What is a Good Life? #153
When Being Becomes Service with Ethan Hsieh
On the 153rd episode of What Is a Good Life?, I’m joined by Ethan Hsieh for a wide-ranging and deeply human conversation on service, being, and what happens when self-work goes too far.
Ethan is a PhD researcher integrating performance-training with 4E cognitive science. He is also Artistic Director of 5ToMidnight and Platform Manager for The Lectern, where he has co-designed select practices with John Vervaeke.
Together, we explore nihilism, play, embodiment, identity, and the question that now orients Ethan’s life: When does being itself become service?
This episode invites listeners to loosen self-fixation, recover participation, and rediscover what becomes possible when we allow life—and each other—to change us.
The weekly clip from the podcast (2 mins), my weekly reflection (2 mins), the full podcast (62 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
2. My Weekly Reflection
I was feeling some stress yesterday.
Some beautiful moments too.
When I take my 2-year-old daughter to bed, I usually walk her on my shoulder.
These moments are often times for me to really feel and inhabit the moment.
Listen to the sounds my bare feet make on the wooden floors. Notice where there is any tension or strain in my body. Feel where her head nuzzles in against my neck and shoulder.
The cadence of my breath becomes quite noticeable. Hers too, deeper as she begins to drift.
I often do this because the moment simply invites it and I really want to be with it. It helps soothe her too.
Last night, while there was some stress in my body, I noticed she started to sing or hum the chorus to a song she often hears me play, Spirit Bird by Xavier Rudd.
It has this repeated primal chant in the chorus.
I picked up what I thought was the cue to start quietly making the same calls of the chorus.
Even after a few minutes of it, my voice didn’t feel as grounded as it usually might.
And it dawned on me.
Was she trying to soothe me this night?
There have also been a few moments recently with my wife where she has asked for a hug in times she felt in need of some support.
In the moments we hug, while initially thinking I am some sort of pillar, when I get really present, when I become aware of where my finger tips are in contact with her back, it is hard to make definitive sense of who is helping who.
While there is definitely some uncertainty in my life that I am navigating now, I have noticed in recent years an almost abnormal tolerance of that, all while feeling I am truly living a good life.
I’ve become all too aware of just how foundational the somewhat effortless presence I experience with my wife and daughter is for that capacity to handle uncertainty.
It allowed me to pause from my work yesterday evening upon sensing a rising surge of stress, and actually sit with it. Slowly closing my laptop and taking a moment to feel it.
It doesn’t make it pleasant, but there is an intimacy with it that often brings me peace.
In my conversation this week with Ethan, he spoke about a period in his life where self-work took over — where life became a series of exercises, each moment another opportunity to work on himself.
He noticed he was becoming less available to the people right in front of him.
Ethan credited his friends and the people he surrounded himself with for grabbing him by the shoulders and returning his attention to the significance of the relational space between us all.
Which left him with a very simple but profoundly important idea of a good life:
“A life lived in good company. Becoming together.”
In a very loud world, there is something so understated about presence when we consider all the ideas of things we value in others or the things we aspire to.
What we may look for in a partner, friends, a team, or community. This quality is rarely the answer you expect to hear or that is foregrounded.
Through all of these 300+ conversations I have been a part of, and the too many to recount moments of my life, presence is the fundamental basis of it all.
And more than any practice, it is people who keep on inviting me back to it.
Work With Me
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A short conversation is the simplest way to see whether the work fits your situation.
Thanks for reading What is a Good Life?
3. Full Episode - When Being Becomes Service with Ethan Hsieh - What is a Good Life? #153
4. This Week’s Questions
Has your “self-work” ever reached a point where life feels like a continued exercise rather than something lived?
With whom does an awareness of presence come most easily to you?
About Me
I am a coach, facilitator, and podcast host, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you’re interested in exploring your own good life through one-on-one coaching contact me via email.
Beautifully articulated piece on presence. The observation about self-work turning into self-fixation captures something I've struggled with, where every interaction becomes a performance review rather than genuine connection. The flip from "who is helping who" when hugging is profound becuase it challenges the transactional mindset we unconsciously bring to relationships. Presence isnt a skill to master but more like remembering to actually show up, which sounds obvious until you realize how rare it actualy is.