Speaker 1: If you're going to be put off by the easy
Speaker 1: things like not having enough time, then you really have
Speaker 1: to question your vocation. Welcome to the one you feed
Speaker 1: throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the
Speaker 1: thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or
Speaker 1: you are what you think ring true. And yet for
Speaker 1: many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Jesse Browner, author, translator, and freelance writer. Jesse's
Speaker 1: writing includes many books, as well as contributions to Nest Magazine,
Speaker 1: New York Magazine, The New York Times, Book Review, Salon
Speaker 1: dot com, Slate dot com, and others. His latest book
Speaker 1: is his memoir called How Did I Get Here? Making Peace?
Speaker 1: With the road not taken. If you value the content
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Speaker 1: Hi Jesse, Welcome to the show. I'm happy to have
Speaker 1: you on. Your book talks a lot about the choices
Speaker 1: we don't make in life, what the unlived part of
Speaker 1: our life looks like, and as someone who spends a
Speaker 1: lot of time wrestling in those same areas, I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to get into that conversation. But before we do,
Speaker 1: let's start like we usually do with the parable. There's
Speaker 1: a grandfather who's talking with his grandson 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 grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. If I can counter your parable with
Speaker 1: the parable of my own, sure a parable duel would
Speaker 1: be great. A few years ago, about ten years ago,
Speaker 1: I translated a book by a French Buddhist monk. His
Speaker 1: name is Machiri Card. He's quite well known, and he
Speaker 1: wrote this beautiful book called Happiness about Learning I believe
Speaker 1: the subtitle is learning Life's most important skill. And his
Speaker 1: thesis is that happiness is not something that automatically comes,
Speaker 1: but it's something that you work at, just like like yoga,
Speaker 1: just like meditation. It's a discipline that you learn. And
Speaker 1: although I had had some familiarity with Buddhism before I
Speaker 1: translated the book, uh, it really had a profound effect
Speaker 1: on me. And I have a dog which is not
Speaker 1: a wolf, but it's close. And my dog Uh is
Speaker 1: not always very good on the leash. She likes to stop,
Speaker 1: and she likes to smell everything, and she can be
Speaker 1: very slow. She's not one of those dogs that goes
Speaker 1: trotting down the street with her head up. She'll she'll
Speaker 1: stop and examine everything on her way. And I had
Speaker 1: been very impatient with her when she was young. And
Speaker 1: after I translated Maturi Card's book, I suddenly started looking
Speaker 1: at our morning walks in a very different way. And suddenly,
Speaker 1: I mean not only was I looking at the morning
Speaker 1: walk from the dog's point of view, that this was
Speaker 1: for her, not for me, and therefore she should be
Speaker 1: allowed to do what she wanted, but also in the
Speaker 1: sense that I had so much to learn from her
Speaker 1: about patients and slowness and non purpose driven activity. And
Speaker 1: so suddenly our walks became incredibly pleasurable for both of us,
Speaker 1: where had they had been quite stressful for both of
Speaker 1: us before that. And so for me, I would say
Speaker 1: I had been feeding the wrong wolf all that time,
Speaker 1: and suddenly, when I realized what was the right wolf
Speaker 1: to feed, everything fell into place. And quite a few
Speaker 1: years later Matthia came to New York and I had
Speaker 1: mentioned this to him in one of my letters to him.
Speaker 1: And one of the first things he asked me, and
Speaker 1: this was years years later, he said, how is your
Speaker 1: dog doing? How are your walks? And he really understood
Speaker 1: how profoundly I had taken his lessons to heart, because specifically,
Speaker 1: as illustrated in the Parable of the Dog Walk. So um,
Speaker 1: I hope that that works as a response to the parable.
Speaker 1: It works great. I think I have learned more from
Speaker 1: my dogs than probably nearly anyone else. Uh. So they are.
Speaker 1: They have been a great teacher to me too, of
Speaker 1: some of the very same lessons. Yeah, I think they're
Speaker 1: all Buddhist without telling us. So your latest book is
Speaker 1: called how Did I Get Here? Making Peace with the
Speaker 1: Road Not Taken? And kind of right at the heart
Speaker 1: of it is you are an author, but you're not
Speaker 1: a full time author, as in, well, let me rephrase that,
Speaker 1: you are an author, but you also have a job
Speaker 1: that you do in addition to that, And the book
Speaker 1: is really about your wrestling with should you have taken
Speaker 1: that job, should you have that job? Should you be
Speaker 1: able to pursue your art full time? And and the
Speaker 1: questions about how you balance those things out, and uh,
Speaker 1: I just found it really compelling as somebody who wrestles
Speaker 1: with a lot of the same questions. Well, thank you.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, virtually every novelist has to have
Speaker 1: a job of some sort. You know, almost everybody I
Speaker 1: know who writes novels teaches. That's quite normal. It was
Speaker 1: not the choice that I made. I took a much
Speaker 1: more um, I guess you would say, straight job on
Speaker 1: an international civil servant, which means I work in the
Speaker 1: bureaucracy at the United Nations. So we all make our choices.
Speaker 1: If you're a teacher, of course, one of your choices
Speaker 1: is accepting that you're never going to really make a
Speaker 1: lot of money. And what I was concerned with when
Speaker 1: I finally made the decision to take this job, which
Speaker 1: was my first full time job ever in my life
Speaker 1: at the age of thirty, was I had spent the
Speaker 1: last ten years scrabbling to make a living while I
Speaker 1: was trying to write. And of course in those days,
Speaker 1: you know, in your twenties, I had not published anything
Speaker 1: of note. I had not published my first novel yet.
Speaker 1: I had done some literary translations and some some short
Speaker 1: stories and some travel pieces, I knew very well what
Speaker 1: it meant to be uh insecure about an income, and
Speaker 1: I had felt that that sense of worry about money
Speaker 1: was more harmful to me than spending my days at
Speaker 1: a job, because the point is always you want to
Speaker 1: be able to devote yourself fully to your work, and
Speaker 1: that mostly entails thinking about it while you're not doing it,
Speaker 1: because you know, at the most you're going to be
Speaker 1: writing four or five hours a day, but you need
Speaker 1: to be thinking about that work for the rest of
Speaker 1: the time. And so you worry about having a job
Speaker 1: that's going to distract you, that's going to soak up
Speaker 1: some of your emotional and intellectual energy. And I had
Speaker 1: found that working freelance was not helpful to me. Yes,
Speaker 1: that was free to make my own hours, but always
Speaker 1: being worried about where the next paycheck was going to
Speaker 1: come from was not really conducive to being able to
Speaker 1: focus on my work. So that was part of the
Speaker 1: decision making process for me. And now I've been at
Speaker 1: that job for well over twenty years, and I still
Speaker 1: wrestle with the consequences of that decision, which is why
Speaker 1: I wrote the book. You know, just because you make
Speaker 1: a decision doesn't automatically mean that you've trusted your instincts.
Speaker 1: I think most of us, especially writers and artists in general,
Speaker 1: have a tendency two second guess ourselves all the time.
Speaker 1: That's natural and it's good. You know, it's very helpful
Speaker 1: to the creative process because you never want to be
Speaker 1: complacent about something you've put down on the page or
Speaker 1: on the canvas. But it doesn't always make for a smooth,
Speaker 1: pleasant life, and you just have to accept that that's
Speaker 1: not your lot. You talk about in the book, you
Speaker 1: say that what all our unlived lives have in common
Speaker 1: is that we are somehow more ourselves, more true to
Speaker 1: what we believe our true selves to be. Um. You
Speaker 1: quote Adam Phillips who says in our unlived Lives, he says,
Speaker 1: we are always more satisfied, less frustrated versions of ourselves.
Speaker 1: And so you've got this idea of what your life
Speaker 1: might look like if you could focus on your writing
Speaker 1: full time. And that's the sort of thing that we
Speaker 1: talk on this show an awful lot about. It's I
Speaker 1: kind of call it the you know, the if then
Speaker 1: you know life proposition, Like if I had this, then
Speaker 1: you know, and that this can be anything from a
Speaker 1: car to thinking I righte full time or the right relationship.
Speaker 1: But it's always this idea that if something was different
Speaker 1: than I would be this better version of myself. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I can't speak for other people. Uh, you
Speaker 1: would naturally presume that almost everybody has moments like that,
Speaker 1: if not entire lifetimes. Uh live that way. But so
Speaker 1: it was very important to me when I began to
Speaker 1: consider how I would write this book that this not
Speaker 1: be exclusively First of all, that it should not be
Speaker 1: about me, because my life really isn't especially interesting. I've
Speaker 1: been going to an office for twenty five years. There's
Speaker 1: not a lot to write about. But also that in
Speaker 1: general it should not exclusively be about artists or writers.
Speaker 1: I wanted it to expand, to encompass the experiences of
Speaker 1: people who may be questioning the decisions they've made that
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with artistic expression or self fulfillment,
Speaker 1: simply people going about their ordinary lives and wondering what
Speaker 1: if you know? This is not exactly an earth shattering topic.
Speaker 1: What ifs make up? You know? Of our dreams? And
Speaker 1: it's the backdrop to so much social discourse, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to say, including of course the current political scenario, you
Speaker 1: can't escape the question what if, but approaching it from
Speaker 1: a creative perspective and learning that the question ultimately is
Speaker 1: not what if, but what is? It helped me. I'm
Speaker 1: very careful in the book two disclaim any intention of
Speaker 1: writing a self help book because I don't have claim
Speaker 1: to have any answers. But I do say without a
Speaker 1: doubt that writing the book was helpful to me, and
Speaker 1: therefore you can only hope that some people are going
Speaker 1: to find a kindred are in it. Hey, everybody, Before
Speaker 1: we get back to the interview, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: give another big thank you to our listeners who have
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Speaker 1: If you go to patreon dot com slash one you feed,
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Speaker 1: chat with Eric and this should be exciting for those
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Speaker 1: among other things, we're also offering limited edition the One
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Speaker 1: let's keep this great show going. And here's the rest
Speaker 1: of the interview. Jesse Browner kind of back to the
Speaker 1: wolf parable, right, we have this life that is and
Speaker 1: I like the way you said that to me, the
Speaker 1: good wolf is being involved in that life and appreciative
Speaker 1: of that life and and living in it. And for me,
Speaker 1: feeding the bad Wolf is really when I'm in that constant,
Speaker 1: grass is always greener, And we talked about it on
Speaker 1: the show a lot because I wrestle with it a lot.
Speaker 1: It's just my my nature tends to be that way.
Speaker 1: So what are some of the things besides writing the
Speaker 1: whole book that you have found helpful for yourself when
Speaker 1: you find that you're living more in the resentment or
Speaker 1: the feeling like you squandered your potential by taking a job.
Speaker 1: What are the some of the things you do to
Speaker 1: bring you back to your own life that help you
Speaker 1: to inhabit it more fully. Oh, I wish I had
Speaker 1: some earth shattering answer for that, but I think it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty much what anybody would say in the same circumstances. Uh.
Speaker 1: My family is very important to me, and I always
Speaker 1: know that, no matter what else I may potentially have
Speaker 1: failed at as a as a human being or as
Speaker 1: an artist, this is one endeavor that I have indubitably
Speaker 1: not failed at. I have two wonderful children who filled
Speaker 1: me with love and pride, And you know, I would
Speaker 1: have to say that I was I was born to
Speaker 1: be a parent almost if I mean at least as
Speaker 1: much as I was born to be a writer, and
Speaker 1: that's probably the problem as well as the solution, then,
Speaker 1: of course, is my work. You know, as a writer,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I work. I don't really know
Speaker 1: how other writers work. I don't spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time asking them how they work or worrying about it,
Speaker 1: and we all work different ways. However, for me, I
Speaker 1: I often have long hiatuses between my books, and I
Speaker 1: forget exactly the kind of peace of mind that I
Speaker 1: get when I'm writing. So when I am, for instance,
Speaker 1: as I am right now, right in the middle of
Speaker 1: a book, um, I will get up at four o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning and I will put in three very
Speaker 1: productive hours before I have to walk the dog, which
Speaker 1: is another very productive four or five minutes before I
Speaker 1: go off to my job. But having spent those three
Speaker 1: hours in the morning doing what I was born to do,
Speaker 1: colors the rest of my day and nothing can really
Speaker 1: bother me after that. And so I'm extremely lucky, and
Speaker 1: I'm able to remind myself constantly while I'm writing how
Speaker 1: lucky I am. What a gift it is two have
Speaker 1: something that you feel you need to do every day. Uh.
Speaker 1: The problem is if I'm finished with a book, and
Speaker 1: I'm involved in the publication process, which can be stressful
Speaker 1: and time consuming, and then later involved in the process
Speaker 1: of just stating another book before it starts to go
Speaker 1: on paper. It's easy to forget that you have something
Speaker 1: like this that you can turn to. Uh, when you're
Speaker 1: feeling that you're forgetting that maybe your life has a
Speaker 1: higher purpose. So it's a seesaw. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it doesn't always work, but when it works,
Speaker 1: it really works. There's a couple of things about what
Speaker 1: you said that I really like. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I really like is the fact that you have
Speaker 1: not allowed the fact that you've got a job, in
Speaker 1: a family and the kids as an excuse for why
Speaker 1: you can't be a writer. You found a way to
Speaker 1: keep doing it. And I think that that's a trap
Speaker 1: a lot of people get into, is if I can't
Speaker 1: be this thing all the time, then I'm not going
Speaker 1: to do it. I see people who get trapped in
Speaker 1: They've got something they want to pursue, but they feel
Speaker 1: like if they can't make a living doing that, then
Speaker 1: they shouldn't do it. And and there's a whole middle
Speaker 1: ground in between there where you can both have a job,
Speaker 1: take care of a family, and engage in things in
Speaker 1: your life that really matter to you. Who is the
Speaker 1: poet who said I'm of three minds about that, like
Speaker 1: like a tree with three ravens. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: if you're a writer, you right, and nothing's going to
Speaker 1: stop you from doing it. And if you're making excuses
Speaker 1: for not doing it, there's a bigger problem. Uh, And
Speaker 1: you need to really ask yourself why you think you're
Speaker 1: a writer if you're not writing, because ultimately it does
Speaker 1: come to that. That's that can sound cruel, but you
Speaker 1: know it has to be a little bit cruel. You know,
Speaker 1: even of us who are publishing are publishing garbage, and
Speaker 1: I potentially include myself and that um and we are
Speaker 1: only one to the people who think of ourselves as writers.
Speaker 1: So if you're going to be put off by the
Speaker 1: easy things like not having enough time, then you really
Speaker 1: have to question your vocation. The flip side to that,
Speaker 1: that is the second mind is the one that bothers
Speaker 1: me all the time, which is, well, if I can't
Speaker 1: do it, why should I do it? Why engage in
Speaker 1: something on a mediocre or or half hearted foundation when
Speaker 1: there are enough people out there doing it really well
Speaker 1: and fully committed to it, and I wrestle with that
Speaker 1: a lot. That's what this book was, was a lot
Speaker 1: was asking myself, if I'm not creating at my highest potential,
Speaker 1: maybe I shouldn't be doing it at all, because then
Speaker 1: I'm just doing it for selfish purposes to make my
Speaker 1: felt myself feel smart or creative or two um win
Speaker 1: the admiration of my peers, all of which are terrible
Speaker 1: reasons to be a writer, because you have to, um,
Speaker 1: the only personal quality that every writer really needs to
Speaker 1: have is is humility. Um. And if you're if you're
Speaker 1: not humbled by the task that's facing you again, you're
Speaker 1: not going to be approaching it with the correct openness
Speaker 1: of heart and mind. So there's that. And then there's
Speaker 1: the third raven in the tree, if that's the right quote,
Speaker 1: which is what I do is well, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do my best. I know I am not able to
Speaker 1: devote myself to it, and I am going to hope,
Speaker 1: without any evidence to back up that hope, that there
Speaker 1: is actually an upside to living a full life. Uh
Speaker 1: that involves more than simply single minded devotion to your craft.
Speaker 1: And maybe there are advantages to the way I'm doing
Speaker 1: it that I'm not even aware of. But you know,
Speaker 1: that requires a certain amount of blind faith, which fortunately,
Speaker 1: when you're a civil servant, you have a lot of
Speaker 1: time to cultivate blind faith, and I've been quite good
Speaker 1: at that, if nothing else. I agree with you that
Speaker 1: I could be of three minds on that. You know,
Speaker 1: I believe that the buddhas perhaps his best teaching to
Speaker 1: me was the the idea of the middle way, um
Speaker 1: and which is really option three for you, which is
Speaker 1: that it's not exactly the way you would have it be,
Speaker 1: but it's you're finding the middle ground between giving up
Speaker 1: and doing it. And I also think that there are
Speaker 1: things that we do in our lives, not always because
Speaker 1: we could be the best at it, or that it
Speaker 1: adds some tremendous value to the world, so much as
Speaker 1: it helps us find a truer part of ourselves, whether
Speaker 1: that be some sort of creative action, whether that be
Speaker 1: an exercise we enjoy. But I think that those things
Speaker 1: kind of fall into if you take the artistic piece
Speaker 1: of it away. I think that those things can add
Speaker 1: a lot of value and depth to life if we're
Speaker 1: not too attached to the results. Well, I agree completely, um.
Speaker 1: And I think that probably the most persistent monkey on
Speaker 1: an artist's back is the idea of happiness. Especially those
Speaker 1: of us who grew up in the twentieth century and
Speaker 1: grew up with the tradition of the bohemian suffering artists,
Speaker 1: we were afraid to be happy. Maturity card against speaks
Speaker 1: a lot about that. People are afraid that, and especially
Speaker 1: artists and even more especially writers are afraid that they're
Speaker 1: going to lose something that is exclusively theirs if they
Speaker 1: are simultaneously seeking artistic fulfillment and happiness. Happiness is somehow
Speaker 1: a kind of a bleach in their minds that whitewashes
Speaker 1: all the things that make them unique. Um. And of
Speaker 1: course this goes back to War in Peace with Tolstoy's
Speaker 1: opening lines about all happy families are the same, and
Speaker 1: every unhappy family is unique in its own way. We
Speaker 1: have this idea that if we are able to cultivate
Speaker 1: a sense of dissatisfaction that is somehow reaching in to
Speaker 1: the deepest aspects of our individuality, both as human beings
Speaker 1: and as writers, and we're afraid of being happy. And
Speaker 1: that is definitely true for me. That is definitely the
Speaker 1: iconography of the twentieth century artist. You know, obviously you
Speaker 1: think of Franz Kafka or Jack Kerouac, you name it. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, if they're happy, there's something wrong with them.
Speaker 1: They can't be very good writers or or artists. Um.
Speaker 1: The really great artists are the van Goes and the
Speaker 1: other you know, people who saw off their ears, um,
Speaker 1: and how at the moon. So we're afraid to be happy,
Speaker 1: and we're afraid to do things that are going to
Speaker 1: make us happy. Um, making writing makes me happy, and
Speaker 1: I'm not really supposed to say that. I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: say that writing makes me feel the most isolated or
Speaker 1: the most unique, alone, wandering the empty rooms of the
Speaker 1: mansion of my soul. It could be true you have
Speaker 1: to fight to be happy as an artist, but I
Speaker 1: don't really think it's true. I don't think you lose
Speaker 1: anything by trying to be to be happy and trying
Speaker 1: to be good. In other words, happiness is is what
Speaker 1: you feel inside, and being good is the way you
Speaker 1: projected to the outer world. I don't really see the contradiction,
Speaker 1: but lots of people do. Yeah. I was having this
Speaker 1: conversation with Ohio's poet Laureate a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and we were we were talking about this, and part
Speaker 1: of the thing is that we were talking about was
Speaker 1: the idea that we hear the artists, we hear about
Speaker 1: having these you know, these very destructive and wild lives
Speaker 1: are the only ones we talked about because the artists
Speaker 1: who are six sessful, who don't do that, there's not
Speaker 1: very much to say. It is kind of a boring topic. Um, well,
Speaker 1: he's well adjusted and produces great art is kind of
Speaker 1: a boring story. Um, And I love what you say
Speaker 1: in the book. You say, perhaps the vicarious thrill we
Speaker 1: get from reading these Lives lies in the fact that,
Speaker 1: whereas genius is elusive and beyond the grasp of most
Speaker 1: of us, we can all imagine ourselves acting transgressively and destructively,
Speaker 1: selfishly and irresponsibly, at least once, even if we are
Speaker 1: not in reality prepared to accept the consequences. And I
Speaker 1: just thought that was great because I think being a
Speaker 1: bohemian in my twenties also, uh, it was easier to
Speaker 1: focus on the self destructive things that artists did than
Speaker 1: actually being an artist. Well, yeah, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: more fun, you know, It's very simple. I mean, how
Speaker 1: many of us are geniuses? Virtually none of us? Um
Speaker 1: certainly not me. I would I would have loved to
Speaker 1: have been a genius, but I'm not. And therefore am
Speaker 1: I really paired to go through a life being a
Speaker 1: miserable bastard to myself and to other people on the tiniest,
Speaker 1: slimmest chance that being unhappy and being selfish is going
Speaker 1: to nurture my genius. I mean, what that that's the
Speaker 1: terrible odds. I'm a poker player, and I would never
Speaker 1: bet on that hand. So, you know, bet on the
Speaker 1: bet on the likelihood that you're not a genius and
Speaker 1: that you can make meaning in your life in other ways,
Speaker 1: that is, through the love that you project within your
Speaker 1: family and within your community. The ability to make meaning
Speaker 1: outside of your art is going to preserve you against
Speaker 1: a lot of the absolutely inevitable heartbreaks that come with
Speaker 1: deciding you're an artist and you're going to dedicate your
Speaker 1: life to creating art. There are so many frustrations and
Speaker 1: setbacks and moments of self doubt, perhaps of self loathing
Speaker 1: that are absolutely incumbent on the job of being an artist.
Speaker 1: Why bet against yourself? Uh? And that's what I was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out. Could I be a happy person
Speaker 1: even if it turned out that I wasn't a great writer.
Speaker 1: I certainly won't know whether I'm a good writer in
Speaker 1: my own lifetime. So if by some miracle I end
Speaker 1: up being a Henry Roth or some Vanier Rousseau whose
Speaker 1: genius is only discovered long after I'm dead, well, as
Speaker 1: an atheist, that doesn't mean a lot to me. Uh
Speaker 1: So why not? You know, how are you going to
Speaker 1: reconcile yourself at the end of your life If you're
Speaker 1: both a lousy artist and a lousy person. There you go.
Speaker 1: That's a bitter pill to swallow both those. Certainly being
Speaker 1: a lousy person is difficult to you just mentioned, Um,
Speaker 1: you know you're someone without God, and you say that
Speaker 1: work hard at something you love and even if you
Speaker 1: may never be the best, you can always be the
Speaker 1: best you can for someone without God. I find this
Speaker 1: as close to a workable definition of the meaning of
Speaker 1: life as I've ever come across. There's a wonderful Finnish novelist.
Speaker 1: And of course now that I need to find her name, um,
Speaker 1: I am not going to she uh is the author
Speaker 1: of the famous set of series of children's books called
Speaker 1: The Move Controls. And I'll think of her name in
Speaker 1: a minute. I'm sorry for your listeners having to hear
Speaker 1: me in one of my old man's moments. Anyway, her
Speaker 1: motto was simply work and love. It was in Latin,
Speaker 1: of course, but it's really that simple. You just work.
Speaker 1: You know, work is what makes us who we are,
Speaker 1: at least it's true for me, and love is what
Speaker 1: makes us who we can be. And I feel as
Speaker 1: if in recent years, not you know, not for the
Speaker 1: majority of my life, but in the last say, five years,
Speaker 1: since I began writing this book, I've had a big
Speaker 1: change in my life. I tried to become a Buddhist
Speaker 1: at the wrong moment, and my children used to call
Speaker 1: me the angry Buddhist because I was really good at
Speaker 1: talking about it but not very good at living it.
Speaker 1: And I'm still not very good at living it. But
Speaker 1: I never forget I'm here to try to make other
Speaker 1: people happy, and I can do that if I'm very
Speaker 1: very lucky through my writing. And you know what, if
Speaker 1: I'm not so lucky, I can still do it. So ultimately,
Speaker 1: it's not too contradictory. Paths it's not two paths that
Speaker 1: diverged in the woods. It's two paths that come together
Speaker 1: in the woods. Uh. But maybe you need to walk
Speaker 1: both of them to their logical conclusions. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think that's probably a great place to start wrapping up.
Speaker 1: I love the book. It's called How Did I Get Here?
Speaker 1: And like I said, I wrestle with this unlived life idea,
Speaker 1: this grass is always greener on on the other side
Speaker 1: thing in my own life, and I've found, like you,
Speaker 1: there's no easy answer to that, but that for me,
Speaker 1: most of the answer seems to be in what you're describing,
Speaker 1: which is to be more deeply involved in the life
Speaker 1: you actually have. Exactly. I couldn't have put it better myself.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Jesse for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I really did enjoy the book. It
Speaker 1: was one of those that the whole time I was
Speaker 1: reading it, I was like this, I relate with all
Speaker 1: of this, So thanks so much. And and one of
Speaker 1: the things I loved about it a lot is that
Speaker 1: you don't have easy answers in the book. And I
Speaker 1: don't think there's easy answers to most of life's questions,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot of deep thought about it that
Speaker 1: I found very helpful. So thank you, well, thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm really pleased that it reached you in some way. Excellent.
Speaker 1: We'll take care of the same to you, Eric. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. Bye, yep bye. You can learn more
Speaker 1: about Jesse Browner and this podcast add one you Feed
Speaker 1: dot net Slash Jesse. If what you just heard was
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