Guide From The Perplexed
Guide From The Perplexed
Episode 7: Apathy and Depression
JD and Mordecai continue on their path of perplexity, examining how apathy is "buying into our smallness."
Books/Writers Referenced:
Alan Watts
Marcus Aurelius
David Hawkins
Timestamps:
00:42 - 19:04 What is Apathy?
19:04 - 30:07 Scale of Emotions
30:07- 32:04 Ladder of Emotions
32:04 - 37:59 Apathy and Depression
37:59 - 43:13 Spiritual and Philosophical Traditions
43:13 - 51:04 Acting Out Emotion
Well, it's JD and Mordecai back at it on our path of the perplexed. So good to be back. JD it's become a real highlight of my of my week. So it's kind of non negotiable. So thank you for being part of it.
JD Stettin:A real pleasure for me to and likewise, that's probably the thing I'm most look forward to on my on my calendar every week.
Mordecai Rosenberg:It's good, we mean any to liven up your calendar.
JD Stettin:Yeah. What does that tell you? Guys, Monday at noon, everything else is downhill from here.
Mordecai Rosenberg:So I thought we'd start this week on chapter four, which is apathy. The way Hawkins starts it is he says that apathy is the belief 'I can't' the feeling that we cannot do anything about our situation, and no one else can help. Now, first of all, is that your experience of it that apathy is that when you feel a sense of apathy? Do you have the same experience of it?
JD Stettin:Apathy and depression, apathy is the belief'I can't' just reading of the words like kind of let it sink in on my own, another way here, too I guess that wouldn't have been my initial take on on apathy, that phrase, I can't. To me, apathy feels more like, it doesn't matter, or why bother? Or it's all, you know, garbage anyway, I wouldn't have thought that it started with the belief that I can't.
Mordecai Rosenberg:It's interesting that he does describe it that way. It's also interesting that he groups it together with depression. I would have thought of apathy as one of the symptoms of depression. But not that apathy is the core of it and that in the middle of of the center of energy there is I can't. But I do think about it, well, so sometimes, I also feel that apathy is that I don't know how to and this is something that I I have been feeling well. I guess it comes in fits and starts, but in terms of my own spiritual path, we try and we try, and we try, and we do all these different things. We meditate and journal and go to Israel for three and a half years. And yeah. Cool pledges, right and listen to Alan Watts lectures. Then sometimes I just feel like, I actually haven't done anything I've accomplished anywhere. And am I really any closer? You know, because it feels like, somehow the path, the way you get there is almost by falling into it. You can't, it's not a destination that you can just run to and get to. And so sometimes I definitely have a feeling of just like, maybe I can't get there, maybe I can't get to that state of higher consciousness, or enlightenment, or whatever it is. So part of it is I can't and I guess one of the reasons why I can't might be I just don't know. I don't know how to or I don't have the capability. Yeah, but maybe there is a lot when it comes down to it is part of that 'I can't'.
JD Stettin:It's interesting to think about it that way. As in I can't underneath that. And maybe just to play with that a little bit more. So is it in what you just described this feeling of? Am I getting anywhere? Where is this exactly? How am I doing it? Do you feel like there's an I can't under there? Or maybe is it a I don't know how or what even is this? And then do you do experience that I guess as apathy or depression or is it confusion? What words have you maybe in your experience used before, say apathy and depression before this chapter and Hawkins? Like how have you described to yourself that
Mordecai Rosenberg:Well, I guess it's that's a very feeling? interesting question. I would say it is a like, under requited desire. Is that the word required? Yeah, but it's like wanting to just wanting something that's just like out of grasp. Confusion, the frustration. Yeah. Fear, I guess fear. Right? Like, am I just gonna be doing this my whole lifetime and like not get there? Hmm. You know, there's also another side of it, which is that I kind of feel like what you're put on earth to do is this work and to achieve it. I also have felt that, like, if I do this fear of achieving it, because like if I do achieve it, does that mean that like, I'll just die? Because, you know, it's like--
JD Stettin:--Mission accomplished.
Mordecai Rosenberg:Mission accomplished. So alright, you're out and I don't really want to die. Which is like a weird. I mean, there's a lot a lot of assumptions and presumptions in that.
JD Stettin:That makes me think of what's that line from? God, I think it's true pay of us about the work is not for you to finish. But you have to do a low Allah Hama Lucha, something like that, your job is to do the work. Right. Whether or not you finish it, that's not even a no one's asking you to do that. And that's not a directive. It's just a thought that bubbled up as you talk about that. To think feels comforting.
Mordecai Rosenberg:I started a parenting seminar. So one of the things that they said in the first session was that we want to redefine our conception of successful parenting and successful parenting is practicing these things he steps. It's not based on your child's reaction to that. Right, so your job is to do the work and then step away. It's not to just because your child doesn't react the way you would like them to doesn't mean that it's a failure. I think you're right, that it's not our job to achieve. Right? And the timing of achievement is also not up to us. But you put in the work, whatever the work means, like, again, it's hard to even know, like what is it? I'm like, What is this?
JD Stettin:This takes us back to our title guide from the perplexed, those of you who are unsure. Yeah, this is it? It's totally perplexing. What even is the task, like, we were just talking before. I came from a volunteer orientation this morning, where my job was to clean cat carriers, it was like a pretty clear, 'Okay, here's a stack of dirty cat carriers, here's the paper towel, the spray cleaner and the spray sanitizer, and your job is to clean, sanitized dry and stack'. There's something so comforting about that, there's a very definite task, like start to finish. Some of it was trickier than other parts of it and when I was done, I walked away and you know, mission accomplished. There's something really good in that feeling, and that simplicity. Coming back from that to this, and it's like, even if we can back off from the notion of having to accomplish anything or get somewhere to your point, like, where's even the start? on the game board? Where's the starting line? Exactly? Right. Forget about the end goal. Forget about where's the start line? And also how do we play?
Mordecai Rosenberg:What was the line that you had you know about how to get to Tottenham or something?
JD Stettin:Yeah, the Alan Watts. American turret that, Yoko like, how do you get to upper Tottenham? And he goes, I don't know but I wouldn't start from here. No, oh, no. That's not very good. So yeah, that it does feel over whelming at times, and I'm trying to think about kind of your opening salvo in terms of have I felt apathetic or depressed? Or maybe what are the times and ways I felt empathetic or depressed as it relates to this journey? Because I've definitely felt confusion, I felt fear, anger and I'm trying to think that the way he defines apathy, I can't. I mean, maybe one way it's come up is sometimes with really strong feelings and difficult emotions. The 'I can't' not even being able to be with them. I don't know if that qualifies quite as apathy or if that's a response or reaction of 'I can't' create a certain apathy towards something or someone. One example that just occurred to me, I was thinking as passing homeless people and sometimes, like not even being able to finding myself closing my heart maybe in a way that even if I give them, you know, the dollar or whatever change it is that I have the inability to really be with that person. That moment for what they are on this kind of like I can't and that's what life is like, I can't. I can't even open my heart to the pain and suffering of this human right now and I think maybe that's a form of apathy again, whether even if I choose to give that person money, just that feeling of I can't even go there. Because the idea of the suffering of this human is just so overwhelming to me, that I can't and I can feel the close and the shutdown of the emotional experience.
Mordecai Rosenberg:That's so interesting. Something that comes to mind is dissociation. I think dissociation is very much apathetic, you know, when a woman is being raped and she dissociates from her body, she can kind of just see it happening but in her mind she kind of separates from her body, right, because she can't handle the pain of that moment. I definitely have felt that also a lot recently, this sense that there are certain emotional tunnels that I just don't want to go. So if something comes up, I might just dissociation. It has definitely been something that one of my real go to's for as long as I can remember. Yes. So it's, oh I don't want to feel that, I feel like this is the letting go process and feeling these difficult emotions, right of anger or fear or grief. Apathy, I feel like is probably something that just will come up over and over when you don't want to go there. Or I don't want to feel that so I'd rather go to that 'I can't' , there is this feeling of No, I can't go to that feeling and survive. That's how it feels. There is something to that. I wonder if it's you I'm not sure that all these will. We'll talk about this in a couple of minutes. But I don't know if this ladder of emotions, like I don't know, if they just go away. It's like, Well, okay, I dealt with apathy, now I'm up to level three. I'm Mario Brothers. I think it cycles, and you come back to it. And probably apathy may be something that you hit every time you get to another difficult emotion, or particularly intense moment.
JD Stettin:I think hearing you talking about that, too. I think his line about most icons are really I won't. And to your point, it's a way of, in your example of maybe finding difficult pain tunnels or my example of sometimes with a homeless person, it's like, I won't go there. It feels too hard. I don't think I can. The most in his hierarchy, it seems like the lowest or the most basic and most primal perhaps way of dealing with it is through apathy, through like totally shutting down. I think I also just, you know, there's some gratitude for this right and hearing you talk about when I've read similar things about rape or some other really deeply traumatic events where people dissociate. There's a way in which the ability to disassociate or even to be apathetic, is an amazing survival tool and it really kicks on when our systems otherwise cannot handle what is happening to us. Part of letting go as you know, according to what little we know about it is being with and so being with that, like, oh, wow, I'm shutting down because I can't handle that. And there's a judgmental side that's maybe like, well, you should be able to handle it or why can you go there? What's wrong with you or why, but also recognizing and respecting, like, wow, this is a survival mechanism. Thank you, system, thank you brain, heart, mind, whatever, for saving me from things that I am apparently not ready to deal with. Byron Katie, so how do you know you're not ready to deal with it? Because you shut down like that. That's the reality. That's where we are in going back to the question of where do we even start, you know, not from here? I think that's the beauty of that the answer is exactly, wherever that is, in that moment of apathy. That is, if you can find that that's the starting line. Yeah.
Mordecai Rosenberg:I think that's right. Another analogy that came to me was just in terms of how to think about this scale of emotions. I was thinking about what to do with, let's say, with guilt, or shame or apathy, or these low level emotions and like doesn't mean that you are, do you just need to eliminate them? Right? I don't know that you can just say, why, you know, like, eliminate, I'm going to let go so that I can eliminate apathy. I don't think that's how it works. I do think that when you're stuck in those lower level emotions, they it's almost like blinders, from seeing the higher level emotions that are already present. Right? So let's say if you went out if it was a stormy day, right, and the sun was totally blocked, and you went outside and someone asked you, is it light out or dark out? Right? So if you're feeling apathy, you're gonna say it's dark out. Like, there's no sun, it's dark out. Sure. But you could also say, Well, is it also light out? Right? And if you can expand that aperture of your purse, broaden your perspective, you can say, well, yeah, it's not nighttime. Right? I can and even at night, say, Well, is it? Is it dark out? Yes. Is it also light out? Yeah, I mean, I can see their street lights, I can see their stars, Moon, I can see that. It's so he talks about this first recognizing that 'I can't' is really an 'I won't'. Then once you realize that it's I won't, you can see, well, why is it that I won't write maybe it's I won't, because I'm scared. Right? I'm not willing to feel this. Let's say, you know, if you have a difficult emotion, right? I'm not willing to feel to feel this because I'm scared that I won't be able to handle that scale of emotion. Once you just acknowledging, simply acknowledging that you now feel fear, you have moved up the scale and it was there, right, as part of this conversation, when you were saying, Well, what does that feel? What are you feeling in those moments? And sure enough, it's like, well, yeah, I feel confused. I feel fear. You know, I feel pride. It's there, there actually are all these other parts of the palette, your emotional palette that are underneath, right, but that if you're stuck in apathy, you can't see beyond that.
JD Stettin:I really, really love that. Just another fun kind of metaphor. I had this basketball coach in elementary school who, I guess, thinking back and now I guess he liked the sort of Zen game tricks when it came to giving someone an opportunity to do something or who would get the ball first or just some way he would ask these kinds of real questions like he'd hold up two fingers and say, How many fingers do I have? If you said to it was wrong? The answer is he has five fingers, you know how many fingers on his hand and it's like the answers, yet five it's holding up to so that, sort of to your point, about is it light outside even when it's nighttime. It's like wherever else it isn't nighttime and seeing the fullness as you zoom out of like, yes, it's always dark. Thinking about this progression or this ladder, this chain of emotions in that way. When you're sitting at the quote unquote, top, which emotional index which whichever one it is that's on the very top. It's not that the other ones cease to exist or you've like surmounted. The lower ones is that when you're sitting at, let's just say peace or joy or oneness, you see the whole rainbow. Whereas when you're sitting in apathy, that's the only thing you see. When you're sitting in love and joy and oneness, you can see the sad, the fear, the anger, the suffering the app, you can see all of it. The courage that you can see that and it feel and you can be with all of those things. When you're sitting in the higher level, it's when you're stuck in a lower one, that you just, you're only able to feel in that way, maybe that's an understanding of that hierarchy. When you're in apathy. That's all you got. When you're in fear, you can have apathy and grief and fear when you're an anger. You can have anger, fear, apathy, grief, you know, and it's kind of how much and this idea of what are we doing, what's the purpose of any of this, it's not to get past and never experience apathy, or fear or anger again, it's, to be in the fullness, complexity of everything, all at once and that's just not something you can do. When you're stuck on any one of them through being with each one of them and letting go you actually then I think get to be with all of them. Hmm, in a way.
Mordecai Rosenberg:That's so interesting. I don't know if this is what you're saying. But looking at the list, I'm wondering also if the blockages upwards but not downwards. So Toto, right. Let's say, if I'm feeling grief because I just lost a loved one, God forbid, I can still feel guilt in that moment and feel like I wasn't there for them, or shame, you know. But I may not be but I can't really feel desire, I may not be able to feel desire. I may not be able to be in the point of feeling fear. So it's, that would be a really interesting way of looking at it where as you make your way up, you can now appreciate you can be with the emotions, or you can, I don't know about be with them because apathy, you don't want to be with guilt and shame. But you can be aware of them, you can see them.
JD Stettin:And that's where I also wonder if when, let's say in a particular moment, right, because I think none of these things, nothing lasts forever. But in a particular moment, if you're able to get up to let's just say, the level of love. You can feel guilt, grief, fear, desire, pride, but you're not trapped by it. And in a way that you know, we've kind of touched on in different ways. And with the mood meter. There's nothing wrong with feeling anger, honestly, even I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with feeling guilt or shame. It's being trapped, being stuck at those levels that feels you know, maybe arguably, there's nothing wrong with anything, but it's when you're stuck at those levels, you're missing out on the entirety of the rest of this experience. Whereas when you're up top at joy, peace movement, you're getting all of the experiences and that kind of full multi dimensional fully colored brightness of life of existence of humanity and consciousness when you can you can notice your anger maybe or your fear and not be bothered by it because you also can feel reason and love and joy. And you can see that in all in that same mood moment or relationship or you know, quote unquote problem and that feels. Wow, yeah, I hadn't really thought of it that way before this is kind of coming up as a result of this conversation. But yeah, that's what's sad about being locked in any of these levels, I guess is we're just missing out in any moment. We could be feeling all of these things kind of, you know, Viktor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning. I don't think he wasn't feeling anger or fear or guilt at various points in the concentration camp. I think he was feeling all that and also able to feel willingness, acceptance, reason love. At the same time and what a wonderfully liberating thing that you can just kind of be almost playing as like a piano just going up and down the scales this full range and texture of our inner lives.
Mordecai Rosenberg:When you think about it, the experience of our life is just feelings. When we talk about wanting to get there's a I don't know if you have a bucket list, right of things you want to do, let's say you want to travel to Africa, or well, why do you want to go to Africa? Because you want to have set foot in Africa? No, it's because you're searching for a feeling. That feeling maybe, ah, which is not on this, but you know, it could be love, like when you travel to new places, you have this sense of pleasure, that comes to that somehow, whether it's from the newness or the appreciation for seeing things in a different context that gives you a greater appreciation. So the maybe what you could say is that the measure of the fullness of your life is how much color you have in the tapestry, how much color you're willing to have in the tap, it's like a tapestry of feelings, right? So if you're either able to, if you're willing to either experience anger or happiness, well, then your tapestry is black and white. If you're willing to experience fear, well, now you have great in there, if you're willing to experience love, then you have read it and so the ability to sit with these things, it's not that you are now eliminating desire from your tapestry. But the point is that you can just have it as part of your tapestry, it's part of this greater sum. The truth is, these things are always present. One thing that I realized with the mood meter, a bit is lots of times there's a lot of different squares that I could check. Yeah, yes, I'm feeling hopeful. And I'm feeling excited, and I'm feeling a little nervous, and I'm feeling. So it's, maybe part of what this whole process is, just giving yourself the ability to just expand that tapestry, like the variety of colors, emotional colors that you have.
JD Stettin:I love that metaphor and that idea. It does feel like in a way, they're already there. And it's about just being able to, you know, awareness and they're all baked into us all the time. And the more we can be with each one in this sort of ladder system, the more that unlocks the ability to be with the next and kind of interesting, you mentioned, use colors as an example. I remember, at some point studying linguistics in undergrad, words for colors in different languages. So different languages have different number of color words, different colors. But one thing that seems to be consistent from non literate cultures through literate cultures. And I think this was true as a female 15 years ago, probably still is, but that there, there was a sort of universal order in the sense that if your language only had two color words, it would be black and white. If your language has three, it would be black, white, and red. If your language has four, it would be black, right? What black, white, red, and then blue, or green, I don't remember. But the idea is you could have different numbers, but they were all in this sort of order. And that feels very much like this, you know, map of consciousness that Hawkins has, which there is an order to these things, because it's just you can't experience courage if you haven't even dealt with the shame of a particular situation. You can't have a word for blue, if you don't have a word for red. That just seems to be true ethnographically. There's something really interesting about this idea, I think they're all there anyway, right? Like the color is, I guess, very much like color to. Color, the shape of whatever molecules, which is what actually determines color, right? It's all geometry when it comes down to it. But that's already there. Whether or not you know, the word for fuchsia. That's the wavelength of light that is being reflected back up from it. And it's about, again, developing that granularity, but you can't know what fuchsia is until you know, red. You just did, there wouldn't be a way for you to access that. You couldn't get to Blue unless you had a concept of black and white or dark and light. It just wouldn't. It wouldn't make sense. And so just thinking of your metaphor, the tapestry and the colors and like, ooh, this really does feel fitting in a way or useful way of maybe approaching this map of consciousness.
Mordecai Rosenberg:Yes. So it's not even, like just different sections of the tapestry, but it's actually different. It's just layers of, of like brushstrokes, you know, over, over and above and you make such a great point. Courage means nothing if you have never experienced fear. What does that mean? You're courageous? If you know, when you see, what was that movie, like free solo with that? Oh, yeah, the climbing the climb, you had a climber? Right? And they said, they looked at his brain. And, it wasn't that he was so courageous that he was overcoming fear, the fear part of the brain just didn't exist. You know? So you just had a real seeking need. But can you feel love, if you've never experienced grief? Or how much deeper is your sense of love, if you've experienced grief, right to know what it means to have someone in your life? What I love about that, also, is that now it's not that these things are just levels to be surmounted, but that I actually want to keep them, right, I don't because they're having those as part of the tapestry deepens the levels of those things above it. So I don't want to eliminate fear. I just want to be able to sit with that. Because if I can sit with that fear, then I can become courageous, right? I can and my courage can be that much. Deeper and enjoyable, are powerful with knowing that there's that fear underneath it?
JD Stettin:Again, just thinking of the many Alan Watts talks, we listen to books, you've read that idea of you can't have the crest of the wave without the valley that enlightenment, peace, joy, love reason also don't make sense without shame, guilt, apathy, fear, grief, desire, they all do sort of sit and talk to one another in this way. And so yeah, you're not trying to get rid of any of them. I think we're just maybe trying to be aware of as many of them in a given moment as possible, which makes me think about this mood meter app, it would be kind of cool to build a version of it. Where to your earlier point about feeling a lot of things at once, like that would be really cool to try to be able to capture in a particular moment, or about a particular topic, like going back to the other week, your son's basketball game. If we were there in the crowd and in a moment at a timeout or halftime, you like pull out your phone, and you could plot like all the different, okay, there's actually a little bit of shame about, I don't know, maybe I couldn't do this, as a youth, I wasn't athletic or whatever, there's some guilt about feeling that shame. There's some apathy toward like, it would be really neat to see like how, in any given moment, you could kind of stack all these different feelings that are probably there, and that are just waiting to be noticed or recognized or on earth. And as you release each one of you. Oh, yeah, I do have some shame about this. And that now there's now some guilt or ism. Oh, my God, I was apathetic about this, like, what a wonderful way to like build and feel emotional texture in any given moment, or for a given feeling or problem or whatever it is, and kind of see how maybe you like, hit a wall at at pride or at courage or you kind of can't really feel it or you find yourself getting stuck on, on desire. You really want your son's team to win and you can't, you're blinded by that moment. And that's really interesting, and formative too in a particular moment or relationship to feel like, Oh, I am stuck on pride with this person. Or in this case, like, wow, I just can't keep running into that.
Mordecai Rosenberg:That's interesting. Hawking says, also, I want to read just a small portion. I'll skip around a little bit. But on page 55, it says apathy and depression are the prices we pay for having settled for and bought into our smallness. In reality, it is only a definition of ourselves that we have unwittingly allowed it to happen. The way out is to become more conscious. What does it mean to become more conscious, to begin with becoming more conscious means to start looking for the truth for ourselves, instead of blindly following, but blindly allowing ourselves to be programmed, whether from without or by an inner voice within the mind which seeks to diminish and invalidate focusing on all that is weak and helpless. To get out of it, we have to accept the responsibility that we have bought into the negativity and have been willing to believe it. The way out of this then is to start questioning everything. So this is also I found very interesting, this idea that apathy, this I can't. Well, it means because you feel like you're too small and you can't, you bought a book for me called notes from my therapist, which I love, I feel like it was written for me. I highly recommend it to anyone who's listening. One of the things that is a recurring theme in the book is that when it comes to emotions, we were not shown by the adults in our life, that it was okay to have big emotions or shown what to do with those emotions. Right. And we were rewarded for not having big emotions. Yeah, and I see that look, if my kid is having a temper tantrum, well, then that in and of itself is a problem for me, right? I want them to not be angry, if they're in a bad mood, if that's a problem for me, I don't want them to be in a bad mood and that's how it was growing up. So I think one of the messages in terms of the smallness is that you are, maybe one of the messages is that you're incapable of handling these big emotions, right? You can't, it's not okay for you to be sad, or fearful, or angry. That is, I think something else that we have to learn in terms of apathy. I'm not exactly, maybe that's for another episode, I want to talk about the role of psychotherapy in the path of enlightenment. Helpful, harmful or dependent. But maybe that is part of what you get with therapy is just teaching yourself that, oh, no, it's okay to have these feelings, it doesn't mean that you are just insufficient or you're not enough because you are feeling anger or fear. What are your thoughts?
JD Stettin:That was one of the one question that he didn't put out in advance or talk last week that we just didn't get to as as it happens.Similarly, I think for a very long time and through different spiritual philosophical traditions, I was under the impression that there was something wrong with the emotionality and that it was meant to be in some way teams controlled, got me past eliminated. And I think it is portrayed that way very often in media here and whether it's Eastern or Western spirituality. My perception is that was a desirable goal is to find myself in more emotionless state or controlled or be able to say, I'm angry, I can just be happy or I can quickly get rid of that and increasingly, in my journey, the last few years and in my case, with a form of therapy, which I found to be so wonderful and opening for me. It's been about reconnecting with the emotionality and not not being afraid of my own feelings, or perhaps being afraid and still allowing myself to have them and to notice them. And it's, I was thinking about this. This weekend I was visiting friends in Dallas and I have some young kids and even as the kids cry or yell and the notions of letting them have whatever feelings they're going to have whether they're good or bad or difficult or like when a child falls and maybe you know, no serious damage but skins the knee or just gets banged up a little and is crying. This notion of telling the kid like oh, you're okay, you're okay. You're fine. It's not a big deal. Even that is a form of depriving them of a can be a form of depriving them of their feelings. Telling someone something's not a big deal or that they're fine. It's a way we have I think, in a way we use it comforting ourselves or people. But I think there's an insidiousness to it do that. That's saying like, Oh, you're okay, you're not. You're not feeling there, you have nothing to worry about. That robs you of your experience of being worried or scared or frightened, or like a kid falling down and banging his knee. Yeah, they're scared, they're hurting, they're in pain. Maybe they're suffering. And instead of trying to like quickly wipe it away and stop crying, you're fine smiles, like letting them have that, perhaps, and this isn't. I do not run a parenting seminar. None of this is practical advice. I don't have kids. I don't know what actually works in human development, but as an adult raised like that, as a child coming out of that and thinking like, oh, yeah, there is this way in which we really were trained up to not have emotion and not have emotionality and not not let it show, and maybe not even be aware of it ourselves. That seemed like a virtue in a way, and I think someone just mentioned Ryan Holiday to me this weekend, and I haven't thought about him in a little bit. But with the obstacle, the way that he goes the enemy daily stoic, and I haven't revisited stoicism in a bit, I wish there was a while where I was reading Marcus Aurelius meditations every year. And I really loved that. But I maybe just as a, I guess, random topic for another day. But I'm curious in terms of how much of stoicism feels like, is it actually presence and awareness and being with? Or is there a form of controlling your emotions, not allowing yourself to feel or to have and I just wonder. I know that there's a lot of that influence in me philosophically, in the last 1015 years, and I'm curious with the lens I have now in the wake of therapy, in the wake of that book that we both enjoy so much, what would feel like to go back over some of that and to revisit it. And that's not to say, I think another important part of this is, Hawkins talks about this, I think initially is having emotions doesn't necessarily mean acting them out. So I don't think either of us, or Hawkins or anyone in this system are talking about is saying, oh, because you're feeling angry, great, embrace your anger and go do destructive things, having an emotion and then taking a course of action. Those are very different things. I don't think anywhere in Hawkins and when we're talking about is acting out, necessarily anger, depression, rage, grief, whatever it is, but just being aware of it. I don't know if maybe stoicism is about being aware and then choosing to act in a more staid, calm manner, but I would be curious to kind of revisit some of that at some point.
Mordecai Rosenberg:I haven't gotten very deep into stoicism. Quotes that I've read from Marcus Aurelius resonated, but I haven't gone too deep into it. So can can't comment. Too much there. I do agree with in terms of the acting out. So another thing that I feel like we grew up with was that if someone else was having a difficult emotion, right, then you needed to do something about it, or your parent needed to do something about it. Right. That's another thing that comes up in this notes from my therapist, but I have this with my wife, I'm certainly working on this where, like, if she's upset, I feel like I need to fix it. I feel like it's my responsibility to fix it to try to either show her why oh, give her a different perspective or to do something, you know, do something else and certainly, I should want to make her happy. There's no doubt about that. But this idea that it's okay for people to have feelings, sometimes people are just upset and that doesn't mean that it has to be fixed. So probably, I mean, certainly with my with my kids also, right, it's okay for your child to be angry and upset or pissed and you don't necessarily have to you know, I'm always stressed about like, Well, my relationship with them and so I go up and I'm the first one to apologize and say sorry for upsetting you and its this idea of how can we expect to be okay? Or maybe at least it's understandable that we're not okay. With this letting go and just sitting with our own emotions, if our instruction has been that if someone else's emotions are not non neutral, that we have to do something about it, then certainly it's understandable that we would feel the same way about our own emotions that if we feel anger, you have to do something about it. Right? You got to get that out, you can't just sit with it. So that's another thing to just, you know, maybe practice is just noticing other people's emotions and feel, being able to let go of that. So like, well, that's okay. They can have that emotion and it doesn't require me to do anything about it.
JD Stettin:Oh, man, that's been such a big one. For me, too. The responsibility for other people's experience and something my therapist has been telling me from day one and our work together is the kindest thing you can do for another person is to let them have their experience. And again, it feels so countered to your point so much of the way in which we were raised to be responsible, right cold call Israel Arabian villas, which not necessarily a terrible idea, but this notion of like, really feeling deeply responsible for what's going on. Around us, that's a very big, difficult burden to bear and just an unreasonable one. And again, this notion of the kindest thing you can do, is to let someone else have their experience. So to for ourselves, the kindest we can be to ourselves is to okay, if I'm feeling apathy, like, okay, let's sit with that, let's let myself have that experience don't try to fix myself or anyone else. And that comes back to their idea of, there aren't really any problems in that way emotionally. I don't mean, there aren't problems in the world that night, but emotionally there aren't problems. There are just states. They're just emotions to be with. There isn't fixing, fixing isn't a thing and our minds. And I think somewhere in the questions you put together for today, I think you questioned or wanted to maybe touch on the notion that on page 15, as the biologic purpose of apathy is to summon aid. Part of the feeling is going to help as possible on this sort of, maybe evolutionary, biologic take on emotionality, that they all have some kind of purpose and are trying to do something for our system. Recognizing that maybe there was originally some sort of survival mechanism at play behind some of these initial emotion, we can think of some of them like, certainly fear makes some kind of sense, from a survival standpoint, maybe even anger, arguably pride at certain points, maybe that played into some into survival. But this recognition that certainly most of the time, much of the time, I don't know most, there isn't actually a survival issue at stake when we're feeling apathy or grief or fear. There isn't someone with a gun to our heads, literal gun telling us to do something in order to survive. And so recognizing that there isn't actually a problem. You know, maybe when one of your kids is angry or hurt or crying, that's not a problem. There's a problem if your kids running out into the street and there's an oncoming car, that is a problem that needs to be solved. But if your child is, again, sad or angry, because there's some interaction you just had, that in and of itself isn't the problem.
Mordecai Rosenberg:Right? Yeah. And also the fact that to your point about the biologic basis for them, that there is a message there. If you're feeling like apathy, there is a message right? And just like, if someone came running into your house and saying, Hey, your kid is standing in the middle of the street you would respond to that, like, well, thank you. So fear is the same thing. If I see my kid running into the middle of the street, it's like someone coming into my house and yelling your kid is in the middle of street it's dangerous. There's a response that is necessary. It's to think about even apathy and depressio of this 'I can't' to know that if I sense that, what Totally to your point, its own candidate that, hey, your son is is that telling me? What if 'I can't' really means I won't? What am I saying no to? Where am I feeling? What am I feeling fearful about? Because these emotions now become not just neutral, but they are helpful. They're giving you some message. Right? And if you can just sit there with them and listen to them. You know, you can actually hear what it's saying instead of just trying to shut it up which deprives you of of the message that's being brought. in the middle of the street. You wouldn't plug up your ears and go, I can't hear you. Right, right. I'm not listening. Listening isn't happening.
JD Stettin:Yeah, I can't go there. Right now. It's like, you say, Holy shit. Yeah. Thank you. I got it.
Mordecai Rosenberg:Let me turn on Netflix because I can't.
JD Stettin:Right, let me pour myself a drink. Find something to binge on Netflix. And yeah, go there for hours and then then deal with it. To your point, even at the very bottom, apathy and depression, it feels so hard because how do you be with not being right? That's like the ultimate way of not being like, I can't even touch it. But the message there is maybe like, wow, this is incredibly painful for me. So much so that I'm sensing that I am shut down. And again, the question of how do you get to upper top and I'm like, sometimes that's how you get there. That's the starting point is recognizing that you don't have a starting point, that you're totally and utterly stuck and shut down in this moment in this area of your life. Very hard place to be.
Mordecai Rosenberg:Well, JD, this has been enlightening, as always on our path to enlightenment, so thank you. Discussion. Yeah.
JD Stettin:Likewise, thank you for sharing your head and your heart here today. And as ever, everyone stay perplexed, and we will be back next week to be just as confused but in a different chapter. Maybe
Mordecai Rosenberg:That's right. A little further on in our perplexity. So that's we'll call that progress. Alright. JD-- Take care.
JD Stettin:I'll talk to you soon. Have a lovely day. I'll talk to you soon