I’ve known Lisa Dickey for quite a few years and I’ve enjoyed and admired her career and accomplishments for a long time. She travels the world and writes books and, in between writing books, she writes other books with famous people who live interesting lives and stories. She’s a NYT Best-selling author/collaborator who has helped notable personalities such as Dr. Jill Biden, Herbie Hancock, Jane Lynch, Patrick Swayze and, most recently, George Stephanopoulos realize their own stories in book form, among many others.
Jeremy: You’ve made a career out of digging into the lives and stories of powerful/famous/talented individuals. Do you see any patterns in terms of how these dynamic people talk about or think about death?
Lisa: I’ve worked with about 25 book clients, from all walks of life, so it’s difficult to generalize. But If there’s any pattern, it’s that most don’t seem to think about or dwell on death very much. They tend to be very focused in the present, or looking toward the future, but without a lot of apparent anxiety about the end of life or what comes next. One exception was Patrick Swayze, who knew he was dying when we were working on the book, and so he did address his feelings about death in it.
What about grief?
Grief is another matter. Some of the books I’ve worked on have dealt very directly with grief and loss. Much depends on whether the person has a religious faith that informs their beliefs. In the case of Cissy Houston, for example, she writes about grieving her daughter Whitney’s death, but also about her beliefs regarding the afterlife, which are influenced by her lifelong affiliation with the Baptist church.
I think many of us have a subconscious thought that, I don’t know, “If I was better traveled or better read or better educated or had experienced more of the world than I have, then I might have less fear of the unknown, death in particular.” I see you as a very experienced person who leads this incredible life… so is it true? Do you feel better prepared for the unknown when that day comes because of your breadth of experiences and perspectives?
For me, the biggest benefit of traveling widely and learning about other people’s cultures is that it made me realize we don’t really know anything. There are so many belief systems, and while many of them share certain characteristics (virgin birth, an all-seeing god or gods, etc.), they are also significantly different in many respects. I was raised in a Christian belief system that declares itself the one true faith. But experiencing so many other faiths, and seeing the comfort they bring to their own believers, was eye-opening for me. We are products of the environments in which we were raised; the vast majority of humans believe what they were raised to believe, which is simply an accident of birth.
I don’t feel any particular fear about death. I am by nature an optimist, and a believer in the inherent goodness of humans. If there is a “god”—and I don’t know that there is, in the way that most people believe in one—I have difficulty imagining that he or she would cast anyone into the “hell” that I was raised to believe in. That just makes no sense to me at all. So, my expectation after death is that either our spirits move on to some other non-hellish realm or plane, or possibly inhabit another body on earth. Or, at the very worst, nothing happens and our consciousness simply stops.
You’ve had some pretty wild collaborations and some amazing conversations. Can you recall a time that someone shared something that rocked your perspective on death or grief? Maybe you believed one thing and a conversation changed your mind?
I did a book with Herbie Hancock, who is a longtime practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism. We talked a lot about his beliefs, and he showed me how to chant. I was struck by how strong his beliefs are about concrete ways Buddhism has changed his life. He genuinely attributes much of his success to his practice of Buddhist faith. I was moved by that, though I didn’t end up wanting to become a Buddhist myself. But it was fascinating to see what a bedrock his faith is in his life, and how many hours he spends practicing it.
What scares you? Sincere question, because I have this image of you that you’re un-scareable. It’s tough to imagine the same woman who’s sitting down with the governor of California to rap about life is fretting about death in her bed that night. But maybe that’s ridiculous.
Ha! I am definitely not un-scareable, but I try not to spend time worrying about things if I can help it. I’m definitely spooked sometimes by the ability of humans to be cruel to one another, and I don’t generally like watching movies or TV where that happens (no CSI or Law & Order for me, thanks!). I’m currently scared about the direction the country seems to be heading in, with the real possibility of a certain former president being re-elected despite his long record of misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, racism and cruelty. That’s definitely more likely to keep me up at night than fear of what might happen after we die.
Lisa’s latest book, written in collaboration with George Stephanopoulos, is The Situation Room. A #1 New York Times Bestseller, it recounts the history-making crises from the place where twelve presidents made their highest-pressure decisions: the White House Situation Room.
Lisa and her work can be found at her website, LisaDickey.com.
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