Surrender to the Season

Summary

Podcast Summary – Bewildered: Surrender to the Season

Hosts: Martha Beck & Rowan Mangan
Release Date: February 25, 2026

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Overview

This episode of Bewildered explores the theme of “Surrender to the Season” in every sense—literally (the literal seasons with their weather and demands), metaphorically (the seasons of one’s life and work), and culturally (how society expects constant productivity regardless of natural cycles). With their signature warmth, laughter, and deep sincerity, Martha and Rowan challenge listeners to tune out the culture’s rigid expectations and, instead, embrace the wisdom of nature by honoring where they truly are—seasonally, emotionally, and personally.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Multiple Dimensions of “Season”

• Seasons Everywhere
  The conversation begins by riffing on the concept of seasons not just as weather but as phases in one’s life, work, and relationships.
  • “There are different seasons, and the thing about it is. Ugh. Surrender. Just give up. That's what I say.” (Rowan, 00:30)
  • “The culture says don't. But we say. We say celebrate. Surrender to the season. And even celebrate the season. It's a way to be happy.” (Martha, 00:37)

Embracing the Weirdness of Joy

• Commitment to Feeling Good (Even if You Look Weird)
  The hosts highlight the importance of prioritizing well-being and joy, even if it draws social judgment.
  • “Making the commitment to feeling good even when it means looking weird.” (Martha, throughout)

Humor as Connection

• Language Learning & Absurdities of Modern Life
  The pair dive into a tangent about their attempts to learn Spanish, Rowan adopting silly personas and confronting the absurd anxiety of Duolingo’s AI “Lily”, segueing into Rowan’s penchant for labor-saving gadgets.

  • “Each language has a certain way you have to hold your mouth. Spanish is in the front of your mouth. I finally discovered French is, like, way back in the back, like that. I just said something in French. I don't know what it was, but it was passionate.” (Martha, 04:37)
  • “You seem to be on an absolute pell mell determined course to eliminate all forms of effort that have to do with everyday life. And the way you do it is you buy machines that do things that machines are not needed to do.” (Martha, 07:41)

• Memorable Moment: Rowan jokes about her massage gadget—“It was convulsing itself on your neck and you were going, ‘oh.’ And doing a very slow and terrifying dance…” (08:41)

• Quote: “I would rather do things with like biological forms. And you could be a head in a jar and your entire life would be taken care of by the things.” (Martha, 11:23)

The Challenge of Surrender

• Literal Winter as Metaphor for Resistance and Acceptance
  Rowan describes her crash course in Upstate New York winters and how that affected her understanding of “surrender”.

  • “Marty, I think if I stayed out here much longer, I could die. Like, not. I’m not even exaggerating. I think that it is possible that it could be so cold I might just, like, expire, Right?” (Rowan, 18:54)
  • “Winter commands respect.” (Rowan, 23:37)

  Martha contrasts cultural programming (“push through regardless of the weather”) with the more adaptive, nature-honoring approach of listening to the seasons’ demands.

  • “Culture is coming to consensus, and it tries to make us all into these automatons that were meant to serve the industrial revolution... There is no difference. And I had learned to just think that, but it's not true at all.” (Martha, 24:33)

Surrender—Not Apathy, but Celebration and Adaptation

• Cultural Incongruence
  The hosts reflect on how society expects the same output regardless of season, often leading to burnout and disconnection from what our bodies and souls actually need.

  • “In modern materialist culture, pretend there are no seasons. Try to make everything consistent all the time, everything predictable and identical, no matter what time of year. But in reality, there are these qualities of season.” (Martha, 45:55)

• Natural Wisdom: Many Ways to Surrender

  • Martha recounts a story from The Book of the Eskimos, reflecting on how some cultures literally hibernate through winter, lying together in communal dark to conserve energy (26:46).
  • Rowan humorously outlines her preference for “soft blankets, central heating, marshmallows in hot chocolate... six to eight seasons of a show I’ve never seen before, but that is brilliantly written, and a full-time live-in au pair” (27:52).
  • The conversation connects ritual, gratitude, and even physical adaptations (like Martha sleeping with her next day’s clothes—53:03).

Metaphors: Seasons of Life, Work, and Aging

• Life Stages as Seasons
  Surrendering isn’t just for literal winter: they extrapolate to seasons of life—childhood as spring, maturity as summer, aging as autumn and winter.

  • “If you’re a little kid, there’s so much joy in exploring the world, like a little seedling... And now scientists tell us that plants actually play when they’re growing. Isn’t that wild?” (Martha, 36:14)

• Noting Perimenopause, Aging, and “Croning”
  Rowan discusses her transition into perimenopause, and Karen’s perspective of “croning” as a reclaiming of feminine power:

  • “You’re croning. And Marty and I were having, like, a funny time with the—like, you’re crowning. If you’ve ever given birth to a child, there’s a moment when you’re crowning... So you imagine crowning, but they hold up the mirror and you see these old granny, like, hair, little glasses, knitting, coming out.” (39:59–40:57)

• Cultural Resistance to Aging—The Futility of Forcing Perpetual Spring

  • “But what we generally do is fight like crazy to keep spring always springing. Right. But he [Eckhart Tolle] says, think about the body as a vehicle for light... And if you’re not—if you don’t have an ego and your body is aging, if you’re in the winter, it’s like the first morning you wake up and there’s snow everywhere. Is that not beautiful?” (Martha, 57:37–59:22)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Embracing the Season:

  • “The fight is to say that it’s always 69 degrees in a dry, like, brightly lighted area where we put machines together as machines.” (Martha, 33:21)
  • “If you just sat there saying, I wish it were summer, I wish it were summer, you’d never invent cocoa and marshmallows, right?” (Martha, 36:23)

• On Fear, Anxiety, and Mindfulness:

  • “The one emotion inevitably associated with living in a projection of the future is fear. If you're always living with an eye on the future and you're never actually where you are, that's highly associated with anxiety.” (Martha, 53:03)

• On Celebration & Ritual

  • “We surrender into celebration and gratitude. Yeah. And ritual. I mean, my God, Ceremony. Like what all these beautiful traditions that we can draw on for each season has amazing sort of things that we can do to come together with other people in recognition of what’s happening as the wheel turns.” (Rowan, 54:11)

• Aging and Surprise

  • “And the one emotion that they most find in people who are aging is surprise.” (Martha, 60:31)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:30–01:00 – Framing the episode’s theme; surrender and cultural expectations
• 07:41–13:17 – Light-hearted riffing on gadgets, massagers, and human adaptation
• 17:00–27:00 – The realities (and rituals) of Upstate NY winter and surrendering to its demands
• 32:00–36:00 – Struggles of integrating natural cycles with cultural obligations like school
• 36:00–42:09 – The fractal nature of life’s seasons; honoring perimenopause/croning as a season of power
• 45:55–54:04 – Reflection on “surrender” as adaptation and realignment with deep needs versus fighting demands
• 59:00–60:51 – Embracing aging as a beautiful “snowfall moment” and the value of surprise

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Final Thought – How to Surrender to the Season

• Tune back into nature’s cycles and your body’s signals, rather than the constant demands of culture.
• Celebrate and ritualize the state you’re in—whether it’s literal winter, the autumn of your life, or a slow period in work—rather than striving fruitlessly for perpetual “spring.”
• Be present: acknowledge the limits, beauty, and surprise of where you are.
• Use humor, gratitude, and creativity to not just cope—but to thrive—amidst change and challenge.

“Celebrate the snuggle... I do think the celebration is the key and also the way of dealing with it creatively... I am present in this environment. What beauty can I make? What love can I express? And then apply that to the season of your life.” (Martha, 55:16)

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Practical Tips from the Episode

• Create cozy, seasonal rituals (e.g., sleeping with your next day’s clothes for warmth!).
• Mark transitions (personal or environmental) with ceremony and gratitude.
• Allow for “seasonal” productivity in work and life—ebbs and flows are natural.
• Accept that feeling tired, resistant, or slow is part of the winter both literally and metaphorically.

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Closing

The episode ends with Martha and Rowan inviting listeners to celebrate being exactly where they are, to approach even difficult seasons with curiosity and reverence, and to collectively keep “staying wild” by honoring their true natures—no matter how that looks.

Transcript

[A]

So, Marty. Yes. This episode of Bewildered is called Surrender to the Season.

[B]

Indeed it is.

[A]

There are seasons that we experience.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

In the outside. Weather.

[B]

Weather. Seasons.

[A]

In our own lifetimes.

[B]

Lifetime weather. Season.

[A]

In the work that we do.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

In the people that surround us in

[B]

each and everything we make.

[A]

There you are. There are different seasons, and the thing about it is. Ugh. Surrender. Just give up. That's what I say.

[B]

Yeah, but that is not what the culture says. The culture says don't.

[A]

But we say. We say celebrate.

[B]

Surrender to the season. And even celebrate the season. It's a way to be happy.

[A]

It's how we're talking today. Hope you'll enjoy it.

[B]

Hello, the lovely peoples. This is Marty Martha, inviting you to a free masterclass that I have made called five five paths to your purpose. Probably the most common question I get from people is, how do I find my purpose? Why don't I feel that I'm on purpose? Well, it turns out there are certain things you have to do to find your purpose, and I broke them down into five, and I made a little masterclass about it. So if you'd like to see it, just go to marthabeck.compurpose and you will be able to watch it without any charge at all. Hi, I'm Martha Batts.

[A]

And I'm Rowan Mangan. And this is another episode of Bewildered. It's the podcast for people trying to figure it out, isn't it?

[B]

It is. It's trying. We're trying to figure it out. And week by week, we keep trying. Do we figure it out?

[A]

Hell, no.

[B]

Not really. No. Not ever? No. What are you trying to figure out these days?

[A]

I'm trying to figure you out.

[B]

Oh, good luck, lassie.

[A]

I mean, you are complex and yet so simple. Like, you are such a sweet, simple little creature. Like, for instance, just before we came over here to our studio, you were wandering through our co working space and you did spy some photographs on a wall. And I watched your little face go, whoa. And you just stood there completely unselfconscious, going, oh, not like. Not actually making that noise, but because we're in an audio context. I'm trying to show the expression on your face with that noise.

[B]

You know why, though? It was perforce, it was not like I could. Had an option. I had to. Well, the. The lip, the embouchure, the position of the lips. I told you there was a picture of a woman playing a flute.

[A]

Like, what were you expected to have done?

[B]

My mirror neurons just reacted. It's not my fault.

[A]

And then the Thing that was really on my mind about you and your cute little brain and your little face.

[B]

Do you think it's cute?

[A]

It's very cute. And is that you have a new thing that you do. Because we try to. We speak to each other in many languages, some of them not known to humanity.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But we. We have been trying to practice our Spanish because we regular listeners will know that we. We duo ling. Duolingamos.

[B]

Duolingo for, like, as long as three minutes a day. Yeah.

[A]

And that's kind of the issue, isn't it? Is that we're both like. We have things we do when we can't get to the word. And one of them is go to French. Very irritatingly, go to a mixture of Chinese and Japanese, neither of which I speak sometimes.

[B]

Ge. Not that I speak that either, but kind of.

[A]

But then when we try to speak Spanish and we cannot find the word, there's this new thing that you do where you have a Persona of someone who speaks Spanish. Of you who speaks Spanish. Yeah, but that's not the personality.

[B]

Oh, the person.

[A]

No, the personality of this person is very like. Like a jolly, slightly creepy uncle at Christmas where you just start going. You're desperately trying to think of the word. So you're, like, mid sentence talking to

[B]

me, and then you just go.

[A]

And, like, holding your mouth in this weird way because it's trying.

[B]

Wait.

[A]

Make your mouth more Spanish. That will help the words come out.

[B]

You know, it is true. Each language has a certain, like, way you have to hold your mouth. Spanish is in the front of your mouth. I finally discovered French is, like, way back in the back, like that. I just said something in French. I don't know what it was, but it was passionate.

[A]

I think it was related to the Watergate scandal. All right, so that's it. Just. Just this, this little version of you that goes.

[B]

Ha, ha. Oh, my God.

[A]

I am having.

[B]

Anybody who does duolingo will know that there is. I don't know what it is. In other words, language learning modules. But in Spanish, it's Lily. Lily, who is a sort of snarky teenager and calls you and wants to talk to you about things.

[A]

Yeah, she's AI Also.

[B]

I know. I did figure that out. I don't actually think anybody. Yeah. Oh, okay. Got it. All right.

[A]

I'm helping you.

[B]

So I, I. I kid you not. When the lesson turns out to be Lily calling me, I literally go out into a flop sweat. I start shaking. My brain is completely paraly. I can't think of anything unless it's in maybe Chinese. And Lily is calling, and I either just defer. Can't speak now, or I take a deep breath and I just am all in. And she says something about, when did you receive your diploma? And I'm like, life isn't about diplomas, Lily. It's about the compassion we feel for another, not only for humans, but all living beings. And I'm just ranting, like, just, here's the thing.

[A]

You don't want to use the past tense.

[B]

That's true. Here's the thing about all the European languages. Just say it in English with that accent. Nine times out of ten, you're going to get the right word. I remember asking our friend Katja if, like, if you said in German bear was Bach or something. And she's like, no. And I said, what is it? She said, bear. And like almost anything with an ion on it, just pronounce it. In Spanish, you've got a cognate. Whereas Chinese, there was not one cognate.

[A]

It was really hard for you. Yeah, it was really. Sorry.

[B]

It makes everything else seem really easy. But I think they may send help for me because these rants I do with Lily are truly demented.

[A]

For a little while. When they first introduced that feature, they would have a surprise call from Lily. Not like, here's my lesson from today. And someone was telling us that he was, like, in bed with his spouse, decided to quickly get the duolingo, because you get penalized if you don't do it.

[B]

Oh, you do.

[A]

And so he's on his phone, his spouse is asleep, and then he opens his phone to do his duolingo.

[B]

And Sully is like.

[A]

And he's like, lily,

[B]

no, I wanna.

[A]

It's like getting caught.

[B]

It is. It's a fun and lovely world.

[A]

Yes. And I love the creepy uncle that you become when you speak Spanish. So anyway, what are you trying to figure out, Mari?

[B]

You're always trying to figure me out. So I'm like, it's tit for tat. And you can make what you want of that phrase. You just had to go there, right? Those who don't have visuals will not know what I just was talking about. But imagine wasn't tat. That's what I'll say. So here's the thing, though. You seem to be on an absolute pell mell determined course to eliminate all forms of effort that have to do with everyday life. And the way you do it is you buy machines that do things that machines are not needed to do.

[A]

Like what?

[B]

Well, last night I came in and you were like strapped into this contraption. You were holding your arms out and around them were wrapped these nylon straps. And the straps were attached to what appears to be.

[A]

This sounds like lesbian sex toys.

[B]

And it's.

[A]

No, no, no.

[B]

It appeared to be like some kind of alien with two tiny legs and two big ones. And it was, it was convulsing itself on your neck and you were going, oh. And doing a very slow and terrifying dance that involved arms out. The thing is on your neck. It's like chewing at you like a mountain lion trying to kill a goat. Right, like right there at the base of the neck, it's munching away this alien. And you go down into sort of a crouch and then hold one leg up and then crouch and other leg up. I got. I have footage.

[A]

I didn't start dancing until you started filming.

[B]

That's what you think. You just weren't conscious of the dance.

[A]

It's this hard thing because it massages on both sides equally.

[B]

Oh, massage.

[A]

But you only need. I only needed it on the one side. So it was like simultaneously. It was like, oh, yeah, that. And also. Ow, you know, on the other side. And so I was like, ooh, you know what?

[B]

I know now it is a matter of weeks, possibly days before I come in. And you will have a more advanced machine that you can target to one or the other sides of your body. Because if it happens, you will look for a machine that does it. And that is just all human activity across the board. Yeah.

[A]

We've talked about this before and I think it's a brilliant thing about me. I will say as a side note, that was all Karen buying that machine. I just am the only one good hearted enough to use this thing that someone's sunk our money into. But yeah, like, don't you ever feel like you should Google? Is this something that makes it easier to hold a book up in your hand and then you inevitably, in this glorious late capitalist world we live in, there is that thing, you know what I Google and it is available for 2.99 for a pack of 25 if you never need more than one.

[B]

Do you know what I Google?

[A]

Landfill.

[B]

How do I strengthen my hand? What exercises can I do so that holding a book up is easier?

[A]

Yes. Yeah, that's. That's our two personalities.

[B]

Yeah. And it's why, it's why I am seeing the dim horizon of my life and you are just coming on dawn. Yeah. Sunset to the analog world. Morning for the digital and machine. Yeah. I'm not making any sense.

[A]

No, I mean, I'm following you.

[B]

Yeah. I would rather do things with like biological forms. And you have. You could be a head in a jar and your entire life would be taken care of by the things.

[A]

How dare you? If I was ahead in a jar, what would my alien rub?

[B]

You make a solid point the jar, probably.

[A]

It is a creepy looking thing, I'll give you that. I mean, it's very much of the like the Sigourney Weaver alien thing. Yeah, yeah. And it does kind of pulsate.

[B]

Yes. And it's very. I will say it's almost incredibly hard to make something that is a massager and does not look like a sex toy.

[A]

It's true.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Although let's dig in a bit further. I think it's going really well.

[B]

And I went to this place near our home in Woodstock, Woodstock, New York. And there was this long, like, it looked like a cigarette holder, but it had bristles. No. I'm going to take you over and check it out. Because I said. And it was like, special gift for Christmas. And I was like, what the hell? I couldn't figure it out. So I took it to the woman at the counter and I said, what does this do? And she said, well, I don't know, but that company generally provides. Pleasuring instruments and I mean, like sex toys. I said. And she's like, yes. What for either gender could you do with a bristly cigarette holder? That would not be sheer torture. I gotta show it to you. It's so. God, no. You would have because you need something to be your head in a charge.

[A]

Like, look, Marty, stick my head on a cigarette holder.

[B]

Yeah, I have no idea. So if anybody out there knows, because I don't know. No.

[A]

Do you remember, I don't know if we've talked about this on Bewildered before. There was someone we met. We didn't know them very well. I desperately hope they don't listen to this podcast. But one of our first social encounters with them that was planned, we were given a gift and it was quite literally a vagina steamer for us to share.

[B]

Probably everybody out there is going, you didn't have your own vagina steamer, you losers.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it's a thing now.

[B]

We just didn't know. We didn't know we were living in the woods. You'd think you'd know more if you were living in the woods, but no,

[A]

no, we just had like, we had herbal tea. It's not like we didn't know anything about steam and Herbs.

[B]

We just.

[A]

Wrong orifice.

[B]

Exactly. Yeah. I'm not even gonna go down that rabbit hole because you can get into comparisons and burn patterns that are possible if you use it incorrectly for the. Either the tea or the steamer.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I think. Listen, I just want to say, I think we should be really proud of ourselves because this is going really well, and I don't think we have anything to be ashamed of.

[B]

Except I've ruined your Christmas present now. Okay, what the hell are we talking about?

[A]

You know what I think?

[B]

What?

[A]

Let's do a podcast.

[B]

What?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But what will our listeners think? They actually got to a point. When has that ever happened?

[A]

Hi there. I'm Ro and I'll be your podcaster for today. Do you know how to tip your podcaster? It's actually pretty easy. You can rate our pod with lots of stars, all your stars. You can review it with your best superlatives. You can even subscribe or follow Bewildered, so you'll never miss an episode. Then, of course, if you're ready to go, all in. Our paid online community is called Wilder, A Sanctuary for the Bewildered. And I can honestly say it's one of the few true sanctuaries online. You can go to wildercommunity.com to check it out. Rate, review, subscribe, join, and you all

[B]

have a great day now. So we talk a lot on the podcast about coming to our senses, which sounds like you could do it by yourself, but weirdly, it isn't.

[A]

No, you actually can't do it alone. And I think especially right now when everything out there feels very polarized and overwhelming and noisy, people really often don't have a place where they can just go and be completely themselves.

[B]

Yeah. So. And that's why we started Wilder, which is our online community. And it's for people who really want kindness and connection and belonging without the strident, divisive argument that it's seems to be everywhere these days.

[A]

Yeah. In Wilder, we explore a new theme every month to help us stay in touch with our true nature. And there are all these live events on Zoom that are so fun from like body doubling, co working, parties, meditations,

[B]

teachers, meditations and classes.

[A]

Mari does Earth School, which is brilliant and frequent meditations that we do together. And it is just a group of people who are the best. So if you've ever listened to this podcast and thought, I wish I could go deeper with this, or I wish I could talk to more people about these kinds of ideas, Wilder is where that happens.

[B]

It really is. So if you want to come join [e-mail] we would love to see you there.

[A]

So today, Mari, we're going to talk about a thing called. That we named, and therefore it is called Surrender to the Season. And what we mean by that, if you can imagine such a thing, is, you know, the season that it is outside, hot, cold, leaves, no leaves. Surrender to that. Just give up. Okay, let's go all over.

[B]

Good job. Let's.

[A]

Thanks.

[B]

Call that a wrap. No, it's been very, very interesting, and I mean this with great love. It makes me shriek with laughter inside myself to watch an Australian encounter an upstate New York winter. Because, I mean, upstate New York winter is not quite as bad as the Boston winters I had to cope with as a teen.

[A]

Really? You've never talked about it? Endlessly.

[B]

Yeah. But, you know, I. So you'd think you would know, but, you know, is that, like.

[A]

You know, but you don't know?

[B]

Somebody who encountered. I remember in Singapore, when I lived there for a year, my Chinese teacher going, yes. And it's always. It gets cool at night here. And I'm like, you want to know cool? You should try the top of the Rocky Mountains where I grew up. She's like, yes, it gets very refreshing there. And I was like, and more than refreshing. And she's like, cold. So refreshing. And I was like, no, let me tell you. Your eyes begin to water because your eyeballs are freezing solid, and then your eyelashes freeze together. That's how cold it is. And she's like, oh, sounds refreshing. It's so refreshing. She just couldn't get past it. Like, an iced tea was the coldest. Drinking an iced tea was the coldest she'd ever been. And I really wanted to just. I loved her, but I wanted to take her and just dip her in a snowstorm and see that look of shock and understanding that I see in your eyes every day.

[A]

It's a lot.

[B]

It's a lot.

[A]

It's a lot. There's that thing that I said to you a couple of weeks ago where I. I got out to gas up the car or something, and I was like, marty, I think if I stayed out here much longer, I could die. Like, not. I'm not even exaggerating. I think that it is possible that it could be so cold I might

[B]

just, like, expire, Right? Yeah. And you're not used to your body giving you that message?

[A]

No.

[B]

When I went to look for the northern lights with some friends in. In the Arctic Circle.

[A]

Hmm. Tell me you didn't just go out looking like, just wander off into the.

[B]

Cause you get to a. As you go out, they drive north from the edge of the Arctic Circle, and you're going north to the North Pole. The feeling you don't need to even actually experience what's outside. I was in a bus, a heated bus. We went right from, like, a log cabin that was heated to a bus that was heated. And we're driving along. But, you know, your entire body knows that if you are out there for 30 seconds, you're dying, you're dead. It was terrifying. Just to be there was terrifying. And so that's. I, you know, I identify with what you're going through. Cause I'm used to the cold we're getting now. 15, 16 degrees. It's like. And by the way, that's Fahrenheit, not centigrade. 15 degrees center height. Center height. 15 degrees centigrade. Anyone can cope with that. But Fahrenheit is a different proposition. So it's very sweet to see you, like, park the car at the house and then put on full gear.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because every heating device known to man is already in the car. So that you basically have to strip down to your underwear to be okay in the car, because the seat is heated. The car itself is heated. There's heat everywhere. Right. Heat. And then you get to the. And instead of just grabbing your coat and hoofing it to the house, you know, in a butch way, like me.

[A]

How dare you accuse me of not being butch.

[B]

Sorry, honey, but you just have a few more winners to go through. You know, you get completely bundled up before you get out of the car to go to the house, which is adorable.

[A]

Yeah. I'm still alive.

[B]

You are. And that is to your credit. But here's the deal.

[A]

Oh, can I just say one thing?

[B]

Yes, please.

[A]

There are noises that you don't know about. And I was like, what the hell is that? And you're like, that's the sound of snow and ice falling off the house. Yep. That was a new one.

[B]

Yeah. Isn't that. It's. I really have. Like. All kidding aside, it is delightful to watch you experience a northern winter. It's like having two five year olds. But you're a nice one. Who doesn't? As Lila said yesterday, I want to flee the facility.

[A]

What the fuck is she talking about when she says shit like that?

[B]

That. Where does she get that?

[A]

I want to flee. I swear to God. Like, because you can't make that up. I wouldn't. Like, no one's gonna make that up. That Their five year old said, I want to flee the facility.

[B]

And that's. She can't even. She's like, I want to flee the facility.

[A]

You know what? That's really troubling. We should, like, discuss that offline.

[B]

Oh, my God, that's troubling. It is. There's so many troubling things.

[A]

Do you think it's possible that we're all part of an experiment and she's the only one who's aware of it?

[B]

I think so. When she gets in the bathtub and says, look, it's an ocean of chlorine and sunshine. What? Where did she.

[A]

Something's wrong.

[B]

Where'd she freaking get that something's wrong? We're not even making these up. She said them.

[A]

You can't make it up. Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Anyway, I surrender to season.

[B]

And what you said to me the other day was interesting to me because my way is, you don't surrender to the winter. Having lived through winters where I had to get up and walk to school and in my dress no matter what the temperature was, I was like, you hate it when you're a kid. You weep because you have to go out in it. And then you're like, okay, I'll toughen up. And you just do it. And that gets sustained. So I'll jump out of the car to pump gas and I don't put my coat on and everything. And I stand there in the 13 degrees, and you're like, you're going to die out there. And I'm like, no, I know this. I'm not going to die. But you were bringing. So to me, it's like winter, summer, same requirements, same behaviors. Get out there and pump the gas like you would in the summer. Right. But you said something about how winter is a different thing.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's not the same to live here in the winter.

[A]

Winter commands respect.

[B]

Yes, it does.

[A]

I am from a country, or at least a part of Australia, where, like, summer's hot and winter's cold, but the range is. Is not that great. Right. And I used to think it was amazing and almost impossible. The way that I heard Northern Hemisphere people, but especially Americans, would refer to past times by the season. I remember last fall or whatever. And I would think, how. How do you know? How can you know what it was? I mean, that just doesn't. But I look here and the entire freaking landscape is a. It's a different place. Yeah.

[B]

It's a markedly different place with different requirements and different pressures.

[A]

Yeah. Especially winter.

[B]

Yeah. When you're in a Place that has seriously cold winters. Here's the thing. We talk about culture versus nature on this. That culture is coming to consensus, and it tries to make us all into these automatons that were meant to serve the industrial revolution. We're all supposed to be factory cogs in the great materialist machine and all that. And so in the winter, you know, in the summer, you show up and punch the clock. In the winter, you show up and punch the clock. There is no difference. And I had learned to just think that, but it's not true at all. It. It is very different to get up in, like, September, dress your kid and take them to school versus getting up out of a warm bed when it's still dark and trying to get yourself warm enough and then trying to force a very strong human being into a snowsuit against their will.

[A]

Yeah, that's not for the weak.

[B]

No, it isn't. And it takes. It is heavy physical labor, and it takes a lot of time. And by the time you get the kid to school, you're pretty much done for the day.

[A]

Yeah, well, that's certainly true for me. But, like, so what? Everything you're talking about, I agree with in that it's cold and dark and snowsuits. But there's another layer of it that I feel like we're all, in our household, really confronting with our first Catskills winter, which is. There's this. There's this inner level of fuck it. I don't want to.

[B]

Oh, it's deep.

[A]

That is separate from I will die of this cold. It's just like, I don't want to. And some really fundamental part of me believes with every fiber of its being that I don't have to.

[B]

Well, yeah, and I think we shouldn't have to. Like, I remember one of my favorite books that I've ever read was called the Book of the Eskimos. And I don't think that's a politically correct.

[A]

I think it's gone back to being correct.

[B]

Okay, well, this was written in 1906 by a guy who. I think he was Danish, but he went to Greenland, fell in love with an indigenous woman, and then he lived most of his life in Greenland, which is some harsh winter, I'm here to tell you.

[A]

And basically the winter expert here, ladies and gentlemen.

[B]

Yeah, the Greenland expert. I've read about it. He said, you know, they would have. They would basically just lay in supplies during the warm. The short warm season, and they would be in that part of the north. They built homes out of stone, but Home is a pretty strong word for it. It was more a dugout that was under a big rock like a boulder. And then everybody would go in there and lie down. And that is basically how they spent the winter, which was long. And they would get out to get their food, but they just basically lay there in the dark, which never ended. And they would have. They would tell stories and sing songs, but they were lying down in the dark. And that's how they conserved enough calories. And they were all bunched up together so they were warm. Not unlike the ladybugs that are hibernating in the top of the roof in our house.

[A]

Yeah, there's fewer every day, but. Okay, so here's the thing is I don't want to do that either. I just want to be very clear in case I'm like powerfully manifesting something from the universe right now. When I say I don't want to go out and do shit, I do not mean that I want this dugout in the dark thing. I want soft blanket, central heating, marshmallows in hot chocolate. Like just to be very clear, six to eight seasons of a show I've never seen before, but that is brilliantly written and a full time live in au pair.

[B]

Okay, got it. I do think that's the way. As long as you also have a machine that climbs onto your back and massages you while you dance slowly around the living room.

[A]

That's more my speed. Yeah.

[B]

Now but you're right, there's something biological. There's a social aspect to it. There's a biological aspect to it. And really truly, I think that when you are undergoing an icy like long nights, short days, winter to force your body to show up at the office at exactly the same time as if we had an office. But I'm hypothetically. And pretend that you feel the same way you feel in the summer and then leave after dark. I mean, when I was going to school it was like pitch dark by four in the afternoon and it was so depressing. And I remember that the freshman library, everybody would go to stay and they closed it at 11. And it had these double doors, kind of the airlock arrangement. And everybody would be kicked out of the library, but only the first bank of doors. And then we would just cluster like ladybugs. Like ladybugs, yes. Or greenlanders of your. Not your Greenlanders. Greenlanders of. Just digging myself in deeper like the Greenlanders. I'm sorry. Okay, so we would all be in the airlock, all of us freshmen looking out at this heinous cold. And the snow would be blowing horizontally because the wind was so bad.

[A]

Oh my God.

[B]

And people would just stand there and cry.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And then when you had to go out and the tears froze to your face.

[A]

Oh my God.

[B]

Brutal.

[A]

It was so brutal.

[B]

And then I saw an episode of 30 Rock where they, they. They're in New York, 30 Rock, Feller Plaza. And then they go to Boston to shoot a show and all of them just freeze in place and they start going, the cold, the cold. And it was very validating.

[A]

I feel like you're needing. There's a lot of validation that you are yet to receive. This is for having lived in Boston.

[B]

I have joke about it being trauma, but it actually was because the first year I was there, my coat got stolen and I didn't have warm outerwear. I just had to run everywhere to stay warm. And I remember turning to going to art class with my sketchbook and I'd be running and every time both of my feet were off the ground at the same time, the sketch would become a sail and just blow me sideways or backwards and I'd land on ice and just be pushed like a sailing ship until I hit like a snowbank. And then I'd have to dig in and try to fight my. It was like some kind of Jack London dystopic nightmare.

[A]

Sweetie, I feel like maybe we need to like, put some time aside. Like not on, not in front of my hands. Process this.

[B]

Yeah, okay. Yeah, Back to now.

[A]

All right. Don't surrender. Like. Okay, so if you're season. Is that what she was just describing? Don't surrender to that in the sense of don't go towards the light right now. Right.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I like, I'm much more in the. Let's just go ahead and lie down on the couch and not torture ourselves with the Industrial Revolution's demands.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

When we're little hibernatees, you know, we need a little sleeping bag.

[B]

Yeah, we do.

[A]

And we just need seven or eight seasons of a really good show that involves espionage of some sort.

[B]

Okay, so there's part, like, we have extraordinary privilege in so many ways. And one of the aspects of our privilege is that we get to adapt our schedule. Except for Lila's school schedule, which is still tapped into the larger culture. But we can basically say we're going to go to bed at 8 o', clock, we're going to sleep in.

[A]

And we do.

[B]

And we do. We're going to sleep until 7 the next morning. Because who doesn't need 11 hours of sleep in the winter. No one I like, and then still get up a little bit, like, oh, really? And just like. Like truckle around a little bit during the brightest part of the day.

[A]

Truckle is good word.

[B]

I just made it up. Yeah, but. But here's the thing. If you're too integrated into culture, as we are with the school system, you have to fight that impulse. And so there's. So it's fighting, fighting, fighting. And it's not just winter. It's like that Ana DiFranco song says that nobody goes outside in the summer because we can't even bring ourselves to sweat. What's that line?

[A]

Yeah, sweat in the summer, shiver in the winter, just enough to know you're alive. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And the fight is to say that it's always 69 degrees in a dry, like, brightly lighted area where we put machines together as machines.

[A]

You know what is occurring to me as you say this, and I'm sorry, because I'm just completely, like, derailing your point, but is that whenever we talk about, oh, Lila goes to school, blah, blah, blah, we get comments that say, why are you even forcing her into the school system? You should be homeschooling, blah, blah, blah. And so I was just in this little interesting little thought bubble of my own where it was like, but you know what? We all contain multitudes. And just as those Greenlanders of yore would have lost their freaking minds, let's be honest in that hole, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like, part of surrender, part of what we always come to when we're about our nature is also adapt. Right. And one of the things that our kids neurotype, and to some extent our various neurotypes respond well to is some external structure.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Right. And so it's like, it's complex.

[B]

No, but it's interesting because you said the Greenlanders would go out of their minds, and maybe they did. But from what I recall from the book of the Eskimo is that they surrendered to that being the necessity. So they did not lose their minds. They. I don't know if they did some deep form of meditation or what they did, but there are people who, like, there were anchorites in Europe who would lock themselves in caves and meditate for the rest of their lives for the glory of God.

[A]

There are weird people in every society.

[B]

All right, well, maybe if you have to surrender more, there are more weird people, because surrender makes you look weird. According to. It's also normative for us to be up and talking and, like, entertaining ourselves. Maybe that's not what their nature wanted to do.

[A]

But okay. And here's the deal, we're trying to thread needles.

[B]

I know, but okay, you didn't derail the point at all. Because part of what we're talking about is not just literal weather. It is also the season of your life, the season of your age group or whatever, and what needs to happen at those times. And if you're in the springtime of your life, you need outward, you're coming into bloom. So it can be autumn, summer, winter, fall in the weather sense. But if you're a little kid, there's so much joy in exploring the world. You're like a little seedling that's coming out of the ground, like basking. And now scientists tell us that plants actually play when they're growing. Isn't that wild? And there's so much joy. And if you look at the light celebrations all over the world in the dark nights, whether you're southern, northern, it depends on where you are when the dark time comes. But in the northern hemisphere, during the dark winter months that we're in now, there are celebrations with lights everywhere, with candles, with bonfires, with carrying lights around, carrying lantern around. And there's this jubilance that goes with you don't fight the cold and the dark. You find joy within it. And that's part of the surrender to the season. If you just sat there saying, I wish it were summer, I wish it were summer, you'd never invent cocoa and marshmallows, right? You'd be like, where's my iced tea? Why is it so cold here? This must be really refreshing. And winter isn't the only one you have to surrender to. There are different things that happen in each season. And I think if you can flow into joy in response to what's happening around you, that's the nature, that's the natural way.

[A]

And it's kind of interesting to imagine the sort of each of us embodying a range of seasons. There is a quite literal. In our kitchen where we come in the back door, there's this coat rack that is just like this enormous human, like, lurking in our kitchen right now. Because there's 17 coats. I don't know why there's only five people, but there's 17 coats on there all the time, right? And so there's that happening. And then at the same time, there are people in their 60s, there are people in their 40s, there are people in their 30s, there is person in their 30s, and there is person in there 5. I want to flee the facility. And so we're all living through these. These different facets, but it's all seasonal. And I had a really interesting thing happen, a conversation with Karen the other day, that I'm just trying to decide how much I talk about perimenopause on this podcast, but let's just go there. It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. Life. Yeah. Like, it's so beautiful to wake up in a tiny puddle of your own sweat after two hours of sleep. It's just like. It's part of the seasons. It's rich. It's the rich tapestry it is of nights.

[B]

Would that be autumn? That would be autumn, yeah.

[A]

I feel like. I feel like there are many seasons.

[B]

All right, we can talk about that later. Tell me more about perimenopause. Oh, please.

[A]

And I. So I'm complaining about these symptoms quite a lot. And then I was saying to Karen at the time we're recording this that it had been kind of a dark week in the news. I don't know if you guys could imagine such a thing, but I bumped into Karen in our house. Chatty, chatty, how you doing? How's the day going? And I said to her, you know, I'm aware of this, like, sense of a very slow burning rage deep within my spirit right now as I read the news and so on. And she's like, oh, that's. You're becoming a crone. You're going through the perimenopause and you're accessing your power. And it's like every now and again,

[B]

I mean, often she just flares back on her hind legs and just zings1.zings1.

[A]

And she just said it, like, she was telling me, like, what the guy at the post office said. Right. It's so wild how she does that.

[B]

That's probably what the guy at the post office did say.

[A]

Can you imagine?

[B]

Now, that's Karen's wisdom.

[A]

It's Karen.

[B]

When it comes out, it's something.

[A]

Yeah. And I was just like, oh, my God. And actually, she said, you're croning. And Marty and I were having, like, a funny time with the.

[B]

Like, you're crying.

[A]

Crowning.

[B]

If you've ever given birth to a child, there's a moment when you're crowning, and that's when they see the head and you get fixed and they give you a mirror to look at it. And when you said you were crowning, that was the image I had of the crown of your head coming out through that particular opening.

[A]

So you're like giving birth to yourself as an. So you imagine crowning. But they hold up the mirror and you see these old granny, like, hair, little glasses, knitting, coming out.

[B]

And it's like, hello, Benjamin Button. Oh, my God. Yeah. So that is one of the seasons. Kurt Bonegut said something about how there should be at least six. And, like, between winter and spring, there was one he called unlocking.

[A]

Oh, that's good.

[B]

Yeah. I don't remember what the other one he added was, but you can sort of slice it depending on what the weather's like in your neck of the woods. There are all kinds of little seasons within seasons within seasons. And then you're right. There are all these fractal seasons in human life where Lyle is clearly bursting out in the spring. We have little seedlings in our indoor garden where they just. You plant a seed and you go. And there's nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing. And then I swear to God, I went and checked on them before I went and watched a sitcom with Adam. Came back, boom, six tomato plants, like, in half an hour.

[A]

And, like, that is just the ultimate. Sorry, derailing you again. But, like, those seedlings that we're, like, diligently putting under the grow light, I get up at seven, turn on the grow light, turn it off at eight o' clock when we go to bed, like, and we're trying to grow freaking tomato plants.

[B]

We're pretending it's summer.

[A]

We're pretending we're not surrendering to the season. And if you've ever had your tomato seedlings burn in the frost, something's wrong there. It's not meant to be.

[B]

All of us from the north are going. Really? That happens every year. No, but you said to me when you came out of there, we're not supposed to be growing plants. Like, plants are not supposed to be coming out of the ground right now. No, no. Enough. Yeah. Because you can feel the sort of. We have so many accommodations to make it seem like it's always the same time. You go to the supermarket, you can always get fresh. You can always get blueberries, though they're not available anywhere within 10,000 miles. You will get them. And there's something lost. I mean, between my studio and the house. House. There's like a little path that I have to go outside. And I go back and forth probably every morning, every night, and in between several times. And it means, like, 10 seconds outside. And even if it's 5 degrees, I

[A]

will say it's about 30 seconds.

[B]

Is it okay? Anyway, this is how quickly one's body remembers the seasons. Because when we lived in Pennsylvania, where it was also cold, I never left the house. Like pandemic. We'd get up, put on our pajamas, turn on the zoom things, and order food to be delivered. It was just we never left. And that's kind of how I lived in Pennsylvania. And now I have to walk back and forth for 30 second periods. Just little. And I feel so much more physically attuned to the world, to the Earth. And it's actually like a nutrient that I was missing. It feeds something in me, even though it's very, very cold and icy and yeah, it's perilous. There are animals out there. And I would have thought it was a negative thing, but it feels like I'm back on Earth. I'm back on Earth.

[A]

Just enough to know you're alive.

[B]

Yeah. And there's an intimacy with the planet and the animals and everything. Hearing the coyotes howl at night, where their voices carry so far in that cold, dry air. And it's a weird, disconcerting sound, but it's like, right, Earth. I remember Earth.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And so, yeah, you were saying that about the tomatoes. And I was thinking, how are we going to live next winter? Like, differently.

[A]

Yeah. And that's kind of what it, what it circles around to, right. Is where we're in a season in a literal sense around us. We're in different seasons in our lives. We're in seasons, you know, in many seasons. And in between seasons, our work, our different businesses that we try to run are in their own seasons as well, requiring different qualities of energy. So I feel like when we get to the point of saying, how do we come to our senses? It's about how do we accommodate the, the demands or the requests that the seasons bring.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that our. What do our bodies and our souls need? And yet, yeah, we live in a culture. So how do we do that?

[B]

We'll tell you that right after this foreign.

[A]

We have seasons. There are seasons, there are lives, there are businesses, there are. There are many different parts of selves that experience seasons. Talk to me about coming to our senses within them.

[B]

Right. So in modern materialist culture, pretend there are no seasons. Try to make everything consistent all the time, everything predictable and identical, no matter what time of year. But in reality, there are these qualities of season. And it does. It's interesting because almost every indigenous culture has a four part division that is connected to the directions of the compass and everything. Even though not everybody has four seasons, it seems to have that quality to it. There's a beginning, there's a springtime. Well, there's a birth, death and rebirth. There's an internalized period of growth that is. Metaphorically maps to pregnancy, where everything is happening internally under the soil, inside the mind and soul and heart, inside the body. So everything's very internal. It doesn't look like much on the surface, but if you push it to come to fruition, you'll kill it. Right. It's gestational. So there's that, and that's the winter. And then the spring is this period of incredible dynamism and freshness and innocence and exploration. And those are the qualities of the beginning time, the springtime. And then there is. The qualities of summer are when it gets like. The exploration gets more relaxed and there's. I don't know, what are the qualities of summer.

[A]

I feel like summer has this quality of excess and bounty and ease and almost there's sort of the, like, I think about high summer and a sort of bacchanalian solstice, you know, where there's. It's. It's. It's excess.

[B]

Yeah. You know, and the song Summertime and the living is easy. Fisher jumping the cotton is high. Like everything is easier. And there's a kind of languid rhythm to things.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And also because it's often hot, so you don't want to be that active. But people hang out and like, sip mint juleps and commune in the summer. If you surrender to the season, there's a way to celebrate each one.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Then there's autumn, which is bringing the harvest.

[A]

Yeah, I was going to say agriculturally, it's sort of about. It's very winter is coming kind of thing. But it's actually around here, like just almost unbearably beautiful time too. And I hate the feeling of using fall to focus on winter. You know what I mean? Like, it's actually like a really great time to go. Stop thinking about winter.

[B]

No, it's. I mean, it's really interesting to look at the way the Puritans girded themselves for winter, which is, brace yourself, things are gonna get ugly and hoard and hoard everything. And the way the indigenous people taught them to celebrate the autumn, which is gratitude. Gratitude, Gratitude, gratitude. Every time I've been to a Native American ceremony and I've been to several, it's amazing. There are hours spent on gratitude. And these people have been so wrongly treated, you know, like their whole history is just one long tragedy. And they're sitting there, sorry That's a

[A]

terrible thing to say about people's entire history being tragic.

[B]

But what has happened to those cultures since Columbus brought the plague that killed one out of every five people on Earth in the American continents? It's horrible.

[A]

And there's a lot of tragedy and there's a lot to be proud of. And there's a lot of beautiful lineage

[B]

and beautiful stories, joy and wisdom and depth. And that's why I was going to the ceremonies. I was trying to find and learn from that. And I felt like such a talk about a tiny spriglet. And here were these people who talked forever hours about how grateful they were. There was no mention of the hard time is coming. It was just like, look what we've been given. Look at the sunset, look at the rainbow. I remember somebody saying, it's a full circle. Imagine it going under the ground and people just drenched in beauty.

[A]

Yeah, they weren't, they didn't have that.

[B]

And I don't want to be like sentimentalizing it or anything like that, but I was really. I really learned how to celebrate the autumn.

[A]

It's so interesting because I feel like we, you know a lot when we have these conversations where we try to characterize our culture. This idea of the silo of grain or whatever, like the hoarding of food that gets done ahead of the winter is a sort of trope that is familiar to us. And I've never thought before about the obsession with future as being a form of scarcity. And that being able to dwell in the beauty of the fall without obsessing about the scarcity of the winter to come is actually another really unfortunate tendency of the culture we live in.

[B]

You know, what, you know, what our culture does is it takes the absolute best characteristics of each season and tries to make it persist all the way across. So if it's cozy and you're getting lots of presents because it's wintertime and there are these gift giving ceremonies in winter, there should always be a lot of material stuff. You should always be getting a lot of presents. If it's spring and there's action and there's growth and new life, that should just keep going. It doesn't matter if you're 70. It can be the springtime, have nine children. Exactly. And if it's the summer and everything is easy, then everything should always be easy. And then it's the autumn and the harvest is in, but it should always be harvest because of this obsession with, I don't want to let this go. And so there are these parallel Things there are. I am terrified about what is happening and about the negative aspects of each season. I don't wanna be too hot. I don't wanna be too cold. And there is an obsession with hanging on to the most positive aspects of every season, and neither of those surrenders to that. Everything's always moving.

[A]

Yeah, it's funny that I was just thinking about the Game of Thrones thing where the Starks, you know, the people of. No, not. Yeah, the Starks, their words of their clan are, winter is coming. Like, that is what they. That is what they say to identify themselves as winter is coming, not winter's here, not spring is. You know what I mean? It's like we. How we look at the future as though it looms over us in such a way that we're always looking there and we're never here.

[B]

And the one emotion inevitably associated with living in a projection of the future is fear. If you're always living with an eye on the future and you're never actually where you are, that's highly associated with anxiety. And mindfulness is one of the most prominent ways to get out of anxiety. And it's so simple. You just come here and for us right now, that means that I find ways to celebrate getting. I have a new little ritual that you didn't know about. I take my clothes for the next day every night, and I tuck them into bed next to me and I curl around them and sleep with the clothes I'm going to wear the next day so they're warm and I can just slither out of my pajamas and into my clothes and not have to worry about. But I, like, that's a surrender to the season. Okay. I'm going to adapt and I'm going to have a good time. It's fun.

[A]

Martha Beck slithering into her clothes that she's just slept in. Okay. You do you. All right, so here's what I think.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I think that what you're talking about with the ceremonies and the gratitude is. That's key to me, if we're wanting to. What do we surrender into? We don't surrender into apathy and nihilism. We surrender into celebration and gratitude. Yeah. And ritual. I mean, my God, Ceremony. Like what all these beautiful traditions that we can draw on for each season has, like, amazing sort of things that we can do to come together with other people in recognition of what's happening as the wheel turns or whatever. Right. But it's also. So to celebrate where we are each season, to accept, you know, that you'll never, at the height of summer, get cozy.

[B]

No, you don't want to be cozy. Yeah. You don't want to curl up in a cuddle puddle.

[A]

You lose the snuggle in the summer. So let's celebrate the snuggle.

[B]

Celebrate the snuggle. See, I do think the celebration is the key and also the way of dealing with it creatively. I'm thinking about how beautiful the clothing is that's come out of being freezing cold. Whether it's the furs used by the Inuit people or the gorgeous sweaters they learned to knit in Ireland with the. The pattern of each family. So that when, inevitably, the men were killed at sea, their bodies could be identified by sweater patterns.

[A]

So fun, so sweet.

[B]

And then, like, you go to someplace where it's usually warm, like Hawaii, and they're making these incredible arrangements of flowers to wear just because it's beautiful. And all of it is like, I am present in this environment. What beauty can I make? What love can I express? And then apply that to the season of your life. Because as we've been doing this, I'm like, my foot hurts, and I think my gums are receding. And you said, surrender to the season. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is that season. That's what happens. I asked my dentist about it. He said, that's just genetic.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

All right. I'm gonna find a way to celebrate it. And as you say, this is one of the things we fight most is aging, which is croning. Right. Like Karen saying it as a really positive thing. And so do we. But there's always that moment when you're in a group of people who's had a lot more work done than you have. Like, a lot. Or maybe you've never had any work done. And you told me, I think to myself, in those situations, surgery or self

[A]

acceptance, those are your two options.

[B]

Yeah. And I've never been a fan of elective surgery, so self acceptance it is. How am I gonna make that into something beautiful for the winter?

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. And to let the winter be a thing without obsessing about, you know, death and decay and the inevitable breakdown of your mortal form.

[B]

But here's the thing that's coming like that is I disagree. I would celebrate the hell out of that.

[A]

But what we're saying is, be in this.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Don't be in the next thing.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Be in this. Celebrate where you are and the beauty of now.

[B]

Absolutely. And what you said made me remember something. Something that made winter much more exciting for me. And that is. Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth talks about how you push into the world as a physical being until you get to midlife, and you're just trying to make. You're trying to master your body and then relationships and then career and all of that. And then you're finally kind of getting on top of it in your 40s, and then you start heading back towards spirit, toward the disintegration of the body. And. And what we generally do is fight like crazy to keep spring always springing. Right. But he says, think about the body as a vehicle for light, and you learn to live in it so as to keep it alive. There's another writer, I can't remember who, who says that the ego is a vehicle. So the ego, the selfishness, the grasping, the hoarding. It's a vehicle to take the body to the point where it can achieve experience, enlightenment. And then it drops away like an eggshell. And the ego just. It takes the body there. It drops away. And if you're not. If you don't have an ego and your body is aging, if you're in the winter, it's like the first morning you wake up and there's snow everywhere. Is that not beautiful? I mean, and that's another kid. But to see you look at a snowfall and to see you and Lila, just the wonder of this gorgeous thing. Snowfall in a pine forest, it's just. You can't describe it. And then the morning comes, and it's full of light.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I used to, as a kid, I would take my crayons and try to color somehow the look of sunshine on snow and how the prisms and the crystals are shooting tiny beams of all colors of light at the same time. And I would sit there with the whole box of crayons, trying to draw that and just going, I can't do it. Like, what if that's what aging is? What if you're just full of different prisms of light and you're not thinking, oh, it's so cold, and I wish there were cherries growing, you know?

[A]

Yeah. And, like, isn't this interesting? Yes. Isn't it interesting? And isn't it interesting that I didn't think this would happen to me?

[B]

Never.

[A]

I thought this was something someone else's body did.

[B]

Literally. Ro. I have never. All these people that I knew got old, and I never did. I never turned 60.

[A]

I was smart enough to avoid.

[B]

There were all these people turning 60 around me, and I didn't. And then one day I did. And I was outraged.

[A]

Isn't that wild? Outraged, yeah.

[B]

And the one emotion that they most find in people who are aging is surprise.

[A]

Can a test can attest? Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. And like, getting used to that is something. But God, let's celebrate it because there are jewels glinting from the snow. There really are.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And the more we can celebrate the season we're in, the more we can stay wild. We hope you're enjoying Bewildered. If you're in the USA and want to be notified when a new episode comes out, text the word wild to 570-873-0144. We're also on Instagram. Our handle is Bewildered podcast. You can follow us to get updates, hear funny snippets and outtakes and chat with other fans of the show. Bewildered, produced by Scott Forster with support from the brilliant team at mbi. And remember, if you're having fun, please rate and review and stay wild.