Arthur C. Brooks

You remember my mother-in-law?

Remember we talked about my mother-in-law?

It's the beginning of our book together.

She was bedridden in her last three years of life.

It was hard and she was in a lot of pain and it was a tough life.

But in the most painful part of her life, her suffering was lower because she had lowered her resistance to it.

And she found what the meaning of that actually was in giving back to other people.

And that's the question that we have to ask.

When you're in pain, don't say, I gotta get rid of the pain right now.

No, no, no, no, no.

It's what am I learning from this pain?

And so doing as the resistance falls, you'll find that your suffering falls and that's a life full of meaning.

Can you talk about that?

Yeah, yeah.

So beauty is a funny thing.

And when I say, okay, think of something beautiful, people often think of, you know, somebody they're attracted to physically.

That turns out not to be the kind of beauty that gives you a sense of meaning in life, that leads you to make all kinds of odd decisions, as a matter of fact.

Three kinds of actual beauty, however, will illuminate the right side of your brain and show you meaning.

it's number one is natural beauty beauty in nature number two is artistic beauty like a beautiful song or a painting or a poem and number three is moral beauty where you witness acts of selflessness by other people and that uniquely stimulates the brain to to to transcend itself in a funny way to go from here's what's actually happening to wow that's actually the meaning of life wow that's the meaning of life now there's a great psychologist who does that you know you and i have a mutual friend my my beloved friend rain wilson the actor yes yes

His uncle is a psychologist named Rhett Deisner, who actually is the world's leading expert in moral beauty, in moral elevation.