The One You Feed - How to Become Whole Through the Bittersweet with Susan Cain

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Susan Cain is an author who has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Her record-smashing TedTalk has been viewed over 30 million times and was named by Bill Gates as one of his all-time favorite talks. Susan is the author of the book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, which spent seven years on the New York Times Best Selling List and has been translated into 40 languages.. In this episode, Eric and Susan discuss her new book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. But wait, there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you! Susan Cain and I Discuss How to Become Whole Through the Bittersweet and … Her book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole Why some people really love sad music  How brokenness points in the direction of transcendence How to know if you tend towards a bittersweet state of mind Why do some people turn pain into something beautiful and in other cases people are broken by life’s difficulties The way of “even so” Union between souls when sorrow is shared Understanding the messiness and unpredictability of grief The mystery of bittersweet  The divine nature of longing How longing is different from craving Being open to great states of transition as gateways in our life Moving on vs. Moving forward Poignancy  What it means to turn in the direction of beauty Susan Cain links: Susan’s Website Twitter Instagram Facebook By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Susan Cain, check out these other episodes: Life Transitions with Bruce Feiler The Longings of our Heart with Sue Monk KiddSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The same thing that can, when it's not working right, predispose us to anxiety and depression is the very thing that can bring us to our highest and deepest selves. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.

Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers

to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor what's in the museum of failure and does your dog truly love you we have the answer go to really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Susan Cain, an author who has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Her record-smashing TED Talk has been viewed over 30 million times and was named by Bill Gates as one of his all-time favorite talks. Susan is the author of Quiet,

The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, which spent seven years on the New York Times bestselling list and has been translated into 40 languages. Quiet was named the number one best book of the year by Fast Company, which also named Cain one of the most creative people in business. LinkedIn named her the sixth top influencer in the world. Today, Susan and Eric discuss her new book, Bittersweet, How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. Hi, Susan. Welcome to the show. Hey, Eric. It's so great to be here. I am really excited to have you on. You're sort of a patron saint to introverts everywhere, of which I lean in that direction. And your latest book, where we're

going to be spending our time, is called Bittersweet, How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. But before we do that, let's start like we always do with a parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with a grandchild, and they say, in life, there's two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you and your life and the work that you do. So I love that parable. And it actually seems to me to echo another parable that I came across while I was researching

Bittersweet, which I have found to be such a great guiding star and consolation of how to live. And I'll tell you this parable, and I think you'll see the parallels, but we could talk about them. So in this other parable, this one comes from the Kabbalah, which is the mystic form of Judaism. And in this parable, the idea is that all of creation originally was an intact divine vessel, but that the vessel shattered, and that the world that we are living in now is the broken world following the shattering, but that scattered all around us still are the divine shards from when the vessel was still intact. And that one great way to live a life is to look

around us and to notice the divine shards wherever they have happened to land around us and to bend down and pick them up. And you will notice different shards from the ones that I will, but we can all do our own gathering. And I love this. And it reminds me of the parable that you shared because it's acknowledging the pain and the tragedy and the evil that exists in the world without feeling that we have to become a prisoner to them. So it's not telling us to look away from them and pretend that they're not there, which is, I think, what our mainstream culture would tell us. It's telling us they're very much there, and we can admit that and tell the truth about that. tell us. It's telling us they're very much there and we can admit that and tell the truth about that. And at the same time, we can turn in the other direction, in the direction of beauty and of love and that we have the ability to decide to turn in that direction. I find that parable to

just be such a relief, a relief to be able to tell the truth. Also, just a great way to live, to know that we always have that option. So I think it's very much what the grandparent in your parable was telling the grandchild, just with a different image. Yeah, it's one of the things I love about the wolf parable is exactly what you said, which is it just sort of says like, hey, we all have this in us. That's the human condition. It's natural. It's normal. I've always liked that normalizing of it. And I love the parable that you told from Judaism, which is a beautiful, beautiful story. And as you were talking about it, I actually had another thought, which was not only are we walking around collecting the shards, we are ourselves the shards in some ways. And when we come together, we are putting them back together in a way. That sort of flashed into my mind as you were telling that story. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that what the grandparent was saying also is that we can't deny that these two aspects of ourselves exist at all times. With denying it comes a kind

of blindness, but we can acknowledge it and then decide to turn in a particular direction. Let's jump into the book. I mean, I kind of have to start close to where you start, which is by talking about music. And you start the book by really trying to find out why do some of us really love what would be considered sad music? I am that type. I listen to melancholy music. Give me any chance and I'll listen to it. My partner really doesn't because it makes her sad. And I haven't been able to explain to her why I like melancholy music very well. I haven't been able to put it into very good words. I was reading your book and I just stopped and I said, I have to read you something, which is rare. I normally just interview prep and she's always like, I wish you'd share more about what you're interview prepping. And I just am kind of going on my way, but it was so good. It stopped me and I'm just going to read it really quickly if that's okay. Yeah, sure. You said, it's hard

to put into words what I experience when I hear this kind of music. It's technically sad, but what I feel really is love, a great tidal outpouring of it, a deep kinship with all the other souls in the world who know the sorrow the music strains to express. But the music makes my heart open, literally the sensation of expanding chest muscles. And I've been looking for that description ever since I started listening to melancholy music. So thank you. You're welcome. I just got goosebumps knowing that you'd been looking for that explanation as I had been too. I mean, it was only when I started writing this book that I actually like put into words exactly what the sensation is and why it matters so much. The reason I put music at the heart of the book, I mean, partly just

because it unites us in our state of longing, our state of like exile from Eden, you could say, that's the power of bittersweetness itself, not just the music, but the bittersweet condition itself, like the fact that all humans are united in existing in this state of what feels to us like a grand imperfection and impermanence and longing for the world to be different from the way that it is. To see the joys and the beauties in the world and wish that they could last forever and wish that they comprised all of the world instead of only a part of it. All those longings, the fact that we're in that together is just this great uniting force. And the fact that we live in a world that tells us not to talk about any of that and not to talk about our sorrows and our longings is like living in a world that is telling us not to love each other as deeply as we could.

Yeah. And I really want to get to what you just said a little bit more in detail, which is about telling us not to love things as deeply as we do. Because not only does our culture tell us that, some of the spiritual traditions I'm most attached to almost seem to be saying that. But we're going to save that for a little bit later, because we got to talk about Leonard Cohen for a second, who you talk about as your favorite musician and is mine. He was the guest I most ever all time wanted to have on this show. And it didn't happen. I got close. At one point, I was talking with a guy who knew him who was a monk at the center that Leonard was at. And he said, you should know that Leonard's monk name means great silence. So just to give you

an idea of how likely you are to get a conversation with him. So... That's so interesting. And can I interrupt you to just say that he's my guy, artistically. After my book Quiet came out, you know, which is all about introversion and the power of quiet, he actually tweeted out of the blue about the book and about quiet and how important it is. You know, that was like a glory day for me. And I can't believe I can't even find the tweet now, but I will always remember it. So, yeah.

Yeah. So, I just had to share that. I remember where I was when I heard that he passed. I wanted to talk a little bit about a conversation, I think Adam Cohen was saying in an interview with Rick Rubin, but I loved this line at the end. He's describing what Leonard Cohen's music did. And Adam, his son said, he was giving you a transcendence delivery system. That's what he was trying to do every time. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I don't have the

quote in front of me. But I think he was talking about that in the context of talking about how, you know, his music was famously kind of sorrowful and gloomy. And his record producers at one point were joking about how they should give out razor blades along with his albums. And, you know, and that's what he was famous for. But what Adam was saying is, yes, and. I mean, it wasn't only about brokenness. It was about brokenness pointing in the direction of transcendence. The song that is best known of his and has been covered maybe more than any other song in music history is Hallelujah. And Hallelujah is about, I mean, it's literally in his words, it is about the broken hallelujah, a cold and broken hallelujah. So I think in all his music, he's constantly expressing and wrestling with the

bittersweet, the way in which everything is so fundamentally broken and so fundamentally beautiful. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So there's one other thing I would just want to talk about with music for a second, something else that you said that I really love. You said this type of music, you're talking about a specific song, but it doesn't matter, of the world don't simply discharge our emotions, they elevate them. And also you say it's only sad music that elicits exalted states of communion and awe. Yeah, this is an interesting thing. I did a little bit of research and studying of the whole nature of sad music and why we love it so. And you and I are not the only ones who feel this way. Many, many people do. The people whose favorite songs are happy listen to them 175 times on their playlist, but the people whose favorite songs are sad listen 800 times. And they tell, yeah, you know, like they feel this deep sense of connection. And they tell researchers that the music makes them feel connected to the sublime and the wondrous. And it's not just because of, quote, negativity per se, because this does not happen from music that expresses anger or disgust or, you know, any other negative emotions you can think of.

It's specifically something about sadness. And in fact, there is this one study done by an MIT economist. It was published in an MIT review under the title, How Are You, My Dearest Mozart? And in this study, the economist, he took all the letters that Mozart, Beethoven, and Liszt had written throughout their lives, and he coded each of the letters based on the emotions expressed within them. And then he correlated the time at which those letters had been written and looked at what music the composer had produced at that time. And he found that the most and the only predictive emotion of all was sadness, that when the letters expressed sorrow, that was what

reliably predicted the most profound and the greatest of their works. And again, not any other negative emotion, just sadness, just sorrow. So there's something about this state of sorrow, and I think anybody who feels a kind of creative spirit in them, we all know this. We've been there. There's something about a state of sorrow that puts us in mind of a kind of like longing and reaching upwards, wanting to transform the sorrow into something else, into something high, into something sublime. Yeah, I think that's really fascinating that sorrow is the emotion that, as you say, can sort of lead us to these higher states of transcendence, of awe, of beauty. It's not the other negative emotions. And it made me think a little bit about the idea of neurosis, right? Neurosis being very

often something we're layering on top of to avoid feeling maybe the core emotion, which might be sorrow. And so these sort of more neurotic emotions, that's for lack of a better word, I'm going to use them, anxiety or depression. I'm a depression sufferer. We'll talk about that. These things actually are ways of avoiding what is actually most healing in some ways. Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. word neurosis because one of the things I did when I started researching this book, I basically was researching for years what I call the bittersweet tradition, which is all the religions, wisdom traditions, artists, philosophers, poets who have been talking about this bittersweet state of being for thousands of years all across the world. And I looked also at mainstream psychology. In mainstream psychology, there really is no word for this state, this state of like this beautifully piercing longing that I was trying to investigate. The only word that comes close is the word of neurosis, as you said, except when psychology talks about neurosis, it's only talking about the problem of it. It is a real problem when it goes too far and

it descends into anxiety and depression. And for anyone who's been there, those are not pleasant states. But there's nothing in psychology or in this terminology that talks about the great transcendent longing that's at the heart of human nature and that is intimately connected. The same thing that can, when it's not working right, predispose us to anxiety and depression is the very thing that can bring us to our highest and deepest selves. And so a lot of the challenge of life is figuring out what to do with that thing and how to use its powers, its powers, which can be dangerous, but which can also be beautiful and transformative.

You wrote this idea of transforming pain into creativity, transcendence, and love is at the heart of this book. And when I read that, I was like, that's as good a description of what we've been trying to do over 500 episodes, right? Which is, you know, I'm a recovering addict, I have depression, you know, my whole thing is how do we take this difficult stuff that we all face every human life, you know? Buddhist says we're all brothers and sisters in sickness, old age and death, right? So for all of us, how do we take that and create something meaningful and beautiful? Exactly. You know, in the book, I have this quiz that we developed. It's called the Bittersweet Quiz. I say we because I did it together with the psychologists David Yadin and Scott Barry Kaufman.

David Yadin's at Hopkins. And the quiz basically asks a bunch of different questions. Questions like, do you draw comfort or inspiration from a rainy day? Do you react very intensely to music, art, and nature? And there's a bunch of questions. You can find it either in the book or on my website. And what we found is that people who score high on the quiz, meaning that they tend to this bittersweet state of mind, these same people, they have maybe exactly what you would predict in terms of strengths and vulnerabilities. Their strengths are that they also score high on measures of receptivity to wonder and awe and spirituality. And that was a strong correlation. But then there was also a more minor but still significant correlation with anxiety and depression. It's like the quiz codified, I think, what you just said and what we've both been reaching

towards, which is there is something in this bittersweet state, this state in which you're aware of life's joys and sorrows and you to states of great wonder. And if you're not careful to manage it right, it can also deliver you to a place of depression. The question is, how do you do it right? I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the

bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all.

Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

It's called Really, No, Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've asked that question, I feel like, hundreds of different ways, which is, why do some people take pain and turn it into something beautiful? And I don't only mean art, right? It could just be love. It becomes a creative force in their life, and I would say a good thing in the world. Why does that happen in some cases? And in other cases, we see people just broken by the difficulties in life, you know? And so,

what are the factors in there? And you in the book later on say there's different pathways to the peace we all seek. You're trying to sort of answer this question, at least it seems to me. And I'm just going to read the four that you came up with and let you kind of talk about them. First one was sort of, you know, let it go. Some degree of, you know, just letting things go. The other is to know how resilient we are, to really lean into resilience. The other is non-attachment, right? And trying to aspire to a love that is bigger than possession. And then the last one you say, this is the one you're trying to aspire to a love that is bigger than possession. And then the last one you say, this is the one you're going to need to explain, is the way of even so carries a different

wisdom, one that expresses the longing that many of us sense is the force that will carry us home. Yeah. So that last one comes from a poem that was written by Issa, one of the great Japanese Buddhist poets. And it was written after he lost his beloved young daughter to smallpox. And he says in the poem, basically, he says, I know that this world of do, do like D-E-W, I know that this world of do is just a world of do, but even so, but even so. And he's basically saying, you know, I get it that everything is impermanent. I get it that we're just dew drops who are, we're all of us going to evaporate any minute now. I understand that. And yet there's something in me that doesn't accept that. There's something in me that will insist on feeling sorrow and feeling grief for my lost daughter,

no matter what. And I think there's so much beauty and wisdom in that poem. He's a trained Buddhist. He's saying, even I feel this way. And implicit in the poem, because there's a reader at the other end of that poem, and he knows it. He's not writing it to himself. So implicit is there's a reader on the other end who feels the exact same way, who no matter what will feel a grief and feel a longing, and that we are united in that feeling. And there's something about the uniting of that, the fact that all humans are in that state together, that is a great joy of its own. There's one young woman who I quote in the book who calls this the union between souls. And she's talking about how she experiences that at her grandfather's funeral. At the funeral, there's a barbershop chorus who sings a song in tribute of her grandfather. And she sees her father for the first time in her life crying in front of her,

crying in public. And she says what she remembers of that funeral is not the sorrow, but the union between souls that happened there. And I think that's what is bringing to life when he says, I may be a Buddhist and I may understand it about the dew drops, but come on, we're all in this together. I love that idea. You say this is the ultimate paradox. We transcend grief only when we realize that we're connected with all the other humans who can't transcend grief because we will always say, but even so, even so. What I love about that poem, and I've tried to articulate this and listeners have heard this before, I try to articulate and talk about an experience I had when I had to put

to sleep a dog that I love deeply beyond all measure. And I had to put down another dog like eight months before. And for whatever reason, I was able to sort of like say, you know what? Yep. This is a world of do. It's a world of do. We come, we go. As creatures, we get sick, we die. This is what happens. So, I sort of set down my argument with the universe, and I just was able to descend into the grief itself, and it felt beautiful. It was so clear to me that that grief was the parallel, the other side of the great love. You know, I was having great grief because I'd had great love. But in order to do that, I feel like I had to set down my defense against it. I had to sit down the, but it shouldn't have happened.

He's too young. But I just had to put down another dog eight months ago. All my arguments with the universe, like you said, but even so, even knowing all that, I'm really sad. And yet there was a deep beauty in it that I had not experienced in other grieving situations where I and deprives us of the process the way it is. Even for somebody who does get through grief with a great measure of resilience. And, you know, as I write in the book, the Columbia psychologist George Bonanno, who studies grief, has found that the vast majority of us kind of surprise ourselves by how resilient we end up being in the face of grief. It's not true for everybody.

Some people really get into chronic grief. But many, many people are more resilient than they expect to be. But that doesn't mean they don't pass through the moments of feeling it so incredibly intensely. And it doesn't mean they might not feel it 50 years from now, 50 years from the day they've lost their beloved, it can come up upon them unawares. So all of that is part of the same messy soup. I agree. I think there's this idea that is in certain circles, and your book is part of this, which beautifully says, hey, difficult experiences can become really beautiful things. And we hear that and we buy into that. And yet, they're still brutal when you're in them. They're still like, that's a lovely idea.

I find it helpful to hold a kernel of it in my mind some of the time when I'm in the darkness, like, okay, yeah, this is transforming, but you still got to go through it. And it is not pleasant at certain moments, for sure. Absolutely. And I also want to take a minute to acknowledge that I think there are, for some people, some griefs and some traumas that are so enormous and so horrible and so beyond what any human should be exposed to that maybe you don't ever get to that place, or maybe you only get to glimpses of that place. And I'm thinking in particular, there's someone I've come to know over the years who, as a child, was just exposed to such a heart-wrenching and

horrible degree of abuse that you just can't even imagine. Well, I guess you can say two things about him now as a grown adult. One is that his life is forever marred in a very deep way. I'm in touch with him every day. I don't think I've seen him go through a single day without suffering emotionally as a result of what happened to him as a child. It's also the case that he is an incredibly loving soul who writes poetry every day and does great acts of love for the people around him almost every day. And so both of these things are true at once. But I'm invoking him to say I don't think it's easy. And I do wonder if there are some degrees of grief and trauma beyond which maybe a full healing isn't possible. To me, the jury's out on that question.

I agree. I agree 100%. I believe some degree of healing is always possible, but how much is up in the air? I wonder about this a lot, you know, being a recovering addict and alcoholic, this is a question I think about a lot, which is, we know that trauma is a huge indicator for addiction. And we know the more traumatic experiences you've had, the higher that relationship really is. And so we see some people who get sober and you're like, well, my God, what they went through was just, I can't fathom, you know, and yet they get sober. And then you see other people that don't, even with much less trauma. So I think this sort of healing process, to me, it's deeply mysterious.

One of my great mysteries of my adult life has always been, why do some of us get sober and others don't? And for every answer I give, I can find people that contradict whatever answer I come up with, and I'm left with a mystery. I don't think we can fully articulate something as complex as healing. And the world is deeply complex. And I think that's what the bittersweet to me also takes into account. There's some measure in it to me of this is all deeply mysterious and that that mystery can be deeply both terrifying, but also deeply beautiful. Yeah, that's right. You know how in the book I give different examples of people who have been engaging with the bittersweet tradition all over the world, and one of them is the poet Gabriel Garcia Lorca.

And he calls the longing aspect of the bittersweet, like that mysterious longing that so many of us feel, he calls it the great force that everyone feels but no philosopher can explain. And I think that really embodies the mystery that you're talking about. Yeah. In the bittersweet tradition, you actually say, what I call the bittersweet is a tendency to states of longing, poignancy, and sorrow, an acute awareness of passing time and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. So I thought for a minute we could talk about those states individually. We've talked a little bit about sorrow, so I don't know if we need to go back to sorrow. Maybe we'll land there. It seems to be where I often, even without meaning to. No, I'm joking, sort of. one because I've seen longing as a deeply beautiful thing. And yet, as somebody who studied a lot in Buddhism, we're also told to watch out for craving. And you stumble right into this in the book and talk about it. So I really wanted to talk about that for a little

while because I think that is such a big and confusing sort of distinction. confusing sort of distinction. Yeah, I agree with you, of course. And there is a state of longing, a state of yearning that exists across all the traditions, right? There's the longing for the Garden of Eden and the longing for Mecca, the longing to be united with God, the longing for somewhere over the rainbow, you know, in Homer's Odyssey. Like, that's a story of epic adventure. That's the way we think of it. But really, that's a story of Ulysses longing for home. The adventure happened because he was filled with homesickness for his native Ithaca that he hadn't seen, I think, for 17 years or something like that. And he's weeping on a beach with homesickness, and that's what sets him off on the journey that ultimately brings him home.

But this idea of, you know, I'm a poor wayfaring stranger longing for that world of home, there is something about that, this longing for home, this ultimate home. Whether we think of it explicitly in terms of the divine or more metaphorically in terms of like a longing for perfect union, perfect love, that is central to what human beings are. That is central to who we are. We are creatures who long for an ultimate union and long for an ultimate home. and we come into this world crying. A psychoanalyst would say, well, it's because we left the womb, but going more deeply, the womb is the representation of that ultimate home for which we long. And so many of the great theologians and mystics have taught across all the traditions that we should go deeper into the longing because it's the longing itself that brings us closer to that for which we long.

Rumi says that, and he's talking about God or Allah, he's saying the longing you express is the return message from the divine that you seek. The grief you cry out from is what draws you towards union. Your pure sadness that wants help, that is the secret cup. So all these traditions, and particularly the Sufi tradition, which is the mystic side of Islam, all these traditions speak

of this divine nature of longing. And as soon as I started learning about all this and diving into these traditions, I felt like a kind of homecoming because I felt like, oh my gosh, you know, this is what I have been experiencing all my life and never really understood what it was. But then like you, I had this big question of like, I mean, I'm not an expert in Buddhism, but I know something about it and the way that Buddhism warns us against craving. And I thought, well, how do these teachings about the, you could call it divine nature of longing, how do these teachings square with Buddhism's warning against giving into craving? So I went to ask a Sufi teacher about this, actually. This is Llewellyn von Lee, the great Sufi teacher who's based in California.

And I asked him this very question at a retreat that he gave, the difference between longing and Sufism and Buddhism. And he says, longing is different from craving. Longing is the craving of the soul. You want to go home. He says, in our culture, it's confused with depression, and it's not depression. There's a saying in Sufism, Sufism was at first heartache, only later it became something to write about. And then he said to me, if you're taken by longing, live it. You can't go wrong. If you're going to go to God,

live it, you can't go wrong. If you're going to go to God, go with sweet sorrow in the soul. And I say all this as an agnostic myself, and yet there's such a deep truth in this message, and one that I think coexists with the exhortation against craving, because this longing that we're talking about is more about a longing for everything that is good and true and beautiful and love. And where's the harm in that? I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do

his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel

might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio

app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I think that we find this paradox right in the center of Buddhism. I know I've talked about it with many Buddhist teachers, which is this idea of why are we even practicing if we don't want something? Like, what are we doing if there's not some desire? Like, we're not sitting around meditating for no reason. We're doing it because there's something that we are after or we want. And even the Buddha talks about, you know, great determination. Determination comes when you're like, well, there's something I want and I'm determined to get it.

So I think that even within Buddhism, we sort of just have to sit with this paradox that says, yeah, there are some things that we want, and that longing is okay. I love the way Houston Smith in his book, The Great World Religions, it's a classic. But he talks about Hinduism, and he paraphrases this. So I want to make sure I'm saying that it's what he said, not what Hinduism said. But he said about Hinduism, that basically what Hinduism is saying is your desire is great. You just are desiring the wrong things. It's not strong enough. It's not big enough. And that that's the normal path through life.

That when we're younger, we desire the things of the world, and that's natural and normal. And as we grow old, we start to go, wait, there's something more. The things of the world aren't satisfying. So what is this bigger thing? So I just love this question because it's another one of the things that I feel like has been central to what I've asked people on this show for 500 episodes, which is this longing seems clear, it seems real, it seems true, it seems innate to human nature, and it feels right. It seems true. It seems innate to human nature and it feels right.

And we also know that craving over attachment causes a great deal of suffering. And so trying to balance that paradox, I think, is really important work. It's kind of similar to like trying to balance that thin line of, okay, I'm going to turn difficulty and sorrow into beauty or I'm going to fall off the other side. Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. That's a great way of putting it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, do you think that the idea of saying that what we're all ultimately longing for is love, by which I don't mean like a new relationship kind of love. I mean, like, like love. Maybe that's something that unites all the different religious traditions, including Buddhism. I mean, Buddhism would say a love without attachment.

Yeah, yeah. I've always loved the Joseph Campbell quote around, you know, that we're not looking for the meaning of life, we're looking for the feeling of being alive. You know, we could call that love, we could call that transcendence, we could call it connection. You know, when I think about spirituality, and I've got a course called Spiritual Habits, right? So it's a word I use when I think about what it means most deeply. It just to me is about connection to what matters. That's going to be different for everybody, but it's about connection to what matters. And so, you know, the words we use might be different. But I do think that that's what we're after. And as we're talking, I'm thinking about early days of Alcoholics Anonymous. And Bill Wilson was the founder, and he got into correspondence via

letters with Carl Jung. And Jung made the connection that said, you know, what alcoholics are after is an experience of the transcendent. It's in the word spirit, spiritus, you know, we call alcohol spirits. That's what's right. That's what's being chased. Absolutely. And the only thing that's going to be a cure for that is something that addresses that need, which is why AA became a spiritual program, very religious in its early leanings and it's diversified, but it's pointing to that same thing, that there's some connection we need to something that's more than us and our little wants.

Absolutely. Oh my gosh, that's so true. You know, it's funny as you say that. So I wrote most of my first book, Quiet, in this amazing, beautiful little cafe in Greenwich Village, no longer exists, but it was called Doma. And Doma had this magical spirit about it, and it drew artists and writers and actors from all over the city. They would come and hang out there and work on their stuff and have conversations. It was such a magical place. I hung out there all the time for a number of years. And once or twice a week, I would notice there was this group of people who would come in the evening to DOMA and they would sit together and talk and I always noticed them because they seemed so alive and so full of spirit

and I wondered where they came from and then at a certain point someone told me oh there's an AA group that meets down the block and this group is coming from there and it was such a striking group of people like you just noticed as I, you notice them immediately and they had a kind of magical property about them, like even more than the usual genizens of Doma. Yeah, absolutely. It can have that effect. And I think the other thing you talk about in the book is that sometimes the things that lead us most commonly to transcendent and exalted experiences is difficulty, sadness, a understanding that life is finite, you know, and I think a lot of people, particularly early on in AA, I mean, I was so close to death

when I came in, you know, as a heroin addict that I was just so aware of it that it made life sort of glow in a different way. Sometimes I wish I could recapture that, you know, a little bit more with the emotional maturity I have now and the spiritual energy I had then would be perfect. He's done studies where he has tried to track what are the conditions that cause people to experience the great spiritual and transcendent moments of their lives. And he's found that one of the most reliable ones is being at moments of transition, including moments of great loss, including approaching death. And other studies that have found that if you ask people to imagine what are the emotions that they would feel upon approaching death, like people assume the emotions would be, you know, like you feel depressed and angry and like that. But when you talk to people who are actually dying, it's nothing like that. They're reporting much more uplifted and much more spiritual emotions a lot of the time. So there is something about being open to these states of transition.

Those are some of our great gateway moments, even the transitions that feel really difficult and that feel as if they're full of loss. It certainly has been the case for me. Transitions of all different sorts have been big moments, and most of them have been ones that I wouldn't have chosen. Yes, exactly. Exactly. You never choose it. You never choose it. This is a very innocuous one or a very mild one. But I went through an experience like this a little bit. Just this past summer, my two sons went to sleepaway camp for the first time. Like my husband and I really have devoted everything, you know, to our kids over these years. And suddenly they weren't home

and we knew they weren't going to be home again for the rest over these years. And suddenly they weren't home and we knew they weren't going to be home again for the rest of the summer. And that in and of itself was a kind of like foretelling of them going away to college and growing up and all the rest of it. And the first day or so, I just felt such a blue feeling, you know, just like a blue sense of loss. And then life went forward. And I don't know, my husband and I, we went to the beach, just the two of us for the first time in so long. And it was such an incredible experience. And it was like a kind of second honeymoon. Like, we had only just met and at the same time that we had known each other all our lives, it was just this great thing that would not have happened,

but for passing through that blue moment of transition. thing that would not have happened but for passing through that blue moment of transition. Yeah. I mean, that's a real one that children going away, as you mentioned, in a small way, summer camp, and then the big way in college. Like that is a big thing for people that emptiness to me is a really real thing and it can be very difficult, but it's also very fertile as you sort of found. And you just use a word in there that brings me to something else I wanted to talk about with you, because you talk about the author Nora McInerney. Am I saying that right? Oh, Nora McInerney. Yeah. Yeah. She has a TED Talk and uses a phrase in the middle of it, which is she makes a distinction

between moving on and moving forward. And you just actually used that word when you talked about what happened with you and your husband. You moved forward. Oh, that's so interesting. I didn't even realize I was using her phrase, but it's such a helpful framework. So Nora McInerney, she's a writer who lost her first husband at a very early age and was full of grief and felt that the culture and everyone she knew was kind of sending her the message after some period of time, you know, time to move on, move on, move on. And she said moving on was impossible. But what was possible was moving forward,

which is to say she will mourn her first husband for the rest of her life at the same time that she went on to remarry and create a blended family with her new husband. So she has moved forward with him and with her husband's memory. You know, the person she is in this second marriage is not the same person that she would have been had she never known and loved and lost her husband. So she has moved forward with him and with that loss. And I think that's such a liberating way to think about loss because it's like allowing us to acknowledge the enormity of it at the same time that we're still living our lives. You know, I think there's a feeling if you're ever going to feel happy again, that that's a kind of abandonment of the person who's gone. But the idea of moving forward is telling you that there is no abandonment at all. You're carrying them with you. You're moving

forward with them. I love that idea. It makes me think of another phrase around grief that I love. It was a guest we had on the show. Her name's Megan Devine. And she says, some things can't be fixed. They can only be carried. And I loved that idea too. Like, okay, you're not going to fix the fact that you lost your husband or God forbid your child or your dog that you love deeply. That's not fixable, right? But it can be carried. You know, there is a way to carry it. And she says, move forward, you know, while you're carrying it. That phrase has always stuck with me and it sort of resonates a little bit with that one about moving forward versus moving on. Yeah, I love that. I'm going to have to remember that one. That's a really great image.

So let's talk about poignancy. That's not a word that is used a whole lot. Talk to me about poignancy, what it is, and how it ties into everything we've been talking about. The happy tears that we so often feel is poignancy. It's like a grandparent watches a grandchild splashing in a puddle. The grandparent has tears in their eyes as they watch that child splashing. And why are they crying? Where do the tears come from? You know, this is like a beautiful moment. It's a moment of incredible love and appreciation for this child. It's also a moment of understanding, maybe not on a conscious level, that the grandparent may not be there to see the child grow up and that the child herself won't live forever.

All of it is implicit in these moments when we cry those happy tears. You know, when you tear up at a beautiful TV commercial, like that's poignancy. It's poignancy. It's like the perfect blending of joy and sorrow. I am enormously susceptible to it. Yeah, I was just going to say, I think some of us kind of dance at the tip of that needle or whatever the expression is at every moment. Oh, yeah. I'm just known for tearing up at nearly everything from something that's sad to something like you said, that's sort of poignant to something about an entire crowd of people cheering in the same way. There's something about that. It's even beautiful. It just gets me. I won't bore you or the listeners with it, but there are a number of running jokes in my family about the absolutely preposterous things that have made me

cry. But yeah, poignancy is a great word for it. Also, the thing you said earlier about exactly what you said, what I feel really is love, a great title outpouring of it. It makes my heart open. There's an elevation. You use that word about sad music, it elevates us. All those things feel wrapped into what I'm feeling when AT&T makes me cry about calling your grandmother, right? I mean, I know I'm being yanked and manipulated in a very obvious way, but what's happening inside me is still beautiful, I think. Yeah, well, the reason the manipulation works is because it's pressing your and our deepest, works is because it's pressing your and our deepest, most potent buttons. Throughout our whole conversation, I kept thinking of the two-word phrase by E.M. Forster of only connect, only connect. That's what he said. And I came across that phrase when I was a young girl,

and it just struck me. I was like, oh my gosh, that's the truth of everything. And every single one of those examples you just gave was a moment of only connecting. I love that phrase. I also love something you say near the end of the book. You say, there's the simple exhortation to turn in the direction of beauty. Yes. Yeah. That's something I've really come to believe. And I also think it's a way for people like us who exist naturally in this bittersweet state of being. And, you know, we were talking at the beginning about the great power of the bittersweet way of being is that it can deliver you to these states of wonder and awe and spirituality and transcendence. And the dark side of it is that it could deliver you to anxiety and depression, well, one of the best ways of marshalling the powers of a bittersweet way of being is to proactively and consciously turn in the direction of beauty everywhere that

you can, because it's all around us. We think of it as being reserved for the moment you take the family vacation to the Grand Canyon and you ooh and ah, or you go to church and you see the light through the stained glass windows or whatever, but it doesn't have to be confined to those specific moments. It can be daily and it can be constant. And it can be proactively sought and even chased. I think we can chase beauty. So during the time that I was writing this book, well, during part of it, there was the pandemic and there's been all the social and political strife. And I found myself waking up every morning and being tormented by my Twitter feed. And I ended up asking people to recommend to me their favorite art accounts.

And I started following all these artists. And my feed now is just like one giant cascade of art. And then I started every morning posting a favorite piece of art onto my social channels and pairing it with a favorite poem or quote or whatever. And that ended up attracting this whole community of people who love to start their days in that same way. And so it was like a whole group of people connecting around turning in the direction of beauty. And I think that's one of the best ways we have of channeling this bittersweet power. I absolutely love that. I create an episode each week for supporters of the show I call Teaching Song and a Poem. And I talk about something that's on my mind, and I play a song

I love and a poem that I love. And what it does for me is it orients me all the time looking for that sort of beauty. So I think that's a beautiful place for us to end, which is with you encouraging us that beauty is all around us and to look for it. You made a bittersweet playlist, which people can find on your website and on Spotify. I could not help but match you and make my own bittersweet playlist. Oh my gosh, I've got to listen to it. I'll send it to you. Yeah, please do.

We'll put links in the show notes to Susan's website, to her playlist, to my playlist. On your website is the bittersweet test, which I scored, as you might imagine, very highly on. I'm shocked. Yeah. So where can people find you? So the best way to find me, through my website at susancayne.net, you can sign up for my newsletter, which will always keep you up to date. And I'm also on LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. And you can find the Bittersweet book really anywhere you get your books.

And I also have a Bittersweet quiz really anywhere you get your books. And I also have a Bittersweet quiz that I've developed, which is so cool. We deliver text messages to you every morning with little sound recordings from me or art to look at, written messages for you. So it's just like a one-minute thing that you get every morning, a kind of little uplift start to your day. And you can find that on my website as well. Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on, Susan. You and I are going to go into the post-show conversation and we are going to discuss some very specific songs that were on your bittersweet playlist. And maybe I'll introduce you to one or two from mine. Listeners, if you'd like access to the post-show conversations, to that special episode I talked

about a couple minutes ago, you can go to oneufeed.net slash join. Susan, thank you so much. I loved the book. I've loved this conversation and I've been wanting to talk with you for a long time, so I'm really happy we got to do this. Thank you so much. It was really so lovely to talk to you. I love the frequency that you're on. It's very different from many podcasts and I so appreciate it and admire it. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast.

When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for supporting the show. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast

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