Henry Winkler says he has reached a point in life where the present is the whole story. The 80-year-old actor said he is so grateful to be on the earth and so grateful to be in the moment, adding, “It’s the only thing that matters. It’s the only thing.”
That outlook echoes Matthew 6:34, which says, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Winkler recently posted a photo of Charlie Brown and Snoopy that made the same point in a lighter way: Charlie says, “We only live once, Snoopy,” and Snoopy answers, “Wrong! We only die once. We live every day.”
For Winkler, that idea is not just a slogan. He said it is important to be able to pivot or take a different path than expected, and he connected that instinct to the way he has lived with dyslexia. “I believe pivoting is one of the keys to living,” he said. He added that his parents were embarrassed because he was not a good student, and that he could not do the work because of his dyslexia.
He said the condition once made him retreat so that he was “not a whole person,” even if he looked like one on the outside as an adult. The turning point, he said, came about 11 years ago, when he found a therapist who helped him overcome it. He said that if he were to give that therapist a present, it would have to be “the size of a skyscraper.”
Winkler also tied the idea of pivoting to the way he works. He said he and Lynn Oliver sometimes write on Zoom and sometimes in the same office, and that they usually have a full outline for a book. Then, he said, the book sometimes takes a left on its own. “You throw the outline out and you just go, ‘Hey, wait for me. Hey, wait for me,’” he said. The message, from faith to writing to recovery, is the same one Winkler returned to throughout the interview: stay with the moment, and be ready when life changes direction.
