Bruce Feiler's A Time to Gather, and Amy Schmittauer Landino's Good Morning Good Life
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens and you're listening to Totally Book to the Zibi.
[0:06]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[0:08]In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors
[0:14]and story creators whose work I think is worth your time.
[0:18]As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously a podcaster, I get a comprehensive
[0:24]look at everything that's coming up and spend my time curating the best books so you don't
[0:29]have to.
[0:30]Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests, like I do, every single
[0:35]day.
[0:36]For more information, go to zibimedia.com and follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens.
[0:45]Amy Schmittauer-Landy-Know is the author of Good Morning Good Life, expanded edition,
[0:49]five simple habits to master your mornings and upgrade your life.
[0:52]We recorded this live at The Whitby.
[0:55]Amy is a best-selling author, international keynote speaker, and award-winning YouTube creator,
[0:59]known for helping ambitious women command their time, energy, and influence.
[1:03]She's best known for her global best-seller Good Morning Good Life, a morning routine
[1:06]manual that has inspired thousands of readers worldwide and is now in an expanded edition.
[1:12]A four-time author and high-performance personal brand coach, Amy has spent nearly two decades
[1:17]teaching entrepreneurs how to direct their attention with intention.
[1:21]Her lifestyle design channel, AmyTV, has earned more than 37 million views and nearly
[1:27]half a million subscribers.
[1:29]With Midwestern roots from her hometown of Columbus, Amy resides in Connecticut with her
[1:33]husband and two daughters.
[1:35]Welcome to Totally Book Live.
[1:37]I'm really excited to be here with Amy Landy-Know, author of Good Morning Good Life,
[1:42]three simple habits to master your mornings and upgrade your life.
[1:46]Welcome.
[1:47]Zippy, thank you for having me.
[1:48]Thank you.
[1:49]You're welcome.
[1:50]Thank you.
[1:53]Amy, tell us about your book.
[1:56]Good Morning Good Life actually came about in 2019, and it was all just a conversation
[2:02]with my audience about time and time management, and I'd actually started in my creator
[2:08]life as somebody who advised businesses how to leverage digital platforms just early
[2:14]days, right, like Facebook and Twitter, and it all just continued to evolve.
[2:19]People were watching my videos and saying, this is great advice, I just, I intend to
[2:23]do none of it.
[2:24]I don't have the time.
[2:25]I was like, what, why are you watching, that's so funny, but it was a really fun thing
[2:30]to unravel.
[2:31]I was like, okay, time management, what does that mean?
[2:35]And then it was like, well, let's talk about morning routines, and that just went bonkers.
[2:40]And it just kind of came about.
[2:42]I started saying, good morning, good life in the videos, and it really is born from
[2:47]a conversation with my audience.
[2:49]And my thought process is, I've read every morning routine book.
[2:53]I love them all.
[2:54]I live for them all.
[2:55]There's been incredible authors that have presented amazing ways for us to consider
[2:59]how we start the day.
[3:01]I've just seen different versions of my life happen where sometimes they work and sometimes
[3:05]they don't.
[3:06]And I just thought, maybe it's a little bit simpler than that, to start the day on your
[3:11]terms that you could really do it your way if you just kind of fill a couple of buckets
[3:15]and say, all right, world, now I can take whatever you throw at me.
[3:21]Why does the morning routine even matter?
[3:25]You know, part of it, I think, is just everybody's talking about it.
[3:29]Literally.
[3:30]I think it's because, oh, there's successful people.
[3:32]What do successful people do successful people start the day on their terms?
[3:36]Great.
[3:37]So now it's like, well, what's the morning routine?
[3:39]Let me do their morning routine.
[3:40]So it starts down this road of, okay, well, if they do that, then I should do that.
[3:44]And I think it's interesting that we can start the conversation there.
[3:48]But then say, okay, but what would actually be an alignment with who you are and what
[3:51]you want to achieve in this life or who you want to be and have that be true to you.
[4:00]I also think it's a really fun conversation about what somebody's current morning looks
[4:04]like, that they don't even like, but they're not even saying, like, I want to achieve
[4:09]anything.
[4:10]I just want to not wake up and be miserable.
[4:14]And it's like, okay, well, then let's just unpack that.
[4:17]Let's just talk about what's not working.
[4:20]And let's find the thing that works for you.
[4:22]So it's really sort of the cake.
[4:25]It's the cake.
[4:26]Everybody wants a slice of cake.
[4:27]The cake is like, let's talk about your morning routine, but like, we open it up and we're
[4:30]really going to just broccoli and the cake.
[4:33]And I trick you into eating it because it's really going to help you kind of get that
[4:37]foundation for who you're trying to be all day long.
[4:40]So in the book, you outline kind of five big buckets.
[4:43]Yeah.
[4:44]When you talk about that and how they can help us live better.
[4:46]There's a lot of buckets and I don't want to go through all of them because I think
[4:50]they're very deep.
[4:51]But the first one I think is the most important and that is to decide.
[4:55]To make a decision is so important.
[4:59]It's basically saying, I know this is right for me and this is what I'm going to do and
[5:03]I'm going to do it.
[5:04]And a lot of people I think struggle with that.
[5:06]And that's what I've noticed.
[5:08]So the decision to even say, I'm going to do this is huge.
[5:14]In the beginning of the book, I talk about the fact that I went to work one day and somebody
[5:19]that works with me was talking about the fact that she was going to do a half marathon.
[5:24]And I was like, I just I would never have guessed that she would have said to do that.
[5:29]And so I thought that she's not really a half marathon person.
[5:31]She's not a runner.
[5:32]She's not a runner.
[5:33]I'm not a runner.
[5:35]The two of us are the same.
[5:36]We are not runners like that.
[5:38]Now she's changing the narrative.
[5:40]She wants to do something different.
[5:41]She's made that decision.
[5:43]And that's when I started entertaining it.
[5:44]Well, if she could do it, could I do it?
[5:46]And I talk about that and I made that decision and all of a sudden it went from I could
[5:52]never be a runner.
[5:53]That's not my thing to completing that half marathon.
[5:59]It doesn't even matter if you complete it.
[6:01]It was just the decision that you were going to show up and believe that it was true.
[6:07]And most of the time when I'm hearing about morning routines from people who are saying
[6:10]they're struggling with it, they're saying I'm not a morning person.
[6:13]I'm not a morning person either.
[6:15]I would never identify as a morning person.
[6:18]But what I do know is that I'm a life person and I like the idea of starting the day
[6:23]on my terms so that I can do the things I want to do.
[6:27]But that was only something I could learn myself by taking first small actions.
[6:32]So I feel like that moment was really big for me and identifying what does it mean to
[6:37]be ready or ready is actually a decision.
[6:42]It's not a feeling.
[6:44]So saying I'm ready to run and learn how to run a half marathon or I'm ready to become
[6:52]a morning person even if I don't feel like I am just doing things differently.
[6:57]I think that's really big.
[6:58]I think that's really big.
[6:59]But there's a lot more to it.
[7:03]There's a whole bucket called rise and it's about sleep.
[7:09]So it's not what you think it would be but it's really identifying the fact that your
[7:15]morning routine doesn't start at 8 a.m.
[7:17]It starts at 8 p.m.
[7:19]And when we don't rectify that fact, we don't start seeing better mornings.
[7:25]We're borrowing from what could be and the things we're procrastinating on.
[7:31]We're borrowing from that time in the evening to a point where we're not happy doing
[7:38]things we think we should do because they're easy and so that we can avoid the rest of
[7:43]it.
[7:44]So the staying up late, the binging, the scrolling, the whatever, like I'm not even against
[7:47]any of that.
[7:48]It's just the conscious awareness of the fact that you are doing it.
[7:52]So you give us a bunch of tactical tips that I appreciate it for.
[7:57]I'm always looking for time optimization.
[8:00]I try to do everything right away.
[8:02]I try to, you know, block time for things, do one thing at a time.
[8:06]You talk about time blocking and I'm sure you've blocked this time on your schedule.
[8:10]Do they?
[8:11]Color code at all.
[8:12]Yes.
[8:13]What are some hacks and tips for managing time most efficiently?
[8:18]Stop trying to manage time.
[8:19]It's not something you can manage.
[8:21]The time passes whether you like it or not.
[8:25]My big thing is it's all about energy management.
[8:28]When you realize that it's where you're applying your energy or where you're exerting
[8:33]energy, better yet when you're doing something that actually gives you energy, like right
[8:36]now I feel like having conversations with authors that's something that just like gives
[8:40]you energy, right?
[8:42]And knowing and identifying those things as I need to insert more of that into my life,
[8:49]put that on the calendar, schedule time for that.
[8:52]There are going to be things we have to do in life that we don't want to do.
[8:57]And those things are usually exerting energy.
[8:59]They're taking energy away.
[9:00]We just have to figure out how much of that is my life and how can we kind of minimize
[9:06]that if it's not what feels good and we continue to go down this road of doing things
[9:12]that we don't like feeling good and I just want people to feel like they could do less
[9:16]of that.
[9:17]So stopping it as time management and energy management, if you're multitasking because
[9:23]you have too much on your plate, what are you doing that you shouldn't be doing?
[9:26]How can we just look at that and say it needs to be deleted?
[9:28]A lot of people have a hard time with the word delegation, me too, like delegate to who?
[9:36]I'm the best at it.
[9:38]That's what I'm talking about.
[9:40]It's not just that you could delegate it.
[9:42]There's a very good chance it could get deleted.
[9:45]We take on so much more than the average person could ever imagine, I guess I'm saying,
[9:50]we in the sense of ambitious, high performing women most of the time I'm speaking to.
[9:57]And I just think that we could be math.
[10:00]at one thing, or maybe two, if we gave ourselves the chance.
[10:07]So what do you feel like you're a master in?
[10:09]And what did you give up to get there?
[10:11]I feel like I'm a master in learning about people
[10:15]and coming up with a framework to help them become
[10:19]better at who they want to be.
[10:21]How does one become a YouTube star?
[10:23]Who?
[10:24]How did you become a YouTube star?
[10:25]That's a really good question.
[10:26]I wouldn't even know how to be honest with you.
[10:29]When I discovered YouTube, I'd made a video for a old friend of mine.
[10:35]She asked me to be in our wedding.
[10:37]And I was like, I want to stand out.
[10:38]I want to be different.
[10:39]And I was like, maybe I could make a video.
[10:40]This was in 2007.
[10:43]I had a digital camera that had a video mode on it.
[10:46]That was like, OK, great.
[10:47]We're off to a running start.
[10:48]I had a huge computer in my kitchen.
[10:51]And I found Windows Movie Maker on it.
[10:53]And I made her video.
[10:54]That video was burnt on a DVD.
[10:56]And weeled into the rehearsal dinner to be played.
[10:59]So at the time, I didn't even know YouTube existed.
[11:02]And I think it did at that point.
[11:04]But after that, I was very inspired.
[11:06]Because at the dinner, I'm like, this is fun.
[11:09]Let's play the video.
[11:11]And it's, you know, a montage, right?
[11:13]Like, it's like where we went to school and people who are
[11:16]wishing her well that she hasn't seen in years and all that.
[11:19]But the entire room was captivated.
[11:22]And I just couldn't believe it.
[11:23]Because it's like, you guys don't even know who these people are.
[11:25]Like, what do you care?
[11:26]And everybody was like, that was amazing.
[11:28]That was amazing.
[11:29]That was amazing.
[11:30]I thought, how cool is it to have the emotions of everyone
[11:33]in the room in the palm of my hand?
[11:35]Because I played something that I created.
[11:37]And as somebody who did not have this God-given talent
[11:41]in school where it was like, well, you're going to be
[11:43]an architect, my best friend from kindergarten.
[11:45]He's going to be an architect.
[11:46]That's what it is.
[11:48]When you don't have that, it's a really cool feeling when
[11:51]you find out you did something and you made something
[11:53]yourself and that you actually have built some kind of
[11:56]a talent.
[11:57]So after all of that, I just was like, okay, well, how
[11:59]can I start making more videos?
[12:00]And I didn't want to be on them.
[12:02]I was just filming my friends and just kind of stitching
[12:04]them together.
[12:05]And I was like, let me find another way.
[12:07]Maybe I can upload it and share the link to my friends so
[12:10]they can watch it.
[12:11]That's how I found you too.
[12:12]I had no idea.
[12:13]It was a sharing network.
[12:14]I had no idea.
[12:15]People were building audiences and finding their people.
[12:19]Like, you're talking about 2009.
[12:22]And it was totally groundbreaking.
[12:24]And it was the thing that became what turned into me
[12:29]leaving a very comfortable job at a law firm that
[12:34]should have been where I stayed, raising money for a
[12:36]political party, working for rock stars.
[12:40]And I was supposed to stay there.
[12:42]I was supposed to be there.
[12:43]That was the right thing to do.
[12:45]But I found this other thing that lit me up.
[12:49]And so I laughed and I never turned back.
[12:52]Amazing.
[12:53]Thanks.
[12:54]Well, Amy, thank you so much.
[12:55]Good morning, good life.
[12:56]I'm totally thinking about my mornings differently at this
[12:59]point.
[13:00]And it's very inspiring.
[13:01]Thank you so much.
[13:02]Thanks, Debbie.
[13:03]Bruce Feiler is the author of a time to gather how
[13:08]ritual created the world and how it can save us.
[13:11]Bruce is the author of seven New York Times best
[13:14]sellers, including life is in the transitions.
[13:16]The secrets of happy families and walking the Bible.
[13:19]His three TED talks have been viewed more than five
[13:21]million times.
[13:22]And he teaches the TED course how to master live
[13:24]transitions, a native of Savannah, Georgia.
[13:27]Bruce lives in Brooklyn with his wife Linda Rottenberg
[13:29]and their twin daughters.
[13:30]Welcome back.
[13:31]Bruce, so excited to have you on totally book to talk about a
[13:34]time to gather how ritual created the world and how it can
[13:37]save us congratulations.
[13:39]Thank you.
[13:40]And let me just say, I mean, just first of all,
[13:41]but stop by saying, I'm such, no, I want to say it in a way
[13:45]that captures what I feel.
[13:47]I'm not only an admirer, I'm an appreciator,
[13:50]and I'm a, I don't know.
[13:53]I'm so grateful that you have taken these various worlds
[13:58]that can be very lonely and isolating, right?
[14:03]Like people, whether it's parents who are very busy
[14:06]or workers who are busy, readers, writers,
[14:10]booksellers, like and gathered them all in one place.
[14:14]Such the spirit of what I've been working on and thinking about
[14:17]with this book for the last three years.
[14:19]And you've turned this all into this community.
[14:22]You know, you've opened your store, you've opened your home,
[14:25]you've opened your life, like in your public persona.
[14:29]And it's just amazing.
[14:31]And it's really exactly where my head is at
[14:35]and kind of what's the sort of the spirit of this book, right?
[14:38]Which is that we can push back against all of the loneliness
[14:41]and, you know, the algorithms and all the tech.
[14:44]You've created this algorithm of togetherness
[14:46]that kind of rivals the algorithm of allowness.
[14:49]And I'm just so happy to be here.
[14:51]And this is my first interview about this book.
[14:53]So I'm also, no idea what's going to come out of my mouth.
[14:57]I mean, you could, you could just, you know, more praise is fine.
[15:01]I'll just listen.
[15:02]You know, we don't even have to talk about anything.
[15:05]That was probably the nicest introduction, introduction to
[15:08]podcast ever. So thank you for that.
[15:11]And actually, as we're recording today's eighth anniversary
[15:14]of starting the podcast.
[15:15]So you are the first podcast on my eighth anniversary.
[15:19]So it's, it's, it's a ritual for both of us.
[15:22]This is the full circle moment.
[15:24]Okay.
[15:25]How does my togetherness, which uses an example,
[15:28]how does it illustrate what you are going for in the book?
[15:31]You know, here's how we think about it.
[15:33]That why.
[15:34]I belong to the tribe of groupkeepers, right?
[15:38]Like I'm the one who like, you know, manages the backyard Olympics
[15:43]and, you know, produces the family meeting and goes to the dinner table
[15:48]with like family games.
[15:49]You know, I have, I have identical twin daughters.
[15:52]As you know, they will be 21 in nine days.
[15:55]Like I'm the one who had the, what seemed like a brilliant idea
[15:59]when they were two two because they had just learned to like speak and,
[16:03]and, and talk and, and look at letters like, Oh, we're going to blow up
[16:07]all 26 letters and hang them in the house, which took to four in the morning.
[16:11]And that, and one of them said, Oh, all the letters came to visit.
[16:15]And now at 21, we're like dispatching things to, to college roommates
[16:20]and department mates because something has to, I'm the producer of the family,
[16:24]you know, of the kids birthday party.
[16:26]So there are groupkeepers, right?
[16:28]That's what you are.
[16:29]You're a groupkeeper.
[16:30]And, you know, even if you've never heard that word and I made that word up,
[16:33]it doesn't matter.
[16:34]There are those of us who care about the group.
[16:37]And this is sort of a celebration.
[16:42]It's a little bit of how this happened and that we have been gathering
[16:48]as for 300,000 years before they were anatomical humans, right?
[16:53]So how did we get to this place?
[16:55]And also I sort of blueprint for how to do it more effectively, right?
[16:59]So how to, whatever it is, it can be a joyful thing like a wedding or a family
[17:05]reunion or a backyard picnic or it can be a sad and sorrowful thing like
[17:10]the loss of a loved one or I'm going through chemotherapy and I want my friends
[17:14]around me or I just lost a pet.
[17:16]All right.
[17:17]So whatever it is, this is how to do it better and more effectively.
[17:21]And to, as I said earlier, like push back against all of the algorithms that are dividing us,
[17:27]we need to bring us together.
[17:29]We've been hearing this for a generation.
[17:32]What I've tried to do is bring it all into one place to help people do it
[17:36]in a way that brings belonging and meaning to everyone.
[17:39]And you did the work for us and travel to all these places and learned so much
[17:43]and aggregated all the information.
[17:45]I think intuitively we all know that it helps together.
[17:49]During COVID, obviously, especially the lack of funerals in COVID,
[17:53]we felt, I particularly felt that like intensely how it helps to be around people.
[17:59]But why exactly?
[18:01]What is it about us as humans or not even just humans?
[18:04]Why does it help so much to be in community?
[18:08]Let me just first of all emphasize, you know, kind of what you said.
[18:12]It is the first essential human act actually.
[18:15]You know, we think right now that sort of like religion created ritual.
[18:20]In fact, it's the other way around.
[18:22]Like, you know, people started bearing one of the first things that humans did
[18:27]was bury their loved ones.
[18:30]And then what happened was they used red ochre and they sang songs and they made paintings.
[18:34]And then they would come back every year to market.
[18:36]So this, we know that this happened long before they was organized religion.
[18:40]And then so organized religion came along.
[18:42]and then it sort of like took it over in a lot of ways.
[18:45]And added a lot spectacle.
[18:47]Like, you know, as you know, my book opens in the backstage at a group baptism at the Vatican.
[18:51]And like, you know, they invented sort of, if I asked you to think of a wedding
[18:54]or a funeral, like you would think.
[18:56]Even if you're not Christian, as I know, that describes you.
[19:00]Like, you would think of those weddings and those funerals.
[19:03]And so now we're in this moment where kind of a lot of people still embrace religion.
[19:08]Not half of my adult life who's been, you know, talking about it.
[19:12]But a lot of people are like non-religious or I'm spiritual, but not religious.
[19:16]And so what's happening is that people are taking it over.
[19:18]So the one thing is it's the essential glue that holds us together.
[19:24]We know for a hundred centuries in every corner of the culture we've ever looked.
[19:28]When someone comes into the group, right, there's a wedding, there's a baby.
[19:32]When someone leaves the group, there's a coming of age.
[19:35]This happened to me recently and a funeral.
[19:38]When someone gets sick or moves, the group reconstitutes itself.
[19:41]I just lost a loved one my sister-in-law 10 days ago.
[19:46]And so what happens is the group wants to get together and find meaning.
[19:50]And so that's the sort of essential, it is the essential human act to gather together.
[19:55]That's the first.
[19:56]We now know.
[19:57]So that's the 300,000 year history.
[19:59]What's happened now?
[20:00]last 30 years, and in some cases in the last 10 years,
[20:03]is we now can peak inside the human brain.
[20:05]So we know that when we're going through life transitions,
[20:09]the rituals help us regulate them, right?
[20:13]We know it makes us feel less nervous, less fearful, okay?
[20:17]We also know that the more we invest in these kinds of gatherings,
[20:23]we know that the more we get out of them, okay?
[20:26]So that, you know, and then I think that, you know,
[20:28]with a lot of ways, what these rituals do for things, right?
[20:32]They connect us, okay?
[20:33]You and I are going to go through its time together.
[20:36]You're going to reach out to me, I'm going to reach out to you.
[20:39]We're going to do something, so they connect us, okay?
[20:42]They also, you know, they chronicle our lives.
[20:45]If I asked you to think of the 10 high points of your lives,
[20:48]probably eight of them would be things that you shared,
[20:52]a wedding, the birth of a child, right?
[20:53]You know, a graduation, a milestone anniversary,
[20:57]whatever, we tell our lives for these.
[20:59]But here's the fourth of the seas,
[21:02]is that they correct imbalances within the group.
[21:06]So one of the reasons, so people don't like to do these now
[21:09]in a lot of ways because of the conflict, right?
[21:11]So you and I are going to get married, you have one background,
[21:13]I have one, you want a big wedding, I want a small wedding,
[21:16]that you want to rabbi, I want, you know,
[21:19]I want a justice of the peace, you want it indoors,
[21:22]I want it outdoors.
[21:24]You can verify that we're fighting so much,
[21:26]we haven't even, you know, started,
[21:28]exactly.
[21:29]So now we have to compromise, right?
[21:31]So rituals are compromised,
[21:33]rehearsal like do it at the wedding,
[21:34]or you're going to do it, should we have children?
[21:36]Should the child be involved in ballet,
[21:38]or should they be involved in basketball?
[21:40]So it forces the conflict onto the table
[21:43]and allows us to resolve it,
[21:45]which is one of the more joyful and surprising things
[21:47]that I discovered because it's okay that we're different
[21:50]because then we have to work it out,
[21:52]like it forces us to create or what I call a peace plan.
[21:54]Well, in the book, you talk about your father's funeral
[21:57]and how your mother did not want to put dirt on the casket
[22:01]and your sister, I think wanted to put roses on
[22:04]and the conflict between them,
[22:05]you had to mediate and figure out how to handle,
[22:09]and that was an example of conflict
[22:11]in these difficult times.
[22:13]Well, first of all, I love that you brought that up.
[22:15]Exactly, it was slightly, first of all, great memory,
[22:17]but it was slightly inverted, right?
[22:19]So that my mother didn't want to do the dirt on the coffin
[22:23]because that she thought it was barbaric, right?
[22:26]My sister wanted to do long-standing yellow roses,
[22:30]which seemed very hallmark, right?
[22:32]And so like voices were being raised,
[22:34]I was on the phone trying to mediate this
[22:36]and I was like, okay, we're gonna call you back, rabbi.
[22:38]And then I sort of middle-childed my way through a resolution
[22:43]something that I learned, I talked to 100 ritual designers
[22:47]who do this for a living around the world,
[22:49]and it was okay, let's just do it you and me.
[22:53]We just have the conflict.
[22:54]You want a big wedding, I want a small wedding, right?
[22:56]That's the example I just gave.
[22:57]So, is there be what is it that you really want?
[23:00]Why is it that you want?
[23:01]Like what's underneath the surface for why,
[23:04]why do I want a small, maybe I get nervous,
[23:06]maybe I don't want the performativity,
[23:07]maybe you have a lot of friends,
[23:09]maybe I feel self-conscious that I don't have a lot of friends,
[23:11]right?
[23:12]Or maybe your parents are gonna be very, maybe minor divorce,
[23:15]right, and therefore I don't know how to,
[23:16]so now we've gone, the conflict has realized
[23:19]that something is different going on.
[23:21]So how did we resolve this with my dad's funeral
[23:24]on two days notice, okay?
[23:26]So we got the roses, okay?
[23:29]But we also, instead of using the dirt
[23:31]that would offend my mother,
[23:33]we went to his beloved beach on Tiber Island,
[23:35]we got little bags of sand,
[23:37]and we gave everybody a choice.
[23:38]So you don't have to decide,
[23:40]and then some of us did both.
[23:43]And then, as you know from my book,
[23:46]I then went, you know, you mentioned,
[23:48]I should probably say it.
[23:49]I went to rituals on six continents in 16 countries, right?
[23:54]You know, like a group baptism in the Vatican,
[23:55]a two filing in Bali, a traditional bride prices
[23:58]of Africa, six weddings in a day in Vegas,
[24:01]and 10 funerals in Ireland.
[24:02]And so there was an Ireland at this funeral
[24:05]of a 90 plus year old woman,
[24:07]and we drive to the synagogue,
[24:11]this is gonna be to the cemetery,
[24:12]and the funeral director who's invited me,
[24:15]I had taken an Uber,
[24:16]and she says, well, how are you, you know,
[24:19]I said, how am I gonna get there?
[24:20]She's like, come with me, and without thinking,
[24:21]I say, yes.
[24:23]And so she opens the hearse,
[24:25]this plops up the bumper seat,
[24:29]or whatever you wanna call it,
[24:30]and there I go, writing to the cemetery,
[24:32]alongside the casket with Mrs. Burke.
[24:38]And when we get there,
[24:40]they have a beautiful little service.
[24:41]It's very traditional.
[24:43]She's being reunited with her husband in Ireland,
[24:45]they bury people in the same graves.
[24:47]And then the family comes up,
[24:48]and each of the kids gets,
[24:51]each and the kids and the grandkids and the cousins,
[24:53]gets a long stem, yellow rose,
[24:55]and I am bawling at the cemetery,
[24:58]thinking, this is what happened to me,
[25:00]and that's what happens in all of these,
[25:02]you know, when you go to a great wedding,
[25:03]you're like, you're at every wedding you've ever been to, right?
[25:06]When you're at a funeral,
[25:07]you're thinking of everyone you know,
[25:08]who've ever died.
[25:09]And when you're at a celebration,
[25:11]you're thinking of all the joyous moments,
[25:12]and that's just such a lesson
[25:14]of how these become such the universal backbones
[25:17]of our life stories.
[25:18]I feel like the premise of your book is so clear,
[25:21]and I totally buy into it,
[25:23]and I feel like anyone listening will buy into it.
[25:25]But what about people who are like,
[25:27]yeah, that's great,
[25:28]but I feel like I don't belong to a community,
[25:30]or I don't know what to connect,
[25:31]or, you know, maybe I don't have a funeral coming up,
[25:34]or a wedding, and I'm gonna see each of my life,
[25:36]where there's just, there aren't a lot of moment markers.
[25:39]What then?
[25:40]So this, I think, is the great story that's going on,
[25:43]which I'm a little shame-faced, you know,
[25:45]given the things I've written about family,
[25:47]you know, I've written about life transitions,
[25:49]I've written, I've wrote five books about the Bible,
[25:51]like I feel like the thing I was shocked
[25:55]that I didn't realize.
[25:57]And that is that we have turned,
[25:58]I said for 100 years, 100 centuries,
[26:00]we've done these kind of events until this century,
[26:02]when we're turning our backs on the traditional calendar.
[26:07]Okay, fewer people are getting married, of course.
[26:09]Fewer people are having birth rituals,
[26:11]coming of age rituals, of collapse.
[26:13]And, you know, no one's having funerals,
[26:16]it's a shocking thing, and in 1975,
[26:18]percent of Americans were accreated now,
[26:21]it's 65%, going to 80 in the next 10 years,
[26:24]and only one in four has a funeral,
[26:26]and only one in five is buried.
[26:27]So most of our kids and grandkids
[26:29]are not gonna have funerals.
[26:31]My sister-in-law just mentioned is being cremated,
[26:33]and there is, now we're having,
[26:34]now what we are doing is having a celebration of life.
[26:37]What we did do is when people gathered to say goodbye,
[26:40]and she had already died,
[26:41]we had an impromptu gathering.
[26:43]So here is the answer to your question.
[26:45]Top down, prescripted, you know, hierarchical,
[26:49]patriarchal, you know, all of these rituals,
[26:54]that's what's going away.
[26:55]What is replacing it,
[26:57]that's what I call the celebration recession.
[26:59]But the reason that I feel like my book chronicles
[27:02]this ritual renaissance is that bottom up bespoke,
[27:06]I want them when I need them,
[27:09]a young ritual designer, you know,
[27:10]at the end of my book tells me,
[27:11]I want a ritual when I want it,
[27:13]I want to have my friends over,
[27:14]and I don't need anyone's permission,
[27:16]I don't need my parents to tell me it's okay.
[27:18]So I think that what's going on is that prescripted is empty,
[27:23]but do it yourself is more meaningful,
[27:26]but it's harder, which is the gap, precise gap,
[27:29]I'm trying to say.
[27:30]You want to have people over here,
[27:31]I mean, I can do it right now.
[27:33]There are five things you need to do, okay?
[27:35]So if you are going through it,
[27:37]if you have a surgery coming up,
[27:38]you want to have people over,
[27:39]and invite people over,
[27:41]you don't even have to have bring food,
[27:42]you know, a lot of people don't want to do the dishes,
[27:44]I get it, you know, there are five simple things,
[27:46]and that's what I've tried to outline.
[27:48]You need boundaries, okay?
[27:50]You need to pull the people together.
[27:51]We'll be did this for my sister-in-law,
[27:53]we just lived a single candle, okay?
[27:54]And what that says is outside we were that,
[27:57]and inside this circle we are this,
[27:59]we are entering the special place, the sacred space.
[28:02]That's what you need number one.
[28:03]Number two, you need stakes.
[28:05]To say, this is why we're here, okay?
[28:09]Yeah, you know, Zippy is going through a surgery next week,
[28:13]and we're here.
[28:14]And I tell a beautiful story about this, okay?
[28:17]Somebody put up their kid to adoption,
[28:19]35 years later, the kid suits them,
[28:21]we're here because a lot of emotion
[28:24]and a lot of time has passed,
[28:25]and there's campaign and confusion
[28:27]and desire to reconnect, we don't know.
[28:28]This is why we're here,
[28:29]we're not going to sugarcoat it,
[28:31]the stakes elevate it, okay?
[28:33]Somebody did something, you know,
[28:35]that they are now ashamed of.
[28:36]They put a kid up for adoption in this case,
[28:39]this beautiful story, the sun sought them out,
[28:41]and now we want to do it.
[28:43]Or I tell the story of a woman I met at a grieving
[28:45]and weaving circle who's mother
[28:47]when she got unwed and pregnant at 17,
[28:50]the mother took her,
[28:51]and she forced to take the baby away.
[28:55]And she felt I couldn't track down my kid,
[28:57]but the kid tracked down her,
[28:58]we're now going to connect a lot of feelings there, okay?
[29:02]We're going to get together,
[29:03]in that case they went to a museum,
[29:05]we're going to stay out loud, this is our intention,
[29:08]this is what we're here, this is what's at stake,
[29:10]then compromise, okay?
[29:13]Then we're going to work it out, okay?
[29:16]I have my motto for this is the four somethings,
[29:19]do something old, do something new,
[29:20]do something borrowed and do something new, okay?
[29:22]Something from your tradition,
[29:23]I said that earlier with our wedding, right?
[29:25]My tradition, okay?
[29:26]Some quirky thing that you have that suits you, okay?
[29:29]We met when I, the story I tell my book
[29:32]where I sent you a brandy shot at the airport,
[29:34]we're going to bring two glasses of brandy
[29:36]and we're going to, so you're going to create something
[29:38]that recognizes the messiness
[29:41]and the fact that we're different.
[29:43]You're then going to have empathy,
[29:44]you're going to hold space.
[29:46]As the woman said at this double mastectomy circle,
[29:48]I describe in my book, we're not here to give advice.
[29:51]We're just here to listen and to offer support,
[29:55]whatever you're feeling before your surgery,
[29:57]the death of your pet, the loss of a loved one, okay?
[30:00]a child who who is now, you know, decides that they want to change their name.
[30:04]We're going to just listen and be there. And then the last and most important thing you need,
[30:09]you need hope. That's what the circle is. It's the hope of who we can be at our best possible
[30:15]selves. And then we're going to close the circle and we're going to go on. So simple things.
[30:20]You don't need music. You don't need to sing. You don't need to bake. You don't need to do the dishes.
[30:24]You just need to gather people and say, we're here for one another.
[30:28]Bruce, thank you so much. A time together. I'm excited for our mythical wedding.
[30:33]And I hope that we have a fabulous time. And anybody who joins us to thank you again.
[30:38]Thank you for all you do. Thank you for including me in this community. And we will get through
[30:43]this. But the only way to do it is to get through it together. Okay. All right. Thank you so much.
[30:48]I really appreciate all of it. Thanks, Bruce. Thank you for listening to totally booked with
[30:54]Zibi, formerly mom's don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend,
[30:59]leave a review, follow me on Instagram at zibi Owens and spread the word. Thanks so much.
[31:05]Oh, and bye the books.