I'm Elise Hugh. You're listening to the TED Talks Daily Summer Book Club series. So much keeps us

distracted these days, right? And it's hard to just sit still and reflect on what we really want,

what we really long for. But author Susan Kane makes the case in her 2019 talk that longing is a really meaningful guide.

Stick around after to hear Susan on Amanda Palmer's podcast, The Art of Asking Everything,

where she talks about some of the themes shared in her talk and her newest book, Bitter Sweet.

They get into how longing and asking are two sides of the same coin.

When I was in my early 30s, I was an associate at a Wall Street law firm, and I had been working

16-hour days for seven years straight. And even though ever since I was four years old, I'd had

this beautiful and impossible dream of

becoming a writer, I was also pretty ambitious and on the verge of making partner. Or so I thought,

because one day a senior partner named Steve Shailin knocked on my office door, Steve was tall and distinguished and very decent, and he sat down and he reached for the

squishy stress ball on my desk, and he said that I wasn't going to be making partner after

all.

And I remember very badly wishing that I had a stress ball too, but Steve Shalen was using mine. And I remember feeling sorry that

it had fallen to Steve to be the one to tell me this news, because he really was a good guy.

And I remember bursting into tears right in front of him, such a non-partnerish thing to do.

But that very afternoon, I up and left my law firm for good.

And a few weeks after that ended a seven-year relationship that had always felt wrong.

And so now I was in my early 30s, and suddenly I had no career, no love, no place to live.

And immediately, I fell into a relationship with a handsome musician

who liked to compose lyrics by day

and stand around a piano with friends singing at night.

...