Transcript

Most People Fear Getting Older This Is Why They Shouldnt FEAR It | Mark Nepo

From John R. Miles · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 52 min · 7,623 words · 66 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Most People Fear Getting Older This Is Why They Shouldnt FEAR It | Mark Nepo", an episode of John R. Miles published January 8, 2026 (52 min, about 7,623 words). It mentions 6 people, works and ideas, including The Fifth Season, The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo, Clear Water, Menches.

What this episode is about

In this discussion, Mark Nepo emphasizes the importance of embracing life's inevitable changes, particularly the aging process, rather than fearing it. He advocates for engaging with others and expanding one's sense of solitude to foster connection, suggesting that even small interactions can enrich our lives and blur the boundaries between self and others.

Key takeaways

  • Loneliness speaks louder than silence; engage with life, even if it feels awkward at first.
  • Presence matters: the café buzz offers more companionship than a solitary book at home.
  • Acceptance isn't surrender; it's swimming with life's current, learning and contributing as you flow.
  • Grief breeds compassion; sharing pain can create ripples of connection that transcend our struggles.
  • Every generation faces division, yet the call to compassion is eternally relevant and profoundly human.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Clear Water, Mark Nepo
  2. – 10:00: Menches
  3. – 15:00: Compassion Circles
  4. – 25:00: The Book of Awakening
  5. – 30:00: The Fifth Season
  6. – 35:00: The Book of Awakening, The Fifth Season
  7. – 40:00: The Fifth Season
  8. – 51:53: The Fifth Season

Notable quotes from "Most People Fear Getting Older This Is Why They Shouldnt FEAR It | Mark Nepo"

  • It is my profound honor today to welcome Mark Nepo to Passion Struck. Mark, it's such an honor to have you on today. I've been wanting to do this conversation now for about four years. So, thank you so much for being here.
    about Mark Nepo · at
  • So we are asked not to bend life to us but to inhabit life. And there was a Chinese philosopher Menches in 300 BC.
    about Menches · at
  • He is trying to spread love through acts of compassion. and he's trying to get people to start compassion circles because we've lost this whole presence and connection in the…
    about Compassion Circles · at
  • Books. I'm holding a couple up here in front of the camera that I think everyone knows the book of awakening or at least millions of people do. But I have loved your work for…
    about The Book of Awakening · at
  • And so this starts to move in into the fifth season, my latest book about creativity in the second half of life.
    about The Fifth Season · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

Books & papers

Concepts & topics

Places & events

  • Clear Water — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Cold Water and I always loved that area of the country. So, I'm a little bit jealous. Although here in Clear Water, it's probably a little bit warmer today than it is today.

Full transcript with timestamps

If you're lonely, you say hello. Get out of the house. Doesn't mean that every interaction will be some may be awkward, some may not work out, some may be irritate, but you're engaged in life. And so even as simply as instead of reading at home alone, read in a cafe with even if you never say hello to another person, you're around other light. You're exchanging presence and energy. So expand our sense of solitude to let others in so that the line between self and other blurred. Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host John R. Miles and on the show we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.

Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long- form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors CEOs creators innovators scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passionruck.

It is my profound honor today to welcome Mark Nepo to Passion Struck. Mark, it's such an honor to have you on today. I've been wanting to do this conversation now for about four years. So, thank you so much for being here.

Oh, you're so welcome. Thanks for having me. And as we were chatting before we started today, you were in one of my favorite parts of the country in Kalamazoo. I grew up as a kid going to Cold Water and I always loved that area of the country. So, I'm a little bit jealous. Although here in Clear Water, it's probably a little bit warmer today than it is today.

It is for sure. Well, before we dive in, I want to begin really with a personal note about the impact that your work has had on me and my greater family. Last year, my sister Carolyn passed away after a courageous battle with pancreatic cancer. And her final years, much like your own journey as a survivor, were marked by resilience, reflection, and an unwavering commitment to living a life anchored in love and meaning. Over the last 10 years of her life, she became a Buddhist and living in the present moment was key for her. She during that time discovered her calling after she got this diagnosis. Actually enrolled in a master's program in social work at the University of Texas

because she wanted to help other people navigate their very struggles that she had faced. And her life was really a testament to compassion, acceptance, and the quiet courage of showing up for others. So many things that you write about. When we were planning her memorial service, which she in her typical fashion dictated what she wanted, she made one very specific request that your poem, accepting this, be read aloud. She felt it captured her philosophy of life more clearly than anything she could have said herself.

And I wanted to say a couple lines that echoed through that chamber and through all of us. We were outdoors in Austin reading this and as the Buddhist priest was saying your poem, a butterfly went over his shoulders and through the scene which we all believe was sister.

And the words I wanted to say are we cannot eliminate hunger but we can feed each other. We cannot eliminate loneliness but we can hold each other. We cannot eliminate pain but we can live a life of compassion. And for those of us who were watching this, those words became not just a comfort but a call to action that she wanted to ripple beyond her. For someone whose writing Mark has helped us through profound grief like that and someone who has stood at the edge of life and death, you understand the necessity for that kind of acceptance and compassion. What inspired those lines in accepting this and in a time Yeah. and where the world feels increasingly divided. How do we what you call the small living things awaken in the stream live into that final stanza?

Thank you. Thank you. It's very touching for sharing that from your service with your sister. Well, I think and let's back up a little bit when we talk about our time and things are very difficult and acute and polarized and I would back up and say that every generation, every age faces the same thing. The things that trigger us, the things that block us are different in each age, in each generation. But this is part of the archetypal journey of being alive, being human, struggling to be awake, to stay awake, to remember who we are to ourselves and each other. So I think from my cancer journey, I'm 74 now. And if I met someone my age, when I was younger, I thought they were ancient. It doesn't seem so old now. In my early 30s, I almost died from a rare form of lymphoma.

And through that I was turned inside out and upside down. And through no wisdom on my part, I was jettisoned into learning a different way to be in the world in learning how acceptance we often misconstrue it. It doesn't mean resignation. It doesn't mean giving up. It doesn't mean just obeying whatever someone asks of us. Acceptance comes out of surrender. And I think surrender, I've learned, is cooperating with truth. So instead of fighting life, we stay in relationship with it. We work with it. And that so in a way in the ancient one of all the spiritual traditions speak about this in different ways but the dowist tradition the ancient Chinese tradition dao simply means the way they don't even try to name it but the metaphor for it which I so love is that life is like an invisible river and every soul is a fish in that river and so the goal of every soul every fish is to Find the current so you can swim

with it. And that's the proper use of our will. That's the work of acceptance and not fighting, not insisting on what I want, but seeing what am I being asked here to learn and contribute that will both feed my life and life in the stream of life. That is really beautiful and profound. As I have dived deeply into your work, one of the things I've heard you say more recently is that the heart is our strongest muscle and that its work is to keep us awake to life. When you look at the world today, what does living from the heart actually require of us?

Well, it requires us. So let's also back up here to say that and again this is whatever part of the journey of every soul that comes into being is there's an age-old argument if you will. On the one hand there's a tribe of thinkers throughout the generations who have said human beings are you can't trust them. They're if you don't have constraints and rules they're gonna they're going to be cruel. they're going to just go with self-interest. So, we really need to clamp down on these strange beings. And there's the other, which I'm a part of that tribe of thinkers and feelers that says, "No, human beings are innately good." And left to their to our own basic human nature, we will be kind and help each other and be more together than alone. And the things that block us come from we can be blocked by others, by suffering, by the world we live in, by ourselves, by the wounds that we but our job of awakening is how to repair

from those blockages and wake up again. And the heart is, I believe, our strongest muscle, our strongest instrument. And the word trust literally means to follow the heart. And so we are asked not to bend life to us but to inhabit life. And there was a Chinese philosopher Menches in 300 BC. And [clears throat] I loved he had this wonderful metaphor for this. He said that water allowed its true nature will always flow downhill and join other water. It can be manipulated. It can go even uphill or sideways or through a dam or a pipe. But allowed its true nature, it will flow and join other water. And he said, "So too, we allowed our true nature, we will flow and join with each other. We will help each other. We won't even think about it. It'll be just innate. But we can be we can manipulate ourselves and be and I think we live in it now to come back to where to our age and our turn. This is

and this doesn't minimize the suffering, the cruelty, the lack of compassion that we're seeing in our age globally. But it's our turn. Will we choose love over fear? Will we remove what's in the way? Will we remember, oh my god, it's you. Oh, so I think that there are many things in our modern world that have almost like a inadvertent perfect storm. I don't think anybody planned this, but we have the pandemic. We have technology, the insulation of social media. And we have this I think one of the things that seems so simple but it's so profound is many of us have lost our direct connection with life.

And why is this important? Because when we are directly connected to life, we have a reverence for life. And if we have a reverence for life, we can't do harm. One of the things when we're not connected with life, our need to feel and be here doesn't go away. And so it comes out sideways. And in some ways violence is a desperate last attempt to feel. It's will do anything to feel. This is where the whole notion the psychological self harm of cutting people who are so blocked from their heart so have no access to what they're feeling and to the life around them that they still need to feel. they still want to do something to open up and it comes out in very hurtful ways. So I think and all the traditions give us ways to reconnect with life and each other. And so it starts with taking a risk.

It starts with when we're closed, how do we open? When we're numb, how do we wake up? And I think it always starts with the risk to be present, to hold nothing back for me. And so all these states, we will experience them be because we're human. We're not going to eliminate them. But this is what it is to be a spirit in a body and time on earth. We're always course correcting. Oh, today I was too closed. Oh, today I gave myself away. Oh, today I listened and I lost myself. Oh, today I didn't I was stubborn. That's the work of self-awareness through the heart. How do I keep returning to the coroner of aliveness?

And this is why you and I could work at the same office for years and oh, we're cordial and but we don't really know each other. And then one day after shortly after perhaps you lost your sister and shortly after perhaps I lost my father and then now we say hello and those walls are down and we actually see each other and I go oh my god I had no idea it's you. Oh here we are. Let's begin. what you have just captured is so profound and it really is at the center of all the work that I'm trying to do. I see so many people today who are whether you call it lonely, hopeless, nihilistic, whatever word you want to use and I think the word I use for it is they feel invisible in their own life.

They feel like [snorts] they don't matter. And when you lose that central feeling of mattering, you are just filled with a profound emptiness and a lack of any direction that's giving you meaning. And I love your work on using the word love here. I happen to have Joshua Green, who's a Harvard psychologist, and Dr. Rick Hansen, who you might be aware of yesterday on the show, and we were talking about how to expand the circle of moral concern. And Rick in this chapter of his life has created this foundation called the global coalition circle. And with this, he is trying to spread love through acts of compassion. and he's trying to get people to start compassion circles because we've lost this whole presence and connection in the communities that existed for millennia. So I'm completely in line with what you are saying and what you teach.

Oh, thank you. And I think that one of the things that's important is when we think of the world, it's overwhelming. When we think of these huge and it always has been, how do we reignite compassion all over the world? Well, when we think of it conceptually, it is overwhelming and can make us feel insignificant. But when we feel it through our heart, we become a part of it and that gives us resilience and that's uplifting. And this is why ev all of it begins with the smallest detail, the smallest step. So when I listen to you totally in your pain or whatever you're going through, then I am casting a stitch in the fabric of humanity. I'll give you a personal example of this that was so profound for me. And this was my father's gone now about almost 15 years and toward the end of his life he lived to be 93 and I was visiting him in a hospital and he was he had a stroke and I mean he could talk

but it was so much work he just didn't and but there I was all of a sudden and it was not a private room and there was all kinds of noise and things clanging and people everywhere and but all of a sudden I was feeding him applesauce with the spoon and it was a very bittersweet, beautiful, sad, wonderful moment. And I just fell in my whole life was in that moment, slipping the spoon so it didn't hit his teeth and him trying to swallow the applesauce and the tearing, of course. And then I was surprised because I fell into a moment of wonder by giving my all to that moment, that detail.

I had tripped into the moment of every adult child who ever fed a dying parent. And I was not alone. And so it's changed how I understand resilience by being authentic and holding nothing back and giving my all not to change the world but to the detail of the moment that opens to me. I can trip into the larger stream of the mystery of life. And that's where I was like a fish swimming in that stream. I was now by not by trying to swim in the stream, not by trying to fix the world, but by meeting what was presented to me with everything I had.

I was in the stream with all of humanity. And so my encouragement is care for what's before you with all your heart. And it matters. It matters because we do not know. We do not know which gesture of wholeheartedness will keep the world going. And so each day we are challenged to be fully here and hold nothing back. I can completely relate to what you were going through in a different context. So my my papa who was my hero growing up when he got into his 90s had developed dementia and we faced the same onset that you were going through where he had forgotten really how to care for himself and it happened to me in a different way not through feeding him but just seeing all the memories and this brilliant person who was the head of research at craft that brilliant mind disappear was just so difficult.

to see from someone I respected so much. So, I completely understand what you're saying here. And what I've heard you say previously is that immersion is whatever is before us and that's what brings us alive. For someone who's not in one of these moments that you and I are referencing here, but they're in their everyday life, what does that immersion look like? And how do we know when we're holding back from it? I think in a very simple way I use a very simple question to help me get a sense of that and that is is what I'm involved in is what I'm giving myself to whatever it might be is it lifegiving and heartening or is it life draining and disheartening that's like an inner barometer especially when things seem complicated or tangled I just come back to that question is this lifegiving and heartening ing or life draining and disheartening. And if it's lifegiving, even if it's difficult,

well, I'm in. But if it's life draining, what am I doing? And so likewise, if I don't feel what's before me and what's in me? Well, there are usually two two poss major kind of reasons for me at least. One is I'm blocked somehow. I have a wall or a wound or a fear or an anxiety that's not allowing me to be thorough and open. So then, okay, how do I identify where I'm blocked? That's the inner work so I can clear it out. The other is I may be just tired and I need to rest. I'm committed to being wholehearted, but there's some days I'm half-hearted. So it means it's like when you go to a famous museum and you want to take in everything and after an hour you're like, "Oh my god, another masterpiece. Give me a break." No, there's not. That's still a masterpiece.

We're just tired. We got to rest so we can refresh and take it in again. And that's part of our journey as well is to tend things, not push. to tend and not push. So I think that and then also there is just that not everything is going to be while life is divine and always miraculous again because we're human we come in and out of being able to fully apprehend it. There's a wonderful story from Einstein was recalling it was a conversation with him about his early development of his mind and he shared that at the age of 11 he in a glimpse of intuition grasped all of Uklitian geometry and he said and I knew the next day would be dull of necessity but we have these it's like life is like the ocean. There's these crests and these swells and the waves crash and because we're not always on the crest of a wave, it doesn't mean there's something wrong. And so by keeping the heart open, we can discover the

extraordinary in the ordinary. Mark, you have now written 25 plus books. I'm holding a couple up here in front of the camera that I think everyone knows the book of awakening or at least millions of people do. But I have loved your work for years. But as I have understood from hearing you talk, you knew you wanted to be a poet fairly early on in life. And I'm going to go into have you tell this story here in a second, but when I was early in in my life, I was serving as a naval officer. I was in road to Spain and over there it was really an interesting dichotomy between us Americans and the Spaniards who were in the military and we would be in the office at 5:30 in the morning working till it was dark and our Spanish friends would roll into work around 9:00 a.m. They take a two-hour siesta in the afternoon and they would work into the evening. But I remember one of my close Spanish friends said to me, "John, you

Americans love to work and we work to live." And it reminded me of something that you said to your parents that

I'm going to live a making instead of make a living, which I just love. Can you think of that line? When I was undergraduate, actually just to back up a bit. So when I was in high school, I first started writing because my first love was a year ahead of me and went she went to college and fell in love with someone else and it was my first heartache and I was devastated and I wasn't a loner but I have I hadn't experienced a real friend yet until I got to college and so I started writing as a way to deal with the heartache and I realized pretty quickly I wasn't just talking to myself. I had begun a conversation with life and with the mysteries of life and the difficulties of life and the wonders. And so that was the beginning of my writing. And then when I realized in college that I was a poet and I didn't I hadn't really written anything much, but I just knew it and I was still learning what

that meant. And I was the first in my family to go to college in the history of my family, a family of immigrants, Jewish immigrants. And my father, who was a master woodworker, my mother was a bookkeeper, but they were both highly intelligent, grew up out of the Great Depression, were very survival oriented for my brother and I. And they got a mystical poet for a son, like we didn't really speak the same language. And I came home as a sophomore, I think in college, excited to tell them that I was a poet. And we were around the small kitchen table and we had the classic argument, my father escalating and yelling that how are you going to make a living? And I don't know where it came from in me. And I just said without missing a beat, I'm going to live a making.

And it just frustrated the hell out of him. And I spent the next several years trying to understand what came through me from my soul and from the world of spirit was a deep instruction on how to move forward to stay close to what it means to be alive. And I would share with you now all these years later that I've discovered I think over time that the creative process and the introspective process are really the same thing. I just happen to write it down because that's how I learn. And one of the reasons that I've been blessed to be prolific is that I've learned that writing is really listening and taking notes more than speaking my beliefs.

And so I've been able to explore a lot because I write about what I need to know, not what I know. If I'd written about only what I know, I would have written very little. And and so this raises a whole thing that's a paradox in life and that is we all whether the art is in living not in what we produce. And and so this starts to move in into the fifth season, my latest book about creativity in the second half of life. Because really what I'm exploring there is not that well now that I'm retired I can paint more or I can write more. What I'm exploring there is our life is the work of art.

And by immersing ourself, by devoting ourselves, we take our place in the mystery of life, we live as fully as we can as holding nothing back. Our relationships become a work of art. And so another lesson from my father which I learned a lot because he was a creative force as a master woodworker and and he built a 30-foot sailboat catch when I was a boy out of wood that I spent a lot of my youth on. And so [clears throat] I didn't learn a lot by him talking about creativity just by watching him. and and I remember being 10 or 11 and we had a small home on Long Island and the basement was where his workshop was and he was working because one of the things he would do as a hobby as well was he would carve half models. So what he would do is he would get blueprints for sailing ships from the 1800s and then he would build them to scale maybe six foot long and they were half models because he you would only build half so you

could mount them on a wall so part of it was flat and I [clears throat] remember watching him through the see-through stairs of the basement and he was immersed in with a tweezer with black thread pulling two scale rigging through the masts and the dead what were dead eyes or turnbuckles they call them now today and he didn't know I was watching him and I didn't know what it meant but I've come to understand he was showing me the secret life of detail this goes back to dealing with the one thing that's in front of you and I learned that he was so immersed And this is interesting given what I learned by attending him when he was in his last years there in the hospital.

But back then he was so immersed that he was in the moment of everyone who ever built a boat. And so while what he the work he did was excellent, it's about immersion, not excellence. Excellence is the byproduct of immersion. If you light a flame, you don't have to work for it, it will give off heat by virtue of it being lit. And if we're immersed, we will do excellent work. But if we just strive for excellence, we may not be immersed. And we and the reward for immersion is the experience of oneness and connection to life. And now we come back to reverence and doing no harm. One of the things today when we get back to your question about someone who's not feeling connected, who's feeling numb, who's feeling isolated, what do you care about?

What can you immerse yourself in? It doesn't have to be a big career. It may be caring for one plant. It may be bringing dinner to a neighbor. It may who knows what it would be. It could be stamp collecting. could be working on cars. It doesn't really like the soul wants us to throw care on the fire of aliveness.

Yes. So like any fire, a fire doesn't care what kind of wood you put on it. And I don't think the soul or the life of spirit cares what care we put on the fire of aliveness. just that we care.

I can completely relate to what you're saying. For so many years of my life, [clears throat] I was chasing success. I was trying to chase happiness. And I found the more I chased, the emptier I became. And that none of that comes from trying to chase it. It comes from meaning in our lives. It comes from those who we surround ourselves with. And I think Victor Frankle got it right. We find meaning at work or in pursuing a creative element that we're passionate about. We find meaning in love. Love could be love of our partner, caring for someone who might be sick, love of another human being. It could be a friend. It comes in suffering. And I think as Derer Kelner teaches, I think it can come in moral beauty by doing acts of kindness to others. So I agree with you that when you start pursuing those things and you immerse yourselves in them, that [clears throat] is the secret that I found in this chapter of

my life is that is bringing me more happiness and success than I ever felt before when I was trying to chase it. It becomes a result of having meaning and purpose and service in life.

Yeah, I think absolutely. which doesn't mean that we don't do things. One of the things in our modern world, we have rightly an emphasis on heart and being because we're so out of balance with thinking and doing. But ideally, I think like you need two good feet to walk. Being and doing complement each other. And at their best, when we're fully inhabited, they're one and the same. And just like when we're really there for each other, it's hard to know who's giving and who's receiving. They really become the same thing.

Yes. And that is the reward for that deep immersion when and there is an epidemic of loneliness in our age. I know especially with young people and I was on on an interview with a young editor in London, a young woman who asked about this and and I don't give advice. I just share and you know what I share are examples not instructions and but I found myself speaking from my cancer journey and that and what came up was you don't interview ambulance drivers. You take the first one and if you're lonely, you say hello. Get out of the house. Doesn't mean that every interaction will be some may be awkward, some may not work out, some may be irritate, but you're engaged in life.

And so even as simply as instead of reading at home alone, read in a cafe where there even if you never say hello to another person, you're around other life. You're exchanging presence and energy. So expand our sense of solitude to let others in so that the line between self and other blurs. I want to go into the fifth season here in a second, but I want to ask you one more question about the book of awakening which really was a turning point for millions of readers. And as I understand it, it it's not something that immediately became a New York Times bestseller. It went out there for 10 years before Oprah discovered it and then it had its own journey on the other side. But this book was written after your cancer journey. And what I've heard you say when you talk about it is you call the book short doses of what matters. Today looking back, what rises to the top of that list? What matters

more now than it ever did before? Well, thank you for that question. I think I would return to that what matters most is being as fully present and wholehearted as we can be knowing that we can't do it all the time. But how do I behold the life that I meet? Because I think one of the things about the fifth season to go to the latest book and was the journey for every human being once we're here is to awaken so that there's as little as possible between what lives in here and what lives out here. And why I speak so much about authenticity is that I believe that when we're authentic, the practice and devotion to being authentic makes us a clear inlet between the inner life and the outer life. Makes us kind and useful, makes us receptive.

And that's an end. One of my books is the endless practice. That staying that open is an endless practice because we're never done. And there's a great metaphor for this which is in what's called an aquia. Now in the south, it's actually the word comes from the Arabic because in in desert climates and you'll see what this means, but in the southwest Native Americans for centuries and a sequia is a sloo way or a natural water flow, let's say from the top of a mountain where snow after winter will create a water course to the bottom of the mountain

and villages and tribes would would settle there because there's a natural water source. It's right there. So, so well naturally over a winter debris would fill the ACIA, trees, limbs would fall in it, animals would build nests, stones would erode. So that once a year at least there was a ritual where the entire tribe including children and elders would take a few days [clears throat] and from the top of the mountain to the bottom clear out the so nothing was blocking the flow from source into the world. Well, this is a fantastic metaphor for a spiritual practice and what both collectively in relationships and families and towns and nations, but in our own individual work. And the Equia, the source, the waterway between spirit and our lives gets clogged not because we're deficient or stupid because it's natural. This is what experience does. And so we have to clear it out. So just like we would do a house

cleaning every spring at least once a year we each need our own form of cleaning out the pathway the slle way between source and how we live in the world. So this gets back to what patterns what patterns what wounds what patterns what ways of closed-minded and closedhearted thinking and feeling what ways of assumptions and judgments. How do we make a practice of clearing that out so that we start with I don't know rather than I told you. Man, that really hit me. And I think you're so right. As I was immersing myself into the fifth season, because I'm myself now, the second half of life, one of the things that struck me that I find so true is you point out that the years behind us grow longer than the years ahead. And when that happens, the proper place of dreams and memory shifts. And you say that dreams are the kindling of our aliveness. And I love that because given my work centers on mattering

that belief that our presence has weight, meaning and value is so important. So how do you think presence what you were just talking about memory and dreams?

Yeah. Contribute to that feeling that we matter. Well, so this is one of the things as from the book, a shift in our horizons and as we age. So I'm 74. I'm hoping to live to 100. Who knows? But even there's more years behind and ahead. And one of the things, it doesn't mean I don't dream anymore, but I but often one of the liabilities of dreaming in our world is that without realizing it, we defer our better self to the future. Oh, when I do this, then I'll be whole. When I'm in that relationship, then I'll be happy. There's always a if then. Oh, yeah.

But what we do is when we dreaming, we're actually putting forward some of our potential and possibility so that we can see it. So that the alive we can then see where is that aliveness in us right now.

Yeah. How can we bring it alive now? now and I think I've been helped with this because almost dying from cancer all those years ago while I dream it always boomerangs back well okay what I have is now so if I'm dreaming that how can I bring it alive now and the same thing with memory when we look back which we tend to do as we get older okay but the difference between what I try to uncover in the book as the helpful use of memory versus one that kind of entraps us. Nostalgia entraps us. So nostalgia is when I look back to 20 years ago to a very wonderful experience and I go, gee, boy, I wish I could have that again. I wish I could go back there.

Wish I could go back to Spain, right? 25 again. But what the helpful use of memory is, I go back to whatever that memory is to touch into what was alive then and trace it because that stream of aliveness is always there. Oh, where is it showing up in me now? So just like we go back in memory to say, oh yeah, where is that aliveness in me now? And I dream forward. Well, not forget going forward. Where can I trace it back so that both memory and dream help us realize what is wants to be alive in us right now?

I want to switch to celestial topics here for a second. I love how you use metaphors and there's one of the meteor that I think is really profound and the meteor is this idea that yeah as we burn through what doesn't matter we shine brighter and I thought that this is

an extraordinary metaphor how did that arrive for you and what is it well I think yeah metaphor and again has been my native language even when I was a kid I didn't know what metaphor was but it was it's how the world's always spoken to me. How spirit has always spoken to me. Now, and so what I would I want to share from that is every one of us has a gift. And part of our job of awakening and immersing and following our heart is to discover what our gift is and let it be our teacher. Let it be our teacher. So the metaphor just entering the second half of life myself and trying to understand from all the things I've been through this paradox of how while outwardly yes the body starts to wear away and we have limit physical limitations but at the same time throughout our our life of the spirit is deepening and broadening and expanding and illuminating.

And if we don't become a student of that, then the limitations of the earthly body will take over and be way out of proportion. So it's not reframing, it's not turning from one to the other. It's allowing both to accurately rightsize what our experience is as a spirit in a body in time on Earth. So I guess trying to live into all of that this metaphor came about the meteor. So we know that meteors very few reach earth because they burn up in the atmosphere. And so when a meteor starts it's a certain size and as it moves through the atmosphere more and more of it flakes off and it gets brighter and brighter until there's nothing left but light.

And that became a teacher for me that oh this is what it's like to be a spirit in a body over a lifetime on earth. Throughout our life we through the life of experience and gravity and wonder and suffering and beauty and erosion. Our outer life flakes off and we become more and more light till the spirit leaves the body. And so nobody likes the flaking off. A year ago I had major back surgery. I had fusion surgery. So I have those titanium screws in my back and it has a blessing.

You had that too? No, my father my father Oh, your father had that. And it was a scary moment, but he was in so much pain that he said it's given him a new release on life in some ways because he was in

so much distress before that. Exactly. And I felt it was so difficult since my cancer journey. It was the most difficult thing I've been in. And the surgery has been a tremendous success. I'm so blessed. I'm thankful that I and that was a flaking off and I'm brighter for it. So there's just again it's not to deify suffering. It's like everyone has to deal with gravity. This is part of gravity. This is part of but the opposite of the outer world has the force of gravity and the inner world has the emanation of spirit and these two for we live subject to these two amazing forces in the world.

One of the things before we close I wanted to make sure we talked about is throughout the book you have stories of saying yes to life and they're really powerful. I wanted to ask in your view what does it mean to say yes to a life in a way that affirms I matter. This moment matters and what I give of myself matters.

Yeah. So I think that saying yes to life is again is not being obedient. Often we need to say no to situations and relationships and patterns in order to say yes to life. Saying yes to life and I come back down to means leaning in when pain and worry and fear push us away. It means holding nothing back when we hesitate. It means loving again after we've been burned by love. It means never and you may familiar with Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah song. Yeah. So he talks about a broken hallelujah there and saying yes to life. This coincides with what I think the real meaning of the story of Job is. I don't think it's a blind obedience to God. I think it's a saying yes to life by accepting and not turning away from all the hardships that there's a mystery. There's a paradox. You and I could be on a raft at sea and a huge wave comes and smashes the raft and we're hanging on. That's not a good day for us.

And it doesn't diminish the majesty of the sea. And we're asked to hold both. That's the broken hallelujah. Not just a everything's wonderful, don't worry, it'll work out. No, the fact that saying yes to life is there is a incomprehensible mystery that we're a part of. This is why you've heard the old proverbial question, is the glass half full or half empty? Well, that is really not helpful for me because it's always both. And our job in the broken hallelujah in saying yes to life in facing life and embracing life is how do we relate to both? How do we let both be a teacher?

How do we open our heart to the mysterious wholeness of life that is both fragile and gentle and at times harsh and can break us and break us open. And that's where the work of being a spirit in a body and time on earth is. And no one knows how to do this, which is why we need each other. I think that I've come to think that life is made just difficult enough. So we need each other to ensure the journey of love and bouncing back and forth from positive to negative from true to false is again like that question. It's not helpful.

Yeah, because it's always both. Yeah, it's definitely both. And one of the most important shifts I think we need to make that is a much bigger part of Eastern thinking than it is for us in the West or it's more either or which I found throughout my career.

Mark, it has been such a profound honor to speak with you today. If you could leave one thing for listeners to carry with them as they're entering the fifth season, what do you hope they will finally release?

Well, I think what I would offer again, we go back to the heart being our strongest muscle and our finest instrument is to trust our heart. And I encourage people not to think that everything that's in the way is a problem or a deficiency, but a teacher. We're in our world, modern world, we've been mistaught to think we're entitled to a obstaclefree existence. And no, obstacles, nobody loves obstacles, but they're not demons, they're teachers. And what's in the way is the way

and that's how our light goes brighter and how our heart shows up for each other.

Mark, thank you so much for joining us today on Passion Struck. I know this will be a fan favorite. Thank you so much for everything you have done for so many people throughout these 27 books of knowledge that you have put out into the world, which I know as you were writing them, I know you hoped that they would touch people, but you probably never in a million years thought they would touch as many people as they have.

Not at all. It's beyond anything I imagined. I'm just so grateful and thank you, John. Wonderful to be with you.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Most People Fear Getting Older This Is Why They Shouldnt FEAR It | Mark Nepo"?

John R. Miles (Host), Mark Nepo (Guest).

What is "Most People Fear Getting Older This Is Why They Shouldnt FEAR It | Mark Nepo" about?

In this discussion, Mark Nepo emphasizes the importance of embracing life's inevitable changes, particularly the aging process, rather than fearing it. He advocates for engaging with others and expanding one's sense of solitude to foster connection, suggesting that even small interactions can enrich our lives and blur the boundaries between self and others.

What is mentioned in this John R. Miles episode?

6 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including The Fifth Season, The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo, Clear Water, Menches, Compassion Circles. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Most People Fear Getting Older This Is Why They Shouldnt FEAR It | Mark Nepo"?

The episode runs 52 min; the transcript is about 7,623 words in 66 timestamped sections.

More from John R. Miles

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.