In the age of machines, what makes life worth living?

“If we are not to become ever more diminished as humans, we need to remain in control of machines, not come under their control. I am not talking about an apocalyptic future; I am talking about apocalypse now.”

As I’ve mentioned, lately I’ve been reading the work of the great author and psychiatrist, Iain McGilchrist. Today, I thought I’d share this crucial and lovely bit with you here, from his 2024 essay, “Resist the Machine Apocalypse”.

“No two ways about it: We are making ourselves wretched. We are more affluent than ever, but riches — and power, the only point in having riches — do not make people happy. Ask a psychiatrist. Or take a look at the face of Vladimir Putin, who has, alas, the power of life and death over millions of people and is the owner of the most expensive toilet-paper dispenser in the world. No, affluent as we are, we are also more anxious, depressed, lonely, isolated, and lacking in purpose than ever. Why is this? I suggest it is because we no longer have the foggiest idea what human life is about [emphasis added]. Indeed, there is a sense in which we no longer live in a world at all, but exist in a simulacrum of our own making.

Leaving nuance aside, and condensing three decades of research and a vast body of supporting evidence into a phrase: We are now mesmerized by the least intelligent part of the human brain. For reasons of survival, one hemisphere of the brain, the left, has evolved over millions of years to favor manipulation — grabbing, getting, and controlling — while the other, the right, has been tasked with understanding the whole picture. So conflicting are these goals that in humans the hemispheres are largely sequestered, one from the other. Our seeming ability these days to hear only what comes from the left hemisphere does not arise from the brain’s having changed radically in the last couple of centuries, though it is indeed always evolving. It’s more like this: You buy a radio set, and you soon find a couple of channels worth listening to. After a while, you find yourself listening to only one. It’s not the radio set that has changed; it’s you. In the case of the brain, it would not matter so much if we had settled on the intelligent channel-but we didn’t. We settled on the one whose value has nothing to do with truth, or with courage, magnanimity, or generosity, but only with greed, grabbing, and getting. Manipulation….

What makes life worth living is what can only be called resonance: the encounter with other living beings, with the natural world, and with the greatest products of the human soul — some would say, with the cosmos at large, or with God. Only in encountering the uncontrollable do we experience the world in its depth and complexity and come fully alive. The resonance we enjoy in a real relationship with a sentient other is not possible where there is no freedom, no spontaneity, no life. If we are not to become ever more diminished as humans, we need to remain in control of machines, not come under their control. I am not talking about an apocalyptic future; I am talking about apocalypse now. We are already calmly and quietly surrendering our liberty, our privacy, our dignity, our time, our values, and our talents to the machine. Machines serve us well when they relieve us of drudgery, but we must leave human affairs to humans. If not, we sign our own death warrant.”

The above is from a 2024 essay by Iain McGilchrist, called “Resist the Machine Apocalypse.” You can read the rest on McGilchist’s wonderful site.

*

And for today’s prompts, I ask you:

*Where do you most experience what McGilchrist calls “resonance” - with (as he puts it) other living beings, the natural world, or “the greatest products of the human soul”)?

*What are the parts of your life that you most want to guard from AI/machine takeover?

*What aspects of your life have been improved — or diminished — by tech?

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Today’s Kindred Letter is on an especially important topic: the decline of the Humanities, and how to reverse it. If you’re a fellow devotee of art, literature, poetry, mythology …please consider sharing.

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As an English major in the 1980s, I was so lucky to attend a university whose commitment to wisdom seemed to match the promise of its soaring architecture. It was the end of an era, though I didn’t know it yet – the era in which universities were temples where many of us went to pray, where we went searching for awe and wonder and the far reaches of the human soul. In the late ’80s, books – our beautiful, sacred books – were starting to be viewed as mere “texts” to be “interrogated”. But this view, so curiously disrespectful of literature, seemed still a sideline; I had no idea that it — along with the growing primacy of pre-professional majors, and students’ legitimate worries about making a living — would soon eat up the Humanities departments.

During the last decade, the number of Humanities majors nationwide dropped by a third, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. On campus, everyone knows that it’s the STEM and business subjects that get the shiny new buildings and the fiercest competition from hopeful applicants.

Universities are taking various steps to address some of these problems.

But what we really need, I believe, is a new vision for the humanities: one I call Sacred Humanism.

The true purpose of the Humanities is to help us understand the human condition, and each other, and to quench our thirst for meaning, depth, beauty and truth. We need to teach poetry, literature, art and history not only as texts to critique -- but as gateways to the sacred. We need to develop in students a character strength that positive psychologists call the “Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence” (which is a secular, and rather muted, way of saying spiritual awe) -- and which is a fundamentally constructive rather than deconstructive impulse. We should emphasize that which gives us chills, reverence, and consolation.

Studies by the psychologists Jonathan Haidt, Dacher Keltner, and others, show that awe is linked to lower stress and inflammation, higher life satisfaction, generosity and empathy. If the Humanities departments were to place awe at the center of their mission, the students might return -- not to satisfy curricular requirements, but out of spiritual hunger.

Students once flooded the mythologist Joseph Campbell’s classes at Sarah Lawrence College, because he taught them myth and meaning and the art of living a good life; more recently, the Northwestern University literature professor Gary Saul Morson’s classes on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky draw standing ovations for similar reasons. These examples point the way forward for Sacred Humanism.

In contrast, since the 1950s, the prevailing worldview in U.S. academia was “Secular Humanism.” Secular humanism emphasizes reason and ethics while rejecting dogma, supernaturalism, and authoritarianism. This philosophy was, in part, a response to the barbarisms of the 20th century. As a lifelong atheist and now agnostic, who is allergic to dogma and utopianism, I’ve long admired this view, and still do.

But too often Secular Humanism saw the spiritual impulse as a narrow experience shared by a credulous few, rather than a deep yearning that animates us all — and so the thirst for wisdom and elevation gave way to analyses of power dynamics.

Such inquiries are not without value; it’s useful to analyze, say, “Girl with a Pearl Earring” from, say, the perspective of women’s role in society. But no one fell in love with “Pearl Earring” as a statement on patriarchy. They fell in love with its luminosity. They beheld it and wanted to know where this kind of sensitivity and insight comes from, and what they could do to embody it themselves, and inspire it in others. They wanted depth, they wanted solace, they wanted to nourish their souls.

The deepest purpose of poetry and art is to show us what transcendence – the ecstatic apprehension of the world beyond the self -- feels like. In the Humanities, you can study mythology, to explore the depths of the human psyche, around the world, across the centuries. You can study history because if it doesn’t repeat then at least it rhymes, and maybe we’ll get something right next time. You can read literature, to know that humans two thousand years ago experienced the same exact thing you felt last week when you broke up with your boyfriend.

None of this requires adherence to a particular religion, or to any religion. But it does make room for it. And it makes room for the experience of awe that uplifts us all, and brings us together -- whether we’re atheists, believers, or somewhere in between.

*

As always, I would love to hear from you, if you’re so inclined.

*Does the phrase/idea of “Sacred Humanism” resonate with you?

*Can you think of a work of art, poetry, literature, mythology, that inspires awe in you?

*If we lose the Humanities altogether, what do you think we lose? If we succeed in restoring them to their former glory, what do you think we gain?

Please do leave a comment below! And, if you have a friend or colleague who you think would like to hear about Sacred Humanism, please do share this Kindred Letter.

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© Susan Cain

Last week, 400 people joined us for a live event with , who’s a writer and also a maestro of how to work and thrive on Substack. I highly recommend her Substack!

And, if you missed our conversation, the video replay is below!

We discussed:

*How and why I write my “newsletters” (I really dislike that word) as Kindred Letters;

*How to love your writing life;

*Envy and jealousy of other writers;

*The magic of our Quiet Life Candlelight Chats;

*Why “vibe” is the word of 2026;

*and more.

You can watch here!

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Hello everyone! I’m going live on Substack today at 2 pm ET/1 pm CT - as a guest of , the maestro of Substack Writers at Work.

You can join from your desktop, phone, or in the app: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/268274

Join and add it to your calendar, here: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/268274.

I hope to see you there! And if you can’t make it — I realize this is very short notice — we’ll send out the replay later.

xo Susan

Our Candlelight Chat this past Sunday, on the Wendell Berry poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” and on being a Highly Sensitive Person (“HSP”), was so so good. Thank you so much to all who attended, for your uniquely thoughtful and kind-hearted energy, which I felt all the way across the Internet.

And, if you missed it, not to worry; we’ll send out the replay video to all subscribers/scholarship members soon!

As per the Wendell Berry poem, in which the poet “comes into” the peace of wild animals “who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief,” we talked a little about anticipatory anxiety and anticipatory grief. Surely these are some of the more useless and unpleasant of emotional states. How can we manage not to succumb to them?

I shared a few tips on Sunday, and promised to share more here. So that’s what we’re talking about today.

But the first and most important thing to realize is that these states of being, annoying though they are, do serve a purpose. Sometimes, we worry because there really is something we can fix - and only the unpleasantness of worrying gets us to do the work of fixing it.

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Many of you have requested that we devote a Candlelight Chat to the phenomenon of being a “highly sensitive person” - what it’s like to be one, its challenges, its unexpected rewards.

So, we’re going to do that, tomorrow - from 1-2 pm ET, on Zoom!

Please come with your thoughts, experiences, and questions (though as usual, you’re welcome to share them in writing, via the chat box, or not at all; that is, you’re welcome to participate purely by listening).

Tomorrow’s Candlelight Chat will be “just us” – meaning, no esteemed guest this time - just a chance for us to talk to each other.

As promised, we’re also going to discuss the poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” by Wendell Berry. See below, to read the poem in advance.

You’ll also be able to “ask me anything” - whether on the above topics or not (though as usual we won’t be covering politics).

Here are your log-in instructions:

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Where are you on your life journey, and where and what is the home to which you are traveling?

In honor of the new Odyssey movie, by Christopher Nolan, here is one of my all-time favorite poems, by Constantine Cavafy.

Cavafy was a Greek poet who often wrote about events from ancient history and literature. This one is based on Homer’s Odyssey -- and Ulysses’ famous journey back to his homeland, Ithaka, after the Trojan war.

The poem is a metaphor for the journey of life itself, with Ithaka symbolizing the fulfillment of that life journey.

Read it through, and then I’ll give you my interpretation.

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Ithaka

BY C. P. CAVAFY​

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

As usual, Cavafy ends with a goosebump-inducing line: “you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.”

And he’s already told us what they mean, with the OTHER goosebump-inducing line that preceded this final one: “Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.”

In other words: this poem conveys the timeless idea that the journey, not the destination, is the ultimate point.

But also: that the destination’s whole point is to facilitate the journey.

But I think the poem has a spiritual element too, the same one that’s at the heart of my book Bittersweet and that I’ve been trying to share for years now. Early in Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey, we meet Ulysses, weeping on a beach, longing for home (Ithaka).

And the reader understands that it’s this very homesickness that sets his journey in motion; and that this longing for Ithaka represents the spiritual longing we all feel (whether we’re atheists, believers, or somewhere in between) to return to the perfect and beautiful world from whence we came.

Freud interpreted this longed-for world as the womb. The Judeo-Christian tradition calls it the Garden of Eden. The Sufis call it the Beloved of the Soul, with whom they long for union. The Wizard of Oz calls it Somewhere Over the Rainbow. But it’s all the same thing. And this longing is what J.R. Tolkien called “our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human.”

So please ask yourself: who or what do you long for, and where will your longing carry you?

*

Of course, there’s one big thing you have to overlook, in order to fully relish this poem: What about the people back home – Ulysses’ son, Telemachus, who longed for him, all the years of his absence, without the benefit of an exciting journey to distract and enrich him? What about Ulysses’ wife Penelope, trapped in her womanly role of weaving and unweaving all day and night, in an effort to fend off Ithaka’s would-be plunderers?

Many poets have addressed this question. One of my favorites is Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “An Ancient Gesture,” which I came across in my 9th grade literature textbook, and which immediately seized me.

An Ancient Gesture

Edna St. Vincent Millay

​I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don’t know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.
​
And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope…
Penelope, who really cried.

“Penelope, who really cried.” I think about that line, ALL THE TIME, when I see politicians or other public figures mimicking deep emotions for the crowd’s consumption.

False tears won’t carry us home – but true ones might.

Incidentally, one other person who has addressed Penelope’s situation is actually… me. My very first (unpublished) writing project, after leaving my law career at age 33 to become a writer, was a coming-of-age memoir. I wrote (parts of) it both in prose and sonnet form; and in the sonnet version, I rewrote Penelope’s story, imagining that she’d had many private, unrecorded, but equally glorious adventures of her own, during all the years she waited for Ulysses.

Then I told my own story as a modern-day version of hers, concluding:

“I’m Penelope’s descendant/Heiress to a life transcendent.”

And this I believe: whoever you are, and wherever you are on your journey, you are heir to Homer’s Ulysses. And, you are Penelope’s descendant.

And you will come to understand, if you don’t already, what all these Ithakas mean.

*

As always, I’d love to hear from you, if you’re inclined to share.

*Where are you on your own life journey?

*What is your Ithaka?

*Are you inclined to read more Cavafy? You should!

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Have you had the feeling I do, that the deepest life, the most authentic life, occurs far away from the spotlight — and that the constant bidding for you to become more visible is actually leading you AWAY from such a life? (I realize, as I write this, that I am officially a public/online person, but, you know, not really. Or at least, not completely.)

If this resonates with you, you’re going to love this essential new essay by the great psychologist (and friend of The Quiet Life), Scott Barry Kaufman. The essay discusses Abraham Maslow’s essential research on the elements of an “actualized life” - and how Maslow’s findings directly contradict everything you’re told today about the importance of connectivity and visibility.

SBK shows us why today’s sages are ignoring Maslow’s findings - and how to resist them.

I urge you not to miss this one! And, to follow SBK’s “Beautiful Minds” newsletter.

Here’s SBK:

“In Chasing Productivity, We Lost the Inner Life

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“I don’t easily express my feelings, nor do I even know what they are 99.9% of the time, but in these Candlelight Chats, something always hits me so deeply that I feel it practically in every bone in my body, and that makes it easier for me to express my feelings.” - a Quiet Life member.

I always feel a little nervous about hosting these Candlelight Chats, because by nature the role of “host” is not my forte.

And yet. And yet. These Chats are one of the most meaningful things we do at The Quiet Life (TQL).

And so I appreciated the above feedback from a TQL member; and so I look forward to hosting our next one.

This next Chat will be on Sunday, July 26, from 1-2 pm Eastern time, on Zoom, and it will be “Just Us” - i.e., no guest speakers. It will be a chance for us to talk to each other, and listen, and be together as we think - write - experience quietly. As always, there will be no pressure for you to come onscreen and speak, though you’ll be welcome to, if you’d like. You can also participate via commenting in the chat box, or simply by watching and listening.

Log-in info will be distributed to Quiet Life members the day before the Chat. If you haven’t yet subscribed, you can do that here:

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One thing we’ll talk about for sure is the Wendell Berry poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” which I find myself continually recommending to individual TQL members - so much so that I think we should discuss it (and find solace and inspiration in it) together, as well.

Here’s the poem, which you can start contemplating now:

As always, I’d love to hear from you:

*How do you feel generally about our Candlelight Chats? Who has been your favorite Candlelight Chat guest (or topic) so far?

*Do you have a dream guest you’d like me to interview in future?

*Do you prefer “Just Us” Chats?

*Is there a question or topic that you’d like to discuss at the upcoming “Just Us” Chat?

All of us at The Quiet Life are so honored, and thrilled, that you’re here.

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“We can choose to dispose our attention in a certain way, and depending on how we dispose it, we find a different world.” — Iain McGilchrist

This weekend I’ve been immersed in the work of the great author and psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, including the profound insight above.

But it’s not actually his work I’m sharing with you today; today, I just want to share this reflection of his, on his own shyness.

This is for you if you’re shy too, or if you have imposter syndrome, or if you’re a writer or researcher who tends to feel that you’ve never learned quite enough and that there’s still one more study you really should read, one more point you really should make, to ensure that your argument is airtight and able to withstand the slings and arrows of the most formidable imaginary PhD examiner.

I don’t know why we love so much to know that we’re not alone in our idiosyncrasies, but we do.

So here’s Iain:

“I cannot account for it: my parents did not in any way undermine me, they rather supported me, and would have given me confidence. And at school, I certainly wasn’t told I was not good enough, or anything like that. But I’ve always gone through life with the, you know, what they call the ‘imposter syndrome’. I am aware of how little I know. And so you feel like you’re skating on thin ice all the time. And you can never have enough knowledge of an area. So when I’m writing, I’m drilling down and gathering in and trying to make sure that what I’m saying is grounded on something that is very hard to refute. I’m a shy person, but I’ve developed a persona as many shy people do for performing. And it’s interesting to me as a psychiatrist that some of the people who have what’s now diagnosed as social phobia (in the past, they would just have been said to be rather a shy, retiring person), often take jobs that involve them being on stage. Or being a DJ is another famous one. You’d think you’d have to have a lot of confidence to do these things. But actually it’s a kind of way of performing which is not too threatening.” - Iain McGilchrist

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“We imagine the full impact of what might go wrong, but don’t imagine our own resilience.” -

It’s not so often that I read an essay that gives me multiple new ways of understanding something as familiar as anxiety. But this one did!

Today I’m so happy to share with you this piece by Substacker , on the evolutionary roots of anxiety. Hertz’s essay is chockfull of useful insights (some of which I’ve bolded and annotated for you — see below). Even if you’re already familiar with the idea that the humans who survived and passed their genes on to us are the ones who reacted with greater alertness to real and imagined threats, I guarantee you’ll find other important gems - including insights that will help you outwit unwarranted anxiety.

Read on!

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Today, we’re discussing the pull between going out into the world to help, vs. the desire to stay home and lead a quiet life.

This past week, I received a fantastic e-mail from a new member of The Quiet Life (Welcome, Dan!). It was fantastic, not just because of its honesty but also because it asked a question that many of us wonder about but don’t say out loud.

Rather than answer Dan privately, I asked if I could share his query and my response with you, here. He graciously agreed.

Here’s Dan’s question:

“I am a 62 year old man, partly retired, with very strong introversion tendencies. I now have the time to be helping out or contributing, physically, in the world. But due to my introverted tendencies, I really don't want to be doing that.

I have no guilt or bad feelings about being an introvert, this is what I am and I love being this way. Staying home reflecting, thinking, writing, etc, gives me tremendous pleasure, and I feel no guilt at all about not socializing more than I do. But I do feel guilt about not helping, and the nagging thought persists in my brain that these introverted days benefit no one but me and that feels bad.

I give money to the causes I care about but I don't give of myself - my time or energy. And I really don't want to do that, not deep down in the most honest part of my soul. But not doing that and quietly staying home feels like I am not doing my part.

Perhaps this question has already been answered or addressed earlier before I joined, but I am very interested to know if any other introverted people feel this way, or what I can do about it.

Thank you so much.

Dan Haverstock (name shared with permission)”

And here’s my answer:

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Have you ever come across the term — and concept — of SIMIs (the Seemingly Insignificant Minor Interactions of Everyday Life)?

If you’re an introvert, especially, you might not be inclined to pay much attention to these interactions. You might (as I am) be inclined to focus mostly on your deeper relationships. And I do believe that going deep, relationally, is a deeply satisfying way to live.

But I like the concept of SIMIs too - the constellation of minor interactions that round out our days. To recommend paying attention to SIMIs is not to urge us to be more social than we actually want to be; it’s more akin to stopping to notice a flower or cloud formation.

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I came across the concept of SIMI’s from a new book by internationally bestselling author Dr. Amir Levine, called Secure: The Revolutionary Guide to Creating a Secure Life. Dr. Levine is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University Medical Center whose patented findings hold potential for innovative treatments for psychiatric disorders in adolescents and adults. And I’m so happy to have the chance to bring an exclusive excerpt of the book to you, right here.

Here’s Dr. Levine:

“One August morning, Ava’s husband collapsed on the floor. All attempts to resuscitate him, first by her and then by the Emergency Medical Service that quickly arrived at the scene, failed, and he was pronounced dead from what appeared to be a massive heart attack. For a long time, Ava couldn’t comprehend it. One moment they were having breakfast, sipping coffee, and talking about the news, and the next, he was gone. Sometimes she would wake up and instinctively look over to her husband’s side of the bed expecting to see him. Other times she thought she heard him coming up the driveway or walking softly about in the next room, only to remember that he was gone and sink into despair. She was full of sadness and anger and often just felt numb, disconnected from the world she had always known. Days went by without her doing much of anything. It didn’t help that they lived in a small town where everyone knew them as a couple.

One day, Ava decided that she needed to change her environment if she was ever going to overcome her grief; she simply couldn’t stay in their home anymore. She packed up and moved across the country to a quiet neighborhood lush with gardens and greenery. Each morning, she woke to the sound of birds chirping in the backyard and would lie in bed watching rays of sunlight peek through the trees.

After a few weeks, Ava decided to visit the nearby community center. A yoga class was about to start, and she surprised herself by joining. As she moved through the asanas with the others in the class, she found herself breathing into the challenge as the yoga teacher instructed. And it helped her feel a little better. At the end of the class, a group of women greeted her. No one knew her history; they didn’t even ask. They were just nice for the sake of being nice, not because they felt sorry for her. It was a breath of fresh air.

They told her about other gym classes at the center that were worth attending and invited her to join them for lunch. She felt so welcomed and included. And that was just the beginning. Over the next few weeks, as she ventured out of her home more and more, Ava discovered the strangest thing. Everyone, literally everyone, she passed by waved hello and smiled at her. And it wasn’t just pedestrians; people passing in their cars all waved hello, too. The first few times she was thrown off. She even looked behind her to see if they were waving at someone else. But she soon realized this was the norm here. Even complete strangers greeted you in this community. A little time went by, and then one morning she woke up and was struck by an unexpected feeling — a spontaneous sensation of unexplained well-being and joy.

Unbeknownst to her, Ava had created an enriched environment for herself that helped her overcome her grief and heal. If you pay close attention to Ava’s story, you will see that her enriched environment consisted of many small interactions that on a day-to-day basis changed her life for the better. I’ve come to call these small interactions the seemingly insignificant minor interactions of everyday life, or SIMIs for short. What most people don’t realize is that our SIMIs, the ones that often escape our attention because we believe they are of little consequence, are actually of huge importance in the process of changing your brain and your life toward greater security.

THE SEEMINGLY INSIGNIFICANT MINOR INTERACTIONS OF EVERYDAY LIFE (SIMIS)

Oftentimes when people seek professional help to overcome emotional and social difficulties, they think of sifting through their early childhood experiences with a therapist as the main vehicle for healing and change. Seldom do people pay much attention to the minutiae of their day-to-day social interactions. But from the point of view of the brain, the minor interactions we have with people not in the past but in our present, everyday lives — whether close allies, significant others, friends and family, or even just colleagues, acquaintances, or passersby on the street — can be a powerful avenue to achieving radical transformation. Change can, in fact, come from taking command of the SIMIs of everyday life.

Neuroscience studies reveal that SIMIs have the potential to shape and reshape our brains countless times. They can either strengthen existing neurocircuitry or overwrite it to create new pathways. Positive SIMIs can provide us with the opportunity to heal past adversity as new experiences overwrite the old. But negative SIMIs can further solidify past relational experiences that did not serve us then and will not serve us now or in the future. Each positive SIMI is an opportunity for neuroplastic shift, which means that the right SIMIs have the potential to alter the brain on the most fundamental molecular level — helping you attain a richer, more satisfying life.

While most animals, driven primarily by instinct, have very limited control over whom they will interact with and how, human beings have a greater degree of freedom. In our society today, we don’t have to stay at a certain company or in a certain job, nor do we have to stay in relationships — whether romantic, familial, or platonic — that are harmful to our brain. We can remove ourselves from one social milieu and try our luck in another. And we can try to change a certain dynamic within an already existing social context; this, if successful, can result in dramatic improvements in well-being and happiness.”

OK, this is Susan writing again. I hope you enjoyed this piece as much as I did, and am very curious to know:

*Had you heard before of the concept of SIMIs?

*Do you take kindly to the idea, or does it feel to you like more urging to be more extroverted than you prefer?

*Note that Dr. Levine also recommends taking charge of which SIMIs constitute our days — and making changes to our daily lives so that we actually enjoy the people we meet. Have you ever made such a change?

Please do leave a comment—and join the conversation!

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Do you generally notice that you have an inner voice that’s speaking to you all day long?

Many of us don’t. Or we notice The Voice some of the time, but the rest of the time, it speaks and speaks and speaks, shaping our moods, shaping our days.

The Voice tells us stories. And we don’t even know it. We just think we’re experiencing reality.

Today’s Kindred Letter is about becoming aware of The Voice, and taking control of the stories it tells.

We’re going to do this courtesy of an excerpt from Eric Zimmer’s new book, How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life. We were lucky to host Eric recently as a Candlelight Chat guest; he’s an author, teacher, speaker, and the creator of The One You Feed podcast — an award-winning show with more than 75 million downloads. Most of all, he’s a treasure trove of hard-earned wisdom, which he loves to share generously — including here in the Kindred Letters. Here’s Eric:

“As I sit here and write this my back hurts. I’ve had the good fortune to be traveling for a bit and have been walking . . . a lot. So I woke up, as is often the case, with a sore lower back and shoulders.

And what my brain says to me is “My back is killing me.” If I am in a less than fully aware state, this is what I wander around saying to myself. If I stop and actually check in with the signals my back is sending, however, the reality is much more like “my lower back is kind of tight right now.” Which of those two messages do you think is more useful for my state of mind?

Extreme language produces extreme emotions. Even if something like “it’s killing me” is obviously hyperbole, to use that script internally is to reinforce that what’s happening is fairly dire. To disrupt this, I use the basic perspective exercise from the last chapter, asking myself, What am I making this mean? and then What else could it mean? Then, following George Kelly’s personal construct theory, I ask myself a third question: What meaning is most useful to me right now?

This is where middle-way thinking comes in. This morning I realized that the best way to move forward with my day was to scale back how I was describing the pain to myself. (Internally, the whole conversation went more like “*eyeroll emoji*—I feel your pain, Eric, but a tight lumbar is unlikely to be your cause of death.”)

Take another situation all too common for some of us. Your two-year-old has another tantrum and you say, “I can’t stand it!” It’s a throwaway line, but it’s also emotional code for “This is relentless. I’m completely overwhelmed. And if this is what parenting is, I might not be cut out for it.”

Now imagine saying to yourself something more like: “Raising a toddler is an exercise in absurdist theater, where one finds oneself negotiating with a tiny tyrant over the existential importance of wearing pants. It will pass.” Not an easy thing to remember in the moment, I know. But parents—tell me that’s not the truth.

“I can’t believe they did that!!” Think about that statement. You mean you genuinely, as an intelligent human being, have an inability to believe that someone’s done something that you didn’t want them to do? Now let’s come back to the truth. You can believe it; you just would have chosen for that person to act differently. Try rephrasing to “I wish they hadn’t done that.” If you’re auditioning for The Real Housewives you may want to stick with the original, but assuming you want a calmer existence, the reframe is the right way to go.

Again: Extreme language produces extreme emotions. Whether we’re talking to ourselves or anyone else, more measured language creates space for a more balanced, middle-way perspective. Even our most basic linguistic tics can reveal deeply ingrained tendencies—so prepare to get dramatic with the grammatic. (Sorry.)

Adjectives, Adverbs, and Pronouns

I never thought I’d be treating the lessons of third-grade English like a red-string conspiracy board, but here we are. Adjectives (which modify nouns), pronouns (which replace nouns), and adverbs (which modify verbs and adjectives) can, if we’re not careful, become little bombs of extremity in our descriptions of reality.

An example of an adjective to watch out for is horrible. This one is a favorite of my mom’s (sorry, Mom), although it’s pronounced more “haaaarrible” when she says it. Describing things that are unpleasant or tedious as “haaaarrible” can tip our negative feelings over into despair or hopelessness. Similarly dangerous words include disastrous, unbearable, awful, and disgusting. Less common, but among my favorites to say (no one said drama-queen words weren’t fun): flabbergasted, flummoxed, catastrophic, astronomic, and preposterous.

Among adverbs, suspects worth questioning are always and never. Want to turn a discussion into a fight? Just accuse the other person of always or never doing something. It works like a charm. Why? Because when looking at our own behavior we know that it’s a patchwork, not an on-off switch. I have not forgotten to do the dishes every day, which is what the statement “You never do the dishes” would cause me to rebut. Or I don’t always get grumpy after work. Adverbs like these provoke defensiveness and shut down the productive, nuanced conversations that should happen about not only the dishes but why the dishes have been causing resentment in the first place.

These wonder twins of adverbs don’t just mess up our communication with others, they skew our internal monologues. I’ve seen this with countless coaching clients: “I never finish anything I start” . . .which, of course, is not true, but certainly keeps us feeling like failures. Or “I always mess up” . . . which is the reverse of the above but contains the same seeds of an anxiety spiral. We can add constantly, completely, absolutely, utterly, and totally to our mix.

Pronouns (she, he, they) seem innocent enough at first glance, until you add everyone and no one to the mix. “No one loves me” is a classic of the genre. “Everyone thinks I’m stupid,” you say after a presentation to five people goes a little less well than you had hoped.

When you notice yourself using any of these red-flag words, experiment with substitutions that reflect the nuance of reality. We could replace my mom’s old standby, horrible, with something like “That doctor visit was unpleasant.” We could say “I’m having a hard time right now” instead of “Everything is terrible” (two red-flag words for the price of one in that sentence). Describing a family visit that didn’t go well, try replacing “He astronomically miscalculated the impact of teaching his parrot swear words” with “Grandma did not like the colorful avian commentary.” And if your first thought is “You never listen to what I say,” try instead “Sometimes I think you don’t give me your full attention.”

Note that our goal here is not to gloss over things that are difficult or make us unhappy. It is to remind ourselves that reality is rarely black and white, and that there are a lot of benefits to seeing in full color.”

OK, this is Susan writing again. I hope you enjoyed Eric’s ideas as much as I did, and would love to know:

*When reading Eric’s words, did you suddenly realize that you actually do use overly extreme internal language?

*Do you generally NOTICE that you have an internal voice speaking to you, or do you identify your thoughts and inner monologue as reality?

*If you do notice your inner voice - what does it generally sound like? Is it friendly? Is it critical? Is it thoughtful? Other?

Please, share your thoughts!

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Last week, I took a car service to the airport. Traffic was heavy, and the drive was unusually long. When we arrived, I offered the driver a cash tip.

He shook his head and said: “The gratuity is already included” (something no driver has ever said before; I greatly appreciated his honesty).

I said, “I know, but that’s OK,” and added: “The trip to the airport was so long” — meaning, he deserved the extra tip. He nodded, and put the money in his pocket.

And then he said “I’m sorry”.

I didn’t know why he was apologizing. It was only after I walked away that I realized that he took my remark about the length of the trip as an accusation, rather than what I’d meant it to be: a nod to the terrible traffic, and a reassurance that he deserved the extra money.

This was in keeping with his behavior throughout the ride, which had been accommodating to a fault. He’d even told me that I should think of the car as belonging not to him but to me.

And what had happened to him to make him so quick to apologize, to feel so undeserving?

And if YOU are overly quick to apologize, if you instinctively accommodate, or worry that you’ve burdened someone — why is that?

I don’t know the driver’s story, and I don’t know yours; but if you apologize a lot, it’s likely NOT because you’re constantly in the wrong.

Here’s what’s probably happening, and how to change it.

Do you remember the incredible Candlelight Chat we did, where our guests were the hosts of This Jungian Life (which has since become one of my favorite podcasts)? In one episode, Lisa Marchiano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee explore the reasons that some humans over-apologize:

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Fear

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

-Kahlil Gibran

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”Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence”:

This sounds, at first, like such a forbidding statement. It speaks of closed doors, and finality.

But I find this idea so comforting, because without it, we feel that we should at least try to go back to all the good people and situations that lived and happened in the past. We experience a kind of magical thinking: if only I protest loudly or compellingly enough about this change, about this farewell, if only I make the right call, if only I travel to the right destination, if only I perform the correct ablutions: then things can be as they once were. We know rationally that we can’t go back, but we feel as if, if only we worked at it hard enough, we could.

And all this trying, and the futility of it, is so much more painful than the letting go itself.

It also stops us from becoming the ocean.

What do you think? What has your life experience been?

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Following our last “Just Us” Candlelight Chat, I received this note from one of our Quiet Life members:

“Thank you so much for hosting this lovely gathering. It’s always such a treat to connect with fellow kindred spirits :)

I have a question: how to best respond when people say “you’re so quiet”? I’ve never really understood why people feel compelled to point it out. It seems less about making me aware of it and more about their discomfort with my communication style.

It’s not exactly an insult, but it’s not really a compliment either, especially given the way it’s often said, usually with a bit of a grimace. I once had a leader walk by my office and say, “You’re so quiet it drives me crazy!” 🤷‍♀️

What I also find interesting is that I’ve never heard the same kind of comment directed at someone for being “so loud.” 🤔”

I was about to launch in and give an answer but it occurred to me that so many of you have asked a variation of this question over the years. So I’m sharing my response with all of you: five ways to respond to the “why are you so quiet” question — and even more important, what tone to take, as you respond:

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I’m very excited to share with you all that today is publication day for our new children’s book, Lucky and Norman - and the reviews are wonderful!

This children’s book, which I wrote together with three generations of the Cain family, tells the true story of a friendship between our kids and two donkeys they met on vacation - and how learning to say goodbye to Lucky and Norman taught our children about love, sorrow, and resilience. This children’s book was also inspired by my grown-up book, Bittersweet.

You can order the book here!

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And here are some of the reviews:

“The emotional core of the book is handled with grace. Lim’s watercolor, pencil, and digital illustrations couldn’t be lovelier. Soft greens and golden fields are bathed in changing light, from bright blue days to dusky blue-violet evenings. Her donkeys are the stars of the book: Their enormous, soulful eyes and reactive bodies register wariness, delight, and heartbreak with astonishing expressiveness. Lim varies her spreads and includes intimate vignettes and sweeping pastoral panoramas that give the book visual rhythm. Rooted in real experiences, the story carries the warmth of something genuinely lived.” —Kirkus

“When spring arrives, a family drives to the country, where they stay for a week on Mr. Santiago’s farm. While the parents enjoy the peaceful setting, their sons explore the farm. Their host, Mr. Santiago, introduces them to the two donkeys, Lucky and Norman. Though the boys are initially awkward around them, they yearn to play with Norman and Lucky, and they follow the farmer’s advice to earn the donkeys’ trust by feeding them apples and carrots, a practice that helps them eventually befriend the animals. When the animals are finally friendly, the boys spend each day running to the field and romping with the donkeys until it’s time to go home. Their awesome week turns bittersweet when they realize how much they will miss their new friends. Created using watercolor and pencil as well as digital elements, the illustrations sensitively depict the donkeys as well as the people in this quiet yet engaging family story, which was written as a collaboration involving three generations of family members fondly recalling their week in the country with Lucky and Norman.” —Booklist

We hope you love reading Lucky and Norman to the little ones in your lives, as much as we enjoyed creating (and living) it.

xo Susan, Ken, Grandma Bobbi, Grandpa Al, Sam and Eli

A few weekends ago, our son attended Admitted Students Weekend at a West Coast university, and our whole family came along. The weekend was jam-packed with people and activities, pride and excitement. We went to sample lectures and new restaurants, we toured the campus and town, we chatted with other expectant parents (I chose the word “expectant” purposely - it’s usually used for birth, and this stage of life is a new kind of birth, even if it feels like a leave-taking.) There wasn’t much time to think.

But then Sunday morning came. I had to continue on to a speaking engagement in Ohio, while Ken and the boys flew home to New York. The way our flights worked out, they left town a few hours before I did. We said goodbye and I wandered around our now-empty Airbnb, fully aware that this was a precursor to the bigger goodbye that looms in our future, the one that’s coming this September.

And that’s when it set in: the Pain of Separation. The exact same one I wrote about in Bittersweet and now Lucky and Norman (our new children’s book teaching kids how to say goodbye with resilience).

Luckily, I recognize this particular pain so well by now - if you’ve lived this long (I’m 58) you’ve been through it many times. You’ve also learned that it will likely subside. I knew that, as soon as I was in motion myself — heading for the airport, en route to Ohio — I’d feel much better.

All of this made me ask myself what else I know, by now, about how to deal with the Pain of Separation. And the answer, I think, is quite a lot.

Here are seven of my tried-and-true strategies for saying goodbye to your beloveds: whether due to an empty nest, a breakup or any of life’s vagaries (and you can ask me, this September, how well I’m implementing these strategies!):

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