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Speaker 2: You can be an atheist, a Jew, a Christian, a Buddhist, Monk, Muslim, whatever,
Speaker 2: but looking at people with that level of respect and
Speaker 2: reverence for who they are deep inside is the first
Speaker 2: prerequisite for knowing them.
Speaker 3: Wellow Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great
Speaker 3: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have
Speaker 3: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 3: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 3: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 3: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is David Brooks.
Speaker 3: He's one of the nations leading writers and commentators. He's
Speaker 3: an op ed columnist for The New York Times, a
Speaker 3: writer for the Atlantic, and appears regularly on the PBS
Speaker 3: News Hour. David is the best selling author of The
Speaker 3: Second Mountain, The Road to Character, The Social Animal, Bobos
Speaker 3: in Paradise on Paradise Drive, and his newest book discussed
Speaker 3: here with Eric, How to Know a Person, the art
Speaker 3: of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen.
Speaker 1: Hi, David, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Oh it's great to be with you.
Speaker 1: I am so happy to have you on. I was
Speaker 1: describing several of your more recent books about you know,
Speaker 1: character and asking the deeper questions about our lives, and
Speaker 1: even your latest book, which is called How to Know
Speaker 1: a Person. The art of seeing others and being deeply
Speaker 1: seen have been deeply resonant with me. So I'm really
Speaker 1: happy to have you on. And we'll discuss that latest
Speaker 1: book and others in a moment. But we'll start like
Speaker 1: we always do, with the parable. And in the Parable,
Speaker 1: there's a grandparent who's talking with their grand child and
Speaker 1: they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always a battle. What is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: I'd like to start off by asking you what that
Speaker 1: parable means to you in your life and in the
Speaker 1: work that you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess the first thing I think of is
Speaker 2: we're living through hard times where the bad wolf has
Speaker 2: been given pre eminence. People just aren't as kind to
Speaker 2: each other as they should be, and so we have
Speaker 2: this epidemic of sadness in American society, rise of depression,
Speaker 2: rise of suicide. Fifty four percent of Americans say that
Speaker 2: no one knows them well. The number of people who
Speaker 2: say they have no close personal friends has quadrupled in
Speaker 2: twenty years. The number of people who rank themselves at
Speaker 2: the bottom level of happiness is gone up by fifty percent.
Speaker 2: So there's just something sad and broken in our society,
Speaker 2: and in my view, it means we have to double
Speaker 2: down on the good wolf. And the good wolf is
Speaker 2: the humanity in us. That humanity consists of trying to
Speaker 2: see the world from another point of view. And in
Speaker 2: my view, there's one skill that's at the center of
Speaker 2: every healthy family, society, country, and organizations the ability to
Speaker 2: see others deeply and make them feel deeply seen, to
Speaker 2: make people feel seen, heard, and understood. And that's hard
Speaker 2: when you feel there's war going on around you. It's
Speaker 2: hard when you have leaders say we can't afford morality
Speaker 2: because it's a dogy dog world. But in these hard times,
Speaker 2: I'm really struck by the defiant humanists, the people who say,
Speaker 2: even in hard times, I'm going to stand up and
Speaker 2: my humanity, my ability to see other people is not
Speaker 2: going to be a weakness. It's going to be a
Speaker 2: strength for me. I saw a video online at Twitter
Speaker 2: the other night of James Baldwin in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: and the great novelist in the midst of racism, was saying, no,
Speaker 2: I'm doubling down on my humanity. Gold of my ear
Speaker 2: in the midst of Middle East War, Gandhi in the
Speaker 2: midst of co onnialism. And so I wrote the book
Speaker 2: trying to understand in hard times, how can you be
Speaker 2: a more gentle, a kind, or more respectful person who
Speaker 2: illuminates others with a gaze that says I just want
Speaker 2: to understand you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that scene in being seen is so deeply important.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mentioned to you briefly before we started
Speaker 1: about my addiction history, and you know, I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the things that makes twelve step programs work
Speaker 1: when they do work for people, right, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: they work for everybody, but when they do, one of
Speaker 1: those things is you feel deeply seen for the first time.
Speaker 1: You suddenly feel like you've not understood yourself, and no
Speaker 1: one has understood you for a long time as you
Speaker 1: wrestle with this addiction, and suddenly you feel seen and
Speaker 1: you feel understood, And that is a lot of the
Speaker 1: healing process. I mean, that's a big engine in what
Speaker 1: makes that overall thing work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why it's so important that we see each
Speaker 2: other accurately, because if I see you, if I see
Speaker 2: potential in you, you'll see potential in yourself. If you
Speaker 2: being your attention on me, you'll bring forth growth in me.
Speaker 2: And so the act of casting attention is a generous
Speaker 2: creative act. The problem is we're not naturally good at it,
Speaker 2: and so there's researchers at the University of Texas who
Speaker 2: test how well are we reading each other the first
Speaker 2: time we meet somebody, and the average person is only
Speaker 2: reading the other person well twenty two percent of the time,
Speaker 2: and some people it's zero percent of the time. They
Speaker 2: just don't know what's going on in the other person's head.
Speaker 2: So it's important to get really good at that skill
Speaker 2: of knowing how to probe deeply into people, how to
Speaker 2: be curious about people. The number one reason we don't
Speaker 2: see each other's we're just not curious and we don't ask.
Speaker 2: I sometimes come back from a party and I think,
Speaker 2: you know, that whole time nobody asked me a question.
Speaker 2: And I've come to feel that only thirty percent of
Speaker 2: people are question askers. The rest are perfectly pleasant. They're
Speaker 2: just on broadcast mode. They're not curious about others. And
Speaker 2: so the book is an attempt to walk people through
Speaker 2: the skill from the first second you meet somebody, through
Speaker 2: the conversations, through hard times, through politically hard times, how
Speaker 2: you get to know another human being and make them
Speaker 2: feel known.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean my partner and I often will remark on
Speaker 1: that will go out to dinner, or will be with
Speaker 1: a group of people, and you know, sometimes it's just
Speaker 1: this amazing, wonderful, deep conversation, and other times we leave
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't quite feel right. And what we've
Speaker 1: often found is that we're the ones who asked all
Speaker 1: the questions all night. No one ever reflected a question back,
Speaker 1: no one ever asked how are you, no one you know,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's an odd thing. And I think
Speaker 1: that piece about curiosity is really important, and you talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the gaze at a person, and it seems
Speaker 1: to me that the way we are as creatures, the
Speaker 1: way we have evolved, that we cannot not judge people
Speaker 1: at first sight. Like it doesn't seem to be a
Speaker 1: mechanism I can turn off right, Like it just happens automatically.
Speaker 1: I see somebody and immediately a judgment forms of them,
Speaker 1: and then based on that judgment is sort of I
Speaker 1: think your next level is a really good one. There's
Speaker 1: some cases where it's an immediate like or a idiot dislike,
Speaker 1: but most of the time it's sort of a lack
Speaker 1: of curiosity. Oh, I know what that person's about. I
Speaker 1: know what somebody who rides a Harley Davidson and wears
Speaker 1: the leather is about. Or I know what somebody who
Speaker 1: drives in audi and is it a coffee shop and orders,
Speaker 1: you know, a latte that has eighteen customizations, I know
Speaker 1: what they're about.
Speaker 2: Based on those judgments, Yeah, So that's called stacking, and
Speaker 2: that's when you know one thing about a person, then
Speaker 2: you make a whole series of assumptions about them. And
Speaker 2: so I know that you're a Trump voter, say, or
Speaker 2: a person's a Trump voter, and I think, oh, then
Speaker 2: I must believe this, X, Y, and Z, And that's
Speaker 2: never true. If you're actually curious about people, you find
Speaker 2: their lives are completely amazing and unpredictable. And so I
Speaker 2: remember years ago I met a woman at a Trump
Speaker 2: rally who was a big Trump supporter, who was also
Speaker 2: a lesbian biker who converted to Sufi Islam after surviving
Speaker 2: a plane crash. Oh, like, what stereotype do you fit into?
Speaker 1: Exactly? It's great.
Speaker 2: And so it's that humility that the person you meet
Speaker 2: is not a problem to be solve. There a mystery
Speaker 2: that you'll never completely unravel, and the fun of it
Speaker 2: is getting to know them really well. And so I
Speaker 2: do think that the quality of the attention you bring
Speaker 2: to a person determines what you find a little to
Speaker 2: some degree that if I see you with judgmental eyes,
Speaker 2: I'll find flaws. If I see you with fear in
Speaker 2: my eyes, I'll find threat But I see you with generosity,
Speaker 2: then I'll see someone who's smarter than me in many things,
Speaker 2: who's more interesting than me and many things, who has
Speaker 2: a soul of infinite value that I want to get
Speaker 2: to know and understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think what you're describing there is
Speaker 1: that getting to know process deeper and deeper, because I mean,
Speaker 1: stereotypes they exist for a reason. They're not completely made up, right,
Speaker 1: And oftentimes, even early on with someone, you just sort
Speaker 1: of keep encountering what you expect to encounter with them.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things that you talk about is,
Speaker 1: and we're kind of jumping around in the book here,
Speaker 1: but I think we've just kind of been led here naturally,
Speaker 1: is that it's the quality of the questions that you
Speaker 1: ask people, because if we stay at the basic questions,
Speaker 1: we may stay at the level of the stereotype that
Speaker 1: we just talked about right now, the woman you just
Speaker 1: describe very quickly, you'd be like, WHOA, what's going on here?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: But someone else you might go, oh, you know, they
Speaker 1: they do indeed drive a pickup truck, they do indeed
Speaker 1: love Nascar, they do indeed love hunting. They like, you know,
Speaker 1: you would just sort of keep skimming along the surface
Speaker 1: and keep getting kind of what you expected. So what
Speaker 1: are some ways that we start to go deeper with people?
Speaker 1: And I'd love to sort of start off that question
Speaker 1: in people that we are sort of meeting for the
Speaker 1: first time and not at like a say, a dinner
Speaker 1: party where our friends have brought together people they think
Speaker 1: are interesting, and there's almost a permission and an expectation
Speaker 1: often to go deeper in that context, whereas it's a
Speaker 1: parent of someone on your kid's soccer team and you're
Speaker 1: sitting there watching the soccer game.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And I was just talking with my son about this
Speaker 1: last night, because he's twenty five now, but when he
Speaker 1: was in high school, we lived in an upper middle
Speaker 1: class or upper class white enclave in Ohio, and I
Speaker 1: really struggled connecting more deeply with a lot of the
Speaker 1: parents there. We were just actually just talking about this
Speaker 1: last night. So I'd love to go back, if I
Speaker 1: could go back there and say, Okay, how do I
Speaker 1: break through to a deeper level with these people that
Speaker 1: I spend time with? But I keep seeing stuck on
Speaker 1: the surface and our surfaces are very different.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, first, as I say, is the quality of
Speaker 2: the gaze when you first meet a stranger. They're asking
Speaker 2: certain questions as the same time you're unconsciously asking questions,
Speaker 2: Am I a person to you? Am I a priority
Speaker 2: to you? Do I matter to you? And the answers
Speaker 2: to those questions get communicated with your eyes before they
Speaker 2: get communicated with your mouth, and so it's the way
Speaker 2: you look at them that has a tremendous power. I
Speaker 2: was in Waco, Texas a couple of years ago, and
Speaker 2: I was having breakfast with a woman named LaRue Dorsey,
Speaker 2: and she was like ninety three, and she presented herself
Speaker 2: to me as this strict disciplinarian, like real tough lady.
Speaker 2: She was a teacher. She said, I loved my children
Speaker 2: enough to discipline them, and so I was intimidated by her.
Speaker 2: And then into the diner walks a mutual friend of
Speaker 2: ours named Jimmy Durrell, and Jimmy's a pastor who ministers
Speaker 2: to the homeless. And he comes up to our table,
Speaker 2: grabs Missus Dorsey by the shoulders and shakes her way
Speaker 2: harder than you should shake a ninety three year old,
Speaker 2: and he says to her, Missus Dorsey, Missus Dorsey, you're
Speaker 2: the best, You're the best. I love you, I love you,
Speaker 2: And that stern disciplinarian turned it to this bright eye
Speaker 2: shining nine year old girl, and it was just the
Speaker 2: power of Jimmy's gaze, and he said, just a warm,
Speaker 2: garrulous guy but something more important is going on, which
Speaker 2: is that he's a pastor, so he believes when he's
Speaker 2: looking at anybody in the face, he's looking into the
Speaker 2: face of God. He's looking at somebody made in the
Speaker 2: image of God. He's looking at somebody or anybody with
Speaker 2: a soul of infinite value and dignity. And you can
Speaker 2: be an atheist or Jew, a Christian, a Buddhist, Monk, Muslim, whatever,
Speaker 2: But looking at people with that level of respect and
Speaker 2: reverence for who they are deep inside is the first
Speaker 2: prerequisite for knowing them well. And then there's the tendency,
Speaker 2: which we resist a lot, is to go just an
Speaker 2: inch deeper. You got to do this slowly. And so
Speaker 2: when I meet people, sometimes I ask them about where
Speaker 2: they grew up. I travel a lot, so I probably
Speaker 2: know something about their town. People love to talk about
Speaker 2: their childhood. Sometimes I'll ask you know, where'd you get
Speaker 2: your name? That gets people talking about their parents and
Speaker 2: their ethnic marriage and things like that. Sometimes as I
Speaker 2: get to know people a little better, it'll just be like,
Speaker 2: tell me the most enjoyable, unimportant thing about you. And
Speaker 2: I asked that, and I learned some scholar loves reality
Speaker 2: trash TV shows, and he learned from me that I
Speaker 2: have ridiculous fondness for the early songs of Taylor Swift,
Speaker 2: and so, you know, it's just a fun thing to
Speaker 2: learn about each other. We get to know each other
Speaker 2: a little more deeply. And you can always ask people
Speaker 2: what they're proud of. So if you're at the sidelines
Speaker 2: of a soccer game, they're probably proud of their kid,
Speaker 2: and so ask them what they're proud about, and you'll
Speaker 2: be surprised how quick people want to get deep. I
Speaker 2: was at a dinner and this was a dinner conversation,
Speaker 2: so not so casual with an eighty year old political scientist,
Speaker 2: said what should I do with the rest of my life?
Speaker 2: And that was such a big question. We had a
Speaker 2: great conversation about his interests, about how you should approach
Speaker 2: old age these days, how do you confront death. It
Speaker 2: was just a great conversation because he had the guts
Speaker 2: to ask a big question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, those are all really great, and so do
Speaker 1: you believe that. Let's take this scenario I've been describing.
Speaker 1: You go to a soccer game and there's the parent
Speaker 1: and you meet them with that gaze because they're most
Speaker 1: likely not meeting you with that gaze. I mean, again,
Speaker 1: some people are in those situations seem to unfold pretty
Speaker 1: easy and naturally right. But let's assume they're not meeting
Speaker 1: you with that gaze. They've kind of got you in
Speaker 1: the same sort of stacked idea of your character and
Speaker 1: they're just not that interested. And so you meet them
Speaker 1: with the warm gaze and you engage them, and you
Speaker 1: try and go a little deeper. I would assume there
Speaker 1: are many cases where that works far better than you thought,
Speaker 1: and there are other cases where people just don't want
Speaker 1: to go there. But you seem to indicate that far
Speaker 1: more often than we think people do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do absolutely think then sometimes they don't want
Speaker 2: to go there, sometimes their jerks or their liars, so
Speaker 2: you can't you know. I've a line in the book
Speaker 2: that in every group of people, there are two sorts
Speaker 2: of people. There's diminishers, the people who make you feel
Speaker 2: small and stereotyped and ignored, and illuminators, the people who
Speaker 2: make you feel lit up and respected. And if you
Speaker 2: confront a diministry who just doesn't want to go there,
Speaker 2: then there's nothing you do to force them. But I
Speaker 2: have found in my career as a journalist, and I've
Speaker 2: talked to people who are in sort of the conversation business,
Speaker 2: and I asked them, how many times does somebody say
Speaker 2: none of your damn business? And the answer is zero
Speaker 2: or almost zero. People love to tell their life story.
Speaker 2: I ran too a guy named Dan McAdams who's at
Speaker 2: Northwestern who studies how people tell their life story. And
Speaker 2: he calls his research subject in. He asks them about
Speaker 2: their high points, their low points, their turning points, their life.
Speaker 2: He says about half the people cry during the session
Speaker 2: because something's said. They're accounting, and then at the end
Speaker 2: he gives them a check to compensate them for their time,
Speaker 2: and he says a lot of the people just push
Speaker 2: the check back across the table and said, I'm not
Speaker 2: taking money for this. This is one of the best
Speaker 2: afternoons I've had in my life. No one has ever
Speaker 2: asked me about my life story, and it's just so
Speaker 2: much fun to try to tell you who I am.
Speaker 2: And so I find we're way too shy about wanting
Speaker 2: to go deep. And if people don't pick it up,
Speaker 2: they don't pick it up. But if you ask them
Speaker 2: big questions, they will enjoy it. And so some of
Speaker 2: my favorite big questions is after you've gotten to know somebody,
Speaker 2: you have to establish trust before you have these conversations.
Speaker 2: But it's like, what crossroads are you at? Most of
Speaker 2: us are at some sort of transition point in life,
Speaker 2: So what crossroads are you at right now? Or if
Speaker 2: the next five years is a chapter in your life,
Speaker 2: what's the chapter about? What commitments have you made? You
Speaker 2: no longer really believe in? What's the forgiveness you're hoping
Speaker 2: you'll get from somebody? And those are big questions, and
Speaker 2: they get people to see their lives from thirty thousand
Speaker 2: feet and they're not the questions you ask on first meeting.
Speaker 2: But if you know somebody, you can really deep in
Speaker 2: a friendship by having a conversation about those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I heard you in a conversation with Peter Block,
Speaker 1: who's also been a guest on this show here from
Speaker 1: Ohio where I'm at, and you guys discussed a question
Speaker 1: I believe that he likes is what question, if you
Speaker 1: had the answer to, would set you free? And I've
Speaker 1: been pondering that one all morning. I still don't have
Speaker 1: an answer, but I'm like, wow, like really gets you thinking,
Speaker 1: Like what is in the way of me being free?
Speaker 1: And that freedom will mean different things for different people.
Speaker 1: But what a powerful question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not one we would normally ask. And
Speaker 2: that's the great gift of really being interested in somebody else.
Speaker 2: You give them a chance because to tell their own
Speaker 2: life story and to understand themselves in a different way,
Speaker 2: because most of us just don't sit down and compose
Speaker 2: our life story. We only get to tell when somebody asks,
Speaker 2: and when we do, we've suddenly got a different image
Speaker 2: of ourselves. I love Peter Block's stories. One of his
Speaker 2: questions is can you be yourself where you are and
Speaker 2: still fit in? And so, you know, can you be
Speaker 2: natural at your workplace or do you only bring part
Speaker 2: of yourself to work? And that's just interesting to know
Speaker 2: those conversations. You think, well, it's just a passing hour
Speaker 2: or two maybe, but I really do think those kinds
Speaker 2: of encounters alter the way people see the world, alter
Speaker 2: the way they feel in the world. And if we're surrounded,
Speaker 2: whether it's at an AA meeting or even with a
Speaker 2: soccer team, it becomes a little closer to family. And
Speaker 2: you know, my kids were athletes, and my boys play baseball,
Speaker 2: My daughter played ice hockey, and our little families on
Speaker 2: those teams became community because often we're traveling around together,
Speaker 2: having breakfast at comfort in and plus my kids were pictures.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you how many times there'd be a
Speaker 2: three to two count and I send up a little
Speaker 2: prayer to God, God, take five years off my life,
Speaker 2: but just have the kid throw a strike, right. And
Speaker 2: so those are vulnerable moments when your kid is either
Speaker 2: doing well or not.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. I can understand and relate with that.
Speaker 1: So I want to just spend a minute on some
Speaker 1: I guess tips. Right. You refer to this as sort
Speaker 1: of a self help book, right, like where you're really
Speaker 1: trying to teach people how to do this. And obviously
Speaker 1: you've said that the self help is you mostly right,
Speaker 1: you want to learn how to get better at this.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about a couple of ways to be
Speaker 1: good conversationalists. And I'm just going to bring up a
Speaker 1: couple that you listed and just ask you to kind
Speaker 1: of say a little bit more about. But you said
Speaker 1: one of the ways is to favor familiarity. What do
Speaker 1: you mean by that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would think people would like to talk about
Speaker 2: what they don't know, but they like to talk about
Speaker 2: what they know. So if you meet somebody who's a
Speaker 2: football fan, he or she wants talk about the game
Speaker 2: that happened Sunday afternoon. And that's why I always ask
Speaker 2: about their hometown. People love to talk about their childhood.
Speaker 2: I have a friend named David Bradley. But his great
Speaker 2: skill is to hire people. He's built successful businesses, not
Speaker 2: because he's a great manager, but he's really good at
Speaker 2: spotting people. And he has two techniques. One is he
Speaker 2: wants to know about their skill set, but he wants
Speaker 2: to know it in the narrowest way possible, like don't
Speaker 2: tell me you teach. Tell me oh I like drawing
Speaker 2: up lessons plans, or I like tutoring special needs kids,
Speaker 2: Like I want to know the specific skill you have.
Speaker 2: But the other thing he's looking for is what he
Speaker 2: calls spirit of generosity. And so it's always take me back,
Speaker 2: he says people in job interviews they start their life
Speaker 2: talking about their career. He says, take me back to
Speaker 2: your childhood, and he wants to know. I don't know
Speaker 2: if it is right or not, but is his theory
Speaker 2: we all carry around the person we were in high school,
Speaker 2: and so he wants to know who were you in
Speaker 2: high school and how has that changed? And if you
Speaker 2: were an outsider in high school or insecure, you probably
Speaker 2: still carry some of those insecurities around with you. He
Speaker 2: wants to get at that deeper level, and that's favor familiarity.
Speaker 1: I'm contemplating if someone asked me that question in an
Speaker 1: interview and I answered, honestly, I'm like, would that help
Speaker 1: me get the job? Would that? You know? Would that
Speaker 1: help me not get the job? I you know, it
Speaker 1: would help that person realize that I was sort of
Speaker 1: two wildly different people in high school one year to
Speaker 1: the next. And it's an interesting question. The other is
Speaker 1: you talk about don't be a topper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's so if you tell me you're having
Speaker 2: problems with your teenager, and then I turn around and
Speaker 2: start talking about the problems I'm having with my teenager,
Speaker 2: it sounds like I'm just trying to establish some commonalities
Speaker 2: so we can relate to one another. But what I'm
Speaker 2: really doing is shifting the topic of conversation onto me
Speaker 2: and away from you ye and showing I care more
Speaker 2: about me than you. And so if you tell me
Speaker 2: you're having a problem with your teenager or whatever. I
Speaker 2: might say, yeah, I'm having a problem with mine, But
Speaker 2: tell me about what you're experiencing. And then, on any subject,
Speaker 2: whether it's across political difference or a relationship difference, it's
Speaker 2: always a good idea to ask three times, to ask
Speaker 2: the question one way, then ask another, and then ask
Speaker 2: it another way, and it's like, what am I missing here?
Speaker 2: Tell me more about that. Because we think we're more
Speaker 2: clear than we are, and we think we listen better
Speaker 2: than we really do. So if I can ask you
Speaker 2: three times and then do a thing called the looping,
Speaker 2: which is paraphrasing back to you what you just said,
Speaker 2: then we'll be sure that we really do understand each other.
Speaker 2: And that looping can be awkward, like I'm summarizing what
Speaker 2: you just said, but you'll be astounded how often you
Speaker 2: get it wrong and how often you has heard what
Speaker 2: the other person just said.
Speaker 1: I have a couple questions in there about that very
Speaker 1: specific thing. I mean, I think the topping thing. I
Speaker 1: know I do it. I mean the minute I read that,
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, yeah, I got to do it all
Speaker 1: the time, right. And I do think that there is
Speaker 1: a genuine desire to sort of connect over a shared thing,
Speaker 1: and I also understand completely how it's sort of shifting
Speaker 1: back to me, and so it's one to kind of
Speaker 1: watch for. And I think there's probably an art to
Speaker 1: when you sort of say yum, me too, and when
Speaker 1: you step back and let them tell their story and
Speaker 1: again kind of you know, I'll go back to my
Speaker 1: twelve step things. Right, If I had just said I'm
Speaker 1: a heroin addict and I just explained all about being
Speaker 1: a heroin addict, and that other person had sat over
Speaker 1: there and just asked me questions about it, it has been
Speaker 1: a far different experience than when they go, yum, me too. Right,
Speaker 1: that's true, right, Like, you know, I know what that's like.
Speaker 1: So I think there's probably an art to, like, how
Speaker 1: do you do that well? Where you can sort of
Speaker 1: say I understand you because I've been there, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm not making this about me, you know, it's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very well put. I hadn't thought about that complexity,
Speaker 2: but I totally agree with if somebody's walked through the
Speaker 2: experience you have, it's a very different conversation. And so
Speaker 2: then you can say, well, did you feel like this
Speaker 2: in the morning, did you like yes, Like I'm talking
Speaker 2: from some awareness here, and empathy is three different skills,
Speaker 2: And the first skill is mirroring, the ability to catch
Speaker 2: the emotion. But then the second skill is mentalizing. It's
Speaker 2: taking the experiences I had and then trying to imagine
Speaker 2: what you had. And that's what I'm talking about here. Mentalizing.
Speaker 2: It's the ability to use my experience to illuminate yours.
Speaker 2: And then the final skill is caring. It's the ability
Speaker 2: to accurately do what you need to do to feel
Speaker 2: cared for. And so that's like, you may be having
Speaker 2: an anxiety attack, and if I had an anxiety attack,
Speaker 2: I might want a glass of wine.
Speaker 1: You just referenced asking a question three times, and you
Speaker 1: also referenced sort of this looping process. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to start with the looping process and then go back
Speaker 1: to the three questions. My partner Jinny and I often
Speaker 1: debate this b looping thing, a version of it, right,
Speaker 1: it's called different things, And she believes that it's very
Speaker 1: important that you often use the exact words somebody used
Speaker 1: going back, because those words carry a resonance and an
Speaker 1: importance to them. And I'm always much more like, well,
Speaker 1: if I just summarize it in my own words. It
Speaker 1: kind of shows I've got it and I understand what
Speaker 1: they're saying. What do you think about that? I'm just
Speaker 1: kind of curious your thought on that, or what you've
Speaker 1: learned from people who know a lot about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny you say that. So I think about
Speaker 2: this a lot, and I think i'm my instinct is
Speaker 2: more on your side that if you repeat the exact
Speaker 2: words back, then it sounds like you're a therapist and
Speaker 2: not a friend. But so my instinct is to paraphrase.
Speaker 2: But as you're saying that, I was very lucky early
Speaker 2: in my career to be on a TV show with
Speaker 2: Jim Lair called The News Hour on PBS, and Jim's
Speaker 2: method was you would give an answer and then he
Speaker 2: would pick out the three essential words words and repeat
Speaker 2: it back to you. Those three words and him repeating
Speaker 2: those three words was an invitation for you to go deeper,
Speaker 2: yeah or else. He would take those three words, and
Speaker 2: my partner was Mark Shields. He would throw those three
Speaker 2: words to Mark. So I think there's a very good
Speaker 2: point that there is if you can pick out the
Speaker 2: three crucial words, that becomes an invitation to go deeper.
Speaker 2: And so, just as I'm thinking of this off the
Speaker 2: top of my head, I had a conversation with a
Speaker 2: young person who was leaving her current employment and then
Speaker 2: going off to, as she said, find herself and travel
Speaker 2: the world. And I didn't have the presence of mind
Speaker 2: at that moment to stop the conversation at that moment
Speaker 2: and say find yourself? What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: And so I let the moment pass, And I've now
Speaker 2: appreciated something I didn't point out in the book because
Speaker 2: I really didn't think about it. Those moments when something
Speaker 2: important has just been said, and if you can pause
Speaker 2: at that moment and go deeper at that moment, and
Speaker 2: it strikes me that using the exact words as the
Speaker 2: person used is an effective way to So let's pause here,
Speaker 2: let's go a little deeper on this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's actually a great idea of those three words,
Speaker 1: because you're right. If you just say back exactly what
Speaker 1: they said, you start to look like a therapist or
Speaker 1: a Saturday Night Live skit or just something that's not real.
Speaker 1: You become robotic, right, it becomes a method, not a
Speaker 1: feeling or a deep connection. And yet, as you point out,
Speaker 1: you know the words can be important. And you said
Speaker 1: that we want to ask the question three times. Can
Speaker 1: you give me an example of a question I might
Speaker 1: ask and then how I might follow it on three
Speaker 1: times without asking the exact same question three times or
Speaker 1: again it looking like I'm using a method, like because
Speaker 1: what you're talking about is moving around their answer and
Speaker 1: looking at it from there and looking at it from there.
Speaker 1: What are some of the ways we might do that
Speaker 1: very practically, because I can't quite think of how to
Speaker 1: do that in all cases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the hardest conversations I have these days are
Speaker 2: conversations across difference or inequality. And so I walk into
Speaker 2: a room. You know, I work at the New York Times,
Speaker 2: I work at the Atlantic, I've been teaching at Yale University.
Speaker 2: I come with a lot of elite baggage when I
Speaker 2: walk into a room, and so a lot of people
Speaker 2: naturally see me as whether they're on the right of
Speaker 2: the left, they see me as part of a system
Speaker 2: that is holding them down. And so those are hard
Speaker 2: conversations because sometimes in the way they approach me, there's criticism,
Speaker 2: there's blame. You're enmeshion systems that are awful, and so
Speaker 2: my first instinct in those conversations is to get all
Speaker 2: defensive and say, oh, I'm not part of the problem,
Speaker 2: I'm part of the solution, or here's what I'm dealing with.
Speaker 2: And I've learned it's best at those moments to resist
Speaker 2: that temptation to get defensive, and that my first job
Speaker 2: is to stand in your standpoint. The Scottish have this
Speaker 2: word ken, which is a naval term for the whole
Speaker 2: world that you can see from your ship. We have
Speaker 2: the phrase that's beyond my ken, and so my job
Speaker 2: is to get inside your ken. And so if they say, well,
Speaker 2: you're part of the establishment. I guy. The guy come
Speaker 2: up to me in the airport the other day and said,
Speaker 2: you're part of the establishment. And here's what I should
Speaker 2: have said. I didn't have the presence of mind, but
Speaker 2: I probably should have said, what do you mean by establishment?
Speaker 2: And how do you feel pinned down or ignored or
Speaker 2: judged by the establishment? What kind of establishment would you
Speaker 2: like to see? Or do we not need one? And
Speaker 2: suddenly there's a little train of thought and suddenly we're
Speaker 2: not critiquing each other, we're exploring a point of view.
Speaker 2: And two things I like to when there's disagreement, one
Speaker 2: fun thing to do is find the disagreement under the disagreement.
Speaker 2: We may superficially disagree about whether Donald Trump's a good
Speaker 2: guy or not, but there's probably a philosophical reason deep
Speaker 2: down that we're disagreeing. So let's go off in a
Speaker 2: search together for that fundamental disagreement under the disagreement. And
Speaker 2: then the other thing I've learned in hard conversations is
Speaker 2: to pay attention to the under conversation. That when we're talking,
Speaker 2: there's the nominal subject that we're talking about, whether it's
Speaker 2: politics or whatever, the culture war, but there's also the
Speaker 2: under conversation, which is the flow of emotion between us
Speaker 2: as we're talking. With every comment, you or I are
Speaker 2: making each other feel a little more threatened or a
Speaker 2: little more safe. And so if I ask you to
Speaker 2: go into detail about your point of view, I may
Speaker 2: not ever agree with you, but at least I'm showing
Speaker 2: you the respect of curiosity about your point of view.
Speaker 2: And there's a great book called Crucial Conversations by a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of authors.
Speaker 1: And funny, I was just about to reference that book.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, something from it, because I love that book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great book. But one of the things
Speaker 2: they say in that book is, in any conversation, respect
Speaker 2: is like air. When it's present, nobody notices when it's absent.
Speaker 2: It's all anybody can think about. So I'm going to
Speaker 2: be showing you the respect of asking you three times
Speaker 2: what did you have from that book?
Speaker 1: Well, a similar idea which is about this idea of safety,
Speaker 1: and that once safety leaves a difficult conversation, you can't
Speaker 1: go anywhere. And my experience is once safety leaves a
Speaker 1: difficult conversation, everything that happens after that is injurious. It
Speaker 1: injures each other, right, And you know what's sort of
Speaker 1: amazing is sometimes in certain relationships or in certain fraud
Speaker 1: political conversations, that safety leaves the room immediately. Like my
Speaker 1: ex wife, I remember I was reading that book. I
Speaker 1: was like, we got to figure out how to communicate better.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to get safety, you know, we're
Speaker 1: going to establish safety. And I'd established safety and then
Speaker 1: I mean, I swear it was like a minute and
Speaker 1: a half later it's all gone again, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: how is this possible? But it's because we had so
Speaker 1: so many conversations that we did not say, oh, safety's gone,
Speaker 1: let's stop. We just plowed onwards. And those conversations damage
Speaker 1: the relationship again and again and again and again. But
Speaker 1: it's really hard in the moment of emotion to stop
Speaker 1: and go, oh wait, safety's gone. Nothing good can happen here,
Speaker 1: nothing good can happen. It's really hard to pause and
Speaker 1: step back from that. So that was one of the
Speaker 1: things from that book that really has always been illuminating
Speaker 1: to me. And that's sort of what you were just
Speaker 1: talking about, which is that monitoring the under conversation, whether
Speaker 1: it's for respect, whether it's for safety, you know, and
Speaker 1: when that starts, either respect or safety is gone and
Speaker 1: that has to be fit mixed before the conversation can
Speaker 1: carry on in any way that will be less than destructive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have a phrase in destruction and when safety
Speaker 2: goes away, our motivations deteriorate.
Speaker 1: And so at first, where that's a great yes.
Speaker 2: We were motivated to like share our point of view
Speaker 2: on something. Suddenly I'm motivated to show I'm smarter than
Speaker 2: you or more powerful than you, and so the motivations
Speaker 2: are deteriorated. The only thing you can do, as you suggest,
Speaker 2: is it is like stop the conversation, and they have
Speaker 2: a term or from one of the experts, I spoke
Speaker 2: to a term called splitting, and that's where I clarify
Speaker 2: what my motivations are here. No, I wasn't trying to
Speaker 2: silence your voice. I was trying to understand what your
Speaker 2: point of view a little better. So you say what
Speaker 2: you're not trying to do, and then you say what
Speaker 2: you are trying to do. And that may not, as
Speaker 2: you say, save the relationship or save the conversation. Once
Speaker 2: contempt enters the room, it's really hard to get out
Speaker 2: of the room.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but at least it gives you your best shot
Speaker 2: at recovering something.
Speaker 1: There's another thing that you talked about in difficult conversations,
Speaker 1: and one of them is keep the gem statement at
Speaker 1: the center. Say a little bit more about that. I
Speaker 1: think it applies to what we're talking about with safety
Speaker 1: and respect, but say more about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I learned that one from a mediator. It's if
Speaker 2: we're having a disagreement. We may just like say my
Speaker 2: brother and I are having a disagreement about our dad's healthcare.
Speaker 2: There's usually something deep down that we agree upon, so
Speaker 2: we both want what's best for our dad. And if
Speaker 2: we can keep that thing we agree upon the GEM
Speaker 2: statement at the center, then we preserve a relationship. Amid disagreement,
Speaker 2: it becomes clear we're just arguing over means, not ends.
Speaker 2: I think that's just a valuable way to soften a disagreement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree also, And I think in certain situations
Speaker 1: in my life where there's been problems in a relationship,
Speaker 1: you know, the GEM statement that we can go back
Speaker 1: too is, or at least in my case, has been,
Speaker 1: we love each other and we care about each other,
Speaker 1: and we're trying to resolve a problem, and going back
Speaker 1: to that often is very helpful. I love that phrase.
Speaker 1: When safety goes away, our motivations deteriorate, right, and the
Speaker 1: GEM statement is really away, at least in my mind,
Speaker 1: of recovering that safety. Yeah, I love you, I care
Speaker 1: about you. That's the core. That's what we're after here,
Speaker 1: you know, And now we're talking about an issue that
Speaker 1: is in there, but it's not about that core idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I once ran into a blog post about how
Speaker 2: to save a relationship that's troubled, and it was filled
Speaker 2: with good advice. I can't even remember who did it,
Speaker 2: but one of them was like, you know they tell
Speaker 2: you never go to bed mad. You should always resolve
Speaker 2: your fights before you go to bed. And her advice was, no,
Speaker 2: just go to bed, you'll wake up, you'll be rested,
Speaker 2: you'll make pancakes. It'll be a lot better. Yeah, I remember.
Speaker 2: Another her piece of advice was never complain to her
Speaker 2: mom or complain to his mom, because his mom will
Speaker 2: forgive you, but your mom never will bitch to somebody
Speaker 2: else's mom, not your own mom. Another one was boast
Speaker 2: about your partner friend and have them over hear you boasting. Yes,
Speaker 2: people like to be boasted about.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That don't go to bed mad is one of the
Speaker 1: worst pieces of advice I've ever heard. I mean, I
Speaker 1: heard that advice and I would try that at points,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I can't tell you how many
Speaker 1: disastrous conversations came from trying to follow that advice. Because
Speaker 1: it's three in the morning, you're both exhausted, your motivations
Speaker 1: have deteriorated, and it never has turned out well for me.
Speaker 2: No. Same.
Speaker 1: You have a chapter in the book called how to
Speaker 1: Save a Friend Who's in Despair. I thought it was
Speaker 1: a great chapter. I would wonder if you could just
Speaker 1: share some of the key points for you know, how
Speaker 1: to save a friend in despair and maybe what you
Speaker 1: even mean by that save? You know, what do you
Speaker 1: mean by save a friend? But let's just talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about how do we work with, you know,
Speaker 1: people in our lives that we care about who are
Speaker 1: in the midst of really rough times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now that I think about it, I poorly named
Speaker 2: that chapter. I hadn't thought about till the second, but
Speaker 2: it should have. And how to sit with a friend
Speaker 2: is in despair because saving is beyond your ability, I
Speaker 2: guarantee you.
Speaker 1: But people want to read about how to say that's
Speaker 1: going to bring him in the door, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's okay. I think it's still good. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So my oldest friend in the world was a gun
Speaker 2: named Peter, and he was a wonderful guy, cheerful, playful, sporting,
Speaker 2: good looking. He had like a wonderful life. He had
Speaker 2: great career, wonderful wife, great kids, and at age fifty
Speaker 2: seventy he gets hit by just a severe, severe depression.
Speaker 2: And so I thought I knew what depression was, but
Speaker 2: I didn't really know what depression was. I learned that
Speaker 2: a person who's fortunate enough not to have suffered from
Speaker 2: depression cannot understand what depression is by extrapolating from their
Speaker 2: own moments of sadness. It's not like that. And the
Speaker 2: best description of depression I read was from another friend
Speaker 2: of mine who suffered from it, who said, a depression
Speaker 2: is a malfunction in the instrument we used to perceive reality,
Speaker 2: and so reality just appears very different. And my friend said,
Speaker 2: I had these voices in my head that were lying
Speaker 2: to me, that were telling me you're not worth anything.
Speaker 2: Nobody would miss it if you're gone, and so depression
Speaker 2: is just different than sadness. And I made a couple
Speaker 2: mistakes early on with Pete. The first one, I tried
Speaker 2: to give the ideas about how to get out of
Speaker 2: his depression. You know, you used to go on these
Speaker 2: service trips to Vietnam. You should do that again. And
Speaker 2: I learned later that if you're offering ideas to someone
Speaker 2: who's depressed, all you're doing is showing you don't get it,
Speaker 2: because it's not ideas they are lacking. And so that
Speaker 2: was the first mistake I made trying to get them
Speaker 2: out of depression. The second mistake I made was what
Speaker 2: psychologists call positive reframing, which is to try to get
Speaker 2: them to see all the things about their life that
Speaker 2: are great. Oh, you have a great family, you have
Speaker 2: great kids, great career. When you do that to someone
Speaker 2: who's depressed, all you do is remind them they're not
Speaker 2: enjoying the things that are palpably enjoyable, so they feel worse.
Speaker 2: And so I think I eventually learned that your job
Speaker 2: as a friend of a depressed person is one to
Speaker 2: acknowledge the reality and to just say this sucks. I'm
Speaker 2: here with you for you. I'm not going away. There's
Speaker 2: nothing i'm doing. I'm just sticking around. And I wish,
Speaker 2: in retrospect, i'd sent them just little touch points, like
Speaker 2: a little text, random blue that said I'm here, I'm
Speaker 2: thinking about you. No response necessary, Yeah, just those little
Speaker 2: touch points. I wish I told him I'm proud of
Speaker 2: your strength that you're still here because you're in a
Speaker 2: lot of pain. You were fighting this with bravery and courage.
Speaker 2: And then Victor Frankel, who wrote the great book Man
Speaker 2: Search for Meaning, he would say to people who were
Speaker 2: in this situation that life has not stopped expecting things
Speaker 2: from you, and that sounds kind of harsh, but he
Speaker 2: found it very useful that when somebody was really thinking
Speaker 2: of ending their life to be told, no, you still
Speaker 2: have some jobs here on this earth, so stick around.
Speaker 2: And that sounds kind of intruitive, but I think it
Speaker 2: actually works. And so we lost Pete. He's come to
Speaker 2: the depression. But it was a hard education in how
Speaker 2: to talk to and not talk to someone, and ultimately
Speaker 2: the words had limited use.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nothing I said made a big difference pro or
Speaker 2: con particularly, but learning how to be present through those
Speaker 2: moments is one of the most generous things you can do,
Speaker 2: and in most cases, I think, really a beautiful act,
Speaker 2: whatever the outcomes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm deeply sorry to hear that he didn't
Speaker 1: make it. And you know, there's no way that we
Speaker 1: don't carry some sort of like what could I have
Speaker 1: done differently? And it sounds like you've gotten to the
Speaker 1: point where you sort of realize not a whole lot, right,
Speaker 1: Having been in the recovery community for at least the
Speaker 1: last twenty five years, you know, we've lost a lot
Speaker 1: of people to addiction. You know a lot of people
Speaker 1: who never find their way back. And yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: humbling process. It's an extraordinarily humbling process. And to realize that.
Speaker 1: I believe there are things you can do that make
Speaker 1: things worse, particularly with an addict, Like you can make
Speaker 1: things worse for an addict, which is generally to continually
Speaker 1: shame and scold them. That will actually make it worse.
Speaker 2: Because maybe come to feel hopeless about the situation or
Speaker 2: their own efficacy to deal with the situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and an addict has plenty of shame, right, What
Speaker 1: an addict needs is the ability to actually come out
Speaker 1: for help. And it's an incredibly difficult thing. And so
Speaker 1: if you are constantly shaming or criticizing or yelling at
Speaker 1: the addict, it almost forces them into a defensive position,
Speaker 1: like we talked about earlier, Like right, it's natural somebody
Speaker 1: comes at you, you go into defense. And a big
Speaker 1: part of getting somebody to the point of being willing
Speaker 1: to begin recovery is they have to lose their denial
Speaker 1: and their defenses enough to do it. But if you're
Speaker 1: constantly helping them erect them, right, yeah, yeah, right, right,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't work. And people think, you know,
Speaker 1: they addicts feel no shame about what they're doing, but
Speaker 1: they feel tremendous overwhelming shame. It is one of the
Speaker 1: engines of addiction, and so the more shame you put in,
Speaker 1: it's like putting gasoline in a high powered engine, right,
Speaker 1: And so you know, those are some of the reasons. Now, again,
Speaker 1: even if that's what we're doing, it's not our fault
Speaker 1: that the attict ends up where they are, right, it's
Speaker 1: not ours. But there are things we can do that
Speaker 1: are more or less potentially helpful. But at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, it's beyond us, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how I came to think of it, Like,
Speaker 2: especially talking to his wife and kids, Like, the thing
Speaker 2: was bigger than Pete. The monster was bigger than Pete.
Speaker 2: It was certainly going to be bigger than us. And
Speaker 2: he had the great carry at the loving family, but
Speaker 2: the monster was just big.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean I've dealt with clinical depression in
Speaker 1: my adult life, and I mean I think in my
Speaker 1: addiction sort of were a response to each other. And
Speaker 1: so I am familiar with depression. I have friends who
Speaker 1: can get very very depressed. You know that thing you
Speaker 1: said about don't offer ideas because it's not a lack
Speaker 1: of ideas, right, it's a lack of energy. It's a
Speaker 1: lack of ability to do. I'll share this because if
Speaker 1: he's listening, because he's editing this show right now. But
Speaker 1: you know, my best friend Chris, who's also the audio engineer,
Speaker 1: who's been on the show with me for ten years,
Speaker 1: I mean, there have been multiple times over the last
Speaker 1: fifteen years where we nearly lost him to cocaine addiction.
Speaker 1: I mean I really literally thought multiple times like he's
Speaker 1: not going to live through this, and it's just it's heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: It is so hard to have someone you love and
Speaker 1: care about that much. I'm saying this to you, but
Speaker 1: I'm also saying it to all the family members out
Speaker 1: there of children who are depressed or children who are addicted,
Speaker 1: or your spouse or I mean, it's really really hard
Speaker 1: to go through that, and it's also really really important
Speaker 1: to find a way to take care of yourself through that,
Speaker 1: because you can't be of any benefit to anybody else
Speaker 1: if you are self destructing and being around somebody who's
Speaker 1: deeply depressed or who's an addict, being really really close
Speaker 1: to them, if you don't have the proper frameworks and
Speaker 1: support will make you crazy. I mean, it's why alan
Speaker 1: On exists, right because the spouses of addicts tend to
Speaker 1: go crazy. Right, it makes you insane because you're dealing
Speaker 1: with somebody who's acting insane. Like, Yeah, those are difficult things.
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry to hear about your friend. Are there
Speaker 1: other things that you know out of that chapter that
Speaker 1: you feel like would be valuable to add to this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I resonate when you said it had
Speaker 2: an effect on me because a lot of our calls
Speaker 2: were over COVID, so they were phone calls, and that
Speaker 2: was already a deeply disorienting time. So that was the
Speaker 2: time I felt most close to depression. I began to think,
Speaker 2: is it catching? But well, you know, maybe, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: guess it helped me. Frankly, the only thing I'd add
Speaker 2: And I know less about this than you do, and
Speaker 2: probably a lot of people in the audience said, there's
Speaker 2: some books that really helped me. There's a William Steirn
Speaker 2: book called Darkness Visible, and just to get inside the
Speaker 2: mind of a depressed person was an education for me.
Speaker 2: And so I read a bunch of books because I
Speaker 2: am who I am, and I learned. I learned that
Speaker 2: depression is far weirder than I thought it was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, have you read The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon.
Speaker 2: I read that too. Yeah, that was a beautiful book. Oh.
Speaker 1: He's been a guest several times in this show. A
Speaker 1: beautiful man, and that book is so so good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He talks about the weirdness of depression. He says,
Speaker 2: I I was terrified of taking a shower at the
Speaker 2: same time I knew showers are not scary.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, he's really good. I want to go back
Speaker 1: to something that we were talking about a little bit before,
Speaker 1: and I don't remember the exact context, but it was about,
Speaker 1: you know, listening to somebody versus giving advice sort of.
Speaker 1: That was the general thing you referenced in your book,
Speaker 1: Ethan Cross. And Ethan was a guest on the show,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a great book called Chatter, and there
Speaker 1: was one thing from it that really really stood out
Speaker 1: to me because it's a question I've often thought about
Speaker 1: a lot. And you know, it seems that there's two
Speaker 1: models that we hear about dealing with somebody who's struggling.
Speaker 1: Model one is the one that we're all sort of
Speaker 1: naturally given to, which is you give them advice, you
Speaker 1: do positive reframing you Did you think about it this way?
Speaker 1: Did you like, we get in, we try and fix it,
Speaker 1: and we've heard an awful lot about how that's not good.
Speaker 1: You know. The women in our lives, if we're listening,
Speaker 1: will tell us like, stop trying to fix it, you know.
Speaker 1: And again I'm making a gender thing there, but I'm
Speaker 1: just speaking for my own life in men and women
Speaker 1: that I have known, you know. So the other model
Speaker 1: is you just sit with the person and you sympathize
Speaker 1: and you go, oh, yeah, your boss, what an asshole? Like,
Speaker 1: I mean, such a you know, and you do that.
Speaker 1: And what Ethan said, and I can't speak to the
Speaker 1: data the studies that he referenced, but what he said
Speaker 1: was that actually, the people who get the most out
Speaker 1: of supportive friendships are getting both those things. They're very
Speaker 1: first getting that deep understanding, being heard, sympathized, empathized with supported,
Speaker 1: I'm on your side one hundred percent, right, and then
Speaker 1: at some juncture perhaps they're getting offered alternate perspectives, you know.
Speaker 1: And this is what I valued so much about my
Speaker 1: early friendships in AA was that when done right, they
Speaker 1: had both those things. When done wrong, it was just
Speaker 1: somebody telling you that's one of your characters efects coming
Speaker 1: up and you you know, and you're like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean, but that other perspective is so valuable.
Speaker 1: But I also think we can't take that other perspective
Speaker 1: in until we feel deeply seen, heard, and understood. And
Speaker 1: so I always think of that study that Ethan referenced,
Speaker 1: because it speaks to me to a sort of a
Speaker 1: middle ground here of how we work with people who
Speaker 1: are struggling or you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that resonates with me. I think the way
Speaker 2: i'd phrase it is, first, people need to be understood
Speaker 2: before they'll change. Yeah they're going to They're not going
Speaker 2: to change if they feel misunderstood or threatened or unsafe,
Speaker 2: and so you do have to show that unconditional positive regard.
Speaker 2: I guess the way I would say it is I
Speaker 2: used to think wise people were like Yoda or Dumbledore
Speaker 2: or Solomon, like filled with maxims and mottos that would
Speaker 2: solve all your problems, tell you what to do. We
Speaker 2: all want the smart person come in tell us what
Speaker 2: to do. But I no longer think that's what wisdom is.
Speaker 2: I think a great quality of wisdom is the ability
Speaker 2: to be tenderly receptive. So it's to receive what you're sending.
Speaker 2: It's almost like being a coach and not a professor.
Speaker 2: You're there to see somebody in a noble struggle. You're
Speaker 2: there to see somebody negotiating the contradictions in life that
Speaker 2: we all have to negotiate, the between intimacy and freedom,
Speaker 2: and so they're just trade offs we have to make.
Speaker 2: And then you're there, and this is most important, I think,
Speaker 2: to try to be a story editor, and so you
Speaker 2: want to tell me the story. If someone's in trouble,
Speaker 2: it's probably because their story isn't working for them anymore.
Speaker 2: And often it's because they get causation wrong, and so
Speaker 2: they blame themselves for things that are not their fault,
Speaker 2: and they blame others for things that are their fault.
Speaker 2: And so what therapists are, and I think what good
Speaker 2: friends can be is story editors. Let's get you to
Speaker 2: retell the story of your life in a way that
Speaker 2: you're the hero here and in a way that explains
Speaker 2: to you what you should be doing. You can't know
Speaker 2: what you're going to do until you know what story
Speaker 2: you're a part of. Dennison, the writer said, any pains
Speaker 2: can be born if they can put into the form
Speaker 2: of a story. So if you know what you're long
Speaker 2: the whole path of your life is going to be,
Speaker 2: what the narrative of your life is going to be,
Speaker 2: then the current moment is just a point in time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you'll be able to get on track with that
Speaker 2: longer narrative and you'll come back better. And so I
Speaker 2: do think it's that the wise person is not giving
Speaker 2: advice to the wise person is helping the other person
Speaker 2: retell their own story through prompts sometimes by you know,
Speaker 2: you can't have a friendship that's all compassion without confrontation.
Speaker 2: Sometimes there has to be a little confrontation in there
Speaker 2: to say, didn't you leave this out of the story?
Speaker 2: You just told me yes, and don't you need to
Speaker 2: confront this? And then they have to tell a larger
Speaker 2: story and a more accurate story about themselves.
Speaker 1: You said several things in there that are so good.
Speaker 1: But I love that idea of being a story editor.
Speaker 1: That's actually, you know, kind of what it is, and
Speaker 1: the element of a story is what perspective you're taking, right,
Speaker 1: And so in that case, if you're a story editor,
Speaker 1: you're also a perspective editor, which is kind of what
Speaker 1: we need And one of my favorite big questions, deepest,
Speaker 1: most valuable and important questions, and it's not like a
Speaker 1: dinner party conversation. It's a question that you use in
Speaker 1: response to what's happening in your life, is what am
Speaker 1: I making this mean? Right?
Speaker 3: I mean?
Speaker 1: Because crucial conversations lays out very clearly that part of
Speaker 1: the problem in every disagreement is there's an objective fact,
Speaker 1: like if you were rolling a camera, you know, the
Speaker 1: classic example. It's easy to use and we all laugh
Speaker 1: about it, but we all understand it is like, you know,
Speaker 1: the husband who doesn't take out the trash, or your
Speaker 1: wife who doesn't take out the trash, whatever. If a
Speaker 1: camera was what it would see is that a person
Speaker 1: did not take out the trash. That's the objective fact.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, though, it's all about what we make it mean,
Speaker 1: you know, and being able to ask ourselves what am
Speaker 1: I making this mean? And what else might it mean
Speaker 1: to me? Is one of the most powerful and deep
Speaker 1: questions you can have, and it's very helpful often to
Speaker 1: be able to do that what else could it mean? Thing?
Speaker 1: In partnership or in community, you know, with someone else,
Speaker 1: a discussion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all this. Huxley, the writer, has a phrase, experience
Speaker 2: is not what happens to you, It's what you do
Speaker 2: with what happens to you. Yeah, and that's pointing to
Speaker 2: that subjective layer. What does that mean to you? And
Speaker 2: so you know, if husband doesn't take out the trash,
Speaker 2: a question is why is that a trigger for you?
Speaker 2: Why is that an issue for you? And so there
Speaker 2: are all these things that are happening inside of us
Speaker 2: and we need somebody to ask us why like you
Speaker 2: seem to have it all and yet you feel inferior?
Speaker 2: Or what's that about? Why is celebrating holidays so important
Speaker 2: for you? What was in your family that made that
Speaker 2: so important for you? You look like an insider, but
Speaker 2: you feel like an outsider? Yeah, where did that come from?
Speaker 2: And so those are all questions designed to ask like
Speaker 2: why is this triggering you? Let's see what's in the
Speaker 2: background here and see where you actually came from and
Speaker 2: where you are now. I would say that in researching
Speaker 2: this book, one of the things I learned and was
Speaker 2: amazed by is how subjective all our points of view are,
Speaker 2: how we really are constructing our own reality. And just
Speaker 2: give one example, a guy named Dennis prophet teaches at UVA,
Speaker 2: and he asks college students to look at the hills
Speaker 2: on the UVA campus and see how steep do you
Speaker 2: think those hills? And people tend to overestimate the steepness
Speaker 2: like it's a five percent great hill. They'll say that's
Speaker 2: twenty percent. And then one day all their data came
Speaker 2: back from the research and the students got the hill's
Speaker 2: steepness exactly right, and they were like, wow, why did
Speaker 2: that happen? And it turns out that day the researchers
Speaker 2: happened to ask a bunch of students who were members
Speaker 2: of the women's soccer team. So these were very fit
Speaker 2: D one athletes, and so when they looked at a hill,
Speaker 2: it didn't seem very stick to them because it was
Speaker 2: no problem for them to run up that hill. And
Speaker 2: so the lesson here is the way you see a
Speaker 2: situation depends on what you can do in the situation.
Speaker 2: So a fit person sees less steep hills than an
Speaker 2: unfit person, a happy person sees less steep hills than
Speaker 2: a sad person. Someone with a backpack sees steeper hills,
Speaker 2: and somebody without a backpack. And this may all seem trivial,
Speaker 2: but it comes to seem very important to me. So
Speaker 2: a poor person when I was teaching at Yale, a
Speaker 2: poor person who lives in town does not see the
Speaker 2: same campus as a student at Yale who has badge
Speaker 2: as and access to all the buildings. A poor person
Speaker 2: walks into Neiman Marcus sees a very different store than
Speaker 2: a rich person. And so these are what's called affordances.
Speaker 2: And the way we perceive the world depends on what
Speaker 2: we can do in the world, and so our economic status,
Speaker 2: our social status, just has tremendous power over the way
Speaker 2: we see reality. And we have to be appreciative of
Speaker 2: how subjective everybody's viewpoints really are.
Speaker 1: So that was the way you see a situation depends
Speaker 1: on what you can do in that situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was originally formed by a psychologist actually forty
Speaker 2: or fifty years ago, and it's called affordances. You do
Speaker 2: what the situation affords. So if you're a hunter and
Speaker 2: you have a bow and arrow, you see a different
Speaker 2: field than if you have a rifle. Yeah, you see
Speaker 2: a much smaller field.
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting to think of that in a psychological sense, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the way you see a situation depends on
Speaker 1: what you can do in that situation, or what you
Speaker 1: believe you can do in that situation. Now again, obviously
Speaker 1: the Neeman Marcus example or the Yale campus example between
Speaker 1: a rich and a poor person, that's not a psychological thing,
Speaker 1: right now, we may layer things on top of it.
Speaker 1: That's a reality, right. But I'm thinking back to depression,
Speaker 1: right and I'm thinking back to one of the main
Speaker 1: things that we referenced, which is it's not about having ideas,
Speaker 1: it's about having efficacy to do them. It's about believing
Speaker 1: you can do them at all. And so my experience
Speaker 1: of depression is the way I see a situation depends
Speaker 1: on what I can do in the situation, and what
Speaker 1: I'm capable of doing feels very very small. So I
Speaker 1: feel very very small, right, you know.
Speaker 2: I imagine if you're an alcoholic, when you see a
Speaker 2: city block, you see liquor.
Speaker 1: Stores, yes you do, yep, lots of them.
Speaker 2: The opportunity where am I going to get the next drink?
Speaker 2: And yeah, that's partly, but I think what you're saying
Speaker 2: is actually a little deeper than that, that your vantage
Speaker 2: point can be filled with a sense of inefficacy or efficacy. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: And if you've led a blessed life, you probably think
Speaker 2: you can walk into a room and you can handle
Speaker 2: whatever you find there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well there's that phrase, I can't take it, right, That's
Speaker 1: an internal phrase that many people use with a difficult situation.
Speaker 1: I can't take it, I can't do it, you know.
Speaker 1: And I've gone through some difficult things emotionally recently, and
Speaker 1: I've had moments where the thought pattern is I can't
Speaker 1: take this, it's too much, or I'm just utterly heartbroken,
Speaker 1: you know. And there's a balance in there of allowing
Speaker 1: the emotion to be what it is, but not limiting
Speaker 1: what my future and potential responses to that emotion might be,
Speaker 1: you know, always react the way I react today, Right,
Speaker 1: there's this balance of It's that old saying like if
Speaker 1: you believe you can't do something, you're right, you know,
Speaker 1: in that you bring it about to a certain degree.
Speaker 1: And so even in an emotional sense, I do think
Speaker 1: that's one of the as we mentioned, the primary engine
Speaker 1: of despair and depression is a form of despair. Is
Speaker 1: that belief that I can't make this different?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess the times I've felt those levels of suffering. Well,
Speaker 2: I remember once this is about ten years ago, and
Speaker 2: I was in a dark period and somebody gave me
Speaker 2: a book by a guy named Henry now In, a theologian,
Speaker 2: and he says, you need to stay in the pain
Speaker 2: to see what it has to teach you. And I'm like,
Speaker 2: screw that. Yeah, it's getting out of the pain. Like
Speaker 2: and so I think we should never romanticize pain and suffering. Yes,
Speaker 2: and I myself have felt it with an earlier when
Speaker 2: the first level of my life dump me, I was
Speaker 2: like filled with narcissistic pride that oh, look how much
Speaker 2: pain I can.
Speaker 1: Feel, like yeah, you know, yes, oh.
Speaker 2: I'm really feeling this. I'm deep guy. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, you know, I do think those moments of suffering.
Speaker 2: And one of my favorite phrases is from a theologian
Speaker 2: named Paul Tillick who was writing in like the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: He says, those moments of suffering interrupt our life, and
Speaker 2: they remind us were not the people we thought we were.
Speaker 2: They carved through what you thought was the floor of
Speaker 2: the basement of your soul and reveal a cavity below,
Speaker 2: and you carve through that and reveal another cavity below,
Speaker 2: and so you see into depths of yourself you don't
Speaker 2: see when you're happy, and you realize that only spiritual
Speaker 2: and relational food will fill those depths. There's a phrase
Speaker 2: you can either be broken by suffering or broken open,
Speaker 2: and it's hard. But our goal here is to be
Speaker 2: broken open, to approach the world with even more sympathy
Speaker 2: and wisdom and credibility. Frankly, there's a great saying I have.
Speaker 2: I'm going to butcher it. It sin Jordon Wilder. I
Speaker 2: put it in the book. He says, where would your
Speaker 2: power be without the wound you carry because of what
Speaker 2: you've gone through. He's saying you have credibility your low voice.
Speaker 2: I think he says, trembles in the hearts of men
Speaker 2: in love service. Only the wounded soldiers conserve.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And so that sentiment, I think is what you get
Speaker 2: out of the suffering. And if you just shut it
Speaker 2: off and deny the suffering, then you're not going to
Speaker 2: get that power to bring with you for the rest
Speaker 2: of your life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and you may have sensed from the
Speaker 1: way I've had several of these conversations. I'm a big
Speaker 1: believer sort of in the middle way, you know, and
Speaker 1: it is that don't shut down the pain and ignore it.
Speaker 1: But you can drown in it if you're not careful, right,
Speaker 1: and you can over romanticize it. And knowing that pain
Speaker 1: can lead to healing and redemption and open us up
Speaker 1: in new ways is a beautiful thing. And it's the
Speaker 1: worst thing to say to somebody who's in deep pain.
Speaker 1: This is the opportunity for growth. You're like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to I'm going to throttle you. And yet even in
Speaker 1: the midst of it, I do find that if I
Speaker 1: can put even two percent five percent of my mind
Speaker 1: on that, if I can know that my story is
Speaker 1: being edited right now, right in a powerful way, it
Speaker 1: does give me a little bit of hope while feeling
Speaker 1: the difficult emotions in the pain.
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, And sometimes your mind just needs to create
Speaker 2: new models of the world, and those transitions are hard,
Speaker 2: they're filled with grief, but your mind is doing its thing.
Speaker 1: Do you just have an exceptional memory for quotes that
Speaker 1: you've read or do you actually spend time like that
Speaker 1: Paul Tillet quote was a fairly long quote that you
Speaker 1: just trotted out. Do you spend time like trying to,
Speaker 1: like really memorize the things that are really meaningful to you,
Speaker 1: or you just happen to have that gift.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I definitely don't think I have a
Speaker 2: memory gift. But for things that are important to me
Speaker 2: that I've thought about a lot, I can at least
Speaker 2: paraphrase them pretty well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my ability to return a quote that I know
Speaker 1: I've heard and that was meaningful feels semi non existent.
Speaker 1: I usually can find the idea, you know, like I
Speaker 1: can remember, like, oh, Ethan Cross said something about that
Speaker 1: and it really meant something to me. And but I've
Speaker 1: just been impressed to several times in this conversation where
Speaker 1: I'm like, wow, that's pretty good at that.
Speaker 2: Oh well maybe yeah, I had a friend who could do,
Speaker 2: like you, recite long hundreds of lines of poetry and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, and that's out of my league.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was memorizing poetry for a while every morning.
Speaker 1: I've kind of gotten away from it, but it was
Speaker 1: a great little thing to do, because I love to
Speaker 1: be able to just be out walking and bring a
Speaker 1: poem to mind and walk with it and sit with
Speaker 1: it and not have to pull out a piece of paper.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to wisdom for a second,
Speaker 1: because you've talking about wisdom or a variety of different
Speaker 1: ways in your past and your previous books, and I
Speaker 1: just want to read something you wrote and then ask
Speaker 1: you to kind of maybe elaborate on it. And you say,
Speaker 1: wisdom isn't a body of information, it's the moral quality
Speaker 1: of knowing what you don't know and figuring out a
Speaker 1: way to handle your ignorance, uncertainty, and limitation. That's a
Speaker 1: beautiful phrase and very counterintuitive to the way we would
Speaker 1: think of wisdom. Say more about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, our major intellectual flaw is overestimating what we know.
Speaker 2: And we all think we're smarter than we are, and
Speaker 2: we know more about a situation than it is with
Speaker 2: situations like people are infinitely complex. The trade I admire
Speaker 2: most is humility. Humility is not thinking lowly of yourself.
Speaker 2: My favorite definition of humility seeing yourself accurately from a
Speaker 2: position of other centeredness. And so it's the ability to
Speaker 2: know what you know and know what you don't know,
Speaker 2: know what you're good at, know what you're bad at.
Speaker 2: And so Abraham Lincoln, I think, was a genuinely humble man,
Speaker 2: but he knew he was pretty special in some ways,
Speaker 2: like he knew he was great with words, he knew
Speaker 2: he was wise, he knew he could take toughness, but
Speaker 2: he never thought he was master of events. He was
Speaker 2: willing to tolerate other people's foibles. One of my favorite
Speaker 2: stories about him is there was a general who was
Speaker 2: a total jerk in my eyes, named McLellan, and Lincoln
Speaker 2: wanted to get him to fight more, to be more
Speaker 2: aggressive on the battlefield, and so McClellan wouldn't come visit
Speaker 2: him in the White House even though he was president
Speaker 2: at States. So Lincoln and his aide John Hay went
Speaker 2: to McClellan's house, and McClellan keeps them waiting in a
Speaker 2: waiting room for forty five minutes, and you can imagine
Speaker 2: keeping the president waiting, And then after about forty five minutes,
Speaker 2: the butler comes down says General McClellan has decided to
Speaker 2: retire for the night, so he just flat out refused
Speaker 2: to see his commander in chief. And John Hay is indignant, like,
Speaker 2: you can't treat the president this way, and Lincoln's like, listen,
Speaker 2: we're here to fight the war. My personal ego is
Speaker 2: not at stake here. I don't matter that much. We
Speaker 2: just somehow need to get him to fight more aggressively
Speaker 2: and so he was not bothered at all, and to
Speaker 2: be not at stake and to know what's really important
Speaker 2: and what's really not important. That's part of wisdom, and
Speaker 2: that really is a quality of humility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've also said that we can be knowledgeable with
Speaker 1: other men's knowledge, but we can't be wise with other
Speaker 1: men's wisdom. Wisdom is in a body of information, you know,
Speaker 1: And sort of back to that same phrase you used
Speaker 1: about ignorance, uncertainty, and limitation. You know. I'm just fascinated
Speaker 1: by wisdom because I think it's the thing that people
Speaker 1: often attribute to me, which then makes me go, well,
Speaker 1: hang on, let's before I'm even willing to take that
Speaker 1: mantle at all, what are we actually talking about. But
Speaker 1: it's also one of the things that I most deeply
Speaker 1: feel like I want in life, right, I mean, actually,
Speaker 1: what I really want is the ability to respond wisely.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be wise, So what I want
Speaker 1: the ability to respond wisely in all the situations in
Speaker 1: my life. And I think that's what you're speaking to
Speaker 1: when you say what do I do? How do I
Speaker 1: handle my ignorance, uncertainty, and limitation. Because the times that
Speaker 1: we don't respond wisely is because we're lost in one
Speaker 1: of those things, or as the Buddhists would say, not
Speaker 1: only that, we're also lost in greed and hatred or
Speaker 1: grasping in aversion, pick your terms there, right, But those
Speaker 1: are the ways that we don't respond wisely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I would say wisdom is knowing about other people.
Speaker 2: Knowledge is knowing about things, but wisdom is knowing about
Speaker 2: people in their situations. And so if you have sat
Speaker 2: doing the show or gone through the experiences you've gone through,
Speaker 2: you probably have not come out with that with empty hands.
Speaker 2: You probably have come out with some wisdom. What you
Speaker 2: were just saying, I resonate so much of that. I
Speaker 2: think I've discovered. I may not be the greatest intellectual
Speaker 2: in the world, but I like to teach. If I
Speaker 2: can find something that I've found useful in my own
Speaker 2: life and I can share it with somebody and then
Speaker 2: they write it down, that's about as good as it
Speaker 2: gets from me. If I can offer some words that
Speaker 2: other people find useful. And there's a saying about writers
Speaker 2: that were beggars who teach other beggars where we found bread.
Speaker 2: And so if I find something that could work for me,
Speaker 2: maybe it'll work for you, And so I share it.
Speaker 2: And that's like the core of what gets me up
Speaker 2: in the morning.
Speaker 1: Yep, certainly I feel like that's what I am about too.
Speaker 1: You know, how can I share what I found elsewhere
Speaker 1: that is helpful? Any final words on seeing other people
Speaker 1: or being seen? Any like big thing that you felt
Speaker 1: like it was really important that Eric just completely missed
Speaker 1: the boat on that you feel like you like to
Speaker 1: leave as we wrap up here.
Speaker 2: The thing only thing I'd mentioned is it's not only
Speaker 2: fun to be seen. When people tell me stories of
Speaker 2: times they were seen, their eyes light up their everyday stories.
Speaker 2: Is like a lady she was working a homeless shelter
Speaker 2: early COVID. She comes home, she's overwhelmed. She gets home
Speaker 2: and starts hugging her dog and crying, and her husband
Speaker 2: just sits down next to her and he says, here
Speaker 2: are the six chores. I'm going to do all your
Speaker 2: slam doo work. And that's not profound, but he understood
Speaker 2: what she needed at that moment. And one day I
Speaker 2: was sitting in my dining room when I my wife
Speaker 2: walks in and she doesn't notice me. She's just looking
Speaker 2: at a flower and orchid we keep by the front door,
Speaker 2: and I have this sensation sweep across my mind. I
Speaker 2: really know her, I know her through and through. It
Speaker 2: wasn't like the personality types I would know about her
Speaker 2: at that moment. It was just the ebb and flow
Speaker 2: of her being, the harmonies of her music, and it's
Speaker 2: that moment of connection with a family member or somebody.
Speaker 2: It was just a very profound moment to really know
Speaker 2: somebody else's So it's fun to be the scene. It's
Speaker 2: also really fun to be the seer and to have
Speaker 2: that knowledge of another human being. It's just one of
Speaker 2: the most profound experiences you can have.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. Well, David, thank you so much. This has
Speaker 1: been such a wonderful conversation. I would love to go
Speaker 1: much longer, but we are out of time. But you
Speaker 1: and I will continue a little bit longer in the
Speaker 1: post show conversation, and we're going to talk about a
Speaker 1: woman named Eddie Hillisoon and a piece you wrote for
Speaker 1: magazine recently and really about a female way of relating
Speaker 1: to great difficulty that involves attention, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of great stuff in there, and so we'll explore that
Speaker 1: in the post show conversations listeners. If you'd like access
Speaker 1: to that, add free episodes the joy of supporting something
Speaker 1: that means something to you. You can go to oneufeed
Speaker 1: dot net slash join and we'd love to have you
Speaker 1: as part of our community. David, thanks so.
Speaker 2: Much, great pleasure. I truly enjoyed the conversation. I learned
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
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