Finding Meaning In Life's Mundane Challenges

🌱 Imagine this: What if our greatest pains and deepest grief are actually challenges designed to help us grow into what we were always meant to be? In this episode of "Grief to Growth," host Brian Smith welcomes James Parker, a distinguished staff writer at The Atlantic and author of the powerful new book, "Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes: Odes to Being Alive." 🖋️

James takes us on a journey through his unique odes—celebrations of life's raw and real experiences, from the mundane to the profound. Together, we explore the importance of observing life's smallest moments, embracing both the joy and the struggle, and finding meaning in everything from panic attacks to the simple act of giving money.

Join us as we discuss: ✨ Why James wrote his book and how it serves as a guide to appreciating our existence ✨ The therapeutic power of writing and how odes can serve as mindfulness practices ✨ The role of heroes like Jason Bourne in our understanding of identity and purpose 🎸 Plus, James and I geek out over our favorite music and discover we agree on the best movie of ALL TIME—spoiler alert: it’s a classic you don’t want to miss!

Whether you're navigating grief, seeking deeper meaning in life, or simply curious about the art of odes, this episode offers insights that resonate on multiple levels. After listening, join our community at grief2growth.com/community to continue the conversation. 🌐

Guest Links:

• James Parker's Book: Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes: Odes to Being Alive
• The Atlantic: James Parker's Articles

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Can't wait to hear from you!

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https://www.grief2growth.com/ndelessons

Transcript

Brian Smith  0:00  
Close your eyes and imagine.

What if the things in life that cause us the greatest pain, the things that bring us grief, are challenges, challenges designed to help us grow to ultimately become what we were always meant to be. We feel like we've been buried. But what if, like a seed. We've been planted, and having been planted, we grow to become a mighty tree. Now open your eyes. Open your eyes to this way of viewing life. Come with me as we explore your true, infinite, eternal nature. This is grief to growth, and I am your host. Brian Smith, Hey there. Welcome to grief, to growth, where we explore life's most profound questions, to help you navigate through its toughest challenges. Whether you're a longtime listener, you're tuning in for the first time, I'm glad to have you with us. My name is Brian Smith, and my mission is to delve into who we are, where we came from, why we're here, and where we're going today, we have a special guest who embodies his journey in his work and his writing. His name is James Parker. He's a distinguished staff writer at The Atlantic, and is the author of the compelling new book, get me through the next five minutes, odes to being alive. James is knows for his profound explorations of human experience vividly captured it as a claim biography of punk rock performer Henry Rollins, and it's called turned on. His writing has garnered numerous accolades, including New England newspapers and Press Association awards, an ASCAP Dean's Taylor award for music criticism and a National Magazine Award nomination. In his latest book that we're going to discuss today, James offers a unique collection of ODEs that reflect on the raw and real experiences of life. These are these are not just literary works, but they're practical guides to appreciating and navigating our existence, which is what we're all about here, at grief to growth from the confusing and despairing times of his mid 20s to the present day, James shares insights aimed at helping us enjoy life a little bit more. In today's episode, we're going to explore questions like, Why did James write this book? What are the ways to enjoy life that he advocates, and how do odes serve as tools for digging into reality and celebrating it? We'll also dive into some of the books more eclectic topics, and there are some very eclectic topics, such as the importance of managing our nervous system, the significance of James born as an action here, Jason Bourne as an action hero, and even an ode to constipation. James journey is one of self reflection and sharing learned wisdom, making him the perfect guest for our show. So as always, after the podcast, join us at grief to growth.com/community, to carry that, carry on the conversation and with that, like to welcome the grief for growth. James Parker,

James Parker  2:46  
thank you, Brian, thank you for having me very, very pleased to be here. Yeah,

Brian Smith  2:49  
I'm excited to have this conversation today. We started talking a little bit before we got started. We just kind of jumped right in. Yeah, before we get into other things, you use the word ODE. It's not a word that we use very often. So what is an ode?

James Parker  3:02  
An ode? Well, so, so, you know, I tend to do everything backwards. So I wrote a lot of them before I actually researched what they are. But when I, when I did finally research what they are, I discovered that pinda, in ancient Greece, the poet, he's generally credited with the invention of the ODE. And what he would do is he would write these poems in celebration of great athletes and great feats and great sporting achievements. And that's so that's kind of the origin of the odors. It's a, it's a way of celebrating something, and people have used it in many different ways. You know, Keats is Ode to a nightingale. Is very famous. That's, that's, you never heard that. I'm describing that as a celebration, but it's a it's a very profound investigation of a state of mind, a state of being. Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, he's one of my models, because he he was incredibly sort of voracious and omnivorous in in and random seeming in the in the subjects he picked for his ODEs. You know, Ode to fish soup, Ode to lost socks, Ode to newspapers, whatever it is, whatever he was feeling. So basically that's, that's they. I mean, for me they, I'm probably answering like four questions at once here, or none at all. But basically they serve, for me as a just a way of getting into it, a way of focusing, a way of using the gifts that writing gives me, which is the gift of attention and the gift of the detail, and just kind of getting into it. Yeah,

Brian Smith  4:31  
I think I love it. I love the way you take and these things that we consider mundane or routine, and you really observe them and really get into them, and kind of, it's a kind of a mindfulness practice, almost. And say, let's think about, you know, these, these little things that we we often overlook. Now, the title of the book get me through the next five minutes really jumped out at me, because, as I was telling you earlier, I deal with a lot of people that are, that are in grief, yeah, and a lot of times we're in that intense part of grief. For like, you know, we can't even think about the next five years or five days even we're like, get me through the next five minutes. Yeah. What does that mean to you? Get me through the next five minutes. Well, as

James Parker  5:11  
as he was saying that Brian, I was, I was like, I just, I time traveled back to to, you know, sitting in front of a doctor when I was 2324 and, you know, he was a fam he was the family doctor. And I just, you know, I've been having panic attacks, but, but back then, you know, this is like early 90s, people didn't even say panic attack. You just, you know, I mean, nobody knew what to say about it. But I was, I thought I was going nuts, basically. And I was trying to explain that to this, to this doctor who'd known me since I was a kid, but he was not a particularly imaginative man. And he said, Well, have you, you know, do you have a, do you have a, like, a career path, you know, have you considered, he literally said, Have you considered accountancy like that was, that was the remedies. And then I said, I don't think that's, I don't think that's gonna do it. And he said, Well, we've got these, you know, we got these tricyclic antidepressants that we can give you. This is pre Prozac as well. Um, tricyclic antidepressants. And, you know, they take, they take a couple of weeks to work. And at that, at that moment I had that, the exact thing that you're describing, I had like, how am I going to do this? How am I going to how am I going to sit around and wait for two weeks for these things to to work? I can, I can barely take it just, just minute to minute, you know. So I think that, I think the, you know, the urgency of the title comes, comes from that, and it's and it's also, it's also to do with, with, with gratitude. I mean, I'm very grateful to the artists, you know, the musicians and the poets and the athletes and the actors who have, who have got me through, you know, who've got me through, who keep me excited, who keep me interested, who keep me focused. So it's partly that too, like, like, I mean, whoever has got me through the next five minutes, I owe them, you know, big time,

Brian Smith  7:05  
yeah, yeah. I think it's great. So and you say you write the book to your 25 year old self, but also to your present self. So what about your 25 year old self? What do you what would you like for your 25 year old self to know?

James Parker  7:19  
I would like him to know. Which I'm sure is, I'm sure you go into all the time, which is that you know you, you know if you hang in there, if you hang in there, and you and you respect your equipment. You respect your perceptual equipment. You respect what you came here with. You don't talk harshly to yourself. And you just sort of, if you can lie back into it, it will sustain you. It doesn't feel like it's going to it feels like it's like a trust exercise with the universe. You feel like you're going to fall into the abyss, but you actually don't, rather miraculously. But it takes, it takes courage and faith and a lot of help, I think, to to do that. And I think I'd also say to him, you just love this, the practical stuff. Like, you know, do your pull ups, take your cold showers, listen to your AC DC. Like, these are the for me, these have been the fixes, you know. And you know, you know, everybody knows what their own fixes are, because it's happened in their lives. You know, your nervous system has responded positively to such and such a stimulus. Go there. You know, if it's healthy, if it's not an addiction, you know, go there. So, you know, these are the, these are the things that will help you keep going until the deeper healing which you of which you have no control. Unfortunately, I don't think, I mean, you can open yourself up to it, but it's going to happen at its own rate, right? You're the expert, Brian. I mean, I mean, am I making sense? I think

Brian Smith  8:50  
you are making sense. Yeah, you have to, again, kind of allow that to happen, you know? And just that trust, and that's why the thing, one of the things I love about the book, there's a lot of love about it, but it's, it's for anybody in any phase in life. And I love the way you recognize that. It's like, okay, this is for because, because I have a 27 year old daughter, and I know that that generation is struggling with a lot of angst right now. Oh yeah, they're really dealing with I was listening to an interview with Johan Hari this morning.

James Parker  9:17  
Oh yeah.

Brian Smith  9:17  
He talks about the loneliness problem. So there's that, there's the the economy, that they feel like, okay, they're almost, almost giving up the life. It's interesting, because you're like, Well, we're never going to have a house. We're probably not going to have kids. Yeah? Um, let's just, it's just, you know, basically live, live the YOLO, right? So it's just this. But they're, they need to be taught this thing that you're saying this lesson from our perspectives, like, yeah, we felt that way too, that that panic that you had in your mid 20s, I think it's pretty common. I did, yeah,

James Parker  9:49  
yeah. I do think, I do think the kids today are dealing with extra stuff, though, honestly, I think, I think there's, I think there's a level of just environmental, ambient anxiety kind of a. Everyone's brain, which, which, I'm not sure it was there when we were kids. I mean, you know, like, my, my socially, I felt my surroundings were basically pretty secure, and that that was actually one of the things that kind of made it, made it worse in a weird way. Like, what is wrong with me? Do you know what? I mean, yeah, why can't I? Why? Why am I not having fun, like my friends? Why can't I connect to this, to everything, you know?

Brian Smith  10:23  
Yeah, well, it's different and it's the same. I think every generation feels like it's the worst it's ever been, but everything has been turned up a level now. Yeah, I know, with social media and instant 24 hour news, you know, we, you know, it's just interesting that we're also so connected, yeah, something that happens in in Russia this morning. You know, I hear about now, so there is more. There's everything's been turned up a level. So I definitely agree with that, and I think that's why we're seeing this, this level of angst and the moment.

James Parker  10:55  
But you're right, you're right though it's this, it is the same stuff. It's all, it's always like, immemorial, it's been the same stuff, right? I mean, it's the human, you know, Jeff Dyer, an English writer who I love. He has a book called, also known as the human condition, yeah, because that's, that's based, that's it, right? And we all have to come to terms with at some point, in our own way.

Brian Smith  11:17  
Yeah. Well, I was talking with a 26 year old client the other day who's dealing with, you know, depression and lack of motivation, etc. And he was like, I'm really tired of outside circumstances controlling how I respond. I could, I could take charge of my life right now. Yes, by outside circumstance. And that's, that's the human condition. We can't control the things outside. Yeah, your your book is about, like, looking, what can I do? Yeah, what can I do? What can I What can I focus on? What

James Parker  11:47  
can I focus on? And how, you know, How deep can I dig into the kind of texture and the granular reality of my life as I'm actually living it now, because, because, I mean, I mean, I keep quoting writers, but, but John Updike, he had this beautiful line, consciousness is in ecstasy. I mean, that's just a that's a beautiful, like, there's something inherently joyful. I think about, again, not to say that we always feel it, but just about being alive, yeah, being this tremendous field of perception and energy and what's coming at us. I mean, there's, there's inherent kind of ecstasy in that, I think, and that, you know, of course, we separate ourselves from it a million different ways, but if, but if you go into your own circumstances, you I think you can find it, yeah,

Brian Smith  12:35  
why that's what, that's kind of, what I get is just to the book, and I hadn't heard that, that quote before, but I love that, because it's really a matter of our observations, a matter of our perception. And, you know, I read Victor Frankel's book, you know, many years ago is this guy's in a in a concentration camp, and he's finding meaning in life. So the thing is, it's digging for it, it's making those observations. And your book takes it, and they're very short chapters, very short ODEs, you know? And I like that, because I think that's that really suits our society today. You can read them really quickly and but they're so profound, and it shows the the profundity of what we consider to be the routine in life. And some of your odes are kind of funny, like ODE Ode to constipation, yeah, you know. So that's a very short one, yeah. So let's talk about that. That's that one's going to get people's attention. What is the ode to constipation?

James Parker  13:31  
Oh, let me read the ode to constipation. Hold on, just, just so I get it right. It's a tiny little so some of them are poems, and some of them are in prose. This is a very short poem, and it doesn't rhyme, which is uncharacteristic for me, because I'm obsessive about rhymes. Okay? Ode to constipation. My cat sticks his head around the bathroom door and regards me with small, humorless cat face. So that's it's almost like a haiku. What I mean like, it's a little bit, a little snapshot of a moment which kind of expands outwards. Me sitting there, my cat poking his head around. The expression on his face is like, Oh, Jesus, you again, you know, I mean, here you are, yeah, yeah. Having this, having this, having this issue, and it's this, you know, there's something beautiful about it. I think, I hope, I

Brian Smith  14:20  
think, I think there is and that, and that's again, that's that taking the joy and the little moments of life that we could we just again we so easily overlook. It's like, okay, I have to get from this moment to this moment. And we prioritize this, this moment's important, but this moment isn't Yeah, and the book really draws us into like, Okay, where am I? You know, right now, what's happening right now? Yeah, when I opened up on the first ones I read was owed to giving money? Oh, thank you. Yeah. And I thought that was a great observation, you know, because we all struggled with that, right? You're walking past a homeless person. Do you give them money? Do you not give them money? Yeah, no. Are you concerned with what they're going to do? With it. So yeah, for people that don't know, tell them about that one. So

James Parker  15:03  
my, my, my take on that which is, which is not excluding my take by any means. It comes from, come through, you know, Catholic social doctrine, it comes from the homeless people that I know is, is that if you want to give somebody money, give them money. If you don't want to give them money, don't give them money, but if you do give it, give it. In other words, let it go, hand it over without any expectation, without any condition, without any or are you going to spend it on drugs, blah, blah, blah, you know, are you going to make yourself totally responsible for this person and look out for them? Probably not. So give them the money. What they have their own business, and after it's left your hands, it's none of your business. So that's basically my, my, and also you just, you really do never know. You never know they might spend it on drugs that, as I say, Mo, they might spend it on a new copy of Moby Dick. And you just don't know, and it's not your business anymore. Once you've given

Brian Smith  15:56  
it time for a real quick break, make sure you like and subscribe. Liking the video, we'll show it to more people on YouTube and subscribe you will make sure you get access to all my great content in the future. And now back to the video. Yeah, I love that, and that's that's my philosophy. And I remember one time I was actually coming out of a liquor store and there's a guy standing there, and he asked me for money to buy beer. And I'm like, Who am I to judge what he's going to do with it? Because exactly, if you give it, that's no longer yours, it doesn't matter what he does with it. And also,

James Parker  16:27  
you know, like to just to sort of blow out that moment a little bit. If you do give it and you give freely, then I do think you're, you're kind of participating in the larger economy of creation, which is, which is, which is a constant giving of stuff, a constant pouring outward. And if you and if you orient yourself within that, then you're going to feel, you're going to feel pretty good.

Brian Smith  16:48  
I think, yeah, I think, I think so too. And again, it's kind of that, like it's again, those little moments can be life lessons for us. And this happened like many years ago, and something I've reflected on many times, because there is that tendency that we have to judge that person, you know, yeah, what are you going to do with the Why are you here? And I'm thinking, Okay, well, I'm buying beer, yeah, exactly. I'm walking out of a liquor store. How am I going to judge him? Yeah,

James Parker  17:14  
right on exactly, you know, yeah, who throws the first stone? Exactly, that's, that's it. That's exactly it. Yeah,

Brian Smith  17:21  
so I know you, you're like, you're into poetry as well, and I'm really not so much. So what does poetry do for you that? What is it that attracts you to that poetry?

James Parker  17:32  
For me, I run a run, a writer's group for homeless writers every Tuesday, and what I say to them is, poetry is the is the it's the highest form of journalism. It's like the latest news on reality, like it's the kind of frontiers of perception. For me, that's that's where poetry exists, and that's why I'm always incredibly refreshed and restored by it. And I've also discovered with writers who might not think of themselves as writers, writers with a lot of very raw experience to deal with poetry sort of offers itself very immediately as a way of just cracking into what's going on for them. You know that you can bypass a lot of cliches, a lot of things that happen when you're trying to write prose and just go straight to the to the heart of it. So that's, that's basically what it means to me. That's a lovely question.

Brian Smith  18:28  
Yeah, well, it's good. I'm glad, I'm glad I asked you that. So you also talk in the book about buzz management. And what is that?

James Parker  18:38  
Buzz management? For me, that's just my term for the whole business of trying to keep your your levels sort of decent, like not get too excited by anything, not get too depressed by anything. Be excited, but not anxious. When, you know, I'm a real up and down sort of dude, I get I suddenly get very tired. You know, what do I do then? Now I'm all anxious, and I've drunk too much coffee. What do I do then? Now I need my booze. You know, all of that, all of that comes under the heading there are healthy ways to do it and unhealthy ways to do obviously, all of that comes under the heading of Buzz management. I mean exercise, I think is, for me, has been the best, the best way of doing it.

Brian Smith  19:18  
Oh, really. Okay, yeah, so what kind of exercise do you enjoy?

James Parker  19:22  
I do, I like I do pull ups and push ups and I jump rope outside, always outside. And, you know, do some cool stuff, pretty, just pretty basic stuff, but, but just to be in the air, you know, huffing and puffing, get your blood going it, you know, it's had, like, scientifically proven effects on mood elevation, all that, right? It's yeah, side effect you get strong, which is nice,

Brian Smith  19:48  
yeah? Well, I think I know in the book you don't really like, it's not prescriptive. It's not like, do these five things you talk about, some of the things that work for you. Exactly, I think we mentioned earlier. Maybe before we started. But you mentioned cold showers. Yeah, tried that. I hate cold showers. It's like torture. So, but that's, that's something that you found to be very beneficial.

James Parker  20:12  
Didn't, can you feel good afterwards? Kind of,

Brian Smith  20:15  
yeah, yeah. I did it for a while, but I was, yeah, it was, it's a cost benefit thing, right? I am a person. I'm cold by nature. I don't like being cold. I i Yeah. So I was like, I tried it for a while. I'm like, Yeah, I'll find something else. There's a guy, Wim, Hof, yeah. I was like, and I like, I would die. I would literally die if I plunge into a frozen light.

James Parker  20:40  
I mean, I've done, I've done, I've done the Wim Hof, you know, ice baths. And it's quite interesting when, you know, when you climb in your brain for 10 seconds, your brain basically screams at you, you are going to die in here and you and that's and you have to ride that ride that out. I mean, I mean, part of it for me is not, it's not just the, you know, the lovely, sort of tingly feeling that I get afterwards. It's the sensation of having overcome myself that, right? First thing, you know, I mean, I have you had this battle with myself, and I've won,

Brian Smith  21:09  
I guess I've made the excuse. It must be a different experience for other people. Yes, they must not be feeling when I'm feeling otherwise,

James Parker  21:18  
right? Yeah, if it doesn't sue you, it doesn't sue you, you know, yeah,

Brian Smith  21:22  
maybe I'll try it again. You've

James Parker  21:24  
got other tricks, I'm sure. Brian, right? Yeah, I

Brian Smith  21:26  
do have other things I do. And it's interesting, because as I worked with clients, I have general categories of things I recommend to them, like gratitude, which I think you spoke about earlier, exercise, mindfulness, you know, getting the proper amount of sleep, but it's different for everybody. And it's really interesting because I had a woman I interviewed after her mother passed away. She was deeply depressed, and people were recommending all kinds of stuff for you should go for a walk, you should do yoga, you should do this. You know, their thing. And she's like, I hated all those things, but what she found was powerlifting. So I love powerlifting because it makes me feel strong. It makes me feel accomplished. There's something about counting the reps that was like meditative to her, yeah. So her thing was powerlifting Nice. So I say to people, find what works for you.

James Parker  22:13  
When you set, when you when you counsel people to orient themselves towards gratitude, like practically. How does that? How does that work?

Brian Smith  22:21  
Well, I when I'm dealing with people, a lot of times it's in those early stages of grief. So gratitude is like, you know, it's a very lofty concept that they don't, yeah, they're going to reject, of course. So what I want to do, I start with a lot of somatic stuff. Like, okay, are you, have you been fed today?

James Parker  22:39  
Yeah,

Brian Smith  22:40  
do you have food? Are you? Are you warm? I do when I wake up in the morning. A lot of times it might be my bed feels really great, you know, just to start with those little, those little things that you can appreciate. Instead of, you know, looking at big things, right? And it's, it's a matter of training yourself to start focusing. And again, that's what I love about your your book, because it's obvious that you've practiced this. It's obvious that you practice mindfulness. Because the things that, like I was reading about, like, our purpose for being here, and you talk about the Jason Bourne movies, yeah, a lot of times we sit down and watch a movie, we're just like, I'm just here to be entertained. Yeah? And it's like, yeah, it was great. He killed the bad guy, blah, blah, blah, yeah. We don't see the bigger thing behind it, the connection to the hero. Yeah. And talk about that, because I thought was really interesting. Your observations about different types of heroes, and you chose Jason. Jason Bourne was kind of like the prototype. He's,

James Parker  23:36  
that he's, yeah, he's, he's the archetype for me. I mean, Tony Gilroy, who wrote the screenplay for the first couple of ball movies. He's he's a genius, in my opinion. He did Michael Clayton, the film with with George Clooney, which I think is one of the great movies. But the Bourne movies, they obsessed me for a long time before I understood why they obsessed me and and I think, I think it's because you know why we love Jason Bourne and why we love him, why I certainly love him more than James Bond or Jack Reacher or John Wick, you know, as charismatic as those guys are, is because he's on the essential human mission, which is figuring out who he is and what he's here for. You know, he wakes up. He's a, he's a he's a nobody. He has no memory. He's pulled out of the sea, you know, which is a classic mythological thing to figure, you know, pluck from the ocean with no name, and he's on the fishing boat. And, you know, he discovers that he can tie these fancy knots, and then he discovers that he can speak German. And then he discovers that he's an amazing fighter when he, you know, tackles these two cops in Zurich. So, so he realizes that he's been, he's been trained and but then, but then it goes even deeper, because he because what he's actually been trained to do, which is kill people, is not what he wants to do. So he has to go under that too. So it's a very, you know, and that's the, that's the dynamic of the movie, him on this journey, you know, trying to find his. Name, essentially trying to find out who he is and and what happened to him. So yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's why I love Jason board, yeah. And I think that

Brian Smith  25:08  
for me, from my perspective on life, my perspective is we are. We are spiritual beings that have been placed in these bodies, put on this earth and essentially forgotten who we are. So I think, and it's interesting when I wish

James Parker  25:21  
I knew why that happens, though, why we forget, you know? Um,

Brian Smith  25:24  
yeah, well, I think it's because we like the challenge. I think people like challenges. And when I say this to people, you know, they'll say, Well, I would never, ever choose this life. I would never choose to have these challenges. And then I'll ask, I'll say, Well, what about people that run marathons. I would never choose to run a marathon. Yeah, but people do, and why do they do it? Because they want to be able to say they finished. Why do people climb mountains? You know, when I went to college, my degree is in chemical engineering, that was four years of torture. It was not easy. And I would think like, why am I paying them to do this to me, Well, I'm doing it because I want to develop a skill. So as humans, we come here and we face these challenges, and the forgetfulness is what makes it challenging to remember who we were. It would be easy and

James Parker  26:16  
we could always I love that though, that we, that we, you know, we choose it. We choose it. But as difficult as it might be, and as alien feeling as it might be, Jeremy like you might, you know that that was one of my sort of, it wasn't a delusion. It never got to that level. But it was definitely a sort of intuition that that I was, I was kind of under attack. I was under attack by alien forces, you know, like, and it's hostile, and I've have to protect my you know, you get very brittle, and you get very small, right? And very defensive, but, yeah, but once you can, once you can understand it as some it's all, it's all part of your bloody game in the world, you know, this is why, yeah, that's beautiful, Brian. I love that. Yeah, I

Brian Smith  26:58  
think that's the, that's the model that works for me. And again, when I always sexually each other now and I, you know, like you're obsessed with the Jason Bourne character, I'm obsessed with survival shows. There's a show called alone.

James Parker  27:13  
Oh yes, I

Brian Smith  27:14  
love alone, yeah. And I watched that, and I'm like, Okay, first of all, there's a lesson. Like, people are not meant to live alone. You can see very quickly that we cannot live alone, that we we have to live in societies. And it's not just the physical aspect. Some of those people just they would draw because they go crazy, yeah. I mean, after after a week of not talking to anybody, they're like, I have to tap out, yeah? And I, and again, I watched it, and they do have a prize now, but when they first start, I don't think they even had a prize. And I would describe the show to people, they said, Well, why would people do that? If they're not doing it for the money, I'm like, they do it for the challenge. They do it because they say, I want to see if I could do this. Yeah. And what's really interesting is the spiritual development of the people by the end, yeah, some of these people that come in, they're usually poor people. They're usually don't have a lot of money. And they, they come in and they're, and they're, they're, they're obviously rugged, yeah, and they, they just start connecting to to them deeper, to the deeper cells. They appreciate their parents more. It's fun to watch.

James Parker  28:20  
Those shows are beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I wrote, I wrote a piece about that show. Actually. Do you remember the guy? There's a guy he, I think I've forgotten his name, and it's not important. But the reason he struck me was because he they put him on the on the edge of a lake in Patagonia somewhere, on his you know, he gets there, and he gets there, and he sets up his tent, and then he goes, Patagonia, and yells it. And you something about the way he did that. You're like, oh my. And then, and then, and then he pauses a little bit, and you can kind of feel the echoes coming back at him. And you're like, Oh, this guy is about to get crushed. And again, no, no judgment, because, I mean, I don't know how long I would I would last. Because it's not, you know, that obviously they can all, you know, whittle the sticks and eat the berries and do all that stuff, but it's the mind, isn't it? It's how well you can tolerate your own company, and then what arises after that, you know, beyond that,

Brian Smith  29:13  
right? And I think that again, that show for me and survivor and others, they're metaphors for the human condition. And so I look at those things, and so again, we say, Well, why would I put myself in situations like because that's who we are as humans. We love the challenge and even putting ourselves where we feel alone. Because when we even in these bodies, I believe, when we're in spirit, we're so connected that we don't know what it's like to feel alone. We're always, there's always, you know, we always have that connection. Anytime we want it, we can just we're instantly connected. Yeah, we come here and we feel alienated. We feel literally like you talked about aliens. Yeah, I remember being a kid when I was four or five years old, like, well, I don't like this place. And even I could be in the house with. My parents, my brothers, and I still felt alone, because I it's just it was, it's hard to even describe the feeling, but yeah,

James Parker  30:08  
did that? Did that feeling stay with you?

Brian Smith  30:11  
It did, yeah, for a very long time. Yeah. What? What?

James Parker  30:15  
What made it? What kind of alleviated it in the end, do

Brian Smith  30:19  
you think it? Wow, that's, that's my whole life. That's the whole arc of my life. You know, it really kind of started going away when I realized, you know, I was raised in the church that was taught we're souls. But still, it was separate when I started learning that we have soul groups, that we have, we have teams that we are, that we are multi dimensional beings that are actually, it's not just we're multi layered, you know, even so all of that, and this has been in the last several years and really separate after my daughter passed away, which was nine years ago, yeah, you know, feeling the connection that I still have with her, realizing that we're always connected in a certain way, yeah, so. But it's through all these observations about life, you know, all the things that your books about, these, these, yeah, the little things. And looking at video games and like, why do we play video games? My daughter and I love to play video games. And I would think, why? What's the, what's the deal with? Well, we like the challenge, yeah,

James Parker  31:18  
and the, journey. I mean, the best video games have an incredible, heroic journey up a level, up a level. Fight always,

Brian Smith  31:27  
always up a level, and every boss is harder than the last. And the the thrill when if you beat a boss the first time you play the boss, yeah, that's that's a terrible game. You've got to play that, and it's got to feel like you're never going to beat it. You have to learn the moves, and you have to go back and forth, and you have to try it over and over again. You have to develop different skills, because this jump requires you know this move, and then when you finally beat it, it's that, it's that thrill. So people that design games know this, yeah, if you look at that from a higher perspective, if you look at this life as a simulation or a virtual reality? Yeah? But it makes sense all the stuff that we go through, yeah?

James Parker  32:07  
I always, I always say, as well, you know when, when, when I talk to people who are feeling bad, you know? I always say, if it didn't, if it didn't feel like, it wouldn't be real. You know what I mean? Like, if you could see your way through this, then you wouldn't actually be in this state, right? If it didn't feel like there was absolutely no way out and you were completely stuck, then what would be the point of this word depression? Do you know what I mean? If it was something that we could just manage and but it is. It's a very it's a real state. And you get there and you feel like you've got nothing, you've got no tools, you've got no way forward, you've got nothing. And in a way, just to experience the reality of that is is kind of a gift, I think is very painful, but it's still a still a gift. It is. And that's what

Brian Smith  32:49  
I love about your ODEs. Because there's some odes to things that are higher, and there's some modes of things, like constipation, yeah, just, just a natural part of being human, yeah, and learning to appreciate the things. Quote, good or bad?

James Parker  33:04  
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's it. You said it.

Brian Smith  33:08  
So in terms of what you want people to take away from the book, what do you think are the lessons again? We I'm not going to probably do cold showers, and I don't like ACDC, so I'm not looking at it for like, I'm going to do these particular things, right? But what do you want people to take away in general? Um, I

James Parker  33:29  
think, I think, I think just what we've what we've been talking about in terms of paying, paying attention to your own life and to your own perceptions, like what you were saying about waking up in the morning and and and and appreciating, you know, I feel cozy in bed like I'm I feel, I feel good here. I mean, it's so it's so easy. There's something in the brain that will immediately override that with, oh yeah, but you got to do this and that and get going and email this person and, oh, Jesus, you know, how am I going to get through the day that that's that kicks in so quick. So how do you, how do you anticipate that? How do you sort of give it a swerve somehow, into this beautiful, organic field, which is always available to you and and is, and is so rich. I mean, there's, you know, that I've got an ode to my dog's balls in there. My dog, my dog, sonny, and it's all about, it's all about walking around with him, and he's, you know, he's a real handful of a dog, but, but learning, learning to appreciate, you know, like the weird little weeds on the curb and the old shoe that he's sniffing at and, you know, the fact that I have to be hyper vigilant because he might get a fight with another dog at any minute, etc, etc, you know, we've all got, we've all got things kind of inviting us into that, into that state. So keeping, keeping yourself open to that, I think is, I think is the is the ticket. And I would really, I really hope that that I can just elevate people's moods, just to take, you know what I mean, just just a notch with with this that would, that would be. Very happy if that, if that was the

Brian Smith  35:01  
case, yeah, did you think of it as a mindfulness book when you wrote it?

James Parker  35:05  
No, I didn't. Actually. I thought about it as just a series of funny little exercises and and the larger kind of thing only came into focus when all, when they were all together, you know, the old started talking to each other, and then, and then I kind of began to understand what, what it was all about, but, but as I'm writing them, I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to concentrate on the thing I'm I'm writing about, yeah,

Brian Smith  35:28  
so, um, so you're trying to, you said you want to elevate, elevate people's moods, yeah, by helping them, I guess, make these, these observations, yeah, because I don't, is it the particular observations, or is it just the idea of learning to make observations? It's,

James Parker  35:46  
it's, it's, it's, yes, the latter, learning to make observations and learn, and learning to trust your own perceptions and your own language. I mean, that's one of the hardest things. When you're helping people with with writing, helping kind of beginners, they freeze like, I can't write, I can't do that, that I can't do that thing. I haven't got access to that language, that special. You know, there's, there's, there's this kind of illusion that there's something out there. Everybody knows how to do this other something. And you don't, you know you are the you know, you and I and everybody else. We're the leading experts in the fields of who we are. Nobody knows it like us. Nobody. Nobody can describe it like us, nobody can go as deep as we can. So, so that's so, so, so go there, you know, I mean, you have, you have a tremendous amount of original experience to to communicate. So, so go for it. And avoid cliche, avoid, avoid kind of hide bound, herd instinct, language, you know, go for your own perceptions, your own words, your own style. I love what

Brian Smith  36:46  
you said there about you're the, you're the expert on yourself. Because, again, a lot of times people feel like, well, I don't have anything to say. And right, you know, people, even in my field of coaching with people, people, there's always this, this feeling like, well, I don't, I don't know enough and I need to go get this I need to get this degree. I need to get this education. Yeah, we all can, this is my opinion. We can all talk to people. Yes, none of us says I don't know how to talk. But yes, when it comes to writing, a lot of times I think people feel like, oh, I don't know how to write. Yeah, and there are, there are all these rules around writing that, frankly, I ignore. I've written a book. I'm writing a couple more books. I just what I love now is I can put them out whether anybody likes it or not. I'm not hiring an editor, right? I'm going to put it on Amazon and people, if there's a mistake in or whatever, that's fine. Yeah, yeah. We all have a voice. We all have something to say. Yeah,

James Parker  37:39  
I've got a I've got an ode to Ode to small talk, which is, it's basically about how the, you know, the kind of really insignificant seeming on a verbal level, interactions that you have with people in the street, around the place they can actually, I wonder if I can connect this to what you were saying about soul groups and teams like, there are, there are people who we Meet in the street who will just say something completely inconsequential to us? You know, have a nice day. You know. How about those Celtics? Whatever it might be, somehow you feel utterly restored and refreshed. I mean, profoundly. Not just like, Oh, that was nice. That would seem like a nice person, but really, like, it gets to the core of you, like you recognize something, and then you might never see them again, probably, probably don't, you know, but there's, but they're the, you know, these, these, these moments of connection. They're quite, I mean, they're quite mysterious in some ways, yeah, well,

Brian Smith  38:32  
there are, there are people that make outsized impacts on our life, and there are people that we meet. It's interesting because I work with a guy that does a lot of past life work, and he goes, You know, when you meet somebody and you immediately dislike them, yeah, it's probably because of a past life encounter, yeah? And at some level, you you know who that person is, yeah. There's also the opposite. There's that person that you meet, that you have an immediate connection with, that you just, you felt like you've known them forever, yeah? And again, doing these, these exercises, the ODEs, reading those, and starting to do your own observations. And we start to notice those little moments they I think they become more I don't know if they happen more often, and we just notice them more often, but you know, these things we call synchronicities start to really pop into our lives.

James Parker  39:17  
Yeah, my, my granddad used to say, friendship is largely a matter of of recognition, you know, just like I know this person and with you know we're fine, whether we've been fine before, I know we're going to be fine from now on. Do

Brian Smith  39:30  
you want me? Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny, this is, I'm going to take us down a little bit of a rabbit hole, but there's a song I Love by Kenny Loggins called Sweet reunion. Yeah. And in the song, he's meeting the love of his life, and it's about him meeting. It's a romantic love, yeah, when I, when I hear that song, I think about when my daughters were born, and he talks about how we've lived 1000 lifetimes before, and you know, and you're, you're finally here, walking into my life. And I think that's what it is. I think, I think friendship, love might. Children. They're when they it's like, okay, here you are. I've been looking for you, and now

James Parker  40:04  
you are. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna quote a band back at you. There's a band called The pupils and and the there's a line. It's just about knowing people. And there's and there's a line, it's good to know. I'll know you till the end. I mean, you just just about your friends and the people you love that's just how you feel. You're going to know Him forever beyond this life, of course, right?

Brian Smith  40:24  
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think, I think that's, I think that's true. I mean, at least it's true from my perspective of looking at things, yeah. And again, I, what I love about your your odes is they encourage people to again, I keep saying it. But we, tend to overlook our lives. We tend to think that they're just mundane. We tend to only look for the highlights, you know, we don't think about Ode to brain farts, which was, I like that one too, that one, that one jumped out at me. Good.

James Parker  40:53  
Yeah. I mean, that's about, that's about, well, I try, and I try and classify the different, you know, the different types of brain fart. You know, there's a brain fart of, a technique where, you know, you suddenly find yourself very, very bad doing something that you've that you have been quite good at, for some reason, for whatever reason, there's a brain fart of of memory, you know, where you forget your friend's wife's name or the name of your favorite restaurant. There is, and then there's the brain fart of being, which you actually forget who you're, what you're doing, it, which, mercifully, in my case, has been fairly brief, you know, like little two sec. But, my God, you feel it, but it's like, Jesus, what it's like you fall down a manhole, you know, to like, wonder, who, what am I doing here? And, you know, it fades. But actually, when I was, when I was in my, you know, in my least, least sort of together moment in my, in my 20s, that that that was kind of what having a panic attack felt like, it felt like, like a brain fart amplified, you know, to the edges of the universe, like, like, I've got no sense of why I'm here. Everything's being sort of pulled out with me. That was how, that was how it used to feel,

Brian Smith  41:53  
yeah, yeah. That lack of understanding, again, who you are, why you're here. And these exercises can help to anchor us, yeah? You know, we, when I teach something called Positive Intelligence, and we talk about, you know, getting back in the body, we do things called PQ Reps, yeah? And they're just, they're little moments of mindfulness, where it could be a tactical thing, yeah, PQ Reps for, it stands for positivity quotient. So you do little things like, you know, rub if you're having a panic attack, for example, yeah, that unreal feeling when you feel like your head's gonna explode and everything, yeah, yeah. If you can, if you can focus on something small, like rubbing your fingers together, or the feeling of yourself in your chair or something, yeah, yeah. It can bring you it can bring you back in. It can anchor you back, yeah. And I, what I like about this is, like, there's always something that I can observe, whether it's, you know, it's, whether it's what's going on with this character in a movie, or whether it's, you know, the brain fart, it's part of the human experience, you know, accepting that,

James Parker  42:55  
yeah. I mean, it's funny Brian, as well as as, as we're talking I'm realizing that I actually that ODE that is not complete. Ode to brain FOSS. I should have, I should have carried on. I should have gone into panic attacks with it. Do you know what I mean that would have, that's, that's where it that's where it wanted to go. So, yeah, maybe I'll have to do that at some, some point.

Brian Smith  43:13  
Well, we've discussed a lot of the a lot of those. What are some of your favorites that we haven't discussed? I'm very

James Parker  43:20  
there's one called Ode to, Ode to coming round, coming around on the bathroom floor, which I really like, because I used to there was a time in my life when I was I was a night Baker, and I'd come in at three in the morning. And my son, who's 22 now, he was a baby then, so he'd often wake me up crying, and I'd jump out of bed, and then my wife would hear a great kind of thump, and I'd be laid out on the on the on the bathroom floor. And, you know, fainting, as any, as anybody who's fainted knows, is really an awful experience. I mean, you just get kind of like dying. I mean, you just, you can feel everything sort of slipping and sliding, and then down you get, and then you and then you black out. But coming round, I found was rather beautiful. It was very leisurely. I was kind of astonished by, you know, this is what we've been talking about, like the fingers, and, you know, rubbing your fingers, feeling yourself in your chair, I would have that feeling like, Oh, my God, I am grounded. I'm earthed. Some kind of electrical thing happens. I think when you faint, like, you know, your brain cuts out. And as those circuits kind of restore themselves and refresh themselves, I would think, Oh, my God, this floor is beautiful. You know, like the bathroom tile feels so cool against my cheek, and the light is so clear, and that this body feels great, and that, that you know that it's kind of about feeling at home in the in the world, which is a brief feeling, but you know it when you have it, and it can be very sustaining.

Brian Smith  44:44  
Yeah, awesome. And nothing would ask you about, I know you talk about Jesus a little bit in your book. What do you what are your thoughts on

James Parker  44:52  
Jesus? I love Jesus. He's a, he's a, you know, inspiring presence in my life. I'm a. I was raised Catholic. I'm a fairly, sort of collapsed Catholic. I There's a lot of things about the church that I do not subscribe to at all, but I love the fact that it's there. I go to Mass when I can, and I get a lot out of the out of the New Testament. I get a lot out of the Gospels, and I get a tremendous amount out of the words of Jesus. Yeah.

Brian Smith  45:19  
Okay. Anything else about you you'd like to say about

James Parker  45:23  
about Jesus? Yeah, um,

I think, I think, you know, I'm not, I wish. I wish. I've tried to write an ode to praying, um, and I've been unable to, because I'm not actually very good at praying. I don't mean praying for stuff. I mean praying in the sense of aligning yourself, yeah, with with the higher thing. And I wish you know, as much as as much as I, as much as I, you know, write about this stuff, there's a there's a there's a there's kind of a lack of it in my life in terms of practice. So that's what I thought of when you asked me that question,

Brian Smith  46:06  
interesting, but you wrote an ode to sleeping Jesus, right? Sleeping Jesus?

James Parker  46:10  
Yeah, I got very interested in the moment. There's only one moment in the Gospels where he falls asleep, which is on the it's on the on the boat in the sea of Galilee, in the during the storm, the disciples are freaking out, and Jesus is asleep in the back. And they, you know, they wake him up. And you can imagine him sort of coming out of it a little bit, sort of groggily, perhaps a tiny bit irritated, like, well, you know, you know, why do you wake me? Because it's because, it because it's a beautiful idea that he can be, you know, he gets a bit of rest because he's, you know, he's a busy guy to do so, so you shouldn't really disturb him when he's, when he's, you know, when he's getting his his 40 weeks. But they do disturb him. And, of course, he rises and he and he quiets the storm. But I just love that idea that there is this, there is this that, you know, I've got this image of him sort of curled up almost like a, like a little pearl or something at the at the heart of things, connected to the to the to the ocean, to the root of the ocean, not to the surface turbulence, which is what the disciples are experiencing. And by going by going to him, that's, that's how they settle it down. So, you know, he settles it down, but it's there. But it's there. It's their appeal to him, that ends up with the thing being, it's them going beneath the surface, basically that, yeah, that settles the situation. Yeah, yeah. I think

Brian Smith  47:28  
it's a beautiful observation. And there's, there's so much again, in these in these stories, whether we take them literally or we take them as metaphor, yep, you know, because, again, they're in the same circumstances. They're literally in the same boat. Yeah, Jesus is like, I'm sleeping. Yeah, exactly. These guys are freaking out. So it's an example of what the type of peace that we can all hopefully, you know, try to achieve. And I think again, that's what we're talking about here. It's like, even though, in that, in that story, he calms the sea, it's really more about that internal piece. I think that we can't control our our circumstances. We're going we're going to go through crap. We're that's again, I was talking to someone yesterday, and I say it all the time, the pain, the turmoil, the things we go through here, they're not a they're not a bug, they're a feature. Yeah, I think, I think we come here to experience that, and I've tried to make the case for that, as we've talked about, you know, some of these, these things that humans do with the crazy things that we do. I was watching someone zip lining the other day over this, over Dubai, yeah, and I posted on my Facebook page. Everybody's like, nope, nope. And I'm like, No, I would never do that. But I saw a story, and this is another because I this is why I connect so much of the book, because this is why my mind works too. There was a guy that was, he was going out Mount Everest, and he encountered a guy who had gotten in trouble, yes, would have died, and he rescued that guy, and he brought him down. Okay, that's the story. But I'm thinking, Okay, why were they on Mount? Everest right? Because you don't have to be there,

James Parker  49:04  
right, right, right? Nobody, right? Nobody. Made this guy climb, climb Mount. Everest right. So

Brian Smith  49:10  
it's like, this is, this is what humans do. We we crave these things. And what you're, I think telling us to do is like, embrace it all. Yeah, don't. Don't try to bypass things. Don't, don't think that this thing is a little thing. Embrace it all. Observe it all. It's a it's a short ride. It's a relatively short ride. It

James Parker  49:30  
is a short ride. I mean, what you know when I dedicate this book to my my my wife and my son and the writers that work with and also my therapist, Dr Cottle, who I saw him for about 10 years, you know, and he really, he really helped me. And one of the things he would say, like, you know, when I was moaning on about, you know, this mood or that mood, or these sensations, or that sensations now and again, you just look at me and you go, Well, I mean, you're an artist, you're a writer. What do you expect? But this is it. This is this is. What happens when you raise your sensitivity or to a certain level, which is where you should be to be alive. Wow, you know, isn't it nice? It's so simple, but it's but I found it so, so helpful. I mean, Saint, you know, Saint Irenaeus, the the Catholic saint wasn't Catholic, but, you know, he's a saint. He said, The glory of God is a man fully alive. And that's, I think that's the and I should say, like, I hope it doesn't sound like I'm preaching, because I fall short of all of these things many times a day, and have had, you know, long periods when where I was failing to embrace all the things we've been talking about, but I do. But when I'm on my game, I you know, when my system is on this game, I think that's the I think that's the ticket. I

Brian Smith  50:49  
think that's I think that's brilliant. What your what your therapist said to you. I was talking with a friend yesterday who said a brain injury, and they think and operate differently because of that, yeah. And we're looking at going on to maybe medication for it or something. And I'm like, but is it? Is it affecting how you function in the world? Is it preventing you from getting things done? Is it? Is it? And they're like, Well, no, but it makes me act differently and work differently, and I'm like, but it also makes you great at what you do, yeah, so you have to be careful with trying to make everybody like everybody else Exactly. And you made it. I love what you said. It gave me goosebumps about you said, you're an artist, you've got a you've got a level of sensitivity. Well, the world is crazy. So people that if we do have a higher level of sensitivity, we're going to feel pain. There's a reason why artists feel pain. And you know, you could, you could not feel pain. You could walk around the world clueless. You could walk around the world not caring, yeah,

James Parker  51:47  
or you can drink or drove or do whatever it is. I mean, there's what, there's there's ways of not doing it for sure,

Brian Smith  51:51  
right, right? So what, I think, what we're saying is, okay, embrace it all. And, yeah, I, I used to suffer from seasonal affective disorder. I live in Ohio, and it gets really gloomy here in the winter, yeah, and I mentioned earlier I hate the cold, and I live in a place where it's cold. You know, six months out of the year

James Parker  52:10  
these cold, it's never going to take this cold channel thing. I could tell I hate the cold, so

Brian Smith  52:15  
it's really hot right now, people are like, complaining about the heat. I'm like, I will never complain about the heat, yeah, but I gotta. I got a sad light, and I put it in it on my desk, and it helped. And I used it for a couple years. And then one year, I was like, You know what? I'm just gonna accept the fact in the winter that this is the way I feel. Yeah, I have lower energy. I sleep in a little bit later. I typically go to bed earlier. I'm like, but I looked around like, that's what nature does, yeah, animals in nature don't fight. When are they hibernate, yeah?

James Parker  52:46  
But also, what I mean, what you're doing there, Brian, just by, just by sort of explaining the condition to yourself, you know, in that, like, by kind of itemizing those that's, that's like a little ODE that you've written just there. Do you know what I mean? Like, like, it helps once if you sat down and wrote, yeah, I have less energy. I need this. I need that. These are the things that happened to me under these, you know, under these conditions, somehow that's a way of conquering the condition in a funny way, right? No,

Brian Smith  53:13  
a couple years after, one of my friends said that she had seasonal affective disorder, and I sent her my light, I said, I don't use it anymore, yeah? Because I'm like, this is a temporary thing, yeah? I know why it is. I know it's because it's December. I know it's going to go away in March or April, yeah? So I'm just going, I'm just going to embrace it and and then when you stop fighting, it doesn't hurt, yeah? But also,

James Parker  53:37  
you know, part of the condition of depression and grief. I'm sure I had that much experience with it, is, is this, like what we were talking about at the beginning? This the sense that time has stopped. I mean, you can't, you can't project forward at all, right, exactly. So, so, so you have to, kind of, you have to recognize that, like, this is, this is part of it. You know, this isn't, this is not necessarily the cape, but it is definitely the case now, and and it kind of endure that, or find a way to manage it, right?

Brian Smith  54:06  
Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. And it's, it's, I love, like, I said, I was reading about you said, this is, this is to my 25 year old self, because that's an exercise that we do. Sometimes it was like, we go back, yeah, and we talk to our younger selves, yeah. And you putting this out there, you know, at the age that you are now, and having had this experience, these experiences, hopefully give someone else hope that says, yeah, it's going to be okay. And I know there's, there's a big campaign, what is it? It gets easier, yeah, for people that are suffering, it's like, that's true life. It gets easier and it gets harder, because life is always it's like this. That's right, yeah.

James Parker  54:43  
But whatever I mean, I mean, one thing I say to people is, if it's if it's acute, the state that you're in, if it's acute, then you know it's going to change, because nothing stays acute. Nature is incapable of maintaining a state of acuteness for very long. So if you're acutely depressed, that's that's going to. Pass fairly soon,

Brian Smith  55:01  
right? Yeah, that's a great point too. Yeah. So, yeah, these things, they come and they go and again. I think it's, this is a the book is great because it's not like Man's Search for Meaning was, it's kind of hard to get to. I mean, Viktor Frankl is a very, you know, it's kind of hard to understand. This is a book that anybody can read it pick. Can read, it pick up, and it's, it's light hearted, but it's also extremely deep, if you, if you take them, if you take the message of it. I so appreciate you saying this. Brian, yeah. And really, really easy to read. And I think that's you have a thing where you like your books being compact. Is that true? Yes,

James Parker  55:39  
yes. I I'm very pleased, you know, I put people. People have different ways of reading that. But I'm a, you know, I'm a books guy. I'm like, I'm like, I'm an analog dude. And I love so this is, this is, you know, it's little, and it fit and compact, and it fits into your back pocket. And I love the thought that people can take it with them around the place. And, you know, have pop into it now and again and have a little read. And it's just, it's, you know, it's kind of available in that, in that physical sense, that that made me, it made me very happy when I opened the box. Was like, Oh yeah, because I was, I was, I was anticipating a big, like, clunky hardcover, like, like, something somebody gives you for Christmas that you never read. And this, this feels like a little tool, almost, toolkit, perhaps, yeah,

Brian Smith  56:21  
I think so. And you know, it's interesting, because most books that are bought are never read. I forgot what, what percentage of the actual book gets read, but it's a very small percentage. People buy books and they have intentions to read them, but they're they're hard, frankly, they're hard to get through. And sometimes it takes me a long time to get through a book, yeah, but when you have little bite sized things. You could pick it up and you can read it for five minutes, yeah, and finish it. Finish an ODE. You know, that's that you feel a sense of accomplishment. You come back to it, yeah, it takes me, you know, 30 minutes to read a chapter. I'm like,

James Parker  56:54  
I'm a slow reader. I'm a very slow reader. I have to keep going back and checking, yeah. It could also, you know, if it ends up being a bathroom book, that's a, that's a noble destiny for me. I think that's, that's fantastic, you know, I

Brian Smith  57:06  
don't, I think it would be great to be a great bathroom book, right? Yeah, right, because the ODEs, they do stand alone. There's some themes that kind of come together, but, yeah, it's, it's, it's accessible, and I think we do need that. It's great to have academic stuff that's all, that's all wonderful too. But, you know, some of us struggle to get through those, and some of us never get there. We buy them and intend to, but we never do. I think this is a book that people will will finish, right?

James Parker  57:33  
Thank you, Brian, so

Brian Smith  57:36  
I know we talked about a lot of your ODEs. Are there any other ones that you want to say before we wrap up, um,

James Parker  57:42  
there's, there's a, there's, well, kind of one of the one of the bigger ones is called Ode owed to the right at the right time. And this is very, this is very specific to me. And I think, I think this is kind of what we've been getting at. I mean, this is, I'm right. I'm just writing completely out of my own, you know, quite idiosyncratic experience, in a way. So I went to boarding school. When I was eight. I went to boys boarding school, all boys boarding school, Catholic in England. And, you know, I come from a very privileged background, but it was a pretty harsh environment. And I saw, I write about that. I write about the feeling of being homesick, which is very, you know, there's a, there's a kind of emerging literature about what being sent away to boarding school does to people. And specifically in England, there's a whole class of men who have emerged from this experience who often end up being politicians. And what it can, you know, I think it encourages you to build a kind of artificial self, as, you know, as a as a defense, and then, if you're lucky, life will smash that artificial self and you'll be forced to become who you who you are, which is what happened to me. But the smashing can be very painful, right? Nonetheless. Anyway, back to the old so it's about me at boarding school, and my mum giving me Pink Floyd's album the wall, and me and me finding in that that album just a kind of incredible explanation of who I was, of what was happening, of what it means to be English, of what it meant to have these psychotic, abusive teachers Surrounded by frightened little boys who are all being mean to each other. It completely saved my bacon. So that. So the the the odness of that, if you like, is, you know, what is it for you? What was, what was the moment where a record or a book or a movie came to your rescue and and kind of matched, matched your circumstances in that, in that way? Yeah, I'm

Brian Smith  59:43  
glad I asked you that last question, because the wall, it to me is like a phenomenal album. Oh, good.

James Parker  59:51  
So we connect on that, not on ACDC, but the wall, the

Brian Smith  59:54  
wall came out when I was in I was in college. I think it was my second or third year in college. And this was back, we had, you know, albums, and so we got that album, we just played it over and over and over. And I don't know why, because I didn't really understand the story of it at the time, yeah, until the movie came out, yeah and, but I just, I love, I love the songs individually, yeah, when the movie comes out, you see the arc of the guy's life. And that is, that might be the single best album that's ever been put out. I

James Parker  1:00:25  
agree. I totally agree. And I've never stopped listening to it. And it never ceases to, you know, give me the goods. It's a masterpiece. It's so

Brian Smith  1:00:34  
and for people that don't know what we're geeking out about, it's about this building up with this artificial personality, this this little boy who is in a frightened world. He's got an overprotective mother, but the rest of the world is like, you know, coming at him, and she's like, you've got to build this wall. You've got to protect yourself. Yeah, yeah. And it ends up he fight at the end, and he's built this wall, and he realized he's basically put himself in jail, that he can't be himself anymore. He's alone

James Parker  1:00:59  
behind the wall, yeah? So that, you know, the chance at the end of the UN tear down the wall, tear down the wall. And everybody's got their own their own wall, their own version of it, their own bricks. What they've what they've done, right?

Brian Smith  1:01:10  
I think we all do. I think we all do. We all come in this world. You know, we come in pure, like we talked about, we come from spirit. We come in pure, but we get bogged down by the way of the world. And they tell us, you've got to build this wall, you've got to, you've got to, you've got to play this part. You've got to play this role. Just so happy

James Parker  1:01:27  
talking about this point on this buddy vibrating. But we all

Brian Smith  1:01:30  
just want to be ourselves. Yeah, you know, we want to be ourselves. And it takes until we get, you know, in our in our later years. And yeah, it was a sentence from the tear down the wall. It's like, you have to tear down the wall. But it was also freeing. Yeah,

James Parker  1:01:43  
oh, yeah, yeah. And yeah. I mean, it's an ongoing process as well. I think the wall is constantly attempting to rebuild itself, and we constantly have to smash it down. Yeah? Always. People are

Brian Smith  1:01:55  
always trying to put us back in the box. Yeah? People like to have you defined. They want to know who you are. And you do something that, well, that's not, that's not a character for you. That's the way you're supposed to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, that's, that is a fantastic way to end, James, I've really enjoyed our time together. Remind people the name of your book and where they can get it.

James Parker  1:02:15  
Get me through the next five minutes. Owes to being alive. You can get it all good, you know Amazon or good bookstores, get at your local bookstore. If you, if you can, please support your local bookstore. But yeah, that's it, Brian, I've had such a great time this morning. What a beautiful conversation.

Brian Smith  1:02:33  
Thank you. Yeah. Have a Good day. You, too. You

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