Transcript
[0:00] This is a Halloween special episode, as
[0:02] a matter of fact, and I was thinking
[0:03] what what's the best thing to talk about
[0:05] with a Halloween theme? And the answer,
[0:07] as far as I'm concerned, is the masks
[0:10] that we wear in life. A lot of people
[0:12] are masking themselves [music] from
[0:14] themselves a lot of the time because
[0:15] they just don't accept who they are. And
[0:17] so they change it in such a way they
[0:19] don't accept what's going on. And the
[0:21] truth of the matter is if you there's
[0:22] something you don't like about yourself,
[0:24] looking honestly at that is critically
[0:25] important [music] such that you can
[0:26] actually help a hope of changing it. I
[0:29] want to talk a little bit about kind of
[0:30] the the more serious [music] side, the
[0:32] ways that we put on masks in our lives.
[0:35] When we when we guard our true identity,
[0:37] when we don't allow people to see what
[0:39] we what we actually think about
[0:41] something, when we censor ourselves. Is
[0:44] that a bad thing? Is that a normal
[0:46] thing? Is that a good thing?
[0:48] What about the masks that we wear that
[0:51] disguise who [music] we truly are?
[1:00] Hi friends, welcome to Office Hours.
[1:02] >> [music]
[1:02] >> I'm Arthur Brooks. This is a show about
[1:04] love and happiness and that's my mission
[1:05] in life to lift people up in bonds of
[1:08] love and happiness using science and
[1:09] ideas. I'm a behavioral scientist, a
[1:11] professor at Vanderbilt University,
[1:14] where I write, speak, and teach about
[1:16] the science of happiness and how
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[1:19] an academic concept. On the contrary,
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[2:58] sure, but I hope you enjoy it. Well,
[3:00] this is a Halloween special episode as a
[3:02] matter of fact. And I was thinking what
[3:04] what's the best thing to talk about with
[3:06] a Halloween theme?
[3:07] And the answer as far as I'm concerned
[3:09] is
[3:11] the masks that we wear in life. Now,
[3:14] let's be literal about it right now.
[3:15] When I was a kid, I loved Halloween. The
[3:17] most heartbreaking Halloween of my life
[3:19] is when I was 4 years old and um getting
[3:22] ready to go out trick or treating for
[3:23] the first time on my own with my
[3:25] 7-year-old brother and we both got the
[3:27] chicken pox and we couldn't go because,
[3:30] you know, it was the irresponsible thing
[3:31] to do. We would infect somebody because
[3:33] that's so highly infectious.
[3:35] So, my dad called around to all the
[3:36] neighbors in the neighborhood to find
[3:38] out who had already had chicken pox. We
[3:39] got to go there. I think I wind up with
[3:41] like, you know, three pieces of candy or
[3:42] something. Most of the time, however, it
[3:44] was like greatest day of the year
[3:47] because of all the sweets which probably
[3:48] cultivated the horrible sweet tooth that
[3:50] I still have today. But just as
[3:52] important as anything else, it was super
[3:53] fun to dress up in different costumes.
[3:56] We'd think, "What are we going to be
[3:57] this year?" And And a lot of kids do as
[3:59] well. Now, my Later, my kids did that,
[4:01] and now my grandkids even. One of my
[4:02] sons, when his first son was an infant,
[4:05] he
[4:06] really looked forward to going to a
[4:08] Halloween party wearing his old clothes
[4:10] that he had worn when he was a farmer.
[4:11] He was a farmer when he first got out of
[4:13] out of high school for a year and a half
[4:15] where he worked on a a wheat farm in
[4:16] Idaho. He still had his old stuff, and
[4:19] it was I mean, it was authentic. And he
[4:21] dressed up his infant son as a chicken
[4:23] and carried her around the party the
[4:25] whole time. And they had a great time, I
[4:27] have to say.
[4:28] So, that's fun for a lot of people, and
[4:30] that's an interesting psychological
[4:31] phenomenon why we like to dress up like
[4:33] something, especially when we wear a
[4:34] mask
[4:35] where people can't recognize us. Now,
[4:36] that's actually more characteristic of
[4:38] carnival, where right before Lent in the
[4:42] Catholic calendar, you have Mardi Gras
[4:44] in New Orleans or carnival in Cologne in
[4:47] Germany or in certainly in Rio de
[4:49] Janeiro. These are famous places where
[4:50] people go kind of nuts. They get all
[4:52] dressed up, but most importantly, they
[4:54] cover their faces, and this leads to fun
[4:56] and disinhibition and and and maybe
[4:58] doing things that they ordinarily
[4:59] wouldn't do,
[5:00] which is great fun. I asked somebody in
[5:02] New Orleans one time who was just going
[5:04] berserk um on Mardi Gras, "Why are you
[5:07] getting into it so much, you know, doing
[5:08] things that you ordinarily would find
[5:10] impermissible?" And the guy said, "Well,
[5:12] I Look, I got to have something to
[5:13] confess in Lent." And
[5:15] I thought to myself, "My My guess is you
[5:16] have plenty to confess already without
[5:18] doing actually more." But, that's a
[5:20] phenomenon, that disinhibition, that's
[5:22] that fun that actually has a word for it
[5:25] for exactly that phenomenon in German.
[5:27] The Germans have a word for everything,
[5:29] you know, one long word that means
[5:31] something kind of complex, and this is
[5:32] no exception. It's called
[5:33] Maskenfreiheit. That means the the
[5:36] freedom to that you find behind a mask,
[5:40] mask freedom, is what that really means.
[5:42] And it's both like a literal thing in
[5:44] the case of the carnival celebrations in
[5:46] Cologne, where people have a great time.
[5:48] But also it's a it's a metaphorical
[5:50] thing. Maskenfreiheit is something that
[5:53] people get when they're when they're
[5:54] behind virtual masks. So, you'll see
[5:56] that in in in some German philosophy as
[5:59] a matter of fact, where people get kind
[6:00] of a rush from anonymity. And this has
[6:03] probably been true in your life where
[6:04] you're wearing a virtual mask by being
[6:07] someplace where people don't know you. I
[6:09] you think of a mask as being in front of
[6:11] people who do know you, but they can't
[6:12] recognize you. But it's kind of the same
[6:13] thing. If you go someplace where where
[6:15] where you're not known so that you can
[6:17] act in a maybe a different way than than
[6:20] what you're you're used to. One of the
[6:22] things that's really interesting is that
[6:24] that people often say they get into deep
[6:26] conversations with strangers on planes.
[6:29] I've had strangers tell me unbelievable
[6:31] things that I'm pretty sure they haven't
[6:32] told their spouses or members of their
[6:34] own family about, you know, deep dark
[6:36] secrets. They're not going to see me
[6:38] again, for example. I don't think I've
[6:41] done that, but but who knows? But that's
[6:42] kind of liberating to a lot of people to
[6:44] confess to a stranger in a bar that you
[6:46] don't know your spouse or whatever. I
[6:48] hope that's not the case for you. Um but
[6:50] there'll also be there's sort of a
[6:51] thrill if you're
[6:54] you know, you're you're used to being
[6:55] around all the people in your life that
[6:56] you you travel solo and and you're
[6:58] anonymous, and you can become kind of a
[7:00] different person. And a lot of people
[7:02] will actually tell me this. They'll go
[7:03] to some exotic location, they'll go by
[7:05] themselves, um or you know, just with a
[7:07] small group of friends, and they'll turn
[7:09] into a different person. It's funny
[7:11] because, you know, one of my kids uh
[7:12] went to camp one summer as a kid, and
[7:15] she changed her name.
[7:16] And and she made all these friends, and
[7:18] she used a different name the whole
[7:20] summer. And there are still people that
[7:21] I know
[7:23] uh whose kids were at camp with her that
[7:26] summer who say, "Oh, how's you know,"
[7:28] using the name that she used that
[7:30] summer. And I have to think about it,
[7:30] like, who who Oh, yeah.
[7:33] That's a mask. And that was super fun
[7:35] for her, actually. I mean, totally
[7:36] legit. There was nothing, you know,
[7:38] dishonest about that. That's who she
[7:39] wanted to be that summer. There's also
[7:41] the freedom, the Maskenfreiheit, that
[7:43] comes from what we we would in English
[7:45] call kind of the hive mind, where you
[7:48] get a
[7:49] intensely pleasurable experience by a by
[7:51] by blending into a crowd. That's one of
[7:53] the things that people get when they're
[7:55] in in periods of religious ecstasy, as a
[7:58] matter of fact. They'll find that
[7:59] they'll lose their inhibition in kind of
[8:00] a divine state. Or or for that matter, a
[8:03] Rolling Stones concert. You know, people
[8:05] are just like so into it and they lose
[8:06] themselves, that that hive mind
[8:08] experience, which also, by the way, can
[8:10] be really dangerous, of course, but
[8:11] we're talking about it in a positive
[8:12] sense.
[8:13] All that is well and good, and I hope
[8:15] you have an experience like that on
[8:17] Halloween, a very constructive, positive
[8:19] one.
[8:20] But in your life that you can get those
[8:21] things. Matter of fact, I'm going to
[8:23] talk a little bit about how to induce
[8:24] those experiences. But I want to talk a
[8:26] little bit about kind of the the more
[8:28] serious side of the ways that we put on
[8:30] masks in our lives. When we when we
[8:33] guard our true identity, when we don't
[8:35] allow people to see what we what we
[8:37] actually think about something, when we
[8:40] censor ourselves.
[8:42] Which, by the way, is happening all the
[8:45] time. We find that more than 60% of
[8:47] university students today in America say
[8:50] that they censor their own opinions
[8:52] because they believe that they will be
[8:54] canceled because of, you know, cancel
[8:56] culture on campuses. There's no nothing
[8:57] new about the fact that that exists, and
[8:59] that's obviously happening in
[9:00] workplaces. And we got to ask, is that
[9:03] bad?
[9:04] Is that a bad thing? Is that a normal
[9:06] thing? Is that a good thing?
[9:08] What about the masks that we wear that
[9:11] that disguise who we truly are? There's
[9:13] a real um uh a kind of a remarkable
[9:16] trend in psychology today to talk about
[9:19] how mental health requires a sense of of
[9:22] deep deep authenticity, that whole
[9:24] authenticity thing. I'll put I'll put it
[9:25] in the show notes, a article from
[9:28] Psychology Today, which is not a an
[9:29] academic publication, it's a popular
[9:31] publication. But it's about how to
[9:33] develop authenticity, 20 ways to be a
[9:35] more authentic person. Do you that? Is
[9:38] that a good thing to do? That's what I
[9:41] want to talk about. What Why are you
[9:43] wearing a mask? I'm going to make the
[9:44] case
[9:45] that you are. And I want to ask why. And
[9:48] furthermore, I want to know is it too
[9:50] much? Is it too little? Is it a good
[9:51] thing? Should you rip it off?
[9:53] And and and if you are and you're going
[9:56] to keep doing that, how can you do it in
[9:57] such a way that it actually doesn't hurt
[9:59] you? That you can actually be a happier
[10:00] person. Are you hiding certain things
[10:03] about yourself? Should you continue to?
[10:05] Why are you doing that?
[10:07] That's an interesting subject as it
[10:09] turns out. And there are a lot of
[10:10] different ways I could take this. I've
[10:11] got all kinds of data on the secrets
[10:14] that people in different demographic
[10:15] groups keep. I've got data on the
[10:18] secrets that men my age keep. At some
[10:20] point I'll talk about that. It's going
[10:21] to deeply disturb you as a matter of
[10:23] fact, but that's not what my purpose is
[10:25] actually here today.
[10:27] Maybe it's not such a bad thing by the
[10:28] way if you're not completely authentic
[10:31] despite the fact that there's so much in
[10:32] the zeitgeist about authenticity, how
[10:34] you got to show your feelings or they'll
[10:36] be repressed and then you'll become, you
[10:38] know, anxious or or you'll bottle them
[10:41] up and bad things will actually happen
[10:42] to you. There's a pretty interesting
[10:44] article.
[10:45] It's actually a lot written by the
[10:47] columnist George Will. Some of you know
[10:48] George Will. He's a conservative
[10:50] columnist for the Washington Post. He's
[10:51] been writing for decades as a matter of
[10:53] fact. A great writer. He says that one
[10:55] of the biggest problems that we have in
[10:57] modern life is that people are too
[10:58] authentic.
[10:59] Like
[11:00] repress yourself so that we all can live
[11:02] a little more civilized
[11:04] existence. But still today, I mean
[11:06] there's a lot that I hear because I
[11:08] teach at business schools about the
[11:09] importance of bringing your whole self
[11:10] to work. I want to bring my whole self
[11:12] to work. Well, do you?
[11:15] Um if you're an employer, do you want
[11:17] people to bring their whole selves to
[11:18] work? Hmm.
[11:20] We have to understand where that's not
[11:22] the case. If you don't want them to
[11:23] bring their whole selves to work, how do
[11:25] you feel about the fact that you're
[11:26] asking them to wear a mask?
[11:28] A virtual mask as it might be. What
[11:30] about you? What's your view on this? I
[11:33] want to dig into that and as I as I just
[11:36] mentioned, I want to
[11:37] I want to talk about the costs and
[11:39] benefits of masking yourself and how to
[11:41] do so appropriately and how to think
[11:43] about it in a maybe different way. And I
[11:44] want to make you skeptical both about
[11:47] the repress yourself idea, but also
[11:49] skeptical about the authenticity
[11:51] movement a little bit. This like so many
[11:53] other things is something that we can
[11:55] treat with prudential judgment and good
[11:58] ideas and that's the point here. Now, as
[12:01] a matter of of just basic neuroscience,
[12:06] both sides are kind of right that you
[12:08] should wear a mask and that you
[12:10] shouldn't wear a mask. Here's what I
[12:11] mean by that.
[12:13] The human brain has two systems for
[12:15] behavior.
[12:16] They're called BIS and BAS. Now, BIS is
[12:19] the behavioral inhibition system and BAS
[12:22] is the behavioral activation system and
[12:24] they're working in conflict with each
[12:26] other, but sort of in tandem as well.
[12:28] Here's how the prefrontal cortex of your
[12:29] brain assesses what you should do. The
[12:31] most important thing that it does by the
[12:33] way is it inhibits you from doing what
[12:36] your limbic system is saying when you're
[12:38] experiencing negative emotions or
[12:39] positive emotions.
[12:41] Freaking out, for example, getting
[12:43] violent, for example, running away when
[12:45] you shouldn't or crying when you don't
[12:47] feel like it's appro- appropriate. Your
[12:49] behavioral inhibition system in the
[12:51] prefrontal cortex of your brain is going
[12:52] like, "Don't do that."
[12:54] Or or you like get really mad at
[12:55] somebody and your limbic system says,
[12:57] "Go punch him in the face." And your
[12:59] behavioral inhibition system in the
[13:00] executive center, the C-suite of your
[13:02] brain is like, "Yeah, don't do that."
[13:03] Don't do that. So, all day long your
[13:05] behavioral inhibition system is working
[13:06] going, "Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope."
[13:10] Those are masks because your limbic
[13:12] system is saying, "This is you."
[13:14] And your behavioral inhibition system
[13:16] says, "Pretend it's not."
[13:18] That's kind of going on. Now, for a
[13:20] certain point, you decide that it's okay
[13:23] to go forward. If it was all inhibition,
[13:24] you wouldn't do anything. You would
[13:26] never express yourself. You would never
[13:27] say what you think about absolutely
[13:28] anything, you wouldn't be able to put
[13:30] one foot in front of the other.
[13:32] That's where the behavioral activation
[13:34] system kicks in, where you say, "Okay
[13:36] now.
[13:37] Okay now." So, you have a feeling,
[13:40] you inhibit the action related to it
[13:42] until you think that the coast is clear,
[13:44] it is appropriate, and then you act. So,
[13:46] that's how the system is working all day
[13:48] long, and what that means is sometimes
[13:51] masks are good for certain periods of
[13:53] time, and sometimes it's good to take
[13:55] them off. So, this is just good sense,
[13:57] but it's also scientific truth about the
[14:00] way that we actually act. The idea of
[14:02] unbridled authenticity is to refute the
[14:06] idea that the human brain is working the
[14:08] way it's supposed to.
[14:10] Like that the prefrontal cortex
[14:12] shouldn't inhibit anything, and I think
[14:14] that that's ridiculous, and and my guess
[14:17] is that you agree with that. The
[14:18] question is, how much is too much,
[14:21] and and how do we know?
[14:23] Okay now, here's where masking or
[14:26] behavioral inhibition. This is virtual
[14:28] masking. I'm not talking about, you
[14:29] know, putting someone on your literally
[14:31] on your face.
[14:32] Where it becomes a problem with respect
[14:34] to our quality of life, our mental
[14:36] health, our happiness, contentedness,
[14:38] satisfaction, enjoyment of life.
[14:40] It's a problem when it has two
[14:42] characteristics. It's involuntary,
[14:44] and it's consistent. In other words,
[14:47] you're masking yourself when you don't
[14:48] want to, and you're doing it all the
[14:50] time. There are people who are kind of
[14:52] living like that, who are living in a
[14:54] kind of a permanently repressed state.
[14:56] And you might say it's completely
[14:57] voluntary if you're doing it, but it
[14:59] might be because you believe that if you
[15:01] say anything that you think that that
[15:03] something will change in your life
[15:05] that's so dramatic that you just can't
[15:07] face it, and there's nothing that you
[15:09] can actually do about it. There And
[15:11] there are some sort of hilarious cases
[15:13] of this.
[15:14] Um I heard of a guy who he when he was
[15:17] in ninth or 10th grade, he transferred
[15:19] from one school to another halfway
[15:22] across the country, and on his first day
[15:24] of school in the new school for whatever
[15:26] reason you're like
[15:27] he he pretended he had a British accent.
[15:30] Okay, he's an American guy.
[15:31] And he pretends he has a British accent.
[15:33] I'm sure it was terrible. But what are
[15:35] the ninth graders now? And and he had to
[15:37] keep doing that for the rest of the year
[15:39] having to beg his parents to let him
[15:41] transfer schools at the end of the year
[15:43] so he could you know take off that mask.
[15:46] For him it felt involuntary and it had
[15:48] to be completely consistent or constant
[15:50] or or he would have looked like he was
[15:52] insane which actually he might have
[15:54] been. There other cases where we see
[15:57] this as well that's not just
[15:59] you know a dumb thing that somebody does
[16:01] as an adolescent.
[16:03] Um for example, in the workplace there
[16:04] are cases in which this actually
[16:06] obligatory. Some of you have ever have
[16:08] heard of something called the Pan Am
[16:09] smile. This is the classic mask. Pan Am
[16:13] for you know you you youngsters is an
[16:15] airline that ceased to exist but um but
[16:19] in my childhood Pan Am was
[16:21] with TWA with those are the two big
[16:23] American Airlines and and and Pan Am was
[16:26] the most professional of them all as a
[16:27] luxury airline and back in the old days
[16:29] people would get dressed up and you know
[16:31] wear a suit to go get on a plane because
[16:33] it was kind of unusual. I certainly
[16:34] didn't fly at all until I was you know
[16:36] probably
[16:38] 14 or 15 years old and um on the other
[16:40] hand my kids had passports um that they
[16:42] got as soon as they got their social
[16:43] security number when they were 6 weeks
[16:45] old so you know things change. It's been
[16:47] democratized. But anyway, Pan Am had
[16:49] this ultra ultra professional crew of
[16:51] flight attendants. And and what they
[16:53] were instructed to do was to be just
[16:55] unfailingly pleasant because travel was
[16:58] a big deal. Now I get it they're
[17:00] supposed to be today too. I mean fly the
[17:01] friendly skies. Yeah. And um but in this
[17:05] case they were instructed on how to do
[17:08] so. They had to smile at passengers no
[17:10] matter what they were feeling. I mean
[17:12] this is literally the instruction that
[17:13] they got. Um you can read about this in
[17:16] um an interesting journal called Humor,
[17:18] International Journal of Humor Research,
[17:21] a 1993 article called This is an old
[17:23] article, but it still is really good.
[17:25] Not all smiles were created equal, the
[17:27] differences between enjoyment and
[17:28] non-enjoyment smiles, where it talks
[17:31] about the Pan Am smile. And you know
[17:33] perfectly that when somebody smiles at
[17:35] you and they're not feeling it, what it
[17:36] looks like. It's like this.
[17:38] If I smile at my wife and I'm not
[17:40] actually happy, like
[17:42] I'm in a world of hurt, man. I mean,
[17:43] she's a Spaniard, so she's not putting
[17:46] up with any, you know, inauthentic
[17:48] emotional nonsense from her husband.
[17:50] Mrs. B, she's hardcore. So, I'm like,
[17:52] yeah, no.
[17:54] And she's like, what's wrong? So,
[17:56] okay, but but that's kind of how
[17:59] everybody understands when people are
[18:01] smiling inauthentically. You don't
[18:02] believe it? Well, there's a lot of
[18:03] research on the different kinds of human
[18:05] smiles. And 18 out of 19 identified
[18:09] human smiles are masks.
[18:12] Interesting, isn't it? I mean, there's
[18:13] only one that was identified by a French
[18:15] physiologist Duchenne for authentic
[18:18] human happiness. He He named it after
[18:20] himself. I've mentioned it on the show
[18:21] once, maybe twice, actually, about the
[18:23] Duchenne smile. Now, what is the
[18:25] Duchenne smile? That's one that's
[18:26] authentically happy. And how do we know
[18:28] when somebody's authentically happy? We
[18:30] don't actually look at the shape of the
[18:31] mouth so much. We We actually see in the
[18:33] face, which is just full of these tiny
[18:35] little muscles, the inadvertent or the
[18:38] involuntary activity of the zygomaticus
[18:40] major and orbicularis oculi muscles,
[18:43] which is in the top of the cheeks,
[18:44] pulling up the corners of the mouth, and
[18:46] the and around the eyes, which will
[18:48] actually create crow's feet when you
[18:50] scrunch up your eyes.
[18:52] This is involuntary. It's when you're
[18:54] happy this happens, when you have this.
[18:56] The limbic system gets this little
[18:58] ventral tegmental area tapped and you
[19:00] feel joy, and you're like
[19:02] somebody says I love you. Or for that
[19:04] matter, by the way, if you take a big
[19:06] bump of cocaine, which I hope you're not
[19:08] doing, your thrifty brain will will the
[19:10] signal through and you'll be like
[19:12] and you'll you'll you'll react in this
[19:14] particular way." Well, every other human
[19:16] on the planet, without knowing any
[19:18] facial anatomy, knows the zygomaticus
[19:21] major and orbicularis oculi muscles, not
[19:23] by name, but they know when they see a
[19:25] happy smile when they don't. And when
[19:26] they see the Pan Am smile,
[19:28] "Welcome aboard." When somebody's having
[19:30] a bad day, that actually affects them.
[19:32] Tons of interesting research on that in
[19:34] Frontiers of Psychology, Apex Journal of
[19:36] Psychology,
[19:37] an interesting article in 2026, new one,
[19:40] called Cultural Differences in the
[19:41] Production of Emotional Facial
[19:42] Expressions, a review, talks about a
[19:44] little bit about this. So, the bottom
[19:46] line is that the Pan Am smile was
[19:49] probably a pretty bad policy. Now, I'm
[19:51] not saying that if a flight attendant is
[19:53] having a crummy day, you know, you get
[19:55] on, you say, "Good morning." She says,
[19:56] "Screw you." I don't I don't think that
[19:57] that's a good policy, either.
[20:00] The point is that the mask itself was
[20:02] probably ineffective.
[20:04] And and and it was also hard on the
[20:07] flight attendants. So, it didn't help
[20:09] the passengers, and it was actually bad
[20:11] for the
[20:11] for the flight attendants themselves.
[20:12] And this gets us back to whether or not
[20:15] masks are good things, whether or not a
[20:17] little bit more authenticity would have
[20:18] been a good thing. There's a lot of data
[20:20] on the extent to which you put on an
[20:21] emotional mask like that, how it can it
[20:24] can actually affect you it can affect
[20:26] you negatively. A 2010 study in which
[20:29] psychologists asked participants, this
[20:31] was a this was an experiment
[20:32] experimental conditions, to take
[20:34] customer service complaints at a
[20:36] railroad call center.
[20:38] Is there a railroad call center? I mean,
[20:40] it's like, "Yeah, I'm in a Santa Fe
[20:42] Railway. I'm going to go I'm going to
[20:44] call them up and ream them out for bad
[20:45] service." I don't know. But anyway,
[20:47] that's what the experiment was.
[20:49] Of
[20:50] a customer call center
[20:52] to take complaints for railroad
[20:55] you know, issues.
[20:57] Anyway,
[20:58] and the the people in the experiment,
[20:59] they they were obviously volunteers for
[21:01] this. So, this was a fake call center,
[21:02] but they were getting real calls as as
[21:05] part of the as part of the protocol. And
[21:07] they were told to either defend
[21:08] themselves when people were rude to them
[21:10] or remain polite and super friendly no
[21:12] matter what. In other words, give in, be
[21:14] polite, and be friendly. And again, this
[21:16] was an experiment, so it's not like they
[21:18] were training real people at a call
[21:19] center to defend themselves, to tell off
[21:21] somebody who's doing this. This was for
[21:23] experimental conditions. Chris, so what
[21:24] they wanted to know was when you were
[21:27] emotionally inauthentic, and that was
[21:29] the rule, you were ordered to do so,
[21:31] what it actually did to your mental
[21:32] health and your physical health. And and
[21:35] it was actually pretty interesting what
[21:37] happened, pretty profound what happened.
[21:39] The group of people who were told to be
[21:41] polite and friendly no matter how
[21:43] abusive the people on the line were,
[21:45] they experienced
[21:46] consider I mean significantly higher
[21:48] blood pressure than people who were
[21:49] authentic and higher cardiac stress than
[21:52] those who weren't um than people who
[21:54] expressed themselves during
[21:55] conversation, which is obviously not
[21:57] going to be good for
[21:58] your levels of anxiety and anger, aka
[22:01] your levels of negative affect. That
[22:04] paper, by the way, if you're wondering
[22:05] where they got all that, you know,
[22:06] railroad stuff,
[22:08] that's in the uh Anxiety, Stress, and
[22:10] Coping, a academic journal um
[22:13] from 2011. Once again, as always, I'll
[22:15] leave it in the show notes. Why? The
[22:17] answer is that that it created these
[22:19] deleterious impacts because that mask of
[22:22] being nice when somebody's abusing you
[22:25] and you don't like it creates what uh
[22:27] researchers call emotional labor. Now, I
[22:29] know I don't like that term either, that
[22:31] just sounds so campy, right? Emotional
[22:34] labor, why do I have to do all this
[22:36] emotional labor, man? I got it. But
[22:38] that's the term of art that the
[22:40] psychologists have used, and they found
[22:41] that when they exert this emotional
[22:43] labor, it it it it um
[22:46] breaks down their willpower over time,
[22:48] and it creates stress and anxiety inside
[22:50] the person vis-a-vis these physiological
[22:52] impacts.
[22:54] If you're like me, you got to be
[22:55] drinking when you're in the gym, and you
[22:57] have to be drinking something [music]
[22:58] clean without any calories that will
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[23:58] So,
[24:00] what do we think about this?
[24:02] Well, to begin with, you probably can
[24:03] relate to this if you've had a job
[24:06] where you've got to do the pan am smile
[24:07] or you have to be customer facing or
[24:09] something like that and the and and the
[24:11] boss just can't afford for you to, you
[24:13] know, like, "Nah, I'm not putting up
[24:14] with this today."
[24:15] But, it's much worse when you have a
[24:17] relationship where that's the case. And
[24:19] I know a lot of people who are in
[24:20] relationships where there's a ton of
[24:21] emotional labor because the emotional
[24:23] mask in which they're not actually
[24:25] allowed to bring even sometimes their
[24:28] authentic emotional selves or that
[24:30] authentic self has negative effect.
[24:32] Okay, there's a whole string of things
[24:33] that I said in there, but if you're
[24:35] listener to this show, you know exactly
[24:36] what I'm talking about. I'm bummed.
[24:39] I can't express it to my life partner,
[24:41] the person on whom I'm supposed to be
[24:43] looking as I take my dying breath. And
[24:45] that's just not good for you, and it's
[24:47] really bad for relationships, and in
[24:49] fact, that can ruin your marriage if
[24:52] that's actually happening. This is
[24:54] physically and emotionally exhausting. I
[24:57] know people who do this, who feel like
[24:59] if they actually express themselves, if
[25:00] they have a fight, that
[25:03] it'll be the end. And it's interesting
[25:04] because there you know, couples who do
[25:06] this mutually, who have this
[25:08] you know, enforced peace all the time.
[25:10] Bryce Eifler who who's my research
[25:12] director
[25:13] um and I are fielding a survey soon
[25:16] about the quality of relationships where
[25:17] we where we measure um two things to
[25:21] predict the health of relationship,
[25:23] conflict and honesty.
[25:25] Conflict and honesty.
[25:27] And and where everybody wants to be is
[25:29] high honesty and low conflict. And
[25:32] gosh, it would be great if you were
[25:34] married to somebody like that. I'm I
[25:35] don't have that kind of marriage. I have
[25:37] a I have a pretty high conflict
[25:38] marriage. I mean, it's not like abusive
[25:40] or problematic, you know, it's not like
[25:42] screaming, but you know, we argue. We we
[25:45] argue. We're both very high affect
[25:47] people is how this works. But super
[25:49] honest.
[25:50] And it turns out that in real life,
[25:52] there aren't that many low conflict,
[25:54] high honesty marriages. There just
[25:56] aren't out there. The happiest ones that
[25:59] go on and on and on and on and on, they
[26:00] tend to be moderate to high conflict,
[26:03] but very very high honesty. The worst
[26:06] ones, they tend to be low conflict and
[26:08] low on Actually, the worst ones of all,
[26:10] the ones that don't last even for a
[26:11] minute, are high conflict and low
[26:13] honesty. So, it's like you're screaming
[26:14] at each other and you're going behind
[26:16] each other's backs. That's no good,
[26:17] obviously, but marriages that have
[26:19] persisted for a while that are
[26:20] unhealthiest,
[26:22] they tend to be low conflict but low
[26:25] honesty. And the reason they're low
[26:27] conflict is because they're low honesty
[26:29] because the people are wearing the
[26:31] masks.
[26:32] You know, I was I had a you know, one
[26:34] colleague um for years
[26:36] who told me about his first marriage.
[26:37] And I didn't even know he'd had a first
[26:39] marriage.
[26:40] And yeah, you were married for 5 years.
[26:42] 5 years. By the way, it new interesting
[26:44] research shows that there's a 5-year
[26:46] itch in marriages. That's when the
[26:47] likelihood of divorce peaks after 5
[26:50] years. Um I'll do an episode on that if
[26:52] you want. So, put it in the show notes
[26:53] if you want me to do, you know, what
[26:54] when the danger zones of a marriage
[26:56] actually are.
[26:57] And and I said, "Well, what happened
[26:58] that marriage?" And he said, "You know,
[27:00] we never had a single fight.
[27:02] And we realized that this just wasn't
[27:05] working." And I thought about it later,
[27:08] you know, given the tools and this
[27:10] survey that that that Bryce and I have
[27:12] fielded, turning it into an instrument
[27:13] that you'll be able to use soon,
[27:15] um, that what they were was in the
[27:16] quadrant of low conflict and low
[27:19] honesty. And what they needed to be was
[27:21] higher honesty, even if it meant higher
[27:22] conflict. And who knows, maybe they'd
[27:24] still be married today. But that's what
[27:26] the data say, because those are happier
[27:27] relationships. In other words,
[27:30] you got to be able to take off your
[27:31] mask. That's what it comes down to. So,
[27:33] let me sum up where we are. And then
[27:34] what I want to do is what I always want
[27:35] to do, is talk to you about when you
[27:38] should be more or less authentic.
[27:41] And and and how you can use these ideas
[27:43] to construct a life where you're not we
[27:45] the behavioral inhibition system is
[27:47] still working, but where you can
[27:48] activate that system as well.
[27:51] So, summary. In a world which everybody
[27:54] was expressing themselves completely
[27:55] freely would be completely
[27:57] unimaginable and probably uninhabitable,
[28:00] I for one would surely have been fired
[28:03] um, many times uh, if it had not been
[28:05] for my masks. But, we can mask and
[28:08] unmask at appropriate times and
[28:10] healthier ways if we understand how our
[28:13] brains
[28:14] and our hearts work.
[28:15] So, let me give you three things to be
[28:17] thinking about if any of the things I've
[28:19] talked about here is been operative in
[28:21] your life, or you're worried that
[28:23] somebody you love, um, might be
[28:25] struggling with anything along these
[28:26] lines. Number one,
[28:29] uh, you need to take a break from
[28:30] yourself
[28:31] a lot of the time.
[28:33] Um, in other words, a good thing for you
[28:36] to actually do is that you are, if
[28:38] you're getting along in society, not
[28:40] showing everything about yourself and
[28:42] being a particular person that you want
[28:43] other people to see. You probably will
[28:46] very usefully take a a vacation from
[28:48] that from time to time.
[28:50] I recommend that almost everybody take a
[28:52] break from their own personality and
[28:54] become more authentic in a positive way
[28:57] that you can. I'm not talking about
[28:58] doing anything stupid or rash from time
[29:01] to time. You know, maybe the
[29:03] responsibility of wearing your mask all
[29:05] the time is something you need to take
[29:06] some time away from. For most people
[29:07] that I've found it it actually is. I
[29:09] recommend, you know, engaging in
[29:12] hive-like activities from time to time
[29:14] where you can really become
[29:15] disinhibited. For example, if you're
[29:16] you're you're somebody who doesn't
[29:17] really like to show your emotions very
[29:19] much, but you have a turbulent inner
[29:21] life. Going back to my earlier episodes,
[29:23] if you're a mad scientist, but you
[29:25] actually are an introvert, that probably
[29:27] means that you're experiencing high
[29:29] levels of affect, but but but you're
[29:32] showing low levels of negative affect
[29:34] because your your personality and your
[29:36] affect profile are not in sync. And
[29:38] there's a lot of people like that.
[29:39] That's largely a genetic phenomenon. If
[29:41] that's the case, then hive-like
[29:43] activities are a vacation
[29:45] from your mask. You're taking off your
[29:47] mask someplace. That means a concert.
[29:49] That means a religious activity or
[29:52] whatever it happens to be where where
[29:54] you can actually be your uninhibited
[29:56] self and not feel bad about it. Or go
[29:58] away and be a different person, like my
[29:59] daughter.
[30:00] Change your name at camp. I mean,
[30:03] that's not going to work so well for
[30:04] somebody like me, but you get my point.
[30:06] Maybe there's something you can actually
[30:08] do, you know, I'm going to go away and
[30:10] even though I'm a really kind of a
[30:12] buttoned-up person, I'm going to go have
[30:13] a crazy weird adventure on my own
[30:16] vacation. And I'm furthermore, I'm going
[30:17] to go right now and no one. By the way,
[30:19] I was talking to somebody but an actor,
[30:21] a really famous actor some months ago,
[30:24] and he told me that he does this
[30:25] regularly where he goes to parts of the
[30:27] world where nobody recognizes him at
[30:30] all. And he says he really becomes a
[30:32] different person and it is a source of
[30:33] resuscitation for him.
[30:36] So, now how did one other story actually
[30:38] that that that that where I don't have
[30:40] to guard the anonymity of the of the
[30:43] people. Malcolm Forbes, who, you know,
[30:45] the the billionaire, father of Steve
[30:47] Forbes, who's run for president several
[30:49] times, he realized that he needed to do
[30:52] this every weekend. You know, he was
[30:54] really buttoned-up all He was a
[30:56] like a finance guy, and he was all every
[30:59] all all week he was just, you know,
[31:02] proper and good, and he figured out that
[31:04] on the weekends he needed to be a
[31:05] different guy. So, he basically joined a
[31:07] motorcycle gang when he was 50 years
[31:10] old.
[31:10] People didn't know for a long time that
[31:12] when they found out they thought it was
[31:13] really, really funny. That was taking
[31:14] off his mask, and you need to do a
[31:15] version of that, too.
[31:17] Maybe.
[31:18] Probably. Number two, you have to be
[31:21] able to take your mask off around the
[31:22] people who love you and you love. That's
[31:25] critically important. Don't be my friend
[31:27] who just
[31:28] wandered away from his relationship
[31:29] because he was in the wrong quadrant of
[31:31] honesty and conflict. Low conflict
[31:34] because low honesty. That's
[31:36] unsustainable if you truly if you truly
[31:38] love somebody. Many years ago when my
[31:41] one of my grown kids, uh not my
[31:43] daughter, but this is my son Carlos,
[31:45] he was at um preschool. He was 3 years
[31:47] old.
[31:48] Four. And uh he was in a rainbow room.
[31:51] And um
[31:52] I went to pick him up, and I I, you
[31:53] know, I I got a glimpse of him playing
[31:56] at the end of school. Um he didn't see
[31:58] me, and he's having a great time. I
[32:00] mean, he's just goofing around, he's
[32:01] laughing, and running back and forth,
[32:03] and suddenly he turned around and he saw
[32:05] me from across the room. As soon as he
[32:07] saw me, his face went from a smile into
[32:10] the like this, curled up, and you know,
[32:13] you can tell when a kid is when the
[32:14] waterworks are about to start, usually
[32:16] because the left side of their face
[32:18] starts to kind of twitch a little bit.
[32:20] The reason for that is because the
[32:21] negative emotions are more dominant in
[32:24] the right hemisphere of the brain, which
[32:25] can controls the left side of the face.
[32:28] And and that started to happen, and he
[32:30] burst into tears, and he comes running
[32:32] over to me and starts telling me about
[32:34] all the awful things that happened that
[32:35] day.
[32:36] That mask came off as soon as saw me and
[32:39] and I was kind of alarmed by that. So, I
[32:41] went to his teacher who's just wonderful
[32:43] and I said, "What gives? You know, he's
[32:45] having a great time and he sees me, he
[32:46] starts crying. What's wrong Is there
[32:47] something wrong? Is there something
[32:48] wrong with me?" And she starts laughing.
[32:50] She says, "It's always the same." She
[32:52] said, "They were
[32:53] effectively wearing a mask all day. I
[32:55] mean, even at 4 years old, they have a
[32:58] personality and they have to live up to
[32:59] certain standards and and and and they
[33:02] save for they save for their most
[33:03] important relationships their true
[33:05] selves even when they're little. Now, a
[33:07] lot of this a little of this can go a
[33:08] long way, friends. Don't only save up
[33:12] your bad feelings for your loved ones.
[33:14] You know, that's going to be harder than
[33:15] too. And I've done this with Mrs. B, you
[33:17] know, where I like I'm cuz I'm super
[33:19] public and I'm giving speeches and I'm
[33:22] not going to get in front of my classes
[33:23] and be grumpy or in front of an
[33:25] audience. And so, I'll be if something's
[33:27] really on my mind, but I'm just, you
[33:29] know, giving it the old putting a brave
[33:31] face on it. Brave mask on it. And I'll
[33:34] come home and I'll just complain and
[33:35] complain and complain. And finally, you
[33:37] know, Esther's like, you know, "Sorry, I
[33:39] need a little of the good stuff, too."
[33:40] So, a little of this can go a long way,
[33:42] but you need somebody for whom when they
[33:44] pick you up, you could burst into tears.
[33:47] Uh that's really, really important. Um
[33:49] I'll put a couple of interesting
[33:51] articles about that. One from 2001,
[33:53] Unconditional Self-Acceptance and
[33:55] Psychological Health from the Journal of
[33:57] Rational Emotive and Cognitive
[33:58] Behavioral Therapy. So, that's one thing
[34:00] that you really need is to be able to to
[34:02] to take off your mask around people you
[34:03] love the most.
[34:05] And last but not least is um
[34:07] consider this. Are you actually masking
[34:11] so you won't see yourself?
[34:13] And I know that sounds
[34:14] kind of
[34:15] elliptical,
[34:17] but make sure you like what's actually
[34:19] behind your own mask and you're actually
[34:21] okay with that.
[34:22] Um a lot of people are masking
[34:24] themselves from themselves a lot of the
[34:26] time because they just don't accept who
[34:28] they are. And so, they change it in such
[34:30] a way and accept what's going on. And
[34:32] the truth of the matter is, if you
[34:33] there's something you don't like about
[34:34] yourself, looking honestly at that is
[34:36] critically important such that you can
[34:38] actually help a hope of changing it. But
[34:40] so many people are running away from
[34:42] themselves all the time. And sometimes
[34:44] metaphorically, but sometimes even
[34:46] literally. I know people who just travel
[34:48] and travel and travel and travel and
[34:49] travel because they don't like to be at
[34:50] home with themselves.
[34:52] Effectively, that's happening with most
[34:54] people who abuse drugs and alcohol. They
[34:56] don't like to be at home with
[34:57] themselves. The trouble is that when you
[34:59] travel to escape yourself, the first
[35:01] thing that jumps out of your suitcase is
[35:03] generally you. Um so you're back on the
[35:05] road again. And it's worth
[35:07] being comfortable with with what's
[35:09] behind your own mask, even if it's
[35:11] appropriate that you're
[35:12] that you're wearing a mask a lot of the
[35:14] time.
[35:15] So, is that true?
[35:16] Is there something you need to deal
[35:17] with? Is there something about you that
[35:19] you're hiding from you?
[35:22] Mhm.
[35:23] One last note. Um
[35:26] Here's a literary thing that I was I
[35:27] always really liked on this subject. In
[35:29] 1836,
[35:30] a good long time ago now,
[35:32] almost 200 years ago. By the way, 1836
[35:35] was the 200th anniversary of the
[35:36] founding of Harvard University. How
[35:38] about that? And and somebody who lived
[35:40] right there in
[35:41] Massachusetts was Nathaniel Hawthorne,
[35:43] the great American writer.
[35:45] And he published a short story called
[35:46] The Minister's Black Veil.
[35:49] It's such a weird one. I mean, this is
[35:51] sort of the Edgar Allan Poe school of
[35:54] American literature, which is surreal
[35:57] and and not violent, but kind of scary,
[35:59] kind of spooky. And this chronicles the
[36:01] life of a small town parson, a minister,
[36:04] in New England, who suddenly decides to
[36:06] start wearing a veil over his face. He
[36:08] won't tell anybody why.
[36:10] Uh he gives nobody a reason, and he
[36:12] refuses it to remove it at any time,
[36:15] even when the woman he's in love with
[36:17] and engaged to marry asks him to.
[36:20] Well, obviously, this becomes a problem
[36:22] because he won't take off his veil,
[36:24] or his mask, I guess.
[36:26] And she breaks off their engagement.
[36:28] People start avoiding him, even dying
[36:31] sinners, because he's the parson. He's
[36:33] the town parson. He would go to people
[36:34] who are dying and and give them their
[36:36] last blessing and that he's and and
[36:38] Nathaniel Hawthorne, wonderful writer,
[36:40] they shuddered at the veiled face so
[36:42] near to their own as they took their
[36:44] dying breaths. In other words, they got
[36:46] the creeps. But he wears the veil for
[36:48] the rest of his life and dies sad and
[36:51] alone. Now, what is that? That is
[36:53] obviously a metaphor for what we're
[36:54] talking about here. The story forces
[36:57] readers to consider their own black veil
[36:59] and the cost that they pay in life of
[37:02] actually not coming face to face with
[37:03] who they are as people. Another quote,
[37:06] "All through life that piece of crap
[37:09] has suffer has separated him from the
[37:11] cheerful brotherhood and woman's love.
[37:14] The mask trapped the minister in that
[37:16] saddest of all prisons, his own heart."
[37:20] There's a barrier between him and and
[37:22] other people.
[37:24] What mask are you wearing?
[37:26] Time to take it off.
[37:28] Do some questions, then we'll be done.
[37:30] This is an anonymous question. It came
[37:31] in from one of our live events.
[37:33] How do you define long-term satisfaction
[37:36] compared to other types of happiness?
[37:37] This gets back to the one of the
[37:39] earliest episodes where we defined
[37:40] happiness itself. Happiness has three
[37:42] parts. To begin with, it's not a
[37:44] feeling. Feelings are evidence of
[37:45] happiness. Happiness itself is a
[37:48] measurable, definable phenomenon. It has
[37:51] three basic macronutrients. Think of it
[37:53] as a meal. Happiness is a meal.
[37:55] Uh and to be properly nutritious, it you
[37:58] need to get in balance and abundance
[37:59] three macronutrients in happiness. They
[38:01] are enjoyment, satisfaction, and
[38:03] meaning.
[38:04] Most of what we're talking about in this
[38:06] show is dealing with one or more of
[38:08] those macronutrients. You asked about
[38:09] satisfaction.
[38:11] Satisfaction is to the joy of an
[38:13] accomplishment with struggle. And that's
[38:16] what we're really looking at. The
[38:17] trouble with satisfaction is it tends to
[38:19] wear off because we're under the
[38:20] illusion that if we get the thing that
[38:23] we actually want with struggle that will
[38:25] stay, we'll keep that feeling of
[38:26] satisfaction permanently, but of course
[38:28] we don't. That's the arrival fallacy. If
[38:31] I get it, it'll be so great. If I get
[38:33] the Porsche, I'm going to enjoy it. And
[38:34] it turns out that the new car smell
[38:36] wears off pretty darn quick. And so the
[38:38] result of that is that long-term
[38:40] satisfaction requires that we understand
[38:43] it as the things that we have divided by
[38:46] the things that we want.
[38:48] And we don't need to maximize the
[38:49] numerator to get greater satisfaction,
[38:51] have more. We need to manage the
[38:54] denominator. We need to want less.
[38:56] There's a lot in that, but I hope that's
[38:58] helpful.
[38:59] Cecilia L writes in to the website
[39:02] office hours at arthurworks.com. What's
[39:04] the relationship between happiness and
[39:05] disappointment?
[39:07] It seems that disappointment is
[39:08] universal and and most happy people have
[39:10] somehow processed their disappointment
[39:12] so that they don't become a bag of
[39:13] bricks to drag around. Disappointment is
[39:15] absolutely universal and completely
[39:17] ubiquitous. Why? Because it is
[39:20] unrealized desire.
[39:22] That's what disappointment is,
[39:23] literally. You have a desire and that
[39:25] desire is not realized. Okay, now, there
[39:28] are two ways to deal with disappointment
[39:30] to be a happy person. Not to say I'm
[39:31] never going to be disappointed.
[39:33] What you need to do systematically is
[39:35] number one, you can change the
[39:37] realization. You could try harder to get
[39:38] that thing. Change realization. Or you
[39:41] can change your desires.
[39:43] And it's funny because, you know, in the
[39:45] in the subject of marriage, which I talk
[39:46] about constantly on this show, I can't
[39:48] remember who it was. I I think it was
[39:52] who said the secret to a happy marriage
[39:54] is low expectations.
[39:56] And that's kind of what that's all
[39:57] about. Is is having, you know, desires
[39:59] that are that are more modest along
[40:01] along the way. Or desires that are
[40:03] actually changing. It's not stupid. I'm
[40:05] not talking about having low
[40:06] expectations, but I am talking about
[40:08] desires that are that are more
[40:10] reasonable to what we can face in life.
[40:11] And that's one of the reasons that
[40:12] people tend to have fewer
[40:13] disappointments as they get older than
[40:15] they did when when younger. Because
[40:16] they're able to see where their desires
[40:19] are are reasonable or disordered a
[40:21] little bit better. It's not that you
[40:22] don't get any, but things do get better,
[40:24] trust me. I promise.
[40:25] Um for example, um one of the biggest
[40:27] reasons that couples divorce is not
[40:29] betrayal or money or, you know,
[40:31] disagreement or
[40:33] um abuse, God forbid. It's actually
[40:35] disappointment. That people are
[40:36] disappointed with each other. That's
[40:37] that 5-year peak in in um in divorce is
[40:42] because
[40:43] she's disappointed with him or he's
[40:45] disappointed in her
[40:47] or both. And the number one reason that
[40:49] disappointment tends to occur
[40:51] is the misapprehension,
[40:54] the disordered desire
[40:56] that my happiness depends on you.
[40:59] And so therefore, if I'm not happy, it
[41:00] means you're not doing your job.
[41:02] And I'm disappointed in the marriage.
[41:05] Okay. Anonymous writes in once again, uh
[41:08] subsequent to a live event, "How can I
[41:09] rationalize a God that permits
[41:11] suffering, illness, disasters,
[41:13] misfortunes, while appreciating the
[41:15] gifts of life?"
[41:16] Yeah, that's a mystery. Um I have a an
[41:20] unsatisfying answer to that, which is
[41:23] the Book of Job, first chapter, 21st
[41:25] verse. I'm going to quote by memory, so
[41:28] you can write into the comments I've
[41:29] getting it wrong. The Lord giveth
[41:31] and the Lord taketh away
[41:33] and blessed be the name of the Lord.
[41:35] That was Job after bad stuff happened to
[41:38] him in the Book of Job where he's lost
[41:40] his children, he lost his flock, he lost
[41:42] his fortune, he lost his reputation.
[41:45] He lost everything. The Book of Job, by
[41:47] the way, is an is a psychological
[41:49] thriller about the mystery of pain and
[41:52] suffering while remaining faithful as a
[41:55] religious person. It's basically an
[41:57] exegesis on
[41:59] you can't understand. In the 30th
[42:02] chapter,
[42:03] uh Job is actually talking directly to
[42:05] God saying, "Why? Why? I was your man. I
[42:09] didn't do anything do anything wrong,
[42:10] and all these things happened to me."
[42:12] And then God is really sort of sarcastic
[42:14] in the 30th chapter. It's actually
[42:15] wonderful. It's hilarious. And God says,
[42:17] you know,
[42:18] "Yeah, good. Fair fair question.
[42:21] But since you're so smart and you think
[42:23] that you can understand the complexities
[42:25] of the universe, you tell me why I
[42:27] created the heaven and the earth,
[42:30] the stars in the sky, the fishes in the
[42:32] ocean. You tell me because, you know,
[42:33] you're so smart, you must know. No, you
[42:35] don't? Ooh.
[42:37] Well, maybe you can't understand this
[42:38] either.
[42:39] Suffering is a mystery.
[42:42] But to embrace that mystery, it turns
[42:44] out, the I don't understand
[42:47] is the way that we can
[42:49] that we can actually be free. This is
[42:51] what people who are deeply religious and
[42:53] who suffer
[42:54] is the source of their freedom. Is the
[42:58] the embrace of the mystery per se, of
[43:00] the of the complexity of this, the the
[43:02] fact that this is something that can't
[43:04] be resolved because life is messy itself
[43:08] and we're limited in our understanding.
[43:11] I don't understand. So, I probably I
[43:13] will. Maybe.
[43:15] But I can't now. Blessed be the name of
[43:17] the Lord. And that's my last word. I
[43:19] hope you've enjoyed the episode. Please
[43:21] let me know your thoughts at
[43:22] officehours@arthurbrooks.com. Like and
[43:24] subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, Apple.
[43:26] Leave a comment. Critical,
[43:29] positive, negative, it's all good. I
[43:30] really appreciate the feedback a lot.
[43:33] Please follow me on the social media
[43:34] platforms, Instagram, LinkedIn, other
[43:36] platforms where I have content that
[43:37] actually isn't just this, a lot of other
[43:39] stuff as well. And don't forget to order
[43:41] of your life, my latest book, if you
[43:43] haven't ordered it already, and I
[43:45] [music] will see you next week.
