This Is Why I Find Pema Chödrön So Essential
The Ezra Klein Show
New York Times Opinion
4.3 • 14.5K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2026
⏱️ 74 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | The |
| 0:07.0 | The There's this book I love, and I go back to him back to, called Comfortable with Uncertainty. |
| 0:36.8 | It's by the Buddhist teacher Pema Chodran, who's also written really, really, really well-known, beloved books, |
| 0:43.3 | like, When Things Fall Apart and Welcoming the Unwelcome. |
| 0:47.3 | But this particular book resonates with me, in part because of the title. |
| 0:52.3 | It has been a real revelation of my own life how uncomfortable |
| 0:57.5 | I was with uncertainty. How many places I didn't go, how many things I didn't do, how many |
| 1:02.9 | conversations I wouldn't have, because I just couldn't control the way they would turn out. |
| 1:08.4 | And just knowing that, just feeling uncertain, feeling a little afraid, was enough |
| 1:14.0 | for me to avoid the thing altogether. But you get older and you begin realizing how much there |
| 1:19.2 | is that you can't avoid. You realize that discomfort is going to come for you whether you want |
| 1:23.5 | or not. I think it's easy to go pretty far with the illusion, that you can control what |
| 1:29.0 | is happening around you, that there is some set of decisions you can make or choices you can make, |
| 1:35.1 | find the people, the partner, the job, the success, the whatever, they'll keep you safe. |
| 1:40.8 | And then you keep getting older, and you realize it's not going to happen, |
| 1:45.2 | that things are going to keep falling apart, |
| 1:47.7 | and coming back together, and then coming apart again, |
| 1:50.3 | that there's no stable ground in the end to stand on. |
| 1:53.2 | And so you have to have some real relationship with uncertainty, |
| 1:55.9 | with discomfort, with pain, with suffering, with loss. |
| 1:59.7 | And I've just found children's books and work to be maybe better than anything else |
| 2:06.4 | for trying to force, at least me, into some more truthful relationship with that, |
... |
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