Balancing Self and Society

0:00 [SPEAKER_05]: We all have that one friend, the one who says exactly what's on their mind, no matter what, and that's Sheedle Mars. [SPEAKER_03]: That's right, every week my friends and I dive into whatever's on my mind, sports, politics, pop culture, even my own struggles, you name it. [SPEAKER_03]: If I'm thinking about it, we're talking about it. [SPEAKER_05]: Unfiltered, unapologetic, and just a little dangerous. [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome back to another episode of Sheeple Weapon. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm Leethel Sheeple, right? [SPEAKER_03]: And what a great blessing I have is that Eric from our last episode has designed to join me again.

0:47 [SPEAKER_03]: Yep. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a continue talking to me. [SPEAKER_03]: This is like a dream come true. [SPEAKER_03]: And he's still here. [SPEAKER_03]: So you must enjoy it. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_03]: So Eric is back with us last episode. [SPEAKER_03]: We kind of got in deep about who we are as people in our soul and everything else. [SPEAKER_03]: And the first episode that I did with you we're talking about meditations and accepting the flood of thoughts that come to your mind and [SPEAKER_03]: what it means to meditate, what it means to slow down all of those things. [SPEAKER_03]: And I told you, I struggle with it. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I thought it meant stillness, calmness, and yet. [SPEAKER_03]: And I told you in the last episode, typically I don't listen to my episodes. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't like the sound of my voice.

1:28 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know about that. [SPEAKER_03]: I listened to that episode from last year. [SPEAKER_03]: And if anybody hasn't listened to it, I strongly advise you to, because there was a lot in there. [SPEAKER_03]: And it helped me process the fact that I can let the flood and the flood and the flood some of whatever Confias crap shows up in my mind. [SPEAKER_03]: And some of them, it's a roller coaster of positive and negative, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, there's parts of it where it's like, you can do this, you've got this, it's everything is doable. [SPEAKER_03]: What you think is 18 hours of work is actually six minutes. [SPEAKER_03]: You need to just like, there's some of that. [SPEAKER_03]: And then then there's the part that go, why you even come home.

2:11 [SPEAKER_03]: Nobody wants you here. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh yeah, I'm familiar with that one. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's like, who the hell are you? [SPEAKER_03]: You don't really hear. [SPEAKER_03]: And then, there's a dude in the internet. [SPEAKER_02]: Yep. [SPEAKER_03]: I should learn to make salad or bread. [SPEAKER_02]: Whatever the latest jingle is. [SPEAKER_03]: Then it goes back to you. [SPEAKER_03]: What am I supposed to do today? [SPEAKER_03]: Do I have a meeting stick? [SPEAKER_02]: No. [SPEAKER_03]: What time is it? [SPEAKER_03]: Oh crap. [SPEAKER_03]: Do I have time to take a shower? [SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely not. [SPEAKER_03]: Who started the Spanish inquisition? [SPEAKER_03]: He's got me. [SPEAKER_03]: When he said, I make you in my image, if it was the Indian lady, like, I'm short, he's got a... How tall is he?

2:53 [SPEAKER_03]: He's kind of gotten a range. [SPEAKER_02]: Is it he? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it is. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: So... [SPEAKER_03]: that you just saw a snippet two and a half minutes snippet of my meditation. [SPEAKER_03]: That's me meditating. [SPEAKER_03]: And last time we talked, you were like, let it be. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Don't try to control it. [SPEAKER_03]: Don't try to stop the words from showing up in your head or images and colors and smells and sounds like I'm a full sensory person. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So I feel everything [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And that was kind of life changing for me. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, it really was. [SPEAKER_03]: And now I think about the last episode we did together, talking about our soul and our spirit and what's good for it.

3:41 [SPEAKER_03]: And finding grace for it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think we ended on talking about you with your children at night and where you need the most energy because this is a moment of need. [SPEAKER_03]: finding a way to say, whether I've met that need or not in that moment with my children, he's okay. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And I will tell you, I probably will go back and listen, probably to both episodes again, stomaching the sound of my own words, to pull out those nuggets that I think have helped me part of doing this show this. [SPEAKER_03]: is my sole right me doing this is purely for me.

4:25 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not monetizing it despite the efforts that the sober vegetarian would be so proud of product right so the the rush of commercialism has not come to me in the show and yet I have spent a lot of money on puffy bikes [SPEAKER_03]: And equipment where I can put sound effects in this thing. [SPEAKER_02]: That's really cool. [SPEAKER_03]: This is. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh freaking. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, next in a year You're gonna see me with like a sound. [SPEAKER_03]: You're like why? [SPEAKER_03]: Why not? [SPEAKER_03]: Why not? [SPEAKER_03]: So I do this for everybody that asked me about the show. [SPEAKER_03]: What's it about? [SPEAKER_03]: I do this for me.

5:06 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, no. [SPEAKER_03]: I do I talk about the things I care about. [SPEAKER_03]: I talk about things that matter. [SPEAKER_03]: because it helps me process and it helps my soul. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's okay. [SPEAKER_03]: So I think you for participating in it. [SPEAKER_01]: Of course. [SPEAKER_03]: And I hope you're having a good time. [SPEAKER_01]: I am. [SPEAKER_01]: These are the types of the conversations that I don't get to have all the time, because when you [SPEAKER_01]: meet with people out in the world, I mean, everybody's, I've given a scoop of doubt, scoop of divert analogy before everybody's at a different depth that they're willing to socialize it. [SPEAKER_01]: And some, for me, what I've learned how to try to do, [SPEAKER_01]: is become a scuba-diver where I can go up and down.

5:50 [SPEAKER_01]: I come up to meet you wherever you want to be. [SPEAKER_01]: And we'll, we can dive down as deep as you want to go. [SPEAKER_01]: And I can talk at all the different levels. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: That's how I am, too. [SPEAKER_03]: And I find myself often, and I think because of the world we live in is so haptic. [SPEAKER_03]: We have families, and we have work, and we have obligations. [SPEAKER_03]: And so much of our life is dedicated to our obligations that we can't. [SPEAKER_03]: allow ourselves to go deep deep requires time. [SPEAKER_03]: That's true. [SPEAKER_03]: It requires effort. [SPEAKER_03]: It requires compassion to engage in a deep conversation that I find that in our go-go-go-go world, [SPEAKER_03]: in our go-go-go-go life, we don't have the energy for it.

6:33 [SPEAKER_03]: But most people don't have the energy for it, and that's not a knock on them. [SPEAKER_03]: For me, I tend to essentially have conversations with myself, because the thoughts are there. [SPEAKER_03]: And if I don't get them out, and I do things like, I think we talk about journaling at once in one of our episodes. [SPEAKER_03]: I tend to let it, a thought will roommate in my mind. [SPEAKER_03]: over, over, over and over again. [SPEAKER_03]: And even if I'm processing it, even if I'm meditating with it, unless I articulate it and out of my body, so that's either verbally or written. [SPEAKER_03]: And in some cases, especially when I'm processing your trauma or deep feelings, like, [SPEAKER_03]: I tend to lean into artistic expressions, don't be drawing or poetry or painting or engaging and things like that, because the words aren't, they don't make perfect.

7:26 [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And there's no other way for me to get it out of myself, the experience. [SPEAKER_03]: And then I feel a sense of relief once it's done. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think it's a good analogy. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I can meet you where you're at. [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: because that's kind of what I wanted here is like, okay, we can stay surface. [SPEAKER_03]: We can talk about kids and diapers and play dates. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a lot of things we can talk all day about that, but we can also go and talk about what is so. [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And isn't that part of being human is tackling those questions [SPEAKER_03]: and possibly never coming to an answer for just the process of talking about it is enriching in another self.

8:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's an act of vulnerability no matter what depth you're meeting yourself at. [SPEAKER_01]: And well, and that's how I try to meet it is like all I can do is give you my perspective on my lived experiences one way or the other. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I can only talk to things from the point that I've seen and witnessed them in myself. [SPEAKER_01]: And so if we are just talking about kids or the weather, whatever, I can just, I, there's only so much that I can say about that kind of stuff that that but [SPEAKER_01]: because it's coming from my authentic point of view. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, yes, the weather is nice. [SPEAKER_01]: I do prefer it a little chili but not cold. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, okay, yeah, we can get to that point and then what? [SPEAKER_01]: And then what? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

8:52 [SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of people have not spent the time watching their emotional reactions of things. [SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people have not spent the time watching their mind without being attached to the thought as, quote, unquote, their thoughts. [SPEAKER_01]: standing, daily meditation practice is hearing the thoughts just like a radio or a podcast like these things come across, I can take them or leave them but none of them remind. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying my best not to hold any sense of allegiance to anything I hear. [SPEAKER_01]: And so if we are to talk about consciousness or soul stuff like you have to have some first hand experience in order to have these kind of conversations about it. [SPEAKER_01]: And I think most people do, they have glimpses of times where they have been super aware or super present, where the experience felt different or more at ease or chill.

9:44 [SPEAKER_01]: And I always point people to like, on long car rides, like those times where you do have no choice, but to like be sitting present with your mind and everything just kind of zones out and you're just there with the road driving and you're listening onto these thoughts [SPEAKER_01]: 20 miles away and you're like, I don't know how I did that. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know where I got. [SPEAKER_03]: Bruce will say it all the time because I get in the car and it's like I'm transported to another race. [SPEAKER_03]: I unless I'm driving I won't engage in conversation even like it's I sit my butt down. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm staring in front of me. [SPEAKER_03]: I am not anywhere on the surface. [SPEAKER_03]: I am so deep in my own thoughts and consciousness that I am completely unaware of the world.

10:28 [SPEAKER_03]: And he's like wanting to talk. [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm... [SPEAKER_03]: way in here for being out here in the surface is not where I get it. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And so when I'm driving, I have to say a little bit more towards the surface because I'm driving. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And so I am more talkative when I'm driving. [SPEAKER_03]: But even in that case, I want the subject matter to be deeper. [SPEAKER_02]: Substantate. [SPEAKER_03]: And because it's a long drive, you have the time to do so. [SPEAKER_03]: I think we started last episode about that. [SPEAKER_03]: How hard it is to get together in our interactions with people, even your own family, how short they are. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And so most of my interactions, even with my husband, I think it plays into why even relationships are so hard to maintain.

11:13 [SPEAKER_02]: That's true. [SPEAKER_03]: Is the brief moments when we're together, [SPEAKER_03]: are so small and they're so fleeting like it's 10 minutes before we go to work it's 10 minutes before we go to sleep it's five minutes in discussing what we're having for dinner it's constantly these little brief moments of time communicate or it's text but we're using that time and what we think of as the most efficient way which is talking about logistics. [SPEAKER_02]: Great. [SPEAKER_03]: What's your day like? [SPEAKER_03]: When will you be home? [SPEAKER_03]: Are you making dinner tonight? [SPEAKER_03]: Do we have a birthday party again? [SPEAKER_03]: Are you traveling next week?

11:55 [SPEAKER_03]: Like the 90% of our conversation is legit. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And just the bolt nuts and bolts of living life. [SPEAKER_03]: And it never is. [SPEAKER_03]: How do you feel about how do you feel about your life? [SPEAKER_03]: Do we have time? [SPEAKER_03]: Can we sit and talk about our feelings that are alive and connect on a deeper level other than the fact that my shirts are wrinkled and we need laundry. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I think that's the crux of our socialization and even that's just internal with our family where we live with them. [SPEAKER_03]: Now imagine those moments of connection with our friends or family that doesn't look with you are even less.

12:40 [SPEAKER_01]: I think the matter of prioritization actually, like I think that, it's from where your perspective is on what you view as you. [SPEAKER_01]: I give you see yourself as [SPEAKER_01]: this person, this little person and going through it's daily life and this little body, doing these tasks, going to work, coming to doing these things. [SPEAKER_01]: If you prioritize that as what you define yourself to be new, then that is what you're going to put first. [SPEAKER_01]: But if you start to try this and this is everything starts with this self. [SPEAKER_01]: If you and yourself, [SPEAKER_01]: start to try to see yourself is more than that. [SPEAKER_01]: Like see yourself is the background on which like maybe I witnessed my body going through life doing all this stuff.

13:25 [SPEAKER_01]: But can I sit back here and also pay attention to not only the subject matter of what's going on, but the heart on how it feels about these the feelings as they are expressing themselves during the motions or the storyline of whatever is going on or behind the [SPEAKER_01]: ticking by like a ticker on a news program or whatever it is. [SPEAKER_01]: Like we would watch a movie. [SPEAKER_04]: Like, [SPEAKER_01]: When we sit in an audience as an audience member and watch these movies, we're seeing the storyline going through. [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that real appeal to sitting in a theater and watching movies is you get sucked into it and you have no stake in it. [SPEAKER_01]: So you have no choice but to be with the emotions that are intended to get brought up through this art, through this cinema.

14:07 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think if the more you make it a practice of watching my life unfold like it is a show or a movie. [SPEAKER_01]: Eric just happens to be the central character that I'm following around, but there's so many other characters that come across and I'm watching my feelings and other things that flare up as they come in and I'm like we talked about in that last episode I'm allowing those feelings to have their space to do what they want to do and any given point without me needing to read well Eric needing to react to it in real time Eric the character having to do anything about it I can just let my feelings come up and notice it that's interesting [SPEAKER_01]: And then if I don't have the time to right then maybe I can deal with it later with intellectualizing it, but just the fact of I'm letting these things process as they come up.

14:51 [SPEAKER_01]: It gives me the perspective of, I'm more than just that character. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm what notices this character. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm what experiences life through this character. [SPEAKER_01]: I experience these emotions through this character. [SPEAKER_01]: I experience this thought through this character. [SPEAKER_01]: Then I make myself available in conversation to, if some of the, one of the guys I listened to around us, he always says, give people a space to where, if they want to come up for air, they can, they feel safe doing it around you. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how I try to live my life [SPEAKER_01]: If I'm cultivating some presence and spaciousness inside of me to let all this stuff go through, then I know [SPEAKER_01]: that now that I've held space for myself with hard and feelings, I know I can hold space for somebody else that they come to me with the same thing.

15:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Because now I have a reference point. [SPEAKER_01]: I have felt how hard heartbreak is. [SPEAKER_01]: I have felt how hard grief is. [SPEAKER_01]: I felt how hard loneliness is. [SPEAKER_01]: And it may not be caused by the same set of circumstances, but deep down underneath the circumstances is, all we have is the feeling. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's what everybody's acting off of and that's what everybody's reacting to or trying to avoid in some cases. [SPEAKER_01]: underneath everything that happens. [SPEAKER_01]: It always comes back to feeling. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Because I say, think about all of our life is comprised, all of what we know as our life is comprises of nothing but memories. [SPEAKER_01]: And when you think back in your mind on the memories of events that happen, I have I can have [SPEAKER_01]: hardly picture the scenery.

16:17 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, maybe I'll have a snapshot here and there if it's like certain, it's almost like a bookmark on YouTube videos, something like maybe I have a thumbnail image, but I don't really, I don't vaguely remember what was actually happening, I definitely don't remember what was said most of the time, but I do remember how those things made me feel, and if all I'm going to remember about current events that happened in my life is how it made me feel, then why not [SPEAKER_03]: And I think so much of what we're experiencing in today's society is telling you and I think women get more of a past with it, but even women are trying to say we need to be logical and that we're not supposed to feel that the feeling of an emotion.

17:04 [SPEAKER_03]: is actually something to avoid. [SPEAKER_03]: We shouldn't feel. [SPEAKER_03]: Feeling as vulnerable, feeling as weakness. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think a lot of men get that language and not as much women but to a certain extent. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And for girls, and for women, it would be, don't feel bad. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Like when you feel sad, that's you being a motion when you feel those things. [SPEAKER_03]: It is something [SPEAKER_03]: If you're feeling sad or bad about something, it means something about you is wrong and you need to figure out how not to feel bad. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And so I think we're trying very hard not to feel as a people. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And when in reality, [SPEAKER_03]: feeling is the point.

17:47 [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Feeling is the point to what you've just said and I want to take that with me is what you're left with of your life is a collection of emotions. [SPEAKER_03]: I had a thought recently because I've been trying to write you've been encouraging James to write a book and I told you that I was writing something to you. [SPEAKER_03]: And in it, [SPEAKER_03]: Again, I'm taking it from a fictional standpoint outside of myself. [SPEAKER_03]: It's not really me, but it's kind of my thoughts on things. [SPEAKER_03]: It's great. [SPEAKER_03]: Is this idea of the purpose of life is to be seen living it? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And [SPEAKER_03]: That thought just occurred to me very randomly and my nightly.

18:30 [SPEAKER_03]: Why am I up? [SPEAKER_03]: Why am I laying in a puddle of my own sweat? [SPEAKER_01]: Those are the fast songs. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's like that it literally was clear as day like on past my brain. [SPEAKER_03]: The point of living is to be seen living it and to be witnessed living it. [SPEAKER_03]: You come out of yourself and you see yourself as the character, you see yourself in the movie of your own life and you're living it. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's building this kind of tapestry that's hard. [SPEAKER_03]: And at the end of your life, you will have created something that is supposed to be it's seen and experienced. [SPEAKER_03]: Like we're not supposed to be isolated. [SPEAKER_03]: Like the idea of life of I wake up, [SPEAKER_03]: I go from my bed, I take a shower, I sit in my desk and I've never left six square feet.

19:20 [SPEAKER_03]: And no one else is supposed to be present in this space with me. [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's fundamentally unhuman. [SPEAKER_02]: I think so, I agree. [SPEAKER_03]: And we're kind of, we keep going in the direction I feel of trying to make ourselves do more and more and more. [SPEAKER_03]: in the small amount of space, the least amount of people. [SPEAKER_03]: When I feel, my heart is telling me, and my soul and my spirit is telling me, the opposite is, right. [SPEAKER_03]: That we should be bidding more for connection, we should be making more time for connection. [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And that connection doesn't have to be transactional.

20:01 [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Hey, I need a spreadsheet. [SPEAKER_03]: Hey, I sent you a spreadsheet. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Authentic expression. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Expression. [SPEAKER_03]: He's fresh. [SPEAKER_03]: Of beauty. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And exchange. [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: You should feel hurt when I'm hurt and feel joy when I'm joy. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And that process of us doing that over and over with people in general is actually enriching, beneficial to humanity. [SPEAKER_03]: And we should be trying to spend less time in our houses and more time, outside and more time with people. [SPEAKER_01]: I try to think of it like our authentic expressions of feeling are as an energy source, like emotions, energy in motion.

20:48 [SPEAKER_01]: And so we can tap into our own battery or energy source as it will by being into with our own authentic expressions of our feelings. [SPEAKER_01]: But then there's an exchange that happens with energy when you are now allowing that energy to flow in between to be full by two people fully expressing their authentic. [SPEAKER_01]: And not only am I opening myself up to receive, [SPEAKER_01]: when somebody is expressing their souls, then I get a chance to open up and express myself and they receive, this is just exchange of energy and it feels, I feel like at least both people leave in the situation and enjoy.

21:28 [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, and it's almost that experience of resonant freedom. [SPEAKER_01]: Right, exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: Are we vibing? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Like when you vibe with somebody, because I don't think [SPEAKER_03]: when we're engaging in relationships, especially in the modern sense of dating apps and whatever. [SPEAKER_03]: This idea of walking into a situation without a preconceived notion of what the outcome needs to be and just check in the vibes yeah can we relate as people This isn't a transaction of do you want to go home with me do you want the lobster it's not that it's Tell me why you are the person right yeah, and I'm going to tell you why I am the person I am through my lived experience certain areas we won't exactly and [SPEAKER_03]: It's some people don't vibe like their energies just don't go together.

22:21 [SPEAKER_03]: I find your energy to it. [SPEAKER_03]: You have to find the war. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: You resonate with. [SPEAKER_03]: And then you're to your point when you have a conversation that goes deeper than the logistics. [SPEAKER_03]: It goes deeper than the economics. [SPEAKER_03]: It goes deeper than just the here and now in reality of what's tangible. [SPEAKER_03]: You've you've created this frequency this exchange. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: through the exchange itself, you come out of that experience feeling lighter, feeling brighter, and be more energized, even for introverts. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: That's the argument that the pieces I will have is that even for people who say I don't like people, even they benefit from those connections.

23:04 [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: I saw the meme one time it says like I come to find out I did it's not that I didn't like social interaction I just didn't like going to bars or is not like I think like social interaction It's just I like being around the people I vibe with I like doing the things that I like to do and that stuff does energy I was mean but going out. [SPEAKER_01]: I think the thing that exhaust people about other people [SPEAKER_01]: isn't the self or the soul that they get exhaustive, this is the mess. [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody is presenting with a certain mess and everybody is just doing the things that society is taught them as supposed to be fun and some people is not like I don't find it fun to sit and be at a bar and watch people drink and like I do now but like back in the book.

23:49 [SPEAKER_01]: Now because I'm watching it from a different perspective, I don't feel like I have three young children. [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: I watch it from a different perspective now. [SPEAKER_01]: I try to actually, that is one of the more fun places to be when you're trying to meet people at a deep level because their inhibitions have been lower. [SPEAKER_01]: And they are willing to meet you there. [SPEAKER_01]: But like, I was at that point. [SPEAKER_01]: I... [SPEAKER_01]: That stuff doesn't energize me if we're just meeting at a surface level and talking about the weather or talking about the sports games Which I will do. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just fine. [SPEAKER_01]: I love to talk about that kind of stuff But there's a there's a a deeper like if we really want to get to their soil the rich soil of it Like you can't just tell spit-off acts to me or you can't just tell me like don't present me what you think you like these most digestible like I want to know like what you how you really felt about like why like [SPEAKER_01]: Jill will say I do a really good job of asking podcasts questions during conversations like follow up like you don't we need to You're gonna continue because ADHD is making me interrupt you.

24:50 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean I could take this What I always enjoy about conversations with you, especially whether it's here or out in the world is you ask those probing questions Then allow a person to say [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, one you want to know, like it's not like you're making conversation polite, but you want to know you've actually interesting, but giving that opportunity for someone to express themselves and then you play you come back with it and so if I were to do more episodes with you, I would actually. [SPEAKER_03]: flip the main mics and let you take over some of that because it is so I found it so beneficial in our conversations and our relationship.

25:34 [SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the things that like when we talk about our lives being an opportunity to express our lived experiences of often said like in my TikTok videos like each of our lives I view as a piece of artwork. [SPEAKER_01]: is like, we have, and in that same vein, all artwork is spiritual in nature because it is an expression of a life lived and what is life being lived if not spiritual in nature. [SPEAKER_01]: And so the best artistic expressions are those that express somebody's authentic feelings that they had in certain moments. [SPEAKER_01]: that cannot necessarily be explained in words. [SPEAKER_01]: So now words is a medium also to be doing it, but other people use all types of forms of artistic expression as mediums in order to take a snapshot of their or emotional configuration at any given moment, at any given time.

26:28 [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I love that so many of my friends writing books and stuff like that now, because like I said, a life lived in itself is [SPEAKER_01]: an artistic piece for me. [SPEAKER_01]: It's as good as any movie. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I love sitting and listening to people's stories because the longer you let people talk and the more you're like asked probing questions about like people's backgrounds and then the wise behind it all every single life, every single story is amazing both twists and turns and and these synchronicities and these all these events that had to happen exactly the way they did for somebody to get to where they were. [SPEAKER_01]: And it makes you realize in your own life how many things had to happen exactly the way that they did to get you where you were. [SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, could not have happened any differently.

27:10 [SPEAKER_01]: As I just, I love listening to people's stories. [SPEAKER_01]: And like, I'll be out anywhere and ask people about their stories. [SPEAKER_01]: Just because I found them all so fascinating. [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think people realize themselves how fascinating the stories are until they have to start telling. [SPEAKER_03]: Hey, Kripp. [SPEAKER_03]: Tell that story. [SPEAKER_03]: Or that we're supposed to keep more private than we do. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think the things we share, it's such a public world, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like everybody is posting what sandwich they eat. [SPEAKER_03]: And where they post to the minute where their location is, what they're doing. [SPEAKER_03]: And we think we're living these very public lives. [SPEAKER_03]: We think we're telling these very public stories in my life as an open book. [SPEAKER_03]: But the life that you're sharing is very curated.

27:50 [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And we don't. [SPEAKER_03]: come on our podcasts or our social media. [SPEAKER_03]: And go, I'm crying. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm experienced all of this. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm crying thing and I'm the asshole. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: We don't want to share that part. [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And share the part where we're vulnerable and we're not our perfect self. [SPEAKER_03]: We could be making mistakes. [SPEAKER_03]: I believe that every person has the capacity to [SPEAKER_03]: do something, say something, be something wrong, and any given moment, but the aggregation of all of that does not, you can't look at one moment and say, that's a good person, bad person.

28:33 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Anybody can have a weak moment. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Anybody can yell, anybody can say an insensitive thing. [SPEAKER_03]: That one insensitive thing doesn't now negate the fact that you take care of so much, you care so much. [SPEAKER_03]: And you let one bit of vitriol or flux from your mind come out of your mouth and now it's over. [SPEAKER_03]: But we do, we curate this thing, this image of self and we think that's us sharing ourselves. [SPEAKER_03]: And we think that the connections we're forming on our curated selves, in our virtual world is the same. [SPEAKER_03]: as the connections we can form by sitting people in the same room.

29:16 [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And I find that to be a more fascinating thing. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And once hear the two of us in the same room, I like this better. [SPEAKER_03]: Me too. [SPEAKER_03]: It feels different. [SPEAKER_03]: It feels better. [SPEAKER_03]: It feels more impactful. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to leave this room. [SPEAKER_03]: feeling more energized even though that this is very mentally taxing, not in a battle that I'm using a lot of mental energy to do it, but I'm going to feel energized. [SPEAKER_03]: That's right. [SPEAKER_03]: Whereas I don't get the same enrichment from a great conversation that happens over it. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I get that. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that the people that I find actually even online, the people that I find most appealing are the ones who are the most authentic like with expressing the messy parts of themselves, even online.

30:02 [SPEAKER_01]: I think that energy, like we said, energy exchange seems to be real. [SPEAKER_01]: There are if you think about [SPEAKER_01]: what everything is made of on particular small levels. [SPEAKER_01]: That's how I try to think about things. [SPEAKER_01]: This is like, I'm not this one solid self sitting at this one solid table or whatever. [SPEAKER_01]: This is trillions of atoms all co-mingling with the, and with this energy, have you ever seen the thing that said that like, when we touch something physical, we're not even actually touching the object. [SPEAKER_01]: We're just feeling the magnetic pressure against things. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, there's actually, there's infinite space. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: I was going to say, if you go down that rabbit hole, it's about space and put, yes, that everything we think is tangible is not tangible.

30:52 [SPEAKER_03]: And what I also, this is something I subscribe to. [SPEAKER_03]: And people may not, when I do this, I'm leaving Adams. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: So there's a resonance. [SPEAKER_03]: of my existence as I move through and people are walking through the atoms that used to be in me all day and we think that that doesn't impact us but this movement of energy. [SPEAKER_03]: this movement of a physical matter, because the Natham is matter something now is with you. [SPEAKER_03]: And I have attracted a different version of oxygen. [SPEAKER_03]: It's a different Natham. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Like that doesn't have an impact.

31:34 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And my thesis is that shared space. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Matter specifically, to lots of animals or mammals or any kind of species on the planet. [SPEAKER_03]: especially human. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: We are especially attuned to the energies and the relationships and the connections formed by physically present with one another. [SPEAKER_03]: And so I had a question for you because you and I, again, hard to come together, lots of busy lives, I get mixed messaging both societally and from my friends. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to leave my house. [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to get it. [SPEAKER_03]: If you ask me come over in 9 p.m.

32:15 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm up. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: But I want to. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: There's a part of me that absolutely wants. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: There's a part of me that thinks that would be beneficial to me. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm so busy, so busy. [SPEAKER_03]: I want to connect. [SPEAKER_03]: I want to spend time with my friends and my family. [SPEAKER_03]: And then I don't. [SPEAKER_03]: And then there's the part of me going, I ain't even. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to leave don't want to talk to people and this desperate hope and desire to leave and go out there and talk to people. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And so where do you find one society. [SPEAKER_03]: It's leaning.

32:56 [SPEAKER_03]: Are you thinking we're heading a one direction or the other. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, and where do you land personally when you're being pulled in these two directions? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so as far as the personal question is concerned now, I think before, like before my divorce, I think of everything pre-divore supposed to work. [SPEAKER_01]: Pre-divore's I was very much in the camp of [SPEAKER_01]: Leave me at home alone. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to go do anything. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I'm much more comfortable in my space at home And I think that's just because like we sit at if I'm read that's the time where I don't have to put on a mask That's the time where I'm recharging my battery [SPEAKER_01]: And I was in the mind space before something must have been wrong with me that I didn't like being in these social situations where everybody else seems appeared to love.

33:46 [SPEAKER_01]: They appear to love, they do this kind of stuff. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: Right, I agree now that the more that I've watched myself and watch other people closely I get that like I'm not so different than anybody else everybody's feeling the same stuff They're just everybody's there's massive because that's the way that society makes it seem like yeah But before I didn't think that and I was like this just drains me I don't want to be how doing this like I don't this like being out and I think another part of it was being in that same space [SPEAKER_01]: I think I got overwhelmed about other people's energies. [SPEAKER_01]: I like, because I am my type of autism. [SPEAKER_01]: I like, I notice patterns real well. [SPEAKER_01]: And so like I watch, like I people watch a lot.

34:27 [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like able to pick up on all the little micro like things and people's, but it's so fun. [SPEAKER_03]: But like it can be overseen, but it can be so fun. [SPEAKER_01]: Right, exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I love it now. [SPEAKER_01]: But then back, I didn't know how to separate. [SPEAKER_01]: So I've always had to think a hard thing with boundaries. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I didn't know how to separate like as like somewhat of a natural impact that I guess you could say, but like as someone who does try to feel things like when I watch movies I'm in that I'm feeling exactly what they're feeling so like being out in these situations. [SPEAKER_01]: like where people are kind of allowing themselves to be like express a lot, but I'm noticing all these little microphones that are like they're the vibe that I'm picking up off of them isn't matching the expressions on their faces and I just want to know more, but like I'm not going to go up and ask them like what their childhood dramas are.

35:14 [SPEAKER_03]: It should look like your mother wasn't. [SPEAKER_01]: And that kind of, I think that exhausted me. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I would much rather be in my own little insulated space at that. [SPEAKER_01]: Then when I was back then, like, the where, like, I didn't, I wasn't picking up on all this stuff. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't have to worry about it. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm just with me. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm chilling. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm cool. [SPEAKER_01]: But now, so post divorce, I found socialization to me, to me, to be much more survival-based. [SPEAKER_01]: I was doing this all alone, I was doing this all alone, and coming from like what we talked about in the last episode where I was taking up a lot of the parenting responsibilities anyway, [SPEAKER_01]: My feelings over the situation at the time.

36:02 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm going through this huge grief and like somewhat of a depression Like I'm not eating like and I'm like breaking down every few minutes like and then like and I've talked about I think I said this on the last bit Because you and Bruce came through like angels at that time for me because y'all would let Roland come over and play and just give me a little bit of space So where I wasn't like [SPEAKER_01]: Dealing with his needs and then trying not to break down on myself and like so that was the first like clue to me It was like I was like oh like we really do need other people like we really do need people to pick us up When we're like when we're down like when we don't have it all together [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and it's like the first time I ever really understood like having a crew like having the village like I didn't really because you know me My first instinct is like I'm gonna do this all my own.

36:47 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not finna burning anybody with taking up my stuff [SPEAKER_03]: You wouldn't ask for help. [SPEAKER_03]: Like you wouldn't say I need help with your own right. [SPEAKER_03]: I think if somebody says that There's automatically an interpretation of something's wrong with your own or something's wrong with you The other thing wrong with either of you. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's that it's a lot. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and [SPEAKER_03]: Somehow it's not okay to say it's not okay for me to ask for help. [SPEAKER_03]: It's not okay for me bid for connection. [SPEAKER_03]: It's not okay for me to fall. [SPEAKER_03]: And everyone can fall around me. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'm a pick it up.

37:27 [SPEAKER_02]: Right, and I got you. [SPEAKER_03]: And it actually hurts my feeling when someone witnesses me struggling and I'm [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I'm going through a lot. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm dealing with a lot. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm handling a lot. [SPEAKER_03]: I carry a lot and they go, I didn't want to bother me. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, what you don't like me anymore? [SPEAKER_03]: What you can't, you don't think I'm relive. [SPEAKER_03]: What is happening here? [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I hear for you. [SPEAKER_03]: They're like, what you're struggling to stop it. [SPEAKER_01]: Get him on me. [SPEAKER_03]: I get. [SPEAKER_03]: I feel better about myself when I help you, which will ensure help me. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And so it's like the weirdest thing they're like, but cheaper, you don't sleep. [SPEAKER_03]: And we know that you're doing 18 million things.

38:09 [SPEAKER_03]: We don't need to bother with one more thing. [SPEAKER_03]: I guess we're not. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know what I'm talking about, like, I knew you better. [SPEAKER_02]: I knew you better. [SPEAKER_02]: I knew you better than you hate me. [SPEAKER_03]: It's just clear we're not. [SPEAKER_02]: Just say it. [SPEAKER_03]: Just say it. [SPEAKER_03]: Just say it. [SPEAKER_03]: But you have 18 piles of laundry in your living room. [SPEAKER_03]: What's that matter? [SPEAKER_03]: You want me to reorganize your closet? [SPEAKER_01]: I'll be there with Jill and I've talked about this all the time that we said we need to take one weekend week where we just go to each other's houses and do everybody else's work. [SPEAKER_03]: So there's the I saw a tick tocker and I think she has like it's like a thing they have a franchise of and we could create a chapter of it called the Hot Mess Express.

38:50 [SPEAKER_03]: And you go to your friend's house if they're going through stuff and you just handle their shit for them. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I'm down. [SPEAKER_03]: And I would love to create a group of people to do exactly like what you said because I don't want to be my home. [SPEAKER_02]: No, no way. [SPEAKER_03]: I'll clean your house. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, this go to your house. [SPEAKER_03]: Right now, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I will have that whole place who I sat you down in the middle of my living room. [SPEAKER_03]: Would every toy and their sets be put together? [SPEAKER_03]: 100%. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I love it. [SPEAKER_03]: But I think we could, and that's the thing, like, that's creating villages, creating this this interdependence, not codependence, but this interdependence of community.

39:31 [SPEAKER_03]: I feel so silently. [SPEAKER_03]: And it pains me because I can see it. [SPEAKER_03]: Society, I feel like we're being told more and more and more disconent. [SPEAKER_03]: I agree, it's not serious. [SPEAKER_03]: That we should not trust our neighbor, should not trust our friend. [SPEAKER_03]: We shouldn't even trust our own parents. [SPEAKER_03]: We don't even trust our own kids. [SPEAKER_03]: We don't trust our own spouse. [SPEAKER_03]: And everything is about self. [SPEAKER_03]: And this isolation to self. [SPEAKER_03]: And only doing things that matter to self. [SPEAKER_03]: And this idea of loving oneself, and you and I prioritize community learning, but there's a opposite this true that if we only focus on self and we don't allow room for community, this actually also damaging to our community.

40:17 [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: Two ends, two extremes on the same spectrum. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I think, I agree. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's nefarious in a way. [SPEAKER_01]: I think that it's intentional. [SPEAKER_01]: The systems at the intentionally like to keep people isolated, because of that specific reason is that like when we get together, we start to see ourselves beyond more than just ourselves. [SPEAKER_01]: We start to think for the group. [SPEAKER_01]: We start to want to do things for the group, and make for the good of good of all. [SPEAKER_01]: And if you keep people separated and fighting them amongst, [SPEAKER_01]: each other, if you don't start, you don't see those people as a part because nobody's watching your back. [SPEAKER_03]: The idea of having someone watch your six, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

40:57 [SPEAKER_03]: You can't have eyes behind you and I always say for especially Americans, and this is where like being arrogant, the arrogant Asian collectiveness is that Americans [SPEAKER_03]: are very stingy about what they take out of their front pocket and allow anything to be taken from their back. [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's a good one. [SPEAKER_02]: That's true. [SPEAKER_03]: Like so like these moments of I'm not going to pay 999 for this, but 10 billion dollars for children around the world. [SPEAKER_04]: Yep. [SPEAKER_03]: Fine. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And we do that because we don't seize ourselves in other people.

41:39 [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: The less we see ourselves in them and my thought process recently has been with social media and TikTok and YouTube and Zoom and everything. [SPEAKER_03]: even on people who traditionally care that we would ascribe to them as being more collective as more about the group. [SPEAKER_03]: they are very sensitive to global is now that's front and center to them through the media they consume. [SPEAKER_03]: And very sensitive to the plight of a person sitting right next to you. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I get that. [SPEAKER_03]: That circle of empathy. [SPEAKER_03]: How far out does your empathy go? [SPEAKER_03]: And it was to like the trees and the atoms. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: How much do you care of their flight?

42:20 [SPEAKER_03]: And for a lot of people, it's concentrates on yourself. [SPEAKER_03]: Your immediate family, your secondary family, which is cousins and this and I, your friends, like this group is really, really tight right proximity to you, yeah, and then it goes out to your friends friend to your co-workers like it keeps going out now and what I find is that it's now harder. [SPEAKER_03]: to connect with that proximity group because they're not here. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So you can now I can empathize with people halfway around the world. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's now closer to me. [SPEAKER_03]: then my friend who I haven't seen in two years.

43:02 [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: That's now closer to me. [SPEAKER_03]: I feel more here than I do that. [SPEAKER_03]: And so now this thing is kind of gotten the shape and because we're isolating. [SPEAKER_03]: I do think it's nefarious. [SPEAKER_03]: I make the joke all the time with bruises. [SPEAKER_03]: I think whatever powers that be are trying to make us all murderous pedophile. [SPEAKER_03]: Like I feel like we're being trying. [SPEAKER_03]: It's unnatural to us. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's why we're sad. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's why we're lonely. [SPEAKER_03]: If emails are lonely too. [SPEAKER_03]: We don't go, you know, you've had, you've had your wife and you have your partner now, females will find any reason, not to go to brunch. [SPEAKER_03]: We have our tenth-quat cousin, eighteen times removed, is coming into ten.

43:47 [SPEAKER_03]: I can't go to brunch because now our obligation is to this one random person who we [SPEAKER_03]: May see you once and don't care, but that matters now. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: There are 18 birthdays that happen in Ryan's school classroom. [SPEAKER_03]: I have to go to all of them. [SPEAKER_03]: but I can't get together with brunch, so people that I care most about, because I need to worry about how I will be judged societally before I go and get that connection. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's a common trope. [SPEAKER_03]: A girl's not getting together and they do one girl's night every 10 to 10 years and that's their connection. [SPEAKER_03]: We think women are more connected than men. [SPEAKER_03]: Right.

44:28 [SPEAKER_03]: We're being told not to connect. [SPEAKER_03]: Our lives are being designed so that we don't connect. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think it's unnatural for us to not connect. [SPEAKER_03]: But then how do you connect? [SPEAKER_03]: How do you prioritize that? [SPEAKER_01]: I started trying to like I went through after post divorce. [SPEAKER_01]: I started trying to make my I've made it a point to say yes more like to catch myself on that default. [SPEAKER_03]: My husband will talk to you all a bit about that. [SPEAKER_03]: He's working on that too. [SPEAKER_01]: I've been trying to catch myself saying like but before the default no comes out and I will say yes and make myself go because it will be those situations where it's like and make excuses and I can't do this. [SPEAKER_01]: I can't do that whatever.

45:08 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm so busy. [SPEAKER_01]: But then every time I got actually ended up going, I couldn't get out of it. [SPEAKER_01]: I would find myself having great times. [SPEAKER_01]: And I'd find myself coming back feeling so inages. [SPEAKER_01]: And every time it's just like, why don't I do that more? [SPEAKER_01]: And so I try to start making myself say yes more. [SPEAKER_01]: And then it always comes back to mindfulness for me is that the reason I'm saying no is because I have these expectations of how it's going to go when how I'm going to feel. [SPEAKER_01]: And then I'm trying to like, [SPEAKER_01]: Not put myself in that situation, but that how arrogant of me to assume and create these expectations about how something is going to go and not open myself up to get out of my comfort zone into the unknown, where all of this, where miracles take place, like if I stay in my comfort zone, then yeah, like it's predictable, it's safe, like I know like, I know what I like, I know how I can become, but you don't grow in that in their comfort zone.

46:00 [SPEAKER_01]: ships are safe and harbor but that's not what ships are made for. [SPEAKER_01]: I think we're all in a way being called to step out to cultivate the sense of bravery inside of ourselves that allows us to be okay with the unknown because I think a lot of our harmful habits and patterns come from especially harmful mental habits and patterns come from trying to overanalyze things in order [SPEAKER_01]: 99.99% of life happens outside of the things that we can perceive and I say, it's not one of the things that we know for a certain. [SPEAKER_01]: We only know for a certain what we can interpret right now with our senses in this present moment.

46:43 [SPEAKER_01]: Everything else is conjecture. [SPEAKER_01]: Every single thing else is imagined or it's thought. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not real, it's this essence of imagination. [SPEAKER_01]: So the mind has a way to me seeing the mind [SPEAKER_01]: going of commensain us putting us in this sort of hypnosis of with the right thoughts of commensain us that is so scary out there and so scary out there in the wild or it's going to be so bad like you know what to say if you know it's comfortable but [SPEAKER_01]: Stepping outside into that unknown of experience, although it may seem scary, it is often the most enriching things that we do. [SPEAKER_01]: It is a weak role. [SPEAKER_01]: The only place we grow is outside of our comfort zone.

47:25 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think that life, like you said, everybody's life is a piece of art in supposed to be about expression. [SPEAKER_01]: Even like Gandhi had a quote, they asked him, I'm a new reporter, like Wahoo's on a train, said, kind of what's your message for the people? [SPEAKER_01]: And he said, my life is my message, and I think that the only way that we get to contribute to us as a species, instead of me as an individual, is by doing that by living life, like you said, in expressing ourselves through that lived life. [SPEAKER_01]: I was watching this documentary on dinosaurs, so that's nice, a new documentary on Netflix, voiced by Morgan Freeman, on dinosaurs. [SPEAKER_01]: And I was just amazed at the scope of the time that they had.

48:10 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they were going millions of years at a time. [SPEAKER_01]: They'd be like, this dinosaur species was here. [SPEAKER_01]: And then we were going to zoom for 12 million years. [SPEAKER_01]: And I just kept thinking, 12 million years for such little change in a species. [SPEAKER_01]: When our own species have not lived anywhere close to one million years. [SPEAKER_01]: And they're talking on the scale 200 million years, but age in each epic or era that they discussed, the number one thing that these dinosaurs were doing, the ones that survived and then propagate their gene pool, their species were the ones that were able to adapt. [SPEAKER_01]: And it got me thinking like adaptability is the number one survival trait amongst all species. [SPEAKER_01]: and how do we adapt as a species if not by sharing our lived experiences, what work for us, what did not work for us.

48:57 [SPEAKER_01]: This is how I felt and this isn't, did anybody else feel this way? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And the way that we do that is through socialization. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And it is to experience when you're socializing. [SPEAKER_03]: part of it is experiencing sameness. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And part of it is experiencing different. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And so we share on the same and we experience each other's differences. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think sometimes especially now we're being told to seek out the sameness. [SPEAKER_03]: We need to find our people. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: I think like we do so that when we communicate it is always the same. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: and part of it is the experience of the different and you're supposed to be searching for the difference. [SPEAKER_03]: I kind of think with people, you're talking about documentaries and dinosaurs and everything else and animal patterns, humans are naturally inquisitive, they're natural explorers.

49:51 [SPEAKER_03]: And I call with my husband when we were talking about it saying, yes, more. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, my husband is going through that too. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm doing that more to where I was like, I need to start living and I need to start opening myself up to doing new and different things. [SPEAKER_03]: Is that it's like, I call it going on an adventure. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: We are supposed to walk into scenarios where we don't know what's going to happen. [SPEAKER_01]: Because we have to get the experience, the EXP, like video game terminology, got to get the EXP if we're ever going to pass that on and allow our species as a whole to continue to evolve towards survival and to the future.

50:32 [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the only way we get there is about understanding that we're just little parts of a giant puzzle. [SPEAKER_01]: We're just like our lived experience is just contributing to like I envision like a this fractal artwork or something like that. [SPEAKER_01]: Like this large fractal artwork and fractals being little pieces that I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like self repeating patterns where like if you zoom in on any particular piece of the artwork, it's a representation of the whole. [SPEAKER_01]: And I like to think of us as a species, as each of our lives is being little pieces of that represent the whole of the sum of life as consciousness, as human beings, whatever you want to call it.

51:17 [SPEAKER_01]: And so our little bitty lives, no matter how insignificant it may seem in the grand scheme of 220 million years, [SPEAKER_01]: It contributes, we contribute our experiences if we're open to authentically sharing it towards the collective knowledge. [SPEAKER_01]: We only know how to operate based off of the data that we store inside of our minds. [SPEAKER_01]: And that data gets put in there by our own lived experiences and by the lived experiences, we're willing to open ourselves up to be aware of, or to see, or to be experienced by somebody, also expressed by other people. [SPEAKER_01]: And so like, that's why they say you're a proud of your environment because if you grow up seeing the same behavioral patterns, seeing the same reaction, seeing the same way people operate, naturally, that's all you have.

52:03 [SPEAKER_01]: That's all that's filling up your database for you to pull out of. [SPEAKER_01]: That is an example for how you operate in similar situations. [SPEAKER_01]: But by going out, like you said, and socializing, meeting people who are different, and I think this was why college is so enlightening for a lot of people and why they're also trying to get rid of it. [SPEAKER_03]: Get rid of people going to college. [SPEAKER_03]: Every person that's saying colleges unnecessary, their kids are going to college. [SPEAKER_03]: They're trying to keep it from you. [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And there's a reason you're supposed to go. [SPEAKER_01]: Go to college and not do it online because you get exposed to people from all different types of ethnic backgrounds and all different types of lived experiences that you have not had It gives you a lot more to pull from in your database on how you approach different lives living situations and it gives you a humanizes people whom you may have not otherwise gotten a chance to [SPEAKER_01]: put into that column of a dear one, or a loved one.

53:01 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I kind of think about, because they always say college campuses are liberal or whatever that is, or cities are liberal. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And you say it's in a lot, you know, people call it indoctrination. [SPEAKER_03]: They're going to college to be indoctrinated to accept unacceptable human behavior. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And they're what I think gets missed about why places that have [SPEAKER_03]: large concentrations of people interacting with one another in a small geographic area, where meaning places like New York City in Chicago and college campuses, where people are coming from various walks of life, is exactly what you said that you are now [SPEAKER_03]: Instead of having it be a caricature, now you're meeting a person who doesn't fit that mold and it humanizes them outside of the caricature and that that behavior isn't inherently harmful as you may have been led to believe.

54:02 [SPEAKER_03]: And by the way, this goes both ways. [SPEAKER_03]: I heard this even growing up. [SPEAKER_03]: It's harmful to the feminist movement by people who choose to be [SPEAKER_03]: housewives. [SPEAKER_03]: You're rejecting all of the freedom or fine. [SPEAKER_03]: Why would you want to be submissive to your husband? [SPEAKER_03]: And I always thought the point of feminism was the choice. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And when I meet someone who's like fully with their whole chest believes that what's best for them is being at home and homeschooling their kids. [SPEAKER_03]: And they love this. [SPEAKER_03]: They love their husband, they love the life that they have them. [SPEAKER_03]: This is what they would choose for themselves. [SPEAKER_03]: Nine times out of ten. [SPEAKER_03]: They don't want to do what someone else tells them to you.

54:44 [SPEAKER_03]: To someone else. [SPEAKER_03]: That experience, exposing myself to that experience and realizing, yes, it is actually, there are those women who want that and they are genuine, they're being authentic, they're not being brainwashed to want that and I'm even somewhat of a traditional with myself and that I love the concept of marriage, I love the concept of being a mother and I love a lot of [SPEAKER_03]: what we think of as traditional family values, Sunday dinners, these that these types of things, that when we all talk together, [SPEAKER_03]: I am a mix of some of those values and some of these values and some of those values and what I can experience everybody's experience, a humanized is everyone.

55:32 [SPEAKER_03]: And you realize, no, there's no one person that's just the devil. [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: There's no one person that's got either. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: But there's no one person that's a devil. [SPEAKER_03]: I think we always think towards the negative, every action that someone else does. [SPEAKER_03]: When I engage with you on experience and I think some of these conversations that we have [SPEAKER_03]: Come to you and say, but why do you want to do that? [SPEAKER_03]: And I give you a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little [SPEAKER_03]: Wouldn't you look at I'm the key that I'm doing everything that makes me feel so good right you're not doing any of those things yeah and how is that possible yeah [SPEAKER_03]: We have to open up our minds to the idea that two people can engage with life in completely different ways and both of them fully valid for themselves.

56:39 [SPEAKER_01]: I open my mind to allow and people, unconditionally, to be themselves when I realize that, when I fully realize that everyone is seeing life from their own, [SPEAKER_01]: set of eyes. [SPEAKER_01]: The problem behind their own set of glasses, if you will, like everyone in everyone experiences life from their own perspective, two people can look at the same situation and come out of it telling two vastly different stories about it because everything that we experience in life gets filtered through this process in machine that we call our mind. [SPEAKER_01]: And my process in machine that I have in my mind, [SPEAKER_01]: has is stocked with different experiences than anyone else's process in machine that they have in their mind. [SPEAKER_01]: They've stocked the different experiences.

57:20 [SPEAKER_01]: So the stuff that we experience out there, there is an objective reality. [SPEAKER_01]: There is matter. [SPEAKER_01]: There is stuff that we walk through this world in experience. [SPEAKER_01]: But everything that we encounter gets broken down and reproduced, [SPEAKER_01]: and is always affected by our histories. [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: And everyone has grown up with different histories. [SPEAKER_01]: So the way that our mind is putting together, the pieces of the puzzle that is a big objective reality, is always subjective. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: It always comes to a different lens. [SPEAKER_01]: It always goes through a different perspective. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I try my best now not to assume [SPEAKER_01]: what other people are thinking about different situations without enough information about how they feel about it.

58:05 [SPEAKER_03]: Why are you the way you are? [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_04]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: It brings me to how people communicate in that and how people relate to each other and part of it is verbal communication, part of it is physical communication, this nonverbal space. [SPEAKER_03]: And then part of it is just the vibe, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I'm not, I can be a stoic and whatever, and you're getting a vibe for me. [SPEAKER_03]: And some of that is that communication. [SPEAKER_03]: And when, [SPEAKER_03]: I communicate and this might be part of our Neapolitan flavoring, part of how I story tell and why I do backgrounds, like quick stories, let me see you.

58:48 [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: It all started when I was four years old. [SPEAKER_03]: And if you knew these pieces of the story, and when you now get to the decision, the idea is that you can now place yourself in my body, in my mindset, or both the same [SPEAKER_03]: with the same set of inputs, which is why I haven't told you the whole back then. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Imagine you're me. [SPEAKER_03]: Now let me ask you what you would do. [SPEAKER_03]: Or, and most of the time, I'm not asking what you would do. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm asking if my thought process on the situation is valid. [SPEAKER_03]: Is valid. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Because often I'm going to come to the decision I'm coming to.

59:30 [SPEAKER_04]: Right, right. [SPEAKER_03]: Do I have the universal input? [SPEAKER_03]: And does this now lead me to the same decision point? [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And sometimes it's yes, sometimes it's no. [SPEAKER_03]: The best conversations I've had in a given that whole thing is like, okay, some of this isn't relevant. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Some of this we need a dig deeper. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that a lot of impact that. [SPEAKER_03]: And then you're here. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, now let's bring in some of these variables. [SPEAKER_03]: Do you feel like you have enough to go on go go forward? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: For a lot of times when I'm communicating, that's a very circuitous, low-quacious way of should we have pizza tonight.

1:00:11 [SPEAKER_03]: I haven't had pizza recently. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not craving pizza pizzas. [SPEAKER_03]: Like this is all the input you need to know. [SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_03]: She'd be happy to see you. [SPEAKER_03]: And my husband was like, [SPEAKER_03]: You want peace to just get pizza? [SPEAKER_03]: No, no, that was necessary. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And then you want a pizza? [SPEAKER_01]: Just do it. [SPEAKER_01]: I heard pizza. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's why when I'm trying to make a decision, or now when other people are trying to make a really hard decision between two things, I say flip a coin, heads of this tales of this. [SPEAKER_01]: And I flip a coin as you will know what you want and then when they're coins in there. [SPEAKER_01]: It's not even about the coin, but you're gonna know when that coin is made. [SPEAKER_03]: It's at the same thing to someone yesterday, right?

1:00:52 [SPEAKER_03]: Like you flip a coin, you find yourself anticipating an album. [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it's irrelevant. [SPEAKER_03]: It's irrelevant what the coin now tells you to do. [SPEAKER_03]: Uh huh. [SPEAKER_03]: You want an outcome. [SPEAKER_04]: Yep. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's your decision. [SPEAKER_03]: I actually use that in my own life where I'm torn between two lovers. [SPEAKER_03]: When I'm torn between two things and I said if I assign these to a random set of like [SPEAKER_03]: paper out of a hat. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Is there one I wish I would pull exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And that does usually and sometimes you have to do that tangibly actually get it to work. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: To actually kind of get to that decision. [SPEAKER_04]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not going to cut this. [SPEAKER_03]: Josh, you can cut this wherever you want.

1:01:33 [SPEAKER_03]: And actually, if you do cut it, we'll have a little snippet of more content. [SPEAKER_01]: Or we get the real stuff. [SPEAKER_03]: This is an official episode. [SPEAKER_03]: This is where we're now getting to. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So, you can stop listening if you don't want to listen to the crazy part of her. [SPEAKER_03]: And if you're wondering what your listen, this is Sheeple Weapon. [SPEAKER_03]: I am Weeple Sheeple. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm here with Eric Smith. [SPEAKER_03]: Our resident grew in my neighborhood. [SPEAKER_03]: He is my, my Mr. Miyagi. [SPEAKER_03]: He and I wax on wax off. [SPEAKER_03]: And there were two things that I wanted to kind of cap off talking about, which was one. [SPEAKER_03]: this need for connection, need for socialization, this need for people to need each other, and the impetus, the outside world trying to manufacture something where we're being told to separate, is a manufacturer.

1:02:24 [SPEAKER_03]: It's not natural, we shouldn't, [SPEAKER_03]: necessarily listen to that and connect with each other and then the part about self and the value of self. [SPEAKER_03]: So it's like kind of that two sides of the same coin. [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. [SPEAKER_03]: The community matters are connection matters. [SPEAKER_03]: This building of a foundation of presence with one another matter. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Community. [SPEAKER_03]: that you lose sight of the fact that you are a part of it. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's kind of the crux of what we've been talking about and the reason we've come together to talk together on the show recently is both of us craving that connection, both of us craving a deeper conversation and finding the time to tell work to welcome and do this.

1:03:10 [SPEAKER_03]: And by the way, if an employer is listening, [SPEAKER_03]: This is after hour because we would not do that. [SPEAKER_02]: No company time not at all not at all. [SPEAKER_03]: That's what we were trying to do is the importance of this end [SPEAKER_03]: doing it by example, coming together and doing this podcast is almost a show of one prioritizing the connection between people and also doing it because this builds our own self-love. [SPEAKER_03]: And so that was kind of the point of, that was it. [SPEAKER_03]: You may now go to regular scheduled program. [SPEAKER_01]: But [SPEAKER_01]: and it's so frustrating is balance. [SPEAKER_01]: I want there to be an answer one way or the other soul bed, but most of the time with this kind of stuff, with life stuff, with consciousness stuff, with soul stuff, it's always balance.

1:03:55 [SPEAKER_01]: It always comes back to like not too hot, not too cold, just right. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I think what I've noticed in conversation, when we talk about balance, and we talk about things like 50, 50, and we talk about shades of gray. [SPEAKER_03]: equal amount of yeses and equal amount of nose and and I don't know that's what balance is no and I it's each time you engage with a decision you're trying to find balance. [SPEAKER_03]: One is kind of on the aggregate you'll never know if you balance until you die by doing [SPEAKER_03]: But you're also, you're standing on a tippy toe in that one moment and balance in that moment is different than the balance you're going to find in the next, you have an opportunity to make a decision.

1:04:48 [SPEAKER_03]: You need to spend a year or go, go, go, go, go, go. [SPEAKER_03]: There's no balance. [SPEAKER_03]: There is completely lapsided to be spending all of the energy you have. [SPEAKER_03]: And then you're going to find a part where it's like, do nothing. [SPEAKER_03]: And there's no balance in those moments either. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think people think you're supposed to like, okay, I said yes, yes, for today. [SPEAKER_03]: So I need to say no to. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: I worked out yesterday, so I need to not work out today. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't think it works. [SPEAKER_01]: There is no consistent self. [SPEAKER_01]: There is no consistent and statutory self. [SPEAKER_01]: Like our ideas of ourselves are constantly and constantly changing.

1:05:29 [SPEAKER_01]: Everything is changed, life is changed. [SPEAKER_01]: And the [SPEAKER_01]: the idea that keeps most of us stuck, I feel like it's trying to stay committed to a particular view of ourselves. [SPEAKER_01]: When that particular view of ourselves is always, like we said earlier, has always been curated. [SPEAKER_01]: It's never, it's not something tangible that we can point our finger at and say, [SPEAKER_01]: This is Eric and everything this is the Bible of Eric and everything Eric does has to come Exactly as Bible the algorithm that follows like like all of that is created It's manufactured. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like one of my favorite quotes is like it's your life babe Hidden with a plot twist whenever you feel like it.

1:06:11 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I heard that one time And I was like dang that's so true. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like you we don't have to we don't have to play the thing I can wake up tomorrow and be some and I completely different nobody stopping me. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, nobody stopping me [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I adopt that more and more. [SPEAKER_03]: And I've always kind of been that way. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm a person of moods. [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And so I'm a fashion person and not a commercial sense of like I like to accumulate clothes. [SPEAKER_03]: But I think of my clothes as a self-expression. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And if anyone were to go to my closet, I am part, gothic, and I am part grandma. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm flaky. [SPEAKER_03]: It's everything. [SPEAKER_03]: And I've got so many that are gifts and thrifts, and whatever.

1:06:52 [SPEAKER_03]: And I don't throw anything away because I figure, when I wake up, I go, I go, I go, who am I today? [SPEAKER_03]: Who do I feel like? [SPEAKER_03]: am I girly pop? [SPEAKER_03]: Am I buff bunny? [SPEAKER_03]: Am I what at one am I? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And I love the clothes aside. [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: What's my mood today? [SPEAKER_03]: And that idea that I don't have to have an aesthetic, I don't have to have a preset personality. [SPEAKER_03]: And I can hit you with a plot twist and feel like it. [SPEAKER_03]: I'll tell you a story. [SPEAKER_03]: That's a question. [SPEAKER_03]: What was your first impression on me? [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's actually pretty spot on to how you are now.

1:07:33 [SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, I read people pretty well and I read about it pretty well. [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think like you were, I knew from the get-go that you were a people person, like pleasing person, like I was like, I don't know, I'm gonna have to save her from herself. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know what she keeps offering to help me. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know these things when I know she did. [SPEAKER_01]: How do you say that? [SPEAKER_01]: You always came across as sunshine. [SPEAKER_01]: Very, very open, very, amenable. [SPEAKER_01]: Always willing to try to help. [SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, that's nice. [SPEAKER_01]: That's nice. [SPEAKER_01]: I describe those people. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, as joy from inside out, like as yellow. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just ironic that that's what we were talking about, lately, that the path that you've been on. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, you certainly felt that way from the very beginning.

1:08:14 [SPEAKER_03]: And from you. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Because I did get a color. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, really? [SPEAKER_03]: It was peace. [SPEAKER_03]: It was not a peace in the way I've like born or common like because I wouldn't describe you as calm as an undisturbed. [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Because I kind of see you as the duck on the water, like you're going in the direction, you're doing your job, but when I see you as this idea of you're not going to come to an event or a party or a situation with [SPEAKER_03]: Complaints like this negative sense of perception of what this needs to be and you were so open and Allowing of whatever the person that was coming to you to come to you as their self Yeah, it was unassuming.

1:09:06 [SPEAKER_03]: I think that's the word. [SPEAKER_03]: It was like unassuming and because it was unassuming I felt like This is what one of the few people that I can engage with in my life [SPEAKER_03]: that does not have an expectation of who I'm going to show up in. [SPEAKER_04]: That's good. [SPEAKER_03]: And so this brings me to a point because most people's first impression of me because I give them a curated version is. [SPEAKER_03]: boring math nerd who's got a stick up or butt about compliance. [SPEAKER_03]: Wow, yeah, people's general perception of me is that I listen to classical music. [SPEAKER_00]: Wow. [SPEAKER_03]: And I must have been challenged that I'm that type a Asian high achiever and that my interests are within a very restricted box.

1:09:56 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: They come to me and they go, they expect answers, they expect logic, they expect decisions, but they don't expect a joke. [SPEAKER_00]: That's fascinating. [SPEAKER_03]: They don't expect funny, they don't expect me to know anything about the modern way. [SPEAKER_03]: They expect me to know a lot about history. [SPEAKER_00]: That is crazy. [SPEAKER_03]: And I get this thing of moments of shock. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: when I present myself as something other than that. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And now, this is up to the last couple of years, because now I'm being more, and so people kind of know to expect a little bit of, but now it's like, okay. [SPEAKER_03]: when they see me and I will sing, or I would listen to music that's more contemporary.

1:10:40 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I know the hits. [SPEAKER_03]: I know all the lyrics. [SPEAKER_03]: And I like that. [SPEAKER_03]: And I dance and I do all those things. [SPEAKER_03]: People like, oh my god. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, you're social. [SPEAKER_03]: You're not what I expected you to be. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: You can actually have fun. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm shocked. [SPEAKER_03]: You're a person that has fun. [SPEAKER_03]: I think the idea is that I show up and I go, they just immediately, [SPEAKER_03]: relate back to any Indian grandma they've ever seen her and they just assumed that that's my personality and then they get something wildly different that's so funny because that's when I first met you [SPEAKER_01]: I think the first impression that I was had because you were trying so hard to be included in your son's life and like you were playing with him and stuff like that.

1:11:30 [SPEAKER_01]: And so like I knew it was like oh yeah it's very playful like just like enjoyful like I said and it's like I don't know I didn't I never assumed that that's new yeah so you're meeting me in that point in life or you're getting to see that for a lot of people [SPEAKER_03]: My whole life, even for Bruce, he was like, he'll tell you when he first met me. [SPEAKER_03]: I was that, because it, and I actually have this conversation recently with one of my clients, because he was talking about turning 50 and who was like, I'm boring. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm regular, I'm like, and look at you with, [SPEAKER_03]: Look at all, you're brightly colored and you're big. [SPEAKER_03]: And you're allowed. [SPEAKER_03]: I said today, because I spent most of my life trying to be like him, because I thought that was better.

1:12:13 [SPEAKER_03]: I really do. [SPEAKER_03]: And even today, there are moments where I think that's better. [SPEAKER_03]: I think I'm too much. [SPEAKER_03]: And I got a dial-up back, but I would rather be that. [SPEAKER_03]: And then I was trying to tell him, but there's no such thing as boring. [SPEAKER_04]: Think exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And you got to accept you and love you for you. [SPEAKER_03]: And if you actually don't like the fact [SPEAKER_03]: don't engage and don't brighten up. [SPEAKER_03]: You can actually say yes. [SPEAKER_03]: If that's what you want, if you want to enjoy more things, you can go out and enjoy more things. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: But you're meeting me at a point where I'm allowing myself. [SPEAKER_03]: to be big and allowing myself to be loud and allowing myself to play.

1:12:53 [SPEAKER_03]: And that is my authentic self. [SPEAKER_03]: People that have known me before, this whole new person. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's it's so funny because I think we do get into that situation where we before we find out who we are, we go up meeting this expectation of [SPEAKER_01]: who are most closest level and to expect us to be. [SPEAKER_01]: And it is hard for them to see you all of a sudden change. [SPEAKER_01]: That's why they said Jesus can perform miracles at home. [SPEAKER_01]: He can perform miracles in his hometown because they had such a solid concept or idea about who they thought he was. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's impossible to break. [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's impossible to break those preconceived notions that people have especially our closest level [SPEAKER_01]: Even though who we were to them back then may not have even been our most authentic so we were put we're curating that one to and that one to there's a practice and [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, one of those types of yogis that is netty netty not that and so it's like, I think about that for myself, my idea of myself like that one's not really, really, that one's not really, it's just keep digging it, who is who am I behind all that?

1:14:01 [SPEAKER_03]: But you know what's funny? [SPEAKER_03]: They're not real. [SPEAKER_01]: Right, exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: And then here's the thing, here's where math comes into it is that point on a circle. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, zero turns into infinity. [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's the thing. [SPEAKER_03]: It's like I've taken the offices like glass half full half. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: All of those are right. [SPEAKER_03]: And it started the first our first conversation in the first episode of like, if I think of myself, I the answer is everything. [SPEAKER_03]: It's not nothing. [SPEAKER_03]: It's not these were not inauthentic versions of mine. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: I didn't lie. [SPEAKER_03]: I didn't tell you I liked scrambled eggs when I did that. [SPEAKER_03]: That's who I was. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I liked them. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Is that what I would choose for myself if no one would is here.

1:14:41 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So that's I'm bringing portions of myself versions of my they are still all my bedroom. [SPEAKER_02]: That's true. [SPEAKER_02]: That's true. [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm not discarding them. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm making them more connected. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: A more cohesive picture as opposed to going, okay, like a deck of cars. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to deal you out. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Now. [SPEAKER_03]: maybe you get 10 cards, maybe you get 15 cards, but they're all still part of the same. [SPEAKER_02]: That's true. [SPEAKER_03]: And so that's how I've approached it. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And I want to ask you, because you've said that you weren't always like this. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, when I tell you calm and you are a sky blue, you are a peaceful, like, [SPEAKER_03]: You've said that that's not always been the way you were.

1:15:28 [SPEAKER_03]: Do people that knew other versions of you? [SPEAKER_03]: Seeing now, going, okay, I'm seeing that more of you? [SPEAKER_01]: I thought, so I thought I was coming off as different. [SPEAKER_01]: My parents seem to believe this is always meant me. [SPEAKER_01]: I think my journey has been more of like, I was always very quiet, get it? [SPEAKER_01]: I was always trying to like, remove myself from being any kind of attention, even though I kept getting attention. [SPEAKER_01]: I want to award it to every, it's like every level of school and stuff like that that I was in. [SPEAKER_01]: But I was always like, I was always putting myself, [SPEAKER_01]: on the back burner. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, if me and my brother had events on the same day, go to his, please go to his.

1:16:09 [SPEAKER_01]: He needs it more. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't need it. [SPEAKER_01]: I'll be okay. [SPEAKER_01]: I can't find it. [SPEAKER_03]: What is achievement? [SPEAKER_03]: It's not attention. [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Be recognized for achievement. [SPEAKER_01]: You're right. [SPEAKER_03]: I think those are different. [SPEAKER_01]: I always wanted the office. [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't want to be seen. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it wasn't until I got into the therapy that realized that's kind of a trauma response. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, and so my work has actually been a little bit different. [SPEAKER_01]: It's been allowing myself to show [SPEAKER_01]: and let people see more of Mikka. [SPEAKER_01]: I guess in the same way as yours. [SPEAKER_01]: This is like allowing my people to see more of my personality that's underneath the, I guess here as well as that. [SPEAKER_01]: I've always had that calm, composed like exterior, like I guess how other people's would have perceived me.

1:16:50 [SPEAKER_01]: But, [SPEAKER_01]: On the inside, I wasn't that calm. [SPEAKER_01]: On the inside, it was very much like pulling all the levers, like losing a vase, pushing all the buttons, like fading my, like chameleon, fading myself to meet, like, who? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Other people expecting me to be just to be in that situation. [SPEAKER_01]: Coach switching, like I've always had to deal with that a lot, especially like being by racialism is like not knowing where I fit in, not knowing where I belong, not knowing like what, like how I should have made that set. [SPEAKER_01]: Like I'm, [SPEAKER_03]: to black to be in with the white people and to white people and I'd actually love to talk to you on another episode about that specifically because it was something I a lot of people talk about that fish out of war I'm I'm Indian and white [SPEAKER_03]: predominantly what area and I don't fit in.

1:17:36 [SPEAKER_03]: And so I wanted to talk to somebody, there was a couple of people who were talking about it and we said, you know what it's like to not fit in when you're supposed to. [SPEAKER_03]: So if I go to the Indian community, where I look like that, I don't fit in. [SPEAKER_04]: at all. [SPEAKER_03]: This personality done belong there. [SPEAKER_03]: You belong there more than I belong. [SPEAKER_03]: And now we talked a bunch of times when I talked about this the other. [SPEAKER_03]: So recently, because I get judged very hard to see that in that community, where they're more accepting of other people liking their culture and customs, and I don't do them correctly and I should. [SPEAKER_02]: Hmm, I get that. [SPEAKER_03]: And so they'll speak to me in Hindi or Goodrothi and I can understand, I can't say anything.

1:18:20 [SPEAKER_02]: Right, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So you go to these communities where you're so post-affirming. [SPEAKER_03]: And so like what you just said, not white enough. [SPEAKER_03]: You're not black enough. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And for me, I'm not anything of anything. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And my community is nowhere around me. [SPEAKER_03]: And what do you do with that? [SPEAKER_01]: I think for me, as a kid, I became like, I almost, like, I, I, very young, I remember thinking, I don't, I'm not picking sides, and then I'm going to be just being the middle, and you're all going to have to deal with it. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: I guess I developed this habit of, uh, [SPEAKER_01]: Like I said, community being a comedian, like doing what I need to be here, being what I need to be there. [SPEAKER_01]: And I still, and this is what we talk about balance, and this is why it's so hard, and I don't think there's like a real, this is the right way to be.

1:19:06 [SPEAKER_01]: I still find myself doing that, but in a much more detached space, to where it's like, I will be who you need me to be in this moment, but it's not like, I don't feel the pressure of it. [SPEAKER_01]: on the internal. [SPEAKER_01]: If that makes sense. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I'm not doing it as a sense of if I don't get this right, like, I'm a failure. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But it's just like, [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I know who I am, I'm comfortable with myself to show up in any way that I want to or need to or feel the need that fits the situation or whatever, like at the end of the day, like I know that I am a combination of infinite parts like where we're talking about of infinite cells and so if I need to pull these out like little tools like little Pokemon balls or something like that is like oh.

1:19:53 [SPEAKER_01]: work air it go or like and so now it's just like I'm still doing I'm still like appear to be acting the same and like maybe appear a little bit there but I feel like the edges are smooth out. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like not such a hard transition from one into another air the edges are smooth out to where it's like you see you still see a little hint of need coming out. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah I think about coats switching left and some of it find it derogatory like you're being [SPEAKER_03]: I tend to code switch and the reason I do, one is that empathic part, so I tend to [SPEAKER_03]: unconsciously mirror who I'm with.

1:20:34 [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: So when I do that, it usually helps them take that guard down. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: Like I'm here to accept you as you are. [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't do that because I go, oh, I need to adopt an accent. [SPEAKER_03]: It just starts to happen. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So like I'll go to Canada for a week and I will come back with a Canadian. [SPEAKER_03]: I as soon as I'm impressed in somebody's format form of speech, I will adopt that cadence. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I will slow my speech down or speed it up or develop a different pattern and I will do it without even thinking about it. [SPEAKER_02]: Same way, I'm the same way. [SPEAKER_03]: Part of it, in my heart, I'm feeling like it's natural to me because I want to connect with people and I want them to feel comfortable with me that just happens.

1:21:22 [SPEAKER_03]: I think in some cases, it can come off as disingenuous. [SPEAKER_04]: I give up. [SPEAKER_03]: Right? [SPEAKER_03]: OK, I'm going into the black mirror with my black friends and they're using a particular cadence of speech. [SPEAKER_03]: And I had this conversation with my friend, Luke Beckham, we see you talk at school. [SPEAKER_03]: You talk at work. [SPEAKER_03]: And you don't talk like this. [SPEAKER_03]: And you talk like this with us. [SPEAKER_03]: Are you mocking us with this? [SPEAKER_03]: Is this something you're trying to copy us or monsters or appropriate us in some way and I said I'm just trying to fit in. [SPEAKER_03]: It just happens because I want to fit in and whether I want to or not It's going to happen.

1:22:02 [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_02]: It's subconscious. [SPEAKER_03]: It's completely subconscious. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's not a judgment call. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not saying this is better than how I talk at home. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just a doctor. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm just winning, right? [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I completely get that. [SPEAKER_01]: I do the same thing, especially the accidents thing. [SPEAKER_01]: And I, it's, it gets to a point where I have the same that I get wary of it because I don't want anyone to think that like the same thing. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm either coming off this ingenuous or mocking or anyway. [SPEAKER_01]: And it's one of those things, I guess I haven't really had a whole lot of time to explore about myself and think about, like, I wonder why that is. [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's a survival trait, like we talked about more than anything, as far as socialization is concerned. [SPEAKER_01]: I also just want to make people feel comfortable.

1:22:44 [SPEAKER_03]: That's I think that's it I told you I play it again. [SPEAKER_03]: Is it because we're weird? [SPEAKER_03]: Or is it child? [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Let's play that game. [SPEAKER_03]: It is mirroring. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: The code switching. [SPEAKER_03]: Childhood trauma or quirky. [SPEAKER_03]: And the answer is it. [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, it's always, it's always, it's always, it's always, it's always, it's always. [SPEAKER_03]: But I, when I do it and when it happens to me, part of it is I'm, [SPEAKER_03]: Trying to queue and signal to my environment that I am one of you, except you as you will. [SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: I am not an outsider to this. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not judging this as... [SPEAKER_03]: negative, positive, I'm trying to integrate and it's like a simulation, I'm trying to integrate into your comfort zone and make it so that you feel comfortable interacting with me and that you don't feel like there's a language barrier here that there's a communication barrier, there's an understanding barrier that I can understand you in the way that you are naturally [SPEAKER_03]: And that's kind of what the signal is.

1:23:55 [SPEAKER_01]: It's almost a murder complex in a way. [SPEAKER_01]: It's like in order to take away everyone else's uncomfortable, this, I'll be the most uncomfortable. [SPEAKER_01]: I'll do it. [SPEAKER_01]: Just give it to me the heart test. [SPEAKER_01]: I want you to be feel so comfortable that I will make put myself in a situation that's not normal for me or what it is. [SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know the Mars, the right word. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know either, but I'm not. [SPEAKER_03]: we adapt. [SPEAKER_03]: We're saying, let us adapt. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, allow me to come 90% of the way to you. [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And you come 10%, I don't need to go 50 and expect you to come the other way. [SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_03]: I can get all the way to you.

1:24:36 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And part of being and connecting with people, this is my own thing. [SPEAKER_03]: Uh-huh. [SPEAKER_03]: Is wanting to experience it firsthand. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, when someone told you before, they're telling the whole story, when I get with somebody, you know, they're like, man a day, tell me the whole thing. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I want to be you. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Let me experience it exactly how you saw it. [SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_03]: Like I'm walking through your eyes as you're a robot through the story. [SPEAKER_03]: And part of that is, it's a little bit of acting, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, [SPEAKER_03]: I know what causes that, action.

1:25:44 [SPEAKER_03]: I know the cultural reasons behind those actions. [SPEAKER_03]: I know why you act like that. [SPEAKER_03]: And... [SPEAKER_03]: It's not foreign. [SPEAKER_02]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: It is had I grown up in the same shoes you grew up in. [SPEAKER_03]: I would behave the same way. [SPEAKER_04]: You're right, yep. [SPEAKER_03]: And now that culture is part of you. [SPEAKER_03]: I can accept it in you and I can accept it in me. [SPEAKER_03]: And now it's a foul. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that makes sense. [SPEAKER_03]: It's not foreign. [SPEAKER_03]: And when I look at other people and I see someone behaving in a way that's foreign to me. [SPEAKER_03]: I usually do try to dig into, if I lived as you, I make the same choice.

1:26:25 [SPEAKER_01]: But like, how do we get to, and then what? [SPEAKER_01]: And then before that, we have that. [SPEAKER_01]: And then what I have, and it's just like tracing it back, like it's trying to recreate the whole picture. [SPEAKER_01]: I found myself doing that also, especially with people, especially with people. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't. [SPEAKER_01]: and like immediately agree or get along with like I think like I try to I tell you all I don't have enemies but that and that that's because like I really don't challenge people a lot on their beliefs like right or wrong whatever whatever I believe right around to be [SPEAKER_01]: But I really do try to put myself in their shoes like you're saying, and understand it, maybe once we get to a place where it doesn't feel like so much like I'm threatening anybody, then I can be like, have you considered this perspective?

1:27:08 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And I do that too. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: And especially with parents, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Like we always try to judge each other. [SPEAKER_03]: And that's just natural. [SPEAKER_03]: It, you go, I wouldn't do that. [SPEAKER_03]: you and I know that people do that about way I care and I do that about way other people care but it's not an enjoyment away of like you should not pamphlets away. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm well open to criticism. [SPEAKER_03]: A lot of times I'm trying to figure out why someone does it a certain way. [SPEAKER_03]: But things that are passionate to me, especially when I see, and I don't know why it's a triggering thing for me and this is where I actually do open my mouth and say, but having considered is mothers and sons.

1:27:49 [SPEAKER_03]: And I see, there is a particular thing that I'm being very mindful of in raising Ryan, [SPEAKER_03]: of one having him be independent, having him be brave enough to challenge the speech and the wants and needs and will of his friend group. [SPEAKER_03]: So allowing him to be his full authentic emotional self and allowing him to cry, allowing him to feel. [SPEAKER_03]: And there are things that like even me it's triggering like when he cries, [SPEAKER_03]: I accept that he cries and like, you're allowed to feel your feelings. [SPEAKER_03]: I understand why you're sad. [SPEAKER_03]: It's okay to be sad. [SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_03]: but we do need to tire shoes now.

1:28:31 [SPEAKER_03]: Also, it's kind of guiding the difference between your feelings or a valid, but you can't let your feelings prevent you from living the life. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Crying and spending 45 minutes crying right now won't change the fact that you cut your pancakes and squares and such chunks. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I understand like you are very upset. [SPEAKER_00]: You're really, but also come on. [SPEAKER_03]: And we appreciate it. [SPEAKER_03]: And you're feeling all of you as in this. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: but that won't solve the fact that you're angry and you need to put one of these in your mind. [SPEAKER_01]: I think I was actually talking to Bruce about this the other day about the same thing because it's like, they're having such big reactions because it is one of the first times that they're like experiencing this.

1:29:13 [SPEAKER_01]: They don't know that everything's gonna be okay. [SPEAKER_01]: Like we do, like we've experienced this situation hundreds of times now at this point in our lives and it is as simple as, [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, feel it, and then like, let's get over it. [SPEAKER_01]: But to them, it's such a big disruptor in their life because they have the experience. [SPEAKER_01]: They haven't had the chance to go through it. [SPEAKER_01]: And they don't know. [SPEAKER_01]: It is a big abyss of uncertainty out there for them. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's like the hardest part for me as a parent trying to keep in mind when I feel myself getting short with, like, especially like with physical pains. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, those scripted in here or something, and I'm just like, I'm very, very. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you get over it. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm trying to avoid things like big boys don't cry and trying to part be like you'll survive it and part not be like denying him his connection with the emotion.

1:30:02 [SPEAKER_04]: That's true. [SPEAKER_03]: And the other day he's with the boys and there's a thing he feels like he's slow. [SPEAKER_03]: He's not enough. [SPEAKER_03]: Everybody's like doing sports. [SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't want to. [SPEAKER_03]: And he's the only one in his friend group, not doing some form of team sports and he's added. [SPEAKER_03]: He's not going to do it. [SPEAKER_03]: No amount of peer pressure because of that. [SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't have a cardio. [SPEAKER_03]: He's not as bad. [SPEAKER_03]: So they're all like last one ends of Rodney. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And so his comeback to that was, and I heard it out by the boy, he's like, well, first one in is gay, and so I didn't want to call him out in front of everybody because that's a thing and we came back out of the pool.

1:30:48 [SPEAKER_03]: It's just him and I and I go. [SPEAKER_03]: Hey, why do you say, first one in is gay? [SPEAKER_03]: Well, he's like, I'm slow and I just want everybody to leave me alone and they're like, last one is arriving. [SPEAKER_03]: So now I keep getting called the rotten egg and I have to find something worse. [SPEAKER_03]: And then it is per perception because that's the how boys talk. [SPEAKER_03]: He thought, okay, well, people say things, if it's bad, they'll say it, okay, and so let me say it that it's good, and I said, do you know what gay is? [SPEAKER_03]: And he goes, yeah, it's when boys like boys. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, okay, is from my perspective, there's nothing wrong with that. [SPEAKER_03]: So if you said to me, last one is a rotten egg. [SPEAKER_03]: First one in his game, I guess, I'm gay then, nothing wrong with that.

1:31:31 [SPEAKER_03]: You didn't insult me. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: This is not for this because there's nothing wrong with that. [SPEAKER_03]: That's worse than a rotten egg. [SPEAKER_03]: And I said, how bad of what for? [SPEAKER_03]: That sounds awful. [SPEAKER_03]: I agree it. [SPEAKER_03]: First one is diarrhea. [SPEAKER_03]: I think every one of your friend group would understand. [SPEAKER_03]: But that's worse. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Then the rotten. [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to use that. [SPEAKER_03]: We don't need to use gay of this speech pattern that's going to form here and down this preadolescence adolescent period. [SPEAKER_03]: I got to make it in the bus. [SPEAKER_03]: This is not how we're going to talk in my house. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: That's not an insult in my house and that's not what we say in my house. [SPEAKER_03]: But, and so that's where I do get passionate on people's parenting and I get judging.

1:32:14 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Let's try to remember that we need to raise our boys. [SPEAKER_03]: to be able to be partners and not rapists, we need to we have to actually raise our boy yeah and that that's a challenge that I've faced because we talk about mostly in the context of raising girls and how hard it is to raise girls and now I'm finding it. [SPEAKER_03]: raising a boy is active parenting from the dangers of the outside world. [SPEAKER_03]: We have this mental effects as well. [SPEAKER_03]: And boys I have to protect mentally before weird crap gets given their head. [SPEAKER_01]: I try, I've actually had that same talk with Amy like last week because she, they were an adult who had been written or something and said something the same thing.

1:32:59 [SPEAKER_01]: And I had, like, hey, do you know that thing that they said, I was like, do you know what that means? [SPEAKER_01]: And she's like, yeah, and I had this exactly, like, almost verbatim, the same exact thought. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, this is a, a property that we use for certain types of people is not meant to be used as an insult. [SPEAKER_01]: And the way that they did it was wrong. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how I tried the relationship that I try to have my kids is one of complete open dialogue, as far as my thought process is behind things that happen in the world. [SPEAKER_01]: Because I know I'm not going to be able to protect them. [SPEAKER_01]: But I can tell you exactly where for word as it comes into my mind what how I think about this or like and and I and I hope that my hope is that they can trust me That dad always going to be honest with them matter how hard it is and so no matter if they get confused about something that they experience from one of their friends or whatever.

1:33:48 [SPEAKER_01]: make the whole my hope is that they always know they can come to me for what my understanding of the truth is and I've always had this thing of like I'm not here to shelter. [SPEAKER_03]: He is going to be exposed to so much and I want that exposure in the safety of him being able to come home. [SPEAKER_03]: Not being exposed to it at 25 years old where he's at no experience within his brain is kind of formed. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And so he can see things here, things experience things, whether it's curse words or it's bad language or a bad scenario, things he sees on YouTube and God knows what they're watching on YouTube. [SPEAKER_03]: I want me to give him that context and not a 12-year-old boy.

1:34:29 [SPEAKER_03]: He's like, like, come to me and let's talk about why what you're hearing is problematic. [SPEAKER_03]: But why what you're hearing is good and not [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I can't talk to my parents about stuff that I hear because they're just going to yell at me for listening to them about them and have them explain this to me. [SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_03]: I'd rather me explain this. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And not judge you for the fact you heard it. [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to hear it. [SPEAKER_01]: I try to play, even since my kids were little, I played what I call Encyclopedia Dad. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, Emmie's really, she will ask a lot of questions. [SPEAKER_01]: That's her type, doesn't. [SPEAKER_01]: And so like I've instead of like cutting it off or be like that's just the way it is like I try my best to give like legitimate Sometimes scientific explanations as far as I can like it should keep asking questions and I'll keep throwing out answers as best as I can do to my knowledge And so like that's I think they've come to expect that until the point now where they [SPEAKER_01]: Especially her.

1:35:24 [SPEAKER_01]: She can sense when I'm about to start going off on a long trip. [SPEAKER_01]: She'd be like, okay, Dad, I'm like, what's she's gotten her fill? [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Dad, it just cut me off. [SPEAKER_03]: Yep. [SPEAKER_03]: Bruce can tell that me too, because there are times where like, [SPEAKER_03]: Ryan'll hear something on his videos or or is be something to move around here than talking about something. [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm like, okay. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And Bruce will look at me going shift in the beard. [SPEAKER_02]: There they go. [SPEAKER_03]: Now's not the time for the likes. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm like, but I have. [SPEAKER_01]: I thought I needed to educate this is a teachable moment oh my god my whole parenting style is nothing but teachable moment and I'm trying my best now they'll like feel out when it's appropriate like when they're actually paying attention to me or when they're just like entertaining me because it's like my own videos and it's so hard [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know how much of it gets through.

1:36:21 [SPEAKER_03]: You're right. [SPEAKER_03]: I think part of it is that I want him to understand that I care more than what I'm saying. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, because I think eventually, as he gets older, more of it will kind of get in. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: But I think I need him to understand that I care about that. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: So for rights one? [SPEAKER_03]: I said to Ryan. [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, it was a civil war. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Of words. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And I said, Ryan. [SPEAKER_03]: this matters. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And I care about you knowing the words and knowing a vocab inside and out, but we are going to work on this one. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Because this one is going to impact this right now. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: It's going to impact your friends.

1:37:02 [SPEAKER_03]: It impacts you. [SPEAKER_03]: And you need to know these work. [SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_03]: And he's like, Mom! [SPEAKER_03]: I can't we just look at the regular way where you give me the definition. [SPEAKER_03]: I tell you the word and I'm like nope, I'm going to give you the word. [SPEAKER_03]: You're going to tell me the definition. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to work through context. [SPEAKER_03]: These ones matter. [SPEAKER_03]: And Bruce is like, let it go. [SPEAKER_03]: I think no. [SPEAKER_00]: So we're going to do that. [SPEAKER_00]: This is the hill in my eyes. [SPEAKER_03]: You need to understand that I care about. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And these are the things that I care about. [SPEAKER_03]: My mom made me work on my silver right now because I'm way more than I am now I don't care all about segregation.

1:37:47 [SPEAKER_03]: Screws, segregation, all right. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't worry about how it was spelled but I didn't have to know. [SPEAKER_01]: I did the same thing when Rowan came home with that when I put little extra emphasis on like no, no, no, no. [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want you to recite the pervadeum definition. [SPEAKER_01]: I want you, I want to see you. [SPEAKER_01]: Right. [SPEAKER_01]: Explained it to me in your old words. [SPEAKER_03]: So we're just, oh, I took it too much. [SPEAKER_03]: That's much. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm most of the time, I think I do, but I'm getting better about like, when I see their attention fade, they're just like, dropping it into a lot of fun. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's usually if it's not about school. [SPEAKER_03]: And this is, you needed to get it right for school. [SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, using that as an excuse. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Like, we'll kind of be like, ah, all right. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.

1:38:27 [SPEAKER_03]: But there are things, like, they're just things that I talk about. [SPEAKER_03]: and I get kind of up in arms about it. [SPEAKER_03]: You can see my feathers. [SPEAKER_01]: Jill says that it's like putting furniture into a dark room. [SPEAKER_01]: Like, like, they don't know that it's going to is there right now, but one day the lights are going to come on and then their rooms are already going to be fully furnished. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: Because we took the time. [SPEAKER_03]: I like that. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, I like the lot. [SPEAKER_01]: It may not be sinking in right now, like to a deep understanding level, but they have heard the concept. [SPEAKER_01]: They've been exposed to it. [SPEAKER_01]: And one day, their light of consciousness is going to come on and they're going to all this stuff is going to start making sense because they've already been all the furniture's already been put in. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and I like that so much.

1:39:08 [SPEAKER_03]: And I often say right now, especially this age, this is where we have the most influence the influence will wane as they get [SPEAKER_03]: into adolescence. [SPEAKER_03]: I think comes back around as they get older and they reflect on who their safe people were and they kind of like, my dad did this, my mom did this. [SPEAKER_03]: But there's this piece in the middle. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: They say it's biological. [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't read an article that said something like that. [SPEAKER_01]: Habit of teenagers to think that their parents are stupid is biological in nature because it forces them out of the nest and to go propagate. [SPEAKER_01]: Yes. [SPEAKER_01]: The bloodline. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it forces them to go experience. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And I think again it goes to it is human nature.

1:39:51 [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: to explore and to lead. [SPEAKER_03]: And so when we're trying to keep everybody close and insular and isolated, is going against our fundamental nature. [SPEAKER_03]: And in all of this conversation in the last three hours, we tried. [SPEAKER_03]: So all of this conversation was that we need to connect. [SPEAKER_03]: We need to [SPEAKER_03]: experience more outside of the bubbles we are creating ourselves and that part of creating these bubbles in and of itself, this idea of like we only consume the media, we only watch the movies, we like we only listen to the songs, we like like even our music.

1:40:38 [SPEAKER_03]: the discovery part. [SPEAKER_03]: We can skip past it, right? [SPEAKER_03]: Where is before on the radio? [SPEAKER_03]: You have to listen to a song that didn't like. [SPEAKER_03]: We're creating these little bubbles and in and of itself the creation of those bubbles is harmful to our soul. [SPEAKER_01]: It's just an echo chamber. [SPEAKER_03]: Right, an echo chamber we want it because it makes up. [SPEAKER_03]: are processing easier. [SPEAKER_01]: It's validation now. [SPEAKER_03]: It is starving the soul. [SPEAKER_03]: The soul is craving more. [SPEAKER_02]: I want to expand it. [SPEAKER_03]: It wants to expand and hopefully we can find some ways and I think it's counter-intuitive. [SPEAKER_03]: We have to reject some of our commercial impulse.

1:41:19 [SPEAKER_03]: Our efficiency impulse. [SPEAKER_03]: to go do something at times that are inconvenient, at times with energies that are depleted. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: To go do something that sounds [SPEAKER_03]: awful. [SPEAKER_03]: And just do it. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Nike. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it is late. [SPEAKER_03]: I am tired. [SPEAKER_03]: Okay. [SPEAKER_03]: Let's watch. [SPEAKER_03]: Let it be one of the Oscar. [SPEAKER_03]: What we're going to have to think about. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Let's do that. [SPEAKER_03]: Because you have to force yourself to that all of that sound. [SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to do it. [SPEAKER_03]: And I just said it. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the thing. [SPEAKER_01]: That's a part of like yelling out your [SPEAKER_01]: what, you want to look for opportunities to continue to grow.

1:42:05 [SPEAKER_01]: What are these opportunities? [SPEAKER_01]: And you don't have to go finding them. [SPEAKER_01]: I found that life presents me opportunities. [SPEAKER_01]: I wake up every morning. [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, put me, universe, God, whatever, put me in the situation that you need me in the most, and I promise I would do my best with it. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_01]: But just make it obvious. [SPEAKER_01]: Put, if you bring me the opportunity, I promise I would do my best with it. [SPEAKER_03]: How often has he listened to that request? [SPEAKER_01]: I was. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and that's how to nickel. [SPEAKER_01]: Well, if anything, it focuses me on being more aware for opportunities. [SPEAKER_01]: I think opportunities are always surrounding us. [SPEAKER_01]: But we get locked in, siloed, like you said, in our echo chamber, and we only do things that are, that are comfortable and in our zone.

1:42:45 [SPEAKER_01]: But by saying that, it's like, I'm trying to focus my perspective on finding the opportunities, more opportunities that come to me naturally, to say yes to them. [SPEAKER_01]: losing my job last whatever getting laid off last September and like like I was so comfortable in that position I had everything I need it was making the money I needed I was at work in promover a day and that was something that like threw me all off course and it made me so I have to step out of my home prison and start interviewing again and get into this new position where it's a lot more social where I have to go in and actually interact with people like because there's a moment or whatever sometimes yeah [SPEAKER_01]: but I don't know, it's just not fighting life so much when as it brings changes to you.

1:43:27 [SPEAKER_03]: I like that sentence, not fighting life. [SPEAKER_03]: And so if I'm going to sum up the last bit of our conversation and even the kind of all of our conversations, all the episodes, whatever, [SPEAKER_03]: It would say, here are the pointers. [SPEAKER_03]: If I'm going to leave the audience with some takeaways. [SPEAKER_03]: One, get divorced. [SPEAKER_03]: Two. [SPEAKER_01]: Listen. [SPEAKER_01]: We, that could be a whole new thing, but I know you're going to talk to Julia at some point about that all. [SPEAKER_03]: It's great catalyst for self-reflection and change. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Say yes to divorce. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, listen if it comes knocking at your door like it didn't mean yeah, but no is when those Catalysts and Catalysts for change, right, so in my case your case was divorced job Life circumstances same thing with me life circumstances find changes getting older [SPEAKER_03]: that don't fight at some rich and you will come out the other side and there is a point in a path.

1:44:26 [SPEAKER_04]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: That's waiting for you outside of these cataclysmic moments. [SPEAKER_03]: It's as hard as these moments are. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And as negative as they are. [SPEAKER_03]: Or may seem and feel in the moment those feelings are relevant. [SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm. [SPEAKER_03]: They're not the end. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And so we can accept them for some of some bit of the blessing that they are in what they're allowing your future to be. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: If you want your life to change, if you want experience more, if you want to feel more. [SPEAKER_03]: And we should want those. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Say yes more. [SPEAKER_03]: Yep. [SPEAKER_03]: Allow yourself to say yes more. [SPEAKER_03]: Not to cocaine. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's a difference. [SPEAKER_01]: It's a good judge, man.

1:45:06 [SPEAKER_01]: Use good judge, man. [SPEAKER_03]: Say yes for sponsored. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: Great. [SPEAKER_03]: But saying in these moments of connection. [SPEAKER_03]: Now, say in the context of connection, Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: The context of safe experience. [SPEAKER_03]: It's not harmful to yourself or other. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: We can say yes more. [SPEAKER_03]: And then to allow yourself. [SPEAKER_03]: to feel and to be, and those can be separate things. [SPEAKER_03]: And my being is not my feeling, and my feeling is not my being, and that you probably are all the things you are. [SPEAKER_03]: There's no one perfect version of you. [SPEAKER_03]: There's no one version of you. [SPEAKER_04]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: And you can accept all of them in their totality, the one that wants to smack everybody, and the one that's the artist, and the one that bakes cookies for the bakes.

1:45:57 [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Are all you. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's okay that they're all parts of you. [SPEAKER_04]: That's right. [SPEAKER_03]: And then the feelings that you have, what you like, what you dislike, what you, [SPEAKER_03]: how you interpret your feelings and you're going to experience all of them. [SPEAKER_03]: If you're experiencing sadness, it's not because you're deficient. [SPEAKER_03]: There's something wrong with you that you feel a feel heaviness or feel hardship or frustration or anger or anything that we would describe as like the idea, you shouldn't be enemies. [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: I have envy. [SPEAKER_02]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: I need to process that. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I have resentment. [SPEAKER_03]: I need to process them.

1:46:38 [SPEAKER_03]: Right. [SPEAKER_03]: I told Ryan the other day, it's not the emotion itself that's bad. [SPEAKER_03]: It's the actions you take based on them. [SPEAKER_02]: There you go. [SPEAKER_02]: Bingo. [SPEAKER_03]: I can feel resentment. [SPEAKER_03]: I can feel envy. [SPEAKER_03]: I can feel anger. [SPEAKER_03]: I can feel agitation, aggravation. [SPEAKER_03]: I can feel irrational. [SPEAKER_03]: I can feel like I don't know what I feel. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And all of those are okay. [SPEAKER_02]: They end there's a problem. [SPEAKER_03]: Then there's a problem. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I need to process these things. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: and processing those things is what makes you strong. [SPEAKER_03]: Processing those things are will make you like able to cope with life. [SPEAKER_03]: Life [SPEAKER_03]: is all of those things. [SPEAKER_03]: So if you don't process those things like this, maybe hard. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_03]: If you do process those things, you find ways where even in the hardest of times, which you can experience through divorce, through sickness, through whole bunch of things, the hardship, the heaviness that we feel now, if we can sit with our feelings and sit with each other and sit with ourselves, even in that ugliness.

1:47:38 [SPEAKER_03]: There are times of places and moments where we can find joy and beauty. [SPEAKER_03]: That's right. [SPEAKER_03]: Even here and now, even as ugly as it is. [SPEAKER_03]: That's right. [SPEAKER_03]: And if you can't find joy and beauty, even in moments that are, even in times that are ugly, you will find life to be much more difficult. [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely. [SPEAKER_03]: And I empathize with that. [SPEAKER_01]: It's about how much we can accept, accepting, constantly expanding ourselves in order to be able to accept all of likes, ups and downs, all of its spectrum of emotion. [SPEAKER_01]: And that's why I like my definition of the word love as like it is all inclusive of all of them. [SPEAKER_01]: All of the entire spectrum of emotions, like a rainbow, before it gets broken out into the prism of the definitions of this is sadness.

1:48:19 [SPEAKER_01]: This is anger, this is envy. [SPEAKER_01]: To me, pure love is the light, before it gets separated and all of them. [UNKNOWN]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I actually like that definition a lot. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And it's the totality of the feeling. [SPEAKER_03]: And it is all of it. [SPEAKER_03]: And we need all of it. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: And it is part of our humanity. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: So don't shoot it away. [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly. [SPEAKER_01]: Except more. [SPEAKER_03]: Don't close yourself off. [SPEAKER_03]: Feeling pain is. [SPEAKER_01]: appropriate. [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: We're not supposed to avoid pain. [SPEAKER_03]: We're supposed to feel it. [SPEAKER_01]: And in this dualistic life that we live in, you can't have one without the other. [SPEAKER_01]: They're like complete light without any darkness has no definition.

1:49:00 [SPEAKER_03]: It's one similar. [SPEAKER_03]: I can't appreciate it. [SPEAKER_03]: And I appreciate you for coming on the show and talking to me in the lunches you have. [SPEAKER_03]: I hope you want to talk more because these are always so good. [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Hopefully, anybody who's listening to this can find the nuggets out. [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to listen back to it and find more nuances like watching a movie again that's complicated to find some of the nuance in it and take out parts of it that help them live life in a more authentic. [SPEAKER_03]: free light. [SPEAKER_04]: Wait a second. [SPEAKER_03]: All right, of course. [SPEAKER_03]: This has been Sheet 11.

1:49:41 [SPEAKER_03]: Did I kill anything? [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. [SPEAKER_03]: Did I make a point? [SPEAKER_03]: I think so. [SPEAKER_03]: I think I point achieved. [SPEAKER_03]: It took a while. [SPEAKER_03]: But we got there. [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. [SPEAKER_03]: And I hope you join us again next time. [SPEAKER_03]: Thank you. [SPEAKER_03]: Thanks for hanging out with us today. [SPEAKER_03]: If you love this episode, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss what's coming next. [SPEAKER_03]: And hey, share it with your friends, share it with your family. [SPEAKER_03]: Until next time, stay bold, stay real, peace out, dupses, and keep speaking your mind. [SPEAKER_03]: See you soon.