← We Can Do Hard Things
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- [00:00]
Glennon Doyle
A couple years ago, May rolled around and my family and I headed to the mountains. Okay, we booked the coziest Airbnb cabin. Huge windows, fresh mountain air and views that looked like a postcard quite honestly. The kitchen was perfect for big breakfasts and we had all the space we needed to just be way more than any hotel could have offered. Spring is seriously the best time to travel, whether it's with family or friends. And Airbnb makes it easy to find those one of a kind places where everyone gets little more space, a little more privacy, and a lot more memory making. So if a spring trip is calling, book one of the most loved homes on Airbnb. It's the best way to experience the spring season in total comfort and style. No Bull is a footwear brand for training and for daily life. Built to support you in your pursuit of physical, mental and emotional strength, no Bull is known for their best in class award winning footwear. It's the shoe for for everyday life. If you change up your workouts but want one pair of a stable and reliable shoe, you can trust the no Bull drive to get the job done. No matter what your choice of movement is or how you choose to take care of yourself physically, mentally and emotionally, you can trust no Bull has the footwear options you need. Exclusively for We Can Do Hard Things listeners, no bull is offering 30% off your order. Visit www.notle project.com backslash hard things for 30% off your entire order. That's www.n o b u l l p r o j e c t.com backslash hard things For 30.
- [02:03]
Abby Wambach
Hello pod squad. Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. Just get ready because our guest today is just an insider of joy and delight, and we have been waiting for this conversation for a long time. Ross Gay is an American poet, essayist, and professor, I think at iu, right?
- [02:23]
Ross Gay
Yep, yep.
- [02:24]
Abby Wambach
Go Big Red. My mom said to say to you.
- [02:26]
Ross Gay
Oh really?
- [02:27]
Abby Wambach
I guess that's a thing. Who is committed to the rigorous work of observing and articulating joy. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry award for his 2014 book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. A devoted community gardener, Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard so Cool, a nonprofit Free Foot Free for All Food, justice and Joy Project. A college football player, he is a founding editor of the online sports magazine Some Call It Ballin' it's literally like.
- [03:05]
Glennon Doyle
My world's colliding Football and joy. Boom.
- [03:11]
Abby Wambach
I know.
- [03:11]
Glennon Doyle
And I wanna learn how to garden. So welcome.
- [03:14]
Abby Wambach
Ross. Thank you for being here.
- [03:16]
Ross Gay
Glad to be here. Thank you for having me.
- [03:19]
Abby Wambach
So your work is about so many things, Joy, beauty, laughter, crying, dancing, gardening, healing, skateboard love. So there is sometimes a reaction, which is fascinating, of how can you possibly focus on these things during such serious hard times? So what do you say to that, Russ?
- [03:41]
Ross Gay
I mean, you know, more and more I'm like, what? Aren't serious hard times? That's one thing that I say. But the other thing, you know, because part of that question, which is a little bit of a. Sometimes it's a question, it's just like a sort of a generous, how do you do that? But sometimes it's also a little bit of a rebuke, you know, like, you're not being serious. And to me, because joy is fundamentally a kind of practice of connection. I wrote the book. It came out, like, six months ago now, and. And now that I've written it, I feel like I have a pretty good definition of the word joy. I offer one in the book, but I feel like it's getting better. And I think that definition might be something like the ways that we practice entanglement, the feeling that we have when we actively practice being entangled with one another. That word entanglement. I think I kind of come to that through this. A beautiful book by a writer named Anna Singh T S I N G called Mushroom at the End of the World. But you know that we are connected fundamentally. And if joy is actually the evidence of connection and it's the evidence of participating in connection, to suggest that it's not serious is just wrong. You know, usually I have stronger words than wrong, but, you know, like stupid.
- [04:59]
Abby Wambach
But I think you nailed it.
- [05:01]
Amanda Doyle
That'll do.
- [05:02]
Abby Wambach
Thank you.
- [05:03]
Ross Gay
But it's wrong. It's as serious as can be.
- [05:06]
Abby Wambach
Because what you're suggesting is that the experience of joy makes us feel connected to each other and the world, and.
- [05:16]
Ross Gay
Then that makes us aware.
- [05:17]
Abby Wambach
Makes us aware of the connection. And then that awareness of connection is what makes us want to love and heal and support each other. So joy is connected to saving the world.
- [05:30]
Ross Gay
Yeah. And each other, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think fundamentally that's what it is. The connection is there. Like, to be a creature is to be connected, you know, and to imagine otherwise is, in a way, to be brutal. And I feel like we do a lot of imagining otherwise all the time. I know, I know. My saddest moments of my life are when I'm imagining that I'm unconnected. And I start to sort of do all this stuff to maintain that dream. But when I'm feeling the best, and I think the feeling is joy, is when I'm not only witnessing, not. I'm not only attuned to the fact of the connection like that this black walnut tree is in. We are connected like the shade that it's offering, what it's doing with the air, that it's housing all kinds of creatures that I can't even fathom the number of creatures that it's housing. I feel like, ah, now I'm starting to feel something. And then when I try to practice belonging to that connection, you can do it by playing pickup basketball. Maybe that's a site of it. Gardening's a side of it. Dancing's a side of it, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
- [06:34]
Amanda Doyle
I love that when you're saying that joy is not easy. It has everything to do with the fact that we are all going to die. And it's so counterintuitive because when people think of joy in the very shallow sense that you don't understand it as is this, like, running away from the fact that we're gonna die, but it's. You are going headlong through it. And there's a part where you say that going to that place where we all realize we're gonna die is reminding us that we don't belong to an institution or to a party, to our state, but to you, say, but to each other, which we must practice and study and sing and dream and celebrate belonging to each other as though our lives depend on it. It's not the escapism, it's the reality.
- [07:27]
Ross Gay
Yeah. Yeah. It's not escaping, it's entering. Yeah. It feels like joy is something that, you know, it's sort of available. The connection, the fundamental connection or the entanglement. It's available, but you're right, you don't escape there. You enter there.
- [07:41]
Glennon Doyle
You know, I think that that's where maybe I have thought about joy incorrectly. I think that my soul has known that the connection piece was very important. But I always just thought joy was about how it made me feel, like the joy was mine. I never have considered this idea that it was actually about the connections with people and things and trees. What you just said was so profound to me. I want to talk about the Book of Delights because, my goodness, your work is just outrageous. Can you tell us how that project came about and why?
- [08:21]
Ross Gay
Yeah. I was having a nice day. One day that must have been lovely.
- [08:29]
Amanda Doyle
It's a great way to start a project.
- [08:31]
Ross Gay
I know. I was, like, in the middle of, like, a moment of delight, actually. I was at a writing residency in Italy, and I was walking along, really, And I was sort of like, you know, the birds were singing and the bees were, like, buzzing along and there's sunflowers. And I was like, man, this is so delightful. And I was like, I should write a little essay about it. And then, really, it was like a bird flew in my head and was like, do it every day for a year. Write an essay about something that delights you every day for a year. And then that happened to be, like, two weeks from my birthday. You know, that was probably, like, early or mid July that that happened. My birthday is August 1st. So I was like, all right, let me start on my birthday and then let me give myself these rules, these little constraints that'll make it easy. One of them was, like, to write them quickly. So I wrote them all in, like, 30 minutes, and then I did them daily and I wrote them by hand. And that's how it started. That's how I started.
- [09:23]
Abby Wambach
I didn't understand. This is my first introduction to you. Then I read everything that you. I thought, oh, a book of delights. This will be some light, fun reading. And then I get to day one, Ross, and you say something about, oh, you're getting dressed and you're putting on flowered socks and all of this beautiful clothes. And you say, it's a little bit of healing for my old man. Shirley. Who would warn us against wearing red lest we succumb to some stereotype. I barely even know. A delight that we can heal our loved ones, even the dead ones. We are healing backwards, Ross.
- [10:06]
Ross Gay
I think so. Because they're in us, aren't they? They're still with us. Yeah. Yeah, I think.
- [10:12]
Abby Wambach
I think. I think you're right that when we do things in our lives right now that we were warned against by our parents, we are not only healing future generations, but backwards.
- [10:25]
Ross Gay
Yeah, I often think of that. I was just with my mother this last weekend, and I think, you know, when you're around your mother, you're kind of like, you know, more acquainted with some of this stuff. And I was, like, thinking. We were talking about my dad and I was just thinking, oh, in addition to, like. Oh, I would have loved to. He died when. When I was, like, 29. So I was, you know, like, not quite old enough to be grown with him. And I have often thought it'd be so nice to be a full on adult, like an aging person with my dad, to have that conversation. But also that so much of, you know, his sort of stuff that felt like difficulty between us. The older I get, of course, the more I sort of feel like I understand that difficulty. But I also feel like in ways there are some of his sort of wounds that, that I'm able because I, you know, because, you know, you look at your hands and it's like, here he is, you know, or whoever it is, they're there with us. You're like, okay, well, I'm gonna put that thing to the side. We don't have to like carry that wound or that terror or that thing along. I do feel like that's part of what we get to do.
- [11:39]
Abby Wambach
It's such a beautiful act of freedom because I always think of me having to heal my parents or past generations by like telling them everything they did wrong and then making them go to therapy and then write and maybe just not maybe just living more freely and then imagining that as this backwards healing is a beautiful thing. Can I ask you about this insistence upon joy and gratitude? It makes me think a lot about our trans friends right now, who. It seems like in those groups, trans and queer people, there's just this adamant insistence upon trans joy, queer joy right now that can feel confusing, I think, to outside people, because, wait, everyone's under attack right now, and as you said, have always been under attack, but these are serious times. And so it feels as if, if people who are being marginalized or being under attack are constantly having to fight for their lives and they are never getting to experience the things that make life worth living.
- [12:50]
Ross Gay
That's it right there, it seems to me. Yeah, it seems that's, that's it fundamentally, like the joy. The joy is like the reason to be alive. And if you lose track of that, you're like, you know, you know, fighting is the reason to be alive. That's kind of a meager existence.
- [13:05]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [13:06]
Ross Gay
But if connection is the reason to be alive, that makes perfect sense to me.
- [13:11]
Abby Wambach
Mm. Yeah, it's the boldest.
- [13:13]
Ross Gay
I mean, I think that's part of my. Part of what I'm sort of why. Why I'm curious about this. You know, meditate. Thinking hard about joy is because it's. And it's a little bit of this other thing, which is like, sometimes people will ask the question of, like, joy as resistance, and I want to kind of refuse that. And the reason I want to refuse it is because resistance implies, I think that what isn't joy? What is unjoyous or whatever, the incursions to joy are larger than what constitutes joy. What I feel like is that joy is actually the truth. And so it's not resistance. I don't know if this is accurate either, but it's like the offenses of joy.
- [14:01]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:03]
Ross Gay
It's bigger. It's bigger. It's just bigger, you know, which is why it's. It's dangerous.
- [14:11]
Amanda Doyle
Yes. It reminds me of your loitering, where if the whole world is a no loitering sign and if the system is. That must be consuming, must not be loitering.
- [14:22]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [14:22]
Amanda Doyle
Then what is disruptive and appears resistant to that.
- [14:26]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [14:27]
Amanda Doyle
Is relaxing, is not being consumptive.
- [14:31]
Ross Gay
It's a kind of a refusal that chooses each other over this thing that we're supposed to be convinced is the truth. You know, I'm glad you mentioned that essay. Yeah. I think that's one of those essays where it kind of gets to. That it's such a kind of assault to a system to not be chasing after it, you know, or something. It's such an assault.
- [14:59]
Amanda Doyle
And that the system only exists because of the assimilation to the system.
- [15:03]
Ross Gay
Yeah, totally. Totally. I've been thinking lately about, like, a buddy of mine and I were talking and that there are all of these kind of modes of authority. And the modes of authority have to make us imagine, you say the state or something, but you can say other kinds of authority have to convince us that they actually are the suppliers of care. And once we fully have sort of assimilated that, we're like, well, we will wait for the system. We'll wait for it to distribute the care. Because they are the ones who have access to the care. And they do a good job of, like, making that the case that they have access, but it's also not. It's not. It's a thing that we sort of submit to. You know, we submit. We sort of have to. It feels like we have to sort of forget that we are, in fact the providers of each other's care all the time, every day.
- [15:57]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [15:57]
Ross Gay
Even if it means, like, someone walking by and being like, oh, yeah, I got some seeds for you. Like, we were just walking down the street the other day and we're looking at these trees, and dude came outside and we're like, what kind of trees are those? He was just, like, taking his trash out. He's like, oh, you know what? And he looked on his phone. He did his little thing on the phone. I guess you could tell what kind of trees they are. And he's like, oh, it's a sweet gum. It's such a, like a little interaction, a little brief, fleeting caretaking interaction that is the fabric of our lives, you know, and it's the kind of thing that makes you be like walking down the street and you see someone needing help, carrying something and you're like, oh, I got you, I got you, or doing this and that. But it feels like that kind of fabric of care. We have to be convinced that it's not available or it's not true and that the, the way that the care comes is from the kind of administrative care. But the evidence to me is that the administrators of care are the withholders of care.
- [17:04]
Abby Wambach
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- [18:06]
Glennon Doyle
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- [18:37]
Amanda Doyle
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- [19:41]
Abby Wambach
ROSS we have this friend who was just at our house for a while and she has an interesting take on money, which we talked about forever that night. And she just believes it comes in and out. And so she does not save.
- [19:54]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [19:55]
Abby Wambach
And it reminds me a lot of your. Not how your rule about not hoarding the delights, not saving up the delights and having to do them each day. But it's because she believes fully and thinks belief means you act on it until it's real, too, that the community that she's been taking care of with this money that flows in and out will be there when hers is gone. And she just has to live that way to believe that life is as beautiful as she thinks it is.
- [20:22]
Ross Gay
The principle of sharing, that's the other thing. The question of joy is also like when you're sort of thinking about connection, you're sharing, sharing. And like, sharing is also an offense to who needs us to buy things, who needs us to believe that? And you see it like all these kind of instances of like. Of what you might call radical care. But it's just like care, you know, are often made illegal.
- [20:50]
Abby Wambach
Yeah, well, yes, yes.
- [20:53]
Amanda Doyle
Giving people anything in the street is made illegal giving. And we've even institutionalized that. How do we care for each other? Okay, support this 501C3. How do we get. We're looking for the. The institutions to support instead of seeing the direct through lines of connection that you open our eyes to. I'm deeply interested in your practical discipline of capturing joy. And you talk about this kind of delight muscle that we can hone. And you say that the more you study delights, the more delights there are to study. And it seems to me, myself included, that many of us have that delight muscle very atrophied because we have not exercised it. Where do people begin who believe what you say, but the muscle is not. It's not working at the moment.
- [21:54]
Ross Gay
Yeah, I love that question. I've been, like, touring a lot with this Inciting Joy book, and so I've been having a lot of conversations for the first time in a while in person with people who read the delights and a lot of people who read the delights. It's so interesting. I didn't realize this would happen, but a lot of people are like, oh, yeah, start a little delight practice, and so sweet. Or people will be like, I've done this thing with my friends. Like, this one person said, me and my, like, three friends get online every morning for, like, 20 minutes, and we, like, go over our delights every day. And her partner was there and was like, yeah, you've missed, like, four days in, like, the last two years. I'm like, are you kidding me? That's not an answer. But it is, like, a question. It is something about. There is something deeply communal about this sharing, you know? Sharing. Yeah, sharing. Sharing, Totally. It's more about sharing. It's amazing when a hummingbird, like, lands four feet away from you. It's amazing. But there's a little bit extra amazing when you're next to someone and you're like, yo. Yes. You know, actually, the other day, I was in the airport, and Steph Curry made a stupid, beautiful move, and I found myself looking around to find someone to be like, yo.
- [23:10]
Abby Wambach
Yeah. Yes.
- [23:11]
Ross Gay
That was impossible.
- [23:14]
Amanda Doyle
It's the witnessing that you talk about you witnessing in yourself, and then someone witnessing the same thing with you.
- [23:21]
Ross Gay
Yes. Yes.
- [23:22]
Amanda Doyle
It's just bearing witness to the reality. Like, you're saying, like, we live in a world with Steph Curry.
- [23:28]
Ross Gay
Kidding me. Totally. I was walking. I remember, like, so many times you just, like. I'm thinking of, like, walking by the cemetery here, and there's a beautiful sycamore tree, and evidently chimney swifts come into it. And I remember walking by one day, and a friend of mine was just sitting there looking up at the swifts, and it was, like, not quite dusk, I guess, when they start to pour out. But I had to go, like, do it. Do a thing. And I was like, what are you doing? And she's like, I was waiting on the swifts, you know? This is so beautiful to just witness other people witnessing things that delight them, things that they love, you know? That's the other thing that I think. I think that, you know, in addition to, like, that it being evidence of, like, oh, there's a lot of things to love, there's a lot of stuff to love. Also the evidence of, like, we're really inclined to share what we love. That feels to me really important. And so I think that's just like a ground that I would offer to think about, like, for people who are like, oh, man, my delight muscles atrophied. There's something about, like with other people.
- [24:32]
Abby Wambach
Yeah. Ross. My dad and I had not been talking a lot, and after I read the book of Delights, I asked my dad if we could just send each other a picture a day of something that delighted us that day. Because it's such a beautiful way to communicate who you are to each other without all the words. I don't know. It worked for a while and then I guess you stopped being delighted. I've got to start up again.
- [24:55]
Glennon Doyle
Well, we've been walking around and every once in a while one of us would go delight. And. And I do think that there's that moment of not just connection because we agree on it, but sometimes I didn't see it. And it's like for me to see my wife in the light.
- [25:16]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [25:16]
Glennon Doyle
Without even having experienced it, I can feel my, like the dopamine, like, get pushed into my brain and I, I get lit up just by her delight.
- [25:26]
Abby Wambach
Yeah. It's cool.
- [25:27]
Ross Gay
Yeah. Yeah. And I think maybe too, like, even if it was a thing that didn't particularly delight you, but seeing someone else delighted. Yes. It's same thing, I think, probably, you know.
- [25:38]
Glennon Doyle
Yeah. Because my delight is just maybe it's not on that.
- [25:41]
Ross Gay
It's her delight.
- [25:41]
Glennon Doyle
It's her delight.
- [25:42]
Abby Wambach
I can tell you. I would have walked right by that. Steph Curry, Delight. Ross.
- [25:49]
Ross Gay
I hear you. I hear you.
- [25:51]
Amanda Doyle
The connection, though, it's again, these practices that you have tune us into the reality. You talk about how joy is more likely to be found in these spaces where the divisions between us get murky. Because our practice in our lives is to think of ourselves under the myth of being so individualized. But in these spaces where it gets a little more murky is the place where we can see the reality of connectedness more fully. So you talk about pick up basketball games and gardening and dancing and organizing as a place. Can you tell us more about the elimination of the divisions and what that does?
- [26:32]
Ross Gay
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, let me just talk about pickup basketball.
- [26:36]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah, please do it.
- [26:37]
Ross Gay
Please do. Because it is complicated. It's such a good thing. Like, you know, we all know that feeling of like, whatever it is. Like, I think a dance floor is a good example of like, where something happens and, you know, like, we get together in a certain kind of way.
- [26:54]
Abby Wambach
But, like, we went free.
- [26:56]
Ross Gay
I believe we went free. Yeah, we go free and we go free because we kind of boom. We become each other. We become a murmuration or something. But the. In pickup basketball is so interesting. You know, there's all these kind of rules, and the rules are not fixed necessarily. There are all of these. Basically, the way that it works is there's 10 people, say, on a regular court, and the winner, the person who scores the most points will stay on the court and then the next team will get on. And every single time, there's a new person introduced into the system, the organisms, there's going to be a new understanding of the rules because there aren't referees and there aren't coaches. So it's the people who are playing the game who are going to decide how we're going to play the game every single time. And that means some people never call fouls. Some people all the time call fouls. Some people, when someone calls a bad foul, they'll yell. Sometimes they'll take the ball and go to the other end of the court. There are all of these modes of sort of protests and modes of like, trying to not fuck up the game, basically. Additionally, in pickup basketball, you can be playing against someone else one game, and they can really be, you know, kicking your ass. And then in just the nature of the game is that two games later, you're. You might be on the same team. So. So it doesn't abide, like, the kind of animosities, you know, though it's deeply competitive. It also doesn't abide, like a sort of permanent rival. It doesn't work that way. Also, everyone in pickup basketball, the nature of the game is that at some point you're going to be on the court trying to find people to get on your team to play next. So you're going to be a host, and you're always going to also be a guest because you're going to be someone who says, oh, can I play? So all of these things. Additionally, you can call, next game. I'm going to play next. I got next game. But you can't call, I have the next 10 games. Which also is like, it's a way that the game itself manages. Figuring out how to keep everyone in the game.
- [29:12]
Abby Wambach
Oh, God, that's so stressful. It's like a moving, constant trust in the energy of everyone and spontaneity.
- [29:20]
Amanda Doyle
It's as if the universe is fluid. Oh, and we have to just go into the flow of it.
- [29:27]
Ross Gay
Yeah, yeah, totally. And there was this other thing recently. I was talking to a friend. Abby, this might sound ridiculous to you, but playing basketball with a friend? And I was like, oh, and he's better than me? And I was like, well, what if we just don't keep Scott?
- [29:47]
Abby Wambach
Now you're talking. Delight.
- [29:49]
Ross Gay
And the idea in my head. In my head was, like, partly. It was actually, it wasn't just that he was kind of kicking my ass. It was a little bit that I was trying to, like, think about this feeling that I had before we would play, which would be a kind of nervousness. And because I really wanted to win. I'm competitive. But I was also thinking about this other thing, which is like, well, what if the predominant objective of the game is to make beautiful shit as opposed to, like, beat each other? But then I was talking to another friend who is like, but in pickup basketball, you need a way to keep. Get the next people onto the court. And there's something, you know, you could say we'll do it with a clock. But there's something very nice about that. Clocks don't fit in that it's. It's off the clock. You know, there's some other kind of metric that's going to get everyone on the court.
- [30:43]
Abby Wambach
Is it because all those things are outer controls, like rules, clocks? That's like institutional outer control. And you are dependent upon interdependence.
- [30:54]
Ross Gay
Yeah, totally. Yeah. Like, we have to negotiate how. And it's interesting, too, that a court is called a court.
- [31:01]
Amanda Doyle
Yeah.
- [31:02]
Ross Gay
That we have to. Without judges. We are going to be the ones who determine how to make the game go, how to keep the game going, you know, which to me, I think of as, like, a kind of laboratory of care.
- [31:16]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [31:17]
Glennon Doyle
It's interesting trying to, like, create a no win, no lose situation in the thing that we call a game, which is, like, the whole point. Right. How did that work out? Did not try.
- [31:27]
Ross Gay
And me and my buddy, we would do it on the clock. Yeah. And it could be okay. And we. We kind of itch back towards, well, let's just play this one up to five, you know.
- [31:37]
Glennon Doyle
Got it, got it, got it. We got to get a little competitive. We got to, like, know I'd be scared.
- [31:43]
Abby Wambach
I know this seems like a good time.
- [31:45]
Glennon Doyle
This is going against everything I have known to be true.
- [31:58]
Amanda Doyle
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- [34:27]
Abby Wambach
Speaking of sports, I need to talk about crying. I need to talk about crying and laughing. So you talk about your time on the football team in high school and I think college. College, okay. And the kind of specific brand of kind of masculinity shaming that occurred specifically by this one coach. And when you recounted one of these horrible stories to Stephanie, you explained to her that you couldn't really share what had happened with anyone back then because if you would have, you would have started crying. And Stephanie said, and what would have happened if you started crying? And you said, I would have had to kill everyone and everything around me. And she said, why?
- [35:21]
Ross Gay
That's a pretty good question, isn't it?
- [35:23]
Abby Wambach
So right though it's so deeply. I understand. So can you tell us why? Why?
- [35:29]
Ross Gay
Yeah. And two, I want to say that the thing that's even like just as interesting to me is that it had never even occurred to me that, oh, that feeling I had was I was about to cry. Like, it took me 25 years until I was playing ball with this kid who every once in a while we wouldn't keep score. And I was talking to him because he's sort of easy with tears. It's not a big deal with him. And I was explaining to him, I was like, oh, damn. I realized I spent like the last 25 years every time I tell this story, even to myself, I never acknowledged that, oh, the thing that was about to happen to you is that you were about to start crying. And then, yes, like, and then.
- [36:12]
Abby Wambach
It'S.
- [36:13]
Ross Gay
Such a great conversation because you can imagine it's just a person who's like, not hung up in that way and who's like, oh, well, why would you have to kill everyone?
- [36:19]
Amanda Doyle
Naturally sounds like a disproportionate response to.
- [36:24]
Abby Wambach
Situation, but it's not.
- [36:26]
Ross Gay
But it's not right. You can go in a corner and cry.
- [36:28]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [36:31]
Ross Gay
And it takes me like whatever, 60 pages in that essay to kind of try to figure out like what that's about. But I do feel like part of it in this long way is that, you know, so much of the training, that certain kind of training and being a so called man or whatever is like to be. And not only, though not only, you know, is to be not falling apart. You know, like holding it together is one way of sort of saying it, but it's like not falling apart. And so much of the training, it seems to me, is like that any evidence of, of when I say falling apart, what I kind of think I really mean is of being a creature. And of being a creature, what I mean is of having need, which all of us are mostly need, shameful as it is. You know, I think it's that. I think it's sort of like that kind of intense. And I Feel like that instance is a really interesting glimmer of it. But that was going to. That was like, evidence of, like, oh, my need was about to be exposed. And my need just something like, you know, my need to be, like, cared for or not abused, you know, in the way that, you know, coaches get stupid sometimes and make mistakes. And I also want to say that I've been a coach and have said things I wish I would not have said, you know, that was my need talking. And to have my needs shown to me at that time in my life and to not be able to register that as need for years, I think also speaks to sort of the depth of the aversion again, to being a creature.
- [38:09]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [38:10]
Ross Gay
What a sorrow it is. And just like so many of the sort of mythologies of growing up or, like, being successful or blah, blah, blah, is like eliminating your need. It's like going beyond your need. It's like being able to manage your need, you know, or, like, have no need. But to be without need means. Means you're not alive, you know?
- [38:32]
Abby Wambach
Is the need to kill everyone the need.
- [38:36]
Ross Gay
Bring it back. Bring it back.
- [38:37]
Abby Wambach
Because I already got back there. No, I'm not. You dropped it, okay? You dropped it to Stephanie, then you dropped it on me, and we're going to work it out, okay? But is the. Is it the need not only to eliminate having needs, but to eliminate anyone who may have witnessed you having the need?
- [38:57]
Ross Gay
Right, Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Totally. And which is so great. Why is my partner being like, huh? Well, what was that? Because obviously, when you're in a relationship, your needs are always being shown to you and sometimes they aren't nice.
- [39:14]
Abby Wambach
That's right.
- [39:14]
Amanda Doyle
The falling apart is fascinating because you can. You can fall apart when you're crying. You can. People say, oh, she fell out laughing. She fell. It's like when we're all together, when we're keeping ourselves together, we're the opposite of falling apart. But you need to fall apart to connect with other people.
- [39:36]
Ross Gay
That's it. That's it. And I glad. I'm glad you mentioned laughter, too, because it is like laughter is policed, too.
- [39:42]
Abby Wambach
Yes. Can I read your part about that?
- [39:46]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [39:51]
Abby Wambach
Because they know laughter is a contagion. Those who laugh are its vectors. And one of laughter's qualities is that it can draw us together by reminding us of the breath that we share, which also reminds us, or can, especially when we fall off our chairs, when we gasp for air, how we sometimes do of the dying we share, which is a pretty big thing to Share, when you think about it, maybe one of the biggest. And if we share that, why not share everything else? It could be epidemic, this sharing, which is why they try to nip it in the bud. Oh, my. We talked to Gloria Steinem about this laughter thing. And it's like, you know, I think it was Margaret Atwood who said that men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them, which is so tied to what you just said. Like, when women see men's vulnerability, it's, like, dangerous. And when women show their actual power by laughing because it's the only thing that can't be forced, that that is proof of freedom.
- [40:52]
Ross Gay
Yeah. Yep. Yeah.
- [40:58]
Abby Wambach
What do you mean by laughter Draws us together by reminding us of the dying we share.
- [41:03]
Ross Gay
Laughter is the expelling, often of breath. We breathe because we die, or breathing is evidence of our dying.
- [41:13]
Abby Wambach
It's hard to forget it. Then do a lot of that. Can you talk to us about when your neighbors came together to plant a community garden and how you eventually. I mean, the garden stuff. Just talk to us about gardening. And I want you to get to the point where you have to decide whether to put a fence around the garden.
- [41:32]
Ross Gay
Oh, yeah, I love it. And it's so sweet when you say neighbors, because my neighbor, any countryman, is like the. The mother of that community orchard. I could throw a baseball into their yard. And she had this idea. And she was a slightly older undergraduate student at Indiana University, and I would see her at the farmer's market. She was a farmer and growing stuff, but she was also finishing up her degree, and she did a project on, like, food security and food sovereignty and stuff. And she had realized how few of the trees in the urban canopy and that means the trees that the city manages, produce food. And she was just sort of thinking, well, oh, well, maybe a neat alternative, a way to sort of do something, provide a little bit of fruit, would be to have a community orchard. So she proposed it, she wrote her thesis, and then her thesis director introduced her to the urban forester. The urban forester said, well, if you have a call out meeting and a lot of people are interested, we'll let you use this acre and we'll give you a little bit of seed money.
- [42:34]
Abby Wambach
Seed money.
- [42:35]
Amanda Doyle
I know. I was like, I know.
- [42:40]
Ross Gay
And Amy, Amy had this call out meeting and 100 plus people came. And shortly after, we were. We were broken into teams. And it's just like the most lovely experience in the process of doing it and, you know, doing hours and Hours and hours and hours and hours of labor, among which labor was like all of these awesome potlucks. The most inefficient meetings we've ever been to in your life. And it was due to the inefficiency. And I say this too. Like a lot of people had like little kids and stuff. It was hard. It was hard. You know, we were like figuring it out. People were having to figure stuff out. A lot of people were having to support all of this going on and that inefficiency. I just want to say this, it just feels so important that, that inefficiency was so important and so part of like the love that I feel for those people that we were wandering, that we were bumbling, that we were like not sure and that we were trying and that we were like sharing recipes and stuff. But in those meetings, those long ass meetings, like so long, it was so great. None of us knew what it meant to be on a board. You know, we just kind of like, oh, yeah, okay, I guess you're supposed to make a board now. And then we became kind of the board and then we were like doing these meetings and they were like three hour meetings.
- [44:00]
Abby Wambach
Oh gosh.
- [44:00]
Ross Gay
People who are like on boards like, who like had different kinds of jobs would be like, oh, no.
- [44:10]
Glennon Doyle
Can'T approve the minutes. No approval of the minutes here.
- [44:14]
Ross Gay
I know, I know. At one point there's this funny story in there. Like at one point my friend Stacy, who's a farmer, and we were supposed to write the contract about, you know, these. I think when you do these little contracts with cities, they have a kind of like a termination clause. Like if it, you know, the orchard gets out of hand or no one's managing it, we're going to take the land back. And we spent hours trying to figure out, like, what do you do? And I suppose we were like looking at, we were so bumbling and it was so fun, it was so meaningful.
- [44:43]
Amanda Doyle
You know, the only termination clause that was written, Written in poetry.
- [44:47]
Ross Gay
I know, exactly, exactly. But at some point, because we had like all the tree or we were about to have all the trees and we had to sort of. We were going to have a fence for a deer fence. But there was like the conversation, the very reasonable, predictable conversation about, well, so the, the gate, like, is it going to be always open? Is it going to. Can you always get in? And you can imagine that some of us were nervous that if you could get in, shit would get broken, basically. And there were enough people, enough of us who were like, well, the openness of the gate is more important actually than. Than this other thing. You know, it was a tussle. It was like this really beautiful tussle. And you know, of course the orchards then it's been open the gates, you can just go walk in there whenever you want and. And you can also just go and harvest what you need. And it just works out. It just works out.
- [45:50]
Abby Wambach
Like pickup. It works out.
- [45:52]
Ross Gay
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [45:53]
Abby Wambach
You said we decided that somebody stealing a few trees wouldn't be the worst thing. The worst thing would be putting a lock on the dream of free fruit for all. Yeah, that's really cool.
- [46:02]
Ross Gay
That's right.
- [46:03]
Abby Wambach
That's really cool.
- [46:05]
Amanda Doyle
I love the openness of the gate is worth more than the brokenness inside. I feel like that's the story of every human. We could keep the gate closed and keep it perfectly unbroken, or we can open it and be like, it's worth the cost. Have a little busted up ness in there.
- [46:29]
Ross Gay
Yeah, it's worth it.
- [46:31]
Abby Wambach
I feel like that's why I've seen struggled to stay at churches. When I was reading to you about your orchard, I kept understanding the problem from my perspective of is like there's always a moment where the church decides that it has to protect itself instead of giving itself because of the institution of it. So it was like actually if the only church that would ever work is one that was constantly dying and having to rebuild. Constantly dying and having to rebuild.
- [47:01]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [47:02]
Abby Wambach
But the protection of it is what keeps it from what it purports to be.
- [47:06]
Ross Gay
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Say it again, say it again.
- [47:08]
Abby Wambach
It's like, okay, so there's always a moment in a church that I've experienced where you're sitting down and everyone's like, well meaning and doing the thing and go, Jesus and all the things. And then it's like, but we have to like repave the pavement and like pay for that or the new whatever when we know there's people that are hungry the next town over. So the actual answer would be we just give the freaking money and we let the thing fall apart every time. That's the answer.
- [47:35]
Ross Gay
Right?
- [47:35]
Abby Wambach
But that's not the answer. That becomes not the answer over and over again. So it's like the equivalent of just putting up the fence to me, which is like the only church that would be really, truly legit is one that would constantly out of money. So it wouldn't exist.
- [47:51]
Ross Gay
Yeah, yeah. The giving away is what builds the church or something. The giving away is what builds the thing.
- [47:58]
Abby Wambach
Yeah. Or the Being openness to dying and then resurrecting in a different way, which is very tied to gardening and Jesus and such. Okay.
- [48:06]
Glennon Doyle
Also, hold on just a second. I just have to say delight. Are you hearing the birds?
- [48:10]
Abby Wambach
Yeah, there's a bird chirping. Yes, it's at Ross's house.
- [48:13]
Glennon Doyle
It's Ross for sure. And I just, I love that so much. And like, for sure we're keeping the birds, of course.
- [48:21]
Abby Wambach
Delight. Can you imagine if we cut the birds chirping out of Ross Gay's episode?
- [48:25]
Amanda Doyle
I think it's just coming from Ross's heart, actually.
- [48:27]
Ross Gay
Yeah, there's any birds.
- [48:29]
Glennon Doyle
Honestly, like when I look at you and your beautiful, gorgeous smile and I don't know how you're doing this, but you smile while you speak.
- [48:38]
Abby Wambach
Yeah. God Squad could see it.
- [48:39]
Glennon Doyle
It's just like amazing. I don't know if this is post book of delights and inciting joy or you've always been this delightful to look at.
- [48:49]
Ross Gay
Well, my mom would say so. Yeah. No, my mom really wouldn't say.
- [48:56]
Abby Wambach
I read those parts too. Could you tell us the story of when you told your dear friend Jay that you were going to stop doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu?
- [49:09]
Glennon Doyle
Jiu Jitsu.
- [49:10]
Ross Gay
Jiu Jitsu. Yeah.
- [49:12]
Abby Wambach
That was big for me to read and understand. Why did you decide to stop?
- [49:18]
Ross Gay
Well, and this is good because I sort of wanted to come back a little bit, circle back in some way to that Atwood observation. And that was part of what that fear of crying was. That's sort of the witness of my need. But also in that, the way that she put it and the way that you said it is the witness of my frailty. And when your whole life is built around obscuring the fact or like tending to this fantasy of not being frail, that is such an assault when. When someone witnesses the fact that. No, no, you're. You're actually frail. You're actually frail. But partly this, this to see if I can bring this over to the J. Me and Jay. I remember. Yeah, I was on the, on the phone and I was just doing, you know, like little. I don't know, I was just taking this Jiu Jitsu, not a class, whatever you call it. And I was so. I was learning things, you know, and it's also good to say that kind of in the beginning of this, sometimes people ask, well, where do you feel like you started to learn some of this, Some of this stuff I started to learn when I was reading Pema Chedron, who has a book called Things Fall Apart. Which I completely forgot until after I wrote this. This book in this essay. And who feels like a. Like a real teacher to me? Like, when I was completely losing it in my 20s, my friend Nora gave me a copy of the book the Wisdom of no Escape. And it does feel like a book that kind of, like, kept me around a little bit. But when I was talking to Jay, I had been enough. Like, I was starting to learn things about observing myself, which had not been a thing that I had necessarily. I was learning how to do that. And I got to talk about in the book. I make fun of myself a little bit because, you know, the language that we. You now be like, well, how could you feel into that?
- [51:17]
Abby Wambach
Yeah, yeah.
- [51:20]
Ross Gay
You know, I had no idea what the hell that meant. You know, Then I'd be like, no, no. But. But at that point, I started to sort of learn, like, oh, yeah. If I felt into it, I'm like, I'm defensive all the time. I'm ready to be at war all the time. And the manifestation of that being all kinds of things like not feeling good, feeling on edge, feeling paranoid feeling, et cetera, et cetera, and just having this sort of insight. At some point, I have to say, I don't know if it hurt that I had got this little weird injury where, I don't know, my rib didn't break, but something happened, but it coincided. It wasn't like this sort of like, it wasn't just a moment of insight.
- [52:06]
Abby Wambach
It was also a rib.
- [52:07]
Ross Gay
I think it might also have been a little bit of rib.
- [52:10]
Amanda Doyle
That's beautiful, too. End Both.
- [52:12]
Ross Gay
That's good, too.
- [52:13]
Amanda Doyle
Sometimes it takes a broken rib and really feeling into it.
- [52:17]
Ross Gay
Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. My broken rib, which was hiding my soul.
- [52:21]
Abby Wambach
Exactly. Protecting your heart.
- [52:23]
Ross Gay
Protecting my heart. And I was like, yeah, I want to figure out how not to do things that cultivate the sense of defensiveness. And I told him over the phone, me and Jay are like, you know, been besties for a long time. And he probably knows me as well as most anyone from a long time. See my changes and everything, too. And I remember hearing over the phone, I imagined hearing over the phone, him making a face that was like a face of like, huh, that's different, or. Or a face of dis. Recognition. I couldn't see him. There was not yet a thing called zoom. And I also was like, I just sort of made it up, I think. I. I. There was a quiet. And I imagined that he was not recognizing me. And the feeling I had was of my body actually sort of dissipating, like my body sort of breaking into particles and floating around the room. It was a strange and really moving feeling because it, again, talking about witness, it sort of made me feel like, oh, right. What does it mean to sort of encounter, at least, even if only in your mind, what it means for someone who you love and by whom or through whom you've sort of understood yourself, who might not quite recognize you? The idea of that. Just the idea of it, because like I said, I think Jay was probably like, oh, cool. But the feeling was like, oh, man, what if this dude doesn't recognize me?
- [54:02]
Abby Wambach
And is it also the fear of the. Because who knows what Jay was thinking? But, you know, reimagining, like yourself in that situation, the fear we have when someone that we know ourselves through starts to change something about themselves, then we feel like we're disintegrating. Because then it reminds me of, like, when somebody gets sober in a relationship or somebody, and then the other person's like, but that's not what we do.
- [54:29]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [54:29]
Abby Wambach
And does you looking in a mirror gonna mean that I need to look at myself?
- [54:33]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [54:34]
Abby Wambach
It's a disintegrating moment for everybody.
- [54:37]
Ross Gay
Totally. Totally. I think of that as, like, the many good lessons of, like, being in couples therapy is to be like, practicing witnessing each other change. Yeah. Witnessing with love, each other change, which obviously can require some grieving, I guess. Oh, that's not partly. It's like, what a relief to be in my experience, to be like, oh, this pattern I have of just knowing everything about you without asking you, which is like the pattern of knowing everything about everything without actually checking in. Well, what do you love? You know, what are your values? What are your, you know, what are we doing that to have to learn that? Oh, that's a thing that I do. And then. Then I do with my partner, and I do it with my closest people. And to learn that, oh, actually part of being close is to be like, I will always be learning you anew. Something like that. Yeah. You know, always unknowing you.
- [55:37]
Abby Wambach
Yeah, it's always unknowing you. People should put that in their vows instead of knowing you. I will always unknow you. Because it's like, when you look at something, the closer you it. You just don't see it.
- [55:48]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [55:49]
Abby Wambach
So, Ross, I mean, everyone on the pod squad has to hear this every episode, so. Sorry, but this is my quick reference to recovery. I'm in recovery for eating disorder right now, and so I've gained weight, which is good. Yay. But my wedding ring is too small now. And I was so upset one day. Cause it's like so tight and it almost broke. And then I was thinking, no, no, no. This is what. Ross Gay will understand this as a poet. Like, this is my new metaphor. Like, may my wedding rings just go keep getting so small that I just, like, bust them over and over again. Let's just keep growing as opposed to having something that keeps us one size.
- [56:24]
Ross Gay
Yeah, beautiful.
- [56:25]
Abby Wambach
Thanks, Ross. I just thought you might appreciate that one I didn't tell to anyone else but you.
- [56:29]
Ross Gay
Yeah, beautiful.
- [56:32]
Amanda Doyle
What you were just talking about, Russ, when you're talking to Jay and feeling like you're disintegrating, I'm just imagining we feel like someone else's that we love is changing before us. Is it like the initial alienation from that where we feel disconnected, abandoned? And then is it the. When you say, like, breath is both proof that we are living and proof that we are dying? Is it like we are active and changing? And so we have to go through that to find a new connection point, to witness the evolution? I'm imagining all these little particles and then imagining the other person and like, what is happening in that ecosystem when there is change.
- [57:19]
Ross Gay
Yeah. I think of it like, you know, again, being around my mother, I feel like, oh, man, what an interesting project to have a kid and be like, part of being a parent is to, like, really know your kid and to also be around this person who is always changing.
- [57:41]
Glennon Doyle
Oh, my gosh.
- [57:42]
Ross Gay
And part of the. The negotiation of that relationship is to be like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know you, and I don't. And I don't want to, like, lock you into this thing that I think you were or you should be. But, like, let me just know you as you continue to change. I feel like the way you put it sounds. I mean, that's interesting to me. That sounds interesting to me. Yeah. Like, it's also comes back a little bit to connection, which I think is also really moving and beautiful and complicated, which is that we do recognize ourselves through who loves us, you know, and we also recognize ourselves through people who don't love us. Yes. You know, I think that's also important to know. You know, but if we're talking about who loves us and who we deeply trust, that feels like a kind of. It is. It's kind of disintegrating. It's a kind of unmaking of oneself and reconstituting of oneself and an unmaking of a relationship and a Reconstituting of a relationship again and again and again and again and again.
- [58:39]
Abby Wambach
Yes.
- [58:39]
Amanda Doyle
And when you say joy emerges from this reality of shared sorrow, there is joy emerging from this shared sorrow that we will never truly know anyone, and including ourselves and someone else will never truly know us. And so we're, like, all just buzzing around each other, trying and trying and loving and loving. And yet we know that we're always just gonna miss each other. And those rare moments you connect, there's so much joy because of that.
- [59:12]
Ross Gay
Yeah. The way you say it, too, it makes me think that, like, a deep commonness is the unknowing. And if the unknowing is kind of a ground that's like, oh, we really have. We have a handful of things together. One of them is, like, this kind of abiding unknowing. I feel like if we practice, that can make us tender.
- [59:35]
Abby Wambach
Yeah.
- [59:36]
Ross Gay
You know, I think.
- [59:40]
Abby Wambach
Rasque, what a.
- [59:41]
Glennon Doyle
Freaking delight you are.
- [59:43]
Abby Wambach
By the way, once I started reading all of your books, I texted Liz Gilbert's one of my best friends, and I texted her and said, dee, have you heard of Ross Gay? And she said, have I heard of Ross Gay? He's my neighbor. I said, is he as great? Tell me the truth. Is he as great as his books make him seem like he is? And she said, he's better. He's even better in real life. Pod Squad, go get Inciting Joy. Go get the Book of Delights. Go get all of Ross Gay's work. You know how we're talking on the POD lately about how we need to keep leaning into anything that capitalism tells us is worthless? Ross Gay is the guide through that.
- [60:20]
Amanda Doyle
Okay?
- [60:22]
Abby Wambach
So go pick up his work. You will not regret it. And just go forth this week and unknow everyone around you. We love you, Pod Squad. We'll see you next time.
- [60:33]
Amanda Doyle
Bye.
- [60:35]
Glennon Doyle
Geez.
- [60:36]
Abby Wambach
Yay.
- [60:37]
Ross Gay
That's great. Thank you for that. So beautiful.
- [60:44]
Abby Wambach
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the POD helps you because you'll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod while you're there. If you'd be willing to give us a five star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise Berman and the show is produced by Lauren Legrasso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner and Bill Schultz.