George Saunders

That's right.

And you have to develop your own positive traits, too.

You can't just kind of float through.

So really, the book was sort of an offloading of these two ideas I've had that are really in direct contradiction.

I think some philosophers say it's the absolute view, which is hers, versus the relative view, which is the one we walk around living in.

I do.

I do.

I mean, to me, both of the books kind of take place in a waiting room, like a waiting room where the judgment is next, but we don't really get to see that process at all.

We're just in a waiting room that seems to be occupied by people whose lives were such that they didn't die at peace.

Yeah.

You know, they had some kind of agitation or sense of deprivation or something that keeps them kind of resonant.

There's a Buddhist idea that when we're alive and we're in these bodies, that's a blessing because the mind is so powerful and neurotic.

But when in a body, it's kind of contained.

So they always say it's like you're like a wild horse.

the mind is like a wild horse tied to a fence as long as you're in a body.

But then when you die in that liminal space, the rope gets cut and your mind is just supersized.

And, you know, they say in some of these teachings that like, if you think of a foreign city, you go there.

Or if you have occasion to have a negative feeling, it becomes demons, you know, or if you have a happy feeling, it becomes heaven.

So I think these people are all in kind of that mode where they're

They just didn't – I would say maybe it's that in life there was some kind of denial that was going on.