Ep 15: Wisdom with Anne Marie Vivienne
92,000 Hours
In this episode of 92,000 Hours, we speak with Anne Marie Vivienne about wisdom. She defines wisdom as intuition and instinct. It's doing what works until it doesn't. Anne Marie speaks about the power of listening, learning others' "songs", the beauty of ordinary rituals and domestic tasks, and living life in flow with the seasons.
Anne Marie Vivenne is a writer, poet, and philosopher. Her research and writing focus on the environment, people, the West, feminine systems, and deep ecology. She is the founder of Wisdom Anthologies, a nonprofit movement seeking to document the wisdom and lives of elder women. She is also the co-host of the IONAA podcast.
Transcript
Annalisa Holcombe (1:37)
Anne Marie is a writer, poet, and friend. She uses ordinary rituals to create a life of wonder, purpose, and possibility that helps others do the same in their own rhythms. Her writing delves into the healing qualities of wisdom, resonance, beauty, and living a life in flow with the seasons. She’s the founder and creator of wisdom Anthologies, where she documents the ancient culture of alderwomen, and is the co-host of the IONA podcast with Allie Kessler as they explore feminine systems ancient, modern, and conceptual. Today, we’re talking about wisdom.
Annalisa Holcombe (2:27)
We're going to get it we're going to start up with our standard main question that everybody is required to answer to be on the 92,000 Hours podcast, which starts with removing things from your life… so like really getting down to the essence of who you are. So you can't count work or sports or volunteerism or religious activity or research. Take all those things away that are things that you do and tell me about who you are, as a person. What are you most proud of about yourself? What makes you really proud of yourself as a human?
Anne Marie Vivienne (3:11)
I think for me, I’m a good friend and a good listener, I love listening to people, and I think that feeds into all those other things you mentioned—job, spirituality, all those things, but I think at my core I am a friend and iIm really proud of that. And a loyal friend. And a friend who gives unconditional love, so I’m proud of that.
Annalisa Holcombe (3:40)
That's awesome. Tell me about like, just to dig in a little bit more, what's an example of how that has looked like for you? When you are actively being a good friend, or a good listener, what does that look like?
Anne Marie Vivienne (3:53)
Yeah, I think it's it's not just a one moment thing where I'm going to sit down and listen to you right now, because you're crying or because you know your life just blew up. But I’m curious about—you know, the way I put it is I'm curious about learning people's songs. And that takes a lifetime for anyone to discover their own song, and so you know. For instance, you know, a couple of my closest girlfriends you know they're they're the creative types and I think we all end up being a little bit more introverted. I think in some ways it's a little bit of a protection, because we know we're meanderers as creatives and a lot of people want you to just fit in a box because it's easier for them to navigate you. And I felt like with you know with my friends and watching them, we've tried to start projects a couple of times and then they get distracted and want to do something else. I could get mad and offended and say, “Well, we were going to do this, and what happened? You said you were going to do this and you didn’t.” It's just listening to them and to their hearts and then just finding their rhythm and I love listening to their rhythms and and being surprised by them, I think, being a listener means you're willing to be surprised.
Anne Marie Vivienne (5:21)
Because often I think we think we know what people are going to do, or what they're going to say. And so, when they don't do it we’re offended for some reason, like oh my God you didn't do what you normally would have done or you didn't show up in the way you normally show up. But it's like, oh that's interesting… you did a variation on me. You know, if you think of a song, there's these kind of refrains or the chorus that comes again and again, but the interesting part is when they tweak it a little bit, and obviously like “oh, that's new!” I think, for me, being a friend and being a listener means learning someone’s song and giving them a whole lifetime to do that. And finding those people you do resonate with because I do think you know I've discovered there's people I just don't resonate with, and I think to be a friend in that instance is to just let it go.
Annalisa Holcombe (6:13)
I love that I've never heard anybody talk about listening as lyrical like that, that's really pretty. I love it. One of the things I really want to talk to you about today was your passion project, the Wisdom Anthologies that you do, can you talk a little bit about what that even is?
Anne Marie Vivienne (6:36)
So it's definitely on hold with COVID but what wisdom anthologies was—I think when COVID is over it will be something new, I don't know what yet. But the essence of it is I love sitting with elderwomen, and I feel like in our culture we've really lost touch with our elders. I really do think because of that we've lost a lot of wisdom, we've lost this oral tradition, we've lost a lot with it. So Wisdom Anthologies—and we'll get more into it, I will try not to go on and on—but I've traveled the world looking for women who are willing to let me listen to them actually. And it's really interesting that there's so many women who don't want to be listened to. They're so used to not being listened to that being listened to, is actually such a vulnerable place to be.
Anne Marie Vivienne (7:40)
And I think for so long now for generations, I feel like we've slowly been ignoring our elders that they get to this place where they could be considered elders and they don't know who they are, they still can't trust themselves and they don't want to tell their stories and they don't think they've learned anything. And then you find the gold golden ones who are just like they own it and they're like yes, I have lived a life, and I have a perspective, and I have something to say. And so I just feel honored that they will let me listen and I learned a lot from them, and so I document them I photograph them I do some audio recordings. And hopefully one day I'll be able to compile it into a book and someday documentaries.
Annalisa Holcombe (8:28)
You call it wisdom, so I want to focus on that language for a good piece of this because I'm interested in what does like what does that word mean to you.
Anne Marie Vivienne (8:40)
So I'm going to just like throw out a few characteristics and we can dive down whatever hole you want to dive down. But ultimately, for me, wisdom, I think a lot about not to economize things, but you know it's kind of a Yin and Yang. How do you balance things? So I always look at things from that perspective of Yin and Yang, feminine/masculine, so to me wisdom is a feminine concept—not female, but feminine. So yes, males—all of us have that feminine wisdom and it's that knowing that can't be learned through books, it will never be learned through books and book knowledge. It's your intuition, it's your instinct. And it has feminine qualities, it's mysterious, it's fluid, it's cyclical. It evolves and grows and, you know, if you look to nature like nature is wisdom, it embodies wisdom. And so, for me… So there's this adage that is, you know, wisdom is doing what works until it doesn't. So it's knowing when when things need to change and shift, and you can only know that and by intuition and instincts and for me wisdom is ruled by the heart, not by the mind.
Anne Marie Vivienne (10:04)
So, to me, intellect is the mind and when the intellect gets miswired that's when trauma happens, that's when anxiety happens, that's when depression happens. To me, wisdom is always in the heart and wisdom will always remind us that, you know, for cases and trauma like… When you finally realize that you're safe and you're not, you know, when you can get out of that loop that you get stuck in with trauma. When you finally realize that you're out of the trauma, that's heart wisdom. That's the knowing. Because your brain gets wired to think it gets stuck, right? There's a wire tripping and you still think you're in danger. And that's the same with anxiety, you know, you're making it up, it’s all fictional. And so that's where the intellect can go wrong when it gets miswired, right, and then we start trying to make decisions from this clouded space.
Anne Marie Vivienne (11:03)
But when wisdom is from the heart, wisdom is… you can't explain it. And that's what I love. It changes, my definition of wisdom changes all the time, and it should depending on where I'm at, who I'm interacting with, what the environment is. It's knowing what your environment is, explaining to the room and not in a way that’s, you know, you're selling yourself but it's just knowing what your environment is and how to respond.
Annalisa Holcombe (11:30)
I love that so much. So in this podcast, we had a podcast about values, and we did a like a little added, if you want to, some work that you could do to help yourself define your values and how you bring your values to your work or to your life and how you think about them. And it comes with like cards with value-laden words written on them. So I've been doing that work like with students and in my mentoring program and then on this podcast, I've done it so many times. And it's interesting because, over time—not at the beginning, but over time—I’ve been drawn to the word wisdom more and more. When I've had to narrow down what are my true values to three words and then define them myself, wisdom has become central to that in ways that it wasn't at the beginning. At the beginning, it had more to do with intelligence or knowledge and now it's much more about wisdom for me and I think it's interesting.
Anne Marie Vivienne (12:38)
Yeah and I think, you know, there's this great book called The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist and he's a psychologist and he's studied neuroscience a lot, and he went anyway, but he talks about he has a new way of talking about right brain/left brain. I don't know if you're familiar with this book. But to distill it down, basically—you know he goes into great detail so it's fascinating for anyone who's interested in the brain—but The Master and His Emissary is this story about how the master who rules this country, his country is growing and growing and he needs help running the country. So he gets an emissary to help him just kind of oversee this region, and so master goes off and he's doing his own thing. Anyway, the emissary gets to this place where he thinks he's the master and that he knows what's best for this region. But as the master comes back and it's like, “Oh man, this guy—the emissary—what he can't see is the big picture.”
Anne Marie Vivienne (13:48)
And so, for me, the brain you have—left brain, which is really good at this hyper focusing and getting into those details and the right brain is this big picture, it's how we see the big picture. And his whole argument for writing this book is that we've become a society that is so left-brain that we have forgotten the big picture. And to me, wisdom is that big picture of like… you know, and we talk so much about facts right now, like facts are a thing. Facts are truth and I want to say no, no, no. Truth is something else, facts are so necessary and we need them. I'm not saying, facts aren’t… but they have their place. But it's like we're making facts the master when they're just the emissary. And so another way I say this is, you know the heart needs to be in charge. And the mind is there to help—it can do all these cool little things. It can organize. It can us survive. It can help us find food. But the heart needs to be in charge.
Anne Marie Vivienne (14:50)
And so, yeah, this shift—I’ve done the same shift from being you know someone pursuing the intellect and intelligence through these, you know, our reverend ways of academia and the ivory tower and yet I was losing my soul. I was learning some really great things, but also just, you know, losing my rhythm… and just becoming codependent with these institutions, and the authority. I think we a society that loves to create authority—who's the expert? When it comes to our day to day lives, when you can make wisdom central, everything starts to flow and you're not fighting yourself anymore. I think we spend so much time trying to align ourselves with the prescribed intelligence and what's the right way to do things and… Oh, this is another metric I love to use with wisdom. Wisdom… let's see, so the intellect and intelligence is often concerned with how things look, you know, does my life look right? And wisdom is concerned with does my life feel right?
Anne Marie Vivienne (16:08)
And so that's where that music kind of comes in and it's like, can I dance to my own life? Do I feel like dancing? You know, you don't always feel like dancing, but I mean for the most part, if you feel like you've entered a dance with life you're probably—good chance you're leading with wisdom and not trying to like mechanically fit yourself into this… you know, intellectual… not even intellectual… but even just the societal pressures of what does a successful life look like?
Annalisa Holcombe (16:40)
I love the idea of and, by the way, I'm smiling so much because this is exactly what I was hoping would happen in this… like there's so much. I know that I'm gonna have to listen to this 400 times to just… because you say so much in this much time that I have to go back and go like “How do I sit with that and think about it for a little bit?” Like I want to pause and go like… wow, that’s affecting me.
Anne Marie Vivienne (17:07)
Being a poet I've learned to condense a lot into these.
Annalisa Holcombe (17:13)
I love it so much and you do this, all the time, I remember you telling me about how we need to be rooted like two years ago, sitting on my back patio and I can't stop thinking about it. It is in my head all the time. But it's this… like I'm really interested in two things. The fact that you said and I'm going to live with this for a while, like… Can I dance to my life? That's really good and it's something for me to sit with for a while to figure out. Like sometimes my dancing might need to be a little more still and sometimes it might need to be like super crazy.
Anne Marie Vivienne (17:56)
The dance can be whatever it needs to be, but is it a dance? And even that skill… you know, musicians have a saying that the music happens between the notes. So what stretch, or you know, sometimes between notes it's a pause, it's a rest, it's a silence. So it's like, that dance and that music you're making doesn't always have to be this like super upbeat rhythmic dance, it could be a lament. Because seeing dancers who do more of a lamenting… Annalisa Holcombe (18:30) That is so beautiful still.
Anne Marie Vivienne (18:34)
Yeah, or it could be sleeping, my goodness, how I think most of us could use a lot of a lot more naps in our lives which you keep dancing a little bit.
Annalisa Holcombe (18:42)
More, that's right. So another thing that I just love that you are… so when you speak about wisdom and then you speak about elder women, and I love the juxtaposition of that because often what we're talking about is either young or men, right, and you're interested in talking about older women. So what, tell me what… like first of all, what draws you to elder women and, second, what's an example of wisdom that you've learned through that work.
Anne Marie Vivienne (19:20)
Right, so yeah, the elder women. So two things that we don't like to pay attention to. And that was it exactly, you know, I felt like they're invisible and they're a mystery, and I also feel like they have this… there's a generation right now that it's about to be gone that I feel like has this last… any kind of sentiment towards a slower life, and I feel like their wisdom to me has a pace. It's slow. You know, like you, don't get wisdom by rushing through life, and I feel like it's been a couple of generations since we've really… since we've known how to just sit with life and let it unfold rather than forcing it. And I feel like these women had at least a childhood that was slow and mimicked the seasons. And that's just so calming to me, it's so… like all I want to do is live with the seasons. Can we live in harmony with the seasons? Like winter, can we all hibernate a little bit more, and spring is time for planting, fall is time for harvesting—we’ll work really hard during this to the shoulder seasons, winter and spring, hibernating. And summer is for siestas, you know, and play and just enjoying each other.
Anne Marie Vivienne (20:50)
But yeah I feel like these women have still something that we are really… you know, back to this idea of being a friend, I feel like they know how to listen. They, when you talk with these elder women, you really have to remember they give themselves time to think. And so I had to learn very quickly not to interrupt that silence with more questions. Like okay they're done, now I'm going to ask my next question. It was like, well, no, no, no honey, they're thinking and you will wait for the next thing. So it's really taught me how to listen and to let those pauses and to let people process and…
Annalisa Holcombe (21:38)
Exercise patience in ways that we’ve forgotten.
Anne Marie Vivienne (21:41)
Yeah, and another thing about these elder women is, and I think is so fundamental to wisdom, is they don't take themselves seriously. They are so light hearted, and they have that perspective of just like “That is not worth your worry, my darling,” you know? Like, “Why is that the thing that's got you so upset? That's not that big of a deal and I'm not that big of a deal. And it's all going to be fine. And we're all going to end up in the grave anyway, so what are you trying to prove?” And I think wisdom really embodies this lightheartedness and this playfulness that I think we just… we were so busy trying to fill our resumes with these serious things and I'm just like, I wish I could put more fun things on my resume.
Annalisa Holcombe (22:33)
Do that, shall we? Like, I would love if I got a resume that somebody talked about more about how… Actually, I just have to tell you that one of the things I love that we're talking about—even in my work at WGU— is learning happens everywhere. And it shouldn't only be the realm of the educational institution that gets to, you know, like place that upon your head that I should get to own my own learning. And I should be able to talk about what I've learned and what that means, I should get to own it not a transcript from another place.
Anne Marie Vivienne (23:11)
Exactly that, yes wisdom is, and that’s… it's personal. Why it can't be? That's why it can't be in a textbook or even in a self help book; you know it, it has you, you have to spend time with yourself and know yourself well enough and to know that intuition. To know that voice of intuition and that instinct that is yours. And to be curious, I think, in some ways, where I don’t… to be genuinely curious about yourself and what do I want, what is fun to me, what makes me want to dance, what makes me, you know, like… and rather than we all get stuck in the woods and there's a big business out there, books that tell us what we should do. But I think that learning for yourself starts with learning about yourself. And that can be really healing and empowering.
Anne Marie Vivienne (24:15)
Then you get to show up to the table with exactly what only you can offer to a situation and I think good employers, the ones who I would call good employers, will want that. Will want what you have, what only you can offer. I'm sure, yeah, they could replace—anyone can be replaced it anytime but for right now, you hold the position that you hold. There's something that you have that's very unique, and if you don't know what that is your jobs just going to turn into misery. You might have even started out liking your job, but now you're doing what you think you should do to get the promotions, to get the whatever, and all of a sudden you're just dying inside, because you don't know who you are. And you've lost your curiosity about “what would be a fun way to approach this problem” or “would be a healing way to approach this problem”.
Annalisa Holcombe (26:00)
As you know, this whole podcast is a bit about finding purpose and meaning in our lives, and acknowledging that we spend most of our lives at work—so how do we find purpose and meaning at work? And so I've had these conversations with my colleagues who are working with me on this podcast who've expressed worry, we're like “Is this podcast privileged? Are we talking about purpose and meaning in work, how does that apply to the person who might be in what society has termed a ‘menial role’? How does someone who is a dishwasher or a janitor find purpose and meaning?” And when I was reading your stuff about the beauty in ritual and the beauty in simplicity, I was like “Oh, please let's talk about that.”
Anne Marie Vivienne (26:53)
You're right, you know, the conversation of meaning and purpose can definitely become privileged. But I also think you know in general, embracing the ordinary… and somehow I think we've really dismissed the importance of what I call domestic jobs. And at home that's the obvious, you know, keeping the house clean and whatever, and that’s happening in restaurants. It’s the people who are doing the domestic kind of work… And I just think you know that's why we have this you know we've had this decades-long thing with like, you know, homemakers and are they valuable in our society and are you really working if you're a homemaker? And that translates then into the workplace. Do you have… you know, can your job be meaningful if you are a janitor or if you are, you know, doing dishes? And hell, yes. To me, it’s maddening that we have this hierarchy of work and what we value. You can have this super high-paying job, and we all know this happens, you can have a high-paying “important” job and be miserable and find no meaning.
Anne Marie Vivienne (28:13)
I've had jobs where I've, you know, it's looked good and I've loved telling people my title and yet I felt it was really hard to find meaning in “Why am I doing this?” I think, one, I'm such an advocate of each of us in our personal lives valuing our domestic—I call them “ordinary rituals” they like washing the dishes is a ritual for me. I put on certain music, it's at a certain time of day, it's part of my winding down and it's learning how to make your life holy and sacred. And that actually ties into this idea of wisdom being cyclical. And what rituals do is they create the cyclical rhythm, you know, it's like you wake up and my mom taught me to make my bed in the morning, and I've been doing it first thing since I was a kid. And we underestimate the value of these domestic ordinary rituals, but these are the things that give meaning to our lives. And even if you're going to a job, where you question the meaning of… you know, like “Why am I doing this? What is it really doing for society?” Paying the bills is a domestic duty and, you know, I live alone and single, like doing this for myself is nourishing to me. It’s a sign that I love myself that I will do a job that I'm not 100% passionate about because I care about me and I care about putting a roof over my head. And I live in this, you know, post-industrial society where yes, do I wish I could be a farmer? Absolutely.
Anne Marie Vivienne (30:07)
You know, as you know, this is my… and maybe one day I will be. But for now, this is where I'm at and I'm learning from it and I feel like these rituals, when you can really build them into your day, it becomes like that song. Because they don't become routine if you allow them to have some variation, like I was talking about with song. Just like my my rituals at home and at work change seasonally and according to my intuition and what do I need . But having them there allows me to have a sense of purpose. My life is sacred, these things are holy—even these tiny little tasks. And so I can apply that at work to these tasks that we all hate to do, but everyone has them. Okay, this is… I care about me, I care about my community, I care about the people I work with. Even if I don't care about our ultimate goal, like let's say you're in a job where you're like “I don't even care about our mission.” But if you can get to a place where you care about the people you work with and they're trying to put a roof over their head for their families and their kids, and so your success is their success… and if you can have that team mentality, then you can start to have the meaning and purpose, because if it's always all about you it's so hard to.
Anne Marie Vivienne (31:34)
The meaning and the purpose and I'll just end with this last little thought, I'm rambling… I don't know how you say out loud I've only ever read it, but the Japanese term ikigai, have you heard this? It's just that, you know, “what do you get up in the morning for?” And I think if you limit yourself to getting up in the morning to go to my job, it's like… yeah… You know it's a perspective thing and wisdom is all about getting that bigger picture perspective. We don’t honor these mundane things enough because they lay the groundwork for these peak experiences, and you can't have the peak experiences without them. So we're a culture, you get sucked into the culture of buying a live versus building a life. I have to constantly poll myself and say, “I want to build a life, and that means it's going to end in a lot of ways”, I feel like I'm “behind,” you know, we all play that game of like “I’m this age… I should be at this place, I should have this kind of money, have this kind of house, blah blah blah,” and I'm just like I'm building a life so it's going slow.
Anne Marie Vivienne (33:03)
And my days are very mundane, you know. When people want to catch up with me I'm like “Well, I'm doing the same things reading and going to work and writing.” Peak experiences are very unfair, you know.
Annalisa Holcombe (33:22)
You know, what I remember, I talked about this with a friend of mine, all the time and we call them our Cheerios moments. And it and it comes from… I read an article once about a mom who had cancer and she was super worried that she was going to pass away without having what you're calling the “peak experiences” with her kids and she was so sick that the big trip to Disneyland wasn't going to be able to happen, and she was talking to her kid about it and her kid was like “I couldn’t care less about Disneyland. The thing that matters the very most to me is when we have Cheerios together every morning.”
Anne Marie Vivienne (34:03)
Kids, I'm telling you.
Annalisa Holcombe (34:06)
I always like, it's those cheerios moments—it's those little things that make the meaning. It's not the giant experience, which is fun and has something, but your kids are going to appreciate your everyday ritual of having cheerios with that.
Anne Marie Vivienne (34:25)
Yeah, and that's the same with any relationship, right? And I think that's so hard for people when they get into a romantic relationship is they find out it's mostly pretty mundane and ordinary and not that exciting. We're just we're so addicted to that excitement. In a lot of ways I'm just always like, I need to detach from dopamine. You know? We all want those dopamine hits, and you get them and you just want more and more, and you want those highs. And I'm just like, I just would love some space from dopamine. Can we just turn it down, world? Also, with wisdom, I did want to mention that I do realize that wisdom is not owned by the elders. Anyone at any age, we all have these moments of wisdom. I love that story of the child reminding the mother, the things that matter are the things that most people overlook and rush through.
Anne Marie Vivienne (35:33)
I remember hearing an interview with a rabbi since a few years back, I was going through a divorce and they were talking about our culture's obsession with happiness and this phrase that people often use, “pursuit of happiness”. And this rabbi was saying, “I think we've been running so fast trying to pursue happiness that we don't realize that it's behind us.” We're going so fast that we don't realize it's just right here. And this it it. I have one of my rituals — at anytime if anyone wants to like hear the rundown of Anne’s daily rituals… But one of them is it nighttime—and these only you know my rituals really take a couple minutes but it's a way that orients me in my day. But I have one at night, and I just call it a death meditation. This day is over, it's gone. It's a way for me to practice, and to remember that in the end I end up in the grave. What were the things that really mattered today? A lot of the times they're really mundane and yet they're the sweetest things.
Anne Marie Vivienne (37:04)
If I have any kind of consciousness, you know after death, I know if I could look back, those are the things I will miss the most. Making my bed, doing my dishes, sitting down in my reading chair, or a cup of tea. I'm not going to think about living abroad in China and that adventure; I mean, sure, maybe a little bit, but I'm going to miss most the things I did day to day where I took care of myself or I took care of my people.
Annalisa Holcombe (37:43)
Where you made a life. That's what it looks like. But there was something I wanted to make sure I talked about which—I don't even know where it would lead but—I loved you you brought this up at the beginning. I had read about it in some of your work, that it can be difficult to actually interview the elder women because… the struggle to highlight them. And I think I've experienced that too, this whole part of our society, the older we get as women, the more likely we are to disappear. In my career, I haven't disappeared, but in social situations I’m far more invisible than I was when I was young and pretty, right? It’s a whole different thing for me now. And I'm seeing it, I'm like “Wow, as I begin to age, I get more and more invisible.” It's infuriating, too, I have to say, because I have more things to say now. I’m more interesting than I was back then.
Anne Marie Vivienne (38:36)
Now I would like some attention, please!
Annalisa Holcombe (38:39)
Yeah, I have some stories! But I I read this book called Disappearing Act, and it's a leadership book but it was about how we as a society have literally disappeared. All of those things that we call “soft skills”, but they were the things like creating the connections, the nurturing, the supporting, the encouraging, the meaning-making. Even the preparing for something and cleaning it up that happens in the business world that was often done—it wasn't even called leadership. We didn't even think of them as skills because they were done by the secretaries, the assistants, and the wives. So they literally disappeared out of the literature until like the 1990s, when people are like “Oh, soft skills are something!”
Anne Marie Vivienne (39:36)
Yeah, okay, this thing with soft skills. This goes back to this idea of feminine and I think we severely misunderstand what feminine is and the power that it has. This idea of soft—it doesn't quite get at what it is. What it is is it’s fluid, it's adaptable, it does what needs to be done, and I think that is badass. Does the trash need to be taken out so this looks right? I will take the trash out.
Annalisa Holcombe (40:09)
I'm not going to look around and wonder who's going to do it for me.
Anne Marie Vivienne (40:12)
And it has to do with like, it's concerned with the ecology and what is the environment like, and making an environment friendly so that it evokes innovation. The feminine gets that the environment matters. People need to be fed so they can think. Bodies need to be taken care of so we are at our best. And so the feminine—if you lead with that feminine, and it's not about being just soft. When you think of women who—and not just women like, I have a list of men I want to interview for Wisdom Anthologies, that’s like phase three or four, you know, I’ll get there. What are the things and skills and characteristics that we need? You're right, with connection and those relationships, taking time to have a conversation with people and knowing building a relationship often takes time. It's not just this wheel and deal, one conversation, handshake, done, boom.
Annalisa Holcombe (41:21)
Right, it's work and it's a valid and really important part of getting something accomplished.
Anne Marie Vivienne (41:26)
Yeah, it’s not just useless chit chatting. These skills that have been labeled “soft” and that’s, you know… I have a project where I've been keeping a list asking people “list for me some feminine qualities.” And people maybe get three or four and they're interesting, and then I’m like “Let me share with you some. Mysterious. Receptive. Open. Awakened. The feminine qualities are the awakeners, life-givers, cyclical—not linear. It's expansive and not focused. So, you know, these soft skills that people talk about, they severely and grossly underestimate the power that they have. I think the more we begin to invest in them individually, because I think as individuals we’re really bad at embracing those sides of ourselves. “Well, I shouldn't stop and have this conversation.” Or “Does it matter if we have good food at this thing?” Or “does it matter if the space we meet in is beautiful?” I'm like yes, it does actually. And where I did my graduate work is at a school in England, and it was so different from my undergraduate.
Annalisa Holcombe (42:48)
You can say it, your school is a pretty big deal.
Anne Marie Vivienne (42:52)
Yeah, I went to Oxford. So I'm doing my undergraduate here in Utah which, I love my school, but it was like… I went to Oxford and it was beautiful. And the things I could think—and I wanted to be in the library, I wanted to 24/7 be learning and talking and discussing and creating ideas, and I wanted to be there. There's been different office places I've worked at and, yes, the more beautiful and thoughtful the spaces, the better I think. The more I want to be there and contribute. So, you know, the people who are making these spaces at least tolerable—I think most of us, if we're lucky, we have a tolerable space we're working in. Hopefully, we have natural light. Then we're lucky if we even just have natural light, to underestimate the value of how that affects our productivity and our passion… I actually want people to stop talking about productivity at work and start talking about passion. Because if you just like nail passion, if you help build passion, people will go beyond productive.
Anne Marie Vivienne (44:08)
We’ll kill it. So if you make our working conditions beautiful, which is through these “soft skills”, if you make it a place I want to come talk to people and have the water cooler conversations, I will give you my all. No, duh.
Annalisa Holcombe (44:33)
You talked about this, the importance of beauty. I know you've done a lot of thinking and writing and listening about what beauty is and means to us. And I love when… like I read something that you had written about beauty being located also in the dark spaces or in the overlooked spaces. And I would just love to hear you talk a little bit about… how does beauty play a role in terms of either our wisdom or our connection? Talk to me a little bit about that.
Anne Vivienne (45:11)
So for me, beauty is rooted in darkness, it has to be. Most of you know I'm a poet by training and that's what I studied in school. I still consider myself, first and foremost, a poet. I think that's why I love poets so much, because they're not just talking about pretty flowers and all this stuff, they always weave into it the sorrow and the grief of life. Real beauty is honest, and the honest truth about our human existence is that we are imperfect and we will die. And not… you know, we're not always going to do what is expected of us. I don't want to say we don't do good things all the time, I think most of us are well-intentioned and just kind of haphazardly trying to get through life but we end up hurting people and being hurt along the way. And without the sorrow, without the grief, without the darkness, there is no beauty. And that's just… if you don't acknowledge the darkness and if you're always this person who's like “It’s sunshine all the time in my life, and I always take the positive view, and I never get mad,” then I'm like, “Then the beauty in your life has no substance. It has no depth. It’s manufactured. It's coming from the mind.”
Anne Vivienne (46:48)
The mind can be a wonderful place of the imagination, it can also be quite fictitious in a very damaging way. I feel like, again, back to that heart—if your heart does not break from time to time… and that's where wisdom is (in the heart), and to receive wisdom, the heart has to break. So if you go through life trying not to get your heart broken in this way or that way, you're also blocking out that beauty and that joy that will come from that. So for me, I get a lot of people who are like “You're so sad, you’re so melancholy sometimes.” I'm like, I have to have seasons of that. It's real and it's honest and, yeah, sometimes I'm not super happy with my life. And it's when I allow myself to not be happy with it, I go into the depths, and then I can find what is at the roots so that I can change it. You have to be willing to hurt. And you can't avoid it, and I'm learning more and more to embrace it.
Annalisa Holcombe (47:58)
And actually see beauty in your own hurt.
Anne Vivienne (48:03)
Yes, yes. And the wounds, there's this phrase, you know, there's wisdom in the wounds. Wisdom is the wounds. And when you're willing to learn from the wounds rather than run from them, or trying to cover them up, or give them a bandaid (which we all do)… It’s so sneaky, we’re so sneaky. We think we're working on it and then you're like “Oh no, I'm not. I haven't gone deep enough. Still not, I'm still out. Oh, I have to go deeper? Oh, this has to hurt more? Okay. I'm still trying to pretend everything's okay and I'm fine and I'm not.” That’s where wisdom becomes really personal, because only you will know how deep you need to go and how long you need to go there. And not worry about everyone else around you who's worried about you, you know, like “Are you okay?” Yes, I'm sad and depressed, but I am okay. This is part of my process. I get a lot of people who will see the one side of me where I'm all about beauty and then they want to ignore when I write about the sadness, or the sorrow. And I just think, you can't just have the one side, they go together. That ties into those peak experiences and the ordinary, you know…
Anne Vivienne (49:30)
If you want the peak experiences, it's gotta go dark sometimes. And that's what nature shows us, it goes dark every night, and—actually I prefer to wake up very early, I wake up at 4am because I don't have kids and waking up early sounds awesome. I wake up because it's still dark and I want to remind myself that I'm rooted, that's where my roots are and that's the subconscious and I want to face it. I want to get in there, because it's crazy but it's beautiful. And when you can accept it and face it, it doesn't turn into that shadow toxic thing that can happen.
Annalisa Holcombe (50:13)
Love it, I love it so much. This is so great, I want to ask you my question that I always ask about which is mentors show up in lots of different ways, so I’m interested in you talking to me about a mentor that you've had.
Anne Vivienne (50:32)
It really is my friends, because they see all sides of me. They see I do have this… I want to do well at my job, and a little bit of ambition there, but I also have this very spiritual mystical side that you know I don't get to show at work so much. And so I think they're my people that I go to and, especially, these two girlfriends I have because they they allow me to be the complex person that I am, and I think we're all complex people with many layers and they know that I always have a struggle inside. I’d love to live the creative life but that's also not sustainable, so finding the balance of being a creative while having a day job. And so they're able to really, at least if they don’t… you know, they rarely have ”This is what you should do.” But they're the good listeners, that goes back to this listening. So I guess, I would say good mentors are the good listeners who just allow you to hear yourself out loud. And they listen and they can just say “Yeah, this is a struggle we all face. We're with you.” For me, mentors are people who’s say “Yeah, you’re human.”
Annalisa Holcombe (51:56)
Can I just tell you, however, it makes me almost feel a little bit weepy because your biggest accomplishment, is being a good listener. And your mentors are your friends who listen, who full-on listen. So this really resonates with me about… it's so funny because sometimes it chokes me up, so I'll try not—and I don't even know why chokes me up because I do actually think it's super profound if you think about it. It was probably five or six years ago, Sister Helen Prejean came to Utah and spoke. She's just amazing. I just remember, I wrote it down, and I wish I had it but as she was speaking, she was said as she goes and visits death row inmates and is with them. And she said what she's learned in her work with people who are facing death is that the most important thing, the biggest most giant gift, you can give someone is to listen to them.
Anne Vivienne (53:06)
The truth of it is, and I've said this a couple times, I love that, is that we're all facing death. None of us knows when that moment is coming and that's why we can get so anxious. But we're also just not facing that, we're trying to avoid that fact. And so I do this exercise a lot and a lot of like different coaches use this, I think, but it's the inner mentor. Imagining yourself 20 years from now. Because only you know what you can contribute in the best way. Only you will know what you are going to do in this situation to get over this hurdle, and so it's like this meditation practice that you can do going to visit yourself. And how did you get there? How did you get to where you are, how did you get to this place? What did you do in this situation to get there? What did you say to that person or how did you handle this? And I think to me, a lot of people ask with the Wisdom Anthologies, “Who do these women go to for their wisdom?” Themselves. Absolutely themselves.
Annalisa Holcombe (1:37)
Anne Marie is a writer, poet, and friend. She uses ordinary rituals to create a life of wonder, purpose, and possibility that helps others do the same in their own rhythms. Her writing delves into the healing qualities of wisdom, resonance, beauty, and living a life in flow with the seasons. She’s the founder and creator of wisdom Anthologies, where she documents the ancient culture of alderwomen, and is the co-host of the IONA podcast with Allie Kessler as they explore feminine systems ancient, modern, and conceptual. Today, we’re talking about wisdom.
Annalisa Holcombe (2:27)
We're going to get it we're going to start up with our standard main question that everybody is required to answer to be on the 92,000 Hours podcast, which starts with removing things from your life… so like really getting down to the essence of who you are. So you can't count work or sports or volunteerism or religious activity or research. Take all those things away that are things that you do and tell me about who you are, as a person. What are you most proud of about yourself? What makes you really proud of yourself as a human?
Anne Marie Vivienne (3:11)
I think for me, I’m a good friend and a good listener, I love listening to people, and I think that feeds into all those other things you mentioned—job, spirituality, all those things, but I think at my core I am a friend and iIm really proud of that. And a loyal friend. And a friend who gives unconditional love, so I’m proud of that.
Annalisa Holcombe (3:40)
That's awesome. Tell me about like, just to dig in a little bit more, what's an example of how that has looked like for you? When you are actively being a good friend, or a good listener, what does that look like?
Anne Marie Vivienne (3:53)
Yeah, I think it's it's not just a one moment thing where I'm going to sit down and listen to you right now, because you're crying or because you know your life just blew up. But I’m curious about—you know, the way I put it is I'm curious about learning people's songs. And that takes a lifetime for anyone to discover their own song, and so you know. For instance, you know, a couple of my closest girlfriends you know they're they're the creative types and I think we all end up being a little bit more introverted. I think in some ways it's a little bit of a protection, because we know we're meanderers as creatives and a lot of people want you to just fit in a box because it's easier for them to navigate you. And I felt like with you know with my friends and watching them, we've tried to start projects a couple of times and then they get distracted and want to do something else. I could get mad and offended and say, “Well, we were going to do this, and what happened? You said you were going to do this and you didn’t.” It's just listening to them and to their hearts and then just finding their rhythm and I love listening to their rhythms and and being surprised by them, I think, being a listener means you're willing to be surprised.
Anne Marie Vivienne (5:21)
Because often I think we think we know what people are going to do, or what they're going to say. And so, when they don't do it we’re offended for some reason, like oh my God you didn't do what you normally would have done or you didn't show up in the way you normally show up. But it's like, oh that's interesting… you did a variation on me. You know, if you think of a song, there's these kind of refrains or the chorus that comes again and again, but the interesting part is when they tweak it a little bit, and obviously like “oh, that's new!” I think, for me, being a friend and being a listener means learning someone’s song and giving them a whole lifetime to do that. And finding those people you do resonate with because I do think you know I've discovered there's people I just don't resonate with, and I think to be a friend in that instance is to just let it go.
Annalisa Holcombe (6:13)
I love that I've never heard anybody talk about listening as lyrical like that, that's really pretty. I love it. One of the things I really want to talk to you about today was your passion project, the Wisdom Anthologies that you do, can you talk a little bit about what that even is?
Anne Marie Vivienne (6:36)
So it's definitely on hold with COVID but what wisdom anthologies was—I think when COVID is over it will be something new, I don't know what yet. But the essence of it is I love sitting with elderwomen, and I feel like in our culture we've really lost touch with our elders. I really do think because of that we've lost a lot of wisdom, we've lost this oral tradition, we've lost a lot with it. So Wisdom Anthologies—and we'll get more into it, I will try not to go on and on—but I've traveled the world looking for women who are willing to let me listen to them actually. And it's really interesting that there's so many women who don't want to be listened to. They're so used to not being listened to that being listened to, is actually such a vulnerable place to be.
Anne Marie Vivienne (7:40)
And I think for so long now for generations, I feel like we've slowly been ignoring our elders that they get to this place where they could be considered elders and they don't know who they are, they still can't trust themselves and they don't want to tell their stories and they don't think they've learned anything. And then you find the gold golden ones who are just like they own it and they're like yes, I have lived a life, and I have a perspective, and I have something to say. And so I just feel honored that they will let me listen and I learned a lot from them, and so I document them I photograph them I do some audio recordings. And hopefully one day I'll be able to compile it into a book and someday documentaries.
Annalisa Holcombe (8:28)
You call it wisdom, so I want to focus on that language for a good piece of this because I'm interested in what does like what does that word mean to you.
Anne Marie Vivienne (8:40)
So I'm going to just like throw out a few characteristics and we can dive down whatever hole you want to dive down. But ultimately, for me, wisdom, I think a lot about not to economize things, but you know it's kind of a Yin and Yang. How do you balance things? So I always look at things from that perspective of Yin and Yang, feminine/masculine, so to me wisdom is a feminine concept—not female, but feminine. So yes, males—all of us have that feminine wisdom and it's that knowing that can't be learned through books, it will never be learned through books and book knowledge. It's your intuition, it's your instinct. And it has feminine qualities, it's mysterious, it's fluid, it's cyclical. It evolves and grows and, you know, if you look to nature like nature is wisdom, it embodies wisdom. And so, for me… So there's this adage that is, you know, wisdom is doing what works until it doesn't. So it's knowing when when things need to change and shift, and you can only know that and by intuition and instincts and for me wisdom is ruled by the heart, not by the mind.
Anne Marie Vivienne (10:04)
So, to me, intellect is the mind and when the intellect gets miswired that's when trauma happens, that's when anxiety happens, that's when depression happens. To me, wisdom is always in the heart and wisdom will always remind us that, you know, for cases and trauma like… When you finally realize that you're safe and you're not, you know, when you can get out of that loop that you get stuck in with trauma. When you finally realize that you're out of the trauma, that's heart wisdom. That's the knowing. Because your brain gets wired to think it gets stuck, right? There's a wire tripping and you still think you're in danger. And that's the same with anxiety, you know, you're making it up, it’s all fictional. And so that's where the intellect can go wrong when it gets miswired, right, and then we start trying to make decisions from this clouded space.
Anne Marie Vivienne (11:03)
But when wisdom is from the heart, wisdom is… you can't explain it. And that's what I love. It changes, my definition of wisdom changes all the time, and it should depending on where I'm at, who I'm interacting with, what the environment is. It's knowing what your environment is, explaining to the room and not in a way that’s, you know, you're selling yourself but it's just knowing what your environment is and how to respond.
Annalisa Holcombe (11:30)
I love that so much. So in this podcast, we had a podcast about values, and we did a like a little added, if you want to, some work that you could do to help yourself define your values and how you bring your values to your work or to your life and how you think about them. And it comes with like cards with value-laden words written on them. So I've been doing that work like with students and in my mentoring program and then on this podcast, I've done it so many times. And it's interesting because, over time—not at the beginning, but over time—I’ve been drawn to the word wisdom more and more. When I've had to narrow down what are my true values to three words and then define them myself, wisdom has become central to that in ways that it wasn't at the beginning. At the beginning, it had more to do with intelligence or knowledge and now it's much more about wisdom for me and I think it's interesting.
Anne Marie Vivienne (12:38)
Yeah and I think, you know, there's this great book called The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist and he's a psychologist and he's studied neuroscience a lot, and he went anyway, but he talks about he has a new way of talking about right brain/left brain. I don't know if you're familiar with this book. But to distill it down, basically—you know he goes into great detail so it's fascinating for anyone who's interested in the brain—but The Master and His Emissary is this story about how the master who rules this country, his country is growing and growing and he needs help running the country. So he gets an emissary to help him just kind of oversee this region, and so master goes off and he's doing his own thing. Anyway, the emissary gets to this place where he thinks he's the master and that he knows what's best for this region. But as the master comes back and it's like, “Oh man, this guy—the emissary—what he can't see is the big picture.”
Anne Marie Vivienne (13:48)
And so, for me, the brain you have—left brain, which is really good at this hyper focusing and getting into those details and the right brain is this big picture, it's how we see the big picture. And his whole argument for writing this book is that we've become a society that is so left-brain that we have forgotten the big picture. And to me, wisdom is that big picture of like… you know, and we talk so much about facts right now, like facts are a thing. Facts are truth and I want to say no, no, no. Truth is something else, facts are so necessary and we need them. I'm not saying, facts aren’t… but they have their place. But it's like we're making facts the master when they're just the emissary. And so another way I say this is, you know the heart needs to be in charge. And the mind is there to help—it can do all these cool little things. It can organize. It can us survive. It can help us find food. But the heart needs to be in charge.
Anne Marie Vivienne (14:50)
And so, yeah, this shift—I’ve done the same shift from being you know someone pursuing the intellect and intelligence through these, you know, our reverend ways of academia and the ivory tower and yet I was losing my soul. I was learning some really great things, but also just, you know, losing my rhythm… and just becoming codependent with these institutions, and the authority. I think we a society that loves to create authority—who's the expert? When it comes to our day to day lives, when you can make wisdom central, everything starts to flow and you're not fighting yourself anymore. I think we spend so much time trying to align ourselves with the prescribed intelligence and what's the right way to do things and… Oh, this is another metric I love to use with wisdom. Wisdom… let's see, so the intellect and intelligence is often concerned with how things look, you know, does my life look right? And wisdom is concerned with does my life feel right?
Anne Marie Vivienne (16:08)
And so that's where that music kind of comes in and it's like, can I dance to my own life? Do I feel like dancing? You know, you don't always feel like dancing, but I mean for the most part, if you feel like you've entered a dance with life you're probably—good chance you're leading with wisdom and not trying to like mechanically fit yourself into this… you know, intellectual… not even intellectual… but even just the societal pressures of what does a successful life look like?
Annalisa Holcombe (16:40)
I love the idea of and, by the way, I'm smiling so much because this is exactly what I was hoping would happen in this… like there's so much. I know that I'm gonna have to listen to this 400 times to just… because you say so much in this much time that I have to go back and go like “How do I sit with that and think about it for a little bit?” Like I want to pause and go like… wow, that’s affecting me.
Anne Marie Vivienne (17:07)
Being a poet I've learned to condense a lot into these.
Annalisa Holcombe (17:13)
I love it so much and you do this, all the time, I remember you telling me about how we need to be rooted like two years ago, sitting on my back patio and I can't stop thinking about it. It is in my head all the time. But it's this… like I'm really interested in two things. The fact that you said and I'm going to live with this for a while, like… Can I dance to my life? That's really good and it's something for me to sit with for a while to figure out. Like sometimes my dancing might need to be a little more still and sometimes it might need to be like super crazy.
Anne Marie Vivienne (17:56)
The dance can be whatever it needs to be, but is it a dance? And even that skill… you know, musicians have a saying that the music happens between the notes. So what stretch, or you know, sometimes between notes it's a pause, it's a rest, it's a silence. So it's like, that dance and that music you're making doesn't always have to be this like super upbeat rhythmic dance, it could be a lament. Because seeing dancers who do more of a lamenting… Annalisa Holcombe (18:30) That is so beautiful still.
Anne Marie Vivienne (18:34)
Yeah, or it could be sleeping, my goodness, how I think most of us could use a lot of a lot more naps in our lives which you keep dancing a little bit.
Annalisa Holcombe (18:42)
More, that's right. So another thing that I just love that you are… so when you speak about wisdom and then you speak about elder women, and I love the juxtaposition of that because often what we're talking about is either young or men, right, and you're interested in talking about older women. So what, tell me what… like first of all, what draws you to elder women and, second, what's an example of wisdom that you've learned through that work.
Anne Marie Vivienne (19:20)
Right, so yeah, the elder women. So two things that we don't like to pay attention to. And that was it exactly, you know, I felt like they're invisible and they're a mystery, and I also feel like they have this… there's a generation right now that it's about to be gone that I feel like has this last… any kind of sentiment towards a slower life, and I feel like their wisdom to me has a pace. It's slow. You know, like you, don't get wisdom by rushing through life, and I feel like it's been a couple of generations since we've really… since we've known how to just sit with life and let it unfold rather than forcing it. And I feel like these women had at least a childhood that was slow and mimicked the seasons. And that's just so calming to me, it's so… like all I want to do is live with the seasons. Can we live in harmony with the seasons? Like winter, can we all hibernate a little bit more, and spring is time for planting, fall is time for harvesting—we’ll work really hard during this to the shoulder seasons, winter and spring, hibernating. And summer is for siestas, you know, and play and just enjoying each other.
Anne Marie Vivienne (20:50)
But yeah I feel like these women have still something that we are really… you know, back to this idea of being a friend, I feel like they know how to listen. They, when you talk with these elder women, you really have to remember they give themselves time to think. And so I had to learn very quickly not to interrupt that silence with more questions. Like okay they're done, now I'm going to ask my next question. It was like, well, no, no, no honey, they're thinking and you will wait for the next thing. So it's really taught me how to listen and to let those pauses and to let people process and…
Annalisa Holcombe (21:38)
Exercise patience in ways that we’ve forgotten.
Anne Marie Vivienne (21:41)
Yeah, and another thing about these elder women is, and I think is so fundamental to wisdom, is they don't take themselves seriously. They are so light hearted, and they have that perspective of just like “That is not worth your worry, my darling,” you know? Like, “Why is that the thing that's got you so upset? That's not that big of a deal and I'm not that big of a deal. And it's all going to be fine. And we're all going to end up in the grave anyway, so what are you trying to prove?” And I think wisdom really embodies this lightheartedness and this playfulness that I think we just… we were so busy trying to fill our resumes with these serious things and I'm just like, I wish I could put more fun things on my resume.
Annalisa Holcombe (22:33)
Do that, shall we? Like, I would love if I got a resume that somebody talked about more about how… Actually, I just have to tell you that one of the things I love that we're talking about—even in my work at WGU— is learning happens everywhere. And it shouldn't only be the realm of the educational institution that gets to, you know, like place that upon your head that I should get to own my own learning. And I should be able to talk about what I've learned and what that means, I should get to own it not a transcript from another place.
Anne Marie Vivienne (23:11)
Exactly that, yes wisdom is, and that’s… it's personal. Why it can't be? That's why it can't be in a textbook or even in a self help book; you know it, it has you, you have to spend time with yourself and know yourself well enough and to know that intuition. To know that voice of intuition and that instinct that is yours. And to be curious, I think, in some ways, where I don’t… to be genuinely curious about yourself and what do I want, what is fun to me, what makes me want to dance, what makes me, you know, like… and rather than we all get stuck in the woods and there's a big business out there, books that tell us what we should do. But I think that learning for yourself starts with learning about yourself. And that can be really healing and empowering.
Anne Marie Vivienne (24:15)
Then you get to show up to the table with exactly what only you can offer to a situation and I think good employers, the ones who I would call good employers, will want that. Will want what you have, what only you can offer. I'm sure, yeah, they could replace—anyone can be replaced it anytime but for right now, you hold the position that you hold. There's something that you have that's very unique, and if you don't know what that is your jobs just going to turn into misery. You might have even started out liking your job, but now you're doing what you think you should do to get the promotions, to get the whatever, and all of a sudden you're just dying inside, because you don't know who you are. And you've lost your curiosity about “what would be a fun way to approach this problem” or “would be a healing way to approach this problem”.
Annalisa Holcombe (26:00)
As you know, this whole podcast is a bit about finding purpose and meaning in our lives, and acknowledging that we spend most of our lives at work—so how do we find purpose and meaning at work? And so I've had these conversations with my colleagues who are working with me on this podcast who've expressed worry, we're like “Is this podcast privileged? Are we talking about purpose and meaning in work, how does that apply to the person who might be in what society has termed a ‘menial role’? How does someone who is a dishwasher or a janitor find purpose and meaning?” And when I was reading your stuff about the beauty in ritual and the beauty in simplicity, I was like “Oh, please let's talk about that.”
Anne Marie Vivienne (26:53)
You're right, you know, the conversation of meaning and purpose can definitely become privileged. But I also think you know in general, embracing the ordinary… and somehow I think we've really dismissed the importance of what I call domestic jobs. And at home that's the obvious, you know, keeping the house clean and whatever, and that’s happening in restaurants. It’s the people who are doing the domestic kind of work… And I just think you know that's why we have this you know we've had this decades-long thing with like, you know, homemakers and are they valuable in our society and are you really working if you're a homemaker? And that translates then into the workplace. Do you have… you know, can your job be meaningful if you are a janitor or if you are, you know, doing dishes? And hell, yes. To me, it’s maddening that we have this hierarchy of work and what we value. You can have this super high-paying job, and we all know this happens, you can have a high-paying “important” job and be miserable and find no meaning.
Anne Marie Vivienne (28:13)
I've had jobs where I've, you know, it's looked good and I've loved telling people my title and yet I felt it was really hard to find meaning in “Why am I doing this?” I think, one, I'm such an advocate of each of us in our personal lives valuing our domestic—I call them “ordinary rituals” they like washing the dishes is a ritual for me. I put on certain music, it's at a certain time of day, it's part of my winding down and it's learning how to make your life holy and sacred. And that actually ties into this idea of wisdom being cyclical. And what rituals do is they create the cyclical rhythm, you know, it's like you wake up and my mom taught me to make my bed in the morning, and I've been doing it first thing since I was a kid. And we underestimate the value of these domestic ordinary rituals, but these are the things that give meaning to our lives. And even if you're going to a job, where you question the meaning of… you know, like “Why am I doing this? What is it really doing for society?” Paying the bills is a domestic duty and, you know, I live alone and single, like doing this for myself is nourishing to me. It’s a sign that I love myself that I will do a job that I'm not 100% passionate about because I care about me and I care about putting a roof over my head. And I live in this, you know, post-industrial society where yes, do I wish I could be a farmer? Absolutely.
Anne Marie Vivienne (30:07)
You know, as you know, this is my… and maybe one day I will be. But for now, this is where I'm at and I'm learning from it and I feel like these rituals, when you can really build them into your day, it becomes like that song. Because they don't become routine if you allow them to have some variation, like I was talking about with song. Just like my my rituals at home and at work change seasonally and according to my intuition and what do I need . But having them there allows me to have a sense of purpose. My life is sacred, these things are holy—even these tiny little tasks. And so I can apply that at work to these tasks that we all hate to do, but everyone has them. Okay, this is… I care about me, I care about my community, I care about the people I work with. Even if I don't care about our ultimate goal, like let's say you're in a job where you're like “I don't even care about our mission.” But if you can get to a place where you care about the people you work with and they're trying to put a roof over their head for their families and their kids, and so your success is their success… and if you can have that team mentality, then you can start to have the meaning and purpose, because if it's always all about you it's so hard to.
Anne Marie Vivienne (31:34)
The meaning and the purpose and I'll just end with this last little thought, I'm rambling… I don't know how you say out loud I've only ever read it, but the Japanese term ikigai, have you heard this? It's just that, you know, “what do you get up in the morning for?” And I think if you limit yourself to getting up in the morning to go to my job, it's like… yeah… You know it's a perspective thing and wisdom is all about getting that bigger picture perspective. We don’t honor these mundane things enough because they lay the groundwork for these peak experiences, and you can't have the peak experiences without them. So we're a culture, you get sucked into the culture of buying a live versus building a life. I have to constantly poll myself and say, “I want to build a life, and that means it's going to end in a lot of ways”, I feel like I'm “behind,” you know, we all play that game of like “I’m this age… I should be at this place, I should have this kind of money, have this kind of house, blah blah blah,” and I'm just like I'm building a life so it's going slow.
Anne Marie Vivienne (33:03)
And my days are very mundane, you know. When people want to catch up with me I'm like “Well, I'm doing the same things reading and going to work and writing.” Peak experiences are very unfair, you know.
Annalisa Holcombe (33:22)
You know, what I remember, I talked about this with a friend of mine, all the time and we call them our Cheerios moments. And it and it comes from… I read an article once about a mom who had cancer and she was super worried that she was going to pass away without having what you're calling the “peak experiences” with her kids and she was so sick that the big trip to Disneyland wasn't going to be able to happen, and she was talking to her kid about it and her kid was like “I couldn’t care less about Disneyland. The thing that matters the very most to me is when we have Cheerios together every morning.”
Anne Marie Vivienne (34:03)
Kids, I'm telling you.
Annalisa Holcombe (34:06)
I always like, it's those cheerios moments—it's those little things that make the meaning. It's not the giant experience, which is fun and has something, but your kids are going to appreciate your everyday ritual of having cheerios with that.
Anne Marie Vivienne (34:25)
Yeah, and that's the same with any relationship, right? And I think that's so hard for people when they get into a romantic relationship is they find out it's mostly pretty mundane and ordinary and not that exciting. We're just we're so addicted to that excitement. In a lot of ways I'm just always like, I need to detach from dopamine. You know? We all want those dopamine hits, and you get them and you just want more and more, and you want those highs. And I'm just like, I just would love some space from dopamine. Can we just turn it down, world? Also, with wisdom, I did want to mention that I do realize that wisdom is not owned by the elders. Anyone at any age, we all have these moments of wisdom. I love that story of the child reminding the mother, the things that matter are the things that most people overlook and rush through.
Anne Marie Vivienne (35:33)
I remember hearing an interview with a rabbi since a few years back, I was going through a divorce and they were talking about our culture's obsession with happiness and this phrase that people often use, “pursuit of happiness”. And this rabbi was saying, “I think we've been running so fast trying to pursue happiness that we don't realize that it's behind us.” We're going so fast that we don't realize it's just right here. And this it it. I have one of my rituals — at anytime if anyone wants to like hear the rundown of Anne’s daily rituals… But one of them is it nighttime—and these only you know my rituals really take a couple minutes but it's a way that orients me in my day. But I have one at night, and I just call it a death meditation. This day is over, it's gone. It's a way for me to practice, and to remember that in the end I end up in the grave. What were the things that really mattered today? A lot of the times they're really mundane and yet they're the sweetest things.
Anne Marie Vivienne (37:04)
If I have any kind of consciousness, you know after death, I know if I could look back, those are the things I will miss the most. Making my bed, doing my dishes, sitting down in my reading chair, or a cup of tea. I'm not going to think about living abroad in China and that adventure; I mean, sure, maybe a little bit, but I'm going to miss most the things I did day to day where I took care of myself or I took care of my people.
Annalisa Holcombe (37:43)
Where you made a life. That's what it looks like. But there was something I wanted to make sure I talked about which—I don't even know where it would lead but—I loved you you brought this up at the beginning. I had read about it in some of your work, that it can be difficult to actually interview the elder women because… the struggle to highlight them. And I think I've experienced that too, this whole part of our society, the older we get as women, the more likely we are to disappear. In my career, I haven't disappeared, but in social situations I’m far more invisible than I was when I was young and pretty, right? It’s a whole different thing for me now. And I'm seeing it, I'm like “Wow, as I begin to age, I get more and more invisible.” It's infuriating, too, I have to say, because I have more things to say now. I’m more interesting than I was back then.
Anne Marie Vivienne (38:36)
Now I would like some attention, please!
Annalisa Holcombe (38:39)
Yeah, I have some stories! But I I read this book called Disappearing Act, and it's a leadership book but it was about how we as a society have literally disappeared. All of those things that we call “soft skills”, but they were the things like creating the connections, the nurturing, the supporting, the encouraging, the meaning-making. Even the preparing for something and cleaning it up that happens in the business world that was often done—it wasn't even called leadership. We didn't even think of them as skills because they were done by the secretaries, the assistants, and the wives. So they literally disappeared out of the literature until like the 1990s, when people are like “Oh, soft skills are something!”
Anne Marie Vivienne (39:36)
Yeah, okay, this thing with soft skills. This goes back to this idea of feminine and I think we severely misunderstand what feminine is and the power that it has. This idea of soft—it doesn't quite get at what it is. What it is is it’s fluid, it's adaptable, it does what needs to be done, and I think that is badass. Does the trash need to be taken out so this looks right? I will take the trash out.
Annalisa Holcombe (40:09)
I'm not going to look around and wonder who's going to do it for me.
Anne Marie Vivienne (40:12)
And it has to do with like, it's concerned with the ecology and what is the environment like, and making an environment friendly so that it evokes innovation. The feminine gets that the environment matters. People need to be fed so they can think. Bodies need to be taken care of so we are at our best. And so the feminine—if you lead with that feminine, and it's not about being just soft. When you think of women who—and not just women like, I have a list of men I want to interview for Wisdom Anthologies, that’s like phase three or four, you know, I’ll get there. What are the things and skills and characteristics that we need? You're right, with connection and those relationships, taking time to have a conversation with people and knowing building a relationship often takes time. It's not just this wheel and deal, one conversation, handshake, done, boom.
Annalisa Holcombe (41:21)
Right, it's work and it's a valid and really important part of getting something accomplished.
Anne Marie Vivienne (41:26)
Yeah, it’s not just useless chit chatting. These skills that have been labeled “soft” and that’s, you know… I have a project where I've been keeping a list asking people “list for me some feminine qualities.” And people maybe get three or four and they're interesting, and then I’m like “Let me share with you some. Mysterious. Receptive. Open. Awakened. The feminine qualities are the awakeners, life-givers, cyclical—not linear. It's expansive and not focused. So, you know, these soft skills that people talk about, they severely and grossly underestimate the power that they have. I think the more we begin to invest in them individually, because I think as individuals we’re really bad at embracing those sides of ourselves. “Well, I shouldn't stop and have this conversation.” Or “Does it matter if we have good food at this thing?” Or “does it matter if the space we meet in is beautiful?” I'm like yes, it does actually. And where I did my graduate work is at a school in England, and it was so different from my undergraduate.
Annalisa Holcombe (42:48)
You can say it, your school is a pretty big deal.
Anne Marie Vivienne (42:52)
Yeah, I went to Oxford. So I'm doing my undergraduate here in Utah which, I love my school, but it was like… I went to Oxford and it was beautiful. And the things I could think—and I wanted to be in the library, I wanted to 24/7 be learning and talking and discussing and creating ideas, and I wanted to be there. There's been different office places I've worked at and, yes, the more beautiful and thoughtful the spaces, the better I think. The more I want to be there and contribute. So, you know, the people who are making these spaces at least tolerable—I think most of us, if we're lucky, we have a tolerable space we're working in. Hopefully, we have natural light. Then we're lucky if we even just have natural light, to underestimate the value of how that affects our productivity and our passion… I actually want people to stop talking about productivity at work and start talking about passion. Because if you just like nail passion, if you help build passion, people will go beyond productive.
Anne Marie Vivienne (44:08)
We’ll kill it. So if you make our working conditions beautiful, which is through these “soft skills”, if you make it a place I want to come talk to people and have the water cooler conversations, I will give you my all. No, duh.
Annalisa Holcombe (44:33)
You talked about this, the importance of beauty. I know you've done a lot of thinking and writing and listening about what beauty is and means to us. And I love when… like I read something that you had written about beauty being located also in the dark spaces or in the overlooked spaces. And I would just love to hear you talk a little bit about… how does beauty play a role in terms of either our wisdom or our connection? Talk to me a little bit about that.
Anne Vivienne (45:11)
So for me, beauty is rooted in darkness, it has to be. Most of you know I'm a poet by training and that's what I studied in school. I still consider myself, first and foremost, a poet. I think that's why I love poets so much, because they're not just talking about pretty flowers and all this stuff, they always weave into it the sorrow and the grief of life. Real beauty is honest, and the honest truth about our human existence is that we are imperfect and we will die. And not… you know, we're not always going to do what is expected of us. I don't want to say we don't do good things all the time, I think most of us are well-intentioned and just kind of haphazardly trying to get through life but we end up hurting people and being hurt along the way. And without the sorrow, without the grief, without the darkness, there is no beauty. And that's just… if you don't acknowledge the darkness and if you're always this person who's like “It’s sunshine all the time in my life, and I always take the positive view, and I never get mad,” then I'm like, “Then the beauty in your life has no substance. It has no depth. It’s manufactured. It's coming from the mind.”
Anne Vivienne (46:48)
The mind can be a wonderful place of the imagination, it can also be quite fictitious in a very damaging way. I feel like, again, back to that heart—if your heart does not break from time to time… and that's where wisdom is (in the heart), and to receive wisdom, the heart has to break. So if you go through life trying not to get your heart broken in this way or that way, you're also blocking out that beauty and that joy that will come from that. So for me, I get a lot of people who are like “You're so sad, you’re so melancholy sometimes.” I'm like, I have to have seasons of that. It's real and it's honest and, yeah, sometimes I'm not super happy with my life. And it's when I allow myself to not be happy with it, I go into the depths, and then I can find what is at the roots so that I can change it. You have to be willing to hurt. And you can't avoid it, and I'm learning more and more to embrace it.
Annalisa Holcombe (47:58)
And actually see beauty in your own hurt.
Anne Vivienne (48:03)
Yes, yes. And the wounds, there's this phrase, you know, there's wisdom in the wounds. Wisdom is the wounds. And when you're willing to learn from the wounds rather than run from them, or trying to cover them up, or give them a bandaid (which we all do)… It’s so sneaky, we’re so sneaky. We think we're working on it and then you're like “Oh no, I'm not. I haven't gone deep enough. Still not, I'm still out. Oh, I have to go deeper? Oh, this has to hurt more? Okay. I'm still trying to pretend everything's okay and I'm fine and I'm not.” That’s where wisdom becomes really personal, because only you will know how deep you need to go and how long you need to go there. And not worry about everyone else around you who's worried about you, you know, like “Are you okay?” Yes, I'm sad and depressed, but I am okay. This is part of my process. I get a lot of people who will see the one side of me where I'm all about beauty and then they want to ignore when I write about the sadness, or the sorrow. And I just think, you can't just have the one side, they go together. That ties into those peak experiences and the ordinary, you know…
Anne Vivienne (49:30)
If you want the peak experiences, it's gotta go dark sometimes. And that's what nature shows us, it goes dark every night, and—actually I prefer to wake up very early, I wake up at 4am because I don't have kids and waking up early sounds awesome. I wake up because it's still dark and I want to remind myself that I'm rooted, that's where my roots are and that's the subconscious and I want to face it. I want to get in there, because it's crazy but it's beautiful. And when you can accept it and face it, it doesn't turn into that shadow toxic thing that can happen.
Annalisa Holcombe (50:13)
Love it, I love it so much. This is so great, I want to ask you my question that I always ask about which is mentors show up in lots of different ways, so I’m interested in you talking to me about a mentor that you've had.
Anne Vivienne (50:32)
It really is my friends, because they see all sides of me. They see I do have this… I want to do well at my job, and a little bit of ambition there, but I also have this very spiritual mystical side that you know I don't get to show at work so much. And so I think they're my people that I go to and, especially, these two girlfriends I have because they they allow me to be the complex person that I am, and I think we're all complex people with many layers and they know that I always have a struggle inside. I’d love to live the creative life but that's also not sustainable, so finding the balance of being a creative while having a day job. And so they're able to really, at least if they don’t… you know, they rarely have ”This is what you should do.” But they're the good listeners, that goes back to this listening. So I guess, I would say good mentors are the good listeners who just allow you to hear yourself out loud. And they listen and they can just say “Yeah, this is a struggle we all face. We're with you.” For me, mentors are people who’s say “Yeah, you’re human.”
Annalisa Holcombe (51:56)
Can I just tell you, however, it makes me almost feel a little bit weepy because your biggest accomplishment, is being a good listener. And your mentors are your friends who listen, who full-on listen. So this really resonates with me about… it's so funny because sometimes it chokes me up, so I'll try not—and I don't even know why chokes me up because I do actually think it's super profound if you think about it. It was probably five or six years ago, Sister Helen Prejean came to Utah and spoke. She's just amazing. I just remember, I wrote it down, and I wish I had it but as she was speaking, she was said as she goes and visits death row inmates and is with them. And she said what she's learned in her work with people who are facing death is that the most important thing, the biggest most giant gift, you can give someone is to listen to them.
Anne Vivienne (53:06)
The truth of it is, and I've said this a couple times, I love that, is that we're all facing death. None of us knows when that moment is coming and that's why we can get so anxious. But we're also just not facing that, we're trying to avoid that fact. And so I do this exercise a lot and a lot of like different coaches use this, I think, but it's the inner mentor. Imagining yourself 20 years from now. Because only you know what you can contribute in the best way. Only you will know what you are going to do in this situation to get over this hurdle, and so it's like this meditation practice that you can do going to visit yourself. And how did you get there? How did you get to where you are, how did you get to this place? What did you do in this situation to get there? What did you say to that person or how did you handle this? And I think to me, a lot of people ask with the Wisdom Anthologies, “Who do these women go to for their wisdom?” Themselves. Absolutely themselves.