Speaker 1: Hey friends, Eric here with some exciting news. I've been
Speaker 1: writing a book and it's about to be out in
Speaker 1: the world in April of twenty twenty six. The working
Speaker 1: title is How a Little Becomes a Lot, and it's
Speaker 1: all about how small, consistent actions, the kind that we
Speaker 1: talk about all the time on this show can lead
Speaker 1: to real meaningful change. Right now, the book is in
Speaker 1: the editing process and there's still some shaping to do,
Speaker 1: which is where you come in. I'd love your input
Speaker 1: on what to focus on, how to talk about the book,
Speaker 1: even what it should be called. If you've got a
Speaker 1: few minutes and a couple thoughts on what would make
Speaker 1: this book most helpful for you, I'd be really grateful
Speaker 1: to hear them. Just head to oneufeed dot net slash
Speaker 1: book survey. You'll also get early updates, fun giveaways, and
Speaker 1: to behind the scenes look at what it actually takes
Speaker 1: to make a book. Editing marathons, title debates, existential spirals,
Speaker 1: and me questioning all of my life choices at two
Speaker 1: am over one stubborn sentence. Again, that's oneufeed dot net
Speaker 1: slash book survey. Thank you so much for being part
Speaker 1: of this. Your feedback really means a lot to me.
Speaker 2: Truly, the same thing that can, when it's not working
Speaker 2: right predispose us to anxiety and depression is the very
Speaker 2: thing that can bring us to our highest and deepest selves.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 3: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 3: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 3: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 3: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 3: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 3: Our action matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 3: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 3: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 3: how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 1: It's technically sad music, but what I feel really is love.
Speaker 1: A great title outpouring of it. I've never had a
Speaker 1: good answer for why I find yearning music so strangely
Speaker 1: uplifting until this conversation. This week, I talk with Susan Kine,
Speaker 1: author of bittersweet and quiet about the strange alchemy where
Speaker 1: sorrow becomes beauty and longing becomes connection. We dig into
Speaker 1: why certain types of music make our hearts ache in
Speaker 1: the best way, and why that ache might actually be
Speaker 1: pointing us towards something sacred. Some spiritual traditions can seem
Speaker 1: to treat desire and longing like enemies. This conversation offers
Speaker 1: a different view that yearning can be a spiritual force
Speaker 1: in its own right. Susan also holds a special place
Speaker 1: in my heart, not just because of her work, but
Speaker 1: because she kindly introduced me to her literary agent who
Speaker 1: later became mine. Susan and I talk Leonard Cohen, grief,
Speaker 1: transcendence and how turning towards the bitter sweet might just
Speaker 1: be the path home. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is
Speaker 1: the one you feed. Hi, Susan, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hey, Eric, it's so great to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to have you on. You're sort of
Speaker 1: a patron saint to introverts everywhere, of which I lean
Speaker 1: in that direction. And your latest book, where we're going
Speaker 1: to be spending our time, is called Bitter Sweet. How
Speaker 1: sorrow and longing make us whole. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's start, like we always do, with a parable. In
Speaker 1: the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild
Speaker 1: and they say, in life, there's two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always a battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the others a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. The grandchild stops, thinks about it
Speaker 1: 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: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you and your life and the.
Speaker 2: Work that you do. So I love that parable, and
Speaker 2: it actually seems to me to echo another parable that
Speaker 2: I came across while I was researching Bittersweet, which I
Speaker 2: have found to be such a great guiding star and
Speaker 2: consolation of how to live. And I'll tell you this parable,
Speaker 2: and I think you'll see the parallels, but we can
Speaker 2: talk about them. So in this other parable, this one
Speaker 2: comes from the Kabbalah, which is the mystic form of Judaism.
Speaker 2: And in this parable, the idea is that all of
Speaker 2: creation originally was an intact divine vessel, but that the
Speaker 2: vessel shattered, and that the world that we are living
Speaker 2: in now is the broken world following the shattering, but
Speaker 2: that scattered all around us still are the divine shards
Speaker 2: from when the vessel was still intact, And that one
Speaker 2: great way to live a life is to look around
Speaker 2: us and to notice the divine shards wherever they have
Speaker 2: happened to land around us, and to bend down and
Speaker 2: pick them up. And you will notice different shards from
Speaker 2: the ones that I will. But we can all do
Speaker 2: our own gathering. And I love this and it reminds
Speaker 2: me of the parable that you shared, because it's acknowledging
Speaker 2: the pain and the tragedy and the evil that exists
Speaker 2: in the world without feeling that we have to become
Speaker 2: a prisoner to them. So it's not telling us to
Speaker 2: look away from them and pretend that they're not there,
Speaker 2: which is I think what our mainstream culture would tell us.
Speaker 2: It's telling us they're very much there, and we can
Speaker 2: admit that and tell the truth about that. And at
Speaker 2: the same time we can turn in the other direction,
Speaker 2: in the direction of beauty and of love, and that
Speaker 2: we have the ability to decide to turn in that direction.
Speaker 2: I find that parable to just be such a relief
Speaker 2: or a leief to be able to tell the truth.
Speaker 2: Also just a great way to live, to know that
Speaker 2: we always have that option. So I think it's very
Speaker 2: much with the grandparent in your parable was telling the grandchild,
Speaker 2: just with a different image.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's one of the things I love about the
Speaker 1: Wolf parable is exactly what you said, which is it
Speaker 1: just sort of says like, hey, we all have this
Speaker 1: in us. That's the human condition. It's natural, it's normal.
Speaker 1: I've always liked that normalizing of it. And I love
Speaker 1: the parable that you told from Judaism, which is a beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful story. And as you were talking about it, I
Speaker 1: actually had another thought, which was, not only are we
Speaker 1: walking around collecting the shards, we are ourselves the shards
Speaker 1: in some ways, and when we come together, we are
Speaker 1: putting them back together in a way. That sort of
Speaker 1: flashed into my mind as you were telling that story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And I think that what their grandparent
Speaker 2: was saying also is that we can't deny that these
Speaker 2: two aspects of ourselves exist at all times. With denying
Speaker 2: it comes a kind of blindness, but we can acknowledge
Speaker 2: it and then decide to turn in a particular direction.
Speaker 1: Let's jump into the book. I mean, I kind of
Speaker 1: have to start close to where you start, which is
Speaker 1: by talking about music, and you start the book by
Speaker 1: really trying to find out why do some of us
Speaker 1: really love what would be considered sad music. And it's funny,
Speaker 1: this is an interesting thing in my own household because
Speaker 1: I am that type. I listened to melancholy music. Give
Speaker 1: me any chance, and I'll listen to it. My partner
Speaker 1: really doesn't because it makes her sad. And I haven't
Speaker 1: been able to explain to her why I like melancholy
Speaker 1: music very well. I haven't been able to put it
Speaker 1: into very good words. I was reading your book and
Speaker 1: I just stopped and I said, I have to read
Speaker 1: you something, which is rare. I normally just interview prep
Speaker 1: and she's always like, I wish you'd share more about
Speaker 1: what you're interview prepping. And I just am kind of
Speaker 1: going on my way, but it was so good it
Speaker 1: stopped me and I'm just going to read it really quickly,
Speaker 1: if that's okay. Yeah, sure, you said it's hard to
Speaker 1: put into words what I experience when I hear this
Speaker 1: kind of music. It's technically sad, but what I feel
Speaker 1: really is love, a great title outpouring of it, a
Speaker 1: deep kinship with all the other souls in the world
Speaker 1: who know the sorrow the music strains to express. But
Speaker 1: the music makes my heart open, literally the sensation of
Speaker 1: expanding chest muscles. And I've been looking for that description
Speaker 1: ever since I started listening to melancholy music. So thank you,
Speaker 1: You're welcome.
Speaker 2: I just got goosebumps knowing that you've been looking for
Speaker 2: that explanation as I had been too. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was only when I started writing this book that I
Speaker 2: actually like put into words exactly what the sensation is
Speaker 2: and why it matters so much. The reason I put
Speaker 2: music at the heart of the book, I mean, partly
Speaker 2: just because it literally was the catalyst for why I
Speaker 2: went off on this bittersweet quest in the first place,
Speaker 2: but also because the way in which sad music is
Speaker 2: a gateway to love, because it unites us in our
Speaker 2: state of longing, our state of like exile from Eden.
Speaker 2: You could say that's the power of bittersweetness itself, not
Speaker 2: just the music, but the bittersweet condition itself, Like the
Speaker 2: fact that all humans are united in existing in this
Speaker 2: state of what feels to us like a grand imperfection
Speaker 2: and impermanence, and you know, longing for the world to
Speaker 2: be different from the way that it is. You know,
Speaker 2: to see the joys and the beauties in the world
Speaker 2: and wish that they could last forever, and wish that
Speaker 2: they comprised all of the world instead of only a
Speaker 2: part of it. All those longings. The fact that we're
Speaker 2: in that together is just this great uniting force. And
Speaker 2: the fact that we live in a world that tells
Speaker 2: us not to talk about any of that and not
Speaker 2: to talk about our sorrows and our longings is like
Speaker 2: living in a world that is telling us not to
Speaker 2: love each other as deeply as we could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I really want to get to what you
Speaker 1: just said a little bit more in detail, which is
Speaker 1: about telling us not to love things as deeply as
Speaker 1: we do, because not only does our cul tell us
Speaker 1: that some of the spiritual traditions I'm most attached to
Speaker 1: almost seem to be saying that. But we're going to
Speaker 1: save that for a little bit later because we got
Speaker 1: to talk about Leonard Cohen for a second. Who you
Speaker 1: talk about as your favorite musician and is mine. He
Speaker 1: was the guest I most ever all time, wanted to
Speaker 1: have on this show, and it didn't happen. I got close.
Speaker 1: At one point, I was talking with a guy who
Speaker 1: knew him, who was a monk at the center that
Speaker 1: Leonard was at, and he said, you should know that
Speaker 1: Leonard's monk name means great silence, so just to give
Speaker 1: you an idea of how likely you are to get
Speaker 1: a conversation with him.
Speaker 2: So that's so interesting, And can I interrupt you to
Speaker 2: just say that, yeah, he's my guy artistically. After my
Speaker 2: book Quiet came out, you know, which is all about
Speaker 2: introversion and the power of quiet, he actually tweeted out
Speaker 2: of the blue about the book and about Quiet and
Speaker 2: how important it is. Oh wow, like a glory day
Speaker 2: for me. And I can't believe I can't find the
Speaker 2: tweet now, but I will always remember it, so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so I just had to share.
Speaker 1: That I remember where I was when I heard that
Speaker 1: he passed. I wanted to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: a conversation I think Adam Cohen was saying in an
Speaker 1: interview with Rick Rubin, but I loved this line at
Speaker 1: the end he's describing what Leonard Cohen's music did, and
Speaker 1: Adam his sun said he was giving you a transcendence
Speaker 1: delivery system. That's what he was trying to do every time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. I mean, I don't have the
Speaker 2: quote in front of me, but I think he was
Speaker 2: talking about that in the context of talking about how,
Speaker 2: you know, his music was famously kind of sorrowful and gloomy,
Speaker 2: and his record producers at one point were joking about
Speaker 2: how they should give out razor blades along with his
Speaker 2: along with his albums, and you know, and that's what
Speaker 2: he was famous for. But what Adam was saying is yes,
Speaker 2: and I mean it wasn't only about brokenness. It was
Speaker 2: about brokenness pointing in the direction of transcendence. The song
Speaker 2: that is best known of his and has been covered
Speaker 2: maybe more than any other song music history, is Hallelujah.
Speaker 2: And Hallelujah is about I mean, it's literally in his words,
Speaker 2: it is about the broken Hallelujah, a cold and broken Hallelujah.
Speaker 2: So I think in all his music he's constantly expressing
Speaker 2: and wrestling with the bittersweet, the way in which everything
Speaker 2: is so fundamentally broken and so fundamentally beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I agree. So there's one other thing I
Speaker 1: would just want to talk about with music for a second,
Speaker 1: something else that you said that I really love. You
Speaker 1: said this type of music. You're talking about a specific song,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: Of the world.
Speaker 1: Don't simply discharge your emotions, they elevate them. And also
Speaker 1: you say it's only sad music that elicits exalted states
Speaker 1: of communion, and awe, yeah.
Speaker 2: This is an interesting thing. I did a little bit
Speaker 2: of research and studying of the whole nature of sad
Speaker 2: music and why we love it so. And you and
Speaker 2: I are not the only ones who feel this way. Many,
Speaker 2: many people do. The people whose favorite songs are happy
Speaker 2: listen to them one hundred and seventy five times on
Speaker 2: their playlist. But the people whose favorite songs are sad
Speaker 2: listen eight hundred times. And they tell, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: they feel this deep sense of connection, And they tell
Speaker 2: researchers that the music makes them feel connected to the
Speaker 2: sublime and the wondrous. And it's not just because of
Speaker 2: quote negativity per se, because this does not happen for
Speaker 2: music that expresses anger or disgust or you know, any
Speaker 2: other negative emotions you can think of. It's specifically something
Speaker 2: about sadness. And in fact, there was this one study
Speaker 2: done by an MIT economist. It was published in an
Speaker 2: MIT review under the title how are you, my dearest Mozart?
Speaker 2: And in this study, the economist he took all the
Speaker 2: letters that Mozart, Beethoven, and Liszt had written throughout their lives,
Speaker 2: and he coded each of the letters based on the
Speaker 2: emotions expressed within them, and then he correlated the time
Speaker 2: at which those letters had been written and look at
Speaker 2: what music the composer had produced at that time. And
Speaker 2: he found that the most and the only predictive emotion
Speaker 2: of all was sadness. That when the letters expressed sorrow,
Speaker 2: that was what reliably predicted the most profound and the
Speaker 2: greatest of their works. And again, not any other negative emotion,
Speaker 2: just sadness, just sorrow. So there's something about this state
Speaker 2: of sorrow. And I think anybody who feels a kind
Speaker 2: of creative spirit in them we all know this, We've
Speaker 2: been there. There's something about a state of sorrow that
Speaker 2: puts us in mind of a kind of like longing
Speaker 2: and reaching upwards, wanting to transform the sorrow into something else.
Speaker 2: Into something high, into something sublime.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's really fascinating that sorrow is the emotion that,
Speaker 1: as you say, it can sort of lead us to
Speaker 1: these higher states of transcendence, of awe, of beauty. It's
Speaker 1: not the other negative emotions. And it made me think
Speaker 1: a little bit about the idea of neuro right, neurosis
Speaker 1: being very often something we're layering on top of to
Speaker 1: avoid feeling maybe the core emotion, which might be sorrow.
Speaker 1: And so these sort of more neurotic emotions, that's, for
Speaker 1: lack of a better word, I'm going to use them
Speaker 1: anxiety or depression. I'm a depression sufferer. We'll talk about that,
Speaker 1: that these things actually are ways of avoiding what is
Speaker 1: actually most healing in some ways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. And it's interesting that
Speaker 2: you use the word neurosis because one of the things
Speaker 2: I did when I started researching this book, I basically
Speaker 2: was researching for years what I call the bittersweet tradition,
Speaker 2: which is all the religions, wisdom traditions, artists, philosophers, poets
Speaker 2: who have been talking about this bittersweet state of being
Speaker 2: for thousands of years all across the world, and I
Speaker 2: looked also at mainstream psychology. In mainstream psychology, there really
Speaker 2: is no word for this state, the state of like
Speaker 2: this beautifully piercing longing that I was trying to investigate.
Speaker 2: The only word that comes close is the word of neurosis,
Speaker 2: as you said, except when psychology talks about neurosis, it's
Speaker 2: only talking about the problem of it. It is a
Speaker 2: real problem when it goes too far and it descends
Speaker 2: into anxiety and depression, and for anyone who's been there
Speaker 2: that those are not pleasant states. But there's nothing in
Speaker 2: psychology or in this terminology that talks about the great
Speaker 2: transcendent longing that's at the heart of human nature, and
Speaker 2: that is intimately connected. The same thing that can when
Speaker 2: it's not working right predispose us to anxiety and depression
Speaker 2: is the very thing that can bring us to our
Speaker 2: highest and deepest selves. And so a lot of the
Speaker 2: chalent of life is figuring out what to do with
Speaker 2: that thing and how to use its powers, its powers
Speaker 2: which can be dangerous but which can also be beautiful
Speaker 2: and transformative.
Speaker 1: You wrote this idea of transforming pain into creativity, transcendence
Speaker 1: and love is at the heart of this book. And
Speaker 1: when I read that. I was like, that's as good
Speaker 1: a description of what we've been trying to do over
Speaker 1: five hundred episodes, right, which is, you know, I'm a
Speaker 1: recovering addict, I have depression. You know. My whole thing is,
Speaker 1: how do we take this difficult stuff that we all
Speaker 1: face every human life? You know, Buddhist says we're all
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters in sickness, old age, and death right,
Speaker 1: So for all of us, how do we take that, yeah,
Speaker 1: and create something meaningful and beautiful exactly?
Speaker 2: You know, in the book, I have this quiz that
Speaker 2: we developed. It's called the Bittersweet Quiz. I say wee
Speaker 2: because I did it together with the psychologists David Aiden
Speaker 2: and Scott Barry Kaufman. David Aiden's at Hopkins, and the
Speaker 2: quiz basically asks a bunch of different questions, questions like
Speaker 2: do you draw comfort or inspiration from a rainy day?
Speaker 2: Do you react very intensely to music our nature? And
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of questions. You can find it either
Speaker 2: in the book or on my website. And what we
Speaker 2: found is that people who score high on the quiz,
Speaker 2: meaning that they tend to this bitter sweet state of mind,
Speaker 2: These same people. They have maybe exactly what you would
Speaker 2: predict in terms of strength and vulnerabilities. Their strengths are
Speaker 2: that they also score high end measures of receptivity to
Speaker 2: wonder and awe and spirituality. And that was a strong correlation.
Speaker 2: But then there is also a more minor but still
Speaker 2: significant correlation with anxiety and depression. It's like the quiz codified.
Speaker 2: I think what you just said and what we've both
Speaker 2: been reaching towards, which is, there is something in this
Speaker 2: bitter sweet state, this state in which you're aware of
Speaker 2: life's joys and sorrows, and you're aware of its impermanence,
Speaker 2: and you're deeply connected to that and connected to its beauty.
Speaker 2: There's something about that state that, if you're following it
Speaker 2: and you're in your best self moment, let's say, it
Speaker 2: can deliver you to states of great wonder, and if
Speaker 2: you're not careful to manage it right, it can also
Speaker 2: deliver you to a place the depression. The question is
Speaker 2: how do you do it right?
Speaker 1: I've asked that question I feel like hundreds of different ways,
Speaker 1: which is, why do some people take pain and turn
Speaker 1: it into something beautiful? And I don't only mean art right,
Speaker 1: It could be it could just be loved. It becomes
Speaker 1: a creative force in their life. And I would say,
Speaker 1: a good thing in the world. Why does that happen
Speaker 1: in some cases? And in other cases we see people
Speaker 1: just broken by the difficulties in life, you know, And
Speaker 1: so what are the factors in there? And you in
Speaker 1: the book later on say there's different pathways to the
Speaker 1: piece we all seek. You're trying to sort of answer
Speaker 1: this question, at least it seems to me. And I'm
Speaker 1: just going to read the four that you came up
Speaker 1: with and let you kind of talk about them. First
Speaker 1: one was sort of, you know, let it go, some
Speaker 1: degree of you know, just letting things go. The other
Speaker 1: is to know how resilient we are, to really lean
Speaker 1: into resilience. The other is non attachment, right, and trying
Speaker 1: to aspire to a love that is bigger than possession.
Speaker 1: And then the last one, you say, this is the
Speaker 1: one you're going to need to explain, is the way
Speaker 1: of even so carries a different wisdom, one that expresses
Speaker 1: the longing that many of his sense is the force
Speaker 1: that will carry us home.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So that last one comes from a poem that
Speaker 2: was written by Issa. One of the great Japanese Buddhist poets,
Speaker 2: and it was written after he lost his beloved young
Speaker 2: daughter to smallpox, and he says in the poem, basically
Speaker 2: he says, I know that this world do do like
Speaker 2: dw I know that this world of do is just
Speaker 2: a world of do. But even so, but even so,
Speaker 2: and he's basically saying, you know, I get it that
Speaker 2: everything is impermanent. I get it that we're just dewdrops
Speaker 2: who we're all of us going to evaporate any minute. Now.
Speaker 2: I understand that. And yet there's something in me that
Speaker 2: doesn't accept that. There's something in me that will insist
Speaker 2: on feeling sorrow and feeling grief for my lost daughter
Speaker 2: no matter what. And I think there's so much beauty
Speaker 2: and wisdom in that poem. He's a trained Buddhist. He's saying,
Speaker 2: even I feel this way, and implicit in the poem
Speaker 2: because there's a reader at the other end of that poem,
Speaker 2: and he knows it. He's not writing it to himself,
Speaker 2: so implicit is there's a reader on the other end
Speaker 2: who feels the exact same way, who, no matter what,
Speaker 2: will feel a grief and feel a longing, and that
Speaker 2: we are united in that feeling, and there's something about
Speaker 2: the uniting of that, the fact that all humans are
Speaker 2: in that state together, that is a great joy of
Speaker 2: its own. There's one young woman who I quote in
Speaker 2: the book who calls this the union between souls, and
Speaker 2: she's talking about how she experiences that at her grandfather's funeral.
Speaker 2: At the funeral, there's a barbershop chorus who sings a
Speaker 2: song in tribute of her grandfather, and she sees her
Speaker 2: father for the first time in her life, crying in
Speaker 2: front of her, crying in public. And she says, what
Speaker 2: she remembers of that funeral is not the sorrow, but
Speaker 2: the union between souls that happen there. And I think
Speaker 2: that's what is bringing to life when he says, I
Speaker 2: may be a Buddhist, and I may understand it about
Speaker 2: the two drops, but come on, we're all in this together.
Speaker 1: I love that idea. You say, this is the ultimate paradox.
Speaker 1: We transcend grief only when we realize that we're connected
Speaker 1: with all the other humans who can't transcend grief, because
Speaker 1: we will always say but even so, even so, what
Speaker 1: I love about that poem, and I've tried to articulate
Speaker 1: this and listen, have heard this before. I try to
Speaker 1: articulate and talk about an experience I had when I
Speaker 1: had to put to sleep a dog that I love
Speaker 1: deeply beyond all measure, and I had had to put
Speaker 1: down another dog like eight months before, And for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I was able to sort of like say, you know what, Yep,
Speaker 1: this is a world of do. It's a world of do.
Speaker 1: We come, we go as creatures, we get sick, we die.
Speaker 1: This is what happens. So I sort of set down
Speaker 1: my argument with the universe, and I just was able
Speaker 1: to descend into the grief itself, and it felt beautiful.
Speaker 1: It was so clear to me that that grief was
Speaker 1: the parallel, the other side of the great love. You know,
Speaker 1: I was having great grief because I'd had great love.
Speaker 1: But in order to do that, I feel like I
Speaker 1: had to set down my defense against it. I had
Speaker 1: to sit down the but it shouldn't have happened. He's
Speaker 1: too young. But I just had to put down another
Speaker 1: dog eight months ago. All my arguments with the universe,
Speaker 1: you said. But even so, even knowing all that, really sad,
Speaker 1: and yet there was a deep beauty in it that
Speaker 1: I had not experienced in other grieving situations where I
Speaker 1: had sort of grieved and argued my way through them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that resonates with you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, thank you for sharing that story. Yeah, it does,
Speaker 2: it does. I think there's something about setting aside our
Speaker 2: griefs too soon. Maybe that feels not human and deprives
Speaker 2: us of the process the way it is even for
Speaker 2: somebody who does get through grief with a great measure
Speaker 2: of resilience. And you know, as I write in the book,
Speaker 2: the Columbia psychologist George Bonano, who studies grief, has found
Speaker 2: that the vast majority of us I don't surprise ourselves
Speaker 2: by how resilient we end up being in the face
Speaker 2: of grief. It's not true for everybody. Some people really
Speaker 2: get into chronic grief, but many, many people are more
Speaker 2: resilient than they expect to be. But that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: they don't pass through the moments of feeling it so
Speaker 2: incredibly intensely. And it doesn't mean they might not feel it.
Speaker 2: You know, fifty years from now, fifty years from the
Speaker 2: day they've lost their beloved, it can come up upon
Speaker 2: them unawares. So all of that is part of the
Speaker 2: same MESSI soup I agree.
Speaker 1: I think there's this idea that is in certain circles,
Speaker 1: and your book is part of this, which beautifully says, hey,
Speaker 1: difficult experiences can become really beautiful things, and we hear
Speaker 1: that and we buy into that, and yet they're still
Speaker 1: brutal when you're in them. They're still like, that's a
Speaker 1: lovely idea. I find it helpful to hold a kernel
Speaker 1: of it in my mind some of the time when
Speaker 1: I'm in the darkness, like, Okay, yeah, this is transforming,
Speaker 1: but you still got to go through it, and it
Speaker 1: is not pleasant at certain moments, for sure.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And I also want to take a minute to
Speaker 2: acknowledge that I think there are for some people, some
Speaker 2: griefs and some traumas that are so enormal and so
Speaker 2: horrible and so beyond what any human should be exposed
Speaker 2: to that maybe you don't ever get to that place,
Speaker 2: or maybe you only get to glimpses of that place.
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking, in particular, there's someone I've come to
Speaker 2: know over the years who as a child was just
Speaker 2: exposed to such a heart wrenching and horrible degree of
Speaker 2: abuse that you just can't even imagine. Well, I guess
Speaker 2: you can say two things about him now as a
Speaker 2: grown adult. One is that his life is forever marred
Speaker 2: in a very deep way. I'm in touch with him
Speaker 2: every day. I don't think I've seen him go through
Speaker 2: a single day without suffering emotionally as a result of
Speaker 2: what happened to him as a child. It's also the
Speaker 2: case that he has an incredibly loving soul who writes
Speaker 2: poetry every day and does great acts of love for
Speaker 2: the people around him almost every day. And so both
Speaker 2: of these things are true at once. But I'm invoking
Speaker 2: him to say, I don't think it's easy, and I
Speaker 2: do wonder if there are some degree of grief and
Speaker 2: trauma beyond which maybe a full healing isn't possible. To me,
Speaker 2: the jury's out on that question.
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree one hundred percent. I believe some
Speaker 1: degree of healing is always possible, but how much is
Speaker 1: up in the eye. I wonder about this a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, being a recovering addict and alcoholic, this is
Speaker 1: a question I think about a lot, which is, we
Speaker 1: know that trauma is a huge indicator for addiction, and
Speaker 1: we know the more traumatic experiences you've had, the higher
Speaker 1: that relationship really is. And so we see some people
Speaker 1: who get sober and you're like, well, my god, what
Speaker 1: they went through was just I can't fathom, you know,
Speaker 1: And yet they get sober, And then you see other
Speaker 1: people that don't, even with much less trauma. So I
Speaker 1: think this sort of healing process, to me, it's deeply mysterious.
Speaker 1: One of my great mysteries of my adult life has
Speaker 1: always been why do some of us get sober and
Speaker 1: others don't? And for every answer I give, I can
Speaker 1: find people that contradict whatever answer I come up with,
Speaker 1: and I'm left with a mystery. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: we can fully articulate something as complex as healing, and
Speaker 1: the world is deeply complex. And I think that's what
Speaker 1: The Bitter Sweet to Me also takes into account. There's
Speaker 1: some measure in it to me of this is all
Speaker 1: deeply mysterious, and that that mystery can be deeply both
Speaker 1: terrifying but also deeply beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. You know how in the book I
Speaker 2: give different examples of people who have been engaging with
Speaker 2: the Bittersweet tradition all over the world, and one of
Speaker 2: them is the poet Gabriel Garcia Lorca, and he calls
Speaker 2: the longing aspect of the bitter sweet, like that mysterious
Speaker 2: longing that so many of us feel. He calls it
Speaker 2: the great force that everyone feels but no philosopher can explain. Hmmm,
Speaker 2: and I think that really embodies the mystery that you're
Speaker 2: talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the bitter Sweet tradition, you actually say what
Speaker 1: I call the bitter sweet is a tendency to states
Speaker 1: of longing, poignancy and sorrow, and acute awareness of passing time,
Speaker 1: and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world.
Speaker 1: So I thought, for a minute, we could talk about
Speaker 1: those states individually. We've talked a little bit about sorrow,
Speaker 1: so I don't know if we need to go back
Speaker 1: to sorrow. Maybe we'll land there. It seems to be
Speaker 1: where I often even without meaning too. No, I'm joking
Speaker 1: sort of. But let's talk about longing, because this is
Speaker 1: a really interesting one, because I've seen longing as a
Speaker 1: deeply beautiful thing, and yet, as somebody who studied a
Speaker 1: lot in Buddhism, we're also told to watch out for craving.
Speaker 1: And you stumble right into this in the book and
Speaker 1: talk about it. So I really wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: that for a little while, because I think that is
Speaker 1: such a big and confusing sort of distinction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with you, of course. And there is
Speaker 2: a state of longing, a state of yearning that exists
Speaker 2: across all the traditions. Right there's the longing for the
Speaker 2: garden of Eden, and the longing for Mecca, the longing
Speaker 2: to be united with God, the longing for somewhere over
Speaker 2: the rainbow, you know. In Homer's Odyssey, like that's a
Speaker 2: story of epic adventure, that's the way we think of it,
Speaker 2: but really that's a story of Ulysses longing for home.
Speaker 2: The adventure happened because he was filled with homesickness for
Speaker 2: his native Ithaca that he hadn't seen, I think for
Speaker 2: seventeen years or something like that. And he's weeping on
Speaker 2: a beach with homesickness, and that's what sets him off
Speaker 2: on the journey that ultimately brings him home. But this
Speaker 2: idea of you know, I'm a poor wayfaring stranger longing
Speaker 2: for that world of home, there is something about that,
Speaker 2: this longing for home, this ultimate home, whether we think
Speaker 2: of it explicitly in terms of the divine or more
Speaker 2: metaphorically in terms of like longing for perfect union, perfect love,
Speaker 2: that is central to what human beings are, that is
Speaker 2: central to who we are. We are creatures who long
Speaker 2: for an ultimate union and long for an ultimate home,
Speaker 2: and we come into this world crying, as psychoanalyst would say, well,
Speaker 2: it's because we left the womb. But going more deeply
Speaker 2: the womb is the representation of that ultimate home for
Speaker 2: which we long. And so many of the great theologians
Speaker 2: and mystics have taught across all the traditions that we
Speaker 2: should go deeper into the longing because it's the longing
Speaker 2: itself that brings us closer to that for which we long.
Speaker 2: Remi says that he's talking about God or Allah. He's saying,
Speaker 2: the longing you express is the return message from the
Speaker 2: divine that you seek. The grief you cry out from
Speaker 2: is what draws you towards union. Your pure sadness that
Speaker 2: wants help, that is the secret cup. So all these traditions,
Speaker 2: and particularly the Sufi tradition, which is the mystic side
Speaker 2: of Islam, all these traditions speak of this divine nature
Speaker 2: of longing. And as soon as I started learning about
Speaker 2: all this and diving into these traditions, I felt like
Speaker 2: a kind of homecoming because I felt like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: you know, this is what I have been experiencing all
Speaker 2: my life and never really understood what it was. But then,
Speaker 2: like you, I had this big question of like, I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm not an expert in Buddhism, but I know something
Speaker 2: about it and the way that Buddhism warns us against craving.
Speaker 2: And I thought, well, how do these teachings about the
Speaker 2: you could call it divine nature of longing. How do
Speaker 2: these teachings square with Buddhism's warning against giving into craving.
Speaker 2: So I went to ask a Sufi teacher about this. Actually,
Speaker 2: this is llewell and von Lee, the great Sufi teacher
Speaker 2: who's based in California, And I asked him this very
Speaker 2: question at a retreat that he gave the difference between
Speaker 2: longing and Sufhism and Buddhism, and he says, longing is
Speaker 2: different from craving. Longing is the craving of the soul
Speaker 2: you want to go home. He says, in our culture
Speaker 2: it's confused with depression, and it's not depression. There's a
Speaker 2: saying in Sufhism. Sufhism was at first heartache. Only later
Speaker 2: it became something to write about. And then he said
Speaker 2: to me, if you're taken by longing, live it. You
Speaker 2: can't go wrong. If you're going to go to God,
Speaker 2: go with sweet sorrow in the soul. And I say
Speaker 2: all this as an agnostic myself, and yet like, there's
Speaker 2: such a deep truth in this message, and one that
Speaker 2: I think coexists with the exhortation against craving, because this
Speaker 2: longing that we're talking about is more about a longing
Speaker 2: for everything that is good and true and beautiful and love.
Speaker 2: And where's the harm in that?
Speaker 1: I think that we find this paradox right in the
Speaker 1: center of Buddhism. I know I've talked about it with
Speaker 1: many Buddhist teachers, which is this idea of why are
Speaker 1: we even practicing if we don't want something, Like, what
Speaker 1: are we doing if there's not some desire, Like we're
Speaker 1: not sitting around meditating for no reason. We're doing it
Speaker 1: because there's something that we are after we want. And
Speaker 1: even the Buddha talks about you know, great determination. Determination
Speaker 1: comes when you're like, well, there's something I want and
Speaker 1: I'm determined to get it. So I think that even
Speaker 1: within Buddhism, we sort of just have to sit with
Speaker 1: this paradox that says, yeah, there are some things that
Speaker 1: we want, and that longing is okay. I love the
Speaker 1: way Houston Smith in his book The Great World Religions,
Speaker 1: it's a classic, but he talks about Hinduism and he
Speaker 1: paraphrases this, So I want to make sure I'm saying
Speaker 1: that it's what he said, not what Hinduism said. But
Speaker 1: he said about Hinduism that basically what Hinduism is saying
Speaker 1: is your desire is great, you just are desiring the
Speaker 1: wrong things. It's not strong enough, it's not big enough,
Speaker 1: and that that's the normal path through life. That when
Speaker 1: we're younger, we desire the things of the world, and
Speaker 1: that's natural and normal, and as we grow old, we
Speaker 1: start to go, wait, there's something more. The things of
Speaker 1: the world aren't satisfying, So what is this bigger thing?
Speaker 1: So I just love this question because it's another one
Speaker 1: of the things that I feel like has been central
Speaker 1: to what I've asked people on this show for five
Speaker 1: hundred episodes, which is this longing seems clear, it seems real,
Speaker 1: it seems true, it seems innate to human nature, and
Speaker 1: it feels right. And we also know that craving over
Speaker 1: attachment causes a great deal of suffering, and so trying
Speaker 1: to balance that paradox, I think is really important work.
Speaker 1: It's kind of similar to like trying to balance that
Speaker 1: thin line of Okay, I'm going to turn difficulty and
Speaker 1: sorrow into beauty or I'm going to fall off the
Speaker 1: other side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. That's
Speaker 2: a great way of putting it. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you think that the idea of saying
Speaker 2: that what we're all ultimately longing for is love, by
Speaker 2: which I don't mean like a new relationship kind of love.
Speaker 2: I mean, like like love if that's something that unites
Speaker 2: all the different religious traditions, including Buddhism. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: Buddhism would say I love without attachment.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I've always loved the Joseph Campbell quote around
Speaker 1: you know that we're not looking for the meaning of life,
Speaker 1: We're looking for the feeling of being alive. Yeah, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: we could call that love, we could call that transcendence,
Speaker 1: we could call it connection. You know, when I think
Speaker 1: about spirituality, and I've got a course called spiritual habits. Right.
Speaker 1: So it's a word I use when I think about
Speaker 1: what it means most deeply. It just to me is
Speaker 1: about connection to what matters. That's going to be different
Speaker 1: for everybody, but it's about connection to what matters, and
Speaker 1: so you know, the words we use might be different,
Speaker 1: but I do think that that's what we're after. And
Speaker 1: as we're talking, I'm thinking about early days of Alcoholics
Speaker 1: Anonymous and Bill Wilson was the founder and he got
Speaker 1: into a correspondence via letters with Carl Jung and Young
Speaker 1: made the connection that said, you know, what alcoholics are
Speaker 1: after is an experience of the transcendent. It's in the
Speaker 1: word spirit spirit us. You know we call alcohol spirits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: That's what's being chased, absent, and the only thing that's
Speaker 1: going to be a cure for that is something that
Speaker 1: addresses that need, which is why AA became a spiritual program,
Speaker 1: very religious in its early leanings, and it's diversified, but
Speaker 1: it's pointing to that same thing, that there's some connection
Speaker 1: we need to something that's more than us and our
Speaker 1: little wants.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Oh my gosh, that's so true. You know, it's
Speaker 2: funny as you say that. So I wrote most of
Speaker 2: my first book Quiet in this amazing, beautiful little cafe
Speaker 2: in Greenwich Village no longer exists, but it was called Doma,
Speaker 2: and don't I had this magical spirit about it, and
Speaker 2: it drew artists and writers and actors from all over
Speaker 2: the city. They would come and hang out there and
Speaker 2: work on their stuff and have conversations. It was such
Speaker 2: a magical place. I hung out there all the time
Speaker 2: for a number of years, and once or twice a
Speaker 2: week I would notice there was this group of people
Speaker 2: who would come in the evening to Doma and they
Speaker 2: would sit together and talk. And I always noticed them
Speaker 2: because they seemed so alive and so full of spirit,
Speaker 2: and I wondered where they came from. And then at
Speaker 2: a certain point someone told me, Oh, there's an AA
Speaker 2: group that meets down the block, and this group is
Speaker 2: coming from there. And it was such a striking group
Speaker 2: of people, like you just noticed, as I say, you
Speaker 2: notice them immediately, and they had a kind of magical
Speaker 2: property about them, like even more than the usual denizens
Speaker 2: of Doma.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it can have that effect. And I
Speaker 1: think the other thing you talk about in the book
Speaker 1: is that sometimes the things that lead us most commonly
Speaker 1: to transcend and exalted experiences is difficulty, sadness, a understanding
Speaker 1: that life is finite, you know. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people, particularly early on in AA. I mean,
Speaker 1: I was so close to death when I came in,
Speaker 1: you know, as a heroin Addict, that I was just
Speaker 1: so aware of it that it made life sort of
Speaker 1: glow in a different way. Sometimes I wish I could
Speaker 1: recapture that, you know, a little bit more with the
Speaker 1: emotional maturity I have now and the spiritual energy I
Speaker 1: had then would be perfect. Oh.
Speaker 2: Interesting, interesting, Yeah, And I mean there are all those
Speaker 2: studies that I talk about in the books, like David
Speaker 2: Yaiden Johns Hopkins, that guy who I developed the Bittersweet
Speaker 2: Quiz with. He's done studies where he has tried to
Speaker 2: track what are the conditions that cause people to experience
Speaker 2: the great, spiritual and transcendent moments of their lives, and
Speaker 2: he's found that one of the most reliable ones is
Speaker 2: being at moments of transition, including moments of great loss,
Speaker 2: including approaching death. And other studies that have found that
Speaker 2: if you ask people to imagine, what are the emotion
Speaker 2: that they would feel upon approaching deaths, like people assume
Speaker 2: the emotions would be, you know, like feel depressed and
Speaker 2: angry and like that, But when you talk to people
Speaker 2: who are actually dying, it's nothing like that. They're reporting
Speaker 2: much more uplifted and much more spiritual emotions a lot
Speaker 2: of the time. So there is something about being open
Speaker 2: to these states of transition. Those are some of our
Speaker 2: great gateway moments, even the transitions that feel really difficult
Speaker 2: and that feel as if they're full of loss.
Speaker 1: It certainly has been the case for me. Transitions of
Speaker 1: all different sorts have been big moments, and most of
Speaker 1: them have been ones that I wouldn't have chosen.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly exactly. You never choose it. You never choose it.
Speaker 2: This is a very innocuous one, or a very mild one.
Speaker 2: But I went through an experience like this a little bit.
Speaker 2: Just this past summer, my two sons went to Sleepway
Speaker 2: camp for the first time. Like my husband and I
Speaker 2: really have devoted everything, you know, to our kids over
Speaker 2: these years, and suddenly they weren't home, and we knew
Speaker 2: they weren't going to be home again for the rest
Speaker 2: of the summer, and that, you know, and of itself
Speaker 2: was a kind of like foretelling of them going away
Speaker 2: to college and growing up and all the rest of it.
Speaker 2: And the first day or so, I just felt such
Speaker 2: a blue feeling, you know, like a blue sense of loss.
Speaker 2: And then life went forward and I don't know, my
Speaker 2: husband and I we went to the beach, just the
Speaker 2: two of us for the first time in so long,
Speaker 2: and it was such an incredible experience, and it was
Speaker 2: like a kind of second honeymoon, like we had only
Speaker 2: just met and at the same time that we had
Speaker 2: known each other all our lives. It was just this
Speaker 2: great thing that would not have happened but for passing
Speaker 2: through that blue moment of transition.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that's a real one that children going away,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned in a small way summer camp and
Speaker 1: then the big way in college, like that is a
Speaker 1: big thing for people. That emptiness, to me is a
Speaker 1: really real thing and it can be very difficult, but
Speaker 1: it's also very fertile, as you sort of found. Just
Speaker 1: used a word in there that brings me to something
Speaker 1: else I wanted to talk about with you, because you
Speaker 1: talk about the author Nora mcernie. Am I saying that right?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Norah McInerney, Yeah, Yeah, she has a ted talk and
Speaker 1: uses a phrase in the middle of it, which is
Speaker 1: she makes a distinction between moving on and moving forward.
Speaker 1: And you just actually used that word when you talked
Speaker 1: about what happened with you and your husband, you moved forward.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so interesting. I didn't even realize I was
Speaker 2: using her phrase, but it's it's such a helpful framework.
Speaker 2: So Nora McInerney, she's a writer who lost her first
Speaker 2: husband at a very early age and was full of
Speaker 2: grief and felt that the culture and everyone she knew
Speaker 2: was kind of sending her the message after some period
Speaker 2: of time, you know, time to move on, move on,
Speaker 2: move on. And she said moving on was impossible, but
Speaker 2: what was possible was moving forward, which is to say,
Speaker 2: she will mourn her first husband for the rest of
Speaker 2: her life at the same time that she went on
Speaker 2: to remarry and create a blended family with her new husband.
Speaker 2: So she has moved forward with him and with her
Speaker 2: husband's memory. You know, the person she is in this
Speaker 2: second marriage is not the same person that she would
Speaker 2: have been had she never known and loved and lost
Speaker 2: her husband. So she has moved forward with him and
Speaker 2: with that loss. And I think that's such a liberating
Speaker 2: way to think about loss, because it's like allowing us
Speaker 2: to acknowledge the enormity of it at the same time
Speaker 2: that we're still living our lives. You know. I think
Speaker 2: there's a feeling if you're ever going to feel happy again,
Speaker 2: that that's a kind of abandonment of the person who's gone.
Speaker 2: But the idea of moving forward is telling you that
Speaker 2: there is no abandonment at all. You're carrying them with you,
Speaker 2: You're moving forward with them.
Speaker 1: I love that idea. It makes me think of another
Speaker 1: phrase around grief that I love. It was a guest
Speaker 1: we had on the show. Her name's Megan Devine, and
Speaker 1: she says, so things can't be fixed, they can only
Speaker 1: be carried. And I loved that idea too, Like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're not going to fix the fact that you lost
Speaker 1: your husband, or God forbid, your child or your dog
Speaker 1: that you love deeply. That's not fixable, right, But it
Speaker 1: can be carried, you know, there is a way to
Speaker 1: carry it. And she says, move forward. You know while
Speaker 1: you're carrying it. That phrase is always stuck with me,
Speaker 1: and it sort of resonates a little bit with that
Speaker 1: one about moving forward versus moving on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. I'm going to have to remember
Speaker 2: that one. That's a really great image.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about poignancy. That's not a word that
Speaker 1: is used a whole lot. Talk to me about poignancy,
Speaker 1: what it is and how it ties into everything we've
Speaker 1: been talking about.
Speaker 2: The happy tears that we so often feel is poignancy.
Speaker 2: It's like a grandparent watches a grandchild splashing in a puddle,
Speaker 2: and the grandparent has tears in their eyes as they
Speaker 2: watch that child splashing, And why are they crying? Where
Speaker 2: do the tears come from? You know, this is like
Speaker 2: a beautiful moment, and it's a moment of incredible love
Speaker 2: and appreciation for this child. It's also a moment of understanding,
Speaker 2: maybe not on a conscious level, that the grandparent may
Speaker 2: not be there to see the child grow up, and
Speaker 2: that the child herself won't live forever. All of it
Speaker 2: is implicit in these moments when we cry those happy tears.
Speaker 2: You know, when you tear up at a beautiful TV commercial, like,
Speaker 2: that's poignancy. It's poignancy. It's like the perfect blending of
Speaker 2: joy and sorrow.
Speaker 1: I am enormously susceptible to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just gonna say, I think some of
Speaker 2: us kind of dance at the tip of that needle
Speaker 2: or whatever the expression is at every moment.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I'm just known for tearing up at nearly everything,
Speaker 1: from something that's sad to something like you said that's
Speaker 1: sort of poignant, to something about an entire crowd of
Speaker 1: people cheering. In the same way, there's something about oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's even beautiful. It just gets me. I won't bore
Speaker 1: you or the listeners with it, but there are a
Speaker 1: number of running jokes in my family about the absolutely
Speaker 1: propos usterous things that have made me cry. But yeah,
Speaker 1: poignancy is a great word for it. Also, you know
Speaker 1: the thing you said earlier about exactly what you said,
Speaker 1: what I feel really is love a great title outpouring
Speaker 1: of it. You know, it makes my heart open. There's
Speaker 1: an elevation use that word about sad music. It elevates us.
Speaker 1: All those things feel wrapped into what I'm feeling when
Speaker 1: at and t makes me cry about calling your grandmother, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know I'm being yanked and manipulated in
Speaker 1: a very obvious way, but what's happening inside me is
Speaker 1: still beautiful, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the reason the manipulation works is because it's
Speaker 2: pressing you're an our deepest, most potent buttons.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Throughout our whole conversation, I kept thinking of the two
Speaker 2: word phrase by E. M. Forster of only connect, Only connect.
Speaker 2: That's what he said, And I came across that phrase
Speaker 2: when I was a young girl, and it just struck me.
Speaker 2: It was like, Oh my gosh, that's the truth of everything.
Speaker 2: And every single one of those examples you just gave
Speaker 2: was a moment of only connecting.
Speaker 1: I love that phrase. I also love something you say
Speaker 1: near the end of the book. You say, there's the
Speaker 1: simple exhortation to turn in the direction of beauty. Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's something I've really come to believe. And I
Speaker 2: also think it's a way for people like us who
Speaker 2: exist naturally in this bitter sweet state of being. And
Speaker 2: you know, we were talking at the beginning about the
Speaker 2: great power of the bitter sweet way of being is
Speaker 2: that it can deliver you to these states of wonder
Speaker 2: and awe and spirituality and transcendence. And the dark side
Speaker 2: of it is that it could deliver you to anxiety
Speaker 2: and depression. Well, one of the best ways of marshaling
Speaker 2: the powers of a bitter sweet way of being is
Speaker 2: to proactively and consciously turn in the direction of beauty
Speaker 2: everywhere that you can, because it's all around us. We
Speaker 2: think of it as being reserved for the moment you
Speaker 2: take the family vacation to the Grand Canyon and you
Speaker 2: ooh and awe, or you go to church and you
Speaker 2: see the light through the stained glass windows or whatever.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't have to be confined to those specific moments.
Speaker 2: It can be daily, and it can be constant, and
Speaker 2: it can be proactively sought and even chased. I think
Speaker 2: we can chase beauty. So like, during the time that
Speaker 2: I was writing this book, well during part of it,
Speaker 2: there was the pandemic, and there's been all the social
Speaker 2: and political strife, and I found myself waking up every
Speaker 2: morning and being tormented by my Twitter feed. And I
Speaker 2: ended up asking people to recommend to me their favorite
Speaker 2: art accounts, and I started following all these artists and
Speaker 2: my feed now is just like one giant cascade of art.
Speaker 2: And then I started every morning posting a favorite piece
Speaker 2: of art onto my social channels and pairing it with
Speaker 2: a favorite poem or quote or whatever, and that ended
Speaker 2: up attracting this whole community of people who loved to
Speaker 2: start their days in that same way, and so it
Speaker 2: was like a whole group of people connecting around, turning
Speaker 2: in the direction beauty. And I think that's one of
Speaker 2: the best ways we have of channeling this bittersweet power.
Speaker 1: I absolutely love that I create an episode each week
Speaker 1: for supporters of the show I called teaching Song and
Speaker 1: a Poem, and I talk about something that's on my mind,
Speaker 1: and I play a song I love and a poem
Speaker 1: that I love. And what it does for me is
Speaker 1: it orients me all the time looking for that sort
Speaker 1: of beauty. So I think that's a beautiful place for
Speaker 1: us to end, which is with you encouraging us that
Speaker 1: beauty is all around us and to look for it.
Speaker 1: You made a bitter Sweet playlist, which people can find
Speaker 1: on your website and on Spotify. I could not help
Speaker 1: but match you and make my own bittersweet playlist.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I've got to listen to it.
Speaker 1: I'll send it to you.
Speaker 2: Please do.
Speaker 1: We'll put links in the show notes to Susan's website,
Speaker 1: to her playlist to my playlist on your website. Is
Speaker 1: the Bittersweet Test, which I scored as you might imagine
Speaker 1: very very highly on I'm shocked. Yeah, So where can
Speaker 1: people find you? So?
Speaker 2: Best way to find me through my website at Susankane
Speaker 2: dot net. You can sign up for my newsletter which
Speaker 2: will always keep you up to date, and I'm also
Speaker 2: on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, and you
Speaker 2: can find the Bittersweet book really anywhere you get your books,
Speaker 2: and I also have a Bittersweet quiz that I've developed,
Speaker 2: which is so cool. We deliver text messages to you
Speaker 2: every morning with little sound recordings from me or art
Speaker 2: to look at written messages for you. So it's just
Speaker 2: like a one minute thing that you get every morning,
Speaker 2: a kind of little uplift start to your day, and
Speaker 2: you can find that on my website as well.
Speaker 1: Awesome, Thank you so much for coming on, Susan. You
Speaker 1: and I are going to go into the post show
Speaker 1: conversation and we are going to discuss some very specific
Speaker 1: songs that were on your Bitter Sweet playlist, and maybe
Speaker 1: I'll introduce you to one or two from mine listeners.
Speaker 1: If you'd like access to the post show conversations to
Speaker 1: that special episode I talked about a couple minutes ago,
Speaker 1: you can go to one net slash Join Susan. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. I loved the book, I've loved this conversation,
Speaker 1: and I've been wanting to talk with you for a
Speaker 1: long time, so I'm really happy we got to do this.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. It was really so lovely to
Speaker 2: talk to you. I love the frequency that you're on.
Speaker 2: It's very different from many podcasts, and I so appreciate
Speaker 2: it and admire it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you so much for listening to the show.
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