Ten years ago, Michael Trainer hosted His Holiness the Dalai Lama for his 80th birthday. It took seven months, an idea that arrived in the freezing Pacific, and a reason that was deeply personal: his father had been diagnosed with dementia, and Michael wanted to make him proud while he could still understand.
What he learned surprised him. His father didn’t need any of it. He would have been just as happy with an ice cream cone down the street.
In this solo episode, recorded in Uluwatu, Bali, Michael shares a moment he has rarely told publicly. At the photo, his father was turned away from the camera, lost in his dementia. The Dalai Lama took his hand, closed his eyes, sent him a blessing, and gently turned him to face the lens.
Michael is also honest about the harder truth beneath the anniversary. The last decade was spent caring for family and doing deep inner work, and he doesn’t feel any closer to the partnership and family he wants most.
From there, he offers a practice: look ten years ahead and separate your resume goals from your eulogy goals. What are you actually optimizing for? Which experiences will matter when you look back on a life well lived? And what is the cake, metaphorically, that you’re sailing toward?
“Who we are and our worthiness isn’t about our doing. It’s about who we’re being.”
Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection, co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.
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