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A lighthearted reading of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Join us as we read his private journal from 2,000 years ago and talk about how it makes us feel.
Good morning, Tom.
Good morning, Paul.
Welcome back.
Thank you.
Yes.
To the States.
We're not welcome back to in person.
We're still doing this remotely,
but welcome back to the Bay area.
Thank you.
It's good to be back.
On the flight back.
I had a little bit of a.
You could call it a stoic moment.
So basically whenever there's
international travel, like I
get all, flustered and I, so we
have, we had one of those days.
Where, we, we were like
running late to the airport.
We're rushing.
I'm sick that day.
I woke up pretty sick.
And so it was like, it was
lining up to be a bad day.
Just not a fun day.
Yeah.
And I'm already, I already am in that
mood when I'm doing international travel.
And we have this lovely thing with
the pasta and my wife, where she like,
she, she's very reasonable and leaves
on time, but I want to leave three
hours early because I'm a stereotype
of a guy anyway so we show up at the
airport, we end up checking a bag
which contains Upasana's green card.
Oh no.
And so she's an Indian citizen,
so she cannot enter the
country without a green card.
We're rushed, we're Googling frantically
reading the, USCIS page on what happens
in this scenario, and what, and everyone
on Reddit is recommending that you
like stay overnight and DHL, like
fast ship, the green car, like some
crazy, there's no, we're talking to the
airline and they're like, we can't like,
once it's checked, it's impossible.
Yeah.
And they can't even get, they
can't even get the bag off.
They just said the bag is going
to go and you're going to stay.
Okay.
So she can't even get on the plane.
Yeah, they're saying listen,
like you'd be a liability.
Like we'd get in trouble with our American
counterparts if we put you on this plane.
So you have to stay.
There was like a whole, like
there was a whole thing.
And then we, we push our way through,
we get on, we get her on the plane
and we're like, Yeah, we I don't we
pull a bunch of things and we make it
clear, we show all the pictures, we
complain, we're very loud, and we get
on the plane and there, and the sort
of attitude of like, all right good
luck, see you in 12 hours or see you
in 24 hours when they sent you back.
But anyway, so the whole flight, 10 hour,
11 hour flight, I'm like I'm imagining
the scenarios of what happens when we land
and the best version, the best scenario in
our minds, the ones that the happy path.
is where you are sent to the what's
called secondary screening, which
sounds very banal, but it is horrific.
It is like from the movies, it
is like a room with no windows.
It is last time a person was in there,
it was like a four hour, just sit there
and wait for no reason kind of situation.
It's like they can do it, do anything
to you behind those closed doors.
And I'm not even allowed to enter.
Like your partner's not allowed to enter.
It's like a whole, it's
like a whole thing.
And that was like the best case
scenario that we had in our mind.
And then we show up and the, and we're
super, we've packed it, we've rehearsed
our, like our, our, the, what we're
going to say and all these things.
And we go to the, we go to this
customs official and he, and we give
him our passports and he's like green
card and we're like, listen, yeah.
And.
He come, he let us through.
Yeah.
Wow.
Beautiful.
He let us through.
Yeah.
And the whole, that whole day, that
day turned into the best day ever.
Yeah.
Ever.
Yes.
'cause he, what a gift.
That man is the hero.
, we don't deserve.
Yes.
That man.
Because, 'cause we had the picture and
we had all these like stamps that she was
approved earlier and all these things.
And he, I think what happened is
that the correct thing to do would
have been to send us a secondary.
But he took personal liability.
Yeah, that you guys were
gonna not fuck it up.
To set us through.
Yeah.
To let us through.
And he gained nothing from that.
And he said it quietly.
He like looked around, he said it quietly.
And I think that he
broke the rules for us.
Yeah, I say, that's amazing.
That's lovely.
And I think he's a hero.
And I think he's just,
Ah, it made me so happy.
And so like this experience of turned
into the best day ever because of
expectations, because of how much I had
worked myself up for like just spending
the rest of the day in the airport.
Yeah, that's lovely.
It makes me think of this.
I think we've maybe talked about this
speech before actually on this podcast.
There's this David Foster Wallace speech
called this is water that he gave as a
commencement addressed in Kenyon College.
There's a passage in that speech.
Maybe I'll find it later.
That's related to this basically where
he's talking about all the sort of like
horrible soul deadening stuff that we
all just have to deal with in life on
a regular basis and like red tape and
bureaucracy is something that he Gives us
example of, but then he also the point he
ends up making is how moments like yours
where some simple bureaucrat who could
just make your life hell for no reason.
Yeah, decide sometimes to be really
sympathetic or kind or whatever.
These can actually be like
magical moments in life.
They're these incredible
moments of oh yeah, wow.
Humanity and life are amazing
because of the, yeah, the way
they're reaching out to you beyond
the power of the big institution
that they're a part of or whatever.
That's what came to mind for
me while you were saying that.
But yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
I wonder if like my net happiness.
Yeah.
Was higher.
You know what I mean?
I wonder if I can hack this system where
I just always put the green card in the
bag and then or even just if I could
just convince, this is effectively what's
those is, it's convincing yourself that.
Like having expectations, lowering
expectations, like always having low,
like minimal expectations, so that
you beat them and then you feel good
at it doesn't seem like a life hack.
Yeah.
I don't think that, yes, I
was sitting in the plane.
I was like worried about it, but
it still got to watch my movies.
I still got to it wasn't like
I, my, my flight was ruined.
It was fine.
It was just, I was just expecting.
I survived it.
And I think if I had gone into
it being like, oh, yeah I'm
expecting us to be out by, 1245.
And if we're late later than that,
I have, I'm going to be upset.
Yeah, it was better that
I had low expectations.
It's, we're in an interesting boundary
of things you can control and things you
can't control, too, I feel in the scheme
of stoicism and that important distinction
between here's the set of things that are
under your power and things that aren't.
Obviously, putting the green card in
the checked bag and then checking the
bag is a thing that you can control.
In my power, baby!
Technically in your power, but also
you're human, we all do stuff like this.
Yeah.
It requires tricking myself,
that's the hard part.
I have to basically trick myself.
Yeah, I guess I'm skeptical.
That's possible.
My experience with trying to
trick myself with stuff like that
is that it doesn't really work.
Your brain knows when you're the one.
It might be possible for
somebody else to play a trick.
Like you could engineer a situation
where someone else helps you play this
trick on you somehow or something.
Yeah, it's like a service.
Like negativity as a service
or like lowering expectations.
So there are, maybe there
are minor ways to do it.
I've gotten, we had a period of time
where Apostle and I like, It's just back
to back flights where we like forgot
our passport at home or showed up after
the gate closed like just horrible.
And so then there was this period
of time where we were just like,
listen, something's gonna go wrong.
That's just how it is.
That's just how it always goes.
So let's see what goes wrong this time.
And that attitude helped
out a lot actually.
So maybe you can little things like that.
It wasn't.
That's a lovely I didn't
have to convince myself.
Yeah.
That's a lovely attitude.
I really like that, that
you guys didn't give up on
traveling or like whatever else.
You were like, no, it's
gonna be a disaster.
We're gonna do it anyway.
Yeah.
That's very nice.
Yeah, you show up early so that
you can, you have space to deal
with whatever disaster happens.
Yep.
Yeah okay, you started this podcast
off right away by saying, Oh, I
had a stoic thing happened to me.
Well, I'm going to just say
I have one of those two.
So let me, I'm going to, I'm going
to take, I'm going to take my turn.
It's in some ways.
It's there's a, there's some overlap with
yours, which is that Last week, middle
of the week, I had the fun privilege of
going to one of the Copa America games
that was played here in San Francisco.
I got to see Colombia play Brazil.
Holy cow!
How come, Tom?
Some friends had two extra tickets.
Oh my god!
I scored them with a parna.
We went to the game with two of
her friends, which was very cool.
Very interesting environment.
Overall very energetic crowd, very pro
Columbia crowd, which was surprising to
me, not intuitive to me that would be
a bigger draw than Brazil in the United
States, but it was, were they Colombians?
I'm guessing there were Colombians.
Yes.
We were almost everybody in the.
Crowd was a spanish speaker and wearing
a jersey of either colombia or brazil
basically, but the majority were
colombians, which was not Intuitive to
me, but it was super interesting event.
It's a spanish language event, which I
didn't put together until we got there
copa america It's like primarily run
by a Spanish speaking organization.
So all the game announcements
are in, they're substituting
and giving cards and stuff.
All those announcements are in Spanish.
It's clearly, yeah it was this
very interesting experience of
feeling like, even though we only.
Took an Uber down to South
Bay to go to this game.
It was like, we were in a
completely different world.
Cause it was also like 95 degrees.
Everyone's speaking Spanish.
Everyone's smoking cigarettes
in the stadium, all this stuff.
That's whoa, where have we gone?
I am not in San Francisco anymore.
Which was very fun.
And then on the way home,
we took some public transit.
To get away from the stadium in order to
call an Uber that wouldn't be incredibly
expensive and on that public transit,
my phone got stolen with all with my all
my credit cards, my driver's license, my
yeah, every all my identification also
in a little wallet case on that phone.
Yeah, exactly.
That's the nightmare scenario.
Do you, how do you, is
that like a catch 22?
Yes.
So that's.
So yeah so a natural reaction
would be to freak out and be
like, Oh God, I'm screwed.
And even worse, I'm supposed to get on a
flight 36 hours later to go to my friend's
bachelor party in Glacier National Park.
So I now don't have a driver's license
or any functioning credit cards.
And I get, I'm going to say, I'm going
to toot my own horn here a little bit.
I think I stoicism helped me handle
this situation pretty admirably,
actually, which is that I realized.
In that moment.
Okay, you're still down in South Bay.
You have lost your phone
and all your identification.
You could start freaking out
about this and yeah, whatever.
Or you could realize that right now.
The only thing you actually need
to do is cancel your debit card.
Everything else is going
to basically be fine.
The phone is off.
They've stolen it in such a way
that it's already turned off.
They're not going to
mess with it or whatever.
So I placed one phone call to cancel
the debit card that was in there.
And then we moved on with our evening.
We like, I just did the
rest of the evening.
With no phone and that turned out to
be totally fine the next day I had to
there were some annoying stuff where
I had to get a phone delivered to my
apartment and then Figure out how to
let a delivery person in when you don't
have a phone Which is how I buzz people
into my building is with my phone.
So anyway, there's complicated
stuff going on there But mostly
the stoicism for me came in that
element of oh, yeah You know what?
I don't actually have to turn
this into a big thing right now.
All of it is in my power to
fix later and I will do that.
So I fixed it all the next day and got
on my flight to Glacier National Park on
Thursday morning and it went totally fine.
Nope.
No problem.
No problem at all.
Do any mental gymnastics
to get yourself there?
Did you have to tell yourself that?
Oh, we got these tickets for free.
So it's fine.
Did you have to tell yourself that
like I haven't had this happen to
me before so I it's about time.
No, I said to myself, it
was time for a new phone.
Anyway, the back of the back on
my old one was all shattered.
I'm sure they were the thief was pissed
when they took the case off and the
whole yeah, poor thief spider webbed out.
Yeah.
Yeah, but that was about it.
I, we, while we were on the public
transit, I would say I spent five to
10 minutes like thinking about it and
like really living in that moment.
And then I was, but I was quite pleased
with my ability to just move on from
it and not be so freaked out about it.
And so that was, yeah,
that was a good example.
Yeah, exactly.
It felt like a nice.
And I really do think this
podcast contributed to my ability
to do that in that moment.
It's maybe the most tangible example
I've felt so far of oh yeah, this thing
we've been doing, these ideas we've
been discussing, having a real in an
intense moment for me, having an impact.
That's awesome.
That's a great, that's
a great application.
Yeah.
Can I, okay, one more thing
before we get into reading.
Do you.
Do you get antsy when you're bored?
Do you get bored?
Is boredom like a feature of your life?
Like when you're waiting for something?
Yeah, we talked about this a couple
months back, if I remember it right,
because I was bored for some reason.
And I remember feeling, that's right.
Oh, you were sick.
You were sick.
And you were like, I'm so bored.
Yeah.
That's right.
But I'm so rarely, I would say in
general, I'm not usually, I'm lucky me.
We have so much
interesting stuff going on.
I don't feel like I'm usually bored.
Okay.
Were you've been dealing
with some boredom?
No I sorry, the app, I hate to keep
publicly airing the not laundry, but the
thing where I like to leave early and like
to leave late so that little bit of time
between our preferences for when we leave,
I feel this boredom because I'm usually at
the door with my shoes on yeah, waiting.
And I think the antidote, the story you
had made me think maybe the antidote
is we do one of these like 10 day
meditation retreats where you are not
allowed to talk for 10 days and you pay
for that experience, um, just so that
you can be like, Oh, I get this free
version of the thing I paid for where
I can just, Meditate for 10 minutes.
Yes, totally.
I, yeah, I think that totally makes sense.
If you,
I'm interested, I guess that
it's boredom and not anxiety
that you're feeling in those.
Those moments because well,
boredom, it's a form of anxiety.
Maybe it's anxiety that you are
like, that's the way I experience it.
It's what do I do right now?
You're feeling, and there's
antsiness that goes along.
There's antsiness.
There's I take my shoes off.
Should I keep them on?
Should I go try to sit down
and do something but, but
maybe there's not enough time.
Yeah.
I say.
Yeah, I do think I think you're spot on.
I think coming up with a way to
just be like, Hey, let me just
turn on the meditation here.
Yeah.
Sounds great.
You're not allowed to have your phone
at this expensive retreat, right?
So you get to have a version
of that experience for free.
Yes.
And get rid of your spiderweb phone.
Yes, exactly.
Yeah.
Yep.
Nice.
Yeah.
All right.
Shall we dig into some entries here?
Yeah.
All right.
We are in book seven.
It's Marcus and we are at entry 14.
I believe last time we left off with
this nice, this cool, like mellows
versus Maros distinction that I remember
about, like the distinction between us
being a limb of a greater thing versus
just a sort of more generic part.
Anyway, that, that was cool.
I'm remembering that.
Let's see what Marcus is up to today.
Number 14, 7 14 is about your phone.
It looks like, here we go.
Okay, great.
Let it happen, if it wants,
to whatever it can happen to.
And what's affected can
complain about it, if it wants.
It doesn't hurt me, unless I interpret
it, it's happening, as harmful to me.
I can choose not to.
This is literally about your phone, Tom.
You did this.
You did this.
You hadn't even read this chapter.
Yeah, it's true.
Yes.
I think you're right.
Yeah, I think, yes.
A thief wants to take my phone.
Fine.
Does it really hurt me?
It only hurts you if you let it hurt you.
Yeah, exactly.
And I think, yeah, it did for a minute.
I was, I did, I think like we had a
conversation a couple of months ago
at this point about a weird guy at the
grocery store who threatened you and
then you were having these fantasies
about being mean to him or whatever.
I also had, I definitely entertained that
brief fantasy of I catch the thief and.
Yeah.
Kick them or something.
Kick them.
Yeah.
And then the fantasy kind
of ends around there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It doesn't, it never really leads
anywhere all that satisfying
other than the violence itself.
But yes, then I was able to
get rid of that and just be
like, yeah, you know what?
Okay.
And here's the even.
Sort of on the subject of life
hacks, like you brought up earlier.
The weird thing is the following
day when I was still, it was a work
day, but also I had to replace all
my cards and get a phone delivered
and set it up and get Verizon to
activate it and do all this shit.
It was actually such a satisfying day
for me to accomplish all that in one
day ends up being like a good, it's
stupid and nerdy or something, but I
feel very, I felt so efficient that day.
I was getting so much shit done all day.
It was like, in a weird way, the thief
gave me the gift of this very, I felt
like a sort of superhero the next day.
I love how that's your super.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's a kind of, yes.
Administrative superhero.
Did you like go through and rethink
all the apps you have on your phone?
Was it like a cleansing moment for you or?
I restored it from a backup, so I
didn't wipe the phone completely.
But it was, like it was an opportunity
for instance to be like should
I maybe turn on location sharing
services so that other people could
help me out in situations like this
in the future or things like that.
Definitely a moment to
revisit some stuff like that.
I did.
I also downsized the phone itself.
It was a moment to be like, do I
need a huge phone or maybe just
a regular size phone is fine.
And so now I have a
nice normal size phone.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Yes.
I agree.
I do think this thematically
feels very similar.
Okay.
Number 15, no matter what anyone
says or does, my task is to be good.
Like gold or emerald or purple
repeating to itself, no matter what
anyone says or does, my task is to
be emerald, my color undiminished.
But they're um, the choices
of colors are interesting.
And I think the point he's making is that
we should be as constant as colors are.
Like, these things, they
don't have any change.
Yeah, exactly.
Your, our duties are as unchanging as
a color's duty is to be that color.
Yeah.
Two thousand years later, this example
of an emerald people are shitting
on that says, no, I'm going to keep
being an emerald makes no sense.
I wonder if in the, at the time it
may, maybe at the time like emeralds
were out of fashion or something.
I interpret them since two
of the three are like stones.
They're like, yeah they might be have,
they might've been held up as examples
of like things that don't blemish.
There are things that stay constant
in their brilliance over time at
a time when a lot of like other.
Dyed fabrics or whatever
might lose their luster.
These might be examples of constancy.
I see.
I see.
My task is to be emerald.
Yes.
My color undiminished.
Oh, the purple is interesting.
I know purple is the
like, royal color, right?
In In this period, but I wonder how
they got yeah, that's pretty telling.
He's my job is to be emperor.
Yeah, exactly.
My color undiminished.
Yeah.
I'm impressed that they got purple
to be like gold and emerald.
I get it.
They stay gold and
emerald for a long time.
I wonder what purple thing they're getting
that stays purple for such a long time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I still think this
analogy is a little weird.
Like the colors are
repeating to themselves.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You didn't need to take the
step of anthropomorphizing.
You could have just said like
gold, emerald, or purple,
no matter what anyone says.
They'll continue to be
that color and diminished.
Yes.
He chooses to give it a voice.
Yeah, that's right.
It's to give it like an option.
Yeah.
As if it could change color.
Yeah, you're right for a text
that has very little dialogue
or speech in it at all.
In a way, that's right.
This requires this 1 needed dialogue.
We need somebody saying a thing.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's an interesting point.
Yeah, he definitely could have.
Yeah, it's there's this funny
thing with, In some ways,
it's such an economical text.
The entries are so short.
But then also, in some ways, he
just this could be shorter, yeah.
I don't know, Mary Beard ruined ruined
this for me a little bit back when
she just nonchalantly was like, yeah,
The Meditations is a horrible book.
Wow.
Look, I don't know, I don't know if I
share her verdict, but she was, she's
a, she's the prominent Roman history.
And she's not a do it.
Like historian and she's just she was
just like so matter so nonchalantly.
It was like obviously
meditations is horrible.
I say interesting I'd forgotten that
she was that negative on it I yeah, or
the way she praises like meditations
is not a good book or not good writing
She just and then she moved on I guess.
I see.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's tough when a scholar of
her statitude just takes that
kind of pot shot at the text.
Yeah.
And we've devoted years.
Yes.
We really have.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we're like parsing
apart every sentence.
But no, she's wrong.
We're right.
Yes.
We're right.
Let's go Marcus.
Yes.
16.
The mind doesn't get in its own way.
Really appreciate it.
It doesn't frighten itself into desires.
If other things can scare
or hurt it, let them.
It won't go down that road on
the basis of its own perceptions.
Let the body avoid discomfort, if
it can, and if it feels it, say so.
But the soul is what feels fear
and pain, and what conceives
of them in the first place.
And it suffers nothing, because it
will never conclude that it has.
The mind in itself has no needs except for
those it creates itself, is undisturbed
except for its own disturbances, knows
no obstructions except those from within.
Whoa.
Okay.
So more body, mind, soul talk from Marcus.
Sometimes his concepts of especially
mind and soul are interesting to me
historically because they feel a bit
different than the way that we maybe
conceive of the mind and soul today.
Yeah.
I like, I think I follow most of the
beginning of this and it's cool that,
that basically the problems that arise
for the mind come from other places, but
the mind itself doesn't screw itself up.
Seems to be what I'm taking away
from it, that it doesn't like,
it's not where fear comes from.
That comes from your soul or whatever.
And that might mess with the mind.
But if your mind is, yeah, sorry.
Yep.
Yeah, no, go ahead.
Just in my head, there's like
a diagram forming here where
there are different layers.
And there's the mind and I guess
there's the soul, which is a separate
layer or something like that.
But obviously the part that you alluded
to how this is not the modern conception.
The part that I don't agree with is that
the mind doesn't get in its own way.
I think the mind is constantly
getting in its own way.
Yeah.
You've seen Inside Out too.
I haven't seen Inside Out too, but yes
I think, We have this concept for sure
in the modern day of the ways in which
our minds are constantly doing this.
Yeah.
But I think basically the mind gets
in its own way all the time, but
there's an additional layer, there's
like the sort of reaction layer.
There's the how you're feeling
and then how you react.
And maybe that's what he means by
soul, where that is the part that
you can have some control over.
I don't think you can control your mind.
I think you can control your reactions
to what your mind is pinging.
Interesting.
I feel like he's, I almost read
it the other way, that for him,
the mind is the reactions part.
And then yeah.
The soul is the, your initial reaction,
roughly speaking, because it's like,
yeah, I see it as borrowing the
characters from inside out or whatever
we have all this stuff in our brain.
That's emotional stuff that causes us
to be sometimes illogical or irrational.
And that emotional stuff, I think he
thinks lives in the soul, actually.
And that's the origin of our emotions.
But, and then the mind in his concept
is this thing that if you could divorce
it from all the nasty fear that the
soul has or whatever would be this
rational operator if except that it yes
this fed fear from other outside stuff
messes it up I actually, I think that's
the correct generous interpretation.
I think he also probably
understands these things.
And it's just the word mind
that's getting me tripped up.
Yeah I agree.
I think part of it is just that we
don't talk about soul that much.
Like our modern concept of this
stuff has merged those concepts.
We're, we put way more emphasis
on the mind than the soul.
But it's interesting to that.
This is something that also
maybe doesn't agree as much
with our modern interpretation.
He's got this concept that the soul, even
though it's the thing that feels fear and
pain, he says it suffers nothing because
it will never conclude that it has.
So it's like the soul is what creates
fear and pain, but it's out of a concern
for your mind or something like that.
And the soul itself doesn't get damaged
because it's the like eternal thing.
I don't know if I agree with that either.
The, our modern concept of soul
does include this, like in some
religious context, it's the
thing that lives on after you.
So maybe in that sense, it's the
thing that doesn't get damaged, but.
Yeah, the mind in itself has no needs
except for those it creates itself.
Boy, yeah, I don't know, Marcus.
It's weird.
Yeah, because you're right.
But so he first says the thing that
matches your interpretation, which
is that the soul is the thing that
passes, vibrations to the mind and
the mind can control what it chooses
to interpret and whatnot, which
makes sense, which, which maps.
Soul to what we think of as a mind.
And then yeah.
And then the mind, what he says, mind,
we think is like the conscious mind.
Yes.
But then he says the
other thing about souls.
Yes.
It suffers nothing because it will
never conclude that it has you.
That's getting very far away.
The idea that a soul could even
conclude to something in general.
Mind conclusion is what minds
do to me, not what souls do.
I agree.
Yeah.
Okay.
Interesting.
I feel like we're still this is, in
some cases it's refreshing to get
a Marcus entry where I'm feeling
like he's not repeating himself.
He has a very specific little anatomy or
whatever diagram, the relationship between
the body and the mind and the soul.
Yeah.
And only he shared the diagram.
Yes.
It's one of the things that is harder for
us to appreciate, I think in the modern
day, but we're still figuring it out.
Okay.
We have a one of his favorite moves is
to do a, an bullet point and then the
same number, but with an a afterwards.
So we have one of these and it's often
up to us to thread the needle on what
the connection between those two are.
Okay, here's number 17.
Being is good luck.
Or, good character.
What?
Okay.
What does this mean?
I have a guess, but okay.
17a, as often, he puts
this a in parenthesis.
So this is I think it's like a
parenthetical response to the first one.
So in parenthesis.
But what are you doing here?
Perceptions, that's with a capital P,
so he's like addressing the perceptions.
Get back to where you came from and
good riddance, I don't need you.
Yes, I know, it was only force
of habit that brought you.
No, I'm not angry with you.
Just go away.
Okay.
What?
I don't understand that part.
Okay let's start at the
He's in the deep end.
He's Let's start at the top,
let's see if we can get to the
bottom of what's going on here.
All right.
Being is good luck or good character.
I can get on board with this.
If you're healthy and well adjusted in
life, there's two explanations for that.
Either you've had good luck or
you've, you live very philosophically
and you can handle the bad stuff
that has been dealt to you in life.
Okay.
Sounds good.
I dig it.
Yeah.
That's how I read that.
Which is great.
Okay.
Now what on earth is he talking about?
But what are you doing here?
Perceptions?
It's like a play.
Yeah.
Yes.
Exactly.
It's very He's doing
his Doth thou protest?
Yeah.
It's the little Hamlet
soliloquy thing he's doing here.
What are you doing here?
Perceptions.
Okay.
So I think we have to Let's look We
gotta use every part of the buffalo here.
The fact that this is part a and in
parentheses means that it is a response.
I think we have to interpret this as a
response to the thing that came before it.
So somehow the perceptions are
messing up the conclusion that
he drew initially, I think.
That's how I interpret it.
Cause my, I don't see a wellbeing
because of perceptions with a capital
B P even, I have good character.
Or good luck, or whatever, and therefore
I should have well being, but then, dirty
perceptions sneaks its ugly head in.
Yes, and maybe that's because
Back from whence you came, good
riddance, I don't need you.
Yes, it's very Charles Dickens
Christmas carol dealing with the ghost
of Christmas past kind of vibe to me.
I'm
not angry with you, just go away!
Go away.
Yes, it's very, yes.
All that is very British to me.
Yeah.
Translated, it's good riddance.
Yes, it's very repetitive too.
Yes, I know it was only force
of habit that brought you.
Okay, so it's something like,
let me take a stab at it.
He's writing in his little meditations
journal and he's writing these
things that he's trying to convince
himself are true or whatever.
And he writes one that's says being
is good luck or good character.
And then he's thinking about that
some more, and he's got all these
sort of like additional but, either
some people have more good luck
than others or wait, this guy has
well being, but it doesn't seem
he's always interrupting himself.
He's constantly yeah, he's
interrupting himself, but he's.
And then 17a is him realizing that
he's interrupted himself or that
he's like getting distracted by
his own perceptions of the world.
And that's distracting himself from
the truth of entry number 17 and
he's saying shoo, go away perceptions
because I'm I'm onto something here.
And, but I always am like, I'm
too reliant on my own individual
perceptions of the world and it messes
me up from doing my good philosophy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's okay.
All right.
So he's talking to himself and
constantly interrupting himself on
a train of thought that we don't
really get to see where he was headed
necessarily, but he was headed somewhere.
And then he goes down the
rabbit hole where he personifies
perceptions with a capital P.
Yeah.
It's interesting because
in general, I think of the percept
like his perceptions, this guy's
perceptions are generally his allies.
Like he won't like he is.
A guy who has stuff going on in his
life and then loves doing the task
of turning whatever events are going
on in his life into the most abstract
lesson he could possibly learn from the
thing that just happened in his life.
And that requires a lot of perceptive
ability that requires him to be like,
okay, here's what happened, but what was
really going on, and then he uses those
his perceptions to turn it into these.
impenetrable sentences that he writes.
But here he's mad at his perceptions now.
He's saying the perceptions
are actually not helpful to me.
I think the way to be generous
with this is to not use the current
meaning of the word perceptions.
Yeah.
I read that as like
little voices in my head.
I read that as whatever the mind or
I guess the soul whatever word he was
using like the little, the little,
control center in, in inside out.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yes.
I dig that.
I think you're right.
That yes.
Okay.
We perception to us is like a field
of brain science or whatever, but
that's not how it works for him.
I think that's the way that this.
Yes.
Makes the most sense.
What do you make of the, It was only
force of habit that brought you here?
I actually that the way I interpreted
it was that, it's not good or bad, it's
just is what it is you weren't trying
to annoy me, no one's out to get me,
it's just, this is just how, yes, like
it's a force of habit to have these
negative thoughts yeah, it's a force of,
again, if we're interpreting this as a.
Control center and inside out.
It's like one of those little
characters and inside my brain,
this job is to keep me safe.
And so that thing like causes
anxiety because it makes me think
that I'm unsafe and that's his job.
It's a force of habit.
It's a, yeah.
And in that way, actually,
I agree with that.
I think that's I like
that explanation of it.
There's something I started out
being like, what is this entry?
But I like it now in how meta it is,
where he's he's showing us a particular
process that he goes through where
he's like, thinking about something,
writing in his journal or whatever.
And then the perceptions intervene.
Like he's he gets interrupted by his
perceptions and then he could like,
Stop writing or get mad about, rail
against the frustrate how frustrating
it is to be a human and have these
things, but no, his attitude is,
yeah, just to be shoo, go away.
You go away.
I'm not mad.
I'm just, this is my
nature, but also go away.
Yeah.
I, it's actually pretty powerful.
It's pretty powerful, right?
Cause we usually don't like, this takes a
lot of self control to react this way to
to, to some kind of disturbance in your
mind to say that this is how, this is how
in psychology you're supposed to treat.
Like anxiety, for example, you're
supposed to come in like the doors open.
I'm not going to try to block you.
You come in, sit down.
I'm aware that you're here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's also I feel like there's a lot
of places or that this sort of exists,
but the world of meditation too.
I feel like.
Like the way a lot of meditation is
described as working kind of works
like this to where you just observe
your thoughts as they're happening.
And then say, Oh, yeah, okay, that's
the thought I'm having right now.
And then, maybe move on to something
else that he seems to be in that way.
Kind of a pretty high level.
He's up near the top of the.
Theory of mind pyramid or whatever.
The other thing that makes me
think of is top chess players
have this metacognition Exactly.
That's the word I was about to use Yes
I love that concept and he seems like
he has a lot of that going on here
where he's okay I'm thinking something
and then I realize like change in my
thoughts and I can see what the change
in my thoughts is and I can choose to
put that change away if I so desire.
Yeah, I feel very good about our
interpretation that we've built.
Yeah, but I, it makes me wonder.
If we're just like, this is a
blank canvas that it's more like
whatever we're talking about is
just a reflection of what we think.
What's going on in our brains.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What is, okay.
Give me the most, the interpretation
that is the most like non, nonsense,
like something completely different.
He actually meant the word perceptions.
And he's like contradicting himself
thinking that I should just think about
facts and not try to interpret them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I should only think about facts.
Yeah.
That, that, that.
I'm not angry with you.
Just go away.
Like that could be a very
viable reading as well.
In which case, I don't know if
I'm like, I don't know if I agree.
Yes.
What are you doing here, Perceptions?
We're giving him 2000 years of
we're giving him Disney's Inside
Out, we're giving him so much here.
Yeah, I think you're right.
We're giving him a lot.
And there's a way in which I
agree, this whole text is very
much Big time blank slate.
Yeah, you just read some words and
then you and I decide what they mean.
And then exactly that project is
probably at least 50 percent our
brains as opposed to his brain.
I think that's true in a way.
That's great.
I think that there's
something wrong with that.
We're not historians.
We never set out to do that.
Yes, the point was to find something
to bounce ourselves off of.
And I think this is a nice bouncy
thing for us to reflect off of.
A worse text would have
less of us in it, actually.
It would give us less to do.
Like a math textbook, imagine that.
Yeah, exactly.
It would be hard.
Yes I really using the capital P
perceptions to be the inside out
characters, roughly speaking, like
that could almost if you were going
to stage inside out as like a, an old
Greek play or something like that,
they might be called the perceptions.
I feel like in that kind of setup.
So I think that's a very
nice analogy for this entry.
Nice.
All right.
I think this is going to be our
last entry for this episode here.
Number 18.
Brightened of change.
It's like an ad.
It's like an ad on the bus.
Yes, that's true.
Yes.
I think I'm, I think I'm getting
invited into Scientology or something.
Yeah.
Brightened of change.
But what can exist without it?
What's closer to nature's heart?
Can you take a hot bath and
leave the firewood as it was eat
food without transforming it?
Can any vital process take place
without something being changed?
Can't you see it's just the same
with you and just as vital to nature.
Yeah, I dig this one.
It's the stuff of like aphorisms now.
I feel like we, maybe
this feels very obvious.
Yes, I agree.
Yeah.
I guess I always with the obvious stuff.
I always.
Enjoy his specifics, though.
Can you take a hot bath and
leave the firewood as it was?
It's very revealing of oh yeah
in order to have a hot bath.
Imagine.
Oh, it's so much work.
I have to start a fire.
What a massive project.
Although, Yeah, I guess someone
else is making the fire for you.
Let's say it wasn't someone
else making a fire though.
I agree with you that in Marcus's
case, probably somebody else is making
the fire, but let's say somebody,
let's say Marcus had to make the fire.
I think I've been thinking
about recently and it's obvious
too, but like the way that.
Contrast is really important in life.
And having to work for something like a
hot bath can make it feel way better than
if you just got the hot bath for free.
I'm just imagining having to make a
fire and then imagine trying to get
the temperature of the bath, even
remotely correct when you've you're
doing it by heating water over a fire.
Yeah.
Think about if you've got it even
close to think about how satisfying
and amazing that bath would feel.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you have a thing to occupy yourself
because what I'm, after work, I am
looking for something to be handsy with.
Like I like cooking, right?
And if I could just extend cooking,
like if I just had the food instantly, I
don't think that would make me happier.
I like the process.
And so right now we have this
shower, which has no process.
There's no art in taking a shower.
There's no art in getting
the water temperature, right?
Yes.
Like totally.
And so maybe we've been robbed.
Yes.
You guys are shopping around
for places you might live.
Maybe you find somewhere with
a firewood powered bathtub
situation It's all in my control.
Yes But yes, I think there is I agree
with your point Although I think you're
being tongue in cheek that in a way the
convenience of modern life It doesn't
really deprive us of these satisfactions,
but it alienates us from them a little
bit We have to go find them as opposed
to being given them almost automatically.
Yeah.
Nice.
That's a good one.
Yeah.
Eat food without transforming.
It is a funny way to phrase it.
How does Marcus eat his food?
Does he like, I assume he means
like spit acid into it so it
turns into a liquid first.
Oh, interesting.
I was interpreting that as.
It turns into poop.
Like you can't.
Oh, that's a good one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It doesn't come out the
same in the other side.
That's it.
Yeah.
Once you've eaten it, it changes.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
That's a good one.
Okay.
It's just a weird way to put it.
Yeah.
I interpret it as being, he's being
polite when he, without transforming it.
He doesn't want to say.
Poo.
Okay.
My initial interpretation was eat
food and have it still be there
in the same way that fire would.
Yeah.
Like it is gone, but I like
your interpretation of poo more.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
That seems like a good place
to end this episode, I think.
Yeah.
All right.
Bye Tom.
Good episode.
Bye.