Karen Duffy on Using Stoicism to Find Happiness (Even with Chronic Illness) | Nothing Is As Encouraging As This

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and talk to actress Karen Duffy about her new book Wise Up: Irreverent Enlightenment from a Mother Who's Been Through It, how she got introduced to Stoic Philosophy, her ongoing battle with sarcoidosis, and more. Karen Duffy was born on May 23, 1962 in New York City, New York, USA. She is an actress, producer, and writer, known for Dumb and Dumber, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Blank Check. In 1996, Duffy was diagnosed with neurosarcoidosis. Her brain and spinal cord were affected, leaving her partially paralyzed. She wrote about her affliction in the humorous 2000 autobiography Model Patient: My Life as an Incurable Wise-Ass. In November 2017 she celebrated the publication of her second book, Backbone: Living with Chronic Pain without Turning into One where she wrote about battling with sarcoidosis for two decades. For Duffy, who can usually only get up three days a week, writing and reading have served as a form of therapy. Her gateway to stoicism was Marcus’s “Meditations,” and her most recent book Wise Up, that was just released this month, uses stoicism as a compass to navigate the world. The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today. Novo is the #1 Business Banking App - because it’s built from the ground up to be powerfully simple and free business banking that Money Magazine called the Best Business Checking Account of 2021. This year, get your FREE business banking account in just 10 minutes at bank novo.com/STOICGo to shopify.com/stoic, all lowercase, for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today - go to shopify.com/stoic right now. Sunday can help you grow a beautiful lawn without the guesswork OR nasty chemicals. F​​ull-season plans start at just $129, and you can get 20% off at checkout when you visit GETSUNDAY. COM/STOIC. As a member of Daily Stoic Life, you get all our current and future courses, 100+ additional Daily Stoic email meditations, 4 live Q&As with bestselling author Ryan Holiday (and guests), and 10% off your next purchase from the Daily Stoic Store. Sign up at https://dailystoic.com/life/ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Karen Duffy: TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

• 0:03Speaker 00

  Bienvenidos al podcast de Stoic Daily, donde cada semana te traemos una meditación inspirada por los antiguos estoicos, un corto pasaje de sabiduría antigua diseñado para ayudarte a encontrar fuerza y perspectiva aquí en la vida cotidiana. Y los miércoles, hablamos con algunos de nuestros compañeros estudiantes de filosofía antigua, conocidos y obscuros, fascinantes y poderosos. Con ellos, discutimos las estrategias y hábitos que han ayudado a que se conviertan en quienes son y también para encontrar paz y sabiduría en sus vidas reales. Pero primero, tenemos un rápido mensaje de uno de nuestros sponsors.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  "Nada es tan alentador como esto. El promedio estadounidense verifica su teléfono y su pantalla algo como 344 veces al día, casi una vez a cada cuatro minutos. Estamos pegados a estos dispositivos y, de hecho, ciertamente estás casi escuchando esto en uno ahora mismo. ¿Cómo podemos convertir este negativo en un positivo? Bueno, pensemos en este pasaje en el libro seis de Meditaciones. Cuando necesitas alentamiento, lee Marcus Aurelius, "Piensa en las cualidades de las personas que te rodean. Esta persona tiene energía, esta persona tiene modestia, otra generosidad y así sucesivamente.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  Nada es tan alentador como cuando las virtudes se venifican visiblemente en las personas que nos rodean, cuando estamos prácticamente bañados con ellos. Es bueno tener esto en mente." Así que el libro Marcus' journal entonces fue una fuente de alentamiento. Se bañaba con recordatorios virtuosos para que se pudiera mejorar por asociación, para que pudiera conectar la sabiduría de otros con sus propios instintos, con su comportamiento. Y eso es lo que trata el libro Meditaciones, por lo que se titula "Debtes y lecciones". But actually, nearly every page or every other page in the book, Marcus quotes or cites or tells a story about someone else, someone that inspired him, someone that reminded him,

• 2:05Speaker 00

  someone to model himself around, someone to keep in mind. Today, we should follow that example, maybe in a journal, maybe with a coin, or a print, or a tattoo, maybe on that device that you've already checked 100 times this morning. That's what we're trying to do with this newest thing we've rolled out here at Daily Stoic, the Daily Stoic Smartphone Wallpaper Library. You can check it out at dailystoic.com/wallpapers. It's over 50 wallpapers containing quotes and wisdom from Marcus Aurelius, Zeno Seneca, and Epictetus, and more. And it's an ever-growing library. We're going to add to it all the time, drop in new art every few weeks. And once you gain initial access, you have access for life.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  As Epictetus said, "Every day and night, keep thoughts like these at hand. Write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them." Well, there's no better place to keep these thoughts than on the home screen of your smartphone. And our hope with the Daily Stoic wallpapers is that a proportion of those screen checks become a moment of reflection. Maybe you'll see the lock screen and decide not to unlock it, to pick up a book instead, to be present instead, to remember that life is short instead, to do what nature demands of you instead. And rather than your phone being a source of distraction with the Daily Stoic wallpapers, your phone can be a source of encouragement and wisdom.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  And you can head over to dailystoic.com/wallpapers right now to gain access to this awesome new resource we've set up. And look, if you're thinking about joining us in Daily Stoic Life, this is a good excuse, as Daily Stoic Life members get them, plus all our courses, plus a bunch of other awesome bonuses, totally for free. So you can go to dailystoic.com/wallpapers or dailystoiclife.com to sign up. And I hope that the next time I bump into one of you in person, you can bring up your phone and show me that you are keeping thoughts like these at hand, that you are putting up the virtues of Stoicism and the people you admire around you, that you're embodying it there on the device.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  And I hope it makes a little difference. So check that out, dailystoic.com/wallpapers, dailystoiclife.com, and I'll talk to you all soon.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm trying to think about where to start on this episode because, you know, I'll just start how I started, which is I pulled up ZenCaster, which is where I often record. Sometimes I use Zoom, but I pulled up ZenCaster and my guest today was talking with someone off-screen. She didn't quite know I was there yet. And I was waiting for her to finish, and I didn't want to interrupt her. I'm just sort of sitting there. And she notices me and says, "Oh, hi, hi. It's great to talk to you." And I said, "I'm really excited."

• 5:07Speaker 00

  And then, all of a sudden, you know, like, you know when you're having like, computer troubles and you have like, a friend come in and like, adjust the monitor, show like, they're leaning over your shoulder to show you something? Well, the person whose house she was at leans over to help set up the monitor so she could do this. And lo and behold, it's Bill fucking Murray. My guest today, Karen Duffy, is, I guess, lifelong friends with Bill Murray, and she was in Charleston to do something, and that's where she was recording. And she had some Wi-Fi troubles and stopped by her friend, Bill Murray's house. And he was gracious enough to host the recording of this episode. And if that weren't enough, ZenCaster, just so you know, this isn't an ad, ZenCaster completely

• 5:52Speaker 00

  crapped out at the end of the episode. And it wasn't uploading her file. It was a Wi-Fi issue, but I think it was also ZenCaster. And so I was worried we lost everything. And so I'm having the people who produce my show trying to frantically get in touch with her. And she finally texts in, she goes, "We had a Wi-Fi and a ZenCaster issue, but Bill's driving me around in his convertible, and we're trying to pick up Wi-Fi somewhere, and we'll get it uploaded. Just you wait." So Bill Murray was not only gracious enough to host this episode, but I think he salvaged the recording of it, which I'm very excited to bring to you. And, look, I get, basically, anyone that writes a book about Stoicism, their publisher Their publisher or publicist reaches out to me and says, would you like to have this

• 6:37Speaker 00

  person on? And sometimes I say yes, sometimes I say no. I'm certainly flattered by the interest and the recognition that this is probably the biggest platform for Stoicism that's out there. And I have this little note next to my desk that says, are you being a good steward of Stoicism? So I try to support the people that are writing books about Stoicism. But I also just, you know, I try, I try to keep the show interesting, both for me and for you. And I don't want to have just every single person that writes a book about Stoicism on. And so when Karen's publicist reached out about this book, Wise Up: Irreverent Enlightenment From A Mother Who's Been Through It, I didn't really know what to think. And I was reading the back and I was like, wait, is this who I think it is? And it is, as we talk about

• 7:21Speaker 00

  in today's episode, Karen Duffy is like, one of the most prolific actresses from my childhood, at least that I remember. She was in Dumb and Dumber, of course, all time classic, although she speaks somewhat not in pride of it in today's episode. But she's also the FBI agent in Blank Check. I don't know if you're my age, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I called my sister, I was like, I'm interviewing the actress from Blank Check. And she's like, are you serious? Anyways, she is in all sorts of 90s movies. She was in MTV VJ. She was in Fantastic Mr. Fox and a number of other things. But,

• 8:02Speaker 00

  and look, she was an actress that wrote a book about Stoicism and parenting. Maybe I would have thought about it. But like a true Stoic, she has been tested by life. She has an incredibly painful neurological disease that affects her brain and spinal cord, leaving her partially paralyzed. She wrote a book about this, a sort of a humorous autobiography called Model Patient: My Life as an Incurable Wise Ass. And then another book called Backbone: Living with Chronic Pain Without Turning Into One. And her sarcoidosis has been like, the challenge of her life, in addition to the entertainment business, in addition to being a mother. I mean, just imagine waking up every day in chronic pain,

• 8:47Speaker 00

  which is, as Marcus Aurelius did. And so it's fitting then that her gateway to Stoicism was Marcus's meditation. And her most recent book, Wise Up, is really a letter, a series of letters to her son. About how to be Stoic, how to think about Stoic philosophy. And so it's exactly the way I think Stoicism should be taught to young people. It's a wonderful, sweet book, and this was a fantastic conversation. And the backstory that led up to it made it even more fun. You can follow Karen Duffy at DuffyNYC on Twitter. And you can check out her new book, Wise Up: Irreverent Enlightenment From A Mother Who's Been Through It.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  And don't forget to check out her other book, Backbone: On Living With Chronic Pain and Model Patient, Her Life as an Incurable Wise Ass. She was just a delight to talk to. And I think you're very much going to enjoy this conversation. And I certainly enjoyed having it. Thanks to Karen for coming on. Thanks to Bill Murray for saving it. And thanks to you for listening to it.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  I love Charleston. I wrote my first book when I was living in New Orleans. Charleston felt a little smaller.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  And actually, we have, I met Matt Mullenweg. He's a buddy of yours. I met him because we were at a dinner party and we both bonded over one of your books. And

• 10:17Speaker 00

  No way.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Yes. And I love that. And actually, Matt is in my book. I talk about the story about, Matt told me this funny story about how he was

• 10:32Speaker 01

  on a plane and a guy took off his shoes and the smell took human form and ran around the cabin. And so the stewardess took two bags of coffee beans and told this guy to stick his feet in the coffee beans. So I'm always like, never drink coffee on an airplane.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  That's amazing. Well, you know, one of my favorite passages in Meditations is Marcus Aurelius clearly sitting next to someone with BO. And he's like trying to decide whether he should say something or whether he just has to put up with it. And I think about that like pretty much every time I'm on an airplane. And I just think like how so much has changed and then things are exactly the same.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  It's true. I have no sense of smell. I am completely anosomatic. And my son plays hockey and

• 11:30Speaker 01

  You never want to parent the smelly kid and because I can't smell,

• 11:34Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  I figured, well, regular soaps and detergents aren't going to do it. So I went online and I found Gorilla Wash Monkey Cage Cleaner, which is what zoologists use to hose down their cage. And I figured, well, if it works for primates, it's probably going to work for my son's goalie equipment. And my husband and son said that the smell of Monkey Cage Cleaner is actually worse than a nut cup. So it didn't work.

• 12:06Speaker 00

  No, I have a terrible sense of smell, too. I had to have two operations on my nose for various reasons over the years. And they just, it screwed up my sense of smell. And I basically can, I can only smell things if it's like turned up to 11, basically.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  That's funny. There is the short straw of anosomatics or cachosmia, where everything smells like the worst thing in the world. I think because of, I lost my sense of smell when I was in my 30s. And having a bit of actor's training, I have a strong sense memory. So I can remember, like, if I say gasoline, I can now experience gasoline. But usually when you're playing sensory roulette, most people say, oh, yeah, I'll get rid of my sense of smell. But now that it's become more of an issue with the, with COVID, it's been interesting how people are saying.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Right. How do you know?

• 13:05Speaker 01

  How do you know? Exactly. Exactly.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Where I live in, in Austin, that we have this thing called cedar fever. And it's, it's like this allergy from the cedar trees. And it mimics the symptoms of COVID almost exactly. So it's a, it's been a wonderful two years of like, wait, do I have it? Do I have it now? And then is it allergies? I guess I'll have to wait. And it's weird how the body plays tricks on us.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  It is. And that cedar smells so fantastic. And then you remember that it also is what people use in hamster cages. And then you can ruin it. So I think that. So much about life is how we perceive. This morning I got up and I was reading a little bit of Emerson. And I love how Emerson said, like, nothing great in life ever occurred without enthusiasm. And Jim Valvano, the baseball coach, football, basketball coach is a big

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  here and survive and advance. And he really gets into the Emersonian quote. And it's been very sweet having a son who is an athlete. How the transcendentalists and the Stoics have really inspired him. It's been really cool. So this morning I told him, you know, I, within our family, we don't have any technology at the table, only philosophy books. And he has grown up with daily Stoic and all of your books.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  And so he is, he's just outside of Charleston. He's the captain of his crew team. And he sent me this really sweet note and he was saying, just, you know, write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year. He who is rich, who owns the day. And that was a very sweet thing to get from basketball. But we're all very stoked.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Well, I was thinking of you as I was preparing for this because I saw this meme and it was, it was like a picture of a, of a father and a daughter in a Blockbuster video. And it said, the year is 1998, your dad said, you have snacks at home and your dad says you can pick out a couple of movies to watch over the weekend. And then it says, there's nothing wrong in the world. And that was my memory of Blank Check, which I think I probably got at a Hollywood video instead of a Blockbuster video, because that's what we had near my house. But it just very much called me back to a time in my life where I was thinking of absolutely nothing but like, how many movies I could rent that weekend.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  That is so charming and deeply flattered because.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  When I first saw Blank Check and I was thinking, what is it about this movie? And then I realized that may be the worst movie I've ever seen in my life. And I truly wouldn't watch it again if it was screening on my own corneas. And but the best thing, we filmed it in Austin.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  I know, I was just reading that.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I fell in love with Austin and have very many good friends who are based there. And a lot of friends in the tech business, a ton were just there for South by Southwest. So that's very funny. Well, I'm sorry about that. I wish I could give you those 90 minutes back there, Ryan.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  No, the good, the good news about the movies that you see when you're a kid is going back to the this, the no smell, is you also don't have any taste. So you don't know whether it's good or not. It's just whether it fulfills your fantasy or distracts you for a couple of hours or whatever. I've seen that movie many times.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  That's very funny. And again, I deeply apologize.

• 16:59Speaker 00

  The only thing that strikes me about that movie is the somewhat weirdness of the kid falling in love with, like that there's a, there's like a B plot of a, of the man, of the boy falling in love with a much older FBI agent. I'm not sure you could do that in a movie today.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Thankfully, thankfully, no. And it was, it didn't really make a lot of sense, but I had a, it was, I was talking to my husband the other day and he said, what is it about, about when you were doing movies? And I said, well, somebody has to make the bad ones. Like, they're not all gonna be Lost in Translation. They're not all gonna be Apocalypse Now. Somebody has to make the bad ones. And I was okay with that.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Well, isn't that the Epictetus line that we're all actors in a play? And we just have to do what the director tells us, basically?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. And it was interesting because at that time, probably when you were about.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  Seven and watching, suffering through a blank check. That's when I really just dove into meditations. And it's, it's interesting that in life, we have, you know, our native, our ancestry and, but we, I believe we also have our native decade. And that's, I think where we become awake. And I think in the nineties, it's where I learned to read myself a new brain.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  And that I was just really motivated to, I always believe it's never too late to get smarter, better. And it was inspiring to dive into the Stoics, especially Penguin Publishing. Used to have something called a 90P. And they were small, little classics and they could fit in your pocket. And it was just masterful and just getting to read all the classics and diving back in. So it's been, it's been amazing because essentially, education is free.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  What we pay is attention. And so that's what you're willing to pay. And I loved that education can somewhat be a meritocracy. It's what you put into it. And we often forget, I read the statistic that we often forget about 80% of what we learn the day before, unless you really make a conscious effort to make notes and follow up. And I feel like that's very illuminating.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  Well, you tell, you tell the story in the book. What is, what was your introduction to the Stoics? A friend just says, hey, you should read Marcus Aurelius. How does this go? What's going on in your life that you get, you get passed on to the Stoics?

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting. I

• 20:25Speaker 01

  I had a very, I've had a really, I think I live life in somewhat in extremis, where I've had very good things happen to me, one in a million great things, and one in a million not so great things. And, you know, working, I was a recreational therapist. I grew up in a family where service was absolutely a part of the deal. Shirley Chisholm said, "Service is the rent we pay for our life on earth." And so I grew up in a family where we were refugees and foster children,

• 21:07Speaker 01

  and we were always expected to do things. So I went on to college and got my degree as a recreational therapist, and really working with high-risk recreation for people with disabilities. And essentially, the philosophy of this profession is to focus on ability, not on what you can't do, focus on what you can do. And when I graduated, I felt like I didn't want my education to end as I was entering the, my professional life. So I'm just gonna keep, keep making a reading plan, which I think is so important, and, you know, trying to read quickly

• 21:52Speaker 01

  and trying to memorize a quote a day that would somehow stick around in my brain. And it was really, you know, when I was working on MTV, I picked up meditations and have never put it down. And I love that it was like the flipping of a switch. It, it just made so much sense. And then just absolutely finding it, finding a whole new way to live.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, what strikes me about the Stoics is how long that's been happening. Like at the beginning of Meditations where Marcus is thanking all his teachers and he thanks Risticus for loaning him his copy of Epictetus from his own library. And you go, wow, okay, so 20 centuries ago, somebody just gives this guy this book and a light goes on, the switch flips exactly as you said. And then that's what happened to you. That's also what happened to me. Hopefully that will happen to people who pick up your book because they know you from something, they never even heard of the Stoics, but that it's this sort of series of torches, you know, one lighting the other, lighting the other, that just goes on forever.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  It's just so beautiful where you talk about Epictetus because also about, you know, the lamp that he had in front of his house that was stolen and about not hanging on to things. Nathaniel Horford said that education is not the filling of a bucket, it is the lighting of a lamp. And again, that torch metaphor, I think is burning in all of us. And I think one of the beautiful things is how we often want to share and kindle this passion, I think, but so beautiful about philosophy and especially the Stoics, the practical Stoics like Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Xenocentium, that goodness that we all want

• 23:57Speaker 01

  to share. And they were sharing and there is such beauty in that.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a pay it forward-ness to Stoicism. It's not evangelism, which, you know, is this idea that like, you know, you are obligated to save someone else. It's more like, this worked for me, can I share it with you?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  It's magic and it's, there's something so attractive.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  I believe that when you're passionate, you want to share. And that was incredible when my husband gave me a copy of Discourses. And that amplification of gratitude for this writing that was 20 centuries ago. And how it resonates with all of us. And that's what's so beautiful. And I, there's something that you're giving with a gift of the Daily Stoic and the Daily Dad is that often the view is, oh, philosophy is not for me, but it's for everyone.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  And it's just a practical way to navigate the world. And it's joyful. Like, and I love that, like, some philosophers are absolutely right bonkers. Like, Deogenes the cynic lived in a jar and said, you know, I'm like a dog. I bite rascals. And he was just a madman. I just love it.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  So, so the mid 90s, you're, you're reading The Stoics. Is this before or after the diagnosis that, that changes everything for you?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  So, well before. And I was working at MTV, was working, sadly, making the movie that you had to suffer through and working with Michael Moore on a show called TV Nation. And it was just such an amazing experience. And I was at an industry event and I had a headache and...

• 26:23Speaker 01

  I normally don't get headaches. I think I'm more of a carrier, like I give them. And I had a headache and it just never went away. And I had no idea that where I am now, 25 years later, that it would be possible to live in chronic pain every single day. But I believe that there is a steadiness that the Stoics gave me.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  That understanding that gratitude is the greatest of all the virtues, but the parent of all others. And to find gratitude,

• 27:08Speaker 01

  even though my illness had to reroute my entire life, my career, I'm no longer to be insured, you know, my fertility, my job, my physicality, and losing, you know, feeling in my hands and feet, some days I use a cane, some days not. I just felt like I can handle this. And I really believe that having a scaffolding of knowledge from the Stoics made a devastating catastrophic illness

• 27:48Speaker 01

  seem to be but something that I wasn't so special when I was going to be able to deal with it.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Was it a slow moving catastrophe? Or was it very, was it sort of quickly onset? Like you were, you were told this is how it's going to go, get ready? Or has it been 25 years of sort of worsening symptoms and pain?

• 28:12Speaker 01

  It was like a Looney Tunes safe fell out a window and hit me and flattened me. And I'd been essentially living with the safe that every morning when I wake up, I have to pick up that safe and then carry it with me all day. So.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  It hasn't.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  I don't know how it could get worse, but it hasn't gotten worse with managing chronic pain, but it was absolutely overnight. I woke up one day and felt like I was struck by lightning and that was, that was a challenge, absolutely.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  And, and the double challenge of like, what is my life now? What do I do? How do I carry on? I imagine is the sort of, aside from the, the excruciating physical pain, the grieving of so many things that you couldn't do anymore also comes into play.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Yes, it's so wise. Yes, it's, you have to kind of mourn for your old life and figure out a whole new life. And I'm deeply grateful that I was awake to the idea that, oh, I'll be able to work around this. And, um, and there are days when I am somewhat roped to my sofa like Gulliver. And then other days where I'm really kind of high functioning and I'm able to be in my friend's house and talk to you. So there's, um, I'm grateful

• 29:51Speaker 01

  for every day. And I do believe that chronic pain and happiness absolutely coexist. It, it, I think, you know, you, you can't have your happiness predicated on outside circumstances and you just have to find it where, where you are.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  But still, is that the easiest thing in the world to have your happiness be independent or in spite of external things? So how do you, how do you actually do that? That seems like incredibly tough.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  Well, if I only worked on days that I felt good, I would never get anything done. So, um, it's.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  I have to have a bit of compassion for myself in that I can't hold myself to the standards that I had when I was a non-disabled person. I have to understand that that there is, I'll have to have a sense of kindness and almost treat myself the way that I would for somebody who I loved outside of myself. And I really have, I'm just full of gratitude and really happy for my life. How lucky am I that this is my fifth book and I'm able to write where that doesn't take a lot, you know, I don't have to do stunts. I can

• 31:21Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  work from home and read the thing I love to do the most.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  So what, what, turning to the Stoics then, as, as your life gets turned upside down, as, as you're trying to find a way to sort of muddle through some of those dark moments, particularly early on, what, what does Marcus teach you? I'm just curious. What, what do you, what do you find yourself drawn to in meditations as you deal with chronic pain?

• 31:51Speaker 01

  As you pointed out, I love the beginning where he is thanking people. And I love that he thanks gratitude and he, and he thanks his mother for her compassion and generosity and the fact that like Marcus Aurelius was trying to teach himself humility and he was sleeping on the floor until she was like, get up and get back to bed. I love, I believe, you know, I think it was Cicero who said gratitude is the parent of all the other virtues. But I think what is so resounding is how conversational it is when you read

• 32:33Speaker 01

  it and how it feels like across the millennia. I think Galileo said that books are entombed minds and the fact that we have this resource of these entombed minds that we can travel through the millennia and have these conversations. And I would, I mean,

• 32:56Speaker 01

  My main man is hepatitis. I really dig hepatitis.

• 33:00Speaker 00

  Well, it's interesting you like Epictetus, although also with Marcus, I mean, there's one reading of Marcus, historians suspect that he had some sort of chronic stomach pain. Obviously Epictetus, you know, walking with a limp from the sort of tragic accident where his leg is, not accident, the tragic

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:20Speaker 00

  abuse where his leg is broken. Do you feel like the Stoics speak to chronic pain specifically?

• 33:30Speaker 01

  I believe that pain is a part of life and will never escape, will always experience pain. But I think what I love about the Stoics is the clarity that, about resilience and always, how long are you going to wait until you expect the best from yourself?

• 33:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  And I just didn't want to put my life on pause and, and, and I expect the best from myself and squeeze as much fun out of life as I can.

• 34:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, although, you know, I think some people, when they read Marcus Aurelius, they don't see him as someone having a lot of fun. Do you disagree?

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Well, I think the idea that journaling was so important to him as he's dodging assassins and the, if you're a leader in the world, I think you get there because you understand people and humor is such a big part of life that

• 34:47Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, listen, there

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Uh, there was another Marcus, I forget, uh, Marcus Aurelius Agribus invented the first whoopee cushion. And he filled, um, animal skins with air and then had a dinner party. And then his trick was that he would have the footmen servants just completely start lessening the air so they were all on the, under the table.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  So I think there are some good time Charlies in there. I believe that pretty much all the interesting radiant minds, um, have a sense of self-deprecation and self-deprecation and humor. And, uh, so maybe that's not what he's most known for, but I absolutely believe that he's had to have been a great storyteller and a great conversationalist.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you, but my journal's not like filled with jokes. Like my journal's dealing with the stuff that I need help with, which is usually not having fun, right? Like that, I got that covered, right? Like I need the, the, the journals for the serious shit. So it's, there's kind of a, a selection bias there that I think maybe sometimes people miss.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Actually, you know, in my journals and my notes, I love, uh, I've got this guy who makes book journals and he takes old copies of books and turns them into journals. And actually, no, I put in things that made me laugh so I can remember. I, that's, I worked, I'm working things out, but I, I have some humor in there.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Well, there's, there's one reading of Marcus Aurelius, it's a, it's a long, it's a long ago published academic paper, but that the argument was that, that Marcus Aurelius' stomach ailment is so bad that he gets hooked on opium and that some of the more trippy passages in meditations come from, you know, what?

• 36:50Speaker 00

  Come from are somewhat opiate, uh, uh, opium induced. I don't know how much I buy that, but I've got to imagine one of the, the tricky parts of navigating chronic pain i- and we're obviously seeing this play out over the country, uh, as we look at the opioid epidemic. How, how do you deal with the management of pain, uh, sobriety, uh, and, uh, a- all of that kind of stuff? Like, how, how do you deal with, I imagine there are things you could do that would make, uh, the pain, that would lessen the pain, but then also come at a very high cost. So as one manages chronic pain, how, how do you think about that?

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Thank you. That's a very thoughtful and compassionate question. I love that the word compassionate means suffering together. And, uh, so that is compassionate. You're absolutely right. Every day it is a, it is a choice. Um, I have to decide what I need to be game for. And, uh, so there are certain medications that I take that turn me into Gomer Pyle in a gas leak. I am not, not, not what I think of the best version of myself.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Um, and, uh, it's, it's something that I have to kind of build in to every day. And I think because I have to almost take it in account of what do I have on my schedule? How am I going to manage taking my prescribed medicines? And then how am I going to go and squeeze the best out of myself and the best out of this day? Um, it's interesting when you talk about Marcus Aurelius and his stomach ailment because, uh, in ancient Greece, poppy was, um, it's the, you get opium is, they made a tea and it was called poppy juice.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  And they would, often didn't know how to calibrate it. Um, but, uh, um, it possibly that some of those lupier, um,

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Passages may be a bit of the plant, I don't know. But it's an interesting question. I think historically it'd be very interesting to look back on that.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  That must be so challenging that you that you wake up and you have that choice every day. I mean, I suppose all days are choices, but you do say your favorite quote from Epictetus is the one about making beautiful choices. I suppose that's kind of an impossible choice that you're faced with every day. How how how much pain am I willing to tolerate? How much consciousness am I willing to dole? And that sort of tension between those two things must sometimes be totally excruciating.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  You know, I think I have a

• 39:55Speaker 01

  a nature that seems to be a little bit like roll with the punches, fly by the seat of my pants and kind of make the best of it. I mean, our life is made of time and, you know, there is no part time, free time, downtime. It's me time. No, it's all time. And so I look at life almost as an actuarian. And Oliver Berkman talks about how there's 4,000 weeks in our life. And I loved a passage that you had in Daily Dad, like we have kids for 18 summers.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  And I think find that to be beautiful, but the rest of my family finds me to be a bit morbid. And perhaps, um, I've always volunteered at a nursing home. When I was, when I finished college and was back, I was working at the nursing home that I volunteered at when I was 12. And I realized that the skill set I had working at a nursing home. Uh, which was elocution, uh, how to speak clearly, how to use my bodies. Also, I'm more visible to an elderly person, a sick person to our baby because I'm high. I've got black hair, white skin, red lips. So I'm so I'm visible.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  And I thought, where else can I use these skills? And I was working at an Alzheimer's floor, a unit at a nursing home. And I thought, everyone's saying MTV is destroying attention span. So I bet you I'd be great at MTV. So I got my gig at MTV and I still kept working at the nursing home. And in the past 10 years, I've become a hospice, hospice chaplain. And I'm not practicing now because of the, uh, because of COVID. But I do believe all skills are transferable.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  And, uh, I'm deeply grateful for my experience, my training as a hospice chaplain. And I also think that, um, you know, we, memento mori, you know? We all must be prepared. And so it's been, uh, not excruciating. I think it's almost in a way been a gift that I'm able to live this. I never expected to have what I call, you know? I have this, these extra innings. This is my bonus. I've got a round on the house. How lucky. I'm going to make as much, I'm going to make the most of it.

• 42:46Speaker 00

  I want to talk about memento mori at the end, but it does seem like you've had a lot of different lives. Right? That you've, your, your career and your life has had a lot of different chapters. And then, as you said, the skills are transferable. So what you learn or what you practice or the virtues that one calls out, you're able to apply to the other. And this is, you know, sort of a parenting book or it's a unique kind of parenting book. And then it's sort of letters to your son. What, what is, what is both Stoicism and this sort of grappling with chronic pain? How, how do you think that that's shaped how you approach being a parent?

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting, Ryan, because I wrote this book, Wise Up.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Really thinking about Nicomachean ethics and Seneca's letters to a Stoic. Yeah. It was never, I never wrote it as a parenting book. I wrote it as, as an epistolary because I thought this is a great way to

• 43:52Speaker 01

  express how much I love the gift of Stoicism. But it was not, it was never a parenting book. It had never occurred to me until my publisher.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  And so I used my son. I asked him if I could address the letters to him. And he, and he, and he, he said, yes. And I, I, because my son, we have a great relationship. I really enjoy his sense of humor. And I thought in writing letters where my son essentially stands in for the reader, I could have a lot more fun and fill it with bits of trivia and historical information that I just found fascinating. So it was really a way to write the most entertaining book that I was proud of. I am a bit of a magpie.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  I find bits of information and treasure them up. Me too. And then I get to tell where, by reading all your books. And that's what I love is that like you've lit the fuse for so many people. Their lives are going to be enhanced because of.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Sharing, the sharing of the knowledge, which is such a gift. So, thank you for that.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, you, you, you, you have a similar way of expressing in the book that this idea that we don't control what happens, we control how we respond. I imagine, obviously, you're having to model that for your family. Like, you didn't choose this illness, you're having to choose how to live with it. But how, how, because my kids are much younger than yours. How do you actually teach that to your kids, right? Like, how do you day to day sort of teach, other than modeling? How have you tried to walk your kids through these Stoic principles?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Probably, one of the best things was the no technology at the table, only philosophy. And, um, and my, my son just had to give his chapel talk at his school as a senior. And it was fantastic because he wrote and presented a talk that he is now a budding Stoic. And I think having books available and sharing what we're passionate with our children is truly

• 46:38Speaker 01

  the way to, to model it. And I love that he, you know, he said the other day, like, you know, you've got to make, you've got to play the hand you're dealt. Make the best of what you have, and take the rest as it comes. And I was like, wise words, young lad, wise words.

• 47:04Speaker 00

  He was listening.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  He was listening. And that is so fantastic, because, um, you know, I always think like, the mom is always the worst role in a TV show, in a movie. It's always some saggy, naggy, like, there's not a lot of mothers where you really, where you get to see that there's, someone's not always chewing a hole in shorts. But I was able... To, you know, tell my son, like, in your teenage years, like, it is expected that you will find me a huge pain in the keister. And that is the direct job of testosterone.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Okay, there are hormones swimming in your cojones that are going to make you think that I am a, the biggest pain in the butt to ever come down the pike. And he's like, I don't see that happening. And I was like, the sound of me biting into a piece of toast will be repugnant. I don't see it happening. But it did happen, and it wasn't a bite of toast. It was a corn cob that apparently I chomped into like sea biscuit. And I'm always telling him, like, dude, moms are so incredible that nature had to synthesize a chemical to break our bond, so you don't live in my basement for the rest of your life. So be aware.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  And that has been such a gift, the fact that we can, you know, like, we can talk about it and laugh about it and, um, uh, and, and, and knowing that I don't think we can take things so seriously. And, uh, and I tend to not take it that seriously.

• 48:55Speaker 00

  Well, no, I love what you just did there because obviously I think sometimes we forget because the Stoics are so, feel so modern, that they were right in 2,000 years ago. Right? And so the idea that they would have understood that there's a chemical that's operating in the relationship that's provoking certain reactions, it's likely to do X, Y, or Z. They wouldn't have known that. But I feel like 2,000 years later, they would, they would have certain, like, like what you just did was you're like, okay, here's the situation that's likely to happen. Here's the, here's the, the, the cause of it. So let's understand it. We're still going to get frustrated with each other about the toast or the, or the, the corn, the corn on the cob. But because we understand it, because we've talked about it, we're not going to let it feel like the end of the world.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  We're not going to let it blow up into something bigger than it is. To me, that's what the Stoics are talking about when they talk about sort of using your reason rather than just your emotions. And I do like to think that If Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus or Seneca was around today, they would be incorporating these understandings of these concepts into what they're doing. I read a thing from Adam Grant. He was like, "The worst thing we do to parents is that we don't teach them any basic psychology or bio-- like that they're just flying blind and they don't understand some of these forces that are operating just below the surface that are affecting every part of this really difficult thing we're doing."

• 50:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. And we were just, we just flew to Charleston and our flights were delayed and flying is more complicated. And, and I think the fact that Aristotle said, "It is expected that unexpected things will happen." And the problem is we don't expect problems. I expect problems all the time because I am a walking biological complexity. And so while we were at the airport, there was a family that was blowing their top and

• 51:06Speaker 01

  the outside reaction as if they were the only people out of the 200 that were on this flight. And it was a really, the three of us, we just, we had compassion for, for everyone who had to deal with them. We also tried to have compassion for the people who were blowing up. But the fact that we understand that life will not be perfect and I can, I can accept that. And that was something that is really great to see my son.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Take in this information and also now being awake to the idea that unexpected things will happen. The problem is we don't expect problems.

• 51:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I mean, my wife and I were just doing this yesterday. We went to this drive-in zoo down the street from from our house. And and so we, you know, we thought like our kids would have this amazing time and they did. But on the way back, my my son, who's five, had just like a complete temper tantrum. He wanted to watch something on our phone, and we said, no. And he just had this complete meltdown. He's like screaming all this stuff. And and there was a part of me that's like, you know, you can't let your kid act that way. Why are you treating me like this? We just gave you everything you said you wanted. And then it was like, wait, when did we eat last? And it's like, you're obviously just hungry. And and so we sort of catch ourselves and we go, OK, like, obviously, we don't have any food. So this is going to go on till we can get some food. But just

• 52:36Speaker 00

  the idea that, like, understanding, like, OK, you're acting this way, and I can react to the surface level behavior that I'm seeing, or I can understand and I could, you know, my my parents would have just yelled at me about this, right? They would have tried to like, crush the behavior and made me feel like I was doing something wrong by the way I was being, instead of just understanding that this is a five year old who has zero control of themselves and is actually just really hungry. And by the way, it's my fault because I didn't give him food on the schedule that we normally eat food, right? And I think this idea of sort of understanding what's going on beneath the surface with people is like, one of my favorite parts of Stoicism.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And it's a gift that you give yourself. But it also, it's a gift to others, because when I'd like to be a good person when things aren't looking too good. I'm really good in a catastrophe, which I think I was, which is why I was drawn to becoming a chaplain and being a part of volunteer with the FEMA, the Office of

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Emergency Management. And I like

• 53:49Speaker 01

  I think there are banana peels in front of us at all times. And statistically, a pandemic was predicted. We just never believe it's going to happen. And I am a spectacularly optimistic catastrophist. I think things are gonna go great until they don't. And then we're gonna figure it out and then we'll get back on being great again. And that is, and I think that's something that I was able to learn through reading and from experience. And what I love about the Stoics is that it's so much, it's not just about reading.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  It's about taking action and doing things and expecting, taking action, being a good person, being brave, being, having vigor. I love, I do see humor and vigor in the Stoics.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  I feel in a way that they are friends, you know, I spend so much time with them.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  Sure. No, I mean, that's, that's what's so incredible about what Marcus manages to do in meditations is that his life should be utterly incomprehensible and unrelated to us. He's literally worshipped as a god. He's the most famous person in the world. He's the most powerful person in the world. Plus, he lived 2,000 years ago in a society that had slaves and, you know, cults and all these ridiculous things. Right? And then somehow you pick up meditations and you're like, this is my guy. Like, I know exactly what he's talking about. And I think that's what art does, right? By getting very specific, you manage to become almost universal. But there is something incredible about Seneca too.

• 55:40Speaker 00

  It feels like he's writing to you. Or Epictetus, it feels like he's calling you out instead of whoever it was in the lecture hall that he's speaking to in discourses. It's one of the most remarkable things I've ever come across in my life.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  It is this radiant intelligence. And the fact, is the metaphor you used earlier, this torch has been carried. And how lucky you are, how lucky we are that.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  You read the book that changed your life and that has now put you on a path that will illuminate people for centuries to come. That's a real gift. So, thank you for doing this. I mean, it takes a lot out of you. I mean, you are dedicated and I think that should really be honored. So, thank you for this.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  Well, so you mentioned Jim Volvano earlier and since it sounds like you get Daily Dad as well, the other email that I do. I can't get over that exchange he tells about his dad, that he tells his dad he wants to be a coach in Division One athletics. And his dad goes in the other room and it says, "Jim, come in here." And he comes in there and he goes, "You see that suitcase?" And he goes, "Yeah." And he's like, "My bags are packed to watch you play and to watch you coach in the Final Four." Just this idea of being a fan. How have you thought about that with your son? It sounds like your son is very into hockey.

• 57:22Speaker 00

  How have you thought about being a fan, but also, you know, I guess it's a tension, right? Being a fan, but also demanding, encouraging them to be their best. How do you think about that?

• 57:33Speaker 01

  It's interesting because my husband and my son never met me when I was sporty and active, when my feet and hand worked, you know, or not constantly. I can't have anything touch my neck. So, they didn't know me when I was a ski instructor or when I was a runner, when I was very active. And my son is just, is a goalie, a hockey goalie. And he just won the...

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Northeast Elite Championship, big, big moment. And he's been a goalie and playing hockey since he was four and playing in travel leagues since he was six. And one of the things that as a mom, I realized that I could, if I worried about him out on the ice where he's on razor blades of skates and there's checking and they've got sticks and he is in the net and pucks are coming to him at 100 miles an hour.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  If I worried about his safety, I would dissolve the joy that he gets from that. And so I really had to lie on a lot of stoic training like to, as Nicholas Nassim Tadis Haleb says, I had to domesticate my emotion of fear. I couldn't eradicate it. I had to domesticate it because I did not want to become the person that robbed him of the joy of what he loves the most. It's funny, so now he's the captain of the crew team and he's down here rowing and the season's over and it's fantastic.

• 59:37Speaker 01

  And I was saying goodbye when he's off to row and I said, you know, there is a small part of me that is somewhat relieved, like, okay, you know, hockey's done. He goes, oh, mom, but people die much more in crew. People get hurt. And I was like, I love you for that. But when you mentioned the Velveño, that speech in his father's, like, my bag is packed. Yes.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  I want to have my bag packed and be supportive. But it's interesting because my husband's very sporty and I felt like a choice like my Jack did not need two parents that were knew everything about the sport. So I was able to somewhat keep myself occupied, support him, but not know everything that's going on. And that was, that was something again, that I explained to him that, you know, you don't need two parents that are barking mad about hockey. Just need one who's like, eh, good. And I think that that is-

• 1:00:44Speaker 00

  Just sort of like, let, let them hear, let them have this. It doesn't have to be territory that you muscle your way into and assert your sort of adult authority or superiority over.

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  Yes, beautifully said. I just figured he didn't need my prying eyes at the wrinkle the time or I have him, I've got to equip, equip him in the best way I can. And again, take the rest as it happens. It's interesting because my friend Bill's son is a D1 hockey coach at UConn. And that's been really beautiful seeing Luke Murray, uh, coach UConn and seeing how proud the whole family is. It's been really great.

• 1:01:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's like, look, they're, they're going to get enough pressure from basically everyone else. How can you develop the restraint to be, to sort of let, to not be another voice, but then also sort of be the backstop that is the unfailing, unconditional support, no matter what happens?

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yes. I think keeping my back, that has become a shorthand, you know?

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  We talk a little bit in the book about familect. And familect are the nicknames that we call each other. It's the secret language that families have and-

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  I love, love Bill Walton, the NBA legend. And he really opened up a way for our family. Because I was, I was pretty much trying to hide that I was sick to my kid all the time. And hiding chronic pain and sarcoidosis of the central nervous system is like trying to keep a beach ball underwater. It's always gonna pop right back up. And when I read-

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  With a surprising amount of force, right? Like a disruptive amount-

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:02:54Speaker 00

  Sprays everywhere, goes in unpredictable directions.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Doing the exact opposite of what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to suppress this. So I figured this is gonna do a number on his developing brain. And, but it was really through the grace of Bill Walton's amazing book, Back from the Dead, where he talks about his life with chronic pain. I was like, ah, I can, so we, Bill Walton is in our pantheon of heroes. Like, he had to tell his family, he had to tell his wife, just stop walking. You're pushing air on me. And I never, I didn't know how to say that. And now I can say it.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  And, and that's, and that's what's so beautiful. And I write a lot of handwritten letters, thank you letters. I've written letters to you in the past. I never put a return address because it's not about reciprocity. It's just thanking people for, and I have been doing this since I was a kid and then picked it up again when I was in my late twenties, early thirties. Every day, I write a handwritten thank you to some random person in the world. And that-

• 1:04:21Speaker 00

  So gratitude's like a literal practice for you? It's not just like, I try to think about what I'm grateful for. You actually write it down every day?

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  And I have special postcards that don't have any return address because I just wanna just say, hey, I appreciate that. You do a good job. And I like writing thank you notes. It doesn't take a lot, but I feel like, uh, I can imagine that in the course of three decades, like, just these, if they all came back to me. But that was not the point. It was really just about sending a bit of grace into the world. And it's just a short, small, tiny thing to do. But, um, I really like it. And I like think about like, who am I gonna thank now? Like, yeah, it could be, you know, somebody who works as a hostess

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  at a waitress, or the lady who I saw on an architectural tour. Good job. And I mean it.

• 1:05:23Speaker 00

  Well, that's what's so remarkable about that first, uh, chapter of Meditations, which I had someone look, it's almost 10% of the book, like by word count, is that they would have never seen it. So it's so beautifully written and so kind and so all encompassing. But Meditations was never published and a lot of them were dead. So one, it's the idea that gratitude is something they're doing for you also, right? That it's the writing down, the reminding that was powerful. But then I also wonder, like, did Antoninus know what he meant to Marcus Rilus? Like, did Marcus Rilus also articulate to Sextus

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  the philosopher, or to his mother, or to his brother, while they were alive, did he also manage to express that gratitude with the same comprehensiveness and clarity? I, I, part of me suspects that maybe not, that it, the reason he was writing it is that he felt like he'd missed the window. I don't know, I could be just making that up.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  It was an interesting point to ponder. And again, it's a great thought exercise because I am a demonstrative person and I deeply value the relationships that I have and tend them like a garden. And, um, I try and express what I admire about people to them because

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Again, this may be one of the gifts of working at a nursing home or as a chaplain. And at the end of life, I have had the gift to see many people at the end of their lives. And I've never heard anyone saying, "Oh, my gosh, it's hot." You know, like, the devil's... It's always like, wow, this is beautiful, and I'm so grateful. And it's... What I've heard as last words, it's always been about love. And bearing witness to that has been a great opportunity to move forward.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  Well, yeah. I mean, that's one of my favorite lines in... And it's... I think it's one easy to sleep on. But he says at the beginning of Meditations, when he's... I think he's thinking Sexus. He says that he learned from Sexus to be free of passion but full of love. Which, again, is not what you would think of when you think of Marcus Aurelius. But that he was striving to be full of love is, to me, just a whole other side of the Stoics that we don't think about very often.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  And that's what I... I think... It's interesting, because we interpret it and we take... Read the same material, but we take many different things out of it. And I really see so much of the radiant appreciation for every day, where life was really hard. In the Golden Age of Rome, which was only 40 years, 80% were enslaved people. And it was not an easy time. The life expectancy was about half. And yet, there is a gratitude for love.

• 1:08:49Speaker 01

  And I love this idea of decanting passions. The... I mean, one of the things that I really love about the ancients was the Greek idea of love was not the erotic, romanticized idea. They had many forms of love. They had self-love, philatia. They had brotherly love, philadelphia. But love for everyone, agape. Ludos, the playful love. And the idea that...

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  Erotic love, which passionate, romantic love seems to be what all the love songs and popular culture and film are speaking of. But there are so many definitions and the fact that our measly alphabet of just 26 letters, and we put four of them together, L O V E, yet it contains so much. And I find that just to be unbelievable. That we say, oh, I love Frank Sinatra. I love Charleston.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  That's what I love about Bill Walton, how he's always using the word love when he's calling a game. I love bicycles. I love volcanoes. I love my life by love by Flory. I love that about him. He uses love like a old master.

• 1:10:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, no, you're totally right. Well, look, I want to talk to you about Momentum Mori real fast, but I did want to call out my, my favorite part of your book is at the end, you have a letter where your son, your son writes a letter to you at the end of the book. And he had, The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite novels, maybe my favorite. But he says, remember little Pammy in The Great Gatsby? Neither did her mother, Daisy Buchanan. You are a much better literary mom. First off, that's such an incredible compliment to you. And to me, it seems like if you could ask for successes as a parent, that something like

• 1:11:02Speaker 00

  that is, is exactly what you'd want to hear. But you're, you're totally, it's just, I just, it struck me as such a great observation because you're right. The kid is never named in the novel. The parents live these preposterously self-absorbed lives, you know, obsessing about this long-lost love and going to parties and what other people think about them. And then, you know, covering up the murder and all the stuff that happens in the book. But never once do you hear Daisy or her husband or, or Gatsby himself express even the slightest interest in this, in this child.

• 1:11:44Speaker 00

  I just thought it was very, your son has an eye.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought it was really funny. I also love how he mentioned,

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  with my kid, I don't do a lot of social media, but if I ever mention him, and when I was writing this book, I asked for his permission. Because in France, if you post a social media post of your child, you can be brought to court and you can be sued and pay a $7,000 fine. Wow. So I think that it's important to, at any stage, understand that, yes, your kid might be cute, you know, with the crack of his butt hanging out, but realize that that's forever and that I want to honor.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  So I really, I said, "Jack, you know, can we use your nickname, Lefty?" And he said, "No, no, I am proud of you." And I would like you to use my real name. And he's a quiet, humble man. I read this interesting, but

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  statistic, and I don't know how scientific it is, but it said that the average adolescent male speaks about 4,000 words a day, and the adolescent female speaks about 20,000 words a day. And so he's a man of few words, but I think, yeah, he can't be a gasbag like me. And it's been interesting to kind of draw this out of him and to be able to run a project like this. And I was very impressed that he pulled out the literary mothers that he had read about in Iraq.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Very good.

• 1:13:43Speaker 00

  Well, my last question for you, and I was just thinking about this more because we went to the Austin rodeo on Saturday, and my kids won a goldfish that like ring toss. And then one of them died by Sunday night already because my son overfed it. And even though I told them several times, this is exactly what was going to happen. So now we're already having to have this little discussion about about about their pet dying and how the pet won't come back. How have you had to think about, you know, it's one thing for the Stokes to say memento mori, you know, act as if death hangs over you, which it does in the

• 1:14:23Speaker 00

  loosest sense. But in your case, it sort of literally does. And memento mori isn't just a philosophical practice. I imagine it's somewhat, it's a crushing reality at times, or an overwhelming fact of your disease. Talk to me about memento mori and how suicide has helped you, but then how you've had to think about it as a parent.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Well, I think because I have been, I've had last rites, and then I came roaring back. And I would, I would recommend not dying to practically everybody because it was really, really nice to not die. But I don't have that great fear. And I, I think that having a, I don't think of myself as somebody with an incurable illness. Just think, oh, they

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  didn't figure it out yet. But I, it's interesting because my husband is super fit and is, and a little bit neurotic about death. And maybe I'm barking mad and I don't fear it and I tend to spit in death's eye. I'm glad that my husband has a maybe more level view. And I'm

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  I just realized at my son's school, there's a monument to a woman who went down on the Titanic. And her name was Edith Chase. She was only one of the four first-class passengers who went down on the Titanic. And she gave her spot on the lifeboat to a mother who had four children. And her monument says, "Love is stronger than death." And that's what I believe. One of my best friends in the world has ALS. And we were diagnosed around the same time. And actually, I had a head start.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  I was a grizzled veteran by about 10 years. She is dealing with ALS. And one of the things that she told her children was, "A mother's love is eternal." And I love that. And I just feel that love is stronger than death, just like that monument notes. And so perhaps I do not fear death because I don't fear love. I embrace love and I believe it's eternal. It is what puffs us up. My four-chambered organ is pumping right now.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  My 40 trillion cells are thrumming right now. All I have is this moment. All I have is this day. And I'll take it. I can't imagine feeling any different about life or my life ending. And I've been close and I've had to prepare. One of the things as a chaplain is you, one of the exercises is you have to prepare your funeral. And that's a great thing to do. It's a good thing to think about because we often just kind of want to not think about. But, you know, I've got the margarita machine.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  I've got the spooky Halloween of sound effects record I want to play. I mean, I've got the fireworks. It's going to be a party. It's going to be called, yeah, Duff, Going Out with a Bang.

• 1:18:26Speaker 00

  I love it. No, it's um, it's uh, it's, I, I think about this where like, obviously you, you don't want to be, you, you would never want your life to be cut short. I, I'm sad when I have to go out of town or when I have to be gone all day or whatever. And I go like, you know, uh, that makes me sad. And then, then I catch myself, I'm at home and they want to play. And I'm like, no, sorry, I'm busy. Right? So it's, it's funny, like, we want more time. Uh, but the irony, as Seneca points out, is when, then when we have the time, we don't actually spend it on the thing that we say we care about.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  Carpe diem, carpe notum. I mean, that's, like, why just the day? It's carpe notum as well. Seize it all.

• 1:19:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. Or seize right, it, it, it's like, forget the day. Why don't you just handle like, these next two minutes in front of you and not waste them?

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  It's, it's really interesting. Uh,

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  I read a lot about, like, the Lancet, and I've tried to read as much about biology and psychology, and that the signal of pain lasts six seconds. But it's just constantly, what's happened with me is the lesion in my central nervous system grew so big, and your skull is a contained environment, that it destroyed the nerves um, um, in my medulla and cerebellum. And so this part of my brain, there's like a baseball-sized granuloma. And normally your cells are permeable, but sarcoidosis makes them like crystals. So they're...

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  Sugar, so they can't talk to each other and there's causing, it's crushed all the nerves. So as my brain is constantly keeping me alive and keeping me moving, it's also saying like, "Hey, there's a big problem here." So it's like this car alarm that's always going off, like, "There's a big problem here." And I can't get it to turn off. So I feared if I get mad at this, I'll be mad all the time. So I should just, I have to accept what I have and make the most of what I have. And I have deep compassion for people.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  What's interesting, the word "pain" comes from the Latin "phona," which means punishment, penalty. So living with chronic pain is almost like being punished for a crime you didn't commit. And pain reduces language. When you're in pain, you can't talk. You're just like, "Grr."

• 1:21:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, turns you into an idiot.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. Well, and actually, a true idiot in Ancient Greek was a free person who didn't vote in a democratic election. So I like that the idiot is not a person who doesn't vote, idiotus. But yes, it does. And it can turn you into an object of pity. And I just recognize that pain reduces language and that writing and talking to the world through books has been such a gift. And I think I'm much more eloquent out of my left hand than I am out of my pie hole. So it worked out for me. I'm grateful.

• 1:22:06Speaker 00

  Well, Karen, I'm very grateful for the book. It was beautiful and thoughtful and it's a fun read. And I'm so glad we got to, we got to talk. And I don't know if in 1997 or '98, when I was watching Blank Check, this is where I thought we'd both end up. But here, here we are. It worked out, as was fated, the Stoics would say. And I'm so glad we connected.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  The same, and it was truly a gift to be a part of your day. So, thank you, and I wish you all the best.

• 1:22:36Speaker 00

  You know, the Stoics in real life met at what was called the Stoa, the Stoa Pochyle, the Painted Porch in ancient Athens. Obviously, we can't all get together in one place because this community is like hundreds of thousands of people, and we couldn't fit in one space. But we have made a special digital version of the Stoa. We're calling it Daily Stoic Life. It's an awesome community. You could talk about like today's episode, you could talk about the emails, ask questions. That's one of my favorite parts is interacting with all these people who are using Stoicism to be better in their actual, real lives. You get more Daily Stoic Meditations over the weekend, just for the Daily Stoic Life members, quarterly Q and As with me, cloth-bound edition of our Best of Meditations, plus a whole bunch of other stuff, including discounts, and, this is the best part, all

• 1:23:21Speaker 00

  our Daily Stoic Courses and Challenges totally for free, hundreds of dollars of value every single year, including our New Year, New You Challenge. We'd love to have you join us. There's a two-week trial totally for free. Check it out at DailyStoicLife.com.