Speaker 1: The other theme of the book is that our happiness,
Speaker 1: our sense of wonder, or whatever it is it makes
Speaker 1: us happy, depends on the stories we write for ourselves.
Speaker 1: Because we're always writing a story. You have this internal
Speaker 1: monologue in your head all the time, right, you're talking
Speaker 1: to yourself constantly.
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 or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this episode is author Douglas Westerbeek. He
Speaker 2: worked at one of the largest libraries in the US
Speaker 2: and has spent the last decade on the local panel
Speaker 2: of the International Dublin Literary Award, reading current literary novels
Speaker 2: and nominating the best for selection. Although he has a
Speaker 2: background in screenwriting, the Dublin experience inspired him to write
Speaker 2: his own novel discussed here. It's called A Short Walk
Speaker 2: through a Wide World.
Speaker 3: Hi, Doug, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi are you. It's good to be here.
Speaker 3: I am very happy to have you on. We are
Speaker 3: sitting together in a studio in Columbus, Ohio. It's very
Speaker 3: rare that I get to do interviews in person in Columbus,
Speaker 3: so this is a real treat. Live in Cleveland for
Speaker 3: people who don't know, that's about two hours away from here.
Speaker 3: So thank you for coming down. We're going to be
Speaker 3: discussing your novel, which is a great adventure story called
Speaker 3: A Short Walk through a Wide World. But before we
Speaker 3: get into that, we'll start like we always do with
Speaker 3: the parable. In the Parable, there's a grandparent who's talking
Speaker 3: with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are
Speaker 3: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 3: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 3: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 3: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear, and
Speaker 3: the grandchild stops think about it for a second. They
Speaker 3: look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which
Speaker 3: one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 3: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 3: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 3: the work.
Speaker 1: That you do. So my first thought goes to Carly
Speaker 1: Jung because he always used to talk about he had
Speaker 1: these twelve archetypes, and one of them was the shadow.
Speaker 1: And this the first thing I thought when I hear
Speaker 1: this is so the shadow is this part of you
Speaker 1: that you bury. You just bury it your whole life,
Speaker 1: like way down there, because it's really the darkest side
Speaker 1: of you. And a lot of people are just don't
Speaker 1: even realize it's there and live in denial of it.
Speaker 1: So on and so forth. Everybody ignores this and most
Speaker 1: people aren't even aware of it, although every once in
Speaker 1: a while, you know, you catch yourself thinking something or
Speaker 1: you lose your temper or whatever, and it's there and
Speaker 1: we all kind of know it's there, but you bury it,
Speaker 1: so you never know. But what Young used to say
Speaker 1: was that you really want to know it, You really
Speaker 1: want to be familiar with it, you really want to
Speaker 1: make friends with it. So like the impulses say, yeah,
Speaker 1: you want to feed the good wolf, and you should
Speaker 1: because I remember, you know, for a long time, my
Speaker 1: writing wasn't getting me anywhere, and I was just on
Speaker 1: the sidelines and I was living, you know whatever, my
Speaker 1: domesticated life, and I would see even friends of mine
Speaker 1: who had all the success, and I could have been
Speaker 1: really embittered it, and I remember making the conscious choice,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be that person. I don't want.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be very happy when someone else like
Speaker 1: gets wherever they get to because they're living the life
Speaker 1: they want to live, and that's great for them, and
Speaker 1: I want them success. But on the other hand, the
Speaker 1: other wolf, the one that you know you impulsibly don't
Speaker 1: want to feed, might not be the best idea because
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you think about even the best
Speaker 1: people out there, Like you can imagine like like mother Teresa, right,
Speaker 1: she goes down to Calcutta and she wants to feed
Speaker 1: the poor, and I think a lot of people picture
Speaker 1: this like you know, this kind old lady handing out
Speaker 1: treats the kids, and it's not the way it was.
Speaker 1: This is a huge undertaking right, It's like running a
Speaker 1: corporation or something. It's huge. And from what I understand,
Speaker 1: Mother Teresa was tough. She was not easy to work for.
Speaker 1: She was really demanding. She did not put up with
Speaker 1: fools all that kind of stuff because she had to
Speaker 1: do this incredible job. So it takes a certain amount
Speaker 1: of ruthlessness and relentlessness to get that done. And if
Speaker 1: she had and tapped into that, maybe she would not
Speaker 1: have been able to do the incredible, miraculous things that
Speaker 1: she did.
Speaker 3: She was an inveterate gambler too. I heard I didn't
Speaker 3: know I'm making that. I was like, what I sort
Speaker 3: of thing of what insult I could lab at Mother Teresa.
Speaker 3: That wouldn't get me, like permanent wouldn't infuriate the entire
Speaker 3: audience and not the gambling's not serious? But no, that's
Speaker 3: not true. Go on, sorry, I couldn't resist.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. But yeah, I think that was
Speaker 1: my whole point. This darkness and you kind of helps
Speaker 1: propel you forward, kind of helps you get your task done.
Speaker 1: It kind of makes you focus. It kind of like
Speaker 1: cuts out the distractions around you. It can do a
Speaker 1: lot of good for you. So you don't want to
Speaker 1: starve it to death, but you want to be aware
Speaker 1: of it and you want to use it where it's applicable.
Speaker 1: I suppose it's how I guess you'd say it. That's
Speaker 1: the first thing I thought of. Anyway.
Speaker 3: Interestingly enough, I was having a conversation just was it
Speaker 3: yesterday day before with another novelist. I don't talk to
Speaker 3: novelists often, but a friend of mine, Matthew Quick, and
Speaker 3: we were talking about this very idea, the Youngian idea
Speaker 3: of the shadow really, and we were talking about it
Speaker 3: in the context of that as particular type of men
Speaker 3: in the eras in which we've been raised, and by
Speaker 3: type I mean maybe more liberal, and recognizing the overreaches
Speaker 3: that men often have had, that there was a certain
Speaker 3: amount of trying to be the good boy, and that
Speaker 3: what that did for both of us was the thing
Speaker 3: that we couldn't face in ourselves was anger. It was
Speaker 3: the thing that got shoved way down. My father was
Speaker 3: a very angry man all the time, and so I
Speaker 3: spent my whole early adolescence through early adult years going
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna.
Speaker 1: Be like that.
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna be like that. You shove it down
Speaker 3: shove it down, right, And I think there's been a
Speaker 3: cost to me for that. And it's not that I'm
Speaker 3: even conscious of it anymore, because I think I've shoved
Speaker 3: it down for so long that it really is deep
Speaker 3: down there, but you see occasional flashes of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I'm the same way. You know. I love
Speaker 1: my dad and all that, but he was really short tempered, yep,
Speaker 1: and it made it really tense to be around him.
Speaker 1: It's like living next to a volcano because you never
Speaker 1: know when he's going to go explode and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And so, I mean, I was kind
Speaker 1: of raised to be angry, and I feel I mean
Speaker 1: like sometimes I'm an angry driver and sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: I get I remember every time I've been angry, though,
Speaker 1: it has never helped me, and so I learned really
Speaker 1: quickly not to be so angry. I'm trying to think, actually,
Speaker 1: is there ever a time where it's helped me? And
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of one, and I really can't.
Speaker 1: I remember really well the times where it's just totally
Speaker 1: undermined what I was trying to do. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think this gets back to talking about
Speaker 3: the two wolves, which is making a distinction between an
Speaker 3: emotion and the behavior that that emotion causes or pushes
Speaker 3: you to. So to try not to be angry, like
Speaker 3: the emotion of anger, I think is probably destructive to
Speaker 3: not recognize like I'm angry, Like, shove that down, don't
Speaker 3: You can't feel that, you can't feel that. Right, However,
Speaker 3: it does seem perfectly reasonable to me and part of
Speaker 3: being a good person in the world of then not
Speaker 3: letting that emotion go to whatever it wants to do
Speaker 3: right right, And I think that's an interesting thing when
Speaker 3: we think about emotions. There's almost always an urge with them,
Speaker 3: like the emotion is causing us to want to do something,
Speaker 3: And that's often the place for me where I've tried
Speaker 3: to learn to separate. Don't repress the emotion, but don't
Speaker 3: indulge the action either. That's sort of the ideal.
Speaker 1: Now, it's not the actual emotion of anger. I mean,
Speaker 1: you should be angry about certain things. You should be
Speaker 1: angry about whatever, slavery, the Holocaust, whatever it is. How
Speaker 1: you manifest that anger, though, is something you can control
Speaker 1: and you've got to do it, wisely, got to do it.
Speaker 1: So it's actually a productive thing, as opposed to something
Speaker 1: that undermines you.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it's the whole respond rather than react idea. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so let's turn to your book. I'm going to let
Speaker 3: you maybe tell us for a minute or two your
Speaker 3: description of what the book is about, just to give
Speaker 3: listeners a sense of the type of book we're discussing.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I can give you my elevator picture
Speaker 1: firsts people who don't know. So it starts off with
Speaker 1: Aubrey Torvell. She is a nine year old girl in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties Paris, and she gets really sick at the
Speaker 1: dinner table one night, so all her parents will all
Speaker 1: freaked out. Her her family's fread out. They rush her to
Speaker 1: the doctor and the doctor tries to fix her, but
Speaker 1: gets the doctor and she's totally fine, and the doctor's like,
Speaker 1: I don't see anything wrong with her, And so she
Speaker 1: goes back home and she can't even get inside the house,
Speaker 1: she's so sick this time. And they take her back
Speaker 1: to the doctor and now she's even sicker, and the
Speaker 1: doctor has no idea what's wrong with her, and he's
Speaker 1: poking and prodden or trying to figure it out, and
Speaker 1: she gets so frustrated she just runs off into the
Speaker 1: streets of Paris at night, and she feels fine, and
Speaker 1: she realizes that it's this active exploration of being somewhere
Speaker 1: she's never been before that cures her. And so she
Speaker 1: spends the rest of her life wandering around and around
Speaker 1: the world, constantly on the run from this disease. And
Speaker 1: so it's an epic adventure. She's going to climb the
Speaker 1: Himalayas and cross the Sahara and raft down the Amazon,
Speaker 1: all these amazing things, and so that's the exciting part.
Speaker 1: It's a huge epic adventure. That's the fun part to read.
Speaker 1: But on the flip side, I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: girl who has lost her family, has nowhere to call home.
Speaker 1: She can't fall in love because they're all doomed. She
Speaker 1: just lives this life that seems to have no meaning.
Speaker 1: So how do you find a meaning in a life
Speaker 1: that feels like an eternal punishment? And that's the dilemma
Speaker 1: that she's facing here. It seems like it would be
Speaker 1: a great adventure, terrific excuse to get out of there.
Speaker 1: A lot of people admire her and are envious of
Speaker 1: her because they see this woman who's having this grand adventure,
Speaker 1: perfect excuse to do it. Can't hold it against her.
Speaker 1: But really, you know, it's not so easy if you're there.
Speaker 1: And I love to travel. Most people do love to travel.
Speaker 1: But I remember I was traveling. My wife is from China.
Speaker 1: We were traveling through China. I think we spent like
Speaker 1: three weeks there, maybe four, and we started in the south,
Speaker 1: moved our way north. By the time we got to Beijing,
Speaker 1: me and my kids were exhausted and we didn't you know,
Speaker 1: there was no forbidden city, no great wall. We just
Speaker 1: slept for three nights, you know. So, I mean that
Speaker 1: was only four weeks. Imagine doing this for a lifetime,
Speaker 1: so it can be brutal. My dad used to travel
Speaker 1: all the time for his work, you know, so he
Speaker 1: hates to travel. Now. My wife is kind of similar.
Speaker 1: She's a musician with the Cleveland Orchestra and they're very
Speaker 1: much traveling, touring orchestra. And you get tired of it.
Speaker 1: You just want to stay home with your kids and
Speaker 1: enjoy your life and stuff like that. But so there's
Speaker 1: a flip side. There's the adventure of travel, which is
Speaker 1: why we go on vacations. But I mean, most people
Speaker 1: don't take a vacation that's more than you know, a week,
Speaker 1: ten days something like that. Then they come back home,
Speaker 1: and if it goes on forever, it's a whole different story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's ironic that we're having this conversation because in
Speaker 3: about ten days I'm about to embark on a three
Speaker 3: month trip, oh my god, to Europe. Now, it's not
Speaker 3: a vacation.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to spoy shows.
Speaker 3: It's not a vacate. I mean parts of it will
Speaker 3: be vacation, but I will be working well, and there
Speaker 3: I'm working on a book myself, so I'll be writing,
Speaker 3: I'll be doing interviews. So it's not a vacation, but
Speaker 3: it is three months of us moving our way, you know,
Speaker 3: covering a fair amount of ground over that time. And
Speaker 3: as we were planning the trip, I had sort of
Speaker 3: been reading your book a little bit, not in preparation
Speaker 3: for the trip, but just they sort of align, but
Speaker 3: certainly thinking about that, like how long do we want
Speaker 3: to stay in one place versus how many different places
Speaker 3: do we want to see? And what's the pace that
Speaker 3: you're on right Because to your point, like when you're
Speaker 3: always moving, that gets to be exhausting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've planned some vacations where it's like, Okay, we'll
Speaker 1: spend one or two days there, one or two days there,
Speaker 1: and that's never the best way. Really, the best way
Speaker 1: to do it is pick a spot, stay for a
Speaker 1: while so at least you feel like you've gotten like
Speaker 1: the feel of the place and so on. And because
Speaker 1: otherwise it's hectic, it's constant moving. You never get a break, right,
Speaker 1: and you need a break just to enjoy the place. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not enough to just stop and see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've interspersed a week here, a couple of weeks there,
Speaker 3: But then there's a couple of weeks where you know,
Speaker 3: we're seeing multiple places where there's a lot more movement.
Speaker 3: So I'm so fortunate that my work allows me to
Speaker 3: work from anywhere and get a chance to go do this.
Speaker 3: But it's ironic that we're talking about an epic journey
Speaker 3: when I feel like I'm going on. For me, what
Speaker 3: is an epic journey?
Speaker 1: It is an epicture, right.
Speaker 3: So you've referred to the book as an adventure story.
Speaker 3: You've also referred to it as a spiritual journey. That's
Speaker 3: a term that means all sorts of things to all
Speaker 3: sorts of people. When you use it. What are you
Speaker 3: referring to? What do you mean?
Speaker 1: I think? I mean it actually pretty literary. So this
Speaker 1: has a backstory to it. So when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: tell you the whole story. It doesn't make me look good.
Speaker 1: But when I was like I don't even remember how old,
Speaker 1: I was, like seven, eight years old, maybe not even,
Speaker 1: And I remember getting to a big fight with my
Speaker 1: little brother. I had four brothers, I had one little one.
Speaker 1: And it was over something stupid too. It was like,
Speaker 1: what are we going to watch on TV? Or and
Speaker 1: I wanted to watch a Godzilla movie and he wanted
Speaker 1: to watch you know, knowing him, it was like sixty
Speaker 1: minutes or something, and I'm like, no, I want to
Speaker 1: watch Godzilla. And he got his way, and I went
Speaker 1: out in the backyard and I sulked, and I remember
Speaker 1: sitting under the tree in the backyard thinking, God, if
Speaker 1: you're out there, just reake total unabashed revenge on my
Speaker 1: little brother. And weeks went by and nothing happened, and
Speaker 1: I was like and because of that, I became a
Speaker 1: novowt atheist from like the age of like seven. I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, you'll really let me down. I'm
Speaker 1: not believing in you anymore. That's my revenge, you know,
Speaker 1: my petty revenge. As I got older and I stuck
Speaker 1: to this, you know, and my argument's got a lot
Speaker 1: more sophisticated than that. But as I got older, I
Speaker 1: started noticing that all the stories I was writing, not
Speaker 1: all of them, but a lot of the stories I
Speaker 1: was writing were about these characters who were either very
Speaker 1: atheistic or they didn't like God, but God loved them
Speaker 1: any And I was like, why am I writing these stories.
Speaker 1: I'm not that person, and then of course cursed me. Well, jeez,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not nearly as atheistic as I thought I was,
Speaker 1: and maybe there's a lot more going So these are
Speaker 1: the types of characters I write now. And because of that,
Speaker 1: I started studying the religions. I started suying all of them.
Speaker 1: But the Old Testament had these great stories that I loved.
Speaker 1: A great one would be Jonah because Jonahs given this
Speaker 1: task is to go down and convert Nineveh, right, which
Speaker 1: is an insane thing for you know, this guy who's
Speaker 1: just minding his own business and God comes down says
Speaker 1: go to Nineveh and convert him, and he's like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to go to Nanova. I want to stay home.
Speaker 1: I was enjoying myself. I was perfectly happy before you
Speaker 1: came along. And he does everything he can to get
Speaker 1: out of that situation, and I'm thinking, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you just do it, he says, your life's going
Speaker 1: to be a lot easier, But he refuses, and in retrospect,
Speaker 1: because we all know how the story ends, he would
Speaker 1: have just been smarter just going along and doing it
Speaker 1: as he was told. But God, who admired the guy
Speaker 1: who like butts head with God and says, no, not
Speaker 1: going to do it, Like you're gonna lose this battle.
Speaker 1: You have no chance of winning this one. But he
Speaker 1: fights it anyway, and there's something kind of admirable about that,
Speaker 1: even if he's wrong. And I know, like the bigger
Speaker 1: moral of the story is that it's trying to show
Speaker 1: that if you turn your head away when evils are
Speaker 1: happening in the world, you're not helping the world. So
Speaker 1: I get that. But at the same time, there's something
Speaker 1: really admirable about a guy who's fighting a completely futile
Speaker 1: war against something bigger, impossibly bigger than he'll ever be.
Speaker 1: He can out comprehend how big this thing he's up against. Is,
Speaker 1: and he fights it anyway, and I always thought that
Speaker 1: was admirable. And I think Aubrey Torvel is going through
Speaker 1: the exact same adventure because she's stuck with this disease.
Speaker 1: She's traveling around the world. She has no idea why
Speaker 1: she's been singled out for this. She's the only one
Speaker 1: in the world that has this thing and maybe the
Speaker 1: only one ever will and she doesn't know why, and
Speaker 1: it makes her miserable, where if she kind of embraced
Speaker 1: her fate, she would have been a lot happy here.
Speaker 1: But people come up to me all the time. I
Speaker 1: love that character of Aubrey Torrevell. She's a great character.
Speaker 1: It's because she's making this feudal fight. She's very feisty,
Speaker 1: she's she's very single minded, and there's something about that
Speaker 1: that people admire. I think, I think that's what it is.
Speaker 1: I'm off on a tangent there, but that was my idea,
Speaker 1: is that you know, she's up against this, it's not
Speaker 1: until she kind of learns to her look back on
Speaker 1: her life and say, you know what, that wasn't so
Speaker 1: bad and I saw things no one else gets to see,
Speaker 1: and there is something to that. She kind of comes
Speaker 1: around this idea kind of manifests to a story. I
Speaker 1: don't kind of say it outrightly, but there's a voice
Speaker 1: in her head, there's all kinds of other things happening
Speaker 1: going on, and what does that mean? And I don't
Speaker 1: spell it out, but in my mind I knew what
Speaker 1: it was, and I hope the readers get that. There
Speaker 1: is also a story about enlightenment. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: discussion between her and the Prince in the middle of
Speaker 1: the story, and they're talking about what it means to
Speaker 1: be enlightened and how do you know? And it's, you know,
Speaker 1: the ideas, it's kind of like waking up from a dream,
Speaker 1: from a dream life to your waking life, and enlightenment
Speaker 1: is when you're waking up in your waking life into
Speaker 1: something even higher than that. And you see her go
Speaker 1: through that process. By the end, you're there. So it's
Speaker 1: a story of enlightenment as well. And to me, that's
Speaker 1: all the way through the book, and that's where the
Speaker 1: spiritual element comes.
Speaker 3: In, right, because it's not a book about God in
Speaker 3: a direct way, right, there's no divine being, there's no
Speaker 3: her taking on. But what you're saying is this person
Speaker 3: fighting their fate being sort of one of the core
Speaker 3: themes there, and I always think it's so interesting, and
Speaker 3: I think it's one of the fundamental dilemmas that we face,
Speaker 3: particularly in today's day and age, where choices are unlimited
Speaker 3: and every view of the world and every way to
Speaker 3: live is shown to you you can actually see it.
Speaker 3: All is this question of what do I accept about
Speaker 3: my life being the way that it is, and what
Speaker 3: do I change? Because that's the first question, like if
Speaker 3: you're going to fight your fate. On one hand, you
Speaker 3: look at that and go, well, it's admirable, and on
Speaker 3: the other hand you go, well, it's a completely losing battle.
Speaker 3: But why, it's obvious that if there's something we can't change,
Speaker 3: then accepting it is the reasonable course of action. And
Speaker 3: I think most people are wise enough to know that.
Speaker 1: That's a very dallas take. You don't fight the universe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but that even shows up in like if you
Speaker 3: look at like parents who have children who have disabilities,
Speaker 3: if there's just no chance of fixing it, in many ways,
Speaker 3: their life is easier because they don't have to try
Speaker 3: and figure out whether to fix it, how much time
Speaker 3: and energy to put into fixing it. Yeah, right, they
Speaker 3: just accept They get on with the business of like,
Speaker 3: all right, how do we build a life with this
Speaker 3: thing that we've been given that we can't do anything about.
Speaker 3: Andrew Solomon, who's a great writer, wrote The Noonday Demon,
Speaker 3: which is called the Atlas of Depression. He also wrote
Speaker 3: a book called Far from the Tree, and it's about
Speaker 3: children who are different than their parents. Maybe they're blonde,
Speaker 3: they're autistic, but they're different. And it was one of
Speaker 3: the main points I really took away from that book
Speaker 3: was this idea of these parents whose children there might
Speaker 3: be a way to make them better, and they are
Speaker 3: caught in this poll. Like part of them is going
Speaker 3: just all right, this is what we have. Let's deal
Speaker 3: with it. But then there's another part of them that's going.
Speaker 1: It could be different.
Speaker 3: It could be different if you just did this, What
Speaker 3: if you tried this. So I think most of us
Speaker 3: in the modern world are closer to that ladder thing
Speaker 3: I was describing, which is we look at our lives
Speaker 3: and if we just knew there were things that couldn't change, Like,
Speaker 3: I know my height isn't going to change, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: I could do some crazy surgery that breaks all my
Speaker 3: bones and but all intents and purposes, I'm the height
Speaker 3: I am. And so you go about accepting that. I go, well,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to dunk a basketball. I just kind
Speaker 3: of move on.
Speaker 1: Right. If you're raising kids, you're dealing with this dilemma daily, right,
Speaker 1: because you want your kids to be as perfect as
Speaker 1: and ready for the world when it comes to them
Speaker 1: and all that. You want them to be perfect at everything,
Speaker 1: and there's certain things they're going to be good at
Speaker 1: and certain things they're not going to be good at.
Speaker 1: And it takes time to figure maybe not time, patience
Speaker 1: and understanding to realize this is what they're like. And
Speaker 1: the more you try to push them into being this ideal,
Speaker 1: the less of a credit they're going to be to you.
Speaker 1: If you want your kids to turn out, well, let
Speaker 1: them be them and they'll figure out their own way
Speaker 1: and they'll figure out their pluses and minuses. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a lot like that.
Speaker 3: There's a line in the book where you're talking about
Speaker 3: Aubrey once believed it was possible to control the world,
Speaker 3: to make it bend to her personal sense of justice.
Speaker 3: What a child she was, how foolish she been, how haughty,
Speaker 3: And then it goes on to say, without a doubt,
Speaker 3: she knew she did not command the world, but was
Speaker 3: at the mercy of it. It's a lesson. Most people
Speaker 3: learn at some point in their lives that the world
Speaker 3: is a bigger and more powerful thing than you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a lesson I learned. It's a lesson
Speaker 1: I see a lot of people learn. You start off young,
Speaker 1: your idealist, and then you realize. I remember my dad
Speaker 1: telling me when I was a kid, you know what,
Speaker 1: you're young, You're full of energy, you're idealistic. This is
Speaker 1: the time to try to do the things you want
Speaker 1: to do, because when you're older, you're going to be crushed.
Speaker 1: Why why right? True? Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think that is wise and generous. Right,
Speaker 3: instead of telling you not to be idealistic and not
Speaker 3: try that stuff, It's like, go, this is that time
Speaker 3: that's appropriate for this phase in your life of where
Speaker 3: you're at.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking of me when I was a kid
Speaker 1: because I was very idealistic. I have lots of other
Speaker 1: friends who are like that. And eventually life gets to you,
Speaker 1: you know, because I had I'd already been planning to,
Speaker 1: you know, write books and make movies and do all
Speaker 1: this stuff. By the time, I was like twenty, and
Speaker 1: you know it didn't work out.
Speaker 3: That way, And yet here you are. I don't know
Speaker 3: how old you are with enough, I ain't twenty, you're
Speaker 3: not twenty. You're not sixty.
Speaker 1: Either, No, no, but this is my next stop, though, it's.
Speaker 3: Your next stop. Really, yeah, so you're older fifty five?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Actually on fifty four, you must think I.
Speaker 1: Might be fifty four. No, I don't. I forget these things,
Speaker 1: all right, all.
Speaker 3: Right, genuinely yeah, I forget too. But my birth year
Speaker 3: was nineteen seventy, so it's always easy to figure out
Speaker 3: because I can just go, oh, well, what year is it,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four? Add thirty to it. Okay, I'm there.
Speaker 1: Oh crap, So then I'm no, no, I'm older than you.
Speaker 1: Then I even realize I really genuinely forgot.
Speaker 3: Well, you look very young that way, you look very young.
Speaker 3: But my point with that was not to compliment you
Speaker 3: on your age. My point was to say, you had
Speaker 3: this idealism of all these things you were going to
Speaker 3: do when you were young, and they didn't happen right, right, right,
Speaker 3: and yet here you are with a novel that has
Speaker 3: done I mean, I don't know how you gauge how
Speaker 3: well a book does, but I know it's been in
Speaker 3: windows of Barnes and Noble. That's good enough, right, I
Speaker 3: mean that's something so tie together this early disillusionment with
Speaker 3: creating art and lack of success with where you are today.
Speaker 3: How did that happen? Did you stay with it to
Speaker 3: get to the point where you were able to do it?
Speaker 3: How did you keep creating art in that period?
Speaker 1: Well? So, I mean I've been doing it since I
Speaker 1: was little. I mean I started writing stories and I
Speaker 1: was in like third grade, and maybe even before that.
Speaker 1: I remember me and my friends in third grade would
Speaker 1: get together and we would all write stories together, and
Speaker 1: we had all these imaginary characters and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And mine was a blue raccoon. I think my friend
Speaker 1: had these family of pickles, went around talking and stuff
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: Raccoons and the pickles get together every they.
Speaker 1: Did, so we have all these joint stories. It was
Speaker 1: like Marvel's universe. And they would all like intersect and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. They would rob banks and stuff like
Speaker 1: that together. They're always getting into these Well, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Point is I kept writing these stories after they had stopped,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't stop. So I was totally writing for pleasure.
Speaker 1: But I think around sixth grade I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is what I want to do. And so I
Speaker 1: just started writing stories and more and more, and see
Speaker 1: I went to school for it. Afterwards. I would submit
Speaker 1: screenplays to competitions and they did really well, and it
Speaker 1: would just always be enough to keep me going, like enough,
Speaker 1: like encouragement. But it never has. So I was optioned,
Speaker 1: like you know, four times, I think, and all you would,
Speaker 1: but none of them ever got produced, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was just crushing after a while. Then they had kids,
Speaker 1: and you take a break. But even when I had kids,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, I have to find
Speaker 1: time to write. You get the shakes when you don't write.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, it's like a physical reaction to not writing.
Speaker 1: And I've always had that, and so I mean I
Speaker 1: just constantly wrote. I probably have like fifty screenplays and
Speaker 1: five or six novels already, just because just yesterday, I'm
Speaker 1: working on a novel that I know is unpublishable. It'll
Speaker 1: never be published. It's insane. It's a total vanity project,
Speaker 1: is what they call it. But in between books, I'll
Speaker 1: take off a month, and I'll work on this thing
Speaker 1: just for fun. And all that time I wasn't doing
Speaker 1: it because I thought it would have like this tremendous,
Speaker 1: incredible payoff or anything. I'm doing it because I can't stop.
Speaker 1: I don't know any other way to live. Right.
Speaker 3: It's just like am I well in the sense of
Speaker 3: she can't stop moving, or she gets worse than the show.
Speaker 3: You just described your inability to stop writing. I guess
Speaker 3: without getting some sort of I never made that analogience
Speaker 3: this is going in my next story. Well, there's another
Speaker 3: Aubrey connection that I picked up, which I don't know
Speaker 3: if you may or may not know, but one of
Speaker 3: the things that appears to potentially be an inciting incident
Speaker 3: for her is when she's young, she fails to take
Speaker 3: a certain act.
Speaker 1: Towards God, right, a selfless act. Right.
Speaker 3: It was sort of a battle with God. And you
Speaker 3: describe being a young child having a revenge fantasy and
Speaker 3: swearing off God because he didn't take out your little brother.
Speaker 3: That's another simm I don't know if you've connected that
Speaker 3: dot either to an extent.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, maybe not quite so consciously, but I mean
Speaker 1: that one I totally feel yeah, yeah, like I can
Speaker 1: get that one right away. So it's also a setup
Speaker 1: like you get from you know, the Garden of Eden's right,
Speaker 1: don't eat that apple?
Speaker 3: Yeah right, of course they're gonna ghet it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, throw out the puzzle of ball.
Speaker 1: Of course she's not going to throw it out at
Speaker 1: that point. Oh no, I got to see what's inside it,
Speaker 1: so she doesn't. Yeah, and that's what sets her off
Speaker 1: in her journey, and it's like she was set up.
Speaker 3: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode. Integration reminder.
Speaker 3: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 3: and integration. It can be transformative to take a minute
Speaker 3: to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
Speaker 3: detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
Speaker 3: and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and
Speaker 3: how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously,
Speaker 3: just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
Speaker 3: can be so powerful. Have these reminders to stop and
Speaker 3: be present, can't it. If you want to keep this
Speaker 3: momentum going that you built with this little exercise, I'd
Speaker 3: encourage you to get on our good Wolf reminders SMS list,
Speaker 3: I'll shoot you two texts a week with insightful little
Speaker 3: prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They are a nice
Speaker 3: little nudge to stop and be present in your life,
Speaker 3: and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
Speaker 3: the busyness and forget what is important. You can join
Speaker 3: at oneufeed dot net slash sms and if you don't
Speaker 3: like them, you can get off a list really easily.
Speaker 3: So far, there are over one and seventy two others
Speaker 3: from the one you feed community on the list, and
Speaker 3: we'd love to welcome you as well, So head on
Speaker 3: over to oneufeed dot net slash sms and let's feed
Speaker 3: our good wolves together. So there's another line in the
Speaker 3: book that says the best way to survive some things,
Speaker 3: thought Aubrey, was not to understand them. Do you believe that?
Speaker 1: So I've read this great book called Deep Survival. Lawrence
Speaker 1: I think wrote it because I love to write survival stories.
Speaker 1: So he was writing all about how people survive what
Speaker 1: they survive. There are some situations people just can't survive,
Speaker 1: but in certain situations it is a kind of a
Speaker 1: personality that gets you through it. And I remember so
Speaker 1: many aspects of it. One was to just act and
Speaker 1: the other one was people who tend to survive tend
Speaker 1: to admire their situation. Like there was a story about
Speaker 1: a plane crash and the plane broke open in midair
Speaker 1: and this girl, strapped to her seat was literally tumbling
Speaker 1: through the air into the jungle, and you know, because
Speaker 1: there was a jungle, she landed in the trees and
Speaker 1: actually survived this fall from an airplane. A bunch of
Speaker 1: them did. An airplane was low, I guess, but she
Speaker 1: describes it as, Oh, look at these trees, they look
Speaker 1: like broccoli. She remembers this instant and when she's on
Speaker 1: the ground, she's like, this is a beautiful jungle, and
Speaker 1: she's admiring this like everyone else's. A lot of other
Speaker 1: people are looking at this like this is their grave.
Speaker 1: You know this, this is the worst thing that can
Speaker 1: happen to me. This is miserable. She's actually admiring the
Speaker 1: place she's in. She's the only one that survived because
Speaker 1: everyone just froze sat still, and she's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to follow this river. I'm going to
Speaker 1: walk because if I stay here, they're not going to
Speaker 1: find us. With all that, and so she just did something.
Speaker 1: Whereas everyone else said no, no, wait, they'll find us here,
Speaker 1: she's like, I don't know. She took off. No one
Speaker 1: else will go with her, and she is the only
Speaker 1: one to live. She eventually was picked up. And there's
Speaker 1: a I don't remember where I heard this a soldier saying.
Speaker 1: It was a combat soldier, and he says, look, if
Speaker 1: you're ever lost in the woods, just walk, because it'll
Speaker 1: take you somewhere. I mean, you can stand there and
Speaker 1: freeze out of fear, and you can just sit there
Speaker 1: and not do anything, or you can take some steps
Speaker 1: and maybe it won't help, maybe it will, but at
Speaker 1: least you'll know more than you did before because you're
Speaker 1: starting to see the place you're at, and maybe you'll
Speaker 1: come across something, maybe get a little lucky, Maybe you'll
Speaker 1: find some food, maybe you'll find a river you can follow,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. But if you just stay
Speaker 1: in one place, you're not improving your situation. So when
Speaker 1: Aubrey is saying that, I mean, Aubrey is not necessarily
Speaker 1: a great intellect. She's an action oriented person. For her,
Speaker 1: you got to keep moving first of all. She has
Speaker 1: to keep moving anyway, if she thinks about her plight
Speaker 1: too much, it's going to make her miserable, and that's
Speaker 1: what one of her flaws is, right, So, I mean,
Speaker 1: I hate to advocate mindlessness because I don't think it's
Speaker 1: quite there. But sometimes if you just do something, it's
Speaker 1: the best antidote there is. And so instead of just
Speaker 1: sitting there feeling sorry for yourself, just get out there
Speaker 1: and walk and maybe things. Maybe they won't prove, maybe
Speaker 1: they will, and it's certainly it's going to improve a
Speaker 1: lot more than just sitting there, you know, doing nothing.
Speaker 3: Yep, I feel obligated to tell listeners we do not
Speaker 3: offer survival advice on this show.
Speaker 1: So the other amazing thing about.
Speaker 3: That book, so just if you're in the woods, the
Speaker 3: show has no opinion on whether you should stay put
Speaker 3: or walk.
Speaker 1: But the other thing was, like he actually broke it
Speaker 1: down by demographics, kids under the age of six we're
Speaker 1: more likely to survive than kids between the age of
Speaker 1: seventeen and like thirteen, because the kids between seventeen and thirteen,
Speaker 1: you know, teenagers, These young teenagers who don't know how
Speaker 1: to control their emotions yet tend to get really panicky
Speaker 1: or they tend to get really depressed. Their emotions get
Speaker 1: ahead of them and take them over, and they tend
Speaker 1: to curl up and die, whereas under six they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll just look for food, and they go off and
Speaker 1: just do the things they have to do. They're very practical.
Speaker 1: They don't get hung up on emotions at all because
Speaker 1: they just don't have that life experience and it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean much to them yet they just do what they
Speaker 1: have to do. That's why you hear like little kids
Speaker 1: being raised by wolves and monkeys and things like that,
Speaker 1: because they just let it happen. Whereas you know, these
Speaker 1: older group of kids, you know, they'll be freaked out,
Speaker 1: they'll have like you know, they'll self doubt. All these
Speaker 1: kind of things just undermine them. And then as you
Speaker 1: get older, the chances get better. Then you get to
Speaker 1: a certain age and your chances drop off and it's
Speaker 1: all in the mind, and it's because of where your
Speaker 1: mind is at that age. It was really fascinating, though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's wild.
Speaker 3: That is adventure novels or survival novels. I may not
Speaker 3: get this right. The author, Lauren Groff is Laura. She
Speaker 3: has a new book. Her latest book is sort of
Speaker 3: a survival story or a woman who wanders off from
Speaker 3: I'm going to say a medieval village where it's just
Speaker 3: a bad place to be. And so anyway, she's an
Speaker 3: amazing writer. Her prose is incredible, and so you might
Speaker 3: really enjoy that. Back to this idea of Aubrey's life
Speaker 3: as being both a blessing and the curse in that
Speaker 3: she has to keep moving, and we talked about how
Speaker 3: sometimes that may not be ideal. You make an analogy
Speaker 3: in the book between imprisonment and exile. Right, somebody's making
Speaker 3: the point that like punishment is to be imprisoned, right,
Speaker 3: you can't move, and she makes the point, well, people
Speaker 3: are often exiled also another type of punishment. And as
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this idea, it seems that either
Speaker 3: of those things where really any condition in the extreme
Speaker 3: becomes really difficult, right, Like if you're imprisoned in a
Speaker 3: prison cell, that's awful, horrible, right, you can't go anywhere,
Speaker 3: you can't I mean like nothing, And to be forced
Speaker 3: to move to a new place you've never been every
Speaker 3: three days, as Aubrey is, is also a form of
Speaker 3: torture in its own way. So it seems like there's
Speaker 3: this and I don't know if you think about this,
Speaker 3: but there's a case being made for sort of a
Speaker 3: middle way here. That the middle way is ideal.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I love Daoism and that's the philosophy there.
Speaker 3: Yep, for sure.
Speaker 1: But I have to admit, and this isn't true for everybody,
Speaker 1: But I know for me, I would prefer exile because
Speaker 1: at least you're out there and you're moving, agreed, and
Speaker 1: then there. But there are people I know and I've
Speaker 1: met them who would prefer to be in the prison
Speaker 1: because they can relax and they can just you know,
Speaker 1: people are taking care of them, feeding them, and they
Speaker 1: just have to sit there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to make it a little bit more realistic, because
Speaker 3: I think almost any buddy would choose exile over prison
Speaker 3: cell because that's so extreme.
Speaker 1: But we like a guy who didn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, well, and it's interesting some people who are
Speaker 3: out of prison or I have a friend who was
Speaker 3: in prison. He just got out in the last six months.
Speaker 3: He was in prison for twenty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a tough adjustment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, all of a sudden, your life is
Speaker 3: completely structured in to a degree you would never want
Speaker 3: your life to be structured. And then suddenly there is
Speaker 3: nothing as far as structure goes. Anyway, I was sort
Speaker 3: of making the middle way point the right a little bit.
Speaker 3: For most of us, somewhere in between those two things
Speaker 3: is going to be the ideal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's how most of us live our lives, right,
Speaker 1: because we're not sitting at home all day doing nothing.
Speaker 1: We're out and about, we go on vacations once in
Speaker 1: a while, and so and so on and so forth,
Speaker 1: and most of us don't cloister ourselves inside a room
Speaker 1: of the rest of our lives, and most of us
Speaker 1: aren't wandering the world forever and ever. Yeah. Either, there
Speaker 1: are people now you know, you're hearing about these what
Speaker 1: digital nomads, and they do it for like a couple
Speaker 1: of years, and then you go on YouTube and you read,
Speaker 1: well what are they up to it? And now I
Speaker 1: was like, I broke down. I couldn't do it anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I've known a couple of people who
Speaker 3: have tried the digital nomad lifestyle, and it a seems
Speaker 3: to like you're saying to be great for a while,
Speaker 3: until all of a sudden it's not.
Speaker 1: One guy said something really interesting to me, which because
Speaker 1: he was going around the world seeing all these beautiful things,
Speaker 1: they stopped becoming beautiful to him. Yeah, and he missed that.
Speaker 1: He missed the idea of going somewhere and being stunned
Speaker 1: by what the landscape or the culture, whatever it is
Speaker 1: he was after. He missed being stunned and not bowled
Speaker 1: over by that because it was becoming routine for him. Yep,
Speaker 1: and that's something that it didn't actually occur. Yeah.
Speaker 3: We habituate to almost anything, right, We habituate to almost anything.
Speaker 1: Imagine. Yeah, imagine habituating to like natural beauty. I can't
Speaker 1: even imagine that, but I guess it would happen. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I think that raises a question that I think
Speaker 3: is at the heart of a lot of spiritual journeys
Speaker 3: or spiritual work, which is, how do you continue to
Speaker 3: see the extraordinary in what has become very ordinary? How
Speaker 3: do you continue to enliven your life even though it's
Speaker 3: not changing much.
Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh my god, it's like you want an answer
Speaker 1: from me.
Speaker 3: No, No, no, I'm not looking for an answer so
Speaker 3: much as yes, I've been hoping.
Speaker 1: How do you do that?
Speaker 3: Six hundred episodes in I figured you were the guy
Speaker 3: who was going to solve this problem.
Speaker 1: The other theme of the book is that our happiness,
Speaker 1: our sense of wonder, whatever it is it makes us happy,
Speaker 1: depends on the stories we write for ourselves. Because we're
Speaker 1: always writing a story. You have this internal monologue in
Speaker 1: all the time, right, You're talking to yourself constantly. Although
Speaker 1: I've heard there people who don't have this internal monologue,
Speaker 1: and I never knew that was even possible.
Speaker 3: I've heard that also, and I remained skeptical. I can't
Speaker 3: write like creative exactly anyway. I've heard the same thing,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, obviously that's self reported because we can't
Speaker 3: hear inside anyone else's head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, do they just walk in this kind
Speaker 1: of like vacant void. I don't get it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, A little thought experiment I like to do sometimes
Speaker 3: though to this end, and it's pretty much impossible to do.
Speaker 3: But it's a little bit like a zen coon is
Speaker 3: to try and process the world without language, Like just
Speaker 3: imagine you don't have language. Yeah, I mean, I can't
Speaker 3: turn language off because again I think in language in words, right, right,
Speaker 3: But it is an interesting sort of way of trying
Speaker 3: to put your brain on tilt, so to speak. Right.
Speaker 1: I wondered the same thing. I'd like our way weight
Speaker 1: early ancestors, you know, the cro magnum and how they
Speaker 1: how do they do it? How they put everything together?
Speaker 1: I mean they were slowly getting there. I mean, is
Speaker 1: it visual? Is it? I have no idea how they
Speaker 1: do it. Frankly, it's hard to imagine. It's like trying
Speaker 1: to get inside the head of your cat.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. If there was any one thing that
Speaker 3: I like, if there was a god and I could
Speaker 3: get to ask God a question, I think my question
Speaker 3: would be something like, can you put me inside the
Speaker 3: head of a dog for a few days or an
Speaker 3: octopus or pick your creature? Now, what is consciousness like
Speaker 3: for a creature that doesn't have language in the way
Speaker 3: that we do. I look at my dog all the time,
Speaker 3: and just what must that experience be?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's just mind blowing, but it would be
Speaker 3: great to know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, but what I was saying before we got on too,
Speaker 1: that was a So everybody tells them their own stories,
Speaker 1: and they're constantly building this in their head. They talk
Speaker 1: to themselves, they imagine their futures, they rewrite their past.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can do all kinds of stuff to
Speaker 1: yourself In the book, there are these libraries that Aubrey
Speaker 1: comes upon, and they're scattered all throughout the book, and
Speaker 1: it's a recurring place that she visits. These books. They're
Speaker 1: not in a language, so she can read them anywhere
Speaker 1: in the world. They're all in pictures, and there are
Speaker 1: people's stories, so she's reading all these people's stories. It
Speaker 1: becomes a major theme in that well, what's her story
Speaker 1: and what's story is she telling herself? Because like we
Speaker 1: were saying, she comes off, she's miserable in the beginning,
Speaker 1: and what she's got to do, She's got to learn
Speaker 1: to change her story or she's going to be miserable
Speaker 1: till the day she dies. And so people can find
Speaker 1: their happiness by finding the right story, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people can get that story wrong. They will tell
Speaker 1: themselves the wrong story. I'm thinking of what's that movie
Speaker 1: Zone of Interest where they run Auschwitz. But to them
Speaker 1: it's just a day job, right and a way to
Speaker 1: promote themselves and further their career, and they are totally
Speaker 1: telling themselves the wrong story. I don't want to give
Speaker 1: the way the ending, but at the end that staircase scene,
Speaker 1: it manifests itself. This is not a guy who's well right.
Speaker 1: And that's because they've completely told themselves the wrong story,
Speaker 1: as wrong as you can make it. And this isn't
Speaker 1: my idea, by the way, I'm not an intellect by
Speaker 1: any stretch of the imagination. But Victor Frankel came up
Speaker 1: with this because he survived Auschwitz and he saw it
Speaker 1: happening firsthand. He would see people sitting there saying, you
Speaker 1: know what, I have a feeling we're going to be
Speaker 1: liberated by the end of March, you know, And then
Speaker 1: it wouldn't happen, and that person would die. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: would just curl up and give up hope and just die.
Speaker 1: And he saw this again and again, people telling themselves
Speaker 1: the wrong story, and sometimes it costs them their life.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say philosophy. He was a psychologist. His theory
Speaker 1: was that, look, you've got to tell yourself the right story.
Speaker 1: That story can change, it can adjust over time. If
Speaker 1: you get it wrong, it can have disastrous results. If
Speaker 1: you get it right, you can really make a meaningful
Speaker 1: life for yourself.
Speaker 3: Fascinating. I have a bunch of responses to that. I mean,
Speaker 3: one is I mean, there's a type of therapy called
Speaker 3: narrative therapy, and the whole point of it is to
Speaker 3: do exactly what you're saying. You rewrite your life experiences
Speaker 3: to tell a different story, right, right, Because we're making
Speaker 3: up the story, right, We're making up the meaning right right.
Speaker 3: In most cases, right, there's a fact and then there's interpretation.
Speaker 3: We're making it up. And if you're going to make
Speaker 3: it up, why not make it up in a way
Speaker 3: that leads to you being happier, healthier, and of more
Speaker 3: service to other people in the world, right, Like, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think about this all the time, Like I'm telling
Speaker 3: myself stories all the time. Most of them are about
Speaker 3: how something is going to turn out. And I don't
Speaker 3: know how something's going to turn out. If I did,
Speaker 3: I would be an inveterate gambler, right, Like, I mean
Speaker 3: I would, I would take after Mother Teresa, and I
Speaker 3: would be gambling all the time because I would know
Speaker 3: what was going to happen. But I don't. And yet
Speaker 3: predominantly my stories when I'm not careful are ones of
Speaker 3: impending failure. Yeah, And so I just try and remind
Speaker 3: myself you don't know the future. So if you're going
Speaker 3: to make up a story, why not make up one
Speaker 3: that is a little bit more useful.
Speaker 1: So I was almost the opposite. I mean, you have
Speaker 1: the you know everything can end in failure kind of
Speaker 1: thing going on, and I had like, everything is going
Speaker 1: to be great. I can't wait. You know that's a
Speaker 1: bad story to tell yourself too, because you're divorcing yourself
Speaker 1: from reality.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I guess I have my versions of those
Speaker 3: two where everything's gonna be fine, Everything's gonna be fine,
Speaker 3: which I think is like a cognitive bias where you
Speaker 3: just believe what you want to believe, right right, and
Speaker 3: you're right. That is an equally damaging story. If you
Speaker 3: have an infection and you just say to yourself, sure,
Speaker 3: it's gonna be fine, it's gonna be fine, and next
Speaker 3: thing you know, you have sepsis.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know people have gone through
Speaker 1: it like terrible divorces, and then that reshapes their narrative
Speaker 1: and now they're like depressed all the time. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: you know, because that's the ultimate betrayal right there. Now,
Speaker 1: do you survive something like that?
Speaker 3: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: I mean rewrite your whole world right there and then
Speaker 1: And you could either like say, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: survive this or this is going to kill me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you choose it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean as a recovering addict and alcoholic, that's a
Speaker 3: pivotal point for people who I think get better, like
Speaker 3: much much better. There's a rewriting of that story that
Speaker 3: happens very often with people when they're able to help
Speaker 3: someone else with the thing they've gone through, Because all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, it goes from this thing I endured
Speaker 3: to now this gift that I can give to others.
Speaker 1: The story becomes the gift.
Speaker 3: No, well, in a way in a sense, so my
Speaker 3: alcoholism or my addiction went from being this terrible thing
Speaker 3: to when I realized that now I had that power
Speaker 3: to help other alcoholics and addicts. Now this thing that
Speaker 3: was a curse or a burden, this addiction is now
Speaker 3: I mean, a gift is a strong word for it,
Speaker 3: but is now it has a purpose and a use.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think that's I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know where I wanted to go with this.
Speaker 3: I kind of just ended up there in a roundabout way.
Speaker 3: But we're talking about this idea of rewriting your own
Speaker 3: story and how Aubrey has to do that and what's
Speaker 3: interesting is that the way that she's able to do
Speaker 3: that is very often by other people helping her see
Speaker 3: her story differently.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, well we get an example of someone who
Speaker 1: tells the wrong story to himself, and who's there. One
Speaker 1: of the setups of the book is that I was thinking, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: here's a woman who can't actually settle down and marry anybody.
Speaker 1: She's going to go through a series of lovers just
Speaker 1: because that's the situation she's in. Nobody can hold it
Speaker 1: against her. So I just went for it. And so
Speaker 1: she's gonna have, you know, she's gonna fall in love
Speaker 1: with a very possessive man, and then she's gonna have
Speaker 1: a very romantic affair, and then she's gonna have a
Speaker 1: very platonic relationship. One relationship without words. One's just unreciprocated,
Speaker 1: all kinds, one in old age. But one of them
Speaker 1: is the guy who's telling himself and they actually say this,
Speaker 1: she's telling himself the wrong story. He thinks he can
Speaker 1: cure Aubrey. He can't. He's telling himself the wrong thing
Speaker 1: for the wrong reasons too, because he's very possessive and
Speaker 1: wants to hold onto her and later on we get
Speaker 1: people who are telling themselves various versions of themselves, and
Speaker 1: they have it in their head, and so we see
Speaker 1: that manifest through a lot of other characters. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the Prince really helps her along because he kind
Speaker 1: of like opens her up to other possibilities. Vicente at
Speaker 1: the end very patient. He's very much a curmudgeon, but
Speaker 1: he's actually very patient and very really good hearted guy,
Speaker 1: and he helps good listener too, and he helps get
Speaker 1: her through. You were saying the gift, you're describing it
Speaker 1: as you've rewritten your story and that you can help others.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what ends up with Aubrey at the end,
Speaker 1: because I was thinking at the end, because she goes
Speaker 1: to this whole enlightenment thing, she sees the world in
Speaker 1: a whole different way, But how do you explain that
Speaker 1: to other people and how do you make them see
Speaker 1: it too? And towards the end, it's very much intimated
Speaker 1: that she's going to help these kids that she's taken
Speaker 1: care of. She's going to lead them through life and
Speaker 1: she's going to help them try to get there as well.
Speaker 1: So she's kind of the same way she's been there,
Speaker 1: She's seen enlightenment. She's going to help others try to
Speaker 1: get there too, and that, like you're saying, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like her gift to them too. She has rewritten
Speaker 1: her story now and that's what she's gonna I just
Speaker 1: gave away the end of the book, but that's what's
Speaker 1: gonna happen.
Speaker 3: Well, not exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: There's a whole lot to get there.
Speaker 3: So you've alluded to Aubrey finding enlightenment or experience and
Speaker 3: enlightenment a couple of times. Describe that a little bit
Speaker 3: more in whatever way you want. What is it that
Speaker 3: she sees?
Speaker 1: So it's hard to articulate because I've never been enlightened,
Speaker 1: and I don't know anybody who has. I'm using a
Speaker 1: lot of creative license here. I'm using it in a
Speaker 1: way that I don't think is actually representative of what
Speaker 1: is typically what people will call enlightenment. I don't think
Speaker 1: enlightenment is a state of being for starters. I think
Speaker 1: it's just like you have a moment of clarity and
Speaker 1: then it passes, and then you have to go back
Speaker 1: to washing the dishes and raising your kids and everything else.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like an epiphany. You have an epiphany,
Speaker 1: and that's your moment. I've done it differently in the book.
Speaker 1: It's a fictional book. It's magical realism or specultive fiction,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. So what I did
Speaker 1: in the book is that she actually has a moment.
Speaker 1: It's in one of the libraries and she has decided
Speaker 1: she's not reading anymore, and there's one last book sitting there.
Speaker 1: She has this moment where that book has been left
Speaker 1: out for her and she knows it. So she looks
Speaker 1: at it, and I wanted to get that feeling of
Speaker 1: the Prince described it as enlightenment, as waking up from
Speaker 1: your dream world into your actual world. And then enlightenment
Speaker 1: will be I'll wake up further than So she reads
Speaker 1: a story about a blind kid and it's all black
Speaker 1: and white, just pencil drawings, and then he goes blind
Speaker 1: in this page after page of just blank pages, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden she flips when it's all
Speaker 1: in color. And that's what I was getting at there.
Speaker 1: And then she has a moment where the pros itself
Speaker 1: becomes scattered across the page because it's really hard to articulate.
Speaker 1: You don't articulate enlightenment, right, you just kind of like
Speaker 1: create this impression. After that, she's a different woman. She's
Speaker 1: terrified because I'm thinking, if you have a moment where
Speaker 1: it's so clear and so precise that you think you
Speaker 1: see the whole universe in a nutshell type of thing,
Speaker 1: or the face of God or whatever it is, that
Speaker 1: must be terrifying. So she is terrified, and she can't
Speaker 1: look people in the face, and she's this terrified little
Speaker 1: old lady walking through the woods and scared of everything.
Speaker 1: And she has to get over this. And she gets
Speaker 1: over this because she has to take care of these
Speaker 1: children at the end, so she has no choice. She
Speaker 1: gets over it, but it lingers there. She knows she
Speaker 1: has seen something that no one else ever gets to see,
Speaker 1: and it's a worldview that no one else ever has
Speaker 1: because she was one on one with whatever it was,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it, that's been pushing her
Speaker 1: through the world and showing her all these wonderful things,
Speaker 1: things that she doesn't necessarily think are all that wonderful.
Speaker 1: But now in retrospect, now that she's older, she can
Speaker 1: look back on it and say, you know what, that
Speaker 1: was pretty freaking amazing, And she's been rewarded by it
Speaker 1: with this book or this moment, this beyond articulation. So
Speaker 1: to her, she's gone through all that and she doesn't
Speaker 1: know what to do with it it until she realizes, well,
Speaker 1: here I am, I've gotten what I always wanted. I
Speaker 1: have kind of a bit of a home here in
Speaker 1: the jungle, and I've got all these children to take
Speaker 1: care of, and I've got to somehow figure out a
Speaker 1: way to pass this on. And it's a bit like
Speaker 1: there's a branch of Buddhism. There's several. One is, you know,
Speaker 1: you try to reach Nirvana, and then Nirvana's a kind
Speaker 1: of heaven. And then the other one is, you know,
Speaker 1: you reach Nirvana, you see it, it's beautiful. Now you
Speaker 1: go back to Earth to try to help others get there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's Oddrey's approach that. Yeah. So yeah, that's where
Speaker 1: I was going with that.
Speaker 3: It's interesting that you describe her enlightenment in that sense
Speaker 3: of seeing, you know, with the mind of God or
Speaker 3: because I was reading very arcane thing the other day
Speaker 3: about what the different schools of Buddhism believe about omniscience
Speaker 3: and enlightenment. Is enlightenment a type of omniscience where you know, everything,
Speaker 3: you see everything? Or is that not what was meant
Speaker 3: in the book.
Speaker 1: I think I was hinting at that. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's actually how it works. Yeah, yeah, so I was
Speaker 1: taking a lot of dramatic license for me. Enlightenment is
Speaker 1: a moment of epiphany about anything. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be like world chattering or anything like that. You have
Speaker 1: an epiphany about you know, your kids, or your marriage
Speaker 1: or oh that's what a cat thinks like, you know,
Speaker 1: something like that. Oh, a sudden you figure it out. Oh,
Speaker 1: or something occurs to you and you have that moment
Speaker 1: and you can glide off that moment for a while
Speaker 1: because you know. But then there's reality and you have
Speaker 1: to deal with reality, and you have to cook dinner
Speaker 1: and you have to do this and that, and it's gone,
Speaker 1: but you can remember it. You remember what you thought,
Speaker 1: but you don't necessarily have the same feeling. And it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily this gigantic worldview or anything. It's not like
Speaker 1: you have stepped outside the universe and can see it all.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you've taken certain mushrooms you can do that.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but yeah, Well, as someone who studied
Speaker 3: and practiced really diligently in Zen Buddhism, which is very
Speaker 3: focused on enlightenment. I mean Zen sort of considered like
Speaker 3: the direct train. And so I've had a couple of
Speaker 3: those experiences, and I would say that I agree in
Speaker 3: that they were like waking up, and yet they were
Speaker 3: very ordinary in another way. It was just sort of
Speaker 3: a like, oh, of course, they were what would be
Speaker 3: described as sort of oneness or unitive experiences, right where
Speaker 3: like I truly felt like I was connected to everything else,
Speaker 3: and my personal sense of me as this limited individual
Speaker 3: was just kind of gone. I ran my life into
Speaker 3: the ground chasing heroin, and you know, it was it
Speaker 3: was better than that. And I do think there's a
Speaker 3: lot of debate in spiritual communities about does somebody become
Speaker 3: permanently awakened? What does that even mean? You know, let
Speaker 3: me be clear, I'm making no claim to that in
Speaker 3: my case at all. And for me, it was this
Speaker 3: really ramatic experience that really shook up my psychic landscape.
Speaker 3: I've had a few of them, but really shook it
Speaker 3: up in ways that never went back to the way
Speaker 3: it was before. But then ordinary life and ordinary consciousness
Speaker 3: does very much reassert itself.
Speaker 1: It's like an infusion of love for everyone. I always
Speaker 1: suppose is that. Yeah, yeah, that's what it feels like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as you've read enough about them to know, and
Speaker 3: what you did in your book with the way I
Speaker 3: love the way you had the words scatter across the page,
Speaker 3: because that is the nature of these experiences. They call
Speaker 3: them ineffable, right I, meaning you can't anything you say
Speaker 3: about them is trivial compared to the experience, right, right,
Speaker 3: So it was a oneness experience, the great Zen teacher
Speaker 3: Szuki said, and I love this. He said, not two
Speaker 3: but not one, describing this experience. So like, it's not
Speaker 3: like I thought I was you exactly. I could tell
Speaker 3: a difference between you and me, but on some deeper
Speaker 3: level there was no difference.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It went from being something I intellectually sort of think about,
Speaker 3: like interdependence and interconnection and know to like the experience
Speaker 3: of it. But yeah, it was one of amazing amount
Speaker 3: of love and freedom and just ah shit, like all
Speaker 3: that stuff I've been worried about really makes no difference.
Speaker 3: I think a lot about these things, having had a
Speaker 3: couple of them and study them. It's interesting. In the
Speaker 3: Zen tradition, they describe this as they call it ken show,
Speaker 3: which means a moment or satori, a moment of awakening, boom,
Speaker 3: this flash, like you're describing. There's one Zen teacher makes
Speaker 3: this description of it's like you're in a room that's
Speaker 3: all enclosed and you have this moment and it's like boom,
Speaker 3: somebody punches a hole in the wall, and now there's
Speaker 3: light coming through there. And over time, and this is
Speaker 3: what co on practice in Zen is intended to do,
Speaker 3: is that it keeps punching more holes in that wall
Speaker 3: until eventually the whole finally, one day, the whole structure
Speaker 3: completely crumbles.
Speaker 1: Does that happen for people, I think to.
Speaker 3: The degree that it is ongoing is hard to know.
Speaker 3: But I do think people can have pretty radical, fundamental
Speaker 3: changes in the way they experience the world. But again,
Speaker 3: I also do believe we habituate to anything. I don't
Speaker 3: think that you get out of that. I often think
Speaker 3: of enlightenment as a sudden jump in consciousness, meaning you're
Speaker 3: here and then all of a sudden, you're way up
Speaker 3: here and it happens like that, and you're like WHOA,
Speaker 3: because it's so different versus a gradual thing where you
Speaker 3: change a little bit, a little bit, a little bit,
Speaker 3: a little bit. I've joked before that if you put
Speaker 3: the twenty three year old, homeless, heroinautic version of me
Speaker 3: in my brain today, he might think he was enlightened.
Speaker 3: And again, I'm not saying I'm enlightened. That's not what
Speaker 3: I'm saying. I'm saying the difference between the level of
Speaker 3: the psychic torment of where I was then and now
Speaker 3: would have seemed completely revolutionary to that poor kid. But
Speaker 3: it's totally normal to me, right because I've gotten here
Speaker 3: little steps, that's I mean, with a couple what felt
Speaker 3: like sort of big jumps, but it's been much more incremental.
Speaker 1: So the wall coming down, would that be because you're
Speaker 1: punching holes in it a few to time until the
Speaker 1: whole thing comes down. Would that be the same as
Speaker 1: kind of like habituating to this sense of oneness.
Speaker 3: That's a good question. I think what they're trying to
Speaker 3: get to there is that you have these flashes where
Speaker 3: you see the world in a certain way, and then
Speaker 3: ordinary consciousness reasserts itself, and then you have another flash,
Speaker 3: and then ordinary consciousness asserts itself, and then eventually the
Speaker 3: thing crumbles and ordinary consciousness isn't there. But I think
Speaker 3: there's an element of consciousness that things become ordinary. But
Speaker 3: I do think there is a degree of psychic freedom
Speaker 3: that is available that some people achieve in a pretty
Speaker 3: ongoing way. But what the experience is like for them ongoing,
Speaker 3: I don't know. Meaning if you or I were to
Speaker 3: suddenly drop into that head, we would be like holy shit.
Speaker 3: But I don't know what it's like to them, right,
Speaker 3: And then you get into the whole question of people
Speaker 3: who are in the business of selling you could become enlightened,
Speaker 3: and so thus they have a snake oil. And I
Speaker 3: don't even necessarily mean snake oil, but I do mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know. Enlightenment seems like it sometimes can turn
Speaker 3: into a contest with people like I am and you're not.
Speaker 3: I don't just mean straight out Charlatan's either. I mean
Speaker 3: people have had some degree of insight, right.
Speaker 1: I was thinking that if you ever do habituate to
Speaker 1: that like this is your normal state of being now,
Speaker 1: then does it become really difficult to fit in society?
Speaker 1: And are you are you in danger because you're kind
Speaker 1: of disconnected? I don't know, that's just.
Speaker 3: That's the nature of that phrase choppwood carry water?
Speaker 1: Really? Really what chopped wood carry water?
Speaker 3: What? It's funny because you alluded to like doing going
Speaker 3: back to just doing the laundry and doing things like that.
Speaker 1: Right, oh okay, right right?
Speaker 3: The zen phrase you know, before enlightenment, chop would carry water.
Speaker 3: After Enlightenment, chop would carry water, Meaning you just do
Speaker 3: the basic same things, right right? I don't think so,
Speaker 3: because again, to me, it wasn't. I mean, I've done hallucinogens, right,
Speaker 3: I know what it's like to be in an altered
Speaker 3: state where you're like, whoa, I can't function?
Speaker 1: Right, this was not that at all? It was it
Speaker 1: felt No, I wouldn't think it would be quite that bad.
Speaker 3: But I'm thinking I'm a danger here of pretending that
Speaker 3: I know what enlightenment is about. So that's I want
Speaker 3: to I want to just caveat question. Just yes, I
Speaker 3: want to be really careful. But I've talked to a
Speaker 3: lot of spiritual teachers who seem to have some degree
Speaker 3: of that. But you know, you wonder what any of
Speaker 3: that is worth or mean when you find these you know,
Speaker 3: so called enlightened teachers that are sexually abusing their students, right, anyway,
Speaker 3: let's change directions and end this. Libraries. You're a librarian
Speaker 3: or we're a librarian. I don't I don't know, Okay,
Speaker 3: I love libraries.
Speaker 1: It was awesome being a one.
Speaker 3: Nicole who works with the one you feed, who's a
Speaker 3: producer of the show and helps us do some other things,
Speaker 3: was a library, and she actually left a job at
Speaker 3: the library to come work for us. So libraries are
Speaker 3: near and dear to our hearts. In the book, libraries
Speaker 3: play a big role, and they seem to be the
Speaker 3: one place that Aubrey can stay in right, right, so
Speaker 3: they seem like a sanctuary to her. Was that the
Speaker 3: intention of her being able to stay without having to move.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the only place where she can go where
Speaker 1: she doesn't have to worry about rushing off to the
Speaker 1: next place. Although she actually travels through the library too,
Speaker 1: so she doesn't actually notice this for a while. But
Speaker 1: if the idea is that, look, you're set off on
Speaker 1: this journey, you're wandering around and around the world. If
Speaker 1: the idea is that something out there wants to show
Speaker 1: you the world, and particularly these libraries, because the whole
Speaker 1: history of everything is in these libraries. And he's showing off.
Speaker 1: He wants somebody to know. Right, this is a very
Speaker 1: old Testament idea of a divine being, whereas he's kind
Speaker 1: of proud of what he's done, he's got his own
Speaker 1: mood swings and so on and so forth, and he
Speaker 1: wants like the show off his creation. Is the idea
Speaker 1: or not his, but whatever it is, I never specify.
Speaker 1: I'm very open about it. So there are these libraries,
Speaker 1: and the idea is, well, look, this is what the
Speaker 1: end goal is, to get into these places and see
Speaker 1: what's in there. Why would he chase her out or
Speaker 1: whatever it is? Why would the world chase her? If
Speaker 1: the world want you to see was in these libraries,
Speaker 1: why would the world chase you out? Again? So the
Speaker 1: idea is to take that away. It made no sense
Speaker 1: to have her finally find these places and then get
Speaker 1: sick and have to leave them, because this was the
Speaker 1: whole endpoint of her journey, really, and really that kind
Speaker 1: of is where the whole journey kind of ends. And
Speaker 1: then there's an epilogue in the Amazon. Just logically speaking, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where it would go. And why why chase her out?
Speaker 1: Once you're in? You know, this is the part that
Speaker 1: you were meant to see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting in a sense to say that on
Speaker 3: one hand, assuming there's some force that is directing things
Speaker 3: in this novel. On one hand, I'm going to force
Speaker 3: you to keep going around the world to see places,
Speaker 3: right Like, I'm not going to let you stop. You're
Speaker 3: just have to keep going. And at the same time,
Speaker 3: also then saying but you can also get everything that
Speaker 3: you need to see from a book is an interesting
Speaker 3: juxtaposition there, right.
Speaker 1: It is, And I bring that up. She has a
Speaker 1: near death experience where she's thinking this stuff through while
Speaker 1: she's dying, and she's realizing, you know, I've spent all
Speaker 1: this time. I've spent like the past, you know, so
Speaker 1: many years of my life just reading books when you
Speaker 1: know there's a whole library out here in the actual world. Right.
Speaker 1: I think about this often because you know, I love
Speaker 1: to read books and stuff like that. But it's a
Speaker 1: very solitary existence. I mean, it's not like going to
Speaker 1: the You can go to the movies with your friends
Speaker 1: or the theater or concert, but a book. Reading a
Speaker 1: book is something you just do by yourself. You can't
Speaker 1: share it. It's an anti social behavior. Actually, I hate
Speaker 1: saying about you know the thing I'm in. It's true,
Speaker 1: is there's no way around it. And so I often
Speaker 1: think about that because there's a kind of a not
Speaker 1: a disconnected kind of conflict. Yeah, I'm a bit both.
Speaker 1: I can be very introverted. I can be very extroverted,
Speaker 1: and I suppose a lot of us can, which is
Speaker 1: why we do these things. We can be very sociable,
Speaker 1: but then take time out for ourselves to read these books.
Speaker 1: So I'm not knocking it, but I am saying it
Speaker 1: is inherently an antisocial behavior. And so she does the
Speaker 1: deep dive, and she doesn't see anybody for years, and
Speaker 1: she's just doing this and she learns a lot. She
Speaker 1: sees everything else, but she misses a lot at the
Speaker 1: same time. You've got to have a foot in both places,
Speaker 1: and she doesn't for the longest time. And then when
Speaker 1: she's out in the world, she has to readjust to it,
Speaker 1: and she has to learn how to talk to people again.
Speaker 1: She's coming out like a hermit, and she has to
Speaker 1: totally get used to the world all over again. Those
Speaker 1: are the thoughts that she's having, and she writes, as
Speaker 1: you know what, you know, I'm reading the stories of
Speaker 1: all these individuals around the world. But I'm a story too,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think I make a pretty good book,
Speaker 1: she says at the end. That's where that was going.
Speaker 3: Wonderful, Doug, thank you so much for coming down. I've
Speaker 3: really enjoyed this conversation. I really enjoyed the book. Love
Speaker 3: links in the show notes to where people can get
Speaker 3: the book, and it's a real treat. I hope listeners
Speaker 3: will talk.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. You know you do these interviews
Speaker 1: all the time, so you're used to it. But I
Speaker 1: never get to talk like this to anybody, so I
Speaker 1: enjoy this way more than you. I think.
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