Speaker 1: I think for a lot of people it's because they
Speaker 1: expect belonging to be there right away, and it never is.
Speaker 1: Belonging is something you always have to work at. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good Thanks for joining us. Our
Speaker 1: guest today is Emily White. Emily is a former lawyer
Speaker 1: turned writer. She's the author of Lonely Learning to Live
Speaker 1: with Solitude. Emily has also written for The Daily Mail,
Speaker 1: The New York Post, The Huffington Post, and The Guardian.
Speaker 1: Her latest book, which will be released in January, is
Speaker 1: called count me in how I stepped off the sidelines,
Speaker 1: created connection and built a fuller, richer, more lived in life.
Speaker 1: And don't forget that. The One You Feed is sponsored
Speaker 1: by Audible dot Com. Go to Audible trial dot com
Speaker 1: slash One You Feed to get your free audiobook. Here's
Speaker 1: the interview. Hi Emily, welcome to the show. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. I'm happy that you could join us tonight.
Speaker 1: You've got two books that I found both pretty interesting,
Speaker 1: so I'm looking forward to getting into discussing each of
Speaker 1: those in a little bit more detail. But we will
Speaker 1: start with the theme of the show, which is the
Speaker 1: parable of the two Wolves. So there is a grandfather
Speaker 1: who's talking with his grandson and he says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us. One is a
Speaker 1: good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops
Speaker 1: and he thinks about it for a second and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins. And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. I found the parable almost
Speaker 1: kind of hauntingly apt to the work that I've been
Speaker 1: doing over the past seven years. UM. I started by
Speaker 1: writing about loneliness and moment as had been a really
Speaker 1: defining theme in my life for a long long time.
Speaker 1: And I'd say that would be kind of the first wolf,
Speaker 1: the wolf we don't like. And I if you had
Speaker 1: told me when I was writing my first book, which
Speaker 1: was about loneliness, that I would go on um to
Speaker 1: write a book about connection, I wouldn't have believed you.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have believed that second, better wolf was out
Speaker 1: there and in me as well. But I did go on.
Speaker 1: So I feel like I've sort of, I mean to
Speaker 1: stay within your parable, traveled from one wolf to the other.
Speaker 1: And I I guess the main thing I take from
Speaker 1: the Parable is just the truth of it that you
Speaker 1: wind up with what you feed, and that you can
Speaker 1: choose what you feed. And I traveled from loneliness to
Speaker 1: connection by making some specific choices and and and feeding
Speaker 1: that decision to connect. And I was kind of surprised
Speaker 1: with where I landed. UM. But I like the parable
Speaker 1: because it does represent these choices that we can make
Speaker 1: in life and how those choices shape us. And so
Speaker 1: your your first book was titled Lonely, and it was
Speaker 1: about your experience with loneliness as well as you spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time sort of studying loneliness in general.
Speaker 1: Can you share a little bit about what you learned
Speaker 1: in the researching and writing that book? Sure? I. Lonely
Speaker 1: was published in two thousand and ten, and I was
Speaker 1: writing so I wrote it kind of in my mid
Speaker 1: to late thirties, and I was writing about a period
Speaker 1: in my early thirties, early to mid thirties when I
Speaker 1: was extremely lonely. That would be the bad Wolf. And
Speaker 1: I was sort of driven to write the book because
Speaker 1: I needed to understand what was happening to me. I
Speaker 1: wanted to learn everything I could about loneliness, and so
Speaker 1: I learned about I taught myself about the physiology, the psychology,
Speaker 1: the sociology, everything really I could to understand loneliness and
Speaker 1: to understand the role that it had played and was
Speaker 1: continuing to play in my life. And I found, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not everyone who can spend sort of four years
Speaker 1: reading about their demon or their bad wolf, but I
Speaker 1: found doing so extraordinarily helpful. It was sort of like
Speaker 1: a sustained period of mindfulness where I just stared at
Speaker 1: what the problem in my life was and I learned
Speaker 1: a lot. I talked to The irony was I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that helps. I wound up talking
Speaker 1: to just a huge number of people mainly in the
Speaker 1: US about loneliness but also all over the world, and uh,
Speaker 1: it was really um. It was a great way to
Speaker 1: learn about more about something that I've been confronting me
Speaker 1: my whole life. Really, So, what are the main themes
Speaker 1: out of that book? Tell me a little bit about
Speaker 1: what what loneliness is, maybe what some of the main
Speaker 1: causes are. I'm curious about as as you and I
Speaker 1: were talking briefly before the show, there's a couple of
Speaker 1: things I'm always curiousness, curiousness. There's a couple of things
Speaker 1: I'm always curious about in regards to loneliness. A couple
Speaker 1: of things that come up to me when I think
Speaker 1: about it. And one is really the connection between loneliness
Speaker 1: and depression or I've heard people say that sometimes depression
Speaker 1: is um or yeah, depression is masquerading is loneliness. And
Speaker 1: then the other thing I'd be curious about what you
Speaker 1: learned in that book is about the phenomenon of being
Speaker 1: lonely while in a group of people or around other people. Sure,
Speaker 1: I I think a lot of the confusion between loneliness
Speaker 1: and depression arises from the fact that it's okay in
Speaker 1: our culture to say that you're depressed, and it's really
Speaker 1: not totally okay to say that you're lonely. So people
Speaker 1: are kind of blurring them, blurring the waters, Muney, and
Speaker 1: the water is intentionally there. For me, I knew I
Speaker 1: was lonely as opposed to depressed, because for me, depression
Speaker 1: has a tendency to blot emotions out. And I found
Speaker 1: my loneliness was extremely acute. It was an extremely intense sense,
Speaker 1: and I knew what was wrong. You know. Depression, and
Speaker 1: again I'm speaking for myself, is often a sort of
Speaker 1: this global sense of what's wrong, you know, and I
Speaker 1: knew what was wrong. I felt too alone. And a
Speaker 1: lot of people are some people who write about loneliness
Speaker 1: and depression, we'll talk about social depression, and by that
Speaker 1: they mean that it lifts when you feel connected. And
Speaker 1: I think when people say they're depressed and lonely, what
Speaker 1: they often, but sometimes they are. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: be clinically depressed and lonely at the same time. But
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the times I like the
Speaker 1: notion of social depression. We don't use that term in conversation.
Speaker 1: It's it's only used when people are writing about loneliness.
Speaker 1: But the notion of feeling better when you're connected is
Speaker 1: just so intuitively sound. And I found for myself that
Speaker 1: what I was calling depression, or what if I was
Speaker 1: calling loneliness, lifted when I found more connection. And that
Speaker 1: kind of flows into the sense of what the idea
Speaker 1: of being lonely in a group, because I firmly believe
Speaker 1: that you can be lonely on your own and you
Speaker 1: can be lonely in a group. My loneliness hit at
Speaker 1: its absolute worst. I used to be a lawyer, and
Speaker 1: I was spending every single day in an office filled
Speaker 1: with practiced a specific type of law. So these were
Speaker 1: like minded people who have decided to join the same firm,
Speaker 1: and I felt entirely alone and having I think there's
Speaker 1: a fatigue that goes along with hiding depression, but I
Speaker 1: think there's a special fatigue that goes along with hiding
Speaker 1: loneliness because you're you have to pretend that you feel
Speaker 1: connected when you don't, and that's exhausting and um So,
Speaker 1: I think in some ways it's easier to be lonely
Speaker 1: when you're alone, because at least no one is asking
Speaker 1: you to pretend to be something that you're not. Um
Speaker 1: it's often I hear this repeatedly. I've heard from many, many,
Speaker 1: many thousands of lowly people, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: will talk about and this is a dangerous thing that
Speaker 1: goes back to your who do you feed parable The
Speaker 1: danger is you feel better when you're alone, when you're
Speaker 1: lonely in some ways, and that can just start feeding
Speaker 1: the loneliness. Is there a definition that you use for
Speaker 1: lonely or certain causes of loneliness that we could maybe explore.
Speaker 1: It gets just kind of pedantic when people start defining loneliness.
Speaker 1: I think everyone knows what it is, and when you
Speaker 1: start seeing the written definitions, they seem to sort of
Speaker 1: start to break from the lived experience of loneliness. I
Speaker 1: always say lonely loneliness is a sense, a subjective sense,
Speaker 1: because you can be with people, you can be in
Speaker 1: a marriage, you can be anything of being too much
Speaker 1: on your own and feeling vulnerable and unhappy and resentful
Speaker 1: and angry because of it. Um, it's the isolation that's
Speaker 1: the problem, and again that sets it off from depression
Speaker 1: because so many things could cause depression, whereas with loneliness,
Speaker 1: it's this sense of just being being asked to be
Speaker 1: too much on your own. And what what causes that
Speaker 1: that loneliness? What causes say, for example, or what are
Speaker 1: some of the causes of people who are in very
Speaker 1: similar social situations, for example, one to feel very lonely
Speaker 1: and another to not feel so lonely. I think not
Speaker 1: getting what you need from that social situation. I mean
Speaker 1: some people. I mean, you know, the idea has been
Speaker 1: put forward that we have different social needs and so
Speaker 1: I might actually need more than you socially, and if
Speaker 1: that needs not being met, maybe I'll get lonely and
Speaker 1: you don't. But I think, I mean, and this is
Speaker 1: where we could start getting into, you know, which is
Speaker 1: what I think as opposed to the researching, I think
Speaker 1: we're entering an era where we're on our own so much,
Speaker 1: you know. Eric Kleinenberg's book Going Solo was a bestseller
Speaker 1: because he documented what so many people were experiencing, which
Speaker 1: is the experience of living a lot own and if
Speaker 1: you live alone and if you don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of contacts outside of the home and maybe your workplaces
Speaker 1: in particularly social I think it's becoming increasingly hard for
Speaker 1: us to make two ties that we need to fend
Speaker 1: off loneliness. And I guess I'm sort of supported in that,
Speaker 1: sadly in by the fact that loneliness rates are going
Speaker 1: up depending on what group you look at. But almost
Speaker 1: all of these studies are carried out in the states
Speaker 1: of summer in England. I guess, um loneliness is just
Speaker 1: kind of increasing across the board. Um, there's one exception
Speaker 1: to that is kind of an anomalous study involving teenagers.
Speaker 1: But I think we're growing lonely or as a society.
Speaker 1: And I and that's part of the reason I wanted
Speaker 1: to write Count Me In, which is my second book
Speaker 1: about connection, to see what can we do of out that.
Speaker 1: You know, the question I got so many times from
Speaker 1: so many people was, you know, how do you feed
Speaker 1: the second well of how do you connect in a
Speaker 1: disconnected era? And I I kind of attack attack, I
Speaker 1: guess I explored it would be a nicer word. I
Speaker 1: explored the problem for personal reasons, but I wound up
Speaker 1: getting really really interested in what do you do in
Speaker 1: this sort of um In what Eric Klein of Books
Speaker 1: called the going solo arra. He uses that in a
Speaker 1: in a positive sense, you know, um that you can
Speaker 1: live alone and be happy. And I think that's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: But I think going solo is kind of a another
Speaker 1: way of what you know Robert Putnam called the bowling
Speaker 1: Alone era. You know, if you get a book after
Speaker 1: book with these titles that they're they're kind of telling
Speaker 1: you something about how we're living our lives today. And
Speaker 1: so you went on to write you you reference it
Speaker 1: there your your new book, which I think is coming
Speaker 1: out in January called Count Me In. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: in the book you talk about a definition of belonging
Speaker 1: that is, um, belonging equals the sense of being welcomed, needed,
Speaker 1: or accepted by a group, plus a sense of fitting
Speaker 1: in or matching with that group. I found that a
Speaker 1: really that was put forward by the University of Michigan
Speaker 1: nursing professor Bonnie Haggarty in the nineties, and I kind
Speaker 1: of made note of it when I started my research,
Speaker 1: but then as I started living the book, I found
Speaker 1: it was just bang on. Like there's some academic definitions
Speaker 1: of belonging that seemed to me to just kind of
Speaker 1: fly right past the point, and I thought that one
Speaker 1: just nailed it. You need to feel feel welcomed and needed,
Speaker 1: and you need a sense of fit, and so there's
Speaker 1: kind of two things that need to be in place.
Speaker 1: And when those things are in place. UM. I explored
Speaker 1: this through volunteering, I spluted through phase. I explored it
Speaker 1: through political protests. I explored it through um neighborhood. Um
Speaker 1: it Actually she's right. I mean, you actually do get
Speaker 1: a sense of being part of something I keep saying
Speaker 1: larger than yourself. But I think it's so important because
Speaker 1: so many of our social tists today are about us
Speaker 1: and about our one on one relationships, and I was,
Speaker 1: for personal reasons, was really looking for something other than that.
Speaker 1: And I think what I came to call Haggardy's rule
Speaker 1: UM kind of captures what it was I was looking for.
Speaker 1: You explored this idea of belonging, and you you determined
Speaker 1: that you wanted more of that in your own life,
Speaker 1: and you went out to try and find it, which
Speaker 1: is really what a lot of the book is about
Speaker 1: and I think there's a couple of things that you
Speaker 1: you just touched on there that that I found interesting
Speaker 1: in the book and what you talked about, which was
Speaker 1: that it's that that ability to belong is out there,
Speaker 1: but that it's not necessarily always easy to find, and
Speaker 1: there's certainly not a one size fits all thing for belonging.
Speaker 1: That you have to kind of go out and experience
Speaker 1: different things and try different things until you find both
Speaker 1: that that being needed and welcome that you talked about,
Speaker 1: as well as being needed and welcomed by people that
Speaker 1: you feel like our for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: your people or your type of people. And I think
Speaker 1: it's yeah, the book is my exploration of belonging, and
Speaker 1: I set it out sort of as a series of
Speaker 1: takeaways or ideas that people could apply to belonging in
Speaker 1: our own lives. So I'm never expecting I'm not, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things I did was volunteers zoo inspection
Speaker 1: um of roadside zoos, and I'm not expecting anyone to
Speaker 1: do that, but that's where my search for belonging took
Speaker 1: me for various reasons. And I think we have an
Speaker 1: idea that it's easy to connect to, it's easy to
Speaker 1: belong you know, and you've mentioned having to do more
Speaker 1: than one thing. You you kind of have to try
Speaker 1: quite a lot of things in order to find a
Speaker 1: sense of belonging. Sometimes it will appear right at the outset.
Speaker 1: Other times you kind of have to kind of make
Speaker 1: your way through the woods and and stick with it,
Speaker 1: I think, and I've seen this happen. I saw this
Speaker 1: happenyone was writing the book. If someone would show up
Speaker 1: once front events. There was a community garden that I
Speaker 1: attended and found a great sense of belonging at, And
Speaker 1: they would show up once and they would disappear. And
Speaker 1: that might be for the very valid reason that they
Speaker 1: decided it was the wrong fit. But I think for
Speaker 1: a lot of people, it's because they expect belonging to
Speaker 1: be there right away, and it never is. Belonging is
Speaker 1: something you always have to work at. You have to.
Speaker 1: That's why I liked your parable. You have to feed it,
Speaker 1: you have to stick with it. Um. It's something in
Speaker 1: a strange way that I think we today um have
Speaker 1: to learn. It's I don't know that it comes so
Speaker 1: easily to us anymore. Um, you know I start the book.
Speaker 1: I'm early in the book. I talked very very briefly
Speaker 1: about my father's life. And my father was born in
Speaker 1: a small town Kentucky and the late nineteen twenties and
Speaker 1: he and I think he in some ways was the
Speaker 1: inspiration for the book because he just was born into
Speaker 1: these various senses of belonging to He had an incredibly
Speaker 1: rich sense of place. He had a huge family, he
Speaker 1: had local place, UM, he had his religion, and he
Speaker 1: seemed to know how to belong in a way that
Speaker 1: I didn't. And my father passed away many years ago,
Speaker 1: and UM, I think I needed to relearn. I think
Speaker 1: I will not say we. I needed to relearn something
Speaker 1: that he was sort of given, um that I don't
Speaker 1: think we're given today. And I think that's a loss
Speaker 1: to us. So I was like, Okay, well, how do
Speaker 1: I recreate this in a completely different setting, in a
Speaker 1: completely different era. Um. And you know, there's lots of
Speaker 1: things you don't want to recreate about what my father
Speaker 1: was born into, but there's kind of a a given
Speaker 1: quality to the belonging that he had that I don't
Speaker 1: think we have any more. That I tried to reproduce
Speaker 1: and that I think I found UM and that goes
Speaker 1: back here parable I was astonished at how much belonging
Speaker 1: is out there, UM kind of just waiting for us.
Speaker 1: And it was an amazing discovery. It was an amazing
Speaker 1: feeling to realize that we still can belong today and
Speaker 1: ways will look really really, really different from my dad's life,
Speaker 1: but ways that are still really rich. And I go back,
Speaker 1: you know, we were talking about social depression. They just
Speaker 1: it gives you this rich sense of connection that is
Speaker 1: energizing and makes you more enthusiastic about life and just
Speaker 1: gives you so many more resources in terms of social
Speaker 1: support and and all of those things. But I think
Speaker 1: are really good for us, and I think we can
Speaker 1: create it. Maybe you could tell us about a couple
Speaker 1: of the areas or things that you tried UM and
Speaker 1: found for belonging. A couple that I thought were particularly
Speaker 1: interesting were the ones around UM the faith, and then
Speaker 1: the other around the civic activism, around around some of
Speaker 1: the animal rights. Right. Well, I knew I wanted to
Speaker 1: try and belong three safe because Um, first of all,
Speaker 1: the first of all, there's a couple of reasons. You know,
Speaker 1: people are still engaged in faith in a way that
Speaker 1: they're not engaged in you know, the PTA anymore. So
Speaker 1: I knew I wanted to try it. And Chris belongs
Speaker 1: to three or four different PTA groups across the city.
Speaker 1: He doesn't have any kids, and but but it's he
Speaker 1: just goes. Is he a shrine or two? Well only
Speaker 1: in his house. He's got he's got a little car here. Um.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people are still engaged in faith, right,
Speaker 1: So it was something I wanted to try again because
Speaker 1: I had a religious education, um, meaning I went to
Speaker 1: Catholic school until I was sixteen, and I had kind
Speaker 1: of and that was maybe the one sort of sense
Speaker 1: of belonging that I was given, though it's all sort
Speaker 1: of fraught today. This was in the seventies. I started
Speaker 1: Catholic school, um, and I didn't find a sense of
Speaker 1: belonging there and I kind of tried to get away
Speaker 1: from it into other religion and it just wasn't working.
Speaker 1: So I had to come back to Catholicism. So part
Speaker 1: of the book is about me trying to but me
Speaker 1: trying to navigate finding a sense of belonging through faith
Speaker 1: and it's tricky and I come to this as someone
Speaker 1: who doesn't have trouble with faith. Um, it wasn't a
Speaker 1: matter of me trying to cultivate belief. I mean that
Speaker 1: was sort of already there. And I would never suggest
Speaker 1: to anyone that they go down this path, you know,
Speaker 1: and try and force themselves to believe in in something
Speaker 1: they don't believe in. That just isn't gonna work, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But if you've kind of are already kind of tilted
Speaker 1: that way. Um. Faith was interesting because um, we tend
Speaker 1: to be or I was born in nine you know,
Speaker 1: I was born into a faith tradition. It wasn't a
Speaker 1: choice I made. It was something that was handed to me. Um.
Speaker 1: And kind of trying to make that work in many
Speaker 1: decades later in the here and now was interesting and
Speaker 1: challenging in all sorts of ways that I wasn't expecting, um,
Speaker 1: but was also very rewarding. So that was kind of
Speaker 1: the intuitive thing that I did, which was kind of
Speaker 1: what happens when you try and find a sense of
Speaker 1: belonging through faith. And that was kind of a fraud
Speaker 1: area for me because I'm gay, So you kind of
Speaker 1: prepare homosexuality up with Catholicism and you just get kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, electric sparks flying, but it's still
Speaker 1: it's still kind of worked. Um. Whereas the political protest,
Speaker 1: I did a lot of work. Um. I used to
Speaker 1: be an environmental lawyer, and I did a lot of
Speaker 1: work in the book. Um. One of you know, one
Speaker 1: of the kind of overarching principles that guided my work
Speaker 1: in the book is that you know, to belong you
Speaker 1: sort of have to root it in what you value.
Speaker 1: You know, if you if you start looking for belonging
Speaker 1: in something you don't particularly care about. You know, in
Speaker 1: my case faith, team sports, which I'm not putting down
Speaker 1: by any sense, it's just is not going to take
Speaker 1: you anywhere because to me, team sports just they don't
Speaker 1: they don't resonate that, it don't connect with anything. Whereas
Speaker 1: for me, animals have always been became an environment a
Speaker 1: lawyer largely to protect species, and um, they've just mattered
Speaker 1: so so so much to me my whole life. So
Speaker 1: I thought, what can I do? You know, I know,
Speaker 1: there's got to be a way of belonging through animals, UM,
Speaker 1: And I tried. Since I had a very old cat
Speaker 1: at home at the time, I couldn't foster, I couldn't
Speaker 1: volunteer at animal shelters. So I wound up quite to
Speaker 1: my surprise. Um, and this is what I mean. But
Speaker 1: you gotta feed it. You gotta go where they're you know,
Speaker 1: where the arrows are pointing. Quite to my surprise, I
Speaker 1: wound up with an animal protest group in Toronto called
Speaker 1: Pick Saves Um that involved bearing witness um near an
Speaker 1: avatoire on a very very busy roadway in Toronto, which
Speaker 1: is a massive city. Um. And I found it. It
Speaker 1: was one of the most complicated forms of belonging that
Speaker 1: I found, not because of what I was being asked
Speaker 1: to do, though it is hard if you don't have
Speaker 1: any experience, uh, protesting. If you don't have any experience,
Speaker 1: start of building a sign on the edge of a roadway,
Speaker 1: as I did. But I'll just put as an aside,
Speaker 1: you get used to holding a sign on a roadway
Speaker 1: very very fast. Um. But because I think, you know,
Speaker 1: protests involves us joining together, and we don't do that
Speaker 1: so much in public anymore. So. I think my caring,
Speaker 1: which really started out being about animals and and did
Speaker 1: take me into all these really interesting places related to
Speaker 1: animals and people who cared about animals, also taught me
Speaker 1: a lot about kind of joining with others in public
Speaker 1: today and how um unaccustomed some of us, many of
Speaker 1: us are to it today. I really had to learn.
Speaker 1: But it was okay to kind of stand with a
Speaker 1: group in public. And and you know, our cause happened
Speaker 1: to be pigs, with which a lot of your listeners
Speaker 1: won't care about or agree with, and that's okay. But
Speaker 1: I think what's important is learning to stand together for something.
Speaker 1: And UM, I now feel that that's the skill that
Speaker 1: I have that I can apply um in other areas,
Speaker 1: you know, if it's climate change or if it's the
Speaker 1: Keystone Xcel pipeline. You know, I know how to do
Speaker 1: that now. And I would really, you know, for people
Speaker 1: do one thing from the book. I mean, I'd like
Speaker 1: them to take a lot from the one thing would be,
Speaker 1: you know, learn how to to be with other people
Speaker 1: about a cause that you care about, because it's a
Speaker 1: it's a really great skill to to have. Well, that
Speaker 1: part of the book was striking because you you said
Speaker 1: something there that I thought was really really interesting, and
Speaker 1: it was that, um, you were out there, you know,
Speaker 1: standing on the roadside sort of protesting about the treatment
Speaker 1: of these animals, and that you realize that there were
Speaker 1: people who really hated what you were doing and it
Speaker 1: and in a lot of cases it had a lot
Speaker 1: less to do with the fact that you what the
Speaker 1: cause was, but that that in our culture today, caring
Speaker 1: too much about something is oftentimes looked down upon. It's
Speaker 1: considered un hip or not cool. And that and and
Speaker 1: that caring about things in itself was what was being judged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I felt that. It took me a long time to
Speaker 1: figure I mean, it was with the protest group for
Speaker 1: quite a while, and people would always scream the most
Speaker 1: banal comments, Um, you know, I love bacon, you know,
Speaker 1: the baby screaming from criers, so they'd be completely protected,
Speaker 1: and they were also isolated in their own little vehicles.
Speaker 1: You know, I love ham, I love bacon. You know,
Speaker 1: you'd hear the same things over and over, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't figure out why these people were doing this. I mean,
Speaker 1: a lot of people drove past or a lot of
Speaker 1: people would honk and support, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: felt compelled to scream their of bacon, which is really
Speaker 1: not something no matter how much you like your b
Speaker 1: L T s most people feel compelled to scream about
Speaker 1: So I thought, why are they doing this? And the
Speaker 1: more I stuck with it, and the more I looked
Speaker 1: at people's faces as they were screaming at me, would
Speaker 1: you also get used to Um? I realized it was
Speaker 1: caring just as you said, they didn't like. You know,
Speaker 1: in an individualist culture, which we have in spades, you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to say that you're connected to something else,
Speaker 1: or that what happens to another creature affects you or
Speaker 1: upsets you. You're supposed to be in your own little,
Speaker 1: self contained bubble. And if you step out of that
Speaker 1: and you start pointing to all the links between us,
Speaker 1: or saying, you know, what happens to that miserable, miserable
Speaker 1: pig and that horrendous pick truck affects me, you're kind
Speaker 1: of breaking the rules of individualism, and that really really
Speaker 1: harshly judged. You know, you're called I was called all
Speaker 1: sorts of things. I've got a pretty healthy ego, so
Speaker 1: you know, calling me Aimes doesn't really matter. Um. That
Speaker 1: also helps with my gay Catholicism. But and I know
Speaker 1: other people won't be like that. But it was amazing
Speaker 1: the extent to which people are invested in in individualism today.
Speaker 1: Are invested in the idea that we create our own
Speaker 1: destinies or that we're all responsible for ourselves, that we're
Speaker 1: not linked. And that was spelled up for me very
Speaker 1: very very clearly in my care and project. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's you know, I'm not sure exactly what that is,
Speaker 1: but when you were talking about the feeling of being
Speaker 1: out there and initially being embarrassed to be out there
Speaker 1: and being embarrassed to care about something, that really hit
Speaker 1: home with me because there is such a there's a
Speaker 1: real vulnerability to showing that you do care about something
Speaker 1: and that you're willing to to stand up for it.
Speaker 1: And I realized that's something that I am myself. I
Speaker 1: get very anxious about. Maybe it's starting to change, but
Speaker 1: if you take a stand for something, you're sort of judged.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a massive, massive shortcoming in our culture,
Speaker 1: that this hesitation we feel about coming together and taking
Speaker 1: a stand connection is part of that. There's a very
Speaker 1: very deep sense of connection and belonging that flows, I mean,
Speaker 1: on on the side of the subject from being part
Speaker 1: of a group like that, because when you do overcome
Speaker 1: the anxiety that you feel, and it's not easy. I'm
Speaker 1: not suggesting that people are going to go out and
Speaker 1: do this. For me, it was really really important to
Speaker 1: challenge that anxiety. When you are able to connect in
Speaker 1: that way, it's a very deep, deep sense of connection
Speaker 1: that you feel to the other people that you're with
Speaker 1: in that group. There was something else that you talked
Speaker 1: to about in the book that I also I had
Speaker 1: never thought of, and once I read it it made
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. Was that we tend to think
Speaker 1: of and we talked a little bit earlier about belonging
Speaker 1: versus connection. But you there's this idea of public versus
Speaker 1: private belonging or connection, and that that private connection tends
Speaker 1: to be very intense. So, um, you know, we've got
Speaker 1: our we've got our good friends, and we share a
Speaker 1: lot of things, but that public belonging tends to be
Speaker 1: a less intense thing, and that that is not a
Speaker 1: bad thing, that's actually a good thing in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah, I um
Speaker 1: love you know, I described public belonging what people used
Speaker 1: to call a civic life. You know, in my editor,
Speaker 1: in a sort of a demoralizing moment, said you can't
Speaker 1: use that phrase because no one's going to know or
Speaker 1: most people are going to know what you're talking about anymore.
Speaker 1: And I thought, my she's you know, she's right, we
Speaker 1: don't know what a civic life means anymore. So I
Speaker 1: I kind of stuck with the terms private, which everyone
Speaker 1: did they understands in public, which is a little more
Speaker 1: counterintuitive doing things that don't involve you know, some of
Speaker 1: these groups that I joined, I did make friends, but
Speaker 1: a lot of them, like the community garden, you don't
Speaker 1: know people's last names, you don't know where they live,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter because you're still part of the
Speaker 1: group that's doing the gardening and tending to the tomato beds,
Speaker 1: and you get to know them in this way that's
Speaker 1: less intense. And we see that as a failing. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, these people aren't your BFFs. Well, you know
Speaker 1: I have BFFs and they're fantastic people, but we need
Speaker 1: more than that. You know. People sometimes say they're she's
Speaker 1: tired to go out, and I say that too, And
Speaker 1: sometimes what we mean by that is I'm too tired
Speaker 1: to go and kind of have a high voltage conversation
Speaker 1: in Starbucks about my personal life. You know, I just
Speaker 1: it's too much and there's this wonderful ease that comes
Speaker 1: with being with people not having to talk possibly at all,
Speaker 1: or not having to say much um. Again, this is
Speaker 1: getting back to what my dad had, Like he kind
Speaker 1: of seemed to have this intuitive sense of being with
Speaker 1: people without you know, he wasn't one to you know,
Speaker 1: kind of have a lot of conversations. But you can
Speaker 1: be with people in the public sphere or in the
Speaker 1: specific sphere in a way that's different, and it's relaxing
Speaker 1: because you're not sharing secrets, um, You're doing things. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's a there's a wonderful sense of just you know,
Speaker 1: having an activity as opposed to just talking um. It's
Speaker 1: great for introverts. You know, I am UM in many ways.
Speaker 1: So it sounds a bit surprising even the book A
Speaker 1: big introvert, and I found that being in these big
Speaker 1: public groups didn't drain me of social energy. It actually
Speaker 1: gave me energy because I wasn't exchanging things on a
Speaker 1: one on one basis. And because we have so so
Speaker 1: so many of us have less belonging in our lives,
Speaker 1: we've kind of lost sight of how important that is.
Speaker 1: And I think we we definitely value our private relationships
Speaker 1: but I think we might overvalue them to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: or if not overvalue them, they should be balanced with
Speaker 1: public relationships so that we don't have to be on
Speaker 1: all the time when we're with other people. What struck
Speaker 1: me about the book was that just the very way
Speaker 1: of framing that belonging and it's it's again back to
Speaker 1: that belonging versus connection. I tend to think of going
Speaker 1: out there and connecting with people, making a new friend,
Speaker 1: or you know, if it's a romantic relationship or and
Speaker 1: and I think as a culture, we do a lot
Speaker 1: less thinking about belonging to two groups. And it seems
Speaker 1: to be very different, as you said, than maybe when
Speaker 1: you know, a generation ago. Yeah, I mean I was
Speaker 1: fascinated by Robert puttins bowling alone. I mean kind of fascinated.
Speaker 1: It's probably the wrong word. And I've read it over
Speaker 1: and over and I just it captured I mean not
Speaker 1: just for me. It was a huge bestseller. It captured
Speaker 1: this sense people had that were missing, in another word,
Speaker 1: that we're not using a community, that we're missing community
Speaker 1: were we have our one on one relationships if we're lucky,
Speaker 1: because increasingly people are losing those one on one relationships.
Speaker 1: You know, people's social circles, their private social worlds are shrinking,
Speaker 1: and we no longer have the public world to support us,
Speaker 1: so we kind of have less support in general. But
Speaker 1: you know, the Robert Puttin's whole argument is what we've
Speaker 1: kind of lost or let go of, or had taken
Speaker 1: away from us this public sense of belonging that people
Speaker 1: used to have, and they used to root their private
Speaker 1: relationships in that larger sense of belonging, and when you
Speaker 1: take it away, you're put too much weight on your
Speaker 1: private relationships. You know. I used an example in the
Speaker 1: book where something personally hard happened to me and it
Speaker 1: was wonderful to go to a group and know that no,
Speaker 1: not one single person there had to support me. You know,
Speaker 1: it could be one person or the other, and I
Speaker 1: could just kind of go from person to person and
Speaker 1: talk casually about what had happened, and if they wanted
Speaker 1: to engage, they could engage. You know, in asking less
Speaker 1: of people, they can give us more. They they can
Speaker 1: provide us with all sorts of different ways to support.
Speaker 1: You know, in a way that my best friend kind
Speaker 1: of called on to sort of be on. You know,
Speaker 1: when I have a problem she has to help. You know,
Speaker 1: not everyone in our life has to serve that role,
Speaker 1: and if you free people up from serving that role,
Speaker 1: they can be so many other things to you. And
Speaker 1: I think that was one of the best things that
Speaker 1: I learned in the book was just how good it
Speaker 1: felt um And I think this is why I liked
Speaker 1: Catholic school as a child, actually, was just how good
Speaker 1: it was to be kind of part of a group.
Speaker 1: And that today sounds like the ultimate conformist thing to say,
Speaker 1: and I think it's actually one of the most radical
Speaker 1: things you can say in a culture where we're expected
Speaker 1: to be so much on our own, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't have to be We can be with other people
Speaker 1: too well. I think it's an interesting transitional time because
Speaker 1: I think that like everything there are, there are good
Speaker 1: and bad sides of everything. And I think that the
Speaker 1: fragmentation of some of these larger that there used to
Speaker 1: be is positive in some ways, because I think it
Speaker 1: it allows for I do think there's a value to individualism,
Speaker 1: and I do think there's a value to being able
Speaker 1: to be who you are, and the broader that a
Speaker 1: group gets, the more conformity is potentially needed to fit.
Speaker 1: So I think it's an interesting where do you find
Speaker 1: that that middle ground. I've always been fascinated by and
Speaker 1: um English philosopher Elaine day Bouton, and he wrote a
Speaker 1: book called Religion for Atheists, and his his general premises,
Speaker 1: you know, he's an atheist, but he looks at everything
Speaker 1: that we've that we've lost by not having religion in
Speaker 1: the sense of the things that are religion provided to us,
Speaker 1: as far as the community and the rituals and the
Speaker 1: and the support and all that. And I've really that
Speaker 1: really resonates with me because I do think we've lost
Speaker 1: a lot of that, and yet in some ways, I
Speaker 1: think it's very positive that some of them, some of
Speaker 1: the loss of of religious belief I think has had
Speaker 1: also some positive um impacts to society. So it's it's
Speaker 1: one of those of finding the right balance between between
Speaker 1: those things. Oh absolutely. I mean I write as a
Speaker 1: twenty first century lesbian who I mean was born into Catholicism.
Speaker 1: But ultimately it was my choice to make in a
Speaker 1: way that um, the generations before me didn't have any choice.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what you were, UM. But I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of a baby in the bath water scenario
Speaker 1: where we've thrown out in our in our quest for
Speaker 1: personal autonomy, which is so important. And again, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of living an example of this. I get
Speaker 1: to live a life openly that no one else in
Speaker 1: my family would have been allowed to live. Um, we've
Speaker 1: probably gotten rid of too much. Um. So I think
Speaker 1: you know you've used the word balance. It's really about
Speaker 1: restoring that balance. Um. And maybe we're at a tipping point,
Speaker 1: we're realizing we've gotten rid of too much and we
Speaker 1: need to start to work to bring some of it back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I'm certainly not you know, you know, emphasizing it.
Speaker 1: We all have to be one thing, or we have
Speaker 1: to be what we were born into. You choice. My
Speaker 1: chapter on faith is actually me about me trying to
Speaker 1: make various choices, um, other than Catholicism, and exploring different
Speaker 1: faith and ultimately winding up back at Catholicism. And that's
Speaker 1: a very different journey, you know, choosing to be there. Um.
Speaker 1: I guess in a sense, I chose my tradition, which
Speaker 1: is a mix of individualism and and tradition. But um,
Speaker 1: it is about balance. And I wouldn't ever want to
Speaker 1: come across and saying, oh you know, we need to
Speaker 1: go back to the old ways where no one had
Speaker 1: any choices. The takeaway for me that that sort of
Speaker 1: hit if I tie tie your your first book and
Speaker 1: your second book together, for me was that loneliness is
Speaker 1: a real thing, and I think it's something a lot
Speaker 1: of people deal with, and we all tend to think
Speaker 1: there's a tendency to think of the cure for loneliness
Speaker 1: is another friend or a girlfriend. And I think what
Speaker 1: Count Me In does as a book as points to
Speaker 1: a lot of other ways to counter loneliness that are
Speaker 1: not dependent on those individual very that those very important
Speaker 1: personal relationships. Yeah, very much so, and I mean I
Speaker 1: think it's very doable. I mean, telling someone who's lonely
Speaker 1: to go find a partner or go find a best
Speaker 1: friend as a pretty tall order. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: the advice thing give and outa meetings all the time,
Speaker 1: because it's just not that that that has not worked out.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this sort of a middle zone where
Speaker 1: you can get to know people in other ways and
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be a best friend relationship and
Speaker 1: you might very well find some good friends in the
Speaker 1: groups that you join exactly Well, Emily, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to come on the show. Your
Speaker 1: book is out in January of two thousand fifteen, and uh,
Speaker 1: I'd encouraged the listeners to check it out. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. Thank you very much. We'll take care and
Speaker 1: we will talk again soon. Thanks a lot, all right bye.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about Emily White and this podcast
Speaker 1: at one new feed dot net slash Emily