Making Sense with Sam Harris - #249 — Distance & Arrival

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

Sam Harris and David Whyte further explore his work in his book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. If the Making Sense podcast logo in your player is BLACK, you can SUBSCRIBE to gain access to all full-length episodes at samharris.org/subscribe.

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As always, I never want money to be the reason why someone can't get access to the podcast. So if you can't afford a subscription, there's an option at SamHarris.org to request a free account. And we grant 100% of those requests. No questions asked. Okay, the briefest of housekeepings here. Okay, the briefest of housekeeping's here. Just want to announce that the first season of my podcast with Ricky Gervais, Absolutely Mental, has dropped, and 11 episodes are available at absolutelymental.com.

The first three of those episodes we released here on the podcast, So there are eight new ones. And thank you all for letting us demo the series on you. Anyway, I had a tremendous amount of fun doing this with Ricky. These conversations really are just like the ones we've had in private to date. So if you want to ride along with us, that's where you can do it,

at absolutelymental.com. Okay. Today I'm speaking with David White. David is a poet, and he's been on the podcast before. Truly wonderful voice voice who's been producing more and more content for us over at Waking Up. His poems and short essays and extemporaneous reflections are slowly accruing over there, and it's really wonderful. And here is the next installment. We discuss a few more of his short essays from his book, Consolations. When I'm speaking with David, I feel like I'm speaking with my alter ego in some ways. He is so different from me, but there's so many places where David White. David, thanks for joining me again. It's a pleasure. So we have many more things to talk about, taking the roadmap you have set out in your

the roadmap you have set out in your wonderful book, Constellations, the audio of which is slowly making its way into the Waking Up app. And so we have to remind people, this is your book of essentially prose poems or short essays focused on specific words. And we'll do a few more of those words today. but you also sent a poem through do you want to read that and this is this is a piece I wrote in a deep kind of reverie last week I'm I'm building on an original book of poems called pilgrim many of the many of those poems took the image of a journey to a place that we set for ourselves and especially it took the form of a journey to a place that we set for ourselves. And especially it took the form of going to Santiago de Compostela,

which is such a fashionable pilgrimage right now and still a heartfelt and sincere one across northern Spain. So this is called For the Road to Santiago. We all have that experience of the wonderful experience actually of packing for a new trip. But there's something about going to a place of ultimate meaning for us, which is represented by Santiago, where I feel we already have what we need so this this was written out of that experience very short poem for the road to santiago don't make new declarations about what to bring and what to leave behind for the road to santiago don't make new declarations about what to bring

and what to leave behind bring what you have bring. Bring what you have. You were always going that way anyway. You were always going there all along. I like that a lot. So the distinction between being a tourist and a pilgrim is always fascinating. You know, on the surface, if you're moving your body from one place to another, you go into some foreign country because you want to go, or even some sacred place because you want to go, this distinction is really just in the mind of the traveler, but it's a pretty profound one. but it's a pretty profound one. Exactly. And there were always, you know, in the chronicles of pilgrims, there are always those who were just out for a holiday and a laugh, you know, and just to get away to, especially in feudal times where your life was so hedged in, you know, by your responsibilities to those above you. So going off on pilgrimage was an enormous part of medieval life in England,

you know, and all across the continent. But we're usually both, you know, we're a pilgrim who gets caught up in the delights of tourism along the way. And, you know, we're creatures of remembering and forgetting. And you could say that the tourism is a form of temporary forgetting. It begins in delight, a bit like opening the internet in the morning. It begins in delight. That's short-lived. I am a creature of forgetting because i've forgotten that it ever began in delight at this point yes well i mean part of the uh part of the dynamic of the internet is human beings are so desperate for news yeah for a voice from the other side that's somehow going to change their present and that setting off into the internet

on the morning is the same call that every human being feels towards all the great pilgrimage sites that have lived in our different human cultures, whether it's Mecca or Kyoto or Varanasi, or if you're an Elvis fan, it's Graceland. Something happened there that was extraordinary that you are going to touch and you are going to actually incarnate it in your own life. So it's this very ancient and everyday dynamic in human life that over there is just slightly more important than here where I'm standing. And I'm going to make a journey out of here to there. And something extraordinary is going to happen along the way. And almost always something more extraordinary than I'm prepared for. I always say that no one really survives a real

conversation with something other than themselves, and no one survives a real pilgrimage, if you're sincere. The person who arrives is never the person who began in the first place. Yeah, that might be the crucial distinction. I think when you are on pilgrimage, the goal to be changed by the trip is always explicit, right? It's not just that you're interested or you just want to, you've heard some places great. It's an inner process you're focused on. There's a lovely little piece in the Irish tradition written by an Irish monastic. You can imagine a pilgrimage from Ireland to Rome

in the 6th or 7th or 8th century was quite perilous, yeah, and quite extraordinary. But it's just a few lines, but he says, To go to Rome, great the journey, little the gain. If you do not take him with you, you will not find him there. To go to Rome, great the journey, little the gain. If you do not take him with you, you will not find him there. Of course, that's the image of Christ in the Christian tradition. But whatever the name you have for the great calling in your life, if you don't stay within the gravitational well and invitational pull of that calling,

you will end up as a mere tourist. But I think there's a lot of self-forgiveness necessary in every pilgrimage just as there is in every life of of forgiving yourself for all for all of your uh of your uh parallel peregrinations you could say all the hours you wasted you know which in the end you find are are all the great stories So you didn't waste a minute along the way when you finally arrived there. That's a point that I think we'll return to in discussing some of these words. But I actually have a question about the poem. This line, don't make new declarations about what to bring and what to leave behind. What were you thinking

in terms of new declarations? This has to do with the essential way that we hold the conversation of life. And on any journey, the way we hold that exchange between those we meet along the way and the landscapes we meet along the way and the landscapes we meet along the way and the events we meet along the way both joyous and traumatic so there's a way no matter your outward circumstances that you hold the conversation of your existence and you know in that essay destiny i'm looking at the way that uh this word which seems fated actually can be an understanding of the depth by which we hold that conversation you know so you i i always think that every human being lives out their destiny, no matter what they do, but you can live out your destiny through distance and exile and through never consummating your desires.

Yeah. Or you can live it out at a deeper level and your life is, is, is completely transformed because of the depth of attention and intentionality that you bring to the conversation. It's still your essential nature. It's just that you are inhabiting it in a fuller way. I mean, that's exactly what your app is all about, you know, is inviting people into these deepest states, conversational states, I would say, while not leaving the essential foundations of the way you're made.

Well, let's listen to destiny and discuss. Destiny. Destiny always has a possessor, as in my destiny or your destiny or her destiny. It gives a sense of something we cannot avoid or something waiting for us. It is a word of story, book, or mythic dimension. Destiny is hardly used in everyday conversation. It is a word that invites belief or disbelief.

We reject the ordering of events by some fated, unseen force, or we agree that there seems to be a greater hand than our own working at the edges of even the most average life. But speaking of destiny not only grants us a sense of our own possibilities, but gives us an intimation of our flaws, we sense, along with Shakespeare, that what is unresolved or unspoken in a human character might overwhelm the better parts of ourselves. When we choose between these two poles of mythic triumph or fated failure, we may miss the everyday conversational essence of destiny. Our future influenced by the very way we hold the conversation of life itself, never mind any actions we might take or neglect to take to people simply by looking at the future in radically different ways have Completely different futures from one another awaiting them no matter their immediate course of action Even the same course of action

Coming from a different way of shaping the conversation, will result in a different outcome. We are shaped by our shaping of the world, and are shaped again in turn. The way we face the world alters the face that we see in the world. alters the face that we see in the world. The way we face the world alters the face that we see in that world. Strangely, every person always lives out their destiny, no matter what they do, according to the way they shape the conversation.

But that destiny may be lived out on the level of consummation or of complete frustration, through experiencing a homecoming or a distant sense of constant exile, or more likely, some gradation along the spectrum that lies between. It is still our destiny, our life, but the sense of satisfaction involved and the possibility of fulfilling its promise may depend more upon a brave participation, a willingness to hazard ourselves in a very difficult world, to hazard ourselves in a very difficult world, a certain form of wild generosity with our gifts, a familiarity with our own depth, our own discovered surprising breadth, and always a long-practiced and robust vulnerability, equal to what any future may offer. equal to what any future may offer.

Our destiny is fated not only by great powers beyond our beckoning horizon, but by the very way we shape and hold the everyday conversations of a familiar life. Our destiny is fated not only by great powers beyond our beckoning horizon, but by the very way we shape and hold the everyday conversations of a familiar life. life. The idea of destiny, as you point out, is first, it's a term we don't use very often, and nor do we use fate very often. These are kind of unfashionable ideas, although in another mode, I think people believe or want to believe that the things in their lives happen for a reason, right? That there's not a lot of accident. But it is interesting to consider this question of

whether things in our lives could have been otherwise. I mean, we live with this sense of the possible. We're given a choice between various options in every moment, really, and it always seems coherent to ask, well, what would life be like had I taken a different path? But it's at least possible that what actually happens is the only thing that could have happened. In any case, the counterfactual, the notion of possibility is simply a thought that's occurring to us as we travel down whatever path we've actually taken. How do you think about this in terms of your own life? I do feel it is possible to miss a tide in your life. it is possible to miss a tide in your life. And there are great lines by the great German,

Port Rilke, you know, where he's looking out at the garden in the autumn as things are dying away. And he says, no more things will happen. And even the thing, and it's about having missed a tide in his life. And he says, no more things will happen. And even the things that do happen will cheat you. Even you, my God, and you are the one who draws him daily deeper into your depths. The sense, I do remember, for instance, coming to the end of years of hard work

towards a particular goal, which was a degree in marine zoology, which was no easy feat for me. I was always an artist. I was always more artistically inclined, more literately inclined. But when I was 14 or 15, I saw this extraordinary figure, Jacques Cousteau, sailing across our little television set. And so I conceived a notion to follow the life of the dolphin aboard the good ship Calypso. And so I put myself into the salt mines of biology, chemistry, and physics. But as I was coming towards my final examinations, it was a time of a terrible bust in the life sciences. There were no jobs, there were no jobs anywhere. And, uh, and I decided instead of facing up to extreme heartbreak

and disappointment in not getting any jobs, I wouldn't apply for any at all so this is turning away in a way from from your original joy you know the original place you've set yourself you're turning away from Santiago because the disappointment you intuit you know is just too strong and uh but I went to see uh I went to see my girlfriend at that time. I lived on the Northern side of Snowdonia and she lived on the Southern side. We didn't see each, each other very much. And she lived in a remote Valley on a farm at the top of a wonderful place called Coom Pennant.

And, uh, it's famous for its witchcraft actually. And Alistair Crowley used to call up the devil in a tower at the bottom. And I'd hitchhike around, be dropped off. I would whistle as I went past this ruined tower where all of this necromancer used to take place and walk up to the farm. Well, I arrived this time. I'd just done all my examinations. I'd made this very serious young man's vow not to apply for any jobs because I didn't want to be

existentially disappointed, you know, and I didn't want to be sifting plankton in a station in, in the outer Hebrides either. I wanted that original blue water image. Well, I got to the farm and it was a communal, it was a communal farm. So lots of people lived there. I knocked on the door and I could tell there was no one in just from the echo. But I was miles from anywhere. There was a storm coming in off the Irish Sea behind me and halfway up the mountain there. So I let myself in, as you do when you're a student. And I was like Goldilocks in the House of the Three Bears.

There was no one there, and I said, well, I'll get a fire going for them. When they come back, it was quite cold, you know, so I got a fire going, and then I said, well, I'll make a cup of tea, and if they turn up, they'll have a cup of tea already made, you know, so I made a tea. I can tell you, David, that in the film version of this,

you are promptly cannibalized by witches. Well, I tell you, something even more extraordinary happened because I fell asleep in the chair, and literally at midnight there was a knock on the door. And I said, wait a minute, if someone's knocking on the door, it means they don't live here either. And I tell you, this farm is remote. It's halfway up the mountainside with the wind blowing and the rain blowing.

And I opened the door, and there is this slightly disheveled figure having walked up the same track that i walked up and uh and he's looking for someone else who lives in the house who also isn't there and i said well i don't live here but come in sit by the files have a cup of tea you know and uh and we sat down and uh and as you do with a complete stranger i said uh i started asking him what he did in his life yeah he had this wonderful leather bag that was filled with papers i noticed because he opened it and put it down at the side you know and it didn't quite fit with his attire. He looked like this wonderful pilgrim figure, but here were all of these papers. I said, what's your, what's your work, by the way? He said, oh, I, I walk around doing audits of wild, of wild woods in, uh, in England and Wales. Yeah. And I audit, you know, the carrying capacity of these old woodlands and trees. And I basically

get the opportunity of spending a lot of time in these wild places, counting everything and then putting it together as to how healthy the system is. And I looked at him with my mouth open because it was a representation in a way of what I wanted in my life. And I, I said, how did you get work like that? And of course I was asking myself, why have you given up on your own dream? Yeah. Although I wouldn't have consciously known I was asking myself that, but that's what I was doing. Why have you got off the road to your Santiago? And he said, do you really want to know? I said, yes. He said, I was a drug addict in North London, and I wanted to kill myself. And I looked at him. I said, really? He said, that's where I started.

I was in a flat with other drug addicts. We all mistrusted and hated each other. We were all stealing from another. The addiction was the greatest thing of all. One rainy day when I was in there by myself, I tried to throw myself out of the window. But it was an old-fashioned sash window, which I had to lift up. And I was so weak at the time that I got halfway out with my head in this flower box that was in ruins outside, and the sash window came down on the back of my shoulders, you know? And I was so weak, I couldn't get out of there. I was staring into this flower box, but there was a little drip from the roof above falling into one corner of the flower box and this little stream going through this tiny landscape and of course I had nowhere to go no friends I started working my hands in this ground you know and re remolding it all and I

must have been there 45 minutes or an hour before one of my flatmates came in and helped me get out. But in that time, as my hands were working in that ground, I knew what I was supposed to do. And the hardest thing I ever did in the years that followed was walk past my dealer, literally outside the block of flats where we lived, and knock on a friend's door and ask him to take me in. I got taken in. I started doing landscaping just in a

physical way, laboring. I went to night school. Then I got a degree, and then I got a master's. Now you see me here. So I do believe, you know, that he could have been wedged in that window and not come to ground. Yeah. And he would have lived out his destiny from the distance of longing through the misery of his addiction to things that represented where he wanted to go on in a temporary basis through drug experiences you know which can be remarkable in themselves you know but sustaining them is another discipline but also i do believe that i could have been sat in front of that fire

and not asked him that question and my my life, I would have still lived the same life on the way to Santiago, but I would have lived it out through distance and longing and maybe a parallel kind of admiration through reading, but perhaps not through consummation yeah so it's right it's uh i mean that i suppose that's what you speak about sam when you talk about volition as opposed to willpower that there's there's a way of coming into your body coming into your voice coming into your speech in which you have a completely different future than if you didn't do that. It just strikes me as fundamentally mysterious.

And if you pay attention, the mystery never recedes. And again, we're always confronted with simply what happens, right? The thought that does occur to you, the memory that does arise, the intention that actually becomes effective, that leads to action. It's like we're driving a car, but we're not looking through the windshield at the future. We're looking in the rearview mirror at what's already past. And in some ways, we have more control over the past than the future. At least we can change what the past means to us in a way that's decisive. And the future is, we really don't know what's going to happen next. In this conversation, we have a plan, we have a roadmap.

I know the words we want to talk about, but thus far we've talked about very little that has been planned. And so it's all just unfolding. But when you look at your life, it seems like... Actually, I think you made this point in one of your essays in Consolations, I believe. It could have been a poem, but isn't there an image of you standing at the back of a boat looking at the wake rather than looking forward? Yes. Yeah, it's like we're always in the presence of the wake we're leaving in the world. But it's not to say that it's entirely passive.

You have a line in this essay, Destiny, that we are shaped by our shaping of the world. In acting on your environment, you are now creating an environment that is acting back on you, and sometimes in incredibly powerful ways that determine everything. Yeah, we have all of these inherited qualities, but we can bring them together in a way which is a kind of catalytic to new possibilities. The only poem that I ever wrote under commission was one commissioned by the Boeing company for the triple seven airplane. I've tried worked with their top leadership and, uh, they just launched the plane and

they'd won a, they'd won a, an aerospace trophy, the Collier trophy, and they wanted a poem at the celebratory dinner. Well, I said to the executive who'd been sent to request it, I said, poets don't do very well under these circumstances, I said, but I'll have a go at it. And, you know, I suddenly had this really powerful physical sense of all of the time I'd spent on airplanes in my life of nonstop traveling. And the remarkable and biblical scenes you often see out of the window are looking down over the Mississippi Delta, shining like a national guitar, as Paul Simon said, all of these remarkable scenes.

And yet it's equally remarkable how often people have the shutters down and they're watching something really unremarkable on that little screen in front of them. You've hit upon one of my pet peeves here. The fact, admittedly, it's been a long time since I've been on an airplane. We're still under the shadow of COVID here.

But the idea that people would prefer to spend five or ten hours in a dark tube watching their screens when, certainly under conditions of daylight, there is a better view of Earth than they have ever seen in any other circumstance unfolding outside that window. It's, yeah, I find that very frustrating. Exactly. So I've often thought that that dynamic is actually because people can't really understand the invisible forces that are holding them in place. So part of the dynamic, it's not the whole dynamic, but part of the dynamic is I'm actually not here. I'm not traveling at 500 miles per hour, 36,000 feet above the ground with no visible means of support. coming into land through layers of humidity and temperature, you'll often see this solid white line suddenly form around the wing. And when you look at that solid white line,

you realize that the forces that are holding you in place are actually as solid as concrete. But they're actually made up of a conversation between the shape of the wing and the velocity of the air around the wing itself. If you only have the wing, you'll just travel like a missile and hit your... Sorry, if you only have velocity, you'll just hit your destination like a target. If you only have the wing, you'll stall without the velocity. But you put the two together, and you can travel thousands of miles. Now, the interesting thing is that shape has been there since the beginning of time as a potential for human beings.

The shape of that wing, I forget the technical term for it, but all aerospace engineers know it. And airfoil, think yes and uh but it was only 120 years ago that those two qualities were brought together so this is the piece i wrote and it's about it's about holding the conversation at a deeper level so you can travel further. Travel to places you never imagined. If you'd like to continue listening to this conversation, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org.

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