Speaker 1: It is quite possible to live as the walking dead
Speaker 1: and then at the end discover that you haven't really lived,
Speaker 1: and that's terrifying. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our 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 feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Dr
Speaker 1: John Keig, the professor and Chair of Philosophy at the
Speaker 1: University of Massachusetts. He's written extensively in academic philosophy, but
Speaker 1: his work has also appeared in The New York Times,
Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, The Paris Review, and Harper's Magazine. Today,
Speaker 1: John and Eric discuss his new book, Six Souls, Healthy Minds,
Speaker 1: How William James Can Save Your Life. Hi John, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Aleric, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I am really excited to have you on your somebody
Speaker 1: I've wanted to talk to for several years now, so
Speaker 1: I'm glad we got to make this happen. We're going
Speaker 1: to be discussing, among other things, your latest book called
Speaker 1: Six Souls, Healthy Minds, How William James Can Save Your Life.
Speaker 1: But before we get into that, let's start like we
Speaker 1: always do with the parable. In the Parable, there is
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 1: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 1: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 1: and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second, and he looks up at his
Speaker 1: grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do well. It's interesting. When you first invited me,
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my gosh, that's the story that my
Speaker 1: grandmother used to tell me, except it was two dogs instead. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I've given a bit of thought over the years,
Speaker 1: and at the center of the story is an issue
Speaker 1: of choice, the issue of choice about how you take
Speaker 1: up the circumstances in your life, a choice about how
Speaker 1: you interpret reality, how you interpret the events of life,
Speaker 1: and that it's up to you. You have the choice
Speaker 1: to feed the good wolf. My grandmother used to say that,
Speaker 1: like the act of feeding is an intentional action, and
Speaker 1: so if you're driving your car and you throw a
Speaker 1: sandwich out the window and a dog comes up and
Speaker 1: accidentally eats the sandwich, you haven't fed him in the
Speaker 1: way that the parable intends. That it's about intention and
Speaker 1: you have the choice. I'm reminded of the Holocaust survivor
Speaker 1: Victor Frankel, who also was the founder of logo therapy,
Speaker 1: saying that between stimulus and response, there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of space, and in that space is our freedom, and
Speaker 1: that everything can be taken from a man except one thing,
Speaker 1: the ability to respond to particular events, or the ability
Speaker 1: to interpret one's reality, and I think that this is
Speaker 1: what the parable is getting at. My grandmother would also
Speaker 1: say something to me that I think is more or
Speaker 1: less true. She would say, feeding a dog is a
Speaker 1: daily thing. It's not once in on um. So there's
Speaker 1: a type of chance every day to feed the right animal.
Speaker 1: And that is what life is. It's just the time
Speaker 1: that we have to figure out how to improve the
Speaker 1: nick of time. As Henry David Throw would say, like
Speaker 1: that's what we do here now. I think my grandmother's
Speaker 1: basically right about the daily feedings. But I think that
Speaker 1: if you think about it, a wolf can go a
Speaker 1: long time without eating and then gorges itself. And I
Speaker 1: think that there are those events in life that are occasional,
Speaker 1: that are momentous. We really have a choice about who
Speaker 1: we become, where we tap meaning, what we worship, what
Speaker 1: we obsess over, and those make us who we are.
Speaker 1: In short, that's what the parable means to me. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I love first that this was something that your your
Speaker 1: grandmother shared with you, and I also love pointing out
Speaker 1: both aspects of that, both the sort of daily consistent
Speaker 1: feeding and these other sort of big moments I think
Speaker 1: about my recovery a lot, and we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about that in a second, because William James was named
Speaker 1: by Bill Wilson, who founded a When A saved my
Speaker 1: life a couple of times, he said William James was
Speaker 1: an unintentional co founder of a A, you know, because
Speaker 1: of his ideas. But it makes me think about in
Speaker 1: my recovery. You know, people often asked me like, well,
Speaker 1: what was the big what was the big turning point?
Speaker 1: And I often say, well, here's a couple turning points,
Speaker 1: and those are important, and at the same time, they're
Speaker 1: not any more important than the thousands of choices I've
Speaker 1: made since you know, it's kind of both those things,
Speaker 1: and I like that you point that out. I mean,
Speaker 1: in part, my father, and I say this in American
Speaker 1: Philosophy Love story. My father was a serious alcoholic and
Speaker 1: died at fifty six of esophageal cancer and never took
Speaker 1: that chance to feed the right beast um or did
Speaker 1: in certain respects, but not in the respects that would
Speaker 1: save his life. And I can tell you that at
Speaker 1: the end of his life he had an enormous out
Speaker 1: of regret, which I now see is the scariest part
Speaker 1: of death. It's not the death part that so scary,
Speaker 1: it's rather living a life that you're upset about at
Speaker 1: the end. Yeah. Yeah, that certainly seems to be the case.
Speaker 1: So William James is the subject of your book, and
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, he was listed by Bill Wilson as
Speaker 1: one of the unintentional co founders of A mainly because
Speaker 1: Bill Wilson was so inspired by the varieties of religious experience.
Speaker 1: But there's a great line in the appendix to the
Speaker 1: A A Big Book where I kind of thought we
Speaker 1: could start in which William James describes a couple of
Speaker 1: types of religious experience. One is the is the type
Speaker 1: that he he lists throughout the book, and the type
Speaker 1: that Bill Wilson had, which are these overwhelming, you know,
Speaker 1: white light moments of transformative spiritual experience. But he also
Speaker 1: described something called an educational variety spiritual experience, which the
Speaker 1: founders of A A felt that was important to add
Speaker 1: in because people got this idea like if I don't
Speaker 1: have this huge spiritual experience and I'm not having a
Speaker 1: real one, and you know, William James's point was, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can have those, but you can also have this
Speaker 1: educational variety, which is one where you slowly progress, you
Speaker 1: slowly learn, and yet over a period of time you
Speaker 1: find yourself in a really different place. And I was
Speaker 1: kind of curious. I just thought I'd start by sort
Speaker 1: of bringing that idea up from William james perspective. I'm
Speaker 1: very interested that you hone in on this the sort
Speaker 1: of sacredness of the ordinary and in other words, the
Speaker 1: ways that we can orient ourselves to the universe that
Speaker 1: break us out of our standard, insular, individualistic mindset and
Speaker 1: get us in touch with something a little bit bigger
Speaker 1: than ourselves. And I think that that's what William James
Speaker 1: wants us to think about from beginning to end. I mean,
Speaker 1: he suffered from depression for much of his thirties. He
Speaker 1: considered suicide very serious lee and one of the keys
Speaker 1: for James is to feel connected to something beyond yourself.
Speaker 1: Before David Foster Wallace came along and said that our
Speaker 1: insular mindset was our default setting for human beings, William
Speaker 1: James was also saying pretty much the same thing. In
Speaker 1: an essay called on a Certain Blindness in Human Beings.
Speaker 1: He says that we have an innate tendency to think
Speaker 1: that we are absolutely the center of the universe, and
Speaker 1: these educational devotional experiences or educational uh spiritual experiences where
Speaker 1: habits that James took up every day to make himself
Speaker 1: a little bit more aware of the universe at large
Speaker 1: and his part in it. So in the Varieties he
Speaker 1: says that there is a state of mind familiar to
Speaker 1: religious men and women. I would add where you quote
Speaker 1: be as nothing in the water spouts of God, and
Speaker 1: it's just basically to be silent in the water spouts
Speaker 1: of God. Now you can say that this is a
Speaker 1: grand sort of thing, but you can also in other words,
Speaker 1: a huge transcendent mystical experience. But I can tell you
Speaker 1: that what James believed is that you could get tastes
Speaker 1: of that on a hike up your local hill, or
Speaker 1: you know, listening to birds or praying, or doing any
Speaker 1: number of small acts where your egoism is dislodged and
Speaker 1: you realize that the universe is not an antagonistic force
Speaker 1: but rather a thou James would call it in the Varieties,
Speaker 1: that it was a place where you could inhabit and
Speaker 1: live and live with the universe rather than simply against it.
Speaker 1: And you can do that in lots of little as
Speaker 1: you call them, educational experiences. Yeah, I love that there's
Speaker 1: so many different directions I could go with that, and
Speaker 1: I think where I want to go is kind of
Speaker 1: back to the beginning with your book and William James,
Speaker 1: although I want to get back to habit at some
Speaker 1: point because I love the way you talk about this
Speaker 1: in your book, and I think he makes some really
Speaker 1: nuanced points around habit. But I want to start with
Speaker 1: the title of the book, Six Souls, Healthy minds. What
Speaker 1: does William James mean when he talks about six souls?
Speaker 1: So he makes this distinction in the varieties of religious experience.
Speaker 1: Between these two types of individuals are two types of mindsets.
Speaker 1: And the healthy minded is the person who is born
Speaker 1: into the world and who immediately thinks that the universe
Speaker 1: is some way fitted to his or her purposes, that
Speaker 1: they feel at home in the universe. While the six
Speaker 1: souled individual is born into the world and he or
Speaker 1: she feels themselves as alien, that the world is an
Speaker 1: antagonistic place, or, as Albert Kamu would later say, is
Speaker 1: completely indifferent to our human purposes, and that it's a
Speaker 1: really frightening place. And this is the six sold individual.
Speaker 1: And I think that while James as often regarded as
Speaker 1: the father of American pragmatism as a sort of go
Speaker 1: forth and conquer philosophy of philosophy of action, what we
Speaker 1: forget is that this philosophy of action, his pragmatism was
Speaker 1: put together and his psychology. He was father of empirical psychology.
Speaker 1: His psychology and philosophy was a response to his own
Speaker 1: six solness. So he was the doctor who would cure himself,
Speaker 1: and he did this through his philosophy and through his psychology.
Speaker 1: Today we don't think about psychology or philosophy is saving
Speaker 1: your life. But I think in William James's case, as
Speaker 1: he struggled with suicide and depression, the thoughts that he
Speaker 1: came across could have a life saving value. And that's
Speaker 1: what I meant by the book. In moments of crisis,
Speaker 1: philosophy can respond in meaningful emotional ways. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always loved that Six Souls from William James and
Speaker 1: this idea of people who had to be essentially twice born.
Speaker 1: You know, the people who were born once who sort
Speaker 1: of were born content and happy and felt like the
Speaker 1: world was a good place. And those people who had
Speaker 1: to be sort of born a second time. And I
Speaker 1: am definitely in that ladder camp, you know, I would say,
Speaker 1: for as long as I could possibly recall, I think
Speaker 1: I felt like, hmmm, I don't quite fit here. You know,
Speaker 1: something just isn't right. You know, the world and I
Speaker 1: just rub each other the wrong way. And James had
Speaker 1: that feeling through his twenties and thirties. I mean, he
Speaker 1: came out of this family that encouraged him to be free,
Speaker 1: to exercise a huge amount of choice over his life.
Speaker 1: He came out of a family that was quite a
Speaker 1: fluent and when you're told to be free all the time,
Speaker 1: it's no surprise that James felt constrained and felt anxious
Speaker 1: about the choices that he had, And so through his
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties he didn't know which way to go.
Speaker 1: He was paralyzed paralysis by analysis. He also thought a
Speaker 1: lot about the fact that we are mortal beings. We
Speaker 1: have bodies um that are subject to natural forces that decay,
Speaker 1: And how do you face human infinitude? How do you
Speaker 1: face the fact that there's a inordinate amount of suffering
Speaker 1: in the world, And when you suffer, it seems like
Speaker 1: you're at the center of things once again, as Wallace
Speaker 1: and James would say. And I think that James's philosophy
Speaker 1: begins to respond to that and say, let's see if
Speaker 1: these six old folks can feel themselves a little bit
Speaker 1: more in harmony with a world that they once took
Speaker 1: as alien. In part, when he answers the question in
Speaker 1: the nineties is life worth living? That's what James is
Speaker 1: telling his listeners at the Cambridge y m c A.
Speaker 1: He's saying, at a very deep level, you are not alone.
Speaker 1: And all you need to do is look open your
Speaker 1: eyes and you'll see that you're not alone. And I
Speaker 1: think that's a very powerful message. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: that message of you're not alone in feeling like a
Speaker 1: six soul is so important. I don't know how many
Speaker 1: people we would say are once born or need to
Speaker 1: be twice born, or six souls or not, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: There's a ton who have this six old sense. And
Speaker 1: I also think, I mean James's answer to this question
Speaker 1: is life worth living? Is so trenchant. I think usually
Speaker 1: we think about this question being answered in two mutually
Speaker 1: exclusive ways. There's the yes and the no, and the
Speaker 1: healthy minded will always say yes. Right every day the week.
Speaker 1: The six sold when they're going through real sickness of
Speaker 1: the soul say no, right and they say no, life
Speaker 1: is not worth living. It's like, this is not the
Speaker 1: place for me. Give me over to the blessed calm
Speaker 1: of non existence. And James had flur did with that
Speaker 1: no through his twenties and thirties, and what he does
Speaker 1: in the eighteen nineties when he's invited to address a
Speaker 1: number of suicides on Harvard's campus in this lecture, which
Speaker 1: becomes the essay is Life forth living? He says it's
Speaker 1: not yes or no. Is life worth living? He says
Speaker 1: maybe it depends on the liver. You might think that
Speaker 1: it's flippant, and in part James is kind of there's
Speaker 1: a bit of humor to James's comment, but actually it's
Speaker 1: dead serious because James is saying, it depends. It's up
Speaker 1: to you. You get to choose the one you feed,
Speaker 1: You get to choose it. It's up to you to
Speaker 1: make life forth living. In part, so when we're feeling disempowered,
Speaker 1: when we're feeling real sickness of the soul, we feel
Speaker 1: like we don't have freedom, like we don't have power,
Speaker 1: James is saying maybe it depends on the liver is
Speaker 1: saying it's still up to you. You still have the choice. Now,
Speaker 1: some of my students say to me, I just want
Speaker 1: to yes, Okay, I just want the yes. Tell me yes,
Speaker 1: Dr Keg, and I say, maybe the maybe is better
Speaker 1: because maybe the maybe also says that your feelings are
Speaker 1: not invalid. You are not crazy to think that you
Speaker 1: are out of joint with the world, right, But it
Speaker 1: also says maybe you should hold on and not throw
Speaker 1: yourself off the bridge, because then maybe is always there.
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, maybe maybe life is worth living. Maybe
Speaker 1: tomorrow you'll wake up and see it slightly differently. Maybe
Speaker 1: their possibilities out there. So I mean, I'm curious to
Speaker 1: know what you think about his response to that or
Speaker 1: his answer to the question. I agree with everything you said,
Speaker 1: and I think the other thing about a maybe answer
Speaker 1: is that when you hear that, you're like, oh wait
Speaker 1: a second, somebody's kind of telling me the truth here,
Speaker 1: Because when somebody just goes is life worth living? And
Speaker 1: they go of course it is, and you're like, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem that way to me. I feel like
Speaker 1: you're not hearing me. When someone goes, maybe you suddenly
Speaker 1: go maybe this guy is gonna get me. Well, hang on, Like,
Speaker 1: you make a great point you describe being at the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Bridge and there being I don't remember exactly what
Speaker 1: the sign said, like something like life is worth living.
Speaker 1: And you make the point like how many people are
Speaker 1: dissuaded from jumping by that sign that says life is
Speaker 1: worth living? You're like, well, but when you hear somebody
Speaker 1: state the truth, you know, it's what drew me to
Speaker 1: Buddhism so much when I first heard it, as I
Speaker 1: went again, depending on how you translate it, life is suffering,
Speaker 1: life is full of suffering, whatever you want to say.
Speaker 1: But I felt like somebody is starting from a position
Speaker 1: I can get on board with, you know, and I
Speaker 1: think that is life worth living. Maybe feels like it
Speaker 1: starts from a position that feels to me like this
Speaker 1: is somebody who has wrestled with the very real fact
Speaker 1: that sometimes it doesn't feel like it. So I can
Speaker 1: trust and believe this person absolutely. I mean, the sign
Speaker 1: wouldn't be at the bottom of the Brooklyn Bridge if
Speaker 1: there weren't those individuals who proved that this is not
Speaker 1: a universal I mean, the sign is there for a reason.
Speaker 1: It's because for many people they decide that life is
Speaker 1: not worth living, and James is saying, hey, slow down, like,
Speaker 1: let's just say maybe for the time being. Right, the
Speaker 1: more I thought about it, it's a deep philosophical point,
Speaker 1: which is I think James is encouraging us to realize
Speaker 1: that the most meaningful things in life, where we tap meaning,
Speaker 1: where we tap significance, are actually shot through with him. Maybe.
Speaker 1: What I mean by that is James was urging us
Speaker 1: to realize that the universe is full of possibilities and
Speaker 1: that we get to explore them, both at our own
Speaker 1: risk but also at our own reward. That is what
Speaker 1: it maybe is. It's possibility. And if I ask my students,
Speaker 1: I say to them, hey, what do you find most meaningful?
Speaker 1: And are like, well, I fell in love with my girlfriend,
Speaker 1: or um, I like playing soccer, or I like playing music.
Speaker 1: In other words, those are the things that get them
Speaker 1: up in the morning. Right, I say to them, I say,
Speaker 1: would that first kiss or would that love have been
Speaker 1: as meaningful if everything was guaranteed about it? Wasn't there
Speaker 1: a big maybe? Isn't there always a big maybe at
Speaker 1: the base of love? Right? Similarly with soccer, would you
Speaker 1: play the game if you knew the outcome already? It's
Speaker 1: a big maybe. And similarly with music, it's the variation
Speaker 1: and possibilities that you explore in music that actually are
Speaker 1: the most meaningful. So don't tell me that a maybe
Speaker 1: is an important James says. At the end of the essay,
Speaker 1: he says, the world is full of maybes, and I
Speaker 1: think that that's probably where meaning comes from. James is suggesting,
Speaker 1: I think, to us, I love that you say. I
Speaker 1: think William James's philosophy saved my life, or more accurately,
Speaker 1: encouraged me not to be afraid of life. Say a
Speaker 1: little more about that. I mean, there are a number
Speaker 1: of different aspects to James's philosophy that have helped me
Speaker 1: through some very very dark times. So when I was
Speaker 1: twenty and I attempted suicide, James was there basically saying,
Speaker 1: anyone who hasn't considered suicide. He says this at the
Speaker 1: end of his life to his friend Benjamin Blood. He says,
Speaker 1: anyone who is not at least thought about suicide or
Speaker 1: whether life is worth living hasn't really had a full education.
Speaker 1: And I thought, oh, well, at least I'm not crazy.
Speaker 1: And then when I look at James, what I see
Speaker 1: is a companion and misery. Arthur Schopenhauer often UH talks
Speaker 1: about this a companion in misery, at least through his
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties. If you look at James's letters through
Speaker 1: those times, there's some deep suffering. And I think sometimes
Speaker 1: philosophy can afford us those individuals where we see, oh,
Speaker 1: this experience that I'm having right now, this this location
Speaker 1: that I feel, this alienation that I feel is part
Speaker 1: of the human experience, and individuals have the opportunity to
Speaker 1: form lives as a response to that threat of alienation,
Speaker 1: and James does this. I think that as he works
Speaker 1: through his psychology, which is published in James is crafting
Speaker 1: a sort of how to manual on becoming better adjusted,
Speaker 1: or as a means to being twice born if you're
Speaker 1: six sold. Now, the psychology looks pretty the principles of
Speaker 1: psychology looks pretty dry. But if you look in it,
Speaker 1: James is noticing a couple of different things. He's formulating
Speaker 1: a theory of the emotions which hadn't been formed before
Speaker 1: or developed before, which was that the body keeps the
Speaker 1: score to use that famous expression. In other words, our
Speaker 1: bodily positions, how we use our bodies, how we hold ourselves,
Speaker 1: and what we do with our bodies can significantly change
Speaker 1: the way that you feel. James was ahead of his
Speaker 1: time when it came to yogic practice, right. He was
Speaker 1: a big early supporter of yoga in this regard. James also,
Speaker 1: in the Principles of Psychology, articulated a theory of habit,
Speaker 1: which really did a lot for my psyche. James was
Speaker 1: not alone in the history of philosophy and thinking that
Speaker 1: habit was the great ballast of human behavior. Aristotle thought
Speaker 1: that too. But what James is interested in is how
Speaker 1: good habits are formed and how bad habits are broken.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's what James gives us in
Speaker 1: the Principles. So let's go into habit a little bit
Speaker 1: more and talk about kind of what you just said there,
Speaker 1: how good habits are formed and how bad habits are broken,
Speaker 1: and then maybe we can go from there into what
Speaker 1: he saw is the downside of habit in some cases,
Speaker 1: any kind of habit. You know, he saw a downside too.
Speaker 1: But before we get to that, let's let's start with
Speaker 1: what did he have to teach us about how good
Speaker 1: habits are formed for better or for worse. Organisms are
Speaker 1: plastic in nature. In other words, they're malleable. Our bodies
Speaker 1: are malleable. Our neural nets are malleable. And donald have
Speaker 1: found out in the twentieth century that neurons that uh
Speaker 1: fire together wire together. And James says that patterns of
Speaker 1: behavior instantiate themselves in our bodies and they prepare us
Speaker 1: to have those actions or have those events again. So
Speaker 1: habit is a type of heuristic or a shorthand tool
Speaker 1: that allows us to negotiate our worlds in much easier
Speaker 1: ways than if we had to, you know, start from
Speaker 1: scratch or reconstruct the wheel. James's theory of habits says
Speaker 1: that activities that you do form patterns in your body
Speaker 1: or in your way that you carry yourself. And he
Speaker 1: says that this is a good thing for most of
Speaker 1: human life. But there's a downside to habit, namely that
Speaker 1: it can make us less aware of the surroundings in
Speaker 1: which we find ourselves. James was very worried about autopilot
Speaker 1: okay in life. So James was a big proponent of
Speaker 1: choice and freedom, and he wanted to say that habit
Speaker 1: had its place, but then also it should be guarded
Speaker 1: against if it got a life of its own, or
Speaker 1: if it took on a life of its own. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has a phrase that you use, which is the
Speaker 1: irrepressible but subterranean force of habit, you know, And I
Speaker 1: love that idea that, Yeah, habits are I guess it's
Speaker 1: kind of obvious, but they're good when they're good. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, good habits carry us along. Bad habits carry
Speaker 1: us along in a bad way. And then I think
Speaker 1: the point that you were making is this, even the
Speaker 1: things that seems sort of neutral, they deadness to life.
Speaker 1: We just go through the motions, or we go through autopilot.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's one of the great things about humans
Speaker 1: is that we can automate a certain amount of behavior
Speaker 1: and thinking. But it's also equally bad news, I think,
Speaker 1: and I love that you referred to it. You say,
Speaker 1: this was a personal insight for me regarding the dangers
Speaker 1: of midlife, and so I'd love to talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that beyond just broadly. But why to you
Speaker 1: did it feel like this was a particular danger of midlife?
Speaker 1: I think when you are young, you have all of
Speaker 1: these great expectations, and then as you grow older. I'm
Speaker 1: forty two now, which won't seem very old to a
Speaker 1: lot of your listeners, but um, when I was twenty,
Speaker 1: it seemed ancient. And when you get older, you realize
Speaker 1: that the expectations that you have, that you've fallen practically
Speaker 1: short of them, and that your life has fallen into
Speaker 1: a type of mundane rat race. So you go to
Speaker 1: work only to make money so that you can buy
Speaker 1: gas so that you can drive your car to work,
Speaker 1: and the cycle continues, and then um, one day on
Speaker 1: the subway, perhaps you are looking around and a question
Speaker 1: comes to you that is tinged with weariness and amazement,
Speaker 1: and the question is why, Like, why the hell am
Speaker 1: I doing this? And I think that that was one
Speaker 1: of the drives to go back into William James. Additionally,
Speaker 1: when the book came out, I was going through some
Speaker 1: serious health problems. I had a cardiac arrest at the
Speaker 1: age of forty after running on a treadmill, and it
Speaker 1: was a wake up call after the bypass surgery that
Speaker 1: my habits needed to change, that I needed to stop
Speaker 1: drinking as much as I was, that I needed to
Speaker 1: eat more, that I needed exercise less, that I needed
Speaker 1: to not be so obsessive about life that the habits
Speaker 1: that I had formed are just we're killing me um.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was a congenital issue, but it was
Speaker 1: also an issue brought on by certain types of behaviors,
Speaker 1: and I needed to change those those habits, and James
Speaker 1: really has now helped me a great deal out of that.
Speaker 1: James says that you should do two things that are
Speaker 1: difficult every day, just for the habit of it or
Speaker 1: just for the practice. And sometimes the hardest thing to
Speaker 1: do is to break even rigorous habits UM. In other words,
Speaker 1: if you have a habit of treating yourself poorly UM
Speaker 1: and pushing yourself to extremes, the hardest thing that one
Speaker 1: can do is simply sit and rest, and with bypass surgery,
Speaker 1: you have no choice. But James was there to say, Hey,
Speaker 1: you formed habits. Now unfortunately or fortunately, you have to
Speaker 1: break them. I think this idea of habit is so
Speaker 1: interesting because I generally think have created good habits in
Speaker 1: my life that support me UH and my overall well being,
Speaker 1: and they do narrow the experiences that I tend to have,
Speaker 1: you know, So I've been really interested in this idea
Speaker 1: that we need a certain amount of habit and a
Speaker 1: certain amount of flexibility. You know, how do we have both?
Speaker 1: You know, how do I have enough habit that it
Speaker 1: supports my well being, enough positive habits? And yet how
Speaker 1: do I have enough flexibility in life that things don't
Speaker 1: get so dull? I mean, for James, it was also
Speaker 1: an issue of consciousness. It wasn't just the actions that
Speaker 1: you took, but it's also the ways that you can
Speaker 1: look at the world and the willingness to look at
Speaker 1: different things. Usually our angle of vision is so narrow
Speaker 1: that we see the world through a very circumscribed frame.
Speaker 1: It's usually a frame of utility. It's usually a frame
Speaker 1: of like do we have money to pay rent? Are
Speaker 1: our kids doing okay? Are our partners doing all right?
Speaker 1: Do I have clothes for tomorrow? It's usually about me,
Speaker 1: you know, all about me, all about I. And James
Speaker 1: was repeatedly saying that consciousness is mind blowing lee large.
Speaker 1: I mean, the abilities that we have to take in
Speaker 1: the world are actually quite astonishing. Our habitual lives narrow
Speaker 1: what we can see and what we can make sense of.
Speaker 1: But he was always encouraging us to see beyond them.
Speaker 1: He tells this famous story about going through a poor
Speaker 1: community in Appalachia, and James goes by a house and
Speaker 1: he admits to his listeners he says, at first, this
Speaker 1: house looked so horrible. I couldn't imagine how anyone would
Speaker 1: live there. It didn't look at all like my Cambridge house.
Speaker 1: And then James says to himself, he says, how narrow
Speaker 1: and how silly that perspective is. And that's the certain
Speaker 1: blindness in human beings. I mean, it's just that you
Speaker 1: interpret reality through yourself, right, And then James comes to
Speaker 1: the position. He says, overcoming that certain blindness would be
Speaker 1: something like realizing that others live lives that are as
Speaker 1: vibrant as your own, and as meaningful as your own,
Speaker 1: and absolutely different from you, but still meaningful and vibrant.
Speaker 1: When we talk about habit, it's not just an action,
Speaker 1: it's also about the way that you take in the world.
Speaker 1: It's about how you see the world. Yeah, you say
Speaker 1: in the book at one point, our volition and the
Speaker 1: practical pursuits that structure and organize our lives is what
Speaker 1: keeps us from recognizing the full range of experience. We
Speaker 1: regularly confuse what is urgent and immediate with what is
Speaker 1: actually important or miraculous. Right, And I am gil tea
Speaker 1: of this in the extreme, right, I confuse the immediate
Speaker 1: for the actually important. And I mean, whatever I urgently
Speaker 1: need to do in a day takes over my entire world, right,
Speaker 1: and I might very easily miss what is actually significant
Speaker 1: or meaningful. I mean, I think about your two wolves again,
Speaker 1: and I think that the bad wolf, the wolf of
Speaker 1: selfishness or the wolf of fear, when the wolf of insecurity,
Speaker 1: the wolf of cruelty, this wolf is fed. If we
Speaker 1: don't actively choose the other wolf, right, we're going to
Speaker 1: fall into the wolf that you wouldn't want to find
Speaker 1: in a dark alley. I mean, like it's just going
Speaker 1: to happen because of the fact that we are limited
Speaker 1: by our own vision, or we think we are limited
Speaker 1: by our own vision. We're taught that the most important
Speaker 1: things in life are the most immediate, the most you know, local,
Speaker 1: and that's simply not the case for James and for
Speaker 1: a number of other philosophers who have helped through the years.
Speaker 1: Right to quote James, he says, blind and dead. Does
Speaker 1: the clamor of our own practical interest make us to
Speaker 1: all other things? I just love that idea, you know.
Speaker 1: Can we look beyond what seems like our to do
Speaker 1: list or the things that we think will make us
Speaker 1: happy and and be present. It's why for me, I
Speaker 1: have chosen Zen as my spiritual practice because Zen is
Speaker 1: obsessed on this point. You know. Zen is very much
Speaker 1: focused on your direct and immediate experience, like all the
Speaker 1: thoughts about it, all the thoughts about everything that you
Speaker 1: need to do, Like just experience what you're experiencing, but
Speaker 1: try and experience it more deeply, whatever it is. It's
Speaker 1: why for me, it's the practice that I have sort
Speaker 1: of landed on is because I become imminently practical. Just
Speaker 1: what's the next thing that needs done? You know, just
Speaker 1: let me give me a list of things that needs
Speaker 1: checked off. I love it. Let me just work my
Speaker 1: way through the list, you know. But that's not where
Speaker 1: the deeper experience of being comes from. The comment blind
Speaker 1: and dead is telling if we are blind to this
Speaker 1: wider or deeper reality, that we have a chance to
Speaker 1: experience the maybes of life. Right. If we are blind
Speaker 1: to those, there's a very good chance that we're going
Speaker 1: to reach the end of our days and discover that
Speaker 1: we haven't lived, like thorough says. I mean, James is
Speaker 1: inheriting that American philosophical position that was expressed in Transcendentalism.
Speaker 1: Live deliberately. That's the message of Walden, so that when
Speaker 1: you get to the end of life, you don't discover
Speaker 1: that you haven't lived. And when I saw my father
Speaker 1: watch my father die, I thought to myself, it is
Speaker 1: quite possible to live as the walking dead and then
Speaker 1: at the end discover that you haven't really lived. And
Speaker 1: that's terrifying, and it really drives a per person into
Speaker 1: living more deeply or meaningfully. I think so, for example,
Speaker 1: I think that finitude and the fact that we only
Speaker 1: have a certain number of years and who knows when
Speaker 1: it's gonna the end is actually going to come, is
Speaker 1: an impetus to live more deeply. If you only have
Speaker 1: a few more years, your eyes get wide. Some people
Speaker 1: sense things more deeply. I guess some people also shut down.
Speaker 1: But I'd like to think that the end is an
Speaker 1: impetus to live now. Yeah, And I want to talk
Speaker 1: about something else that you say here in this section
Speaker 1: of the book where you're talking about William James kind
Speaker 1: of has a can do mentality, right, there's this will
Speaker 1: to believe. You know, there's a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: taking life sort of by the horns. But you say
Speaker 1: that this deeper experience of being is something that we
Speaker 1: can't just force to happen. We can orient towards it,
Speaker 1: we can block it, but there's an openness to it
Speaker 1: and a receptivity to it that I don't quite know
Speaker 1: how you describe in the book, but I think you
Speaker 1: used the word that that's unsettling in a way, and
Speaker 1: I agree. I feel very similar. Like I've hit this
Speaker 1: point in the last several years where I've gone, okay,
Speaker 1: my will is a really useful tool for me in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. And yet when it comes to
Speaker 1: this deeper experience of being, there's a certain openness, receptivity,
Speaker 1: almost a grace that I'm not real comfortable with you
Speaker 1: and I both. I mean, I was brought up on action.
Speaker 1: I mean I was taught that if you work hard,
Speaker 1: work yourself to the bone, that maybe you will be
Speaker 1: worthy of love. I mean, like, and I was just
Speaker 1: taught that. I mean, my mother didn't intend that message
Speaker 1: to come through, but that's the one that came through,
Speaker 1: and I love her to dust. She did a wonderful
Speaker 1: job if she's ever listening to this. But um, if
Speaker 1: we go back to that quote about to be as
Speaker 1: nothing in the water spouts of God, the first part
Speaker 1: of that quote is telling it's to hold your will
Speaker 1: in abeyance and be as nothing in the water spouts
Speaker 1: of God abeyance. In other words, you realize that the
Speaker 1: will can only take you so far, and you actually
Speaker 1: do nothing and you just receive. Okay. And for somebody
Speaker 1: who's so used to working and doing and going and
Speaker 1: going and going, that's incredibly difficult, because you feel if
Speaker 1: you're not acting, then you're not worthwhile and that you're
Speaker 1: not worthy. And one of the things that I've learned
Speaker 1: very recently, very very recently, is that that is not
Speaker 1: the case. That you can receive and the proper response
Speaker 1: to receiving life is gratitude rather than just working your
Speaker 1: butt off. I will say one thing about the book
Speaker 1: about how it's structured, is that the chapters proceed in
Speaker 1: this way, where you start in the Six Soul, you
Speaker 1: talk about William James's go out and Conquer the world
Speaker 1: attitude with the will to believe, and then you get
Speaker 1: into consciousness and like we say, it's an issue of
Speaker 1: receiving sight seeing things again, it's more passive. And then
Speaker 1: you get into this issue of transcendence and hope and
Speaker 1: then wonder. And what I was trying to do is
Speaker 1: to very subtly suggest that these are the steps that
Speaker 1: one might take. And for me, the hope, gratitude, wonder,
Speaker 1: transcendence are really difficult. I'm still way back. I mean
Speaker 1: I'm still most days, I'm still way back, and just
Speaker 1: the work your butt off mode as I gro older,
Speaker 1: I'm getting better, or at least I hope I am. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that sort of in some ways mirrors my
Speaker 1: journey in some way. Certainly, you know, getting over alcoholism
Speaker 1: and addiction, there was an element of very active work
Speaker 1: in that. You know, you go to meetings, you help
Speaker 1: or alcoholics, you read the books, you you know that
Speaker 1: there was a real element of that. And I still find,
Speaker 1: you know, if I look at my own spiritual life,
Speaker 1: there is an element of will in it for sure,
Speaker 1: and there's an element of openness and receptivity, and it's both.
Speaker 1: And and then we talk about this paradox all the time,
Speaker 1: this paradox of like you need enough will to sort
Speaker 1: of practice and then yet you have to completely let
Speaker 1: go at that point, and it is paradoxical. It's challenging
Speaker 1: to do. If it was just do one or the other,
Speaker 1: it would be easier to figure out, like, Okay, just
Speaker 1: will your way through it. Okay, figure that out. Or
Speaker 1: if it was like, just sit back and do nothing
Speaker 1: and wait for things to happen. Okay, I could probably
Speaker 1: wrap my head around that too. Eventually. It's the both
Speaker 1: that I think makes it tricky. I think so too.
Speaker 1: I mean, I very recently discovered a couple of William
Speaker 1: James's copies of Frederick Nietzsche, and Nietzsche in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century was talking about the same thing. I mean. Nich
Speaker 1: is famous for the will to power and philosophy of
Speaker 1: the hammer and all this masculine action stuff. But he
Speaker 1: also believes that we need what he calls the more
Speaker 1: fatigue or the love of fate, which is to say,
Speaker 1: you can orient yourself to the circumstances that you are
Speaker 1: faced with. This is not an issue of changing them.
Speaker 1: Some things you can't change. I can't change my father.
Speaker 1: I can't change the genetic disposition I was given. I
Speaker 1: can't change lots of things. But I can orient myself
Speaker 1: to those things in ways that I come to embrace them.
Speaker 1: And even the most embarrassing or disgusting or despicable things
Speaker 1: you can come to not only accept but understand it
Speaker 1: as just part of yourself, of what you became, which
Speaker 1: is not simply resignation. It's orienting yourself to the things
Speaker 1: that you cannot change in such a way that you
Speaker 1: feed the good wolf. I want to read a line
Speaker 1: that you wrote here and I want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about it. You say, when my six soul struggles,
Speaker 1: it is I think because I can't find generate, or
Speaker 1: even fain the zest. James is right that it can
Speaker 1: be found everywhere and activity, perception, imagination, or reflection, which
Speaker 1: I have to say, is little comfort when I can't
Speaker 1: find it anywhere. So let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: what does that zest mean? And I would say that
Speaker 1: that is also my primary way that I feel sick
Speaker 1: sold anymore? Is it manifests as a lack of zest.
Speaker 1: Zest is at the center of an essay that James
Speaker 1: writes called what makes Life Significant, and he says that
Speaker 1: what makes life significant is the zest of life, that
Speaker 1: feeling of excitement, the feeling of utter connection, the feeling
Speaker 1: of having your eyes wide open. And he was always
Speaker 1: on the lookout for it. I mean, James might have
Speaker 1: talked about putting your will in abeyance, but he was
Speaker 1: always on the lookout and on the move to find zest.
Speaker 1: He bored very easily. And I think that your question
Speaker 1: is a good one. In other words, how do you
Speaker 1: maintain interest, how do you maintain attention? How do you
Speaker 1: actually see something anew that you've seen over and over
Speaker 1: and over again. So we're returning to the question of
Speaker 1: habit and the question of the midlife. And when you're
Speaker 1: in midlife or the middle years, you tend to repeat
Speaker 1: yourself and repeat action that you take over and over again,
Speaker 1: and it's very difficult to see the newness in them.
Speaker 1: It's very difficult to see anything particularly significant or meaningful
Speaker 1: or valuable about them. Just doesn't get you here right
Speaker 1: right in the solar plexus. Right, that's the feeling of zest,
Speaker 1: And I think one of the keys to maintaining it,
Speaker 1: I mean, in part its imagination, and it's the ability
Speaker 1: to see things anew. I would go back to David
Speaker 1: Foster Wallace in This is Water. He says that he's
Speaker 1: standing in a supermarket convenience store in a line, and
Speaker 1: everybody's pissing him off because they're ahead of him. But
Speaker 1: if he can just use a little bit of imaginative
Speaker 1: insight and to choose to think differently about this situation,
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, the line changes. He notices
Speaker 1: people in the line, He notices that the cashier is overtaxed.
Speaker 1: He notices that the person who is behind him probably
Speaker 1: deserves to be ahead of him. And the ability to
Speaker 1: see things differently, I think is crucial in maintaining the
Speaker 1: ability to sense zest. And James said that the real
Speaker 1: task of philosophy is to think otherwise, in other words,
Speaker 1: to think outside the box. And I think that also
Speaker 1: has existential value because it allows us to see zest
Speaker 1: in the ordinary, or experience zest in the midst of
Speaker 1: the ordinary. I'll tell you something very personal, which is,
Speaker 1: before bypass surgery, I performed my duties in parenting very
Speaker 1: dutifully right, and I did the same thing every day.
Speaker 1: But after a while I wasn't experiencing the zest. And
Speaker 1: now after surgery, for some reason, even the little mundane
Speaker 1: things in life can sometimes I'm no Buddhist master here,
Speaker 1: like I'm not feigning to be, but sometimes I can
Speaker 1: feel something new in an experience that I've had repeatedly.
Speaker 1: But then I realized that I actually haven't had it repeatedly.
Speaker 1: That there is newness, right, you just have to open
Speaker 1: your eyes to it. My grandmother would say, you can't
Speaker 1: step in the river at the same place twice. It's
Speaker 1: like a very very wise woman. So I fully agree
Speaker 1: with what you're saying though about sast Yeah, it's so
Speaker 1: interesting because I think my Zen training has taught me
Speaker 1: look more closely, just look again, look deeper, don't seek variety,
Speaker 1: just look at what's already there, look at it more deeply.
Speaker 1: And that is wonderful and really good training. And I've
Speaker 1: started to also say, you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 1: introduce some novelty. I'm going to allow myself to do
Speaker 1: things that I don't normally do, to try and shake
Speaker 1: things up a little bit. And can I come at
Speaker 1: zest thing? Both directions one is to see more deeply
Speaker 1: into the ordinary moments, to look at them differently, you know,
Speaker 1: and then the other is, you know, can I just
Speaker 1: do a few more things. There's a woman named Julie Cameron,
Speaker 1: who wrote a book called The Artists Way, and she
Speaker 1: has this great idea. She calls them artist dates, and
Speaker 1: she just says, go out once a week by yourself
Speaker 1: and do something you wouldn't normally do. Take your inner
Speaker 1: artists out on a date and just do something a
Speaker 1: little bit different to sort of wake that and shake
Speaker 1: that person up. And so I've sort of found for
Speaker 1: me that it's both those that helped me. I've had
Speaker 1: periods of my life where I focus on the novelty,
Speaker 1: just give me something new, give me something new, give
Speaker 1: me something new, and that's not very sustainable and certainly
Speaker 1: not healthy in a lot of different ways. It leads
Speaker 1: to a lot of less than healthy behavior. And then
Speaker 1: I found, on the other hand, just hitting the same
Speaker 1: drum again of look differently is useful. But I'm finding
Speaker 1: a little bit more success with blending the two. I
Speaker 1: think that that's right. And I think that if you
Speaker 1: look at James's own life in very normal interactions, he's
Speaker 1: surprisingly insightful and compassionate and look at things differently, look
Speaker 1: at things differently, look at things differently. I just got
Speaker 1: back from several months in Shakaro in New Hampshire where
Speaker 1: James summered, and he bought that house because he said
Speaker 1: that he needed a little bit of wildness, and he
Speaker 1: was he was wild man. My teacher Doug Anderson called
Speaker 1: him a Roman candle, and he put some expletives before
Speaker 1: the Roman candle. And James was constantly on the move,
Speaker 1: both looking for new experiences. But then when he did
Speaker 1: have to settle down, he tried to see things differently.
Speaker 1: You say in the book something I like to which
Speaker 1: is you said, sometimes I try and identify what I
Speaker 1: find most zest less, so to speak, what leaves me
Speaker 1: feeling holy, numb or empty, and then I try not
Speaker 1: to do that. How does that resonate with you post surgery?
Speaker 1: I think that the need for zest becomes much more
Speaker 1: crucial when you have a brush with death. In other words,
Speaker 1: you really look for the zest. So this via negativo
Speaker 1: way where I say this is not giving me zest.
Speaker 1: This is I mean, I think about like Marie Kondo
Speaker 1: saying that you should throw away everything that doesn't give
Speaker 1: you joy. But I mean this is kind of the
Speaker 1: It's like it's like, this is not zess, this is
Speaker 1: not zest, This is not zest. And then you kind
Speaker 1: of outline a space that has potential for zest and
Speaker 1: then you tread that that way. That's been helpful, especially
Speaker 1: since the facts of life are that a lot of
Speaker 1: life consists of very boring things. And I'm not sugarcoating it.
Speaker 1: It's boring, it's mundane. But to figure out what is
Speaker 1: really not giving you zest and then to move towards
Speaker 1: the path that you've created, I think is a way
Speaker 1: to go. A's funny as you were saying that, I
Speaker 1: was thinking, depending on the day, me following Marie Condo's
Speaker 1: advice might mean I end up throwing everything away. It's like, well, nope,
Speaker 1: it's all gotta go, burn it all down, burn it
Speaker 1: all I mean, the truth of the matter is that
Speaker 1: I've done that several times already and it doesn't work
Speaker 1: out very well. So I mean, burning it all down
Speaker 1: has its virtues, but it's also very very painful, difficult.
Speaker 1: End I'd prefer not to have to burn anything else
Speaker 1: fully to the ground. Again, I fully concur And you know,
Speaker 1: I think for me, there's been a realization as I've
Speaker 1: gotten older and hopefully a little bit wiser, is like
Speaker 1: that idea of chasing what's new has a pretty limited
Speaker 1: shelf life to it, right, Like you just you can
Speaker 1: only do that so long before it becomes very problematic.
Speaker 1: You can't go very deep into anything if all the
Speaker 1: time you're just like, this is not interesting, throw it aside, right.
Speaker 1: I think about this with relationships and also with well,
Speaker 1: let's just stick to relationships. But I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: in my limited experience moving from one to the next
Speaker 1: and next and next and next, settling down and committing
Speaker 1: to something is very difficult, and finding zest in the
Speaker 1: commitment I think is the task. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's the task of life, in other words, to find
Speaker 1: stability that is not deadening, to find work that is
Speaker 1: not drudgery, to find a relationship that is long but
Speaker 1: still interesting. When we're talking about the balance between habit
Speaker 1: on the one hand and then novelty on the other,
Speaker 1: I think we're talking about the same issue here, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And I think I have the same sort of realization
Speaker 1: in relationship as somebody who sort of used to perpetually
Speaker 1: be like, Okay, I'm in this one. It's not good enough.
Speaker 1: I start looking forward the next one. You know, I
Speaker 1: did that for a lot of years, and I finally
Speaker 1: sort of realized like that's not going to work. You know,
Speaker 1: like how do you find the deepness, the intimacy and
Speaker 1: the interestingness and zest in the commitment? And I think
Speaker 1: if you look at also doing work that's valuable, you've
Speaker 1: got to dive up a certain degree of expertise, correct,
Speaker 1: You know that takes time, that takes focus, that takes
Speaker 1: stain with something, and you know, how do I discover
Speaker 1: what's new within what's already here? Right? I mean I
Speaker 1: also think that there's something about flow that I think
Speaker 1: William James would have been very very much aware of,
Speaker 1: and that flow states are real and they have will,
Speaker 1: but they also have a type of receptivity or easiness
Speaker 1: to them. I mean, laughter and falling in love. These
Speaker 1: things you can't will yourself into, but the will is
Speaker 1: not gone. I mean, these are choices, but it's not
Speaker 1: the type of choice that you can force yourself into.
Speaker 1: And so the habits of life that I formed when
Speaker 1: I was younger about pushing so hard and thinking that
Speaker 1: this would be the only way for me to be
Speaker 1: lovable and that I had to earn everything that lead
Speaker 1: to two destroyed Mary Ridges. I mean other things did too,
Speaker 1: but I'm sitting there after bypass surgery, or I'm laying
Speaker 1: down after bypass surgery, and I can't do anything. I
Speaker 1: am just in the hospital room at toughs and I'm
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, I almost killed myself, Like I pushed
Speaker 1: it way too hard, and I did it for a reason,
Speaker 1: but actually it was deeply counterproductive to work this hard,
Speaker 1: you know. And then Cath my partner, came in and
Speaker 1: she just laid beside me in the bed. I couldn't
Speaker 1: do anything. I mean I couldn't I couldn't move, I
Speaker 1: couldn't make good small talk. I was just a you know,
Speaker 1: a piece of meat. And she laid there next to
Speaker 1: me and moved over all the tubes, and I thought,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I think she loves me and I'm
Speaker 1: not doing anything. That was a very deep realization that, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't have to do it, gosh darn thing. That
Speaker 1: there's a least of small part of the universe that
Speaker 1: is connected to me and I don't have to work
Speaker 1: for it. I mean, that's a that's a deep thought
Speaker 1: at least for somebody like well, our friend William James,
Speaker 1: I think probably had that realization as well. I think
Speaker 1: that is a beautiful place for us to wrap up. John,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I have really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I've wanted to have you on for
Speaker 1: a while and I just had a gut sense it
Speaker 1: would be a great conversation and it it has been so
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks Eric,
Speaker 1: and I just want to say that I really admire
Speaker 1: what you've been doing here, So thanks for having me on.
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