Chip Conley

San Francisco has seen its share of boom and bust cycles: the Gold Rush, the 1906 earthquake and fire, the sexual liberation of the hippie 60s and 70s and the AIDS epidemic of the 80s, the dot-com boom and bust, the Great Recession, the Pandemic and remote work phenomenon and, finally, however you would currently describe the “balagan” (chaos in Yiddish) that describes the current state of this 7-mile by 7-mile earthly bardo.

“When you cannot do what you’ve always done, you do what matters most.” Robert D. Hales

Recently, I was being filmed at my home in Galisteo, NM, near our new Ranch campus. It was a lovely late summer day, and I was talking about the “midlife chrysalis,” the subject of my upcoming TED talk, which will go live on November 13.

Two years ago, the well-known, 78-year-old Christian mystic Richard Rohr who’s written 50 books decided to make the pilgrimage to Baja because one of his idols was leading an MEA workshop.

Traveling through Italy brought up some memories for me, including one that is bittersweet. I was 20 years old and going to college in England for a quarter. Along the way, I decided to trek to Florence to see some college friends studying there. If you can believe it, I wore my hair like Peter Frampton, long wavy curls (yep, I'd gotten a perm). I even carried a guitar with me, playing the role of the melancholy artist—my self-delusion of uniqueness.

If Dick can pluck some strings pushing 100 (sharing a video on Instagram (tinyurl.com/dvd-ukulele), no less), you can become a beginner at something as well. My favorite cocktail party question to someone I've never met is, "In what part of your life are you a beginner these days?"

I was touched reading a philosophy professor share his nearly-end-of-life story in the Washington Post with the title, “As my end nears, I crave the soul-to-soul connection of seeing friends in person.” (https://tinyurl.com/zoom-friends-dying)

I’ve been crying a lot the past week. I lost a mentor two decades older than me. My last episode of Mad Men, much of which takes place at the Esalen Institute - a place where I have a long history with my mentor - had me bawling my eyes out. I watched a mediocre film “50/50” with Joseph Gordon-Levitt who is dealing with a cancer diagnosis. I felt sick to my stomach while trying to be entertained by the big-C.

Back in 2020, when MEA's campus remained shut for over six months, and I found myself blessed with time on my hands, I began to consume alcohol every night. While I seldom indulged in excess in a single night, I can admit that for about a year, I was engaged in binge drinking.

A deeply religious friend used to tell me, "When the day of reckoning arrives, we'll have to face some uncomfortable truths." I had never associated this idea with midlife, a life stage Brené Brown says we need to “unravel.” (https://bit.ly/3roPjO8)