If We Were Dying, It Would Be Easier | What Grief Teaches Us About Being Alive

If only we could, as Marcus Aurelius said, let everything we do and say be that of a dying person, then we would get so much more right. Kate Bowler is a four-time New York Times bestselling author https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=kate+bowler*, award-winning podcast host, and professor of religious history at Duke University. She is the host of the podcast Everything Happens https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/everything-happens-with-kate-bowler/id1341076079, where she has honest conversations about grief, joy, faith, love, and the realities of being human. Grab signed copies of Kate’s books Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/everything-happens-for-a-reason-and-other-lies-ive-loved-signed-by-author?_pos=4&_sid=d6732fd30&_ss=r, No Cure For Being Human (And Other Truths I Needed To Hear) https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/no-cure-for-being-human-and-other-truths-i-need-to-hear-signed-by-author?_pos=1&_sid=d6732fd30&_ss=r, and her latest book Joyful, Anyway https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/joyful-anyway-signed-by-author?_pos=2&_sid=d6732fd30&_ss=r at The Painted Porch https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=kate+bowler* | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ https://www.thepaintedporch.com/search?type=product&q=kate+bowler* Follow Kate Bowler: Instagram https://instagram.com/katecbowler/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf8m7lNdR7YVieU0muCg5cg 🪙 We have a collection of items in the Daily Stoic storehttps://store.dailystoic.com/collections/memento-morito help you in your own memento mori practice https://store.dailystoic.com/collections/memento-mori, check them out here:https://store.dailystoic.com/collections/memento-morihttps://store.dailystoic.com/ 🎟️https://www.dailystoiclive.com/DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ Boston, Massachusetts - November 16 https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/0100648FA1C21706 Nashville, Tennessee - November 20 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daily-stoic-live-onstage-with-ryan-holiday-tickets-1991992836196?aff=oddtdtcreator Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - December 8 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/daily-stoic-live-onstage-with-ryan-holiday-tickets-1987339339462?aff=oddtdtcreator Washington D. C. - December 9 https://www.unionstagepresents.com/shows/daily-stoic-live-09-dec 🎙️AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing toThe Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content:https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email athttps://dailystoic.com/dailyemail -- Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  So I have a bunch of traveling I'm doing through the end of the year on Daily Stoic Live Tour. I just got back from San Diego. I like to stay in the places that I'm staying. I like to book places on Airbnb so I can be like a local. I not only do some of my best writing, but I learn about things that I wouldn't have known otherwise. When I was just in San Diego, I took a walk along the water. I bumped into someone who recognized me and they told me about their favorite local bookstore, which was like two blocks from where I was staying. And I never would have known about it if it wasn't for that encounter. It was cool to me to think that I have helped facilitate that experience for many, many people coming to Austin over the years. The first house that I bought in Austin, when my wife and I first moved here, we would list it on Airbnb and it helped me make the transition from my corporate life to being a full-time writer.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  So if you're gonna be away, you should maybe think about listing your place on Airbnb. It can be a great way to earn extra cash while you travel, can offset the cost of your trip, or maybe even go towards whatever you're doing next. If you've got travel coming up, check out Airbnb. Your home might be worth more than you think and you can find out how much at Airbnb.com/host. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 1:21Speaker 00

  If we were dying, it would be easier. If we knew we had terminal cancer, if we were mortally wounded or being deployed to a war or the world was ending, it would put everything in perspective, right? We would get our affairs in order. We would say what needed to be said. We would stop wasting time. We would let go of our grievances. It would be immediately clarifying. It would reorder our priorities. It would force us to get serious. If only we could, as Marcus Aurelius said, let everything we do and say be that of a dying person, then we would get so much more right. Well, the good news and the bad news, according to Seneca, is that we are a dying person.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  We are dying every minute, he said, dying every day. Little by little, we are losing the life we have left. It's just that we don't realize it. We forget. Instead, we hold on to grudges. We neglect relationships we should be investing in and we waste time and energy on things that wouldn't matter if we knew how little time we had left. Perhaps what a diagnosis or an impending deployment does is that it gives us something to point to. It's right there in our face. It breaks the walls down and gives us clarity that was obscured by all the clutter

• 2:37Speaker 00

  and all the distractions. But we shouldn't need a diagnosis. We shouldn't need the orders or the bad news. The clock is already running. The diagnosis has already been made. We are dying every day. The question is whether we can remember that before circumstances force us to.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. We know that the Stoics lost people, not just because everyone who has ever lived has lost people they love, but because Rome was a tragic and dark and unhealthy and violent place. Seneca buries an infant. Marcus Aurelius buries multiple children. He loses his father as a young man. He lives through a plague. You know, Seneca writes a series of essays that are called Consolations. In one case, it's him consoling his mother over the loss of him. He hadn't died, but he was being exiled.

• 3:47Speaker 00

  He's gonna go away for a long time, maybe forever. He writes to the daughter of a friend of his. His friend had died and he was consoling his daughter. This is a genre that Stoics aren't just talking about memento mori, like practicing, meditating on your own mortality, but they were talking a lot about grief, right? It doesn't matter how stoic you are. If you love someone and you lose them, that's sad. We have a story about Marcus Aurelius mourning one of his teachers. He's breaking down in tears and Blosfer tries to tell him, you know, that's not manly. And it's Antoninus who says, hey, let this kid be human. So this is part of the human experience. And it's something I wanted to talk about in today's episode.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  I had Kate Bowler out to the painted porch in the studio recently. If you don't know who Kate is, she's a four times New York Times bestselling author. She has this great podcast. She's a professor of religious history at Duke. But at 35, she was diagnosed with stage four cancer. And this, as you can imagine, was a profoundly transformative experience. Changed how she thought about grief and hope and happiness and control, what it means to live in a world where so much of what happens is outside of our control. And in this little chunk, Kate and I are going to be talking about grief. Talk about Joan Didion's incredible book, Blue Nights. Talk about her terminal cancer diagnosis, which thankfully turned out to be at least

• 5:12Speaker 00

  temporarily incorrect, and how she found happiness inside a life, a world that has real suffering in it. And so we talk about grief as something that can have a strange effect on us. It can make the world dark and also the world brighter. And this Stoic practice of memento mori. So let's get into it. As I said, Kate is an incredible author. Her new book about joy is called Joyful Anyway. Like, how do you have joy in a world with so much darkness? My favorite book of hers is Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies. I've loved. Let's get into it with Kate.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 6:03Speaker 02

  Love the crown molding.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet?

• 6:12Speaker 01

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 6:22Speaker 03

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• 6:26Speaker 04

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• 7:01Speaker 00

  I mean, obviously, one of the things you talk about in the book, which is, you know, a constant theme of life is like grief and how do we handle it? And you have this scene at the beginning, it kind of reminded me of, have you read Joan Didion's Blue Notes?

• 7:16Speaker 05

  Not in a while.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  She is describing the scene of spilling out onto the sidewalk in New York City. Her daughter has just gotten married. They're getting in the car to drive away. She's with her husband and she's like, you know, little did we know that 18 months later, like two of these three people would be dead. And then obviously her sort of final works are about wrestling with the magnitude of that way, sort of life just can beat the shit out of you. But you have a similar scene in the book where in such close proximity, the happiest day and the unhappiest day of our lives can be.

• 7:53Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, I had a, just a like really rapid series of world's best, world's worst. I got my dream job. I finally had this like little pumpkin-headed froggy-eyed baby I'd wanted forever and couldn't because of infertility. And then, and then I very suddenly got a stage four cancer diagnosis. And then it was-

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Which was terminal, right?

• 8:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, they said I, I mean, it was the fall and we thought it would be my last Christmas. And I had this little like, little

• 8:29Speaker 05

  kid that smelled like cookies and I was like, it was unimaginable that he wouldn't have any memory of me. And this, like the speed with which things come undone. I don't think I'll ever get over what an avalanche life can be.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  And maybe what an illusion stability and security are.

• 8:53Speaker 05

  Exactly. And that's why, like, if someone is having a beautiful season, I like a season in the sun, a season of happiness, I always just want to be like, bless this, like-

• 9:03Speaker 00

  Or you're not like-

• 9:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  You have no idea. You have no idea what's gonna happen.

• 9:09Speaker 05

  I did have a lot of like, I came out of chemo and saw this poor woman eating a very decorative salad and I was just like, what are people even doing with decorative salads? Like, I just, I just pictured how long it took to chop it up and I was like, what's time? I was a little-

• 9:25Speaker 00

  It's like when people come up to you and they're like, enjoy this. You have no idea what my mourning with these monsters has been like.

• 9:32Speaker 05

  Exactly. I think, I think there's suddenly the value of everything you had is so clear to you. And also there's this weird- There's like, one of the only gifts of grief, and I will say only, is that it really paints the world in bright colors. And it's, it's like falling in love. And everybody is so beautiful. Like, I am a faculty member at Duke University. My desire to gossip is very strong.

• 10:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 05

  And all of a sudden, I, I just like couldn't gossip. I stopped swearing.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  Cause all this stuff seemed trivial.

• 10:14Speaker 05

  Everything was, I just thought everyone was so magical.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:18Speaker 05

  The amount of like, people's, suddenly I was just like, senior colleagues. I'm like touching their big cheeks, putting my hands on their, and just like loving, loving them. It was awful for them. I just loved them so much. It's just so strange. I mean, when you think it's all gonna go, life is, um, it's brevity. It makes it shocking and brutal and sweet.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  And then, and then I think trying to count time later is really tricky. I went through about five years of, like, we just really didn't know. It was just like, at first it was that I wasn't gonna survive two years. And then it was always like, well, you'll, you'll be fine for a little bit longer, but we don't know. It really only took till about five years where everyone's like, you'll probably be okay. Five years of, I counted weeks and months.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  It's a long time to be in limbo.

• 11:15Speaker 05

  It really reorganized how I thought about time.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:18Speaker 05

  And in some ways, it made me worse. Because like, a lot of the hyper efficiency and desire to live, my like, I just wanna squeeze everything in. I wrote like a billion books.

• 11:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 05

  Very short period of time.

• 11:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 05

  Cause I was like hungry to live. And also the way I think is by writing things down.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:37Speaker 05

  And then it kind of flattened out in a way in which I just noticed like, well, if I got my life back, what, what monster wouldn't be so grateful for everything that they've lost? So I thought, well, any kind of dissatisfaction with my life probably means I'm like, well, definitely a bad Christian.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:55Speaker 05

  For sure. I mean, that's a, but probably a bad woman because don't I have this beautiful child? And definitely a bad cancer survivor.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 05

  And I think trying to rediscover then, without just like, making my life back into a ticking clock again.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 05

  How to think differently about the beauty of life without having to either return to a sense of imminent tragedy.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:18Speaker 05

  Or just imagine that you get things forever, which I know you don't.

• 12:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, the memento mori thing is weird. It's not remember, uh, that you are gonna, I mean, obviously you're remembering that you are going to die. But it, it would be different if it was, you are going to die tomorrow. That would, you know, or you are gonna die in one month or one year. Like, the certainty of that, it would, would actually, in some ways, be totally destabilizing because it makes all these other things irrelevant. It's that you could die. So how do you, how do you find a way?

• 12:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  To live in the uncertainty? So you're both, you're both, you know, not taking the future for granted.

• 12:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  And at the same time, not taking a not future for granted. Like, you, you do have to assume.

• 13:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  At some level, you might be around in a year or two years or five years. And so it's that balance that we're trying to get right.

• 13:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's, it, you're kind of framing language of the future and what kind of hopefulness is a gift? And what is a poison? Because I do think that when, I think most people imagine, just end up reframing hope as a, as just another language of certainty. Like, things will always come my way, there will always be another opportunity. And when you know for certain that that's not true.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:33Speaker 05

  My hope is that, that it really resets the baseline for reality. And that the baseline is that the gifts that we have are so rich and so beautiful. And the things that we lose are so precious and very little of it is based on what I deserve.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:50Speaker 05

  Or what anybody deserves. But that I wanna be able to live with the kind of capacity to ride that roller coaster. And I think that's why I found happiness to be such an unsatisfactory framework of just like, the slow math of trying to like accumulate every nice contented convenience.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:08Speaker 05

  And, and live as if you can just sort of snack forever and never be hungry.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 05

  And I was like, well, if you know that, if you know that the bottom drops out, can we have a deeper appreciation for something like joy, which can take you from zero to 100, which can, which can help you see reality more clearly? And also kind of stun you back into an awakeness to what's already there.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  How do you do that when you are reeling from the loss of a person? Like, uh, someone you love or someone you're with or, how, how do you think about grief in that sense?

• 14:44Speaker 05

  Yeah. I think that's a really terrifying thought for a lot of people that it's like a song and then they won't hear the music is how I was thinking about it. Like, and I think that's one of the only things that we can, I'm very careful with the things I think we can actually promise each other in times of like devastation. And I think we should be able to, in a loving and gentle way, promise each other joy. That joy will come back, not as a solution, it will never cure that grief. But it will, it will help us sing the song of our life. I'll never forget, my friend TJ's uncle gave him this advice and he gave it to me when I was sick. He was like, too many people die with a song still in them.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 15:29Speaker 05

  And if you believe that like, there will be truths you have to sing in a major key and ones you have to sing in a minor key, but that you will still hear the music. I think this is a kind of like, belief in the persistence of the transcendent quality of joy that can surprise you, visit you, but also like, I mean, it will, I mean, what happens in grief is despair. It will shout down the loudest voice, which says that nothing will ever be good again.

• 15:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and also, you wouldn't want joy to be dependent on you. Right? Like, like what a, what a sad thing that would be, that like.

• 16:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  The joy in your children's life or joy in your life is dependent on, like, I've said this before. It's like, uh, it would make you feel terrible if nobody missed you. But also if them missing you was debilitatingly sad and torturous to them, you also wouldn't want that.

• 16:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  Right? Like, but obviously that can be hard to appreciate the closer you are to the thing happening.

• 16:34Speaker 05

  When I first started this project, someone really, really close to me lost her mom. And this was just kind of the debate we were having is, when is it the right time to let in that little bit of hope?

• 16:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  That, that joy is gonna still find her, even though she lost her mom suddenly and too soon. And it was the kind of, sometimes we lose somebody that we, we needed them for the end of the story.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:01Speaker 05

  Like, your story together wasn't quite done.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Those are really difficult to grieve.

• 17:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, the unfinished business.

• 17:07Speaker 05

  I think that believing that there was going to be a part of that story together that would feel redeemed by being able to like, look back on beautiful times together, but also just feel like she was still capable of joy, I think was going to be, and became like very healing for her.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, but, and it, I think it's worth pointing out, like, nobody's last thoughts are like, I hope they never feel good again. You know, like, like, like, they, they, they are not hoping to, to.

• 17:36Speaker 05

  May this suck out every last possibility of hope.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I'm taking the keys with me.

• 17:42Speaker 05

  I buried, I buried your passwords.

• 17:45Speaker 00

  But that's like, that's the opposite of what they're probably, like, that's the opposite of what they're thinking.

• 17:52Speaker 05

  That's right. Your phone now has my face ID.

• 17:57Speaker 00

  But that is kind of how it, it can feel in those moments. You're like, well, I can never say this, I can't say this now. Or, you know, things will never be the same again, or I can never step foot in that room again, like.

• 18:09Speaker 05

  And then I think people think joy would be inappropriate. Like, you're not grieving, you're not devastated, no. I, and I, I would say this is, this is true of grieving people, this is also true of liberals. I'm just gonna say, good liberals always feel like they can't be joyful when someone else in the world is in pain.

• 18:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 05

  And I think it's, that goes back to a kind of math framework where like, one has more and the other has less. But every person I know who does like, really existentially complicated work in their life has made, like, made a place for joy, made like a discipline around joy.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 18:49Speaker 05

  Because my, as my friend Gary Haugen says, like, joy is the oxygen for doing hard things. It has to be the reminder of your own, like, of, of, of the goodness of your life, which is the reason why would, we would keep doing the hard things in the first place.

• 19:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, like, it somehow feels sacrilegious to be having fun or doing creative work while the country's on fire. And it's like, no, no, that, that is, in a way, the first step towards sort of reclaiming things.

• 19:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  Is like, I'm not gonna let you take from, like, you wouldn't let them take that from you by force.

• 19:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  Right? Like, you wouldn't let them control what you say and think, but you are letting them inside your head.

• 19:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  You know, deciding that you don't get to be happy because it's inappropriate or something, which is totally, but yeah, like, again, as your grandparent or spouse or whomever you lost isn't, isn't, isn't gonna come back and be, what the fuck? You guys did Thanksgiving anyway, you know, like.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  Did Thanksgiving anyway. I gave you that recipe.

• 19:44Speaker 00

  I thought, I thought it was over.

• 19:46Speaker 05

  It's just Grandma's recipe for a reason.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  This was supposed to die with me, guys. It's like, that's not.

• 19:50Speaker 05

  Every good thing dies with me will be my new memoir.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, that, that's, that's not, it's so ridiculous when you say it that way. But at some level, that's, that's what we're telling ourselves. Like, it's, they never said anything like it. We just assumed like, literally the, the worst, most like self-absorbed reality that could possibly happen.

• 20:14Speaker 05

  I think that the thing too, if you think about a moment of joy, the other bit that is like they would want for you is it feels like grace. Like, it, it, it's, it's weird, but it, it feels like, it's like a mercy.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:28Speaker 05

  Cause it usually, it'll, it'll like cover a wound.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  It's just a good reminder that there are some things we really can't fully heal ourselves. And so when we receive something like that, it will feel like a gift, cause it is a gift.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Love the crown molding.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Don't you wanna see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.