Great Leap Forward: From Career to Post-Career. A Conversation with ex-ABC newsman Dan Harris
Dan retired from ABC News in 2021. I retired in 2018. We compared notes about that life-changing transition
Next week will mark one year since I started writing Second Acts for Facebook Bulletin. The title was meant as my retort to F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s comment that “there are no second acts in American lives.” I retired from ABC News in late 2018, nearly four years ago. The time has flown by. This is my second act, writing weekly for Bulletin, volunteer projects that have become a key component of my life, teaching, and serving on the board of Midori and Friends, a non-profit that provides music instruction to tens of thousands of New York City public school children.
In the next few weeks, I will let you know about some coming changes to Second Acts. In brief, I will be starting a premium content option (yes, that means behind a paywall) that I will explain in detail soon. I will also continue to write and post here which will remain at no cost.
Dan Harris, photo credit: www.tenpercent.com
For this anniversary article, I spoke with my friend and former Good Morning America colleague, Dan Harris. Dan retired from ABC last year and I'd been wanting to talk to him to get his perspective on and experience, so far, with the transition to a new stage of life following a similarly long career in news.
An important caveat or footnote to our conversation is that we are both very aware that we have been more fortunate than many Americans who leave the work force and immediately or eventually face enormous financial pressures. Without some degree of financial security, talk of pursuing meaning, traveling or having fun post-career is largely fantasy, even preposterous. For too many people, the passage is stressful and frightening. Millions of our fellow citizens have no pension, little in the way of savings and many have no health insurance. Retirement can be a period of enormous personal freedom and growth, but only if you’re free from want and need.
Another key advantage Dan and I enjoyed was having had lots of advance notice that we would be departing ABC and the field of journalism. We had many months to adjust and plan for the next chapter in our lives. Many people, especially in their 50s and 60s, get “let go” from their jobs with little or no warning. Some don’t even realize that they’ve retired — or rather, have been retired — until they try and fail to get another job or comparable position.
These are powerful caveats. Also, everyone goes into retirement or forges their next act with their unique personal backgrounds, experiences, interests, hopes and fears. There is no model that fits everyone or maybe not even that fits most people. Still, I believe there are some lessons and ideas that anyone can gain from our experiences, and that includes people for whom retirement is many years away, or so they think. Time passes quickly. As those warnings on side car mirrors caution: Objects are closer than they look.
Since leaving ABC News, Dan has plunged even deeper into his successful meditation projects. He was still at ABC when he published his first book, 10% Happier, an autobiographical introduction to meditation. It turned out to be a best seller and he’s been expanding on it ever since. He wrote a sequel, Meditation For Fidgety Skeptics (like me). He currently hosts a podcast and co-founded the 10% Happier app. His website is www.tenpercent.com. He’s currently writing a new book, tentatively titled Me, A Love Story which he told me “is my attempt to take on about the self-love industrial complex which, by the way, for all of its ridiculousness contains timeless wisdom.” Can’t wait to see the movie.
Dan Harris is a wise man and also a wise guy. Here’s a condensed excerpt from my recent conversation with Dan.
Photo credit: Getty Images
RC: So, how are you doing? Busy, right?
DH: Yeah, yeah. I'm definitely busy. You know, the real answer is obviously, or I hope obviously, I'm aware that I have a charmed life et cetera et cetera, but I definitely have some sources of anxiety these days with on-going negotiations on several fronts, so that's a little stressful, but other than that good.
RC: At least, you don't have to hold up liquor stores for money.
DH: But I might hold up a liquor store for fun. (laughing)
RC: Just for the experience?
DH: I want to have the full range of human emotions.
RC: I keep thinking you left ABC last September. Was it really that recent?
DH: I think it was the end of September.
RC: Wow. It's coming up on four years for me, so I think we have different perspectives. We're different ages. Different stages and ages, so my second act is different from yours. I'm wondering. I talked to you shortly after you ... what word do you use by the way? retired? left?
DH: Yeah, retired. I mean, I'm not a retired person but I did retire from ABC News.
RC: There's a distinction there. Early on post-ABC, you gave me a look, you said, "It's weird." Was it weird? Is it still weird?
DH: The conversation about retiring that stuck with me the most was with you because you kind of show up on the air and send me off and then come over and spend the day, I remember sitting next to you and saying this feels weird and you said you're not going to know how you feel about it for months.
RC: Yeah, because it -- I hate to generalize because probably everybody has a different experience -- it evolves or changes, or you gain perspective with time.
DH: Yes. I can tell you one that's clear for me is that, at least right now, I don't miss it. There are things I miss. Like I miss my friends, The good news is I still get to see you and Whit (Johnson) and Rob (Marciano) and lots of other folks regularly. But when big news happens, I'm not finding myself pining to be there. And that's a huge change because for 30 years of my life that was the organizing principle of my life.
Discussing weighty matters over brunch (with ABC's Rob Marciano, still in his first act)
RC: I had the same experience, Dan. I think we've talked about this a little. I was a little disturbed by how easily I left it behind because I began to question: If I can really leave it behind this easily, was I deluding myself, thinking I loved it and enjoyed it? And, if so, maybe I should've been doing something else all that time. I discovered that I love teaching and working with kids. Who knew?
DH: It deeply resonates with me, what you just said because I'm sometimes waiting for the other shoe to drop and wake up and just feel desperate that I left this thing, and that has just never happened and I'm wondering: am I in denial? There's certainly precedent for me being in denial. But I actually think it's something else and my guess is it's the same for both of us, which is that we did love it for a long period of time, but toward the end there, in the final years, we both knew something had shifted.
In your case, I saw you getting deeper in volunteer work in your final years at ABC. And in my case, in the final years, I had actually deliberately changed my job description -- with the consent and agreement of my bosses -- to make it so I was only hosting weekend GMA and doing large investigative projects and no more breaking news, which freed up more time for me to do the meditation stuff. So I think it was probably a mix and it involved a transition.
RC: I sometimes give speeches or speak on behalf of places where I do volunteer work. I spoke recently to an organization (Little Sisters of Assumption community service group) where I tutor a little guy in East Harlem. I told them --- and I mean this -- I loved journalism. I loved my time at ABC. It fit my personality and interests and short attention span -- in and out -- (also) to travel. But now at least I get more -- let me pick my word carefully here -- satisfaction or gratification from working with young people. Right now, I'm working with new immigrants, helping them become conversant in English. I feel better about myself than I felt from any story I did in 40 plus years in the news. And that's nice. But also has me wondering if maybe I should have been doing this instead all along? Or maybe doing that made it possible for me to do this now. I don't know.
DH: I don't know either. And that's always the healthiest attitude. I actually personally suspect that it was a mix. It was the right thing for you for a long time. It has allowed you to do what you're doing now. But let me give you something else. Now I'm going to get metaphysical. Well, it's not metaphysical, but it's a little philosophical.
RC: Go, man. Go for it.
DH: ... which is we have this view, this feeling that we are, that somewhere behind or eyes and between our ears there is some core unit of Ron-ness, of you, of self. But there isn't. If you close your eyes and look for Ron, you can't find him.
RC: Okay.
DH: And the who you are is unfindable and constantly changing. The atoms in your body -- zero percent of them are the same atoms that were there when you were 30. You're changing physically. You're changing psychologically. And so to assume that you're this solid entity traveling through time, that's just not the way it is, even though it feels that way. So I think that you're just a different person now and different things float your boat.
RC: I wonder about others. I wonder about me. But I also wonder about others for whom the transition or change to a, let's call it second act, isn't as smooth as it has been for you and me. Are our experiences applicable to them?
DH: I'm sure there's a huge spectrum. I was joking earlier about I don't have to hold up liquor stores. You know, you and I are among the privileged humans who've ever trod the earth. So, I think we're just set up to have these transitions be more (pauses)...
RC: Fluid?
DH: Fluid. Pleasant. Invigorating. Many other people, the choice is not theirs. You set up to have a pretty smooth transition., Same with me. My guess is one huge variable is how much agency people have or feel they have about the transition.
RC: Absolutely. There's also a difference in our career changes. You're in your early 50s. I'm now in my late 60s. So I'm entering a stage of life which is very different than yours. A lot of my friends have died. My brother right before I retired. One of my closest friends died of Covid two years ago. Really good friend, a great guy, just died of cancer earlier this year. At this stage in your life, whether you're working or not, part of being in that stage is facing mortality. It's frightening. But it's also stimulating in the sense it helps you focus -- like the prospect of being hanged in the morning -- on what's important, what matters and going out there and getting it. If you can figure it out.
DH: There's a reason that spiritual and philosophical traditions for millennia have talked about the importance of contemplating your own death. Because it's a pretty wise counselor. It will give you some perspective and sharpen your priorities if you can keep in mind that pre-game is over. And there's a lot to be said for trying to bring the wisdom of old age into whatever age I am at now.
RC: Do you consider this to be your second act? How do you see this new different phase of stage in your life?
DH: That's fair. I never really thought about it in those terms but, yeah, if the first 30 years of my professional life was TV news, then this definitely a next act. I don't know if it'll be the second and last aspect, or maybe it'll be something else. I don't want to say I'm done with news forever but, yeah, this feels right. I have moments, and I am sure you have too, where I'm out living my life not thinking about the direction of my life and somebody comes up and says, "I miss you on ABC." I'm sure this has happened to you. It's such a strange feeling. I'm kind of waiting for the identity crisis to kick it, but it really hasn't.
From left, Rob Marciano, Claiborne, Paula Faris, Dan Harris
RC: I won't say that I'm deliriously happy, but I'm happy about having the opportunities I have to do -- and try -- new things at this stage of my life.
DH: Can I just pick up on when you said whether there are lessons for other people? I can think of a few. One is -- and obviously consider the source here. I am heavily influenced by Buddhism -- but if you stake your identity on something that is inherently impermanent, which by the way everything is, in this case if you're staking your identity on your professional status, you are highly likely to suffer. So, retirement is a deep subject. Because it goes right to identity and it's such an intimate thing. That's one lesson. The other lesson is I think a common denominator between our endeavors -- yours and mine -- is service. I think there's more service in what you're doing than what I'm doing. Clearly. Obviously. I strongly believe in the public good part of what I do. But what I do is more remunerative than volunteer work. Nevertheless, there is a larger purpose and meaning to the things you and I are doing. Human beings go about happiness wrong generally, which is that we think it's kind of personal development and working on the self and some of that is important, but we're overlooking a fundamental fact about the species, which is that we're social creatures. We're enmeshed. We're embedded. We're interdependent. And overlook that at your peril. So, service and meaning are really rapid routes to the kind of happiness we have been talking about. And the third thing is just this death thing. It's not morbid to think about the fact that life is fleeting. Because what it does is shove you into the only time it ever is, which is right now. And that's really useful. I'm not saying it's easy. Most things that are useful are not easy.
Cover photo: being muted by Sharyn Alfonsi, now a CBS correspondent for 60 Minutes