Good Life Project - Mitch Albom: Building a Life and Living that Matters.

Episode Date: October 30, 2018

How does a kid obsessed with making it in music end up becoming an internationally renowned, best-selling author, journalist, screenwriter, playwright, radio and television broadcaster and...and yes, musician? That's what we explore in today's wide-ranging conversation with Mitch Albom (https://www.mitchalbom.com/).Albom is the author of numerous #1 New York Times bestsellers. Tuesdays with Morrie, which spent four straight years atop the New York Times list, is now the bestselling memoir of all time. Morrie, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, For One More Day and Have a Little Faith have been made into award-winning television movies. His books have collectively sold nearly 40-million copies worldwide. Albom's latest book is The Next Person You Meet in Heaven (https://amzn.to/2po61tC).  Along the way, Mitch has followed his curiosity into journalism, sports-radio broadcasting, and continues to perform as a member of a band with a crew of other well-known authors. He founded nine charities in Detroit, including the first ever 24-hour medical clinic for homeless children in America, operates an orphanage in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, which he visits monthly and lives with his wife, Janine, in suburban Detroit.-------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sparketypes/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today is Mitch Albom. When most people hear his name, they think of him as the author of the book Tuesdays with Maury, which came out some 21 years ago and really became a part of the culture, sold a tremendous amount of copies and influenced a lot of conversations and began to awaken people to the idea of asking bigger questions about life. In those intervening 21 years, he has written a number of books, spoken around the world, become a philanthropist and served in so many different ways. And he's got a new book out now, which is actually 15 years after he came out with a book called The Five People You Meet in Heaven. This is the sequel to that book, and it's called The

Next Person You Meet in Heaven. And I had an opportunity to sit down with Mitch and have a really wide ranging conversation where we wove in a bit about what this new book is about and how it ties in with the earlier one, but really went much deeper into who he is as an artist, as a creator, the things that inspired him in life, the risks that he took, the openness to serendipity, what motivates him, where his muse comes from, how he sees a sort of seamless relationship between music and writing, how he found his way into a job that taught him how to write in the very early days and actually worked for free for the first six months or what we call, he sort of air quotes free, and how that has informed everything that he's done since then.

Really excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. swimming or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're gonna die.

Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. God, I was thinking about it. It's like 20, 21 years since Maury first came out. 21 years. Yeah. On the eve now, literally, of your latest book. Your journey,

just like the way you've navigated your life, has kind of fascinated me. It seems like, you know, on the one hand, you've gone from this to this to this. But then when you really look at your deep interests and passions, the way they've sort of fed into your life, it feels like it's more like a yes end. And then you're adding things rather than moving from one to another. Like, way back, seems like very early days, it was all about music for you. Yes. Yeah. If you go back to my music days, it kind of all starts to make sense. You just started the sports writing days. You're missing, you know, a little bit of the story. But I do find, it's interesting you say that,

I do find as I get older that a lot of things are falling into place that oh now i see why i went through that 15 20 30 years ago it's coming back to help me here now or why this happened and that did so and that's actually kind of a lot of what i deal with in this in this new book is you know why things happen why we don't when we don't think we understand why they're happening mistakes Mistakes. We think they're all mistakes. It's all a mistake because we're doing so bad. And then you find out, wait, that mistake actually led to something good. So I've had my share of mistakes. My music writing was a failure in terms of music stage was a failure, but it really launched me into a bunch of other things that turned out maybe that's what I was meant to do. When you were a kid,

was music the thing where if you could have made your living, if that could have been it, that would be it? Not just a kid, my friend. Yeah. Right now. Right, sitting in front of me today. Right now. I know it sounds strange, but if someone said, okay,

we're going to take whatever you've done in writing and you're not going to do that anymore, but we're going to transfer it and you'll be able to do it in music, I'd probably say yes. Even though I've never done any of it in music to this level yet. Music was always a passion of mine. And most things that I ended up doing that weren't music were being done as an addendum to music. I was a typical kid that told my parents when I was in 10th grade or 11th grade, I want to be a musician. That's great. That's wonderful. You're going to college. You can go to college and you'll be a musician. It's a nice hobby. Right. So I was a musician during college and I did get a college degree. And of course, I met Maury Schwartz at college. Didn't know that that was going to mean

anything. And Maury actually said, if you want to be a musician, be a musician, go pursue your dreams. So I left college and pursued my dreams as a musician. I lived over in Europe for a while, had an incredible experience as a nightclub singer on the island of Crete, where I was a singer and a piano player in this luxury resort in this little fishing village called Agios Nikolaos, which has now become quite the hotspot, but wasn't back then. Should have probably just stayed there the rest of my life. I had a little bungalow on the Aegean Sea. The water was blue.

The sky was always sunny. All I had to do was play piano for like an hour in the lounge and then sing with the band for a half an hour. And I was done. And they gave me cash, American cash. There was no taxes. There was no anything. And there was no expenses because

everything was taken care of. It was a luxury resort. And of course, like a fool, I left that after about six or seven months because I had to get back to New York City. I had to start my career as a young budding songwriter. And of course, when I got to New York City, I fell on my face, didn't succeed at all. But that led to other things, which ultimately led to writing, which ultimately led to me being here with you. Yeah. So, I mean, when you come back to New York, though, at that point, so you're what, like early 20s? Oh, barely.

Yeah. I got out of college when I was 20. So, yeah, probably 21. Right. Because how soon was it then when you started going from there into sports writing? Oh, there was a gap. I was a musician, a starving musician for several years. So you were kicking around New York for a chunk of time.

Yes, kicking around New York. I did the whole routine. This was the early 80s. Which was, I mean, that was such an incredible scene for music in New York. It was, but it was no scene to be a part of if you weren't into drugs. Yeah. And I was not. And it was tough.

You know, like, I mean, you were totally shut out if you weren't a drug user. I didn't, I wasn't even like making a moral stand. I didn't know anything about it. I was just this innocent kid. I didn't even know where you went. I didn't know, you know, I had no interest in doing drugs. I didn't know where you went to do drugs. And people just disappeared.

The musicians just disappeared and they were gone. And the next time you saw them again, they were crazy. But I lived all over Manhattan and Queens. And I did every showcase that you could think of on Monday nights where you have to bring your own people, and you make $6 for the night, and scrape together musicians. And ironically, here I had been, this nightclub singer in this island of Crete, beautiful, fantastic place, and I had to come back to become, you know, I wanted to start my career. And when I would try to put a band together, you know, you do auditions. And I remember on 8th Avenue and 40th Street, they had a building that they, I don't know if everyone's ever tried it since, was just a building for musicians to make music in. That was, I think, called the Drum Center or something like that. I can't remember.

I know the exact building you're talking about. But it was organized by floor. So type of music was so they put the real loud music on the highest floors, like heavy metal. They were up on the 20th. And if you were like basic rock, you were on 15 to 16. If you were folk, you were in the low 10s. And if you were solo acts, you were in the, you know.

So I used to audition musicians up there. And they would come in. And a lot of them were 40, 50 years old. And when you would talk to them, they would say, oh, if I could just get a gig on an island somewhere. I'm looking, wait a minute, I just left a gig on the island somewhere. I can't believe I came back to this. So I starved. I went through the whole deal.

I banged on record producers' doors. I went to labels. In those days, there was no internet. There record producers' doors. I went to labels. In those days, you know, there was no internet. There was nothing to send. You had to go. And you would bring your tape. And they'd undo your tape. And they'd start playing your tape. And you'd hear this song that you sweated over and just died over and spent all this time putting this tape together. And after 10 seconds, their phone would ring. And they'd pick up the phone. It wouldn't stop your tape. And they'd just talk on the phone, talk on the phone, talk on the phone.

And then they'd hang up and shut the tape off. And they'd say, yeah, man, I'm just not hearing it. You know, and you say, hear it. Of course you're not hearing it. You're on the phone. So it was a tough time as a creative person because everything you're creating, nobody really necessarily wants to hear,

at least when you're starting out. And I remember waking up in the morning sometimes in New York in his little tiny apartments thinking, if I don't get out of bed, nobody is going to miss me. Nobody's going to say, where's Mitch? Why isn't he coming and bringing us his songs? Why doesn't he show up today and play something for us? And that takes a lot out of you.

That's what I remember whenever I come to New York is that feeling of like, you've got to get yourself up and you've got to walk yourself down because nobody's going to come knock on your door and say, where's your music? And even though I didn't succeed in music, that helped me a lot later on when I did get into writing. Yeah.

Do you remember at any point, was there ever a sort of putting a stop date on it? Like, if I don't make X, if I don't break through, if I don't get something by this date, it's time to leave it behind or not so much. But not so much a specific date, but probably a... I started to transition. So one of the things being a musician is you work at night,

so you have your days free. And so I started to say, all right, I'm not going to spend all day just trying to bang on these doors. I'll play at night and I'll see who I meet and I'll work, but I got to find something else to do during the day. This is going to drive me crazy. Cause I was starting to hate to come home to the piano in the apartment. I looked at the piano and I would close it cause it made me,

it hurt my feelings that I wasn't succeeding. And, you know, I started to, this thing that I loved, I loved music. I still love music, but I loved it so passionately. And then I was sort of starting to resent it. You know, I was like, no, I would turn on the television instead of playing piano. So during the day, I started to wander around looking for stuff to do.

And one day, as fate would have it, and I did a lot of stuff. I worked as a Pinkerton security guard and, you know, I was a social worker and I ran little kids programs and I mean, you name it, scooped ice cream, everything. But one day I happened to be in a supermarket here in Queens and there was these newspapers that they give away, local newspapers that they throw in your basket. It was called the Queens Tribune. And at the bottom of the front

page, I had this little ad that said, you know, if you have spare time, we could use some help at the newspaper. And I had spare time. So I went down to their office. I was like the youngest person to walk in there by 35 years, at least. And I said, yeah, you know, I like to, they said, well, can you write something? Can you do some reporting for us? I said, sure, sure. You know, I never reported on anything. And they sent me to, it was like a meeting on, I don't even know what it would be, but some kind of little local government meeting on parking meters and why they were raising the parking meters on 108th Street from 5 cents to 10 cents. So I went. All I knew

about journalism at that point was I had seen the movie All the President's Men. So I took a little notepad. That's basically qualified. That's it. I took a notepad and a pen and I started asking these really grueling questions. Why are you raising a 10 cents and why does it have to be? And then I mimicked what I had always read in newspapers. The first paragraph kind of tells you what it is. The second paragraph is a quote. The third paragraph kind of flushes it out. Somehow I sort of understood organically that that's how you write a news story. So I turned in the story about parking meters. The next week I'm in the supermarket and there's the little paper. I pick it up and my story is the bottom of the front page, which.

It's huge. Yeah. Well, it's huge. And two things that I learned from that, because I saw my name on it and I had that feeling like when you see your own name on a work for the first time, a printed work, and your stomach just goes a little quiggly and you go, wow. And I knew two things. One, this writing thing was something I wanted to pursue. on a work for the first time, a printed work, and your stomach just goes a little quiggly, and you go, wow. And I knew two things.

One, this writing thing was something I wanted to pursue. And two, if I was on the bottom of the front page, then absolutely nothing happened in New York City that previous week. Because how does a story about parking meters rank at the bottom of the front page? Oh, that's funny. But I've been in writing ever since. And it was really just because of an accident. So when people tease me sometimes about, oh, you're writing these books about heaven, five people you meet in heaven, next person you meet in heaven, and they're all about how

things happen for a reason, and we don't understand it. I'm walking proof of that. I have 10 examples I can give you of this never should have happened, and I didn't understand it at the time. And now that I look at it, boy, if that didn't happen, I wouldn't be here with you. Not the least of which is Tuesdays with Maury and all of that. So I'm a big believer in sliding doors and all that kind of stuff. And that was one for me. Yeah. I mean, and at the same time, you had a willingness to step through and to go into a place of uncertainty and also

to go and try things where there was a high, a high likelihood, or at least the possibility of failure. Yes. But I had already failed. So because of music. Yeah. So do you feel like that's sort of steeled you for this? Absolutely.

In fact, as small as that local paper was, they wanted me and they called me in the morning to say, you know, can you do something for us? And when you have been working for several years at a creative field and nobody calls you, and you're having to always call that record producer and get the woman on the phone who says he's busy, he can't talk, well, can leave a message, wait for him to call back. Somebody calls you and says, we want you to create something. You jump. And it was a great feeling. And I think that's why journalism attracted me originally, because there was always a need. I mean, it's a coal furnace. You always have to keep shoveling stuff into it. So there's always

a story, always a story. And I ended up working at that paper for free for six months. It's something I always tell young people. They say, well, you know, where do I, should I get my start? You know, how much do they pay? I say, stop worrying about how much they're going to pay you. Go where there's an opportunity and don't worry what a paycheck it is. And I always give them that example. I worked for six months.

I learned everything there was to learn about newspapering in those six months because I had to put the paper together physically myself as well as go out and write the stories, edit the stories, linotype them, you know, put them, print it, everything. I knew exactly how a newspaper worked. And then after six months, they started paying me $25 a week. I want to say I was working my way up. You broke through.

But because I worked at that local paper, I had enough clips that eventually I applied to journalism school right here at Columbia University, a great journalism school. I never would have gotten into it without those clips because I see something. My undergraduate education wasn't lending itself to it. That helped launch everything that came after it. So I was very lucky to get that piece in that newspaper in the supermarket. And working for free was the smartest thing I ever did because it set me on my path. Yeah. Which is so interesting also, because there is, as you said, there's a huge amount of resistance to that. And it's funny because I don't even, I don't believe in free. Like there is no free, like somebody is always paying. It's just who's paying and is it hard currency? Is it like, is it education? Is it what is, so again, in the context that you just mentioned,

yes, you weren't working for cash, but you were getting paid. You know, you were essentially getting this intensive six-month education and, you know, like really fierce training on how to actually understand and navigate this industry. And I feel like these days, that's discounted so much. Yeah, well, partly because the opposite of discounting, you know,

they're putting the emphasis on how much money you can make. And there's a lot of money being young these days. When I was coming up, you didn't think about it because young people didn't make money. Older people made money. And that's something that's lost on this generation. You know, the generation of 24-year-old billionaires who invented an app and sold it and they're done. And the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, God bless them, he's done amazing things and nothing should be taken away from him. But he's also created this idea that billionaire by 23 is absolutely doable. We didn't have that idea. Nobody was a billionaire by 23. There weren't ways to make that kind of money back then.

So you had the time to fail and to make little amounts of money. And even when I went to journalism school, when I got out, I remember thinking, if I could make $10,000 a year, I'll never need anything more than that. So I'm blessed that I was never driven by money. And, you know, never in those years, in those fields, you weren't doing it for money, you know, especially journalism. You didn't get into that for money. By the time money came to me, which was, I was already in my late 30s, I already had

a, I had everything I wanted. I knew how to live. And it really, you know, I can effectively say, you know, I certainly went from not having much money to having money. I live in the same house. I'm married to the same woman. I drive the same kinds of cars. I mean, you know, but it's because it came later in life.

So, you know, again, as you point out, a lot of things happen early on that you don't get paid for, but they're worth their weight in gold in terms of what they teach you. And what I learned from that whole little chapter that we've just kind of gone through was how much I actually loved writing. And it filled this need that I had to be creative like music. And in fact, to be honest, music and writing to me are very similar. There's a rhythm, there's a cadence, you come back to themes, especially because for me me music was not just free-forming and jazz, it was also songwriting. And songwriting, there's a lot of parallels to creating a story or a novel that you do with the song.

And I always, when I write, I always bounce back and forth. My wife has observed this, so have many other people who watch me, you know, when I don't know that I'm being watched and they say, you're back and forth you're bouncing back and forth and i say physically physically bouncing back and forth i always have some kind of beat going when i'm writing and if i stop it usually means i've hit a glitch like it's not working these sentences are not working together and the nicest compliment i get from people who read my work whether it be in books or even if they still read some of the newspaper work, I still do a little bit, is they say, boy, when I start, I just get right to the bottom of your stuff, right? I just keep going. You know, I never like stop and have

to go back and read over it again. Well, that's because I work very hard on the rhythm of the sentences and the cadence of the words. And so music has informed me greatly in my writing. And it's one of the reasons I'm able to write short books. I think, you know, Tuesdays with Maury is short, five people you meet in heaven is short, this new one,

next person you meet in heaven is short because it's about, you know, writing sort of like this and getting it out. And when you do that, uh, long paragraphs of explanatory prose just don't kind of fit into that sort of story. And,

and so I don't tend to write, I tend to write sort of musically. And so one doesn't form the other. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

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We're sitting in the studio and we have like instruments around. I know, I'm tempted to just grab one of those guitars. Grab it and play, like feel free. But I found the exact same thing. So I, so I, when I, I found that when I'm writing, I'm speaking it sometimes out loud as I'm writing for the exact same reason. I'm looking for, I'm looking for the rhythm, for the cadence, for like, for a sense of flow that comes from, I think also me being a kid who loved music and played and plays to this day. And like, I want that sing-songy sort of like easy, like you're just sliding along with it,

you know, like you're just, you know, you've got the windows rolled down and it's just flowing through you. Yep. That's an art. I mean, that's, that's a tricky thing to manage. Yeah. I haven't gotten it down yet, but it's an aspiration. It's an aspiration. And like you said, I think you kind of know it. A lot of times I'll read something out loud after I've written it. Yeah. And that's the moment where I know like whether I've gotten it, like I can write it and I'll get 80% there, but not until I actually read it or have somebody read it. It's interesting to say that my wife, I don't think she's really actually read, physically

read any of my books, but she's heard them all. And she'll come down when I think I'm sort of ready for them to be heard. And she'll sit behind me in my office. I'll sit by the desk and there's a little couch just behind and she'll sit there so I can't see her because if I see a look on her face, if she winces or something like that, you're going to go, what, what, what, what do I do wrong? And I'll read it to her. And reading it out loud has formed and shaped and edited more of my books than any staring at a screen will ever do. Because a good book should be able to be read, at least by its author, with a rhythm and whatever. Now, it's a little hard for someone else to do, you know, because someone else can get it wrong. They don't know where to put the emphasis, and then it can sound wrong. That's why I've always read, ironically, my audiobooks.

The first time I read an audiobook, which was Tuesdays with Maury, was because nobody else wanted to read it. It was this tiny little book. Nobody wanted it. It was an orphan, you know. I mean, if I told you what we had to go through to try to get Tuesdays with Maury published, you'd laugh because everybody now says, well, who wouldn't publish it? But I can give you a long list of lots of people who wouldn't. And so when it came time to do the audio book, the norm was to get an actor. Well, nobody wanted to do it, and we didn't have the money to pay an actor.

And so I did it myself. And I found that reading especially books that I'm in, like that one, and there's one I wrote called Have a Little Faith, where it's a true story. that I'm in, like that one, and there's one I wrote called Have a Little Faith, where it's a true story. And I'm actually doing another one, my next book after this one, as a first-person account of something that happened with me with a little girl. And so who better to read it than the person who was involved? I know what Maury sounded like, you know, and I could do his voice, you know, when you get to where I am and you will get to where I am. You know, well, someone else isn't going to do that.

I was there. And then I ended up just reading all the rest of them too because I understand that rhythm and cadence that we're talking about. Yeah, I was so curious about that because I remember listening to Five People in Heaven and you're playing all these different voices. You know, you got Eddie and you got all the different people in your meeting. And I'm like, this is really fascinating, because it felt just as a listener that you were really embodying all these different people. And it felt like, I don't know if this is true or not, but I kind of felt like you were having fun doing it just by listening to it? Well, especially the Five People You Meet in Heaven, because Five People You Meet in Heaven, which was my first novel, which everybody told me I was crazy, crazy, crazy to write a novel. And that's why I always laugh a little bit about, you know, people telling me, you said, are you afraid to take a chance or whatever? I've so

many times done the wrong thing by everybody else's standards. And many times it's worked out well. That was one time I had written Tuesdays with Maury. It was supposed to be this tiny little book. Nobody was supposed to read it. And then it became this phenomenon that I can't still to this day explain. Well, by the time I came to do another book, everybody wanted Wednesdays with Maury and Chicken Soup with Maury. And I said, I'm not going to do that. Spill the franchise. Yeah. And I said, I'm not going to do that. Everything that happened, happened with him. And that's it.

And then they said, well, you know, we can do another nonfiction, find another subject like that, find someone to sit next to or whatever. And I said, no matter what I do, it's going to pale in comparison. It's going to get held up. It's going to, I don't want to do that. So I was kind of paralyzed for a while. I mean, I didn't write anything for six years. And finally I said, you know what?

I'm just going to go the total opposite way. And I'm going to write a novel and kind of a magical novel, like it takes place in heaven. And you should have seen the people. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that. You know, do it, do it, do it like six years from now, but now just do a nonfiction book. And I finally, I ended up going with a publisher for it because they were the only ones who said, we want to do that novel first. And I told them the story of the five people we meet in heaven in a room. This was fascinating. If you ever people out there who want to write and you ever want to know, well, what's the right place for you to publish? So after Tuesdays with Maury, all those people who didn't want to see me or didn't want to

publish, they all wanted to see me. So I came around town i was the you know i was very very well welcomed in publishing houses and i would tell them these the story you know about what this i had this idea for this book about five people you mean heaven and they'd nod and they'd nod they said yeah but we'd like a non-fiction first then you could do that one but let's talk about non-fiction one place i went one place i went was hyperion books i sat down there was a man named Bob Miller. He was the publisher and all the rest of the room was women. And I told the story of this old man named Eddie, who was based on an uncle of mine, who was a World War II vet, grizzled guy, barrel chested. And he always thought that his whole life was wasted, that he

was a nobody. He worked blue collar jobs and all the rest of it. And he always would say, and I would imitate my uncle. You talk about the sound. I'm a nobody, never been nowhere, never done nothing. You know, I used to call him from the road just to give him the fact that I was traveling. And I would say, hey, Uncle Ed, how you doing? Hey, buddy boy, where are you? I said, I'm in Cleveland. Oh, Cleveland. Holy cow. Cleveland. That sounds great.

What's that like? And I told the story of this character that was sort of based on him who dies working in an amusement park, taking care of rides as a mechanic. And this is the maintenance guy. It's his whole life. And he just feels like, what am I doing here? And on his 83rd birthday, there's an accident. One of the tower drops, breaks, and it falls. And there's this little girl who he had just met

a few hours before. And she accidentally runs the wrong way and hides on the platform, not knowing that this thing's about to fall down and crush her. He dives to push her out of the way. He feels her two little hands in his, and then nothing, everything goes black. And he wakes up, and this is kind of the way I'm telling it in this room. He wakes up in the afterlife, and he realizes he's in heaven, and he starts to meet people who were in his life. Some of them he remembers, some of them he might have had five minutes with them, and each one tells them about an encounter that changed his life forever and changed their life forever, even though he might not even have realized or remembered it.

And ultimately he keeps asking them, did I save the little girl? Did I save the little girl? Just tell me my life was worth something. And finally he gets to this little girl. At the end, his fifth person turns out to be a little girl who he killed accidentally during a war that he didn't even realize he'd been a prisoner of war like my uncle in the Philippines, like

my uncle. And when he got out, he burned everything to the ground, but he burned a hut that had a little girl in it and he didn't know. And he meets her in heaven and she basically says, I'm here because of you. You know, you burned me. You killed me. And she explains to him that he is actually, he was at that pier, at Ruby Pier, at the amusement park his whole life, to make up for her. The reason that he was sort of told, a place like that by fate, to be a maintenance man was to take care of children, keep them safe, right?

Keep the rides safe, keep them safe. And that made up for the life that he took. So with his life revealed to him, he says to her, well, but the little girl, just tell me, did I save her? I felt her little hands in mine. Did I pull her out of the way? And the girl in heaven says, no. He shakes her head, no. And he's crushed. He just, so I was a failure. The last act of my life was a failure. And she says, no. He shakes her head, no. And he's crushed. He just, so I was a failure. The last act of my life was a failure. And she says, you didn't pull her, you pushed her. And he said, no, no, no, no, no.

I couldn't have pushed her. I felt her hands. I've been feeling her hands ever since. I felt her hands in mine. I must have pulled her. And she says, those weren't her hands. Those were my hands. And I was bringing you to heaven. When I said that in that room, a woman in the

room burst into tears. She just burst into tears, and then she apologized. She said, when the meeting was over, she just burst into tears, and then she apologized. She said, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. When the meeting was over, I walked out of that room with my literary agent and in the elevator going downstairs because they had said to me, we want this book. We don't care about nonfiction. We want this book. And we're going down the elevator. And I said to my literary agent, I want to publish with these people.

And I want the woman who was crying to be my editor. I didn't even know who she was. And that's exactly what happened. And she became my editor for the next three or four books. And we had a great relationship there. So find somebody who connects with you on an emotional level and a visceral level and work with them. Don't try to force a key into a hole. Keep going until you find someone who gets what you do, and then they'll help bring it out of you. And that's what happened. I walked out of that room with my literary agent and in the elevator going downstairs, because they had said to me, we want this book. We don't care about nonfiction.

We want this book. And we're going down the elevator, and I said to my literary agent, I want to publish with these people, and I want the woman who was crying to be my editor. I didn't even know who she was. And that's exactly what happened. And she became my editor for the next three or four books. And we had a great relationship there. So find somebody who connects with you on an emotional level and a visceral level and work with them. Don't try to force a key into a hole. Keep going until you find someone who gets what you do, and then they'll help bring it out of you. And that's what happened. Yeah. I mean, it's such a powerful example. And that final scene from that book has stayed with me also, you know, it's like, I think that was the moment where you're just kind of like the, but it's a really interesting point, right? Because

we're in a sort of a moment now, if you're a maker, if you're a creator, whether it's music, writing, art, whatever it may be, where most of those industries have been largely defined by you devote yourself to making things that you believe are somewhere between the intersection between who you are and what needs to be expressed and what you hope maybe somebody will buy and earn you a living or maybe not. And there've always been some sort of, the paradigm has always involved gatekeepers in some way, shape or form. And, and, you know, no matter what creative industry you're in, you've always heard, well, there are so many incredible people out there. There's so many gifted people who are doing really good work, who never get discovered or who, you know, the gatekeepers say, well, this is great work, but we can't see how to make money at it. So it's interesting to sort of hear that story in the context of the moment we're

in now, where it seems like a lot of the paradigm is really changing and the way that people are bringing creative work out into the world now also. And you almost have the ability to just bypass them and go directly to the people that you want to touch. And then what we're seeing is they become the ultimate arbiters of whether this is something that really resonates with them or not. And then if it does, those gatekeepers then come back to you and they're like, oh, now we want it. Yeah. Or, hey, we never heard of you before, but now we've heard of you and we want to buy your company. That is true, but to a certain extent, it depends on the industry, the delivery system is still important.

It's true that you can now write a book, you don't need a publisher to put a binding on it or put it on paper or distribute it. You can write something and put it on the internet and it can reach the whole world theoretically. But so can the guy who's sitting next to you. And so can the guy who's sitting next to him and next to him and next to him.

And you know what? A lot of them think that they can write. Not all of them can. And there's so much stuff out there. So much noise that it's so hard to find something. It's like a million books a year being published now or something like that. Yeah, yeah.

So it's hard. In some ways, it's easier in terms of like the barriers to entry are gone. In some ways, it's harder in terms of like trying to reach people. It's just, I was in the car today and I was doing a little test. We were talking about marketing because I'm out now, you know, talking about the book and talking to you and other people.

And I said, okay, there's a movie out, as we're speaking now, it's coming out called First Man, you know, and it's about Neil Armstrong. I said, they've spent a ton of money. And the people in the car, I said, now, do you know about it? One of them said, yeah, yeah, I've seen this about it. And I said, the person in front, do you know about it? No. I said, you don't know about it?

No. Now it comes out, as we're speaking, comes out this week. I said, they've spent probably $80 million to get you to say yes when I ask you the question, do you know about it? And you still don't know about it. So with that much money being spent just on movie publicity, can you imagine when a book comes out or you independently publish a book, what the infinitesimal odds are of people finding out about it when there's so much noise, $80 million on this movie, $100 million of publicity on that movie,

you know, filling your head. And even that doesn't get through to the average consumer. So it is tough because of all the content that's out there. Some of it not great, but a lot of it there, you know? And so it's a challenge. It's a different kind of challenge, especially for someone who's been writing for a while. But I at the same time i still feel like what you're writing i feel

like if you know if maury came out today 21 years later and you know you think it would be well received i i do and and i've heard you share the story that hey listen this wasn't an out of the gates home run there wasn't a big marketing push it was kind of a grassroots and it grew and then there was a bit of a tipping point when like you land on Oprah. Yet at the same time, I mean, the nature of that book, it was so visceral and so real. And it entered the conversation that so many people are asking about. Like, you know, to me, it was almost like a really easily digestible modern day version of Gibran's The Prophet, almost like Mithra Braniwara's The Regrets of the Dying.

And they did it in such an accessible, beautiful, story-driven, humble way. At least I want to hope that a book like that, if it came out today and it had very little marketing dollars behind it, that we are, and I think we are in an even deeper existential crisis right now that, that, that a book like that would still somehow may take longer, right. And may take a completely different path, but fundamentally like a book like that is, is speaking so directly to, to pain and deep existential questions that are never going to leave us. And I want to believe. And I'm a marketer and an entrepreneur at the same time.

I would want to believe, too. I think one of the things that would go against the desire is that back then, I remember, I'll give you a perfect example. I went to a bookstore in Illinois. I couldn't even tell you where it was. But I remember we were driving there, and I thought it was in this at least decent-sized city. And we left the decent-sized city, and we went like 20 miles outside of the decent-sized city.

Of course, I was tired, and I was doing a lot of these types of things. I said, where are we going now? And we went to this tiny little bookstore and I got out. I said, oh gosh, this is a long way to go. And we walked in and it was this kind of bookstore in almost a house kind of thing. And there was a cat, two cats jumping around, and there was nobody in the store. And I looked at the person I was with, kind of rolled my eyes and said, this was sort of, I didn't say it, but that's a long way to come to have nobody. And the woman made me a cup of tea or something and sat down.

And one by one, people started coming into that store. And by the time we were done, at least 300 people had come through that store and had gotten a book. And I said to them, where are you all coming from? Oh, I live over here. I live 10 miles away. I said, why are you here? I can't remember the woman's name. Let's say her name was Annie. Because Annie said this was a good book and we needed to read it. That's not around anymore.

And that's how Tuesdays with Maury was largely built in the Midwest and in the South and these small bookstores where people would, hey, you got something good to read? Read this small book. This is really good. And they would hand it to them by virtue of Amazon blowing up everything. And then, you know, just the economy and Borders is gone and Walden Books is gone. I can name all kinds of chains that I used to go to. They're all gone. Barnes and Noble is struggling. There just aren't that many places anymore to go have someone hand you a book and say, you got to read this. This is really good. Even Borders & Barnes & Noble in your local community, they had people in those stores.

They were hand-selling. Yeah, they were hand-selling this stuff. So much as I would like to think that the message is absolutely necessary, and I agree with you on that, The places you go, you know, everyone now goes to their screens. It's hard to have something recommended to you the same way. Just because something's got five stars or four stars, what doesn't? You know, it's not the same as Annie with the cats telling the people, you gotta come

and this guy's coming in tomorrow at 10 o'clock. You should come meet him. And people saying, okay, well, I trust you, so I will. Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's changed. It people saying, okay, well, I trust you. So I will. Yeah. No, I agreed. I think it's changed. It's interesting. Jonah Berger wrote a book called Contagious.

I want to say it's five years ago. I was surprised because he shared data on that book where he said 90% of word of mouth at that point was face-to-face, which really shocked me because I thought it would be a lot more online. And another friend actually just recently came out with a book where they got new data and they said it's now 50% word of mouth is It's face-to-face and 50% is virtual or remote, you know, all the blah, blah, blah. But 50% is still a solid, I mean, yes, it's dropped dramatically, but it's still pretty solid. Anyway, let's go back. Yeah, I could probably go down that

rabbit hole for a while. You know, so you're in your journey. It sounds like your writing starts to really fill a lot of the Jones that you were looking for from the music. It becomes your music to a certain extent. There's a performance aspect of it to a certain extent also. I'm curious when you were a writer, when you were a musician, what was the part of it that really lit you up? Was it the writing? Was it the performance? Was it the performance? Was it seeing what happened to people's faces? And do you feel like you get that from writing books? No, for me, it was never about an audience.

I would have been perfectly happy being a producer. That was my goal in music, was to be a record producer. For me, it was going from nothing to something. Yeah, so it was the creative act. The absolute act of creativity. It still is. Sometimes I'll hear a sentence in my head. There's a sentence in this new book, The Next Person You Meet in Heaven, sad sentence, because my wife and I, I have, this is a side story, but I have an orphanage that I run in Haiti, and we have 47 children there. And a few years ago, one of them got very sick, and we brought her north to America.

And she basically became our daughter for two years while we tried to help her survive a cancerous brain tumor. Terrible thing. And we traveled all over the world. In this book, there's a moment where Annie, who's the little girl from The Five People You Meet in Heaven who's now grown up, when she's younger, in a life full of mistakes that she sees as mistakes, she gets pregnant by a guy she doesn't even like. She has the baby. They get married quickly. She has the baby. The baby only lives a couple days and is gone. In heaven, when she's doing her journey in heaven and she meets Eddie again without ruining it for the people who are listening. She gets to find out what happened with her baby and she gets

to hold the baby again. And then it's gone. And that's exactly how I felt having Chica, our little girl, for two years of intense, intense two years. She was with us every minute of every day. There was no going off to school. There was no weekends. She was with us every minute. And then she was gone when she died. And I had this sentence in my head about how do you describe that feeling?

How do you describe that feeling? God, it's so big. I'm never going to be able to fit this into it. It'll take paragraphs. And somewhere between walking from my bedroom down in the morning to the computer, I suddenly was able to crystallize how I felt at that moment. And I had the words, full and vacant, or in my head, full, vacant, full, vacant. And I ran down, I put the blank screen up in front of me and I started with those things.

And in a matter of seconds, I came up with the sentence, she felt utterly full and utterly vacant, comma, which is what having and losing a child is like. And that was it. One sentence and I summed up exactly the experience that we had had with our little girl and what I wanted Annie to feel and what she felt when she had this baby in her arms and the baby was gone.

Now, that sentence didn't exist. It was just white, and then it existed. And I could sit back and I could look at it and say, yes, I just created something that says exactly what I want to say, this message. That's what you do when you write music. That's what you do when you write a song. That's what you do when you finish a symphony. That's what you do when you write a book or a movie. Yes, what I felt inside is now out in some form. It's being played by an orchestra or it's on a piece of paper. I can look at it. And

that to me is still the biggest thrill of this whole thing. And it's why I write. It's for moments like that. And that's why I continue to say you know, say of all the things I do, and I have a variance of things that I do, that's the most precious to me and still the most special. Yeah. When a moment and language like that comes to you, do you know in the moment that that's, that is something special. Yeah. When you can't imagine it being said any other way, you know you've tapped into something. When you look at it and you feel like, I just make an adjustment.

If I could just make an adjustment, I just tweak this knob, tweak this word, tweak this word, tweak two more words over there. You probably don't have it. There's an old expression in sports. When you have two starting quarterbacks, you don't have one starting quarterback. It's a little like that in writing too. When you can see several different ways of saying it, you still haven't found the perfect way to say it.

And I've had sentences in my books, the beginning of the five people you meet in heaven, all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time. I can't think of a better way to say that. If you give me 10 more years, I'd still come back with those words. So, you know, that was right. And that's the sentence that's often quoted from that book. And, you know, there are other ones. There's one in this book, you know, Annie dies young. And I said, because she was young, she never thought about heaven, but heaven is always thinking about us. These are simple sentences, but that's exactly the way I want to say that. I don't know if I put in another adjective or another verb or whatever that wouldn't make it any better. So yeah, when you hit these little phrases

and you say that that's true, that that's true. Now I've heard musicians talk about, I played something that was true. And you say, well, how can it be music? No, I know what they're talking about. I know what they're talking about. I know what they're talking, it's not derivative. It's not off of something else. It fits exactly where they are at that moment. It fits the chord structure. It fits the mood that they're trying to create. It's true.

And that's what you're looking for in your writing. That's true. That's what I'm trying to say. It's not a flowery bunch of words thrown together to try to say something. It's not a paragraph that takes too long. It's that sentence is true. And that's what you search for. That's the holy grail of what you're doing. If you're writing the kind

of books that I write. Yeah. No, it's so beautiful. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. As you're sharing your process, what I realized is when I feel that when I'm writing something, I get literally a physical reaction. I'll sort of almost shake. And that's, to me, that's the signal that, and the same word popped into me, that was

truth. That like there's something which is true about what just came out. And that is the space I think, I think as a creator, that's the space that you're trying to get to. But also as somebody who's just out there living your lives and you want to consume something that's going to land a matter to you, that's what you're seeking also.

Like you're seeking truth, you know? And if you can read somebody else's expression of it and it is genuinely like that true and that direct and that easy to consume. And there's, you're not trying to show off the language. And the craft doesn't lead in front of the truth, but the truth is just plain. There's something about that.

You feel it immediately. There's no veil. And it does not need to be five-syllable words. Quite often, it's the simpler ones that do it. I remember with Tuesdays with Maury, I struggled greatly as to how to start that book. How do you start a book about a professor who's dying and you had a relationship with him 16 years ago? Do you start at one point?

I started when we were back in college. That was the first page. At one point, I started it when he had already died. And at one point, I started when I saw him on Nightline. And there were so many different fits and starts. And I never really could get it right. And so working with the editor and, yeah, well, OK, maybe try this, try this. And then I remember I went through some boxes of old term papers that I had written for Maury when I was a student at Brandeis University in sociology.

And you had to write term papers. And back then, they taught you that there was a form for term papers. You had to say what the purpose of the paper was, how you would lay out the argument, what it was going to be, what your conclusion was going to be if you proved your point. And I looked at that and I was reading that and I was reading that and I said, what if I just start this like a term paper? And I sat down and I wrote the sentence, the last class of my old professor's life took place in a small study where he could watch a pink hibiscus plant shed its leaves. And it was very didactic, you know,

the class was, there were no books, there were no final exams required, you know, KISS was given instead of a test or whatever, blah, blah, blah. And it was all very unsentimental and very just, you know, sort of this, this, this. And at the very end, the last class of my whole professor's life had one student. I was the student. And I wrote that as one page. And I remember I faxed it because we didn't have internet. I faxed it to my editors in New York. And I got back a fax and it came back, comes out of the machine and had one word on the bottom, wow.

And I knew that I had found the start of that book. And sometimes it's just that that's, you know, that's what you're looking for. And when you find it, it feels great, whether it makes you shake, like you said, or it makes you sweat or leap up and down. There's some physical reaction, but it's definitely a physical reaction or a facts that says, wow. Yeah. Do you have a sense for where, it's funny, I've heard different writers describe the muse as existing external to them and then some as it comes from them. Do you have any sort of sense of that for you? Sort of book dependent. If I'm writing nonfiction, like Two Sisters of Mori or Have a Little Faith or this new book, next book after Next Person You Meet in Heaven is called The Summer of Chica.

And that's about our little girl, Chica. They're external. You have to honor who it is that you're writing or you can't. It's not your creation. It's their influence on you. And you have to feel that they're there with you as you're writing a book. And Have a Little Faith was about two clergymen

and I had to have them in the picture. And Maury, I had to have Maury in the picture. When you're creating from whole cloth, like Magic Strings of Frankie Presto, which was my previous book before this one, you know, this total epic novel about a musician, then no, that's your, that's internal. You're satisfying something that's internal. I've had, it's funny you ask that because I've had, you know, I have a lot of friends, I play in this band of writers and I've

become friendly as a result of that over the last 27 years with people like Stephen King and Amy Tan and Dave Barry and Scott Theroux and Ridley Pearson and Greg Isles and fantastic writers, all of them. And James McBride and many, many more. And we, you know, sometimes we very rarely talk about writing, to be honest with you. Mostly we talk about what, what, what was that? And what chord was that?

Talk about anything, but right. Yeah. Anything but right. Fight club, right? Yeah. Once in a while, we'll, we'll we'll you know you'll hear people talk and i heard a lot of them over the years different novelists were in there and they say well i just start the book and let the characters kind of tell me where we're going to go and i go you got

to be kidding me i don't know what characters you're using but my guys are like union and i opened the drawer and they're like if i said to them where are we going to go today they say oh we know where we're going to go. You're in charge. You know, you tell us where to go. So I've never had that happen. I've always kind of known where my books are going to end before I start them. I don't know the middles and I don't know the particulars, but I kind of know the North

Star of it. As I told you that story about five people you meet in heaven, I knew how I wanted to end it. I knew who the fifth person was. I didn't necessarily know who the second or third or fourth was, but I knew who the fifth was. And in this book, The Next Person You Meet in Heaven, where Annie goes to heaven, I knew that she was going to meet Eddie again. And that was the big moment. That was the reunion that everybody had been waiting for, who'd been asking me about a sequel. So I knew that that was going to happen. It was

just a matter of when and all that. And I kind of knew I have a twist ending on this that I don't want to ruin for anybody, but it's not what you expect. And I knew I was going to do that too. So I don't let the, the characters don't sail the ship for me. I'm sailing it for them.

Yeah. It's so interesting that you have, you've had that conversation with all these other writers also. And there seems to be, and I've talked to a lot of people, there doesn't seem to be one sort of like uniform, well, you know, like we all do it this way. Every wedding just kind of has a different attribution for where things come from. But I will tell you one thing that's true of all writers that I respect, and many of them are in that band.

Everybody treats it like a job. I don't know anybody who does good work consistently who says, well, I just wait until the ideas hit me. And then at two o'clock in the morning, I go down and start saying, you know, we're in a lightning bolt. Everybody gets up and they have their routine and they slog at it and they slog at it. And, you know, whether it's in my case, you know, 6.30 in the morning and start and go every single day for X period of time, no interruptions, no music, no anything like that, and then I'm done. Or I know Greg Isles is always talking about, like, he can only work when it's really dark outside,

dark at night, and he does all this stuff from 2 o'clock till 6 o'clock in the morning. Whatever it is, you have your routines, and you follow your routines, and you treat it like a job. You can be creative, of course, and you can be an artist, of course, but playing the artist does not seem to be really effective in writing. I'm sure there are some who do it, but the ones that I've met and who do really consistently good work, they combine that artistry with discipline. Yeah.

I mean, it's like with Steve Prefield's War of Art. He's like, that is the professional, like, is the one who actually shows up, does the work when they least want to do it. And they have the ritual and the routine. And you just, you sit and if you get five good words one day, it is what it is. That's the good day. Right. That's right. One of the things that, so you're in a place now where, you know, as you mentioned, we're 21 years after Maury came out. You've had a number of extraordinary books that have landed very nicely and put you in a position in life where you have the ability now to focus a lot of energy on philanthropy.

How does that work into sort of like when you think about the contribution you're making to the world with your, either through your writing, through your speaking, through music, where does being of service in such a, not just in terms of, yes, giving money to, but also it seems like in a very participatory way. Yeah. Well, I mean, to be honest with you, that's been sort of a parallel existence ever since Tuesdays with Maury. Many things, I was 37 years old when I encountered Maury again. 37 is young, but it's not a kid. I had lived a pretty selfish life, very ambitious, very much about just getting ahead and getting ahead. I wasn't cruel and I wasn't mean, but I wasn't involved. I spent 120 hours a week working. I had 10 different jobs and I never said

no to anything because I thought they won't ask me again if I say no, so I have to say yes. When I went and saw Maury, it came at a very unusual time. The newspaper I was working for went out on strike, and that had been where the largest part of my work was, so I wasn't working all of a sudden. It just so happened at that time. And then I saw Maury again, and he reminded me of a time in my life when I was a totally different person, when I was in college and I wasn't thinking about this hundred hours a week of work, or I was thinking much more along the lines of, you know, being a good person and being creative and doing the kinds of things that I thought mattered. One of the things he said to me during those Tuesdays was, what do you do for your community? I said, what do you mean? He said, what do you do for your

community, your charities, helping poor people, whatever? And I said, I write checks. And he said, anybody can write a check. He said, you've been given a voice and you need to use that voice for something more than aggrandizing yourself. I remember that specifically because who uses the word aggrandize in a sentence, but a college professor. I started my first charity that year, 1995, before Two Cent and More even came out. It was called the Dream Fund. And that was a pretty simple thing. It was a scholarship fund. Still exists today.

It's 20 plus years old. It provides scholarships for kids in Detroit, where I live, who can't afford it to study the arts. Because I thought, well, I would have liked that when I was young, struggling artist if somebody had done that for me. Then over time, as I got older, I got more involved with things and started to do a little bit more charity work and really got involved in Detroit. One time when I was in 2006, the Super Bowl came to Detroit and they wanted me to write stories about Detroit and things that were going on. And I happened to see that there was a party,

they were calling it a Super Bowl party for the homeless, which I couldn't understand how the homeless can have a Super Bowl party. So I went down and explored and turned out it was an effort by a bunch of, you know, people to get the homeless people off the streets of Detroit during the weekend of the Super Bowl so that they wouldn't bother all these visitors, put them in this one big shelter, stick up a television on the wall, and then on Monday morning, kick them back out into the snow. It was really cold that week, and something about that just struck me as so phony and so cruel. So I went down to a homeless shelter that I had gotten to know

and asked if I could spend the night there to write a story about what it's like to have shelter for a night and how you don't give this to somebody and take it away. And they said, okay, but you've got to go in with everybody else. So I did, and I went down. I got my bar of soap and my towel and my bed, and then I was waiting in line for dinner. And this guy in front of me turns around, and he looks me up and down, and he says,

aren't you Mitch Albom? And I said, yeah. And he looked me up and down again, and he said, so what happened to you? And of course, you know, I laughed a little inside, and I saw that he was serious. And I realized, wait a minute, that's a perfectly logical sentence coming from him. I'm sure he never figured to be on a line like this. And as would happen in 2006 and then 7, 8, and 9, there were a lot of people in Detroit who used to be serving on the soup lines with their churches and then found themselves on the other end. Lots.

And so that line stuck with me. And I went back and I wrote a column about the experience. And it must've struck a chord because I was trying to raise $60,000. That was the amount that it would take to keep all those people that they took off the streets in the Superbowl in the shelters for another six weeks until it got warm. Within a week, I had about $360,000 from people who just sent in $25, $10, $15. They were just moved by the story. And I didn't know what to do with it. It was way more money than we needed. And so, as I've told you before, things happen for all these weird reasons. I had to start, I had to form a charity. So, I formed something called Say Detroit, S period,

A period, Y period Detroit, which stands for super all year instead of super for a weekend. And I began to invest and start things with homeless shelters and medical clinics. And one thing led to another. And now Say Detroit is nearly a $3 million a year operation that runs nine different charities in Detroit. 100% of the money goes 100% to the cause. There's no, we have no salaries. We have no offices. We have no lobbies. We have no anything. And it takes up probably, that takes up probably a good 40% of my life every week. We've got all these different operations. We even have a food line and a store that we sell dessert stuff in

that we raise money. And then we turn all the money back over to the charity, like Paul Newman did with his salad dressing. Eventually I got involved in Haiti after the earthquake and ended up taking over an orphanage there because in one of those moments in life where I said, the pastor didn't have any more money. He was in his eighties. He was, you know, it was clear the place was falling apart. And I had been there a bunch of times.

I said, ah, how hard could it be? It's an orphanage. Come on, I can do this. And of course, here it is almost nine years later. And I have 47 kids now. And I go there every month. So yes, you're right. I'm very involved. I'm much better at being involved in charity than I am at raising the money for it. Thank goodness there are other people to do that. I like to be on the ground. I like to work and teach. And I love being with the kids in Haiti and the kids that we teach at our rec center in Detroit and literacy programs and things. I just like getting my hands dirty. It fits perfectly, to answer your question, with who I am and my work and whatever. In fact, I don't see how I could do anything but But here I'm writing these books about, you know, things that are important in life that I've learned.

It'd be pretty stupid if all I did was live on a hill and, you know, in Los Angeles and, you know, hobnob with the stars and say, and then say, let me break away from this cocktail party for a second. I got to write another book about the meaning of life and then I'll be right back. So, you know, it informs me. It tells me, it gives, it keeps me grounded, reminds me of the things that are important. And I think it's an obligation. I think Maury was right. You know, I am obligated to do something. I've been blessed way more than any one person should be. And, you know, the thing that you do when that happens to you in life is you figure out a way to share it. That's the only, only, only antidote to that otherwise poison of like,

what am I going to do with all this? And I see with athletes, and remember, I've worked around athletes my whole life, rich, huge, multi-billion dollar athletes, and I've watched it make them crazy. And unless they find some other purpose, start foundations or things like that, it's too much. And so for me, it's a good balance in life and it helps keep me where I want to be. It makes complete sense. It's almost like it's the other side of the creative act.

It's the service side. It's the reconnecting yourself with, it's the other focused side. Yeah. This feels like a good place for us to come full circle as well. So as I sit here recording this in the container of the Good Life Project, if I offer out the phrase to live a good life, what comes up for you? Make sure it involves others. I'm not sure that you can ever really live a really good life if you're not doing things for other people, if you don't make helping other people or lifting other people a central part of your life. It doesn't have to be everything that you do. But when we had this chance to raise this little girl, my wife and I did not have kids of our own.

We got married pretty late. Had a lot of nieces and nephews.. Had a lot of nieces and nephews. I have a lot of nieces and nephews, a lot of kids. And then, of course, took over the orphanage. And I feel like I've got 47 kids. But when this little girl came into our lives and was with us every single day, even though I was in my 50s, she opened my eyes to what a life is when you're living it for someone else, as opposed to when you're living it primarily for yourself. And it is a rich life and a good life. And even in losing a child to a brain tumor,

I still don't look at it as we lost a child. I look at it as we were given one. And that's what made the life good. And so if I've learned anything from all this time, it's that first and foremost, you need to be involved with other people. You need to be helping other people. It's what cures loneliness. In fact, this is in this book, The Next Person You Meet in Heaven.

One of the characters she meets and he meets in her five people is her old dog who takes the form of a human and talks to her about loneliness and says to her, the end of loneliness is when you realize how much need there is in the world and how you can be of, if you just give to others in need, your loneliness goes away. And I have found that to be so true. If I'm depressed, if I'm down or whatever, I go take care of these kids and, hey, do you have nothing? I stop thinking about it. I know it sounds corny, but it's true. That's the equation. And so for me, a good life has to involve helping other people and giving other people, sharing with other people. After that, once you've done that and you're at peace, then it has to involve some creativity and beauty, enjoying whether it's beautiful words,

beautiful music, beautiful art, beautiful movies. It has to be seeing the culmination of human creativity in some form. It inspires you to be creative. I'll tell you something that I learned right in this city, might not have been very far away from where we're sitting. I was Pinkerton security guard. Okay. That was one of the jobs that I had to take to make money when I was a musician. And one of the guys I got assigned to cover or to protect for something or another was a photographer. I don't know what we were doing, some shoot or something.

I was just standing around. But somehow I got to talk to him. And I don't remember his name now, but he was like a Scavullo of the time. He was very, very well known. Somehow we got to talking and I said, you know, what's the best piece of advice that anybody ever gave you? Because of course I wanted to be a musician, you know. And he said, well, when I was first starting out as a photographer, there was a guy who was kind of like me, you know, he's very well known and all that. And of course I couldn't get to him, but I put all my pictures together

and I put them in an envelope and I sent them off to him. I said, please tell me what you think of my work. And he said, a few weeks later, I got all my pictures back and there was a note handwritten by the guy. And he said, it's obvious from these photos that you have mastered the basics of photography. Now, go out and listen to the best music, watch the best theater, see the best dance, take in nature, and all the rest will take care of itself. And I never forgot that, even though I learned it when I was a Pinkerton security guard, because so much of being a creative person or being a writer or an artist, whatever,

comes from just surrounding yourself with creativity. It doesn't come from reading necessarily. It can come from listening to music. It can come from watching dance. But if you put yourself in the environments where great creativity is around you, your creativity will rise. His did, and eventually mine did too.

Yeah, that's beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We

have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?

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