Susan Cain On How Longing and Sorrow Make Us Whole

Welcome to Let It Be Easy with Susie Moore.

Susie Moore:

Hello, my friends. My gosh, do I have a treat for you with this interview? Do you know when you just love an author so much that you've memorized their quotes in your mind and you just repeat them constantly? That's how I feel about Susan Cain our guest on the Let It Be Easy Podcast today. Now, you may know Susan Cain as the author of the book Quiet incredible book. It's about the power of introverts in a world that won't stop talking. And that book sold millions of copies. I remember it was on the New York Times bestseller list for seven years. Susan knows how to take something that I think maybe we're not always conscious of it exactly what it is, and she brings it into the mainstream. She did that with Quiet, and that's what she's doing now with Bittersweet. Bittersweet is all about the sorrow and logging that we feel as humans.

For example, why does Sad Music move us? Why is their grandparent emotional watching their grandchild splash around in puddles? Why are airport arrivals those areas and airports such a mixed bag of emotion? Susan deeply explores the complexities of human emotion with this book Bittersweet, and I found that this book gave me so much permission to feel all the feelings that I experience in my body without judgment and without thinking that there's anything wrong. And Susan is the true authority. She's named one of the top 10 influences in the world by LinkedIn. She's a renowned speaker. Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages, and she's been named one of the most creative people in business. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited for you to check out our conversation and see what opens up within you. Now, I give you Susan Cain,

Susan, Susan, Susan. What a book. I mean what a book. Bittersweet. Congratulations. Launch week this week. I loved this book, Susan. We were at the beach together. We were on my terrace together. You were in the bath with me. I really been enjoying my time with you, and I almost feel like the questions you ask in this book, the concept of bittersweet, it's really changing how I'm looking at the world. And I mean, the first question I have for you is you say that you wrote this book to understand the mystery of bittersweet music, specifically Leonard Cohen, your favorites. And I actually love what you say here on page 36, upbeat tunes make us want to dance around our kitchens and invite friends for dinner, but it's sad music that makes us want to touch the sky. It's almost like this mystery. Can you just speak to us about that for a moment? Why this book? Why Bittersweet Music and Why This is True? I was so moved by sad music

Susan Cain:

And I'm so glad that you started by asking about the word mystery because that's really what this is. I mean, it was that for me personally, which is why I launched on this quest to understand the power of a bittersweet and even melancholic mindset. But I quickly realized that it wasn't just my mystery, and instead this question was getting at the mystery of the ages because what I quickly found was that there is a bittersweet tradition that spans centuries and it spans continents and it's deeply embedded in our wisdom traditions and in our artistic and literary traditions. And it's like all these artists, writers, theologians for centuries have been trying to tell us that this place, this space between the perfect and beautiful world that we long for and the world that we currently inhabit, that that space is where our greatest selves reside. It's the source of our creativity, it's the source of our sense of communion.

And yes, as you say, all this started for me just because, I mean, I love all kinds of music. I love music, but have noticed all my life that in response to so-called Sad Music, minor key music, that my response wasn't really sad at all. And it was instead more of a feeling of uplift and a deep awe at a musician's ability to transform what clearly originated as pain into beauty and a sense of communion with all the other people listening who kind of know the sorrow that the music is straining to express all of it. There's so much transcendence in that, and I wanted to get at that because our culture doesn't talk about this. It is considered weird to talk about these things in our culture, and therefore this whole deep tradition of communion, transcendence, creativity, a bittersweet kind of joy is not available to us.

Susie Moore:

And here we are with a book with the answers, with the exploration. As I was reading your book, Susan, I was thinking, gosh, so much is bittersweet, but I've never put words to it that way. In fact, I always thought maybe was a little bit strange because see, it's almost like you give words to the emotions that coexist like the happiness and even the feeling of, I know we speak so much about longing, and I've got questions about that, but you know what an interesting place where I feel that? I think it's very bittersweet. Susan,

Susan Cain:

Tell me

Susie Moore:

Is Airport Arrivals?

Susan Cain:

Oh, yes. Oh my gosh. Since I was a kid, I have always loved the airport arrival place, and you'd sit and watch these people who had reuniting perhaps after years of the tears of joy. Yes, I know exactly what you mean.

Susie Moore:

Yes. And I remember one time my sister came to visit me in New York when I was living there, and she was coming from London, leaving her baby. And the second I saw her, I was so excited and I felt a heaviness like, she's going to be in the departure soon. This is already going to be over soon. And I thought, I'm like, why can't I be present? Why can't I enjoy this? I thought there was something that I needed to fix mentally. I was like, oh, I'm fully attached. I'm not feeling appreciation right now. But it's not that I felt like you've explained that to me with your book.

Susan Cain:

It is not that. Oh, I have such goosebumps at what you're saying. It's not that at all. And I know exactly what you're talking about. And in fact, so you read about this in the book, Laura Enson, she's this amazing psychologist at Stanford who does work on, well, she does work on all kinds of things, longevity and aging and so on. But basically she has found that it is the awareness of life's fragility and the awareness of the passing moments of life that actually lead to a kind of wisdom and sense of gratitude, fewer bad moods, all the rest of it. And she actually talks about the feeling of watching a child splashing in a puddle.

Susie Moore:

Yes, I remember that from the book. Yes. And the grandparent knowing that they might not be there when that child grows up. And it's like the temporary and the eternal in one place.

Susan Cain:

Exactly. Exactly, exactly. And usually when we are crying tears of joy, usually that's underneath the tears of joy.

Susie Moore:

So we can understand, I feel like Susan, I almost can't believe this book hasn't been written before this concept hasn't been explored. And then how something is obvious once you read about it, once you learn about it. And I feel like you just uncovered this mystery. You put language to it. I felt so seen and understood reading your book, and I love the bittersweet quiz. I mean, there are great questions in here. There's a quiz, there's so much in this book. I scored seven on your quiz. And then I thought, it's interesting because I'm also very consciously optimistic. It's a decision. And I also loved reading in the book how you said that often creative people lost a parent young, and you say the percentage based on the age. I mean, I lost my father to addiction when I was 19 and thank you. But my mom, so my mom's still here, and she's always said to me, we grew up on welfare because of the domestic violence in our home.

We lived in different shelters. And my mom would always say that people who've suffered are kinder. And I was like, Hmm, yeah, that seems like it makes sense. And I feel as if you speak so much about suffering in this book. And there's a beautiful quote here where you say that deeper ma in the book here on page 104, you understand suffering says deeper ma, that's why you should teach. And that Sharon told me, must read the book for the context. It's the first time in my life I thought that suffering was worth something. And I just thought that again, I thought, wow, why do I feel so cool to help and to want to bring ease to others? And I feel the way that you've explained this and how sorrow contribute or you make it your creative offering. Could you talk to us about that for a minute?

Susan Cain:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think what you're getting at with this question is the idea that into every life is going to come some pains. I'm suffering and I'm sorry, it sounds like you had more than your fair share of it at two young an age. And we are basically faced with a choice when that happens, we can either deny it and push it down and then invariably end up taking it out on ourselves or on other people around us, or we can try at a certain point to absorb it and transform it into something else through a kind of alchemy. And I think that's what you're really getting at. And there's actually a centuries old archetype for this process, and it's called the Wounded Healer. And it exists all the way back into our Greek myths. There are different figures whose power comes from the fact of having been wounded, and then you're often using those powers to train other people and to help other people do the same thing.

And the person, Sharon, whose story you alluded to that I tell there are many such stories in the book, but the one that you were talking about with Sharon, so this is Sharon Salzberg, who's one of our great meditation teachers in the west. And Sharon had come from a really horrific childhood where she kind of lost one loved one after another and suicide and addiction and all kinds of terrible afflictions. And she talks about how when she was growing up, she felt that she was the only one in her school who came from a family like this. And so the fact of having had these experience marked her as inadequate, and then she caught to college and just through a complete serendipity of needing a class that fit her schedule, she ended up signing up for a class in Eastern philosophy and learned through doing that about the different traditions, well, about the Buddhist tradition, talking about suffering, being at the heart of human experience.

And the question is, what do you do with that? And she said that was the first time she had ever realized that that was just a natural part of human experience, right along with joy. There's sorrow, there's joy. They're all part of the experience. And she ended up going to India for years to study. And the passage you're talking about is she studied under one of the great teachers, Deepa Ma, who said to her at the end of her time there that what she should do is go back to the United States and teach loving kindness meditation. And then as you say, part of the reason that she should be called to teach in this way is precisely because she had suffered and could help other people.

Susie Moore:

And you speak so openly in the book too. I know you say it's the first time you speak about your relationship with your mother, which has had its complications, and you lost your father and brother, I'm sorry too, Susan, I feel like when I read your words, there's such openness. You're so willing to share all these complexities of being human, the emotions we have, the waves that we feel and experience. And one story that actually stood out to me in your book, which I thought was really special, and I was like, well, I have a lot of parents read this. You speak about the, again, impermanence, how you were on vacation with your husband and two boys and they made friends with these donkeys, and when you had to leave, they were so sad because they were going to be sending new friends. And you said that the only thing that consoled them was you telling them the truth that grief is part of the experience. You will be sad. It wasn't like, oh, it's okay. Well there are other donkeys. We'll come back. Yeah, those things could be true too. But could you tell us a bit about that? How when you had that conversation with them or you shared with them, this is just the experience, I feel like this is something that we don't do. We never talk about it this way, and what if we could?

Susan Cain:

Yeah, and I think we're doing our children a disservice because we are teaching our children inadvertently, especially children who are growing up in relative comfort. We are inadvertently teaching them that life is the fun, the comfort when things are going well, which that is of course a wonderful and treasure and real part of life, but we're inadvertently teaching them that when it's time to say goodbye to the donkeys or to a grandparent or whomever it is, that that's like the detour off the main road of life. And as you say, when our children had to say goodbye to these donkeys that they'd fallen in love with at the end of this vacation, they were crying themselves to sleep, and they were, they're happy kids, but they were so upset about this and all the different things that parents would normally try to say, and that we tried to say, another family will come and take care of the donkeys.

They'll be fine. Maybe we'll see them again. None of that made any difference. It was really only when we said to them that everybody feels this way at some time. You have felt this way before. You're going to feel this way again. The feeling will lessen with time, but this feeling is part of life. That's when they stopped crying because that's when we are telling them the truth. And there is a tremendous relief in being told the truth. And in someone confirming to you that what you see over the horizon, which looks like joy and it also looks like sorrow over there in the horizon, that that's true and that you're not crazy for thinking it or for seeing it or for feeling it. There's such a validation in that. And when you, oh, sorry, go ahead.

Susie Moore:

Yeah, I completely agree. I think we do do this disservice when we don't allow the space for the emotion. And I always say truth is ease. There is such a, when we say, yeah, don't resist it. You could be sad. You could be sad. This is, and you'll be sad again. And you share also a story where your son was so sad when he was, I think leaving third grade and this was beautiful how you explained it, Susan, that never again will there be that exact configuration of students, will it be that exact teacher in that exact moment. And there is such a beauty to the appreciation of that and the willingness to let that be. The way that one of my favorite expressions that I got from your book, it was repeated so many times, so beautifully, is the experiences come and go and we can practice to change, being present, gratitude, all of those wonderful things, loving kindness, meditation. But these three words were I think, some of my favorite in the book, but even so could you explain what but even so means to us, Susan?

Susan Cain:

Yeah, I mean, but even so those words actually come from haiku by one of Japan's great poets, ISA, ISSA. And this poem that Isa wrote 200 years ago, he was talking about the death of his daughter from smallpox, I think it was smallpox, and he's like a Buddhist master. So he has been trained and schooled in the art of understanding and permanence and understanding that everything in this life is always changing. It's always ephemeral, it's always impermanent. And he's basically writing this poem and saying, I don't have the exact words at my fingertips, but the basic idea is I understand that the dew drop is just a dew drop, meaning that it's going to evaporate any minute, but even so, even so. And I love that because he's basically saying, we can teach ourselves and we should teach ourselves to be aware of this constant change and impermanence, but there's also always going to be a part of us that rebels against that and says, but even so, I want my daughter back.

But even so, I want the world to be different from the way that it is. And I find in that paradoxically the ease that you are talking about and seeking, because what it's saying to us ultimately is we all feel this. So there's a great communion in it. It's like one of the great bridges that we have from one soul to another because here is a guy who's writing haiku 200 years ago and we're still reading him 200 years later because we're still having the same kinds of experiences. And then 200 years from now, people will still understand it because we're all together in this experience. Yes, I do want to stress, how do I say this? It's like because I'm trying in this book so much to emphasize this underlooked at part of life. It can seem then as if it's arguing for a view in which you're only aware of the sorrow and the, but even so, and that's not the point. It's more like the more you're willing to let that in along with your joys, the greater the ease you actually find at the end of the day because you're not resisting what life is.

Susie Moore:

I think what you do so beautifully is allow space for it all, for it all to coexist and not just to shine light on the good bits and it's going to get better, whatever it may be that we love to remind ourselves, which has a place. Absolutely. But one conversation I had recently with a friend, she made the decision to get a divorce. Her marriage wasn't sustainable. There was a lot of infidelity on her husband's part, and she knows that it's the right thing to do. And one thing that I love to repeat, it's okay to be sad after making the right decision. And she said, I go to my daughter's room with her little squidgy stuff that she plays with whatever that weird stuff is. The kids put posters on the walls and she's like, she's with her dad right now. That's the right thing. I made the right decision. But even so, yeah, she's not at home in her bedroom. So I think that what I've taken so much from bittersweet is the space for that to be, and not for negative emotions to mean that something negative has happened or that something

Susan Cain:

Or that something negative has happened, but that's part of life also. And

Susie Moore:

Yes,

Susan Cain:

The next thing will happen and maybe that will be positive or maybe it'll be more of a mix, but that's what life is.

Susie Moore:

Yeah, and it's so interesting because in the book too, you speak a lot about American positivity in corporations and even, I thought it was so interesting how you spoke about how when Russians were taught about how you smile if you are at McDonald's, it's like the have a nice day because I'm from the uk. It's not like that there. And it's interesting because I feel like I fit right in with the positive. I love it. I always consciously be feeling good. But can we speak about that for a moment, about maybe what we've learned and how it's maybe limited what we think we're allowed to feel and how we're allowed to come across?

Susan Cain:

Yeah, I mean, we can talk about the history of how we got this way, but I'll just give you one picture kind of where we are that really said it all to me. So as part of the research that I did for the book, I went back to my college campus 30 years after I had graduated, and I was just curious to sit down and talk to students about what their inner lives were like as opposed to the lives that they present on the surface as their walking around campus. And there is an incredible, almost like a magic power that you have when you show up someplace as a writer because people will be more willing to talk to you about their insides in that kind of context than they might be if you just met them at a cocktail party or something.

So I came to campus and I was talking to these students and literally two minutes into the conversation they start telling me about this phenomenon called effortless perfection, which is a term at that point hadn't heard before, but I now know it's a very common term or buzzword on US campuses. And it basically means the social pressure that students feel to look attractive, to be thin, to be fit, to be socially adept, to be getting great grades, to be bound for career success, all these things. And not only are they supposed to be perfect in all these different domains, but also it's supposed to appear to come effortlessly. So you're supposed to be like that proverbial duck where you can't see them paddling wildly under the pond. They're just gliding along the surface as if nothing's happening. But really they're paddling madly underneath. And there has been on our nation's campuses also just increasing levels documented of anxiety and depression and these media stories of kids who had died by suicide only 24 hours after posting on Instagram, smiling pictures of themselves surrounded with all their friends. So there's something happening of this great disconnect between what people actually feel and what they feel they can express.

And that situation makes it so that we can't show up in all our wholeness to each other. And the real problem with it, I mean, there's a sense of personal invalidation of like, well, maybe the way I am is really not okay, there's that. But there's also the sense that we're not having as much of a communion as we could because we're showing up essentially with our avatars and not with ourselves,

Susie Moore:

And we lose something we lose. You say here, I've quoted you speak about how sadness triggers compassion in the book. And I didn't know this, the word compassion, the real origin means to suffer together. I thought that was, and did you find that when you were conducting those interviews that people were just opening up to each other in different ways and that you were having such so much of a deeper connection when you kind of bespoke the truth even though it wasn't cool or it wasn't effortless perfectionism? What was your experience of having those conversations? Were you like, I want to hug these people. I want to tell them that they're okay. Were they sharing together too, or just with you?

Susan Cain:

No, I would say they were sharing together too because some of the interviews that I conducted were just one-on-one, and some of them were groups and it was like, oh yeah, we're suddenly talking about all these things that we hadn't talked about before. I mean, this is something I've been aware of this dynamic for the last 10 years because my previous book was quiet about the power of introverts, and I found with that too, that was also talking about something that had not been socially acceptable to discuss. And so there too, I saw this phenomenon of the minute you make it socially acceptable to talk about what's really happening, the floodgates open and people are dying to talk about it.

Susie Moore:

Oh, yes

Susan Cain:

And then they're connecting in a much more authentic way.

Susie Moore:

It's like you tap into something, Susan, you see something, but we don't, you observe. And I mean this book, you say it took your whole life to write it. You share so many of your own experiences. And do you still have questions about bittersweet? Are you still exploring this or do you feel like, I've written the book, I understand this now. Where are you with it?

Susan Cain:

I don't know. I don't think you ever fully understand anything, but I do feel like I understand so much more than when I started. And yeah, the great challenge of writing this book is that I felt like I was trying to describe a state of being and a state of mind that was inherently so ineffable, so indescribable. And yet the project was to describe it in a hundred thousand words, and that was really hard at the beginning

Susie Moore:

Was your publisher. I don't know. I mean, how bittersweet, because I think if someone goes bittersweet, oh, how sorrow and longing make us whole. Oh, interesting. I mean, it seems like it's not something that we've spoken about. It's not been a topic of conversation, and here you just give us this great piece of work and so many stories and so many studies. I mean, what did writing this book do to you? What was the biggest shift in you that you noticed as you went through the process of your a hundred thousand words?

Susan Cain:

The biggest shift for me was really rethinking my relationship to religion and spirituality because I have all my life been a quite deep agnostic. But as I started really investigating my response to music and to bittersweet states of mind and so on, I realized that I react to those moments, the way people describe their reaction to being with God. And that in some ways, this is my take. Everybody has a different take of course, but to me, it's the same experience and a different language, and that this kind of existential longing that I believe we all feel for a more perfect and beautiful world. For somebody who is explicitly religious, they will name that state that they're longing for as the Garden of Eden or Zion or Mecca or the Sufis call it the beloved of the soul, which I love as a way to put it. And then there are other more metaphorical ways of naming that same state. So in The Wizard of Oz, it's like somewhere over the rainbow, that perfect place we long to be. But I believe that that state of longing is one of the best parts of us as humans and one of the deepest parts of us as humans.

So yeah, I guess I've really come to rethink my relationship to religion in that way.

Susie Moore:

That's so interesting. And one thing that, another story I enjoyed, sorry,

Susan Cain:

Can I say one other thing about that? Oh,

Susie Moore:

Yes, yes.

Susan Cain:

So it really came from the act of writing these things down. So in writing all this down, I was trying to describe what my reaction is to really transcendent bittersweet music. And I was trying to put it into words what happens when I hear music like that? But many people feel this way, it's been documented in research. So anyway, I'm describing it or I'm trying to describe it, and I realize when I hear that music, if I'm alone, when I hear it, I'm like, if automatically going like this, I'm making a prayer gesture. And I don't know where that comes from, but that's what happens. And so it's through the act of that process of really trying to capture a state that you can end up coming to insights that you wouldn't have expected to find.

Susie Moore:

When you speak of longing, because throughout the book we speak about longing, you speak about the difference between longing and craving and the trip. I mean so many you guys need to read this book. There are so many good stories here. You're so honest. Susan, how would you describe the difference between a longing and craving once you've got your answer?

Susan Cain:

Yeah. So this came from my explorations of Buddhism and Sufism. And in Buddhism there is famously the idea that you want to extinguish attachments and you want to extinguish your cravings for attachments to things that aren't serving you. So attachments to greed, attachments to possessive love and so on. And then at the same time, so I'm reading about that, but at the same time, I'm deep into the state of thinking about longing for the perfect and beautiful world, as I call it. And I also spent a lot of time exploring Sufism. And in the Sufi, Sufism is the mystical version of Islam. And in Sufism, the state of longing is very core to the whole enterprise. It's almost explicit as I understand it, that longing is the state that carries you to belonging, that longing for the divine is paradoxically what brings you closer to the divine. And

So I was trying to figure out how it could be that I, in some ways, longing sounds a lot like craving. So I was thinking, okay, well, and in fact, if you go onto Buddhist websites and you type in the word longing, you're going to find all kinds of declarations about why longing is something that you should try to renounce and that it's an unhealthy and unproductive state. But so I actually went across the country to a Sufi retreat run by this amazing teacher named Luellen von Lee, who's all over the internet, by the way. He has all these great talks on UFM for people who are interested. And I asked him this question of what is the difference between longing and craving? And he said, they're completely different states, and longing is more like the kind of sweet sorrow, a state of sweet sorrow. And I forget how he put it, but he said, you know what? I'm just going to find it in the

Susie Moore:

Book. Yeah, because it's so good. And you did travel across the country. Yeah, we went a long way to get this answer.

Susan Cain:

Yeah. So he said,

Yeah. So I told him, so he has all these videos on longing, and that was what had brought me to him in the first place. And so he said, longing is different from craving. It's the craving of the soul. He said, you want to go home. And in our culture that's confused with depression, and it's not depression. There's a saying in Sufism, Sufism was at first heartache only later was it something to write about? And then he told me, if you're taken by longing, live it, you can't go wrong. If you're going to go to God, go with sweet sorrow in the soul. And yeah. Wow.

Susie Moore:

And there's your answer, and

Susan Cain:

There's the answer,

Susie Moore:

Oh my gosh. When you say this desire to go home, I've got notes here from your book that bitters speed is this quiet force. All humans know loss. It's how we turn towards each other. How longing is the gateway to belonging? How do you define wanting to go home or wanting to come home? How would you define that? What does that mean to you?

Susan Cain:

Well, I'd say there's an existential meaning and there's an everyday meaning. The existential meaning is we come into this world wanting to go home. You come into this world crying. We come into this world with a sense of a kind of fundamental pain of separation, of a kind of distance between us and the place we're supposed to be between us and the Garden of Eden. This is why this is one of the fundamental images in all religions. There's always the place. And the Garden of Eden is a way of embodying that as a literal place that we're longing to be. So there is that existential state, and it's important to understand that that's at the core of our soul because it explains so much of our nature to us and even our love relationships. There always comes, if you track the course of most love relationships, what's happening is that during the first moments of meeting each other, the first weeks, the first months, you find and you feel as if your partner and as if the love you've created together is a kind of garden of Eden, it's like a temporary feeling of like, oh my gosh, okay.

All that separation that I once felt, it's gone. I got to the place. Belonging is extinguished. And then you get to know each other more deeply. You start realizing, oh, okay, well there's this incompatibility and this problem and this one. And you're like, and if you're not careful, and if you don't understand what all these psychic forces are, you might think, okay, this means this is the wrong partner for me because I'm supposed to be in Eden and I'm not an Eden anymore. I just got kicked out all over again. And that's the problem. So the more we can understand this fundamental force, the more we can make better decisions in our everyday lives, but also understand this great thing that's animating us to always be reaching for more because it is the source of our creativity that our creative impulse comes from this source. The word longing literally means to grow longer, to reach. And it is that feeling of incompleteness that makes us want to paint a painting or build a rocket to Mars or whatever our creative expression is. It's like it drives us out.

It drives us forward, I should say.

Susie Moore:

Yes, yes. And can we just speak about the practical side of this, which I also really appreciate. I love how you speak about the bridges of Madison County, the movie, the Love Affair, what happens, and you reference Elaine Debo in the School of Life and his work saying Why you'll marry the wrong person. It's so practical. If I'm not walking around red rose petals in my house 24 7 thinking how handsome and irresistible my husband is every single second of the day, is he the wrong one? What's the deal? And just the practical nature of which you break this down. I think this can bring us a lot of peace.

Susan Cain:

Yes. And I mean, I do hear what you say. Okay, if you're not happy with your relationship, maybe there are good reasons for it. I don't know. I don't know. I don't mean you.

Susie Moore:

Oh, I was divorced. I've been divorced. I'm in my second marriage. Love it. And look, I know when it's not the same,

Susan Cain:

The difference between the two,

Susie Moore:

It's very clear to me. Yes. But there is such peace that you can find because you can watch a romantic movie and feel the longing and you can go, oh, I see those two, and it's so perfect. And of course, we end on the happiest note, and we never see anything after that. It's like the Happily Ever After ends there. And we live in our day-Today lives, especially what we've had in the last couple of years, the experiences, and we can think that there's something wrong.

Susan Cain:

I was just thinking about this the other day. I was watching with my boys, the movie Pearl Harbor. Yeah. So it's basically for those who haven't seen it, it's basically a movie about World War ii and Pearl Harbor was bombed, but there's this love story, of course, that's part of the movie, and it's a typical Hollywood love story in that the young couple meets against the backdrop of war, and they're thinking of each other and longing for each other the whole time that the guy is overseas fighting. And then he comes back. I mean, there's a lot more to it, but I'm giving you the Hollywood quick sketch. He comes back and then they live happily ever after. So you're meant to think I'm watching this love affair and thinking with these people, this young couple, they barely know each other at all.

I hope they are going to live happily ever after. But really what they're doing when they have that love affair is these two young people who don't know each other. What they're really enacting is that human longing for that perfect state of divine union you could call it. And if they get lucky, their marriage actually is going to be a really good one. And it may be lucky, and it may not be, but they don't really know each other. So those moments in our lives, especially when you're so young and tender and having these loves for the first time, we don't realize we're going through an enactment of something that is much deeper than that particular coming together of two people. And I think it would help us if we understood what's actually really happening.

Susie Moore:

I completely agree, and I actually haven't seen the move. You read the book Bridges of Madison County, and I didn't know the story, but I love how you included it here about that quick love affair that had to end, and how there's this constant longing for one another. So for anyone who doesn't know it, I didn't know it. A woman goes to America, she's married, someone comes by, I think he's a photographer. They had this love affair for a few days, and she packs her bags and then unpacks them because practical life, she's married and she

Susan Cain:

Packs her bags thinking she's actually going to leave her family for the, that she's fallen in love with, right?

Susie Moore:

Yeah. So offer to the sunset, get it unpacks and stays, and then it's like the longings always there. I think we all have a bit of a story like this, maybe not that dramatic or that romantic even necessarily, but I think sometimes we can long for, oh, did I make that right choice? Or was that move the right idea? Or should I have let that person go? Should I have let that opportunity go? And I think that there's also a piece in that, Susan, there's a piece that you can feel.

Susan Cain:

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's why that movie did as well as it did. The analysis of that movie after it came out was like, oh, there must be a lot of women in really unhappy marriages, and that's why the movie did so well. You can look at it that way, but I believe it was tapping into something deeper, just that deeper state of longing that we all have. As you say, that takes so many different expressions. I'd say there's two things to understand about this. Number one, this is an existential thing that is always with us. But number two, when you are feeling that kind of longing in your life to ask yourself what does it mean and what is it telling me about the gap between the life I'm living and the one that I could live and how might I fill that gap a little bit?

Susie Moore3:

Oh, yes. And you say, and this is one of my extra highlighted for those of you, I know we listed on a podcast, but I'm holding a book highlighted in hot pink right here. I love this question. I love this question. I love this question. You say, Susan, on page 236, what if I asked you this question? What are you longing for? You may have not asked yourself this question before. You may not have identified the important symbols in your life story. You may not have examined what they mean. I jump ahead a little bit here. You say, have you asked who is the artist or musician or athlete or entrepreneur or scientist or spiritual teacher you love? And why do you love them? And what do they represent to you? And have you asked, what is the ache you can't get rid of? And could you make it your creative offering? I know the ache and I see someone, she's just doing all the things, and I'm like, I feel it. I felt it. Could you speak to us about this for a moment?

Susan Cain:

Yeah. And then wait, I want to hear about, well, tell us about your age and then I'll speak to it.

Susie Moore:

Oh, so I come from a tech background. I worked in the Silicon Valley tech world and loved it. And because I come from a family that was very poor, I take care of my mom financially. I remember always going, why can't I just be grateful with this job? Why can't this just be enough? I tick. I speak about this. I was making a great living, half a million dollars at the age of 30, stock options, connections, safety in a comm. I'm like, why can't this be enough? And then I would see different self-help authors creating great work teaching like you Susan, doing such deep, incredible, meaningful, lasting work. And I'd have an ache. I'd go, oh, there's something here. And it won't be quiet. I tried. I tried. Because it can be very irresponse and it's not like go all out. Just abandon your go. Follow your dreams. It's not that, right? But it's paying attention. What is it you're longing for? Because it doesn't go away.

Susan Cain:

Yes. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about, exactly what you're talking about

Susie Moore:

When you say, what are you looking for? This is towards the end of the book. What a beautiful question to leave us with. What does that question represent to you?

Susan Cain:

Well, I mean, I guess before I asked that question, I told a story that was not unlike yours. It was a different version of what you just told. I had been a corporate lawyer. Well, I wanted to be a writer since I was four years old. But for safety and all those things, I went and became a corporate lawyer. And then the day that I learned that I wasn't going to be making partner, I left my firm that day. And I also, at the same time, a couple of weeks later, ended a seven year relationship that I had been in that had always felt wrong and quickly after that. So now I'm in my early thirties, and suddenly I have no career. I have no relationship, no place to live because I've moved out of the apartment where I'd been living all that time that I was a lawyer.

And I fell into a relationship with a guy who was a musician for much more of an artistic world than the one I had been a part of all these years. I had mostly known bankers and lawyers that whole time that I was doing corporate law. So I fell into this relationship with this musician and lyricist, and it was like an obsessive relationship for me. It was an obsession I could not shake. And it was really tormenting me in its obsessive nature. And then one day I talked to a friend of mine who's very wise, and this is a friend who I'd been regaling with telling the same story over and over about this guy I'm so obsessed with. And one day she looked at me and she was like, if you are this obsessed, it's not because of him specifically. It's because he represents something that you're longing for.

So what are you longing for? And instantly I knew, instantly I knew that what she meant, and that this guy to me had been a representation of the world of writing and art that I had always wanted to be a part of and had not been all those years. And it was like the way I describe him is he was an emissary from the perfect and beautiful world. That's what he represented to me. And as soon as I knew that, the obsession fell away and I red redoubled on my writing and really made that my focus. And it was just one of those great moments of clarity.

Susie Moore:

And here we are, here're on the bittersweet tool. I love how when you met your husband, you share the story of how he read some of your work. And he was like, drop everything, right, woman?

Susan Cain:

Yes.

Susie Moore:

I was like, she's got a really nice husband. Oh my gosh. But think about that insight. It's like a laser, laser into what is it you are longing for? You could run a three day seminar with that question. What is it? That

Susan Cain:

Is so true. That is so true.

Susie Moore:

What is it within us? What is it within us that connects that aches, that cares? It's always going to come back to us. And the self-awareness of this question, it's like, yes, sorrow and longing make us whole. And they tell you, they reveal a lot to you.

Susan Cain:

They reveal a lot to you. Yeah. And the reason, the part that you quoted from the book where about this question where I asked, who's the artist or spiritual leader or entrepreneur, whatever, the person who you find yourself admiring almost beyond reason. And ask yourself, what do they represent to you that makes you admire them the way that you do? And I think that's a very helpful question to ask. So in my case, it was the musician, Leonard Cohen, who I had loved all my life without, excuse me, without really stopping to think what did he mean to me? Exactly. What did he represent? But it's a very useful question to

Susie Moore:

Ask. It's a very useful question. And because you asked the question, we have the joy and the gift of this book, Susan, this is such a must read. I mean, what's, I know sometimes it's hard to say, but if you had to in a nutshell say what your wish for this book is out in the world now officially or released April 5th, if feel like, gosh, my intention for this book is to do what?

Susan Cain:

Oh gosh. I guess I'll say two things. One is that I really have had kind of this burning desire to share this kind of deep feeling that I was having that I know other people have, and just to figure out a way to put it into words to communicate this truth that I believe to be so fundamental to who we are as humans. So it was that. But then I'll also say that with my first book, quiet, when I started hearing from readers in emails and so on, the word that I heard again and again and again was permission. Finally, I have permission to be my more quiet self. And from early readers of bittersweet unnaturally, I'm hearing the same words. I'm hearing permission and validation. And I really want that too because for people to feel that they have permission to explore this side of themselves, because I believe this is one of the most beautiful sides of humanity, and that we should all feel free to explore it. And especially for those of us who do score high on the bittersweet quiz, and I don't know how much more time we have, but maybe we can tell your listeners a few of the questions from the quiz so they can easily identify with it.

Susie Moore:

I have it right.

Susan Cain:

But for people like that, I especially want them to feel like, okay, my way of being, it's actually taking me somewhere. Somewhere. I would

Susie Moore:

Love to read out some of these questions because it's funny, Susan, you know how everybody loves to sing Adele? Yeah, sure. There are so many memes about her. It's like Adele makes you miss people who you crossed eyes with in the grocery store once. Yes. I was thinking about that as I was going through this quiz because your questions are so good. It's like, are you especially moved by old photographs? Have others described you as an old soul? Do you find comfort or inspiration on a rainy day? Are you moved to goosebumps several times a day? Do you feel elevated by sad music? Do you feel the ecstatic is close, that there are more? These what? Good questions. I mean, I agree with you, Susan. I feel so seen in this book, and like I said, I thought there was something maybe a little wrong with me. I'm like, why do I feel a little sad at the arrivals? What is this space or this thing that maybe I need to change my thinking about, change my thinking about, so I feel a bit better? What if it's all the coexistence is the magic, and

Susan Cain:

It is the magic? It absolutely is the magic. And by the way, I just love it so much that you thought of the arrivals area at the airport.

Susie Moore:

I've thought about that place my whole life since I was a kid, Susan. Okay. Everywhere books are sold, but bittersweet is available. Is there anything else anyone else should check out in the book? You have so many amazing links, YouTube videos, the starting story of the Cell. Oh my gosh, I could keep you here for two weeks. I won't. But is there anything else anyone should check out apart from of course, bittersweet. The book available everywhere.

Susan Cain:

Yeah. Okay. So the book, you could come to my website, which is susan kane.net, and you can buy the book that way. And I also have a newsletter that you can sign up for. I do have a bittersweet playlist that I put together. Ade is on there, so that's on Spotify. So I think if you just search my name and Bittersweet on Spotify, you'll find it. I'm also on all the social channels, and I also gave a Ted Talk on Bittersweetness, which just dropped about a week ago. So that's called The Hidden Power of Sad Songs and Rainy Days. So you can find that too.

Susie Moore:

Oh, Susan, thank you. Thank you for writing this book for your time with me today. Truly. I know this book is going to be so helpful and meaningful to so many, and I am just deeply honored and happy to have spent some time with you. So thank you so, so much, Susan.

Susan Cain:

Thank you so much for having me, and I just love your teachings on ease, and it's so great that you're doing this. So thank you so much.

Susie Moore:

Thank you, Susan.

Susan Cain:

Take care.