What is a Good Life? #89

Connecting To The Web Of Life with Manda Scott

Sep 24, 2024

On the 89th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Manda Scott. Manda trained as a veterinary surgeon but is now an award-winning novelist and host of the Accidental Gods podcast. Best known for the internationally best-selling Boudica: Dreaming series, which The New York Times labelled “a masterpiece in historical fiction,” her latest novel departs from historical fiction in favour of a contemporary Thrutopian narrative, exploring the potential for a future we’d be proud to leave as our legacy. Any Human Power opens doorways we could all walk through, following routes to a paradigm shift we could make happen now.

In this captivating conversation, Manda takes us on her journey of connecting to the living web of life. We explore what the web is asking of us, learning to learn through pain until we can learn through love, the joyful curiosity that arises from the heart-mind connection, dreaming awake, and the magic of co-creation that our relationships with each other can entail. She outlines the role of artists in envisioning a future that lays the foundations for a new way of being and path to follow.

This entire conversation is brimming with hope, connection, curiosity, and considerable wisdom and insight from Manda. I hope it serves as a window into what is possible when we fully sense and connect with all that is around us—the living web of life.

The weekly clip from the podcast (4 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (82 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.

1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast

2. My weekly reflection

Just like in the short clip above, where Manda points out that we often become aware of our actions only after we’ve been doing them consistently for some time, I realised I was doing the same thing when she described her own experience.

In the clip above, she points to the role of joyful curiosity in relaxing her mind. I had been wondering what has been occurring within me for some time now, where a few things have shifted quite considerably.

One being my internal dialogue with myself becoming much more supportive and helpful, another being how much more calmness I feel in my being, both of which are obviously influenced by the extent to which I feel present in the current moment.

What I realised while listening to Manda is that this, for me, has coincided with a genuine curiosity about what is happening in the present moment, while truly feeling and knowing in my head, heart, and bones, that I cannot know what is going to happen next.

How could I possibly know what is going to happen in the next moment?

Even if I am simply sitting on my couch at home, with no distractions, and I do not move a muscle or a limb, I have no idea what thought is going to come into my head next, what emotions I’ll feel in five minutes, if a storm is going to brew outside, or if someone is going to enter the room.

At no point in my life do I know the totality of the experience I am going to encounter next.

Now, given that our lives and culture are so geared around pretending we know, that we can predict what comes next, that we can insure, mitigate, and protect ourselves from this not knowing or uncertainty, this may not sound like the most desirable state.

However, from my experience, the genuine feeling, sense, and acknowledgement of this not knowing has been the most liberating realisation I have experienced.

As I reflect on it now, it has given my mind something truly useful to do. If my mind now realises that it doesn’t know what is happening next, well, it had better pay attention to all that is present now.

While that has the potential to sound a bit intense, when the mind can rest in this attention, a truly enlivening and connecting experience can occur. Instead of defensively trying to predict, it can simply become joyfully curious about what is coming next.

An experience I often have in both these interviews, and the conversations and dialogues I facilitate, is a moment that goes as follows: I may momentarily fear that I do not know where it is going, then my mind realises it had better pay attention if I indeed do not know where it is going, then I settle back into the moment again and realise it is all still playing out, words and questions continue to emerge. When I notice that this is still happening without a plan, agenda, or structure, a rush of joy and curiosity comes over me in the realisation of how enjoyable this process or unfolding is to observe.

Conversations can honestly feel like adventures, life feels extremely alive, and I have almost no choice but to be myself and nothing else in that moment, as anything else would be manufactured and clearly impede this unfolding that seems to work beautifully if I don’t interfere with it.

I don’t think we realise how much of ourselves, reality, joy, and curiosity we stamp out of our lives by trying to fix everything to an agenda or timetable and pretend that we truly know.

How much effort it takes to uphold these concepts, projections of ourselves, or even maintain constant beliefs, in the face of an ever-changing and unpredictable world. It almost feels to me as if we put ourselves in conflict with or in opposition to life force itself.

The simple analogy for our lives that comes to my mind is the difference between watching a TV show where you know its weekly rhythm and the arc of the story within two minutes of it beginning, and you can see the plot twists coming, versus watching something like Succession, where its wild twists leave you with little choice but to be an enthralled observer.

With nothing to do but enjoy the continued sense of curiosity, and your mind simply wondering in a joyful sense, “I wonder what happens next?”

3. Full Episode - Connecting To The Web Of Life with Manda Scott - What is a Good Life? #89

Click here for Apple and Amazon

4. This week’s Questions

How would you describe your relationship with curiosity?
Have you ever had a felt sense of being in contact with the living web of life?

About Me

I am a coach, podcast host, and writer, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 200 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.

If you would like to work with me to explore your own lines of self-inquiry, take part in my weekly free silent conversations, discuss experiences I create to stimulate greater trust, communication, and connection, amongst your teams, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.