Good Life Project - Elizabeth Gilbert | Back Into the Light

Episode Date: June 6, 2019

Elizabeth Gilbert (https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/) is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love, as well as several other internationally bestselling books. Her new novel City of Girls (https://amzn.to/2QgYIAC) is a fast-paced, pleasure-drenched tale of the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Since her last appearance on the podcast some four years ago, Gilbert's life has been turned upside-down and back again. She has navigated profound awakening, love, loss, transition, reclamation and, along the way, continues the practice of finding her way back into the light. We explore all of this, in detail, in today's deeply honest and powerful conversation.------------- Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKED. To submit your “moment & question” for consideration to be on the show go to sparketype.com/submit. Visit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount Codes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

So my guest today, Elizabeth Gilbert, has been on the show in the past, about four, four and a half years ago, actually. She's an author, back in 2006, came out with Eat, Pray, Love, a series of novels and memoirs and other books since then. Tremendous wisdom, tremendous insight. She has a new book out now called City of Girls, which is a fun, engaging, playful, intense novel about life and about a group of characters in the 1940s in New York City. It also touches on some really powerful, relevant issues of the day. And we talk about that a bit,

but in the time since Liz has been in the studio with me, her life has also gone through its own incredibly powerful narrative arc, her own journey. Leaving one relationship, falling in love with somebody new. That somebody new knowing that she only had a certain amount of time left on the planet as she was living with cancer. And Liz spent that time with her and then had to figure out, how do I move forward? How do I wake up each day and reclaim and redefine and set the new parameters of my life moving forward? We explore a lot of that in today's conversation. It's wide-ranging.

It is emotional. It's powerful. As always with Liz, there are so many things that she thinks about and says and shares that are healing and welcoming and inclusive that you may want to listen a few times and potentially even with a pad and a pencil to take some notes. Super excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. Last time you and I hung out in the studio was four-ish, four or five years ago. It was right around when Big Magic came out. Yeah. And it was interesting because I was reflecting. Because when that episode came out, our audience's response was bonkers. Oh.

It was like, this is amazing. Okay, yes, Liz is incredible. She's got a big heart, incredible craft, awesome ideas. But there was something else going on. And I got really curious. So I had that episode transcribed. because I was like, can I actually, I wanted to look at the words and see what was happening. And there's something that jumped out at me that was so powerful, but it was nothing that you said, but it was the transcriber's note. So in brackets, at a minimum of once a minute, there were little square brackets with the word laughs.

There's another one. Right? And I was like, okay, so you literally laughed at the rate of once a minute. Once a minute. That seems like I'm losing my pacing if it's only once a minute. I got to get my game up.

Oh, that's beautiful. It was amazing. I was like this, It was so telling. Now I can't stop. We're going to be like one of those Indian laughing clubs. Right. The laughing yoga will start rolling. Yeah.

Because I was really fascinated. I was like, I wonder if that's part of what it was about. And then I got really curious. I'm like, what allows somebody to be so sort of just unapologetically light? And it's interesting also because in the intervening years between then and as we sit down in the studio now, a lot has happened in your life. Yeah. A lot of dark stuff has happened. I think it's weird.

My first reflex to answer that question was you also have to allow yourself to be unapologetically dark um they can tell me more like you have to be fully present for all of it i don't think you can just take one i think you have to be willing to feel otherwise what the laughter wouldn't have any any depth to it anything it would just be a kind of a showy put on. It wouldn't be the laughter that we feel when we're in relief as we take a break between catastrophes, which is what life is. A lot of life is just taking breaks between catastrophes and being like, oh, whew, okay, what's next? What's the next disaster up? But yeah, that's what came to mind. Yeah.

I mean, I feel like you need the contrast to know when you're in one place or the other. Yeah. And you need to, you know, I know and love some people who have trouble feeling and they don't cry as much as I do, but they don't laugh as much as I do either. And I feel like it's not a good trade to create a kind of protective numbness around you so that you don't have to experience pain. Also means that you don't get to think that everything is hilarious. Rackets laughs. You know, like you have to measure out, like we're going to transcribe this one. It has to be at least 60.

At least. I'm going to try to get it down to 45 seconds. Turn on the clock. But there's also something, I don't know, when you're really like, when you're really allowing the world to have its way with you and the experience of life to have its way with you. There's also something intrinsically funny about tragedy and disaster. I mean, gallows humor is a real thing and I've experienced it at the bedside of the dying of the love of my life. I've experienced it at funerals. I mean, there's a kind of rueful sort of, holy shit, can you believe this kind of laughter that also exists? And I remember a friend of mine who does a lot of work with dying people saying to me, if you can't laugh at death and dying, get out of show business. You know, this is also part of the insanity and the mystery of human life.

It's weird. It's weird and it's funny. It is weird and funny. I mean, you all have actually, you know, Greek comedy, Greek tragedy. It's tragedy. It's weird and it's funny. It is weird and funny. I mean, you go all the way back to Greek comedy, Greek tragedy. It's tragedy. Yeah. But it's all, it's like brought to the level of farce where you're like, oh. Yeah.

Like I'm not actually, now I see it. It's like you had to amplify it to that level. Right. To kind of like see like, oh, there is something, there's another level of something I can respond to emotionally here. Yeah, maybe that could be it. Very well. All right. So let's talk about the last four years.

So the last time you're hanging out, we were enjoying a great conversation, getting a new book out. Shortly after, your world completely turned upside down a lot of ways. So you came out of a long-term relationship, went into a relationship with somebody with Raya who you had known for a long time. Yeah. So my best friend in the world was a woman named Raya Elias. And she and I had a 17-year-long friendship that by the last five, six years of it had become so important to me. She had become the most important person in my life, which was a complicated thing to know when you're married. And I was married to a lovely, wonderful man who I loved. But Rhea had become the only word I could ever use to describe her was my person. She was my person. She was

the person I needed. The first phone call in any emergency, the first phone call at any moment of celebration, the one who I went to for guidance, for counsel, for comfort, the one who, when she would say to me, all right, let me break it down for you, Gilbert. I would sit up and listen and do what she said because I knew that she knew me, that she had it right, that she understood life in this very rich and surprising way, and that she would love me even if I did it wrong. That sense of great safety that I had with Rhea was this feeling that she's never going to throw me away, you know, and she's going to take me exactly as I am, no judgments, only love. And we had each other's backs. We were just, we were vital to

each other. And then in 2016, she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer. And within a couple of weeks of that diagnosis, there was something about the jarring horror of that diagnosis that made me unable to not see anymore what I had been not seeing for years, which was like, oh, I'm in love with her. Oh, that's what I mean by my person. That's what I mean by the most important person in my life. That's what these feelings are. This is love. And I couldn't bear to let her go to her grave, not knowing that. And I, I, I

saw that the horror that that would create in my life, if I were to not reveal that and she were to go, and I would have known that, that I had been given this great, great love of my life and that I had let it go out of propriety or fear or caution or whatever would make you not speak the truth in that moment. And so I just spoke the truth in that moment and left my marriage. And it was fast and decisive and pretty drama-free. I mean, it was very obvious to everyone that this is what had to happen now. And then I spent the next 18 months with her. And as she said, I want you to walk me all the way to the edge of the river. And that's what we did.

I walked her right to the edge of the river. Yeah. But you can't go farther than that. No. It's interesting. So you had known each other for so long and there was this one cataclysmic and catalytic moment that kind of awakened you like, oh, there's actually this extra way I feel. And your choice was, I need to say something now because she needs to know this

in this moment. Did you talk to her about why she had never also come to that place and shared how she was feeling about you until that moment? We both had such immaculate boundaries, largely because of previous suffering that we didn't want to repeat in our lives. So Rhea was gay, and I was married. And like many lesbians her age, she had a whole history of stories of being in love with married women and or being, you know, having the bisexual woman choose ultimately to go with the guy and make the safer choice in life. So she had some very heartbreaking stories about that. And she was

never going to do that again. And I had heartbreaking stories about leaving marriage and fidelity was important to me and loyalty. And so I was never going to do that again. And I had heartbreaking stories about leaving marriage and fidelity was important to me and loyalty. And so I was never going to do that. So the boundaries were airtight, you know, and so we just, we just loved each other for years that way, you know, until death, you know, which has a way of blowing up paradigms came and made those boundaries just seem absolutely ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous, and also inhumane and just wrong. You know, it was just, it was, what I can say about the feeling I had about what it would have done to me to have let Raya go without ever expressing those feelings. The only way I've ever been able to say it is that my soul was appalled by that idea.

My soul would have been appalled by that idea. And if you're walking around with an appalled soul, you're not well. You're not well in yourself and you're not well in the world. And so I really do feel like it wasn't even a decision. It was just me agreeing with something that was very obvious and had to happen and me allowing it, saying, okay, I'm in accordance with this command, this divine command, that this is what now has to happen. And so I just did what I was told by the great mothership in the sky. And we got to be together, and it was beautiful.

Did you expect to hear it back? She always laughed at telling that part of the story when she would tell that story about me coming to her and saying, and then Lizzie G comes to me and says, do you like me in that way? You know, she said, you sounded like a third grader. Do you like, yes, no, do you like me in that way? And I truly didn't know. I knew she had great love for me, but I half expected her to be like, ew, you're like my sister. You're like my best friend. Yuck. But she didn't have that response. She said that in that moment, she felt that a cage door opened in her heart and a thousand doves flew out. It's just,

and then the whole universe came in and every angel entered. It was such a big yes for her and such a shock, such a disruptive thing. You know, at the moment that you've been given a death sentence to also be given love, she said, how can I be so happy at this moment? This is, how can this be the greatest moment of my life? But it is. So it was, it was, it was definitely returned. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting also because, you know, there's this moment of just complete connection and elation, but at the same time under this, under the context of, wow, there is a terminal illness, you know, that now you've both said, okay, so we're in this together. Yeah.

No idea how long it is. You're like, no idea what you're going to go through by committing to saying, okay, this is like, we are not just saying yes to each other. We're saying yes to what life is going to become, which is going to be really hard in a really short amount of time. Yeah. We were pretty cavalier about it at first, I have to say. Rhea was cavalier about it because she'd already died three times because she was a

recovered heroin addict. And she used to be very cavalier about death before it got close enough that its terror, its inevitable terror caught her. But even with that diagnosis, she was such a badass anyway. But she used to say, like, I died three times already. I know it's not so bad. And she had a line in one of her songs, my faith to keep me warm died more times than I was born. And that's truly who she was. And I think, honestly, I have to be very candid.

There was a part of Rhea, and I loved her honesty about You know, this has been so hard. Life is, and she had a good life, but she also had a hard life. She'd, you know, she'd been through a lot, but she had cleaned up and she had a good life. But I think even a good life is a hard life. And I think that I was fascinated by that sense that she had of, oh God, there's so much I'm never going to have to worry about again. I never have to worry about whether I have enough money in my retirement account. I don't have to, there's people I never have to see again. There's like hard situations I never have to be in again. I don't have to worry about climate change anymore. I'm not going to be here. Like there was truly some sense of her, of a release, of a sense of, oh, I get to, I get to go.

And I get to go on my own terms with my own honor, with my lover by my side. That's how it began. But by the end and what we went through in the end, dying is no joke. And being with somebody who's dying is no joke. And dying of terminal cancer is not the same as overdosing as a junkie in your 20s. You know, there was, she was scared and she was angry and she was heartbroken and she was, she lashed out. I mean, she was, she went through everything that everybody who's on the verge of death goes through unless they're a fully enlightened being, which, you know, none of us are. So, and I went through everything that a caregiver goes through unless they're a fully enlightened being, which, you know, none of us are. So, and I went through everything that a caregiver goes through, pain, exhaustion, heartbreak, resentment. You know, there was nothing romantic about the road that we walked, except for that we walked the entire thing together.

Yeah. And while, I mean, while she is saying, okay, so yes, it's horrible, but thank God, there was a sense of release for her. You've lived a different life, and your job was to carry on. So it's like you're not experiencing, it's a very different thing for you. Yeah. I don't get to go.

Yeah. I don't get to go. Yeah. I have to stay here in this veil of tears that is also a merry-go-round and also a playground and also beautiful and also horrible. And, you know, I was told something really beautiful by my friend, the novelist Ann Patchett, after Rhea died. But it's one of the really most resonating things that anybody has told me, where she said, Rhea belongs to the infinite now.

And someday you will too. Someday we all will. And once you do, once you belong to the eternal, to the infinite, you will have literally the rest of eternity to be there and to be in merging with whatever that is and to be with Raya and to be with all souls. But you just have this tiny little mysterious period of time to be in a human form in life. So embrace that and take it. Don't be in such a hurry to merge with the infinite that you don't do this, that you don't do this messy, strange, complex life in a human form and make sure to re-embrace that and rejoin the world that you belong to as somebody who is living. And i thought that was so beautiful

so kind it also kind of reassured me when she said don't worry you'll be you'll be dead soon too i was like oh good then i'll get to hang out with ray and we'll get to you know like soon enough like soon it's like in the cosmic time in the cosmic time it's you know it's a blink yeah you know it's an it's it's it's instant that we'll all be there and you know i like to think that we'll all meet up at some soul conference and look back on what we did here and be like, wasn't that weird? Hopefully there's really good music there. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, Raya would have come back if there wasn't.

It's like knock on the door. Yeah, exactly. No, it's all music. Sorry. So, yeah, I had to stay and I've chosen to embrace that and to believe that my life in a realist world will find its way to be as beautiful as my life in a real filled world was. And that's my creative challenge now is to kind of figure out how to have that be. Yeah. I mean, how do you do that? Which I guess I'm not answering in a universal way. I'm answering you as an individual. Is it an intentional process for you or is it just wake up every morning? It's kind of like,

I'm going to figure it out. It's intentional. I mean, I've lived my whole life with a lot of intent and I think that grieving Rhea has been in many ways the greatest creative challenge of my life. It's an act of creativity to figure out, I mean, here's what they've given me. You know, like, and I always think of creativity as like working with what you've been given in the most interesting possible way. So when I say they, I mean, whoever's governing this fucking thing, whatever it is. Here's what they've given me. They were like, here, we're going to give you, you who are always so wary and have places in yourself that are, that are so guarded and pain that you've always felt no one can reach. We're going to give you the one person who can reach it, who can soothe you, who can make you feel completely safe and absolutely seen. And

now we're going to take that away. So that's an interesting creative challenge. How do I now figure out how to be safe, seen, loved, and joyful when the person who provided that's gone? And instead of me doing the how dare you take her from me, which I did do. I mean, that's part of grieving, you know, and I had a long list of complaints to the universe about that. I had a long list of other people who I would have been very happy to see die. And I was like, you took that one, you took that one, you took that one. Like I will trade you literally all of them for that one, you know, but that's not how it works. We don't get that

vote. We don't get that vote. And no one ever has gotten that vote. No one gets to orchestrate that. So there's a surrender in that. But as far as, you know, the aftermath goes, this I think is the most radical possible question that I could live into. And I like to live into the most radical possible question. There was a life that I could only have with Rhea. And that life is gone and it's completely denied to me and I cannot have it. And that life was amazing. And now there is a life that I can only have without her that I never could have done had she lived. And what is that life? And do I have the courage to find that one and do the stuff that she would never be interested in doing? Be in relationships with people that I couldn't be in a relationship

with if I was with her. Live in a way that is different from the way she would have lived to just say like, well, what is the benefit? I mean, and I say that word as a radical world, what is the benefit? And if I believe in a benevolent universe, and I do, then what am I being offered here? What can I be that I couldn't have been with her? And one of those things I'm finding is stronger on account of if I had a story that there was only one person in the world who I could be with and be safe in the world, then what did that make me? And you take that person away and I have to find a way to internalize and become that in my own way. If the universe loves me and wants me to grow, then of course they're going to take that person away from me, you know, and say, okay, now you find it. Now you find it in you. And I feel as though I've braided so much of Rhea's emotional DNA into mine that in my most

challenging moments, I really do literally say what Rhea would say or do what Raya would do. And that's the eternal Raya that is now part of me and makes me infinitely stronger than I ever was before. Yeah, I mean, to rediscover that internally is a big thing. Because to a certain extent, it tells you that other people may come and go in your life, people that you love differently, but just as deeply, who have like fulfill certain yearnings or needs in you and create that same or like their own version

of that sense of safety and whatever you needed to go to that place. And yet if you can sort of like generate it internally, as well as have that compliment, what you've already created, I wonder if there's a sense of, well, yes, it would be horrible to lose this person for whatever reason it is.

And yet at the same time, you would be different because the loss would be of what that person brought to you that you felt you needed to survive, to do what you're here to do, rather than you having that from yourself and having that person compliment it. And you're losing the complimentary part of it, sure, pain there, but there's still the essence, which comes from the inside out. That's beautifully put. And the only thing I would question, and I said it myself, but when you said it, I heard it differently when you said, you know, to find it within yourself, it's also finding it in the universe and letting it enter you and knowing, getting to a point of knowing

that you always, that you were never not safe. You know, that you always had everything you needed, that never once have you not had exactly what you needed. And that to me, it feels like the ultimate in autonomy, you know, not a sense of independence of like the, in the Yankee way, the way I was raised, which was, you know, you're on your own. Right. Self-reliance. Yeah. I mean, I think that self-sufficiency is a dangerous thing, especially in this culture, that word can be dangerous because we have a very tragic and broken and dark relationship with that idea from Calvinism and from capitalism. And some of us, like me,

were raised in families where we were always told, you're on your own, no one's ever going to take care of you, which is a deeply lonely feeling. And so when I'm told by spiritual teachers to find it within myself, there's something in me that bucks, that's like, no, no, I had to do that when I was four. Like, that feels lonely and isolating to me. I am done with that. Yeah, you find it. You do it. You do it. I want you to do it for me. I am done with that. Yeah, you find it. I know what it feels like. You do it. You do it. I want you to do it for me. I want somebody else to love me.

I don't want to have to find it within myself because what I've been hardwired to believe that self-sufficiency means is alone. And because that's based on scarcity. And so when my parents raised me to say, watch out, you've got to learn how to do everything yourself, no one will ever take care of you, that's because they saw the world as a place of danger and scarcity. And so when my parents raised me to say, watch out, you got to learn how to do everything yourself, no one will ever take care of you, that's because they saw the world as a place of danger and scarcity. But what I'm experiencing as I go deeper and deeper into this post-Raya world and finding that sense of safety is a kind of autonomy that says, you actually don't have to worry because you'll always get what you need. You know, so like the self-sufficiency that my parents taught was you'll never get what you need

and there'll never be enough of it and no one will give it to you. You know, the opposite of that is everything you need is right here. Put your hand out and an apple will drop into it, a piece of fruit. Like everything you need is available. And it's not about being alone. It's about being integrated into everything. So it's the exact opposite of loneliness. It's not about being alone. It's about being integrated into everything. So it's the exact opposite of loneliness. It's not the self-sufficiency of the lone wolf. It's the self-sufficiency of a leaf in a forest that is part of all of it and doesn't have to worry about its place because its place is clear. It's just part of all of this and everything is therefore provided. And that to me feels like, God, that would be independence. That would be real spiritual independence. And then I could really, really get down with loving people. Because as my great

teacher Byron Katie says, nobody is safe for me if I need something from them. It's so true. So the less, the more I can just get it from me, from the cosmos, from the soup, then when I'm with you, you're safe for me because I'm not needing you to give me, take care of me, save me, fill me, soothe me. I mean, it's like it's relational, but not dependent. Right? Yeah. And it's not just relational in the context of an individual. It's sort of like everything. Yeah.

It's like, you know, it's the woods. Maybe you can only be independent if you are relational. Okay, so this brings up something. I'm holding Liz's most recent book in front of me, by the way, because there's a passage. Man, I should have brought my glasses in here with me. And I want to talk to you about some of the stuff in here because it's an awesome book. But also, there were so many passages and thoughts that you shared in this. And it's a novel, you know, that just landed as, okay, so who's she talking about?

And this is just a really beautiful, expansive lesson in general for everyone. I'm going to kind of start towards the back here because it touches on what we're talking on right now. And it references a character named Frank who is no longer with the people in the book. And you're recalling, or the character. My narrator. Yeah, your narrator. My avatar. Is recalling to his daughter who was trying to figure out what the nature of their relationship was many, many decades later.

And this is what you wrote. He was so peculiar in death too. He remained so vivid. He came to me in dreams and he came to me in smells and sounds and sensations of New York itself. He came to me in the scent of a summer rain on hot macadam or in the sweet perfume of wintertime sugared nuts sold by street vendors. He came to me in the sour, milky odor of Manhattan's ginkgo trees in springtime bloom. He came to me in the budding coo of nesting pigeons and in the screaming of police sirens.

He was everywhere to be found across the city, yet his absence weighed my heart with deep silence. It sounds like that's what you're describing. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And I was curious also about this character. Because I'm curious about a lot of the characters and how they relate to you and people in your life.

Just talk to me more about that. Yeah, I don't want to say too much about the character because it's such a yeah spoiler right because um of so much of what the novel is about is about the mystery of this person and we we don't really find out till the end so i i think i'll leave that clip in mystery so that the readers can figure it out and find it but this idea that the the people who are so vivid in life remain vivid in death is something that I only have learned since Rhea's death. And that the vividness shows up in just seeing the world through a Rhea filter, if you're me. But there's also this tremendous comfort in, you know, in one of the things that used to make me weep and weep when I imagined a world without Rhea. One of my favorite things in the world to do was to walk into a room with Rhea Elias on my arm. She was just so, she was so fucking cool. And she was so beautiful. And she was so

magnetizing. It didn't matter if like Obama and Madonna were in the room, like Rhea was still the biggest character in that room that had the biggest personality and just radiated this kind of magnetism and charisma. And I just loved watching the world engage with her. And, you know, when I knew that she was going to be gone, one of the beliefs that caused me an enormous amount of suffering was I will never be able to walk into a room with Rhea again. But what I've learned is I actually am never again going to walk into a room without her because she's everything now, you know. She's everything in my imagination, in my memory. You know, she's always, I used to have to sometimes not be with her in the real world because of the realities of where our bodies are and what your job is and what you're doing. And now I don't ever have to not be with her because she still takes up all that space. And she's in a weird way, accessible and

available at all minutes of the day. You are during this whole time also, I mean, you're a writer. So this book is out now. I know one of the things that you've shared in the past is that you, or I guess both of, but when she would ever allow herself to imagine what it would be like if we were romantic partners. And she said she always imagined that it would be so beautiful and romantic to live with me while I was writing a novel, because she knew the kind of state I get into when I'm writing a novel. And to, you know, hear me get up at five o'clock in the morning and make myself a cup of tea and go into that room and shut myself in there and come out later having created these worlds. And she wanted to be near that. And she never got that chance because while she was dying, you know, her dying was a full-time job for both her and for me and not just her suffering, but also all the things that

she wanted to do before she died. And it just wasn't a time for me to be writing a novel about New York City showgirls in the 1940s. It's just what my mind wasn't in it, my heart wasn't in it, I couldn't imagine caring about it. And when I did have time to write, I was just writing down what was going on, you know, what was going on as a, as a, I say it like a chronicle to make sure that I didn't lose any of it. Any of the moments, the horrible and the wonderful moments. So, so she never got to live with me as a novelist, but when it came time for me to write the book, I went and lived in the house that she had lived in and among her things. And I wrote the book in her office. And that was my way of being like, okay, babe, let's do this now.

So it's like she never got to live with you as an artist, but in a sense you got to live with her as you wrote. Yeah, I did. And also my attention as she was dying was so much more on fostering her creativity than mine because she was a musician and a songwriter. And I just had to make sure that I got her in the studio to get those songs done and to help her in that regard and make sure that she had put those songs

into the ether before she left. And that just seemed way more important to me than making sure that I got my writing done. Yeah. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

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The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. So when you start to return to your own creative process,

was this book and the book we're talking about is City of Girls. And this is a novel about New York City theater world in the 1940s and showgirls and playboys and playwrights and Broadway and Times Square of that moment in history, which I always thought was like the most impossibly glamorous moment of New York's history. And I wanted to be in it. So I had spent almost four years prior to Rhea getting sick, doing research for the book. And I was almost at the point where I was about to start writing it when she got sick. And then I put it away and truly thought I may never write it. I couldn't imagine caring about it. I couldn't imagine. Who gives a shit? Rhea's dying. Who cares about this book or anybody in it

or any of the work I had done on it. Like, it just didn't care. And then very shortly after she died, again, you know, I spend a lot of my life just following commands from the mothership is the best way I can explain it. The great magnet in the sky, whatever it is that tells me what to do, told me to do this and told me that the very best thing that I could possibly do for my own recovery and my own healing was to throw myself into a really big ambitious creative project that had nothing to do with death and dying, except for the passage that you just read,

which God did manage to slip in there, but that was all about life and sex and exuberance and promiscuity and recklessness and wildness and fun and champagne cocktails and showbiz. And that that would be what would make me okay. And whatever it was that told me to do that was absolutely correct. Yeah. Made me be okay. Did it creep in slowly or were you kind of like fairly quickly? Like, you know what? Oh no, I got right on it. Also it was due. I should also mention that it had a deadline. I had already gotten a year's extension on the deadline because of Rhea's illness. And I had gotten the feeling from my publisher that that was not going to be very

welcomed if I'd come back. But there was also a part of me that didn't want to, I didn't want to put it off for another year. I didn't want, what would I have done? I mean, I'd gone from being full-time caregiver to this, somebody who was, I should say, not the world's easiest patient. I mean, all of that sort of hugeness of character and badassery and, and, and independence of Rhea also meant that she was a sucky ass patient. She just killed us. It was three of us who were taking care of us and she just murdered us. She was so hard to take care of. And now there's nothing, you know, now there's just this big vacancy. What do I do? And I was so, I wrote it fast and hard because I was so grateful to have something to occupy my time. And the wonderful thing about creativity, I've always said is that your creative pursuits are such a vacation from your regular mind and your regular thoughts. And if you're lucky enough to find something that you

can fall into, I could have a couple hours a day where I would forget that Rhea had died, only because I would forget that Rhea had lived. Because I would forget everything except what I was focused on in these characters in this book. And that was just such a balm for my mind to get to be in that world instead of this one. Yeah. Do you feel like you would have written a different book had you written it two years earlier? Sure. I mean, I think all my books would have been very different if they were written one year to the next. But I mean, in particular because of what happened. How did it influence it? I think I wanted it to be lighter and more joyful because of Ray's death, because I felt that I needed pleasure, and I wanted to write about pleasure because I'd been in so much pain. I think I would have been married two years earlier writing it, so I think my views on marriage would have been different than they turned out to be for the character in the book. I think that the relationship, the foundational relationship in her life might have been very different if I was writing it from within a marriage to a man. So I think, yeah,

I think the book is funnier, weirdly, because it came out of that darkness and also more sexually radical and more socially radical than it would have been. Yeah, it was interesting because when I, for the first 350 pages probably, and the book's like 400 something pages, I was like, I'm having deja vu. Like, what am I feeling right now? I haven't read another book like this. I was like, oh, I feel like I'm actually, while I was reading, I'm like, I feel like I'm in the middle of a 1950s Billy Wilder movie. Oh, great. Yay. Thank you. That's exactly how I wanted you to feel. Well, you totally succeeded. Great.

It was, it was like, it was fast. It was fun. It was joyous. It was irreverent. It was pushing the envelope of expectations, you know, like at every turn. But the other part of it is it was also, you know, it's set in the 1940s. It's got that classical sort of like romp feel to it. But it was so of the moment at the same time. Of this moment. Of this moment. Tell me more. the way that people were living, but in terms of a lot of the social issues that are sort of like at the center of public conversation right now, which were not then, but in the book, we're all spoken to, you know, an exploration of like a woman's right, you know, to experience and revel in pleasure, you know, to be in power and in control and in business. And yet at the same time, how, when quote indiscretions happen,

men and women were treated profoundly differently. Right, right. The women were banished and the men were allowed to keep all their attainments. Just keep on rocking. Yeah, yeah. So like the issues that were, you know, were so, speak to what's going on in the world right now and so many of the things that I think people are addressing on a level now that haven't really been publicly addressed in a long time.

Well, you know, it's funny because I started researching the book before the Me Too movement began and then that erupted and it was really in full eruption last year when I was writing. And it made me think, do I want to alter anything about this story in light of that? And the answer was nope. Because these girls and women, in order to be viable, believable 1940s, 50s, and 60s characters have to be, they can't be prematurely woke. You know, I hate historical novels where people are prematurely woke, where like the 18th century scullery made in a novel speaks about feminist powers if she has a, you know, master's from Barnard. And I'm like, no, you can't, no, you can't have these ideas yet. You can be strong and tough and willful in a way that is appropriate and accurate to what

would have been possible for an illiterate scullery made in the 18th century, but you can't be talking like you're Mary Wollstonecraft. You can't. So I really wanted to make sure that these girls were, they were not, in a weird way, they were not consciously choosing their behavior. They were just being themselves. And themselves happened to be very wild, very loose, and very reckless often without, always without considering the consequences in advance. And so I just had to let them continue to be that. And I had to let the men behave as men would have, which meant that these girls were often in danger, but they were, the definition of a risky girl is that she's willing to put herself in danger in order to be sexual.

And that's the reality of how a lot of girls have lived in the past and continue to now. So I wanted to tell that story, not about people being safe or politic or on the right side of social debate, but about people being messy and full of longing and lust and desire and agency and then having to see what happens when you act like that. Yeah. And I guess that was part of my question also about whether it would have been a different book. And again, of course, who knows, right?

But reflecting both because of what's going on sort of like in popular culture, but also because of what was awakening you on a very personal level, the moment you heard Rhea's diagnosis and the moment you both shared how you felt with each other. But I guess to a certain extent, when you write something like this, you know,

it's always just going to reflect who you are at any given moment in time. Oh, yeah. And what you want to say. I mean, look, you want to write a memoir or write a novel? Yeah, I know. You know, because that's where it's going to, that's where I always say, you'll learn so much more about me by reading my novels than you will by reading my memoirs, because I've written both. And it's not that I'm trying to shield or protect or hide anything in my memoirs. I try to be very

honest and open, but we don't, you know, I'm careful and I'm aware and I'm hyper self-conscious and I'm choosing how, you know, trying to figure out how to choose how to present myself. Whereas in a novel, I'm every single one of these characters, you know? And so it's basically like my fingernails and my DNA and my hair are all over that crime scene. Like, you know, you can see a lot about me in that book. And so I have heard it said that every novel is a work of nonfiction

and every memoir is a work of fiction. You gotta bet. It would be funny to sort of like go through and say, okay, so like the friends who've known you at different parts of your life, like who do you see Liz as in what characters, in what way? It's like, depending on when you've known her. It's like categorize it that way. Yeah. They could go through this book and be like, oh yeah,

there's Celia. Yep. And here she's, you know, yeah, exactly. And here she's Aunt Peg. Yeah. I've definitely been every person in that book. Right. So when you turn this in, yeah. And here she's Aunt Peg. Yeah, I've definitely been every person in that book. this becomes your bomb. This is the thing where you dive in and it's consuming you and you get to just turn on the creative thing and absorb yourself in it, right? Then you write the manuscript. You go through the stuff with your editor, you hand it in, it's accepted, right? So you don't have to work on this anymore. You wake up the next morning.

Yeah, now what? Yeah. Well, that's kind of day one in a way. I've had this cushion where I got to take a reprieve. I mean, I guess you wake up and you just see what sort of world do you live in now? Where are we today? What have we got? And I did some traveling with some friends.

I'm turning 50 this year, and it was really important to me this year to make sure that I spent time on traveling journeys with every person who I love. So instead of having like a big 50th birthday party, I went to Mexico with my best friend from fourth grade. That's great. And then I went to Hawaii with another friend, and I'm about to go to Europe with another friend and to just so to share time with people. Obviously, there's something about walking that close to death too that makes you look around and be like, who is precious to me? Who's left? What can I do? What can I do unto them? And what can I do with them? So that we don't wait till someone has the cancer diagnosis before we take that trip to Mexico and we just like, why don't we just do it now? So I think a lot of that was

a lot of planning of that and a lot of kind of excitement around that. And then a lot of just navigating the landscape of grief. I mean, grief is an energy field that I've said has a great deal in common with love. In one way, it's because as the adage goes, grief is the cost, it's the price that you pay for love. And the loss that comes is, you know, that pain is because you loved. It's kind of a badge of honor of love to be able to grieve. But also it has something to do with love in that I have no control over it. I have no power over it. When it comes, it hits and it hits hard and it will make you buckle to your knees. And it's what my friend and Rhea's ex-wife, Gigi, and I call a carve-out moment. It's just a carve-out.

You just stand there and you get carved out by it. And you just, you just let it, you just let it carve you out because it's bigger than you and stronger than you. And resistance is how you actually get hurt. I know. So you just stand there like, like a rock at the seashore and you just get pounded by that wave and let it shape you into whatever it's going to shape you into. because that's the nature of the geology of grief. And so I was really, I would say a lot of what I've done over the last 18 months is kind of practicing nonviolent, nonresistance to grief. That, okay, oh, here it is. I have like two seconds to hit the ground. It's coming.

And then just let it roll through you like a weather front and just let it do what it's going to do to you for as long as it is. And then stand up off the floor and wash your face and go have lunch. Be like, I guess I survived that one. Okay, now what's next? Yeah. You've been public in a lot of ways for a fairly long time, sharing in a very transparent way. Does the last four years for you change the way that you approach or does it change where the line in the sand is

about what's public and what's private or about when it's public, how either completely raw and open and honest you are or how much you feel like you need to keep as your own at any given moment in time. I don't have a rule. I don't have any rules. I was about to say about that, but then I was thinking in general. Right. It's like, let's just make it a block. I don't have any rules. I don't have any rules about that because how in the world am I going to know in advance what that think that it's a service because the people who are kind it, it feels burdensome on me. I think in the same way that any talent that you have that you don't use becomes a burden, any information that

you have about how to survive this journey on earth that you don't share as a burden. It's a burden on you because it's meant to be out there. So I just follow my instincts on it. And I couldn't even possibly tell you what that is. It's intuitive. And yeah, I just, I seem, I don't know. And I guess what has changed is that I care a lot less. You know, once you've lost somebody who was important to you to the degree that Rhea was to me, I kind of like, I'm not afraid. I mean, I'll throw something out there if I'm wrong. If it turns out to have been a mistake, then okay. It's not someone dying. Right. So people disagree with me on Facebook. Oh, God. Wow. I'm going to die. You know, like, it's just not, it's not a human life. It's not a human death. It doesn't have that much weight. Therefore, you know, share it and throw it out there and see what happens.

Or don't. That's also fine. It's not that big a deal. Yeah. I guess it's that it's a whole different context, right? Yeah. It's like, now you know what the certain bar is. Mayday, mayday.

We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die.

Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. Flight risk. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. It's interesting. Probably not a lot of people know,

the podcast actually started two years earlier than the podcast's video. The first interview I ever did for that one was the behavioral economist and Duke professor, Dan Ariely. Oh, he's extraordinary. Such an incredible guy. And probably even if you're familiar with his work, a lot of people don't know that Dan is actually very badly burned on something like 70% of his body when he was 18 or something like that in Israel.

Some sort of ceremony and oil exploded all over him. And he was in the burn ward for two years in the hospital. And we're talking about this. I remember the conversation. It's why I'm bringing it up, which is that, you know, he's like, I have a visual, physical, sensory reminder every day of my life. He's like, I'm good. But I have this reminder every day of my life of as bad as it can get, you know,

and it serves a certain constructive purpose. Talk about someone who laughs a lot, by the way. Yeah. Like talk about someone who has walked through tremendous darkness and has great light giddiness in him. I mean, that's my favorite thing about him is how joyful he is. You know, this is something that my friend Rob Bell, do you know Rob Bell? Yeah. That he calls the light after the darkness, after the light. And the way he explains it is that there's a lightness that people have that

is about innocence and naivete and like top 40 pop music and let's go to the beach. And there's that kind of, when you're around people who are light in that way, it's almost like L-I-T-E light, you know? But it looks like exuberance and fun and good times. And then after that, inevitably in people's lives, there comes the darkness. And some people don't ever emerge out of that. You know, they remain that, you know, there's that adage that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Sometimes, for some times, what doesn't kill you just fucks you up and leaves you just a wreck. And some people can't get through that for whatever reason or haven't yet, you know, and they're in that darkness. And then there are the people who have passed through that to the light that's on the other side of that darkness. And those people are radiant with something that is what it's like to be around Dan. Where you can't accuse that of being shallow laughter, giggling, enjoyment. That is somebody who has literally walked through fire. Yeah, he knows. And because of that, there's a resonance to the joy and it's the resonance of such a miracle that we're still here, you know? And the way Rob described it is

that he once saw Archbishop Tutu and the Dalai Lama meet at a conference and they're old friends, apparently. And he said, you want to know what those two guys do when they meet and they run into each other? Because he watched the moment that they ran into each other. They bump bellies up against each other a bunch of times and then they just start giggling. And he said, these are two of the most, like, and these are not two people that you could accuse of being frivolous or not understanding human suffering, you know? But they are the light on the other side of the darkness, on the other side of the darkness, on the other side of the light. And boy, when you're around somebody like that,

do you feel it? Do you feel the grace? Do you feel like you're there yet? Depends on the day. You know, I hesitate to say it because I don't want to tempt fate. I don't want to say i've been through my greatest darkness yet yeah you know my greatest darkness could start this afternoon i i don't have the slightest idea what they've got in store for me you know and i had a friend uh who was a

i wrote about for for gq years ago and he had had as a 20 year old he'd been hit by a bus and lost his leg and then he overcame it and he became a motivational speaker and a one-legged athlete. And he routinely won, you know, beat people in triathlons and Ironman who were able-bodied. And, you know, he just became this kind of superhero, this one-legged superhero. And he really felt like he was in the light on the other side of the darkness and that he was that guy. And then he was in a triathlon and he got hit again by another car and he became a quadriplegic. And, and then he had to go through the real darkness, you know, and he said, you know, be careful of thinking that your karma is over. You know, the story is ongoing. And,

and he, his, what he came away with, and he was, by the time I met him, very much the light on the other side of that darkness. And he said, you know, they had to do this to me twice to get my attention. You know, I didn't get the lessons out of it the first time that I needed to. I still was in my ego. I still thought I was champion guy and that it was all about achievement and success. And only with the humility of the second accident have I been able to find grace. So here's sort of a perpetual question with me around this. Do you think there's any way to get to that second light without having to go through the darkness?

I hate the word cheat and hack, but, you know. I've tried them all. Like, can you, you know, like, can you get to that place without being brought to your knees in a profound way? Because I'd love to believe you can, but I haven't yet really seen the example of it. Well, that would presume that there's such a thing as a human life that's never brought to its knees. And I've never experienced that life yet. Have you? I haven't witnessed that in anybody.

I mean, I've seen it, but I haven't seen somebody, circling back to the beginning of our conversation, who is able to live in those same highs, that same joy, that same state of bliss, without having been to that place before at some point. But I also haven't seen anybody who hasn't experienced extraordinary loss, suffering, and pain. It appears to be the contract. I don't understand. I think a good use of it is transformative. Let's use this to become better human beings. I think that's a really great way to see suffering and pain. You don't have to see it that way, but you'll still have suffering and pain. And without catharsis, without catharsis and transformation, all of your pain is

just wasted suffering that you just got for no reason. So you might as well use it, spend it, spend it to buy enlightenment, spend it to spend it, spend it to buy enlightenment, spend it to buy wisdom, spend it to buy humility and compassion. Use it. They gave it to you. I don't know if that's the master plan of the universe, but I think it's a very graceful way to interact with suffering and pain. And you will have it. I mean, it's the first noble truth. And I think what you can do is instead of living in fear and hiding in your bedroom from suffering, which it will find you anyway, suffering knows where you live. It knows your home address. And when it's your turn to suffer, it will come and knock on your door and you'll be aware that it's your turn to suffer because it will be happening. And it knows your real email address.

Exactly. It knows where you live. So given that that is the case, then I do think that a very productive and to yourself generous use of your time would be to start to embody practices that have been proven to help mitigate suffering so that when it comes, you're not unarmed. Now, that doesn't mean you still won't have to be in pain, but it might mean that you'll have a perspective and a practice and a ritual that will hold you safely through that. That's probably as close to a hack as you can get. Yeah. But that means showing up for the work of yourself. I so agree with that. I see so many people spending so much of their energy

trying to protect against every eventuality that may cause pain or suffering rather than investing that same energy or even a portion of it in building practices and skills that would allow them to find some level of increased equanimity when it does in fact arrive. Because like you said, it will. It's the first noble truth. And yeah, I wonder what would happen if some of those practices were taught to a lot more people, sort of like just as a matter of fact in life. I just love what you just said about, you know, where is your time going?

Is your time going in trying to remain safe in a world that has proven itself again and again to be unsafe? Or is, and appears to be not just that it's unsafe, you know, because we fuck up. It appears to be sort of natural law that it's unsafe, you know, because we fuck up. It appears to be sort of natural law that it's unsafe. You know, there's that wonderful satirical headline in the Onion newspaper that says, Earth's death rate holding steady at 100%. You know, there's also just natural law to go up against. If not, that you'd be harmed by your neighbor. Something's going to get you. So do you spend your life trying to be safe from that? Or do you spend your life trying to be safe from that or do you spend your life learning how to help yourself when you're in danger? You know, with, again, practices that have been proven over millennia to be of great service to people when they're in that state.

I think that's the best readiness that you can have. And I also, I can't remember, I wish I could remember who it was, but I heard an interview once with a guy who studied resilience. And one of the things that he was fascinated with was how is it that two people can go through the exact same trauma and then this person ends up okay.

Maybe they walk with a limp, but they're okay. Right, post-traumatic growth versus trauma. And this person's not. And so he spent a lot of time studying the resilient. Who are the people in this community who also lost everything, who also went through the genocide, who also went through the abuse, who also went through the addiction, you know, had all the same terrible things happen to them, but then somehow found the resilience to not bounce back, but to stand up again and reclaim in a kind of sacred way, themselves and their life and to re-embrace the world, the world's terms. And what he came up with, and again, I'm so sorry if you're listening to this, sir, I wish I could remember who you were, but that there are three things that you need in order to be resilient.

And one is you need to believe that life has meaning, that life itself has meaning. The second is you have to believe that your life has a particular meaning within that. And the third thing you need is community. You need community. You need to feel that you belong somewhere. And what he said is don't wait for the hurricane to go knock on your neighbor's door and ask for help. Build that before. Like that's a wonderful way to also be safe when the wave comes is to know that you have people and that you've cultivated people who will take care of you. How do you do that? By becoming someone who takes care of people. And that's how you cultivate community,

by giving, by giving until trust is built. And then you know that, oh, this is going to hurt, but I've got arms around me. And I've spoken about this on social media at times where I've talked about incredible friends that I've spoken about this on social media at times where I've talked about like incredible friends that I've had or you know I've shared stories of amazing acts of friendship and interestingly almost invariably in the comments somebody who is feeling very sorry for themselves will say

you're lucky I don't have any friends like that and I always want to say so be a friend like that you know be a friend like that to someone. If you don't have anybody who's generous and loving and full of grace in your life, then go be that in somebody else's life. That's how it works. It's not about what you get. It's about what can you contribute to this relationship?

What can you bring as an offering? That's how community is built. It's built on the offerings of the generous and the loving. I love that. Talking about having people, you've recently shared, I guess, a pretty cool full circle relationship moment to a certain extent. So one of Rhea's oldest friends, Simon, is somebody who you shared not too long ago publicly again.

You were in a relationship with. Mm-hmm. You were in a relationship with. How does that sort of, how does that feel to you? And how does it feel to you to share that? And I'm curious, why share it? Well, why share it is an easier question to answer. It makes my life easier to a certain extent because I do live in the public eye. And he was going to be with me a lot. Right.

And I would so much rather tell you who someone is than have you guess. And also I just feel like, let me just tell you, let me just make the introductions here and then we can all go back to our business, you know, and you'll notice or not notice depending on how carefully you looked that I haven't said anything further about it since then. And so for me, it was a way to allow myself to walk freely through the world with someone, answer whatever the, I don't want to say nosy questions are because I think they're very natural questions that people would have. And then just say, okay, and now I'm going to go have this very private story with somebody. And that's how I chose to do it. I didn't have to.

It was a decision I made. Do I say something about this? Do I not say something about this? The other reason I wanted to say something about it is that any time I wrote about this in that post, but any time that I can normalize your life by showing you my life, because my life tends to not follow normal lines. So I know that people carry an enormous amount of shame over some of the things that this love story with Simon would have brought up. Have you lost your spouse or your partner or your lover and now time has passed and you find yourself attracted to somebody else,

is that okay? Let me be the one to say yes. If you're worried that that's not okay, look at me here. Let me show you how I'm doing this. Were you with somebody of one gender and then you're going to be with somebody of another gender and you're wondering if that's okay, here I am to let you know that that's okay. Whatever I can do to make you feel less broken, wrong and weird, I'm more than happy to put my life out in public for that. And, you know, are you falling in love and you feel like you're 16 again, even though you're 50 and because you are so full of insecurity and uncertainty and excitement and fear, and you think you should know how to do this and you don't, hello friend, it's going to be okay. Falling in love at 50 feels exactly the same way as it did at 16. Navigating a new relationship is always that, you know? So

that was my secondary reason. My first reason was, let me just clear this so that I can just move about the world freely. But, but also I know that my, the other people's lives have these elements in them as well, you know? So let's talk about it. A couple of years ago, a mutual friend of ours, Glennon Doyle, was here. And this was after her book came out. And I guess a lot of people may or may not know that very often when a book publishes, it's actually years after the story and the book has been told. And I was hanging out with Glennon and we're talking about relationships as you do, especially with Glennon. And I asked her, we started talking about the fact that she was in a relationship at that time. And she was always very forward-facing about everything that went on, you know, especially in the book, very detailed, very forward-facing, but most intimate things.

And she said, I don't want to talk about it now. You know, it didn't take long for us to realize who it was and that it was Abby and that beautiful marriage now. But it was interesting because she kind of said that she's like, for now, for this window, I just want it to be mine. And that may change in a big way in the not too deep, but right now I just need to own this. It's just me and this one other person. And so with me. Yeah. You know, beyond what I've told you here, which is exactly what I said in that Instagram post a couple months ago. Yeah.

I haven't said another thing about it and don't plan to. Yeah. Completely respect that. Completely respect that people wonder and have questions, but it's like, oh no, this is so fresh. And let me find my way through this. So as we sit here today in this container of the Good Life Project,

I asked you the same question four or five years ago, but I'm gonna ask it again. So if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? I love that I can't remember what I said last time, and I'll ask you after if you remember. I think it's to know that you are loved. And in my mind, when I said that, it's a capital L, meaning by the divine, by what created you, and not a small L that is dependent upon other people or other things working out in a way that you want them to. It's very nice to be small L loved, if you can get it. Good work if you can find it. But it's not as important to me as knowing that I'm capital L loved, that

whatever made me, wanted me, wanted me and wanted me to be here and will always take care of me, whether I'm alive or dead, whether I'm in pain or in joy. And I think if you've got that in your pocket, you can walk around knowing that, like capital K-N-O-W, like knowing it, like really living in the knowledge and the knowing that you are loved and that there is nothing that you could ever do to lose that. And, you know, that is sometimes I think I have no value. I'm just loved, you know, and I love to offer that to people as an alternative to the American purpose-driven life that says that you don't have any value unless you're serving a purpose. And what is your purpose? And all of us are born with a purpose and you have to find your purpose.

Then you have to change the world with that purpose. All of that just makes the tendons in my neck stand out and gives me hives of anxiety that I'm doing it wrong or that I might never get there or that I had a purpose but I failed and it should have been this one. All of that is just so tremendously anxiety producing, so inhumane to teach people that that is what the point of their life is, is to earn somehow their presence on this earth through purpose and through what they contribute and it better be good. It's just so mean. The reality is that you are not required to have a purpose at all. That's what it means to be loved.

You are not required. Nothing is required of you. Nothing is required of you. You are part of all of this and couldn't not be if you tried. And that, I think, is real peace. Thank you. Welcome. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening app so you never miss an episode. And then share, share the love. If there's something that you've heard in this episode that you would love to turn into

a conversation, share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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