Speaker 1: I told my wife because she's like, listen, there's a roadblock.
Speaker 1: There's something going on with you. I know it. And
Speaker 1: so when I saw his email, the light bulb just
Speaker 1: came on. I said, this is what I need to do,
Speaker 1: at least try to get past this roadblock. And that's
Speaker 1: what happened. I saw his email, I signed up, and
Speaker 1: the rest is history. I could never complete a project,
Speaker 1: and I've completed a project faster than I thought and
Speaker 1: I didn't throw in the towel. We talked about this
Speaker 1: today when I was talking with Eric. You know, I
Speaker 1: want to keep giving up, and he's like, don't walk
Speaker 1: away from what you've already created. If you want to
Speaker 1: help getting past your roadblocks, Like Andy and hundreds of
Speaker 1: other clients have, go to one you feed dot net
Speaker 1: slash transform. The mistakes one makes, if one owns up
Speaker 1: to them, if one embraces them, tries to learn from them,
Speaker 1: can be just as important as the successes. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true,
Speaker 1: and yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is part kerk Palmer, a writer, teacher,
Speaker 1: and activist whose work speaks deeply to people in many
Speaker 1: walks of life. Is founder and senior partner of the
Speaker 1: Center for Courage and Renewal. Parker is also the author
Speaker 1: of many books, including the one we discuss on this episode,
Speaker 1: On the Brink of Everything, Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old.
Speaker 1: Hi Parker, Welcome to the show. Hi Eric, Good to
Speaker 1: be back with you, sir, Yeah, pleasure to have you
Speaker 1: on for a second time. We will jump into your
Speaker 1: new book called On the Brink of Everything in a moment,
Speaker 1: but let's start like we normally do with the parable.
Speaker 1: There's a grandfather who's talking with his granddaughter, and he says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks
Speaker 1: about it for a second, looks up at her grandfather,
Speaker 1: and she says, well, Grandfather, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do. Well.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very relevant parable to anyone I
Speaker 1: know who's still alive and will on the face of
Speaker 1: the earth. Seems to me we faced daily questions about
Speaker 1: which of our impulses we're going to feed or encourage,
Speaker 1: or manifest or express, and those choices make a big
Speaker 1: difference in our lives and in the life of the world.
Speaker 1: I'm a profound believer in the whole idea of that
Speaker 1: we create reality from the inside out, and that whatever
Speaker 1: is churning and working inside of us, for better or
Speaker 1: for worse, comes into the outer world and helps to
Speaker 1: co create a reality that I have to live in,
Speaker 1: and to some extent you have to live in, and
Speaker 1: other people in my orbit and in the larger society
Speaker 1: around me have to live in. So any way we
Speaker 1: have of coming at this question of how do I
Speaker 1: exercise deep thoughtfulness about what it is in myself that
Speaker 1: I feed and what it is in myself that I
Speaker 1: that I don't feed. I think is worth reflecting on it,
Speaker 1: And for me, that parable has always been a very
Speaker 1: simple path into that really complicated question question, and I
Speaker 1: think arises big time these days. It always has in
Speaker 1: human history. But these days when there's so much free
Speaker 1: floating anger, free floating anxiety, free floating contempt, free floating
Speaker 1: hatred really in our political system, and when we put
Speaker 1: more of that into the world, not reflecting on the
Speaker 1: choices we're making, it can't possibly be a good thing.
Speaker 1: So I sitting here today on what January third, nineteen,
Speaker 1: I hear that parable through those years that are tuned
Speaker 1: into our current political situation. That's great. Yeah, I agree
Speaker 1: with you. One of the things that often people say
Speaker 1: about the parable is that, you know, people often think
Speaker 1: the parable is you can't starve your bad wolf. You
Speaker 1: can't you know, can't shun your bad wolf. You can't
Speaker 1: you know, you can't push off these bad sides of yourself,
Speaker 1: which I agree with in the parable actually doesn't say
Speaker 1: anything about doing anything detrimental to the bad wolf, but
Speaker 1: it points me towards something that you say. And I'm
Speaker 1: just going to read a line of years back and
Speaker 1: we can kind of head into it from there, and
Speaker 1: you say, looking back, I'm awed by the way that
Speaker 1: embracing everything, from what I got right to what I
Speaker 1: got wrong, invites the grace of wholeness. Yeah. When I
Speaker 1: wrote On the Brink of Everything, which was a wonderful
Speaker 1: exercise in reflecting on my own aging. Um, I'll turn
Speaker 1: eighty in another month here, and I think I probably
Speaker 1: started writing the pieces that constitute book about five years ago,
Speaker 1: and so I was very conscious of the fact that
Speaker 1: I was moving into my late seventies, and then eventually
Speaker 1: I hoped to cross that threshold with the big zero
Speaker 1: at the end of it. It became a way of
Speaker 1: helping me look back on my life, look around, and
Speaker 1: look ahead. And as I looked back, I thought I'd
Speaker 1: let a complicated life of zigzag life and up and
Speaker 1: down life and in and out life as many of
Speaker 1: us have, and yet from this vantage point of age,
Speaker 1: I can see how every bit of it has woven
Speaker 1: together into what I currently experience as pretty resilient fabric
Speaker 1: of life, and that all the threads that went into
Speaker 1: that fabric are somehow necessary, somehow required, not only the
Speaker 1: bright and light threads, but the dark and difficult threads,
Speaker 1: maybe threads that I at once put into the fabric
Speaker 1: years ago and instantly or eventually wished I could pull
Speaker 1: out because they somehow marred the perfection that I was
Speaker 1: looking for. But I think, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things I've learned over the years is that perfection as
Speaker 1: an illusion. I think most of us learned that is
Speaker 1: as we go along, if we're if we're honest about
Speaker 1: coming to terms with ourselves, and the mistakes one makes,
Speaker 1: if one owns up to them, if one embraces them,
Speaker 1: if one tries to learn from them, can be just
Speaker 1: as important as the successes that one may achieve in
Speaker 1: a lifetime, those bright and shining moments that we mostly
Speaker 1: like to talk about and that we put on our
Speaker 1: resumes and you know us in job interviews and so forth. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I feel like one of the gifts of
Speaker 1: age is the opper trinity to look back and say
Speaker 1: it all belongs, it all as a place. And I
Speaker 1: guess I could spend time regretting certain parts of my life,
Speaker 1: certain decisions I made, certain mistakes I made, certain ways
Speaker 1: I've fell on my face, and I certainly had my
Speaker 1: share of all of that. But another gift of ages
Speaker 1: deep appreciation for the present moment, deep appreciation, deep gratitude
Speaker 1: for the fact that I'm alive and well. And to
Speaker 1: waste energy in regret it seems pretty nonsensical to me,
Speaker 1: And at the same time, as you're suggesting, I don't
Speaker 1: want to ignore the facts of my life, and so
Speaker 1: to reframe them as again threads that helped make the
Speaker 1: fabric of my life more resilient has been very helpful
Speaker 1: to me, and I don't know that I would have
Speaker 1: come as far with that job of reframing if I
Speaker 1: had not written this book, which required me to be
Speaker 1: very actively and intentionally reflective about my journey over what's
Speaker 1: now nearly eighty years. You describe this process and looking
Speaker 1: at both are are good and are bad. You say,
Speaker 1: your descents into darkness and rising again into light, your
Speaker 1: betrayals and fidelities, failures and successes. You talk about embracing
Speaker 1: all of that is being fierce with reality. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: love that phrase. As you know, Eric, I stole that
Speaker 1: phrase from a wonderful writer, Florida Scott Maxwell, who wrote
Speaker 1: a book that I don't think is widely enough known
Speaker 1: called The Measure of Our Days. When she was, as
Speaker 1: I recall, in her late eighties or early nineties, she was, uh,
Speaker 1: I believe, a young in psychotherapist, and it's a deeply
Speaker 1: insightful book, The Measure of Our Days. In that book,
Speaker 1: she has this very arresting phrase about I can't quote
Speaker 1: it directly, but the notion is that if you're willing
Speaker 1: to embrace everything you you are and have been everything
Speaker 1: you've said and done, for better or for worse, you
Speaker 1: become fierce with reality. And I like the notion of
Speaker 1: fierce with reality. I mean, I think you know, fierce
Speaker 1: rightly understood is a word about that has to do
Speaker 1: with being fully alive. And if there's if there's anything
Speaker 1: I want to be an old age, it's fully alive,
Speaker 1: because again with old age comes this this profound gratitude
Speaker 1: for the fact that I'm still here to walk the
Speaker 1: walk and talk to talk, and tell the story and
Speaker 1: and let the story keep evolving. Um. As I say
Speaker 1: early on in the book, I know people who feel
Speaker 1: badly about the fact that they're old. I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm one of the lucky ones. Um. It doesn't take
Speaker 1: thirty seconds of reflection to recall that lots and lots
Speaker 1: of people have never made it this far. And I
Speaker 1: feel very lucky about that. And so out of appreciation
Speaker 1: for life and the gift of another day of life
Speaker 1: that I give thanks for every morning that I get up,
Speaker 1: I treasure this notion of fierceness, that I can respond
Speaker 1: to things with fierce love, with fierce commitment, with with
Speaker 1: fierce passion and concern, you know, tempered by what I
Speaker 1: hope is the wisdom of yours, tempered by knowledge, for example,
Speaker 1: of the fact that not all of the problems I
Speaker 1: see around me are problems that I can solve or
Speaker 1: help sell, but some of them I can make a
Speaker 1: contribution to. And if if my desire to do that
Speaker 1: is fierce, and if I do it out of a
Speaker 1: fierce love for people who are afflicted and affected by
Speaker 1: those problems, then maybe maybe I make some kind of
Speaker 1: marginal contribution to the to the world, and I'd much
Speaker 1: rather do that than lose myself in regretting or handwringing
Speaker 1: or or self pity. I can be very contemporary about this,
Speaker 1: because I woke up this morning realizing I'd got to
Speaker 1: get in and see my doctor about a certain thing
Speaker 1: that um that had had troubled me yesterday, and I
Speaker 1: was able. I was luckily able to get in and
Speaker 1: see her, and you know, came away with a reasonably
Speaker 1: good It wasn't the catastrophic possibility that I thought it was,
Speaker 1: but something it looks like it's much more manageable than that. Well,
Speaker 1: I feel very lucky to be sitting here talking with
Speaker 1: you now without also carrying the burden of a really
Speaker 1: challenging diagnosis. I feel very lucky that I had a
Speaker 1: doctor within reach who had a cancelation this morning and
Speaker 1: was able to see me. I feel very lucky that
Speaker 1: I'm among the fortunate ones who has the kind of
Speaker 1: health insurance that allows me to seek good medical care.
Speaker 1: So it comes very naturally to me in in age
Speaker 1: to focus not on the problematic side of things, or
Speaker 1: to focus on the problematic side of things in a
Speaker 1: way that says what's there for me to learn. You know,
Speaker 1: when I'm when I feel down, when I feel self pity,
Speaker 1: when when I feel to use the ultimate insult in
Speaker 1: the in the Midwest grumpy. Uh, someone says you're grumpy
Speaker 1: in the Midwest. That's a really bad thing. You don't
Speaker 1: want to hear that about yourself to be able to
Speaker 1: take moments like that, moods like that and say where
Speaker 1: is this coming from? But what what is there here
Speaker 1: for me to learn? And I think this this has
Speaker 1: to do with not ignoring, um, you know, the devouring wolf,
Speaker 1: the bad wolf, but to ask that wolf, what do
Speaker 1: you want? Um, Okay, you're hungry, but I'm not going
Speaker 1: to let you gnaw on my leg or on someone
Speaker 1: else's leg. What can I feed you that will satisfy
Speaker 1: that that that hunger. It's not going to be me
Speaker 1: in my heart and my fate in my future. But
Speaker 1: there must be something. And I sometimes think that these
Speaker 1: shadow forces in our lives are simply asking us to
Speaker 1: pay attention to something about ourselves and about our world
Speaker 1: that isn't working for us, and to learn. I don't
Speaker 1: negotiate that that interface between self and world in a
Speaker 1: more creative life giving way very well. Said very well, said,
Speaker 1: it's interesting your book, and then I read another book recently.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you're familiar with this gentleman's work.
Speaker 1: His name is Jonathan Rouch and he's a Brookings Fellow guy,
Speaker 1: but he wrote a book called The Happiness Curve and
Speaker 1: we I did an interview with him recently and will
Speaker 1: air it some time here. But it's fascinating because he's
Speaker 1: showing that for a lot of people, happiness sort of
Speaker 1: drops as you go into your twenties, your thirties, your forties,
Speaker 1: into your late forties, and then it starts the happiness curve.
Speaker 1: It starts its way back up in aging. And your
Speaker 1: book and reading that it more and more is for
Speaker 1: me is helping to really work with a notion that
Speaker 1: I think is somewhat in bedded in our culture, which
Speaker 1: is that you hit your peak whenever that might be
Speaker 1: called mid thirties, mid forties, whenever you hit your peak,
Speaker 1: and then it's just all downhill from there. I loved
Speaker 1: his book. I love the work you're doing because it
Speaker 1: really points to that the aging process and getting older
Speaker 1: really wherever we are. But you know, you can you know,
Speaker 1: some people think I'm old, right, and to you, I
Speaker 1: look young. So um, it's all perspective. We're all we're
Speaker 1: all older. But I love this idea that reframes that
Speaker 1: aging is not this one way decline into misery, that
Speaker 1: there's lots of benefits and wonderments and and grace, as
Speaker 1: you say in the title of your book, to Getting Older. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm glad you brought that up. I've read
Speaker 1: a little about Mr. Rouch's book. I haven't read the
Speaker 1: book itself, but I I like very much this message
Speaker 1: that you just articulated from that book. When I think
Speaker 1: back on my thirties and forties and you use this
Speaker 1: word hit our peak, and that's what's expected of us
Speaker 1: at that time. That's a lot of pressure, you know.
Speaker 1: And those are years in which you are keeping your
Speaker 1: altimeter close at and and you're seeing you know, have
Speaker 1: I hit my peak yet? You know? I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I'm only at ten thousand feet. I know some people
Speaker 1: who are at fifteen thousand feet. I better get up there,
Speaker 1: even though I'm already having a hard time breathing. And
Speaker 1: then there's always somebody at twenty feet, so I better
Speaker 1: get up there too. That's a miserable way to live,
Speaker 1: even even though most of us would look back and say,
Speaker 1: or many of us, I mean, I would say this
Speaker 1: about myself. I'm sure that I worried about the wrong
Speaker 1: things during those years, but they were years of energetic
Speaker 1: work in which I was trying, in my case, to
Speaker 1: carve out a career as a writer and a traveling
Speaker 1: teacher and an activist related to causes that I cared
Speaker 1: a lot about. And it was hard work, and it
Speaker 1: was stressful work because you know, I had I had
Speaker 1: way too much ego pinned on its on its outcomes. UM.
Speaker 1: I think. I think one of the things that allows
Speaker 1: happiness to go up is when the ego falls away. Uh.
Speaker 1: And for me, you know, having experienced, as you know
Speaker 1: from my writing, three deep dives into clinical depression, UM,
Speaker 1: I have the experience of the ego disappearing entirely pretty
Speaker 1: miserable while you're there, very miserable and even deadly while
Speaker 1: you're there, when the sense of self disappears. It's a
Speaker 1: terrible place to be. But you come out of that
Speaker 1: with some new ways of inhabiting your own life that
Speaker 1: are less burdened by ego. Then you know, then before
Speaker 1: you had that, that ego free experience, you know, you
Speaker 1: shift in some ways from the performance mode of midlife,
Speaker 1: like the question is always um, and I can be
Speaker 1: very concrete about this. In my life as a speaker
Speaker 1: in front of some very large audiences like five thousand
Speaker 1: physicians in Orlando, Florida, is one memory I carry with me.
Speaker 1: It's easy to get very nervous about um. Are they
Speaker 1: going to respect me? Are they going to like me?
Speaker 1: Am I looking good while I do the job. The
Speaker 1: more you hold those ego written questions, the deeper your
Speaker 1: anxiety goes, and the less possible it becomes to do
Speaker 1: a good job. So when I started working on that
Speaker 1: somewhere in midlife, when I began to recognize what was
Speaker 1: going on, I had the realization, that's really not why
Speaker 1: I'm up there, or if it is, I should stop
Speaker 1: doing this, because those are not good reasons to be
Speaker 1: up there to perform, warm and look good. I'm up
Speaker 1: there if I understand myself in the world properly. I'm
Speaker 1: up there to serve a bunch of people who are
Speaker 1: rendering an important service in the world, and I'm up
Speaker 1: there to serve them with ideas that I believe will
Speaker 1: help them render that service in the world even better
Speaker 1: than they are already doing. So. I was talking with
Speaker 1: them about patient centered medicine, for example, And as soon
Speaker 1: as I began to get up in front of audiences
Speaker 1: with some real clarity around the fact I'm not there
Speaker 1: to perform, I'm there to serve, that kind of debilitating
Speaker 1: anxiety went away, and I was able to focus more
Speaker 1: on questions of am I doing the work necessary to
Speaker 1: serve them and these ideas and ultimately their patients. Well, um,
Speaker 1: that's that's a much more life giving and creative question
Speaker 1: then the ego questions about you know, do they like me?
Speaker 1: And do I look good while I'm while I'm doing this? Um,
Speaker 1: And I think they come again. I think that that
Speaker 1: falling away of ego, which comes easier with age, is
Speaker 1: accompanied by a rise in happiness. I mean, there can
Speaker 1: be no happiness when one lives in an egocentric world,
Speaker 1: when everything revolves around one's self. Perspective is huge, and
Speaker 1: perspective I think comes more easily with age when we're
Speaker 1: not constantly measuring ourselves against the guy or the gal
Speaker 1: who's at fifteen thousand or twenties thousand feet, when we're
Speaker 1: only at at ten tho. I mean you look back
Speaker 1: and you say, how silly can a person be? You know?
Speaker 1: And the answer is, well as silly as I was
Speaker 1: at that time. That's how silly a person could be.
Speaker 1: First off, you're still looking good doing what you're doing,
Speaker 1: because I can see you here, and so I want to.
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to affirm that I agree
Speaker 1: completely ego. It can work its way into everything, and
Speaker 1: we all wrestle with it. I wrestle with it with
Speaker 1: the show all the time. I try and stay focused
Speaker 1: on what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, because because
Speaker 1: I love to talk to people like you, and and
Speaker 1: because I think that there's a lot of people out
Speaker 1: there who tell me that it really helps them, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's when I'm on target and doing well. When
Speaker 1: I start doing less well as when I start comparing
Speaker 1: myself to how many downloads we've got, how many you know,
Speaker 1: start comparing myself to place you spent a lot of time.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not getting as many downloads as christa
Speaker 1: tip it is right, you know. So I it's so
Speaker 1: good to come back to why and what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Um that leads me into a section in the book
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about. It's a question that's asked
Speaker 1: by adults of all ages, but perhaps most urgently by elders,
Speaker 1: who wonder if all these years add up to anything worthwhile?
Speaker 1: Does my life have meaning? Talk to me about that? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: as you know, I think that's the second essay in
Speaker 1: the book, m in the first chapter, and that was
Speaker 1: a very important piece for me to write, because I
Speaker 1: came to realize as I was writing it, the question
Speaker 1: of does my life have meaning? Does my life have meaning?
Speaker 1: There's another one of those egocentric questions that seems perfectly
Speaker 1: reasonable but ends up being a trap. Um. I came
Speaker 1: to the place to be very concrete about this. I
Speaker 1: came to the place ten fifteen years ago where people
Speaker 1: would would start asking me, now, you know you're sixty
Speaker 1: or seventy years old, what do you want your legacy
Speaker 1: to be? And my instinctive answer then and now, whatever
Speaker 1: it is, it's not my legacy. It's our legacy, because
Speaker 1: there is nothing in the world that any of us
Speaker 1: can create that isn't a communal creation. If I've written
Speaker 1: some good books, they're good only because I've had wonderful
Speaker 1: readers who have given me both affirmation and critique in
Speaker 1: in feedback whom I have come to know, and in
Speaker 1: the mysterious way writers get to know readers that they've
Speaker 1: never met and and who I have wanted to serve.
Speaker 1: It's been a very two way street. It's been a
Speaker 1: very relational thing. Even though I'm rarely face to face
Speaker 1: with with my readers, but I'm They're on my mind
Speaker 1: as I write. And every conversation I have ever had
Speaker 1: in my life, whether it's in the privacy of my
Speaker 1: own home or when I'm out on the road giving
Speaker 1: talks and workshops, is somehow a place where I'm collecting
Speaker 1: insight and information and facts and feelings and coming to
Speaker 1: understand the commonality of the human struggle and the human
Speaker 1: possibility more deeply. And all of that gets fed into
Speaker 1: the book that I write. It's true that I sit
Speaker 1: at the keyboard and write the book, but what's on
Speaker 1: the pages is an awful lot about us. It's a collective,
Speaker 1: communal phenomenon. If somebody's gonna in my obituary, somebody's going
Speaker 1: to write a line and about his legacy, I want
Speaker 1: that line to read our legacy, the legacy that was
Speaker 1: co created with with many many people over over many,
Speaker 1: many years, that that's just a gut conviction of mine
Speaker 1: that has nothing to do with false modesty. Somebody accused
Speaker 1: me the other day of false modesty, and I said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not modest at all, let alone false. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to buy that. It's just the simple truth. And
Speaker 1: it's you know, sadly, it's the truth that is often
Speaker 1: ignored or trampled on in our individualistic culture, where there
Speaker 1: is this is this great pressure to imagine that I'm
Speaker 1: doing all of this myself. You know, this is this
Speaker 1: is all about my prowess, my gifts, my my my strength.
Speaker 1: The truth of the matter is that we're all embedded
Speaker 1: in community whatever we do, and different people bring different
Speaker 1: strengths and different gifts to that community and what comes
Speaker 1: out comes out in the mix, and it comes out
Speaker 1: as a as a communal creation. I mean, I founded
Speaker 1: a nonprofit called the Center for Courage and Renewal that
Speaker 1: has three hundreds plus facilitators who are have worked with
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people around the world, people in
Speaker 1: the helping professions, teaching, the law, ministry, philanthropy, etcetera, helping
Speaker 1: them rejoin soul and roll. But that's not my legacy.
Speaker 1: There is no way in the world that I could
Speaker 1: have created that by myself. I planted some seeds, I've
Speaker 1: found some people that I wanted to garden with. Um.
Speaker 1: They taught me a lot about how to be good gardeners,
Speaker 1: and eventually we started growing a crop that other people
Speaker 1: found nourished, and so they wanted to help us grow
Speaker 1: that crowd. And on and on it went profoundly. Communal
Speaker 1: enterprise is what what life and work are all about.
Speaker 1: And so asking the question does my life have meaning,
Speaker 1: it's started to get off on the wrong foot. UM,
Speaker 1: I think the real question is have I been over
Speaker 1: the course of time and I'm I'm thinking out loud
Speaker 1: now I'm realizing I'm about I think I'm about to
Speaker 1: say something that I haven't said before that isn't in
Speaker 1: the book, You know, Have I been sufficiently open to
Speaker 1: and aware of the incredible contributions that other people have
Speaker 1: made to my life over all these years, aware of
Speaker 1: them in a way that has allowed me to at
Speaker 1: least somehow make a deep bow in their direction, honor
Speaker 1: them in the work that I do, and acknowledge that
Speaker 1: at every step on the way that is such an
Speaker 1: important thing to do, and as you were saying it,
Speaker 1: it just hit me like this show. And I don't
Speaker 1: know why I haven't thought of this more overtly before,
Speaker 1: but I certainly think about the listeners a lot, and
Speaker 1: it occurs to me. I've had two fifty guests. They've
Speaker 1: been co creators every bit or more than you know.
Speaker 1: And so that gave me a sense of gratitude. We
Speaker 1: just passed our five year mark. January one marked five
Speaker 1: years doing this. Yeah and uh and so yeah that
Speaker 1: that gave me a moment of gratitude. I'll say one
Speaker 1: more thing about this there. So I have people come
Speaker 1: up to me and say thank you so much for
Speaker 1: writing about your experience with clinical depression, and they'll often
Speaker 1: say it with tears in their eyes because what you
Speaker 1: said about that and let your life speak. For example,
Speaker 1: another one of my books saved my life. And for me,
Speaker 1: there's only one genuine response that I can make to that.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful that the words I put on paper were
Speaker 1: helpful to you. But I didn't save your life. You
Speaker 1: saved your life because the life saving work was your
Speaker 1: inner work. How you internalize those words, how you put
Speaker 1: wheels on them in your own life, how you use
Speaker 1: them as a lens to see your way through a
Speaker 1: very dark place. I didn't I didn't do that for you.
Speaker 1: You did that for yourself. I'm very grateful that we
Speaker 1: met in the middle between my words and your own
Speaker 1: inner processing. But I really am not going to take
Speaker 1: credit for saving your life because I didn't do it.
Speaker 1: You need to take credit for that yourself. And I
Speaker 1: think that also allows me to say one more quick thing,
Speaker 1: Eric before we move on. That loops back to our
Speaker 1: discussion of ego. I think it's always worth saying there
Speaker 1: is a kind of ego strength that is a loutable
Speaker 1: thing that a person needs to make his or her
Speaker 1: way through the world. You know, I've talked with many
Speaker 1: many women who will say, well, I understand what you're
Speaker 1: talking about in terms of wrestling with the male ego.
Speaker 1: But for me and a lot of my female friends,
Speaker 1: they will say to me, the question of having egos
Speaker 1: strength is the first question that we have to that
Speaker 1: we have to deal with. And I think they're I
Speaker 1: think they're exactly right. Um, I think there is a
Speaker 1: gender difference here and that for at least some men,
Speaker 1: it's the overweening ego the ego that wants to take
Speaker 1: charge and control everything, And for some women it's the
Speaker 1: weak ego that is the problem, the ego that is
Speaker 1: always wants to be self effacing, that always wants to
Speaker 1: be helping but not helped, that doesn't feel worthy of
Speaker 1: asking for hell word of asking for recognition. So there's
Speaker 1: something to be said for the healthy ego as um
Speaker 1: as a gift. Well, well, the overweening ego has to
Speaker 1: be kept under control. Indeed, I agree. I often think
Speaker 1: about that stuff from the sense of whether I think
Speaker 1: too much of myself or too little of myself or
Speaker 1: you know, the problem is usually in in my experience,
Speaker 1: because I've been on both sides of that. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm amazing, I'm a piece of crap right both cases.
Speaker 1: My problem in those moments is that I am so
Speaker 1: focused on me, that's you know, that's for me. Where
Speaker 1: more that I can do a lot of what you
Speaker 1: recommend in this book and not recommend, but that you
Speaker 1: write about in the book and in our discussion about
Speaker 1: recognizing our place among others, and the more I can
Speaker 1: turn that attention outward and have it be less about me,
Speaker 1: what I've accomplished, what I've done, et cetera. I'm always
Speaker 1: in a better place. I got this line from a
Speaker 1: prayer in a But you know what I've just prayed
Speaker 1: for for years and years is to be released from
Speaker 1: the burden of self. Yes, absolutely, And I you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna boil down to some very simple acts.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things that I found this
Speaker 1: morning when I was quite concerned about my health and
Speaker 1: lucked out and was able to get a doctor's appointment
Speaker 1: on the very morning that I felt I needed it.
Speaker 1: I got up early, I always do, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: call the doctor yet to see if I could get
Speaker 1: an appointment. But here was an email waiting for me
Speaker 1: from a reader who was suffering from X, and I
Speaker 1: just I thought, I'm going to feel better if I
Speaker 1: answer her email in a way that attempts to speak
Speaker 1: to her condition and just to acknowledge her as a
Speaker 1: human being, and to express compassion for her suffering and
Speaker 1: say what little I might be able to say that
Speaker 1: could be useful and offer a conversation, you know, down
Speaker 1: the road in a in a month or so, when
Speaker 1: my schedule loosens up a bit. So I did that,
Speaker 1: and I felt better. It was a very conscious effort
Speaker 1: to get outside of my own my own worries, I
Speaker 1: really outside of my own self pity and my own
Speaker 1: and my fear for my own fate um and touch
Speaker 1: the life of another, of another person. It seems to
Speaker 1: work every time I want to just read a couple
Speaker 1: of things you wrote about this does my life have meaning?
Speaker 1: Before we kind of wrapped this part of the conversation up,
Speaker 1: because these are really great for me. I am not
Speaker 1: the son at the center of anyone solar system. If
Speaker 1: I keep trying to put myself there, insisting that I
Speaker 1: am special and my life must have some sort of
Speaker 1: special meaning, I'll die in despair or delusion. Peace comes
Speaker 1: when I understand that I am only one thing among many,
Speaker 1: no more or less important. I love that because that's
Speaker 1: another one for me is just to be one among many.
Speaker 1: I feel like I spent so much of my life
Speaker 1: trying to be something special, trying to be better or
Speaker 1: different or unique. And the more that I can, as
Speaker 1: you said, just recognize I am one among many really
Speaker 1: always helps with that. Because in this essay you say,
Speaker 1: I'm able to affirm that I've made meaningful contributions in
Speaker 1: at least parts of my private and public life. In
Speaker 1: other times, everything I've done seems as flimsy and as
Speaker 1: flammable as straw. And I think it's again that looking
Speaker 1: at it just from my orientation, If I'm in a
Speaker 1: good mood, I think I've done good. If I'm in
Speaker 1: a bad mood, I think I've done terrible. But that
Speaker 1: recognition of my place in the greater hole always seems
Speaker 1: to have a healing effect for me. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's absolutely critical. And you know, that's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons if you take this a step beyond the human
Speaker 1: world where we've mainly been focusing on our conversation, it's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why for me, getting out into
Speaker 1: the natural world, especially into a wilderness area or a
Speaker 1: semi wilderness area, always makes me happier, always as a
Speaker 1: healing impact, because out in the natural world there's this
Speaker 1: theory interesting mix of sort of the way I speak
Speaker 1: about it is indifference and acceptance of me um. You know,
Speaker 1: when I'm in the middle of the boundary waters of
Speaker 1: northern Minnesota, million acres of pristine wilderness where no motors
Speaker 1: are allowed, and I'm back on a trail where if
Speaker 1: I don't watch myself carefully, I could get lost. I
Speaker 1: look up at the sky where maybe a big thunderhead
Speaker 1: is rolling towards me, and I realized this place is
Speaker 1: utterly indifferent to me. It doesn't even know I'm here.
Speaker 1: A couple of missteps and I could be done for it.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, there is this profound sense
Speaker 1: of acceptance. You know, those those trees, those rocks which
Speaker 1: have seen at all, those ancient rocks that have seen
Speaker 1: at all, They're really not a concern about my latest
Speaker 1: screw up, and they're not impressed by my it a success.
Speaker 1: I'm just out there is one among many, and that
Speaker 1: it's that interesting combination of indifference and accepted that you
Speaker 1: get in the natural world that I get in the
Speaker 1: natural world that somehow adds to my happiness. It's like
Speaker 1: the place just right, you know, where you're holding this
Speaker 1: paradox that that has talked about in an old Hasidic
Speaker 1: Jewish tale where the where the Rabbi teaches that everyone
Speaker 1: should have a code with two pockets in one pocket
Speaker 1: is gold to remind us that we are precious, and
Speaker 1: the other pocket is is dust, to remind us that
Speaker 1: we're nothing. I love holding that paradox, and the natural
Speaker 1: world helps me hold it. I agree. That's something I
Speaker 1: have grown to appreciate more and more, particularly over the
Speaker 1: last few years, how important the natural world is. And
Speaker 1: lately I've done sometimes when I'm sitting out in nature,
Speaker 1: I I sit there and I go for a second,
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, they say the Earth's been around
Speaker 1: for like four point five billion years, Like this place
Speaker 1: that I'm standing is part of that. Like I tend
Speaker 1: to think of that as an abstract concept, but I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: this very place has been here, you know, not in
Speaker 1: its exact same shape. I recognize that that has changed.
Speaker 1: You know, there might have been a sea here or mountains,
Speaker 1: but this place has existed that long and it profoundly
Speaker 1: humbling in a good way. Experience. Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: And this house that I've built in this place is
Speaker 1: just a blip on the radar her of time, you know,
Speaker 1: And I can get into a space with this house
Speaker 1: where everything that's important to me is right here. You know,
Speaker 1: these papers, these books, Well, it really isn't everything that's
Speaker 1: important to me that's right here, and all of this
Speaker 1: shall pass. So you know, it's another way of asking,
Speaker 1: So what what is really eternal about our bet our lives,
Speaker 1: about the human experience. Um. I think probably what I'm
Speaker 1: clearest about is that these questions are eternal. Amen to that,
Speaker 1: you have a line that says, perhaps the most important
Speaker 1: sentence I've ever written is that one word enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is in a reflection on actually on a
Speaker 1: clinical depression and on a poem I wrote about being depressed. Um,
Speaker 1: let me attempt to quote the poem from memory because
Speaker 1: if I can do it, because it puts that word
Speaker 1: enough in context and maybe helps explain well, I think
Speaker 1: that's the most important sentence or word I've ever written.
Speaker 1: So the poem is called Harrowing, and there's a double
Speaker 1: meaning to that title. I was walking. I was out
Speaker 1: in the country suffering from depression. I was walking past
Speaker 1: a recently harrowed field, um, which has been dug up
Speaker 1: by a big piece of farm machinery with disc carrow
Speaker 1: prior to planting. And harrowing was the nature of the
Speaker 1: experience that I was going through with clinical depression. So
Speaker 1: harrowing is the name of the poem, and it goes
Speaker 1: like this, the plow has savaged this sweet field, misshapen
Speaker 1: clods of earth kicked up rocks and twisted roots, exposed
Speaker 1: to view last year's growth, demolished by the blade. I
Speaker 1: have plowed my life this way, uprooted a whole history,
Speaker 1: looking for the roots of what went wrong. Until my
Speaker 1: face is ravaged, furrowed, scarred enough, the job is done.
Speaker 1: Whatever has been uprooted, let it be seedbed for the
Speaker 1: growing that's to come. I plowed under last year's reasons.
Speaker 1: The farmer plows to plant a greening season. So it's
Speaker 1: in that context. I didn't get the poem quite right,
Speaker 1: but it's in the book. The fact that at your
Speaker 1: age you can remember that poem is a I am
Speaker 1: blown away because I don't think I can remember something
Speaker 1: my red I blew a few words. Beautiful poem, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, it was very meaningful for me to
Speaker 1: write that at the time. It's sort of helped me
Speaker 1: hold and carry that experience of depression, which is otherwise
Speaker 1: just kind of amorphous and all over the there I was.
Speaker 1: I had gone on retreat, hoping to you know, reflect, meditate, journal,
Speaker 1: get some counseling around what went on in my life
Speaker 1: that led me to this place. And the inside of
Speaker 1: the poem obviously is enough already with that looking back,
Speaker 1: with that digging up, with that rooting. Um, look at
Speaker 1: this field. It's it's been dug up, it's been uprooted,
Speaker 1: just like your ravaged, furrowed, scarred face indicates you've been
Speaker 1: But why is the farmer doing that? The farmers doing
Speaker 1: that to plant a new crop, um, you know, to
Speaker 1: grow a new harvest. So enough, the job is done.
Speaker 1: Whatever has been uprooted, Let it be seed bid for
Speaker 1: the growing that's to come. I plowed unearthed last year's reasons.
Speaker 1: The farmer plows to plant a greening season. So I
Speaker 1: think we just come to those moments in life when
Speaker 1: of necessity, we've we've pushed hard on some boundary or
Speaker 1: some question um or some issue that that we're finding
Speaker 1: ultimately inexplicable. In a lot of ways, what happens to
Speaker 1: us in life can never be fully plane by background factors.
Speaker 1: It just happens. M Depression is to some extent bad
Speaker 1: luck and recovery full full recovery, thriving, surviving and thriving
Speaker 1: on the other side of depression is good luck. Um.
Speaker 1: Nobody really knows, you know, why some people decide to
Speaker 1: end their lives and other people come through into richer
Speaker 1: and fuller lives. So there's bad luck and there's good luck.
Speaker 1: But the point is to know when to lay something down,
Speaker 1: to know when to say enough. I've whether it's depression,
Speaker 1: or a relationship that isn't working, or a job that's
Speaker 1: not fulfilling um or a way of being in the
Speaker 1: world that is not bringing you happiness in any shaped
Speaker 1: form or fashion. There comes a point when you've slammed
Speaker 1: your head against that wall often enough and all you're
Speaker 1: getting is a headache. The wall isn't yielding. That you
Speaker 1: just need to be able to say enough, That job
Speaker 1: is done. I've pushed that one as far as I can,
Speaker 1: and and now I just I have to ask myself
Speaker 1: what's next for me? What? What risk am I called
Speaker 1: to take? How am I called to reach out? What
Speaker 1: left to turn or right turn or reversal do I
Speaker 1: need to make to get away from this impenetrable wall
Speaker 1: Because the rest of the world is waiting and the
Speaker 1: rest of my life is waiting. I just I find
Speaker 1: that an enormously helpful insight. You know, again, we talked
Speaker 1: early in our conversation here Eric about no regrets about
Speaker 1: the past. Um I don't regret the time I spent
Speaker 1: slamming my head up against walls that nothing but give
Speaker 1: me a headache, because I can look back and say
Speaker 1: I did my best to take that wall down, but
Speaker 1: it was it was not going to come down. It
Speaker 1: isn't like I cut that job short. It isn't like
Speaker 1: I stopped trying to redeem that relationship, or stop trying
Speaker 1: to make that job work prematurely, right too soon, out
Speaker 1: of laziness or flows or avoidance. I really gave it
Speaker 1: my best shot, but it didn't work. And I'm glad now,
Speaker 1: fifteen years later, that I'm not still slamming my head
Speaker 1: against that against that same wall, that I'm not still
Speaker 1: digging up the past to try to figure out what
Speaker 1: went wrong. You know, what I've been doing is to
Speaker 1: let go of that old story and start writing a
Speaker 1: new story. There's a wonderful poem I think I may
Speaker 1: cite it in the book. I can't quite remember. It's
Speaker 1: a poem called thank You Robert frost Um. I can't
Speaker 1: remember the poet's name at the moment, but the poem
Speaker 1: starts out by citing an incident that apparently actually happened
Speaker 1: in real life Robert Frost was asked, do you have
Speaker 1: hope for the future, and he said yes, and I
Speaker 1: even have hope for the past. And he goes on
Speaker 1: to talk about how, um, we can refigure the past.
Speaker 1: We can reframe the past. We can retell the story
Speaker 1: of the past in a way that makes it a
Speaker 1: better story, and that in which we exercise self forgiveness
Speaker 1: and forgiveness for others. Um, you know, without without twist,
Speaker 1: singing the facts by taking a new look at them
Speaker 1: from a different angle. And I find this, this notion
Speaker 1: of writing a different story very, very liberating. I'm just
Speaker 1: put in a little plug here, but I know that
Speaker 1: you live in Columbus, Ohio, and my dear friend and colleague,
Speaker 1: Carrie Newcomer, the singer songwriter, and I are coming to Columbus.
Speaker 1: I think it's in April at the Burkhart Center. I believe,
Speaker 1: wonderful place, wonderful organization put on our stage show, which
Speaker 1: is called what we Need is Here Whole Hard Times
Speaker 1: in the Human Possibility. It's a show we love doing
Speaker 1: a night, a minute show. It's interspersed with songs and
Speaker 1: spoken word. And I can I can reassure everybody that
Speaker 1: carried as the singing, and I do the spoken word cases.
Speaker 1: So that's that that will be a relief to all
Speaker 1: all who are listening. But SUREY is just in the
Speaker 1: process of coming out with a new album called The
Speaker 1: Point of Arrival, and one of the songs on that
Speaker 1: album that I really really love is called telling a
Speaker 1: Different Story. It's a great theme for redeeming one's past,
Speaker 1: um reframing the narrative. Yes, that is such a fundamental
Speaker 1: skill to be able to do, to make meaning out
Speaker 1: of what has happened to us. And I asked people
Speaker 1: a lot on the show, what do you think is
Speaker 1: the difference between people who you know bad experience breaks
Speaker 1: them or bad experience turns them into a stronger, more
Speaker 1: fuller purpose. And one of the things that I hear
Speaker 1: most often is exactly what you said, the ability to
Speaker 1: reframe the events in a meaningful way. Yeah, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be exercise and self deception, as I think
Speaker 1: some people hear it to be um, it often involves
Speaker 1: something as simple was saying being able to genuinely say
Speaker 1: to yourself, even though I can look back and say
Speaker 1: what I did was a mistake or inadequate, I did
Speaker 1: what I had to do, and I did what I
Speaker 1: knew how to do, and I did the best I
Speaker 1: could at the time. It's unfair to ask of my
Speaker 1: twenty year old self or my thirty year old self
Speaker 1: that I should have known back then what I know
Speaker 1: at almost eighty. That's just an unreasonable demand to make
Speaker 1: on myself, the self I was fifty or sixty years ago.
Speaker 1: Totally well, I think this is time for us to
Speaker 1: end this part of the conversation. You and I will
Speaker 1: continue in the post show conversation and listeners if you're
Speaker 1: interested in getting the post show conversations, we have lots
Speaker 1: of them with lots of guests, and this one is
Speaker 1: going to be great. Parker and I are going to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the hope of results, you know,
Speaker 1: how how we can do work and let go of
Speaker 1: the outcome, and how critical that is to being able
Speaker 1: to do good work. So we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: that if you're interested. When you feed dot net slash support, Parker,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on. It's been a
Speaker 1: I think this is even better than the first time. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you, Eric, it's always a delight to talk with you.
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed this time together. Thanks so much. Bye.
Speaker 1: If what you just heard was helpful to you, please
Speaker 1: consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast.
Speaker 1: Head over to one you Feed dot net slash support.
Speaker 1: The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank
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