The Daily Stoic - Karen Duffy on Using Stoicism to Find Happiness (Even with Chronic Illness) | Nothing Is As Encouraging As This

Episode Date: April 13, 2022

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and talk to actress Karen Duffy about her new book Wise Up: Irreverent Enlightenment from a Mother Who's Been Through It, how she got introduced to Stoic Philosophy, her ongoing battle with sarcoidosis, and more.Karen Duffy was born on May 23, 1962 in New York City, New York, USA. She is an actress, producer, and writer, known for Dumb and Dumber, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Blank Check. In 1996, Duffy was diagnosed with neurosarcoidosis. Her brain and spinal cord were affected, leaving her partially paralyzed. She wrote about her affliction in the humorous 2000 autobiography Model Patient: My Life as an Incurable Wise-Ass. In November 2017 she celebrated the publication of her second book, Backbone: Living with Chronic Pain without Turning into One where she wrote about battling with sarcoidosis for two decades. For Duffy, who can usually only get up three days a week, writing and reading have served as a form of therapy. Her gateway to stoicism was Marcus’s “Meditations,” and her most recent book Wise Up, that was just released this month, uses stoicism as a compass to navigate the world.The Jordan Harbinger Show is one of the most interesting podcasts on the web, with guests like Kobe Bryant, Mark Manson, Eric Schmidt, and more. Listen to one of Ryan's episodes right now (1, 2), and subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show today.Novo is the #1 Business Banking App - because it’s built from the ground up to be powerfully simple and free business banking that Money Magazine called the Best Business Checking Account of 2021. This year, get your FREE business banking account in just 10 minutes at bank novo.com/STOICGo to shopify.com/stoic, all lowercase, for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features. Grow your business with Shopify today - go to shopify.com/stoic right now.Sunday can help you grow a beautiful lawn without the guesswork OR nasty chemicals. F​​ull-season plans start at just $129, and you can get 20% off at checkout when you visit GETSUNDAY.COM/STOIC.As a member of Daily Stoic Life, you get all our current and future courses, 100+ additional Daily Stoic email meditations, 4 live Q&As with bestselling author Ryan Holiday (and guests), and 10% off your next purchase from the Daily Stoic Store. Sign up at https://dailystoic.com/life/ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Karen Duffy: TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a Meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating, and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their actual lives. But first we've got a quick message from one of our sponsors. Nothing is as encouraging as this. The average American checks their phone

and their screen something like 344 times a day, nearly once every four minutes. We're glued to these devices, and in fact, you're almost certainly listening to this on one right now. So how can we turn this negative into a positive? Well, let's think about this passage in book six of meditations. When you need encouragement, Marx-Riehlius writes, think of the qualities of the people around you. This one's energy, this one's modesty, and other's generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us. When we're practically showered with them, it's good to keep this in mind. So, Marx's journal then was a source of encouragement. He was showering himself with virtuous reminders so that he might be improved by association so that he could wire the

wisdom of others into his own instincts and to his behavior. And that's what book meditations is about, why it's titled, debts and lessons. But actually nearly every page or every other page in the book, Marcus quotes her sites or tells a story about someone else. Someone that inspired him, someone that reminded him, someone to model himself around someone to keep in mind. Today we should follow that example, maybe in a journal, maybe with a coin or a print or a tattoo. Maybe on that device that you've already checked a hundred times this morning.

That's what we're trying to do with this newest thing we've rolled out here at Daily Stoic. The Daily Stoic Smartphone Wallpaper Library, you can check it out at dailystoic.com slash wallpapers. It's over 50 wallpapers containing quotes and wisdom from Marks, really Zeno, Seneca and Epictetus and more and it's a ever growing library We're gonna add to it all the time drop in new art every few weeks and once again initial access You have access for life as epictetus said every day and night keep thoughts like these at hand right them Read them allow talk to yourself and others about them

Well, there's no better place to keep these thoughts than on the home screen of your smartphone. And our hope with the Daily Stoke wallpapers is that a proportion of those screen checks come a moment of reflection. Maybe you'll see the lock screen and decide not to unlock it. To pick up a book instead, to be present instead. To remember that life is short instead, to do what nature demands of you instead. And rather than your phone being a source of distraction

with the daily stoke wallpapers, your phone can be a source of encouragement and wisdom. And you can head over to dailystoke.com, slash wallpapers right now to gain access to this awesome new resource we've set up. And look, if you're thinking about joining us in Daily Stoke Life, this is a good excuse as Daily Stoke Life members get them. Plus all our courses, plus a bunch of other awesome bonuses, totally for free. So you can go to DailyStoke.com slash wallpapers or DailyStokeLife.com to sign up. And I hope that the next time I bump into

one of you in person, you can bring up your phone and show me that you are keeping thoughts like these at hand that you are putting up the virtues of stoicism and the people you admire around you, that you're embodying it there on the device. And I hope it makes a little difference. So check that out dailystoke.com slash wallpaper dailystokelife.com, and I'll talk to you all soon. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Historic Podcast.

I'm trying to think about where to start on this episode because you know, I'll just start how I started, which is I pulled up Zencaster, which is where I often record. Sometimes I use Zoom, but I pulled up Zencaster, and my guest today was talking with someone off-screen. She didn't quite know I was there yet, and I was waiting for her to finish. And I didn't want to interrupt her. I'm just sort of sitting there. And she notices me. She says, oh, hi, hi, it's great to talk to you. And I said, I'm really excited. And then all of a sudden, you know, when you're having computer troubles and you have a friend come in and like adjust the monitor, like cleaning over your shoulder to show you something,

a friend come in and like adjust the monitor, like there's cleaning over your shoulder to show you something. Well, the person whose house she was at, leans over to help set up the monitors so she could do this, and lo and behold, it's Bill fucking Murray. My guest today, Karen Duffy, is I guess lifelong friends with Bill Murray, and she was in Charleston to do something, and that's where she was recording. And she had some Wi-Fi troubles and stopped by her friend Bill Murray's house. And he was gracious enough to host the recording of this episode. And if that weren't enough, Zencaster, just so you know this isn't an ad, Zencaster completely crapped out at the end of the episode. And it wasn't uploading her file, it was a Wi-Fi issue, but I think it was also Zencaster. And so I was worried we lost everything. And so I'm having the people who produce my show trying to frantically get in touch with her. And she finally

texted and she goes, we had a Wi-Fi and a Zencaster issue, but Bill's driving me around and it's convertible. And we're trying to pick up Wi-Fi somewhere and we'll get it uploaded just you wait. So Bill Murray was not only gracious enough to host this episode, but I think he salvaged the recording of it, which I'm very excited to bring to you. And look, I get basically anyone that writes a book about Stoicism, their publisher, their publisher or publicist reaches out to me and says, would you like to have this person not? And sometimes I say, yes, sometimes I say, no, I'm certainly flattered by the interest

and the recognition that this is probably the biggest platform for stoicism that's out there. And I have this little note next to my desk that says, are you being a good steward of stoicism? So I try to support the people that are writing books about Stoicism, but I also just, you know, I try, I try to keep the show interesting both for me and for you. And I don't want to have just every single person that writes a book about Stoicism one. And so when Karen's publicist reached out about this book wise up, a reverent enlightenment from a mother who's been through it, I didn't really know what to think. I was reading the back and I was like, wait, is this why I think it is? And it is. As we talk about in today's episode,

Karen Duffy is like one of the most prolific actresses from my childhood, at least that I remember. She was in Dumb and Dumber, of course, all-time classic, although she speaks somewhat not in pride of it in today's episode. But she's also the FBI agent in blank check. I don't know if you're my age, you know, exactly what I'm talking about. I call my sister. I was like, I'm interviewing the actress from blank check. She's like, are you serious?

Anyways, she is in all sorts of 90s movies. She was in MTV VJ. She was in Fantastic, Mr. Fox, and a number of other things. But, and look, she was an actress that wrote a book about stoicism and parenting. Maybe I would have thought about it, but like a true stoic, she has been tested by life. She has an incredibly painful neurological disease that affects her brain and spinal cord, leaving her partially paralyzed. She wrote a book about this, a serve of humorous autobiography, called Model Patient. My life is an incurable wise-ass, and then another book called Backbone Living with Chronic Pain without turning into one. And her sarcoidosis has been like the challenge of her life in addition to the entertainment

business in addition to being a mother. I mean, just imagine waking up every day in chronic pain, which is as markets are really asted. And so it's fitting then that her gateway to stoicism was markets is meditation and her most recent book Wise Up is really a letter, a series of letters to her son about how to be stoic, how to think about stoic philosophy. And so it's exactly the way I think stochism should be taught to the young people. It's a wonderful sweet book and this was a fantastic conversation and the back story that led up to it made it

even more fun. You can follow Karen Duffy at Duffy NYC on Twitter and you can check out her new book Wise Up Irreverent Enlightenment from a mother who's been through it and don't forget to check out her other book backbone on living with chronic pain and model patient, her life as an incurable wise-ass. She was just a delight to talk to, and I think you're very much going to enjoy this conversation, and I certainly enjoyed having it. Thanks to Karen for coming on. Thanks to Bill Murray for saving it,

and thanks to you for listening to it. I've loved Charleston. I wrote my first book when I was living in New Orleans. Charleston felt a little smaller. And actually, we have, I met Matt Mullenweg, a body of yours. I met him because we were at a dinner party and we both bonded over one of your books and uh... I would. Yes. And I love that.

And actually Matt is in my book. I talk about the story about Matt told me this funny story about how he was on a plane and a guy took off his shoes and the smell took human form and ran around the cabin. And so the stewardess took two bags of coffee beans and told this guy to stick his feet in the coffee beans. So I'm always like, never drink coffee on an airplane. That's amazing.

Well, you know, one of my favorite passages in meditations is Marcus really is clearly So I'm always like never drink coffee on an airplane. So that's amazing. Well, you know, one of my favorite passages in meditations is Marcus really is clearly sitting next to someone with BO and he's like trying to decide whether he should say something or whether he just has to put up with it. And I think about that like pretty much every time I'm on an airplane and I just think like how so much has changed and then things are exactly the same. It's true.

I have no sense of smell. I am completely anosomatic. And my son plays hockey and he never won a parent the smelly kid and because I can't smell, I figured, well, regular soaps and detergents aren't going to do it. So I went online and I found guerrilla wash monkey cage cleaner, which is what zoologists use to hose down their cage. And I figured, well, if it works for primates,

it's probably going to work for my son's goalie equipment. And my husband and son said that the smell of monkey cage cleaner is actually worse than a nut cup. So it didn't work. No, I have a terrible sense of smell, too. I had to have two operations on my nose for various reasons over the years. And they just screwed up my sense of smell.

And I basically can I can only smell things if it's like turned up to 11 basically. That's why there is the short straw of anosomatics or cacosmia where everything smells like the worst thing in the world. I see because of I lost my sense of smell when I was in my 30s. And having a bit of actors training, I have a strong sense memory. So I can remember, like if I say gasoline, I can now experience gasoline. But usually when you're playing sensory roulette, most people say, oh yeah, I'll get rid of my sense of smell.

But now they've just become more of an issue with COVID. It's been interesting how people are... Right, how do you know? How do you know exactly? Exactly. Where I live in Austin, that we have this thing called cedar fever, and it's like this allergy from the cedar trees,

and it mimics the symptoms of COVID almost exactly. So it's been a wonderful two years of like, do I have it? Do I have it now? And then is it allergies? I guess I'll have to wait. And it's weird how the body plays tricks on us. It is, and that cedar smells so fantastic.

And then you remember that it also is what people use in hamster cages. And then you can ruin it. So I think that so much about life is how we perceive this morning, I got up and I was reading a little bit of Emerson. And I love how Emerson said, like nothing great in life

ever occurred without enthusiasm. And Jim Volvano, the baseball coach, basketball coach is a big, yeah. And survive in advance, and he really gets into the Emersonian quote. And it's been very sweet having a son who is an athlete, how the transidentalists and the stoics

have really inspired him. It's been really cool. So this morning I told him, in our family, we don't have any technology at the table, only philosophy books. And he has grown up with dailyoic and all of your books. And so he is just outside of Charleston. He's the captain of his crew team.

And he sent me this really sweet note. And he was saying just write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year. He who is rich, who owns the day. And that was a very sweet thing to get from past. Well, we're all very stoked. Well, I was thinking of you as I was preparing for this because I saw this meme.

And it was like a picture of a father and a daughter in a Blackbuster video. And it said, the year is 1998, your dad said, you have snacks at home, and your dad says you can pick out a couple of movies to watch over the weekend, and then it says there's nothing wrong in the world. And that was my memory of blank check,

which I think I probably got it a Hollywood video instead of a blockbuster video Because that's what we had near my house But it just very much called me back to a time in my life where I was thinking of absolutely nothing but like how many movies I Confident that weekend That is so charming and deeply flattered because When I first saw blank check and I was thinking, what is it about this movie? And then I realized that may be the worst movie

I've ever seen in my life. And I truly wouldn't watch it again if it was screening on my own cornyas. And but the best thing, we filmed it in Austin. I know I was just reading that. Yeah, and I fell in love with Austin and have very many good friends who are based there and a lot of friends in the tech business. Ton were just there for Southwest. So that's very funny. Well, I'm sorry about that. I wish

I could give you those 90 minutes back there, Ryan. No, the good news about the movies that you see when you're a kid is going back to the, the, no smell is you also don't have any taste. So you don't know whether it's good or not. It's just whether it fulfills your fantasy or distracts you for a couple of hours or whatever. I've seen that movie many times. That's very funny. And again, I deeply apologize. The only thing that strikes me about that movie

is the somewhat weirdness of the kid falling in love with, like that there's like a B plot of the boy falling in love with a much older FBI agent. I'm not sure you could do that in a movie today. Thankfully, thankfully no. And it was, it didn't really make a sense, but I had, it was, I was talking to my husband the other day and he said, what is it about, about when you were doing movies? And I said, well, somebody has to make the bad ones.

Like, they're not all going to be lost in translation. They're not all going to be apocalypse now. Somebody has to make the bad ones. And I was okay with that. Well, isn't that the epic teetus line that we're all actors in a play and we just have to do what the director tells us basically? Exactly, exactly.

And it was interesting because at that time, probably when you were about seven and watching suffering through a blank check, that's when I really just dove into meditations. And it's interesting that in life, we have our native, our ancestry. But I believe we also have our native decade. And that's I think where we become awake. And I think in the 90s, it's where I learn to read myself a new brain. And that's I was just really motivated to, I always believe it's never too late to get smarter, better. And it was inspiring to dive into the Stoics, especially

Penguin Publishing. Used to have something called a 90p. And there were small little classics. And they could fit in your pocket. And it was just masterful and just getting to read all the classics and diving back in. So it's been it's been amazing because essentially education is free. What we pay is attention. And so that's what you're willing to pay. And I loved that education can somewhat be a meritocracy. It's what you put into it. And we often forget, I read

the statistic that we often forget about 80% of what we learned the day before, unless you really make conscious efforts to make notes and follow up. And I feel like that's very illuminating. Well, you tell the story in the book, what was your introduction to the Stokes? A friend just says, hey, you should read Marcus Aurelias. How does this go? What's going on in your life that you get passed on to the Stoics? Well, it's interesting. I had a very, I've had a really,

I think I live life in somewhat in extremists where I've had very good things happen to me, one in a million great things and one in a million. Not so great things. And working, I was a recreational therapist, I grew up in a family where service was absolutely a part of the deal. Shirley Chisholm said, service is the rent we pay for our life on earth. And so I grew up in a family where we were at. Refugees and foster children,

and we've always expected to do things. So I went on to college and got my degree as a recreational therapist and really working with high risk recreation for people with disabilities. And essentially the philosophy of this profession is to focus on ability, not on what you can't do, focus on what you can do. And when I graduated, it felt like I didn't want my education to end as I was entering the professional life. So I just, I'm just going to keep, you know, keep making a reading

plan, which I think is so important. And, you know, trying to read quickly and trying to memorize a quote a day that would somehow stick around in my brain. And it was really, you know, when I was working on MTV, I picked up meditations and have never put it down and I love that it was like the flipping of a switch. It just made so much sense and then just absolutely finding a a whole new way to live. Yeah, what strikes me about the Stokes is how long that's been happening. Like if the beginning of meditations where Marcus is thinking all his teachers and he thanks Rousticus for loaning him his copy of Epic Titus from his own library and you go,

wow, okay, so 20 centuries ago somebody just gives this guy this book and a light goes on the switch flips exactly as you said. And then that's what happened to you. That's also what happened to me. Hopefully that will happen to people who pick up your book because they know you from something they never even heard of the Stoics, but that it's this sort of series of torches, one lighting, the other lighting,

the other that just goes on forever. It's just so beautiful, where you talk about Epic Tades, because also about the lamp that he had in front of his house that was stolen and about not hanging on to things. Nathaniel Horathon said that education is not the filling of a bucket. It is the lighting of a lamp. And again, that torch metaphor, I think is burning in all of us.

And I think one of the beautiful things is how we often want to share and kindle this passion, I think, but so beautiful about philosophy and especially the stoics, the practical stoics like a big tatus, Marcus Aure know, since you have that forness that We don't want to share and they were sharing and there is such beauty in that Yeah, there's a pay it forwardness to stoicism. It's not evangelism Which you know is this idea that like you know you are obligated to save someone else. It's more like This worked for me. Can I share it with you? It's it's it's magic and it's there's something so attractive. I believe that when you're passionate, you want to share and that was incredible when my husband gave me a copy of discourses

and that amplification of gratitude for this writing that was 20 centuries ago. And how it resonates with all of us. And that's what's so beautiful. And I, there's something that you're giving with a gift of the Daily Stoic and the Daily Dad is that often the view is, a philosophy is not for me, but it's for everyone. And it's just a practical way to navigate the world. And it's joyful. Like, and I love that like some philosophers are actually right bonkers.

Like, uh, Deoghene's The Sinek lived in a jar and said, you know, I'm like a dog. I bite rascals. And he was just a madman. I just love it. rascals, and he was just a madman. I just love it." Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for? FTX Founder's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded with other people's money that he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Fried was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes

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So, well before and I was working at MTV, I was working sadly making the movie that you had to suffer through and working with Michael Moore on a show called TV Nation. And it was just such an amazing experience. And I was at an industry of end and I had a headache and I normally don't get headaches. I think I'm more of a carrier, like I give them.

And I had a headache and it just never went away. And I had no idea and it just never went away. And I had no idea that it, where I am now, 25 years later, that it would be possible to live in chronic pain every single day. But I believe that there is a steadiness that the Stoics gave me that understanding that gratitude is the greatest of all the virtues, but the parent of all others, and find gratitude, even though my illness had to reroute my entire life, my career. I'm no longer to be insured. My fertility, my job, my physicality, and losing, you know, feeling in my hands and feet. Some days I use a cane, some days not. I just felt like I can handle this. And

I really believe that having a scaffolding of knowledge from the Stoics made a devastating catastrophic illness seem to be, but something that I wasn't so special when I was gonna be able to deal with it. Was it a slow moving catastrophe or was it sort of quickly on set? Like you were told, this is how it's gonna go get ready or has it been 25 years of sort of worsening symptoms and pain? It was like a looney tunes safe fell out a window and hit me and flattened me. And I've been essentially living with the safe that every morning, when I wake up,

I have to pick up that safe and then carry it with me. They, um, so it hasn't, I don't know how it could get worse, but it hasn't gotten worse with managing chronic pain, but it was absolutely overnight. I woke up one day and felt like I was struck by lightning. And that was, that was a challenge, absolutely. And the double challenge of like, what is my life now? What do I do?

How do I carry on? I imagine is the sort of, aside from the excruciating physical pain, the grieving of so many things that you couldn't do anymore also comes into play. Yeah, that's so wise. Yes, you have to kind of mourn for your old life and figure out a whole new life. things that you couldn't do anymore also comes into play. Yeah, that's so wise. You have to kind of mourn for your old life and figure out a whole new life.

And I'm deeply grateful that I was awake to the idea that I'll be able to work around this. And there are days when I am somewhat roped to my sofa like gulliver. And then other days where I'm really kind of high functioning and I'm able to be in my friend's house and talk to you. So there's I'm grateful for every day. And I do believe that chronic pain and happiness absolutely coexist. I think you can't have your happiness predicated on outside circumstances. And you just have to find it where you are.

But still, it's not the easiest thing in the world to have your happiness be independent or in spite of external things. So how do you actually do that? That seems like incredibly tough. Well, if I only worked on days that I felt good, I would never get anything done. So it's, I have to have a bit of compassion for myself and that I can't hold myself to the standards that I had when I was a non-disabled person. I have to understand that there is, I have to have a sense of kindness and almost treat myself the way that I would for somebody who I loved outside of myself.

And I really have, I'm just full of gratitude and really happy for my life. I how lucky am I that this is my fifth book and I'm able to write where that doesn't take a lot. I don't have to do stunts. I can work from home and read the thing I love to do the most. So what turning to the Stoics then, as your life gets turned upside down, as you're trying to find a way to sort of muddle through some of those dark moments, particularly early on, what does Mark has teach you?

I'm just curious. What do you find yourself drawn to in meditations as you deal with chronic pain? As you pointed out, I love the beginning where he is thanking people. And I love that he thanks the gratitude and he thanks his mother for her compassion and generosity and the fact that Marcus Aurelius was trying to teach himself humility and he was sleeping on the floor until she was like, you know, get up and get back to bed. I love, I believe, you know, they were Cicero, said, gratitude is the parent of all the other virtues.

But I think what is so resounding is how conversational it is when you read it and how it feels like across the millennia. I think Galileo said that books are in tuned minds and the fact that we have this resource of these in tuned minds that we can travel through the millennia and have these conversations. And I would say, I mean, my main man is hepatitis. I really dig hepatitis. Well, it's interesting that you'd like hepatitis, although also with

markets, I mean, there's one reading of Marcus historian suspect that he had some sort of chronic stomach pain. Obviously, hepatitis, you know, walking with a limp from the sort of tragic accident where his leg is not accident, the tragic abuse where his leg is broken. Do you feel like the Stoics speak to chronic pain specifically? I believe that pain is a part of life and we'll never escape a always experience pain, but I think what I love about the Stoics is the clarity that about resilience and always, how long are you gonna wait until you expect the best from yourself. And I just didn't want to put my life on pause. And I expect the best from myself. And squeeze is much fun out of life as I can.

Yeah, although I think some people when they, then they read Marcus really is they don't see him as someone having a lot of fun. Do you disagree? Well, I think the idea that journaling was so important to him as he's dodging assassins and journaling was so important to him as he's dodging assassins and the if you're a leader in the world I think you get there because you understand people and humor is such a big part of life that

yeah, I absolutely I think you know isn't there, there was another, Marcus Aurelis Agribus invented the first woopy cushion and he filled the animal skins with air and then had a dinner party and then his trick was that he would have the footman servants just completely start lessening the air so they were all under the table.

Yeah. So I think there are some good time charles in there. I believe that pretty much all the interesting radiant minds have a sense of self-deprecation and humor. And so maybe that's not what he's most known for. But I absolutely believe that he's had to have been a great storyteller and a great conversationalist. Yeah, I mean, I don't know about you, but my journal is not like filled with jokes. Like my journal is dealing with the stuff that I need help with, which is usually not having fun, right? Like that, I got that covered, right? Like I need the journals for the serious shit.

So there's kind of a selection bias there that I think maybe sometimes people miss. Mm-hmm, actually, you know, in my journals, in my notes, I love, I've got this guy who makes book journals and he takes copies of books and turns them into journals and actually, no, I put in things that made me laugh so I can remember. I worked on working things out, but I have some humor in there. Well, there's one reading of Marcus Realis. It's a long ago published academic paper,

but the argument was that Marcus Realis's stomach ailment is so bad that he gets hooked on opium and that some of the more trippy passages in meditations come from, you know, or somewhat opium induced. I don't know how much I buy that, but I've got to imagine one of the tricky parts what come from or somewhat opium induced. I don't know how much I buy that, but I've got to imagine one of the tricky parts of navigating chronic pain and we're obviously seeing this play out over the country

as we look at the opioid epidemic. How do you deal with the management of pain, sobriety, and all of that kind of stuff. Like, how do you deal with, I imagine there are things you could do that would make the pain that would lessen the pain, but then also come at a very high cost. So as one manages chronic pain, how do you think about that? Thank you. That's a very thoughtful and compassionate question. I love that the word

compassionate means suffering together. So that is compassionate. You're absolutely right. I have to decide what I need to be game for. And so there are certain medications that I take that turn me into gomer pile in a not what I think of the best version of myself. And it's something that I have to build in to every day. And I think because I have to almost take an account of, but do I have on my schedule, how am I going to manage taking my prescribed medicines and then how am I going to go and squeeze the best out of myself and the best out of this day? It's interesting what you're talking about Marcus Aurelius and his stomach ailment because

in ancient Greece, Poppy, since the big Edo biomes, they made A.T. and it was called poppy juice. And they would, if I didn't know, how to calibrate it. But it possibly that some of those lupier passages may be the plant I don't know. But it's an interesting question. I think historically it would be very interesting to look back on that. That must be so challenging that you wake up and you have that choice every day. I mean I suppose all days are choices but you do say your favorite quote from Epictetus is the one about making beautiful choices. I suppose that's kind of an

impossible choice that you're faced with every day. How much pain am I willing to tolerate? How much consciousness am I willing to dole? And that sort of tension between those two things must sometimes be totally excruciating. You know, I think I have a nature that seems to be a little bit rural like the punches fly by the sea to my pants and kind of make the best of it. I mean, our life is made of time and, you know, there is no part time, free time, down time. It's me time. No free time, down time. It's me time. No, it's all time. And so I look at life almost as an actuarian and Oliver Berkman talks about how there's 4,000 weeks

in our life. And I would love the passage that you had in Daily Dead. Like we have kids for 18 summers and I think find that to be beautiful. But the rest of my family finds me to be a bit morbid and perhaps I've always volunteered at a nursing home when I was when I finished college and was back I was working at the nursing home that I volunteered at when I was, when I finished college, I was back, I was working at the nursing home that I volunteered at when I was 12. And I realized that the skill set I had working at a nursing home, which was how to use my bodies. Also, I'm more visible to an elderly person, sick person to her baby,

because I'm high on the black hair, white skin, red lips. So I'm visible. And I thought, where else can I use these skills? And I was working at an Alzheimer's floor, a unit at a nursing home. And I thought everyone's saying MTV is destroying attention span. So I bet you I'd be great at MTV. So I got my gig at MTV and I still kept working at the

nursing home. And in the past 10 years, I've become a hospice chaplain. And I'm not practicing now because of COVID, but I do believe all skills are transferable and I'm deeply grateful for my experience, my training as a hospice chaplain. And I also think that we, the Momento Mori, you know, we all must be prepared. And so it's been not an excruciating. I think it's almost in a way be like gift

that I'm able to live this. I never expected to have what I call, you know, I have these extra innings. This is my bonus. I've got a round on the house. How lucky I'm gonna make the most of it. I wanna talk about momentum or at the end, but it does seem like you've had a lot of different lives,

right, that your career and your life has had a lot of different lives, right? That your career and your life has had a lot of different chapters. And then as you said, the skills are transferable. So what you learn or what you practice or the virtues that one calls out, you're able to apply to the other. And this is sort of a parenting book or it's a unique kind of parenting book and that it's sort of letters to your son. book or it's a unique kind of parenting book and that it's sort of letters to your son. What is both stoicism and this sort of grapple in with chronic pain? How do you think that that shapes how you approach being a parent? Well, it's interesting, Ryan, because I wrote this book, wise up, really thinking about nicomachian ethics and senica's letters to a stoic. So it was never wrote it as a parenting book. I wrote it as an epistolary because I thought this is a great to express how much I love the gift of stoicism.

But it was never a parenting book. It never occurred to me until my publisher. So it's a brand new book. And so I used my son. I asked him if I could address the letters to him. And he said, yes, and I, because my son, we have a great relationship. I really enjoy a sense of humor. And I thought in writing letters where my son essentially stands in for the reader, I could have a lot more fun and fill it with bits of trivia and historical information that

it just found fascinating. So it was really a way to write the most entertaining book that I was proud of. I am a bit of a magpie. I find bits of information and treasure them up. And then I get to where they're reading all your books. And that's what I love is that you've lit the fuse for so many people, their lives are going to be enhanced because of sharing the sharing of a knowledge, which is such a gift. So thank you for that. Well, yeah, you have a similar way of expressing it in the book that this idea that we don't

control what happens We control how we respond. I imagine obviously you're having to model that for your family like you didn't choose this illness You're having to choose how to live with it But how because my kids are much younger than yours. How do you actually teach that to your kids? Right like how do you day-to-day sort of teach other than modeling? How have you tried to Walk your kids through these Stoke principles? Probably one of the best things was the no technology at the table, only philosophy.

My son just had to give his chapel talk at his school as a senior. And it was fantastic because he wrote and presented a talk that he is now a budding stoic. And I think having books available and sharing what we're passionate with our children is truly the way to model it. And I love that he sent the other day, like, you know, you've got to play the hand you're dealt, make the best of what you have, and take the rest as it comes. And I was like, why is words young lad? Why? He was listening.

He was listening. And that is so fantastic because, you know, I always think like the mom is always the worst world in the TV show show and a movie. It's always some saggy naggy. Like there's not a lot of mothers where you really where you get to see that there's someone's not always chewing a whole short. But I was able to tell my son like in your teenage years, it is expected that you will find me a huge pain in the keester.

And that is the direct job of testosterone. Okay, there are hormones swimming in your co-h your colonies that are going to make you think that I am a the biggest pain in the butt to ever come down the pike. And he's like, I don't see that happening. And I was like, the sound of me biting into a piece of toast will be repugnant. I don't see it happening. But it did happen. And it wasn't a bite of toast. It was a corn cob that apparently I chomped into like sea biscuit. And I'm always telling them like, dude, moms are so incredible that nature had to synthesize

a chemical to break our bond so you don't live in my basement for the rest of your life. So be aware. And that has been such a gift, the fact that we can, you know, like, we can talk about it and laugh about it. And knowing that I don't think we can take things so seriously. And I tend to not take it that seriously. Well, no, I love what you just did there because obviously I think sometimes we forget because the still X are so feel so modern that they were writing 2000 years ago, right? And so the idea that they would have understood that there's a chemical that's operating in the relationship that's provoking certain reactions, it's likely to do

the X, Y, or Z. They wouldn't have known that, but I feel like 2000 years later, they would have certain, like, what you just did was you're like, okay, here's the situation that's likely to happen. Here's the cause of it. So let's understand it. We're still going to get frustrated with each other about the toaster or the corn on the cob. But because we understand it, because we've talked about it, we're not going to let it feel like the end of the world. We're not going to let it blow up into something bigger than it is.

To me, that's what the Stokes are talking about when they talk about sort of using your reason rather than just your emotions. And I do like to think that if Marcus Aure or Epic Titus or Senica was around today, they would be incorporating these understandings of these concepts into what they're doing. I read a thing from Adam Grant, he was like, the worst thing we do to parents is that we don't teach them any basic psychology or biot, like that they're just flying blind and they don't understand some of these forces that are operating just below the surface that are affecting every part of this really difficult thing we're doing. Exactly and we

were just we just flew to Charleston and our plates were delayed and flying is We're complicated and And I think the fact that You know Aristotle said it is expected that unexpected things will happen and You know the problem is we don't expect problems. Well expect problems all the time, because I am a walking biological complexity. And so while we were at the airport, there was a family that was blowing their top. And the outside reaction, as if they were the only people out of the 200 that were on this flight. And it was really, the three of us,

we just, we had compassion for everyone who had to deal with them. We also tried to have compassion for the people who were blowing up, but the fact that we understand that life will not be perfect. And I can accept that. And that was something that is really great to see my son take in this information and also now being awake to the idea that unexpected things will happen.

The problem is we don't expect problems. Yeah, and my wife and I were just doing this yesterday, we went to this drive-in zoo down the street from our house. And so we thought our kids would have this amazing time. They did, but on the way back, my son who's five had just a complete temper tantrum. He wanted to watch something on our phone and we said no.

And he just had this complete meltdown. He's like screaming all this stuff. And there was a part of me that's like, you can't let your kid act that way. Why are you treating me like this? We just gave you everything you said you wanted. And then it was like, wait, when did we eat last? And it's like you're obviously just hungry.

And so we sort of catch ourselves and we go, okay, like obviously we don't have any food. So is going to go on to we can get some food. But just the idea that like, understanding like, okay, you're acting this way and I can react to the surface level behavior that I'm seeing or I can understand and I could, you know, my parents would have just yelled at me about this, right? They would have tried to like crush the behavior and made me feel like I was doing something wrong by the way I was being. Instead of just understanding that this is a five-year-old who has zero control of themselves and is actually just really hungry. And by the way, it's my fault because I didn't give him food on the schedule that we normally eat food, right? And I think

this idea of sort of understanding what's going on beneath the surface with people is like one of my favorite parts of Stoicism. Absolutely. And it's a gift that you give yourself, but it's also it's a gift to others because when I'd like to be a good person when things aren't looking too good. I'm really good in a catastrophe, which I think is why I was drawn to becoming a chaplain and being a part of a volunteer with the FEMA, the Office of Emergency Management.

And I think there are banana peels in front of us at all times. And statistically, a pandemic was predicted. We just never believe it's going to happen. And I am a spectacularly optimistic catastrophist. I think things are going to go great until they don't. And then we're going to figure it out. And then we'll get back on being great again.

And that is, and I think that's something that I was able to learn through reading and from experience. And what I love about the Stoics is that it's so much, it's not just about reading, it's about taking action and doing things and expecting taking action, being a good person, being brave, having vigor. I do see humor and vigor in the Stoics. Like, I feel in a way that there are friends. And I spend so much time with them. Sure. No, I mean, that's what's so incredible

about what Marcus manages to do in meditations is that his life should be utterly incomprehensible and unrelated to us. He's literally worshipped as a God. He's the most famous person in the world. He's the most powerful person in the world. Plus, he lived 2,000 years ago in a society that had slaves and cults and all these ridiculous things,

right? And then somehow you pick up meditations and you're like, this is my God. I know exactly what he's talking about. And I think that's what art does, right? By getting very specific, you manage to become almost universal. But there is something incredible about. You, Senna Katu, you feel like he's writing to you.

Or Epititus, it feels like he's calling you out, instead of whoever it was in the lecture hall that he's speaking to in discourses. It's one of the most remarkable things I've ever come across in my life. It is this radiant intelligence and the fact, the metaphor you used earlier, this torch has been carried, and how lucky you are, how lucky we are that you read the book that changed your life and that has now put you on a path that will illuminate people for centuries to come. That's a real gift. So thank you for doing this. I mean, it takes a lot out of you. I mean, this is, you are dedicated. And I think that should really be honored.

So thank you for this. Thank you. Thank you. Well, so you mentioned Jim Volvano earlier. And since it sounds like you get daily dad as well, the other email that I do, I can't get over that exchange she tells about his dad. That he tells his dad daddy wants to be a coach

in division one athletics and his dad goes in the other room and it says Jim come in here and he comes in there and he goes you see that suitcase and goes yeah and he's like my bags are packed to watch you play and to watch you coach in the final four. Just this idea of being a fan, how have you thought about that with your son? And it sounds like your son is very into hockey. How have you thought about being a fan, but also, I guess it's attention, right,

to being a fan, but also demanding, encouraging them to be there better. How do you think about that? What's, it's interesting because my husband and my son never met me when I was sporty and active when my feet and hand worked, or not constantly. I can't have anything touch my neck. So they didn't know me when I was a ski instructor

or when I was a runner, when I was a very active. And my son is just, is a goalie, a hockey goalie. And he just won the Northeast Elite Championship. It's a big, big moment. He's been a goalie and playing hockey since he was four and playing in travel leagues since he was six. One of the things that as a mom, I realized that I could, if I worried about him out on the ice where he's on razor blades on,

on the, of skates, and there's checking and they've got sticks. And he is in the net and pucks are coming to him at a hundred miles an hour. If I worried about his safety, I would dissolve the joy that he gets from that. And so I really had to lie on a lot of stoic training, like to, as Nicholas Nassim Tzuhleb says, I had to domesticate my emotion of fear. I couldn't eradicate it. I had to domesticate it because I did not want to become the person that robbed him of the joy of what he's the captain of the crew team and he's down here rowing and The seasons over and it's fantastic and I was saying goodbye when he's off to row and I said, you know, there is a small part of me

That is somewhat believed like okay, you know hockey's hockey's down He goes, oh mom what people die much more and crew Just like people get hurt. And I was like, I love you for that. But when you mentioned the velvano, that speech and his father's like, my bag is packed. Yes. I want to have my bag packed and be supportive. But it's interesting because my husband's very sporty

and I felt like a choice like my Jack did not need two parents that were do everything about the sport. So I was able to somewhat keep myself occupied, support him, but not know everything that's going on. And that was something again that I explained to him that you don't need two parents that are barking mad about hockey. Just need one who's like, eh, good. And I think that that is sort of like let them here, let them have this. It doesn't have to be territory that you muscle your way into and assert your sort of

until authority or superiority over. Yes, beautifully said. I just figured he didn't need my prying eyes at the wrinkle of the time or I have him. I've got to equip him and the best way I can and again take the rest as it happens. It's interesting because my friend Bill's son is a D1 hockey coach at Yukon and that's been really beautiful seeing Luke Murray coach Yukon and seeing how proud the whole family is. It's been really great. Yeah, it's like, look, they're going to get enough pressure from basically everyone else.

How can you develop the restraint to be, to sort of let, to not be another voice, but that also sort of be the backstop that is the unfailing unconditional support no matter what happens. Yes, I think keeping my bad, that has become a shorthand, you know. We talk a little bit in the book about family act and family act are the nicknames that we call each other. It's the secret language that families have.

And I love Bill Walton, the MBA legend. And he really opened up a way for our family because I was pretty much trying to hide that I was sick to my kid all the time, and hiding chronic pain and sarcoidosis of the central nervous system is like trying to keep a beach ball underwater. It's always going to pop right back up. And when I'm like a surprising amount of force, right, like a discussion about sprays everywhere, goes at unpredictable directions, doing the exact opposite of what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to suppress this. So I think this is going to do

a number on his developing brain. And, but it was really through the grace of Bill Walton's amazing book, Back from the Dead, where he talks about his life with chronic pain. I was like, ah, I can, I can, so we can, Bill Walton is in our pantheon of heroes. Like he had to tell his family, like he's had to tell his wife, just stop walking, pushing air on me. And I never, I didn't know how to say that. And now I can say it. And that's, and that's, what's so beautiful. And I write a lot of handwritten letters, thank you letters. I've written letters to you in the past. handwritten letters, thank you letters. I've written letters to you in the past.

I never put a return address because it's not about reciprocity. It's just thanking people for, and I have been doing this since I was a kid and then picked it up again when I was, I mean my late 20s, early 30s, every day I write a handwritten thank you to some random person in the world. And that... So gratitude is like a literal practice for you. It's not just like, I try to think about what I'm grateful for. You actually write it down every day. And I have special postcards that don't have any return address because I just want to

just say, hey, I appreciate that. You do a good job. And I like writing. Thank you notes. It doesn't take a lot, but I feel like I can imagine that in the course of three decades, like just these, you know, if they all came back to me, but I, that was not the point. It was a really just about sending a bit of grace into the world. And it's just a short, small tiny thing to do. But I really like it. And I like think about like, oh, am I going to thank now? Like, yeah, it could be,

you know, somebody who works at a hostess, said, waitress or Yeah, it could be, you know, somebody who works at a hostess, said, oh, wait, you're sore. The lady who I saw on an architectural tour did job. And I mean it. Well, that's what's so remarkable about that first chapter of meditations, which I had someone look, it's almost 10% of the book, like by word count, is that they would have never seen it.

So it's so beautifully written and so kind and so all-encompassing, but meditations was never published and a lot of them were dead. So one, it's the idea of gratitude is something you're doing for you also, right? That it's the writing down, the reminding that was powerful. But then I also wonder, like, did Antoninus know what he meant to Marcus Real? So did Marcus Realis also articulate to sex to the philosopher or to his mother or to his brother while they were alive, did he also manage to express that gratitude with the same comprehensiveness and clarity?

I part of me suspects that maybe not, that the reason he was writing it is that he felt like he'd missed the window. I don't know. I could be just making that up. It was an interesting point to ponder. And again, it's a great thought exercise because I am a demonstrative person. And I deeply value the relationships that I have and tend them like a garden. And I try and express what I admire about people to them because again, this may be one of the gifts of working at a nursing home or as a chaplain. And at the end of life, I have had the gift

to see many people at the end of their lives. And I've never heard anyone saying, oh my gosh, it's hot. You know, like the devil's, like it's always like, wow, this is beautiful. And I'm so grateful. And it's what I've heard as last words, it's always been about love. And bearing witness to that has been a great opportunity

to move forward. Well, yeah, I mean, that's one of my favorite lines in, and I think it's one easy to sleep on, but he says at the beginning of meditations, when he's, I think it's thinking sexist, he says that he learned from sexist to be free of passion, but full of love. But again, it's not what you would think of when you think of Marcus really, but that he was striving to be full of love is to be just a whole other side of the stoics that we don't think about very often. And that's what I, I think it's interesting because we interpret it and we take, read the same interpret it and we take,

read the same material, but we take many different things out of it. And I really see so much of the radiant appreciation for every day where life was really hard in the golden age of Rome, which was only 40 years, that 80% were enslaved people. And it was not an easy time. The life expectancy was about half. And yet there is a gratitude for love.

And I love this idea of decanting passions. I mean, one of the things that I really love about the ancients was the Greek idea of love was not the erotic, fantasized idea. They had many forms of love. They had self-love, flatturia. They had brotherly love, Philadelphia, but love for everyone. Agape, Ludo's, the playful love, and the idea that a Rodic love, which passionate romantic love seems to be what all the love songs and popular culture and film are speaking of but there are so many definitions and the fact that our measly alphabet of just 26 letters and we put four of them together LOVE yet it contains so much and I find that just to be unbelievable. That we say, oh, I love Frank Sinatra.

I love Charleston. That's what I love about Bill Walton. How he's always using the word love when he's calling a game. I love bicycles. I love volcanoes. I love my life. I love my life. I love my flurry. I love that about him. He uses love like a

Old master Yeah, no, no, you're totally right. Well look, I want to talk to you about momentum warrior real fast But I did want to call out my my favorite part of your book is at the end You have a letter where your son your son writes a letter to you at the end of the book and he had the great Gatsby's one of my favorite novels mate, maybe my favorite, but he says Remember little Pammy in the great Gatsby neither did her mother neither did her mother Daisy Buchanan You are a much better literary mom first First off, that's such an incredible compliment to you. And to me, it seems like if you could ask for success as a parent,

something like that is exactly what you'd want to hear. But you're totally, it's just, it struck me on such a great observation because you're right. The kid is never named in the novel. The parents live these preposterously self-absorbed lives, obsessing about this long-lost love and going to parties and what other people think about them and then covering up the murder and all the stuff that happens in the book, but never once do you hear Daisy or her husband or Gatsby himself express even the slightest interest in this child. I just thought it was very, your son has an eye. Yeah, I thought it was really funny.

I also loved how we mentioned with my kid, I don't do a lot of social media, but if I ever mention him and when I was writing this book, I asked for his permission because in France, if you post a social media post of your child, you can be brought to court and you can be sued and pay a $7,000 fine. Wow. So, I think that it's important to, at any stage, understand that, yes, your kid might be cute, you know, with the crack of his butt hanging out, but realize that that's forever and that I want to honor. So I really, I said,

Jack, you know, can we use your nickname lefty? And he said, no, no, I am proud of you. And I would like you to use my real name. And he's a quiet humble man. I read this interesting, but statistic and I don't know how scientific it is, but it said that the average adolescent male speaks about 4,000 words a day. And the adolescent female speaks about 20,000 words a day and the adolescent female speaks about 20,000 words a day. And so he's a man of few words, but I think he can't be a gas bag like me and it's been interesting to kind of draw this out of him and to be able to run a project like this. And I was very impressed that he pulled out the literary mothers that he had read about and heard if I rank.

Very good. Well, my last question for you, and I was just thinking about this more because we went to the Austin rodeo on Saturday and my kids went a goldfish that like written toss. And then one of them died by Sunday night already because my son overfed it. And even though I told him several times, this is exactly what was going to happen. So now we're already having to have this little discussion about about their pet dying and how

the pet won't come back. How have you had to think about, it's one thing for the Stokes to say, Momentumori, actors if death hangs over you, which it does in the loosest sense, but in your case, it sort of literally does and Momentumori isn't just a philosophical practice. I imagine it's somewhat, it's a crushing reality at times,

or an overwhelming fact of your disease. Talk to me about mental worry and how soicism has helped you, and then how you've had to think about it as a parent. Well, I think because I have been, I've had last rights and then I came roaring back and I would recommend not dying to practically everybody

because it was really, really nice to not die. But I don't have that great fear. And I think that having a, I don't think of myself as somebody with an incurable illness, to think of. They didn't figure it out yet, but it's interesting because my husband is super fit and is a little bit more neurotic about death. And maybe I'm working mad and I don't fear it, and I tend to spit in death's eye.

I'm glad that my husband has a, maybe, level view. And I'm, I just realize at my son's school, there's a monument to a woman who went down on the Titanic. And her name was Edith Forbes Chase. She was only one of the four first class passengers who went down on the Titanic. And she gave her spot on the lifeboat to a mother who had four children. And her monument says, love is stronger than death. And that's what I

believe. One of my best friends in the world has ALS. And we were diagnosed around the same time. And actually, I had a head start. I was a grizzled veteran by about 10 years. She is dealing with ALS. One of the things that she told her children was, a mother's love is eternal. I love that. I just feel that love is stronger than death, just like that monument notes. Perhaps I do not fear death because I don't fear love. I embrace love. And I believe it's eternal. And it is what puffs us up. My four chambered organ is pumping right now. My 40 trillion cells are thrumming right now. All I have is this moment, all I have is this day, and I'll take it. I can't imagine feeling any different

about life or my life ending. And I've been close and I've had to prepare one of the things as a chaplain is you one of the exercises is you have to prepare your funeral. And that's a great thing to do. To get thing to think about because we often just kind of want to not think about, but you know, I've got the Margarita machine, I've got the spooky Halloween of sound effects record I want to play. I mean, I've got the fireworks. It's gonna be a party. It's gonna be cool. Yeah, tough going out with a bang. I love it. Now, it's, it's, I think about this where like obviously you don't want to be, you would never want

your life to be cut short. I'm sad when I have to go out of town or when I have to be gone all day or whatever. And I go like, you know, I mix me sad. And then I catch myself, I'm at home and they want to play. And I'm like, no, sorry, I'm busy, right? So it's funny, we want more time, but the irony as Seneca points out is, then when we have the time,

we don't actually spend it on the thing that we say we care about. Carpe diem, Carpe no, I mean, that's, you know, why just the day? It's Carpe no to, Carpe no, I mean, that's, you know, like, why just the day? It's Carpe no to them as well. Seize it all. Yeah, or seize right? It's like, forget the day.

Why don't you just handle like these next two minutes in front of you and not waste them. It's, it's really interesting because I read a lot about, like the land set and I tried to read as much about biology and psychology and that the signal of pain lasts six seconds. But it's just constantly what's happened with me is the lesion in my central nervous system grew so big and your skull is a contained environment that it destroyed the nerves in my medulla and cerebellum. And so this part of my brain, there's like a baseball sized granuloma. And normally your cells are permeable, but sarcoidosis makes them like crystals. So they're sugar. So they can't talk to each other and they're causing, it's crushed all the nerves.

So as my brain is constantly keeping me alive and keeping me moving, it's also saying, like, hey, there's a big problem here. So it's like this car alarm that's always going off, hey, there's a big problem here. So it's like this car alarm that's always going off. There's a big problem here. And I can't get it to turn off. So I feared if I get mad at this, I'll be mad all the time. So I should just, I have to accept what I have and make the most of what I have. And I have deep compassion for people. What's interesting, the word pain comes from the Latin phoena, which means punishment,

penalty. So living with chronic pain is almost like being punished for a crime you didn't commit. being punished for crime, you didn't commit. And pain reduces language. When you're in pain, you can't talk. It's just like, yeah, turns you into an idiot. Exactly. Well, it actually, a true idiot in ancient Greek was a free person who didn't vote in a democratic election. So I like that the idiot is not a person who doesn't vote. Idiotus. But yes, it does. And it can turn you into an object of pity. And I just recognize that pain reduces language and that writing and talking to the world through books has been

such a gift. And I think I'm much more eloquent out of my left hand than I am out of my pie hole. So it worked out for me. I'm grateful. Well, Karen, I'm very grateful for the book. It was beautiful and thoughtful and it's a fun read. And I'm so glad we got to we got to talk and I don't know if In 1997 or eight when I was watching playing check. This is where I thought we both end up But here here we are. I've worked out as was faded the stokes would say and I'm so glad we connected the same and It was truly a gift to be a part of your day. So thank you, and I wish you all the best.

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