Joyful Anyway: Surviving the Sh*t Show of Regular Life | Kate Bowler

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32:31One of the things that's coming to mind, and this is kind of related to some of the things you talked about earlier as joy blockers, is like non-distraction. I would imagine constant scrolling indoors with no natural light or nature at all does not put you in the way of joy. I mean, I get delighted every once in a while when I'm scrolling on TikTok, no question about it, but it's not the same thing. It's a kind of synthetic version. And I'm sure you and I have a similar position on this. there's a certain quality of attention that we kind of have to get into a better place of cultivating in order to even be aware of joy if it was coming in the room at all.

33:21That's all true for sure. To me, like the prototypical example of joy as an act of grace from the universe or God or whatever you want to call it for me is sitting on the steps of a building in Harvard Square when I was a junior in high school, summer between junior and senior year. And there were no phones at that time because I'm not young. And so this was in the late eighties and I was just sitting there. I don't know, I might've been talking to somebody. I can't remember, but it was one of those, New England has these nights that are simultaneously hot, but just like a little bit of cool. So it was just temperate, even though it was July.

34:04And I just was overtaken with this sense of everything's okay, which I've had subsequently a few times on retreat and which if you strive for, you will never experience. But there was something about just the randomness of sitting there, undistracted, open, outside where, yeah, I was joy ready in ways that modern life militates against. That's so right. That makes me want to write down joy ready. I really like that. I think that that's right. Like your eyes, you've got this aperture so that you've kind of let out all the granularity of everything that the world as it is kind of filter in. And then the world as it is all of a sudden gets recast as like it's almost like it's like falling in love where it's just like it's beautiful.

34:56It's just so beautiful. And then other times I think you kind of have to find the yes inside of a situation where you would otherwise want to say no. So I had a very bizarre version of that when I was coming out of a very difficult surgery and I had a doctor I really hated. And I was ready to go home and they, you know, you go through like the mostly checkout process and I was waiting for someone to come pick me up and I'm sitting like in a very normal going home room in the hospital. And the doctor comes in, he's like, Kate, I'm here to take a surgical train out of your stomach. And it was one, the doctor I hated.

35:37And two, I was not actually aware at that time that I had a surgical drain in my stomach. And I was like, no, no. The answer is no. Actually, I just had this nice smooth bandage on my stomach and everything's all tucked in. And I've got my nice going home clothes on and my stuff is packed. And the answer to you, sir, is absolutely not. And I don't really know what my plan was. Go home and do it myself. Like, what was I going to do with that new information? And everything in me was like, absolutely not. But I knew that, of course, like, you don't really get a choice. But if I don't get a choice, is there anything else there?

36:17And I just had this weird, like, sense. I should just find a different answer than no. And he had his hands up in front of him because they were clean, I guess, because he was about to tear something horrifying out of my body. And just the way his hands up like that, it just reminded me of when I had this one brother-in-law. He was this big, beefy, he was into wrestling, and he was for a season very into up-close magic. So he's always trying to take coins out from behind my ear or just constantly scarves on scarves out of sleeves that he wasn't wearing. And he was just like such a funny guy. But his hands up like that just really reminded me of like my brother-in-law's up close magic.

37:00So instead of saying no to this doctor, I was like, okay, you can take the surgical drain out, but I need you to do it as a magic trick. And it's just like the look of deadness in his eyes as our eyes locked. And it was just like a full confrontation. And then without saying a word, he spun out. And then he comes in. Knock, knock. look, Kate, I'm here to take a surgical drain out of your stomach and I will do it as a magic drink. And I was like, we had like suddenly grand ceremony between us. So I arranged myself on the hospital bed and like, you know, pull my shirt up and there's this bandage and he's pulling off the bandage and he's like, look.

37:39And I do really appreciate it when you're going through something tough, if someone gives you like a very specific description. And he said, you're going to feel a deep pinch and you're gonna feel a hard pull. so hard, like I'm going to have to hold on to the side of the bed. And so I closed my eyes and I felt a very deep pinch. And then it felt like an anchor being rested from the seafloor. It's like my insides are becoming my outsides. I opened my eyes and there's this doctor holding what appears to be like 200 million feet of tubing in his hands. And I can see that he has an enormous bright red spray, what is obviously my blood, because he did something wrong.

38:24And we stared at each other in utter horror. And then he just goes, ta-da!

38:36The himcuffing committed to the magic trick absolutely put me over the edge. I was truly joyful about that for a week. And what I learned in that insanity is that sometimes even when you can't say no, see if you can find the yes. But in the yes, this is the bit about the randomness of joy. There is a weird kind of magic that happens where what was supposed to be a horrific experience ends up being a doctor who regularly comes to my lectures now. And I see him every now and then. Wow. ta-da indeed i've really taken that to be like uh is there a ta-da here somewhere yes somewhere yes in the things that i'm not going to be able to control okay but so that strikes me as a kind of a cousin of gratitude which is a term that you used earlier and all of that feels to me like a trainable skill.

39:40I know we're saying that joy is grace, you know, like we you can't manufacture it. But having a like a background attitude of not taking stuff for granted, of looking out for delight and things that you're glad about, that feels like the opposite of a joy blocker. I'm like writing down background attitude now because that's really good. I totally agree. Yeah, I do. I think that there is like in any good and beautiful thing that happens, I do think there's a little window of where there's possibility for action and play and engagement with what's happening. So in these background attitudes, I agree.

40:23I think finding a little movement where it looks like there's none. And I think we see it in, I mean, this is partly why I'm kind of in love with Alan Alda. Are you also in love with Alan? I feel like everyone and should be in love with Alan Alda. I'm in like with Alan Alda. He's not somebody I think about much, but maybe you can tip me over. Well, this is about to change for you. Okay. Because this man, in response, like he did, you know, he had a long, of course, amazing, impressive career in acting, but was a science communicator for a really long time. And so he started this incredible program with a university in New York to teach improv skills to doctors and science communicators of all kinds and realize that the more you can add play and responsiveness in frankly, like very emotionally fraught conversations, the more you can find little windows, a possibility, possibility for like misunderstanding.

41:19Is there something I can make the truth more evident to you? But also I think just for like meaning making in what otherwise feels like, man, like I just get handed a diagnosis or I just get handed the life I have. So I loved the idea that there's just so much when we're trying to like respond to reality that if we can reframe it a little bit closer to play and delight, I think it's easier for us to bring our full selves into a situation that can otherwise feel very brittle and frankly, like quite traumatic. What I'm about to say is a little bit of a conversational bank shot, but what you're saying reminds me of the emphasis that you hear in Zen Buddhism on spontaneity, that if you're not so stuck in the swirling stories of your mind, past, future, what are people thinking of me, et cetera, et cetera, that you can be more awake and aware in the moment and therefore more responsive, all of which seems like another way to be joy ready.

42:27I really like that. Yeah. And people are thinking, though, Dan, I'll just tell you that they like you and it's going really well. So you don't have to have that thought anymore. But in case you're wondering, I'm just doing consumer response. I can tell you I get plenty of the opposite feedback on the regular. No, my opinion is declarative and I'm a professor. So you're welcome. Exactly. This is an argument I'll let you win. Thank you. I felt right. I I felt right when I was saying it. Okay. So your book, which is called Joyful Anyway, talks a lot about how to put yourself in the way of joy. But you also, you talk about something called the ache.

43:05I'm curious what you mean by that. What is the ache and how is it related to joy? I was looking for the right kind of historical and philosophical, just like emotional framework. For many of us, the default state coming into our desire for joy is like, why does it feel like there's a kind of bittersweet longing inside of us so often? I mean, sometimes it feels like Hungry Hungry Hippos, which was a game I was very good at. It really struck me as a question that felt almost inappropriate to ask for someone like me who has been, just has so much to be grateful for and has been given back so much.

43:49And so just, I wondered like, why is it that I feel the ache is this feeling of like longing, of restlessness, of incompleteness. And it can either be seen in a theological framework as a kind of like missing piece. and then you find your rest in God. So I teach in a seminary, so it's not like I'm not like ready with all these responses. So I just kind of went looking for why it is that that language and that sort of indictment of the human condition is so common. Very often, frankly, the language that's used for it is often like a musical analogy. It feels like the blues or in Portuguese, saudade or this kind of like truths you can only sing in a minor key.

44:33And so I think we either have to decide when we feel like that, that again, we're a problem to be solved and that's just like another thing to fix about it, or it's a glitch in the system and there's something wrong with us. And I'm not saying there's not anything specifically wrong with me, not that I'd want that, but I'm saying that's not necessarily untrue. But if there is this ache inside, does this mean that we're more or less capable of experiencing joy? So I kind of went talking to a series of historians and theologians and psychologists, and I loved my conversation with Father Ron Rollheiser, who's a professor and spirit and priest.

45:11And he was like, look, Kate, this thing that you're kind of describing as a sort of character flaw is so universal in the human condition. He's like, Kate, his babies were born crying. There's a lot of crying in the middle. There really is a lot of crying at the end. So you can either decide this is an incompleteness or you can say that this ache, this too has a kind of holiness to it. It's an engine and you can either use it to sort of kind of endlessly snack forever is to have these endless hungers or you can point it, use it to point yourself toward these like deeper, more satisfying, still lovely things on offer.

45:50That really, I found it very encouraging to think about the ache that's inside of all of us, how very normal it is, especially around middle age, to feel like I don't know what completeness feels like. And then to start using that to reach for things that are more satisfying than like what you described as like the million synthetic versions on offer. So I can see how in a, again, to use your phrase, Jesus-y context, the ache would be described as the God-shaped hole. Oh, yes, they would. Yeah, well, if you think that there's a solution to it, but it's less a hole that then has to be plugged. And more a quality of being alive.

46:30What I was trying to get to there is that, so in Buddhism, there's this idea of the hungry ghost. I'm sure you're familiar with this. Yeah, but tell me. But for the viewers and listeners, these kind of mythical creatures that have huge stomachs, but very narrow necks. So this just incredible, insatiable hunger that can never be sated. That is the way many of us are. And that hunger is based on a misconception, a fundamental misconception that there is something solid there to be hungry. that the self that we're building up and defending ultimately in the Buddhist view is an illusion. And so you can uproot the ache right there at the level of the self is, I believe, the Buddhist proposition.

47:15So anyway, I'm saying all that just to hear how that goes down with you based on the fact that you're a professor of religion. I think you're totally right. Every good solution comes from an analysis, like an indictment of the human condition. And at that level the Christian framework would be we're trying to decide just how much our hunger is. One theological interpretation is that it is entirely just evidence of our sin and our fallenness and shows that we have to be utterly redeemed. Or in this version that Father Ron and others propose is that it's a much more neutral, not indictment, but just description of our desire to be set on a journey as long as we're pointed in a particular direction.

48:09And I think in that case, I had previously imagined it much more like in the Buddhist framework as a kind of indictment against hunger itself. I just remember the feeling of when I moved from kind of being a cancer patient all the time to feeling like I was back to being a person. I wondered why the hunger kind of came roaring back to life. And it didn't feel like it was, you know, just for like weight loss and diamond medallion status and for that kind of thing. It felt like this, like roaring desire to be alive, but that aliveness felt almost identical with almost just wanting to eat the whole world.

48:58And that also just felt like being back in love in a different way. The ache in some way felt identical to being in love, like you were feeling joy in the achiness? There's this quality of wanting more that's so specific to us being on this path. Like, I'm giving you an example about like the way that ache isn't necessarily a negative. It can feel very similar to like when you look at your kid and in it is so much fear that you can't protect them from the world and then so much love and like, I'll eat you up, I love you so. And you'll never look at them and think like, and that was great. And we did it.

49:41We loved each other. And we actually had enough memories. I had six core memories with you. Like that's in the, we're fine. Like there's this thing about the nature of, I think our hungers is that there will never be enough. And that the moreness of love makes more, which will always be tinged with both hunger and pain and love. And I think framed in that way, the ache doesn't necessarily have to be a negative thing. It can just be this kind of engine that is propelling us that we just have to, but we do have to set the compass. It's a positive spin on the hunger in that it points you in a direction that maybe it's not a hole you can ever fill, but you can improve your life by listening to what you're hungering for.

50:26And would the right word be pursuing it? Yeah. I mean, and I think in that Christian framework, we would call that desire to kind of slowly refine that hunger so that we're consuming the things we should be consuming. We call that sanctification, but we kind of are hoping that has a kind of a refining quality that as we go, we like hunger for more and more of what's lovely. Well, actually there is a Buddhist analog to that. So yes, I do want to be careful because you actually know what you're talking about. And I'm a little bit like the guy who slept at a holiday in last night when I'm talking about Buddhism, but I do, I'm gonna do my best here.

51:08In Buddhism, like the problem is hunger or thirst as it's sometimes translated. I think the ancient word for it is tanha. So it really is actually thirst, but this unquenchability, this, you know, insatiability. That is the problem. But there is also Chanda, which is the ancient word for like a healthy desire for enlightenment. So it would be, I think, the Buddhist analog for sanctification. I have heard of Chanda, but I'm not a Buddhism scholar. I think it sounds like both frameworks have a kind of the hero's journey aspect in which we have this narrow window of what's possible. And we have a set of beautiful things, virtues, that we're hoping that we can cultivate.

51:55And then doing so, it pushes us along a path. Well, so let me see if I can say how this has worked for me and you'll or how I think it's worked for me and just tell me if this sounds like it kind of fits the paradigm you're proposing here. I've had several experiences, again, like on usually on meditation retreat, especially in the early days where there's a homesickness or a loneliness or both. Yeah. But it's not just that I miss my family, which I do. It's a kind of much more like primordial pining. And it's not just like, I'm eating this dish and it could use some more salt. It's much more fundamental.

52:35I have learned over time to tune into that and realize that what I'm really thirsting for, but in the Chanda sense, is better and fuller relationships. That's beautiful. And especially now when we've got this sort of very strange buffet in front of us and people are not sure what to want right now. I mean, one enormous worry I think we should have is for people who've decided not to want anything. The amount of like nihilism in our culture right now of people who feel because they're so hopeless that it doesn't matter what they hunger for. The amount of like online gaming, what that reflects about people's lack of belief that it matters if they save for the future because no one cares about their work and AI is going to take their job.

53:25Like this spinning story of like how nothing we do matters and you can just and then just like take what's there. Just take what's there. It has created a real confusion for a lot of us about like what is worth wanting right now and does it matter? And so anything I think that furthers our conversation about how we can hope that our hungers can fuel us and sustain us for relationship, for love, for like these little cousins of joy, like for hope, for delight, for service. like those are these things that like i think we can tell that there we're headed in the right direction when we start to see that they want a future for us and for other people like they inherently make us more self-sacrificing more in tune with like the world and other people but the ones i really worry about are the desires that are just these like endless small flames and they're burning everybody up i saw a video the other day on tiktok i've said this publicly before but I'll just say it again.

54:29I'm not a huge, I don't have Instagram on my phone because it makes me miserable, but I actually like TikTok because I've trained the algorithm to only feed me comedy clips and animal videos and emotional reunions. These squirrels becoming friends with somebody? Amazing. So it actually is for the 15 minutes a day that I do it. And I actually don't find myself wanting to do it for much more than that, but for the 15 minutes a day that I do it, or maybe sometimes on a particularly lazy day 30. It is really actually fun. Anyway, I saw a video the other day of this guy saying they keep saying AI is going to like take our jobs.

55:03Like, when will that happen? I want it to take my job. That's a funny version of it. But I do think the nihilism that you're talking about gives us Trump. You know, it's like this burn it all down Joker-esque. Let's elect the orange line guy because it's all a game and none of it matters. Yeah. None of it matters is a really terrifying poison in the water right now. And it's hard to convince people what hope is for specifically, like, and what hope will mean. Hope will mean that democracy is held up by trusted institutions. Hope will mean people can have valuable opinions based on expertise and education to be in service of the broader public.

55:51Like, I'm really hoping, hoping that like we're going to we're going to soon see the tides turn that like we need the things that shelter us and our communities. And I'm I'm just so worried about the amount that hopelessness is causing people not to worry about the institutions that are crumbling around us that like genuinely need our support, like the news, like higher ed. Yeah. And like the government itself. Like the government, like voting processes, like people who sign up to work at the ballot. I cry every time I see people. I always I would start to vote. I've only just gotten American citizenship.

56:33And where are you from originally? Oh, I'm I am the most Canadian. Yeah. I was going to guess that. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah. So you just got American citizenship. Sorry. Because I didn't want to be ejected from this country for free speech is why I did that. I just cry looking at the people volunteering at the voting booths. Like, this is just small acts of hopefulness in the way that all of our small actions contribute to trusted communities. One of the things that should really worry us, honestly, is the decline in a certain kind of volunteerism rates. If you look at about a quarter of Americans volunteer, and those are very steady numbers since the 1970s that we can track them, but the kind of volunteer has changed in which they used to be people who volunteered in their community the same way every time.

57:22And now we have the same amount of volunteers, but they're only doing intermittent volunteering. So people are not able to get the benefit from having these like long form secondary ties to communities that they otherwise don't necessarily feel tied to. And what's so good about long form ties is it makes you buy in to the power of these communities and these institutions. And so I worry that people don't get like the long form view of just how precious and meaningful that their small acts of service are. Well said.

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59:44Back to your book, again, Joyful Anyway. There's a thing in the book that I just kind of leaped out at me. The idea of loving the people God puts in your way. And I was put in mind of that when you referenced unsolicited the election workers. Oh, yes. I've had this like little habit of going on these really strange adventures because I, one of the things that delights me is going to visit world's largest things or like, so I have this app that I look at called Roadside America, which works in Canada and the United States. And you can just like pick a random thing and go see it. And I had a couple extra hours after I had given a commencement address in rural Pennsylvania.

1:00:27And I talked to this poor old man driver. And I don't mean old, just normal, nice tablecloth, go out to a four o 'clock dinner old. I mean translucent under sunlight old, should not be on the road. It is not safe for any of us old. And I took this poor sweet man on one of my little adventures. And I just boondoggled the crap out of that poor man. And we were up and around and into a graveyard, which he thought was to visit a member of my family, which it turns out I'd taken him to see what was supposed to be the most documented victim of spontaneous combustion, which is, of course, not a real phenomenon.

1:01:07But we were doing just ridiculous things. And I was like, this poor sweet man was so kind and told me about his unbelievable life, which included taking care of so many foster kids and just one of those hearts that unfold like origami, where there's like there's more and more and more in there. And I was like, wait a minute. Like, whoa, how do I be you? Like, what's your best advice for being 84? And also, why did you let me take you to do all these ridiculous things when you were supposed to just take me to the airport? And he said, he was like, look, I just, you know, in referencing all the kids you'd taken care of, and he just said, you know, when I felt my life going in a certain way, like a way I didn't want and I didn't plan.

1:01:51I just found that if I just start to love the people that God puts in my way, if I treat not just things randomly, it's not just things as they come, but if I treat them like an assignment, I will always be busy. Love as an assignment. And then today my assignment was you. And I was like, you beautiful, precious, This very impressionable man. I took from that the intimacy between joy and service and joy and surprise and joy and letting new things open up your heart and delight you. And that you could then become someone who is even more and more grateful for the things that you didn't choose. I thought that love as an assignment sounds like the fastest superhighway to joy that I had heard.

1:02:39It's really interesting because there is all this science around so-called micro interactions or Dr. Amir Levine, the guy who wrote Attach, calls them seemies, seemingly insignificant minor interactions that these are like if you're not paying attention to these, you're leaving a lot of money on the table happiness wise. Like when we use the word random, we mean it, I think, even if only mildly as a pejorative, but to think of it more as an assignment, whether you believe in God or not, like karma, for those of us who are non-believers, karma just as a law of cause and effect, has placed whoever's in front of you, you know, whether they are clearly in the case of your driver in need of like a do not resuscitate bracelet or whatever.

1:03:22they're in front of you instead of treating them as like obstacles or random or something to be ignored like oh no this is this is the assignment that's a very interesting approach to life when i see someone like that then respond to the world there's a little bit more like pliancy in it there's just a little more give there's like that there's an openness to things not being like they were set on the calendar. And I am like, as a person who is very defined by their calendar, who has plans, like, I think that's an invitation to me to like, let some things break in and be a gift. I think it also just reminds me that like, when things go radically off course, one thing that is constantly meaningful to people is to be able to say, is there something here too for me?

1:04:19Even if nobody planned this and maybe nobody caused it, but is there still some small gift in here for me? And I've spent the last, really since my diagnosis, listening to people tell stories of a life they didn't choose. And one thing I have found over and over again is without having to say it was worth it, can we still find these treasures in the dark? And I think knowing that joy is one of those things that we have an enormous capacity for as people, like a huge capacity to be joyful no matter what, that we're in fact psychologically like well-primed for it, then that the world, of course, will give us endless opportunities to be disappointed and to be set back.

1:05:06But knowing that if even there joy can visit you, I think we would feel like a lot more peace in our hearts knowing that on this path, we will find joy has found us again and again and again. That seems like a rousing peroration on which we can probably close. That said, anything that we missed? No, I can read you texts from my mom, though, or just anything else going on in my life. Folks, we're out of time. We've got to hit a commercial break. Back into news anchor mode. Well, this was a total pleasure. Can you just remind everybody of the name of your book and also of the other books and of your podcast and just like plug everything, please?

1:05:47Sure. My book is called Joyful Anyway. And I have a podcast called and a sub stack called Everything Happens. Not everything happens for a reason, just everything happens, period. And if anyone wants to find me on socials, I'm at Kate C. Bowler. Prior books. Yeah, I'm most known for the book Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved. And a book called No Cure for Being Human. And I've written a lot of kind of devotional-y books, like day-to-day kind of things, little reflections called Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day. And one called Good Enough. And I think my favorite is The Lives We Actually Have.

1:06:23Kate Buller, great to meet you. This was a lot of fun. Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10 % Happier is produced by Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. Also, one last thing before you go, remember to sign up for my new app, which is called 10 % with Dan Harris. You can sign up over at danharris.com.

1:06:57On the app, you'll find a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers, ad-free access to the full expertise of our podcast guests, meaning you'll get this podcast with no ads, exclusive live stream events, which we do weekly, sometimes twice a week, robust discussion threads to connect you with our team, with our teachers, and with one another. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to try before you buy. Peace.