What makes a life extraordinary? It's not what you think.

For 30 years I made a living asking people questions. Executives, physicians, people with titles on the door. When I started Sit Down For This, I figured the extraordinary lives would belong to people like that.

I was only half right.

Dave Fay spent his career in the hospitality industry. Early in our conversation, he told me that hospitality industry work didn't carry much meaning, not next to something like nursing. We found out it may have meant more. Dr. Dan Morhaim was a practicing ER doctor for more than forty years, and he started out working at the post office. When I asked how he got from there to here, he said he was lucky. We find out it wasn't "luck" at all. Rabbi Shalom Raichik told me status is "not my element." And Dr. Bruny Kenou told me that as a kid, she would sometimes go to sleep and hope she didn't wake up, and that she didn't believe she would have made it this far.

Four very different people. Every one of them may have sold themselves a little short.

Here's what I've learned sitting across from them. An extraordinary life almost never looks extraordinary from the inside. It looks like showing up. It looks like a supervisor who saw something in you, a guidance counselor who didn't give up on you, a choice you made on a hard day that nobody else saw.

So I don't accept luck as the answer. Luck doesn't keep you on the path for forty years. Something our guests did. My job is to keep asking until the guest uncovers what it really was, and how you can get more of "it."

That's the moment I wait for in every episode. Near the end, after an hour of stories, the person across from me starts to see what their life has actually meant. Sometimes they're the last one in the room to see it.

The definition of meaningful is not always a brain surgeon or a super famous person. Sometimes it's someone you least suspect.

So if you're wondering whether your own life counts, ask yourself the question I ask every guest: Do you feel like you've led a life of meaning?

Don't give up. Success and meaning is never a straight uphill path. — David

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