The One You Feed - How to Find Solace in Discomfort with Danusha Laméris

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

In This Episode, You'll Learn: How we can discover unique ways to approach discomfort and uncertainty that leads to personal growth and creativity. Recognizing the significance of small acts of kindness and acknowledging progress in life. Why finding simple beautiful things can be powerful and can help us through grief or difficult times  How humor can be the bridge that connects joy and grief Learning to be present with ordinary things broadens our appreciation for them How being willing to ask questions and going deeper can bring clarity and understanding The importance of remembering that the “not knowing” can be where good things happen Sacred envy and how it is tied to your deepest values that can push you toward what’s uncomfortable Delving into our fears, desires, and values as we chase after personal aspirations. Exploring the intricate dance between hope and resilience during ever-changing situations. To Learn More, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I think it is important to look to just the smallest things and to know that when we offer those to others, they can have an impact beyond what we can imagine, that they're really powerful moments. 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 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 reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Danusha Lamaris, a poet, teacher, and essayist. She's the author of The Moons of August, which was chosen as the winner of the Autumn House Press

Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, was a finalist for the Patterson Poetry Prize and winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. Danusha's poems have been published in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Sun Magazine, The American Poetry Review, and many others. She is a Poet Laureate Emeritus of Santa Cruz County, California. Hi, Danusha. Welcome to the show. Hi. Happy to the show. Hi. Happy to be here.

I am really excited to have you on. We're going to be discussing your latest poetry book. Actually, we're going to be discussing all your poetry books. The latest one is called Bonfire Opera. But before we get to that, let's start like we always do with a parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with her grandchild and they say, 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 grandchild stops and they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, 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 in your life and in the work that you do. So many things. I love that that's your starting off place. And I think we're really in that moment as a culture, sort of a witch wolf moment, aren't we? Where on a much broader scale, moment, aren't we? Where on a much broader scale, there's this acting out of the extremes. Do we go toward kindness and goodness toward each other? Do we go toward intense animosity and emphasis on difference? Where do we go? And I certainly feel that in my own life, looking at, well, how do I want to be in the world? How do I want to show up?

And which wolf do I want to pet? That's the other thing. I think there's feeding the wolf that you really want to feed, those aspects of kindness and gentleness toward self, toward others. But I think with the other wolves, we want to kind of pet those wolves so that we're bringing them into the fold as well and welcoming them. And so that's something I've been thinking about a lot too. I don't think anybody's ever referenced petting the wolf. People have talked about befriending the wolf, but nobody's petted the wolf yet that I can recall. So thank you for that. And behind me, you can't see it.

I won't adjust the camera, but I've got two mini wolves back here. Well, actually, I will. Why not? Oh, of course. Of course the doggy show would tell. There's Lola. Oh, my goodness. In the back, who's white.

And that's Beansy right there. Beansy wears a diaper because she's old and incontinent. And in order to wear the diaper, she then has those suspenders that you see on her. So those are my two little wolves. Thank you for that. Yeah. I heard you say something on an interview that just came to mind as you were talking about this particular moment in time.

And it was that you felt like we were having a little bit of a vacuum cleaner moment. And what you meant was that people are talking a lot about injustices and racism and lots of different things, but it's not like they just appeared. It's not like they are worse now than they have been before. It's just that we have had a chance to see things a little bit more clearly. That's right. And I think that it can feel discouraging because it's everything we're hearing and seeing in the news and social media. And it feels like this tremendous tornado has descended upon us as a culture.

And yet we are actually talking about the issues and the underlying stuff that gets just swept under the rug. And here it is being vacuumed out. And we're looking at it. And that has to be a good thing, ultimately. better without minimizing the changes that need to happen is a delicate balance that most people don't seem to be able to do. I was just listening to someone this morning. It was someone who was gay and they were talking about how at his age, he's 56 years old, I believe. He was like, nobody came out in high school. Like that did not happen. Right. And so we look today and many, many, many young people feel comfortable and safe coming out much, much earlier. Now, not everyone, right? So I'm not trying to say like, oh, we've made all the progress we need to make. It's not that.

But I do feel like it's helpful to see progress we have made because otherwise, like you said, I think what happens is we get very discouraged. And discouragement doesn't lead to motivation, whether it be in your personal life or in the broader world, right? If we are discouraged, we don't take positive action. That's right. We have to be tracking that arc. And as Martin Luther King Jr. said, that long arc tends toward justice. Luther King Jr. said that long arc tends toward justice. And I'm not quoting that exactly. But if we're not tracking that, we become even despondent. And I think for so many people growing up right now in a time when the world looks like this, there's a lot of deep sadness and even feeling of how are we going to grow up in this world? And so I think it is important

to talk about. And certainly I had that conversation with my niece and nephew saying, when I was in high school, people didn't come out of the closet, at least not at my school. That's not what I saw. And I tried to describe the lay of the land because it is important to see that it's different now. It's not untroubled, Because it is important to see that it's different now. It's not untroubled, but it's different now. There's movement. Yep. I was watching, just finished last night, actually watching the TV series Mad Men, which is just an outstanding drama.

But it's always interesting for me to watch reenactments of the 60s, right? Because Mad Men starts, I think, probably late 50s and then moves through the 60s. And I mean, we were in tremendous upheaval. Tremendous. You know, I mean, public figures being assassinated. I mean, huge generational divides. I mean, the civil rights. We were in tremendous upheaval. And I think what's hopeful to me about that is that we then emerged from there back to periods that were a little bit more stable. Now, some people feel like the 60s died and that was problematic. But to me, when things feel really uncertain, it's always helpful for me to look back at historical points and go, well, that's a lot of history. It often seems uncertain. Are we really in a time that is radically different? There was a section in that part where they were getting their first big computer. It had to take up an entire room. And people were terrified of the thing. Terrified. And I've been thinking a

lot about AI. And I just thought, well, you know, huh, that's interesting. There was a moment there of terror around the computer. I'm not saying that AI may not be tremendously destructive. I'm just saying that we've always predicted doom as a species. We do. It's one of the things we're best at. And I think about that a lot too, that, you know, often it'll be a religion or sort of a cult or whatever it is that sort of creates the next doom theory. The world is going to end in this year, it's going to end in that year. And yet here we are, here we are with some billions of years left on our sun that is, you know, making life possible here. And we do face tremendous crises around the

biosphere and around how we are engaging as a species with each other and with the more than human world. Yes. And yet, that is the moment when human ingenuity appears. It tends to appear most strongly in crisis, not just on an average Sunday. When we're really up against something, we show up differently. And I have that faith in us. Well, changing direction, let's move into some of your poetry. I haven't been able to figure out where to start, but I think I'm going to start with probably the first poem of yours that I ever saw, which was Small Kindnesses, which is probably the poem of yours that many

people encounter for the first time. But I was wondering if you would read that one for us. Yeah, sure. Small Kindnesses I've been thinking about the way When you walk down a crowded aisle People pull in their legs to let you by Or how strangers still say bless you when someone sneezes A leftover from the bubonic plague.

Don't die, we are saying. And sometimes when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don't want to harm each other. mostly, we don't want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot and to say thank you to the person handing it, to smile at them and for them to smile back, for the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,

and for the driver in the red pickup truck to let us pass. We have so little of each other now, so far from tribe and fire, only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy. These fleeting temples we make together when we say, Here, have my seat. Go ahead, you first. I like your hat. Thank you for that. Yeah, I love that poem for so many different reasons.

It's funny, as you were reading it, and there's the line about, Bless you, a leftover from the bubonic plague, right? And if we talk about like, well, life goes on, you know, like it was a pretty bad moment in human history. But yeah, just that small kindness. And I am a believer that while there are always lots of bad things happening in the world at any given moment, there's a ton of them. given moment. There's a ton of them. There are also countless, like you said, small, teensy little kindnesses. Mostly we don't want to hurt each other. That's a great thing. It is a great thing. And I think we're often looking for the big epic thing to happen. And it's so often the really small things that people never forget. The interesting thing about having written that poem and having it out in the world is that people write to me all the time, or they write about it to each other. And they're sharing these moments that are micro moments in all the chaos of the world.

You know, oh, I was at the grocery store and this woman gave me money because I didn't have enough money to pay at the checkout. And I'd have been having a horrible day, and that just changed everything. And so I think it is important to look to just the smallest things and to know that when we offer those to others, they can have an impact beyond what we can imagine, that they're really powerful moments. It makes me think of something else that I wanted to talk with you about. It's the idea of these small things. And you are describing this. This is not a poem. I found it in an interview somewhere, and I don't remember where. It's not important. But you were describing being home as

a caregiver to your son. And we may talk about your son, who you unfortunately lost, but even before that, he was not well, right? He required an enormous amount of care. And you were saying, someone told me, make something beautiful every day, right? Even if it's just a bouquet of flowers from the garden. And you said, I don't see what that could possibly do, right? Particularly against a baby who has seizures, right? But then you wrote, and I'm going to read this because it's beautiful. I'm older now, time has passed. I know that we are always sitting in the midst of something enormous and unsolved, whether it relates to our health or the health of society or the planet. There's a crisis in every moment. It's only a matter of our distance from it and relationship to it. I've learned to wake up seeing the sun streaming into our living room from the east to sit there and be with it for a while. And then you say, I let beauty do some of the lifting for

me. Say a little bit more about that. Yeah. Oh, thank you for bringing this up. Small, beautiful things. The bouquet of flowers. What can that possibly do? And I find myself hesitating to ever offer advice like that to anybody else who's going through something like being at home with a child who's unwell or a parent or a partner. And the burden of caregiving is profound on the body and psyche, right? It's just profound. And yet, what do you do? And I found that for me, those small gestures of, okay, I'm going to pick some flowers from the garden, or I'm going to cook something that I love, or I'm going to just stare out the window and appreciate it, were windows into another way of being in the world

and still are for me. On a daily basis. I sat and watched the sun come up in the east. Maybe I didn't watch it. And that replenishes us more than we realize often. The eastern side of the house and just let myself drink from that well of beauty. well of beauty. Yeah, you go on to say in this section, talking about having these little moments of beauty, you say, even if I think I don't care, even if I'm still worrying about everything else, my soul cares. It accepts the offering no matter how small. An ant has a better chance of entering a castle with its moat and stone walls than an elephant. I allow myself to honor the ant, a creature that carries 5,000 times its own weight. And that's when you go on to say, I let beauty do some of the lifting for me. And what I love about that, besides that ant getting in easier than an elephant, which is an amazing analogy and metaphor,

what I love about that is it points to, there are these little things that we can do for ourselves, give ourselves a moment of beauty, notice a small kindness, take a short walk around the block that we may in the moment not see as transformational. They're not the big epic thing, but I'm such a big believer in that little by little these things accumulate and they don't change everything, in that little by little these things accumulate. And they don't change everything, but they change some things. And sometimes when we're going through deeply difficult times, I think that's sometimes the best we can hope for is something small that will sustain us.

But if we think that we need everything to change for anything to be any better, then we get, at least I get really paralyzed by that. Yeah, that's such a trap. And I've been there just thinking, oh, I need, you know, my son to get better. I need this to happen. I need that to happen for me to feel differently. But what I found was that, A, that didn't happen. You know, that wasn't his life story that we would find a miracle cure. That wasn't our story. And what happened instead were all these little moments of grace. Often it was nurses at the

hospital who would, of all things, make me laugh in the worst of it. And sometimes it was that, sometimes it was a stranger in the waiting room. I used to have a little prayer or blessing that I would say that I came up with when I just felt I couldn't go back to the neurologist one more time with my son. I just couldn't go through the ritual of them not knowing what was wrong, not knowing what to do, telling me different protocols that seemed scary, you know, side effects of medication. I thought, I can't do this. And so before I got in the car, I somehow put out the request, please let something happen that is unexpected and maybe even wonderful, but just please let something happen that's unexpected. Because I think so much of dread is that feeling that we're just going to go

through the same thing over and over. I couldn't bear it. Let something happen that's unexpected. And I went to the neurologist's office, there it was with my husband and my son. And I struck up this conversation with the woman next to me, or she did with me, I don't remember. I can't describe this exactly, but it felt like we were almost long lost cousins. We just fell into this ease and humor and almost raucousness with each other laughing. And then she said, can I hug you? And this was pre-pandemic, you know, wasn't that kind of request, but she's like, can we just hug? And we did. And we're hugging in the waiting room. I never saw her again, even though we exchanged information. But there was something

about just having a moment outside of time with her that made the whole experience kind of wonderful. That's a beautiful story. That's really great. And I have to pause at this moment and say, you mentioned like the nurses. You know, one of the things I have noticed, so if you're a caregiver out there, I know that this can be a beleaguering time, but the kindness of nurses is such a big deal. You know, I've been dragging my mother through the healthcare system for a while now for a variety of different ailments. And when anybody is just even the slightest bit kind, it means so much. It's unfortunate that maybe that's so not the general case. Now, I shouldn't say that. That's not fair. That's not fair. It's just that any

extra little bit of kindness feels so valuable in that setting. Feels profound, doesn't it? Because we're so vulnerable in those settings. That's exactly it. Yeah. So any little bit, a dropper full is just immense, immense. Who's just a little bit extra something. That nurse who's funny, encouraging, whatever it is. It just, I never, ever forget those moments. whatever it is. It just, I never ever forget those moments. Yeah. You mentioned humor in there, you know, laughing with the nurses. And it's one of the things I love about your work is there's a fair amount of humor in there and it's right up alongside

the really difficult, which is where I find humor to be most useful is actually when it's nestled that close to the awful. To me, it's a profound coping skill. And I often say levity is a spiritual virtue. I was wondering if maybe you would read a poem for us called Dressing for the Burial. Oh, yeah. Okay. I like that you're asking for that one. This is a poem I wrote after my brother died. And I guess it speaks for itself. my brother died. And I guess it speaks for itself, but I'll say a couple of things. My brother died of suicide. And this was about some of the aftermath of that. And it's just a snapshot of a moment. Dressing for the burial. No one wants to talk about the hilarity after death. The way the week my brother shot himself, his wife and I fell on the bed laughing because she couldn't decide what to wear for the big day and asked me,

Do I go for sexy or Amish? I told her sexy, and we rolled around on the mattress they'd shared for 18 years, clutching our sides. years clutching our sides. Meanwhile, he lay in a narrow refrigerated drawer, soft brown curls springing from his scalp, framing his handsome face. This was back when he still had a face, and we were going to get to see it. Hold up the black skirt again, I said. She said which one and then she said you look so mafia chic and I said thank you and it went on until we both got tired and our ribs hurt and now I don't even remember what we wore only that we both looked, weeping over that open hole in the ground. That's such a great poem and such a great moment. And it speaks to, there can be both these things.

There can be this awful, tremendous grief, and there can also be humor right there. You wrote somewhere that joy is when what we want matches what is. Grief is when there's a vast rift between the two. Humor is the bridge. Amen. Couldn't say it better yourself, could you? Amen to that. Humor is the bridge. If we're lucky, we have those moments. I remember in that moment that my sister-in-law said, is this okay? Is this okay that we're laughing like this right now? And I said, you know what? I think we better take what we can get. In a moment, we're going to be crying our eyes out and just having that grief that's so intense that you just feel sick for months even. So I said, if we have a

moment like this, let's just take it. Let's go with it. Yeah. Yeah. I was interviewing another poet, Ross Gay recently, and I can't remember. It's in one of his two books of essays, but he's talking about him and a bunch of friends on their front porch and between them, like they've all lost a parent, you know, and, and the things that they're laughing about, you know, he's like, I'm not possibly going to share those with you. You know, you, you might stop reading me, but I do think that there is a dark humor of people who've gone through a lot of loss, which you certainly have. Your list of losses is, I don't know what to call it, really remarkable.

I mean, I think maybe everybody, by the time they get to the end of their life, has a list like that. You may have just gotten yours early. I think that's right. Yeah, that humor has always been such an important bridge for me between those two things. I love that. It's funny you mentioned Ross, because I've been thinking about a conversation I was having with him, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, about what we were calling the roughness of joy. You know, Ross is sort of known for talking about delight, joy, all of these kinds of states that make us think of lightness. And yet, we were saying how it's actually so the roots of joy, you might say the roots of it are in parched ground

that we experience joy in a more profound way when it is in some ways grounded in loss or suffering because we experienced the contrast. I remember when I was taking care of my son and I was in those years where my life was very boundaried. I couldn't really go places very much. I was just in the orbit of caring for him and being in a lot of fear about what could happen, or was I doing things wrong? Should I be making different choices on his behalf? And I'll never forget what it was like going to the grocery store then. Just to go out and go to the grocery store seemed to be an almost religious experience. Everything would feel like it was moving in slow motion, just loading things into my cart

and looking at the other shoppers who seemed to be almost divine beings. And I think it was because time just felt very, very, very precious and life felt as limited as it actually is. And sometimes I wish I could conjure that feeling again of going to the grocery store and feeling that way about it, but without having that backdrop of loss so close. How do we get back to that without having to re-experience loss? 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

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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. You elsewhere said something along the lines of, you know, I've had some of the best times in my life in the midst of deep grief. You can get so close to the core of life in any moment of intensity. And of course, we prefer the pleasurable moments of intensity, but there is an element of sometimes that intensity giving life a particular deep feeling, which I think is what most of us are seeking in art. At least I am. Frankly,

I'm seeking it in art and in spiritual practice. I'm seeking the sense of being closer and more connected to life. You know, that life literally comes more to life for me. That's what I'm always after. That's the thing, isn't it? How do we get close to it? I think of it or picture it almost like a doorway, that there's this doorway. And when we're standing in the middle of a loss, death of somebody that we love, we can get really close to that doorway of what is essential. And then sometimes a poem or a painting or a play, often for me, it's been a play

or a piece of music. It gets us close to that doorway where we can just peer right into it, into the essence. Here's what really matters. And we are constantly forgetting. We are forgetters by species. We just, we learn things and we remember this is what matters. And then we forget. And then we go, no, here it is again. And then we forget. And I feel like art is a way of trying to preserve what I've heard Jane Hirshfield, wonderful poet and essayist, call the mineral knowledges. How do we save these mineral knowledges, these essential things? Maybe we write a poem and we go back to the poem again and again. Yeah. And I think on some level, it's impossible

to live there all the time, right? You know, the other thing we are as a biological creature is we are up and down and we change and all that. And I think it's good sometimes that, you know, there is some run of the mill rote moments, you know, I think we need those, but it's easy to get caught in a life where that seems like it's the vast majority of the moments and we're seeking that deeper thing. I wanted to ask you a question about engaging with art, whether it be creating it for you or consuming it. Is there any ways that you know of that bring you closer to that door in how you create or how you interact or engage with art? Is there anything you know of that makes that proximity to that door more likely? Well, strangely, I think it sort of refers to what you just said. I think it's the ordinary. Often I get closer to that door

because I'm tending my garden. I'm doing laundry. I'm doing really ordinary things and allowing myself to just be present with those ordinary things. And then somehow that opens that sensitivity to appreciating art more deeply, or even maybe a poem will occur to me while I'm doing chores, regular stuff, going on a walk around the neighborhood. I think being rooted in just regular life. When you say a poem will occur to you, I'm curious, do you get a line? Do you get multiple lines? Do you get an idea for a poem? All of the above, mix and match?

I think all of the above. I think often it's a line. The two poems I've read so far today, I think both of those, it was a first line. No one wants to talk about the hilarity after death. I think that's how that one occurred. So I think those both arrived in a first line and that's often how it is. I just have a line and I go, oh, better write that down. No way I'm going to remember it otherwise. But then it's always a mystery what the poem's going to be about. Yeah. You've said that you don't think a poem is done until it has changed you. Yeah, that's right. Otherwise, it's some notes, it's some free writing, but I don't feel I have a draft of a poem until I've been changed in some very small way. I know we're talking a lot about smallness today, but it could just be the way that I see the subject matter that I'm writing about just shifts by like 5%. Or it could be some tremendous sea change where it completely changes how I view a certain event, person, animal, idea. But there has to be some kind of progression. I can't be the same person I was when I started writing the poem. I don't want to go too deep into the creative process because that's not

what this show is about, but I am interested in what's the process of working through a poem. When you say the process of working through a poem, it has to change me. Can you give any example of that, of a poem where you've been working through and something has changed? Is it just that something comes out of your, I guess not out of your mouth exactly, out of your hand that you simply didn't know you knew? And sometimes it happens by asking myself a lot of questions. So very often in the process, that's what it looks like. And I ask myself things like, well, what's underneath that? And what's under that? Is there another layer under that?

And so it's sitting in this sort of uncomfortable soup of questions and allowing myself to notice what thoughts arrive or what images, but often that's what it looks like. Do you find that that is a lot of what commitment to a creative process is, is being willing to stay in that sort of uncomfortable place where you are with questions more than you are with answers? Because it's very satisfying to write something down and be like, oh, that came very easy and it was good, right? Like, that's very satisfying, but it's not a, at least in my case, a consistent and repeatable path to something, right? It doesn't tend to work that way.

I would say yes. It's what the poet John Keats called negative capability, that ability to sit in that uncomfortable place without what he calls an irritable reaching for solution, for answers that are immediate or obvious, right? That we want to be able to sit in that place of asking ourselves difficult things, of noticing things about ourselves that maybe we don't really like, of being open to seeing something we dislike through the eyes of love. Any of those things might happen that stretch us in a way that's just a little bit or a lot uncomfortable. Yeah, I think it is very difficult, even if we're not talking about creating art, but if we're just talking about generally asking ourselves

questions that we don't know the answers to, there's a very strong tendency in a lot of us to turn away. I was interviewing an author recently, his name's A.J. Jacobs, and he's written a number of really interesting books. He tries these experiments on himself, like The Year of Living Biblically, where he tried to follow like everything in the Bible, growing out his beard. But his most recent book is about puzzles. And it was interesting to hear him talk about the process of solving puzzles, because generally what I've noticed is with a puzzle for me, if I can't figure it out relatively quickly, I just go, eh, forget it, give it up, right? But he talks about the joy of you stick with it. And then in that bafflement, eventually then when you come through that,

it's this very beautiful moment. And so being willing to stay with these things that are uncertain, I lead people through values work sometimes. And values are very difficult. That is difficult work to do because either A, we're not sure, we don't know the answers, or B, we start coming right up against the places that we are out of alignment with what we value, the way our lives are. There's a lot about it that's difficult. And so it's very natural to not want to do it and turn away from it, which I think is kind of that way in general with questions that we don't know the answer to. I don't like that. Let's just say it. I'm just going to be clear. I do not like it. Well, it's interesting

what we get praised for, right? What I got praised for as a child was being smart. So if you're praised for being smart, not being smart is very scary, not knowing the answer. So I think I've trained myself a lot to say, I don't know, but it still is a place the answer. So I think I've trained myself a lot to say, I don't know, but it still is a place of discomfort. And I think it is, you know, maybe for everybody, but some people more than others. Yeah. The not knowing is where so much of the good stuff happens. And we know this, but it's so amorphous to not know. And it lives in this darkness. to not know. And it lives in this darkness. And I think we also have that dichotomy of the light and the dark. And the light seems like the light of knowledge and knowing and clarity, and the dark is something evil and terrible. If you look up synonyms for dark,

it gets really interesting. Nefarious, impure, all of these things that we associate to danger and evil, right, is a synonym for dark. And I guess I don't have to mention how that might play out in race relations. There's some obvious implications there, but the idea that the dark and being in the dark about something is how we partly describe not knowing. And so how do we allow ourselves to be in the rich and fragrant dark? I think it'd be easier to sit in it, but that's part of the not knowing, right? That's part of the not knowing is like, well, is this not knowing leading to something eventually? Like, is the good stuff in this dark or is this just dark? You know, like it's that uncertainty.

I've practiced a lot in the Zen tradition and they talk all the time about this. You know, not knowing is most intimate. It being to use Suzuki's line, beginner's mind, right? This idea of, you know, not knowing is the path to so much wisdom and opening. And frankly, that thing we were talking about earlier, that connection to life comes generally, at least for me, when I don't know, because if I think I know, I just tend to gloss things over. Right. If we know we're bored even. If we knew exactly how our lives would go, and it was on a little sheet of paper that we could carry around with us, and we knew the whole plot, how bored would we be? And yet, we kind of hope that it will be like that and go according

to our best laid plans. And then it gets interesting when it doesn't. I remember being on a road trip years ago with my mom and sister-in-law and our car broke down and we ended up in a Walmart for about seven hours. And disaster of disasters, we're just stuck by the road and we're stuck in Walmart. Well, what do we remember about the trip? What's the most memorable part was everything that happened with the tow truck driver who was showing me all the tattoos he had on himself of his grandkids and the Walmart, the interactions we had with people there. That was sort of the really, in a weird way, the highlight of the trip. Yeah. Well, it's funny, just this very Christmas,

my son and I were fortunate enough to be able to go to Mexico together, just the two of us. He's 24. So time like that is very special. And we got on a plane to come back to the States. And I thought about this. I was like, maybe we should not get on the plane. There's all kinds of travel difficulties, but talk to my travel agent, travel agent was, I think you'll probably be okay. You're going through Minneapolis. And I think the worst of it's blown through there. Well, sure enough, we get off the flight in Minneapolis and they're like, well, your flight has been canceled and there are no other flights out for the next three days. And I just left sunny Mexico where it's 80 degrees. And I'm now in Minneapolis where it's like the wind chills, like negative 20. And I'm, I'm just like, why did I get on that plane? What a thing. And so we spent Christmas in Minneapolis,

him and I, but I tell you, it is a Christmas I will never forget. I couldn't tell you what has happened the vast majority of the last 10 Christmases, but this one is etched in memory. Christmas in Minneapolis even has a good ring to it. It sounds like the title of something. It does. It turned out to be a lovely time. I think he would say the same thing, although he might've been like, just, because then when we got home and we found out we had COVID and we had to quarantine together. And so for me, it was a boom of epic proportions to get that much time with my son. He probably was like, Oh, am I ever going to get away from my father?

It's one of the things he probably will most remember too. He will. He will. He will. 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 cranson is with us how are you 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 no really go to really no really. 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.

There's another thing that you said somewhere, and you were talking about your godson, Jeremias. And he said to you, I want to be a marine biologist, but I'm afraid of sharks. And you said, that's how it is. The thing you truly love usually lives next to the thing you fear. I was a child who was afraid to speak, to express myself. Once in the second grade, I cried because I couldn't fill out a paper asking me how I felt. Happy, sad. With help from another girl in class, I wrote, I am sad because I can't do this. My tears stained the page. But I love that idea that the thing you truly love lives next to the thing you fear. Doesn't it though? I talk to so many people who say, well, I want to do this, but I'm afraid of that. Or I really don't like this aspect of it. You know, like Hermia is saying, I want to be a marine biologist,

but I'm afraid of sharks. And I thought that's, oh gosh, that's me too. I want to write and I want to express myself. And I was so shy and introverted growing up. I thought this is impossible. I think the tasks we're given through our desires are almost always impossible in that same way. Yeah. Yeah. So I would be curious how you learn to sort of move forward in that direction because one conclusion that I think a lot of people can reach is, if I'm this afraid of doing it, it must not be the right thing for me to do. Yes, that's true. That's where we can go with that. And I think this comes back to petting the wolf. I think it goes back to that in the sense that I assume that these kinds of shadows are going to accompany me wherever I go because I'm a human being. And so it's more about how I engage with them. So in that case, if it's, and I'm not saying

I do everything that I'm afraid of. I really don't. I'm not bungee jumping anytime soon. There are a lot of things I'm afraid of that I don't do, but if it's connected to something that's crucial, then I think, well, I have to do. But if it's connected to something that's crucial, then I think, well, I have to find a way through this and pet that wolf and just befriend it a bit or however we want to put it. And one of the other ones that's accompanied me in that way is envy. I studied art and went on to study writing because I was jealous of people who were doing that. on to study writing because I was jealous of people who were doing that. And so that was another indicator to me that if I feel envy or jealousy, if I want to be the person who's getting to study painting or study writing, then maybe I need to be doing that. That's really interesting because I do think envy and jealousy are really interesting emotions because there are times that we can become

envious. I should say I can become envious of things I don't even necessarily really want all that much that might misguide me. Like I see a beautiful house on TV and I'm like, well, I need a house that's like that. And so I'm envying that, right? And that's a form of social comparison that actually leads me in the wrong direction. But you're describing a type of envy or comparison that leads you in the right direction, right? That actually points to this is my heart's deepest longing. I'm just curious how you think about telling those things apart. Well, now that you're asking, I am too. How do we know those? How can I tell? I mean, one I think of is sacred envy, sacred envy. And I think again, it's,

let's say this, it is tied to my deepest values. If I'm just thinking, God, I want a car like that. Is that sort of right next to my deepest values? You know, probably not, but you know, there's some car fans out there, car collectors, maybe it does have a different meaning in your life, but in my life that wouldn't be tied to my deepest value. And so if I'm feeling that and I examine it and it's just so braided into things I deeply care about. That's the difference. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a whole art to learning what it is we actually want and need and what is helpful to us and what is good for us. And it's always been a problem, right? I mean, the phrase keeping up with the Joneses, right, is not a modern phrase, right? I mean, it comes from

a time that predates us, but it does seem to be worse and worse today, given the prevalence of social media and how everything gets sort of prettied up, you know? Like, I'm a big believer in that everything has a cost. You pay a price for everything, you know? And part of what I think gets challenging is the way that we are presented a lot of things is we don't see the cost, right? We just see the pretty side of it, you know? And part of what I think gets challenging is the way that we are presented a lot of things is we don't see the cost, right? We just see the pretty side of it. You know, we don't see the cost of, well, I might be able to have a house like that if I was willing to work in that type of way for that hard with that amount of pressure, like maybe, but I'm not seeing that, right? I'm just seeing the sunny side of it. And so I think part of,

at least for me, recognizing satisfaction in life and really coming to terms with the choices that I've made or that I'm going to make is really trying to say, can I see both sides of, or all sides of this? What is the price for this thing? You know, what am I giving up by having this thing? What am I not getting? What am I, I mean, there's just a lot of complexity. But back to what you said earlier, which I think was really beautiful, was it's being willing to ask a lot of those questions. To sit in those questions is then when I'm able, at least for me, better able to discern like, yeah, I really do want that. That does matter to me. Or that would be nice if it just dropped in my lap.

Or that would be nice if it just dropped in my lap, but I'm not willing to do what it takes to get there or to have that or to do that. So many of the things we want are connected to a lot of discomfort. I don't like sharing my most intimate aspects of my life in a public way. Part of me doesn't like that. And part of me is compelled to do that as a writer. And so I'm uncomfortable all the time. And when I talk to my best friend, I'm sort of giving the daily report of what I've done. That's really uncomfortable because it's daily every day. I'm taking some kind of risk that makes

me uncomfortable, even if it's just on the page, or maybe it's by reaching out to someone I really want to talk to and be in dialogue with. I feel like these kinds of conversations and dialogues are some of the things I value most when we're talking about exactly this and all the other things that branch out from it. How do we navigate our lives? How do we figure out what matters? And so the daily discomfort is kind of the diet that I feel that I'm on. And it makes me feel more alive. It makes me feel uncomfortable. It does all of the things. But it's the price I'm willing to pay for this kind of growth, I suppose, for feeling stretched in a certain way.

I'm willing to pay this price. I don't always like it. Yeah. Well, it's very helpful when we can reframe things that way. I've embarked on a creative project that is really stretching me in ways that are deeply uncomfortable. You know, all the doubt, all the fear, I mean, all of it is there. And thankfully, I've gotten to a place where most of the time I go, that's what I want. Like, that's actually a sign to your point that I am right doing exactly what I should be doing because I'm frightened by it. And because it feels overwhelming. And because I feel like I can't.

But I spent a lot of my life not knowing that, right? And that led me to turn away again and again from certain things because I didn't recognize that that discomfort was part of the price of admission. Oh, that's so good. Something that was good versus something that was bad. It told me what mattered versus telling me what I couldn't do. You know, not being willing to sit with the puzzle longer because I want the answer. Right. It's counter intuitive because you're saying I moved toward the thing I really wanted and I felt terrible. Well, on just a physical level, we are self-protective beings. We don't put our hand into a fire because it hurts and it burns, right? And so more and more strongly that say, who do you think you are? Yep.

What do you think you're doing? Who told you you could do that? You know, and a million others. You sort of activate the hornet's nest. It all gets activated because you are stepping into more of the fullness of your being. And there's a part that wants to protect us and it's going to try and talk us out of it. And so it's so helpful to see the increase in the self-criticism or the increase in fear and discomfort actually a science that you're going the right way. Right. As you were talking, it made me think about how important the support of others can be in this. I didn't know

that for a long time. And so I didn't do certain things because I didn't know that that discomfort was exactly part of the process. I've had the great fortune now to interview so many just exceptional people who all say something similar, you know, and I've had the sense as I've embarked on this to be like, I'm going to read books about making art, not like a technical book about making art, but books by people who are writing about how hard it is, because I need to hear that again and again, like,

oh yeah, you're right where you're supposed to be. This feeling is perfectly natural. This is the process. But outside of that support, it's very difficult to keep marching in the direction of what matters to us. So true. And I think it's true with creative practice and spiritual practice. Yes. I love that you brought up, you know, both in artistic process and in spiritual growth, this support is so, so important. And I was wondering if you would read a poem for us. I don't know if it's in any of your books, but it was published somewhere online.

It's called Nothing Wants to Suffer. This poem and what it's saying has been one of the most foundational spiritual awakenings for me that I have deepened into and deepened into over and over and over and has changed the way I really relate to so much of the world. So I would just love it if you would read that poem. Wow. Well, I'm honored to read it. And it's after a writer and poet named Linda Hogan, who writes so beautifully about the natural world. And this was from an essay that she wrote about corn, about being in conversation with a field of corn. Nothing wants to suffer, after Linda Hogan. Nothing wants to suffer, not the wind as it scrapes itself against the cliff,

against the cliff. Not the cliff being eaten slowly by the sea. The earth does not want to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it. The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust. The coyote in its den, rust. The coyote in its den, the puma stalking its prey, these two want ease, and a tender animal in the mouth to take their hunger, an offering one hopes made quickly and without much suffering. The chair mourns an angry sitter, the lamp a scalded moth, a table the weight of years of argument. We know this, though we forget. Not the shark nor the tiger, fanged as they are, nor the worm, content in its windowless world of soil and stone. Not the stone resting in its riverbed, the riverbed gazing up at the stars, least of all the stars, ensconced in their canopy, looking down at all of us, their offspring scattered so far beyond reach.

That's such a beautiful poem. There's so many beautiful lines in there. It's been so helpful to me to just recognize that core idea that nothing wants to suffer. Now you take it beyond living things, and so I'm not going to talk about that one way or the other, but with all living things for sure, we all want to avoid pain and experience more pleasure. I mean, even down to, you know, like single cell organisms, they behave that way. Like it is so wired into us. And for me, when I'm able to recognize that about everyone and everything, then what I feel like I'm arguing with people about is strategies, right? Forgetting that, you know, your strategy may be problematic, but like I said, that's one I've

deepened into and continue to deepen into, but it's done more to open me to the world than most any other idea. It's profound at its root, isn't it? That everything wants to survive, wants to thrive in some way. Even a plant is, I don't know how to talk about it, but a vine is trying to lean towards something it can rest on. We don't want to assign intentionality in a way that is more or less than what is just true. That all things are trying to grow and thrive in some way. And how do we then support that? Yeah, I think it's a beautiful idea. So we're nearly out of time, but I would like to get one more poem in. And I think a poem that speaks a lot about what we were just talking about is this

desire that we all have for ourselves and those around us not to suffer, to not to struggle, to not face hardship. And you have a beautiful poem about that called Inshallah. Well, thank you for requesting this. And I wrote this during a time when I was waiting for something to happen. And in fact, it was waiting to see if my first book got picked up. It was this book that I'm now holding in my hands. And I knew that it was in the hands of the poet Naomi Shihab Nye, and that she was going to be deciding which book to choose. And it just brought up for me the whole thing about that state of waiting, often when the stakes are much higher than the ones I just described. So here it is, Inshallah. I don't know when it slipped into my speech. That soft word meaning, if God wills it.

Inshallah, I will see you next summer. The baby will come in spring, Inshallah. Inshallah, this year we will have enough rain. So many plans I've laid have unraveled, easily as braids beneath my mother's quick fingers. Every language must have a word for this, a word our grandmothers uttered under their breath as they pinned the whites soaked in lemon, hung them to dry in the sun, or peeled potatoes dropping the discarded skins into a bowl.

or peeled potatoes dropping the discarded skins into a bowl. Our sons will return next month, Inshallah. Inshallah, this war will end soon. Inshallah, the rice will be enough to last through winter. How lightly we learn to hold hope, as if it were an animal that could turn around and bite your hand. And still we carry it, the way a mother would, carefully, from one day to the next. That's beautiful.

I'd love to maybe finish with a little discussion about a word you used in there called hope. Hope is a really interesting idea because oftentimes we don't get what we hoped for. And in your case, in some of the most profound ways, right? Like the amount of hope you must have had for your son to get better and then have him not get better and die. I'm curious how you relate to hope, having seen really tragic things happen. It's such a delicate thing. I think that's where that image of an animal that could turn around and bite you came from for me, because I'm so aware, as we become aware over time time that often the thing you pray for, the thing you hope for, the thing you think you can't live without or the person or whatever it is, that's not what you get. And so I think often we misplace hope. We connect it too much to a certain very specific outcome. And maybe the real hope, the deeper hope is almost always

something else. I really hope my heart will open more. I really hope I will learn something. I really hope that whatever happens is the best outcome for everyone involved. happens is the best outcome for everyone involved. It's like this shifting over of hope that the arc where we were talking at the beginning about that long arc of progress and that long arc of justice, hope that the long arc is being served without being too attached to the particulars, if possible. Well, that is a beautiful place to wrap up. And that's a really beautiful idea. Danusha, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. I have enjoyed every minute of it. I love your poetry, and I'm so happy to have gotten to spend some time with you. Thank you so much for having me. And I so appreciate your deep reading

and all of your questions. Just really enjoyed our time together. 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. 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 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 reallynoreally.com and register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast

or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead the Really No Really podcast follow us on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.