What is a Good Life? #169
Wonder, Wildness And Song with Sam Lee
Hello and welcome to What is a Good Life? A project exploring the big questions around how we live and what actually matters.
This week, I’m reflecting on a beautiful conversation with Sam Lee, Mercury prize-nominated singer, composer, arranger, folksong interpreter. We explore the nature of wonder, the role of ritual and rite of passages, as well as being dangerously surrounded by a dozen shepherd's dogs in the Carpathian mountains. This conversation and Sam's stories are for anyone seeking more aliveness in this life.
If this project resonates with you, thank you for being here – and if you’d like to support it, consider a paid subscription, sharing, or subscribing.
Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
Sam is standing in a circle of ten people, shoulder to shoulder, surrounded by a dozen shepherd’s dogs.
He’s leading a group of people on a wilderness tracking trip in the Carpathian Mountains of Romania and they have encountered its most dangerous animal.
So the group stands tightly together as these huge dogs snap and snarl, kept at bay with really heavy walking sticks.
Some are laughing, others are literally wetting themselves. They hold this formation for around forty minutes until the dogs eventually leave.
Reflecting on the experience, Sam said:
“This isn’t really a threshold experience. This is more of a thrashing experience than a threshold. It becomes one. Many people said they’ve never had an experience where they feared for their real life.”
Afterwards the group reflected on the experience, they sang together too, metabolising the moment.
Throughout this project, I have been fascinated with thresholds - moments in people’s lives that carried significant meaning and yielded change.
Like Sam, and one of my favourite writers, John O’Donohue, I feel we live in a world that often rushes by them. What they require is more our attention and willingness to stay with a moment.
We attempt to create thresholds on demand. It will happen when I go on that retreat. This will be the therapy session where it all breaks open.
I remember the year I saw a therapist in London. When something arose, I’d make a note of it and attempt to hold onto it for the following Wednesday.
And then sitting in that chair telling the therapist of something that occurred five days ago, the whole experience was bereft of energy or even significance.
The next year, just after I had met my wife in India, we were in her home town of Hamburg. I experienced a pang of jealousy that plagued how I felt in relationships before.
As we left a restaurant and were making our way to her apartment, I noticed the usual signs, I was getting cold and distant. When we got back to her apartment I told her what had bothered me and how it wasn’t her problem, it was mine.
I said I needed to be alone and lay on the wooden floor in a room in her apartment. And I wept. I spent several hours there. Something died in me that day and I stayed with it as it did. Just over ten years together now, I am glad I did.
I recall interviewing David Dunn who found himself on the drug and alcohol recovery wing of a prison. Feeling at a significant low in his life, he felt he needed to do something differently. Having had experience in recovery before he volunteered to be a mentor to others in their recovery.
And as he sat there one morning explaining that rock bottom feeling to a group of lads, he said out loud to the prisoners, “I just don’t know my purpose on this planet anymore.”
And then one young guy in the group, who David noted had little interest in recovery, said, “But this is it, Dave. This is what you’re good at, this is what you should be doing.”
David told me how he took the time to sit with that when he went back to his cell. He emphasised a couple of times that it stayed with him, and went on to shape what he created upon his release.
Another experience comes to mind of Diane Button, who while going through chemo, she was bald, had acne, and her tummy was bloated. She felt awful.
In the middle of the night she found herself standing in front of the bathroom mirror and all she could see was her glowing beauty. And she just stared at herself.
After a lifetime of picking on herself and finding the flaws in her appearance, all she could see was her beauty.
When asking people what is a good life, nobody will say peeing your pants while surrounded by huge dogs, being on a drug and alcohol recovery wing in prison, undergoing chemo, or weeping on a floor.
And yet there those moments sit.
A good life is everything in it.
2. This Week’s Questions
Can you recall a considerable threshold you passed through in life that involved little intention or design on your part?
Is there a threshold you are keeping at bay?
Thanks for reading What is a Good Life?
3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - Wonder, Wildness And Song with Sam Lee - What is a Good Life? #169
Listen to or watch the full conversation with Sam Lee below.
About Me
I am a writer, 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.