How to Do Nothing

[00:11] Rory: My name is Rory O’Toole.

[00:13] Matt: And my name is Matt Schultz.

[00:15] Rory: And this is how to be the.

[00:17] Matt: Podcast where we discuss ancient wisdom, modern.

[00:21] Matt: Hacks, paperback self help books, and pithy.

[00:24] Rory: Platters in the hopes of figuring out the best way to live this one. Precious and wildlife.

[00:31] Matt: Today, we will discuss the value of.

[00:33] Matt: Disconnecting and paying attention to birds, trees.

[00:35] Matt: And even a blank wall. Join us as we outline theory behind Jenny O’Dell’s book, how to do nothing.

[00:54] Matt: Hello, Rory O’Toole.

[00:56] Rory: How are you?

[00:58] Matt: Well, those Jesse white tumblers sure make it look fun.

[01:02] Rory: Absolutely. I sent Matt a video. Not only had he never heard of the Jesse white Tumblers, which are a Chicago legendary tumbling group, he had never even heard of the word tumbler.

[01:19] Matt: Tumbling tumbler was something that happened by accident. I didn’t know that there was a whole world of intentional tumbling.

[01:29] Rory: Yeah, exactly. And now you’re mystified, aren’t you?

[01:32] Matt: We call that gymnastics on the east coast.

[01:37] Matt: Have you ever heard of.

[01:39] Rory: I don’t know if it’s gymnastics, though. There’s no bar. There’s no uneven bar. There’s no bound.

[01:48] Matt: I was wondering that because they actually only did one thing.

[01:52] Matt: Is that all they do?

[01:54] Rory: Well, I didn’t watch it, actually, the video I sent to you. But they basically make pyramids and jump over them. Yeah, tumble over them.

[02:06] Matt: They do a front flip very far.

[02:10] Rory: And this actually speaks to a question I meant to ask some people the other day, and you included, but forgot. Do you think you could do a somersault?

[02:20] Matt: Of course.

[02:22] Rory: Okay. You were going to say that because you believe in your athletic ability. You have a deep belief in your athletic ability. I know that you did one when you were seven years old, and you think that that never goes away.

[02:39] Matt: I think I’ve done a somersault more recently than that, and it is a little perilous because of the fear of breaking one’s neck.

[02:49] Rory: And can you break your neck from it? Because my mom used to always tell me not to do them because I would break my neck.

[02:54] Matt: I think you could break your neck. Now, here’s a question I have about breaking your neck. If you break your neck, are you dead?

[03:03] Rory: Now, that’s a good question. They always portrayed it like that, didn’t they?

[03:10] Matt: Yeah.

[03:13] Matt: The media broke his neck.

[03:16] Rory: They broke their neck. They died. They broke their neck. That’s how you kill an animal. You break their neck.

[03:21] Matt: Yeah. That whole twisting neck, does that work so quickly? The neck is apparently of vital importance.

[03:29] Matt: To the continuation of life.

[03:31] Rory: It’s like instant death if you break their neck.

[03:34] Matt: I don’t know. Which is why a somersault hardly seems worth it.

[03:38] Matt: Though.

[03:41] Matt: I do want to say that I think I’ve done a somersault in the last five years.

[03:46] Rory: But you can’t recall. What makes you think that?

[03:49] Matt: I can recall the feeling of the. I can recall the terror of worrying as an adult, of having an adult fear of breaking my neck.

[04:02] Rory: Sure.

[04:04] Matt: It’s not a childhood memory because there’s an adult concern for my neck.

[04:09] Rory: And actually Sam’s dad broke his neck playing. He’s a lot.

[04:17] Matt: He lives.

[04:18] Rory: Yeah, he’s playing squash and hit the wall.

[04:24] Matt: Now what does that mean?

[04:25] Matt: Is he like a single vertebrae?

[04:29] Rory: A fracture in the bone vertebra? If he had a fracture in the bone, I think he had to have surgery and he was wearing a neck brace for a while.

[04:40] Matt: Terrible to replay. Let’s dive in.

[04:44] Rory: Okay, so today we’re talking about. Well, today we read a book. Not today. We spent many hours prior to this podcast reading the book how to do nothing by Jenny O. Dell. And it is a book not about how to do nothing.

[05:04] Matt: No, it’s a mistitled book.

[05:06] Rory: It’s a mistitled book. And that might upset some people, as it did me.

[05:10] Matt: It upset many of the reviewers on goodreads.com who were expecting a how to guide about how to do nothing. How to do nothing. Here’s the book. It’s not about that now. I personally found that it still gave me exactly what I was looking for, but in a different way than what I originally thought.

[05:34] Rory: Yeah, I think it could have been. In the introduction, she says that she thinks of this as a series, more of essays around a theme, and I think that that would have been a good way to market it.

[05:48] Matt: Yes.

[05:49] Matt: And I’ve retitled it in my head, how to be here, because it’s really about being local. It’s about existing where you are in time and in space and in context. And she sort of poses that as an alternative to being everywhere and nowhere, which is the premise of our online, social media, constantly connected culture. So the subtitle of the book is not mistitled. The subtitle resisting the attention economy is a good subtitle. No, this book will not teach you how to do nothing, but in a sense, it will tell you how to resist the attention economy by participating in local ecology and local culture. And local economy.

[06:47] Rory: Yeah. It might even also be better titled, aptly titled, why to do nothing? Because she does spend several chapters explaining why it’s important to be retreating from our online societies that have sort of wreaked havoc in the fabric of our lives.

[07:08] Matt: Yeah. She hits the why question. She does not answer the how question.

[07:12] Matt: And you know what?

[07:13] Matt: It’s because there’s no real good answer to that. And I think she actually talks about that a little bit. To give you a simple answer of how to disconnect is to give you sort of a faulty answer. That guide exists. It’s out there in the world. Set the timer on the app, blah, blah, blah. It doesn’t work. It’s not working. We’re still stuck.

[07:41] Rory: Yeah. And so she says, a quote I liked from the book, from the introduction that I wanted to discuss with you, she says, social media has a financial incentive to keep us in the profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction. And I wanted to ask you, what do you think social media causes most in you? Anxiety, envy, or distraction?

[08:09] Matt: Well, it depends on the social media itself. So Facebook distraction, Twitter anxiety, and Instagram envy.

[08:24] Matt: And.

[08:27] Matt: These days, I’m most drawn to Twitter because it engages my sense of outrage, it engages my sense of doom, it engages my sense of righteousness. Because I see all these wrong opinions, and I’m like, well, they, unlike me, have wrong opinions. I have correct opinions.

[08:53] Rory: Yeah, absolutely.

[08:53] Matt: In the past, I was more drawn to Instagram, which made me feel like I was poor, ugly, and pathetic. Poor.

[09:02] Rory: But you aren’t ugly and pathetic.

[09:05] Matt: You’re right. The poorness was not just an optical illusion. As it turned out.

[09:13] Rory: You’re poor and handsome. And I forgot what the third thing was.

[09:17] Matt: But don’t forget roar. I did get that $50 bonus check from work this week, and there has been talk of a check in the mail for my grandma. So we don’t know who can say what the amount is, but for me.

[09:39] Rory: Social media is like major distraction. A little bit of anxiety, less so envy. But I always thought that I was superior to people by that fact of like, well, it doesn’t cause me envy. It just occupies my time for 600 hours a week. That’s nothing. That’s not bad. And now I’m starting to realize now, as I get older and as Mary Oliver says, how do you want to live just your one wild and precious? I’ve been thinking about that a lot, and I know that I don’t want to live it on my phone.

[10:19] Matt: It’s amazing, actually. You quoted that Mary Oliver poem to me. You said, is this what I’m doing with my one wild and precious life? And I guess it’s utterly just haunted me this line, it hangs like a shadow over every meaningless thing I do and cast a paul on. Sort of just. Is that what good poetry is? It’s shaken me somehow to my core. It has made me aware in a very visceral sense that this is my one wild and precious life. Not necessarily enough to do anything about.

[11:04] Rory: It, but enough to be sad, a little disappointing.

[11:11] Matt: And you know what? I think that is what Jenny Odell says in this book also, is that she goes, none of those articles about how terrible social media is for our society, our souls, our mental health, our quality of life, none of that. That all makes us feel bad about ourselves, but none of it somehow is enough to get us to actually turn away from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whatever it is, and LinkedIn. And what has proven more effective for Jenny Odell is actually supplying herself with something else to pay attention to.

[11:58] Rory: Yes, that’s where the how comes in, I guess. She says she spends time, really in nature. More than that, though, I think she even takes it really step farther and just tells people to look around and.

[12:15] Matt: Observe their surroundings, learn the local fauna, learn the local flora, learn the names of the trees. Birds and trees are huge to this book.

[12:28] Rory: Yeah. And I was wondering myself, she’s not just talking about being in a space and paying attention to a space. She’s really talking about acquiring knowledge of where you are. Because she’s not saying, just look at the birds, observe the birds, see the birds play in the sky, fly in the sky. She’s saying, who are those birds flying in the sky? Let me learn about them.

[12:53] Matt: Yes.

[12:54] Matt: And I would say that that actually is essential to the act of seeing, like being able to describe. If you can describe it. If you can say it, you can see. Patton that you can quote me on that. Matt Schultz. If you can say it, you can see. Mean, I thought this was a very powerful line. She says, never again will it just be like a clump of green to like. When I look at nature, I see a clump of green.

[13:29] Rory: Yes.

[13:31] Matt: The names of the plants. So it’s no longer just this. By having the language, it comes into focus.

[13:38] Rory: Let me tell you. I would have appreciated a little more instruction because I decided to give this a little test run in a couple of ways. One, I bought the Sibley field guidebook to birds of the that these birds are not organized by my neighborhood in, you know, some sort of other order. And the birds are hard to see. They’re far away. They don’t stay. Don’t they do not a long morning looking through this book saying, what was that bird we saw? Was it this one, Sam? Maybe it could have been this one.

[14:24] Matt: No. Yeah.

[14:25] Matt: That’ll never mean. When I first went bird watching a few months ago, I don’t know what I thought. I thought the birds would just be lying there in the trail like big chickens, big, motionless chickens ready to be observed by me. They were not. You need to go bird watching because you’re not just going to see them when you’re out walking because you need binoculars. But I have found. I got a bird feeder as a gift for my birthday this year from my friends Lucy Dee Dee and Alfred, which, you know, roar.

[15:17] Rory: I can’t do that. I live off a filthy alley in a filthy city.

[15:22] Matt: Yes. But I just want to say we had a little off camera debate about whether or not my desire to look at birds was purely from this book or if it existed beforehand, and I was lying about it existing before this book. And I would like to submit this bird feeder no birthday, as evidence, because I asked for it.

[15:49] Rory: No, I did not think that your desire to see birds came from this book.

[15:55] Matt: Okay.

[15:56] Rory: I thought you said you’ve always had a special relationship with birds, to which.

[16:04] Matt: I said, no, you’re right. That’s not true.

[16:08] Matt: I do not roar. Let me ask you a question for a change. Would you rather date a breeder of french bulldogs? His whole job is watching these bulldogs have sex and he’s in the room with them. My brother and sister in law are currently waiting for a dog, and their breeder said to them, oh, I think the dog’s finally pregnant. They had a really good session. So that gives you a sense of what is. Or a gymnast coach, dog breeder.

[16:57] Rory: Don’t even need to finish that.

[16:59] Matt: You need to say it. The original version that I said to Lexi was gymnast, coach or male gynecologist. It was too easy. Gynecologist?

[17:14] Rory: You’d rather date a gynecologist?

[17:16] Matt: Well, this isn’t for me. These are designed for a woman’s.

[17:20] Rory: But she said you would rather date a. Yes, obviously, because, yeah, it’s got a good job.

[17:26] Matt: It’s a good job.

[17:27] Rory: It’s a good job. Yeah.

[17:29] Matt: Anyway, I wrote something on my twitter about the movie don’t look up, and sort of my take on the movie don’t look up, which, as you know, was a negative take. And this guy wrote to me being like, okay, soviet commie, would you rather it just be straight up climate propaganda?

[17:49] Rory: What. What an interesting take on your take.

[17:53] Matt: I know, because you and me think that the movie was neoliberal propaganda, essentially. And I spent so much time thinking about what to write back to him. It really captured a lot of minutes of my morning before I realized that the only response was whatever. And I think I wrote like.

[18:21] Matt: Okay.

[18:21] Matt: Law is like, a great thing to respond to a troll with.

[18:27] Rory: I see.

[18:28] Matt: You never respond to them with arguments or large blocks of text.

[18:34] Rory: Hell, no. No one’s ever being like, you know what? I learned a lot from this comment, actually.

[18:40] Matt: I have had discussions on Twitter that have ended that, and they’re like, they’re really special, but it’s certainly not.

[18:51] Rory: I mean, well, a lot of this book talks about how you lose the human connection. And communication is so important because when you have discussions or disagreements with people in person, you feel for that person and you feel that person versus text in all its forms of sending texts to each other.

[19:19] Matt: We’re not feeling each other.

[19:21] Rory: Feeling. It’s just like. And as a result, it’s a lot of projecting.

[19:26] Matt: Yes. Because you’re still alone, essentially, just now.

[19:31] Rory: Alone in your undies.

[19:33] Matt: Alone in your undies. Here’s a question. Does it matter what we’re doing online?

[19:43] Rory: What do you mean? Like, what I’m distracting myself with?

[19:47] Matt: Yeah. I’m specifically thinking about this discussion that we have usually surrounding screen time with children that we go, is it violent? Is it educational? Is it not educational? We’re very concerned with what they’re looking at on screen.

[20:09] Rory: I mean, I think the content matters to an extent because it becomes part of your psyche.

[20:15] Matt: That’s true. But I think we’re also missing the point a little bit that even if it were all educational, it’s not good to be staring at, to spend your life this way.

[20:30] Rory: No, it’s not. I mean, there’s so many better ways to spend your day. Right?

[20:35] Matt: So many better ways to spend your day.

[20:37] Matt: Not any that pop to mind, of course.

[20:45] Rory: Certainly not going to a zoo or anything, but, no.

[20:53] Matt: The zoo was fun as a child, and then it enjoyed a brief resurgence in my young adulthood as, like, a funny thing to do.

[21:03] Rory: Ditto. And then it just became depressing.

[21:06] Matt: It’s very depressing. Aquariums are kind of fun.

[21:11] Rory: Yeah. It’s like, what do you do? What does one do with one’s life if they’re not looking at a screen? Like, when people come to Los Angeles, where I live, I never know what to do with them.

[21:25] Matt: Yeah. I mean, you eat. Eating is a big part of you.

[21:29] Rory: Take them out to eat. And then I’m like, in LA, you usually will go on a hike. But how many hikes can one do know? Three or four days, someone’s visiting.

[21:39] Matt: Yeah, I don’t know. And I’ve come up with different solutions to the problem at different times in my life. Like a few years ago, I thought, like, okay, I need to start playing tennis.

[21:51] Rory: Oh, yeah, I remember the tennis phase of you.

[21:53] Matt: Yeah. I diagnosed a lack of a certain type of activity, of gameplay with peers.

[22:02] Rory: Wow. That was like, such a sterile way of saying that I need gameplay with peers.

[22:08] Matt: I want to be running, chasing a ball. And you know what? I love playing tennis. It’s very fun. It is a good thing to have in one’s life. So that’s something. But ultimately, it’s like we’re either exercising or having a conversation or eating or sleeping or like, watching or reading something or making love.

[22:36] Rory: Well, now, this book, yes. This book really advocates for staring, paying attention to what’s around you, which I’m a big advocate for. I’m not exactly paying attention, but I’ve been known to stare off into space, enter a quiet distance of my mind, not meditation. Don’t get it twisted.

[23:02] Matt: Don’t get it twisted. Meditation is. I mean, it is a form of meditation.

[23:08] Rory: I’m not restricting my thoughts. I’m not paying attention to my breath. You know what I mean?

[23:12] Matt: You’re right. It’s actually, no, I don’t even think it is a form of meditation. It’s just kind of spacing out. In a world where there was no screens, perhaps we would say, stop spacing out.

[23:29] Matt: Focus.

[23:31] Matt: Where there are screens, spacing out is valuable.

[23:36] Rory: It’s kind of crazy how relative, how it’s all relative, like, everything. Because at that point, spacing out is not. No one in our childhood would have considered spacing out, like, a good use of time. But now that we have a world of constant imagery and content, spacing out, a rare way to spend the day.

[24:05] Matt: Yes. And you know what? I’ve actually been spacing out a little bit over the past couple of days. I’m on break from school right now, and I’ve been watching so much tv as, you know, I watched all three seasons of killing Eve in 1 minute. I had it into like, just one blind flashlight that just cooked my eyeballs. And I kind of got tired of watching tv. It was amazing. That doesn’t really happen to me. So I found myself all of a sudden going to the couch or going to my bed with a book, but then thinking, I’m about to start reading the book. Yeah, spacing out a bit and I needed the book as a pretense, as a little prop.

[24:57] Rory: A little bit of armor.

[24:58] Matt: A little bit of armor.

[25:04] Rory: I’ve actually been feeling that, too. Like, I don’t want to do anything. Like not read, not watch tv. I’ve never not wanted to watch tv or not wanted to look at my phone. I don’t know. Was there something in the air? I’ve been laying in bed just, like, staring at my ceiling.

[25:17] Matt: You and I have both have had a lot of time in the past couple of days.

[25:22] Rory: Yeah.

[25:23] Matt: So I think it’s that it takes.

[25:25] Rory: A lot of time to get there.

[25:26] Matt: I guess it takes a lot of time to get there to feel like, you know what? I don’t want the tv. I don’t want the phone right now, and I don’t want anything.

[25:34] Rory: There’s nothing more for me in the screen. That’s where I’m at. A place at right now.

[25:39] Matt: That’s where I am.

[25:40] Rory: I don’t even want to eat things. And I know it sounds like I’m describing depression, but it’s not that.

[25:46] Matt: No, maybe it’s on we, but even on we is a little too soulful for what I think.

[25:53] Rory: Exactly.

[25:54] Matt: It is a little too poetic.

[25:56] Rory: A little.

[25:58] Matt: A little. It’s a little more meth than that. But I do enjoy it. Here’s a thought I had today.

[26:04] Matt: Roar.

[26:04] Rory: Tell me.

[26:06] Matt: I was walking to the grocery store.

[26:08] Rory: Oh, you were walking to the grocery store.

[26:10] Matt: Yeah. It was a huge mistake.

[26:13] Rory: It’s always the walk back.

[26:15] Matt: Where? The walk back. I thought I was going for one item. I decided I wanted a bunch of items. Then I had to put them all back because I realized I don’t want to carry all this.

[26:25] Rory: Yeah.

[26:27] Matt: Which means now I’ll have to go back. But anyways, as I was walking, I was like, let’s be present for a moment. Let’s feel the night air and listen to the sounds of the city. My question is, is the present moment boring?

[26:46] Rory: Yes, that’s the problem. I think I said that to you.

[26:49] Matt: Before, that the present is boring.

[26:51] Rory: The present is boring. And you have to get so sick of the anxiety of living in the future, in the past, that you would rather have the boredom of the present.

[27:03] Matt: Exactly. Because sometimes I do all of a sudden key into the fact that my mind is racing. I don’t mean racing with stressful thoughts. I just mean, oh, look at that. I’ll tell someone about that later. Oh, that reminds me of this. Just like, I think in Buddhism, they call it monkey brain. Like the monkey just picks up whatever is in front of it. And then all of a sudden I’m like, oh, my God. And I just stop and I sort of let go. The monkey fist opens and everything drops. It’s a huge relief because I was doing all this vigorous mental activity, even being aware of it, and it was so cluttered and tangled and just hideous. It’s a hideous feeling. And then when I let go, it feels really good. But then inevitably, I’m like, so what is there? Just staring at my.

[28:01] Rory: Yeah, exactly.

[28:03] Matt: As they cook. I mean, I think you saw, I posted on Instagram my story, a picture of my dumplings cooking. That was because I was in the present moment and I got bored, so I just. Present moment?

[28:13] Rory: Yeah, the present moment is kind of boring. And it has to be something that pushes you into the present moment. Like the misery of all the other moments, basically. But you know what? This lady who wrote this book does not find the present moment boring. You know who else doesn’t find the present moment boring? Mary Oliver. In fact, you could just read Mary Oliver’s collected works instead of reading this book because they’re kind of at the same ends, which is like, look at the world around you in amazement.

[28:48] Matt: Yes, I read a Mary Oliver poem just today, roar, that said, I’m going to misquote it, but it was like, I don’t know how to pray, but I know how to pay.

[29:00] Rory: Thought I read that poem, too, like, yesterday.

[29:03] Matt: Oh, my God.

[29:05] Rory: Thanks. Because my friend Matt Schultz bought me a nice hardcover copy of devotions just for no good reason.

[29:11] Matt: Hardcover could have gotten the soft cover.

[29:14] Rory: Then I felt bad because I bought my mom the same book, but in soft cover.

[29:19] Matt: That’s not the kind of guy I am.

[29:25] Rory: Yeah, I don’t know how to pray, but I know how to pay attention. She also had, like, a great line in that poem you recommended to me from the book about how there isn’t time in this life to enjoy it and to take care of all your responsibilities.

[29:41] Matt: Yeah, but her world is so full of bumblebees and grass. So much grass. My world does not. Now I can just hear someone saying, like, there’s wonders in your world to pay attention to. And there are, like, okay, I know this sounds stupid, but yesterday I posted that string of pictures on Instagram on my story of sort of lovely little vignettes that I found around my house because I was paying attention to my home. Reason I have been lately, I’ve been cleaning more and cooking more, and I’ve been home more on break. And because of this sickness that’s going around the Boston area.

[30:30] Rory: Is it just happening in.

[30:32] Matt: Just as far as I know, it’s just a local. And, yeah. So I walked around and I noticed the little lovelinesses and, yeah, I took a picture of it. But is that so different than writing a poem about it? I documented.

[30:56] Rory: No, that’s different about than writing a poem about it. It’s a way of expressing yourself, a way of paying attention, making a notation.

[31:04] Matt: A way of notation.

[31:05] Rory: I paid attention. Okay. Yeah. And it’s good to acknowledge paying attention because we don’t get credit for it. Know, no one’s getting promoted because they were paying attention to the birds outside their window.

[31:23] Matt: You know what’s interesting about Eckhart toll with a new earth? Actually, I don’t even know if this is him, but I think it is that. He says that when you’re reading a book, you should every once in a while, take a moment to feel your hands on the book and see the page and feel the couch under your tush, essentially be less absorbed.

[31:49] Rory: Right.

[31:51] Matt: Which is interesting. I feel like know it’s a different kind of attention. He’s like, never forget where you and Oprah, I think quoting or know Oprah and her conversations with Eckhart Tolle is always like, when you’re in the shower, are you in the shower?

[32:10] Rory: Oh, yeah. And she also says, I know all of us. We drive home, and then we get home and they’re like, we’re like, how did we get here? Yeah, that’s another place you forget yourself driving and then the shower.

[32:24] Matt: I don’t forget myself when driving.

[32:26] Rory: Oh, totally forgotten. And I’m sitting in that car, Matt. And I don’t have music on a lot of the time because I’m so absorbed in thought.

[32:37] Matt: So we’re dancing around this roar, Mary Oliver. Okay. Paying attention. Meditation and prayer. Okay. So you have asked me in the past, because as our more loyal listeners know, I’m an observant jewish jew, and every morning I wrap my tefillin, I say the morning service, which is, you have a prayer book. It’s from the book of psalms. It’s all these different things. And depending on how fully you do it, it takes about 20 minutes to an hour. Today it was an hour.

[33:22] Rory: Wow.

[33:23] Matt: Before.

[33:25] Rory: Yes. What is this prayer? Is it meditation? Is it prayer? And you have surprised me by saying, sometimes you don’t always know what it is.

[33:38] Matt: I don’t always know what it is, and I’m trying to figure it out. But I do think that at the very least, what I can say about it is that it’s paying attention.

[33:54] Rory: Is that the answer to life, just paying attention?

[33:58] Matt: I think paying attention is huge. So, yeah, it’s like, I’m reading these psalms, and what else can I do but just sort of pay attention to the words that I’m saying and feel the. To fill in on my arm and feel the, well, fabric on my shoulders.

[34:17] Rory: There is a lot you can do. Like, in church, I never paid attention. That’s like, the thing is, like, your brain can be doing 30 things at once. You could be saying the psalms, the thing could be on your shoulders. What’s it called?

[34:34] Matt: The talit is the cloth.

[34:37] Rory: That thing. And you could be thinking about breakfast, you could be thinking about dinner, you could be thinking about lunch. All these things.

[34:49] Matt: And I call myself back.

[34:51] Rory: Yeah, exactly. You have to call yourself back.

[34:54] Matt: But also, that takes effort. There’s also a question of, like, well, should I be trying to have some sort of lights and heavenly choirs experience of the divine presence before me? And I think a lot of the people that I study with and myself at times have that expectation of prayer. We should feel very moved, that we should feel very moved, and that we’re on the phone with God right now. And it should feel like it.

[35:27] Rory: We’re on the phone with God right now. There we go. You’re going to write that in one of your rabbi sermons, I hope.

[35:35] Matt: And it should feel like it. Like we should feel that presence that we’re in dialogue with. And I’ve come to realize that, at least for myself, that’s an unproductive and unrealistic expectation. And that really, the only thing that I can attain to is attentiveness to the words. And whether or not God shows up, well, that’s God’s business, honey. I’m doing the work and I’m staying out of the results. I’m showing up and I’m paying attention.

[36:15] Rory: And I think Danielle Staub, the real Housewives of New Jersey, pay attention. I got arrested and I was engaged. Pay attention. And then Teresa says, pay attention. Pay attention. And she flips. Wow, they really talked about paying attention.

[36:40] Matt: Did you know meditation is simpler? You just pay attention.

[36:47] Rory: Yes, you just pay attention. I mean, yeah, you get meta with your thoughts, with yourself, you allow to be there.

[36:56] Matt: Well, I think people actually do when they start meditating, have some sort of expectation of lights and sound, special effects, the fog machine. Do you know what I’m talking about?

[37:12] Rory: I think that’s why people don’t stick with it. Yes, because it’s a slow burn of impact in your life.

[37:21] Matt: Yes, we’ve discussed this before. I don’t even think it’s really productive to talk about meditation in terms of the impact in your life.

[37:32] Rory: Yeah, but I think that that is just like. I disagree.

[37:38] Matt: I think it can only impact its own moment that your 30 minutes of sitting presently, that’s life, baby. You were present for that 30 minutes.

[37:50] Rory: Good for you, I guess. But you and I have both admired the serenity of people we know in our lives who meditate.

[37:59] Matt: Yes, but here’s the trick. That serenity comes from them being present, which comes from not worrying about trying to attain to something.

[38:10] Rory: I don’t think that being, like I want to be present is trying to attain to something like that, though.

[38:19] Matt: But I just think that we can only be present now. And if we think that we’re going to meditate and meditate and meditate, and then all of a sudden, at some point down the road, become the person we’re trying to be, I think that’s a flawed attitude. And I think it’s actually very similar to the Alan Carr quit smoking, which I’ve talked about before, which is like, don’t stub out your last cigarette and then think that if you just get through the next four weeks, then something magical is going to happen and you’re going to have become a real quit person. Stub out your last cigarette and go, I’m free now, baby. I’m out. Because you just quit after your last cigarette. You’re quit. You’re free, you’re out. I think all of the best revelations of life come from that. Like, start here, start now. This is it.

[39:18] Rory: Yeah, but I don’t think that you’re detracting from it by saying, I have these problems in my life that are bigger than me sitting on the couch one day. It’s the beginning of what I hope to be like a progressive journey of being able to regulate my thoughts and emotions more.

[39:40] Matt: Sure, I understand what you’re saying. I do.

[39:44] Rory: I mean, I understand what you’re saying, too. It’s how I used to feel about meditation.

[39:49] Matt: I think that they’re both realities, and I think that in order to. I think the progressive one, the one you’re talking about, we need that motivation to even start the practice.

[40:09] Rory: Exactly. I don’t think that people would do the meditation you’re going to do for the reason you’re going to do it, kind of. You know what I mean?

[40:18] Matt: Exactly. But that’s also, like in Buddhism, like freedom from desire. Well, you’re not going to go down this path unless you have a desire to be free from desire.

[40:28] Rory: Sure.

[40:29] Matt: We have sort of an earthly urge that comes from our untransformed consciousness that gets us to do the practice that will transform our consciousness, which will make us realize that we were there all along.

[40:43] Rory: No matter where you go, there you are.

[40:45] Matt: I don’t know if this is part of the podcast or not, but I think I found a better way to describe to you why I all of a sudden found gravity so creepy.

[40:58] Rory: Yeah. Being perpendicular to the earth.

[41:00] Matt: Yeah, she talks about being perpendicular to the earth.

[41:03] Rory: I talk, or does she talk about.

[41:06] Matt: She quotes it.

[41:07] Rory: She quotes me.

[41:09] Matt: No, that’s not you, that’s chappelle.

[41:17] Rory: I’m getting it confused with my own thoughts about being, my own obsession with being perpendicular to the earth.

[41:22] Matt: Sorry, that must be why you liked that quote in the book.

[41:28] Rory: I always imagined myself just hanging perpendicular off the earth with my shoes glued like Pippi Longstocking when she’s walking on the ceiling.

[41:37] Matt: Oh, that’s a fascinating image. Like you’re upside down like a bat.

[41:41] Rory: Yeah. Like the earth is round and here I am just perpendicular to it.

[41:46] Matt: That’s actually a crazy thought. Like here all of us are sort of hanging off.

[41:50] Rory: Yes.

[41:52] Matt: From our feet.

[41:53] Rory: Yes.

[41:54] Matt: I don’t know if that calms the anxiety.

[41:58] Rory: It increases it.

[42:02] Matt: My sudden feeling that gravity was creepy. We all sort of take it for granted that we’re on the ground and that things go down. Like the chair rests on the floor.

[42:16] Rory: Sure.

[42:16] Matt: And all of a sudden, I started conceiving of this as if it was a magnetic force, because that’s really what it is. In the same way that a magnet sticks to another magnet and is like zoop to it. I shouldn’t make that sound. Is there a zoop to it? We are that to the earth. We are magnetized.

[42:37] Rory: Like Pippi and her blue shoes.

[42:39] Matt: Yes. And when I lie down on my bed at night to sleep, there I am just like, fully being sucked into the earth. Like, flat. My whole surface area just being pounded into the planet. And all of it roar. The fact that our cars have to roll because easiest way to slide across this sticky surface that we’re all stuck to, really, it’s so bothersome.

[43:09] Matt: It’s very bothersome.

[43:10] Matt: And not that I would have it any other way.

[43:13] Rory: Well, no, there’s no good alternative, is there?

[43:16] Matt: There’s no good alternative. I would love to experience weightlessness and space.

[43:22] Rory: Would you do a separate sensory deprivation tank?

[43:25] Matt: Yes. In fact, there’s a place, like, to the no. Of my house called float.

[43:31] Rory: Oh, yeah. That.

[43:31] Matt: I want to go to float a chain.

[43:35] Rory: You float. You go in that, like, pod and just. You have no senses. Hell, no.

[43:42] Matt: I want to try. I mean, that’s paying attention right there.

[43:45] Rory: Is it?

[43:47] Matt: I don’t know what it is.

[43:48] Rory: Losing your attention.

[43:49] Matt: I don’t know what it is. We’ll find out.

[43:51] Rory: Yeah, you should do it, and then we can review it on the pod.

[43:55] Matt: Yeah. Is that how to be floating?

[43:58] Rory: I like to float two, three times a day.

[44:03] Matt: Okay.

[44:04] Rory: So something I actually wanted to talk to you about is in this book, she talks about Martin Boober’s book, I and thou a lot, which is a book that I always wanted to know in my high school ethics class. Other ethics classes read it, but my ethics class didn’t read it.

[44:23] Matt: And I know in killing Eve, they talked about I and Thou and killing Eve.

[44:29] Rory: Wow. Okay.

[44:30] Matt: Yeah.

[44:31] Matt: They discussed psychopaths in terms of I and thou. Because the theory. Did you say I and now I and thou.

[44:39] Rory: I and thou.

[44:41] Matt: I and thou by Martin Buber, who was a jewish philosopher and religious philosopher. Jewish.

[44:49] Rory: Did you hear that? You get to count him.

[44:52] Matt: That’s for me. And really one of my first sages that drew me into the Torah. But his whole philosophy is that we experience life in two fundamental modes. There are two fundamental modes of experience, which are two fundamental modes of relationship, because all of life is relationship. So there’s the I thou experience, the I thou relationship, and the I it relationship.

[45:26] Rory: Yes. And so I didn’t quite understand it, what she was saying. So I’m wondering if you can help me, Matt. I think I jewish philosopher in training.

[45:36] Matt: I’m going to try and be succinct, but the IU relationship is when we sort of really relate to someone or something. It can be a tree, it can be a person, it can be a cat. And realize that whatever categories we have.

[45:56] Rory: Can it be my bed?

[45:58] Matt: It can be your bed.

[45:59] Rory: Oh.

[46:00] Matt: Whatever categories we have for that person, tree, person, cat, bed, the thing we’re looking at is an infinitely complex, infinitely unknowable vow. It is this living expression of God, a living expression of reality that’s just fully itself. And when we relate to something that way, we are fully ourselves. We don’t flatten ourselves into categories in that moment, either we are whole, and we relate to another person or thing as whole.

[46:41] Rory: So is it like, the disillusion of categories?

[46:48] Matt: I’m not sure if they dissolve. Because one thing he says he’s discussing having an eye. And now relationship with a tree. He goes, you don’t have to forget. Nothing must be forgotten about the tree. You don’t have to get that. It’s an oak. It’s an addition, not a subtraction. So this isn’t sort of an experience of all the boundaries of life disappearing, but rather an experience of something stepping forward into its true fullness. This tree, it’s not just a tree, it’s not just an oak. It’s this living thing in front of me and I’m really relating to it, or this real person in front of me. And it is just the opposite of that. It’s when we look at someone and kind of all we see are their categories.

[47:40] Rory: You mean the I it relationship?

[47:42] Matt: The I it relationship. Look at that rich lady with her pulled face. Look at that rich lady with her pulled face. And what he tells us is that the eye of that relationship is a different eye than the eye of the other relationship. When we relate to something as an it, we turn ourselves into it, too. It’s reciprocal.

[48:02] Rory: A poor lady.

[48:04] Matt: A poor lady, yeah. And what I thought that she got.

[48:11] Rory: Wrong about this with my saggy face.

[48:17] Matt: Are you a sagger or hollower? We learned from this week, sex in the city, two types of aging, sagging and hollowing.

[48:26] Rory: Definitely going to be a sagger.

[48:27] Matt: I mean, if only we could be hollowers. So elegant. But what Jenny Odell seems to, and I think here she misunderstands Boober. She seems to imply that we should be striving for a world of all I thou and no I it. And something Boober is very clear about is that these are both fundamental ways of living in the world. We wouldn’t be able to pull up our pants in the morning if we were all I thou. And it has its place, it has its purpose.

[49:06] Rory: Now, does everyone get to experience an I thou relationship? Is it just intrinsic to being human being? Or is it something you have to work for?

[49:15] Matt: So, fascinatingly, the show will and grace is named after.

[49:22] Rory: Yes, I do know that.

[49:23] Matt: Named after this book, because he says you need a combination of will and grace. You kind of got to want it. But wanting it isn’t enough. And it also can certainly come upon you by surprise. And I would be doubtful that there’s a human being on earth that has never had an honest moment of relationship in their life, even for a second, where someone just sort of.

[49:51] Rory: I mean, if you love someone, don’t you? I vow them.

[49:54] Matt: Yeah, but not all the time.

[49:56] Rory: But I’m just wondering about capacity. If it’s something you, something that he.

[50:02] Matt: Says in the book is every it will eventually become a thou and every thou will become an it. Like just loving someone you can it. Someone you love. For sure.

[50:14] Rory: No, I know you can it, but can you vow without trying to thou. It’s just feeling of love when you really feel.

[50:24] Matt: Yeah, you can vow without trying to thou.

[50:27] Rory: Okay.

[50:29] Matt: For sure.

[50:31] Rory: I think most people. Thou without trying to thou. Obviously.

[50:35] Matt: Who’s trying to thou. Not everyone’s read this book.

[50:38] Rory: Exactly. That’s what I’m saying.

[50:39] Matt: Yeah.

[50:40] Matt: It’s just about being in real, honest, full human connection with one another and also with things. He talks about cats a lot, actually.

[50:51] Rory: What? He’s cat lover.

[50:53] Matt: I think he was a cat lover. She talked about meeting the eyes of a cat.

[50:58] Rory: Oh, man. Am I right? Come on.

[51:02] Matt: Yeah, the eyes of a cat. And also, there is something really profound about that moment with your cat when you go, oh, ****. You are a living creature in my house looking at me and it’s weird.

[51:23] Rory: It is weird. I have that thought like three times a day.

[51:27] Matt: It’s a weird moment. Yeah, it’s weird. That’s thou right there. What are you. What is this?

[51:36] Rory: What is this? Yes.

[51:38] Matt: This holy mystery.

[51:40] Rory: This is a holy mystery because cats, I think, live the highest, are the highest beings that I know of in terms of life quality.

[51:57] Matt: Actually. Yeah. I don’t know. What about the beloved family dog?

[52:01] Rory: I know we’ve had this conversation many times before. You think it’s the beloved family dog? I think it’s the worshipped single woman’s cat.

[52:18] Matt: I think you’re actually probably right. The dog’s attachment style has some anxiety baked in.

[52:25] Rory: Yeah. It wants too much.

[52:28] Matt: It wants too much. And that’s why we think it’s all about the beloved family dog, because it mirrors our own anxieties.

[52:37] Rory: Yeah.

[52:38] Matt: Cat models a savoir fair that we can’t even fathom.

[52:47] Rory: Exactly. That is the thing. That is the thing. It’s like fascinating, admirable.

[52:54] Matt: What is savoir fair? Did I use that right?

[52:56] Rory: I don’t know. I only know laissez fair.

[52:59] Matt: I meant it to be like, oh, no, I used it wrong. The ability to act or speak appropriately in social situations. I meant like an ability of actually enjoying the life and being independent that we can’t. No, because they’re not joyful. They got it all figured out.

[53:24] Rory: They’re very entitled.

[53:26] Matt: They’re entitled. They’re entitled. They know their worth.

[53:31] Rory: They really know they’re worth. Yeah.

[53:33] Matt: And you can leave them alone. And they’ll be fine. They have no issue staring into space.

[53:38] Rory: They love.

[53:41] Matt: Like, we would go to bed, me and Jesse, my old roommate, and we would be texting each other from our bedrooms, being like, what is the cat doing out there? He was having the time of his life. I don’t know what the hell he was doing, but he was knocking **** over, dancing, pouring some wine.

[54:12] Rory: Yesterday, as I was falling asleep, I often look at my cats. Any cat, actually. Any good cat life. Cat living a good life and long to be the cat. I always thought that I would easily discard this human form to be a cat. The only thing I could think of that is better about being a human than being a cat is that cats don’t laugh. Yeah, I think they have fun. But is laughing is like the only superior function, I think of humanity.

[54:44] Matt: So my dad’s dog, I play tug of war with it as one does with a dog. And I’ve noticed that if I’m trying to get the thing from him and I can’t, like, he won’t let it go, I can tickle him and he lets it go. And this has raised the deeply disturbing possibility that dogs are ticklish but are trapped behind their impassive, non laughing faces and unable to express it. Being tickled, which is like, I don’t know. That to me is as creepy as gravity. Laughing also is sort of like a mask that conceals how we really feel about tickling, which is that we all hate it.

[55:30] Rory: Horrendous experience. It’s kind of weird that we laugh at it, actually. Is that the great incongruency of having a body, an emotion and a mind, you’re not in alignment when you are being tickled.

[55:46] Matt: No. And very few people like it. And when I was a babysitter, for a one year old, the entire first year of his life, I would tickle the baby and he would laugh. And it was delightful. It was delightful. It was beautiful to see his laughter. And then at some point during the year, I had this thought, and it’s.

[56:07] Rory: Like, I hate being tickled. And yet I laugh. Yeah.

[56:11] Matt: And I never did it again. I wanted to start, like, a movement. Should not be tickling babies. Like, it could be torture. That could be a really unpleasant. I hated being tickled when I was a kid.

[56:32] Rory: Me too.

[56:32] Matt: Always did it. Because you’re laughing and a child’s laughter is like a rainbow.

[56:42] Rory: You know what? I never thought about tickling in babies, but since you said that I’m not going to tickle a baby.

[56:49] Matt: Exactly.

[56:50] Rory: Let’s tickle no shake. The no shaking campaign worked really well.

[56:54] Matt: Now we need the no Tickle campaign. And that’s what this podcast is all about. Tricked you into thinking it’s about. We’re just here to get out the word about our social platform.

[57:08] Rory: Tickling baby.

[57:10] Matt: And room checks.

[57:11] Rory: And room checks.

[57:12] Matt: Which is when we were disturbed by the amount of stories coming out every year of women that had been locked in a room in some horrible man’s house for years.

[57:25] Rory: Isn’t a man who’s related to her? Yeah, not always. Sometimes kidnapped.

[57:31] Matt: Not always.

[57:34] Matt: As exemplified by the movie room where a woman is in a room. So we decided that if we ever run for president together, co president, we’re going to have a policy of room check.

[57:49] Rory: Room check every year, or maybe more than once a year, because the element of surprise, very important.

[57:55] Matt: Out with your room.

[57:57] Matt: Open the doors. Every room, every room gets checked in America. Every shed, every basement, every treehouse, every tent. Not a room unchecked. That’s our slogan. No room unchecked.

[58:12] Rory: And you don’t know when it’s coming either. It will be handled on a hyper local level, so you also can’t tell other people in other neighborhoods. Let’s say, oh, room check is coming. Killer barrier kill.

[58:31] Matt: And we think that in the first year of room check that we will free thousands.

[58:41] Rory: Thousands. I think thousands of women will be freed. Yes, I do.

[58:45] Matt: Hopefully after the first year, we’ll never have those kind of results again.

[58:51] Rory: No, I think after the first year, a dozen.

[58:54] Matt: And you know what will happen then in like 20 years, people will say, why? But we’re only like one woman a year with this. Let’s stop doing it. They will have forgotten what it was like to live with unchecked rooms. And then they’ll stop doing it. They’ll cut the program. And then, you know what? That’s the way it works. It’s like with vaccines. We forget what it’s like to not have the solution, and so we stop thinking the solution is necessary. Not to be a Fauci propagandist.

[59:25] Rory: No, but the fact that there are women in rooms right now, and we’re just sitting here perpendicular to the earth, unconcerned, keeps me up at night.

[59:35] Matt: I mean, we’re concerned. You and me are.

[59:37] Rory: Oh, we are. Yeah.

[59:39] Matt: I don’t know about the rest of the people on this horrible gravity slicked, so pay attention.

[59:49] Rory: Pay attention to your neighbors, okay?

[59:53] Matt: Because you know what they say, it’s never the ones you suspect, but it’s always the ones you suspect?

[59:58] Rory: That’s the thing I was going to.

[01:00:12] Matt: Is this the way to be?

[01:00:14] Rory: I think that there are major elements of how to be. And again, you can get a lot of what she’s saying in a more poetic form through Mary Oliver. But I do think we should be paying more attention to the world around us as opposed to the faux society world of our phones, because that will never offer us meaning or transcendence.

[01:00:40] Matt: 100% agree, I think. We want to learn the names of birds. We want to learn the names of plants. We want to check the rooms. We want to meditate.

[01:00:56] Rory: Just naming all the things. All the bullet points.

[01:01:00] Matt: All the bullet points. That’s how to be, how to be. Pay attention. Know your flowers. Know your birds. Check your rooms. Don’t tickle your babies.

[01:01:13] Rory: And with that, folks, we’ll see you next episode.

[01:01:18] Matt: See you next time. We got some real great stuff coming up.

[01:01:22] Rory: We really do.

[01:01:22] Matt: Can’t wait to continue the conversation.

[01:01:24] Rory: Absolutely. Bye, Matt.

[01:01:27] Matt: Bye, Rory.