Hi, it’s Brilliant.
Near the end of his life, my dad said he felt as though he’d lived two lifetimes. He died at sixty-four.
When I was eighteen, thirty sounded old to me. By forty, sixty didn’t sound so old anymore. He didn’t even make it to senior citizen.
He grew up in a blue-collar family. His father worked at an oil refinery and his mother was a secretary. He dropped out of college in his first two weeks and worked a string of jobs: bookbinder, delivery driver, hod carrier, counterman at an auto parts store.
He was driven, and he was competitive. When he got the chance to pitch for a world-class fast-pitch softball team, he moved our family from Utah to Colorado to do it. Later he was inducted into the sport’s hall of fame.
He loved competing and he loved serving people, and business was how he did both. In 1979 he and my mom bought a Toyota store. He built an entrepreneurial career out of making deals and building things.
For more than twenty years he worked eighty-hour weeks, six days a week. By the time I got up for school, he’d already left for work. He was usually still at work when my mom made us dinner and tucked me in. I don’t remember him at a Little League game, a science fair, or a back-to-school night.
He put business ahead of his health, his family, and his spirituality for many years. His choices caught up with him, as they do. He was overweight. Years of stress, poor diet, too little sleep, no regular exercise, and not going to the doctor added up to a long list of ailments, including diabetes.
Eventually he had a heart attack. He survived it. In hindsight, that was the beginning of the end. He was in and out of the hospital after that, and my mom cared for him. The diabetes got worse, and both of his legs were amputated.
I saw him after the surgery. He was on a gurney, in a gown, with bandaged stumps where his legs had been. His hair was a mess. He looked tired, haggard, and scared, and I didn’t know what to say to someone who’d just been through that. My whole life, he’d been the one in control of whatever room he was in.
I asked myself: Is this man successful? Here was a man who was wealthy, respected, and influential. Is this the price of success, I wondered?
It’s not for me to say. But I do know it’s a question worth asking.
I don’t think I knew it then, but looking back I made two decisions in that moment. First, that would never be me. I would do my best to live a healthy, intentional life. Second, I would do my best to help others ask themselves what they really want and what they’re prepared to pay for it. And then I’d help them get it, do it, and become it.
What does it mean to live a good life, and how do we actually live one? I started the School for Good Living to explore that question. I’ve interviewed more than a hundred authors about it, and I spent the last three years writing a book about prayer. And it’s a question we each get to answer for ourselves. What do I really want, and what am I prepared to pay for it?
There’s power in the question. It takes some willingness to ask it, and some courage to follow the answer wherever it leads.
From the Commonplace Book
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Further Down the Rabbit Hole
Illenium is the stage name of Nick Miller, a DJ and producer who played a residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas this spring. He survived a heroin overdose in 2012 and has been sober since. I like to think his music is how he takes his pain and turns it into something beautiful, something that makes a difference for people.
There’s an old line about not being able to lead someone out of a desert you haven’t crossed yourself. Many of his songs sound to me like a man who got out. And he’s leading others out: he brings overdose-response training to his shows.
My current favorite of his: “ur Alive.”
Wishing you every good thing,
Brilliant