Speaker 1: The same thing that can, when it's not working right,
Speaker 1: predispose us to anxiety and depression, is the very thing
Speaker 1: that can bring us to our highest and deepest selves.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they fee their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Susan Kane,
Speaker 1: an author who has appeared in The New York Times,
Speaker 1: The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications.
Speaker 1: Her record, Smashing Ted Talk, has been viewed over thirty
Speaker 1: million times and was named by Bill Gates as one
Speaker 1: of his all time favorite Talks. Susan is the author
Speaker 1: of Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World that
Speaker 1: Can't Stop Talking, which spent seven years on the New
Speaker 1: York Times Bestselling List and has been translated into forty languages.
Speaker 1: Quiet was named the number one best book of the
Speaker 1: year by Fast Company, which also named Kane one of
Speaker 1: the most creative people in business. LinkedIn named her the
Speaker 1: sixth top influencer in the world. Today, Susan and Eric
Speaker 1: discuss her new book, Bitter Sweet, How Sorrow and Longing
Speaker 1: Make Us Whole. Hi, Susan, Welcome to the show. Eric,
Speaker 1: it's so great to be here. I am really excited
Speaker 1: to have you on. You're sort of a patron saint
Speaker 1: to introverts everywhere, of which I lean in that direction.
Speaker 1: And your latest book, where we're going to be spending
Speaker 1: our time. It's called Bitter Sweet, How Sorrow and Longing
Speaker 1: Make Us Whole. But before we do that, let's start
Speaker 1: like we always do with the parable. In the Parable,
Speaker 1: there's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild and they say,
Speaker 1: in life, there's two wolves inside of us that are
Speaker 1: always a battle. One is a good wolf, which represents
Speaker 1: things like kindness and bravery, and love, and the other
Speaker 1: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. The grandchild stops, thinks about it for
Speaker 1: a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well, which
Speaker 1: one wins, and the grandparents 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 and your life and the
Speaker 1: work that you do. So I love that parable, and
Speaker 1: it actually seems to me to echo another parable that
Speaker 1: I came across while I was researching Bitter Sweet, which
Speaker 1: I have found to be such a great guiding star
Speaker 1: and consolation of how to live. And I'll tell you
Speaker 1: this parable, and I think you'll see the parallels, but
Speaker 1: we could talk about them. So in this other parable,
Speaker 1: this one comes from the Kabbala, which is the mystic
Speaker 1: form of Judaism. And in this parable, the idea is
Speaker 1: that all of creation originally was and intact divine vessel,
Speaker 1: but that the vessel shattered, and that the world that
Speaker 1: we are living in now is the broken world following
Speaker 1: the shattering, but that scattered all around us still are
Speaker 1: the divine shards from when the vessel was still intact,
Speaker 1: and that one great way to live a life is
Speaker 1: to look around us and to notice the divine shards
Speaker 1: wherever they have happened to land around us, and to
Speaker 1: bend down and pick them up. And you will notice
Speaker 1: different shards from the ones that I will. But we
Speaker 1: can all do our own gathering. And I love this
Speaker 1: and it reminds me of the parable that you shared,
Speaker 1: because it's acknowledging the pain and the tragedy and the
Speaker 1: evil that exists in the world without feeling that we
Speaker 1: have to become a prisoner to them. So it's not
Speaker 1: telling us to look away from them and pretend that
Speaker 1: they're not there, which is I think what our mainstream
Speaker 1: culture would would tell us. It's telling us they are
Speaker 1: very much there, and we can admit that and tell
Speaker 1: the truth about that. And at the same time we
Speaker 1: can turn in the other direction, in the direction of
Speaker 1: beauty and of love, and that we have the ability
Speaker 1: to decide to turn in that direction. I find that
Speaker 1: parable to just be such a relief or a relief
Speaker 1: to be able to tell the truth. Also just a
Speaker 1: great way to live to know that we always have
Speaker 1: that option. So I think it's very much with the
Speaker 1: grandparent in your parable was telling the grandchild, just with
Speaker 1: a different image. Yeah, it's one of the things I
Speaker 1: love about the Wolf parable is exactly what you said,
Speaker 1: which is it just sort of says like, hey, we
Speaker 1: all have this in us. That's the human condition. It's natural,
Speaker 1: it's normal. I've always liked that normalizing of it. And
Speaker 1: I love the parable that you told from Judaism, which
Speaker 1: is a beautiful, beautiful story. And as you were talking
Speaker 1: about it, I actually had another thought, which was, not
Speaker 1: only are we walking around collecting the shards, we are
Speaker 1: ourselves the shards in some ways, and when we come together,
Speaker 1: we are putting them back together in a way. That's
Speaker 1: sort of flashed into my mind as you were telling
Speaker 1: that story. Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And I think that what
Speaker 1: their grandparent was saying also is that we can't deny
Speaker 1: that these two aspects of ourselves exist at all times.
Speaker 1: With denying it comes a kind of blindness, but we
Speaker 1: can acknowledge it and then decide to turn in a
Speaker 1: particular direction. Let's jump into the book. I mean I
Speaker 1: kind of have to start close to where you start,
Speaker 1: which is by talking about music, and you start the
Speaker 1: book by really try mine to find out why does
Speaker 1: some of us really love what would be considered sad music.
Speaker 1: And it's funny. This is an interesting thing in my
Speaker 1: own household because I am that type. I listened to
Speaker 1: melancholy music. Give me any chance, and I'll listen to it.
Speaker 1: My partner really doesn't because it makes her sad, and
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to explain to her why I
Speaker 1: like melancholy music very well. I haven't been able to
Speaker 1: put it into very good words. I was reading your
Speaker 1: book and I just stopped and I said, I have
Speaker 1: to read you something, which is rare. I normally just
Speaker 1: interview prep and she's always like, I wish you'd share
Speaker 1: more about what your interview prepping, and I just I'm
Speaker 1: kind of going on my way, but it was so
Speaker 1: good it stopped me and I'm just gonna read it
Speaker 1: really quickly, if that's okay. Yeah, sure, you said it's
Speaker 1: hard to put into words what I experience when I
Speaker 1: hear this kind of music. It's technically sad, but what
Speaker 1: I feel really is love, a great title outpouring of it,
Speaker 1: a deep kinship with all the other souls in the
Speaker 1: world who know the sorrow the music strains to express.
Speaker 1: But the music makes my heart open. Literally the sensation
Speaker 1: of expanding chest muscles. And I've been looking for that
Speaker 1: description ever since I started listening to melancholy music. So
Speaker 1: thank you, You're welcome. I just got goose bumps knowing
Speaker 1: that if you've been looking for that explanation, as I
Speaker 1: had been too. I mean, it was only when I
Speaker 1: started writing this book that I actually like put into
Speaker 1: words exactly what the sensation is and why it matters
Speaker 1: so much. The reason I put music at the heart
Speaker 1: of the book, I mean, partly just because it literally
Speaker 1: was the catalyst for why I went off on this
Speaker 1: bitter sweet quest in the first place, but also because
Speaker 1: the way in which sad music is a gateway to love,
Speaker 1: because it unites us in our state of longing, our
Speaker 1: state of like exile from Eden. You could say that's
Speaker 1: the power of bitter sweetness itself, not just the music,
Speaker 1: but the bitter sweet condition itself, like the fact that
Speaker 1: all humans are united in existing in this state of
Speaker 1: what feels to us like a grand imperfection and impermanence,
Speaker 1: and you know, longing for the world to be different
Speaker 1: from the way that it is, you know, to see
Speaker 1: the joys and the beauties in the world and wish
Speaker 1: that they could last forever and wish that they comprised
Speaker 1: all of the world instead of only a part of it.
Speaker 1: All those longing. The fact that we're in that together
Speaker 1: is just this great uniting force. And the fact that
Speaker 1: we live in a world that tells us not to
Speaker 1: talk about any of that and not to talk about
Speaker 1: our sorrows and our longings is like living in a
Speaker 1: world that is telling us not to love each other
Speaker 1: as deeply as we could. Yeah, and I really want
Speaker 1: to get to what you just said a little bit
Speaker 1: more in detail, which is about telling us not to
Speaker 1: love things as deeply as we do, because not only
Speaker 1: does our culture tell us that some of the spiritual
Speaker 1: traditions I'm most attached to almost seem to be saying that.
Speaker 1: But we're going to save that for a little bit later,
Speaker 1: because we got to talk about Leonard Cohen for a second,
Speaker 1: who you talk about as your favorite musician and is mine.
Speaker 1: He was the guest I most ever all time one
Speaker 1: to have on this show, and it didn't happen. I
Speaker 1: got close. At one point I was talking with a
Speaker 1: guy who knew him, who was a monk at the
Speaker 1: center that Leonard was at, and he said you should
Speaker 1: know that Leonard's monk name means great silence, So just
Speaker 1: to give you an idea of how likely you are
Speaker 1: to get a conversation with him. So that's so interesting,
Speaker 1: And can I interrupt you just just say that he's
Speaker 1: my guy artistically. After my book Quiet came out, you know,
Speaker 1: which is all about introversion and the power of quiet,
Speaker 1: he actually tweeted out of the blue about the book
Speaker 1: and about Quiet and how important it is a glory
Speaker 1: day for me. And I can't believe I can find
Speaker 1: the tweet now, but I will always remember it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we just had to share that. I remember where I
Speaker 1: was when I heard that he passed. I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about a conversation I think Adam
Speaker 1: Cohne was saying in an interview with Rick Rubin. But
Speaker 1: I loved this line at the end. He's describing what
Speaker 1: Leonard Cohen's music didn't, and Adam's son said, he was
Speaker 1: giving you a transcendence delivery system. That's what he was
Speaker 1: trying to do every time. Yeah, I love that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't have the quote in front of me, but
Speaker 1: I think he was talking about that in the context
Speaker 1: of talking about how you know, his music was famously
Speaker 1: kind of sorrowful and gloomy, and his record producers at
Speaker 1: one point we're joking about how they should give out
Speaker 1: razor blades along with his along with his his albums,
Speaker 1: and you know, and that's what he was famous for.
Speaker 1: But what Adam was saying is yes, and I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't only about brokenness. It was about brokenness pointing
Speaker 1: in the direction of transcendence. The song that is best
Speaker 1: known of his and has been covered maybe more than
Speaker 1: any other song in music history, is Hallelujah, and Hallelujah
Speaker 1: is about I mean, it's literally in his words, it
Speaker 1: is about the broken Hallelujah, a cold and broken Hallelujah.
Speaker 1: So I think, and all his music he's constantly expressing
Speaker 1: and wrestling with the bitter sweet, the way in which
Speaker 1: everything is so fundamentally broken and so fundamentally beautiful. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. So there's one other thing I would just
Speaker 1: want to talk about with music for a second, something
Speaker 1: else that you said that I really love. You said
Speaker 1: this type of music. You're talking about a specific song,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't matter of the world. Don't simply discharge
Speaker 1: our emotions. They elevate them. And also you say it's
Speaker 1: only sad music that elicits exalted states of communion, and all, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting thing. I did a little bit
Speaker 1: of research and studying of the whole nature of sad
Speaker 1: music and why we love it so. And you and
Speaker 1: I are not the only ones who feel this way, many,
Speaker 1: many people do. The people whose favorite songs are happy
Speaker 1: listen to them hundred seventy five times on their playlist.
Speaker 1: But the people whose favorite songs are sad listen eight
Speaker 1: hundred times. And they tell, yeah, um, you know, like
Speaker 1: they feel this deep sense of connection, and they tell
Speaker 1: researchers that the music makes them feel connected to the
Speaker 1: sublime and the wondrous. And it's not just because of
Speaker 1: quote negativity per se, because this does not happen from
Speaker 1: music that expresses anger or disgusted or you know, any
Speaker 1: other negative emotions you can think of. It's specifically something
Speaker 1: about sadness. And in fact, there was this one study
Speaker 1: done by an m I T. Economist. It was published
Speaker 1: in an M I T Review under the title how
Speaker 1: are You my Dearest Mozart? And in this study, the
Speaker 1: economist he took all the letters that Mozart, Beethoven, and
Speaker 1: Liszt had written throughout their lives, and he coded each
Speaker 1: of the letters based on the emotions expressed within them,
Speaker 1: and then he correlated the time at which those letters
Speaker 1: had been written and looked at what music the composer
Speaker 1: had produced at that time, and he found that the
Speaker 1: most and the only predictive emotion of all was sadness.
Speaker 1: That when the letters expressed sorrow, that was what reliably
Speaker 1: predicted the most profound and the greatest of their works.
Speaker 1: And again, not any other negative emotion, just sadness, just sorrow.
Speaker 1: So there's something about this state of sorrow, and I
Speaker 1: think anybody who feels a kind of creative spirit in
Speaker 1: them we all know this. We've we've been there. There's
Speaker 1: something about a state of sorrow that puts us in
Speaker 1: mind of a kind of like longing and reaching upwards,
Speaker 1: wanting to transform the sorrow into something else, into something high,
Speaker 1: into something sublime. Yeah, I think that's really fascinating that
Speaker 1: sorrow is the emotion that, as you say, can sort
Speaker 1: of lead us to these higher states of transcendence, of awe,
Speaker 1: of beauty. It's not the other negative emotions. And it
Speaker 1: made me think a little bit about the idea of neurosis, right,
Speaker 1: Neurosis being very often something we're layering on top of
Speaker 1: to avoid feeling, maybe the core emotion, which might be sorrow.
Speaker 1: And so these sort of more neurotic emotions, that's, for
Speaker 1: lack of a better word, I'm going to use them
Speaker 1: anxiety or depression. I'm a depression suffer. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that these things actually are ways of avoiding what is
Speaker 1: actually most healing in some ways. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: That's right. And it's interesting that you use the word
Speaker 1: neurosis because one of the things I did when I
Speaker 1: started researching this book, I basically was researching for years
Speaker 1: what I call the bittersweet tradition, which is all the religions,
Speaker 1: wisdom traditions, artists, philosophers, poets who have been talking about
Speaker 1: this bittersweet state of being for thousands of years all
Speaker 1: across the world. And I looked also at mainstream psychology.
Speaker 1: In mainstream psychology, there really is no word for this state,
Speaker 1: the state of like this beautifully piercing longing that I
Speaker 1: was trying to investigate. The only word that comes close
Speaker 1: is the word of neurosis. As you said, except when
Speaker 1: psychology talks about neurosis, it's only talking about the problem
Speaker 1: of it. It is a real problem when it goes
Speaker 1: too far and it descends into anxiety and depression, and
Speaker 1: for anyone who's been there that those are not pleasant states.
Speaker 1: But there's nothing in a psychology or in this terminology
Speaker 1: that talks about the great transcendent longing that's at the
Speaker 1: heart of human nature and that is intimately connected. The
Speaker 1: same thing that can, when it's not working right, predispose
Speaker 1: us to anxiety and depression is the very thing that
Speaker 1: can bring us to our highest and deepest selves. And
Speaker 1: so a lot of the challenge of life is figuring
Speaker 1: out what to do with that thing and how to
Speaker 1: use its powers, its powers which can be dangerous but
Speaker 1: which can also be beautiful and transformative. You wrote this
Speaker 1: idea of transforming pain into creativity, transcendence and love is
Speaker 1: at the heart of this book, And when I read that,
Speaker 1: I was like, that's as good a description of what
Speaker 1: we've been trying to do over five episodes, right, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a recovering addict, I have depression. You know.
Speaker 1: My whole thing is how do we take this difficult
Speaker 1: stuff that we all face every human life. Buddhist says,
Speaker 1: we're all brothers and sisters in sickness, old age, and
Speaker 1: death right. So for all of us, how do we
Speaker 1: take that and create something meaningful and beautiful exactly? You know?
Speaker 1: In the book, I have this quiz that we developed.
Speaker 1: It's called the Bitter Sweet Quiz. I say we because
Speaker 1: I did it together with the psychologists David Aiden and
Speaker 1: Scott Barry Kaufman David Aiden's at Hopkins, and the quiz
Speaker 1: basically asks a bunch of different questions, questions like do
Speaker 1: you draw comfort or inspiration from a rainy day? Do
Speaker 1: you react very intensely to music our nature? And there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of questions. You can find it either in
Speaker 1: the book or on my website. And what we found
Speaker 1: is that people who score high on the quiz, meaning
Speaker 1: that they tend to this bitter sweet state of mind,
Speaker 1: these same people they have maybe exactly what you would
Speaker 1: predict in terms of strengths and vulnerabilities. Their strengths are
Speaker 1: that they also score high on measures of receptivity to
Speaker 1: wonder and awe and spirituality, and that was a strong correlation.
Speaker 1: But then there is also a more minor but still
Speaker 1: significant correlation with anxiety and depression. It's like the quiz codified.
Speaker 1: I think what you just said and what we've both
Speaker 1: been reaching towards, which is, there is something in this
Speaker 1: bitter sweet state, the state in which you're aware of
Speaker 1: life's joys and sorrows and you're aware of its impermanence,
Speaker 1: and you're deeply connected to that and connected to its beauty.
Speaker 1: There's something about that state that if you're following it
Speaker 1: and you're in your best self moment, let's say it
Speaker 1: can it can deliver you too states of great wonder
Speaker 1: and if you're not careful to manage it right, it
Speaker 1: can also deliver you to a place of depression. The
Speaker 1: question is how do you do it right? I've asked
Speaker 1: that question, I feel like hundreds of different ways, which
Speaker 1: is why does some people take pain and turn it
Speaker 1: into something beautiful? And I don't only mean art, right,
Speaker 1: It could be it could just be loved. It becomes
Speaker 1: a creative force in their life, and I would say
Speaker 1: a good thing in the world. Why does that happen?
Speaker 1: In some cases? And in other cases we see people
Speaker 1: just broken by the difficulties in life, you know, and
Speaker 1: so what are the factors in there, and you in
Speaker 1: the book later on say there's different pathways to the
Speaker 1: peace we all seek. You're trying to sort of answer
Speaker 1: this question, at least it seems to me. And I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna read the four that you came up with
Speaker 1: and let you kind of talk about them first. And
Speaker 1: we was sort of, you know, let it go, some
Speaker 1: degree of you know, just letting things go. The other
Speaker 1: is to know how resilient we are, to really lean
Speaker 1: into resilience. The other is non attachment, right, and trying
Speaker 1: to aspire to a love that is bigger than possession.
Speaker 1: And then the last one, you say, this is the
Speaker 1: one you're going to need to explain, is the way
Speaker 1: of even so carries a different wisdom, one that expresses
Speaker 1: the longing that many of his sense is the force
Speaker 1: that will carry us home. Yeah. So that last one
Speaker 1: comes from a poem that was written by Issa, one
Speaker 1: of the great Japanese Buddhist poets, and it was written
Speaker 1: after he lost his beloved young daughter to smallpox, and
Speaker 1: he says in the poem basically he says, I know
Speaker 1: that this world of do do like d e W.
Speaker 1: I know that this world of do is just a
Speaker 1: world of do but even so, but even so, and
Speaker 1: he's basically saying, you know, I get it that everything
Speaker 1: is in permanent I get it that we're just dew drops.
Speaker 1: Who are We're all of us going to evaporate any minute. Now.
Speaker 1: I understand that. And yet there's something in me that
Speaker 1: doesn't accept that. There's something in me that will insist
Speaker 1: on feeling sorrow and feeling grief for my lost daughter
Speaker 1: no matter what. And I think there's so much beauty
Speaker 1: and wisdom in that poem. He's a trained Buddhist. He's saying,
Speaker 1: even I feel this way, and implicit in the poem
Speaker 1: because there's a reader at the other end of that poem,
Speaker 1: and he knows it. He's not writing it to himself.
Speaker 1: So implicit is there's a reader on the other end
Speaker 1: who feels the exact same way, who, no matter what,
Speaker 1: will feel a grief and feel a longing, and that
Speaker 1: we are united in that feeling. And there's something about
Speaker 1: the uniting of that, the fact that all humans are
Speaker 1: in that state together, that is a great joy of
Speaker 1: its own. There's one young woman who I quote in
Speaker 1: the book who calls this the union between souls, and
Speaker 1: she's talking about how she experiences that at her grandfather's funeral.
Speaker 1: At the funeral, there's a barbershop chorus who sings a
Speaker 1: song and tribute of her grandfather, and she sees her
Speaker 1: father for the first time in her life, crying in
Speaker 1: front of her, crying, crying in public. And she says,
Speaker 1: what she remembers of that funeral is not the sorrow,
Speaker 1: but the union between souls that happened there. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what is bringing to life when he says,
Speaker 1: I may be a Buddhist, and I may understand it
Speaker 1: about the dew drops, but come on, we're all in
Speaker 1: this together. I love that idea. You say, this is
Speaker 1: the ultimate paradox. We transcend grief only when we realize
Speaker 1: that we're connected with all the other humans who can't
Speaker 1: transcend grief, because we will always say but even so,
Speaker 1: even so, what I love about that poem, and I've
Speaker 1: tried to articulate this, and listeners have heard this before.
Speaker 1: I try to articulate and talk about an experience I
Speaker 1: had when I had to put to sleep a dog
Speaker 1: that I love deeply beyond all measure, and I had
Speaker 1: to put down another dog like eight months before and
Speaker 1: for whatever reason I was able to wort of, like say,
Speaker 1: you know what, this is a world of do. It's
Speaker 1: a world of do. We come, we go as creatures,
Speaker 1: we get sick, we die, this is what happens. So
Speaker 1: I sort of set down my argument with the universe,
Speaker 1: and I just was able to descend into the grief itself,
Speaker 1: and it felt beautiful. It was so clear to me
Speaker 1: that that grief was the parallel, the other side of
Speaker 1: the great love. You know, I was having great grief
Speaker 1: because I had had great love. But in order to
Speaker 1: do that, I feel like I had to set down
Speaker 1: my defense against it. I had to sit down the
Speaker 1: but it shouldn't have happened. He's too young. But I
Speaker 1: just had to put down another dog eight months ago,
Speaker 1: the all my arguments with the universe, like you said.
Speaker 1: But even so, even knowing all that, I'm really sad,
Speaker 1: and yet there was a deep beauty in it that
Speaker 1: I had not experienced in other grieving situations where I
Speaker 1: had sort of grieved and argued my way through them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that resonates with you. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: that's thank you for sharing that story. Yeah, it does,
Speaker 1: it does. I think there's something about setting aside our
Speaker 1: griefs too soon. Maybe that feels not human and deprives
Speaker 1: us of the process the way it is even for
Speaker 1: somebody who does get through grief with a great measure
Speaker 1: of resilience. And you know, as as I write in
Speaker 1: the book, the Columbia psychologist George Bonano, who studies grief,
Speaker 1: has found that the vast majority of us kind of
Speaker 1: surprise ourselves by how resilient we end up being in
Speaker 1: the face of grief. It's not true for everybody. Some
Speaker 1: people really get into chronic grief, but many, many people
Speaker 1: are more resilient than they expect to be. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they don't pass through the moments of feeling
Speaker 1: it so incredibly intensely, And it doesn't mean they might
Speaker 1: not feel it. You know, fifty years from now, fifty
Speaker 1: years from the day they've lost their beloved, it can
Speaker 1: come up upon them unawares. So all of that is
Speaker 1: part of the same messy soup. I agree. I think
Speaker 1: there's this idea that is in certain circles, and your
Speaker 1: book is part of this, which beautifully says, hey, difficult
Speaker 1: experiences can become really beautiful things. And we hear that
Speaker 1: and we buy into that, and yet they're still brutal
Speaker 1: when you're in them, there's still like that's a lovely idea.
Speaker 1: I find it helpful to hold a kernel of it
Speaker 1: in my mind some of the time when I'm in
Speaker 1: the darkness, like, Okay, yeah, this is transforming, but you
Speaker 1: still got to go through it, and it is not
Speaker 1: pleasant at certain moments, for sure. Absolutely. And I also
Speaker 1: want to take a minute to acknowledge that I think
Speaker 1: there are for some people some griefs and some traumas
Speaker 1: that are so enormous and so horrible and so beyond
Speaker 1: what any human should be exposed to that that maybe
Speaker 1: you don't ever get to that place, or maybe you
Speaker 1: only get two glimpses of that place. And I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: in particular, there's someone I've come to know over the
Speaker 1: years who as a child was just exposed to such
Speaker 1: a heartrenching, a horrible degree of abuse that you just
Speaker 1: can't even imagine. Well, I guess you can say two
Speaker 1: things about him now as a grown adult. One is
Speaker 1: that his life is forever marred in a very deep way.
Speaker 1: I'm in touch with him every day. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've seen him go through a single day without suffering
Speaker 1: emotionally as a result of what happened to him as
Speaker 1: a child. It's also the case that he is an
Speaker 1: incredibly loving soul who writes poetry every day and does
Speaker 1: great acts of love for the people around him almost
Speaker 1: every day. And so both of these things are true
Speaker 1: at once. But I'm invoking him to say, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's easy, and I do wonder if there are
Speaker 1: some degrees of grief and trauma beyond which maybe a
Speaker 1: full healing isn't possible. To me, the jury is out
Speaker 1: on that question. I agree, I agree, I believe some
Speaker 1: degree of healing is always possible. But how much is
Speaker 1: is up in the eye. I wonder about this a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, being a recovering addict and alcohol ho Look,
Speaker 1: this is a question I think about a lot, which is,
Speaker 1: we know that trauma is a huge indicator for addiction,
Speaker 1: and we know the more traumatic experiences you've had, the
Speaker 1: higher that relationship really is. And so we see some
Speaker 1: people who get sober and you're like, well, my god,
Speaker 1: what they went through was just I can't fathom, you know,
Speaker 1: And yet they get sober, and then you see other
Speaker 1: people that don't, even with much less trauma. So I
Speaker 1: think this sort of healing process, to me, it's deeply mysterious.
Speaker 1: And one of my great mysteries of my adult life
Speaker 1: has always been why does some of us get sober
Speaker 1: and others don't? And for every answer I give, I
Speaker 1: can find people that contradict whatever answer I come up with,
Speaker 1: and I'm left with a mystery. I don't think we
Speaker 1: can fully articulate something as complex as healing, and the
Speaker 1: world is deeply complex, and I think that's what the
Speaker 1: Bitter Sweet to me also takes into account. There's some
Speaker 1: measure in it to me of this is all deeply mysterious,
Speaker 1: and that that mystery can be deeply both terrifying but
Speaker 1: also deeply beautiful. Yeah, that's right. You know how. In
Speaker 1: the book, I give different examples of people who have
Speaker 1: been engaging with the Bittersweet tradition all over the world,
Speaker 1: and one of them is the poet Gabriel Garcia Lorca,
Speaker 1: and he calls the longing aspect of the bitter Sweet,
Speaker 1: like that mysterious longing that so many of us feel.
Speaker 1: He calls it the great force that everyone feels but
Speaker 1: no philosopher can explain. And I think that really embodies
Speaker 1: the mystery that you're talking about. Yeah, in the Bitter
Speaker 1: Sweet tradition, you actually say what I call the bitter
Speaker 1: sweet is a tendency to states of longing, poignancy and sorrow,
Speaker 1: and acute awareness of passing time, and a curiously piercing
Speaker 1: joy at the beauty of the world. So I thought,
Speaker 1: for a minute we could talk about those states individually.
Speaker 1: We've talked a little bit about sorrow, so I don't
Speaker 1: know if we need to go back to sorrow. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll land there. It seems to be where I often,
Speaker 1: even without meaning to know, I'm I'm I'm joke um
Speaker 1: sort of. But let's talk about longing, because this is
Speaker 1: a really interesting one because I've seen longing as a
Speaker 1: deeply beautiful thing, and yet, as somebody who studied a
Speaker 1: lot in Buddhism, we're also told to watch out for craving.
Speaker 1: And you stumble right into this in the book and
Speaker 1: talk about it. So I really wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: that for a little while, because I think that is
Speaker 1: such a big and confusing sort of distinction. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: agree with you, of course, And there is a state
Speaker 1: of longing, a state of yearning that exists across all
Speaker 1: the traditions. Right, there's the longing for the garden of Eden,
Speaker 1: and the longing for Mecca, the longing to be united
Speaker 1: with God, the longing for somewhere over the rainbow, you know.
Speaker 1: In Homer's Odyssey, like that's a story of epic adventure,
Speaker 1: that's the way we think of it, But really that's
Speaker 1: a story of Ulysses longing for home. The adventure hopened
Speaker 1: because he was filled with homesickness for his native Ithaca
Speaker 1: that he hadn't seen, I think for seventeen years or
Speaker 1: something like that. And he's weeping on a beach with homesickness,
Speaker 1: and that's what sets him off on the journey that
Speaker 1: ultimately brings him home. But this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a poorer, wayfaring stranger longing for that world of home,
Speaker 1: there is something about that that this longing for home,
Speaker 1: this ultimate home, whether we think of it explicitly in
Speaker 1: terms of the divine or more metaphorically in terms of
Speaker 1: like longing for perfect union, perfect love, that is central
Speaker 1: to what human beings are, that is central to who
Speaker 1: we are. We are creatures who long for an ultimate
Speaker 1: union and long for an ultimate home, and we come
Speaker 1: into this world crying. A psychoanalyst would say, well, it's
Speaker 1: because we left the womb. But you know, going more
Speaker 1: deeply the womb is the representation of that ultimate home
Speaker 1: for which we long, and so many of the great
Speaker 1: theologians and mystics have taught across all the traditions that
Speaker 1: we should go deeper into the longing because it's the
Speaker 1: longing itself that brings us closer to that for which
Speaker 1: we long. Remy says that he's talking about God or
Speaker 1: a lot. He's saying, the longing you express is the
Speaker 1: return message from the divine that you seek. The grief
Speaker 1: you cry out from is what draws you towards union,
Speaker 1: your pure sadness that wants help. That is the secret cup.
Speaker 1: So all these traditions, and particularly the Sufi tradition, which
Speaker 1: is the mystic side of Islam, all these traditions speak
Speaker 1: of this divine nature of longing. And as soon as
Speaker 1: I started learning about all this and diving into these traditions,
Speaker 1: I felt like a kind of homecoming because I felt like, oh,
Speaker 1: my gosh, you know, this is what I have been
Speaker 1: experiencing all my life and never really understood what it was.
Speaker 1: But then like you I had this big question of like,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not an expert in Buddhism, but I
Speaker 1: know something about it and the way that Buddhism warns
Speaker 1: us against craving. And I thought, well, how do these
Speaker 1: teachings about that you could call a divine nature of longing?
Speaker 1: How do these teachings square with Buddhism's warning against giving
Speaker 1: into craving. So I went to ask a Sufi teacher
Speaker 1: about this actually, and this is llewell and von Lee,
Speaker 1: the great Sufi teacher who's based in California, And I
Speaker 1: asked him this very question at a retreat that he
Speaker 1: gave the difference between longing and Sufism and Buddhism, and
Speaker 1: he says, longing is different from craving. Longing is the
Speaker 1: craving of the soul you want to go home. He says,
Speaker 1: in our culture it's confused with depression, and it's not depression.
Speaker 1: There's a saying in Sufism. Sufism was at first heartache.
Speaker 1: Only later it became something to write about. And then
Speaker 1: he said to me, if you're taken by longing, live it.
Speaker 1: You can't go wrong. If you're going to go to God,
Speaker 1: go with sweet sorrow in the soul. And I say
Speaker 1: all this as an agnostic myself, and yet like there's
Speaker 1: such a deep truth in this message and one that
Speaker 1: I think coext this with the exportation against craving, because
Speaker 1: this longing that we're talking about is more about a
Speaker 1: longing for everything that is good and true and beautiful
Speaker 1: and love. And where's the harm in that? I think
Speaker 1: that we find this paradox right in the center of Buddhism.
Speaker 1: I know I've talked about it with many Buddhist teachers,
Speaker 1: which is this idea of why are we even practicing
Speaker 1: if we don't want something? Like, what are we doing
Speaker 1: if there's not some desire, Like we're not sitting around
Speaker 1: meditating for no reason. We're doing it because there's something
Speaker 1: that we are after we want. And even the Buddha
Speaker 1: talks about you know, great determination. Determination comes when you're like, well,
Speaker 1: there's something I want and I'm determined to get it.
Speaker 1: So I think that even within Buddhism, we sort of
Speaker 1: just have to sit with this paradox that says, yeah,
Speaker 1: there are some things that we want and that longing
Speaker 1: is okay. I love the way Houston Smith, in his
Speaker 1: book The Great World religions. It's a classic um But
Speaker 1: he talks about Hinduism and he paraphrases this, So I
Speaker 1: want to make sure I'm saying that that's what he said,
Speaker 1: not what Hinduism said. But he said about Hinduism that
Speaker 1: basically what Hinduism is saying is your desire is great,
Speaker 1: you just are desiring the wrong things. It's not strong enough,
Speaker 1: it's not big enough, and that that's the normal path
Speaker 1: through life. That when we're younger, we desire the things
Speaker 1: of the world, and that's natural and normal, and as
Speaker 1: we grow old, we start to go, wait, there's something more.
Speaker 1: The things of the world aren't satisfying, so what is
Speaker 1: this bigger thing? So I just love this question because
Speaker 1: it's another one of the things that I feel like
Speaker 1: has been central to what I've asked people on this
Speaker 1: show for five episodes, which is this longing seems clear,
Speaker 1: it seems real, it seems true, it seems innate to
Speaker 1: human nature, and it feels right. And we also know
Speaker 1: that craving over attachment causes a great deal of suffering,
Speaker 1: and so trying to balance that paradox, I think is
Speaker 1: really important work. It's kind of similar to like trying
Speaker 1: to balance that thin line of Okay, I'm gonna turn
Speaker 1: difficulty and sorrow into beauty or I'm going to fall
Speaker 1: off the other side. Yeah, that's a really good way
Speaker 1: of putting it. That's a great way of putting it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, do you think that the
Speaker 1: idea of saying that what we're all ultimately longing for
Speaker 1: is love, by which I don't mean like a new
Speaker 1: relationship kind of love. I mean like like love. Maybe
Speaker 1: that's something that you nights all the different religious traditions,
Speaker 1: including Buddhism. I mean, Buddhism would say a love without attachment. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always loved the Joseph Campbell quote around you know
Speaker 1: that we're not looking for the meaning of life. We're
Speaker 1: looking for the feeling of being alive. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we could call that love, we could call that transcendence.
Speaker 1: We could call it connection. You know. When I think
Speaker 1: about spirituality, and I've got a course called Spiritual habits, right,
Speaker 1: So it's a word I use when I think about
Speaker 1: what it means most deeply, It just to me is
Speaker 1: about connection to what matters. That's going to be different
Speaker 1: for everybody, but it's about connection to what matters, and
Speaker 1: so you know, the words we use might be different,
Speaker 1: but I do think that that's what we're after. And
Speaker 1: as we're talking, I'm thinking about early days of alcoholics
Speaker 1: Anonymous and Bill Wilson was the founder, and he got
Speaker 1: into correspondence via letters with Carl Jung and Young made
Speaker 1: the connection that said, you know, what alcoholics are after
Speaker 1: is an experience of the transcendence. It's in the word
Speaker 1: spirit spirit us. You know we call alcohol spirit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. That's what's being chased. And the only thing
Speaker 1: that's going to be a cure for that is something
Speaker 1: that addresses that need, which is why a A became
Speaker 1: a spiritual program, very religious in its early leanings, and
Speaker 1: it's diversified, but it's pointing to that same thing, that
Speaker 1: there's some connection we need to something that's more than
Speaker 1: us and our little wants. Absolutely, Oh my gosh, that's
Speaker 1: so true. You know, it's funny as you say that.
Speaker 1: So I wrote most of my first book Quiet in
Speaker 1: this amazing, beautiful little cafe and Greenwite village no longer exists,
Speaker 1: but it was called Doma, and Doma had this magical
Speaker 1: spirit about it and it drew artists and writers and
Speaker 1: actors from all over the city. They would come and
Speaker 1: hang out there and work on their stuff and have conversations.
Speaker 1: It was such a magical place. I hung out there
Speaker 1: all the time for a number of years, and once
Speaker 1: or twice a week I would notice there was this
Speaker 1: group of people who would come in the evening to
Speaker 1: Doma and they would sit together and talk. And I
Speaker 1: always noticed them because they seemed so alive and so
Speaker 1: full of spirit, and I wondered where they came from.
Speaker 1: And then at a certain point someone told me, oh,
Speaker 1: there's an a group that meets down the block, and
Speaker 1: this group is coming from there, and it was such
Speaker 1: a striking group of people, like you just noticed, as
Speaker 1: they say, you noticed them immediately, and they had a
Speaker 1: kind of magical property about them, like even more than
Speaker 1: the usual denizens of Doma. Yeah. Absolutely, it can have
Speaker 1: that effect. And I think the other thing you talk
Speaker 1: about in the book is that sometimes the things that
Speaker 1: lead us most commonly to transcendent and exalted experiences is difficulty, sadness,
Speaker 1: a understanding that life is finite, you know, And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people, particularly early on in a A,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was so close to death when I
Speaker 1: came in, you know, as a heroin addict that I
Speaker 1: was just so aware of it that it made life
Speaker 1: sort of glow in a different way. Sometimes I wish
Speaker 1: I could recapture that, you know, a little bit more
Speaker 1: with the emotional maturity I have now and the spiritual
Speaker 1: energy I had then, would be perfect. Oh interesting, interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean there are all those studies that I
Speaker 1: talked about in the books, like um David Yaiden Johns Hopkins,
Speaker 1: the guy who I developed a Bitter Sweet quiz with,
Speaker 1: He's done studies where he has tried to track what
Speaker 1: are the conditions that cause people to experience the great,
Speaker 1: spiritual and transcendent moments of their lives, and he's found
Speaker 1: that one of the most reliable ones is being at
Speaker 1: moments of transition, including moments of great loss, including approaching death,
Speaker 1: and other studies that have found that if you ask
Speaker 1: people to imagine what are the emotions that they would
Speaker 1: feel upon approaching death, Like people assume the emotions would be,
Speaker 1: you know, like you feel depressed and angry and like that,
Speaker 1: But when you talk to people who are actually dying,
Speaker 1: it's it's nothing like that. They're reporting much more uplifted
Speaker 1: and much more spiritual emotions out of the time. So
Speaker 1: there is something about being open to these states of transition.
Speaker 1: Those are some of our great gateway moments, even the
Speaker 1: transitions that feel really difficult and that feel as if
Speaker 1: they're full of loss. It certainly has been the case
Speaker 1: for me. Transitions of all different sorts have been big moments,
Speaker 1: and most of them have been ones that I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have chosen. Yes, exactly exactly. You never choose it. You
Speaker 1: never choose it. This is a very innocuous one or
Speaker 1: very mild one, but I went through and experience like
Speaker 1: this a little bit um. Just this past summer, my
Speaker 1: two sons went to sleepaway camp for the first time.
Speaker 1: Like my husband and I really have devoted everything, you know,
Speaker 1: to our kids over these years, and and suddenly they
Speaker 1: weren't home, and we knew they weren't going to be
Speaker 1: home again for the rest of the summer, and that
Speaker 1: in and of itself was a kind of like foretelling
Speaker 1: of them going away to college and growing up and
Speaker 1: all the rest of it. And the first day or
Speaker 1: so I just felt such a blue feeling, you know,
Speaker 1: like a blue sense of loss. And then life went
Speaker 1: forward and I don't know. My husband and I we
Speaker 1: went to the beach, just the two of us for
Speaker 1: the first time in so long, and it was such
Speaker 1: an incredible experience, and it was like a kind of
Speaker 1: second honeymoon, like like we had only just met and
Speaker 1: at the same time that we had known each other
Speaker 1: all our lives. It was just this great thing that
Speaker 1: would not have happened but for passing through that blue
Speaker 1: moment of transition. Yeah, I mean that's a real one
Speaker 1: that children going away, as you mentioned in a small
Speaker 1: way summer camp and then the big way in college
Speaker 1: like that is a big thing for people. That empty nest,
Speaker 1: to me is a really real thing and it can
Speaker 1: be very difficult, but it's also very fertile, as as
Speaker 1: you sort of found. And you just use a word
Speaker 1: in there that brings me to something else I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about with you because you talk about the
Speaker 1: author Nora mc arnie. Am I saying that right? Oh?
Speaker 1: Nora mcinnernee. Yeah, she has a ted talk and uses
Speaker 1: a phrase in the to love It, which is she
Speaker 1: makes a distinction between moving on and moving forward. And
Speaker 1: you just actually used that word when you talked about
Speaker 1: what happened with you and your husband, you moved forward.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so interesting. I didn't even realize I was
Speaker 1: using her phrase, but it's it's such a helpful of framework.
Speaker 1: So Nora mcinnernee, she's a writer who lost her first
Speaker 1: husband at a very early age, and it was full
Speaker 1: of grief and felt that the culture and everyone she
Speaker 1: knew was kind of sending her the message after some
Speaker 1: period of time, you know, time to move on, move on,
Speaker 1: move on, And she said moving on was impossible, but
Speaker 1: what was possible was moving forward, which is to say,
Speaker 1: she will mourn her first husband for the rest of
Speaker 1: her life at the same time that she went on
Speaker 1: to remarry and create a blended family with her new husband.
Speaker 1: So she has moved forward with him and with her
Speaker 1: husband's memory. You know, the person she is in the
Speaker 1: second Marria, it is not the same person that she
Speaker 1: would have been had she never known and loved and
Speaker 1: lost her husband. So she has moved forward with him
Speaker 1: and with that loss. And I think that's such a
Speaker 1: liberating way to think about loss, because it's like allowing
Speaker 1: us to acknowledge the enormity of it at the same
Speaker 1: time that we're still living our lives. You know, I
Speaker 1: think there's a feeling if you're ever going to feel
Speaker 1: happy again, that that's a kind of abandonment of the
Speaker 1: person who's gone. But the idea of moving forward is
Speaker 1: telling you that there is no abandonment at all. You're
Speaker 1: carrying them with you, You're moving forward with them. I
Speaker 1: love that idea. It makes me think of another phrase
Speaker 1: around grief that I love. It was a guest we
Speaker 1: had on the show. Her names Megan Divine, and she
Speaker 1: says some things can't be fixed, they can only be carried.
Speaker 1: And I loved that idea to like, Okay, you're not
Speaker 1: going to fix the fact that you lost your husband
Speaker 1: or God forbid your child or your dog that you
Speaker 1: love deeply. That's not fixable, right, But it can be carried,
Speaker 1: you know, there is a way to carry it. And
Speaker 1: she says move forward. You know while you're carrying it.
Speaker 1: That phrase is always stuck with me, and it sort
Speaker 1: of resonates a little bit with that one about moving
Speaker 1: forward versus moving on. Yeah, I love that. I'm going
Speaker 1: to have to remember that one. That's that's a really
Speaker 1: great image. So let's talk about poignancy. That's not a
Speaker 1: word that is used a whole lot talk to me
Speaker 1: about poignancy, what it is and how it ties into
Speaker 1: everything we've been talking about. The happy tears that we
Speaker 1: so often feel is poignancy. It's like a grandparent watches
Speaker 1: a grandchild splashing in a puddle, and the grandparent has
Speaker 1: tears in their eyes as they watch that child splashing,
Speaker 1: And why are they crying? Where do the tears come from?
Speaker 1: You know? This is like a beautiful moment. It's a
Speaker 1: moment of incredible love and appreciation for this child. It's
Speaker 1: also a moment of understanding, maybe not on a conscious level,
Speaker 1: that the grandparent may not be there to see the
Speaker 1: child grow up, and that the child herself won't live forever.
Speaker 1: All of it is implicit in these moments when we
Speaker 1: cry those happy tears. You know, when when when you
Speaker 1: tear up at a beautiful TV commercial, that's poignancy. It's poignancy.
Speaker 1: It's like the perfect blending of joy and sorrow. I
Speaker 1: am enormously susceptible to it. Yeah, I was just gonna say,
Speaker 1: I think some of us kind of dance at the
Speaker 1: tip of that needle or whatever the expression is at
Speaker 1: every moment. Oh yeah, I'm just known for tearing up
Speaker 1: at nearly everything, from something that's sad to something like
Speaker 1: you said that sort of poignant, to something about an
Speaker 1: entire crowd of people cheering. In the same way, there's
Speaker 1: something about it's even beautiful. It just gets me. I
Speaker 1: won't bore you or the listeners with it, but there
Speaker 1: are a number of running jokes in my family about
Speaker 1: the absolutely preposterous things that have made me cry. But yeah,
Speaker 1: poignancy is a great word for it. Also, the you
Speaker 1: know the thing you said earlier about exactly what you said,
Speaker 1: what I feel really is love a great title outpouring
Speaker 1: of it. You know, it makes my heart open. There's
Speaker 1: an elevation use that word about sad music. It elevates us.
Speaker 1: All those things feel wrapped into what I'm feeling when
Speaker 1: a T and T makes me cry about calling your grandmother, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know I'm being yanked and manipulated in
Speaker 1: a very obvious way, but what's happening inside me is
Speaker 1: still beautiful, I think, Yeah, Well, the reason the manipulation
Speaker 1: works is because it's pressing. You're an hour deepest, most
Speaker 1: potent buttons. Throughout our whole conversation, I kept thinking of
Speaker 1: the two word phrase by E. M. Forster. Only connect,
Speaker 1: Only connect, That's what he said. And I came across
Speaker 1: that phrase when I was a young girl and it
Speaker 1: just struck me. I was like, Oh my gosh, that's
Speaker 1: the truth of everything. And every single one of those
Speaker 1: examples you just gave was a moment of only connecting.
Speaker 1: I love that phrase. I also love something you say
Speaker 1: near the end of the book. You say, there's the
Speaker 1: simple exhortation to turn in the direction of beauty. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something I've really come to leave. And I also
Speaker 1: think it's a way for people like us who exist
Speaker 1: naturally in this bitter sweet state of being. And you know,
Speaker 1: we were talking at the beginning about the great power
Speaker 1: of the bitter sweet way of being is that it
Speaker 1: can deliver you to these states of wonder and awe
Speaker 1: and spirituality and transcendence. And the dark side of it
Speaker 1: is that it could deliver you to anxiety and depression. Well,
Speaker 1: one of the best ways of marshaling the powers of
Speaker 1: a bitter sweet way of being is to proactively and
Speaker 1: consciously turn in the direction of beauty everywhere that you can,
Speaker 1: because it's all around us. We think of it as
Speaker 1: being reserved for the moment you take the family vacation
Speaker 1: to the Grand Canyon and you and awe, or you know,
Speaker 1: you go to church and you see the light through
Speaker 1: the stained glass windows or whatever. But it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be confined to those specific moments. It can be daily,
Speaker 1: and it can be constant, and it can be proactively
Speaker 1: sought and even chaste. I think we can chase beauty.
Speaker 1: So like, during the time that I was writing this book,
Speaker 1: well during part of it, there was the pandemic, and
Speaker 1: there's been all the social and political strife, and I
Speaker 1: found myself waking up every morning and being tormented by
Speaker 1: my Twitter feed, and I ended up asking people to
Speaker 1: recommend me their favorite art accounts, and I started following
Speaker 1: all these artists, and my my feed now is just
Speaker 1: like one giant cascade of art. And then I started
Speaker 1: every morning posting a favorite piece of art onto my
Speaker 1: social channels um and pairing it with a favorite poem
Speaker 1: or quote or whatever. And that ended up attracting this
Speaker 1: whole community of people who love to start their days
Speaker 1: in that same way. And so it was like a
Speaker 1: whole group of people connecting around, turning in the direction
Speaker 1: of beauty. And I think that's one of the best
Speaker 1: ways we have of channeling this bittersweet power. I absolutely
Speaker 1: love that I created an episode each week for supporters
Speaker 1: of the show I called Teaching Song and a Poem,
Speaker 1: and I talked about something that's on my mind and
Speaker 1: I play a song I love and a poem that
Speaker 1: I love. And what it does for me is it
Speaker 1: orients me all the time looking for that sort of beauty.
Speaker 1: So I think that's a beautiful place for us to end,
Speaker 1: which is with you encouraging us that beauty is all
Speaker 1: around us and to look for it. You made a
Speaker 1: Bitter Sweet playlist which people can find on your website
Speaker 1: and on Spotify. I could not help but match you
Speaker 1: and make my own Bitter Sweet playlist. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I've got to listen to it. I'll send it to you.
Speaker 1: We'll put links in the show notes to Susan's website,
Speaker 1: to her playlist to my playlist on your website. Is
Speaker 1: the Bitter Sweet Test, which I scored, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: very very highly on I'm Shocked. Yeah, So, where can
Speaker 1: people find you? So? The best way to find me
Speaker 1: through my website at Susan Kane dot net. You can
Speaker 1: sign up for my newsletter which will always keep you
Speaker 1: up to date. And I'm also on linked In and
Speaker 1: Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, and you can find the
Speaker 1: Bitter Sweet book really anywhere you get your books. And
Speaker 1: I also have a Bitter Sweet quiz that I've developed,
Speaker 1: which is so cool. We deliver text messages to you
Speaker 1: every morning with little sound recordings from me or art
Speaker 1: to look at written messages for you, so it's just
Speaker 1: like a one minute thing that you get every morning,
Speaker 1: a kind of little uplift start to your day, and
Speaker 1: you can find that on my website as well. Awesome.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming on, Susan. You and
Speaker 1: I are going to go into the post show conversation
Speaker 1: and we are going to discuss some very specific songs
Speaker 1: that were on your Bitter Sweet playlist, and maybe I'll
Speaker 1: introduce you to one or two from mine listeners. If
Speaker 1: you'd like access to the post show conversations to that
Speaker 1: special episode I talked about a couple of minutes ago,
Speaker 1: you can go to one you feed dot net slash joint. Susan,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I loved the book, I've loved
Speaker 1: this conversation, and I've been wanting to talk with you
Speaker 1: for a long time, so I'm really happy we got
Speaker 1: to do this. Thank you so much. It was really
Speaker 1: so lovely to talk to you. I love the frequency
Speaker 1: that you're on. It's very differ from many podcasts, and
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