Making Sense - Sam Harris - March 07, 2021


#240 — The Boundaries of Self


Episode Stats

Length

43 minutes

Words per Minute

127.05426

Word Count

5,569

Sentence Count

271

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

David White is a poet, writer, and philosopher. He is the author of Consolations: The Soulless, Nourishing, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, a book that explores the power of words and their meaning in everyday life. In this episode, he talks about how he became interested in words, how he came to write about them, and why he decided to write a book about them. He also talks about his work as a philosopher, and how he uses words to make sense of the world around him. He's also a good friend of mine, and I'm delighted to have him on the podcast to talk about all of this and much more. I hope you enjoy this episode of the podcast, and if you do, please consider becoming a supporter of what we're doing here. As always, I never want money to be the reason why someone can't get access to the podcast. If you can't afford a subscription, there's an option at Samharris.org to request a free account, and we grant 100% of those requests, no questions asked. No questions asked, and 100% without a penny to be asked. We don't run ads. Thanks for supporting the podcast - we do not run ads, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers, we're made possible by you, the listener. - Sam Harris. Thank you, Sam Harris, I really do appreciate what you do for me. Sincerely, - your support is making me a good thing. - I never wants money, I can t help it, I want you to be a good person. - Eternally grateful, I love you, I appreciate you, too much, I do, I'm grateful you. - Your support is so much, thank you, you're making me, I get a good day, I'll make me a better, I know you're a good one, I understand me, you really do that, I think you're good, I care about me, that's a good girl, I like that I can help me, etc., etc., I'm a good guy, etc. - and I'll send you a nice girl, good day. - MRS. - Thank you. XOXOXOXO, Sarah M. White, Sarah, P. et al. - Sam, Sarah's Note: This is a very special thanks to you, Sarah White


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.
00:00:08.860 This is Sam Harris.
00:00:10.900 Just a note to say that if you're hearing this,
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00:00:24.180 There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcatcher,
00:00:27.580 along with other subscriber-only content.
00:00:30.300 We don't run ads on the podcast,
00:00:32.400 and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers.
00:00:35.920 So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.
00:00:39.420 As always, I never want money to be the reason why someone can't get access to the podcast.
00:00:43.880 So if you can't afford a subscription,
00:00:45.800 there's an option at samharris.org to request a free account.
00:00:49.060 And we grant 100% of those requests.
00:00:51.480 No questions asked.
00:00:52.280 I am back with David White.
00:01:01.840 David, thanks for joining me.
00:01:03.860 It's a pleasure.
00:01:04.380 So we already have a series of your poetry in the Waking Up app,
00:01:09.640 which people have absolutely loved.
00:01:12.060 And now you are coming back with yet more work,
00:01:16.680 which is derived from your book,
00:01:19.760 Consolations,
00:01:20.800 the soulless, nourishment, and underlying meaning of everyday words,
00:01:24.800 which is a book I absolutely love.
00:01:26.700 You've given us readings from that book and some marginalia,
00:01:32.360 and these are just fantastic pieces of audio.
00:01:35.880 So what I wanted to do here is have a conversation around a few of them.
00:01:40.880 I thought we would drop in your sections on friendship, honesty, ambition, and alone,
00:01:49.160 and we could just have a brief conversation about each.
00:01:53.460 But perhaps before we jump in,
00:01:56.820 what was your inspiration for this book?
00:01:59.040 Because it's really just a great formula for you,
00:02:02.720 as a student of the power of language,
00:02:05.060 to just drill down on the significance of specific words here.
00:02:08.660 It's the perfect use of your talents as a poet to bring us this kind of prose.
00:02:13.940 Lovely.
00:02:14.740 You're very kind.
00:02:15.420 I think there were two forms of insight, in a way.
00:02:21.760 I was in Paris, actually,
00:02:24.100 and I was speaking to my assistant on the phone.
00:02:28.920 My colleague, Julie Quiring, has been with me for years,
00:02:33.260 and she was quite excited that I had been invited
00:02:38.160 to write a little philosophical piece for the Observer magazine in England.
00:02:42.480 And the Observer magazine goes out to millions of people on Sunday morning,
00:02:48.160 so it was a lovely, lovely way of getting a lot of listening ears to my work.
00:02:55.780 But then she sounded a little hesitant, and I said,
00:02:59.040 what's the hesitancy?
00:03:00.620 She said, it can't be any longer than 300 words.
00:03:04.720 And I said to myself, you know, I'm half Irish, so half English.
00:03:10.960 The Irish side of me said, it's hardly time to take your breath.
00:03:13.800 You know, never mind.
00:03:15.740 Accomplish anything that would give anyone any insight,
00:03:18.680 unless you're actually writing poetry.
00:03:21.020 And so I can't remember how we finished the phone call,
00:03:24.720 but I remember clicking it off quite firmly,
00:03:27.660 as if to say, well, I don't think I'm going to do that.
00:03:31.100 And anyway, I walked around Paris all day,
00:03:34.680 and then I ended up in a restaurant by myself.
00:03:37.160 And I sat down, and I said to myself,
00:03:41.360 what if you could write what you needed to write in 300 words?
00:03:48.060 The other specification was that it had to be a single-word title,
00:03:51.840 which I didn't mind, you know.
00:03:54.000 I said, what would you write about?
00:03:56.100 And so I asked the, I remember asking the waiter
00:04:03.580 if he had any stationery, and they did, actually being French.
00:04:09.220 So he brought out some stationery, and I started writing,
00:04:14.520 and I wrote at the top of the page, regret.
00:04:16.500 And I realized immediately how orphaned that word was
00:04:23.500 and how unfashionable it had become
00:04:26.540 and how I was constantly meeting people who said they had no regrets
00:04:30.400 and how I was constantly asking myself,
00:04:34.560 where had they been all their life if they had no regrets?
00:04:38.200 But that really put me back into a stream of experience
00:04:45.320 that I had all my life around words,
00:04:48.360 where I always felt the adult world was using words
00:04:53.760 in a way that were abstracted away from the physical experience
00:05:01.260 of what the word meant.
00:05:04.160 You know, when you think of a child, when they first hear the word door,
00:05:09.260 it's not an abstract word that exists separate from their own bodies.
00:05:15.500 In that word is the actual physical experience of the door itself.
00:05:22.520 And I always felt this very, very strongly in my growing.
00:05:27.780 I grew up in a linguistic frontier, actually,
00:05:30.900 between Ireland and the north of England.
00:05:32.620 And the north of England is very different
00:05:36.080 than the received identity that we think of
00:05:39.440 when we think of Downton Abbey or we think of Jane Austen.
00:05:43.120 You know, that's southern England.
00:05:44.420 It's very hierarchical.
00:05:45.800 It's very distant socially.
00:05:47.840 And the north of England actually has more of a Scandinavian influence
00:05:52.620 from the Viking settlements that were there.
00:05:54.880 It's very egalitarian, and people are really, really straight with you.
00:05:59.240 And as they say in Yorkshire, they say nothing until they say everything
00:06:04.360 about you and your flaws and how you can put yourself right.
00:06:11.060 So I had that on one side of the house, you know,
00:06:14.500 with these Yorkshire earthy vowel sounds, you know,
00:06:19.640 very short sentences.
00:06:21.320 If a story is told, it's told exactly the same.
00:06:25.740 My Uncle Tom would say to my father, Jim,
00:06:29.240 tell that story about when you were driving up that hill towards Scarborough,
00:06:32.400 you got out at the top, you went into the pub,
00:06:34.340 this fellow said to you, and you said back to him.
00:06:37.120 And my dad would say, well, we were driving up this hill,
00:06:39.260 we stopped at the top of the hill, we went in the pub,
00:06:41.360 the fellow said to me, and I said.
00:06:42.580 And you were actually, it was a kind of a ritual reinvestigation of what had happened,
00:06:51.040 but you didn't expect it to be any different.
00:06:53.560 On the other side of the house was this very different lyrical use of language,
00:07:00.140 you know.
00:07:01.080 It was all Holy St. Mary and Joseph tonight,
00:07:03.800 the holy mortal shame of it and all the saints in heaven.
00:07:06.200 And it was, and, and a story was never told the same way.
00:07:11.580 My mother, I never heard my mother tell the same story.
00:07:15.580 I had about five parallel childhoods for her.
00:07:18.780 So I started to understand quite early that you could inhabit language in very,
00:07:27.860 very different ways.
00:07:28.900 And that language could live in your body in a way in which it could,
00:07:34.740 could open up different worlds to you.
00:07:38.260 And, you know, later on, I heard, or I read the great philosopher Wittgenstein,
00:07:44.500 you know, say, you cannot enter any world for which you do not have the language.
00:07:49.720 You cannot enter any world for which you do not have the language.
00:07:54.060 And so I felt like I was privileged living at this frontier and I could morph my accent.
00:08:00.400 I still do, actually.
00:08:01.260 It's quite disturbing to, to Irish people when, when I morph into Irish,
00:08:06.340 the Irish accent from my mother.
00:08:09.340 But it's entirely natural.
00:08:11.220 Yes.
00:08:11.600 And so I have three accents, which is a kind of, or four,
00:08:15.000 I received English from college, my Yorkshire dialect,
00:08:18.820 which is a full dialect actually.
00:08:20.280 And then Irish, the Irish accent.
00:08:24.720 And then my present kind of Americanized Yorkshire, Irish pronunciation.
00:08:31.060 So I've always been interested in language and the way that people learn words, actually.
00:08:40.560 If you learn the word door when you're learning French now, as an adult,
00:08:46.320 you learn it as an abstract.
00:08:47.540 You see the English word on one side, you see the French word on the other,
00:08:51.240 la porte, you know, and you don't have it in your physical body.
00:08:57.420 Well, many of us as adults learn words, you know, like regret, like alone,
00:09:04.260 in its deeper sense, you know, as abstracts.
00:09:07.280 And so the attempt of this book was to go back to the physical and etymological root of the word,
00:09:18.300 you know.
00:09:19.260 And the etymology of a word, of course, is, is its root in the past,
00:09:23.780 how it was first used, yeah.
00:09:25.760 And what it meant when it was first physically expressed,
00:09:30.820 almost as a surprise in the society or the language.
00:09:34.840 And so I felt there was tremendous solace in the way that words could be used from their,
00:09:45.820 their original meaning.
00:09:47.860 that regret could actually be a kind of faculty for living more positively into the future, actually.
00:09:56.500 With honest, deep regret, yeah, you might treat a grandson with more patience and time
00:10:05.000 than you did your own son, whose boyhood you might have missed
00:10:09.180 because of your own involvement in your growing life.
00:10:14.700 So regret as a frontier with the future.
00:10:18.740 And it's really actually quite remarkable to actually choose things out in your life
00:10:24.500 that you would regret deeply if you were ever a bully at school, even for just a moment,
00:10:30.580 you know, to choose out that moment and to see how it still lives in your body.
00:10:35.500 And it almost always puts you in a sphere of generosity towards anyone who is being bullied
00:10:47.400 around you at the moment, you know.
00:10:49.280 And in many ways, you start to look to redeem yourself from that moment.
00:10:56.020 So I found it, I found it very, very useful indeed to actually think of moments in my life
00:11:03.280 that I deeply regret and use them as a pair of eyes and ears for paying attention to my future.
00:11:14.800 Well, that's beautiful.
00:11:16.680 Well, so you, we've put your, your work in the practice section of waking up
00:11:23.100 instead of the theory section.
00:11:25.420 And this confuses a few people because there's often an assumption
00:11:29.320 that meditation practice requires silence or mostly silence or the spoken instruction
00:11:37.660 is meant to merely introduce the next chapter of silence.
00:11:44.040 But that really isn't the case, or at least it isn't the case with what I would consider to be real meditation.
00:11:50.020 And there's certainly a relationship between the power of words and the power of silence.
00:11:55.180 And so what I've recommended that people do is simply listen to your readings
00:12:01.500 in the same frame of mind in which they would meditate
00:12:05.840 and just let your thoughts replace their own,
00:12:08.740 which is what happens whenever we read or listen to someone read.
00:12:12.640 But it is possible to recognize the nature of mind just as clearly
00:12:18.360 while contemplating someone else's thoughts.
00:12:22.860 So it's really in that spirit that we offer these new readings in the app.
00:12:29.100 Well, I think you said that beautifully
00:12:30.480 because the object in meditation
00:12:35.240 and all of our contemplative disciplines is silence.
00:12:40.720 But really that silence is in order for you to perceive something other than yourself
00:12:45.900 or what you've arranged as yourself
00:12:48.760 to actually perceive this frontier between what you call a self
00:12:53.620 and what you call other than yourself,
00:12:56.540 whether that's a person or a landscape.
00:12:59.300 So one of the greatest arts of poetry is actually to create silence through attentive speech.
00:13:06.760 Speech that says something in such a way that it appears as a third frontier between you and the world
00:13:18.280 and invites you into a deeper and more generous sense of your own identity
00:13:26.220 and the identity of the world.
00:13:28.260 So I think poetry is the verbal art form by which we can actually create silence.
00:13:39.360 So with that as preamble,
00:13:41.420 let's launch into the first chapter here on friendship
00:13:46.700 and then we'll come back to discuss it.
00:13:51.720 Friendship.
00:13:52.640 Friendship is a mirror to presence and a testament to forgiveness.
00:14:02.260 Friendship not only helps us to see ourselves through another's eyes
00:14:07.060 but can be sustained over the years
00:14:09.060 only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses
00:14:14.100 as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn.
00:14:21.080 A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight.
00:14:28.820 A companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs
00:14:34.380 when we are under the strange illusion that we do not need them.
00:14:38.960 An undercurrent of real friendship is a blessing
00:14:57.660 exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again
00:15:06.160 through understanding and mercy.
00:15:10.560 All friendships of any length are based on a continued mutual forgiveness.
00:15:18.500 Without tolerance and mercy, all friendships die.
00:15:23.140 Without tolerance and mercy, all friendships die.
00:15:29.700 In the course of the years, a close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other
00:15:36.640 as much as ourselves.
00:15:38.960 To remain friends, we must know the other and their difficulties
00:15:42.260 and even their sins and encourage the best in them,
00:15:46.620 not through critique, but through addressing the better part of them,
00:15:51.680 the leading creative edge of their incarnation.
00:15:56.600 Thus, subtly discouraging what makes them smaller,
00:16:01.020 less generous, less of themselves.
00:16:04.300 Friendship is the great hidden transmuter of all relationships.
00:16:10.880 It can transform a troubled marriage,
00:16:13.680 make honorable a professional rivalry,
00:16:16.700 make sense of heartbreak and unrequited love,
00:16:21.680 and become the newly discovered ground for a mature parent-child relationship.
00:16:28.160 The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated
00:16:34.880 as a constant force in human life.
00:16:38.240 A diminishing circle of friends is the first terrible diagnostic
00:16:43.140 of a life in deep trouble, of overwork,
00:16:47.200 of too much emphasis on a professional identity,
00:16:50.360 of forgetting who will be there
00:16:53.020 when our armored personalities run into the inevitable natural disasters
00:16:59.900 and vulnerabilities found in even the most ordinary existence.
00:17:05.640 Friendship transcends disappearance.
00:17:11.660 An enduring friendship goes on after death,
00:17:14.960 the exchange only transmuted by absence,
00:17:18.620 the relationship advancing and maturing in a silent, internal, conversational way,
00:17:24.240 even after one half of the bond is passed on.
00:17:27.140 But no matter,
00:17:30.640 but no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend
00:17:34.420 or sustaining a long, close relationship with another,
00:17:39.020 the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement,
00:17:45.580 neither of the self nor of the other.
00:17:49.080 The ultimate touchstone of friendship is witness.
00:17:54.840 The privilege of having been seen by someone
00:17:59.300 and the equal privilege of being granted
00:18:02.660 the sight of the essence of another,
00:18:06.460 to have walked with them and to have believed in them,
00:18:09.780 and sometimes just to have accompanied them
00:18:14.380 for however brief a span on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
00:18:20.420 But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend
00:18:28.180 or sustaining a long, close relationship with another,
00:18:33.440 the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement,
00:18:38.320 neither of the self nor of the other.
00:18:41.120 The ultimate touchstone of friendship is witness.
00:18:45.780 The privilege of having been seen by someone
00:18:50.100 and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another,
00:18:55.360 to have walked with them and to have believed in them,
00:18:58.360 and sometimes just to have accompanied them
00:19:02.480 for however brief a span on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
00:19:08.620 Friendship was begun after waking from a very, very realistic dream,
00:19:17.200 a dream in which I'd been with a very, very close friend,
00:19:20.660 a friend who had passed away.
00:19:22.720 But in the dream he was alive again,
00:19:24.360 with all of the joy of discovering he was actually still alive.
00:19:27.420 And we were in a car, and it was an open-top car,
00:19:32.400 and we were driving across the Golden Gate Bridge, actually,
00:19:36.740 with the sun going down on one side, on the moon, on the other.
00:19:39.860 And we had our arms around each other's shoulders,
00:19:42.480 and we were laughing and telling jokes,
00:19:44.100 and we were also laughing about all the ways
00:19:47.320 that we had consciously or unconsciously insulted
00:19:52.000 and hurt each other over the years,
00:19:54.080 and how we'd been good enough to forgive each other.
00:19:58.140 And waking out of that dream, and the joy of that dream,
00:20:01.560 and the forgiveness of that dream,
00:20:03.500 brought me to understand something of the essence
00:20:08.020 of what it means to be a witness,
00:20:11.480 and a forgiving witness at that, for a good friend.
00:20:15.820 So, friendship.
00:20:18.460 I love this contemplation on friendship.
00:20:22.740 This is now, we're recording this at the,
00:20:25.720 what one hopes is the tail end of a global pandemic,
00:20:28.880 where many of us have spent a year being less social
00:20:32.660 than perhaps we've ever been in our lives.
00:20:36.520 So, you know, I feel keenly the importance of friendship
00:20:40.000 and how imperfectly I have maintained my own in this context.
00:20:47.100 And so, just one point you make here about the nature of friendship
00:20:53.420 is that it does function by a different dynamics
00:20:57.900 than any other relationship.
00:21:00.640 The companionship is, as you put it,
00:21:02.460 to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs.
00:21:05.840 The face of our lives that we show to a friend
00:21:08.820 is the face that we often busily conceal
00:21:13.140 in every other social encounter.
00:21:16.720 Friendship is characterized,
00:21:19.160 real friendship is characterized
00:21:20.800 by a total absence of pretense.
00:21:24.240 And that's an interesting boundary to discover.
00:21:27.600 And I guess we could just take a few moments
00:21:30.280 to reflect on what demarcates friendship
00:21:32.960 from other forms of acquaintance with people.
00:21:37.060 I mean, when does someone become a friend?
00:21:39.180 And how do you know that has actually been accomplished?
00:21:43.600 Yes, Montaigne, the great French essayist,
00:21:47.560 who really began the form for us, actually,
00:21:51.240 he said that real friendship is very, very rare,
00:21:55.980 partly because it comes to us in the same way
00:22:01.140 that a good marriage comes to us,
00:22:02.820 which is also very, very rare.
00:22:04.320 And a good marriage and a good friendship
00:22:07.200 is a product of our willingness
00:22:12.340 to be fully vulnerable,
00:22:14.940 but also to find the right person
00:22:18.140 with whom to be fully vulnerable.
00:22:21.880 And in marriage and in friendship,
00:22:25.060 and you can have a kind of friendship in marriage,
00:22:28.280 and you can have a form of marriage
00:22:30.160 in friendship, actually,
00:22:32.260 a kind of commitment over the years,
00:22:34.320 you find that the relationship advances
00:22:39.140 along the axis of your mutual vulnerability
00:22:42.780 rather than along the sense
00:22:47.560 of trying to impress through your powers
00:22:51.460 and your invulnerability.
00:22:54.800 And so the lovely thing about friendship
00:22:56.800 is that it's constantly asking us
00:23:01.180 to be forgiving both of the mistakes
00:23:05.440 we make ourselves in the friendship.
00:23:08.400 You will always say the wrong thing
00:23:10.560 at the wrong time to your friend over the years,
00:23:14.640 partly on purpose,
00:23:16.040 because you've meant to tell them
00:23:17.960 you couldn't quite do it,
00:23:19.580 but then out it comes one day.
00:23:21.700 And often they might go away for a while
00:23:27.120 and to lick their wounds,
00:23:31.100 but if the friendship is still alive,
00:23:33.820 if it is a friendship of years,
00:23:35.720 by definition, they have come back to you,
00:23:38.300 and they have forgiven you.
00:23:41.960 And you have then to forgive yourself
00:23:44.600 and you have to find a way
00:23:47.400 to actually include it in the conversation
00:23:49.360 at the same time.
00:23:51.380 So it's lovely the way that a long friendship
00:23:53.460 is based on mutual forgiveness
00:23:59.800 of one's sins towards each other.
00:24:03.760 And the other lovely thing about friendship
00:24:05.880 is that a good friend
00:24:10.140 looks at the best in you
00:24:13.460 and remembers what they were first drawn by
00:24:18.400 and what they were first impressed by
00:24:20.440 and knows you in your worst
00:24:24.580 when you're not living up to your possibilities
00:24:28.680 and encourages you in your very, very best.
00:24:35.520 There's nothing as good for your own sanity
00:24:39.380 when you're going through your own difficulties
00:24:41.220 and especially people who start to hate themselves
00:24:46.340 for various reasons.
00:24:48.120 To have a good friend
00:24:49.780 who sees you through different eyes,
00:24:52.680 who sees the leading edge of your maturation in a way
00:24:57.200 and through their eyes
00:25:00.800 brings your eyes to rest on it too.
00:25:04.100 So I've had a number of really, really close
00:25:07.460 male friends through my life.
00:25:09.280 I'm just at the stage in my life
00:25:11.060 where I now have really, really good female friends too.
00:25:15.180 But I have a good circle
00:25:18.580 of half a dozen friends around the world,
00:25:20.960 most of whom I spend time either in the mountains
00:25:23.740 or talking over literary and philosophical
00:25:25.920 or both matters, yeah.
00:25:29.120 And I have had two incredibly close friends,
00:25:32.900 one who's passed away,
00:25:34.920 with whom I strangely still have
00:25:38.080 a very, very powerful relationship.
00:25:41.320 You know, I began this little disquisition
00:25:43.920 talking about Montaigne,
00:25:46.420 who lived in the 1600s and late 1500s.
00:25:50.960 And he lost his close friend,
00:25:57.280 Etienne de la Boétie,
00:25:59.380 when they were both quite young.
00:26:01.740 But in many ways,
00:26:02.820 he kept up an intellectual and philosophical
00:26:05.340 and almost physical relationship with him
00:26:08.760 after his death.
00:26:11.060 And this is one of the remarkable things
00:26:13.480 about true friendship,
00:26:15.060 is that it does transcend disappearance.
00:26:17.440 It transcends mortality and death.
00:26:21.400 I often think that you have as many conversations
00:26:24.500 with the person you have lost,
00:26:26.360 who was close to you,
00:26:27.440 after they've gone,
00:26:29.220 as you had before they passed away.
00:26:33.940 And I often think in the case
00:26:35.660 of John O'Donohue,
00:26:38.700 who was a friend who I lost,
00:26:40.540 that I actually have the possibility
00:26:42.660 of winning arguments now
00:26:44.040 that I couldn't while he was still alive.
00:26:47.480 Because I can always have the last word
00:26:50.140 and shut off the dialogue.
00:26:52.180 But there's always a sense, actually,
00:26:55.420 in a really long and really loyal friendship
00:26:58.160 of mortality, actually,
00:27:01.140 that one of you will be gone before the other.
00:27:03.660 And there's a strange way,
00:27:08.120 especially with John,
00:27:10.980 who is also a speaker,
00:27:12.780 a remarkable speaker.
00:27:14.160 He was from the west of Ireland.
00:27:15.600 He was fluent in philosophical German.
00:27:17.580 He was fluent in Irish.
00:27:19.460 He had a bird of paradise vocabulary.
00:27:22.620 I often think that I begin a sentence
00:27:24.380 and then he ends it while I'm on stage,
00:27:28.140 you know,
00:27:28.420 or vice versa.
00:27:31.940 I'll remember something he said
00:27:33.460 and begin with that thought
00:27:35.140 and then carry it on myself.
00:27:38.320 So there's this amazing,
00:27:39.860 invisible,
00:27:42.260 and very physical sense of inheritance
00:27:45.800 from a heartfelt and powerful friendship.
00:27:51.700 That's beautiful.
00:27:52.680 Yeah, it's also interesting
00:27:55.720 the way friendship reveals the boundaries
00:27:59.220 of the self.
00:28:01.500 And, for instance,
00:28:03.320 one often finds it difficult
00:28:06.180 to be charitable to oneself.
00:28:08.460 And so much of our self-talk
00:28:09.880 is, frankly, poisonous.
00:28:12.620 And it's never the sort of thing
00:28:15.080 we would say to a friend.
00:28:17.060 And one way of correcting for this
00:28:19.500 is to just consciously imagine,
00:28:22.120 you know,
00:28:22.520 how you would treat your friend
00:28:23.900 in this circumstance
00:28:24.700 where you are currently
00:28:25.860 lacerating yourself
00:28:27.580 with self-judgment.
00:28:29.760 And a door to compassion
00:28:32.680 swings open effortlessly
00:28:35.180 once you put the lens of friendship
00:28:37.740 over it
00:28:38.520 rather than your default relationship
00:28:41.420 to yourself and your failings.
00:28:44.460 That's very well said.
00:28:45.900 And it's really interesting
00:28:47.020 to extend that thought
00:28:48.940 to how you speak to yourself.
00:28:52.120 And it's interesting
00:28:53.280 that most of the dialogue
00:28:55.400 we have with ourselves
00:28:56.440 in the mirror
00:28:57.580 is quite negative.
00:29:00.480 If you spoke to others
00:29:03.340 the way you spoke to yourself
00:29:04.520 in the mirror,
00:29:05.420 you would never have another friend
00:29:07.340 in your life.
00:29:07.780 You clear your calendar
00:29:08.920 rather quickly.
00:29:10.000 Exactly, yeah.
00:29:10.840 So it's really interesting.
00:29:12.580 You know,
00:29:12.700 we often think of meditation
00:29:14.160 as being purely silence
00:29:18.240 in order to make a friendship
00:29:20.040 with this deeper sense of self
00:29:22.240 and deeper sense of the world.
00:29:24.440 But it's really interesting
00:29:25.920 to think that you could actually
00:29:27.400 practice a conversation
00:29:30.040 with yourself
00:29:31.160 that helped you to mature
00:29:34.040 and helped in your own maturation.
00:29:37.260 that you could practice
00:29:39.560 holding a fruitful conversation
00:29:42.260 with yourself.
00:29:43.640 Yeah.
00:29:43.940 I think there was actually
00:29:44.980 one French philosopher
00:29:45.940 who defined a philosopher
00:29:47.260 as someone who could stand
00:29:48.360 on a railway station platform
00:29:50.380 waiting for the train
00:29:51.620 for an hour
00:29:52.120 and keep himself
00:29:54.080 fully engaged
00:29:55.060 with his own thoughts.
00:29:57.540 Yeah.
00:29:58.500 Well, the only way
00:29:59.400 you could do that
00:30:00.160 is if it was leading
00:30:01.220 towards larger
00:30:02.400 and larger understandings.
00:30:04.460 So to ask yourself
00:30:06.120 the beautiful question
00:30:07.380 and to be able
00:30:09.220 to follow those questions
00:30:10.580 and to extend
00:30:12.720 what we recognize
00:30:14.860 as self-compassion
00:30:16.220 and to find a verbal way
00:30:19.140 actually which is
00:30:20.060 I think maybe as good
00:30:21.960 a definition of poetry
00:30:23.100 as any.
00:30:24.620 The art of overhearing yourself
00:30:27.060 say things you didn't know
00:30:28.500 you knew
00:30:29.060 that you perhaps
00:30:30.560 to begin with
00:30:31.240 were actually afraid
00:30:32.620 to want to know
00:30:33.680 and that you
00:30:36.140 allow yourself
00:30:37.240 to understand.
00:30:39.660 So friendship
00:30:40.460 with another
00:30:41.000 always introduces us
00:30:42.480 to friendship
00:30:44.280 with the deeper
00:30:46.420 underlying phenomena
00:30:47.960 beneath the
00:30:49.100 the surface self
00:30:51.120 which is
00:30:52.800 which is exactly
00:30:53.960 what your
00:30:54.640 your whole app
00:30:55.480 is
00:30:55.820 is
00:30:56.400 is trying to
00:30:57.720 invite people into
00:30:58.840 I think.
00:31:00.200 Well, crossing the
00:31:01.320 boundary
00:31:02.120 into what one
00:31:03.900 is willing
00:31:04.560 to let oneself
00:31:05.220 understand
00:31:05.780 is a great
00:31:06.440 segue
00:31:07.020 into our next
00:31:08.460 topic
00:31:08.860 which is
00:31:09.600 honesty.
00:31:13.440 Honesty
00:31:14.120 is reached
00:31:15.320 through the doorway
00:31:16.580 of grief
00:31:17.840 and loss.
00:31:21.040 Honesty
00:31:21.800 is reached
00:31:22.500 through the doorway
00:31:23.680 of grief
00:31:24.760 and loss.
00:31:27.140 Where we cannot
00:31:28.240 go in our
00:31:29.260 mind
00:31:29.840 our memory
00:31:31.040 or our body
00:31:32.440 is where we
00:31:34.340 cannot be straight
00:31:35.240 with another
00:31:35.820 with the world
00:31:37.380 or with ourself.
00:31:40.640 The fear of loss
00:31:42.220 in one form
00:31:44.140 or another
00:31:44.620 is the motivator
00:31:46.360 behind all
00:31:47.140 conscious
00:31:47.800 and unconscious
00:31:49.340 dishonesties.
00:31:51.620 The fear of loss
00:31:53.080 in one form
00:31:53.960 or another
00:31:54.440 is the motivator
00:31:56.000 behind all
00:31:57.220 conscious
00:31:57.860 and unconscious
00:31:59.360 dishonesties.
00:32:01.720 All of us
00:32:02.320 are afraid
00:32:03.020 of loss
00:32:03.580 in all its forms.
00:32:05.900 All of us
00:32:06.480 at times
00:32:07.140 are haunted
00:32:07.740 or overwhelmed
00:32:08.740 by the possibility
00:32:09.920 of a disappearance
00:32:11.320 and all of us
00:32:12.800 therefore
00:32:13.220 are one
00:32:14.380 short
00:32:15.160 step
00:32:15.840 away
00:32:16.540 from
00:32:17.260 dishonesty.
00:32:19.800 Every human being
00:32:21.320 dwells intimately
00:32:22.440 close
00:32:22.980 to a door
00:32:23.660 of revelation
00:32:24.420 they are afraid
00:32:25.240 to pass through.
00:32:27.340 Honesty
00:32:27.820 lies
00:32:28.900 in understanding
00:32:29.980 our close
00:32:31.180 and necessary
00:32:32.440 relationship
00:32:33.320 with not
00:32:34.660 wanting
00:32:35.420 to hear
00:32:36.200 the truth.
00:32:37.260 Honesty
00:32:37.740 lies
00:32:38.140 in understanding
00:32:38.900 our close
00:32:40.060 and necessary
00:32:41.620 relationship
00:32:42.280 with not
00:32:43.620 wanting
00:32:44.360 to hear
00:32:45.000 the truth.
00:32:46.360 The ability
00:32:47.440 to speak
00:32:48.720 the truth
00:32:49.480 is as much
00:32:51.020 the ability
00:32:52.020 to describe
00:32:53.280 what it is like
00:32:54.580 to stand
00:32:55.260 in trepidation
00:32:56.480 at this door
00:32:57.480 as it is
00:32:59.020 to actually
00:32:59.760 go through it
00:33:00.540 and become
00:33:01.520 that beautifully
00:33:02.220 honest
00:33:02.760 spiritual warrior
00:33:04.040 equal
00:33:04.920 to all circumstances
00:33:06.460 we would like
00:33:07.660 to become.
00:33:09.860 Honesty
00:33:10.340 is not
00:33:11.820 the revealing
00:33:12.760 of some
00:33:13.860 foundational truth
00:33:15.120 that gives us
00:33:15.840 power over life
00:33:16.880 or another
00:33:17.500 or even
00:33:18.180 the self.
00:33:20.260 Honesty
00:33:20.940 is not
00:33:21.460 the revealing
00:33:22.100 of some
00:33:22.600 foundational truth
00:33:23.600 that gives us
00:33:24.180 power over life
00:33:25.220 or another
00:33:26.560 or even
00:33:27.720 the self
00:33:28.520 but a robust
00:33:30.860 incarnation
00:33:32.320 into the unknown
00:33:34.380 unfolding
00:33:35.500 vulnerability
00:33:36.300 of existence
00:33:37.700 where we acknowledge
00:33:39.440 how powerless
00:33:40.320 we feel
00:33:41.000 how little
00:33:42.320 we actually know
00:33:43.280 how afraid
00:33:44.660 we are
00:33:45.140 of not knowing
00:33:46.000 and how astonished
00:33:47.940 we are
00:33:48.500 by the generous
00:33:49.960 measure
00:33:50.700 of loss
00:33:51.800 that is conferred
00:33:53.300 upon even
00:33:54.320 the most average
00:33:55.440 life.
00:33:58.600 Honesty
00:33:59.040 is grounded
00:34:00.400 in humility
00:34:01.780 and indeed
00:34:03.500 in humiliation
00:34:05.060 and in admitting
00:34:07.280 exactly where
00:34:08.320 we are powerless.
00:34:10.760 Honesty
00:34:11.160 is not found
00:34:12.480 in revealing
00:34:13.000 the truth.
00:34:14.160 Honesty
00:34:14.460 is not found
00:34:15.300 in revealing
00:34:16.120 the truth
00:34:16.660 but in understanding
00:34:18.440 how deeply
00:34:20.280 afraid of it
00:34:21.440 we are.
00:34:23.760 To become
00:34:24.600 honest
00:34:24.960 is in effect
00:34:26.260 to become
00:34:27.280 fully
00:34:27.740 and robustly
00:34:29.640 incarnated
00:34:30.980 into powerlessness.
00:34:34.060 Honesty
00:34:34.620 allows us
00:34:36.400 to live
00:34:36.920 with not knowing.
00:34:39.180 We do not
00:34:40.260 know the full story.
00:34:41.680 We do not
00:34:43.180 know where
00:34:43.920 we are
00:34:44.560 in that story.
00:34:46.280 We do not
00:34:47.020 know who
00:34:47.800 is at fault
00:34:48.500 or who
00:34:49.540 will carry
00:34:50.500 the blame
00:34:51.400 in the end.
00:34:53.720 Honesty
00:34:54.180 is not a weapon
00:34:55.620 to keep loss
00:34:56.600 and heartbreak
00:34:57.440 at bay.
00:34:58.720 Honesty
00:34:59.100 is the outer
00:35:00.620 diagnostic
00:35:01.480 of our ability
00:35:02.660 to come
00:35:03.240 to ground
00:35:03.900 in reality.
00:35:05.440 The hardest
00:35:06.140 attainable
00:35:07.420 ground
00:35:08.200 of all.
00:35:09.680 The place
00:35:10.300 where we
00:35:11.240 actually dwell.
00:35:12.800 The living
00:35:13.240 breathing
00:35:14.080 frontier
00:35:14.960 where there
00:35:16.040 is no
00:35:17.220 realistic
00:35:18.160 choice
00:35:18.760 between gain
00:35:20.060 or loss.
00:35:22.000 So you
00:35:25.460 make the
00:35:26.620 point that
00:35:27.020 honesty
00:35:27.420 is often
00:35:27.840 a matter
00:35:28.180 of admitting
00:35:28.740 how little
00:35:29.740 we know
00:35:30.300 rather than
00:35:31.020 merely landing
00:35:31.980 again and
00:35:32.620 again upon
00:35:33.420 further
00:35:34.420 truths.
00:35:36.260 That's
00:35:36.480 interesting.
00:35:37.060 How do
00:35:38.320 you think
00:35:38.740 of honesty
00:35:40.000 as a
00:35:40.820 sharing so
00:35:42.040 much territory
00:35:42.620 with a
00:35:43.140 confession
00:35:43.800 of ignorance?
00:35:45.320 Well,
00:35:45.700 you know,
00:35:46.340 just by seeing
00:35:47.640 the way
00:35:48.100 the word
00:35:48.600 honesty
00:35:49.000 is used
00:35:49.500 as a
00:35:49.820 kind
00:35:50.020 of
00:35:50.160 weapon
00:35:50.500 in
00:35:51.560 everyday
00:35:51.900 conversation.
00:35:52.960 When someone
00:35:53.840 says,
00:35:54.460 can I be
00:35:55.800 honest with
00:35:56.420 you?
00:35:57.440 You should
00:35:57.880 always say
00:35:58.480 no.
00:36:01.520 Because
00:36:02.080 they have
00:36:04.720 a piece
00:36:05.100 of ammunition
00:36:05.720 which they
00:36:06.340 want to
00:36:06.800 fire at
00:36:07.240 you.
00:36:08.440 And to
00:36:09.880 my mind,
00:36:11.020 the invitation
00:36:13.220 to knowledge
00:36:14.080 needs to be
00:36:15.340 more of an
00:36:15.800 invitation.
00:36:16.280 So I
00:36:17.240 think the
00:36:18.260 pivotal
00:36:19.260 line in
00:36:19.820 the whole
00:36:21.440 essay is
00:36:22.400 honesty
00:36:23.660 lies in
00:36:25.260 understanding
00:36:25.920 our close
00:36:27.280 and necessary
00:36:28.300 relationship
00:36:29.000 with not
00:36:30.180 wanting to
00:36:30.740 hear the
00:36:31.440 truth.
00:36:33.020 And it's
00:36:35.120 that axis
00:36:35.940 of vulnerability
00:36:37.360 again.
00:36:38.860 It's
00:36:38.980 honesty is
00:36:40.280 grounded in
00:36:41.320 humility.
00:36:42.400 So this
00:36:44.460 is where
00:36:44.980 you do,
00:36:46.580 if you
00:36:47.000 want someone
00:36:47.500 to be
00:36:47.800 honest with
00:36:48.280 you,
00:36:48.460 you want
00:36:48.940 it in
00:36:49.240 the context
00:36:49.940 of
00:36:50.480 friendship.
00:36:52.200 I always
00:36:52.860 remember a
00:36:53.340 good Irish
00:36:53.780 friend of
00:36:54.200 mine saying
00:36:54.660 when I
00:36:55.000 was starting
00:36:56.220 to explain
00:36:57.000 something that
00:36:57.920 I'd done
00:36:58.460 that had
00:36:59.520 been
00:36:59.720 misinterpreted.
00:37:01.640 And I
00:37:02.300 got halfway
00:37:02.800 through the
00:37:03.200 sentence.
00:37:03.800 I remember
00:37:04.120 we were on
00:37:04.500 a mountain
00:37:04.920 in the
00:37:06.460 Burren of
00:37:06.980 North Clare
00:37:07.540 and he
00:37:07.880 turned around
00:37:08.440 and he
00:37:08.760 said,
00:37:09.680 never explain,
00:37:11.040 he said.
00:37:11.460 your enemies
00:37:13.840 won't believe
00:37:14.780 you and
00:37:15.680 your friends
00:37:16.340 don't need
00:37:17.060 it.
00:37:18.420 It was the
00:37:19.060 most beautiful
00:37:19.700 thing to
00:37:20.200 say and
00:37:21.980 the most
00:37:23.140 inviting thing.
00:37:25.020 And that
00:37:25.360 led me into
00:37:26.240 a deeper
00:37:26.780 dialogue with
00:37:28.180 myself.
00:37:29.100 So the
00:37:30.220 other pivotal
00:37:30.920 sentence in
00:37:31.780 the essay is
00:37:32.440 honesty is
00:37:33.180 grounded in
00:37:33.800 humility and
00:37:35.400 indeed in
00:37:36.440 humiliation
00:37:37.160 and in
00:37:38.920 admitting
00:37:39.340 exactly where
00:37:40.780 we are
00:37:41.140 powerless.
00:37:43.260 Honesty is
00:37:44.100 not found in
00:37:44.820 revealing the
00:37:45.460 truth but in
00:37:46.820 understanding how
00:37:47.880 deeply afraid of
00:37:49.260 it we are.
00:37:51.800 And then it's
00:37:53.400 followed by to
00:37:53.960 become honest is
00:37:54.840 an effect to
00:37:55.460 become fully and
00:37:56.660 robustly incarnated
00:37:58.640 into powerlessness.
00:37:59.780 I mean I work a
00:38:02.520 lot, I have
00:38:03.280 worked a lot in
00:38:03.940 the corporate
00:38:04.340 world and I
00:38:06.700 always say that
00:38:07.960 real conversations
00:38:09.080 always happen along
00:38:10.480 this axis of
00:38:11.320 vulnerability even
00:38:12.260 in the most
00:38:13.660 powerful
00:38:16.380 hierarchies in
00:38:17.840 the business
00:38:19.760 world.
00:38:20.160 world and the
00:38:22.520 foundational axis of
00:38:24.740 vulnerability you
00:38:25.940 know in the
00:38:26.640 hierarchy of a
00:38:27.440 workplace is my
00:38:29.300 as a leader
00:38:30.280 simply admitting
00:38:31.660 that I do not
00:38:32.700 have all the
00:38:33.260 answers.
00:38:34.280 I've only got
00:38:35.120 one pair of
00:38:35.860 eyes, one pair
00:38:37.040 of ears, I've
00:38:38.040 only got one
00:38:38.600 imagination and
00:38:39.420 one intellect.
00:38:40.160 But in
00:38:41.760 conversation with
00:38:42.740 you, in making
00:38:43.360 an invitation to
00:38:44.400 you, I can
00:38:46.460 double and
00:38:47.960 triple and
00:38:48.820 quadruple and
00:38:49.920 multiply all
00:38:51.680 of those
00:38:52.020 faculties by
00:38:52.840 creating a
00:38:54.800 conversation that's
00:38:56.080 attentive to our
00:38:57.260 mutual future.
00:38:59.720 But of course
00:39:00.380 that kind of
00:39:01.080 vulnerability means
00:39:02.120 a giving up of
00:39:03.760 my protected
00:39:05.620 place in a
00:39:06.480 hierarchy.
00:39:08.120 So honesty
00:39:10.120 is always, you
00:39:11.880 know, the
00:39:12.140 unspoken
00:39:13.080 measure of
00:39:15.600 integrity in a
00:39:16.920 workplace.
00:39:18.440 Yeah.
00:39:18.520 But it's
00:39:18.960 also the
00:39:19.420 unspoken
00:39:21.460 measure of
00:39:22.140 integrity in
00:39:22.840 a marriage or
00:39:23.700 a friendship.
00:39:26.280 Yeah, well, it
00:39:27.380 really is an
00:39:27.860 integrity is a
00:39:29.400 measure of
00:39:30.500 how closely
00:39:33.160 what you're
00:39:34.300 willing to have
00:39:35.080 exposed in
00:39:36.280 public and
00:39:37.040 what is true
00:39:37.800 of you in
00:39:38.160 private are in
00:39:39.700 register with
00:39:40.900 one another.
00:39:41.540 If you have a
00:39:42.340 vast landscape of
00:39:43.600 private
00:39:44.400 preoccupation which
00:39:45.840 you would
00:39:46.800 never dare to
00:39:47.780 reveal to
00:39:48.980 others, you
00:39:50.380 know, that
00:39:50.640 really is the
00:39:51.480 formula for a
00:39:53.000 complete lack
00:39:53.940 of integrity.
00:39:55.120 I'm interested
00:39:56.120 in this
00:39:56.440 discomfort we
00:39:57.700 feel around
00:39:59.620 the truth,
00:40:01.140 right?
00:40:01.280 Whether it's
00:40:02.040 the discomfort
00:40:02.780 in speaking the
00:40:04.280 truth to
00:40:05.040 others or in
00:40:06.180 knowing a
00:40:07.680 truth about
00:40:08.280 ourselves, that
00:40:09.740 really does seem
00:40:10.600 to be yet
00:40:12.020 another place
00:40:12.520 where this
00:40:13.140 boundary of
00:40:13.920 self can be
00:40:15.820 discerned.
00:40:16.920 I mean, that
00:40:17.200 is the tension
00:40:18.540 that is this
00:40:20.020 feeling of
00:40:20.700 self and this
00:40:21.360 feeling of
00:40:21.880 living in
00:40:23.360 jeopardy under
00:40:24.780 the gaze of
00:40:25.640 others or
00:40:26.700 under the gaze
00:40:27.980 of reality
00:40:28.800 itself.
00:40:30.900 Yes, and
00:40:31.340 it's always the
00:40:32.020 giving up of
00:40:32.620 protection and
00:40:35.020 immunity.
00:40:36.800 So, of course,
00:40:37.780 there are parts of
00:40:38.500 the mind that
00:40:39.360 have evolved
00:40:40.740 and rightly
00:40:41.340 so to protect
00:40:42.160 us and to
00:40:43.280 create immunity
00:40:44.120 and we've
00:40:45.920 survived because
00:40:46.700 of them.
00:40:48.120 But, of course,
00:40:49.300 as you know,
00:40:50.100 you know, I've
00:40:50.420 heard a lot of
00:40:50.980 your talks and
00:40:52.880 a lot of your
00:40:53.580 invitations you
00:40:54.460 make through your
00:40:55.160 various talks,
00:40:56.560 you know, to
00:40:56.860 understanding the
00:40:58.360 deeper, more
00:40:58.980 movable, more
00:40:59.840 conversational
00:41:00.600 identity.
00:41:01.920 We don't want to
00:41:02.600 lose those powers
00:41:03.540 of protection, of
00:41:04.840 recognizing what
00:41:05.960 is a threat or
00:41:06.760 what is other
00:41:07.640 than us, you
00:41:08.540 know,
00:41:09.360 they're part of
00:41:09.980 our ability to
00:41:12.000 survive in an
00:41:12.820 evolutionary scale
00:41:13.840 but they can't
00:41:15.740 provide us any
00:41:16.620 sense of real
00:41:18.140 happiness or
00:41:19.340 presence.
00:41:20.560 So, we have to
00:41:22.260 go to a
00:41:22.700 different part of
00:41:23.480 the mind whose
00:41:25.220 primary goal is
00:41:26.280 not protection
00:41:27.720 but meeting
00:41:30.180 and presence
00:41:31.260 and what looks
00:41:33.460 like an
00:41:33.960 incredible form
00:41:35.000 of generosity
00:41:36.020 and beauty
00:41:37.780 as its gift
00:41:39.560 and this is
00:41:41.020 this other
00:41:41.660 remarkable flow
00:41:44.020 that's spoken
00:41:44.760 to in all of
00:41:45.480 our great
00:41:46.340 contemplative
00:41:47.280 traditions
00:41:47.840 and this
00:41:50.360 deeper
00:41:51.260 flowing,
00:41:52.500 more
00:41:52.680 conversational,
00:41:54.300 more generous
00:41:55.080 mind
00:41:55.840 is actually
00:41:57.300 able to call
00:41:58.140 on the strategic
00:41:58.880 mind for
00:41:59.720 protection
00:42:00.360 and for saying
00:42:02.160 no and for
00:42:03.300 saying this is
00:42:04.040 other than me
00:42:04.780 and is bad
00:42:05.360 for me.
00:42:06.480 So, one of
00:42:07.780 the great
00:42:08.100 fears, as you
00:42:09.220 know, is that
00:42:09.760 when we go
00:42:12.780 into this
00:42:13.360 no-self, we
00:42:14.200 will lose all
00:42:15.080 sense of
00:42:16.500 discernment
00:42:17.880 and we
00:42:19.900 will lose all
00:42:20.680 sense of
00:42:21.740 protection
00:42:22.380 and it's
00:42:24.360 only with
00:42:24.920 maturing into
00:42:26.300 the practice
00:42:26.780 that we
00:42:27.340 understand that
00:42:27.980 we can call
00:42:28.640 on those
00:42:29.020 qualities
00:42:29.440 but not
00:42:31.440 have them
00:42:31.860 as the
00:42:32.280 central
00:42:33.060 arbiter
00:42:34.160 of our
00:42:34.840 identity.
00:42:36.400 So, I do
00:42:37.260 think that the
00:42:37.860 invitation to
00:42:38.500 honesty is the
00:42:39.320 invitation to
00:42:40.080 this deeper
00:42:42.620 undoing,
00:42:44.680 actually,
00:42:44.940 this deeper
00:42:47.040 identity
00:42:48.840 which is
00:42:51.120 able to
00:42:53.480 break through
00:42:54.200 these boundaries
00:42:54.960 by what looks
00:42:55.900 like on the
00:42:56.500 surface a
00:42:57.260 kind of robust
00:42:58.200 vulnerability.
00:42:59.920 Well, the
00:43:00.660 topics of
00:43:01.380 identity and
00:43:02.480 vulnerability and
00:43:03.640 achieving anything
00:43:05.500 like security
00:43:06.980 and happiness
00:43:07.780 in this life
00:43:08.540 lead us
00:43:09.180 naturally to
00:43:10.420 our next
00:43:10.900 word,
00:43:12.540 which is
00:43:12.920 ambition.
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