Daniel Smith

Regret is always an emotion that I wonder, maybe there's no value to this one at all.

Maybe this one's just a glitch.

Because regret is essentially a desire for a time machine.

I wish I could turn back time and do it differently.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

I suppose if there's a case to be made, it's that these emotions that we've come to think of as negative,

are aspects of ourselves that are indelible, that are useful, that are full of information, and that we should stop trying to solve for them.

We should stop trying to sort of cleave them off from ourselves and spend time trying to understand what it is they're trying to tell us, what role they play in our lives, what they can tell us about ourselves and about the difficulties of living.

Anger, shame, despair, boredom, envy.

I mean, envy can be a really good one to talk about because it's invade against in moral education.

It's invade against in religious education.

Envy is the thing that...

that leads to destruction and pain and violence in religious texts.

And we are taught or have been taught in the past that this is something we want to not feel.

There's an old Buddhist parable about the second arrow.

The first arrow is the pain that you feel in the course of a life.

Someone comes along, they have something that makes you feel envious.

They have a beautiful spouse or a well-ordered home or a lot of money or a great career, and you feel envy.

The second arrow is the thought or the feeling, I shouldn't be feeling envious.

It is a bad thing to feel envious, and I need to sort of cure myself of envy.