Category: Rich Roll Podcast

Scattered Thoughts

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I’d like to write more, but often I’m pressed for either time or ideas.  Sometimes a photo prompts my next piece. Usually something happens that I feel compelled to share.  When the ideas strike, the pieces often write themselves.  I’m just the conduit.  At least that’s how it feels. 

Today I have time but no ideas.  Photos but no stories behind them.  Many things on my mind, and none of them flowing through my fingers.  More like scattered thoughts colliding.

I’m fifty-one.  Maybe closer to death than high school.  I was thirty when I became a cop.  I remember driving home at the end of a nightshift, pulling into the driveway, and wondering: wondering when I’d feel like a grown-up, wondering when I’d feel comfortable in my own skin, wondering when the world would make sense.

The world still doesn’t make sense.  Yesterday in Buffalo, New York innocent people were slaughtered in a grocery store.  I grew up near the U.S. border.  My parents shopped at that grocery chain regularly.  The grocery store is called “Tops.”  I can still hear their jingle in my head “Tops Never Stops Saving You More.”

I’ve given up trying to make sense of the world. That’s not going to happen.  Which ironically, may be an important step in having a better understanding of myself.

I may not be there yet – understanding myself that is – but I feel like I’m on the right path. It’s only taken half a century.

Fatherhood has helped.  Not that it’s easy.  Every day I grapple with being a dad.  When to discipline?  How to teach life lessons?  What’s the best way to help an innocent child become a strong and confident girl?

Until very recently I listened to the Marathon Talk podcast.  The hosts embraced the notion of trusting the process.  It’s fine to have a goal, but the goal is secondary to the work you do along the way.  It’s the steps that matter, whether in marathon training, or raising a daughter.  Any goal is the product of the steps and moments that came before it.  Take your steps.  Live in the moment.  Keep your eyes on the horizon.  Never stop moving.

I became truer to myself when I stopped eating meat.  I eat a whole food plant-based diet because I believe it’s my best chance to live a long and healthy life.  There’s more to it than that – changing the way I ate showed me that, daily, my ideals and values could be in alignment with my actions.  That was a powerful lesson. 

Veganism led me to Rich Roll.   Rich chronicled his journey from addict to endurance athlete in his book ‘Finding Ultra.’  His podcast guests are leaders in their fields; health, neuroscience, athletics, and the arts.  Podcasts have reshaped the path I’ve taken in my life. They’ve changed the way I breathe, encouraged me to write, inspired me to wake up at 3:00 a.m. to run miles in the dark, and, conversely, prompted me turn my alarm clock off because sleeping may be the best thing any of us can do to promote physical and mental health. 

I used to have one or two books on the go at any one time.  Recently it’s been five or six.  Although the world doesn’t make sense, books help me navigate my way through it.  I’ve been reading about survival, hostages in Iran, a German general kidnapped in wartime Crete, the latest Reacher novel, a collection of essays from Jedidiah Jenkins, and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.  I read with a pen in hand, underlying meaningful passages.  I read with my journal by my side, and I copy especially meaningful passages into it.  Great writing moves me.  Incredible stories inspire me.  They all help me focus on my process and my path ahead.

My wife and I have a close friend whose mother is terminally ill.  Words so often fail in those situations.  So we sought the answer in words more eloquent than any we could ever express.  We sent a copy of Susan Cain’s latest book, ‘Bittersweet’ which is about grief.  Cain wrote ‘Quiet,’ a book about introverts.  It helped me better understand myself.  Without having read it, I know ‘Bittersweet’ will be an eloquent, thoughtful work which will help people all over the world.

I have a friend who did something special yesterday.  He ran one hundred kilometers in fourteen hours.  That’s more than two marathons.  He suffered.  He endured.  He finished.  His achievement was even more remarkable because of his training.  His longest training run was 10 kilometers.  He’s in excellent shape.  Obviously that helped.  But, on paper, no coach would draw up a training program without incorporating much longer runs.  On paper he should have done 20-, 30- and 40-kilometer runs.  He didn’t.  He didn’t need to. His mental toughness is off the charts.  He ran sixty-two miles yesterday with his mind. 

The mind.  That’s another thing podcasts have helped me appreciate.  The power of the mind.  To heal.  To create.  To help us reshape ourselves through meditation, and by visualizing the lives we want to lead.

Two more scattered thoughts.

Yesterday we adopted a kitten.  Her name is Molly.  Our daughter’s name is Molly.  We’re going to have to rename our daughter.

The pictures of the fallen trees are from a cutblock not far from our home.  I walked through it, and although it was undeniably apocalyptic, it wasn’t awful.  There was beauty in the desolation, and in the rich green forest behind it. 

More Things Matter Less

Two people I didn’t know died recently.

I learned about them, their lives, and their deaths, from grieving friends.

Their deaths were unexpected.  One from a chronic health problem that deteriorated rapidly.  The second also “natural,” but without warning.  Both had young children.  Both left grieving families, friends, and colleagues

Natural causes.  A phrase we’ve all heard thousands of times.  Two words that don’t convey the pain death leaves in its wake.

I began to think of death a little differently not that long ago.  It was something I heard on a show that has become a big part of my life.  The Rich Roll Podcast.  Rich is an ultra-endurance athlete, a vegan and an inspiration.  He challenges himself and his listeners to be their best selves.  His guests share their lives with Rich because he’s authentic, curious, and humble.  He radiates warmth and trust.  He’s become a fixture in my life.  Like a friend I’ve never met.  Although I did meet him once.  Travelled across the country to hear him speak and met him briefly afterward.  Bought a t-shirt which I still have.  Very worn, and very torn, I still wear it proudly.

A year or so ago, one of Rich’s guests spoke about aging, and longevity – with a focus on people around my age – forty and fifty.  Not old, but not young.

The guest said something like ‘Nature doesn’t need you anymore.’

Thought provoking words.  Not spiritual, not healing, not sugar-coated.  Evolutionary.  We are all animals.   Dying is wired into our DNA.  And by our forties and fifties, most of us have had children, and aren’t going to have any more.  Nature – cruel, merciless – doesn’t need us.

A lot of things don’t need us.

Work doesn’t need us.  If we are lucky, we have careers in which we are fortunate enough to make contributions – to our co-workers, to our organizations, to the world at large.  But, at work, each of us is completely replaceable, regardless of what we do.  You and I might be missed.  But we’re not necessary.  Not essential.  We’d be replaced and the machine would grind on.

Things don’t need us.  We surround ourselves with so much that is non-essential.  So much plastic, so much made overseas, so much packaging.  Inert crap, that adds little value to our lives.

The news cycle doesn’t need us.  It gorges, spits out, and moves on.  Trump today – gone tomorrow. 

The planet doesn’t need us – alive, we drain it, suck out its exhaustible resources.  Every second we breathe, we’re part of the problem.  Dead, we return to the earth.  Giving a little bit back after all we’ve taken.

But if a lot of things don’t need us – a lot of people do.

Our communities.  Our friends.  Our families.  Our children.

Not knowing that I’m writing this – never knowing anything that I write about – my five-year old daughter just started talking about death. She said to me “I bet you die right now.”  I reassured her and told her that wasn’t going to happen.

I did not tell her that nature doesn’t need her father anymore.  She’s five.  She still needs her dad.  Needs to cover my face in shaving cream like she did a couple of hours ago.  Needs to paint my nails pink and spray me with perfume like she did right after that.

And I need her.  For as long as I can hang on. 

Which is another reason Rich Roll has become a mentor and inspiration.  Nature is merciless.  Accidents happen.   Diseases ravage.  Aging never stops, and always takes a toll.  But there are things we can do that increase our chances – increase our chances to live longer, be healthier, and find contentment in whatever path or paths we choose along the way. 

More things matter less than ever to me now.  Things I used to be passionate about like baseball and politics.  Not that long ago they were central to my life, now they exist on the periphery.

But if many things matter less, then a few things matter more.  My family.  My friends.  Seeking rewarding work – not working for rewards.  Reading. Writing. Running.

And living a life with pink nails, and a shaving cream head.