Tuesdays with Morrie Author - Mitch Albom on new book "Twice"

0:00Wouldn't my life be better if I just got a chance to do everything over again now that I know what I already know? Love seems to be intertwined with the notion of, is this the right person for me? You look at it as a lesson that taught you how to ultimately become the person that you are, and hopefully that's a better person. I see people who find a way to be happy while their daily challenge is to find water and food just enough to live. Your legacy is who you touch, who then will touch somebody else. And the way that you're remembered and the way that you go on is not how they cheer your name years later.

0:40Zac Thompson:What do people get wrong when they think about regrets throughout their life?

0:49Zac Thompson:Mitch Albom, welcome to the podcast. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. No worries. Welcome back. It's great to have you. So, Mitch, we kick off with a big open question every time. I'm going to tweak it this time just for you. Who are you and what problem does your new book twice solve for people? Well, I am by name Mitch Albom. I am by occupation an author or a storyteller. And the problem that my new book solves is the haunting question of wouldn't my life be better if I just got a chance to do everything over again now that I know what I already know and we always assume that that's going to be yes but my book kind of explores maybe it's more like a sometimes yes sometimes no okay lovely so talk us through the process so when you first had this idea where were you when that seed initially planted for you Well, for me, I write books a little bit differently, I think, than other people do.

2:01Ever since Tuesdays with Maury, which was a nonfiction book that I wrote that kind of, I guess, for most readers and people in your audience sort of put me on the map. That book was a nonfiction book, but it was broken down into different themes. You know, we talked about different subjects, my old professor who was dying and I, and each week was a different theme. And ever since then, when I've sat down to write even novels, I actually think of the theme first and the story second. So the where I was when I thought about this is really probably not a question I can answer with a specific moment because I've been thinking about this all my life.

2:44And that is, you know, what if you got a do over, you know, and and what if you got to erase a mistake? And then that turned into a whole story about, well, what if I create a character who actually has that power? And what happens when he starts using it? And then it led me to love, which becomes the overriding sort of theme in it. So books sort of develop with me. Some writers just get a plot and they say, I want to write a book about a guy who blows up shopping malls and a guy who pursues him. they take it from there and they research shopping malls and terrorists and all that. And that's all great.

3:30For me, I try to get that theme and I say, what's the theme? And then I say, so, okay, how can I create a story that would address that theme? And as I say, I've been thinking about that theme for a long time, as I imagine maybe you have and some of the people who are listening to us have too.

3:45Zac Thompson:And why do you think that love was so important to be kind of tied to this thing? Well, because I think if we're being honest, that's one of the things we probably question ourselves about the most. When we're out searching for love at a young age, we're always wondering who's out there for me, right? And we start dating and it's like, well, is this person really the right person for me? Or maybe there's somebody better, you know? How long should I stay with this person, you know, is a real future with this person, or maybe somebody else would have a better future. And then, of course, if you look at the divorce rates, clearly about half of us who have decided to make commitments to one another have decided, no, you know what, I think I'd be better off with somebody else.

4:34And so love seems to be intertwined with the notion of, is this the right person for me? Or did I settle? Or did I act too quickly? Or has this person change or would I be happier? And that's really the question, isn't it, Jack? Is it, would I be happier under a certain different circumstance? And happiness is a funny thing, you know, as I've learned, as I've gotten older, it's, it's really complicated. And, uh, so I wanted to explore the happiness that comes with love and whether, you know, jumping partners or switching to somebody else is the answer. And so in the book twice, I made the caveat, the one exception to the magic that this lead character has, love.

5:26It doesn't work with love. And so if you are, someone's in love with you and you're married to them, you're dating them, whatever, and you decide, hmm, I just want to see what it's like with somebody else. and you go back and try that, that person who is in love with you can never love you again. It's all or nothing. So they'll be in the world. They'll be around. You can know them, but they can never love you again. So you're going to sacrifice that to go explore someone else's love, which isn't the way it works in the real world. A lot of the times, you know, we break up with people. They still stay madly in love with us for some strange reason, or you in love with them for some strange reason.

6:06But in this case, you make the decision, you pay the price. And that became, that's when the book really, to me, became really interesting.

6:16Zac Thompson:There's a lovely book called The Paradox of Choice, where we struggle, where there's so many options out there. And I think for Alfie in the book, there's this like feeling of, well, what if, what if I could just do that? What if I could try and be with somebody else? What have you learned about the feeling of being content as you wrote this book? Yeah, well, it's a really good question. It's at the heart of, you know, what I try to conclude with this book. And that is that, you know, there's a moment where his grandmother in the book, who also has this power, is talking to him, you know, as someone who has lived with it her whole life.

6:57and he says to her, well, why do we only get two chances? Why do we have to live with the consequences of our second chance, which is the rules of the power? Why don't we get more chances? And she says, Alfie, if you kept getting second chances, you wouldn't learn a damn thing. And that's the truth of it, is that if we just keep getting do-overs, we're always going to think that something else is better. It's the buffet syndrome. You ever go to a buffet, you know, and all you can eat. And it's like, I'll take some of that. And I'll take some of that. And I'll take some of that. You know, suddenly you, you don't want one thing.

7:41You want everything because it's all out there in front of you. Whereas if you go to another restaurant, you never think of ordering six things, right? When you go to a regular restaurant, you never say, well, I'll have the chicken. I'll also have a steak. I'll also have this because I just want to taste all of them. But you go to a buffet and you go, hmm, I can have them all. I'll take them all. And so there's something to be learned from that buffet lesson. That is, you know, if you can be content with the choice that you made. And by being content, I don't mean settling. I mean, finding the best in that choice and not thinking about another choice would be better.

8:23Enjoying the chicken instead of thinking, well, this chicken's good, but I bet the steak is better. You know, that haunting thing that you do to yourself, you'll be much happier. And it's really the people, my observation of happiness as I've gotten older and traveled around the world and gotten a chance to meet so many different people from so many different walks of life, is that the people who have the most are frequently the least happy people that I meet. And the people whose choices are pretty simple are amongst the happiest and most content. So there is not a correlation between having a gazillion choices in life and happiness.

9:00And that's one of the things I try to explore in twice.

9:05Zac Thompson:And then it feels like there's definitely like one of the big themes is regrets. So what have you learned about what do people get wrong when they think about regrets throughout their life? Well, I learned this from Maury many, many years ago at his bedside as he was dying that, you know, he would say to me, don't get hung up on your regrets. still haunt you. And when you get to the end of your life, you're not going to want to be thinking about all the things that you didn't do or should have done. You want to appreciate the things that you did. And I think that if you look at everything, I've been asked since this book has, has, you know, become known.

9:58Well, what about you? Would you do anything over in your life twice? And I think a lot of people expect me to say, oh, no, you know, I've I've learned I'm wise and then I would just leave everything alone. And I immediately say, hell, yeah, you know, I can give you 20 right now that I would do over if I was given the chance because I got it wrong the first time. But if you said to me, in doing them over and getting a second chance, you would have to unlearn what you learned from making the mistake, then I would say no. Because everything that you regret taught you something. And everything that you missed out on led you to act differently when you had another chance.

10:48And everything that you should have done under one circumstance in some way led to the things that you did do later on. So I think if you can look at a regret as instead of feeling, you know, oh, I should, life would just be so much better if I could undo it. You look at it as a lesson. that taught you how to ultimately become the person that you are, and hopefully that's a better person, then you learn to almost cherish the things that went wrong and what you would have initially referred to as a regret. I'll give you a perfect example. I did not have, my wife and I did not have children when we got married.

11:38She wanted to have children. I was in that career mode. We were right on the cusp of the years where you can have kids. We got married pretty late. And, you know, we tried, but didn't happen. And we didn't, you know, I didn't start early enough, maybe, you know, we didn't start early enough. And at the time, I didn't, I thought that that's what I wanted, you know. And years later, I came to regret not having children. However, 16 years ago, I was led by fate, I believe, to Haiti after the earthquake and ended up working with an orphanage and ended up becoming involved in the orphanage and taking over the operations of the orphanage.

12:30And now have so many children in my life. I don't know what to do with them. I've got 22 of them that live with me right now as I'm talking to you as colleges, you know, because the summer, they haven't gone back to college yet. And then they go to school around here. They've come up and gone to school. And we've adopted a little three-year-old girl. Well, she was six months when we adopted her. And I would not have done that, I don't think, if I had had children of my own. I put it probably so busy with them and raising them at that opportunity probably would have just seemed like too much or too much to take on.

13:08So I could sit there and regret the fact that I didn't have children or I could say, well, you know, the fact that I didn't probably made me gravitate towards them later in life and appreciate this second chance that I got at them. And really, you know, I like to think I'm a pretty good dad at this age, you know, might not have been back at that age. So it's just a small personal example of how, you know, something that you regret led you to do other things later in your life that you're happy had happened. So I think everyone can kind of find an example like that if they look.

13:46Zac Thompson:I guess if I was to bet money on it, Mitch, I would say that you are an optimist through and through. I might be wrong, but that's kind of how you strike me. so then for some people and you you've probably met these people in your life they they struggle to to let go of the mistakes that they've made i guess from your personal experience why do you think people struggle so much to not find the lesson in maybe the mistakes or the the other paths that they they could have taken well it's a you know it's more of a psychiatrist answer than than an author's, but I think the likelihood is that some people become comfortable with misery and they're more comfortable with misery than happiness.

14:34And sometimes it's not all out misery, it's just sort of a general state of being unhappy, but for whatever reason, they don't feel they're worthy of happiness. They don't feel like they've known it. Maybe their parents didn't show to them. And so their comfort zone is, is being unhappy. And, and no matter what happens, they always end up finding a way to tumble back into, you know, either depression or unhappiness or whatever, because that's where they're at. And, and, and when that happens, you know, they need to talk to somebody about why does this pattern keep repeating? Because the world can be a wonderful place.

15:16It can be. And I have seen, I have been blessed, Jack, to work in the most or second most impoverished place in the world. I'm in Haiti every month for the last 16 years. It is, the poverty there is unlike anything, certainly in the Western Hemisphere. It's the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. And I see people who find a way to be happy while their daily challenge is to find water and food just enough to live. And yet there's smiles and there's singing and there's laughter and there's prayer and all that. How is that possible? How, you know, it, it proves that it's not about what you have.

15:58It's about something inside you. And, and so the people who are always defaulting to unhappiness, and I count amongst them, people who are famous and rich and well-known, you know. I know a lot of them who still find their way to be unhappy with, from the outside, almost everything that anyone could dream of. So I think, you know, people have to look into their histories, their upbringing, all that, but it's something that people should explore and try to solve because you don't have to. The world is not making you unhappy. the world provides happiness possibilities everywhere you know if you just manage and it and it felt like in the book there were themes of we have paths in life that we can take

16:52Zac Thompson:maybe the the the best the best idea i can think of is maybe when it comes to like careers and maybe pursuing dreams whether it be music or the arts and things like that a lot of the time people will go down the safer path or the path that is expected as from from maybe parents or guardians what what can you tell us about kind of following your dreams in that sense yeah that's another thing that i talked a lot about with maury and uh really when i was a kid in college maury was kind of the first person who uh he took me seriously when i said you know i want to be a musician, I think up to that point, whenever I told any adults in my life that I wanted to be a musician, they looked at me as like, well, yes, of course, that's what a kid would say.

17:42But when you grow up, when you get to college, when you get out, you're going to want a real profession. And he encouraged me to go into music, which I did. And I'm glad that I did, even though I failed at it from a commercial point of view because I tried it. And I think it would haunt me if I didn't try it. And I think when people have these dreams of the unsafe kind of career versus the safe career, the time to try it is when you're young and you should try it. If you fall, it's like a kid who's just learning to walk. They're so close to the ground to begin with. It doesn't hurt, right? But when you're fully grown and you take a tumble, you break something.

18:33So early in your career path or right out of school, that's a great time to try any of those things. And if you like it or if you hit on it, if it works out for you, great, you've got a life. If you don't, you still got lots of time to go and try something else. But what happens is there's a lot of pressure And certainly here in the States, there's a lot of pressure on kids today to know what they want to do before they even get out of college or before they even get out of high school, to have a career path and a profession chosen and have it safe or whatever. And they do that because that's kind of what they're taught.

19:14And and they go into it and they start to, you know, they get an advanced degree and they get the starting entry level job and they work up and they get all the accoutrements that come with it. And somewhere in their 40s, they go to a jazz club and watch a guy blow a trumpet and say, you know, that's always what I wanted to do. And and now it's too late. You know, now all this on. I never had that feeling of too late because I tried it when I was younger, you know, and I and I know I know what it was like. I know the pluses and the minuses of it. So I would encourage anybody who's thinking of the unsafe path or the less secure path to try it when you're unencumbered, when you're not married, when you don't have kids depending on you and all that, and give it a go.

19:58And the worst that could happen is you fail, but it'll still serve you well later in life, you know, when you say, someone says to you, didn't you always want to be a musician? And yeah, I did. You know, I tried it. Didn't work out. But I got, you know, I kind of saw what that life would have been like. And I sort of I kind of like the life I have right now.

20:19Zac Thompson:How did you know when to pivot? That's a really good question. Uh, when I found something else, um, and I found something else by accident. So I was a musician. Uh, first I, first I was a musician through college and, uh, you know, I, I, I went to college, but I played on weekends and whenever I could in bands and, you know, setting myself up. And then I went to Europe and I, I was a musician there, uh, for a stretch of time, uh, particularly in Greece. And then I came back to New York City and I did the whole starving musician thing and went from club to club and record company to record company.

21:05And in fact, there's a couple scenes in the book, because Alfie in the book, the protagonist also starts out as music. And there's a moment where he thinks he's written this great song and he goes in and he sits down across from this record company executive, and they put on his tape, and he hits play. And just as he hits play, the guy's phone rings, and the guy picks up the phone, doesn't shut the music off, talks through the whole song, and just as the song ends, he hangs up, he goes, nah, I don't hear it. And that's word for word what happened with me one time with a guy in a record company.

21:41And I said, what do you mean you don't hear it? You were on the phone the whole time. so um i while i was a musician i worked mostly at nights and so one day i was in a supermarket and i picked up this local newspaper that they uh you know handed out for free and it had a little ad on it that said if you have free time we could use some help uh putting out this newspaper and And since I worked mostly at nights and had a regular schedule, I said, well, I'm not doing anything. And so I went down there and they gave me an assignment the very first time I showed up. I was the youngest person by about 60 years.

22:23So I think I was the only one who was mobile enough to go do it. But they sent me out to cover like a, oh, it was like a little local community meeting about parking meters or something. and I'd never written anything really before in my life, but I was always a good storyteller and I was always pretty creative. And so I went there like Woodward and Bernstein. I had a little notepad and I asked a lot of really hard questions about parking meters, wrote things down. And then I wrote a story and I gave it to them. And the next week I went to the supermarket and the paper came out and they put it in my little bag and there was my story on the bottom of the front page, which only shows you how little news there was in that particular part of New York.

23:07But I got that little tingle that you get when you see your name on something that you created, you know. And I said, you know, I went back, wrote another story, went back, wrote another story. I worked there for six months for free, never got paid. And then after six months of like pretty much working there every day, they said, well, you're here all the time. So we're going to give you some money. who gave me$25 a week. And I worked another six months for$25 a week, but I learned about writing and I learned about, in that case, journalism. And I learned that I had some aptitude for it. And when I found something that was rewarding yet creative, I was able to sort of, I liken it to like swinging on a vine, you know, like you, you take your momentum from one vine and then you start looking for another one, but you don't let go of the one you're on until you find one that's safe to grab you know and um writing became this safe vine for me to grab and I let go of music and started swinging on the writing vine and I've been doing it ever since

24:12Zac Thompson:I think it's and I mean it's so fitting with the the book Mitch because the the body doesn't know the difference I taught I used to do music 10 years ago now and we were we were on the up and then all of a sudden you hit that decline you're like oh time to pivot so that's that's where the question came from but I think about like the body doesn't know the difference in terms of that little feeling that you got when you saw your name on the article is probably the same feeling that you got when you write when you perform a song to a room and I guess as you look back now on the success that you've had with the books and all those things but more so probably the ripples of you don't know whose hand those books have ended up in and actually there could be another version of Mitch that's playing boozy little clubs on a Friday, Saturday night.

25:02Zac Thompson:Actually, you don't know probably the effect that the books have had. I want to really dive into Love with You Mitch, because obviously that is one of the big themes of the book. I guess maybe a tough question. Do you truly believe that love the second time around can work? Oh, 100%. Yes, I think love is a learned art as much as it is a feeling. You know, there's, it's like a fire. Okay, a fire, there's all forms of fire. what is undeniable about a fire is that there's ignition and there is flame but after that how that fire grows how long it lasts all the rest of it that's circumstantial right that's not the element of fire itself it's everything around it love is the same way you know yes you need to have that, at least to me, you need to have that combustion and ignition and that entity.

26:16But after that, whether it grows or goes out, whether it turns into a roaring thing, whether it destroys or whether it's controlled, that's all what you do with it and how you nurture it. And I think sometimes people have that ignition, that flame, young in their life, If they don't know what they're doing, they end up blowing it out. And a second time around, if they get a second time around, they're much more careful with it. And they handle it correctly. They blow on it when it needs to be blown on. They let it breathe when it does. And it becomes a much different thing. So, yeah, there's no question to me that you can love more than once.

26:57I, you know, especially people who have, in fact, it's not an accident, I don't think, that people who have happy marriages, statistically, it shows when one of them dies or is widowed, the other one marries rather quickly. And you would think, well, how can that be if it was such a perfect love they had and they said this amazing love story, why would they go marry somebody else? But that's exactly the reason, because they are comfortable being in love and they are comfortable knowing love and sharing love and the world is quite empty without it. And so they search for it in another person. And because they know how to keep those embers going and they know what good love looks like, they're able to find it with somebody else.

27:43Whereas people who are miserable when they're married for the first time and then get divorced or somebody dies, they often don't remarry again because I want to go through that again. You know, like, oh, God, I was bad enough the first time. I don't want to I don't want to have to deal with that. So, yeah, I absolutely believe that you can love multiple times. But I also think, and, you know, I don't want to spoil the book for anybody, but, you know, Alfie meets this girl when he's a little boy in Africa. And, you know, she's like the first girl in his life and meets her again many years later and seems to feel like they're fated.