Mark Nepo

hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mark Nepo, a poet, philosopher, and cancer survivor who has taught in the fields of poetry, health, and spirituality for

forty years. A New York Times Number one best selling author, he has published numerous books and audio projects. Mark has appeared with Oprah Winfrey on her Super Soul Sunday program on Own TV, and has also been interviewed by Robin Roberts on Good Morning America. And here's the interview with Mark Nepo. Hi, Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be with you. It's a real pleasure to have you on. I have seen your books on

shelves for years. The Book of Awakening I read years ago and I really liked and I really enjoyed your latest book, Inside the Miracle. So I'm looking forward to getting into that book in more detail. But we'll start we normally do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,

which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life, and in the work that you do, as well as anyways that you like to feed the good wolf in your own life. Sure well, thank you all. I love I love that parable,

I know it. I know it well, and as i'd like to reflect on it. Um, I'd like to move away from good and bad. You know, I find in my not not to a place of relativism where we say there is no good or bad, but but in terms of how we move through life. I'd like to reflect on this, uh, in terms of things that are

life affirming and things that are life draining. Because often I find when we're told we're good or we're bad, or we're up or we're down, or we're true or we're false, or you know, all of these directional judgments, they're just not specific enough to be helpful. You know, if you tell me I'm bad, I feel bad, but I don't really understand what that means in a way

that's going to help me change. And likewise, if you tell me I'm good, well, I feel relieved for a minute, but I also don't really know what that means in terms of what to what to reinforce. So for me, I feel like we are made up just like X and Y chromosomes. We begin with I think, everything we need inside us, and as we engage in the life of experience, we move constantly between life affirming energies and

life draining energies. And the life draining energies make us look for only things that will confirm what we already know, look for things that will only give us the illusion that we're in control, you know, and they will feed fear and violence and hate and sameness. But when we pursue our aliveness, which I think is what the soul wants us to do, When we pursue our aliveness, which changes for every individual throughout their life, then we come alive and we inhabit our gifts, and so we're all

which one do we feed? Do we do we feed what's life affirming? Or do we feed what's life draining? That makes a lot of sense. One of the things in your book that you talk about a little bit you were just talking about can troll, And in the latest book you say that our personal suffering is often intensified by our want to control life and failing to

be in control. While believing in control makes us feel accountable for all that breaks along the way, and so there is guilt, but where guilt is secreted by a controlling mind, compassion emanates from an accepting heart. Yeah, you know, and I think, you know, we're just all comparing notes. Nobody really has a clue about this great history of life and and that's the wonderful things. And we can admit we don't know anything, then we can really begin

a true journey or inquiry together. So you know, let me first say I don't have any answers, um, But all I can do is speak from my own experience. And you know, all of these things, even what we talked about in terms of life draining and life affirming energies, I have, you know, pursued both. I have fallen trying to control things, and um, it's part of being human. But where we go with it, what we do with it?

And when we fall down do we get up? And so you know, I think that I learned through my my journey and my cancer journey many years ago, we really have very little control over life. We which doesn't mean oh therefore there's nothing to do. I should acquiesce and just live like a rock. You know, there's a difference between participating and engaging in life and trying to control events and people and the thoughts and feelings of

those around us. And when we do try to control things, which is impossible, we we wind up becoming more and more anxious and irritated, and we wind up resenting the life around us that won't stay controlled. So you know, there's a uh, it's not in this book, but I have a small, little, very very short story in my book of stories as far as the heart can see. It's called Cane and Able. I can't recite it, but I can tell you exactly the essence of it. And

the essence is that, you know, two brothers. They find themselves with one small berry in their weaker hand, and the one the one brother looks at it and he and it's so small compared to everything he's worked for and wanted and dreamed of that it makes him bitter. But the other brother looks at the small berry and he says, oh my god, I think I think all my work has led me to this small berry. I think the whole world is inside that one little berry. And so he and you can also this is another

version of of which one will you feed? Now we both we all have these voices in us. We have the voice that looks at at whatever we're given and goes, is that it? After all I've done, after all I've worked? Is that all I get? And that that makes us it? Or that makes us want to, you know, file a grievance with God somewhere. But but the other is we wake up like I did after my cancer journey, and I go, oh my god, it was all here right all along. It's in this little berry. Let me eat

this berry that has everything. Oh my god, how amazing is that? And I think everybody has this ongoing conversation between these two voices. And one other thing I have learned along the way is that as soon as we we stop and we all do two compare or account our experience compared to our dream of what we're working toward, or compared to others, or compared to those in history. As soon as we compare or count, we lose our access to everything that matters because you can't be present

and compare or count. Yeah, that's something we talked about on the show A lot. Is this idea of you know, how how painful comparison can be. I think it was maybe Teddy Roosevelt who said that, um, you know, comparison is the thief of joy. Oh that's beautiful. Yeah, that's a wonderful expression. What I've noticed about is when you're what's're in the comparing mind, you can always look and be like, well, I've got more than that person, but I've got less. You know, wherever you are in the scale,

you can always look up or down. And my experience of that is always that it neither of those points. Am I Connecting? This leads Eric to another kind of ongoing challenge that's part of the human journey, and that is that everyone alive goes through repeated challenges about inflating ourselves or deflating ourselves. And the practice I think, or at least what I aspire to is whenever I'm going one way or the other, is to really try to

just assume my full stature. Not not larger than I am and not small older than I am, and uh, you know, I was, I'm sixty four. But and in each decade I have a different form of exercise. But when I was in my fort I jogged, and uh, I was jogging one day in the summer. I was

living in Albany, New York at the time. And I was, you know, tired, about three miles in and it had was sweating, and I had panting, and my hands were on my knees, and it had rained the night before, and I was looking in a puddle, and all of a sudden, I saw this full grown man in the

puddle and it was me. And and I realized, you know, I had been a little boy running around in a big man's body for years, and all of a sudden I saw myself, just briefly, accurately, and it it was one of those moments that changed changed me, that changed me to assume my accurate, full stature, not to be

anybody else, and not to be inflated or deflated. There's that spiritual idea of humility, which is often I think interpreted as being you know, oh I'm nothing, I'm nothing, whereas you know, the way I the best way I've always heard humility defined is an accurate reading of of really who we are, what we're good at, what we're not good at. I mean, just a very accurate picture of who we are. Is is humility versus a um

sort of a a false sort of condescension towards ourselves. Yeah, and when we when we can be accurate about ourselves, where we're open to life around us, we're more open to life around us. Because when we're bigger than we are, then we're like the Wizard of Oz, we're really trying

to keep puffing it up. And when we're smaller than we are, then we're doing that comparing thing, and we're always trying to knock everything else down because we feel so small, and neither neither allows us to truly relate to life and to those around us. Yeah. One of my favorite lines of yours is you say, if peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a

loss of perspective. Yeah. Yeah, you know I think this, Uh that also really came to me through my own suffering, because I think that I learned while I was going through my cancer journey that to be broken is no reason to see all things is broken and that and again, it's like we're talking here, it's not about it's not about you know, when when we're in pain and when we're in fear, it's natural and human to want well, Okay, the whole world is painful. I'm broken, Therefore everything everything

is terrible. Um. The world's chaotic and broken and um. And when I'm in pain, then everything is painful or I'm afraid therefore the whole world. It's understandable to do that.

But that is both things are true. And you know when I when I was you know, broken and sick and and you know, close to dying and afraid, I had you know, I had a moment where that was all true, and that was overwhelming, and the light outside of my home that day was still beautiful, and somewhere, not very far away, though I don't know where, somebody was making love, and somewhere else, not very far away, a child was being born, and somewhere else someone was

helping somebody. And and so you know, both things are true. And while when we're suffering, we need the company of those who know what it's like to suffer. When I'm suffering, I need I need everything that's not suffering to heal. When I'm broken, I need everything that's solid to heal. And so being in the moment, which we talk a lot about in our age, and I think rightfully so, but we tend sometimes to make a cartoon out of it.

Being in the moment isn't just oh well, I can forget about responsibility or the past, or the future or others and just live with abandon and enjoy it. Now, being in the moment means being in my moment to the depth of my experience where it starts to touch on all experience, and being in the moment of life that is happening everywhere at the same time, beyond my individual journey, and allowing those things to merge. You know,

it's interesting that we're taught as we grow up. We're all taught to discern things, to sort, to prioritize, and then choose. And this is a very great skill, uh, that the mind has that helps us navigate the surface world. It helps me put gas in the car and choose cottage cheese over milk, and you know, choose a cough syrup and not the poison, the end poison it's next to it um. And that's all necessary. But but I think, uh, you know, that kind of mental acuity is not a

code to live by. It's a skill to help us live. And what experience has taught me is that the longer I go and the deeper I feel, things both wonderful and difficult the more I feel like like experience asks us to let everything in, to absorb it and let it integrate, to let it synthesize. And the mind can't do that. Only the heart, I believe, can do that. And that when we can hold the truth of all things, then and it releases a logic of the heart. And

this is where we get into the realm of paradox. Yes, one of the guardians of truth. Paradox has been a great teacher for me. And and one of the ways that I understand paradox is that, you know, we can describe paradox as any moment where more than one thing

is true at the same time. And so if we can withstand that seeming tension of opposites, we we start to to be instructed in a deeper way, a deeper way of things being like the fact that I could be, you know, struggling and sick with cancer, and a mile away, you know, somebody is being born, you know, and one is you know, not more valuable than the other or

or competing with the There they inform each other. Breast of the interview with Mark Nepo in the latest book, you have a line that speaks very much to what we were just talking about that I had pulled out, And it says, the sighted finn only implies the wonder of the great fish pumping below, and the sighted star only implies the oceans of light flooding the universe beyond

the range of our eyes. In just this way, everything worth knowing is cloaked in paradox, because everything substantial defies being revealed in its totality. Thank you, Thank you, And I think that you know. So in that way, we're always I think the physical world, the tangible world, is like the tip of the iceberg. It's a manifestation of the invisible energies of life, whatever you want to call them.

And you know, the mystical call it, you know, the glow and shimmer of spirit, and you know, physicists call it the wave theory that's in between particles. But whatever whatever we call it, there's more than just the surface world. It points to the invisible. And so one of the things I think that we're asked to do in being human and incoming alive, is to maintain our relationship with with all that is unseen and unknown, to stay in

conversation with what we don't know. It's a huge uh point of contention in in our modern global world because we live in an age where there is fundamentalism worldwide. Nobody has a uh kind of a monopoly on fundamentalism. Not right. You know, we have domestic fundamentalism and and

every culture has its orthodoxy and fundamentalism. But I also believe, and I write about this in The Endless Practice, but um, we we've developed a personal fundamentalism where you know, we become so accustomed to what's familiar that we we think of that as truth, and actually that insight is not mine.

That's Robert Keegan's from Who's the psychologist from Harvard Developmental Psychologist, which I love is he talks about egocentrism as when we we substitute what is familiar as true because it's familiar, we believe it's true. And now only things that are familiar to us will we allow in. And then we the fear that anything that's not familiar is dangerous, and

therefore we start having racism and prejudice and violence. And as opposed to you know, Plato said that we're all born whole w h o eli, but we need each other to be complete and and in the Jewish tradition that wholeness that we're born with is spoken about as as the indwelling presence of God that's only manifest when we are in relationship with each other, or with life,

or in conversation with our soul. So there's a huge emphasis in the Jewish tradition on relationship and dialogue and conversation because that's how you know, which assumes that we're not. I don't talk to you to confirm my our sameness. I talk to you so that I can learn from you what I don't know, and you for me what you don't know, and together were we are made more whole. So those have always been fundamental, you know, different kind

of starting points in the in the human journey. At any point in history you can find you can find there really are two lineages. Yeah, and I think that modern culture has a definite sense of to not have the answer is something that we're very afraid of. Yeah. And and actually, you know, I think that we've been

miseducated that that we should even look for answers. I view a question now at this point in my life as a doorway that I would like to open and go through with someone not for an answer so that we can live something together. Yeah, there's that great old quote from Rocca about learning to love the questions and then some day you might be able to live your way into the answers. Yeah, that's a beautiful, beautiful statement.

So your latest book is called Inside the Miracle, Enduring Offering, Approaching Wholeness, and it's a series of writings from a lot of different times in your life, but the the original some of the original parts of the book were from when you had cancer, I believe, back in the

late eighties. So a lot of the book is focused on if I had to if I had to summarize, A big part of it is that it's precisely these challenging experiences, these difficult experiences that we go through that turn us into who we are, that that's the path

to wisdom. Very often, what I've done with this book, which I'm very grateful uh to my publisher, sounds true for the chance to do this is I've taken work over thirty years, starting with my cancer journey and and moving through you know, all the different ways that my perceiving has changed and other struggles and losses to try to glean the lessons and the the inquiry, and so to put that together after all this time was a

real gift to be able to explore that. And I'm not like deifying suffering, you know, um uh, it's it's not about that. It's more about it's like you wouldn't dispute gravity, you know, like it just is. And you know, suffering and difficulty and obstacles, as well as surprise and wonder and the overwhelming impetus of love. All of these things they're equivalent to what friction and erosion are in nature. So in the natural world, things are eroded to their beauty.

You know, we save up money and we go on vacation to look at the Grand Canyon, or to go to the edge of uh one of the continents and look at cliffs that have been pounded for thousands of years by the sea. And so the human equivalent to that is great love and great suffering, great surprise, and great obstacle. And it seems like the order of the universe.

However you want to deem that, whether you talk believe in God or Ackman or dharma or quantum physics or everything or nothing, whatever it is, it seems like the universe has been designed to be just the human journey, the life journey, not just human is difficult enough that we need each other to hold each other up to that erosion and wearing down. And I think that ensures

the journey of love. And you know, in the same way that a piece of coal can be pressurized into a diamond, so to we And so this is just kind of a spiritual physics that I don't know that I would have seen had I not been pressurized myself and eroded and broken open. And so I think that, um, I'm more My work is focused on has always been focused on, and I think all the traditions are focused on. So what do we do once once we're opened? You know, and that becomes part of that becomes a big part

of the spiritual journey. We will be opened, there's no question about it. Just the same way that there's gravity, or that rain will fall to the ground, or that you know, erosion will wear mountains away, we will be broken open. And how we hold each other up and support each other. And what we do with what's opened is when the soul starts to show itself in the world. And you know, this is the thing that Tibetan tradition,

a spiritual warrior not a military warrior. A spiritual warrior is one who is committed to a life of transformation, not knowing what that is will look like. But a spiritual warrior always has a crack in their heart, because that's how the mysteries get in. And so you know, we are cracked open. And and when that happens, what the The The light that is in us comes out, and the light of the world comes in. And now now for the first time, we can't distinguish what's the world

and what's me. And now we are more one, and our compassion begins to be released. There's a beautiful line in the new book where this gets back to what you're talking about. A minute or so ago, was about this, the need for others and how how we come together.

And there's a line in the book where you're describing the great care that your friend and your wife gave to you during the particular difficult time during your cancer, and you say that we made it through, and I'll never forget what they have taught that reaching in and touching the spot that hurts, if done with selfless love, can release the pain. The way a dark branch can be gently shook to free it of all those steely crows. Yeah, yeah, you know. I mean I think we underestimate the power

of of love and of presence, you know. For all the things that we can do. You know, I can if you, if I if we were together and you were to fall over or trip, and I can help you up, and I can get you a band aid, and I can get you a glass of water. But for the things that can't be seen, the things that we have to deal with inside our presence, are bearing witness, are holding, are listening. Has always been great, great medicine, great medicine, and we often underestimate that or forget it,

forget that that it even matters. In the book, you talk about something that you received is the word all use from having cancer, And you talk about something called the terrible knowledge. Well, and the terrible knowledge, And I know that there's an essay that I wrote about that.

Um and the terrible knowledge is this paradox of the fragility of life, of how miraculous and amazing and precious and unrepeatable every moment is that all of eternity is in every moment, in this moment, between us right now, and the terrible knowledge is that we can be erased in a second. And I don't say that to scare anyone.

It's always been this flickering, this shimmering paradox that life is precious, and life by itself is indestructible, but those of us, all the forms blessed to carry life, are not indestructible, and so it makes life all the more precious. And depending on what side of that terrible knowledge we land is whether we are in h the most graceful state or or the most fearful state. And so there's

no solving the terrible knowledge. There is only our journey, just just the way a dolphin will will break surface and go under and break surface and go under like a whale, you know, and we will as well. However, I tend to think that when we break surfaces, when we're prey to the fear and the delicacies of things and the fragility of things, and when we're we're when we're in the depth, is when we're carried by the indestructible nature of life. And I think that you know

we have there are throughout history. You know this, This is an ongoing unstoppable cycle, I believe. So it's not about staying in any one place. It's about how do we live and hold and be a part of this ongoing miracle and indestructible and slash for fragility of life. And so those who get caught or stuck if we you know, in the destructive side, the the fragile, impermanent, fearful side, well you know, then those are the people

who are pessimistic and neolistic. And life is full of chaos and random and and all there is is fear. And those who are who try to be stuck on on the other side to transcend all of that, you know,

life is a panacea. It's beautiful. If they could just get out of this icky stuff on the ground, well, it's it's I think it's always both and and you know, the the impermanence of life grounds us from from running away from everything that's here, and the miraculous light of the indestructible nature of life lifts us from the impermanence. And we and have so are I think, you know, I think part of our spiritual practice, whatever that looks like for anybody individually, I think it has some form

of how how do we allow both in? How do we allow both? And how do we how do we live with both? And it is a terrible knowledge in that you know, when we fall down, it can be terrifying and terrible, but when we're standing strong, it's full of awe. It's full of awe. And I think the the the value of impermanence within one you know, we we we tend from the Buddhist perspective of the impermanence. We always immediately think, oh, that means we're gonna die,

and we all will. But but impermanence within a life means that whatever we're going through, including all the difficulties, that's not permanent. Either it won't last. It doesn't make it easier, but it won't last. Depending on the state you're in, impermanence is either good or bad news, but it's always true, that's right. One of the things on the show that um I talked about a lot is how do you balance ambition and striving with being right

where you are in life? So you're somebody who has you know, you have written an enormous number of books, books of poetry, books of nonfiction, so you're clearly um you know you have some degree of ambition is probably not the right word, but creative drive call it what you will. And yet you've also said things and this conversation confirms a lot of it, like that we think that accomplishing things will complete us, when it's this experiencing life that will. So how do those things balance out

in yourself? Yeah? Well they they thank you. It's a wonderful question. And you know they don't balance out, they because I don't. I don't have any ambition. And I'll tell you how this all. I was very driven before my cancer journey in my thirties. I was a driven artist. And um, through no wisdom on my part. It wasn't like I almost died and said, oh well I'm going to give that up. Um, you know, I just woke up on the other side and I was living from my heart and not my head. And I also had

lost my drive. And this was very disorienting at the time. I mean, it really was troubling. And you know, it was enough that I almost died and I was still here and now I was I was here and I felt like I had lost my gift, I had lost my creativity and I was very wandering for almost, you know, eight months or so or nine months, when I slowly came to understand that I was now freed of the drive and I was drawn to things. And the image that helps helps me understand that was it was like

a river. You know. A strong river makes a lot of noise because the banks are holding it, and so it roars down through the kind of the gully of the banks and the river bed. But when that river reaches the sea, and all rivers reached the sea, that current doesn't disappear. It goes deeper and continues to run strong. But because it's deeper, it doesn't make any noise, and

it joins with all the other water. And that's what going through cancer and almost dying and still being here did to me, against my will, without my knowledge, you know. And and so then when I started to understand I was drawn to things, I was actually freer, and there was so much more joy in creating. And so things started to shift because I wasn't I was no longer creating to produce something. I was creating to stay in conversation with life, and the trail of that conversation started

to become my teacher. So while of course these writings have have parts of me, They have a lot of me. But I wouldn't say that I create them out of nothing. I would say that I retrieved them, and I give of myself, and myself is in the mix, just like silt on the bottom of a river gets taken along by the river. But then what what comes becomes my teacher. So you know, if I the key to my being

prolific has not been ambition. It's been that I've learned how to get out of the way and that I've learned how to uh to write about what I need to learn. I don't write about what I know. And the truth is, I don't know if many authors will admit that. I think that's true for everybody. I write about what I need to learn, and then I become it becomes my teacher. If I only wrote about what

I understood, I would have written very little. So you know, I wrote a book about awakening, the Book of Awakening, because I needed to be more awake. And I wrote a book called The Exquisite Risk because I needed to be able to learn how to take more risks. I wrote a book about courage because whether people you know thought I was courageous in in facing what I had

to deal with. That doesn't matter. I had reached the end of what what was courage for me, And in order to continue to grow, I needed to learn more about how do I be more courageous? So are and listening the book on listening. So, you know, I think that one of the inescapable gifts, hard gifts of almost dying what has been that. You know, I look forward

to things. I planned things, you know, I look forward to our call, but my dreaming is always returned to now it's always my work as always Now there's nowhere to go, there is no ambition. I'm not going anywhere. There's nothing uh to achieve, you know. And so in this way, you know, we've been taught eternity as you stack up years forever like on some imaginary ladder. Actually, eternity to me is more like it's it's all of life that is released in the center of every moment

when we can be fully here. So it's more like a drop of water that ripples clearly in all directions. And you know, I write and express and and and blessed to be in teaching circles because that conversation is when I feel most alive. So let me say one other thing about this, because it's a very important subject. So let's talk about ambition and goals and dreams. I think that we have to have them, And this is where I don't think were we need to choose between

becoming or being. I think that, you know, we have to have them in order to engage ourselves in life. But we hold on to our dreams and our goals the ambitions too tightly as if that's where we're going. I think they're kindling for the fire of aliveness. Dreams and goals and ambitions are what the heart and the soul use to bring us alive. And it's the aliveness that matters. So you know, we work toward dreams, and

a lot of times our dreams don't come true. But you know, as long as we give our full heart and all of our work and effort, which I believe in to to whatever we think we're working on, our dreams may not come true. But by being so devoted, we may come true. That's a beautiful way to phrase that. Do you have any regular spiritual practices that you engage in that help you to stay more alive? Just to

stay in tune with these things that we're talking about. Yeah, you know, I mean I've practiced a lot of different things, um, you know, from meditation to prayer to you know, all kinds of of things and and at this point in my life, and they're all wonderful. So it's like whatever works for for anybody, Okay. You know, it could be gardening, it could be a formal spiritual practice, and it could be being an auto mechanic on weekends. You know, it

doesn't really matter what it is. But what I at this point in my life, I'm really committed to an integrated practice. So I try to have my days. You know, I purposely interrupt my days. I begin by working, and then I'll take our dog for a walk, and I'll work some more, and then I'll purposely go out and do errands to to break up the day. And so I try to really have things be integrated throughout throughout

the day. And and and I'll tell you why. And it's um And I wrote about this in another book, but you know it comes from the why of Beethoven, and Beethoven among many things. But Beethoven, one of his amazing innovations is he he created it's opus one thirty one. It's a it's a concier a string uh concerto for a quartet and and at that time quartet concertos string corcertos um they only had four movements and he wrote

this one with seven. And the musicians at the time we're all kind of like, you know, they were like, what what is he thinking? And they were also like challenged to see if they could play it, you know. And one of the other things he did in this was that, you know, in music, there are rest stops, there are pauses where there is no beat, and it just you know, that beat is filled with silence, there's arrest. Well, not only did he make this with seven movements, but

he made the entire thing without any rest stops. There were no pauses. Now, professional string classical you know, musicians who play string instruments, they are gifted enough and practiced enough that they use those pauses to retune their instruments, because you can't play more than one movement if you're lucky,

without your strings going out of tune even slightly. So Beethoven was saying to the musicians, and it was and it was a comment on life, you know, you can practice, you can do all of this, but yeah, you're gonna have to tune as you go. It's not going to be perfect music, and you're not going to be able to get a rest stop, and you're gonna have to

tune as you go. And and certainly we do have rest stops and we can pause, but there are times in life, you know, we talk here and then we'll get off and you'll go into your life tomorrow and I'll go into mind. And when life happens, we're gonna have to tune as we go. It may sound out of tune, and it doesn't matter because we're not here. We're not here or to do it perfectly. We're here to do it thoroughly. Yeah, I love that story. That's

a great way to think about engaging in life. Well, I think that is a great place to wrap up the interview. I have really enjoyed talking with you. I really enjoy your writing a lot. You're you're a great writer. There's a lot of poetry. Even in the pros it's very poetic. And then of course you write a lot of poems. So we will have links in the show notes to certainly your latest book as well. As many of your other works. But again, Mark, thank you so

much for taking the time. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you Eric. It's great to be a part of your good work too. Okay, we'll take care all right, Bye bye m You can learn more about this podcast and Mark NEPO at one you feed dot net slash nepo. That's n e p O. Thanks