How wisdom can help us get through hard times in life
- Reeta Dhar
- 12 hours ago
- 20 min read
The first full episode of our 'Wise As Podcast' is here! We start with a topic close to our hearts - and what became the impetus for developing our Willow the Wonderer series:
Reflecting on the hardest time in our lives and the wisdom that would have made it a whole lot easier.
The trials of 'coming of age'
A lot of our conversation focused on our teenage and early adulthood years.
As I edited the recording, I found it interesting that we both picked a time when we were 'coming of age' as being the most difficult, as we've had our fair share of trials in later stages of life -- whether it was the ups and downs of work or relationships or life in general.
I think the 'suffering' in the teen or early adulthood stage stands out in our minds because it was the first time we were encountering trials in life. Prior to this we lived a fairly sheltered life and had our parents or teachers there as our fallback.
More importantly, it's also the period where we did not have any life experience nor knowledge or wisdom to navigate these emotional or psychological challenges.
We muscled our way through it all but wasting a colossal amount of time needlessly suffering and accumulating a few scars.
If anything, this conversation underscores the significance of books like Willow the Wonderer, which aims to impart timeless wisdom to children, helping them navigate life's ups and downs with a balanced perspective.
Listen and Like
It's only a 30 minute conversation so hopefully you find the time to fit this into your busy lives at some point over the next two weeks. We are planning to release a new episode every fortnight.
Please do leave us a "like" when you do - it helps bring the conversation to other folks attention. Who knows, maybe some young person going through a hard time in life right now could benefit from the conversation.
The podcast is also available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts so if that is your usual place to go for podcasts, feel free to listen there.
To assist with accessibility, I have also included the full transcript of the podcast below.
Transcript of Episode 2 : How wisdom can help us get through hard times in life
Darren: Here we are, the second podcast of many more. I'm with Rita. I'm Darren, and we are.
Reeta: Don't do i'm. Rita and Darren. Nobody does it anymore.
Darren: It's not, cool do that. No, that's enough. Don't worry about it. Let's go.
Reeta: I thought where we start this conversation today is covering a topic that is central to the work you've been doing for the last five and a half years. Right. So I am firmly into my middle age. And you are teetering on the edge of being an elder.
Darren: I'm a half centenarian. Thank you.
Reeta: Yes. So we've got enough rungs on the board to look back at life with a very particular question in mind, and that is, what do you think was the hardest stage of life, right?
And not only what the hardest stage of life was, but why was it hard?
And more importantly, and this again ties into the work we do, what wisdom, what life lesson, what knowledge would have helped make it easier because, the whole point of what we've been doing with Willow the Wonderer Series has been creating these stories that are imbued with seeds of wisdom that we feel would be very helpful for children as they grow up and as they become adults, as they navigate life.
So do you wanna kick, kick us off?
Darren: Sure. When I when I look back, I think there's lots of difficult chapters in my life from a toddler to an adult, and at the time they all seem bad.
And I, at each stage I didn't have any wisdom to, to navigate my way through so commensurate with my age, they were all quite difficult times.
But I think as an adult now, I think looking back at the, that my whole life, it probably would've been my teens.
Darren: I think that's probably because I was in that transition between a child and an adult, and I think they're really quite formative years where your hormones are going nuts and you're just starting to realize that you have to depend on yourself, and you are responsible for yourself ultimately, and you have to take a bit more responsibility.
I think that was really daunting through my teens realizing that at some point pretty soon I'll be leaving home and have to get a job and fend for myself.
And while that was going on, of course the hormones would work changing rapidly coursing through my veins. And you became very self-conscious and you, I started to look at my identity and who I was compared to everyone else. A bit more self-conscious about the way I looked and the way I dressed. And oh, there's, if I had a pimple, if I had a pimple, I just, I didn't want to go outside. It was horrendous.
Reeta: It is a terrible time, isn't it? And you're not just self-conscious about yourself, you're self-conscious about everyone around you, your parents, it's, it feels like everything they say and do almost feels quite embarrassing at that stage. And they almost cannot say And do anything that feels right to you, does it?
Darren: No I think for me it was the hormones at the time, I just felt angry. I think my body psychology just hadn't quite settled. And I think, yeah, it's probably a difficult time.
Reeta: Does wisdom have any place in there? Is there anything in there that you, now think well, had I known that it would have helped?
Darren: I think, and this goes for every stage of life, I think had I been told that life is ebbs and flows. The bad times will come, but then they'll leave and then you'll have the good times , and they'll leave. And I think I was not really conscious of that. I think when. I was in this situation, it became also encompassing, and I never saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
I, on a physiological level, assumed that's how it is infinitum. I wasn't actually conditioned to think, Hey, this is just a moment in time and it'll pass. And then next week you'll have a different perspective on it. But when I'm in the moment, I can't see that.
And I, Think in retrospect, I wish, I had that knowledge that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that life ebbs and flows and good times, bad times, they fluctuate and they come and go. And I think a, that would've helped me.
Reeta: Yeah.
Darren: How about you?
Reeta: I agree with you that that whole coming of age phase is a really daunting phase and probably one where we suffer the most. And a lot of that suffering is I think, self inflicted.
But what was interesting for me was I did not go through that phase during my teenage years .
I think that's partly cultural and it's partly personality driven because through school I was very academically oriented and I know a lot of kids like me who are very focused.
We've, we were, we are the sort of people who are a bit nerdy, who like studying and who've bought into the whole story and it's not a bad story that, you study hard, you work hard, you get good grades, and then you get a good job. And that's what schooling is about. And a lot of our identity gets tied into that.
and Similarly after school, I went to university and was completely, immersed in my studies and focused on doing well.
So it wasn't until my early twenties when I had left university and started working that I had that sort of freedom in my life to think and realize, okay, so I've achieved the one singular goal I had
That's when it sort of became interesting for me. The structure that studies and academia provided was gone, right? Schools and universities provide a structure and that was gone. And so the corporate environment and I worked in a corporate role. Um, The corporate environment is a completely different beast. you're with a group of people and in an environment where not everyone has your best interest at heart.
In a school environment, you still have a very strong correlation between working hard, getting the grades, which is your rewards, right? The measure of your success is more objective.
Once you start working in a corporate environment, that correlation starts to fall down. It becomes more fuzzy and if you transferred that high achiever energy from a school environment to a work environment, you start feeling well, i'm gonna work really hard and climb up the corporate ladder really fast.
And so you put a lot of pressure on yourself to excel very quickly. And inevitably, these rewards don't come through as fast or as clearly as they did in your school environment.
The annual performance appraisal cycle used to be torturous for me, and I just felt, that so much was held back from me. Whatever I did was never enough. It was just never clear what you had to do to get the full bonus or get the promotion. It, The process just left you feeling a bit underwhelmed in yourself and just generally.
So that early adulthood when you are establishing yourself in a career for me was very torturous.
When I look back at it now, and if anybody looks at my resume objectively, you'll say that I did pretty well. Every 18 months And I was progressing up the corporate chain. I was getting my pay rises and I was doing well as well as you can hope to, but I never felt that I was doing well.
So it wasn't just because the corporation did something to me or there were bad actors that threw spanners in the work. It was, A lot of it was self-inflicted.
I remember a moment at home. So by this stage I'm in my late twenties. I've bought my own apartment. I'm establishing myself as well as I can in life. And I was just really miserable about something or another one weekend, and a part of me just turned around and asked myself.
What will it take? When will you be happy?
And I realized that a lot of the suffering was self-inflicted.
Darren: Was this before you did anything, formal, got any formal teaching any yoga? Did any retreats ?
Reeta: No, I wasn't really spiritual at that stage.
Mm-hmm. In my twenties, I became quite, um. agnostic, I guess is the best word, uh, to a lot of the, religious conventions I had grew up with. And that was the other part of the suffering. The whole question of identity for me really only came in that period when I had achieved financial independence because it's the financial independence that brought me personal freedom.
Mm-hmm. Right. And again, that's very cultural, I think. Mm-hmm. But it's only then that I had to start making choices about how I'm going to live, and I realized that I wasn't going to follow the traditional path.
You mean a traditional,
Darren: Fijian- Indian path?
Reeta: You could say traditional Fijian-Indian, but I think it's a traditional path. Everybody in our culture goes to school, gets the degree, gets the job, pairs up, gets married, has kids, starts a family.
That's the traditional path to me, and I think that's agnostic culturally. And so I was getting to a stage in my twenties where I felt I actually don't want to get married. I don't necessarily want the traditional path of marriage and family and child raising because I have no idea who I am and what this life is going to be about.
And because I had come from such a big family, I could see that just marriage and kids did not necessarily make someone happy. It was one of the things you did. But it wasn't a be all in, end all. Do you know what I mean?
Darren: Everyone's nodding now at home watching, watching this.
Reeta: No. And to present it as some sort of remedy for life, that this is what you do and you'll be happy. Which is the matter of fact way it's presented in Indian families. In
Darren: all cultures.
Reeta: Yeah.
Was just, it just didn't resonate with me and the moment I realized that I may not go down that path. I don't want to go down that path. Not yet anyway, right? suddenly all questions of identity and values were thrown up in the air because now I have different views on what is a moral life, what is an ethical life, and what is a good life?
And it was answering those questions whilst dealing with this disappointment of a corporate life that kind of contributed in my early twenties to a lot of suffering.
And that question that I asked myself, when will it be enough, was a very important one because it answered the next question. It'll never be enough.
Mm. You know, There was that big gaping hole. And no matter what I did out in the material world unless, unless something changed within me, nothing would be enough.
And realizing that then set me down the path of exploring what is it? What do I have to do to change this mindset? To change this constant wanting and needing and not receiving.
Darren: But there weren't any really harder times up until then.
Reeta: No, because, as I said, I bought into the whole path of you just study hard, you get good grades, that's what school is for, and I blocked everything else out.
And we didn't have too much freedom in our teenage years like you probably did to really question our sense of identity too much.
You are dependent on your parents. And your parents have told you that this phase is about studying and establishing yourself in life. And I bought into that and it was good advice in hindsight, I'm not criticizing it.
Darren: Yeah.
Reeta: But the sort of freedoms, the freedom to really think about who I am and how I'm going to live my life happened in my twenties.
And that's when the realization dawned on me that there's a lot about life that I actually don't know. And because I don't know, I'm just reacting to life.
I'm not living it and I'm reacting with disappointment. I'm reacting with wanting I'm running away from things rather than having a clear idea of what is it that I should be going towards.
Darren: Right. So when do you think you first would've liked to have the insights of wisdom that you have now, what, at that age when you were in your twenties going through that
Reeta: I've thought about it. I'm not, and how
Darren: would you have dealt with the situations differently?
Reeta: I've thought about this question. I think with the, in context of the work we are doing, does knowing wisdom earlier really help? Or do you have to suffer to really internalize the learning?
And I think it would have helped to have some guideposts.
It would have helped to have been taught a little bit about stoics and their view on life, learning a little bit about eastern traditions, learning about the philosophies underpinning Buddhism,understanding the basis of things like happiness, things like content contentment - These are elements you cultivate in your mind. You have to practice being happy. You have to practice being content.
Darren: and nobody's teaching you at school or no, it's not.
Reeta: No, . They're not the
Darren: messages in the, in the mass media growing up.
Reeta: No. And that's, and
Darren: generally in your, your, Your parents are probably too busy and strung out to
Reeta: No, The conditioning you get as a child is that the reward will be something external. IE Getting the grade, getting the prize, getting the scholarship. That's your reward. Yeah.
So when you graduate from school into a work environment, you're still looking outside, you're looking at your employer to give you that gratification that, you know, I've worked hard, so now you give me a good performance review and give me a good bonus.
And even if you are working with the best people in the world, they have to moderate the awards that's given out, right? Because in a corporate environment, they try to minimize and manage the employee expense line. So you're never going to get enough.
So there's a bit of, there's a suffering, there's a special kind of suffering, and it. And I've seen other high achievers who came after me go through a similar cycle and have that shock kind of realization that, hang on, i've given my 120% and you are not promoting me to the next level already.
Darren: I think even if you got there to the top level, you'd still come to the same realization.
Reeta: Yeah, exactly.
Darren: That it's something that you have to be happy with inside.
I had a similar cathartic moment when I'd got a full page in an international award annual, it's called the American Illustration Annual, and it was just a select maybe 20 or 30 illustrators worldwide get chosen per year.
And it was one of those books that I'd poured over as a student, and I'd see these gods of illustration presented before me and they were icons to me. And I thought, wow. If I ever reached that level, the heavens would open up and the angel would sing and I would enlighten.
Darren: And that happened in my, I think, early twenties. I remember getting the book on my desk and seeing my work alongside the same gods and I was totally deflated.
I felt like I'd just been directed down a path that ultimately wasn't going to give me that contentment, that inner contentment, which I always thought it would. And I worked really for decades really hard. Very myopically to, to reach that point.
Yeah. And I just wish that in the children's books that I'd read when I was younger, that lesson was in it that ultimately you have to find that contentment from within, and it won't come from, being the, a god of illustration or Yeah. Or what, or whatever.
Reeta: So that was, that, that was the biggest wisdom I felt that was missing, that happiness comes from within.
And whether you call it happiness, whether you call it contentment, whether some people call it peace, whether you call it joy, whatever word resonates with you. That feeling is something that has to be cultivated.
And the word cultivate is very important because what it means is it's something you have to grow and that growth comes from practice, right?
Being happy comes from practicing, being happy, from not being discontent, from just accepting things as they are and learning to be content with what you have and what is. And that's something we all have to practice at.
Whereas society likes to condition us. And I don't think there's any sort of bad intent. It's just everybody's on the same treadmill.
The conditioning we all tend to receive is that validation, that reward, that feeling of happiness will come when you achieve something, when you do something, when you please someone. It's always external and that's how we are brought up.
So that to me was the fundamental insight and fundamental wisdom that I wish somebody had told me.
So that was why I insisted that the ending of
Book one be what it was. That happiness comes from within and because it's a state you can cultivate, it actually knows no bounds.
Darren: Why should it be bounded when it's something that you can generate from within yourself? Yeah, I think that there, there's also a case for explaining to children, I wish, and again, I'm thinking of myself as a child and what I would've said to that, that 5-year-old or maybe a, 7-year-old Darren.
I'd, I'd say because it was always, I, I was always worrying about something. Whether it would've been, I'd have to wear glasses to school or wear shorts to school or have to go to the dentist, and I'd always, it'd always be all consuming to me at the time. And it always felt that life was problematic.
And I think it's because somewhere along the line I was told that life was meant to be perfect. And so I had this expectation and then fought back against the harder times. And I think looking back, if had I been told that, Hey, life isn't meant to be all joyful, or life is Is about as much the sad times and the good times and they're equal and I should embrace both of them. Do you know what I mean?
Reeta: Yeah.
Darren: And I think that would've helped me. Yeah, I understand. I'm not sure whether I could intellectualize it when I was that young, but just as someone to say that, Hey, life is,
Reeta: it changes, it's
Darren: like the Buddhist say, life is suffering.
And once I realized that. Accept as an adult that life is suffering. Then I didn't suffer as much because I wasn't expecting it to be any different. Suddenly this weight came off my shoulders.
Reeta: And suffering. A lot of people criticize the translation of the word. It's probably it's discontent.
There is an element of things changing and things that you don't want. Unpleasant things things will happen Yeah. To you in life.
Darren: I'm not having the peace of mind, as well. .
Yeah.
Reeta: So I actually wanted to ask you, so you said teenage years were difficult, right? Because you're very self-conscious and a lot of things are changing, and you're trying to get a sense of who you are and how you navigate all that.
So if in the midst of that storm somebody had tried to give you advice and wisdom, would it have helped?
Or do you think it's better doing what we are doing? Trying to create stories where a lot of these seeds are planted very early in the life.
You know, 'Cause we're doing picture books. These are, These are stories that are read to kids between three to five to 8 years of age. Yeah.
Right. When they're more innocent, they're not quite dealing with all these kinda changes, physical changes, biological changes, emotional changes. They're still, you know, innocent little kids running around with very little cares in the world and they're just enjoying a good story that has all these little seeds in them.
What do you think is better, or what do you think works?
Darren: Well? I think it's never, you're never too early. I would've never been too early to to learn this, these lessons.
It's, again, it's hard to judge it, but I think anything, any kind of tool that you've got, any kind of condition or knowledge or lesson or words ringing loud in the back of your head helps any situation to navigate through them.
But just the idea that things are transitional and. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
And you're not gonna feel the same next week. It'll be another time, another place that you'll feel differently. It's not. Infinitum the way you're feeling right now.
And I think that's,
Reeta: yeah.
And nobody had these conversations with us, did they? Did they?
Yeah. So I firmly believe that, it's good to have that wisdom embedded in our psyche, in our mind when we are very little because the other aspects get embedded in our mind when we are very little.
This whole idea, this whole conditioning of study hard, work hard, and you'll do well in life and you'll be happy, was an idea that was embedded in my mind when I was very young.
And it got reinforced through school. Yeah. And through years.
Darren: And mine and I wouldn't have it any other way. I think just the discipline and the working hard. It got me to a stage in life where I could realize these things really quickly and I wasn't struggling materially in life. And I could reflect.
Reeta: I completely agree, but that's been the point of the work we've been doing. The narratives in the mainstream are incomplete. Yeah. They're not necessarily wrong, they're just incomplete.
Because the other side of that is, yes, you'll establish yourself materially and you will be materially comfortable, but there's a mental, emotional, psychological side, and so we are given all the training to establish ourself with material comfort, but the training around the emotional comfort, the psychological comfort, that's what's missing in the mainstream narrative.
And as you say, I don't think it's very incompatible, right? You give children a sense that you'll have to balance with both worlds.
You have to work hard, study hard, earn your money, establish yourself so you can live a comfortable life . but on the other side, don't neglect this mind, that emotional world that you have, because that state of mind can be completely different to whatever your materials reality is.
Yeah. And so I think we covered, we did cover this in
Darren: book two, honey, time to Stop and Smell the Roses while you are out on that. Career curvature taking on the world and win and doing well and winning the wards stop and treasure the moments 'cause you'll never get, get them back.
I think I had lost a whole decade where before I. Achieve that milestone where I really wasn't much to myself or anyone, I was just focused on career and didn't really stop and smell the roses and take interest in other things.
And I think there I didn't have much of a balance in my life and I regret not being more consciously present of what I was doing and understanding that this isn't gonna give me the enlightenment and ultimate happiness that I was after, but I should, should just still pursue this goal because it's a, it, it's still a noble effort. But enjoy it, enjoy my time. I think, and I didn't really en I didn't really enjoy my time even though I was winning and scoring goals.
Reeta: Because we've used the word suffering a bit. I would say, as much as difficult as when I think back now, the twenties felt, of course there were moments of just elation and joy as well. I was. Happy being, working where I was. It was what I had worked towards, for so long.
And I worked with good people and I had a great time. It was very satisfying to be able to earn a good salary and, help out my family established in Australia. It was wonderful at a personal level to buy my first apartment and settle into that. So there were moments of, achievement and joy.
But the backdrop to that was also a lot of discontent In spite of achieving these, very important milestones and being able to do these things that were very important to me, there was still that discontent. And that's what's interesting to me. That's when it's I started seeing that it's not these big goals and attainment of these goals. That was the clue, that there's more to life than just achieving things. And thus began the journey, right?
It was important to have that suffering, that realization, because that what then pushed me along the path to explore sort of other wisdom traditions. Philosophical traditions, contemplative traditions, and that has just enriched my life. And hopefully through the stories that we are putting together it enriches, many more lives to come. It's all we can help.
Darren: Yeah, I think just in wrapping up, I think for me also was the realization that your mind is a muscle.
And you can train it in a certain way. It's yeah, you can tell it to act a certain way and it will, and it can be your best friend or it can be your worst enemy. I think that's a choice you can make you, you can make your mind work for you in a very positive way, or you can make it worked for you in a negative way, and it's just a matter of teaching it and yeah, availing yourself at the right literature like Willow the Wonderer,
Reeta: blatant plug.
So if I had to summarize and wrap up the conversation, the place where we both agree, looking back in life at what was the hardest stage, it was that stage in life. And it happened at different times for both of us, where we were coming of age, where we have to make choices for ourselves on who we are, what we are going to be, and how we're gonna live our lives.
And having some wisdom, having some markers that say this is what makes for a fulfilling life can be very helpful and can alleviate a lot of suffering, if not, save you a lot of time.
And that's the whole point of what we are trying to do with Willow the Wonderer Series. We are trying to plant some of these universal, timeless seeds of wisdom into young children's minds so that when they do get to that stage in life, there's something in their psyche that guides them, that tells them that maybe this is the way to go.
Darren: Yeah.
That's a wrap.
Reeta: That's a wrap. Yeah.
Okay.
Darren: Yeah. Okay.
Reeta: that's our thoughts. That's what we feel when we look back on our life. What do you think? Is there a particular phase of life that you felt was more difficult than the others? Is there a wisdom that you think would have helped go through that phase in a more balanced way? And when do you think would have been a good time to learn that wisdom?
Let us know your thoughts and it'll help us see if we've missed anything, you know? yeah. And also
Darren: any, questions about the content of this talk, whether you agree with certain aspects of it and whether you yeah. You want us to explain things a bit more or you rebuke what we said in any way.
We're happy.
We're open to, to
Reeta:just be kind when you comments though?
Darren: Yeah. Or, this is otherwise I'll, find you.
Reeta: Thank you for listening.
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