Hello and welcome to What is a Good Life? A project exploring big questions around what really matters to people. Over the last 5 years, I have interviewed over 300 people around this question.
This week, I am reflecting on my conversation with Philippe Birker. Philippe is a Co-founder of Climate Farmers, an organisation supporting the transition to regenerative agriculture across Europe. He also runs the social music label Hug Records and is rebuilding an abandoned village with friends. This episode is filled with inspiration to pay more attention to how we live, whom we love, our connection to the land, and the power of working on something we find meaningful.
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Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
I did something I’ve never really done last week.
At some point my toddler had crawled into the bed at night. So as I was woken by the rummaging of bins being collected in the courtyard, my usual alarm clock on a Tuesday morning, my three-year-old’s head lay on my shoulder.
I could hear her breathing so clearly. So I lay there for a time and then I noticed the fluctuations in my wife’s breath too.
The thought came to me that I am presently hearing the two most important sounds to me in the world. How lucky am I that I can hear them.
My mind briefly floated to people who went to bed last night with those sounds, and have woken up without them. To those that may wake up tomorrow without them. That no one in my family is guaranteed to wake up tomorrow.
So I lay there for a bit longer.
This morning I woke up to go to the toilet just before six and then I went back to bed briefly.
Once again it was the three of us in bed after another visit during the night, and I could hardly hear a thing. All I was aware of was a stress in my body.
After lying there for a few minutes, I finally noticed my daughter’s breath and I briefly smiled thinking of my experience last week. Today it seems it is the stress that needs my attention. I could feel it in my bones.
I have often alluded to my present financial constraints or difficulties in this newsletter, as they have increased in the last few years. Earlier this year I had to register for welfare.
My working life in recent months has been a mixture of this podcast and newsletter, trying to distill and understand how to build my coaching work commercially, outreach, and applying for external jobs without much traction. It is a bit choppy and strained at times, even confusing, and yet I am also writing the second of two books from this project.
Whatever savings I had left are almost gone. The pressure and need are most definitely ratcheting.
As I made my way to a desk I use in the office across the street at 6:30 this morning, I realised this is what I’d write about and it brought me some peace. Over the last few years, as my lack of financial success has been playing out, I am surprised at how often I return to peace. How stress is the visitor rather than the baseline, how contentment and gratitude remain far more prominent.
In this week’s interview, Philippe shared a story that brought a striking contrast into focus. He found himself in South Africa as part of a university placement for a semester after he initially applied to get a placement in California.
Outside of his course he coached kids basketball in a township. The spirit of the kids and their sense of community really struck him. One day he saw a kid with a Chupa Chups lollipop who was sharing it with nine other kids. It blew his mind how crazy this would be to see in Germany or Holland. He said most Europeans would find it gross.
When with these kids, he thought of a woman on his course who was so distraught by not getting the exchange semester she wanted. Like it was the end of the world. Given the lives and homes of these kids, he almost couldn’t reconcile the two observations. In general these kids seemed happier than most people he knew in Europe.
It left Philippe with a very clear understanding that money is a useful tool that solves real problems, but beyond a certain amount pales in comparison to love and relationships.
I know something of this from the other side.
Eight years ago, I was part of a team to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange and I made a few hundred thousand that year when a share price increased. Shortly after, I was offered a role at another company with a 40% increase to my base. I’ve written before how a rip of electricity I felt when doing a body scan the weekend before that role began led to me walking away from it on the first day of the job. I had no clear vision but I wanted to follow this path I feel I am supposed to be on. I still feel that way now.
Last week, I came home one evening to get something, and my daughter excitedly ran into my arms and asked me to dance with her before I went back to the office. She then took mine and my wife’s hands and there we were dancing.
I could never have imagined eight years ago that this would be where I am. And yet, if you were to visit my home at any given moment, you might struggle to see how the story of my life detracts from the experience of living it.
I don’t think it will always be like this, it is a season of life. But I feel my life is teaching me something really important, revealing it to me through direct experience not through a pithy statement in a book that I repeat. I feel an odd gratitude for it.
Our culture places so much emphasis on how your life looks from the outside that it can be difficult to appreciate the experience of living it. But that experience persists. My daughter invites me back to it, and it brings me peace, so too does paying attention.
I will be very pleased and grateful when more money and material abundance is part of my path once more, if that is the case. If you are listening God or Universe, let it be so. But I would be very surprised if it makes me much happier.
2. This Week’s Questions
Where does the story and the experience of your life feel most confusing?
What lessons has your life taught you that you feel an odd gratitude for?
3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - Living Life With Open Arms with Philippe Birker - What is a Good Life? #193
Listen to or watch the full conversation with Philippe Birker below.
About Me
I am a coach, 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 around this question. What is a Good Life? is a podcast and newsletter that invites us to question what we’ve been told makes for a good life, and to pay more attention to what really matters: our relationships, the moments that make us feel more human, and the experiences that connect us to one another. After hundreds of conversations, I’m increasingly convinced that the good life we are sold and how people actually experience it are very wide apart. These conversations and reflections offer another way of seeing the world, and an invitation to live a little differently.
Another great piece of writing, Mark. I often find one sentence really catches me, and this week it's this one: "Today it seems it is the stress that needs my attention. I could feel it in my bones."
Just the idea of stress as needing attention sounds so sane to me, as I think we'll often think of doing something... urgent in response.
Can't wait to see this second book by the way.