just couldn't.
(33:30):
It was always having to be squeezed in among these
deadlines. So actually this year, you know,
I'm I am a my top priority is getting this book written.
I mean, I'm doing other things, but I can't end of the fall is
going to be totally prioritizingthat.
I just spent a month writing. Can you tell us about the book?
Well, we're going to talk about in the next few days.
(33:51):
You're going to learn a lot about the book.
OK, how about for our podcast? Well, it, it's in many ways
it's, it's the fruits of these this quarter century of
conversation and now how all of the conversations are kind of
interacting in my mind and creating a way to see, to tell
(34:19):
the story of our time. That is not the story that the
New York Times is telling me to.It's a ways of seeing and arts
of living and really, you know, I think that the question that
is on my heart and that he feel is there for so many people is
(34:43):
how to be present and stay present to this world, which
also means getting present to ourselves, right.
So it's not it's not an either it's not it's not not personal,
but it is intimate and civilizational at once.
And we know that we live in a chrysalis time.
I think this is a chrysalis century.
So it's like it's, it's how I how I would how I describe that
(35:06):
that work, that calling through this life that I've had these in
this century, that the early. So, more writing.
Enjoying life, which I just and I do think this was an American
way, you know, it was like optional.
I would do it when I had time, after I'd done important things
(35:28):
and, you know, I. What brings you What brings you
joy? What are the what are the
things? Are there anything from
childhood that you? I'm so much better at being
joyful and today now than I was when I was a child.
OK, So what? What brings you joy to that?
Well, music brings me joy, reading brings me joy.
People bring me joy in a way. I mean, I'm definitely an
(35:49):
introvert. I am absolutely an introvert.
But I, I do love human beings. And I think as I grow older, I
grow maybe a little bit the the different direction.
You're going to introvert. I'm getting more extrovert.
I do have to go and hide after I've been with people a lot and
just kind of regroup. I also, you know what I'll say
(36:10):
my friendships. Yeah, people, I, I have just
fallen in love through the last year for the first time in 15
years. And also in that 15 year period,
I pretty much decided that I you.
You can sell it. You can sell.
It Well, here let me say it thisway.
I knew a lot of women my age whospent their life force on
(36:35):
relationships that we're not good worthy of them.
And I made this decision at somepoint because I didn't want to
be alone or this idea that I don't want to grow old alone.
And I didn't say to my best friend who is just constantly
going from one relationship to the other, we are going to grow
old alone. OK, these men are going to
probably die before us. Sorry guys, but it's true.
(36:57):
So like that can't be a reason to spend your life force it just
to be in relationship. But what I end up doing, which
I'm really proud of, OK, like atthis this I I want to own is at
some point, you know, about 15 years ago, I decided that I
heard myself one day saying feeling sorry for myself that I
didn't have love in my life. And I realized that that is such
(37:19):
a false statement that there areso many forms of love.
And I ended up just deeply investing in my relationships
with other women, which is actually not something I had
done in my life. So it's just my mother.
We're not going to talk about her.
That's that has been one of the most joyful gifts of these last
(37:43):
like 10-15 years of my life are these beautiful friendships and
also my love for my children is another form of love.
So it's like, you know, at any given time, like there are many,
many kinds of love and you don'thave to have every single one of
them. In the last couple of years
coming in pandemic, what I realized while I was grounded in
(38:05):
Minnesota in my very quiet, peaceful neighborhood in Saint
Paul, which I on some level was a lovely place to be grounded.
But I realized that that the place I lived, Minnesota had
been the place where I did two things.
I worked and I and I parented. And while I have people, I live
in Minnesota, all of my deeper relationships were elsewhere.
(38:28):
And I also felt like I had gotten self-sufficient to the
point that probably wasn't good for me and actually quite
different from what I say to other people.
So, so I kind of opened myself in these last few years to this
other kind of love and I'm, and I, and I'm really, you know,
there's a lot of joy, a different kind of joy in my life
right now through that, of that kind of companionship.
(38:50):
But I'm really glad to know thatI can live without it.
I mean, I don't want to live without it right now, but I'm,
I'm, I just, I'm so I'm grateful.
I feel like this, the way I oriented around these last 10
years around love, as such a bigmultifaceted thing, will serve
me for the rest of my life. You wrote a book called Becoming
Wise and about the are living. And So what does wisdom mean to
(39:13):
you? What, what and how are you wiser
today at 64 than you were at 44?You talked about the exhaustion
and just like being on the treadmill and the success
script. So beyond that, maybe, maybe,
maybe it's learning to feel comfortable being alone.
What? What?
(39:33):
What does wisdom mean to you? So after I wrote that book in
no, at no point in the book do Idefine wisdom.
And I didn't relate that until after I wrote it and people
said, oh, what is your operatingdefinition of wisdom?
I didn't have. Your editor didn't ask for that.
That's strange. Well, because what I was doing
was, you know, what I did is I basically took the whole, at
(39:55):
that point, it's like 13 years of conversations and I and I,
you know, there were a couple ofyears and there were all I did
was. Was go back through transcripts
and try to just distill like what kept rising up and who's
who was perhaps most articulate about us a certain thing and
then writing around that. So you know, writing in my voice
(40:17):
but kind of still being in conversation.
But I never. So these five kind of, you know,
these these places in US where love these these these parts of
being human, where I think wisdom shines, you know, is how
I organize smoke. But I never said this is wisdom.
So later when I had to think about it, so my definition, I
(40:40):
was listening to your, what was your definition?
I said metabolize and mine changes every month, but
metabolized experience mindfullyshared for the common good.
Yeah. So, so there's, there's there's
resonance. So what I started to this is
this kind of a really pared down.
(41:03):
I think if any of us think of the wise people we've known and
most wise, most of the wise people in the world are not
famous, but we all have wise people in our lives somewhere in
our lives, right? I think that the difference
between wisdom. So, you know, the difference
between like, say, knowledge or accomplishment is that you can
kind of quantify those things, right?
(41:24):
It's not that a wise person can't be knowledgeable or
accomplished, but those are things you can kind of point
out. And you know, they, they have
this substance and there's a metric to them.
And I think that the measure of a wise life is the imprint it
makes on other lives around it. And, you know, one of the kinds
I've been interested in my, in my work also in those people who
(41:47):
are not famous and, you know, below the cultural radar.
But in, you know, whatever work any of us does in our field, we
know that there are these teachers, right?
These, these individuals who've just radiated something.
They've like, they've influencedgenerations and generations of
(42:07):
practitioners. And I think like those are those
are the and then there are people in communities and those
are that that's that I think is how is a good way to it's kind
of an operating definition of wisdom.
So I'm kind of getting more at that second-half of years like
for. Common good, common good.
Exactly. It feels to me like we're moving
(42:28):
in an era where we need more wisdom.
We need, yeah. The world is complicated and you
know knowledge is sort of like amath equation.
Like it's a plus sign you accumulate knowledge, but you
distill wisdom. And so in a time where it's
complicated, there's like, it's like there's so much out there
trying to distill what's essential is, is, is really
(42:48):
important. And in the history of mystery
schools and wisdom schools and the great bat, they actually
tended to emerge in times of stress on the human
consciousness. So I, I, my hope is that midlife
wisdom schools like MEA are going to become, you know, all
over the world, not not as MEA, but just as us being a catalyst
for others. What are the practices you use
(43:10):
to ground yourself? What are the practices you use
to you know on a regular basis that help you to have a grounded
knowing to to quote I think AV Northcutt the the have.
A grounded knowing. So there's one thing I'll say
about wisdom. I think this is true of Mystics
(43:32):
and it's also to some extent true poets, like the people who
are the greatest poets, Mystics and wise people will never say
I'm a wise person. So like, if you ask me how do
you stay wise? I would just, I find that a
really hard, but you're not asking me that.
I'm asking her how to say how doyou stay with a grounded
knowing? Yeah, I mean, the other thing
about wisdom, I mean, we could talk for an hour about the
difference between wisdom and knowledge.
(43:53):
You know, knowledge becomes lessrelevant.
It just inevitably does. I don't care how brilliant
somebody is at the moment. At the time, I was just at the
Aspen Ideas Festival last week, and I was musing on how three
years ago there were certain people who are, I think, like
the knowledgeable people who come up with phrases like the
(44:13):
world is flat, you know? And I mean, this is right.
You know, it was very smart people that works for a little
while and then history moves on and we need other ways to
describe reality. Wisdom ages well, right.
Like This is why one of the things that I want to be do in
this next chapter of my life is be a good steward of my archive
(44:36):
and really be creative with that.
Because, you know, now I'm really appreciating how so much
of what's in there, like those voices become more relevant
rather than less relevant. And how to me is so much of that
about staying grounded is is about our attention is about
(44:57):
attention, like attending to what is, you know, to what has
meaning and not what is yelling for my attention.
And that's a real discipline these days.
So are there practices and rituals, whether it's meditation
or prayer or journaling or whatever it might be?
(45:21):
I think this is hard for me to answer because so much of for,
you know, I've had different I've across time, I've had so
many different ways of coming atthat right.
I've had times where I was meditating silently.
I've had periods of my life. It was a period where I wrote a
prayer because I felt like like this is my spiritual mother
(45:42):
tongue is prayer. And I wanted I didn't want to
just be meditating. And you wrote a prayer.
I wrote a prayer do. You remember what it is.
Yeah. Will you say it to us?
I can bring it. I'll bring it.
Tomorrow, free podcast listeners.
You just have to come here. And it's next time Chris is
teaching. For about a year and a half, I
prayed this prayer every day. And it starts.
(46:02):
It was a prayer. It was it grew out of me asking
what I most desired, how I most desired to grow.
And I realized that my heart needed to open more.
So I like it began, you know, Grammy, this day, a heart that
(46:24):
keeps learning to open, that keeps learning that keeps
learning to open. And this was like also one of
these times where you kind of figure out things that are
inherited from those early days and you just can't believe
you're still hanging on to them.And you I really needed to let
go of it. But I, I hadn't been, I hadn't
just let go of it with the course of time and I didn't even
(46:45):
know what I was asking for. Like what that would how I would
be different if my heart were more open, but I I was able to
put words around that much of it.
And it sounds like it's manifested.
Yeah, absolutely manifest. I recently shared it with my my,
this, the man I love, who I've been with for a year.
And because I am a person with an open heart now, and I was.
(47:06):
It's not that I wasn't, you know, I was, I was obviously
shining a light on other people have open hearts and helping
people open their hearts. And I think my heart was open
enough to know that it could be more open, right.
I've had times where I did what I call contemplative reading and
I still do that sometimes. Like I'll take a book of poetry
or a book that is very beautifuland dense.
(47:28):
And especially when I was working so hard when I, you
know, was it, I didn't have the mind space to say, I'm going to
read this book, but I just just find a beautiful book that kind
of fills me and calms me and also inspires me and just read a
paragraph at a time. So I'm like, I've had all these
different rituals and right now I've been moving around so much.
(47:53):
I don't I haven't in this. My ritual is a thing in love.
You're a giggly girl right now. Yeah, it's great to fall in love
after you've already figured outwhat you do for a living.
Raise your kids, you know. You've earned it, girl.
You've earned. It to be an adult and then you
(48:14):
get to be a child again. Yeah.
Yeah. OK.
So you're a 64 year old child. You and I both turned 65 later
this year. Yeah.
What does the word retirement mean to you in the current
context of the world as opposed to 60 years ago at what it
meant? I have no relationship to this
word retirement. I I said to you yesterday, I'm
fascinated by the evolution of aging.
(48:36):
I really feel like age is only it.
It's age is kind of like relative life to life and body
to body. I feel like maybe this wasn't
true, but if I think about what retirement meant to me when I
was growing in that world I grewup in, it would be that people
would really just stop doing everything and kick back.
(48:57):
And I think even though we I'm sure there are people who like
to work until their last day andthat may be new I'm.
Farmers. Used to do it, yeah.
Farmers, well, and ranchers, yeah.
But I think even if somebody isn't working in the same way,
we have a, you know, knock on wood or pixels or whatever, we
(49:22):
have more, many more active years to be, just to be alive,
right? And to be of service and and to
be cultivating joy. And so the idea of retirement
just feels too small for me to be a label of who I would become
(49:45):
at some point. But I'm I mean all for working
less. Yeah, yeah, I think.
I mean, I, I wrote a blog post not long ago saying knowledge
workers are confused by retirement because if you were
doing back breaking labour and mind numbing work in a factory,
Sun City sounded really good. Maybe learning to golf, having a
(50:09):
martini at lunch. I mean, that was sort of the way
that era lived. But, you know, if you're doing
knowledge work or, or you're doing creative work, or you're
somebody who is developing what Arthur Brooks calls the
crystallized intelligence, this idea which is an alternative way
of looking at wisdom at 60 or 65, you're just finding your
(50:34):
stride. And so I'm not suggesting that
you have to work at the same pace, but maybe you start doing
new work that is more nourishing, that is tapping into
that wisdom. A few years ago, I started to
notice my brain working differently and kind of really
(50:56):
went down this rabbit hole of what we know about the aging
brain. And I think like, you know, even
a few years ago, if you said theaging brain, you just imagine
deterioration, right, right. And so, So what they say is
that, you know, as our brains grow older, we may be less able
(51:17):
to kind of take it to be to likelearn new things like novelty is
not. And this is also part of why
it's so relaxing to grow old that when that also we're not as
motivated by novelty, but we're more in wonder at the ordinary.
(51:38):
Like you're able to just really enjoy the everyday and the
ordinary. And I feel that.
And again, that is just such a relief, but also what your brain
gets good at over against what it's less inclined to do.
You know, you can't remember names.
(51:59):
So what? Right?
Like, I feel like in my brain isa few years ago.
I'm not feeling this so much now.
That's when I was working so hard.
I feel like my brain was like a filing cabinet and all the files
were just stuffed. There was no more space for new
information. But what I feel now is they say
that what grows are our powers of synthesis, and I am so aware
(52:22):
of that, yeah. You're.
Right, all these connections being made and they're just
being made naturally, fluidly without my needing to attend to
them. And for me, that means that, you
know, the conversations are in conversation with each other in
my head. And so, like, I really love
(52:43):
being interviewed these days because I never know what is
going to come out, you know, andI'm not, if I sit around and
say, what do I know? You know, what have I learned?
That's a hard question. But if I get a question coming
at me and it just has to happen organically, it's just so
fascinating. There's a guy named Doctor Gene
(53:05):
Cohen and he has a great, but he's passed away.
He has a book called the I thinkit's called the aging Brain and
he he calls it 4 wheel drive of the brain.
He says that as we get older, when we're young, our brain is
fast and focused. And as we get older, we learn to
go from left brain to right brain, from logical, lyrical,
(53:27):
all in the same sentence. And there's a sense that you can
traverse a broader sense of yourbrain.
Your brain is shrinking a littlebit, but you're as it's
shrinking, you're not so right brain or left brain segmented.
You're not so binding. Definitely feel that.
It does, right? Like you're.
Doing 11 or the other. Yes, yes, yeah.
(53:48):
OK, good. All right, last question.
So let's say someone 30 years younger than you, a lovely woman
who's on a career path and married and she's like doing a
lot, She's juggling a lot that'shappens in our 30s and our 40s.
She comes to you and she says, I, I want an auction to have tea
(54:09):
with you and that we're having it next week.
Could you come to the tea that we're going to have with a a
wisdom bumper sticker? Like just an aphorism that
really has your wisdom fingerprints on it.
Basically, what's the piece of wisdom that you might offer
(54:29):
someone younger than you? That's hard one.
What's the origin story of that wisdom as well?
Let me first say that I'm reallybad at questions like that.
Although I've always, you know, this was only true of Twitter
and I don't think it's true of Instagram or the others, but I
always felt like Jesus and Mosesand Buddha would have been
amazing on Twitter, right? Like because they did these one
(54:50):
liners right? Or on Madison Ave. or.
On Madison Ave. But what comes up for me is take
Delight. Don't make that optional
intentionally. It is a human birthright.
It is, it is life giving. It is fuel.
(55:10):
It is even fuel for whatever you're fighting.
Don't let anybody take that awayfrom you.
It doesn't. It doesn't have to be in
opposition to doing good things,making things happen.
I that's what I wish I had done more of.
And you're doing it now. I'm doing it now.
And let's give her a hand for the fact you're doing it now.
(55:31):
Thank you, Crystal. Did I do OK?
Yes, you did a great job. The way you know that is that I
was just so full of things to say.
Good, good. All right.
Thank you so much. Yeah.
Well, this is the first time I'mdoing an outro.
(55:52):
Not an intro, but an outro for one of my podcasts.
And each week I'm going to try to really distill down maybe 3
Nuggets of wisdom that I heard in the podcast, or in this case
actually in the course of teaching with Krista for a week.
So first of all, there is a, a term that Krista used in the
(56:14):
course of our workshop that around spiritual hospitality.
And I think I, I asked her aboutit in my, the interview.
You heard that. You just heard.
Spiritual hospitality is a really interesting idea.
The idea that we are here on earth to be spiritual beings
helping to open the doors for other people.
(56:37):
There's a beautiful roomy quote.She's not a quote, but it's a
poem called The Guest House. And it really speaks to the idea
that our role in life is to be an innkeeper for our own
emotions and the emotions of others.
But just as if your life is not to like try to have rain all the
time, the point of spiritual hospitality and Rumi's guest
(57:00):
house is you let the, the, the emotions come through you so
that they, you don't get stuck in a rainstorm or in the sun
because you can't control that. So to me, spiritual hospitality
is really about listening. And that is one of the most
important things I heard from Krista, both in this interview
but also during the week, is howdo we listen to each other, to
inside and then to the greater consciousness of the world?
(57:25):
Secondly, she said at one point during the week.
So this idea that I love who I am becoming, this is, I think, a
real beautiful premise around aging, to see that maybe what
we're supposed to do as a in thecourse of our lives is to
actually become more of who we were supposed to be.
(57:45):
And Krista's one of those people.
I mean, she grew up in, you know, in Oklahoma, Christian
family, liberal minded, but Christian and Bible thumping.
And she to, to become who she has become from her roots really
took an awful lot of willingnessto take a unique path.
(58:09):
The third thing that I will justtake from my time with Krista is
just this the premise that we are supposed to, to be
generative in life, to be generative means you're
generating things, your generativity based upon Eric,
Eric's Erikson's coining of thatterm is about doing things for
(58:30):
future generations. And one of the things that I, I
really took from my time with with Krista is presence is
important. And as we get older, the most
important thing we can offer to younger people is our presence.
So that's my quick down and dirty 3 lessons from my time
(58:52):
with Krista. I hope you enjoyed this
particular episode, We'll see itnext week.
Thanks for listening to The Midlife Chrysalis.
This show is produced by MidlifeMedia.
If you enjoyed this episode, help us spread the word by
subscribing and leaving a reviewon your favorite platform.
I knew a lot of women my age whospent their life force on
relationships that were not good, worthy of them.
And I made this decision at somepoint because I didn't want to
be alone or this idea that I don't want to grow old alone.
This is also part of why it's sorelaxing to grow old that also
(00:22):
we're not as motivated by novelty, but we're more in
wonder at the ordinary. Like you're able to just really,
I really enjoy the everyday and the ordinary and I feel that.
And again, that is just such a relief.
Welcome to the Midlife ChrysalisPodcast with Chip Conley, where
we explore how midlife isn't a crisis, but a chrysalis, a time
(00:45):
of profound transformation that can lead to the most meaningful
chapter of your life. Welcome to the midlife
chrysalis. This is Chip Conley, and boy, am
I excited for this episode. It was with Krista Tippett, who
is famous for being one of the best interviewers in the world.
(01:06):
Her podcast and show On Being, which was on NPR and then became
a podcast, is legendary. And Krista recently joined us
here at the MEA campus in Santa Fe, where she and I Co LED a
workshop on becoming wise and the art of living.
This is a recording of an interview I did of Krista in
(01:30):
front of that cohort, that workshop cohort.
So it's very unscripted and in the moment.
I hope you enjoy it so, my dear.Is this the first live podcast
recording you've done? No, we've done it.
We did a live podcast with MariaShriver.
Oh, you did? And Rich Roll and Michael Fronte
in this room. So, yeah, so we've done, we've
done some of them and I probably, I may have even
(01:52):
forgotten one, but but yeah, I mean, the podcast has only been
out for less than a month and it's already in the top now
probably half percent of podcasts in the world, which is
not saying a lot. I think there's a lot of
podcasts, but it's actually pretty impressive.
It's you know, so you know what this is all about.
So what does it take to be a great interviewer?
(02:19):
Because I, I need to learn from you.
Gosh. I've never, I've never thought
about it that way. Well, one thing is I think I
don't really think of doing an interview as much as having a
conversation. You know, I'll just say a few
things. One thing I've, I felt like I
learned a lot after. It took me a little while to
learn this, but at some point I realized couple of things.
(02:44):
I think court hospitality is a core value for me as it is a
core value for you. You've said that listening is a
form of spiritual hospitality. Listening, yes.
And like I try to create a hospitable space.
I mean that's something I want to do everywhere.
And this really is something we've had in common.
And I think to create a hospitable intellectual space,
(03:07):
spiritual space. And that has meant, and you got
this right too already. That starts before the
conversation begins, right? That's that's in the spirit in
which the invitation is extended.
You know, my producers, my audioengineers were always especially
I saw this really come to life during COVID when people are,
(03:29):
you know, suddenly we're interviewing people in their
homes, in their basements, you know, and you know, everything
being held in a spirit of warmthand just wanting to make it a
comfortable experience for the person.
Do you need a glass of water? I said just before this I was
(03:52):
offered a snack and given a feast, and I'm sure I'd have
room for lunch left. So yeah, So that.
And then I think another thing Ilearned is that, well, also I
think the point of preparation is also hospitality because we
(04:12):
encounter each other at a bodilyanimal level before any words
are spoken. And I think we know just within
minutes whether this person is genuinely interested in US or
whether they're there's asking curious sounding questions
(04:34):
rather than being curious or whether we need to kind of have
our guard up. And I think our a lot of our
culture is kind of that I need to have my guard up feeling.
So, so these days we kind of walk around like that.
So you actually have to activelydispel it.
And then the final thing I'll say just that comes to mind that
I've learned is I think also thepoint of the preparation, yes,
(04:57):
is to is to is to transmit this feeling that I get you like I
have taken time. Like first of all, I want you
here. And that's another thing.
If we meet somebody and we have that feeling, I don't have to
explain or represent or defend you, just your whole body
(05:19):
relaxes and that makes a lot possible.
And I think also the point of the preparation is, you know,
when I know I'm going to interview someone, I obviously
have a set of questions in my mind at the beginning.
But often a lot of those questions fall away when I do
the preparation. And I realized that's because
I'm I'm asking questions that are going to be interesting to
(05:41):
them rather than just what is interesting to me.
Those are a few things. Yeah, are.
Yeah. Are your questions serving them
as much as they're serving you and the audience?
And Yeah. So here's a question that I hope
serves you OK. One of your most poignant
interviews ever was with John O'Donoghue before he passed,
(06:01):
right before he. Passed on being greatest hits,
yeah. Talk about talk about John
O'Donoghue sisters don't know John O'Donoghue poet turned I'm
sorry, a priest turned poet, butphilosopher and and religious
says any past at age 52 in the middle of the night and very
(06:21):
flukish Irish descent and spoke quite a bit about the inner
landscape of beauty. So which is so perfect for Lee
who just walked in because Lee talks about tracking and all of
you heard Lee talk about tractor, which is sort of an
inner landscape of beauty. What was your experience being
(06:42):
with him? Did you ever meet him?
I never met him. Because he did, he did get out
to California a lot in those years.
So, yeah. So John O'Donoghue was a poet.
He was former Catholic priest, so and theologian.
He was a poet, he was a philosopher and he was kind of
an just an Irish storyteller. And that interview took about 2
(07:05):
1/2 hours because I was sitting in a sitting person with him
because every single question heanswered 5 different ways,
right? We got the poetic answer, we got
the Irish storyteller, we got the philosophy, we got the
theology, we got the former Catholic priest.
So it was kind of interesting to, because I remember that it
was, it was delightful and it was a lot of work.
It took about an hour longer than it would have because I was
(07:27):
trying to get an ending and he Icouldn't land it.
But then what happened and and it was beautiful and he was
beautiful. And then what happened was kind
of mysterious and magical because so that I think the
interview was like November. It's like kind of pre Christmas
turn of the year. So it's January when we get
(07:51):
around to producing it. And actually that week we were
in production and this one was on public radio.
So things were much more formalized and we had deadline.
You had to get it up by noon on Wednesday.
And suddenly we get word that, you know, he's 5253 when I met
him, he's in the. He's.
Totally healthy, young and we get news that he died.
(08:11):
He had a stomach aneurysm. Who's heard of that?
I know. And so then it turned into just
organically, we're in the flow of it and it turned into an
obituary show. And, you know, I, I knew of
people in Los Angeles who the day that it came out that it
(08:32):
aired, there were actually traveling who had known John,
who were traveling to a memorialservice for him.
And suddenly he comes on the radio and they said it was
perfect, John. But he would basically like, you
know, inject himself into his own and memorial service.
But what happened with the show altogether is that a lot of
(08:54):
people met him for the first time through this interview.
It kind of became this vehicle for keeping his voice alive in
the world. I've never had an experience
like this. And I there's just something
more precious about it because of that and just really because
it was all happening at the sametime.
(09:16):
Yeah, well, thank you. Thank you for keeping his memory
alive. His work is very profound for us
here at MEA. There's a later this week.
I will. I will do my best job of quoting
or speaking his poem for A New Beginning, which I think is one
of my favorites. Thresholds is something he
(09:38):
talked about the idea of thresholds.
And we're actually, you know, after our session here, we're
going to go right into talking about transitions and
thresholds. And one of the things I took
from your interview with him andjust from, you know, reading him
his work, was just the idea thatin a threshold, in a transition,
you are welcomed into leaving behind a routine or a habit and
(10:04):
to maybe starting to ritualize your life differently.
Do you have thoughts on that? Yeah, you know that that
particular inside of his I carrywith me all the time.
And you know what he points out?And sometimes it's so useful to
have things point pointed out that are so that we know but
don't say and don't name and then therefore don't actively,
(10:27):
attentively enter into. So he says life is full of
thresholds. Some we choose, most we don't.
And the question is how to crossthis threshold worthily.
And I just, I just love that whole thing.
I love the word worthily becauseit's not a word we overuse.
(10:48):
And it's a word that makes you really think deeply about what
what you know, like you could send days.
What what would what does worthily mean?
Yeah. How does it look?
What what were the components ofa worthy crossing of this
threshold? Hmm.
And he's also about the, the, yes, the inner landscape of
beauty and also the visible world and the invisible world.
(11:10):
And of course, he's Irish. Now, the other thing I have to
say about John O'Donoghue is with that accent, everything you
say sounds even better. So if you're wise, you sound
wiser, especially in an Americanear.
But he comes from that Celtic tradition.
And they have a beautiful understanding in that culture
(11:31):
of, you know, what are they thin, thin places in time.
And that there's a veil between the temporal and the
transcendent. And at times and in places that
veil becomes very thin and, and thresholds are often those
(11:52):
times. And then to really stand
reverently before that and take from it what it would give us
this. Those are great.
You know, those are such important moments in life.
But it's also possible to speed past them and not become aware.
I want to go back to your originstory.
So you were. So we're as the group knows, but
(12:15):
our listeners on the podcast don't know.
We were born 9 days apart. You're you're in November 9th,
baby 1960 and I'm a Halloween baby.
We're both Scorpios from the year 1960.
What was it like growing up in Oklahoma?
Oh, gosh. And you know, in the 60s in
(12:35):
Oklahoma even more. But but you know, and how did
you, how did you become who you are today with that origin
story? Yeah, Where did you grow up, by
the way? I grew up in Long Beach, CA.
I mean, I, you know. Yeah, so the 1960s came to Long
Beach, CA it. Did not come to.
Like most of the things you think of in the 60s, they kind
(12:55):
of got there by the time I went to college, maybe.
Wow. But you know about them, you
heard about them. Nobody was burning their bras
and Oklahoma, that I know. I mean, I think about this so
much now because I really think the seeds of now were starting
(13:17):
to be planted in the 60s. And there was a lot of progress,
right? There was a lot of creativity in
that decade and, and some of thethings we started then, you
know, what we're, what we're living with now is what we
didn't quite carry through all the way, right.
(13:37):
Like we made big advances in civil rights and we kind of
stopped at some point and thought that because we changed
laws and we'd integrated schools, the work was done.
And the way I see it, because ofthe way I see the world is and
not just me, like I have teachers like Isabel Wilkerson,
you know, we didn't do the work inside ourselves, right?
(13:58):
We didn't, we changed the laws. We didn't change ourselves
there. And laws are fragile and laws
can be can be undone. And so now I think we are faced
with the work we have to do or we we don't get there.
But so, but, but also when I think about the 60s, you know, I
think of all the things that people think back on, you know,
as a child growing up a little bit far from the action,
(14:23):
watching the news, it, it was a it was a decade of violence.
You know, I was born, John F Kennedy was elected.
My father was big Oklahoma Democrat and almost everybody I
knew in Oklahoma back then was aDemocrat.
Just take that in, you know, Really.
Elizabeth Warren's from from Oklahoma and.
(14:45):
I know Republicans, they don't exist.
And then so my father always told me that I was John
Kennedy's good luck charm and his assassination.
You know, people tell me I may be making this up because I was
three years old, but I don't think I am.
Like, I remember the soap opera playing in the background, which
a few years ago I learned was actually the one playing in the
(15:07):
background. It was in Texas, which was very
close by. And so I actually thought, what
did I do wrong? Like my good luck charmness, you
know, really failed here becauseso, you know, it was Kennedy, it
was his brother, it was it was Martin Luther King junior.
And I remember, you know, bodies, body bags coming home
(15:30):
from the war in Vietnam. And some of them were people
from young men from my town. And and also my father was a
political operator, Dick Fish ina small pond.
And he got he got helped get a Democratic governor elected.
This was right around the Watergate era, who was greedy
(15:53):
and like it was a good guy and then wasn't a good guy and a lot
of people went to prison. He went to prison Sky David
Hall. So it seemed like that kind of
Watergate phenomenon of actually, but in this case a
really idealistic progressive figure really failed people and
really failed that idealism. So all of this is in it for me
(16:16):
when I think about like, this world we've come to now.
Yeah, I didn't really get the win the I didn't really get The
Beatles. Were you a first class noticer?
I I have the sense that you werean observer.
You have you observed things very well at a young age.
(16:36):
I think that I really, what I had to work with in terms of
imagination and literature and thinking was the Bible, right?
I mean, we went to church 3 * a week, My grandfather's Southern
Baptist preacher and I truly, there weren't a lot of books in
my house. The Bible was what I had.
(16:58):
It was what was being introducedto me.
And actually, the Bible is much more complicated and high drama
than it was being taught to me. And I and I was enough.
I, you know, I think I was, I did, you know, delve into all
the richness and contradiction there.
And that was a lot to be to be getting on with.
(17:21):
How do you see the Bible as foundational for you today?
So, you know, I went, I ended upgoing to divide it.
I ended up going to Brown, whichis very flukish, everybody.
Oh my God. And my grandfather was OK with
it just because Rodger Williams was a Baptist, but he would have
been appalled if he knew anything about Rodger Williams
(17:43):
morality. Yeah, I think that then I well,
I ended up after that and ending, ending up in divided
Berlin and my 20s and becoming very political and then going to
divinity school and then learning at a whole new level
about the richness and complexity of that text, of
(18:06):
that, those many texts and a lotmore about the Hebrew Bible in
which there are no heroes. It tells it like it is.
And it can get pretty horrific, right.
So I, I value the biblical text so much.
And I think most of us, even most of us who went to church a
(18:28):
lot, haven't gotten an introduction to it.
MMM. You know, Richard Rohr is just
down the road here and, and he'staught here in this very room.
And you know what? Do you have a an any impression
of Richard or? You know, I did interview
Richard, yeah, once. And I, it was specifically about
(18:48):
it was like, he's hard. He is hard because he knows what
he has to say. Oh, he wouldn't.
Oh, so you so you couldn't crackhim open?
Well, yeah, you, it's hard to get it to be conversational and
interactive, but I interviewed him about specifically about his
work with young men and the desire for, for spiritual life
(19:13):
and the fact that, you know, he's, he's worked with a lot of
I don't know if he's doing that so much anymore, but at one
point. He's not doing it anymore in
prison. He did a lot of men's retreats.
Yeah, and that men haven't felt addressed or so much included.
They come at, you know, we don'tlike to make generalizations
about gender these days. And it is a spectrum, but it's
(19:35):
also true that our religious andspiritual institutions
especially, you know, certainly churches were kind of, they were
kind of run by women. Actually.
This part of the reason they're falling apart is because it used
to be Once Upon a time that you had the congregational leader
who was for a long time a man also in a synagogue.
(19:56):
And you had this army of volunteer women before women
worked outside the home. And now you've got this lonely.
Leader who's supposed to do everything and the structure
doesn't make sense anymore but yeah so there is kind of been
set up for women and women's spiritual orientation and he saw
(20:18):
this deep deep binding. And if you think about our world
now and how this crisis of masculinity and young men who
are filling their hearts and their spirits with with a lot of
toxins, you know who are open tothat because they haven't been
offered more. Yeah, yeah.
(20:40):
My favorite book of his is The Falling Upward.
Has anybody read Falling Upward?Yes, sounds like lots of people.
I think that was the one I really liked, yeah, when I was
getting ready to. The spirituality for the
second-half of life and it's just it's a an exceptional book
about the threshold back to the threshold of midlife.
He's, he says things like, or writes things like the primary
(21:05):
operating system for the first half of life is your ego.
And it's around midlife that your primary operating system
becomes your soul. But nobody gave you operating
instructions and, and, and that you can just feel it.
And I think I feel it. We talked last night about the
fact that I'm an ex. I'm, I was an introvert and an
expert and back to the introvertagain.
(21:25):
And there's a sense of like, oh,it's because that inner
landscape, there's so much, likethere's so much to explore in
here. And so I just, I, I, I credit
Richard for helping me years agowhen that book came out, before
I knew him at all. That book helped me to
understand, oh, there's something happening around
midlife. That would be such a good book
(21:46):
to discover at that point. Yes, yeah.
It's it's just really helpful. So yeah.
Yeah. Well, tell us about midlife for
Krista Tippett. I mean, we define midlife quite
broadly here, 35 to 70. 5 Like your expansion.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're still at 64 and you're
still in midlife, but what is you know, what is, what's been
your journey in during your 40s and 50s and now early 60s?
(22:12):
I mean, you're asking me that ata moment which I'm really living
it and reflective about it. And what I'm reflecting on now
is how I, I lived on the edge ofexhaustion for 20 years.
You're still there. No, no, I'm not.
You're not. OK, good.
It's only only yesterday. OK, only yesterday.
(22:33):
OK, I got. It and how that was a badge of
honor right like I grew up thinking you just push yourself
as hard as you can and I, you know, always had to like justify
my existence in the world and. Where?
Where did that come from? Oh, it partly came from my my
family, my father. He really needed to be proud of
(22:54):
me, but he needed me to do things that he would have done
to be proud of. And so, you know, I had a real
cheerleader. You had a success script.
Yeah, well, he really liked. He was really a surprise and he
really liked what I did in my well, he, you know, he when I
came to him and said, I want to go to this place called Brown
(23:14):
just because I'd gone to the bait camp the summer before and
met my best friend there, want to go to Brown.
I never heard of it. And then her husband called
Brown. So I was like geographic
affirmative action. And I got in and she didn't
because there were fifty kids from her high school flying.
But, you know, when I did that, I think he was.
But. But in the end, he liked it.
It was he saw that it was an impressive thing.
(23:36):
And then I was working in politics and journalism.
He liked all that. He never liked.
He didn't like it when I went todo an high school, when I did
anything with the show. So I I had a really terrible
kind of rift with him. That's a long story.
You can talk about it if you want, but, you know, we have
time. Yeah.
He well, he was a really he was really he was a person who was
(23:59):
adopted when he was four years old and what we know now.
And also I think he never, I think he was terrified of, I
think of those maps as ancient, you know, those maps where it
said there be Dragons at the endof the map.
That always felt like his childhood was like that.
He just didn't really have normal emotional.
(24:19):
He wanted to and he tried, you know, he was narcissistic in the
way a four year old who's been abused as narcissistic.
They just can't see beyond theirWhen we get on to that, well,
let. Me.
Yes, Sir. Well, because I'm a good
interviewer. Where are.
We where is. It no.
So do you think there's some like for you?
I mean you, you can say no, no. Please my father right so.
(24:40):
The generation's trauma. Is there something like Oh my?
Gosh, don't you? I don't know how are you?
I just feel the older I get. It's just astonishing how we are
always, always, no matter how long we're in these bodies,
reckoning with our earliest years and these relationships
(25:01):
with our parents. And it's just it's kind of, I
sometimes feel embarrassed by it, but I was everybody else is
in the same. They're all nodding in this
room, so yeah. So yes, so you, you know, I can
go down that rabbit hole. And so did you have a midlife
chrysalis that in the last 10 years, 20 years, that was your
(25:22):
transformational time that said like I need, I need a
metamorphosis and, and talk about that.
I think that for me has been thelast few years I, you know, I
did make a huge turn. It's just how I got to my father
from like I really was on this politics, journalism,
(25:45):
geopolitics track in my 20s, like on this fault line of the
Cold War world. And I just turned away from
that. I was, I was at the very last
year of in Berlin. I was working as a chief aide in
Berlin to our ambassador to WestGermany, who was a Reagan
(26:06):
appointee and a nuclear arms expert who's 38 years old.
And I thought he was old, but wow, I was 23.
But now I realize just how younghe was.
I ended up sitting around these tables with him and his peers
who are nuclear arms experts, and they were literally moving
(26:28):
weapons of mass destruction. They were, they were planting
weapons of mass destruction in the name of defense.
Right? But still on the earth and I had
this experience that I really didn't know what to do with
because on the one hand I was having an exhilarating,
thrilling, you know, ego, ego tending experience.
But they these men who had huge careers, huge egos, expertise,
(26:56):
huge egos, like huge accomplishment.
I would be with this ambassador or watch him give a brilliant
speech about nuclear warfare as a human being.
He was about 13 and he was like a really immature 13 year old
boy. And most, not everybody, but
most of the people I met at thatlevel were like that.
(27:16):
And so I get to the end of this experience and I'm like, is
this, is this what? Like if I grow up to be this,
these are the people I'll be spending my time with.
And only on the one hand, I'm like in my late 20s, I had this
incredible resume. I was so confused.
And of course, you know, there are root, there are seeds in
that of what I ended up doing that at that point, you know, I
(27:38):
just knew that I had a great resume and I didn't know how I
could live with continuing to build it or doing what it would
have me do next. So that was, I would say, you
know, what I like about the, theyoung people now they talk about
the quarter life crisis. Like that's going to be, that'll
be another expense. Well, we have we're getting a
workshop on on that in January. So yes, and.
Also, I love how the the youngermillennials and the older
(28:03):
millennials have their own generation gap and I've heard,
you know. Sorry, boomers, I mean you we're
we're a little bit we're definitely.
Different. I don't know.
Then I I just. I mean, there's some, some of
those new rooms. We have to be careful because
older boomers like, I mean, I like you, yes, I'm, but I'm
different than you. Identify as a boomer.
Yeah, Yeah. But also like elder millennials,
(28:23):
I've heard some of them describethem.
So I think I had maybe 1/4 life crisis.
I didn't have that language. Then I got married very
impulsively and lived in Englandfor a year and didn't and wrote
fiction and then I had children and, and all of that.
And I went to divinity school, but I didn't know what I was
(28:44):
going to do with divinity school.
And so then, you know, then verygradually ended up starting
this, getting to this. This is on doing, not on being I
guess. But then when I got back into
having a professional purpose, Idid kind of default to that, You
know, I have to justify my, my, my existence and, and do it
(29:08):
right. I mean, it was a passionate
project, right? Do it right.
But I, I look at my own children, I look at younger
people now and I don't want themto think that you have to make a
choice between professional success and just your personal
vitality. I don't want to live in a world
where I think that's a necessarychoice.
(29:29):
But I definitely did that. And, you know, I raised my kids
and I, and I, and I was divorcedfor a long time and was pretty
much single parent. That's hard, right?
So building this big thing and, and attending to my children and
I was really kind of 20 years ofmy life.
But then the, the midlife Christmas threshold, the
(29:53):
chrysalis was, you know, well, probably pandemic.
I don't know. I'm, I like to think I would
have ended up in the same place.It might have taken me longer to
think that it was OK for me to think this way.
You know, Ben's been around and watching this and he saw some of
the transition. But I just gradually realized
(30:17):
that I just didn't want to be caring what I was carrying.
Care carrying as opposed to caring, Yeah, I mean, but it's
both a little. It is both, Yeah, it is both.
But I, I think part of the discernment was I, I didn't ever
stop caring. Yes, but I can be who I am and
(30:37):
do what I do in a way that is life giving and not depleting.
And I do think that one of the gift of aging, but maybe one
that's hard to bear, is you get to a point, or at least I did.
And I know I see a lot of peoplewhere you simply can no longer
(30:58):
lean into the depletings. So sometimes people, you know,
when I took this off public radio in 2022, it's like in a
world in which everybody wants more platforms and I kind of
gave the biggest one up and people said, oh, you're so
brave. But I couldn't not do it.
I just, right. I couldn't not do it.
So it doesn't feel brave to me. It was just.
(31:19):
And the reason you couldn't not do it is because you were
exhausted to the point of just. It was too much.
I it was, it was a life of deadlines, which for those for
more of that most of those 20 years, I was, I was perfectly
comfortable with. I mean, you know, we do, we do
what is necessary for our work. And but what I started to think
(31:42):
about and care about was what amI not doing because I am living
this life of deadlines, what it's like any some of these
decisions. And I at the end of last year, I
really gave up a lot of the organization.
So there's, there is an organization now, but it, you
know, it's like down from a $6 million budget to a $1 million
(32:05):
budget. So just that like the constant
raising of money. There's a question I want to ask
you related to what you just said a moment ago.
One of our favorite questions atMEA is 10 years from now, what
will you regret if you don't learn it or do it now?
Partly because anticipated regret is a form of wisdom on
(32:25):
the idea. And frankly, at 20 years old,
you don't have anticipated regret.
You got a long runway out of you, but at 50607080, Jack here
in the room, happy birthday to you.
You don't have as much runway. So there's a sense that you need
to have a catalyst. When I, when I moved to, to
(32:47):
Baja, I said, I, I, I'm never going to learn Spanish.
I was 56 years old. I, you know, even though you
know, that that was the languageand I'm not going to learn to
surf. But then when I put it in the
context of 10 years from now, at66, will I regret that I didn't
learn Spanish, that I started learning Spanish and learning to
surf. What about you?
What, what might you regret 10 years from now if you didn't
(33:08):
learn it or do it now? I.
Loved writing and I, you know, I've, I've for most of the last
25 years, I felt like I was, youknow, I was like an interloper
doing radio podcasting that I've, I felt like I would be a
writer when I was younger like that I would write, but then
then I didn't. I just couldn't.
(33:30):
It was always having to be squeezed in among these
deadlines. So actually this year, you know,
I'm I am a my top priority is getting this book written.
I mean, I'm doing other things, but I can't end of the fall is
going to be totally prioritizingthat.
I just spent a month writing. Can you tell us about the book?
Well, we're going to talk about in the next few days.
(33:51):
You're going to learn a lot about the book.
OK, how about for our podcast? Well, it, it's in many ways
it's, it's the fruits of these this quarter century of
conversation and now how all of the conversations are kind of
interacting in my mind and creating a way to see, to tell
(34:19):
the story of our time. That is not the story that the
New York Times is telling me to.It's a ways of seeing and arts
of living and really, you know, I think that the question that
is on my heart and that he feel is there for so many people is
(34:43):
how to be present and stay present to this world, which
also means getting present to ourselves, right.
So it's not it's not an either it's not it's not not personal,
but it is intimate and civilizational at once.
And we know that we live in a chrysalis time.
I think this is a chrysalis century.
So it's like it's, it's how I how I would how I describe that
(35:06):
that work, that calling through this life that I've had these in
this century, that the early. So, more writing.
Enjoying life, which I just and I do think this was an American
way, you know, it was like optional.
I would do it when I had time, after I'd done important things
(35:28):
and, you know, I. What brings you What brings you
joy? What are the what are the
things? Are there anything from
childhood that you? I'm so much better at being
joyful and today now than I was when I was a child.
OK, So what? What brings you joy to that?
Well, music brings me joy, reading brings me joy.
People bring me joy in a way. I mean, I'm definitely an
(35:49):
introvert. I am absolutely an introvert.
But I, I do love human beings. And I think as I grow older, I
grow maybe a little bit the the different direction.
You're going to introvert. I'm getting more extrovert.
I do have to go and hide after I've been with people a lot and
just kind of regroup. I also, you know what I'll say
(36:10):
my friendships. Yeah, people, I, I have just
fallen in love through the last year for the first time in 15
years. And also in that 15 year period,
I pretty much decided that I you.
You can sell it. You can sell.
It Well, here let me say it thisway.
I knew a lot of women my age whospent their life force on
(36:35):
relationships that we're not good worthy of them.
And I made this decision at somepoint because I didn't want to
be alone or this idea that I don't want to grow old alone.
And I didn't say to my best friend who is just constantly
going from one relationship to the other, we are going to grow
old alone. OK, these men are going to
probably die before us. Sorry guys, but it's true.
(36:57):
So like that can't be a reason to spend your life force it just
to be in relationship. But what I end up doing, which
I'm really proud of, OK, like atthis this I I want to own is at
some point, you know, about 15 years ago, I decided that I
heard myself one day saying feeling sorry for myself that I
didn't have love in my life. And I realized that that is such
(37:19):
a false statement that there areso many forms of love.
And I ended up just deeply investing in my relationships
with other women, which is actually not something I had
done in my life. So it's just my mother.
We're not going to talk about her.
That's that has been one of the most joyful gifts of these last
(37:43):
like 10-15 years of my life are these beautiful friendships and
also my love for my children is another form of love.
So it's like, you know, at any given time, like there are many,
many kinds of love and you don'thave to have every single one of
them. In the last couple of years
coming in pandemic, what I realized while I was grounded in
(38:05):
Minnesota in my very quiet, peaceful neighborhood in Saint
Paul, which I on some level was a lovely place to be grounded.
But I realized that that the place I lived, Minnesota had
been the place where I did two things.
I worked and I and I parented. And while I have people, I live
in Minnesota, all of my deeper relationships were elsewhere.
(38:28):
And I also felt like I had gotten self-sufficient to the
point that probably wasn't good for me and actually quite
different from what I say to other people.
So, so I kind of opened myself in these last few years to this
other kind of love and I'm, and I, and I'm really, you know,
there's a lot of joy, a different kind of joy in my life
right now through that, of that kind of companionship.
(38:50):
But I'm really glad to know thatI can live without it.
I mean, I don't want to live without it right now, but I'm,
I'm, I just, I'm so I'm grateful.
I feel like this, the way I oriented around these last 10
years around love, as such a bigmultifaceted thing, will serve
me for the rest of my life. You wrote a book called Becoming
Wise and about the are living. And So what does wisdom mean to
(39:13):
you? What, what and how are you wiser
today at 64 than you were at 44?You talked about the exhaustion
and just like being on the treadmill and the success
script. So beyond that, maybe, maybe,
maybe it's learning to feel comfortable being alone.
What? What?
(39:33):
What does wisdom mean to you? So after I wrote that book in
no, at no point in the book do Idefine wisdom.
And I didn't relate that until after I wrote it and people
said, oh, what is your operatingdefinition of wisdom?
I didn't have. Your editor didn't ask for that.
That's strange. Well, because what I was doing
was, you know, what I did is I basically took the whole, at
(39:55):
that point, it's like 13 years of conversations and I and I,
you know, there were a couple ofyears and there were all I did
was. Was go back through transcripts
and try to just distill like what kept rising up and who's
who was perhaps most articulate about us a certain thing and
then writing around that. So you know, writing in my voice
(40:17):
but kind of still being in conversation.
But I never. So these five kind of, you know,
these these places in US where love these these these parts of
being human, where I think wisdom shines, you know, is how
I organize smoke. But I never said this is wisdom.
So later when I had to think about it, so my definition, I
(40:40):
was listening to your, what was your definition?
I said metabolize and mine changes every month, but
metabolized experience mindfullyshared for the common good.
Yeah. So, so there's, there's there's
resonance. So what I started to this is
this kind of a really pared down.
(41:03):
I think if any of us think of the wise people we've known and
most wise, most of the wise people in the world are not
famous, but we all have wise people in our lives somewhere in
our lives, right? I think that the difference
between wisdom. So, you know, the difference
between like, say, knowledge or accomplishment is that you can
kind of quantify those things, right?
(41:24):
It's not that a wise person can't be knowledgeable or
accomplished, but those are things you can kind of point
out. And you know, they, they have
this substance and there's a metric to them.
And I think that the measure of a wise life is the imprint it
makes on other lives around it. And, you know, one of the kinds
I've been interested in my, in my work also in those people who
(41:47):
are not famous and, you know, below the cultural radar.
But in, you know, whatever work any of us does in our field, we
know that there are these teachers, right?
These, these individuals who've just radiated something.
They've like, they've influencedgenerations and generations of
(42:07):
practitioners. And I think like those are those
are the and then there are people in communities and those
are that that's that I think is how is a good way to it's kind
of an operating definition of wisdom.
So I'm kind of getting more at that second-half of years like
for. Common good, common good.
Exactly. It feels to me like we're moving
(42:28):
in an era where we need more wisdom.
We need, yeah. The world is complicated and you
know knowledge is sort of like amath equation.
Like it's a plus sign you accumulate knowledge, but you
distill wisdom. And so in a time where it's
complicated, there's like, it's like there's so much out there
trying to distill what's essential is, is, is really
(42:48):
important. And in the history of mystery
schools and wisdom schools and the great bat, they actually
tended to emerge in times of stress on the human
consciousness. So I, I, my hope is that midlife
wisdom schools like MEA are going to become, you know, all
over the world, not not as MEA, but just as us being a catalyst
for others. What are the practices you use
(43:10):
to ground yourself? What are the practices you use
to you know on a regular basis that help you to have a grounded
knowing to to quote I think AV Northcutt the the have.
A grounded knowing. So there's one thing I'll say
about wisdom. I think this is true of Mystics
(43:32):
and it's also to some extent true poets, like the people who
are the greatest poets, Mystics and wise people will never say
I'm a wise person. So like, if you ask me how do
you stay wise? I would just, I find that a
really hard, but you're not asking me that.
I'm asking her how to say how doyou stay with a grounded
knowing? Yeah, I mean, the other thing
about wisdom, I mean, we could talk for an hour about the
difference between wisdom and knowledge.
(43:53):
You know, knowledge becomes lessrelevant.
It just inevitably does. I don't care how brilliant
somebody is at the moment. At the time, I was just at the
Aspen Ideas Festival last week, and I was musing on how three
years ago there were certain people who are, I think, like
the knowledgeable people who come up with phrases like the
(44:13):
world is flat, you know? And I mean, this is right.
You know, it was very smart people that works for a little
while and then history moves on and we need other ways to
describe reality. Wisdom ages well, right.
Like This is why one of the things that I want to be do in
this next chapter of my life is be a good steward of my archive
(44:36):
and really be creative with that.
Because, you know, now I'm really appreciating how so much
of what's in there, like those voices become more relevant
rather than less relevant. And how to me is so much of that
about staying grounded is is about our attention is about
(44:57):
attention, like attending to what is, you know, to what has
meaning and not what is yelling for my attention.
And that's a real discipline these days.
So are there practices and rituals, whether it's meditation
or prayer or journaling or whatever it might be?
(45:21):
I think this is hard for me to answer because so much of for,
you know, I've had different I've across time, I've had so
many different ways of coming atthat right.
I've had times where I was meditating silently.
I've had periods of my life. It was a period where I wrote a
prayer because I felt like like this is my spiritual mother
(45:42):
tongue is prayer. And I wanted I didn't want to
just be meditating. And you wrote a prayer.
I wrote a prayer do. You remember what it is.
Yeah. Will you say it to us?
I can bring it. I'll bring it.
Tomorrow, free podcast listeners.
You just have to come here. And it's next time Chris is
teaching. For about a year and a half, I
prayed this prayer every day. And it starts.
(46:02):
It was a prayer. It was it grew out of me asking
what I most desired, how I most desired to grow.
And I realized that my heart needed to open more.
So I like it began, you know, Grammy, this day, a heart that
(46:24):
keeps learning to open, that keeps learning that keeps
learning to open. And this was like also one of
these times where you kind of figure out things that are
inherited from those early days and you just can't believe
you're still hanging on to them.And you I really needed to let
go of it. But I, I hadn't been, I hadn't
just let go of it with the course of time and I didn't even
(46:45):
know what I was asking for. Like what that would how I would
be different if my heart were more open, but I I was able to
put words around that much of it.
And it sounds like it's manifested.
Yeah, absolutely manifest. I recently shared it with my my,
this, the man I love, who I've been with for a year.
And because I am a person with an open heart now, and I was.
(47:06):
It's not that I wasn't, you know, I was, I was obviously
shining a light on other people have open hearts and helping
people open their hearts. And I think my heart was open
enough to know that it could be more open, right.
I've had times where I did what I call contemplative reading and
I still do that sometimes. Like I'll take a book of poetry
or a book that is very beautifuland dense.
(47:28):
And especially when I was working so hard when I, you
know, was it, I didn't have the mind space to say, I'm going to
read this book, but I just just find a beautiful book that kind
of fills me and calms me and also inspires me and just read a
paragraph at a time. So I'm like, I've had all these
different rituals and right now I've been moving around so much.
(47:53):
I don't I haven't in this. My ritual is a thing in love.
You're a giggly girl right now. Yeah, it's great to fall in love
after you've already figured outwhat you do for a living.
Raise your kids, you know. You've earned it, girl.
You've earned. It to be an adult and then you
(48:14):
get to be a child again. Yeah.
Yeah. OK.
So you're a 64 year old child. You and I both turned 65 later
this year. Yeah.
What does the word retirement mean to you in the current
context of the world as opposed to 60 years ago at what it
meant? I have no relationship to this
word retirement. I I said to you yesterday, I'm
fascinated by the evolution of aging.
(48:36):
I really feel like age is only it.
It's age is kind of like relative life to life and body
to body. I feel like maybe this wasn't
true, but if I think about what retirement meant to me when I
was growing in that world I grewup in, it would be that people
would really just stop doing everything and kick back.
(48:57):
And I think even though we I'm sure there are people who like
to work until their last day andthat may be new I'm.
Farmers. Used to do it, yeah.
Farmers, well, and ranchers, yeah.
But I think even if somebody isn't working in the same way,
we have a, you know, knock on wood or pixels or whatever, we
(49:22):
have more, many more active years to be, just to be alive,
right? And to be of service and and to
be cultivating joy. And so the idea of retirement
just feels too small for me to be a label of who I would become
(49:45):
at some point. But I'm I mean all for working
less. Yeah, yeah, I think.
I mean, I, I wrote a blog post not long ago saying knowledge
workers are confused by retirement because if you were
doing back breaking labour and mind numbing work in a factory,
Sun City sounded really good. Maybe learning to golf, having a
(50:09):
martini at lunch. I mean, that was sort of the way
that era lived. But, you know, if you're doing
knowledge work or, or you're doing creative work, or you're
somebody who is developing what Arthur Brooks calls the
crystallized intelligence, this idea which is an alternative way
of looking at wisdom at 60 or 65, you're just finding your
(50:34):
stride. And so I'm not suggesting that
you have to work at the same pace, but maybe you start doing
new work that is more nourishing, that is tapping into
that wisdom. A few years ago, I started to
notice my brain working differently and kind of really
(50:56):
went down this rabbit hole of what we know about the aging
brain. And I think like, you know, even
a few years ago, if you said theaging brain, you just imagine
deterioration, right, right. And so, So what they say is
that, you know, as our brains grow older, we may be less able
(51:17):
to kind of take it to be to likelearn new things like novelty is
not. And this is also part of why
it's so relaxing to grow old that when that also we're not as
motivated by novelty, but we're more in wonder at the ordinary.
(51:38):
Like you're able to just really enjoy the everyday and the
ordinary. And I feel that.
And again, that is just such a relief, but also what your brain
gets good at over against what it's less inclined to do.
You know, you can't remember names.
(51:59):
So what? Right?
Like, I feel like in my brain isa few years ago.
I'm not feeling this so much now.
That's when I was working so hard.
I feel like my brain was like a filing cabinet and all the files
were just stuffed. There was no more space for new
information. But what I feel now is they say
that what grows are our powers of synthesis, and I am so aware
(52:22):
of that, yeah. You're.
Right, all these connections being made and they're just
being made naturally, fluidly without my needing to attend to
them. And for me, that means that, you
know, the conversations are in conversation with each other in
my head. And so, like, I really love
(52:43):
being interviewed these days because I never know what is
going to come out, you know, andI'm not, if I sit around and
say, what do I know? You know, what have I learned?
That's a hard question. But if I get a question coming
at me and it just has to happen organically, it's just so
fascinating. There's a guy named Doctor Gene
(53:05):
Cohen and he has a great, but he's passed away.
He has a book called the I thinkit's called the aging Brain and
he he calls it 4 wheel drive of the brain.
He says that as we get older, when we're young, our brain is
fast and focused. And as we get older, we learn to
go from left brain to right brain, from logical, lyrical,
(53:27):
all in the same sentence. And there's a sense that you can
traverse a broader sense of yourbrain.
Your brain is shrinking a littlebit, but you're as it's
shrinking, you're not so right brain or left brain segmented.
You're not so binding. Definitely feel that.
It does, right? Like you're.
Doing 11 or the other. Yes, yes, yeah.
(53:48):
OK, good. All right, last question.
So let's say someone 30 years younger than you, a lovely woman
who's on a career path and married and she's like doing a
lot, She's juggling a lot that'shappens in our 30s and our 40s.
She comes to you and she says, I, I want an auction to have tea
(54:09):
with you and that we're having it next week.
Could you come to the tea that we're going to have with a a
wisdom bumper sticker? Like just an aphorism that
really has your wisdom fingerprints on it.
Basically, what's the piece of wisdom that you might offer
(54:29):
someone younger than you? That's hard one.
What's the origin story of that wisdom as well?
Let me first say that I'm reallybad at questions like that.
Although I've always, you know, this was only true of Twitter
and I don't think it's true of Instagram or the others, but I
always felt like Jesus and Mosesand Buddha would have been
amazing on Twitter, right? Like because they did these one
(54:50):
liners right? Or on Madison Ave. or.
On Madison Ave. But what comes up for me is take
Delight. Don't make that optional
intentionally. It is a human birthright.
It is, it is life giving. It is fuel.
(55:10):
It is even fuel for whatever you're fighting.
Don't let anybody take that awayfrom you.
It doesn't. It doesn't have to be in
opposition to doing good things,making things happen.
I that's what I wish I had done more of.
And you're doing it now. I'm doing it now.
And let's give her a hand for the fact you're doing it now.
(55:31):
Thank you, Crystal. Did I do OK?
Yes, you did a great job. The way you know that is that I
was just so full of things to say.
Good, good. All right.
Thank you so much. Yeah.
Well, this is the first time I'mdoing an outro.
(55:52):
Not an intro, but an outro for one of my podcasts.
And each week I'm going to try to really distill down maybe 3
Nuggets of wisdom that I heard in the podcast, or in this case
actually in the course of teaching with Krista for a week.
So first of all, there is a, a term that Krista used in the
(56:14):
course of our workshop that around spiritual hospitality.
And I think I, I asked her aboutit in my, the interview.
You heard that. You just heard.
Spiritual hospitality is a really interesting idea.
The idea that we are here on earth to be spiritual beings
helping to open the doors for other people.
(56:37):
There's a beautiful roomy quote.She's not a quote, but it's a
poem called The Guest House. And it really speaks to the idea
that our role in life is to be an innkeeper for our own
emotions and the emotions of others.
But just as if your life is not to like try to have rain all the
time, the point of spiritual hospitality and Rumi's guest
(57:00):
house is you let the, the, the emotions come through you so
that they, you don't get stuck in a rainstorm or in the sun
because you can't control that. So to me, spiritual hospitality
is really about listening. And that is one of the most
important things I heard from Krista, both in this interview
but also during the week, is howdo we listen to each other, to
inside and then to the greater consciousness of the world?
(57:25):
Secondly, she said at one point during the week.
So this idea that I love who I am becoming, this is, I think, a
real beautiful premise around aging, to see that maybe what
we're supposed to do as a in thecourse of our lives is to
actually become more of who we were supposed to be.
(57:45):
And Krista's one of those people.
I mean, she grew up in, you know, in Oklahoma, Christian
family, liberal minded, but Christian and Bible thumping.
And she to, to become who she has become from her roots really
took an awful lot of willingnessto take a unique path.
(58:09):
The third thing that I will justtake from my time with Krista is
just this the premise that we are supposed to, to be
generative in life, to be generative means you're
generating things, your generativity based upon Eric,
Eric's Erikson's coining of thatterm is about doing things for
(58:30):
future generations. And one of the things that I, I
really took from my time with with Krista is presence is
important. And as we get older, the most
important thing we can offer to younger people is our presence.
So that's my quick down and dirty 3 lessons from my time
(58:52):
with Krista. I hope you enjoyed this
particular episode, We'll see itnext week.
Thanks for listening to The Midlife Chrysalis.
This show is produced by MidlifeMedia.
If you enjoyed this episode, help us spread the word by
subscribing and leaving a reviewon your favorite platform.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!