What is a Good Life? #177
Complicated Locks, Simple Keys with Sam Smith
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 my conversation with Sam Smith. Sam sees life as a big old experiment. He used to play professional rugby, before starting a few businesses. Last year he wrote his first book, The Door Was Never Locked. In this conversation, we explore identity and the stories we carry without questioning. If you are navigating any big life transitions right now, this conversation will be particularly helpful.
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
When Sam came off the rugby field on a Sunday as a 13-year-old, it was the point of the week where his parents looked the happiest. The rest of those Sundays would take on a really light and fun quality.
He internalised this as: when he is good at sport, it makes his parents happy.
When he was coming out of rugby, whilst he knew they loved him, there was also a real fear of: but they’ve made so many sacrifices and this makes them happy.
A coach he was working with invited him to go and speak to his parents about that. In response, his mum said, “My goodness, Sam, the reason we were so happy on a Sunday when you walked off the pitch was that it was the first point in the week that you looked the happiest.”
It left a real impression on Sam.
“It was this incredible moment for me to see that how wildly wrong we can interpret a look or a word or anything. They were happy because I was happy, and that had always been the case. Yet I’d carried a very different story for a long time.”
There are two things that this story stirred in me.
Firstly, throughout these 300+ interviews, many people have noted the significance of when their attention moves beyond their own personal inquiry and personal sensations to the outside world, nature, and other people’s experiences.
I recall one woman who was stuck in a heavy conversation right up until the point she viewed the Grand Canyon for the first time - her whole breath left her body and she just broke into tears. The relief of her smallness in the context of this larger existence was freeing.
There is something about an outward gaze with our attention that moves us away from both being the centre of the world and feeling the weight of the world.
It allows us to feel more compassion for ourselves and others. Much of what we experience as someone doing something to us is often just the unavoidable mess of being human. Nobody can fully escape this mess.
Secondly, it just made me think of the importance of getting to know your parents intimately. Sam joked that we forget sometimes that they had a life and a story before we existed.
It’s easy to view our parents primarily through the impact they had on us, rather than as people shaped by their own histories, fears, and limitations.
Or that they, like us, can make bad decisions and are prone to anxiety, struggle, and stress at times.
Much like the woman who, standing before the Grand Canyon, momentarily lost her position as the centre of the universe, I find it liberating to widen the scope of my story and become curious about my parents’ lives.
What was their childhood like, how were they as teens, how was the transition into parenthood? What were the highs and lows of their lives? When were they happiest? When were they most afraid? What are they most proud of and what do they regret?
There can be plenty of reasons why questions like these aren’t discussed when we are younger. But as an adult, I must say it is quite relieving and connecting to hear much more context.
I worry sometimes that much of our self-inquiry is fixated on ourselves almost in isolation from the people and world around us. That while our understanding of ourselves becomes much more nuanced and hopefully compassionate to our own humanity, that we don’t extend that to others.
There is something very sad and isolating about all this inquiry if we don’t look out with the same quality of attention.
2. This Week’s Questions
What story are you presently telling yourself that might not be true?
What reminds you that you are not the main character in the world’s unfolding drama?
Thanks for reading What is a Good Life?
3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - Complicated Locks, Simple Keys with Sam Smith - What is a Good Life? #177
Listen to or watch the full conversation with Sam Smith below.
For Apple podcast click here.
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.