speaker-0 (00:15.15)
Okay, welcome back to The Poet Delayed. My name is Scott and I am the host and I've got with me frequent contributor guest. Welcome, it's always good to have you here. We're just going to jump in. Let's do it. All right, let's do it. So I want to talk today about this line that I got out of the Dao Te Ching. I was reading that a while ago.

speaker-1 (00:22.242)
Josh Barron. Josh, it's good to be here.

speaker-1 (00:28.76)
Do it.

speaker-0 (00:40.398)
It's from the translation by Stephen Mitchell, who I like his translations. He translates Rilke's poetry. liked his translations of Rilke. So he translates this. This is the first, I don't know if it's a poem or section. I don't know what we refer to this. I'm going call it a poem. The first poem in the Dao Deqin. The very end Lao Tzu writes darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding.

Now when I first read that, I thought that seemed significant. I didn't quite grasp it at first. So when you hear that, we've talked a little about it, what comes to mind when you hear darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding?

speaker-1 (01:25.426)
so one thing that came to my mind, was, this Jonah Hill doc documentary called Stutz. Have we talked about this? So Stutz is Jonah Hill's therapist and he made a documentary about him and he says, that's a bad idea. that's his, but, something that really stuck with me is that the therapist who is suffering from Parkinson's and knows that he'll be dying and you know,

speaker-0 (01:35.947)
I don't think so.

speaker-1 (01:54.798)
The therapist says there are three things that we should stop trying to avoid. That they are just essential parts of life. They will always be present. And the three are pain, hard work, and uncertainty. And I play this, I've been playing this game since I was like 14, where I imagine, what if I had $7 billion?

And the number changes, but it's always like, like just like a ridiculous amount of money. And, and I think I kind of try to notice where my mind goes. Why, you know, why does it feel like it'd be so liberating to buy blank? And, I have a million kids and providing for them is a certain pressure. Some of them have very expensive needs. And I think that I think that my uncertainty would go away.

because I have seven billion dollars now I know that they'll always be taken care of.

But there would still be, there'd be maybe that uncertainty would go away, but a new uncertainty would take its place. so, those three are unavoidable. and so it was helpful to have that language from Stutz because then when I feel my body thinking my life would be so much better if I had $7 billion, because then I wouldn't have uncertainty, can say, no body, like it might be good for certain things. Like having $7 billion is probably better in most ways than not having $7 billion. But.

I can't imagine that it would bring certainty. That's not possible.

speaker-0 (03:29.976)
Well, I think about uncertainty a lot. In fact, this last episode I talked about uncertainty. shared the story about playing hide and go seek in the basement hallway where I was sitting there and I could hear the person who was it come down the hallway and I was pressed up in the doorway and that was uncertainty. Are they going to come and get me? What are they going to do? And the ability to sit in that uncertainty. I mean, I was so stressed.

The idea of them poking their head around and catching me, like filled me with terror. And I just got so anxious. I couldn't sit in that uncertainty. And so I jumped out. so I, when I think about uncertainty, I like what you said because learning to sit in uncertainty, I think is one of the most valuable behavioral tools that we can learn going through life. That's, that's what I'm actually learning now.

Because you're right, uncertainty doesn't go away. It's inevitable. And the question then is, what do we do? And last episode I talked about, when faced with uncertainty, rather than acting anxiously, just being able to calm down and sit in the uncertainty, and just to pause and let it slow down and make sure that the actions aren't

speaker-1 (04:26.87)
It's an average.

speaker-0 (04:53.748)
our actions, our reaction, our reaction to the uncertainty isn't coming from fear or anxiety, but calming down enough to where then we can move with integrity, like, okay. And that's hard and it's scary. So the question, I guess, given that uncertainty is inevitable, I mean, to your point, you know, I've, I've been struggling a lot lately with work and so forth, but

There's more, a little bit more stability now, but there's still uncertainty. Now you can have uncertainty with, okay, I've, I've got scarcity of funds. There's a lot of uncertainty that comes with scarcity of funds, a lot of uncertainty. But one thing that I've learned is that if I can just sit in it and understand, there's a lot to be learned too, from uncertainty, if we can sit in it. when some things that I learned, like I shared last episode is learning to put things in containers.

bills are due. And if you have 10 bills that are due and you just leave them out there, they're all pressing on your mind at once and they're all stressing you out at once. when you look at them and think, okay, this one's due in two weeks, this one's due in one week, this one's due in five days, this one's due in two months, you put them in their individual containers and you say, can forget about that one now. You know, because I know the limits of that. I know the limits. And so I think

being able to sit in that uncertainty, being able to,

not react anxiously helps us

speaker-0 (06:34.529)
Well, it grounds us more.

speaker-1 (06:37.798)
So it sounds like, I mean, like a part of it is an acceptance, so instead of fighting against uncertainty to accept, like there will be uncertainty. I won't know how I'm going to pay off my bills all the time. And even if I thought I knew there's just be plans, plans can change. Bank, banks can close, know, pipes can burst.

speaker-0 (06:58.984)
Exactly. Kids can curb your car and crack the red.

speaker-1 (07:05.006)
That's how.

speaker-0 (07:06.958)
But here's the thing. I think too, when we sit, start to put the, helps us put things in perspective. Like what is life? Like that quote from Montaigne that I referenced in the last couple of episodes. We don't die of being sick. We die of being alive. Life is full of uncertainty. And when we can sit in it and not look at, Oh, this is scary. And this, everything else loses meaning because of this thing in my life. When we can start looking at things and putting them in perspective.

And that comes from being able to... Actually, let me ask it this way, because I was going to say that comes from being able to sit in that uncertainty. But when you think about that, I mean, what do you think comes from being able to sit in uncertainty? Or what are your thoughts?

speaker-1 (07:50.028)
Well, I have like, I have like a rant that I feel like I want to do and I'm going to do it and you can correct it if it's not helpful, Newtonian physics lied to us. made it seem like there could be certainty. If we just knew enough, then we could figure out how all the ping pong balls were going to fall. And Newtonian physics is really good in closed systems, like in simulations.

But as soon as you expose it to the real world, it becomes like much, much less helpful than you would think. Much less helpful.

speaker-1 (08:30.862)
I read the three body problem a few years ago and I didn't realize that Newtonian physics is really good about predicting the position of two bodies orbiting each other. But as soon as you add a third body becomes so unstable that it can't predict in any meaningful way where the position of the bodies will be in any future state. I had no, I thought it would take like a thousand bodies. I was really surprised that it was only three. The scientific method.

gives us like this illusion of control and certainty. But life is just not certain. And so like I think that in the debate between faith and science, faith has, I think, conceded a little bit too much to science that science could provide certainty that faith can't, that faith is a little bit blinder than science. But I don't think that's quite right because you can have all the science in the world and you don't know

if you should marry this person until you marry them. You don't know if you should take a job until you take it. You don't know... Is the house burning down?

speaker-0 (09:39.31)
I don't know, did you hear an alarm or something?

speaker-1 (09:40.894)
No, just shut off the... Sounds like it's on the street.

So I think that sometimes, you know, when we, when we hear an immature version of science, like if you watch Star Trek, you might think like, we'll just know, just wait a year and we'll know everything. Well, a year comes and goes and we don't know everything and it just never will happen. And so I think like accepting it in a way of like, yes, I won't know if I should cross the street until I cross the street. I can do things to minimize the risk a little bit, but

I don't know how the other drivers are going to drive for sure. One day they might hurt me and hit themselves into me. but all I can do is act on the information that I have, make the best decision. I know how to, and I'll only know with certainty how it turns out. Once it turns out, like I can't, I can't know in advance. I am, I love asking chachi PT if a business will work. what? Chachi PT has a no.

speaker-0 (10:39.969)
What does it tell you?

speaker-1 (10:40.622)
It tells me, this is a great idea. You're thinking about this in the exact right way.

speaker-0 (10:44.558)
That's exactly how it says. You're thinking about this exactly how it works.

speaker-1 (10:48.396)
Wow. You're f****g And it's just not knowable. It's just not knowable. And so, you know, so we can predict with quite a bit of certainty where Mars is going to be on a certain day. And that's amazing.

speaker-0 (11:03.65)
Well, we can launch a probe and tell the probe where to land on the planet Mars.

speaker-1 (11:07.528)
Amazing. Right. Amazing. But it's actually yet less useful than we'd think.

speaker-0 (11:13.314)
Yeah. I don't plan to launch any probes onto Mars anytime soon. That reminds me of this, this, Tonka poem that I wrote called More Quantum Than Classical. It reads, life is uncertain. Embrace the multitude of probabilities. More quantum than classical. Life is not a geared machine.

speaker-1 (11:40.012)
It would be, I think that we want so badly to think that there's someone who knows. Do you know what I mean? Like if I just pay the right therapist, if I just pay the right business coach, then they'll know and they can take the uncertainty out. And if you, think it's very productive to just go, no, there's no expectation of the uncertainty will go away. I can only approach this level of probability and then there's diminishing returns and I just have to ask.

speaker-0 (12:06.692)
So how do we go through life that way because?

speaker-1 (12:10.466)
I think we already are, like I think we should give ourselves credit.

speaker-0 (12:12.962)
Well, we are to some degree, like for me, growing up, I wanted uncertainty or I wanted certainty so badly that I wouldn't do anything.

speaker-1 (12:22.274)
Yeah. But that's not quite true because like you're still alive. Sure. So like you ate food. Sure. Do you know what mean? Right. So maybe you could have gotten better at tolerating uncertainty. We're doing a lot in uncertainty. And so I think like maybe rather than saying like, I'm so bad at uncertainty. could say I've lived 43 years. That means I must be amazing at uncertainty. I've had to deal with so much uncertainty.

speaker-0 (12:33.672)
Yes.

speaker-0 (12:47.219)
I've lived 52, so how much better is that?

speaker-1 (12:49.826)
Nine more years of practice. So, like, yeah, so uncertainty isn't the exception. It is the, the Tao says, this translation says the gateway to all understanding, not the best understanding. Any understanding you have has come from dealing with uncertainty. So you're actually really good at tolerating uncertainty. You've found some cases where it's more difficult for you you need to practice some more, but you're already like amazing at.

speaker-0 (12:56.012)
No, it's the rule. It is tradition.

speaker-1 (13:18.968)
breathing, walking, and dealing with uncertainty.

speaker-0 (13:21.326)
Well, breathing is not necessarily a conscious act.

speaker-1 (13:24.43)
But you've practiced it a lot.

speaker-0 (13:26.99)
while I'm sleeping. You know, side note, I remember the first time I realized that I was breathing. I was probably four years old climbing down the back of a bunk bed and I noticed that I was breathing and I stopped and I thought, huh, I thought I only do that or I thought people only do that when they sleep. Weird, right?

speaker-1 (13:44.846)
But breathing is a skill and like, you know, there's breath meditation and you can use your breath to regulate the rest of your nervous system. And yeah, I mean, so like we're amazing at dealing with uncertainty. If you're still alive, you're dealing with uncertainty.

speaker-0 (14:00.216)
But there is dealing with uncertainty well and dealing with uncertainty poorly. when I was a kid, I didn't stretch. I didn't take risks at all because it was too scary for me. And because of that, and again, this is life. This is part of life. so there's no right amount of risk for people to take. It's not like I took less amount.

speaker-1 (14:24.992)
I know, but I'm just hanging up on this though. Like I think what you're doing is you're comparing yourself to other people and saying they were better at dealing with uncertainty. And so I think, I think a healthier way might be to say, I was dealing with uncertainty all the time because if I didn't, I would literally just stop being alive. So I was dealing with uncertainty all the time. I was so good at it. And then I found some areas where it was harder for me to tolerate uncertainty. And rather than saying I'm bad at uncertainty as an identity statement,

No, I'm amazing at dealing with uncertainty. You went to law school. Is there anything more uncertain than law school? It's like, so it's just like chaos and no feedback and you know, it's like you got through law school. That's it's tons of uncertainty.

speaker-0 (15:08.642)
things would you say, what things are can you find the most certainty in? Like if you think about everything, think about the world and life. What

Where can you find the most certain?

speaker-1 (15:21.418)
That's interesting. I hadn't thought about that. some, something that I think about when I'm talking to clients, so clients will ask me, I, will I win my case? How many days of jail will I go to? And I don't know. I mean, I have guesses and I have some experience and I can ask around and I can do some research, but I don't know for sure. But I know for sure what happened on past cases. You know, so I can say we had a trial.

speaker-0 (15:31.084)
legal clients.

speaker-1 (15:49.976)
this was the evidence, was an inoculaty verdict. And none of that's opinion, that's fact. So to a certain degree, especially when we're not interpreting the past, when we're talking about past events that we experienced, I think we can have functional certainty that those things happened.

speaker-0 (16:04.27)
Our probabilities. No, well, the past are certain because the past have come and gone, but we can take those probab- we can take the the certainties of the past and extrapolate that into probabilities for the future.

speaker-1 (16:06.798)
probabilities about the past?

speaker-1 (16:18.902)
But we almost always do it in an overconfident way. Almost always. Very, very difficult not to. And we're probably worse at it in areas that we are less educated and experienced. What's that phenomenon called where people who know less are more confident?

speaker-0 (16:39.846)
yeah.

speaker-1 (16:40.11)
I'm talking about and so like we should expect to experience less confidence as we grow

speaker-0 (16:47.96)
Well, that's kind of Socrates, you know, I know, what does he say? I know that I know nothing or something like that. more you learn, the more you realize, I don't know anything.

speaker-1 (17:01.922)
The best parents in the world are teenagers who don't have kids yet. Right. They are just certain. know exactly. I was, you know, and I was like, and I was kind of aware of it, but I also couldn't avoid it. It's like unavoidable to be certain about things you know nothing about. Yeah. I thought I really understood computer systems until I learned like five lines of code. And then I was like, Whoa, this is way more complicated.

speaker-0 (17:22.51)
Going back to Newtonian physics, mean you think that explains everything. Until you start looking into the quantum.

speaker-1 (17:28.366)
Right. Well, not even into the quantum, like, I assume to lead talks about billiards and he asks like how many bounces can Newtonian physics predict with high, with high degrees of science of certainty. And because it gets exponentially difficult on like the eighth bounce, it's like, have to know where every Adam and the universe is to be able to predict with accuracy where it will go.

speaker-0 (17:53.998)
You know, I used to think about this because You get the end this may be the the lie that you're talking about or the false impression I used to think you know if you could Because you can track, you know cause and effect, you know new Newton's three laws you can say okay. This ball is here and then in theory you could just reverse it all because of

you know, this first law of, you know, objects in motion stay in motion unless, you know, the three laws. But that's not the case.

speaker-1 (18:31.084)
Right. Right.

speaker-0 (18:34.37)
So I guess the question, practically speaking, because uncertainty is a part of life, we need to get comfortable with it. And we need to learn how to manage through it. Do you have some things that you've found that are helpful managing uncertainty? Or have you noticed benefits of sitting in uncertainty?

speaker-1 (19:00.322)
I mean, I think one of the most painful types of uncertainty is not knowing how someone we care about is going to respond to us. and depending on your theological position, they may be a cause, not an effect where they get to pick. you like among all the unpredictable things, how the people we love are going to behave is maybe the most unpredictable. and so

speaker-1 (19:32.814)
So here's one that comes to mind.

speaker-1 (19:37.518)
There's this three-word scripture that I just like, I'm so obsessed with right now. Charity never faileth.

So that means I, I think that it means it always succeeds.

And so on a really long time scale, think what that's saying is that love is such an attractive force that nothing else can stand up to it.

speaker-1 (20:08.598)
So I have kids who have done really dumb things.

And I, it can be the uncertainty of are they ever going to figure it out? Are they ever going to be healthy? Are they ever going to make good choices? Can be paralyzing. And I choose to focus instead of focusing on their decisions, I choose to focus on the idea that love is so powerful, meaning my love for them, God's love for them, their love for me, their love for God is so powerful that it will never fail. I don't know when it will succeed.

speaker-0 (20:41.643)
But what does success look like? What does it mean?

speaker-1 (20:44.686)
That's the question. I I don't know. I have theories because I'm overconfident, but like, I don't know. And I have to say, I have to exercise like faith and I'm going to define faith. I think like it'd be helpful to define faith with some clarity because of this, because of what we're talking about. To me, faith is acting with incomplete information.

It's not acting completely without evidence. That would be stupid.

speaker-0 (21:16.0)
Yeah, you have to have something to base it on.

speaker-1 (21:18.712)
But I, so I have to exercise faith in God and I choose to exercise faith in God, but a scientist has to exercise faith in their instruments. They have to exercise faith in their colleagues and trust their research enough that they're not just replicating other people's research all the time. Like all of us have to act under conditions of uncertainty. All of us have to act with incomplete information. That is the like defining characteristic maybe of mortality is you will not have all of the information you could have.

want to

speaker-0 (21:50.03)
What I keep coming back to in my mind as we're talking about this, you know question of what does it mean to be successful? What what are we trying to accomplish here? I mean, so we have all these things of uncertainty. We are doing things. We don't know what the outcome is gonna be Doesn't matter what the outcome is. What is what is the purpose of what we're even doing? Right, like so I'm not certain how this is gonna have how this is gonna turn out Does it matter how to or is just the process of doing it the value?

speaker-1 (22:08.716)
Right.

speaker-1 (22:19.948)
Right. And so kind of going back to maybe your previous episode, acting with integrity is the whole game. Yeah. Once you've acted with integrity, you can have good results, bad results. You have less control over the results than you think. Luck plays a much greater role than we think, but I can still act with integrity, which means acting in accordance with who I am choosing to be.

speaker-0 (22:32.014)
you

speaker-0 (22:38.435)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (22:49.698)
Yeah, in a brave, courageous way.

speaker-0 (22:52.254)
Yeah, my new mantra is I can't solve my life today, but I can act with integrity in this hour. So there's lots of uncertainty. And so the ability to shrink it down to just this hour and to ask myself, what can I do in this hour that is going to have, you know, that's going to be done with integrity for me? That's going to, that's not abandoning myself that is being, you know,

speaker-1 (23:05.144)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (23:19.8)
There's something that I need to do that's honest and true. What can I do?

So rather the question rather when you say charity never faileth, it means it always succeeds. We don't know what that looks like. We don't know what that means because you can, what does it look like to live a successful life? What does it look like to fail at life? Or does that even exist?

speaker-1 (23:47.702)
So it feels like acting with integrity is choosing to love my children and accepting them even when they're doing dumb stuff. And that that's success regardless of how it affects their behavior. And I also believe that it will have a powerful effect on their behavior.

speaker-0 (24:08.622)
So, so thinking about this quote, darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding. Like when we sit in darkness or when we sit in uncertainty, I think those are interchangeable here, darkness and uncertainty. that's, that's scary. Cause you, you fret about what if I make the wrong choice? Whether is there a wrong choice or is there just choices with different consequences? I mean,

speaker-1 (24:33.912)
This or there

I mean, I'm a moral absolutist, but...

speaker-0 (24:39.466)
Well, I think there are some choices, but I've been looking at things more like there are consequences. I talked, you one thing that I think lately is we're, we are free to do whatever we want to do. There are consequences. And as long as we understand what those consequences are and we think, okay, I can deal with the worst possible consequence there and go do it.

speaker-1 (25:02.674)
My dad would use this like teaching tool. would draw a tuning fork, you know, with the branches. And so he would say, you're an agent and then you can use your, you can use your agency to choose good choices or bad choices. If you choose good choices, you'll receive more freedom. If you choose bad choices, you'll receive less freedom. That's inevitable. Like that's not me imposing that. That's just like true.

And every time he got it out, we were like so bugged. just like, no, it's the tuning fork again.

speaker-0 (25:35.374)
But what is a good choice and a bad choice? mean, if that's, I that's the whole, you know, beyond good and evil. That's the genealogy of morals from Nietzsche. I mean, it's what is a good choice and what is a bad choice? And maybe the good choice is, is acting with integrity.

speaker-1 (25:51.234)
Yeah. You can't lie and not lose a piece of yourself.

speaker-0 (25:57.422)
I loved Jordan Peterson. says, a rule. Your rule should not be always tell the truth. Your rule should be don't tell a lie because sometimes you don't know if something is true or not. But if you know if something is a lie, don't tell that speak. But if you know something's a lie, don't tell that. But you're right. That's a little tangent there. But yeah, you can't tell a lie. You can't, you can't harm another person.

speaker-1 (26:19.366)
inevitable consequence.

speaker-1 (26:25.516)
And not harm yourself. You were harming yourself. Like there's no choice. You can choose the behavior. cannot choose the consequence. And we see like, if I said, my goal is to not go to prison. And then I went and dealt drugs and shot people and it's like, well, you're going to go to prison eventually. Like you're going to lose your, you're going to lose some freedom. If I'm at the prison and I'm unkind to everyone, I'm going to lose more freedom. I'm going to have fewer options. I'm going to have.

speaker-0 (26:52.758)
shivved in the showers.

speaker-1 (26:53.696)
shiv, which is even fewer options. Yeah. it's, so it's just like, that's.

speaker-0 (26:59.16)
So can we make a generalized statement that good decisions can be defined as decisions or actions or acting with integrity? think that we could do that because...

speaker-1 (27:11.191)
Yeah.

I like that a lot. I've had a lot of friends, you know, at lunch say, I'm not down with the church. I don't feel it. I don't think it's true. I'm going to do another thing. Are you going to still be friends with me? And I'm like, of course. and they're like, well, do you have any advice? And I think that they're going to think I'm going to say like, I need you to go to the temple five times next week or I'm sure they would. don't know. Maybe they don't expect that. But what I say is like, I think God wants you to do what you know to be true.

If you know the church is true and you're lying to me, don't know, then like, that's a problem. If you know the church is not true and you pretend like it is, that's also a problem. there's not, I, something that I learned in my life is that you can't be intentionally wrong and be right. Like I've chosen to believe things that I knew were not true because I was afraid of believing the contrary and there are significant negative consequences.

speaker-0 (28:10.03)
Yeah, and bringing that kind of back around I've done the same thing in an effort to find certainty Yeah, because I Don't feel comfortable about things but I want them to be true because if it's true it gives certainty and it gives Some structure to my life, you know, I wrote another poem That it reads Possibilities March on my walled city of certainties

speaker-1 (28:16.76)
Hmm, that's interesting.

speaker-0 (28:39.734)
and lay siege because I used to shut everything out. And I just wanted, I wanted this to be true, even though maybe I didn't feel good about it. I wanted this to be certain because with that certainty, felt more secure, but it was a false sense of security because it's not true or it's, it's not allowing me to be me. And that's where I mentioned earlier, because I wanted, because I feared uncertainty so much because I wanted certainty.

I was afraid to risk things. was afraid to go out and say, was the guy who buried his single talent. That's who I was. Instead of going out and multiplying it, was too afraid of the uncertainty of the market. What if he's going to come back as he's a vengeful master or whatever he was. So I'm going to bury it here because that's certain, but it got me nothing.

Got that guy nothing, in fact I got it taken away and given to the other guys.

speaker-1 (29:41.356)
Yeah. And yes. And I think Wittgenstein and James would say,

speaker-0 (29:53.998)
They're both over there somewhere.

speaker-1 (29:55.192)
Tractatus? They would both say, I can tell what you believe by how you act.

And...

in the areas of our lives that we act without integrity. But again, to get where we are, we had to do a lot of good stuff. And again, I'm a God and faith person. I don't think God would grind our faces in our bad choices. I think he would notice our victories and celebrate them with us. And that would inspire us to want to be that best version of ourselves more often.

We can tell that you can handle uncertainty because like you're alive, you have a place to live, you have all these books, you have people who love you, have, you know what mean? You have skills, you've served people. So we don't have to, it's not just like a mental exercise. Like at some point we have to choose what we're going to do. And going back to what you're saying about, uh, in the, uh, the affirmation or whatever you call it, want to call it about in this hour act with integrity. I think that one of the temptations of modernity is to say.

I have infinite options and whatever I choose, I'm going to condemn myself for all the wonderful things I could have done. And it's just like not true because that's, you don't have infinite options. You have infinite options and then you have to pick one of them. You can find, you know, millions of people on Tinder and then you have to marry one of them. You know, you have to pick one job and do that job you have. And in this moment, I can only do one thing and I can only think about one thing at a time.

speaker-1 (31:37.154)
So I just have to make that choice and celebrate the good that comes from that choice without comparing it to all these fake alternatives.

speaker-0 (31:48.43)
Yeah, that reminds me of something I've been thinking a lot about. Cause as I mentioned, when I was younger, I would freeze. Cause I, know, if everything was scary, uncertainty was scary. And so rather than doing anything, I would just freeze and not do anything. And I would just kind of take what was handed to me like, this is what you're going to get. Okay. You know, I get what I get and I don't throw a fit type thing. But one thing that I've been thinking a lot about these last few years is there's no wrong direction to go. Just Jordan Peterson.

That's kind of what he references to just move. if you're uncertain about what to do, I think don't move in anxiety, don't move out of fear. But if you're uncertain, like try to sit until you can move with integrity and then just choose something. then if it turns out to... You can always turn around, exactly. And so understand that, that it's not a failure if you start out in the wrong direction.

speaker-1 (32:33.998)
you're going in the wrong direction, you can always turn...

speaker-0 (32:42.55)
I used to think it's a failure. I have failed. have messed up.

speaker-1 (32:47.558)
That's like a Kobe idea and like, there's no failure. just learn. We just get something from it.

speaker-0 (32:52.942)
It's like I remember somebody asked, I think it was Edison, asked him about...

speaker-1 (32:59.726)
yeah, the light bulb. just found 457 ways that don't work. mean, yeah. And it's, if there's some real truth to that, there's a reason that those stories go around. have we talked about my judgment anxiety, final judgment anxiety? No. I have been very anxious about final judgment and

speaker-0 (33:03.598)
Yeah, exactly.

speaker-0 (33:15.15)
Let's talk about it.

speaker-0 (33:20.576)
When you say final judgment, you're talking about God not in the court.

speaker-1 (33:22.84)
God. House. Not in the courthouse. God judgment. And I often, the image I used in my mind was of a courtroom and it gave me anxiety and I avoided thinking about it. didn't want to talk about it. didn't like it. You just quoted Matthew 25 talking about the talents parable that the master comes back and says, why didn't you, do anything with this talent that Matthew 25 has three parables, the 10 virgins, the, the talents. And then the last one is sheep and the goats.

And in our culture, we don't talk about the sheep and the goats as much as the talents. And maybe probably not as much as the 10 virgins either. The sheep and the goats, God comes back. He says, we're going to judge you. He divides the sheep and the goats. The sheep, he puts on the right hand, goats on the left. And he says to the sheep, you can stay with me. The goats cannot. And they both ask why. And he says, because I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was in prison and you.

visited me. The second you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.

So I always thought that my, in my final judgment, I would go and let's say it's with Jesus Christ. And he would say, I gave you all of these educational opportunities, all of these financial resources, all of these relationships, and you didn't win one Oscar. You didn't win one Nobel prize. Like I gave you so much. I expected to get a return on that investment. Like, how dare you? I think that now what I learned from the sheep and the goats parable is.

He's going to give me whatever he gives me. And the only return he cares about is if I gave somebody some food, gave somebody some water, visited them, came to them. So like, I don't think it would be virtuous to just like go off into a mountain and write some books and never interact with anybody. I think that like the good choice is to love deeply. Imperfect, uncertain people. And

speaker-1 (35:23.774)
So I don't, I don't have that much control over when I, whether I win an Oscar, I'm not making any films. So I guess that's not helping my chances, but, but I can feed somebody and if I can't feed them, I can give them water. And if I can't give them water, I can visit them. Like that's doable. And it's like very liberating to me. gives me less sense of uncertainty. Say, I can just help this person that I'm with. I can just be with this person and that's all God wants from me. And if I win a Nobel prize, he might be like,

Did you learn in the process of winning that Nobel Prize? Cool, but I don't care. I knew all that stuff already. I didn't need you to win a Nobel Prize. But what I do want you to do, and I identify with this as a parent, when one of my kids helps another of my kids, or somebody else helps one of my kids, I cannot tell you the gratitude that I feel.

speaker-0 (36:12.47)
Yeah, I understand that. That idea just takes me back to what a success look like. Is it even possible to fail at life? And I'm sure it is. But if you're moving with integrity, let's talk about some more parables. And I've talked with this a lot to you a lot about the prodigal son. in that chapter, because in that one you have

speaker-1 (36:36.696)
Prodigal three parable check

speaker-0 (36:41.742)
the 99 lost sheep and then you have lost coin. It's the 99 that is lost coin is terrible. what I exactly, exactly. job. So what I noticed though, like is the 99 and lost coin are very short and the 99, the sheep had no idea what it was doing. It just got lost. It's foolish. And the shepherd went and grabbed it.

speaker-1 (36:44.876)
Is it what's the order?

speaker-1 (36:49.742)
Good job, King James translators, by the way.

speaker-0 (37:09.58)
and just plugged it back into the flock. No identity.

speaker-1 (37:12.268)
And with what emotion? Judgment and anger? No. Celebration. The sheep that I lost is found. The sheep is just plugged in. He has no malice.

speaker-0 (37:19.138)
But the sheep had no... Yeah.

And then the coin, the coin has no value other than what the lady puts on the coin. The silver, intrinsic silver value, but it's just like all the other coins in the purse. And she's excited. She lost the coin, she's excited, she puts it back in the purse.

speaker-1 (37:25.198)
The has no agency.

speaker-1 (37:29.988)
I mean

speaker-1 (37:38.668)
And again, anger, frustration, condemnation. Welcome back. Yes. Thank you, Cohen. We missed you.

speaker-0 (37:45.196)
But the prodigal son, it's long.

And I've come to appreciate that because that, the sun, he was, sure there was a, mean, I'm.

had to have been some uncertainty. He says, give me my inheritance. So he gives it to him and he gives it to the brother. And then he goes off. He goes off a whoring. He goes off and doing bad stuff. some bad, but he gets to the pigsty and he's sitting there and the scripture says he comes to himself and he says, I need to go back to my father's house. So

speaker-1 (38:11.47)
Bad stuff.

Some foolish and some-

speaker-0 (38:30.52)
People can look at that and say, look at all these horrible things. You failed, you failed, you failed, you failed, you failed. But did he fail? Because through all of those things, he came to himself.

speaker-1 (38:39.65)
Well, I mean, one way that I think about it is unnecessary suffering.

speaker-0 (38:44.14)
was it? Because maybe that's what brought him to where he was because the son who stayed home, he was clueless. Because when the prodigal came back,

speaker-1 (38:52.834)
Well, okay. So the dad's reaction is beautiful.

What if he had reacted poorly? Didn't. I'm saying if he had, he would be inflicting unnecessary suffering on his son. His son could have had a joyful return and this father chose to make it a miserable return. He didn't. Cause so I don't, think that there's some danger in saying, well, it's all good and it all works out. think so like if so that again, here's a personal example. The biological parents of some of my kids inflicted unnecessary pain on them.

speaker-0 (39:01.294)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (39:06.958)
Okay, yeah.

speaker-0 (39:12.141)
Right, but he didn't.

speaker-1 (39:28.982)
It wasn't necessary. I think that my children can learn from it, but I think they could have learned everything that they did learn from it in other ways, probably faster.

speaker-0 (39:42.99)
Perhaps.

speaker-1 (39:44.142)
That's my belief. I could be wrong. And again, going back to my faith belief, my faith belief is that God doesn't need our sin, but he can take even our ashes, our sin, and give us beauty. Like he can, he's the ultimate alchemist. He can take those horrible abusive experiences and turn them into gold, but he didn't need the bad experience to make gold. could have made gold out of lots of things.

speaker-0 (40:08.174)
Right, but God doesn't do that. We have our agency to do what we're going to do.

speaker-1 (40:13.578)
And by the way, that's my, my deepest unanswered faith question is I believe that this is the best way to do this, but I don't understand how that is. Do you know what mean?

speaker-0 (40:25.518)
Well, I think when we think about life, like going back to Montaigne, we don't die of being sick. We die of being alive. So sickness, sin, if you want to call it sin, whatever, that's all the, those are the vicissitudes of life. Those are life. It's just part of life. And so the prodigal son, goes out and he subjects himself to, yeah, stuff that maybe he shouldn't, he could have avoided.

But maybe that's what he needed. We don't know. But at the end, the result is he comes to himself and he comes back to his father and his father gives him a ring. His father gives him a robe. His father gives him shoes. Celebrates. Celebrates. Kills the fatted calf. So all of these, like the ring and the robe, these are signs of authority. These are signs. And so he, not only does he come back and he's welcomed into his father's house.

speaker-1 (41:02.702)
It doesn't grind his face.

speaker-0 (41:15.384)
But comes back and now he has his own authority. He has his own rope. And the other, the son is completely misses the mark. His son says, the other son says, you didn't even give me a kid to celebrate, to make merry with my friends. Like this isn't about just a dinner. It's not just about killing an animal.

speaker-1 (41:32.078)
Right, but so the parable doesn't make sense with mortal economy.

Like if let, let's say it's ambiguous, but let's say that the parable, this, the prodigal who left and has come back, let's say he's going to inherit with the other son. Doesn't the other son have a beef? Like he wasted his inheritance already.

speaker-0 (41:57.934)
Yeah, but my point is that the other son did everything he was supposed to do. Kind of like the guy who buried the talent.

speaker-1 (42:06.412)
I guess, but is he joyful? Is he happy? No. He's doing it all externally, but he hasn't felt it yet. He hasn't been transformed.

speaker-0 (42:08.93)
The Sun at home? Yeah. Didn't seem like it. Not at all because...

So my point he has to go, he has to leave because he did everything the father told him to do. I can, I, that resonates with me because when I was a kid, tried to do everything that I was told exact obedience. That brought me no happiness. That brought me no fulfillment because I was trying just tell me what to do and I'll do it. Tell me what to do. I'll do it. And that was where is the prodigal son risked it. And he ended up coming to himself and he learned and he grew and he came into himself.

speaker-1 (42:35.79)
And earn your love. Yes.

speaker-0 (42:44.044)
And so when I think about that, I think the son who stayed home was like the guy who buried the talent. He was too afraid. And so he never got outside of himself. so he's going to have my, you know, the way I read it is he has to have his own prodigal experience in one way or another, because he did everything and his father says, Hey, all I have is yours. But the son who came home, now he has his own ring. He has his own rope. He's got his own power.

And so I think that there's value in what the prodigal son.

speaker-1 (43:17.806)
Yeah, yeah, and what a shame it would have been if the prodigal had lacked the honesty to say... True. this is not good.

speaker-0 (43:27.298)
Well, and so at some point, he acted with integrity.

speaker-1 (43:29.282)
He had to act with integrity. Right. And my point is, you, you don't have to act without integrity to act with. So I'm saying that the older prodigal, if he takes this opportunity to learn from his father and says, okay, I was upset and my dad wasn't, what does he understand that I don't? Sure. And I want to act with that kind of integrity. Then he can learn it without as painful an experience, but

speaker-0 (43:39.38)
I agree.

speaker-1 (43:56.362)
If, if the only, if he refuses that way and does it another way and then comes back and can be reunited equal joy. And I think he might go, man, I wish I had done that a little bit better, but at the end of the day, he's going to say where I am is so wonderful. CS Lewis, like it was all worth it. It turns those into heavenly experiences in retrospect. It transforms them backwards in time.

speaker-0 (44:25.902)
see that again.

speaker-1 (44:26.988)
So CS Lewis said that for those who go to hell, even their most joyful experiences will turn into bitterness because they were steps on their eventual path to misery. But for those who go to heaven, even their mistakes will be, will be exalted and will be, they, they will, they'll be valuable because they were all steps on the path to their eventual joy. So he says that like the example he gives is like the,

the person who says, give me this happiness, this one vice right now, and I'll, I'll endure any pain. Doesn't realize that it will actually turn to ash in retrospect because it will be the thing that caused his now, his present pain. Yeah. Great divorce. Where is that? In the George McDonald section. George McDonald. It's right. I just saw it.

speaker-0 (45:09.452)
Was that from the book that we...

speaker-0 (45:18.456)
Did you? It's here somewhere.

speaker-1 (45:22.138)
here it is, right here.

speaker-0 (45:23.542)
Okay, yeah, George McDonald.

speaker-1 (45:26.978)
I don't know, he knows something about George MacDonald that I don't, because I haven't seen that kind of depth in George MacDonald's writing. He's good character.

speaker-0 (45:34.815)
Yeah, it reminds me like I wrote this haiku a couple years ago reads the universe speaks Give heed or learn as Jonah in the whale's belly

speaker-1 (45:48.248)
which is a kind of certainty, right? Like, you want to learn. Like you can't disobey the law of gravity. You cannot disobey the strong nuclear force. Like, there's some rules.

speaker-0 (45:50.446)
You're going to learn one way the other.

speaker-0 (46:01.068)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (46:05.934)
This learning to deal with certainty or with uncertainty for me has been...

speaker-0 (46:14.83)
incredibly difficult because my past experience with it has been like I was the son who stayed home. was the servant who buried his talent. Resentful. not initially. Initially it was more, I am too scared to do anything and so I'll just stay small. Eventually I did. I thought, what did I...

speaker-1 (46:27.084)
resentful.

speaker-1 (46:38.626)
But didn't you feel resentment?

speaker-1 (46:43.49)
Why'd I do all this? Why'd I keep keeping all the rules and you don't love me the way I wanted you to?

speaker-0 (46:44.418)
Yeah

Right, exactly, exactly. It didn't help. so learning to sit in uncertainty and then moving with integrity, like learning to not act, not to panic in the uncertainty, to sit and think about it. And it helps to have people to talk to, you know, because here's the thing is moving or not moving, the uncertainty

I guess you can't, there are some uncertainties you can get rid of. Like sometimes you can be sitting in, like for instance, I don't want to go check. I don't want to open up an email that I've been worried about. I can sit in the uncertainty of what it says and then just have it destroy me or I can open it up. And then if it's, and if it's a bet, if it's bad news that I suffer for a little bit and then I move on.

speaker-1 (47:44.282)
I'm having an idea.

speaker-0 (47:45.454)
Let's hear it.

speaker-1 (47:49.03)
I have some people I care about that struggle with OCD and especially like scrupulosity. And, and one of the features of OCD is this like spinning obsessiveness, like not being able to let go of a thought. The thoughts just can't, you can't let go of it. And I experienced that too. Night before a trial, I can't stop thinking about the trial. It's just going, going, going, going. It's not productive anymore. I know it's not productive anymore. There's nothing left to think about, but I can't let go of it.

years ago, this woman did a presentation in our neighborhood, on, on mental health. And she said, one of the challenges with treating with people with mental health challenges is that the mental health challenge that they're in will prompt them to do counterproductive things in a vicious cycle. So I'm depressed. So I eat badly. So I feel more depressed. So I eat more bad food.

And you know you can think of million examples of that. You know, I feel lonely so I play video games so I'm more lonely so I play more video games so I could feel more lonely. And she said that one of the only ways to break one of those cycles is to connect with another human. And her point talking to a bunch of parents was saying time out is an intuitive punishment and sometimes when our kids are being antisocial we might need them to spend some time alone and to think and but

If they're depressed, having them be alone is like the worst possible prescription. It's like just not effective. And so I think that might say something about like our fundamental nature and like the rules of the universe that like, if I'm spinning before a trial or if you're spinning about a, an email and we can't let go of the thought and we're acting OCD about that thing, maybe like you just got to go connect with somebody.

speaker-0 (49:46.818)
I used to have this fear of looking at my bank account. And so I asked my sister to come and sit with me. And she would just sit over there doing what she's doing. And just to have somebody else there, yeah, it's just powerful.

speaker-1 (49:56.814)
Isn't that beautiful? And the other thing, the maybe even like level up version of that is, in your pain to look for people to serve and help, not as a way of earning their love or something like that, but just like out of the joy of helping them, just like not saying like, this is going to fix this other thing, but just like, I have the opportunity to help this person and that brings me joy.

I love helping people, so I'm going to help this person. And what a great way to connect with people.

speaker-0 (50:33.356)
Yeah. That's the solution to a lot of issues is connection with another human.

speaker-1 (50:40.15)
Isn't that beautiful? Arthur Brooks is on this kick that, that you can do addictive behaviors. You just need to do them with other people. So he's like, if you're doing a behavior of something that could be addictive and most things can be addictive and you're doing them alone, you're doing them wrong. think that's pretty close to the quote, which condemns me for video games because I love playing video games alone. it condemns me for watching movies while my family's out of town. Cause I'm just like,

And I know that it's not going to, I'm not going to feel more integrity at the end of three hours of playing video games alone, but it's really appealing, you know, or eating chocolate alone.

speaker-0 (51:20.204)
Yeah. Here is.

speaker-1 (51:23.918)
It's funny how much we're talking about certainty we have about stuff while we're talking about uncertainty.

speaker-0 (51:27.854)
Yeah, well, I read this this really good. Well, okay. on it.

speaker-1 (51:33.47)
Riff on my own thought. Just because there is uncertainty doesn't mean that we're uncertain about everything. True. That's kind of like the Descartes mistake, like, do I have hands? Yeah, I've solved that. I can be uncertain about other more productive things. I have hands. I act like I have hands. My behavior indicates that I believe I have hands.

speaker-0 (51:53.634)
So what makes some things more dreadful and uncertainty than others?

speaker-1 (51:59.534)
Let's get started.

I mean, we don't get to pick what's uncertain and what's not. No. So some things we're certain about and some things we're not.

speaker-0 (52:08.174)
I think maybe something that threatens an existential threat, maybe an uncertainty.

speaker-1 (52:14.498)
Well, okay, here's another thought. What if it's threats to our story about ourselves?

speaker-0 (52:20.61)
Yeah, that's existential.

speaker-1 (52:22.242)
I got a ticket today, as I told you.

I want, I'm very tempted to change the circum facts about what happened to maintain myself image. Hmm. I got to take it for texting and driving and I'm tempted to remember it.

speaker-1 (52:43.15)
positively for myself.

And, uh, it'll be interesting. I'm probably going to order the video of it just to see how much my memory of what happened aligns with what actually happened. Um, but I think that we will go to great lengths. Some of the people that I love the most. Cannot accept that they've done certain things or certain things that have happened. And so they have to change all of the other things they've perceived and all the other like laws of the universe to line up with this story that they feel. It's exhausting.

speaker-0 (53:14.454)
exhausting.

speaker-1 (53:16.448)
And it's like borderline psychosis.

speaker-0 (53:19.39)
Well, sitting on uncertainty is terrifying, especially things that challenge your story of you, things that are existentially threatening. Like I've always thought how terrifying would it be sitting? Like have you seen Saving Private Ryan?

speaker-1 (53:38.882)
Yes.

speaker-0 (53:41.186)
the very end when they're sitting there in that little French town somewhere, and then you can hear the German tanks coming off in the distance. And you don't know, am I going to die here or not? That's enough to cause you to.

speaker-1 (53:52.366)
freeze. Malcolm Gladwell says, you're not actually afraid of dying. You're afraid of being afraid of dying. This is from the U shaped curves book. So people in the blitz and Britain weren't actually afraid of bombs dropping. They were afraid of how they would react to bombs dropping. So once a bomb dropped close to them and they didn't like lose their minds and do things that are not in accordance with their values from then on, they were immune.

speaker-0 (54:18.764)
Interesting.

speaker-1 (54:19.142)
There's a small percentage of us who will get hit by the bomb, the rest of us will go about our business and it'll be fine. At the end of the bullets, didn't even go, lot of people wouldn't even go into the shelters. Bombs would fall, they'd be like, yeah, it's fine.

speaker-0 (54:29.838)
Because can't control where the bomb is going to land. This line from this Rilke poem.

speaker-1 (54:35.138)
Just to me, that cool though about like exposure therapy? I've interrupted this real couple of like eight times. That's all right. But like you just expose yourself to the uncertainty, watch yourself react in a way that doesn't embarrass you. And then you can do it again because you're like, I have confidence that I can deal with uncertainty.

speaker-0 (54:53.806)
Yeah, I like that idea because there are so many things that I, well, you know, I started doing criminal defense recently and I sit in there for these just benign, like initial appearances, but I don't know what's going to happen. And so I'm just like, Oh, I got to stand up and I, I'm in the right place and I got to stand. And then once you do it, it's like, okay, there there's certainty now because I've gone through it. Now, does that mean that it's always, there's going to be occasional curve balls. had a curve ball the other day where

speaker-1 (55:06.082)
Yeah. Yeah.

speaker-1 (55:11.95)
Am I in the right place?

speaker-0 (55:23.48)
there there was a protective order against a pre-trial protective order against the client. was like, well, I guess. And then I just kind of rolled with it. Now I'm OK with it. know, but but those this real couple, let me get back to it.

speaker-1 (55:34.658)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (55:40.526)
I'm ready. I'm gonna force them ready.

speaker-0 (55:42.158)
force it because this line to me he's talking about I read it in the last I'm gonna read it again because it's such a powerhouse of a poem he writes ignorant before the heavens of my life I stand and gaze and wonder the vastness of the stars they're rising and descent how still as if I didn't exist do I have any share in this have I somehow dispensed with their pure effect does my blood's ebb and flow change with their changes so he's he's like

having this awakening where he's like, this is my life. Kind of like the prodigal son. Whoa. I mean, this pig pen, did I miss out on my life?

speaker-1 (56:22.476)
I picked this. I chose this.

speaker-0 (56:24.642)
Yeah, and he's thinking, whoa, did I miss out on it? Do I have any share in this? This is a man.

speaker-1 (56:29.76)
Am I

speaker-0 (56:32.524)
And here's what he says, let me put aside every desire, every relationship except this one with me, with myself, so that my heart is here, so that my heart grows used to its farthest spaces. Better that it, meaning his heart, better that his heart live fully aware in the terror of its stars than as if protected, soothed by what is near.

See, growing up, I stayed small. I sought for certainty where there wasn't certainty. I created this framework and it kept me alive. So there's that. But it soothed me. Even if it was not true, it soothed me. But this line, better that it live fully aware in the terror of its stars.

speaker-1 (57:24.982)
It's so tempting to numb, distract.

speaker-0 (57:26.688)
It's so tempting to f**ked to dis- yes, I'm gonna bury this coin because I'm afraid.

speaker-1 (57:32.182)
And I think that sometimes, like, we have to give ourselves a numbing and distraction budget. there's no point in doing surgery with no anesthetic. This is true. And sometimes the emotion is so powerful that we need some distance.

speaker-0 (57:47.116)
Being fully aware is hard. It's hard. It's hard. And sometimes you just need to decompress a little.

speaker-1 (57:52.418)
You take a nap or you need to go for a walk or you need to recreate. You do need to recreate. which yeah, isn't that cool? Like recreate, like recreation isn't negative. It's creation. It's making it's creating again, making capacity. I'm, I'm not sure if this relates, but I'm obsessed with forgiveness right now. That's my current research project.

speaker-0 (58:19.406)
Okay.

speaker-1 (58:21.684)
And.

And so I did a little research on like, what's the social science research on forgiveness? How does it work? Like, how do you do it? Cause in our faith culture, I don't know that we have, we have clear processes for lots of things like little flip charts with steps, but I don't know what the steps of forgiveness are. Do you know any like in our culture steps of forgiveness? But what about forgiveness? And so I found these, a couple of things.

speaker-0 (58:44.438)
repentance.

speaker-1 (58:53.134)
The social science seems to divide forgiveness into two types, behavioral and emotional forgiveness. Behavioral is I'm just going to treat this person well even though I'm angry with them. And emotional forgiveness is I'm going to replace my anger at them with compassion. I'm going actually go into my emotions and try to replace them. And there's this guy whose name I'm forgetting right now, but he has this reach framework where you recall the hurt,

empathize with the person who hurt you, give them forgiveness as an altruistic gift, commemorate or choose forgiveness and commemorate it in a physical way like writing yourself a note saying, forgive this person and then hold onto the forgiveness because you'll be tempted to wonder if you've really forgiven them or not. I was like, that's really interesting. I didn't know there were steps and that's really interesting. But when they study people who do behavioral forgiveness, they feel just as bitter and angry and resentful.

If you do emotional forgiveness, there's like a massive increase in how you feel towards the person.

And so like going back to what we were saying about like a way to deal with the uncertainty of being alive and having so much uncertainty is to connect with other people, which necessitates forgiveness. Like we can choose to say like, I have a right to be angry with this person and to feel bitter and to feel resentful and that will hurt me and it will hurt them. And I will choose to try to take out some of this resentment and replace it with some compassion. And that can like,

be like a wonderful experience. know, like it can reconcile relationships and reconcile our feelings about them. anyway, yeah.

speaker-0 (01:00:38.338)
We should do an episode on forgiveness. Next Josh Barron episode.

speaker-1 (01:00:44.628)
Maybe that was a reach for relating that to this line from the Tao.

speaker-0 (01:00:51.352)
Well no, because I think...

speaker-1 (01:00:58.138)
I have an analogy about all this. do it. I love music. I love to play music. I've tried to write music. I have a song on Spotify. That's right. When I was learning music theory, I learned about consonant and dissonant tones. So relationships between tones of music. I was like consonant tones sound so much better than dissonant tones.

speaker-0 (01:01:05.481)
We did absorb.

speaker-1 (01:01:25.678)
Why wouldn't we always use consonant tones? And I think the Dow's answer would be like, you have to go into the darkness. You have to go into dissonance to appreciate the beauty of that consonant chord. Um, so like every relationship between two notes in the, in the, what's it called? The Greek scale, the, what we use the 12 tone scale is, um, is on a spectrum of consonants to dissonance that almost everyone agrees with.

So there aren't people who are like, man, I just love minor seconds. That doesn't exist. We all agree that's super dissonant. The most consonant tone is an octave, so it's the same tone cut in half.

That's the most consonant. And if you just played that interval, it would literally be monotone. Like it would just have no movement. It would be dead. It has no change. But if you then go to a fifth, which is pretty consonant, but less, much less consonant than an octave, you get a little bit of dissonance. And then if you go to a minor third, it's not as dissonant as a minor second, but it's a little bit dissonant. Like there's a reason we don't always listen to music.

in major keys. Sometimes we use minor, sometimes we use, you know, funny modes. It's because like you have to go into the darkness for all understanding. You have to break eggs to make omelets. You have to excavate the stone from a quarry before you build a cathedral.

speaker-0 (01:02:58.254)
The cells have to split for there to be life. There's this quote that I'm trying to remember. It was on Lex Friedman podcast. He had this Harvard physicist on there.

speaker-1 (01:03:02.355)
Creative District.

speaker-0 (01:03:15.606)
I think it was, magic happens when the symmetry breaks.

speaker-1 (01:03:20.832)
So an immature artist just paints everything beautiful, everything symmetrical. I'm just going to make squares. And the more mature artist says, we've got to go, we got to go a little bit deeper. We got to go, we got to go to where it's a little bit uncomfortable. can't get strong without the pain of lifting weights. You can't run long distances without pushing your tolerance.

speaker-0 (01:03:43.47)
You can't grow seeking certainty your whole life, trying to avoid uncertainty.

speaker-1 (01:03:48.564)
can only plant the seed in one place, but if you don't plant it there, you can't plant it at all.

speaker-0 (01:03:54.082)
Yes.

speaker-1 (01:03:55.374)
Should we put that in the Dow?

speaker-0 (01:03:57.304)
put that at a footnote. Well, this has been, I've really enjoyed our conversation.

speaker-1 (01:03:59.758)
Josh Barron said.

speaker-0 (01:04:09.196)
So our next one's gonna be unforgiveness. Right. Great. We're gonna do it. So all of you tune in. I just, I'd like to thank everybody who listened to this episode and if it's something, if you got something from it, if you feel like it's worth sharing, please share that. And if you listen to this on pod on, on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever, if there's an option to like and subscribe, and if this is something you feel like you would want to like and subscribe, please do. And as always may IBI is the only prayer.

Thanks for listening.