Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Susan Cain on: Bittersweet, the Happiness of the Melancholy, and How Sorrow Creates the Union Between Souls EP 121

Starting point is 00:00:00 coming up next on the Passion Struck Podcast. If the idea is to transform pain into beauty, which is actually what I kind of came away with from my years of experiencing, the state of bitter sweetness, that basically everybody's going to experience pain in their lives. You have a crossroads when you experience that pain. You could fail to acknowledge it, and then what ends up happening is you end up taking it out on yourself, maybe through addiction or through or others self-defeating behaviors, or you're taking it out on other people through abuse or passive aggression or whatever it is, or you can kind of like take the pain in

Starting point is 00:00:37 acknowledge it and try to turn it into something else, which is what I think creativity is really doing. Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.

Starting point is 00:01:04 If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guest-ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 121 of PassionStruck, one of the top health and wellness podcasts in the world. Thank you to all of you who come back weekly to listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. And if you're new to the show, we have inspiring interviews every Tuesday, and I do a solo episode every Friday,

Starting point is 00:01:49 we call momentum Fridays. And if you missed my solo episode last week, episode 120, please check it out. It was on the topic of how do we create the success we desire. And speaking of guests, I wanted to tell you about some of the amazing ones like today's we have coming up on the podcast. These include New York Times bestselling author Brechen Rubin, Pasternot, Nicole Stott, two of my favorite podcast hosts, Happy Heller

Starting point is 00:02:16 and Jordan Harbinger, along with Dr. Vago, who is one of the foremost experts in the world on mindfulness. And Dr. David Yaden, whom we will discuss in today's episode, who is one of the foremost experts in the world on mindfulness, and Dr. David Yaden, whom we will discuss in today's episode, who is one of the up-and-coming stars in the world of psychology, and especially his research on self-transcendence. And lastly, May 25th, we will be launching Admiral James Stavridis' new book to risk it all.

Starting point is 00:02:42 Now, let me tell you a little bit about today's guests. I was absolutely blown away when Penguin, Random House, and our guest today, Susan Cain, came to me to use the Passion Strap podcast to launch Susan's new book, Better Sweet, which releases today. Susan Cain is absolutely one of my favorite authors and her book, Quiet,

Starting point is 00:03:05 Completely Changed the Way that I viewed myself in my own strengths. She is the author of the Quiet Journal, Quiet Power, the secret strengths of introverts, and the book I mentioned before, Quiet. The power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking, which spent over eight years on the New York Times best sellers less and has been translated into over 40 languages. Susan's TED Talk has been viewed by over 40 million people and was named by Bill Gates as one of his favorite talks of all time.

Starting point is 00:03:40 Linked in named her the top sex influencer in the entire world just behind Richard Granson and Melinda Gates. Susan Partners with Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant, and Dan Pink to curate the next big idea book club. They donate all the proceeds that come from that to children's literacy programs. Her new masterpiece, Better Sweet, how sorrow and longing Makas Hole is available now, and I will put a link to it in the show notes and also let you know that you can purchase it at SusanCane.net. Today we discuss what it means to be Better Sweet

Starting point is 00:04:18 and how this idea originated. The powers of being Better Sweet and why our culture today is so blind to its value. We'll go into depth on Susan's unique writing process and why it takes her years to actually write a book. We go deep into why the book touches on art, religion, as well as myth and the exploration of being effortlessly perfect. We discuss why creativity is a product of both sorrow and longing and we have a great intimate moment where she discusses her relationship with our mother. We go into the influence of Dr. David Yaden and Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman as well as Dr. Dacker-Keltoner to her book. We also discuss how we can transcend our culture of

Starting point is 00:05:04 We also discuss how we can transcend our culture of enforce positivity in the workplace and beyond. So much amazing content in today's episode. Thank you for choosing the Passion Start podcast and choosing me to be your hosting guide on creating an intentional life. Now let the journey begin. I am truly honored and excited to be here today. Let the journey begin. I am truly honored and excited to invite Susan Cain on the Passion Start podcast. Susan, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.

Starting point is 00:05:39 Well, I thought the best place to start was with quiet and I'll put up a copy of the book. You urged our society to cultivate space for undervalued introverts, those highly sensitive people, and I'm one of them myself, and you revealed this untapped power hidden in plain sight. Now you employ that same mix of research, storytelling, and memoir to explore the riches that a different outlook has to offer. Can you explain what it means to be better sweet? Sure. So, bitter sweetness is about the recognition that life by definition is a mix of joy and sorrow and light and dark and bitter and sweet. And also it's a kind of deep awareness of the impermanence of things, but it's also a kind of curiously piercing joy at the beauty of everything. And I came to this idea and this construct because my whole life, I have had a very deep

Starting point is 00:06:49 and intense reaction to minor key, supposedly sad music. I had this moment back when I was a law student where I was in my dorm and some friends were coming to pick me up in the dorm on the way to class. And I was blasting some of my bittersweet music. It was probably Leonard Cohn because I love him. And my friends came to the dorm and they were like, why are you listening to this funeral music? And at the time I just laughed, it was a kind of funny remark and went off to class. But I actually thought about that moment and that joke about funeral music. I thought about that for the next 25 years.

Starting point is 00:07:32 Like trying to figure out what the heck was going on because this music that is supposedly so sad elicits in me and I found out later in many, many other people, not really sadness at all, but rather a sense of uplift, a kind of sense of communion, a sense of gratitude to the musician for being able to transform pain into beauty. And I know this is a state that you're interested in, a sense of transcendence. I wanted to understand, like this book and this idea of bitter sweetness really began with a quest to understand what the heck was going on.

Starting point is 00:08:12 Like how could it be that these states of happiness and sadness could coexist and that when they do somehow there's transcendence and communion on the other side of it. I went off on this quest for years talking, well exploring art and literature and wisdom traditions from all over the world talking to psychologists and movie directors and neuroscientists and And really came to some unexpected places Well, that was one thing that I really admire in all your books that you've written as the amount of research that you put into it.

Starting point is 00:08:51 So can you explain for the audience because you're not an author who pumps out two books a year. It takes you a long time to write these. And I find as I read them, they're a very well research and laid out. Can you describe your writing style, the techniques that you employ to create the books that you have? Yeah, absolutely. I have all kinds of ideas of things that I might write about, but I only really settle on the ones that are completely absorbing to me. And also ones that I feel haven't really been adequately addressed

Starting point is 00:09:25 any place else. And then what I do is I walk around the world for years, looking at the world, like every interaction that I have, everything I read, looking at it all through the lens of whatever question it is that I'm trying to answer. And I take notes on everything. And so by the time I'm done, I have hundreds and hundreds, hundreds of pages of notes that I organize into topics, which more or less become the chapters, although that's a whole thing in and of itself. So the hardest part of the, the walking around the world part collecting all these ideas is

Starting point is 00:10:08 total joy. The hardest part is now you've got this big great mess of 800 pages and what the heck do you do with it? So trying to put all of that into some kind of coherent narrative, that's what takes me so long. Because I really do feel like the book can't just be my diary entry of me trying to answer this question. It has to be laid out in a way that makes sense to a reader and that's going to be interesting and draw them in. And so that's really where we're so much of the work that's done. So I, you know, I've tons of friends who are writers who do put out a new book every two

Starting point is 00:10:45 years and some of them are amazing and I have no idea how they do it because to me there's no way this process could take place any more quickly. Okay. So what you were just talking about reminds me of the lyrics to a favorite song of mine. I'm not sure if you've ever heard the whole of the moon by the water boys. But in it, he talks about how he wondered around the world and search for himself and the other person just sat in their room. And he saw the crescent, but the other person saw the whole of the moon. So kind of an interesting diversion. You might want to check that song out.

Starting point is 00:11:23 Oh, that's really interesting. I have not heard that one. Well, in speaking of songs, I happen to get a chance to look at the song list that you have that readers could download themselves. And I have to say it's a great one. But one of the... And it's so... My publishers told me that at first I should limit it to 40 songs. It was so difficult to pick only 40, but I'm going to keep adding to it over the years. Well, one of the songs on there that really caught my eye is when I went to

Starting point is 00:11:56 Off to the Naval Academy, my parents love Kat Stevens and my dad kind of dedicated father and son to that. And I saw it was on your playing playlist. Why does that song have meaning for you? Gosh, do you know the very act of you naming that song gives me goose bumps? And especially when you talk about your father, you said he dedicated it to you

Starting point is 00:12:18 as he went to the Naval Academy or like what was the story? Well, he is himself of that earned. He was a Marine who fought in Korea and beginning stages of Vietnam. He's still very much alive. Thank God. But when I went off, he kind of just sent me that CD one time with that letter on it saying, will you please just listen to this song? Oh my gosh, wow. I don't have a personal story to tell about this song. Only that, that the thing that the song expresses of, it's really expressing the fact of time passing,

Starting point is 00:13:01 of everything being so transient and of relationships not being fully made sometimes because we think that we have all the time in the world and then we don't. That idea to me is just so inherently poignant. So it's just a song that I've loved since I was very very young. Was your, do you think your father was giving you that song as a way of saying that he didn't feel he had been as present as he would have wanted to be, or was it something else? I think in some ways he did because he was in sales and would travel probably 200 nights throughout the year.

Starting point is 00:13:47 And so when I was younger, he was there more, but as I got older, and his position's got more senior, he tended to travel more and more. But I also thank for him, he's not one who really likes to talk about his experience in the military. He had a really difficult time, especially when he was in Cambodia and Laos.

Starting point is 00:14:09 So, I think it was also an underpinning for my military service, it was going to be like. Wow. But just the idea that he would have done that for you, I find just incredibly loving and poignant. The idea that he handed you that song at that particular moment, which was a moment of your leave-taking. And, you know, probably what he was telling you, what it meant to him, that you were growing up and kind of flying away to have experiences of your own. It's very moving. Yes, well, thank you for that. I guess being the oldest, I was the first to fully the coop, and I couldn't have gone any farther away than what I did.

Starting point is 00:14:57 Well, let's kind of use that as a backdrop. This whole topic of bitter sweetness and melancholy doesn't get much press or attention in our society. Why do you think that is? And why do you think we need to concentrate more on this whole idea of bitter sweetness? Oh my gosh. I mean, our society is so afraid of it and Disgusted by it really like sometimes I yeah, we like to say it's all fear. It's not only fear. It's also discussed and I think that Which which I'll come around to it is really a grave mistake because these These states of being really are some of the deepest, most reliable pathways that we have to creativity and love and transcendence. So we're really missing out by organizing our, the emotions of our society, the way that we do. But I do think there's a kind of disgust and it's rooted in our history, we really do have a history that developed, especially during the 19th century,

Starting point is 00:16:07 of in American culture, of dividing people into winners and losers. You can actually trace the development of the word loser. So we used to speak of loss as merely the act of losing something, lose a friend, you'd lose a necklace, you would lose a job, whatever it was. And there was a kind of idea that misfortune had befallen you, and so you lost something. Then, during the 19th century, when everything became so focused on kind of the rise of business, and who is a success, and who is a failure at business, there became this idea that if you had somehow lost in your business endeavors, that it was probably because of some failure in the man. That's the way people

Starting point is 00:16:52 would talk about it, like a failure inside you in the man. That was what it caused the loss. And you can trace this historically. So by the time we get to the depression in 1929 and the 1930s, there are people who were losing everything because of forces that had very little to do with themselves, but the newspaper headlines would say things like, loser commits suicide. You kind of can't believe it. And this word loser through the 20th century into the 21st has become used more and more. Okay, so what does this have to do with sorrow and melancholy? Well, if you're trying to be a winner, the first thing you want to do in a culture like ours that's

Starting point is 00:17:33 so focused on self-presentation is you want to appear like a winner. And how do you appear like a winner? You have the emotional attributes of or what you think are the emotional attributes of a winner. So you're smiling, you're just like striding confidently through the world, nothing's bothering you. And this was explicitly taught. So in the early 20th centuries, at 20th century boy scouts were taught that they should have a cheerful face

Starting point is 00:17:59 no matter what was going on. They should be whistling through it because it would make themselves feel better and everyone around them. And of course, there's some truth to all of this. I want to hasten to add, like I'm not in any way. I'm certainly not an advocate for depression, which you could describe as an emotional black hole, which I wish would never befall anyone. So I'm not advocating for that. I love states of joy and happiness and uplift. So my point is not against those states,

Starting point is 00:18:29 but the point is that we're not getting anywhere by denying what it means to be human, which is to have a balance of joy and sorrow always, and that we're not really turning out winners, the way we think that we are, by telling everybody that they have to present always a happy smiling countenance. And I could give you an example of how that's playing out in college campuses, if you like. We'll be right back to the Passion Struct podcast.

Starting point is 00:18:59 I would like to emphasize that this podcast is part of my hope and desire to bring zero cost information to the general public regarding how do you create an intentional life. And in keeping with that theme, I would like to thank today's sponsors of this episode. Producing the PassionStruck podcast requires a ton of content creation, ranging from writing my solo episodes to creating interview show notes. The networking that I do with guests and our daily social media posts. And so I'm constantly looking for ways to up my game and efficiency. That is why I absolutely love Grammarly and use it continuously throughout the day every day. It is a true life saver for me, because not only does Grammarly help me

Starting point is 00:19:46 with my spelling and grammatical checking, but it is also a writing tool that helps me ensure my content is professionally written. They even have unique capabilities for tone adjustments, clarity suggestions, and full sentence rewrites. Get through your own emails and your work quicker by keeping it concise, confident, and effective with Grammarly. And they are offering PassionStruck listeners a special discount. Go to Grammarly.com slash PassionStruck to sign up for a free account.

Starting point is 00:20:20 And when you're ready to upgrade to Grammarly Premium, you can get 20% off for being my listener. That's 20% off at graMMall.com slash passion struck. Today's podcast is brought to you by Raycon. I've been wearing my Raycons continuously for over the past month, and I absolutely love it when I have them in because my podcast and music have never sounded so good. I have used other earbuds,

Starting point is 00:20:50 and the thing I didn't like about them is that they would always fall out of my ears. And with Raycons, I never have to worry about that happening. And I really also like their awareness mode. For when you need to listen to your surroundings, you can take Raycons anywhere. And they are priced just right at about half of the other premium brands. It is no surprise that they have over 48,000 five star reviews.

Starting point is 00:21:15 And right now, passion struck listeners can get 15% off their Raycon order at buyraycon.com slash passion struck. That's B-U-Y-R-A-Y-C-O-N dot com slash passion struck to save 15% off ray cons by raycon dot com slash passion struck. Please consider those who support our shows and make it free and available to everyone. And I know all those lengths can be difficult to remember, so we put them in one convenience spot at passionstruck.com slash deals. Now, back to my interview with Susan Kane. When I was a college, I went to Princeton, which is relevant for the story, because Princeton, especially back then, I think it probably is still, the story because Princeton, especially back then, I think it probably is still, had a culture where people were very shiny. I don't mean everybody, but like

Starting point is 00:22:12 Dominic campus culture was like very shiny and adapt, let's say. And everybody presented as if wherever they were supposed to be in life, they had already arrived, everything was good. And I started to wonder, like, is this really what is happening? Is this really what everybody truly felt back then? And it was a time of my own life where I was going through various struggles. And it always felt to me like I was the only one. I couldn't go back into time to find out what people had really been thinking, but I decided to visit my alma mater as an adult. And I went a few years ago. And this time I went with my journalist notebook. And I sat down and I talked to students.

Starting point is 00:22:58 And you know, when you show up as a writer, people will tell you stuff. You know, they'll have pretty open-canted conversations. And what I learned about two minutes, literally like two minutes into these conversations, students started telling me about this phenomenon that they call effortless perfection, which is apparently a catchphrase at many of the country's universities. And it basically describes this social pressure that students feel to be perfect, to be attractive, beautiful, thin, fit, socially skilled, athletic, great grades, like there's supposed to be everything.

Starting point is 00:23:40 And then on top of that, it's also supposed to appear to come effortlessly. And this is a really great pressure. And it explains why in recent years there's been a kind of rash of media reports of college students who were dying by suicide only days after they had been posting on Instagram, you know, these smiling shiny photographs of themselves surrounded by all their friends. You know, so like these people who appeared to have everything going, but so much is a facade that we're presenting to the world. And I think that if we

Starting point is 00:24:22 could learn instead, well, let me back up the message that we are sending our kids and our adults out, the message is that when things are going well, that's the main story. And when you experience sorrow or longing, that's a detour from the main road. If we could instead understand that it's all the main road, then what that would do is normalize our experiences. When difficult things would come to us, we would be able to experience them very differently. And also look at other people's difficulties in a more open way because we wouldn't find them so scary or so distasteful.

Starting point is 00:24:59 Well, I'm glad you brought that up. My daughter is the type that the second she entered high school, she had this dream of wanting to go to an Ivy League. I think by the time she graduates, she's going to have close to 28 AP classes under her belt. 28, my gosh. Yes, we keep telling her it's way too much and joy the high school experience,

Starting point is 00:25:25 but it's just her mentality. And she on her own has friends at Yale in Princeton and went up to visit them both. And it's interesting the way you laid that out because she came back and said, I don't wanna go to either one of those schools. They all act like they're perfect. I just didn't feel like I fit in.

Starting point is 00:25:47 Which to me for someone who has always had that aspiration, it was really great to see that they recognized that it wasn't the right place for them. But I mean, it is hard to want to give up on something like Princeton, which is, you know, the best school undergrad in the country. But I do think that there is this enormous pressure that people are putting on themselves. And when you're first book, you talked about going from a culture of character to one of personality, I think personally. And I'd like to get your feedback on this. We've now entered

Starting point is 00:26:26 a culture of celebrity. This whole personality thing that I grew up in, you grew up with. Now seems like it's morphing because of social media and other social norms. Do you see that trend? Yeah, I would say I see that. And it's interesting because when Quiet came out 10 years ago, I thought then of the rise of the internet as being something that would really temper the culture of personality, because it was suddenly a way to connect with lots and lots of people and to practice self-expression without, I mean, to leave your house. Now that things are more video based

Starting point is 00:27:05 and more influencer based and more about the numbers of followers and all these things, I do think we're morphing into what you just described. And I do think it's becoming harder and harder other than through like very carefully curated storytelling. It's becoming harder and harder for people very carefully curated storytelling. It's becoming harder and harder for people to express truly their sorrows, their longings, their bitter sweetness.

Starting point is 00:27:33 Things are more and more about self-presentation. Well, I kind of agree more to that point, which is one of the major reasons you're probably doing the quiet revolution and I'm doing passion struck is to try to get people out of that vortex and to help them see that if they live their life intentionally if they. If they really go inside their own mind to who they truly are and be that person, they're gonna be so much happier. Being their authentic self. Well, since we were talking about my daughter, I wanted to ask being a parent yourself a question along these lines.

Starting point is 00:28:19 And that is, on a personal level, I have found myself greatly expanded through this sorrow that I have witnessed and felt as I observed deaths and illnesses of people close to me in my life. What is your perspective on raising children to value sorrow, longing, compassion, and disappointment. My perspective is about normalizing it for them

Starting point is 00:28:50 and teaching them from an early age, not in a heavy way, but just in a matter of fact way, that this is part of life. And I feel like one of the things that we need to do as parents is while they're still under our loving roofs, that's actually the best time to be exposing them gently to the things that the world has in store so that they can understand when those things happen. part of it, but this is part of the deal. Joy is also part of the deal and to help them work through it. So I'll give you like a really a small example of this. And I wrote about this in the book actually. We took a family holiday when the kids were pretty little. We rented a house in the countryside and it was right next to like the house had next to it this

Starting point is 00:29:46 field that was inhabited by two donkeys and the boys made friends with the donkeys and that was like the highlight of their trip, you know, they would run to the fence every day and be feeding apples and tarots and stuff and the donkeys would come running when they saw them and it was all great and the junkies would come running when they saw them. And it was all great. And then about two days before we had to go home, it dawns on the kids that they're not going to see these junkies anymore. It's like the whole human mechanism

Starting point is 00:30:15 of responding to goodbye fell down upon them. And they were like crying themselves to sleep at night. And we tried all different ways of making them feel better. You know, someone else is going to come along and take care of the donkeys. They're going to be okay. Maybe we'll come back again and see them. The only thing that really made a difference for them was when we said this saying goodbye the way we're doing, this is part of life, and it is painful. And it's happened to you, excuse me, it's happened to you before, it's going to happen again, but you'll also have great memories later on. And everybody feels this, this pain that you're

Starting point is 00:30:59 feeling is something everybody feels. And that was what got them to stop crying because what that's doing is it's normalizing their experience. So the only thing that really made the difference for them was when we told them that the buy is part of life and that these feelings that they were experiencing were normal. Because what what what children are feeling at a moment like that is like the world has come crashing down. And especially for children who are growing up in relative comfort, they have come to expect

Starting point is 00:31:35 that everything going well is the main deal and that when you're saying goodbye, that's the detour. So I think one of the best things that we can do for our kids is explain to them the totality of life while they still are with us and and still have parental love to help them navigate that. I felt the same thing at the beginning of COVID when they were lockdowns and putting aside all the different policy questions and debates about the best way to handle it. At the beginning, when there was lockdown and the kids couldn't have their sleepovers and

Starting point is 00:32:17 play dates and things like that, I remember talking to friends of mine who are really concerned about the hardship on the children. And my feeling was, you know, there are going to be all kinds of hardships in life. And it's actually not a bad thing for them to be experiencing some of that now, while they're still with us, you know, sort of same idea. When your whole high school existence has been, yeah, altered like, like there's, but I agree with you. I would rather have them face opposition struggles, fears when they're younger, because it

Starting point is 00:32:51 is the great equalizer. It doesn't matter how much money you have where you grew up on the poverty line, we all face those things. So I think the better timing you can do it, I'd much rather have it happen when you're young than have it off at college or even later. And that's when those first things start happening because at least you can be there to help parent them. Yeah, and I do want to say, by the way, I'm not talking about terrible childhood traumas, which I think is a different case, a case all its own. I'm more talking about helping children navigate the inevitable twists and turns of life.

Starting point is 00:33:34 Yeah, I just want to be careful to say it. I'm not validating childhood trauma in any way, quite the opposite. I'm going to switch gears here for a second. I am interviewing Dr. David Yaden here in a couple weeks and he is very prominent in your book, especially chapter three, as is Dr. Scott Berry-Koffman, who I'll put up his book here, as I love to advertise great books. Why was their work so vital to the understanding of

Starting point is 00:34:05 bittersweet and can you talk a little bit about the quiz that's in the book? Sure. So first of all, SBK, as I call him, Scott Barry Kaufman, he's been a close friend for years now. And then I got to know David Yaden through SBK. And I would say all three of us are kind of like intellectual compatriots in some way. We're attracted to very, excuse me, to very similar questions, you know, to what, what it really means to be alive and how to, how to live in the best way possible. And we're all interested in the subject of transcendence. And to me, I don't think I would have been drawn to the question of bittersweetness if it didn't have such a direct connection

Starting point is 00:34:50 to transcendence, which is something I had perceived all those years ago when I heard that music, but didn't quite understand. I've been talking with the two of them through this whole five or seven year journey that I've been on of writing this book. And one thing is they helped me put together a bittersweet quiz, which is in development. We're in the preliminary stages of it now, but I have it in the book.

Starting point is 00:35:15 And it's a quiz that you can take to ascertain what your levels of bittersweetness are or how bittersweet a state of mind that you're in at a given time. And it asks you questions like, do you find comfort or inspiration in a rainy day? Have other people described you as an old soul? Do you react intensely to music or art or nature?

Starting point is 00:35:44 And then what SBK and David Yaden and I did is, we looked at people who had high scores on this bittersweet quiz and tried to figure out what they were like in general. And what we found is that people in a highly bittersweet state of mind also tend to score high in a trait known as absorption which predicts creativity and they score high and high sensitivity which I know is a trait that is very resonant for you

Starting point is 00:36:23 and they also score high in measures relating to awe and wonder and transcendence. So there's something about this state of mind that seems to be deeply connected with transcendence, which you could define as a state in which every day concerns follow-way and you feel connected to the whole in some kind of way. And it's an experience that many people have when they're at a concert, and there's a particularly moving moment at the concert, and you suddenly feel like,

Starting point is 00:36:51 like, well, you're not even thinking about you. You're just like part of something greater and more beautiful and even sacred. So there's something about the bittersweet state that seems to lead to those kinds of states of being. And David Yaden, who does work in spirituality and psychedelics and so on at Johns Hopkins, and who I think of as a kind of intellectual heir to the great William James, the great psychologist. So David Yaden has done work showing that it's actually in the transitional states of life, like moments of divorce, moments of graduation, let's say, even as we're approaching death,

Starting point is 00:37:39 it's in those moments that people seem to report the highest states of meaning and communion and also transcendence. So there's something about being in one of those liminal states where you kind of understand how impermanent life is. You're seeing its fragility. You're seeing that nothing is really solid underneath you. Somehow those moments are connected to these greatest states that humans can experience. Yes, I'm not sure if you've read the book by the Australian Bronny Ware. No. But she was a nurse who was primarily doing hospice care.

Starting point is 00:38:28 And so her book is about her experience of the five traits that she commonly found in the dying and the most common trait that would come up would be that they would have these transcendent moments as they were nearing their death. And the biggest regret that all of them universally had was not spending enough time being their authentic self, which really I think ties into some of the work that both of those gentlemen are doing. Now, I wanted to take the quiz one step further because I took it. And I got a 5.62 on the test

Starting point is 00:39:13 and what does that mean for me? So you had a very high score on the quiz and what it means, and you can tell me if this rings true for you, but it means that you are a person who, or the state of mind in which you were when you took the quiz, let's say, you were very attuned to the kind of diets of life of joy and sorrow moving together. You're probably very attuned to impermanence to the fragility of life. We know that you're highly sensitive because you told me that, but the quiz would have predicted that.

Starting point is 00:39:50 Even if you had never mentioned it, you're probably, you probably easily find yourself in a state of mind where it's easy for you to be creative. And I'm guessing that states of meaning and transcendence are kind of like where you live mentally. And so it's not surprising to me that you also have created a whole movement around passion struck, which as I understand it is kind of seeking the passion and the meaning and the transcendence in everyday life. And none of this is surprising. Like for somebody who had who scored so high in that bittersweet quiz, that's actually exactly what I would predict. And now here you are. Well, I would say all of that is accurate. I think the backdrop was I had just read the power of myth right before I started your book. As I was going through that, just amazing novel by Joseph Campbell, I really opened my eyes up to a different way of seeing all kinds of perspectives

Starting point is 00:40:58 from religion to Maslow's work to other things. And I think it's gotten me thinking in a much broader term about our existence and how fragile it is. And really my purpose in life is to try to do my part in ending suffering and helping people experience joy. I've been just doing a lot of experimenting and you do a good job of it in your book

Starting point is 00:41:29 of just storytelling. Because I think the more we can storytelling and try to give examples of myths through the lives of other people, I call them normalizing the everyday heroes that are all among us. That I wish people would gravitate to instead of these celebrities, these amazing people

Starting point is 00:41:50 who are impacting lives that you don't hear about, but in the most meaningful ways. And so that is what I am really about is how can I do my part in normalizing people like that, people like you who are doing amazing work. I'm glad you said that because I also think it's important to say that if the idea is to transform pain into beauty, which is actually what I kind of came away with from my years

Starting point is 00:42:19 of experiencing the state of bitter sweetness, that basically everybody is going to experience pain in their lives. You have a crossroads when you experience that pain. You could fail to acknowledge it, and then what ends up happening is you end up taking it out on yourself, maybe, through addiction, or through, or others self-defeating behaviors, or you're taking it out on other people, through abuse or passive aggression, or whatever it is, or you can kind of like take the pain in, acknowledge it, and try to turn it into something else, which is what I think creativity is really doing.

Starting point is 00:42:52 What I say to people is take whatever pain you can't get rid of and turn it into something creative or turn it into a way to heal other people. But at the same time, I want to be clear that you don't have to do it on any kind of grand scale. Because like some of the stories that I tell in the book of people who have done this and we can tell some of them now if you'd like, they're people who have tended to do it on a grand scale because those stories can really move us. It's enough to paint a painting that no one's gonna see and it's enough to reach out to your best friend

Starting point is 00:43:30 when they need you and be there for them. So it's these little moments of transformation that really make the difference. And part of our culture of celebrity is that we don't know that we think it all has to happen on a grand scale. Well, one of my favorite stories in the book was your dear friend, the violinist, Min Kim. I was hoping that you could talk about her story and how has her life changed by turning pain into creativity. Because chapter three, I mean, I loved every chapter

Starting point is 00:44:01 of your book, but something about chapter three just really captivated me. So I was hoping you could talk about her. Yeah, sure. Okay, so Min, my very dear friend, Min Kim, Min is a world-class violinist. She was a real child prodigy from the time she was very little. It was destined to be one of the world's great musicians. And was on that path, on that path, on that path. And along the way, she was able to acquire

Starting point is 00:44:36 a Stradivarius violin, which, if you're not familiar with that for anyone who's listening, these are great violins that were created centuries ago. They're worth millions and they're also irreplaceable. No one has ever been able to create violins that produce a sound as pure and beautiful as these. So they're highly coveted. And Min was able to acquire one. And the strad of our or she called it her strad, the strad that she had, became

Starting point is 00:45:06 her everything. She felt that it was the instrument that it could express her heart and soul. And it became her lover, her child, her twin, herself. That all may sound kind of fanciful until you hear that she lived in a tiny little apartment because she Used all the money that she had to pay for the upkeep of this violin and its perfection Which apparently that's a a thing like violins require a lot of care and upkeep to get them to be at their best And she just devoted everything to this violin. It was her life and to this violin. It was her life. And then one day, this violin, which she guarded 24-7, it was never out of her sight,

Starting point is 00:45:50 she let go of it for one split second when she was grabbing a bite to eat at a subway station in London. And the violin was stolen. And long story short, she could never get the violin back. And she wrote a book about it, and the book is called Gone, because from the moment that violin was gone, her whole life shattered.

Starting point is 00:46:11 And she went into a deep depression. As you might, if you had lost everything that had given your life meaning, which is what the thing was for her. Yeah, she was. She actually stopped playing for a while if I have the story correct. Oh yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:25 And this happened right on the eve of a big debut that she was supposed to make and a debut that never came to pass because she couldn't play anymore. So she stopped playing. She went into this depression for years. And then, as she started to emerge out of it, she decided that she wanted to write her story. And so she wrote a book called Gone, you know, because the violin was gone. And this is how I came to meet men. It just

Starting point is 00:46:53 so happened fortuitously that we had the same editor. And the editor told me about her book and sent it to me one day. And it just showed up, you know, months before it published, it showed up in my email box as a Microsoft Word document. And I stayed up all night reading this, this manuscript, it's like, it's the most beautiful thing. It's lyrical, like the way music is. And Min and I got to know each other. And the first night that we met, we talked for hours. Well, when we talked, I told her that ever since the day

Starting point is 00:47:30 that I first read her story, I had had this fantasy that the readers of the world would read her book and would unite to get the violin back from the very wealthy person who now owned it through a long story, and it would have cost millions to buy it back. And she said the most extraordinary thing. She said that she didn't think she should have the violin back anymore because she felt that she and the violin had now led various separate lives and the

Starting point is 00:48:03 violin was on its path and she was on her path and she had emerged as a different person through this great loss that she had undergone. And she said, like if she had to do it again, of course she would never have wanted it to happen, but she also said that all the cliches that people talk about, about loss and rebirth, that they're all true, and that she had kind of reborn into a different person who is now engaged in different acts of creativity. Like she wrote the book, and now she's doing all these different musical collaborations,

Starting point is 00:48:39 but that experience for her, like she had really weathered the ultimate loss because that violin was all of her love wrapped into one thing and it was all suddenly gone. But the lesson was that love exists in its own self. And so you can lose one love and then love can be born again in a totally different form. Yes, and is that interview that you did with her while she was playing alongside of you? Is that available for me to share with the audience?

Starting point is 00:49:12 Oh, yeah. Okay. So then what you're referring to is a TED talk that I gave the summer of 2019. I gave a talk about bitter sweetness on the TED stage and I asked Min to accompany me on stage and she played her violin as part of my talk. And that TED talk is actually being released on March 22nd. So by the time this errors, the TED talk will be live. And so you'll be able to hear the talk and you'll be able to hear men play. Well, let's hope this one gets 40 million views as well. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:49:57 Well, I'm going to switch from men to another story that you tell throughout the book. And that is the one with your relationship with your mom. And you touch on this and multiple points starting in chapter four, and then you talk about it in depth in chapter nine. But can you discuss your relationship with your mom? And there was a saying that you had in there that you were your mom's killer. Why did you say that? Because when I read that, I just had goosebumps all over my body. I had the world's most loving and devoted mother throughout my childhood. We were incredibly, incredibly close.

Starting point is 00:50:40 Yeah, and she was incredibly loving and devoted. And she also, because of certain life experiences that she had had, she was also quite vulnerable. And so when I hid adolescence and started to separate in the way that adolescents do, like I was actually a pretty, I was sort of on the straight side by normal American standards, but still separating as adolescents do, starting to disagree with her about certain life ideas. And she took that really, really hard. And life became very difficult for both of us, for all those years of my adolescence and into my college years to, like, life just became very difficult because she took it so hard that she kind of, it felt to me

Starting point is 00:51:31 anyway as an adolescent, it felt that she was turning on me and like that all love had been withdrawn and also that she herself had plunged into a great sadness that I had caused. That's how it felt. Because she was now so sad because I had changed into a different person. And I wanted more than anything in the world to take away her pain, but I was also the one causing it. So it was like this terrible conundrum. And I did then, as I've kind of done all my life, I wrote it all down, everything that was happening. I kept all these diaries and wrote about all my conflicted feelings towards my mother, you know, my love that was also turning into a kind of hate that I didn't understand. All of it

Starting point is 00:52:26 I wrote down about all the different forbidden things that I was doing in my adolescence that she wouldn't have approved of. And went to college and our very difficult relationship continued while I was at college. And then at the end of freshman year, for some reason that I can't remember, I had to stay on campus for an extra few days, but to send my belongings home while I stayed. And my parents came and took my suitcases away while I was going to stay on campus. And just as they were about to say goodbye I still don't know why I did this. Well, I kind of do just as we were about to say goodbye as an afterthought I handed my mother the diaries and on a conscious level it

Starting point is 00:53:20 It never occurred to me that she would read them like I Just thought well people don't read other people's diaries. And of course. Yeah. And I handed her the diaries. And, you know, and I got home a few days later, and she was utterly distraught.

Starting point is 00:53:41 She had clearly read them and was clearly shattered by them. And even then, I still didn't, even when I saw how upset she was, I still wasn't sure she had read them. Like, that's how unconscious the whole thing had been. I remember saying to you, a friend of mine, do you think she could have read my diaries? Like, no, that could have never have happened. But, of course, do you think she could have read my diaries? No, that could have never have happened. But of course she had. And after that, our relationship was never the same. We still said, I love you and still got together in holidays and all of this. But I was left

Starting point is 00:54:16 with a feeling of that relationship that we had had as a child when I was a kid, that that was a kind of garden of Eden in our relationship and that we were now cast out of that garden. And I felt that I had done it. And for all those decades after that, even though my life was great in so many ways, and as I say, my mother and I still had a mother-daughter relationship. Still it was that during all those years, I could not talk about my mother without crying. Like, I couldn't even say my mother grew up in Brooklyn without crying.

Starting point is 00:54:59 And it's really only in the last few years that I've been able, and that we've been able to And it's really only in the last few years that I've been able and that we've been able to get it all back. I partly because of the different transformations, I think, that I've gone through, through exploring these questions of bitter sweetness and sorrow and longing. It's also happened that during the last few years, my mother has Alzheimer's. And I didn't know this about Alzheimer's, but what happens is you're actually still left or at least in some cases you are with certain conversational lanes that you can still travel down even while the rest of your memory has been eroded. And for my mother,

Starting point is 00:55:37 she um, it's like she's returned to the self that I knew when I was a child. She doesn't remember all the years that we had our troubles. She doesn't remember them. She remembers the relationship we had before, the sweet and loving and humorous and devoted self that I knew growing up. That's who she is now. And that's who we are. And yeah. who she is now and that's who we are. How remarkable and ending that is, as my grandfather had, dementia, and it was interesting.

Starting point is 00:56:16 A lot of people he wouldn't respond to at all, but for whatever reason, whenever I was there, he was totally in the moment, talking to me about experiences that he and I had had together when I was growing up far long ago in very vivid terms. And I remember my aunt and uncle observing this because they themselves didn't even have those type of dialogues with him. So that's very special.

Starting point is 00:56:47 And I'm so happy for you that it was able to come full circle. Because she raised you, I mean, I grew up in a very, very Catholic household with a grandmother on my paternal side who went every single day and you were raised if I have it correctly as in the orthodox sense of the Jewish religion. And I have a Jewish girlfriend, so I know exactly what that means and led a company that was previously led by three Hicitif Jews, so everything lead. So come Friday, they would all disappear at about one o'clock in the afternoon, etc. So and couldn't touch anything. So I understand that. And probably just as I was breaking free of Catholicism and had the resentment of my family members, I'm sure as you were exploring new

Starting point is 00:57:42 things that was probably a difficult thing for someone who was so ungrained in that religion. Yeah, and I guess I didn't spell that out when I was telling the story, but yes, that was a huge, huge, huge aspect of it. Yeah. I wanted to talk about a mutual friend of ours. I recently interviewed Gretchen Rubin who you mentioned in the book. What is the happiness of the melancholy that you two talk about in your interview?

Starting point is 00:58:12 She was doing her blog and she asked me some kind of question. This was years and years ago. She asked me a question of what happiness is for me and I found myself saying that there's an aspect of happiness that I wanted to explore. And I called it the happiness of melancholy. And that was actually probably the first time that I wrote down the ideas that became this book now of Bitter Suite. And in fact, if I had my brothers, I probably would have called Bitter Suite the happiness of melancholy.

Starting point is 00:58:40 But my editors and publishers thought that the very word melancholy would turn too many people away, so we didn't do that. But yeah, the happiness of melancholy, well, you know what I'm going to do to tell you what it is. I talked about it on Gretchen's blog post, and then there was somebody who commented, who read about it, and then commented on her own blog in response. And I quoted it in my book, can I read it to you? Because I have expressed it more than anything. And also I have to dig that up so I can put it as a link in the show notes as well.

Starting point is 00:59:16 Oh, sure. And it's in the notes of the book. This young woman wrote her own blog post and it was about her grandfather's funeral. And the union between souls, that's what she calls it, the union between souls that she experienced. book. This young woman wrote her own blog post and it was about her grandfather's funeral. And the union between souls, that's what she calls it, the union between souls that she experienced at this funeral. And she says, my grandfather's barber shop chorus, sang him a tribute. And for the first time in my 14 years, I witnessed tears cascading down my father's face. That moment with a linting sound of men's voices, the hushed audience, and my father's sadness is permanently etched on my heart. And when our family first had to

Starting point is 00:59:52 euthanize a pet, the love in that room, shared by my father, brother, and me, took my breath away. And then she says, you see, when I think of these events, it's not the sadness that I most remember. It's the union between souls. When we experience sadness, we share in a common suffering. It's one of the few times when people allow themselves to be truly vulnerable. It's a time when our culture allows us to be completely honest about how we feel.

Starting point is 01:00:23 And to me, that says it all, we are living through such a divisive time right now. And yet, there is something powerful about sharing our sorrowful experiences. I think it's a bridge like none other. It's a union between souls. And so to not allow ourselves to go there is to not avail ourselves of the strongest and deepest glute that we have as union. That's what the happiness of melancholy is, the union between souls. Well, I think that's a great lead in then to in chapter nine, you talk about how do we inherit the pain of our parents and ancestors? And you asked the question, can we transform it later? I was hoping you could build upon that a little bit for the audience.

Starting point is 01:01:16 I looked at all the research that's been done into an area called epigenetics, which is basically the idea that children and descendants in general inherit not only through cultural and familial traits, but also on a genetic level, the traumas and the trials, the previous generations have experienced. And this is this whole fascinating line of research. And it's pretty new, It's a little bit controversial, but there's so many fascinating studies that I go into in the book. You can see this happen in animals also.

Starting point is 01:01:53 Like you can take researchers have taken mice and expose them to various traumatic experiences and then had the mate with other mice remove the traumatized mice from the cages. So they're clearly not influencing anything. And they find that for many generations, the offspring of the traumatized mice show the same behaviors as their traumatized forefather. Like it's kind of incredible stuff. That is incredible. Yeah, yeah. And they've shown the same thing with children of Holocaust survivors, where the children have certain blood markers

Starting point is 01:02:27 and other attributes of trauma, even though they themselves didn't go through the Holocaust. The children and the children's children had these same attributes, so in generations later. So there have been various studies like this. The epigenetic side of this discussion is in some ways the most scientifically dazzling proof that we have of the way that trauma perpetuates

Starting point is 01:02:58 across the generations. But we don't even need the science of it because you can just see it with your own eyes. All you have to do is look at our family structures to see it. Rachel Yehuda, though, is one of the scientists who's been a leader on the epigenetic analysis of this. And she has, she's been really careful to say that she wants this information for people who come from legacies of trauma as I have done because on both sides of my family, we lost most of our family in the Holocaust. So it's certainly something that has reverberated through the generations in my life. life, she's very careful to give us this information in ways that can be empowering to us instead

Starting point is 01:03:51 of disabling. And, you know, first of all, the mere knowledge of it is power. Like, if you know that you come from this kind of a familial legacy that has whatever trauma may have been passed down to you. The simple knowledge of it and the knowledge that your shock absorbers may be a little thinner than someone else's might be can help you understand why you might be having the reactions that you are and give yourself the space that you need. And there's also a way that there's this amazing song, it's called After All by Dara Williams, a real masterpiece of a song. This whole song tells the story about how when she was a young adult, she went through a terrible depression and she knew that if she was going to free herself, she had to travel down what she calls a whispering well of her family's story. And she goes and she explores

Starting point is 01:04:49 her mother's story and her father's story. And it's only once she does that and really engages with those stories that the light comes flowing back into her life. So there really is a way of like facing our past and And it's a kind of mindset. I think that matters more than anything else. It's a mindset in which You're looking at your past. You're understanding those past traumas. You're sending your love back those ancestors of yours At the same time you're saying to yourself that their pain is not yours They may be part of you, but they're also different from you. And you kind of have to hold those two truths in your heart at the same time. And that's the most freeing framework that I've found for this kind of inherited pain.

Starting point is 01:05:38 Well, I think that was just a tremendous and reflective answer. So thank you for doing that with the vulnerability that you did it with. And I'm set to interview Dacker, Keltner, later in the year for the launch of his upcoming book. And in chapter one, you spend a lot of time discussing his work that he's doing at Berkeley. What is the compassionate instinct

Starting point is 01:06:01 and what is its link to your book? So first of all, you're gonna love Dacker. He's such a great guy. And his work is amazing. And the link between his work and my book is what we were talking about before about sorrow and bitter sweetness, having the power to be a kind of union between souls. Dacker has kind of proven that idea in scientific terms. He looks at what he calls the compassionate instinct. What compassion really means, the word compassion it means with suffering, with sorrow. So what he is found is that human beings are designed. We are physically designed to respond to other people's sorrow.

Starting point is 01:06:52 We're primed to have that union between souls. And I'll just give you one example of one of his amazing studies, but I'm sure he'll tell you all about them. But we all have in our bodies what's called the vagus nerve. It's like a bundle of nerves and it's the biggest one. It's evolutionarily ancient, so all mammals have it too. And it's so ancient, this is the bundle of nerves that regulates our most basic functioning. So like our digestion and our breathing are regulated by the vagus nerve. Well, it turns out that if you witness another being in distress, your vagus nerve responds

Starting point is 01:07:34 to that. So your vagus nerve makes you care and makes you feel distress, the same distress like curiously that that other person is feeling. And it's amazing when you think about that, this physical part of us, that is so basic that it controls our variability to breathe, also has us feel compassion. So, I mean, definitely, humans have such a capability for sort of disappointingly cruel or negligent behavior,

Starting point is 01:08:08 but we also have this other side of ourselves that's deep and ingrained. I think that the big question for our century going forward is going to be how we can tap into that more compassionate instinct. I believe, and if you look at Dacquers' work, you see this, that finding a way in which we can tell each other our expressions of sorrow instead of turning away from them, or feeling that disgust that we were talking about with them. Instead of that, being able to tell those stories and triggering the compassionate instincts in each other, I think that's our best way to get to that union between souls.

Starting point is 01:08:46 And that's why I felt it was so important to write a whole book shining a light on these states of mind. This is, and what do you hope readers will take away from better suite? I mean, there's so much that I want readers to take away, but I guess I'm going to come back to the idea of whatever pain you feel you can't get rid of to try to transform it into beauty in one way or another, whether it's healing yourself or someone else, whether it's some sort of creative act. And remember, it doesn't have to hang on the walls of the museum.

Starting point is 01:09:23 It just has to exist. That's all it has to do. But yeah, to transform pain into beauty. Okay, well Susan, thank you so much for taking the time to be on our show. And I can't wait for the listeners themselves to get a chance to read your new book because it is a masterpiece. Well, thank you so much. It's been such an honor to be on the show and just so amazing to connect with you personally. I really, really enjoyed it. What an incredible interview that was that we all got to witness.

Starting point is 01:09:54 And I just wanted to personally thank Susan and Penguin Random House for allowing us to launch her book on our podcast. I honestly had about 15 other questions that I would have loved to answer her. So maybe I can get her to come back sometime on our podcast. I honestly had about 15 other questions that I would have loved to answer her, so maybe I can get her to come back sometime in the future. If you truly loved today's episode, I would appreciate you telling some friends and family members about it, writing a review and letting Susan and I both know what you thought of today's interview.

Starting point is 01:10:20 All those five star ratings go an enormous way to increasing the popularity of the show. And if you're new to the show or you would just like to introduce it to a friend or family member, we now have episode starter packs both on Spotify and on our website. And these are collections of your favorite episodes that we categorize by topic into different playlists to give you a great introduction to everything that we do here on the show. Just go to passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started. And if you would like to watch today's interview, you can view it at our YouTube channel at JohnRMiles,

Starting point is 01:10:58 where we have over 260 different videos. Now, if there's a guest like Susan that you would like to see me interview or a topic or question that you have that you would like to see me discuss in one of my solo episodes, you can reach out to me in email at momentumfri day at passionstruck.com, an Instagram at John R. Miles or on LinkedIn at John Miles. And thank you, as always, for supporting us and helping us surpass well over 500,000 downloads of this podcast. Now go out there today and live life passion struck. Thank you so much for joining us. The purpose of our show is to make Passion Go viral.

Starting point is 01:11:38 And we do that by sharing with you the knowledge and skills that you need to unlock your hidden potential. If you want to hear more, please subscribe to the PassionStruct podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to your podcast ad. And if you absolutely love this episode, we'd appreciate a five star rating on iTunes. And you're sharing it with three of your most group-minded friends, so they can post it as well to their social accounts and help us grow our passion-struck community. If you'd like to learn more about the show and our mission, you can go to passionstruck.com

Starting point is 01:12:13 where you can sign up for our newsletter, look at our tools, and also download the show notes for today's episode. Additionally, you can listen to us every Tuesday and Friday, or even more of Inspiring Content. And remember, make a choice, work hard, and step into your sharp edges. Thank you again for joining us. you

Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Susan Cain on: Bittersweet, the Happiness of the Melancholy, and How Sorrow Creates the Union Between Souls EP 121

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.