Not Fade Away – A Short Life Well Lived

By Laurence Shames & Peter Barton

Recommendation of Chris Sacca

This is the story of Peter Barton, a hard-charging executive who built Liberty Global into a media magnate. After years of growing the company and a substantial personal wealth, Peter resigned and decided to explore new challenges in life. Barely into his next chapter, Peter was diagnosed with incurable stomach cancer. Peter struggled with the reality of his impending death and what it would mean for his wife and three young children.

Peter wrote this book for three reasons:

• For his kids to know who he was, what he thought and valued, and how much he loved them
• To energize people and show that they can still choose the life they want, that their possibilities should get them excited and hyper to act
• And to do something he could consider important before he died, in the hope that sharing his experiences might be able to help others

Reading this book has been an exercise in empathy. It’s allowed me to look through the lens of a man in his last days as he examines his life and experiences – to see what he learned on the way, what principles he valued, and what truly mattered and brought him happiness.

The 5 points that stuck with me most…

• Know the difference between smart and dumb risks, understand when you need to change a direction, and have the guts to do it.

One of the biggest lessons Peter learned was that timeliness is everything and opportunities are only useful to those prepared to seize them. If you’re too afraid to look bad trying, then you’ll never accomplish anything in life. When you’re on the wrong track or your gut is telling you something, you need to listen up and act.

After college at Columbia, Peter enrolled directly into a master’s program in International Relations. Only a few credits shy of graduation, Peter had a realization that his degree would only prepare him for jobs at the IMF or World Bank, two institutions whose politics he hated. Instead of waiting around or doing the “safe” thing his professors recommended, Peter bounced. He left the program and drove straight to the Rocky Mountains with the simple mission of skiing as much as possible.

He actually agrees that the “safe thing” would have made sense. He could have easily finished the degree, gotten the credential, and then decided what he really wanted to do. But Peter’s instincts told him how easy it is for people to get trapped in life, how staying “on track” can kill you one slow day at a time. As he says, “It would have been easy to finish that degree – easier than bolting. With the degree in hand, it would have been easier for me to land a job with one of the status quo watchdogs than with anybody else. Once I had the job, it would have been easier to amend my own beliefs than to change the organization. Thus, by increments so exquisitely gradual that they might have passed unnoticed, I could have ended up being totally untrue to myself and living a life I hated. Twenty years later, I might have had a closet full of suits, a passport full of visas, and an irreparable feeling that I’d really blown it. No thanks. Call me irresponsible, but I think it’s better to zig and zag before the first foot is in the trap.”

• Learn to live in the moment, don’t waste the present in a constant scramble for the future.

As an ambitious businessman, Peter admits he lived largely in the future. Everything he did was part of a strategy and a plan for some future gain. He neglected enjoying everything in the present moment because everything was a blur as he raced toward a new goal someplace else.

Once cancer took away Peter’s future, he had nothing left but the present. It forced him to take a step back and reflect. He quotes Socrates who said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Peter realized that his “energies went toward piling up experience, not toward finding meaning” and that “reflection is hard and active work.” But it’s through reflection, that we can learn to live and enjoy the moments we’re in. Despite cancer’s destruction, Peter credits it for doing several wonderful things for him and forcing him into reflection was one of them.

What’s a concrete way we can apply Peter’s lesson here? Keeping a journal might help. It doesn’t have to be daily and it doesn’t have to be spellchecked; but in writing down our thoughts and experiences, we examine them and undertake this process of reflection Peter ultimately discovered and enjoyed.

• Attitude is everything. Pain is out of our control, but the way we respond to it mentally is not.

Cancer knocked Peter down – physically and mentally. He was so used to living his life for adventures, for accomplishments, and for doing. He was comfortable in control and now cancer didn’t even let him control his own digestion. His schedule revolved around doctors’ appointments and his energy levels around his chemotherapy. When his condition wasn’t improving, Peter fell in to the depth of his despair and said it was hard to find a point to keep going on. “Find a point!” his wife, Laura, countered abruptly.

Laura woke him up to see that his frame of mind was something he still could control. It was a place he could still feel strong and hopeful, since he could no longer feel this way physically. Peter realized that “while pain may be unavoidable, suffering is largely optional…it’s the attitude toward the pain that makes all the difference.” By finding a point, Peter refused to let the physical pain infect his mind and his soul. Peter’s physical pain didn’t dissipate, but he chose to let “bodily pain be the body’s problem” and to concentrate on keeping his “mind unclouded, his soul free to soar.”

• The key to happiness, acceptance, and peace, is recognizing and being thankful for the small things in life.

Remembering his childhood, Peter dives deep into a tangent about all the casserole dishes his mother used to have. As trivial as the chipped and worn casserole dishes might seem on their own, they remind him of “incredibly precious things,” like his mother, their kitchen, and family meals they used to have. As Peter says, “I’ve come to feel that the big things in life are best understood by way of small things. Ignore small ones, and the big ones just seem like fancy words, slogans without the truth of something you really know, and really feel.”

There are two approaches to happiness: one where everything has to be perfect, void of any flaws that could spoil the experience, and the other where “small delights” can be seen as “large victories.” Having this presence to enjoy the small things is a gift and characteristic of a wiser and happier person.

• Be excited about the journey you’re taking, not just the rewards of a particular path.

Peter remembers being different from many of his MBA classmates at Harvard. Peter wanted to be excited by his career. He wanted to create and use his passion to take chances. He didn’t want to be like others who didn’t care about the content of their careers, only the rewards and wealth they would bring. Peter saw a lot of “extremely bright people who would never really do anything, would never add much to society, would leave no legacy behind.” He saw this as a terribly sad waste of potential.

Peter remembers, “I didn’t want a safe niche; I wanted to make something that wasn’t there before. I didn’t want to manage; I wanted to invent. If I crashed and burned, so be it. But there had to be some big dream worth pursuing, and there had to be joy and excitement in the challenge of pursuing it.”

Want to read? Click here to buy Peter’s book on Amazon (affiliate link, thanks for your support!).