Question: What is the inspiration for this new book?
Response: As fish swim in water and birds wake to sing, I come alive in this unending inquiry we call writing. And I always write about what I need to learn. Now in my sixties, life feels even more precious and I keep learning how rare this one life is. I know from my own evolution that most of what the heart knows enters us like lightning, and is already true somewhere inside, while the rest of us struggles to catch up. I’ve also learned that we’re never drawn into a change we’re not ready for, though the change may be difficult. Under the weight of living, I’m thankful for how gifted we are to have hearts that feel. Thankful for the chance to be tender and thorough and possible one more time. And whenever we dare or are forced to lift each other up or ease each other down, we have the glorious chance to find what we’ve lost in our common story. When we can truly behold each other, we slowly become each other. We become love itself. It’s through love’s eyes that we can see that it’s sweetly enough to be here at all. I offer this book as a testament to the human spirit and to life itself.
Question: In the book, you offer that effort and grace are key to finding the wisdom that waits in our heart and to living a full life. What do you mean by this?
Response: This is a central inquiry of the book. From an early age, we’re taught to try hard, to do our best, to give our all, which is necessary to accomplish things in the world. We try to get from here to there, from inexperience to experience, from apprenticeship to mastery. But just as we’re clearing a path, we experience heartbreak and loss. Things don’t go as planned. We are betrayed. Our trust is broken. We lose our way. And without warning, we’re thrust into a life of transformation, which no one can escape. Now we’re introduced to a different sense of effort that asks us to put down what we accumulate in order to discover beauty and wonder. As our inner life unfolds, we grow from ignorance to truth and from loneliness to love. This kind of work is necessary to join with the world. We clearly need both to accomplish things and to join with other life. While trying so hard to get from here to there leads to achievement and even excellence, giving our all lets us grow like a root and blossom in the world wherever we are. Ultimately, the effort to grow inwardly is more life-giving than the effort to get. How we grow inwardly leads in time to meaning and grace, a journey we can’t control, but only enter. To make the most of being here, we’re required to learn when to try and when to let go. This is our initiation into grace. The practice of being human centers on our effort to connect to all life and, when in trouble, to make good use of our heart. No one quite knows how to do this, but we must learn how. Our life depends on this journey through the heart. There is no other way. By fully living the one life we’re given, we’re led to the wisdom that waits in our heart. This book explores these themes and invites the reader to personalize them.
Question: You return in this book to the short-chapter format of your #1 New York Times bestseller, The Book of Awakening. What led you to re-engage this form?
Response: I’ve always been moved by the power of story. It is the oldest of teachers. In The Book of Awakening, I tried to offer small doses of what matters to carry into our days. More than returning to this form, I felt compelled to evolve it with all I’ve learned through the years. This book has grown out of the rhythms of my own spiritual inquiry and the path of my teaching. Both keep merging and forming a new whole. Both keep forming me into a new whole. Working with readers and students is a path I am devoted to. This path is a continuous inquiry into what it means to be human, to be here, and to care for each other. And so I’ve structured this book in the shape of the one conversation with life that I’ve been entering with so many through the years, which I welcome new readers to.
Question: You give many examples of seekers whose journeys help to uncover the inner life. Was there someone in particular who helped you find your way into this book?
Response: Yes. My dear father, Morris Nepo, died three years ago at the age of ninety-three. He was at his strongest and happiest when working with wood, when building things. In his basement workshop, no one could suppress his love of life and his insatiable creativity. I learned a great deal from him. Though I can see now that there were many times he didn’t know he was teaching and I didn’t know I was learning. Mostly, he taught me by example that we’re called to make good use of the one life we’re given. He taught me that giving our all can lead to moments of fulfillment and grace. And those moments of full living can sustain us.
Question: Can you tell us about the structure of this book?
Response: The sections of this book point to how we might truly inhabit the one life we’re given: by getting closer to life, loving what we do, finding what can last, and by being kind and useful. I present them in this order only because one page has to follow another. In life, these passages don’t always appear in this sequence. One may lead to another. Being kind and useful may ultimately get us closer to life. And finding what can last may help us love what we do. In life, these passages appear more like spokes on a wheel. Each, if followed, can lead us to their common center. At any time, each of these passages can serve as a meaningful beginning. Each chapter in the book contains a story or metaphor or personal example that brings a question or quandary of living into view. From this, I try to surface and reflect on the life lesson or skill carried there. Finally, and this is the most important part, I offer a question for you to walk with, or a conversation for you to have with a friend or loved one, or a meditation through which you might discover where this question or quandary or lesson or skill lives in you. These invitations are seeds to water along the way.
Question: Can you share a story from the book that gives us a sense of its journey?
Response: I’m happy to. A troubled widower made his way to ask a wise old woman about his troubles. The old woman received him and they walked along a stream. She could see the pain in his face. He began to tremble as he asked, “What’s the point? Is there any meaning to life?” She invited him to sit on a large stone near the stream. She took a long branch and swirled it in the water, then replied, “It all depends on what it means to you to be alive.” In his sorrow, the man dropped his shoulders and the old woman gave him the branch. “Go on,” she said, “touch the branch to the water.” As he poked the branch in the running stream, there was something comforting about feeling the movement of the water in his hand through the branch. She touched his hand and said, “You see, that you can feel the water without putting your hand in the water, this is what meaning feels like.” The troubled man seemed puzzled. She said, “Close your eyes and feel your wife now gone. That you can feel her in your heart without being able to touch her, this is how meaning saves us.” The widower began to cry. The old woman put her arm around him, “No one knows how to live or how to die. We only know how to love and how to lose, and how to pick up branches of meaning along the way.” In just this way, I hope this book can be a branch of meaning that helps us find our way.
Question: What do you hope readers will take with them from The One Life We’re Given?
Response: My hope is that, through the threshold this book opens, readers will deepen their conversation with life. That through their own path of obstacle and surprise, they will be opened to their gifts and become somewhat freed of all they carry. My hope is that they will begin to discover and experience the particular expression of their own nature. I share my story and the stories of others as examples, not instructions. For everyone has to uncover the lessons of their own journey. The word honor means to keep what is true in view. And so, we live the one life we’re given by keeping what we learn in view—about ourselves, each other, and life. We can begin by honoring the truth of our experience and learning from those who’ve loved us. Aware of it or not, we each have someone who’s taught us something about how to live. So who is that teacher for you? And what are you learning in the slow blossom of time? This is a step.
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The One Life We’re Given: Finding the Wisdom that Waits in your Heart
Mark Nepo
Atria Books, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Available July 19, 2016; $26
ISBN: 9781501116322
eBook ISBN: 9781501116346
Lovely new words from Mark Nepo! Thanks for sharing his new book!
Wonderful new book from Mark Nepo. His words are refreshing!