Speaker 1: If you really believe in the sacredness of a given moment,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to waste it chasing phantoms and a
Speaker 1: lot of our thoughts, a lot of our worries, I
Speaker 1: think our phantoms. Actually they feel very real. 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 George Saunders, an American
Speaker 1: writer of short stories, essays, novella's children's books, and novels.
Speaker 1: He's a professor at Syracuse University at a four time
Speaker 1: winner of the National Magazine Award, as well as winner
Speaker 1: of the World Fantasy Award, Story Prize, Folio Prize, Booker Prize,
Speaker 1: and others. Today, George and Rara cover are many topics,
Speaker 1: including his new book, Liberation Day Stories. Hi, George, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show Eron. Nice to be back. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. Yeah, it's such a pleasure to have you
Speaker 1: back on. I was so excited to have you on
Speaker 1: the first time and excited again. I think you're such
Speaker 1: a fabulous writer. And one of my things I'm trying
Speaker 1: to do with the podcast is get more fiction writers
Speaker 1: on because I love to read fiction, and the nature
Speaker 1: of my job is that I read so much for
Speaker 1: the show that if I don't have fiction writers on
Speaker 1: the show, I don't get to read a lot of fiction.
Speaker 1: So here we go, and Liberation Day is your latest book.
Speaker 1: It's a great book of stories. I think we had
Speaker 1: you on before we were discussing your book about Russian literature,
Speaker 1: and today we'll be discussing more original stories from your
Speaker 1: latest work. But before we do that, we'll start like
Speaker 1: we always do, with the parable. There's a grandparent who's
Speaker 1: talking with a grandchild and they say, in life, there's
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, looks
Speaker 1: up at their grandparents, says, well, which one wins? And
Speaker 1: the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. Well, you know, since the last time we
Speaker 1: talked that that's been in my mind? Is everything? Really
Speaker 1: this idea that the mind is kind of this incredible tool,
Speaker 1: but it's also pretty susceptible. So if we put a
Speaker 1: positive aspiration in front of it will mold around that.
Speaker 1: And I'm kind of struck by how even small, little
Speaker 1: positive aspirations can be helpful. So, you know, I've noticed
Speaker 1: in my mind it's kind of a dread mind. I've
Speaker 1: got a lot of doom and dread in there. You
Speaker 1: know sometimes that just at particular moments, I'll think, well,
Speaker 1: what's the dread about? You know? Could you put something
Speaker 1: hopeful in there? Instead? And it actually does really work.
Speaker 1: So that's that's adparable for me. Boy, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of directions to go there, and one of them that
Speaker 1: I want to go to would be a lot of
Speaker 1: your work makes it difficult. I think it questions our
Speaker 1: ability to know which wolf for feeding. And I want
Speaker 1: to go there in a second, but I want to
Speaker 1: stay with the dread for a second, because you know,
Speaker 1: a tendency in your work has always turned things to
Speaker 1: darkness or to negativity. You know, it's something you've recognized
Speaker 1: as a tendency of mind, and so you don't want
Speaker 1: to indulge it all the time. It's also a strength
Speaker 1: of what makes your writing what it is. And so
Speaker 1: I guess my question would be, how do you think
Speaker 1: about these things that seem to be somewhat natural and
Speaker 1: wired into us part of our personality that we want
Speaker 1: to use them where they're useful, but we don't want
Speaker 1: them to get out of control. How do you think
Speaker 1: about that in your own life? Yeah, that's such an
Speaker 1: interesting question, because you're right, you know that one's natural
Speaker 1: tendencies are kind of what you exploit in art. I
Speaker 1: think that's what makes you unique. I guess so my
Speaker 1: experience has been that if you take that natural tendency
Speaker 1: towards darkness, and if I can just stay within a
Speaker 1: minute and kind of subdivide that kingdom. Okay, there's some
Speaker 1: of it that's an authentic, defensable response the situation we
Speaker 1: find ourselves in life, and there's some that's habitual, it's autopilot.
Speaker 1: So in other words, from having written books that investigate
Speaker 1: the first part and might develop certain habits to revert
Speaker 1: to that or to veer toward it, that second part
Speaker 1: I think needs to be interrogated with each work. You know,
Speaker 1: in other words, am I just auto darking here? You know,
Speaker 1: reflexively doing this? And in that If I was, then
Speaker 1: I would be missing certain other paths that the story
Speaker 1: might want to take that might actually be more authentic
Speaker 1: to it. So it's a little bit like if you're
Speaker 1: not paying attention to that, you're kind of overriding the
Speaker 1: natural energy that the story is presenting you with, and
Speaker 1: it's presenting it rather hopefully, like, look, we could do
Speaker 1: something new here. So if you're two wedded to darkness
Speaker 1: as a virtue, say, then you're going to run right
Speaker 1: past those exits. So for me, all of that comes
Speaker 1: down to the line by line rewriting. So maybe twenty
Speaker 1: times you've gone past an exit, you know, powered by
Speaker 1: your habit, then maybe on the twenty first time something
Speaker 1: maybe it's just your own resolve to be open will
Speaker 1: suddenly show you a path that you didn't see before.
Speaker 1: So that's what for me, it's all that granular revision
Speaker 1: type stuff that I'm always talking about that makes that possible.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. I think that's interesting if we were
Speaker 1: to pivot that to our personal lives and our tendencies
Speaker 1: of mind. Right. You know, you talk a lot about
Speaker 1: this revision process. Right, You go in and examine things
Speaker 1: very closely, and you keep sort of, as you say, revising,
Speaker 1: re editing, And I think that's some of what I
Speaker 1: think real change in life results from, is a willingness
Speaker 1: to kind of keep looking at the same thing again
Speaker 1: and again and again and seeing how it might change
Speaker 1: a little bit. So let's say it's I want to
Speaker 1: be more patient with my children, right, it's to continue
Speaker 1: to stay with that, to continue to look at it.
Speaker 1: We have a tendency to be like today it's I'm
Speaker 1: going to be more patient with my children, and tomorrow
Speaker 1: I'm going to focus on this and the next day
Speaker 1: I'm going to focus on that, and we're kind of
Speaker 1: all over the place, whereas with you in a story,
Speaker 1: you're kind of right in that same place again and again,
Speaker 1: and out of that something really powerful emerges. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think for me what it does is it takes
Speaker 1: you right back to the central question, which is how
Speaker 1: do you maintain freshness in a situation like that? Because
Speaker 1: you know, with your kids, you try to be better,
Speaker 1: no doubt you'll develop certain maxims and kind of mantras
Speaker 1: and credos. Okay, but those can get smoothed over pretty
Speaker 1: quickly too, So how do you get to freshness? And
Speaker 1: for me, part of it is if there's some relation
Speaker 1: to well, to reliance on concepts, you know, so if
Speaker 1: I'm reading a story and I have an idea of
Speaker 1: what it's about, that's gonna not help me in being
Speaker 1: fresh because now I'm referring to a secondary thing, not
Speaker 1: to the primary thing. And for me, that's also related
Speaker 1: to monkey mind, you know, to having a lot of
Speaker 1: active thoughts about things. You know, in the past, when
Speaker 1: I've been able to get my monkey mind quieted a
Speaker 1: little bit, it's almost like that freshness is there, you know.
Speaker 1: The word is always there, but your monkey mind is
Speaker 1: made a kind of avail between that moment of freshness
Speaker 1: and yourself. So in writing this is hard to talk about,
Speaker 1: but there's something about the mind state I feel myself
Speaker 1: going into during a revision where a lot of the
Speaker 1: normal ruminative habits are sidelined a bit. And I think
Speaker 1: it's just from literally from the act of concentrating on
Speaker 1: the page and trying to read it in a certain spirit,
Speaker 1: which has to do more with feeling than ideas, you know,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like in trying to read the
Speaker 1: passage to see how I would feel about it if
Speaker 1: I hadn't read it before. That quiets the rumination, increases
Speaker 1: the concentration, and in that moment there's freshness you can
Speaker 1: get in somehow. I don't know. That sounds kind of wacky,
Speaker 1: but that's basically how it feels. Yeah. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it's a really important point, which is how do we
Speaker 1: stay with fundamental issues or things in life or in art.
Speaker 1: We're sort of jumping back and forth between life and
Speaker 1: art here and keep them in a fresh way. You know.
Speaker 1: When I was deep in zen practice, one of the
Speaker 1: things my teacher did a really good job of was like,
Speaker 1: we're staying right here, right here. You're going to read
Speaker 1: this hundred page book, and we're going to read it
Speaker 1: for six months, right, how do you approach it the
Speaker 1: third time you're reading it fresh? That's the art is
Speaker 1: how do you actually do that? I mean, I find
Speaker 1: that very difficult in things that I do. If I'm
Speaker 1: writing something or working on a script for something that
Speaker 1: we're going to do with the podcast, it's like, after
Speaker 1: the second or third time I've read it, I almost
Speaker 1: feel like it's really hard to read it. Oh it is. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a skill to that. I don't think I have developed,
Speaker 1: certainly to the extent someone like you who does it
Speaker 1: all day every day has. That's really a student For me,
Speaker 1: it's it's an article of faith that one can get
Speaker 1: better at that just by trying it, you know. In
Speaker 1: other words, I don't think there's a lot of construction
Speaker 1: about it. Intellectual construction, but it's just you know, I
Speaker 1: always think about that commercial said I'm not a doctor,
Speaker 1: but I play one on TV. So for me, it's
Speaker 1: like I'm not a first time reader, but I'm pretending
Speaker 1: to be a first time reader, and that I think
Speaker 1: somehow giving my self permission to do that for all
Speaker 1: these years has made it easier somehow. So in other words,
Speaker 1: when I'm reading something that I wrote, I drop into
Speaker 1: a mind state that's well, it's not analytical, but it's
Speaker 1: very responsive. It reacts to what was already there. And
Speaker 1: so I guess a long way of saying, I don't
Speaker 1: think we can will it, but I think we can
Speaker 1: practice it. You know, I'm sure, much like meditation, someone
Speaker 1: can list the benefits of it, but you really can
Speaker 1: only feel that from the other side once you're in
Speaker 1: state for a couple of seconds. So I think it's
Speaker 1: something like that. But for me in the writing realm,
Speaker 1: the biggest obstruction I think people have is because we
Speaker 1: read a story and we feel all kinds of intellectual
Speaker 1: responses arising. So then the natural assumption is that the
Speaker 1: root of the thing must be intellectual ideas. But I
Speaker 1: think that's not actually true. I think the intellectual ideas
Speaker 1: or the political ideas, whatever, those arise out of the item.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that the story isn't full those
Speaker 1: things because you consciously put them there. It's something much
Speaker 1: different than that on the creative end. So what I
Speaker 1: find with my students is you have to kind of
Speaker 1: dissuade them of the idea that they have to know
Speaker 1: what the thing is about before they start, and quite
Speaker 1: on the contrary, it's going to be more powerful if
Speaker 1: you don't know. So maybe to answer two questions ago.
Speaker 1: One of the ways you can do is in terms
Speaker 1: of craft, is develop methods for confusing yourself. So for me,
Speaker 1: often I'll start a story with a just a voice,
Speaker 1: a weird voice that I can do that's kind of
Speaker 1: funny that I can sustain, but I don't know whose
Speaker 1: voice it is yet, So I'm concentrating on just sustaining
Speaker 1: the voice, finding it while sustaining it, and then at
Speaker 1: some point you have to explain who's talking that leads
Speaker 1: you forward, but you don't already have the answer. So
Speaker 1: I think that is freshness really, because you just don't
Speaker 1: you don't know. I mean, there's nothing more fresh than
Speaker 1: not knowing. Yeah, there's another thing I know we talked
Speaker 1: about with the Russian book is it makes intimacy between
Speaker 1: you and your audience because if they sense that you
Speaker 1: don't know, then they say, oh, we're on an exploration together.
Speaker 1: It's not this guy who knows the answers who's cramming
Speaker 1: it down my throat. It's rather that he doesn't actually know,
Speaker 1: So I'm going to follow behind him and We're going
Speaker 1: to sort of experience it simultaneously. Really yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think where I'd like to go now is this idea
Speaker 1: of not knowing. Because I said earlier after we talked
Speaker 1: about The Wolf Parable that one of the things I
Speaker 1: think your work does really well is it engenders a
Speaker 1: sense of not knowing. I mean, I'm reading your work
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, I think this now, I think that, now,
Speaker 1: I think this, now, I think that right, it said,
Speaker 1: this whole thing up, you know, where we just don't
Speaker 1: know what is, you know, kind of coming up? I
Speaker 1: mean in Lincoln and the Bartow there's so many great
Speaker 1: things about that book, but one of them is that
Speaker 1: you bring in historical sources to talk about Abraham Lincoln throughout.
Speaker 1: And what I love about it is that I've got
Speaker 1: a couple of them here. One of them says, the
Speaker 1: night continued dark and moonless, a storm was moving in.
Speaker 1: That's one person's interpretation of the event. Another person's interpretation
Speaker 1: of the same event is the guests began to depart.
Speaker 1: Is the full yellow moon hung among the morning stars. Right,
Speaker 1: you've got this very basic thing. It should not be
Speaker 1: a matter of debate about whether the moon is out
Speaker 1: or not. And yet all throughout you show these people
Speaker 1: who remembered this very basic thing very differently. If we
Speaker 1: can't know whether the moon is even out or not,
Speaker 1: how do we leap to much deeper and stronger conclusions
Speaker 1: that are based on flimsier even evidence. I just love
Speaker 1: that idea, and it brings us to this not knowing.
Speaker 1: There's a zenco on not knowing is most intimate. Wow.
Speaker 1: Well that's beautiful. Wow, Well you gotta write that down.
Speaker 1: Thanks for that's that's amazing. Yeah, from the story love letter, God,
Speaker 1: that's a good story. Than I saw that. Stephen Colbert
Speaker 1: read it online somewhere and the link to do it
Speaker 1: is no longer available, so I couldn't see him doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think they took it down after a week. I
Speaker 1: think they gave us a week and they took it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was pretty amazing. Yeah, I really wanted
Speaker 1: to see that. So the part I was thinking of
Speaker 1: is my page numbers may not be right because I've
Speaker 1: got it in a kindle, But I think it is
Speaker 1: starting on page ninety seven. Okay, you asked if you're
Speaker 1: supposed to stand by and watch your friend's life be ruined?
Speaker 1: And I was thinking up through I never want you
Speaker 1: around that kind of person. Sure. Yeah. So this is
Speaker 1: from a story called love Letter, and it's a letter
Speaker 1: from a grandfather to his grandson in some unspecified future
Speaker 1: time where the authoritarian impulses has gotten the upper hand
Speaker 1: in our country. So his grandson has written him a
Speaker 1: letter asking for some advice. He's got a chance maybe
Speaker 1: to intervene on behalf of a friend, but given the
Speaker 1: political climate, it might be risky. So the grandfather writes
Speaker 1: him this long letter. This is from the middle of it.
Speaker 1: That is where we find ourselves. You asked if you're
Speaker 1: supposed to stand by and watch your friend's life be ruined.
Speaker 1: Two answers. One is a citizen, the other as a grandfather.
Speaker 1: You've turned to me and what must be a difficult time,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to be frank. As a citizen, I
Speaker 1: can of course understand why a young, intelligent, good looking
Speaker 1: person perpetual delight to know, I might add, would feel
Speaker 1: that it is his duty to do something on behalf
Speaker 1: of his friend. Jay. But what exactly that is the question.
Speaker 1: When you reach a certain age, you see that time
Speaker 1: is all we have, by which I mean moments like
Speaker 1: those springing deer this morning, and watching your mother be born,
Speaker 1: and sitting at the dining room table here waiting for
Speaker 1: the phone to ring and announce that a certain baby
Speaker 1: you had been born, Or that day when all of
Speaker 1: us hyped out the point lobos, that extremely loud seal,
Speaker 1: your sister's scarf drifting down down to that black, briny boulder,
Speaker 1: the replacement you so generously bought her in Monree. How
Speaker 1: pleased you made her with your kindness. These things were real.
Speaker 1: That is what that is all one gets. All this
Speaker 1: other stuff is real only to the extent that it
Speaker 1: interferes with those moments. Now, you may say, I can
Speaker 1: hear you saying it, and see the look on your
Speaker 1: face as you do that this incident with Jay is
Speaker 1: an interference. I respect that, But as your grandfather, I
Speaker 1: beg you not to underestimate the power slash danger of
Speaker 1: this moment. Perhaps I've not yet mentioned this to you.
Speaker 1: In the early days of this thing, I wrote two
Speaker 1: letters to the editor of the local rag, one overwrought,
Speaker 1: the other comic neither had any effect. Those who agreed
Speaker 1: with me agreed with me. Those who did not remained unpersuaded.
Speaker 1: After a third attempt was rejected, myself pulled over up
Speaker 1: near the house for no reason I could discern. A cop,
Speaker 1: nice guy, just a kid. Really asked what I did
Speaker 1: all day? Did I have any hobbies? I said no.
Speaker 1: He said, some of us heard you like to type.
Speaker 1: I sat in my car looking over at his large,
Speaker 1: pale arm. His face was the face of a kid.
Speaker 1: His arm, though, was the arm of a man. How
Speaker 1: would you know about that? I said, have a good night, sir.
Speaker 1: He said, stay off the computer. Good lord. His stupidity
Speaker 1: and bulk there in the darkness, the metallic clinking from
Speaker 1: his belt area, the palpable certainty he seemed to feel
Speaker 1: regarding his cause, a cause I cannot begin, even at
Speaker 1: this late date, to get my head around or view
Speaker 1: from within, so to speak. I do not want you
Speaker 1: anywhere near or under the sway of that sort of person. Ever,
Speaker 1: that whole story is this basic dilemma of to me,
Speaker 1: do you do something in service of the greater good
Speaker 1: society which may have zero chance of success. It might
Speaker 1: do something or do you protect who's close to you,
Speaker 1: who you have a better chance of protecting. And I
Speaker 1: also loved it because my son and I have these
Speaker 1: kind of conversations. He's about twenty three, you know, He's
Speaker 1: out there like, let's change it all. And I'm much
Speaker 1: more like the grandfather. I'm a little more cautious, like
Speaker 1: why does that really I don't know what if that's
Speaker 1: going to really happen. But that tension in that story
Speaker 1: really brings us to not knowing what's the right thing
Speaker 1: to do. And I think with questions of morality, for me,
Speaker 1: I don't like not knowing, but it feels like the
Speaker 1: right place to be to keep wondering am I doing
Speaker 1: the right thing? Yeah, say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 1: I love that we don't like not knowing, but we're
Speaker 1: the better for it, you know. Yeah. Chekov said something like,
Speaker 1: you know, the zob of a work of art isn't
Speaker 1: to answer a question, but to formulate it correctly. So
Speaker 1: what can happen, I think is you keep asking a
Speaker 1: question and because of the storytelling, the question gets elevated,
Speaker 1: so your original easy answer is invalidated, and all the
Speaker 1: way up the chain until we're in the best stories,
Speaker 1: I think you're left at a moment of going, not
Speaker 1: this is the answer, but ah, thus it is, you know, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's actually how it is. So I think with this story,
Speaker 1: I've felt that not much happens in the story, and
Speaker 1: I think you could argue that he starts to come
Speaker 1: off of that position a little bit, but I'm not sure. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that can sometimes be the work of the
Speaker 1: story is to kind of say the mind with which
Speaker 1: you answer questions like this one easily is not your
Speaker 1: best mind. And you can actually through a story or
Speaker 1: through certain ways of thinking, you can move up to
Speaker 1: higher and higher levels of thinking. And I think, as
Speaker 1: you're pointing out at the end of that, your highest
Speaker 1: state is being able to abide with the uncertainty incrementally longer.
Speaker 1: I think that's really the thing. So one thing is
Speaker 1: in that mode, you'll be acting with the most information
Speaker 1: you could possibly get. You'll be in full mindfulness of
Speaker 1: the complexity, which means you'll be in mind of the risks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also you'll be in mind of the things that
Speaker 1: you sacrifice by having a position. You know you've turned
Speaker 1: your back on one side of it that's going to
Speaker 1: cost you something so in all ways, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's better. It's just so damn hard though, you know,
Speaker 1: in real life it's really hard. Oh yeah. And that's
Speaker 1: what's so great about the story is it makes it
Speaker 1: very difficult to know what the right thing to do is.
Speaker 1: And in the story, let's say you're fifteen twenty years
Speaker 1: on from sort of losing of democracy, right and sliding
Speaker 1: into I don't know if it's a dictatorship. I don't
Speaker 1: know quite what you would call it, but a much
Speaker 1: less free society. Yeah, And the grandfather's looking back and saying, well,
Speaker 1: what would you have had me do? I'm not the
Speaker 1: kind of person who would take up arms. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I called my senator when they still answered
Speaker 1: the phone. I donated money, you know. And it raises
Speaker 1: this question as we look at perhaps the crumbling of democracy,
Speaker 1: of this beautiful thing. This is my own personal question.
Speaker 1: Should I be doing more that I'm doing? And if so,
Speaker 1: what would that be? And is there even any point
Speaker 1: It may be worthy to die on certain hills for
Speaker 1: certain causes, but is it worthy to die on a
Speaker 1: hill for a cause that you know is going to
Speaker 1: have zero effect? And I think the answers to all
Speaker 1: that is, We don't know, but it reminded me of
Speaker 1: one of my favorite songs of all time. And it's
Speaker 1: a song by an artist named Dan Byrne and it's
Speaker 1: called God Said No, And in it, he basically is
Speaker 1: saying to God, like, send me back, send me back
Speaker 1: to Berlin, let me kill Hitler, right, And God is saying, look,
Speaker 1: if I sent you back, you'd take a lover, you'd
Speaker 1: get distracted. Right. Then he's like, send me back to
Speaker 1: Kurt Cobain, let me help him see his glory. And
Speaker 1: he's like, if I sent you back to Kurt Cobain,
Speaker 1: you'd ask him to help introduce you to somebody who
Speaker 1: could get you a record deal. It's this incredible story
Speaker 1: about and you say this quite directly in the story.
Speaker 1: We think we would know what we would do in
Speaker 1: certain historical situations because the lens of looking back makes
Speaker 1: it seem easy. The complexity of being in it is
Speaker 1: a whole different animal. Yeah, And I guess true across
Speaker 1: the board, in our desire to be righteous, we look
Speaker 1: backwards and we simplify those battles, and I think that's
Speaker 1: really to our detriment, because there are battles going on
Speaker 1: right now that we may not even know we're in.
Speaker 1: You know, we're blowing it right now, we maybe don't
Speaker 1: know it. So again, I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that fiction is wonderful at doing is to remind us
Speaker 1: that certainty has some relation to specifics of time and condition.
Speaker 1: So in order, if you say to me in the abstract,
Speaker 1: should one intervene to try to stop an unrighteous system?
Speaker 1: But the right answer is tell me more, like you
Speaker 1: know which system on which day? Who am I? What
Speaker 1: you know? And actually it's amazing how you can always
Speaker 1: say tell me more, almost always tell me. Then at
Speaker 1: some point in the real world you do have to
Speaker 1: act or not act. But I think it's a really
Speaker 1: powerful thing to not leap too soon on anything you know,
Speaker 1: to ask for more information. So fiction, for some weird
Speaker 1: reason storytelling. When you know that my story is made up,
Speaker 1: then suddenly certain things get really valuable, Like specificity is
Speaker 1: a huge one, and specificity is kind of the medicine
Speaker 1: that saves us from the mistakes we make from generality.
Speaker 1: Should a person ever do X, I don't want to
Speaker 1: answer that question, Tell me which person and tell me
Speaker 1: the situation, and keep telling me, and keep telling me
Speaker 1: at the end, maybe I'll act, But more often than not,
Speaker 1: you know, you find out that you don't really have
Speaker 1: to have an opinion about a lot of things, you know.
Speaker 1: I remember on nine to eleven, I had a whole
Speaker 1: morning why I hadn't heard about it. I was working
Speaker 1: and I wasn't on the internet or anything, so it
Speaker 1: was over for about three hours before I heard about it.
Speaker 1: And that whole time I was up happily working on
Speaker 1: a story and looking out the window and our dog
Speaker 1: was sunning herself on the sidewalk, you know. And then
Speaker 1: as soon as I heard the news, I went into
Speaker 1: full thinking person mode, asking questions, fighting debating. But it
Speaker 1: was interesting that most of the questions I ended up
Speaker 1: asking they didn't have any real life corollary for me,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, so I guess it's sort of like,
Speaker 1: if you really believe in the sacredness of a given moment,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to waste it chasing phantoms and a
Speaker 1: lot of our thoughts, a lot of our worries. I
Speaker 1: think our phantoms actually they feel very real. The specificity
Speaker 1: thing I think is really important. And there's a story
Speaker 1: early in the book. I think it's the first story
Speaker 1: in the book is the first story called Liberation Day Became.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to set the whole story up
Speaker 1: because there's too much to it. But it's impossible. I've
Speaker 1: tried it about a million times and you can't do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there's a line in it where one of the
Speaker 1: characters is saying, speaking of her beauty so often with
Speaker 1: such high specificity made her beauty real to me, made
Speaker 1: me notice it. She really is so beautiful. So that
Speaker 1: specificity is a way back to our earlier conversation about
Speaker 1: how do you keep things fresh right? One way is specificity.
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of October learning more about gratitude
Speaker 1: because I was teaching a workshop on it, and one
Speaker 1: of the key things with gratitude is to avoid it
Speaker 1: becoming a wrote exercise is specificity. Right, If you can
Speaker 1: be very specific about what you're grateful for why, down
Speaker 1: to the most granular details, you can actually feel it,
Speaker 1: whereas if you're just like, well, I'm grateful for my wife,
Speaker 1: not much right, right, So specificity really is a language
Speaker 1: of I was going to say love. Maybe that's the
Speaker 1: right word. I don't know. Yeah, No, that's interesting. Somewhere
Speaker 1: I came across this idea that if you ask someone
Speaker 1: to picture a rabbit, that's one thing. If you say,
Speaker 1: a picture a white bunny with a blue spot on
Speaker 1: it's here. Somehow the brain can do that better. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't really know why, but I expect that there's
Speaker 1: some Darwinian component, you know, as much as abstract thought
Speaker 1: as useful to us. Sometimes the brain, you know, the
Speaker 1: way it works is it makes a general first draft
Speaker 1: in the back of the brain. I've read this somewhere
Speaker 1: that then it passes at first draft up through the
Speaker 1: the brain where it's refining it by specificity. It's looking
Speaker 1: at the actual data and refining that model. So I
Speaker 1: think it's innate in us that specificity is what our
Speaker 1: mind needs to function at as high as level. Maybe
Speaker 1: I'm not sure about that, but it feels that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: You've got a new project called story Club. It's a
Speaker 1: substack newsletter and group where you study short stories. And
Speaker 1: in it, you recently answered a letter from someone who
Speaker 1: wrote to you about their friend who was a writer
Speaker 1: who wasn't really writing in that moment, and you said,
Speaker 1: even if you're not actively writing because you're too busy,
Speaker 1: you are still a writer because of the way you
Speaker 1: regard the world with curiosity and interest and some sort
Speaker 1: of love. And I think the real benefit of learning
Speaker 1: to see the world as an artist, even if the
Speaker 1: art you create isn't anything particularly special, right, because there's
Speaker 1: something about viewing the world through an artist's eyes that
Speaker 1: I think does bring us towards greater specificity and does
Speaker 1: bring us towards greater love. You know, I was comparing
Speaker 1: it in The Matrix when they have those really super
Speaker 1: slowed down fight scenes and then you know, when he's
Speaker 1: in that mode what's his name, Neo isn't a really
Speaker 1: good fighter, of course, because he's moving at normal speed.
Speaker 1: So I think in some ways, at least in stories,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of that where you have a situation
Speaker 1: where you know somebody is maybe not the most likable person,
Speaker 1: and in your first draft you kind of poke some
Speaker 1: fun at that person and it's a good time. But
Speaker 1: then you know, because you have other sections to write,
Speaker 1: you have to take a second, third, fourth, fifth look
Speaker 1: at that person. But you're doing it in this kind
Speaker 1: of slowed down environment where you are creating that environment
Speaker 1: through the sentences. You're right, So the sentences for reasons
Speaker 1: we don't know, seem to glow better when they're specific.
Speaker 1: So as you're trying to populate that story with specific sentences,
Speaker 1: that's exactly equal to looking closer, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: looking closer with a kind of artificial tool that you
Speaker 1: don't maybe use every day. You know, if I'm trying
Speaker 1: to describe an irritating person, that's like, I'm grateful for
Speaker 1: my wife. Okay, he's irritating, but you haven't proved it
Speaker 1: to me yet. Give me an example. Okay, Then suddenly
Speaker 1: there's a match stick that he's using as floss, and
Speaker 1: I'm suddenly irritated. Yeah yeah, yeah, got me. But as
Speaker 1: you try to prove that someone's irritating, suddenly that match
Speaker 1: stick is a presence in the story. That guy's got
Speaker 1: to put it down somewhere when he gets up, you know,
Speaker 1: he's got to do something with it. So all of
Speaker 1: that somehow it's really weird. I can't go to explain it.
Speaker 1: But in my experience, if you're trying to make a
Speaker 1: sentence it's good you know, it's atypical or has muscle,
Speaker 1: you know, then you're going to be drawn to specificity.
Speaker 1: You're also going to be drawn as we said at
Speaker 1: the beginning, to your own kind of oddness, like what's
Speaker 1: unique about the way you see the world. All those
Speaker 1: things are really just trying to make a sentence that
Speaker 1: doesn't suck, you know, that calls some attention or engage
Speaker 1: with the reader. But that process is all about slowed
Speaker 1: down noticing. I think, you know. But the weird thing is,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily noticing the real world like that. I
Speaker 1: don't remember ever seeing somebody do that with a match stick?
Speaker 1: Is that maybe in a movie? But somehow it was
Speaker 1: there when I needed it, you know. So there's something
Speaker 1: very deep about it, and I don't really understand, but
Speaker 1: I think to your point, it's a really wonderful way
Speaker 1: to just say. As I'm sure if you said to somebody, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're grateful for your wife, tell me more. Well, every
Speaker 1: day she does this. Okay, tell me more, and pretty
Speaker 1: soon you'll have the whole story there. But just through
Speaker 1: those three holy words, tell me more. Yeah, those are
Speaker 1: holy words. This is coming completely out of left field,
Speaker 1: but I'm going to reference the Seven Habits of Highly
Speaker 1: Effective People by Stephen Covey. You didn't see that coming,
Speaker 1: but he talks a lot in the book, and I
Speaker 1: didn't get it until recently, and it just even clicked
Speaker 1: more in as I was preparing for this interview and
Speaker 1: reading some of what you have to say about writing.
Speaker 1: He talks about this fundamental human attribute of imagination, and
Speaker 1: he is not talking about imagination in the sense of
Speaker 1: creating a work of art, but he's still positive imagination
Speaker 1: as a hugely important thing in living a good life.
Speaker 1: And I think it's for a lot of the reasons
Speaker 1: we're discussing here. It's the ability to imagine different situations.
Speaker 1: It's the ability to imagine complexity. It's the ability to
Speaker 1: imagine how we might act differently or better that if
Speaker 1: we can really engage in imagination, it's not just this
Speaker 1: thing that's only for artists or for daydreamers. It's an actual,
Speaker 1: really helpful tool in living a better life. Yeah. In
Speaker 1: a sense, imagination is opposite of autopilot. Yeah. If I
Speaker 1: walk out here on the street and I go, oh,
Speaker 1: it's my street, and I have a set of fixed
Speaker 1: ideas about it, then what I'm really not seeing is
Speaker 1: the specificity. You know, the way the discreet today is
Speaker 1: different from yesterday, The way that my mind is imposing
Speaker 1: regularity on something that's actually a crazy various phenomenon. So
Speaker 1: I think for me creativity and imagination, I get a
Speaker 1: lot of people say, oh, your imagination so crazy. To me,
Speaker 1: it's there's a power in thinking that imagination is just
Speaker 1: reaction to the extent that I'm creative in a story,
Speaker 1: It's just reacting to what I did yesterday. You know,
Speaker 1: if I think about the muse or something that blocks
Speaker 1: me up. But if I think, look, just say something
Speaker 1: and then tomorrow model by it, I would say all
Speaker 1: of the creativity is contained in that move there, Because
Speaker 1: if you say something, you know yesterday I wrote something down.
Speaker 1: There's kind of two paths to react to it. One
Speaker 1: is to remember my concepts about it from yesterday and
Speaker 1: continue that, which is that's habit. The other one is
Speaker 1: to see it anew And the only way to see
Speaker 1: it a new is to react to it from a
Speaker 1: place of quiet mindedness. I would say, then you react it,
Speaker 1: you're seeing it a new that's fresh. So I think
Speaker 1: that's the crossroads in writing. Your at that crossroads all
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, it's because you can't help but
Speaker 1: have ideas about what you're working on, thematic ideas. How
Speaker 1: do you get clear of those, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think in real life also, and I think as you
Speaker 1: get older, the brain gets encrusted with a lot of
Speaker 1: habitual stuff, you know, So how do you how do
Speaker 1: you find the freshness in a moment? And for me,
Speaker 1: the only thing is say, well, don't succumb to the
Speaker 1: bullshit of your habitual thinking about it if you can
Speaker 1: help it. But that's really really difficult. If I get
Speaker 1: a couple of seconds of that freshness a day, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty happy, you know. Yep. Reading about and hearing you
Speaker 1: describe your working process, you know, there's a couple things
Speaker 1: that come to mind as we're talking about this. One
Speaker 1: is you're not waiting for the grand idea, right you
Speaker 1: actually have said like, I just get a couple lines
Speaker 1: and I just start with that, Right. It's I just
Speaker 1: start where I am, with what little thing I've got,
Speaker 1: And then there's the trust that if I keep sort
Speaker 1: of doing my best to show up with that, it
Speaker 1: will become something. Yeah, And I think that that's a
Speaker 1: beautiful parallel to just making change in life, is just
Speaker 1: start somewhere with something, but keep coming back to it
Speaker 1: with love, and things transform over time. I just love
Speaker 1: that idea. That you are really taking away a lot
Speaker 1: of the I was gonna say grandiosity, but that's not
Speaker 1: exactly what I mean. You're taking away a lot of
Speaker 1: the very high expectation that you have to have something great. Now.
Speaker 1: It's that my process will enable me too, sooner or
Speaker 1: later get to something that's good. Yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: know what I think it takes away from me is
Speaker 1: the anxiety because if I sit down here and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta do something great, forget it, that day has gone.
Speaker 1: When I was younger, I had this mantra, which is
Speaker 1: I don't have to do everything. I just have to
Speaker 1: do something. You know. That's a beautiful mantra. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: built into that is the idea that what we call brand.
Speaker 1: If we approached it that way, I want to do
Speaker 1: something grand. There's already a list of all the grand
Speaker 1: things and they already have answers. You know. So in
Speaker 1: a sense, what we're doing is we're exploring, and the
Speaker 1: accretion of small moments of non bullshit will be something
Speaker 1: quote unquote grand, because if every moment is about something,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're kind of in some kind of
Speaker 1: creative awareness as you're writing a story, which of course
Speaker 1: I do by iteration many many times. Or if you are,
Speaker 1: then by definition it'll be about something, because every moment
Speaker 1: when it stopping about something or became random, you would
Speaker 1: have changed, all right, you know, So in a certain way,
Speaker 1: you can you can sort of forget all that stuff
Speaker 1: I tell that story about. But the first time I
Speaker 1: wrote something I thought I felt was authentically me, you know,
Speaker 1: I was kind of disappointed because I've been aspiring to
Speaker 1: be on Hemingway Mountain, this Kilimanjaro, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: that I had this little ship hill, you know, with
Speaker 1: my name Saunders kind of misspelled on the thing. But
Speaker 1: as you say, you go over and stand on your
Speaker 1: ship hill and you keep working it and hopefully the
Speaker 1: ship hill will rise. You know, that's definitely. But for me,
Speaker 1: it's the anxiety is a big enemy of me, and
Speaker 1: I have an issue with in general and certainly when
Speaker 1: I'm working. So when I look at it now, a
Speaker 1: lot of my esthetic positions are just anxiety reducing positions. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If I can't produce work because I'm too anxious about it,
Speaker 1: then it's done. Yeah, So the first step would be
Speaker 1: get the anxiety under control and write something I agree
Speaker 1: totally I mean whenever I'm working on anything, whether it
Speaker 1: be something like preparing for an interview or you know,
Speaker 1: creating a talk or something, there is inevitably multiple points
Speaker 1: in that process where I go, I don't have it, yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's not here. Whatever I can do to reduce
Speaker 1: the anxiety enough to just keep working, right, you know,
Speaker 1: just keep at it, and then, knowing like that that
Speaker 1: always happens, done it enough now that I'm like, yes,
Speaker 1: you think this is total junk. You think you're never
Speaker 1: going to find your way through it, And that's the
Speaker 1: way you felt literally every time you've created anything, right,
Speaker 1: just trust in the process and do your best. I
Speaker 1: always quote this thing I used to think was Einstein,
Speaker 1: by people are telling me it wasn't. So I don't
Speaker 1: know who it was, but it's just no worthy problem
Speaker 1: has ever solved in the plane of its original conception.
Speaker 1: So when you start writing a talk, if you know
Speaker 1: what you want to say and you just say it,
Speaker 1: no one's having much fun. But if you think you
Speaker 1: know what you're gonna say, and then the peace overturns
Speaker 1: that and as sends, then you're into some cool stuff.
Speaker 1: But so, yes, I think recognizing the familiarity. The process
Speaker 1: that's really important is deep, you know, just trying to
Speaker 1: write a paragraph. Everything is contained in that process. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, yea more and more. To me, it's kind
Speaker 1: of about this awareness that there's somebody on the other
Speaker 1: end of it who's just as real as you are.
Speaker 1: That's a deep thing. That kind of conversation. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to phone that one in and would literally mean
Speaker 1: you'd have to be alert in every paragraph when you're
Speaker 1: doing a talk. You know, when you said I don't
Speaker 1: have it yet, that's you doing really amazing thing, which
Speaker 1: is anticipating the response of a theoretical audience correctly. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a lot. I always think it's interesting to have
Speaker 1: this sort of conversation with someone like you who is
Speaker 1: by any sort of measure of I guess success, right,
Speaker 1: You've won countless awards. You know, your work has been
Speaker 1: featured everywhere. Anybody who is in the literature space thinks
Speaker 1: George Saunders is a hell of a writer. Right, So
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to puff you up here. What I'm
Speaker 1: actually saying is that I think it's really important for
Speaker 1: everyone to hear that, even someone who's got that level
Speaker 1: of previous success still faces the battle of it of
Speaker 1: art day to day to day, because I think there's
Speaker 1: this sense that oftentimes people have, which is I just
Speaker 1: can't do it because I'm not as good as so
Speaker 1: and so, and the fact that I feel that way
Speaker 1: as part of the reason I can't do it, versus
Speaker 1: realizing that everyone feels that way when they're engaged in
Speaker 1: anything meaningful. I'm sure you could sit down and be like, well,
Speaker 1: I am George Saunders and I won the Man Booker Prize,
Speaker 1: but your brain at the very least would go yeah,
Speaker 1: but that was then. What about now? Right? And so
Speaker 1: you still are in the trenches with your anxiety and
Speaker 1: your doubt despite all your previous success. And I think
Speaker 1: you know, the person who doesn't have that is somebody
Speaker 1: who's not doing good work anymore. You know, like when
Speaker 1: you said a minute ago, you're working on a piece
Speaker 1: and you I just don't have it yet. That kind
Speaker 1: of humility that's very useful. The person who doesn't have that,
Speaker 1: the person who always thinks he's got it, that's a
Speaker 1: terrible writer. So for me, part of these dispositional like
Speaker 1: I would kind of like to get to a place
Speaker 1: where I wasn't so anxious about it, but I'm glad
Speaker 1: I'm not. If you have doubts about your abilities, that's
Speaker 1: a great editing tool, you know. That's the way of
Speaker 1: being respectful of the reader, to say, I can't just
Speaker 1: give her any old thing. I have to really make
Speaker 1: sure that it works. So that's really important. But on
Speaker 1: the other hand, you can break that in the two halves.
Speaker 1: There's the part that's useful, which is you have high
Speaker 1: standards for yourself. You don't want to send a story
Speaker 1: off before it's done its thing. But then I also
Speaker 1: see writers who have that imposter syndrome so badly that
Speaker 1: they want that address before they can start. Yes, and
Speaker 1: that can't be you know, So then it becomes a
Speaker 1: friend of mine called the backdoor ego. You have such
Speaker 1: high opinion of yourself that you can't start anything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: backdoor ego. That's great. Yeah, because I mean truly, you know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of a cliche in a personal development world,
Speaker 1: but it's a cliche because it's so true. Which is
Speaker 1: the thing that you're afraid to do. We keep waiting
Speaker 1: until we're not afraid, but that is simply never going
Speaker 1: to come. Yeah, that's not how it's going to happen,
Speaker 1: how it's going to is Okay, I am afraid, and
Speaker 1: still I find some way of working in spite of that,
Speaker 1: or working with that. Yeah, yeah, And I think sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, for me, I'm not a particularly courageous person,
Speaker 1: but I can sometimes reformulate the situation, so it's not
Speaker 1: so scary. So for me to say I'm really afraid
Speaker 1: I'm going to write a book that won't do well,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, no shit, you know, of course. But
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, I'm really hopeful I could write a
Speaker 1: book that is beautiful that I can get excited about,
Speaker 1: you know, or like if you're if you're sitting in
Speaker 1: front of a blank page, I really don't want to
Speaker 1: screw this up and be mediocre. And then your little
Speaker 1: voice in my head goes, yeah, of course, let's not
Speaker 1: do that. You talked earlier about it, you know. Being
Speaker 1: familiar with your own process by this point, I kind
Speaker 1: of know that it's totally fine to have a first
Speaker 1: trap that doesn't have legs. That's totally fine, that's normal,
Speaker 1: there's no stress about that. Of course, I'm writing my
Speaker 1: shitty first three paragraphs. Yeah, but I know that I
Speaker 1: can revise it into something I like. So therefore courage,
Speaker 1: I would say, it doesn't quite enter into it because
Speaker 1: I'm such a chicken shit that I want to outsmart
Speaker 1: the freer you. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder
Speaker 1: if we could have you read another passage from the book,
Speaker 1: And this is in the mom of bold action. And
Speaker 1: I've really wrestled with what to have you read here,
Speaker 1: but I think it starts with and there it was forgiveness.
Speaker 1: Maybe you could set this one up for us to
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah. So in this one, a woman
Speaker 1: with her husband has kind of participated in something that
Speaker 1: ended up causing harm to this old, kind of possibly
Speaker 1: homeless person, and she's now going to do a little
Speaker 1: visualization to try to get us off off the hook.
Speaker 1: I think it's the idea of it. A flock of
Speaker 1: geese came out of a low cloud, emitting this weird
Speaker 1: non goose sound. A second group joined from the left,
Speaker 1: and the third from the right, and the greater flock
Speaker 1: flew off imperfectly in the direction of the high school.
Speaker 1: She imagined of white light shooting out of her forehead,
Speaker 1: an apology beam charged with the notion I am so
Speaker 1: sorry that traveled across town and crossed the river and
Speaker 1: roamed through the woods until it found the two guys, and,
Speaker 1: having briefly paused above them because they looked so damned,
Speaker 1: similar entered the innocent one. Instantly he knew her, knew
Speaker 1: her pain, knew about Derek's long thing, and how out
Speaker 1: a step he was with his classmates, how he sometimes
Speaker 1: went to school with the stuffed bear in his shirt pocket,
Speaker 1: as if he thought that was a good look, poor dear.
Speaker 1: And the thing was knowing her this completely. It all
Speaker 1: made sense of the guy. And there it was forgiveness.
Speaker 1: That's what forgiveness was. He was her, being her, He
Speaker 1: got it all so just how the whole thing had happened.
Speaker 1: How could he be mad at her when he was her?
Speaker 1: Agree forgiveness. Beam shot out of his forehead and flew
Speaker 1: back over the town, charged with the notion to tell
Speaker 1: the truth, I never expected much from life anyway, And
Speaker 1: given all the crap that's happened to me, most of
Speaker 1: which I caused, a slight limp is, believe me, the
Speaker 1: least of my worries, plus the pain is making me
Speaker 1: really attentive to every moment. The beam entered the car,
Speaker 1: hung there near the glove compartment. Although I do have
Speaker 1: one request, it said, go ahead. She thought, kindly forgive
Speaker 1: my cousin. The beam said, as I have forgiven you,
Speaker 1: oh brother in a pig's ass, like that was happening
Speaker 1: someday maybe, although probably not. She didn't have the inner,
Speaker 1: just didn't. She hated that jerk and always would you
Speaker 1: forgave Ricky? The beam said, your guys know Ricky? She said,
Speaker 1: Ricky was worse. The beam said, well, she said, if
Speaker 1: you knew Ricky, if you knew my cousin, The beam said, anyway,
Speaker 1: it was all bullshit. There was no beam. She was
Speaker 1: just making it up with her mind. You a trapped you,
Speaker 1: The beam said, yeah, well who isn't She thought, there's
Speaker 1: so many great things about that. But I just love
Speaker 1: the fact that she's going along on this sort of
Speaker 1: you know, good feeling, you know, forgiveness moment until she's
Speaker 1: sort of asked to forgive. It makes me think of,
Speaker 1: as you were reading it, the Lord's prayer flashed into
Speaker 1: my mind right, like to forgive our trespasses as we
Speaker 1: forgive those who trespass against us, and that idea that
Speaker 1: she was like, well, no, I can't forgive that, and
Speaker 1: that they both are saying, you know, if you knew
Speaker 1: the person right then, you know, you'd know that they're
Speaker 1: a good person. Yeah. Well then also that counter voice
Speaker 1: is coming from her as well, because it's all a
Speaker 1: mental thing, So she's providing an argument and deflating it herself.
Speaker 1: There's a quote. I tried to memorize this for many years,
Speaker 1: but it's I think it's Longfellow, and the gist of
Speaker 1: it is, you know, if you could know your enemies
Speaker 1: secret sorrows and fears, that person wouldn't be your enemy.
Speaker 1: It's much more beautiful than that. But but I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of what she saying to herself. And yet
Speaker 1: she's not interested the person in question that pushed her
Speaker 1: kid down at one point. So she's reached that kind
Speaker 1: of scary place where yes, I know love forgiveness compassion,
Speaker 1: but no I can't. Yeah, you know, and I think
Speaker 1: anybody could get there, and we do get there, and
Speaker 1: that's that's tough. Oh yeah, I mean those are ideas,
Speaker 1: you know, love forgiveness, compassion that I deeply believe in,
Speaker 1: and there are just times where I bump up against
Speaker 1: it and I'm like, nope, you know, yeah, I can
Speaker 1: forgive nearly anything, but that littering. No, can't. Let go.
Speaker 1: Always say when somebody cuts off in traffic, you always
Speaker 1: know which political party they belong to, you know, But
Speaker 1: but you don't actually you know, I think you do,
Speaker 1: You don't, you don't. It's funny, though the littering joke
Speaker 1: kind of cracks me up, because I mean, I sometimes
Speaker 1: feel like I get more bent out of shape about
Speaker 1: littering than I do mass murder. And I really understand
Speaker 1: why that is, but I guess it's that little thing phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Yesterday we were at this place in this couple cut
Speaker 1: in front of us in line, and the cashier opened up.
Speaker 1: They rushed the window, and then they kind of were
Speaker 1: doing that thing where you pretend you didn't know, you know,
Speaker 1: and it was it was really galling for longer than
Speaker 1: it should have been. So at the end of that
Speaker 1: there's this sense of like, well, if you knew my person,
Speaker 1: you know, you'd understand why they did that, and vice versa.
Speaker 1: And in Lincoln in the Bardo, there is this section
Speaker 1: that is really kind of amazing where all these spirits
Speaker 1: are talking about that they did what they did because
Speaker 1: of the circumstances they were raised in right. One of
Speaker 1: the lines is we were as we were, How could
Speaker 1: we have been otherwise, or being that way have done otherwise?
Speaker 1: We were that way at that time and had been
Speaker 1: led to that place, not by any innate evil in ourselves,
Speaker 1: but by the state of our cognition and our experience
Speaker 1: up until that moment. That's really kind of remarkable, and
Speaker 1: it raises this again back to this deep sort of
Speaker 1: not knowing right. You know, how do you judge people
Speaker 1: on their action, recognizing that we don't all have the
Speaker 1: same capacities, the same starting places, the same opportunities, the
Speaker 1: same privileges. Use the words you want. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know further on down that one of
Speaker 1: the other characters in Lincoln and the Bardos says, to
Speaker 1: be grouped with these excepting one sin so passively, even proudly,
Speaker 1: with no trace of repentance. I could not bear it,
Speaker 1: you know, must I even now be beyond all hope?
Speaker 1: Perhaps I thought, this is faith to believe our God,
Speaker 1: ever receptive to the smallest good intention. Say a little
Speaker 1: bit more about that section, and that's one of those
Speaker 1: oppositions we talked about earlier, where I'm just like, yep,
Speaker 1: I agree with that. You know, there are two views
Speaker 1: that are right and they can't really be reconciled. The
Speaker 1: only thing I found that gives me a little piece
Speaker 1: of mind is this idea of the absolute versus the relative.
Speaker 1: So in an absolute sense, I really believe that first
Speaker 1: bit a person who is born, you could call it karma,
Speaker 1: you could call it neurology or whatever, but there's bio fate.
Speaker 1: There's something in that person that is wired already. Then
Speaker 1: they go into a specific world that proceeds in front
Speaker 1: of them in real time and changes them. So I
Speaker 1: think in some ways that there's not much freedom in
Speaker 1: that really, and I believe that the highest form of
Speaker 1: judging someone is to not you know, to kind of go, yeah,
Speaker 1: well you did this because of everything that happened to you.
Speaker 1: That's true, and the absolute sense. On the relative sense,
Speaker 1: you know, if the bear has your neck and his jaws,
Speaker 1: you can say, well he's a bear. You know, he's
Speaker 1: doing what comes natural, but you want to live. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I think that's the relative sense. The relative sense is,
Speaker 1: once you have consciousness, you're rooting for things to come
Speaker 1: out a certain way. The bear is no good because
Speaker 1: the bear is trying to kill you. The Academy award
Speaker 1: is good because they're giving it to you. So I
Speaker 1: think those things they exist compatibly with or without the
Speaker 1: addition of consciousness. And so since we all have consciousness
Speaker 1: and ego and it seems very hard to get rid
Speaker 1: of it, for me, it's just to keep those two
Speaker 1: ideas in mind. Like yesterday, when that couple will cut
Speaker 1: us off there, I just mechanically said, they are what
Speaker 1: they are. It's not worth it. If you just don't
Speaker 1: do anything for an hour, you'll have totally forgotten about it,
Speaker 1: and that will be the virtuous solution, you know. So
Speaker 1: I think that's what those conundrums we talked about before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a similar part very near there in the book,
Speaker 1: as these people are lamenting all the things that they
Speaker 1: did in life and how they couldn't have done differently,
Speaker 1: and then someone says, well, you know, do you think
Speaker 1: that justifies it? And one of the people says, and
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing here, but basically no, And then another character says, well,
Speaker 1: then your punishment is having its intended result, which is
Speaker 1: your punishment is causing you to reflect upon your behavior
Speaker 1: that made me. Then think of a conversation I had
Speaker 1: with a gentleman recently. His name's father, Gregory Boyle. Oh yeah, sure, sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's great. Yeah, somewhere in there, you know, you're talking
Speaker 1: about he works with gang members who lived in horrible
Speaker 1: conditions but have also often done horrible things, you know,
Speaker 1: And he makes this distinction that punishment doesn't really make
Speaker 1: sense given if you take their history into account, but
Speaker 1: you also have to stop them, you know. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I love that sort of It's kind of like you
Speaker 1: and the bear, right, Like, there's no sense getting mad
Speaker 1: at the bear. The bear's doing what it needs to do. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: you got to get the bear off your neck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you're doing what you need to do. Also, you know,
Speaker 1: you're not any less than the bear, that's right, That's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think too. You know. There's also
Speaker 1: there's a slight alteration. So if somebody is offending you
Speaker 1: or you can live in a mind that says, my
Speaker 1: job is to judge that, but you could also move
Speaker 1: over a little bit and go my job is to
Speaker 1: think about altering it. And those are two different mindsets.
Speaker 1: With delivering example, to say, ah at bastard you know,
Speaker 1: and walk away. You've taken all that inside yourself and okay,
Speaker 1: or if you said him, you bastard. Okay, well you
Speaker 1: brought it out. That's maybe a little bit better, but
Speaker 1: it may not go well. But if you said, I
Speaker 1: am going to do something and I'm going to think
Speaker 1: about alteration, how could I alter this now? Again specificity,
Speaker 1: given the situation, you might decide to alter it. Usually
Speaker 1: just shut up, just let the world do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think the slight change and the same thing
Speaker 1: with writing. You know, if you're reading or work and
Speaker 1: you're judging it, I suck, I'm an imposter. That's just
Speaker 1: a dead end. But if you're thinking reading it with
Speaker 1: an eye towards reacting and altering, that's a more hopeful stance,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, applying that sort of back to ourselves, right,
Speaker 1: which is, Okay, there's this thing that I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do differently. I'm trying to change, I'm trying to be
Speaker 1: a better person. I'm trying whatever that thing is. You know,
Speaker 1: the judgment just leads to shame, which there's no learning
Speaker 1: that happens in that. But okay, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be terrible to myself about it. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: punish myself, but I'm going to continue to try and
Speaker 1: alter myself. Yeah when that's appropriate. Yeah, I think the
Speaker 1: world I try to think of more often as playful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with writing for sure, but also in these things we're
Speaker 1: talking about it because the opposite of playful is ego. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know your story is no good and you react
Speaker 1: with shame. That's back to where ego. You're just saying
Speaker 1: I'm so great that I'm worthy of big shame, you know,
Speaker 1: whereas if you were not so much centered in yourself,
Speaker 1: that would lead it to a more playful thing, like, oh,
Speaker 1: this story is interesting, this story is kicking my butt
Speaker 1: a little, but ha ha, isn't it a privilege to
Speaker 1: be in relation to this difficult story? So playfulness, I think,
Speaker 1: is another word I try to use a lot in
Speaker 1: my own mind, because I can get very inward and
Speaker 1: kind of beat up on myself in my writing stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's just to say, you know, this is all pretend.
Speaker 1: It's all just for fun, And the same thing actually
Speaker 1: with personal development, it's all pretend. You know, it's a fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'd like to end by talking about a topic that
Speaker 1: Buddhists all over the world always talk about which is
Speaker 1: we could use different cryptos for it, Crypto exactly, exactly,
Speaker 1: ethereum or bitcoin is the big question, George, where you
Speaker 1: lean the Buddhist I don't know. We could call it desire,
Speaker 1: we could call it clinging, we could call it craving.
Speaker 1: And I just want to bring up two points from
Speaker 1: the latest book. And one is the story Goul, which
Speaker 1: is really funny. And this line is particularly funny, although
Speaker 1: out of context it may not be so. But you
Speaker 1: basically say one evening that earlier described remorseful demon was
Speaker 1: sent tumbling down the cliffs of unceasing desire, which just
Speaker 1: cracks me up as a metaphor, the cliffs of unceasing desire.
Speaker 1: But then at another point you say, every man is
Speaker 1: born with a certain store of desire. It is a
Speaker 1: treasure he has been bequeathed that he must spend wisely.
Speaker 1: Over the course of his life. One moves through the world,
Speaker 1: finding objects on which to expend it. Blessed is he
Speaker 1: who finds a worthy object, shaped by God, provided fortuitously
Speaker 1: unto him, that elicits his long and so strongly that
Speaker 1: all else briefly recedes, and he becomes pure desire. So
Speaker 1: they're sort of the case for desire, the case sort
Speaker 1: of against desire. How do you think about that. You're
Speaker 1: really good at finding those. No, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean I think elso both ways. I mean, a
Speaker 1: life without desire, I think it is depression, you know
Speaker 1: pretty much. I mean, at least I'm sure that if
Speaker 1: you were a great spiritual being, that might be different.
Speaker 1: For me. When my desire and my interest in my
Speaker 1: opinions go away, that means it's a depressive state of mind.
Speaker 1: But similarly, you know, when I've put all my faith
Speaker 1: in my desires, there's just nothing there, you know, Like
Speaker 1: I think probably in my writing career, I've done that.
Speaker 1: When I was younger, I had some idea that like
Speaker 1: a fear of death and that somehow if I just
Speaker 1: wrote a great book, then what I don't know what
Speaker 1: I thought, but it was like a veer, you know,
Speaker 1: I think about death and go no, I just write
Speaker 1: a great book. And so you know, then at some point,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't matter what you're doing. I mean, you're dying.
Speaker 1: You're definitely dying. So your desire to write a book,
Speaker 1: a great book or a good book or whatever you
Speaker 1: can do it, and then it will just come right back,
Speaker 1: you know, or replaced by something else. So I think
Speaker 1: that's one again, one of those conundrums that you think
Speaker 1: is desired the most holy thing in the world. Yes,
Speaker 1: is desire the great curse of living? Yes, yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, but with that in mind, then I
Speaker 1: think you can assess a specific desire more intelligently. So
Speaker 1: for example, you know, I just did a big fourteen
Speaker 1: city book tour, and before I started, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: two or three tour ago, my mindset was I'm anticipating
Speaker 1: a great triumph and I'm going to enjoy the triumph. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: after living through two book tours, like, that's not actually right,
Speaker 1: that's not it. What should I be thinking? Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: I should be thinking I want to get through this
Speaker 1: with grace, you know, and I want to take every
Speaker 1: opportunity that I I can to be positive and helpful to people. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's better, you know, Yeah, maybe at some level and
Speaker 1: want to get good enough at it. I'll just go
Speaker 1: out there without any desire and just respond. But I
Speaker 1: think if you queue up these conundrums we've been talking
Speaker 1: about and let them resonate and it's really hard to read.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm having trouble now even resisting the urge
Speaker 1: to come down on one side or the other. But
Speaker 1: I think that's what we're talking about, is that holy
Speaker 1: state of going Yeah, it's difficult and stopping right there totally.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to stop right there too, because I
Speaker 1: am the same way. I want to come down with
Speaker 1: some clarity. But we're gonna in the spirit of the
Speaker 1: entire feeling that the book gave me, and a phrase
Speaker 1: you've used in talking about the book of holy befuddlement,
Speaker 1: We're going to just end in a state of holy befuttlement.
Speaker 1: It sounds like something that Robin would say to Batman. Yes, exactly. Man. Well, George,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. It is always such a pleasure
Speaker 1: to talk with you. The new book is wonderful listeners,
Speaker 1: if you like short stories, I could not recommend it
Speaker 1: more highly. And well links in the show notes where
Speaker 1: you can find all that stuff. And again, thank you
Speaker 1: so much, George. I know you're busy. I love being
Speaker 1: with you. You always give me so much to think about.
Speaker 1: I really love being with you. Thank you. Thank you.
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