The Antidote to Materialism

A journey towards the eternal

Hey Friend,

Whatdya know, it’s another podcast episode. I’ve been struggling a bit to keep up on the content front while also traveling and holding down a full-time (remote) job, but here we are!

This one was a blast, because my guest, Ken McGrath, has had a wild life. He’s 77 now and this episode features his evolution from a psychedelic-loving hippie in San Fransisco, NY, and Hawai`i, to a Christian pastor, to an insurance salesman, to raising a family, to losing it all, to navigating cancer and much more.

I knew as soon as I heard his story this past summer that I needed to document it if I could, and here it is.

First, some highlights:

  • How Ken lived on the beach in Hawai`i for $30/mo

  • His hypnotic experience of God in his probation officer’s office and how it popped a 15-year spiritual bubble

  • The transformative & profound lessons learned undergoing experimental cancer treatment

  • The one question that his cancer diagnosis brought forth

  • The one value Ken would try to instill in his child above all else

  • The meaning of Love

  • What a faithful relationship with God means

  • What became important after spending 18 months in near-absolute solitude

  • The flaws of organized philanthropy and Ken’s new perspective on giving

  • Which questions he wished he asked himself before he got married

  • And more…

You can listen on Apple here and Spotify here.

What’s Sticking With Me

There was one moment that struck me in particular. Ken was recounting the disintegration of his marriage and financial bankruptcy at 66 years old and how it led to a completely new chapter (after 18 months in near-absolute solitude). This, followed by a cancer diagnosis 10 years later.

It dawned on me then that I truly have no idea what life will hold. I have an image of what (I think) I want the future to look like. What I expect it to look like. But I truly have no idea.

Ken has had so many lives, so many chapters of shockingly different lifestyles and situations, that he now accepts this truth that surprise is inevitable. As young people, most of us have yet to experience this dramatic of a shift in life. Even I, with a more chaotic childhood than most, have likely not felt this, because the changes I experienced were not changes in a foundation built by me.

There is an expectation and/or hope in building something, be it a company, marriage, or anything else, that it will stay standing. We begin to orient ourselves around it, integrating it into our identities. This makes it all the more painful when it ends, as everything inevitably will, including this life.

Death is the ultimate severance. The unavoidable separation from everything we learn to hold as important, even crucial, in this life. (Unless, that is, you are like Ken and believe that your relationship with “all that [you] love most…will be unbroken by death.”)

I’m realizing, as I delve deeper into spirituality, that this issue of attachment is a central one. I feel the pleasure in constructing an identity more and more as I become “successful” in different ways. This ranges from big things like building relationships and a career to little ones like becoming more fashionable and owning nice things.

The fact that these will ultimately disappear, or at least change shape, does not necessarily imply that we should shun them and live like monks. However, I am making an effort to simultaneously live in, as Ken puts it, “the eternal world.”

No matter the success I may or may not achieve in this life, I strive to never lose sight of whatever greater reality may exist. That is the intention behind this podcast: To find and learn from those who have succeeded materially and spiritually. Those who have remained grounded in Love and Truth, whatever those may be, while doing great things in this world.

It’s a long road, but I hope you’ll accompany me on it. After all, if it’s just me, what’s the point?

Until next time,
- Ryan