Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Three Skills for Staying Calm, Sane, and Open in a Chaotic World | Krista Tippett

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

The host of On Being shares lessons learned from 20 years of interviews, including: how to live with open questions, counterprogramming against your negativity bias, and getting over the God question.Krista Tippett is a Peabody Award-winning broadcaster, a National Humanities Medalist, and a New York Times bestselling author. She grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, attended Brown University, and became a journalist and diplomat in Cold War Berlin. After studying theology at Yale Divinity School in the early 1990s, Tippett launched Speaking of Faith — later On Being — as a weekly national public radio show in 2003. She has published three books: Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living; Einstein’s God, drawn from her interviews at the intersection of science, medicine, and spiritual inquiry; and Speaking of Faith, a memoir of religion in our time.In this episode we talk about:Getting over the God question when it comes to contemplating religionWhy Western culture has such a dearth of ways to talk about loveWhy she thinks the core of relationships is not about agreeing but about navigating differencesTuning into our generative agencyHer definition of a wise life as distinct from a knowledgeable or accomplished onWhy she believes it is as important to know what you love as it is to know what you hateLearning to love big open questions instead of rushing to answersWhy the things we get paid to do may not define whether we're living a worthy life And getting our intentions straight and then trying not to tie them too tightly to our goalsOther Resources Mentioned:Krista Tippett’s TED Talk: 3 practices for a life of wisdomFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/krista-tippettSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's the 10% happier podcast, I'm your host, your boy Dan Harris. Hello, my fellow suffering beings. I've been noticing in a lot of my personal conversations recently and maybe this is gonna sound familiar to you. I've been noticing that people seem to have a sense of impending doom, of you that things have perhaps never been worse in human history. And there can be a real certainty to this view and immovability and that dogmatism,

I have noticed extends to so many issues of the day as my friend Maria Popova has written, we are living through a pandemic of certainty. My guests today, Christa Tippett, is here to gently counteract both the pessimism and the dogmatism. To be clear, Christa is not polyanna. She absolutely sees the many challenges we face as a species in this era of polychrisis. Instead, she argues, and I happen to agree with this, that there is more to the story

than just the gloom. And further, that when you focus on arriving at and defending your answers in the midst of all of this, you can overlook the massive power of open questions. Many of you will know, Krista, for roughly 20 years. She's been the host of OnBeing, which was a hugely successful public radio program that she has now migrated over to being a seasonal podcast. She's a Peabody Award winner, a national humanities medalist, and a best-selling author of several books, including Becoming Wise, Einstein's God, and Speaking of Faith. And she just dropped a new TED talk which I

had the pleasure of seeing live and which you can watch by clicking the link in the show notes. That talk which is the basis for this interview centers on three skills that you can use to not only survive these chaotic times but also thrive. She arrived at these skills after 20 years of writing about thinking about talking about and reporting on the human condition. She is a gem I have come to really like Christa and I think you'll hear that affection in this interview. Hello, I'm Hannah and I'm Seruti and we are hosts of a Red Handed, a weekly true crime podcast. Every week on Red Handed, we get stuck into the most talked about cases.

But we also dig into those you might not have heard of, like the Nepali's Royal Massacre and the Nithory Child Sacrifices. Whatever the case, we want to know what pushes people to the extremes of human behaviour. Find, download, and binge Red Handed wherever you listen to your podcasts. Find, download, and binge-read-handed wherever you listen to your podcasts. Emily, do you remember when One Direction called it a day? I think you'll find there are still many people who can't talk about it. Well, luckily, we can. A lot. Because our new season of terribly famous is all about the first One Directioner to go it alone.

Zayn Malik. We'll take you on Zayn's journey from Shilad from Bradford to being in the world's biggest boy band and explore why, when he reached the top, he decided to walk away. Follow terribly famous wherever you get your podcasts. It's terribly famous. I'm Rob Briden and welcome to my podcast, Briden and we are now in our third series. Among those still to come is some Michael Paling, the comedy duo Egg and Robbie Williams.

The list goes on, so do sit back and enjoy. Briden and on Amazon Music, Wondery Plus, or wherever, you get your podcasts. Chris, the tip it, welcome to the show. Glad to be here with you. It's actually pretty intimidating to interview an interviewer. You've had that experience, I imagine. I have. I mean, do you remember when Linn Rosadoasfer did a food show on public radio and she said

nobody wanted to invite her to dinner because they were intimate, right? But the thing is, I like conversation, right? So I like being on both sides of a conversation. It's great. And also at this time, I don't have to be doing the hard work. So it is. We were just talking about this before, Sarah. It's harder to interview than to be able to.

Absolutely. Yeah. Why do you think that is? Well, you're in charge, right? I mean, you control here, what happens? You're in the lead. Questions are powerful. Yeah, I am, but being in charge is labor.

Some people just prefer the power, so they'd always want to be asking the questions. Yeah. And there's a tiding you can do there. If you're asking. If you're asking, right, right. I mean, I know a lot of people, very close friends of mine who rarely will let me interrogate them.

They will just turn the tables constantly because there's a kind of hiding happening there. Because it's a powerful thing asking questions, this is why politicians learn to not answer the questions or ask because they realize that the questions, even if they think they're prepared, can take them a place they don't want to go. I see. I see. But I trust you. Wherever you want to take me over here. Alright, so let me start with something biographical. You have written about this before you started off in the foreign service and sort of diplomatic work in Germany during the Cold War. How did

you go from that to becoming one of the premier reporters on the human condition? That seems like a leap. Well, I found my way through a lot of weird side doors in my 20s because I was in divided Berlin and I actually went there as a New York Times Stranger initially. And that wouldn't have been such a big deal, except that West Berlin was an island behind the Iron Curtain, and all of the bureaus had moved to Bonn. And so I was the New York Times and divided Berlin, presumably if the tanks had rolled in, that corresponded from Bonn would have gotten there.

But I ended up, it just opened every door, and the thing is about divided Berlin, which gosh, it's really aging me now when I say I was in Cold War of Berlin. It makes me feel like, feel ancient. But on the one hand, it was the geopolitical fault line of that world. And on the other hand, it was an incredible laboratory of the human condition. You take one people, one language, one history, one culture, you split it down the middle into two completely opposite, economic, political, social systems, which actually have missiles pointed at each other,

our missiles. And I, because I was in New York Times Square, and then later was offered a job with the State Department. I always had these great visas, so the wall was more permeable to me than it was to any German my age. I just had great visas, which is hard to imagine what it meant to have great visas in that place. It's not what I went there interested in.

I was interested in politics. In the end, I was working with these guys, and they were all guys who were sitting around, moving these missiles around on a map of Europe, that were, you know, these weapons of mass destruction, it felt like that was, I mean, they were genuinely powerful. But at the same time, on the ground, I got so fascinated by how, you know, you had this wall, which was like creating parallel universes.

And still, this dynamic was so interesting and dramatic of how human beings either create lives of dignity and intimacy and beauty or fail to do so. And it had nothing to do with whether they were on the eastern side of that wall or on the western side. It was like, what did they do with their lives? And I just got so drawn into that. And ultimately, I was really discouraged and cynical about the guys who were moving the missiles around because I thought they were there to save the world. And actually, it was big, egosine. And I got so captivated by this strangeness and beauty of human beings. And then I ended up going to Divinity School, just because that was the place where I could see

those kinds of questions being asked over a long sweep of time. And that turned out to actually be much more interesting than I thought it would be as well. So all those guys who were playing risk and battleship, they must have- With actual nuclear warheads. And that's what they were doing. So they must have thought you were crazy

going to Divinity school. Yeah, it didn't make any sense, because I had such a great resume at that point. You know, it was very flukish. And yeah, and there I am kind of late 20s. I thought I was going to go back to Washington and just keep going, but I was so confused. And I ended up going away.

I said I was going away for a couple of months to write my novel, because I did have to be doing something purposeful and all of this confusion just surfaced in me. I mean, one thing that happened, I went to this beautiful village on the island of Mallorca where a bunch of Western journalists went on vacation and I'd gone there once and it was the most beautiful place I'd ever been.

And one of the things that happened is that I just got quiet for the first time in maybe my whole life, but certainly my adult life. And at some point I realized that I was doing something like praying, but I had to call it praying, right? And that wasn't what I was there to do, but it was really essential. And then that helped me start to tell myself truths about how soul stealing that had been and how I couldn't go back to Washington

because I would just die inside, right? But it was all so unexpected. And of course nobody understood why I left and what I did. Had you been raised with faith and strength? Yeah, I was. I was. In a way that was obligatory or meaningful.

It was immersive. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma. And I was Southern Baptist. My grandfather was Southern Baptist preacher. And everybody on your Southern Baptist. And it was really the center of life. It wasn't just the center of religion. Church was the center of life.

But I had moved so far away from that when I went away to college and when I went to Berlin. It had felt just remote and completely irrelevant to the things that I thought were important and interesting. And there was nothing in me that just wanted to gravitate back towards that. I was like, if I was going to take this aspect of myself seriously and the way I was starting to analyze

all those things I was seeing in Berlin, I felt like I had to be able to interrogate it intellectually. I really wanted to dig my hands into these hundreds and thousands of years of dialogue about what it all means and who God might be and what the point of all of this is. So I felt like I was absolutely not gravitating back towards that, towards the religiosity of my childhood, but it did also get me back in touch with, you know, what about that

is also just who I am. I mean, there were things I could access because of that upbringing I'd had. It wasn't a foreign land to you completely. No. You know, now I kind of feel like I'm an honorary Buddhist. I have such wonderful friends and teachers, right? But I'm also really aware that, you know, the way I think about it is Christianity is my spiritual mother tongue in homeland.

And I feel like I get older. That presence of that homeland and that language becomes, it becomes meaningful to me again. And it's very different from, I mean, my grandfather wouldn't necessarily recognize my religious life as religious life, but it all speaks to each other. I'm thinking as any self-centered person does about my own experience covering faith and spirituality coming out of an agnostic, you know, really hardcore atheist upbringing. As I often joke, I did have a bar mitzvah, but only for money and both my parents were scientists.

And though I got forced into covering faith and spirituality at ABC News, and found it really interesting, really learned how ignorant I was and was eye opening. And yet, I never was able to take faith that seriously because I got stuck on the God question. In particular with Christianity, it was like, what kind of Christian are you? Do you believe that Jesus was literally the son of God, a product of Virgin birth, who died and rose

again? Like, as if you believe that, that's great. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I don't see any evidence for that. So I get a little stuck on it. Personally, I don't have that capacity for faith. So I guess that leads me to the question of like, what kind of Christian are you and like how? Yeah. So, you know, when I say I came back to taking religion seriously, or, you know, even to acknowledge, what is a basic definition of spiritual life? It's just interior life, right? Like in Berlin, I was in this world of everybody having great big external lives, very performative, which is actually how a lot of us were raised. We have a lot of formation for our exterior lives. And so just saying, oh, there's this inner world that is also me. And maybe even more defining than that, that I haven't neglected.

But to your question, we could have a conversation about God, which just in a nutshell is just way too small a word for what we're all trying to point at. But for me, what I love about theology, the reason I want to study theology, was not about who God is, but who we are, because the great theology is also this investigation of what it means to be human. And, you know, I discovered Reinhold Nieber, I have you ever heard of him. It's a name. It's a word. In mid 20th century, public theology, we could use some of that right now, frankly. In 20th century, public theology, we could use some of that right now, frankly. The very first line of his book, The Nature and Destiny of Man, is I think just one of the

greatest census and one of the most wise census, which it starts, man is his own most vexing problem. Okay, I mean, and nowadays he would probably say, I don't know, when you use the word man, but the thing is, like, I am my own most vexing problem. That is also a beginning of spiritual life. And some of the things that Neber talked about is also there in St. Augustine is that, you know, this irony that we sin and you know, sin is also a fraught word, but it's a useful word. We fall short. Even and precisely in our moments of greatest accomplishment. I mean, you know this, right? You and I, we've had these experiences.

These are also moments of spiritual breakthrough that can be. And then there's also the iron, the, I would say the great mystery. See, you know, Western culture and American culture don't want to talk about failure. The reality of failure, frailty, mistakes, right? Like we just glossed those over. And the incredible gift of our religious traditions is to say, no, right there, right there, and then when you fail, when you meet precarity, when you cannot rise to the moment, when you know nothing, when you're in pain, even there, and especially there,

those are moments where we can grow. It is so countercultural, and it's just true, even though it's weird. And theology and the depths of other traditions take us there. Politics does not. Nordic social media. Nordic social media.

So I think what you're saying is, somebody like me comes out of a not very spiritual background. You're missing the forest for the trees if you're going to get too focused on Conceptions of God when in fact what's interesting about theology and religion is it can tell you how to do life better Yeah, yeah, I mean obviously there's a lot in there about God just as in Tibetan Buddhism has not just one heaven and hell but many right? I mean the all the traditions actually they have these esoteric places,

and it's not that God is esoteric and Christianity. But the bulk of it is about, you know, if there is transcendence, if there is mystery, how do we live? What do we do with that? I mean, you know, the question of whether there's a God or not or what that means is It's right there alongside the question of how do you lead a worthy life? How to love, right other kinds of formation we have don't

Instruct us in that and they don't actually like we all learn I would propose we all learn sometimes the hard way or again learn sometimes the hard way, or again and again the hard way, that the love is what it's all about. But we know it is just that in school. And in all the secular formation we get, in all the ways, we actually get trained to be successful. That basic truth is ignored. I have the idea that part of that is because love is such a fraught term and another inadequate word. Yes, yes, yes. And that if we could talk about it in

language that was clear, I mean, the book that I've been writing forever is about this, trying to talk about love in a different way. And when are you going to finish that book? It's not that I'm lazy. I have many faults. I think it's different way. And when are you going to finish that book? It's not that I'm lazy. It's I have many faults. I think it's the memoir. And so you have to just let your life play out to certain extent. And the learnings take a while to set in. And also I'm trying to like be self loving in the non-cheasy is way and not force myself to finish before it's ready.

OK. I'm glad to know you're writing that. You asked before two questions that I'd love to hear your thoughts on. How do we we love and how do we live a virtuous life? Yeah, worthy life. Worthy life. Yeah. Yeah. Let's start with love. Yeah. Okay, so I 150% agree with you. Love is exceedingly problematic. It's the most watered-down word we have. And that's where I would say I so appreciate, for example, you know, one of the things about studying theology going to Divinity School is, you know,

getting inside the Greek, the actual sacred text. And there are many words for love in other languages. We're so impoverished. We have this one word, right? I love your dress, right? And also, the other thing we do is we totally equate and conflate, you know, sexual romantic, like we talk about love and like the compelling form of that, which is compelling is sexuality and romance and the in love and that love that you can also fall out of. And that's not what you and I are talking about. It's not the love that binds it all and makes it all meaningful. So in the biblical Greek, there is eros. And then there is philia. Because when I talk about love making the work of not just talking about that, finding the one, right, is our friendships, our friendships, is our love for our children.

And then there's also agape, which is the primary form of love, which is not a feeling, but action. It's things you do. It's ways of being. Because I'm really interested in public life and life together. And one of the things I think a lot about is how the intelligence that we possess in our lives about what love is, it bears no resemblance to any of the cliches about it, right? And I mean, in the relationships the people we're closest to, the people we're intimate with,

it's often things you do in spite of how you feel at the moment, right? at the moment. It's very rarely about feeling perfectly understood and perfectly understanding the other person. It's not about agreeing. It's actually about how you navigate difference. And yet in public life and social media, we just hate people. We can't on imagine that we could be in relationship with people that we disagree with fundamentally and don't understand that they don't understand and we don't feel it. But we make that move to be in relationship all the time, despite how we feel. So when you guys are at love, it's like, I just want to say, I just interrogate it in terms of how it functions. Sometimes it's a feeling and that's beautiful, but that's just not most of the time.

The other thing is beautiful too, that we stay in relationship. Even when it sucks. Yeah. How to live a worthy life. Was that the other question? Yes. I think that's also a matter of constant discernment, right? I mean, there's no answer to the question. But who I'd say this, if you let that question be your

companion, if it is something that you're constantly, seriously, aspiring to, then you keep learning things. And sometimes you can be successful at integrating them into who you are. I would imagine that if you keep that question as a companion, it could be a great treasure separating weed from chaff in terms of, is this how I want to spend my time? You could make anything on your calendar or referendum. Yes, for example, I think this is related. So we're just starting this new season of the podcast. And I'm doing a couple of an Arisa but AI. I mean, I think I'm going to do this from now on every season, but I got to read Huffman about the kind of human condition, angle and

AI. So he has this kind of relational AI platform called Pi, which stands for personal intelligence. And it's really interesting. And so I went on PIE and I said, I host a show called I'm Being and hear our core values or our core values, hospitality, curiosity. I can't remember what else I said. And I said, where do your core values? And PIE came back with this really beautiful list of core values.

And we have big lessons with a lot of people putting ears on a conversation or editing. And so one of my young producers was really kind of offended because I think he said one of his core values was something like truth or something like that. And he said that can't be proven. We can't let an AI platform say that he's truthful and honest. And I said, well, he didn't say he was truthful and honest. He said it was a core value. And core values are always aspirational.

So I'm just saying that, like all the things you may learn if you have that question of what it means live a worthy life as a companion, it doesn't mean that you succeed at all of this. But success in terms of leading a worthy life is actually not about perfection or success. It's about staying oriented. It's about intentionality. And it's about actually how you navigate and really befriend the reality that you're going to get a lot of things wrong.

And then how you work with that. What practices do you have in your life that help you to remember to wake up to this question, to remember to ask yourself the question, not only of worthy life, but also of like, am I loving well? I mean, it's so different. I'm thinking about how that would have landed with me. I'm 62. Well, I feel like if you'd ask me that when I was 42 or 52,

I might not have answered you honestly, but the honest answer would have been more tortured. I've been having this conversation this week, actually, with a bunch of people or about this age, it's such a great age, where you just kind of, I just inhabit my body. I'm just like at a home in myself, and I trust my gut.

And maybe this is from having that question as a companion for a long, long time, through thick and thin. But at this point, my gut is like a course corrector. I have to listen to it, right? And I don't always do that perfectly. But I have to think about that stuff in the same way anymore. Things become more intuitive.

So in some way, living with that question has put it into your neurons into your muscle memory. I think so. Yes. Exactly. What would have made you defensive at 52 or 42 that it would have felt like people were asking, are you making enough time for prayer and meditation? Are you walk in the walk, Tipit? Yeah. Well, you know, the other thing about those younger ages is life is crowded. My children are in their 20s and I actually love the relationship I have with them in their 20s. To me, parenting is an adventure that doesn't stop and even at 25. You get to know your kids all over again the way you have to do when they go from being four to five or 11 to 12.

They're all these cathartic moments and they're keeping those cathartic moments. So my parenting is huge, elemental part of my identity, but it's not hands-on physical labor. And so when you're in the middle of your life and you've got that hands-on physical labor, and more in the building phase of career and even of the other relationships. So I think I truly have more space to actually be more thoughtful and discerning. And that's just a matter of time. My uncle, Peter Johnson, when he he turned 60 somebody asked him the question everybody asks when they turn a big age or any age how does it feel to be 60 and his answer was off the hook. Yeah it's right it's the greatest thing.

Yeah also there are so many wondrous things about being alive now and it's hard for us to see those because of all the reasonable terror. But one of the most fascinating things in my lifetime is the evolution of aging. Because this is not what 62 is like when I was 10 or 20 or 30 or 40. It's very mysterious. Coming up, Christa Tippett talks about tuning

into our generative agency, and that is not a reference to AI. Her definition of a wise life as distinct from a knowledgeable or accomplished one, and why she believes it is as important to know what you love as it is to know what you hate. Go San Real. At least as a journalist, that's what I've always believed. Sure, odd things happen in my childhood bedroom, but ultimately, I shrugged it all off.

That is, until a couple of years ago, when I discovered that every subsequent argument of that house is convinced they've experienced something inexplicable too, including the most recent inhabitant who says she was visited at night by the ghost of a faceless woman. And it gets even stranger. The most recent inhabitant who says she was visited at night by the ghost of a faceless woman. And it gets even stranger. It just so happens that the alleged ghost haunted my childhood room might just be my wife's great grandmother. It was murdered in the house next door by two gunshots to the face.

From wandering in Pineapple Street Studios comes ghost story, a podcast about family secrets overwhelming coincidence and the things that come back to haunt us. Follow Go Story on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus. streaming. Matt has been taken. Oh God. His daughter. He's in the hands of a madman. What are the police have been looking for me? But nothing can stop a father. We want to find her just as much as you do. I doubt that very much. From doing what the law can't. And we have to do this a by way. You have to. I don't.

Bosch Legacy. Watch the new season season now streaming exclusively on FreeVee. And don't miss out in celebration of Sharon Salisberg's new book. We've made her course on loving kindness, which we call 10% nicer. Free over in the 10% happier app until October 23rd. Download the 10% happier app today wherever you get your apps and get started for free. You gave a TED Talk recently. I was there for it and took a bunch of notes and loved it and everybody should go watch it, but I'm going to kind of do the opposite of the Cliff's notes version here because I want to go deeper. And in the TED Talk, you talked about these three lessons, and one of them you just kind of touched on, which is that it's very easy to look at the world and say, we are thoroughly fucked

like everything is bad. But one of the pieces of advice you give in this talk is to tune into the generative story. What does that mean? I do want to just say that I'm a little bit miffed that AI is taking this word, generative AI. I really don't want to give it away, but what I mean is it's the opposite of destructive, right? It's what is life giving and creative and worthy of aspiring to.

And a lot of the story that gets told of our time is what is catastrophic. And yet there's a whole story which also has in it, that there are human beings everywhere all around us, more than are setting out to make the world a worse place in the morning, who are doing their best, right? Who are being forces for healing and kindness and social creativity and feeling very alone in that.

And that is a fiction, right? They're not alone. And again, it's not about being perfect, but those of us who are trying to lean into our best humanity in the face of all this catastrophe are the majority. This is a true story. But across the years, I've interviewed like you, a lot of people who work in brain science. I actually think there's quite a simple explanation to this, which it is about the human condition, which is that we are exquisitely hardwired to be looking for danger. Our bodies are

trying to keep us safe. In that way, journalism is a profession that is absolutely dictated by the amygdala. And the news, the way the news gets defined is what's the most catastrophic thing that just happened around the corner. And those things are anomalies. But the problem is that in a 24-7 news environment, where we're just inundated by the terrible things that went wrong, the worst case exemplar of what a human being is. We internalize that as the norm. We internalize that as the bottom line.

And that is actually dangerous. We have to know the generative possibilities and the generative agency that we have to meet this time that we've been born into, which is extraordinary and perilous and in its way, magnificent. I'm just thinking about how the best weeks of the year for me are at the end of August when my wife and child and I go to this beach town that we really love and a lot of our friends are out there. And so this year, I spent two weeks, we had all these people staying with us, and then all these people staying nearby.

And I love being in that kind of community and seeing old friends. And these are old old friends. People I've known for 20 years or more. And I was really struck this year, because usually, are socializing with these people, it's like part of the New York City dinner industrial complex. It's two hours and you're done.

But this was living with them in a house and having late night conversations, which was glorious, glorious. But I was really struck spending a lot of time with these folks in this way, how radicalized my friends have become, how gloomy they are. About, you know, they're in a good mood day to day. We're all loving seeing each other

and there's a lot of affection there. But when you start talking about the state of the world, people are like, America's done. Capitalism has totally failed. We now know that. We are screwed and every metric going forward. And these are incredibly smart people, incredibly accomplished people.

And I don't know how or whether to argue with them about any of this. Yeah, and I mean, I would probably agree with all those statements on some level, but it's both and. And you know, across the years, I've interviewed a good number of people like Ajahn Lewis or Desmond Tutu, right, who have been on the receiving end of the worst that humanity has to give and of broken corrupt structures. And, you know, the people who find ways to shift the world on his access see that very clearly. It's not about being optimistic and idealistic. It's standing before reality and saying yes and, and that yes and has an articulation of what is my agency.

If not to change all of that, to shape my presence before it. You know, I wrote that book called Becoming Wise and I never gave a definition for wisdom and then after the book came out, people said, what, so what is wisdom? And I never Wise and I never gave a definition for wisdom. Then after the book came out, people said, what is wisdom? I never had a definition. I had to think about it.

My definition of wisdom is that it's distinct from a wise life is something distinct from a knowledgeable life or an accomplished life, even though a person whose wise can be knowledgeable and accomplished, but the thing about knowledge and accomplishment is you can kind of point at them and quantify at them. That's what it is. Whereas I think the measure of a wise life. So if you think just you think now of the wise people you've known in your lives, the measure of that is the imprint they made on other lives around them. Just like you just see ripples and ripples and ripples. So the work of orienting yourself both seeing reality the head on and then deciding how you will be present

to that is also work that is communal because it does ripple out to others. The civil rights elder Vincent Harding who I interviewed a couple, talked about, you know, there are live human signposts in the darkest places. There are live human signposts. And I love that image. Like, we can't even end all the things your friends are saying are true. And I also have my bad days. And there's more of a calling for live human signposts than ever before. Let me see if I can muster some sort of articulation of where I think I'm at with this. And not because I'm gonna make an argument, but more like I wanna see if we can figure it out together.

I think what I think is I have no idea whether the American experiment has failed and whether the case against capitalism is dispositive. And you know, I'm not a climate scientist, so I don't know how bad it's going to be. I'm also not an Austrian, so I don't know how bad it's going to be. I'm also not an austrodom, so I just don't know. What I think I know is that for all the bugs in the design of the human operating system, there's one massive feature, which is that it feels good to be good to other people. And if we have a chance for salvation, it's in that.

Does that land for you? Yeah, and it makes me think of Dorothy Day, who was just this Catholic, she will probably be a saint one day, which I think would make her laugh. But she just was one of these people who committed her life to goodness and all kinds of forms of goodness and love made practical. And kind of the origin story for that was she was 9 years old and San Francisco in a 1906 earthquake hit and she was in Oakland and just watching people come over and boats, like

just the world had ended. And watching how all the adults around her knew how to rise this occasion, take in strangers, just be full on care. And this question she asked, which I would say is the question she lived was, why can't we live this way all the time? Which a child would ask with this clarity. And so to this thing you just said, it does feel good to be good. And then there's this other mystery of us, which I think is really relevant now, where it is true that the forms that I, and also you were born seeing

as the way the world works, the way it functions, they've outlived their usefulness, right? I mean, capitalism, if it did work, it's not working anymore. It's not serving human purpose. And, you know, so what is true about this time, it doesn't mean that you have to lead to a dystopian point of view, but it's true that I think we live in this in between time in history. And I think it's often true in the early centuries that, you know, we're like in the teenage years of a century where like it's very clear what is broken. The forms that came out of the 20th century, they aren't working anymore and they're not suited to how we live now. And

that's true of really element, that's true of school, right? It's true of our political system, it's true of our economic system, it's true of medicine. I mean, you can just go on and on. So what a time to be alive, and that is terrifying, and there's a lot of wreckage from it. And we're also this generation that is called to remake things, remake elemental things. And I guess one of the reasons I have, and I wanna say, like, I think the ecological crisis is in its own category.

I actually think that's what makes our end-between time different from anybody else's in-between time because it's truly existential at a species level. And I don't know what to do with that either. I mean, I think we have to grieve apart from anything else. But it's also true of us, like, that feels good to be good and such a long window to response. And there's this weird thing about us that when we really get pushed to the edge,

like, when we're really going to lose everything, or we've hit bottom, that we have this capacity we have this capacity to just excel, right? Like to be heroic, to make quantum leaps forward and to get out of our heads. And so I think like that's one of my great hopes. And like in terms of the ecological stuff, it may be too late. But I feel like when I talk to a lot of younger people, a lot of young social creatives,

even people involved in climate, and one of the things that just moves me and fills me with hope, which is not a word I use lightly, is that they are so clear that whatever is gonna happen and however committed they are to seeing what's broken and fixing what's wrong. And that part of their fuel for that, first of all, that they have no illusion that there's anything is going to get better. And maybe even in their lifetime, that this

is the work of their whole lifetime. And that their fuel has to be that as much as they know what they hate, as much as they see what's broken, they have to know what they love, and that they have to know how to take joy and that they can't get burned out because the work is long and so important, and so they're building in at the beginning of their lives, things that I am learned to do until I was in my 40s and 50s,

like they are going to get replenishment along the way. So that feels kind of like a species evolution into me. Well, this kind of ties back to you and I were in the same room in the fall of 2022 with the Dalai Lama. And I think we walked away with different interpretations maybe, but we'll find out. I mean, the Dalai Lama was confronted by these young activists who were saying, dude, you're talking about love and compassion, and we're dealing with the Taliban, or we're dealing with massive and transt economic interests that are pushing the climate over a cliff. Love is not the answer. And what I heard him say, although

it took him well to get it out, was similar to what you're saying, which is all that is true. There's, I've been dealing with the Chinese for generations and they're pretty tough to deal with. And so I get that there's a lot of ugly stuff in the world, but yes, and there's also a lot of love in the world. And on top of that, as you work to address the big problems that you want to address, what do you want your fuel to be? Anger, hatred, and fear or love, care. Love on broadly understood back to a gape,

like an unconditional love for the world. And that really landed for me. It did really land with you in the most. Yes, no, well, it took a minute. You know, his English is getting worse. I know, when I wish he would have answered in Tibetan and Genpo would have translated for us. So, you know, an idea like we are all one,

which he said a lot. It's like the Beatles, right? All you need is love. It's actually true. Yes, it's just's like the Beatles, right? All you need is love. It's actually true. Yes, it's just how you understand it, right? Because if I hear all you need is love, it's like, but dude, John, I got to go to the dentist too, but I think a proper understanding of love. He needs to, and I like it doesn't use the term love.

He uses compassion. But in my concept of love, compassion is a piece of love, just one manifestation of it. But John Lennon would say, going to the dentist, is love, it's self-love. You're taking care of yourself, you gotta do it. I mean, it's true that the idea that we are all one is not just a wise, comforting saying, it's proven by science, right?

I mean, we have more microbial cells than human cells in our bodies. We are made of stardust, which also sounds like a cliche and it turns out to be true. And we're all part of each other. So it's true that we're individuals, you and I, and on another level, it's actually not. And I think when he said that in English to these young people, it felt too simplistic. And I guess what we're saying is it isn't. It isn't at the same time, just like we are individuals and we're not individuals. He was at the time 87. Yeah. He is English, has degraded and he's repetitive. And I think he wasn't giving the nuanced

answer that later became clear once you talk to people who are close to him. Well, here's the other thing I think. I would say that, you know, his bedrock embodied conviction and knowledge that we are all one is a wisdom that he has earned across an extraordinary life and eight decades. And I think that that righteous impatience And I think that that righteous impatience of those young activists who we're with is also a form of wisdom, and that we collectively need both of those energies, and they will

sometimes talk past each other and not not value each other. And it's just another both-and. Coming up, Christa talks about learning to love big, open questions instead of rushing to answers why the things we get paid to do may not define whether we're living a worthy life and getting our intentions straight and then trying not to tie them to tightly two-hour goals. tightly to our goals. Deep in the enchanted forest, from the whimsical world of Disney Frozen, something is wrong. Airendel is in danger once again, from dark forces threatening to disrupt the peace and tranquility. And it's up to Anna and Elsa to stop the villains before it's too late.

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There were three recommendations in your head talk. Yeah. I think we've covered the first one, which is yes and there are shitty things going on in the world and there are beautiful things going on in the world and there are beautiful things going on in the world. How do you want to live once you take all of that in? Is that a decent time right? Yeah, I like it.

So we talked before about what's worthy life, how do I love? Is there more to say about this process of finding your question and living with it? I guess I just say, isn't this fun? This is a conversation that's an adventure. And I love being on this side of it? I guess I just say, isn't this fun? This is a conversation that's an adventure. And I love being on this side of it. So what I'd say is that if we know that we inhabit a time where we literally have more uncertainty, then certainty, things that were certain even 10 years ago or looked certain are no longer. And so the living the questions idea comes from Rilca, who I first got to know when I was living in divided Berlin. I mean, his writing. I feel like

he's my friend. And Rilca in the early 20th century said to a young poet, actually nobody ever tells this. This poet, Franz Coppus, who he wrote these letters to, was actually a young military officer who wanted to be a poet. So he was actually a person in the thick of life who actually did not become a professional poet. So it was a little bit, I like it, that it wasn't actually just a poet sitting around, writing poetry.

It was a young person asking the questions. But he was all confusion, which we are at that age. And then I think, again, I like our generation in time is all confusion. And he said, you know, when this is the situation, you're in, you need to not rush to be answers, which you couldn't live now. You can't live the answers. They're not there to live right now. So you have to live your questions. You have to love your questions themselves. And to me, I think you could look at every single one of our crises that we've named.

We can call it a crisis of capitalism. We can say that we are standing for the question of what is an economy for? How does it function? What is democracy in a time of our technology and the scale of our societies, right? These are all big questions. They're open questions and we're going to have to walk into new ways of working with the parts of our life together that they have represented. So in a situation like this, to rush

to an answer, which we really want to do, understandably, and we're like really trained to look for fixes and a plan and action. But to rush to an answer in these cases is to deny the gravity of the questions, to deny the gravity of what is before us to work with. And so then we're called to love and dwell with the questions themselves and let them teach us and let them, you, and let them walk with some patience that is not easy and not natural. And with some curiosity, because truly, truly, we can't see the big answers in fixes now. And collectively, especially in America, we're so action oriented, and we rush to actions just to fulfill the anxiety that we feel about

not knowing what to do and about living in uncertainty. And we waste time and we come up with stupid solutions that we then waste time undoing and we need to not waste our time in that we know. It's not a prescription to not do anything but it's like to hold the questions alongside, you know, whatever is appearing about what can be done. We so long for answers, understandably, but also we're pretty pathological about the way we use words in this culture. And, you know, we just love to argue, right? We just love using our words for a fight.

And we love using our words to put other people down. And so we use words like weapons. I think we need using our words to put other people down. And so we use words like weapons. I think we need to decide not to live that way. Some of the things you've just talked about, I would think of as like macro questions, you know, what's an economy? Those are like society level questions. Yeah. On an individual level, how do I find the questions that matter to me that could be, I think use the term earlier like a guidepost. Yeah, and that's part of how we get paralyzed is by feeling like if we can't affect

those big macro questions. I mean, I'm just reframing what the macro challenges are as a question, but the truth is also that you and I tomorrow cannot change the shape of the economy. I mean, there may be somebody out there who could do that. So I think the challenge is actually to ask the question really close to home. Did you heard of you Rachel Naomi woman? You know her? I was just kind of a Jewish mystic doctor physician. She tells the story of the Jewish story behind T. Kunolam repair the world. You probably at least learn that at Bar Mitzvah. I did. Yes. And the story, you know, is the birthday of the world. There's the original light,

and the light was shattered, and that it landed as pieces inside everything and everyone, and that the work of repairing the world is to look for the light, you know, from where you sit and gather it up and point at it, and in doing, when you do that you help prepare the world. And you know, she said to me, or maybe I said to her, you know, if you hear a story like that, it can sound like very lovely, but not really practical. And she said, well, it's actually a very practical story because it's saying that you look for the light in the world that you can see and touch. And one of the terrible afflictions, I think,

of living now with social media, or social media and the news as it comes to us in this form is that it just distracts us with all these things that are terrible and far away that we can't possibly touch. I mean, this is what is coming out in your friends, right? And so then we just have this existential despair, but an antidote to that is to actually refocus close to home

with real people and fractures that are within your grasp to comprehend and perhaps touch. So where we see that there are shady things happening and also there are beautiful things happening. What do we do? I think this is kind of what I took from the Dalai Lama too, which is, okay, you, Christa, are not gonna solve all these problems.

You have a certain amount of agency and that Tukun Olam view is actually quite practical, which is, are you got your little world? Can you see the light and the opportunities to do good in your little world all the while understanding that you're fallible and you're going to fuck up all the time too? And build your life around that with maybe the useful question in the backdrop of what's a worthy life and how do I love? And then by the way, you are doing your little part to fix the macro problems while ensuring that your life is better,

because that is how you're wired to thrive by being useful. And that's the influence you're having. That's what you're revealing to people around you too. So it's your life. But also there's the truth that in that room, the young woman Shabana, who actually has had probably Taliban guns pointed at her head and who actually is getting girls educated, right? So there's somebody who's stepping into her agency with a way to affect something, you know, this what for you or me would be this far away catastrophe in our world. And yeah, and then there's just that tension there. I didn't hear from the Dalai Lama or anybody in Buddhism that you don't take firm, effective, bold action or that you don't draw boundaries in your life, whether you're

dealing with the Taliban or of not just brother-in-law, you're in touch with the why. What's your motivation? Is your motivation vengeance or is your motivation wanting to help? I find that very useful. So, you know, Brian Stephenson will always say when people say, like, what do I do? I guess he's also picking up these macro toxins that are in our lives and our society. And he always says, you don't get proximate, get proximate, get proximate. So what does that mean? Well, it means this. It's what can you see in touch? We're dealing with big structural wounds and injustices. And some people can touch that at a higher level, but get to know the human dynamics close

to you that become comprehensible to you. What can you do so that this is not an abstraction? I love that because it gives you agency and it will actually matter. And one other thing from the dollar, I'm a he didn't say it in the room, but he has said it, which is to think about it in terms of multiple lifetimes. And you don't have to believe in reincarnation for that, but you can just believe that there are going to be multiple generations after you. And your work may not be completed by the time you draw your last breath.

I find that a relief actually. Yes. Okay. Third piece of thought. Oh, the third one. Yes. Which is calling and wholeness. What does that mean?

Yes. Well, I just partly wanted to surface this language of calling not as an alternative, but as a companion to the notion of challenge and crisis. And it is a religious word. It has particular resonance in Christianity, but it has an interesting history too. Do you want me to show you this interesting? So in the Christian West vocation, the word vocation comes over a car, which is calling.

And the only people who are considered to have vocations were monks and nuns and priests. So it was basically like professional spiritual people, experts, had vocations. And then Martin Luther, one of his battle cries, was out of the monastery and into the world, which is kind of beautiful, that we can all have callings. Then I went to spirit of Protestants who's emerged with capitalism. I think, you know, by the 20th century, when I was born, it's like your vocation was your job title, right? I think if any of us modern people in the West think of vocation, we just think what is your job, what is your work? And that again is a diminishment of us. And I feel again, if we live in this time of existential challenges for our species and for our nation and for our communities and maybe for our families, you know, yes, it's

a challenge, yes, it's a crisis. And what are we being called to? What does it call us to? And then, vocation in that sense, which I think has always been true, it may not be the thing that you do for a living that equips you best to be present to these callings. You know, just it may be a kind of friend you are, the kind of parent you are, that you in some ways you are a teacher, that you are a kind, generous person. And I think vocation really should be and is multitudinous.

I mean, if you think about, you know, like I follow you, actually, I'm not in Twitter very much anymore, but I just love your pictures of your son, right? I mean, you're just, you're so in love with him. And I mean, if I ask you, I feel like you're a vocation. And I know there was a time in my life when this is true, like your vocation as a parent is absolutely as big as your vocation as a professional podcast or journalist, all those things you are.

And I just think it's helpful for us to even with our self-understanding and also to honor the fact that these are as elemental and defining and not just of, it's not just your private life, right? It's like who you are in the world, the fact that you are a father, that you love your son like this, this is shaping you the way you're present to everything. So that's kind of just raising up, you know, us living more spatiously and richly into the sense of what we have to bring to the world. And it may not be the things we get paid to do. And it's often true that the things we're not getting paid to do are the places where, if I said, are you living a worthy life? You say yes, because there's this going on, right? So that's also just like getting in touch with reality in a way. And then the other word I'm a surface in that is

fullness, which is a little bit impatient now with the language of well-being and wellness. I mean we need it and it's been a bit of an antidote but it's not quite big enough. I think what we really want and I think we are equipped for many of us in this world is what I just described would be a wholeness of vocation, but Is to actually apply this incredible intelligence we have and all these resources we have to what is a whole human being and And what would a whole institution look like which I don't know what the answer to that is, but I find that question so intriguing And I think Gosh, we've got a lot of false starts, right? There's a lot of things we're not getting right. But I think that when, you know, the sum of the impetus behind

workplace initiatives and even, I mean, we have a five year thing that's been going on in our organization that has been wholly transformative. And I said, we can't call it DEI. I mean, five years ago, I said that because those words are too small. But it is that impulse, right? And I think that when we're attempting wholeness and we don't know how to do it, we don't have the methodology. But I think that's what we're longing for. And that means institutions that factor in the fullness of the humanity of everybody's

part of them, right? What would it be to be a whole society? And so I guess maybe both of these words, calling in wholeness, are aspirational words, but that is a power that they have that Americans don't take very seriously, that they themselves can create a larger space for us to step into. And then what's so just riveting for me, and this is again, gets back to the generative narrative, is even as there's so much fracture, so much catastrophe,

we are understanding our bodies, the natural world, the workings of reality in these miraculous ways. And they show us how vitality functions. And it has all these qualities that the 20th century didn't acknowledge, like reciprocity and, you know, cooperation, emergence rather than strategic planning, a reality base around the fact that the way life works individually and collectively is that we plan and things go wrong. It never, nothing ever goes this plan. And sometimes that's terrible. And often, it's when things break that we learn something, we didn't even know we need to know or pursue. So wholeness is like that.

It's not like perfection. It's actually like orienting towards reality and orienting towards flourishing, which I feel like is a word that our traditions, if you want to say, what are all these teachings add up to? It is a life of flourishing, right? It's a life of inner abundance, whatever the conditions are. So that's what that was about. Can I just go back to aspiration for a second? Yeah. Because you can help maybe adjudicate not a debate, but just an interesting discussion I was having with one of these friends at the beach. Okay. Who is an incredibly impressive woman who I've known for 20 years, who I will not name because she hasn't given me permission, but she's very,

name because she hasn't given me permission, but she's very, very impressive person. And she wants, and these are her words, to be an exemplary human. And she's constantly kicking her own ass because she's aware of the delta between what she thinks is exemplary and what she believes she's actually doing. And I tried to talk to her a little bit about what in Buddhism is called the Bodhisattva vow or the anotion of Bodhi Chita, which is something to the effect of suffering is endless, and I vow to end it. I am going to dedicate my life to liberating all beings everywhere.

It's a deliberately impossible preposterous goal. But in the making of that vow, you can relax into its impossibility. And she was saying, well, but I see so much opportunity for complacency in there that you won't actually do anything. You've made the vow that you know is impossible. So then you eat Cheetos on the couch

and watch the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City as a consequence. That's so interesting. I'm thinking of Sharon Salzburg saying, you know, even if all you're trying to do is keep focusing on your breath, you will have lost your focus by breath three. And how she'll say, don't worry about it. See, that's where I think there's a collusion between this really kind of spiritual aspiration

and her capitalist Western education and training, which is telling her that it's about hitting a mark and that not hitting the mark is failure. I think there can be no complacency in how we are orienting ourselves. So like, what is your intentionality, and what are you orienting towards, and what are you orienting away from?

And that's inner work, as well as outer work. But reality, reality doesn't, we don't hit the marks a lot of the time. That's the way it works. And again, like what we learn again and again in life, and we could learn this in our collective life if we orient it towards it, is that every time we don't hit the mark

there's learning possible and that we can relax into that. And you know what's Sharon said, like so you forgot the breath, you didn't get it, like you lost it. It's still there for you to take the next breath. But you haven't lost your, I don't wanna say will because I also think that we reduce it to willpower. And there's a little bit of that in this, right? If I just

done it, I just, if I just, I could have done it right. I think everything you're saying is correct. And there's a word that is using Buddhism that I think is useful. What too? One is order. I love that word instead of effort. Yes of effort, yes. Yes. And the other is remembering. And so it's like you can have this aspiration. And I get her concern that you can have the aspiration. You can even tattoo it on your wrist. But if you don't remember and you lose your ardor, then it's empty. And the civil rights elders put this hyphen and remembering, remembering, and I love that. And actually, I think that's a useful image here too,

because it's remembering. It's also just that we constantly have to kind of get back in our bodies. It's like re-re-situate, re-orient. There's something that was useful for me when I was getting religious again in my 20s was Thomas Merton and some of the things he wrote about intention and here's another really beautiful,

deep spiritual concept and which I feel is very resonant in Buddhism as well. It's like non-attachment also to results. And he would talk about pure intention. I know I can't remember which one was the right one. There's the right intention, it's like non-attachment also to results. And he would talk about pure intention. And I can't remember which one was the right one. There's the right intention, there's pure intention. The thing is what we're called to, and where there is also mystery to behold,

is to get our intentions straight. Why? Why do I want to be this way? Why do I want this to be my presence? In the minute we attach it to goals, it's not that we don't, we just have to hold that so lightly, right? Like we're doing the best we can in any given moment and okay, what do I do with this intention? How do I set into action now?

But we never control the results of our actions. And that's one of the wild mysteries of being alive and the way things work. And just physics is telling us about that as much as anything else. And so every time we think we haven't achieved that goal, we have to actually be able to rest and that we had our intention, it was pure, it was real, and then we have to let that go. It was pure. It was real. And then we have to let that go. It's a weird tension to live in. I definitely live in this tension, but it takes a lot of practice.

And I'm a totally ambitious person in some ways, right? Like I'm driven. And I think getting to this point of being able to live in this creative tension is definitely it's worth it to pursue a spiritual path for a long time. Yeah, it's absolutely not about giving up that ambition and that drive. But what a relief to let go of the illusion of control. Because even if I hit that mark that I set, I don't know that that sets the right ripples in the force field that is the universe. know that that sets the right ripples in the force field that is the universe. So I have to do my best to get my attention straight, to walk forward, and then let it go. And then

get my attention straight again, and keep walking forward. This has been really fun. I have like a million things on my list of questions that we didn't even get to, so I have to invagal you into coming back at some point. It's been really exciting. Is there something that you wanted to talk about or something that came up in your mind that I didn't give you a chance to? No, I just came in really curious about where you wanted to go. I trust a conversation.

And this was just such a great adventure. Thank you. Thank you. Your project on being has gone through some changes. Mm-hmm. Used to be on public radio. Now it's podcast only. Can you just talk a little bit about that and give people a chance to hear like what you're working on that you're excited about where we can hear it, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. So we left weekly public radio. I did 52 weeks a year for 20 years and that was enough. And so now we're doing

podcast seasons, but I've realized a lot of people don't know that we, that we're still around. So we're just doing our second podcast-selling season. Really fun. We have a newsletter called The Pause. Everything is on the website on being better. Or we also have a poetry podcast called Poetry and Bound, which is beautiful.

And we're also, you know, it wasn't taking the show off the weekly radio, wasn't about doing less, but it was about doing other. So we're doing convenings and we have this beautiful 20 year archive with people aren't with us anymore with just a lot of wise voices. And so we're kind of mining that we're creating what we're calling a lab for the art of living. Actually later this week, I'm going to be with some people who are starting to design that, to create some tools and resources, I would say, because one of the things we found across the years, people really take in our content and live with it. And so we're trying to figure out how we can deepen that and offer up more along those lines. Do you think it'll be an app? No, I don't think it'll be an app. I don't know what it's going to be. I don't know it's going to be. Stay tuned.

You're living with the question. I'm living with the question. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's great. And I hope people who haven't already done so go check out everything you're doing. Yeah. Thank you.

My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks again to Chris the Tippett. Go check out her TED Talk and go check out her podcast. She's incredible. One last little note here before I let you go, deep cuts is a new feature where you, the listener get to choose your favorite TPH episode

from the archives. It's simple, just give us a call and leave us a voicemail that includes the episode you wanna hear and why. The number is 1508656-0540. We'll put it in the show notes so you don't have to write it down. Finally, thank you so much to everybody who works incredibly hard on this show. 10% happier is produced by Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davie, Lauren Smith, and Tara Anderson.

DJ Casimir is our senior producer, Marissa Schneiderman is our senior editor and Kimmy Räggler. He's our executive producer, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonaventure of Ultraviolet Audio and Nick Thorburn of Islands wrote our theme. We'll see you right back here on Wednesday for a brand new episode of Freshy with the great Adam Grant who's got a new book on potential and success and the science thereof. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-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.