Rowan Mangan:
And I’m Rowan Mangan. And this is another episode of Bewildered. You know us. We’re the people who do a podcast for other people who are trying to figure it out.

Martha Beck:
Exactly. So, Rowy, what are you trying to figure out lately?

Rowan Mangan:
Well, so many things, Marty. As you know, I’m a very confused individual, just trying to live my life. But one of the things, especially in a cross-cultural sort of situation, I’m not from here, sometimes I don’t always understand the culture, the humor. And I often have a fear that I’m not understanding when someone’s having a go. Now, I don’t don’t know if Americans use that expression, “having a go?”

Martha Beck:
No, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s like, “Are you taking me for a ride?” Would that make sense?

Martha Beck:
Yeah. Having a go is more toilet-related, I think.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, really?

Martha Beck:
I don’t know.

Rowan Mangan:
I don’t think so.

Martha Beck:
I don’t think so.

Rowan Mangan:
No, having a go, it’s like… see, part of it is, I think that Americans don’t really do this, trying to make someone believe something when… let me explain what I’m really talking about.

Martha Beck:
Okay.

Rowan Mangan:
So we do Pilates. We’ve talked about it before a long time ago. You have a tale.

Martha Beck:
I do.

Rowan Mangan:
It was a whole big drama in our lives for a while.

Martha Beck:
It doesn’t stick out, people, it’s just underneath.

Rowan Mangan:
We don’t know when we said this so you’ll really have to go through the whole back catalog. I don’t know what she’s talking about.

Martha Beck:
What a treasure.

Rowan Mangan:
What a treasure. But I took a bit of a sabbatical from Pilates for a while, but I’m back and it has caused me to wonder on occasion about our darling Ray, who teaches us how to do Pilates and how to strengthen our core. Cores, I suppose.

Martha Beck:
He’s wonderful, Ray, we love you.

Rowan Mangan:
I love you, Ray. But sometimes, Ray, I’ve got to say I wonder about you. Okay, so here’s… look. He has us do things, and how would we know if they’re real or not? We’re not going to go Google it. So one of the things he has us do, and I’m taking a risk here, if he is having a go, if he is laughing all over Newburg, Pennsylvania about this-

Martha Beck:
It will be a debacle.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. I’m just going to demonstrate how stupid we are. But anyway, so we do this one thing where we’re on the floor on our little yoga mats, doing our little exercises. Then we do this one where we lie on our backs and we grab our ankles and then we roll back like a little ball. And when we get to the sort of bit where we’re on our shoulders, if that makes sense, where our back is sort of rounded, we’re holding onto our ankles, whee. We roll back. And then when we’re at the top of that, this is where I start wondering. We have to clap our feet a few times.

Martha Beck:
Three times, specifically.

Rowan Mangan:
He calls this the seal. So, as in, [inaudible 00:03:41].

Martha Beck:
Or as in the seal of approval, I don’t know.

Rowan Mangan:
But if you’re happy and you know it, clap your feet. I just don’t… I’m just not sure, Marty. I’m not sure that that’s real or… because if it wasn’t, it would just be the perfect joke to play on people week after week, having them clap their own feet upside down on the floor.

Martha Beck:
It would be really good. What if Ray is in dead earnest, but Joseph Pilates, the man who made this up, was just sitting at home thinking, “What can I do to really mess with people’s heads?”

Rowan Mangan:
“Do you think I could get them to clap their own feet? I wonder.”

Martha Beck:
I did have a friend who went to the doctor for a checkup and he had her strip naked and then walk around his office flapping her arms because he said it was medical for some reason.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, boy.

Martha Beck:
And I had forgotten about that until you brought that up and suddenly it takes on a dark and sinister tone.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. Yeah. Mine was really light and fluffy, just happily clapping our feet like seals.

Martha Beck:
But your point is well taken that if people-

Rowan Mangan:
That’s why we rebel against culture. Culture is just, “I say you have to clap your feet,” and you just do it without even thinking.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. We don’t rebel against the culture of Pilates enough.

Rowan Mangan:
No.

Martha Beck:
It’s time we did.

Rowan Mangan:
I think we should just boycott it. We should just go to our class and just sit there and go. “No, you clap your feet. See how you like it, buddy.”

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
All right. That would be really good.

Martha Beck:
All right.

Rowan Mangan:
What are you trying to figure out?

Martha Beck:
I’m just thinking about the Pilates machine called the reformer and I think they’ll fail. Okay. Anyway, my thing is also related to professionals that I go to for my health. It’s my dental hygienist. I went and had my dental cleaning and it is kind of a point of pride with me only at the dentist. Everywhere else, everybody mocks and loathes me for it, but I am obsessed with flossing my teeth.

Rowan Mangan:
Listeners, you should see how smug this woman gets when she gets back from the dentist. Every time she’s like, “They told me I’m fabulous again.”

Martha Beck:
They don’t say fabulous. They say, “Eh, do you floss a lot?” And I’m like, “Constantly.” And they’re like, “Eh, I can tell.” It’s just the hygienist. It’s not the dentist. But this dental hygienist said… and she cleaned my teeth with the little things and then she has to floss my teeth for me as a kind of… that’s part of the red carpet service. And anyway, so she’s flossing away on my mouth and she said, “You could probably floss with your eyes closed.” And I said, “Yes, I can.” But ever since, I’ve been trying to figure out how she needs her eyes to floss. And this is an honest question. Do most people have to look in the mirror to floss or look at their hands or something?

Rowan Mangan:
Well, that’s not the biggest question mark for me in that whole story, because what I can’t help wondering is she meant to floss your teeth or are you being taken advantage of in some way? Because that to me is a step too intimate. I wouldn’t let you floss my teeth. I’m certainly not going to let a stranger do it.

Martha Beck:
They don’t floss your teeth when you go to the dentist?

Rowan Mangan:
I don’t think so.

Martha Beck:
Well, you pay attention because they’re going to be flossing you, girl.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh my God. I don’t want to be flossed by any anyone but myself.

Martha Beck:
Well, that just ruins our romantic Valentine’s evening, then.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s intimate. It’s too intimate to floss someone else. No.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. So in fact, probably she was saying that it’s so intimate, you probably should close your eyes. You shouldn’t even be present with yourself when you floss.

Rowan Mangan:
She should have closed… turned off the lights in that little room.

Martha Beck:
I could imagine her-

Rowan Mangan:
Before she took to you with the floss.

Martha Beck:
I know. I can imagine her looming over me in the dark going, “I’m doing this with my eyes closed.”

Rowan Mangan:
It’s a bit like that terrible meal that you have to… in France that you have to cover your head with a serviette so God won’t see you eating it. That’s what it’s like. It’s like to floss someone else’s teeth is so intimate and grotesque that you should have to turn off the lights and close your eyes before you even attempt it.

Martha Beck:
Well, now you went all dark because that covering your head with a thing while you eat something is… oh, sorry. It just made me throw something across the room. You may have heard the clatter. Yeah, it’s tragic.

Rowan Mangan:
It was a little box of tooth floss.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, tooth flossers. Oh, there’s so many things that I don’t understand and I never will.

Rowan Mangan:
We’ll figure it out, Marty.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, we’ll figure it out.

Rowan Mangan:
Give us some time. We’ll be right back with more Bewildered. We don’t say this enough. We are so glad you’re a Bewildered listener and we’re hoping you might want to go to the next level with us. By which I mean if you rate and review the podcast, it helps new people find us so we can keep bewildering new souls and how much we love that. Ratings are very much appreciated. Obviously, the more stars you give us, the more appreciation is forthcoming. Reviews are quite simply heaven and we read everyone and exclaim over them and we just love you all. Who else is trying to figure something out this day?

Martha Beck:
Well, someone.

Rowan Mangan:
How’s that someone? Because today, as she segued awkwardly, is the Wild Files episode Marty, where we listen to the listeners. It’s about time.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
With our eyes closed and today we’re listening to Caitlin.

Caitlin:
Hello Martha and Ro. I am such a huge fan of your Bewildered podcast. I just want to say thank you for letting me be here. So I’m currently in the process of transitioning my once for-profit business into a not-for-profit business, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time. And I find that a lot of people in my life don’t really quite understand my dreams. They don’t understand my goals. I mean, the important people do, but I find it hard to not get lost in the noise of the culture, so to speak. So I was wondering if you had any advice or any streams of consciousness about how I can maintain my own integrity within my dreams without allowing other people’s ramblings to interfere with that. Thank you.

Rowan Mangan:
Do we have any streams of consciousness? Oh, you better believe we do, Caitlin.

Martha Beck:
Oh, Caitlin, to ask the two of us for a stream of consciousness…

Rowan Mangan:
You had us at “stream of.”

Martha Beck:
I love this question. I really do. I identify with it and I think most people will because I have spent so many hours, months, years, probably 10,000 hours of my life trying so hard to get the people I love and who I know love me to understand me. But it didn’t always feel like it worked.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, I think there’s such a strong, relatable feeling of wanting to be understood, especially in our mission in what we’re… ad that’s what I hear from Caitlin. And to be seen in the way that we see ourselves, our intentions, and for our good intentions to be understood. And that feels so important when it’s the people we love.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, there’s so many. I’ve had so many clients who were really quite clear on their own path, but they were like, “Why does he not understand me? Why do they not understand me?” And it was a separate, painful issue.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
This idea that those that they love did not understand.

Rowan Mangan:
So why do we want this so badly, do you reckon? What idea are we attaching to in wanting to be understood?

Martha Beck:
Well, you know what we say that the culture brings people to consensus and nature brings us to our senses. I think we are such social creatures that consensus gives us lots of comfort. And if you’re really going to go out on your own mission that’s individual and completely unique for you in all the universe, you can’t have that consensus really. Dreams can be quite diaphanous and that means you kind of have to go forward alone. And we want the consensus.

Rowan Mangan:
Right. Consensus feels safe. In a way, we are trying to build a culture around us when we ask for consensus on our dreams or maybe join one that exists, but one or the other, it’s about a feeling of safety and approval.

Martha Beck:
And it is interesting the ways I’ve seen this as I was thinking through the topic. This is as far away culturally as I can imagine this question coming up in two different places, but it was still the same question. I once in the dark of night in the South African wilderness by a crackling fire, I had a fortune-telling session with a sangoma, which is what they call shamans in the local tribes. And so in the way that they do it, it’s called throwing the bones. So this woman had a little bag of bones and sticks and I don’t know what all, shells, and she would throw them and then she would read things from these shells and it was very strange. It was very unexpected. And she would say something and she seemed a little bit confused. She was telling me, “You deal with thousands of people, but you never leave your house.”

And she was looking at me as if she was confused. And then she started to gesture and she brought up a bunch of other people from the Shangaan tribe there in northern South Africa. She was from Mozambique. And she would throw the bones and then she would say something and then the translator would say it. And then all the people behind her, they said something that sounded to me like [foreign language 00:14:03]. And they said it every time she spoke out loud. And I asked someone later, “What were they saying?” And they told me, “They’re saying we agree.” So it was like she was going out on a limb, because she did. She told me some pretty trippy stuff. I wrote a whole book about the wisdom of the ancients because of that throwing the bone session, and she knew what she was doing. She was no phony, but she still needed the agreement of her people. She needed a backup bench to agree with her so that she could dare to say the things that were coming through her.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s fascinating.

Martha Beck:
It was. It really was. Do you think that’s what a Greek chorus is about in the ancient Greek plays, that there’s a chorus of people talking to the hero?

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, so there’s usually… I mean, we’ve talked about this before because it’s such a strong representation of culture, but yeah, you’d have half a dozen people on the stage representing the whole community. And I definitely think that the urge to conform to a culture goes back at least… I mean it probably goes back to whenever, before we even really became human. But I think that the thing is that when we are looking for approval, and that’s the sort of outward sign of being understood, right?

Martha Beck:
Right.

Rowan Mangan:
You want to be understood and approved of, because I think the only way we can conceptualize of not having that is to be judged, right?

Martha Beck:
Oh, yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And being judged by the people around us is another face of, “People don’t get me.” So, all right, so this is quite a deep need that we seem to have. And it’s a component of our social nature.

Martha Beck:
I agree.

Rowan Mangan:
But where human culture is as a whole, looking around, opening a newspaper… I haven’t opened a newspaper this century.

Martha Beck:
As if.

Rowan Mangan:
You know me. I’ll open the newspaper as I suck on my cigarette. The way we do culture with each other according to this sort of need is fucked. So let’s look at alternatives.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, yeah. I think we do have that deep need for a deep bench. Do you say that in Australia, a deep bench?

Rowan Mangan:
That’s some sort of sporting metaphor. I can feel it.

Martha Beck:
No, it means a very deep bench where you can just relax into a cushy… no, it really does-

Rowan Mangan:
That’s lovely.

Martha Beck:
It’s a sports metaphor, as if I knew anything about sports. But it’s having a lot of people who can step in for you if you get tired or injured or whatever. And the people who see our souls kind of feel like the bench, the deep bench, for our mission. And so if we don’t feel that understanding coming from the people closest to us, I think there’s almost a sense of near panic, deprivation of backup.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, interesting.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
I have to say something, Marty. I feel like I can’t stay quiet on this because I feel like in some ways, our listeners do see our souls, and I need them to see you in a way that I don’t think many people have ever seen you, and you said you don’t know anything about sports, but I happen to have been in the room on occasion when NFL football has been played and something really weird happens to you at that time. And you start saying words that I don’t understand, and you’re just watching these things and describing what they’re doing and making prognostications. It’s so completely other-

Martha Beck:
That’s so interesting.

Rowan Mangan:
… from you. Anyway, I just needed to say that.

Martha Beck:
I was so sure that you were going to talk about how last week, I was giving a speech and I was on Zoom and it was a really big corporate event.

Rowan Mangan:
You had your pants off.

Martha Beck:
And so I put on a suit and I came in… yeah, you came in and I got so hot in the middle of the speech that… and there was no way to jump up and fan myself or anything so gently, and I think very subtly, I removed my pants and my socks and Ro came into the room as I was giving my speech in a blazer and my underpants, and she took pictures.

Rowan Mangan:
In fact, I think we might need to provide listeners with the photographic evidence of this because it is very funny and-

Martha Beck:
I’ve never seen the pictures. I just saw you take them.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, you might not see them. You don’t know where the show notes can be found.

Martha Beck:
If you do… all right. It’s my truth. What can I say?

Rowan Mangan:
Stop getting us off-topic.

Martha Beck:
Oh, sorry. Okay. What does the culture say about this whole idea of being understood and how it’s hard for people you love?

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, I think the culture says that it’s obvious and natural that… “natural” that the people who love you will get you. It’s automatic, right?

Martha Beck:
Oh, yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
But it’s not. I don’t think that that’s true. I think it’s often the people who love you don’t get you at all, and also have the strongest ideas about who you should be.

Martha Beck:
That is so… in fact, that is absolutely true. The more people have loved me in my life, the more they’ve tried to get me to understand them, and the more I’ve loved them, the more I’ve tried to force them to understand me.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
So it gets to be quite contentious, even, this effort to make ourselves understood.

Rowan Mangan:
So if we have these missions, and I mean, mission is a very kind of grandiose word in a way, but let’s just use it. Let’s just be grandiose. Fuck it. And we’re going forward in service of this mission. What if no one ever really gets us in this? What if there’s no individual? I’m talking about us in the loose sort of way, one.

Martha Beck:
Right.

Rowan Mangan:
But what if no one ever gets one. Is it still worth it?

Martha Beck:
I think it is. I mean, I think some of the greatest things in the history of the world have come out of people who just said, “Nobody understands this, but I’m going to do it anyway.” I think a lot of the great teachers like Buddha and Jesus were doing that. And I thought about Van Gogh.

Rowan Mangan:
Van Gogh?

Martha Beck:
If you want to be technical. And then I thought, “Yeah, but he cut off his ear and then he shot himself, so maybe not,” but then he had Theo, his brother. Sorry, I’m getting off-topic. I think that none of us is totally understood and the geniuses sort of bring our attention to the fact that they went forward even though they were not completely understood. And there’s a kind of inherent loneliness in the great thinkers, well, in all of us because no two of us is the same. So I think we all need people who love us and we all need people who get us. But here’s the thing: I don’t think they have to be the same people.

Rowan Mangan:
Right. So we need to find someone who can get the parts of you that matter, and that different people for different parts can be okay.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. Because I think we’ve all had the experience of being loved but not understood by a person, and maybe the experience of being understood by people who don’t even really know us. I really think that sometimes, the people… like you read the book I wrote after that sangoma gave me the reading and you were in Australia and you understood it much better than the editor of the book that I was working with, right? When I met you and you started talking about it, I knew you understood that part of me completely, and the people around me when I was writing did not. So it was a weird experience of, “Okay, here’s someone I’ve never met who really understands me.” So that’s one way it can go.

Rowan Mangan:
Then you married me.

Martha Beck:
Well yeah, that’s true. But I think we all experience this, these two factors. Being understood and being loved, I think they are on a sliding scale and they don’t necessarily relate. Where have you felt this mismatch between being understood and being loved?

Rowan Mangan:
I just had a thought. When Caitlin talked about the people who matter, and then there’s this idea of the people who love us deeply. And I just thought… oh, there’s a perfect Ani DiFranco line for this where she says, “There’s a crowd of people gathered in every person. There are so many roles that we play and you’ve decided to love me for eternity and I’m still deciding who I want to be today.” And so often, the people who love us, love us over a lifetime if we’re lucky, right?

Martha Beck:
Yeah, yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And we are so many different people over the course of a lifetime.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, and changing all the time.

Rowan Mangan:
Changing all the time. And this is what I was just thinking is that I am a person of great enthusiasms, but I’m quite… what’s the word for that? When you’re… like dilettante. I’m a dilettante of great enthusiasms. So I get really obsessed and then I move on and get really obsessed with something else. And so I was thinking about when I was doing my masters in international politics, it was a very kind of… a group of very idealistic people on the whole, and we were just constantly reading about all the genocides going on and wars being fought and injustices and all of this in these far-flung corners of the world where no one was getting… there wasn’t media coverage. And I can remember talking to one of my closest friends and just being like, “Why don’t you want to do something about this?” And she’s like, “Jesus, I just came over for a cup of tea and you’re telling me I need to go to Sudan?” And I was just like, “But how can you not feel compelled to?”

Martha Beck:
Right.

Rowan Mangan:
And then I finished my master’s and I still haven’t been to Sudan or made anything better there, remotely. If anything, I’ve probably made things worse just now, saying that. But anyway, so that’s a time when I didn’t feel like people got me. But I have to hasten to add, I’ve been several people since then.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. I had a sort of group misunderstanding, a mass misunderstanding if you will, when I-

Rowan Mangan:
A mis-massunderstanding.

Martha Beck:
A mis-massunderstanding. When I left Mormonism, my whole… everybody I’d known growing up was very, very into that belief system. And the fact that I would leave it… I’m sure they still love me, but it was inconceivable. It did not fit into the same universe in our minds. And my mind changed and theirs didn’t and it was like, “Okay, I’ll love you from here.” But it was rough.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
And I was also thinking about how I don’t understand my own son. I love Adam, but I don’t understand him. His Down syndrome makes him really, really different. And there are parts of him that I know are beyond me, but he gets parts of you. He understands you in some ways better than I do.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, totally. Yeah. And I’ve known Adam less than a decade, but we have a very deep understanding of the places where we’re similar. And one of them I know is that we, Adam and I, both care about stuff being good quality and we both like to research before we buy things, research, find something that’s good quality, decide on it, then we stick with it. We’re both the same. And so he comes to me with his Christmas list because he’s just like, “I can’t trust you other people with understanding how important it is that I get the right adapter for my PlayStation.”

Martha Beck:
We don’t. Yeah, I don’t. I don’t get that. Karen doesn’t get it, but you so get it.

Rowan Mangan:
I feel so grateful to have Adam in our family because yeah, you two really just don’t get it in this way.

Martha Beck:
Every time he gets me a gift, it’s weirdly deeply understanding of where I am in my life.

Rowan Mangan:
So he gets you, you just don’t get him.

Martha Beck:
Exactly. But he gets me in this way that I can’t quite understand. I don’t know how he does it. He just always… like the day that something bad happens, he has a card that’s exactly for that day and it’s kind of amazing.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, he’s uncanny.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
So, what about you and me? I mean, what do you think about where do we have places where we don’t get each other?

Martha Beck:
Oh, going to put the rubber where… on… wait. Put the rubber where your mouth is. Oh, why do I do this? You’re going to put your money where your mouth is. We say that and I’m not going to-

Rowan Mangan:
Where the rubber meets the road?

Martha Beck:
Yeah, just make something out of that.

Rowan Mangan:
The rubber where your mouth is.

Martha Beck:
Oh God, why do I do this to myself? Okay. Honestly speaking-

Rowan Mangan:
This is where your mouth meets the road.

Martha Beck:
It’s where your mouth meets the road. I do think that no one really… if you did not grow up in a cult, you really can’t understand what it’s like to have that as your formative… as your foundation.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, for sure.

Martha Beck:
It’s very, very different from being raised in a secular culture for me, really weird. And I know people who grew up that way get it, and people who didn’t, including even my darling, you, don’t get it.

Rowan Mangan:
No, I don’t. And I feel like that particular cult is especially hard to understand because it looks sort of normal and so it doesn’t… the depth of difference takes… I’m still learning to comprehend it, and probably always will be.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. And it was more intense for me because there are layers and layers of that culture and I was right at the center of the weirdest part.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
So it’s not every Mormon in the world who’s like that, but yeah, it did that. So what about you? Where do you feel misunderstood by moi?

Rowan Mangan:
Well, I think you know perfectly well that you don’t and don’t understand, don’t seem willing to even try to understand me, in my passion for hashtag band life.

Martha Beck:
Oh God.

Rowan Mangan:
I want to live in a van and you don’t respect it.

Martha Beck:
I do not want to live in a van and I don’t want you to live in a van. I mean, I’m just going to say it.

Rowan Mangan:
Do you not want me to live in a van?

Martha Beck:
I will say though, I’m going to meet you halfway because I see your whole fantasy is of living in a van, driving around with Ani DiFranco. Okay? Because you never lose your passion for Ani DiFranco. And we went to an Ani DiFranco concert and I got it. I understand. I didn’t get that part of you. I get it.

Rowan Mangan:
There’s no songs about living in vans that I’m aware of in Ani’s work.

Martha Beck:
Oh, I’m sure you can find something. I think there is no topic upon which Ani DiFranco has not written.

Rowan Mangan:
There’s plenty of topics about driving and being on the road.

Martha Beck:
Well, there you go.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, yeah.

Martha Beck:
She put it in your head. I blame her. But I love her now, so. I loved her all the time. I just didn’t get why you were obsessed with her. And now I do. So yeah, sometimes we have a surprise-

Rowan Mangan:
Thanks for loving me and getting me in that way.

Martha Beck:
Oh, thanks for loving me and getting me and loving me and not getting me sometimes and loving me anyway.

Rowan Mangan:
Yes, good point.

Martha Beck:
And Karen, it goes all the different ways. We all understand different things about each other.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
So what do we do about it, Ro-y Jo?

Rowan Mangan:
Well, I think we will get to the bottom of this and we will figure it out, but we just need to take a little break. So Marty, I think it’s fair at this point to say that it’s likely that at some point, we’re going to come to the realization that some people love you but won’t get you. Don’t get you or won’t get you.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. That’s what we’re saying to Caitlin. That’s the sad truth is, you have to accept the fact that it’s really not always going to happen. In fact, it will always not happen to some degree.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. So what do we do? We very deeply want to create a culture or join a culture of consensus in this area. So what we try to do on Bewildered is connect with our nature, come to our senses. Where do we find our senses here when the longing is so deep?

Martha Beck:
This is where it’s really tricky because we can dodge and weave and try to avoid it, because the natural thing to do when you’ve reached something that you wish you had and you can’t have it, is to go into grief, into the grieving process.

Rowan Mangan:
Right.

Martha Beck:
That’s how we let go of things that we really wanted that can’t come to us wholly. And the first stage of that is denial. So we can bounce around for decades going to different people saying, “Oh, this person loves and understands me. These people love me and they understand me. Oh, I get it.” And I did a bit of that and I’ve watched people do it for decades at a time.

Rowan Mangan:
Or even potentially, I imagine, turning away from love because we think that love without… “I thought he understood me, but he didn’t.”

Martha Beck:
“You don’t get me.”

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
And I think kids go through a time where they want their parents to understand and then they try desperately or they back away or they rebel or do anything to try to bring those two things together. Maybe that’s the bargaining phase that is part of the grieving process. You think, “Okay, well if I did this, if I managed it that way…” That’s the second part after denial. And if you’re really honest with yourself, eventually you get to grief, the sadness part of it.

“I’m sitting here with a person I love, they don’t understand me and that sucks.” Oh, and I left out anger. Anger is a big part. I think it comes before sadness for some people. It all is in a big mush, is what it is. It’s like being in a cement mixer of all these feelings. So there’s denial, bargaining, anger, sadness, and then finally acceptance. And when you come out into acceptance after going through all the other things, your mind, your heart, your soul, they’re all sort of tempered and made softer and more gentle by the process of grieving. It’s actually a productive process. It’s just that it’s not fun all the time and we’d like to avoid it, but-

Rowan Mangan:
We tend to prefer fun to not fun.

Martha Beck:
Generally speaking, yes.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
Although if somebody comes to me and says, “I really want this person to understand me,” and I have met them both, then I’m like, “Oh, I don’t think they’re ever going to understand you, and what’s in front of you is a little spade of grieving, but you’ll be okay.” They’re like, “Oh no.” But I can tell you from experience, it’s better than busting a gut to try to be understood by the people that you love or by hiding your true self so that you’re always grieving the death of your own true nature because you’ve sold it out to feel or to pretend that you’re loved and understood by all the same people.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, and I’ve got another piece of this, I think, which is there are people who get you.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
They may not know you. Hashtag Ani DiFranco. She gets me. She gets me a lot.

Martha Beck:
She does.

Rowan Mangan:
People who get you may not exist. I know a number of fictional characters who get me very deeply, and I appreciate that from them. And for that matter, people who get you might be dead, might’ve been dead for centuries. Rumi.

Martha Beck:
Or they will someday. Rumi. I mean, when-

Rowan Mangan:
You better believe I will.

Martha Beck:
When Hafiz says, “Troubled? Then stay with me for I am not. From the distance of a millennium, I will bend a flame into the darkness to light the candle in your soul.” It’s like he gets me and he loves me. He’s just dead.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, that’s all right. There’s worse things than being dead.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, there better be, because we’re all headed there. That’s a really important point. And when you start to accept these truths, that the people who get you may not know you, that the people who get you may not exist, that they may be dead, and that the people who love you don’t have to understand you, that is when you are in a position to meet the world as the creator of your own destiny, because you’ll be able to love those who love you even though they’ll never get you.

And you’ll understand that you’ll never totally understand them, so it can make you more compassionate, make you listen more deeply. But I think the most important thing is that you realize that these two variables are not associated, being understood and being loved. You need both, but you need to decouple them so that each of them can come from any direction or from any person.

Rowan Mangan:
Isn’t that wild? I feel like there’s something in this that is pointing to such a huge level of spiritual maturity. To be able to love and be loved without an expectation of being understood is so… it’s amazing how mind-blowing it is. And yet, and we’re only talking partially, right? It’s not like you’re going to go and get married and live out your days with someone who you don’t share a language with or anything like that. It’s not in total.

Martha Beck:
People have done that.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, sure. And I’m sure they look great. Whatever.

Martha Beck:
Fun.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
Congratulations.

Rowan Mangan:
But it’s so interesting to think, “Who would I be if I could let go of that longing?” Or say, “I have my mission and there are people who are so important to me who don’t understand my mission, that’s cool, because I can believe in it myself enough to release myself from that longing for the culture’s validation of what I’m doing.”

Martha Beck:
And then you actually become a leader. You become a leader of… somebody who’s deeply comfortable in walking out beyond the culture, allowing for mission and not expecting understanding.

Rowan Mangan:
I think we all consist of so many different facets in ourselves. We’re so many selves, like Ani DiFranco said. And so it’s like we have thousands of different faces all looking out in slightly different directions. And it’s almost impossible that we could meet a single person who could get each single part of us in that way. But maybe we can find one person who can understand one part of us, like Adam and I connecting deeply in our appreciation of good quality things. And then maybe someone else can understand this part of me. And you can talk to ex-Mormons about that part and then maybe that’s enough, ultimately.

Martha Beck:
I think it’s enough and I think ultimately, it becomes everything because it’s reminding me of the metaphor of Indra’s web, which is a Buddhist metaphor about the structure of the universe where it’s this infinite three-dimensional spider’s web, and at each intersection there is a jewel with infinite faces. And in each of the infinite faces of all these infinite jewels is reflected the entirety of the rest of infinity. So ultimately, the more and more and more you get in touch with who you are at the core, the more you understand your own uniqueness in projecting out a certain light and reflecting it from certain other people, but also there seems the entirety of it holds and understands everything. So I think as you move toward losing that sense of needing to be separate and different, as you lose your ego… sorry, this is a bit Buddhist.

Rowan Mangan:
No, this is really cool.

Martha Beck:
What happens is that you become Indra’s web itself. You stop being the one little jewel, you become the whole web, and then you understand the little parts, the infinite little parts of yourself, and you understand everyone else’s infinite parts. And you understand that all along, you all reflected each other very beautifully.

Rowan Mangan:
Dude, I love it because it sort of has that zen paradox kind of flavor to it where it’s like, “If I can let go of this idea, I will come to the recognition of how profoundly we are all connected, how profoundly one we all are.”

Martha Beck:
Yeah. I will never completely understand anyone and no one will ever completely understand me until we realize that we are both understanding itself.

Rowan Mangan:
Oh, that’s so good. Oh, that’s so good. All right. I need a cigarette. So back here on Earth, it’s like X loves me and doesn’t get me. Y gets me, but we’re not close. That’s all right.

Martha Beck:
That’s okay.

Rowan Mangan:
Z is dead people who get me and I love them.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And I don’t know how they feel about me. And A is a dog who understands everything and nothing.

Martha Beck:
That’s the koan of the dog that understands nothing. You just double zenned yourself and you didn’t even know it.

Rowan Mangan:
Dude.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. Be the dog who understands everything and nothing. And then-

Rowan Mangan:
I am that dog.

Martha Beck:
Me, too. And I think if you can accept that and actually play with it and stop clenching to the idea of what love and understanding are, there’s more of a joyful desire to go exploring our true nature, other people’s true nature, the whole experience of life.

Rowan Mangan:
So feel loved here, feel understood there, and stay wild.

Martha Beck:
Stay wild.

Rowan Mangan: 
We hope you’re enjoying Bewildered. If you’re in the USA and want to be notified when a new episode comes out, text the word ‘WILD’ to 570-873-0144.

We’re also on Instagram. Our handle is @bewilderedpodcast. You can follow us to get updates, hear funny snippets and outtakes, and chat with other fans of the show.

For more of us, Martha’s on Instagram, themarthabeck. She’s on Facebook, The Martha Beck, and she’s on Twitter, marthabeck. Her website is, MarthaBeck.com. And me, I too am on Instagram. Rowan_Mangan. I’m on Facebook as Rowan Mangan. And I’m on Twitter as RowanMangan. Bewildered is produced by Scott Forster with support from the brilliant team at MBI.