The Mel Robbins PodcastIf You Feel Lost in Life, Listen to This One Conversation to Find Purpose & Meaning
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
65 min read · 13,431 words- 0:00 – 2:01
Meet the Guest
- MRMel Robbins
If you feel lost in life, today's guest will help you find purpose and meaning. Ocean Vuong is a bestselling author and an award-winning poet. His debut novel earned him the American Book Award, the Mark Twain Award, and the New England Book Award. His newest novel, The Emperor of Gladness, debuted on the New York Times bestselling list, and it's one of the best books I have ever read. Ocean is currently a tenured professor of creative writing at NYU, where he teaches in the MFA program for poetry and poetics.
- OVOcean Vuong
A meaningful life is not a life you use to prove to yourself or others that you are valuable. A meaningful life is finding the power and the value where you are. Shame is so perennial for so much of American life. It's very much true for the poor. I remember, you know, like, being in Stop & Shop's local grocery store, and my mother like, counting how many tomatoes she can afford. [laughing] All the struggles me and my family have gone through, they were all also sites of innovation and creative struggle.
- MRMel Robbins
What would you say to somebody who's listening right now and is in that place where they are feeling a tremendous amount of shame and feeling very lost?
- OVOcean Vuong
Dignity is about looking at what people have said to you that you should discard, and realizing that it's always part of you, and being proud of that as, as, as a process of who you are. So owning all of your parts and not having to walk around with that shame, that to me, is what dignity is. None of us chose to be here, but we stay, and we stay around because we realize there's love here. And it doesn't make poverty better. It doesn't make it even tolerable, but it gives your life a kind of significance when you realize that
- 2:01 – 7:03
The Power of Language
- OVOcean Vuong
you are still capable of giving and receiving love, and that's no small thing. I hope people realize is that wherever you are, it's, it's enough. No one has to escape to be worthy.
- MRMel Robbins
Ocean Vuong, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
- OVOcean Vuong
Thank you so much for having me.
- MRMel Robbins
I am so excited to meet you. I loved your book so much. I've given it to so many people, and I was absolutely honored when you said yes, and said that you would come on and talk about purpose, and feeling lost, and about your work, and the themes in your work. So thank you for being here.
- OVOcean Vuong
Oh, thank you so much for, for recognizing what I'm trying to do. It's a, it's a deep, deep honor to be here and to share with this beautiful audience, um, all around the world about what- at the heart of what I'm trying to do.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about what is at the heart of what you're trying to do, and if I really listen and take in everything that you will teach me today, how could my life change?
- OVOcean Vuong
I hope people realize that, if they don't already, that a meaningful life is not a life that you use to prove to yourself or others that you are valuable. A meaningful life is finding the power and the value where you are.
- MRMel Robbins
And what I love about that is that you're inviting us to consider that wherever it is that you are, even if you envision some possibility beyond where you may be-
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... that there is a way to feel dignity. There's a way to feel proud of who you are and what you're doing, that there's beauty in the life that you're living right now.
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
Even though you may have a hope in your heart that things might change or move in a different direction, that learning how to reclaim that sense of self is really at the heart of your work?
- OVOcean Vuong
100%, and so much of language in our world and our culture has been captured to humiliate us.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- OVOcean Vuong
If we look at advertisements, political campaigns, if we look at, um, you know, emails, corporate messages, we're, we're bombarded by language that tears us down and says we are not good enough. Um, we are, uh, constantly humiliated and debased in the way we experience language. And the work of... I'm already getting emotional talking about this. Uh, the work of poetry and language arts is to reclaim the strangeness and the beauty of language so that the wonder and awe at the heart of it is recycled and reclaimed back to everyday use. Language is a strategy that has always been historically used to control people, and so when you realize that, "Oh, so much of this thing I use every day, when it goes into the hands of corporations and politicians, it's u- it's manipulating me," then you realize, "If I speak and use this material with, with deliberate at- attention and intention, um, then I can reclaim a portion of myself," and part of that is dignity. And a lot of my work is I'm interested in using language as a way to reconfirm self and communal dignity.
- MRMel Robbins
What does the word "dignity" mean to you?
- OVOcean Vuong
The ability to, to live without shame, um, and to be proud of parts of your life that people think, um, are-... are failures? 'Cause in, in, in my short journey, I've learned that all the struggles that my- my, me, and my family have gone through, they were all also sites of innovation and creative struggle. So to me, I think dignity is about looking at what people have said to you that you should discard, and realizing that it's always part of you, and being proud of that as, as, as a process of who you are. So owning all of your parts and not having to walk around with that shame, that to me is what dignity is. And to me, it's like you're told that you've gotta go up, go up the mountain, and there'll be a light that will heal everything. And what I realized was how, how long and inefficient realizing
- 7:03 – 14:25
The Effects of Growing Up in Poverty
- OVOcean Vuong
that is. You know, it's like when my... I, I was raised by illiterate women, and because they were illiterate, they knew how powerful reading was. It was like sorcery to them, you know, because it's like, "We don't know what it, what it is, but we know how pow- we know the world runs-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm
- OVOcean Vuong
... with language, so you have our blessing to go off and figure that out." I never had a mother that forced me to do this or that. She said, "Son, go off and learn what you can, and if you can't, there's always a seat next to me at the nail salon." So you go off, and you go get your education, and for me, it took-- it was a long, circuitous path. It took me six years to get my undergraduate. I went to four institutions, community college, business school, dropped out, what have you. But you go off, and then you tell yourself, and I think this is particularly true of the immigrant and the refugee, but I think it's true for, for all children of the working poor. You s- you tell yourself, "I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go into that institution, and I'm gonna figure it out, and I'm gonna come back and give this thing that was locked away inside the university libraries. I wanna lo- I'm gonna give it to my family, and then we're gonna find out why we're here and what happened to us." So it's kind of this mining, and you realize that knowledge is so inefficient, and it takes so long. Meanwhile, destruction is so efficient. You know, our, our, our social services are gutted overnight by the stroke of a pen. Entire city blocks could be blown apart by weapons. It will take decades to heal and repair them. Destruction is so darn efficient. I think human beings, one of our, our worst inventions was that we have found out- we have found the way in the twentieth century to make instant ruins. You know, before that, ruins took thousands of years to create, but now we can make ruins instantly, and we are still living in the aftermath of that. And I think that's also a metaphor for reparative learning, which is what so much of class, being an, a class outsider is, right? You're, you're brought up with so much shame.
- MRMel Robbins
What did growing up and feeling that shame that you feel when you're poor, when you're an outsider in a new country, what did that teach you about how to live in a world that is constantly-
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm-hmm
- MRMel Robbins
... sending messages that, "We don't support you. We're against you. There's something wrong with you"? What did that teach you about life?
- OVOcean Vuong
Shame is so perennial for so much of American life. It's, it's very much true for the poor. I remember, you know, like, being in Stop & Shop's local grocery store, and my mother like, counting how many tomatoes she can afford. [chuckles] And I just think, you're, as a kid, you're sitting, you're sitting there, you're standing in line, and you're watching the cashier, who's not that older than you, look away because we're all in one ecosystem. They're not making that much money. So it's just like poor folks together. But what's unspoken is that, that deep shame, and none of us knew why or how to, to ameliorate it. And so you're sitting in line, and you're watching your mom push two little plum tomatoes back in the conveyor belt. And you're watching this kid, who's probably four years older than you, look out, look away because he knows, you know, out of respect. Again, that dignity, you know, like offering each other a little bit of dignity to look away. [sniffs] I'm sorry, um-
- MRMel Robbins
Why are you apologizing?
- OVOcean Vuong
Because I want to be clear, and, uh, my voice is-- it wobbles. Um-
- MRMel Robbins
You're very clear.
- OVOcean Vuong
Okay, thank you.
- MRMel Robbins
And I've, I've had the experience, but only I'm the mother-
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... with the kids standing next to me, and I had the line rehearsed for when the credit card would not go through.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And I would always cock my head and kind of look surprised and go, "Well, that's weird, 'cause it just worked at the gas station."
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah. Well-
- MRMel Robbins
And then I'd say, "Come on, kids, let's go out to the car. I've got another card out there," which I didn't. And you don't forget that.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
But everybody knows, and nobody knows how to talk about it, how to make it right.... and looking away in that moment is a form of respect, 'cause you don't want the person who's dealing with that heaviness-
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
- to feel the weight of your judgment either.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And so please, don't, don't apologize-
- OVOcean Vuong
Thank you
- MRMel Robbins
... for speaking and telling us the truth of your experience. Because, you know, for the person who doesn't know you, you're, in my opinion, one of the most decorated [chuckles] and awarded writers alive right now: the American Book Award, the Mark Twain Award, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the New England Book Award, the MacArthur Genius Grant.
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
You are a professor at NYU, and so while your story began growing up in Hartford, Connecticut, immigrating here from Vietnam, your mom and the women around you being illiterate and working in a nail salon, you went on to take back language and write about dignity in the human experience.
- OVOcean Vuong
Gosh, Mel, that's that-- Thank you so much for that counter and, and that opening. Um, I'm so grateful for that m- moment of grace because I think one of the things about moving through class systems is that you always assume what you're going to say is going to be not legible. And I feel like, you know, both you and I know, and maybe a lot of your audiences knows too, where you walk into a room and you say, "Well, do I really say it like it is? Or and, and, and if I do, are they gonna look at me like I'm crazy? Um, or am I just outside the frame of understanding?" And so you try to assume that what you're saying, um, is a breach, so you have to apologize for that breach, right? "Oh, I'm sorry I'm gonna go here, um, but I feel like we need to go here," right? And you gave me such a beautiful moment of gre- grace that I don't, um, really experience in the, in the, in the spaces that I now traffic in. I think, um, there's two types of shame. There's the shame
- 14:25 – 25:56
How to Turn Shame Into Motivation
- OVOcean Vuong
of who you are, which is ontological. You know, people-
- MRMel Robbins
What does that word mean? I know it's a big word. [chuckles]
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Ocean, I like... [chuckles]
- OVOcean Vuong
Um, the shame of yourself, right?
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
So people-- You know, like for queerness, many people shame us for our, for our, ourself, our, our ontological presence, our being, which we cannot change. And then there's the shame of action, of conduct, which I think can be really fruitful. You know, there, there-- It would be great if a lot of our politicians felt a little bit of shame, right? Because that means there's recognizing that you can act on it, you can do something, you can repair something. And so I think in, in many cases, and so much of my childhood was, uh, was about both of those shames-
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah
- OVOcean Vuong
... the shame of being poor, which you had no control over, um, then the shame of being queer, which you have no control over, and then the shame that what you're doing is not enough. So the shame of action. It's like: Oh, I work so hard, but I'm not feeding my family.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- OVOcean Vuong
I work so hard, but I'm still stuck in this tenement. And you know, my mother told me... I remember she got, she, she got, she-- We were just talking one day before bed, and I just like to just talk to her before bed. I was, like, ten or 11, and she turned to me and she said, "I'm so sorry that our family is so stupid. We couldn't make it. It's been 10 years in this country, and other folks have started businesses that are lucrative. They've gone off to Houston and LA, other Vietnamese communities. They bought homes, and we can't figure it out. I'm sorry that we're just so dumb." That gets the heart of what it means to be poor, is that, is you start to feel that you're not a good person-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm
- OVOcean Vuong
... because other people could afford to give, right? The heroes in our public discourse are the ch- the one, the entrepreneur, the ones that can donate, and give, and rescue children, and rescue the people. But when you don't, when you every day you don't have enough to even be the hero of your family, then you start to feel like you're the villain-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm
- OVOcean Vuong
... of your community. And so when I was a kid, in that moment, by my mother's bed, and in that moment, by the grocery store, seeing-- Till the day I die, I'll see those plum tomatoes roll back on this dirty conveyor belt. You realize... I told myself: I'm, I'm gonna use the shame, and it's gonna propel me to understand it. So shame became my propulsive force. You know, I was like: I'm gonna use this to, to, as wind to find out, because this can't be-- There has to be a route to all this.
- MRMel Robbins
What would you say to somebody who's listening right now and is in that place where they are feeling a tremendous amount of shame and feeling very lost, whether it is because of very similar life experiences that you've had, or maybe it's somebody who's feeling a lot of shame because, uh, their marriage blew up-
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... or they got a health diagnosis, and they're having a lot of trouble really just getting through the day, or they've really made some terrible decisions in their life. They're beating themselves over-
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... the things in the past. What do you want to say to that person?... about how to really think about where they're at, and how to shift their relationship with themselves?
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah. For me, it, as a, as a writer, it all begins with language. You know, often when we talk to each other, we use fluff language to get by. You know, "Oh, how's the weather? How about them Patriots?" You know, "What's going on? How's so-and-so?" And, and sometimes we don't answer that question. We say yes, but it's, it's just a m- a muscle memory. "How are you doing?" "Great, good." And I think giving yourself permission to break, to break the norm of hiding and using language to obfuscate, and just say, "I'm not okay," or changing the question, "When was the last time you felt joy?" Now, you're in a different linguistic space.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
And you realize that people actually really hunger for that, but they don't wanna burden you with that, and they don't- we don't have the words to open the doors. We only have the words to move b- outside the doors, and so when the words change... So disruptions in linguistic patterns, which is what poetry and novels do, right? Because they're disruptions. We don't pick up a novel to confirm what we know. We pick it up to learn something new. In a way, we're disrupting ourselves.
- MRMel Robbins
Oh, that's so cool.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
I never even thought about that. But you're right, because I didn't pick up The Emperor of Gladness because I thought I knew everything was in there.
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
I picked it up to be transported, and to use your word, to disrupt my day-to-day life, and open myself up to something different.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah. Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Is there some recommendation that you would have if you're trying to disrupt the language you use around yourself?
- 25:56 – 44:11
How to Make The Most of Your Life
- OVOcean Vuong
I'm gonna work towards securing their safety. And then you start to... All of a sudden, you visualize what you can do, how you can volunteer, how you can help, and all of a sudden, you remove from yours- And when you come back, 'cause it's all a cycle, you come back to yourself, and you say, "Gosh, I, I don't know how to pick up that ball anymore. I see it. I see self-hatred. I see envy, I see bitterness, I see self-loathing. It's all there, but I can't really pick it up. Before, it was stuck, [chuckles] it was glued to my palms. But for some reason, moving outward has cleansed, and now I can't pick it up if I wanted to."
- MRMel Robbins
It's so effective, and it's so simple. As you were talking and explaining this, I, I just did it.
- OVOcean Vuong
[chuckles] Say more.
- MRMel Robbins
So my mom and dad just lost a very, very good friend.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And it was very sudden, and really tragic thing that happened, and the second you started talking about your sister, I thought, "Oh, you know, I hope my mom and dad are having an okay day today. I hope that they are surrounded by friends today. I hope that their heartache is, is getting the support," you know? And then I thought, "Oh, I, I, I need to call them as soon as we're done talking." And everything that was self-centered disappeared from my mind, and there was this big expansion that happened. And as you're listening or watching, I want you to think about somebody-
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... that you love, that you really do hope with all of your heart that they are having a good day, that they are getting the support that they need. And if you, if you truly step into this invitation, I think you will feel exactly what Ocean's talking about, that somehow there was something you were holding inside yourself, even in the subconscious.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
But when you direct that attention and focus outward, something expands and lightens inside of you.
- OVOcean Vuong
'Cause you can only hold one thing at a time.
- MRMel Robbins
'Cause you can only hold one thing. You know, I wanna ask you a question, 'cause I loved your New York Times blockbuster, bestselling, profound novel, The Emperor of Gladness. And when I opened up the first page to chapter one, and I read the first sentence, I thought, "If I ever meet Ocean, I wanna ask you about what this means." And the sentence is: "The hardest thing in the world is to live only once."
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
What does that mean?
- OVOcean Vuong
You have to make it count. You know, what does it mean to live and owe something to the people you love, your obligation to them, to your community, and to live with th- that kind of care? Because the other side of that is YOLO. You know, you only live once, enjoy it, smash it all, and look where it's gotten us: ecological despair, corporate greed, plundering our environment, our planet, just for profit. That's a lot of YOLO. Another side of YOLO is that, well, if you only live once, how do you live in a generative way?
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
How do you live with care and consideration, with the meditative practice you just did? You don't have to be a monk, and sit there, and go om, and do chanting. You can, you can actually do it while listening to someone talk, right?
- MRMel Robbins
I wanna unpack this even deeper. The hardest thing in the world is to live only once, and you said, to you, that means you have to make it count. And what I would love to hear you talk a little bit about, 'cause I've never asked anybody this question, but as a professor, I bet you are witness, front and center, to this sense of pressure and urgency-... that is not only inside your students, but it is one thousand percent inside every character in your book.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
But this pressure that I think is almost universal, to make something of yourself-
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
... to make your life count.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And for somebody who's listening right now, who heard you say, "Oh, well, you have to make it count."
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm.
- MRMel Robbins
And they now feel like, ba-da-ba, ocean. Like, [chuckles] I, I'm still, I'm stagnant. I'm, I'm working in this restaurant job. I didn't expect I would be here. It doesn't feel like it's counting at all.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
What would you say to the person that's in that space? Because I think the pressure you feel to want-
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... it to count is a really good sign-
- 44:11 – 53:32
Reconnect With Your Younger Self & Get Clear on Your Intentions
- OVOcean Vuong
but I refuse to believe that. To me, it's an immune system. I have imposter immune system.
- MRMel Robbins
What does that mean, imposter immune system?
- OVOcean Vuong
It means that when I'm in the center, I don't believe that being in the center alone is anything valuable or dignified. You have to still have conduct. You still have to have, uh, behavior and ethics. And also, that when you realize, you, you go into these spaces and you realize, "Actually, what I learned back there in my hometown, that I thought I was escaping from, was much more useful for me than what I'm seeing here." That the charade, right, of, of power and belonging is truly a hallucination. It was- there's people who feel comfortable here because they have been given this path. Their parents gave them this path, their grandparents gave them this path, that they were following a trajectory that was carved for them. So of course, they feel like they belong, but do you really want that? Do you want that path for yourself? Because that's also the denial of your own creativity. You need that kind of friction, that vigilance.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, I, I think what you're, you're getting at is applicable to anybody.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
'Cause let's say you get a divorce-
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
... and now you're single, and your friend group disappears, and as you start to insert yourself into other social groups, or you see old friends, you will feel that separateness, and you will feel that sense of, "I don't belong here." And if I listen very closely, what you're saying is, that that separateness and that friction is a very important and necessary ingredient to you being able to do the work to grow into or to be the person you're supposed to be.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
Whether it's the friendships you've outgrown or the places that you are never gonna quite feel like you belong in, or the work you need to do to build the skills so that you don't even think about it anymore because you now have the skills to belong.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
And so I think it's applicable to all of us. I'm wondering if there's one thing that you would recommend to begin seeing the beauty in your life, even if you're really struggling right now, especially if they've dis- they've related to a lot of the various things that you've gone through. What would the one step forward you would want somebody to take?
- OVOcean Vuong
At the end of my semester, in every class, I have my students do something very simple, and I do it as well, and it's, it's, it's- you'd be surprised that many of them have never done it. Um, and I, I, what I do is I tell them, "Think about your intention. Why are you here? Why did you sacrifice so much?" And I tell them, "Go back to that person that first found this art. The person who read a poem and said, [gasps] just like Emily Dickinson said, 'My head is taken off,' right? And then decided that they wanna do that for other people. Write a work that transforms and affects people's lives that way. Maybe it was just two years ago, maybe it was 10 years ago, maybe they were just seven or 20. Go back, find that person, and collaborate with that person. Bring that person into the room." 'Cause often, in our linear progress in professional i- life, we often think our older self is not smart enough, naive, leave him, leave him back there. But bringing that person in the room and asking that person, "How were you so strong, and how was that intention so powerful that you didn't even know how to get here? You didn't know how to get to NYU, but you sent me. You, my younger self, sent me here like that little pebble in the pond. I am the ripple; you are the pebble. I'm the ripple that have come from you, so I need you."... when I am inundated by the pressure, when I'm asking: Why am I doing this? What is it for? What's the point? Why am I in this rat race? When I'm about to give up, when I'm fading, I'm gonna ne- I need to bring-- So I tell them, "Every time you write, every morning you wake up, bring that person, have them sit right next, 'cause they know more than you do. They got you here without even knowing what a professor is, without knowing what The New Yorker is, without knowing what a s- you know, what a c- curriculum vitae is, right? They just had that boom, and you are on the journey they set. So what you need to do is say thank you to that person." So at the end of the class, I tell all my students, "At the count of three, you say thank you to yourself aloud, and you need to say that every day, because no one else is gonna say that for you for this journey." So we close, and we-- One, two, three.
- MRMel Robbins
Thank you.
- OVOcean Vuong
Thank you, Ocean. And it's an amazing thing. Thank you, Ocean. Thank you, Mel. Saying that to yourself-
- MRMel Robbins
I am the ripple, you are the pebble. I felt this huge chill when you said that. This idea that your younger self was the pebble-
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
... that had an intention, whether you were present or not to it, that set in motion this ripple, that created the you that you are today.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
If the person listening does not know what their intention is, they do not know what age or what scene of their life that pebble was cast, is there anything that they can do that could help them find that center of intention-
- OVOcean Vuong
Mm. Mm
- MRMel Robbins
... to begin with?
- OVOcean Vuong
I think paying attention to the world and yourself, and again, seeing what you owe, eventually, atte- you know, Simone Veil says, "The most generous thing we can ever give is attention." And I think paying attention to the world, often we think it's about giving attention, but in fact, we are also discovering ourselves when we look carefully at the world. And I never knew I was gonna be... You know, when I was growing up, it was factory worker, nail salon, um, the army, Job Corps, right? Or long-haul trucker. Those were the things-- Or jail, right? Those were the things that was available and what was happening around me. And, and so I, I never- no one ever said, "You can be a professor." In fact, I didn't even know poets were something you, you could become. I thought it was, like, preordained by the government.
- MRMel Robbins
[chuckles]
- OVOcean Vuong
I thought, like, the president signs, like, a, a, a list you get in the mail, and it said, "You get to be a poet."
- MRMel Robbins
[chuckles]
- OVOcean Vuong
Then they give you a cabin in Vermont.
- MRMel Robbins
[laughing]
- OVOcean Vuong
You go there, you scribble away, then you send your piles of paper to Barnes & Noble.
- MRMel Robbins
[chuckles]
- 53:32 – 1:00:04
Fear of Humiliation: Gen Z and Self-Censorship
- OVOcean Vuong
at their life, and I said: All right, they've been in the factories. I mean, I went back to that moment with me, me and, me and my mom at her bedside when I was ten, and when she said, "I'm sorry we're so stupid."
- MRMel Robbins
That was the pebble?
- OVOcean Vuong
I didn't know it then. That was my-- So it wasn't, "Be a poet." I say that to my students, 'cause we're in poetry class, right? It gets too existential beyond that, right? But for me, that was the pebble. It was whatever I was gonna do to take care of my mother, and my brother, and my aunts, that was what I was gonna do. And when I realised that I could take care of my mother, and be an academic and a poet, then that was when it was, like, seventh gear. I, I became kind of ruthless in my pursuit of my craft, because I knew it was something that would then support my family.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- OVOcean Vuong
That was my motivation. So now I say: Oh, I'm, I, I was given that.... My objection was a motivating factor. Without them, I don't think I would've worked as hard. I would not work as hard for myself, I'll tell you that, Mel. I, I would not study as hard, I would not read as much books, I would not write as many drafts without the pressure, knowing that they really depended on me to get them a better life.
- MRMel Robbins
Thank you for sharing that, because it was so helpful to see that your pebble actually wasn't this epiphany, "I want to be an artist or a poet," that your pebble was something so much more deeply connected to your value-
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
-of taking care of your family. And that shifted, for me, the way I think about I am the ripple, and my former self is the pebble. The intention is the power, and it's there, and I really- I got a lot out of that story.
- OVOcean Vuong
Thank you.
- MRMel Robbins
Thank you. So, you know, one of the things I was also curious about, because you've been a, a professor for 11 years now?
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
What is the thing that's really holding your students back more than anything right now from being themselves?
- OVOcean Vuong
The fear of humiliation. Um, we call it cringe culture. We can call it, you know, um, fear, authorial hesitation, whatever you want to call it. I've had the great luxury of being a professor only to Gen Z. My entire career has been educating Gen Z, from the very oldest now to the very youngest. I've watched this generation grow, and I've watched the, um, the, the horrible public, um, precarity that they have to navigate. You know, when I was a kid in the '90s, you do something silly, and your class makes fun of you. Worst case, your school makes fun of you, and then after summer break, all is forgotten, right? [chuckles] And then you, you're kind of cleansed by the amnesia of summertime. But now, you do something out of the norm, as much many children are inclined to do. You're, you're kids, your brain is developing.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- OVOcean Vuong
You can be filmed without your permission, and a week later, an entire country that you have never stepped into is laughing at you. And then years later, you become a meme, a symbol that is completely extracted from your personhood. So the meme is one of the most brutal realities of our 21st century mode of communication-
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah
- OVOcean Vuong
... because it transforms a human being with a historical life and a personality into a communication object, into a sign, which now serves somebody in a group chat. So by the time I get them, I teach a graduate program, so they're 22, 23, and we get the ones who have already committed themselves to art practice. So we get the ones that are kind of professionalizing. But without fail, every year, at the first day of class, you can see by the body language in the room how deeply beaten down and afraid my students are for being a poet. So I tell them that the classroom is a laboratory of failure. This is a place to fail, this is a place to be embarrassed, and I'm, I'm not going to critique you for the first few weeks, and we're not going to critique each other. We are a culture obsessed with static truths. We have an- a word for a bud and then a ro- a word for rose. Rosebud, rose. But there are infinite moments in between. You know, there's a moment where the, the rose just starts to tear, and if you zoomed in enough, you don't even know what you're looking at. It's still r- part of it, but we don't have a word for that.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- OVOcean Vuong
And, and to me, so much of life actually exists in this liminal, monstrous, undefinable space in between the two definitions of rosebud and rose. And so I tell them, I said, "You are now in the space between the rosebud and the rose. That's what these 14 weeks are. We don't have a word for that, sorry. Doesn't matter, though." So normalizing the idea of failure as a necessary procedure of growing as a human being and not using judgment as a punishing tool of progress. What a lot of students want from the, from the classroom is a factory. They've been taught that. "Uh, I'm going to go to NYU. I'm going to feed my weak poems into the NYU factory, and a professor and my peers are going to,
- 1:00:04 – 1:11:42
The Moments That Actually Matter at the End of Your Life
- OVOcean Vuong
to fix everything," right? It's all about this false idea that, "If I just keep working, a finished, brand-new, you know, T-model Ford poem will come out at the end of it," and it's a completely false-
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm
- OVOcean Vuong
... fantasy. So it's introducing to them the, the larger reality that all of this will come through error and errancy, but in fact, error and errancy is part of being alive. And not only that, but part of innovation. That's the daring, daringness, and when I set that up as the re- re-elaborate that as the c- what the classroom is for, you see the body language change.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- OVOcean Vuong
... you know, and, and, and I'm like, "Oh, there you are. There you are."
- MRMel Robbins
What I love so much about your work, and about the way that you think, and the way that you talk about your experience, is you have this unique ability to dig deep into these subtle moments in people's lives. And I, I, I feel like you've got this ability to really normalize what is a experience that so many people feel, but don't have the words to describe. And the message that your work carries in it is the opportunity for all of us to not only create that space for ourselves, wherever you are right now, 'cause being in a, in a moment in your life where sh- shit is still, and you don't feel like it's going anywhere-
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
... and you are feeling like, "This is really what it's going to be? Am I really making my life count?" Especially as you get older.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah.
- MRMel Robbins
I think everybody's had that experience.
- OVOcean Vuong
And imagine being raised by someone like that. Imagine being surrounded, and, and multiply. If you're in a community like that, or a family, everything you said multiplied by eight or nine. Everyone around you feels the same way, right? And the, the, the, the deep resentment, the deep, um, sadness. Uh, but also, like... Again, like, my stepdad worked at Standard Iron. He worked at a place called Standard Iron. He made a screw his whole life. For, like, 30 years, he made the screw that went into gas pumps, and that company shut down. It went overseas. So h- he's uneducated refugee from Vietnam, spent seven days in a boat, and went on to a refugee camp, then came to Hartford, met my mother. And he spent 30 years making a screw, and now he doesn't make a screw anymore. What does he do? You know, so he goes to work at Colt, which is a gun factory in H- in, also in Connecticut, Newington. And he makes a smaller screw that goes into the Colt Magnum, and gas pumps and guns is the most quintessential American story. Every day after work, he hung up his uniform in our living room on a thumbtack, 'cause we, we didn't own it, so we could not put anything on the walls. We couldn't paint it. We had to get permission. It's a bureaucratic nightmare just to paint your walls. He hung his, his, his shirt there because on the right chest, it said, "Ngoc," N-G-O-C, his name with the diacritic stitched in beautiful blue thread. And every time someone come over, he would point to that. He said, "I work at Standard Iron. I have healthcare." [chuckles] That's how low the bar was, right? It's like-- and we're still feeling that bar. It's a big thing to say, "I have healthcare." It's a big thing to say, "I have a salary." It's a big thing to say, "I'm-- I belong to a place with a uniform. They believe in me enough to give me a uniform with my name on it." I looked at that for years, similar to how you described your family in the farm, and I saw that, and I told myself, "That can't be my American life." This man works from 3:00 PM to 12:00 AM. I never see him. I look into his room, I see a tuft of black hair out of this blanket. I- That can't be me. But if you asked him, "How did you spend your American life?" He's retired now. He would've said that is his absolute triumph.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
That was... He, he lucked out, right? He would tell us this. He said, "I..." He would co- convince me to go work. And he said, "Gosh, it's, it's amazing. This is it. Not everybody get..." And he's wasn't wrong. He was not wrong. So I, I think that's why I wrote this book, because I think everyone around me wanted stories about poor people who got out of their situation so that the reader feels good. I, I just was not interested in writing a novel where, like, to make rich people feel good about poor people, right? Or, you know, it a- it's all worth it, or creating poverty porn to build sympathy. I say, "No, this is just American life," and in fact, we want the story of escape. Our history books are filled with stories of escape, of revolutions, of people who overthrew things, but history itself is predominantly people who are stuck.
- MRMel Robbins
Yeah.
- OVOcean Vuong
Stuck in marriages they never wanted to be in, stuck in wars they did not choose to fight in, stuck in coal mines, right, they never thought they'd be in. And some of them, you know, stuck in lives they never chose. None of us are chosen to be born, you know, but we stay, we stay around because we realize there's love here. That's what I'm interested in. None of us chose to be here. None of my characters chose to be there, but they stay because they discover love.
- MRMel Robbins
Hmm.
- OVOcean Vuong
And it doesn't make poverty better. It doesn't make it even tolerable, but it gives your life a kind of significance when you realize that you are-- you, if nothing else, if nothing else, nothing improves, which for the most part in this book, spoiler alert, nothing much does, you are still capable of giving and receiving love, and that's no small thing. It's a- to me, it's a, it's a huge, significant part of one's life, especially after watching my mother die.... you know, when, when she was, we knew it was terminal, she spent m- months bedridden. Breast cancer, most likely from all the chemicals she breathed. It has eaten into her spine, stage four metastatic, into her brain, you know? She, from diagnosis to death was seven months. And when I asked her, "What, what do you want? What do you need? What was your life?" She just told me the smallest moments. "Oh, you remember when we used to, to go get chicken nuggets after work, and we'd sit in the parking lot? That was nice." I didn't even remember that. That's completely her memory. W- and then when she said it, I said, "Oh, yeah. Gosh, I haven't thought about it all this time," and I couldn't believe she held that. It was such, um, an edifying moment, 2019. I started this book in 2020-
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
- seven weeks after she died. And I thought, "Oh, gosh, it's not about the big things. It's not. It's about eating fricking chicken nuggets in a McDonald's parking lot with your son." [inhaling] And I thought, "If, if I am a, a writer worthy of my salt, I have to use what I've learned, and my skill and talent, to hold that." Let me, if nothing else, in, in my one life, the hardest thing is to live only once, let me use what I've developed all these decades to make that shareable-
- MRMel Robbins
Right
- OVOcean Vuong
... with a reader. Because I just wasn't seeing it in the media that I was told I should consume.
- MRMel Robbins
Well, it absolutely comes through.
- OVOcean Vuong
Thank you.
- MRMel Robbins
It absolutely comes through. And, you know, it reminded me of, of a lot of periods in my life where I was rushing through it, hoping to get somewhere else-
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah
- MRMel Robbins
... and, you know, it helped me slow down and, like, really reflect on what was right there.
- OVOcean Vuong
And sometimes, you need the other person to say it, 'cause you don't know.
- MRMel Robbins
Yes.
- OVOcean Vuong
And how incredible if, if my only, like, contribution to your beautiful podcast is just to get people to change the way they say hello-
- MRMel Robbins
Oh
- 1:11:42 – 1:26:55
Kindness vs Empathy
- OVOcean Vuong
Mixtapes, skateboarding culture, and it was like, it was beautiful, but it was also, like, filled with hyper-masculine aggression and toxicity.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
And being in a queer- and when I say queer, I mean, like, you know, all genders, all bodies, all experiences, all hair colors. Like, hats, bring it, like, cost- like, you, you're, you're on it. You're, you got the right image.
- MRMel Robbins
[laughing]
- OVOcean Vuong
Like, it's, you know, we look like a beautiful, athletic carnival, and it's amazing, and I look forward to it every Sunday.
- MRMel Robbins
A beautiful, athletic carnival.
- OVOcean Vuong
[laughing]
- MRMel Robbins
That is a mouthful of amazingness. That's all I'm gonna say.
- OVOcean Vuong
Yeah, tell that to the NBA, you know? [laughing]
- MRMel Robbins
[laughing]
- OVOcean Vuong
Um, but, but just moving my body next to my br- my brother, I felt, um, so much joy, and I think it's... I'm proud of him, you know? I think he's the one that I go to first, um, when I do that meditation.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
Is my brother okay? You know, he's always- we're 10 years apart, um, so I f- I'm like a weird, gay brother-father, you know? Um, but it- you, you embrace it. You, you don't-... It's not a nuclear family. What is a nuclear family? It's just family. It's what you owe. To me, like, that's, this book is about who owes who what. And I- what do these characters do for each other?
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
They, they pile into a van off the clock, and they go watch their manager-
- MRMel Robbins
[chuckles]
- OVOcean Vuong
-wrestle at a bar-
- MRMel Robbins
[chuckles]
- OVOcean Vuong
-to catastrophic, you know, results. And then they say, "You're still our manager." [laughing] Because that's what I witnessed, you know, and that's what we remember. You know, if we're lucky, if we are so lucky, we will get a deathbed. A lot of people don't get a deathbed.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
And when we get that deathbed, we will remember these moments when people were kind to us, when they offered us grace and attention. And I wanted to just... What a miracle to have the technology of the sentence, put that in a book, and then just throw it in the world and say, "Do you get it? Do you get where I'm coming from?" And then, unbeknownst to me, so many people saying, "Me too."
- MRMel Robbins
So do you think the thing that you owe one another is kindness, and grace, and attention?
- OVOcean Vuong
A- a- all three. Kindness, grace, and attention. Absolutely. Because kindness is thrown around a lot, right? It's like, "Oh, be kind, be kind," but what I love about it, I love kindness even more than the other word that gets trafficked a lot, which is empathy.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
Because empathy can still be static, and a lot- and a, and a way, it could also be dangerous and c- le- render us complacent. To me, kindness is such a, a powerful testament to what it means for us to act on our debt to each other.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
Kindness is now empathy via action, and a lot of times growing up, we knew there was-- we're not gonna get anything back right away. 'Cause we couldn't h-- You know, the characters in this book don't have anything to really give each other, but each other. You know, there was a line from, I believe it's the Bible. I read-- I, it's a religious text. I don't know if it's, um, the work of Saint Augustine or the Bible, where the, the line was, "We are given ourselves." That is the gift of life, is that we, we get our... We are given this-ness.
- MRMel Robbins
Mm.
- OVOcean Vuong
And I, you know, I, I'm, I'm not a Christian, but I really love that idea, that, that, oh, I'm taught by this country that I'm out-- I need more. I need to go out and grab more, but this-ness, myself, was already this invaluable gift, and then to then gift myself to others through service and kindness.
- MRMel Robbins
I, I, I love that statement, "given to ourselves," because, you know, a lot of people are searching for purpose, and I've always thought purpose is when you recognize that you've been given to yourself.
Episode duration: 1:26:55
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