{"id":24853,"date":"2025-12-21T23:46:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-22T06:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/?post_type=transcript&p=24853"},"modified":"2025-12-21T23:46:50","modified_gmt":"2025-12-22T06:46:50","slug":"david-brooks-perception-is-an-act-of-creation","status":"publish","type":"transcript","link":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/transcript\/david-brooks-perception-is-an-act-of-creation\/","title":{"rendered":"David Brooks: Perception Is an Act of Creation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image_print\"Print Transcript<\/span><\/a><\/div>

David Brooks:<\/b> Not only is the universe not cold and lifeless or, or meaningless, but it\u2019s moral, that there is a moral order to the universe that holds us all all human beings, as far as I know, long for belonging. They long for respect. They long for pleasure. they long for meaning. These are the yearnings of the soul. Uh, and they\u2019re woven into our nature because they are present in the universe.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Welcome friends. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, I\u2019m so pleased to say that David Brooks is our guest. David Brooks is a well-known Canadian-born American author and commentator. He\u2019s been writing an op-ed column for the New York Times since 2003, and is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and appears regularly on the PBS NewsHour.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s the author of several bestselling books, including. <\/span>The Road To Character, The Second Mountain<\/span><\/i>, and most recently <\/span>How to Know a Person: The Art Of Seeing Others Deeply And Being Seen<\/span><\/i>, which is what we\u2019re gonna be talking about here in this episode of Insights at the Edge. David, welcome.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Pleasure to be here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> I am sitting down with <\/span>How to Know a Person<\/span><\/i>, and I will share honestly that I had never sat down with one of your books before. And the first thing that happened for me is I was just stunned by how enjoyable it was to read how to know a person. So that was the first observation I had. Then the second observation, which is where I wanna start our conversation, is.<\/span><\/p>\n

I felt this sense of, I\u2019ll just use my own language, heart Vision pervading the book. And I was like, what\u2019s going on with David Brooks? I dunno this gentleman that, well, what\u2019s happening? And then I learned more about what. You might call some mystical illumination or numinous experiences you had and how in 2013, and once again, I\u2019m using my own language here, this lit up for you of vision of people being souls and looking at all kinds of people as these. Beings, and I wanna know more, not just about the experience you had, that\u2019s interesting to me, but how that changed your vision.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Hmm. Yeah, I, I would say there\u2019s been a drastic change. Uh, my wife and I have been married for nine years and she sometimes. Of sees videos of me from like 20 years ago and she says, well, I wouldn\u2019t have married that guy. And so I think I\u2019m, I\u2019m a pretty different person than I was, and I would say there were two processes that were interconnected.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first would be an emotional awakening. Like a lot of guys, uh, I would say I had emotions, but there was no highway with between my emotions and my mouth. So I did not know how to express them. I did not know how to, um, even feel them to some degree. I remember thinking back when I was like. Before my kids were born, you know, it\u2019s nice to be shallow \u2019cause all these deep people are suffering all the time, but I\u2019m not suffering.<\/span><\/p>\n

So it\u2019s, it\u2019s kind of nice to be shallow and that way of being as symptom by an event that happened to me maybe in 2 0 0 8. I\u2019m at a ball game, a baseball game with my youngest son and I\u2019ve been a thousand games. I\u2019m a big baseball fan and I had never caught a foul ball. Uh, and we\u2019re sitting there in Baltimore, uh, and a bat flies outta the batter\u2019s hand and lands in my lap.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve caught a bat. And if you know, baseball, catching a bat is a thousand times better than catching a ball. And so any normal human being would\u2019ve waved this trophy in the air and been on the high fiving everybody around him been on the jumbotron, just showing joy. I just took the bat and put it in my ground on the floor and stared ahead like a turtle.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had no emotional reaction at all. And I, um, want to go back to that guy and say, show a little joy. And so I really wanted to learn to process emotion better just as a way of becoming a better person. Uh, and I think I have, I was at a conference in Nantucket. A couple years ago, and the speaker asked us, all of us in the audience to, he gave us a piece of paper with lyrics to a love song.<\/span><\/p>\n

And he says, find somebody you don\u2019t know, gaze into their eyes and sing the love song to them. And if you had asked me to do that 15 years ago, I would\u2019ve combusted. But I found some guy, I sang love song and. I did it and I was sort of proud of myself. It\u2019s a sign of sort of an emotional vulnerability that wasn\u2019t there before.<\/span><\/p>\n

And along with that came, uh, a spiritual awakening. And I think the two were really very intertwined. And the incident you were referred to in 2013? I was, um, I. In a subway in New York, and if anybody knows New York, they know their second ugliest place in New York is Penn Station where the Amtrak chains arrive.<\/span><\/p>\n

The old station and the ugliest part is the subway station next to Penn Station. And so I\u2019m sitting there in a, um, in subway car. Uh, and I look around and I have this sensation that all the people around me have souls. That there\u2019s some piece of them that has no size, weight, color or shape, but gives them infinite value and dignity.<\/span><\/p>\n

And more than that, uh, the souls were yearning that the souls were in motion and some souls were sick. And in degradation, some souls were soaring. Some souls were quietly suffering. Some souls were quiet. Some souls are ill. Uh, and so it was a sense that made my profession make sense that if I\u2019m gonna write stories about people and devote my life to journalism, uh, the people, it should not be writing about just a bunch of molecules.<\/span><\/p>\n

It should be, um, writing about people whose lives of infinite value and dignity. Uh, and so it, it is that yearning of the soul and really the transformation in my life, I think from a very cerebral existence for the first many decades to hopefully more romantic and spiritual existence in the last decade and a bit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> I\u2019d like to dig in a little bit deeper, if that\u2019s okay. To both of these transformations, the way you\u2019re describing them in terms of this yearning souls, what did you actually see? Because as I hear you describe it, I, I am envisioning, I\u2019m seeing a movie inside my own head that\u2019s like, kind of like ghostlike light beams coming out of people, and I\u2019m like, is that what he saw or am I just making that up?<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Yeah. I think it might be the way I saw it, um, the, uh, I think it was like, I guess. I don\u2019t recall any visual shimmering, but I, I recall an awareness, uh, another experience I had. And after I had that experience, I had a series of experiences in rapid succession. One was I was hiking in Colorado and, uh, I was a top of mountain top.<\/span><\/p>\n

I, there was a lake up there and the lake was held by mountains all around. Uh, and I\u2019m happy to bring a, a book of Puritan prayer called High and holy, meek and lowly, uh, and, uh. Somehow I had a sensation there of, uh, the, the moral order of the universe clicking into place like, like the way a car door clicks in a really nice car, like a Mercedes or something.<\/span><\/p>\n

You close the door and there\u2019s a click. And that sensation to me was the idea that we are all held in a moral order. That I think the first sensation of souls was that. The material explanations for the universe are inadequate to experience as that, as I experienced it, that was the subway car. But in the, the mountaintop, it was a sense that we\u2019re all held within a moral order.<\/span><\/p>\n

That the, not only is the universe not cold and lifeless or, or meaningless, but it\u2019s moral, that there is a moral order to the universe that holds us all and that, uh, rape and slavery. Uh, are not just wrong, and sometimes in some places they\u2019re wrong eternally. And that this moral order is woven into our natures, uh, that all human beings, as far as I know, long for belonging.<\/span><\/p>\n

They long for respect. They long for pleasure. Uh, they long for meaning. These are the yearnings of the soul. Uh, and they\u2019re woven into our nature because they are present in the universe. And I\u2019m a religious person or became a religious person through this process. So I would say they were, they were, uh, ordained by God.<\/span><\/p>\n

I.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Now, it\u2019s interesting to use this phrase, I became a religious person. I would say at Sounds True primarily. And here the Sounds True Podcast, we\u2019re always talking to people who say, I\u2019m spiritual but not religious, and I noticed you have a. A slight like, wait a second. I don\u2019t identify that way. I identify in this different way as a religious person, and I thought, huh, this might be an interesting sort of, uh, area to explore together.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tell me why it\u2019s important for you to call yourself a religious person. Not a spiritual, but not religious person.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> First, I, I would say if just a little more of my favorite subject, myself. For many years I was religious, but not spiritual, which is to say I was, I grew up in a Jewish home, married a Jewish family, raised my kids in a Jewish home, kept kosher when synagogue did all the things. But I never encountered faith there.<\/span><\/p>\n

I, I encountered a strong sense of peoplehood there. Uh, and then when I became aware of the luminus of the transcendent, uh, it fit in well with, um. With the Bible as I understood it, the moral order, the sense of human drama, uh, and the beatitudes, the go of gospels of Saint Matthew are to me the place where the spirit, the, the, the splendor of divinity pokes through and really appears that\u2019s a radical, um, document and a document of almost inspiring and otherworldly love.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I think I prefer to be religious, A, because I believe that God exists. B, I believe that he expressed himself through texts and through the stories and that we come to know him by arguing about texts and whether it\u2019s the Old Testament of the New Testament or if you\u2019re Muslim Quran or anything else.<\/span><\/p>\n

But finally, I find religion necessary because. At least in my experience and other people have very different spiritual lives and more advanced than mine. Spirituality doesn\u2019t ask something of me I don\u2019t wanna do. Uh, spirituality in my experience is too easy to be fuzzy, to come forward with obligations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uh, it\u2019s too easy. It does not contain that moral order that, you know, there was a historian, uh, George Marsden who said, what gave Martin Luther King\u2019s rhetoric such force was his belief that natural law, the moral order, are built into the fabric of the universe. That segregation is always an eternally wrong, that slavery is always an eternally wrong, and I, that structure which is embedded in texts and in religious traditions is something that helps.<\/span><\/p>\n

Give my, um, spiritual life structure and shape and direction and demands, uh, a submission that I think, at least for me, again, just a vague spirituality doesn\u2019t demand.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> In how to know a person. You talk a lot about how to see from another person\u2019s perspective how to get behind their eyes. And so that\u2019s what I\u2019m doing in this conversation. Now, if you and I were sitting together, uh, here at my house in the living room and we had the luxury of having a 12 hour conversation, I might.<\/span><\/p>\n

Share with you a bit more about the moral obligations that I feel come from my spiritual but not religious grounding. But we\u2019ll save that David for another time<\/span><\/p>\n

because<\/span><\/p>\n

instead,<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> educated by that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Well, we would, we would just, we would deepen our bond, which is what so much of your book, how to know a person and being seen and seeing Another really looks at is that that process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now talking about this moral universe in a moral life, you write in how to know a person. Morality is mostly about how you pay attention to others. And I thought, wow, that\u2019s really interesting. I need to understand more about that.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Yeah, this is not my thought. This is, uh, Simone ves thought the French mystic from World War II era, and she said, uh, attention is the ultimate form of generosity. Uh, and her student was through the great novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch. And Iris Murdoch said that we normally pay attention to each other with self-serving eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

How can this person serve me? Is this person making me feel good? Are they making me feel bad? And she said, but that should not be our goal. That\u2019s a selfish and immoral way to see. Our goal should be to cast a just and loving attention on others. To bring a gaze upon others, which sees them in a just and loving way.<\/span><\/p>\n

So not just totally sentimentally, just, but not without love. And the example Marat gives is a, a woman who doesn\u2019t really like her daughter-in-law and she finds her immature, uh, and um, too, I don\u2019t know, too shallow. But her mother, the mother is a aware that she has a tendency towards snobbery. And she\u2019s a little old fashioned, so she decides her goal is to be to ch and her behavior toward her daughter-in-law is perfect in all cases, but her goal is to see her daughter-in-law in a different way with different and more generous eyes.<\/span><\/p>\n

So instead of immature, she\u2019s gonna see her as fresh instead of shallow. She\u2019s gonna see her as enjoyment, loving, and she\u2019s just gonna change the attitude with what she sees. That daughter, uh, in-law, and I think that\u2019s what we\u2019re called to do. And I\u2019ll tell you a story and I tell it in the book. Um, I was in Waco, Texas, uh, having breakfast with a woman named La Dorsey.<\/span><\/p>\n

And when I, uh, had breakfast with her, she was like 93. And actually I just learned she died two weeks ago. Um, and, uh. She presented herself to me as a strict drill sergeant type of lady. She\u2019d been a teacher and she said, I love my students enough to, um, be tough with them. And I was a little intimidated by this very formidable lady.<\/span><\/p>\n

And into the bar walks, um, or into the diner. You can see my lifestyle. Um, into the diner walks a guy named Jimmy Darrell, who\u2019s a pastor at, in Waco. He serves the homeless. The homeless were uncomfortable coming to his church, so he brought his church to the homeless and he holds services under highway overpass.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uh, and he sees us both. He comes up to us. He grabs Mrs. Dorsey by the shoulders and shakes her. Way harder than you should ever shake a 93-year-old and says, Mrs. Dorsey, Mrs. Dorsey, you\u2019re the best. You\u2019re the best. I love you. I love you. And, um, her, she, in an instant, she turned into a bright eye shining 9-year-old girl.<\/span><\/p>\n

He brought forth a different version of her with the quality of his gaze, the quality of his attention. And so I think that\u2019s what Irish Murdoch meant by casting a just and loving attention. And to get back to Simon, she said, uh. Prayer is pure attention. And when I read that, I, I was reminded of an anecdote I once read, Dan Rather, uh, was interviewing Mother Teresa.<\/span><\/p>\n

And Dan rather asks her, when you pray to God, what do you ask him? And she says, oh, I don\u2019t ask him anything. When I pray, I just listen. And Dan rather said, well, what is God saying to you? And Mother Teresa says, well, God isn\u2019t saying anything to me. He\u2019s just listening. And if you don\u2019t understand what I\u2019m talking about, I can\u2019t explain that to you.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so it\u2019s that act of attention of attending, uh, which shows respects, which shows compassion, which is the gateway to all other human connection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> You have this phrase that you use the Illuminators gaze as a way to describe this quality of attention. Where did you come up with that phrase?<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Um, don\u2019t know, it just popped into my head. I, uh, when you\u2019re writing, uh, one of. The things that are you find are truly powerful are dichotomies. Uh, and I once had a dichotomy in a, in the book, the Road to Character between the eulogy virtues and the resume virtues. And people repeat that back to me every week.<\/span><\/p>\n

And they also repeat this dichotomy I make in this book. I only allow myself one dichotomy, every three books. Um, and it\u2019s, uh, the Illumina, the Diminishers are people who are uncurious about you. They don\u2019t ask you questions. Uh, they stereotype. They do a thing called stacking, which is they learn one fact about you and then they make a holster series of assumptions about who you must be.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I\u2019ve learned in a career in journalism that nobody lives up to their stereotypes. Um, and then the other people are illuminators. Uh, they are curious about you. They make you feel lit up. They, they. Show you respect. They show you curiosity and they, you really thought, you walk away from them thinking, you know, that person was a really good listener.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uh, and, uh, you know, some examples, uh, there was an, a great novelist named Ian Foster, uh, who lived about 120 years ago in England. And his biographer wrote of him. Uh, to talk to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity, you had to be a sharpest, most honest, best self.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so is that quality of his listening that makes him an illuminator? There\u2019s a story told about Bell Labs, uh, and some of the researchers were just a lot more productive than the others, and they wanna know why. Was it they had better training? Uh, nope. Did they have HQs? Nope. The researchers who were more productive were in the habit of going to the cafeteria and having breakfast and lunch with a specific architect, an electrical engineer, a guy, and he would get inside their problems, ask them about their, what they were working on, give them suggestions for how to think he got inside their minds.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so he\u2019s an illuminator in, in a very practical field. And so I do think, I\u2019ve come to think, sometimes I leave a party and I think, you know, that whole time nobody asks me a question. Uh, and I\u2019ve come to think only about 30% of humanity are question askers. They\u2019re perfectly fine people. They\u2019re just not that curious about you.<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019re presenting themselves, and so illuminators are a great kind of person to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Do you ever notice yourself falling into the Diminishers gaze and think, Hey, wait a second, what am I doing here?<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Yeah. Um, I, I go into a party. Let\u2019s say I\u2019m gonna a dinner party at a friend\u2019s house, say, I\u2019m gonna really pull people. I\u2019m gonna really listen today. Uh, and then I have a glass of wine and I think, oh, I\u2019ve got this funny story to tell. And then I\u2019ve got another funny story to tell, and I find that I haven\u2019t done what I had hoped to do.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve just been on broadcast mode. Uh, and that\u2019s, um, that\u2019s sometimes, you know, you don\u2019t wanna be only receiving and not giving in a conversation, but I have, I have a tendency to be on broadcast mode too much. Maybe it\u2019s a question of the, my job trains me to do that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Sure, and I\u2019m gonna continue and keep you on broadcast mode here. So, uh, when you mentioned, when I asked you about this numinous breakthroughs, heart vision, you talked about an emotional awakening and uh, that I found extraordinarily interesting. I don\u2019t hear people use that language much, and I think that\u2019s what I felt pulsing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Through how to know a person. It was asking me once again, in my own language to see the world through my heart. And you tell this tremendous story of a French writer during a tsunami in Sri Lanka. That to me, really was the takeaway. Break. Break. Open my heart story of the book and I wonder if you can share that I\u2019m asking you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Please go on broadcast mode, David.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Let\u2019s see if I can remember it. I wrote the book a couple years ago. Uh, it was a guy named Carone, I\u2019ve now forgotten his first name, but he\u2019s, um, he\u2019s vacationing in, uh, in Sri Lanka. And, uh. He\u2019s in a bad mood with his girlfriend and they, they both, they were not married, but they\u2019re boyfriend and girlfriend.<\/span><\/p>\n

They each have a son and it\u2019s their first day of their vacation and they\u2019re fighting, and he under, he realizes that he\u2019s gonna have to break up with her, and he realizes the core problem is that he\u2019s incapable of love. He just doesn\u2019t know how to love. He\u2019s never loved anybody. His relationship all failed because he is incapable of love.<\/span><\/p>\n

And they\u2019re in such a bad mood, they decide to not, um, go do the scuba diving thing. They signed up for the next morning, and that turns out to be a consequential decision because that was the morning the tsunami hit. And if you remember, it was decades ago, but a tsunami swept across the Pacific and killed thousands and thousands of people.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it, when the tsunami hit, there was a little girl from another French family also staying in the hotel. Uh, playing in the waves. Her grandfather was watching her and her grandfather was reading the paper while she was playing in the waves, and he feels a wall of water sweeping him up. And he has, first his thought is, I\u2019m gonna die.<\/span><\/p>\n

And his second thought is my granddaughter already has. And he gets swept in limb by the wave, and then the wave starts receding and he\u2019s pushed into a palm tree and a fence pinons him to the palm tree. And so the water is receding and he\u2019s stuck on the palm tree and he lives, he comes down and he realizes he\u2019s now gonna go out, have to go into town, which has been untouched by the wave and tell his son and daughter-in-law that their daughter is dead.<\/span><\/p>\n

And he says, I\u2019ve just, I saw them across the square and I realized that was their last moment of pure happiness. Carre, the, the French guy, the author of this story, his wife, uh, leaps in action. She\u2019s the kind of person in a crisis who is helping everybody. Carre feels useless, but over the next four days, they sit with the family, the parents of the dead daughter, and they have one meal after another, getting emotional, telling the story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uh, and there\u2019s one moment in one meal where the mom is not eating. She\u2019s lost her daughter, she\u2019s not eating. She tries to eat, but her hand just shakes as she tries to bring rice to her mouth. And, uh, her husband is watching her. He\u2019s trying to keep her together. He\u2019s trying to effect, say, stay with us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t go somewhere else. Don\u2019t go. Into crazy land. And so he is trying to keep the tone light. He\u2019s telling jokes, he\u2019s pouring drinks, he\u2019s, he\u2019s watching her like a hawk. He\u2019s trying to stay with her. And Carre looks over at this guy over dinners and he says, there it is. That\u2019s real love for your wife.<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a man capable of real love, and they\u2019re being sent home, and finally they can go home. And he\u2019s, I think he\u2019s in bed with his partner, the woman he was gonna break up with and career has this thought, if there\u2019s one thing I must do in this life, it is to spend my life with her. That is the one thing. And she felt the same way and they ended up getting married. So the power of that story is the power of a man being emotionally broken open. And for most of us, and I would include myself, it\u2019s a process that takes years. But in that case, because of the tsunami and the extreme circumstances, it took a few days and you see a heart broken open.<\/span><\/p>\n

Um, and you know, when I, I\u2019ve been through hard times in my life and I\u2019ve cherished a, a phrase from the novelist, Frederick Ner, that, um, you can either be broken, open by hardness or broken. And when you\u2019re broken, you make yourself invulnerable. You protect yourself from hardship. But when you\u2019re broken open, you make yourself more vulnerable, even in the place of hardship. Uh, and it\u2019s a gutsy thing to do, but it\u2019s necessary if you\u2019re gonna turn a hardship into a, a growing experience. There\u2019s a theologian Henry now and who said you have to stay in the pain to see what it has to teach you. And that seems like bad advice, like stay in the pain. Why? But in those moments of suffering, I do think we see each other more deeply than we, than we do in normal happy moments.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uh, just one final quotation is from a guy named Paul Tillek from the 1950s. He said, moments of pain interrupt your life and remind you you\u2019re not the person you thought you were. They carve through the floor of the basement of your soul, reveal a cavity below, and then they carve through that next floor and they reveal a cavity below.<\/span><\/p>\n

So we see deeper in ourselves in the moments of hardship than we do in moments of happiness. And when you see that deeply in yourself, you realize only spiritual and relational food will fill those cavities. And I think the career story in Sri Lanka is a story of somebody really at a hard shell. Uh, and in extreme circumstances found a real capacity to love.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Turning a hardship into a growing experience. I wonder, David, if you could talk directly to that person who\u2019s right now listening and finds themself. In a hardship and is not quite sure how to find the genuine growth in it. They\u2019re not. I mean, it feels a little forced, something like that.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Well, I\u2019ll tell a story. I tell in the book what I learned about having that kind of conversation. Um, my oldest friend in the world\u2019s, a guy named Pete Peter, marks and Pete had suffered from depression only at age 54 or so. Uh, as far as I know, he did not suffer it before, but when it came, it came hard.<\/span><\/p>\n

For him and I made the mistake that I think I\u2019ve now learned are common when talking to people going through a hard time or suffering from depression. The first mistake I made was I tried to tell him how to make the depression lift. I would say, you know, you, he was an eye surgeon and I would say, you know, you should go on a mission trip where you, you give free surgery so people in Vietnam can see you found that, you find that so rewarding when you do that.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I realized if later that if you\u2019re trying to give a depressed person ideas on how to make depression lift, all you\u2019re showing is you just don\u2019t get it. \u2019cause it\u2019s not ideas they\u2019re lacking. They know the ideas, they\u2019re, they\u2019re lacking desire, energy, a lot of other things. Um, second, um. I made the mistake of trying to remind him of how wonderful parts of his life were.<\/span><\/p>\n

The kid loved his career, great marriage. His boys are amazing, and I was only reminding him that he was not enjoying the things that are palpably enjoyable. So that was a mistake. And I think I gradually learned first that for those of us who\u2019ve been lucky, fortunate enough, never to experience depression, we can\u2019t understand it by extrapolating from our own moments of sadness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uh, another friend of mine named Michael Gerson, who suffered from it, said that depression is a malfunction in the instrument. You used to perceive reality. And so in the case of my friend Peter, he had these obsessive voices in his head telling him, you\u2019re worthless. You\u2019re worthless. No one would miss you if you\u2019re gone. And I think the fir what I should have done, and the way we should have talked about this is first, acknowledge the reality of the situation. This sucks, this sucks. Tell me how it sucks. I think, uh, a lot of people feel isolated in their pain. They can\u2019t quite express what it feels to them. And often when you run into somebody who\u2019s going through hardship, um, there are like two of them.That productivity clock is like a, that\u2019s a, that\u2019s a killer of relationships. \u2019cause if you\u2019re sitting with someone and you\u2019re thinking, oh, I, I can, I\u2019ve gotta go off to the next meeting or whatever, you\u2019re not really present. Uh, and so it was just a. I like looking at myself and being dissatisfied with myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so what did I do? I, I wrote a book about emotion called, called the Social Animal. And it was like, I\u2019m gonna write myself into being a better person and that, I dunno if it\u2019s better, but I, writing is my process of self expansion, of expanding the circle. Um, you know, so I wrote a book about emotion. I think I just become, you know, you\u2019re working out your stuff in public when you\u2019re a writer. And, um, my other favorite thing about writing is writers are beggars who tell other beggars where they found bread. And so if I find something in a book that\u2019s helpful to me, it gives me great pleasure to put it in one of my books and share it\u2019ll pass it along. Uh, and, uh, so I, I think those, the act of writing and then frankly, after the divorce, the act of dating, uh, was an, uh, emotional education for sure, and then falling in love again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uh, and getting married. And, uh, those are all, um, acts of expansion of the heart. And I think what it made me realize, a, a belief and a conviction that was latent within me. I\u2019d been raised by academics and I\u2019m a pretty heady person, but I do believe the heart is more important than the brain. Uh, and that, that, that our sentiments are really the most trustworthy thing about us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in the 17th century, there were these vicious wars of religion. And Catholics and Protestants were killing each other in a great number. And in the 18th century, people said, stop. We\u2019ve gotta stop this. And so there were two branches of the enlightenment. The one branch, which was French, said, reason or emotion and religious fervor are murderous.<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019re killing people. So we have to create a cult of reason, and that our reasoning brain is really the dignity of human being. And they, uh, literally had a cult of reason in the French Revolution. Uh, but there was another enlightenment which centered in Scotland. And they said, we really don\u2019t think reason is that powerful reason is weak.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the Scottish philosophers, David Yum said, reason is and ought to be the slave to the passions. And he meant by that, that your emotions are sensitive. Your emotions are wise most of the time if they\u2019re kept, if they\u2019re well educated. And so you can learn to trust your emotions. And I do believe the heart is really the driver of our lives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reason. The heart tells us where to go. What we want and how passionately we\u2019ll we\u2019ll go, how fast we\u2019ll go. The emotions, um, and reason is just there to help plot the course. So it is slave to the emotions. And so the process of educating your emotions through literature, through art, through ritual, through painting, uh, that is the key educational act of life, not the stuff that goes on in a school room with a teacher lecturing to students.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it\u2019s that emotional education. That\u2019s the one we conduct in our adulthood and really through our adulthood. If we\u2019re gonna grow and become deeper people as we go along.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> One of the things I wanna talk to you about is this notion of how we tell. Our story. You mentioned writing yourself into a better life and that this is how you processed these in the valley moments in your own life and in how to know a person. The the book is divided into three sections. I see you, I see you in your struggles, which we\u2019ve talked a little bit about, and then a section on, I see you in your strengths, which I wanna talk.<\/span><\/p>\n

More about, and in that section there\u2019s a chapter on life stories and you write, the ability to craft an accurate and coherent life story is yet another vital skill. We don\u2019t teach people in school, but coming up with a personal story. Is centrally important to leading a meaningful life. You can\u2019t know who you are unless you know how to tell your story.<\/span><\/p>\n

You can\u2019t have a stable identity unless you take the in ate events of your life and give your life meaning by turning the events into a coherent. So I wanna ask you about this because over the last few years I\u2019ve gone through a really difficult passage, and I\u2019m not gonna go into the details, but to say that there are a lot of different elements in it and a lot of different vantage points from which I could tell the story.<\/span><\/p>\n

I could tell it as a story of failure or a story of victory, depending the mood I\u2019m in. I could tell it as an inner secret story of this or that, and I, there\u2019s so many different ways and. I would say it\u2019s in ate at this point. It\u2019s, it\u2019s chaotic inside me and lots of people I haven\u2019t seen in a while.<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019ll say something like, Tami, tell me the story, what\u2019s been going on? And I think, okay, I\u2019m gonna have to tell 12 different stories. And, and so I\u2019m curious to know more about this process of how you weave it into something coherent.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Yeah. Well, um, I find very few of us, maybe some writers, but not even me, maybe novelists, um, like sit down and think, okay, I\u2019m gonna tell the story in my life. We, uh, we only tell the story of life and learn to tell the story in life when we\u2019re put in circumstances where somebody asks us. And of course, different circumstances are gonna arouse different versions of a story.<\/span><\/p>\n

If I\u2019m, um, at a meeting with a bunch of lawyers and we\u2019re discussing some contract and somebody asks me, who are you, you\u2019re gonna get a very different version than if I\u2019m on a podcast dealing with spiritual and deeper things. Or if I\u2019m with, you know, somebody I knew in college. Was close with back then, but haven\u2019t seen in decades.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I think people bring out different versions of a story, but I, I think there, if you, if you think of the basic plots, I do think a lot of our lives fit into a basic plot. Uh, and in the book I mentioned some of them, I, I just told you a little bit of my story and it\u2019s a classic redemption story. I was going along fine.<\/span><\/p>\n

I suffered a crisis. I came back better. That\u2019s a redemption story. And there\u2019s a guy named Dan McAdams who studies this in Northwestern, who once wrote a book called The Redemptive Self saying Humans tell redemption stories about themselves. And he booked toward around the world. And a lot of the audiences in other countries said, what are you talking about?<\/span><\/p>\n

Americans tell redemption stories, but we don\u2019t tell redemption stories. And so there are other kinds of stories. There\u2019s overcoming the monster. Uh, I was attacked by alcoholism or some other. You know, illness or some challenge and I overcame the monster I was born into blessing and I lived up to my responsibility to share the blessing.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so there are lots of different stories you can tell of your life, but I do think there are some elemental plots, uh, that you fit into. And. I guess I, I am trying to think, like I would say I have different versions of the story I tell in different circumstances, but I think my story is one story. You might be more complicated than I am.<\/span><\/p>\n

Um, I, I, and just because I, I need to know how to, what to do next. And I think it was Doris Less said how, you know, how we know what to do next if less we know what story we\u2019re a part of and we tell stories, then we live into the stories we tell, uh, and. Uh, I just read a, a great book by Andre Agassi, the Tennis Star, and he had a monster of a dad and, uh, he said, I hate tennis.<\/span><\/p>\n

And he spent his adult life. He\u2019s, you know, playing tennis and being great at tennis and his essential story was, I\u2019m enslaved to a game I hate and I\u2019m addicted to it and I can\u2019t get out. Uh, and I read another memoir, um, by Tina Turner. And as we all know, she was, grew up in nut Bush, Tennessee, I think had a beautiful voice, married a truly awful human being.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ike Termer. Uh, he really enslaved her. He paid her no money, didn\u2019t live, give her any power. He cheated on her with every woman he encountered. He forced her to live with several of her, his mistresses and beat her brutally. Um, and it took her 14 years to build herself into the kind of person who could stand up, dike turn.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uh, and she did it by meditation. She did it by studying Eastern philosophy. She did it just by understanding her own mind and creating her own voice. And after 14 years, Ike was beating her one day in the back of a limousine and she started fighting back something she had never done before. And that night they were at some hotel and she escaped out the window.<\/span><\/p>\n

She ran across the highway, she nearly got killed. She went to a Ramada Inn. And asked the manager, um, could you please put me up? I\u2019ve got no money. And he did. And she called her friends and she made her way and started at age 40 a career trying to be a, a successful sexy rock star at age 40. And she did it over the next 30 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

She built her solo career, she remarried and had a beautiful second marriage. Uh, and so her story is one of, of submission of slavery really. Of development, self-growth, and then of prosperity. And it\u2019s a three act story. And she, I think she understood her life through that. And she wrote two very good memoirs, which is how I know the story.<\/span><\/p>\n

Um, and so it, I find it useful to have one overarching story that I present differently. I guess that\u2019s how I put it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> I think part of what has me engaged and curious about this is the notion that how we tell our story is a creative act that we can take on just. Like our perception is a creative act. We can choose an illuminator gaze. We can tell an illuminator story. I\u2019m wonder what, I\u2019m wondering what you think about that, David.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Well, I think all perception is creation. It\u2019s a creative act. We don\u2019t. We think we open our eyes and light beams flood in, and then we see like the way a camera sees. That\u2019s not how we see. Um, what we do is we project models of what we think we\u2019re gonna see out into the world and we, it\u2019s prediction, correction.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so for example, and the models we project determine are based on what\u2019s in our head. So we\u2019re speaking English here. So if you and I saw a rainbow, we would see a seven colored rainbow. Uh, but of course there are no bands in a rainbow, uh, because it\u2019s just a continuum of light. There\u2019s no such thing as color.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s just rays of light. It\u2019s just rays. We are creating the color, and so somebody speaks Russian. In Russian, they have a two words for blue, light blue and dark blue. And so they don\u2019t see seven banded rainbows. They see eight banded rainbows because they have different models in their head. Uh, and there\u2019s a famous experiment I bet a lot of our listeners have seen, uh, called the basketball experiment where they have, they watch, make people watch a video, and there\u2019s a group of people passing a basketball and after the video they say, did you see the gorilla?<\/span><\/p>\n

And the, the people on the subject of the experiment say, what gorilla? I didn\u2019t see any gorilla. They say, watch again. So they watch the video again, and there\u2019s a group of people passing basketball around and a guy in a gorilla suit walks into the middle of the basketbal<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s the person experiencing the pain. Then the, another version of themselves is, is watching the person experience the pain. And trying to figure it all out, and so just like accept reality. The second thing I\u2019ve been told by a pastor to say is, I want more for you. I want more for you. And those words won\u2019t do anything.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact, there are not many words that will do anything but just an affirmation of my expression of goodwill toward you. Third constant touches. I should have sent him a text every day. Because I think he was worried that his friends would leave him \u2019cause he wasn\u2019t much fun to be around. But a text every day says, I\u2019m not going anywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I read about a guy who his brother was going through a hardship and he was tra traveling and he sent him a postcard every day, just a postcard every day. I\u2019m thinking of you then. I\u2019m reminded of the words Viktor Frankl wrote in Man\u2019s Search For Meaning. He was a psychiatrist in the prison, Nazi concentration camps.<\/span><\/p>\n

And when people would come to him with suicidal thoughts. He would say life has not stopped expecting things of you. And that sounds harsh to my ears, but I trust Viktor Frankl knows what he\u2019s talking about. Uh, and then, you know, the final thing I\u2019d say is that, and I, I think about this personally, and I think about this for our country, frankly, that people move forward through a process of rupture and repair. Uh, then I asked people What made the you who you are? Nobody ever said, well, I went to vacation in Hawaii. It was fantastic. That made me the person I am today. It\u2019s always some moment of hardship, a moment in the valley and rupture and repair. Uh, and the thing I learned about being in the valley is that it\u2019s really hard to get yourself out of the valley, that somebody has to reach down and.<\/span><\/p>\n

Help you out and I\u2019ll tell a story from my own life. I went through a hard time in this period of 12 or 15 years ago, and I was getting divorced and my kids were leaving home to go off to college. Uh, or preparing to, and I went through, I was living in a crappy little apartment and doing what any male idiot would do, was trying to solve spiritual and emotional problems through work.<\/span><\/p>\n

Alcoholism just work. Uh, and I was accepting dinners. Any, any invitations I got, I was accepting \u2019cause I was really lonely. And I got invited over to a house by a couple named Kathy and David. And, uh, Kathy and David had a son in the DC public schools who had a friend named James whose mom had some issues, health and otherwise, and she couldn\u2019t always feed her son James, and she couldn\u2019t always house him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uh, and so they said, well, James can stay over when he needs to and eat with us. And James had a friend and that kid had a friend, and that kid had a friend. And by the time I went over there, um. And one Thursday night in 2014 or 2015, um, there were 40 kids around the dinner table and there were mattresses all over the house for kids sleeping.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I walk in the door and first time there and there\u2019s a young man, we call them kids, but they were like 17. Um, and I reached out to shake my his hand and he says, we really don\u2019t shake hands here. We hug here. And I\u2019m not the Huggies guy in the face of the earth, but I started hugging and I went to that house for dinner every Thursday night for the next seven years.<\/span><\/p>\n

And we did that. We did holidays together. Uh, we did Christmas, we did vacations together, and it was a chosen family with about eight adults, I guess, and then 40, what we would call really teenagers like teenagers. And it was a chosen family. And what that whole community did was they demanded emotional openness, they beamed love at, at you, and you really were inspired and had to, and almost impelled to beam it back.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so that community, which lasted until COVID, um, and still we, we obviously stay in touch, um, really was the healing. That was the repair. So it is that process of rupture and repair that we go through, I think periodically in our lives. And there\u2019s really no escape from them. And um, some people, as I say, become stagnant and some people are, endure it and grow.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> In terms of your own growth to this type of emotional availability, what were the actions or commitments that you made as part of that process?<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> I, I guess, um, one, it was just a commitment to like not be the person I used to be. Like I was the kind of person nobody would confide in. Uh, I was a person who, um, always had a clock in his head. This is something I still struggle with. Like when I go to the gas station, um, I think, oh, I\u2019ve got 90 seconds pumping gas, and I get two emails done.<\/span><\/p>\n

l game, waves his arms, and then walks off.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the people did not see the gorilla, most of them. They didn\u2019t predict gorilla. And so every act is an act of creation. There\u2019s a neuroscientist named a Neil Seth who says, life is, uh, a controlled hallucination. We\u2019re we\u2019re, we\u2019re constructing the world in our head based on the very limited information our senses give us.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so if you take that on, then the very act of telling our story is just like the same thing that Charles Dickens is doing. The same thing Jane Austin is doing. And even the act of seeing a scene is the same thing Vincent Van Gogh\u2019s doing. It\u2019s just they write it down. Uh, and so we each have our own way of seeing, and frankly, when we encounter a Van Gogh painting, he gives us another way of seeing, uh, we don\u2019t, we see the starry night on fire.<\/span><\/p>\n

And we see in that starry night painting, there\u2019s a church there in the middle of the painting, which is empty. And the light, the light has gone out in the church. And that\u2019s Van Gogh\u2019s commentary on the church. And so we don\u2019t only see paintings, we see according to paintings. If you\u2019ve seen Picasso\u2019s, Guernica, uh, you don\u2019t see war again the same way.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s taught you to see it in a different way. So I\u2019m just trying to emphasize the creative element. All the things we think are objective and simple, like perception are really very complicated and it, it\u2019s based on what we have inside of us. One final quick story, which is a favorite of mine. There was a researchers at the University of Virginia asked um, students, there are a lot of hills on the campus of the University of Virginia, and they had researchers ask the students, how steep is that hill?<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s the grade? And people overestimated. The hill was a five degree grade and they estimated it was like 30 degree, but one day the researchers asked a group of students and they got it exactly right and they were wondering how, why is the data correct this day when it was wrong? Every other day we\u2019ve done this experiment.<\/span><\/p>\n

It turned out that day they were, had asked me members of the women\u2019s soccer team. So they\u2019d asked division one athletes how steep the hill was, and these were fairy fit human beings. And so to them, the, the hill didn\u2019t look very steep. And so the, the point is, the way we see a situation depends on what we\u2019re capable of doing in this situation.<\/span><\/p>\n

And if you\u2019re fit, you see a very not steep hill. If you\u2019re very heavy, you see a very steep hill. If you\u2019ve got a backpack on, you see a steeper hill than if you don\u2019t have a backpack on. If you listen to sad music, you see a steeper hill, then you, if you listen to happy music, it\u2019s all inside us. And so that\u2019s what this thing called constructivism is.<\/span><\/p>\n

And we have to respect the creative ways we\u2019re putting together the world, either in very helpful ways or very unhelpful ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> In terms of seeing other people deeply, you offer in. How to know a person. A lot of just practical tips. And there\u2019s one that really stuck with me, so I wanna make sure to mention it was the most powerful tip, uh, for me in my life, which was treat attention as an on off switch, not a dimmer switch. Treat it as an all or nothing affair.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2019cause I think most of the time when. Not, not here during this conversation with you. You know, I, I\u2019ve been interviewing people since 2009 and I\u2019ve interviewed my wife a couple of times for about her work and she said, wow, you never pay attention to me in the same way is when you interview me, Tami. And I thought, God, I should do this more often because it\u2019s a full on off switch.<\/span><\/p>\n

And often in the course of our life, you know, I\u2019m listening to her, but I\u2019m also, you know, unloading the dishwasher or doing all these other things and she\u2019ll say, could you please just. Stop and give me your full attention. Very simple act. And I\u2019m like, I can hear you while I\u2019m doing, while I\u2019m not doing this thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

You know, I can, I, anyway, so I, I thought that was a terrific pointer that would really, in many ways change a lot of things. Just that one thing, full on, off switch.<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Yeah, it\u2019s funny, I hadn\u2019t thought about this, but sometimes it\u2019s nice to have a distraction. It\u2019s nice to be driving. Somehow the conversation can flow, but when you really get into something serious, and I think your default should be when you meet everybody. Is 100% not, or 0%, not 60 40. And we\u2019ve all met and there are some politicians who their ma, that\u2019s their magic.<\/span><\/p>\n

I would say that was Bill Clinton\u2019s magic. It it, and everyone says, he treated me like I was the only one in the room. That\u2019s. Uh, that was a standard cliche about Bill Clinton and I think it was sincere in, is sincere in Clinton. Um, but yeah, those were just practical skills. I mean, some of the others, when you\u2019re in a deep conversation, um, one of them that I was given was be a loud listener.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I have a friend who, when you talk to him, it\u2019s like talking to a Pentecostal church. He\u2019s like, yes, yes. Preach, preach. I agree with that. I\u2019m in, I\u2019m in. I just love talking to that guy. \u2019cause he\u2019s so enthusiastic in the way he listens. Uh, another tip I got was, uh, don\u2019t be a topper. If you say to me, uh oh, I had a terrible flight.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was on the tarmac for two hours. I\u2019m inclined to say to you, yeah, I had a terrible flight. I was on the tarmac for six hours. And it sounds like I\u2019m trying to relate to you, but, uh, what I\u2019m really trying to do is let\u2019s pay less attention to your inferior set of experiences and more to my superior set. Uh, and so don\u2019t be a topper. I think, um, it\u2019s, it, it\u2019s been helpful to me to learn that there are just some practical tips that can really change the quality of your conversations, like the dimmer switch, like, and, and these things, these acts that we do with each other. They\u2019re like carpentry, they\u2019re like playing tennis.<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019re skills and they can be taught. And like I mentioned earlier, how do you sit with someone who\u2019s depressed? That\u2019s a skill that can be taught and we can learn that. How do you break up with someone without crushing their heart? Again, a skill that can be taught. Um, how do you ask for an offer forgiveness?<\/span><\/p>\n

And one of the things that weirdly doesn\u2019t happen in our culture is to the teaching of these social skills. I dunno if they were ever taught, but I get the impression more so before cell phones than now.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> How do you break up with a friend without hurting their heart or breaking their heart? How do you say, you know, this is just isn\u2019t really working out, so I don\u2019t, you know how, that\u2019s obviously not how you say it. I don\u2019t know how to do this. How do you do this,<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Yeah. You know, I, I, I mean, I\u2019m, now, I feel weird giving advice \u2019cause I was always on one, getting broken up with, uh, I was never the dumper, I was the dumpy, uh, eh. But I, I would say, um, one of the things that doesn\u2019t work. Is, um, the sandwich, uh, we\u2019re all instructed to when we\u2019re giving feedback on anything to, uh, give a positive thing and then a negative thing, and then a positive thing that\u2019s called the sandwich.<\/span><\/p>\n

And research has shown that does not work. \u2019cause all people here is the negative thing, the positive thing. They do not hear the, I would say the one thing, there\u2019s a really good book I recommend called 10 to 25 that came out maybe a year ago. Uh. And it\u2019s about how to deal with people between ages of 10 and 25.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the author says, you think when you\u2019re talking to one of these young people that you\u2019re giving all sorts of wise advice or not, or telling them what to do or what not to do. But all they are hearing is, do you respect me? Do you respect me? Do you respect me? That is all they\u2019re hearing. And so the problem with the sandwich is it\u2019s a show of respect and then a show of disrespect and then a show of respect.<\/span><\/p>\n

All they hear is, oh, disrespect. There\u2019s disrespect in the air here. And there\u2019s a great book called another book called Crucial Conversations by a guy named Joseph Granny and a bunch of other people. And they say every conversation takes place on two levels, what we\u2019re nominally talking about. And then underneath it, the flow of emotions as we\u2019re talking.<\/span><\/p>\n

Uh, and the set that under conversation is the more important. And so the, uh, and then they have a sentence which was really lingered in my mind, which is in any conversation, respect is like air. It\u2019s when it\u2019s present, nobody notices when it\u2019s absent. It\u2019s all anybody can think about. And so when you break up with someone, sometimes the breakup happens.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the number one cause of divorce, according to the experts is contempt. There\u2019s no respect left. And once you feel contempt for someone, it\u2019s really hard to stay married to \u2019em. Uh, and so in that case, it\u2019s hard to have a pleasant breakup conversation without being dishonest. But in most breakup conversations, the respect that drew you to the person is still there.<\/span><\/p>\n

The love may be gone, but the respect is still there. And so my instinct is to that by showing lavish respect for the who that person is, uh, even though the love may be gone is, uh, is the right way to honestly explain why this isn\u2019t working out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> That\u2019s very helpful. Thank you, David. In terms of concluding our conversation, here\u2019s what I\u2019d love to hear more about. You mentioned I\u2019m a religious person and that comes with certain obligations, commitments, responsibilities. What are they to you? What\u2019s the core of it to you?<\/span><\/p>\n

David Brooks:<\/b> Yeah, I mean in, I mean, if you\u2019re Jewish, it\u2019s the ritual, uh, and it\u2019s the, it\u2019s, you can or cannot keep kosher if de depending on what kind of Jew you are. But I do think it\u2019s, it\u2019s the ritual to have the Friday night meal and I, I joke that. Every church service I go to is more spiritual than every synagogue Jewish service I go to.<\/span><\/p>\n

But every Friday night Jewish dinner, Shabbat dinner is more spiritual than any church service, and I think it\u2019s the obligation to have the rituals. One is also obliged to pass down the story of one\u2019s faith, but then one is obliged to grow in holiness in a very defined way. So for Christians, the obligation and the submission is to attempt to become more Christ-like, uh, every single day of your life.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that can, for many people, involve spiritual disciplines like fasting, uh, prayer, prayer journals. It often involves research and study. And for me, I\u2019m a bookish person, so frankly, I. I get some spiritual uplift from, um, music and architecture, but mostly it\u2019s reading spiritual books, reading books of theology, reading books about Matthew or about Deuteronomy or Exodus.<\/span><\/p>\n

Somehow that obligation, uh, is there, and it, and it, it, it\u2019s my attempt to become more holy. And, and I do think, uh, with, uh, Thomas Aquinas. That every little act we do changes a core piece of ourselves, either in the direction of sanctification or degradation. And one of the nice things about theology, it gives you a definition of the vertical that you\u2019re moving upward towards sanctification, or you\u2019re moving descending downward to degradation.<\/span><\/p>\n

And every little piece of media you consume, every TikTok video you consume, every conversation you have, the way you treat people. Carves, that little piece of you inside, which we call our soul into something, either a little more sanctified or um, or degraded. And we are commanded to live up to the covenant by searching for sanctification.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> speaking with David Brooks, author of the book, <\/span>How to Know a Person: the Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Seen<\/span><\/i>. David, thank you so much for the conversation. I feel so fortunate to have this chance to meet you and have this conversation with you and learn from you. Thank you so much. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"class_list":["post-24853","transcript","type-transcript","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nDavid Brooks: Perception Is an Act of Creation | Sounds True<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"David Brooks: Perception Is an Act of Creation | Sounds True\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"David Brooks: Not only is the universe not cold and lifeless or, or meaningless, but it\u2019s moral, that there is a moral order to the universe that holds us all all human beings, as far as I know, long for belonging. 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