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Goodpain Podcast Season 02, Episode 015: Male Maturation over Time – Remembering to Choose Intentionally
33 Plays13 days ago
In this episode, Jeremy and Tyler explore the past as a means for informing how we can more consistently remember to make active choices. But choosing takes practice: it is easy to forget, including the ways we convinced ourselves we are certain of what will make us happy. While the word is not used, "regret" is one that could also be applied here; however, rather than use it as something to avoid, the co-hosts explore how the fact that we will at times regret, acceptance of that fact can invite us into more active remembering of who we want to be and who we are becoming.
All of this is discussed, and more, as we continue to excavate the topic of mature masculinity.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Good Pain' Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
I want to remember the depth of that heart being broken open without having to relive it, with but to remember because that freedom was the absolute remembrance of what matters in this moment.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm Jeremy. And I'm Tyler. Welcome to Good Pain, where we talk about life's true intensities without pretending they're easy solve. What if the things we're told to fix, optimize, or get over are actually where the real wisdom lives?
00:00:27
Speaker
Each week we gather for the kind of honest conversations you desire to be a part of more often about the relentless demands, the unexpected grief, the quiet victories, and everything in between. Because maybe, just maybe, the answer isn't to limit the hard stuff, it's to find the good in it. Welcome to the
Intentional Life Choices
00:00:44
Speaker
conversation.
00:00:55
Speaker
This week's episode joins Jeremy's and my conversation in progress as we talk about a number of topics around this question of what does it mean to become more intentional? What does it mean to be choosing who we're becoming more?
00:01:10
Speaker
What does it mean to practice choosing? And where do we begin to notice that we even have a choice in our lives? In our discussion, Jeremy and I talk about some of the ways that we have historically made our choices, whether they were conscious choices, whether they were unconscious, and how we increasingly want to use our capacity to remember, to recognize when we've forgotten some of the things that got us to where we are,
00:01:40
Speaker
And instead, remember what it's like to make choices. Remember what it's like to be intentional. And that that takes a little bit of reflection. It takes some contemplation about how we've gotten things wrong in the past and how we have made choices that may have divorced ourselves from the better versions of ourselves in the past and making sure that we're not perpetuating that in the present and further into the future.
00:02:08
Speaker
So
External Validation and Self-Identity
00:02:09
Speaker
with that, welcome to the show.
00:02:16
Speaker
There's something that happens though for for me as a young male, having strengths and seeing the world in that way through my eyes. When I start getting the approval, the adulation, the it takes a much longer period of time to start realizing whether you're doing these things for the approval and the adulation, the valid the validation.
00:02:41
Speaker
Or it's something that's actually a part of me. That's interesting. That's really where I was able to keep some degree of separation from this yeah in some ways.
00:02:51
Speaker
But in a lot of ways, i wasn't. Because I do have a esteem and validation now from the external world that is is in the room.
00:03:02
Speaker
And there was a period of time where it was really important. That has faded. Hmm. that has faded as I've gotten closer and and more aligned to this idea of who am I becoming as opposed to who am I at any given moment. like but
Evolving Expectations of Happiness
00:03:25
Speaker
the the The reason why I say that is because all of those things, those the turning these activities that for a long time were important to me and and that I enjoyed and the ways I showed up in the world, When the validation becomes the engine for that, for doing that, you get put into a box that says, this is that person. I would love to go back yeah and talk to people that haven't, don't know what we've been through, what has become, all these different things wow and show up wow and see how I was frozen in time for them. Yeah, sure. Tiffany has said similar things.
00:04:03
Speaker
There are certain people we know would meet us yeah that still expect we are the people that we were at that point. And I think the question is, how am i fulfilling what I believe is the personality that I'm supposed to have in this world? And who am I in the process of becoming and and reaching for what I feel is a more mature curiosity of that's constantly unfolding.
00:04:31
Speaker
yeah And it's It's unfolding based on the structures or the ways I've defined myself in the past or the ways that other people have defined me And that that I am increasing the, I am not in control of how people are going to define me.
00:04:48
Speaker
Ever. they're They're going to define me in the ways that they
Wisdom, Humility, and Eldership
00:04:51
Speaker
want to define me. Yeah. You have zero control, as you said. Yes. It's so curious that you i brought this up. I was kind of surprised to hear you say that you're still in the throes of this dynamic of self-identity in some way about who am I supposed to be and what's my destiny mama? Like all of those types of questions. That was a Forrest Gump quote. I don't know if you thought I called your mama or not. Yep, i yeah did i did. I heard it. okay You had said something really curious about the currently working through figuring out who who I am. i'm i'm paraphrasing dramatically, but it seemed like that's the statement I heard you say, and I was intrigued by that.
00:05:31
Speaker
If I think about Tyler, when when he is graduating high school, Tyler had a very defined view of himself. He knew that he wanted to get married. He knew he wanted to have a family. Oh, yeah, yeah. He knew things about what he wanted to become at that stage. Yeah. You know, through a lens that said, if I do these things, if Tyler does these things, he will be happy.
00:05:56
Speaker
What has constantly evolved with that, whether that's through hindsight, is going through using those things and pursuing them and saying,
Memory's Role in Shaping Experience
00:06:07
Speaker
yeah, Tiffany and I got married. We got married early. We started a family early. And then getting to those stages where I'd look back at the previous five years and say like, oh, I have these things and they have made me happy. They didn't make me happy in the way that I thought they would make me happy. Of course, of course.
00:06:28
Speaker
and And I could keep recycling that over and over and over again. What I think is going on there is I'm going to say kind of the the immaturity of active forgetting. At each point, when I look back, I never synthesize the fact that it made me happy in ways I i didn't think it would. You could not anticipate. Yes.
00:06:51
Speaker
But now I'm going to make decisions and I'm going to choose to now set, move the goalposts. I'm going to say, okay, now this thing is going to make me happy. I keep going through this cycle of trying to convince myself that I know what's going to make me happy. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, of course. And it seems so simple that we should be able to sculpt that out of any situation we're in because who better to know exactly what's going to make us happy. And the irony of this whole thing is we have really no idea. We have broad strokes and then we get into the moment and realize, oh, what?
00:07:26
Speaker
Perfect example of this in the context of masculinity is the show Reacher. are you familiar with this? Oh, yes. Yeah. Love Reacher. Alan Richardson and... He's amazing, right? So he was in an interview while ago describing this this emptiness, i'm again, paraphrasing, about after he had made it and he booked Reacher. And so he has this steady thing. He's able to do this thing. He's just like, this is not what I was expecting. i kind of don't like this. Again, I don't know if those are hers his words, but he was just like, yeah, I envisioned it going differently. There was this whole other thing that I fantasized about, and this is not it.
00:08:02
Speaker
And like, yeah, yeah, that's how it works. And especially on a really narrow stage such as that, where when we build to a goal through our lives, whatever that thing is, that feels super competitive. This is not terribly dissimilar for anything. I think that's worth pursuing.
00:08:20
Speaker
There's things that you have to do, right? There's sacrifice you have to make. You get there and you realize, what? I wanted streets of gold and whatever, right? Yeah. One thing we talk about with the girls ah is is the nature of what it means to become an elder or or a wisdom holder. And and we we know inherently that there's no guarantee for that.
00:08:44
Speaker
we've We've seen that through trauma, that yeah for for people that that experience significant pain, they may go through life for the next 20, 30, 40 years for the remainder, ah not knowing what to do with that pain.
00:08:58
Speaker
and transmitting it on others. It's a phrase we've used in this series as well, is is that you know we we either learn to transform our pain or we transmit it. We have phrases like, you know ah abused people abuse people. yeah like we we We inherently have this this acknowledgement that the experience of time is not sufficient to transform us yeah that there's something that has to happen yeah in order to and this is why that that aspect of forgetting is but there are times where i have reached a certain threshold where the inherent wisdom that's looking at me and staring me in the face like what you just what what we just said is is that i don't know what makes me happy yeah is is that I forget that almost immediately the moment that I start pursuing the next thing. It's crazy making.
00:09:55
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yeah It is. And and it's it's not a matter of, I think oftentimes people will then go to the opposite extreme and say, well, then how do we navigate this world without setting goals or convincing ourselves that we're going to be happy? Yeah. Yeah.
00:10:10
Speaker
Well, it's not a matter of of stopping those activities. It is a matter of changing the relationship that we have to those activities. This is where I think the the maturity starts to set in the remembering activity of starting to live with that thing that I can either choose to forget.
Trust and Self-awareness
00:10:30
Speaker
i have i was I look back five years ago, this is what I thought would make me happy. Right. it can It was a part of a much bigger sequence of events and and alchemy going on over five years yeah that that thing didn't make me happy.
00:10:48
Speaker
I arrived and and then it went away. And for a lot of us and a lot of the individuals I have worked with found friends or they're on this wheel of constantly needing that next thing that when I get there, then I will have arrived. Then I will have it figured out. And the reason I bring up the conversation we have with the girls is we will talk about people of, of the, uh, chrome hair class, the older, the elders, Chrome. I've never heard Chrome. hair The gray. I've heard blue hair. Yes. The blue their hair. Okay. Yes. um Chrome is the new boomer one. Thank you this is It is. ah
00:11:30
Speaker
ah It's, we could also say, you know, the gilded class. Oh, well that yeah sounds very affluent. That's fantastic. That's right. All right. so That class, oftentimes, we recognize those people that have self-appointed them as elders and wisdom holders sure purely by the passage of time. They believe- They've earned that status or whatever. That's right. I earned that.
00:11:56
Speaker
just Just because of time served. That's right. That's right. Now, the interesting thing about that also is when we look at all of kind of wisdom texts or accumulated wisdom or people we actually hold in that esteem, the word earned or deserved does not show up in any of their language. There's an inherent humility. And what is the nature of that humility? How have they become someone that embodies a more mature version of humility? And And what I would argue is they've chosen to remember, they are constantly choosing to remember yeah the frailty of their own hubris, the frailty of their own knowledge, the frailty of their experience as applicable to anyone and everyone, that their context, the plurality of themself and all of the different things that led to them
00:12:50
Speaker
and who they are is not sufficient to then cookie cutter everybody else. sure And and we this is where we started talking about there is something about the structure, giving structure, giving rules, giving this perceived wisdom, what I was say a naive wisdom yeah because we need something to bump up against. Yeah. I had the benefit of growing up in a house that was evangelical Christian. It gave me something to bump up against, to to to to learn. to
00:13:20
Speaker
But there was a point where I started unbundling that, unpacking that. Where we get sideways is when we start believing that the structure itself is what defines us.
00:13:34
Speaker
And we start anchoring and holding to building structure after structure after structure with the belief that that will define when we have arrived, when we when we fulfill or materialize that structure, whether that's through a job and a promotion and arriving. The number of people that we hear talking about this. it's we We all know it. it's It's around us. We marinate in people coming up to us and saying, hey, enjoy the ride. Pay attention to now sure because it goes fast. We have people that are are leaving clues, but we forget
00:14:14
Speaker
day after day that we have a choice in whether or not we're going to see that we're in it. We're in it right now. Yeah. We don't need to wait until we've arrived. And we're too close. So that's, that task becomes very, very difficult, if not impossible, because the fact that recognizing you're in it while you're in it becomes this really difficult challenge because it requires perspective. It becomes this out of body dynamic or, or expectation to realize, Oh yeah, this is kind of cool right now. I should i should not be dismissive of this.
00:14:47
Speaker
You mentioned happiness here. And so I think happiness is a tricky one to predict, but it's super easy to look back and realize, oh my gosh, I was so happy then. This thing, that was the definition happiness. I would love to go back to that moment, right?
00:15:05
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, just we're kind of talking in circles around this, but at the same point, we can't ever
Living in the Moment and Learning from the Past
00:15:11
Speaker
put the pieces in place to recreate that experience. Again, we can't ever build in a format or a structure that gets us a guaranteed situation that's as impactful, as emotional, as whatever, right? We can only hope to re-achieve that, right?
00:15:29
Speaker
And so memory becomes a part of this, but also we can't do it and moving forward. so so what you just said yes here we go i saw you waiting for me to drop my period so you can so what did two old guys do when they're sitting on a porch yeah um and they're retired say what are they doing they're talking about how expensive everything is they're talking about how the youth is all wrecked but yeah then after those things the easy the low-lying fruits of the conversation Then they talk about the good old days, right? The good old days. yeah Right now. So, so what are the things, what are they doing in that moment? i
00:16:04
Speaker
I do believe that they're borrowing from, from the happiness they may have been blind to during those times. Yeah. They are, they are recollecting those.
00:16:14
Speaker
So if I was to ask you right now, um, what, you know, what we could co-create in terms of a period of time in the past, the nostalgia sure of the eighties, what would that represent for you? This is what, yeah. Wow. So alone tell um,
00:16:31
Speaker
um That's so good. i wish everybody could have been through the process of just witnessing what magic just happened with you skillfully crafting the conversation I wanted to have earlier that we started before we recorded.
00:16:48
Speaker
um Well, great question. Thank you. The first thing comes to mind is um the pure joy of um of the toys and the tools of being able to just be a kid and the 80s for me specifically you were the same yeah yeah okay yep um we talked about uh various action figures and video games and other things and we went down a lengthy path of uh if if we were smart we would have saved some of these things because now there's a financial benefit of this
00:17:21
Speaker
I gave the example of um really hoping to cash in on the pristine condition of every one of the second series of the Garbage Pail Kids. Like no corners are bent.
00:17:33
Speaker
I put them plastic sleeves. I have them in a sacred book that's in a box that does not get looked at or too hot, too cold. Anyway, um and then I kind of realized that they're worthless now. So, but it doesn't matter because in the moment they were fantastic. And I reveled in opening up each one of those packages.
00:17:50
Speaker
and uh laying them out and organized and organizing them and inventorying which ones i have which ones i still need um but then that opened up as to another conversation about we started talking about uh movies and star wars was the first one that came to life and just how great those things were and yeah yeah i kind of butchered your question a little bit because i got excited and i i want to give this one full due time and credits but ah Man, it was it was so huge. It was so un impactful. Yeah.
00:18:23
Speaker
There's something about when we find, and I've experienced this with others of, of that got to experience the eighties. Well, yeah. Is, is that aspect of recreating the happiness of, of, and this started because in the recording studio where we are, I have some Legos and one of them is, the, the Lego game boy, non-working non-functioning in terms of it, that you don't get to. Oh, it's, it's working on me. You don't get to turn it on and watch the Game Boy yeah logo descend. There is. And then that little chime that that comes out. like that Those touch points are important.
00:19:04
Speaker
they ah the the The opportunity to look back and see who I was And the series of choices that I made and, and ask even those questions of holding within these emblems, whether it's the, we talked about yeah the star Wars pieces and and having, i had the large millennium Falcon. I did too. I had, ah and, and, and, and the one, there are things now where I will like the scent of sandalwood. Yeah.
00:19:32
Speaker
And the prevalence of sandalwood soap yeah that has this masculine feel to it. The first time i use a lot of sandalwood soap now because every single time wow I use it, it reminds me of Chewbacca soap on a rope.
00:19:50
Speaker
And I remember... Chewbacca soap on a rope. I remember him dwindling down yeah to that point where the soap one part of the soap starts to yeah it's no longer you can't hang it any longer. Nope. It's but that that sense of smell which we know sense of smell is deeply tied to memory as well. Yeah. We have these things of remembering, but, but the corollary to that is what is the role of remembering it's, I think it also is to contextualize the ways that we continually forget because. ah yeah. Yeah. Because in that moment, when when you and I both did the same thing um in in some respects with the collecting and the yeah the money, and and it had a purpose, it had a form. was like, I'm doing this for a reason that I think is going to make me happy or take out the word happy, sure make me money. Because I believe that having access to that money in the future, there's value there now that entire that we were doing, yeah the purpose and structure that we set up, the practice of looking for, when i when I was doing the Star Wars pieces um and and building out a Star Wars collection, and this was after the this this was in in the in the period when the Star Wars had its resurgence. okay
00:21:12
Speaker
They did the prequels and all of that. yeah Is that I built up a Star Wars collection that filled this room. I have not been privy to this. Are you hiding this somewhere or did that difference? It is gone. Oh, really? and andnna and ah And that'll be another story of how it's gone. believe it. This is one that I still wrestle with. Like, what?
00:21:32
Speaker
can i Can I just stop you right there? Yes. You don't need to say another another word because every listener to the show is going to recognize, why did you get rid of it? And then they're going to also have a story that connects. Like, yeah, I really regret doing the same thing. I had to get rid of it for whatever reason. Yeah. I was 17 when I sold it.
00:21:49
Speaker
I'll say this. Oh, interesting. And that's an important age is because that's when I started dating Tiffany. Got it. And that's an important piece because I needed money to go on dates. Yes. And yeah the age of 17 does not... There's there's two things. um I sold it to a comic book store and he... They're your buddies, by the way. took advantage of me are you in a way that that is like...
00:22:11
Speaker
Yeah. Imagine my shock. Yes. I could go back there now and, and not now the statute of limitations is well gone for that, but I could go, I could have gone back and said, you dealt with and a 17 year old a minor and you took it. Yes, exactly. Anyway, that's the kind of stuff that I wrestle and, and, and gets me charged up.
00:22:30
Speaker
anyway that is so i want to hear more about that a later time but i think what we're talking about here is the fact that you have these things present here we still have these things in a box somewhere in the attic or whatever um we hang on to these things because it is a time time capsule for us immediately being transported right back to that moment in our life where we can share happiness We experienced that thing and it doesn't get old because it was so formative yeah in great ways. And i would also argue that this is ah something that we used to do when we used to print photographs, right? There wasn't digital photography. Like you just rifle through the photos and then photos of your kids, photos of whatever.
00:23:12
Speaker
um But that is so powerful and it takes you, no matter what's going on, it takes you to a different place. That same place that you know is a safe place. It's important to remember those things. Yeah. When we, when we look at, you know, what we were discussing today, it's why is it important to remember? and And, and one of the questions we have here is when we begin to notice, I have a choice. here Yeah. And i think that's a big part of, of the activity that forgetting contributes to is is we forget that at any given moment, we do have a choice. Hmm.
00:23:53
Speaker
the period of time between forgetting and remembering again forgetting and remembering again yeah to a point where hopefully we've used this example so many times um and and it's just when that is important to me because it's those simple things of going into a coffee shop and regardless of what the disposition is of the person on the other side of the counter Remembering that I have a choice to smile, contribute without control of the outcome. Sure. Me smiling or being kind to someone. Right. Doesn't guarantee. it may not land. That I'm going to see yeah the yield, what I would hope for. This is interesting about our intentions and when we were talking about that and what you talked about with the collecting, our intentions, our hopes were the outcomes that that Garbage Pail Kid cards would would be worth something. I really was hoping it would. and And yet the activity of doing that, of believing and holding that loosely, then later on, there is something about looking back at what we experienced and not romanticizing the past.
00:25:01
Speaker
but reliving it in a way that we borrow the actual joy that we had in doing that and in remembering that it's possible to access that joy more frequently in the moment by choosing, regardless again of the outcome, to say like, this is fun.
00:25:21
Speaker
Sure. That's where there are certain practices for me that have been helpful in doing that. I can talk about days where I jump right into work. Yeah, sure, sure. And and I get to the end of that day and it's been productive. I'm exhausted and and all all of the- That feels good because you enjoy the work that you do, which is important. does.
00:25:43
Speaker
But then I start looking at, you know, and playing back some things. oh man, I wish I would have done totally that a little bit differently versus the days where I ease into the day a little bit more. Yeah. Because i know that if I remind myself, it's almost this, this flash forward. If I remind myself of what I would like to be able to look back on the day, Eight hours from now, 10 hours, 12 hours from now and and relive the nostalgia of the day in the way that we talk about these things. then Then I carry that with me through that day as a reminder so I don't forget what I want to experience in the moment. Yeah. And I have access to it more available. And and things like just quieting down, reading certain certain books, certain certain ways of almost casting a spell on myself with the words of others. yeah whether that's And why this is important is because these are this is the structure that I was raised with. And we called them devotions, daily devotions. You do these things.
00:26:48
Speaker
It had no meaning for me then it was perfunctory it was formulaic i had no connection to that but part of yeah growing up and remembering just through the lived experience of where i could have made more active choices now has brought back this structure in a
Trusting Life's Process
00:27:10
Speaker
way that I now reinvent it on my own. I do it through other inspired texts that for me, I actually hold to some degrees sacred yeah because of the relationship I have to this now. sure That is about me foreshortening that time between forgetting and remembering and making sure that I'm staying much more present and showing up in the ways that I want to be right now yeah and moving closer and closer to to the person that I'm constantly becoming. That's important to me. that's that is
00:27:45
Speaker
That's what I want to reach for more frequently. Yeah. i'm I'm struck with something you said about um having to do some work to be in the moment and recognizing that this is good or this is something that I don't want to forget. And I think that's really hard to do. And there are people that do much better living in the moment, but some people can't even wrap their head around that. They're very much...
00:28:09
Speaker
forward thinking or backward thinking right this is there's three options um and if you're always living in the future then that's fine it speaks to maybe the personality type that would get a box of uh garbage pill kids and think this is going to be so much more valuable if i don't open this thing yeah uh but then there's no joy in the moment of that the other hand if you did open it and then you traded them you wrecked them and all that stuff that's somebody who then in the future looks back like if i had only babied those things i could buy that boat or whatever right uh so they're living in the past and they have a regret with that so
00:28:44
Speaker
where would you say you throw yourself into i'm very much in the moment guy yeah and i'll own that and i do better than some of my other creative types because i think we have a ah stereotype there as well uh thinking forward thinking as well but i'm not great at the forward thinking yeah and i think that i recognize now that i wish i were better in some capacities at that but i i enjoy those moments in the now Yeah. I think it's, for me, it's contextual.
00:29:11
Speaker
Is it? Yeah. okay it's and And oftentimes it has to do with what are the stakes that are involved. and and And when I look back at myself, this is the the thing that I think a lot of us do is is looking back at younger versions of ourselves where we were fully convinced at a younger age that the stakes were huge. And then you get later on and you're like,
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah. my Yeah. You had, you don't know the meaning of the word stakes. Yeah. Yeah. The, the compassion that I have for that self is, is that no, those stakes were huge sure because the stakes that were involved for me as a younger version,
00:29:47
Speaker
we're much closer where we're still approximate to my world coming down my world being you know starting off with my my family and then you know increasingly getting bigger and bigger and that's part of some of the starkness of growing up uh is is realizing that our our family of origin our communities did little to prepare us for the expansiveness of the world. and and And we have yet to resolve the fact that we don't have the tools for at each world that we're a part of actually learning how to navigate it before all of a sudden we're in this world where there is so much interdependency. Yeah.
00:30:28
Speaker
and now we're expected to navigate it and and there's of course we're going to oversimplify of course we're going to stereotype that you're the city kid who know you know who doesn't know this world and starts denigrating the other world and we become very tribal in nature because we reach for this simplicity that we want to make ourselves feel secure. and And part of the ways we do that is we rely on past performance to predict what we need to do in order to make decisions now about how that's going to impact the future. yeah and And so when that gets supercharged, when we are constantly living, borrowing from incomplete, forgetful versions of the past that were tainted by the limits by the limits of this situation,
00:31:20
Speaker
And we're thrust into making decisions about a world where those situations don't exist anymore. The contexts have changed, but we hold so tightly to that past version.
00:31:30
Speaker
And we now expect that if we do this, it worked in the past or yeah or it didn't work in the past. And our conclusions about why it didn't work in the past are now we believe are sufficient to decide what we're going to do in order to control the future. yeah Well, yes, that's where I find myself needing to be reminded that it's different situation.
00:31:53
Speaker
I have the capacity for actually trusting. Yeah. Because that's the part that that for me is something that we forget often is, is that we, it's not that I, it's not that I forget that I should trust because that's a, that's a, that's a convincing and a persuasion. That's an intellectual exercise. Yeah, sure. I forget that I have the capacity to trust.
00:32:17
Speaker
And what that requires though is me slowing down, embracing some degree of humility, remembering what we started with is is that all of my efforts in the past were based on whatever accumulated knowledge or perspective I had up until that point. Yeah, you bet.
00:32:35
Speaker
And that I overweighted that in a way that blocked off seeing certain possibilities about the future itself. yeah And that I need to remember very first and foremost to ask myself the question, am I just doing it again? Am I am i am i committing the sins of the past? Sure.
00:32:53
Speaker
ah Two thoughts. ah You're talking about specifically trusting the process or the experience, not so much people. Is that correct? I would say both. Really? oh I would say both. i would argue that you cannot rationalize trusting a person that is in the bones you'd know immediately if you can trust them or not yeah uh and the second they wrong you even if you have gone into it with good intention that you do trust them it only takes one one opportunity for that trust to be broken and then that is a tough road back but the process i thought we were talking about
00:33:24
Speaker
And I think that requires a bit more faith or confidence in you'll be okay, whatever the outcome at the end. But but anyway, do you think that the trust for both categories is applicable? i the The topic of trust for me very quickly shifts from being, I'll say this. Yes, I do believe that we forget that we have the capacity to trust people.
00:33:49
Speaker
The origination of that starts with, do I trust myself? Yeah, of course. Do I trust back to to the example of of being in line at coffee and you get someone up there and their reaction is going to be their reaction.
00:34:04
Speaker
Right. Do I trust myself well enough that regardless of what their reaction is, if it's a poor one that solicits emotions within me do i trust that i can endure those do i have the window of tolerance that's wide enough to feel maligned to feel triggered do i trust myself then to recognize that i want to be someone that is not enslaved to my initial reactions yeah sure and trust that I can catch a breath, that I can then respond in a way that's more closely aligned to my genuine and authentic self and trust that whatever their reaction is going to be is exactly where they are. Yeah, sure. So so for me, i think there's there's a multi-layered version of the trust here because I think oftentimes
00:34:56
Speaker
What we do when we say, and I think you named it, is is that when we define the trust of the other person and the broken trust that they have in through betrayal and these different pieces, is is that there's two aspects to this. Is is that what what what are we not trusting? We're not trusting our expectations that we assigned to them. And they have broken those. And they may have actually been, many people in relationships, they're complicit with helping to build those. Sure.
00:35:24
Speaker
They say things like the most direct one, you can trust me. And then they do something that violates that trust. Yeah. going back Just to stop you. Yeah. Anybody that would lead with, you can trust me. I'm automatically not. Absolutely. Right now. Now here's the interesting thing about this. And this may be get just this, this gets maybe a little bit too heavy. Okay. is is that what I just heard you say is actually you have a deep trust there because when somebody signals that way that and says to you, hey, you can trust me, you're trusting that yourself that that no, I my first theme this person is. Yeah.
00:36:02
Speaker
So but but so the question is not for me as much the trust. It's the how we allow ourselves to be leveraged away from those things is if somebody says that and then there's some carrot that gets dangled that's like, ooh, this, how how am I now trading off against this inherent piece that I know this person might not be trustworthy, but they've said, done, or conveyed something that has me staying within this relationship, staying in proximity. Yeah.
00:36:34
Speaker
And that to that ends up being probably far more interesting to me about myself is how I negotiate, how I rationalize, how how I allow myself to stay involved and yeah in in ways that still forgets.
00:36:52
Speaker
That I have a choice here, that I am choosing to allow something to keep me in the dynamic here, regardless of what I i know, the trust of myself, my my assessment of this is per someone who's not trustworthy, and yet I'm still in proximity to them. Yeah. that probably points more at the the can i trust myself to remember that i always have an active choice in what is going on sure in whether i stay in proximity whether i give my time resources and energy to this person, to this relationship?
00:37:27
Speaker
Or am I allowing myself to be leveraged? And this goes back to there are situations where in that situation, most likely if I'm allowing, if I've forgotten my instincts, my intuition that this, yeah be careful here, and I'm staying involved,
00:37:43
Speaker
And I've therefore forgotten my active choice in the matter. um Most likely it's because now I'm living in the future. Now i'm I'm starting to think that there's something here that I could potentially get in the future. yeah And I'm allowing myself to stay in the proximity under the while holding the hope out that I'll get something.
00:38:05
Speaker
ah The only person that I'm ever going to trust when they say, trust me is the Harrison Ford character in the Indiana series. yeah Outside of that, it doesn't happen. And that's, that's my stand. So we have to move on. We have to agree to disagree. Hey, the other thought I had about this was um you'd alluded to a piece about ah we get into these traps about, oh I've already done this work. I can move on now.
00:38:27
Speaker
e It's a great callback to the interview you did with Amanda Jepson, yes um which was fantastic. And she was very clear about talking about um a lot of those examples that happen in her practice, but also as guys, we kind of get into this mode where oh yeah, I've done this. I'm going to check this box and move on to the next thing.
00:38:47
Speaker
And sometimes we're not that lucky to be able to have the other party be on board with that philosophy because it is a moving target every time, right? It's different circumstances, different volumes of complexity.
00:39:02
Speaker
um But all of this is to say We go through these experiences. We try to make right with ourselves and by others, whatever the outcome is. But i I don't want to get too far away from getting back to the memory piece because the remembering of those experiences, I think, also continue to shape and correct course for The things you just illustrated about, am I cutting myself off from an opportunity here if I insert this rationale from the previous experience into this current one?
00:39:38
Speaker
And then what am I giving up on is, I think, the harder question that people won't have the ability to see until it's too late or ever. yeah What are your thoughts with the memory piece and all
Emotional Connections and Meaningful Relationships
00:39:48
Speaker
that? Memory has, i have the memory of what it's like to have my heart cracked open. Yeah. I have no desire to go through that degree of, uh, an event in 2010, you know, when, when Claire was hurt.
00:40:04
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Of course that's going to, to leave an imprint. sure The imprint of of having my heart cracked open and and being so, feeling a sense of freedom in that moment that everything, there's no room for the projecting about the future or worrying about the minutiae, which a week before was not minutiae.
00:40:30
Speaker
It was putting food on the table and career and all these different things. But In that moment of, of creating this memory that says none of this matters right now. Right. and it's very easy to forget that in a way that says, well, now I'm going to take that memory and I'm going to now over index on control, which I did.
00:40:53
Speaker
Yeah. Like, okay. You kind of be crazy not to given the circumstances of what that memory was trying to guard you against. Right. Yeah. And and it's and it manifested for me personally in and I think we've talked about this before. of For those first five years, I had to get up multiple times a night to go check on Claire. Sure. um And make sure she was still breathing. Yeah. like yeah And and and there are vestigial aspects of that that are still reside within me.
00:41:22
Speaker
it's there there so the memory the imprint of of the feelings in particular of what the experience is at some point at some point those decoupled from kind of the context of it i can still i can still think about all of the pieces around that but i'm never going to be rid of the emotional memory right of what happened and And so now what do what do i do with what do I do with that? what do i How do I live? How do i make sure that that's not a hijacking the present now and and moving you for moving me further away from from what was also presented in that moment, which is that that freedom that I said that came along with that. is is that using the memory to further of Claire to further try to control, to further try to structure and and and stabilize. And they' there there is some aspect of needing to rebuild. But there is a there's a point where it tips further into to now eliminating the the value of the glimpse that I was given, which is freedom can be had in
00:42:38
Speaker
Hmm.
00:42:51
Speaker
that's the reality yeah those are the ecological aspects that we're just not going to get rid of those and but my relationship to those things of believing that by constantly monitoring them, constantly shaping them, controlling them, making sure that the the cost is is the freedom for paying attention to what's happening now. And there are times where we we have, especially right now, we have those things that provide us stability and structure are are directly under assault. Mm-hmm.
00:43:22
Speaker
And we have to respond to those in a timely manner because we're still in this world and we still interact with it. that Now the the person that I am being called to become is is holding that those things are going to be ever present. Can I find the opportunity to even to be free in light of the fact that those things are still here, that structure, the demands, the caring for Claire, us never being, we're never going to be empty nesters, all of those things. Can I find a sense of beauty and and appreciation and freedom regardless of the circumstances?
00:44:02
Speaker
Or do I perpetuate this belief that I will only find that freedom when I arrive, when I get at this point. and and And now i'm so I'm back in that that forgetting.
00:44:17
Speaker
right and And I think that's the, with that without denigrating the fact that this is what we do. Like this is we bo it's it's not a matter of of riot arriving at remembering like I know it's this it's this dance between the fact that I'm going to forget these things and then I'm going to forget these. And what are the what are the things that I'm doing? What are the practices that I do to call me back to help me remember? And also, how is the forgetting itself starting to incorporate itself in in a way of wisdom back to me? Oh, I, I am for this thing.
00:44:57
Speaker
Now this fear or this anxiety or this project over here is a new way that actually caused me to forget why I was doing it in the first place. Right. I love art. That's what we're going to be talking about in the next season. I'm excited about that. I'm i'm really... And one of the things is is that right now, I'm really excited about that. I'm really... I'm starting to... I'm watching a series on on Apple TV Plus.
00:45:24
Speaker
Mark Ronson, I think it's called Watch the Music. And he's going over six episodes and and talking about auto-tuning, talking about sampling through this lens of what does that mean for us to borrow, to stand on the shoulders? When does it become appropriation? When does it become exploited? all It's really, I love it. There's an art to how they're even intellectually chewing on the the medium itself of music.
00:45:54
Speaker
And I'm really getting excited. Well, when we're in the middle of that season, what am i what is going to be the ways that I have forgotten the excitement I'm feeling right now? sure That I'm not in the middle in the middle of it actually living and engaging from that form of excitement. And and ah and all that that's kind of the...
00:46:17
Speaker
the shorthand of my heart being cracked to open of that freedom is, is really pointing at that of, of there's a trying to make a series that's going to, you know, it in this medium that we're here, if we were to be doing this for an audience and asking the questions of, is this going to yield? Are people going to pay attention to it? Is it,
00:46:41
Speaker
In the same way that the the the garbage pail kids, is this going to to pay off? is it all those That has a role. It has a role um in producing generative activity. The minute that it stops producing generated generative activity,
00:46:59
Speaker
And I'm starting to do this because I'm trying to structure the formula that's going to give me the validation. And I'm only doing this if I can convince myself that it is going to be heard by x number of people, et cetera, et cetera. I have forgotten why I was doing it in the first place. And I need things to remind me. yeah And that's, the that's ah I think, a part of the question that I continually ask myself is what are what are how am i making space for the things that help me remember. Because that's where I want to be. I want to be in a state of remembrance in the same way that I want to remember when Claire is having a tough day and she is crying and and Tiffany and I are afraid and we're starting to snap.
00:47:44
Speaker
I want to remember the depth of that heart being broken open all the way then without having to relive it, without having to put myself through, but to remember because that freedom was the absolute remembrance of what matters in this moment. wow And so much of of my time is living in a state of forgetting that that this is fun in the same way that as two guys sitting here talking about the 80s and talking about the Game Boys, ah it was fun.
00:48:15
Speaker
So much fun. yeah and And I want to remember that more frequently. It's a really good goal. What do you want to remember? I think relationships. Those are the most meaningful. Right. I think.
00:48:27
Speaker
Yeah. Damn it, Tyler. I'm getting emotional now. Just just really beautiful moments with. um my kids of course my wife uh uh former friends uh alex my friend alex who passed like all of those are just really amazing things that i don't know what ever lose yeah those are the best you can't beat them Thank you for sitting with us in this conversation, for bringing your own story, your own questions, and your own hard-won wisdom to what we're building together.
00:48:59
Speaker
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00:49:18
Speaker
Good Pain is recorded in Colorado on Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne ancestral lands. And let's remember, we are not alone in this. Our struggle is not our shame.
00:49:29
Speaker
Whatever we are carrying today, we don't have to carry it alone. We will see you next time.