March 8, 2024 • 47 mins
In this episode, Heather Havrilesky delves into the complexities of modern life paradoxes. She shares her journey of self-discovery and acceptance, emphasizing the struggle of balancing the “good wolf” and the “bad wolf” within oneself. Heather shares her insights into the relentless pursuit of self-improvement and the societal pressure for perfection.
In this episode, you will be able to:
- Discover the secrets to navigating complex modern life paradoxes
- Learn how to find guidance in the midst of life’s challenges
- Uncover the path to achieving transformative self-acceptance
- Understand the keys to emotional well-being in today’s fast-paced world
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
We all want to see changes in our lives, in
our minds, and in our hearts, so we read inspirational authors,
we listen to podcasts like this one, and we get
fired up to apply what we've learned. But then inevitably
we fall back into old patterns and it can be
so frustrating and maddening. When we start to build habits
that truly matter, we see real change, but without enough consistency,
(00:22):
we barely scratch the surface. In my building habits that
matter course, I apply behavioral principles to perennial wisdom so
that you can experience the benefits on a deeper level.
This is your chance to get accountability, ongoing support, and
approven system. As you journey towards a greater understanding of yourself,
you start to bridge the gap between knowing what to
(00:44):
do and actually doing it. And you do this in
our group setting, in which community, connection and friendships are
all created which support you along the way. This program
is open for enrollment until March eleventh. Head to oneufeed
dot net slash wisdom to learn all about this opportunity
for us to connect and dive deeper into how building
(01:06):
habits that matter can transform the way you experience your
day to day life. Go to oneufeed dot net slash wisdom.
I hope to meet you in this special program that
starts very soon.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
There's such a transformation that happens when people stop beating
themselves up for falling into the same potholes over and
over again.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
(01:56):
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
(02:29):
for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Heather Havreleski.
Heather is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness. She
has also written for New York Magazine, The New York Times,
Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, NPR's
All Things Considered, and several anthologies. She was a TV
critic at Salon for seven years. Her new book is
(02:52):
How to Be a Person in the World, Ask Poly's
Guide through the Paradoxes of Modern Life. We hope you'll
enjoy this episode from the archive. Hi, Heather, Welcome to
the show.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Hi, thank you for having me. I'm so happy to
be here.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I'm very happy to have you. Your book is called
How to Be a Person in the World, Ask Polly's
Guide through the Paradoxes of Modern Life. It's basically, you
write an advice column, right.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I write an advice column for New York Magazine's The Cut,
and it comes out every week.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
It's called Ask Polly.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Advice columns are a strange format, but the book is basically,
we didn't really want to stray from what was working
with the advice column, So it's about eighty percent new material,
new letters and new responses, and then about twenty percent
old classics from the column.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
The column has been.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Running since twenty twelve, so it's been around for about
five years.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Well, it is wonderful, The column is wonderful, and the
book is wonderful. So many advice columns are I mean,
they're just they seem kind of trite to me, but
yours is, it's incredibly good. The writing is really wonderful,
and just the overall spirit and approach I just really love.
So we'll get to that in a minute, but let's
start like we usually do with the parable. There's a
(04:09):
grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life,
there are two wolves inside of us that are always
at battle. What is a good wolf, which represents things
like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a
bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for
a second, looks up at her grandmother, and she says, well, grandmother,
(04:31):
which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life and in
the work that you do.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Well. I love the parable, and I think that it's
it's really interesting because it actually makes me feel a
little bit conflicted to hear this parable.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
On the one hand.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
I feel like I go back to a position of
telling people to feed the good things inside them and
to encourage their belief in humanity and their belief in
other people, to have compassion for themselves and thereby foster
compassion for other people and connection with.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Other people, which I think.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
I mean, one of the things that sort of works
about my column is the voice of the column is
kind of a little bit harsh, and it can be
a little bit caustic at times, but I always try
to lead with empathy. But a lot of the work
that I feel like a lot of people need to
do in their lives in order to be happier within
(05:34):
their own lives is to connect with other people and
to see that everyone has weaknesses, everyone is vulnerable, and
even people who seem to be coming at you with
a lot of anger or hatred, they actually are in.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Need of compassion and connection if you can find that
in your heart.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
So that's one side of the parable for me, it
makes perfect sense and just a very literal way, Like
you don't encourage within yourself greed and hatred.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
You try to find.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The parts of yourself that are full of love and positivity,
and that are interested in connection. But on the other hand,
creatively lately, I'm in this phase kind of like a
bad wolf phase, i'd say, where I was a little
blocked earlier this year and I'm writing a new book,
and I think, partially due to political reasons, things were
(06:27):
frustrating to me and depressing to me, and so I
was looking for some way to work through this.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
And I think that in some ways, I.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Would argue that if you ignore the bad wolf, you
can be shut down and kind of corked up and
blocked if you don't acknowledge the bad wolf's existence. So
you're walking the line between you feed the good wolf,
but you actually have to see and recognize and not
(06:57):
blame yourself for the things that the bad wolf in
your life. Yea, Does that make any sense at all?
Speaker 5 (07:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
No, It's one of the things I love about the
parable is there's nothing about starving the bad wolf or
putting them in a cage or any of that stuff. Right,
It's just like, look, you just got to give a
little bit more focus to this one over here. And
I think I like the parable because I think it
it normalizes like we all have these drives and desires
that are not our best self, and sometimes those are there,
(07:26):
and again, you don't have to kill those, just try
and be a little bit better. And I love that
about your column. I think you use the word, you know, vulnerable,
and I love that you sort of normalize that life
is difficult for people, not just for the people you're
writing about, for the people around them. And I just
think there's so much help in understanding that life is
(07:48):
challenging and we're supposed to be struggling in a lot
of cases, and that what we see in the culture
around us is just perfection and none of us feel
that way. And that's one of the big things I
really loved about your column.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
One thing I feel like I've struggled with all my
life is this sort of overachiever's mentality. It didn't mean
that I was necessarily an overachiever. I have been an
underachiever at times in my life, but I have this
kind of perfectionist thing, and I think that I took
the culture's you know, our culture is very focused on
(08:22):
self improvement and living your best life and becoming better
and better and better to infinity and beyond, and that's
something that the more on the one hand, again, as
I'm writing an advice column, I naturally push people to
try to improve themselves and look at themselves closely and
identify the things that are standing in their way or
(08:43):
that might be seen as not functioning well or pushing
people away from them, things that drag them down. But
on the other hand, there's this feeling. I think that
I had this sort of rebirth I had once I
realized that the moment that I could look at my
(09:03):
flaws and recognize them as the flaws of humanity rather
than the flaws that.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Just happen to be trapped inside of me.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I'm personally horribly bad, and the difference between me and
the rest of the world is I'm messed up and
the rest of the world is good, and I haven't
learned how to get there yet. I think that when
you finally realize, oh, I do have hatred and greed
inside of me, you know, I can be incredibly petty
and insecure at times.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
It doesn't mean that you feed those things, as the
parable reflects. It just means that you accept to some
extent that you have a lot.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Of darkness and a lot of turmoil on board, and
without accepting that you're kind of in a constant state
of misery because you can't completely, no.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Matter how happy you are, tamp that.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Down, and you can't be become better and better and
better to infinity and beyond.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
In fact, you can't improve forever.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And in fact, if you have that expectation, as our
culture sort of makes us have that expectation often of ourselves,
you find yourself disappointed a lot.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, And I think you're really getting at one of
what I think is the central themes that runs through
this show over and over, which is that paradox of well,
I want to be better, I want to do better,
and I need to accept myself as I am where
I am with my life the way it is, And
how do you do both of those things, because it
really is a both. I think either one of those
unchecked is unhealthy.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, I mean, I think you go through stages of
noticing that you're not making forward progress and noticing that
you need a push to. Like I mean, for me,
I'm a parent. I have two kids, they're ten and
eight years old. They're two daughters, and I also have
a step son who's about turn twenty one, and lately
I'm noticing I worked against the whole mom thing taking
(10:54):
over my entire life so strenuously that I realize that I, actually,
this is going to sound terrible, but so zealously guard
my professional life that I haven't really let my kids
in as much as I could, if that makes any sense.
And so now I'm in this phase of you know,
(11:17):
it's not it's not frightening to be a mother, Heather,
just hang out.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
With your kids. You know.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I was always concerned that I would apply my overachiever
nature to motherhood and be, you know, try to be
too much of a mother all the time, have hovered
too much. So I've kind of done the opposite. And
now I realize that, you know, my kids are they
talk and they're smart, and they're interesting, and they need
someone to engage with them a lot of time. You know,
(11:44):
they need that, they need my time and attention, and
I need them too.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
I need to show up, and I'm kind of losing
the thread.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You can cut this, but so you realize at different
points in your life what maybe you need to adjust,
and sometimes you need to say, wow, I need a kick,
I need to do better, I need to try harder,
Like I've forgiven myself for being the not good enough mother,
like I will never really be the perfect mother, no
(12:15):
one really can, and maybe I will never be even
an amazing mother, a great mother like we all really
want to be. But I need to try a little
harder to be a better mother nonetheless, and I have
to recognize that, as much as I'm uncomfortable with that pressure,
I'm at a point in my life where I actually
have to try harder at that. With my writing, I've
(12:36):
always pushed myself a lot, and there are times when
I have to say, you know what, you have kept
up a pace of writing that is so strenuous, and
you have to back off and relax a little bit.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
You can't keep up this pace forever. I think this
has been a year that my mind and body have said, no,
we're not going to work that hard. We're done with that.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
You know, you're gonna have to live a different kind
of life, yep, yep. So part of the challenge is
just being in touch with what life is giving you
on any given day. And it changes constantly.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah, it does. I think that's one of the wonderful
and confounding if you don't let it be as it is.
Things about life and is that things that worked for
you last week, last month, last year are no longer.
They don't work, they're not appropriate in the same way
it's you know, it's never done. We're always evolving, and
that's the wonderful thing. But it can also be if
(13:28):
you're if you're one of those people that's looking for like,
when is it done? But the bad news is never.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
That's another kind of myth that our culture embraces. There's
a kind of feeling that and this is a seductive
thing to sell to people, the idea that you you
work really hard and then you take a vacation and
everything is amazing.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
And it's just RESTful and beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I mean, it's hard not to for me not to
be fixated on those kinds of endpoint visions.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
You know.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
It's sort of like imagine that experience.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Of just being rich or being successful, where you're you're
never like trying to be more right. And actually a
big focus of my new book is is kind of
I mean, I'm struggling with it. It's not done yet,
so I don't even know. But a part of what
I'm trying to write about is achieving the kind of
(14:24):
the ultimate feeling of and I say the ultimate kind
of ironically here, because to me, the big challenge is
finding a place where it's enough, where what you already
have is enough and there isn't and you recognize the
divinity of the current moment instead of always focusing on
(14:46):
where you're going to land someday.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
That is probably the other big You know, if I
had said there were two themes in the show that
and they're the themes of the show because I'm kind
of always wrestling with them as my own personal questions,
is exactly that too. Like I believe that there's some
degree of striving and ambition and the desire to grow
and change that's innate in us in humans. I think
it's part of who we are. And at the same time,
(15:10):
I believe exactly like you said, there's got to be
a point where you know there's enough. How do you
be a person who's growing and changing and how do
you also be happy with the moment right where it is.
And we had a guest on recently the episode came
out and he had a question that I just loved,
and he said he was talking about that future minded mentality.
(15:31):
He's like, well, one of the things to do to
get out of that is when you sort of envision, like, okay,
well when I get to there is to kind of
ask yourself and then what and really play that through,
like what's that really going to be like? And tragedies
in the news are a terrible thing. But you know,
it wasn't too long ago that we heard about Chris Cornell,
the singer for Soundgarden, you know, suicide, right. And if
(15:52):
we ever need the idea that being beautiful and rich
and famous is what we need, that's where happiness is.
It's people like him that you go, no, it doesn't work.
He's incredibly handsome, incredibly successful, I mean, all those things,
and yet the ultimate misery, you know. And so that
(16:14):
for me is helpful when I start looking at that, Well,
if I just had you know, X or Y, I
look at that, or Robin Williams or other people and
you just go, look, boy, that stuff doesn't do it.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Much about him, but I said to my husband, I said, God,
it must have been really.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
First of all, there's obviously something about that culture, you know,
that kind of rock and roll culture that teaches you
how to thrive in some ways and other ways.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Kind of eats you alive.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
There's something about being famous at a really young age,
being gorgeous. You know, having everything you've ever wanted at
a young age can actually be horribly difficult over time.
It's kind of, yeah, ridiculously privileged, as that sounds, not
that I I had that, but I just I think
that when you get older and you pick up these questions,
(17:07):
often you know that something good is happening when things
start to shift and you start to see people who
have a lot on the surface as almost being in
danger more than people who just are living regular, ordinary
lives that most people would consider boring. You know, it's
hard to put this stuff into word sometimes, but I
(17:28):
feel like my sense of what a beautiful life is
has shifted so dramatically in the past few years. And
it's nice because it's kind of more internal in some ways.
It's really about how are you processing your life and
how are you taking in what's happening around you. And
it's almost like you meet people who you can tell
(17:50):
are really present and take in what they have and
enjoy it and savor it and know how to show
up and savor things. Seeing people who can show up
that it becomes a form of luxury to you. You know,
when you see that in emotion, you say, now, that
looks like vacation, you know, like that like true, you know, meditative, peaceful,
(18:12):
happy living. And I mean it's easy to be cynical
about it because when you're younger, you see people like
that and you say.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
God, what's wrong with that hippee?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
You know, like you don't you don't quite process it
the same way. But I think that it really is
that constant balancing between am I being too easy on
myself or too hard on myself? Do I need a
little push here? Am I just being lazy? Or am
I trying too hard to fix something that you know?
(18:41):
I mean, this is another thing figuring out which things
in your life actually can't be fixed should it be fixed,
and your energy to fix them is dysfunctional energy. You're
just you're just doing something you've always done. I'll fix it,
I'll fix it, I'll fix it. It's interesting to actually
identify the things that all into that category. Sometimes there
are parts of your career you know, that are just wow,
(19:05):
this part of my career is kind of just a
compulsive I want to pat on the head and I
want to be a good student thing, and it's not
actually felt or driven by anything inside of me, not
like everything is just a you know, a Dionysian fest
of my feelings guide everything I do. But I think,
(19:26):
what actually brings me joy or what brings.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
Me satisfaction in my day?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
And how can I make my day more satisfying for
me and of course for the people around me and.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Also for the wider world. How do I you know?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Because once, I mean, that's really another layer of luxury, right,
because once you actually have the capacity to say, I
don't just care about the people around me, I have
to find some way to serve humanity before I'm gone.
Because if I can't do that, what real purpose do
I have? Is my whole goal in life? Just to
(20:03):
I'm going to arrive at that luxury place and be
that you know, rock star whose life is beautiful, and then.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
I'll be done, and like you said, what comes after that.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
I've always been a fan of the serenity prayer, right
because I came up in a recovery culture, because I
was the drug addict at a pretty early age, and
a lot of what I learned in that culture has
kind of I think for me has sort of faded away,
but that seems like the penultimate point of wisdom of
like what can I change and what can I? And
I always remember we had a guest on very early on,
(20:52):
a guy named Andrew Solomon, who's a wonderful writer. He
wrote The Noonday Demon, and he wrote a book called
Far from the Tree about children who have what we
might call disabilities and also the gifts that that brings them.
And he was talking about something and I was really
struck by this. He was saying, you know the people
who have children where you just know, like this is
(21:14):
the way they're going to be, and you just go
about accepting them the way they are. And then there's
other cases where it's very clear that you can improve
the situation and you should. He's like, the torture is
the in between state. It's like, well, yeah, maybe I
could make it better. I mean, I hear that this
would help, and I hear that that would help, but
maybe I should just accept where I'm at. So for
those parents, it's so hard, and I think that just
(21:35):
applies to our lives in general. It's very easy when
we can sort of see, oh, there's nothing I'm going
to do about that, And in my case, I actually
consider it an accomplishment that not only do I know that,
in certain cases, I actually stop doing it even when
I know it. So I think there's something to be
said for even getting to that point. But then to
get into the subtler pieces of is there really anything
(21:57):
I can do here or not? And maybe I can?
Is the you know that somebody said recently. I don't
know if I like this phrase or not, but you know,
is the juice worth the squeeze?
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Yeah. It's funny because as.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
You encounter less of the old problems that you used
to have, you also, even as you're kind of trying
to make yourself a more balanced, open person, sometimes create
problems for yourself from that process. And I kind of
think what you're talking about is sort of I can
walk myself into a space of forgiving myself for my
(22:31):
failings and forgiving other people for their failings, and then
I feel good and I feel like God, we're all
just muddling through and it's fine and there's no reason
for any strife. You know, you just have to shower
your compassion on others and have them meet you, and
then to fix it. Part of you will say, you know,
(22:53):
I could fix all of these damage relationships. All I
have to do is pick up the phone and if
you know, a few people call and say you know what,
I love you.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
I just want you to know.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And there's no reason we shouldn't be able to work
this out. That's not really how it works. And also
you can be tempted to call you know, it's like
you're not thinking of the person that it wasn't that
problem at to begin with. I mean, I think there's
a there's a kind of sensitive, locked in, disordered person that.
(23:25):
I mean, I consider myself sort of a former addict
in my own way because I relate to a lot
of the personality issues that addicts have, and I think
there's a kind of person that sort of it's just
hard not to touch the same flame over and over again.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
And even as you grow, you know, enlightened and better.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
You come back and you say now that I'm more
Jesus like I can touch.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
The flame, And the answer is no, you actually still can't.
You're not going to change that.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
And not only that, but it doesn't serve you to
think about the flame at all. You can analyze every
layer of you know, what do we need and what
don't we need? But there are certain pockets of you know,
the puzzle, let's say, the corners of the puzzle that
set off things inside of you that are dysfunctional as
a person. You know, and you kind of know when
(24:16):
you're in there because you're oh trying to you know,
I'm going to wriggle through this. It's like working on
a Rubik's cube as the world ends.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
And on one hand, you.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Can get a lot of professional satisfaction and a lot
of creative enjoyment out of solving those kinds of puzzles,
the things that you know, I love writing about the
things that make me angry, the things that make me
feel shame. I figured out when I was blocked with
my book earlier this year that I had to go
back to the places that really the things that really
bothered me. I needed to know what was bothering me
(24:48):
in order to make some creative progress. But if you
go back to some things over and over, you know,
it can almost be like a fix, you know what
I mean. It serves some strange either an ego need
or some strange escapist inability to be in the moment
and just be taking in the things that are actually
(25:09):
in your life, especially when it's someone who is not
in your life and you want to go back and
let me fix things with that person, or you're imagining
that person and how they live a little too much,
and it's like, why am I displaced from my own experience?
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Obsession kind of works this way too.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Competition with other writers, competition with other women, competition with
other people who do what you do. These things can
fill the same strange place where you're actually working out
something else by fixating on them. And you think you're
telling a story that's about no, there's a problem there,
but actually you're telling about yourself and your own insecurities
(25:50):
and your own inability to stop touching that fire.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yep. I think we all have some things in us
that are like that. And this makes me think a
little bit of one of the line from your book
that it's sort of to this conversation in general, and
you say, I think it's really easy to see your
life as a series of problems instead of seeing it
is a patchwork of things to savor.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Yeah, like as if everything just needs to be solved
and put out of the way until there's nothing left
do you want to live in an empty room? When
I was a kid, the scene in I think It's
Yellow Submarine with nowhere man. Do you remember that scene
where the man is walking along and it's all I mean,
I remember it actually being more dramatic than it actually is,
(26:33):
because I saw it recently and I was like, I
remember it being much more depressing than this. But it
used to freak me out that there was nothing there.
I think, having been raised a Catholic, there was something.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
About an imaginary man.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
In a place that's just white and everything disappears and
he has nothing.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
It just felt so threatening and terrible to me. But
that's when you're.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Fixing everything to get it out of the way. That's
kind of what you're aiming for. Is like you think
that you're kind of just aiming for death, right, because
there is no rest, there's no real peace where there's
just nothing.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
There are always more problems to solve, right.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
And Also what you said about the kids, I think
is interesting. Kids with different issues. It's the waiting for
a diagnosis. Somehow are not really knowing how much help
you should be giving and how much you should be
you know, accepting what you have. I think that's a
nice metaphor for where we all end up with ourselves sometimes.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah, yeah, I mean definitely like I am this way,
you know I am. A personal example for me is
it's very easy for me to become sort of very
withdrawn and quiet, and that can be difficult in relationships.
It's also just a it's you know, part of who
I am in some way, and so there's this always
this question of well, how much do I work to
improve that versus how much do I accept it? And
(27:54):
you know, I've been thinking of things sort of on
a scale more lately and realizing it's not about not
being a certain way, it's about being the right amount
of a certain way. Like that that tendency of mine
to kind of go off in my head and think
about things is in one hand, very bad for me
and also one of the one, you know, one of
the best things about me. It gives me some of
my best strengths. And so instead of trying to be
(28:16):
a different person and have different characteristics, how do I
how do I dial those characteristics to levels that are
more skillful for my life versus trying to be a
way that I'm not.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
I think that personally, I have sort of started to
put aside the idea that there's some objective good way
to be about anything. Yes, and it's actually legitimate, especially
as when you're older and you're talking about within the
context of a partnership or a marriage or a friendship.
(28:53):
It's not about anyone would agree that you're crazy, or
any you know, anyone would agree that you don't talk enough.
It's actually just two people defining for themselves what works
separately and what works together.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
And it's about asking for Okay.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
I understand that this silence you have going on works
for you. I'm gonna need more, you know, But then
also examining do I compulsively always need more? Am I
attracted to silence? I mean, most of us do end
up with people who just there's spark there because.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
We need a little more from that kind of person.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
And in couples, I think also one person really does
end up being more, a little more withholding, and the
other person ends up being a little more, give me
a little more, give me a little more. I don't
think that's actually a pathology.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
Or a dysfunction.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It's kind of just the way it is, like you
can put the same two people in a different couple,
and they'll start doing the opposite things based on what
the other person, you know, how the other person's trying
to solve the puzzle of them. So lately I've been
kind of feeling my way into this new place where
it's sort of like I might be an objective lunatic
(30:13):
on anyone else's scale. Or maybe maybe our culture, which
is crazy, our culture is completely mad, but maybe our
insane culture defines me as insane. Am I going to
take that to heart every day of my life? I
live in the suburbs. The suburbs are a strange place.
Am I going to navigate my entire existence around the
(30:38):
norms of the people around me and the suburbs? Or
am I actually going to just say bartle Be the scrivener.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
I choose not to like bartle Be. I choose not to.
I prefer not to. That's what you say. He doesn't say,
I choose not to.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
I think letting go of the notion that there's some
objective form of healthy person is so ian, and especially
between two adults in a relationship.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
I mean I end up saying to my husband often, Look,
you don't have.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
To apologize just because you're a weirdo and this or
that way. All that matters is whether or not it
makes me, you know, angry or insane, and whether or
not the things I do make you insane, and whether
we can just talk it out, and you know, we
can work it out.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
We can work it out.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
You know, we can compromise and find a way of
each getting what we need. We're just here to kind
of help each other and to get what we need
at the same time. And it doesn't matter what the
if the entire world says their thing that they have
going on is nutty, there's something wrong there, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I'm going to read something that you wrote that's very
similar to this idea, and you say, my guess is
that at least some of the shit you're taking for
being out of step with the mainstream is related to
your perfectly understandable urge to shove all of humanity into
one of two clean categories, odd and normal and vibrant
and dullsville unique and average. But first, you're going to
(32:31):
need to relax your grip on your worldview a little
and accept yourself for who you are once and for all.
And while you're at it, except that the so called
ultranormals out there are far more complex than you give
them credit for.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
I like letters where people bring me their perceptions of
what is acceptable and what isn't acceptible and even what
is daring and rock and roll and what's just milk
toast and boring, And sometimes people have these I got
something recently from someone who was talking about being into,
(33:06):
you know, freaky sex and BDSM, and she was saying,
I won't settle for anyone who isn't open to the
freaky things that I'm open to. And I mean, I
struggle with exactly how to answer this because a part
of me feels like who defines what bland sexes and
what freaky sex is? Sex is two people deciding together
(33:29):
how they're going to communicate or take part in this
kind of physical party.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
You know, So why is.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
There somehow a lot of cachet around putting on black
leather versus just having.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
Missionary style sex.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
It's just an arbitrary distinction that places the alternative in
some rarefied realm in your mind when you could be
turning your back on someone who is just you know,
the energy that you seek might not actually have translated
itself into sex for this person, but you'll still find
(34:07):
it with this person and saying straight out of the gate,
I'm gonna need this stat and this cuts you off
from a lot of kind of forms.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
You know. It's almost like a way of never being.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Vulnerable to come into a relationship saying here's my laundry
list of what I desire, and I understand it at
the level of I need an egalitarian partner.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
I can't be with someone who doesn't see me as
an equal.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
I mean that's a very basic thing, right, But the
line when the laundry list is very detailed, I'm gonna
need Kellogg's corn flakes every morning, tea without sugar. It's
a challenge to kind of loosen up other people's grips
on what they think are the parameters of what they're
dealing with and their assumptions. I mean, we have so
(34:56):
many just really dumb, flat simple assumptions about what categories
of people are okay and what categories of people are
messed up, and weird keep them away from us.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
We have these ideas about weakness and how if someone
says too much that means they're weak somehow, whereas it's
someone who can perfectly, you know, ape the successful dude
in our mainstream society is somehow really getting, you know,
hitting on all cylinders, and everyone else is just fumbling.
(35:29):
So being able to put that into language is a
challenge because you're kind of taking apart everything that people
know and trying to challenge.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
I mean, you end up saying, what is this, Where
does this come from? Does this serve you?
Speaker 2 (35:42):
If it serves you, if you're happy in that fantastic
you know who. I'm not trying to change everyone's perception
of what's normal. Certainly, God knows, I don't know what
normal is. But people really let themselves be guided and
fenced in and put in a corner by these dichotomies
that don't really serve the fullness of what we are
(36:03):
as human beings inside.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah, they don't really exist in a real way. And
I think that is probably one of the biggest things
that's happened to me as I've gotten older, similar to
what you sort of said in that piece, is that
I stopped sort of dividing people into categories of like
when I was in AA or twelve step program is
supposed to be anonymous, you know, there was this idea
that there were like normal people and then there were us,
(36:27):
and that drove me up a wall. After a while,
I was like, that is just not true, right, there
is not normal people and then there's us, Like I
may struggle with this thing, whereas you struggle with that.
And we had Glenn and Melton Doyle on the show
a long time ago and she said something that just
always I go. I've said it on the show fifteen
times because it blew me away, and it speaks to this.
She said, if you stay on the surface with people,
(36:49):
you know, you don't connect with anybody because everybody's got
different surfaces. But if you take the risk to go
deeper with people, you connect with a lot more people
because as you go a couple levels down, we're really
all the same. And I just thought that was so wise.
And that's kind of what we're talking about, is you're saying,
don't cut somebody out of your life because their surface
doesn't look exactly like what you think it should.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
The hard part, I think is that we don't know
how to negotiating, how to get down beneath the surface
with people, but every person is.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Different, very hard to do.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
And I do think that this is something kind of
interesting that ties back to what we were talking about before.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
My only interest in not being jarring to other.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
People because I kind of like being a weirdo.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Now.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I go through stages, of course, where I don't like it,
and I try to just you know, let me just
fit in. I don't want to be obtrusive, just let me,
you know, fade into the background. But I'm in kind
of a phase of like, Okay, this is what I'm wearing.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Everyone looks letting your freak flag.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Fly a little bit right now. I don't know what
exactly is going on. But the only level at which
I find myself returning to this place where I am
concerned with what the dominant language is is I don't
like the idea that I cut off relationships because I
(38:15):
assert my.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Weirdness, you know, and.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
I don't know how to I don't always know how
to navigate with some people in order to just really
connect with them. I think what I was going to
say is it's sort of like I dislike the fact
that and maybe this is just like an assertive woman thing,
but I people have trouble trusting me a little bit
(38:43):
in some ways. Some people trust me with everything, and
other people just it doesn't matter how long I know them,
they'll never quite trust me. And maybe, I mean, maybe
I'm deeply untrustworthy at some level. I'm open to that too.
Maybe there's some energy that's you know, it could be
like a compare setitive energy that I have, which I
do have a competitive energy. Or maybe it's just I mean,
(39:06):
writers sometimes are you know, package the things they say,
and a lot of different angles of like I have
trouble just saying I'm proud of my work without saying
but I'm a dope, you know, but.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
I don't know what I'm doing. I can't just rest
on one thing.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
I have to give a complicated, conflicted answer as you can.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
But I think it's interesting.
Speaker 6 (39:28):
When you see people like preachers and ministers and teachers
who can meet people where they are without pushing them
away naturally.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
I think if you spend a lot of time needing
more from people, you also push people away because you're
in that battle. And this is the very recovery kind
of thing of like you want.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
More, but you're also I don't need you.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
I don't need anyone, and I you know, watching I'm
kind of fascinated by people who minister to other people
and know how to find them and just be solid
instead of.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Putting too much.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Their ego doesn't come into the picture, comes in in
a way that just makes a lot of room around
it somehow.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Yeah, I think that's what it is. And I mean
I have times where I think I'm able to be
that kind of person, like I can just be there
for people, and then I have other times where I
simply cannot. And for me, the difference really is is
how much am I focusing or preoccupied with myself?
Speaker 4 (40:29):
You know?
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, whether that be how my stomach feels, or how
you see me, or am I going to get paid
for this or whatever the various things are. It really
is the times that I'm able to do that is
when there's just less of me, and in some sense
that's not exactly what I want to say, but less
of that, it's less self consciousness and I'm not thinking
about myself. I'm genuinely looking at them and going, wow, okay,
what's happening there versus my normal mode, which is I'm
(40:52):
a little bit curious about you, and I'm also incredibly
thinking about how I feel and what's happening, and that's
gotten better. And I don't know whether to get myself
credit for that or just to think I just have
gotten older and it's helped to think. It's a little
of both.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes even if you have
the best intentions, if you go into an interaction thinking,
you know, okay, in a situation like this, we're talking
to each other, it's an interview, it's sort of like
you want to get in the zone where you're kind
of building a conversation together that has a lot of
ideas in it, and you want to like, really, you know,
(41:26):
collaborate and make something. Sometimes if you bring that energy
to interactions with just people in your life, you're basically
end up being kind of controlling.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
You're trying to pull things out of them, let's really
get down to the nitty gritty, and they're like, God,
get out of my kitchen. I'm not interested in this.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
So in some ways, for me, learning how to relax
in the presence of other people, yes, has sadly been
a big part of the last five years of my life.
And now I notice the people who don't know how
to do it, And I mean, I'm not judgmental of it.
I lived there for you know, forty years, but figuring
out how to just you know, people show up.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
At your house.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
We had a series of guests this weekend, and people
show up and they bring a lot of different things,
and you never really know which person you're going to
get from. You know, an old friends you've done for
twenty years can show up as fifteen different people based
on how their day win, or how their week went,
or how their year went. And you try to greet
(42:27):
the person that's there and work with whatever you have,
you know, which takes being okay with who you are,
or at least being able to put yourself aside a
little bit, like you said.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
And we do the same thing. We show up as
fifteen different people, so we are very much at the
end of our time. This is one of those great
conversations where I've looked at my notes almost none, Yeah,
because we just look at your notice. Yeah, it's just
been easy. So but I think I want to I
want to wrap up with reading one thing. You know,
you're an advice columnist and so I mean, that's not
(42:58):
all you do, but this book is about that, and
I'm going to read one piece of advice that I
think is so great, and there's probably ten that I
could do, And I can't stress enough to listeners of
this show. If you like this show, you will love
this book and the column, so I strongly encourage you
to seek it out. I'm going to read a piece
of advice and then maybe you could say a thing
or two about it, and then we will will wrap up.
(43:21):
Almost every single person who writes to me is trapped
in his or her head and wants to break free.
You really can't be reminded to step back away from
the little trivial puzzles of life enough. You need some
kind of a process that connects you to yourself, to
your feelings, to a brilliant, full color world that you
deeply deserve but can't touch or taste yet.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Yeah, you know the one thing that I love about writing.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
And you know my advice comes very long.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Which you could have gathered from this interview, but untill
you know two thousand words, usually my response is, but
the thing that I love about doing this is there's
such a transformation that happens when people stop beating themselves
up for falling into the same potholes over and over again.
(44:12):
And start just accepting that these are the potholes that
I fall into, you know, and start to forgive themselves
for the way that they naturally.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Move through the world.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
We are all clumsy in one way or another. And
when you finally realize that your clumsiness doesn't set you apart,
it actually makes you a human being right and connects
you to everyone else who's alive. It's like you can
see color for the first time.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
It's like you can feel.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Your emotions for the first time in a pure way,
because you don't have judgments about what it means that
you're feeling something so called negative emotion or just any emotion.
I mean, so many of us are cut off from
our emotions because we've just been taught to associate emotion
with being out of control. But when you can feel
(45:08):
your emotions, when you can forgive yourself for having emotions
and for having a human body, and for having a
brain that works in certain ways and sends you into
that pothole over and over again, the whole world blossoms
in front of you. It's not that your life is
a never ending epiphany. It's just that you have this
I don't know. It's like an ability to touch the
(45:32):
divine somehow, you know, and to feel right with the
world in a really deep and kind of measurable, palpable way,
and the ability to kind of put that into words.
I mean, it's the challenge of every column I right,
is to put that feeling into words, and also to
nudge someone and make that turn.
Speaker 4 (45:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
It's just so satisfying and so difficult. But I love it.
I love it, and that was thank you for reading that.
It's really really nice.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
So many I could read. And you do a wonderful
job of putting into words and nudging people. This has
been a great conversation. I feel like I could do
it for another two hours effortlessly. So we'll have to
have you back. We'll have to have you back another time.
But thank you so much for coming on again, listeners.
I can't recommend the book How to Be a Person
(46:20):
in the World enough. And we'll have links in the
show notes to her work and you can find it there.
And thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
Thank you, Eric. I enjoyed it so much. I'd love
to come back. Go so nice talking to you.
Speaker 5 (46:32):
Okay, take care, okay, you too, Bye bye.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
If what you just heard was helpful to you. Please
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Head over to oneufeed dot net slash apport
We all want to see changes in our lives, in
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(01:06):
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I hope to meet you in this special program that
starts very soon.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
There's such a transformation that happens when people stop beating
themselves up for falling into the same potholes over and
over again.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
(01:56):
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
(02:29):
for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Heather Havreleski.
Heather is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness. She
has also written for New York Magazine, The New York Times,
Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, NPR's
All Things Considered, and several anthologies. She was a TV
critic at Salon for seven years. Her new book is
(02:52):
How to Be a Person in the World, Ask Poly's
Guide through the Paradoxes of Modern Life. We hope you'll
enjoy this episode from the archive. Hi, Heather, Welcome to
the show.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Hi, thank you for having me. I'm so happy to
be here.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I'm very happy to have you. Your book is called
How to Be a Person in the World, Ask Polly's
Guide through the Paradoxes of Modern Life. It's basically, you
write an advice column, right.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I write an advice column for New York Magazine's The Cut,
and it comes out every week.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
It's called Ask Polly.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Advice columns are a strange format, but the book is basically,
we didn't really want to stray from what was working
with the advice column, So it's about eighty percent new material,
new letters and new responses, and then about twenty percent
old classics from the column.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
The column has been.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Running since twenty twelve, so it's been around for about
five years.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Well, it is wonderful, The column is wonderful, and the
book is wonderful. So many advice columns are I mean,
they're just they seem kind of trite to me, but
yours is, it's incredibly good. The writing is really wonderful,
and just the overall spirit and approach I just really love.
So we'll get to that in a minute, but let's
start like we usually do with the parable. There's a
(04:09):
grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life,
there are two wolves inside of us that are always
at battle. What is a good wolf, which represents things
like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a
bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
And the granddaughter stops and she thinks about it for
a second, looks up at her grandmother, and she says, well, grandmother,
(04:31):
which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed.
So I'd like to start off by asking you what
that parable means to you in your life and in
the work that you do.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Well. I love the parable, and I think that it's
it's really interesting because it actually makes me feel a
little bit conflicted to hear this parable.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
On the one hand.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
I feel like I go back to a position of
telling people to feed the good things inside them and
to encourage their belief in humanity and their belief in
other people, to have compassion for themselves and thereby foster
compassion for other people and connection with.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Other people, which I think.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
I mean, one of the things that sort of works
about my column is the voice of the column is
kind of a little bit harsh, and it can be
a little bit caustic at times, but I always try
to lead with empathy. But a lot of the work
that I feel like a lot of people need to
do in their lives in order to be happier within
(05:34):
their own lives is to connect with other people and
to see that everyone has weaknesses, everyone is vulnerable, and
even people who seem to be coming at you with
a lot of anger or hatred, they actually are in.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Need of compassion and connection if you can find that
in your heart.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
So that's one side of the parable for me, it
makes perfect sense and just a very literal way, Like
you don't encourage within yourself greed and hatred.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
You try to find.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
The parts of yourself that are full of love and positivity,
and that are interested in connection. But on the other hand,
creatively lately, I'm in this phase kind of like a
bad wolf phase, i'd say, where I was a little
blocked earlier this year and I'm writing a new book,
and I think, partially due to political reasons, things were
(06:27):
frustrating to me and depressing to me, and so I
was looking for some way to work through this.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
And I think that in some ways, I.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Would argue that if you ignore the bad wolf, you
can be shut down and kind of corked up and
blocked if you don't acknowledge the bad wolf's existence. So
you're walking the line between you feed the good wolf,
but you actually have to see and recognize and not
(06:57):
blame yourself for the things that the bad wolf in
your life. Yea, Does that make any sense at all?
Speaker 5 (07:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
No, It's one of the things I love about the
parable is there's nothing about starving the bad wolf or
putting them in a cage or any of that stuff. Right,
It's just like, look, you just got to give a
little bit more focus to this one over here. And
I think I like the parable because I think it
it normalizes like we all have these drives and desires
that are not our best self, and sometimes those are there,
(07:26):
and again, you don't have to kill those, just try
and be a little bit better. And I love that
about your column. I think you use the word, you know, vulnerable,
and I love that you sort of normalize that life
is difficult for people, not just for the people you're
writing about, for the people around them. And I just
think there's so much help in understanding that life is
(07:48):
challenging and we're supposed to be struggling in a lot
of cases, and that what we see in the culture
around us is just perfection and none of us feel
that way. And that's one of the big things I
really loved about your column.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
One thing I feel like I've struggled with all my
life is this sort of overachiever's mentality. It didn't mean
that I was necessarily an overachiever. I have been an
underachiever at times in my life, but I have this
kind of perfectionist thing, and I think that I took
the culture's you know, our culture is very focused on
(08:22):
self improvement and living your best life and becoming better
and better and better to infinity and beyond, and that's
something that the more on the one hand, again, as
I'm writing an advice column, I naturally push people to
try to improve themselves and look at themselves closely and
identify the things that are standing in their way or
(08:43):
that might be seen as not functioning well or pushing
people away from them, things that drag them down. But
on the other hand, there's this feeling. I think that
I had this sort of rebirth I had once I
realized that the moment that I could look at my
(09:03):
flaws and recognize them as the flaws of humanity rather
than the flaws that.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
Just happen to be trapped inside of me.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
I'm personally horribly bad, and the difference between me and
the rest of the world is I'm messed up and
the rest of the world is good, and I haven't
learned how to get there yet. I think that when
you finally realize, oh, I do have hatred and greed
inside of me, you know, I can be incredibly petty
and insecure at times.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
It doesn't mean that you feed those things, as the
parable reflects. It just means that you accept to some
extent that you have a lot.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Of darkness and a lot of turmoil on board, and
without accepting that you're kind of in a constant state
of misery because you can't completely, no.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Matter how happy you are, tamp that.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Down, and you can't be become better and better and
better to infinity and beyond.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
In fact, you can't improve forever.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And in fact, if you have that expectation, as our
culture sort of makes us have that expectation often of ourselves,
you find yourself disappointed a lot.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Yeah, And I think you're really getting at one of
what I think is the central themes that runs through
this show over and over, which is that paradox of well,
I want to be better, I want to do better,
and I need to accept myself as I am where
I am with my life the way it is, And
how do you do both of those things, because it
really is a both. I think either one of those
unchecked is unhealthy.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yeah, I mean, I think you go through stages of
noticing that you're not making forward progress and noticing that
you need a push to. Like I mean, for me,
I'm a parent. I have two kids, they're ten and
eight years old. They're two daughters, and I also have
a step son who's about turn twenty one, and lately
I'm noticing I worked against the whole mom thing taking
(10:54):
over my entire life so strenuously that I realize that I, actually,
this is going to sound terrible, but so zealously guard
my professional life that I haven't really let my kids
in as much as I could, if that makes any sense.
And so now I'm in this phase of you know,
(11:17):
it's not it's not frightening to be a mother, Heather,
just hang out.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
With your kids. You know.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
I was always concerned that I would apply my overachiever
nature to motherhood and be, you know, try to be
too much of a mother all the time, have hovered
too much. So I've kind of done the opposite. And
now I realize that, you know, my kids are they
talk and they're smart, and they're interesting, and they need
someone to engage with them a lot of time. You know,
(11:44):
they need that, they need my time and attention, and
I need them too.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
I need to show up, and I'm kind of losing
the thread.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You can cut this, but so you realize at different
points in your life what maybe you need to adjust,
and sometimes you need to say, wow, I need a kick,
I need to do better, I need to try harder,
Like I've forgiven myself for being the not good enough mother,
like I will never really be the perfect mother, no
(12:15):
one really can, and maybe I will never be even
an amazing mother, a great mother like we all really
want to be. But I need to try a little
harder to be a better mother nonetheless, and I have
to recognize that, as much as I'm uncomfortable with that pressure,
I'm at a point in my life where I actually
have to try harder at that. With my writing, I've
(12:36):
always pushed myself a lot, and there are times when
I have to say, you know what, you have kept
up a pace of writing that is so strenuous, and
you have to back off and relax a little bit.
Speaker 4 (12:46):
You can't keep up this pace forever. I think this
has been a year that my mind and body have said, no,
we're not going to work that hard. We're done with that.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
You know, you're gonna have to live a different kind
of life, yep, yep. So part of the challenge is
just being in touch with what life is giving you
on any given day. And it changes constantly.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah, it does. I think that's one of the wonderful
and confounding if you don't let it be as it is.
Things about life and is that things that worked for
you last week, last month, last year are no longer.
They don't work, they're not appropriate in the same way
it's you know, it's never done. We're always evolving, and
that's the wonderful thing. But it can also be if
(13:28):
you're if you're one of those people that's looking for like,
when is it done? But the bad news is never.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
That's another kind of myth that our culture embraces. There's
a kind of feeling that and this is a seductive
thing to sell to people, the idea that you you
work really hard and then you take a vacation and
everything is amazing.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
And it's just RESTful and beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I mean, it's hard not to for me not to
be fixated on those kinds of endpoint visions.
Speaker 5 (13:59):
You know.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
It's sort of like imagine that experience.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Of just being rich or being successful, where you're you're
never like trying to be more right. And actually a
big focus of my new book is is kind of
I mean, I'm struggling with it. It's not done yet,
so I don't even know. But a part of what
I'm trying to write about is achieving the kind of
(14:24):
the ultimate feeling of and I say the ultimate kind
of ironically here, because to me, the big challenge is
finding a place where it's enough, where what you already
have is enough and there isn't and you recognize the
divinity of the current moment instead of always focusing on
(14:46):
where you're going to land someday.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
That is probably the other big You know, if I
had said there were two themes in the show that
and they're the themes of the show because I'm kind
of always wrestling with them as my own personal questions,
is exactly that too. Like I believe that there's some
degree of striving and ambition and the desire to grow
and change that's innate in us in humans. I think
it's part of who we are. And at the same time,
(15:10):
I believe exactly like you said, there's got to be
a point where you know there's enough. How do you
be a person who's growing and changing and how do
you also be happy with the moment right where it is.
And we had a guest on recently the episode came
out and he had a question that I just loved,
and he said he was talking about that future minded mentality.
(15:31):
He's like, well, one of the things to do to
get out of that is when you sort of envision, like, okay,
well when I get to there is to kind of
ask yourself and then what and really play that through,
like what's that really going to be like? And tragedies
in the news are a terrible thing. But you know,
it wasn't too long ago that we heard about Chris Cornell,
the singer for Soundgarden, you know, suicide, right. And if
(15:52):
we ever need the idea that being beautiful and rich
and famous is what we need, that's where happiness is.
It's people like him that you go, no, it doesn't work.
He's incredibly handsome, incredibly successful, I mean, all those things,
and yet the ultimate misery, you know. And so that
(16:14):
for me is helpful when I start looking at that, Well,
if I just had you know, X or Y, I
look at that, or Robin Williams or other people and
you just go, look, boy, that stuff doesn't do it.
Speaker 4 (16:24):
I don't know that.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Much about him, but I said to my husband, I said, God,
it must have been really.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
First of all, there's obviously something about that culture, you know,
that kind of rock and roll culture that teaches you
how to thrive in some ways and other ways.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Kind of eats you alive.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
There's something about being famous at a really young age,
being gorgeous. You know, having everything you've ever wanted at
a young age can actually be horribly difficult over time.
It's kind of, yeah, ridiculously privileged, as that sounds, not
that I I had that, but I just I think
that when you get older and you pick up these questions,
(17:07):
often you know that something good is happening when things
start to shift and you start to see people who
have a lot on the surface as almost being in
danger more than people who just are living regular, ordinary
lives that most people would consider boring. You know, it's
hard to put this stuff into word sometimes, but I
(17:28):
feel like my sense of what a beautiful life is
has shifted so dramatically in the past few years. And
it's nice because it's kind of more internal in some ways.
It's really about how are you processing your life and
how are you taking in what's happening around you. And
it's almost like you meet people who you can tell
(17:50):
are really present and take in what they have and
enjoy it and savor it and know how to show
up and savor things. Seeing people who can show up
that it becomes a form of luxury to you. You know,
when you see that in emotion, you say, now, that
looks like vacation, you know, like that like true, you know, meditative, peaceful,
(18:12):
happy living. And I mean it's easy to be cynical
about it because when you're younger, you see people like
that and you say.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
God, what's wrong with that hippee?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
You know, like you don't you don't quite process it
the same way. But I think that it really is
that constant balancing between am I being too easy on
myself or too hard on myself? Do I need a
little push here? Am I just being lazy? Or am
I trying too hard to fix something that you know?
(18:41):
I mean, this is another thing figuring out which things
in your life actually can't be fixed should it be fixed,
and your energy to fix them is dysfunctional energy. You're
just you're just doing something you've always done. I'll fix it,
I'll fix it, I'll fix it. It's interesting to actually
identify the things that all into that category. Sometimes there
are parts of your career you know, that are just wow,
(19:05):
this part of my career is kind of just a
compulsive I want to pat on the head and I
want to be a good student thing, and it's not
actually felt or driven by anything inside of me, not
like everything is just a you know, a Dionysian fest
of my feelings guide everything I do. But I think,
(19:26):
what actually brings me joy or what brings.
Speaker 4 (19:29):
Me satisfaction in my day?
Speaker 2 (19:31):
And how can I make my day more satisfying for
me and of course for the people around me and.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Also for the wider world. How do I you know?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Because once, I mean, that's really another layer of luxury, right,
because once you actually have the capacity to say, I
don't just care about the people around me, I have
to find some way to serve humanity before I'm gone.
Because if I can't do that, what real purpose do
I have? Is my whole goal in life? Just to
(20:03):
I'm going to arrive at that luxury place and be
that you know, rock star whose life is beautiful, and then.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
I'll be done, and like you said, what comes after that.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
I've always been a fan of the serenity prayer, right
because I came up in a recovery culture, because I
was the drug addict at a pretty early age, and
a lot of what I learned in that culture has
kind of I think for me has sort of faded away,
but that seems like the penultimate point of wisdom of
like what can I change and what can I? And
I always remember we had a guest on very early on,
(20:52):
a guy named Andrew Solomon, who's a wonderful writer. He
wrote The Noonday Demon, and he wrote a book called
Far from the Tree about children who have what we
might call disabilities and also the gifts that that brings them.
And he was talking about something and I was really
struck by this. He was saying, you know the people
who have children where you just know, like this is
(21:14):
the way they're going to be, and you just go
about accepting them the way they are. And then there's
other cases where it's very clear that you can improve
the situation and you should. He's like, the torture is
the in between state. It's like, well, yeah, maybe I
could make it better. I mean, I hear that this
would help, and I hear that that would help, but
maybe I should just accept where I'm at. So for
those parents, it's so hard, and I think that just
(21:35):
applies to our lives in general. It's very easy when
we can sort of see, oh, there's nothing I'm going
to do about that, And in my case, I actually
consider it an accomplishment that not only do I know that,
in certain cases, I actually stop doing it even when
I know it. So I think there's something to be
said for even getting to that point. But then to
get into the subtler pieces of is there really anything
(21:57):
I can do here or not? And maybe I can?
Is the you know that somebody said recently. I don't
know if I like this phrase or not, but you know,
is the juice worth the squeeze?
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Yeah. It's funny because as.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
You encounter less of the old problems that you used
to have, you also, even as you're kind of trying
to make yourself a more balanced, open person, sometimes create
problems for yourself from that process. And I kind of
think what you're talking about is sort of I can
walk myself into a space of forgiving myself for my
(22:31):
failings and forgiving other people for their failings, and then
I feel good and I feel like God, we're all
just muddling through and it's fine and there's no reason
for any strife. You know, you just have to shower
your compassion on others and have them meet you, and
then to fix it. Part of you will say, you know,
(22:53):
I could fix all of these damage relationships. All I
have to do is pick up the phone and if
you know, a few people call and say you know what,
I love you.
Speaker 4 (23:04):
I just want you to know.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And there's no reason we shouldn't be able to work
this out. That's not really how it works. And also
you can be tempted to call you know, it's like
you're not thinking of the person that it wasn't that
problem at to begin with. I mean, I think there's
a there's a kind of sensitive, locked in, disordered person that.
(23:25):
I mean, I consider myself sort of a former addict
in my own way because I relate to a lot
of the personality issues that addicts have, and I think
there's a kind of person that sort of it's just
hard not to touch the same flame over and over again.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
And even as you grow, you know, enlightened and better.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
You come back and you say now that I'm more
Jesus like I can touch.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
The flame, And the answer is no, you actually still can't.
You're not going to change that.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
And not only that, but it doesn't serve you to
think about the flame at all. You can analyze every
layer of you know, what do we need and what
don't we need? But there are certain pockets of you know,
the puzzle, let's say, the corners of the puzzle that
set off things inside of you that are dysfunctional as
a person. You know, and you kind of know when
(24:16):
you're in there because you're oh trying to you know,
I'm going to wriggle through this. It's like working on
a Rubik's cube as the world ends.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
And on one hand, you.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Can get a lot of professional satisfaction and a lot
of creative enjoyment out of solving those kinds of puzzles,
the things that you know, I love writing about the
things that make me angry, the things that make me
feel shame. I figured out when I was blocked with
my book earlier this year that I had to go
back to the places that really the things that really
bothered me. I needed to know what was bothering me
(24:48):
in order to make some creative progress. But if you
go back to some things over and over, you know,
it can almost be like a fix, you know what
I mean. It serves some strange either an ego need
or some strange escapist inability to be in the moment
and just be taking in the things that are actually
(25:09):
in your life, especially when it's someone who is not
in your life and you want to go back and
let me fix things with that person, or you're imagining
that person and how they live a little too much,
and it's like, why am I displaced from my own experience?
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Obsession kind of works this way too.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
Competition with other writers, competition with other women, competition with
other people who do what you do. These things can
fill the same strange place where you're actually working out
something else by fixating on them. And you think you're
telling a story that's about no, there's a problem there,
but actually you're telling about yourself and your own insecurities
(25:50):
and your own inability to stop touching that fire.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yep. I think we all have some things in us
that are like that. And this makes me think a
little bit of one of the line from your book
that it's sort of to this conversation in general, and
you say, I think it's really easy to see your
life as a series of problems instead of seeing it
is a patchwork of things to savor.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Yeah, like as if everything just needs to be solved
and put out of the way until there's nothing left
do you want to live in an empty room? When
I was a kid, the scene in I think It's
Yellow Submarine with nowhere man. Do you remember that scene
where the man is walking along and it's all I mean,
I remember it actually being more dramatic than it actually is,
(26:33):
because I saw it recently and I was like, I
remember it being much more depressing than this. But it
used to freak me out that there was nothing there.
I think, having been raised a Catholic, there was something.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
About an imaginary man.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
In a place that's just white and everything disappears and
he has nothing.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
It just felt so threatening and terrible to me. But
that's when you're.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Fixing everything to get it out of the way. That's
kind of what you're aiming for. Is like you think
that you're kind of just aiming for death, right, because
there is no rest, there's no real peace where there's
just nothing.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
There are always more problems to solve, right.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
And Also what you said about the kids, I think
is interesting. Kids with different issues. It's the waiting for
a diagnosis. Somehow are not really knowing how much help
you should be giving and how much you should be
you know, accepting what you have. I think that's a
nice metaphor for where we all end up with ourselves sometimes.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah, yeah, I mean definitely like I am this way,
you know I am. A personal example for me is
it's very easy for me to become sort of very
withdrawn and quiet, and that can be difficult in relationships.
It's also just a it's you know, part of who
I am in some way, and so there's this always
this question of well, how much do I work to
improve that versus how much do I accept it? And
(27:54):
you know, I've been thinking of things sort of on
a scale more lately and realizing it's not about not
being a certain way, it's about being the right amount
of a certain way. Like that that tendency of mine
to kind of go off in my head and think
about things is in one hand, very bad for me
and also one of the one, you know, one of
the best things about me. It gives me some of
my best strengths. And so instead of trying to be
(28:16):
a different person and have different characteristics, how do I
how do I dial those characteristics to levels that are
more skillful for my life versus trying to be a
way that I'm not.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
I think that personally, I have sort of started to
put aside the idea that there's some objective good way
to be about anything. Yes, and it's actually legitimate, especially
as when you're older and you're talking about within the
context of a partnership or a marriage or a friendship.
(28:53):
It's not about anyone would agree that you're crazy, or
any you know, anyone would agree that you don't talk enough.
It's actually just two people defining for themselves what works
separately and what works together.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
And it's about asking for Okay.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
I understand that this silence you have going on works
for you. I'm gonna need more, you know, But then
also examining do I compulsively always need more? Am I
attracted to silence? I mean, most of us do end
up with people who just there's spark there because.
Speaker 4 (29:34):
We need a little more from that kind of person.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
And in couples, I think also one person really does
end up being more, a little more withholding, and the
other person ends up being a little more, give me
a little more, give me a little more. I don't
think that's actually a pathology.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
Or a dysfunction.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It's kind of just the way it is, like you
can put the same two people in a different couple,
and they'll start doing the opposite things based on what
the other person, you know, how the other person's trying
to solve the puzzle of them. So lately I've been
kind of feeling my way into this new place where
it's sort of like I might be an objective lunatic
(30:13):
on anyone else's scale. Or maybe maybe our culture, which
is crazy, our culture is completely mad, but maybe our
insane culture defines me as insane. Am I going to
take that to heart every day of my life? I
live in the suburbs. The suburbs are a strange place.
Am I going to navigate my entire existence around the
(30:38):
norms of the people around me and the suburbs? Or
am I actually going to just say bartle Be the scrivener.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
I choose not to like bartle Be. I choose not to.
I prefer not to. That's what you say. He doesn't say,
I choose not to.
Speaker 2 (30:52):
I think letting go of the notion that there's some
objective form of healthy person is so ian, and especially
between two adults in a relationship.
Speaker 4 (31:04):
I mean I end up saying to my husband often, Look,
you don't have.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
To apologize just because you're a weirdo and this or
that way. All that matters is whether or not it
makes me, you know, angry or insane, and whether or
not the things I do make you insane, and whether
we can just talk it out, and you know, we
can work it out.
Speaker 4 (31:24):
We can work it out.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
You know, we can compromise and find a way of
each getting what we need. We're just here to kind
of help each other and to get what we need
at the same time. And it doesn't matter what the
if the entire world says their thing that they have
going on is nutty, there's something wrong there, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
I'm going to read something that you wrote that's very
similar to this idea, and you say, my guess is
that at least some of the shit you're taking for
being out of step with the mainstream is related to
your perfectly understandable urge to shove all of humanity into
one of two clean categories, odd and normal and vibrant
and dullsville unique and average. But first, you're going to
(32:31):
need to relax your grip on your worldview a little
and accept yourself for who you are once and for all.
And while you're at it, except that the so called
ultranormals out there are far more complex than you give
them credit for.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
I like letters where people bring me their perceptions of
what is acceptable and what isn't acceptible and even what
is daring and rock and roll and what's just milk
toast and boring, And sometimes people have these I got
something recently from someone who was talking about being into,
(33:06):
you know, freaky sex and BDSM, and she was saying,
I won't settle for anyone who isn't open to the
freaky things that I'm open to. And I mean, I
struggle with exactly how to answer this because a part
of me feels like who defines what bland sexes and
what freaky sex is? Sex is two people deciding together
(33:29):
how they're going to communicate or take part in this
kind of physical party.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
You know, So why is.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
There somehow a lot of cachet around putting on black
leather versus just having.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
Missionary style sex.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
It's just an arbitrary distinction that places the alternative in
some rarefied realm in your mind when you could be
turning your back on someone who is just you know,
the energy that you seek might not actually have translated
itself into sex for this person, but you'll still find
(34:07):
it with this person and saying straight out of the gate,
I'm gonna need this stat and this cuts you off
from a lot of kind of forms.
Speaker 4 (34:18):
You know. It's almost like a way of never being.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Vulnerable to come into a relationship saying here's my laundry
list of what I desire, and I understand it at
the level of I need an egalitarian partner.
Speaker 4 (34:30):
I can't be with someone who doesn't see me as
an equal.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
I mean that's a very basic thing, right, But the
line when the laundry list is very detailed, I'm gonna
need Kellogg's corn flakes every morning, tea without sugar. It's
a challenge to kind of loosen up other people's grips
on what they think are the parameters of what they're
dealing with and their assumptions. I mean, we have so
(34:56):
many just really dumb, flat simple assumptions about what categories
of people are okay and what categories of people are
messed up, and weird keep them away from us.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
You know.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
We have these ideas about weakness and how if someone
says too much that means they're weak somehow, whereas it's
someone who can perfectly, you know, ape the successful dude
in our mainstream society is somehow really getting, you know,
hitting on all cylinders, and everyone else is just fumbling.
(35:29):
So being able to put that into language is a
challenge because you're kind of taking apart everything that people
know and trying to challenge.
Speaker 4 (35:37):
I mean, you end up saying, what is this, Where
does this come from? Does this serve you?
Speaker 2 (35:42):
If it serves you, if you're happy in that fantastic
you know who. I'm not trying to change everyone's perception
of what's normal. Certainly, God knows, I don't know what
normal is. But people really let themselves be guided and
fenced in and put in a corner by these dichotomies
that don't really serve the fullness of what we are
(36:03):
as human beings inside.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Yeah, they don't really exist in a real way. And
I think that is probably one of the biggest things
that's happened to me as I've gotten older, similar to
what you sort of said in that piece, is that
I stopped sort of dividing people into categories of like
when I was in AA or twelve step program is
supposed to be anonymous, you know, there was this idea
that there were like normal people and then there were us,
(36:27):
and that drove me up a wall. After a while,
I was like, that is just not true, right, there
is not normal people and then there's us, Like I
may struggle with this thing, whereas you struggle with that.
And we had Glenn and Melton Doyle on the show
a long time ago and she said something that just
always I go. I've said it on the show fifteen
times because it blew me away, and it speaks to this.
She said, if you stay on the surface with people,
(36:49):
you know, you don't connect with anybody because everybody's got
different surfaces. But if you take the risk to go
deeper with people, you connect with a lot more people
because as you go a couple levels down, we're really
all the same. And I just thought that was so wise.
And that's kind of what we're talking about, is you're saying,
don't cut somebody out of your life because their surface
doesn't look exactly like what you think it should.
Speaker 4 (37:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
The hard part, I think is that we don't know
how to negotiating, how to get down beneath the surface
with people, but every person is.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
Different, very hard to do.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
And I do think that this is something kind of
interesting that ties back to what we were talking about before.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
My only interest in not being jarring to other.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
People because I kind of like being a weirdo.
Speaker 4 (37:36):
Now.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
I go through stages, of course, where I don't like it,
and I try to just you know, let me just
fit in. I don't want to be obtrusive, just let me,
you know, fade into the background. But I'm in kind
of a phase of like, Okay, this is what I'm wearing.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Everyone looks letting your freak flag.
Speaker 2 (37:54):
Fly a little bit right now. I don't know what
exactly is going on. But the only level at which
I find myself returning to this place where I am
concerned with what the dominant language is is I don't
like the idea that I cut off relationships because I
(38:15):
assert my.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Weirdness, you know, and.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
I don't know how to I don't always know how
to navigate with some people in order to just really
connect with them. I think what I was going to
say is it's sort of like I dislike the fact
that and maybe this is just like an assertive woman thing,
but I people have trouble trusting me a little bit
(38:43):
in some ways. Some people trust me with everything, and
other people just it doesn't matter how long I know them,
they'll never quite trust me. And maybe, I mean, maybe
I'm deeply untrustworthy at some level. I'm open to that too.
Maybe there's some energy that's you know, it could be
like a compare setitive energy that I have, which I
do have a competitive energy. Or maybe it's just I mean,
(39:06):
writers sometimes are you know, package the things they say,
and a lot of different angles of like I have
trouble just saying I'm proud of my work without saying
but I'm a dope, you know, but.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
I don't know what I'm doing. I can't just rest
on one thing.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
I have to give a complicated, conflicted answer as you can.
Speaker 4 (39:26):
But I think it's interesting.
Speaker 6 (39:28):
When you see people like preachers and ministers and teachers
who can meet people where they are without pushing them
away naturally.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
I think if you spend a lot of time needing
more from people, you also push people away because you're
in that battle. And this is the very recovery kind
of thing of like you want.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
More, but you're also I don't need you.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
I don't need anyone, and I you know, watching I'm
kind of fascinated by people who minister to other people
and know how to find them and just be solid
instead of.
Speaker 4 (40:05):
Putting too much.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Their ego doesn't come into the picture, comes in in
a way that just makes a lot of room around
it somehow.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
Yeah, I think that's what it is. And I mean
I have times where I think I'm able to be
that kind of person, like I can just be there
for people, and then I have other times where I
simply cannot. And for me, the difference really is is
how much am I focusing or preoccupied with myself?
Speaker 4 (40:29):
You know?
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, whether that be how my stomach feels, or how
you see me, or am I going to get paid
for this or whatever the various things are. It really
is the times that I'm able to do that is
when there's just less of me, and in some sense
that's not exactly what I want to say, but less
of that, it's less self consciousness and I'm not thinking
about myself. I'm genuinely looking at them and going, wow, okay,
what's happening there versus my normal mode, which is I'm
(40:52):
a little bit curious about you, and I'm also incredibly
thinking about how I feel and what's happening, and that's
gotten better. And I don't know whether to get myself
credit for that or just to think I just have
gotten older and it's helped to think. It's a little
of both.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes even if you have
the best intentions, if you go into an interaction thinking,
you know, okay, in a situation like this, we're talking
to each other, it's an interview, it's sort of like
you want to get in the zone where you're kind
of building a conversation together that has a lot of
ideas in it, and you want to like, really, you know,
(41:26):
collaborate and make something. Sometimes if you bring that energy
to interactions with just people in your life, you're basically
end up being kind of controlling.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
You're trying to pull things out of them, let's really
get down to the nitty gritty, and they're like, God,
get out of my kitchen. I'm not interested in this.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
So in some ways, for me, learning how to relax
in the presence of other people, yes, has sadly been
a big part of the last five years of my life.
And now I notice the people who don't know how
to do it, And I mean, I'm not judgmental of it.
I lived there for you know, forty years, but figuring
out how to just you know, people show up.
Speaker 4 (42:06):
At your house.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
We had a series of guests this weekend, and people
show up and they bring a lot of different things,
and you never really know which person you're going to
get from. You know, an old friends you've done for
twenty years can show up as fifteen different people based
on how their day win, or how their week went,
or how their year went. And you try to greet
(42:27):
the person that's there and work with whatever you have,
you know, which takes being okay with who you are,
or at least being able to put yourself aside a
little bit, like you said.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
And we do the same thing. We show up as
fifteen different people, so we are very much at the
end of our time. This is one of those great
conversations where I've looked at my notes almost none, Yeah,
because we just look at your notice. Yeah, it's just
been easy. So but I think I want to I
want to wrap up with reading one thing. You know,
you're an advice columnist and so I mean, that's not
(42:58):
all you do, but this book is about that, and
I'm going to read one piece of advice that I
think is so great, and there's probably ten that I
could do, And I can't stress enough to listeners of
this show. If you like this show, you will love
this book and the column, so I strongly encourage you
to seek it out. I'm going to read a piece
of advice and then maybe you could say a thing
or two about it, and then we will will wrap up.
(43:21):
Almost every single person who writes to me is trapped
in his or her head and wants to break free.
You really can't be reminded to step back away from
the little trivial puzzles of life enough. You need some
kind of a process that connects you to yourself, to
your feelings, to a brilliant, full color world that you
deeply deserve but can't touch or taste yet.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Yeah, you know the one thing that I love about writing.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
And you know my advice comes very long.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Which you could have gathered from this interview, but untill
you know two thousand words, usually my response is, but
the thing that I love about doing this is there's
such a transformation that happens when people stop beating themselves
up for falling into the same potholes over and over again.
(44:12):
And start just accepting that these are the potholes that
I fall into, you know, and start to forgive themselves
for the way that they naturally.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Move through the world.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
We are all clumsy in one way or another. And
when you finally realize that your clumsiness doesn't set you apart,
it actually makes you a human being right and connects
you to everyone else who's alive. It's like you can
see color for the first time.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
It's like you can feel.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Your emotions for the first time in a pure way,
because you don't have judgments about what it means that
you're feeling something so called negative emotion or just any emotion.
I mean, so many of us are cut off from
our emotions because we've just been taught to associate emotion
with being out of control. But when you can feel
(45:08):
your emotions, when you can forgive yourself for having emotions
and for having a human body, and for having a
brain that works in certain ways and sends you into
that pothole over and over again, the whole world blossoms
in front of you. It's not that your life is
a never ending epiphany. It's just that you have this
I don't know. It's like an ability to touch the
(45:32):
divine somehow, you know, and to feel right with the
world in a really deep and kind of measurable, palpable way,
and the ability to kind of put that into words.
I mean, it's the challenge of every column I right,
is to put that feeling into words, and also to
nudge someone and make that turn.
Speaker 4 (45:51):
You know.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
It's just so satisfying and so difficult. But I love it.
I love it, and that was thank you for reading that.
It's really really nice.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
So many I could read. And you do a wonderful
job of putting into words and nudging people. This has
been a great conversation. I feel like I could do
it for another two hours effortlessly. So we'll have to
have you back. We'll have to have you back another time.
But thank you so much for coming on again, listeners.
I can't recommend the book How to Be a Person
(46:20):
in the World enough. And we'll have links in the
show notes to her work and you can find it there.
And thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (46:28):
Thank you, Eric. I enjoyed it so much. I'd love
to come back. Go so nice talking to you.
Speaker 5 (46:32):
Okay, take care, okay, you too, Bye bye.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
If what you just heard was helpful to you. Please
consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast.
Head over to oneufeed dot net slash apport
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