Editor’s note: This article was first published in March 2015, when Norman Lear was 92 and his memoir had just come out; present-tense references to his age and life reflect that time. Norman Lear died in December 2023.
It’s hard to give a quick introduction to Norman Lear, a 92-year-old television legend with four Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award, among many others. He earned a place on President Richard Nixon’s list of enemies and, later on, the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton.
He recently published his memoir, Even This I Get to Experience, which sets out some of his most important life lessons and his own personal philosophy. Business Insider highlighted some of these points following an interview with the television legend.
(Read also: 8 inspiring life lessons from Maya Angelou)
1. Appreciate the absurdity of the situation
You won’t understand everything, but everything will be all right. There are stressful situations in which most people lose their cool without realising that they won’t fix anything that way. That’s when you need to apply a different philosophy.
If you find yourself at an airline counter in total chaos, you’ll see lots of people losing their temper. Lear prefers to laugh at the situation.
Taken even further, there are moments in life when you have to apply the old saying about laughing so you don’t cry. There are times when you think things can’t get any worse and then discover that they could get a lot worse; times when you take one blow after another, in the purest Murphy’s law style. Those are the moments when you must laugh, because if you don’t, you’ll feel even worse.
2. You can sink or swim
Lear recounts that when he was 9 years old his father was arrested, and his mother sent him to live with his uncle. He went three years without seeing his mother and sister.
Later on, life didn’t make things easy for him either. He went through some truly hard times in which he had only two options: sink or swim. As he puts it, he was going to swim; he was not going to sink.
That philosophy has stayed with him all his life. When things get really tough, don’t sink. Adapt to the situation, face up to it and swim. Don’t stop swimming. Never sink.
3. Remember that you influence other people’s lives
Lear has helped people appreciate the power each of us has over the people we deal with, and it has nothing to do with fame.
It ranges from a 6-year-old girl he cast in a series to people he advised at the start of their careers who, 40 years later, thank him for that advice after reaching their goals.
You can help with small gestures: a stranger in a lift, a supermarket cashier or a waiter in a bar. You have an effect on people, and you should be aware of your influence. Whether your actions are positive or negative, you are influencing someone.
On a more personal level, your actions can make someone very unhappy or very grateful. In one way or another, we all have that power.
4. You can’t predict how things will turn out
Lear never imagined himself as a star. After the Second World War he wanted to work in advertising, and later to be a writer. He admits that he had a family and simply wanted to work to earn a living.
See also: What word defines you as a professional?
He was always working, and each job led him to another, until finally, thanks to a good script, he officially became a television comedy writer. Suddenly everyone wanted him.
So nobody knows how things will turn out, but things only turn out well for those who are doing something. If you are working and making an effort, doing something efficiently, things will work out even if you don’t know how.
5. Striking a family/work balance is worth it
Lear has obviously had a successful career, but he admits that at the height of his fame he focused much more on work than on his family. He says that if he could go back he wouldn’t do it the same way: he would spend more time with his family, something that, looking back, he says could have been done. It may be one of the regrets he carries with him at 92.
6. Live in the present
Lear says he learned this lesson too late. Live each moment life offers you, one moment at a time. Learn to savour life’s ups and downs.
In his view, if you get up in the morning and, before the children leave for school, you talk to them, hug them and connect with them, they will go off to school feeling their parents’ affection, and you will leave feeling that you have connected with your children, grateful for that small moment of happiness life has given you. Give thanks for that moment and move on to the next one. Savour these small, seemingly insignificant moments, because over time they turn out to be the most important.
A good day is a day when you feel good about yourself and your life. Tomorrow is another day.
7. Never stop learning about who you are
When Lear was asked how he has managed to stay so strong in situations where others would have collapsed, he answered that he has never stopped learning about himself and his life.
Lear sees life as a journey that is horizontal and vertical at the same time: horizontal in the sense of learning more about the world and about others, vertical in the sense of learning more about who we really are.
Neither journey ends until the day you die. We should always be learning, both from other people and about ourselves, because it is sad that so many people don’t know themselves. And many people have tremendous potential they have yet to discover.
Further reading
- 8 life lessons from Warren Buffett
- 10 life lessons that go against popular belief
- 20 life lessons written by a 99-year-old man
Featured image: Louise Palanker from Los Angeles/Santa Barbara, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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