What is a Good Life? #99
Helping Spirit Flow with Darcia Narvaez
On the 99th episode of What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Darcia Narvaez. Darcia is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, and Fellow of the American Psychological Association, American Educational Research Association, Association for Psychological Science, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She uses an interdisciplinary approach to studying evolved morality, child development and human flourishing. Her most recent books include Restoring the Kinship Worldview, and The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way of Raising Children and Creating Connected Communities. Her book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom won the 2015 William James Book Award from the American Psychological Association and the 2017 Expanded Reason Award. Her recent short films are Breaking the Cycle, The Evolved Nest, and Reimagining Humanity. She hosts the webpage EvolvedNest.org and serves as president of KindredWorld.org.
In this enlightening conversation, Darcia shares her journey to creating The Evolved Nest, a concept that integrates insights from child development, parenting, and adult behaviour. We discuss reconnecting with our natural rhythms, engaging with the world around us, fostering welcoming social environments, embracing play, and allowing the spirit of both children and adults to flow freely.
This conversation is a wonderful invitation to reconnect with our primal wisdom, reflect on how we disconnect from it, and learn how to create the nurturing environments we need to thrive.
The weekly clip from the podcast (5 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (65 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
Does any of this make sense?
Do you see it in any other life form or species? This deep yearning to be something else. The unsettling feeling of not being enough. Being on this planet yet lacking a sense of belonging.
Can you see it anywhere else?
We put ourselves in competition with everything else – peers, imaginary peers online, nature, etc.
Even our children – “they are trying to test me” – when referring to a child.
Maybe they are simply expressing themselves? Maybe it is not all about you and your preferences?
The terrible twos – instead, how about they are simply learning about their emotional range and reactions?
It is like critiquing the music of a beginner as if they were about to play a concert. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
While the vast majority of adults have rarely found peace with their own reactions or emotions, or come to any sense of harmony within themselves or the world around them, we are merely like music critics who can barely play a note.
When looking at so many different facets of our behaviour, it doesn’t make sense to me.
We are eating even though we are full, consuming more even though our closets are overflowing, pillaging our planet even though our lives depend on it, ruining our air quality even though we need to breathe.
And yet, we still build social sciences based on our rationality or notions of a rational consumer.
Watch a few videos showing Black Friday sales behaviour and show me this mythical character, let alone read the studies that say 95% of our purchases are made subconsciously.
We live in a world where 70% of people live on less than $10 a day, and so those who live on much more, you might imagine, would feel very fortunate or lucky.
Is that what you feel each day when you wake up, knowing that you are one of the lucky ones? Maybe more money will change that, right?
I’m not here to deny how compelling the reality and the competition we have invented feels. I’m just pointing out the obvious void that exists within it.
I don’t think there is any “winning” this present game.
Amass enough wealth, and then you have to worry about managing it, protecting it. Then there is always a room to walk into where you will feel small in comparison to another person’s wealth.
I have met and personally known enough considerably wealthy people from my time in finance, or in my network today, to see that there is no winning this game.
Conversely, when lying on my hall floor last night, my wife’s head on my stomach, my daughter lying on her stomach, my dog licking my ear, there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to be. Nobody to become.
When sitting with a friend in the park at the weekend, no devices in sight, just a number of beautiful bare trees in front of us as he told me about his life, there was nowhere to go…
While I was spinning around to some music, dancing and playing with my baby girl.
While I sat in an empty room, just being with myself and noticing my present experience.
When I sat to write.
There are so many ways and moments in my life where all I feel is enough-ness. Whole.
There is nothing special about me; it’s there for all of us to experience.
We just need to place our attention on what is here right now, and these myths simply dissolve away.
And what’s more, we naturally return to so much of the primal wisdom and inclinations that Darcia points to in this conversation.
We simply need to hold each other more, regardless of whether a baby, child, or adult. We need to play more. We need to revere the animal and natural wisdom within us and allow this left hemisphere’s thinking to release its grip on how we perceive this world.
There is no way more thinking, analysing, measuring, or succeeding in cultures dominated by thought will fill the void that is yearning from a lack of human touch, connection, and spirit, no matter how hard we try and effort.
It is not in dominating or winning that this emerges, but a resting into our own being, and feeling the connection not just between the human species, but all of it. Not in some theoretical sense or pointing to intelligent writings, but in a feeling of timelessness, effortlessness, and ease that surrounds us. Love.
When we rest into this being, our place in the world feels undeniable, and our days are littered with moments and feelings we imagined were reserved for the “winners” of this mental game, but yet never come.
3. Full Episode - Helping Spirit Flow with Darcia Narvaez - What is a Good Life? #99
Click here for Apple and Amazon
4. This week’s Questions
In what way may you be stifling the flow of your own spirit or that of others around you?
What does wisdom mean to you? How does one demonstrate wisdom?
About Me
I am a coach, podcast host, and writer, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 250 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you would like to work with me to explore your own lines of self-inquiry, take part in my weekly free silent conversations, discuss experiences I create to stimulate greater trust, communication, and connection, amongst your teams, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.
Brilliant - magnificently rich discussion with Dr Narvaez around spirit and the cripplingly narrow Western mindset compared to animist, indigenous and ancestral wisdoms. Obvious, perhaps, but so uncommon in our popular and overwhelmingly busy culture, such that these thoughts feel revolutionary even when they are as old as human history. Thanks, Mark and Darcia, so much.
Really beautifully put John