The Blindboy Podcast - Humanistic Psychology in the myth of King Midas

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

I speak about the Greek Myth of King Midas through the lens of Humanistic Psychology Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings you teeming Stevens. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I was unsure whether I was going to record a podcast this week because my office is closed for Christmas and my house is full of people. But I didn't want to abandon you glorious pricks. Especially on Wednesday the 27th of December. That's when we all have our little, our little morning walk. So I have prepared something this

week. First off, I had a little bit of a chaotic situation on Christmas Eve. I'd bought too much food for the Christmas period. And I had these six chicken breasts inside my fridge. And they'd gone off by a day. They'd gone off by a day, so I didn't want to eat them. But I felt bad about throwing them away as well. So I thought fuck it I'll give them to Nappertandy. I'll give these six chicken breasts to my cat Nappertandy. She'd be thrilled. This would be like a Christmas present. And the chicken breasts smelled okay. They were technically fresh. They were just gone off yesterday so I didn't want to eat them. But Nappertandy doesn't give a fuck. But then I'm like, six chicken breasts is too much for one cat.

I wonder what I can do. And it was Christmas Eve. So I was on Instagram. And I was looking at all the American influencers. You know, putting on big spreads of food and inviting their friends over. Laying out these big spreads of food. And getting respect from their friends and family. And the thing is my cat

Nappertandy, she's not domesticated, she's a stray cat. I feed her and I mind her but she's still wild. She lives by the rules of the stray cats of the neighbourhood and since her brother Silken Thomas died this year, the stray cats of the neighbourhood just don't respect her space. They come and go as they please. And they steal from her food dish. And this wasn't the case when her brother was alive. So then I start thinking. What if I put all six chicken breasts out?

As like a banquet for all the cats in the neighbourhood. Maybe all the stray cats will show up to Nap or Tandy's back garden and think that she is giving them these chicken breasts like a big spread, like a feast or a banquet. She'd be like a cat influencer. Maybe she might get some respect from the local cats. If she's the one providing all of them with chicken breasts, she'll become popular. They'll call her Princess Chicken Breast in in cat language so I was curious about this idea I wanted to try it out so I roasted all six chicken breasts and left them outside and I imagined the aroma wafting through the neighborhood reaching the nostrils of nearby toms and then following the smell like a rope but it didn't work out like that at all. It was fucking chaos. So I put the chicken breasts outside.

Nappertandy ate one. I waited, waited for cats to show up. Nothing. I went back inside, kind of forgot about it. Went to bed and was then woken up at like 3am with the familiar sound of growling tomcats. I get out of bed, go to the kitchen window, look out. Oh shit. There's 20 fucking cats. Napartandi's gone. And it's just these cats I've never seen before growling at each other around the chicken breasts. None of them eating it because they couldn't decide who was senior enough to eat the chicken breasts. So're all having this huge mexican standoff and then a fucking crow shows up a crow shows up and just bobs along pure confident and starts eating the chicken breast and then i'm like fuck is that cannibalism should i tell the crow to stop eating the chicken so the crow is eating the chicken breast and the cats don't even notice him. They're

all doing that thing where they arch their spines and lick their lips and move really slowly staring at each other and vocalizing making these strained growly meows that makes them sound like they're from Drogheda. Then suddenly the crow flies off and when he flapped his wings it freaked out one of the cats that cat swiped and then there was a frenzy all the cats kicking the heads off each other sending fire flying up into the air and one big tom he thuds against the wheelie bin like makes a load of noise really loud and it was late as well. It was like 3am on Christmas Eve. So there's chaos, loads of noise. And then I see lights turning on in neighbours' back porches.

So then it's like, fuck, I'm after waking neighbours up. And they're thinking, what is he doing with those cats? Would he just leave the cats alone? And then in a house about two down i hear a child crying a child is screaming crying three in the morning and then the da says go back to bed go no go back to bed it's not the grinch it's not the grinch go back to bed so the poor fucking child is bawling crying because they think the grinch is after coming to steal all the Christmas presents or to murder Santa Claus. That's what they think the chaos and the noise is.

So the cat's dispersed. And in the morning all the chicken was gone. And I don't know who ate it. It was all gone. And I'd like to think, I'd like to think it was Santa Claus. Down on his bended knees, eating freezing cold chicken breast off the concrete of my back garden, getting his beard wet with rainwater.

So that was my chaotic and embarrassing Christmas Eve. So I've managed to secure some time, a bit of peace and quiet, to prepare a podcast for you this week, which is fantastic because I didn't think there was going to be a podcast this week. I'd like to speak to you about the Greek myth of King Midas, because it says a lot about the human condition and what it is to find meaning in being your authentic self. So King Midas, he was a real king in a place called Phrygia which would now be in modern day Turkey. He existed in the 8th century BC which is almost 3,000 years ago. But there's also mythological Midas and the myth of King Midas is probably one of the most famous Greek myths. You've definitely heard elements of

it. But Midas was a king in Phrygia. It was a small king, a small kingdom. And it wasn't a very wealthy kingdom. And he wasn't a particularly wealthy king. Like he was a king, so he was well off. He was doing well compared to other people. But he wasn't a wealthy king. In the hierarchy of kings at the time, he'd have been pretty low down. King Midas would have looked to wealthier kings with larger kingdoms

and wanted what they had. Wanted their possessions and their gold and their riches and their land. King Midas would have been like a micro-influencer today. 9,000 followers on Instagram. Runs a nail salon in Clonmel. Posting photographs of outfits and tagging the brands in the hope

that he might one day get a sponsorship. But quite jealous of larger influencers like Suzanne Jackson. I think influencers are a good metaphor to understand the hierarchy of brands age kingships. I'm not shitting on influencers.

It's just an interesting trend has emerged in the past 10 years where you have micro-influencers. Every town in Ireland has got micro-influencers. They're people with maybe 4 or 5 thousand followers on Instagram. They're just regular people. Just everyday regular people. But because they've got a couple of thousand followers, they have a shot at becoming an influencer. Now I don't know much about influencers,

but I would imagine what actually makes a person an influencer on Instagram is when they can earn a living through influencing, when that becomes their full-time job. Once you get to that level, maybe 100,000 followers, then you are a real influencer. This is your profession. This is your job. This is what you do. But I am fascinated by micro-influencers, the people who are trying to get to that place where they can be an influencer. And what fascinates me about it is they have to fake it till they make it. They really have to pretend that they are much wealthier and more successful than they are because they're selling

people a lifestyle on Instagram. A micro-influencer might pause in front of somebody else's house. They might go to the rich part of their town and pause in front of somebody else's house. They might go to the rich part of their town. And pause in front of someone else's house. As if it's their own. Or an Irish micro influencer. They might have just one little corner of their. Bedroom. Or one little corner of their bathroom.

In an otherwise. Regular normal house. But they'll have one little corner. That looks fancy as fuck and they just post from there and I'm not shitting on influencers and if somebody wants to become an influencer you know that's a career fair play to you but watching someone who's a micro influencer only a couple of thousand followers with a regular job watching them trying to become an influencer I can't help but imagine that it's detrimental to that person's mental health

because they really have to live a lie. They have to manufacture and portray a level of success, wealth and leisure that isn't their lived reality. So King Midas, back in ancient Turkey, the king of Phrygia, he was a bit like a micro-influencer. A small king in a small kingdom. Not a lot of money but still a king. And he had to influence. Even if a king wasn't that wealthy, a king would have to put on big banquets. A king would have to display wealth even if he didn't have it and Midas had to do that. Mythological Midas and real life actual King Midas who existed. Because in the

1940s they found his tomb and they dug it up and the real King Midas's tomb was a funerary banquet. was a funerary banquet. His body lay in its coffin and all around him in his tomb are giant vats of wine and tables full of food and empty chairs and goblets. King Midas's tomb was an actual banquet of food and drink that rotted with him and when they dug off King Midas's tomb and found this funerary banquet it was the most perfectly preserved bronze age banquet that the world had ever seen. You know this is the 7th century BC. So King Midas had to show off even in death. He had to display a banquet that would rot with him. He had to display his ability to put on a great feast. It'd be like if an influencer died today and then they posted a photograph of their wake on Instagram and then their death outfit is sponsored by Brown Thomas

and they're tagged in the comments. But mythological King Midas was a bit of a micro-influencer. He would put on these lavish banquets even though though he couldn't really afford them, just to portray the image of influence. If I can act like a king who's wealthy with a wealthy kingdom, then maybe I can command that respect. But the thing is with King Midas, he wasn't envious. He did try to portray himself as being more successful than he was. And he did look to other kings and want what they had. He coveted those things but he wasn't envious about it. Seeing what somebody else has and wanting what they have, that's a healthy part of being human. That can be quite motivational and aspirational. Wow, I like what they have. I like that person's job. I like what that person

is doing there. Fair play to them. How do I get there? What work do I do to get to where they are? But King Midas wasn't. He wasn't jealous or envious. When you look at somebody else and you want what they have, their job, their talent, a skill that they have. So long as you're not eaten up with feelings of resentment or jealousy, then there's a healthy way to be aspirational. But when it becomes unhealthy, I think, is when you feel yourself, you look at what another person has, and then you want to take them down a peg. Or when you think about that person you feel intensely angry or you feel happy when you hear that that person has received bad news

or you find yourself belittling what that person has the type of shit you see in comments about influencers because an influencer's job is to portray a type of success. It's to make people want to be like them so that they can become a walking billboard. But you read the shit that's written about fucking influencers, in particular, like micro-influencers in Ireland. Oh, that car that they have isn't theirs. They're behind on a payment. They went over to Turkey and got their teeth done cheap that couple portray a happy marriage but i know someone who knows that the husband cheats on her that's resentment and jealousy that's seeing another person's life which you would like and rather

than seeing about how you could do that yourself you choose to hatefully resent the person and pick apart what they have and I don't know the world of influencing but I know the world of being a professional fucking artist and the message I always give young artists is if you begrudge in any way if there's any bit of begrudgery in you towards other artists who are successful you must eradicate that first or you won't be able to create. If you see another musician doing well and your initial urge is to take that person down or to resent what they have or wish failure upon them, that's how hard you're going to be on yourself when you try to create anything. The only person who is hurt in that dynamic really is you. It's

not possible to find motivation and tenacity as an artist when you resent other artists' success. And when you feel that resentment coming up, challenge it and instead work really hard on feeling happy. Feel genuinely happy for another artist's success. And then when you do that, you're way more forgiving on yourself. You're much more flexible around failure. You have to fail. If you're going to be an artist, you have to fail fucking loads. That's a given. And failure needs to become water off a duck's back. It's a necessary part of the process. But if you're resenting and hating an artist for being successful, now the cost of failure is massive.

Now you can't fail. Because when you do fail, you're being as horrible to yourself as you are to the person that you're begrudging. But be happy for someone else's success. And now it becomes aspirational. It becomes something that you can at least try to achieve. But in the myth of King Midas, he wasn't resentful or jealous of these other kings,

even though they had more than him. He kind of, he wanted that. I'd love more wealth. I'd love to put on gigantic banquets like the King of Macedonia with the most expensive wines. I'd love to be able to do that. But I don't resent the King of Macedonia for being able expensive wines. I'd love to be able to do that but I don't resent the king of Macedonia for being able to do it. Fair play to him. So there was a goodness and a groundedness to King Midas and this is most evidenced by what King Midas loved more than

anything. More than wealth. What King Midas really loved was his garden in his little palace. He had a wonderfully maintained garden with loads of different types of roses and King Midas' favourite thing to do really was walk around his garden smelling the roses, tending to them, being in the present moment, in the here and now, just enjoying flowers and the beauty of nature. And he also loved his daughter Zoe. He had a daughter called Zoe who he was mad about. She was about four or five years of age and he would walk all around his little garden with Zoe and they would both just look at the roses and smell them and and this was King Midas's favorite thing in the whole world enjoying his garden with his daughter who he loved and then one day while King Midas was in his garden admiring a rose bush with

his daughter his daughter spotted a pair of feet sticking out of this rose bush these darty feet just sticking out of the bottom of the rose bush and she goes to her da goes to King Midas what the fuck is this da and King Midas looks down it's some cunts darty feet Zoe

I don't know what the crack is so King Midas reaches down and he pulls at the dirty feet. At the bottom of his rose garden. And out pops this old lad. This old lad. Who's stinking of sweat. After a three day bender.

And a mad hangover. He's burping and farting. And then Midas is like. Who the fuck are you? What are you doing in my rose garden? What are you at? And the old fella says sorry man my name is Salinas and I I've been on a bender for days and I passed out in your rose bush and I've a rotter of a hangover I'm fucked and then Salinas says geez you've got a nice enough place here is Is there any chance I can crash here for a couple of days? Is that all right with you?

Now, you'd think Midas would be thinking, who's this dirty, smelly tramp? Who's this peasant who smells like sweat? Who's hung over and farting and sleeping in my rosebush? Who's this? I should kick him out of my garden. But Midas doesn't do that because he's a king and now there's a guest in his garden. And when a guest says to him, can I stay here for a few days? Midas is a king. He has to lay out a feast. He has to entertain this guest and feed him

and give him a bed and show him a nice time. So Salinas ends up staying with King Midas for 10 days and this old fella Salinas is a pure lush and each night he's eating Midas out of house and home, eating the best of his food and drinking all the most expensive wines that Midas has clearing out his cellar because Salinas is thinking sure this fella's a king he's a fucking king I'm gonna eat all the food he gives me I'm gonna drink all the drink privately Midas is thinking I know this cunt knows I'm a king but he doesn't know that I'm a poor king but I can't let him know that I'm a poor king so I'm just gonna have to keep giving him the best wine and giving him the best food even though I can't really afford it I just have to do it I have to influence I have to portray this image of being a successful wealthy king and the other thing too is that this Salinas fella the old lad

he's sound so Midas likes hanging out with him and feeding him and drinking him every night because Selinus is dancing and singing and telling stories. Aside from the fact that he's eating him out of house and home, he's being a perfect guest. So on the 10th night, Selinus turns to Midas and he says, Jesus Christ, I'm after spending 10 days here with you, man. My master is going to be looking for me. I have to go. And then Midas is like no no don't go. You can stay as long as you want. Don't worry.

But secretly he's thinking thank fuck. I can't afford to be throwing this fella a feast every single night. Thank fuck he's leaving. And then Selenus goes look I'm an old man and my master is in this this vineyard just to the south of Phrygia is there any chance you'd go with me and make sure I get to my destination safely so I can so I can meet my master so then Midas says okay grand I'll go with you I'll keep you safe we'll take a couple of guards with us so King King Midas sets off with Salinas towards this vineyard in the south. And they get there. And then they meet Salinas' master. And Salinas' master is the god Dionysus.

So if Midas is like a micro-influencer, this is like meeting Kim Kardashian. This is like Dionysus is a god. Dionysus was the Greek god of wine. He was the god of the feeling of tipsiness, the feeling of liberation and lack of inhibitions that you get from being drunk. That was Dionysus casting a spell on you when you drank. So now King Midas is there thinking holy fuck this old smelly lad, this old smelly lad who I found in my garden with a hangover who I just fed and found for the past 10 days this fella's friends with Dionysus

the god how lucky is this so the old lad Salinas he now introduces Dionysus to King Midas and he's like Dionysus this this King Midas fella, he is unbelievably sound. I was hung over in his garden and he just fed me and gave me all the drink in the world for the past 10 days. What a generous, lovely host. And Dionysus, who's a god. And the gods in Greek mythology, they're not massive fans of humans because humans are the playthings of the gods. And if you listen to my podcast that I made about two months ago about Greek mythology, you'll know that Zeus made humans fallible so that they wouldn't become more powerful than the gods. Zeus opened Pandora's box, and humans experienced things like hate and jealousy.

So Dionysus as a god is now really impressed with King Midas, a human. And Dionysus is thinking, fair fucking play to you King Midas. My buddy Selinus here, who with all due respect looks like an absolute tramp. He just arrived in your garden an absolute nobody and you showed him kindness and generosity just for the sake of it. You're really restoring my faith in human beings King Midas. So Dionysus then says I'll tell you what King Midas I'm a god so I'm going to give you one wish. Whatever it is I'm going to give you one wish. Now Midas can't believe this. This

is like meeting Kim Kardashian and Kim Kardashian saying, I'm going to share your Instagram story. Midas cannot believe it. So he's thinking, what do I love most in the whole world? What do I want more than anything? And then the human fallibility creeps in. And King Midas isn't thinking. Do you know what I love most in the whole world? My beautiful daughter, my little daughter and my rose garden and the moments that we spent together in the rose garden. He's not thinking that way now. He's thinking the grass is greener on the other side.

He's thinking about the other kings that are wealthier than him. So King Midas goes to Dionysus. Do you know what I want, Dionysus? I want everything I touch to turn to gold. And then Dionysus is like, are you sure? I'm a god. I can make it happen if that's what you want. And Midas is like, yeah, I want everything I touch to turn to gold. Because I want to be wealthier than all these other pricks. The king of fucking Macedonia. That fucking prick, the king of Persia. Who thinks he's so great with his big banquets.

Fuck him. I want more than him. I want more gold than he has. I want to be the wealthiest, most respected king. The biggest king in all the land. With the greatest amount of wealth. And the way I'm the land with the greatest amount of wealth and the way i'm going to get the greatest amount of wealth i want every single thing i touch to turn to gold so i've got unlimited gold that's what i want so dionysus says okay if that's your

wish go home and when you go home take a bath in wine go to sleep and when you wake up the next morning everything you touch will turn to gold so king midas wakes up and he does what he does every morning he walks out into his beautiful rose garden to admire his roses there's bees all over the garden and they're enjoying the flowers and he walks over to one of the roses to kneel down and to smell it and as he puts his hand on the petal to bring it towards his nose the fucking rose turns to gold and then he's like what holy fuck and then he touches another rose and another and now all his roses are solid fucking gold he can't believe it he's ecstatic with joy. What could go wrong? He calls over some of his servants and he says, look, all the fucking roses are turning to gold.

Cut them down and have them melted into coins immediately. I'm going to be wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. He runs all around his garden, touching every single rose, every one of them turning to gold. He's ecstatic with joy. He spends the rest of garden touching every single rose. Every one of them turn into gold. He's ecstatic with joy. He spends the rest of the day just touching shit. Everything. Touching everything and turning it to solid gold. And saying take it away and melt it into coins.

And then he gets hungry. After a day of touching shit. He's starving so he sits down to eat. and he picks up an apple to bring it towards his mouth. Then the apple turns to gold. And he's like, well, all right, this is going to be difficult. Then he reaches for a leg of lamb. The lamb turns to gold. Then he goes for a cup of water and that turns to gold. Now he's thinking, like, this might be an issue because I'm going to have to fucking eat. I'm going to need to eat. So he puts on a set of gloves. Thinking alright maybe if I wear a set of gloves.

Then I can eat an apple without it turning to gold. So he puts the fucking gloves on. Now the gloves turn to gold. And he can't move his fucking fingers. He still tries to touch an apple. But the apple still turns to gold even though he's got golden gloves. Fuck what am I going to do? He says to one of his servants,

I'm starving here, I'm fucking starving. Can you hold this apple so I can take a bite out of it? So the servant does, but the second that King Midas' teeth bite into the apple, the apple turns to gold. Now he's starting to panic a bit. He's feeling like the pangs of an anxiety attack coming on. He starts pacing back and forth. This isn't great at all. Everything I

touch turns to fucking gold. But I can't eat. And then his daughter Zoe walks in. And he sees Zoe and he's just overcome with that feeling of love. Oh, there's Zoe, my God, my beautiful daughter. And he forgets about his problems for two seconds and runs over and gives her a big hug. Oh, I love you so much, Zoe. And just when he's waiting to hear, I love you too, Dada, he hears nothing because now Zoe has turned into a golden statue. No movement, nothing an inanimate golden statue

his wonderful beautiful daughter is gone now he's in bits he's inconsolable he goes out to his rose garden and all the roses are gone because they were melted into coins and there's no bees anymore

insects aren't interested in golden roses but he has everything he wanted. He's now the wealthiest king. He has infinite wealth but he's miserable. He's empty. He has everything and he has nothing and he goes to bed miserable in his freezing cold bed made out of gold with golden sheets everything metallic luxurious perfect glimmering and miserable and he dreams a dream a dream so sad that he cries in his sleep. He dreams of seeing his daughter again. He dreams of imagining the golden statue becoming flesh and her smile and now that he has everything all he wants all he wants is to smell some roses with Zoe and see the look of joy in her face. Because she loves roses as much as he does. And when they share that moment.

Of both of them loving roses. It's the happiest feeling in the world. And now he only has it in a dream. It only exists in a dream. It's a memory. And then he hears the voice of Dionysus in his dream. And Dionysus says his dream and Dionysus says you stupid prick you stupid human bollocks when you fed Salinas and you were just being sound and nice for the sake of it and being

a decent person being generous and compassionate I was impressed by that I liked that but then you had to fuck it up you had to fuck it up. You had to fuck it up. You had to lean towards that resentment and jealousy. And you got greedy, didn't you? You stupid fucking prick. And then King Midas in his dream is just begging Dionysus. Please, please, I don't want everything I touch to turn to gold.

I don't give a fuck about gold. I just want my daughter back. I just want my daughter back. I just want my daughter back. And then Dionysus says. Do you know what? I'm a god. So I knew this was going to happen. I knew this was going to happen.

So luckily I made the spell reversible. So here's what you need to do. When you wake up. Go down to the river Polus and then wash your hands in the water just wash your hands in that water and you'll lose this ability things will be back to normal and everything that you touch to turn to gold it'll go back to its natural form all right so midas wakes up he runs to the riveractolus, does exactly as Dionysus said in the dream, and then he watches as the water washes away all the sparkly materials from his hand.

And now he no longer has the ability to turn things to gold with his touch. And just as an aside, the beauty of mythology, the river Pactolus is a real place in Turkey and it's a natural source of electrum, which is a very rare alloy of gold and silver. And the myth of King Midas washing his hands in this river is used to explain why this river provides this alloy of gold and silver. So anyway, King Midas is cured of his affliction and he doesn't have any gold anymore because it all turned back into its natural form but most importantly

he has his daughter Zoe and she's alive and he hugs her and they both go out into the garden and all the roses are gone because he had them made into kinds that are now just mush but there's one rose left

that he didn't touch and him and Zoe go over to it and admire it. And they smell it. And a little bee comes down. And Midas realises. He had wealth already. The wealth that he had. Was his garden and his daughter.

And it took losing those things to realise it. And that's the myth of King Midas. And that story is two and a half thousand years old. And what I adore about that story is it's two and a half thousand years old and it says the exact same shit that modern psychology does. Specifically humanistic psychology. And in particular, psychotherapeutic theories

of a fellow called carl rogers humanistic psychology says that the human personality that we have our real self our authentic self like our real self and our ideal self. And often to live in society, there's a battle going on within us between our real self and our ideal self. Our real self is, it's who we really are. It's the part of us that wants to love and to be loved by someone else. Our real self is where we feel truly genuinely calm and safe. When we live in our real selves, our authentic sense of self, we tend to experience life in a very meaningful way. Being alive is enjoyable. It's not filled with anxiety or resentment or anger. Then we have our ideal self. It's how we would like other people to see us.

We learn about our ideal self from messages we receive from parents, teachers and society. I will be happy when I'm rich. I will be happy when I'm thinner. I will be happy when I'm thinner. I will be happy when I have the perfect relationship. I will be happy when I'm more stylish. When I can dress myself better. I will be happy when I get that PhD. I will be happy when my life is like that person's life over there.

Our ideal self is something that we learn early on. When we attach our self-worth to external things. We live in a society that tells us that we are more worthy as people if we have more money or if we're more physically attractive. This is what influencers peddle. this is what influencers pedal influencers pedal an ideal self they construct an online life of absolute perfection wealth style perfect marriage perfect children perfect house perfect friends perfect fun a successful influencer is someone who's able to encapsulate a zeitgeist of what society's conditions of worth are right now. But an influencer isn't selling you, here's some beauty products to show you how you can be more physically beautiful, or here's some style tips. That's not what's being sold here.

What's being sold is a better version of yourself. Now advertising has been doing this for years. Influencers are just the latest incarnation of it on social media. But really what an influencer is peddling is the feeling of if you follow me and interact with me and buy some of the things that I'm promoting, you will finally achieve the perfect you. You will finally achieve the perfect you you will finally achieve the perfect you and then you will be happy this is why too that influencers can inspire such intense feelings of jealousy resentment anger and hatred because if you internalize the messages from society and you truly believe I will only be a good person, a worthy person, when I am that beautiful, that wealthy, that successful, whatever. If you truly internalize that, when an influencer presents themselves on your social media feed with a manufactured,

idealized image of a perfect life, when they present to us like that in our social media feed, it's a continual reminder of everything we hate about ourselves. You can't think that you will be a worthy person through external achievement without also thinking that you're a terrible person because you haven't achieved it yet. But that's often too painful and complex for us to be able to verbalize. So you attack the person and belittle the person who caused that feeling in you, the influencer. But the problem with the ideal self within humanistic psychology is that the ideal self is always unattainable. When you chase the ideal self,

it's a never-ending chase. It never ever ends. And you think, if I can just get those clothes, if I can be as stylish as that person, if I can be as beautiful as they are, if I can have their perfect relationship, if I can have their house,

if I can have all this, I will be happy and complete. That's the feeling. And even if you do manage to achieve these things, if you manage to get them, it doesn't bring happiness. And when your ideal self is too far apart from your real self, from who you really are, you lose a feeling of, you won't have a solid sense of identity and in that incongruity between your real self and your ideal self that's where feelings of anxiety and sadness and anger and unhelpful toxic emotions pop up so to take it back to king midas and why i adore that story

king midas's ideal self was the part of him that wanted to be incredibly wealthy. The part of him that looked at other kings and thought if I can be like them, if I can have their wealth and their gold then I'll be happy. Then I'll have that thing I'm searching for and then he finally gets it and everything turns to gold. But let's look at that metaphorically. What he's looking for is influence. King Midas wants to be really, really wealthy so he can throw these huge, huge banquets so that he will finally be accepted by everyone. They will love me. They will worship me. They will love me. If I can just throw these huge banquets.

Then people will speak about me. And he's not asking the question of. Why do I need that many people to love me? Why can't I just love myself? And when he finally gets everything. And he gets all the gold. He destroys everything that really matters. You see King Midas' real self, his authentic self,

it's the part of him that loves his garden and loves his daughter. Something you don't need any wealth for. You need no material wealth to love a garden and love your daughter. All you need is to be able to experience the present moment and to truly believe that you are worthy of love and that you deserve to love someone else. If you're living in your ideal self, chasing wealth, chasing what someone else has,

thinking, I will be happy if I get that one thing, that's quite a miserable existence. That's an existence whereby you are never, ever good enough because your entire worth depends on what you don't have. And when you don't have these things that you want, the lifestyle, the money, the clothes, the adoration, whatever, when you don't have these things you are worthless because worth is a thing you're chasing and when you live that way you're not open to authentic

experience. You're not going to listen to the things that genuinely nourish you and give you meaning. So for King Midas everything turned gold, but he couldn't experience his daughter's love, and he couldn't experience the love that he has for his rose garden, and he couldn't experience the love that he has for sharing that rose garden with his daughter. The metaphor of chasing all that wealth and getting all that gold is that it separated him completely from who he truly is and then he couldn't identify or meet any of his basic needs what's taken from king midas are the most basic needs eating drinking loving somebody loving yourself and enjoying the present moment. The rose garden is the present moment. That's what the rose garden is. It's the here and now. It's the simple joy of being alive. That's what the

rose garden is. The joy of I am alive. I'm happy to be alive and this feels great. Just breathing feels amazing. King Midas was denied those basic things because his pursuit of wealth clouded his experience with resentment, jealousy, anger and it caused him to be blind around his actual wealth and his actual real wealth. It was something he had all along, which was, I love my daughter, I love my rose garden and I like being alive. That's his real self. That's where he gets his meaning from. And this idea that he needed to be a powerful, influential king who would be spoken about for his great banquets that he can throw. That's his ideal self. Those are the toxic messages that were fed to him by society that he only has worth when people speak about him and look up to him.

Midas probably thought, yeah I know I love my daughter and I know I love my rose garden but who's going to talk about someone because they love their daughter and their rose garden who gives a fuck about that they don't tell stories about people who love their daughter and love their rose garden but the way that we we learn and begin the journey of living in our authentic real self is by accepting it yeah it'd be nice to actually have the life that an influencer portrays, but maybe that's not the real you. King Midas thought he wanted to be a wealthy king who could throw big banquets and be spoken about by everybody in the land. He thought that's what he wanted, but really that's not who King Midas is. King Midas is someone who wants to hang around his rose garden,

love his daughter and share that with her. And King Midas' journey is to truly deeply understand that that's enough. That's actually enough. And that's what brings him meaning. The greatest wealth you can have is to be happy to be alive right now. That's the greatest wealth you can have. I like right now and I like who I am. I'm happy to be me.

And I'm happy to be alive. If you can say those things and they genuinely ring true. Then that's real wealth. And you achieve it through self-acceptance. You accept who you are are and you accept what you can't change about yourself and you accept that you have intrinsic worth we all have the exact same worth as human beings and our external behavior or our possessions or our physical appearance or whatever the fuck none of these things actually determine our worth.

We're born with our worth. It's there. It doesn't change. It's no greater than anyone else's or no lesser than anyone else's. Our worth is intrinsic, unchanging. And all we have to do is accept it. We have to accept that self-compassionately. And it's very difficult because we have a society that tells us the opposite of that. Society sets us up with these conditions of worth. Actually, no, you don't have intrinsic worth. You have worth if your life is like that influencer over there. That's when you have worth.'s bullshit that just services capitalism and consumerism if you can have a population of people believing that if you purchase certain goods what you're actually buying is a better version of yourself consumerism flourishes flourishes in that

environment because we keep buying shit to fill an unfillable hole. Like I know that my authentic self lies in creativity and exercising. I love those two things. If I can create art and explore creativity and then also go to the gym and run

then I'm incredibly happy. I know that that's my authentic self so I work towards my goal is is how can I maintain a job that allows me to do that I want to wake up and in the middle of the day I create whenever I want to and I get to exercise whenever I want to and if I can do those things I don't want much else and I'm kind of happy to be that person but it takes fucking work it takes work and I'll get insecure and I'll get resentful or jealous I might look at someone else's success and think why don't I have that I want that I want have. Then I'll be happy. And my job is to try and catch myself in that moment. And I accept and acknowledge in a self-compassionate way that it's okay to get

jealous sometimes. It's okay to want what someone else has. It's okay to think that when someone else has more than me that they're a better person it's okay to have these flawed thoughts but I have a choice and I can challenge those flawed thoughts and I challenge those things through evidence and what I mean by that is I have achieved I've achieved some stuff that my ideal self thought I wanted I've actually achieved that stuff. Like for instance, I had Johnny Marr on the podcast a couple of weeks back. Johnny Marr is like legitimately a hero of mine. When I was 17, 18 listening to the Smiths and I wanted to be an artist, if you'd have said to me at 17, would you feel like a worthy person or a better person if Johnny Marr liked a piece of art that you made?

If you said that to me at 18, 19, I'd go, oh my God, that's it. That's like heaven. That's the golden touch. That's like King Midas's wish. If I could make a piece of art and Johnny Marr heard it and liked it and told me I was good then I would be unbelievably happy that would be peak happiness that's it I don't think I'd want anything else my life would be perfect but that happened it happened Johnny Marr was on the podcast a few weeks back and he's clearly there saying I love your podcast I love the work that you make, Blind Boy.

Do you think for one second that genuinely made me happy? Absolutely not. It's a nice thing to hear. It's wonderful. I appreciate it. It does not make me happy in any way. Not the happiness that I get from going on a nice run not that deep existential happiness that's related to who I really am because my desire my desire to have Johnny Marr like a

piece of art that I make is rooted in a deep insecurity that I have an insecurity in my childhood where I learned you are only worthy you only have worth when you are good at art because I was shit at everything else so Johnny Marr from the fucking Smiths saying I like the work that you make blind boy it did nothing for me it made me actually feel a bit empty. And it made me feel empty because I knew that something I wanted and I thought would make me happy. And then when I got there, I was left with emptiness. And that there is the ideal self. But luckily, I have the self-awareness to bring that to my immediate attention

and to examine it. Do you know what did bring me happiness? That proper real existential happiness that's rooted in who I truly am. The conversation I had with Johnny Marr, not because he's Johnny fucking Marr from the Smiths, but because he's a sound lad from Manchester called Johnny. I met someone who likes art and music as much as I do and we spoke about it as two human beings being generous with each other and sharing something we love. That made me feel happy. That's my real self. That's meaning and genuinely the fact that it was Johnny Marr the legend that didn't matter. If I met some lad in the pub and we had the same conversation that me and Johnny Marr had

and we're both clicking and connecting on music, that would bring me just as much joy as if that conversation had happened with Johnny Marr. And that's the point that the story of King Midas is making. Selina's turned up in his garden, just a nobody. story of King Midas is making. Selinus turned up in his garden just a nobody but Midas is just a nice generous person and shared all his drinking food with him and Selinus was good crack and they had wonderful fun and King Midas didn't care that Selinus knew Dionysus the god and that's the bit that Dionysus liked about King Midas, the authenticity, the authenticity of, oh, that was your real self there. When you hung out with Salinas and you were generous with your food and

you had a bit of crack, that's the part of you that loves your roses and loves your daughter, that's your real self. But the point that I'm making, how I try to live authentically in my real self, and I say try because it's consistent work, I learned to catch my ideal self. If I feel jealous, resentful, envious, less than another person because of their achievements, or looking down on another person because of my achievements, I go, that's my ideal self-talking.

What do I believe here about my sense of self-worth? What external condition here do I believe is going to define my self-worth? And how can I examine that compassionately? And like I said, I always bring in a bit of evidence. I bring in evidence and I say, here are some examples I always bring in a bit of evidence. I bring in evidence and I say, here are some examples where you've achieved things

that you truly believed would bring lasting happiness. And when you actually achieved them, it did fuck all. And I have a lot of those. I was on the fucking New York Times last year. The president of Ireland come onto this podcast. The fucking president of Ireland come onto this podcast. The fucking president of Ireland said, your podcast is so good, I want to be on it. Do you think that brought me happiness? Not on one tiny little iota. None. It brings a temporary little

buzz, followed by an empty sadness. And the empty sadness is sadness is oh I thought this was going to make me happy because it's not real it's not rooted in my real self and you might be thinking Jesus blind boy you've been a bit hard on yourself again should you not feel a little bit proud that we'll say the president wanted to be on your fucking podcast. The answer to that is I need to work on being proud of the work, the piece of work that I made. I made a piece of work, a podcast, and it happened to be successful enough that the president wants to be on the fucking podcast.

I made a piece of work, but that piece of work does not define my worth as a human being like again 10 years ago if you said to me you're gonna make a piece of work and it will get the attention of the Irish president what do you think I would have said about that oh my god that'd be like having Midas touch I would be so happy that would bring me lasting eternal forever happiness. I'd finally get it then. No. That's my ideal self talking.

That's conditions of worth. I achieve meaning. Through creating things. Exercising. Enjoying the present moment. That's who I am. Feeding cats. That's 53 minutes of me fucking talking there now and this was supposed to be a short podcast.

That was a rambler of a podcast. I didn't even do the ocarina pause. I'm just going to do it now. Don't have an ocarina. I'm going to clap my hands. I'm in a different room recording. Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night

on Saturday, April 13th, when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game, and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. On April 5th, you must be very careful, Margaret.

It's a girl. Witness the birth. Bad things will start to happen. Evil things of evil. It's all for you. No, don't. The first omen, I believe, girl, is to be the mother. Mother of what?

Is the most terrifying. Six, six, six. It's the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real, it's not real. What's not real? Who said that?

The first omen, only in theaters April 5th. Unless you can hear it from the sound, you see. There was an advert there. Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page. Patreon.com forward slash TheBlindBoyPodcast If you enjoy this podcast, if it brings you mirth, merriment, entertainment, distraction, whatever it does for you, please consider paying me for the work that I do, because this is my full-time job, it's how I pay my bills, it's how I rent out my office,

all I'm looking for is the price of a pint or a cup of coffee, once a month, that's it, why? Because like I said, I'm just, all I want is to be able to create, to have the space and time to be able to create and exercise. That's it. And the Patreon supporters, they enable that to happen. When I have people paying me to listen to this podcast on Patreon,

then that's my full-time job. That's all I got to worry about is being an artist. So that's all I want to maintain. That's it. But if you can't afford it, don't worry about is being an artist. So that's all I want to maintain. That's it. But if you can't afford it, don't worry about it. You can listen for free. Because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast.

I get to earn a living. That's about all I want there. That's it there. That's about all I want. How do I meet the material conditions that allow me to pursue my authentic self? I don't want to worry about whether the podcast is too popular, whether it's winning awards, any of that shit. Am I showing up each week, being authentic to myself, being passionate, enjoying the work I'm doing, and then earning a living so that I continue doing that?

and the work I'm doing and then earning a living so that I continue doing that once I can tick those boxes nothing else is really going to bring me happiness but knowing that my bills are paid and that I can continue being creative all the time that is genuine happiness that's that good stuff

that's my real self that's King Midas in the garden smelling the roses and hugging his daughter. Live podcasts. January 22nd and 23rd. I'm up in Vicar Street in Dublin. Come along to those gigs. Vicar Street.

It's a Monday and Tuesday night. You will not be disappointed. Those are my most favourite gigs. Then in February. I am in Oslo. On the 6th of February. I cannot wait to do that gig in Oslo. Then I'm in Berlin doing a live

podcast on the 9th and the 8th in Berlin. One of them is sold out. Then Friday the 23rd of February, I'm in Killarney in the I-Neck. And then my UK tour in April right this UK tour

that's setting out really quickly what have we got there Newcastle Glasgow Nottingham Cardiff Brighton Cambridge

Bristol and London come along to those gigs in April alright I pulled this podcast out of my arse, lads, because I had to record it really, really quickly and I didn't think there was going to be a podcast this week

and I fucked up the Ocarina Pause and put it at the end, alright? But I gotta sign off now. I didn't want to leave you with no podcast. I'll be back next week. In the meantime, rub a dog, kiss a swan, chain your fleck to a worm, dog bless.

night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock hosts the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as we play. Come along for the

ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Thank you. you