Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 511: George Saunders on: “Holy Befuddlement” and How to Be Less of a “Turd”

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

One of the great perils and problems of our age is that we sometimes become too entrenched in our views and attached to being right. According to guest George Saunders, the antidote is something he calls “holy befuddlement.” George Saunders is the author of eleven books, including Lincoln in the Bardo, which won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for best work of fiction in English. His most recent book, Liberation Day, is a collection of short stories that explore the ideas of power, ethics, and justice, cutting to the heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. In this episode we talk about:How George Saunders creates “holy befuddlement” in himself and in his readersHow shaving down dogmatism can help us be, in his words, less of a “turd”How to deal with heightened expectations we might have of ourselvesHealthy ways to enjoy praiseWhat it looks like to cultivate a relationship with our self, to the extent that the self existsThe importance of moral ambiguity in his workThe impact of meditating – or not meditating – on our creative work And forgiveness and coming up shortFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/george-saunders-511See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, everybody, I think we can all agree that one of the great perils and problems of our age is that we've become too entrenched in our views, to attached to being right. We're stuck in our information silos and convinced that the other side is monstrous beyond repair. We have a surplus of conviction and there are market supply chain issues when it comes to cognitive empathy for people who are on the other side on any number of issues. And this is true not just at a macro level but also in interpersonal relationships.

Think about it. How often do you dig in during arguments with friends or family members and refuse to budge? The antidote, according to my guests today, the great writer George Saunders, is something he calls holy befuddlement. In Buddhism, a tradition by which Saunders has been deeply influenced. We might call it, don't know-mind or non-attachment to views. One of the reasons I love having George Saunders on this show aside from the fact that he's straight up delightful and aside from the fact that he's one of our greatest living writers is that he can talk

not only about his extraordinary art, but also about our core subject here on this show, which is how to do life better. So today you're gonna hear George talk about how he endeavors to create holy befuddlement in himself and in his readers. He'll also talk about how shaving down on dogmatism can help us be, in his words, less of a turd. For those of you who don't know,

George won a man booker prize for his extraordinary novel, Lincoln in the Bardot. He's got a new book of short stories out called Liberation Day, and that reference to Liberation will have no shortage of resonance for anybody interested in Buddhism and meditation. In this conversation, we also talk about how to deal with heightened expectations we might have of ourselves, healthy ways to enjoy praise, what it looks like to cultivate a relationship with ourself to the extent that the self exists, the importance of moral ambiguity in his work,

the impact of meditating or not meditating on his creative work, and forgiveness and coming up short. We'll get started with George Sanders right after this. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier

instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist, Kelly McGonical and the great meditation teacher, Alexis Santos, to access the course, just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps

or by visiting 10%.com. All one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my 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. George Sander is welcome back to the show. It's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me again. Really happy to have you back on the show. You have a new book. It's called Liberation Day. Congratulations, by the way, on your new book. Thank you. And I read some of the supporting materials

that were sent to us by your publisher, including a Q&A that you did with the publisher about the title. And it seems like there are two levels to this title in terms of meaning. And so I thought maybe we would start there. Why liberation day? Well, my approach to all things artistic is kind of to trust intuition, trust this process, which is to just come to the work every day, respond to it from a gut level, make the changes, put them in, and then do that over and over again. And the idea is that if you do that, there's some kind of wisdom

that's better than your everyday habitual thinking wisdom that gets into the work. So same with picking titles. Like that one was just, you know, I got to the end, we're here with the stories that are in the book, and I just scan and see which one of these titles is the least bad. Like that kind of thing. But then there's a lovely time when the stories are all edited, you're trying to read them from the beginning with a really fresh mind like you haven't seen it before.

And then you start to notice certain things. And one of the things I noticed was that almost, I would say every story is about that crossroads we get to where we're like mired in stuckiness in something, in some part of our life, and we're longing to get out of it. And so that's the first step. And the second step is in trying to get out of it. It's not easy and also it sometimes leads to further problems.

So I just noticed that in every story somebody was stuck and they could see higher ground, but somehow they couldn't quite get there. So then scanning the title's liberation day is just something lights up and you go, that's it. And then after you chose the title, you're gonna keep making tweaks to make the rest of the book live up to it, something like that. But it's really from the gut. What stinks the least? I like that you're setting such a high bar. That makes me feel better about my own writing. But in terms of the levels, though, because on one level, I'm paraphrasing you back to you, but on one level, you've said that Liberation Day speaks to the notion that everything changes.

So you may feel stuck, but the good news and the bad news is that it's going to be different in an anosecond in some way or another. And then there's a deeper level you have said that these characters that you're writing about here Some of them at least edge around seeing that a true liberation would be Not to be stuck in their cells Right, and that was another thing it hit me sort of laid in the game was that came up two or three times in different stories Or people got in real jams and they were no easy way out, except if they would stop wanting the things they wanted.

And so that resonated with what I know of Buddhism and but then also in other of the stories that people were deprived of their selves, deprived of their memories, deprived of their sort of their autonomy and those were terrible situations and those people longed for those vestiges of self like nostalgia and memory and so that was in this book the word that kept coming to me is conundrum because I kept writing myself into positions where I didn't really know what I was rooting for these characters and

I came to think especially after reading so much of the Russians for that last book as women upon in the rain. That's actually a pretty holy state to be in and that maybe the function of a story is to lead you there, to lead the reader temporarily into a state of sort of holy befuttlement, where the usual easy answers that we apply, because we're good people, and we like to have everything nailed down, are shown to be somewhat inadequate, or at least they're shown to be laden with consequence. So that moment where you think you're supposed to be laden with consequence. So that moment where you think you're supposed to be rooting for A succeeds, there are negative consequences.

You now think you should be rooting against A, and the writer goes, yeah, exactly. And backs out. And for me, that's a really hard position to maintain personally. I've had it a couple times on nonfiction pieces where I've gotten deep into some nonfiction story where I've involved travel. And gone in with a really nice idea about it, very tidy, liberal progressive idea. And then reality happens and pretty soon your idea is standing there in tatters and it's sweet to say, I honestly don't know. I really don't know. And for me, it's even become sometimes a feeling of strength to go, I'm alright with this feeling of being truly befuddled. So I think these stories kind of came to be almost like I'm trying to guide the reader to be in that state for a few minutes along with me. And then we go back to our

all-knowing selves again. I love the phrase holy befuddlement. What is holy about it and how would it come to our rescue in the course of our daily lives? Yeah, it sounds like something Batman would say, or Robin. I think what it means for me is if you're in that state, if you're genuinely in that state, you have removed from you your ability to make facile mistakes. In other words, if you are in that state and a problem presents itself, you have a kind of a new respect for that problem. You've been humbled. I mean, really humbled. Not like the way that celebrities say they've been humbled when they win something.

But you've literally been like, your judgment has been shorn from you. I think this happens when somebody dies or when somebody's sick or you get some bad news. Or sometimes just when you're from you and I'm in a state of real high feeling of anything, you sort of see as if in the rearview mirror that your usual way of judging things is a little too easy and it comes out of your desire to cling to certainty, like to know where you stand. So I think the photoman is holy because it turns off certain delusional tricks, I guess. Certain ways that we know A and B about ourselves, but in that certainty we're missing out on something as well. But I think, as I say, it's very hard to get there and it's very hard to sustain it, which I think is part of the reason that art exists. It's just

almost sacramently to put you into that state for maybe two or three minutes after you finish something. You read a story by Alice Monroe or you hear a bit of beautiful music and just for a few minutes, you're kind of shorn of the quick answer. You've said this before so what I'm about to say is not an original observation but this holy befuddlement seems like a really nice antidote to much of what is ailing our culture right now. I think just to get a taste of it, I mean certainly on the other hand, there are some big things happening about which we should be active, but you know, I was talking to somebody the other day and he said he thought the effect of a work of art is reorientation.

So it's not like it's teaching you something entirely new, but there's a, say, a better part of yourself, a part of yourself that resides in the world a little more deeply, the work of art reminds you that that guy exists. And that's a pretty big thing because I know I've gone through weeks of my life where that I forgot about that person, just running on autopilot. So I think that's the high water mark of what art can do. And I don't think it always does it. That's why some work is of art and lasts and others don't because it's pretty rare

when something can really have that effect. I don't know if what I'm about to say is germane, but there's a term I heard once, moral elevation, which apparently happens when you see an active kindness. I think it's why at the end of my old job when I used to be a network news anchor, we would always end the show with something we called the kicker, which sometimes was silly to water skiing squirrel or whatever, but sometimes it was something sublime where we was somebody who did something just awesome in the world for other people. And I think that there's a contact high we can get from that, which seems not

wholly removed from what you're describing. Yeah, it's kind of a role modeling, isn't? And I think that's for me, germane thing is it's not like we're being told something fresh. It's almost like moral re-evaluation. Oh, yeah, I've done that in my life. I respond to that kind of kindness or that kind of daring. I can do it. I've done it, and I can do it again.

And I think with stories, especially, they're usually small. The things that happen in them that are beautiful are quite quotidian. They're on the everyday level. I think that's beautiful because it reminds us that you don't have to cure cancer or stop or war or something. I mean, just the small story scale actions are actually quite meaningful. Those kind of incremental things that we can do that you see in check-off or again, Al Smerot, just a little moments where somebody in the story experiences more elevation and does something. Then you go, oh yeah, it's not irrelevant. It's not inconsequential.

If in the next two hours I do one thing that isn't flawless or that is inclined towards a sort of kindness or something. And I think these days with so much craziness swirling around, I'm taking a lot of comfort in or trying to take comfort in the idea that the small is not trivial. It's almost like you're a sinking ship and you're looking at the life that's like, I'm not concentrating on this buckle. Make sure the buckle correctly or reach over to my friend and buckle his correctly. It's not nothing. Joseph Goldstein, the great meditation teacher, is a frequent flyer on the show, has said, there is no hierarchy to compassionate action.

We think that compassion or love or whatever you want to call it. We might think or some of us might assume consciously or so consciously that it needs to be grand, it needs to be operatic, there needs to be string music playing beneath our big bold action, but it really can be small, and that doesn't place it down some hierarchy. Right, right. I think that's important. Yeah, because I know I have something in my mind that's kind of like very willing to say, with all this going on, what does it matter that you're doing this little good thing? And that's, I mean, I think that's really a form

of despair to negate a small act because you haven't accomplished the big one. But again, that's why the story for me is, even the doing of this, writing of the story is really a lovely reminder of that because at least in my practice of it, you don't get to go into the story and say, okay, let's make this one great.

That never works. You have to start really small. Like, let me find a couple of sentences that are somewhat compelling. Okay, you got them. Oh, good. Well, actually, the first one's not as good as it could be. All right. Then now you're going to make a small tweak.

Is it worth it? As an artist, I know 100 percent it is because the small tweaks are the only thing you have to make up the big thing. So the tens of thousands of micro decisions in a story, some of which almost seem laughably trivial, semi-colon or not, I know from experience in my gut that those add up to something bigger or not. That's all you've got as those little decisions. So that's kind of heartening that for me I have to put aside any notion of being a good writer or a great writer or moving somebody or making a certain political statement. All I add is totally off the board and it's all sublimated to which word is

better here, which phrase can I take out. And that's kind of empowering. So maybe in life the same way. I mean, you've only got the next hour and that's really what you've got control of. You talked about your attitude when approaching a new work, a new story and how counterproductive it would be to come in thinking, now I'm going to do something great, super moving. But how do you avoid that given what's happened in your career thus far? After you win a man booker prize or after you have all these positive reviews all over the place, after you're profiled in the New York Times Sunday magazine, how do you not have these self-generated expectations on your back

as you hit the keyboard? You do have them. And you know, you say, I wouldn't be a human being if I didn't, but then you spin around real quick and knock it off your back and look at it. Like, okay, George, in what ways are you inclined to be an asshole because of all this attention? And then I can list them and I can observe them. Then I think you sort of say, okay, that what I say is that would not be beneficial to your future work.

Would it? No, sir, it would not. Okay, can we get over that as much as you can? Now, I always say it's kind of like, if somebody ate like six vats of beans, they would fart. There's no, so attention is like that. You get attention, you're gonna get gasp you imploded to say that you won't, would imply that you're

some kind of superhuman though. So I think the thing is to admit it. And for me, I have a real, as neurotic as I am, I have a real tough guy inside me with regard to my work. So I'm pretty good at saying, if you wallow in this attention too much, it's going to make you less of a writer. Do we want that? We don't. Okay, get over it. At the same time, realizing that that ego takes a lot of crazy forms. So it can take the

form of the voice saying, you're doing so well with this attention. You're doing just what you told Dan, you should do. They're by the ego gets stronger. So it's an ongoing thing. But I think mostly it's just I really want to do something good before I die and there's so many ways of getting distracted and attention is one for sure. Or an incorrect relation to attention is one. Can you allow yourself to enjoy some of the attention? Is there a healthy form of craving when it comes to praise? I think there is and I talked to my students about this. Since most of us, I mean, if you're in the arts or you're in communication or in attainment, you got into it or maybe if you're into anything, you got into it for certain reasons that maybe we're not wholly at the beginning.

You wanted attention, you wanted praise, you wanted to be good, you wanted to, for me, I felt like if I was just good at something, then I would excuse all of my other defects as a person. So I say to my students, that's what you got, that's the energy source that you have. So you'd be kind of silly to deny it, especially since we know that denying those things doesn't eradicate them, it just makes them pissed off and they lear you from across the room. So I say, you know, whatever your strongest motivation for working is, don't judge it, just use it. Just literally just take that, like converting it into fuel and go ahead. And what happened with me, I think it's still happening, is that early, let's say, crass set of reasons for writing,

they're still very much there. There may be a smaller proportion of what drives me and what's driving me now is the sense of how Beautiful a story could be the one that I haven't gotten to yet. So yeah pleasure in it is definitely part of it And I've kind of learned to though not lean on that too much like I think when I was younger a Good review would come in and I almost like carry it around either literally or in my mind and that's like eating a bunch of baby roofs I mean the pleasure dies out of it when you've overused it. So I've gotten a little better at taking a quick hit of pleasure and then kind of just literally going onward, just that word onward. So that way, it's not a bad thing, I think, too. I mean, we were given these eagles somehow and they seem pretty important in how we survive. So I think to try to totally deny its existence as sort of silly,

but to say, okay, you can play, but we're not going to, we're not going to misunderstand you as being something that you're not Mr. Eagle. I had a, what I think was a kind of really important breakthrough on this very issue a couple of years ago, I was walking around kicking my own ass for wanting the attention and for wanting the praise. And I then told myself a story about how everything I did was fruit of the rotten tree because the motivation was not wholesome. I mean, I could see that there were wholesome motivations driving me, but I also saw, I think, most sailing into my mind was this desire for positive reviews or nice ad replies on Twitter or whatever

it is. And I was having a conversation one day with my executive coach, your guy named Jerry Kelona who's been on this show a lot of times, great guy. And I was saying to him something along these lines and he said, well, why can't you just think about it like an exchange? You are giving your audience love in the form of your work that is useful to them. And you are in exchange getting love from them

and that fuels your ability to do more work. It's okay to have these motivations as long as you have them in their proper place. Does any of that resonate with you? Yeah, it's beautiful. When I was a kid, I read Walden and something got triggered in me and I thought, oh my god, yeah, every behavior is basically selfish. Therefore, effort is always proof of ego. Therefore, I should never want anything or have make any effort. So this would be at 15. And I thought, okay, that's right. Just I'm just going to anytime I'm proud of myself,

I'm going to distrust it. Anytime I try to do something, try to impress anybody, which is constantly I'm going to distrust it. And I basically went to bed. I got so depressed, there was just every time good energy would come up. And me and I'd want to spend it, this little voice would go, no, no, no, that's ego. And basically what happened was after four days, I'm like, I can't do this. I don't care. I'm not going to live like this. And I just gave myself permission to seek what I wanted.

And now I mean, in retrospect, I think this was something about, you know, they talk about the absolute and the relative. So in the absolute sense, yeah, there's not much meaning. Everything's pretty empty of meaning until the human personality comes to it and makes meaning and so on. But on the relative scale, the little things do matter. If somebody's feeling bad and you say just the right thing and they feel better, that actually is good.

So I think a lot about that, about the absolute truth of the universe, okay. But then the relative truth, which, it's in the details. And I don't think we can live without that, without some lavishing of attention on our own desires and so on. And then it's a case with so many things,

it's just a matter of proportion. And that's where it gets sticky to them. I'm not a Buddhist scholar, and what I'm about to say may make that quite clear, but as I understand it in the ancient language of Pali, which is the language in which the Buddha's original teachings was written down, there is the word Tanha, which can be roughly translated into thirst or craving, which is the source of our suffering.

But there's also a word I think it's chanda, which is like a healthy desire, the desire to be enlightened, the desire to help other people. And I think those words kind of speak to this discussion you and I are having right now. Yeah. And I think I talked earlier about this idea of conundrums. And as I'm getting ancient, I'm noticing that when I feel the best or the most intelligent is when I've got two notions, the seam contradictory, that also both seem true and they're just sitting there and I'm all right with it. That's to me it is the highest place to be. So this is one of the first interviews I've done

for this book and I noticed myself segueing into a certain mode where the interviewee has answers, which completely runs contradictory to what I learned right in the book, which is don't have answers. Have questions. So it's interesting, and I think, yeah, I think those two words you just used it. That's a perfect indicator of how difficult that question is of thirst on hunger. That maybe for me at these days, I find myself drawn to that moment where I go, huh, yeah, that's a tough one. And trying to learn to sit there a little longer

without doing what's natural to me, which is to resolve it. Much more of my conversation with George, Sanders right after this. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai.

And I'm Sydney Battle. And we're the host of Wunder E's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud. From the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feud say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Brittany's fans form the free Britney movement dedicated to fring her from the infamous

conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which sets its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery app. You said earlier that while holy befuddlement is a worthy goal, it's tricky in a time when there are urgent problems where we do need to take a stand, climate, bigotry, the demise of democracy. These seem like issues on which

we should have perhaps a pretty clear point of view. So that seems like another conundrum. I think it really is. Yeah. And I mean, the only resolution that I've made is weird, but is to keep reading stories and novels because I think, let's say that you had to, you knew you're going to have to weigh in on a difficult family issue. You knew that was going to happen at the forthcoming dinner or something. I think one of the things I feel I would want to do is, first of all, clear my mind of as many thoughts as I could, projections and precepts.

And I should this and I shouldn't that just clear all that out. And then I would like to have what you described earlier as a moment of moral elevation. So just before I go into the lunch, I observe something on the street that's totally transcendent in its complexity that opens up my heart or I listen to some Bach or something. But something that goes, oh yeah, life, something gets you a little closer to how expansive life really is and how confusing and how beyond our grasp. It's just something that reminds you of that. Then you go into the difficult conversation in, I don't know what you call it, you just

got less BS in you at that point. You know, you've just seen something that morally elevated you. You've just cleared your mind of all the habitual kind of ego protecting thoughts. You're wide open. You're not even pushing the issue of saying the thing you need to say. You're waiting for the moment to say it. That's going to come out better than if you've been out in the hall. You're like, okay, now first say this, then say this and don't let them push around.

You're going to have a wider range of opportunities. So I think that's what I'm thinking about these political issues is it actually does make sense to involve yourself in art, for example, so that if and when a decision is to be made by you, an action is to be taken, you're going to be fully there in as fully a human form as you can, then whatever happens will be fully there in as fully a human form as you can. Then whatever happens will be for the best. Something like that. Whereas the tendency in this time, I think is to have a list of demands and have a manifesto and a set of pithy catchphrases so you can level your opponents, that that we've been doing, that we do. The other thing

is a little harder. I find that when I think I know the answer, it's actually a little uncomfortable because part of me knows I don't. I call it like the subtle pain of dogmatism. I think one definition of hysteria is arguing strenuously for something some part of you suspects isn't true. Right, which we're all, every argument has that,

isn't it, doesn't it? Yes. Yeah. Now that's true. But then which were all every argument has that and that doesn't. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Now that's true. And but then again, the opposing thing is I feel within myself this dithering progressive, who somebody's hitting me in the head with a board and I say, oh, that's such a nice timber. Thank you. Thank you. You know, that that part of me, I'm a little suspicious of that guy too because sometimes in my desire to be a kind person, I find that it's an easy off-amp to just be a passive person or a docile person, which isn't the same thing at all, but it feels like it. And on the other other hand, do no harm, sometimes feel like a really good model for me. Somebody who talks too much and has too many wisecracks. So again, I would just say these things are swirling around and I would say the state

of the world makes them swirl with more force. It seems more imperative to figure out what one should do and harder to do that. Something that's helped me with this conundrum is a technique taught to me by some recent guests on the show Dan Clermann and Woudita Nisker there, Buddhist inflected communications coaches with whom I've been working for four years because it was identified by many people close to me that I was often a very unskilled interpersonal communicator. It was a correct diagnosis just for the record. And one of their many skills that they teach is called Provisional Language. So it's pretty simple. It's that you can make an argument.

You can be somewhat confident that you have a point of view, but you might just wanna lace your comments with words like perhaps or maybe or could, as a way to just make a nod, not a cosmetic nod, a real nod to what the hell do we really know? Yeah, yeah. In this context, I always perhaps strange to think of Mausetong that he said, for retreating enemy build a golden bridge, and it's not that someone is your enemy, but for somebody who is, who you're maybe in conflict with, if you give them some off ramps,

they often won't take them. I went on the Trump campaign for the New Yorker and it was really interesting to see that if I could put my Outrage aside and Listen, that was good and if I could build off ramps for them to say, you know I'm I could be wrong about this you probably know this better than I do and as you say I wasn't kidding That was true It just put a little more space into the conversations and I think this is also when you're writing a story That's a really important part too because when you're reading a story that I wrote, we're in a really interesting dynamic. You know I'm making this up often from scratch. Okay. So that means you're saying,

I know it's not factual, but let's see if it's truthful. And I'm going to try to tell a story that you buy as being something truthful, as truth in it. Along the way, one of the things I have to do is build off ramps for you, or I guess I have to sort of to reverse the metaphor, I have to kind of block off the off ramp and say, I know you're resisting at this point because of this. Let me take that. Let me take care of that for you. Let me explain. I know you're feeling the story is a little sluggish right now. Let me speed it up. I know there's some internal critic who's feeling negatively about this character. Let me acknowledge that or let me mitigate against that. As in the example

you use, it's a form of making the communication more intimate to acknowledge that somebody else isn't necessarily right with you just because you want them to be. It's sort of like good hospitality, I guess. It's interesting because what you just described, what I heard at least, was a real empathy with your reader. And empathy itself is a huge theme, not only in liberation day, but from what I can tell, all or perhaps at least much of your work. I hope all. Yeah.

Yeah. Because to me, it means I always confuse empathy with compassion with everything else. But I think it has to do with, am I aware that you're on the other end of the phone? And am I assuming the best of you? Now, I think mostly the answer is kind of in real life. Yeah, okay, I'm at the airport counter. The woman is processing my ticket.

Am I aware she's there kind of? But mostly I'm on the plane already. But when you're creating a work of art, a work of fiction, you get a chance in super slow motion to exaggerate the extent to which the other person is there and is beloved to you. And that's called revision. You go through and you say, you know, this draft,

I'm kind of keeping to myself here. I'm not really listening to the possible objections of the reader. That's not very compassionate. Let me rewrite it so that I'm giving her more credit as a reader. So it's almost like it's like practice and caring. You're caring for the reader.

You're caring for her journey through your story. You're also caring for the characters. You're trying not to phone them and either you're trying to make sure that you give them their Do so I've really cherished it as an anxious person and someone who's brain goes nine million miles an hour and I've really cherished it as a Chance a slow everything down almost like in those most of those movies the Matrix movies or the fights slow way down and you think oh, yeah, things are that slow. I could be really tough in a story

You slow everything down. And you get to come to a day and after a day, after a day, and pretty soon you find a more fair arbiter in yourself, you find somebody who actually does care more than maybe at speed I can. For what I can tell, there is empathy on your part in the making of these works. There's also an attempt to induce empathy on the part of your reader.

In particular, I'm wondering if one technique that shows up a lot in liberation day is specifically designed to do this, which is the shifts you among perspectives, even in one story, all of a sudden some other character will hijack the narrative. And I'm wondering if, in part, you're, aside from just making it a good read, your goal here is to get us to see things differently. Yeah, I mean, those things usually come out of necessity to be, there's a story in the book called Mother's Day, which I worked on for about four years in one perspective.

And I just got stuck. And the symptom for that is that when I get stuck, all the control is with me again. And I start spitting out really dopey obvious endings. So when I get there, I'm something like, yeah, I think I need somebody else in here to tell me something about that first character that I didn't know. And also what will happen is you'll by putting a second person, and if you can make that person real, you almost automatically are introducing another element of meaning or thematics to the story. So if you have one person, like in that story, the first woman is deeply hurt by her husband's serial cheating. So the story was about bitterness. Then I put in a second woman who had been one of those

lovers who felt short-changing because she never really got any time with them. Well, then that became about sadness, kind of. So if you've got bitterness and sadness and then somehow the story became about this third thing, but really about being trapped in one's desires, basically. So I think the addition of a second narrator is always mechanically just to wake me up and get me out of the doldrums. And then as you're suggesting, once you do that, it's really lovely to have your authorial advocacy shift from one person to another. And it's genuine. I first, I love that first lady. I'm all I'm so into her. I want her to have a happy life. And I'm sad for her. And I know her addiction. And I know

her to lay out of her house. And then when we pop into her, the head of her enemy. And I come to love her too. Oh, I know her house too. And oh, yeah, of course, it's terrible that to never get to spend time with the person you love. So that's really rich when it happens because it's something like you're trying to, you're trying to occupy a God's eye view, which is to say, which one does God prefer? Oh, both. So that's really, it's really a lot of fun. And then of course, it opens a story up in ways that you didn't expect because sometimes it doesn't turn out well for anybody.

That's the way it goes. Yeah, but that's a really lovely thing to do. But it has to be required by the story. I think it can't just be sort of for fun. Right. I get it. You don't want to overuse the technique. But it does seem to me to be really closer to reality, which is that we've got a seven

billion humans never mind all the animals who are all looking through a straw and all at the same time and that's what the world is. That's it. That's exactly any of that novel Lincoln in the Bardo has something like 160 different perspectives and that's what I came to feel was, you know, if you drop into a conference room on a given day, so there's 12 people in there. The conventional fictional way of saying it is the sun came in through the window into the conference room where Darren Smith was preparing a presentation. And that's like consensus reality. That's the way that we would describe it. And it's very handy. But in fact, as you're suggesting, what's really going on is 12 monkey minds are

grinding away beautifully in each of them in a separate diction, in a different form, in a different structure with different subtext. And really, if you could just, as an angelic presence, skim through those 12 heads at speed, that is the world, right there. Or it's a pretty good approximation of it. And your feelings about the world would be so right, at that point.

You could be 12 people in two seconds. And then over over the table, your heart would be so right at that point. You could be 12 people in two seconds, and then over over the table, your heart would be so full, I think. And your understanding would just be amazing of why that person was gonna get out and get up and storm out of the room, why that person can't stop thinking over love her.

You would be, again, to go back to what we said earlier, you'd be in an incredible position to give advice or to do whatever the next thing was that needed to be done. And you wouldn't be stuck so much in your own story, which can be the source of so much of our suffer. Exactly. Or, you know, our beautifully, you'd see yours as number 13. Right.

Yeah. Right. But we're talking about the self again. And I did make a note earlier to follow up on something you said about the turning down the volume on the self which as you said earlier can be really happiness inducing but you also said and maybe this is another conundrum that the characters you've written about who've had their selves erased they don't like that either so

no self doesn't seem like a happy life too much self doesn't seem like a happy life. Too much self doesn't seem like a happy life. Yeah. So the self that we think is central. If we think it's permanent, if we think it's enduring, we think it's the best. That's probably not right. If you think of yourself that way, you're going to be disappointed. But I think for me, you're fond of the self, but you're not wedded to it. It's like a stray dog who's kind of wandered up to you. Oh, that's a cute dog. Not my dog.

But I like it as cute. You know, I've had the experience briefly, unfortunately, of just feeling like, yeah, that's kind of fun to be a person. Whereas now, at this moment, I feel like it's all I am, and I'm desperate to protect it, and I'm very fond of it, and I want to take good reviews, and I'm obsessing about the details of its childhood. That's maybe too tight. So that's about all I could come up with is it's just like everything else I met or a degree. You've been given this self just like you've been given a body. It'd be crazy to be not dismissive of that. I was the stupid

body. I hate it, which I didn't have it. Maybe you wish that. But on the other hand to say, yeah, this body, it's always changing. It seems to be getting older and less appealing. And it can't do as much as it used to in that suite. Oh my God. Look at that. Remember when that body could jump offence? So to me, that seems like everything gradational. Many years ago, I was taking an online course in Buddhism. And many of the students were doing this thing that many, almost anybody who ever runs into Buddhism does, which is obsessing over what does it mean when the Buddhists talk about the illusion of the self and do we need to get rid of ourselves and all of that. And one of the fellow students said, you know, I think there's an important consonant that is often overlooked here.

He was arguing that Buddha wasn't arguing for no self, but instead not T, not self, that anything that comes up in your mind, you can point to that and say, well, do I own that? No, it's just another little neurotic impulse flitting through my brain. I can't claim ownership to it. So that's not trying to annihilate the self, which is there, even though you can't really find it. But it is more in a moment-to-moment basis, anything that comes up in the mind can't be

claimed as yours. It's about proper relation, too. Yes. I think also, I keep thinking of writing because the other thing is, especially if you're writing fiction, it's a little not realistic as I often do. You're working from ideas that come to you and the source is very unclear. It's not, for me, it's not autobiographical strictly.

It's just like, ah, okay, there's a guy walking down the street and here's what he's thinking. Those ideas are, you don't take much ownership of them. You just go, oh, that's interesting. Is that blue into my thought cloud? Okay, let me put it on paper and use it. But your attachment to it should be anyway very light. The fact that idea and that sentence came to you, you have to really just always be looking at it as a temporary gift that may have to get cut or changed. So even though you these thoughts for stories came to you, they seem like they're

coming from you. But to work with them correctly, you have to just think of them as literally having been blown in on the wind. Oh, look, there's some dialogue. Okay, let me put it in there. If tomorrow it seems not useful, I'm going to just take it right out and throw it back on the wind. So that's kind of a nice feeling. Whereas I think earlier when I was younger and I would try to write from life and try to make it factual about my life, that was more of a trap for me just to type right or I am. But this idea that, yeah, they have just words and ideas that come, if you arrange them

in a certain way, they can have an emotional effect. But if they don't, they can just go right back out. No problem. This attitude must make it much easier for you to as the phrase that's often used in creative circles is kill your darlings. Yes, 100%. Because you certain ideas, tickle your fans a little bit, you think you're so clever. And if you cling to those because they make you feel clever, you're not really working in service of the story. You'll pay for that, so. More of my conversation with George Sonders

right after this. You have said that one of the stories in your new book, I believe it's Sparrow came to you in a dream. And so I wonder what that says to you about the nature of ideation and creativity. Usually dreams aren't really the best for storage. You need to get like, ah, you wake up and they seem great. Oh, yes. A penguin orgy in myorka. And then the light of day, you think that doesn't even make no, but every so often, there'll be something that comes with it. It's just, it comes in a certain flavor that I've kind of come to recognize. And when it comes

I sit up and I think I should really get up and that's hard. And this was in the middle of winter up in upstate New York and I was freezing in the house and I just I think I have to write that down. So I got up and went into the kitchen and basically wrote the whole story. I mean I revised it for months afterwards, but the shape of it was there in real time. So that was really unusual. I don't like ever had that happen before. But it's just after I wrote that Russian book where I was analyzing all those stories, suddenly I felt incredibly more creative in modes that I'm not usually creative. In other words, I was finding new corners of the story form to work in. And I thought, how does that work? I read nothing but those seven Russians for a year and a half and somehow that went into my head and made me a better

writer. So same thing with this dream stuff. I mean, things something I was doing must have, God knows what, you know, did something in my head and that night it decided to appear. So as I do this work longer and longer, I'm just so impressed by and mystified by the way that creativity works and the way the brain works and all that. And to the point where I just don't even have a clue, just feel like I am your handmaiden. Use me. I've often said that I get my best ideas when I'm on long meditation retreats. However, not all of them are good. I've sometimes come home from a meditation retreat, looked at my notebook and it's Ted Kaczynski's uniformer diary. So you don't know what's going to come when you open up.

Yeah, I think David Wallace talked about this. When we're early in our artistic careers, we think that because we felt it as we wrote it down, the reader is going to feel it as she reads it. And that of the fallacy, just like anybody who's ever written about a hallucinogen trip, it doesn't convey. So that's really where the craft comes in, where you say, okay, maybe I'm not trying to get the reader to feel exactly what I felt. And my thing is I'm just trying to get it to feel something. And I actually don't, to be honest, I don't really care about the flavor of that amazement.

I just want her to feel like she'd been through something exceptional. Now, after that, I can say, and it would be nice if she feels this moral elevation that we talked about, or she feels like paying more attention to the world. But that's something I don't think you can really choose. I think the job is 99% like the roller coaster designer, making sure that there's an instant of speechlessness

after the thing is done. Then really your job is finished and we can come in afterwards and talk about the quality of the second bend or the third drop or something, but that's not really what the game is about. A little while ago you were talking about your own efforts to have a different relationship to yourself. I'm just curious to hear more about how that's going for you. Before we started rolling, you did mention that you haven't been meditating of late, even though you do have a pretty long history of it. What kind of differences are you seeing in your mind as you hold off from meditating? It's worse. I can feel a lot of old habits coming back. You know, a lot of thought loops that I thought

I'd been laughably dismissed are coming back. Little more obsession, little more neurosis, little more negativity. And the reason for all this inactivity is just that I'm super busy. So I'm trying to say, okay, maybe part of what you wanna do is just notice the way that your mind is falling out of organization with this neglect, which will hopefully congeal into some kind of

resolve to do better. You know, it's also funny in that mode, I noticed that I think I have a kind of a former Catholic tendency sort of an all or nothing thing. Like if I'm not meditating, I must be doing badly and I better get it together and I better do it all the time. Whereas what I'm actually noticing is that there are other things that will incline my mind to be a little lighter and more positive. I mean, exercise, writing.

Sometimes just, I just went back in New York, we sold our house there and I had to clean it for, I think, two straight weeks, a little longer, 15 hours a day. There was more stuff there than we anticipated. I was out there just working 15 hours a day and it was so beautiful. I had so much fun. It was so happy. That tells me something about my mind and that maybe I need more flat out physical against the odds work.

I'm trying to say, well, amidst the general decline of my mindfulness, what else is happening? What are the countercurrents that I probably rely on all the time? So yeah. Yeah, I mean that tracks for me. I mean, I'm I really try to not be a meditation fundamentalist. I think there are many psychological, spiritual, physical activities, practices we can engage in that will be good for us. Meditation just happens to be one of them. And I actually think it's really useful for you to see how obnoxious your inner world becomes when you're not meditating,

because that creates the inner desire of your own as opposed to an outer desire imposed on you. Like I should be meditating that I think can lead you to see like, you, like I should be meditating, that I think can lead you to see, like, yeah, when the time is right, I would like to start meditating again. Yeah, and also, I know for me, there's been times when I was meditating like crazy and it was actually making me really proud of myself.

And I was so, I had that box so checked off that whatever else I did, it was, so since that thing about the basic problems that beset us, like ego or whatever, they're so clever. Yes, so clever. Slippery. So, yeah.

Does the diminution, perhaps temporarily, of your meditative intensity impact your work? I don't think so. In fact, there have been times when I was meditating before working. And honestly, at that time, my observation was that it was making me so happy that the work was getting a little smooth. It was a lovely day, flowers. So I think I certainly don't think of this as a policy, but I think for me, a little agitation,

a little desire for praise, all those things are somehow in the mix when I'm working well. But also, I have a feeling that for me, the idea that when you're working on something in writing, there's a state of mind that you inhabit that isn't normal. It's not your normal mind. And I think it has, I can just, by observation say, it has less productive thought in it, less rumination. And actually, it's, for me, it's, once I'm into it, it's about 90% reaction to what's already on the page. So in that mode, you really aren't thinking about getting groceries or your, or what your body feels

like. You're really 90% concentrating on the way that phrase is inflecting your mind. And I find that really nice. I crave that maybe more than anything else that feeling of it might be like being a rock climber. I mean, you're up on the mountain. What do you think and not much? You're looking for the next hold. So I think that's one of those cross currents that works for me. If I'm not meditating, is to be in that state of mind for five hours a day really makes me feel happy and positive. And I think part of it is just the absence of rumination, especially negative rumination, but then also to come out of the story and go, that's better now.

That's better. I see that character a little more. That's a nice turn of phrase. To kind of take that little bit of achievement and just put it in my backpack and go, oh, good. Not today wasn't wasted. And even if that's an illusion and I cut the whole thing in the next day, which happens for the rest of that day,

there's a slight, there's more happiness than there would have been. I'm gonna pick out a few key moments from Liberation Day and talk about them and maybe even read a little bit of them and get you to hold forth. Does that sound like something you'd be up for? Sure.

You mentioned before, there's a story called Mother's Day, but there's also a story called The Mom of Bold Action. And in that, the narrator, late in the story, she's sending an apology beam of white light out of her forehead and directing it toward a guy that her husband had permanently maimed. You make it sound so weird, Dan. It gets weirder, so say with me, this woman's husband had permanently maimed this guy because they had come to the incorrect conclusion that he had attacked their son.

And so she's trying to send him this apology through a beam of white light, which by the way, sounds weird, but it actually reminds me of some Tibetan practices. And as she's doing this, she's imagining that via this beam, the recipient, the victim instantly knows her, like really understands all of her. And here's the quote. And the thing was knowing her this completely, it all made sense to the guy. And there it was, forgiveness. That's what forgiveness was. He was her. Being her, he got it all. So just how the whole thing had happened. How could he be mad at her when he was her? I read that in the hopes that maybe you could say a few words about it.

Yeah, well, I kind of stumbled on that idea, which I think is something I've done. Just like, you think of some of you who have offended and you go, if he could see it from my point of view, I know he'd love me because I'm such a nice person and he'd forgive me. So I just made it this beam of light. And it turned out to be a really interesting way to kind of see the limits of her spiritual imagination because she has that nice thought, which I think is probably true. Then a little later on that guy speaks to her in another beam of light and says,

well, all right, I'll forgive you, but you got to forgive. And he names this person who really had done something around her. And she kind of like, box. So even in her own imagining of this thing, she outs herself as somebody who has very limited powers of forgiveness. And I thought that was perfect. That's me. You want infinite forgiveness. And you'll give some. Just the way in that story, she does a pretty incredible thing. And she sort of participation causing her husband to do this really incredible thing.

But even at the end, she's still isn't quite ready to give up her feeling that she was correct. And I just, I kind of loved her for that. I thought, yeah, of course, that's what you, in stories, maybe you get to be completely forgiving, but in real life, we're kind of a little more complicated. So that was just one of those things where a technique, it's kind of comic technique, really. I mean, she imagines sending this beam of light and at first, they can't find the guy and all that kind of thing. But then a sort of comic technique that on the surface is just

there to keep the reader interested, became a kind of an interesting way of dissecting her actual consciousness and how we tend to go about forgiving her. Because one of the other things she does is she knows she's in the wrong at the end of the story and she knows that if she just confesses to her husband, she'd feel somewhat better. And I know this feeling, you know, I'll do something stupid. And if I just tell Paul about it, there's like a feeling that, okay, you're about 80% forgiven by the world because you admitted it. But in the story, she, to her credit, and I kind of loved her for this, she realized that if she told her husband, it would make his life worse.

So at the end of the story, she's refraining from doing that, which would give her some relief in the name of giving him some relief. Don't you think she's, even though she's later revealed to be somewhat hypocritical or just wrong about this idea that forgiveness is a melding of the victim and the offender? And I think you're arguing this, but that she is on to something. And it feels like the more we can do the thing that you're encouraging us to do through your writing, which is to inhabit other minds. The more we see that the barrier between us and other is really permeable. And that seems to be forgiveness to understand that in the right conditions, you would be

that person. You would do those things that they did. A hundred percent. And I think where she comes up short is that when this other character, that she's imagining says, okay, now will you do the same for the person you hate? She says, no, no, that's one too many. And then there's another layer, again, also was discovered at speed,

but the reason she can't do it is because of her hurt. This other guy that she's being asked to forgive really did push her kid down for no reason. So I think that's how it really goes down. All of us believe in forgiveness and compassion and love. But then there's an offense done to us that is just one too many and against our will and against our better intentions. You just bark. I can't do it. I wanted an e. Come easy. I don't line. There is some shit. I will not eat There's some places where as a human being invested with the self and ego. You're like, hey He insulted my shoes. I'm not going there

So one of the things that happened in these stories that I was kind of happy about was that I Think and I can imagine an earlier version of me as a writer that would have ended the story with that realization about forgiveness, and she would have maybe forgiven the guy. That's a nice, lyrical uplifting ending, but there's a little voice in me now that says, yeah, but aren't there cases where that doesn't happen? Isn't there some artistic merit in illustrating one of those cases where this person that we've come to really like I really like this character. She falls short as we all do and I thought that was something in this book that I kept Finding that moment over and over again where a younger me might have just skipped that and in order to have a kind of an uplifting ending with sort of a maybe simpler moral coherence

but I really found myself drawn to the place where you say, well, and this is where the train sometimes goes off the track. This is why we find it so hard down here. So I felt that was kind of a maturation of sorts. I hope it's bringing to mind one of the best book titles ever by Jack Cornfield, another great meditation teacher who wrote a book about how we can have these incredible spiritual experiences. And then we just go back to our regular life and we can be pretty messy even after these transcendent experiences. And the book is called After the Ecstasy, The Laundry. Yeah. And I think that's what you're pointing at here. Right. Yeah, because I mean, otherwise that's another path to despair. If you've had some big

spiritual experience and then you act like a turd, the temptation is to say, well, that's another path to despair. If you've had some big spiritual experience and then you act like a turd, the temptation is to say, well, that wasn't real. That moral elevation wasn't real. That's not correct. It's just a fluctuation. So then, I guess the idea would be, ideally, is to get your fluctuation higher so that you're having a more frequent periods

of moral elevation, fewer moments of turdness, turditude. But I think it's also, I think, if you're, since we're talking about empathy, I think for a reader to see a character fall short, especially a character with whom she's identified is good, because then you say, yeah, that, that, that course, I've done that, there's a part in that story where the main character talks about how hard she's worked

to be a good person, and she does this long, comical list of things that she's done. Kind of like we talked about earlier, this small, incremental acts of kindness that she's worked to be a good person and she does this long comical list of things that she's done. Kind of like we talked about earlier, this small incremental acts of kindness that she's done. And I like that about her. Some of them are ridiculous, but I've done most of them. I mean, she talks about thinking she hid an animal and then going back and trying to find it. I've done that. And so I think that as you can get the reader tracking closely with the character and then the character fails, that's a way of saying, yeah, me too. I feel like that.

It's okay if we do, right? It's not the end of the world if one fails. Have you that as a public service? But don't do it too often. Don't do it too often. Let me read one last passage to you. This is from the, this is on the final page of the book. And it's in the story called My House. The story really landed for me as somebody who's

recently gone through real estate held myself. And it's about a guy who finds a house he really loves. Thanks. He's going to have that house sold to him by the owner. And then the owner kind of ghosts some and doesn't sell him the house and the would be buyer sends him a bunch of I rate letters and then the would be buyer finds out that he's dying and sends a final letter which includes these words. Everything has always been falling down around us. Only we were we were too alive to notice. Nothing lasts, not pride, not affection, not walls, not barns, nothing. I feel this in my body now, the falling apart, a kind of holy truth. I'm trying my best not to be terrified and yet I am sometimes in the night. Two observations here, actually, this observations from DJ Cashmere, the producer,

who prepped me for this interview. This may be the most Buddhist passage in the book. And the other question I had, this is less of an observation, more of a question is, how confident are you that you can successfully inhabit the mind of a dying man? I think I can because we are. I am one. It's sort of like a magic show. You don't really have to inhabit the mind.

You just have to seem to be someone who's inhabiting the mind. So like when I did the Lincoln book, I'm not gonna, I'm not Lincoln, but I can sort of, it's like that commercial, I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV. So in a way, in this case, I asserted that he's dying. I hope you believe me.

And then I say a certain number of things that I expect I would feel if I was dying. And it's kind of an illusion really. If I say, I used to be a clown in the circus, do you go, okay? And then you're looking for one or two small proofs. I don't have to give you the whole psychology of the clown at the circus. I just have to say the thing I hated was I was always losing those rubber noses. Or what are some small, those big shoes chafed since you're a willing participant in the story.

If I just give you those little crumbs of very similar to sometimes that's enough for us to continue to play the game really. I don't know. I mean, either you're not giving yourself enough credit or you're just really good at this magic show because when you talk about feeling impermanence as a holy truth, something that you're knowing in your bones now. I mean, speaking of somebody who's to volunteer in a hospice, I've seen that. I've seen people have that experience, and I've gotten a little bit of it through contact hot.

So it seemed pretty convincing to me, maybe I'm just a sucker or... No, I've had the same experience. I mean, I've watched people in the final months and so on. And then also, I think even things that have happened to me were, like, almost in a plane accident one time, years ago. And that, that stays with you. You know, there's a really wonderful writer named Edgar Carrot, an Israeli writer. And I think, sort of, was that both of his parents were Holocaust survivors. And so, as a kid, he felt like he couldn't really, didn't want to talk about a much or something.

So at one point, and I'm paraphrasing him, but he went to his dad and said, Dad, I know I can never understand what you went through. And the dad said something like, no, he said, son, have you ever been hungry? Tired? Scared? Full of despair? Yes. It's just that bit more. So there is, especially within the form of the story,

you have to sort of get close to it and you can use things that you have felt. I guess it's believing that all feelings are on a continuum. So if you're a little bit hungry, you have a pretty good insight into what it's like to be starving, at least the beginnings and at least within the tolerance of the form. The empathetic part is partly that, that I can imagine the experience of this dying guy, even though as of right now I'm not one, I can imagine the experience of matimbovary, even though I'm not her. That's a very hopeful throwdown. It says, whoever you are, you can imagine someone other than yourself, even radically other

than yourself, even radically other than yourself. And if you're a Buddhist who believes in reincarnation, but I can't say that I am a, I'm believing it per se, but I guess I'm more and more open to it, then you might have been other people. You might have actually had those experiences that you can somehow draw upon. And sometimes it really feels like it. But again, this is, I think, this might seem like the shoddy part of art, but I think part of it is it, as an artist, you learn the mechanical means to stimulate that empathy in yourself. So for example, if you're looking for the perfect sentence to prove that you're a clown in the circus, there are some that

are better than others. And it has to do with very specific technical things, for example, density of detail, specificity, precision of language. And what's weird is when you, what I found is when you pay attention to those things, that's all exactly equal to increased empathy, partly because it, all of those depend on attention to the fictive core layer you're trying to describe, also attention to the language you're using. So somehow, and I'm not quite sure why, but if you concentrate on those things, you actually do become actively more empathetic

towards the person you're describing. You know, you're describing this clown. Okay, what's it like? You have to imagine the dressing room. It's not so great. What did he want to be before? A nuclear physicist, oh boy, what a calm down, maybe. So as you're doing that and you're trying to describe it in specific sentences that convince,

the picture becomes more clear and the ways in which you should feel compassion for him become more evident to you than they were in the sloppy early version. So it's the thing I love about art. The same thing is true, I think, of spiritual practice. We all have the experience of saying, I wish I could be better. Well, wishing it doesn't make it so. So you need practices. The practice of being a writer is one that will in a kind of oblique way,

will lead you to empathy, something like empathy through the very specific technical practice that you just have to do to get it done. I want to have some empathy for you and for your schedule. So let me just close with to my two habitual questions. One of them is, is there something I should have asked, but didn't? No, I thought that was a wonderful conversation. I'm very happy and yeah. Great. I feel the same way. And the other is, can I kind of gently prod you to give one last plug for a liberation day and anything else that you've put out into the university, you want people to check out?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I... Well, this book has a place in my heart because I wrote it during all these political things and during the pandemic. And it was such a source of comfort to me, to just be really a little distraught at times and confused and go up to the writing room and just go, all right, let's put that aside and try to be intense. Just try to be intense and trust that whatever I'm feeling or whatever I need to be thinking about is going to come to me in the best way during these four or five hours. So I didn't really know what the story meant. I still don't actually. My only job was to try to make them and it was such a comfort. So what that did for me is a kind of at this late stage of life reassured me of the power of for me, the power of art and

how important it is and how really it can kind of contain everything. If you are intense enough about it, it can contain just about everything there is. So it kind of felt like it set me on my feet a bit and can't wait to start the next thing now that I have refreshed belief in it. George Saunders, I look forward to your next thing and I hope that you're not actually in the late stage of life that you're actually just in the middle and you have a long productive life. And I'm grateful for your time. So thank you. Dan, thank you so much for what you do and it's always a pleasure. Thanks again to George Saunders. Oh, it was a pleasure to have him on the show. Thank you as well to everybody who works so hard on this show.

10% happier is produced by DJ Cashmere, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davie, and Lauren Smith. Our senior producer is Marissa Schneiderman. Kimmy Regler is our managing producer, and our executive producer is Jen Poient, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonnaventure of Ultraviolet Audio. We'll see you all on Friday for a bonus. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.