Ep 93: Part 6/12, An Academic Braveheart Talks Lostness, Longing & Discomfort: How to Build a Relationship with Yourself Series

Ever gotten intentionally lost? In this episode, Janelle and Andrea sit down with the inimitably honest Michael Scott Overholt for a conversation that will touch you in surprising ways. Expect Greek philosophy, truth bombs, a Bay Area breakthrough, the indirect benefit of knowing yourself and why getting totally lost might be the best way to find out what you actually need. There’s a nod to Plato, Socrates and Rebecca Solnit’s book “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”. You’ll hear:

-How self-care is foreplay for being fully human

-Why Michael got intentionally lost in a forest

-How to reframe uncertainty as an invitation

-Why the longing is actually the THING

-The way curiosity can be the best kink ever

-Why honesty doesn’t make you a hero, but does set you free

TRANSCRIPT:

Janelle Orion 0:00

Janelle, struggling to discuss sex and intimacy with your partner, not feeling met, seen or heard in your relationships. I'm Janelle And I'm Andrea. We're two midlife Mavericks sharing our own experiences, messy AF and no regrets with marriage, divorce, polyamory and pleasure. We've learned that when you're brave enough to figure out what you want and ask for it, with partners, friends, family and most importantly, yourself, you'll feel more alive and free question everything, especially your mother's advice. There's no rom com formula for this. But don't panic. Being alone matters, honey, I can't miss you if you don't leave,

Janelle Orion 0:40

what if your breakup

Janelle Orion 0:41

could be your breakthrough? Our podcast is for brave hearts.

Andrea Enright 0:45

Anyone who seeks or has found the courage to confront their fears and limiting beliefs about breaking societal norms in the spirit of finding their truth.

Andrea Enright 0:54

If you're seeking permission to be brave in your relationships and want to feel less alone along the way, we got you

Janelle Orion 1:07

great parts. It has been a while since I have discussed, had a conversation with a learned person regarding ancient Greek philosophy, and this episode is wild because it really our guest as a Braveheart, just enlightened me to our whole experience of permission to be human. And being human has been a life has been a question that has been asked for 1000s and 1000s of years.

Andrea Enright 1:35

It's true. Michael Scott Overholt, just wow, like so many mic drop moments, so much wisdom being what if you were honest with yourself? What if being uncertain didn't mean that you did anything wrong? What if you can ask what if and live in the wonder and awe and the blue of longing, instead of wanting to close that up, wanting to resolve it, wanting to solve it. What if you can be lost and stay in that lost Ness? This Is What You Get today, with our brave heart,

Janelle Orion 2:10

along with like, really, really, like, honest vulnerability from someone who discloses like parts of himself that he does not like and is willing to share because he hopes that someone else, including his children, will have permission to fuck up to yeah, really incredible permission field,

Andrea Enright 2:29

exactly we don't know what we don't know, and sometimes we don't know what we need. So anyway, oh my gosh. Listen to this episode. Enjoy.

Janelle Orion 2:42

What Janelle, welcome to permission to be human.

Janelle Orion 2:45

I am Janelle, and I'm Andrea,

Janelle Orion 2:49

and we are midway or more into our 12 part series of season four, which is how to build and maintain a relationship with ourselves, and we're very excited to have a brave heart with us today, as listeners know we interview experts each other, and also brave hearts. And the brave hearts are people who are just regular folks, just like all of us who have lived an experience for themselves of building a relationship. And so we're really excited to have Michael Scott Overholt with us today. It's good to be

Andrea Enright 3:25

here. Thank you, Michael for coming on today. So Michael and I know each other. We actually met on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn works now to help you bring people together. And we became very good friends and have bonded over the last couple years and so and I have been impressed by Michael's journey as a brave heart and as someone who has really built a relationship with Himself. So Michael, let's dive in and talk a little bit about where you are now and how you feel like you have built a relationship with yourself. Like, where did that start, and why did that start?

Michael Scott Overholt 4:15

I mean, I think the roots of it go back to, well, at least doing it like deliberately would have been probably been. Probably during graduate school, I got introduced to the idea of the care of the self in ancient philosophy. That's what I was studying. I thought of it primarily as like a simply as a personal development concept. Originally it had, it was much more of a political idea. It was I educate myself so that I can participate in the politics of the Greek polis. And so it was a way of becoming plugged into your local community and being a leader in the local community. That was the whole purpose of it. And only, only rich people could get a. In education, and only rich people could really participate in politics. So that's where, that's where I was just kind of fascinated with this idea how it had morphed over the millennia, and now there was such this, there's this huge push on, you know, self care. And I was interested in that because that's a direct translation of the the Greek epimala, heia two and so it that's where my my interest originally began. What were you studying in grad school? I was studying classics, Greek and Latin. So I focused primarily on platonic philosophy. That was just a kind of like this, this interest. I was like, okay, so I always wanted to look at it in terms of like the ancient to the to the present. And one of the big differences I saw was that the ancient was very much focused on it being like you do it for yourself, so that you can be that way for others. I remember one time getting on a plane, and the thing about like, make sure to put your oxygen mask on first before you help somebody else. I was like, Oh, now we're starting to see this play out a little bit. I would call it the practicality of the ancient idea of self care, where it's like you take care of yourself so that you can help others. Playing out in in, in things like, things like oxygen masks. I think there's even something of, maybe like the fireman's rule is called, is kind of tied to this as well, where you you make sure that that you're able to do something first, so that you can help other people. That was just kind of reaffirming to me, and it helped me as I was wading into books and podcasts on personal development when they were talking about self care specifically, what was the goal of that like? At what point did they introduce the idea of, okay, so now you're better equipped to help other people? Or did they not? And more often than not, I actually saw a lot of self care just really seem to go infinitely down in towards towards the self, and not really ever, like, pull its head up to be like, Okay, now, how does this actually contribute to the lives and impact the lives of people around us?

Janelle Orion 7:12

Just wow. I just want to say wow to that. I love that someone here is studying

Andrea Enright 7:19

history. It's amazing. Little academic voice is nice, right? Beautiful, yeah. So then how did you start applying that, and what like you got interested from this source. And then when and how did that start to play out for you?

Michael Scott Overholt 7:39

Yeah, well, I mean, it certainly got worse before it got better. What I began to realize was that the idea of self care that I began to see as being the most compelling, like the compelling option for me included things like mindfulness and and practices that that really did help me ask some hard questions. And one of the things that became pretty evident to me was that I was not particularly honest with myself, and this is something that ended up having some really big consequences in my life, me being dishonest with myself led to me being dishonest with other people. And in 2019 I ended up having an affair. Hurt a ton of people in that I was always a person who had done things the right way. It seemed like, or at least on the outward, you know, outwardly, I'd really done, you know, things, right? I had a beautiful family, and got my education with their help, I had gotten a PhD. Everything looked great on the outside, internally, like I'm imploding, and I guess I didn't realize how much of an implosion was taking place until it was, you know, it was pretty late, and that began a journey that was was very different from what I expected life to be In One summer I found myself divorced and then jobless. Actually, my teaching position was discontinued at the University of Iowa because they they had budget cuts and they let go. They let me go in the first round with it, with a couple of other people, because I just come on at the University of Iowa, the next year, they cut so many people who had been there for over a decade or more, and what had been a very secure job situation, all of a sudden was not secure for anybody and everybody. Was wondering in my department, was wondering, you know, how long will I have a job? So that began a period of we. I call lostness. I use the language of Rebecca Solnit quite a bit here with her, her book field guide to getting lost. I think this is something that Andrea and I had talked about for hours and hours and hours. And that's when the idea of like self care not only became, you know, I actually had to kind of step back and use it more as like a survival guide than than anything. So a lot of the habits that I had created that were good habits, like exercising every day, you know, being good with a with a sleep routine, recognizing when I was just over stimulated and needed to step away from technology or whatever these, these became things that I don't think I'm being too dramatic and saying, they really saved my life. They kept me out of depression I haven't struggled with, like any sort of substance abuse, you know, or anything from, you know, what was a very drastic turn of events in my own

Andrea Enright 11:00

life. Wow. So, I mean, I'm hearing that think you're equating building a relationship with yourself to self care in this way, right?

Michael Scott Overholt 11:10

That was a massive part. I think I feel like I want to be careful with this, because I don't want to over romanticize a very destructive time in my life. But it was when the house of cards that I had that I realized I had built that was very much. It was very much focused on external appearances and making sure that everything looked good, that I looked good on the outside it. It was during that time it just really came crashing down.

Michael Scott Overholt 11:41

So, yeah, like, I just want to, like, call out, yeah. Just like, gracious, thank you for your honesty, right? A lot of times people talking about their experiences, especially when you've got experts saying, you know, do it this way. We don't actually let ourselves share the parts of us that we don't like, right? That you're not proud

Michael Scott Overholt 12:03

of, yeah, definitely not proud of, this part of my life,

Janelle Orion 12:06

yeah, and so, but yet, I'm hearing is that that also led you, right? So like to who you've become today, right, which I'm we're gonna get to, but I'm assuming a version of yourself that you do really like, and what I'm holding and hearing is just the compassion of like, yeah, this happened, and I'm not proud of it. I don't like it, and it still was in service. And I get to hold myself with forgiveness and compassion through all that. And I know for me, and I would think this is true for other brave hearts listening, is that I feel less alone. I'm like, Oh, Michael, wasn't perfect. I don't have to be perfect. It's okay that I wasn't that I did something that I fucked up on. So thank you. Name that,

Andrea Enright 12:54

Michael. I'm curious if there's anything you had to unlearn as a result of this process or during this process?

Michael Scott Overholt 13:02

Oh, my God, that's a that's a massive question. The short answer is yes. Let's figure out which one, which one do you go with?

Andrea Enright 13:15

Tell us all, all of them.

Michael Scott Overholt 13:18

Yeah. I think the most relevant one to at least to begin with, would be, I mean having lived a life where it was very much shame based, and I want to be careful to define what I mean by that. What I mean by it is I equated my, my personal worth, with what people thought of me. And I wouldn't have said that I did this on purpose, necessarily, and it would be pretty easy to kind of blame it on a religious culture that I was raised in that I would certainly say that didn't help. I think another part it was just kind of my own personality that like kind of the way that I'm bent. I'm an Enneagram one. I'm very performance driven, and I also enjoy the things that I would apply myself to. Like I loved languages, I loved writing. I was doing all the things that I really did love. But I certainly equated my own sense of like self satisfaction with with what other people were giving to me in terms of, you know, what, what they thought of me when I found myself kind of in a well, in a place where all of that was removed, where, you know, things were public, things were known, things were it was clear that I had made some massive mistakes. There was no there was no like coming back from that, and so having to UN to put it in terms of having to unlearn something, I think I had to, I had to unlearn how I thought of myself, like, how I, how I, how I found, like, some energy to to do the things that were necessary. Here's a good example. I always exercised because I loved, I loved the feeling of it, for sure. Sure, and so, you know, one of the differences, I think, that I had to navigate was, you know, when I'm with certain people that I can definitely feel the heat from like I can, I can feel like there's, there's tension there, because, because they are uncomfortable with me, they're uncomfortable with the decisions that I've made. I had to learn to really just kind of sit with that and recognize that at this point, there wasn't a whole lot I could there wasn't really anything I could do. I had to just recognize that I'm human. I made mistakes. These are not things I'm proud of. They're part of my story, and I'm not going to avoid them either. And so being able to, I think, find, find some strength in just the honesty of that was, was the thing I had to unlearn. It felt like a bone being broken and having to be reset, though, over and over and over again.

Andrea Enright 16:01

Wow. What a great metaphor. Yeah, so I mean hearing that like I heard you say earlier, you weren't being honest with yourself, and that's something Janelle and I have talked a lot about with our own relationship with ourselves. And then I also heard you say you had to unlearn how you thought of yourself hat is a doozy. That's huge.

Michael Scott Overholt 16:25

It's ongoing, yeah, I mean, it's, it's one of those things where I, I can very easily, kind of, you know, in the second half of life, you know, I could, like, like, transplant myself, just start all over in a place where nobody knows me, and so, you know, try to kind of avoid that, that pass, but I haven't found that to be particularly helpful, and it, it doesn't go away. I mean, even like preparing for the conversation today, I took a walk, and I was like, I feel kind of, I feel shitty like I know that this is kind of, this is this is a yucky part of me that I'm going to be talking about. And at some point, probably around Yule Street here in Iowa City, I was like, no, but, but the honesty is, the honesty is always valuable and and I think one of the things that has kind of pushed me through, more than anything, I might break up over this one. I don't know of many personal examples in my own life where I saw somebody really fuck up, and then, like come through it and be able to really talk about it openly. And, you know, sometimes I wonder, I mean, I wonder, you know, when my kids make some sort of big mistake, maybe not the same one that I make, maybe, you know, but they could do something that publicly. I mean, everything seems to be public these days, right? I mean, with social media, it's, all recorded. It seems like what would it mean to them to know that, you know that their dad acknowledged that he that he screwed up, but then was able to, was able to stay with it and kind of deepen his relationship with himself, but he didn't just like quit. And I think that's the maybe, that's the the ancient self care part of it coming through again, where it's like, Okay, I gotta learn this, because there might be some people really close to me that I care about really deeply who may have to walk through something at least similar, you know, in terms of recognizing deeply disappointing other people, and what that could look like,

Andrea Enright 18:43

that's just the best model you could be, is just for you to be facing up to like, Okay, well, this didn't work like this. This was a mess up. And now I'm addressing it, and now I'm building a relationship with myself and and now you're really looking at it in the face.

Janelle Orion 19:01

Yeah, and what come I actually, like teared up as with you as you were sharing that, because what I'm feeling is, oh, my God, this is the role model we need. Yes, right? Like the role model in our life isn't that us as humans are perfect humans. It's like the role models that I feel that every generation of us has been missing out on as those that are acknowledging that we are actually imperfect humans, but we care about others, and we apologize, we learn from our mistakes, and then it's not a moving on, it's I just think it's so incredibly profound, this acknowledgement of the self care as a culture or community or collective learning, that you can see that your kids will actually grow and give more forgiveness and permission to them. Themselves when they will, when they do fuck up, because they will, because they're also human, because you're you are walking that path ahead of them. It's really beautiful.

Michael Scott Overholt 20:10

I want to be careful at this because it doesn't, I mean, it's, certainly, it's not a heroic thing. It's, it's, I think, I think the goal is just recognizing the human part of it. You know, there's, there's nothing. There shouldn't be. I don't think if I can, should on all of us. There shouldn't be anything heroic about honesty. But I think there is something more profound in recognizing that honesty begins with ourselves before we can really be honest with other people.

Andrea Enright 20:41

How do you feel differently having gone through this, and I know you're still in it, but having begun this journey, like, how do you feel differently in your being, in your human

Michael Scott Overholt 20:52

I guess maybe this is like a second thing I had to unlearn, but I think it addresses what you're what you're talking about. So I mean, one of the things that I got really damn good at in my first half of life was like telling myself, like, what I'm feeling doesn't matter, you know, emotionally, or my emotions often like, weren't as big as my co parents. This is not blaming her. This is more like my reaction to it was, you know, when, when we have to, when we're feeling too strong, like really strongly about a particular topic, both of us do, and we're in disagreement with that, I often would pull mine back as a result. And that was one way it manifests itself. There are other ways that it manifested itself, in terms of if I was disappointed in something, not really sitting with that sense of disappointment, but just like squashing it down and finding a different thing to do, you know, not not staying present with it, if I had done something even small, that I had disappointed somebody around me, whether my my parents or a colleague or a fellow student. Because I was in school for a long time, there was always a tendency to try to address the emotion, to kind of push it away, push it down. So one of the things I had to unlearn was the way that I responded to emotions that I didn't like, and mindfulness was was really important with this. Mindfulness gave me the ability to say, I can feel, you know, this emotion, you know whether, whether it be anger, or whether it be just sadness or disappointment, I can I can sense it here, or it could be like a sense of I had disappointed somebody else, and I felt shame, you know, or something like that, being able to sit with it and recognize, is there something wrong here, or am I just feeling this sense of uncertainty, which might be another topic to talk about, but it helped me. It helped me evaluate my internal landscape in a much more profound way, and that has actually been really enjoyable. I've learned to lean into discomfort. I've learned to lean into difficult conversations, and sometimes it's simply as as simple as acknowledging to the other person that I'm in the same room with, like, okay, I can sense, you know, what's going on here for me personally, I'm just going to name it. And I don't really like this emotion. I'm not exactly sure where it's coming from. This is what I'm what I'm feeling. And so to answer your question like, how is it different? I would say that one of the main ways it's different is that, you know, being able to being able to lean into some discomfort, sitting with it. I don't want to say that I'm okay with it, but I can say I'm not necessarily running away from it too.

Andrea Enright 24:01

Like it's been such an honor to witness your journey and transformation. Michael and I hear you saying you're leaning into the discomfort, and you're naming the feelings and emotions that are coming up, even if you don't know what to do with them, even if they're uncomfortable, even if they're confusing, but acknowledging them, sitting with them, naming them so beautiful. You also mentioned the word uncertainty. Can you say a little bit more about that massive

Janelle Orion 24:33

fucking word we haven't talked about?

Janelle Orion 24:37

Yeah, let's go over it again.

Michael Scott Overholt 24:42

Yeah. Yeah, this is, this was really fascinating to me. And I recently had a conversation with one of the dads on my my son's baseball team about this, how this played out in his life. But I was looking, I started looking into into some psychology. Studies, actually neuro This is neuroscience studies on on stress, and I was interested in it because this is something that Andrea and I have talked a lot about, was the way that so many of us in midlife, all of a sudden find ourselves in places we've never been before, and we maybe we find that, you know, the the rules we played by during the first half of life, we just suddenly realized they no longer apply, like they they don't work, and we're in this different space. And it's, it's hard, it's, it's uncertain, and I was interested in what that, that's what took me to some of the neuroscience journals that are really, really more and more just defining stress as or anxiety. They're defining anxiety as just uncertain about what is going to happen. Right? One study acknowledged that, in general, humans, whenever we feel at a sense of uncertainty, we sense that we've done something wrong, right? We've there's almost like a sense of guilt that comes along with this. And in religious culture, this can be very damaging, because there's the evangelical movement. And I don't mean to get too religious here, but I think the evangelical movement is this, this hyper, anxious response to uncertainty, like they've got to be certain about what's going to happen after death. And I mean, even as somebody, I've studied, I've studied, you know, religion for in like, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament Bible, you look at the the Hebrew Bible, there's no concept of hell at all. That was a Greek idea. The Greeks were very concerned about suffering eternally, and so when Saint Paul starts evangelizing, get every trying to get everybody to follow this guy named Jesus, he's using that culture. And he starts talking a lot about hell and about like, you don't want to, you don't want to spend eternity, you'd be like suffering. Here's here's a way out. So I think I'll just drop that. But what for me? What for myself, you know, being able to address this idea of like uncertainty in terms of all I'm feeling right now is I don't know what's going to happen. I didn't do anything wrong. I don't like feeling uncertain. I would much rather have a much more sure understanding of where my income is coming. You know, what is my purpose? You know, these sorts of things, and being able to sit with that sense of discomfort has been probably one of the biggest learning curves of my 40s. Is that uncertain, that there are gifts of uncertainty. Uncertainty, it gives you the chance to ask, what if? What if this might be the best thing that ever happened? What if this, this place that I don't know where I'm at, is actually going to provide an opportunity that I would not have gotten anywhere else? That's the change. It's the change from being anxious to being like a sense of wonder or awe about, okay, I'm I'm feeling really, really uncertain here. But you know, what if, can I? Can I ask that question, trying to develop that habit, to to address the uncertainty,

Andrea Enright 28:34

I sit in the anxiety, and then Janelle says, but what if? What if this is just amazing? Andrea,

Janelle Orion 28:40

what if this is the opportunity?

Andrea Enright 28:42

What if you could be awe and awe about this? What if we could wonder like, oh my god, shut up. I'm suffering right. But yes, you're

Janelle Orion 28:51

totally right, of course.

Andrea Enright 28:54

But the uncertainty linking that to something I did wrong is really interesting. I don't think we've talked about that before. I've never made that connection, but I'm feeling into that, and I feel like there's Oh, there's like, guilt and shame about not knowing it's gonna be okay or knowing exactly what's gonna happen.

Andrea Enright 29:12

Yeah, well, I'm laughing that your comment was like, oh yeah. I just like, show, I throw out, like, the what if, because just this weekend for myself, I was in a situation where I was feeling like anxious, sad, confused, but really uncertain. Is the root of it. Is Never based on what you're saying. But because I was feeling uncertain, I also then thought I did something wrong, and so I'm really feeling into that. So Andrea, Thanks for the reminder of what I would say to myself because I was like, because I and really feeling I knew enough to be like, I know I'm telling myself a story, but I still feel really fucking shitty, but really putting and like, yeah, I just feel like, you just like, connected some dots. Here that felt really significant.

Andrea Enright 30:02

Yeah, amazing. So, and back to the building a relationship with yourself. I think being in this uncertainty is just part of it, right? Is it? And it's never gonna go away from what I understand, but we're just managing it better,

Michael Scott Overholt 30:18

yeah? I mean, that's the goal. I mean, it's it feels like it's a regularly occurring lesson to learn. About a year ago, I had an interesting experience in San Francisco that that helps kind of cement this for me. It was a product launch slash conference in Silicon Valley. We had just taken on a new client with our company, and they had this in San Francisco, so I got the chance to go. And my my flight got, got delayed long enough that I actually had to spend another another night there, and I decided to take a walk. I love I love long walks. I like the idea of wandering, which is is roughly related to it. But I'm not going to go. Not going to go to there too much right now. I was going up the coast, and I remember feeling, you know what? I've never been here before, and I feel so alive, like I'm on an adventure, you know? I I've got Google Maps. I know the direction I'm going to go. There's this, you know, there's the ocean beside me. It's California weather. The you know, it's dry, there's all kinds of sunshine, there's mountains, there's there's ocean. It was beautiful. And I remember feeling the sense of this kind of uncertainty, feels like adventure, like this is, this is a fun version of uncertainty. And the the question I was asking myself is, why can't I do this every single time I feel uncertain? And, you know, we have, we have this, like split second decision. It feels like where, when we are faced with uncertainty, it's whether it's uncertainty, or whether we should look in our bank account right now, you know, or our uncertainty of how we're going to navigate a difficult conversation, you know, there's this moment where it's like we have a chance to really kind of go deeper into that fear and anxiety. Or we can ask the question of, you know, what if the adventure question, the wonder question, that little trek along, you know, along the sea was a really vivid and powerful experience to remember that. You know, we have that opportunity every time we face uncertainty. Sometimes it just seems a little easier to do than others. It's not always, you know, walking in beautiful sunshine in California. Sometimes, sometimes it feels like walking in negative 20 degree weather in Iowa.

Andrea Enright 32:49

This relates also to lostness, which I think you know, we've discussed a lot in Rebecca Solnit book, The Field Guide to Getting lost. And so I'm hearing that you value being a little lost, little not sure of the directions.

Michael Scott Overholt 33:09

I think one of the main reasons is that uncertainty is is in a tension. Uncertainty is always in this tension of trying to, like, undo itself, right, which is a very similar state that desire holds. Desire is in this, in this constant tension of trying to resolve itself to fulfill its desire, right? And one of, one of my favorite analogies that that Solnit uses in that book, is like, if we look, if we look in the distance, we can see like this, this blue right? This blue that, when we it's on the horizon. I don't know if like, it's really, really prominent, like the Blue Ridge Mountains. When you're you're far away from mountains, you can see them. They look blue, but if you get right up on them, you take a hike, you drive you get up on them, they're green. They're Brown. They're, you know, they're all these things the blueness has actually, you know, moved on. You know, further. I feel like there's a similar tension between uncertainty and and desire in that we're constantly trying to to satisfy them or to undo them in some ways. And you know, with what uncertainty offers us? Uncertainty offers us a chance to a chance to look for opportunity, as opposed to to simply respond out of fear. I've never done I've never I've never made any great decisions when I've made them out of fear. I have made some great decisions when I've been uncertain and I've decided to just try to find a way to respond in love at all costs. And you know, short of like drastic situations, that tends to be the usual we get. We have a chance to we always have a chance to love. We always have a chance to learn. Learn. We always have a chance to ask, you know, what could come from this? It's just something. It just takes a lot of effort. I think our default is to to be afraid and to protect ourselves, and to to shy away from uncertainty and finding the strength to kind of step into it and to recognize that that there are opportunities there, even when you're feeling lost, is is very valuable to learn.

Janelle Orion 35:29

I am curious about what do you see the relationship is between uncertainty and curiosity?

Michael Scott Overholt 35:37

Uncertainty is simply the place we find ourselves in. Curiosity is the is the muscle, I guess, of our perspective, we can build it. One of the things I love about curiosity is that curiosity does not succumb to he I'm getting the word wrong, but it's adapt. Hedonic adaptation, yeah, hedonic adaptation, yeah. So, so we, it's not like we it's not like a drug or like caffeine, where we have to have more and more of it to feel the effect of it. It's actually the opposite. We can we can develop a sense of of awe and wonder that we're more quick to move into and feel. And I think like uncertainty offers us a daily opportunity to to exercise that muscles. Is how I understand it

Andrea Enright 36:26

okay. Just want to touch on the you talked about Rebecca Solnit, talking about the, you know, the blue right in the distance. And this is one of the things when, when Michael and I, when we first spoke, and I was like, Oh, do you know about the blue of longing, you know? And then I said, Have you ever heard you heard of Rebecca Solnit spoke? And you're like, Oh, my God. And then you went and got it, and we came back, and that was the beginning. But this is something that for a long time I've really focused on. It's like, oh, can I just be okay with the blue of longing? And what this speaks to is the tension that you just spoke about. It's like, no, can we be okay with the blue of longing, without wanting to close up the distance right, without wanting to get what we desire, without wanting to want get the certainty? Can we be okay with the longing and the uncertainty? And this is a concept I've come back to again and again in my life because I found Rebecca Solnit book at a hostel in Jordan in like, 2007

Andrea Enright 37:25

Wow, literally, like, you know, totally serendipitous moment started reading the book was like, this was planted by the universe. For me, I must be unpunked Like someone is, someone is filming my life. But further is that Michael also introduced me to the poet Padraig ottoma, am I saying that

Janelle Orion 37:45

right? Padre gotuma, yeah, yeah, almost, yeah.

Andrea Enright 37:50

And I listened to him speak in Denver recently at the

Andrea Enright 37:53

library. Oh, what a sweet man. Love him. Yeah,

Andrea Enright 37:57

amazing. Couple of hours of my life. And he said, presented a story about really wanting to get some better luggage, right? Because his he was traveling a lot, and his suitcase was worn out, and so, like, he was, like, saving up for it. He was like, I'm gonna wait six months, you know, until I, like, can get the really nice suitcase. And he was looking and picking out the colors. And then he finally got the suitcase and he put it away downstairs, and he's like, Oh, I miss, I miss looking forward to and longing for my suitcase.

Andrea Enright 38:33

And like, Yes, that's it, right? And so can we be okay with that longing and the uncertainty and plunge ourselves into it, to feel alive, instead of wanting to solve it.

Michael Scott Overholt 38:45

Yeah, it's a very strong tendency to try to resolve it, right, whether it's whether it's the uncertainty or whether it's the desire, I don't know. I guess I would be interested in, you know, in in your perspective. Andrea Janelle, you know what might be the opportunities of just not fulfilling that? Does you know that desire? I know that for me, when I think of it in terms of uncertainty, uncertainty is a chance to let my creative, my imagination, kind of come up with scenarios and ideas and possibilities, I have to be very present in the moment to adequately address the uncertainty and the direction that I need to go, necessarily. I would be curious to know what your thoughts are on, like hanging out in the tension a little longer when it comes to things like desire,

Andrea Enright 39:42

and if we can just frame that too in, if we can just hang out in the desire, is that being in relationship with ourself? Janelle, what do you think I have a

Janelle Orion 39:57

example that I have a comment? Lover who we interviewed on this podcast, and he and I were on had one date. It was in February. Can you explain the comment? The comment is someone who where we just, you know, see each other on on occasion. It's like when our when our when our paths cross, and it's, it's a, it's essentially a fuck yes for both of us, right? And scheduling between we thought we were going to see each other in April. It didn't work out without each other in May, and we ended up, I found myself in this state of longing, and we were communicating a little bit, but what I thought was sweet and it was reciprocal, like we both wanted to see each other. So it wasn't like unrequited, but what I felt, I got to feel the tension of was like, Oh, it's my impatience that wants me to say, when are we going to see each other, and what is it going to be and what are we going to do? But when I just got to sit with I don't know, and I don't know if our paths are ever going to cross again, if we're just waiting for the moment that feels the richest and the ripest that I never I didn't know understand this blue of this longing, but I got to feel in that moment, that which I was like, Oh, I get to be in the sweetness of longing for something. But I'm actually not waiting for it, like my life is not on hold. I am just in the oh, that's out there. And I'm still, I'm still in the present moment of going around my day, but I had to also, there was the uncertainty of what's gonna happen. But also be like, oh, and I'm going to also acknowledge the impatient part of me that wants to know, and then also let that one kind of take a back seat and say, but that's not what's here. That's my example of it.

Michael Scott Overholt 41:50

So it sounds like the lack of like resolution allows you to see something that you value pretty clearly,

Janelle Orion 42:02

yeah. But it was, it was like, this open heartedness. It was just like, oh, because we did have a moment. And I wasn't like, I wasn't in the past going, oh, I want that moment again. It was like, Oh, that moment was so rich that I was I've just been like, floating in that moment for months without feeling and like. So I can be longing for another moment, but also just being like. But no, this is the present one, and if I never see him again, then I got to feel the longing of wanting to see him again, and that, in and of itself, was the gift.

Andrea Enright 42:40

I don't know. I definitely think I'm constantly just toggling between, like, knowing that it's okay to want and not have it, not get it, and then really, really wanting it and being uncomfortable and just, it's just a dance, right? It's just a dance going back and forth and and there is something to anticipation. I have this somewhat famous reputation in my family for anticipation, because I used to get packages in the mail from my mom. She would send me so many packages in college. She was like, such a star. And I would get the package, and I would wait like, five days to open it, because I was just, like, so excited about, like, just like, I wanted to live in the excitement of it sitting there and looking at the package. And my friends would be like, Oh my God, why aren't you having the package? I'm like, no, no, I'm just gonna wait. It's kind of ridiculous, like, but it, yeah, there was something there that was that I wanted to hold on to. So I wonder. Now you've inspired me to wonder if I can channel that now, for all this shit that I want to happen, it's not quite the same, but that's

Michael Scott Overholt 43:52

that's really amazing. It's like if Padraig had got his favorite suitcase and just kind of left it in the Amazon wrapping right?

Janelle Orion 44:02

Might have been better for him.

Michael Scott Overholt 44:05

I'll have to ask him about that. I know that one of the bags that he travels with was like, I think it looks like it's made of duct tape or something, or it's like

Andrea Enright 44:14

it's not anymore. I bet he threw it away,

Michael Scott Overholt 44:20

possibly one little snippet I wanted to add about about longing, is that Jack Morin, in his book The erotic oh my gosh, I have to. I'm gonna blank on the name of this book, but it's Jack Morin, M, O, R, I N, talks about the five, essentially erotic turn ons, and one of them is longing and anticipation is how we feel alive in that

Andrea Enright 44:46

state. Yes, oh, man, yes, that's it.

Janelle Orion 44:53

Yeah. And so then there's nothing wrong with it, right? It's also acknowledging, oh, what if we just look at like it isn't actually about the concept. Nation that is belonging gets to be the thing and the uncertainty gets to be the thing, right?

Andrea Enright 45:06

So really, it's just like being turned on and having foreplay for hours and hours, exactly. Isn't that what we're talking about? I love it. At

Michael Scott Overholt 45:18

some point it becomes painful. Oh, does it?

Janelle Orion 45:24

Yeah, I get that.

Andrea Enright 45:26

So desire feels like a different word that we're introducing into this as opposed to the anticipation or the uncertainty.

Michael Scott Overholt 45:36

I think for me, it's just, it really is just a sense of both are valuable in their own right. Like even you've identified that the anticipation is, really is, is a great way of, kind of getting yourself ready for it. Janelle mentioned, you know, the importance of, Oh God, I'm completely blanking at this point. What were you just saying? Janelle,

Janelle Orion 45:59

well, about like anticipation and longing is, is a turn on, how helps us feel more alive?

Michael Scott Overholt 46:04

Yeah, yeah. And I would just say that, like, for me, the those are, those are things that are valuable in and of themselves, you know. And if I can, if I can value that, I think that being able to value uncertainty or, like, I like the terms lostness, yeah, that those are opportunities. I mean, one of my, one of, one of my favorite things, we haven't touched on this, but this does bring it back to platonic philosophy, incidentally, is what Solnit does say is that she's in the introduction to that book, she's wrestling with the question of that meno is asked by Socrates. You know, how do you find, how do you find the thing that you don't know you actually need to find? How do you do that? I find that to be a really fascinating question, outside of what Socrates does, he dismantles it. But the point is, is that, in my experience, what I often find in uncertainty or lostness is something that I didn't realize I actually needed to find. If I had been in familiar spaces the entire time, I wouldn't have gone looking for something that that I frankly did I have no idea that I needed, and one of the best ways of finding what you don't know that you need, like like a key to to you know, understanding yourself more is, is to get lost. I had a really profound experience one time where I was really feeling like this, this internal sense of lostness really deeply because, because of all of the change that was going on in my life, and just everything turned was, was was turned around, everything was upside down. It felt like it felt like, I've likened it to, like The Hunger Games, where Seneca Crane, like the Game Master rearranges the the game going on, and it's like, I know where I'm at, but I am lost. And so I was in, I was in my house, and I had the ability to do it. I just, I just, I was like, I need to get into a woods where I don't know where I am. Unfortunately, in in Iowa City, there's a Hickory Hill Park that allowed me to be lost like in a safe space. So I got turned around in it, and there was this, there was this, um, synchronization of my internal world feeling lost with my external world of being like I've never been here before, and that felt really healthy, and that that's been something that that has guided me, because I see that there's kind of a bifurcation. There's a I can be in a familiar space and still feel lost. I can. I can be lost like, you know, metaphysically, or, you know, spatially, I can, I can be lost, but yet, at the same time, retain a sense of familiarity and at homeness within myself and recognizing that sometimes we're sometimes we're feeling lost simply because we're feeling uncertain about something that could happen. Sometimes we're feeling lost because we don't know what's going on inside of us hormones are changing. I mean, the 40s are our midlife has a lot of those experiences, and I know as a man, they're nothing compared to menopause. I'm not going to try to compare that at all. But being able to recognize that losses has a bunch of different different um forms that it can take, and it also has a bunch of valuable treasures that that are out there, and we just don't, we just don't know we need them, and we don't know what they are, until we actually are lost and we stumble across them.

Andrea Enright 49:56

Thank you for that example of Hickory Hill. That's That's. Yeah, that's lovely. The synchronicity of that lost inside and lost outside, like aligned, like confused but aligned, yeah, yeah, such a paradox there. Yeah. Michael would, would you say? Is there anything you would assign to our brave hearts if they were knowing that they needed to build a relationship with themselves, or take a better look at themselves, is, is there a place you would recommend starting?

Michael Scott Overholt 50:30

There's not a place you just start. You know you just you just start. You trust the process. You trust. You trust your your ability to to get through the process, and you trust that the that the people and the events that you have along the way are gonna are going to be part of a brilliant story at some point. Do you just start?

Andrea Enright 51:00

Yeah, good answer. Oh, Michael, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Thank you for sharing so openly. Thank you for asking me.

Michael Scott Overholt 51:12

I saw your email and I didn't know that you were actually asking me. I thought it was a email. I send out email campaigns all the time. I was like, this, this is Andrea being, you know, doing her Andrea thing, you know, with permission to be human. And I didn't realize it was, and you're like, yeah, it's for you. Yes.

Andrea Enright 51:32

I'm like, Did you see my email?

Janelle Orion 51:36

You You're the Braveheart. You're the one.

Michael Scott Overholt 51:40

Oh, I've got to pay attention to this other than like, this is a good email campaign,

Janelle Orion 51:45

right, right? Yeah. Thank you so much, Michael for sharing your truth, your vulnerability, yeah, your honesty. And there were so many, there's, there were so many moments of wisdom that to take in, and one of them is that honesty is not a heroic act, but for whatever reason, honesty has been lost in our culture. And so I was just like, Oh, we're just trying to make that every day, every day, every day, honesty.

Michael Scott Overholt 52:10

Yeah. It was lovely meeting you to know. Heard much about you. Yeah, thank

Janelle Orion 52:14

you. Okay, brave hearts. You're

Andrea Enright 52:19

gonna get Socrates. You're gonna get a whole bunch of on this episode. Totally Greek philosophy, the whole thing. Yeah. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks for listening. We love you and we'll see you next time.

Janelle Orion 52:40

Hey, Bravehearts, looking for permission, work with us. Andrea offers permission coaching, and Janelle offers erotic wellness sessions. Follow us on Instagram, meet us in real life at permission to be human workshops in Denver. Subscribe to our newsletter. Do all this and more at our website. Permission to be human. Dot live you.