August 14, 2025 • 37 mins
Author and podcaster Gretchen Rubin joins Dani to talk about aphorisms and family secrets.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Danny Shapiro and this is a bonus episode of
family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the
secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep
from ourselves. Today, my guest is Gretchen Ruben, best selling author,
creator of the podcast Happier and Brilliant Student of Human Nature.
(00:32):
Let's dive right in. So, Gretchen, even though this is
a bonus episode, I'm still going to begin with the
question that I love to begin my episodes of Family
Secrets with, which is tell me about the landscape of
your childhood. Because you've spent so much of your life
(00:56):
making human nature and happiness in particular your central subject,
I would say, and I'm curious about your childhood and
whether the seeds for that were in there.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Well, probably the seeds of that were in that. I
was a huge reader as a child, and like my
happiest memories were going to our local library and checking
out the maximum number of books, and on the rare
occasions when we were going on our day long car
trip to visit our grandparents, we actually got to buy
books for the trip, and that was always a highlight.
But the landscape of my child is I grew up
(01:32):
in Kansas City, Missouri, with you know, a mom and
a dad and a little sister and a dog, and
visiting my grandparents in North Nebraska every summer. So I
had a very kind of comically like standardized child that
of course you didn't feel like that to me at all.
Felt extremely rich and strange and particular. But from the outside,
(01:54):
that's what it looked like, and.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I would think, looking back, that's what that's what it
looks like too, right, mm hmmm.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Well, one of the things that's interesting looking back is
my sister, who's the television writer. Now, like we both
are professional writers, and growing up, we had no idea
that that was our fate. We weren't talking about it
or seemingly working toward it like our whole family read
a lot. But looking back on it, there was really
no sign of that, which is kind of odd to us,
(02:21):
all of us now thinking back, So what do.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
You think sort of led you in the direction of
exploring particularly happiness, because I'm thinking that, you know, it's
so interesting. I mean, you've got this fantastic podcast Happier
that you do with your sister Elizabeth, and you know,
you have your massively best selling Happiness Project, and you
(02:45):
have your wonderful life in the Five Senses, which I
would argue is also about happiness in a way. What
do you think either pushed you or led you in
the direction of wanting to explore what makes us happy?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Well, as you said at the beginning, my true subject
is human nature. Yeah, I'm just interested in who are we?
How do we understand ourselves, which, as you know, is
extremely difficult to do, how do we change if we
want to change? And happiness is one aspect of that.
It's probably the most hopeful and exciting aspect of that question.
(03:20):
But I'm really interested in all of it. Before I
wrote The Happiest Project, like, I wrote a big biography
of Winston Churchill, and that's really all about just using
one person to explore human nature. He has such a
tremendous life, it's easier to see him. He's so magnified,
so he makes a good study. My first book was
called Power, Money, Fame, Sex, A User's Guy. That was
(03:42):
a very that was assive, but also a study of
human nathers. Because happiness is relationships, it's the body, it's
purpose it's work, it's you know, it's every it's so
many things come into it.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And it's also I think a kind of mythical holy
grail in terms of, you know, what is happiness even
what does it mean? You know, there's so many there's
so many colors to it. You know, there's contentment, there's coziness,
there's things that could kind of masquerade it as happiness
but really are more like, you know, kind of mania,
(04:17):
you know, And there's kind of the way in which
and I think in terms of the Family Secrets podcast,
I think a lot of my guests and a lot
of the people who really relate to some of the
stories that we tell feel like they need to kind
of put a good face on things as opposed to
(04:38):
what the true nature of happiness or joy is, which
is kind of a very internal and private experience.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I started my career in law, where you know, you
found an entire semester arguing about the definition of contract,
and happiness is even more elusive to define, has something
like fifteen or seventeen academic definitions, and you can get
very caught up and is what I'm feeling tentman or
joy or peace? But I think there's a kind of
happiness that comes from clarity and from like unders like
(05:08):
having the pieces fall into place, and when, as someone
who listens to here, I don't miss an episode of
your podcast, For many people, there is that moment, and
you certainly write about this in Inheritance, where the pieces
fit together and you are like, Okay, now I have
a much clearer view of things that have fogged my
vision and confused me. And and so sometimes even if
(05:30):
it's a very what you might say, unhappy secret, there
is a kind of serenity that comes from understanding and so,
and that's why I think it's a mistake to get
really caught up and like what is happiness exactly, because well,
one of my secrets of adulthood is happiness doesn't always
make us feel happy. And so something can make you
happier even though it doesn't really make you feel happy.
(05:53):
And I think a lot of times in family secrets,
it's sort of in that zone of human experience.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, absolutely, And I through your book, which is told
in for the most part in aphorisms, and was really
looking in particular for the aphorisms that I feel most
connect to the sort of family secret stories that we tell.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
I take down some too, So it'll be interesting if
we picked out the same time.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Oh will it be well? So before we even do that,
I mean, I want to say first of all that
your book Secrets of Adulthood, and the subtitle is simple
Truths for our Complex lives. And I love both that
title and the subtitle because the idea of I mean
aphorisms as you define them. A couple of different times
(06:39):
in the book, brief and sharp aphorisms distill big ideas
into few words. By saying little, they managed to suggest more.
The clarity of their language promotes the clarity of our sinking.
And then a little bit later you write, the discipline
of the aphorism forces precision of sinking. So I mean,
could you just like talk a little bit. You've spent
(07:00):
you know, most of your life, like from the time
that you were a kid, I think, writing down, you know,
aphorisms of others and writing down aphorisms of your own,
and it seems like a great source of like mental
play and pleasure for you.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Absolutely. Now I have a giant trove of my favorite
of other people's aphorisms and they and then I started
writing my own and it is It is an interesting
thing because it's like that old joke, you know, I'm
sorry I wrote I wrote yourself a long letter. I
didn't have time to write a short one that trying
to really crystallize a thought into just a few words,
Like you really have to understand what you're thinking and
(07:36):
let you even agree with your own thoughts. So that's
why I think it's really a very creative and intellectually
gratifying thing to do as a writer or as a thinker.
I think a lot of a lot of people have
these aphorisms that they've created through their own time and
experience and yeah, and studying other people's they do. They
run through my mind more because since they're they're short,
(07:58):
they sort of sticking your mind more. Like one of
my favorite aforicts is Mariva and Idna Eeschenbach and whom
everyone has forgotten, but she's my favorite efforist. And like
she has one that I think of often. You can
fall so fast you think you're flying.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, like once you internalize that you can't untie it,
you forget it.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Right, and it expresses something that you might have. My favorite,
my favorite kind of aphorism is the one where you
read it and you think I've thought that myself. I
never quite put it into words, but I've had that
thought myself. And so I was, you know, trying to
write those myself, as you know, just kind of as
(08:38):
well as gathering them from other people, because I do
feel like there's something you can say in short that's
better done than evil when you do it long.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, And it was so interesting to me that in
some of the you know, of what you describe as
being on your on your crowded bookshelves, you know, with
these masterpieces of philosophy and literature. I've been actually listening
every day for the last few months to Latsa's dow
Da ching just one reading a day, and it's just
(09:09):
kind of amazing how clarifying and enlivening that isn't how
much it sort of stays with you because of its simplicity.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Well, and that's interesting that you do like just one
a day, because there is something when when you just
have one, you really sit with it and you really,
you really sink into it. I'm doing this thing called
a slow read a Worn Piece, where Simon Hazel does
a thing on Substack where you read one chapter of
Worn Piece a day for a year. It has like
three hundred and fifty five chapters, so it works out
very well. And when you read just a short thing,
(09:41):
it does land differently. It's like binge watching Worse versus
watching one episode. When you read just one and really
think about it, it's a very different kind of experience.
So that it's funny because when I was writing this
book of afrosm suer like, oh this is fun It's
like people will just whip through it. It's bite sized,
it's easy, and like, no, it's actually very dense because
if you is reading, if you read more than a
(10:02):
few you start feeling like, whoa, that's a lot on
my mind. So I love the idea of doing just
a little bit of each day with like a classic
like that. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I mean, this is your book is a book that
I can imagine living on a bedside table because it
really feels like you want to take it in these
bite sized pieces and just even just drift off to
sleep or wake up in the morning with you know,
just a lot of this wisdom.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
The one I quote most often is, or my family
quotes the most often is something that can be done
at any time has often done at no time, because
that's just just like we've all done, and we've all
experienced it, you know, and you're like, what's you have
a phrase for it? You're like, Okay, I'm saying that
all the time. Yeah, yeah, totally mourning myself.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, we'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
The first of the aphorisms in your book that I
jotted down as being relevant to family secrets is we
should pay special attention to anything that we lie about
(11:07):
or try to hunt. Yeah right, yeah, yeah, I mean
to me, every episode, every every conversation, whether on the
podcast or not on the podcast, with people who have
either been holding their own secret, or have discovered a
(11:27):
secret that has been withheld from them, or have a
secret that they can't even quite touch because it's a
live wire.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Well, this is your opening line about it is the
secrets that people. How does it go? The people that
keep people keep from us, that people that.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep
from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves, which
always to me, that's the secrets we keep from ourselves
are to me the most interesting.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
That's what we lie about.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
That's right, even if we're not conscious that we're lying.
I mean, in a way, this aphorism is so fantastic
because just the language, we should pay special attention to
anything that we lie about or try to hide, because
even if we don't know that that's exactly what we're doing,
we do know it's the it's the unthought known, we
(12:16):
kind of know it in our bones.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Well, it's also the snoop. Like you also, you say
often that this is a theme that comes up with
your your guess is the snoop. And so there's a
sense of like, I can't ask for this information straight
out somehow, it's it's taboo. I have to sneak around
and look for it, you know, because it's there's I
(12:39):
have to hide the fact that I want.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
To know right right. And there's a real theme of
often people in their childhood's snooping, snooping on their parents,
snooping on their on the adults around them. And and
another thing that comes up is that when we're doing
something like that, I mean, it's like what you said
about your own childhood and the endlessly rich and sort
(13:02):
of fascinating it was to you because it was your childhood,
we don't know anything other than our own childhoods. So
you know, if like I snooped all the time as
a kid, and I just alternately thought either there's something
very wrong with me, or maybe everybody does this because
I had no I had nothing to go on. So
(13:23):
I'm just the idea of the special attention. I think
that will really stay with me because that that feeling
of oh, yeah, I need, I need to pay attention
to this, even if I don't know exactly what it
is that I'm paying attention to, need to sit with
it right exactly. So the next one I came up with,
and then I'm going to ask you about what you
came up with and whether there's an overlap. Build your
(13:45):
shrine at the top of a long steep path. A
view is more beautiful when we've earned it.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
I feel like them, part of them, the power of
efforts are just sort of like the drop my quality.
Like that's what I had to say, Yeah, build your
shrine on the on the top of a long steep path.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah, And that is also what I feel like, the earning,
the discovery the long steep path. You know, the idea
that so often guests are and again not just guests,
but also people I encounter. They make these discoveries later
in life, and you know, after a long steep path
and that feeling of oh, the recognition that that is
(14:31):
making the pieces fall into place, and there's something really
beautiful about that. And then the word shrine and there's
something that is you know, sort of poetic and divine
about that. It's making it holy in some way.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
That's one of my favorites. Well, here's one that I
thought of. Tell me if you think it, you think
it resonates with your themes, which is the place that
hurts isn't always the place that's injured.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
I wrote that down, Gretcha, there you go. Yeah, that
was the last one I wrote down. That's so powerful.
The place that hurts isn't always the place that's injured.
I mean the level on which that is you know,
sometimes physically true, but metaphorically true. Why do we behave
(15:19):
in certain ways based on you know, something that is
painful or something that is like doesn't feel right, and
we don't know the origin of it, we don't know
where it comes from, and yet it has the power
to shape our entire lives until we do. I mean,
Carl Jung said, until we make the unconscious conscious, it
(15:41):
will direct our lives, and we will call it fate.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
One of the things I've write about a lot or
talk about a lot, is identify the problem, because a
lot of times people have a sense of uneasiness or
distress or a feeling like they need to change, but
without identifying the problem, a lot of times we change
what's easy to change or what's obvious, or we blamed
somebody else for something that we're feeling instead of really
probing to understand, like what where is this actually coming from?
(16:09):
Which sometimes looks quite different from the pain that we're experiencing.
And and so I think that that often happens where
Actually a friend of mine said, she said, you know,
I live in New York City. And the friend of
mine was saying, she's going to look for a new apartment,
and I said, and as I see her like six
months later, and because she really wanted outdoor space, so
(16:32):
I saw her six months later and I said, oh,
how is the apartment hunting going? And she said, well,
I gave it up. And I said why, like you
were so excited to do it. She said, well, it's
I told by broker I thought I wanted outdoor space,
but I realized I really want a husband, and it's like, right,
it's a lot. You know, you'd be like, okay, getting
outdoor space. That's what she thought she wanted. That wasn't
(16:53):
really going to address her problem. But fortunately for her,
she figured that out in time before she made a
huge change that wouldn't really have resolved what was bothering her.
I think that's really easy to do, and so you
say like, oh, it's the fault of this or that
person or this situation, when in fact it might be
something quite different that might be more painful to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
So here's another one that I picked out. Sometimes we
choose to confess our deepest secret to a stranger rather
than a friend. Mm hmmm. You know, I was thinking
about that because I once I think in the first season,
maybe the second season of Family Secrets, I had a
(17:37):
guest on who did not want to be identified, and
I decided that that was okay, and we had a
great conversation and it was a really good episode. But
I got quite a lot of blowback from Family Secrets
listeners who were like, wait a minute, you know, we
(17:58):
thought this was a podcast about eradicating shame and you know,
owning our own stories and you know, becoming sort of
comfortable with whatever has made us who we are. So
why would it be why would you have a guest
(18:18):
on who didn't want to be identified? And I've never
done it again, and I think there's something in this
aphorism that speaks to that.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
But on the other hand, is there privacy versus secrecy?
And maybe somebody feels that they can confess to a
bunch of strangers, but they don't really want to deal
with it. They want to deserve there. I mean, I
think the reason that it's easier to tell a stranger
is that there's no consequences, Like, there's no there's no aftermath,
there's no talking about it again, nobody else gets drawn
(18:51):
into it because it's just it's just a stranger and
there's something kind of beautiful about that. And in a way,
a big public can also do you like that stranger,
But maybe you're saying you don't want you don't want
to talk to people who are not ready to deal
with that exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
And there's there are different kinds of consequences. I mean,
there's certainly the consequences and This is something that we
run into a lot. Is not wanting to betray or
hurt someone else's confidence or in a family, one person's
I'm comfortable with this not being a secret is another
person's nightmare. But there's another and I understand that completely.
(19:30):
There's another kind of I think fear that I think
about more in terms of just my guests and the stories,
the way that I hope they land, which is the
eradication if that's even possible, of shame of the the
(19:52):
you know, the feeling that there are so many people
who are listening or reading and nodding their heads and
saying like, yeah, I get that, or something like that
happened in my family, or even if something like that
didn't happen in my family. You know, you're you're okay,
this is your you know, this is this is okay.
(20:14):
I'm you know, sorry, sorry that this happened to you,
but you're like, you know, there's a there's a kind
of humanity, I guess, like the shared human nature of
There's very little I think that we could say to
each other in terms of our inner worlds that we
can sometimes feel are so shameful or mortifying. Very little
(20:37):
that would actually genuinely be shocking.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Right, No, your on secrets seemed so much more in
full than the secrets of other people. No, it's it's
very true. Yeah, you'll read about somebody who's like they
they they agonized for decades and then they you know,
and then and you're like, oh, that's it, that's not
that big a deal, right, Yes, now it's true. But
(21:01):
it is tricky though. And I was like, let's say
there's there's there's something that big and traumatic that happens
to person a. And person a has a brother and
sister and parents and children, and they are all talking
about their own story about what happened with somebody who
was very close to them, and yet there are secrets.
If one person talks about it, then they've all essentially
talked about it. So I see how you should get
(21:24):
tricky depending on the situation, right, exactly exactly. So then
that leads me to one more the last one I have,
which is decisions will be made by choice or by chance. Yeah,
because not deciding is a decision.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Not choosing is a choice. And wow, that's yes, that's
really powerful.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Uh, yes, and it's and and if you've ever felt
that happen. It feels like going with the flow is
it's taking you someplace against your will, just as if
you were fighting against somebody else. Yeah. No, I have
experienced that many times myself.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, and in ways both small and large. I remember
when my memory Inheritance came out, like literally the day
it came out, and I gave my first reading in
a bookstore. There were a lot of people there who
just did not seem like my usual readers, And among
them were couples sitting there looking really uncomfortable and stricken
(22:26):
and holding hands or just sitting kind of stiffly. And
I realized that these were couples who had not divulged
to their children that either yeah, you know that they
that they used a donor, or possibly even that they
were adopted, but you know, given the times, it was
more likely that it was, you know, they used a donor,
(22:48):
an egg donor or a sperm donor and just made
the decision that the child never needed to know. And
and this came up again and again and again for
me in you know, q and as and or therapists
would say, I have patient insteader going through this, you know,
what should I tell them? And Meanwhile, I'm not I'm
not a therapist and I'm not an expert. I'm someone
that's happened to And I tried to come up with
(23:09):
something to say that would be true and useful and
without a whiff of judgment. And so what I came
up was that I would say, is they're going to
find out. Ah, They're going to find out because there
are no more of these kinds of secrets, these these
are these are going to go the way of you
know that. It's just it's not going to be possible anymore.
(23:30):
And so, but not deciding is a decision, and not
choosing is a choice, and.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Exactly, Yeah, but I love that that was your response
because it's right. It's there's no advice to it, there's
no judgment to it. There's merely minding them of something
that is very obvious to anybody who thinks about it,
which is they're going to find out. And then given that,
(23:57):
if you know they're going to find out, what are
you going to do?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Right? That affects your choice? I mean, it may not
affect your choice. You may still decide that you're too
afraid or have your own reasons, but you are definitely
making a choice to not that your kids are going
to find this out at some point and maybe maybe
you're not alive anymore.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
I mean, one of the things that I've really time
to believe and for myself, because I've fallen into this
many times, most significantly when I went to law school,
because I just drifted into law school. I was like,
it was this the easy default decision. I just I
did it very it was sort of the easiest non
choice I could make, even though it was incredibly difficult
and hard work to do it. I did it for
(24:36):
all the wrong reasons, and I'm glad that I went.
And that's sometimes confusing because sometimes we don't decide or
are We drift into a decision and then we're happy
with it. So it's not like it always ends badly.
But I really now very uncomfortable when I or anybody
close to me is making a choice without intention. Then
like you can make the wrong choice, or you can
decide to do nothing at all as to the person,
(24:58):
like maybe we've just decided, you know, we're not going
to raise it. That's our decision. But that's very different
from just being just not confronting it and not making
a decision. It's it's that kind of non choice choice
is very unsatisfying in the end. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
But what you're really talking about, I think is a
self awareness, you know, a self knowledge. It goes back
to the paying special attention.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Yeah, that's the great aim, is self knowledge. And you think,
I just hang out with myself all day long. What
can be easier than self knowledge? And yet I think
it's a great challenge of our lives, which is well,
which brings me to another secret of adulthood. See if
you think this is relevant to family secrets, which is
we know what matters to people when they repeat themselves.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah, I love that one.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah, because it does seem like sometimes the family secrets,
people are saying nothing. But then sometimes it's like certain
things just get repeated over and over and in that
way you're like, Okay, that's significant in some way or
a certain pattern and get repeated over and over.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yes, and you may not know for a very long
time why. It's almost as if it's in bold when
you hear it. It's just something that you you know,
that one makes note of without knowing why. And I
think if we're if if we're fortunate and eventually we
(26:22):
are able to come to know what that means. Then
it's like, you know, in reverse, we look back and think, oh,
that's what that was.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
I get it. That's such a gratifying feeling when you
look back and you sort of see a pattern where.
I mean, I think this is what a lot of
people get from therapy, and a lot of times when
people get from keeping journals or any kind of like
narrative practice, which is as you're telling the story to yourself,
you can start to identify patterns that in the ongoingness
of life sometimes you don't see because you don't have
(26:55):
that kind of reflection.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's also you know, we
talk a lot about trauma. It's one of the hallmarks
of like the narrative that someone who's in the midst
of being traumatized by something tells is like a loop.
It's like a closed feedback loop. It's it's the same
story over and over again with absolutely no deepening until
(27:23):
one is finally begins to be able to take like
a half a step back and start to start to
see a little more clearly, a little bit more from
a distance. Mm hmm, We'll be right back. So any
others that you remarked.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Well, what of them was? We care for many people
we don't particularly care for, because that seems to be
a big scene that family secrets were just people where
they really are struggling in a way that where they're like,
I do love this person or care for this person,
or I do have to ignore and my mother is
still my mother or or whatever the case, and I do,
but sometimes that it's really hard to care for people
(28:06):
we don't care for.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Right, right, and everything that gets placed on top of that,
the guilt or you know, feeling like you know, the
feeling conflicted or feeling like a bad person. But that
is the reason why it's an aphorism is because it's
kind of it's just true, it's kind of unimpeachable.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Well, one of the things I like about aphorisms and
sometimes you disagree, and just because they're so short, you
can sort of think about it more clearly and come
up with your own conclusions. Like I'm sure there's I
have aphorisms in my book that people might disagree with,
but I'm like, but now now you know your own
mind better, Like, and even in disagreeing, there's clarity because
you're thinking about something that you might not have ever
(28:47):
sort of stopped to inquire about your own views into
which is also helpful.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, because we don't. We get caught up in just
the the busy slipstream of you know, our daily lives,
and we just else. We don't stop and you know,
sort of interrogate what's going on until we're you know,
we're all forced to at some point or another. We're
all forced to or until it becomes a kind of
(29:13):
habit or a practice. I mean, your practice of keeping
these you know, this massive file of aphorisms is has
been something that's been like among the building blocks of
your life and your adult life.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Mm hm No, it's something that I've done, I mean
back to when I was eight or ten years old.
It's like copying out quotations and keeping them in categories.
And I'm always interested in one. Like the things that
we do as children like play into what we do
as adults. And this is definitely something that I did
as a child, was collect collect collect copy.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah. Yeah, I share that with you and I and
it's so interesting because when you're doing it, you're not
doing it with any aim in mind.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
No, it's just pure admiration.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
But you know what's interesting, though, is I will some
time write something where I'm like, this seems very significant
to me and I don't even know why, But I'll
find myself like I'll finish a book and then I'll
find myself thinking about a passage or something and I'm like,
I don't know why that struck me, but I need
to copy it and keep it.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
And then years later I'll be like, oh, now I
understand what that meant, or like why I cared about
that or why that struck me. And it's such an
it's just such a gratifying feeling where you're sort of like, Okay,
these ideas have been swirling around in my head for
such a long time, and now finally I understand what
I was just groping toward.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, it's like you catch up with yourself.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Well, for years, I was absolutely I love the writing
of Andy Warhol. I don't even really like his visual art,
but I love I mean, he's this bonker's thinker. And
so I've read and re read like the books that
he wrote in his interviews, and one of those things
is he tells a little story about how he was
going to Woolworths with a friend and his friend is like, oh,
I can't stand that buzz. And he was like, what buzz?
(30:56):
And then he said, oh, yeah, there was a buzz,
but for me, it was completely drowned out by the
smell of roasting peanuts. I was like, what is that?
How can a noise be drowned out by the smell
of roasting peanuts? Like, I just thought it was an
example of his kind of just strange mind. But it's
actually true. I wrote Life in Five Senses, and it's
actually true that when one sense is really activated, the
(31:18):
others kind of fade back. And so it literally was
true for him. But but you know, it took Andy
Warhol to to describe it as such a like interesting
and poetic way, But it was just I was like,
you know, years and years and years later, I finally
caught up to the day that I copied that out
(31:39):
of the philosophy of Andy Warhol.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I love that, and like it also makes these kinds
of collecting of these quotes, aphorisms, you know, pieces of
wisdom into a kind of journal of its own, because
you can you can see what preoccupied you. Yes, yeah,
it's so true.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
It's so true. It's so true. No, like I went
through that because I wrote this unconventional biography of Whist Churchill,
and I had this giant collection of quotations that are
all about kind of the nature of biography, and and
then I just sort of moved on, and so I
wasn't preoccupied by the nature of biography anymore. And then
I was in this period where I was absolutely preoccupied
with color. I mean, I can't even describe to you
(32:22):
how I how much I spent thinking and talking and
reading about color, and has this huge file of color
quotations which I now still sometimes add to from time
to time or look at that. It's not the way
that it was for a while, because then I just
moved on. But yes, you're right, it is. It's a
kind of intellectible journal. Absolutely, it's so true.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
So would you read a few of the passages. I've
earmarked a couple first one page thirty nine. It's in
the self realization.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Oh, I love the story. We're often better off admitting
uncomfortable facts about ourselves rather than trying to disguise them.
Nebraska saw great success with its tourist slogan. Honestly, it's
not for everyone. Marmite, the Yeast based savory spread declared
their love it or you Hate It? I mean I
(33:16):
just love that well. And there's been there's been a
kind of an update to that, which is the city
of Oslo did a huge campaign called is it even
a City? Where it's all about like we're this kind
of disgruntled inhabitant of Oslo is like is this even
a city? And everything that he's describing that he doesn't
like about it. Of course you're like, oh my gosh,
I must immediately go to Oslo. But right, it's uh, honestly,
(33:39):
it's not for everyone. It's it's the truth.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
And there's something there's something that's so disarming about that. Yes,
and you trust the person who's saying that well.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
And as a writer, one of the things kind of
relatedly that I remind myself is a strong voice repels
as well as attracts, And just like Nebraska, honestly, I'm
not for everyone, you know, And and that's okay. You don't.
You don't. You don't have to be you have to
Just the more you face that and can laugh at it,
(34:08):
the less the less upsetting the criticism of is.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Okay, I have a couple more, and that's on the
next page. Are you painting your own fakes?
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Oh? Can I just say that one of the things
that's interesting after your book comes out is what resonates
with people, because you never really know what is going
to strike people's attention. But this is one that so
many people have mentioned to me. So I'm glad you're
I'm glad you're you're appointed to it. So the aphorism
is the question are you painting your own fakes? And
(34:39):
the illustration is There's a story about an art dealer
who bought a canvas signed Picasso. To verify its authenticity,
he visited Picasso at the artist can studio. After a
glance at the painting, Picassa declared it's a fake. Just
a few months later, the dealer returned with another of Pakasso.
He returned to can showed it to Picasso, and Picassa
(35:00):
so dismissed it as a fake. But Charmetstra said the dealer,
it so happens that I saw you with my own
eyes working on this very picture several years ago. Pakassa replied,
I often paint fakes. Sometimes we paint our own fakes,
and we should try to recognize it when we do. So.
(35:20):
That's very relevant for Family Secrets because it is this
idea of like, is there a fake? Are you painting
a fake?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yes? And do you know it?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Do you know it? And do you know it?
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yeah? I mean that goes back to, you know, the
part of our conversation about even just kind of putting
on a happy face right exactly, or your basic garden
variety cocktail party chit chat of like how are you
doing good good?
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Here's Gretchen reading one more passage from Secrets of Adulthood.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
When uncertain about how to proceed, make the choice that
allows you to choose the bigger life, step into the future,
live in an atmosphere of growth, deepen or broaden your relationships,
or put your values into the world.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacour is
the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
(36:45):
find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder and if you'd
like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I'm Danny Shapiro and this is a bonus episode of
family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us, the
secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep
from ourselves. Today, my guest is Gretchen Ruben, best selling author,
creator of the podcast Happier and Brilliant Student of Human Nature.
(00:32):
Let's dive right in. So, Gretchen, even though this is
a bonus episode, I'm still going to begin with the
question that I love to begin my episodes of Family
Secrets with, which is tell me about the landscape of
your childhood. Because you've spent so much of your life
(00:56):
making human nature and happiness in particular your central subject,
I would say, and I'm curious about your childhood and
whether the seeds for that were in there.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
Well, probably the seeds of that were in that. I
was a huge reader as a child, and like my
happiest memories were going to our local library and checking
out the maximum number of books, and on the rare
occasions when we were going on our day long car
trip to visit our grandparents, we actually got to buy
books for the trip, and that was always a highlight.
But the landscape of my child is I grew up
(01:32):
in Kansas City, Missouri, with you know, a mom and
a dad and a little sister and a dog, and
visiting my grandparents in North Nebraska every summer. So I
had a very kind of comically like standardized child that
of course you didn't feel like that to me at all.
Felt extremely rich and strange and particular. But from the outside,
(01:54):
that's what it looked like, and.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I would think, looking back, that's what that's what it
looks like too, right, mm hmmm.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Well, one of the things that's interesting looking back is
my sister, who's the television writer. Now, like we both
are professional writers, and growing up, we had no idea
that that was our fate. We weren't talking about it
or seemingly working toward it like our whole family read
a lot. But looking back on it, there was really
no sign of that, which is kind of odd to us,
(02:21):
all of us now thinking back, So what do.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
You think sort of led you in the direction of
exploring particularly happiness, because I'm thinking that, you know, it's
so interesting. I mean, you've got this fantastic podcast Happier
that you do with your sister Elizabeth, and you know,
you have your massively best selling Happiness Project, and you
(02:45):
have your wonderful life in the Five Senses, which I
would argue is also about happiness in a way. What
do you think either pushed you or led you in
the direction of wanting to explore what makes us happy?
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Well, as you said at the beginning, my true subject
is human nature. Yeah, I'm just interested in who are we?
How do we understand ourselves, which, as you know, is
extremely difficult to do, how do we change if we
want to change? And happiness is one aspect of that.
It's probably the most hopeful and exciting aspect of that question.
(03:20):
But I'm really interested in all of it. Before I
wrote The Happiest Project, like, I wrote a big biography
of Winston Churchill, and that's really all about just using
one person to explore human nature. He has such a
tremendous life, it's easier to see him. He's so magnified,
so he makes a good study. My first book was
called Power, Money, Fame, Sex, A User's Guy. That was
(03:42):
a very that was assive, but also a study of
human nathers. Because happiness is relationships, it's the body, it's
purpose it's work, it's you know, it's every it's so
many things come into it.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
And it's also I think a kind of mythical holy
grail in terms of, you know, what is happiness even
what does it mean? You know, there's so many there's
so many colors to it. You know, there's contentment, there's coziness,
there's things that could kind of masquerade it as happiness
but really are more like, you know, kind of mania,
(04:17):
you know, And there's kind of the way in which
and I think in terms of the Family Secrets podcast,
I think a lot of my guests and a lot
of the people who really relate to some of the
stories that we tell feel like they need to kind
of put a good face on things as opposed to
(04:38):
what the true nature of happiness or joy is, which
is kind of a very internal and private experience.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I started my career in law, where you know, you
found an entire semester arguing about the definition of contract,
and happiness is even more elusive to define, has something
like fifteen or seventeen academic definitions, and you can get
very caught up and is what I'm feeling tentman or
joy or peace? But I think there's a kind of
happiness that comes from clarity and from like unders like
(05:08):
having the pieces fall into place, and when, as someone
who listens to here, I don't miss an episode of
your podcast, For many people, there is that moment, and
you certainly write about this in Inheritance, where the pieces
fit together and you are like, Okay, now I have
a much clearer view of things that have fogged my
vision and confused me. And and so sometimes even if
(05:30):
it's a very what you might say, unhappy secret, there
is a kind of serenity that comes from understanding and so,
and that's why I think it's a mistake to get
really caught up and like what is happiness exactly, because well,
one of my secrets of adulthood is happiness doesn't always
make us feel happy. And so something can make you
happier even though it doesn't really make you feel happy.
(05:53):
And I think a lot of times in family secrets,
it's sort of in that zone of human experience.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, absolutely, And I through your book, which is told
in for the most part in aphorisms, and was really
looking in particular for the aphorisms that I feel most
connect to the sort of family secret stories that we tell.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
I take down some too, So it'll be interesting if
we picked out the same time.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Oh will it be well? So before we even do that,
I mean, I want to say first of all that
your book Secrets of Adulthood, and the subtitle is simple
Truths for our Complex lives. And I love both that
title and the subtitle because the idea of I mean
aphorisms as you define them. A couple of different times
(06:39):
in the book, brief and sharp aphorisms distill big ideas
into few words. By saying little, they managed to suggest more.
The clarity of their language promotes the clarity of our sinking.
And then a little bit later you write, the discipline
of the aphorism forces precision of sinking. So I mean,
could you just like talk a little bit. You've spent
(07:00):
you know, most of your life, like from the time
that you were a kid, I think, writing down, you know,
aphorisms of others and writing down aphorisms of your own,
and it seems like a great source of like mental
play and pleasure for you.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Absolutely. Now I have a giant trove of my favorite
of other people's aphorisms and they and then I started
writing my own and it is It is an interesting
thing because it's like that old joke, you know, I'm
sorry I wrote I wrote yourself a long letter. I
didn't have time to write a short one that trying
to really crystallize a thought into just a few words,
Like you really have to understand what you're thinking and
(07:36):
let you even agree with your own thoughts. So that's
why I think it's really a very creative and intellectually
gratifying thing to do as a writer or as a thinker.
I think a lot of a lot of people have
these aphorisms that they've created through their own time and
experience and yeah, and studying other people's they do. They
run through my mind more because since they're they're short,
(07:58):
they sort of sticking your mind more. Like one of
my favorite aforicts is Mariva and Idna Eeschenbach and whom
everyone has forgotten, but she's my favorite efforist. And like
she has one that I think of often. You can
fall so fast you think you're flying.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Yeah, like once you internalize that you can't untie it,
you forget it.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Right, and it expresses something that you might have. My favorite,
my favorite kind of aphorism is the one where you
read it and you think I've thought that myself. I
never quite put it into words, but I've had that
thought myself. And so I was, you know, trying to
write those myself, as you know, just kind of as
(08:38):
well as gathering them from other people, because I do
feel like there's something you can say in short that's
better done than evil when you do it long.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, And it was so interesting to me that in
some of the you know, of what you describe as
being on your on your crowded bookshelves, you know, with
these masterpieces of philosophy and literature. I've been actually listening
every day for the last few months to Latsa's dow
Da ching just one reading a day, and it's just
(09:09):
kind of amazing how clarifying and enlivening that isn't how
much it sort of stays with you because of its simplicity.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Well, and that's interesting that you do like just one
a day, because there is something when when you just
have one, you really sit with it and you really,
you really sink into it. I'm doing this thing called
a slow read a Worn Piece, where Simon Hazel does
a thing on Substack where you read one chapter of
Worn Piece a day for a year. It has like
three hundred and fifty five chapters, so it works out
very well. And when you read just a short thing,
(09:41):
it does land differently. It's like binge watching Worse versus
watching one episode. When you read just one and really
think about it, it's a very different kind of experience.
So that it's funny because when I was writing this
book of afrosm suer like, oh this is fun It's
like people will just whip through it. It's bite sized,
it's easy, and like, no, it's actually very dense because
if you is reading, if you read more than a
(10:02):
few you start feeling like, whoa, that's a lot on
my mind. So I love the idea of doing just
a little bit of each day with like a classic
like that. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I mean, this is your book is a book that
I can imagine living on a bedside table because it
really feels like you want to take it in these
bite sized pieces and just even just drift off to
sleep or wake up in the morning with you know,
just a lot of this wisdom.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
The one I quote most often is, or my family
quotes the most often is something that can be done
at any time has often done at no time, because
that's just just like we've all done, and we've all
experienced it, you know, and you're like, what's you have
a phrase for it? You're like, Okay, I'm saying that
all the time. Yeah, yeah, totally mourning myself.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, we'll be back in a moment with more family secrets.
The first of the aphorisms in your book that I
jotted down as being relevant to family secrets is we
should pay special attention to anything that we lie about
(11:07):
or try to hunt. Yeah right, yeah, yeah, I mean
to me, every episode, every every conversation, whether on the
podcast or not on the podcast, with people who have
either been holding their own secret, or have discovered a
(11:27):
secret that has been withheld from them, or have a
secret that they can't even quite touch because it's a
live wire.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Well, this is your opening line about it is the
secrets that people. How does it go? The people that
keep people keep from us, that people that.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we keep
from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves, which
always to me, that's the secrets we keep from ourselves
are to me the most interesting.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
That's what we lie about.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
That's right, even if we're not conscious that we're lying.
I mean, in a way, this aphorism is so fantastic
because just the language, we should pay special attention to
anything that we lie about or try to hide, because
even if we don't know that that's exactly what we're doing,
we do know it's the it's the unthought known, we
(12:16):
kind of know it in our bones.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Well, it's also the snoop. Like you also, you say
often that this is a theme that comes up with
your your guess is the snoop. And so there's a
sense of like, I can't ask for this information straight
out somehow, it's it's taboo. I have to sneak around
and look for it, you know, because it's there's I
(12:39):
have to hide the fact that I want.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
To know right right. And there's a real theme of
often people in their childhood's snooping, snooping on their parents,
snooping on their on the adults around them. And and
another thing that comes up is that when we're doing
something like that, I mean, it's like what you said
about your own childhood and the endlessly rich and sort
(13:02):
of fascinating it was to you because it was your childhood,
we don't know anything other than our own childhoods. So
you know, if like I snooped all the time as
a kid, and I just alternately thought either there's something
very wrong with me, or maybe everybody does this because
I had no I had nothing to go on. So
(13:23):
I'm just the idea of the special attention. I think
that will really stay with me because that that feeling
of oh, yeah, I need, I need to pay attention
to this, even if I don't know exactly what it
is that I'm paying attention to, need to sit with
it right exactly. So the next one I came up with,
and then I'm going to ask you about what you
came up with and whether there's an overlap. Build your
(13:45):
shrine at the top of a long steep path. A
view is more beautiful when we've earned it.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
I feel like them, part of them, the power of
efforts are just sort of like the drop my quality.
Like that's what I had to say, Yeah, build your
shrine on the on the top of a long steep path.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Yeah, And that is also what I feel like, the earning,
the discovery the long steep path. You know, the idea
that so often guests are and again not just guests,
but also people I encounter. They make these discoveries later
in life, and you know, after a long steep path
and that feeling of oh, the recognition that that is
(14:31):
making the pieces fall into place, and there's something really
beautiful about that. And then the word shrine and there's
something that is you know, sort of poetic and divine
about that. It's making it holy in some way.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
That's one of my favorites. Well, here's one that I
thought of. Tell me if you think it, you think
it resonates with your themes, which is the place that
hurts isn't always the place that's injured.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
I wrote that down, Gretcha, there you go. Yeah, that
was the last one I wrote down. That's so powerful.
The place that hurts isn't always the place that's injured.
I mean the level on which that is you know,
sometimes physically true, but metaphorically true. Why do we behave
(15:19):
in certain ways based on you know, something that is
painful or something that is like doesn't feel right, and
we don't know the origin of it, we don't know
where it comes from, and yet it has the power
to shape our entire lives until we do. I mean,
Carl Jung said, until we make the unconscious conscious, it
(15:41):
will direct our lives, and we will call it fate.
Speaker 3 (15:44):
One of the things I've write about a lot or
talk about a lot, is identify the problem, because a
lot of times people have a sense of uneasiness or
distress or a feeling like they need to change, but
without identifying the problem, a lot of times we change
what's easy to change or what's obvious, or we blamed
somebody else for something that we're feeling instead of really
probing to understand, like what where is this actually coming from?
(16:09):
Which sometimes looks quite different from the pain that we're experiencing.
And and so I think that that often happens where
Actually a friend of mine said, she said, you know,
I live in New York City. And the friend of
mine was saying, she's going to look for a new apartment,
and I said, and as I see her like six
months later, and because she really wanted outdoor space, so
(16:32):
I saw her six months later and I said, oh,
how is the apartment hunting going? And she said, well,
I gave it up. And I said why, like you
were so excited to do it. She said, well, it's
I told by broker I thought I wanted outdoor space,
but I realized I really want a husband, and it's like, right,
it's a lot. You know, you'd be like, okay, getting
outdoor space. That's what she thought she wanted. That wasn't
(16:53):
really going to address her problem. But fortunately for her,
she figured that out in time before she made a
huge change that wouldn't really have resolved what was bothering her.
I think that's really easy to do, and so you
say like, oh, it's the fault of this or that
person or this situation, when in fact it might be
something quite different that might be more painful to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
So here's another one that I picked out. Sometimes we
choose to confess our deepest secret to a stranger rather
than a friend. Mm hmmm. You know, I was thinking
about that because I once I think in the first season,
maybe the second season of Family Secrets, I had a
(17:37):
guest on who did not want to be identified, and
I decided that that was okay, and we had a
great conversation and it was a really good episode. But
I got quite a lot of blowback from Family Secrets
listeners who were like, wait a minute, you know, we
(17:58):
thought this was a podcast about eradicating shame and you know,
owning our own stories and you know, becoming sort of
comfortable with whatever has made us who we are. So
why would it be why would you have a guest
(18:18):
on who didn't want to be identified? And I've never
done it again, and I think there's something in this
aphorism that speaks to that.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
But on the other hand, is there privacy versus secrecy?
And maybe somebody feels that they can confess to a
bunch of strangers, but they don't really want to deal
with it. They want to deserve there. I mean, I
think the reason that it's easier to tell a stranger
is that there's no consequences, Like, there's no there's no aftermath,
there's no talking about it again, nobody else gets drawn
(18:51):
into it because it's just it's just a stranger and
there's something kind of beautiful about that. And in a way,
a big public can also do you like that stranger,
But maybe you're saying you don't want you don't want
to talk to people who are not ready to deal
with that exactly.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
And there's there are different kinds of consequences. I mean,
there's certainly the consequences and This is something that we
run into a lot. Is not wanting to betray or
hurt someone else's confidence or in a family, one person's
I'm comfortable with this not being a secret is another
person's nightmare. But there's another and I understand that completely.
(19:30):
There's another kind of I think fear that I think
about more in terms of just my guests and the stories,
the way that I hope they land, which is the
eradication if that's even possible, of shame of the the
(19:52):
you know, the feeling that there are so many people
who are listening or reading and nodding their heads and
saying like, yeah, I get that, or something like that
happened in my family, or even if something like that
didn't happen in my family. You know, you're you're okay,
this is your you know, this is this is okay.
(20:14):
I'm you know, sorry, sorry that this happened to you,
but you're like, you know, there's a there's a kind
of humanity, I guess, like the shared human nature of
There's very little I think that we could say to
each other in terms of our inner worlds that we
can sometimes feel are so shameful or mortifying. Very little
(20:37):
that would actually genuinely be shocking.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Right, No, your on secrets seemed so much more in
full than the secrets of other people. No, it's it's
very true. Yeah, you'll read about somebody who's like they
they they agonized for decades and then they you know,
and then and you're like, oh, that's it, that's not
that big a deal, right, Yes, now it's true. But
(21:01):
it is tricky though. And I was like, let's say
there's there's there's something that big and traumatic that happens
to person a. And person a has a brother and
sister and parents and children, and they are all talking
about their own story about what happened with somebody who
was very close to them, and yet there are secrets.
If one person talks about it, then they've all essentially
talked about it. So I see how you should get
(21:24):
tricky depending on the situation, right, exactly exactly. So then
that leads me to one more the last one I have,
which is decisions will be made by choice or by chance. Yeah,
because not deciding is a decision.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Not choosing is a choice. And wow, that's yes, that's
really powerful.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Uh, yes, and it's and and if you've ever felt
that happen. It feels like going with the flow is
it's taking you someplace against your will, just as if
you were fighting against somebody else. Yeah. No, I have
experienced that many times myself.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Yeah, and in ways both small and large. I remember
when my memory Inheritance came out, like literally the day
it came out, and I gave my first reading in
a bookstore. There were a lot of people there who
just did not seem like my usual readers, And among
them were couples sitting there looking really uncomfortable and stricken
(22:26):
and holding hands or just sitting kind of stiffly. And
I realized that these were couples who had not divulged
to their children that either yeah, you know that they
that they used a donor, or possibly even that they
were adopted, but you know, given the times, it was
more likely that it was, you know, they used a donor,
(22:48):
an egg donor or a sperm donor and just made
the decision that the child never needed to know. And
and this came up again and again and again for
me in you know, q and as and or therapists
would say, I have patient insteader going through this, you know,
what should I tell them? And Meanwhile, I'm not I'm
not a therapist and I'm not an expert. I'm someone
that's happened to And I tried to come up with
(23:09):
something to say that would be true and useful and
without a whiff of judgment. And so what I came
up was that I would say, is they're going to
find out. Ah, They're going to find out because there
are no more of these kinds of secrets, these these
are these are going to go the way of you
know that. It's just it's not going to be possible anymore.
(23:30):
And so, but not deciding is a decision, and not
choosing is a choice, and.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
Exactly, Yeah, but I love that that was your response
because it's right. It's there's no advice to it, there's
no judgment to it. There's merely minding them of something
that is very obvious to anybody who thinks about it,
which is they're going to find out. And then given that,
(23:57):
if you know they're going to find out, what are
you going to do?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Right? That affects your choice? I mean, it may not
affect your choice. You may still decide that you're too
afraid or have your own reasons, but you are definitely
making a choice to not that your kids are going
to find this out at some point and maybe maybe
you're not alive anymore.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
I mean, one of the things that I've really time
to believe and for myself, because I've fallen into this
many times, most significantly when I went to law school,
because I just drifted into law school. I was like,
it was this the easy default decision. I just I
did it very it was sort of the easiest non
choice I could make, even though it was incredibly difficult
and hard work to do it. I did it for
(24:36):
all the wrong reasons, and I'm glad that I went.
And that's sometimes confusing because sometimes we don't decide or
are We drift into a decision and then we're happy
with it. So it's not like it always ends badly.
But I really now very uncomfortable when I or anybody
close to me is making a choice without intention. Then
like you can make the wrong choice, or you can
decide to do nothing at all as to the person,
(24:58):
like maybe we've just decided, you know, we're not going
to raise it. That's our decision. But that's very different
from just being just not confronting it and not making
a decision. It's it's that kind of non choice choice
is very unsatisfying in the end. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
But what you're really talking about, I think is a
self awareness, you know, a self knowledge. It goes back
to the paying special attention.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Yeah, that's the great aim, is self knowledge. And you think,
I just hang out with myself all day long. What
can be easier than self knowledge? And yet I think
it's a great challenge of our lives, which is well,
which brings me to another secret of adulthood. See if
you think this is relevant to family secrets, which is
we know what matters to people when they repeat themselves.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah, I love that one.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah, because it does seem like sometimes the family secrets,
people are saying nothing. But then sometimes it's like certain
things just get repeated over and over and in that
way you're like, Okay, that's significant in some way or
a certain pattern and get repeated over and over.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yes, and you may not know for a very long
time why. It's almost as if it's in bold when
you hear it. It's just something that you you know,
that one makes note of without knowing why. And I
think if we're if if we're fortunate and eventually we
(26:22):
are able to come to know what that means. Then
it's like, you know, in reverse, we look back and think, oh,
that's what that was.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
I get it. That's such a gratifying feeling when you
look back and you sort of see a pattern where.
I mean, I think this is what a lot of
people get from therapy, and a lot of times when
people get from keeping journals or any kind of like
narrative practice, which is as you're telling the story to yourself,
you can start to identify patterns that in the ongoingness
of life sometimes you don't see because you don't have
(26:55):
that kind of reflection.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's also you know, we
talk a lot about trauma. It's one of the hallmarks
of like the narrative that someone who's in the midst
of being traumatized by something tells is like a loop.
It's like a closed feedback loop. It's it's the same
story over and over again with absolutely no deepening until
(27:23):
one is finally begins to be able to take like
a half a step back and start to start to
see a little more clearly, a little bit more from
a distance. Mm hmm, We'll be right back. So any
others that you remarked.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Well, what of them was? We care for many people
we don't particularly care for, because that seems to be
a big scene that family secrets were just people where
they really are struggling in a way that where they're like,
I do love this person or care for this person,
or I do have to ignore and my mother is
still my mother or or whatever the case, and I do,
but sometimes that it's really hard to care for people
(28:06):
we don't care for.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Right, right, and everything that gets placed on top of that,
the guilt or you know, feeling like you know, the
feeling conflicted or feeling like a bad person. But that
is the reason why it's an aphorism is because it's
kind of it's just true, it's kind of unimpeachable.
Speaker 3 (28:25):
Well, one of the things I like about aphorisms and
sometimes you disagree, and just because they're so short, you
can sort of think about it more clearly and come
up with your own conclusions. Like I'm sure there's I
have aphorisms in my book that people might disagree with,
but I'm like, but now now you know your own
mind better, Like, and even in disagreeing, there's clarity because
you're thinking about something that you might not have ever
(28:47):
sort of stopped to inquire about your own views into
which is also helpful.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
Yeah, because we don't. We get caught up in just
the the busy slipstream of you know, our daily lives,
and we just else. We don't stop and you know,
sort of interrogate what's going on until we're you know,
we're all forced to at some point or another. We're
all forced to or until it becomes a kind of
(29:13):
habit or a practice. I mean, your practice of keeping
these you know, this massive file of aphorisms is has
been something that's been like among the building blocks of
your life and your adult life.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Mm hm No, it's something that I've done, I mean
back to when I was eight or ten years old.
It's like copying out quotations and keeping them in categories.
And I'm always interested in one. Like the things that
we do as children like play into what we do
as adults. And this is definitely something that I did
as a child, was collect collect collect copy.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah. Yeah, I share that with you and I and
it's so interesting because when you're doing it, you're not
doing it with any aim in mind.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
No, it's just pure admiration.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
But you know what's interesting, though, is I will some
time write something where I'm like, this seems very significant
to me and I don't even know why, But I'll
find myself like I'll finish a book and then I'll
find myself thinking about a passage or something and I'm like,
I don't know why that struck me, but I need
to copy it and keep it.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
And then years later I'll be like, oh, now I
understand what that meant, or like why I cared about
that or why that struck me. And it's such an
it's just such a gratifying feeling where you're sort of like, Okay,
these ideas have been swirling around in my head for
such a long time, and now finally I understand what
I was just groping toward.
Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, it's like you catch up with yourself.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Well, for years, I was absolutely I love the writing
of Andy Warhol. I don't even really like his visual art,
but I love I mean, he's this bonker's thinker. And
so I've read and re read like the books that
he wrote in his interviews, and one of those things
is he tells a little story about how he was
going to Woolworths with a friend and his friend is like, oh,
I can't stand that buzz. And he was like, what buzz?
(30:56):
And then he said, oh, yeah, there was a buzz,
but for me, it was completely drowned out by the
smell of roasting peanuts. I was like, what is that?
How can a noise be drowned out by the smell
of roasting peanuts? Like, I just thought it was an
example of his kind of just strange mind. But it's
actually true. I wrote Life in Five Senses, and it's
actually true that when one sense is really activated, the
(31:18):
others kind of fade back. And so it literally was
true for him. But but you know, it took Andy
Warhol to to describe it as such a like interesting
and poetic way, But it was just I was like,
you know, years and years and years later, I finally
caught up to the day that I copied that out
(31:39):
of the philosophy of Andy Warhol.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I love that, and like it also makes these kinds
of collecting of these quotes, aphorisms, you know, pieces of
wisdom into a kind of journal of its own, because
you can you can see what preoccupied you. Yes, yeah,
it's so true.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
It's so true. It's so true. No, like I went
through that because I wrote this unconventional biography of Whist Churchill,
and I had this giant collection of quotations that are
all about kind of the nature of biography, and and
then I just sort of moved on, and so I
wasn't preoccupied by the nature of biography anymore. And then
I was in this period where I was absolutely preoccupied
with color. I mean, I can't even describe to you
(32:22):
how I how much I spent thinking and talking and
reading about color, and has this huge file of color
quotations which I now still sometimes add to from time
to time or look at that. It's not the way
that it was for a while, because then I just
moved on. But yes, you're right, it is. It's a
kind of intellectible journal. Absolutely, it's so true.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
So would you read a few of the passages. I've
earmarked a couple first one page thirty nine. It's in
the self realization.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
Oh, I love the story. We're often better off admitting
uncomfortable facts about ourselves rather than trying to disguise them.
Nebraska saw great success with its tourist slogan. Honestly, it's
not for everyone. Marmite, the Yeast based savory spread declared
their love it or you Hate It? I mean I
(33:16):
just love that well. And there's been there's been a
kind of an update to that, which is the city
of Oslo did a huge campaign called is it even
a City? Where it's all about like we're this kind
of disgruntled inhabitant of Oslo is like is this even
a city? And everything that he's describing that he doesn't
like about it. Of course you're like, oh my gosh,
I must immediately go to Oslo. But right, it's uh, honestly,
(33:39):
it's not for everyone. It's it's the truth.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
And there's something there's something that's so disarming about that. Yes,
and you trust the person who's saying that well.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
And as a writer, one of the things kind of
relatedly that I remind myself is a strong voice repels
as well as attracts, And just like Nebraska, honestly, I'm
not for everyone, you know, And and that's okay. You don't.
You don't. You don't have to be you have to
Just the more you face that and can laugh at it,
(34:08):
the less the less upsetting the criticism of is.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
Okay, I have a couple more, and that's on the
next page. Are you painting your own fakes?
Speaker 3 (34:18):
Oh? Can I just say that one of the things
that's interesting after your book comes out is what resonates
with people, because you never really know what is going
to strike people's attention. But this is one that so
many people have mentioned to me. So I'm glad you're
I'm glad you're you're appointed to it. So the aphorism
is the question are you painting your own fakes? And
(34:39):
the illustration is There's a story about an art dealer
who bought a canvas signed Picasso. To verify its authenticity,
he visited Picasso at the artist can studio. After a
glance at the painting, Picassa declared it's a fake. Just
a few months later, the dealer returned with another of Pakasso.
He returned to can showed it to Picasso, and Picassa
(35:00):
so dismissed it as a fake. But Charmetstra said the dealer,
it so happens that I saw you with my own
eyes working on this very picture several years ago. Pakassa replied,
I often paint fakes. Sometimes we paint our own fakes,
and we should try to recognize it when we do. So.
(35:20):
That's very relevant for Family Secrets because it is this
idea of like, is there a fake? Are you painting
a fake?
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Yes? And do you know it?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Do you know it? And do you know it?
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Yeah? I mean that goes back to, you know, the
part of our conversation about even just kind of putting
on a happy face right exactly, or your basic garden
variety cocktail party chit chat of like how are you
doing good good?
Speaker 3 (35:46):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Here's Gretchen reading one more passage from Secrets of Adulthood.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
When uncertain about how to proceed, make the choice that
allows you to choose the bigger life, step into the future,
live in an atmosphere of growth, deepen or broaden your relationships,
or put your values into the world.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly Zacour is
the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.
If you have a family secret you'd like to share,
please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear
on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight
eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also
(36:45):
find me on Instagram at Danny Ryder and if you'd
like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,
check out my memoir Inheritance.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Family Secrets News
Host
Dani Shapiro
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