The One You Feed - How to Craft a Meaningful Life with Emily Esfahani Smith

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Emily Esfahani Smith describes what it means to craft a meaningful life by using the concept of four pillars: belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence. She illustrates that by fostering a sense of belonging in our relationships, finding purpose in our goals, imbuing our life experiences with narrative coherence, and achieving transcendence through deeper connections, we can enrich our lives with meaning. These elements are not just about attaining personal satisfaction, but also about playing active roles in improving the environments around us. In this episode, you will be able to: Discover the difference between happiness and meaning and how it can lead to a more fulfilling life Explore the four essential pillars of a meaningful life and learn how to integrate them into your daily routine Grasp the power of belonging as a pillar of meaning and how it can bring deeper connections and purpose to your life Unlock the key to finding purpose and learn ways to align your actions with your true values and passions Delve into the concept of transcendence and how it can elevate your life to a whole new level of meaning and fulfillment To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The defining feature of a meaningful life is connecting and contributing to something that lies beyond the self. 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 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 Know 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 I heart radio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. In case you're just recently joining us or however long you've been a listener of the show, you may not realize that we have years and years of incredible episodes in our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests that we've decided to handpick one of our favorites that may be new to you, but if not, it's definitely worth another listen. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Emily Esfahani-Smith. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Emily Esfahani-Smith, author of The Power of Meaning, Crafting a Life that Matters.

She graduated from Dartmouth College and earned a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Emily's writings about psychology, culture, and relationships have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Time, The Atlantic, and other publications. Emily is also a columnist for The New Criterion, as well as an editor at the Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Hi, Emily. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Eric. I'm excited to have you on the show because your new book is called The Power of Meaning, Crafting a Life That Matters. And this topic has

been on my mind a lot, really the role and the differences between happiness and meaning and what that looks like. And your book spends a lot of time on that and then also goes through and talks about sort of what are the pillars of a meaningful life. So I'm really excited to get into that. But let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are 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 greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,

and stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. So this parable reminds me of an assignment that I had when I was in high school. And the assignment was to take a position in the debate of whether human beings are inherently good or inherently evil. And I remember at the time thinking that it was an either or decision, that human beings were either good or evil, and that we had to kind of check the other instinct. And in the years since, you know, studying psychology, studying philosophy, and just living my own life and interviewing

people for the things that I write, like this book, I've discovered that it's actually a lot more complicated than that. And that we do have these two pieces of us inside of us. And that so much of what becomes our reality is determined by what our mindset basically is about who we are. determined by what our mindset basically is about who we are. Are we that evil wolf or are we that good wolf? And which one do we want to bring to light? It's really a question, I think, of identity and how we want to define our identities. And it's something that I talk a little bit about in my book, actually. And so I think for me, what that parable has taught me is that human beings are so much more complicated than they're sometimes painted to be, and that we each have the choice to define our own identity by the mindset that we take. And we can

choose to create a positive identity for ourselves by adopting a positive mindset about who we are and how we want our lives to go. Yeah, I agree. That idea of whether we're good or bad, I always think about because in the West, we've got Christianity, which tends to say, hey, original sin, you're bad. There's Buddhism, which says, hey, everybody underneath it all is this perfect diamond and you just need to uncover it. And I sort of land where you do, which is, I think both are in there. I mean, I just think that's how we come. Right. And to your point, it's what do we do with it from that point? Exactly. And that we have the power to decide the kind of person that we want to be. Yep. So let's start off by talking about happiness versus meaning. What's the difference?

So these are two different approaches or paths, you might say, to leading a good life. And they've been recognized as two separate approaches for thousands of years in philosophy and now have been studied by positive psychology researchers as two different approaches to how we lead our lives. And happiness is defined as kind of a positive emotion, a positive mental state. And researchers have seen that it's associated with getting the things that you need and want, with being in good physical health, with leisure activities like sleeping in or playing games. And our culture, you know, there's so much out in our culture about how, you know, what are the 10 steps to a happier life? How can we all be happier? There's really kind of a zeitgeist around happiness. Meaning is different. And I'd like to think of it as bigger than happiness. The

defining feature of a meaningful life is connecting and contributing to something that lies beyond the self, whether that's your family, your work, God, nature, just this idea that it's not about you. It's about something else that makes your life, gives your life purpose and gives it worth. And when people say that they have meaningful lives, it's because three criteria have been satisfied. One is that they feel that their lives are significant and have worth in some way. The second is that they feel their lives are driven by a sense of purpose, a goal that somehow contributes to the world. contributes to the world. And finally, they feel their lives are coherent, which means that they understand their lives and their experiences as part of some greater whole, a larger narrative, and not just as random and disconnected. And so in the book, you reference, I don't know if I'm

going to get his name right, but last name is Nozick? Yes, Robert Nozick. Yeah, a thought experiment he does that sort of lays out what the choice between these two look like. Could you walk us through that? Absolutely. So one of the things that I am trying to do in my book is, as I mentioned earlier, that there's such a zeitgeist around happiness, and so many people want to be happy. And that's understandable. It seems like just such an obvious thing that we all want to be happy. We want our children to be happy, our friends to be happy. But I think that if you push people a little bit and get them to think a little bit more deeply, that you'll see that what people

actually want is to lead a meaningful life. Human beings are meaning-seeking creatures, and they always have been. And we all want to know that our lives are significant in the grand scheme of things, that they made a difference in the world. And so Robert Nozick was a philosopher at Harvard. And to make this point, he kind of proposed what he called a thought experiment. And basically he said to imagine that there is a machine that you could plug into that would give you all of the experiences, any experience that you could possibly want. You know, if you want it to be happy for all the days of your life, just feel pleasure time after time, then you could do that. And he asks readers, you know, would you plug into this experience machine that could give you pleasure, unending pleasure and happiness?

And most people, if they reflect on it, they probably wouldn't plug into the machine. And the reason is because, you know, the happiness that you feel there is not really earned, that the life that you would lead, such as it is, isn't really a life at all. You're just kind of experiencing feelings, but you're not doing anything that's of worth and of significance. And so this was Nozick's way of saying, and I quote, you know, there's more to life than feeling happy. People don't just want to feel happy. They want their lives to amount to something more. And so that's the idea that we take away from the experience machine thought experiment.

I love that thought experiment. I think it's a fascinating way to think through, you know, happiness and meaning, like, what are you striving for? Right. Elsewhere in the book, you talk about historian and philosopher Will Durant, and an old story that just cracked me up when I heard it, which is that the old story of a police officer who attempted to stop a suicidal man from jumping off a bridge. The two talked, attempted to stop a suicidal man from jumping off a bridge. The two talked, then they both jumped off the ledge. And Durant goes on to say, this is the past to which science and philosophy have brought us. And so, you know, I think that a lot of the book you're talking about, and we talk about it on the show a lot, about how our current culture does not really emphasize meaning and purpose. How a lot of the ways that people used to get meaning and purpose have gone away or are less relevant to a lot of people. And so

we kind of have to find our own purpose. And you reference in the book, one of my very favorite books ever, which is Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Can you just tell us briefly about Viktor Frankl and kind of what his contribution to this discussion is? Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor and a psychiatrist from Vienna. And when he was transported to the concentration camps during World War II, he spent a lot of time observing the other inmates in the camps and the fact that some of them quickly fell into despair and lost hope about their situation, which obviously was a terrible situation. Everything had been deprived of them, their identities, their freedom, their dignity. And yet in the midst of that, there were some who did not lose hope and who did not fall into despair.

And Frankl wanted to understand why that was. And as he observed more and more inmates and as he spoke to inmates, he concluded that the difference between the people who ultimately were more resilient to their adversity and those who succumbed to it was meaning. And he tells the story of a couple of suicidal inmates in the camps who had lost hope. And by reminding them what their meaning and purpose in life was, Franco was able to kind of zap their vitality back into them. And so for one of them, it was his son who was still alive and would be waiting for him after the war. And for the other scientist, it was a set of books that he needed to complete. And so the idea really is that each of us have kind of a unique meaning or purpose in life and that, but constantly keeping it in our minds and setting it as the

star that leads us forward, that not only will our lives be richer, but that we can weather even the most horrendous adversities through living our meaning and purpose. Yeah. The other thing I found fascinating in your book that I just don't remember, whether I've heard it before or not was that Frankl chose, he had the opportunity to leave shortly before his family was taken to the concentration camps. He could have come to America and he chose not to, to stay, to be there with his family, which I thought was a pretty remarkable thing. That's right. And it was certainly an agonizing decision for him because

he could flee to safety. He could go to America, lead a life of ease and comfort, continue his career, which by that point had been remarkably successful and would promise to be only more successful in America. But he decided that it was his duty and his responsibility to stay to help his parents adjust to camp life, basically. And I think that I love that story because it highlights another point that that runs through Frankel's writing. He wrote Man's Search for Meaning about his experiences in the concentration camps. he writes about how responsibility and duty are kind of our wellsprings of meaning and how the things that we have a duty to complete and a responsibility to do may not always make us happy, but that they're the right thing to do and that we bring what we value into the world. And we each have our own list of what matters to us.

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So that theme runs through the book, this idea of duty and responsibility. Yet I know an awful lot of people who have duty and responsibility and seem to resent it, or it doesn't feel meaningful to them. It feels like a big ball and chain. How do people turn that around? Well, I think what you're describing is kind of what motivated me in a lot of ways to write this book. There are millions of people who are unsure that their lives have meaning, unclear that their lives have meaning. They're kind of going through the day-to-day motions, going to work, picking their kids up from school. And they kind of feel like they're on autopilot and they're unsure whether their lives are significant in any way. And what I found in my research and

in talking to all kinds of individuals about their own journeys to a meaningful life was that the wellsprings of meaning are all around us. And you don't have to be curing cancer or writing the great American novel to be leading a meaningful life. You can be a clerk at a store. You can be a stay-at-home mom or dad. You can be a regular scientist and still have a life that's rich with meaning by relying on and leaning on what I call the four pillars of a meaningful life. And these are the four sources, I argue, of a meaningful life, which are belonging, purpose, storytelling, and transcendence. And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about them later. But the basic idea is that,

you know, we just have to reframe our attitude towards our own lives and realize that, you know, maybe we won't be recognized by the history books and immortalized by them, but that simply by connecting to others, by serving others, by loving and contributing, that we could still lead lives that are very rich with meaning. I agree. I think our culture also makes that more difficult for us given the way the celebrity culture is and that so many people think that, like you said, it has to be this huge,

big thing. I always think it's interesting because when you start to put things into the grand scope of things, you might look at like a rock band that's touring the country right now that's relatively successful and think, well, that's meaning like he's writing songs that's influencing lots of people. But if you look one level up from that, you're like, well, no, he won't be remembered. I mean, it's it becomes this, right? It doesn't matter where you land on that scale, I think, between, you know, between being somebody who might leave a small mark in history and somebody who doesn't in the grand scheme of things, you can either look up at how unimportant your life is, or you can look at where you are. I guess what I'm trying to say is no matter where

you are, if you're taking a comparing mindset, you kind of feel like you fall short. No, I think that's right. And it reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes comic, actually, which I saw. My favorite. Right, which I was looking at just the other day. And Calvin is kind of, you know, staring there with his arms outstretched to the sky, looking at the stars time, we each have a network of people whose, whose lives we can influence and our, our small acts can make a big difference in their lives. And so keeping, keeping that in mind as well. And, you know, I, I there's in, in, in my chapter on purpose, um, I quote the novelist, George Eliot, who, who pays a tribute to the people who kind of keep the world going in small yet indispensable ways. who rest in unvisited tombs. But the fact that they were doing what they were doing has made the world a better place and a more peaceful place, has kept it moving forward in

some way. I agree with that totally. And I think that this meaning thing for me, the more I've thought about it, I've realized it's not something that I can get to intellectually. Your four pillars sort of talk towards that. But when I intellectually try and do it, and I go, well, yeah, my meaning is to help my son. And then if I follow that thing, I go, well, but what does that really matter? Because he's going to die too. Well, it's going to, intellectually, I can never get there. But the example I've used recently a couple times is, on the other hand, if I walked out my front door and there was a dog laying there suffering, there's nothing you could do that would convince me that that didn't matter. No intellectual argument you gave me, no existentialism

or nihilism or anything would make me not believe that helping that dog wasn't incredibly important. And for me, I can't get there through my mind. I think that's 100% correct. And I mean, Aristotle said that the flourishing life is an active life. So a life in which you're doing things. And I think I remember one of my, one of my professors in graduate school, um, the great psychologist, Martin Seligman said that one of the greatest, you know, cures that you could give someone who's feeling depressed is to tell them to go out and volunteer. And I think that that speaks to this point that you're talking about, which is that we may try to overanalyze and over intellectualize, you know, whether life is meaningful, whether our lives are

meaningful, but at the end of the day, we have it in our power to do specific things that can improve the world in some way. And so long as we're doing that, our lives will feel more meaningful to us. Yeah. I come from 12 step tradition, you know, I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict, so I spent a lot of years in that program. And right at the very heart of that program is that idea of you need to help other people. Right. That's right at the center of it. And it's obvious, you know, kind of why. It makes a lot of sense.

And, you know, now that I was looking at your four pillars of meaning, I was thinking about how a lot of that is fulfilled within a 12-step program. There's the belonging fromstep program. There's the belonging from being there. There's the purpose, which is to help others. There's the storytelling where everybody tells their story. There's a connection to something bigger than yourself, which I find it interesting. I have things about the 12-step programs I like and things I don't, but it's interesting to see it in this frame. So let's talk through the four pillars then. Let's start with belonging. Well, to take a step back, I think it seems pretty obvious that in any kind of definition of a good life, a meaningful life, that relationships would play an important role in that. You know,

there's so much research out there about how relationships are important for happiness, and one would expect that they would also be important for meaning. But what I'm trying to say is that it's not just relationships that are important, but a very specific type of relationship, one that's defined by a sense of belonging on both sides. And so what is belonging? Belonging is basically mutual care, mutual respect. When two people come together and let each other know tacitly and explicitly that they value each other and that both people matter to the other. So, you know, when other people treat you like you matter, you feel your life matters too. And so you can see why it would be important to a

meaningful life. And, you know, that's kind of the abstract definition. But if you get a little bit more concrete, when you ask people, you know, what are your primary sources of meaning in life, again and again they say they're close relationships. And parents in particular say they're relationships to their children. Having kids is one of the most potent forms of meaning that people can achieve. But I talk about this in my book. Close relationships obviously are great wellsprings of belonging. people can achieve. But, you know, I talk about this in my book, close relationships, obviously are great wellsprings of belonging, but you can also experience belonging through more ordinary and small connections with people, whether it's smiling at someone who's passing on the street,

just acknowledging one another, making eye contact, connecting for that brief moment, or having a conversation with the barista at the coffee shop or the person who's cleaning your office. So it's, you know, belonging can happen in big and small ways since we can find opportunities to cultivate it. Excellent. So let's now talk about the next piece, which is purpose. And we've kind of alluded to this a little bit, but maybe you could take us a little deeper into it. Let me just first say that meaning and purpose are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably. So somebody might say, I don't know what the meaning and purpose of my life is, or my life feels like it has meaning and purpose. And they're obviously related.

However, they're distinct. And purpose is a goal, kind of a long-term goal that we're always working towards that organizes everything else that we do. And most often it involves making a contribution to others or to the world in some way. and purpose can sound so big and like we have to accomplish something very grand in order to count our lives as meaningful or in order to have said, well, I found my purpose. But the research shows that purpose can come in all shapes and sizes. So for example, you know, you may be an educator who's working to eliminate the achievement gap and find purpose in doing that. And that would be an example of kind of a larger purpose or goal that drives you. Or you could be a cleaner at a hospital who sees your purpose as helping the children and the patients there recover more quickly, heal more quickly by keeping the hospital as clean as possible. So it can come in all shapes and

sizes. And I think it's important to remember that because otherwise we might get discouraged and thinking, well, I haven't found my capital P purpose. I don't really feel like my life has a calling. And there are a lot of people who feel that way. And if you do, that's fine. Just because you don't have a capital P purpose or a capital C calling doesn't mean that you can't find purpose in kind of the ordinary acts of daily life. And one of my favorite examples is a study of adolescents, which found that when they contributed to the household in some way, like by doing chores or watching their younger siblings, that they felt a stronger sense of purpose.

And the reason was because they felt like they were contributing to the smooth operation of the household, basically. The teenagers around me do not seem to echo this, this finding, or at least they're not, they're not letting on. Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes it's just about framing. So maybe you could help them reframe it. Exactly. As you were saying that the idea of a big purpose and all that, I think is elusive for a lot of people. I also think it changes a lot, at least for me, it has. There's been a purpose for a particular period of time more specifically, but sometimes I think a purpose that can be sufficient is just simply to leave every place I go, every

interaction I have, everything I do a little bit better than it was before I got there. And that's a pretty all purpose purpose, I suppose you could say. I think that's absolutely right. That's a purpose that can kind of, everything that you do can fall under it. And I love your point, Eric, about how purpose can change throughout the course of our lives. That's so true. And it's so important to remember that because we need to be nimble purpose seekers, I think, and realize that when one stage of life is over, that might mean that one source of purpose has gone away, but we can still find purpose in other ways and we should look for it. 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. Let's move on to storytelling. I found this one particularly fascinating. Oh, thank you. It's fine that you say that because it was kind of the most unexpected pillar in a lot

of ways. I had an intuition that storytelling should somehow be involved, but it was the most elusive pillar for me to kind of wrap my arms around. But when I did, it just became very clear the role that it plays in a meaningful life. And this goes back to what I was talking about earlier, which is the idea that people, when they say their lives are meaningful, one of the reasons is because they feel that their lives are coherent, which is to say that they kind of understand their experiences and the world that they live in, in terms of a broader narrative. And in particular,

when it comes to their own lives, they've told a story about their lives that explains who they are, where they came from, where they're going, and why they do the things that they do. So it's really about kind of putting the pieces of the puzzle together to get something bigger. the puzzle together to get something bigger. And, you know, storytelling is so essential to humans. It's part of our DNA. It's part of our brains. It's where we're storytelling creatures and we're kind of doing it all the time, maybe without realizing it. And I think that if we were a little bit more intentional about, you know, reflecting on our past experiences and trying to understand how they shaped us, that we would have a better sense of who we are and also a greater sense of meaning in our lives,

because again, it would just help our sense of coherence about who we are. Yeah. And you talk about two types of stories, a redemptive story and a contamination story. Yes. So Dan McAdams is a psychologist at Northwestern University, and he's one of the leading figures in this field called narrative psychology, which is basically about how we tell our life stories and the significance that it has. And McAdams has found that there are a number of different types of stories that people can tell about their lives. They're defined by different themes. So maybe you tell a story about your life that's kind of defined by growth and love. Maybe I tell a story about my life that's defined by loss and tragedy. So one of the types of

stories is a redemption story, which is a story that moves from bad to good. Redemption stories are all over literature. In the Old Testament, the story of the Jews is a redemption story. In American history, the story of African Americans moving from slavery to freedom, that's a redemption story. So these stories are everywhere. And McAdams has found that the type of people who are most likely to contribute to society all tell very similar types of stories about their lives. And those stories are redemptive stories. So if you're the kind of person who see your life as moving from bad to good, who see yourself

as kind of overcoming tragedy and adversity and being stronger afterwards, you're more likely to contribute to society in a variety of different ways, such as by giving back to younger generations. So that's pretty interesting because it suggests to us that the story that we tell about our lives can affect how we behave in our lives and how we understand our role in society. And the other thing that I want to say about stories is that, you know, we're not doomed to tell one type of story about our lives. So if you're telling, let's say, a contamination story, which is the opposite of a redemptive story, a story that moves from good to bad, you're not stuck telling that story. You can edit your story and you can retell

it and reframe it and reinterpret it in a way that brings you a positive sense of meaning. Yeah, it is a story after all. Right. You know, it is a story. Now, what I found fascinating about this idea was, on the show, we talk a lot about the idea that we become great, not in spite of our problems, but because of them in a lot of cases. And yet that doesn't happen for everybody, right? Some people are able to take these terrible experiences and transmute them into something powerful and good, and other people get broken by them. And I loved how you say in the book that

sense-making and narrative are thus effective ways to make meaning from trauma and ultimately overcome it. Venting raw emotions and falling back on platitudes does not lead to health benefits, but sustained and thoughtful writing does. It helps us move beyond our initial emotional reactions to something deeper. I think that, you know, we can't control whether bad things will happen to us, but we can control how we respond to them. And what's interesting is that the more willing you are to do the hard work of sitting down and reflecting on those difficult experiences, writing about how those experiences affected you, actively trying to make sense of them, the more likely you are to kind of overcome those experiences in a positive way. So this meaning-making process is kind of restorative for people after adversities. And I think it makes sense. I mean, you know, when you sit there and you try to reflect on why this thing happened, how did it affect me, you're getting some peace

and closure, a little bit of peace and closure anyways, and that kind of helps you move forward in a healthier manner. So let's go to the last of the pillars, which is transcendence. And this can come in a lot of different flavors. Transcendence is basically about connecting to something that is far greater than you are. The word transcend means to kind of, to go beyond, to step outside the ordinary realm of experiences and feel something higher, something more sacred. And, you know, this is, this is the pillar that gave rise to, to religious experiences that is central to religious experiences, religious experiences, that it is central to religious experiences, religious rituals like meditation or chanting or singing and praying together. But it's also a pillar that we can build through experiences in nature or by encountering great art or great music.

And the common denominator is that we're somehow lifted above the ordinary realm of waking experiences and experience a reality that's higher. And that allows us to see the world anew and to gain a sense of clarity. When you speak to people who've had transcendent experiences, they talk about, you know, how they're kind of mountaintop experiences and how when they come back down from the mountain, that they're changed in some way, that their perspective on reality is a little bit different and that they feel a little more at peace with their lives actually. So, you know, I know earlier, Eric, we were talking about how we can feel so insignificant in the grand scheme of things and And transcendent experiences can definitely amplify

that feeling because you realize that you're just a tiny speck in this vast ocean of the universe. And yet the paradoxical thing about transcendent experiences is that even though you realize your own smallness, you're not left feeling with a sense of despair afterwards. You're left feeling with a sense of peace because even though you are so small, you also realize that you are connected to something vast and something incomprehensible, whether you want to call that the world, nature, consciousness, ultimate reality, God, what have you. It's this larger thing that we're all a part of. Yeah, I think the other point there is that we tend to think of transcendent experiences as

these really overwhelming experiences. You know, transcendent with a capital T is that. And I think a lot of us, though, when we don't have that sort of thing, either we're searching for it all the time through these practices, or we dismiss it. And, you know, William James, who wrote, you know, varieties of religious experience talks about a spiritual awakening that happens over a period of time, instead of the bam one moment, you know, one that's a lot more progressive. And so I think things like nature and art and music, even if it's not this one overwhelming moment, I think there's a cumulative effect of turning towards those things as a source of bringing us up and out of the world that is valuable also.

The more we're able to recognize those small kind of micro moments of transcendence, the more we'll experience them and build this pillar in our lives. I mean, feasibly, you could take a walk to your car and just be outside and see the trees and see a caterpillar crawling across the sidewalk and feel awe and feel the beauty of the universe and the fact that you're alive and you're here and just the wonder of it all. I mean, there are opportunities to experience this pillar every day. Yes, there are. So we're near wrapping up, but I wanted to wrap up by talking about some things you say near the end about what's happening to us maybe as a species. And I think this is a time where a lot of people could use, you know, a little bit more hope.

You referenced two writers who say something, you know, one of them, Easterbrook says, a transition from material want to meaning want is in progress on a historically unprecedented scale. And then you also quote the economist Robert Fogel, who says that we're in the middle of a fourth great awakening, which is defined by an interest in spiritual concerns like purpose, knowledge, and community over material ones like money and consumer goods. In the writing of the book, did you come away feeling that also? Absolutely. It's been one of the most powerful takeaways in writing this book,

the fact that there is this shift that's happening across society and that sociologists have measured, economists have measured, journalists have reported on, that people are really interested in meaning, institutions are really interested in meaning. Institutions are really interested in bringing meaning to people. This is a really positive development. It's a way to kind of make our culture a little bit more humane. And in my book, I specifically talk about it in terms of what I call cultures of meaning that different organizations are creating. And you just see this groundswell,

this interest in, you know, how can we help other people lead more meaningful lives? How can we help them identify their values and their mission from public policy to educational institutions, to corporations at every level of society, there seems to be this newfound interest in meaning. And I think that, I think that it's really hopeful for reasons that you alluded to, the fact that there's so much negativity out there right now. And yet, one of the counterpoints to all of that negativity is the fact that people really are engaged with the question of how we can all lead more meaningful lives and how we can help one another lead more meaningful lives. And I think it also, it makes sense that this moment is happening

in our culture right now when so many of the traditional forms of meaning that we've relied on as a species like religion and community are kind of dissolving and people are looking for new ways to satisfy their yearning for meaning. And it's great that these institutions have risen up to help satisfy it. There's also, you know, a dark side to it as well. Just as there are many positive cultures of meaning, there are also many evil and destructive ones, such as, you know, ISIS and hate groups and gangs.

And so I think that there is an imperative on our culture and on each one of us to provide kind of positive and generative alternatives to those evil cultures of meaning so that people don't have to turn to them to feel that their lives have worth and significance. Yeah, I find that whole idea of us heading towards that fascinating. I'm sort of a believer in like the middle way with a lot of things. And it seems to me like there was a necessary time where personal freedom and individualism and, you know, being our own selves was critical to break out of a

particularly maybe tribal mindset or where people were really sort of locked in. But it feels like in this typical of a lot of change that I see is the pendulum swung back. It sort of over swung to the other side where we now we've got so much of those things, the individualism and, and the freedom of choice and all that, that now it's maybe starting to swing its way back to the middle, which is a, which is an area between those two extremes that allows us to be ourselves and who we are, and also belong and have meaning at the same time. It doesn't have to be one or the other. I think that's right. I think that makes a lot of sense. Well, Emily, thank you so much for taking the time to come on. I really enjoyed reading the book.

It was a great read. Lots of different things in it. We only covered a small part of the great stories and anecdotes and research studies and all that that's in there. So it was very well done. Thank you. And again, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, Eric. It was great speaking to you. Okay. Take care. Take care.

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