Speaker 1: You always get to your happiness through the traviles of
Speaker 1: your discontent and your difficulties you have being in the
Speaker 1: world and being at ease in the world, unhappiness is
Speaker 1: actually knocking on our door, telling us this is the
Speaker 1: way to happiness.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen.
Speaker 1: Or empower us.
Speaker 2: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 2: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 2: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 2: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 2: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 2: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 2: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 2: good wolf.
Speaker 3: We often take ourselves so seriously, the name we carry,
Speaker 3: the identity we've constructed, the projects we chase, and yet,
Speaker 3: as David White reminds us, the whole endeavor might be
Speaker 3: just slightly absurd. In this conversation, with poet David White,
Speaker 3: we explore the deep truths that reveal themselves when we
Speaker 3: let go of our need to name, to define, to fix.
Speaker 3: David talks about anxiety as a mask for unspoken truths,
Speaker 3: about the real meaning of care, and about the strange,
Speaker 3: sacred humor that arises when we realize how much we
Speaker 3: don't control. From zen coons to Irish folklore to yack
Speaker 3: mangers in the Himalayas, David weaves together the poetic and
Speaker 3: the practical, and somewhere in all of it he helps
Speaker 3: us see that maybe the goal isn't to be extraordinary,
Speaker 3: but to recognize the unordinary beauty of what's already here.
Speaker 3: This is an episode about loosening our grip, living with paradox,
Speaker 3: and letting language lead us closer to the world, not
Speaker 3: away from it. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is the
Speaker 3: one you feed. Hi, David, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Very good to be with you again, Eric.
Speaker 3: Yes, I am very honored to have you back on.
Speaker 3: I'm very excited to talk with you, and we're going
Speaker 3: to be talking about your latest book, which is called
Speaker 3: Consolations two, which is a series of essays about I
Speaker 3: don't know if you call them common words, but words
Speaker 3: that all of us would know that you are putting
Speaker 3: under a little bit more of a microscope, I would say,
Speaker 3: But before we get to that, let's start, like we
Speaker 3: always do, with the parable and the parable. There's a
Speaker 3: grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 3: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 3: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 3: like kindness and bravery and love, and the others a
Speaker 3: bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Speaker 3: And the grandchild stops and they think about it for
Speaker 3: a second. They look up at their grandparent and they
Speaker 3: say which one wins, And the grandparent says, the one
Speaker 3: you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking
Speaker 3: you what that parable means to you in your life
Speaker 3: and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Well, that parable would have meant something very different to
Speaker 1: me a few decades ago than it does now, and
Speaker 1: with all of my zen sitting and zen study, but
Speaker 1: also the deep states of attention that poetry and walking around,
Speaker 1: and I'd say, bring, I'd say, the one you feed
Speaker 1: is the one that holds both together. Actually, that you
Speaker 1: don't choose we're always choosing between what we think are
Speaker 1: opposing qualities, and there's actually some invisible part of you
Speaker 1: that's able to hold both horizons and to live in
Speaker 1: the territory between those horizons. I was just working with
Speaker 1: the story of the young Finn McCool out on the road.
Speaker 1: He's taken in under the tutelage of a wild bandit
Speaker 1: called Cormack McCall, and Cormack McCall takes the young Finn
Speaker 1: under his wing and teaches him the ways of a warrior.
Speaker 1: But he shows Finn this spear which is bound to
Speaker 1: a tree with tight cloths, and it's bound to a
Speaker 1: tree because this spear is so full of the spite
Speaker 1: of killing, as it says in the Irish mythological tradition,
Speaker 1: it's so full of the spite of killing that it
Speaker 1: will kill anyone it comes across. And comic McCall says
Speaker 1: to Finn, you must never unbind this unless your life
Speaker 1: is at stake, and then you can unleash the spear
Speaker 1: and use it. And so there's an understanding that we
Speaker 1: mostly operate through cooperation through kindness, but there are times
Speaker 1: for cutting through and for eliminating. I'm not saying people,
Speaker 1: but eliminating qualities that are standing in your way, and
Speaker 1: they take a kind of fierce, ruthless presence actually, and
Speaker 1: so human beings have never been able to choose, just
Speaker 1: from the standpoint of evolutionary survival, between their kind of
Speaker 1: cooperative qualities that they hold and the necessity to take
Speaker 1: a stand in the world that not choosing that ability
Speaker 1: to hold both sides of the world. You could say,
Speaker 1: these inner and outer horizons are very necessary and very powerful.
Speaker 1: I often think that horizons are enormously powerful in an
Speaker 1: individual human life. One of the essays in constellations to
Speaker 1: is horizon, the way that we're constantly seeing edges between
Speaker 1: what we know and what we do not know, and
Speaker 1: the horizons out in the world are certainly representative of that.
Speaker 1: There's nothing more beautiful than a far horizon to a
Speaker 1: human being, whether it's mountains or the ocean or a
Speaker 1: far plane. And we're finding out, actually through medical research,
Speaker 1: that human beings are actually much calmer, much more at
Speaker 1: home in the world, and much happier actually when they
Speaker 1: are looking at a horizon, when they have their heads
Speaker 1: up and their eyes gazing into the distance. And we
Speaker 1: all know the forms of unhappiness we have from gazing
Speaker 1: too closely at our screens, you know, whether it's a
Speaker 1: phone or a laptop. But it's interesting to think that
Speaker 1: we also have an inner horizon. We have a horizon
Speaker 1: insiders between what we can understand or actually feel physically
Speaker 1: about ourselves and what lies beneath. But we often feel
Speaker 1: that horizon insiders as a horizon of resistance or disturbance.
Speaker 1: We often see it as negative actually, because what lies
Speaker 1: below will actually break apart what lies above. What lies below,
Speaker 1: in many ways is the latest edge of our growing maturity,
Speaker 1: but it's way beyond the life that we have actually
Speaker 1: constructed for ourselves on the surface. So when you unbind
Speaker 1: that spear inside yourself, it feels as if it's going
Speaker 1: to destroy and kill your present life. And so the
Speaker 1: ability to live with both what is nourishing in the
Speaker 1: world and what feels like qualities that will end your
Speaker 1: life is a real necessity. So the ability to actually
Speaker 1: go inside yourself and physically lean against that horizon, almost
Speaker 1: rest against it, and get used to what feels like
Speaker 1: a horizon of resistance and disturbance until it opens into
Speaker 1: something else. Often the qualities we feel there are what
Speaker 1: in your story, your parable would be associated with the
Speaker 1: consuming wolf, and so the ability to live in the
Speaker 1: territory between those two horizons, to hold both wolves inside you,
Speaker 1: is what is called foreign life.
Speaker 3: There are so many things you said there that I
Speaker 3: would like to respond to, and I'm only going to
Speaker 3: be able to hit a couple of them. But one,
Speaker 3: when you were talking about fierceness, I couldn't help but
Speaker 3: think about Manjuiciry, the Buddhist. Yeah, would you call him
Speaker 3: a deity, a figure, it doesn't matter, but he wields
Speaker 3: a flaming sword right to cut through delusion. I also
Speaker 3: was thinking about in one of your essays you write
Speaker 3: about Zen that one of the things about Zen is
Speaker 3: it refuses to choose between different things. And then the
Speaker 3: last piece I think underlies a lot of what I
Speaker 3: think the book is pointing towards, which is that these
Speaker 3: words that typically, as you said, might fall under bad
Speaker 3: wolf category, or we might put under negative emotion category,
Speaker 3: or however we want to label them, are actually very
Speaker 3: useful and instructive. And when I look at the words
Speaker 3: that I picked for us to talk about, is maybe
Speaker 3: a personality test here in disguise Anxiety shame, guilt, injury,
Speaker 3: nagging you, unhappiness. You know, I left alone, moon and
Speaker 3: reverie and sojourn again. Diagnostic perhaps, yeah. But the point
Speaker 3: is that the reason I picked those words is because
Speaker 3: you help turn them on their head to a certain degree.
Speaker 3: You help us see where indeed those things anxiety, shame,
Speaker 3: guilt can be not good within us right, they can
Speaker 3: be destructive, but they are also hugely constructive seen in
Speaker 3: the right.
Speaker 1: Light, exactly. And that's the task of all these micro essays,
Speaker 1: both in Consolations one and two, is to rehabilitate words
Speaker 1: and language that we use against ourselves. My understanding is
Speaker 1: that if there's a quality that we feel, whether it's
Speaker 1: jealousy and hate, then there's a place for it in
Speaker 1: the constellation of our identity. Actually, it's necessary to understand
Speaker 1: what hate is saying to you, what anxiety is saying
Speaker 1: to you. In my essay on unhappiness, which is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite ones, I say, if we're happy now,
Speaker 1: unhappiness is how we got here. You always get to
Speaker 1: your happiness through the traviles of your discontent and your
Speaker 1: difficulties you have being in the world and being at
Speaker 1: ease in the world unhappiness is actually knocking on our
Speaker 1: door telling us this is the way to happiness. So
Speaker 1: it's a rehabilitation of so many parts of ourselves that
Speaker 1: we've consigned to the negative, to one wolf or another.
Speaker 1: When you're not supposed to choose, you're supposed to live
Speaker 1: in the intimacy between them. And I'm thinking now of
Speaker 1: a Zenko on where the end of the story says
Speaker 1: that not knowing is most intimate. Not knowing is most
Speaker 1: intimate when you can think about that in a love
Speaker 1: relationship with your partner, your wife, your husband, and that
Speaker 1: the more you can see them as if you've seen
Speaker 1: them for the first time, the more possibility you have
Speaker 1: of loving them for who they actually are, rather than
Speaker 1: the delusory identity that you've granted them. It's a resentful
Speaker 1: part of the partnership. And so, but also not knowing
Speaker 1: allows you to look at a bird. You know, if
Speaker 1: I was trained in zoology and marine zoology, and we
Speaker 1: learned all of the Latin names of animals and birds,
Speaker 1: so you're automatically when in the presence of a bird,
Speaker 1: singing out the double barreled Latin name of it, as
Speaker 1: if that tells you what you're looking at. It's actually
Speaker 1: a delusion, it's actually a gate. I had to teach
Speaker 1: myself when I went as a young naturalist to the
Speaker 1: Galapagos Islands not to say the Latin name to myself.
Speaker 1: To let the bird announce itself literally through its behavior,
Speaker 1: through its song, through its presence, through its flight, you know,
Speaker 1: to get another essence that lies beneath the name. So
Speaker 1: we're constantly naming things in ways that allow us to
Speaker 1: handle it, or I should say, allow our strategic minds
Speaker 1: to handle it. Yeah, because we can be so terrified
Speaker 1: by the fierceness of the world in our evolutionary past,
Speaker 1: when we were gathered at night around the fire and
Speaker 1: you listened out into the darkness and heard all of
Speaker 1: these cries and trumpet calls. And I've had this experience
Speaker 1: actually in today's world. In the African bush, you told
Speaker 1: stories about what was out there, and the story helped
Speaker 1: you to make sense of your fears and also of
Speaker 1: your communal protections psychological protections. But it didn't mean to
Speaker 1: say that your stories were true about what you were
Speaker 1: hearing or what you were frightened of. And all of
Speaker 1: our great traditions going back for hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: years always say that the real ability to be present
Speaker 1: in the world is through deep, prolonged, silent attention and
Speaker 1: the ability to shape a deeply attentive identity that can
Speaker 1: sustain that form of attention. Is how we come to
Speaker 1: ground in this world and how we actually live in
Speaker 1: the territory between what we call unhappiness and what we
Speaker 1: only call happiness.
Speaker 3: I want to go back to something you said a
Speaker 3: couple minutes ago about once we name something, we cease
Speaker 3: to see it. I think Christian Murdy had that quote,
Speaker 3: which is something like, you know, once the child learns
Speaker 3: the name of the bird, they never see the bird again.
Speaker 3: Pointing to what you're saying. And at the same time,
Speaker 3: one of the things poetry does is it it's specificity
Speaker 3: about what it's seeing. It's seeing a birch tree, not
Speaker 3: a tree. Even the zen co on. You know, it's
Speaker 3: not a tree in the courtyard. It's the oak tree
Speaker 3: in the courtyard. So there is all Also at the
Speaker 3: same time the concept and the name takes us away
Speaker 3: from the thing. There are ways in times in which
Speaker 3: the name brings us closer to the thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, Sir Emily Dickinson, said a word is dead when
Speaker 1: it is said. Some say, but I say, it just
Speaker 1: begins to live that day there's a poet speaking. I mean,
Speaker 1: the task of poetry is to use language in a
Speaker 1: way which grants life and is just as movable as
Speaker 1: the thing that you're speaking of and all. It's why
Speaker 1: you'll almost never see the word God in good poetry,
Speaker 1: and if you do see the word God, it always
Speaker 1: brings the poem to a halt. You have to use
Speaker 1: language that opens up the physical quality itself and opens
Speaker 1: up the silence behind that word and the kind of
Speaker 1: gravitational pull of the world. I often talk about the
Speaker 1: conversational nature of reality and the ability of a human
Speaker 1: being to create a more conversational identity in that world.
Speaker 1: But you could say that every conversation is based on
Speaker 1: a mutual invitation. And we all know the way in
Speaker 1: intimate relationships that the conversation stops when our invitations stop.
Speaker 1: When you stop making an invitation to your partner in
Speaker 1: a marriage or a relationship, almost always the conversation and
Speaker 1: the relationship is coming to an end. So the invitation
Speaker 1: we make is through our eyes, our ears, and then
Speaker 1: our speech. So poetry is invitational speech in a way,
Speaker 1: and it's joining the invitational nature of the world. The
Speaker 1: world's constantly calling us out from any subscribed or circumscribed
Speaker 1: perimeter that we've laid down for ourselves in the dust
Speaker 1: around our feet. It's constantly calling us over the horizon
Speaker 1: that we've arranged for ourselves. And it's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons the world is so nourishing. It's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons the world is so terrifying that the same time,
Speaker 1: and our ability to submerge in screens and not be
Speaker 1: physically present in the world is definitely one of the
Speaker 1: ways we're hiding. And especially in North America, it's almost
Speaker 1: become a cultural norm to walk into places where everyone
Speaker 1: has their head down in screens. You know, where they
Speaker 1: are controlling what they see, what they're listening to. In
Speaker 1: many ways, and the wilder, more abandoned edges of the
Speaker 1: world are kept at bay, where you don't have control
Speaker 1: of who you meet, where the conversation leads you how
Speaker 1: your physical body is behaving in the presence of other
Speaker 1: physical bodies, so in and out of horizons. The conversational
Speaker 1: nature of reality, the invitational nature of reality that will
Speaker 1: never ever lead us alone, which which is why we
Speaker 1: so often get anxious about the world. But anxiety is
Speaker 1: one of the telling qualities that tell us we're supposed
Speaker 1: to respond to a certain knock on our door in
Speaker 1: a way other than the way we're responding to it now.
Speaker 3: So let's move on to anxiety. It's one of your essays,
Speaker 3: and I was wondering if maybe you could just read
Speaker 3: the first couple paragraphs of it.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I was just revising this the other day. Actually,
Speaker 1: so this is the latest version, or just a few
Speaker 1: sentences changed, but crucial sentences. I think Anxiety is the
Speaker 1: mask that truth wears when we refuse to stop and
Speaker 1: uncover its face. Anxiety is the mask that truth wears
Speaker 1: when we refuse to stop and uncover its face. The
Speaker 1: disembodied state I feel when I pretend to put things
Speaker 1: right by worrying about them instead of conversing with them.
Speaker 1: The disembodied state I feel when I pretend to put
Speaker 1: things right by worrying about them instead of conversing with them.
Speaker 1: Anxiety is my ever present excuse for not truly resting
Speaker 1: into the body, or the breath, or a world where
Speaker 1: I might find out that truth. Anxiety is the temporary
Speaker 1: helper going by the name of Werri, who, when turned
Speaker 1: into our constant living companion, becomes our formidable jailer. In
Speaker 1: the midst of anxiety, we always haunt the body like
Speaker 1: an unhappy ghost from the past, instead of living in
Speaker 1: it as a live anticipation of our future. Anxiety creates
Speaker 1: the ghostlike sense of living timidly in our mortal frames,
Speaker 1: so that we begin living in the world in the
Speaker 1: same way as a troubled guest, a guest who does
Speaker 1: not believe they deserve the rest and hospitality that the body,
Speaker 1: the breath, or the world can offer. Anxiety is the
Speaker 1: mind refusing to be consoled and nourished, either by the
Speaker 1: body itself or by the beauty of the world that
Speaker 1: this body inhabits. Anxiety is an extended state of denial,
Speaker 1: the refusal to put right something that needs to be
Speaker 1: put right, because putting it right often means feeling real anguish,
Speaker 1: a real sense of the unknown, and the need to
Speaker 1: change at a fundamental level. That's beautiful That laft line
Speaker 1: is crucial about the refusal to feel real anguish. Anxiety
Speaker 1: is often a limbo state where we refuse to actually
Speaker 1: fall down into the grief that we're actually feeling. You know,
Speaker 1: if you read back into our mythological past, or even
Speaker 1: into the Bible, the King James Bible, you see people
Speaker 1: are constantly falling down, weeping, our tearing their clothes. There
Speaker 1: was an understanding that a full state of physical grief
Speaker 1: is actually a form of enlightenment. We've all had that
Speaker 1: experience where we lose someone close to us, you know,
Speaker 1: that just breaks apart all of our defenses and we
Speaker 1: break down weeping, And for many people that is the
Speaker 1: nearest experience they will have to what it's called kensho
Speaker 1: in the Zen experience of breakthrough of enlightenment. Actually, you're
Speaker 1: on an edge. There's nowhere else to be in the world.
Speaker 1: There's no further place to go. You're intimate with the loss,
Speaker 1: You're intimate with your own physical body in the world.
Speaker 1: You've given up your hopes for an easy explanation, and
Speaker 1: you're just plunged into the sheer physical absence of the
Speaker 1: person that you've lost. And there was a moment back
Speaker 1: in the thirteenth century where the Great Dominichon mystic mister
Speaker 1: Eckhart was asked by someone obviously in the state in
Speaker 1: a state of grief because he said, where is God?
Speaker 1: Where is God? And Ekat said, God is nowhere. God
Speaker 1: is pure absence. The person he must have thought a
Speaker 1: lot of the person he said this to, because it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's asking a lot of the person to
Speaker 1: whom he's speaking, So as probably someone who was a
Speaker 1: student of of Ekat, that he'd be worthy of this description,
Speaker 1: that he'd be up to and able for understanding God
Speaker 1: in this way. That God is is the far horizon
Speaker 1: of your yearning. It's where you're being pulled to out
Speaker 1: of yourself. It's the greatest context you can imagine, and
Speaker 1: you know even as you're imagining it that it will
Speaker 1: lead you to places that you still cannot imagine.
Speaker 3: Back to anxiety. I think part of the problem with
Speaker 3: anxiety is that I think it arises out of uncertainty.
Speaker 3: Let's say I'm anxious about something. If that thing were
Speaker 3: to actually occur, I have developed some degree of capability
Speaker 3: of allowing myself to go into the grief, the heartache,
Speaker 3: the pureness of all these things we're talking about. What
Speaker 3: I found harder to do is when that loss is
Speaker 3: looming and may or may not happen, And it seems
Speaker 3: those are the really difficult things to set down, the
Speaker 3: ones that could go either way.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, so this is you know, the powerful physical
Speaker 1: gift that deep silence gives you is to allow the
Speaker 1: world to be itself and to announce as it goes
Speaker 1: along what's actually occurring. Because we all know how many
Speaker 1: of our anxieties will never actually come to pass, and
Speaker 1: we all know the way that things we should be
Speaker 1: anxious about will come to pass.
Speaker 3: Right, do we have no idea or even coming What we're.
Speaker 1: Worrying about is not what we should be worrying about.
Speaker 1: And the ability to see to the center of the
Speaker 1: pattern also strips away all of these necessities that the
Speaker 1: surface that we think we need in order to be ourselves.
Speaker 1: Silence always leads you to a radical kind of simplicity,
Speaker 1: and so many of the things that you're defending on
Speaker 1: the surface, you realize are ridiculous and part of some
Speaker 1: absurd project that you decided are your ancestors decided to
Speaker 1: hand down to you. You immediately eliminate a lot of
Speaker 1: the things you're going to worry about just by paying
Speaker 1: attention in deep silence and starting to shape an identity
Speaker 1: that's in that deep silence.
Speaker 3: The horizons that you were talking about. I was actually
Speaker 3: going to save that kind of end of the interview
Speaker 3: because I think it is such a uplifting and hopeful
Speaker 3: although there's fear embedded in it, but ultimately for me
Speaker 3: it ends up being hopeful because this idea that there
Speaker 3: is a horizon out there that I can't yet imagine
Speaker 3: is really consoling to me, because I think what we
Speaker 3: all tend to do is we have something that feels
Speaker 3: important to us, and it's out there in the future,
Speaker 3: and it's uncertain, and we want it to go a
Speaker 3: certain way because all we can imagine, as far as
Speaker 3: we are able to imagine, is how this thing we
Speaker 3: want won't happen, and that's as far as we can see.
Speaker 3: But a horizon says there is something beyond that.
Speaker 1: The definition of a horizon that you can't actually see
Speaker 1: what's beyond it, but your imagination is drawn to it, yes,
Speaker 1: and your physical body is drawn to it at the
Speaker 1: same time. Where migratory creatures actually we came out of
Speaker 1: Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, following horizon after horizon.
Speaker 1: It was part of our ability to survive and be
Speaker 1: in this world, actually, but it's also part of our joy,
Speaker 1: the joy of beauty and of exploration. Often when we
Speaker 1: lose our relationship to beauty, we also lose our relationship
Speaker 1: to courage, which is really our heartfelt love of the
Speaker 1: world and care for the world. And so there's another
Speaker 1: paragraph here in the essay on anxiety. The way we
Speaker 1: use it is a defense against beauty and against nourishment,
Speaker 1: and against all the ways that the world is actually
Speaker 1: giving to us, you know, through the blue of the sky,
Speaker 1: the green of grass, you know, the wind across the mountainside.
Speaker 1: Constant anxiety is an unconscious defense against what is calling
Speaker 1: us to a deeper understanding. Ever present, anxiety actually covers
Speaker 1: over and prevents me from feeling fully what is preying
Speaker 1: on my mind or what is trying to be gifted
Speaker 1: to me. Constant anxiety is our constant way of not
Speaker 1: paying attention. Anxiety is a trembling surface identity that finds
Speaker 1: the full measure of our anguish too painful to bear.
Speaker 1: Constant fretting is our way of turning away from and
Speaker 1: attempting to make a life free from the necessities of heartbreak.
Speaker 1: Anxiety is our greatest defense against the vulnerabilities of intimacy
Speaker 1: and a real understanding of others. Allowing our hearts to
Speaker 1: actually break might be the first step in freeing ourselves
Speaker 1: from anxiety. That's probably the most radical line I wrote
Speaker 1: in the essay. Allowing our hearts to actually break might
Speaker 1: be the first steping freeing ourselves from anxiety. There's another
Speaker 1: saying here called care, the word care, and my favorite
Speaker 1: line in that I say is care doesn't care if
Speaker 1: you don't want to care. Human beings don't have a
Speaker 1: choice about caring. They always care about something, yes, and
Speaker 1: care is the measure of our heartfelt participation in the world.
Speaker 1: And the only way you can stop caring is to
Speaker 1: actually close yourself off from the world. So opening up
Speaker 1: the path of care is also opening up the path
Speaker 1: of heartbreak. There is no sincere path a human being
Speaker 1: can take in this life without having their heart broken,
Speaker 1: and yet we spend enormous amounts of energy trying to
Speaker 1: find a path where we will not have that imaginative
Speaker 1: organ broken open and displayed to the world.
Speaker 3: Right, I had something I was going to say and
Speaker 3: it just zipped away.
Speaker 1: Okay, hotbreak of interviewing, you.
Speaker 3: Just redeemed that that's probably going to end up staying
Speaker 3: in the interview. Now, Chris isn't going to cut it exactly. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 3: I'm going to move on because it's gone. But I'm
Speaker 3: going to stay with anxiety for a second, and I'd
Speaker 3: like to talk a little bit about what do we
Speaker 3: do with this, because again I think sometimes yes, it's
Speaker 3: a way of avoiding what we're actually feeling. And I
Speaker 3: think in the other way, it's what we talked about.
Speaker 3: It's this uncertainty and there is care in it because
Speaker 3: we are seeing that this thing really matters to us
Speaker 3: and we don't know what's going to happen with it,
Speaker 3: which is I think what causes the anxiety. And you
Speaker 3: say that anxiety is difficult to shed because it always
Speaker 3: refuses to rest, and rest is where the answer to
Speaker 3: anxiety lies.
Speaker 1: Yes, and actually rest lies under our anxiety. The very
Speaker 1: thing you're being anxious about is the very thing you're
Speaker 1: meant to converse with in a different way than your
Speaker 1: anxiety is allowing you to speak.
Speaker 3: That's a beautiful.
Speaker 1: Anxiety is both my protection and the sure indication of
Speaker 1: my deepest vulnerabilities, all at the same time. What seems
Speaker 1: completely wrong with my life, with the world and with
Speaker 1: the time in which I live is often my greatest
Speaker 1: manufactured defense against being fully part of this world, this body,
Speaker 1: and this time. What I worry about and fret about
Speaker 1: for my children's future is often what keeps me from
Speaker 1: helping them into that future. What I worry about and
Speaker 1: what I am anxious about keeps me in an insulated,
Speaker 1: busy state of mind that stops me feeling the true
Speaker 1: depth and vulnerability of how much I care, how much
Speaker 1: I want to make a difference, and how much I
Speaker 1: feel powerless to do it. So underneath anxiety lies this
Speaker 1: deep well of care. I care about something, but I'm
Speaker 1: afraid of caring to the debt to which it's calling me,
Speaker 1: because it calls for a kind of physical vulnerability in
Speaker 1: the world that probably my parents, or my schooling on
Speaker 1: my society did not initiate me into. So I need help.
Speaker 1: You know, you can get it from the poetic tradition,
Speaker 1: from our great contemplative traditions that talk about the vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: You know. We tend to think of Zen, for instance,
Speaker 1: and I've got an essay on Zen. We tend to
Speaker 1: think of it as this beautiful, clear state, and it's
Speaker 1: all about polished flaws and bronze bells and the clarity
Speaker 1: of sitting in silence, very organized. But really the path
Speaker 1: of zen is the invitation to heartbreak, and all of
Speaker 1: the zen coins are often about physical breakdown, about not
Speaker 1: understanding something because you can't stand being so fully invited
Speaker 1: so physically into the world, and the breaking apart into
Speaker 1: tears are a great shout. Are the moon reflected in
Speaker 1: the surface of the water in the bucket, the bucket
Speaker 1: breaks open, the water runs out, you know, And then
Speaker 1: it says, and then the monk is enlightened, and you
Speaker 1: don't realize the physical experience or breakdown that the said
Speaker 1: monk went through at that time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's always monks. So and so stubbed his toe,
Speaker 3: hit his head, was struck by lightning, was locked in
Speaker 3: a tomb. There's always something like that, to your point,
Speaker 3: which causes this breakthrough. I want to pause for a
Speaker 3: quick good wolf reminder. This one's about a habit change
Speaker 3: and a mistake I see people making. And that's really
Speaker 3: that we don't think about these new habits that we
Speaker 3: want to add in the context of our entire life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Habits don't happen in a vacuum. They have to fit
Speaker 3: in the life that we have. So when we just
Speaker 3: keep adding I should do this, I should do that,
Speaker 3: I should do this, we get discouraged because we haven't
Speaker 3: really thought about what we're not going to do in
Speaker 3: order to make that happen. So it's really helpful for
Speaker 3: you to think about where is this going to fit
Speaker 3: and what in my life might I need to remove.
Speaker 3: If you want to step by step guide for how
Speaker 3: you can easily build new habits that feed your good Wolf,
Speaker 3: go to good Wolf dot me, slash change and join
Speaker 3: the free masterclass. Let's move on to a couple of
Speaker 3: the other things. There's so many that I want to
Speaker 3: talk about, and the book is amazing in that way.
Speaker 3: I don't know how many you wrote, but there's a lot.
Speaker 3: I ended up choosing like twenty five, and then I
Speaker 3: had to edit way down from there, so I want
Speaker 3: to make sure we get a little bit of a tour.
Speaker 1: The number is important, actually because with a part of
Speaker 1: the story, I began very naturally writing these essays, and
Speaker 1: I created a reader's circle and did twenty four people
Speaker 1: signed up for it, and I did twenty four one
Speaker 1: every two weeks for people, and that got me writing,
Speaker 1: and then I did another twenty and then I said, oh,
Speaker 1: I have a book, and then I added a few more,
Speaker 1: and lo and behold, it came out with fifty two
Speaker 1: essays in the first book, and all of the reviewers said, oh,
Speaker 1: a pack of cards or one for each week of
Speaker 1: the year. But it was just sheer luck that I
Speaker 1: put fifty two out, And so I decided to do
Speaker 1: fifty two again in the second one, just because the
Speaker 1: number had been so talismanic, so luckily talismanic for the
Speaker 1: first one. And I actually wrote sixty five essays in
Speaker 1: seven months last year and a kind of delirium, and
Speaker 1: it was a delirium, actually, and then I chose fifty
Speaker 1: two out of the sixty five to put out in
Speaker 1: the book.
Speaker 3: I think that's very interesting because one of the things
Speaker 3: that I noticed in beginning to read the book, and
Speaker 3: this is this is a feature of our modern life,
Speaker 3: right that we're going so fast, is that at first
Speaker 3: reading of some of the essays, you know, I'm talking
Speaker 3: about the first hour in the book or so, I'm
Speaker 3: feeling impatient because I'm like, this is beautiful, but it's
Speaker 3: the bottom line, you know. David laid out for me
Speaker 3: what's the bottom line, and as I had a little
Speaker 3: bit more time with it and I began to slow down,
Speaker 3: then they start working on a completely different level. And
Speaker 3: so I think a week is actually an interesting amount
Speaker 3: of time to think about spending with one of these.
Speaker 1: That's well said, Eric, because you're not meant to start
Speaker 1: this book and read it all the way through and
Speaker 1: it would probably kill you in the way it killed
Speaker 1: me to write it. Yet you did that. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: meant to take one essay and spend a few days
Speaker 1: with it, actually, and they're short enough that you can
Speaker 1: return to them. And yes, exactly, the physical experience itself,
Speaker 1: it's like portray. You can't speed read portray. Poetry itself
Speaker 1: actually engages you to slow down to the same physical
Speaker 1: experience in which it was actually written.
Speaker 3: Yes, there's an old Chinese line something like read a
Speaker 3: book for the thousandth time and the truth will emerge.
Speaker 3: And when I started studying with a Zen teacher really serious.
Speaker 3: I remember he was like, Okay, here's the book to read,
Speaker 3: and it was I think it was Appreciate your Life
Speaker 3: by my Zuomiro. She doesn't it doesn't really matter. But
Speaker 3: what I noticed was I was told and encouraged to
Speaker 3: read that book in a totally different way. This is
Speaker 3: in the last decade since I had this podcast, and
Speaker 3: as part of having this podcast, I'm reading a lot, right,
Speaker 3: because I'm trying to honor every guest by reading their things.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to understand the material. So it's the way
Speaker 3: I show love to the guests to the audience, right.
Speaker 3: But it's fast, and I suddenly realized when I was
Speaker 3: doing this reading for my zen practice, I was reading
Speaker 3: a book that I could have read in an afternoon
Speaker 3: for six months. Yes, and your essays, I think provoke
Speaker 3: a similar thing. There's a lot of facets. As you
Speaker 3: turn the diamond around, you know, the diamond being the word, right,
Speaker 3: There's so many facets. And of course there's that thing
Speaker 3: that happens when we read, which is that if we
Speaker 3: truly are engaging, we are not the same person that
Speaker 3: we were the first time we read it.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. I mean the essays are written in a
Speaker 1: poetic fashion, and in poetry you only need one line. Actually,
Speaker 1: they are like coins. In my essay on Despair in
Speaker 1: the first book, the only line you need from that
Speaker 1: essay is despair takes us in when we have nowhere
Speaker 1: else to go. Despair takes us in when we have
Speaker 1: nowhere else to go. Everything's in that line, you know,
Speaker 1: the shelter that's in despair, the invitation to give up.
Speaker 1: It's a temporary form of giving up, where we pretend
Speaker 1: we can't go on in a sense, in order to
Speaker 1: go down to another layer of ground. And so, yes,
Speaker 1: prolonged attention. You're much better reading one line and staying
Speaker 1: with that for a good few hours or one paragraph.
Speaker 1: Then you are running through the whole book, you know,
Speaker 1: so quickly. So as you know, Eric, we have our
Speaker 1: educational systems commoditize learning, and I think actually one of
Speaker 1: the bright sides of what's also going to have a
Speaker 1: big shadow, you know, with artificial intelligence, is that we're
Speaker 1: no longer going to be able to test people on
Speaker 1: rote learning. Right. It's going to free us up. We're
Speaker 1: going to have to reimagine what learning and testing what
Speaker 1: learning means. We're going to have to go back to
Speaker 1: more of a you know, the ancient oral inheritance of
Speaker 1: testing presence, yes, and testing understanding at a deep level.
Speaker 3: What you say about only needing one line, It's funny
Speaker 3: when I listen to you read, there are so many
Speaker 3: lines that could be the line that I expect that's
Speaker 3: the end, right, Like you just hit it with the
Speaker 3: line that ends up and then it goes on. And
Speaker 3: I say that as a compliment, not as a negative thing, right,
Speaker 3: because each of these lines is good enough that it
Speaker 3: could be an ending and you'd have so much to
Speaker 3: ponder and reflect upon. Let's move into another essay. I
Speaker 3: am going to skip by for now too that I
Speaker 3: really want to talk about guilt and shame because it's
Speaker 3: really important, right, those are really big things. But I
Speaker 3: feel like I want to hit one that just was
Speaker 3: the one that I most was like, huh that I
Speaker 3: didn't see coming. And it's about nagging. Yes, you say
Speaker 3: nagging is love? Unlistened to from both sides, say more
Speaker 3: about nagging. I found it a really beautiful essay and surprising.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you. There's a number of essays that are
Speaker 1: begun tongue in cheek. The one now insay now where
Speaker 1: I say now is not what it was. Then it
Speaker 1: goes into more serious territory. And I just wanted to
Speaker 1: choose something that we all have to work with in relationship.
Speaker 1: And I thought, have I ever come across a long
Speaker 1: term relationship where nagging doesn't occur, you know, either in
Speaker 1: your own life or witnessing other marriages, and I realized
Speaker 1: what an emblem of care it is actually. And if
Speaker 1: you're in a relationship where you're never nagged, you do
Speaker 1: have to ask yourself if the person really cares about you.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know all the evidence of the way
Speaker 1: that in relationship, especially for men, you're going to live
Speaker 1: longer being in relationship, most especially with a woman who's
Speaker 1: actually asking you if you're taking care of yourself in
Speaker 1: the right way. And men live so much longer in relationship.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately women don't, so they need to kind of help.
Speaker 1: But nagging is love and listened to from both sides,
Speaker 1: the helpless nagger and the equally helpless naggee. Nagging is
Speaker 1: something both sides want to turn away from, something both
Speaker 1: sides would rather not experience, but something that is also
Speaker 1: an abiding and ancient necessity in every long term relationship.
Speaker 1: Love meets powerlessness. Love meets powerlessness is our way of
Speaker 1: knocking on a door when those living inside most need
Speaker 1: our help but refuse it, or when we ourselves neglect
Speaker 1: to gain and again to ask for the necessary help.
Speaker 1: Nagging is necessary in every committed human relationship because nagging
Speaker 1: is the way love tries to survive when it feels
Speaker 1: it has no other way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the two lines there for me are when love
Speaker 3: meets powerlessness and then the last one. Nagging is the
Speaker 3: way love tries to survive when it has no other way.
Speaker 1: And yes, I.
Speaker 3: Love it because it goes back to these things that
Speaker 3: we see as negative point towards what we truly care
Speaker 3: about in what matters, and nagging is just another example
Speaker 3: of that. It is there's something that I want, There's
Speaker 3: something deeper I want here in this relationship, and I'm
Speaker 3: not getting it, and it's partially why nagging. Often the
Speaker 3: relationship advice is like, look underneath the thing. It's not
Speaker 3: about the thing. It's not about the trash being taken
Speaker 3: out or not being taken out. It's not about It's
Speaker 3: usually about something far deeper, which gets to another essay
Speaker 3: that you've alluded to, which is care. We're feeling uncared for,
Speaker 3: so we're nagging as an attempt because it's the way
Speaker 3: we're trying to keep love alive when it feels it
Speaker 3: has no other way. Just such a beautiful idea.
Speaker 1: Yes, it can also be proactively helpful in a way
Speaker 1: that can help a person who's refusing to get diagnosed
Speaker 1: far some kind of pain they have in their body.
Speaker 1: They're just trying to soldier on in the most especially
Speaker 1: in the masculine psyche, and the necessity to keep knocking
Speaker 1: on that door and to find different ways of faghing
Speaker 1: it until it's heard.
Speaker 3: I think that's so tricky to figure out. I'll give
Speaker 3: you an example. I've got a friend, yes, and her
Speaker 3: husband is taking terrible care of himself, right, high blood pressure,
Speaker 3: you know, high cholesterol, way overweight, eating terribly, not exercising,
Speaker 3: and his father went in his fifties from heart disease
Speaker 3: and he is now in his forties and they have
Speaker 3: young children. So she is really flummoxed by this and
Speaker 3: frustrated by it, right because she doesn't want her kids
Speaker 3: or herself to be left without their partner in potentially
Speaker 3: five to ten years. And so I think what you
Speaker 3: come up against here is this also love meets powerlessness,
Speaker 3: Like what can you do that doesn't destroy the relationship
Speaker 3: by trying to get somebody to do something they don't
Speaker 3: currently want to do?
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean it's the invitation on both sides is
Speaker 1: on the one side to say it in a way
Speaker 1: in which there are no defenses against what you're saying
Speaker 1: and on the person who's being asked. It's listening at
Speaker 1: another level, yes, But sometimes in order for that listening
Speaker 1: to occur, you literally have to get down on your knees.
Speaker 1: You can't just keep saying it as a logistical invitation,
Speaker 1: get to the doctor, Get to the doctor. It may
Speaker 1: actually necessitate you, as the nagger, going to another level
Speaker 1: of intimacy, literally getting down on your knees in tears
Speaker 1: and saying why it's so important to you. You know,
Speaker 1: if that doesn't work, it may be that the relationship
Speaker 1: is coming to an end. There are certain points, you know,
Speaker 1: where you try sincerely metaphorically and mythologically three times and
Speaker 1: if it's not received, then you're meant to hold a
Speaker 1: different conversation with that. But you won't find out until
Speaker 1: you follow what looks like nagging on the surface to
Speaker 1: its foundation in a real invitational conversation that displays your
Speaker 1: vulnerability in why you're asking this.
Speaker 3: And I think it gets to a really challenging thing,
Speaker 3: which is what are we willing to or able to
Speaker 3: live with in a relationship and what is our relationship
Speaker 3: with ourselves, about the trade offs that life inevitably involves. Yes,
Speaker 3: I'd like that to be your next book. Take the
Speaker 3: serenity prayer and write an entire book about how the
Speaker 3: wisdom to know the difference in lots of really naughty situations.
Speaker 3: Why don't you tackle that one next, Eric, that's your
Speaker 3: next book? Actually, I honestly think it might be. I
Speaker 3: really sort of jokingly but not because that idea of well,
Speaker 3: you just accept the things you can't change and you
Speaker 3: change the things you can is lovely on the surface,
Speaker 3: but boy, it's complicated because we don't know, right, you
Speaker 3: don't know? Am I one more asked from the person changing?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, there's another level to this is the
Speaker 1: way we nag ourselves. We nag ourselves in unproductive ways.
Speaker 1: Nagging is you know, you will often say to yourself
Speaker 1: in the mirror, oh my god, you know, you need
Speaker 1: to lose some weight, you know, But it's really underneath
Speaker 1: that the need to be lithe to be young, to
Speaker 1: be healthy in the world, you know, and the ability
Speaker 1: to actually talk to yourself in the mirror in a
Speaker 1: way in which you would want to listen to yourself
Speaker 1: is a whole discipline in and of itself. If you
Speaker 1: talked to your friends the way you talk to yourself
Speaker 1: in the mirror, you'd never have another friend in your life. Actually, right, So,
Speaker 1: the ability to have compassion for yourself, you could say
Speaker 1: that's a practice of deepening the conversation, deepening what looks
Speaker 1: on the surface like nagging. Yeah, The conclusion of the
Speaker 1: micro essay on nagging is nagging is that heavily disguised beautiful,
Speaker 1: but listen to invitation to a better life. We all
Speaker 1: want to receive. Nagging is that heavily disguised beautiful but
Speaker 1: unlistened to invitation to a better life we all want
Speaker 1: to receive, always despite ourselves and always, always, always, always,
Speaker 1: despite the other person trying to be brought out of
Speaker 1: the place where it is presently hiding. Nagging is love
Speaker 1: just love unlistened to from both sides.
Speaker 3: That point you made about we're nagged quite often because
Speaker 3: we're not really listening right to our conscience, to what
Speaker 3: is good for our health, to the courageous beckoning path
Speaker 3: we refuse again and again to take. And I think
Speaker 3: that's what's so interesting. Is also points to a lot
Speaker 3: about what you talk about in the essay on guilt, right,
Speaker 3: which is we tend to think we should move away
Speaker 3: from it, but it could be enormously instructive. So that
Speaker 3: nagging voice inside of us, I think calls upon us
Speaker 3: to have some degree of discernment about is it nagging
Speaker 3: us unnecessarily and in unkind and habitual ways like you
Speaker 3: just described, or is it nagging me because there's a
Speaker 3: deeper call that I'm not answering, And like many things,
Speaker 3: that's difficult to figure out. But one of the things
Speaker 3: that you've said multiple times, and I've heard you say
Speaker 3: it before, but I don't think it landed for me
Speaker 3: in the same way that it did today, is that
Speaker 3: it's about the conversations that we have with these things
Speaker 3: and going to a deeper level of conversation with them
Speaker 3: than we normally do. That seems to be an underlying
Speaker 3: theme of what you're pointing us to in all of these.
Speaker 1: Yes, And we can tend to think of conversation as
Speaker 1: just some kind of verbal exchange, you know, but the
Speaker 1: Latin roots the etymology of conversation lead us to its
Speaker 1: original meaning, which is inside out. Actually converse means inside out,
Speaker 1: and you're literally meant to bring the inside to the outside.
Speaker 1: That's the true invitation in every conversation. We all know
Speaker 1: the satisfaction when we have an exchange, and they're rare,
Speaker 1: although you can make them less rare through practicing deeper conversations.
Speaker 1: We all know the pleasure and satisfaction we get when
Speaker 1: we certainly say something we didn't realize we knew, and
Speaker 1: that we suddenly say something together. I mean, I'm having
Speaker 1: that experience with you, Eric in this interview where we're
Speaker 1: saying things about things I've written here which I'd never
Speaker 1: quite said before. That's incredibly satisfying. It's bringing the inside
Speaker 1: of an experience out into the world again. Yes, and
Speaker 1: the essays themselves are meant to do that, but it's
Speaker 1: interesting to try and think of more than interesting, to
Speaker 1: think of conversation as a physical experience of bringing the
Speaker 1: insight to the outside, not just what's hidden verbally, but
Speaker 1: the physical experience that's hidden under the words out into
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 3: That's beautifully said, let's lighten things up here quite literally,
Speaker 3: because you say that humor is a disguised form of
Speaker 3: spiritual discipline. I've often called it a spiritual virtue. Levity
Speaker 3: is a spiritual virtue. Talk to me about how humor
Speaker 3: is a disguised form of a spiritual discipline.
Speaker 1: Humor tells us that whatever context we've arranged for ourselves
Speaker 1: in our minds or in our religious beliefs, there's always
Speaker 1: another context that makes your context absurd. And just understanding
Speaker 1: that from the get go gives you a real sense
Speaker 1: of humor, a real ability to live at many different
Speaker 1: levels at once. And you know, humor is really big
Speaker 1: in the Irish culture, and it's big because it fits
Speaker 1: with the Irish understanding that whatever you say always has
Speaker 1: another context that contradicts it, And every conversation in the
Speaker 1: West environment is actually based on this dynamic, every real conversation,
Speaker 1: you tried to subvert the original basis on which the
Speaker 1: conversation started, and then everyone's really happy and you can
Speaker 1: go on to the next subject. Actually, I'm serious about humor,
Speaker 1: serious about humor as the understanding. Now, however you've described yourself,
Speaker 1: it will not survive meeting with reality. I had this
Speaker 1: experience many years ago up in Himalayas of almost dying
Speaker 1: from amoebic dysentery. I was hallucinating for three days and
Speaker 1: three nights actually in a yak manger at ten thousand
Speaker 1: feet in this outside where this family were keeping me alive. Actually,
Speaker 1: and the culminating experience after three days was sitting up
Speaker 1: covered in dried yack, dung and straw, just laughing outrageously.
Speaker 1: The whole family ran out actually to see what was happening.
Speaker 1: And my experience was that this whole David White project
Speaker 1: was totally absurd. Yeah, yeah, And I had this name,
Speaker 1: I had this idea about myself, and it was just
Speaker 1: absolutely ridiculous, and I was literally raving sitting up. But
Speaker 1: it was a real powerful breakthrough that stayed with me
Speaker 1: after I came out of the hallucination. And beneath me
Speaker 1: was this river in the valley, the High Valley that
Speaker 1: came out of the slopes of dew Lagiary, and I realized,
Speaker 1: looking at the river, we'd given a name to that river,
Speaker 1: the Marcy Andi River Valley, but actually you were naming
Speaker 1: something that was already gone. And you might as well
Speaker 1: try to understand a human being, you know, through this
Speaker 1: essential movement through the world, through the way they hold
Speaker 1: a conversation of life, rather than through any static nomenclature.
Speaker 1: We often will try to dismiss a person by labeling them.
Speaker 1: You see it in the adolescent behavior emanating from the
Speaker 1: White House at the moment, you know, naming, nicknaming people,
Speaker 1: giving people names that make them small in the eyes
Speaker 1: of the world, that embarrass them. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: this is the way that we behave as adolescents in
Speaker 1: trying to keep the world at bay and trying to
Speaker 1: keep other adolescents at bay. We want a more mature
Speaker 1: experience of the world. We stop naming people too early
Speaker 1: in the process, you know, we stop calling out wife, wife,
Speaker 1: our husband, husband, our partner, partner. We start releasing them
Speaker 1: from the names we've given them. You're good at this,
Speaker 1: you're bad at that. You know it's your fault, it's
Speaker 1: my fault. And you start to let the words emanate
Speaker 1: from another more movable, more conversational, more invitational, more vulnerable,
Speaker 1: robustly vulnerable, where vulnerability is not a weakness but a
Speaker 1: strength place And it's actually not a place, it's more
Speaker 1: of a waveform or it's a tide. It's the sea
Speaker 1: that lies beneath you and between you and the world.
Speaker 1: I have a whole book of love what you called
Speaker 1: the sea in you actually, and it's the ability to
Speaker 1: stay in love with a person by actually feeling that
Speaker 1: tidal give and take inside them. They don't even know
Speaker 1: who they are, So how could you give them a
Speaker 1: name right and say you know who they are? They're
Speaker 1: just finding out who they are. We give names to
Speaker 1: our son, our daughter and about who they are, but
Speaker 1: they're often out in the world trying to find that
Speaker 1: out themselves. So how could you, even as a father
Speaker 1: or a mother, name fully the child that you brought
Speaker 1: into the world.
Speaker 3: Actually, and as soon as you name it, it's something else, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the Taoist view of reality and comes
Speaker 3: out of Taoism, which is that life is all process,
Speaker 3: it's all e vent it's all relation. These things that
Speaker 3: we are giving nouns, they aren't that way really at all.
Speaker 3: And the same thing happens if you dig deep down
Speaker 3: into the fundamental level of reality right now, if you
Speaker 3: get down into quantum physics, you find things aren't things
Speaker 3: in the way we think they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are great lines in a love poem by
Speaker 1: Pablo Rude says, when the rice withdraws from the earth
Speaker 1: the grains of its flower, when the wheat hardens its
Speaker 1: little hip joints and lifts its face of a thousand hens.
Speaker 1: I make my way to the grove where the woman
Speaker 1: and the man embrace, to touch the innumerable sea of
Speaker 1: what continues. El Marable de loca continua to touch the
Speaker 1: innumerable sea of what continues. So we're afraid of what continues,
Speaker 1: because what continue may take the other person away from us.
Speaker 1: And that's the risk we take in loving fully. It's
Speaker 1: always the full measure of your ability to give the
Speaker 1: other person away to the world, and most of the
Speaker 1: time they come back to us. But there may be
Speaker 1: a tide that takes them away from us completely. And
Speaker 1: that's what we're afraid of. Is is the change in
Speaker 1: the world that will break your heart. So the ability
Speaker 1: to understand that heartbreak is part of your sincere dedication
Speaker 1: to the other actually and the sincere dedication to our
Speaker 1: world at the same time.
Speaker 3: So listener in thinking about that and all the other
Speaker 3: great wisdom from today's episode. If you were going to
Speaker 3: isolate just one top insight that you're taking away, what
Speaker 3: would it be. Remember, little by little, a little becomes
Speaker 3: a lot. Change happens by us repeatedly taking positive action.
Speaker 3: And I want to give you a tip on that,
Speaker 3: and it's just start small really important when we're trying
Speaker 3: to implement new habits to often start smaller than we
Speaker 3: think we need to, because what that does is it
Speaker 3: allows us to get victories. And victories are really important
Speaker 3: because we become more motivated when we're feeling good about ourselves,
Speaker 3: and we become less motivated when we're feeling bad about ourselves.
Speaker 3: So by starting small and making sure that you succeed,
Speaker 3: you build your motivation for further change down the road.
Speaker 3: If you'd like a step by step guide for how
Speaker 3: you can easily build new habits that feed your good Wolf,
Speaker 3: go to good Wolf dot me slash change and join
Speaker 3: the free masterclass. I think that is a beautiful place
Speaker 3: for us to wrap up. You and I are going
Speaker 3: to talk for a couple more minutes. In the post
Speaker 3: show conversation. We may get into shame and guilt, we
Speaker 3: might get into injury. There's so many good ones unordinary listeners.
Speaker 3: If you'd like access to that post show conversation and
Speaker 3: all the other post show conversations, ad free episodes, a
Speaker 3: special episode I do just for you each week, you
Speaker 3: can go to one you fee net slash join and
Speaker 3: become part of our community and help support this show. David,
Speaker 3: thank you so much. It is always a pleasure to
Speaker 3: talk with you. I feel like I could do it
Speaker 3: for hours.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you Eric. That passed very quickly, always
Speaker 1: a good sign next experience of the timeless in the conversation,
Speaker 1: So thank you too.
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