A version of this article was published in It’s Not Just You, a weekly newsletter from TIME. Subscribe here to get a weekly serving of big-hearted advice delivered to your inbox.
The two people I most wanted to hear from on the eve of this election were Pema Chodron, the iconic Buddhist nun, and Sarah Silverman, comedian, actor and most recently, podcaster.
This is not just because I think we may have gotten to a point where a nun and a comedian are our best hope of finding emotional equilibrium.
Pema is legendary for writing healing books with titles like When Things Fall Apart. So it’s no surprise that her teachings are so relevant now. I’ve got her audiobooks on repeat at least through Thanksgiving.
And I wanted to talk with Sarah because of the soul-fortifying way she answers audience questions in her new podcast. If the queries are sincere (i.e. not about her boobs), her advice to callers is wise and nuanced and unselfconsciously kind. (Almost Buddhist.) Don’t get me wrong; the brilliantly ribald Sarah appears in these sprawling episodes too. There’s lots of pube talk and scalding rants about the transgressions of powerful rich people.
The Sarah Silverman Podcast was hatched when the pandemic stopped her from touring. And she’s still iterating every week–it’s life on the learning curve. “Listen, there’s so much I do wrong and mess up, and if that can help anybody, great. Because I think living an unexamined life is kind of how we got here.” Responding to her audience with empathy was always part of the plan—perhaps even more essential now that much of what we talk about these days, losing friends to COVID, losing relatives to political divides, is not the stuff of jokes.
People are changed by feelings, not facts
To the caller thinking of cutting off contact with his Trump-loving grandpa, Silverman offered this sweet bit of universal wisdom: “Feeling judged doesn’t make people open” to change, she said; “they go toward where the love is. Find a place where you can connect. Bond over a procedural [drama]. Ask him about his life, ask about what made him laugh as a kid.” And generally, she speaks in terms of love when talking about the clash of realities we’re seeing in the U.S.: “You don’t even really change people’s minds often with facts or poll numbers or things like that. People are really only changed [by] feelings. If they’re going to be changed at all, they’ll be changed by loving you, this person who embodies everything that they’re against.”
Another caller was being upset with himself over the way he felt about his sibling becoming a trans man. Silverman’s response was a clever path to empathy: “His woke self knows how he should feel about it. But that’s not how he feels about it.” Then she pointed out that his discomfort was the mirror image of how his now-brother felt when he knew how he was supposed to feel in a body that presented as female, but he didn’t feel that way.
Sarah’s own family bonds likely inform such advice; she sees her dad every week for dinner, wears her late theater-director mom’s paint-splattered overalls, and Zooms weekly with the global Silverman United clan.
Watch a Bones
I ask if she has advice on how to manage our emotions as we head into this unholy mash-up of pandemic, cultural division and economic stress. She recalls what she told her mom during the last fraught presidential election when the news was making her distraught: “Sometimes you’ve got to change the channel. Watch a Bones.” Truly, it’s possible to be too engaged, so give yourself a few hours of apathy. “If you care about this election you want to be involved, you do have to give yourself a little distance. You have to take care of yourself,” she says. “it makes you more effective as a citizen.”
If it’s hysterical, it’s historical
Seriously, though, “It’s important to be a detective in your own life, and figure out where it is coming from. People will drive 10 different cars before they make a decision about what car they want. Put a little elbow grease into your own history and what makes you lose your sh*t … My therapist has a saying: If it’s hysterical, it’s historical. So when you go bananas over something perceivably small to others, there’s probably something that’s bringing up.”
Then she laughs. “Listen,” she says, “I’m just spitting out stuff I learned.”
Aren’t we all.
More from Sarah about politics and her podcast here
Find more good stuff from the It’s Not Just You newsletter below including the founder of Pandemic of Love on why showing up to help is self-care, some evidence of human goodness, and for this angsty election week, we’re serving up a special batch of wellness tips from TIME’s health team. Subscribe here to get a weekly serving of big-hearted advice delivered directly to your inbox.
Pema Chödrön on when things fall apart
“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
More from the Pema Chodron Foundation.
MOMENT OF GOOD
Meet Lonnie and Clara Neely who are 101 and 102 years old. They’ve been married since Dec. 6, 1937. This year they voted absentee and were moved to sing “Sweet Low Sweet Chariot.” Give a listen here.
Why Showing Up For Others Is Self-Care 🧡
—Shelly Tygielski, Founder, Pandemic of Love
When I started Pandemic of Love back on March 14th, none of us could have imagined just how deadly and prolonged the COVID-19 crisis would become. It was a simple idea: create a mutual aid system connecting those who wanted to give their time or resources directly with those who needed help. Human to human.
Since then, Pandemic of Love has brought hundreds of thousands of the unlikeliest people together, saving families from spending nights on the street, paying for funerals of loved ones lost to COVID-19, and ensuring that both prescriptions and refrigerators were filled.
What we’ve learned is that showing up for others is actually an act of self-preservation. The hope of action is an antidote to some of the helplessness and anxiety we feel as we watch COVID cases rise and face the dawn of another dire winter.
SMALL COMFORTS 🌞
Can’t sleep? If you’re having electoral map nightmares, try this body-scan meditation audio guide from Jon Kabat-Zinn. And here’s a guide to sleep music and why it helps
Science-backed ways that help with chronic stress When your body is constantly geared up for self-protection, your systems fatigue and start to decline. But there are ways to change the way your mind and the body react to pain and stress. Find them here.
And for when the news is just. too. much. check out this guide to the most calming anxiety-free content you can stream.
A version of this article was published in the It’s Not Just You, a weekly newsletter from TIME. Subscribe here to get a weekly serving of small comforts and big-hearted advice delivered directly to your inbox.
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