Speaker 1: For the next hundreds of years, because is the world
Speaker 1: we have, and in that world is bittersweetness, and this
Speaker 1: existential longing, I believe is one of our great superpowers. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome my
Speaker 1: dear friend Susan Kine. She's author of wonderful book Quiet,
Speaker 1: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking,
Speaker 1: which was a really big game changer for a lot
Speaker 1: of introverts who felt as though their unique guests were
Speaker 1: not appreciated in a world that is catered towards extroverts.
Speaker 1: Her most recent book is called Bitter Sweet, How Sorrow
Speaker 1: and Longing Make Us Whole. And really like this new
Speaker 1: book as well. Her new book touches on lots of
Speaker 1: really important topics that aren't often discussed, such as the
Speaker 1: complex emotion of bitter sweet and idea that she refers
Speaker 1: to as existential longing, which I really like. I've known
Speaker 1: Susan for quite some years, and I remember when she
Speaker 1: was working on this book, we would have lots of
Speaker 1: text chats about existential longing and how it's strongly tied
Speaker 1: to things like creativity and human connection and spirituality. It's
Speaker 1: really always a delight to talk to Susan, and today
Speaker 1: is no exception. I hope you enjoy our chat as
Speaker 1: much as we did, so without further ado, I'll bring you,
Speaker 1: Susan Caine. I am very proud of you. I am
Speaker 1: very proud of you, Susan, and I love how you
Speaker 1: bring such soul and emotional depth to your writing and
Speaker 1: thinking and thinking. I think we need that in the
Speaker 1: world today. There's a lot of thinking that somehow the
Speaker 1: idea is that, well, if it's properly reasoned, we've stripped
Speaker 1: out all the emotional depth from it, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that's quite right. I agree, that's actually such an
Speaker 1: interesting idea, because I do think even from an intellectual
Speaker 1: point of view, we now understand that the emotions are
Speaker 1: just as important, if not more so, than our ability
Speaker 1: to reason. And yet in a way that academic ideas
Speaker 1: get discussed, there is still a feeling of like, no, no,
Speaker 1: the cognitive thought process being above a heart and sooul,
Speaker 1: and maybe a suspicion that the heart and soul is
Speaker 1: not it is based on it's based on slimsy intuition
Speaker 1: and not on heart evidence. They'll say, yeah, but you
Speaker 1: show these things can be integrated, and sometimes you just
Speaker 1: have to show people a better way. Okay, So this
Speaker 1: new book, Bitter Sweetness is such a complex emotion, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's not just like, you know, like a palette of
Speaker 1: colors where you're only just combining two and then out
Speaker 1: pops something. I feel like your the Bittersweetness combines like thousands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like all of them, not even thousands, but all
Speaker 1: of them, which which I guess would then say that
Speaker 1: we end up with brown, right, like a big muddy brown.
Speaker 1: But I don't think that is where we end up.
Speaker 1: Is that true, that if you combine all the colors,
Speaker 1: brown is what comes out. I think. So I'm no
Speaker 1: visual artist, but I think I didn't know that, or
Speaker 1: maybe black. I don't know. Well, black seems somehow appropriate
Speaker 1: or bittersweetness, but in a way that I feel like
Speaker 1: you're arguing that the black that comes out is actually beautiful.
Speaker 1: Like you're not saying like it's not black, but you're
Speaker 1: saying it's beautiful. It's like a like when you look
Speaker 1: at it, you're like, Wow, there's so much here that
Speaker 1: can be fodder for so much of the goodness of humanity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I am saying that. I'm saying that bitter sweetness is
Speaker 1: one of the great gateways that we have to creativity,
Speaker 1: to connection, to love. And yeah, we're living in a
Speaker 1: culture that tells us not to talk about these things
Speaker 1: so much, and that is to our great detriment. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like not using one of the great powers that
Speaker 1: we have. And maybe we should define what bitter sweetness
Speaker 1: is for people who are listening and haven't read the
Speaker 1: book yet. Sure, well, I feel like that's no fun.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Let's be poetic about it. If you've
Speaker 1: ever wondered why you like sad music, if others have
Speaker 1: ever called you an old soul, if you find comfort
Speaker 1: or inspiration in a rainy day, if you react intensely
Speaker 1: to music, art, nature, and beauty, if you've ever wondered
Speaker 1: why creativity seems to be associated with sorrow, longing, and transcendence,
Speaker 1: then you know what the definition of bittersweetness is. I
Speaker 1: love it, I love it, I love it. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Are people I hope, I don't know. I tried something
Speaker 1: new there. But do you want to define what? Do
Speaker 1: you want to define? Precisely? It's so funny we just
Speaker 1: reversed roles. Wait a minute, wait, what's it happen? You're like,
Speaker 1: You're like, Scott, shouldn't I give the scientific definition? And
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, oh, Susan, let me be poetic,
Speaker 1: let me yeah. And I will say, speaking of the
Speaker 1: scientific definition, that some of those questions that SBK just
Speaker 1: read to you come from a quiz that that he
Speaker 1: and I'm a great psychologist, David Yaden and I worked
Speaker 1: on together. It's in a very preliminary form and it's
Speaker 1: at the start of the Bittersweet book, and it helps
Speaker 1: you assess where you are or on this bittersweet spectrum,
Speaker 1: how likely you are to find yourself in states of
Speaker 1: bitter sweetness, which I would define as being the recognition
Speaker 1: that joy and sorrow and light and dark, bitter and
Speaker 1: sweet are forever paired kind of acute awareness of passing time.
Speaker 1: And then also with all of that a curiously piercing
Speaker 1: joy at the beauty of the world, which when we're
Speaker 1: in the states of bittersweetness we feel very intensely. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's the music is such a great example of this.
Speaker 1: Some of my favorite cell sonatas are an E minor.
Speaker 1: For some reason, E minor just strikes the core of
Speaker 1: my soul. Strikes to the core of my soul. I
Speaker 1: love E minor and it's a sad ostensibly sad yet
Speaker 1: joyful key. It's hard to describe. Yeah, And did you
Speaker 1: always wonder about it? I mean, it's actually because of
Speaker 1: that experience that I started going down this path in
Speaker 1: the first place. Like at first, I wasn't thinking no,
Speaker 1: not not, but minor key music in general for me,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't at first know I was going to
Speaker 1: be writing a book about a bittersweet construct. All I
Speaker 1: really wanted to do was was answer the question of
Speaker 1: why it was that minor key music elicited the reactions
Speaker 1: in me and many other people that it does, you know,
Speaker 1: And it's a reaction that philosophers can call the paradox
Speaker 1: of tragedy. Why is it that something that is extensibly
Speaker 1: tragic or sorrowful, or is a minor key like dissonant
Speaker 1: and unresolved, Why is it that that those states would
Speaker 1: be elicit in us feelings of joy and uplift and
Speaker 1: communion and transcendence. That's what I was trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: Like I saw it happening in music. So at first
Speaker 1: I was just answering that narrow question that became a
Speaker 1: much bigger, a much bigger project of how all these
Speaker 1: states are connected? Who uses the phrase happy melancholy to
Speaker 1: describe those states? I read, I saw that in quotes
Speaker 1: in your book, but who calls it that one? So
Speaker 1: that actually started. It was years ago. Gretchen Rubin, you
Speaker 1: know who has the Happiness Project book and blog and
Speaker 1: so on. She asked me in her blog to I
Speaker 1: can't remember exactly what the question was, but it was
Speaker 1: something like, what is your favorite form of happiness or
Speaker 1: something like that, And again, what was long before I'd
Speaker 1: written this book? And I said, it's the state that
Speaker 1: I would call the happiness of melancholy, which I you know,
Speaker 1: I've just for so long been intrigued by. And I
Speaker 1: might have actually called this book the Happiness of melancholy,
Speaker 1: except I was told by you know, agents and publishers
Speaker 1: and people who care about the success of the book,
Speaker 1: that that very word melancholy would drive people away, and
Speaker 1: so I couldn't use it well like I use it
Speaker 1: in the book, but I couldn't use it as as
Speaker 1: the title well melancholy all so go on, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: you go ahead, and then I want to talk about
Speaker 1: melancholic and psychology. But what were you going to say, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's what I want to talk about. Well, that's precisely
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about, because that's what linked
Speaker 1: to depression, and just melancholy, not happy melancholic, but just
Speaker 1: straight out melancholy has been correlated with depression. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is the thing. I mean, if you look in
Speaker 1: mainstream psychology, there is not really any distinct call it
Speaker 1: a correlation. Effectively, there's no distinction made between the state
Speaker 1: of melancholy that artists and writers have been talking about
Speaker 1: for thousands of years versus depression. It's not really talked about,
Speaker 1: even though I think that many of us, like you
Speaker 1: with your e minor reaction, we know what it is
Speaker 1: to experience melancholy in a productive and uplifting and in
Speaker 1: spiritual sense, and so I've found it very frustrating than
Speaker 1: in mainstream psychology, there's really no place to discuss this.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are, I would say, the tender shoots
Speaker 1: of that discussion and rising up now, but generally it
Speaker 1: hasn't been there. Yeah, that's really unfortunate. That's really unfortunate.
Speaker 1: Imagine therapist who is familiar with your book and and
Speaker 1: these ideas and science of it, and uh and has
Speaker 1: A has a patient too is melancholic and they say, great,
Speaker 1: let's build on that and figure out some way of
Speaker 1: integrating that emotion into your life that gives your life
Speaker 1: more depth and meaning. Maybe that's more, Maybe that's more
Speaker 1: of what a coach does. But why should why should
Speaker 1: there be any distinction? And again, what we I'm not saying,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you're not saying that the psychologist should
Speaker 1: take a person who presents with clinical depression and say great, Like,
Speaker 1: that's not the point talking about that emotion, right, We're
Speaker 1: distinguishing the emotion for depression, and psychology needs to make
Speaker 1: that distinction. Yeah, just to be super clear about it,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent, thank you, thank you. If I didn't
Speaker 1: want to get canceled, so I appreciate that canceled by psychology,
Speaker 1: that would be not a good canceling for me. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some of the powers of a bittersweet,
Speaker 1: melancholic outlook. And I am very curious why our culture
Speaker 1: has been so blind to its value up to this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, so the powers. I'll kind of say this
Speaker 1: all at once, but it really needs some unpacking for
Speaker 1: lack of a better worth. It's kind of appliche word.
Speaker 1: But the powers really do have to do with creativity
Speaker 1: for reasons that we can talk about, not in the
Speaker 1: conventional sense in which people equate sometimes I think falsely
Speaker 1: equate depression and creativity. It's not what I mean. But
Speaker 1: the powers have to do with creativity and with connection
Speaker 1: and communion and love. I believe what is really happening.
Speaker 1: You can see if we think about the experience that
Speaker 1: we've all had when you look at something that you
Speaker 1: find almost unbearably beautiful. You know, it could be a painting,
Speaker 1: work of art, could be nature, you know, it could
Speaker 1: be the child splashing in a rain puddle, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: And the feeling that you get sometimes where you cry
Speaker 1: at the sheer beauty of that thing. And all the
Speaker 1: way back in your five hundred, Gregory Great called these
Speaker 1: called this feeling of crying in the face of beauty compunctio,
Speaker 1: which is the holy tears, and he described it as
Speaker 1: a kind of the kind of bittersweetness. And it's what
Speaker 1: you're crying at is the gap between the world that
Speaker 1: we long for, like that beauty represents the perfect and
Speaker 1: beautiful world which all humans that their soul feel they've
Speaker 1: been vanished from. It represents the gap between that world
Speaker 1: that we're still longing for and the Eden that we
Speaker 1: can't stop speaking of, and the world that we live
Speaker 1: in today. And that maybe what I've said so far
Speaker 1: accounts only for the tears part and not the holy
Speaker 1: part of that phrase holy tears. But what makes it
Speaker 1: holy is, and you can use that word literally or metaphorically,
Speaker 1: what makes it holy is the glimpsing that better world
Speaker 1: for that moment. It makes us reach for it and
Speaker 1: do everything we can to bridge to narrow the gap
Speaker 1: between that world and the one that we're in. So
Speaker 1: it's the heart of our creative impulse. The word longing,
Speaker 1: literally it's etymology, means to grow longer, to reach for something.
Speaker 1: You're reaching for Eden, and that's why we create in
Speaker 1: the first place. And it's also the fact that we
Speaker 1: are all in this state of exile from Eden. We're
Speaker 1: all in that state together. That gives us a kind
Speaker 1: of communion because we all know it, we all know
Speaker 1: what it means, and it's the deepest part of ourselves. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's it's quite a statement. I need to process everything
Speaker 1: you just said, because it's really quite profound, and there's
Speaker 1: so many layers to it, because it resonates a lot
Speaker 1: with the kind of creative mind we put forth in
Speaker 1: our book Wired to Create. You know that the creative
Speaker 1: person is deeply sensitive to the world and and and
Speaker 1: its meanings and its potential meanings, and its ability and
Speaker 1: their ability to show the world what new ways and
Speaker 1: new interpretations and deeper complexities. And it does seem like
Speaker 1: when creativity is at its best, it's able to go
Speaker 1: deeper into a phenomenon or something that most of us
Speaker 1: just see the surface of. Does seem like that's the case?
Speaker 1: Seem like that's the case. Yeah. In your Ted talk,
Speaker 1: you said a comment something along the lines of like,
Speaker 1: and that's why we exalt or give such special status
Speaker 1: to musicians and artists. And that statement actually hit me different.
Speaker 1: There's a new phrase that what the kids are saying
Speaker 1: these days that hit me right or saying, I forget
Speaker 1: what the phrase, but people saying that my Twitter time
Speaker 1: when recently and I had a Google hit me okay,
Speaker 1: emotionally kind of hits you in a different way because
Speaker 1: I had I've long wondered, like why do we exalt
Speaker 1: artists and musicians? Why do we put them above on
Speaker 1: a pedestal above like doctors. And they used to bother me.
Speaker 1: It used to be like, I feel like doctors should
Speaker 1: kind of they should be the ones we kind of
Speaker 1: put on the healthcare professionals, like should have the most
Speaker 1: status and money in our society. But but yeah, there's
Speaker 1: something that if you can, if you can, it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful gift to the world if you if you have
Speaker 1: that capacity and drive to not even has that drive
Speaker 1: to create, you know, yeah, yeah, And it's that they're
Speaker 1: the reason we exalt them is that they're bringing us
Speaker 1: the taste of eat, and that's really what they're doing,
Speaker 1: and we want those tastes. I mean, we would like
Speaker 1: to live there all the time. Talking about psychology for
Speaker 1: a second, meanstream psychology, I kind of knew in advance
Speaker 1: that I believe there was this distinction between melancholy and
Speaker 1: depression that the field of psychology wasn't talking about. What
Speaker 1: I didn't realize and came to see is that I
Speaker 1: think that because in psychology, I think because most psychologists
Speaker 1: are atheists or agnostics, and I'm an agnostic myself, but
Speaker 1: because most psychologists are this. We don't properly talk about
Speaker 1: spirituality in psychology like we think of it as I'm saying,
Speaker 1: we as if I'm a psychologist. I'm sort of in
Speaker 1: the field as a writer. But you know, spirituality gets
Speaker 1: talked about is if it's like it's like a characteristic
Speaker 1: that's over here, and some people have and some people don't.
Speaker 1: You know, you look at the list of character strengths,
Speaker 1: and for some people spirituality is high on the list,
Speaker 1: for others not at all. And I have come to
Speaker 1: believe that's a misunderstanding of what spirituality is, and that
Speaker 1: instead what is accurate and truth is that all humans
Speaker 1: have this longing for the better and more perfect world,
Speaker 1: and that one manifestation of that is to long for
Speaker 1: Mecca or Eden or Design or the beloved of the
Speaker 1: soul or whatever you call it. And for other people
Speaker 1: it takes completely different manifestation that we express in more
Speaker 1: secular terms. But still the heart of the human soul
Speaker 1: is that longing and that sense of disconnection from the
Speaker 1: world as we wish it were, the world we feel
Speaker 1: we belong to. Yeah, I think many truths flow from
Speaker 1: that central premise. So I would like to I'd like
Speaker 1: to see what happens if we use that as an
Speaker 1: organizing principle in psychology. Do I just want to give
Speaker 1: credit to Jeane Houston. I'm not sure if you say
Speaker 1: Houston or Houston, but she talks a lot about this idea,
Speaker 1: and so I just want to give credit where its due.
Speaker 1: She talked her books. Thank you. I appreciate you doing that.
Speaker 1: I remember early in the early days of the book
Speaker 1: idea and Concept, the whole thing was surrounding a concept
Speaker 1: that you called you referred to me as existential longing. Now,
Speaker 1: I loved it, but that's not the central folk guy
Speaker 1: like you don't even use that exact phrase in your
Speaker 1: TED talk. You say, use the word longing, but I
Speaker 1: don't think I heard you say existential long What happened
Speaker 1: to that phrase because I loved it? Huh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I'm going to turn this
Speaker 1: to you for a second. What do you think the
Speaker 1: phrase existential longing gives us that that de play longing
Speaker 1: does not? Well, if I add the word existential to
Speaker 1: any word, it gives me something. Yeah, what is the
Speaker 1: thing that gives you? I? Now, I had to articulate
Speaker 1: and what that thing gives me besides a feeling, like
Speaker 1: existential psychotherapy gives me something above and beyond just psychotherapy. Right,
Speaker 1: with existential psychotherapy, it's all about understanding what does it
Speaker 1: mean to be an experientially alive human. What are the
Speaker 1: factors and things we can do that make us feel
Speaker 1: fully human? Addressing all of our needs, but our spiritual
Speaker 1: needs as well, and not neglecting those needs, but also
Speaker 1: of course not neglecting the lower needs. What does it
Speaker 1: mean to feel like a whole person? Existential longing does
Speaker 1: seem like it adds something to me. Then longing I
Speaker 1: can long for that delicious pizza that I had back
Speaker 1: when I was twelve years old, I could want. You
Speaker 1: can long for lots of things that aren't existential. Right,
Speaker 1: It does seem like there's a boundary condition where when
Speaker 1: you long for things that we're existential to your whole being,
Speaker 1: that's what you're longing for. So it really it's something
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, well that's very persuasive, and maybe I
Speaker 1: should bring it back into the way I talk about it.
Speaker 1: I like that Susan's bringing existential back. What are you
Speaker 1: saying what I said credit to ask you not at all.
Speaker 1: I'm just reflecting a mirror back on you, because do
Speaker 1: you remember, like we had text messages three years ago
Speaker 1: about this. For years you used that phrase and I
Speaker 1: was like, I love it. Okay, so existential longing and
Speaker 1: just bittersweetness, the complexities of it. Do you how do
Speaker 1: you see it? Differentiate it from the experience of all
Speaker 1: A w E. I have trouble saying that word out
Speaker 1: all all yeah and wonder. I knew what you meant.
Speaker 1: I do believe they are a very close cousins of
Speaker 1: their closure. Yeah. And in fact, we found in our
Speaker 1: quiz that people who are predisposed to these experiencing these
Speaker 1: states of bitter sweetness also tend to be predisposed to
Speaker 1: states of awe and wonder and so on, so they're
Speaker 1: very closely connected. I would say that bitter sweetness has
Speaker 1: that element of sorrow in it. Understanding that everything is impermanent.
Speaker 1: You know that that which you are gazing upon, that
Speaker 1: is putting you into this state of awe and wonder,
Speaker 1: will not last, and that maybe that's part of the
Speaker 1: reason you're feeling that awe and wonder in the first place,
Speaker 1: is because it's infused with its impermanence. So it's a
Speaker 1: recognition of those states. To go back to the existential idea,
Speaker 1: there's more of an existential question to bitter sweetness, whereas
Speaker 1: I think on wonder we could experience, as you know,
Speaker 1: just sort of like a passing phenomenon and not one
Speaker 1: that has the same profound implications. The all experience can
Speaker 1: certainly feel profound. You're often witnessing something very outside of
Speaker 1: yourself and you're kind of in reverence of it, whereas
Speaker 1: bittersweetness is not. It's not the same thing as reverence
Speaker 1: or even you know, fear. It is something more deeply existential.
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. Yeah, the reverence might trigger,
Speaker 1: but it's more about the longing to go home. At
Speaker 1: its base, it's like a longing for some fundamental home.
Speaker 1: And it might be triggered by beauty or by aw
Speaker 1: or whatever, but at its base it's it's there's a
Speaker 1: fundamental pain of separation to being human and a longing
Speaker 1: for that reunion. And that's what bitter sweetness is. When
Speaker 1: we feel something bittersweet, do we always actually want to
Speaker 1: return to the thing, because it seems to me like
Speaker 1: we can have the bittersweet feeling, and yet also cognitively
Speaker 1: not want to return back. For instance, I when I
Speaker 1: when I visit like my high school. Where I visit
Speaker 1: like the high school's probably a bad example because there's
Speaker 1: not any longing there at all. But let me think
Speaker 1: of a better example. When I go to like when
Speaker 1: I go back to England. That's actually have a proper example.
Speaker 1: When I go to England and I visit my Cambridge
Speaker 1: like where I had my grad school days. There were
Speaker 1: some of the most wonderful moments in my life, and
Speaker 1: I feel this kind of bittersweet feeling when I when
Speaker 1: I visit it again and kind of activate some of
Speaker 1: those same emotions and feelings, but I don't actually want
Speaker 1: to Some things our best when they're only experienced once
Speaker 1: or twice. Sometimes when you try to go back a
Speaker 1: third time, you're like, no, it wasn't meant like it's
Speaker 1: not the same thing, you know, And so yeah, do
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, So I know exactly yeah no,
Speaker 1: And I don't mean I don't mean it in the
Speaker 1: literal sense, like I don't know you literally want to
Speaker 1: repeat the past over and over again. I'm talking about Okay,
Speaker 1: Like there's this one quote I have it in the book.
Speaker 1: I read this, I just kind of could not believe
Speaker 1: that someone has actually managed to articulate the following feeling.
Speaker 1: Let's see if I can find it. It's in a
Speaker 1: novel by a guy named Mark Merlis, and he is
Speaker 1: describing the feeling we've all experienced this when you meet
Speaker 1: somebody like erotically irresistible. And he's saying that when you
Speaker 1: look at that person who finds it irresistible, maybe i'll
Speaker 1: just quote I'll quote him. And this is from a
Speaker 1: gay novel, so it's written by a man speaking about
Speaker 1: another man. Just to put it all in context, he's saying,
Speaker 1: do you know how sometimes you see a man and
Speaker 1: you're not sure if you want to get in his
Speaker 1: pants or if you want to cry, Not because you
Speaker 1: can't have him. Maybe you can, but you see right
Speaker 1: away something in him beyond having. You can't screw your
Speaker 1: way into it anymore than you can get at the
Speaker 1: golden eggs by sluting the goose. So you want to cry,
Speaker 1: not like a child, but like in exile. He was
Speaker 1: reminded of his homeland, and that's what Character as when
Speaker 1: he first beheld Character B is if you were getting
Speaker 1: a glimpse of that other place we were meant to be,
Speaker 1: the shore from which we were deported before we were born.
Speaker 1: So that's that's beautiful. But I really need to wrap
Speaker 1: my head around it more than yeah, okay, because well,
Speaker 1: what is it that you are longing for there? Specifically?
Speaker 1: I can I can relate to the feeling of seeing
Speaker 1: someone so beautiful for me because I have my own
Speaker 1: quirky taste. Maybe other my friends will be like bro,
Speaker 1: really her, and I'm like, no, trust me her, you know,
Speaker 1: but someone's so beautiful to me I've had. I can
Speaker 1: relate to that feeling of feeling like yeah, like I
Speaker 1: don't know about crying, but like like, no matter what
Speaker 1: I do in the mortal world, it will not be
Speaker 1: enough union with that person. Just like you know, they
Speaker 1: use the word screwing, but making love, no matter how
Speaker 1: much making love you know i'd be doing with that person,
Speaker 1: I still like nothing like it still there not be
Speaker 1: a full completeness because that person is such perfection in
Speaker 1: my eyes. Now, So there's kind of an understand I
Speaker 1: think I kind of get it, But what is what
Speaker 1: is the longing there? Do you can you articulate it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like in that moment that the person represents something
Speaker 1: beyond that which is attainable in this world. And I
Speaker 1: guess I'm saying that's that is a fundamental part of
Speaker 1: our being, that a full union is not attainable in
Speaker 1: this world, but the act of longing for it brings
Speaker 1: us ever closer, kind of like an acientop and it
Speaker 1: expresses itself through acts of creativity and through acts of love. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do tend to be utopia utopia, you know. I
Speaker 1: tend to think along those lines, even in my own
Speaker 1: theory of whole love that I propose and in my
Speaker 1: book Transcend, it's what does it look like when all
Speaker 1: these things are integrated with a partner, And what does
Speaker 1: a whole love look like? And I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's obtainable. It's probably not attainable. But the idea is
Speaker 1: that there is some sort of ideal that we're deeply
Speaker 1: longing for. Is this kind of what you're saying, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yes, I would say so. I actually think
Speaker 1: it's useful in our real life love relationships to understand
Speaker 1: these dynamics and to accept that the person who we're
Speaker 1: with and the person who we love is not going
Speaker 1: to deliver us back to Eden, you know, and that
Speaker 1: what often happens in the course of the typical lovel
Speaker 1: relationship is that at the very beginning of it, when
Speaker 1: you're first uniting, you actually feel, for some moment in
Speaker 1: time or moments in time, that together you've achieved this
Speaker 1: thing that the human soul longs for. And then, of
Speaker 1: course real life intervenes in the form of incompatibilities and
Speaker 1: so on that any two humans coming together are going
Speaker 1: to have. And then, you know, if we're not aware
Speaker 1: of these dynamics, you might turn to your partner and
Speaker 1: be like, wait, what the heck this wasn't eaten after all.
Speaker 1: Now I better go look for another person who might
Speaker 1: deliver me there. And of course that doesn't really get
Speaker 1: you anywhere. So I actually think it's very helpful. It's
Speaker 1: healthy to understand the way we are programmed this way
Speaker 1: and to appreciate. You know, in the course of any relationship,
Speaker 1: you're going to keep having those moments where you feel like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we're getting back to that amazing place,
Speaker 1: and to know it can keep generating that way. But
Speaker 1: it's not always going to be It's not all the
Speaker 1: time going to be that way. It's very good to
Speaker 1: have a realistic view as well of other people and
Speaker 1: not put people on pedestals. That's that's that can lead
Speaker 1: to psychological disorders when you when you do splitting, you know,
Speaker 1: with people. So yeah, but but also holding at the
Speaker 1: same time, holding in mind this emotion of existential longing
Speaker 1: is still valuable. Yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah, I mean, And
Speaker 1: so like all my life, I've loved Leonard Cohen, I
Speaker 1: talked about this time. I think I'm obsessed with my
Speaker 1: whole life, and I never really understood what it was
Speaker 1: about his music that spoke to me so much, you know.
Speaker 1: And then after he died, I heard, well, I started
Speaker 1: reading about him, and they heard interviews with his son
Speaker 1: and so on, and he like his music came out
Speaker 1: of this idea. It was based on the mystical side
Speaker 1: of Judaism and the idea, well, the metaphor of the
Speaker 1: Kabala is that all of creation once was divine unity,
Speaker 1: and then it shattered, and so now we're we're living
Speaker 1: in a kind of broken world where the shards of
Speaker 1: the divine are scattered all around us. It's strewn around us,
Speaker 1: and our job is to pick them up wherever we
Speaker 1: might happen to see one, and so all of all
Speaker 1: of his music that I was reacting to all those
Speaker 1: years was about this idea of beautiful brokenness, you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that everything is simultaneously broken and beautiful. And also,
Speaker 1: like the way his son talks about his music, he
Speaker 1: says that like he had this perception that this was reality,
Speaker 1: but that he would create these songs whose purpose was
Speaker 1: to be a kind of transcendence delivery machine, like he said,
Speaker 1: the way the way cigarettes delivered nicotine to you. His
Speaker 1: songs were for the purpose of delivering transcendence through through
Speaker 1: the medium. And that's what creativity can be at its best.
Speaker 1: I think that's what we're often doing when we perform
Speaker 1: are to act. I agree. I have often felt not
Speaker 1: completely at home with being a scientist because I like writing,
Speaker 1: and I like writing being a vehicle to inspire and
Speaker 1: to have people experience the feeling of transcendence. I actually
Speaker 1: want people to read my books and feel transcendence when
Speaker 1: they read my books. That's a different kind of longing
Speaker 1: than a lot of scientists have. Pure pure scientists, right,
Speaker 1: I understand that being able to integrate those sides of
Speaker 1: me which I feel like I did in my book
Speaker 1: transcend I feel like it gave me an opportunity to
Speaker 1: really be you know, unabashed and saying hey, I like transcendence.
Speaker 1: Say it's the title of the book, and also saying, hey,
Speaker 1: let's look at the science and see what it says
Speaker 1: about how we can have merchants as that was a
Speaker 1: really nice way for me to finally find a way,
Speaker 1: a sneaky way of integrating it all. You know, but
Speaker 1: I don't think I think. I think it was very
Speaker 1: on his face you were doing. And it seems to
Speaker 1: me that science and specifically psychology has more appetite for that,
Speaker 1: or more license for that than it used to. Do
Speaker 1: you agree with that? Yeah, thanks to people like David Yaiden,
Speaker 1: and thanks to people like doctor Keltner and and people
Speaker 1: who are really studying the science of transcendence, Andy Neuberg
Speaker 1: putting it on a firm foundation, a firm neurological and
Speaker 1: behavioral foundation, where it's not treated as though it's indicator
Speaker 1: of mental illness. Because Freud certainly thought these shelf transcendent
Speaker 1: moments were infantile regressions to the womb. What even mean?
Speaker 1: I know, but that's what he that's what he saw
Speaker 1: these things. As he would say, bittersweetness is well, he's
Speaker 1: that was his everything that it was like that wasn't
Speaker 1: like sex or violence was infantile regressions to yeah, no,
Speaker 1: and the oceanic experience was not sense. I know, I know.
Speaker 1: I love Dacher Keltner's work. I actually spent a whole
Speaker 1: chapter talking about it. His work especially on the compassionate
Speaker 1: instinct and the way that human beings because we are
Speaker 1: primed to respond to the cries of infants, that what
Speaker 1: radiates from there is that we're also primed to respond
Speaker 1: to the cries of all beings in distress. And obviously
Speaker 1: we're not perfect at that, and we have lots of limitations.
Speaker 1: But I love his studies about the vagus nerve, you know,
Speaker 1: the big gigantic bundle of nerves in our bodies which
Speaker 1: are responsible for our most basic functions of breathing and digestion,
Speaker 1: and that also react when we see another being in distress.
Speaker 1: To me. The fact that it's that basic and that
Speaker 1: ancient a bodily system that governs thisby to not just ability,
Speaker 1: but like a tendency to see sadness, to notice it,
Speaker 1: and to respond with love. That's pretty profound, you know.
Speaker 1: And remember if it was Dacker someone else who said,
Speaker 1: we tend to think of these emotions as being Sunday
Speaker 1: School emotions, you know, that are like we're taught we're
Speaker 1: supposed to feel these things, but maybe they're not quite true.
Speaker 1: So to have this whole body of work that fills
Speaker 1: the case for it from the ground up is so valuable. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so valuable. And yeah, I'm excited about the new
Speaker 1: science of self concendence. Everything has to be the new
Speaker 1: science for it to like count, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of publicity materials. But I'm really excited about it. I'm
Speaker 1: really excited about it. You did, you did quite a
Speaker 1: bit of research in traveling while you're doing this book.
Speaker 1: One thing that I want to talk about was the
Speaker 1: conference you went to a conference of transhumanists, yes, who
Speaker 1: hoped to live forever. What did you learn about bittersweetness?
Speaker 1: I'm talking to them, Well, that whole inquiry that was
Speaker 1: very interesting and it really challenged a lot of my
Speaker 1: assumptions and ways that I'm still grappling with, because you know,
Speaker 1: this is a collection of people who believe that we
Speaker 1: can and will ultimately live, you know, if not forever
Speaker 1: healthy lives, that we can extend our health span for
Speaker 1: hundreds of hundreds of years at some point. And they
Speaker 1: ask really interesting questions like, you know, let's say that
Speaker 1: the standard of philosophical assumption is that it's an immortality
Speaker 1: that helps to give our life meaning 's say, you know,
Speaker 1: and that impermanence is what that the knowledge of impermanence
Speaker 1: gives us a greater sense of the preciousness of life.
Speaker 1: And these things are true, I believe. At the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, I talk to some of these people at
Speaker 1: this conference and they would say things like, you know,
Speaker 1: those are all story is that we tell ourselves because
Speaker 1: we feel we have no choice but to die. And
Speaker 1: so if you truly have no choice, then of course
Speaker 1: you're going to want to give yourself as beautiful and
Speaker 1: reassuring a story as you possibly can. But if you
Speaker 1: knew you didn't have to and your beloveds didn't have
Speaker 1: to die, you would no longer be telling yourself that
Speaker 1: quote story. And that is a very persuasive argument. At
Speaker 1: the same time that you have not only the philosophers,
Speaker 1: but on the other hand, people like Laura Carstenson at Stanford,
Speaker 1: who studies aging and longevity and so on. She gave
Speaker 1: a famous Ted talk called older people are Happier, And
Speaker 1: she's done all this research showing that older people tend
Speaker 1: to in a greater sense of meaning, a greater sense
Speaker 1: of gratitude, less likely to have a necessary anger, like
Speaker 1: a whole list of traits that we might classify as wisdom.
Speaker 1: And well, that's been a stereotype for a long time
Speaker 1: of it, that age confers wisdom. But what Carstensen found
Speaker 1: is that it's not age per se that gives wisdom.
Speaker 1: It's having an intense sense of life's fragility that gives it.
Speaker 1: And so she found that young people who for whatever
Speaker 1: life circumstance, have been primed to realize how fragile life is,
Speaker 1: that those young people had the same sense of wisdom
Speaker 1: that the older people did. Wow. Yeah, yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think that does get to a very profound truth that
Speaker 1: we all sense. You know. It's like the reason we
Speaker 1: love cherry blossom is the way we do like why
Speaker 1: do we have festivals in their honor? It's not only
Speaker 1: that they're beautiful, it's that they don't live very long.
Speaker 1: They're a symbol of fragility. Wow, what kind of tree
Speaker 1: lives the longest? I know? I guess Redwood's live for
Speaker 1: hundreds of years, don't they? And we love them too,
Speaker 1: We love them in a different way. We're in all
Speaker 1: of them in a different but we love them differently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they don't live forever, you know, hundreds of years
Speaker 1: as a blip. So, but I do think there's something
Speaker 1: about their strength and solidity that is very, very comforting
Speaker 1: and magisterial. I mean, so, I'm not saying fragility and
Speaker 1: bittersweetness is the only type of beauty in the power.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying it's like one type that we tend
Speaker 1: not to pay attention to. I'm reflecting on Abraham Maslow's
Speaker 1: near end of death, at the very end of his life. Yes,
Speaker 1: he was walking on the beach and he wrote in
Speaker 1: his personal diary, because yes, I read a thousand pages
Speaker 1: of his personal diaries, and he wrote, it's the contrast
Speaker 1: between the eternal nature of the waves and the mortality
Speaker 1: of my being that creates the highest height of transcendence
Speaker 1: for me. Wow. Yeah, it was the contrast of the two.
Speaker 1: I don't know how I'm linking this to what you're saying,
Speaker 1: but it's completely linked. I get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And he also said right that it was in the
Speaker 1: final months of his life, after he had had it
Speaker 1: was a heart attack, he already had a big heart attack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that he experienced the greatest sense of transcendence, meaning is
Speaker 1: that right? He wrote that he realized it wasn't the
Speaker 1: peak experience that was the greatest beauty and transcendence in
Speaker 1: onlyfe It was what he called the plateau experience, which
Speaker 1: is being able to see them miraculous in the every day. Right.
Speaker 1: He said that was more transcendent to him than the
Speaker 1: peaks that he had been chasing his whole life, in
Speaker 1: which so many people seek, you know, and which he
Speaker 1: had written about so much in his life. So a
Speaker 1: lot of people are not aware of the plateau experience
Speaker 1: now now, is that the best naming for it from
Speaker 1: a publicity point of view? No, no, no, no, it's
Speaker 1: the wrong name. So I think you should rename it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the existential longer experience. Yeah it is. And it's
Speaker 1: a kind of contrast experience too, But yeah, contending with
Speaker 1: a transhumanist or immortalist or whatever word one uses, contending
Speaker 1: with that argument it's very very interesting. Like one of
Speaker 1: the people who I met with, a guy named Keith
Speaker 1: Comitta or who I really respect, such a good guy
Speaker 1: who's doing all this work to extend our health scans.
Speaker 1: He did a thought experiment with me where he said, Okay,
Speaker 1: would you want to die tomorrow? No? I wouldn't. Okay,
Speaker 1: would you want to die next week? No? Would you
Speaker 1: want to die ten years from No? No, Well what
Speaker 1: about the day after that or the day after that
Speaker 1: or the day after that. And you start to realize
Speaker 1: as you do this thought experiment that it's hard to
Speaker 1: envision the day that you would ever if you could
Speaker 1: like push the button and say now it's time to go,
Speaker 1: and that it's very hard to answer that question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so true. I guess the best answer that I've come
Speaker 1: up with to that is is, like, you know, God
Speaker 1: bless the transhumanists for working on all this stuff. The
Speaker 1: whole idea of the preciousness that's embodied in fragility is
Speaker 1: a response to the world as it is. You know,
Speaker 1: if one day of the world totally transforms into something else,
Speaker 1: then maybe the theory will still hold and maybe it won't.
Speaker 1: But for the next hundreds of years, this is the
Speaker 1: world we have, and in that world, this bittersweetness, in
Speaker 1: this existential longing, I believe is one of our great superpowers.
Speaker 1: So that's how I square the circle of what the
Speaker 1: transhumens are doing and my philosophy. What about the work
Speaker 1: you did learning from bereavement counselors, like in the Art
Speaker 1: of Dying, Well, I mean, what really came out of
Speaker 1: that experience? You know? I talked in the book about
Speaker 1: how I went to this conference, as you say, for
Speaker 1: breeding may counselors, not a griefing counselor myself. I was
Speaker 1: like a person writing about this stuff, and we all
Speaker 1: had to go around the room and share an experience
Speaker 1: of loss. And I shared my story and I found
Speaker 1: myself like in floods of tears, embarrassingly so like much
Speaker 1: more than anybody else in the room who had shared.
Speaker 1: And because of that, that led to a deep conversation
Speaker 1: with the amazing guy who was leaving the center. His
Speaker 1: name is Simca Raphael. He does a lot of work
Speaker 1: with agreement and death and so on. He's a death counselor.
Speaker 1: And he calls himself and wow, and he kind of
Speaker 1: diagnosed me for lack of a better word as suffering
Speaker 1: from a kind of inherited grief that I inherited through
Speaker 1: the generations of trauma of my family that had come
Speaker 1: before me, and you and I talked about this. Actually,
Speaker 1: like that set me down a whole pathway of looking
Speaker 1: at their research on inherited grief and whether it's whether
Speaker 1: it's transmitted only culturally and familiarly, or whether it's also
Speaker 1: transmitted epigenetically, And I tend to think it's all three
Speaker 1: and the epigenetic evidence it's early, but it's really pretty
Speaker 1: fascinating the various studies that have went done by people
Speaker 1: like Rachel Jehuda who have looked at at the transmission
Speaker 1: and epigenetic transmission children of Holocaust survivors. She's also looking
Speaker 1: now at grandchildren too. But then you also see it
Speaker 1: in these crazy Nige studies, you know, where you have
Speaker 1: like you take one traumatized mouse and have it mate
Speaker 1: and then remove it from the cage, so remove it
Speaker 1: from the community, so it's no longer influencing its fellow
Speaker 1: nice on a behavioral level. It's gone. But six generations later,
Speaker 1: you see the descendants of the traumatized mouse exhibiting the
Speaker 1: same the same symptoms of having been traumatized. So there
Speaker 1: was something that seems to have been passing understanding all that.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's fascinating, it's validating to people who feel
Speaker 1: they've experienced it. And I think it's also liberating because
Speaker 1: once you, once you suspect that this might be at
Speaker 1: play in your in your own history, there are different
Speaker 1: ways of like absorbing that knowledge and transforming it into
Speaker 1: something that you can really live with and experience with
Speaker 1: some beauty. Yeah, and it can even be a guide
Speaker 1: for self actualization. Dare I say, because you know, I'm
Speaker 1: creating this form of coaching I'm calling self actualization coaching,
Speaker 1: and I'm creating a program, whope, training program for it,
Speaker 1: and I would love to incorporate some of your ideas
Speaker 1: into it. I would love to. In particular, you said
Speaker 1: something that really hit again. You said a lot of
Speaker 1: things that hit in your ted talk and then in
Speaker 1: your book and your book, but something it really hit
Speaker 1: you've talked about you said, follow your longing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would modify say follow your existential longing. You know, there
Speaker 1: is a really deep, profound there's deep profound wisdom there
Speaker 1: on as a guide to how to really self actualize
Speaker 1: in your life and is not running away from those
Speaker 1: longings but actually following them, and it's just so beautiful.
Speaker 1: Did do you want to elaborate a little at all
Speaker 1: on what you meant by by follow your wonging? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I'll give you two examples of it, you know,
Speaker 1: one in terms of inherited grief. For a second before
Speaker 1: kind of go out from there, there's this, really there's
Speaker 1: this masterpiece of a song by the musician Dara Williams.
Speaker 1: It's called after All, and she talks about how she
Speaker 1: had fallen into Oh this is all in the song.
Speaker 1: It's like a storytelling song, and it talks about how
Speaker 1: she had fallen into a depression and she started realizing
Speaker 1: that the only way out was to travel down, which
Speaker 1: she caused the whispering well of her family, and so
Speaker 1: she starts learning about what her mother had been through,
Speaker 1: her father had been through, and the generations and then
Speaker 1: she comes back up out of the well and suddenly
Speaker 1: the world is bright and still of colors again. And
Speaker 1: she does this all really beautifully. But it is a
Speaker 1: way of showing how not turning away from these things
Speaker 1: but instead like diving into them with full knowledge of
Speaker 1: what they are, can rescue us and can also transform
Speaker 1: them into She said, it worked me over like a
Speaker 1: work of art. That's the line in the song that
Speaker 1: process had worked her over like a work of art.
Speaker 1: And then I'll also, if you want, I'll tell you
Speaker 1: a story of how longing was like the great sack
Speaker 1: of self actualizing force in my life. Do you want
Speaker 1: to hear the story? Yes? Please? Yes? Please? Okay, I
Speaker 1: guess I alluded to it in the Ted Talk, but
Speaker 1: so a bad boy artist who got obsessed with yes, yes, yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I guess we're coming to the end, so I'll try
Speaker 1: to give you a shortened version. But you know, I
Speaker 1: had wanted to be a writer since I was four.
Speaker 1: I had totally forgotten about that and became a corporate
Speaker 1: lawyer and practice law for almost a decade and got
Speaker 1: really ambitious about it. Wanted to make partner until the
Speaker 1: day came that basically I found out I wasn't making partner,
Speaker 1: and I left the firm like that very day, and
Speaker 1: also at the same time left a relationship that had
Speaker 1: always felt long. It was a seven year relationship. So
Speaker 1: like I'm suddenly in my early thirties and I'm floating
Speaker 1: around with no career and no love and I don't
Speaker 1: have a place to live. Yeah, and I fall into
Speaker 1: this relationship with a lyricist and musician and very lit
Speaker 1: up person who I developed like a crazy obsession for,
Speaker 1: and I could not shake myself from this obsession. It
Speaker 1: was simultaneously the best and the worst feeling in the world.
Speaker 1: And I had this friend, Naomi, and I would tell
Speaker 1: her every time I saw her. I was sure I
Speaker 1: bored her silly with stories of this guy. And then
Speaker 1: one day she said to me, if you were this
Speaker 1: obsessed with him, it's because he represents something you are
Speaker 1: longing for. So it's not him, it's like, what are
Speaker 1: you longing for that he represents to you? And and
Speaker 1: it was so clear, it was like instantly I knew,
Speaker 1: well he was representing the world of writing and art
Speaker 1: that I had wanted to be a part of since
Speaker 1: I was four years old, and gone and was massive
Speaker 1: detour in the wrong direction. And as soon as she
Speaker 1: said that, and I had that realization, the obsession was gone.
Speaker 1: It was wod And I know that sounds to cinematic
Speaker 1: to believe, but truly it was gone. And I just
Speaker 1: started writing and I still loved him, but not like that,
Speaker 1: you know, the obsessive quality was no longer. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: rever you. Yeah, the power over you yeah yeah. And
Speaker 1: that's and that was a case of just following my longing.
Speaker 1: And I promise you I had no idea at that
Speaker 1: moment that I could ever make a living from being
Speaker 1: a writer. It was just that I then organized my
Speaker 1: life around writing and that was enough to satisfy and belonging. Susan. Wow,
Speaker 1: this was so great chatting with you, and I just
Speaker 1: want to thank you so much for coming back with
Speaker 1: my Psychology podcast and for just keeping it soulful. You know,
Speaker 1: you just you keep you keep keeping it soulful, and
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. Well. Thank you so much, SPK.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that is no small explanation of why we've
Speaker 1: been friends for such a long time, the desire to
Speaker 1: keep it soulful. So thank you for all you do
Speaker 1: and have been doing. And I have been watching it
Speaker 1: all for years with so much excitement and happiness for you.
Speaker 1: So thank you. Thank you, Susan. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: this episode of the Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: react in some way to something you heard, I encourage
Speaker 1: you to join in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: We're on our YouTube page thus Ecology Podcast. We also
Speaker 1: put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube
Speaker 1: page as well, so you'll want to check that out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
Speaker 1: and creativity.