Losing My Father Taught Me How To Live - Michael Smoak

1. 0:00 – 1:10

   The 'Dead Parents Under Thirty' reality and why it feels unfinished

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr0:00

      What is something young parental grief teaches you that you can only learn by experiencing it?

   2. MSMichael Smoak0:08

      This is unique. As I remember the day my dad died, a friend of mine, her mom passed when she was probably twenty-five, twenty-seven maybe. And she said, "We belong to a club. It's a specific club, and it's a shitty club, and you and I, David, both belong to it. It's the Dead Parents Under Thirty Club, and it sucks." But it's unique because it's, you're not a kid. You're not eighteen with the whole world ahead of you when they die, or I wasn't. I was twenty-seven, but I'm not there yet. I'm not married. I don't have children. I don't have a home. I don't have my own family life built and solid. So in a lot of ways, I'm still a kid, [clears throat] and there are things that my old man was still supposed to be here for. That's a weird experience. And I think the most valuable lesson above all else that I have learned is the finality of life and what matters at the end of our lives. Getting that, I know your, your mom passed suddenly, right?

2. 1:10 – 1:40

   What dying people wish for: presence over productivity

   1. MSMichael Smoak1:10

      And I'm sorry for that. The, the thing that I think was powerful for me was listening to what my dad would tell me he wished he did more of in his life, and it was never work more. It was never think more. It was never take less risk. It was spend more time fully present with the people he loved. And this was a guy that lived an incredibly full life, like really, really intentional, and he still just wishes he spent more time with the people he loved. And so I think the best lesson it ever taught me [chuckles] is just, "Fuck

3. 1:40 – 2:20

   Empty the tank: living with minimal regret

   1. MSMichael Smoak1:40

      it. We're gonna die." Like, do what you want. Be present. Love on people hard. Love hard. Live fully. Empty the tank on your life. I want to empty the tank on my life. It's why I'm traveling the world full time now. I wanna look back and go, "Wow, look at that thing I did for a year when I was twenty-eight. That was awesome." And I wanna get as close as I can in the last months or weeks of my life, should I have the privilege of knowing it's coming and not ending suddenly, to know that I have minimal regret. I don't have any hypotheticals I wish I'd played out. I just played them out. And I'm so grateful for that. I don't take anything for granted anymore because I see what it's like to be at the end.

4. 2:20 – 2:50

   Rocking chair cinema: choosing today for the memories you'll replay

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr2:20

      I learned from my experience this idea of the rocking chair cinema. And what I mean by that is that at the age of, let's hope ninety, a hundred years old, all you will have is your thoughts and your memories to keep you company. Hopefully some grandchildren and some children around you. But either you're gonna be keeping yourself company with this cinematic experience that we call memory while you, or you'll be sharing those stories with your, your infants and their kids. And when I'm making decisions, specifically

5. 2:50 – 3:29

   From YOLO to YODO: you live every day, you only die once

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr2:50

      around opportunity and adventure, I play it through the lens of this eighty-year-old fella, this phantom older me who will be reliving what I'm currently doing via memory and asking him, "In this moment, what would you choose to do?" And I only learned that through losing my mother. You may have only learned that through, through losing your father. And it's what I think the YOLO movement got wrong. You only live once. It's entirely false. It's a lie. You only die once, but you live every single day. It should be YODO. [laughs]

   2. MSMichael Smoak3:27

      [laughs] That's good.

6. 3:29 – 4:26

   Liberation and purpose: serving via them, not for them

   1. DJDavid McIntosh Jr3:29

      And yeah, through that lens, I've been making decisions. It's why I'm out here in Long Beach, California. But I only learned that through gamifying mortality, and you can only get that three-D lesson from being in that shitty under-thirty club. It's not Forbes thirty under thirty, it's Dead Parents Under Thirty Club. And y- you mentioned it in your opener. As much as I would pay every last penny in my bank account to have one last day with my mother, and I'm sure you would with Mike, your father, there is a sense of liberation from that struggle because life is now for itself and not the servitude of others immediately. But when turning that pain into purpose, turning that wound into work, in fact, they live on. They live on in that servitude. So you might not be serving them, but you're serving via them.

7. 4:26 – 5:27

   Watching decline up close: what most endings look like

   1. MSMichael Smoak4:26

      Mm-hmm. Yeah. And in, in understanding the finality of life and how quickly it can come to an end or slowly, I think you only die once is interesting because at the end of your life, you're gonna relive it through your own eyes. So that rocking chair cinema you alluded to, I, I watched... 'Cause there will come a point for most of us, most of us aren't gonna be lucky. We aren't just gonna go to sleep and never wake up. That's the best way you could possibly leave the Earth. Most people don't have that blessing. For most of us, we're gonna suffer. We're gonna get weaker. We're gonna be in pain. Our friends are gonna die. Our kids are gonna get busy. Our grandkids are never gonna come visit. We're gonna be alone. And then, only then maybe will we have the relief of death. And I watched that. I watched a guy who's full of agency and autonomy be forced to sit on the couch and just reflect. And luckily, my dad lived a very full life. He did a lot of cool shit and built an incredible family and loved others, and others loved him.

8. 5:27 – 5:37

   You need enough 'material' for the final rewatch

   1. MSMichael Smoak5:27

      And so he had a lot of good to reflect on. I worry about getting to the end of my life and not having as much good as I possibly could to relive the movie. There's gotta be enough material-

   2. DJDavid McIntosh Jr5:36

      [chuckles]

9. 5:37 – 6:38

   Risk isn't real (unless it can harm your survival)

   1. MSMichael Smoak5:37

      ... to carry me through to the end, or I'm gonna go insane thinking about all the things I didn't do. And so I think, when I think about that question you just asked me, the po- most powerful lesson I've learned, I truly believe that risk is not real. If, if it's not gonna kill me, if my immediate physical safety is not harmed, and if I'm able to eat and pay rent or pay my mortgage, all risk is psychological. It's not real. It's a narrative that our minds craft to keep us safe because our brains are designed to identify patterns and familiarity. And now we don't live in a world where there's lions that could eat us or tribes that could attack us, so it looks for lack of safety elsewhere because that's still what it's designed to do. And that's why I love the, the phrase, "You are not your thoughts, and your brain is not always your friend," because the idea of mitigating risk is not real if our well-being is not being potentially comp- compromised. And so it's caused me to do a lot perceivably... People ask me about what I'm

10. 6:38 – 7:32

    Why the nomad life isn’t crazy: recalibrating risk with mortality

    1. MSMichael Smoak6:38

       doing now, the nomad thing. Like, "Dude, that's fucking crazy. I can't believe you're doing that." And I just go, "What do you mean? I'm just living in Airbnbs. I have stoves. I have a bed. I have a roof over my head, and I'm making an income where I can... What do you mean it's crazy?" It's crazy because our threshold for risk is completely different because you don't really remember every single day that you could fucking leave this Earth at any moment. Marcus Aurelius, "You could leave this Earth at any moment. Let that dictate what you say, do, and think." And I truly believe that, and it's only through what we went through that I really embody that, and I want people to not have to go through what I went through to be able to embody the same. It'd be the best thing ever if I can teach people what I feel in my heart and my bones about life without them having to carry their dying father to the bathroom and back. I don't want people to have to do that. So I'm trying to, through my conviction, teach them.

Episode duration: 7:32