Emily Falk

And I'm so sorry to hear that Soma lost her friend.

And it also makes me think about my dear friend, Emil Bruno, who ran Penn's Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab.

And he got a diagnosis seven years ago about a glioblastoma brain tumor.

And so he understood that that meant that there was really a finite amount of time, typically when people have this kind of brain cancer.

they have a fairly short amount of time to live.

And in that context, the little things, the things that might be frustrating or annoying or whatever on a day-to-day basis would just roll off his back in a totally different way.

And he reflected on that, like how that diagnosis and that opportunity to pay attention to the fact that we have a finite number of days and minutes and hours together

really you know put a fine point on the things that that really matter and the things that don't and he really let go of so much defensiveness and became an even more open version of himself in such a beautiful way

And so, you know, I really love Soma's story because I think it also speaks to the ways that when we see other people go through those kinds of experiences with grace, it can also model for us ways that we might move through the world in a slightly less defensive or slightly more open way and then have those effects on other people as well because that kind of way of being is contagious.

Thanks for having me back, Shankar.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, it was a typical night in my house.

And what that looks like is one of my kids was jumping up and down on the couch.

He was playing his guitar.

The other kid was trying to show my grandmother something.

something that he had built, probably a Lego creation, like kind of really, really close up in her face.

I was trying to get dinner on the table.

So you can imagine sort of dishes clanging and my phone is probably pinging with emails and text messages from people that I work with who would really like a response very quickly.

And when I was in that situation, I sort of had this sense of like, oh, my gosh, there's so many different things that I'm trying to juggle right now.

And in that particular moment, I decided that I was going to prioritize a little bit of time with my grandmother.