A recorded conversation exploring how awareness of mortality shapes personal meaning and counseling practice. The speaker describes mortality awareness as freeing people from conventional scripts, prompting them to clarify what is truly meaningful, align actions with personal vision, and prioritize immediacy and authenticity in life and therapeutic work.
In the past, both you and I have worked with people who have been terminally ill. And throughout our time together, the exploration of mortality, viewing that as a part of how we deal with life, that they go together, has been important. And how would you say that has integrated itself or influenced your work with people?
I think that being aware of mortality and how outrageous that is that this life is short term has allowed me to basically not follow just the ordinary rules that are in front of me, but to think for myself that somehow it's given the freedom to inquire what is really meaningful and purposeful. And what do you think is really meaningful and purposeful and just to hell with everything else, to hell with ordinary conventions and ordinary traditions. I want to know what's really important to you and contrast that with how you live it. And that kind of passionate inquiry of this dynamic and, let's say, dualism between what you yourself feel is the most essentially fulfilling life and the life you're living makes work a lot easier. And the impermanence of life somehow makes it more precious. It makes it more like, I really want to take advantage of. Of my short days here on Earth. And if someone isn't really feeling that sense of immediacy, then it's clear I'm the wrong match for them. And yet all I'm really asking for is, well, what's really important to you? It's not like I get to decide for you. So it becomes kind of fun because I get to play with your best vision of your life and have that be superimposed with the areas that are both consistent with it, which we can feel the joy of that together and feel the inconsistencies and feel the suffering of that together, and then hopefully support you to follow your own vision.
And how do you think it is that so many people are separated from that feeling that life is impermanent versus acting so out of sync with it?
Well, I mean, our conditioning right from birth is to believe you live a life of being successful and smart and getting security and you'll be happy. And the myth of following the program as being the source of happiness is like being given a blindfold. Like, don't look at the nature of how tenuous this existence is here on Earth. Look instead at, okay, if I'm well educated and if I get a good job and if I have a good family, I'm going to be just immune. I'm just going to be happy. That's it. Or even if I follow the religious program or the spiritual program, I'M going to be happy. And I don't have to look at whether I really believe it most of the time. It's just I'm going to follow it instead of really looking at your internal life and saying what makes sense to me. You, uniquely me. So that lack of support, even. Let's just starting with our educational system again. Imagine in sixth grade that they're saying, what do you imagine would make you happiest? Kids would start to be thinking about that. No, forget about what we've taught you about school or success and that what do you think is going to really make you happy? And then ask a more sophisticated version of that in junior high and then high school and college, and that being one out of your four courses or your parents, that's what they're modeling for you. I'm not interested in telling you what to do. I'm interested in what you think. So it's very easy to understand why it's not a priority because it's not practiced very often.
So in your work, how essential is this?
It's totally central. It's so central because everyone has a unique way in which they frame the best life. For some people it's God, and for some people it's goodness. And for some people it's integrity. For some people it's creativity or inspiration. And asking that question is like, so much fun. It's so inspiring. It's a privilege. It's really a privilege to ask anybody the question of what does it for you. And then it makes counseling be a joy. It makes friendship be a joy, it makes love be a joy. Because you're not projecting your own ideas on the other person. You're really respecting and trusting them enough as an individual to ask them, give it to me, give it to yourself, and then let's have the integrity to kind of look at where you're just not fulfilling your own vision. And we get to be with that too. And of course, you also get to change your vision. So you get to have a continuous series of visions and let it evolve. And how much fun is that?
