Why Is Everyone So Emotionally Detached? - David Brooks

there's a lot of people in the world who find something I think attractive about being stoic or aloof or rational or cynical emotions don't really get much room or honor yeah I used to be that guy so I'm going to tell you a quick story I love baseball and I've been to a thousand baseball games and I've never caught a foul ball so about 10 years ago I'm at Camden Yards uh with my son and the batter loses control of the bat it flies into the air lands in my lap in the stands so I've got a bat and getting a bat is a thousand times better than getting a ball and so any normal human being is holding his trophy up in the air high-fiving everybody hugging getting on the Jumbotron I put the bat at my feet and stare Straight Ahead like I have the emotional reaction of the turtle and I I look back on that guy and I think show a little joy and I I was uh through the early part of my life even when I was four my Nursery School teacher apparently told my parents David doesn't really play with the other kids he just watches them which I guess is good for a career in journalism but it's just an emotionally detached way of living and I found it um that I was just I had emotions but they were I was a little they were strangers to me and there was certainly no Highway between my heart and my mouth so I couldn't Express them uh and I just found it a cold uh lonely uh and detached way of living uh and so uh I've sat on on a journey for 10 years to become a little more emotionally vulnerable a little more emotionally available and little less of a complete emotional idiot what do you think compels people to not feel feelings I think a uh grew up in a certain culture where feel feelings are not acceptable especially if they're guys two fear feelings are sort of hard to control fear of vulnerability uh desire for Mastery uh if you can reduce the world to systems and logical systems then it's a world you can control and people are just afraid of intimacy I mean the thing we want most in the world is to be seen in our fullness the thing we fear most in the world is to be seen in our fullness and so it's terrifying to open yourself up uh to people and I found moments of real you know scariness cuz you know who knows how much to reveal who knows it's scary to face yourself but you know over the years I've become better at it I think and I've come to just totally appreciate this way of life I was at a conference about two years ago and then Tucket and we're at some venue and the speaker passes out these sheets of paper uh and on each sheet of paper is a lyrics to A Love Song and the speaker tells us find a stranger stare into their eyes and sing the love song into their eyes and if you would asked me to do that 10 years ago I would have spontaneously combusted but but uh but I did it and I wouldn't want to do that every day but um I'm glad to be a little more loose Than I Used to Be yeah describing the desire for Mastery control uh fear uh lack of safety around expressing emotions if I managed to get you in the first statement then you've managed to get me in that one because it's just uh I'm in therapy at the moment prop properly for the first time and dude it's so hard like it's [ __ ] [ __ ] rough and because you're no longer able to hide all of the things that you have glossed over with competence and achievement and reputation and uh willful ignorance or or or negligence or coping strategies or whatever it might be and you know I'm like I'm not an alcoholic I'm not dependent on it like it's I'm not coping in any extravagant way of other than all of my mental faculties trying to come together to not have me be in a situation where I'm not in control must be in control always me I'm the guy I'm the one that's got the competent I know the plan I know the itinerary this is what's going to happen and so on and so forth and uh then you you step into a relationship like a therapeutic relationship or one where you see somebody else deeply or they see you and it's not as predictable you don't you don't know where it's going to go you don't really know what you're going to say the sentences that you say aren't always tied up with some nice bow they don't come into land gently sometimes they nose dive and crash sometimes they bail out and you just lose them and you're like where where did that aerplane go and you don't know yeah well every relationship right involves a loss of control uh if you want to get married have a good friend you're putting your heart in the hands of another and that person has the power to to really hurt you so I I think it's it's important to be skilled at this process I tell my students my college students you know one of the most important decisions you're going to make is is who to marry and the studies show that Mar the quality of your marriage is four times more important than the quality of your career to make to how happy you are uh and so you you should spend a lot of time having boyfriends and girlfriends so you get in practice now I had a therapist tell me um that therapy is story editing that people come to her uh because their story sort the story they tell themselves about their life isn't working and her job is to go back over and over life and get help people find a more accurate story I don't know if that resonates with with your experience yeah certainly in in part and that's also a problem right that you think or you thought that you knew how the The Arc of you worked I know where I began I know where I was I know where I am now and oh isn't that nice and smooth it's like this sort of wonderful idea and then you go well if if that's the story that's true why does this thing exist and why does that thing exist and why is that here and why do I have that thought and why do I cope with people in that particular way why have I got this particular pathology or dependency or thought pattern or Loop or whatever and that very much kind of starts to tarnish this lovely smooth round ball that you've created which is the narrative and then you try and roll it and it sort of Jangles along a little bit and you go yeah [ __ ] I don't think there's and the other the other reason the main reason for me is I just kept I I kept on seeing the same patterns come up in my personal relationships in the way that I deal with my business in how I feel when I record the podcast sitting in discomfort especially emotionally uh displeasing people um a lot of these things and I was like if the same problems continue to show up in your life the problems aren't the problem yeah you are the problem and and it was the same things and I just don't like there's this really phenomenal quote I took from um Robert Wes why Buddhism is true and he says is a quote from keny R rache he says uh ultimately happiness comes down to choosing between the discomfort of becoming aware of our mental afflictions and the discomfort of becoming ruled by them and for me I want to be aware of every single one of them I want to know all the dark Corners it's like this morbid curiosity about the dark corners of yourself uh and that's good it makes you grow but on the other side it pursues you into sort of difficult places and yet this sort of you know bowing at the the feet of cerebral horsepower and cognitive effort and rationality and we're going to optimize and all which I'm a massive fan of I've done a series called life haacks on this podcast but it it can pull you away from okay and what are we here for like are you here to just complete your to-do list and die or the the option that you have of the the experience of being an experiencing machine like you can feel a thing the phenomenon of being alive and being sad or happy or elated or in dread or whatever like you get to feel that and that's kind of color yeah one of my heroes is a guy named Frederick Benner a novelist and when he was nine his dad committed suicide and his mom didn't even stick around for the funeral she just took her kids and they split her Bermuda and so he never had a chance to mourn never had a chance to have any kind of closure he just walled himself off and he walled himself off for the first 35 years of his life until he realized that if you close yourself off from the hazards of the world you're closing yourself off from what he said was the Holy sources of life itself and you know our greatest Joys are relationships and that involves that level of uh emotional openness and vulnerability I'm we're recording this I'm sitting here on my dining room table at home and I was sitting here about 2 years ago at this very table and my wife walks in the front door which is over to my right uh and she's standing there the door is open it's summertime and the light is coming in behind her and she just pauses in the doorway uh and she doesn't notice I'm there um CU that's the kind of Charisma I have and so she her eyes rest on an orchid which we keep by the table and I look at her and I say to myself this thought comes to my Consciousness I really know her I know her through and through and if you'd asked me to describe what I knew about her at that moment it wasn't like the traits of her personality or career anything she'd achieved it was sort of a whole EB and flow of her being just the harmonies of her music the the the incandescence of her personality the occasional flashes of fierceness the um just the way she sees the world it wasn't as if I it was like I wasn't only seeing her I was almost as if I was seeing out from her and when I think of the how I was observing at that moment I wasn't like inspecting her I was just the only word in the English language I could think of is I was beholding her I was just like it's a warm appreciative gaze and it was a great feeling cuz it's someone you you really know and love and you've you've built this relationship through the trials and tribulations of any relationship and you have these moments of just joyous encounter and a couple weeks after it happened I told it to two older friends of mine and they said yeah that's how we look at our grandkids we just behold them and so I would I found the highest and the lowest points in my life have involved um relationships and so you know I mentioned I've tried to loosen myself up I've become a lot more joyous I've also become a lot sad so I I I used to be like Mr Ed steady Eddie uh and so I'm not I'm when you touch this piece of yourself you're almost making yourself um a uh dependent upon your own heart which you don't really control and you don't really understand and it does all sorts of crazy [ __ ] uh and um but it it's living it's living I often think about you know the Overton window the concept of an Overton window so I guess an interquartile range that sits within all speech of acceptable speech and I kind of think about the way that we experience emotions and comfort and discomfort especially in the modern world it's kind of like that we have a personal Overton window within which we and some people have it up here and you go oh my God they're so fiery and they're so depressed and they're so happy and they're so sad you know and the absolute extreme that's manic um well actually no that's the that they just have not to 25 and 75 to 100 they just they don't have the middle section um and I I know precisely what you mean and this is I'm going to talk to Ryan holiday about this the next time that he comes on you know this whole sort of stoicism movement massive fan of it art of resilience by Ross Edgley uh Ryan's book ego the enemy obstacles the way both been really formative for me I think that appeals to a lot of people because it protects them some parts of that philosophy if you don't go the whole way appeal because it sounds like I can armor myself against the world but I think you also armor yourself against the beauty of the world as well and I I think what you're talking about there is like if you're going to crack yourself open you will feel high but you're also going to feel lows um yeah there's a therapist have a phrase um some people need tightening and some people need loosening and some people who are manic they need tightening I needed loosening and so that was my process but the problem my one of my problems with stoicism and I too have great admiration for it uh in general but one of the great myths of Western Civilization is that reason is separate from emotion and that if you're more it's like a teeter totter the more rational you are the less emotional you are that is a complete myth there's a neuroscientist at at us USC named Antonio deas and he studied people uh who couldn't feel emotion they' had lesions in their brains and so they literally could not process emotion you could show them the most horrific images they had no reaction and so were these people super smart Mr Spock no their life fell apart because what emotions do is they assign value to things and they tell you are you moving toward your goals or are you moving away from your goals and if you can't assign values to things then you can't rationally calculate because you have no criteria upon which to make a decision and so deasio one of damasio's patients uh couldn't process emotion and so deasio said to him you know do you want to come back next Tuesday or Wednesday what would it be better and the guy spent 30 minutes on the advantages of Tuesday and the advantages of Wednesday and deasio calls his team over and they just watch the guy think it through he can't render a decision because he has no emotional valuation process and so finally deasio said how about Wednesday and the guy said fine uh and so you're not thinking you're not turning Mr Spock is a myth humans need emotions and intelligent emotions on which to think rationally and there's a neuroscientist named Lisa Feldman Barett in northeastern who has a concept of emotional granularity some like kids they can't distinguish one emotion from another so if you take a toy away from the kid the toy will scream I hate you mom because the kid doesn't understand there between hate and anger I'm angry with you Mom and some of Barrett's patients uh they can't tell the difference between anxiety and depression even though anxiety is an upstate and depression is a down state they just don't have the the what she calls the granularity to distinguish but some people are emotional Geniuses and they can tell the distinction between all sorts of emotions that are adjacent to one another stress anxiety impatience frustration and they can clearly understand they just have a finer tune understanding of what they're feeling and that's just a very helpful thing to have in life to know that you're feeling stress but not frustration or whatever it is uh and so it's it's I urge people to educate their emotions through Reading literature and things like that the going to plays is a fantastic way to educate your emotions and experiencing other cultures like lots of cultures have names for emotions we don't have um the the French have a name for I was I walked on a I was taking a hike near a cliff and I don't trust myself not to throw myself off like that's an emotion uh somebody told me I've never been able to check this out that the Danes have an emotion for I feel badly for you because you just too much emotion in public like that's one of their emotions wow I mean that should be a British word that should this sort of uh second order uh like proxy cringe for someone else there's a there's a word in German that describes the Sensation that migratory b birds feel when they are prevented from migrating wow that's a good word I should say the culture of my family I grew up in this Jewish Home in New York and I say if you saw that movie Fiddler on the Roof you know how emotional warm and Huggy Jewish families can be and I grew up in the other kind of Jewish Family and so the cult phrase in our culture was think yish act British and so we were very stiff upper Li preserved yes yes um just rounding out what we spoke about there this uh blending of rationality and you know a lot of people myself included and a lot of the audience will love their capacity for executive function you know they like the Mastery and the competence that they feel about being able to make stuff happen in the world they're not an emotional mess they're not going through each day just at the mercy of whatever comes and sideswipes them but they also want to feel life more richly how have you or other people learned to bring this balance in yeah I I found it just by uh getting closer to people every step of the way uh and so I now one of the things I I have a friend named Nick Epley who teaches at the University of Chicago and he was commuting to his office and because he's a psychologist he understands the things people enjoy most is talking to other people and so he's on the commuter train and he looking around he says nobody's talking to each other they're all on their screens and so he pays them on the for about a month find a stranger on the train and talk to them and then he interviews them later and everybody introverts and extroverts say this has been a great ride much better than at my screen and people just take pleasure from each other and so I found uh the skill of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen is a skill that is a natural emotional education and so for example one of the things I try to do is make every conversation not every conversation but a lot of conversations uh memorable conversations and the quality of your conversations determines the qual is determined in part by the quality of your listening skills and how good you are at the skill of conversation and so I asked conversation experts tell me give me some pointers on how to get better and there these are things like treat attention as an onoff switch not a dimmer like if you're going to pay if you're going to be with someone give him 100% attention or 0% but not 60% don't be a Topper if you say oh I've just had this horrible flight we were on the tarmac for 2 hours my instinct is to say I know exactly what you're going through I had a terrible flight we were on the T for 6 hours and it sounds like I'm trying to relate but what I'm really trying to do is let's turn attention away from your inferior experiences and onto my Superior experiences so don't be a Topper um be a loud listener I have a buddy who when you talk to him it's like talking to a Pentecostal Church uh he's like yeah uh-huh uh-huh amen amen preach and I love talking to that guy and you don't have to use all those sounds you can just nod you could like show you're really into the conversation and so you have deeper conversations and the most important conversation conversational skill is the ability to ask good questions I sometimes leave a party and I think you know that whole time nobody asked me a question and so I I've come to think that like 30 or 40% of humanity are question askers and the rest are nice people but they just not curious about you and so like I when I meet somebody I start them off sometimes I always ask about their childhood people love to talk about their childhood and then when I get to know somebody and there some trust has been established I ask uh slightly bigger questions like I asked a guy once what's your favorite unimportant thing about you and it turns out this guy who's a scholar and a theologian he loves watching reality TV trashy TV that's my favorite reality thing and I told him yeah my favorite unimportant thing about me is I like early Taylor Swift better than later Taylor Swift so like it's un important but it's a thing um and then as you really get to know somebody you ask questions that they don't have the answers to about themselves but if they think about it they can come up with an answer so if the next five years is a chapter in your life what's this chapter about if we met a year from now what would we be celebrating what would you do if you weren't afraid I had a friend who was being interviewed for a job and at the end of interview he turned to the interviewer and said what would you do if you weren't afraid and she started crying cuz she wouldn't be doing HR for that company but she's afraid to leave uh and so these are questions that are are just big questions and then there's a guy named Peter BL who asks really deep questions you really have to know somebody well to ask this question but it's like what commitment have you made that you no longer believe in uh what skill do you currently hold in Exile what talent do you have that you're not using and so you know these are questions that get you to explore I was at a dinner party and I asked the group how do your ancestors show up in your life like we're all affected by our heritage by our ancestors and so there was a Dutch family couple at the table and they talked about Dutch Heritage there's a black couple they talked about African-American experience I talked about 5,000 years of Jewish history and it was fun it was just fun and we had to sort of figure it out together how how do our ancestors show up in her life and it we learned each other learned about each other and we learned about ourselves I'm not sure how familiar you are with British culture and I don't know how much this ports across elsewhere it can't be non but it's very strong in in the UK there is a um like a lack of earnestness especially amongst young people um and I always struggled I always to I I like I like Being Earnest that's I have to work harder to be like more Jo like playful or silly or whatever um maybe part of that's because I want to be seen as like intellectually or academically sophisticated and there's something about not it's like oh that's not what a someone of a a good academic standing would say or what that's not someone who's insightful would would do things so I'm like both learning to loosen up whilst doing that but yeah I I remember a lot of the time there's a term banter in the UK which is not the same as just crack back and forth It's usually this sort of jibbing jibing usually sardonic sort of cutting back and forth between often guys but I'm girls probably have it too and I found that that actually shut down my ability to open up because I think a lot of the time I wanted to have a deeper conversation about things but if you try to do that in the wrong context you get burned because it's exep gay like who says that and that what does that teach you and I'm not going to lay my like performative artist emotional retardation at the feet of like my British culture Queen Elizabeth yeah exactly God damn you um but you know you've got your predisposition you've got your fears that come about naturally from not wanting to be too open or vulnerable you've got blah blah blah blah blah and then culture washes on top and um yeah I I again so much that you've just said there is some that I've learned through the show which you know your episode 760 or something like that in six years so I've had a lot of time talking to people and it's interesting what you said about the mhm yeah keep going the power of a nod is so insane and people can go back and listen to the first ever episode I did on the show and it's it's painful because I wasn't able to give a nonverbal confirmation that I was still paying attention because I hadn't learned the power of a nod and then I watched a bunch of Oprah and there's even meme about Oprah where she has like different categories of nods and there's like that yes I'm still listening nod and there's the O that's interesting nod and then there's the HM yes that must have been difficult nod like you know there's all of this different repertoire and for a conversation like this where a lot of people just listen you don't want to interject you want the person to just keep going they're in their flow but you want them to know that you're still paying attention but when you do it in person it really works as well you get people to be you know the sentences are 50% longer because they know that you're just there nodding away so I feel like I I might um get my Editor to look at all of the nonme angles of episodes and try and create this glossery of different nods that I've got but yeah non-verbal y continue to nod I'm here with you I see what you're saying D D D D D uh and then the topping thing I really wanted to bring this up to you I've been excited to bring this up since I knew that you were coming on Shawn Strickland and Theo vaugh had a conversation Shan's a UFC champion Theo's a comedian Shawn has a a really ult emotional moment where he's he's really really really grasping he's sort of crying shaking he's got this bottle of water in his hand this bottle sort of shaking all over the place and Theo says it's okay buddy we don't need to talk I can just sit here for a while if you want and it's like the most insane it's the most you it's like David Brooks synthesized into a sentence like this most recent book of yours synthesized into a sentence doesn't one up him doesn't try and rip him out of it doesn't try and say stop doesn't minimize doesn't try and I I once had this thing or whatever and he just holds space for this guy and it's phenomenal and uh Charlie Hooper one of my friends did an amazing breakdown and I watched it and it just yeah between your book therapy that video I'm just like I'm I'm all in I'm all in on feeling failings yeah no that I used to think wisdom was like the ability to be like Yoda to say smart maxims now I think it's the ability to receive the stories that people are telling you in a way that holds space for them uh I had a a student uh named Jillian Sawyer I had her as a grad student when she was in college um her dad got pancreatic cancer and so um he died after college and and she was then invited to become bridesmaid of a friend of hers and so she's a bridesm made at the wedding and she watches the Father of the Bride give this beautiful toast to his daughter and then it comes to time for the father daughter dance and Julian thinks I just can't take this I'm just going to go to the lady's room and have a cry and so she's goes the lady's room has a cry comes out in a few minutes and every single person at her table and joining adjacent table was standing in the hallway and she said they they didn't try to validate my grief they didn't say a word just all of them in sucession gave me a quick hug even the new boyfriends who I knew less well and it was exactly what I needed and that that's just the art of presence uh I I have another friend an old friend who um lost a daughter in Afghanistan and I said like how do I talk to you about that like what what do I say and she said some people don't want to raise Anna with me because they think they're bringing up a bad subject but they should know that Anna is always on my mind and so you should raise her and if I feel like talking about her I will if I don't I won't but you've you you're not introducing a bad subject to me so that's just being present and then she had another daughter who had a horrible bike accident and she was nursing her to health and she said you know what was the best thing that happened to me from that a friend did for us they came and they brought a coll or whatever and then they went to the bathroom and while they were in the bathroom they noticed um there was no shower mat and so they went out to Target they bought a shower mat and they put it in and they didn't even tell me and it was just like a practice thing that I needed done and so sometimes you you can be a profound friend not not by having the Deep heart heartart conversation just by the mere Act of presence if this is so important why are we not all doing it already why are we not seeing other people deeply if the rewards are as great as you say yeah some of it is cultural you mentioned British culture I I mean I think we we built up defenses cuz it is vulnerable and is a little scary and I know British culture reasonably I remember I used to watch the show I don't know if it's still on cult have I got news for you uh and it the the people on that show were so quick and so funny spontaneous wit uh and I think British culture doesn't get enough credit for being a very comically gifted culture people are just genuinely funny but it does become a defense mechanism and I've seen it again and again and again it becomes a way so there's that cultural thing and then you know we um we evolve to live in bands of 150 people when you and you really got to know people I'm assuming in you know 100 gatherer bands uh now we we live with lots of like hundreds and hundreds of people it's much easier to slide by and do the surface aloof thing and just sort of like cheery Bon of me second getting to know someone takes time and I'm try to be a very efficient person and I've got a little clock in my head so that when um somebody uh when I'm I pull over the gas station to pump gas in my tank I'm thinking oh I got 90 seconds here I can get two emails done and and and if you you have that clock in your head then the the patience of building a a relationship just doesn't seem worth it like when I leave a party I leave in like 30 seconds when my wife who's very relational leaves a party it takes her like an hour CU she see there was an article that came out recently that said uh people who do Irish goodbyes at parties save themselves up to two days per year see that that would be me that would be me but on the other hand people really like my wife and me they're okay with me but H uh so uh I think that's the thing and then it's there's always a sensation that uh this person will think I'm prying that I'm I'm getting too personal too vulnerable too fast and of course that is a danger like if somebody's really vulnerable right off the get-go then you're like creeped out on the other hand I interview people for a living like you and how how many times in my life have I seriously asked to somebody to tell me some piece of their life story how many times have they said none of your damn business the answer is zero zero people love to tell their story uh there's an academic at Northwestern University named Dan McAdams and he studies how people tell their life story so he pulls him into his lab for 4 hours tell me your high points your low points your turning points the end of the 4 hours he gives them an envelope with some money to compensate them for their time and a lot of the people say I'm not taking money for this this has been one of the best afternoons of my life no one has ever asked me these questions and so people have a need to tell their story uh and and you're giving them a great gift by asking I think we assume that other people have got their life together more than we do or at least I I certainly did for a very long time you know I always presumed that anybody else's Judgment of me was because of some perfect insight into my malignant broken programming and they were perfectly rational and I was deficient in some sort of relative way and what that means is that you assume that they they talk about their life all the time they've got friends that or you know someone I don't know what it is maybe they've been on a Netflix documentary or whatever the whatever the [ __ ] it is that they've done they have conversations like the ones that I'm yearning to have all the time and if I bring it up to them that highlights to them the fact that I have a scarcity of that and them being someone who has a surplus of that will see me in a deficient light somehow yeah I well of course it's a truism but it's a true truism like a lot of truisms that even when we know someone we only seeing 10% of them uh and that everybody has demons everybody has something uh deep down that uh you don't know anything about and everyone's gone through some struggle that you don't know anything about but I have found um that I've never met somebody who said yeah I have too many people to tell to talk about important things with I've never met that person and and so there's a there used to be an or a journalist named studs turkle who did this these oral histories and he said if you listen if you listen they will talk they will always listen cuz no one has ever asked in their life story uh and so I think there's way more people who never have the chance because there's a bit of a social stigma and again I don't want people spilling their guts I was at a party and there was a journalist and she was grilling me about my spiritual life and she was giving me nothing like it nothing about her it was just like I felt like I was on trial interrogation yeah and so that was awful but you know a conversation that moves halfway halfway halfway uh uh is a beautiful conversation in the book I draw this distinction between diminishers and illuminators and diminishers are people who are not curious about you they stereotype you they do a thing called stacking which is I learn one fact about you and then I make a whole series of assumptions about you and so illuminators on the other hand are people who just make you feel seen they really care about you and they make you feel lit up and one of the stories I tell is of Jenny Jerome who would go on to become Winston Churchill's mom but when she was a young lady she was at a dinner party in London in Victorian England and she SE next to William Gladstone the Prime Minister and uh she leaves that dinner thinking that that Gladstone is the cleverest person in England and then sometime later she's at a different dinner party and she happens to be seated next to Gladstone's great political rival Benjamin Israeli and she leaves that dinner thinking that she's the cleverest person in England and so if you can make other people feel entertaining and funny and clever you've done a little Noble service for the world I want to talk about the felt sense of you as an individual not the art of seeing others deeply but the art of Being deeply seen mhm talk to me about going from this protective autism R hyper rationality world the step by step there will be people listening there will be a lot of people listening who think this sounds like me the control the order the the I like to be competent and to get things done I don't like to be out of control what is the felt sense that you went through of beginning to open up and how do you cope with with the discomfort of that rising and how can people also do that how can people become more comfortable with feeling feelings yeah well I I went through you know reasonably ambitious person so I went through a phase that a lot of us go through called the career consolidation phase of life you're trying to build your career build your identity achieve things make a difference in the world and in my experience uh a couple things happen one you achieve success and it's not as great as you thought it was going to be uh and you know I remember the first time I got a call from my agent saying one of my books was on the bestseller list like I had sort of dreamed about writing a bestseller and I felt nothing I just felt nothing and I've had way more Career Success than I thought I would but and I've I found that it spares for me the from the anxiety I might feel if I thought I was a failure but as far as positive good it doesn't lead to that much so there's it's created this dissatisfaction have a Deeper Life or you don't achieve success you fail in which case you're in the valley or something happens in life that wasn't part of the original plan you get cancer you lose a child and so there's a theologian in the 1950s named Paul tiik who says moments of suffering uh interrupt your life and they remind you you're not the person you thought you were and he says they carve through the floor of the basement of your soul and they reveal a cavity below and then they carve through another floor and they reveal a deeper cavity below so in those bad moments you see deeper in yourself than you do uh in normal life when you're happy and you realize only spiritual and relational food will fill those cavities and so in my case I went through a bad period I had a divorce my kids were leaving home I I had underinvested in a intimate friendship and good friendship so I I had work friends uh but I had no weekend friends like the people I really wanted to hang around with who I could call at 2 in the morning and so I I just realized this Gap in my life um and I'm I'm a little eccentric I'm sort of University of Chicago intellectual so I wanted to learn about emotions so I wrote a book about emotions called The Social Animal years ago so like I did it the Chicago way I wrote a book but more it was a and then I I found when you're you're in one of life's valleys you can't pull yourself out you have to rely on somebody else to reach into the valley and pull you out and so around about 2014 or so uh I'm in DC reasonably lonely and I get invited over to couple's house uh their name Kathy and David and they have a kid in the DC public schools who's got a friend who's got his mom has some issues and he has some often has nothing to eat and no place to sleep so they said James can come over to our house and then James had a friend and that kid had a friend that kid had a friend and by the time I go over to their house in 2014 or so uh there were 14 mattresses in the basement and there were 40 kids around the dinner table and so I visit and I hold out my hand I meet a kid kid at the front door the first time and he says we're not really allowed to shake hands here we just hug here and I'm like not the huggiestv so you join a different culture where where being emotionally available is the norm and by process of asmosis um I think you you do you you don't even notice I wouldn't say I notice the change I wouldn't say like oh I've I've gotten 60% more emotionally available like that's it's but the spirit is opened and I WR in the book I I can prove it to you but I have to name drop so I've been interviewed by Oprah twice in my life and the first time in 2014 and the second time in 2019 and after the taping in 2019 she pulls me aside and said David I've rarely seen somebody change so much in middle age you were so blocked before and she should know she's Oprah H and so I it's there's just a fruit a flowering of the spirit that happens to people and I think it often happens as people get older that career consolidation phase ends and another phase uh called generativity the the desire to really be of service to the world that's sort sort of kicks in I I think when people hit especially if they hit like 50 or 60 I say you remember when you were 13 or 14 and horniness entered your life well around 50 or 60 generativity enters your life this intense desire to give and I'm I'm oversimplifying it you don't have to be 50 to experience this you can experience it when you're a parent at 25 but um I do think that desire to be of service to the world and and to just be more um to cry more easily yeah that's something that I'm quite ashamed about I ashamed about how emotional I am I think I've cried on this show maybe twice maybe two or three times usually when I'm telling some like quite happy story it doesn't tend to be something that's sad but if it's me on my own watching a a Christmas movie good example I watched two quite sad Christmas movies one of them is klouse uh which is phenomenal animated children kind of like children's thing but it's really deep and meaningful uh that's outstanding and then there was another one which was an animated version of uh night before Christmas and at both of these I'm like you know weeping fully Weeping at the end of it and I find I find that happens when I tell like when I think about stuff when I reminisce so on and so forth but the discomfort that I feel and that desire to like clamp down on emotions I totally I I totally understand what you mean and there's something there's another part you were talking before about how we're in different sized tribes and and and now we're in there's more people so we kind of flit through the conversations a little bit more I think another element of it is that has decreased our level of security especially since social media because if you only have 150 people to be open and vulnerable with you [ __ ] 10 of them are your kin 20 of them are your extended kin half of them are older than are going to die within the next decade so who cares another half of them are baby so they don't know you know there's just not that many people that would use and also it's not cemented on the internet for the rest of time so I think that given that so much of our communication interpersonally uh and even you know people use uh video journals Diaries Vlogs Etc writing that that is a very personal approach that I think there is a fear that that will be used as some sort of cuu to batter us with at some point later in life by a person who isn't as Earnest by a person who is going to be more cutting or sardonic or doesn't feel things so very deeply there are people out there that I think just don't feel they don't don't feel them don't necessarily have the capacity to fill them and don't have the desire to have the capacity to fill them um I'm not one of those people and yeah I I I I genuinely feel like I'm on the same train similar train tracks to yourself just a little bit further behind and uh one of the other things again an an Oprah bit I haven't learned like everything from Oprah but uh two things that I did learn uh first being uh develop a nice repertoire of nods uh and the second one something that I know that you're a big fan of is the use of Silence yeah no I I for researching this book I would watch Oprah I turn the sound off I just watch her uh and I I notic like she did this Harry and Kate famous interview and um when they're saying something happy she's verbalizing yes uhhuh but when they're saying something sad she goes quiet and it's like creating an emptiness for them to continue uh their talk and so I I think that's part of the process but the other thing I'd mention is that doing this being good at social skills social life it is an absolute skill it's like it's it's it's a skill like learning carpentry or uh learning to play tennis and you can get better by learning the skills I mentioned some conversation skills before and so you just have to know what to say like I tell the story in the book um one of my friends got very terrible depression and I just literally did not know what to say to a depressed person I thought I was reasonably well educated but I didn't even know what Depression was really and I learned you can't understand depression by extrapolating from your own moments of sadness if you're if you're lucky enough not to have experienced it that a friend of mine another friend said a depression depression is a malfunction in the instrument you use to perceive reality and so depression you're like my friend the one who got depressed his he had these lying voices in his head like um you're worthless nobody would miss you if you were gone and he he was literally seeing the world through lying voices and I just made mistakes which were just skill mistakes not nothing to do with my heart or anything I want to do the right thing but I didn't know how and so the two classic mistakes that I made which I'm told other people make is I tried to give them ideas on how to get out of depression like you used to go to these service trips to Vietnam you found that so rewarding why don't you do that again and I learned if you're giving people who are depressed ideas about how to get out of depression You're just showing you don't get it cuz there not ideas they're lacking it's a lot of other things they're lacking but not ideas and the second mistake I made was called cognitive reframing uh which is um trying to remind people how good how many good things they have in their life great marriage great career great kids and if you're to a if you try to convince a person who's depressed that their life has all these positives you're making them feel worse cuz you're look at all of the things I'm taking for granted oh how much shame that I don't have these problems and yet I still feel like [ __ ] right and and I'm not enjoying the that are enjoyable why why am I not enjoying these things oh there's something really broken with me yeah right and so it's these are just like knowing what to say what not to say and you you could just learn how to show up for people in these circumstances in ways that are more graceful than not if that's what not to do with someone I think this is probably quite specific to depression but maybe we can broaden it out into people who are are sad or have had a you know going through a tough period how can people be better seeing others that are down yeah first um and I learned this the hard way over three years um first acknowledge the reality of the situation this sucks this really sucks and so just show that you're there with them second just a burst of Good Will I want more for you I want more for you that doesn't mean that you'll make any difference cuz frankly I've learned the words have Li very limited utility in these circumstan but you can at least say I want more for you uh and then constant touches uh a lot of people who are depressed are terrified their friends will leave them because they're not fun to be around and it's just like I'm thinking of you and I wish I'd sent my friend like more texts here and there I read about a guy whose brother was depressed and he was a world traveler he sent postcards from everywhere he went in the world no response necessary I'm thinking about you and that just a constant set of light touches and then there's a I read about this later uh from the classic book which I hope everybody's read called man search for meaning by Victor Frankl and he's in the death camps uh the Nazi death camps and he's confronted with a lot of people contemplating suicide and so his advice he what he said to them was life has not stopped expecting things of you that you still have responsibilities to the world there are still things you can contribute uh and one of them is credibility with suffering uh and you know I I often think When someone tells me they're contemplating suicide first thing I think is you're so brave because you're going through some horrible stuff and you're still here and so I just admire the courage with which you're you Embrace Life uh and so uh these are things I'm not sure it'll make any difference but it's a way of being a graceful friend to the person uh and never asking why just I'm here I'm here I'm here what are some of the ways that we make ourselves less easy to see uh well a by invulnerability uh B by egotism uh because we we want to the reason a lot of people don't question is that they they want to perform and the performance is a performance I mentioned earlier Fred bner the novelist and he says it's important from time to time to tell some secrets about yourself cuz it'll remind you you're not the person you pretend to be for the world and he says it'll make it a little easier for others from time to time to tell secrets to you and so we we do that we all we all put on a show and you mentioned social media my view in social media it's judgment everywhere understanding nowhere and so of course you put up walls and you know there's books out now the subtle art of not giving a [ __ ] and and girl wash your face and these are all books that say don't mind what other people are saying like do not mind because so many people have that so consciously on their mind I'm being judged all the time um and of course the truth is that people aren't thinking about you that much so be who you are uh but uh I I do think we have we put on that show uh and then finally just you know I I'm um I'm a practiced escape artist and so if you came up to me with a problem 20 years ago uh I would uh look at my shoes and then pretend to have an important appointment with my dry cleaners I'm like you know I I I was an escape artist uh and it's just a way to like Glide cuz I was comfortable if somebody was getting too personal I just was uncomfortable and I guess a little fearful and so that's one of the ways and you know it's just a question of um you know trust and you you'd mentioned trust earlier and I have found that if you're open in the world with your friends and acquaintances you will absolutely get betrayed cuz people will sometimes take advantage of your vulnerability and they'll use it against you and look I'm in political journalism it's kind of a rough business uh and and I found it's better to lead with trust and be betrayed occasionally than to not trust people and to wall yourself off I think that is one of the huge tradeoffs that people feel uncomfortable about and I see this a lot um in comment sections you know I talk a lot about the problems of men and there is a lot of advice uh for men especially around vulnerability how much should you show how much should you not if you do this to your partner it's immediately going to make her unattracted to you um the the full gam and then people saying that you you can do this you just need to find a partner that's you know in the right place to be able to hold space and so on and so forth um but there is this perennial um concern around if I show my vulnerabilities especially to a female partner as a man uh but also to the world generally that's associated with a kind of weakness uh it is a vector of attack that can be used in future it is uh inadvisable for a whole host of reasons and it makes you it makes you diminished in status both to yourself and to other people and um I grappled with that for a long time because that is me I my background is in uh running nightclubs not exactly the most emotionally mature um environment to grow up in and uh I I I'm still playing with this idea but I you're still going to feel feelings ultimately you're still going to have these thoughts and I I really struggle to see how pretending that you don't feel them or not showing them is braver than actually doing it like to me the the bravest thing that you can do is to you don't need to tell everyone about everything about your [ __ ] athletes foot or your chronic flatulence or like you know whatever like the the door hinge that squeaks and annoys you but it's that seems to me like the the the real hero's journey it's that that seems to be the thing where you think wow that person is not only sufficiently Brave that they're able to verbalize this but that they're doing it because they think that they can overcome it uh and again you know do you want to be ruled by your mental afflictions or you do you want to become aware of them yeah I've known a lot of women who dumped guys and I've never had one tell me you know I dumped cuz he was just too vulnerable like the the main reason women dump guys is cuz they don't communicate uh and they don't feel like it's a mutual open loving relationship and so I do think um you know that vulnerability is just like not only good strategy for life but it it's a good strategy for building a relationship but of course you got to do at the right pace I remember when I was uh dating the woman who's now my wife we were like emailing and we were like emailing in ways where we would slightly cross a a threshold and it was like minute and like and I remember I I sent her an email which was a little more intimate than the emails we'd sent before it was just like 5% more and then so I get on a flight a cross country flight and I think okay I can't wait to see how she reacts do she pushed me away or she like welcoming and of course the flight had no Wi-Fi and so I'm like for five or six hours I'm sitting there wow what a terrible open loop to yeah yeah so but it turns out well we're married how can people end a conversation more effectively yeah I think the I sucked at this so I remember I went to my fifth High School reunion and my only trick for entering a conversation was I've got to go to the bar and so I was so hammered after 20 minutes of that that reunion that I had to leave the reunion but I think the the way I've learned is like you have a conversation uh and I say I I say I've really enjoyed talking to you I particularly enjoyed your analysis of how British culture made it might have made you more inhibited uh and that was great so in other words a positive burst I really enjoy talking to you and then mention a couple things the other person said that particularly struck their interest and then say it was it's been great and then you can leave but it's that positive burst with specificity and then people leave thinking wow that was that was good he really listened yeah yeah that's lovely uh you also talk about proving the energy that you walk into a room with and since moving to America for all of the flaws that it has I find myself flourishing here because you're an enthusiastic Bunch uh everyone is kind of maybe not everyone uh but uh many people are uh like excitable and you know they they they they want to hear what you've got that's going on maybe it doesn't go particularly deep but especially you know you've got something good here's some good news I've got dude that's amazing was in the UK they would be like oh all right you must think you're a little bit special um again like banter um talk to me about how people can improve the energy that they come into a room with yeah well we are um I noticed like I used to live in Continental Europe and when you pass somebody in a hiking trail in a forest nobody says Hi in Europe but here in America we always say hey hi and that was it you we this is just a small thing I had a friend who moved here from Africa and she said uh my first few years here my cheeks hurt cuz I had to smile so much you people smile ridiculously resting smiling face and so when we first meet somebody each of us is unconsciously asking a question which is is this person going to be nice to me am I a person of this person am I priority to this person and the answers to those questions will be answered by your eyes before any words come out of your mouth and so the power of that first gaze and the Simon V was a French intellectual in the World War II era said attention is a moral act it calls forth people things into being and so the way you open you you treat each person as just this reverent creature I tell a quick story that I put in the book um I'm in Waco Texas uh which must be close to Austin how big could Texas possibly wo wo's an hour from where I am right now so uh I'm having breakfast at a diner with a woman named laru dorsy who's like 93 and she's like a drill sergeant type she had been a teacher and she said you know I just I loved my students enough to discipline them and I'm a little intimidated by this this lady who's like tough uh and in the diner walks a mutual friend of ours this pastor named Jimmy derell and Jimmy M pastors to the homeless in Waco among others uh and he comes up to our table he sees us there he knows us both and he grabs Mrs dorsy by the shoulders and he shakes her way harder than you should ever shake a 93-year-old and he says to her Mrs dorsy Mrs dorsy you're the best you're the best I love you I love you and in an instant that formidable drill sergeant lady I've been talking to turns into a bright ey shining 9-year-old girl and Jimmy with the power of his attention created called forth a different version of her uh and so if you see the world objectively people will be objective if you see the world uh critically people will feel judged and you'll see you'll see judgment you'll see flaw but if you see the world you mainly you'll see people doing the best they can in difficult circumstances so the way you cast it detention determines what you see yeah I think I find myself very much being a mirror to uh the energy of other people but not so much the first mover and I'm trying to be I'm trying to be more of a first mover with like like really stepping in uh my friend George actually the guy that first told me about your book uh that then resulted in this episode happening um he often when I when I sit down with him we're I hope for him too I think for him too we're just at our best it's exactly what I want to be it's open it's about ideas it's hopeful it's funny it's it's all of those things I'm like well why am I not like that with everyone because it's still me I'm the common denominator between these things and why do I need to wait for somebody else to determine you know are we doing Fox Trot or salsa this evening it's like no like you you get to choose you get to choose maybe they're waiting for you to do that uh not just being it's different to holding space it's not like being a vessel for them it's it's like folding around the weird conventions and it's not breaking step with stuff um so just to recap let's say again someone listening big on the cerebral side of things loves the rationality and thinks I like the idea of stepping into this more emotional realm what's your starter kit for good questions to break people out it's the F it's maybe the first time with an existing friend that they've done this or maybe it's the first time with someone that they don't know quite so well now like they want to Pivot the conversation towards something they think is a bit more deep or meaningful what are your what's your your favorite run through yeah I would say the thing that comes immediately to mind is is storytelling questions uh people are just better when they're in story uh and so as a political journalist I know longer ask people uh what do you believe about this instead I ask them uh how did you come to believe that and that way they're telling me a story about their the person or the experience that influenced how they think and so you want to get them into the story mode there's a classic example of this I read about in a book called you're not listening by a woman named Kate Murphy and she's describing this focus group leader who's reading uh uh uh who's leading a focus group she's been hired by so supermarkets to figure out why people go to the grocery store late at night and so she's she could have just said to the folks group why do you go to the grocery store late night instead she said tell me about the last time you went to a grocery store after 11:00 p.m. and there was some lady in the store who um in in focus group who hadn't said anything and she said well I smoked some weed and I need manaja with me Ben and Jerry and so you get a little glimpse into her life and she gets them in the story mode I have a friend um named David Bradley who started three successful businesses and uh own for time the Atlantic magazine where I work parttime uh and he his genius is hiring people and he he hires on two basic criteria the first one is Spirit of generosity and the second one is Extreme talent and so he defines talent talent very narrowly he doesn't know are you a good writer what kind of writer are you a synthesis writer are you a narrative writer so he defines Talent very narrowly but how does he find spirit of generosity is a method he calls the take me back method he says when people are presenting themselves as especially in professional circumstance or in a job interview they start in the middle they start at the beginning of their career he says no take me back to your childhood uh tell me what your home life was like and he has a theory which I'm not sure I agree with but he says everybody is who they were in high school somewhere deep down so if you were unpopular in high school you still are carrying around those insecurities and so he's he wants to know who were you in high school and how has that changed uh and so he that method take me back suddenly he's getting people into narrative mode and the final thing I'd say is one of the tips I got from the conversation experts is uh make people authors not Witnesses people don't go into enough detail when they're telling you about some event in their life so if you ask them where was your your boss sitting when she said that to you suddenly they're deep in the scene and they're telling you a much richer narrative so i' I've learned to try to make as many conversations possible storytelling conversations and not argument making conversations David Brooks ladies and gentlemen David honestly I I I Adore the book I adore this transformation that you've been on I think it's very aspirational in a a very non-typical aspirational way and uh I love it I really really love it um where should people go they're going to want to keep up to date with everything you do where should they head uh they can head to the New York Times web page and I'm I'm there once a week and I'm at the Atlantic and they can go to Amazon and buy my book hell yeah David I really really appreciate you thank you so much for today thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode there is something else you will absolutely love right here go on give it a tap