The Lost Art of Waiting

[0:00] Matt: It comes like a fleeting memory. Whatever you grab just turns to dust. Like eye contact with strangers.

[0:24] Michael: You ready for this?

[0:25] Matt: I think so.

[0:26] Michael: All right.

[0:27] Matt: No less ready than ever.

[0:29] Michael: Oh, wow. No less ready than ever.

[0:32] Matt: I don't know what that means.

[0:33] Michael: I don't know either.

[0:35] Matt: Cheers. To the shores

[0:39] Michael: today. Matt's got a short commercial break for you.

[0:44] Matt: Do I?

[0:44] Michael: Yeah. Oh, boy, oh, man.

[0:47] Matt: Oh, Bon, we are drinking scotch tonight.

[0:53] Michael: Yeah.

[0:53] Matt: A little out of the ordinary, but it felt like the right move. So we're drinking a Bon and. I decided that their marketing slogan should be oh, boy, oh, man. Obon.

[1:12] Michael: I think it's great. Yeah. I mean, I was gonna drink it anyways, but, like.

[1:16] Matt: But now you're gonna.

[1:17] Michael: Yeah. Really drink it. I'm really excited.

[1:19] Matt: Yeah. What's going on?

[1:23] Michael: I was thinking a second ago, like, have you been going to the Springs or.

[1:27] Matt: I haven't started yet.

[1:28] Michael: Okay.

[1:30] Matt: I usually start in March, but they were closed for, like, the first two or three weeks of March. I can't remember what they were doing. Some kind of construction or something.

[1:38] Michael: Yeah, they do, like, a big deep clean every March.

[1:42] Matt: And then it's been cold for the last. It's been like 45 degrees in the morning for the last couple of days. So, yeah, that rate, the water would be warmer than the air. I'll probably start going in the next week or two.

[1:54] Michael: All right.

[1:55] Matt: Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I've been missing it every year. I think I'm going to keep going through the winter, and I always chicken out.

[2:04] Michael: Yeah. It's like once you stop, it's like that a week. It's really hard to jump back into that.

[2:10] Matt: Right.

[2:12] Michael: Yeah.

[2:12] Matt: So for those who don't know, Barton Springs is this wonderful treasure that we have here in Austin, the spring fed. It's actually. There's three springs that feed the pool, and the water's a constant. What is it, 68 degrees. So usually in the summers. Springs and summers, I go down there every morning, take a swim, lay in the grass, do some Wim Hof breathing exercises.

[2:35] Michael: Touch grass.

[2:36] Matt: Touch grass. Get wet.

[2:38] Michael: Even out your electrons in your body.

[2:40] Matt: Yeah, totally. I miss it. I need it.

[2:46] Michael: Yeah. Just the. Just even. Just the idea of slowing down a little bit sounds. It's like, oh, we're just. Man. I've been kind of like 90 miles an hour, all kinds of stuff. And I was just kind of realizing how much I kind of forget to slow down.

[3:09] Matt: We do not live in a slow world anymore.

[3:11] Michael: No. It's getting more so.

[3:15] Matt: Well, I kind of wanted to talk about that because I was having this thought about the way my teenage daughters text me.

[3:22] Michael: Oh, yeah.

[3:24] Matt: Like if they need something, they text me at the exact moment they need it. So, like, one of my daughters will text me, dad, can I have some money for. To buy lunch? I'm literally in line, so I need you to do it right now. And I was thinking about how when we were kids, it was just such a different world. There was no instant communication for the majority of your life, unless you were at home and you could make a telephone call, assuming the other person you wanted to talk to was at their home.

[3:57] Michael: Yeah. Or even. Do you remember the difference? Whenever his call waiting came.

[4:01] Matt: I don't know, my dad hated that so much. But I was thinking about how when, before I got a car, before I was 16, when I got out of school, if someone was going to pick me up, you had to go to the place of the school where people get picked up, and you had to stand there being visible to the person who was looking for you. And you had to be looking for the person. If the person was late, you'd have no way of knowing if they had a car accident or something, some emergency, you'd have no way of knowing unless they called, called the school and got somebody who worked for the school to go find you and tell you. And so it was like a really normal experience that if you were waiting to be picked up, you were waiting. There was nothing else to do. And now if one of my daughters needs to be picked up from someplace, as soon as they're ready, they're texting me, are you here? Where are you parked? What are you doing? The general dynamic with kids these days

[5:07] Michael: is kids these days. Yeah.

[5:10] Matt: You know, if I go drop one of my daughters off at a friend's house, she texts them from the car outside the house and has them come to the door because she doesn't want to go up to the door and knock on the door. So it's like this instant communication that we have enables all of these, you know, what you might say are conveniences. But I was talking to my mom about this, just telling her my thoughts on this, and she said, yeah, I really feel like our phones are a pathway to our. Our anxieties. And I thought that was a really brilliant statement because, you know, if you're sitting and waiting to be picked up and you can't do anything about it, there's really no use worrying about it. You just kind of have to sit, you know, and think about something. Else. Or if you have a book, maybe read it or, you know, work on your cartwheels. I don't know, whatever you do. But now if you're waiting, you have like real time communication access with the person you're waiting for. You might even have GPS location on them. You know, we have all of these things. And so if you're anxious at all about having to wait, you can feed that anxiety by checking and checking and checking and checking, rather than having to just sit and be alone with yourself, be alone with your thoughts. We really aren't afforded those in our daily interactions anymore, our daily routines. It's like we really have to build them in. I've talked about building in two hours a day with no screens, beginning and the end of every day. And you were talking earlier about wanting to build in a Sabbath day to just force yourself to stop. Yeah, but all that stuff used to be built in, in small little increments, you know?

[7:00] Michael: Yeah. It's like just sitting with the unknown for a little bit. It's like, what am I going to do?

[7:07] Matt: It's like, I don't know, you have to do it on purpose. We used to have to sit with the unknown all the time. When is this person going to be here? Are they okay? Did they get where they were going okay? You know, I don't know.

[7:18] Michael: Yeah.

[7:19] Matt: And if you were ever out doing something and you ended up not having what you needed, you just had to make do without what you needed. There was nothing you could do about it. Like, I remember this one night. I grew up in a small town about half an hour outside of San Antonio, Texas. And this is when I had a car. And one night I had taken a couple friends into San Antonio to go to a movie. And it was like 10:30 or 11 when we were coming back. I was 16. I had this old car, very cool car. I got voted coolest car in the senior yearbook. It was a 1965 Thunderbird, fire engine, red. And it's not like the kind of Thunderbird you think of when you think of a Thunderbird. Now, the thing was a boat. It was huge. It was two doors, but I think it weighed two tons. It was an awesome car, but it had all kinds of problems that I couldn't really afford to fix. And one of the problems was that the gas tank had a leak in it. But I figured out that the leak was at the top of the gas tank. So you were pretty much okay if you just never filled the tank up. But the other problem is that the Gas gauge was broken and the odometer was broken, so there was never any way to know how much gas you had in the car. And the consequence of that is that I would run out of gas a lot. So my friends and I are coming back from the movies, 10:30 at night. We're on Interstate 10, which at that time at night, there wasn't a lot of people on it. And I ran out of gas and cell phones didn't exist. And so we just had to get out of the car and walk down the side of the interstate until we got to the nearest exit, which in that part, in those times was probably a mile or two, and go to a payphone and call someone's parents to bring us a gas can. I mean, but I remember it was kind of an adventure. It was kind of fun.

[9:22] Michael: Yeah.

[9:23] Matt: But we don't encounter all that kind of thing much anymore in our lives. And I wonder what we've lost because of that.

[9:33] Michael: Yeah, Well, I think that's. For me, I was kind of telling you this earlier was just like, I've kind of. I have all these things I've built into my life. Kind of like you're talking about going to the Springs or whatever it is, just to kind of, like, kind of check myself. And. And I've kind of recently kind of gotten out of, like. I've kind of missed a few of those governors that I've got set in place. And it's like. It's like you forget why sometimes you put certain things in place until you don't have them or you haven't been using them, and you're like, oh, yeah, that's why I work out in the morning or stretch or whatever. It's like, because it helps me sort of orient my day. And it's like. It's like being able to sit with the unknown for a period of time kind of helps you to, like, oh, yeah. It's like not everything is immediate. It's like there's a lot of things I don't know, I can't see. And if I just kind of pretend like I am in control, then it's sort of like you kind of forget that you. How much. How much you are not in control at all. It's like you kind of have to be reminded of that. You know, it's like. I think that's like. We've talked about this a few times in the past of midlife crisis, you know, it's like, where

[11:01] Matt: I had to make an adjustment. Okay. You were like, Wilson, behind The fence on home improvement. All I could see was your eyes.

[11:12] Michael: I don't know what's good.

[11:17] Matt: Well, what do you think the effect of that is? Sitting. Sitting with the unknown. I mean, even trying to do that by like just consciously not looking up the answers to everything all of the time. You know, we. We carry around these devices that have Google and now AI on them, and if you ever want to know something, you just get the information right then and there. There's something to be said for not look it up. You and I sat down before the podcast to kind of talk about what we were going to do, and we had made some notes from last week, and I was like, oh, I'll just check the notes. And you were like, yeah, what if we just sit here for a minute and think? What do you think that is? What does that do for a person?

[12:05] Michael: Yeah, I don't know.

[12:13] Matt: I mean, I'll venture an answer. Friend shared a podcast with me recently, and I was listening to it, and I've had this experience multiple times, and to be fair, I find it kind of a turn off. I'll listen to a podcast and it seems like everyone on the podcast is saying what they had planned to say before the recording started. It didn't seem like a genuine conversation. It felt like a platform for people to say the stuff that they wanted to say. You know what I mean? And so when I'm listening to a podcast that's like that, it's much less engaging. And it doesn't feel like people are thinking in real time, thinking the actual thoughts they have, they're delivering the thoughts that they prepared at some other point. And I wonder if there's something to that. You and I talk a lot about questions, and a lot of times the question that you might have isn't really the question. And you have to ask sometimes a wrong question to realize, oh, I need to figure out what the right question is. And I think if we just sort of presuppose that we know the answer to the question, which with the phone in your pocket, you do, you know the answer to every question, right? If you don't have to spend very much time with your question, you get the answer to it and move on, you don't get the opportunity to discover that there's a better and deeper question at hand. And so if you sit and think about the answer, your brain starts generating alternate questions or slight variations to those questions. And that's what a real conversation is like. In a real conversation, you're not sitting there waiting to say what you want to say. You're actually in real time processing as I'm talking. And then you respond to that moment. Not necessarily to the words or even the exact sort of subject at hand, but you're responding to the moment in the conversation, if you're having a real conversation.

[14:29] Michael: Yeah, that's true.

[14:32] Matt: I mean, we're all familiar with the opposite of that. People do it most often in arguments, especially arguments with a romantic partner that gets really heated, and your partner says something to you, and you go, oh, I got the zinger. To come back at that. But they haven't stopped yet. They're still going. And so you're just sitting there remembering your zinger until they finally stop, and then you deliver it, and you're like. You have this sense of like, oh, I just missed the boat. Because they've laid out a whole other point between the time I thought of it and when I delivered it, and I wasn't paying attention because I was so focused on what I wanted to say.

[15:11] Michael: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I think I just. Yeah, I think that's. There's that part just like, I'm kind of just needing that. Sitting with the unknown. I think that's something I've always really treasured. And. Well, it's kind of both. I mean, I really love just sitting there and just kind of, like, exploring thoughts and ideas. And then other times, I'm like. It's like you're on a line, and you're just, like, rocking and rolling with something specific. And. Well, actually, all that. Now I'm kind of like, Sorry. I'm thinking out loud now, too.

[15:57] Matt: I also feel like I really derailed you when I adjusted your mic stand.

[16:01] Michael: Oh, yeah. I can't. I can't think straight. Like, it's like a. I was kind of in a certain train of thought, and I kind of, like, lost it. Like, I'm sorry.

[16:13] Matt: Come back.

[16:18] Michael: Yeah, I don't know.

[16:21] Matt: Well, what is the feeling of. You said you feel like you need to sit with the unknown. What is that? What is it that you need to sit with? Foreign.

[16:35] Michael: Well, it's unknown, man.

[16:36] Matt: I know.

[16:38] Michael: Well, I think, like, in conversation, there's.

[16:40] Matt: There's.

[16:40] Michael: There's. There's so many different ways to explore something, and sometimes it's. It's through things you've already said a million times, but the millionth and one time you say it, you say it just a little bit different, and you're like, oh, right. What was that?

[16:55] Matt: It, like, glimmers.

[16:56] Michael: It glimmers.

[16:57] Matt: Oh, there was something new there.

[16:58] Michael: Yeah. And like, even Monday night I was just kind of like I was out with some, some people and I was kind of running through a bunch of stuff that you and I have talked about a lot and, and things I've been thinking through. And, and it was like it was kind of the same, same conversation I've had many times, but it was, it was, it was something different in it. And I think that's the. There's almost like we need to keep that curiosity and just not regurgitate or try to fill in the right answer. I think that's kind of sitting with the unknown is like you kind of have an expectation of discovery. I mean, even with what we do every night, Wednesday night, it's like, we've got to get some thoughts. But it's also this expectation of discovery and I think that's also kind of sitting with the unknown is you're kind of dealing with the island of knowledge and your books. Here's kind of what I have. And let's kind of see what's there. And then you kind of find, oh, whoa, there's a whole ocean out there of the unknown. It's like living in that tension of the known and the unknown. I think it's like, is it harder for people today?

[18:13] Matt: Such a good analogy. The quote, as the island of my knowledge expands, so do the shores of my ignorance. It's so interesting that, like, people love to go sit on the beach and look at the ocean. We're drawn to it.

[18:30] Michael: Yeah.

[18:30] Matt: You know, men have written love letters of books about the ocean. That's what Moby Dick is. What were you starting to say?

[18:45] Michael: Oh, I don't know.

[18:46] Matt: Yeah.

[18:47] Michael: Yeah, I think just. Yeah, just being able to sit with those different ideas. No. Okay, that's what I was saying. It's like, I wonder if there is like. Because you were kind of explaining how your kids deal with, you know, in mine too, it's like, you know, texting and you can, you can get immediate answers. You know, gps, like, oh, he's on his way. I can watch the car come all the way to, to where I'm at

[19:16] Matt: and, or even like this blows my mind. Like my 15 year old, her and her friends really like to spend the night here at my house and I love that. But it's like every once in a while they'll all be here on like a Friday night and it's 10pm and I hear a knock at the door or 10:30pm I hear a knock at the door and I'M like, wake and I see one of the. I'm like, walking over there and I see one of the girls, and then they come back with a chick fil a bag and they're like, oh, we just doordash some food. They could just do that. Whereas, like, delivery was barely a thing in the 90s.

[19:53] Michael: Pizza was pretty much it.

[19:54] Matt: Pizza was it. Now you can get anything from anywhere delivered to you by a stranger in 20 minutes. It's crazy.

[20:02] Michael: It is.

[20:03] Matt: I mean, that instant gratification. I mean, what is it? Delayed gratification is like the basis of maturity. And we live in a world that's instantly gratifying.

[20:21] Michael: I think there's an emotional stability about that. And success is kind of like the whole marshmallow experiment. You set up a marshmallow in front of a kid and you can have two if you wait. Or you can have. You just eat this one. And it doesn't seem like that our society kind of like, encourages that very much. Man, I feel like I'm kind of like, all caught up in, like, what is. Like. Like, did I raise my kids right? Like, do they have that. Do they have those abilities to. To kind of like, sit and be okay with not knowing? Like, Like, Hannah, like, she does a really great job with this. I think she'll just go out and garden. I didn't tell her to do it, you know, like. And, you know, and I don't know, it's just. It's like. But it's like, is there a thing or is it. Or is it a personality type? Or are you prone to ways as far as, like.

[21:27] Matt: I mean, there are certainly personality types that will predispose a person towards. Things like that. Like, well, I'm just going to go garden.

[21:42] Michael: Yeah. Because I mean.

[21:43] Matt: But I wonder if living in a world where delayed gratification is never necessary, Is it futile to try to teach it. Because it's all artificial?

[22:08] Michael: Yeah, I'd almost kind of. I guess I'd push back on that in that it's, it's. It's part of our human psyche. Like, we're, we're. We're not. Were built to have those times. I mean, you can kind of see it built into religions where you have a Sabbath, you know, a day that you kind of like, you don't work.

[22:26] Matt: I guess that's true. It had to be imposed by religion.

[22:29] Michael: Yeah. And. And now with, like, religion not being as much practice, you don't have that same, you know, imposition of, you know, no techno, like Jews, like, no Technology on Saturday.

[22:42] Matt: Yeah.

[22:43] Michael: And. And you kind of think like, well, that's kind of dumb. It's like, well, actually, that's really smart.

[22:50] Matt: Yeah.

[22:50] Michael: To have those sort of imposed upon you. Like, no, this is important. And there's a reason why we do it. There's a religious reason, but there's also like a physical human need for. To stop and not just continue seven days a week.

[23:07] Matt: Right.

[23:07] Michael: In the same mentality.

[23:09] Matt: Well, it's like the. The image of Neo getting plugged into the. It's not the real Matrix, but it's like the test one. What is that one called? Do you remember?

[23:18] Michael: I don't know.

[23:19] Matt: The construct. Yeah, I think something like that, you know, and they. He downloads Jiu Jitsu into his brain and while it's downloading, like, you can picture his face in your mind. He's like, you know, it's like kind of like that's why you need a break. Because when you're like, hyper, especially when you're hyper productive and hyper focused, it does feel like that. It feels like I'm mainlining something. And you can't do that forever. It's too intense. You need to take a break. And then sort of. It's like. I think it's why we need to sleep. We need to sleep to take a break in order to consolidate memories and organize thoughts and feelings in a way that isn't exactly conscious. It's not. It's very much not like left brain categorizations. It's more like resetting your pram and clearing out caches and things like that. But I think it's really beneficial to take regular intervals of conscious time to not be focused on what you have been focused on and maybe look for things that you haven't been paying attention to.

[24:31] Michael: That's such a great example of sleep. It's like, like, what's happening there. It's like. Because you can use computer terms in this area, but it's not. It's. It doesn't really equate exactly. And I think that's. Maybe it's a helpful analogy or something, but I wish I could remember that Roger Penrose, he's this, like, brilliant.

[24:52] Matt: I love him.

[24:52] Michael: Yeah, brilliant guy. So neuroscientist, I guess. And he talks about, like, humans are not, like, we use a lot of, like, computer program language to explain, like, how we operate, but it's like, it's not the case at all. And I can't. I forget the details. It was a while back since I read his stuff, but it Made a lot of sense to me. The way he phrased it.

[25:16] Matt: He's not a neuroscientist. I just googled it because I was like, he's a physicist. Physicist. But he's primarily a mathematician and philosopher of science. Yeah, that sounds pretty badass.

[25:27] Michael: That sounds pretty badass.

[25:28] Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. I mean, I think the computer analogy is the wrong one. It's like I was saying a couple weeks ago about memory. My contention being that it isn't like retrieving a stored file. It's more like playing a song for the second time. It's like you're re experiencing it. Something like that. It's like plucking the same string again. Totally experiencing the same vibration.

[25:55] Michael: I feel like I want to fight you again on this, but. Yeah,

[26:02] Matt: Yeah. I mean, every metaphor fails.

[26:05] Michael: Oh, yeah, totally. No, I. I really love that because, I mean, like, kind of what you're saying is, like. Like, when you look at a picture or when you look at a book, you know, like, it's not just the book. It's, like where you were when you read the book or the picture. Like, it just draws you back into. Or. A song from the 90s. Was that Wonderwall? I think that was, like, one of my girlfriends. Like, it reminded me of her or something like that, you know, like, so anytime that song comes on, it, like, it takes me back into all those.

[26:35] Matt: Right.

[26:35] Michael: Thoughts and ideas and feelings and stuff.

[26:38] Matt: Right.

[26:39] Michael: It's, like, so. So amazingly complex.

[26:44] Matt: But we were talking about sleep as it relates to sleep.

[26:50] Michael: Yeah, Yeah. I mean, just like, I. I think there's. I. Again, this does not have to do with this, but I just remember, like, there's this part where I always. I always. I have this vision sometimes when I. Before I go to sleep, or I'm just kind of like floating on top of the water, and it's sort of like I'm floating on my unconscious, and the air is my conscious self. And I just. Like, at some point, I just sort of, like, breathe out and then I float underneath. And every time I've kind of, like, done that, sort of like it's kind of a meditation exercise probably. I don't know, but it's just sort of like. It's just sort of like I feel like I'm. There's. I'm giving into, like, hey, there's a lot going on inside me. I don't know and I don't understand. And the only way for me to connect with that is either through sleep or through, like, a meditation of Some sort of.

[27:42] Matt: My version of that is I sort of imagine myself falling through the pupils of my eyes into darkness. And as I fall away from them, my vision contracts and becomes smaller and further and further away until it goes away. But I find it really interesting that. And I don't know if everyone's dreams are like this, but my dreams are very uncanny. They don't follow the laws of physics that I know in this world. They also don't follow any kind of imagination that I'm familiar with in conscious world. Like, I could never sit down and draw a picture of a landscape that's going to show up in a dream. It's always something very bizarre. And it's rooted in things that I know, but it manifests. I mean, it's almost like that movie Annihilation. Did you ever see that with Natalie Portman? Apparently. The book is fantastic. I've never read the book, but the movie is really good. But everything has these strange forms and behaves in strange ways in this movie. And it's really kind of creepy, but it's almost like I think my dreams are a chance for me to. It's like process things in a different dimension. It's like you've been trying to work things out in your human brain in three dimensions in this physical world. And when you go to sleep, you get to, like, you know, you get to go from black and white to color, or you get to be, you know, in Mary Poppins and dive into the street chalk art and go process in a different world that doesn't obey the rules that you're limited to in the real world.

[29:31] Michael: It's so funny because it starts to kind of like, open up a whole series of things that we've kind of discarded in our modern world or postmodern world, which is like prayer, meditation, even dreams. And paying attention to your dreams. It's like, no, those are really important. But I don't understand it. It's just nonsense. It's like, no, it's not nonsense. Like, it's actually. It's actually mean something. Your dreams are not nonsense. And I think that's something that more of the ancients kind of took value in is like, hey, no, my dreams are mean something. And if you don't treat them that way, then you're not going to get the information that you need. I think you will. I think you kind of do anyways, subconsciously. But I think there is something to pay attention to. You know, those. Those wanderings that you have, even waking wanderings.

[30:30] Matt: Oh, totally.

[30:30] Michael: Daydreams if we call me.

[30:32] Matt: Yeah.

[30:34] Michael: Because sometimes there's. There's things you need to know that you are not ready for. And that's sometimes the way to wake you up to things you're not ready for.

[30:45] Matt: That's such a good point. I mean, if I ever have breakthroughs, it's all. It's almost always while I'm wandering. Often when I'm physically wandering, like, I go out for a walk and think about something else. And on that walk, because of the movement and the sun and whatever, all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's the answer to the problem I've been slaving over.

[31:10] Michael: Yeah. You almost hear about all sorts of inventions that are made that way are discovered. How to measure gold. And the value of gold is the. He was in a bathtub. I've got his name now.

[31:22] Matt: But was, I believe, Salvador Dali.

[31:29] Michael: Is it.

[31:29] Matt: Salvador Dali came up with this idea. No. What were you talking about?

[31:33] Michael: Oh, the measurement of gold. Yeah.

[31:36] Matt: I don't know that story. Tell it.

[31:37] Michael: I don't know that. I couldn't tell. But basically it was a scientist that, like, he was trying to figure out how to find the value of gold and the whole thing. But he took a bath and he realized displacement of water and. Yeah. Anyways.

[31:53] Matt: That he could measure the volume of gold by the displacement of water. Yeah. I think it was Salvador Dali. He had concocted a method by which he would go to sleep and he would out off the side of his bed, hold a large metal spoon and on the floor put a metal bowl. And his idea was that as he drifted off into that sort of liminal space of dreaming when his mind was letting go and his hand would relax and it would drop the spoon into the bowl and wake him up so he could have access to the thoughts that are in that in between space.

[32:35] Michael: Yeah.

[32:36] Matt: Really interesting.

[32:37] Michael: That's really cool. I like that.

[32:39] Matt: Yeah.

[32:42] Michael: Yeah. It's. The funny thing is, if you don't pay attention, you don't ever see them. Because like last year, 20, 25, I think I wrote down maybe 10 dreams. And most time I had like, you know, at least 50 or more dreams every. Every year that I wrote down. And I started this year really well because I wanted to kind of like get back into that practice or that habit. And it's. It's like something that I don't always understand what they're. What they are, but there's something about paying attention to them, like, helps me, like, kind of be in touch with that unknown part that sometimes just slips by and goes away from me.

[33:24] Matt: You said something earlier about how your dreams have meaning, and if you don't think that they have meaning, well, they won't have meaning for you. I mean, that's the same thing as saying if you don't pay attention, you're not going to get anything from what you miss. And by paying attention, you see a lot more. I mean, that's. I think it's pretty well documented that the more you write your dreams down, the more of your dreams you're going to remember.

[33:54] Michael: Totally.

[33:55] Matt: Because you're paying attention.

[33:58] Michael: I mean, it's.

[33:58] Matt: It.

[33:59] Michael: It's so much like, even like in relationships or marriages, it's. It's sort of like you stop paying attention to your partner and your husband or your wife and. And then something, like, jars you awake and you start paying attention. You're like, oh, I like this person. You know, it's a. It's a. It's like we need that sort of. Sort of jarring sometimes to help us, like, wake up to our life.

[34:30] Matt: Yeah.

[34:31] Michael: And I think that's. Oh, that was a point I was making earlier, was the midlife crisis. You know, it's like sometimes we. And this happens, I think, kind of. It's quite normal. It's like you just stop paying attention and you just start doing life. And then somewhere there's this sort of midlife crisis where you sort of wake up and it's like, oh, I'm just doing life. Like, but why? Like, what am I doing this for? And you kind of like. It's kind of a jarring. And that's when you go buy the Ferrari or whatever, you know, because you. Because you want to live life. You want something. You want something out of it. Yeah. You know, or you just go to sleep and. And you just kind of die slowly.

[35:12] Matt: Yeah.

[35:13] Michael: Which.

[35:14] Matt: Which.

[35:14] Michael: I've seen kind of both. Both cases of that where, you know, people that were kind of remade themselves or kind of woken up in that midlife or have just, like, stopped and they just sort of like. It just looks like they slowly die. Just get ready for death. So maybe that's what it is like, if we're just always connected and being fed. It's like you're sort of like. Like in the Matrix, you know, you just sort of.

[35:45] Matt: You're asleep.

[35:46] Michael: You're asleep. Yeah. Yeah.

[35:48] Matt: Having a convincing dream. Man, it's complicated being human.

[36:01] Michael: It is. It's really fascinating. Yeah. I mean, again, just. Even just stopping and thinking, like. I mean, it's all those Kind of like dumb pothead thoughts, you know, where you're sitting on this earth and having a Carl Sagan moment. The blue dot.

[36:18] Matt: Yeah, the pale blue dot.

[36:20] Michael: Pale blue dot. And it's just good to remember that of how small you are sometimes and, and you lose. You just kind of like it's okay to lose that control that you have of who's picking me up, when are they picking me up? Is this available? Can I eat right now? I can eat right now. And then, you know, it's like all this immediacy of gratification of, of knowing.

[36:50] Matt: Yeah, that issue of control. I was having lunch with a friend today and he was telling me the story of how there's this one intersection near his house. And for the past couple days he's noticed that there's been like, you know, if like there's a car wreck and somebody dies, people will put sort of crosses and flowers and stuff there. And he said he had noticed that, something like that there. And he drove by yesterday and there was a woman sitting in a chair just sitting there next to that stuff. She had a blanket on. It was cold out and he was really curious and so he started googling it and found out that it was this young 38 year old MMA fighter who had gotten in a wreck on his motorcycle and died on the site. And he sort of put it together that that was his fiance sitting there.

[37:42] Michael: Wow.

[37:43] Matt: And he was like, just hit me that none of us know how much time we have left. You know, like last week this wasn't on their radar at all. It wasn't on her radar that she was going to be sitting in a lawn chair in the cold thinking about her dead fiance, you know, and it made me think about like my dad, that no one was expecting him to die. And it just really is true that we don't know. And none of us know how much time we have and we feel like we have control over it. We feel like we can reasonably expect that the things we want to do in the next day or week or month or year will happen, you know, so long as we choose to do them or don't fuck things up terribly. But we just don't know. We don't have control over those things. We don't have control over the time and place of our death. And so what, you know, what, what can it be said that we really have control over at all?

[38:50] Michael: Yeah, well, I mean I, I've kind of hit this a little bit right now. It's like, like right now I'm in builder mode. And I'm not as present at home, you know, I mean, I'm at home, but I'm not as present at home. And that's kind of gone through my head is like, I don't have a lot of time with my kids here now. But also like, you're, you're. It's like, it also doesn't mean that you stop. It's like, but you know, it's like, so how do you balance those things as far as like, no, it's okay to be in builder mode, but it's also not okay to be in builder mode until you're like, you know, son, when are you coming home? I don't know when we'll get together then.

[39:30] Matt: We'll get together then.

[39:32] Michael: That is such a great song. I don't know how many times like that has been a sort of like a check on myself, like, because I even see it with my, my dad, you know, it's like. And he was pretty present, I think, growing up. Although I don't remember a lot of my growing up years. But like, I saw him in his older years really wanting to be with me, around me and, but also I was also kind of busy. I was kind of, I was kind of the sun. I was like, yeah, I've got, I've got these things, you know, and I'm kind of painting a little bit too extreme of a picture here. But like, but I could kind of feel like I was the son in that, you know, it's like, okay, yeah, yeah, dad, that's cool. I've got things I need to do, you know. But then I was like, I was like, oh, I don't want my kids to be like that. I want them to want to be around me. And. Yeah, but I don't know. But at the same time, it's like you are here to also build things and do things. And it's like, I just don't know how you square that circle.

[40:45] Matt: Well, it reminds me of the great Thomas Sowell's statement that there are no solutions, there are only trade offs. I mean, every decision we make has trade offs. And I don't know what wisdom prescribes when it comes to choosing your own trade offs, but maybe we can at least be aware of them and you can sort of track the debts that you're accumulating. To your point, it's. No, it's not necessarily bad or wrong to be in builder mode, but you should know that you are making trade offs and some of those trade Offs might be accumulating into a bargain that you would not want to make.

[41:28] Michael: Totally. Yeah.

[41:32] Matt: I mean, by the time your kid writes Cats in the Cradle or his version of it, it's probably accumulated into something you wouldn't have wanted. Don't make your kids write the song. Like, let them tell you before they go sit down and compose the song. It's like, hey, I think we need to spend some time together. I'm thinking about pinning a national hit song about broken family relationships.

[41:56] Michael: And it's about you, Dan.

[41:58] Matt: It's about you primarily. Like, okay, it's gonna make a lot of money, though.

[42:03] Michael: Yeah, exactly. So maybe, like, maybe in June. Is that good? Is that a good.

[42:09] Matt: There's this one line that in this movie called Running Down a Dream, which is this. I think it came out in 2001 or 2002, maybe 2006 or 2003. I really don't know about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. And they interview a ton of. It's like a six hour documentary. They interview a ton of people. And there's this music journalist, this Rolling Stone journalist talking about Tom Petty. And he observes, he says, basically, like, everyone who becomes successful in the music industry seems to be trying desperately to say something to someone who isn't listening.

[42:45] Michael: Oh, that's good.

[42:48] Matt: He talks about Tom and his relationship with his dad, you know, and he felt like Tom was trying to say something to his dad that his dad wasn't listening to.

[42:59] Michael: Which is interesting because it's like most successful financially. People have some story of that.

[43:07] Matt: Right.

[43:08] Michael: And I used to. There's a guy I know that, that researches and knows a lot of those people and, like. And I used to fight him. I was like, no, you don't have to give up everything in order to be that kind of successful. And the more in life that I've gone, I've kind of like accepted that he was kind of right. It's like, it's a trade off. Like, if you want to have the life of a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or, you know, politician this. Well, whoever you really admire, it's like there's trade offs for becoming that person. And are you willing to make those trade offs?

[43:49] Matt: Well, I guess we've all heard the story of the boy who sold his soul to the devil to learn how

[43:54] Michael: to play the fiddle. Totally.

[43:57] Matt: I guess we're all in danger of that all the time. We're all potentially selling our soul to the devil all the time with the trade offs that we make if we aren't wise about them. And we don't say, well, I'm only going to make trade offs that move me in this ultimate direction, which is toward the good and toward redemption and toward reconciliation.

[44:21] Michael: Well, it's funny because it's like, okay, there's another thing I want to explore in this idea is the opposite end of that. Like, that's kind of like there's this ambitious part and you see this in whether it's Christian missionaries to Elon Musk. There's this sort of like ambition that you, you're serving something, but all these other things are dying around you. And I've known a lot of like missionary kids and they call them. I don't know what they. There's some sort of term they use, like PK ones or something like that. But like, it's like their parents give themselves to sort of like this evangelist, you know, to the world. And it's for this good cause, but it really fucks up their family, you know, and. Yeah, and then you have like this. The same thing with like.

[45:11] Matt: That's common enough to be a stereotype. It's like if you knew a kid whose dad was a pastor, that kid might look buttoned up on the outside, but he was doing drugs and having sex for sure.

[45:21] Michael: Totally. Well, I think that's a hard thing is like, because at the same time, you know, you want to see your parents acting in the world and there's something healthy and good for a kid to see that and they learn things from that. So it's like I, I just, I'm trying to think of like, because, because like the deadbeat that's not doing anything, that's not engaging the world at all. That's, it's like, you know, it's kind of the same, the same thing just on the other side of, of the. Hyper vigilant,

[46:00] Matt: hyper ambitious.

[46:01] Michael: Hyper ambitious. Yeah. And so like, how do you. I mean, I thought maybe I could take. Paint a picture of how the middle looks. It's like it's, it is, it's Sabbath. It's. There's, there's, there's times to work and there's times to rest and to be able to manage those things well, because I also see this with parents who spend all their time with their kids taking them everywhere and trying to give them the best opportunities. It's like that also is not a good thing either. And I think that's the part where you have to reach this balance of understanding when it's time to rest and when it's time to work. I think that's a really difficult balance.

[46:46] Matt: When it seems like it becomes tempting to try to come up with some heuristic for like what is generally the right way to live and the right trade offs to make. But I'm reminded of again, Viktor Frankl, who I just adore. He said it is not for man to ask what the meaning of life is. It is for life to ask man and man to answer with his life. It is like, what are the right trade offs to make? Well, you get to decide and you get to offer your life as a possible answer to what is the meaning of life. All of our answers are going to be different because all of our lives are different and none of them are going to be right. They're all going to be differently wrong and differently right and differently rewarding and damaging to each one of us, depending on who we are and who our families are and all kinds of things. And also reminded of this conversation I had, I went to this dinner. It's like this, they call it a founder's dinner. They just basically get a bunch of sort of entrepreneurial people together and mingle and create value, whatever it is. I was talking to this young guy and he was telling me the story of how he ended up in Austin or wherever he was living and was talking about having to make this decision about where he really wanted to live versus like going to this other place because this girl he really wanted to date. And he wasn't sure whether or not he'd made the right decision. And he sort of put the question to me because I told him a little bit about some of my history and my kids and that I'd been divorced and actually, I don't think I told him that part yet. But he said, because I said, well, I had that decision once in my life and I ended up moving for the girl. And he said, how did that turn out for you? I said, I think it depends on where you decide to stop telling the story.

[48:41] Michael: Oh, that's really good.

[48:42] Matt: Yeah, you know, I can't really say what turned out good or it turned out bad. A lot of bad things happened. A lot of really good things happened. And if I'm being honest, the story still isn't over, you know, so there's still an opportunity for what was bad to be redeemed or what was good to be trodden on. I think we have to keep ourselves open, especially as we get older and into the sort of functional routines of our lives that sort of lead to that midlife crisis to stay, to keep paying attention. What is the state of things today? Because it might not be the way that I judged it when I called that part of it done or over.

[49:32] Michael: Yeah. I. I really like that. Like, it depends on when you stop telling a story. Because you could be in a really shit place right now. And it's like, if I stop right now, I'm like, that's the story. That's the story.

[49:45] Matt: Well, that's how you. You become the person who just shuts down and dies. Yeah. You decide your story's done, then what else is there to do?

[49:54] Michael: Yeah.

[49:57] Matt: And plus, you know that every really good story has at least one moment of utterly certain defeat at hand. Until Gandalf rides over the hill at the last moment and transforms certain defeat into victory.

[50:14] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Those archetypical stories, they're there for a reason. Kind of to remind us of the arcs of life.

[50:28] Matt: Well, I think I would argue that an archetype exists in a story. Not to remind us, but so that it is the method by which we understand a story. It's the method by which we recognize a story.

[50:48] Michael: Yeah.

[50:50] Matt: Because it's so deeply rooted in our experience.

[51:04] Michael: Yeah. I always love the. The Gandalf, you know, coming into. Was it the. The keep at the right time.

[51:12] Matt: Right.

[51:12] Michael: It's like it helms deep. I've experienced that so many times, I think, like, oh, shit. Everything is about to just.

[51:24] Matt: Yeah, well. And just going back to the kind of the. What we were talking about in the 90s, it's like if you're waiting for somebody, you're waiting, you know, and if you're. Sometimes when you're waiting for somebody and it's like just totally a pedestrian, mundane thing to do, to sit and wait for somebody, and then this person shows up at this magnificently surprising moment in which the course of your day changes.

[51:55] Michael: Oh, it's interesting too, because there's a sort of like our typical story of the dad or the mom that's not around, and the kids become estranged and maybe even mad or angry, but then they realize, like, why they were not around. You a wrinkle in time.

[52:13] Matt: I love that story.

[52:13] Michael: Yeah. It's like. But their mom and dad were solving this like. Like universal problem. Yeah.

[52:21] Matt: At a solar system scale.

[52:23] Michael: Solar system scale, Exactly. And it's like, you know, I'm watching right now. Was it Monarch, the. The monsters. Godzilla movie?

[52:32] Matt: Oh, yeah.

[52:33] Michael: And it's like this one dad is just. He's just not around and they're finding out it's like why he wasn't around. It's still not obvious why, but you're starting to get this point of like, because he was solving a really big problem and it was actually to preserve their world they were growing up in. And so sometimes that is the sacrifice you make is your kids. And that sounds horrible. It sounds like, I mean it sounds so. But that maybe one. Because that's kind of like the cliche. It's like one day they'll understand.

[53:06] Matt: But that's also true. In that case though, it's like the father in A Wrinkle in Time isn't sacrificing his kids for something greater. He's sacrificing his own time with his kids in order that they aren't sacrificed by someone else's trade off. So he's buying them the future. So it isn't really sacrificing his kids.

[53:28] Michael: It's like, or even parents, when they go to work and stuff, it's oh, they're not around. It's like, well, they're also providing for them to eat and you know, maybe a future to give them something. Like especially those immigrant families where, you know, you, they, you know, immigrants come over and it's like they work really hard and, and provide for their kids to have a better future than what they, they had. You know, and sometimes like you see this sort of resentment, then you realize like, oh, I mean, obviously this is like a cliche type thing, but situation but oh, my parents did that so they could, so that I could have something more than what they had. And obviously there's a, that can also have false like expectations of what you think is good for your kids too. You know, it's like, what do your kids really need? Yeah, I think that's, I think every good parent wrestles with that. Like, am I doing enough? Am I around enough? Am I, oh, sorry. I mean, because you have to live with that tension. It's like,

[54:42] Matt: well, I mean, I think if you don't live with that tension, then you're not paying attention to it and so you won't ever know. And so you'll just resort to being probably defensive, accusatory things like that. But if you're paying attention to how you're parenting your kids and how much time you're spending with them and the quality of that time and if you're sort of stressed and anxious and worried about all of those things and like my kids spending too much time on their phones, are they spending too much time with this friend or that friend? Are they spending. Spending enough time with these activities. Well, you're probably paying attention to the right thing, and you're probably going to get it more right than you realize. Yeah, I mean, it's like. It's like you're going to remember more of your dreams if you write them down. It doesn't totally make sense why that is, you know, why does writing one thing down help you remember a totally different thing later? But I think the answer is that, well, you're paying attention to the category.

[55:49] Michael: Yeah. Isn't that great? I think as we've been talking about this and talking around it, I feel like I'm getting a better picture of that sort of tension between sort of just moving forward and not doing anything at all. It's like you kind of have to. There's a lot of unknowns, but there's one thing you can do is pay attention. But also, you can't. Like you. But you also have to, like, succumb or to give yourself to. I don't know if I'm being a good parent. Yeah, it's like you have to accept those realities, that tension of, like, I'm going to pay attention. Although the more I pay attention, the less I will be the thing that I'm wanting to be.

[56:46] Matt: Or at least the more aware I'll be that I'm not the thing that I want to be.

[56:50] Michael: Yeah, I think that's hard to. I think that's hard to. To grasp or to. To. To be okay with. It's like. It's like when you're good at anything, you start to realize how not good you are at it. It's like. But no, actually, you're pretty badass, you know? But the more you learn about it, it's like right now, it's like a lot of stuff I'm playing around with. AI it's just like, whoa. It's like crazy. But I'm just like. I feel like I'm just not getting anywhere with it. But then I talk to somebody that's. That's really new to it. And I'm just like, oh, wow, I know a lot. But then I was like, I feel like I don't know anything at all.

[57:30] Matt: This is the. The Dunning Kruger effect, which is commonly misunderstood. And I learned recently what it really means is that the less skilled you are at something, the more likely you are to overestimate your ability. And the more skilled you become at something, the more likely you are to underestimate your skill level, because the more skilled you become at something you also become more aware of the criteria for judgment. And so you're like, you know, you learn to play Wonderwall on the guitar and you play it one time at a party and you get laid or whatever, it's like, you're like, I'm a pretty badass guitar player, you know. And then you discover the Assad brothers, who are these classical guitar masters, and you try to learn one of their songs and you go, oh shit, I don't know. I didn't understand the category of what a guitar was or what it meant to be good at it. And so you lose that arrogance and you're more likely to underestimate your skill level the more skilled you are. Which means that if anyone ever asks you to self assess your abilities in a job interview, you should basically respond, if I'm not very good, I'm certainly going to overestimate my abilities. And if I'm really good, I'm certainly going to underestimate them. So either way, you're not going to get the information that's going to help you make the decision you want to make.

[59:00] Michael: That's so good.

[59:03] Matt: So you should come up with a better question.

[59:08] Michael: Oh, if someone ever answered that question to me like that, I'd be like, fuck yeah, you're hired. It's like, ask me a better question. I'll be like, damn it, that was good.

[59:21] Matt: Flipped it. Now I'm interviewing you and I'm not sure I'm interested.

[59:28] Michael: That's not a place I want to work at. That's good, man.

[59:34] Matt: I mean, another lesson from it is even just your own self assessment, you can't really trust it. Yeah, you really have to. You have to trust other people and you have to. It's like if you want to know if you're a good parent, you should probably ask your kids, you know.

[59:51] Michael: Hmm.

[59:53] Matt: Wow.

[59:53] Michael: And even that is depending. Depends on their age too.

[59:57] Matt: Yeah, definitely.

[59:59] Michael: It's like, am I a good parent that can mean different things at different times. And I mean, that's a really good question. Like, I think whenever your kids are in your 30s, I think that you can actually get a pretty good assessment of whether you're a good parent.

[60:11] Matt: Right.

[60:14] Michael: Well, so this kind of leads into that. One thing I think you were kind of hitting on is we use all this language of certainty. And you know, even with the advent of AI or Google or just the Internet in general or Encyclopedia Britannica for that matter, you know, it's like we start to get this illusion that we know and understand things, but We're. I feel like we're kind of hitting that. We're hitting another point in our. In our sort of timeline where we're like, oh, like, I don't understand how the world operates. And I think that's a. That's a really scary moment because you start to have to revert to religious language because it's like, how do you move forward in the world? It's by faith. And do you follow where I'm kind of going with this?

[61:15] Matt: I think so.

[61:16] Michael: Okay. Because I have another conversation in my head right now. I might have jumped too far ahead,

[61:25] Matt: but

[61:28] Michael: it's like whenever. The Dunning Kruger effect is very good example of this. It's like, when I first started Medici, I thought I knew everything, and then I opened another store, and I was like, oh, fuck, I don't know anything. And. But you have to, like, you as an entrepreneur, as you mature, it's like you kind of have to operate more in religious language, which is like, all right, I'm heading this direction, and I believe that this is the right direction, because I've already done this many of times. I've made many assumptions that didn't turn out the way I thought they would. So you have to sort of open it. You have to broaden your category, which is not certainty. It's hopeless, or faith or vision. You know, I have a vision of the future, and I'm heading that way. So I think. I think maturity leads you into more sort of religious language, which is that sort of like vision or.

[62:20] Matt: Yeah, I think I get you now. Is. Let me say it in my own words, like, so you open a coffee shop, your first coffee shop. It goes well, and you think, great, I know what I'm doing. And so you go open your second one, and it fails spectacularly. And you're like, wait, what the hell? I knew what I was doing. And so I guess you could say, well, I'll just retreat to my one thing that's working and just stay there and never try another thing again. Or you could say, okay, maybe I don't know so much about what I thought I knew about, but maybe what I do know is that I still have a vision for something bigger than where I am, and I implemented it wrong the second time for ways that I don't fully understand, but I can begin to discover and check those against my vision and my hope, and then try again. But the next time you try, it's less like. It's less about certainty, and it's more about belief. I believe in the vision, not in this particular instantiation. Because I'm humble enough now by my last failure to know that my instantiations can shock me with how wrong I am. But they. But they don't seem to be shaking my vision. I still believe in the vision totally.

[63:49] Michael: It's any kind of like, get this idea in business in general, it's like, okay, well, you're P. L. And it's like location, location, location. And there's all these things that are, you know, if I just get these things right, I'll be successful financially or business wise or whatever, you know, and. Or as a parent, you know, and, and. But the more you try those things, it's not that they're necessarily wrong, but it's not the full story. It's. It's. It. They're kind of like signposts along the way. Like, hey, you should probably try to find a good loc, you know. But that's not, that's not, that's not the whole story. It's like, that's a.

[64:27] Matt: You can't put anything at any. Look at any good location. And it will be good. Yeah. I mean, we're all familiar with those locations in which there's been five businesses in the last 10 years.

[64:39] Michael: Congress.

[64:40] Matt: Yeah. And none of them work. And you're like, what is going on with this? Is it cursed? Are there ghosts in there?

[64:45] Michael: Yeah, totally.

[64:53] Matt: Yeah. I heard somebody say that if you ask a successful person how did they become successful? They'll all say a very similar thing, which is something like, you have to be persistent, you have to be diligent, you have to be kind and compassionate. All of these very generalized things. And I think it might have been chamath on the all in podcast was like, they're saying all of that because they don't want to say the real thing. All that stuff is bullshit. The real thing is they got lucky. And I think the underlying principle there is that we really don't know very much about what makes things go well. It's much easier to know why things fail than why they succeed. And someone who's successful doesn't know very much about why they were successful. They can say that they studied hard, but so do a lot of people who fail. They can say that they were diligent. So are a lot of people who fail. And I think the real better answer is something like, well, to your point, I believed. And that belief kept me paying attention long enough and present long enough to where luck favored my preparation. And I owe it to what I believe in that. I have what I have. I mean, I feel like that's just rediscovering God through some kind of first principles. You're all familiar with the person who gets up on the stage at the Oscars, even though no one watches that anymore, and says, I want to thank God for this. It's like, what is it that they're saying? They're saying that they had their vision set high enough that it was able to gather up enough opportunity that something finally struck,

[67:02] Michael: and it's just an admittance. Like, I don't know why I'm up here right now.

[67:06] Matt: Yeah.

[67:08] Michael: And I could give you a lot of answers. Like, I was persistent. I was this, I was that. I was like, yeah, but I think that's the. That's really the mature answer is like, I just want to thank God. I don't know why I'm here.

[67:19] Matt: Right.

[67:20] Michael: Yes. I did work really hard. I did all this. But there's a lot of, like, your point? There's a lot of people who did those things, too.

[67:27] Matt: Right.

[67:27] Michael: And are not up here right now.

[67:29] Matt: When I was younger, I used to really believe that persistence was the key for anything. You know, if you stick at one thing long enough, it's going to work. And I think that's likely to be true, but I don't think it's not true enough to be an explanation.

[67:42] Michael: Yeah.

[67:42] Matt: I think because none of us has really the will to be persistent for persistence sake. We have to have some reason that we're being persistent, and that reason has to be high enough, big enough, holy enough, something like that, to call us to it and to bend our will toward it, you know, to simultaneously keep us out of complete disaster. Like, you know, the only way alcoholics get sober is by adopting spirituality. That's what AA is. They've just stripped it of any kind of denomination. But it's extraordinarily religious language, because you can't just use your will to replace an addiction in your life or to remove addiction in your life. I should say, rather, you actually have to replace it, and you have to replace it with something big enough to replace it, and your own will is not enough. And neither is anything else you can find really under the sun. You have to find something bigger if you're in really dire straits.

[68:55] Michael: Man, that's so crazy. Well, it's just funny. We kind of always end up in that. It's like you have to have language that's big enough. You have to have an idea that's big enough, and and, you know, just how that frames so much of what

[69:17] Matt: we do reminds me of G.K. chesterton. So, you know, if somebody comes to you and says, why did Medici work? You could say, well, because I believed. And then the question would be like, well, what did you believe in? And you might be able to say, I believed in myself. But GK Chesterton talks about this in his book Orthodoxy, and he says, I'll tell you where to find the men who really believe in themselves. They're in the insane asylum.

[69:50] Michael: Oh, wow.

[69:52] Matt: They believe in themselves above all other evidence. There's nothing you can say to convince them because they believe in themselves. That's where you end up. So you have to believe in something outside of yourself.

[70:08] Michael: That's a bit of a low blow. Yeah, I know. I know it was,

[70:14] Matt: but yeah, a bit. So you have to believe in something outside of yourself, otherwise you end up insane. And you have to believe in something outside of yourself that's big enough to incorporate all of the vast troubles and successes and failures and disappointments and surprises and weakness and illness and all the things you're going to experience has to be the thing you believe in, has to be bigger than that.

[70:49] Michael: It's so funny because I always kind of tend towards this area, like, what does it say about us biologically? Because psychologically I really do. I don't see how. How it could be any other way. As far as, like, if your psychology is not oriented in kind of in the way that we're talking, it's like it kind of leads to some dark places. But that's funny. It's like, well, how did we evolve in that way? It's like we want to do away with God, but actually in doing away with God, we kind of like we ruin our psychology. Does that make sense? I'm using the word psychology specifically because it has to do with more like physical or like, like non spiritual kind of stuff. But it's. It just. It just seems that when we do away with God, like, we ruin our psychology and it's actually in it and it harms us biologically too.

[71:48] Matt: Well, that's probably because psychology isn't non spiritual. So if you get rid of the spirituality, you ruin the thing you take it out of. And I also don't think biology is distinct from spirituality in the same way that your gut biome is not distinct from your physical health or even your mental health. I mean, when I was a kid, the model was like your brain was what did the thinking. And now we know that there's just as many neurons in your gut. I mean, you're. That's why we've always intuitively had this idea. It's like, what's your gut response? Because you actually think with that thing. So. And I think we all know that mental and physical health are not distinct either. They're very intertwined. I mean, placebo is consistently as effective as real drugs. I mean, what you think is true determines what is true in very weird ways. And if that isn't spiritual, I'm not sure. What does spiritual mean? Yeah, I mean, if you have an effect over the truth, you are an inspirited person. We all are. So maybe the problem is trying to draw distinctions, and that's what you have to do if you get rid of God, you have to start drawing distinctions. Well, this is what's separate from God. If God doesn't exist. And once you separate it, it's like, what does it say in John 15? If you prune the branch from the vine, what good is it? It gets thrown into the discard pile and burned. It's dead. It cannot be brought back to life. Once you separate what should not have been separated, the only outcome is death.

[74:02] Michael: Yeah, I think that's a. Well, for me, I always kind of default into sort of like evolution, biological evolution. And. And I find that just. It's sort of like it's always wanting.

[74:30] Matt: Do you default to it? Because that's kind of your moat, like in the Moten Bailey. Yeah, it's like extending an olive branch to another way of thinking.

[74:45] Michael: Well, it's the one. I mean, it just. So it makes the most sense to me, or not the most sense. It's one of the things that. Outside of our conversation right now, that makes the most sense to me. Like. Like, if I were to paint a contrast to the way that we're talking right now, like the spiritual language, it's

[75:04] Matt: like

[75:07] Michael: my contrast to that is always like, no, I'm just an animal, and I'm just kind of functioning and doing as an animal does. And there's things that are more beneficial to me as an animal. And so I do those things because it's an evolutionary process that's allowed me to get to where I am right now. And so as long as I function in that way, then I will. I will have more success and move my. Move my lineage into the future, you know? So I think that's just kind of like. It's just kind of my. Like, my contrasting aspect of it. I mean, I don't. I don't believe that, but it's just sort of like it helps. Well, I believe that there's. That's, it's an aspect or a part of it, but I believe there's actually a reason to why we evolved this way. And that's that there's that part of being able to acknowledge that higher path that, you know, like we're saying, like to acknowledge that there is a God. Like I think there's. I think somehow we are evolutionary wired to acknowledge that. And when we acknowledge it, we're actually becoming more in line with our biology, our psychology are.

[76:21] Matt: Well, I guess I just don't know what the word evolutionarily is doing there. It's like we are wired that way.

[76:28] Michael: Well, I guess in my head when I picture this is a sort of like when I think of man coming through history, it's not that we were like, oh, hey, look at this place I'm in. It's sort of like you've slowly kind of came into an awareness of other. And part of that other started to be like a God of some sort. And so like that evolutionary process is that sort of the ability to actually comprehend something like God. And so that, that wasn't like a one day process. That was like a. That was like a millennia of time that we kind of awoken to that idea.

[77:14] Matt: Well, it's kind of a. It's almost like a fractal. It's like I experience that even just on. In the limited arc of my own life, but I can also see that occurring in the arc of history as well.

[77:28] Michael: Totally. Yeah.

[77:29] Matt: I can also see that occurring in the intermediary arc of my family

[77:36] Michael: or

[77:36] Matt: the intermediary arc of the West. The United States.

[77:46] Michael: Yeah. It seems like that's such a theme. There's this sort of waking up.

[77:50] Matt: Yeah.

[77:51] Michael: And it happens over millennia. And I don't know what's bigger than millennia, but

[77:59] Matt: cosmic scale.

[78:00] Michael: Cosmic scale. Yeah. As well as like a lifetime, you know, from a child to an older

[78:05] Matt: person or even in smaller seasons. Happened in my 20s, happened in my 30s.

[78:10] Michael: Yeah.

[78:13] Matt: Verdict still out on my 40s.

[78:20] Michael: Well, what do you think? What do you want to close out with here? What's some of your thoughts here?

[78:31] Matt: Hmm. I guess I would just encourage you and me and anyone else who's listening to this to try to take some mind. Some mind. Try to take some time to let your mind wander and to remove yourself from the mainline input, whatever that is in your life, whether it's, you know, Michael, you're in builder mode totally. Or the person who's listening to this and scrolling Instagram right now? Maybe it's that. Maybe it's just a preoccupation with disappointment and distress. Just take a time to put it down. You can put things down. You can turn things off. You can wait. You can just wait. And you might be surprised what you discover while you're waiting.

[79:35] Michael: I like that. What's interesting, because, like, I kind of like. I feel like there's really. There's really two different types of people. It's like one that needs to put things down. There's others that need to pick it up. You know, it's like. It's like, what are you not taking action on?

[79:51] Matt: Well, maybe. Maybe putting everything down and taking a Sabbath, whether it's for an hour or a day, gives you the space to be convicted. To say, I haven't picked that thing up in a while and it needs to be picked up. Maybe you need to clear the radio waves that you're tuning into long enough for you to remember that you need to pick something up.

[80:21] Michael: I like that.

[80:23] Matt: All right, well, cheers.

[80:25] Michael: Cheers. Thank you, guys. Oh, boy.

[80:28] Matt: Oh, man.

[80:32] Michael: Cheers, everybody.

[80:33] Matt: Love you.

[80:37] Michael: I think we're definitely getting picked up by Ol.

[80:43] Matt: There.