Living and working more boldly, with the end in mind

Perspective is one of the most powerful forces we can bring to our life and work, but it can be hard to find and easy to lose. I'm sure all of us encounter acute reminders that life is short or that the small stuff isn't worth sweating and find ourselves emboldened to show up as our bravest and best selves. But the feeling doesn't always last. That's why I'm drawn to the incredible work of Barbara Becker, who has delved deeply into the question of how to preserve that kind of mindset. She has a new book out - Heartwood: The Art of Living with the End in Mind - and so I asked her for advice on living and working more boldly, based on the galvanizing knowledge that our days are finite.

Here is our conversation. A big thanks to Barbara for sharing her wisdom as well as a very personal challenge in such an open and inspiring way. It's a gift to all of us.

Q: In your book, you talk about living with the end in mind. What does that mean, and what inspired that concept within you?

 A: When my earliest childhood friend Marisa was diagnosed with a terminal illness at the age of thirty, I went on a journey to explore the meaning of loss and love. While Marisa was living out the last year of her life, I became completely absorbed by the question, Can we live our lives more fully knowing someday we will die?

Marisa made the absolute most of her remaining time. She was an incredible lover of life. She got married to her college sweetheart. She travelled to Italy with her family. She kept working as long as she could and spent deep, quality time with colleagues and friends.

But I couldn’t help wonder about what happens to those of us who are still here, who are going about our day-to-day lives? Can we, too, live with a more heightened sense of what matters most by taking on death as a teacher?

I discovered that wise people throughout time have advised us to live with the end in mind… from the Buddha to the Prophet Muhammed to Stoic philosophers like the emperor Marcus Aurelius. So I tested whether this wisdom would hold up within the context of a modern life.

Ultimately, Heartwood is a book about resilience and hope. It’s a book about truly living—fully acknowledging that someday we will die. When I stepped back and looked at what I had done, I saw that I had written a love letter to life.

Q: You have a great metaphor and namesake for the book that frames grief and loss in a way that's very apt for this moment. Tell us about heartwood.

A: Heartwood is a metaphor that I found in nature, and it quickly became the central theme of the book. Imagine walking through an old growth forest. Inside every tree is a central pillar that is most prized by woodworkers, that gives the tree strength and stability. That core is called heartwood, and what most people don’t know is that it’s no longer living… it no longer transports water and nutrients.  The living growth rings of the tree expand out from this central core.

It turns out we’re a lot like the trees.  Those we’ve loved who have died form our heartwood, our enduring strength.

There is both pain and beauty on this journey. We make meaning through narrative and metaphor. With both of my parents now gone, I think of them as my heartwood. We don’t ‘get over’ our loved ones when they die.  Instead, we find an ongoing connection with them, even as we go about living.  It also helps me to recognize that someday, I’ll be someone’s heartwood too. 

Q: At moments when we find ourselves struggling with adversity, how can we find resilience?

A: I am in one of those moments of personal adversity right now, it turns out. The day that Heartwood was released, I was undergoing surgery for a new diagnosis of breast cancer. Suddenly, I have been reading the book I wrote to help others… to help myself.

I have been reminded again and again in these past several weeks that the Heartwood story is about learning to face things as they are, not as we would prefer them to be. The Taoists say this is a world of 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows, and both of these realities are simultaneously true. Can I be present to all that is? 

Having a health challenge can be a radical lesson in surrender. I’m learning to walk step-by-step, not writing chapter 21 when I’m only on chapter 4, so to speak. Sometimes it’s simply not possible to think beyond one day at time. That has its benefit too—there’s a simple beauty that unfolds when we slow down in the midst of a culture that can move at warp speed. 

I should say that my doctors are extremely optimistic about my prognosis, and I am so grateful for that! As long as I walk this part of my life story, all of the people I wrote about in Heartwood who I was fortunate to learn from are such a source of strength to me now.

Q: Wow, thank you for sharing that. I wish you the best in your recovery. Given that we're here on LinkedIn, I'm wondering about how all of this makes you think about your work. How can living with the end in mind help us understand what we most want to do and why?

A: I once met a man on hospice who told me he wished he had spent more time in the office! It flew in the face of conventional wisdom. But here he was – a person who had been so passionate about his work and the contribution he made to his community that he not only had no regrets about all the time he spent working, he even wished he could have done more!

I had been working in the field of strategic communications for over twenty-five years when I met this man. While I enjoyed my work, I knew there were more things I wanted to learn and do. So I went back to school to study comparative religion in order to dive deeply into the ways in which people derive meaning in their lives across diverse cultures and traditions. And in the process, I did what had been previously unthinkable to me…I became an ordained interfaith minister. As a part of this new work, I have offered blessings at memorial services at NYC’s potter’s field during the COVID pandemic and have also served as a disaster chaplain. I’m not giving up my communications work, but I am absolutely enriched by this new avenue of personal expression.

Q: What's your advice for finding the courage to be bold in our career choices?

A: Whenever I am faced with a career decision of any level of magnitude, I ask myself: What would I do if I had only one year left to live? This inquiry has the power to set my priorities straight and forces me to examine the level of passion and integrity with which I carry out my career choices. 

 To paraphrase the American poet and theologian Frederick Buechner, our calling in life is where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. The answer will be unique to each of us, but in the very asking, we may even uncover our truest, most worthy reason for being… the vocation that author Parker Palmer says is that which we cannot not do. I can’t think of anything more bold than that!

Thank you Barbara. That is powerful indeed.