What is a Good Life? #22
Other Ways of Existing with Craig Slee
On the 22nd episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am joined by Craig Slee, who is a disabled writer, consultant, and theorist dealing with mythology, magic, culture, and exploring life through the lens of landscape, disability, and fugitive embodiments. He has contributed essays and poetry focusing on the numinous and disability to various anthologies and has also co-facilitated seminar series at the Dresden Academy for Fine Arts, including one on Ableism and the Arts in 2022.
In this episode, Craig takes us on a journey from burning out from trying to be “normal”, living with a life-long disability, exploring other ways of being and existing (see clip below 🎬), developing a deeper awareness regarding the subtleties of life, pain, and suffering, and ultimately to discovering vitality and aliveness in living his own good life.
There is plenty to take from this episode in terms of guiding you to pay attention, developing a more subtle awareness, and the significance in our inquiries of sensing the world without labelling it, and what all this may lead to in terms of finding other ways of existing.
The weekly clip from the podcast (4 mins), my weekly reflection (2 mins), the full podcast (65 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
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After interviewing 150+ people around the question of, “what is a good life?”, I’ve created the following offerings based on this research:
1-on-1 coaching programs for working professionals to find their own answer to this question.
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For a free 30-minute consultation for any of the above, here’s my email and LinkedIn.
2. My weekly reflection
In the clip above and at the start of this interview, Craig discusses the struggle he experienced with his Mental Health when he was striving to be as “normal” as he could be.
While he was talking about this specifically in relation to his experience with cerebral palsy, I am sure we can all relate to moments in life when we have suffered in our attempts to conform to what is “normal”.
When we start to explore ourselves and life more deeply, it is clear that normal only exists in rather clunky and convenient groupings on the surface. We are all our own unique bundle of things, our very own specific constellation of experiences, personality, environments, emotions, thoughts, behaviours, relationships, etc.
I often think of society and notions of normal in terms of shoe size; if society had an average shoe size of 8, we would classify that as normal, however, it is actually only a small portion of people that feel comfortable with an 8, it is merely an average.
The unfortunate part of this myth of normal is that we are at times desperately trying to cram ourselves into whatever shape is required, whether it is to be part of the group or to do what we are told is the “right” thing.
The human experience is far too varied, nuanced, and unique to have such reductive metrics or guidelines for life. As much as we try to distance ourselves from nature, we are nature. As much as we pretend to be so orderly, we are also chaotic. As much as we aspire to logic, we are also emotional. As much as we try to conform on the surface, we remain unique.
It is hard to experience our own good life if we are perpetually wearing a shoe size that doesn’t fit.
3. Full Episode - Other Ways of Existing with Craig Slee - What is a Good Life? Ep. #22
Click here for Apple and Google.
4. This week’s Questions
Is there an area of your life in which you’re expending too much energy in striving to conform to an idea of “normal”?
What other ways of existing might emerge in your life if you paid more subtle attention to your own experience of life? What first comes to mind?
About Me
I am a Coach based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I left behind a 15-year career in Capital Markets after I became extremely curious around answering some of the bigger questions in life. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 150 people, to provide people with the space to reflect on their own lives and to create content that would spark people’s own inquiry into this question. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience, beyond the facades we typically project.
If you would like to work with me, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.