Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 103: Sally Quinn, Walking the Labyrinth

Episode Date: October 11, 2017

When author and journalist Sally Quinn needs a moment of peace or clarity, she said, "I walk the labyrinth." A labyrinth walk has long represented a journey or pilgrimage and Quinn uses it for walking meditation -- her late husband, legendary Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, even built one for her at their Maryland estate. Quinn, who launched the Post's 'On Faith' website as a self-proclaimed atheist, talks about her new memoir, "Finding Magic," her notorious D.C. dinner parties and discovering meaning in her life through the years she spent caring for Bradlee as he suffered with dementia, their son, who had heart defect and severe learning disabilities, and her ailing parents. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Sally Quinn, as you're about to hear, is a character, a great character. She rose to journalistic notoriety and prominence at the Washington Post as the as a style reporter she really covered the Washington DC social scene for many many years it was a big part of the scene she ended up marrying Ben Bradley the editor the famous editor of the of the Washington Post who was the editor

during the Pentagon papers and and and Watergate and later on got interested and faith in spirituality and started a website for the Washington Post called on faith, and during which time she had a transformation from being an atheist to something else. What that's something else is, I'll let her describe in this interview. She's also got her own, I would say, brand of meditation. You know, when I talk about meditation, mostly I would say brand of meditation. When I talk about meditation mostly, I'm talking about mindfulness meditation, pay attention to your breath when you get lost, start again.

But I'm always very open about the fact that the word meditation, as you'll hear me saying, the conversation is a little bit like the word sports in that it describes a whole range of activities. And you're gonna hear a very smart person, a very interesting person talk about the kind of meditation that she's kind of designed for herself. And also about her transformation as I said from from a self-described atheist into something else. And she broadly describes that something else as magic, which she talks about at length in her new book, Finding Magic, A Spiritual Memoir,

which is just out. So without further ado, you're in for a treat. Here's Sally Quinn on her new book. From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Thank you for coming on. Appreciate it. Delighted to be here, Dan. Congratulations on the new book. Well, it was two and a half years in the writing and I'm now feeling postpartum depression. Really? Really? Because every time I've only written one and a half books, but I'm like postpartum elation. I'm just so happy it's over. Well, you know, the end of writing a book is really a nightmare because you're on deadline. It was horrible. But actually I love writing and I love the process of writing. So until the last couple of months when we were under a lot of pressure, I was just really happy living in my own writing world.

It's so funny to hear you say, because I hate writing. I said this to somebody yesterday. I was interviewing, being interviewed by another writer and I said, I love writing. He said, I said this to somebody yesterday, I was interviewing being interviewed by another writer and I said, I love writing. He said, you what? You love writing. I mean, I can't remember which famous writer it was who said that, you know, writing is easy. You just sit down at the computer and wait until the blood runs out of your fingers. I feel like I'm like ripping my insides out and putting them up on the screen and then having this depression realization that they're not even that interesting. You know, over and over.

Yeah, there is that. The problem is reading it again and again and again and then you think really, you know, and it just anybody care. That's the stage I'm at actually in this next book. I'm doing just that could read through, read through, read through. But I have to say, it took a lot of bravery for you to write about the stuff you write about. So it's surprising for me to hear that you enjoyed the process because you get really raw in this book. Really raw, yeah. Well, you know, you get to a certain age and you sort of think, I have nothing to hide. There's nothing that I'm ashamed of and

I don't feel bad or guilty and as long as I can be truthful and authentic, that's what matters to me and it just seems to me that people respond better if you are telling the truth about yourself. And they can sort of, that you're more accessible that way. I don't think that anything I wrote was really, overly revealing, but I know a lot of my friends said, I learned so much about you, and there was so many things about you that I didn't know, and so many things you'd been through.

I mean, certainly, that I didn't know and so many things you'd been through. I mean, certainly, you know, the details about my son, Quinn's heart surgery and those many years after that we went through when he had severe learning disabilities and all of that. And my parents illness and their subsequent deaths, and then of course my husband Ben Bradley's dementia and his sort of decline in death. And your frontline caregiving in that case?

Yes, but the thing is that they were the whole book. I mean, it is called Finding Magic and it's really about what's the meaning of life. And of course, I had to, I didn't write the prologue or the epilogue until I actually had finished the book because I wasn't write the prologue or the epilogue until I actually had finished the book because I wasn't sure what it was about. Because I had started writing the book, I had gotten a book contract to write a book

about how I had started this religion website for the Washington Post call on faith as an atheist. Then I signed the book contract and then Ben started to his decline. And I couldn't write. I just was undone by and also exhausted. And I had, I just had nothing to give. I didn't have any juice. And so I was unable to write.

And then it was about two or three weeks after he died that I thought, I've got to write this. I have to write this. I have to get it out. And I started writing about his death and about his dementia and his death. And I thought maybe that's where the book would start. As it turned out, that's the end of the book. I realized once I'd gotten to the end of the book that that's not the way I wanted to

present Ben and the first. I mean, Ben was this incredible sort of charismatic, dynamic, energetic, wonderful, sexy, fabulous guy and historic figures. But I wanted people to see Ben before they saw the demise. We should just explain who he is for those, anybody who, you know, we're outside the beltway right now. So Ben Bradley, editor of the Washington Post during Watergate, you know, you've seen all the presidents, men, you've seen him portrayed. So he is a towering figure. By the way, he was also tall. Yes, well, he was six feet tall. But, and by the way,

there's going to be an HBO documentary about him coming out in November. And, and then there's a movie that's, he DC even Spielberg is doing on the Pentagon papers and Tom Hanks is playing Ben and Merrill Streep is playing Catherine Graham. So but in any case I just decided that once I'd finished the book and then I decided to write the prologue and the upload. I had to figure out what the meaning of the book was, what the point of the book was. And I was on deadline, so I had about two months to figure out the meaning of life. But I did. I did, at least for me, you know, what was meaningful to me in my life.

And it was sort of a progression of, once I finished writing about Ben's demise, I then started writing about my childhood. And it's a spiritual memoir that's called Finding Magic. And the idea is that I took just stories from my life, all the way through my life, that had some significance, that had some sort of epiphany or something that was illuminating or something that was spiritual or sacred that happened to me, that sort of was throughout the spiritual experience that I had all this time thinking I was an atheist, that led to me finally after starting this religion website, studying faith, different faiths, and traveling around the world, studying faiths that realized

that I wasn't an atheist. And then I had to sort of figure out what it was that I actually believed and what was important to me in my life. There are so many things in the several paragraphs you just uttered that I want to follow up on and we will follow up on those so many beats in your biography that I want to hit. Let me just kind of approach it from given that we are at least ostensibly a meditation-related podcast. Let me start with that angle and then see where it takes us. So we had lunch a couple months ago and you mentioned to me that you'd been meditating. Can you just tell me how you got into that, what your practice is, and what it's done for you? Well, my brother is a practicing Buddhist

and he meditates every day. And so I, you know, it's fascinated by the process, but what really got me started was some 20 years ago, I went to a health bond, California, and they had this thing called elabrant, which I'd never heard of, and elabrant is normally people think of it as a maze, but it's a large circle, and it isn't a maze.

You walk in and out and around until you get to the center, but you don't get lost in it. And it's a meditation tool. And they have one on the floor of Shartt Cathedral. I think the original one was in Crete, actually. But they had one in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. And this health spot had copied that one, which was copied from the Shart Cathedral.

And so I went to this health spot and they said, you really should try this. And I thought, oh, it sounds too new, AG. And I don't think I'm, you know, but they said, well, you know, a lot of businessmen come out here and they walk the labyrinth and they say it changed their lives. So I thought, well, that's kind of interesting.

So I went up and I walked it with a number of people that evening. And I sort of liked the experience. There were a lot of people walking it in, you know, in and out. And there were torches and there was music and there was music, and it was nighttime, and it was just a very pleasant experience. But I didn't really get much out of it, but the next day I went up, it was in this grove

of live oak trees up on a hill overlooking the spa. And I went up in the late afternoon, and there was no one there. And so I decided to walk it on. My only idea is that you you picture something in your mind, you focus on something a problem or an issue or something you care about that you want to focus on. And so I started thinking about my son, Quinn. I had gone to this spa because Quinn was born with a heart defect. He was sick for the first 16 years of his life, and I was in and out of the hospital. And during this time, he was about seven or eight.

I was just exhausted, and my husband insisted that I get away. I'd never left him for even overnight. And I just needed this. And so I started concentrating on Quinn, and I walked the labroth, and I ended up sitting down in the center of the labyrinth and closed my eyes and I began to meditate and I meditated for I don't even know how long it was.

How do you define meditation in this? Well for me it's just trying to blank your mind and I can do it now. At first it was really hard because you close your eyes and you sort of try to think of nothing and suddenly everything comes into your head. And a lot of people feel they can't do meditation because they just think it doesn't work, but of course it does work. It's just that you know you do have ideas that come in your head when you meditate. But for me, You do have ideas that come in your head when you meditate. But for me, I just went into almost a trance. I just saw nothing and I thought of nothing. And I find that impossible to do when I've been meditating for a long time.

I find that I have to focus on something like my breath and then to think and come and I let it go, go back to the breath. No, no, but I was breathing. I mean, they had talked about breathing and how important it was. So I was concentrating on my breath. No, no, but I was I was breathing. I mean, they had talked about breathing and how important it was. So I was concentrating on my breath. Oh, okay. Okay. No, no, I was concentrating on my breath, but not ideas about, you know, you know, what am I going to do? I'm having a dinner party next week. And do I have to who should I, they wasn't that kind of a thing. And I opened my eyes and I looked up and right in front of me was this huge

fir tree, evergreen, enormous evergreen tree that had these huge branches that looked as if they were reaching out to embrace me. Right in the middle of this grove of live oak trees and it was the only tree that was not a live oak tree. And I looked at this tree and I thought, that is Quinn. Quinn is different from all of the other kids. I mean, he had severe learning disabilities and he didn't have any friends and he was sick.

And I thought, that's Quinn. He is not like the other trees, but he is more beautiful than all the other trees. And just at that moment, I knew that Quinn was going to be okay. And it just never felt so happy in my life. I was transcendent in my feeling of just bliss. And so I became a devotee of the labyrinth. In the following year, we were, I had made

in a reservation to come out, mainly because I wanted to walk the labyrinth again. And Quinn was scheduled to have a test at children's hospital. And it was like an IQ test. And so I said I was going to postpone it and Ben said, look, there's nothing you can do. I'll take him to the test and you go on out there. So I said, okay, but at the moment that he was taking the test, I decided to go up to

the labyrinth in the middle of the day, the same moment. And I walked the labyrinth and I sat there alone in the middle of the labyrinth, focusing on Quinn and breathing and meditating for the whole hour that I knew he would be taking the test. And when I came back, they called us in and for the report and they were very grim face. And the doctor said, you know, we're sorry to tell you, but he did really badly on the test. He just didn't score at all.

However, the one really interesting thing is that he scored higher on one part of the test than anyone we have ever tested. And I said, what was that? And they said the maze. So after that, I was blown away and Ben built me a labyrinth in our farm down in the country for a birthday Christmas present. And he had the same guy who did the one at Grace Cathedral come out and it's a 50-foot

insure conference and it sits on a hill over looking the St. Mary's River. And it's unbelievably peaceful and beautiful and I go and meditate. I go there. I walk the labyrinth every time I'm there. And sometimes I'll go and sit and meditate for hours. I don't even know how long I'm there. Sometimes it's a couple of hours. Sometimes I'll be 15 or 20 minutes.

It just depends. But one day I was in the center of the labyrinth and I was meditating and I lay down, said it with my arms and legs out. And all of a sudden this little plane came over and I started circling around around around and I thought they think I'm dead. There's this dead person like that.

But I just find that it gives me a sense of clarity that nothing else does. It's different from prayer, but I just feel I always come away with something when I walk the labyrinth. And now I'm on the board of children's hospital because children have been, Quinn, was it children's hospital for so long? In Washington, D.C. Yeah. And we just built a healing garden upstairs on the roof of the hospital

and I got them to put a labyrinth up there so that parents and children can walk the labyrinth. And you know, there are a lot of hospitals who have, which have them now, and lots of churches too, because people just find them. The National Cathedral in Washington has two labyrinths that they put out once a month and have labyrinth walks and music and at night and candles. Get a little geeky and granular with me on what you do with your mind as You're walking the lab rinse and how that's different if at all from the sort of seeded or lying down meditation that you do when you reach the center Well usually what I do is I focus on something like

Quinn's health or Ben's health or After Ben died or Ben's health, or after Ben died. You know, I was sort of in this bubble of grief for at least a year, and I would walk the labyrinth and I would just concentrate on the grief and how I could deal with that grief, how I could get on with my life because there were times when I didn't feel I wanted to or could. So I start the labyrinth and I actually in my labyrinth it is surrounded by river stones and I've asked all of my friends to give me some trinket or something that belongs to

them that has no monetary value but that is meaningful to them, like a coin or a whatever might be. And I buried all of these things around the labyrinth, so that I have this sense of feeling totally supported by all of my friends. I have a little thing of my mother's ashes there and my father's buffalo nickel for when, from when he was in Korea and he was had commanding officer the buffaloes

He was Buffalo Bill and I have things from Quinn and Ben and my close friends and so when I started the lab rent It's just I I sort of have this little ritual where I kind of embrace all of my friends and sort of ask for their support. And then I will focus on whatever it is, whether it's Quinn's health or Ben's health or my grief or something. And so I walk, you walk very slowly as you go into the labyrinth and you just very slowly and very methodically just focus on what it is. You know, whether it's just say it's grief, help me get over this. Help me. How can I get over this grief?

How can I deal with it? How can I go on? Let me want to go on. And then I get to the sitter and sometimes I'll sit down, sometimes I'll stand up, sometimes I'll lie down, and I'm looking out at the river and usually close my eyes. And then focus again on what it is that I'm concentrating on, that I want clarity about. And I stay there until something comes to me, some sense of clarity. I mean, one day I was there and I opened my eyes and I looked up in the river and there

were these two boats. And one of them was this beautiful sailboat and it was sailing very calmly and softly along peacefully. And then there was this kind of jet boat, you know, cigarette boat that was kind of zooming around, you know, the river and making a lot of noise. And I sort of thought, I want to be the sailboat. I don't want to be the cigarette boat. You know, maybe I've been a cigarette boat earlier in my life, you know. But that's not who I am anymore, and that's not what I want to be. I want to be the sailboat. I want to be calm and peaceful and happy, and not sort of having to get there fast and go there. So, I mean, that just gives you

an idea of the kind of little moments of clarity that you have, and certainly with Quinn and looking at those trees, because that changed my life, and it changed my whole idea about who Quinn was. You know, I came back and looked at Quinn and I thought, he is more beautiful than all of the others. He's just different. It's interesting to hear you describe this because clearly, this practice which has done so much for you. On the other hand, it's actually quite different from the way I would imagine your brother, the Buddhist or me as a Buddhist slash mindfulness guy practices what we call quote unquote meditation. By the way, the word meditation, as has been said before, is a little bit like the word

sports. It describes a whole range of activities. But generally speaking, the way meditation is taught today is focus on your breath when you get lost, start again, or focus on a mantra when you get lost, start again. But you seem to have kind of, I don't know if this is the right word, invented a practice for yourself that is a little bit different, but seems to have done a great deal for you. You know, I write in my book, Finding Magic, about this book that I read, which I loved, and it's called A Religion of One's Own. And I realized when I read this book that it was written for me, because I have my own religion.

People ask me now what's your religion, because I was an atheist. I'm no longer an atheist. And I did travel around the world. And when I started the website, I didn't know anything about religion. My friend, John Meacham, who's a religion scholar and a writer sort of argued with me and talked me out of being an atheist and gave me a list of books to read about religion. And I read them and then I took a trip around the world to study the great faith. And I have been studying and thinking about religion,

interviewing people for the last 11 years. And so what I've done is, in sort of way, cherry picked the things that I like from different faiths, because there are a lot of things I don't like about religion, and certain religions, and there are a lot of things I do. That's not a word that people in organized religions like, and a cherry picking because they want you to just buy the whole package. And so I've created this religion of my own which works for me. And what I write about in the book is that it's so personal. You put 3,000 people in the National Cathedral or in a mosque or a synagogue. Every one of those people has a different view of God or the creator, whatever, and a different relationship, personal relationship with that being or deity or

relationship with that being or deity or thing or whatever they want to call it. And so I just feel that my own faith, my own religion is mine. And nobody has one that's like mine. And I wouldn't certainly ever think to tell somebody that they should believe this or they should believe that or this works or this doesn't work. I'm only saying what I've found works for me. And so I consider what I do in the labyrinth meditation. Even if I don't walk the labyrinth, I meditate every day for probably 10 or 15 minutes at the least. And I just feel centered. It just makes me feel calmer and happier. And there are

just so many things that don't bother me anymore, that used to bother me, that don't get to me. I mean, my husband was, I would certainly not say a Buddhist, and he would certainly not have called himself a Buddhist. He did have faith. He never went to church. And the last year and a half of his life, I interviewed him at the Washington Post for my website on faith. And we had never talked about religion. I mean, he didn't like it that I was an atheist, but he never discussed it.

We never discussed it. And I asked him if he was an atheist, but he never discussed it. We never discussed it. And I asked him if he believed in God, and he said, yes. And I was really surprised. And I said, do you think, for instance, he had been in World War II in the Pacific, on a destroyer, which was probably the most dangerous assignment you could have. And you saw a number of kamikaze pilots coming at his destroyer actually saw one that came so close that he could see the face of the pilot, the Japanese pilot, as the plane went down. And I said, the fact that you survived, do

you think God had a plan for you? And he said, yes, I do. And he said, I just, I can't imagine not having these beliefs. And the few times that he did pray, he prayed when Jack Kennedy died. Jack Kennedy was his closest friend. And he went to St. Matthew's Cathedral, which is interesting. And he was walking by St. Matthew's when Quinn was about to have heart surgery and went in and prayed for Quinn then. But his form of, I think, religion or meditation, this is why I say probably was a Buddhist, is that he was a woodsman, and we always had a place outside of Washington where, first it was a log cabin and the woods in West Virginia

and then it was in the woods this farm in southern Maryland. Ben would go out on the woods at sort of nine o'clock in the morning and come back at five in the afternoon. He would take some water with him and he'd have his axe and his chains on, his Jeep, and he would just disappear and he would go and he would clear brush and cut down dead trees and burn and and he described it as being mind emptying. But it was a form of meditation for him and he did it all the way through Watergate before he and I were not together during the Pentagon papers but he did it during that. He did it all the way through when Quinn was so sick and almost died, all those years. And it just gave him a sense of peace. And I have to say sometimes it was really annoying to me because he just never got upset about anything. And I would get upset.

During all the stress that he'd gone through now. I've never, I've never once saw Ben depressed, never in 43 years together. And I do think that working out in the woods, he had to get there. I mean, it was if he didn't get out in the woods, and Quinn is the same way, my son. He has to get down there and get out in the woods at least once every two weeks, or he starts going crazy. I mean, it's his religion too. But Ben used to have this expression that drove me crazy if I'd be upset about something he'd say.

When the history of the world is written, this is not going to be in it. And I would sort of want to go, pow, you know, look. Great point though. I think about that all the time. And you know, and now that Ben is gone, then it's left to me to think that. And I think that way, when things that normally used to upset me come up, I just keep thinking, well, when the history of the world is written,

this is not going to be in it. And I mean, I haven't written a book for a while. This is my fifth book. But I just remember the last four books being crazed during the book tour, you know, and checking how many books were being sold and, you know, just being frantic the whole time. And I don't feel that way now. I'm just so calm about it. You're the sailboat. I'm the sailboat. You know, if the book does well great if it doesn't do well I did the best I can I'm proud of it. I hope it does well, but you know life goes on and you know I'll write another book and

And I'll just be happy. I will continue to find magic in my life No matter what I want to get into your definition of magic and of magic and the fact that you say you're no longer an atheist. But just out of curiosity, how's Quinn these days? What does he do? How old is he? How's his health? Quinn is fabulous. He's 35.

His fiance and her five-year-old daughter just moved in with him. And their dog, Teddy Roosevelt, this last Labor Day. And they're blissfully happy together, and he works for the National Center for Learning Disabilities. He has his own website called FriendsOfQuin.com for young adults with learning disabilities,

which is terrific. And he interviews a lot of celebrities who are dyslexic or have certain learning disabilities. He did a wonderful interview last week with Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul and Mary. And this young now woman, a transgender young girl, young woman who wasn't a boy and is now a girl named Emily. And also she has learning disabilities and has been mocked and teased and bullied all of her life. And Peter Yaro wrote this wonderful song for her called Don't Laugh at Me. And she has this beautiful voice and so Quinn interviewed the two of them and it was just

magical. And they sang the song together, Don't Laugh at Me. And it made you cry. But he, Quinn has enormous empathy for people, and I think a lot of it is because he, of what he went through, but also because he had the love of his father, Ben admired Quinn more than anybody he ever knew, because he said Quinn was more strong and courageous and more resilient than anyone he knew, and, you know, to have been Bradley say that you're the person he most admire is a big deal.

And his health is okay. His health is great. Yeah, he has a pacemaker, but his health is okay. He still has learning differences, but he talks openly about it, and that's what he does. He works with people with learning differences. You refer to his interview with Peter Yerrow

and Emily as a magical, so that gets us back to magic. Yeah, puff the magic dragon. Exactly. That's a very organic variety of magic in that case. What do you mean when you say magic and what do you mean when you say you were an atheist but aren't anymore? Well, I became an atheist when I was four, when my father was in World War II, and he

liberated Dacau, and he took pictures of all of the bodies and emaciated people, and it was just, and he had scrapbooks made, and I found them after he came back from the war, and I was horrified. And where was this, where did you grow? Well, I'm an army brat. So we were living in Washington, DC at the time. But I've gone to 22 schools. I never lived any place longer than a year and a half

in my life. And I found these scrapbooks. And I finally confessed to my father that I had found them. And he was upset. I didn't, he didn't have TV then. I didn't know about the war. I just knew Nazis were bad people.

And Daddy explained to me what had happened. And I said to him, Daddy did God know about this. And he said, yes, he did. And I said, well, why didn't he do anything? And he said, God is a mystery. And I said, well, why didn't he do anything? And he said, God is a mystery. We don't know the answers. And I was just not only outraged, but devastated. And I cried all night long. And all I could think about was all of these little Jewish children who were praying to the same God I was and their parents for protection. And I was praying every night for God to bless me and my parents.

And everyone I loved, that God didn't listen to them, and he let that happen. So if he wasn't going to protect them, why would he protect me? And I just realized there can't be a God. And so I stopped believing in God then. I learned the word atheist when I was 13, and I was actually happy to see that,

because I never confessed that I didn't believe in God, but I was happy to see that there was actually this word that described that I wasn't alone, that I wasn't the only person who didn't believe in God. But so then I started studying, you know, I sort of went through all the, and I write a lot of stories about moments in the book, about moments in my life that were sort of transcendent or illuminating or had some meaning for me. And then after John Meacham and I met and he talked me out of being an atheist,

and I started studying about religion. What did I mean? He talked you out of being an atheist? Well, he talked you into believing in God. No, no, no. But he didn't... He said, you're not a negative person. And... And atheist is a negative word.

It... because it means you're against something. And atheist is someone who denies the existence of God. Well, I can't deny the existence of God because I don't know. I mean, my favorite bumper sticker is I don't know and you don't either. Nobody knows. And the word agnostic means nothing to me because we're all agnostics. I mean, the Pope is an agnostic, because nobody really knows. You believe, you have faith, but you don't know. And so, so then, so Meacham said, you know, go out and read all these books. He gave me a whole list,

and I did, and learned something about it. Then if you decide you want to be an atheist fine, but at least know what you're talking about. And so I began to read, you know, William James' variety of religious experiences was a huge eye opener for me in terms of the different kinds of religion. And also I thought the interest, the confluence between psychiatry and religion was really fascinating to me, but that's a whole other area of exploration, but something that I've really been fascinated by. But I, you know, so I came to start seeing that there were things, especially on this trip,

about religion that really appealed to me. And particularly the rituals and the ceremonies, which I used to think were sentimental and mockish and sort of embarrassing. And then suddenly now I find that I'm embracing ritual all the time. I mean, it's probably the most important ritual in my life was my husband's funeral at the National Cathedral, which I thought was transcendent. I mean, I really felt that we were in touch with the divine at that moment.

And so then I had to figure out what I was. If I wasn't an atheist, I decided I was a person of faith because I did believe in magic. And I believed, I grew up in the deep south. And in the deep south, you know, there were people believed in my southern, like, Dougal family, Scottish members of my family believed in the occult, and they believed in the Scottish stones and time travel and psychic phenomena and palmistry and and voodoo and and tarot card card reading and so I grew up with all of

that and that was sort of and I was also a Christian at the time but that that was part of my embedded religion that was part of what I understood and I accepted it and and all of the women in our family have had some psychic abilities and I do have some psychic abilities although it comes and goes. I mostly like it when it goes because it's very uncomfortable when it does happen. You mean like you can sit with somebody and tell what their future is or? Well, I don't know, but just you just have flashes. I mean, I think people, I think everyone has psychic abilities actually. I just think that some of them are more developed than others.

I mean, you know, you know, you have thousands. Everybody's had an experience with like, you know, they're driving along and all of a sudden they have a really horrible feeling about, it's their child and they call, you know, the child and they find out that the child has been an accident or a sick or something, you know, I mean, these moments of whether psychic or telepathy or whatever, you know, I mean, these moments of whether psychic or telepathy

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And so that was all magic and growing up that was not considered a religion, it was not considered particularly legitimate, but as I grew older and particularly when I was writing this book, I sort of had the subiphany, which is that all religion is magic. And that anything that you believe, any kind of faith you have, is all about faith. You have to take it on faith. I mean, faith is like this said that, you know, it's a blind man walking into a black room, a darkened room, and looking for a black cat and finding it. It's something that you have to believe in.

I mean, it's not that you have to see it to believe it. You have to believe it to see it. And that's what faith really is. And so I realized that, you know, if you talk about any kind of religion or Christianity, you talk about Jesus Christ and Christ walking on water and the Virgin birth and raising Lazarus from the dead and actually being resurrected and going up to sit on the right hand of God or Muhammad taking dictation from Allah and writing down the Quran or Buddha or the Hindu religions and there are many gods that's all magic. And you have to believe in that magic in order to have faith in it.

And that whatever I believed, whatever part of my embedded religion, whatever part of it was magical, was no different. And certainly, as legitimate as anything, anyone else believes. And the astrology, for instance, I once interviewed a foreign minister from an Arab country who traveled with his astrologer and he would never make a move without him. So many, I mean, most people in the Middle East have astrologers and in India and in a lot of countries in the Middle East and Southeast, I mean Southeast Asia. And I once suggested to someone in the State Department

that they have a resident astrologer on the staff because even though they may not think it's serious, it would be really smart to know what the astrologer is telling, you know, the Saudi prince when they're about to meet, whether this is an auspicious moment or whether Mercury is in retrograde or whatever it might be, it would be helpful to know what this other guy is thinking. And I have been to an astrologer for years, this one astrologer who I find brilliant and she does more of a sort of a life map than

anything else is not really prognostication. But that any of these things are, I mean, astrology is old, and that people will often make fun of things because they're not institutional religions, and that they happen to be in another category, which is magic. But when you look at anything that anyone believes, if people will make fun of Mormons because they can't believe that Joseph Smith found the tablets, the golden tablets,

but Mormonism is a very young religion. I think if the Mormonism had been developed or discovered in 2000 years ago, people would take it more seriously. I think that new religions are things that people are more skeptical about, even though they may just be as legitimate as any other faith. So I ended up believing that magic was what my religion was, because I think that, and the stories in my book are all about things that I say led me to find magic.

Do you believe in God? I believe that there is a creator, and I can't wrap my mind around the fact that there was first nothing and then something. But I don't have a personal God, I don't have a personal God to pray to. However, I do pray. But I pray it's more of sending out good thoughts and positive thoughts and wishes. Could it be called wishes? I mean, if somebody is sick in the hospital, you know, and when

Quinn was sick, people would say, I'm praying for you. And I thought, well, I'll take all the help I can get. I don't pray to a God or a thing or a person, but I put out positive thoughts or positive energy because I think it makes me feel better and I don't know whether it works or not. That's the thing. I mean, I think nobody does know whether it works or not. But when we talk about magic, and it really ends up being about meaning and what the meaning of your life is.

And I had to sort of come to that conclusion by finding that the magic that happens in my life, there are moments every single day in all of our lives that are magic and that we don't necessarily realize it or we don't accept it because we're looking for some thunderbolt or some giant thing that is transcendent or that changes our lives when there's so many magical moments all day every day.

And I think that I know you've written about happiness a lot. And I found that what I found was that you don't look for happiness to find meaning. You look for meaning to find happiness. And that what has given me the most happiness in my life is finding meaning. And what is meaningful to me is loving the people I love and taking care of the people I love. I know that taking care of Quinn and then both of my parents

who were sick and then died and then taking care of Ben all those years and after he died, that was probably the most spiritual thing I ever did in my life and gave my life more meaning than anything ever has. And I was filled with love for Ben and he, for me, and his gratitude toward me for taking good, such good care of him was just overwhelming. And I was more in love with him the day he died than I had ever been in my life before. And that was the most meaningful thing that could ever have happened. So I'm just approaching your thesis from my own sort of selfish standpoint or selfish is into right word but like a personal

standpoint And so I completely buy when you say the source of meaning is connect interconnection connection with other human beings I think say in my experience that is true Also, I think there's a enormous amount of meaning to be had in just living your life fully and instead of Walking around in a fog of rumination and projection, you know, this autopilot that most of us live in, and that can be a source of magic however you want to define it. I would define it in a non-metaphysical way, but just in the idea that, wow, actually there's a lot more

beauty and interesting stuff in our work-a-day lives, and we often pay attention to. And I also think that through meditation practice, you can find a kind of meaning and a mystery by just looking at your own mind. That, you know, who is this me that I think is so solid and stable, and how do I, how am I aware of all of this stuff? Who's taking delivery of these various packages that are coming in, the seeing, the hearing, the thinking, all that stuff. Who is Dan? I think there's a lot of meaning and interesting stuff in there,

but where I draw the line and I'm curious to get back to this with you is I have respect for the world's great religions or even the world's unsanctioned religions, including palmistry. People want to believe it, as long as it's not harming anybody else. I have no beef with that, and came to that view through many, many years of covering faith and spirituality, but personally, I have trouble believing in anything

for which there is no proof. Part of that is because my parents are scientists and my wife's a scientist, and part of it is because I just constitutionally, I can't, I mean, if you say you believe in it I know be for that again as long as it's not hurting anybody but I don't I can't make that leap and I'm curious how you got there in terms of being able to have faith in something that you really can't prove Well, that's I first of all I say this in the book that

I First of all, I say this in the book that I accept and respect what anyone believes as long as it doesn't hurt anybody. That's the most important thing about accepting other people's beliefs in their faith. I also agree. I mean, my argument all along, certainly, about God and a personal God, that I could never believe in an all-loving, all sort of, all-powerful omniscient, omnipotent God, because the issue of suffering comes in, and no one, what they call theodicy, the problem of suffering comes in and no one is what they call theodicy, the problem of suffering, that no one has ever and all the times that I have interviewed hundreds, thousands

of people about God. No one has ever given me an answer that's satisfactory about how could a loving God allow such suffering. I just don't understand it and I don't believe it. But the interesting thing is, and I felt the same way you have, that you've got to show it to me, or else you've got to show me empirical proof, but that sort of eliminates the whole idea of faith. Yeah, it does. But that sort of eliminates the whole idea of faith. Yeah, it does. Yeah, so, you know, and I never quite knew what faith meant

until I started thinking about things that I have faith in, like I have faith in myself and my ability to to care for people and to love the people I love. And I have faith in my ability to thrive and survive, and I am resilient. I have faith in Quinn, and I had faith in Ben, and faith in the terms of confidence, as opposed to metaphysical thing. But I think that what you're saying is that if you can't prove it, you can't believe it. Well, I can't. That's right. Yeah. And that's what I said. It's not like you have to see it to believe it. It's like you have to believe it to see. Yeah, but how did you get there? How did you go from? Yeah. Because, well, I'm stammering and stuttering now

because I'm just have to figure out how I should have the answer to that, Dan. How did I get there? Because. But it seems, whether or not you want to talk about how you got there or whether you figured that out, it just seems so important to you now. The whole book is called Finding Magic.

Right. So, magic of a variety that is beyond the mundane. So, I actually think it's plenty magical. You seem to have adopted and I'm just curious like, how? Why? Okay. So, I'm coming there. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm glad you asked me that question because I realize that I don't care how scientific you are and I don't care what a scientific genius anybody is. There is so much that science doesn't know and can't prove. I mean, you can take the telescope, and you can send rockets up into the outer space,

and you can look as far as, but the final answer that scientists don't know is, where do the universe come from? What is out there? What's really out there? So there are so many things that science can't explain. And there are some scientists who are actually people of faith because they say there is a moment where you have to draw the line. There's a moment where you can go only so far with science and then you can't explain

the rest of it. And so what is it? So for me, I think it's more of a feeling than I have. I mean, and that's what belief is, that's what faith is, that there's a feeling that I have that I can only describe by saying it's transcendent. It's a feeling of being in touch with the divine, a feeling of just incredible happiness that comes to me at certain times in my life that I can't explain. And that no one can explain it.

I mean, you can say, well, the neurons in your brain, blah, blah, blah, and if you put you put, you know, all kinds of cords and plug you into machines and everything they'll show that your brain does. But in the end, nobody can really explain where it comes from. And so, I mean, astrology is different because astrology is a science in the sense that there are the stars and there are the planets and they do move around and you know that the moon does affect the tides and it affects people's blood and the water in your body. You know, different planets have different aspects that will affect the human being. But when somebody draws a chart about you, an astrological chart, the really good astrologers

and the way they interpret it, is more of a map of your life and who you are. It's more like going to therapy than anything else. It's just sort of saying this is who you are and this is what, you know, this is how you will, you will tend to work, to tend to behave, tend to live. These are the issues you're going to have, the issues that you won't have. And I mean, that's more concrete to me than anything else. But the sense, the feeling that I get in these moments, I don't feel that there's any explanation for them.

When I was at Ben's funeral, I was in the National Cathedral. There's something just amazing about that building. And every sometimes I just go in and just sit there. Now, I'm not praying to God. I don't know what I'm doing in there except that I just have the sense that there is something bigger than I am that makes me feel somehow stronger and more peaceful and more supported. And so I think I'm not being very articulate. No, I think you're actually we're being quite articulate there. I think a lot of people,

resonate with that. There's a feeling of mystery and having this kind of hard to articulate a suspicion that there's something larger and unexplained. And I guess where I take that is like, I'm comfortable with mystery. I'm intrigued by mystery, but I don't have to believe, I don't have to like think that there't have to think that there's something behind it that I can't make any case for. Well, my book is divided into three sections.

The first one is magic, the second one is mystery, and the third is meaning. And it was, you know, that I grew up sort of believing in magic. Mystery is when I started feeling, you know, I was looking for what it was, trying to figure it out. And meaning is when I realized that I had found meaning in my life. And that was meaning that was caretaking and loved George Valiant.

Did Harvard did the study called the Grant Study that my husband was part of with you? Oh, your husband was part of that? Yeah, my... Yeah, my... J. Kennedy, yeah. My grandfather part of that? Yeah, my grandmother. Yeah, my grandmother. My grandmother gave me that book when I was younger. They basically studied young men from Harvard

over the course of their lives. Their lives. Most of them are dead now. But Ben was in that study, and they filled out a form of answering questions about their lives every year. And Valiant wrote a book about it later. And he said, he came to the conclusion after interviewing these people over a course of 70, 80, 90 years,

that there was only one conclusion he came to, and that was happiness equals one thing, and that is love full stop. And you can't measure love. I mean, you can't scientifically measure love. I mean, to me love was the most important thing in my life with Ben and still is now. And I think how you love is the most important thing you can do. And I couldn't live without it. And I don't know how anyone can live without it.

But scientifically, how do you define love? How do you describe it? You just know it. When you see it, you feel it. And so, for what I believe, I mean, for what faith is, I mean, if somebody says they believe that Jesus was the Son of God, they believe it. I mean, they're Catholics who believe that when you take communion, when you put the bread in your mouth and the wine in your mouth, that it actually turns into the blood and flesh of Christ.

It's called transubstantiation. And a lot of people believe that. And I mean, the beliefs of people all around the world are extraordinary. I mean, to a lot of beliefs to us are just sound crazy. But the fact is that they believe them and they have faith in them, and it gives them some sense of security and some sense of support.

And it gives them happiness and comfort. And so, I mean, what I'm looking at is something and I have decided that I don't have to see it to believe it, that I know that I have a feeling of being in touch with the divine or being transcendent or a feeling of magic, then I don't need anything more than that. I don't need somebody writing down a piece of paper for me. This is what the study shows,

and this is what love means, and maybe you love Ben and maybe you don't, but how do you quantify that scientifically? In our remaining moments, I just want to ask you about, you really kind of made a name for yourself in many ways by Washington society. And I just would, so a big shift here in conversation because we've really delved into the deep end of the pool

in lots of ways. But I'm just curious, are you still, are you a sailboat or a cigarette boat when it comes to dinner parties and making the scene in DC these days? Do you no longer care? Are you still interested in it? And how are things different now under Trump than they were in the many administrations you've

experienced previously? Well, I'm just sailing along, baby. But do you still throw parties? Oh, all the time. All the time all the time and There is and when talk about ritual Somebody said if you had if you could choose one dinner party that you could go to and throughout history What would it be and I said it would be the last supper? Because here's when Jesus was a real party boy as my friend Tim Schreiber says that almost everything in the Bible is Jesus is at a party.

And you know, what does he do right before he dies? He has everybody for dinner and they break bread and they drink wine and they sit around and talk. And there's something I actually did a very short-lived column at the Washington Post called The Sacred Table because for me, entertaining, there's a certain sacredness about it, and there's a certain sense of spirituality about what I can't think of anything I love more than to have the people I really care about sitting around my dining room table, and with lots of candles and wine and good food, and talking about things that are really important to them

and really sort of communing. It's a form of communion, you know? And I want people to leave my house sort of feeling levitated, feeling affirmed, feeling honored in some way. And I mean, I think that happens when you get people who you care and I don't invite people, I don't invite jobs to my parties.

I invite the people I like. And if they happen to have jobs fine, if they don't fine. Big jobs, you mean? Yeah, well, you know, being part of the administration or a journalist or whatever. But I invite the people I like, and that I care about. And people always seem to have a really good time. And I think when people talk about parties in Washington, they often think, oh, will the Georgetown dinner party set?

But I think that it's very sad what's happened in Washington over the last, certainly when I first started working at the Washington Post, which is almost 50 years ago. I was covering parties, and Republicans and Democrats would go to dinner all the time together. But they all live there. Now, with the airplane, nobody lives there.

They live in their home districts, and they sleep on their sofas at night, or they travel back and forth to wherever. They don't know each other. There's this incredible sense of ranker and unhappiness and hostility in Washington that never used to exist before. And of course, now it's more toxic than has ever been before during the Trump administration. But when I have parties, I bring people together. And people always, I mean, Washington is 4% voted for Trump in Washington.

And I had a winter solstice party, which is the 21st of December, which is welcoming in the new. And it's that winter solstice is the darkest day of the year. And so it was after the darkness comes the light. And I have to say, most of the people who were there were not Trump supporters. But and people were still in shock that Trump had been elected. And but everybody came and just wanting

to have a good time, wanting to relax, but also feeling a sense of community, because there was a certain fear of what was gonna happen to the country. And I think people left feeling, we're gonna be okay, we have this sense of community here, and we're all in this together. And nothing is gonna be bad

as long as we can all be together. And I'm, you know, when I went off to Martha's Vineyard for the summer, August, and Quinn, my son lives in the house next to mine. It's connected to mine. He said, Mom, I really missed you a lot this summer. And he said, you know, when you're here so long, when you're not here so lonely, because when you're here, the house always seems to be filled with people and people laughing and having dinner and having a good time and having fun. And I really like that.

And that made me feel great because that's what entertaining should be about. That's what I do. And I don't ever have a party for no reason. It's always to honor somebody or to for something or like the Winter Soul's party, you know, out of the darkness comes the light or, you know, for someone's book or a dinner for somebody's book or somebody's engagement or whatever. So that there's always something or some reason to celebrate or someone to celebrate. So, and I think that it's just too bad that we don't have that kind of social connection anymore in Washington.

And you know, sometimes, I mean, I invite still invite people from both sides with the aisle, but a lot of them don't come. It's been fun to sit here and commune with you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dan. If people want to learn more about you, obviously finding magic a spiritual memoir, they can go pick that up. Are there other places they should go in order to learn more about you, obviously finding magic a spiritual memoir, they can go pick that up. Are there other places they should go in order to get more Sally Quinn?

Well, I have a Facebook page and I'm on Twitter, but I would say Amazon because I'm pushing Amazon because Amazon owns the Washington Post, which is where I work. So I would say, yes, go to Amazon or go to your local book stores and pick it up. And this is a good time. My lawyer represents both me and Hillary Clinton. And he said, I have to tell you that Hillary's book is now coming out in the same day. Yours is.

And he said, but there's good news, because she'll drive people into the store. So what I'd like to say to people is that if you're gonna go into the store, you should definitely buy my book. If you're gonna buy Hillary's because mine is an antidote to hers because once you read about how awful any campaign is

and this was the worst campaign anybody's ever been through, you're going to need some spirituality and some different outlook on life. That's a good pitch. Thank you very much. You did a great job. Appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, that does it for another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast.

If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe, rate us. Also if you want to suggest topics, you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. Importantly, I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Kohan, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who helped make this thing possible. We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday.

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