Begin Again with Davina McCall - Alain de Botton: How To Fall In Love Again

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

In this episode of Begin Again, philosopher and bestselling author Alain de Botton shares a deeply compassionate guide to repairing your love life and building a relationship with yourself that can last a lifetime. He opens up about his early struggles with belonging, the emotional weight of childhood trauma, and the transformative lessons he’s learned through decades of studying human relationships. Through gentle wisdom and radical honesty, Alain unpacks what keeps us stuck in patterns of pain, why love so often goes wrong, and how we might begin again with ourselves and with each other. From understanding victimhood and building emotional resilience, to facing regret and redefining success, this conversation invites you to rethink what it really means to live well. With philosophical clarity and a therapist’s care, Alain de Botton offers a roadmap not just to falling in love again, but to becoming the person you’re proud to be. 👉 Follow us on Instagram: @beginagain 🎥 Watch more on TikTok: @beginagainpod (Intro) (00:01:37) Who Is Alain de Botton? (00:02:37) Finding Inner Strength Through Love (00:08:22) Healing Emotional Wounds From Childhood (00:13:44) Letting Go of the Victim Mentality (00:22:48) Choosing Love When Life Feels Hopeless (00:26:27) Why Deep Friendships Matter in Adulthood (00:29:38) The Fear of Love and 'The One' (00:37:34) Adobe Ad (00:38:42) Saying No and Discovering Your True Self (00:46:32) Feeling Safe With Your Weirdest Self (00:53:27) How to Find the Right Therapist (00:57:29) Creating Space for Emotional Reflection (01:00:49) Learning to Live With Regret (01:04:31) Moving On With Emotional Scars (01:08:28) Life Always Renews Itself With Love Sponsored by: Adobe - http://adobe.ly/Davina  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Love is both beautiful and you want to scream with horror, but it would become easier if we were able to admit how frightening love and tenderness actually are when we're confronted with them. Today's guest is one of the most brilliant minds of our time. A philosopher and a best-selling author, it is Alan de Botton. He's here to help us navigate and understand why we feel what we feel so that we can heal and live our best possible lives. I'm a psychotherapist. This is the basic thing you need to do.

Get out on a starry night and look at the same. stars. Suddenly you're aware of the vastness in which we all live. And you think, you know what, it's not all about me. The university being going on a lot longer, it's a lot bigger. I am a grain of sand. Thank God. We talk about love, some of its biggest myths, why so many of us think we need to be chosen to feel worthy. We even talk about how to move on from a life that's hurt us. I mean, that's just the beginning. There's so much more in this conversation. There's a zone, right? Between what you're hoping for and what life serves up. Yes. And you can either fill it with tears or you can fill it with laughter. Let's try and fill it with the richest kind of laughter. Being human is a

full-time job and it's not always easy to get it right, but actually no matter how lost you feel, there is always space to begin again. So, Alan de Botton, modern day philosopher, what I love about what you want to do is you want to bring these big ideas to the general public in a way that we can all digest and understand them. You were a co-founder of school. of Life. How many years has School of Life been going? We started in 2008. I mean, like, that is such an amazing organisation and the good that they've done

has been quite extraordinary in the reach that it's had. And I'd like to talk to you today, particularly because of the reason that I started this podcast, which was the idea was potentially that I should do this podcast about menopause and midlife, because that's what I'm sort of well known for. But I said, I'd rather do it because I want to try and help people get to a place where they have loved the life that they've lived or they've lived a life that they've loved and that they can die and let go happily and die knowing that they've had a great life with no regrets.

And how do we do that? Sometimes we have to begin again. And if I could just interview non-stop for five days, I think I'd have the answer. And we could end begin again and we'd be done. Well, we could speculate together. But I like that very much, the idea that you need to get to a place mentally to cope with your external circumstances. That was really, you know, if you went back to the stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome, that's precisely what they thought philosophy should do. It should be about training your mind to cope with whatever external circumstances you're facing.

And, you know, it sounds very odd because nowadays we very much believe that we should be changing the external circumstances. But sometimes you can't, particularly in relation to death. It's one of those immovable obstacles you cannot get past. And therefore, the idea that you have to meet that external obstacle with a change of your own mindset. I mean, it's not just death. There are lots of things which are outside of your control and you face a choice. You know, it's either you're going to get run over, have to commit suicide, end life, or you will somehow have to cope.

And it is amazing what happens to people at those points of juncture. when suddenly they think everything was going to be about that and actually I'm going to have to go here. How can I cope? And you think you can't cope. And I think you can almost measure somebody's sort of evolution as a human being

for how many times they've come up against those obstacles and have dealt with it. And let's not gloss this over. We're talking here about, it often happens at night, middle of the night crises where you think, I cannot go on.

This thing is bigger than me. I'm jumping out of the window. And I think, you know, a lot of us, probably many more of us than we think, I'll include myself in that, have been in those places. And how do you then cope? How is there dawn? I'm really interested in dawn, D-A-W-N. You know, dawn, it's the return of sunlight. It's the return of perspective. You know, at 4 a.m., it's so dark. You just can't tell what the answer is going to be. You know, your brain is not firing correctly. All those bits of the mind that are responsible for imagination, creativity, are kind of switched off. they're sluggish and you just think it's over. And then dawn comes and there's a light over the landscape and there's a little bit of hope. There's something there that you're going to make it. You're going to find it's not optimal. It is not where you wanted to be, but you're going to find a way through.

And these are amazing moments. And I know when I meet somebody, I think I'm meeting somebody now who's been there. You just pick it up. You think, okay, they've been there. They know what that is. I think that's what it is to be an adult. I mean, there are 12-year-olds who've had to deal with that, and there are 50-year-olds who haven't. Yes.

My kind of people have, you know, and I think they're probably watching, and this is the place for them. And we need those places. And out of that comes laughter. Let's not forget there's a lot of joy. When you've known that kind of bleakness, my goodness joy becomes important. And sweet things and tender things, you will never look away from a cuddle or a bit of dark chocolate or a sunny day. These things assume a momentous importance because you've known. the dark stuff. I think this is such an important message to try and get across to people who

have an abject terror of facing a problem or dealing with a problem because I think a lot of the darkness that comes when thinking about letting go of your life because we're all terminal. We're all going to die. We're all dying. Yeah, we can't avoid it. I'm dying now. I'm dying now. I've always been dying since the day you were born. That it would be awful to look back and think I didn't do that thing because I was frightened. And not only that, what you lost out on was the joy that you were just talking about. And I love the idea of fear because, of course, we get held back by fear.

And we have this kind of basic timidity. What happens if I call them and they weren't interested? What happens if I pitched an idea and it was rejected? And really at those moments you need to think, what's the true emergency? The true emergency is death. That's the ultimate. emergency. Compared with that true emergency, that thing you're a little bit scared of doing on a Monday morning, forget it. It's a tiny thing. Give it a shot. What does it matter? Make a fool of

yourself. At the school of life, we always have this thing that confidence is not born out of telling people, you can do it, you're wonderful, you're beautiful, it's a same. We're all idiots. We're on a planet of 8 billion people. What other options are there for you? So if you're really scared about, oh, I might look like an idiot if I try that. Don't worry, that was decided a long time ago. decided by the highest authorities, you are an idiot already. So you've got nowhere particular to fall. Go for it. I love it because you've said before in talks that, you know, be weird. Like, don't be afraid to be the silly one that goes for the thing that doesn't work. You know, it's interesting the weird thing because we all start, I mean, little kids are very weird. Age two or three,

kids are so strange. They want to eat odd things. They want to put their hands in strange places. They think they're this or that. It's just, it's madness. And then by nine, they're starting to get a lot less weird. By 15, they're doing what everybody in the class is doing and they're completely boring. That's what teenagers are so boring. And then, hopefully, it gets better and better. And by the time you're 89 or 122, you're completely weird, by which I really mean, you're loyal to what it's actually like to be human. And most of the time, the story we tell ourselves about what it's like to be human is an abbreviated, cliche, dried out husk of an actual account of what it is to be us. And so the best people just go, you know what? And it happens in small ways and large. Think about

entertaining, right? Someone who knows how to be a bit weird in entertaining knows that if you are trying to make somebody else feel comfortable, you've got to remember what it was like for you to be uncomfortable and for what made you comfortable. So don't give people food you wouldn't eat. Don't make them sit on chairs you don't want to eat. Don't make them do stuff you wouldn't want to do. Stay loyal to who you are and how strange you are. And yeah. I think a massive part of the journey to accepting death is finding out who you are and you're just saying, you know, be who you are. But I think I got like menopause and have been learning and I'm still not there yet of who am I really. And I think part of that is what do I want?

What do I want? It's always been for my kids or providing for the family. And I am on a, I feel like I'm on a bit of a journey of what do I want, which in turn will show me who I am. Yeah. But I would quite like to find out if you've got any practical tips for people who are maybe a bit younger than me because I am quite old and I kind of of wish I'd started this journey 20 years ago. Yeah. How can you start this journey?

By the way, this is a big theme, saving people time. Because why on earth do these life lessons sink in so late on? Couldn't we just, you know, we're trying to save people time. It's like, I took 20 years to learn this. Please don't take 20 years to learn this. Please, you know, I'm all the time saying this to people, and I'm sure you are too. So, okay, so how do we learn to, I mean, look, childhood is a very different. period. And I think we all need to understand that children are born into the world, utterly

dependent on those around them, the few people around them who are randomly chosen and who will be suffering from various distortions of their own minds. I mean, it's very rare that you are born into a sane family. Most of us are born into, you know, it's a lopsided sort of proposition. So we have to understand that this is the way we're born. How long are we going to let that lopsided entry into the world determine our lives? ideally a minimal amount of time. What you need to do is to realize the nature of the lopsidedness, accept the lopsidness, and start to correct it as early as possible.

How do we find out what our lopsidedness is? Is it that we sit and ask ourselves questions? I mean, you know, it depends in which area. Love and work, the two great areas of life. This is Freud said, you know, happiness means getting love and work right. And most of us get love and work dramatically wrong. with things that are probably related to early childhood. We pick up, what happens in childhood is that we don't only learn language and social skills.

We learn a whole emotional vocabulary about who we are, how we function, what's expected of us, what it takes to be good, what it means to be a boy, a girl, gender, roles, etc. All of this is encoded in us unconsciously. And we need to understand the language we've learned in order to become self-aware and question. bits of it are going to be barmy, really, really strange, really distorted. There will be an excessive focus on some areas and not on others. And ultimately, the goal of adulthood is to become your own arbiter of your own value and of your own mission and of your own joys, etc. It used to belong in other people. A child looks up at its parent and goes, who am I? What

am I worth? And the answer comes back from the parent's face. And that answer is loaded with prejudice and bizarre stuff, right? And after a certain age, you think that happened to me in the past. I can't let that continue. At some point, I've got to become. And by the way, we do this in love. I mean, in love, you know, most of us spend a good portion of our lives thinking I'm not complete until I meet somebody else who's able to mirror for me a good picture of who I am.

I won't tolerate myself until someone else can say, you're okay. And until then I'm not okay. Can I quickly ask you something about that? So, because I think what you're saying is, I want to find somebody where I like myself. Okay, so you're showing me a version of I become a nice person when I'm with you. I give you power of attorney over my worth. I give you the power to decide whether I'm a good person or a bad person. Think about lonely.

But shouldn't we know if we're a good person or a friend? Of course. But of course, that's not the history. So let's get passionate towards the history. Because we've come from a place where, We, you know, we take our school grades to our parents and go, what am I worth? Am I a good person? And maybe there are good evolutionary reasons why that's the case.

But the point is, how long do we want to let that continue? Yes. At some point, we have to seize the reins and go, now I'm an adult. And part of adulthood means not surrendering my power to decide my worth always to random external authorities. I mean, you know, again, in relationships, people, people get into terrible trouble because they stick around people who beam back a terribly negative image of them. And they go, I've got to spend another decade persuading this person that I'm a worthwhile human being. And you think, no, you don't.

If you are not getting back an image that you like and that broadly, you know, agrees with your sensible reasons for your own assessment and sense of worth, get out. Don't be around such a situation. We do so much of giving up to others something that should be self-generated. And we get into terrible trouble because of that. Something that I'm really interested in which kind of plays into what you're talking about. I mean, we've kind of touched on a bit that life is suffering, you know, this idea that we've all got to try and be happy all the time. It's unachievable, it's untenable, and it's not realistic. And I do worry about people trying to achieve something that they're never going to be able to achieve because life is difficult.

And getting through those difficult times a bit like going through a crisis. or doing something you're frightened of means that when you get through it, you're like, yes, I got through it. But also I feel like, do you know what, I've completely loved my challenge. Give me two minutes because I'm actually going to come back to it. We were just talking.

What were we just talking about? Well, it's about whether you allow somebody else to determine what you're worth it. We might sort of childhood. And the way that children will sort of look to their parents or those around them to decide whether they're a good person or a bad person. Yes.

And so I think basically what I was saying was that as we get to the point where we start believing ourselves, there is like a time in your life where you have to cleanse your life of people that are toxic. I've remembered it. Oh my God, thank you so much. That was like doing the best poo ever. I love you. This has never happened to me before. Can I just say something?

Yeah. Thank you for being patient and letting me find it. No, it makes me feel emotional. I'm so grateful to you. Anyway, I feel fucking great. So what I hear about quite often is people that can't take responsibility for themselves. And I'm really interested because I've had some experience of addiction and treatment centers. I didn't personally go into treatment center.

I went to a fellowship. But it is said in a treatment. treatment centre that an addict that is stuck in victim mode is almost impossible to treat because they can't recover because they don't believe that they can help themselves. They've lost power. What creates, are we born victims or do we become victims? And if someone is in victim mode, they often don't want to get out because it's easier. But how can we do, do we, do? Can we help a victim? Do we have to just leave them be?

What do we do? I mean, look, I'm inclined to be quite generous towards that word victim. You know, people go, oh, that person feels victimized, etc. And I want to start by going, let's not put them. Let's not label them. Let's not label. Let's not treat them as bad people, et cetera. I think all of us, I mean, what do we mean by victimhood?

Let's say, I go outside and it's the third time I've left the house. and every time I leave the house it looks sunny, but then every time I've spent five minutes walking down the road, it starts to rain, and I get completely drenched, and I've forgotten my umbrella. By the third time this happens, I start to feel the world's getting at me, right? I feel like I'm being victimized by the weather, right?

Or I go into a restaurant and I say, can I have a nice table? And they go, yeah, over there, and you realize the table's wobbly, and there's a strange smell, and they've given you the worst table, and you think I'm being victimized in the pizza restaurant, or whatever it is.

So it's quite possible to feel that you're being got at by the world. Often it has to do with a deep sense that you're unworthy and that you're not a good person. The more you feel, I'm not good, I'm unaware, there's something wrong with me. The more you'll constantly be reading insult everywhere. Everyone's laughing at people at getting at me, etc. So again, huge compassion. This comes from not really having been seen, loved, honoured, etc. And then you make it worse for yourself because you're permanently seeing yourself.

as a good, a fitting, plausible candidate for victimisation, and then you feel victimised by things that go wrong. The tube train left the station in order to hurt me. My date didn't show up because they loathe me. Everything is connected up with something wrong with you. And of course, what we really realise is that the world's much more random. The weather wasn't interested in you. The tube is not trying to humiliate you.

The date that was late, they had some problem with their own family, whatever it is. You know, there's often a lot more going on than the victimized person feels. And so that's why, by the way, it's really useful to get out on a starry night and look at the stars. Because suddenly you're aware of the vastness in which we all live. And you think, you know what? It's not all about me. And that's a beautiful thought.

Because normally we think it's not all about me and that's a bad thing. You'd be more about me. And then sometimes you look at something vast like the ocean, like the stars. And you think, thank goodness that I'm not the center of this show. This show's been going on a lot longer. It's a lot bigger. I am a grain of sand. Thank God.

And so that's a sort of anti-victimization strategy to realize that, you know, it started long before you, it'll go on long after you. It's not about you. And thank God it's not about you. But I mean, partly, so partly the response is to think the universe is not being run by you. Do you think victims know that they're victims? Or they're living in victimhood. It's that things are getting worse and worse for them.

that they want to change it? I think it's really about an abdication of power. Yes. You see, I think what it really means is everybody else is doing something to me. And I think, you know, the ultimate anti-victimization strategy is to think you can't control everything, but there are some things you can control and you control this, your mind. You can. You've got executive power over many of your thoughts.

So what does it really mean that you got reigned on, that the tube got delayed? that, you know, somebody left you, etc. What do these things mean? You can't change the event. You can change what the event means. This is a foundational insight of this sort of personal philosophy. You can't change the world always, but you can change your attitude to the world. And therein lies freedom, because you can do stuff with your mind, largely to do with detaching yourself from a view that you are the cause of everything that occurs to you.

and determining as it were, I'm a writer. I spent a lot of time in my early career wondering, so I would spend hours in a room writing paragraphs, assembling them into books, and then thinking, oh, I like this, I wonder what everybody else will think. And putting these books out into the world,

and I used to have complete traumas around reviews, getting reviewed by people. Because if you think about what a review is, it's condensed. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a, a little professional issue, but it has global applicability because all of us are being reviewed. All of us are books that are being reviewed. And, you know, reviewer A didn't like it, but reviewer B liked it.

And I weep about reviewer A and celebrate, you know, on and on it would go. A total oversensitivity to the views of others. Now I'm like, you know, can we say fuck it on your show? Right. Fuck it is a very important philosophical proposition. You know, to be able to say, fuck it, to many, many things is a route to adulthood. And at some point you have to think, fuck it. My worth, the worth of what I've written is not determined by person A or B's response.

I know the worth. Let me be the decider of that. And thereafter, who cares? It doesn't matter. And we can do this over so many other things. We are not totally at the mercy of external verdicts. It takes a long time to learn that. I feel like nature, the universe, whatever you believe in, gifts you the fuck it button as you enter the latter part of your life in order to cope with the latter part of, you know, finding or beginning that stage of your life.

And also I feel like aging wrinkles, aching, bones, sleeping less, is kind of. is kind of rose tinted with the fuck-it button. Like it's, everything becomes special. Let's face it, you know, very linked to fuck it is laughter. Laughter is unbelievably. Laughter is the thing that fills the gap between hope and reality. Hope up there. Wait, say that one more time.

Laughter is the thing that fills the gap between hope and reality. You can take that. I've just thought of it now. But it's, you know, there's a zone, right, between what you're hoping for and what life serves up. And you can either fill it with tears or you can fill it with laughter. let's try and fill it with the richest kind of laughter. I mean, there's plastic humour when no one laughs. It's not funny.

The rich humour, humour gets rich and real when it's up against the darkness. When basically you're thinking, okay, I could jump or else not, but, you know, I'm going to make a joke instead. It really is an alternative. Gallows humour, you know, the humour that you make on the way to the gallows. It's the best humour. We've mentioned suicide a few times, but actually suicide at this time in people's lives is really. real. Many, I know, perimenopoles or women take their own lives and we know that men at midlife. It is often for women in terms of perimenopause, it can be a time of grieving. For men, it can be a time of

going back over your life. And I see a lot of men, male friends of mine, trying to unpick what they've achieved and the feeling of darkness that comes over them when they haven't, they never became the rock star or the, it's a letting go of things. How can people navigate that? You know, we've talked about it in quite a light way, but obviously this is a huge issue. And I think, you know, I know there's a huge sensitivity to suicide and that the normalisation of themes of suicide are often taken to invite people to commit suicide. I can see that and I can see that that's a risk.

I also think it's hugely important to get the topic on the table. Yes. in order, partly to destigmatize it and in order then to make sure that people don't choose that road. If you don't look at it, you can't advise people not to choose it because everyone's so scared of it. So let's look at it. People reach points. Anyone intelligent who's suffered serious setbacks in love, in work, in family, et cetera, in health, may reach certain nights, long nights of the soul where they are thinking, should I be here or should I not. And that is normal.

It's not a sign that anything's gone wrong. It's a sign that you are, you know, deeply engaged in the business of living. And so there's nothing wrong with you. The question is then what do you do? And I think that the choice, to make a choice to say, I could go down the fatal road or I could choose life. Up till now, life has been chosen for me. Now I'm going to choose it. I'm going to choose it consciously.

I'm up against awful things which would, you know, one could understand why one would think now it's over. But I'm not going to do that. I've decided that even though there is so much darkness, I'm going to orient myself towards the light and I'm just going to make a bloody-minded

decision to stick here until the end, until the end. Not because it's totally joyful, in fact because it's hell in many ways, but because I've decided and I'm going to stick with my decision. I'm going to keep going. And that's a very very legitimate path that people can go down. And, you know, anyone, anyone past the age of 40,

let's say, has probably got large areas of their life that have not gone as they would have hoped. You know, it's, you're going to be living in Kankuku land if you really, if everything's really gone well, you know, you're married your childhood, sweet, oh, that's gone all well, you know, careers, brilliant. There are those people. I'd be terrified if that was me because I'd think it's coming, like at some point, you know. Maybe, maybe. Bless these people. It's a. amazing. It's like, you know, talking about privilege. This is true privilege. And there are, there's an elite of, you know, and great, they're probably quite soft because these, they have not

been battle tested. You know, they're a ship that's never been in the water. But, you know, good for them. They're probably not watching. So, for the people who are watching and listening, you know, something major has gone wrong. By the way, this is why friendship post these disasters, it becomes so much richer. It is really something that you can be getting on with when you when you connect with somebody else? Because you're like, I've been in hell. Have you been in hell too? You're great.

I mean, two people who've been in hell, it's a fantastic basis for a friendship. I'd really like to quickly talk to you about friendship because I think often in midlife, as I said, sometimes we are letting go of old friendships. We're building new friendships. Maybe we've changed. Maybe we've experienced something.

But you say something really lovely about how you can forge a friendship and what is needed for a friendship. Could you just talk through the kind of major thing that you have to be with someone in order to become friends? Look, I think you have to share your suffering. That's what friendship's about. Sharing suffering. It's like you're holding hands through the valley of darkness and you're thinking, it's shit, isn't it? And the other one goes, yeah, it's really is shit.

But we like each other and we're going to support each other. And it's beautiful. That's when friendship reaches, it goes from being a sort of luxury add-on to being an absolutely essential bedrock. And some of the reason why people have to let go of friendships is because, because their friends are not on the same page about suffering as they are. They are refusing to acknowledge their own suffering. They don't want to talk about the other person's suffering. They are blocked in some way emotionally. I mean, I've got a friend who I've known since university, bless him. He's a lovely person. He is refusing to go into his own suffering.

He is standing on the kind of threshold of a certain brittle optimism. I can't go any further with him. And so out of loyalty, I see. him. We connect. We don't really connect at depth. Other friends, as time is going by, the friendships are getting richer because they're bringing more and more of themselves to the table. They're going, you know what, my sex life's not great. I'm feeling impotent. I'm no longer turned on. Money's a problem. I'm feeling humiliated by my children. I don't like my children. I don't like my job. I feel like an imposter. I've got panic attacks. I feel so ugly. This bit of my body's failing me. Blah, blah, blah. On and on it goes. These are gifts. You talk about

shopping, it's creamy Christmas, et cetera. Don't give a bloody present. Give a problem. Give a problem. Give the gift of vulnerability and sorrow and grief. That's what it is. That's a bridge to another person. Can I just say you just blow my mind? Give a gift of vulnerability.

Absolutely. Oh my God, I bloody love that for Christmas. Yeah. Do not wrap anything in a thing. No. Give someone a bit of what the pain of being human. That's the gift. That's the gift.

That's so much. Yeah. You know, it's so interesting because, you know, it really makes me think of these friendships that I've forged with friends, with girlfriends, you know, that I've known for decades. And sometimes I am guilty of just trying to share the good moments. Yeah. I'll think they don't want to hear about that. Like, they've probably had a lovely day and I, it'll be a burden. And I'll be here for hours if we start talking about that.

But it's a gift. Yeah, it's a gift. This is such a great way of looking at it. I mean, I love that. Friendship is so important to the quality of life. As our relationships, I think I heard as a stat. And it may have come from you, in fact, about 60% of your happiness as an adult comes from your relationship. Is that correct? Look, it can do. But let's think about that. Because I think I'm coming to a new view on it. I'm divorced. I got divorced a couple of years ago. How long had you been married? I'd been married 20 years. So I was exactly the same.

Right. Seven years ago, I got divorced. I'd been married for 18 years. Which is, by the way, anyone, you know, anyone who's come through something like that, it's an enormous, it's an enormous thing. It's a really complicated thing. And we, of course, live in a very romantic culture that associates happiness with a partner. And not just a partner, a partner who understands you, who reads your soul, who's on the same page as you, over small things in large, etc., etc. And on and on it goes. And our demands of relationships are beautiful, but they're very exigent. They're very, very high. And they get us into trouble. And so I think a lot of people are walking through the world with the following view. Love is incredibly important. And for me, love hasn't quite gone right. Maybe they're in a relationship and it's not, it's a bit scratchy. Or they're out of a relationship and they can't find the one. They're not able to find.

word, do you? Well, you know, I'm very compassionate towards the longing for the one. I'm not averse to thinking about the one. The question is just, what do we want that one to be? What are our criteria for the one? What's really important? And what's important to you? Well, for me, it is connection, the capacity to connect over, I mean, the enemy of love is loneliness. The Opposite of love is loneliness. So what we're really saying is what stops people feeling lonely? So it is possible to be in a marriage and be lonely. Totally, of course.

And to be in company and be lonely. But I also want to say, I just want to add in a little stoic, you know, remember my analogy about being a book and wanting to be read by someone and not knowing what you're worth is until there is a reader of you who reads you exactly how you want to be read, otherwise you panic. I think, you know, people who are in the dating world or looking for a partner or maybe exiting a relationship, etc.

There can be that feeling of I need somebody who gets me totally. Otherwise, I don't exist. Otherwise, I can't be until someone sees me absolutely. I get that.

It's a very difficult position to walk through the world with, to want to be understood absolutely. I think it's best to start like this. My advice to myself

and people out there is to say, I understand myself well, I'm committed to understanding myself. I'm the ultimate judge of my own worth. If somebody else comes along and wants to join in that project, read a few lines of the page of me,

fine, that's great. If they don't get it or it's not for them, that doesn't have to be the end of me. That's not an absolute tragedy. Because, you know, I have a lot of friends who was on the dating scene. I've been on the dating scene. And what happens is people come back from dates and they are devastated. They're like, that date went wrong.

That person did not promise to be. the one who could read me, who could understand. And you want to, again, add a little bit of stoic philosophy here and say, your worth is not, don't surrender the whole of you to an outside arbiter. So, you know, to come back to the theme of love, of course love is important. Of course, a companion who sees you, who understands you, can interpret you, etc. Beautiful, I've written tons about this. It's fantastic.

But it's also important to recognize that life can be led outside of that, that we are not totally at the mercy of another person. It's to surrender too much power to give somebody else total control over your sense of worth. And I think there are those who are cheerfully single and those who are catastrophically single, you might say. The cheerfully single thing, I might meet somebody, be great if I did, they would really add to my life, be lovely.

They might come in one year, two years, five years, 25 years, or never. I can bear it. I can bear it because my life can be bearable. And then there are the catastrophically single. who remember the day that their last relationship ended. It was 12th of February at 1903. And it's engraved on their heart.

And since then, the only thing they're doing is trying to find that other person. And if they don't find the other person, their life hasn't, their life is on hold. It has no meaning. And we want to take these people. And I know those people, because they have been a part of me, and say, you're giving up too much control here. That something is going wrong here. You can't give other people that much power. I also kind of I'm thinking about friends of mine that go on dates and they'll be they get the ick about something and you think that's such a non-descript.

Yes. And funny thing to get the ick about or the old red flag about something and you think not sure that that is necessarily a red flag that might just be a misguise. And I think that one date, you know, a two-hour dinner, you can't do it. You've got to go back for a second one at least. I agree. And also, you know, it's a big, it's a big theme for me to constantly, I constantly harp on this point. So let me harp on it about it here. We think that people are interested in love. And we think we live in a romantic culture. We've got to get them for relationships and be loved. Half the story at best. The true story is that there is that there is, that there is. is an incredible terror of love and that people are as assiduous in running away from love as they are apparently devoted to running towards love. A lot of the time what people are doing is finding reasons why love is not going to be for them and is not going to work. Why? Because love places us in an incredibly vulnerable position. Yes. And if love has burnt you before, maybe in childhood

and children are loved by their parents or should be loved and often they get their hearts broken. Little children have heartache and heartbreak. They don't know it. We don't recognize. We don't recognize it as such. But, you know, if you're a child and mommy and daddy doesn't quite love you, you are broken inside, right? And you take that breakage into adult life. And it means that when an adult, you know, pitches up and says, here I am, I'm ready to love you, you go, oh, on one hand, that's wonderful. On the other hand, I feel a bit sick. Oh, I just realized that, you know, you look like playing golf or you, you know, don't, aren't wearing the right t-shirt or whatever it is. You try and reach for some reason why this most

beautiful but also appalling and terrifying specter, which is to be loved, is not possible. Brief analogy on prison camps. Let's imagine you've been brought up in a prison camp. You've been restricted in your diet. You've had a very calorie restricted diet. Your stomach has shrunk. You have not been able to absorb the nutrients that you needed. Suddenly, the prison gates are opened. You can go out into the world and eat anything. You're invited to a banquet, beautiful grapes, fruits, etc. On the table. What do you do? You can't absorb it. You're are sickened by it. It is too rich. It's too much too soon. And I think that some of what goes on when people hit the dating world is someone comes along and goes, I like you. I want to understand

you. I'm on your side. I'm whatever. And it's both beautiful and you want to scream with horror because you think this is the most unfamiliar, strange and appallingly terrifying thing that's ever happened to me. And I think dating would become easier or love would become easier if we were able to admit how frightening love and tenderness actually are when we're confronted with them. So everybody moans, oh, it's so difficult to find love, etc. You know, count your blessing sometimes that you haven't found the love you say you like because your lovelessness may be protecting you from a vulnerability and a terror of vulnerability that you are not on top of yet. That's what I would say to people.

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I actually cried when you talked about give little you a hug for coming up with all these brilliant strategies to handle the way your life was going. Yeah. And these strategies carry on into later life and manifest, don't they, in the weirdest ways. And this is, you know, this is the basic thing. I'm a psychotherapist. I trained in psychotherapies, sort of late in life thing. But, you know, one of the things that you learn in therapy school, and it's a very basic thing, lots of your viewers will know it. listeners alone, but it's really the idea that if you look at most of the crazy stuff that people

are doing as adults, drinking too much, being too superficial, being too deep, sabotaging themselves, all the crazy psychological stuff they're doing, almost always you can trace a line back to those behaviours and a version of those identical behaviours in early childhood that served a person well. You know, somebody disassociated in early childhood. That could be a really great thing if your father's an alcoholic and your mother's depressive. The ability to be a bit of a bit of to cut yourself off your emotions. Brilliant. You know, you worked that out at five.

At five, you worked out that not feeling is a good strategy. You're a genius. Literally, genius. This is genius level. Problem is, as so often is the case, something that got you through from zero to 10, then continues from 10 to 20, 30, 40, 50, 40, 50. And you're still doing it.

So you're pitching up at 40 in a relationship and you are disassociated. Fantastic back then. Now, disaster. Your marriage is going to collapse, etc. And so, it's really, you know, really important question to ask yourself is, what's the stuff you're doing now that you probably recognize as a bit as a bit destructive?

Rather than lashing yourself and thinking I'm a bad person, have a lot of compassion and think, probably this was a genius move on the part of the younger you. What was that? Let's say, let's say you're scared all the time. You're not an idiot. You're not sissy. Why are you scared all the time? Maybe because being scared all the time was really clever if you were in an environment where fear was an early warning system for something seriously dangerous. So if you were terrified all the time, well, you know, that's probably because there was something there that was very scary.

Let's imagine you're a bit superficial and plastic and everybody, and you constantly crack jokes and you can't go deep and you're sort of optimistic in a plastic way. And people go, well, why are you like this? You can't, you know, everyone, like, you're getting feedback from people that you're a bit fake. And, all right, rather than go, oh my God, there's something wrong with me.

I'm thinking, how did I get to be that way? Children of depressive or angry parents often become comedians. Because it's so difficult around them. What do you do? You learn to make jokes, to appease, to get people, you know, to be on your side, et cetera. And that's fantastic. You know, you become the playful kid. And that's great, age seven, eight, nine, gets you through it.

By the time you're 40 and every time there's a serious moment or a possibility of seriousness, you have to crack a superficial joke. You're missing out on the marrow of living. And people around you are going to drift away from you because they're sensing, I can't get through to this person. So always look, what's the problem in your life now? How might that problem have been related to a solution that you had worked out as a child? Sounds simple.

I mean, it's the work of a lifetime. Yeah, but it's... I feel like that's part of the joy of living, is working yourself out. I know, I know, but isn't it terrible? When I think about my life and other people, you know, you think, what did you learn from 30 to 40, 40, 40, 50? You can put it on a poster stamp. I learned not to give too much advantage to other people. I learned to say no to people, et cetera.

And that sums up a decade. I learned to say no to people. And you think, why didn't I learn that sooner? Yeah, it's so funny. There are just, I mean, again, we need to laugh. We are incredibly dumb creatures. We're beautifully dumb creatures. Yeah.

And we just, like a cow that's just led patiently through an obstacle course. It's just, yeah, we don't learn fast. It's unbelievably slow. You just talked about saying no. Yeah. Saying no is one of the greatest lessons I've ever learned. I mean, it sits, you know, it sits on such a rich area, this saying no. Because saying no is also linked to saying yes.

What it really means is having an accurate sense of what you feel, which is not, you see, little children don't know what they feel very easily. They're very dependent on the outside world. I was on holiday recently, and there was a kid bawling its eyes out. And the kid was saying, I want to go home. I want to go home. I don't like it here. And the mother said, but you're happy here.

We've just come to Greece and we're on holiday. And we spent a lot of money to be here. You're having a nice time. And the kids stopped crying. And I thought, oh, gosh. I mean, you know, everybody was trying to be a good person. But there was something quite complicated going on here, which was a narrative. You know, sometimes you hear a parent saying to children, but you are happy.

It's your birthday. And the kid's going, I'm miserable. It's my birthday. And the ability to unspool that learning from childhood and to go, okay, all sorts of layers have been added on to me about what I like, about who I am, about, you know, what I want at Central. And that's someone else's stuff. There's somebody else's stuff. And you go, you know, there's a lovely quote from the American essay, Ralph Waldo Emerson, where he says, in the minds of geniuses, we find our own neglected thoughts. in the minds of geniuses, we find our own neglected thoughts.

In other words, when you read a poem or a book or a prose poem by a so-called really clever person of genius, what you'll often find is something you think yourself, your own but neglected thoughts. You're like, oh, that's a bit of me that I'm just finding in somebody else. Now, why, how come we've ended up in a situation where your own thoughts, you're no longer in control of them? and somebody else tells you them. Why? That's because we are alienated very often from our own truest thoughts.

We're not aware of what we really want, what we really feel, what really brings us joy, what we really, you know, and then we're relying. That's what I'm trying to do now in my life. Right. So we're then reliant on other people, clever other people, to come along and say,

I'm going to help you to, you know, but we should be, this is the work of the later part of life. Well, it's the work of all life, but it's the work particularly of the second part. of life, I think, to get a more accurate hold on the actual nature of your thoughts and feelings. I mean, that is basically, who are you? Who am I?

You know, this is my big question. Yep. And who am I, by the way? Let's be very sympathetic. You know when you go to a restaurant and you look at a menu and you think, what do I want to eat? Now, in some moods, you think, oh, I know, obviously it's the spinach and the this, whatever, and you just know. Sometimes you think, I'm not sure. I'm looking at these words and there's not.

can't get a reading of what's what my appetite is in relation to this list of options. That's much more accurate to what most of us feel in relation to many big questions of life. Yes. When people go, what do you want to do with your life? You're like, not getting any, I'm not sure. So what do you need to do? One of the things you need to do is to become a more accurate reader of your deeper self and the deeper self is shy. The deeper self doesn't shout, I want to be an accountant or I want to marry this person. It's confused. And what we need to do is to be a bit more like archaeologists who are passing over the ground of the metal detector.

And every now and then the metal detector lets out a faint, very faint beep. They're a tiny big beep here. And then you go over there and a little beep here. And these beeps are little beeps of interest, of liveliness, of engagement. But they're a bit sporadic. They're a bit like, you know, there was one over there, one over there. One on a Monday. One of the Wednesday.

And it's not like a burning thing. Like, this is your mission, son. Oh, my God, this is so right. And what you need to do is to take these little fragments, like a careful archaeologist, and assemble them in the back room of your mind into something that will be a plausible mission. Like, oh, okay, I've been studying myself for a long while. And now I'm getting a sense that from all these bits that I see, maybe my next career move should be that. That's not a burning, like I know from, I've known from the beginning that it's that.

It's a slow assemblage of things. And in other areas, too, I mean, even pleasure. Think of holidays are fascinating because holidays. I wrote a book called The Art of Travel, which was all about how people go on holiday and travel. And one of the fascinating things is that travel is one of the main things that we do for fun and for pleasure. And boy, boy, do we get it wrong in fascinating ways? Because it's really difficult to know what it's, you know, you've got two weeks, you've got 10 days of holiday, you've got a bit of money. And it's so that time is so valuable.

So valuable. And also, you're bombarded with suggestions from other people. and very rarely have we, do we sit down with ourselves enough and go, okay, it's your time. What do you really want to do with it? If, you know, if you could really, do you really want to go skiing? Is that, do you want to go down a slope? And you might think, not really, and if you've properly followed your interests, again, I love a, I love a weird person. And, and you know those people who stand by the edge of runways, plane spotters, and they're in anorax, right?

And take what it means. I love an aeroplane. And I have actually stood at the end of a runway and looked at things. Not as assiduously as I should. But, you know, and it's good to have children because you can blame it on them. But I loved it. And it's quite odd to think what I really like doing is not going to the Tate or the Tate modern or the National Gallery or any of this elite institution. I want to go to Heathrow and I want to see an Airbus A380 before it touches down when it's about 20 metres from the earth.

and just hearing that raw. That's what I like, right? Or, you know, I'm interested in electricity substations. That's what I do. Not me. That's not mine. But, you know, I could have, you know. And you learn to become a fetishist.

If I can use a word. You know, fetish is, fetish is the word we give to a slightly weird sexual interests that are a bit sort of odd. We're all fetishists, but we don't, we need to come out of the closet about our fetishists. And those fetishers include things like. You're embarrassed. Yeah. Fetishers might include things like, I really. like a hot bath and having a hot bath is

the big thing and that's what I want to do all the time or I want to eat a certain kind of food that no one thinks is great or I want to go to a certain places. Be as weird as you actually are. That's surely you know, talking about gifting. That's a gift you can give yourself to be as odd as you are. And by the way

we were talking about relationships and dating when you arrive on a date you know there can be a terrific impasse to go oh I'm normal and are you normal too? We're both very normal but it was two wonderfully normal people great, have a lovely time. Ultimately, what you want is not a chance to be so-called normal.

You want a chance to make your weird meet somebody else's weird. So, yes, take people into the slightly odder parts of you because that ultimately is what a friendship or a relationship should be about. And if you stay on the threshold of normality always, you'll never get anywhere. It's exhausting if you are a bit weird to try and kind of contain that for too long. It's so tiring. And the thing is, we're all weird, which, is why little children are so interesting because they're not interested in being normal.

And that's why every little child is a fascinating, I mean, there's no boring little child, but there's a lot of boring adults, a lot. And what makes an adult boring, we're always asked at school life, what makes someone interesting? Be as weird as you actually are. That is the root to being, you know, take a reading of who you are and show that to another person. You will be interesting. People often say things like, just when they're getting interesting. People go, oh, I'm sure that's going to bore you. Or I don't want to bore you with that stuff. And you want to go, no, no, no, no, that's the interesting bit. No, you're about, you've been talking nonsense or the, I don't want to hear about your new sofa. This is, this is the,

this is the, this is the bit. There's some life here. Carry on. You know what I mean? That stuff. I am, I'm kind of thinking a lot about people in their gorgeous weirdness and also where that comes from. I think you can be gloriously weird when you feel safe. For a huge part of getting older and feeling good. I'm also in a really good, healthy relationship. But we'd known it. We'd been friends for 20 years. So I think that was a big grounding.

You know, we, like when I look and think of people that are trying to make a decision about a relationship from one date, I think that's so difficult. I had 20 years. I knew the very bones of this man. Like I know the way he thinks, everything about him. But I've been on an amazing journey to feeling safe in myself. And I didn't feel safe as a kid.

And but what has really helped me every now and again is having... So I can only be my true weird self when I feel safe. And when I don't feel safe, I feel like I have to lock that bit of me away because I need to conform to be with everywhere like everyone else because I don't feel safe. And I think it's a really important part of being safe sometimes to know that at other times you're not safe. And it sounds a bit weird because that phrase feeling safe, you know, we can mock it,

et cetera, some people do, because we're not talking here about somebody who's going to murder you or whatever, whether it can be that. But most of the time we're talking about emotional safety, right? And, you know, there are people around whom you feel safe and around people. And I think, for example, the people I feel safe around with, I think you're not going to lose your temper arbitrarily. You're going to receive what I say with tolerance and imagination, et cetera. And there are other people around whom you constantly have to walk on eggshells. And, you know, they've got crosses to bear.

They've got problems, blah, blah, blah. It's challenging to be around someone that you constantly feel, if I put my foot here, there may be an explosion here. That's quite taxing. A good bit of advice for people. Try not to be that person. You know, try not to be the person who is so reactive that anything that somebody else says to you, well-meaning thing is going to lead to an explosion. And I think, you know, our best friends are always people that we think, I'm going to be able to say more or less anything to them and they'll be able to meet me with it. They're not going to be alarmed.

They're just going to meet it. And that, again, feels so safe. wonderful. We want to give these people a medal. I mean, I also, I think, with a best friend, I always feel that I can be 100 percent honest. So, I can tell them something. How many best friends do you have? One. Yeah. I've got two.

Yeah. And it's important to remember. I mean, you know hundreds of people. I know hundreds of people. I mean, my partner, I would probably say is a best friend, but I think that they're also a partner and that's quite a heavy load. We've given them a different load. It's quite a heavy heavy, heavy load to carry. Best friend and yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And

partner. And by the way, I do think they should be national best friend day. I agree. And, you know, because if I think of my two best friends, they've got me through hell. And, you know, they know who they are. And they need medals. And they really do. They do need medals.

I owe them my life. And I think that some people do not have those people. And that's an emergency for them. And I want to help them. Let's go out and find that best friend for them. Also, people feel guilty that they don't have many best friends. friends, you know, and that's what's important that you say, I have one best friend. You, DeVina, who's, you know, if you have only one best friend, that's good.

That's really nice to hear for people because that's a sign that normalises in a really useful way. The fact that these people don't grow on trees and don't have hundreds of them, that's fine. That's fine. You have one partner and one best friend. It's fine. I mean, I was very, very lucky. And I quite like to talk about therapy and the value of things.

that because I had my first bit of therapy when I was 15. And my parents felt that it would help me to talk to a third person that wasn't connected to the family. And actually, it was amazing for me. It was a very good experience. But I have one person now who I met when I was 50. And I spoke to for a year. when trying to understand divorce and how I was going to handle that.

And I've stayed in touch with her and she's been brilliant. And so I could contact her and go, I've come up against a wall with something. Please could you see if you've got an appointment in the next couple of weeks? It's not urgent. See other people that are urgent. But I would love to unpick something with you. And I think it will take one session. And I can speak to her on the phone.

and we can literally crack out a solution. But what I'm trying to ask you is, for many people they might go and see someone and they go, I didn't like them. I didn't like therapy. I'm not going to do it. And actually it's so difficult to find your person in therapy.

Can we just... I'm glad you say that because it's so important for people to know that there are many bad therapists out there and that there are many therapists who are maybe good but not for them. that those are two categories because otherwise the alternative

is that people think there's something wrong with me and I'm not made for therapy which is almost always not the case so a lot of bad therapists and a lot of bad a lot of therapists who are not for you

so keep that in mind shop around in the same way that you wouldn't marry the first person you date so you should not ever feel because sometimes therapists are a bit wily they go you know

at the end of the first session so when are we meeting again rather than what they should say is why don't you go away think about it see how you feel and whether you want to come back. Maybe you don't, lots of other people,

and I quite understand if you, you know, you should not be inducted into immediately following one kind of therapist. It's a very personal kind of relationship. It's got to fit. I've had several therapists who did not work for me and some who did. And that's absolutely the way it should be, can be, must be.

But, you know, at its best, why do we need a therapist? therapists are trained to be with you through your own exploration of your mind. They're following you on your journey into your own mind and giving you a little bit of assistance. Some of that assistance means sometimes being really quiet, not saying anything. Sometimes it means being encouraging. Sometimes it means laughing because you said something funny. Sometimes it means not laughing because even though you said something, that sounded maybe like it was a joke, actually it hides a lot of pain,

and maybe it's quite useful at that point for the therapist to go, oh, I wonder how come that feels quite sad to me, etc. So they're doing a very subtle bit of footwork around your own gentle exploration of your mind. Also, it provides a concentrated, normally 50-minute session during the week when it's about you and your mind, and you can cement declarations, moves a little bit more easily in the presence of a witness.

You go, I've had enough of X and being heard to have had enough of X or I want more Y, that can really help you to cement change. That's so true. Saying something out loud in the presence of somebody else gives it weight. Absolutely. Because we are social. We are social creatures and I think that being witnessed for our desires to evolve is really important.

It's odd. It shouldn't be that way. But somehow it is and so let's just work with that. One of the things that I love about you is the way you're always getting me to think. And we talk a lot about looking at yourself, looking at that we've talked to earlier about finding the tiny weenie little thing down here and how do you feel and collating them. But you can only find those bits of yourself,

if you listen and are aware and we can't do that at the moment I feel so many people are like but I can't do that I keep listening but we can't do it

because there's so much noise everywhere which is you know look humans have been aware of this ever since we invented monasteries and nunneries what were monasteries and nunneries I mean take away the sort of heavy

religious bit of it it's really born from the insight that if you're in a city I mean a city is a metaphor, a busy place full of humans. You will not be able to direct your thoughts onwards. So the people who built the great monasteries wanted people to leave, some people, to leave at certain points, and go into a community that is quiet, that promotes introspection, that gives structured moments in which you can look inside. And we need to remember that tradition because it gives us a sense of the kind of efforts we

might need to make in order to go inside ourselves. We might need, as it were, metaphorically, to go to a monastery, which might mean clearing Sunday evening of all distraction and lying in a bath or in bed with a notebook beside you and thinking, right, I'm going to try and make sense of this relationship or this career hurdle or this not with my friend or whatever it is. I'm going to try and make sense of it. And to be aware that there are two parts of you and observe a a conscious self and an unconscious self. The unconscious self is vast and the observer self is tiny. I can sometimes compare it to a person with a little flashlight.

And they're like looking around inside a vast library. That library has got volumes in which is inscribed everything you've ever thought, every image you've ever seen, every person you've ever met. And most of these books are sunk in darkness. And you need to go into the stacks, into those library stacks, and pick out the volumes of yourself in order to try and, read key passages that hold a clue as to what you should do next. And that takes time. We can't do that if we're always busy. Let's also remember that the reason why we don't do this is not because we're lazy,

but because we're scared. Yes, fear. It's fear. It's not laziness. It's not laziness. We are addicted to our phones, et cetera, to scrolling because we are afraid of what we might need to confront. Imagine if I had to go inside myself and realize that I'd messed up my last relationship, that I felt really guilty about someone, that there was someone I wanted to contact, but I was afraid of contacting them, that there was some massive regret around my career. So no wonder, we get terrified. We don't want to do that work of thinking, but the price you're going to pay for not acknowledging that pain is massive. It's going to mess up the future. It really is. So, you know, gird yourself to undergo that pain in the name of a more clear and sort of authentic future. And I wish I had.

It would be a regret, I feel like, is one. of the worst. You know, if you're not going to do it, then just think, well, I'm just not going to do it and making it a decision. Don't let it become a regret later in life. Do you know, let's also hear it for regret. I think we've got this model of not wanting to regret. I've not wanted to regret. And you want to hear it for regret. Yes. I love that. I want to hear the fact that though, of course we must do everything to minimize our regrets. And we really must. We must do everything. We must do everything. And listen to your show and, you know, do everything and do the work and go to therapy in order. Of course. Of course.

But once we've done everything we can, and it may not be very much, because depending on our second, but once we do everything we can, we have to accept that to have regrets is human. We would not be properly human. If we reached our deathbeds without regrets, of course you've got regrets. And that's not some weird anomaly in a sign of failure. It's a sign of imagination. Regret occupies that zone between what you've done and what could be possible. And of course, there will be so many things that could. have been possible that you will not have done. You know, there will be people you never spoke to. There will be places you didn't go to. There will be moves you didn't make. There will be thoughts you didn't have. Of course. And you have to be, it's not just being kind on yourself. You've got to be realistic. This is what it is to be a human being. So don't miss the fundamental nature of being human. It's like saying, I mean, people who say, it's like people who say, I've got no, I'm not jealous of anyone. You want to go, hang on, either you're seriously out of touch with your feelings, which normally the case, or you're in heavy denial. It won't be the case. So, but of course,

you're envious. We're all envious. How bizarre you would be to look upon the rich, good fortune of others and not feel it, of course. Envy is such an interesting one because it is seen as the greatest sin of all, isn't it? It's like, it's a kind of toxic, evil trait that you could pop up. possibly be envious of somebody else. And I think it's quite interesting that because everybody feels it. And also, you wouldn't be, you know, the old should envy the young, there should also pity the young, and vice versa. You know, the rich envy the poor, the poor envy. There's envy across all barriers.

Parents envy their children. Of course they do. They actually, you know, and we're like, oh, no, no, that doesn't exist. Of course it exists. To envy is merely to recognize something good. The existence of something good. It could be in an unexpected place. but it's to acknowledge honestly

that you have spotted something good that you don't have and that should be happening to you every day if you're alive and in touch with reality you'll be thinking hang on a minute why don't I have that pair of shoes that relationship that money that house that thing because life is very

we know about political inequality but my goodness there's inequality across all things across so many other different playing fields that don't have political parties associated with them But think of the massive inequality of satisfaction in life. Think of the lottery of health, of beauty, of intelligence. These are all things in which are radically unequally distributed through society.

And we've got this thing called politics which aims to look at financial inequality. Fine, that's fine. Lots of struggles over that financial bit. But think of all the other massive areas of inequality for which ultimately there isn't political restitution most of the time. You can't found a political party to rectify the maldistribution. of intelligence or something. So there's unfortunately going to be endemic

endemic disparities in levels of satisfaction, therefore envy, therefore regret. I think one of the other really kind of toxic feelings that I wouldn't want to die with would be

resentment or anger towards somebody and this idea of forgiveness I remember when my I was estranged from my mother in the end, and she was living in South Africa. And she was dying in South Africa, and I'd made a choice to not go to her.

And it felt like in my own head and my heart, I'd let go of the, I think it was anger. But it felt nice to do that. But in a way, she wouldn't have received it. In my head, she received it. And I guess a regret possibly of mine is that she knew how I felt. That's interesting. I've never said that out loud.

It's such tricky territory because I know, I wonder how it lands with you, But I know that we're supposed to forgive. And yet I think a lot of us know behaviors, maybe in a parent, maybe in an ex, maybe, you know, someone who came across, that we think that's just endemically shitty. Yes. It's really difficult. And what do we do with that? I think it's too Hollywood to go, I love you anyway or it's beautiful or whatever. You know, it's like, no.

Because actually they are awful, like all. it was awful. It was awful and it's kind of no excuse. So, so then there's the question, right, what do we do with that? I mean, there is a way of which, of course, it chews up your life. That's what I mean. Right. And so how do you stop it? How can you die without it? Right. Ruining your life. Yeah. And I do think then you require a dose of solitary pessimism of going, they were my parent. And I, you know, I carry it as a wound forever that that that parent, who should have been there for me, did not act as they should. I can't reinvent my notion of children and parents.

I can't pretend that something was that wasn't or wasn't that was. I don't want to twist my sense. I've got to stay loyal to my feeling that something went really badly wrong here. And I can't just give a Hollywood ending to this. The question is, yeah, how does one act next? And I do think there's then a way of looking away, just saying, okay, I refuse to keep looking at that. I'm just going to look at other things.

I know it. I've seen it. I've wept. I've done the work. Now, onto something else. Because life is short. There are other people who do not have this issue. I let it go. There is a certain dignity in sometimes just saying,

something awful here. Just park it. Just move away. I don't forgive it. I understand it. I'm not naive about it. I'm just going elsewhere. Thanks very much.

to protect yourself. But of course, at some point, everybody reaches that state known as adulthood, where whatever tragedy they suffered, you think, okay, you had the power that is in an adult to take responsibility, to change, to not pass it on. So huge compassion for what you went through. But did you really need to do that thing? And then did you really need to, over many years, maybe, not say sorry? not properly acknowledge, not probably go into it.

Is that forgivable? Maybe not. Maybe not. Alan, I had just got to say, like I knew, I mean, I feel like I know your work. But in a really comfortable and eye-opening way, you've made me look at lots of things differently. I particularly will be enjoying my silences over the next few weeks and ruminating. Oh, can we just finish?

I'd like to round up on dawn. Let's think about when the light of the new day comes and what that brings for you. That we are creatures of cycles and moods and we forget it about ourselves. We tend to think that what we think is fixed and fixed forever. and that hurts particularly when what we're thinking is quite dark. We think that's forever. No, it's not. It's a mood. It's a weather. There's weather. Constantly weather.

And so though it looks rigid, though it looks like it will never shift, it will. It's shifted before and it will shift again. And when you're in a very happy mood, think, yeah, there'll be some dark weather too. It's just the mobile nature. We're made of water. Most of us is water. We're viscous. We think of ourselves as like something fixed and rigid.

We're not. We're constantly mobile. We change. and there's beauty in that too and acceptance of just as the weather's constantly got patterns of shifting ups and downs so to the human mood isn't

and if we can accept that about ourselves and others we'll be somehow lighter about the changes we keep needing to go through and if anybody is experiencing a very very dark moment I'd just like to say if you're living in the UK that we are heading into autumn and then into winter

and dawn comes at an acceptable time at this time of year. You know, actually to experience a dawn and watch it happen is a time of great hope. And that there is renewal again, we're going into another season. So the seasonal nature of existence is something we need to, you know, there's a giant metaphor in the idea that there is summer, autumn, winter and then spring. That there is a springtime. Every day there is a springtime. We're constantly experiencing springs. We're constantly experiencing autumns.

And I think one of the things about despair is a sense of stasis. Like we're fixed now. What is will always be. And I think anyone who's in that mood just think there will be a new mood. You don't even know what it will be like. You don't know. The thing about despair is it's based on an assumption that you know what's coming. And you don't.

You actually don't. For better and for worse, you do not know what's coming. and you don't know how you're going to feel. So surrender sometimes to thinking, you know, when you've tried everything else and you can't make progress, think, I don't know where to go next, but I'm just going to ride this rapid. I don't know where I'm going to wind up.

I'm just going to keep going today. I don't know how I'll feel this evening. I'm just going to keep going. And tomorrow and the next day, I don't know where this is heading, but I'm just going to keep on going on this journey and see where I'll wind up without any prediction. And that is just keep on.

keeping on. There's a really nice expression in anonymous fellowships of Just for today. Absolutely. That we just keep it in one day. Absolutely. And there's always an end to this day. And tomorrow there's a new dawn, a new day, new potential. Let's see what that brings. So beautiful. So true. Thank you. Alain, I'm going to come over. Are you a hugger? I wasn't for ages and now I've become a full hug. I'm coming in. I'm coming in. I'm coming in. Yeah, like this. Oh. Good.