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- [00:00]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. Today we are sharing one of my favorite kinds of episodes. The conversations with people who don't deny how hard it is right now, but somehow hand you a way to stay human and loving and alive inside the heart. The question we're asking today is how do we keep noticing what is beautiful while everything is on fire? And the person who's answering it is the one and only Ross Gay. In this conversation, Ross teaches us that joy isn't escapism. Joy is not denial. Joy is the evidence that we are connected, entangled, belonging to each other as though our lives depend on it because they do. Ross teaches us that joy is not denying reality. Joy is not a break from the fight. Joy is the thing that keeps us fighting because it reminds us what is worth fighting for. In this conversation, we talk about ways to rebuild your delight muscle if yours has atrophied from stress and doom scrolling and grief. We talk about why witnessing someone else's delight can light up your own brain. And we talk about unknowing the people we love so we can practice seeing them again and again freshly with beginner's mind instead of assuming we already do. This is not a just be positive episode. You know, we don't do that here. This is a learn to notice what's already amazing episode. This is a remember why life and love and the planet and each other are worth fighting for so we can stay in the fight. This is a let delight reintroduce you to your own life episode. Okay, let's take a breath and go find some shimmer with Ross Gay. 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?
- [02:26]
Ross Gay
Yep, yep.
- [02:27]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Go Big Red. My mom said to say to you.
- [02:29]
Ross Gay
Oh, really?
- [02:30]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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 food 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.
- [03:07]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
It's literally like my world's colliding football And Joy. Boom.
- [03:14]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
I know.
- [03:14]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
And I wanna learn how to garden.
- [03:16]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
So welcome to us. Thank you for being here.
- [03:19]
Ross Gay
Glad to be here. Thank you for having me.
- [03:22]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
So your work is about so many things, Joy, beauty, laughter, crying, dancing, gardening, healing, skateboarding, 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?
- [03:44]
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.
- [05:03]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
But I think you nailed it. That'll do. Thank you.
- [05:06]
Ross Gay
But it's wrong. It's. It's as serious as can be.
- [05:10]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Because what you're suggesting is that the experience of joy makes us feel connected to each other and the world, and
- [05:19]
Ross Gay
then makes us aware.
- [05:20]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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. Is connected to saving the world.
- [05:34]
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, I'm not only attuned to the fact of the connection, like that this black walnut tree is, in fact, 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.
- [06:37]
Co-host or guest contributor
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. That you don't understand it as is this, like, running away from the fact that we're going to 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 going to 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.
- [07:26]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [07:26]
Co-host or guest contributor
It's not the escapism, it's the reality.
- [07:30]
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.
- [07:44]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
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?
- [08:24]
Ross Gay
Yeah, I Was having a nice day one day.
- [08:30]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
That must have been lovely.
- [08:32]
Co-host or guest contributor
It's a great way to start a project.
- [08:35]
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 the 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.
- [09:26]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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.
- [10:09]
Ross Gay
I think so. Because they're in us, aren't they? They're still with us. Yeah. Yeah, I think.
- [10:15]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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.
- [10:29]
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, who, they're with us. You're like, okay, well, I'm going to put that thing to the side. We don't have to carry that wound or that terror or that thing along. I do feel like that's part of what we get to do.
- [11:42]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
It's such a beautiful act of freedom because I always think of me having to heal my parents or past generations by telling them everything they did wrong and then making them go to therapy and then.
- [11:54]
Ross Gay
Right.
- [11:55]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
And, 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.
- [12:54]
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.
- [13:08]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah.
- [13:09]
Ross Gay
But if connection is the reason to be alive, that makes perfect sense to me. Mm.
- [13:15]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah, it's the bold.
- [13:16]
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.
- [14:05]
Co-host or guest contributor
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:06]
Ross Gay
It's bigger. It's bigger. It's just bigger, you know, which is why it's. It's dangerous.
- [14:14]
Co-host or guest contributor
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.
- [14:25]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [14:25]
Co-host or guest contributor
Then what is disruptive and appears resistant to that.
- [14:29]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [14:31]
Co-host or guest contributor
Is relaxing, is not being consumptive.
- [14:35]
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.
- [15:02]
Co-host or guest contributor
And that the system only exists because of the assimilation to the system.
- [15:07]
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.
- [16:00]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah.
- [16:00]
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 that I Guess you could tell what kind of trees they are. And because I was 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 administrators of care. But the evidence to me is that the, the administrators of care are the withholders of care.
- [17:05]
Co-host or guest contributor
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- [19:09]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
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- [20:14]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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. She does not save. Yeah, 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.
- [20:54]
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.
- [21:22]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah, well, yes, yes.
- [21:25]
Co-host or guest contributor
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 care? We're looking for 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. Who believe what you say? But the muscle is not. It's not working at the moment.
- [22:26]
Ross Gay
Yeah, I love that question. I've been, like, touring a lot with this inciting joy book, and I'm 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, I started 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. 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? Wow. 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? Yes, Sharon. Sharon. Totally. Mm. 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, yes.
- [23:43]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah.
- [23:44]
Ross Gay
That was impossible.
- [23:46]
Co-host or guest contributor
Well, it's the witnessing that you talk about you witnessing in yourself and then someone witnessing the same thing with you.
- [23:53]
Ross Gay
Yes. Yes.
- [23:54]
Co-host or guest contributor
It's just bearing witness to the reality. Like, you're saying, like, we live in
- [23:57]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
a world with Steph fucking Curry.
- [24:00]
Ross Gay
Are you 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'm just waiting on the Swift, you know. 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.
- [25:04]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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. And, I don't know, it worked for a while, and then I guess you stopped being delighted. I've got to start it up again.
- [25:27]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
Well, we've been walking around, and every once in a while, one of us would go, delight. 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 delight without even having experienced it, I can feel my, like, the dopamine, like, get pushed into my brain and I get lit up just by her delight.
- [25:58]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah, it's cool.
- [25:59]
Ross Gay
Yeah. Yeah. And I think maybe too, like, even if it was a thing that didn't particularly delight you, but. But seeing someone else delighted. Yes. It's same thing, I think, probably, you know.
- [26:10]
Co-host or guest contributor
Yeah.
- [26:11]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
Because my delight is just. Maybe it's not on.
- [26:13]
Ross Gay
That's her delight.
- [26:13]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
It's her delight.
- [26:14]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
I can tell you, I would have walked right by that. Steph Curry. Delight. Ross.
- [26:21]
Ross Gay
I hear you. I hear you.
- [26:23]
Co-host or guest contributor
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 pickup 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?
- [27:04]
Ross Gay
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, let me just talk about pickup basketball. Yeah, please, 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, 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, but, like, we went free. 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. So, 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.
- [29:44]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Oh, God, that's so stressful. It's like a moving, constant trust in the energy of everyone and spontaneity.
- [29:52]
Co-host or guest contributor
It's as if the universe is fluid
- [29:56]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
and we have to just go into
- [29:58]
Co-host or guest contributor
the flow of it.
- [29:59]
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, well, and he's better than me. And I was like, well, what if we just don't keep.
- [30:19]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
God, now you're talking. Delight.
- [30:21]
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 was 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.
- [31:15]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Is it because all those things are outer controls, like rules, clocks. That's like institutional outer control. And you are dependent upon interdependence.
- [31:26]
Ross Gay
Yeah, totally. Yeah. Like, we have to negotiate how. And it's interesting, too, that a court is called a court.
- [31:32]
Co-host or guest contributor
Yeah.
- [31:34]
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.
- [31:48]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah.
- [31:49]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
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.
- [31:59]
Ross Gay
And me and my buddy, we would do it on the clock. Yeah. And it could be okay. And we kind of itch back toward like. Okay, let's play a couple. We had this long running, full court, one on one game going and. And we would like, itch back toward. All right, well, let's just play this one up to five, you know. Got it, got it, got it.
- [32:18]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
We gotta get a little competitive. We gotta, like, know, get it in. I know this is like the, this is going against everything I have known to be true.
- [32:36]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Okay.
- [32:36]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
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- [33:35]
Co-host or guest contributor
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- [35:49]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
I need to talk about crying. Okay. I need to talk about crying and laughing. So 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?
- [36:38]
Ross Gay
That's a pretty good question, isn't it?
- [36:41]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
So, right though. It's so deeply. I understand. So can you tell us why? Why?
- [36:47]
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 was that you were about to start crying. And then, yes, like, and then
- [37:30]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
it's
- [37:30]
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?
- [37:37]
Co-host or guest contributor
Naturally sounds like a disproportionate response to
- [37:41]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
the situation, but it's not right.
- [37:44]
Ross Gay
You can go in a corner and cry.
- [37:46]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah.
- [37:49]
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 of 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. 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.
- [39:26]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah.
- [39:27]
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 is 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, Is
- [39:50]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
the need to kill everyone the need? Because I already got that. No, I'm not. You dropped it, okay? You dropped it to Stephanie, then you dropped it on me, and we're gonna 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 Right.
- [40:14]
Ross Gay
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Totally. And which is so great, why it's 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 to look at.
- [40:31]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
That's right.
- [40:32]
Co-host or guest contributor
The falling apart is fascinating because you can fall apart when you're crying. People say, oh, she fell out laughing. She felt. 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.
- [40:54]
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.
- [41:00]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yes. Can I read your part about that?
- [41:03]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [41:08]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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, Mike, 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.
- [42:10]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [42:12]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Hmm.
- [42:13]
Ross Gay
Yep. Yep.
- [42:15]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
What do you mean by laughter Draws us together by reminding us of the dying we share.
- [42:20]
Ross Gay
Laughter is the expelling often of breath. We breathe because we die, or breathing is evidence of our dying.
- [42:31]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
It's hard to forget it. Then do a lot of that. Can you talk to us about when your neighbors came together to play 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.
- [42:50]
Ross Gay
Oh, yeah. I love it. And it's so sweet. And you say neighbors because my neighbor, any countryman, is like 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, 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. And 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.
- [43:52]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Seed money. I know.
- [43:57]
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 was 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 you'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 when 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, 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.
- [45:17]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Oh gosh.
- [45:18]
Ross Gay
People who are like on board, like, who like had different kinds of jobs would be like, oh, no,
- [45:27]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
Can't approve the minutes. No approval of the minutes here.
- [45:31]
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. 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.
- [46:01]
Co-host or guest contributor
You know, the only termination clause that was written in poetry.
- [46:04]
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 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.
- [47:07]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Like pickup. It works out.
- [47:09]
Ross Gay
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [47:11]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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.
- [47:20]
Ross Gay
Yeah, that's right.
- [47:21]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
That's really cool.
- [47:22]
Co-host or guest contributor
I love the openness of the gate is. Is worth more than the brokenness inside. I feel like that's like the story of every human. We could keep the gate closed and keep it like perfectly unbroken, or we can open it and be like, it's worth the cost. A little busted up ness in there.
- [47:46]
Ross Gay
Yeah, it's worth it.
- [47:48]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
I feel like that's why I've 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.
- [48:18]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [48:19]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
But the protection of is what keeps it from what it purports to be.
- [48:23]
Ross Gay
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Say it again. Say it again.
- [48:26]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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, reap. Pave 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.
- [48:52]
Ross Gay
Right.
- [48:53]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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 was. Would constantly out of money, so it wouldn't exist.
- [49:08]
Ross Gay
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The giving. The giving away is what builds the church or something. The giving away is what builds the thing.
- [49:16]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah. Or the being openness to dying.
- [49:18]
Co-host or guest contributor
Yeah.
- [49:19]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
And then resurrecting in a different way, which is very tied to gardening and Jesus and such. Okay.
- [49:23]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
Also. Hold on just a second. I just have to say Delight. Are you hearing the birds?
- [49:27]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah, there's a bird chirping.
- [49:28]
Co-host or guest contributor
Yes.
- [49:29]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
So it's at Ross's house for sure.
- [49:32]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
And I just. I love that so much. And like, for sure we're keeping the birds.
- [49:36]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Of course. Delight. Can you imagine if we cut the birds chirping out of Ross Gay's episode?
- [49:42]
Co-host or guest contributor
I think it's just coming from Ross heart, actually.
- [49:46]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
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.
- [49:55]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah. Broad Squad could see it.
- [49:57]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
It's just like, amazing. I don't know if this is post Book of Delights and inciting Joy or book you've always been this delightful to look at.
- [50:06]
Ross Gay
Well, my mom would say so. Yeah. No, my mom really wouldn't say so.
- [50:14]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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?
- [50:27]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
Jiu Jitsu.
- [50:27]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Jiu Jitsu.
- [50:29]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [50:29]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
That was big for me to read and understand. Why did you decide to stop?
- [50:35]
Ross Gay
Well, and this is good because I was sort of wanting 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 someone witnesses the fact that, no, no, you're actually frail. You're actually frail. But partly this. 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 Chodrone, 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 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 kind of talk about in the book. I make fun of myself a little bit because, you know, the language that we now be like, well, how could you feel into that?
- [52:34]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah, yeah.
- [52:37]
Ross Gay
You know, I had no idea what the hell that meant. You know, then. I know, but. But at that point, I started to sort of learn, like, oh, yeah. If I felt into it, I'd be 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 had 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. Okay.
- [53:23]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
It was also a rib.
- [53:25]
Ross Gay
I think it might also have Been a little bit of rib.
- [53:27]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
That's beautiful, too.
- [53:29]
Co-host or guest contributor
End bow.
- [53:29]
Ross Gay
That's good, too.
- [53:30]
Co-host or guest contributor
Sometimes it takes a broken rib and really feeling into it.
- [53:34]
Ross Gay
Yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. My broken rib, which was hiding my soul.
- [53:38]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Exactly. Protecting your heart.
- [53:40]
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.
- [54:19]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Or.
- [54:19]
Ross Gay
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. 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?
- [55:19]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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 now what we do.
- [55:46]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [55:47]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
And does you looking in a mirror going to mean that I need to look at myself?
- [55:51]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [55:51]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
It's a disintegrating moment for everybody.
- [55:54]
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.
- [56:08]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
Yeah.
- [56:09]
Ross Gay
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.
- [56:52]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yeah.
- [56:53]
Ross Gay
You know, always unknowing you.
- [56:55]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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.
- [57:06]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [57:06]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
So, Ross, I've been. 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 Ras Gay will understand this as a poet. Like, this is my new metaphor. Like, may my wedding rings just keep. 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.
- [57:41]
Ross Gay
Yeah, beautiful.
- [57:42]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Thanks, Ross. I just thought you might appreciate that one. I didn't tell it to anyone else but you.
- [57:46]
Ross Gay
Yeah, beautiful.
- [57:49]
Co-host or guest contributor
What you were just talking about, Ross, when you were 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.
- [58:35]
Ross Gay
Yeah.
- [58:35]
Co-host or guest contributor
When there is change.
- [58:36]
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.
- [58:59]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
Oh, my gosh.
- [59:00]
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. 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.
- [59:37]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
Yes.
- [59:37]
Ross Gay
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, you know, and an unmaking of a relationship and a reconstituting of a relationship again and again and again and again and again.
- [59:56]
Co-host or guest contributor
Yes. 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 was so much joy because of that.
- [60:29]
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.
- [60:52]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
Yeah.
- [60:53]
Ross Gay
You know, I think.
- [60:57]
Stephanie (Ross Gay's partner)
Rasque, what a freaking delight you are.
- [61:00]
Host (possibly Glennon Doyle)
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. Okay? 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. Bye. We are proud to say that We Can Do Hard Things is an independent production brought to you by us, Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for human humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us at We Can Do Hard Things on Instagram.