Despair and Hope with Noah benShea

In today's episode of the "Helping Families Be Happy" podcast, host Christopher Robbins, co-founder of Familius publishing, husband, father of nine, author, fisherman, backpacker, and aspirational musician based in the Central Valley of California, talks to Noah benShea, one of North America's most respected and beloved poet philosophers. He has the Pulitzer Prize-nominated and internationally best-selling author of 29 books translated into 18 languages, embraced around the world. Today they will discuss the duality of despair and hope from his most recent book - The Surfer and the Sage: A Guide to Surviving and Ride Life's Waves.

 

Episode Highlights

• 02:15: Life is a great party to which you have been invited. Now you have to decide what you want to wear to the party. The first thing to remember is that you get to choose not only from your clothing wardrobe but also from your emotional wardrobe.
• 02:58: Despair and hope are options that each has in each of their moments. Being filled with despair is not necessarily a flaw.
• 03:19: Those in the military remind us that hope is not a plan, and they are right. But from hope, a move to the positive can be planned.
• 03:40: Despair is not designer clothing more is it meant to be worn every day. However hope is a superhero cloak that on the tough days and even on the easy days, can shield you from despair.
• 06:30: Faith is saying things unseen, hope is hoping to see things unseen.
• 08:27: There are so many things, and we want to move towards hope.
• 10:28: As per Noah there is nothing more challenging for us in this lifetime to come to because Aristotle said that honesty is important to all wisdom.
• 11:45: We are all alone, but we are all alone together when we recognize our own aloneness, we recognize empathetically our aloneness, our brother and sister.
• 12:50: Remind other people that you hope the best for them and that the best for you will be arriving.
• 14:47: Noah suggests passing vulnerability to children this way your children will recognize that the strongest person in their life is not absent from vulnerability.
• 16:16: We are not seeking to solve all problems, but just help people explore ways to improve their lives, and help their families be happy, says Christopher. 

3 Key Points

1. Noah gives several real-life examples that give insights into hope and despair.
2. One of the areas where we fall victim to despair is when our ego is in despair, says Noah.
3. Noah talks about mental illness and the importance of seeking medical help in case feeling depressed.

Tweetable Quotes

• "I know there are people for many years I was asked to be a national philosopher, dealing with people in the field of addiction, and one of the things I would remind people that to some people dope is the is the only hope."- Noah benShea
• "I was thinking about hope versus faith the other day and somebody I think framed it for me and they framed it in a religious sense." - Christopher Robbins
• "For me, there has been no more profoundly despairing time in my life, and perhaps for those lists they were observing than when you wake up in." - Noah benShea
• "I don't think there's anything more challenging for us in this lifetime to come to because Aristotle said that honesty is important to all wisdom." - Christopher Robbins

Resources Mentioned

• Helping Families Be Happy Podcast Apple
• Familius: Instagram
• Podcast Editing