Walk the Pod S24 E3 | Nothing lasts for long – transcript

WtP S24E3 | Nothing lasts for long

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Walk the Pod, your daily walking show where I take my podcast for a walk because I don’t have a dog. You take 10 minutes out of the day, to walk in nature, and to pay attention to what’s directly in front of you.

My name is Rachel Wheeley, podcaster and human in the world, trying to figure out how to be. There’s a squirrel just ahead of me on the footpath, the sun is shining on its white bib and it’s the most beautiful day in the world.

Welcome to episode three series 24 of Walk the Pod

What I can see directly in front of me

Somebody’s walking along just ahead of me with a bobble hat on and a backpack. A backpack which I think of as a sort of French style backpack, in that it’s a small bag with two long straps, which they are wearing over both shoulders.

When I was at school was very uncool to wear a backpack over both shoulders. So we used to walk around with half a tonne of books in our backpacks slung over one shoulder. And then we wonder why we’re lopsided for the rest of our lives.

I’ve decided, having come out of hospital the other day that I’m going to live to 100 or die in the attempt and very excited about that. Now I’m going to have to do some more regular exercise I think because walking is obviously wonderful. But it’s not cardio is it? You know, got to do a bit of I don’t know jogging or something. Maybe as we go on.

As a little brown pup on the cycle path and it’s got a massive stick in it’s mouth. It looks very happy about that, as it should be. It’s the greatest day in the world as a dog when you’ve found a massive stick, isn’t it? That’s the greatest thing ever.

I can just hear the bell in the Wimbledon Chase Primary School ringing there to bring all the kids in from the playground. And off they go. scampering in.

How the devil are you

How the devil are you, I hope you’re having a nice day. What day is it… Wednesday, beautiful day today on the bike track, sunshine, streaming down, warming my face a little bit. And I’ve got Stoics on the Cycle Path for you again, of course.

Very, very excited to be bringing you some Stoic philosophy again, having had many series where we didn’t because we sort of we exhausted Meditations. And what I needed to do was to start reading the book of letters that Seneca wrote 2000 years ago.

And I have started to read that now. So I feel like Stoics on the Cycle Path is a bit of a broader offering, then, What Would Marcus do? Which was the thing with the feature before. Now, I’ve had had some correspondence in from my ex BBC colleague Peter Sansun.

Sansun wrote that his favourite piece of stoic philosophy is by Jodi Mitchell. Sorry, if that sounded like I said Jodi, it’s because I sort of smudged the letter D from an N. I meant to say, Joni Mitchell.

Who, who sung in a song called Chinese cafe, ‘Nothing stays the same for long.’ Is that right? Is that the lyric? Hang on, can we just check that. Is it ‘Nothing stays the same for long’ or is it… No, ‘Nothing lasts for long.’ Nothing lasts for long. And she sings that multiple times in the song. Peter says, ‘It’s profound because it has at least two meanings at the same time. The surface says, ‘All things must pass.’

It also says that there is an infinitude of nothingness. Take that Jean-Paul Sartre. Now, I’ve learned very definitively about the infinitude of nothingness walking along this cycle path on the first section of the Deep Time Walk, which revealed that there was an infinitude of nothingness before anything that we’ve ever heard of happened on the Earth. There was a whole load of time when the Earth was just there was no real, no real life to start.

I’m just walking under the railway bridge. That’s why the sound is slightly different. Somebody has left a bottle of Lipton iced tea under the railway bridge today for reasons best known to themselves.

So thank you Peter for that. That’s Peter’s favourite piece of Stoic philosophy. The actual Stoics on the Cycle Path today is from not quite as unlikely a source as Joni Mitchell. But the combined brilliance of 1970s American psychoanalyst Carl Rogers, and Gabor Maté, who wrote a brilliant book called Scattered Minds, ostensibly about attention deficit disorder, but really about parenting. And I would also argue self parenting.

Stoics on the Cycle Path

This Episode 3 edition is from Scattered Minds, and I’m just going to read the whole section because I think it’s so brilliant. So Gabor Maté writes:

“In his book on Becoming a Person, Carl Rogers describes a warm, caring attitude, for which he adopted the phrase, unconditional positive regard, because he said, it has no conditions of worth attached to it. This is a caring, wrote Rogers, which is not possessive, which demands no personal gratification, it is an atmosphere which simply demonstrates ‘I care’, not ‘I care if you if you behave thus and so.’

So the first thing is to create some space in the child’s heart of hearts for the certainty that she is precisely the person the parent wants and loves. She does not have to do anything or be any different to earn that love. In fact, she cannot do anything. Because the love cannot be won and cannot be lost. It is not conditional, it is completely independent of a child’s behaviour. It is just there. Regardless of which side the child is acting from, good or bad.

The child can be ornery, unpleasant, whiny, uncooperative and plain rude and the parents still lets her feel loved. Ways have to be found to let the child know that certain behaviours are unacceptable, without making the child herself feel not accepted. She has to be able to bring her unrest, her least likeable side to the parent without fear that it would threaten the relationship. When that is made possible, absolute security is established, we can reliably expect emotional growth to follow.”

Now, I fell off my sofa when I read that for the first time because I thought to myself, yes, that is clearly, clearly the the answer to how to parent, something which nobody really knows. So they will just sort of muddle through and work it out as you go along. But when I read that, I thought, yes, that is, that’s how I’m going to parent. And indeed how I’m going to self parent, because we’re all self parenting as well as parenting – trying to help ourselves through the world, even while we’re raising small children if we are not raising small children is a perfectly valid choice of lifestyle.

So I hope you enjoyed that. If you have any thoughts raised by that particular episode of Stoics on the Cycle Path, or if you have a favourite piece of Stoic philosophy of your own, please get in touch. Email rach@rachelwheeley.com Go to walkthepod.com. Press the button marked ‘Message’ and leave me 59 seconds of your beautiful voice, or go to @walkthepod on Instagram and you can WhatsApp me maybe? I really don’t know where that works, probably.

But let’s, let’s see. If someone could try that out for me. I’d really appreciate it or tweet @rachelwheeley.

So there are myriad ways that you can get in touch with your Stoics on the Cycle Path suggestions.

And I’m really enjoying having Stoic philosophy back on the pod because I missed it. I missed reading from Meditations and I will I will be including many extracts from Meditations in this feature. As we go on.

What can I see directly in front of me? Well, I can hear some crows, I expect you probably can too, at the top of this tree which just looking at the tree in terms of trying to work out what kind of tree it is, don’t think this is an oak tree has very small buds on the ends of all the twigs. So that’s not an oak tree and I’m looking at the ground see if I can identify from the brown leaves.

What kind of tree it is,

But I don’t know. I feel such a failure.

I’m not good at identifying trees, particularly in winter time. It’s quite difficult. Well, that feels positively Spring like today. It’s absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous weather. Nice warm, just a slight breeze, it’s beautiful.

I can see a little dog walking along slightly ahead of me – a little brown dog with its tail curled over his back. And it’s on one of those leashes that is like extendable, coming out of her a red handle, I can hear the ThamesLink, just about to go over the railway bridge.

There it goes. And looking up into the sky. It’s quite a lot of blue. Not so cloudy today.

Numbers game

Not cloudy at all. Now, speaking of paying attention to what’s directly in front of me, I was playing a game this morning, which was based on a game that I play with the kids sometimes when the kids are particularly not enjoying being outside, which they sometimes don’t.

We play a sort of numbers game where they have to spot numbers in the environment and the one who gets the highest number wins, which usually results in child three racing off to find a lamppost with one of those ‘don’t let your dog foul the pavement’ signs on it, which has a fine of £1000 in the UK.

And that usually wins the game because you can’t you can’t beat 1000. That’s very difficult. And the rules for that game are, you’re not allowed to use telephone numbers and the environment because obviously, those are absolutely gigantic numbers and would spoil the game. But the game I was playing with myself this morning, when I was coming back from the school run the first school run I’ve done since I came out of the hospital.

Consequently, a school run absolutely tuckered me out was, can I find the numbers 1 to 10 in the environment. And can I take a photograph of those numbers in such a way that the numbers themselves are beautiful to look at in sequence. So I was trying to do that this morning. And that’s quite fun, I recommend that to you. And it’s funny how playing that game does help you to pay attention to what’s directly in front of you because you start to notice what’s around you in the environment.

So that’s my that’s my top tip for paying attention to what’s directly in front of you for the day and if you want to send me your number sequences you can do so. The best way to do that is to join the Walk the Pod walking club and stick them in, probably the #walking-and-wellness channel, I would say would probably be best.

But there are various other ways you can get them to me if you don’t want to do that you can send them to me in all the ways I just said really you can email them to rach@rachelwheeley.com if you want to, and I will be delighted to see your your numbers in the environment – maths fans.

I mean that’s not even maths that’s just numbers but you know anyway, so that’s something to do if you’re having a walk today and you’re not quite sure how to entertain yourself while you’re on your walk.

I forgot to say that you can’t use car number plates for the 1 to 10 game. The 1 to 10 numbers game requires you to use your imagination a bit more than that, so that’s the rule for that one.

Sorry about that if you’ve started already and I’ve ruined your fun, but number plates are no good.

Outro

Thank you for walking with me today. This has been Episode 3 Series 24, Walk the Pod. Thank you to everybody who’s got in touch with me to say Rach, you sound like you can breathe again on the pod.

It’s really sweet of you to get in touch with me to say that, I really appreciate it. It’s very kind of people to to notice. I thought the most the most impressive thing was that people were getting in touch with me before to say Rach you need to sort your breathing out, because that did actually make me pay attention to it in a way that I had not been.

But I really appreciate everyone who’s got in touch to say, Rach, you sound like you can breathe again. And that’s good. So thank you. I’m delighted to be able to breathe again. I’m delighted to be able to podcast because there was a point in the hospital where the things they were saying they were going to have to do to help me, we’re going to make podcasting nigh on impossible. So really very grateful to still have the power of my voice and the power of breath.

Huge fan of breathing, highly recommend it if you have a gratitude practice. I encourage everybody to include their ability to breathe in that because whilst it is rather a given and rather obvious when you start to lose it, it’s rather worrying. Kind of, kind of important.

Lots of love. Take care of your beautiful mind this afternoon and I’ll be back with Episode 4, Series 24. Walk the Pod tomorrow lunchtime.

Listen to this episode

https://anchor.fm/rachelwheeleyisfunny/episodes/WtP-S24E3–Nothing-lasts-for-long-e1e5ghd

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Walk the Pod Series 24 Episode 2 – Transcript

WtP S24E2 | Do not fuss

Introduction

Hello and welcome to Walk the Pod, your daily walking show where I take my podcast for a walk because I don’t have a dog. You take 10 minutes out of the day, to walk in nature and pay attention to what’s directly in front of you. My name is Rachel Wheeley, a podcaster and human in the world trying to figure out how to be. I’m on the cycle path in SW19, Wimbledon, as a cyclist zooms past on the bike track to my left.

Kids are whooping and hollering in the Wimbledon Chase Primary School to my right. And the trees are resplendent above me with their little buds. No leaves, but those little buds promises what’s to come. absolutely delighted to be here walking with you again this lunchtime as a very tall person comes towards me with a tiny baby attached to their chest by means of a sling and somebody behind them pushing a pram.

I’ve got Stoics on the Cycle Path for you today, Poddies. Not Seneca today, but Marcus Aurelius, another wise person who knew how to survive 2022 2000 years ago and will be paying attention to what’s directly in front of us of course, as we always do.

Welcome to Walk the Pod.

Paying attention to what’s directly in front of me

My lovely friend Ariana sent me a message just now saying it’s mild out and it is mild out. So actually, it’s really quite pleasant out here today and can’t see the sun. It’s kind of grey and mis. Or at least it looks grey from inside but it’s actually actually warm. And I can see a tiny speck of blue sky. A little pinhole in the clouds shows me that the blue sky is still up there. And there’s some kids kicking a football around on the field. The Thameslink train is going over the railway bridge in the distance very much business as usual on the cycle path this afternoon.

There are 1000 million scooters parked up just inside the chain link fence in the primary school and walking past a prescription on the floor sure we’ll see what it’s for. I don’t know whether Can you read other people’s prescriptions? I think if they’ve dropped them on the floor you can cite slight dizziness other thing I don’t know.

Stoics on the Cycle Path

We were talking yesterday about friendship. Seneca was advising his friend to be very slow, to make a friend to spend a good while passing judgement on somebody before accepting them as a friend. But then to embrace them wholeheartedly.

And today’s Stoics on the Cycle Path is from Marcus Aurelius. Now another very, very wise person who I’ve often gone to for advice. Marcus Aurelius wrote a book called Meditations, which essentially was him just jotting down things to himself. sayings that he’d heard from other places. Wise mottos he had picked up from around the place and at the beginning of Meditations, he lists all his mentors and people who’ve given him wise advice over the years.

And he just kept writing these things down until you had books and books and books of them. This one is from book six. And it is the 27th entry in book six. He says,

“How cruel it is not to allow people to strive for what seems to them, their interest and advantage. And yet in a way, you are forbidding them to do this. When you fast that they are wrong. They are surely drawn to their own interest in advantage. But it is not actually so well then teach them show them do not fuss.”

And this is a big theme of Marcus’s Meditations, the idea that he should just be a good person. Don’t wang on to other people about how good you are. Or try to try to sort of humble brag your way through life, explaining to people how wise you are just just demonstrate it by being a good person.

And here, I think he’s saying, let other people pursue whatever seems right to them, even if it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to you. And that is pretty good advice, I think because we can expend an enormous amount of energy wondering why other people do and say all the things other people do and say. It’s, ultimately, wasted energy that we’re never gonna get back. best just to think well, different people like different things. Get on with our own lives.

If you have a favourite piece of Stoic philosophy, do share it with me because I’m very happy to share other people’s favourite bits of Stoic philosophy. And let’s see whether we can glean any wisdom together out of it.

You can email: rach@rachelwheeley.com. You can go to walkthepod.com and press the button marked ‘message.’ And you can leave me 59 seconds of your beautiful voice. You can go to my Instagram @walkthepod you can press the button marked contact. And I was really hoping that will take you to my whatsapp, but apparently it isn’t quite that straightforward.

But see if you can see if you can navigate that. Nigel of Galicia very kindly had a go at that for me yesterday, it doesn’t entirely work. I’m gonna keep working on it, but he’s gonna keep working on it

Daily walking is good for you

it’s nice having a walk. I don’t know whether you’re in the habit of having a daily walk away from your desk at lunchtime. But I highly recommend it. If you’re listening to this podcast while you’re indoors, that is allowed. I’m not going to ban you from listening. But I would much prefer you to use the podcast as an excuse to get out the door at lunchtime have a walk.

Only listen to the podcast while you’re walking and just see what happens. I think you might be surprised by the mental health and physical health benefits of daily walking around your local area particularly if you have some nature around you. And particularly if you have a dog.

I don’t have a dog but I might just take my podcast for walks as if it’s a dog. That’s a normal thing to do. I can see loads of pups in the distance over there. My favourite type of dog little brown dogs are not good at identifying dogs, little brown dogs saying hello to each other.

New kittens on the block

Also, very excitingly, have some kittens, new kittens on my block where I live. So I was watching them this morning. One of them which is white with grey splodges likes to sit under the hedge and watch people walking around. And so it goes and sits in its usual spot every morning and has a good has a good look at everybody whilst keeping nice and safe under the hedge so that was entertaining.

And then of course we also have many squirrels that live where I live so I always have fun watching them as well. I managed to get a picture of one this morning, but it will my lens clips going if you know lens, it’s like Instagram stories, but it’s for Patreon. So, the pod walking club got pictures of the squirrel.

Every squirrel is called Peanut by the way, I don’t know whether you know that. But I’m got the pictures of peanuts this morning. So it’s quite proud to have captured it. One of them is have a picture of a squirrel the other one is a half a squirrel as it leapt out of the out of the shot as I was trying to take a second picture of it just walking under the railway bridge now as you can probably hear sound changes ever so slightly.

It’s kind of windy today. So if you’re getting a lot of wind noise I apologise why I’m trying to trying to baffle it with my very high tech solution of the cuff of a gardening glove which I’ve cut off the bottom of the said garden glove and have looped over the bottom of my phone in order to create a bit of a baffle from wind noise. This is what this is what 10 years of BBC sound engineering teaches you how to baffle with noise from your podcast. That was not time wasted, was it?

Outro

Anyway, listen, I think it’s time I went now I’ve got to go and do a few errands. But um, because I’m not working this week, I’m resting this week. Getting better from the surgery I had a couple of weeks ago. And so I’ve got a few errands to do not actually working afternoon. But thank you for walking with me as ever.

And I am going to be back tomorrow with another daily episode of Walk the Pod. So remember, if you want to take me up on my challenge, to listen to the next episode, on a lunchtime walk, and then you can always report back to me how it went. And one of the ways that I mentioned earlier you can also tweet me @rachelwheeley if you like that sort of thing. So take care of your beautiful mind this afternoon. And I look forward to speaking to you again tomorrow.

https://anchor.fm/rachelwheeleyisfunny/episodes/WtP-S24E2–Do-not-fuss-e1e3rh0