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
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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 Maria
Shriver. Oh, you did?
And Rich Roll and Michael Frontein this room.
So, yeah, so we've done, we've done some of them and I
(01:51):
probably, I may have even 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.
There's a lot of podcasts, but it's actually pretty impressive.
It's you know, so you know what this is all about.
(02:12):
So what does it take to be a great interviewer?
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.
(02:33):
You know, I'll just say a few things.
One thing I've, 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. 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.
(02:53):
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
have in common. And I think to create a
hospitable intellectual space, spiritual space.
And that has meant, and you got this right too already.
(03:14):
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 audio
engineers were always especiallyI saw this really come to life
during COVID when people are, you know, suddenly were
interviewing people in their homes, in their basements, you
know, and you know, everything being held in a spirit of warmth
(03:38):
and 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 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 I
(04:03):
learned is that, well, also I think the point of preparation
is also hospitality because we encounter each other at a bodily
animal level before any words are spoken.
And I think we know just within minutes whether this person is
(04:27):
genuinely interested in US or whether they're there's asking
curious sounding questions 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 actively
(04:49):
dispel it. And then the final thing I'll
say just that comes to mind thatI've learned is I think also the
point of the preparation, yes, 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
(05:11):
that feeling, I don't have to explain or represent or defend
you, just your whole body 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
(05:32):
questions fall away when I do the preparation.
And I realize that's because I'm, I'm asking questions that
are going to be interesting to them rather than just what is
interesting to me. There 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 hopeserves you OK.
(05:55):
One of your most poignant interviews ever was with John
O'Donoghue before he passed. Right before.
All time on being greatest hits,yeah.
Talk about talk about John O'Donoghue.
So those don't know John O'Donoghue poet turned, I'm
sorry, a priest turned poet, butphilosopher and and religious
(06:15):
says any past at age 52 in the middle of the night and very
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
(06:37):
you heard Lee talk about tracking, which is sort of an
inner landscape of beauty. What was your experience being
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 Jillian O'Donoghue was a
poet. He was former Catholic priest,
so and theologian. He was a poet, he was a
(06:57):
philosopher and he was kind of an just an Irish storyteller.
And that interview took about 2 1/2 hours because I was sitting,
I was sitting in person with himbecause every single question he
answered 5 different ways, right?
We got the poetic answer, we gotthe Irish storyteller, we got
the philosophy, we got the theology, we got the former
(07:17):
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 wastrying to get an ending and he I
couldn't land it. But then what happened and and
it was beautiful and he was beautiful.
(07:37):
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 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
(08:00):
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. 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
(08:24):
people in Los Angeles who the day that it came out that it
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, the memorial service.
(08:46):
But what happened with the show altogether is that a lot of
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
(09:09):
it was all happening at the sametime.
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 ofquoting or speaking his poem for
A New Beginning, which I think is one of my favourites.
(09:32):
Thresholds is something he 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 and
just from, you know, reading himhis work, was just the idea that
in a threshold, in a transition,you are welcomed into leaving
(09:57):
behind a routine or a habit and to maybe starting to ritualize
your life differently. Do you have thoughts on that?
Yeah, you know that that particular inside of his I carry
with 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
(10:19):
then therefore don't actively, attentively enter into.
So he says life is full of thresholds.
Some we choose, most we don't. And the question is how to cross
this threshold worthily. And I just, I just love that
(10:39):
whole thing. I love the word worthily because
it's not a word we overuse and it's a word that makes you
really think deeply about what what you know, like you could
send days, what, what would whatdoes worthily mean?
How does it look? What what were the components of
a worthy crossing of this threshold?
And he's also about the, the, yes, the inner landscape of
(11:02):
beauty and also the visible world and the invisible world.
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
(11:26):
of, you know, what are they thin, thin places in times.
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
(11:48):
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 pastthem and not become aware.
I. Want to go back to your origin
story? So you were So we're as the
(12:09):
group knows, but 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 in 1960.
What was it like growing up in Oklahoma?
Oh, gosh. And you know, in the 60s in
(12:31):
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 did. Not come to.
Like most of the things you think of in the 60s, they kind
(12:51):
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 in
Oklahoma that I know. I mean, I think about this so
much now because I really think the seeds of now were starting
(13:12):
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.
(13:32):
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?
(13:54):
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,
(14:18):
watching the news, it was a it was a decade of violence.
You know, I was born on the night John F Kennedy was
elected. My father was big Oklahoma
Democrat and almost everybody I knew in Oklahoma back then was a
Democrat. Just take that in, you know?
Really. Well, Elizabeth Warren's from
(14:39):
from Oklahoma and. 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
(14:59):
playing in the background, whichwe a few years ago, I learned
was actually the one playing in the 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, youknow, really failed here because
so, you know, it was Kennedy, itwas his brother, it was it was
(15:19):
Martin Luther King junior. And I remember, you know,
bodies, body bags coming home 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, big fish in
a small pond. And he got he got helped get a
(15:41):
Democratic governor elected. This was right around the
Watergate era, who was greedy and like it was a good guy and
then wasn't a good guy and a lotof people went to prison.
He went to prison Sky David Hall.
So I was seeing like that kind of Watergate phenomenon of
actually, but in this case, a really idealistic progressive
(16:03):
figure really failed people and really failed that idealism.
So all of this is in it for me 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 were
(16:27):
an observer. You have you observed things
very well at a young age. 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,
(16:50):
there weren't a lot of books in my house.
The Bible was what I had. It was what was being introduced
to 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
(17:11):
there. And that was a lot to be to be
getting on with. How do you see the Bible as
foundational for you today? So, you know, I went, I ended up
going to divide it. I ended up going to Brown, which
is very flukish, everybody. Oh, I thought it was a Bible
college and my grandfather was OK with it just because Rodger
(17:33):
Williams was a Baptist, but he would have been appalled if he
knew anything about Rodger Williams 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 todivinity school and then
(17:55):
learning at a whole new level about the richness and
complexity of that text, of that, those many texts and a lot
more about the Hebrew Bible in which there are no heroes.
It tells it like it is. And it can get pretty horrific,
(18:15):
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 lot, haven't gotten an
introduction to it. You know, Richard Rohr is just
down the road here and and he's taught here in this very room.
And you know what? Do you have an any impression of
(18:38):
Richard or? You know, I did interview
Richard, Yeah, once. And I it was specifically about
it was like, he's hard. He is hard.
Because he knows what he has to say.
Oh, you wouldn't. Oh, so you so you couldn't crack
him open? Well, yeah, you, it's hard to
get it to be conversational and interactive, but I interviewed
(18:59):
him about specifically about hiswork with young men and the
desire for, for spiritual life 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.
(19:25):
They come at, you know, we don'tlike to make generalizations
about gender these days. And it is a spectrum.
But it's also true that our religious and spiritual
institutions especially, you know, certainly churches, 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
(19:47):
a time that you had the congregational leader who was
for a long time a man also in a synagogue.
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 it's kind of
(20:08):
been set up for women and women's spiritual orientation.
And he saw this deep, deep bounding.
And if you think about our worldnow and how this crisis of
masculinity and young men who are filling their hearts and
their spirits with with a lot oftoxins, you know who are open to
(20:32):
that because they haven't been offered more.
Yeah, yeah. 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.
The spirituality for the second-half of life and it's
just it's a an exceptional book about the threshold back to the
(20:53):
threshold of midlife. He's, he says things like, or
writes things like the primary 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.
(21:14):
We talked last night about the fact that I'm an ex.
I'm, I was an introvert and an extrovert and back to an
introvert again. And there's a sense of like, oh,
it's because that inner landscape, there's so much,
like, there's so much to explorein here.
And so I just, I, I, I credit Richard for helping me years ago
when that book came out, before I knew him at all.
(21:36):
That book helped me to understand, oh, there's
something happening around midlife.
That would be such a good book to discover at that point.
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 high.
Like your expansion? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you're still at 64, You're still in midlife, but what is
(21:58):
you know, what is, what's been your journey in during your 40s
and 50s and now early 60s? I mean, you're asking me that at
a moment which I'm really livingit and reflective about it.
And what I'm reflecting on now is how I I lived on the edge of
(22:21):
exhaustion 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.
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.
(22:43):
And where did that? Where did that come from?
Oh, it partly came from my my family, my father.
He really needed to be proud of Maine, but he needed me to do
things that he would have done to be proud of.
And so, you know, he 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
(23:05):
well, he, you know, he when I came to him and said I want to
go to this place called Brown 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 our husband, Phil 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
(23:26):
think he was. But, but in the end, he liked
it. It was he saw that it was an
impressive thing. And then I was working in
politics and journalism. He liked all that He never
liked. He didn't like it when I went to
do an high school when I did andeven 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
(23:48):
want. But you know.
We have time. Yeah, he well, he was a really
he was really, he was a person who was 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, those
ancient, you know, those maps where I said there be Dragons at
the end of the map. That always felt like his
(24:09):
childhood was like that. He just didn't really have
normal emotional. He wanted to and he tried, you
know, he was narcissistic in theway a four year old who's been
abused as narcissistic. They just can't see beyond their
when we get on to that, how? Well, let's.
Yes, Sir. Well, because I'm a good
interviewer. Where are we?
Where is. That no.
(24:30):
So do you think there's some like for you?
I mean you, you can say no. Please, my father.
Right. So the generation's trauma, is
there something? Like this, 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 arealways, always, no matter how
long we're these bodies reckoning with our earliest
(24:53):
years and these relationships 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
(25:15):
years, 20 years that was your transformer transformational
time that said like I need, I need a metamorphosis and, and
talk about that. I think that for me has been the
last few years I, you know, I did make a huge turn.
It's just how I got to my fatherfrom like I really was on this
(25:38):
politics, journalism, 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 inBerlin to our ambassador to West
(26:00):
Germany, who was a Reagan 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 young
he was. I ended up sitting around these
tables with him and his peers who are nuclear armed experts.
(26:20):
And they were literally moving 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 Ireally didn't know what to do
with because on the one hand, I was having an exhilarating,
thrilling, you know, ego, ego tending experience.
(26:42):
But they these men who had huge careers, huge expertise, huge
egos, like huge accomplishment. I would be with this ambassador
and watch him give a brilliant speech about nuclear warfare as
a human being. He was about 13 and he was like
(27:04):
a really immature 13 year old boy.
And most, not everybody, but most of the people I met at that
level were like that. 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 that I was so
(27:26):
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 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 the
young people now they talk aboutthe quarter life crisis like
(27:47):
that's going to be that'll be another expansion.
We're actually having a workshopon on that in January, so yes.
Also, I love how the the youngermillennials and the older
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 the I, I just, I mean, there's some, some of
(28:08):
those new rooms. We have to be careful cause
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.
I've heard some of them describethem.
So I think I have maybe 1/4 lifecrisis.
I didn't have that language. Then I got married very
impulsively and lived in Englandfor a year and didn't, and wrote
(28:31):
fiction and then I had children and, and all of that.
I went to divinity school, but Ididn't know what I was going to
do with divinity school. And so then, you know, then very
gradually ended up starting this, getting to this.
This is undoing not on being I guess.
But then when I got back into having a professional purpose, I
(28:55):
did kind of default to that. You know, I have to justify my,
my, my existence and, and do it 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
them to think that you have to make a choice between
professional success and just your personal vitality.
(29:22):
I don't want to live in a world where I think that's a necessary
choice. But I definitely did that.
And, you know, I raised my kids and I and I and I was divorced
for a long time and was pretty much single parent.
That's hard, right? So building this big thing and,
and attending to my children andI was really kind of 20 years of
(29:43):
my life. But then the the midlife
Christmas threshold, the 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 tothink that it was OK for me to
think this way. You know, Ben's been around and
(30:05):
watching this and he saw some ofthe transition, but I just
gradually realized 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
(30:25):
discernment was I, I didn't everstop caring.
Yes, but I can be who I am and 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
(30:46):
to a point, or at least I did. And I know I see a lot of people
where you simply can no longer lean into the depletings.
So sometimes people, you know, when I took the show 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.
(31:08):
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. 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
(31:28):
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 about and care about was what am
I 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, Ireally gave up a lot of the
(31:52):
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 budget.
So just that like the constant raising of money.
There's a question I want to askyou related to what you just
said a moment ago. One of our favorite questions at
MEA is 10 years from now, what will you regret if you don't
(32:15):
learn it or do it now? Partly because anticipated
regret is a form of wisdom on the idea.
And frankly, at 20 years old, you don't have anticipated
regret. You got a long runway ahead of
you. But at 50607080, Jack here in
the room, happy birthday to you.You don't have as much runway.
(32:36):
So there's a sense that you needto have a catalyst.
When I, when I moved to, to 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 language
and I'm not going to learn to surf.
But then when I put it in the context of 10 years from now, at
66, will I regret that I didn't learn Spanish, that I started
(32:58):
learning Spanish and learning tosurf.
What about you? What, what might you regret 10
years from now if you didn't 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, you
know, I was like an interloper doing radio podcasting that I
felt like I would be a writer when I was younger like that I
(33:21):
would write, but then then I didn't.
I just couldn't. 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 enter the fall is going to be totally prioritizing
that. I just spent a month writing.
(33:43):
Can you tell us about the book? Well, we're going to talk about
in the next few days. You're going to learn a lot
about the book, OK? How about for our podcast?
Audience 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
(34:04):
the conversations are kind of interacting in my mind and
creating a way to see to tell 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.
(34:26):
And really, you know, I think that the question that is on my
heart and that I feel is there for so many people is how to be
present and stay present to thisworld, which also means getting
present to ourselves, right. So it's not it's not an either,
(34:46):
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 that work, that calling through
this life that I've had these inthis century, that the early.
(35:10):
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 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?
(35:32):
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 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 that the
(35:54):
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 my friendships.
Yeah, people, I, I have just fallen in love the last year for
the first time in 15 years. And also in that 15 year period,
(36:17):
I pretty much decided that I. You can sell it.
You can sell. It Well, here let me say it this
way. I knew a lot of women my age who
spent their life force on relationships that were not good
worthy of them. And I made this decision at some
point because I didn't want to be alone or this idea that I
(36:40):
don't want to grow old alone. And I didn't say to my best
friend who was just constantly going from one relationship to
the other. So we are going to grow old
alone. OK, These men are going to
probably die before us. Sorry guys, but it's true.
So like that can't be a reason to spend your life force it just
to be in relationship. But what I ended up doing, which
(37:01):
I'm really proud of. OK, like at this 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 sucha false statement that there are
so many forms of love. And I ended up just deeply
(37:23):
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 has been one of the most
joyful gifts of these last like 10-15 years of my life are these
beautiful friendships. And also my love for my children
(37:44):
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't
have to have every single one ofthem.
In the last couple of years coming in pandemic, what I
realized while I was grounded inMinnesota in my very quiet,
peaceful neighborhood in Saint Paul, which I on some level was
(38:06):
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. And I also felt like I had
gotten self-sufficient to the point that probably wasn't good
(38:28):
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 liferight now through that, of that
kind of companionship. But I'm really glad to know that
I can live without it. I mean, I don't want to live
(38:50):
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 big
multifaceted thing, will serve me for the rest of my life.
You wrote a book called BecomingWise and about the are living.
And So what does wisdom mean to you?
What, what and how are you wisertoday at 64 than you were at 44?
(39:17):
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? What does wisdom mean to you?
So after I wrote that book in no, at no point in the book do I
define wisdom. And I didn't relate that until
(39:38):
after I wrote it and people said, oh, what is your operating
definition of wisdom? I didn't have your.
Editor didn't ask for that. That's strange.
Well, 'cause what I was doing was, you know, what I did is I
basically took the whole, at that point, it's like 13 years
of conversations And I and I, you know, there were a couple of
years and there were all I did was with go back through
(40:00):
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, 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
(40:25):
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 was listening to your, what was
your definition? I said metabolize and mine
changes every month, but metabolized experience mindfully
(40:45):
shared for the common good. Yeah.
So, so there's there's there's resonance.
So what I started to so this is this kind of a really pared
down. 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
(41:06):
people in our lives somewhere inour lives, right?
I think that the difference between wisdom, so you know, the
difference between like saying knowledge or accomplishment is
that you can kind of quantify those things, right?
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.
(41:29):
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 mywork, also in those people who
are not famous and, you know, below the cultural radar.
But in, you know, whatever work any of us does in our field, we
(41:52):
know that there are these teachers, right, these these
individuals who've just radiatedsomething.
They've like they've influenced generations and generations of
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
(42:14):
of an operating definition of wisdom.
So I'm kind of getting more at that second-half of years like
for. Yeah, becoming good.
Exactly. It feels to me like we're moving
in an era where we need more wisdom.
We need, yeah, the world is complicated.
And, you know, knowledge is sortof like a math equation.
Like it's a plus sign you accumulate knowledge, but you
(42:35):
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
important. And in the history of mystery
schools and wisdom schools and great that they actually tended
to emerge in times of stress on the human consciousness.
So I my hope is that midlife wisdom schools like MEA are
(42:57):
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 to ground yourself?
What are the practices you use to, you know on a regular basis
that help you to have a groundedknowing to to quote I think AV
(43:18):
Northcutt the I have. A grounded knowing.
So there's one thing I'll say about wisdom.
I think this is true of Mystics 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
(43:39):
asking me that. I'm asking her how to say how do
you 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. You know, knowledge becomes less
relevant. It just inevitably does.
I don't care how brilliant somebody is at the moment.
At the time, I was just at the ass when I did this festival
last week and I was musing on how three years ago there were
(44:02):
certain people who are, I think like the knowledgeable people
who come up with phrases like the world is flat, you know, And
I mean, this is right. You know, it's 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
(44:25):
things that I want to be do in this next chapter of my life is
be a good steward of my archive 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 thatabout staying grounded is is
(44:51):
about our attention is about 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 meditationor prayer or journaling or
(45:14):
whatever it might be? 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 at
that right. I've had times where I was
meditating silently. I've had periods on my life.
It was a period where I wrote a prayer because I felt like like
(45:34):
this is my spiritual mother 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? I can recite it.
I can bring it. I'll bring it.
Tomorrow, free podcast listeners.
You just have to come here next.Next time Chris is teaching.
For about a year and a half, I prayed this prayer every day and
(45:57):
it starts, 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
(46:20):
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
(46:40):
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 the I am a person with an open heart now.
(47:01):
And I was, 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 andI still do that sometimes.
Like I'll take a book of poetry or a book that is very beautiful
(47:22):
and dense. 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 aparagraph at a time.
So I'm like, I've had all these different rituals and right now
(47:44):
I've been moving around so much.I don't.
I haven't in this. My ritual is being in love.
You're a giggly girl, right? Now, yeah, it's great to fall in
love after you've already figured out what you do for a
living, Raised your kids, you know?
(48:05):
You've earned it, girl. You've earned.
It to be an adult and then you 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 that would have
meant? I have no relationship to this
(48:26):
word retirement. I I said to you yesterday, I'm
fascinated by the evolution of aging.
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 mentor when I was
growing in that world I grew up in, it would be that people
(48:48):
would really just stop doing everything and kick back.
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,
(49:11):
have a, you know, knock on wood or pixels or whatever, we have
more, many more active years to be, just to be alive, right?
And to be of service and and to be cultivating joy.
(49:32):
And so the idea of retirement. Just feels too small for me to
be a label of who I would becomeat some point.
But I'm, I mean, all for workingless.
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
(49:54):
mind numbing work in a factory, Sun City sounded really good.
Maybe learning to golf, having amartini at lunch.
I mean, that was sort of the waythat 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
(50:17):
Arthur Brooks calls the crystallized intelligence, this
idea which is an alternative wayof looking at wisdom at 60 or
65, you're just finding your 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
(50:37):
nourishing, that is tapping intothat wisdom.
A few years ago I started to. Notice my brain working.
Differently. And kind of really went down
this rabbit hole of what we knowabout the aging brain.
And I think like, you know, evena few years ago, if you said the
aging brain, you just imagine deterioration, right, right.
(50:59):
And so So what they say is that you know, as our.
Brains grow. Older, we may be less able to
kind of take it to be to like learn 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
(51:26):
motivated by novelty, but we're more in wonder at the ordinary.
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.
(51:50):
You know you. Can't remember names so.
What? Right.
Like I feel like in my brains a 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 fileswere 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.
(52:12):
And yes, I am so aware 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
(52:34):
my head. And so like, I really love being
interviewed these days because Inever know what is going to come
out. You know, and I'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 Iget a question coming at me and
it just has to happen organically, it's just so
(52:54):
fascinating. There's a guy.
Named Doctor Gene Cohen and he has a great, but he's passed
away. He has a book called the I think
it'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 togo from left brain to right
(53:18):
brain, from logical, lyrical, all in the same sentence.
So great. And there's a sense that.
You can. Traverse a broader sense of your
brain. Your brain is shrinking a little
bit, but you're as it's shrinking, you're not so right
brain or left brain segmented. You're not so binary.
Definitely feel that it does right?
Yes, like you're. Doing 11 or the other.
(53:40):
Yes, yes, yeah. OK, good.
All right, Last question. So let's say someone 30 years
younger than you, a lovely womanwho's on a career path and
married and she's like doing a lot, She's juggling a lot that's
happens in our 30s and our 40s. She comes to you and she says,
(54:00):
I, I want an auction to have teawith you and 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 a aphorism that reallyhas your wisdom fingerprints on
it. Basically, what's the piece of
(54:21):
wisdom that you might offer 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 really
bad. At questions like that, although
I've always now 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 Moses and Buddha would have been amazing on
Twitter, right? Like because they did these one
(54:43):
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 is it is life giving.
It is fuel. It is even fuel for whatever
(55:05):
you're fighting. Don't let anybody take that away
from 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, thank you, Krista. Did I do OK?
(55:29):
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, gladly.
Well, this is the first time I'mdoing an.
Outro, 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
(55:53):
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
course of our workshop that around spiritual hospitality.
(56:13):
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. There's a beautiful roomy quote.
She's not a quote, but it's a poem called The Guest House.
(56:36):
And it really speaks to the ideathat 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 thetime, the point of spiritual
hospitality and Rumi's guest house is you let the, the, the
emotions come through you so that they, you don't get stuck
(56:59):
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 how
do we listen to each other, to inside and then to the greater
consciousness of the world? Secondly, she said at one point
(57:20):
during the week. So this idea that I love who I
am becoming, this is, I think, areal beautiful premise around
aging, to see that maybe what we're supposed to do as a in the
course of our lives is to actually become more of who we
were supposed to be. And Krista's one of those
people. I mean, she grew up in, you
(57:41):
know, in Oklahoma, Christian family, liberal minded, but
Christian and Bible thumping. And she to, to become who she
has become from her roots reallytook an awful lot of willingness
to take a unique path. The third thing that I will just
(58:04):
take from my time with Krista isjust 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 that
term is about doing things for future generations.
(58:25):
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 with Krista.
(58:45):
I hope you enjoyed this particular episode.
We'll see it next week. Thanks for listening to The
Midlife Chrysalis. The show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
on your favorite platform.
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 Maria
Shriver. Oh, you did?
And Rich Roll and Michael Frontein this room.
So, yeah, so we've done, we've done some of them and I
(01:51):
probably, I may have even 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.
There's a lot of podcasts, but it's actually pretty impressive.
It's you know, so you know what this is all about.
(02:12):
So what does it take to be a great interviewer?
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.
(02:33):
You know, I'll just say a few things.
One thing I've, 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. 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.
(02:53):
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
have in common. And I think to create a
hospitable intellectual space, spiritual space.
And that has meant, and you got this right too already.
(03:14):
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 audio
engineers were always especiallyI saw this really come to life
during COVID when people are, you know, suddenly were
interviewing people in their homes, in their basements, you
know, and you know, everything being held in a spirit of warmth
(03:38):
and 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 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 I
(04:03):
learned is that, well, also I think the point of preparation
is also hospitality because we encounter each other at a bodily
animal level before any words are spoken.
And I think we know just within minutes whether this person is
(04:27):
genuinely interested in US or whether they're there's asking
curious sounding questions 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 actively
(04:49):
dispel it. And then the final thing I'll
say just that comes to mind thatI've learned is I think also the
point of the preparation, yes, 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
(05:11):
that feeling, I don't have to explain or represent or defend
you, just your whole body 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
(05:32):
questions fall away when I do the preparation.
And I realize that's because I'm, I'm asking questions that
are going to be interesting to them rather than just what is
interesting to me. There 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 hopeserves you OK.
(05:55):
One of your most poignant interviews ever was with John
O'Donoghue before he passed. Right before.
All time on being greatest hits,yeah.
Talk about talk about John O'Donoghue.
So those don't know John O'Donoghue poet turned, I'm
sorry, a priest turned poet, butphilosopher and and religious
(06:15):
says any past at age 52 in the middle of the night and very
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
(06:37):
you heard Lee talk about tracking, which is sort of an
inner landscape of beauty. What was your experience being
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 Jillian O'Donoghue was a
poet. He was former Catholic priest,
so and theologian. He was a poet, he was a
(06:57):
philosopher and he was kind of an just an Irish storyteller.
And that interview took about 2 1/2 hours because I was sitting,
I was sitting in person with himbecause every single question he
answered 5 different ways, right?
We got the poetic answer, we gotthe Irish storyteller, we got
the philosophy, we got the theology, we got the former
(07:17):
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 wastrying to get an ending and he I
couldn't land it. But then what happened and and
it was beautiful and he was beautiful.
(07:37):
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 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
(08:00):
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. 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
(08:24):
people in Los Angeles who the day that it came out that it
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, the memorial service.
(08:46):
But what happened with the show altogether is that a lot of
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
(09:09):
it was all happening at the sametime.
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 ofquoting or speaking his poem for
A New Beginning, which I think is one of my favourites.
(09:32):
Thresholds is something he 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 and
just from, you know, reading himhis work, was just the idea that
in a threshold, in a transition,you are welcomed into leaving
(09:57):
behind a routine or a habit and to maybe starting to ritualize
your life differently. Do you have thoughts on that?
Yeah, you know that that particular inside of his I carry
with 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
(10:19):
then therefore don't actively, attentively enter into.
So he says life is full of thresholds.
Some we choose, most we don't. And the question is how to cross
this threshold worthily. And I just, I just love that
(10:39):
whole thing. I love the word worthily because
it's not a word we overuse and it's a word that makes you
really think deeply about what what you know, like you could
send days, what, what would whatdoes worthily mean?
How does it look? What what were the components of
a worthy crossing of this threshold?
And he's also about the, the, yes, the inner landscape of
(11:02):
beauty and also the visible world and the invisible world.
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
(11:26):
of, you know, what are they thin, thin places in times.
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
(11:48):
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 pastthem and not become aware.
I. Want to go back to your origin
story? So you were So we're as the
(12:09):
group knows, but 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 in 1960.
What was it like growing up in Oklahoma?
Oh, gosh. And you know, in the 60s in
(12:31):
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 did. Not come to.
Like most of the things you think of in the 60s, they kind
(12:51):
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 in
Oklahoma that I know. I mean, I think about this so
much now because I really think the seeds of now were starting
(13:12):
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.
(13:32):
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?
(13:54):
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,
(14:18):
watching the news, it was a it was a decade of violence.
You know, I was born on the night John F Kennedy was
elected. My father was big Oklahoma
Democrat and almost everybody I knew in Oklahoma back then was a
Democrat. Just take that in, you know?
Really. Well, Elizabeth Warren's from
(14:39):
from Oklahoma and. 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
(14:59):
playing in the background, whichwe a few years ago, I learned
was actually the one playing in the 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, youknow, really failed here because
so, you know, it was Kennedy, itwas his brother, it was it was
(15:19):
Martin Luther King junior. And I remember, you know,
bodies, body bags coming home 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, big fish in
a small pond. And he got he got helped get a
(15:41):
Democratic governor elected. This was right around the
Watergate era, who was greedy and like it was a good guy and
then wasn't a good guy and a lotof people went to prison.
He went to prison Sky David Hall.
So I was seeing like that kind of Watergate phenomenon of
actually, but in this case, a really idealistic progressive
(16:03):
figure really failed people and really failed that idealism.
So all of this is in it for me 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 were
(16:27):
an observer. You have you observed things
very well at a young age. 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,
(16:50):
there weren't a lot of books in my house.
The Bible was what I had. It was what was being introduced
to 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
(17:11):
there. And that was a lot to be to be
getting on with. How do you see the Bible as
foundational for you today? So, you know, I went, I ended up
going to divide it. I ended up going to Brown, which
is very flukish, everybody. Oh, I thought it was a Bible
college and my grandfather was OK with it just because Rodger
(17:33):
Williams was a Baptist, but he would have been appalled if he
knew anything about Rodger Williams 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 todivinity school and then
(17:55):
learning at a whole new level about the richness and
complexity of that text, of that, those many texts and a lot
more about the Hebrew Bible in which there are no heroes.
It tells it like it is. And it can get pretty horrific,
(18:15):
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 lot, haven't gotten an
introduction to it. You know, Richard Rohr is just
down the road here and and he's taught here in this very room.
And you know what? Do you have an any impression of
(18:38):
Richard or? You know, I did interview
Richard, Yeah, once. And I it was specifically about
it was like, he's hard. He is hard.
Because he knows what he has to say.
Oh, you wouldn't. Oh, so you so you couldn't crack
him open? Well, yeah, you, it's hard to
get it to be conversational and interactive, but I interviewed
(18:59):
him about specifically about hiswork with young men and the
desire for, for spiritual life 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.
(19:25):
They come at, you know, we don'tlike to make generalizations
about gender these days. And it is a spectrum.
But it's also true that our religious and spiritual
institutions especially, you know, certainly churches, 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
(19:47):
a time that you had the congregational leader who was
for a long time a man also in a synagogue.
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 it's kind of
(20:08):
been set up for women and women's spiritual orientation.
And he saw this deep, deep bounding.
And if you think about our worldnow and how this crisis of
masculinity and young men who are filling their hearts and
their spirits with with a lot oftoxins, you know who are open to
(20:32):
that because they haven't been offered more.
Yeah, yeah. 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.
The spirituality for the second-half of life and it's
just it's a an exceptional book about the threshold back to the
(20:53):
threshold of midlife. He's, he says things like, or
writes things like the primary 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.
(21:14):
We talked last night about the fact that I'm an ex.
I'm, I was an introvert and an extrovert and back to an
introvert again. And there's a sense of like, oh,
it's because that inner landscape, there's so much,
like, there's so much to explorein here.
And so I just, I, I, I credit Richard for helping me years ago
when that book came out, before I knew him at all.
(21:36):
That book helped me to understand, oh, there's
something happening around midlife.
That would be such a good book to discover at that point.
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 high.
Like your expansion? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So you're still at 64, You're still in midlife, but what is
(21:58):
you know, what is, what's been your journey in during your 40s
and 50s and now early 60s? I mean, you're asking me that at
a moment which I'm really livingit and reflective about it.
And what I'm reflecting on now is how I I lived on the edge of
(22:21):
exhaustion 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.
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.
(22:43):
And where did that? Where did that come from?
Oh, it partly came from my my family, my father.
He really needed to be proud of Maine, but he needed me to do
things that he would have done to be proud of.
And so, you know, he 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
(23:05):
well, he, you know, he when I came to him and said I want to
go to this place called Brown 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 our husband, Phil 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
(23:26):
think he was. But, but in the end, he liked
it. It was he saw that it was an
impressive thing. And then I was working in
politics and journalism. He liked all that He never
liked. He didn't like it when I went to
do an high school when I did andeven 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
(23:48):
want. But you know.
We have time. Yeah, he well, he was a really
he was really, he was a person who was 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, those
ancient, you know, those maps where I said there be Dragons at
the end of the map. That always felt like his
(24:09):
childhood was like that. He just didn't really have
normal emotional. He wanted to and he tried, you
know, he was narcissistic in theway a four year old who's been
abused as narcissistic. They just can't see beyond their
when we get on to that, how? Well, let's.
Yes, Sir. Well, because I'm a good
interviewer. Where are we?
Where is. That no.
(24:30):
So do you think there's some like for you?
I mean you, you can say no. Please, my father.
Right. So the generation's trauma, is
there something? Like this, 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 arealways, always, no matter how
long we're these bodies reckoning with our earliest
(24:53):
years and these relationships 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
(25:15):
years, 20 years that was your transformer transformational
time that said like I need, I need a metamorphosis and, and
talk about that. I think that for me has been the
last few years I, you know, I did make a huge turn.
It's just how I got to my fatherfrom like I really was on this
(25:38):
politics, journalism, 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 inBerlin to our ambassador to West
(26:00):
Germany, who was a Reagan 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 young
he was. I ended up sitting around these
tables with him and his peers who are nuclear armed experts.
(26:20):
And they were literally moving 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 Ireally didn't know what to do
with because on the one hand, I was having an exhilarating,
thrilling, you know, ego, ego tending experience.
(26:42):
But they these men who had huge careers, huge expertise, huge
egos, like huge accomplishment. I would be with this ambassador
and watch him give a brilliant speech about nuclear warfare as
a human being. He was about 13 and he was like
(27:04):
a really immature 13 year old boy.
And most, not everybody, but most of the people I met at that
level were like that. 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 that I was so
(27:26):
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 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 the
young people now they talk aboutthe quarter life crisis like
(27:47):
that's going to be that'll be another expansion.
We're actually having a workshopon on that in January, so yes.
Also, I love how the the youngermillennials and the older
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 the I, I just, I mean, there's some, some of
(28:08):
those new rooms. We have to be careful cause
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.
I've heard some of them describethem.
So I think I have maybe 1/4 lifecrisis.
I didn't have that language. Then I got married very
impulsively and lived in Englandfor a year and didn't, and wrote
(28:31):
fiction and then I had children and, and all of that.
I went to divinity school, but Ididn't know what I was going to
do with divinity school. And so then, you know, then very
gradually ended up starting this, getting to this.
This is undoing not on being I guess.
But then when I got back into having a professional purpose, I
(28:55):
did kind of default to that. You know, I have to justify my,
my, my existence and, and do it 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
them to think that you have to make a choice between
professional success and just your personal vitality.
(29:22):
I don't want to live in a world where I think that's a necessary
choice. But I definitely did that.
And, you know, I raised my kids and I and I and I was divorced
for a long time and was pretty much single parent.
That's hard, right? So building this big thing and,
and attending to my children andI was really kind of 20 years of
(29:43):
my life. But then the the midlife
Christmas threshold, the 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 tothink that it was OK for me to
think this way. You know, Ben's been around and
(30:05):
watching this and he saw some ofthe transition, but I just
gradually realized 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
(30:25):
discernment was I, I didn't everstop caring.
Yes, but I can be who I am and 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
(30:46):
to a point, or at least I did. And I know I see a lot of people
where you simply can no longer lean into the depletings.
So sometimes people, you know, when I took the show 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.
(31:08):
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. 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
(31:28):
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 about and care about was what am
I 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, Ireally gave up a lot of the
(31:52):
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 budget.
So just that like the constant raising of money.
There's a question I want to askyou related to what you just
said a moment ago. One of our favorite questions at
MEA is 10 years from now, what will you regret if you don't
(32:15):
learn it or do it now? Partly because anticipated
regret is a form of wisdom on the idea.
And frankly, at 20 years old, you don't have anticipated
regret. You got a long runway ahead of
you. But at 50607080, Jack here in
the room, happy birthday to you.You don't have as much runway.
(32:36):
So there's a sense that you needto have a catalyst.
When I, when I moved to, to 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 language
and I'm not going to learn to surf.
But then when I put it in the context of 10 years from now, at
66, will I regret that I didn't learn Spanish, that I started
(32:58):
learning Spanish and learning tosurf.
What about you? What, what might you regret 10
years from now if you didn't 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, you
know, I was like an interloper doing radio podcasting that I
felt like I would be a writer when I was younger like that I
(33:21):
would write, but then then I didn't.
I just couldn't. 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 enter the fall is going to be totally prioritizing
that. I just spent a month writing.
(33:43):
Can you tell us about the book? Well, we're going to talk about
in the next few days. You're going to learn a lot
about the book, OK? How about for our podcast?
Audience 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
(34:04):
the conversations are kind of interacting in my mind and
creating a way to see to tell 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.
(34:26):
And really, you know, I think that the question that is on my
heart and that I feel is there for so many people is how to be
present and stay present to thisworld, which also means getting
present to ourselves, right. So it's not it's not an either,
(34:46):
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 that work, that calling through
this life that I've had these inthis century, that the early.
(35:10):
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 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?
(35:32):
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 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 that the
(35:54):
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 my friendships.
Yeah, people, I, I have just fallen in love the last year for
the first time in 15 years. And also in that 15 year period,
(36:17):
I pretty much decided that I. You can sell it.
You can sell. It Well, here let me say it this
way. I knew a lot of women my age who
spent their life force on relationships that were not good
worthy of them. And I made this decision at some
point because I didn't want to be alone or this idea that I
(36:40):
don't want to grow old alone. And I didn't say to my best
friend who was just constantly going from one relationship to
the other. So we are going to grow old
alone. OK, These men are going to
probably die before us. Sorry guys, but it's true.
So like that can't be a reason to spend your life force it just
to be in relationship. But what I ended up doing, which
(37:01):
I'm really proud of. OK, like at this 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 sucha false statement that there are
so many forms of love. And I ended up just deeply
(37:23):
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 has been one of the most
joyful gifts of these last like 10-15 years of my life are these
beautiful friendships. And also my love for my children
(37:44):
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't
have to have every single one ofthem.
In the last couple of years coming in pandemic, what I
realized while I was grounded inMinnesota in my very quiet,
peaceful neighborhood in Saint Paul, which I on some level was
(38:06):
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. And I also felt like I had
gotten self-sufficient to the point that probably wasn't good
(38:28):
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 liferight now through that, of that
kind of companionship. But I'm really glad to know that
I can live without it. I mean, I don't want to live
(38:50):
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 big
multifaceted thing, will serve me for the rest of my life.
You wrote a book called BecomingWise and about the are living.
And So what does wisdom mean to you?
What, what and how are you wisertoday at 64 than you were at 44?
(39:17):
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? What does wisdom mean to you?
So after I wrote that book in no, at no point in the book do I
define wisdom. And I didn't relate that until
(39:38):
after I wrote it and people said, oh, what is your operating
definition of wisdom? I didn't have your.
Editor didn't ask for that. That's strange.
Well, 'cause what I was doing was, you know, what I did is I
basically took the whole, at that point, it's like 13 years
of conversations And I and I, you know, there were a couple of
years and there were all I did was with go back through
(40:00):
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, 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
(40:25):
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 was listening to your, what was
your definition? I said metabolize and mine
changes every month, but metabolized experience mindfully
(40:45):
shared for the common good. Yeah.
So, so there's there's there's resonance.
So what I started to so this is this kind of a really pared
down. 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
(41:06):
people in our lives somewhere inour lives, right?
I think that the difference between wisdom, so you know, the
difference between like saying knowledge or accomplishment is
that you can kind of quantify those things, right?
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.
(41:29):
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 mywork, also in those people who
are not famous and, you know, below the cultural radar.
But in, you know, whatever work any of us does in our field, we
(41:52):
know that there are these teachers, right, these these
individuals who've just radiatedsomething.
They've like they've influenced generations and generations of
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
(42:14):
of an operating definition of wisdom.
So I'm kind of getting more at that second-half of years like
for. Yeah, becoming good.
Exactly. It feels to me like we're moving
in an era where we need more wisdom.
We need, yeah, the world is complicated.
And, you know, knowledge is sortof like a math equation.
Like it's a plus sign you accumulate knowledge, but you
(42:35):
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
important. And in the history of mystery
schools and wisdom schools and great that they actually tended
to emerge in times of stress on the human consciousness.
So I my hope is that midlife wisdom schools like MEA are
(42:57):
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 to ground yourself?
What are the practices you use to, you know on a regular basis
that help you to have a groundedknowing to to quote I think AV
(43:18):
Northcutt the I have. A grounded knowing.
So there's one thing I'll say about wisdom.
I think this is true of Mystics 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
(43:39):
asking me that. I'm asking her how to say how do
you 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. You know, knowledge becomes less
relevant. It just inevitably does.
I don't care how brilliant somebody is at the moment.
At the time, I was just at the ass when I did this festival
last week and I was musing on how three years ago there were
(44:02):
certain people who are, I think like the knowledgeable people
who come up with phrases like the world is flat, you know, And
I mean, this is right. You know, it's 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
(44:25):
things that I want to be do in this next chapter of my life is
be a good steward of my archive 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 thatabout staying grounded is is
(44:51):
about our attention is about 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 meditationor prayer or journaling or
(45:14):
whatever it might be? 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 at
that right. I've had times where I was
meditating silently. I've had periods on my life.
It was a period where I wrote a prayer because I felt like like
(45:34):
this is my spiritual mother 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? I can recite it.
I can bring it. I'll bring it.
Tomorrow, free podcast listeners.
You just have to come here next.Next time Chris is teaching.
For about a year and a half, I prayed this prayer every day and
(45:57):
it starts, 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
(46:20):
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
(46:40):
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 the I am a person with an open heart now.
(47:01):
And I was, 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 andI still do that sometimes.
Like I'll take a book of poetry or a book that is very beautiful
(47:22):
and dense. 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 aparagraph at a time.
So I'm like, I've had all these different rituals and right now
(47:44):
I've been moving around so much.I don't.
I haven't in this. My ritual is being in love.
You're a giggly girl, right? Now, yeah, it's great to fall in
love after you've already figured out what you do for a
living, Raised your kids, you know?
(48:05):
You've earned it, girl. You've earned.
It to be an adult and then you 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 that would have
meant? I have no relationship to this
(48:26):
word retirement. I I said to you yesterday, I'm
fascinated by the evolution of aging.
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 mentor when I was
growing in that world I grew up in, it would be that people
(48:48):
would really just stop doing everything and kick back.
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,
(49:11):
have a, you know, knock on wood or pixels or whatever, we have
more, many more active years to be, just to be alive, right?
And to be of service and and to be cultivating joy.
(49:32):
And so the idea of retirement. Just feels too small for me to
be a label of who I would becomeat some point.
But I'm, I mean, all for workingless.
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
(49:54):
mind numbing work in a factory, Sun City sounded really good.
Maybe learning to golf, having amartini at lunch.
I mean, that was sort of the waythat 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
(50:17):
Arthur Brooks calls the crystallized intelligence, this
idea which is an alternative wayof looking at wisdom at 60 or
65, you're just finding your 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
(50:37):
nourishing, that is tapping intothat wisdom.
A few years ago I started to. Notice my brain working.
Differently. And kind of really went down
this rabbit hole of what we knowabout the aging brain.
And I think like, you know, evena few years ago, if you said the
aging brain, you just imagine deterioration, right, right.
(50:59):
And so So what they say is that you know, as our.
Brains grow. Older, we may be less able to
kind of take it to be to like learn 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
(51:26):
motivated by novelty, but we're more in wonder at the ordinary.
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.
(51:50):
You know you. Can't remember names so.
What? Right.
Like I feel like in my brains a 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 fileswere 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.
(52:12):
And yes, I am so aware 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
(52:34):
my head. And so like, I really love being
interviewed these days because Inever know what is going to come
out. You know, and I'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 Iget a question coming at me and
it just has to happen organically, it's just so
(52:54):
fascinating. There's a guy.
Named Doctor Gene Cohen and he has a great, but he's passed
away. He has a book called the I think
it'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 togo from left brain to right
(53:18):
brain, from logical, lyrical, all in the same sentence.
So great. And there's a sense that.
You can. Traverse a broader sense of your
brain. Your brain is shrinking a little
bit, but you're as it's shrinking, you're not so right
brain or left brain segmented. You're not so binary.
Definitely feel that it does right?
Yes, like you're. Doing 11 or the other.
(53:40):
Yes, yes, yeah. OK, good.
All right, Last question. So let's say someone 30 years
younger than you, a lovely womanwho's on a career path and
married and she's like doing a lot, She's juggling a lot that's
happens in our 30s and our 40s. She comes to you and she says,
(54:00):
I, I want an auction to have teawith you and 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 a aphorism that reallyhas your wisdom fingerprints on
it. Basically, what's the piece of
(54:21):
wisdom that you might offer 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 really
bad. At questions like that, although
I've always now 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 Moses and Buddha would have been amazing on
Twitter, right? Like because they did these one
(54:43):
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 is it is life giving.
It is fuel. It is even fuel for whatever
(55:05):
you're fighting. Don't let anybody take that away
from 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, thank you, Krista. Did I do OK?
(55:29):
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, gladly.
Well, this is the first time I'mdoing an.
Outro, 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
(55:53):
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
course of our workshop that around spiritual hospitality.
(56:13):
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. There's a beautiful roomy quote.
She's not a quote, but it's a poem called The Guest House.
(56:36):
And it really speaks to the ideathat 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 thetime, the point of spiritual
hospitality and Rumi's guest house is you let the, the, the
emotions come through you so that they, you don't get stuck
(56:59):
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 how
do we listen to each other, to inside and then to the greater
consciousness of the world? Secondly, she said at one point
(57:20):
during the week. So this idea that I love who I
am becoming, this is, I think, areal beautiful premise around
aging, to see that maybe what we're supposed to do as a in the
course of our lives is to actually become more of who we
were supposed to be. And Krista's one of those
people. I mean, she grew up in, you
(57:41):
know, in Oklahoma, Christian family, liberal minded, but
Christian and Bible thumping. And she to, to become who she
has become from her roots reallytook an awful lot of willingness
to take a unique path. The third thing that I will just
(58:04):
take from my time with Krista isjust 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 that
term is about doing things for future generations.
(58:25):
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 with Krista.
(58:45):
I hope you enjoyed this particular episode.
We'll see it next week. Thanks for listening to The
Midlife Chrysalis. The show is produced by Midlife
Media. If you enjoyed this episode,
help us spread the word by subscribing and leaving a review
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