The Parables That Stick With Us

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0:28Heidi Grant:unfortunately our cleaning fairies are on strike right now what fresh hell laughing in the face of motherhood this changes everything no it doesn't with margaret ables and amy wilson it's a biological imperative a podcast that solves today's parenting dilemmas so you don't have to your boat has been bumped there was a hamburger in your bed

0:57Hey, everybody. Welcome to What Fresh Hell? Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. This is Amy.

1:01Heidi Grant:And this is Margaret. And before I even tell you what this episode is about, I'm going in. I'm going straight to Mailbag, Amy. I'm doing it. Mailbag. Wow. I'm changing it up. It's new you. New me. Not a new year, but a new me. No, almost. Almost. I'm starting early this year. Today's mailbag is actually a review for the podcast that was left on Apple Podcasts. And it says, I'm an older mom with two teenage boys and our house is generally cluttered and people are always coming and going. I don't have many friends, but Margaret and Amy remind me I'm not alone on this journey. They always share relatable stories and interesting guests that will answer all your questions.

1:44Heidi Grant:They bring peace to my chaos by laughing at my mistakes. Thanks. Thank you so much for all your time and stories. My life was dull until I found y 'all. Oh, that is so nice. And that is from Hospital Wife. Thank you so much for the review. If you'd like to review our podcast, we are a whisper away from a thousand reviews. Don't tell us why that's important, but it is. It's totally important. It opens the portal to the next parenting generation. So use your power carefully, but go ahead and do it. Amy, today we are talking about parables. Okay. Otherwise, no. Do you know the term epilogue? Not epilogue like the last part of a book, but an epilogue.

2:27Heidi Grant:No, an epilogue. No? It's a brief fable or allegorical story with pointed or exaggerated details meant to serve as a pleasant vehicle for a moral doctrine or convey a useful lesson without stating it explicitly. I mean, it uses the words fable and allegory, which I would, if you've told me to come up with synonyms for parable, I would say those two. And now I'll also say epilogue. They're basically famous stories that have a very clear and pointed lesson about them. A lot of these are ones that we sometimes reference on the show in shorthand. And I thought it would be fun to dive into these parables a little bit more and talk a little bit more in depth about what we get from it.

3:11Heidi Grant:This is one that has been going around, I think, TikTok and other places. And I saw it. This one I had never heard about before, and I really liked it. Do you know the parable or the epilogue of the empty boat? I do not. Hit me. Okay. The empty boat mindset is a metaphor for responding to life's frustrations without taking them personally, which is something that we have talked about. Sure. The concept stemming from a story where a person gets angry when a boat crashes into theirs. It suggests that the anger disappears when the person in the boat realizes that the boat that hit them was empty and drifting aimlessly.

3:56Heidi Grant:The empty boat mindset encourages people to question whether an obstacle is a personal attack or simply a random event, which can lead to peace, understanding, and a release from unnecessary anger. So the basic story is like a man is in a boat and a boat hits him, how angry he is. And then he realizes there's nobody in the boat and he feels not angry anymore. He feels the boat crashed into him and he's like, what kind of idiot am I being targeted? Who would do this to me? Why would they do this to me? Why would somebody attack me like this? As he turns around and he realizes there's no one in the boat and the boat was just adrift, his reaction is, oh, this was just an accident I can move on from.

4:41Heidi Grant:This was just like a random boat that hit me. I have heard a version of this before, like in a children's book, maybe that it's basically old man yelling at clouds that like, who's waking me up? Who's disturbing my sleep? And it's branches against the window and like this whole time you've been mad at a tree about misplaced anger. I'm here for it. What are we learning from this parable? I think there's a ton. My husband often uses the phrase and he really does live his life this way. Never assume malice when anything could be attributed to ignorance or not noticing that he's very big on the idea of like, I didn't hear about the school fundraiser because Jeannie from the PTA has it in for me and she conspired with Susan and Jan and they all decided.

5:29Heidi Grant:And that in fact, it is much more likely that someone mistyped your email address. I think that you don't always have to be like the boat is empty because sometimes people are running an agenda specifically to hurt and annoy you. But I think it is always worth asking in any given situation, is it possible the boat is empty? Is it possible this is just something that happened and not a grand conspiracy where people are delighting and making my life hell? It seems to me like there's times when the boat really is empty, like there's traffic on the airport and you might miss your flight, right? That's an empty boat moment.

6:05Like there's traffic because there is. Nobody's making a decision. Right. And you can get pretty mad in those moments And that's it is an empty boat. And then you can walk it out further to be this moment that I was excluded from this. There is a sentient being involved, but it still doesn't mean that there was a conscious decision made to hurt me. Like, is there any part of this where the person driving that other boat was talking to their friend? You know what I'm saying? Like there is somebody there, but it still has the same non-intentional energy.

6:36Heidi Grant:The writer of this piece, which is from secularbuddhism.com, and we'll link to it in the show notes, says the core idea is simple. Much of our suffering doesn't come from what happens to us. It comes from the meaning we attach to what happens. You sometimes talk about this as the second arrow or the pain is in the gap, like that the idea I'm doing it right now with college applications. Right. And I am attaching to college applications several gigantic ideas. Number one, did I do a good enough job as a parent that my kid deserves to go to college and that other people will see that my kid deserves to go to college?

7:16Heidi Grant:Then there's, did I do a good enough job that my kid is going to go to a quote unquote better school than my nemesis Susie's kid? This is not real, by the way. It's the many things that I am attaching to getting into college that are making this experience more painful than it needs to be. I'm thinking about this boat and I hadn't thought about this until now, but there's also this feeling of like right now I'm in the place with the college applications where you have to log into each school and make, oh, it still has a red X next to first quarter grades. And should you go back to the school? My daughter's like, no, no, no, they got it.

7:51But do they? You know, that whole kind of thing. It's more like I've pushed the boat out from shore. My daughter's not even in it. This is like her college applications have been sent. The boat is floating and it's supposed to get somewhere and you are no longer in charge of this boat. And I'm having trouble with that part of it. You can't tack it where it's going. It's empty boat. We will float where it floats.

8:11Heidi Grant:Yeah, he says in the description, it's an invitation to practice compassion, curiosity and non-attachment in moments of tension. It's the idea of I don't have control over the other boats. Like, I just have to practice the idea that things happen randomly sometimes. And that is a concept that none of us are particularly comfortable with. I like this. There's a practice that they recommend. It says, as you go about your week, notice when you feel bumped. It's really more that than like, is the boat empty or not? Whatever. The problem is like, hey, I just got bumped. That's the moment to query, right?

8:44Yes. I'm mad. Okay. Why are you mad? What story are you telling yourself? Is it an empty boat that bumped you? what part of this reaction is maybe silly and maybe just a choice.

8:56Heidi Grant:That's right. He finishes by saying not every bump needs to become a battle. And I think that's my takeaway from it. The bump becomes a battle because of your reaction to the bump. And we got to watch that. All right. The next one we're going to talk about is called The Wolf. I'm going to read you the parable, children, and then we'll talk about it. A young boy came to his grandfather filled with anger at another boy who had done him an injustice. His boat got bumped. The old grandfather says, let me tell you a story. I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much with no sorrow for what they do.

9:27But hate wears you down. And hate does not hurt your enemy. Hate is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. It is as if there were two wolves inside you. One wolf is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him. He will only fight when it is right to do so. But the other wolf is full of anger. The littlest thing will send him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone all the time for no reason. He cannot even think because his anger and his hate are so great. Sometimes it is hard to live with these two wolves inside you because both wolves will try to dominate you.

10:04The boy looks into his grandfather's eyes and asks, which wolf will win, grandfather? The grandfather smiles at his grandson and says, the wolf that will win is the one that I feed. So you've heard this story before.

10:17Heidi Grant:I haven't. Oh, you haven't. No, I enjoyed this story. Oh, this is such a famous one. I feel like this is something I talk to my kids about all the time. Like, which wolf are you feeding right now? And we all feed the wrong wolf sometimes, right? We all have periods where it's like Gollum stroking my precious, just being like, oh, it feels so good. I've had times where it's like my birthday and I kind of start to realize my husband's going to screw it up. And rather than be like, hey, it's my birthday, I like settle into the righteous rage of it. And I'm like, oh, it's almost going to feel so good when he forgets.

10:55Heidi Grant:And I scream at him and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, like there are so many examples of us feeding the wrong wolf. Well, the negativity bias that we have talked about means that you collect evidence. Your brain collects evidence. See, I was right for the thing you choose. and all of our brains for completely primitive caveman reasons choose negativity. Choose what if I'm in danger? Choose what if there's not enough food for everyone? Choose what if it isn't safe here? Like that's a safer way to survive. The idea being you want to remember which bush has poison berries on it more than you want to remember like the bushes that are fine, that it's important biologically.

11:34Heidi Grant:It's a biological imperative. The idea being that you have to remember the bad things because that's what keeps you safe. You pay more attention to them. Yeah. Yeah. But then you're feeding the wolf, the wrong wolf. At that point, you're definitely feeding the anxiety wolf, right? Like everybody's after me. I remember we had Tiffany Jenkins on and she was talking about her anxiety and that her internal world was basically like the Terminator brain. Like everywhere she went was like, there's water over there. What if one of the kids like ran and dove into it. She was over scanning for potential dangers everywhere they went.

12:11Heidi Grant:And I think that's where you can say to yourself, I'm overfeeding my anxiety wolf. I need to figure out how to feed the parts of myself that are telling myself a better story than this. And, you know, I just want to say, if you're struggling with anxiety, it doesn't mean that you're a less evolved person than somebody who doesn't struggle with anxiety. Some people leave you, right? Some people just can feed that happy wolf more easily. And some people have lesser tonin or more dopamine and their other wolf is going. But this, this sort of mindset reset is always available. And what is it like to feed your wolf?

12:49Heidi Grant:That's a good thing to do an inventory. Does it look like sitting down with girlfriends and talking about how bad everybody else is, which ups your anxiety about people talking about you? Or is it always assuming that your husband is going to do the stupidest thing, you know, rather than giving him the benefit of the doubt? Or is it seeing your kids as they are a problem in my life versus they're having a problem that I can help them with? So I think it's both important to feed the right wolf, but to do that, you got to back up and be like, how am I feeding which of the wolves in my life? All right.

13:26Makes sense to me. Let's take a break. When we come back, more parables. After an afternoon at the pool, my mom's skin needs a hydration reset. The perfect solution? Osea's Undaria Algae Body Oil. It has an amazing citrus scent and a non-greasy texture, so my skin feels silky smooth and stays that way. Osea is clean, clinically tested skincare

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17:12Heidi Grant:That's R-U-L-A dot com slash WFH. So I included the farmer, which you've talked about a lot on this, but it's the version of it that I feel like we've referenced this, but now we're going to dig in on it. It's the story of the farmer. Amy, why don't you read starting at a farmer and his son? This is an old Chinese proverb. A farmer and his son had a beloved stallion who helped the family earn a living. One day the horse ran away and their neighbors exclaimed, your horse ran away. What terrible luck. And the farmer replied, maybe so, maybe not. We'll see. A few days later, the horse returned home, leading with him a few wild mares as well.

17:52And the neighbors came over to say, oh my gosh, your horse has returned and brought these other horses. This is beautiful. What great luck. And the farmer replied, maybe so, maybe not. We'll see. Later that week, the farmer's son was trying to break one of the mares and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The villagers came over and said, oh, no, it's so horrible. Your son broke his leg with terrible luck. The farmer replied, maybe so, maybe not. We'll see. A few weeks later, soldiers from the National Army marched through town recruiting all the able-bodied young men for the army. The farmer's son, because he was still recovering from his injury, was not conscripted.

18:30The neighbors shouted, your boy is spared. What tremendous luck. To which the farmer replied, maybe so, maybe not. We'll see. So the moral of this story is that very few events can be judged as truly good or bad or lucky or unlucky, no matter how they seem in the moment. Only time will tell the whole story. and so all too often we apply meaning to something immediately and I guess the more evolved thing is not to pass judgment on what is happening and not to get sucked into this being the terrible thing and feeding that wolf.

19:06Heidi Grant:Yeah I don't think there's a version that is evolved and unevolved it's just that the lesson of the story is that it's very hard to know if things are good or bad in the moment. That's the only lesson. And I grew up with a father who said the phrase, never judge a crossroads a thousand times, a hundred thousand times. And looking back on life, I understand a lot more what he was saying. I think it's very hard to give this advice. And I'm wary of giving it to my kids because it's very easy to see with little kids like, oh, I'm engaged to Jenny at the lunch recess when they're in kindergarten. Oh, Jenny doesn't want to be my friend anymore.

19:46Heidi Grant:this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And you're kind of laughing because you're like, you're not even going to remember Jenny's name in two years. This is not the worst thing that's ever happened to you. But as we get older, I think we see much more clearly that life takes many twists and turns. And sometimes you think, I mean, I can think of us, Amy, certain things we wanted to have happen with the podcast. And we thought, this is going to be the thing that makes the podcast successful, especially in the beginning. And that those things didn't happen. and the other things that have been turned out to be much better.

20:19Or this one award or this one thing is going to change the trajectory of the podcast or my acting career or whatever it is. And then that doesn't happen either. Right. Yeah. This changes everything. No, it doesn't. It doesn't do anything. I think about this all the time and I've been applying it to my own life. And with a lot of success, I do think it is something you can't tell somebody else. You know what I mean? Well, who knows? You just have to think this for yourself. You can't tell somebody else to think that, especially when something unfortunate has just happened to them. But I think you can apply it to yourself and learn a lot from it.

20:50And certainly looking back, yeah, on like things that happened to me or to my kids or to my nieces and nephews, like they didn't get into the college they thought they really wanted to go to. That was a disappointment. Now, nine months later, it's like, I can't believe I ever thought I was supposed to go somewhere else. It's easy to see for their people, harder to apply to yourself, but I think you can only apply it to yourself and it does work.

21:13Heidi Grant:Yeah, and I think that a lot of these stories are based around the bump that we keep talking about. The bump happens and it's like, we don't even know if this was a good bump or a bad bump. So like, who knows who was in the boat or not in the boat? Yeah, it's not I don't care that I was bumped or whatever. It's like this thing has happened. It's okay to feel sad about it. It's not you never feel disappointment. It's be curious about the part of the story that you don't know yet. There's another parable. I don't even know if this is on our list for today about the elephant. There's, you know, a bunch of people who are blindfolded touching an elephant.

21:46And this one's like, no, no, it is very long with like a hair at the end is touching the tail. And somebody's like, no, no, no, no. It's very floppy because they're touching the ears. and everybody is right and nobody is wrong, even though nobody's agreeing because they're all touching different parts of the elephant.