Five Things I’ve Learned from Mark Nepo

Mark Nepo is a poet, a NYT best-selling author of The Book of Awakening, a spiritual voice of our times—and a now he's on Substack, too

Come check out The Fifth Season today. There’s still time to join us.

I’m writing about Mark Nepo this morning because I’ll be supporting him later today in his presentation of “The Fifth Season” (a three-part webinar series that starts in a couple hours from now on this Sunday, January 11), which is also the title of his new book and a metaphor for living in the second half of life.

I’m blessed and grateful to count Mark as a close friend and colleague. My mom is responsible, as is true for so many of the wonderful things in my life. When she was first introduced to Mark’s The Book of Awakening, she was moved and then overcome by its profundity and gifts of insight, the way so many of Mark’s readers are. And so she invited him to teach at her retreat center, Pine Manor, and so he did—for many, many years.

When I met Mark in 2008, he was at a crossroads with his agent. Maybe what happened next was hubris, though I like to think of it as divine intervention; either way, I offered to represent him. I wasn’t an agent, but I knew a lot about book publishing, and so he became the first, only, and last author I’d ever agent.

A beautiful story about our start together is that Mark’s agent was having trouble selling one of his books, As Far As the Heart Can See. In fact, it was Mark’s desire to find a home for this book that spurred his leap of faith with me. My thinking was, Let’s see what we can do. He must have thought the same.

A few months later, I called him with the news that we’d gotten an offer. “A seventy-five hundred-dollar advance,” I told him.

“Seven-hundred and fifty dollars?” he asked, seeming pleased with that number.

“No, seven thousand, five hundred dollars.”

For the little book we thought we might not be able to sell, this was pretty good! Mark was pleased, and our first deal was signed.

Fast forward about a year-and-a-half, and The Book of Awakening, which was originally published in 2000, years before we met, was chosen by Oprah Winfrey to be one of her Ultimate Favorite Things for the final Oprah Winfrey Show in 2010. Mark shot out of a canon after that, and I was along for the ride. We sold his next book for six figures.

It may be true that part of Mark’s success can be tied to Oprah. She fell in love with The Book of Awakening the same way my mom did, the same way Jamie Lee Curtis and Melinda Gates did (scroll to 15:30 to hear Jamie Lee and Melinda talk about Mark). Mark has famous fans and fans among the masses. I know a lot of famous authors, and Mark remains the most humble and unaffected among them. He’s followed his calling to put words to the page, and to deliver stories to his followers in the form of retreats and online courses like today’s. The Fifth Season is his 27th book.

Last night, I spent some time shooting hoops with my son in our backyard on his mini-hoop. He made about 95% of his shots, the same percentage I missed. I was astounded that shot after shot after shot landed. Bug-eyed after his fifteenth or so swish in a row, I looked at him. “I spent a lot of time out here,” he told me.

Which made me think about Mark, and what we attune ourselves to, and to the lessons I’ve learned from him over our nearly twenty-year friendship and collaboration.

1. Keep writing, even when no one is listening

This is the lesson I most often share when I relay what I’ve learned from Mark because he said it in response to the dazzling madness that followed The Book of Awakening being one of Oprah’s picks for her Ultimate Favorite Things. A less grounded person might have been swept up and away by the excitement of it all—the press, the sales, the Oprah Effect. But when I asked him about it, he just said, “I’m so glad I kept writing even when no one was listening.” The point being that Oprah was not the destination; his calling to write was the same whether he had no readers or many millions of readers.

2. The practice matters more than the product

Mark often says to me now about his writing that he’s like a jazz pianist, improvising as the words come through him. It wasn’t always this way, however. Writing, reflection, conversation—these aren’t means to an end; they are the work. Mark shows up to his creative life and tends to his work with a sense of wonder and gratitude. He often talks about retrieving poems as would a diver going into the deep. Mark finds joy in sharing his poems and his stories. The Book of Awakening is not more important because Oprah chose it; every poem and each story is its own expression and its own gift.

3. Words can carry us back to ourselves

Mark loves etymology. I’ve heard it said that etymology is a kind of ancestry for words, and this is how it feels to read Mark’s work—like he’s honoring the ancestry with every word choice he makes. His next book, forthcoming in May, is The Language of the Soul: How the Words You Choose Shape the Life You Live. What an important book for our time. Words matter. This book is described by Mark as a rich and contemplative guide to the spiritual essence of language. For me, the book which I read in manuscript form, is an invitation to slow down. To consider what we say and why we say what we say. Mark has a way with metaphor, and finding meaning in experience and story. You can experience this in his recent interview with Mel Robbins, “The Exact Words You Need to Hear Today If It Feels Like Nothing’s Working,” which brought her husband to tears and seemed to render Mel speechless a few times. Mark reminds me to just be—to slow down, to take in a story, to contemplate my words.

4. There’s great strength in not having all the answers

Again, a lesson for our time. In this backlash moment of escalating aggression that relies on never asking questions and never being curious and always being right and self-righteous, Mark embodies a different way of being. Especially a different way of being a man. People turn to Mark with such difficult, big, existential questions, and he often responds: “I don’t have the answers.” You can see this in the Mel Robbins interview, and I see this in every single course he does during the Q&A. We are not taught to not have the answers, and certainly we’re not taught to admit that we don’t have the answers, and yet Mark does this all the time. He invites in the wisdom and knowing of the other person, and shows them a mirror to their own depth. It’s beautiful to witness, and I’ve seen it play out hundreds of times.

5. Friendship is a spiritual practice

One must be deeply settled in their own role as a friend to write about friendship, which Mark often does (notably in his 2024 book, You Don’t Have To Do It Alone: The Power of Friendship). And he exemplifies what it means over and over again. A true friend, Mark has said, can be the key to our own aliveness. Friends make us feel safe, but also through the support and validation of good friends, we find confidence and a sense of place and belonging in the world. Mark is the kind of friend who always gently validates, who asks questions and doesn’t hold back when it comes to sharing about himself. Friendship is not lopsided. It asks you to be both listener and revealer. I am lucky to have Mark as a friend, and also to have been given the gift to contemplate other friendships that have formed and informed me through Mark’s offerings on this important way we interact with others.

Mark has been a profound influence on my life, and I’m a better person for having him in my orbit. We’d love to have you with us today, and if not, next time you’re feeling down or overwhelmed or anxious or unmoored, read his work, listen to his interviews, or check out his Weekly Reflections. He’s a steady, calming balm for these turbulent times.

San Francisco, February 2020