If You're Exhausted by the World, You Need to Hear This (Anne Lamott + Kate Bowler)

Anne Lamott announces she feels 57, though her driver's license says 71. Kate Bowler counters that she feels 112 — not from longevity, but from exhaustion, «like cockroaches» that survive everything. This exchange sets the stage for a conversation about the gap between our interior selves and the bodies, roles, and performances the world demands.

Lamott's insight — «your inside person doesn't age» — is both comfort and provocation. The self that longs, hopes, and loves remains constant even as the exterior changes. This constancy is why Lamott could marry for the first time at 65, three days after starting Social Security, having never learned to date sober. She met her husband on OurTime.com after a year of «god awful dates,» including one man who brought her a plot treatment. Her criteria: a man who, if he were a woman, she'd want as a best friend. The breakthrough came when she realized the dealbreaker wasn't his allergy to cats — he had a trick involving brewer's yeast in the kibble to change the protein in cat secretions — but whether he shared her belief in God and her literary loves.

Bowler's sense of being 112 comes from a different place: the relentless work of rebuilding a «sand castle» sense of self-worth every day, wave after wave. Her parents gave her love but an incomplete foundation, leaving her to feel that at her core she is fragile, easily washed away. When she first met Lamott and heard the words «you are loved and chosen,» it hit like daggers to her «stabby little heart.» The tears came immediately. Lamott's response: «Do you normally cry this much?» The answer, of course, was yes.

Anne Lamott grew up believing she was in charge of everyone's happiness. Her father — brilliant, Kennedy-handsome, a bird watcher — was the center of her universe, but he hated her mother, drank, and had affairs. Her mother, raised in England, ate compulsively and tried to manipulate her three children into perfect performance. Lamott learned early to «fashion this fabulous persona,» to be the family's flight attendant, ensuring everyone was comfortable and no one was upset.

She was never told she was loved simply for being herself — for having a big, open, sensitive heart. In the 1950s, there was a book called «The Overly Sensitive Child,» written for parents «saddled» with children like her. She would cry at National Geographic photos of children in Africa or India, and her parents would say, «Oh, for Christ's sake, Annie.» At the dinner table, anger or sadness meant being sent to your room without eating. The lesson was clear: stop feeling, start performing.

Lamott developed a lifelong eating disorder and spent decades believing that self-esteem came from external validation — the bestseller list, the great review, the world validating her parking ticket. She describes the high as «like crack,» the greatest feeling on earth, but it dissipates. Then you need it again, or you feel empty because «it's not there anymore.» She didn't get sober — from alcohol or the need for external approval — until she realized «it was never out there. It was an inside job.»

Six days after the Nashville school shooting — three children and three aides killed — Lamott drove to church on Palm Sunday to teach Sunday school. She had two nine-year-olds in a group of five. While they worked on cards to send to Nashville, she told them the story of the sparrow and the horse: a warrior finds a sparrow lying on its back in the street, feet straight up in the air. «What on earth are you doing?» the horse sneers. «I'm trying to hold back the darkness,» the sparrow replies. «That's absurd,» the horse says. «You barely weigh an ounce.» «One does what one can,» says the sparrow.

The nine-year-olds looked puzzled. «Is that a true story?» one asked. Lamott watched them draw — faces inward and dreamy, mouths on the edges of smiles — trees, hearts, dogs, and, improbably, a beaver. She reflects on the last 30 years of Sunday school: several of her cherished kids have died — one of brain cancer, one by hanging after feeling unable to come out as gay, one shot in a homeless encampment. Her kids have been cutters, addicts, anorexics. «And that was before things here got really bad.»

Scientific reports say Earth will cross the threshold of catastrophic climate change within 10 years unless we stop burning fossil fuels. Lamott asks: «Raise your hand if you think we will.» Parents come to her near tears, asking how to help their kids. She tells them: be in prayer, but also focus on miracles and how each child can help. «Be kind. Do good. Pick up litter. Walk more. Plant seedlings. Read inspiring biographies. Help them find ways to serve the poor. Laugh a lot. Read and make art. That's all I've got.»

Father Dowling helped Bill Wilson get Alcoholics Anonymous started in 1935. Wilson was «the most neurotic, depressive on earth,» yet God chose him to receive the 12 steps — threw them through a tear in the veil «like a football.» Wilson wanted to think things through, to figure everything out. Father Dowling told him, «Bill, sometimes I think that heaven is just a new pair of glasses.»

Lamott thinks about this every morning. She wakes up, says her prayers, puts on her glasses, and lets the dog out to pee. Every single morning, the same ritual. A lot of days, she's just cranky. She wishes people would obey her will. She has «excellent ideas for everybody» and «tiny tiny control issues.» Her gravest character defect — and deepest wound — is endless judgment: this is good, this is bad, this person, that person, forget them.

But if she puts on the good pair of glasses, she makes a decision to live in the prayer of learning to endure the beams of love. Jesus is so clear: get thirsty people water. He's constantly telling his «whiny bachelors» — the disciples — to go to the beach, eat something, relax. «You all seem very tense.» Then he goes off and prays. So Lamott feeds people. She goes to Doctors Without Borders and sends $25. She gets a bunch of ones and gives them to every person at the intersection, «even though you don't think they're going to spend it on what you think would be best.» Jesus doesn't say to the blind man, «What do you anticipate looking at after I heal you?» You just give.

Lamott reads Naomi Shihab Nye's poem «Gate A-4» in full: wandering the Albuquerque airport after a 4-hour delay, the poet hears an announcement asking if anyone speaks Arabic. At her own gate, an old Palestinian woman in traditional embroidered dress is crumpled on the floor, wailing. The flight agent says, «Talk to her. What is her problem?» The poet speaks haltingly in Arabic. The woman thought the flight was cancelled; she needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment. The poet says, «No, we're fine. You'll get there just later.»

They call the woman's son. Then her other sons «just for the fun of it.» Then the poet's dad, and he and the woman discover they have 10 shared friends. Then Palestinian poets the poet knows. This takes two hours. The woman is laughing, pulling out a sack of homemade mamul cookies — «little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts» — and offering them to all the women at the gate. «To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament.» The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the woman from Laredo — all covered with powdered sugar and smiling. «There is no better cookie.»

The airline breaks out free apple juice. Two little girls run around serving it, covered in powdered sugar too. The poet notices her new best friend — «by now we were holding hands» — has a potted plant poking out of her bag, «some medicinal thing with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradition. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.» The poet looks around that gate of «late and weary ones» and thinks, «This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate once the crying of confusion stopped seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too. This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.»