speaker-0: We've spent this whole podcast celebrating what happens when you reject the script. But going off script also comes with a cost. What about everything we leave behind? And what if freedom doesn't just liberate us? It can also leave us untethered, overwhelmed, endlessly optimizing, scrolling through lives we could be living instead of actually inhabiting the one we have. Maybe that helps explain why tradition, religion, prescribed gender roles, and even the promise of someone else telling us what to do can suddenly feel strangely seductive. Today we're turning the deviance lens on ourselves. What if breaking the rules was only half the work? Maybe the real question isn't how free we can become, but it's what we're willing to bind ourselves to once nobody else is choosing for us.
speaker-1: Yeah. Most of us were given a cookie cutter template for how to live, love, and succeed. But what if you don't fit that mold? What if you're ready to live a little differently, even if that makes you the odd one out?
speaker-0: We're Nyla and Cole, two people questioning the systems, the stories, and the identities that shape us. From politics to pleasure, culture to connection, this is where taboo meets truth.
speaker-1: If you've ever felt like a black sheep, cycle breaker, or someone who doesn't quite fit the cookie cutter mold, then you're a deviant just like us. ⁓ I think we might be shocking a lot of our regular listeners because for once we're gonna be singing the praises of tradition and script after, you know, talking about how great it is to break the chains and get off script. We're gonna be talking about actually what's lost when you step away from. structures and traditions that we grew up in. Even talking about how beautiful something like tradition can be.
speaker-0: Yeah, and it might be a bit of a therapy session for both of us. But let's see.
speaker-1: I I think we're gonna get pretty real. I mean, you and I have talked a lot about this just between the two of us. Going off script is hard because there's so much that can get left behind. There's structure and meaning and clarity about what we're even doing in this life that can disappear and it can feel like the the rug gets pulled out from under us.
speaker-0: I think also it's easy and simplistic to draw binaries here and say, you know, the old script was bad, the new script is good and life is just so much more nuanced than that. So I think it's gonna be helpful just to make space for the overlaps, right? Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, and also just realizing that ⁓ because you've moved on from something, it doesn't mean it all needs to be tossed in the bin. ⁓ I think it's really important to to think about what your childhood gave you that was working. And then gives you a chance to say, okay, can I find that in another way? Do I have to give that up? We don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is a very timely topic for me actually, because just yesterday, for the first time in over a decade, I set foot in the church where I grew up as a kid. yeah, which was you can imagine ⁓ a pretty intense experience. sort of did my head in. So my dad misses singing traditional hymns. But in most Protestant churches now, praise music is rock and roll, bass guitar, drums, and my dad, who's in his eighties, just really misses singing hymns from a hymnal. And he took it on himself to organize an afternoon.
speaker-0: ⁓
speaker-1: Where people could come and sing their favorite hymns. And I went along to support. And so actually for both my dad and me, it was a return to this familiarity. Yeah. And I was there with all these gray hairs. And it was actually really beautiful seeing them singing all their favorite songs that they hadn't had a chance to sing together in decades and see what it meant for them to be together, reconnecting with these songs from their childhood and from the beginning of their faith. It was powerful to be a part of that.
speaker-0: ⁓ my god, can we have a minute for your dad and how cute he is and his little posse? So cute.
speaker-1: He spent weeks playing 'cause he he did the piano for it. He spent weeks and weeks practicing and Yeah. So like for at all ages, there's something really powerful about connecting with what was meaningful to you decades ago. Yeah, no, my dad's a cutie. Shout out to him.
speaker-0: There's also something quite beautiful about singing together, you know, whether that's in a choir or or otherwise. I think it touches on something that does things to our nervous system, you know? Or connects to that feeling of like being part of something bigger than yourself.
speaker-1: Yeah, there's that connectedness. I mean, even, you know, hymns have harmonies. So everyone was harmonizing together. You're you're creating something bigger from the sum of all these different parts. You get into this place of connectedness and devotion. People really got emotional. It was beautiful. ⁓ the other thing that's really timely about this topic is just a week ago I reconnected with an old high school friend. I hadn't seen her in two decades. She was raised Mormon, and the big headline.
speaker-0: I kind of love it.
speaker-1: In her life since I've seen her is that she has pretty much abandoned her faith. She says she now believes like five percent of what she was taught growing up, but she still goes to church every Sunday and she takes her kids and her husband to church every Sunday.
speaker-0: How interesting. So she likes the ritual still and she still wants to engage in the the routine or or like the comfort of that.
speaker-1: Isn't it fascinating? Ritual. I think it's I think it's so many things. The community, the structure, the values that the church teaches her kids, the sense of belonging. She she sort of feels like an infidel, like she's afraid that one of these days she's gonna get caught. But until then she's still getting all this meaning out of it, which I think is fascinating.
speaker-0: Is fascinating because I guess it shows how complex these feelings can be, right? Because so I I'm not religious anymore, but I think most faiths have a beautiful foundation of you know, love actually. Be a good person, be a good human being. Yeah, also like take care of each other, you know, and they have their own expressions of it, but ultimately it's about being kind and loving to others. So
speaker-1: Exactly.
speaker-0: I totally resonate with why she'd want to have that kind of community around her. Also specifically actually for her kids, because my first instinct was, ⁓ wow. Like so she's open to her kids continuing to learn about these values from a faith based lens, even when she doesn't believe in it anymore. Right. But actually, now I think about it, there is so much to gain when you have more people teaching your kids and you're not just doing the whole parenting thing you know yourselves, like ⁓ mom and dad are are teaching you rather than like the whole community is here to participate in what children learn.
speaker-1: When it's when it's the village who's setting an example.
speaker-0: Yeah, and usually, you know, when people talk about how it takes a village, usually they're talking about like childcare or you having physical time and space to do other things like go to work or go out or have friends. But maybe a deeper part of that is also the learning doesn't only come from mum and dad, it comes from uncle and aunt and grandparent and, you know, person in the church who's close to my parents. And so I can see why your friend doesn't want to lose that, right?
speaker-1: Yeah. So before we dive further into all of this, Nyla, tell me what else do you feel like you've left behind and that you miss from the time before you chose to go your own way, go off script, as we love to say.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's a good question, and the obvious one is like practical things like having the kind of family infrastructure, at least in my case, there's no place to turn to just to be nourished or to feel safe. So that feels like the most practical loss. But I think it's also like the web of family that comes together, you know, children and siblings and parents and cousins and And th there's almost kind of a a family identity that's moving through the generations. We're not independent units, you know, and I kind of feel like I'm an independent unit now. I still would make these choices, but there is a real sense of loss around having a connection to those multiple generations, but also the web of connections.
speaker-1: I it sounds lonely.
speaker-0: It is it is lonely and I I I I kind of feel it for myself, but as an adult, I can kind of co-create a community that nourishes me, right? I also feel it for my next generation, right? My son. I have actively to create a community for him as well, because he's not as connected to the sense of intergenerational history and you know family history and connection. Really your friend story is making me reflect on how the layers of that or the expression of that really forms in how I raise my son too, in in thinking about who the role models are and who the safe people are and where are the places where he can turn to, apart from, you know, the two parents, the two adults in his life. So that's probably the biggest thing I'd I'd say. Yeah. What about you?
speaker-1: ⁓ I keep going back to this this sense of certainty about the world that I really miss. This clarity of purpose. You know, when you're given all the answers to the universe as a little kid, it feels great. And then when you suddenly have these seeds of doubt and you start questioning things, and then you start building your own worldview, ⁓ I've described it before as like building this house and then the house just sort of collapses and I'm left with like this framework. I've got like this scaffolding of values and ways I want to conduct myself in the world, but it doesn't have any sort of purpose or meaning or mission around it. Like I s I don't really know what I'm here for anymore. And it's actually pretty unnerving, if I'm gonna be honest with you. Wow. and I've I feel like I've been just trying to rebuild in different ways.
speaker-0: Hmm. It's kind of like the North Star that you have, right? When you follow a vision or an ideology for how life should be, in some ways, like it's easier because you don't have to create a future vision or a future definition of what a good life looks like or what the definition of of a life well lived should be. It's almost laid out for you. So you just need to kind of follow the guidelines.
speaker-1: Yeah, and ⁓ you know, the search for meaning and truth is frankly exhausting. I I don't think we say enough how just being a critical thinker in search of personal meaning is exhausting and often miserable because I don't think there personally at this point in my life I don't think there's one answer to be found. I think you are committing yourself to a life of asking questions. And it's a lot easier to have answers than it is to ask questions.
speaker-0: That's true. And maybe when we start to feel like that it's time to like slow down and ask less questions. I Yeah. I'm reminded of maybe four or five years ago after my divorce, I was trying to like expand my definition of what does it mean to live a good life or what what is the definition of a rich life? And in that spirit I started to write lists every day or just kind of journal about what does it mean to live a rich life.
speaker-1: Yeah. Amen. Hallelujah.
speaker-0: ended up being a lot about meaning and purpose and like thinking about where that comes from. Some of it comes from work, of course, right? Doing things every day at work that are important to you and feel like you're able to contribute to something that matters. But a lot of it actually comes from relationships and the people I choose to spend my time with. I really wanted freedom from this sense of obligation in the communities that I was in. But I didn't want to become totally untangled, you know? Like I didn't want to lose everything. And it it connects back to your friend's example, right? Of like, how do I curate a life where I get to keep the best bits? You know, the bits that I that really help me feel useful in a community, help me feel connected to other people. It's like there are all of these different ingredients to what brings, you know, flavor into life, right? And I think part of what I've uncovered really is also that. freedom, liberation, stepping into off script, whatever you want to call it, it can kind of turn into this giant custom build of life, you know, like where you're designing every part of your life. There's so many options. They almost become a bit debilitating, you know?
speaker-1: I mean it sounds great in theory, but I think both of us have realized that it can be a crutch in the end and can be a little overwhelming.
speaker-0: Yeah. It carps back to the paradox of choice, right? Schwartz, he talks about how beyond a certain point, options just create paralysis. Mm-hmm. They create regret. They create self-blame. And it makes me think of when I go into you know Hotel Chocolat? The chocolate shop. You don't know Well, there's a chocolate shop called Hotel Chocolat. Okay. As you can imagine, you walk in and
speaker-1: No. British ⁓ thing.
speaker-0: You're surrounded by like a whole wall of amazing chocolates, like truffles and all sorts of things, different sizes, different flavors. It's amazing. And they lure you in with, you know, three bees on a tray and they're standing at the door and come and have a look. And and then you get in there and I I just don't know where to turn. Like there are so many permutations and varieties and options. Like the overwhelm means that I literally I look around and I just walk out. With nothing. And actually then I don't even want it. It does something to my brain where I'm just like, ⁓ no thanks. It's too hard.
speaker-1: Yep. I mean I can just relate way too well. I I feel like I have no right to complain about this, but you know, I've like a good millennial with two loving parents, I was taught that I could achieve anything I wanted to. I could I could chase my dreams. Yeah. And I went into adulthood with that mindset. Not only that, but I just have this voracious appetite for variety and newness. But I think it really it really has been a curse for me.
speaker-0: Mm.
speaker-1: the sense that I can like be anything I want because I look on it decades later and ⁓ it's actually been debilitating. I mean I I feel really spoiled saying this, but
speaker-0: No, no. I mean, of course, these are all first world problems, right? But like do you feel like you're stuck in that paralysis point? There's just too many options here and I kinda wanna keep options open because otherwise I'm closing myself off to things.
speaker-1: Yeah, frankly, I think it's the I think it's the biggest double edged sword of my off script journey. You know, I have chucked out all the scripts, I've burnt ⁓ in a big bonfire, and then I'm like, Well crap, what now?
speaker-0: ⁓ man, it's it's actually really important to have constraints, I think. Like creativity, innovation, all of these things. We need constraints, right? We need things that like get in the way and hold us back or force a decision in a certain way that's suboptimal because you haven't got all the choices in the world. And so in a way, life works similarly. We almost need something to constrain us that becomes a forcing mechanism for us to make a decision.
speaker-1: I mean I I've been pretty nomadic for the last few years and I I won't say digital nomad because I think it gives a lot of us the ick factor. But I have been ⁓ I I don't know, people think it th they imagine you in some Bali co working space which ⁓ I have been ⁓ before. I've you know, spent a month at a co working space in Bali. But that's neither here nor there. Yeah, exactly. Don't tell anyone.
speaker-0: What's it to that?
speaker-1: And yeah, I I mean it's also just in my nature to travel. I'm curious. I'm an explorer. But then I find myself thinking, well, I'll I'll drop anchor when I find the ideal fit. I'll stay put when I find what I'm looking for. But the more laps I do of the globe, the more options I see. And I think my my ideal becomes further and further away. It becomes more and more hard to pin down what I'm even looking for.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's it's like you're like constantly optimizing for for life, like constantly optimizing for every situation, right? So nothing actually quite fits.
speaker-1: I've got these two friends who always we get together for brunch and they say, So how are you pursuing excellence this week? And
speaker-0: I love them.
speaker-1: I I mean I think they're pursuing excellence in lots of very impressive ways, but I think the bar just keeps getting higher and higher and higher and the rubric keeps getting more and more complex and then we're just constantly chasing things, never feeling like we've landed. It I'm just I feel like I'm chasing my tail around the globe, frankly, because I'm pursuing this this optimized life, which doesn't exist. I just keep reaching higher and higher and this you know, the ceiling keeps moving higher and higher. I'm thinking of Tantalus, you know, it's a Greek myth. Tantalus was sentenced to hell and his punishment was reaching for things that just always get out of reach, reaching for fruit on a branch, but the branch like pulls away and then bending down to drink water and the river like shrinks away. That's where we get the word tantalizing because you're constantly tantalized by these options, but they're not actually available. And I think a lot of us lock ourselves into our own mental hell of thinking we're surrounded by options. But none of them are actually good enough for us. And so we don't actually choose anything. I I was reading about some studies on maximizing versus satisficing, which is I'm pretty sure a word of these researchers made up. But satisficing. So this this one study groups everyone into one of two camps. Either you're a maximizer, you keep trying to identify the very best possible choice for yourself, or you're a satisficer who
speaker-0: Spicing.
speaker-1: Chooses something that meets your standards and then you stop searching. And shock of the century, Nyla, which one of these two groups do you think shows higher life satisfaction and happiness?
speaker-0: I thought you were gonna ask me which one do you think I am?
speaker-1: We don't need to label coal at all. No.
speaker-0: No, we don't do labels, as we said.
speaker-1: No, we reject labels. But ⁓ yeah, maximizers they show more regret. They're more consumed with social comparison. they're questioning their decisions more often. Yeah. And that leads to lower life satisfaction and and lower happiness.
speaker-0: What's that research that also suggests that people always want to make like reversible decisions? Yes. That that movie, what was it? With Gwyneth Paltrow, Sliding Doors.
speaker-1: Sliding doors. That's really interesting too. So if you ask someone, do you want to make a decision that's a point of no return or that you can change your mind? Everyone says, ⁓ I'd love to be able to change my mind. But study after study shows that the points of no return decisions people feel better about. It's this I guess having optionality.
speaker-0: Well they just commit. They commit and then they don't sit there thinking, ⁓ I wonder if I should have picked the other one. Maybe the other life would have been better. So it's like there's no what ifs anymore.
speaker-1: It closes that that mental what if in your mind. It shuts that door and then you just you move on with your life. Yeah. The most illustrative example for me, the one that really helped me get this, was a study back in two thousand two they did with photography students. These students took a bunch of photos and then they were asked to choose from the prints they had made. And one group was told that the choice they made was final. They had to stick with this print. And then another group was told, actually you can exchange this later. And everyone wanted the second option, like, ⁓ I wanna be able to change my mind. But the ones who had to take a choice and stuck with it ended up really being proud of their print more and really liking their print and and being proud of their artwork as opposed to the ones who were just stuck in this what if mode. And man, I just relate to that so much.
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean I'm thinking about how this applies in life and yeah, the obvious example is dating culture, right? Like a lot of online dating and app culture is really at the mercy of this kind of paradox of choice of like, you could just keep scrolling, so why commit to somebody if they don't take all your boxes or you know, if they're a little bit weird, then yeah. It doesn't take much to think, well, I could just go back to the list and
speaker-1: There's a better option out there.
speaker-0: I think it does contribute to how willing people are to just commit to something that's in front of them. I do think there is this feeling of yeah, but I could just go back to scrolling again and and see what else is out there.
speaker-1: I think the the weight of all these options and all these choices is exhausting a lot of us and it's it's also feeling quite discouraging.
speaker-0: And you know what? Sometimes you just want someone to tell you like how to adult, you know? And I don't have to constantly weigh up all the different choices. You know, where's the manual for how you get to do this? It's like, could someone help me figure this out?
speaker-1: Yeah, I think you can't blame people for actually choosing certainty. ⁓ we are seeing a shift in the last few years of people choosing to go back to more traditional roles and expectations, even even gender roles. There's something that feels really seductive about just going back on that script and not having to make decisions. I think there's something just reassuring and just r just soothing and less exhausting about
speaker-0: Soothing.
speaker-1: Taking something off the shelf that you already know is a tried and true path.
speaker-0: seeing this now all around us, right? Like well, there's obviously the trad wife movement. This whole phenomena of like getting cosier with the aesthetic or the idea of just stepping into a role and not needing to prescribe something that might be off script, but just like being okay with what was previously there.
speaker-1: Yeah, having very constrained this is my role. You shared a clip with me earlier this week. There's this debate, I guess, between a trad wife and a and a feminist. And the trad wife was saying, You know, you don't know how great it is to just let someone else make the decisions for you, let someone else protect you and to just not feel like you have to do it all on your own. That was sort of their argument.
speaker-0: Yeah. And she's quite controversial because she's basically saying, Women don't need to vote. My husband will be voting for me. But I found it really fascinating because I was thinking to myself, like, what makes somebody want to have this perspective? What am I missing here, right? Because my my immediate reaction is, you know, the feminist movement is about equal opportunity for all. It's not about saying, I don't need to vote because somebody else will do it for me. But I see the appeal of saying, just give me a job description. And give me someone to protect me, you know, and I'll take care of the house admin and the kids and the cooking. I mean, we all need a wife. Like I could do with one, that that's quite helpful, you know. And I could do with a protector, that would be quite helpful too. But I don't think those two things like are mutually exclusive, you know? I think you can have freedom and equal rights and still have the opportunity to say, I can choose the amount of traditional role I want to play in my relationship. You can decide that between yourselves. I mean, just do what you want to do in the privacy of your own home. Why do you feel the need to then advertise that as something that needs to be anti opportunity for other people?
speaker-1: Well and certainly think if you choose to be a homemaker in your marriage, great. That is your choice. You know. The whole point
speaker-0: That's the point. It's a choice.
speaker-1: ⁓ it's nuts. The whole point you and I have made a point in this podcast of not lecturing anyone to choose a particular script. That's the whole thing. Choose the script of a trad wife, go have a great time. Different struggles for different folks.
speaker-0: Right. Exactly. Right. Exactly. The interesting question for me is like, what pressures of this modern custom build life where we're constantly self-defining ourselves? What is it that makes a very clearly defined role feel so appealing? It's obviously less exhausting. You ha you have to think less about how to show up. It's kind of like I don't want this many choices, so like constrain my choices. It's kind of a direct response to the paradox of choice. But also in some ways it's like asking, give me a very bounded role. And I think that's the bit that feels like a bit icky to me.
speaker-1: There's that comfort and ease with not only being told what to do, but also just the reassurance that you're doing the right thing. anime, I think this is probably really relevant to bring in this concept of anime. Emile Durkheim, French sociologist, came up with this term over a hundred years ago, end of the eighteen hundreds, that I think just has become more and more relevant ever since. I guess normlessness would be another way of putting it.
speaker-0: Mm.
speaker-1: What happens when the scripts in a society break down and the norms and standards disappear and suddenly people are left to make their own choices and make their own scripts. And Durkan doesn't talk about the toll it takes on society. He doesn't say, ⁓ like all hell breaks loose and we descend into anarchy. He talks about the toll it takes on the individual. Basically you're left adrift. And he describes it as the malady of the infinite because suddenly the options are endless. You and I have talked about this overwhelming sense of possibility.
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean it it feels like there is no definition of enough and maybe that's that's the malady.
speaker-1: Yeah. Durkheim calls it the insatiable will. Which man, honestly, really hits a terrifying chord with me. It like really hits something because like there's something about being bounded by the norms and expectations of society that can prevent you from just going crazy and can force you into a life that is actually perfectly fine. I also not to paddle in cultural stereotypes, but I kinda think it's really fitting that Durkheim is French 'cause I can't think of a society that just really celebrates freedom and libertine life just like breaking scripts and doing what you want. But at the same time, statistically, the French come up as the most miserable of all wealthy nations. Like they they test people's happiness and the French are also miserable. I don't know. Are they it's is it 'cause they're told they can have it all and they should always be breaking the scripts. I don't know. This is a very nondeviant thing for me to be suggesting. But I think there's a pain that comes with the freedom too.
speaker-0: Yeah. I mean it it also is amplified by the capitalist world we live in, right? We're just yet another marketing campaign cause swing us in a whole different direction again and just you know, when are we gonna reach peak consumption? We're constantly consuming, we're constantly chasing the next trend. We're at the hands of these product and marketing gurus who are just like dangling the next carrot for us. It's it's it's tantalizing, right? And they know exact ⁓
speaker-1: Product for idealizing your life.
speaker-0: It feels like exactly what we're talking about, you know, the the infinite, the better partner, the more meaningful job, there's gotta be a better city to settle down in for coal, you know. I think the deviance that's emerging here is that at some point you gotta put a fork in the ground, right? You gotta Yeah commit to Yeah. Yeah. Are you talking to yourself right now or Yes.
speaker-1: Drop anything. Cole just drop anchor already. Yeah. There's a you see the suitcase behind me.
speaker-0: it's literally there. It's ready to be packed again. Jinx. man. Yeah, I mean, come back to community for a minute because a huge part of the world still has it, right? A huge part of the world still has active, organized, faith based communities. For sure. And, you know, it's emotional, it's infrastructure, but people also share knowledge. Care, introductions, practical help, a sense of like identity and belonging. So it really goes deep. I was thinking before about, you know, we've mentioned before the individualist versus collectivist lens on community, and what does it mean to have a role within a wider community and how does that connect back to our tribal nature as humans, right? And instead of romanticizing the individualist life where we get all of the autonomy that we need. Like what is that right balance of duty without autonomy that can suffocate you, but autonomy without duty that becomes almost lonely and a bit like meaningless?
speaker-1: you know, my Mormon friend said the thing that drove her out of her belief system, if not away from the church, was the Mormon church's insistence on obedience. A lot of organized religion ⁓ has this sense of do as you're told. And I think it's very easy to have community without cult like falling in line and doing as you're told. I think you can have a nurturing, mutually supportive community where you're still allowed self determination. ⁓ even setting your own values. And I think we're fine I think us off scriptors are finding that in different ways. I think you can see a lot of ways that we're recreating community and still retaining that freedom. My mom goes to an episcopal church, Anglican as it's called in Britain. But there's this sort of joke that Anglicanism and Episcopalianism is Catholicism without the actual content. Like people go People go for the the liturgy. You go to see people in robes, lighting candles, saying some incantations. There's the ritual of mass without the heavy handedness of the Pope telling you what to do. So you get all the pomp and circumstance and beauty. There's a beauty to the ritual, free of the orthodoxy.
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, it connects back to the conversation we had with Fox and Badge, you know, we talked to them about how do we have ritual and collective participation in ways that, you know, we don't maybe have in modern life when we don't have the same kind of faith based rituals in everyday life.
speaker-1: Yeah, they've just started to very deliberately have these these ritual events of just coming together and it's you know, it's alcohol free, drug free during the daytime, people coming together and taking part in a ritual that is creating that sense of community and meaning. Yeah. Now they actually got that from they were inspired once they did the Shakti Rising event, they realized that there was a potential for for more ritual outside of just the festival nights they throw. ⁓ yeah, I don't know why I I can't tell you why ritual is
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Such an important human need, but people really seek it out, whether you're dropping mushrooms at Burning Man or going to church on a Sunday morning.
speaker-0: I mean it's it's bonding, right? Robert Putnam talks about social capital and he talks about how, you know, there's value created in being in networks of trust essentially, like there's reciprocity, there's mutuality in those in those networks. And he talks about two different types of social capital and one is essentially bonding, having close ties within a certain group. And sometimes that comes through a ritual, through shared norms. Right, as we're we're talking about. And and the other one is is bridging, which I actually Fox and Badge does beautifully in their their one night festivals where they're connecting across difference and inviting people in. And it's worth saying that like tight communities, as we see in many kind of religious communities, and you talk about your friend mentioning the following the rules, the cult like Yeah, and it's worth saying, you know, sometimes tight communities can like police conformity
speaker-1: Yeah, obedience.
speaker-0: to exclude other people and and maybe that's where that obedience angle comes in actually. I definitely felt it in religious communities that I've been part of as well. But there's a huge amount of bonding that happens through ritual and convention, I guess.
speaker-1: I I really love this idea of bonding and bridging and how they're both not only valid but really needed. I think it's not just allowable but beautiful to really bond with people over shared beliefs, ⁓ and maybe shared background, shared history. Yeah. But then you and I also know just how thrilling and beautiful it is to connect with people who aren't like you, to to learn from completely other ways of being. And other ways of seeing the world. You know, that's how we get to build our new script. ⁓ there's almost this like false debate of one or the other. It's again like this false thing of like, are you a feminist or are you a housewife? You can be both. ⁓ do you have like a chosen community, a chosen maybe even religious community? And do you also connect with people who aren't like you? I think a rich life includes both.
speaker-0: Yeah, actually that's such a nice way of also reflecting on us, Cole, because I think one of the things that really unites us is that we both seek out opportunities to see differently. We're curious about why somebody else's lens can be so different to our our own. I find that quite enriching in either in feeling like, no, no, this is the right choice for me, and in kind of almost finding self validation. that I've picked the thing that fits me well, but also in just understanding that it doesn't have to be a simple binary and that there can be multiple ways that people find joy.
speaker-1: It was cool sitting with a bunch of seventy and eighty year olds yesterday singing their favorite hymns. It was truly a it was truly a sacred experience because the Yeah. There was the connectedness to each other, but also connectedness to their core beliefs. we should all be so lucky to be able to participate in shared ritual like that.
speaker-0: That's beautiful. Yeah, I mean it's like the antidote to the loneliness crisis that we apparently are living through, right?
speaker-1: Yeah. I think what we keep going back to is thank goodness you and I have the freedom to make our own choices, but that also means we have the freedom to start limiting our choices. We have the freedom to start making a choice and sticking to it, to to drop anchor, to close a door, to put up some walls, to choose a community. You know, we've got the freedom to do that. Thank goodness. I need to learn how to get better at that.
speaker-0: Hmm. Yeah, in some ways I feel like motherhood is like a constraint in my life in some ways. You know, there is this role, this responsibility that I have that means that I don't have endless freedom. There is a bit of a cap to how much freedom of choice I do have because I've committed to something. And it doesn't feel oppressive. It feels meaningful for that very reason, right? So Yeah, are there times where I wish I had like more freedom to ⁓ do different things with my time? Of course. But then it's something that ain't changing in my life, you know, like can't take him back to the store. So it's like, you know this is also beautiful, messy, loud, sometimes amazing part of life. And in many ways it's an example of that, like make a decision and stick to it.
speaker-1: Thanks.
speaker-0: It's like now some things that are ruled out so I don't even think about them, actually. They're no longer options in my world right now. And I'm gonna liberate it of that. So I've got freedom from freedom. How's that for deviants?
speaker-1: Love it. Ruth Chang talks about this idea that commitment can create reasons. That a lot of us are just desperately looking for reason and meaning. But once you find yourself committed to something, that actually suddenly you you find a reason. And I think parenthood is a really beautiful example and a powerful one. She actually talks about romantic relationships. Like maybe we've got it sort of backwards. It's not about finding someone to fall in love with and then sticking to them. It's actually about committing to someone and then realizing all the beautiful things that this person gives you. Yeah. Finding love from this person that you've chosen to commit to.
speaker-0: Yeah. It's nice. I mean, obviously there needs to be some basic level of compatibility, but then yeah, beyond that, you have the opportunity to grow together and not be tick boxes. I mean, in many ways I think that's a lot of marriages, right? Like people once they get over, you know, the honeymoon period or whatever you call it. I remember being there and I remember thinking, you know, this is a commitment I've made to this person, this human being, and they're constantly changing, and so am I. And There are gonna be good bits and bad bits. And so, like, how do we just get through life in a way that optimizes for all the good stuff? And we do our best to move through some of the things that feel less good, but we're still committed to each other. You know, and I think that's maybe how a lot of people's marriages endure the distance, right? How they go the long haul.
speaker-1: Yep. Naila, on this podcast we've talked about the appeal of surrender before. And it almost feels like we're saying there's an appeal to just let some walls get built around us, let ourselves get stuck in place, surrendering to to what life has given us in a way.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's funny, right? It's it's almost like a paradox in itself, but surrender, it can feel liberating in the bedroom, but yet terrifying in life, right?
speaker-1: Yeah. Which I guess, you know, I think that was one of the big conclusions from that episode about Shabari and being tied up. Yeah. When we are exhausting ourselves in the real world trying to optimize and trying to chart our own path, it's really great to just give ourselves a break in the bedroom.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and maybe that that works vice versa, right? Like sometimes take control in the bedroom and let go in real life. Switch it out. Switch it out, guys. Yeah, I think what's really interesting as a parallel between kink and being tied and life in the way we're talking about liberation and freedom is that being bound can have two meanings, right? Like it can be either coerced Or it can be something that you choose to attach to or choose to choose as choose as healthy Yeah. Yeah, something healthy, right? So what does it mean when we almost become too scared or too frightened to be bound by something? I I think it could be a really great place to self reflect, right?
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. You drawn a really important distinction. You're talking about two completely different things. You're talking about the passive getting bound to something, getting tied up somewhere with it wasn't your choice, and then choosing to attach yourself to something.
speaker-0: Mm.
speaker-1: Choosing where you want to fit, where you want to to put roots. And those are two completely different things.
speaker-0: Yeah. And it I think it's hard to know what surrender looks like in life, right? I've been writing about this on my Substack, but one of the things that I realized was that my own definition of what surrender looked like in life seemed to be really passive. It was like, ⁓ just I guess I'll just like sit here and wait. And I was like, wait a minute. This doesn't feel like something I'm choosing. And it also doesn't seem like a smart idea. So I started to think about Surrender as something you participate in. You know, how do I participate in expanding opportunities and creating opportunities and then surrender to how they might unfold rather than having a very specific end in mind or a very defined version of what success would look like. And it's a bit like how people say it's the journey, not the destination. Whatever. Sure. But it but I think what I found helpful about it was like it reminded me of like where I was being quite rigid about what it needed to look like for it to be worthy or successful or something that I that I wanted. And there's a good balance in there somewhere. There is like a Goldilocks zone of how do I learn from my experience in life of like what I do and don't want and what I do and don't like and desire. But also how do I leave enough openness to reach for something that's here that might be here already? Instead of saying it has to take this one form before it takes all my boxes.
speaker-1: Yeah, because the same can really be said for our own standards of optimizing our life and self optimization. You said that modern world tells us five hundred different ways to pursue self-optimization, be the best version of ourselves. But what can end up happening is we just keep chasing and chasing. And then we start monitoring, we start measuring ourselves against these rubrics. And then we end up just getting really down on ourselves. We end up just Drowning in self-criticism and even self-rejection. Yeah. Just deciding that who we are isn't good enough. We we develop this really unhealthy relationship with ourselves.
speaker-0: So true. Yeah, I I feel like I'm at that point where I'm just a bit done with the constant reach for self-improvement. Because part of the joy of life is also leaving room for spontaneity and for, you know, magic to happen sometimes. And we talked a little bit in our last episode about impermanence and I think it connects to this idea of like being with what's present and making it enough rather than constantly needing it to be better or to be different or something else and Everything's always changing. So everything is impermanent by nature, right? Whether that's people or bodies or relationships or careers or identities. So I think it's a really important opportunity to just kind of step back and ask yourself like, how can I fully participate in the life that exists for me right now? Rather than constantly treating the present as a waiting room. or like not good enough for for the better version of me that's gonna come later, you know? It's exhausting.
speaker-1: And th this is what we wanted anyway by going off script was the freedom, right? Just the freedom to to experience life, the freedom for spontaneity, the freedom to be surprised.
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. Like sometimes I think if my life continued like this for another six months, would I be okay with that? And you know, often the answer is yes, because I can appreciate and have gratitude for all the things I love about my life. And I think that for me is an antidote to this never enoughness culture is just saying, actually there are a lot of things about my life I love. So let's continue to nurture this and put some stakes in the ground and, you know, continue to deepen into this rather than stay at a slightly superficial level so I've got optionality to go for something different.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, we're not talking about settling. or just learning to put up with the lot you've been dealt in life. I think a really cool word that came up in our research for this episode is devotion, which is a little ironic or maybe fitting because to me that's a very spiritual word. I only think about devotion in a church context. You know, devote yourself to your beliefs. But devotion is about Committing yourself to something. And what we're talking about is choosing to really commit to the life you've chosen for yourself, really digging in, making a commitment to the things that are important to you, whether that's community or career or family or partner or place. There's something about sustained engagement, and that's where meaning comes from. Susan Wolfe has this whole piece on happiness and meaning, and it comes from The sustained commitment to things that give you worth. And I think that's all we're saying, devoting yourself to what you know is going to give you meaning and purpose and joy. ⁓
speaker-0: Wow, I love that.
speaker-1: Right. I think it's time for us crazy heathens to rethink devotion and what we want to devote ourselves to.
speaker-0: I'm gonna ask you that next time we speak. What are you devoting yourself to this week, Cole?
speaker-1: I'll try to be ready. All right. I love it. ⁓
speaker-0: Time for you to put some stakes in the ground, my friend. Yeah, I love it. And maybe that's like a really nice place to end actually and a question to leave with everyone who's listening, you know? How do we build a life with enough freedom to be ourselves, enough structure to belong, and enough devotion to really go deep into what gives us self worth?
speaker-1: Honestly. Mm. We got this. We can do it.
speaker-0: Totally. Love it. I love this conversation.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean it's I'm feeling a sense of relief realizing that we don't have to keep chasing the perfect life for us. We just have to really lean into what we know gives us joy and meaning. And I think that's a lot easier question for me to answer than how do I achieve excellence and perfection?
speaker-0: Exactly. Yeah, that's a bit ick. All right. Well, we'll stick to the devotion from now on. How about that? Great. All right, everyone. Thanks for listening.
speaker-1: Yeah. Thank you everyone. This has been great, Nila. I love getting real with you.
speaker-0: Yeah and until next time.
speaker-1: Stay kind, stay curious, and stay just a little bit deviant. Bye everyone.
speaker-0: See ya. Bye.
speaker-1: Yeah. Most of us were given a cookie cutter template for how to live, love, and succeed. But what if you don't fit that mold? What if you're ready to live a little differently, even if that makes you the odd one out?
speaker-0: We're Nyla and Cole, two people questioning the systems, the stories, and the identities that shape us. From politics to pleasure, culture to connection, this is where taboo meets truth.
speaker-1: If you've ever felt like a black sheep, cycle breaker, or someone who doesn't quite fit the cookie cutter mold, then you're a deviant just like us. ⁓ I think we might be shocking a lot of our regular listeners because for once we're gonna be singing the praises of tradition and script after, you know, talking about how great it is to break the chains and get off script. We're gonna be talking about actually what's lost when you step away from. structures and traditions that we grew up in. Even talking about how beautiful something like tradition can be.
speaker-0: Yeah, and it might be a bit of a therapy session for both of us. But let's see.
speaker-1: I I think we're gonna get pretty real. I mean, you and I have talked a lot about this just between the two of us. Going off script is hard because there's so much that can get left behind. There's structure and meaning and clarity about what we're even doing in this life that can disappear and it can feel like the the rug gets pulled out from under us.
speaker-0: I think also it's easy and simplistic to draw binaries here and say, you know, the old script was bad, the new script is good and life is just so much more nuanced than that. So I think it's gonna be helpful just to make space for the overlaps, right? Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, and also just realizing that ⁓ because you've moved on from something, it doesn't mean it all needs to be tossed in the bin. ⁓ I think it's really important to to think about what your childhood gave you that was working. And then gives you a chance to say, okay, can I find that in another way? Do I have to give that up? We don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This is a very timely topic for me actually, because just yesterday, for the first time in over a decade, I set foot in the church where I grew up as a kid. yeah, which was you can imagine ⁓ a pretty intense experience. sort of did my head in. So my dad misses singing traditional hymns. But in most Protestant churches now, praise music is rock and roll, bass guitar, drums, and my dad, who's in his eighties, just really misses singing hymns from a hymnal. And he took it on himself to organize an afternoon.
speaker-0: ⁓
speaker-1: Where people could come and sing their favorite hymns. And I went along to support. And so actually for both my dad and me, it was a return to this familiarity. Yeah. And I was there with all these gray hairs. And it was actually really beautiful seeing them singing all their favorite songs that they hadn't had a chance to sing together in decades and see what it meant for them to be together, reconnecting with these songs from their childhood and from the beginning of their faith. It was powerful to be a part of that.
speaker-0: ⁓ my god, can we have a minute for your dad and how cute he is and his little posse? So cute.
speaker-1: He spent weeks playing 'cause he he did the piano for it. He spent weeks and weeks practicing and Yeah. So like for at all ages, there's something really powerful about connecting with what was meaningful to you decades ago. Yeah, no, my dad's a cutie. Shout out to him.
speaker-0: There's also something quite beautiful about singing together, you know, whether that's in a choir or or otherwise. I think it touches on something that does things to our nervous system, you know? Or connects to that feeling of like being part of something bigger than yourself.
speaker-1: Yeah, there's that connectedness. I mean, even, you know, hymns have harmonies. So everyone was harmonizing together. You're you're creating something bigger from the sum of all these different parts. You get into this place of connectedness and devotion. People really got emotional. It was beautiful. ⁓ the other thing that's really timely about this topic is just a week ago I reconnected with an old high school friend. I hadn't seen her in two decades. She was raised Mormon, and the big headline.
speaker-0: I kind of love it.
speaker-1: In her life since I've seen her is that she has pretty much abandoned her faith. She says she now believes like five percent of what she was taught growing up, but she still goes to church every Sunday and she takes her kids and her husband to church every Sunday.
speaker-0: How interesting. So she likes the ritual still and she still wants to engage in the the routine or or like the comfort of that.
speaker-1: Isn't it fascinating? Ritual. I think it's I think it's so many things. The community, the structure, the values that the church teaches her kids, the sense of belonging. She she sort of feels like an infidel, like she's afraid that one of these days she's gonna get caught. But until then she's still getting all this meaning out of it, which I think is fascinating.
speaker-0: Is fascinating because I guess it shows how complex these feelings can be, right? Because so I I'm not religious anymore, but I think most faiths have a beautiful foundation of you know, love actually. Be a good person, be a good human being. Yeah, also like take care of each other, you know, and they have their own expressions of it, but ultimately it's about being kind and loving to others. So
speaker-1: Exactly.
speaker-0: I totally resonate with why she'd want to have that kind of community around her. Also specifically actually for her kids, because my first instinct was, ⁓ wow. Like so she's open to her kids continuing to learn about these values from a faith based lens, even when she doesn't believe in it anymore. Right. But actually, now I think about it, there is so much to gain when you have more people teaching your kids and you're not just doing the whole parenting thing you know yourselves, like ⁓ mom and dad are are teaching you rather than like the whole community is here to participate in what children learn.
speaker-1: When it's when it's the village who's setting an example.
speaker-0: Yeah, and usually, you know, when people talk about how it takes a village, usually they're talking about like childcare or you having physical time and space to do other things like go to work or go out or have friends. But maybe a deeper part of that is also the learning doesn't only come from mum and dad, it comes from uncle and aunt and grandparent and, you know, person in the church who's close to my parents. And so I can see why your friend doesn't want to lose that, right?
speaker-1: Yeah. So before we dive further into all of this, Nyla, tell me what else do you feel like you've left behind and that you miss from the time before you chose to go your own way, go off script, as we love to say.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's a good question, and the obvious one is like practical things like having the kind of family infrastructure, at least in my case, there's no place to turn to just to be nourished or to feel safe. So that feels like the most practical loss. But I think it's also like the web of family that comes together, you know, children and siblings and parents and cousins and And th there's almost kind of a a family identity that's moving through the generations. We're not independent units, you know, and I kind of feel like I'm an independent unit now. I still would make these choices, but there is a real sense of loss around having a connection to those multiple generations, but also the web of connections.
speaker-1: I it sounds lonely.
speaker-0: It is it is lonely and I I I I kind of feel it for myself, but as an adult, I can kind of co-create a community that nourishes me, right? I also feel it for my next generation, right? My son. I have actively to create a community for him as well, because he's not as connected to the sense of intergenerational history and you know family history and connection. Really your friend story is making me reflect on how the layers of that or the expression of that really forms in how I raise my son too, in in thinking about who the role models are and who the safe people are and where are the places where he can turn to, apart from, you know, the two parents, the two adults in his life. So that's probably the biggest thing I'd I'd say. Yeah. What about you?
speaker-1: ⁓ I keep going back to this this sense of certainty about the world that I really miss. This clarity of purpose. You know, when you're given all the answers to the universe as a little kid, it feels great. And then when you suddenly have these seeds of doubt and you start questioning things, and then you start building your own worldview, ⁓ I've described it before as like building this house and then the house just sort of collapses and I'm left with like this framework. I've got like this scaffolding of values and ways I want to conduct myself in the world, but it doesn't have any sort of purpose or meaning or mission around it. Like I s I don't really know what I'm here for anymore. And it's actually pretty unnerving, if I'm gonna be honest with you. Wow. and I've I feel like I've been just trying to rebuild in different ways.
speaker-0: Hmm. It's kind of like the North Star that you have, right? When you follow a vision or an ideology for how life should be, in some ways, like it's easier because you don't have to create a future vision or a future definition of what a good life looks like or what the definition of of a life well lived should be. It's almost laid out for you. So you just need to kind of follow the guidelines.
speaker-1: Yeah, and ⁓ you know, the search for meaning and truth is frankly exhausting. I I don't think we say enough how just being a critical thinker in search of personal meaning is exhausting and often miserable because I don't think there personally at this point in my life I don't think there's one answer to be found. I think you are committing yourself to a life of asking questions. And it's a lot easier to have answers than it is to ask questions.
speaker-0: That's true. And maybe when we start to feel like that it's time to like slow down and ask less questions. I Yeah. I'm reminded of maybe four or five years ago after my divorce, I was trying to like expand my definition of what does it mean to live a good life or what what is the definition of a rich life? And in that spirit I started to write lists every day or just kind of journal about what does it mean to live a rich life.
speaker-1: Yeah. Amen. Hallelujah.
speaker-0: ended up being a lot about meaning and purpose and like thinking about where that comes from. Some of it comes from work, of course, right? Doing things every day at work that are important to you and feel like you're able to contribute to something that matters. But a lot of it actually comes from relationships and the people I choose to spend my time with. I really wanted freedom from this sense of obligation in the communities that I was in. But I didn't want to become totally untangled, you know? Like I didn't want to lose everything. And it it connects back to your friend's example, right? Of like, how do I curate a life where I get to keep the best bits? You know, the bits that I that really help me feel useful in a community, help me feel connected to other people. It's like there are all of these different ingredients to what brings, you know, flavor into life, right? And I think part of what I've uncovered really is also that. freedom, liberation, stepping into off script, whatever you want to call it, it can kind of turn into this giant custom build of life, you know, like where you're designing every part of your life. There's so many options. They almost become a bit debilitating, you know?
speaker-1: I mean it sounds great in theory, but I think both of us have realized that it can be a crutch in the end and can be a little overwhelming.
speaker-0: Yeah. It carps back to the paradox of choice, right? Schwartz, he talks about how beyond a certain point, options just create paralysis. Mm-hmm. They create regret. They create self-blame. And it makes me think of when I go into you know Hotel Chocolat? The chocolate shop. You don't know Well, there's a chocolate shop called Hotel Chocolat. Okay. As you can imagine, you walk in and
speaker-1: No. British ⁓ thing.
speaker-0: You're surrounded by like a whole wall of amazing chocolates, like truffles and all sorts of things, different sizes, different flavors. It's amazing. And they lure you in with, you know, three bees on a tray and they're standing at the door and come and have a look. And and then you get in there and I I just don't know where to turn. Like there are so many permutations and varieties and options. Like the overwhelm means that I literally I look around and I just walk out. With nothing. And actually then I don't even want it. It does something to my brain where I'm just like, ⁓ no thanks. It's too hard.
speaker-1: Yep. I mean I can just relate way too well. I I feel like I have no right to complain about this, but you know, I've like a good millennial with two loving parents, I was taught that I could achieve anything I wanted to. I could I could chase my dreams. Yeah. And I went into adulthood with that mindset. Not only that, but I just have this voracious appetite for variety and newness. But I think it really it really has been a curse for me.
speaker-0: Mm.
speaker-1: the sense that I can like be anything I want because I look on it decades later and ⁓ it's actually been debilitating. I mean I I feel really spoiled saying this, but
speaker-0: No, no. I mean, of course, these are all first world problems, right? But like do you feel like you're stuck in that paralysis point? There's just too many options here and I kinda wanna keep options open because otherwise I'm closing myself off to things.
speaker-1: Yeah, frankly, I think it's the I think it's the biggest double edged sword of my off script journey. You know, I have chucked out all the scripts, I've burnt ⁓ in a big bonfire, and then I'm like, Well crap, what now?
speaker-0: ⁓ man, it's it's actually really important to have constraints, I think. Like creativity, innovation, all of these things. We need constraints, right? We need things that like get in the way and hold us back or force a decision in a certain way that's suboptimal because you haven't got all the choices in the world. And so in a way, life works similarly. We almost need something to constrain us that becomes a forcing mechanism for us to make a decision.
speaker-1: I mean I I've been pretty nomadic for the last few years and I I won't say digital nomad because I think it gives a lot of us the ick factor. But I have been ⁓ I I don't know, people think it th they imagine you in some Bali co working space which ⁓ I have been ⁓ before. I've you know, spent a month at a co working space in Bali. But that's neither here nor there. Yeah, exactly. Don't tell anyone.
speaker-0: What's it to that?
speaker-1: And yeah, I I mean it's also just in my nature to travel. I'm curious. I'm an explorer. But then I find myself thinking, well, I'll I'll drop anchor when I find the ideal fit. I'll stay put when I find what I'm looking for. But the more laps I do of the globe, the more options I see. And I think my my ideal becomes further and further away. It becomes more and more hard to pin down what I'm even looking for.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's it's like you're like constantly optimizing for for life, like constantly optimizing for every situation, right? So nothing actually quite fits.
speaker-1: I've got these two friends who always we get together for brunch and they say, So how are you pursuing excellence this week? And
speaker-0: I love them.
speaker-1: I I mean I think they're pursuing excellence in lots of very impressive ways, but I think the bar just keeps getting higher and higher and higher and the rubric keeps getting more and more complex and then we're just constantly chasing things, never feeling like we've landed. It I'm just I feel like I'm chasing my tail around the globe, frankly, because I'm pursuing this this optimized life, which doesn't exist. I just keep reaching higher and higher and this you know, the ceiling keeps moving higher and higher. I'm thinking of Tantalus, you know, it's a Greek myth. Tantalus was sentenced to hell and his punishment was reaching for things that just always get out of reach, reaching for fruit on a branch, but the branch like pulls away and then bending down to drink water and the river like shrinks away. That's where we get the word tantalizing because you're constantly tantalized by these options, but they're not actually available. And I think a lot of us lock ourselves into our own mental hell of thinking we're surrounded by options. But none of them are actually good enough for us. And so we don't actually choose anything. I I was reading about some studies on maximizing versus satisficing, which is I'm pretty sure a word of these researchers made up. But satisficing. So this this one study groups everyone into one of two camps. Either you're a maximizer, you keep trying to identify the very best possible choice for yourself, or you're a satisficer who
speaker-0: Spicing.
speaker-1: Chooses something that meets your standards and then you stop searching. And shock of the century, Nyla, which one of these two groups do you think shows higher life satisfaction and happiness?
speaker-0: I thought you were gonna ask me which one do you think I am?
speaker-1: We don't need to label coal at all. No.
speaker-0: No, we don't do labels, as we said.
speaker-1: No, we reject labels. But ⁓ yeah, maximizers they show more regret. They're more consumed with social comparison. they're questioning their decisions more often. Yeah. And that leads to lower life satisfaction and and lower happiness.
speaker-0: What's that research that also suggests that people always want to make like reversible decisions? Yes. That that movie, what was it? With Gwyneth Paltrow, Sliding Doors.
speaker-1: Sliding doors. That's really interesting too. So if you ask someone, do you want to make a decision that's a point of no return or that you can change your mind? Everyone says, ⁓ I'd love to be able to change my mind. But study after study shows that the points of no return decisions people feel better about. It's this I guess having optionality.
speaker-0: Well they just commit. They commit and then they don't sit there thinking, ⁓ I wonder if I should have picked the other one. Maybe the other life would have been better. So it's like there's no what ifs anymore.
speaker-1: It closes that that mental what if in your mind. It shuts that door and then you just you move on with your life. Yeah. The most illustrative example for me, the one that really helped me get this, was a study back in two thousand two they did with photography students. These students took a bunch of photos and then they were asked to choose from the prints they had made. And one group was told that the choice they made was final. They had to stick with this print. And then another group was told, actually you can exchange this later. And everyone wanted the second option, like, ⁓ I wanna be able to change my mind. But the ones who had to take a choice and stuck with it ended up really being proud of their print more and really liking their print and and being proud of their artwork as opposed to the ones who were just stuck in this what if mode. And man, I just relate to that so much.
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean I'm thinking about how this applies in life and yeah, the obvious example is dating culture, right? Like a lot of online dating and app culture is really at the mercy of this kind of paradox of choice of like, you could just keep scrolling, so why commit to somebody if they don't take all your boxes or you know, if they're a little bit weird, then yeah. It doesn't take much to think, well, I could just go back to the list and
speaker-1: There's a better option out there.
speaker-0: I think it does contribute to how willing people are to just commit to something that's in front of them. I do think there is this feeling of yeah, but I could just go back to scrolling again and and see what else is out there.
speaker-1: I think the the weight of all these options and all these choices is exhausting a lot of us and it's it's also feeling quite discouraging.
speaker-0: And you know what? Sometimes you just want someone to tell you like how to adult, you know? And I don't have to constantly weigh up all the different choices. You know, where's the manual for how you get to do this? It's like, could someone help me figure this out?
speaker-1: Yeah, I think you can't blame people for actually choosing certainty. ⁓ we are seeing a shift in the last few years of people choosing to go back to more traditional roles and expectations, even even gender roles. There's something that feels really seductive about just going back on that script and not having to make decisions. I think there's something just reassuring and just r just soothing and less exhausting about
speaker-0: Soothing.
speaker-1: Taking something off the shelf that you already know is a tried and true path.
speaker-0: seeing this now all around us, right? Like well, there's obviously the trad wife movement. This whole phenomena of like getting cosier with the aesthetic or the idea of just stepping into a role and not needing to prescribe something that might be off script, but just like being okay with what was previously there.
speaker-1: Yeah, having very constrained this is my role. You shared a clip with me earlier this week. There's this debate, I guess, between a trad wife and a and a feminist. And the trad wife was saying, You know, you don't know how great it is to just let someone else make the decisions for you, let someone else protect you and to just not feel like you have to do it all on your own. That was sort of their argument.
speaker-0: Yeah. And she's quite controversial because she's basically saying, Women don't need to vote. My husband will be voting for me. But I found it really fascinating because I was thinking to myself, like, what makes somebody want to have this perspective? What am I missing here, right? Because my my immediate reaction is, you know, the feminist movement is about equal opportunity for all. It's not about saying, I don't need to vote because somebody else will do it for me. But I see the appeal of saying, just give me a job description. And give me someone to protect me, you know, and I'll take care of the house admin and the kids and the cooking. I mean, we all need a wife. Like I could do with one, that that's quite helpful, you know. And I could do with a protector, that would be quite helpful too. But I don't think those two things like are mutually exclusive, you know? I think you can have freedom and equal rights and still have the opportunity to say, I can choose the amount of traditional role I want to play in my relationship. You can decide that between yourselves. I mean, just do what you want to do in the privacy of your own home. Why do you feel the need to then advertise that as something that needs to be anti opportunity for other people?
speaker-1: Well and certainly think if you choose to be a homemaker in your marriage, great. That is your choice. You know. The whole point
speaker-0: That's the point. It's a choice.
speaker-1: ⁓ it's nuts. The whole point you and I have made a point in this podcast of not lecturing anyone to choose a particular script. That's the whole thing. Choose the script of a trad wife, go have a great time. Different struggles for different folks.
speaker-0: Right. Exactly. Right. Exactly. The interesting question for me is like, what pressures of this modern custom build life where we're constantly self-defining ourselves? What is it that makes a very clearly defined role feel so appealing? It's obviously less exhausting. You ha you have to think less about how to show up. It's kind of like I don't want this many choices, so like constrain my choices. It's kind of a direct response to the paradox of choice. But also in some ways it's like asking, give me a very bounded role. And I think that's the bit that feels like a bit icky to me.
speaker-1: There's that comfort and ease with not only being told what to do, but also just the reassurance that you're doing the right thing. anime, I think this is probably really relevant to bring in this concept of anime. Emile Durkheim, French sociologist, came up with this term over a hundred years ago, end of the eighteen hundreds, that I think just has become more and more relevant ever since. I guess normlessness would be another way of putting it.
speaker-0: Mm.
speaker-1: What happens when the scripts in a society break down and the norms and standards disappear and suddenly people are left to make their own choices and make their own scripts. And Durkan doesn't talk about the toll it takes on society. He doesn't say, ⁓ like all hell breaks loose and we descend into anarchy. He talks about the toll it takes on the individual. Basically you're left adrift. And he describes it as the malady of the infinite because suddenly the options are endless. You and I have talked about this overwhelming sense of possibility.
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean it it feels like there is no definition of enough and maybe that's that's the malady.
speaker-1: Yeah. Durkheim calls it the insatiable will. Which man, honestly, really hits a terrifying chord with me. It like really hits something because like there's something about being bounded by the norms and expectations of society that can prevent you from just going crazy and can force you into a life that is actually perfectly fine. I also not to paddle in cultural stereotypes, but I kinda think it's really fitting that Durkheim is French 'cause I can't think of a society that just really celebrates freedom and libertine life just like breaking scripts and doing what you want. But at the same time, statistically, the French come up as the most miserable of all wealthy nations. Like they they test people's happiness and the French are also miserable. I don't know. Are they it's is it 'cause they're told they can have it all and they should always be breaking the scripts. I don't know. This is a very nondeviant thing for me to be suggesting. But I think there's a pain that comes with the freedom too.
speaker-0: Yeah. I mean it it also is amplified by the capitalist world we live in, right? We're just yet another marketing campaign cause swing us in a whole different direction again and just you know, when are we gonna reach peak consumption? We're constantly consuming, we're constantly chasing the next trend. We're at the hands of these product and marketing gurus who are just like dangling the next carrot for us. It's it's it's tantalizing, right? And they know exact ⁓
speaker-1: Product for idealizing your life.
speaker-0: It feels like exactly what we're talking about, you know, the the infinite, the better partner, the more meaningful job, there's gotta be a better city to settle down in for coal, you know. I think the deviance that's emerging here is that at some point you gotta put a fork in the ground, right? You gotta Yeah commit to Yeah. Yeah. Are you talking to yourself right now or Yes.
speaker-1: Drop anything. Cole just drop anchor already. Yeah. There's a you see the suitcase behind me.
speaker-0: it's literally there. It's ready to be packed again. Jinx. man. Yeah, I mean, come back to community for a minute because a huge part of the world still has it, right? A huge part of the world still has active, organized, faith based communities. For sure. And, you know, it's emotional, it's infrastructure, but people also share knowledge. Care, introductions, practical help, a sense of like identity and belonging. So it really goes deep. I was thinking before about, you know, we've mentioned before the individualist versus collectivist lens on community, and what does it mean to have a role within a wider community and how does that connect back to our tribal nature as humans, right? And instead of romanticizing the individualist life where we get all of the autonomy that we need. Like what is that right balance of duty without autonomy that can suffocate you, but autonomy without duty that becomes almost lonely and a bit like meaningless?
speaker-1: you know, my Mormon friend said the thing that drove her out of her belief system, if not away from the church, was the Mormon church's insistence on obedience. A lot of organized religion ⁓ has this sense of do as you're told. And I think it's very easy to have community without cult like falling in line and doing as you're told. I think you can have a nurturing, mutually supportive community where you're still allowed self determination. ⁓ even setting your own values. And I think we're fine I think us off scriptors are finding that in different ways. I think you can see a lot of ways that we're recreating community and still retaining that freedom. My mom goes to an episcopal church, Anglican as it's called in Britain. But there's this sort of joke that Anglicanism and Episcopalianism is Catholicism without the actual content. Like people go People go for the the liturgy. You go to see people in robes, lighting candles, saying some incantations. There's the ritual of mass without the heavy handedness of the Pope telling you what to do. So you get all the pomp and circumstance and beauty. There's a beauty to the ritual, free of the orthodoxy.
speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, it connects back to the conversation we had with Fox and Badge, you know, we talked to them about how do we have ritual and collective participation in ways that, you know, we don't maybe have in modern life when we don't have the same kind of faith based rituals in everyday life.
speaker-1: Yeah, they've just started to very deliberately have these these ritual events of just coming together and it's you know, it's alcohol free, drug free during the daytime, people coming together and taking part in a ritual that is creating that sense of community and meaning. Yeah. Now they actually got that from they were inspired once they did the Shakti Rising event, they realized that there was a potential for for more ritual outside of just the festival nights they throw. ⁓ yeah, I don't know why I I can't tell you why ritual is
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Such an important human need, but people really seek it out, whether you're dropping mushrooms at Burning Man or going to church on a Sunday morning.
speaker-0: I mean it's it's bonding, right? Robert Putnam talks about social capital and he talks about how, you know, there's value created in being in networks of trust essentially, like there's reciprocity, there's mutuality in those in those networks. And he talks about two different types of social capital and one is essentially bonding, having close ties within a certain group. And sometimes that comes through a ritual, through shared norms. Right, as we're we're talking about. And and the other one is is bridging, which I actually Fox and Badge does beautifully in their their one night festivals where they're connecting across difference and inviting people in. And it's worth saying that like tight communities, as we see in many kind of religious communities, and you talk about your friend mentioning the following the rules, the cult like Yeah, and it's worth saying, you know, sometimes tight communities can like police conformity
speaker-1: Yeah, obedience.
speaker-0: to exclude other people and and maybe that's where that obedience angle comes in actually. I definitely felt it in religious communities that I've been part of as well. But there's a huge amount of bonding that happens through ritual and convention, I guess.
speaker-1: I I really love this idea of bonding and bridging and how they're both not only valid but really needed. I think it's not just allowable but beautiful to really bond with people over shared beliefs, ⁓ and maybe shared background, shared history. Yeah. But then you and I also know just how thrilling and beautiful it is to connect with people who aren't like you, to to learn from completely other ways of being. And other ways of seeing the world. You know, that's how we get to build our new script. ⁓ there's almost this like false debate of one or the other. It's again like this false thing of like, are you a feminist or are you a housewife? You can be both. ⁓ do you have like a chosen community, a chosen maybe even religious community? And do you also connect with people who aren't like you? I think a rich life includes both.
speaker-0: Yeah, actually that's such a nice way of also reflecting on us, Cole, because I think one of the things that really unites us is that we both seek out opportunities to see differently. We're curious about why somebody else's lens can be so different to our our own. I find that quite enriching in either in feeling like, no, no, this is the right choice for me, and in kind of almost finding self validation. that I've picked the thing that fits me well, but also in just understanding that it doesn't have to be a simple binary and that there can be multiple ways that people find joy.
speaker-1: It was cool sitting with a bunch of seventy and eighty year olds yesterday singing their favorite hymns. It was truly a it was truly a sacred experience because the Yeah. There was the connectedness to each other, but also connectedness to their core beliefs. we should all be so lucky to be able to participate in shared ritual like that.
speaker-0: That's beautiful. Yeah, I mean it's like the antidote to the loneliness crisis that we apparently are living through, right?
speaker-1: Yeah. I think what we keep going back to is thank goodness you and I have the freedom to make our own choices, but that also means we have the freedom to start limiting our choices. We have the freedom to start making a choice and sticking to it, to to drop anchor, to close a door, to put up some walls, to choose a community. You know, we've got the freedom to do that. Thank goodness. I need to learn how to get better at that.
speaker-0: Hmm. Yeah, in some ways I feel like motherhood is like a constraint in my life in some ways. You know, there is this role, this responsibility that I have that means that I don't have endless freedom. There is a bit of a cap to how much freedom of choice I do have because I've committed to something. And it doesn't feel oppressive. It feels meaningful for that very reason, right? So Yeah, are there times where I wish I had like more freedom to ⁓ do different things with my time? Of course. But then it's something that ain't changing in my life, you know, like can't take him back to the store. So it's like, you know this is also beautiful, messy, loud, sometimes amazing part of life. And in many ways it's an example of that, like make a decision and stick to it.
speaker-1: Thanks.
speaker-0: It's like now some things that are ruled out so I don't even think about them, actually. They're no longer options in my world right now. And I'm gonna liberate it of that. So I've got freedom from freedom. How's that for deviants?
speaker-1: Love it. Ruth Chang talks about this idea that commitment can create reasons. That a lot of us are just desperately looking for reason and meaning. But once you find yourself committed to something, that actually suddenly you you find a reason. And I think parenthood is a really beautiful example and a powerful one. She actually talks about romantic relationships. Like maybe we've got it sort of backwards. It's not about finding someone to fall in love with and then sticking to them. It's actually about committing to someone and then realizing all the beautiful things that this person gives you. Yeah. Finding love from this person that you've chosen to commit to.
speaker-0: Yeah. It's nice. I mean, obviously there needs to be some basic level of compatibility, but then yeah, beyond that, you have the opportunity to grow together and not be tick boxes. I mean, in many ways I think that's a lot of marriages, right? Like people once they get over, you know, the honeymoon period or whatever you call it. I remember being there and I remember thinking, you know, this is a commitment I've made to this person, this human being, and they're constantly changing, and so am I. And There are gonna be good bits and bad bits. And so, like, how do we just get through life in a way that optimizes for all the good stuff? And we do our best to move through some of the things that feel less good, but we're still committed to each other. You know, and I think that's maybe how a lot of people's marriages endure the distance, right? How they go the long haul.
speaker-1: Yep. Naila, on this podcast we've talked about the appeal of surrender before. And it almost feels like we're saying there's an appeal to just let some walls get built around us, let ourselves get stuck in place, surrendering to to what life has given us in a way.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's funny, right? It's it's almost like a paradox in itself, but surrender, it can feel liberating in the bedroom, but yet terrifying in life, right?
speaker-1: Yeah. Which I guess, you know, I think that was one of the big conclusions from that episode about Shabari and being tied up. Yeah. When we are exhausting ourselves in the real world trying to optimize and trying to chart our own path, it's really great to just give ourselves a break in the bedroom.
speaker-0: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and maybe that that works vice versa, right? Like sometimes take control in the bedroom and let go in real life. Switch it out. Switch it out, guys. Yeah, I think what's really interesting as a parallel between kink and being tied and life in the way we're talking about liberation and freedom is that being bound can have two meanings, right? Like it can be either coerced Or it can be something that you choose to attach to or choose to choose as choose as healthy Yeah. Yeah, something healthy, right? So what does it mean when we almost become too scared or too frightened to be bound by something? I I think it could be a really great place to self reflect, right?
speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. You drawn a really important distinction. You're talking about two completely different things. You're talking about the passive getting bound to something, getting tied up somewhere with it wasn't your choice, and then choosing to attach yourself to something.
speaker-0: Mm.
speaker-1: Choosing where you want to fit, where you want to to put roots. And those are two completely different things.
speaker-0: Yeah. And it I think it's hard to know what surrender looks like in life, right? I've been writing about this on my Substack, but one of the things that I realized was that my own definition of what surrender looked like in life seemed to be really passive. It was like, ⁓ just I guess I'll just like sit here and wait. And I was like, wait a minute. This doesn't feel like something I'm choosing. And it also doesn't seem like a smart idea. So I started to think about Surrender as something you participate in. You know, how do I participate in expanding opportunities and creating opportunities and then surrender to how they might unfold rather than having a very specific end in mind or a very defined version of what success would look like. And it's a bit like how people say it's the journey, not the destination. Whatever. Sure. But it but I think what I found helpful about it was like it reminded me of like where I was being quite rigid about what it needed to look like for it to be worthy or successful or something that I that I wanted. And there's a good balance in there somewhere. There is like a Goldilocks zone of how do I learn from my experience in life of like what I do and don't want and what I do and don't like and desire. But also how do I leave enough openness to reach for something that's here that might be here already? Instead of saying it has to take this one form before it takes all my boxes.
speaker-1: Yeah, because the same can really be said for our own standards of optimizing our life and self optimization. You said that modern world tells us five hundred different ways to pursue self-optimization, be the best version of ourselves. But what can end up happening is we just keep chasing and chasing. And then we start monitoring, we start measuring ourselves against these rubrics. And then we end up just getting really down on ourselves. We end up just Drowning in self-criticism and even self-rejection. Yeah. Just deciding that who we are isn't good enough. We we develop this really unhealthy relationship with ourselves.
speaker-0: So true. Yeah, I I feel like I'm at that point where I'm just a bit done with the constant reach for self-improvement. Because part of the joy of life is also leaving room for spontaneity and for, you know, magic to happen sometimes. And we talked a little bit in our last episode about impermanence and I think it connects to this idea of like being with what's present and making it enough rather than constantly needing it to be better or to be different or something else and Everything's always changing. So everything is impermanent by nature, right? Whether that's people or bodies or relationships or careers or identities. So I think it's a really important opportunity to just kind of step back and ask yourself like, how can I fully participate in the life that exists for me right now? Rather than constantly treating the present as a waiting room. or like not good enough for for the better version of me that's gonna come later, you know? It's exhausting.
speaker-1: And th this is what we wanted anyway by going off script was the freedom, right? Just the freedom to to experience life, the freedom for spontaneity, the freedom to be surprised.
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. Like sometimes I think if my life continued like this for another six months, would I be okay with that? And you know, often the answer is yes, because I can appreciate and have gratitude for all the things I love about my life. And I think that for me is an antidote to this never enoughness culture is just saying, actually there are a lot of things about my life I love. So let's continue to nurture this and put some stakes in the ground and, you know, continue to deepen into this rather than stay at a slightly superficial level so I've got optionality to go for something different.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, we're not talking about settling. or just learning to put up with the lot you've been dealt in life. I think a really cool word that came up in our research for this episode is devotion, which is a little ironic or maybe fitting because to me that's a very spiritual word. I only think about devotion in a church context. You know, devote yourself to your beliefs. But devotion is about Committing yourself to something. And what we're talking about is choosing to really commit to the life you've chosen for yourself, really digging in, making a commitment to the things that are important to you, whether that's community or career or family or partner or place. There's something about sustained engagement, and that's where meaning comes from. Susan Wolfe has this whole piece on happiness and meaning, and it comes from The sustained commitment to things that give you worth. And I think that's all we're saying, devoting yourself to what you know is going to give you meaning and purpose and joy. ⁓
speaker-0: Wow, I love that.
speaker-1: Right. I think it's time for us crazy heathens to rethink devotion and what we want to devote ourselves to.
speaker-0: I'm gonna ask you that next time we speak. What are you devoting yourself to this week, Cole?
speaker-1: I'll try to be ready. All right. I love it. ⁓
speaker-0: Time for you to put some stakes in the ground, my friend. Yeah, I love it. And maybe that's like a really nice place to end actually and a question to leave with everyone who's listening, you know? How do we build a life with enough freedom to be ourselves, enough structure to belong, and enough devotion to really go deep into what gives us self worth?
speaker-1: Honestly. Mm. We got this. We can do it.
speaker-0: Totally. Love it. I love this conversation.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean it's I'm feeling a sense of relief realizing that we don't have to keep chasing the perfect life for us. We just have to really lean into what we know gives us joy and meaning. And I think that's a lot easier question for me to answer than how do I achieve excellence and perfection?
speaker-0: Exactly. Yeah, that's a bit ick. All right. Well, we'll stick to the devotion from now on. How about that? Great. All right, everyone. Thanks for listening.
speaker-1: Yeah. Thank you everyone. This has been great, Nila. I love getting real with you.
speaker-0: Yeah and until next time.
speaker-1: Stay kind, stay curious, and stay just a little bit deviant. Bye everyone.
speaker-0: See ya. Bye.
