Soul Boom - Listen Now: Rainn Wilson on Everything Happens w/ Kate Bowler

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

We've got a treat for you, Soul Boom fam! Are you living your best life now? Not always? This is a podcast for you. Duke Professor Kate Bowler is an expert in the stories we tell about success and failure, suffering and happiness. She had Stage IV cancer. Then she didn’t. And since then, all she wants to do is talk to funny and wise people about how to live with the knowledge that, well, everything happens. Sometimes we can fix our lives and sometimes can’t. So when self-help and self-care fall short, what do we need to turn instead? Rainn Wilson (Dwight Schrute of NBC’s The Office) says that what we need is a spiritual revolution. This conversation is rich and challenging and invites us all to think about the virtues we need to sustain a life and how we might cultivate these virtues not just for our own wellbeing but for that of the people around us. Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with bubble baths or the latest cold plunge trend. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy? To hear more of Everything Happens, head to https://lemonada.lnk.to/everythinghappensfd Thank you to our sponsors! Waking Up app (1st month FREE!): https://wakingup.com/soulboom Fetzer Institute: https://fetzer.org/ Sign up for our newsletter! https://soulboom.substack.com SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom!! https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom Watch our Clips: https://bit.ly/SoulBoomCLIPS Watch WISDOM DUMP: https://bit.ly/WISDOMDUMP Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/soulboom TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@soulboom Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: [e-mail] Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Spring Green Films Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Voicing Change Media Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Soul Bloom fam, it's Rain. And listen, we've got something really extra special for you today. I'm doing a feed drop from Kate Bowler, the incredible Kate Bowler, author, humanitarian, divinity professor, spiritual thinker. And she has this incredible podcast. Everything happens. I had the chance to join Kate in a conversation. And she is someone who has lived through some of the most incredible suffering you could imagine and come out on the other side. and has spun that into gold.

She just exudes wisdom and good humor. And in this episode, we dive deep into how a spiritual revolution might be the answer when self-help falls short. Sit back, relax, enjoy this thought-provoking conversation. And if you love it, please make sure to check out more of Kate's amazing show. Everything Happens. She is a gem. Available wherever you get your podcasts.

This is Everything Happens, and I'm Kate Bowler. If you've been around for a bit, you know that I have some strong feelings about the $12 billion self-help and wellness industry that has sold us on the idea that our lives are entirely figure outable. Just follow this five-step plan or drink this barely tolerable green juice or protein powder. Like what is going on with things that are made of dust that we're supposed to eat? or, you know, read the latest cheap paperback that you found in the airport spinner rack. The truth is, sometimes we can fix our lives, and sometimes we can't. But when self-help and self-care fall short, what do we need to turn to instead? To fill us up, to draw us toward one another, to encourage us that we are all, you know, human again today.

My guest today says that we need a spiritual revolution, which is not exactly what you would imagine from the guy from the office, but he has so many opinions and I love his brain on exactly this. Rain Wilson, of course, needs no introduction. But just in case you've lived under a rock or in like a very shaded area somewhere or in a spaceship stationed on a planet far away, let me tell you about him. Rain is a three-time Emmy-nominated actor, best known for his role as Dwight Shrewt on NBC's The Office. But he's just also such an artistic, soulful, creative person, and the co-founder of the media company SoulPancake and the author of the book Soul Boom.

I had a very special privilege of getting to talk with him in front of a live audience with our friends at the Fetzer Institute. And it was a conversation that was very challenging and rich and was there to really just help me and I hope help you think about the virtues we need to sustain a life, how we might cultivate these virtues, not just kind of for our own well-being, but for those of us integrated into the lives of the people around us. And spoiler alert, that version of self-care will have very little to do with bubble baths or the latest cold plunge enthusiasm, even if it would be so nice if it were that easy. Before I talk with Rain, we're going to take a quick break, though, to tell you about some of our sponsors.

Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with the hilarious and thoughtful Rain Wilson. Oh, hey, hey, hey, hey. Oh, hi. I know, and this is how we always meet. Yes. Fancy meeting you here. Yeah, yeah.

Again. Yeah, welcome to Kalamazoo. Thank you. Thank you. It feels because I've been listening to you and reading you and just wandering around my neighborhood, listening to your audiobooks, having my spiritual thoughts and hopes and dreams, it feels like I... You're going to have to forgive the amount that I feel like I know you. So thank you.

Also, I have the overwhelming desire to get comfortable because I have 200 questions. Okay. Sorry. Let's do it. That's great. I think we're maybe, ish, 10 years apart. And my parents were also hippies, but your parents were hippies before hippies were hippies. Yeah, pre-hippie, proto-hipy.

That's right. Yeah. Tell me a bit about their kind of early questing selves. Yeah, they essentially, my parents were farm kids who found themselves in Seattle in the mid-60s. And they were a little bit more in the beatnik. line of things. So my dad painted murals and wanted to be Mark Toby, the, an abstract expressionist painter. They lived on a houseboat in Seattle and Lake Union.

And my mom did experimental theater where she in one play painted her naked torso blue and ran around in the audience. Yeah. Which is what we're here to do today. Today. I've already worn blue. This is the first, it's the first ever for Fed Sur.

Yeah. Camera's out, everybody. We're all going to participate. Ring the bell. That's awesome. I loved your, like a house, like, it was like all the choices. The houseboat boat, the houseboat choice. The art choice. Your dad's real, like, sci-fi side.

Yeah. Tell me some of the. sample titles of his works. Yes, so my dad on the side, it's a very strange upbringing because my dad was very working-class blue collar. He spent his whole life either as like a line cook or a school teacher, but mostly like managing a sewer construction company. And on the side painting abstract oil paintings, listening to opera, singing at the top of his lungs. And as if that wasn't enough, he had a secret hobby of writing science fiction novels.

So he wrote, gosh, 10 or 12 sci-fi novels. He only got one of them published, Tentacles of Dawn, major books, 1976. We got a check for $500 for that book. And there's a picture, I think, in the Bassoon King of us holding that up. That was more money than our family had had. It was like, oh my gosh, we can buy shoes because we were pretty poor in Seattle. I grew up drinking powdered milk instead of milk because it was cheaper and getting my clothes from the Salvation Army. But my dad had all kinds of titles of science fiction books. I can't remember.

You probably remember some of the, it was the Ghosts of E, Clarissa of Doom. What else? What else? There's so many. It's just like galactic zombies and, you know, anything. anything you can imagine. I love the world buildingness of it. The like,

remaking the world through total imaginary post-apocalyptic or pre-apocalyptic. Yeah, completely. Gorgeous madness. I imagine on a typewriter just like... He was on a typewriter. And that that's nuts. Yeah. Think about writing, you know, Clarissa

of Doom on a typewriter. It's hard enough to write Clarissa of Doom some kind of word process. But, and it's interesting with my dad because, and I'm going to jump ahead to something a little more profound. But when I think back on my dad, like, he loved the creative process. He just loved being creative. I think he was told his whole life. He had a very traumatic childhood.

His mom died under just horrific circumstances. His dad was the worst dad known to humanity. and he just, so it was all about, like, at work, he would secretly type science fiction novels when he wasn't sending sewer construction trucks out to the, you know, the leafy clogged drains of Seattle. And then he'd come home and he'd paint these abstract oils. But for him, it was the process of creation. He didn't really, he would have loved to have been discovered, but he'd wanted to do zero of the

work of, like, trying to take his books out and his paintings out. And I used to say to him when I was like 11 years old, like, Dad, you got all these paintings. Why don't you take them out to the galleries? There's all those galleries downtown. And like, oh, they don't want this. They're blah, blah, blah, blah. And so when I chose to become an artist or an actor and I fell in love with theater, I kind of knew what I was up against.

So it was a, I had a very different perspective because when you have a parent that. Yes. Tries and then won't. Yeah. Who long. for discovery and acceptance and success but doesn't want to put in the effort. Because of fear and insecurity and trauma and whatnot, I knew, like, if I'm going to do this, I have to go all in.

So it was about, like, I'm going to New York City. I'm going to go to the best school. I'm an apprentice. I'm going to learn from the best. I'm going to put myself out there. And for better or worse, having had my father as a kind of a reflection of another path, that that did kind of help me ultimately in my career. Do you think there's a, I don't want to ask this,

it's, because I've seen people create, like they just, the baby being born make something out of, I love the kind of like furious hope that I can hear when you describe your dad's, like prolific love of, like sci-fi or art or but just the like the kind of gnawing loving making do you think there's a is there always a grief in that or because i'm i have a very creative dad my dad has made many things that have never seen the light of day there's been a lot of early typewriter in my life yeah and i've often wondered if creativity

always has like a lightly tragic feeling because it there's so much hope in the making and then there's sometimes just like just hoping that also wanting to give it to somebody else to experience well I think that's an awesome question and I do believe that we in seeking the divine we seek to emulate the powers and kind of fact that assets of the divine and imagination and creativity is one of the great powers of God in the Baha'i faith. God is often referred to as the fashioner. And I love that word, fashioner, that when we fashion, whatever it is, in the creative impulse, we are emulating a divine spark.

And so, and there's, there is an element of that in that art is service. If you make someone laugh, that's a service. If you make something beautiful, that is a service. And that is a divine impulse as well is obviously to be of service. You can give someone soup if they're hungry. That's service. But you can also make a beautiful poem that brings solace to someone's heart. And that's also service.

But my dad's definitely was born out of trauma. So, and I think that's okay. I think both can live side by side. But I think for him, art and creation was his way out of his traumatic childhood. For instance, he always just loved classical music. Like I said, he was always playing classical records and listening to classical radio stations and whatnot. In fact, we lived as Baha'i pioneers.

I know you're going to get to that in, which is similar to missionary work, although we like to think Baha'is like to think they're not there to convert the natives, but more to kind of like work in the community. And we lived in Bluefields, Nicaragua on the Mosquito Coast for three years when I was a, when I was a kid and my dad brought his classical albums and he had a classical music radio show at the Bluefields Nicaragua radio station, which, believe it or not, did not play the kind of music that you would normally attribute to a radio station, an AM radio station in Bluefields, Nicaragua, mostly what they played there.

Yeah. Country music. Stop. Country music was huge in coastal Nicaragua in the 1970s. And his daddy's like, you're ready for this? That's awesome. Chopin, y'all.

So, but it's interesting because one time I, then I asked him, like, you know, why do you love classical music so much? And they boil down to this. This is cray cray. His mom died under the most horrific circumstances. He was like eight or nine years old. She bequested to him her classical music collection. So for him as this kind of destitute Illinois farm boy with a stack of classical music records,

and I think a little, I imagine a little turntable, that was his solace and his escape. and he clung to that for his entire life. That's beautiful. And the way we kind of like bear witness to other people's loves in our own loves, where we like, I'll carry it with you, I'll carry it with me and my heart kind of feeling. I remember seeing my dad and his mom were so utterly different. And most of his young life had been marked by the tragedy of her early near fatal tuberculosis, which meant that she was shuttered in a sanitarium for a long time,

and he had to be put to foster care. And so there's this, like, early... That's crazy, because that's the circumstances that my dad... Yes, that's right. I totally... Yeah, my dad's mom had tuberculosis and was in the sanitarium, sanatorium. And it's out of, it's, these places are tucked away because they expect them never to emerge.

Yeah, but continue. They're just like living museums of their own life while they're still, And at the time, right, it was wildly incurable. And so they, and so there's just so much hopelessness and deep sadness and separation. And why is it my mom here when my mom should be here? And but when, and she should have gone to college. And so then he became the one who was obsessed with going to college to kind of carry this legacy of this beautifully, wildly, intelligent person who never got to

like sort of be the flowering fruit of the whole thing. But I thought maybe the most touching thing I saw them do later in life when he wrote this absolutely impenetrable dissertation on Tudor history. And my, and my grandma who'd had

like a huge chunk of her... Nothing says love like an impenetral history of the Tudors. And it would like, remember those printers that was like knee? Yeah, yeah. And you had to like perforate off the side. Yeah, yeah. for about 40 years of your life.

Making a happy birthday banner was like a two-hour process. But I could see them trying then to kind of cross the huge bridge to each other, separated by so many things. And at that point, she'd had a lot of her lungs cut out because that had been the cure, too. But she was living in rural Saskatchewan. And she, it took her, I think, about a year. but she embroidered Elizabeth

the first subject of his dissertation ordered in freshwater pearls and like I think there's just when I picture your dad in a radio station Nicaragua playing like making sure that the string quartets get their time

on the air there's just something so wild about the way we like carry our loves for each other and then we need to express it Like, you got to sing that song or embroider that. That's beautiful. Yeah.

We'll be right back. I don't think it would be possible for me to do justice to your Nicaragua childhood. Because if we were playing the game like two truths and a lie, like, no, you can't tell. You couldn't tell. So if you wouldn't mind offering some seemingly contextless fact experience in which you're like, would you believe that this was my life at that time? Yeah.

Well, my stepmother almost died in quicksand. And I had my full understanding face on. It was sorry. That threw. That guy is. It zagged. But what a way to go, though. I mean, there's part of me that wishes that that's how she would have died.

She's in a senior home in Bainbridge Island, Washington now, and I'm glad she's lived a full, rich life. Don't get me wrong. But what a way to go. I mean, can you imagine the stories I would be telling if my stepmom had actually died in Quicksand? No, it's not the Princess Bride. It's actually my favorite line.

But yeah, one of her legs went all the way up to her hip. It was a very awkward thing, and then her other leg was out, and then some friendly Nicaragans threw her a brain. And she was like pulled her out. But that was, that's a minor story. That it gets way, uh, it gets way more intense than that. It was, uh, you know, shaking the scorpions and spiders out of your shoes every morning.

Um, the amount of, uh, my dad had malaria. I had amoeic dysentery. I think can, is it possible on your, I'm not sure that I haven't listened to your podcast. And I don't know much about the Fetzer Institute. You can say it. I want you to say it. I had multiple worms come out of my butt. So that was an interesting...

In fact, it's one of the most, like, visceral memories of my childhood are very long worms emerging from my anus. So... So... God bless us, everyone. But what else can I say? I will say that. On a lighter note, we had a pet sloth.

And we kept him in a cage, and every night, sloths are very strong and very slow. Every night, he would open the bars in the cage, and he would escape. And every morning, my dad would go out, knowing that he can't have made it further than 30 feet from the cage. And circle the yard looking around the bushes. And sure enough, there would be the sloth, and he would grab it, put it back in the cage, and Ben the bar's back. And that says a lot about the human experience. It's like a full Sisyphine drama every day of him almost escaping.

He's like, I'm almost, I'm like, oh, damn it, dragged back. Drag back, yeah. Because I kind of have a theory about secret theory about you, that I'm hoping you'll be like, yes, that's. very perceptive or no, that's absolutely unprovable. But your genuine weirdness, she said respectfully, respectfully, I think there is something about being a curious adult that has to do with being able to accept the surreal.

And like when things just, you know, everyone expects a linear life and you're just used to things coming into view fully through your peripheral, I just imagine that that has led to like, well, I suppose this is what's happening approach to life. Yeah. I think there's some spiritual magic in that. I would say that's very astute. Yeah, 100%. I think, you know, by the time, you know, by the time I'm in American elementary school, you

You know, I've seen and been through a lot. And my family is extremely eccentric. And so it's kind of like, hey, anything goes. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to be non-curious. It's hard to be uncurious having that background. Yes.

There's a thing, too, about the way you described your family growing up, about the outsiderness of knowing that some parts of family life were, like deeply loving and other parts were missing. Yeah. And that you'd have to find them. It took you a while to find out that those were, those pieces were actually kind of essential.

You're like, oh, no, I'm going to need to know, intimacy, connection. Yeah, yeah. How long did you feel the kind of missing pieces? Until my late 40s. Yeah. Oh. No, it's true.

I, because the big piece missing from my, from the childhood that we haven't mentioned so far is that my mom left me and my dad. When she was doing the plays where she painted her torso blue, she went and had an affair with the theater director and left and I was about a year and a half, two years old. So, uh, I didn't really see her again until I was about 15. So, um, and my dad remarried right away. And so there were, there was a lot of like, um, there was a lot of like, um, there was a lot. of those missing pieces. And the difficulty was, and I think that people of faith often really relate to this, which is, by the way, we're all people of faith. We just maybe have faith in different things. So people of faith can relate to the fact that there was this kind of like, like this

cognitive dissonance, but I would call it an emotional dissonance having to do with the idea that we were Baha'is, members of the Baha'i faith. And if you know anything about the Baha'i faith, it's just love and unity straight down the middle. It's love and unity. But in my home life with my dad and stepmom, because they really did not have a very good marriage or loving marriage, we talked about love and unity a lot and expressed it in a church community context, but I didn't feel it at home.

So there was this very odd disconnect. between that and also i was not receiving the kind of emotional nourishment that i needed as as a child so and when i say you know late 40s i really mean that i really mean like it took me a lot of a lot of therapy and a lot of 12 step to kind of get to some kind of like adult healing of of of recognizing what it is that i that i really needed so it was it was a very peculiar kind of trauma to have parents that were fighting, either fighting or not talking to each other, but then going, you know,

a couple times a week to Baha'i gatherings where we would be singing, you know, kumbaya like songs. Yeah. So that was difficult to navigate. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like the vocational pull toward creativity

did a lot of good work in you, where it was like, oh, my gosh. you're going to take the outsiderness that you feel. You're going to take the, and you're going to practice being really, really good at something in groups with other people who also love the vulnerability of public weirdness, which is how I guess I'm describing acting. That's theater kids.

That's theater nerds right there. Once I found, yeah, I, so in going back to the outsiderness of it all, the first of all, I'm just wired a little bit weird, so that's okay. It was a lamp for Halloween. It was like, what will you be? I was Socrates, then I was a lamp. Yeah. Then I was very unpopular for us, which I still feel as essential.

I can't even remember what my Halloween costumes were, but that's great. That reveals a lot. But one of the things that I remember doing in junior high school, and maybe we can all relate to this at some level. It was like I was so alien. Growing up in Nicaragua, Baha'i family, dad writing weird science fiction novels. And a lot of nerdy pursuits, a lot of opera playing in our house. I was on the chess team. I played the bassoon.

I was in Model United Nations. I mean, my nerd creed is through the roof. But I would observe other kids and how they behaved and try and emulate. that. So if you had a cool kid who was like coming up to someone else, he's like, hey, Johnny, how's it going? And slap him on the shoulder. Like, how's your weekend, bro? And I would, I would observe that. And they're like, okay. And then I would go up to- Subject-A. Approach his subject. And then I would go up to my friend Mike, like, hey, Mike, how was your weekend, bro? You know, and I would literally try and emulate it. So that didn't help matters much.

But that's how I felt. But then when I found the theater, and children, you know, and children, of the theater. Yeah. Those are the ultimate outsiders. And I really found, I found a home and a place to belong and a great channel

for my, for my creativity. Yeah. Yeah. Did you recognize it as a vocation? Like, not just a job, like a, like a calling that aligned you with a certain,

I'm just curious about how you thought, like, did you think, oh, this internally matched my gifts or at the time did you think this is, There's something transcendent, like transcendent going on. I was an evangelical experimental theater artist.

So when I left the Baha'i faith when I was about 20, and I left it hardcore, I was like, I didn't want anything to do with God, religion, morality, any of that mumbo-jumbo nonsense. I just wanted to be an artist in New York City. I was living my dream. But we had the same evangelical fervor about the theater that someone would have about any religious practice. So we really thought that we could change people's minds and hearts if we did the right production of Miss Julie or the three sisters in the right church basement to the right 37 people

that we could literally change the course of their lives. And that was the fervor and the mission with which we undertook the making of theater, which I think is the only way to make theater because it certainly doesn't pay. And, but it was about blowing people's minds. It was about new forms. It was about making them laugh in unique ways. We would have the most intense conversations about the making of theater and its importance. And, you know, we, I remember having a conversation once about, you know, it was late at night and a bunch of us theater artists.

And we were pondering things. And someone said, would you ever do a commercial? And someone very seriously and very sonorously said, I would if it were for soy milk. So we had, it was very serious conversation. Well, these sounds like academics were their life. If the footnote apparatus isn't 200 pages longer than the manuscript. Is it really an academic book?

Nice. So, yeah, so that was, but that was a great way to do, that was a great way to do theater because it, and it is, and this is the human, this is the natural human input, impetus toward transcendence that we are, we are wired. Yeah, we are hardwired to try and transcend, to overcome, to be of service on some kind of higher level, to, to transform and to use all of our tools and our DNA and our, our, our, sine you to make brave and beautiful and good things. And you can meet educators that are that way. You can meet health practitioners that are that way. You can, you know, meet people in, you know, architects have to think in that way. Like, I'm going to make a space that's going to transform people when they enter that space. They're going to see the world differently. We want to aspire toward that. And kind of everything in contemporary society wants to keep us back from thinking in that

way. So I think it's really important to think, brave and think big and think transcendent. I got some tepid snaps from the fetters. The aliens are snapping. That really makes you love. Was it in your late 20s that you were

Are you worried about like, I think you described it as like deaths by despair? Like the feeling that you all can feel vocationally alive and yet there are these sort of darker selves that want to kind of gnaw you and suck away your purpose. Yeah, I mean, I talk a lot about these days when I go to college campuses and whatnot, I talk a lot about mental health. because I do think that the current mental health epidemic is super deadly and overwhelming. And I think people over 40 or 50 really don't understand how deep and dark and deadly it is. It is horrific. Dr. Varunsoni is the chaplain at USC who is a dear friend of mine. He describes going three times a week to either funerals of

kids that have committed suicide or hospital beds of kids that have attempted suicide. This is really, really bad. And the kids who are on the front lines of these mental health epidemics, one of the bombs, one of the solutions that they most need are spiritual tools and spiritual connection, which can give someone vision, mission, and purpose, and a sense of that, seeking the sublime, the sacred, the transcendent. And there is a, there's a longing and a hunger for that. So my way into that is that in my 20s, I experienced a lot of this stuff firsthand. So I realized now, we didn't have words for it in the mid-90s for a mental health epidemic,

but I was having crippling anxiety attacks for years. That would render me sometimes on the floor like shaking and sweating. and it would come on at really the most inopportune times. And I realized that I was using a lot of drugs and alcohol during that time to just try and medicate this anxiety, which is very common in the modern world as well. I wrestled with addiction, certainly depression, anxiety and alienation and loneliness. And these are all elements of the diseases of despair, not my phrase. you know, phrases that are used by, you know, positive psychologists to talk about what's happening to the youth today. And diseases of despair also can include what's happening

on social media and the kind of like device, dopamine delivery devices and platforms and apps and the isolation that those things engender. This is an area of great. interest to me. It's something that I relate to because I've experienced it. And something I think anyone who's, you know, writing about spiritual topics has to take into a deep and profound consideration. Yeah. Can you walk me back on that phrase you said about when you talk to college kids about the path through? One of them was service and there were two others. It was really good. But it was, it was, it was.

When I just said now, vision, mission, purpose. Vision, mission purpose. I think it's, it's just simply being a part of something larger than yourself. I think humans long to be a part of something larger than themselves. And everything in contemporary society is saying the self is the most important thing. Yeah.

You and I really do share a profound concern that there is a religious, worldview that's in competition with the one you're describing. And that's like a very narrow view of self-help. I've been writing a history of self-help and the kind of language of just aggressive individualism. And then most solutions to what you're describing they would counter with is like, well, more me time. There's a lot of, especially it's like the religion of Instagram for women is a lot of aggressive bubble bathing into you just lock yourself in the bathroom for two minutes a day.

Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and you've solved most of the. Yeah, I have a big problem with self-care, with the, with the idea of self-care because the, you know, even the, you look at the origins of positive psychology, which is an incredible movement. And I'm, and we've learned so much from positive psychology, and yet it doesn't seem to be helping us. And, um, that's a weird dichotomy. I mean, I haven't quite wrapped my head around. Yeah, the happiness industry, the history of positive thinking and the sort of rise of the happiness industry and how it kind of bastardizes a lot of social science into five-step. Yeah. Psychologist approved.

Yeah. Gratitude list, cold plunge. Yes. Yes. A study of 12 people. Yeah. And I think, like, the terrible culprits will just try to sell as solutions, things. like, I mean, my favorite is the absolutely

non-ironic book called The High-Hive Habit, which apparently two hands meeting in space to make just a light sound is the solution then. You do that daily. You look at... We're doing it. Oh my God. Good night, everybody. We got it all figured out.

Social scientists agree that a daily high five. Because what we want is this like deep inner, like a reweaving. of the social fabric as opposed to like dry brushing. Yeah, I think there's a lot to say on this. I was going back to the positive psychology movement and, you know, Arthur Seligman, who's one of the founders of it, had an incredible study early on.

And people need to understand that this movement, which started in the 90s, is really exciting and important because psychology was always about how screwed up we are and how neurotic. we are and how much trauma we've experienced and how we got that way. And for the first time, people are like, well, let's study what works. Let's study what makes people happier and what makes them more successful. And I'm all for that. And, you know, Seligman had a, you know, I had one of his earliest classes all take a test of their happiness to get a baseline. And then one weekend, he told the kids to go out and do everything that they think is going to make them happier and

come in and share about it and some kids like hooked up and other kids got wasted kids went Atlantic City other kids like went on a shopping spree blah blah blah they took the happiness test again and of course guess what their happiness scores were lower then he had another weekend was like go do something for someone else go be of service whether there's call your sick aunt or visit a friend who's hurting or hold the door open at a Starbucks or whatever it is and they took the test again and guess what their scores were higher so you know scientists have understood that it's by getting out of oneself, actually, that we find greater well-being. And I think that what has happened is because we live in such a consumerist capitalist society

that we want an immediate payback for our investment, right? So spirituality has become kind of codified into something that will simply relieve my anxiety and bring me, you know, 8% more serenity on a daily basis. So you talked about like, if I read this Rumi poem on Instagram and I take the hardcore bubble bath and I do my yoga class, then I will be 8% less anxious in my day. And so I've paid my money. I've invested my time and I have gotten this payback of an 8% greater serenity. And that way of thinking is corrupt profoundly at its core. So there's nothing wrong with seeking some peace in your life. And I do it. You do it, I'm sure. You know, my prayer and meditation practice, connecting with nature, even cold plunges

and gratitude lists, which I do on an almost daily basis. There's nothing wrong with these things as long they're in the service to something greater. And I think that we, you know, culturally, part of what a spiritual revolution means is really thinking outside of the bottom. on kind of like how we do most everything, how systems work. So we have a system of seeking to obtain spiritual enlightenment or peace or centeredness or serenity. And it's, it's, it works completely within within the bounds of consumerism. I totally agree. Yeah.

It's like it's wild how instrumentalist all the language sounds. I mean, it really is. I don't know what instrumentalist means. You make everything. I'm a bassoonist. Is that anything? You do know the power of an instrument. Yes.

No, just making everything. That's the first, that's what she said, Joe, ever told in the Fetzer Institute. Boom. Mic drop. Huge mic drop. The idea that everything, I mean, it's just a,

it's a version of American pragmatism where everything has to be for something. So exactly what you're describing about like why it's got this like why. Just another version of a language of why it's so corrupt is because we've taken a thing that is a, that is good for its own sake. Beauty doesn't need to be proven as being instrumentalist for truth telling friendship. It shouldn't have to be social scientists agree that we make everything into a tool. And so therefore everything is some kind of has a use or an exchange. And then it makes it makes all the beautiful things part of a wellness morning routine or a story about us trying to get what we deserve.

And I really like a psychologist Lisa DeMore is so lovely. She writes about adolescent mental health. I think you'd really like her. The first chunk of her book is like, can we just talk about some of the limits of our obsession with positivity, especially when it relates to the mental health of adolescence. She makes two out great points. One is that mental health is not trying to crowd all the emotions into our cultural obsession with like happiness,

but it's having the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time. So in some cases, it is a terrible thing happens. The appropriate emotion is sadness. Feel terrible emotions. Yeah. And like as it, but as opposed to just crowding on one sort of end of the swimming pool, And the other is, in order to, like, guide adolescents through the wide, the ups and downs, she was like, they're the, the fastest way to create, like, more agility is just service.

It's just putting them, so your point about, like, you just make them part of something that's bigger than themselves. And there's, like, a natural, I think of it, like, those really weighted blankets where you're just like, oh, yeah, no, it's not about me. It's fine. But it is wild how much service is, like, it's not a sexy topic right now. Like, I'm excited for you as you try to talk people into it. Yeah. They're not, they're not love of it. Yeah.

I believe that the solution to the youth mental health crisis is, has been around since the late 70s. Tell me. And its name is Dungeons and Dragons. Because when you play D&D, you're in a group of people. without devices, shoulder to shoulder, snacks, a lot of jocularity, a lot of high fives. You're in service to something greater. You're taking your little retinue of elves and dwarves and magic users and wizards and monks, and you're seeking the treasure and you're on a mission.

You've got to work together. There's basically everything that one used to find in a religion, one can find in a group of kids, Dungeons and Dragons. And it's, uh, when I know like my son is doing better is when he's playing a lot of D&D. I'm like, okay, all right, all right. You're on the right path. Weekend of orc slaying is a go. Yeah. I like how into virtues you are because you're very, because that's, I mean, I think it's a very good argument to say, like, how do we know that what we're doing? Like love is, is real love. And like, because it produces these beautiful qualities, like, as a, opposed to I became more emotionally regulated by myself.

So I love that you also are like, no, no, there's like, we do have great language for this. Like patience, forbearance, joy. And I would say encouragement is maybe the most pure service that we can offer another person. You know, I mean, I think that love, love is interesting as a concept, but I think also culturally we, I think we struggle to understand. And believe it or not, I think we struggle to understand what love is because we only have one English language word for love. And so many other languages I hear, I don't know, that Sanskrit has like 19 words for love. And, you know, I love, you know, the New York Knicks.

And I love my wife. And I love God. And I love skateboarding videos from the 70s. But that's not, you know what I mean? That's not really love. And so. Love isn't a feeling in the chest. Love is in an action.

It's only borne out in action. It doesn't even really matter what the internal impulse is for that action. But encouragement of another person, I think, is one of the most sincere and pure acts of love. Yeah. Who do you think, or what do you think we would all be like if we did have a spiritual revolution? What are things that you would like? You'd look around and you'd see what? Well, I think that at the core of any spiritual revolution is compassion.

And I talk about in Soul Boom, what would it be like to invent a compassion machine where you can go into the machine and it's wired to your brain. It looks like an MRI machine or something like that. And in it, you're immediately put in the circumstances of an immigrant at the border or an Afghani, you know, sheep herder or a Vietnamese fisherman trying to get by, whatever it is the circumstances, someone wildly different than yourself, and you enter their world and you see and feel the world exactly as they do, because that would be the ultimate way to kind of like foster compassion. So with deep compassion comes sacrifice, personal sacrifice. So when we have

a family member who's sick, we have incredibly deep compassion for that family member. We'll quit our jobs to take care of them, right? We'll do anything. We'll drain our bank accounts, you know, because we love them so much. But as too often happens, we stop that apparatus at the boundaries of family. So increasing the how we define family to, and then to increase it, not just to our tribe, not just to kind of like fellow Anabaptists who live in Raleigh Durham, you know, but to go, you know, to people with different skin colors who speak

different languages and who maybe think about the world in a different way politically than we do to ever-increasing kind of universality of compassion where we drain our bank accounts and sacrifice our time, our energy, and especially our comfort. We sacrifice those bubble baths for the good of someone else. So what does that look like? It looks like any great religious spiritual movement, like you look at the early Christian movement of the first 300 years. And the writers of the time were outraged and perplexed that there were these people that were Sumerians and Romans and they were, you know, centurians and they were former slaves and former prostitutes. and they were not only helping each other,

they were helping other people. If there was a flood or an earthquake, they were sacrificing, this may be the first time in human history, that there was a group of people sacrificing of their time, attention, and comfort for the good of someone else, just out of love and out of altruism.

And so we've done it before, right? And there have been many cases of this, but I would say that's what a world looks like, where, you know, you're consistent, constantly, culturally, and socially sacrificing for the good of the other and for the good of community. Rain Wilson. Hey. All right.

Thank you. Look, I know that we're living in a world and in an age that is replete with things that make us feel despair. The rising mental health crisis. The seemingly intractable geopolitical crises. political seasons that make you sick to your heart and your stomach when you're arguing with family and friends. We are juggling problems at home and in our families and in our lives. So yes, there is so much to despair all around us. And also, I love what Rain said about how we are hardwired to transcend, to make brave, beautiful, creative things.

the service of others. The antidote to so much despair is sometimes just making ourselves useful. And I know that I don't have to remind you of that. Like there is no high horse here, you beautiful listener. You're the one in the hard job or in the volunteering position or in a caregiving role or you're that friend that people call to ask you to care about other people every day. And I just have to say, as someone who's met so many of you, you do it really beautifully, I might add. But when you're feeling a bit low, remember that we are building something brave and beautiful and transcendent together, one small, faithful act of hope at a time. Here is a blessing, then, from my book, have a beautiful, terrible day that invites us to take a step

back from the person, that wellness machine that our culture is trying to make us. So let me just bless the real you instead. God, I am told to invest in myself. You're worth it. I should find myself in the market that owns me. If you check my billing statements, I am a monthly subscription for white noise and sleep stories and chewable melatonin. I am a statement. I am a standing grocery order for dark roast fair trade beans and dry full-bodied Spanish Reds. And on a customer service report somewhere, read aloud in an air-conditioned boardroom, I represent the value of unlimited digital access to the New York Times and Wordle, mostly wordle.

But Lord, this is not the creation story of gardens and mud-made flesh, and life breathed into one-click ordering. Unmake me, unmake me, unmake me, unmake me. Put me to sleep, steal another rib, and let me awake to all things astonishingly unnamed and unknown by the world I made in affordable monthly installments. All right, my darlings, may we be unmade and remade all over again today and in the week to come. A big thank you to all the people who let me get to do this. Our incredible partners who make everything happens. Our incredible partners who really make everything happen.

Lily Endowment, the Duke Endowment, Duke Devonite School. Thank you so much. And a massive shout out to the Fetzer Institute for making today's conversation possible. I had such a lovely time with you. This podcast is a group project full of people I adore. Jess Richie, Harriet Putman. Keith Weston, Gwen Higginbotham, Brenda Thompson, Iris Green, Hope Anderson, Kristen Bowser, Jebbert, Sammy Philippi, and Catherine Smith. I love you guys, and I love doing this with you.

And we do it because we're kind of obsessed with you, listeners. Yes, you. Looking into your local D&D club now, questioning the usefulness of cold plunging, bless you. You are our absolute favorite, and we are so grateful to get to make useful things for you. And let us know who you want to hear from this season. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. These things matter so much. It just takes a few seconds. Or call us and leave us a voicemail at 919-3-2-8-731.

All right, darlands. If you are Canadian, you're going to love next week. I am speaking to the inimitable Chantelle Crabiasic on the podcast. I can't even believe it. My Winnipeg self, my heart is bursting. And until then, this is Everything Happens with me, Kate Bowler.