Why Do We Do Hard Things?

Why do we do hard things? Why do we have this urge — compulsion even! — to make things that have feeling in them?

Where does that come from? And what should we do with it?

I dive into these complex questions today on the podcast with my guest Raj Lulla. Raj is a friend and author of the book the Caring Place. And this is the third episode of a build-in-public style series we’ve been doing on his book launch.

The topic is rich and relevant to anyone who’s made something that matters, wants to make things that matter, or wants to make a difference in the world.

Listen in while we try to answer this difficult question: why do we do what we do?

Shownotes

Raj’s newsletter: https://rajlulla.com

Pre-order the Caring House: https://amzn.to/3SGbr0k

Software Generated Transcription:

[00:01:36] Dan: You wrote a book. Why would you do something like that?

[00:01:41] Why would you endure the kind of pain and suffering that requires to put something like this out into the world?

[00:01:48] Raj: Well, because I was starting a business and joining another business and had my third kid on the way in three years. And I just felt like I didn’t have quite enough

[00:01:58] going on.

[00:01:59] So,

[00:02:00] Dan: much free time is the answer.

[00:02:02] Raj: yeah. You know, honestly, it was because. There was an idea that just wouldn’t leave me alone. I, I heard an episode of This American Life that talked about this counseling center for kids in Salt Lake City. It’s a grief counseling center for kids called The Sharing Place. And and just the, some of the things that the kids said, the way, the methodology of The Sharing Place, of How they help kids understand you know, a lot of them, I think 60 percent of the kids there have lost a dad.

[00:02:34] And, you know, so helping them understand that level of grief and trauma to me seemed insurmountable. You know, like, just how do you even begin to approach that? And the care with which they do that and the skill with which they do that was, was amazing to me. But then also, I, I kind of get the what ifs at that point of, of, okay, wow, what if what becomes of the children who go through this place?

[00:03:01] And, and there was one particular kid on the episode who, who was trying to explain that his dad had died by suicide. And he said this phrase, my, my dad shot his brains. And and I know that at the, the sharing place, they teach kids to. Kind of understand that, you know, your brain is like a computer and that if you damage it too much, then it stops working.

[00:03:26] And so that was this kid’s, you know, kind of ineloquent, but innocent way of expressing what had happened to him. And you know, I just kind of played things forward in my mind of what if a little boy and a little girl had met. In those circumstances, each having lost a father, and and then, could they grow up, fall in love, get married as people do, kind of, you know, elementary school sweethearts, and, and, but with their shared trauma and tragedy, could they survive married life?

[00:04:01] I mean, married life is hard enough as it is, and, and with the suspicion that you know, you might lose, The person that you’re with in the same way that repeats the worst thing that’s ever happened to you in your life. Could marriage survive that? And it was just so Interesting to me that it just the thought wouldn’t leave me alone Even that phrase that you know, my dad shot his brains was It was just haunting and not in a not in a ghoulish way But just sort of in a I wonder what happens kind of way

[00:04:38] Dan: Uh, it’s fascinating that that would be, that that would be something that would hook you in, in such a way. And I’m curious just to, to peel back another layer of, of like, why, what do you, like, what do you make of that? Like, what do you make of the fact that you’re drawn to this kind of Pain and trauma, suffering, like it just tells me I, I assume that it speaks to something that you’ve known of these kinds of experiences and of of nothing else, of grief and loss but yeah, what do you make of all of that?

[00:05:21] Raj: Yeah. It,

[00:05:24] first

[00:05:24] had the idea for the book, I didn’t think that it was unusual

[00:05:29] Dan: um,

[00:05:30] it

[00:05:32] Raj: didn’t think that it was personal in the sense that I Just thought it was really a really fascinating thought experiment that you know What two people from a really extreme background let’s play it out in our minds it like if you were given this as an improv You know, prompt.

[00:05:50] It would, of course, be a dramatic one, or most likely, but, but, you know, just how would it play out? Just let’s play it through to the end. And, and, in fact, the very first line of the book is The first thing you ever said to me is my dad shot his brains. And so for me, it was kind of just this question of what did Gabe, the main character, do that Caused his wife Jenny to bring this up because I imagine this is not a thing you bring up over breakfast This is not a thing that that you bring up lightly.

[00:06:24] In fact, it’s probably the one card you never play so what did he do to cause that and and so at first I thought it was that but having written the book having lived with the book for about seven years now and and gotten to unpack The why of it. What I realize now is like I said, like I mentioned, we were having our third kid in 37 months and which is really fast for anybody who’s doing the math and we were having our third kid in 37 months.

[00:06:59] I had just left the non profit world where I had seven jobs in 10 years and and my wife and I had been married for about, let’s see, about eight years at that point. And our marriage started With the world kind of crumbling around us, we got married in 2008. The Great Recession started in 2008.

[00:07:21] My wife’s sister unfortunately passed also by suicide or accidental overdose. We’re not quite sure all of the circumstances around her passing, but it was very tragic, very sudden, left a three year old behind within six months of us getting married. And, and I’d also just lost a job, and so the very beginning of our relationship was compounded by grief, and, and it was interesting because I, you know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know her sister well, and so I was kind of more a passenger to Lindsey, My Wife’s Grief, and but I did know that, that walking through that with someone, you join what they call this club that nobody wants to join, you, you experience something in life that that everybody ultimately will experience losing a loved one in one manner or another and obviously some are, are more tragic, more shocking than others, but all of them are difficult and everybody joins this club eventually.

[00:08:22] And there are kind of rules to the club that most people don’t know. Things like you know, that, that most people in your life will avoid talking about it because they don’t want to make you think about something sad. And they don’t realize that you are are already thinking about that all the time and that them bringing it up It gives a moment of catharsis rather than You know rather than you know, oh man, I’d finally forgotten about that horrible thing that had happened But you bringing up just drags me right back in.

[00:08:55] No, that’s not what happens. People are are hoping for anyone that cares in, in those times. And especially after, outside that kind of month around a funeral, people just stopped talking about it. And so then you’re left very much kind of on your own to deal with it. I think there’s also some other things where, you know my wife and I, we both come from, Families that immigrated to the U.

[00:09:21] S. or at least parts of our families did and I mean ultimately everybody did but a very recent and so it’s hard for those types of families, our types of families, to feel like we have a great support system. I mean growing up. I only had, you know, half of my grandparents in the U. S. The other half was in was in India.

[00:09:42] And so it’s not like we could just call family over when we needed something. And so there’s this sense of isolation. And when, then when you compound that with a situation like tragic loss, then You just, I mean, it’s easy to feel like you’re on an ocean floating by yourself, hoping to see land again.

[00:10:03] Like you just, it’s hard to get your bearings. It’s hard to know when things are going to be okay, if they’re ever going to be okay again. And so there were some really formative experiences, especially early in our marriage that, that, I think I was still trying to process we also had a couple of miscarriages before we had our, our first Who’s Healthy, and you know, and, and again, this is all in the, in the midst of losing seven jobs in ten years, and, And so, I mean, there was a good decade there where it just did not feel like the hits would ever stop coming.

[00:10:40] Dan: feels so true to my experience of life that like we do the things that we do because we think that They’re great ideas, or I mean, I’m just thinking about even, you know, the choices I’ve made in my, my career, even going into ministry early in my career, thinking that this was, you know, a choice and I don’t know. And then, then it becomes kind of this another dimension emerges that’s like, Oh, this didn’t just happen. This didn’t just happen out of the blue. It’s not like,

[00:11:17] these things stuck in us, in our minds, in our hearts and our souls, for, for no reason. But there’s a lot of context, a lot of story that That goes into it and compels us to do the things that we do.

[00:11:31] Raj: Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s funny because I was actually talking with the director of The Sharing Place about the book and it was a wonderful experience and, and only confirmed what a great organization that is. And He asked me kind of the same question that you did about he asked specifically said do you have a grief story and kind of Hearing what the book was about and that makes sense and and I’m asking if I had a grief story And so I told him just about everything that I just told you in a little bit more detail But one thing that I forgot was that one of the major defining things of my late teens, kind of like you’re talking about, the time that I chose to go into church work was that a friend of mine from church had had attempted suicide.

[00:12:20] And and thankfully, you know, it’s it wasn’t completed and, and she’s still in the world today, but. That shaped a lot of what I was thinking about then, and, and even my faith of trying to make sense of, you know, church is supposed to be this place of hope and peace, and you can have someone who is checking all the boxes, you know, regular attendance and serving and all these things, and even seems joyful, who is just utterly dying inside.

[00:12:52] And, and so that, that really shaped a lot of my late teens, early 20s. And then for that next 10 years following that to be you know, and to involve a lot of grief and loss, it, it just kind of felt like this is the way that the world is, you know, and from about 16 to You know, the 31, 32. It just is like, well, life is pain.

[00:13:18] You know, that, that line in the Princess Bride, life is pain. Anybody who tells you any difference trying to sell you something.

[00:13:24] Dan: So true.

[00:13:26] Raj: and yeah, and I, I will say too, I, I’ve always been curious. I think probably, especially since that, that time where I almost lost a friend in high school I’ve always been really fascinated.

[00:13:42] And I don’t think in an unhealthy way, but just with. The fact that, as humans, the thing that really separates us from other species is our sentience. You know, at least some people would say that, you know, of course there’s very intelligent animals and all those things, but this, this awareness that we have, this consciousness that we have, and the fact that that consciousness can get so sick that it would be a existential threat to that consciousness.

[00:14:15] is fascinating and, and it’s something that I think every normal person worries about on some level. Of, you, you hear about these stories, you, you, you, or you lose a loved one, and, and you think Like what, what would it take for me to be in that spot? I don’t know. Maybe nobody else goes to that place. I know that I certainly have that, that question of, of man, what, what goes wrong inside of us that, that makes us no, no longer.

[00:14:52] able to keep going. And and especially, you know, living through what was a very hard time, hard, hard season of life at that point, seven jobs in 10 years, three kids in three years. And and just kind of having this question of like, how does anybody make it through this? That’s what the book is ultimately about is, is just this, and, and having this kind of extreme situation for these, these two people and how they met.

[00:15:18] It was just a canvas on which to ask the question, how is anybody, okay, how do, how do we do this at all? Is it possible? And I’ll, I’ll spoil some about the story just to say that like, I knew that I wasn’t writing a book that was going to, going to be a bleak, you know, story that, that says well.

[00:15:40] Sometimes you don’t. Good luck. I just, I did not want it to be that. And, and so yeah, it’s a book that deals with a heavy topic, but it’s not a sad book. There are, there are hopefully things that will make you cry. I cried writing it. I, I can’t remember who it was. I think it was I don’t think it was Hemingway, it was one of the great writers who said that if you don’t write, cry writing your book, nobody will cry reading it, and I bawled at one of the scenes, and but it was in a really beautiful way, and what, the, the harder, more Kind of senseless tragedy or seemingly senseless tragedy was it easier to write than, than the ones that are a little bit more meaningful in, in the book, which I think tells us something about life too, is that.

[00:16:25] You know, when somebody lives really well and and you know, has a full life, then then we get to experience their loss in a really bittersweet way. And and while it is really painful and makes us cry, it also you know, punctuates how much that person gave and and, and the joy we get to experience from that.

[00:16:49] Dan: Yeah, Yeah, It’s interesting. I hear you talking about this question of like sentient beings in how that darkness, sickness can, you know, all of everything. I won’t rehash everything you just said, but it feels like such a heady way to to engage in the topic which is so, so different than the way the places that I go with it, which is like, and I think maybe that’s just some, some of yeah, the differences, the differences between, between maybe how you and I process the world, because it’s like, well, I just cry.

[00:17:21] That’s just that’s just the, the, the solution. And but yeah, it’s, it’s interesting to me and it, but it also feels like I could see how. That question, the intellectual question, then leads to the creation of the story, which then leads to, and you can tell me if this is not true in your experience, but then leads to maybe the feelings. And is that how some of how you’ve, how this book has been a part of your processing of some of these feelings?

[00:17:51] Raj: Yeah, I, I was just listening to Nimesh Patel was on Mike Birbiglia’s podcast Working It Out, and he was talking about how there’s this Hindu concept. of equanimity, where you’re essentially supposed to be kind of even keel in all situations that you know, the world doesn’t owe you anything. So when you get good things, you you know, it’s not owed to you.

[00:18:16] And when you lose things, it was never yours to start with, essentially. And it’s like the universe just is, and what happens happens, essentially. I will say I’m not a scholar on, on Hindu teaching by any means, but. You know, having been raised by an Indian father and, and having that as a part of my cultural background, there’s definitely the sense that emotions are if not weakness, they’re, they’re unreliable.

[00:18:43] And so you know, being a highly sensitive person a term I didn’t even know until I read Susan Cain’s book Quiet you know, being that, and that was in my 30s when I read that book. So being a highly sensitive person, being raised in a culture that doesn’t really value the emotional experience, I you know, And my dad is an engineer as well.

[00:19:08] And so, like, approaching, approaching an emotional issue with kind of a cold intellectualism, for me, is sort of a way to work it out, to, to, you know, I, I, the first time I went to therapy, I was 24. Lindsay and I had just gotten married I had just lost a job in a really horrible way. It was a toxic environment and I, I was fired from my first job not for performance or anything.

[00:19:38] Really just culture politics of the organization and the I went, I went to therapy and it, to me, it was to, to mechanically fix. panic attacks. You know, it was like I can’t go to the grocery store without like hyperventilating. So can you fix me? It felt very mechanical.

[00:19:56] And so sometimes I have to approach, or I feel like I have to approach emotional issues from that direction.

[00:20:04] And, and I think if we’re all honest with ourselves, We, we, we sort of all do that. You know, the characters in this book certainly are aware to a point, and they’ve got the language that they were given and by the way, the book is based on The Sharing Place but is a very, very fictionalized version of it.

[00:20:24] In fact, it’s called The Caring House. Maybe not the most creative title in the world you know, based on this, but I didn’t want anybody to confuse the quality of care that these folks may or may not have gotten in, in the book with the quality of the real life place, which is why I did not use the actual name of the place.

[00:20:41] But I do hope to really support the sharing place through. The launch of this book because it, for one, it was such a huge inspiration to me, but also I just think that the work that they do is so, so needed. And and so anyway first time I went to therapy, I thought it was, I thought I was fixing that.

[00:20:57] And and, and I think that we all kind of you know, approach the world in, in that way where everything seems like a mystery to us of like, gosh, I don’t know why I’m angry right now. And then, and, and then we, the people around us are like, well, is it cause you just lost your dad? Or is it cause you, you know just lost your job or, or how, how are you feeling about finances or what?

[00:21:23] You know, it seems so obvious to everybody else, but we feel so alone in those experiences. And yeah, for whatever reason, my, my particular circuitry just finds it easier to intellectualize the questions about how I’m feeling than to than, you know, for you, you’re like, I just cry. I was like, yeah, that would be nice in some way.

[00:21:48] You’re probably a lot more emotionally healthy than I am.

[00:21:54] Dan: You know, I love it. Yeah, I, I’ve taken back to like that question that the director of the the sharing place asked of do you have a grief story? And when you just, you know, retold the asking of that question, like, I just felt it in me. I’m like, of course

[00:22:12] Raj: Yeah,

[00:22:13] Dan: And I feel like, like the answer to that question, no matter who we are, who is the reader, the listener, it’s always, yes there

[00:22:22] isn’t a way to be in this world and not have a grief story.

[00:22:25] Maybe it’s not a capital G grief story. Maybe you haven’t lost someone, but you’ve lost some, something,

[00:22:32] Raj: yeah, yeah, even, even a sense of the way the world is supposed to be,

[00:22:37] you know, I, I remember, I think it was second grade, third grade, it was around there I remember trying to explain to one of my classmates that my family was from India. My name is Raj, full name Rajesh, and so, like, it’s not a secret to anybody that, that I, that I have this, this history, but at the same time, growing up in Nebraska, in majority white schools, and, and every substitute teacher, I would just say here when it got to the paws on the list, cause it was like, Scott Lewis it’s like, yeah, I’m here.

[00:23:11] It’s Raj. You can skip the rest of it, you know, and and so, you know, I remember trying to explain to a classmate where my family was from, and I’d been there, went there in kindergarten, then went there again in fourth grade. And, and so he came back the next day and he was like, Oh, my mom explained it to me she said there’s no way they’re from India, they’re, they must be from the West Indies, and it’s like the number of times in my life I’ve been confused with Native Americans and now apparently the West Indies Hispanic and very rarely the actual Indian that is my heritage.

[00:23:52] It’s so alienating and I’m not complaining about it, but it is to say that, I mean, from, you know, seven, eight years old, I was aware that I didn’t have a rootedness in, in our state, in our city, in our region, even in our country, in the same way that my peers did. And, you know, like we didn’t go over to grandma’s for you know, Thanksgiving dinner.

[00:24:22] In fact, my grandma didn’t even celebrate Thanksgiving dinner because she was in a completely different country. And, so all of those traditions, all of that history, all that warmth, all that support, all those things, I, even, I couldn’t have, I couldn’t have told you at that age. exactly what I was missing, but I was aware that I didn’t have it.

[00:24:41] I didn’t, I couldn’t have enumerated that list of exactly what those things were. But it’s a, it’s an experience that. That persists. I mean, even today, there’s times where like, if we can’t find a babysitter, it’s just like, I mean, it’s just date night, but what if it was an emergency? You know, what, who do we have?

[00:25:04] And of course, you know, I think one of the hard things is that, that Rolodex is actually bigger than we typically think that it is, you know, that I could call my business partner and his wife and, and, and ask if, if they would take our kids while we ran to the hospital or something like that. You know, there are more people than I, I would think, but you do have those moments where you just go, man, this is just hard every day.

[00:25:31] And and so I wanted to write something that. that made anybody who’s ever felt that way, who’s ever had a grief story, whether it’s, you know, as quote unquote, small as just not feeling like the world is the way that it’s supposed to be, or as big as having experienced massive life, massive, massive loss the way that my wife and her family has.

[00:25:52] I want to just honor that and, and explore it. And I needed it too. I needed it for myself to sort of try to tackle this question is, can it be okay? Can it work out?

[00:26:03] Dan: I love it. I love it. It just brings me back to that question of how, how is anyone okay?

[00:26:11] Raj: Yeah.

[00:26:12] Dan: which like, the answer is they’re not. Like at some level, everyone is not okay. And I mean, I feel like that’s some of, some of my, I don’t know. I feel like my work with this. What we’re doing with the Meaning Movement is to invite, invite that question at least in the context of work to say that like We’re not okay.

[00:26:36] There’s there’s questions here We all have big questions about what we’re doing with our lives and where things are going and why we do the things we do and what we should do next and all of those all of those things and so I guess I just want to call that out. That question does have an answer in my opinion, which is We’re not okay

[00:26:55] Raj: Yeah.

[00:26:56] Dan: And can we, can we, be okay with that?

[00:26:58] Raj: yeah. And there are people who definitely start with more. You know, cards in their hand than other people, you know, there’s, there’s kids that you know, that my kids interact with who you know, their, their families live in much nicer houses than we do. And and. You know, have great educations, great careers, all those things that kind of seemed automatic for them.

[00:27:22] And I, I’m not saying it was, you know, because certainly those people had to work hard to even just maintain the level of lifestyle that they were raised into. And, and that is a lot of work on its own. But the path I think maybe seemed a little bit more clear. And even just that clarity is is a heck of an advantage to start with.

[00:27:40] And you know, but I also know that, that even in those places you know, in those lives, that there are these moments you know, referencing Mike Birbiglia again, who, who he’s got a joke that he, he says. Something like, I would never leave my family, but I get it, you know, and of course it’s like so transgressive to say

[00:28:06] out loud, but but you know, it, it, it is this universality of everybody in the audience going, like, I mean, fought with a spouse on the way here, or got yelled at by my kid on the way out the door to go see this show.

[00:28:20] Yeah, and yeah, so to your point, definitely, it is a universal experience at some point or another. In fact, I think that one of the You know, one of the most perfect scenarios, I think, to read this book is if you are on a business trip and and you want to miss your family, you know, like you may be kind of left with, you know, anybody seen my keys?

[00:28:47] Ah, you know, and there’s just that stress and whatever. And you finally get that kind of exhale moment at the airport, which is insane, right? Because. The airport being one of the busiest, craziest places, but you finally sit down in those, you know Herman Miller chairs and, and, and you’re like, At least no one is demanding anything of me right now.

[00:29:09] The pilot is going to take care of the flying, the, the you know, flight attendants are going to take care of the drinks. All I have to do is literally move my body from this chair to another chair and I will be in a different city. If you’re that kind of person or you’re having that kind of day, this is, this is, I think, the perfect book to read in a hotel room, over a weekend while you, while you are away from your family and wanting to come back, just wanting to give them the hugest hug in the world.

[00:29:38] I think this is a perfect book for that. I also think that it’d be a great book to read on a family vacation and you know, your kids are playing and you are sometimes tired of yelling at them to not, you know try to drown each other in the pool or whatever, and you’re off to the side needing some escapism.

[00:29:58] And you will cry by the pool. I’m, I’m not promising that you won’t. I’m not, I’m not even pretending that you won’t, but but sometimes that good cry by the pool is what you need. So then when you take the kids out to pizza later, you really cherish it.

[00:30:12] And that’s, that’s what I think this book is for, is to, is to give us that reminder, just like you know, some of my favorite movies, like you know, if you like Arrival, About time you know, basically anything with, with time travel.

[00:30:28] And the reason I say that is the book is not exactly linear. It’s not a, it’s not a time travel book, but there are some flashbacks. And part of the reason I did that is because none of us actually experience reality in ins sequential order. You know, like you, we could be sitting right here right now.

[00:30:44] We’ve already done it. And thinking back to third grade to high school, you know, we’ve time traveled in our minds.

[00:30:51] in, in the space of 30 minutes. And we do this all the time. You know, you’re, you’re driving to work and all of a sudden you remember. You know, this thing that happened when you were five or I even remember this morning, just thinking about this interview, this time with my first therapist where I just got back from India and, and I had, I got some kind of cough while I was over there, like some kind of respiratory infection.

[00:31:15] And I missed my next appointment because I didn’t want to get anybody sick, but I was still just this lingering cough and I made my next appointment and there was something about the AC kicking on his office or whatever that just like made my throat tickle so bad. And I was like I was just coughing. I was like, can I have some water?

[00:31:30] And, and he said, no, he’s like, I don’t have any. And I was just, I felt so abandoned by, by my therapist in that moment. And this was like, you know, 15 plus years ago at this point. And and what a weird thing to think about. On a Friday morning in, you know, in 2023, I was just this one, like, moment of feeling abandoned by my therapist you know, 15 years ago.

[00:31:55] We do this all the time, and, and so, and part of that, to your point about the Meaning Movement, is like, making sense of our, our own story is a lot more difficult than we think. All these things happen so fast, they happen both so fast and so slow, you know, like the, the major movements of life happen really slow often, and then the, the onslaught of day to day where you don’t know what’s going to be important five years from now is just so relentless.

[00:32:23] that it’s really hard to make sense of things. And so, you know, the book you know, has a, has, it’s not a time travel book, but it has kind of that sense of like, we have to go backwards to go forwards and to make some sense of, of our story.

[00:32:36] Dan: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And I think it’s absolutely, absolutely true. I think yeah, that’s, that’s a great, great place to to, to wrap up and I know I’ve, I’ve, I’ve yet to finish the, the book, but it does, it lands lighter than, than the premise sounds at first at first pass and, you know, in all the ways that you, you describe it, it sounds like a, I don’t know, it sounds like a feel, a feel good, but I don’t know it’s but like a real feel good kind of book. It’s the way that you describe it. I don’t know if that makes sense. It’s not I

[00:33:10] guess it’s just it’s not just sugar. You know, it’s not just like, but it’s but it’s meaningful. It’s heartfelt.

[00:33:15] Raj: the, the, the thing about Gabe, the main character in the book, is that I allowed him to be the things that I am probably too afraid to be in terms of he’s very snarky about the things that have happened to him and And so he’s he’s got this sarcastic edge which makes the book feel a lot lighter just to start with is that you you get that he kind of realizes how absurd life is and, and even loss, you know, and, and, and grief, you know, where it’s just like, Oh my gosh, like we’re on this really insane rollercoaster.

[00:33:51] And he’s got a a, a sharp wit about it. And his wife, Jenny does too, but. You know, in the process of, of him trying to get where he needs to go, he also you know, needs to, to understand how much of a defense mechanism that is. And you know, the, the humor propels you through a lot of the, the first half of the book starts to, to turn into more genuine moments.

[00:34:23] And again, this is some of the stuff that I experienced where you know, I was I was a. I don’t even know what the proper term would be, but overweight, chubby, whatever, kid in elementary school. And I learned, I learned by the time I got to junior high that if you can be the fastest wit, it doesn’t matter what anybody says to you, because you can beat them.

[00:34:42] And, and so it doesn’t matter if you’re stronger or any of those kinds of things. I’ve never, I’ve never got beat up in my life. And part of it’s cause I’m, I’m a big guy. I got broad shoulders, but part of it too is like, you just, you just, you know, take somebody’s knees out with a cutting remark and they’ll leave you alone.

[00:35:00] And you know, but they’ll leave you alone

[00:35:04] and so it’s not a way to live, it’s a way to survive, it’s not a way to live. And this book is, like you said, hopefully, genuinely heartwarming in the sense that That we get past that surviving and and how to actually live.

[00:35:20] Dan: That’s good. I mean, that sounds like a good takeaway for everyone.

[00:35:25] Raj: Yeah. Thanks, Dan.

[00:35:26]