Discerning Purpose in Life’s Second Half: A Conversation with David Brooks

Welcome everyone who has already joined us.

My name is Seth Green and I'm the Dean here at the Graham School at the University of Chicago. We are thrilled to have you for our conversation with David Brooks,

Chicago. We are thrilled to have you for our conversation with David Brooks, a noted columnist from The New York Times, a contributing writer to The Atlantic, a best selling author and most important to the University of Chicago, a senior fellow and advisor to our Leadership and Society Initiative.

David, thank you so much for joining us.

We are really excited about our conversation with you today.

Good to be with you, Seth.

And I'm joining you from Little School Commuter School in New Haven, Connecticut. But we still pay homage to the great University of Chicago.

Connecticut. But we still pay homage to the great University of Chicago.

All right. Well, wonderful. I don't know what university that could be, but we'll have to find out at some point.

David, we are here because you are an extraordinary thought leader on many levels.

And one of the books that you've written, The Second Mountain, really propelled you into this conversation about how you can move from incredible accomplishment in one's first career and long standing focus to a second mountain where you really think about this purpose driven life.

And we're going to go over the course of this conversation deeply into the subject of how you discern and then activate a next chapter of purpose.

And in many ways, the context for our conversation will be this book.

And so I'm curious just to set the foundation for the rest of our conversation, if you can share what led you to write The Second Mountain and whether there was a defining moment in your life that kind of sparked this intellectual curiosity?

Yeah. The basic theory behind The Second Mountain was we all get out of school at some age, and we think we have a first mountain to climb.

And that first mountain is usually about the career.

It's trying to make an impact.

It's a bit about the self, about trying to become an affluent, successful person. And then something happens.

successful person. And then something happens.

Either you achieve success and it's not as gripping or as rewarding as you thought it was. I remember the first day my agent called me and said,

was. I remember the first day my agent called me and said, you have a book on the your book is on the best seller list, the New York Times bestseller list. And every writer sort of dreams about this moment.

bestseller list. And every writer sort of dreams about this moment.

And when it happened, it was like it was nothing.

It was something that was happening out there. It didn't really seem to touch me. So

I've had way more career success than I ever thought I would.

But it's it's been kind of unrewarding.

It spared me the anxiety I might feel if I thought myself a failure, but it's given me surprisingly little positive joy.

But. So that could happen.

Or you could fail. Your life and career doesn't go the way it is, or something can happen.

That's not part of the original plan.

But either way, you're in a valley.

And your valley is when you have to reinvent yourself.

And so my own form of Reinvention.

We all have our own forms. Mine was more emotional and internal.

And so let me describe the old David and then describe the transition I went through.

The old David. I'm a big baseball fan, and I've I've been to thousands of games and I've never caught a foul ball. And so I'm at Camden Yards with my youngest son watching the Orioles play, and the batter loses control of the bat, and it flies through the air and it lands in my lap. Now,

getting a bat is a thousand times better than getting a ball.

And so any normal human being is up, dancing around, waving his trophy in the air, high fiving everybody, getting on the jumbotron. I took the bat and I just put it on my ground.

jumbotron. I took the bat and I just put it on my ground.

And I just sat there and stared straight ahead.

And so I had the emotional reaction of a turtle, basically. And that symbolizes to me a certain kind of life,

basically. And that symbolizes to me a certain kind of life, which is sort of life I was raised in and was living which was emotionally aloof, emotionally withdrawn, and not good at expressing my emotions or really feeling that and it's I look back on that guy and I think show a little joy.

And I wasn't totally dissatisfied with it because it's all basically who I was.

And all I knew I was sort of the guy, the kind of guy who nobody would ever confide in. Then I go through in 2013, I go through a hard time and my marriage is

in. Then I go through in 2013, I go through a hard time and my marriage is ending. My kids were going off to college, and I really I learned that I did what any

ending. My kids were going off to college, and I really I learned that I did what any male idiot would try to do.

I tried to work my way through the problem just to keep going with my old life.

And so if you had gone to my apartment I wasn't having any over.

So if you go to the kitchen and pulled out the drawer where there should have been silverware, there was just post-it notes and where there should have been stationery or.

Yeah, where there should have been plates. It was stationery. And so that symbolized me a period of just misleading a life.

Yeah. Both relationally and internally.

And so you're in a Valley, and Paul Tillich, the 1950s and 60s theologian, says that your moments of suffering interrupt you, interrupt your life, and they remind you you're not the person you thought you were. And so you, he says they carve into the floor of the basement of your soul and reveal a cavity below, and they carve into the floor and reveal a cavity below that.

And so you see, when those hard moments you see deeper into yourself than you ever do in happier moments. And I ran into a passage from a theologian named Henri Nouwen who

happier moments. And I ran into a passage from a theologian named Henri Nouwen who said, you can you have to stay in the pain to see what it has to teach you.

And I was like, screw that. I'm going to get out of the pain. But but finally I ran across a passage from Frederick Buechner, the novelist who said, you can either be broken by those hard moments or broken open.

And I sort of resolved to be broken open.

And in the middle of that, one of the final thing I learned was that you can't pull yourself out of the valley.

You need some help. And I got invited over to a family's house.

A couple who I didn't really know, but for dinner, through an acquaintance. And they had a kid in the DC public schools named Sandy.

And Sandy had a friend named James who didn't have a place to stay or food to eat because his mom had some issues.

And they said, James can stay with us.

And then James had a friend, and that kid had a friend, and that kid had a friend. And by the time I got there on one Thursday night I,

friend. And by the time I got there on one Thursday night I, I walk in there and there are 40 kids around the dining table and 15 mattresses spread around the house. And so I joined that community for the next seven years or so.

I went to dinner there every Thursday night we celebrated Thanksgiving or holidays together. We celebrated vacations together, and they demanded emotional openness.

together. We celebrated vacations together, and they demanded emotional openness.

They beamed love at you. And you had to be back at me at at them.

And so I think I went through a bit of a personal metamorphosis.

So some people, their form of their values, they retire, they get a new career or they live a life of service.

For me, it was I stayed in my job, but I.

I became a different person.

And not just I can show you that I've changed because a couple of years ago, I was in Nantucket at a conference, and the the speaker hands us all a piece of paper, and he it contains the lyrics to a love song.

And the speaker says, okay, find someone you don't know, gaze into their eyes and sing the love song to them.

And I found some old guy.

I gazed into his eyes and I sang the love song to him.

And if you told me to do that 15 years ago, I would have spontaneously combusted. So

that's a sign. One way or another, we can all grow in middle age or later life.

We have that potential.

So your second mountain was singing. I take it as the That was my one singing that I've done with singing.

That would have been not a mountain, but a deep ravine.

Well, so I want to dive deeper into this concept.

You've given us your metamorphosis, I want to talk about at the individual level, what does it mean to know when is the time for a second mountain, and then how do you discern and actually activate it?

And then at the end of our conversation, I want to come over to the societal level.

What does it mean if we are a society, if we enable these second mountains?

But let's start with the person.

And I want to ask you how someone who may be deeply entrenched in their first mountain can start recognizing it's time to transition.

And you gave us your example.

There were some really hard moments in your life that created a valley.

In some ways, that woke you up to an issue that maybe wasn't that apparent because, as you said, you know, we all live our lives.

And so the fact that you weren't jumping around the jumbotron that felt natural and maybe would not have caused a concern, and it was only after you went through this valley, you became cognizant.

And so can you talk a little bit about how people begin to discern that it might be a time when they are in need of another mountain.

And do you have tips for kind of identifying that potential inflection point?

Yeah, I would say a few things first.

Sometimes in my case, it just hits.

Life comes at you hard.

And in my case, it was that moment of disruption around the divorce and all that and some other people. It's a cancer diagnosis that they survive.

But for a lot of people they just retire, you know, they've had their career and, you know, it doesn't have the thrill.

Or maybe they have a their firm has retirement age.

Or they think I can I'm fortunate enough to be able to, you know, not worry as much about money.

I can do what I want. And and then for other people, there just comes an overwhelming need to do something generous.

And I tell my college students do you remember when we were 13 or 14 and horniness came to your life sometime around age 55.

Generativity is going to come into your life, and it's this fervent desire to do something generous for society to leave a mark.

To just say, how can I be of service here?

And I find, you know, I'm one of my professors at University Chicago was a guy named Leon Kass.

And he said people are not defined by their viewpoints or the color of their skin or their profession. They're defined by the ruling passion of their soul.

their profession. They're defined by the ruling passion of their soul.

And he says some people have a love of understanding, and some people have a love of money, and some people have a love of pleasure.

But we all have one ruling passion of our soul.

And I find as people age, the ruling passion of their soul shifts and the in their early in life maybe necessity necessarily the the ruling passion of our soul has a lot to do with our ego.

And then after a little while, those ruling passions go away.

And I needed a blow to my ego to break me open the hard time.

But some people, I just think this is good, but I really I'm good.

I don't need to prove myself anymore.

And so I want to give back.

And so that's a transition and not a change.

A change is when you change your job.

A transition is when you change your consciousness.

And the tricky part about this transition is I think Einstein is credited with saying, I don't know if he actually said it, but you're not going to solve your problem at the same level of consciousness on which you created it.

So, so the the interesting thing about this transition is you're going through a whole new consciousness. And that is a bumpy ride.

new consciousness. And that is a bumpy ride.

That takes time. And some of the transitions are trivial or can seem trivial, though maybe important. Moving from time scarcity to time abundance.

That's a big one. Like you have a mentality in your head.

You're always on the move. You're going with the clock. You have to shift that and downscale to allow. I'm going to take some time here.

Time abundance. And then the other transitions are just social.

A lot of people who leave their firm. I had a guy tell me, you know, when I worked at my company, I thought I had 200 friends here in this organization.

After I retired, I realized I had five.

And those are the people who would still return my emails. And so that's a transition.

But mostly I think it's the transition of moving from the desires of your ego to desires of some higher piece of yourself.

Well, so let's pick up on that transition that you ended with, David, because I do think we want to look into some of the barriers that make it difficult for individuals to imagine their next chapter.

And in our work with the Leadership in Society initiative, where we're coaching incredibly accomplished individuals who want to have something meaningful in their next chapter, one of the big parts is really unpacking what success and purpose look like to your point at this stage of life, which may be different than how you felt in adolescence or in, you know, the early to mid career.

And so how do we think about that transition?

Because success is so often measured by growth.

If you're in corporate, by profits, by influence, by relevance, by stature.

How do you think about and then encourage individuals who are at this inflection point to think about what it means to have that internal sense of purpose in a world where they may have been successful, where most of it was with a really strong extrinsic motivation or accountability set.

Yeah. I mean, we are surrounded from college through our workplace by extrinsic rewards.

There's vast systems of grades, SAT scores, salary status and recognition.

So we just live in a society just filled with extrinsic rewards.

And the one thing we know about extrinsic rewards is when you surround somebody with somebody with these extrinsic rewards, whether in school or workplace, you crush their intrinsic desires.

You you call them, withdraw from what they really want to do.

And after a time, they lose track of what they really want to do.

And so excavating those intrinsic desires, it's a surprisingly hard question.

What do I want most? What is the deepest passion here?

And that that takes some effort.

And it's scary. There's a philosopher who wrote about vampire problems that when you she asked Seth, would you like to become a vampire?

You could live forever.

You could fly around at night, we would get some artificial blood.

You wouldn't even have to bite people. Wouldn't that be so cool?

You'd have magical powers.

And her point was that you as a human, Seth, have no idea what your vampire self would like.

So you can't make the decision about whether you would want to be a vampire because you have no idea what your future self will be.

And her point was that life is filled with vampire decisions.

And so getting married is going to change who you are. You're creating a future self.

Joining the Marine Corps is going to change who you are. Leaving your main career is going to change who you are.

And the one thing I've noticed is that this transition goes in three phases.

It goes through the process of rupture and then it goes through.

You go through a period in the neutral zone where you have no idea what you're doing.

And then finally you find yourself.

And that can take a couple of years.

And so my counsel to people is take your damn time.

But the final thing I'd say is the people I find who handle the process well wind up someplace radically unexpected.

I found with the LSI fellows and with other senior programs like this, that when people leave, they think, well, I was in, I was a lawyer, I was.

So I'm going to do something I'm going to do, like criminal justice reform, something I know about, something adjacent to my career. That's very common.

And then after a year of, like, just random reading and going to classes at places like Chicago.

Suddenly some new passion, or maybe a passion they had lost in childhood rises into view. And I find this process of finding what your next passion it really it often involves going back into childhood and saying, what gift do I have that I'm not haven't used, that were repressed. And so I met a lady out in the Bay area who was a prosecutor, big time prosecutor, prosecuted big drug gangs,

mafia. And she did the Stanford version of LSI.

mafia. And she did the Stanford version of LSI.

And she thought she'd do that. But then in the end, she decided, you know, I I've always loved this character, Anne Boleyn, you know, the wife of Henry the Eighth. And I always wanted to be a playwright.

Eighth. And I always wanted to be a playwright.

And so she said, I'm going to write a play about Anne Boleyn.

She said, all I wanted, you know, I don't.

I want to do something I am totally unqualified for.

And then she told me, if it fails, who gives a shit?

I'm 65. Like, just go for it.

And so when I, I had a conversation with her a little while ago and some production company in San Francisco was reading her play, and she said it was one of the most rewarding things she's ever been a part of. So she,

you know, she had made the big transition away from her old self and to a pretty radically different self.

One of the key pieces that you write about in your recent book really gives a toolkit on how to get there is the importance of relationships, particularly at this stage of life.

I know they were vital to you and your own discernment and coming out of the valley.

And you know, you describe the family that kind of took you in as you were going through this metamorphosis. Can you talk a little bit about why relationships matter,

this metamorphosis. Can you talk a little bit about why relationships matter, in your view, particularly at this inflection point, and what advice you'd give to people on cultivating deeper connections?

Because, you know, you've talked about having work relationships, but that's very different. And obviously Aristotle has his own view on this in terms of,

different. And obviously Aristotle has his own view on this in terms of, you know, these different types of relationships where, you know, you can think about them just being for utility, but all the way over to virtue, where they're deep and values based.

So just want to kind of draw out the role of relationships in this whole discernment process.

Yeah. So I this little school of Yale, I'm sitting next to I taught here for 20 years off and on. And I would have one of my students come who had been graduated five years before, come back to class and tell the students what and about what the next five years was going to look like in their life. And she said you're going to have terrible

bosses. Your jobs will suck.

bosses. Your jobs will suck.

You're going to have heartbreak, breakup, depression and mental health problems. You're five years out of college.

And then she said, so the one lesson is invest in your friendships over invest in your friendships. And they the transition from leaving college is not unlike the

your friendships. And they the transition from leaving college is not unlike the transition of leaving your first mountain.

Your, you know, you got to find a new vocation.

It's and and so the process of doing that and wandering through the neutral zone.

It's it's miserable when it's a solitary process.

And what I have found, now that we're in our second year of LSI, is that there is a cohort, I don't know how many there are.

22 or so. 25.

Yeah yeah.

And I would say that what, what they get out of the program, maybe 20% of it is what we faculty bring, and 80% of it is what they bring each other and the opportunity to have 22 or 25 really good friends at the age of 65 or 70 or 60.

That's just a rarity in life.

And but they can they have this and they're going to walk through this process.

And I find that a lot of the programs that are most effectively changing lives create a cohort. They have this cohort effect.

cohort. They have this cohort effect.

They do something intense together for a little while. And then every year or two or twice a year they have a reunion And they have that these shared bonds.

It really helps to not travel alone.

Well, so on that note of this cohort that is at the university that is deeply working with one another to discover themselves and think about their futures.

You teach in the program, and one of the things that you do to spark that inner cohort connection is reading humanistic texts where, you know, you're looking at how people across time and space have answered these big questions. And I'll just go to the nine big questions that you saw as fundamental,

questions. And I'll just go to the nine big questions that you saw as fundamental, that you kind of based your curriculum around.

And I'll read a few of them.

Who am I? What do I really want?

What am I called to do?

How must I grow? Who are my people?

Can you give an example of a text that you read with the fellows as part of your course, and how you use humanistic inquiry to spark this individual discernment.

Yeah. So actually, my first dinner with the first cohort, I mentioned a book that I assumed they'd all read, and about half of them had called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

And after I mentioned at dinner, they emailed me and said, hey, we'd like to read that book again with you.

And so we did. And Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist in Austria in the 1930s, and he was thrown into the Nazi concentration camps and in the camps he realized that the wrong question to ask about your life, whether you're trying to find a vocation or not, is what does what what do I want from life?

And that's just the wrong question to ask, because you can't look inside and find your passion. And he realized, and he said, you know,

passion. And he realized, and he said, you know, what do I want from life is irrelevant because I didn't want to be in a Nazi concentration camp. Like, life just throws you places.

concentration camp. Like, life just throws you places.

And so he said, the right question to ask is what is life asking of me.

So what problem is out there that life is that is thrust in front of me that I'm uniquely qualified for?

And so he's a psychiatrist in a concentration camp.

He decides, well, life right now is asking me to study suffering, human suffering. And he writes in that book, suffering became a problem upon which I did

human suffering. And he writes in that book, suffering became a problem upon which I did not want to turn my back.

And he found out, by the way, that he wanted to study why some people died as soon as they got to the camp. And some people endured for years.

And he found out that the people endured, had something outside the camp that they were morally committed to, whether it was writing a book or doing a lab experiment, or serving their kids and their wife, who may still be alive or may not be.

And so they had some meaning.

And so his main thesis, which I agree with, is that what we want most in life is meaning. And so we read through that is where are you getting your meaning?

And how does what does meaning mean for you?

And then Frankl is just like it's a gripping story.

And so we, we went through that and, and then some of the texts we read that we had one small little essay and I can't remember who wrote it, but he said I have learned that I always go astray when I do things for people.

I'm only doing it right when I do things with people.

And a lot of people come back, come into this phase of life thinking you know, I want to give back.

And implied in that phrase is the idea that I've got this wonderful self and I'm going to do things for people. But anybody who's done community service knows that if you do things for people, they'll hate you. Like, nobody wants people, like they don't want to be charity cases.

Right?

If you do things with people, then then you're on the right track.

And so that little essay gave us a vocabulary that sparked like a 45 minute a conversation about the ways they were doing for or with and not for.

You know, David, I think it's also an acknowledgment that individuals, no matter how accomplished, have needs and that they require this interaction for their own generativity and purpose.

And one of the things that we found is that some of these individuals who reach great accomplishment, and then you come to them and say, you know, would you want to go through this learning journey? Their cognitive dissonance is, oh, no, I'm the person that everyone comes to.

I teach others, right.

And that can be a really challenging way to go about this next chapter of life, because it turns out you have a lot of needs. Those may have been satisfied in a world where you had an important position and you're in that role of interacting.

But that's only one way of interacting in this next chapter, it might be very valuable to you to have this horizontal interaction and to be truly generative for others, right?

I mean, I think of some of our fellows who, you know, the former CEO of Deloitte, and she's out there mentoring and counseling our undergrads and graduate students as part of her work.

But she very much sees co mentorship.

She sees them informing her understanding of society and being able to bring new fluid intelligence to the way that she's thinking about things. And I think that interaction ends up being more sustainable and more mutually beneficial.

And so I think just that idea at the center of it that I have needs too, even though I have all of these assets, I have needs and this can be a mutual benefit, right? And this community, I'm I'm not really serving.

benefit, right? And this community, I'm I'm not really serving.

I'm enjoying motivation with.

And I think that, you know, is a lot of what you've done in weave and in other contexts as well.

Yeah.

I mean, a lot of the leaders who come into our program have been the center of the room, your company, your whatever.

And in political life, you're you're the center of the room.

And somehow suddenly, you're not the center of the room.

And I noticed this. And, you know, my wife, who we taught the course for the first year. Sometimes we try to go to each other speaking events just so we can have time together. And sometimes I'll go to one of her speaking events, and she'll be speaking and I'll be in the audience and I'll think, oh, this is so great, I don't have to give a talk. And then I think,

hey, I'm right here. Somebody should ask me my advice about something like, because I want to be the center of the room. And so it's hard to pull back, and I notice a lot of fellows, they say it's not about me.

I don't care about myself anymore, but they still have all the habits of people who are the center of the room, and they still want to be the center of the room. So stepping back is that is a hard thing.

room. So stepping back is that is a hard thing.

And I in Washington, I was once at dinner, a lunch at a restaurant downtown with a friend named Michael Kelly, who was a great editor at The Atlantic.

And there were two former defense secretaries having lunch with each other at a table nearby. And Michael pointed them and said, look,

nearby. And Michael pointed them and said, look, that's a powerless lunch.

They used to have all the power. Now they have none. But they were trying to remain relevant. And that curse of trying to remain relevant can be torturous and can drive a lot

relevant. And that curse of trying to remain relevant can be torturous and can drive a lot of people crazy. So the ability to to de-center yourself is a tremendous skill.

But the one thing I found, one of the beautiful things about these programs, and this is true generally, is that people take classes with each other in the cohort, but then they take classes with a regular university. And so suddenly they're in classes with 21 year olds.

And I have found that the friendships, the cross-generational friendships, as Marc Freedman would say, are powerful, that the, the, the this older folks are a little intimidated by the younger folks, because if you've been in a college campus recently, not only was I not as impressive as these college students, I knew nobody who was as impressive as they are. Like, they're just they've been ramped

up to another level. And so they're intellectually intimidating.

But the student, there's young kids and they need they need parents.

I've learned this, that they may have their own parents. They need more parents. And so

they get a lot out of that.

And then the final thing I'd say is, after the second mountain came out, I realized I could have a job, a second career as a CEO whisperer, because all these CEOs, mostly guys, would come up to me and say, hey, can we have a phone relationship? I've got nobody to talk to.

It is lonely at the top, as they say.

And and so there were a lot of people, people going through a lot and nobody to talk to, and they didn't want to appear vulnerable. And so they were really hurting inside. And these were very impressive people from the outside.

inside. And these were very impressive people from the outside.

But everybody's carrying something.

Well, so I want to just complete this individual piece.

Then we're going to move to society. David, because you've walked us through this importance of vulnerability, self discovery.

We've talked about how you can use texts and cohort and intergenerational connection as a vehicle for better understanding yourself.

What may be those pure motivations once you have begun to discern where you want to head?

Can you talk a little bit about how you've seen people activate that next chapter?

Because both within the university where you've counseled people, but also in your own life, you've seen a lot of people that have tried to take this next step.

They've said, okay, I want to reboot or I want to embrace this next chapter.

You did this personally in your own life.

How do you make that transition?

What are the mindsets and approaches that allow you to be successful?

Yeah. Well, I had a friend who was she retired from a job in the arts world when she was 70, and she realized six months later, I'm really bad at predicting what will make me happy. And so she had thought.

me happy. And so she had thought.

She had thought this all through, that this is what I like.

This is what I like. This is what I like. And when it came time to give her, she had plenty of time to do these things that she liked.

She was bored and she needed a totally new challenge.

And she actually went into real estate development after a job in the arts.

So that that's unusual.

Maybe she went to her second mountain first, I don't know. But

That her interior design, though, was phenomenal.

Yeah.

Exactly. And so that's a process of of iteration, a process of, of a bias toward action that you're only you you're only going to find out what you want to do if you're actually doing it.

You it's very hard from the outside to imagine yourself doing it.

You just have to be in the environment.

And clever people are just really good at having social range and trying a whole bunch of different environments.

And this is true at any age, by the way. We think success is like Tiger Woods. You start out playing golf at four. And you then you become Tiger Woods.

Woods. You start out playing golf at four. And you then you become Tiger Woods.

But Tiger Woods is the rarity.

Roger Federer is the the norm.

He sampled a whole bunch of different sports and specialized relatively late in life there. In Olympic athletes, there's zero correlation between who's really

there. In Olympic athletes, there's zero correlation between who's really good at 15 and who's really good at 25, and the people who are really good.

They wander. They just have that wandering mind.

And so a lot of the people who reinvent themselves they wander and they put themselves in some spot and then something sparks.

It's that the, the the finding your passion is a bit of its resonance.

It's something inside meeting something outside. Like it feels like your inside is calling out to it. And then your outside is calling in and you're waiting for that moment of ignition. I have a friend named Fred Swaniker,

of ignition. I have a friend named Fred Swaniker, who he grew up all across Africa.

His dad was a diplomat.

His his mom was a teacher, and they founded schools wherever they went.

He came to the States got into a nice college and then got a job as McKinsey as one does.

And then and then he decided it wasn't for him.

And he was saying, what am I going to do? And he realized that that if you choose something, what you're going to do, picking that thing is you should pick something big. Because if you're privileged enough to be in a major university,

something big. Because if you're privileged enough to be in a major university, you're very talented, you're very lucky. You got a lot of life's blessings. Pick a big problem, then pick a problem.

blessings. Pick a big problem, then pick a problem.

Which you are uniquely qualified.

So Fred had grown up across Africa.

His mom was a teacher. He knew about education. So he said, I'm going to. My thing is education in Africa.

And he founded something called the African Leadership Academy, which is a school in South Africa.

Now he's founded a whole series of universities spread across Africa. There's

one in Mauritius and in Kenya, Nigeria and elsewhere.

That's just amazing accomplishment to found a bunch of universities.

And so Martin Luther King said it similarly, your vocation should have height.

It should be big. It should have it should touch a lot of people and should have depth.

It should go into the basement of your soul. And if you can find those three things, but you can't know it unless you can't really talk yourself into that, I don't think you just have to feel that that double negative.

I can't not do this. And so that takes patience just to feel that little moment of eruption going on.

Well, I've loved your use of Frederick Buechner's quote that, you know, often you find that vocation at the intersection where your deep gladness meets a deep hunger in the world.

And, you know, a lot of our curriculum within Lssi.

Right? Understanding yourself.

What is that source of deep gladness?

Understanding the world.

What is that hunger in the world?

Where do those two meet so that you can do something that is meaningful to you, meaningful to the wider world around you and feel truly motivated for an enduring chapter because the problem is so big that it calls you in and has many layers on which to allow you to really have meaning and purpose.

Yeah, I ran into a guy, actually in Chicago who'd served time in prison for gang activity.

And he now works with the police to recruit kids out of gangs.

And the way he does it is very simple.

He just. He's probably in his 60s, I'm guessing.

He just walks around the neighborhoods at the where the gang kids hang out, and he gives them their phone number, his phone number, and he says, so if you ever are in crisis or have trouble or want to get out, call me. And so when you're with him, his phone is just ringing off the hook

call me. And so when you're with him, his phone is just ringing off the hook because he's giving out his number to a lot of people. And when you meet people like this you you never you never hear them say, you know, I'm going to do this for a couple of years, and then I'll try something else. When they

found their vocation, they they know I got to put them on this earth. And they're driven by a moral motivation.

earth. And they're driven by a moral motivation.

And those motivations are can be as hard and, and as sometimes as sort of the motivations that want to make you a CEO.

Because if you want to rise in the world, that's going to drive you.

But if you feel you can contribute to a very serious problem like gun violence in Chicago, then it's it's hard to take a Sabbath because your motivations are so aroused.

But in my view, we like it.

What what's worst in life is to be have no desires.

That's called depression.

But when you're in the grip of controlling desire, we like the effort.

It feels good. We don't.

And then this is the thing that's some people, you know, they they want ease and leisure.

And I get it. They worked hard all their life. They want ease and leisure. Other

people want purpose. And so this shift is for people who said, you know, I like purpose more than leisure. I and just finally to get into the neuroscience, there are two different systems in our brain which is the liking system.

This gives me pleasure. And then there's the wanting system.

I want to do this if and the wanting system in most of us is a lot stronger.

And so for example, I want to go play golf.

That's liking it's pleasurable, but I, I want to get up and feed my daughter at 2 a.m.. That's wanting.

That's not about pleasure. And that's just a deeper and more powerful system in the brain.

Well, so I think.

We've done a really great job of covering the individual.

Right. Why this matters to individuals, how it can be hard to discern and activate.

But if you are able to do so, you're able to touch this deeper desire and have a more enduring meaning.

And the positive impact, I think, may be clear on society, because if people are feeling motivated and they're contributing that generosity that you said becomes our, you know, way of understanding middle lessons, perhaps then you're going to contribute more to the world around you.

I want to now, though, look at this from another lens which you've written about, which is why does meaningful second chapters at every level.

We've been talking at an elite level, these accomplished leaders.

But but at every level why does that matter for society?

And when we first approached you to be a part of this, David, one of the first things you said is your motivation for really being co-creators with us of this initiative is that you saw this under institutionalized space in our society, and you believed there was a greater need for structure around midlife so that you could help people to find this.

Why? And your reason wasn't just for the individuals, also because you saw this as being really important to society.

So let's start with that societal gap, and then we'll talk about where answers may lie. Can you describe that gap that you see in the structure of adulthood today?

lie. Can you describe that gap that you see in the structure of adulthood today?

Yeah.

So the It used to be people, you know, when people when we founded the Social Security system, people would retire at 65 and died at 67.

And now if you're 60, you have a 50% chance of hitting 90.

So people just live a lot longer and have healthier longevity.

And so this widening of the lifespan has created two new stages in life.

And remember, these stages in life that we take for granted are arbitrary or not arbitrary. We should say they're socially constructed, as they say in the Academy. So

arbitrary. We should say they're socially constructed, as they say in the Academy. So

we think of childhood as the way we think of it as innocent childhood.

But in the Middle Ages, a lot of cultures did not think of it as innocent childhood. They were just like adults. And and then adolescents.

innocent childhood. They were just like adults. And and then adolescents.

We think teenage, of course, every age had teenagers.

But being a teenager, that only came into a conception in the middle of the 20th century magazine called 17 magazine was created and people thought, oh, there's this period between childhood and adulthood called adolescence.

And so that was created.

And now we've got two new stages.

And we have the institutions to serve them.

And the first is people in their 20s.

It used to be most Americans by age 25, they'd gotten a job, bought a home, gotten married and had kids at age 25.

Now it's 35 before people are doing that.

So in that in those 20s, there's this period of wandering and who's there to help them. And it's the same, let's say, 63 to 73, where you're in good health.

And you've got a lot of years ahead of you.

And we don't have anything to serve that.

So I thought this would really.

And then it has the extra benefit of using these tremendous human resources, older people, and activating them for whatever social good they want to do.

And so how could that not be good to unleash well-intentioned people doing social good.

And so I think as people choose what they want to do, it's important to ask themselves, what year is it?

Like what is the big problem of this age?

And there are a lot of big problems. Some people choose climate change, political corruption. My own particular big problem, the one I think undergirds a lot of our other

corruption. My own particular big problem, the one I think undergirds a lot of our other problem, is the crisis of of alienation and distrust.

And so a lot of people say they're lonely.

Mental health rates, suicide rates dropping happiness levels.

And so that's loss of connection.

And so I started a program we've that was designed to empower people who are building social trust, who are working in their communities, doing building social capital.

And so to me, that's like one of the big problems of our ages.

And I just said, well, what's the big problem here?

And, and that, that I think seniors that's a problem that they are expert in because as people get older, they get better.

They get their personalities improve.

Their levels of conscientiousness go up.

They're warmer. Cry more.

They're happier. If you take a bunch of 20 year olds and show them a picture of a crowd, the 20 year olds focuses on the threatening faces in the crowd.

If you go up to 70 year olds a picture of a crowd, the 70 year olds focus on the happy faces in the crowd.

They're not as threat oriented.

They're more like pleasure oriented or more like what's good here.

And David, can I ask, do you think that will sustain?

Because arguably one distinction between the seven year old and the 20 year old is that they grew up in radically different environments.

Right. There was a very high level of optimism, arguably, in the childhoods of the people that are part of that baby boomer generation.

We're growing up in a very different information environment, a very different way of thinking about the world.

Is it an age factor? Is it a generational factor?

Is it both? Perhaps combined?

I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on why there may be that difference in outlook.

Yeah, some of it is. You're right. Is age or is the period that we grew up in.

And so the most important statistic I pay attention to is social trust.

They ask people researchers, do do you trust your neighbors by the people around you trustworthy? And two generations ago, 60% of Americans said, yes, Americans are trustworthy.

And now it's not 60%. It's 30%.

Wow.

But if you look at baby boomers, they're still up around 60%.

They've basically they registered at an early age, 18, 20 or somewhere around there.

The world is basically safe.

I trust people, but if you look at Gen Z and ask them, do you trust your neighbors? Only 19% say yes.

So they're in a much lower level of trust.

And so they have a much more fragile view.

If you ask Gen Z, do you agree with the following statement?

Most people are selfish and out to get you 72% in this study said yes, most people are selfish. I agree with that. Most people are selfish and out to get me at my age. Imagine going through life thinking most people around me are out to get me. That

my age. Imagine going through life thinking most people around me are out to get me. That

would be a horrible way.

And if you want to know the roots of this, I recommend a show on Netflix called adolescence, which portrays in a way that's searing for us parents age, how tough it is to be young.

And so I think that's just an opportunity to think about these cross-generational friendships, because they're more needed now than ever.

Well.

We're coming up to time.

I want to just ask for you.

We talked about how these are mutually beneficial relationships where you're giving back, but you're also gaining.

You've been an incredible faculty member of the Leadership and Society Initiative here at the university. You've helped now two cohorts really go through this process of discernment

the university. You've helped now two cohorts really go through this process of discernment and really activating now, for many of them, a meaningful next chapter.

Can you talk about what you've taken away personally from your work with the fellows and with the initiative?

Yeah, well, the two cohorts, I did a lot of the people retiring, and because of the financial events the last few days, none of us will be retiring anytime soon. So it's a little different, different experience.

soon. So it's a little different, different experience.

But, you know, honestly, the thing that leaps to mind is just how friendly. Like, it's a group of, as we said,

friendly. Like, it's a group of, as we said, two dozen people or so and you'd think there'd be cliques.

And, you know, in any normal group of people, there's acrimony and tension and so and so I don't like and so whatever, I've just found total cohesion.

And I it's probably because they're going through something together.

But it's partly I think people are just relaxed a little and they can get out of their own way. And there's a general spirit of, of real affection in those rooms, which makes the teaching of it fun, because there's a lot of laughter in those rooms. And so this is why this narrative we have that cranky old people I think I personally

am crankier than I was when I young. But these people are not cranky. They're the

whatever the opposite of cranky is.

Well, I'm a very biased person because I'm dean of a school that is committed to the lifelong liberal arts and people reading these timeless books across all ages and stages. But I really do think that what happens when you ask the bigger questions,

stages. But I really do think that what happens when you ask the bigger questions, why am I here? What's the purpose of my life?

What kind of legacy do I want to leave?

It is a huge opportunity for bonding.

And I think somehow within our social media formulas, we have become obsessed with finding petty things to fight over and petty ways to fight them. And in that context, when you're in this community of people that

them. And in that context, when you're in this community of people that want to ask deep questions about the things that really matter and they want to listen as well as share, it is a really generative and beautiful community.

And even though, as you know, within the fellows, we have people with wildly different viewpoints and very different lived experiences. I think they appreciate that everyone in that room is serious,

experiences. I think they appreciate that everyone in that room is serious, mature, wanting to actually search for something greater and wanting to do something positive in the world.

And I think that bond outlives any of the disagreements that people may have intellectually about the topic.

And I think it's just very sobering for people that in a world that feels so polarized and rift that you can have that kind of opportunity or oasis to think deeply and connectedly about things that really matter.

So I think there's many factors to it age and where people are in their lives.

This inflection point, the community.

But I'm struck at just how much great texts matter to creating a foundation on which you can build deeper, more meaningful relationships.

And so it's been beautiful for us to see that in LSI.

But even in other programs of the school where that kind of exchange is happening.

Yeah.

When I was teaching undergrads, I would after graduation, I would have coffee with my former students, you know, ten years out and with disturbing regularity, I would think, you know, this kid was electric at age 21.

They were asking the big questions. They were in these kinds of schools and they were like, had great books put in front of them, and their minds were just electric of so much fun to be around. Like from, I live in D.C.,

so I took a five hour train ride every week to get to be around people like this, and then got into their job and they got into their professional rut and life almost closed them in, and nobody was asking them to be questions anymore. And so the point you make about being surrounded by these questions.

They just open up the mind.

Once I send you an essay or a little quotation from Howard Thurman, who wrote The Jesus and the disinherited, great theologian and civil rights leader.

And he says, when you as you make your life the you carve things and so you're set, you get more set in your ways. And he says the challenge is to find the green growing edge, like, where's the green growing edge where I'm still on the edge.

And some people are just phenomenal at this. Like he's a quintessential example.

But Warren Buffett is phenomenal at this.

That guy has changed continually through the course of his life and has built up sort of power by compound interest.

I read a memoir of Tina Turner.

She obviously had this horrible marriage to Ike Turner, took her 14 years to invent herself.

At age 40, she decides to reinvent herself away from Ike and becomes starts being a sexy rock star at age 40 and then is still going strong in her 70s.

And so that kind of burst comes out of sort of breaking free from the cocoon.

Well David.

Thank you so much for taking the time for what has been a phenomenal conversation.

I also want to say how honored we are to have you teaching at the school.

I don't mean to embarrass you, but I see you as truly one of the most important thinkers of our entire like, world in terms of really helping us to understand the cultural dynamics at play in a time when culture has never been more important as a mode of analysis, for understanding where we are and where opportunities lie in the future.

We're very grateful, and we look forward to having you on campus later this month for another visit with the fellows.

So thank you again and enjoy your time at some university out in New Haven.

Okay, I will, thank you. It's a I'm looking forward to my next Hyde Park visit.

So thanks so much, Seth.

Thanks, David. Bye.