"What's the Point?" – A Simple Answer to Life's Biggest Question | Lili Taylor

0:04This is the 10 % Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

0:18Hello, my fellow suffering beings. How are we doing today? One of the biggest ongoing issues in my life is that sometimes I feel like I'm just trudging through my to-do list. There's this great quote from a former mayor of New York City. I forgot which mayor, but many decades ago, this mayor coined a nice phrase, the squalid succession of days. And if you're just in a constant state of toppling forward, looking at everything through the lens of productivity, life really can feel like a squalid succession of days. So today we're going to talk about doing stuff just for the pleasure of doing it.

0:52No ulterior motive, nothing to gain. the only purpose is the experience itself. Although actually, and this is interesting, these types of activities, which again, you just do for the fun and pleasure of the activity itself, can also put you in touch with awe, which is an incredibly powerful human emotion that is genuinely transformative. My guest today is Lily Taylor, who you've probably seen in innumerable movies and plays and TV shows. She was in Mystic Pizza and Say Anything back in the 80s. Then she was in I Shot Andy Warhol and Ransom. She was also in High Fidelity, Public Enemies, the TV show American Crime, also The X-Files, Six Feet Under.

1:32I could go on. The reason why I wanted to have Lily on the show, however, is not because of her illustrious career, although we'll talk a little bit about that. But really, it's because she wrote a book about birds. It's called Turning to Birds, and it's just come out in paperback. I hasten to say right here that you should not worry if, like me, you're not super interested in birds. The point of this interview isn't the birds per se, although birds are awesome and definitely worth paying a lot of attention to. The point is that paying attention to birds or anything really can pull you out of yourself and can put duct tape over the mouth of your inner nihilist who's always asking, like, what is the point of it all?

2:13So I'm very excited to talk to Lily. Before we dive in, I just want to say that it is very hard not to feel like you're trudging through life if you haven't had any sleep, which is why over on the 10 % app, we're now going big on sleep. In my experience, sleep is one of the most popular use cases for meditation apps. So next week, we are adding 10 new sleep meditations on the app. And we're going to do a live video session with our teacher of the month, Cara Lai, who's going to talk about how to deploy meditation for your sleep. If you want to sign up, which I think you should. The place to do so is danharris.com.

2:48Join the party. Oh, and I should say very quickly here that if you want to meditate with me in person, I've got an IRL event coming up at the 92nd Street Y on May 17th. There's a link in the show notes if you want to buy tickets. All right, we'll get started with Lily Taylor right after this. Hey, it's Dan. I just want to tell you about something I'm really proud of, the new community we are building over on my new app, which is called 10 % with Dan Harris. Here's something I believe with no reservation. Taking care of your own mind is not selfish. It's actually essential if you want to show up for the world, if you want to deal with the various emergencies on the planet right now.

3:28There is, in fact, a geopolitical case for you to get your shit together. In other words, taking care of your own mind is good citizenship. I think about it like an upward spiral. You train your mind. That makes you happier and less reactive because you're steadier. That improves your relationships with everybody around you. And because relationships are crucial to human happiness, you get even happier, then your relationships get even better and up you go. Our mission over at this new app is to guide you through this process with a growing library of meditations from world-class teachers like Seven A.

4:00Selassie and Joseph Goldstein and on and on. Also add free access to our full podcast archive, exclusive live stream events where we guide meditations and take your questions. We do those every week and much more. Head on over to danharris.com. You can try it for two weeks free. And if you cannot afford a subscription, we'll give you one. No questions asked. There is a version of your home you haven't lived in yet, where the light behaves, where the rooms feel finished, where you sleep until you decide to wake up. Blinds.com has spent 30 years making it easy to find the perfect fit with over 25 million windows covered.

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5:39Lillie Taylor, welcome to the show. Hey, glad to be here. Glad to have you here. I know you've told this story before, but can you briefly recount how you first got interested in slash obsessed with birds? I always knew they were there, but I hadn't noticed them. and that happened when I kind of took a break from work about 15 years ago and I went upstate. It was very quiet. I started to become aware of things that were going on out there. It's a lot like what happened to people during COVID. I just had it 15 years earlier when things got kind of quiet and that's when I realized that these things with wings actually had real life things happening and they were real.

6:24And that's when I start to notice birds. And I mean, I notice birds to a certain extent. I live in the, my wife doesn't like when I call it the suburbs. She says we're in the country, but it's the suburbs. There are a lot of birds. I notice them ambiently, but I haven't been sucked in the way you have. So I'm just curious, like what drew you in so powerfully once you started to notice them? That's a good point. Yeah. It's like, what is that difference with noticing? What are the levels of noticing. Why did I go a little bit further in? I think, well, probably because I have had trouble meditating.

7:00And I have found that by listening, birds help me listen. Birds help me focus on something outside of myself. And it's worked for me. I've been able to find moments of peace and connect with something bigger through observing the bird. And that's, I think, why I went a little further out of desperation, probably. You were having trouble finding a contemplative or spiritual practice and the birds turned out to be it. They were like a gateway into that. Yeah, a gateway. And I think they're a great gateway in general because I think that maybe not in your case, But a lot of times they can be a gateway in that if you start to notice them, they can bring you into something that you might like, like clouds, like insects, trees, because they're involved with everything.

7:57So they'll bring you into most things in the natural world. So if they're not your jam, just try it out and they may bring you somewhere else. And if you don't get anything, you don't have to look. No, I want to be clear. I probably wasn't clear. I'm not saying birds aren't my jam. I think this conversation may end up turning them into my jam. It's more that I've noticed them, but never really gone deep. You've raised a lot of big questions about getting out of yourself, and I want to get into that quickly and soon, but I want to stay with the specifics of birds for a little while, at least. There's this term, a spark bird, the bird that does it for you and gets you sucked into birding.

8:38Did you have one of those? No, I didn't. I opened the book saying, you know, there's a term in the birding world called a spark bird and I don't have one. And I wish I did because obviously right now would be a perfect example of how that's just an easy little thing to go to. And I don't have one. And that's kind of a lot of my story is like, I'll stay with birds. Sorry, I keep going off into deeper things, but no, that's fine. I'm sorry. No, no apologies. I have to stay simple. Don't stay simple. Do whatever. Do you. Okay. My path, I don't use that word much, but has not a lot of white light experiences.

9:15It's more like, I guess, the kind of garden variety, as they say, or the non-exciting or gradual, very gradual. And so the bird thing happened for me. I mean, I think there was a moment where I heard a bird in a specific way. It was a blue jay. It was really loud. And so it caught my attention. I finally was like, what is going on? Oh, I see. There's this, okay, what's happening? And that's when it's sort of something happened where I was like, wait, you're, you're not just like generally squawking. There's actually something behind that noise. There's like meaning there. Wow. You're a bird. And so I had a little, I used to say,

10:01So that was kind of a moment, not a spark moment, but it was a maybe consciousness moment. So when you started to look at birds, what did you see or hear that got you interested? Was it deciphering the various calls? Was it distinguishing among the various types of birds? What sent you down the rabbit hole? I started to decipher the sounds, and they became specific. And from there, I started to stay longer than I wanted to stay past that uncomfortable moment. I found that when I stayed, I saw the story. There was always a story if I stayed. For instance, I discovered the house sparrow, that little brown bird that we see all over the place, like pigeons and house sparrows, I found that when it was atop this fence post and chirping, that chirp was actually its call for an attack.

11:02And that's when I realized that sweet chirping, oh, those birds are so sweet. Oh my gosh, they're tweedling. And no, actually, that chirp was actually, I think it's called the chirp of death, actually. in the... That's an example, for instance. Or a blue jay making a lot of sound. In fact, just the other day, the blue jays were making a lot of sound. They have a bad reputation, blue jays. They take a lot of bird seed or they bully, but they're also known as the alarm call in the bird world. Sure enough, in Brooklyn, I heard in my backyard, the blue jays, I went, stayed longer than I wanted to, and then I found the Cooper's hawk.

11:42and it was very quiet out there besides the Blue Jays. Very quiet. When I looked outside this morning, it was like as if it was a ghost town out there, tumbleweeds and stuff. It's because the Cooper Hawk's around. I couldn't find him, but he's around. So it's like you've tuned into this whole soap opera that's surrounding us all the time that most of us are just missing. There's all this good plot happening. And we're ignoring it. Yeah, and I guess ignoring almost feels a little too, I don't want to say like ignoring, but I guess in a way it is, but it could also be just not realizing. The hope is that once we start kind of going into that world, that parallel universe, that it's always there.

12:26And that's what I realized when my little sabbatical was over, that I realized that I could tap into that power of basically survival, not even a desire to live, but it's the will to live, which I need sometimes. Not that I'm always wanting to die or something like that. It's not like that. But sometimes I just need a little oomph, a little bit of a, yeah, that's why I'm here. You know, that kind of thing. Wait, unpack that a little bit. So paying attention to the drama of the birds, this kind of like secret society that's all around us that we are missing out on, somehow reinforced what at times can for you be a sort of nascent will to live, but dormant?

13:10Yeah. Like for instance, one of the things that I do is I go up to the top of the Empire State Building at nighttime in the spring when the winds are from the south because birds from in the spring are traveling from the south to the north and they're traveling to make life basically to breed. They face many obstacles as they come deaf. A lot of them die. They don't make it. Anyway, when I'm on the top of that Empire State Building and the birds are very close to me, almost like I could maybe touch them if I was taller with my hand, you know? Seeing that energy to looking straight ahead, going to make life.

13:52If I recognize that, I must have that inside of me too. Or I wouldn't know it. I wouldn't know it and I wouldn't be so moved by it. There's a saying that I say a lot in the book that I say almost every day is no contempt prior to investigation. And I think that's the thing is that what birds help me with is for some reason I have contempt prior to investigation and I don't know why. I don't know why I say no a lot. I probably out of fear. I don't know why. Why do I say no? What am I so afraid of? What do I think is going to happen if I jump into this experience? And birds sort of just have helped me say yes.

14:33Well, okay. You see two things there that I want to follow up on. The first about this kind of will to live thing, and then about contemporary investigation. So on the will to live thing, this is me attempting to make an empathic leap into your mind, but it's mostly just going to be projection on my part. Many of us kind of trudge through life at times where we're just like checking shit off of our to-do list and it can feel a little rote, a little lifeless. Something for you about tuning into the life of birds can jar you out of that rut. Am I close? Yeah, you're close. It even unfortunately goes a level deeper into what's the point.

15:18Sometimes I wrestle with that. I was just wrestling it with the other day. There's a voice that could come in and say, like, who cares? When I say, oh, yes, I'm curious about, this is in my mind. Like, I want to figure out this thing. Why? Okay. It's like having a friend that's not very nice or something inside. That's just kind of like, so? And that's just something I've wrestled with for years, I guess that's the contempt. I don't understand why I have that, but I've been able to find ways to not let that get in the way of me having a nice life. Right. I'm just trying to figure out exactly what it is about the birds that counterprogram so powerfully against your inner nihilist.

16:07It's just like their will to live. They're not having any existential crises beyond, am I going to get fucking food? Am I going to be able to mate and get my DNA into the next species? And there's something about the simplicity and power and urgency of that, that puts some duct tape over the mouth of your inner nihilist. Yes. But also I think what it does is when I'm out there and I am in that parallel universe, I'm seeing all the things that are happening out, even in my yard in Brooklyn, I'm seeing the bird that ate the seed from the flower that I planted that then pooped out that seed next door and I'm seeing another flower grow and I'm seeing the babies of that bird, that morning dove that, in fact, on my windowsill, one of the juveniles is on my windowsill about to take off.

17:03Maybe he'll or she will take off today. But what that does for me is it makes me feel a part of something bigger. And so I don't feel as alone. I feel a part of something. And I think that's where that nihilism or that who cares, that's where that aspect is almost like as if it's not a part of anything. Birds help me feel a part of the whole thing. You quote E.E. Cummings, the writer who has smushed a bunch of words, three words into one word, and he makes it this neologism or whatever, more than me. Correct. More than me. Yeah. It's more than me. Yeah. I mean, look, I love that I named my corporation.

17:49I mean, you know, we have to have these corporation things. I don't even know what I was like. Well, I guess I'll name it more than me. you know? And I think that's one of my things is just maybe I've got a deficit of not feeling a connection to something. And so I have to kind of practice it every day. You know what I mean? To feel a part of. Somebody asked me yesterday and I didn't, I get these lists of questions that people submit to me before I do live streams. Yeah. One of the questions was something about hopelessness. I was rushing, so I didn't have time to really think it through, but this is, If you're answering the question, more than me is the answer to hopelessness, or at least an answer to hopelessness.

18:30I think so. I think that when we can connect to something bigger, even through people or just something that's bigger than us, I think you've got a pretty good chance of feeling a little better.

18:46Coming up, more with Lily Taylor.

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19:32On Rho, I've gone from struggling to run a mile to running farther every day. You can access FDA-approved GLP-1s online. Get the support you need to reach your weight loss goals. Go to Rho.co slash weight to see if you qualify. I'm a paid Rho partner. 20 % average weight loss in one year in non-diabetics with obesity or overweight. with a weight-related medical condition versus 3.1 % in placebo arm. Rx only. To stay informed about serious side effects, go to roe.co.safety. If you're up for it, a little bit more education for me personally about the basics of birds. You said something that I've heard said before.

20:05You say this in the book and in the introduction, and I had heard this said before, but I still don't really understand it, that birds are basically flying dinosaurs. Yes, right. Do you want some clarification there or what the hell's going on? Yes, please. Yes, that's what's kind of cool is birds. They discovered that birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs. They are living dinosaurs. Have you seen some of those pictures of dinosaurs with feathers? Maybe, but I forgot it. Okay, so yeah, they were able to figure out how to test or recreate. Oh boy, this is where I wish I was a scientist.

20:47But basically, they were able to find that dinosaurs not only had a lot of color, but they had feathers. Feathers. Boy, talk about feeling a part of something, Jesus. It's like, oh boy, yeah, it's not just now. The earth has been here for a long time, ebbs and flows. And boy, do I need this now at this particular moment. I just need to read a lot more history right now. That's helping me deal with this moment of this time is history. Yes, definitely history in terms of hopelessness. History really helps me to view all of the noxious events in the news with some perspective and context. But back to the nihilism, because I have that too occasionally where.

21:34Just to step back for a second at New Year's 2025, I interviewed an amazing Dharma teacher named Vinnie Ferraro, who encouraged me to do something. that I had heard about a million times but never actually done, which is that in the Buddhist tradition, there's something called the five daily remembrances. The Buddha recommended that you call these to mind first thing in the morning and right before you go to bed, I believe. And they are, my body is going to get old. My body is going to get sick. My body's going to die. Someday I'm going to lose everything and everybody I hold dear. The only real possessions I have are my actions.

22:12So I've been doing this really consistently. The point is not for it to lead to some nihilism. And I know that. And but there are moments of like, well, why the fuck would I do X? I'm going to die anyway. Yeah. So I'm just curious for you, like as somebody for whom this nihilistic streak is quite prominent and salient, what is it exactly about realizing part of this long flow of events, these little feathered creatures in front of me are the descendants of dinosaur who roamed the earth tens of thousands of years ago. How does that get you to do X? Yeah, very good question. And this is great too, because it really makes you distill or makes me having to distill and articulate of belief.

22:59I think what it does is it brings me into today. you know it's like that great not sanskrit it's uh what is it look to this day uh for it is life the very life of life in its brief course lies all the verities of existence the pains of existence the pains of something so look to this day for it is life the very life of life and i think that what you just described the connecting back and feeling a part of helps me look to this day and for its life and to just stay here today. And that's all I have to worry about and not get overwhelmed with tomorrow. Because like, why am I here? Like, I'm not just here to trudge.

23:46I hope not. I mean, I would like to make it more than trudging. I would like to have more meaningful experiences. And I can do something about that. And it is up to me. to make the meaning because the meaning isn't going to make it for me. I have to do it. And that's up to me. And then why else am I here? And I think a lot about my deathbed to help me think about how to be more now. What are some things I want to feel like before I've died? And I do want to feel like I gave it my all. I think that's exactly it. The five daily remembrances or just thinking about death, generally nihilism would be a pitfall in that particular path of wrong turn.

24:34It's really about introducing urgency and vividness into the right now to counter program against our deeply wired tendency to trudge. And I think about it for myself. It's like I've got limited heartbeats. How do I want to spend this time? And I want to be doing things that are meaningful to me. And the meaning comes from the interconnection. That's right. I'm not like wearing a hair shirt and saying I should never meet my own needs, but my needs are like in this web of everybody else's needs. And like, there is the truth of enlightened self-interest. I meet my own needs by being useful to other people.

25:16And so birds or whatever it is that floats your boat gets you into that space and out of what's the next thing on my to-do list. That's right. Exactly. And there is beliefs that focusing on something outside yourself that's maybe bigger than you, I don't know what that means exactly, but that's got something more going on, can create a feeling of something. Sometimes awe, ideally. Yeah. You know. Well, let's talk about awe because awe is really important and powerful. Just a note to the listeners, we've done not a few episodes on awe. And so I'll drop some links in the show notes. The kind of preeminent expert on awe is this guy, Dacher Keltner, with whom I've done a bunch of interviews.

26:04So I will drop some links to Dacher in the show notes. But anyway, back to you, Lily. There's a term that you talk about in the book, biophilia. Can you say more about that? Yeah. E.L. Wilson came up with that. It was a theory he came up with. And the great entomologist, a lot of breakthroughs with ants. He believed that we are hardwired to respond to the natural world and that all that's needed is for it to get activated. All the wiring is there ready to go. And that's his theory. And so that's the good news. I see that over and over. I find this thing I like to do, or I don't like to do, what am I talking?