sunday life: a chat with Mitch Albom about faith
This week I find my “right reason”…and get a little faith.
On Tuesday I sat with Mitch Albom. Which is lovely and fitting, really, because Mitch wrote Tuesdays with Morrie, a book about how he spent Tuesdays sitting with a bloke called Morrie. Not read it? Well, Morrie is Mitch’s former teacher and is dying. Mitch is a sports journo from Detroit. Each week Mitch visits Morrie who, as he faces death, shares his compassionate insights with Mitch. The end. Or thereabouts.
Much like when I look at a Splade or a pair of Crocs, I’ve often wondered what possesses someone to spend years of their life creatively and myopically dedicated to something that, on paper, isn’t exactly a commercial shoo-in. I mean a book of wisdoms by a dying teacher and a sports hack…who was he kidding? Indeed, countless publishers knocked the book back.
But perhaps you know what comes next. Tuesdays with Morrie was finally published in 2000 for a modest fee. It became the biggest selling memoir in history. And Mitch has sold a whopping 28 million books since.
So the question I put to Mitch: what kept him writing? What keeps anyone creative on their path as the bills pile up and the doubters circle in? Faith, says Mitch. Which is also lovely and fitting, because his latest book is called Have a Little Faith.
On Tuesday, Mitch’s thinking enlivened me. He told me he wrote Tuesdays to “do the right thing”. This I didn’t know. Morrie had clocked up huge medical bills and didn’t want to pass them on to his family. What could Mitch do to help? Write a book to cover the expenses. His motivation was merely some peace for Morrie, not fame nor fortune. While ever he kept writing he achieved this. “I didn’t try too hard, my aims were modest,” he told me. So it just unfolded. As we conclude together, when you do something for the right reason, the mission is authentic, goals are reached and the world responds to this with recognition and affection. They buy it.
I feel this is a really good theme to explore right now. So many of my peers are desperately trying to make their stupendously lucrative creative mark. A decade ago success was all about corner offices and working our way to the top. But we’re a generation who’ve seen farmers become overnight stars and blogs by call centre operators turned into books-turned-into-movies-starring-Meryl-Streep. The pressure is on to find our very own no-brainer creative contribution – an online business, an e-magazine, a short film – that’ll make instant money or headlines.
But life doesn’t work like that, Mitch says. JK Rowling – who took years to write her first Harry Potter book, on a typewriter, while on welfare, which was rejected by 12 publishers and finally picked up for 1500 pounds – will tell you the same. Fame and fortune are tenuous carrots. They’re external signposts that can be shifted by others. The “right reason”, however, is yours to authentically define and will always deliver. It might be a desire to enlighten humanity, to make music that matters or to see if admin tasks can be improved with an adhesive yellow notepaper.
At the moment, I’m contemplating a big writing project that will suck me dry on all counts. I’ve been doubting whether I can do it, mostly because I’ve focused on whether it’ll be “bought”. So I sat still and asked, am I doing this for the right reason? What is my right reason? Once I dropped external signposts from the picture, my “right reason” – to share an important message with other people – kicked in. And I started writing.
But back to faith quickly. On Tuesday I also asked Mitch how he accesses faith. He’s still trying to, he says. Faith, he say, is a belief in something bigger than us and a feeling that we’re not here to take. He’s worked out, from his journey with his latest book, the best way to access the peace and sense of belonging that faith brings is to invest in other people.
To finish, I’d love to share this little insight from Have a Little Faith: “When a baby comes into the world, its hands are clenched…because a baby, not knowing any better, wants grab everything, to say, ‘The whole world is mine’. But when an old person dies (it’s) with his hands open. Why? Because he has learned the lesson”.
Go for it Sarah. There are lots of ways your book can be “bought” and lots of ways (ie; non-financial) you can be compensated in life for major efforts undertaken. Time is your only cost which is being spent anyway.
On financial pursuits, years ago I was running a business which had not quite “made it” yet but I kept faith in my idea and what I wanted to see. It got tough too. I owned 2 properties that I had to sell – my own home and a small flat – just to keep the business alive. I’d bought them both about 8 years prior so it was a big decision. All my friends owned their houses – here I was going back to renting one.
Imagine selling up all your possessions (effectively what I did) just to keep your idea alive. With no guarantee either – ideas crash & burn all the time. That was a real test of faith for me. Faith in myself. It made me answer the questions – how much did I believe in this idea? How much faith did I have in myself?
My old boss used to very inelegantly say “Paul, there comes a time when you have to put your cock on the block”.
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I used to wonder the same thing, why people pursued a path that left them in debt and seemed to be going nowhere. Now I think I understand it better. The alternative would have made them miserable.
I chose a corporate career thinking that it would provide me with the financial stability that I needed to buy a house and to one day pursue my ‘real passions’. A few months into my career, I realised there was no way I could continue working at such a banal soul destroying job.
I know what it is I want to do. But I know it would take at least 10 years of hard work and poverty to finally succeed. I have yet to find the faith to pursue that path, but I hope one day I’ll find the courage to.
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I like this thought: write the book you would like to be the only book you are ever remembered for. What would it say? Leave? Teach?
Write the book that pulls you out of bed every night like a secret friend, waiting to be met.
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April 7th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Louisa, this is just lovely and perfect. Do you mind if I pull it out on my blog?
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The right reason and our creative approach comes from “out of the box” thinking rather than desperately trying and being constrained by logic thought processes. Our awareness around this will create the outcomes we require.
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“I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?” Sam wonders out loud to his best mate Frodo in Lord of the Rings, after they’ve struggled through much on their journey. In raising that question Sam’s acknowledging the story they are involved in is much bigger than their individual pursuit. I love that line. My faith helps remind me of that too – there is indeed a bigger story, and it’s not all about us. Faith helps me focus less on myself, but on God and others more.
Thanks Sarah for sharing your insights from your time with Mitch Albom, I’ve been hoping you would. And great that you’ve made a call on your book – I trust making this decision will remove some of that restlessness you’ve referred to previously. I hope you may be able to share some of your journey in future blogs as it unfolds. Having written a manuscript myself which will one day see the light of day I’m fascinated by writers journeys and rituals.
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Once again, your posts come at interesting times for me and are a great cue to some personal reflection. I started a blog not because I wanted to be the next girl that got a book and movie deal, but because I wanted to motivate myself to write, and I wanted to have fun with the creative process. And while I still hold no aspirations of being the girl who strikes a book and movie deal, I do struggle to keep writing a blog very few people read, I start checking my stats and i fret over ways to get my blog seen. And then, I stop, and I think, why am I doing this again? And I go, ah, I remember now, I’m doing it for the right reason…
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April 7th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Misho, where the mind goes, the energy flows, don’t you reckon?
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Your article appeared just at the right time for me as I have recently been toying with the urge to express myself through writing and had thought of doing so merely in a personal journal . The thing playing on my mind was that other women might be able to relate to much of what I want to write about. You have given me the idea of a blog (altho I know nothing about them) and reading the comments of RubyTwoShoes has reinforced this, as I too want to do it for the personal satisfaction, as a creative outlet and if along the way, someone else can relate to it-all the better! Your closing quote from “Have a little Faith” is particularly powerful. I have emailed you – if you have time to answer my query I would be most grateful.
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[...] Is it about accumulating followers? Attention? Why do I reach out? Recently, esp in light of my Mitch Albom column, I’ve tried to be conscious of reaching out authentically. Doing it for the right [...]
I love this.. Inspiring and succinct.
Thank you Sarah.
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Hello Sarah – I was real happy to find your article in The Age on Sunday – thank you. I have read all of Mitch’s books and they have all been fantastic. I find that they change with your life – ie. re-reading opens up new insights into what has been written. Thanks be to Mitch for changing the way I look at life.
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Sarah, I was such a random reader of your Sunday Life articles but I’m now a convert with your ‘find my right reason’ one. I think there is the tendency to get too clever by half that sometimes, especially with success, one loses sight of the original vision. The number of times I have got so excited by the embryo of an idea and then implementation robs it of all that. And it’s partly the focus on success and the the need to be secure about getting everything right that does it. Does the volume of information and the many new-fangled ways available now to acquire them make us lose our intinctive nature? Strategic plans, projections, simulations, forecasts, etc focus on the end-result so that we miss the joy of journey. Thanks for writing about Tuesdays with Morrie. Now I’m on the hunt for a copy.
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Of course, Sarah. Love the column by the way:-)
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