'A temporary thing': Extended interview with Tom Tobias

Web exclusive extended interview: Making the most of right now, with yoga and meditation instructor Tom Tobias

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TTV: I worked a lot. I had to pay my own way and I liked my job, so I would do that. I hung out at the student union a lot - you know, drink coffee, do the crossword, and try to talk to girls.

TT: Yeah, I did that. I listened to music, talked to girls - played Frisbee a lot when the weather was appropriate.

TTV: I always felt like everybody else was “getting it” with the whole college experience and I just couldn’t figure it out, you know? I would ask people, “How can you be so into going to these classes that you hate?” And they would say, “That’s how I’m going to get a good job.” And I wanted a good job, too, but I just felt like that wasn’t the right way for me to go about getting it. What made you think that you’d want to be an engineer? Were you good at math or something?

TT: Yeah, I was really good at math and science and physics. I’m good at that stuff, but just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean you should be doing it.

TTV: That’s one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned. I was told that years ago by basically a complete stranger and that had never occurred to me.

TT: Yeah.

TTV: I was just so happy to be good at something, you know?

TT: If you could go back now, what would you study? Would you study writing?

TTV: I don’t think so. I don’t think I ever learned much about writing in school. I feel like I learned to write by reading. I would probably study something like language or visual arts - something that I’m uncomfortable with because I don’t feel like I have a natural talent for it. I’d like to sit in that uncomfortable space and kind of try to figure it out - try to pull something out of it. I wouldn’t chase paper though. Where did you grow up?

TT: In St. Louis.

TTV: What did your parents do?

TT: They were in the beef business. Actually, they just sold that. I’ve been a vegetarian for 10 or 12 years now.

TTV: How’d that come about?

TT: Well, it wasn’t that much of a conscious choice. I had all of the information; I had all of the intellectual reasons as to why I shouldn’t eat meat. You know, the plant-based diet and what it does for the body and the environment, what it’s like for the animal, you know, all these great reasons - but that wasn’t really doing it. I remember my last meal with meat. I remember it tasted unbelievable. It was this bowl of really beautiful black bean soup and it had big chunks of ham in it, and it was those chunks that kind of did me in. It was a visceral response.

TTV: Had you planned that to be your last meal with meat?

TT: No, no, not at all. It just happened upon me. I was just eating it and as I was eating it I was just thinking, “Oh my God, this is so good - and also I’m so repulsed.” That was it. That was the last time. Oh, and I saw that guy the other day at lunch and he said he was experimenting with vegetarianism himself now and I think that’s just so cool. I love experiments. I feel like I treat life as an experiment - it’s fun to approach things that way. You can always do something different - it’s all voluntary.

TTV: Were you an athletic child?

TT: Yeah. I would say so, yeah.

TTV: What were you into?

TT: Running. Just natural running. I remember there was this huge field behind our house, about the size of a football field, and it was full of clover. In the summer we would try to run the length of that field barefooted and try not to get stung by bees. Our house also kind of backed up to some woods, so we would run through there, play in the creeks, we were always outside. When I was older I got into trail running. In high school, I was kind of drawn to lifting weights - I wasn’t a body builder, I was a power lifter - and I got really disciplined. I don’t know what it was. Well, yeah I do, I was a wrestler.

TTV: Me too.

TT: Okay, so you know what it’s like then. You know what it’s like to be on your back, to have another person holding you on your back? It’s like hell and the time goes by so slowly. Well, I had this match where I had this kid on his back for the entire match. I mean, I immediately took him down and put him on his back for the rest of the period and I didn’t pin him - I couldn’t pin him. In the second period, I chose to start on the bottom. I had an immediate reversal and put him on his back again for the whole second period. The third period, he started on the bottom and I put him on his back again - and I was goofing off, sticking my tongue out to my friends in the crowd - and finally, I pinned him. Later, after the match was over, we were in the locker room and I saw him and something hit me, I don’t know, I started crying. I felt like he should have won because he put out so much more than I did, I just happened to be stronger and better at technique and this and that. But his heart, man it was just bigger than him. And so I decided I didn’t want to compete directly like that anymore. That shifted my attitude.

TTV: Strangely, I understand that.