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The Art of Happiness With Sharon Lebell (Episode 4)
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Want to become more Stoic? Join us and other Stoics this October: Stoicism Applied by Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay on Maven
In this episode, Caleb speaks with bestselling author Sharon Lebell. They discuss:
- Why judgment is the beginning of connection
- How Sharon thinks about role models
- Key ideas in The Art of Living
- The importance of clarifying and communicating values
- Why optionality is overrated
Sharon is the bestselling author of The Art of Living: The Classical Mannual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness and a cofounder of the Walled Garden. Read more about her here: https://www.sharonlebell.com/
Stoa Conversations is Caleb Ontiveros and Michael Tremblay’s podcast on Stoic theory and practice.
Caleb and Michael work together on the Stoa app. Stoa is designed to help you build resilience and focus on what matters. It combines the practical philosophy of Stoicism with modern techniques and meditation.
Download the Stoa app (it’s a free download): stoameditation.com/pod
Listen to more episodes and learn more here: https://stoameditation.com
Caleb Ontiveros has a background in academic philosophy (MA) and startups. His favorite Stoic is Marcus Aurelius. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/calebmontiveros
Michael Tremblay also has a background in academic philosophy (PhD) where he focused on Epictetus. He is also a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His favorite Stoic is Epictetus. Follow him here: https://twitter.com/_MikeTremblay
Thank you to Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music in the conversations: https://ancientlyre.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to Stoic Conversations Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Stoic Conversations. My name is Caleb Ontiveros. In this podcast, Michael Trombley and I discuss the theory and practice of stoicism. Each week, we'll share two conversations. One between the two of us, and another will be an in-depth conversation with an expert.
Interview with Sharon Labelle on Happiness Practices
00:00:19
Speaker
In this conversation, I speak with Sharon Labelle. Sharon is the author of The Art of Happiness, which is one of the best modern introductions to stoicism. We talk about her daily practice, the reality of running communities in the digital world, and the importance of depth. It's the nuanced challenge of this last point that I took away most from this conversation.
00:00:41
Speaker
Sharon is thoughtful and focuses on the most practical aspects of wisdom traditions like stoicism. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do as well. Here is Sharon LaBelle.
Exploring The Art of Living and Digital Communities
00:00:57
Speaker
There's so much to talk about, but let's start at the very beginning. What is your story? What is my story? I'm best known for being the author of
00:01:11
Speaker
the book, The Art of Living, right here, the classical manual on virtue, happiness, and effectiveness. And it's a popular
00:01:22
Speaker
meaning for the people, meaning for every man or every woman, interpretation of the Stoic teachings of the great Stoic sage Epictetus. And I wrote this book quite a few decades ago before the, I don't know, I guess what you could call the Stoicism movement started to flourish.
Skepticism of Digital Spaces
00:01:52
Speaker
And I write about all kinds of philosophical topics. I do public speaking and I'm a co-founder of the international philosophical community online.
00:02:12
Speaker
called The Walled Garden. I founded this with my colleagues, Kai Whiting and Simon Drew. And we're having a lot of fun building community in a digital space with people who are bringing honest inquiry
00:02:38
Speaker
to their personal searches. The culture that we're building is really beautiful. And a little footnote to that is I'm uneasy in digital spaces, or at least I think I have a healthy skepticism of them because I'm a big fan of non-digital culture.
00:03:04
Speaker
standing in front of people in three dimensions in all of our non-curated awkwardness. So this was an interesting change for me to try to see if we could do something worthwhile to bring people from all over the world together and just see if we could
00:03:30
Speaker
really touch each other's minds and hearts in a way that would be worthwhile. Do you see yourself as a stoic or would you prefer to describe yourself in another way?
Risks of Rigid Stoic Identification
00:03:44
Speaker
I never object when people refer to me as such because it's not that I'm not a stoic, but I prefer to just think of myself as someone who
00:04:00
Speaker
is excited to learn from any good fount of wisdom, whether it be an ancient wisdom tradition or even somebody I'm standing in line with at the post office. I think wisdom is everywhere and I get a little nervous when it's codified because that tends to give rise to
00:04:29
Speaker
Certain charismatic people can take ownership of the narrative of a group. And there can be problems with unequal power, manipulation, and so on. Those are, I don't mean to be catastrophic in my thinking, but I just always like to keep my lance free.
00:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, there's something to that. Labels, movements like this are always good at bringing people together, but there's also the risk that you shut others out or become isolated in a way that particular individuals
Stoicism and Eastern Philosophy Connections
00:05:11
Speaker
can take advantage of. I think you're right, Caleb. Yeah. And certain people, when they feel that they have found something,
00:05:21
Speaker
valuable and of course there's the origin texts of stoicism or treasure troves of horrific guidance that's just as relevant today as it was back in the day. People can start to overly identify with the ideas and
00:05:46
Speaker
start to sort people into the categories of, are you doing it correctly or incorrectly? I would rather be around a fool who is kind and lives well than someone who has all the answers.
00:06:04
Speaker
So one question that gets at this issue of Stoicism and other life philosophies, if you will, is you talk about Stoicism having a broadly Eastern element. How do these two worlds, the ancient Greek and Roman philosophy and the more Eastern side of things come together for you? I see them both as contemplative traditions.
00:06:34
Speaker
Mind you, we're talking about a huge swath of wisdom and practices. But one of the things that first attracted me to Stoicism was that I had, and continue to, for many years, I practiced Zen Buddhism. And the premium put on stillness
00:07:04
Speaker
the value that can be found in stillness, I found elevated in Epictetus's discourses and in Marcus Aurelius's meditations. By stillness, I simply mean
00:07:28
Speaker
settling the mind so that you can see the world with clear eyes. I think both worlds put a high value on that.
00:07:46
Speaker
Yeah, I've seen the world, seen the world anew. It's always a good phrase. It's useful to think of the project, some parts of the project is clearing, clearing away your mind, if you will. So it's easier to find what you're looking for. Yes, there's so much there once we part the cloud.
00:08:06
Speaker
That's right. There's also this connection. I think that especially Marcus Aurelius talks a lot about the ephemeral nature of things, how things are moving in flux. And that ties quite a lot with other ideas about how things are interconnected ephemeral that you see in other traditions as well. Indeed.
00:08:31
Speaker
So in terms of your practice, if you will, is that something you think about as having a daily practice or I know others might be, maybe they approach philosophy in a more intuitive and less systematic way.
Daily Practices for Centering Thoughts
00:08:45
Speaker
So how do you think about this issue? For me personally, daily practice is essential. And I'll talk about the substantive part of that in a second, but
00:09:02
Speaker
It's the easiest thing in the world is to drift from one's own ideals and principles. Heaven knows not only the pace of modern life, but all of its claims, wanted and unwanted, on our attention make us almost inevitably very scattered, very
00:09:33
Speaker
fractured in our minds. Maybe you're thinking, tell me something I don't know. This is real. This is part of our lives. You receive a text and automatically you become this kind of passive responding machine. And even if you're bringing your own creativity to bear on your response, you're still, you're tethered to
00:10:02
Speaker
to the author of the text that came to you, for example, or the advertisement that's put in front of you. And so if we don't regularly bring ourselves back to order, so to say, again, stillness is kind of my keystone. It's really easy to
00:10:30
Speaker
just to get lost and to just live one's life in a posture of reactivity rather than creativity or proactivity. So what to do, what to do? I don't prescribe any particular daily practice to other people because I think everyone is different and needs to find out what works for them best.
00:11:00
Speaker
But I think it's so valuable to create that narrative through line diachronic across time So that you have this strong chord this like you can hold on to your rope Right of of your principles what matters the most? So what do I do every day? I happen to practice yoga every day and
00:11:28
Speaker
I like it because it's a moving meditation and when I'm done, my mind and my heart feel centered and it's then that I
00:11:45
Speaker
read some source of wisdom. I often go to stoic sources, but I look at all kinds of different things and then rooted in all that, I then meet my day as best I can. Is there a particular source of wisdom that you've been looking at lately? I've been, I have a daughter who
00:12:13
Speaker
chose to be a rabbi, actually. Her father had been a Jesuit priest and I was a secular Jew, and she decided to go into the rabbinate and
00:12:32
Speaker
So she has been sharing a lot of lot, but some very interesting Jewish sources with me that I've been enjoying, particular Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose ideas I find fit like a glove with some of the highest ideals of stoicism, interestingly enough.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's a tradition that I know less about. At some point, hopefully that'll change. We had a fellow named Zohar Atkins, who is a rabbi and a philosopher and poet type, and we did chat a little bit about that here as a part of this series, but that's still a tradition that I am woefully ignorant about.
Value Judgments for Meaningful Life
00:13:18
Speaker
There's so many. There's so many.
00:13:22
Speaker
One thing that stuck out to me when I was reading your book, it was a line on seriousness. Something to the effect of spiritual progress requires us to highlight what is essential and pay less attention to what is trivial, which to me brought to mind the sort of virtue of seriousness over things like sensationalism or mere term gratification. Could you speak to that a little?
00:13:52
Speaker
Yes, definitely. Seriousness implies judgment. It implies differentiation. It's not, as sometimes people will say, oh, it's all good. No, it's not all good. We kid ourselves that way. And in order to live a meaningful life,
00:14:20
Speaker
We necessarily have to make value judgments along the continuum of good, better, best, bad, worse, worst, and we have to
00:14:36
Speaker
bring those value judgments to bear on aesthetic choices, on spiritual choices, on practical choices, and on our moral choices. And I think part of becoming a serious person is embracing
00:14:58
Speaker
that discernment and that judgment, not being sanctimonious. We're not talking about that. I know when I was coming of age as a young person, the zeitgeist was, oh, don't be judgmental. Don't be so judgmental. But it's not all good. Everything is not all good. If we're not
00:15:29
Speaker
judgments, then nothing means anything. So one of the things I love about stoicism is it elbows you in the ribs and it says, stand up and be a grown-up. Decide what is good. Decide what is worthy. Mind you, keep an open mind. Keep learning. Don't assume that you know everything in a conclusive way.
00:15:48
Speaker
making these micro
00:15:59
Speaker
if we don't make these distinctions, then we're just bags of me just living by our basest instincts and just seeking gratification and avoiding discomfort. And that
00:16:15
Speaker
that forsakes our dignity as human beings, and it also forsakes just the opportunity that ordering our lives through our values, not being abstract about them, but being very specific, that makes
00:16:36
Speaker
That makes the world better for everyone when we know where we stand and our thoughts and our words and our deeds are congruent. Yeah, there's a honesty in that, of course, and expressing one's judgment.
00:16:53
Speaker
I think often in some circles there might be some hesitation to express one's values in certain scenarios. Of course there are maybe the opposite problem arises in other circles, but often I found that if you state what you think about something in a relatively clear manner without intending to antagonize someone, whether it's a practical judgment, political one, or aesthetic one, often one can have pretty reasonable conversations.
00:17:22
Speaker
Yes, I think, Caleb, that's where the excitement, where the connection begins. Because it's not like you're trying to persuade someone else to be you or to see it your way. But if you show your cards, then you can talk, then you can learn, then you can listen.
Balancing Curiosity with Seriousness
00:17:47
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:17:48
Speaker
One thing that also came to mind in that section is I've recently, as in last year, I read a book by a philosopher named Zina Hitz, who talks about St. Augustine quite a bit. And Augustine had this distinction between curiositos and studiatos, which are two Latin words, which essentially just means curiosity as a vice,
00:18:14
Speaker
and seriousness as a virtue. So the kind of curiosity that he thought was vicious was the sort of thing that drove him to watch with some kind of perverse pleasure at the gladiatorial games. There's something that sort of drives you to enjoy that sort of thing.
00:18:33
Speaker
that is somewhat pernicious. And he contrasted that with the virtue of seriousness, which is aimed at the value that you want to promote or something of this sort. And there's always this risk that what we intend to do in a serious manner is maybe corrupted in some way or we get distracted. So this, of course, connects back to your point about the daily routines is that
00:19:02
Speaker
things like a daily routine keeps one headed on the path, as it were. Yes. Another thing that stuck out to me about your work is, of course, there's this issue of role models in stoicism.
Qualities in Role Models
00:19:17
Speaker
So I was wondering about how you thought about finding role models, surrounding yourself with role models, or about this rather large topic in general. That's a very important topic, I think,
00:19:32
Speaker
because we do need role models. I know I need role models. And at the same time, we have to keep our heads. I think we see how easily in our desire for heroes, we can forget that people are all too human and we can be disappointed because
00:20:01
Speaker
We all know, say, someone who's a very gifted artist, say, in one discipline or another, but they're maybe a very miserly person. There's this tendency, a kind of weakness, I think, in us sometimes if we're not disciplined in our thinking,
00:20:20
Speaker
to think that if a person is good in category A, then they're also good in categories B, C, D. And I know that got broadsided many times and found out people had
00:20:40
Speaker
whom I had deeply admired actually had feet of clay because as a young seeker, I was around many different spiritual leaders. And then I worked for many years in book publishing, working with some of the great thought leaders of the time.
00:21:03
Speaker
at people who were considered spiritual rock stars in a way. And I knew them as authors, as people, and they were fragile or they were mean or they were a lot of things. I think it's very important for us to realize
00:21:25
Speaker
to break down what is it in a given person that we admire and to just remind ourselves over and over again so we don't subjugate ourselves or abnicate ourselves because we're so dazzled by a person. We must remember that people have extraordinary gifts, extraordinary qualities, and they're also human. And the main thing is
00:21:56
Speaker
It's always up to us in the end to decide how to be a good person, how to live a meaningful life. No one else can tell us ultimately those answers. And anyone who purports to do, I would run away from very quickly.
00:22:22
Speaker
clarifying what you value about the person and focusing on that, maybe what you can learn about that, and then being careful to not let that sort of permeate through every action or everything they do. Does that set you end up maybe missing as it were? Yes, and also you don't want to see yourself as being less than them because certainly
00:22:48
Speaker
There are people who are endowed with great gifts and there are people who have developed certain abilities or ways of thinking that we may admire, but that's it. That's it. That's good, but that's it.
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah, you don't have to add anything else to that. You don't have to add anything else to it. Yeah. The line that Bactita says, of course, he went to jail. You don't have to add anything else to that. He went to jail and his life is ruined. No, it's just that he went to jail. Right. Well said.
00:23:23
Speaker
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00:23:43
Speaker
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00:24:11
Speaker
Something I am curious about that you probably have experience with is thinking about once you're in the broadly spiritual, philosophical, self-help game, as it were, how do you prevent yourself from being the kind of person who someone might read your book and they think, wow, that's fantastic, and then they bump into you, as it were, and then
00:24:34
Speaker
Maybe this seems like some people get corrupted by some amount of fame or they narrow down on particular parts of their work to the extent of other aspects of their life. So I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that.
Dangers of Fame and Humility
00:24:50
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know if this is just a statement of my particular temperament. I've had a front row seat to many illustrious
00:25:03
Speaker
minds and teachers who when they get suddenly get a lot of adulation or a lot of attention they do get carried away with it and it changes them for the worse. In my own case when I over the years I've gotten a lot lots of people fans I guess you call them have reached out to me thank you for writing the book or I've heard from a number of
00:25:32
Speaker
soldiers, particularly in Afghanistan, who used the art of living as a way to get through very dire circumstances. But when people have tried to endow me with some kind of special knowledge, it frightens me and I want to straighten them out really fast because I don't know anything that
00:26:01
Speaker
special that other people don't know. We all have specialized knowledge and experience just based on where we were placed in the world and whom we happen to come in contact with and certainly we all try to do our best work. Nobody
00:26:24
Speaker
I don't know. I guess I'm just a real populist. I don't believe that anyone carries any special... No, I was about to say I don't believe anyone carries special knowledge. I do, but not total special knowledge.
00:26:44
Speaker
It goes back to, at least this is how I'm inclined to think about it, and you can push back if you think a little bit differently. But I think some people, in fact, do have special knowledge. They have insight that they can share with others either from their experience or natural talents, whatever it may be. Some people are in some sense better than others at certain activities or domains.
00:27:06
Speaker
And then one gets into trouble when, you know, better than others at these domains just becomes better than others or something of that sort. And that's, I think, where we, where one starts to make mistakes. We always have to, I think, turn back to ourself and just ask ourself in any given moment. And who was it I wanted to be? What do I need to do to be that person?
00:27:31
Speaker
make that micro adjustment right here, right now, within the life I'm living, not someone else's circumstance. We always have to return to ourselves. I don't mean return to our ego, but just return to this. I'm at a loss for words for a minute, Caleb. I guess just to return to ourselves. What do I have to give? How can I be of use?
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think everyone probably knows more about their own life than any guru or philosophical teacher in a way, I suppose. Amen.
00:28:13
Speaker
Something that I've noticed that you've probably come across as well is that occasionally people will reach out to you about your work. They'll say it's about something, how impactful Astoa is and how much they've learned about. And they detailed this situation where I've gone through these sorts of tragedies and I've made these changes to my life. And I think, why are you thanking me when it seems like you're the sort of person who I should be learning from, right? They've come through all these obstacles. So their roles should really be reversed. Right.
00:28:41
Speaker
I couldn't agree more because they had to do the work. They're the ones who did the work. Because any kind of, call it a spiritual change, call it a personal or psychological change, it's never convenient. It's never easy.
00:29:03
Speaker
valuable change you have put upon, you have to exert yourself. And that's different than just reading some words on a page which can inspire you to be sure. Inspiration is wonderful.
00:29:21
Speaker
The only thing that's real is the actions you take in the world or the actions you refrain from taking in the world. The things you say or the things you refrain from saying and so on.
00:29:37
Speaker
So how do you think about shaping your, or how someone should think about shaping one's desires so that they focus more on the person who they want to be, less on perhaps other situations, and focus less on things like competition, or status, or whatever it may be, and more on, as the Stoics would say, virtue?
Focusing on Desired Virtues
00:30:05
Speaker
That's a wonderful question.
00:30:08
Speaker
It does, I think, make us circle back to the idea of call it daily practice or daily checking in with ourselves. I think we have to, over and over and over and over and over again, point our attention simply towards the question, who was it I wanted to be? Oh yeah.
00:30:39
Speaker
What do I need to do then? Very simple questions, but we have to return to it over and over again. And when we do, and when we make a habit of returning to that question, who was it I wanted to be? The how of it, the what we need to do, that'll change each time because
00:31:05
Speaker
like you mentioned earlier in the podcast, the Stoic and the Broad Eastern observation that life is ephemeral. It's just baked into life. Life will always be changing. And given that, we always have to change our approach, but we can keep returning to, who was it I wanted to be?
00:31:31
Speaker
And to say it to yourself, I want to be an honest person. That means I don't want to lie. I want to tell the truth today. I want to tell the truth today. Simple, not necessarily easy, but simple. Repetition.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of these things are simple, but as you said, that doesn't make it easy, of course. And especially because we aren't getting regular reinforcement from the broad culture. If we just allow ourselves to be buffeted by what's going on around us, which is, it's pretty easy to fall into that. Hey, you want to go to the game? Hey, just
00:32:15
Speaker
Yeah, you just have to gather yourself over and over. What kind of person did I want? Do I want to be? I want to be someone who gives. How can I give today? Specifically, again and again, return to ourself, return to yourself. Yeah.
00:32:32
Speaker
Yeah, I know some people find value out of repeatedly asking questions like that, or memorizing particular mantras, or using the physical situations as a trigger. And whenever you look in the mirror, then you check in, or whenever you get home and open some door, then you just check in. Right. Yeah, that's, I think those are excellent mnemonics. And they're also piggybacking on what you just said, Caleb, is that wonderful stoic idea of mement moray. We have to remember.
00:33:01
Speaker
We're going to die. That's real. That's real. There's going to come a time when the off switch is going to go off. So what are you going to do with this time you've been inexplicably given when the on switch is still on? What do you want your life to stand for?
00:33:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. It's easy to act as the one who lived for 10,000 years, but it is not. It's just not. It's just not. What do you think you've learned about fostering community from your work with Simon and Kai on the walled garden? It's been one of, this is not an overstatement. It's been one of
00:33:56
Speaker
the greatest gifts of my life to work with them because fundamentally I'm an introvert.
Joy of Community Building
00:34:05
Speaker
I do most of my work both as a writer and speaker collaterally and as a musician. I'm by myself most of the time and I enjoy my own company.
00:34:19
Speaker
But these colleagues, we found each other. We're all from different countries, very different walks of life. And yet, there are ways that we want the same thing. And to be in that kind of a mutually supportive community, I wish that for everyone, regardless of whether you have a philosophical bent or not,
00:34:49
Speaker
I've been reminded by the beauty of this colleagueship that we are fundamentally social animals and we need to be in dialogue with other people, otherwise we will just start running around in our own heads. And sometimes running around in our own heads can create a symphony or create something quite beautiful, but
00:35:16
Speaker
There's a point where you can get lost, too. And there's so much magic that can happen between people coming together, goodwill. It's a beautiful thing.
00:35:34
Speaker
think, in a way, that's what organized religion excels at, is creating community. Some people like to be part of organized religion, some people don't, some people don't want dogma. But I think we can follow
00:35:55
Speaker
that model of churches and mosques and synagogues and how they take these are groups of people who when you get sick the casseroles come people take care of each other and we need that god knows we need that yeah that's right
00:36:12
Speaker
when my mother's family moved here from South Africa and they essentially found a church. And as soon as they had found that church, there are people showing up, helping them move, bringing any extra furniture they had, helping them out with meals. And that is, that absolutely is a benefit of communities. Yeah. They've really gotten that one right.
00:36:40
Speaker
And how do you think we can in the non-religious context or even the harder challenges in the digital world attempt to approximate the same thing?
Authenticity in Digital Communities
00:36:56
Speaker
Or perhaps that's not the right question. Maybe we should be thinking about not approximating what religions have done in the physical world, but creating something new. How do you think about that?
00:37:07
Speaker
I do understand the spirit of your question and it's such an important question because in the digital world, of course, there's so much opportunity for dissimulation, in other words, for not
00:37:27
Speaker
really coming as you are, but perhaps hiding behind an avatar or somehow focusing on the presentation of cell over much. And yet this is a huge and growing part of what it means to be a human being on this planet right now. And so I don't have any particular
00:37:56
Speaker
road-tested answers to this question, but I think this is something we must keep thinking about. What am I talking about? Just being real with people, being real with ourselves. I think the more we work on ourselves,
00:38:18
Speaker
then we can bring our real selves. I'm not talking about reckless self-disclosure, but simply not posing, not posturing, not doing apps that take the dark circles from under your eyes. If you've got dark circles under your eyes, you earned them. I mean that metaphorically, but I also mean it literally. We must be real.
00:38:47
Speaker
I think that can be our individual contribution towards building community in digital spaces. But I also think we need to stay strongly anchored in our local communities to find common cause with the people around us to work on social justice projects or just all the small but important ways that we can
00:39:18
Speaker
fine tune the life that we are physically in.
00:39:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a question I often get about which groups to join or create. And I don't always have a good answer. One is just because people's situations are different, but I know it's certainly difficult to create a rich online community. So what your remark makes me think of as perhaps one way to do it is simply by
00:39:49
Speaker
being more real, as you said, or being clear about what this community is
Commitment to Pursuits for Meaningful Life
00:39:54
Speaker
doing. This is what we're up to. And if this aligns with what you are up to, you should join. If not, maybe there are other communities that you could join or that you can start. And there's something, there's something, can be something useful about that. Yes. Do you have any further thoughts about that? On creating community? Um,
00:40:16
Speaker
Yeah. Or even have baked ideas. I think that often, I think that people when they ask this question are sometimes more willing to join communities than foster them. And a fact of the matter is you need to do quite a bit of work for a community to go, to go, I think, especially when.
00:40:39
Speaker
they're in the digital sphere even when they're not in the digital sphere. And that can be really quite simple things from if it's a stomach-weeding group to offering to lead a discussion on a particular passage or just ensuring that there is in fact a next time that the group will meet. So I think doing these sorts of things can be, shouldn't be underrated. I like your distinction between
00:41:09
Speaker
fostering the community and merely joining. It's very important. Someone once said to me, and you always have much more fun at the party if you help decorate the gym. Yeah, that's a good line.
00:41:27
Speaker
If I think about the religious context, there's the fact that my mother's family was able to move here and get so much help works is that there's this expectation that when the next family comes, her family would be right along everyone else and offer their time and their resources. Yes.
00:41:47
Speaker
I think these groups can work well in physical spaces because often exit is harder. It's harder to not go show up to church, especially if you're in a smaller town. You will bump into someone. You're right about that. Where were you?
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah. Where were you on Sunday? I haven't seen you for a while. One benefit of the digital world is it makes it easy to leave from the communities, but there's a cost there where I think people are, they almost have too much optionality. They're too many choices. Well said. Yes.
00:42:27
Speaker
Yeah, so there's something to committing to what you have, even if it may not be perfect.
00:42:35
Speaker
Probably a mistake people make in a number of domains of their life is hoping for now in this world where there's so many choices, so much more optionality, hoping for the perfect partner, perfect job, or when at some point you need to commit and make that job the best job you can have or make the relationship work or something like this. One of my favorite essays is written by a fellow named Burn Hobart called Against Optionality. So if someone's listening wants to follow up on that theme, it's an essay I like quite a lot.
00:43:03
Speaker
revolves around his experience dating and his marriage. So both abstract and at peace. Yes. What's the significance of the garden being wall? Because anything of value has to be contained and defined. We have to say, we have to embrace
00:43:33
Speaker
the thing we're doing. This actually dovetails I think Caleb with what you just said about
00:43:41
Speaker
optionality. It's not seeing the world as an undifferentiated field, but selecting and enclosing, not as a fortress against the outside world, but to simply say, this is us, and we're talking about this, that, and the other, and this matters. So it's almost a kind of, what's the word? A sacralization, like making something
00:44:10
Speaker
Consecrating almost. Yeah. Yes. That's a good word for it. That's how I think of it. I know that the image of the walled garden is, has a lot of work and mythic significance, but it's above my pay grade to talk about all that. That's very good. Yeah.
00:44:32
Speaker
Excellent. Is there anything else you'd like to add? I guess the only thing I was going to say is because I was really hooked in by this idea of against optionality. I think one of the greatest nuggets that I took away from stoicism in general and in writing my book, The Art of Living, is simply that reminder that it's much better
00:45:04
Speaker
to live an inch wide and a mile deep, then a mile wide and an inch deep. In other words, when we commit and drill down into something, when we simply just decide, this is the person I'm going to love, words and all, and I'm all in,
00:45:27
Speaker
Amazing things happen. That's where meaningfulness in life happens. When we dare to care about something, you know, the craftsmanship comes from that drilling down, that value of narrowing one's options and then fully entering them. That's all. Excellent. Very well said. What a joy to talk to you.
00:45:57
Speaker
Thanks so much for coming.
00:46:15
Speaker
And I'd like to thank Michael Levy for graciously letting us use his music. Do check out his work at ancientliar.com and please get in touch with us at stoameditation.com if you ever have any feedback or questions. Until next time.