A warm welcome to Intersections, a space that we create to connect with people from different parts of the world, to reflect, to fuse different disciplines and ideas, and to share the resources we have as a community. Today's conversation is going to be about death, a topic that we often do not consciously reflect, discuss, socialize or educate you on. Death is very central to the human experience.

Our guest speaker today is Andrea Miller, one of my beloved colleagues and partners from our mentoring institute. We came in contact when she was a student in one of my classes, and we developed a kinship. She started her own television production company called Sunny Side and she also teaches film production at an institute in London. She has been a tremendous guide in helping to put some of the work that I've been doing into a digital form and to help us connect to camera. Today, over 120 hours of content is being guided by her, filmed in locations such as the Millennium Bridge in London, the escalators of the mid-level in Hong Kong, and Columbia University's campus in Central Park. Without further ado, let me invite Andrea to join us. Andrea, welcome. It is great to have you here today. I'm so grateful that the audience and I are having the opportunity to spend time with you.

I'm very grateful. Let's just take a minute to just say hello to our friends. Please put some of the comments on the screen so we can see where you're calling from. Andrea, you can see the chat window as well so that you can appreciate that our community is very global.

I want to give you a personal reason for talking about this topic. I ended up an early stage in life recognizing that there was something beyond what I was experiencing. When I understood mortality, it got me curious about how life can be approached with a sense of joy, pleasure and fulfillment, knowing that these are all things are going to be left behind at some point. So, what should our relationship then be, not just with death but with life also? And I realized that it is incredible that we do not talk about this, and it is not an active part of a conversation at a cocktail party. Conversations are generally about our curriculum at business school, and so on. So, for me, there's been this strong intrigue about what we can do to create a space where we can invite an awareness of consciousness, appreciation and ultimately a triumph over this awkwardness that we have of a topic like death. Andrea, what are your thoughts?

I have written about it a few weeks back, and it was prompted by this heavy aura of personal grief and loss that I was tapping into from certain conversations with some people in my community. I, too, have lost a loved one due to the pandemic. And, when I have had that experience in the past of encountering a friend or colleague who was grappling with that moment of losing someone very dear to them, I have never felt more helpless than in that moment. In other conditions, you can seek to give them hope; you can seek to look for solutions as a way to make them whole again and reverse the course of destiny; but when you lose someone, it's irreversible, it's absolute, it's gone. Having struggled with that for a while over the years, I asked myself, "how can I now really be of help and service in this regard when I cannot do anything materially?" That is what led me over the years to start compiling stories and ideas, and combining some science so that I can be of service nurture the human spirit in that time of the deep grieving and loss.

I remember that moment. She was such a beautiful figure in your life. There is an irony to this because until it strikes us in a personal way such as in the pandemic or on your doormat, we tend forget about it. We do not think about it as an everyday thing. I want to share a video with you all and then I am going to ask you a question. It is about a footballer. Watch it and then tell me what you think is going to happen next. Some of you might say, "He's going to kick the ball, perhaps into the net." Now, look what actually happened. He got struck by lightning. The good news is that he survived. He has moved on and he has done well for himself in football.

The reason I want to share that with you is that we feel that we can predict the future, that this is the course my life is going to take; here's what I'm going to do tomorrow. Here's what I'm going to do the day after next year. I don't know much but there is one thing I can predict about the future, and that is death is certain - even though we shy away from talking, thinking or reflecting on it. Therefore, how can I do something in a way that really propels my life to its fullest potential? "Any thoughts from you, Andrea?"

That's really a powerful piece of research, this notion of our current self-worth as a future self. I encourage any or all of us who are listening to this webcast, that you consider studying that research about findings on our future selves and how to make it more salient. So, how do you feel when you encounter death in a conversation or in an experience, any thoughts?

Let's take a poll now. I'm going to ask you three questions. Use the link on the upcoming slide to give your response. It should be rewarding to see what you are all coming up with.

These responses in the chat are very beautiful, shared emotions – misdefined, awkward, nervous, uncomfortable, uneasy, scared and fear. And I respect that. Some of us may have lost a loved one recently or maybe in the past, and you're still not able to fully make peace with that. Some of us may be living with the fear of losing a loved one because of the conditions in which they are thrust today, and some of us might be struggling with our own health, our own immortality. And I want to respect that. I want to share that it takes heroic courage to be able to go through something like that and come out whole on the other side. I am grateful and honored that you would seek to engage on this topic consciously today. It is also my hope and prayer that for you is that there will be something meaningful that we can do together today, to bring to bear the possibility that we can overcome the beacon, grow the beacon, gain inspiration and strength even from these moments of absolute and irreversible loss. The other thing I want to sort of like acknowledge is that we come into this conversation from very different belief systems. Some of us might believe that I am a physical being- when I die, I die; there is nothing else that is left of me. There are others who might believe, here is my spirit, my soul, my consciousness that will transcend death, and it will remain in some other plane of existence. Others of you who might believe that there is the soul and consciousness in me that transcends and gets to reincarnate in another body at some future point. Still, there are others who don't know what happens after death and are curious, and some of us don't care. At Intersections we encourage you to go on a hero's journey and to rise to your fullest potential.

Thank you for sharing in the chat. Frederick, here is talking about how he was asked if he believed in life after death. He said, "no." But he was hopeful. I remember a similar quote from Steve Jobs, in his interviews with Walter Isaacson for his book. He said he was asked if he believed in God and in the afterlife. And he said that he has never really been fully invested in that. But he is increasingly feeling hopeful. And, since we're talking about Steve Jobs, I want to show a couple of videos as a way to have us think about why we take about death in the context which we are familiar, for example if I am a business school professor, I am more comfortable relating to that area. This is the commencement address that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford. It's quite well-known, some of you may have watched it.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like, "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday, you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me. And since then, for the past 33 years, I've looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "if today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

So, in one excerpt Steve Jobs was talking about how it makes us feel awkward and uncomfortable to be thinking about death. And the only thing is that I lean into the discomfort. I invite the discomfort into my life every day. That it makes me a better version of myself, a more authentic version of myself. Let's watch this other one and then, "Andrea, I'd like your reactions."

No one no one wants to die, and yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. Live your life to the fullest. Everything else is secondary.

I really liked the way you were also asking our audience about that, because I learned so much from all of you. Andrea, you have been a great instructor for me in so many regards. Let's hear it from you. It would be inspiring to see in what way, let us say you go on a retreat once a year and reflect on your own mortality. The one thing I wanted to share as a common misunderstanding I see people taking away from Steve Jobs is how disciplined he is in looking at himself in the mirror every day. They feel like, if I look at myself in the mirror and said, "I'm going to die at the end of the day, what am I going to do now?" If I call up my mom or share with this loved one that I want to spend the whole day with them and quit going to my office and all that, that would be a dysfunctional living because most likely I will be alive at the end of the day. And people would say, are you crazy? But that was not what Steve Jobs was saying. What he was saying is that we know that at some point, death will knock on our door. We also know that we cannot completely control when that happens. We also know that there's a pretty good chance that if you're in good health, and if you're in a safe environment, that might not happen in the near future. But that it can happen at any time because of accidents and a bolt of lightning and so forth. So, we must be open to introducing a humble sense of uncertainty into our mind. We don't have to flip flop from I'm going to be dead at the end of the day to I'm going to be alive at the end of the day. You have to operate with a much greater amount of nuance and that nuance that says that since there's a ninety-nine-point nine percent chance that I'm going to be alive, I should go to the office, I should keep doing the things that I'm going to do. But since there's that point one percent chance that we might not, if there are some lingering grudges or unresolved relationship issues, I'm at least doing something over the next few days or weeks or months to seek to bring them to closure before going on my deathbed. If there is a dream that I really wanted to pursue, should I just keep it on the wayside because there's that point one percent chance that I might die today, or tomorrow or the day after. Why not like start to be authentic and be true to myself and listen to my inner voice and start pursuing that dream now in some practical way? Because at some point when this thing, happens, I will not live to regret it. I don't know when it will come. I didn't know if I'd die at 23 or at 37 or at 58 or at 92. But since I was always aware of that possibility, I used it to strip myself out of any of these distractions in life, get to my core, my essence, and really connect with knowing that every moment in life is a gift.

Thank you for sharing that, Angela. Please continue to share in the chat window any thoughts, practices, ideas or stories that can inform and guide us even more. There are some very dear friends of mine, some very well-intentioned people who would say. "don't go there, don't write a newsletter on it; don't do a webcast on it." I mean, this is a heavy topic. And it is somewhat against the grain of that advice that I felt like it's exactly why we want to lean into it. We want to reflect on it. We want to find a way to take it from there to something beyond. That is our hope. So, thank you for sharing. I want to lean into one more thing that Steve Jobs said which was provocative. He said that it's like the single greatest gift that life has here for us. It's an interesting idea. I remember sometimes I read about the stories of kings, and the moment they got crowned king from being the prince. I was thinking that this person, on the one hand, must be so happy to finally have this moment, but on the other hand realized that the only reason that this moment has come is because at some point he is going to die, because if death was not a part of life, then his father would have been king forever. There would never have been any change or evolution or transformation.

There's this little irony, what makes life vibrant, what makes our planet really sort of whole, rich and beautiful are these cycles of birth, sustenance and death. And it is true that humanity has grown and transformed and evolved itself. It was such a perceptive comment from Steve when he looked at those young Stanford graduates that were being freshly minted and he said, "today you are the new. You're looking forward to your future. And then one day you're going to be brushed off in order to make way for the next generation." When you think about death that way, it is very liberating and welcoming, like energies that draw us to realize that death is around me all the time for example, when I have to leave a certain, job, close out a certain project or stop working at this office. We're being invited to die every day. I remember as my daughter was growing up in Rio, I felt like I wish this present state of hers could be preserved because it is the most charming and beautiful state. When she was one year old, when she was three years old, when she was five years old, I was convinced that that those were the most charming years of her life. Luckily and fortunately, now that she's 18, I continue to feel like this is the most charming phase of her life. So, I'm glad and grateful to see that you renew on that front. And that is something you have to make peace with. She's not going to be the cherubic with big bouncy cheeks, innocent eyes, little daughter like baby - the infant that is gone. And you have to continually make peace with moving on from the past. That is a real invitation.

As I said, death is the great equalizer. And I sometimes find that that's a really helpful tool to keep yourself grounded and humble. I remember a story about a Rabbi. He was extremely well regarded in the community. Once he went into a certain town with some of his close disciples. As they were going through the main street of that small town, all of these people, the residents of the town, came out in great numbers to honor and pay homage to this great Rabbi who had come to visit them. And in that little cavalcade that was going on, he had closed his eyes several times, which confused some of his own students there. Later, they said to him, "Rabbi, you must have really felt uplifted with the adulation and regard that everybody holds you in in this community, why was it that you were closing your eyes a few times during that time?" And he said, "Well, I want to keep my ego in check. I was closing my eyes and visualizing that this was my hearse on the way to the cemetery.". Yeah, he was grounding himself through that great equalizer. Just like you and me and everyone here, I'm here temporarily and then I'm gone.

There are a couple of other beautiful comments being shared that I have just noticed. What is being shared today may not be able to do justice to all of it but I'm sure hopefully all of you were enjoying it. Look at this amazing comment from Hillary? "It is only since I lost my sister and my son that I have become more aware of the present and life's simple gifts of nature and small moments." You have given us such an incredible gift, both based on the wisdom in that message about the simplicity of that idea of the gifts of nature and small moments that all of us can enjoy. Also, because you are coming into it from a place of lived experience, you know how we can go through life as fighters, as heroes and apply some of the thoughts and ideas and aspirations we share in a program like this. Andrea, are you familiar with NDEs?

The acronym stands for Near-Death Experiences.

Right. So, you heard about it at the minimum. I want to invite our colleagues again to share with us if you have or know somebody who's had that experience. In the meanwhile, let me introduce the idea a little bit to you and then share a couple of powerful videos on that. I got interested in near-death experiences when I was a teenager. I was very curious about the process of death and dying. I know what it's like to be at a party, what it's like to fly on a plane but I have no clue what it's like to die. And I was very curious, so I studied the Indian scriptures. And, some of them were helpful for me to understand from an institutional faith standpoint. What I started to discover is that there is a whole community of people who have experience of near-death. Sometimes, people might have a sort of illness or an accident that carries them to the door of death. Their heart stops beating for a while etcetera, then, in some miraculous way through medical science or otherwise they recover. When they're interviewed after recovery, you start to uncover some very common shared characteristics about their experiences in that moment. There's a whole community of researchers who have done these interviews with these people, in order to draw out statistically the common themes. I am one of those researchers. I have tremendous affection and regard for those who I've recently been in touch with. A very storied figure in that field is Dr. Kenneth Ring. He has dedicated his whole career to the study of the near-death experience. I want to do you a couple of excerpts of an interview that he did. They talked about some of the observations and lessons from that experience.

I am going to take a moment to absorb that, but one thing I find really beautiful is that here he is talking about an experience that many of us live in fear of. And what he's talking is that people who have come very close to that experience in its totality are actually coming back and becoming the best versions of themselves. They're going to a place of greater universality, a greater sense of selflessness, a greater sense of meaning and purpose and significance. That is uplifting learning. I wanted to share that, because in part, I really felt for those individuals who were not able to be with their loved ones at the time that their loved ones were passing on during this coronavirus age. I wish there was a way to reassure ourselves that when life sometimes creates conditions where you lose someone and you cannot be there to hold their hand, you recognize that in that journey they're making it into the vast unknown?

I am so grateful, David, that you were able to offer that up to us. I realize that officially we're at the clock on noon. We did start a few minutes late. I think this is a compelling conversation. There's maybe one or two more last chapters that we should maybe close out on. I'm going to extend our time for those who can return. There will also be a live recording on Youtube that you can watch. Andrea, I wanted to turn to you on last chapter we have. Sometimes when we do have to encounter that moment, how will we operate when a loved one is confronting his/her final days. There is something I came across in a TED Talk, which is a beautiful story offered by Amanda Bennett.

She lost her husband to cancer. She talked for a bit about the love, the connection, the relationship, and the fight that they've taken on in that time. A lot of people have won that fight, have won that battle, and have gone on to live much longer and healthier lives beyond that. But there's something really powerful in her message that I think we can also gain a lot of inspiration and insight from. Let me show you this video which is about a five- or six-minute long. The main thing I want you to take away from this is the grappling between fighting versus accepting. And what happens when we have to transition from one to the other? And is there still room for something redemptive, something inspiring, something positive and beautiful when one comes to accept the finality of death? This is Amanda's story.

"I believed I could keep him from dying, and I'd be embarrassed to say that if I hadn't seen and talked to so many people who felt exactly the same way, right up until days before his death. I felt strongly and powerfully, and maybe irrationally, that I could keep him from dying ever." So, what do the experts call this? They say it's denial. It's a strong word, isn't it? Yet, I will tell you that denial isn't even close to a strong enough word to describe what those of us facing the death of our loved ones go through. And I heard the medical professionals said, "well, we'd like to do such and such, but the families in denial. The family won't listen to reason. They're in denial. How can they insist on this treatment at the end? It's so clear. Yet they are in denial." What the experts call denial, I call hope. And I'd like to borrow a phrase from my friends in software design. If you just redefine denial and hope and it becomes a feature of being humans, it's not a bug, it's a feature. So, we need to think more constructively about this very common, very profound, and very powerful human emotion. It's part of the human condition, and yet our system and our thinking aren't built to accommodate it. Terence told me a story in that long ago night, and I believed it. I wanted to believe it. And during Terence's illness, I, we wanted to believe the story of our fight together to giving up the fight. That's how it felt. It felt like giving up meant giving up not only his life, but also our story. The story of us is invincible. For the doctors, the story of themselves are healers.

Maybe we don't need a new piece of paper. Maybe we need a new story, not a story about giving up the fight or hopelessness, but rather a story of victory and triumph, of a valiant battle, and eventually, a graceful retreat. A story that acknowledges that not even the greatest general defeats every foe, that no doctor has ever succeeded in making anyone immortal. And that no wife, no matter how hard she tried, has ever stopped even the bravest, wittiest and most maddeningly lovable husband from dying when it was his time to go. We never said goodbye because we were unprepared for the end. We have a noble path to curing the disease. But it doesn't seem to be a noble path to dying. Dying is seen as failing. And we had a heroic narrative for fighting together, but we didn't have a heroic narrative for letting go. So maybe we need a narrative for acknowledging the end and for saying goodbye, and maybe our new story will be about a hero's fight and a hero's goodbye.

Terence loved poetry, and the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy is one of my favorite poets. I will give you a couple lines from one of his poems about Mark Anthony, one of Cleopatra's guys. He's been a pretty good general. He's won all the fights. He's eluded all the people that are out to get him. And yet this time, finally, he's come to the city of Alexandria and realized he's lost. The people are leaving, they're playing their instruments and they are singing. And suddenly he knows he's been defeated, that he's been deserted by the gods and it's time to let go.

The poet tells him what to do. He tells him how to say a noble goodbye, a goodbye that's fit for a hero. "As if long, prepared, as if courageous as it becomes, you who are worthy of such a city, approach the window with the firm still and with emotion, but not with the entreaties or the complaints of a coward as a last enjoyment. Listen to the sounds, the exquisite instruments of the musical troops and bid her farewell, the Alexandria you're losing."

That's a goodbye for a man who was larger than life. A goodbye for a man who for whom almost anything was possible. A goodbye for a man who kept hope alive. And isn't that what we're missing? How could we learn that people's decisions about their loved ones are often based strongly, powerfully, many times irrationally on the slimmest of hopes? The overwhelming presence of hope isn't denial. It's part of our DNA as humans. And it's maybe it's time our health care system, doctors, patients, insurance companies, us, start accounting for the power of that. Hope isn't a bug. It's a feature.

It is kind of hard to watch that and not really speak for a few moments. What a beautiful act to give us this gift of very noble and gracious will to be able at some point accept and move on. There are these situations that life affords us where we have to keep fighting the fight, and then other situations where we would perhaps be better off just to accept gracefully and welcome a new chapter. I want to again acknowledge the beautiful thoughts and ideas that are being shared in the chat. What an honor to have my good friend, Mitch Medek, to join us on Intersections. He was talking about the ripple impact that the death of someone has on those who continue to live. He was sharing a personal example of how he lost his father when he was 10 months old, who continue to exert a powerful influence on his life until now. Mitch, could you share one or two examples of the ways in which your father has continued to influence your life?

We are at that point that we should start closing things out. I know this topic is so multidimensional, so rich, so deep, so personal. I encourage those of us who haven't read the newsletter, to get a chance to browse that as well. There are a few other ideas and thoughts and resources and stories that we offer there that we didn't get a chance to cover here. Any other thoughts or questions in your mind before we wrap up?

I agree. I got very inspired by that as well. Some people, rather than be consumed only by grief, they seek to make that a moment of planful celebration; enjoy a couple of last experiences on the human plane, and have those intimate and beautiful conversations with their loved ones. Maybe you take on this moment heroically when door is being shut to the past and to this life. And yet some new door is being opened to a place that you'll only discover when you get there. Thank you so much for joining me, Andrea. Thank you all for joining us for this webcast. This is topic that we don't come together to talk about all the time. And I'm incredibly grateful, for all the ways in which you have connected with your hearts and minds and shared your own stories in the chat. Great to have you. Next week, we're going to have an incredibly powerful opportunity with Matthew Stevenson, who challenged his colleague on white supremacy in America. It is an incredible true-life story of transformation, of bridge building, of loving your enemy and gaining all kinds of positive impact on that basis. Again, thank you all for joining us today. All the best to all of you. "Any final words from you before we close, Andrea?"

Yeah, thank you. Bye.