Name: In Conversation: Alain de Botton on Great Company with Jamie Laing
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T18:06:24.000Z
Duration: 59 min 1 s
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Hi, I'm Alain de Botton, and I'm great company.

Look, I think it's always going to be your meaning.

And I think that's the paradox in that phrase, that we think of the meaning of life as something that's out there rather than primarily in here, and that we need to discover our own meanings of life.

And really what we mean is, what are my deepest sources of satisfaction?

Some of the most pleasant people to be around are those who, perhaps through lots of trials, have understood what is meaningful for them.

We recognize them, often they have a little twinkle in their eye, they're kind of, you think this person is free, they're inwardly free, because they know, roughly, what they're up to.

It's funny, I'm in a real process with myself, and I'm going to use this as more of a therapy session towards myself, if that's alright.

I find it incredible, not so much anymore, I think I do, let's be honest, I'm going to be honest.

I think a lot of us, and maybe lots of people listening, we find it very hard to sit with ourselves.

And I'm in a real position now of trying to lean into what I would describe as ordinary.

I spoke to someone once who I said, I just constantly am looking for exciting things, and they said, that's not a good thing.

Life is boring, and it's important to sit with that, and sit in that silence.

And I still find that very difficult, and I think it's getting worse and worse as we get older, because of social media and everything.

I'm a big fan of the concept of the ordinary, only because it's actually extraordinary.

And most of the time, if we think an ordinary life, an ordinary job, people recoil from that word.

We have a very hierarchical system of values, really, which is that the extraordinary is good and the ordinary is boring and awful.

I think that some of the most beautiful moments are those when people can accept the ordinary.

If you think of some of your happiest moments, maybe in childhood, maybe in a relationship or with a friend, they often are things that are very ordinary.

We sat down at the kitchen table and we drew some sunflowers, and it was nice, as a child, maybe, even as an adult.

Some of the greatest works of art actually depicting very ordinary moments.

We're on a hunt for things that are ecstatic.

And though they have their place, we can't live on the summit.

And making ourselves at home there is one of the challenges.

It's interesting you say about sitting with yourself.

I think we all, all listeners probably, will have this issue as well.

Sometimes we're sitting on a train and we think, I can't bear to be here.

And the difficult thing is that when we say we're suffering from anxiety, what is anxiety?

Anxiety is often a worry that doesn't know itself, that we're fleeing.

And it gets worse and worse because we're running away so much.

And the difficult but really important thing to do is to turn around and go, OK, I'm going to be brave.

I'm just going to think about what I'm actually worried about.

So a pen and paper can come in handy and just a quiet room.

And another very useful exercise which a therapist taught me is automatic writing.

You set yourself a challenge of, as it were, downloading your brain, just writing whatever is in your mind for two minutes.

So you set yourself the task, just get a pen and paper, just write anything.

And what tends to happen is that you find out things about yourself.

If you told me to go do automatic writing and just write down my thoughts and just do it, whatever came into mind, I would almost lean into, oh, I've got to think about something, so therefore I'm going to write.

How do you separate yourself from not thinking?

Because what you're saying is, don't think, but think.

Well, most of the time we become enemies to ourselves because we're so concerned with seeming normal to ourselves.

So we're sitting there with our own mind and we think, well, I should be having this sort of thought because after all I'm a sort of normal person.

But the truth is we're all far weirder than we can acknowledge.

And in that weirdness are some very important realizations.

We don't love and hate as it's entirely, inverted commas, normal to do so.

So take our feelings towards our parents, for example.

Many people feel an incredible desire to be very loyal to their parents.

But actually people's true feelings towards their parents tend to be colored by a far wider range of emotions.

We shouldn't allow that into consciousness.

But if we don't allow it into consciousness, sometimes there can be buildup of anxiety.

You know the old thing that sometimes you catch yourself in a rage with a household object.

The drawer doesn't open and you think, damn it, why doesn't it open?

It's probably not the drawer or the milk bottle.

And what tends to happen there is that somewhere along the way, the source of your true anger has become foreign to you.

You've lost touch with the anger that you actually feel.

Normally because you feel you don't have the right to that emotion.

Now I'm not advocating for some random fury with everyone.

And obviously anger does need to be contained.

But the acknowledgement of anger is a different thing.

You might find that someone at work really angered you by something that they said.

Now again, I'm not saying you necessarily always have to tell them.

But for you to tell yourself is really important.

Something saddened us and we don't know that they've saddened us.

And the thing that we know is depression.

If you look at it clinically, what depression tends to be is a sadness or a trauma that has forgotten itself.

And so people are, you know, the opposite of a kind of, not the opposite, but the twin of depression is what they call mourning.

So in mourning, something or someone has been lost and you go into a period of sadness that has a beginning, middle and an end.

In depression, you're also sad about something, but you don't know what it is.

And therefore it can be endless because it hasn't been found by your own mind.

Our minds and our bodies don't understand themselves.

And it's so odd because we have a name and we have an identity and I might say to you, you know, what do you think about that?

And most of the time you'd be able to tell me.

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In Conversation: Alain de Botton on Great Company with Jamie Laing

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