All Episodes
Previous Next
May 19, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
19:19
2385 The Experience of Illness

Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, discusses his overall experience since his recent Lymphoma diagnosis.

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Well, I guess this is the first time you and I, or at least me, have had a chance to chat about this diagnosis.
I did a video on Wednesday, I think.
It's Friday.
I had a chat with Jeff Tucker today.
And I want to be sort of open about...
You know, what I'm experiencing, what's occurring.
So far, it has been mostly positive.
You know, and I'm not even sure if that's true or accurate.
I'd say it's been almost entirely positive.
I feel like my brain has been returned to me.
When you have a very active brain...
I read something the other day.
You know what it's like having a really creative brain?
Imagine having a browser open with 3,200 tabs.
But it's not true.
That's not what it's like.
I think that's not a very creative way of expressing that.
A very creative mind is to really have a relationship with all dimensions of the brain.
The brain is, for me at least, is not something that I can drive, you know?
Like, the ego, the I... Well, I said the ego is not mastered in its own house.
It was something that I really didn't like at all in the past that Freud said.
I really didn't like that perspective at all because it felt like there was sort of no will, no choice, no...
But...
For me...
It's always been like perpetual surfing.
You know, the wave never quite crescendos, the wave never diminishes, and there's always adjustments and angles, and you're riding what is occurring for you.
You know, when I sit down to do a podcast, I don't have a lot of notes.
I have a few ideas, and I try to meet people.
The creativity as it arises within me and to attempt to shape and fashion it in some way that is hopefully useful and comprehensible to other people.
But it's not me willing the podcast.
It's not me willing the conversation.
It's not me willing the response.
It is, and you can hear this, of course, in the tangents and the sides and so on, that there is a cacophony is an unkind way of putting it.
It's not.
Because it's not, you know, it's not screechy, it's not confusing or destructive that way.
But it is not, it's not an ego-based activity.
It's not an I-based activity.
I mean, I guess the closest thing I could think of is something like songwriting.
You know, like, every songwriter, when they sit down, I mean, they want to write Bohemian Rhapsody, you know, they want to write Moonlight Sonata, they want to write A Fugue in D-Mind, like whatever, they want to write some great song.
And I remember the guy played Radar O'Reilly.
He wrote like hundreds and hundreds of songs.
Probably no one's ever heard of any of them.
Or Angela Bassett playing Tina Turner, talking to Ike Turner.
You know, these songs all sound the same.
Songwriting is not an ego-based activity.
Otherwise, it wouldn't take train like half a decade or more, probably, between hits.
But you try to shape the creativity itself.
That you have that is arising within you.
And there is an odd kind of...
There's an odd kind of insecurity, you know, in being really utterly dependent upon an aspect of yourself that you have no control over.
I mean, John Cleese said, I think, that, you know, and he got this from somewhere else, that artists have, like, You know, 15 years of creativity in their heads.
And that's sort of that peak after that.
And there seems to be some real truth in that.
You know, Dire Straits, Queen, I think it sort of bans Led Zeppelin.
I mean, the peak of creativity and then it just kind of tapers off.
But, you know, if you're out of creativity...
At least you can, you know, be the Eagles and play live, you know?
So at least you have...
Like, you can make your fingers move and you can make your voice sing.
You can't make yourself write a great song, but you can make yourself play an instrument and a whatever, right?
And that's not...
You know, no one's going to pay me one thin dime to come up and do a live podcast.
Or rather, to do a podcast that I've done before.
Hey!
Hey!
Podcast 70, man.
Woo, rock on.
Play that song from Titanic.
Free bird.
Free world.
That's not how it is going to be for me.
And I think that when I was...
Because, I mean, y'all don't know much.
I guess those of you who read my novels and poems and so on, y'all don't know much about my creative side, sort of fiction, artistic side, acting side, and so on.
But that is also, you know, you have the inspiration or you don't.
You can write the next page or you can't.
I've never had a lot of writer's block, mostly because I never really had to write, so if I didn't want to write, I didn't write.
But it's probably something like that, I guess, with the caveat that, you know, if you are a good writer, then, you know, you sell a bunch of books, maybe you get a movie made or whatever, and if you're not retarded with your money, you can live on that for the rest of your life, right?
But, for me, given that what I do can't be done live, you know?
There's no tour.
And, you know, I guess you could say, well, if I stop podcasting tomorrow, you know, would I still be making money in ten years?
I don't know.
Probably not a lot.
But I don't have, you know, residuals and DVD sales and, like, it's all just donation-based, right?
So...
It's sort of a real challenge to place your entire livelihood.
Look, I mean, livelihood is a very serious matter.
You don't have any money.
You don't have a lot of fun.
I mean, I grew up with no money.
This is not a theoretical thing for me.
This is a very real...
I mean, I saw it all around.
People without money are just pretty wretched.
It's a stressful life.
It's a diminished life, and it's a...
Way too many compromises kind of life.
That's scary as hell for me.
So to place my income and the good that I can do for the world, not just about my filthy lucre or anything, but to place that in the hands of Of no hands is really tricky, right?
But I think that's one of the reasons why it was kind of alarming to do this, because should inspiration dry up, I mean, who knows how much juice there is in me, right?
Shakespeare wrote some great plays.
Dickens wrote some great novels.
And a lot of them weren't that great.
You know, a band with five hits can...
Can do quite well.
I mean, it's the last hit that the Rolling Stones wrote.
But they, again, they get record deals so that they can do movies, residuals, concert tours, and merchandise.
I mean, they don't have to, right?
They've sort of hit that sweet spot and so on.
But it's not quite the same in sort of the realm that I work in.
I mean, podcasting is not...
Not stadium filling.
What's that old joke?
Drew Carey had these, my dick is so big jokes.
My dick is so big, it only plays stadiums.
But that's not how it works, right?
In the realm of, you know, internet media podcasting stuff, right?
I mean, you, to a large degree, you kind of eat what you kill, right?
So look, if I go to that well, right?
And the well is dry...
Then that's it for the lovely, delightful StephBot.
And that's, I don't know if you've ever put your faith in God, let podcast take the wheel.
That is a challenge.
And, you know, the faith in God thing is, you know, God will provide while creativity will occur.
That's not always the easiest thing to trust in.
And I suppose...
I mean, the reason that I'm talking about all of this is that since my cancer diagnosis, that has gone.
Like, any of that anxiety around producing, creating, that's gone, you know?
Why?
I guess because I have material now, baby!
I have the grim, gaping, jaw more of white breath death, and therefore, I suppose...
You know, imminent, but you know, it's certainly in the air tonight.
And so I think that's very interesting to me, that that sort of relaxing into cancer, as I've talked about before, is really important.
And that's been really quite a gift.
It's all provided.
I find myself laughing more spontaneously.
Again, I mean, I tell you, I don't know what to make of it.
I've got to say, it is fundamentally about the most surprising thing that has ever occurred to me in my life.
You know, the uncorked happiness of grim disease.
It's intensely humbling.
It's intensely humbling.
And I mean, I am buoyed up, of course, as I said many times, not to make this over too dramatic, but the positive prognosis and so on.
But I think that has a lot to do with the quietness that I'm experiencing, the quietness of the mind, the peace of mind that I'm experiencing.
And I hope I don't join the legion of people who return to their former selves a month or two after they're better.
I think I can work to maintain this.
Or at least have this as a touchstone that I can return to to calm the silly storms of the moment.
Because they are.
As I was saying to Jeff, I wish I had the problems I had a month ago.
Before that, I wish I had the problems I had a month before that.
But on my very last dying day, I will wish for one more day of only problems.
Probably.
Unless it's really, you know, something I desperately want to...
A mortal coil I desperately want to shuffle off.
But...
And I'm really...
I'm so interested about this issue or this question that The relationship between life and problems is very interesting to me.
Life is what occurs when you're waiting for problems to stop.
Don't you always have something that you're worried about?
Do you always have something that's bothering you?
It feels like sometimes one thing goes and another thing comes up.
It's not even whack-a-mole, because whack-a-mole, you know, it just feels like it's just this rotation.
One thing, down, another up.
One problem goes away, another problem comes up.
Wouldn't it be interesting if, you know, problems don't interfere with life, but problems are life.
You know you're alive because you have problems, and problems are like breathing, breathing.
It doesn't exactly change the problems in particular into non-problems.
I don't think there's anything.
There's no way you can stub your toe and sing a happy aria, but I think what it does for me is it means the problems are not oppositional to life and happiness.
Problems don't lean against life, you know, like life is charging forward and then you've got these spearmen who lower their spears pointing right at the chest of the Horses to bring them over.
Problems aren't something you have to sail against, like tacking in a sailboat against the wind.
To fight the existence of problems is to fight life.
And I've never found a way to escape problems.
I mean, yeah, I'm on vacation or whatever, a little bit here and there, but I've never found a way to escape problems.
Because if you say, well, okay, I'm going to live A small, inconsequential life, well, if you have capacity and you don't exercise it, then that causes you stress.
Like the stress of underutilization, the problems caused by the humiliation of underutilization is, you know, don't we all have this, you know, I'll go open a dive shop in Belize or something, and Just teach people how to scoop it.
Whatever it is, right?
But all that sort of stuff is interesting because I don't think that would solve my problems at all.
Because then wouldn't I know that I was hiding from my potential?
Wouldn't I know that I was stuffing my Supernovas under garbage bags in the hopes of keeping them from the spying eyes of jealous guys.
I think I would feel that, and then you'd have the problem of humiliation, and then you'd have the problem of desperation, time sticking away, and I'm not achieving my dreams, pursuing my goals, whatever.
I think that would also then create problems.
So, living smaller than you are, We'll certainly eliminate some problems.
I mean, if I was still in the business world, I'd have some problems in the business world, of course, right?
But when you live any sort of public figure, particularly in the realm of morality, I mean, that's such a third rail of human culture that...
I mean, attempting to improve the ethical art of mankind is...
Waving the wand and bringing up immense geysers of evil where before there was formerly only a steady savage diminished plane feasting on children for the most part.
You know, when people sort of finally got that having sex with kids wasn't a great idea it created a category of moral evil that hitherto had not really existed.
It had existed in the effects but it did not exist in the Premeditation.
So I don't think that living a smaller life when you have a potential for greatness.
Years ago, I never watched this show very much, the show Mad About You, with Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt.
There was a character who was a doctor.
It was a really hysterical wife.
He was a doctor and he decided to stop being a doctor and to go and see, you know, real America and, you know, be a busboy and Klein likely would be a logger or whatever it is.
He was going to see the real America and gave up on his sort of medical thing.
Sort of an interesting plot line.
But not...
We're not very believable.
I don't think a lot of people do that.
And isn't there that sense?
Some people do.
But I think for a lot of people that's not solving the problem of problems.
Retreating from the problem of problems creates the problems of I've retreated from the problem of problems.
So what if problems are not a deviation from life?
What if problems are your life?
I mean, I say part of your life, but that sounds again like sort of diminishing it, but what if problems are like the breathing out that you have to do to breathe in again?
What if problems are the markers of achievement, right?
The lichen marks the high-water marks of a tide on a pier.
And that's, I mean, it's an interesting idea for me that this cancer that I was diagnosed with is interwoven in my life.
It is not an interruption to my life.
It is not a barrier to my life.
It is interwoven in my life.
And it too has something to instruct me in that quite possibly I could not learn any other way.
A shot across the bows.
A way to stop resistance.
Because commercials, I mean, have so much to do with this, right?
I mean, commercials and celebrity culture and so on.
You don't see a lot of problems in these people's lives.
And so there's this idea that there's this Elysium world of Greek gods who can Do all this amazing stuff and never really have any problems and so on.
And commercials, of course, are constantly going along with that, as is, you know, things like sexiness and all that.
So, yeah, I think it's interesting.
And this is stuff that I've really had a chance to really chew over in this process as trying to understand why it is such a relaxing thing to be in this place, why it clarifies.
So, I hope this helps.
Again, let me know if this stuff is of interest to you.
It certainly is of interest to me, but for those who may, who have not or may not have experienced this stuff, it may not be that interesting, but let me know.
Let me know.
Stefan Molyneux, as usual.
▲
Export Selection