You Can't Waste Time

Summary

Bewildered Podcast: "You Can't Waste Time"

Hosted by Martha Beck & Rowan Mangan
Original Air Date: May 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

In "You Can't Waste Time," Martha and Rowan explore the theme of growth, grappling with the question: What happens when society’s controlling voice tells us to strive for comfort and completion, but our deeper nature pushes us into new, uncertain territory? The hosts use personal anecdotes, rich metaphors (snakes, houses, sweet potatoes!), and playful banter to examine how embracing cyclical change—and letting go of the fear of "wasted" time—can reconnect us to our authentic purpose.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Growth: Not “Growths”—Taking Risks and Ignoring Convention

[00:20–00:51]

• Rowan opens by addressing the discomfort of stepping away from what you're good at and choosing to try something new, even when culture warns against it.
• Martha and Rowan both emphasize resisting convention:
  Rowan: "The culture says, no, don't do that. And we say something different."
• Personal growth involves continually choosing newness and challenge, even at the risk of seeming foolish or “wasting” previous investments.

2. Sweet Potatoes, Sums, and the Irish Metaphor

[02:03–04:12]

• Rowan shares a lighthearted story about overzealously planning a garden and calculating excessive harvests (“two pounds of potatoes a day!”).
• This launches a side discussion filled with playful family banter, connecting food, ancestry, and even a touch of historical context with humor and affection.
  • Martha: "I have plenty of English ancestors."
  • Rowan: "Yeah, unfortunately. So let's take it outside, mofo."
    ([04:29])

3. The “Integrity Cleanse” & The Mystery of Sleepy Time Marty

[05:28–12:21]

• Martha introduces her personal quest for integrity:
  Martha: “To be one thing, whole and undivided...I really, really scour my life to see if I'm in integrity.” ([05:28])
• The segment devolves into comic storytelling about Martha’s bizarre sleep behavior—taping her mouth shut and waking up with her thumbs bandaged, performed by her subconscious alter ego "Sleepy Time Marty."
  • Rowan: "This is like, seriously the plot of a horror movie." ([10:35])
  • **Rowan tells the infamous ‘pen is a house for a pig’ Sleepytime Marty story." ([11:18])
• This section (filled with banter and authenticity) highlights the theme of hidden selves and unconscious behaviors—even when trying to live by one’s ideals.

4. Growth as Destruction and Reconstruction: The House and Life Parallel

[15:09–20:11]

• Rowan shares the story of "Petunia"—a friend whose life and house both seemed to fall apart simultaneously, requiring complete rebuilds.
• They note the metaphor between our outer and inner worlds:
  Martha: "If you write down a description of your living space right now and read it back, you will have written a metaphor for your inner life.” ([19:20])
• Petunia’s journey exemplifies how sometimes, just after creating the “perfect” life/house, something deep within urges us to start again.

5. Nature's Rhythms: Snakes, Eggs, and Shedding Old Skins

[20:51–28:04]

• The hosts elaborate on a mesmerizing story about watching a snake lay eggs—and then the newly hatched snakes shedding their skins.
  • This becomes a rich metaphor for personal cycles of growth:
    Martha: “When your soul has come out of its egg, it squiggles around...and then it says, I'm going to shed my skin. My skin is itchy.” ([24:03])
• They note that nature requires continual change, while society encourages fixation and permanence.
  • Rowan: “I started having, like, a little mini panic attack when I imagined being an itchy snake...But what if I forgot to take the deep breath and then you're stuck in a skin that's too small?" ([27:34])

6. The Kindergarten Complex, The Sunk Cost Fallacy, and the Myth of “Wasting Time”

[28:04–36:04]

• Discuss the societal pressure to avoid starting over and to stick with what you’ve invested time and effort in—dubbed the “Kindergarten Complex.”
  • Martha: “[In our culture] to start again as a beginner...looks to many people like failure. And the stink of failure is what we want to avoid above all else.” ([29:31])
• Relate the sunk cost fallacy—from business schools and real-life disasters (e.g., the Challenger Shuttle)—to individuals’ lives.
  • Martha: “Because they put so much money into it, they pour more in to sort of prove that they were right.” ([34:19])
• Upend the cultural definition of waste:
  Rowan: "What if you can't waste time or money? What if it's impossible?" ([34:36])
  • Martha: "I actually believe this...If my entire objective is to have an experience, simply to have an experience...No wasted time. The whole objective was to have an experience." ([35:00])

7. The Joy of Perpetual Change: Stretching, Pandiculation, and Soul vs. Ego

[36:04–52:30]

• Explore the tension between the ego’s desire for safety, permanence, and approval versus the soul’s insatiable desire for newness and growth.
• The cyclical process of growth/destruction is compared to the feeling of stretching after waking—a process called “pandiculation.”
  • Martha: “So feel for the sense of constriction and start stretching into it…as long as it feels like a delicious stretch.” ([52:57])
• Even physical as well as emotional discomfort can be signs that it's time to evolve and try something new.

8. Living the Metaphor and the Moral of the Episode

[49:45–53:34]

• Martha recognizes her own lifelong obsession with metaphors as a personal form of perpetual transformation. Martha: “But what if it's my ego that wants to remain static, and the one thing my soul loves is to literally transfer things, is literally to move, to grow? If the snake's real purpose in life is not to be a certain size, but to keep growing.” ([49:21])
• Rowan closes with encouragement to embrace the feeling of being a beginner, feeling "itchy in your skin," and trusting that expansion is more truthful than safety:
  Rowan: "As long as it makes your ego feel confused and, like, it's probably a waste of time." ([53:08])

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

On Embracing Newness:

“To start again in your life, to start something you don’t know, where you really feel like you’re in complete shambles...that looks to many people in our culture like failure. And the stink of failure is what we want to avoid above all else.”
– Martha [29:31]

On Letting Go of “Waste”:

“What if you can’t waste time or money? What if it’s impossible to do that? Like, what if life on Earth does not contain anything but useful time and useful money?”
– Rowan [34:36]

On Cycles of Growth:

“When your soul has come out of its egg, it squiggles around… and then it says, I’m going to shed my skin. My skin is itchy.”
– Martha [24:03]

The Nature of Permanent Change:

“Everything is impermanent, and if you are in a state of wanting things to be permanent, you start to destroy them because their nature is to be impermanent. And the place I see this most is with people’s romantic relationships... It moves, it changes in wonderful, delicious ways, but it changes.”
– Martha [37:54]

Pandiculation – The Cat Stretch:

“All pandiculation means is the stretch when you get out of bed. That’s the whole thing. It means… And he said, I watched cats, and I watched the way they would get up and stretch, and I started mimicking their movements.”
– Martha [50:59]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [00:20] — Opening theme: growth vs. convention
• [05:28] — Defining “integrity cleanse”
• [10:35] — Sleepytime Marty’s nocturnal antics
• [15:09] — Petunia’s house/life rebuild story
• [19:20] — “House as metaphor for inner life”
• [24:03] — Snake metaphor: shedding for growth
• [29:31] — “Kindergarten Complex”: the fear of being a beginner, sunk costs
• [34:36] — Upending the concept of time/money waste
• [36:04] — The cyclical rhythm of growth and joy
• [50:59] — The power of stretching (pandiculation)
• [52:57] — Signs it’s time to grow: constriction, discomfort, and the seduction of safety

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Episode Essence

“You Can't Waste Time” provokes listeners to reconsider society’s obsession with final destinations, expertise, and the fear of wasted effort. Through humor, metaphor, and deep personal sharing, Martha and Rowan invite us to repeatedly shed old skins, dump sunk costs, and embrace new journeys—reminding us, with laughter and genuine warmth, that our true nature is to keep growing, no matter how weird or beginnerish it looks.

Rowan: “As long as it makes your ego feel confused and, like, it's probably a waste of time… you're probably evolving.” ([53:08])

Stay wild!

Transcript

[A]

Hi, I'm Martha Beck.

[B]

And I'm Rowan Mangan. And this is another episode of your favorite podcast, and mine, Bewildered, a podcast

[A]

for people who are trying to figure it out.

[B]

Oh, my God. You shifted.

[A]

I know. I learned that.

[B]

Whoa. This is crazy.

[A]

Everything is new.

[B]

I just.

[A]

I know.

[B]

We're just.

[A]

We're just changing everything.

[B]

We're leaving convention behind.

[A]

It's probably unwise.

[B]

Oh, I feel like you're bumping up against today's topic.

[A]

What is that, rock?

[B]

Well, today we're talking about growth. Not growths. Not anything to worry about, nothing to take to your doctor and get checked out. Just sometimes we're doing things, we're good at them, and something in us says, I feel like I want to do

[A]

something a bit different, something totally different that I'm not good at at all.

[B]

Yeah. And the culture says, no, don't do that.

[A]

And we say something different.

[B]

Yeah. So let's get started.

[A]

Hello, the lovely peoples. This is Marty, Martha, inviting you to a free masterclass that I have made called Five Paths to youo 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 Marthaba and you will be able to watch it without any charge at all. So what are you trying to figure out right now, Roe?

[B]

Nothing. I've got it all figured out. Luckily, I finished.

[A]

Okay. Yeah. That's the end of the podcast forever, then.

[B]

Yeah. No, I. What am I trying to figure out? I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with us. And, you know, is there any hope?

[A]

Are you talking about humanity in general? You're talking about you and me?

[B]

Us in particular? No. We were having a conversation the other day that. That brought on this train of thought where I. I was dreaming about future gardens that we might have, and we were going to have sweet potatoes.

[A]

Good galore. Galore, yes.

[B]

Other potatoes galore.

[A]

Every kind of potato.

[B]

Potatoes galore.

[A]

How could it go wrong?

[B]

It's my born name.

[A]

Potatoes galore. I've heard them called melons. I've heard them called many things.

[B]

Mine are always called mashed potatoes.

[A]

Oh, mashed potatoes galore. Okay.

[B]

So, yeah, I was going to grow all these things in our future hypothetical garden. Turns out sweet potatoes don't grow very well in this region.

[A]

Not at all. They're tropical, actually.

[B]

Well, it was worth a try anyway. So I had. I was doing my sums. We'll do this much ground and this will be the potato patch. This will be the sweet potato patch. This will be the pumpkin patch. And I did it with my sums and I had my little calculator. And then I was like, oh, this is gonna give us like 600 pounds of sweet potatoes and 250 pounds of potato potatoes. And you know, and you just look up at me and I was just like, oh, my God, that's so silly. And you were just like, that's fine, two pounds a day. And I was like, is that age? Because you seemed to have done like internal mathematics and you're like, two pounds a day.

[A]

And I could eat two pounds a day.

[B]

Well, that was my thought too.

[A]

You were really active. But no, I've thought about it because there were like 200 years of history where the Irish. And you should know this, I don't have Irish ancestry. You have Irish ancestry. Lived on nothing but potatoes and milk products. Like the vast majority of Irish people lived on those two foods. So, yeah, I did sit and think, how much would you have to eat if you only had to have potatoes? Probably two pounds a day. I thought,

[B]

oh, my ancestors are turning in their graves. It's fine, it's fine. We'll talk about that.

[A]

Did I break your dream?

[B]

No, no, no. Just. It's a bit more complicated than that with the whole potato thing. But yeah, there was actually thriving agriculture and then it was all eaten. Colonial power, you know, shipping it overseas.

[A]

And I have plenty of English ancestors.

[B]

Yeah, unfortunately. So let's take it outside, mofo. Okay.

[A]

Yeah. The troubles.

[B]

The troubles are brewing again.

[A]

Here they are. My God.

[B]

We've kind of got like an inter sectarian marriage.

[A]

My word. Wow.

[B]

We could be like part of a gritty 80s Belfast based kind of play where we dance.

[A]

My grandmother was Swedish. Does that mean I get to be Viking and invade?

[B]

You're not in my genre of play. No, this is very much a like a 1980s, 1970s. 80s gritty Vikings never go out of style.

[A]

Were the Swedes the Vikings or was that somebody else? I know that was up north.

[B]

Listen, we are just getting so off to the point.

[A]

That's right. Okay. We gotta get back. Get back to where you once belonged.

[B]

Two pounds a day. So, Marty, what are you trying to figure out?

[A]

Oh, you're done with yours, is it?

[B]

Okay, potatoes galore.

[A]

In short, I have this thing with integrity where I wrote a whole book about it. And I'm always on an integrity cleanse, which means to be one thing, whole and undivided.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So no, one thing is integrity and two things is duplicity. And I try to. I mean, I really, really scour my life to see if I'm in integrity.

[B]

Well, can I just ask something? You know when you're watching a TV show on your phone and you can make it small and then also play solitaire on your phone when you're in the bath, for example, hypothetically? Is that being two things?

[A]

No. It is. Stare at box in bed. Okay. Yeah, no worries. Not in my moral lexicon. But I've recently realized that I do have a double life and I cannot help it.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yes, wow. Also, I don't know how I ever get out of bed feeling rested, because I have a highly active life while I'm asleep that Wake up Marty doesn't know anything about. Wake up.

[B]

Wake up, Marty.

[A]

Wake up, Marty.

[B]

Wake up, Marty. It's sleepy time, Marty. Let's go out and play.

[A]

Okay. So sleepy time Marty does all kinds of things in my sleep. Wake up Marty tapes my.

[B]

Wake up, Marty. I think I got something to say to you.

[A]

You sing that to me every day, don't you? No, actually. Because I would slap you around the ears. There's not a way to wake someone

[B]

up around their ears.

[A]

About the head and face. You know, what they say in legal documents or whatever. People assaulting other people.

[B]

This is fine.

[A]

Okay?

[B]

This is all content.

[A]

Everybody who reads the book Breathe. Excellent book. You should really read it. Ends up taping their mouth closed. Like, I know so many people who do this now. And you do it. We all.

[B]

No, I don't do it. Oh, I know, because it gave me a terrible injury.

[A]

Oh, dear. Did it smack you about the head and face?

[B]

It did not.

[A]

It.

[B]

It caused me to erupt in little red dots around the area. I have very fine skin.

[A]

Yes. You should eat more potatoes.

[B]

Potatoes galore.

[A]

Mashed potatoes galore. Anyway, I put this little surgical tape on my mouth. You leave a room. Little room at the sides so you can cough in your sleep. Right. And it's great. You sleep better, you snore less, whatever. But I just.

[B]

I feel like this is. Hasn't been adequately contextualized. You gotta breathe through your nose. That's the way to do it. So you tape your mouth shut and that. It fixes everything. It's like part of the. Like, new biometrics. Yeah.

[A]

If you have to breathe through your mouth, only without breathing through your nose. Like you. You die in a week or something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's like, horrible for you, but if you breathe only through your nose, you flourish for centuries. Something like that.

[B]

I solved this a different way.

[A]

How?

[B]

I bought this thing on the Internet that I stick up my nose and it just. It dilates my nose.

[A]

It looks cocaine.

[B]

It's amazing. I've never slept better.

[A]

So confident in my sleep.

[B]

Sleep is for the week. It's called a nasal dilator. I know you like to tease me by saying I'm obsessed with getting a. The perfect tool that nothing else.

[A]

You are. You are.

[B]

This is a nasal dilator.

[A]

You know that. Most of us have only heard dilate in one context. Well, you did.

[B]

That's not true.

[A]

Well, you ended up having a cesarean. Perforce.

[B]

People's dilate.

[A]

Yeah, but once other parts of you have dilated and out came a human being, it tends to just sort of wash everything else away into a dim fog. Anyway, can I please tell you what's going on?

[B]

Absolutely not. Sorry.

[A]

So I put tape on my mouth to go to sleep. And I know I've slept well and peacefully. If I wake up and it's still there. Most of the time it's not. And lately it's been. I've been getting really elaborate with. So.

[B]

Sleepy time Maddie.

[A]

Sleep time. It's a sleepy wakey wake. Marty puts the surgical tape on my lips, then I go to sleep, but softly snoring now because my mouth is taped shut. And at some point during the night, Sleepy time Marty takes the tape off, tears it carefully in two lengthwise, and bandages both my thumbs. Wow. Yeah, I know. And then, furthermore, I've been waking up. My neck kind of has a crick in it. I've been waking up in the morning asleep, like, not on a pillow, holding up my own head with my hands. So I wake up in this position with bandages on my thumbs. And I think, who the hell am I when I'm asleep?

[B]

This is like, seriously the plot of a horror movie.

[A]

It is. I know. I'm thinking I should call Stephen King and have him write it up. I just can't be bothered.

[B]

I just. I love it. Because the Sleepy Time Marty, first of all, that's appropriately creepy.

[A]

That's my porn name.

[B]

As the name

[A]

Potatoes galore. Sleepy time Marty.

[B]

Sleepy Time Marty is. I mean, we could. We can definitely work up the screenplay. Like, for sure. No worries. Stephen will get in on the ground floor. But your sleeping self, I happen to know, is the sweetest, most adorable person.

[A]

You've already told the pig story.

[B]

I don't. I'll listen. I've told it so many times, and I will never stop telling it because there is someone listening to this right now who has never heard this story. Whose day is going to be brighter after hearing it. Have you heard it, Drew?

[A]

No.

[B]

Okay. Drew hasn't heard it once, I find

[A]

shocking because you guys are here all the time. Yeah. And very repetitive when you. When you tell it. He'll remember.

[B]

So once Marty was like, 3/4 asleep. Sleepy time Marty was like, more or less driving the desk at that point. And suddenly her little voice comes and goes, a pen is a house for a pig. And then there's a long pause and I think, oh, yeah. And then she comes back with a smile in her voice and says, a baby pig. It's the most adorable. I think about that probably two, three times a day.

[A]

You have a very sad life. Potatoes galore.

[B]

I don't. I don't. Sleepytime Marty.

[A]

Anyway, there's stuff going on in our house at night that we don't. We don't really know about, so.

[B]

Sleepytime Marty rips the tape, bandages the thumbs.

[A]

Yeah, that's not an easy thing to do. Even wide awake.

[B]

So interesting. We need to put a camera in your room.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Capture this behavior.

[A]

I know. All right.

[B]

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

[A]

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.

[B]

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

[A]

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 Seems to be everywhere these days.

[B]

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,

[A]

teachers meditations and classes.

[B]

Marty 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.

[A]

It really is. So if you want to come join [e-mail] we would love to see you there. So, potatoes. What are we actually talking about?

[B]

I'm glad you asked. Sleepy time. Today we're talking about growth. And I don't mean the things that. That come up on your body.

[A]

Plural.

[B]

Growths, not growths.

[A]

Growth so good and the other is so bad.

[B]

Right. Fascinating. That in itself is a topic.

[A]

Fascinating.

[B]

So we're talking about the way that we grow as people.

[A]

As people.

[B]

As people. I grow as a people. Fire growths. And we had been reflecting on a friend of ours, and I'm going to tell you a little story about this friend of ours. Let's call her Petunia. Petunia was having a very rough year recently, and as her life imploded, so, too did everything in her house start to break.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I know we talk about our house breaking. Petunia is not us in this story. That would be confusing.

[A]

But on the outside, like, everyone she knew and loved got either terminally ill

[B]

or diagnosed with something to.

[A]

She had to go help. Like, and she was the only healthy person in her whole circle, so she was caretaking everyone around her.

[B]

Terrible things. Yeah. And. And then her house started breaking in these really, like, this is a metaphor kind of ways. Like, it wasn't subtle. It was like, she's like, we get on the phone, how are you doing? Well, now, apparently, the foundation is rotten.

[A]

Yeah, it started. The roof used to be replaced. Oh, they've bashed into a wall. So we have to take down the walls. Now there's been a slight shift in the earth, and the whole entire foundation has to be rep. Like, it was that old original ax story where the guy keeps replacing the axe head and the handle, and he keeps replacing them. Replacing them, but it's still the same axe. That's what her house was like.

[B]

Yeah. So that was interesting that her life was in this. It was so funny. Our friend's life was in shambles. Anyway, we thought, this is podcast content. And then her house was in shambles. But the thing about it that was so interesting to watch is that, I mean, this friend of ours, she is tough. Like, she will roll with it, roll with it, roll with it. And she was like, patching everything. Fix it. No, not patching the house.

[A]

Totally replacing the house.

[B]

In the house. And it was like she was in the process of making her house that she's lived in for a while. Like, magnificent.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The most amazing foundation, the most amazing

[A]

roof, ship shape, everything perfect.

[B]

And then, like, solid. Like, the tree fell down.

[A]

That's right. It fell into the house.

[B]

Something like. And it just kept going and kept going. And so then she. And then it was like her favorite tree. And then there was that to go through. And then we planted new tree. Anyway, the point is, she got to the end of her hell year.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Everyone was sort of dispatched or dead. And she turned around on a dime, looked at her magnificent house, put it on the market, bought some land to build a house on.

[A]

Yeah. Boom. Mic drop. Well, I hope not. I hope she keeps the mic, because it's going to be a long build. Right. Like, she is. She didn't just make a final statement. She made an initial statement. Right. Yeah.

[B]

And so it's like this thing where we think we're headed towards one destination, but I think our soul is like the. Oh, my God, guys, you heard it here first. It's not about the destination. It's about the journey. It's about the friends we make along the way. But the soul's, like, cool. That was fun.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, our little human cultural selves are

[A]

like, yay, we made it.

[B]

Now we just sit on the couch for 40 years, and then we die. Yeah. And. And the soul's like, nummy, num. I loved that. Let's do it again.

[A]

Yeah. And it really, really is understood that you're supposed to get to a place where you're comfortable and everything is easy and everything's put together and you don't have to stress or worry anymore. And then, sure enough, you get up and you say, let's do something else. And this is particularly, like, intense for us. Not intense. This is particular, particularly meaningful to us, because we always have this idea that the space you live in is a metaphor for your inner life. I'm sure we've said it on the podcast.

[B]

Oh, we have.

[A]

Something I teach coaches to do. Like ask. If you write down. Seriously, if you write down, you who are listening to the podcast, a description of your living space right now and read it back, you will have written a metaphor for your inner life. So we watched this, and she knew that she's thoroughly acquainted with that concept. So as her house disintegrated and she replaced all of it, and as her life situation was disintegrating and she was replacing all of it, we talked about it, but it still was happening. Like some sort of weird, like, three dimensional illustration of what we were talking about just kept happening to her. And she'd call us laughing and say, guess what needs to be replaced now. You know? But she did. She got it all put together and bought some land and decided to build from scratch.

[B]

Because she's like, I've gotten used to having contractors around all the time. 24 7. It's nice.

[A]

It's nice. You can do things to please them. You can do things to bother them.

[B]

In Australia, you get. They're called tradies. In Australia, you get your tradie a cup of tea. Ah, I don't know what you do in America. And so I usually just run away. I don't know what the etiquette is.

[A]

That's what you're supposed to do. Oh, cool. Sweet.

[B]

I'm killing this. Yeah. So growth, right?

[A]

Yeah. And we were talking about this and how this is how I came to this idea of there's the house metaphor. But then there's something else that Lila and I got into the other day.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

I came into the. Into the room where my whole family is, and Lila's sitting there with her back to everyone else watching a video. And she said to me, muffy, come see the snake eggs. Well, what am I gonna do?

[B]

Marty sat down next to Lila and didn't move for 45 minutes. She had not greeted anyone in the room. We were all sitting there for family time, which, if you're a regular listener, you know that that's kind of a sacred part of our day and sometimes called wine time. And so we don't drink, though.

[A]

So anyway, it's called what it's called.

[B]

All right.

[A]

It's Adam who named it.

[B]

Yeah. And I didn't say it wasn't whine. Oh, it's. We can whine.

[A]

All right. Okay. Everybody there was whining together except for me.

[B]

You and Lila would. And I was like, at the point where I said to Karen, is she pissed off? Like, what is going on? Because we would ask her things. She's come in, she hasn't said hi. She sat down. And we would ask her things and Martha would do this particular voice. And that's like she would use if you were a telemarketer or something. She'd be like, roger that or something and would not move. And Karen was just like, no, I think it's just snakes.

[A]

Yes, she knows me well. Snake eggs. Rowie. Now, I had never seen the like, I've read about it, but I'd never seen it. There was a snake in her little cage in her terrarium and she was there with her eggs. And you'd expect like a chicken lays an egg and you can imagine that egg fitting inside the chicken. But what if a chicken laid a dozen eggs at once? So many eggs that they were the same size as the finalized chicken after the laying this snake. If you had put these eggs in the snake tube, they would have filled it entirely. It was fascinating. And they had to like squish her to make sure she got them all out.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. I once heard an animal psychic communicator talk about doing a reading with an iguana. And it was a pet iguana. And it started acting upset and they brought her. The iguana said, you know, tell us what's wrong with him. And she did. And the iguana said, I have eaten far too many grapes and they're in my tummy and they won't come out. And she said, do you give your iguana grapes? And they were like, no, I don't want give him grapes. And she's like. She went back and asked the iguana about it and it turned out she said, first of all, your iguana is not a he, it's a she. Secondly, she's very attracted to you. Like to the extent where she literally used the phrase fallen in love. And that triggered the iguana to ovulate a whole bunch. And her tummy was full of these little grape sized eggs. A and she couldn't lay them in an enclosed space, so they had to litter out in the yard and roam around to find a place to lay the eggs. And then she did and she was done. That's sweet.

[B]

That's not a metaphor. That's just a story.

[A]

That's just a story. But like, I think people's lives will be different having that story.

[B]

Anyway, this. I tell you how my life will be different thinking about that story. Snake getting its eggs squished out of it.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

What if they missed some and then the egg hatched inside?

[A]

Some snakes do that and then they come out alive. The babies.

[B]

It'll wiggle out.

[A]

Yeah. Some of them sort of hatch in there. But no, these eggs were so big that if there one had been left in there, you would have been able to tell. It would have made a huge bump and you have to squish it out. And then they hatched. Yes, they did. And these tiny, lively little snakes came out, and it was amazing. And I wasn't going to miss that. I wasn't going to miss an instant of that. All of this to say that. I think when your soul has come out of its egg, it squiggles around, it gets used to its new environment, and then it says, I'm going to shed my skin. My skin is itchy.

[B]

Wait, so it's shed its egg?

[A]

Yeah, the egg is like the first skin you shed that's getting. Sorry. Like. Okay, okay, it comes out.

[B]

We're gonna decode a metaphor for you now.

[A]

All right. The little snakes were all shiny and slippery.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And then. But they had to put them in little terrariums with rocks to rub against, because soon the snake is going to start getting feeling kind of tight in its skin. And then, like, the lenses of its eyes start to separate because that's part of the skin it's going to shed. And then to give it a rock to rub against so it can get this itchy old skin off. And then it sheds its skin. It comes out. It's got a bright, shiny, loose skin. And here's what it has to do then it has to inhale and hold like an opera singer or whatever, and puff up while its skin kind of gets leathery and harder. Because if it doesn't do that, the skin will firm up around it and it won't be able to grow. So it has to grow inside. Then once the skin is hardened a little, it goes. Or how it. Whatever it does. And then it's littler and the skin is looser and baggier. And I think that that's what we have to do. We get to the point where the house is perfect, where the inner life is perfect, where it's easy and it's done. And everybody says, you have made it in some way. In some way. I don't know. I've never experienced anyone telling me that. But, you know, there are times when I was like, this is good. This is not bad at all. I think I've raised my children. And then you show up and it's like, nope, another one on the way. Right. It's like. It was. I thought, who did that? All Done with that. And then it's like, no, no, this skin is. I want to start again.

[B]

Just when you think it's safe to go back in the water.

[A]

That's right. That's right. So what are we to take from.

[B]

I'm speechless. I. Okay, so first of all, the thing that really struck me about the metaphor was I started having, like, a little mini panic attack when I imagined being an itchy snake that's just scratched off the old skin. But what if I forgot or do you ever have that thing where if you're getting a massage or something and someone says, deep breath, but you've just taken a deep breath, and then they're like, deep breath. And you're like, do I quickly breathe out? And then do the performative, like, deep breath in. I literally just breathed in. Like, what do you want me to do? And so then I try to breathe. Breathe in further.

[A]

I think making that sound is the key because you can do it even if you're not breathing in. And then they'll be like, wow, that was a deep one.

[B]

And you feel approved of. That's what I'm looking for in a massage. So I imagined, what if you forget to take the deep breath and then you're stuck in a skin that's too small? And I started having, like, a little bit of a claustrophobia reaction.

[A]

I think that actually happens to people. In all seriousness, I think there are people who have arrived because. So the culture. Nature split here is the culture says you arrive and then you just hang on for dear life. Don't give up the seat at the top of the pyramid. Right. Just hang on there. You may have to climb a little higher, but that's it.

[B]

You have to kick some people down who are trying to get up.

[A]

But I think our nature says we climb to the top of something and we go, well, that was fun to climb. And we roll back down and start up another mountainside. And people. I think people are afraid to do that because of cultural sort of patterning of what your life's supposed to look like, they're afraid people will think they've failed if they don't succeed at what they've already succeeded at. Like, if you've gotten really good at being like, there's this guy who's a brilliant chess master, and he got like. He was like, the best in the world. His name's Josh Waitzkin. He's amazing. And then he started doing this Taiwanese martial arts called push hands. And he became the best in the world at that and then just when he was getting a big fan base there, he switched to doing finance stuff. He just. He likes to learn. He loves. He's brilliant, and he loves to learn. And the people around you are like, wait, wait.

[B]

It's about getting to the point where you have learned.

[A]

Yeah. I sometimes call it the kindergarten complex. To start again in your life, to start something you don't know, where you really feel like you're in complete shambles. And you. I don't know, you're a beginner at age 40, 50, 60, 70, whatever it is, right. That looks to many people in our culture like failure. And the stink of failure is what we want to avoid above. Well, some people want to avoid it above all else.

[B]

It's funny, isn't it? It's like this. I don't know how much of it is, like, of this culture or is, like, a feature of how our, like, ego or whatever is. Is sort of set up. That expertise is what we feel like we want to do. We want to just be there going,

[A]

I wouldn't do it that way if I were you.

[B]

You know, like, it's. It's so interesting that. That there's. There's so little humility in. In how we look at. Growing towards.

[A]

Yeah, it's very left hemisphere. I've got all the right answers. I am like that. You cannot contradict me without fear of successful contradiction from me. I have it all. I know it all. I'm doing it all right. And then there's the part that says, I'm going to start something else and I don't know what I'm doing. And we're so afraid to just say, I don't know what I'm doing.

[B]

The only thing worse than I don't know what I'm doing is I want to not know what I'm doing. I'm seeking out that state.

[A]

Why would you throw away everything? Yeah, actually, what they told me when I was pregnant with Adam, you're throwing away your life. If you have a baby with down syndrome and you have a choice and you choose to keep the baby, you're throwing away your life. And I remember the obstetrician at Harvard telling me that and going back to my apartment and thinking, I don't think I really want this life. I might as well throw it away. And I did. You know, they were right. But what's wrong with throwing away a life that wasn't very happy? I was, like, fighting as hard as I could to be successful, but I wasn't happy because I was busy fighting to be successful.

[B]

Yeah. There's something about the sunk costs fallacy.

[A]

Ah, say more about that.

[B]

So if you are heading in a certain direction and as it were, kind of like investing in that direction, whether that's time or money, is the, is the kind of where it comes from. So you're heading towards something and, and everything that has led you towards that is only useful in the way that it serves the destin, the presumed destination that you're heading towards. And anything that deviates from staying on that exact course is a waste.

[A]

Yeah. And if you've already invested a lot in gaining some particular end, then you don't want to stop pursuing that end because you've already put so much money into it. When I used to teach this as a business school case, we would use a disguised version of the space shuttle, which was the one that blew up. Was it Challenger or something?

[B]

If it was Exploda.

[A]

Oh, right. Too soon, too soon. Okay, so. And one of them blew up, I don't remember. But the business case was disguised as a car racing. And this car company had poured all this money into creating this incredible machine. And the reason the space shuttle blew up was that the O rings didn't. These things called O rings, I don't know what they did, but they didn't do it at low temperatures. And the engineers, three engineers went and told people, look, if you take off in a low temperature, they might fail. And that in fact, is what happened. But in the case it was a race car, do you put the guy in the race car? There's somebody telling you, an engineer telling you that some parts may fail. Do you put your driver in and run the race? And every time I taught that case, people always said, yeah, you have to put the car in. You've already put so much into it. Right. That you've got to, to run. You've got to keep pursuing that goal. And then, so they do the case, and then you'd reveal this was actually the space shuttle. And the students would get so angry. They were, they were violently. They were like, if you had told us it was a spaceship, we would never have gone for it.

[B]

If you told us it was a car in space instead of on land, that changes everything.

[A]

But that, I mean, they were so driven to the sunk cost fallacy. And that is one of the main reasons businesses fail. They pour money into something that isn't working, but because they put so much money into it, they pour more in to sort of prove that they were right. They were on the right course, the first time.

[B]

Do you know what I think might be like a super countercultural idea that I want to explore a little bit? What if you can't waste time or money? What if it's impossible to do that? Like, what if life on Earth does not contain anything but useful time and useful money?

[A]

I actually believe this.

[B]

I do too. I mean, that's the thing. Because, like, you have to believe that it's possible to waste time or money in order to fall for the sunk costs fallacy.

[A]

Yeah. And that it goes to what is the purpose of getting this thing in the first place? Like, yeah, am I wasting time if my whole intention is to put a spaceship into space? Well, I can waste time by not doing it right or whatever. But if my entire objective is to have an experience, simply to have an experience, it's like, okay, that didn't work. We're going to throw away that plan. We're going to ditch that spaceship. We're going to build another one. Okay, you wasted time. No, the whole objective was to have an experience.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So done.

[B]

Yeah. Let's do a different one. Let's go on a different ride now. Like, let's.

[A]

Or let's lie on the couch for a year and a half being depressed about our failure. That's still an experience. No wasted time.

[B]

No.

[A]

No wasted effort.

[B]

Impossible.

[A]

I actually believe that. And I live like it.

[B]

Let's get back to that couch. It's funny, isn't it? Like the whole there's all this, like conquering language and everything and the journey and the destination in this straight line that we walk towards our destination and doop, doop to do, and then we get there and then we put our feet up on the couch and we pick up the remote control and we're done. And I. And you know, it's very beguiling, right? Because I love the feeling at the end of the day when I can put my feet up and grab the remote control. It's like, oh, that's lovely. But at a certain point it's going to get old. Right. Like, you can enjoy it for an hour and a half before it bears.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But if that is your whole life, if that's because we're talking about it in terms of arriving somewhere, the possibility of arrival.

[A]

So what I'm sort of saying is the cycle of being in fresh and shiny in our skin and then outgrowing it and then sloughing it off and going into like getting all full fed and fat and going, I am a full snake in My skin, I'm going to enjoy this. And then the next day, getting up and go, I think I'm going to become an entirely new snake. That's the rhythm that gives it joy.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. And it's funny how often these conversations that we have sort of end up in a place where it's like things change. That's what nature. That is what our true nature is, is that change happens. And our little minds and our little culture think that there's a way to encase a state in amber and it will stay there for thousands of millions of years.

[A]

But something is permanent.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It breaks the first noble truth of Buddhism. No, first noble truth is life is suffering. And the next one is nature is impermanence. Everything is impermanent. And if you are in a state of wanting things to be permanent, you start to destroy them because their nature is to be impermanent. And the place I see this most is with people's romantic relationships. People get together and they're like, this needs to be permanent. You are always going to feel about me exactly the way you feel right now.

[B]

Yeah. Write this down, sign it. It's a legal document saying you have to feel the same way about me tomorrow that you do today.

[A]

We were watching the show last night at Trinity time, which is just really staple along with wine time and morning communion. It's a staple of our troubled relationship. We were watching this show about a woman who starts to worry that her husband doesn't love her. So she books a really romantic restaurant and then books a hotel afterwards where they can go and make love. And she dresses. And he's working on a case. Right. He's a cop working on a case. And they're in their, what, 50s, at least 60. So they've been married a long time. And the whole idea is they're supposed to feel exactly. She wants him to feel exactly the way he felt on their first date or the first dinner they had after they got married or something. And basically, if he has changed, she is gonna be like, he's gonna catch hell. Because you're not supposed to feel different from the way you feel when you're first falling in love. Hormone saturated, bleary eyed, obsessed with the other person's glory. Like it does, it moves, it changes in wonderful, delicious ways, but it changes. And I think our culture in particular is obsessed with the one romantic relationship being the thing you achieve. You lock it in and then by gun, you just ride it till you're dead, you know?

[B]

But also career. Right. I mean, I Think so, yeah. I think we're sort of starting to come to a point, at least in the kind of waters of the culture that we swim in, where people are doing more like different sort of entrepreneurial things that are sort of been enabled by combination of technology and the pandemic. So, you know, it's a little bit. But I think the narrative about career and success are still very dominant.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. And so I think this is what I'm taking from this. I want to find the places where I'm stuck thinking I've made it and now it's easy. So I'm going to keep it being easy. I did this with art a little while ago. Like, I worked with pencils my whole childhood and my whole life. Then I got into oils when I was in my 30s and 40s and my kids were old enough not to eat them and die. And then a couple of years ago, I just thought watercolor, the hardest kind of painting. And I don't want to do a loose, sloppy watercolor. I want to do these ridiculous watercolors that people in Asia who've been working with brushes since they were born, they can do things that are. Oh, my God, they're magic. I could not do that on my best day, not for a second. So what do I do? I'm obsessed with that.

[B]

Karen and I have a joke that we talk about behind your back where it's like, why does Marty want to do that? Or someone told her it was really hard.

[A]

It's true. It's true. And I don't ever get good at them.

[B]

Oh, come on, Stone.

[A]

I don't have a single watercolor I really like.

[B]

Yeah, but it's not about what you like. You're not a good judge of your own work.

[A]

Meh. Anyway, why? Like, I was getting up at five every single morning for months just to do a style of watercolor painting that I could not do. After spending decades of sunk cost learning other media, I'm like, fuck that. I'm doing something impossible.

[B]

And that's cool. I love that. Because there's a way to build the narrative, because it's all. It all fills out under the category of art. Right? Or even of painting and drawing that pencil. And then you went to ink, you went to oil, and then you went to watercolor. And so it defies the sunk cost thing, because you can say, well, you were just developing as an artist, but actually you were taking on a completely new thing. And so what if it becomes where. Where you have said art, and you can fit all these things under it, so that you're both following a line and reinventing. What if we had. Okay, so instead of art, we have life. And in life, you put down the pencil and you pick up the oils and the oil brush. But what if that's. You put down accountancy and. And you pick up paragliding.

[A]

I'm not sure paragliding pays in quite the same way accountancy does.

[B]

Such a cultural way of that is.

[A]

That's exactly it. It's all about. It's about the time and money. Are you wasting time and money?

[B]

Are you going to earn at an equivalent level?

[A]

Oh, that's such a vicious trap, isn't it? Because if you're going by the soul, and I like what you said about is the ego's job is to stay in the. In the sweet spot of having everything done and right and all that. But the soul is like, no, we're doing something completely different.

[B]

Soul is like, that was fun. Let's do another one.

[A]

That's just weird. I remember I used to be. For like a year, I was spokesperson for one of the diseases that I have.

[B]

Congratulations.

[A]

Hello.

[B]

I'm raising awareness of disease. Behold. Are you aware of it?

[A]

So it was fibromyalgia. I had suffered from it horribly for like 12 years. I could barely get out of bed. And then I found a way. I had a career as a writer. I write lying down. Still do. Lying down on my bed with a laptop on my thighs, on my knees and just tapping away. And so I made books and things happened and I got asked to be this spokesperson. But in the meantime I started doing things I really liked. And my whole thing is if I don't do what my soul wants, the fibromyalgia gets like. It grabs me. Talk about being clubbed about the face and neck. It just pounds my body into a little puddle of pain and assonance. Is that what it is when you consonance? Pathetic puddle of pain. Okay, anyway.

[B]

Alliteration.

[A]

Alliteration, that's it. So I have to do what my soul wants. And when I do what my soul wants, I have no symptoms. So they called me. And one day the people who were running this foundation and said, we want to put out an inspirational story about what you've been able to do yesterday or the day before, because you have use this method of living your joy and it makes your symptoms better. And I was in an airport talking to them. I'm like, all right. They were like, so what did you do yesterday? And I said, I Tracked lions. My friend took me out to track lions, and we did run on the track of a lion for, like, hours. And there was this long. I thought they would be so impressed. And there was this long appalled silence. And then they were like, okay, we need you not to talk about that. They were practically saying, you are identified as a weak and feeble person. Let's stay in your lane. And they're like, maybe you could talk about.

[B]

Maybe you went to the store. Yes. Well done.

[A]

They actually said gardening, but I think gardening's way hard. You garden. Anyway, they were like, they were not pleased with this dramatic change of activity. And people might say, like, the accountancy paragliding thing, like sitting around writing books, doing things, doing interviews on Zoom or whatever that is. That's for your gainful employment, such as it is. But lion tracking. You will never get paid for lion tracking. Wrong again. Wrong again, Dr. Watson. Yeah, because, I mean, there are things you can learn tracking in. At Londolozi, our favorite place in South Africa, that you can learn no other way. So my friends there, I was like, you're teaching me to track. It's changing my life. Let's bring other people, and they will give us money, and we will teach them these things, and they will have a completely revolutionary experience, just like I did. And they do.

[B]

If I knew you, your personality, but not your life, and you announced that you were lion tracking yesterday, I would immediately assume that it was a metaphor. And so it'd be like you would lie and tracking. So it was like you were following the. You know, and I would try to unpack it. And then I was thinking, as you were talking, it's like, but I know your life, so I know that that was literally true. And then you brought up, but you can't make money. And then I was like, how does she make money? By turning it into a metaphor.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

My literally do it, but make it a metaphor rather than making a metaphor and running with the metaphor.

[A]

So I actually. This is reminding me of what Liz Gilbert said about going to Greece, and she taught herself the Greek Alphabet, and she started to read things. It's fun to read the Greek Alphabet because these symbols that look really unfamiliar suddenly are speaking to you the way the English Alphabet is. I loved that in Greece. But she said, there's a company somewhere in Greece called Metaphor, because, like, every truck on the Greek islands is delivering something called Metaphor, or it's working for a company called Metaph. Turns out that metaphor just means to carry things from place to place.

[B]

Transport.

[A]

Transport, yeah. And I think. Yes, I think that is one thing

[B]

that I do is you transport ideas.

[A]

Well, I live by metaphors. And I think that might literally. Yeah, no, metaphorically, of course. So it may sound like I'm rambling incoherently. It generally does. But no, I have a point here. And it just came to me. I was going to say this scuttles our thesis because we're talking about always being willing to change to a new thing. But my whole life has been extending metaphors from the house metaphor to the snake metaphor to the truck metaphor. But what if it's my ego that wants to remain static, and the one thing my soul loves is to literally transfer things, is literally to move, to grow. If the snake's real purpose in life is not to be a certain size, but to keep growing.

[B]

Yes, that's it.

[A]

So instead of here I am in my thing, and I better not show myself to be a beginner at anything. I'm not going to leave this thing ever. I'm not going to stop pouring money after my sunk costs or whatever it is.

[B]

Instead of.

[A]

Instead of that, which is culture, you move to your nature, which is. Am I feeling itchy? Do I feel like my skin's not quite big enough for me right now?

[B]

I want to just find myself wanting to just rub against a rock. Has anyone got a rock that I could borrow? I just want to rub against it and start getting the skin off me.

[A]

Potatoes galore comes back to mind in this.

[B]

No, it's true, though.

[A]

It's like, remember when we used to swaddle Lila? And I've watched babies on the Internet do this, too. When you swaddle them, they love to be tightly wrapped at night. It makes them feel at ease. But then you take off the swaddling, and every single morning, they're all folded up inside.

[B]

They're folded up like a little baby.

[A]

And that's how they've been for nine months. And then you take off the swaddling, and they bring their little tiny, tiny arms up and they just stretch them as high as they can above their heads, and they kick their legs out, just entering the new day with so much joy, like they're bigger than they were the day before. And the love of. The feeling of, ah, I'm out of that skin again.

[B]

Maybe that's why, like, everyone can relate to how good it feels to stretch. Yes. Like, to stretch when you wake up. Stretch and yawn.

[A]

Oh.

[B]

Best feeling, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That's the feeling that we're like. I would rather Chase that. Than some sort of abstract idea of destination. Yeah, right.

[A]

Okay, this is so. I'm sorry. I'm going to apologize for this. But while I was on my tour with the fibromyalgia thing, a man came up to me and he said, I also cured my fibromyalgia. And I said, how? And he said, pandiculation. And I was like, do we really want to talk about that here? All pandiculation means is the stretch when you get out of bed. That's the whole thing. It means. And he said, I watched cats, and I watched the way they would get up and stretch, and I started mimicking their movements.

[B]

This conversation is literally making me yawn. It's true. Isn't that amazing?

[A]

That's fat. You're very. You're very vulnerable, my love.

[B]

I'm suggestible.

[A]

You're suggestible. But, yeah. And so I started. I thought, okay, I'm going to imitate a cat. And I started doing that. And it really does. It super helps your body.

[B]

Did you do it in your capacity as fibromyalgia? Spike space. Hello. I cured my disease by pretending to be a cat.

[A]

Watch. Oh, hey, everybody out there with. With fibromyalgia. We're not making fun of you.

[B]

Don't just be a cat.

[A]

It's a terrible, terrible disease.

[B]

I was not making fun of fibromyalgia. I want to be very clear. I was making fun of you.

[A]

And let's just hold. Hold on to that, people. She's making fun of me.

[B]

And I think the people were not confused about that.

[A]

Good. Well, anyway, the whole, like, we keep coming around to this point, that the stretch, the. It followed by the release and the.

[B]

The constant growth, because if you hold that growth at bay, your skin is getting leathery and you're basically. You know that feeling I had before, that claustrophobic feeling of, oh, my God, I'm stuck on an elevator.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I can't get out. You know, like that. That is the worst. That our souls don't want that to be our experience on planet Earth.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So if you feel like that's a waste of time, there you go.

[A]

So feel for the sense of constriction and start stretching into it in whatever way. Like, do something you've never done before. As long as it feels like a delicious stretch.

[B]

Yeah. As long as it makes your ego feel confused and, like, it's probably a waste of time.

[A]

That's right. And you're afraid people are going to think that you're failing or a beginner and that you're stupid for throwing away all the time and money you put into becoming the thing you used to be. And if those things are all happening, you're probably evolving. You're probably following your soul's sort of flight through life.

[B]

And that's how we stay wild. We hope you're enjoying Bewildered. If you're in the USA and want to 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 is produced by Scott Forster with support from the Brilliant team at mbi. And remember, if you're having fun fun, please rate and review and stay wild.