Death Inspired Life Change

Mike Posner shares how a series of deaths inspired him to walk across America.

"I was at a friend's jewelry shop and someone across the room said 'my friend just walked across America.' It was like a tractor beam. I said 'I want to do that one day.' The sentence lingered in the jewelry shop like a fart no one wanted to claim, and everyone went back to whatever they were talking about.

Fast forward 4-5 years later, my father dies from brain cancer. About 6 months after that, my assistant Nick comes to pick me up for a studio session and says 'Avicii's dead.' Avicii was a friend I worked with in the studio just a few weeks before. I kept saying 'I can't believe this' out loud, but there was one thought going through my head that I couldn't make stop: 'I have to walk across America.'

A couple weeks later, my friend Willie calls and says one of our best friends we grew up with, Ronnie, was dead. I realized - I'm going to die. Before I die, I want to live the life I actually want to live, and I wasn't doing it. I was 30 years old living the life that 20-year-old me had set up. I was living the life my manager thought I should live. It was pain. I walked across America because I was in pain and I wanted to figure out a different way."