How Young Adults Can Recover Hope, Friendship, and Vocation with Anna Moreland

Brian Williams (00:00)
Hey folks, this is Brian Williams, host of Forged, a podcast of the Humanitas Institute about forging well-lived lives of discipline, delight, craft, and calling that draws the classical tradition into contemporary times. Today I'm really delighted to welcome my guest, Anna Moreland. Anna is a friend and colleague from Villanova University down the road where she has an endowed chair in theology and is director of the honors program. Now, some of you who know that Villanova has a basketball team.

Might be delighted to know that that basketball team is attached to a great Augustinian university ⁓ with an honors program led by Anna and her fantastic faculty. Anna is the author of two books on Thomistic philosophy, Muhammad Reconsidered a Christian Perspective on Islamic Prophecy, which is on my shelf but unread, which I hope to rectify this summer. And it'll put ⁓ no, I'm looking forward to it. And the book Known by Nature, Thomas Aquinas on Natural Knowledge of God.

Anna Moreland (00:52)
⁓

Brian Williams (00:58)
But today I'm especially interested in speaking with Anna about her new book and a book written in a very different genre called The Young Adult Playbook. So welcome to Forged, Anna.

Anna Moreland (01:10)
Delighted to be here, Brian.

Brian Williams (01:12)
I do have to say that I didn't meet Anna for the first time either at our universities or a basketball game. ⁓ we were at a separate university at a conference in 2022, and it was during the World Cup, and I was scrambling to find a facilities guy to turn on a TV for me so I could watch the US national team eventually lose ⁓ to the Netherlands. And this woman sits down next to me and said that she was not interested, I think, ⁓ not interested in the US team, but happened to be Argentinian.

And wanted to see Argentina play right after the US. And as some will know, Argentina went on to gloriously win that World Cup, ⁓ which was which we were all pretty excited about. Do you have tickets for this year's World Cup? ⁓ okay. Yeah. Yeah. My my 18 year old son keeps pestering me about when we're getting tickets. And I was like, when you get a job, actually. Hey, so let's lean into that Argentinian heritage. I'd love just to hear more about it. On forged.

Anna Moreland (01:54)
I'm not a millionaire. No.

Brian Williams (02:09)
I'm really interested in the kind of patterns and practices of our ordinary lives. ⁓ but but how did that Argentinian heritage and culture shape you? Is it mom or dad who's Argentinian?

Anna Moreland (02:21)
So both. So we moved to the US when I was three. So ⁓ I'm first generation. And my parents raised us in a very strict Argentine household. It meant that English was not allowed to cross the threshold of our Spanish exclusively, so much so that at the dinner table we were four children and always had dinner together. You know, the bread plate by the your main plate where you eat, like where you put your bread? Yep. For

Brian Williams (02:31)
Okay, what does that mean?

is that right? So it was the Spanish exclusively inside.

Anna Moreland (02:51)
Years my parents put ten marbles in the bread plate and then we would just eat and if say Paul said a word in English and as he was speaking, I would charge him a marble per word. And what would we earn at the end of the dinner? Nothing. But sibling rivalry. Like it was like genius that my

Brian Williams (03:15)
So

you were checking on each other to make sure that you didn't

Anna Moreland (03:17)
Yes. So my f it was a really important value to my father in particular. And ⁓ so yeah, Spanish only at home, Argentine school on Saturdays. I grew up mostly outside D C where the embassy runs a school. ⁓

Brian Williams (03:32)
Well I didn't know there was such a ⁓

Anna Moreland (03:35)
Yeah,

there is such a thing. So in in DC there are a lot of international organizations. So a lot of sons and daughters of Argentines will be there for a set number of years and then move back. So the Department of Education set up this school that the embassy helps run. So I could have gone, say, to an Argentine college because I had I took, you know, the literature and geography and moral and civics, which is an Argentine, you know.

Department of Education History. Yeah, absolutely. Las Malvinas son Argentinas. I learned all the way through. I had the map with the Malvinas right at the at the you know at the bottom of the map. And yeah, my a lot of my parents' friends were Argentine or at least Spanish speaking. So it was an enclave really.

Brian Williams (04:06)
So it was Argentinian culture.

Yeah,

'cause I was gonna ask for a lot of first generation immigrants, their children, you there's there's a lot of studies done on kind of first generation, second generation. It's one thing to speak Spanish and have an kinda Argentine home, but then if you go out into the wider culture and you have none of that, it's pretty easy to lose that. But it sounds like that was reinforced for you.

Anna Moreland (04:41)
Very much so. Yeah. And we have a very well, I mean, I'm going to Argentina in a few weeks. We have a very close extended family that we're still

Brian Williams (04:49)
Okay, so so what what were some of the rhythms and rituals and practices of your Argentine home? I mean, obviously this marble thing at the dinner table. My mom and dad did something similar with like you couldn't put your elbows on the table, there's certain words you couldn't say, how you use your silverware, and you would get like you'd check on your brothers to make sure they didn't do it or they got we had docked allowance or something like that. I don't know what it was. So yeah, but what were some of the rhythms and like rituals and practices when you look back you think, that was just like it was like part of just our life?

Anna Moreland (05:19)
So we only were allowed to listen to classical music in the house. Like there were just some sort of traditional and I don't know if that's Argentine or just that my particular parents know we weren't allowed to watch TV. Again, that's not Argentine. But it was a great way to w to raise kids and I'm failing at it, you know, with my own children.

Brian Williams (05:37)
Well I was gonna ask what from my next question was just gonna be like what from your childhood, some of those practices and rhythms did you carry over into adult life or with your own family? Yeah. I mean it sounds like dinner. Was it was dinner was was ⁓

Anna Moreland (05:46)
Dinners Dinners

Dinner was us that what made everything work. And I that we have, thanks to my husband's cooking ability. ⁓ we have we have four children and and we are able to do that and have been able to to do that. Last night was Tomas, our youngest sixteenth birthday. Okay. ⁓ And two our two college kids came home and we

We're able to through FaceTime, my mother and my oldest were able to join and we do affirmations every birthday. So it means that you say something affirming about the birthday person, which sometimes is a struggle, you know, when you're raising four teenagers.

Brian Williams (06:26)
that's right. Something rather no. Once a year you have to say something nice.

Anna Moreland (06:29)
Yeah,

exactly. Exactly. Yeah. ⁓

Brian Williams (06:32)
That's great. Hey, so when I think of Argentine culture, I think of Malbec wine, I think of steak, I think of soccer. And I had a had a student ask me a couple days ago, he said, Do do you think, Dr. Williams, that certain cultures practice some of the like goods of human life better than others? So so what does Argentine culture get right? Like what what do they what does it get right about, you know, being being human or practicing human beings?

Anna Moreland (07:01)
Yeah. So I think a relationship to time that's not like the US relationship to time. So I had ten years of Argentino pairs help us raise our children. And the first one is my cousin. Yeah. Okay I did. Okay. And because I I tried, I limped through the whole Spanish only at home thing, which wasn't perfect. But the point is they would arrive and I would say, Could you take Juan Pablo to a play date from four to five thirty? And And they would just laugh. Like it's just

Brian Williams (07:11)
Right in Argentina.

Anna Moreland (07:30)
You're gonna take some a kid to another kid's house for ninety just that whole sort of scheduled approach, the sort of being tethered to a really strict schedule, especially when it refers to person-to-person relationships, is foreign, I would say, to Argentine culture. So the Saturday asado, you know, the barbecue that starts at noon and goes till ten PM, is again, it's foreign to US culture. You know, this extended

Brian Williams (07:33)
Yeah.

What what kind of cultures have that relation to time? There's an interesting study w of our relation to time called Chronemics, which is how different cultures relate to relate to time. There's kind of Chronos time and Kairos time, you know. Is it my experience with both Mediterranean cultures and kind of Latin American cultures are that it's it's something to do with where you live. I mean, it's almost to me, it seems like global south ish.

Anna Moreland (08:28)
Yeah, it could be. I don't know. I I I hesitate to make these grand statements, but

Brian Williams (08:34)
But you did about the American time and you're right. I mean we're we're ran by the clock. I have a I have a colleague who's from Barbados and when he's running a meeting, I just know to schedule an extra hour probably because we're not gonna pay that much attention to the time.

Anna Moreland (08:47)
my gosh, can tell you quick story about that? So when my sister got married, she got married to a son of Cuban, ⁓ Cuban Americans. And in Argentina, if you say like them weddings at 6 PM, we know the wedding's not actually gonna start till 7 p.m. And my sister arrives and realizes that the church lot is just too empty because the Latin Americans haven't arrived yet. And so she asks the driver to keep driving around the neighborhood and to come back.

Meanwhile, you've got this American priest who's just having a heart attack. And then because only half the people haven't the Americans are all there. Latin Americans aren't there yet. So they all finally arrive. And then at the end of the mass, the apparently the reception area, the reception place didn't have enough parking. And so there's an announcement. Would you mind setting up some carpooling if you can carpool to the reception? So the Argentines run out.

Brian Williams (09:19)
Nobody's showed up for this wedding yet.

Anna Moreland (09:43)
of the church to get the spots first. ⁓ right. And the Americans are like organizing carpools, r you know, going along the rules. Like it's just yeah. It's just a

Brian Williams (09:53)
friend that's hilarious it's wonderful we have we have always told the story we have friends from guatemala and went over to their house one night on daylight savings ⁓ in the in the spring I think and we went for six for dinner which in my house that's when you eat well we we had some little black bean dish and something to drink and then seven hit and then eight hit nine thirty they were like we maybe we should go ahead and put the steaks on the on the grill

You know, nine thirty, we probably sit down and eat at ten thirty. We finished by eleven thirty, which because of daylight savings was twelve thirty. And at that point in time, they were like, Hey, do you s guys wanna just spend the night here? And we looked at each other and we're like, I guess so. So we just bedded down with them, but you know, I I was I was my introduction to kind of Latin American time.

Anna Moreland (10:38)
Yeah, it's great.

Brian Williams (10:40)
How do you I mean 'cause you you you live at a university.

Anna Moreland (10:44)
I know. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I mean I think I think I would say at home with my husband who's who's from Iowa and Minnesota, ⁓ we do eat at eight. So we eat more Argentine time than American time. And then ⁓ we ha we host a lot for over for dinner and those are extended, I would say, not super late. But no, it's tough when you're really living in this culture to say like to invite for dinner and not eat till ten PM, right? So

I'd say we serve at like eight thirty, which is late enough for

Brian Williams (11:20)
So what what what is it that we miss do you think? I mean, with our y our relation to time? I mean, because I'm watching the clock, I'm scheduling everything and but yeah, but like what what are we what good are we missing?

Anna Moreland (11:32)
the sort of joy of the surprise, the unexpected, the ⁓ the sort of reception to life versus there's a I think ⁓ a myth about being in control of your life. If you're in control of your schedule and there's this I think control in the US has become an idol. And that keeps us, I think, from a a receptivity, ⁓ a sort of stance, a human stance of receptivity.

But then we're too much we're in too much of a hurry to notice, to attack to t pay attention to those around us and to life in general.

Brian Williams (12:09)
Do we miss being is is it a s is it a sense of missing being present?

Anna Moreland (12:13)
Yes, absolutely. It's always the next thing. Always.

Brian Williams (12:16)
Yeah, it's always the next thing. Yeah.

⁓ it just makes me think. ⁓ there's a professor, phil philosopher of technology called Albert Borgman out at University of Montana for so many years, and he had this idea of what he what he called focal practices. And he just he said, You know, we always we have these moments of like walking in the woods or having the dinner party with friends or that moment where you are lost in the moment. Totally.

And he says the problem is those are kind of haphazard and episodic and they happen. You're like, well, that was that was neat. That was great. I love that time. But then they don't necessarily happen again until you kinda bake them into your your life as what he calls a focal practice. So these are just the things that you you just you regularly do to ensure that you're relating to, I don't know, other people and the world in in this kind of sense.

Anna Moreland (13:05)
I mean it's like prayer and it's like research. Yeah. You can't you can't research efficiently. True. You can't. And you and you can't pray efficiently. Yeah. So there it just is a receptivity and openness to those practices. Yeah. That I wish I did better than I do.

Brian Williams (13:11)
No that's

Yeah, they are difficult to practice. But they they they they show up in this book, the Young Adult Playbook, I I would say in that that central section on on leisure. Yeah. Right? I mean, 'cause that that's in a way what what you're we're describing, a relation to time that is ⁓ not, you know, looking at the clock, but is a kind of immersion in the moment, a kind of open receptivity to the to the moment, it seems like. So you wrote a book

For young adults, a young adult playbook. Would the young adult Anna Moreland be surprised at what adult Anna Moreland is doing these days?

Anna Moreland (14:03)
Yeah. I mean, in some ways, and I've never asked myself that question, truth be told. So I I would say that the young adult Anna Moreland didn't think that far ahead. Because we didn't have to. Like it's not it there was less I mean, I went to graduate school because I still had questions from undergrad. I wasn't thinking like, I'm gonna get a job. It's gonna prepare me to get a job. In fact, I went to graduate school assuming I wouldn't.

get a job. So it was a joke among us. And I know it sounds whimsical in this age and culture and totally not based in reality. But but the young adult Anna

Brian Williams (14:47)
Did you have a vision of the adult Anna? Did you have a sense

Anna Moreland (14:50)
I'm

sure I wanted to be married and have a family. I'm sure. Yeah, for sure. And faith was central to what I was doing.

Brian Williams (14:58)
So this book that you wrote, the young adult playbook, I mean one question I had was, you know, is it is it unique to this moment? Would it have been relevant to you and I? I mean, I was born in seventy one, grew up in the seventies and and eighties, right? And so my wife and I we sometimes laugh, you know, when when we let our kids wander off and kind of do whatever they want for hours, we're like, I'm parenting like the seventies and we survived, right? Where I would be gone for hours a day on my bu my huffy bicycle and mom and dad had no clue where I was. And

You know, no internet. We didn't grow up with the T V most of time either. And so do you think the time the era that you and I grew up in was just so radically different from kids today? You do?

Anna Moreland (15:37)
Absolutely.

I mean this this book absolutely emerged as a response to what I've been hearing for two decades from my students. So it emerged much more in the care and attention to them than anything else. So

Brian Williams (15:52)
So you didn't write this for young adult Anna.

Anna Moreland (15:54)
Not

even close. Young adult Anna knew how to date. Like there was I dated all the time. It was just part of the ⁓

Brian Williams (16:02)
For those of you d don't know the book yet, you should get it. But Anna and her her co author, Tom Smith, they address three issues work, leisure and and love and and and dating. So are there things you knew that you think this our current generation of students that you and I teach don't don't know or don't know how to do or don't have to

Anna Moreland (16:12)
Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

a

little shocked by yeah so I'll I teach a course called the Young Adult Playbook. No, that's the book. I teach a course called ⁓ Shaping an Adult Life. Okay. And in that course it's got these three components. And in the third, I'll have students make an office hour appointment with me and say, you know, Dr. Moreland, I I'd like to talk to you about a segment of the class. I was like, okay. And the and the question will be, okay, so I've asked somebody out on a date.

I don't know whether from West Campus we should take an Uber to the place we're going. Should we walk? What should I have questions prepared? What do I do when the check arrives? I mean it's the driving manual is really basic.

Brian Williams (16:59)
Wow,

yeah. I mean I know about wedding planners, but I didn't know about dating planners. But yeah, Doctor Moreland, would you plan my date for me? Yeah.

Anna Moreland (17:07)
I and I've had when I say I've had I've had these conversations over and over again, I'm not exaggerating. Okay. So the young a young adult Anna would have never anticipated that the social script for dating has been as ripped up as it has.

Gosh, I think a lot of things happened. I think young men and women are pretty terrified of each other. I think of course this Jonathan Hayes, social media. Yeah. Sort of that that has Anxious generation. ⁓

Brian Williams (17:37)
Whereas you and I, when you know, in high school, if you wanted to hang out with your friends, you actually had to hang out with your friends and be physically present. Right. You had I have ⁓ noticed the the I think it's a phenomenon that sixteen year olds aren't getting their driver's license. Yeah. They're they're eighteen, they're twenty, they're twenty two. And I said, Man, if you wanted to be with your friends as a kid, you had to drive to them. So everyone wanted their our licenses so we could go hang out at each other's homes. Social media technology means that you don't have to

do that anymore. So but you don't have this like ability or you don't have the practice of like being physically present. Yeah. To people. That's kind of play into some of this.

Anna Moreland (18:13)
A hundred percent. And the the sorts of social norms that operate online are ⁓ very confusing and yet very strict at the same time and not very safe. So there's a a sort of rushing to the bedroom that happens online that then makes the interpersonal communication much more difficult because all of a sudden you've

opened yourself, you've overopened yourself to another person and then you see each other in person and of course you're terrified because you've been intimate. Right. And that's a very vexing

Brian Williams (18:54)
Y you mean like like the intimacy, like how how quickly ⁓ like an online relationship moves into very intimate

Anna Moreland (18:59)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm not talking about sexual intimacy. I'm just talking about emotional intimacy. I mean, it could include sexual intimacy, but I'm talking just about an oversharing of of sort of intimate parts of myself. And that can be a lot of intimate.

Brian Williams (19:17)
Which people feel more free to do online.

Anna Moreland (19:19)
A hundred percent.

W but it's so funny 'cause more free to do on one in one sort of on the one side and yet the the practice of screenshotting and sharing with your friend group ⁓ is really difficult. So I'll have a male student will say to me, If I talk and talking can mean anything, but okay. If I if if I'm talking to a gal I'm talking Yeah, well it can mean a lot more than that. But okay, fine. if I'm talking to a gal, I'm talking to her whole friend group.

Brian Williams (19:45)
Texting in half words.

Interesting. Or at least he has to worry about that. Yeah. Yeah, because it's it's there in print as opposed to a conversation that's gonna blow away in the

Anna Moreland (19:54)
And that

Totally.

And she can, you know, show her friends and then her friends know what he said and then they have an input and what how she's responding. And then so it's not just the it's not just the sort of ⁓ words, but it's images as well. So so even in a person, I'll give you one story. I was talking to my students about I don't understand why nobody holds hands on campus. You know, there you've got these quasi-marital dating situations.

And walk they walk around campus next to each other but not holding hands, which I think is totally bizarre. ⁓ and the students were like, I know that's an ick. Everyone agreed it was an ick. It was just ⁓ awkward to w hold hands. Okay, everyone agreed on that. And as students

Brian Williams (20:46)
I thought it was pretty great when I was dating in school and college. That's right. It's part exactly.

Anna Moreland (20:49)
Right. It's part of sort of the erosion

of student says, and I am not joking, and I really love this student. ⁓ I saw a gal sitting on her boyfriend's lap in the student center last week, and I took a photo of it and sent it to my friend group, and we all agreed how gross that was. So imagine at any moment

Somebody can take a photo of you and interpret it in any way. Right, right. And so that sort of gave opened up to the a whole series of of of other moments where a guy is studying with a gal in the library, a photo is taken of them. By the time he gets back to his dorm, there's been a whole narrative built

And ⁓ f talk about false news or fake news. A total so so he has to get back to his dorm and defend himself against this possible situation that had happened in the library, they were studying for astronomy or whatever. I mean it was it's so anyway, so I

Brian Williams (21:57)
There's

a fear element. Like I can't like be in friendship with another with because somebody's gonna take a photo.

Anna Moreland (22:01)
So you wonder why there there's a

whole risk aversion. ⁓

Brian Williams (22:10)
Massive risk aversion. I've been told this too. I've been told this this too by high school students. My my son's in high school and I was asking him about this and he said, Yeah, you don't want to be seen as being too close of a friend to another girl because then everybody chatters about it. And so then that means that relationship retreats online.

Anna Moreland (22:27)
It's not just to another girl. So That's true. So it's it's vexed all around. Yeah. All around. So I I mean I think it's a

Brian Williams (22:29)
Yes, right. That's that's true.

Everybody mildly hates it but doesn't know what to do

Anna Moreland (22:41)
That's right. And it's funny because and so they they feel like they don't have agency when they do, but they express agency in other areas. But somehow in this area of interpersonal relationship, I know, you know, I I I had to opt out. So many are opting out. I mean, we know with the social scientific data, the epidemic of loneliness didn't just appear. ⁓ it makes sense.

Brian Williams (23:05)
So do students now expect both too much and too little from Eros?

Anna Moreland (23:15)
I'd say too little, way more than too much.

Brian Williams (23:18)
Little. Because

maybe are we past that era where of like soulmates and people looking for their soulmate and thinking their partner's gonna complete them? Because I mean there is a there was some of that, maybe in certain subcultures, maybe in certain Christian subcultures.

Anna Moreland (23:31)
persists. So, you know, the the women's the women's fiction ask part of the publishing industry is basically holding together the entire publishing industry. So they're the only people who are still buying books. Yeah. ⁓ and it's it's this exploding genre, which I don't have all positive things to say about it. And yet what I find really striking is that that I mean it's a rom com illusion.

that is based on a real human desire for lifelong intimacy and partnership. But it is written about in pretty

Different storyline.

Brian Williams (24:16)
Yeah, well that's what I wonder about i in too much because sometimes I have s I will have students who have this vision of their partner completing them and it's my soulmate I'm trying to find and I think, yeah, you might be expecting too much from your partner, right? That kind of thing. You're expecting too much from your partner in that relationship, which is not gonna complete you, and that person's gonna disappoint you and they're not your soulmate. If you went to a different school, you'd marry a different person. Right. And that sense those people I'm like, you're expecting too much.

Anna Moreland (24:28)
Yeah.

I

That's right.

Okay, so that's right. And and and it's absolutely true that students, once they do start dating, the ones who do are in these sort of all absorbing, not healthy, quasi-marital kind of situations. And so your f your roommate starts to date and it's like she's moved to Iceland because you never see her again, right? So there's just a lack of balance all around. It's a student said to me the other day, he was complaining about this gal he had just broken up with. ⁓

You're not gonna believe this. He said to me, she she would only text me like every twelve, like a twelve hours would go by without her texting me. As if that was just a st you know, like ridiculous. And I'm thinking, and I literally stopped. I was like, I'm I'm sorry, what did you just say? Twelve so so there's this constant texting if you're in a relationship. Yeah, so you're moving through the day with this person who's not next to you.

And look, I mean, I'm sure there's a companionship that's element that's part of it, but then like what do you talk about when you're together? You know? Yeah.

Brian Williams (25:47)
And that's that's some of that I mean, I s you know, some of the some of the social media apps where it's like you're expected to post something every day or every six hours, every twelve hours, and streaks and that kind of stuff. I mean, that fosters a kind of neuroses. Yeah. Like I haven't heard from X person on a text in a few hours or something like that. And I just kinda say, Well, what what are you actually texting about? So that's where I I wonder if we're expecting too much, but then of also too little.

Anna Moreland (26:06)
Right. Yeah.

Also too little. Yeah. So I I agree. Now that I get where you are coming from I agree.

Brian Williams (26:16)
You

know, expecting too little could be, you know, both I'm I'm on the first date and then jumping into bed together, right? That expecting too little, and it becomes just like that that that level of intimacy becomes very casual, but you have to be a kind of emotional prude, right? Because you might use your body, but you've got to.

Anna Moreland (26:36)
That's right. You have to be chill.

Brian Williams (26:38)
Yeah. You can't give your emotions to everybody at that level of intimacy, which seems like expecting too little. How do you help them? What do you tell them?

Anna Moreland (26:42)
Yeah.

so I teach them how to date.

Brian Williams (26:48)
Okay, say more about that. I know you do. ⁓ I teach a class called The Ordinary Life and I have a night on kind of love and sex and their s response is usually why has nobody ever else talked to us about this this frankly? But I don't teach how to date. So how how do how do you do that?

Anna Moreland (27:05)
So I've I've I used to make it an optional assignment. Now it's I it's it's it's in this class it's required, but I have six versions of it. Okay.

Brian Williams (27:14)
It's required to date. They have to go on a date.

Anna Moreland (27:16)
Yeah.

Right. So it's either the coffee date, which is a traditional one. It's either the conversation moving from situationship to relationship, having the com define the relationship conversation. It's ⁓ the if you're already dating, it's an actual date for the dating because these they're not really dating dating. They're just together together. It's a reflection on a breakup because some students aren't ready.

It's a if you're still terrified, you get your roommate on a blind date. So it's I really want to revive blind dates because that helps everybody. Because you you're too terrified to ask somebody out on a date. So you set up your friend and then your friend goes out on the date and realizes, like, my gosh, I didn't have to do the asking. I was set up. This is so great. Like this was

Brian Williams (27:51)
Also.

I see

human there's no pressure because somebody else may not work, but the stakes are pretty low. that's pretty funny.

Anna Moreland (28:07)
Somebody else put it together.

So

I'm trying to bring like revive that social script. And then there's the person who's in a toxic relationship reflecting about how to get out of the toxic relationship. So years ago it was one, it was the coffee day. It's just each you know, just because of listening to students and

Brian Williams (28:24)
Yeah, it was just going on it.

How do they respond? What kind of from students?

Anna Moreland (28:32)
my gosh.

It's so great. Is it like a delight. Yeah, it really is. Everyone claps. You know, so so when somebody's gone on a date, they come back, tell the class, everyone claps. Okay. Like it's just this, ⁓ it's it's awesome. And then I'll get emails from students who graduated five years before ago. Dr. Morland, you'd be so proud of me I finally went on a date. Students who w didn't have the courage. And ⁓

Brian Williams (28:37)
Yeah.

Anna Moreland (29:00)
That's a little late when you're twenty five. I want you I want I want those muscles to start developing younger. Well and you and in a safe way.

Brian Williams (29:07)
⁓ you lose an easy pool of keys. I I I because I I have a couple of friends who did their career, you know, got through, got into professions, and then they were both like, where are we supposed to meet guys now? Yeah. We meet them in the bar. ⁓ dating apps, of course, have filled that, or church, and they were like, That's slim pickings. And so they were like, Yeah, maybe we should have thought about this when we had this easy pool of like massive university.

Anna Moreland (29:34)
I think that's part of the reason why a lot of these alumni associations are taking on more and more activity, I guess I would say. Because I I do think Yeah. I mean, I do think that going to col there's a whole sort of this is obviously for college destined or not destined, but you know what I mean, students young people who are going to college, which is not the majority, but your college experience becomes kind of identity identity forming and then that

Brian Williams (29:42)
Okay.

Anna Moreland (30:02)
there's something about it that if you're you're linked to it and you're moving to a new city and which which is like a very lonely experience, the university can help foster a sense of belonging and community. And so then there are I I know students who have met their spouses at these

Brian Williams (30:21)
Alumni. Yeah, that's pretty funny. The Villanova Dating Service. Alumni Dating Service. That's good. There's a there's an app you can download probably for that. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to your alumni in advancement department. Maybe they could they can they can bank on that. I mean, it is interesting to think about just the changes even from when you and I were kids, but you know, even from a hundred years ago. There there's a there's a good book called From the Front Porch to the Back Seat.

Anna Moreland (30:29)
Good idea!

Nice. my gosh, I love that.

Brian Williams (30:48)
Right. It's like you can learn a lot from a title. And you know, the front porch is there were social norms for how people got together in a kind of controlled environment. Families were kind of involved, but you were still on your own on the front porch in the parlor. And you you both parties knew how to kind of navigate the the way forward. Whereas kick that, you know, the front porch to the back seat, all of a sudden there are no social norms. Nobody's helping us guide this, and we're kind of making it up. So no real surprise.

that you arrive at this kind of generation where there's like real anxiety about how to how to do

Anna Moreland (31:22)
It's even worse than the backseat, I think. I mean, it's just gotten much more dangerous. You go to a guy's apartment and you've never met before and you don't know any of his friends. He doesn't know any of your friends. Yeah. That's at least the backseat approach. You generally had mutual friends. Yeah.

Brian Williams (31:34)
And

you two doors to jump out if you Yeah exactly. ⁓ Right. Exactly. ⁓ yeah, that's right. And that's where I I just ⁓ I wonder about expecting too much or this kind of weird dichotomy between, you know, giving everything with my body but being an emotional prude, as I call it, like holding my emotions back because I as I have to. And no surprise that that feels that that's awkward.

Anna Moreland (31:38)
Exactly.

And you're not really giving giving everything with your body. You're having a fake conversation with your body, not a real one. So

Brian Williams (32:01)
Yeah,

that's probably right. Hey, here's a question. So I mean Eros has always been mmm difficult to navigate, uncontrollable. I mean, Plato's symposium to to start with, which is a a a riot of confusion, I think, intentionally. But I it's not just this doesn't start with our college students, right? This you know, they're they find themselves in this kind of culture. So w is there a way in which like if you had

Parents of young teens, you know, sitting in front of Yeah. What what do you what do you what do you tell them? Because I did have these students frequently say to me, like, why has nobody ever talked to us this frankly about kind of love and love and sex? And I say, Well, you don't have any multi-generational friendships. You probably don't know people who are older than your your parents' age. Speaking with your parents can be awkward about this. So I'm sorry the first time you're talking about this is with your dean in a classroom, but you know, we got a good rapport. But is there a way that

Anna Moreland (32:34)
shave hat, yeah.

Brian Williams (32:59)
Parents can speak into this earlier?

Anna Moreland (33:02)
Yeah. I mean, I think I would encourage parents to listen into this earlier. I would encourage parents to actually listen to their children. So we so, you know, there there's this, I think, I mean, granted, we've done a lot of maybe made made a lot of mistakes as parents, but ⁓ there's this mistaken sense that parents have when they put like lifetime 360 on their kids' phone and find my iPhone. And if they know we're that

child is is if they know how how quickly that child is driving when he goes to the Wawa to get the hoagie, they think like, ooh, they know what's going on. This is the Jonathan Haight point. But actually, you know, the phone has been a window to just foreign territories that they so ⁓

Brian Williams (33:47)
⁓ I'm a big fan of Life three sixty by the way. ⁓ really? I mean I have it. Just so I can track I so I know where my eighteen year old son is is sometimes and I can't find him and he's not answering his phone or he's sometimes driving too fast.

Anna Moreland (33:59)
Well,

my sixteen year old left his phone in the mailbox and it's not gathered. So we couldn't we thought he was well, we didn't know anyway. We don't need to go into that. We're not going into my own parenting situation. That's

Brian Williams (34:02)
Is that right? Uh-huh.

Yeah, 'cause I could just sneak out the back door of my house and didn't take my phone and you know, I could drive across to John Bemo's house and nobody knew where I was 'cause it was one in the morning and, you know, nobody was tracking me.

Anna Moreland (34:19)
Yeah. Well that turns out that can still happen. Yeah.

Brian Williams (34:22)
Yeah,

yeah, apparently so so Yeah. Yeah, but what do you say to parents? That's my question.

Anna Moreland (34:25)
Sorry,

yeah. So I I so I say to parents, open the conversation with your students. It's sorry, with your children, but and get to know your children's friends, I think is really, really important. And your children's friends' parents if possible. And that's it's really challenging, I know.

Brian Williams (34:40)
One of things that happened at my mom and dad's house, my mom and dad's house was one of those homes that everybody hung out at. Yeah. And so that was pretty great. And so when we think about like students not actually, you know, teenagers not actually spending time together, I mean, one thing could be be the home where they want to hang out. That's right. And so then you are bringing them together. That's right. Not to control them, but you're almost you're giving them space. Yeah. And hopefully in a kind of relatively stable home.

Anna Moreland (35:02)
Yeah, for sure. And yeah. And I think that does still happen in some communities, certainly. The not going up to the door, it was a huge loss. You know, when I went I mean when you go to pick up your child and instead of w knocking on the door Exactly. Right. So then that was the place where parents, you know, we met each other. that's right. That's right. Not that long ago.

Brian Williams (35:17)
Yeah. ⁓

And now it's text the kid and the

Anna Moreland (35:26)
Now

I've I have gone and knocked and ⁓ the parent opens up and says it's kind of like what are you doing here? You know. Yeah. Do they know that does he know that you're here? I'm like, Well, no, 'cause that's that's why I came to ring the doorbell. ⁓ and so it is a it feels a little awkward, but it's really important for the parents to know each other. So ⁓ having the other parents over for dinner

Brian Williams (35:50)
And being a place maybe where your when your children do start dating, if they do date, be a kind of place where, you know, the the girlfriend or boyfriend can come hang out. I mean, I think the you know, a lot of the girls I dated in high school and college, I spent lots of times with their f family. And they would come over and do dinner or we'd go to movies together as a family, or I there were there were lots of like interaction there, you know. That's very humanizing. Yeah.

Anna Moreland (36:16)
And it can be still be done, I think.

Brian Williams (36:19)
Hey, let me ask you a question, because you have two other parts of your book, work and and leisure. Yeah. I asked if we both expect too much and too little from love and arrows. Do we expect, I think with work, I want to ask, do you think we expect too much from work in our profession to kind of give us an identity and define us in ways that we foist so much, perhaps? And this is my question like, do we foist too much of our happiness and identity on

on the just getting the right w job and career. What's your experience with

Anna Moreland (36:52)
Yeah. So I'm gonna have the opposite reaction again. Yeah. Where I think too many

Brian Williams (36:58)
Argentinian

thing just to be oppositional because I was hoping little

Anna Moreland (37:00)
Absolutely.

Yeah, ask my husband.

Brian Williams (37:05)
⁓

yeah, okay. Yeah, let's get on the call here. No, well how how do you think we relate to work?

Anna Moreland (37:08)
yeah.

So I think I I think students have lost hope for themselves way too early. Assume they'll be ri miserable in work. Assume that work is is a pathway to make money, to raise a family, to go on vacations, to do the things they want to do, and assume that that path is gonna be difficult. And so I I literally two days ago I had a student write in a journal. I know my life beyond college is gonna suck.

And that again, that's a refrain for me that I hear over and over from students. I just want it to be more bearable than I'm anticipating. What can I do to make that happen?

Brian Williams (37:47)
Well,

I I enjoyed my college years, but they weren't the pinnacle of my life. No. You know, I mean it was good, ⁓ but it wasn't like it was it wasn't all downhill from from college. So so people so your sense is like students are expecting once I get into my profession or career, it's just like purely instrumental way to make money that I'm actually gonna hate what I do, most likely.

Anna Moreland (38:07)
Yes, one hundred percent. Okay. I I like and and there there are all these ⁓ sort of framing devices around it. Sort of I really like the team I'm working on. That's of repet repeated over and over again. Well, what about the work you're actually doing? Well, it's kind of boring and mundane, but I really like the team. Or ⁓ there are all these sort of things around the substance of what you're doing that are determinative.

Brian Williams (38:09)
And we' where's

Mm-hmm.

Anna Moreland (38:38)
The substance of what you're doing is boring. So all these other things have to make up for it. Have to make up for it. And so so you're not having really having conversation of what do you really want to do with your life? ⁓ even students are going into nursing, which you think is like a noble profession where you're helping people. But nursing has become really difficult, right? These and and there are a lot of unhappy nurses because of all these.

Brian Williams (38:41)
yeah, right, right, right.

Working ungodly hours at ungodly times of day and whatever else goes around it. Certainly surgeons and doctors too, who that I talk to, they're like, Well, our lives are are ran by whatever bureaucrat, you know, the the CFO who owns the hospital, and I've got ten minutes with each patient max, and then I've got to move on. Even senior surgeons and senior people in places. So So where do you think that this this comes from? I mean, why are students expecting this?

Anna Moreland (39:27)
Yeah, exactly.

Brian Williams (39:34)
See, because I wanted to say, well, I wonder if people are expecting too much from work and they're they're they're thinking they're only thinking of education, for instance, as preparation for a career, kind of overpriced job training. And then they're thinking, what am I gonna be? I'm gonna be, you know, consultant, chemist, you know, nurse, and that's my identity. And that's where I sometimes want to push back and say, you know, there's a lot more about you than that's right than just your work.

Anna Moreland (39:59)
That's right. And so that's what that moves into the leisure section where I say, you know, what you do for leisure shapes you, molds you, and forms you as much as what you do for work. So I a hundred percent agree with that. And I do think that work is identity shaping for emerging adults, but in a way that's wrapped around kind of prestige and power versus sort of the substance of the thing. Of the work of what I'm actually doing. Yeah. ⁓

So and th that's just sort of the the cultural occurrence that they grew up in and they've been swimming in forever and that their parents are ⁓ encouraging as well. So

Brian Williams (40:40)
You're a theologian. Were we made to work? Yeah. Is good work a kind of a basic

Anna Moreland (40:46)
Genesis. I d I mean I know there's disagreement on this. That's why I don't get I don't think work is a ⁓ result of the fall. Yeah. I think work is a gift and ultimately all human living is a gift and and our ability to co-create, our ability to sort of ⁓ co-create, not in this sort of dangerous theological way, but senses, but to enter into the creative process and and use the gifts that we were given, ⁓ is

Brian Williams (41:06)
Tolkien would say.

Anna Moreland (41:15)
One of the fundamental goods of human living. And ⁓ so work is a good. It's a limited good. We have to put guardrails around it. It can't overtake our lives as it does in a lot of people's lives, right? But it is a good. It's not an instrumental good, right? It's an internal good to who you are, but just it serves the life worth living. It doesn't dominate the life worth living.

Brian Williams (41:39)
It's an internal good. What do you mean by internal good? I use language of basic human good sometimes, but an internal good, like an intrinsic good.

Anna Moreland (41:45)
It's an intrinsic good, exactly. So it's not it's not just it doesn't just it's an it's not just an instrument to get you to something else. It's not just the instrument to get you a paycheck. A paycheck that serves that that by the way, that serves all these other goods. Right. So so the paycheck is the instrument, but

Brian Williams (42:02)
Whereas I would say money is an instrumental good. That's you agree with that? Like a money

Anna Moreland (42:05)
Money

is a hundred percent an instrumental good. But the way they frame the job is as a way to get money. And so then the job becomes the instrumental good as well. You see what I'm saying?

Brian Williams (42:07)
Other goods.

And

money often becomes the in some of their minds an intrinsic good. 'Cause they think I just I need I need the money. That's right. And I'm always like to do what with the money. Right. I see. So yeah, so instead of seeing money as an instrumental good that gets you to other goods, the job becomes an instrumental

Anna Moreland (42:23)
That's right. That's right.

Because the job is the instrument to get the money, which is the instrument, right? So they're both sort of

Brian Williams (42:35)
I always balk when anybody says ⁓ refers to work life balance. Do you okay, because that seems like false dichotomy to me. I'm like, no, no, w work is part of your life. Yeah. And that might reinforce this idea. Like like work is s what something I do separate from my life that gets me money maybe to pursue my life.

Anna Moreland (42:40)
I now read two.

That's

right. And it gives it's just a sort of a technocratic frame, I think, because it it makes you think that, if I can get the right numbers, if I can work eighty percent and or not a hundred percent, or if I can be home at a certain hour, if I've got that b balance with respect to a schedule, then everything will be fine. And that's just totally

Brian Williams (43:14)
I think

it also plays into you wonder if some, you know, technocratic employer came up with the dichotomy, right? Because then I can say, Anna, this is your work. I don't care about your life. That's separate. What you do on your own time is up to you. But I dominate your your work time, which is nine to five every single day. And then as an employer, I'm not really responsible for helping you s figure out how work fits into like the whole of your life. And so it's like you do you do what you want on your in your life.

Anna Moreland (43:39)
I wouldn't want a lot of employers to do that either necessarily, you know.

Brian Williams (43:43)
But I think like for for me, I mean I'll just say in my staff, I I I recognize that work has to fit into the life. ⁓ sure. Right. And so in the sense that like you gotta come in late one day or you're gonna work from home today, as as long as you get the project kinda done. I mean, you know, it's that it's that person who's like watching the punch c the time clock, you know, who doesn't care what how what how this impacts the rest of your life

Anna Moreland (44:02)
I was just thinking of the employer that was saying like, Okay, we really believe in this value. We're all gonna believe in this value together.

Brian Williams (44:09)
I mean more just an employer who recognizes that that the life that work is not the total sum of your being. And and that it ha that has to try to f you're trying to foster a whole life life here. So how how so how do you frame this for students? Like or for a or for their parents, if if you will.

Anna Moreland (44:16)
For sure.

Yeah. So yeah, parents have read this and counselors and it gives them kind of a window into their students' lives, their young their children's lives, so they

Brian Williams (44:35)
And

just think about like what what they ought to do or how they pursue this career and profession. Because college or not, you you're gonna find some gainful employment, most of us, or you're gonna be in a home as a caregiver, s which is a was certainly a part of work, just unpaid. So so what kind of framing do you give?

Anna Moreland (44:51)
Yeah. So the overarching theme is to help arm them with hope that I think they've already lost for themselves, to put hope in the driver's seat and stash their fears into the trunk because fears drive so much of so of so many of those decisions that they make in this both in deciding what to study, but then that leads to to what to do. ⁓ and whether to take that return offer from an internship that you're really miserable in, but it was a bird in the hand, or to do the fifth year masters.

Because you're too scared to look for a job. That's the fear making that decision. Yeah. So so it's a it's a it's a fear of the uncertainty, a fear of the unknown, which I don't blame them for those fears. But instead of letting that fear make the decision, let's harness that fear, throw it into the trunk. What do you hope for? And let's try to ⁓ help rebuild their professional imagination because we've got this very reduced culture.

Brian Williams (45:23)
Shell's gonna ask, what fears do you see them?

And a professional imagination extended over time because sometimes students also feel like, Well, if I take this job, I might hate it. And I say, You might, but you only have to be in there for a year. Learn what you can learn and then go to the next one and the next one. And so sometimes there's that fear of like finding the right dream job r when you're twenty two. And I say, Well, you know, so one of the things I do, I have alumni come back and talk who are ten years out, and they just say d mo more or less they just say, Do something.

Get a job and then figure out what the next one is, you know.

Anna Moreland (46:20)
That's right. Except that the finance, the sort of the finance finance has become a at least at my university, a kind of a postdoc. If you're really going into you've got to go into finance because then everyone will think you're really smart for the rest of your life. But then it turns out that going into finance has its own sort of handcuffs to it.

Brian Williams (46:33)
Going into finance. Yeah.

Yeah.

Anna Moreland (46:46)
So you're working all the time. So then I'll have conversations with students who are like, I really want to get out. I'm going to go to med school or I'm going to go to law school. Because again, they're in this prestigious environment and don't have the liberty, the imagination, the anything to think about what actually do I want to do with my life. They've already been kind of boxed in. And ⁓ and so instead of working functioning as a postdoc.

functions as a sort of reducing it further reduces their imagination. Uhhuh.

Brian Williams (47:19)
How so? Because the money attached to it or because

Anna Moreland (47:21)
And

the prestige because they can't just leave and go teach at a at a high school. Right. Because everyone around there is gonna be like, What are you doing? And it's they're miserable. I mean a lot of those jobs are misery inducing. Yeah. And it's really hard to get out of them.

Brian Williams (47:38)
That's right.

And then that prestige piece is interesting. Yeah, right. Because I mean, it's like every high school student who's a senior, where where are you gonna go to college? Where are you gonna go? Well, they wanna they're gonna lead with kind of the prestige places. And when mom and dad write, you know, the annual Christmas letter, they right, they wanna be able to say, Johnny's working in finance for, you know, well, McKinsey and company, whomever it happens to be, they don't wanna say Johnny's teaching junior high at, you know, Hoboken Middle School.

Right. And so there is that pressure that some that some certainly feel.

Anna Moreland (48:15)
Right. Right. Yeah. ⁓ and it's a pity.

Brian Williams (48:19)
Yeah. So so how what do you tell him to look for? I mean, how do you help like discern, you know, what what

Anna Moreland (48:24)
It's all about discernment. Yeah. All about discernment. So it's step one is that prof rehabilitating the professional imagination. Step two is seeking concrete models of people you actually admire and talking to them and finding out how they got where they got. It is a process of rebuilding the imagination. And then step three is arming them with the courage to take a path that they hadn't thought of, right? ⁓ and and having them use companions along the way, but the companions that are helpful, not harmful, right?

But it it really I mean it's it's based in ignition discernment.

Brian Williams (48:57)
Yeah. Okay. ⁓ say say more about

Anna Moreland (48:59)
Nations

of Loyola, sixteenth century, right? so it's it's based in a dis what traditionally it's called a discernment of spirit. So you're really trying to ⁓ listen to God's call in your life where you're being called to serve on and honor the Lord. Mm-hmm.

Brian Williams (49:16)
How do you do that? How how how do you how do you it's help students like discern God's call? 'Cause you know, I'm trying to do that with my teenage students, I'm trying to do that with my university s students. What's that what's that look like beyond, you know, I mean sitting in prayer? Yeah. But but but but

Anna Moreland (49:33)
A lot of time in my office too, just listening to students. Yeah. And then

Saying back to them, like, wait, I'm sorry, did did I just hear you say this? I'm listening to for what their hopes actually are because they are expec they've already boxed themselves in in a way that I don't think they should. So, and then putting them in touch with people. I do a lot of putting students in touch with alumni, like student to student, student to student, student to student, because ⁓ thirty year old it could be much more persuasive.

Brian Williams (49:43)
Be listening for

Anna Moreland (50:07)
than me and saying, wait, I'm sorry, why are you going to law school? Like why are you going to solve law school right now because you don't know what you want to do with your life? You want to go into that kind of debt to answer that kind of question? How about get a job, you know, almost any job, not necessarily any job, but get a job that builds you some identity capital. And then and also give them vocabulary like identity capital, weak ties, flow, you know, these little

⁓ and vocabulary vocabulary helps.

Brian Williams (50:41)
yeah, listen, I think as teachers what we're doing is naming reality for our students. Right? We have these experiences and it's like, well no, I c I can name that for you. I can I can give you a way to frame your experience or your fear, your hope, or whatever it happens to be. What's identity capital?

Anna Moreland (50:55)
Meg J wrote this book and did the defining decade. She's a psychologist at UVA. And it's this what this set of ⁓ a sort of personal assets that you build through experiences. So in your twenties, you want to think of building identity capital in your work. Not not think of building a nest egg, but let's build who I am, you know, sort of relationship cap capital, political capital, whatever, through

two year volunteer experience and then a job and wherever or whatever. Let let l let me figure out who I wanna become professionally in a way that's expansive, not reductive. Do you see what I mean? Does that make sense? Yep. Yep.

Brian Williams (51:37)
Without that being its own kind of checkbox anxiety that I'm not building my personal brand.

Anna Moreland (51:42)
All the time. Exactly. Right, because it's not the LinkedIn. Yes. No. Yeah.

Brian Williams (51:46)
It's not my LinkedIn brand. No. It's

it's me. It's me be it's me becoming as a person. Yeah. Or me developing.

Anna Moreland (51:53)
Exploring,

but exploring not just for exploring sake, exploring with a direction, a sort of intentional expl exploration, I would say. Yeah, I did. Okay. I 100% did. And and the the thing that try to tell them is that you're not gonna know beforehand how formative it's gonna be, right?

Brian Williams (52:03)
Did you do that in your twenties?

Or or how that experience might play into the

Anna Moreland (52:16)
Exactly.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. So allow that to happen. ⁓ so I graduated a year early from college and I was gonna do Teach for America. But I ended up going back to Argentina for a year and taking care of my grandmother as my own kind of, you know, serving to my family. My father was an only child and working down there and wow. I almost stayed to live down there for life. I fell in love and fell in love not just with this young man, but with a whole way of living that's different than

And sort of how we started our conversation.

Brian Williams (52:46)
Soccer.

Those were my three. ⁓

Anna Moreland (52:49)
Long Sunday afternoons. I mean, it's pretty fun to be a young person. Yeah. Yeah. Dancing, you know. Anyways, fun. So that I I that was a transformative year for me.

Brian Williams (53:03)
Held were you?

Anna Moreland (53:04)
I was t twenty one turning twenty two. Yeah. That was young.

Totally transformative. And I would have stayed down there, but n were it not for my very strict Argentine parents who basically told me I was coming back to graduate school because I had applied to graduate school and but decided I didn't want to go. And ⁓ yeah. Okay. I was drunk on love. ⁓ And my parents said you know my parents said you have to come start, do the masters, you don't have to stay for the PhD. You can always move back.

Brian Williams (53:27)
Ha ha ha.

Argentine. Okay.

Anna Moreland (53:37)
Right. And that was very wise of them. Yeah.

Very hard to hear. But yeah, I don't have that kind of control over my sixteen year old. I mean it's just kinda nuts how but that's fine. So I came back and I started graduate school school. Okay. And that was where I found ⁓ who I wanted to be. In a way that I didn't how'd that happen up until then?

Brian Williams (53:50)
So you came back?

Is

that where you realize you you fell in love with with yeah with well understanding and knowledge and academia?

Anna Moreland (54:06)
And friends and people and because it was I I I I'm a theologian, right? So my faith was at the center of that and and and it and on quite frankly, it was the first time there's a group of Americans that I wanted to be around that was healthy and in grad school. In grad school. I g ⁓ undergrad w I didn't find that really. Yeah. So Boston College. Yeah. Mhm. and it was a total gift. Those grad school years were

Brian Williams (54:27)
That's cool. Yeah.

Anna Moreland (54:34)
A total and complete gift.

Brian Williams (54:36)
They're like college, but everyone's just a little more mature and more grown up. I mean that was that was my experience. ⁓

Anna Moreland (54:42)
It's what

college should be, I guess, in some ways. But and it was unusual in that it was really communal. So and a lot of graduate experiences are pretty lonely, but but I had the gift of it not being lonely at all.

Brian Williams (54:54)
You you weren't on a kind of career path. You you were you were expl Yeah. No. And it just gaffawed. yeah. So you weren't on a yeah, you were exploring questions and and pursuing thoughts and ideas and reading books, you know. Yeah. I mean, which is why I'm a teacher, just so I can keep reading books the rest of my life.

Anna Moreland (55:13)
Yeah. I look back, I wish I could go back because I wonder, like, was it because I was had this traditional sense of being a woman and was gonna be a mother in a family? I don't think so. I really don't because I thought I would work. So it's in some ways looking back, it's a bit of a puzzle to me. Yeah, that I just wasn't like concerned about.

Brian Williams (55:30)
What what you were thinking?

Anna Moreland (55:37)
Making money.

Brian Williams (55:37)
Yeah, and sometimes now now that I'm not twenty, I look back at my twenty something self and I thought, y you could have been a little more concerned, probably about I mean, ⁓ right as soon as I graduated college, I started a a coffee bar cafe with my roommate and we ran that for three years. You know, pretty successfully. It was pretty great, you know, we made no money, then spent a lot of time in school and you know, not making any money, but having a great time. And so sometimes I'm like, ⁓ you could have been a little more attentive to some of that, you know.

Anna Moreland (56:05)
Although I think I don't know, at least the students I work with are afraid of being poor. Yeah, pe being poor is not the worst thing. As long as you're hanging out with other wor poor people. I don't mean like I'm sorry, I didn't just make like this grand sociological statement, by the way. I just meant the in your twenties, you know, when you're ⁓

Brian Williams (56:21)
Yeah, I was just telling a student two days ago who was who was ⁓ about to get engaged. ⁓ his fiance's not listening, so I won't name him, but he's not engaged yet. And he was raising some of these concerns. And I said, Yeah, I get that. I get that. But I remember times when my wife and I in our twenties being married, we were we were breaking up bacon bits and our ramen noodles to make dinner a little more interesting. Right. Because that's what we could afford at the time. And we couldn't afford back in the day to rent

you know, a two fifty a two dollar fifty cent movie on a Thursday 'cause we'd already rented one on on the Tuesday and we were like, ⁓ we really need to wait until next week. But y yeah, th that wasn't great, but you did it and you were together and you thought, you know

Anna Moreland (57:02)
And I don't wanna romanticize it, but it's it's not it's not it that looms larger, I think, in young people's li minds than it actually is when you're living it.

Brian Williams (57:11)
And I think h his question was, should I get established and get my career and save a bunch of money before I get married? And I and I said no. I said, do that with your spouse. I said we'll live through that together and and you know, that's where you're gonna build your relationship and you know, foundation for the future kind of thing. So hey, so a final question here on this on on the book, leisure. Part of the book is leisure. The central portion is leisure. I asked if we expect too much and too little from love. I think

Sometimes we expect too much from work. You suggest maybe too l little from work. What about leisure? Do we even know what leisure is? I mean I kinda generally think we expect too little from from from like actual leisure. So and what is leisure f in your mind? I mean it's not it's not as I tell my kids, you're not sitting on the couch eating Doritos playing video games. That's not what I mean by leisure.

Anna Moreland (57:59)
No, I mean I the I think the root of leisure is the Sabbath. So ⁓ so it's ⁓ and it's ⁓ an orient the orient the orientation is one of gratitude. So it's an interior it's an interior posture toward the world, fundamentally, that's very in line with the interior posture that you should have toward work. But then that it's not like we're our interior posture is deser divorced from what we do with our bodies. So of course, what we do with our bodies can either

enhance that or not. And mostly what we do with our bodies during leisure, ⁓ doesn't enhance. ⁓ thinking about leisure as Sabbath and as as a sort of celebration of the gift that is life. That sounds totally cheesy when I said it out loud.

Brian Williams (58:41)
Yeah, well so so my question is, okay, what what what's that how how do I if it's a posture, like a receptive attitude, to the goodness of the work.

Anna Moreland (58:48)
Yeah, what we talked about already. Gratitude.

Brian Williams (58:50)
Dude. How how do I how do I nurture that? Yeah. And how do I practice that?

Anna Moreland (58:55)
Yeah. So I talk about pruning and planting. So you've got to prune to you're setting up an interior garden and you have to prune this the the phone is a super predator to the garden. So there's a lot of pruning that has to happen there. Delete Instagram, delete TikTok, right? All of a sudden that like opens up some earth where you can plant. And a lot of the planting for young people in in at least up to now has been recovering childhood practices of leisure. So

18 and 22 year olds used to play music, used to craft, used to draw, used to write, used to do a whole host of things, used to play pickup basketball. So it's a lot of recovery of neglected plants, replant them. And then those become actually a pretty spectacular garden. And that leisure section, those those conversations around leisure and the

promises, the pruning implanting promises that then they schedule send an email to themselves. So a year later after graduation, they receive an email that reminds them of their practice. Which is great because all of a sudden, you know, it's o it's they're in a really different environment and they're reminded about what they're hoping for themselves in leisure.

Brian Williams (59:59)
Is that

So are these these are these are non instrumental kind of practices. Like they're not they're not designed to get you something. It's like a it's like a friendship. I'm not friends with friends for the sake of something else. I'm friends with friends because like it's good in and of itself. So it's finding these kind of things.

Anna Moreland (1:00:16)
One hundred percent.

That's right. And it just an ingredient for living, basically, that's inter in integral to who you are. So whatever that's gonna be and and and I think the root of that is in friendship. It's not that ⁓ some of these don't happen alone in solitude. Of course. But friendship is key, I think. ⁓ I mean, as Aristotle said, is I don't know if friendship's a virtue, not a virtue, but it's indispensable to the life of the virtues, right? So

Brian Williams (1:00:41)
Music, yeah. Reading, yeah, yeah, drawing or something.

And w question here again, just for, you know, thinking about well, I want to ask a question about parents, like how do we help our students not give up those those practices? Right. Cause I mean, Aristotle, back to him, you know, he says it it's so important to learn to feel pleasure and pain at the right things straight from youth. And it seems like one of those things that we want students to feel pleasure towards and and not and maintain their pleasure for these kind of practices.

kind of leisure practices to say what you you can continue these leisure practices into your adult life. And I think, you know, for a lot of our listeners who who who who are adults might be hearing this and thinking, yeah, I've given up all those 'cause I thought I was supposed to, those kind of things that that I enjoyed doing when I was a kid.

Anna Moreland (1:01:41)
That's right. When I go around the country talking about this book, I I've been, and so has Tom, just thrown back on my heels at the breadth of people that it it it speaks to. So I mean, I haven't made you cry, but normally at the end of of one of these speaking engagements, somebody's in tears. And it's somebody generally over forty. Sometimes I I have young people too.

Brian Williams (1:02:06)
Work, leisure, and eros. I mean those those issues I'm we're navigating those, you're navigating those, I'm navigating those, you know, right now and and one of those will likely have gone bad, ⁓ you know, for one person or

Anna Moreland (1:02:19)
And in the US the epidemic of loneliness is not just about eighteen to twenty two year olds. adults are are suffering from it too.

Brian Williams (1:02:26)
And an inability to practice leisure. That's that's not entertainment. I mean George Grant, Canadian philosopher, has this great definition of entertainment as the not disagreeable occupation of my attention. Right. And I and I and I think, yeah, when we don't know how to practice leisure, we default to the not disagreeable occupation of my attention on whatever that happens to be. hey, so on on the podcast here we reflect on discipline, delight, craft and calling.

What's a discipline you practiced ⁓ o over the years that has been kind of life sustaining for you? Is there something you've attended to?

Anna Moreland (1:03:05)
Yeah, so both prayer and exercise. So right now I'm doing the nineteenth annotated ignation spiritual exercises. So I've been doing that for a few months. You tell So I I used to do eight day Ignation silent retreats when I was in graduate school mostly. And then I still do silent retreats but more abbreviated. And this is that eight day but spread over like nine months. So

It's a commitment to daily prayer and journaling and meeting with a spiritual doctor once a week. So definitely prayers that this should be at the center of the whole thing. I've I've messed up with it so many times, right? So right now I'm going through an intense dedication to it, but that hasn't been every season of my life, of course. But it's a desire for it to be at the center. And then exercise. Ever since I was young, I remember I was not that I was a big swimmer at all. So this isn't that kind of thing, but

When I was really young, I would go in the summer and do the swim team first thing in the morning. I'd come back and my mother will reflect this back to me that I'd be like, Ay, Mama, this is the best way to start the day. And the truth is that is still true for me today.

Brian Williams (1:04:17)
Okay. ⁓ so that's discipline. Delight. What delights you?

Anna Moreland (1:04:22)
My husband, my family and my friends. It's true. My husband primarily, but ⁓ and my family, I'd say. Even even those teenagers.

Brian Williams (1:04:32)
Yeah, that's great. discipline, delight, craft. Is there craft you've pursued? Something that you've kinda learned to do? What is it? You knit. Okay. Cats, beanies, gloves.

Anna Moreland (1:04:40)
I knit.

I do, not very well. Yeah,

mostly sweaters. Sweaters Yeah. Yeah, a lot of unfinished projects. Like I get close and then I don't finish. Which is I don't know why. But but anyway, I love knitting. I love going to conferences and knitting.

Brian Williams (1:04:57)
It's kinda had a comeback. I have students who sit in class and knit and first I was like, I'm not what are you doing? And then and then I thought, that's great. That's great. Yeah, okay. knitting. who'd you learn that from? Did you pick it up or did you learn that from a mom or grandmother?

Anna Moreland (1:05:06)
Yeah. ⁓

N well, my mother is a knitter, but ⁓ I don't know, ten years ago maybe Mike and I were on sabbatical at Notre Dame and there's a lot of football watching, American football watching. Yes, there is. And ⁓ I find it very boring. And the wife of a philosophy professor was knitting at a game watch and I was like, ⁓ that's amazing. And so she taught me.

Brian Williams (1:05:32)
Yeah.

You just lost like ninety percent of our listeners who thought you're trying to find something to do to redeem like sitting and watching Notre Dame football. Yeah. Fine. so discipline, delight, craft, and calling. What's your calling, Anna Moreland?

Anna Moreland (1:05:50)
I mean to be a child of God primarily and then a wife and mother and a theologian and teacher. Yeah.

Brian Williams (1:05:57)
Yeah. Good. Thank you. Hey, I'd like to ask guests if there's a a a paragraph or a passage or a poem sometimes that has been meaningful to them over the years. Is there one that comes to mind for you?

Anna Moreland (1:06:12)
There is ⁓ there are a couple. Yeah. Well, the one that I think I shared with you, I don't have it committed to memory. Yep, I have it right here. Okay, perfect. ⁓ read it for it. Perfect. So

Brian Williams (1:06:23)
You can you can you can't.

Right.

Anna Moreland (1:06:28)
That's

awesome. That's perfect. So ⁓ the third Sunday in Ordinary Time in the Catholic Liturgy is coming up, I think this Sunday or next Sunday. And ⁓ this is a previous translation before the latest translation change of the liturgy. And it's just the opening prayer of the Mass. So it's the collect. and it's a prayer that's been meaningful to me for a long time. We'll read it for

Brian Williams (1:06:51)
Yeah, why why it's been meaningful.

Anna Moreland (1:06:53)
So almighty Father, the love you offer always exceeds the furthest expression of our human longing, for you are greater than the human heart. Direct each thought, each effort of our life, so that the limits of our faults and weaknesses may not obscure the vision of your glory or keep us from the peace you have promised.

Brian Williams (1:07:17)
that's wonderful. Wha why why is that prayer of all the prayers kind of res what resonates with you about that over the years?

Anna Moreland (1:07:23)
So this Ignatius ⁓ Jesuit priest who was my mentor and who presided at my wedding and was my everything really in graduate school, ⁓ he used to open class with that prayer. And so it anchors me in a particular time in life that was so instrumental to who I am and in just formative, I would say. So it anchors me also in a time of life when I felt integrated as a human being. So part of it is just

personal narrative, right? But also I just think it's a beautiful player prayer and it's never not tr not what I should be praying, right? So that's still

Brian Williams (1:08:02)
Okay, well thank you. ⁓ and thanks for spending time. Let me get lost in the moment, not thinking about all the things I have left to do today. So I've been talking with Anna Moreland about her book, The Young Adult Playbook, which aspires to help young adults, emerging adults live well in the domains especially of work, leisure, and love. So I'm grateful for this conversation. Thank you.

Anna Moreland (1:08:06)
Thank you for it's been a delight.

Like

with thank you, Brian.

Brian Williams (1:08:29)
And with that we'll wrap it. You've been listening to Forged with Brian Williams, the podcast of the Humanitas Institute about forging well-lived ordinary lives of discipline, delight, craft, and calling. Thanks again, folks.