Rowan Mangan:
And I’m Rowan Mangan. This is another episode of Bewildered, the podcast for people trying to figure it out. How you doing Marty? You okay?

Martha Beck:
I’m doing well. Yeah. In my little ADD hyperfocus versus totally distractible, but it’s fun.

Rowan Mangan:
Love it, love it.

Martha Beck:
How are you doing?

Rowan Mangan:
I’m good, I’m good. I’m trying to figure things out, the way I do. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how we, you and I, still have a lot of perplexing cultural misunderstandings, often accent related, I should say, rather than cultural. Is that fair?

Martha Beck:
Yeah, yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Accent related. The other day, I still don’t even know how this happened actually, because the other day we’re chatting away about writing novels. I’m in the bath, usually am, am right now, I’m not right now. So I was in the bath, and you were on the floor drawing pictures.

Martha Beck:
On paper, I had paper. I wasn’t just-

Rowan Mangan:
Drawing on the floor.

Martha Beck:
… drawing pictures on the floor. Although-

Rowan Mangan:
That’s Lila’s [inaudible 00:01:33]

Martha Beck:
… I would.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, you would. Anyway, so I wrote this down, so I know what I said, right? I said, “You have to have people that cross purposes, or else you won’t be able to generate scenes.” Right? I was talking about novel writing. And I thought, it’s not going to change any worlds, but I thought it was a reasonable point. And I look up at you and you’ve got this look on your face, and it’s like a little bit so confused, a little bit sympathetic, and you’re trying so hard to understand and not be too prejudiced against me.

Martha Beck:
What did I think you said?

Rowan Mangan:
So I look at you and you look at me and there’s this long silence and then you just said, “Snnnes”? And I’m like, “What?” And you went, ” Snnnes”? Finally, I remembered I said, “Scenes,” and you went, “Scenes? What didn’t you say scenes?” I said, “I did say scenes.” You said, “You said, ‘ Snnnes.'” But your little face looking up at me so eager from the floor.

Martha Beck:
And I was just waiting and watching to see if you would generate a ” Snnnes.”

Rowan Mangan:
” Snnnes, Snnnes.”

Martha Beck:
Snnnes. I mean, heaven knows what that really is.

Rowan Mangan:
I know. What is a Snnnes?

Martha Beck:
Some Australian delicacy, I think.

Rowan Mangan:
Probably is. What are you trying to figure out, my love?

Martha Beck:
I’m trying to figure… you know, so many of my figuring out things have to do around bedtime and insomnia, as you know we’ve both gone down the insomnia road a few times in our lives. So I have all these rituals and things that help me sleep, and it takes me like five minutes to get everything in place, to just position myself for sleep. First of all, I have to tape my mouth closed, because of a book called Breathe.

Rowan Mangan:
So she didn’t say, “take my mouth,” she said, “tape.” As in-

Martha Beck:
Yeah, get a little piece of surgical tape and tape my lips together, because that way I won’t breathe through my mouth, because they found out that it’s really bad for you and if you breathe through your nose everything is good and if you breathe through your mouth, you die almost immediately.

Rowan Mangan:
Marty’s very susceptible to-

Martha Beck:
There’s a book-

Rowan Mangan:
… people who write things like that.

Martha Beck:
… it’s called Breathe. Just read it, just read it. You will be taping your mouth shut at night. Okay, so then I put on my eye shade, because even the slightest amount of light will wake me up immediately. Then, I put in my earplugs, because the slightest sound will… Then, this you don’t know, and I’m always bundled up all day, right? I wear nine layers and a bathrobe on top of everything. Well, for some reason, when it’s time to go to sleep, I have to chill my body. So then, I just lie down in a pair of very light pajamas or a t-shirt and shorts and I take the blanket off and I try to chill myself down to sleep temperature. And then, sometimes I get up and I sort of stagger about, and I thought, “Okay, my body is cold. My mouth is taped shut. My eyes are covered. My ears… I cannot see or hear. I think I’m dead or the undead. I’m a were-zombie.” I have to turn myself into a zombie to sleep, a cold, sightless, soundless, taped mouth shut zombie.

Rowan Mangan:
When someone walks into the room, I mean, there’s you staggering around, but when someone walks into the room and you’ve assembled yourself for sleep, it is the funniest thing, because Marty, she’ll sit up like in a panic, because she always wakes up in a panic… But she can’t see, she can’t hear, and her mouth is taped shut, so she sits up with this stricken look on her face, but she can’t open her mouth except on each edge.

Martha Beck:
On the sides.

Rowan Mangan:
It’s stuck together in the middle.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, you don’t tape the whole thing shut. You don’t want to die, you just want to have closure.

Rowan Mangan:
And so, then she’s got her mouth open at each end going… Then this crazed look in her eyes once she pulls up the sleep mask.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
It’s not good.

Rowan Mangan:
The other thing that you do is sometimes in the middle of the night, in your sleep, pull off the tape-

Martha Beck:
This is true.

Rowan Mangan:
… and you stick it somewhere for safe keeping, like your-

Martha Beck:
Carefully.

Rowan Mangan:
… sleeping self sticks it carefully to your ear or your cheek.

Martha Beck:
I find it all over the room. I find it on different parts of my body. One night, I put it on the bottom of my foot. I don’t know what I was thinking. Little squares of surgical tape, everywhere. To me, it’s just proof that I’m the undead. I’m holding my body together with surgical tape, for reals.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s really interesting.

Martha Beck:
That’s a plan for aging. I just got to wrap everything in surgical tape. Oh my goodness. Bilbo, that dog. Shut your wet mouth.

Rowan Mangan:
Let’s just leave that in.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, we’re just going to leave it in.

Rowan Mangan:
Today, our guest is Bilbo Baggins, cockapoo of Pennsylvania. Strong opinions, a bit controversial at times.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, he has a lot to say.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. He knew we were doing a BeWild Files episode.

Martha Beck:
Oh, he must have.

Rowan Mangan:
I hadn’t anticipated having Bilbo be the person, but we’ll see how we go, we’ll see how we go.

Martha Beck:
So who is another person besides Bilbo Baggins?

Rowan Mangan:
Well, first let me remind our listeners that we have a kind of episode that we do sometimes. It’s called the BeWild Files. We haven’t done one for a little while, but we’re going to do them more, because we’re getting more questions from y’all.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, and because all you people out there are way more interesting than we are-

Rowan Mangan:
So much-

Martha Beck:
… by ourselves.

Rowan Mangan:
… more interesting than us. I mean, you may not tape your mouth shut at night, but you’re still interesting. If you want to know how to submit a voice recording for us telling us what you are trying to figure out, please go to rowanmangan.com/bewildered and I’ve got some very detailed instructions there for you.

Martha Beck:
Fantastic.

Rowan Mangan:
We’ll be right back with more Bewildered. I have a favor to ask. You might not know this, but ratings are reviews are like gold in the podcasting universe. They get podcasts in front of more faces, more eyes, more ears, all the bits that you could have a podcast in front of, that’s what they do. So it would help us enormously if you would consider going over to your favorite podcasting app, especially if it’s Apple, and giving us a few stars, maybe even five, maybe even six, if you can find a way to hack the system, I wouldn’t complain, and a review would also be wonderful, we read them all and love them. So thank you very much in advance, let’s just go out there and bewilder the world. Mwah.

Before we get to today’s person, though, I do want to just kind of preface it, because as our listeners know this is a podcast about culture and the forces of culture, and often I think it’s fair to say that we talk about culture and we kind of mean mainstream culture in this country, whatever we don’t-

Martha Beck:
Modern Westernized culture. We’ve done this before.

Rowan Mangan:
All that stuff. But I just wanted to say that we’re looking at a different kind of culture today.

Martha Beck:
A subculture.

Rowan Mangan:
A subculture.

Martha Beck:
Because we all have layers and layers of culture. Any time there are two people in the room culture is the third guest at the table, right? So there are really strong subcultures within our broader culture. And today, we’re focusing on not so much the mainstream.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, because of course the mainstream’s very powerful and reinforced everywhere, but really the thing is when any kind of consensus is pushing you outside what feels right to you, right? So, what we realized as we started talking about today’s topic is that there’s actually an implicit kind of pressure that today’s, I don’t want to say guest, our BeWild Files-

Martha Beck:
Person.

Rowan Mangan:
… person who’s coming, they… I think it’s like self-help culture, spiritual culture, those kind of things sell us certain promises that can make us unhappy. Is that fair?

Martha Beck:
Yeah. All right, so Rowy can you play us our wonderful guest?

Rowan Mangan:
I will.

Gazit Haigh:
My name is Gazit Haigh. My pronouns are they/them. And I am wondering about how to interact with those situations which don’t feel joyful and authentic and true, but are necessary. For me, one of those is co-parenting with my ex. I use Byron Katie’s The Work, which is really helpful, but it definitely never feels like something that is my true north, unless I guess we think about that I want to do it for my kid. But it just usually doesn’t feel warm and fuzzy. So any thoughts would be so greatly appreciated. Thanks for all you do. I love the podcast so much.

Rowan Mangan:
Gazit. What a cool question.

Martha Beck:
What a lovely human.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. You know what I love most about this, Marty, is that it acknowledges, in the whole issue that Gazit raises, it shows us that life isn’t perfectible. There’s always going to be shitty stuff that we have to deal with and I do think that sometimes we’re tempted to believe that all the bad stuff can go away if we’re zen enough or self-helpy of spiritual people sometimes, I think, try to sell that.

Martha Beck:
I think sometimes they believe that.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, yeah. And I think that down that road is shame and self-loathing and all of that sort of stuff.

Martha Beck:
Yes, indeed.

Rowan Mangan:
I do love this, and thank you Gazit for, I want to say writing in, for speaking in. Thanks for speaking in.

Martha Beck:
For jumping in.

Rowan Mangan:
Jumping in? I don’t know if they jumped.

Martha Beck:
They may have been jumping. Could’ve been.

Rowan Mangan:
We can’t know.

Martha Beck:
Can’t rule it out.

Rowan Mangan:
That’s true. It’s true. And I have to say, oh my god, it’s such a good, I mean, it’s such a juicy problem, it’s not a good problem. Would never say that. If I had to share a human being with any of my exes, OMFG. I would not be doing well at all.

Martha Beck:
I assume you mean not eating, but raising as a child. Because if you were sharing a… that’s a lot of meat.

Rowan Mangan:
It depends on the size of the child.

Martha Beck:
But yes, co-parenting. Absolutely.

Rowan Mangan:
Co-parenting. Yes.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, it’s so awkward, right?

Rowan Mangan:
It puts you in this situation where you’re artificially keeping alive a relationship that’s died. It’s a zombie relationship.

Martha Beck:
Like me at night, when I go to sleep.

Rowan Mangan:
Like you at night. Yeah. Isn’t that weird? We should be allowed, in this world, to break up and move on, but then there’s this little thing called children that can prevent it. So anyway, all of that to say, I really feel you on this one and I think it’s not unique, I think there’s other similar situations that we kind of confront sometimes like a toxic workplace, I think, can be that sort of ongoing nasty.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, any place where you’re absolutely stuck with someone legally or because of blood ties or whatever. I have friends now who have never had good relationships with their parents, but their parents are now older and they’ve got that role reversal and they’re caring for their parent as if the parent were the child, but they also have all these years of negative experience and maybe weren’t even talking to each other, so it’s really awkward.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, yeah. And we’re talking shit, if we’re going to say that that’s fixable. That is always going to suck a bit. Is that fair?

Martha Beck:
I mean, yeah. And I think that we’ll get into this a little bit more, but there’s something very odd and icky that comes in when people try to overlay the difficulty of that with, “I’m so enlightened. I’m doing a spiritual bypass.” Right? People are like, “Oh yes, my son just racked up $900 on a phone bill to a phone sex line and he’s just the Buddha in my path.” That’s a literal example from one of my clients, by the way. “He’s just the Buddha in my path.” And I’m like, “He’s a very horny Buddha in your path.”

Rowan Mangan:
He’s the horny Buddha in my path.

Martha Beck:
But it’s just like, “Oh, everything’s so great.” No it isn’t. Stop lying.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, and it’s funny how it looks different than, “Go to school. Go to work.” It’s a different message, but it’s that same force, that same cultural force that pushes you against your nature.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, and every religion starts out with be happy and wise and forgiving and it ends up being let’s all pretend to be happy, wise, and forgiving, and we’ll kill you if you don’t. As soon as something goes cultural, the potential for all that falseness arises and you’ve got the same basic situation.

Rowan Mangan:
Totally, totally. And so, given all of that, and given the acknowledgment that it won’t all be sunshine and roses, we can still come to our senses around these kinds of situations. Right, Marty?

Martha Beck:
Yes. And the whole thing is, culture tells us to come to consensus, and nature tells us to come to our senses and that’s what we try to help people do. So here we have the cultural consensus for this subculture being, if you’re good enough at your yoga and meditation and whatever, everything is going to be joyful and blissful.

Rowan Mangan:
And I don’t want to say that Gazit is subscribing to that-

Martha Beck:
No.

Rowan Mangan:
… either. But I think it’s like, what do you do around this situation? Well, what you don’t do and what no one on this podcast is going to say is just fix your attitude.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. Turn that frown upside-down. Ah, I just read a psychology book that literally sad that-

Rowan Mangan:
No.

Martha Beck:
… and I wanted to find the author and hurt him. Okay, speaking of authors, well podcasters, when we heard Gazit’s question, I thought about this conversation you told me about between a podcast host named Theo Vonn and a psychologist named Jason-

Rowan Mangan:
Jordan Peterson.

Martha Beck:
Jordan Peterson. Yeah. It was like a year ago. And we were watching Lila start learning to walk and play and everything.

Rowan Mangan:
Lila is our two-year-old.

Martha Beck:
Lila is our two-year-old. Yes. It’s not just the neighbor. But Karen, our beloved Karey Koo, gets very, very upset if Lila does anything dangerous like, I don’t know, stand up. “You could fall.” Well, yes. That’s true. And Ro said, “Well, these two guys were talking and one of them said, ‘If you’re going to make your kids tough, which they better be if they’re going to survive in the world, you don’t interfere when they’re doing dangerous things carefully.'”

Rowan Mangan:
And we really took that sort of phrase to heart, this dangerous things carefully idea, because it’s surprising. It’s revolutionary.

Martha Beck:
And they said, that’s really cool, because they can learn so much. And then, the author said, “Well, that’s where everyone learns everything, is doing dangerous things carefully.” And by the same token, I think the place we grow in terms of self-efficacy and internal power, a positive sense of power, is not when you’re always happy, but when you’re doing emotionally painful things with courage and integrity. That’s the equivalent of doing dangerous things carefully, is you’re doing painful things with integrity-

Rowan Mangan:
Integriterally.

Martha Beck:
Integriterally?

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah.

Martha Beck:
I want that on a t-shirt. I am living… Okay, let’s just move on. So yeah, the question comes up, you have to do this, you have to go interact with your ex and how do you do that ethically and with integrity. So the first thing you do is you stop pretending it’s going to be easy.

Rowan Mangan:
Yes. Oh, wow. Even just saying that.

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
And I’m not even in Gazit’s situation. Even just saying that, I’m like, “Oh, that makes it easier.”

Martha Beck:
Right? Exactly. The moment you say, “This is going to be really hard.” It’s like I used to get shots when I was a kid and the nurses always said, “This won’t hurt.” It hurt and I felt so betrayed, so when I had kids and I took them to the doctor I’d say, “This will hurt but only for a second,” and they were so much cooler with it, right? So it’s not going to be fun to go deal with your ex with your child, and even if you’re enlightened it’s not going to be fun.

I’ll get to more about that in a second, but the point is just prepare yourself by saying, “Where is the difficulty?” And the difficulty will always be where there’s pressure to pretend that you’re not feeling something that you are. I mean, my whole premise is, whenever we’re pulled off our truth, we suffer. So when we’re face-to-face with our ex, we get pulled off our truth by a number of things, one of them is, I can’t handle conflict, I have to get out of here.

Rowan Mangan:
Can I just say another one, though?

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
And I think Gazit didn’t mention this, but when I think about this sort or scenario, one of the things that, to me, greatly complicates it is when these interactions have to take place in front of your child, there’s so much complexity to that, right? Because yes, you want to be in integrity for your own sake, for your child’s sake, but we don’t want our kid to see… You know what I’m saying? Real nasty conflict or feel that-

Martha Beck:
Oh no.

Rowan Mangan:
… so it’s hard. There’s layers to the integrity piece.

Martha Beck:
And if you don’t want it to get nasty, you have to get in touch with, if you are angry or whatever, you have to, for example, examine beliefs like, “They shouldn’t be acting that way,” which is like saying the sky shouldn’t be blue, it should be pink. It’s a no win situation, it leaves you just backed into a hard place, and you’re going to behave strangely. The only thing your kids need to see if you behaving truthfully.

So what I would do, if I had it to do over, is sit the kid down and say, “Yeah, my ex and I aren’t together anymore, however you see me act, however you see them act, trust yourself. You’re going to make sense of this,” instead of, “We both love you and you should be happy with this.”

Sit down with them and say, “This is awful and icky and hard, but you can always trust yourself. You can trust what you’re feeling, and you can always talk to me about it. Because it’s not easy. It’s not fun.” And people try to paint over the cracks of divorce and stuff even more with their children than they do with themselves and children need honesty above everything, and they need to be told, “Trust your own perceptions.”

Rowan Mangan:
I totally agree with all of that, and I just want to push a little bit harder at you. When there is a face-to-face interaction, and I’m making this up, I don’t know if this even happens, but so Gazit’s there, their ex is there, the child or children are also there and Gazit’s wanting to be in total integrity-

Martha Beck:
Sure.

Rowan Mangan:
… and they’ve gone into the situation recognizing that the ex is probably going to be an asshole, so that’s good. So there’s at least that, embrace the fact that it’s not going to be different this time.

Martha Beck:
Right, right, right.

Rowan Mangan:
But if the ex is an asshole and Gazit’s integrity is to stand up for themselves or have some sort of conflict adjacent, if not conflict based kind of response, that could be upsetting to the child. How do you navigate that?

Martha Beck:
So you have to work through your own emotions until you get to a place of peace. Now, we’re talking about, instead of never doing anything dangerous, do dangerous things carefully, what we were saying here is-

Rowan Mangan:
Do painful things-

Martha Beck:
Yeah. It’s not always be happy, but do unhappy things with integrity and that will bring you peace. So the peace that comes up, it underlies the surface emotion. You can be angry, you can be wistful, you can be embarrassed, and if you’ve done you’re own work, there’s an underlying bedrock sense of peace. Now, from there, you can start to be what, in meditation, they call the compassionate witness. And here’s how I see it when I have to deal with someone difficult for me.

I always think of a rattlesnake that came into my house in Arizona. And it was really interesting, because we had a split-level house and I was going up one staircase, half a staircase, and the door was open to the desert, and then there’s another staircase, so I’m coming up the stairs and at my eye level, a rattlesnake is coming into the house. And my kids were going to school out that door.

My instinct was to run and scream, right? But instead, I was worried about the kids being frightened, so I thought, “Okay, I got to stay really calm,” and I started to remember that the human hand moves like three times faster than a rattlesnake strike. And then, I saw that the rattlesnake was still a distance from me, so I said very calmly to the kids, “Kids, I want you to go out the other door to go catch the bus for school.” And then I thought to myself, “I understand snakes. I know a thing or two about snakes.” In Arizona, they used to always publish things in the paper saying, “If you have a pet snake, please do not kiss it. They will bite your lips.” Apparently, it was a problem in Phoenix, probably still is.

But I knew to respond to it the way you respond calmly to a rattlesnake. It was poisonous, it was frightened, it was likely to strike. If a person is poisonous and frightened and likely to strike, you have to say, “That person is like a rattlesnake.” There’s nothing morally wrong with rattlesnakes. I’m not furious at the rattlesnake for being a rattlesnake. I’m at peace with the snake being a snake. And if I’m dealing with a psychopath, for example, if you have a psychopathic ex, I’m going to be a peace with the psychopath being a psychopath. So that means having to get in touch with how infuriating it is and go, “Okay, where am I protesting against reality?”

Rowan Mangan:
Which it sounds like Gazit was doing, because they were saying they’re doing Byron Katie’s work.

Martha Beck:
Right. And the Byron Katie work is about one basic thing, which is Loving What Is, title of her first book. And that means that as things are, you come to terms with them. Ex is an asshole, you’re at peace at the reality that your ex is being an asshole. They may not be forever, but they may be at the moment. And then, if you’re not at war with that, if you’re not thinking, “I’ve got to make them different, this shouldn’t be this way,” all these struggles that we go on inside. When you just say, “Oh, an asshole is an asshole, a snake is a snake, what’s my next move?” Keep my side of the street clean. Make sure I tell my kid that, whatever they hear, they should trust themselves, because ex may be a problem. But I may be a problem, too, and I’m going to let the kids have their freedom to detect their own truth.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah, and then I also think there’s a piece which is about reframe your own definition of success for each interaction, because what we want to do, well I can’t speak for you, what I would want to do in your situation is, I want my ex to act the way my best friend acts and like any reasonable person would act and recognize where I’m trying and da, da, da, da, da. And so, that’s what we have to let go of when we have those sorts of thoughts and those sorts of situations. But if success is, I’m going to have this interaction with my ex, who I accept is a difficult person, and I am going to work on not getting activated by it. I’m going to work on keeping my focus on myself and on the kids or whatever it is.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, yeah. And there are actual physical things you can do, because, for example, if you never start breathing shallowly, you can’t get as into fight or flight, so one definition for success would be, I’m going to watch my breath. The whole time I’m going to keep it slow and deep and steady. That’ll mop up so much trouble-

Rowan Mangan:
Wow.

Martha Beck:
… I can’t even tell you. Another thing is-

Rowan Mangan:
Isn’t that wild, that you can just do that?

Martha Beck:
It’s fabulous.

Rowan Mangan:
And change things. Yeah.

Martha Beck:
I’m going to keep the tone of my voice low. There is something about a low, calm voice that doesn’t spike anxiety, and everybody who’s being an asshole is anxious, I promise. They’re feeling scared, angry, fight or flight, right? But keep your voice low and slow and breathing calmly and then noticing, “Oh, I’m angry,” without saying, “I shouldn’t be angry,” or “Oh, now they’re lying.” Without thinking, “They shouldn’t’ be lying.” Just those three things. If I can watch my breath, keep my voice low, and observe reality without fighting it. Now you’re in integrity. Now you’re not going to be as riled up and you’ll actually build a sense of self-efficacy after dealing with the situation this way, no matter what the ex does.

Rowan Mangan:
Can I please derail the whole thing?

Martha Beck:
Please.

Rowan Mangan:
Number two, keep your voice low and slow?

Martha Beck:
Yeah.

Rowan Mangan:
Oprah voice. Oprah voice.

Martha Beck:
Oprah.

Rowan Mangan:
Do Oprah voice, then it’s a fun game like you’re there with your ex but you’re also interviewing Meghan Markle and you’re like, “Were you silent or were you silenced?”

Martha Beck:
Boom.

Rowan Mangan:
And you’re Oprah. So good.

Martha Beck:
Yeah. There are two things you should watch. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned these before, but they are classics. There’s one of Oprah early in her career where she had an audience full of out-there white supremacists. Lots of people are internal, unknown white supremacists, but there were-

Rowan Mangan:
Card carrying.

Martha Beck:
Yeah, shaven headed killer types, racists, and she’s interviewing them and her voice stays so low and so calm. And then, there’s one where Gloria Steinem is being interviewed by some senator or something and he is literally the most misogynistic, he is acting like a total bitch calling her a bitch and she’s like, “Well, blah, blah, blah.” And I’m like, “Why aren’t you screaming at him?” Because if she screamed at him, number one, she’d play right into his game, and number two, it’s like lunging at a snake and trying to bite it, it’s going to bite you. So the other thing is she leaves her integrity, because she leaves her peace, her internal peace, because she’s baited in by his false energy, she’s sort of entering his world of ickiness. And where she stays in that whole interview is in a deep, calm place where she’s watched the misogyny her whole life and she’s not expecting it to be anything but what it is and she is no one but she is.

Rowan Mangan:
Wow. And, I mean, that can’t help redefine the kind of shape of an interaction.

Martha Beck:
Oh, it’s incredible. After they overturned Roe v. Wade, there were so many people calling me, I was calling them like, “What are we going to do?” And I saw an interview with Gloria Steinem, and she’s like 80-something now, and she’s like, “When the courts pass an unjust law, we do not obey it.” Just quiet. I was just like, “Ah, you are awesome. No wonder you got so much done in your life, and you’re still getting it done. Yeah.” Okay, so end goal is always integrity and when you stay in your integrity you can find peace because the truth always gives you peace and peace can be present. At all times, there can be sorrow with peace.

There can be anger with peace. There can even be fear with peace, if the peace is at the level of, I would call it the soul, and the deep, deep self.

And everything else, it’s like there’s a band in the ocean way deep down where the blue whales go to call to each other and it’s so still, it’s like 3,000 feet down and lower, I think, and it’s so still that sound waves will travel from one whale to another across a thousand miles. And at the top, there are all these waves going… all this activity and everything, but there’s this deep calm place where the whales go to talk and we all have that inside us and the whales are our true selves. And there are still waves at the surface and that’s part of the fun of the ocean.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. I love that, I love that peace not perfection is the goal. There’s something kind of, I don’t know if I’m getting overexcited about this, but, to me, that kind of quality of bittersweet is really so much of what it’s about being here.

Martha Beck:
Yes.

Rowan Mangan:
There’s a song by Bob Dylan that I really love that kind of captures that quality of bittersweet to me, which is called Most of the Time and you should look it up. There’s a great cover by Ani DiFranco and, to me, there’s an essence here of what Gazit actually came in acknowledging, which is it just is, it’s part of the thing of life. But okay, here are some of the words from this song. “Most of the time I’m clear, focused all around. Most of the time I can keep both feet on the ground. I can follow the path. I can read the signs. Can stay right when the road unwinds. I can handle whatever I stumble upon and I don’t even notice that she’s gone most of the time.” So it’s like all the feelings are there, all the right stuff is there, and it’s most of the time. And if it can be most of the time that we can follow the path and read the signs and stay right when the road unwinds, then that’s pretty freaking good.

Martha Beck:
It’s better than never being upset, because you don’t go to sea to just be on a flat plane of glass, you go for the ride, the whole thing is the ride and you’ve just described the condition of nature.

Rowan Mangan:
Yeah. Plus, where would the music be?

Martha Beck:
So true.

Rowan Mangan:
All right.

Martha Beck:
So go hear that song and Ani DiFranco’s cover and stay wild.

Rowan Mangan: 
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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.