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 Matt Hoffar. Matt was born with a bone condition and has broken more than 40 bones. He’s had a liver transplant, and he’s now waiting on open heart surgery. He has been a basketball coach, worked for the Vancouver Grizzlies in the NBA, a stockbroker, and a boxing promoter. He still trades and invests, and today he’s a writer and creator in animation, developing a comedy series. He’s also one of the most positive, curious people I know, and I wanted to explore how he lives so fully.
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Take care, Mark
1. My Weekly Reflection
One of the reasons I feel so resistant to final answers or neat equations about what makes a good life is that someone will share something from their life that undermines or complicates whatever conclusion I might be approaching.
I’ve spoken to people who experienced abuse that sent them down a path they might never otherwise have taken, shaping them into someone they are now happy to be. They still hate what happened to them, they wouldn’t wish it on anyone, and yet they’d struggle to imagine their lives becoming what they did without it.
I’ve also heard people reflect on the obstacles they faced because of discrimination, and how those experiences shaped what they felt called to do. One artist I spoke to dedicates himself to observing the broken bones of this world and sharing something human or beautiful from them.
I find these experiences difficult to reconcile with any neat equation for a good life. They don’t make the terrible things that happen to people any less terrible. But they do make it clear to me that we know little about what a life will become.
When I interviewed 100 people privately around this question, health was comfortably the second most frequent answer, after relationships. I suspect we often think about a good life in terms of what needs to be present. If something is missing, we assume the life is somehow lacking.
I’ve known this week’s guest, Matt, for well over a decade, dating back to when I lived in Vancouver. He was born with a bone condition and has broken more than 40 bones. He’s stopped counting at this point. He’s also had a liver transplant and is waiting for heart surgery.
When I asked him “what is a good life?”, he promptly opened with:
“I feel like I’m living it.”
I spoke to him a couple of weeks before this interview, and he told me about the surgery he was waiting on, among many other things. I’m continually impressed by how Matt engages in life and how engaging he is, regardless of his history with health conditions. When I speak with him, he’s noticeably attentive, curious and caring. We laugh a lot. There’s a real consistency to how I experience his presence.
In our interview, Matt reflects on how waiting for heart surgery isn’t necessarily as intense an experience for him as it might be for someone who has never been seriously ill. His history has shaped his relationship with the medical system, which has been a place of healing for him. It’s partly a case of who he is, but also of what his experiences have equipped him for.
There’s a quirk to this life that I keep noticing. Sometimes, navigating the very things we wish weren’t there builds or shapes something in us. This doesn’t mean everything happens for a reason – tell that to someone in a war zone. Sometimes life is just awful. But we can never know what might become possible further down the line.
The conversation with Matt also makes me think about how easily we can make the very things we have, or don’t have, into the things on which our happiness depends.
Have you ever considered that the thing you believe will make you happy is already present in the lives of many people who are still miserable? It might be material, in terms of money, fame or a bigger house. Or it might be a partner, a family, or some other form of relationship we believe we need.
And conversely, there are people living without the very things we desire or fear losing the most who still find ways to enjoy their lives.
This isn’t a pep talk to turn that frown upside down, or a call to remain mindful and equanimous no matter what life throws at us. I’ve spoken to people for whom difficult times have meant nothing but hardship and despair.
These are more things about life that continue to intrigue me. They leave me more open to the potential that there’s always room for what we cannot presently imagine.
The more I listen to people’s lives, the less certain I become about what a good life must contain. At the same time, the possibilities for what my own life might become seem to expand.
2. This Week’s Questions
What do you tell yourself a good life must depend on?
What has surprised you the most about your life path so far?
3. Weekly Clip From The Podcast
4. Full Episode - Living Fully While You Wait with Matt Hoffar - What is a Good Life? #194
Listen to or watch the full conversation with Matt Hoffar 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.