UWaterloo Alumni Podcasts
UWaterloo Alumni Podcasts
Uncharted: Living a happier life feat. Brian Orend (BA ’94)
In a deeply personal conversation, Brian Orend (BA ’94) opens up about his frustrating journey of medical misdiagnosis after having his first seizure at age 30. Brian's anger motivated him to research happiness and share his findings in a book, which offers practical tips for a more positive life. As a philosophy professor at the University of Waterloo, he's now teaching a course on happiness.
Read more about Brian and other stories about happiness in Waterloo Magazine.
Welcome to Uncharted, a University of Waterloo alumni podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Ferguson. On Uncharted, we feature awesome alumni who open up about their career journeys, the highs and lows, the twists and turns and anything they've learned along the way. On today's episode, we're welcoming Brian Orend.
Brian Orend:The seizures just kept happening, and you know so it made me really miserable and I guess, since I'm an academic guy, I was like you know, I'm going to learn about happiness, because this just sucks.
Jennifer Ferguson:Brian's an alum and a professor at Waterloo. We met up on campus in the philosophy reading room and you might notice I just can't help but smile and laugh around him. Brian has this infectious energy and just radiates happiness. But to say he's dealt with some challenging circumstances is an understatement. It's what inspired him to research happiness and write his book. Brian's story is courageous and if you listen all the way through, you might just pick up a practical tip about how to lead a happier life. Brian, welcome to the podcast.
Brian Orend:Thanks, jennifer, thanks for having me.
Jennifer Ferguson:Let's start by going back to when you were a student at Waterloo. What did you study?
Brian Orend:I did a double major in history and philosophy. What made you choose that? Always the interest in history. But then kind of discovered philosophy later on and just kind of caught the bug and so couldn't. Couldn't choose between the two and felt I was up for the work appetite to do the double major and luckily we have that here where you can absolutely do a couple of the things that you're interested in.
Jennifer Ferguson:That's right Is there a reason that you chose Waterloo to study at.
Brian Orend:Actually, yes, I had my last year of high school. I was in a pilot program that placed there's about five of us here in the region. That placed us with a professor a willing professor at Waterloo, and so I was with John English, who is a legend in the history department. He was a member of parliament and all this kind of stuff, and I just had such a terrific experience with John and I could see further work and study opportunities if I stayed here, right, and so that was that.
Jennifer Ferguson:It's so great that you had that experience.
Brian Orend:Yes, so lucky and it was just a pilot, like the whole thing was just really happy circumstance.
Jennifer Ferguson:And now you're still here on campus. Did you have a break in between, or have you always stayed on campus?
Brian Orend:No, no. So I did all my grad school in New York right. So I went to move to New York City kind of mid late 90s, lived there for four years, had a great time at Columbia and then was lucky enough to get hired straight out of grad school to come back here and be a faculty member.
Jennifer Ferguson:And what do you teach?
Brian Orend:I teach in the philosophy department.
Jennifer Ferguson:And are there any specific classes? People might be listening. Who want to take your classes, brian?
Brian Orend:Yes, Well, I teach all kinds of international justice related things, so human rights stuff, ethics of war and peace stuff. I also teach a bunch of like law classes, like philosophy of law, um, international law related stuff. Um, back when international studies was a thing, I taught a whole bunch of international studies and I teach whatever kind of the philosophy department needs me in terms of like moral issues, political issues, right, so like biomedical ethics, and coming up next year gonna be a brand new course, first year course on happiness wow, that is so cool it's been in development now for like three years.
Brian Orend:So I wrote this book, I wrote a book on it, um well, I guess just like three, four years ago, and then my colleagues were like, oh, we think there might be student demand for this. So then I did it like a kind of grad seminar thing, and then each year we've kind of gone down, like you know. I made it the third year, second year and just you know, trimming the design and figure out how it's going to, how it might work for first year. So next winter is gonna be the first running of phil 125.
Brian Orend:Uh, we'll see how it goes
Jennifer Ferguson:do you have like a tease for it? How? What's? What is the the, the course about in like two sentences, putting you on the spot.
Brian Orend:So it's. The world's been a pretty miserable place for the past four or five years. So sustained, intelligent, research-based look at the nature of happiness and how you can get more happiness in your life Seems to me there should be a lot of demand for that.
Jennifer Ferguson:I would like to take that course.
Brian Orend:Well, we'll see if the students agree or not.
Jennifer Ferguson:Is your book going to be the textbook?
Brian Orend:No.
Jennifer Ferguson:That'd be kind of cool.
Brian Orend:The book is very niche, right. It's about happiness in a certain kind of context, right. So this is intended as a kind of general introduction, right, hitting on a whole bunch of different connections with happiness.
Jennifer Ferguson:Well, let's talk about your book Seizure the Day.
Brian Orend:Yes, seizure the Day
Jennifer Ferguson:What inspired you to write your book.
Brian Orend:I was lecturing when I was 30 years old and I had my very first seizure right in front of a class and just collapsed completely. You can imagine the poor students, right, you know, thought I was like dropping dead of a heart attack, right, but just a seizure, although I was hospitalized for a long time with it and then I had a kind of comedy of errors with misdiagnoses and things like that. So I kept having seizures for years and it had a whole bunch of negative impacts on my life, you know, personal life and things like that. I was able to keep my job though, thankfully, which I'm grateful for, and the seizures just kept happening and you know, so it made me really miserable and I guess, since I'm an academic guy, I was like, you know, I'm going to learn about happiness because this just sucks and I'm going to see if I can, um, improve things that way, because I guess, um, because at the time it was like a medical um brick wall, so we had kind of tried everything and we didn't and nothing seemed to be responding.
Brian Orend:Right now is because of an initial bad medical mistake, right, but at the time we didn't know that, and so I guess that's why it's I'm like well, nothing is working medically, which would be the first choice, so why not read all about happiness and see if I can pick up some things from there? And so, since I did this over years, eventually I had a book's worth of notes and materials. I'm like, well, I'm going to write, I'm going to write it up as a book, why not?
Jennifer Ferguson:Why not? Why not write the?
Brian Orend:book Exactly, exactly.
Jennifer Ferguson:Now, my understanding is that you bring a lot of philosophy into your view on happiness. Can you tell us a bit about that?
Brian Orend:Yeah, well, many of the great philosophers have written about happiness, or at least historically they have. Maybe more current philosophers don't as much. I think all of us have big questions about what is the nature of happiness or what is the nature of unhappiness, what's the connection between happiness and pursuing goals? What's the relationship between happiness and pursuing goals, right? What's the relationship between happiness and relationships? What's the relation between my happiness and the society in which I live and the kind of social institutions that we have, right?
Brian Orend:So I guess I would want to say my philosophical approach is like a small p philosophy, right. So it's not like a big philosophical doctrine kind of thing. It is just a willingness initially to ask kind of open-ended questions about nature of happiness, its relation to other important spheres of life, its relation to just ordinary beliefs, right. So I think one of the good things about philosophy is it can help us ask critical questions about our unreflective beliefs and just push us farther to say, okay, well, maybe you used to think that was happiness and now you realize, well, that was superficial, mistaken or had a kernel of truth, but you didn't know. There's a whole bunch of research that sheds a lot more light on it. Yeah, so I guess a kind of a small P kind of questioning, critical approach to happiness, but in the end aiming at something applicable and sort of like a comprehensive understanding, not just kind of items of knowledge here and there, but trying to tie a kind of coherent approach.
Jennifer Ferguson:I think your story is really inspiring. I mean thanks for being so vulnerable and sharing about your experience teaching and what happened. I'm sure that was a moment that you'll never forget and your students.
Brian Orend:No, no for sure,
Jennifer Ferguson:Not at all either.
Brian Orend:Yeah right,
Jennifer Ferguson:I'm sure that was a moment that you'll never forget, and your students not at all either but to be able to take that and do something positive with it. What was it like during that journey? Because I'm sure there was some desperation in there and some frustration.
Brian Orend:Definitely not really frustration, for sure. Not really desperation, right, sorry, frustration for sure. Not really desperation, right. Um, almost like not enough like time or whatever to be like truly kind of desperate. It was just well, this is a real drag, um, but it was the real rub or the real kind of anger and frustration was sort of kind of I'll tell you, the kind of real scandal.
Brian Orend:So after you have a seizure, immediately they do an MRI on your head, right, because there's essentially two big potential causes, right, it's either heart or it's brain. So that very first seizure, going all the way back when I was 30, in classroom, so the next day they did an MRI, right, and so of course, as you all know, they say, unless we talk to your doctor, there's nothing there. So no one ever contacted any of my doctors. So the assumption then is that it was heart, and so then for years we did all this cardiac testing. This was the assumption, but then the seizures just kept going. So that was very frustrating and eventually I came upon a guy who's like you should not still be having seizures, like the medication should be working, something's not adding up, and he's like we're going to start all over Right from the start, we're going to assume this is your very first seizure, mri. Okay, so we do mri again.
Brian Orend:Then he calls me into his office, right, and this was at western, just kind of down, so the teaching hospital and I knew something was up because when I went in there all of his uh interns were with him. So the doctor was waiting for me with all of his interns, like this is gonna be, they're gonna tell me I'm, I'm a dead man or something like this. Right, um, so he's like so, brian, I've got bad news for you. And so I'm like okay, they're gonna tell me, but I'm gonna die, or something like that. And he's like here's the image that we just took. So up comes my brain, but a nice new kind of color image, crystal clear, like a piece of chalk brain tumor, right there, right. And he says and I went to the other hospital who did your first MRI, like five years ago. So this is like five years later and I was able to get that very first image. Here's that first image. And he calls it up the tumor is right there, clear as day, like a child could see it. So the only way that they could have missed it is that they never looked at it that first time. So imagine five years laboring under a thing.
Brian Orend:Is this heart doing like? I had procedures, I still got scars and all these different medications, and still so, anyway, to hook it back to your thing, not quite desperation, but frustration. And then, when I found that out, because that's just medical negligence, like that's just, let's just look at the screen like, um, there's no way a trained again like anyone could see it, right, much less a trained oncologist. Right, because so. But as they say, anger is a great motivator, right? So, you know, you're just angry at the lack of progress. And then this you realize you've I don't know what's, you've been victim, I don't know. Victimizes a dramatic word, but you've, uh, had this happen to you, right, as a result of the health care system. And so then you just resolve that, okay, no one's going to make me better and I just have to try to make myself better, right, and that's. And then thus starts the research journey.
Brian Orend:Um, that led to the book
Jennifer Ferguson:wow
Brian Orend:yeah
Jennifer Ferguson:to be able to take that anger and, like I'm angry for you.
Brian Orend:Thank you
Jennifer Ferguson:as you tell this story,
Brian Orend:right because of course it is.
Brian Orend:We have beliefs about the Canadian health care system and its quality and those sorts of things aren't supposed to happen. Right like. Those are just those are obvious things.
Brian Orend:Right like
Jennifer Ferguson:yeah and I think you know what you're sharing. A lot of people have felt that anger before maybe not with the healthcare system, but in some way they've felt this anger. And to be able to go past that, yeah, that's that's the hard bridge there. Is that something that we can get help for in your book, because I feel like I need to take a look at that book.
Brian Orend:Maybe I think it's In the closing section of the book. I talk about the importance of courage, and I think that that's. I don't know. I certainly didn't feel courageous during the whole process. It's just one foot in front of the other, just dogged, just a determination to improve. But then I think, once you see improvements though, then it feeds on itself right, and then progress happens right. So that's kind of encouraging. But I think at know at least in my experience really the anger was the short-term motivation Like that kind of had to happen for things to change.
Jennifer Ferguson:I really appreciate you sharing all of your story. I'm wondering with your book, have you had people reach out to you and tell you how your book has affected them or changed them or brought them a new perspective?
Brian Orend:I have. I have, if they're going to read my book and then if they're going to take the step to try to contact me, they have an intensely personal reaction or some kind of association. So you just wouldn't believe all the kinds of stories. They're all very touching in their own kinds of ways, but it's hard to know of a pattern. I had. People say you should have said more about courage all the way through and not left it till they to the big kind of conclusion. So if I do a second edition I'm going to keep that in mind. Other people talk about like specific, like tips I have or advice I have, and they said that worked for me. Um, some of them just kind of commiserate um, like, especially right so I had seizures, right so, um, so by definition I'm epileptic. The tumor is benign, by the way. I guess I should have said we're glad to hear that.
Brian Orend:Yes, yeah yeah, so, um, so I've had a lot of epileptics reach out to me and or even I've had things of like, um, the spouses of epileptics or the children of epileptics say, you know, like we were just in despair and there was no kind of book that even remotely kind of talks about this stuff, and they would share like heartbreaking stories. Yeah, so it's always really nice and lovely, but it's always, you know, like touching and even sort of upsetting to see what everyone kind of goes through.
Jennifer Ferguson:It is. Yeah, I do have a question for you that I want to finish up with here. So if you could give one piece of advice to someone who's suffering from illness on how to live a happy life, what would that piece of advice be?
Brian Orend:I have a bunch, but if I Happy, life is a big thing Happier, more achievable. So if I had to only just one thing, one piece of advice, I would say buy yourself a notebook Over the next month. Take careful notes of everything that increases your pleasure or happiness and take careful notes of everything that makes you sad. Read the notebook. So do that every day over the course of a month. Read the book at the end and then change your behavior. Do more of what makes you happy, do less of what makes you unhappy, and that will at least help build you up to take the kind of longer term steps.
Jennifer Ferguson:Brian, it has been such a pleasure talking to you and thank you for sharing your courageous journey. It is indeed courageous.
Brian Orend:Oh, thank you, You're very kind, jennifer.
Jennifer Ferguson:UWaterloo alumni podcasts are produced and hosted by me, jennifer Ferguson. Brian's story is part of the happiness edition of Waterloo Magazine. You can read more at uwaterloo. ca/ magazine. Don't forget to follow, like and subscribe wherever you listen and for more alumni content, go to uwaterloo. ca/ alumni.