The time I met Will Smith, Matthew McConaughey, and Dave Grohl in a span of two weeks

~1200 words. 5 minute read.

Okay, I didn’t meet them in the flesh. I may have picked that title to sucker you in. But stay for minute if you have it; it may be worth it.

My mother has been reading biographies since I was a kid and I never understood how someone could dedicate hours upon hours reading about someone else’s life. I felt that nonfiction books could teach me, and fiction could entertain me – what could I possibly take away from a biography?

The fact that I am late bloomer - and am, in fact still ‘blooming’, aka ‘understanding things for the first time’ - is worthy of a whole other blog post but, suffice it to say that I understand now. In the past two weeks, I have spent every free minute - on the Peloton Tread, in the car, squeezing orange juice for the kiddo, cooking dinner, you name it -  listening to the autobiographies of Will Smith (‘Will’), Matthew McConaughey (‘Greenlights’), and Dave Grohl (‘The Storyteller’), all read by the authors. Now that I got through them, I have two conflicting emotions battling it out inside of me. One is the suddenly awakened and unquenchable thirst to learn not from the intellect of other people, but rather from their life lessons, which - alas – are so much like my own (without the fame and glamour, of course). The other is an emptiness that comes from the sudden re-emergence into my own life, after having been so deeply immersed in someone else’s. 

All three of them share themes of rags-to-riches, being a child and being a parent - so relatable they’re almost painful to listen to -, of missteps and obstacles that, in retrospect, were the most important and defining moments in life, and of rebellion – exactly what you would expect from biographies. But listening to them in such quick succession clearly brought out the differences in their personalities and approaches to life:

Will Smith

Ambition and drive pushed him to the top at lightspeed. Music, acting, performing, becoming the greatest Movie Star in the world, and strategizing how to get there – he spells out the recipe. It’s the story of ‘if I get up an hour before everyone else and go to bed an hour later than everyone else, I am outworking everyone by 14 hours a week’ (he is obviously not taking any days off). The key moment: At the pinnacle of all this, achieving goal after goal, turning everything he touches  into gold, he notices that those around him, his loved ones especially, are not as happy as he thinks they should be. What follows is an avalanche of insights that you should listen to for yourself. (I really recommend the audio book versions of all three biographies, as they are performed (!) by the authors themselves. So good!)

Matthew McConaughey

Unlike Will Smith, McConaughey is concerned with the question of the meaning and purpose of life right away. He presents his life as a series of green, yellow, and red lights, which I found to be a compelling framework for interpreting events in your own life. That’s not to say that he doesn’t chase fame and success, but he quickly recognizes that the only way to encounter green lights is to pivot, take turns, change, and reinvent himself again and again, even if it means risking what he has already earned. It’s almost like he has an aversion to his own comfort zone, always striving to discover meaning elsewhere, and that includes turning down $15M for a romcom because he wants to do drama. Listening to that story is a bit frightening, until you realize that his mindset prominently includes failure as an option. If Will Smith’s career and life is aggressively choreographed, Matthew McConaughey leads his by experimentation, trial and error.

Dave Grohl

Maybe it’s because it’s the one I just finished and is therefore freshest in my mind, but it was arguably the one that started the slowest. Yet, it crescendo-ed without interruption until the very end, eventually completely blowing my mind (a little like Foo Fighter’s ‘Everlong’ maybe). Grohl’s story is strikingly different from that of the two Hollywood stars. He found his tribe in early childhood: Rock music. The entire book captures his child-like wonder of playing music, experiencing music and presents the characters around him, including those who influenced his creative mind. All throughout his narrative, he never emphasizes his own greatness, but that of those around him. It’s a humility that has become a long-lost relic among those in the public eye. What makes you happy when listening to his chapters of life is the constant re-affirmation of his desire to be exactly who he is and do exactly what he does - maybe it’s what we all want to feel. Unlike McConaughey’s search for meaning, Grohl embraces his calling and finds meaning from the first chapter. Does that make for a boring story? On the contrary, it makes for endless fascination. It makes you watch every YouTube video of him playing the drums, or the guitar, being a guest in talk shows, talking about Kurt Cobain. Listening to Grohl’s book and his music is like consuming a heavy dose of what we all crave so much, maybe now more than ever: Authenticity.