Jon Batiste + Suleika Jaouad: WHAT IS ENOUGH?

Okay, Pod Squad, if you are feeling today like you could use just a big warm security blanket wrapped around you and just something that is going to make your heart feel full and your mind expand and make you just

relax for a minute on this earth. Hands down, one of my favorite conversations we've ever had.
I love these two so freaking much. Oh my god, I can't.

So one of the people today, Abby describes as her favorite people on the planet. Last night at dinner, she said, I think he's just the best person, period.
In the world.

And that's how I feel about the other one, Suleika. So the people we have today are Suleka Jawad and John Batiste.
I will read their bios, even though everyone knows who they are.

But what you need to know first about this conversation is that they are an incredibly grounded.

but creative and loving couple who talk about life and the world in a way that we just need to hear more of.

And today they're talking to us about art and creativity and love and how to love each other better and how to love the world better.

It's a must. Listen.
Suleika Jawad is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoirs, The Book of Alchemy, and Between Two Kingdoms.

She writes the Isolation Journals, the number one literature newsletter on Substack, and wrote the New York Times Life Interrupted column.

A three-time cancer survivor and visual artist, she appears with her husband, John Batiste, in the Oscar-nominated documentary, American Symphony. Yes, we gotta go watch that.
So freaking good.

John Batiste is a seven-time Grammy and an Academy Award-winning artist whose music moves between jazz, soul, classical, and pop. His ninth studio album, Big Money, is out now.

Audiences also know John from his Oscar-winning score for his chart-topping album, Beethoven Blues, and the acclaimed documentary, American Symphony, which celebrates his artistry, resilience, and love with his wife, Zuleika, at the height of his creative powers.

Pod squad, I'm so

happy to give you the gift of Suleka and John. One of my favorite double dates ever.

We did it. Hi, John.
I've never met you. Hello.
Hi, how are you? We're so good. I'm Glennon.
I'm Abby. We met briefly

at an event, but I'm sure you don't remember.

john remembers everyone that's one of his many many gifts yeah so so it's it's nice to be here in these boxes yes on the uh box within a box you see as god intended as god intended friendships to be yes human to human interaction that's right we're staying human john is what we're doing

we locked in

How is your morning, you guys? Where are you? What's going on? We're in Nashville. The sun's shining.
We're together.

You know, I just came off of a tour bus about an hour ago and uh we've been moving we've been maybe five shows in a row in the last four or five days

so now i'm here and we're here together i'm so excited i get to see john perform at the ryman tomorrow which is gonna be the grand old opera tomorrow the ryman was uh last time

no no no it's the same thing yeah but yeah but but but uh yeah we're on the road now together. I love when we get to be on the road.
We did a tour. When was the tour we did together? It was like...

In April. Something we never done before.
Ever.

The best experience ever.

Why? What was it like to be on tour together? I love it.

I'm ready to retire doing my thing and do our thing.

It's so good. I feel like this is a hack that the two of you have unlocked.

It can be scary to work with your significant other, but if you really not only love each other, but like each other, merging work worlds means that you get to be together more often.

You just get to be together and, you know, you get paid.

That is a nice hack. And Theory One gets paid.
Theory one gets paid, ideally.

I'm seeing the vision. See, Glenn and Abby, y'all got it hooked up.
See, I see the vision. Come on.

I understand. I mean, guys,

we actually,

it is wonderful, and we have found many wonderful things about it. But since we're talking about this, you should know that we are actually in a moment of trying to undo a lot of it

because

we just figured out maybe like a month or two ago that we have gotten ourselves to the point where most of our conversations, our dynamic is about work.

And like then these weird dynamics come in that, I don't know, it's like we're controlling each each other more than loving each other or something.

So, yes, awesome. And also, it's like everything else.
I can't figure out what the right

combination is. You're describing it like a third party.

It's something that's there, that's not supposed to be there, and it's getting in the way of you being together. That's right.

So, yeah, that's a very, very wise thing to share.

I felt felt like we were at that first stage of it where it's not,

we're doing something that allows for us to be together in a way that allows for us to also be creative, to tell stories about how we met,

and all of the different aspects of our life that align and help to inspire other people by doing that.

So, it feels like we're touring, but it also feels like we're kind of hanging out on stage. But I could imagine if you did that

a longer period of time, it could become an idol of sorts. Yeah.
And it wasn't without its challenges. Yeah.
They were very similar and in certain very important ways, complete opposites.

So like I am a planner. I like to, you know, write out everything I'm going to say.
I study it. I memorize it sometimes.
And, you know, within that, I'll do a little improv.

And John prepares in his own way, but what he loves more than anything is throwing out the script. So, night two of tour, I think it was, in Chicago,

we're supposed to be on stage in about 30 minutes. Salt shed.
I'm getting my hair and makeup done. And John's like, here's what didn't work last night.

And let's change the whole structure of what we've spent weeks and months planning.

And I start to get this like panicked, like wide-eyed whale-eyed look and I'm like we can't do that and John says well do you want to make it better or do you want to do what we prepared and I completely broke down I had a panic attack I started sobbing all my makeup was dripping down my face and John was like let's push the show by like 20 minutes.

And I was like, we can't do that. I'm already a mess.
Now I'm worried that people are going to be mad at us because they've been waiting. And

by the time I got on stage, I was such

a frazzled mess that this very strange thing happened. And I was kind of mad at John, too.
Like, I was mad at him for messing up our perfect plan, mad at him for,

in my mind, inducing this panic. And I just kind of looked over at him.
And in my mind, I was like, oh, you want to improvise? I'll show you improvisation. And I went completely off script.

And I will say, you know, this is the kind of difficult dance of collaboration within a romantic relationship. It was probably my favorite on-stage experience.

And I couldn't have admitted it

after the show

because I was still...

Just sort of thrown by the whole thing, but I was grateful to you for pushing me there. Yeah, well, I know you.

So, people, people who work together that have the chemistry and the thing, it's kind of like a relationship. It's kind of like somebody who you know there's an ESP,

and you can play something or you can say something, and then they'll finish the sentence, or they'll finish the chord, and the rhythm will come together, something will happen. It's like boom.

So, like, sometimes that requires a push. And

I don't have

any

method about improvisation. It's more about finding the connection that's the most real, what's the realest, authentic, not any shred of fakeness, any shred of getting in the way of the signal.

Just get all of the noise out of the way of the signal. So whatever we have to do to get there, I know it's going to, everybody's going to be happy in the end.
So,

and also, I got some push from this one, too.

It's a two-way street. You got to have both.
You got to have

the love and the honesty to know that you can carry the weight of the push and you can sustain the push. Because that's the power there.

There's power in that kind of honesty because people don't see that very often. So, when you show people that, that's what's really inspiring.
Not the notes and stuff. That's nice.

But the real thing is the inspiration. Oh, there's something about, if you could stay in that place, it might be all right.

It's like there's something about the structure and sticking to the structure, and me saying, but we're supposed to do it this way and hers.

That's the problem.

The not problem is what you just described. But I think a lot of this has to do with the origin of our specific arts.
John, I'm a little bit more like you, and you're a little bit more like Suleka.

Writers like a container. They like to control the sentences, their ideas, and they like the structure.
I don't mean to say control, but I do think that there's a little bit of that.

And I think, John, with your background in music,

in the way that like jazz music is off the cuff and it's live and it's energy and it's

your essence coming out, right? And your essence comes out in a different fashion. And I'm not saying one is right or the other because I have learned so much from you because I am like off the cuff.

That is like basically in my bio. Like I do not plan.
I am myself. That is how I do it.
But I also think that there is something to be said about pushing each other

in the direction of each other. And I wonder, as a cautionary tale, there might be like a

place that you don't want to get into because we are trying to navigate how to not,

because there's part of me that wants to be too much like Glennon, and there's maybe part of Glennon that wants to be too much like me. And so

how do you guys find the balance in that co-collaboration to not mesh? Yeah, and I want to know how does Suleka push you, John? Yeah.

How do I push you? Well, it's so funny you mentioned a form of structure and a form of

creating some sort of scaffolding so that we know. all of the beats and we know exactly what order the beats will come in.
Now for me, I like to know, okay,

this is

what the essence of what we're saying is. This is

the heart of it.

If we say this sentence a hundred times in a row and nothing else, we'll have conveyed the heart of the message. That's good.

And then everything else around that, I like to follow the spirit in the moment

and try to get to the heart of that message in all the different ways that the spirit makes available in that moment. Now, that sometimes is not the best plan

because Suleika will, you know, having something in the trunk and establishing a certain flow allows for the spirit to move even more freely.

And, you know, as someone who I've just been leading bands since I was 15, and I've always been the one that dictates the pace and the flow and the direction.

When you're on stage and you got a co-band leader, it's another star. So you gotta, you got, there's a push.

It's not a bad thing, but it's also

a push from what I'm used to.

So you have to figure out how to create space that's not only making space because there's another person that has a viewpoint that you love and you want to share the stage with, but also because it just will make it better.

And how do you find that? the alchemy of those two elements coming together and not just, okay, we have the equal proportions, but how do you make

the whole greater than the sum of the parts? That's good.

That's right.

Well,

let us know

any more tricks you have.

It's interesting because I feel like you all are always

it feels like you all are circling around a lot of things that we're always circling around.

Okay, so like, you know, Suleika, you and I have been trying to figure out how to be artists and capitalists for a while at the same time.

Like, how do you do art and then promote the art and keep your soul and all of that? I wanted to ask you guys,

we were on this lake vacation recently and with the family and the kids took a picture of me. Abby threw two lines to me on the dock.
So I was holding two lines. Boat lines.
Yeah.

So I was holding two lines like this. They were pulling me in opposite directions and it was ridiculous.
I felt like I was going to fall in and the kids took a picture of me.

And I looked at the picture, and my first thought was, Oh, here I am trying to serve God in money. This is my

that is the caption of this.

So, my question to you all is

how,

like when you put out big money, John, at first before I heard it, I was like, I felt betrayed. I was like, what?

Then I was like, thank God.

Can you talk to us about how you all, all, when you're in your home and away from the world,

talk about like what is enough

and how does not enoughness ruin everything? Like, what are your talks around art and money and how to stay true to your art and also get it to people? It's been an ongoing conversation since day one.

And, you know, in the early days,

it was

more tied to like, how do we pay our bills?

Which in some ways makes things a lot easier

because enough

is quite literal in that context. Like, how do we make enough to pay our rent, to pay our phone bills, to do the work that we really want to do that may or may not be profitable?

I think that's... the double-edged sword of success and

the feeling feeling of the goalposts constantly moving. I think we're both people who, from the time that we were little, there is no such thing as enough in terms of our creative growth.

We're always pushing ourselves, we're always asking ourselves the question: like, how do we make this better? It's a challenge, and it's something that we're navigating.

It's something that you explored quite literally in the making of big money. And

I feel

these sort of

dual

and dueling impulses

to

want to build something and to make it as big and beautiful as it can be and then we talk a lot about retirement. We want to shut the whole machine down.
We want to hibernate.

We want to kind of tuck into ourselves and not have to participate. in that way.
And so I don't know the answer to that question.

I think think it's a work in progress. It's something we're constantly reassessing

and that we, yeah.

Yeah,

you're constantly at war with the monster that's within.

We all have one that's within. The best way to deal with it is to stare it in the eye and to let it know its place.

You got to look at it because the thing is, if you don't look at it,

it's going to creep up behind you and get closer and closer and then pretty soon it'll be right up on you take over

we are constantly warring with our our nature so you you you have to think about the aspect of that not just from a career perspective but from a spiritual one and then you have to think about well what is the work that only i can do

What's the work in the world that only

I can do? And then let me do that to the best of my ability.

And what you'll see is there's a resonance in that that makes whatever success or lack thereof in terms of the worldly standard that comes with that worth it.

So then there's a level of fulfillment within while you balance this fight with the monster. And then from there, I think it's a question of how much do you give? You know, biblical principles, 10%.

But

what is giving? How do you define that? And that's really the thing. And as you grow, and as the goalposts move, and as things expand, and

your vision of yourself and what you can contribute to the world, to the community that you're part of, to society, all of that expands, then how you give changes. So it's like a constant,

you got to constantly grapple with it. And then the systems of the world and the way that things are built are impossibly corrupt.

So

even in the context of a thing that you're doing

that you have the greatest of intention of being a part of,

there's something or someone or someplace that it hurts.

Everything

in every single vertical of society is rooted in some level of impurity. So you have to find a way to to

to orient yourself, find equilibrium within all of that. And that's a really, it's a really conscious effort.
You have to be very sober-minded.

And you have to continuously push forward in a way where you understand

exactly where you're standing at every moment. And

that's the key. It's hard, but I mean, that's as much as we've figured out so far.
So in your metaphor, what is the beast? Yes. Is it ambition? I mean, the beast is different for different people.

Everybody has one, though.

Don't fool yourself and think you don't have one.

I'm reminded

a friend of ours

is on the dating apps and looking for a partner

and was considering potentially

pursuing something. with an individual she met on the apps and John said what is his relationship to his beast

And it was such an interesting question because, you know, some people allow their beast to devour them. Other people pretend the beast isn't there.

And it's something I've been reflecting upon a lot.

And what you've been thinking about that, Boo?

Talk about, huh? I think... My beast is a little bit like a chimera.
Like it has like multiple heads to it. But you know,

ambition is one of those things that I think, especially for men, is prized and valued. As a woman, it can be a little trickier.

I like ambition. It's the thing that drives me.
It's the thing that makes me push through my own resistance. But one of the heads that sprouts from my ambition beast is

that

kind of perfectionistic tendency that, when taken to an extreme, can feel like a kind of prison.

And, you know, Glenn, to your earlier point, it's like, yeah, we're writers. We love our words.
We want to say things just the way we want to say them.

And so, in an on-stage context, like sometimes that can be limiting because I'm so attached to the words that I wrote in my preparation or in my script that I miss the moment.

I miss the opportunity to feel the energy of the crowd and to have that really improvisational magic that can only happen when you're actually listening and you're not like reading off of a teleprompter in your mind.

Other times, though,

it prevents me from experimenting and taking risks. And I want to be good so badly

that I don't allow myself the freedom to explore and mess up and

to open myself up to a kind of uncertainty that feels scary, but that when I lean into it,

quickly shifts from like a fear of what I don't know to a sense of awe and excitement at the mystery of what's possible.

Interesting.

Yeah. Did you write that beforehand? Didn't just read it.
No, I didn't. Wow.

See?

But I think that what you both are saying is so true in that the beast

or the monster, however you want to categorize it, lives within us.

And so many people, and myself included, at certain times in my life, I think that my identity is that, but I don't know that it's maladaptive.

I don't know that it's working not in my best interest in terms of my soul's best, highest, best interest. And so, I don't know.
What do you think the beast is for?

Well, it's interesting because everyone says ambition, but ambition is just an empty word. It's like ambition for what is the question.

Because

ambition for what? Like,

if we define what we're ambitious about in a way that is true to us, I mean, I was listening to an interview that you did actually, we made our entire family watch it, John.

And you, I think, quoted Monk and you said, a genius is the one who sounds most like himself.

So, if ambition is aligned with that

for a creative, that my ambition is to make my life and my art and my relationship most myself,

then

unbridled ambition might not be dangerous. But if ambition is tied to relevance and the metrics that the world does instead being perceived a certain way,

it is a monster. So like, Suleika, when you say ambition, what do you mean? What are you ambitious for?

So I think,

you know,

we started this by talking about what's enough. And I think where ambition can dip into dangerous territory is when it's an unconsidered yearning for more,

but you're not defining what more is.

It's just like more, more, more, more, more. And you start to just feel like

this kind of like gluttonous

appetite, but there's no, you haven't identified what more is and

what's meaningful to you

about what you want more of. Yes.

And so when I find myself in

this kind of cycle of just, I'm adding things, I'm doing things, and I don't even really know why or if I'm even enjoying them, that's where it starts to get tricky.

And, John, what are you ambitious for? And what is your monster, your beast? Huh. Well, see,

I

want to be great.

And that requires you to have a certain focus.

And I feel like that focus can be

wonderful if it's not misaligned with your quiet time with God.

If you start to make that become

your God that you worship

then your talent becomes an idol and your gift that you've been given to cultivate, to work on, to share becomes a form of

self-indulgence, even if it's helping people. Now that's the thing right there.
Yes.

Even if it's helping people.

My belief is we're not here

just to do the thing that we've been made to do. We're here to be on a spiritual journey with the Creator.
I love that. The Creator creates and created us in his image, and it's a beautiful image.

It's an image of creation, of movement, of

spontaneity.

There's also

this vision of people, and everybody's beautiful, and everybody has their own divine spark, and it's a light within them. And

you can lose track of it, but you can never ever fully lose it. So, everybody, you see everybody, you're supposed to see all of this love and energy that's coming from these people.

And that is not work.

That's not head down. That's a way of life.
That's a form of existence. And you need quiet time.
And you need time to reflect on all of the wonders of

what that is.

And be in communion.

So for me, that's

the big thing.

The pursuit of some

imagined level of achievement. in a pantheon that's also equally imagined to create a legacy for what.

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Because of the state of the world,

I have not been doing very well lately, just in general.

So I'll leave it at that, but I was talking to a friend, Brandy, my friend Brandy Carlisle, who was in the middle of finishing her album and doing, she's the best, and she was doing a little bit better mentally than I was, and we were talking about it.

And she said,

Have you been writing? And I said, No, I've been activating and organizing. And she said, I just don't think that you're obsessed enough with anything right now.

And I just blew it off. I was like, okay, whatever.
And then that night in bed, I was like,

And so, my question is: you two deal with hard things all the time, okay? Like in your personal lives, in the world, you are not bypassers of pain.

How is art connected to anxiety? Does it help you? Do you have to be obsessed with something to survive? And also, is anxiety a precursor to creation? You want me to, you uh, you got

me to go for okay,

I know

I think everything beautiful has to come from

some level of tension.

joy comes from pain.

There's never a scenario where you have

an expression of a person that doesn't come without some sort of

journey or some sort of epiphany or realization that comes from being

in opaque gray darkness.

The essence of

creative

expression is catharsis. It's release.

It's this moment that

is a shining beacon when you are lost.

And now I want to share it on stages and on the rooftop. I want to go.

So

anxiety is a part of the equation, not necessarily to creation, but it's a part of the human experience that leads to the impulse to create.

And

uncertainty, rather. And I believe that.
I believe you have to have a

it's kind of what we're talking about facing the beast.

You have to have an element of

darkness

within the context of you shining the light. What about you, Sue? I'm forgetting who said this, but someone said this.

These are not my words, said that a mosaic is a conversation between what's broken.

And so it's not so much that for me

the creative impulse necessarily arises from pain. Like I think

of like most children who have this unbridled connection to their creativity. They're playing make-believe, they're tapping into their imaginations, they're making gloriously messy finger paintings.

It's not because they're like a brooding, self-destructive artist who then feels the impulse to make the masterpiece. But I like

and it really resonates with me what you said

about it stemming from tension. And tension for me can be a question that I find myself circling around.
It can be an attempt to

figure out how to put together a mosaic of broken pieces or at least to understand

how they're in conversation with each other. And, you know, I think the challenging thing about creativity as we get older is it can be both a self to anxiety and a source of anxiety in and of itself.

And so at some point, that pilot light of self-consciousness ignites as we get older and we start to sort ourselves into categories. Like I'm a bad artist, I'm a good artist,

the arts are not for me,

whatever it is. And so I think we

both very much believe that everyone is deeply creative and more than that, that there's great value

in

cultivating a creative practice. And so

once again, where things get tricky for me is when you enter, you know, trying to make a living from your creative work into the equation.

So, if I'm by myself and I'm journaling or I'm just painting for myself, whatever it might be, that is a source of joy, it's an antidote to whatever is plaguing me. The second I try to imagine anyone,

let alone, you know, a faceless public

consuming that creative work, that's where

things start to shift. I start to wonder: is this good?

Is this interesting?

Will this be criticized? Or worst of all, will this be entirely ignored? Whatever it is.

And that gives me a great deal of anxiety.

Yeah.

You know, I don't think that artists

until

the modern age,

there's not really been a precedent for the way that art is taking the place as a commodity in society.

So I don't really think that the relationship to

creating, similar to like when you think about a child, they're trying to make sense of the world. There's a natural tension to the way that they are and the way that the world is.

And

their impulse is to be a certain way, which over time, as you say, that pilot lie to self-consciousness, they learn to not be that way.

Hopefully they retain it.

But I think that's the best example, which is,

it's not tied to an audience or a profit.

It's only because of the invention of these media delivery systems,

the phonograph record and RCA Victor and then the CD, and streaming, and TV, and all the ways of the satellite being able to broadcast the thing.

But for centuries, artists in society were the ones who

knew literature and they had a certain wisdom. And they were the griots and the madrigals and the troubadours and the toast tellers.
And they had the oral tradition, and they would pass it on.

Since the first drum, and the writers, and the scribes would create the history and the mythology of a place and a people and pass it on.

And it was a way, it was a part of the fabric of everyday life and it was music and

writing and painting and it became a part of how people gather in community.

And that's when it actually had, I believe, the deepest meaning that we've gotten away from. And the things that we resonate with most are the things that have that meaning that are also entertaining.

But these things are much more than entertainment. It's a form of our communal gathering and spiritual practice.
And if we look at them like that, I think that makes it a lot easier.

Now, it's harder because we're in this system. Again, that's impossibly corrupt, but

the aspect of seeing it for what it is helps me a lot. And children are a great, great example of that because

they don't know yet. And

the tension with them is not as much anxiety as it is:

wow, this is my nature, and people are trying to box me in.

And

their nature is the truest to the source of creativity itself. Yeah.

And they're just something about being the sub, the subject of the artist and not switching into

perceiving yourself. Like, that is whatever my beast is, something about that.

Because sometimes when I'm saying to Abby, I just don't know if I'm doing enough, if I'm being good enough, if I'm giving enough, I don't think that's what I mean because I know I am.

I think what I mean is I don't know if I'm being perceived as giving enough, being good enough, being whatever, which is gross to admit, but I think that's what I mean. Am I being perceived?

It's not about all about output, it's about how I'm being perceived. And that's what

an artist being a part of this modern world,

what is added to it, right?

When did that start for you? When did you start to feel

the weight of perception? I mean, probably

really young, like as a young girl and just noticing that the way people perceived me was tied to my power to move in the world.

Or sometimes tied to a withdrawal of power or a withdrawal of motivation. I mean, I

I can pinpoint, for me, like an exact moment where my relationship to creativity changed. And like the phrase we use between the two of us is creative injury.

And so like

eighth grade, I had always loved to write. I was doing it in my journal.
And I had this wonderful English teacher who invited us.

as an extra credit project to write a short story and I was so excited. I was like, oh, yes, this is my moment where I'm going to move beyond the journal, and I'm going to do a really good job.

And so I spent all of spring break filling up an entire yellow legal pad with a novella. It was like 70 pages, or however many pages are in a legal pad.
And I handed this thing in.

And

the next week, everyone got their assignments back. except me.
And I was thinking to myself, oh, I did such a good job that my teacher is waiting to have a one-on-one.

I was expecting publication, like possibly a literary agent, maybe a parade. I don't know.
And

later that day, I got summoned to the school psychologist's office

and they were holding my yellow legal pad with my story on it. to discuss some of the concerning themes in my story.
So I

was on a real reading journey in eighth grade and had been heavily drawing upon some of my most recent inspiration. I had just read Lolita's Nabokov

and a Paul Holes novel set in Morocco. So my novella.
As eighth graders do. As eighth graders do.
My novella featured

a protagonist who was a 13-year-old

sex worker set in an opium den in Tangiers.

You're so funny to me now, but I was so horrified. And the worst part was the teacher never said a word to me about it.
And I felt like I had done a bad thing. I felt humiliated.

I was honestly grateful

that she didn't tell my parents about it, but it took me

until the age of 22 to ever show my writing to anybody again. Wow.

And so I think, you know, we all have these creative injuries

at some point in childhood or adolescence or adulthood

where you

lose that pure connection to your creativity, where you become conscious.

of the perception of others and then the work becomes like trying to get back to that free-flowing space and so for me like I write all of my first drafts in my journal because I have to trick myself into thinking this is the writing that doesn't count.

It's the writing just for me. The second I open a Word doc,

I get scared. I freeze up.
It's like the blinking person

is just like a warning sign of all the possible pitfalls and dangers that can befall me. And I can't write anything true.

I start to self-edit before I've even figured out what I'm even saying.

Me too. I tell Abby, I'm like, I think this is why Jesus only wrote in the sand.
Like, I can't write things that will be stuck forever. That's terrifying to me suddenly.
Totally.

Do you have, did you, do you remember any creative injury, John? Or did you skip over that part? Oh, no. I had a wealth of

a season.

I think about my upbringing and

it's so funny because there's a whole period of time that didn't feel particularly creative and seemed pretty much like

a purgatory.

There's a lot of neighborhood bullies and a lot of antics, a lot of different energy. You know, a very classic American upbringing in a suburb outside of New Orleans, very provincial.

Kennedy, Louisiana, we've got a railroad track separating it. And, you know, where you got a railroad track and a river, there's a certain mythology to that.

But you did have some significant creative injuries. Oh, yeah, after that.
After that. And like

John always says to me, you have to get your rejection in and so rejection was a really

big part

of Those early years and figuring out how in spite

of being perceived in various ways

What you do with that injury John has his own school psychologist story bizarrely enough

Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Don't we all?

Yeah, Yeah, and it really is. People always say the one-liner is about rejection and all that, and it kind of can feel like bullshit, except that it's the truest thing.
That if you are

so fearful, like the number one fear is like public shaming, right? It's like any sort of, someone's going to tell me I'm not good enough. So the best thing that can happen to you is that early on.

And then you survive it. because then you're not equating it with death anymore.
But I also think that it's about, because because I think that that happened to me.

I had a guidance counselor that she said to me, Abby, you're never gonna make it playing soccer. She literally said that.
Like, you're never gonna play soccer.

Like, you're never gonna be able to make money play soccer. So you need to like work harder on your studies.
I mean, she had a point, but

I think that because

the way that our constitutions are made up and the way that these crafts and these gifts sit with inside us,

those things,

whether it be a counselor or somebody saying, like,

this isn't right with your novella, like

it, that kind of creates the trajectory of, like, oh, thank you.

Like, and we don't know this for very much later until we can actually prove it to ourselves that we, in fact, are writers or musicians or athletes. And so, there's a part of me that

though it probably would have been less painful, I think that that element is almost like that creative injury is almost part of the impulse that

the way we are wired pushes us in the direction of either proving that one rejection wrong. Yeah, it's the tension he was talking about.
It creates

a tension of creation.

You know, it's interesting you said proving it wrong, because I think you're someone who responds to a creative injury, especially if it's externally inflicted by being like watched.

You'll see. And it's like, I'm someone who

isn't always able to do that.

I'm someone who's like, oh, you saw something

about me that I didn't fully clock and shame on me for not seeing that.

And I immediately assume.

My reflex is to assume that whatever that outward perception is, it's truer than my own perception.

I have to actively work at reorienting myself to rejection or to creative injury. And so I'm so curious, John, for you where that comes from.

Because you had a lot of people from the outside telling you what you're doing is wrong or what you're doing is bad or whatever it is. Hmm.

I don't know where it came from in the early days, other than just

a drive and intuition and a sense of

knowing.

That's the kind of thing we were talking about earlier, where you feel this

real compulsion to be and express authentically.

And it doesn't matter if there's aspects of rejection or aspects of tension involved with it. It's just your truest self and that's ultimately the best that you can do.

and I guess I attribute that to having great mentors and great parents to instill a sense of

values in that way but also I think about the history of the planet earth and the greatest souls have been the most rejected

so I think the process of it

I've gone through now is like I can articulate it is first I like to examine what is said to a degree whatever it is because you always want to have a

sense of being able to be objective and that's part of a foundation of humility within you have that

but then

you got to look

well

most of the the things that

I care about

are rejected by the world.

So

and the people who count the most,

what do they think? What do they say?

And then ultimately, that inner knowing. You just got to know

and let that drive you. Because that's the one.
Because if you're not doing it for that, everything else is external. That's right.

What are the things that you care about the most that the world rejects?

Well, I mean, look at look around.

I mean

Look around that's what the album is

talking about is just the tip of the iceberg of talking about just look at the aspects of what's happening we've

We've stretched things beyond the natural limitation in almost every category

and it's created this epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Now, we're not in a time where everything is dark, and I don't want to be doom and gloom.
But if you look at the aspect of things

that we've achieved, and you measure that against the level of spiritual and moral decay,

it's unfathomable. And what's the culprit? Mammon, money, big money.

You look at what's driving everybody.

What's our ultimate value system? What's the thing that underlines everything?

And

everybody

who was a part of this system has to deal with the ramifications of that.

So I just feel like the purity of what we could be and who we are as souls on this earth, this planet Earth, our common home, which has been stretched beyond its natural limitation

in pursuit of what? I mean, I don't want to soapbox y'all, but that's just kind of, you know,

look around.

But we here, we still got some

joy warriors out here pushing,

shaking.

But even in a smaller level, like I think of jazz music, which in this day and age is

something that, like, a guidance counselor,

as your guidance counselor did, it's probably not likely to advise you to pursue as a career path that's going to pay the adults. Fair.
Right?

No, no.

Listen, you got to do it because you love it.

But that's interesting because it starts there.

That's connected.

It's like if the thing that we're all going towards is money and the big money, then you're being advised as a nine-year-old to give up the thing that you, that expresses you because it won't ultimately serve this thing that we're all guiding everybody towards.

So that's all connected.

You laying it out, Glenn.

Go ahead, give them a sermon, huh?

Like, if ambition were tied to something else, if ambition were tied to like every adult around you is trying to figure out who you are at your essence and then figure out how to guide you on a path that will allow you to be that forever.

And then we figured out

because even the term like earn a living is so insane. Like, oh my God, we've we accept that.

We accept that we have to earn our right to exist and it's a whole paradigm that would change how we served children, I think, if we changed what we're ambitious for.

Well, and I also think it's not allowing us to fully develop our human essence

because

it's not being cultivated in us. throughout our younger adolescence and younger years.

You're told, you need to go do this, you need to go do that, and you need to train and become coder and get into computer science because that's the future and that's the where all the jobs and the money are.

But then you're getting coders who aren't completely developed or evolved.

And so even the evolution of the way that tech and science, it's we're not, nobody's their full selves because it's being it's not being cultivated in us as children.

And so you show up to to be our authentic self and you don't even know what the hell that means. That's right.
You're like, I know how to code. Our beloved

friend Liz gives what she calls her purpose talk, which I'm sure we've all heard, which is, you know,

this sort of toxic messaging that we receive from the time we're very, very young, that you have to find your singular

purpose. You have to master that purpose, then you have to monetize it and become the best at the world.
And it's so much pressure. And she, you know,

I think of her every day. She offers like such a gentler corrective,

which instead of being fixated and identifying a passion or a purpose,

just

following the threads of your curiosity. And, you know, I think

so many people suffer from feeling like they haven't found a purpose or a passion.

And more than that, they haven't earned a living by monetizing that sense of purpose or passion. And

I think we do a great disservice, not just to children,

but to

our

ongoing possibilities of changing our minds about what we're curious about of being able to pursue something because you're obsessed with it because it's fun without necessarily having

to figure out how to translate that into something that pays your bills that's right

that's why I feel sad for you Suleika that your painting is so good I know I mean that's what I'm thinking about when I'm I'm like oh no she's so good at this

what are you gonna do because I am protected from my painting ever being monetized. No, that's not true.
No, I agree. First in line to buy a painting.
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you guys I have to know this personally I have two more questions I know you guys are so busy but number one I want to know what your last argument was about and why that's my favorite thing is figuring out what people argue about and then I also want to know what each of your

it I don't even know what the words are relationship to

orientation towards spirituality and God

two completely different things yeah that's nice.

I love we talking about all of these major themes.

Abundance out of order is gluttony.

And that's a deep world we're in. I think when we

when we

think about

the second question, you mean what do we believe?

Or what will we...

Even separately. Like, how do you, how is your relationship to God separate? Like, when you talk about how to know where, what's real creativity and how

you're able to keep going, even when the world is rejecting, what I'm thinking in my head is, okay, he must have a real daily practice with God.

Because the people that I know who are in daily practice with God, it's like,

you know, when you're painting and you put the

gesso, whatever on, it's like it protects you.

It like protects the canvas from all the other shit that's gonna come you know what i mean so when i'm not in that i'm way more susceptible to what the world thinks of me yes yes yes no yeah i'm i'm christian i believe that we

are in a broken world

so that it's helping to to to

understand

and also have empathy for

the brokenness of

this whole system this whole aspect of our time on earth is to figure out how do we

shine our light and point to the source of all things for me when I think about Jesus Christ and what

that

really

the the the the the message of the gospel is is that the world is broken, but there's hope.

And if you think about hope,

it's sometimes hard to have or hard to see. So that's the idea of faith.
And then that's the practice.

How do you instill faith even in times when you don't see a hope, when you don't have a vision of the best in people or the best

in the systems of the world? And you're trying to...

move through the world and you're trying to be light and you're trying to be the best version of yourself and to raise your your gifts to their highest divine potential and order.

It definitely is helpful for me.

And I think that

it's a way of living that

has

in many facets been corrupted by people. So when you see the corruption of it in different ways, that's also a challenge against it.
But then the truest and most

pure essence of it is in the Word of God. So I try to connect to that and define that through every single action, every single moment, every motivation.
In a nutshell, it's how you live.

It's how you live.

There's a way to live that's Christian-like.

There's

the fruits of the Spirit.

There's aspects of understanding that you have

for the origin of all things the the state of of humanity and how you treat people how you exist that

can point people in a direction

of the divine that's what i mean there's there's a lot more to that and it's it's a journey and there's a there's so much that can be said about that about this one but it's it's how you live you can profess something

and not live it.

Yeah.

That's like when she's the opposite of when Gandhi said, It's we love your Jesus. Your Christians just aren't any.
We, I don't see Jesus in your Christians.

And Suleika's like the flip of that. Yes.

You guys are so cool. Yeah.
You two are so cool. I said to Glennon, I want a non-hologram double date.
Okay. But can we flip the question on you too? Yeah, that's what I was

curious about that. You're like, our

most fight, recent fight or our relationship to religion or our idea of God?

Both. Both.

Okay, well, we got in a huge fight last night. Right? I wouldn't say it was a huge fight.
It's one

way to dust up. We just got in a little verbal conundrum, and Abby, who is much more good at being earnest and careful than I am, because I tend to shut down and get

defensive, walked us through it like she was a therapist. And we slowed it down and found the fear inside of each of us.
It was like the most lesbian situation.

We were doing some real good parts work. We were doing some good parts work.
Yeah.

So we are

working on when there is conflict, not

mostly me, not shutting down and hiding and protecting myself. It is very hard for me to stay open and soft when someone has pointed out something in me that I don't like.

Suleika, it's a version of when the world says mean things and I'm like, okay, you're right. And I'm just going to shut down.

As opposed to some, the inherent like worth that some people have, that they're like, I can step into this conflict and survive. I can keep going and create and survive.

I tend to be more of like a snail who just goes back into the shop. Yeah, and the story you have is that you're bad or that you're not good.
Yeah.

And then the way that you respond is in protection of that or for the fear of that. And so

I think that having these kind of, because over time, and this is the way you guys know this in marriage and relationship, you start to know the other person so well that the way that you go into conflict,

you start to

go through the perspective of their perception and

what they're going through. And so then that changes the way that you would do it.

And sometimes that's actually not good because it's allowing them to keep hiding, or for me to not say the thing that I need to say in the moment when, you know.

Yes, and what we're working on, you guys, that we figured out last night is I think that the meanest thing a couple can do to each other is, so here we do this thing where I'm saying something that's like pretty, I'm saying words that are kind,

but my energy is so judgmental and I am judging the shit out of you, but I know how to say the right words, so this can't be proven in a court of law, okay?

Abby is reading my energy and is like, WTF, why are you being that way?

What we're trying to avoid at all costs is going into, that's not what I was feeling. That's not what I was thinking.
You can't prove it. I said the right words.
And like gaslighting the other one.

Do you know what I mean? How you're like, I'm reading you. I know that's what you're thinking.

And so we have to admit that energy to each other if we get if we're gonna get to the kernel of the thing.

It's the way in which, when you've done a lot of therapy, the same way you can speak medical ease or legalese, you can speak therapily. Yes.
And you can say things unimpeachably,

but

the unprocessed, untransformed feelings are still

behind those words. We, you know, we've devised a shorthand,

we have a code word.

Our code word is lunch meat.

And it's for situations when,

like, we're in our feelings.

We're tempted to shut down, to withdraw because...

maybe we're feeling hurt or you know one of us is traveling and we haven't responded to a phone call Instead of doing the thing I think that so many of us do when we perceive

the other person is

when the when you're feeling hurt, is to

get into your feelings, to be passive-aggressive, to lash out, to shut, whatever it is. We just say lunch meet, which is the cue that

what we need to do is

to

double down on expressing our love to each other. And when we do that, then, you know, the rest of the argument feels less like an argument and more like an actual conversation.

Oh my god.

I'm going to steal it. Last night, Abby said, can we have a safe word? You called it a safe word.
This was not during sex, it was during the argument. Okay.

And she,

and I was like, no, that's, so now we will be doing that. Yes.
Okay. We will make one after this episode.
We are so grateful for you.

We, yesterday, which was, I've never heard Abby say in her life, she was sitting there reading something about you guys and she goes, I have a crush on John.

And I was like, that Abby Womanbach is the friendship I've ever heard you say. Friendship crush.
She said, no, you said a personality crush. Personality crush.

And I said, I have a personality crush on Suleika.

So you guys are our personality crushes.

And we adore you. And please, next time, can we please just have a couch time with no cameras? Not that it will matter if it's not monetized, but I think we should try it anyway.
Yeah, I know

you both are tired and you want to spend your time together. And so I just want to say I appreciate you choosing to spend this time here with us in these boxes, within the boxes.

And let's do this in live, in real life at some point. We love you both.
We really love you guys.

The personality crushes are mutual. We love you both.
We

look forward to our couch double date. Oh, yeah.
Come on, couch.

All right, pod squad. We'll see you next time.

We Can Do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human.

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