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95. Intricately Interconnected- with Mark Poehner
81 Plays3 years ago
In this converstaion with Mark Poehner (Marco), we cover a few topics such as his experience as a foreigner growing up in Colombia during a time of inmense violence . We also talk about his family dynamics and upbringing and his approach to parenting. We talk as well as his passion to reforestation and conservation of endagered forest species in Colombia. And how everything in life is intricately interconnected.
Here is more about him in his own words:
"It wasn’t until I was in my 50s and read Third Culture Kids, by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken, that I understood how growing up in Colombia and going to Colegio Bolívar molded my identity and social adaptation. Like many other CB students and alumni, I am a hybrid of two or more cultures, having entered Colombia at age 5, in January 1961. It was a bewildering introduction to a society at war with itself, with extremes and contrasts between wealth and poverty, ethnic diversity, natural beauty and abundance and the ugliness of the Violencia.
My father, who had been born to missionary parents in Pereira, Caldas (1926, prior to the secession of Risaralda), also felt “called” to minister to the poor and downtrodden, so he ventured into the most remote regions, jungles and marginalized neighborhoods, where the refugees settled; and he took me with him. I formed deep bonds with the forests and pueblos of Colombia. I became a “grincolombiano” or “grindio.”
On my 17th birthday I left home, Colegio Bolívar and Colombia, to make it on my own. Borrowing my airfare, I went to the USA, where I began working as a farm laborer, a dock worker, and even a janitor at my high school, to subsist. It took four years to afford college, where I felt out of place socially. I worked a few years as a journalist, then turned to teaching, first adults, then children.
In my early 30s, in a crisis of identity, I returned to Colombia to explore my national affinity. Teaching some wonderful 4th grade classes at CB, from 1988 to 1991, I realized that I was both Colombian and USAmerican, and that it was my choice to embrace both.
During that time I was offered an abandoned farm in upper Pance, above the town and the end of the road. I bought it in February 1989, borrowing from my retirement account. I devoted it to reforestation with native species, and to the conservation of endangered forest species. I learned the hard way, that the idealism of “self-sustained” farms takes 26-hr. workdays; so I kept the project going on my meager teacher budget.
Dealing with the violence of my upbringing (frequent fighting in my neighborhood, ongoing disturbances in the countryside and the city), I pursued a different approach to relationships and communication. After marrying and becoming a father, I was given a mentor in “Effective Communication and Relationship Building.” I studied under Selwa Saíd for 17 years, learning how to teach and raise children without coercion, punishment or yelling, and to listen to the intent and desire of others in conflict. I thoroughly changed my approach to teaching and parenting.
Now retired, I live between my two countries, between Cali and Central Coast California. Between forestry and surfing. As a hermit in the Farallones de Cali and as a dad on the Monterey Peninsula. As many other CB alumni, I’m a hybrid, a bridge builder, and hopefully a resource for a more peaceful and healthy future."
Contact Mark Poehner
FB: Marco Poehner
Markpoehner@icloud.com
WA: +1 831-512-2880
316-562-6627 (when I have a signal)
Contact Kendra Rinaldi: https://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com/
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Transcript
Overcoming Internal Judgment
00:00:01
Speaker
The judge in me is somebody I'm not going to get rid of. That judge is always going to be there. But that judge doesn't have to rule. That judge doesn't have to be the driver of my car. He can be a navigator, but not the driver. I'm the driver. And there are different components. I have different passengers in my car, so to speak.
00:00:27
Speaker
realizing, recognizing the judge when the judge is judging and say, Oh yeah, you're judging this. Thank you for that judgment. Now I'm going to weigh it and proceed. And so I, to my surprise was able over a period of a few years to decrease my judgmentalness about myself. And lo and behold, along with that came compassion with other people.
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:58
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast. This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:01:21
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys. I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
00:01:43
Speaker
I'm excited to welcome to the podcast today, Mark Poner today. Am I pronouncing the last name? I always. Yeah, I always say this. OK, OK, OK. But today we're going to call him Marco because he goes by Marco as well. He lives between Cali. We were talking before Cali of California and Cali, Colombia. So so between the two Calis. So we're really excited to have you on. I'm excited to have you on and I'm excited for the listeners.
00:02:13
Speaker
to get to listen to all these different things.
Marco's Passion for Environment and Communication
00:02:16
Speaker
When you decided that you wanted to be a guest, we were talking about what were the themes we were going to talk about, and there's two that are major in your life. I'm going to give a snippet to the listeners. We're going to be talking a lot about your passion, about the carbon footprint that we have in our lives. With that,
00:02:38
Speaker
the passion that you have of the regeneration of the Andean forests and the species that are there for extinction. And then the other topic you're really passionate about is teaching and facilitating effective communications with people, especially with children, without it being raised
00:02:56
Speaker
them being raised in coercion and what was the other word? And punishment, right? So that's the two passions. So we're going to see how we take the conversation into those directions. So welcome, Marco. Thank you very much. Yeah, it's a pleasure for me. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about both of these things, which actually are tied in one way or another.
00:03:24
Speaker
Partially because everything is tight. Everything is linked. It's impossible really to disvinculate. And I think that a lot of the illness of our planet and of our species and all the damage we do to other species, it's a lack of recognition that we're all interconnected intricately.
00:03:47
Speaker
Oh, I could not agree more. I could not agree more. It's like getting your little toe. You don't realize how much you need that little toe, that little toe, the little one, the little piggy.
00:04:02
Speaker
until you hit it or you break it, then you realize, oh my gosh, we are all interconnected even within our body, these parts that we don't even realize why they exist. And in our human experience and collective experience with other species and plants, everything, we all are interconnected and we all affect the other. So yeah, I'm excited to hear this. So let's talk a little bit more about you and
Marco's Colombian Roots and Cultural Influences
00:04:30
Speaker
your upbringing and then we'll navigate as to why these two areas of your life are your passion. So you were mentioning you were born in the States, but went back to Colombia at the age of five. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Yeah. OK, so take us into that. How was it growing up in Colombia? My father was born in Colombia.
00:04:55
Speaker
He was born in Pereda Caldas, not Pereda Rizaralda. Rizaralda had not been formed. I remember when Rizaralda became independent in 1967. So he was born in Pereda of missionary parents. And they had a certain determination to convert all the Catholics into evangelical Christians. I think there are some inconsistencies that were, of course, there are inconsistencies.
00:05:24
Speaker
At any rate, I suspect that I might have some great uncle somewhere in Pereda, but my grandfather had to leave Pereda. Part of it was also because it was in the 1920s, he had a couple of sons there, and one of them died of tuberculosis.
00:05:47
Speaker
My father got tuberculosis and they decided to come back to the United States to pursue treatment. So my father grew up in a few years in Florida and then they wound up going down to Argentina again as missionaries. And so my father somehow or the other kept his Spanish and then they lost everything in a cyclone in Argentina.
00:06:16
Speaker
And they wound up going back to the west side of Florida, Tampa, ironically knocking down a forest in order to plant watermelons and stuff. So my father was a lumberjack.
00:06:32
Speaker
So your father is the reason that now you're trying to be very cautious about your carbon footprint. Well, in part, you know, I think that it's I think it's a very good illustration of the generational changes that are occurring. And, you know, I'm 66 years old now, born in 55. I grew up in Kylie.
00:06:54
Speaker
from age five, January 6, 1961, till June 9, 1972. And I wound up identifying as a caleno.
00:07:06
Speaker
I mean to the extent that I even my parents put me in Colegio Americano when I first started school I learned how to read before going to school because I went to church and so My mother would sit next to me and point at the words in the hymn book So I learned how to read music and words at the same time in Spanish and
00:07:34
Speaker
Then over the first few years, I lost my English. And so my parents became very pretty, not just me, my siblings too. There were four of us at the time. I have a twin sister and two older brothers.
Bullying, Health, and Racial Perceptions
00:07:50
Speaker
For some reason, I mean, I suspect that it was because I was very delicate of health.
00:07:57
Speaker
probably because I was the blondest one, so the sun had the biggest effect on me. You had El Monito, you know, I was the Monito in Cali. And so- And Moro, in other countries, Moro means like monkey, but in Colombia, Moro means blondie, like blonde. So anybody that's American, even if you're not actually blonde, by the way, even if you're not blonde, they'll still call you Moro because you're white, right? Yeah, well, the thing is, there's a takeoff on that.
00:08:26
Speaker
because from the origin of the word, it also means doll. So, so, so interestingly, the word is used in a pejorative way in Central America with people that are dark and Afro descendants are sometimes pejoratively called mono by the,
00:08:54
Speaker
people that are not of African origin. But at any rate, I grew up with a lot of discomfort. Partially, I had amoebic dysentery for seven years straight.
00:09:14
Speaker
And, um, from the time I was five and so I had terrible stomach aches and I would cry. And then I also had some sort of problem with my legs. So there were times I couldn't walk and my legs hurt a great deal. So I would cry, you know, which is what a little boy does. I don't think I have to make excuses for it. Um, and I also wound up, I think because of the tremendous dehydration, uh, from, from the dysentery.
00:09:44
Speaker
that I had terrible migraines. And so I would cry. And this resulted, for some reason, in my older brother, bless his heart, he bullied me. And interestingly, I was not able to confront him about the bullying until I was in my 50s.
00:10:14
Speaker
Oh, wow. It was part of my processing. And I stopped talking to him for seven years. And then one day I reflected and I said, no, Marco, you got to talk to your brother. You can't just cut him off. And so I called him and and I told him, I said, there's a reason for this. And he confessed right away. He said, yep, I'm a bully. And then he said, what can I do?
00:10:45
Speaker
to make up for it. And so I said, well, I tend to have a very, very low self-esteem. I feel very bad about myself. The effect of the bullying was that I always felt insufficient. And I've never been smart enough. I've never been good looking enough. I've been almost invisible. This is what you thought there. That's when you thought that in your 50s when you were talking to your brother. That's when you were telling him. Yeah. Yeah. I realized it.
00:11:15
Speaker
as a 50-year-old man, that I had a major problem with my self-esteem and that it had to do with not being accepted as a child. And so I would spend all my time on the street.
00:11:32
Speaker
And we lived across from Edificio en Esalano when it was first built, let's say three years after it was built. So my first friends were refugees from the basically the explosion of August 7, 1957, I think it was.
00:11:53
Speaker
in which seven trucks of dynamite exploded and took out one quarter of the city then. I'm learning something about the history of our country because I didn't know that part. The history of our country is fascinating and terrible. When we get into grief, I believe that Colombia is a country that is constantly in grieving and it has not been able to process it.
00:12:20
Speaker
And I think that fairly recently with the hope for the Peace Corps that was signed five years ago, many of us believed we were going to be able to go through the grieving process, leave it behind and begin to take steps forward in life. But as a nation, I cry for Colombia, literally. But I also do for the States because I again, the inter interconnectedness, one of the
00:12:49
Speaker
most devastating things of the last 50 years of war, which are the only ones that journalism in the United States accepts as a civil war of the last 50 years. I said, wait a minute. I was there in 1961. I saw people killed in front of me, you know, even as a child. And then every day in the newspaper, there were photographs of people with their throats slit and their tongues hanging out and their bodies cut open and children that were killed.
00:13:18
Speaker
It was a horrible la violencia, and at least 200,000 people killed each other off, led by the conservative government, and then wound up creating circumstances that led to further marginalization of the people who were poor, who had to leave their homes. And I grew up with these people.
00:13:42
Speaker
My father was, my father went back as a missionary. He went a little ahead of the family in 1960 and in 61 brought the rest of us down a few months later. And he was somebody who was dedicated to serving the poor, the disenfranchised, the refugees. And so he would go into the jungle, literally. I mean, we would spend, at age 11, he began taking me because my father
00:14:10
Speaker
My mother told my father, Alden, you better start taking Marky with you because he's spending too much time by himself on the street. She thought I was on the street in front of the house. I was walking all around Cali. Or I would get on the back of a bus, sneak on the back of a bus, and then the chauffeur would see me and say, hey, Monito, come this way. And I'd go sit up front on this box next to the chauffeur.
00:14:38
Speaker
and travel around the city, and then I'd get off somewhere and walk from there. And I got to know the whole of Cali of that time, which was only 660,000 people at that time. It's now, I think, a lot closer to 3 million. But I would walk from Santa Rita to Juan Chito.
00:14:59
Speaker
You know, I swam across the Rio Cauca almost drowned in it when I was eight. And this is at the eight and eight years old. You're you were just going like that. And you lived at what you lived in one of the
Colombia's History and Healing Process
00:15:11
Speaker
as missionaries, you didn't go and live in an affluent neighborhood. No, we didn't. You lived within one of the poorest neighborhoods. I wouldn't say one of the poorest. I'd say it was kind of it was certainly what we call un barrio over a working class, working class. Oh, OK. OK.
00:15:29
Speaker
Yeah, which was, you know, blue collar working class. There were some people who were entrepreneurial. There always are, fortunately. And so I also had friends that kind of moved up the economic ladder. But I have friends that I grew up with whose houses I slept in and then who slept in my house. And they lived close to the Rio Cauca, you know, in Alfonso Lopez or Barrio Siete Agosto.
00:15:57
Speaker
So when you're talking about just to give people that are listening, if they're English speakers or just from the state, when you live near the river, there is more cause of a lot of flooding happen. So a lot of these neighborhoods that are built alongside end up having a lot of flooding and things like that, too, right? A lot of that happens. That's part of it. The other thing is that the infrastructure in most Latin American cities
00:16:27
Speaker
is quite to the contrary of the infrastructure of the cities in the United States. So during the 40s and 50s, they started building after the war, building cities in North America with suburbs. And so the better off people would move to the suburbs. In Latin America, our cities, the infrastructure was the other way around. The rich people live closer to the center of town. And to this day, you can go to Cali
00:16:56
Speaker
and go to Barrio San Antonio and find incredibly wealthy homes with a rather modest front. Or you can go to, eventually they built suburbs like Sila Jardin in the 1960s, 70s, and especially when the Colombian mafias, the cartels started having no way to spend enough money. They built new suburbs for themselves.
00:17:27
Speaker
and also legitimate industrial people. So let me try guiding the conversation because my gosh, there's so much resource. So one of the things then for you is having experienced one living in another country, seeing the violence firsthand in that country, seeing that process of grieving, experiencing your own grief as well with the aspect of even with the bullying and your own,
00:17:54
Speaker
inner turmoil and confronting your brother when you were in your fifties. That that takes a lot of bravery, by the way, Marco, to be able to speak up, especially as an adult and confront those things. So kudos to you. That's interesting. I never really thought of it as bravery. I thought of it as an act of love. I I. That's beautiful, too.
00:18:20
Speaker
I have to love, to love myself, I have to make it right. And that includes making it right with my brother. It means talking to him about something that is hurtful, that has been hurtful. And the thing is we have struck up a wonderful relationship since then. I love him profoundly and we talk with frequency.
00:18:45
Speaker
That is so awesome. So yeah, you know what? That's so true, because those things can be interconnected. Because even with vulnerability, people sometimes think vulnerability is weakness, but vulnerability is really courage. So in vulnerability here, of you being able, because of that act of love, to share with your brother, active love to yourself, like you were saying, acknowledging that you were feeling this way and your upbringing of insecure, how you felt about yourself was a lot rooted in your bullying as a kid.
00:19:15
Speaker
Um, then that act of love and being vulnerable enough to share with your brother, that does take courage. And that's kind of where the, yeah. So it's all intertwined. Now how, yeah, go ahead. Well, I was just going to comment on that because I have a daughter who's 24 years old and we talk a lot. I, my kids and I talk a lot. I have three kids and we'll spend two, three, four hours a week.
00:19:39
Speaker
one-on-one conversations about whatever, you know, the human existence or art or the woods or whatever. And one of my daughters says, you know what I don't like about most men is that they're never vulnerable. They're always on guard. And she, you know, she uses a sexual imagery and will say, you know, they're afraid of being penetrated.
00:20:09
Speaker
She said, one of the things I like about gay men is that they're vulnerable. So that was a few years ago conversation. And I thought, you know, what does it mean for me to be vulnerable? And for me, it means to be available for intimacy. And that means
00:20:30
Speaker
pretty much, I mean, usually, particularly at my age, I'm just mostly on the emotional intimacy and spiritual intimacy. I tend to live rather, rather cast life and I'm a bit of a hermit. But anyhow, the issue of vulnerability is very important.
Vulnerability and Emotional Intimacy
00:20:58
Speaker
Because in order I think in words for us to really be in touch with ourselves We have to become vulnerable to other people as well So yeah, it allows us to see ourselves like truly see ourselves By being vulnerable right and and see others too in that vulnerability and and one of the things I think and those when you were talking about the intimacy in order to really have intimacy and
00:21:23
Speaker
in terms of, it's really about connection, right? And to be able to see someone and to be seen. So that's the part I think that makes it so important. Okay, so now let's talk then about how did the passion, actually, do you wanna go ahead and talk about your, let's talk about your children since you mentioned them. Let's talk about this aspect of your passion, about this communication and the way of child rearing
00:21:51
Speaker
Uh, and where that passion came from. That's going to take me back to the past again. Well, that's the thing. A lot of the things that this goes again, back to how the podcast being titled grief, gratitude in the gray in between is because of the fact that things in our life.
00:22:11
Speaker
end up being catalysts for some sort of growth or change. So like you said, whatever you experienced shifted how then you are now as a parent.
Coping Mechanisms and Personal Growth
00:22:22
Speaker
So go ahead and make us do that. Yes. Well, because I grew up in a neighborhood, which was a working class neighborhood and which was everybody was of color. I mean, I was unquestionably
00:22:36
Speaker
the the the blondest kid in in the neighborhood and the next was my brother you know or my brother said they were fair skin they had uh what they call Caucasian features and that sort of thing just like me and um so we were notorious very easy to pick out well it turns out
00:22:57
Speaker
that at that time, early 60s, there were refugees from Spain that included priests that were communist priests and so on that had to leave. And coincidentally, a couple of them got assigned to the church up the street from where I lived. And my father had built, he was very pragmatic, so he built a chapel
00:23:25
Speaker
for church, for people to come to. He built it in the most central, geographically central part of Cali he could get, which is barrio siempalos. Nobody knows where that is hardly. It's inside basically a barrio bella el casa. So very central.
00:23:44
Speaker
And it turns out that these Catholic priests, even though they were either anarchists or communists that had to leave Spain or Franco would kill them, they were also tremendously Catholic. So I found out later when I was 15 years old, and I got to know some of the boys of my neighborhood better, that the priest would send them
00:24:10
Speaker
to break the windows of our house and to throw mud at our house and to interrupt the religious proceedings and to beat me up. So I grew up very violently, you know, fighting or avoiding fights on a daily basis. And one of my coping mechanisms was to become more aggressive than the aggressor.
00:24:36
Speaker
So I began picking fights. I began, if I'd see somebody look at me, I'd say, what you looking at? You want me to split you open or something? And then the other one was learning how to use my wits to humiliate
00:25:00
Speaker
and to belittle people so much that they wouldn't dare attack me. So those were coping mechanisms. And then at the same time, I was beginning to go where I had spent already a few years going into the jungle with my father and I started hunting. So I had a gun at age 11 and I would hunt. And the only thing with my father was, you kill it, you eat it.
00:25:31
Speaker
So I ate a lot of different kinds of animals. Interestingly, at age 16, another one of my brothers said, I don't understand hunting. If we're going to eat meat, why do we have to kill wild animals? We have plenty of cows that we grow. And I thought about that for about a year and I quit carrying a gun, no more guns. And I picked up a camera and
00:25:56
Speaker
And then for a few years, I would try to take the best photographs in the woods or wherever. And then I realized I was spending so much time concentrating on trying to take a good photograph that I wasn't enjoying what I was seeing to the fullest extent. So that was a beginning of a conversion of sorts that led me to pacifism.
00:26:21
Speaker
I also, at a young age, read some Adam Smith and some Karl Marx and Engels and Trotsky and so on and started thinking about politics and political philosophy and so on because it was a time of turmoil.
00:26:38
Speaker
So I was in the demonstrations in Cali in 1970, 1971, that led up right after Frente Nacional was finishing up, and the election was won by Rojas Pineda, was stolen by him, and so on. So that's when Eme di Esonueve was formed, based on Buen minta, the Esonueve. That's the guerrilla movement.
00:27:02
Speaker
I was in a bit of a quandary because I tended to always side with the disenfranchised with the poor. I mean, I would have gotten along real well with Pope John XXIII, but I also became persuaded that violence was not going to be the means for a revolution of any sort. And so I was kind of caught between my Christianity on the one hand,
00:27:32
Speaker
pacifism on the other, recognizing that Christianity was not really a pacifist religion by any means. Quite the contrary, even, but I don't want to get into too much history there, but
00:27:49
Speaker
That could be for another. That could be a whole other chapter. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I wound up spending many years studying the history of Latin America and got a degree in it.
Career Shift and Parenting Philosophy
00:28:03
Speaker
So to me, I was a man of a violent mouth. I was good at communication. I became a journalist.
00:28:13
Speaker
And I wrote for newspapers in Los Angeles. But eventually I wound up getting into teaching. I was frustrated with journalism because I didn't feel that one could do in-depth investigation and give historical background to the present day conflicts.
00:28:41
Speaker
And particularly when I covered the Malvinas War in 1982, Falklands Malvinas. And I realized that this is just, people aren't going to understand why this war is going on because the historical background is completely omitted. And so it became more of a propaganda war, which was won by the British.
00:29:09
Speaker
But in the meantime, I decided to study. And I said, you know what, I really enjoy studying. So I went back to college and worked on a graduate degree. But I also began to question my religion at that time because I was kind of between Protestant on the one hand, and I had studied theology and gotten into Orthodox Christianity.
00:29:38
Speaker
At the same time, I was very interested in liberation theology, and it was very difficult. I could reconcile those in my mind, but eventually I couldn't reconcile all the very
00:29:52
Speaker
different contradictions until I opted out. I also realized that a lot of my internal conflict was due to the inability to reconcile my religious beliefs to the reality of life that I lived. And I also recognized when I became a teacher that I was too harsh. And I also recognized that I had a problem with my anger.
00:30:22
Speaker
that I was quick to anger. And so I pursued therapy. And eventually I got married, kind of late. It was almost 40. I mean, I got married the first time when I was 32, but that didn't last. And so when I married the mother of my children, I was 39 and a half, or 39. And my daughter was born when I was almost 40 years old.
00:30:52
Speaker
And I had sworn I would never spank my kids, because I used to get spanked. I mean, I'd get spanked two, three, four, five times a week. Sometimes I'd get whipped. My mother lost her temper. My father was very measured. He'd say, OK, this is what you did. This one deserves five lashes, or this one deserves three lashes, or such. And he was very calculating and very careful about not over spanking me, with a couple exceptions.
00:31:23
Speaker
When my eldest daughter was seven, I realized that I had a default mechanism that was not letting me do what I wanted to do, which was to raise my child in a loving and rational way. And at that time, I was also going through a divorce.
00:31:48
Speaker
And the therapist said, you know, Marco, you got to study communication, interpersonal communication with Selva Saeed. And I was too arrogant for a year. And then she had a heart attack and decided to retire. And she called me in one last time and said, Marco, I have one request. Take classes with Selva Saeed. So what is the name of this? Selva? Selva is a personal name. S E L W A.
00:32:18
Speaker
And the last name is Saeed, it's an Arabic name. She was a family to Edward. Interpersonal connections, you said? Interpersonal relationship building. Okay. She called her course effective communication and relationship building.
00:32:37
Speaker
And I stayed with her for 17 years. At first, I was like brass. I couldn't listen, but somehow or the other broke through in the first conference of about three days. And I said, there is some richness here that I really would like to tap into. And she had three levels of skills that she taught interpersonal skills for how to listen
00:33:07
Speaker
actively without interrupting or interfering with other people. And how to talk in a way that was easy for another person to listen to. How to set boundaries, how to set limits without injuring the other person with complete respect for whoever one is talking to. And I thought, yes. And also that included not judging. And I said, well, how can I not judge?
00:33:37
Speaker
And she said, don't judge yourself. And I said, well, how can I do that? And she said, practice. And it was a very frustrating answer for me to practice. And so.
00:33:56
Speaker
I learned more to meditate in my own way and take this in. And I realized the judge in me is somebody I'm not going to get rid of. That judge is always going to be there. But that judge doesn't have to rule. That judge doesn't have to be the driver of my car. He can be a navigator, but not the driver. I'm the driver. And there are different components. I have different passengers in my car.
00:34:25
Speaker
so to speak. And so realizing, recognizing the judge when the judge is judging and say, oh yeah, you're judging this. Thank you for that judgment. Now I'm going to weigh it and proceed. And so I, to my surprise, was able over a period of a few years to decrease my judgmentalness about myself
00:34:52
Speaker
And lo and behold, along with that came compassion with other people. And so the application of that was when I'm talking to my daughter from age seven on, I said, I'm not going to punish you anymore. No more time out. Definitely no spanking.
00:35:11
Speaker
And I'm going to learn to talk to you even when I'm frustrated or something. It's not your problem that I'm frustrated. It's my problem that I'm frustrated. So I'm going to learn how to deal with my frustration. And it's going to take some time because I have to learn a whole new way of.
00:35:30
Speaker
processing my thinking and sometimes you are going to practice like just like you had to practice the the non-judgment you were going to practice this new way of of of being and reprogramming yourself by practicing yeah well sometimes i would get so stuck i i mean i didn't know how to say it you know i'd be driving my kids home from school and they start quarreling with each other about
00:35:55
Speaker
You know putting their foot up on the chair in front of them or whatever kids argue Yeah, I know those and and I would say something like it's hard for me to drive with the the argument going on and One time my kids both reacted or two of them that were quarreling said dad. Why do you talk so funny? Just talk normal
00:36:23
Speaker
I said, do you want me to talk normal? Like I grew up talking and they said, yeah. And I said, well, shut up until we get home. So the fact that the way was like weird, but the shut up was the normal. And so my kids said, no, dad, keep practicing. And I got to tell you,
00:36:54
Speaker
Uh, you know, over the years I became a little, a little less slow. I still ponder my words a great deal. And, and sometimes people think I'm slow as in.
00:37:08
Speaker
processing as if it's like that it's taking, but for you it's because you're still processing how to speak, not that it's that you're like, okay, how do I say this in a way that is, you're still rethinking how you're going to express yourself. I'm actually going further than that. I'm listening to what the other person is saying and asking myself what is meant by what is being said.
00:37:35
Speaker
And what's the impact of that on, on me? And if it's appropriate for me to express the impact at this moment, or should I express that impact later on? So I'm very deliberate, very measured. Um, sometimes deliberate being deliberate and measured. I like, I like those two words. It's something I got to learn.
00:38:00
Speaker
Oh, I'm still learning it. And I tell you, I had 17 years with Selva Saeed. She was adorable. She didn't get the polio vaccine on time, so she had polio as a kid. And she was interned in a special institution that some very benevolent lady set up for children. It was called the Institute for Crippled Children in New York City.
00:38:31
Speaker
And it turned out that everybody at that Institute was tremendously compassionate and never once raised their voices that children. And so Selva learned it, uh, from age six to 12, she was interned. And she said, when she went home, she would hear her parents saying things like shame on you and, you know, hitting the spanking them and so on. But at the institution, she was never punished and never belittled.
00:39:01
Speaker
And so she wanted to teach people, she started out with parent effectiveness training and then decide that we also have to work on the parents on our own relationship with one another and with ourselves. And that's when she began.
00:39:20
Speaker
developing and she went to courses all over the United States on interpersonal communication and nonviolent communication with Marshall Rosenberg and so on and traveled around the world and she also wound up having a change of belief system. She wound up going to India and
00:39:45
Speaker
became involved in Janieism, but she never once spoke about it. I asked her about it in private conversation. She never ever brought it into her skill workshops or communication skills. Extremely, extremely respectful of other people's where we're at.
00:40:07
Speaker
And again, to me, the model of that, the respectfulness, she never taught respectfulness as a skill. She taught it by example. And I determined that's what I have to do with every single one of my students besides my own three children is consider that here are people that are of equal value to myself intrinsically.
00:40:36
Speaker
that are just less equipped with experience, less equipped with the skills needed to juggle the things we juggle in our minds. And I have a duty to honor that value in them when I address them in a way to improve their skills, to teach them something, to even potentially guide them.
00:41:03
Speaker
although even guidance can border on disrespect, I think, unsolicited advice, questioning, psychoanalysis. It's not my part to do that. I can do that, but that's for me, for me inside myself. I have to be tremendously respectful of other people where they're at. So I began practicing that and I stopped all forms of coercion.
00:41:34
Speaker
with my children, no time out, nothing, no reganos, no scolding. There were times I got frustrated and I got close and I said, I need a time out.
00:41:48
Speaker
So take ourselves, I would remember clocking myself in the closet, mommy's on a timeout, really like, but they were little just so that I could be able to like manage where the Hulk, I would call it the Incredible Hulk that lived inside of me, where that was going. I'm like, I need really, I'm like, let me be here, it's for your own protection. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's beautiful how children, I mean, when you say that,
00:42:16
Speaker
What's their response? Please. No, mine was so little they didn't understand. Why are you in there? I'm like, No, no, no, please. Yeah, they still want to be like, No, I need space. I need space. Yeah, I need a timeout. And that's, that's where I again, we'll go to where how everything's interconnected, because I think
00:42:41
Speaker
for an adult to be left by himself or herself, usually by herself with the children is an isolation that is not natural. It's not normal. It's not healthy. And so here's a mother stuck with one, two, three children in the house with numerous incidents throughout the day, sometimes one after the other for the whole day.
00:43:08
Speaker
in which judgments have to be made about what should I do? How do I handle this? And I got to get this done in the meantime. And there's nobody there to back it up. And so I think how we raise children is something that totally needs to be revamped.
00:43:33
Speaker
What you're saying right there too, it probably of course changes based on the cultural components of how children are raised. What you were describing is how I raised mine because I was here in the States, so I was who cooked.
00:43:52
Speaker
who cleaned, who took care of the kids, everything, right? But if I was in Colombia, it might've been a little different. If that's not, I didn't grow up with my mom being the person that cooked. And so the type of activities that I would do with my mom were different. She could probably actually spend quality time focused doing something with us.
00:44:13
Speaker
a little differently than what I was able to do when I was raising my kids, because my focus was on three things, four things at the same time, right? Cook, you know, this doesn't, this can't burn, you can't climb on this and fall or this, whatever, right? So it does shift on that. And I'm sure in other cultures in which maybe it's more community based, more people, more than one person live, like homes in which multi-generational homes. So there's others that live there that help
00:44:41
Speaker
Yes. So there's a whole different barriers. There's also the class system in Colombia, which is a caste system. I'll call it that, but it is, yeah, basically that. And so many, many, many people that are well-to-do are raised by a maid, not by their mother. Their mother is out doing other things.
00:45:05
Speaker
There were maids in our house, too, although the arrangements were different because of it being an evangelical missionary thing. There were certain exchanges of, let's say,
00:45:20
Speaker
We would give an education to somebody, but then she would help with with cooking or something like that. Yeah, something like that. So, OK, so then this all became one of your passions. And this is something before we go into talking a little bit about the your passion now about the carbon footprint and all these other aspects. This is something you also educate people and do workshops on as well, correct? With the parenting component and communication? I'll put it this way.
Workshops on Non-Coercive Parenting
00:45:49
Speaker
I have done it.
00:45:51
Speaker
prior to retirement and I've done it voluntarily in Colombia at my nature reserve. The difficulty in retirement has been scheduling both in the United States and in Colombia to be able to set up because my mentor died about a year and a half ago.
00:46:16
Speaker
But before she died, she was losing her mental faculties over, let's say, three to five years. So I was kind of guiding the workshops, or I was one of the people guiding the workshops. And these were once a week.
00:46:37
Speaker
For several years, I mean, for me, it was 17 years of study with her. And then I asked her, would you please develop a workshop on how to raise children and how to teach children a workshop for parents and for teachers? And she did that. And so we did three years of that.
00:46:57
Speaker
And I wound up teaching parenting classes and so on at the school where I taught. I also taught amongst, basically there it was diet was one thing and then raising children without coercion, with due respect. And, you know, there'd be people that say, well, you know, I believe spanking is necessary. I was spanked. I came out okay. And say, okay.
00:47:25
Speaker
All right. And, and by the way, is it okay if I ask you a personal question? Yeah, sure. Go ahead. So what's the last time you visited your dad? And invariably the people who got spanked and that turned out all right. They visited their dad five years ago, 10 years ago. I said, is that what you want? Cause if you're using the same mechanism, you're going to have, you're going to have the same result.
00:47:53
Speaker
So for me, I believe that as parents or as adults, not just parents. I mean, you might not have children of your own, but you have other children in your life. And some people try to reduce that number to a minimum. They don't want to see their nephews and nieces. They don't like little children. And I was kind of like that. When I was a journalist, I thought, no, I don't want anything to do with kids. And when I started teaching, I taught adults before I taught kids.
00:48:21
Speaker
And I was persuaded by somebody who was becoming an elementary school teacher to become an elementary school teacher. So, it's been a process for me, but I believe all our society needs to learn how to communicate. And in Colombia, a country that we can say is at least 500 years of violence,
00:48:48
Speaker
I think a lot of it stems from even how we talk to our children, how children are reprimanded or belittled, demeaned. What a disrespectful way to refer to a child. So it's profoundly part of our culture.
00:49:16
Speaker
Now, I think that we have very similar attitude to nature. We have grown up, we have been imbued with belief systems, religious and philosophical, that have man versus nature, and the concept that we're supposed to exercise dominion over nature and over the world.
00:49:45
Speaker
We've gotten very good at that, except that we do it by killing it. And since I grew up going into the jungle to accompany my father where he was doing his missionary work, and I would go hunting and so on, but I would also make friendships with the people in the jungle.
Love for Colombian Forests and Reforestation Efforts
00:50:08
Speaker
And if there were other children, I would become friends with them and so on.
00:50:12
Speaker
And, uh, but I fell in love with, I fell in love with the forest. And from the very, very first time I went in that the smell of the forest is just.
00:50:25
Speaker
like that. Yeah, it's wet. There's actually a name for it. There is, but I don't remember, but I, but it is a very, it's, it's that, uh, the black kind of dirt when it would, and there's some people that are more sensitive to that smell in my house, when it would rain, you know, how, you know, in my house when it would rain,
00:50:52
Speaker
That smell of that earth, for me, I didn't actually like that smell, but I had a different reason. Mine, I associated with that humidity because I had asthma growing up. There was something about when it would rain and the smell of that wet earth, dirt,
00:51:14
Speaker
that then somehow or another in my brain, I would associate to actually afterwards getting asthma attacks or things like that. So it was kind of like not, not a smell that I per se was like, yeah, in the jungle. It's a little different though, because yes, yes, because in the city, what you're getting is that water is striking the dust for the first time. And that dust is a composite of
00:51:39
Speaker
you know, shattered dirt, but not just that. It's got pollen in it. It's got a little bit of lichens, which is kind of a symbiotic relationship between algae and and fungi. And so you're getting particles that in your case, you're allergic to. When I'm in the jungle, I'm
00:52:06
Speaker
I smell the muskiness of the animals. I smell the humid soil that is basically humus, it's leaves that are rotting and transforming into soil. And to be able to kind of carry a scent
00:52:32
Speaker
And then my own scent, because, you know, after hours of trekking through jungle, you know, I began to smell like other animals and with a distinct human smell because we have a different diet and so on. But to me, the jungle woke up a different, a different love.
00:53:00
Speaker
And at some point I recognized that, you know, that it was disappearing. And, you know, I had decided to hunt for animals without any equipment, just see the animal and go home satisfied, you know, fill my heart. And most of the time it's not animals, most of the times it's plants, unless one is considering all the beautiful
00:53:29
Speaker
little creatures, entomologists are fascinated by, you know, many different insects. I mean, in a tree, a mature tree in Colombia, you can have 600 species of beetles living on one tree. And that's just species of beetles. That's not talking about the other, you know, wormy things and so on. So,
00:53:57
Speaker
the incredible biodiversity of Colombia. I'm in love with it. I've always been in love with it. So it's now 61 years of love for the forest in Colombia. And I also always fell in love with the Farallones de Cali. You know, we always had a view of the Farallones of the, in English, the Faryons. And interestingly, the Faryons that we know about
00:54:27
Speaker
in the states are islands off the coast of California and Washington and so on. And then I think Reunion Island, which I want to visit, has Farallones very similar to our own. But eventually, I always wanted to go up to the Farallones. And I also started having a recurring nightmare that it was being, a road was being built
00:54:58
Speaker
from Cali to up behind the Farallones, and it would go all along the Farallones behind, and now the Farallones would no longer be wild. And it was a recurring nightmare. I haven't had it for quite a few years, and maybe it's because I've been reforesting that area for the last 32 years. Much of the, well, where I bought the farm, when I went back to teach at Colegio Oliva,
00:55:28
Speaker
I had an opportunity. I was invited on a hike up to the Farallones and I went and now way back down the guy said, why don't you, well, let's go visit that old man over there. The candles still on. And we went, knocked on the door and they opened and gave us agua panela to drink. And I wound up negotiating the farm within that very same night. I had no idea. I thought I was going to buy a house in San Antonio with, with my,
00:55:57
Speaker
retirement funds from California and set up an ice cream shop in San Antonio, which I think was a good idea, but somebody else has done that probably. And I wound up buying that piece of land in order to conserve the regrowth of the forest and to
00:56:16
Speaker
Um, to plant more. Yeah. How do you access it? How do you, do you, do you have to walk up to get to where you, where your, it's not that far. It's only 400 meters from the end of the road. So you, so you part, you like, if you're driving there, you park there and then you just walk up all the way up to. Yeah. Yeah. From Colegio or you go up. All the way up to there is nine kilometers.
00:56:46
Speaker
which I walked many times. I call him a leader for those listening. That's the school that I graduated from and that Marcus mentioned, Marco's mentioning that he worked out for. I also graduated. Well, I didn't graduate from it, but I went to that school. I had a I had a scholarship at that school. It's so funny or ironic because they wanted more Spanish English speaking people at the school in order to make it a bilingual school.
00:57:15
Speaker
And so, and the principal at that time was Dale Swall. And he was a Mennonite. And so he had a certain amount of comforterity, let's say, with my father. And anyhow, my family, out of four kids, we had two and a half scholarships. So I went to Kolehiwolewa, too. And I am tremendously grateful. It really helped get my education going.
00:57:45
Speaker
So that later on, I left home very early. I left home the day I turned 17 because I couldn't get along with my father. And I figured either he'd kill me or I'd kill him. So I left home. That's when you came to the States? That's when you came to the States then? Yeah. And he gave me the airplane ticket to the States that I was going to repay. Later on, he said, no, you don't have to repay because I didn't ask your brother to repay. So it wouldn't be fair.
00:58:15
Speaker
My father was very fair. But here in the States, I wound up working on farms. So I cleaned cages for animals, fed animals and so on, then picked crops and then loaded trains and loaded trucks. I was a cotero, you know, one of the most disregarded occupations that a Colombian can have in Colombia. You know, the guy that loads the trucks with food.
00:58:43
Speaker
That's one of my jobs here in the States. And until I, and then I was, you know, a food server and stock worker and so on. But eventually I decided I, I, I wanted to get paid for using my head. And so I became a journalist, um, and later a teacher. So.
00:59:07
Speaker
What a journey, Marco, like so many different things. Now, can you just dive a little further into how do you help? So you have this land with the planting and the regeneration. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Like how many trees do you plant or what is this process that you do? I have no idea how many trees I've planted, maybe 100,000. Wow. And I don't mean me planting them by myself.
00:59:36
Speaker
Because by myself, I mean, I try to have a policy of, you know, plant a tree a day, minimum. So 30 years. But, you know, I hire people too. And sometimes, and everything comes out of my own pocket. For years, I was trying to work on this notion of the self-sustaining farm, what we called at that time the Gran Haintegral,
01:00:06
Speaker
So, you know, trying to have animals, you know, so I would have fish grow trout and do this and that. And and I realized, yeah, I can do this if I work 24 or 26 hours a day. This is it's pie in the sky. And Colombia is a wonderful, wonderful country for pie in the sky. Everybody, it's it's a magical quality, which are
01:00:35
Speaker
our compatriate Gabriel Garcia Marquez was so wonderful, illustrated to the rest of the world, the magical quality of our life, because we are a magical people. And it's a magical country. And I also find when I go to Columbia, it's like I put my foot on the ground and I start thinking of stories to write or poetry. And at the cabin that I built,
01:01:05
Speaker
I can sit and write poetry two, three hours. And my problem is that I wind up thinking in patterns that drive me nuts later. It's like I can't continue thinking in rhymes and rhythms.
01:01:20
Speaker
What you're just saying right there, sorry to interrupt, but the part that when you step there and the energy that infuses within you to then be more creative goes back again to the part that you were saying about how interconnected
Cultural Energies and Creativity
01:01:36
Speaker
we are. Yes. I've realized that and I've asked this to other people sometimes as well as
01:01:43
Speaker
When we travel and when we've lived in different places, we do have this sense of how these energies of these different lands do have an impact on us and our being. And the fact that it's so clear that when you step foot on Colombian soil, that you feel this magic and creativity just flowing through says a lot about that.
01:02:11
Speaker
I took an acted nose and probably also honestly, you've given. It's like a way of I'm going to get my own creativity is coming here like of what I'm feeling, but it's like the fact that you've given to the soil, you've given it something. You're getting back also something. That's certainly true.
01:02:31
Speaker
That's I have no doubt. I'll tell you what. There were some people that I saw. They were chills. I got chills. I'm not kidding. I got chills. Yeah, because you've you've you're planting all the you're giving it. You're taking care of it. So you're getting this energy. Sorry. Go back. Well, I wound up saying this almost by accident. And it was really a moment of enlightenment to myself. Or what was it? They're called an epiphany.
01:03:02
Speaker
Somebody asked me, they were interviewing me and they said, well, but how is it that you get all these trees to grow so plush, so well, they're so healthy? I said, no. When I'm planting trees, I am the forest. And I now know that's true. I wander the forest.
01:03:28
Speaker
I wander the forest day and night and sometimes I'll be up in the forest till two, three, four in the morning, experimenting, looking at what's out there at nighttime and how do trees behave during the night and not just trees? Because again, everything is related. I mean, I've spent the last few years persuaded that there are certain species of fungi
01:03:57
Speaker
that are related to certain species of trees symbiotically that they're mycorrhizae, the hair like the cilia of the of the of the fungi, the hair like almost they used to call them roots. I mean there's funny science that used to call mushrooms plants that are not.
01:04:19
Speaker
They're a separate kingdom that has way more species than the conjunction of vegetative species and animal species, including all the invertebrates. So to be able to see the different mushrooms growing next to different kinds of species of trees, and it's been my intent, and I've actually written invitations to universities in the United States and Columbia
01:04:49
Speaker
We need people who will come and study what these relationships are between the fungi and the trees. And specifically, because my focus is on trees that are in extreme danger of extinction. So I'll go to different parts of the forest outside of my own predio, my own 47 acres, and look for trees. And I have people that know trees way better than I do.
01:05:17
Speaker
They're natives of the mountains. They were born in those mountains themselves, not even in the city of Cali. And I pay them. And so minimum wage, let's say, is 32,000 pesos a day. I'll pay you 60,000. And you can go for two hours. You'll bring me back seeds of this tree, this tree, this tree.
01:05:40
Speaker
You got a day's work because you put yourself in danger. I pay people well. I believe very seriously in that. Pay on time. Pay well. So I try to pay. I don't hire too many people. I hire whatever I can. I sacrifice. I don't go out to pizza here in the States because I know a pizza will provide a family of four for a week.
01:06:10
Speaker
So I can hire somebody for the money a pizza costs. And to me, that's a responsibility. It's part of who makes me who I am. It also happens to be strategically, I think, very functional because the people there look out after me. And I have had near-death experiences.
01:06:40
Speaker
more than I wish. Years ago, before I was trained with Celis, I ate an effective communication.
Communication's Role in Community Building
01:06:49
Speaker
I had gun sales at my head. I got shot at. People tried to kill me and that doesn't happen anymore. I
01:07:04
Speaker
Well, because you've already also opened that bridge of that aspect of what you said of even the communication component, too, that now even just your interaction then with people is very different and that trust and the listening and so forth. So you are one with the people. You're not just this gringo anymore. Yeah, again, there's irony because in a sense I am. I mean, my friends in Ponce call me grindio.
01:07:34
Speaker
Grindio, like an India, which is in the India with gringo. That's a native and... Yeah, because, I mean, I don't look like anybody. I mean, once in a while, somebody will call me paisa or paisita or something like that. But which is because if I go to Yarumala Antioquia, everybody looks like me, except they all have a ruana, a carriela, a machete, a una, canica de agardiente.
01:08:02
Speaker
Hey, you're the you're the Caucasian version of you. Yeah, you could look like the Caucasian version of Colombia knows. Yeah, let's look at my dad being my dad being American Italian when he lived in Colombia, the same my dad could pass for. I mean, his accent was not he didn't grow up there. So his accent is not as good. So when he'd speak, then yes, you'd know he was. I mean, my dad listens to the to this part. My dad's barely my biggest fan. So he will get for him. I don't want to be.
01:08:30
Speaker
Yeah. He'll be wanting to even know your email address and like, oh, I want to hear more. I want to know if he knows so and so and so and so that went to school at that time. So believe me. He'll be here probably from my dad. He would probably be completely right. I probably do. Yeah, and you are.
01:08:46
Speaker
You probably do. When we finish recording, I'll ask you for your names as well and see if you know them. We're going to be wrapping it up, but we could probably go on, as we mentioned before, for hours, but we did accomplish the goal of touching the two priorities right now in your life, which were
01:09:03
Speaker
the parenting component and the communication and as well the regeneration of the forest. And I thank you so much for doing, and it really did give me chills that part of that. You were talking about symbiotic. Let's talk. Sorry. You talked about the symbiotic that happens in nature and the mushrooms and the trees and then the fact that you are one with
01:09:27
Speaker
with that land too and that you are the forest. I mean, it's just such beautiful imagery and really... Yeah, I need to... I'm gonna take a lot from that because I'm one of those that has no green thumb yet. That's okay. I got 10 of them.
01:09:48
Speaker
Yeah, so I have to learn from that aspect of being able to grow something, knowing that it's just, I'm looking here at my little, even my little, what are these called? The ones that are supposed to be okay with little water, even those end up dying in my home. I feel so sad. Oh, what they call the dumb canes? Yeah. Yeah, I'll show you. You see, even these little ones. Oh my goodness.
01:10:17
Speaker
Oh, succulents. That's even the succulents. Okay. I won't tell you about my succulents. I rent a two bedroom house here in Pacific Grove is the name of the township. And four of us live here. My ex-wife, two of my kids and myself.
01:10:40
Speaker
And so my ex-wife has one room, I have the other room. It was meant to be a room for my son and I who shared a room for 17 years. So guess why we talk to each other all the time? To me, the greatest honor a parent can have is for a child to come and say, mom or dad, I need somebody to talk to. Could you listen to me?
01:11:09
Speaker
I got to get something off my chest. What an honor. It's anything. My kids are all in their 20s, so it is anything. Also, if I'm messing up, if I'm making a mistake, I want to talk to you about this activity. It's impacting me.
01:11:38
Speaker
And I can acknowledge it and say, thank you for, for giving me the opportunity to change something that needs changing. You know, and even learning how to apologize for goofing up for a child with a child is I learned to say, Oh, that didn't come out right. Yeah. I, I wish I hadn't said it that way. I wonder if there's an opportunity.
01:12:09
Speaker
if you'd give me an opportunity to express it differently. I have never been told no, not once. Children are so resilient. And when they're honored, they know instinctively how to honor back and say, sure, go ahead, give it another try. And that means they get to go back and give it another try.
01:12:36
Speaker
Yes, and it's okay to admit we're wrong. That part, it's okay to admit we are wrong even as a parent. That again is that aspect of, like you're saying, it's not about our own
01:12:56
Speaker
ego, it's about allowing them to also be able to learn to admit when they're wrong in the future. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a lesson that we give them. So the same even goes with my neighbors and fancy because I was the ecologist, right? I was the guy that was not going to allow trees to be cut down any further. And meanwhile, my neighbors, when I went there, uh, I was the first not from there.
01:13:27
Speaker
to, to buy. So I was, and now I'm still a resident, but there are new generations that have come in the, let's say the last 10 to 20 years. And so the older people, the pioneers one, I have gone back and said, I did not start out right with you guys. I, I, I was imposing. I have a different.
01:13:57
Speaker
I know you and I have different ethics about the forest, and I want to express my respect to you. And I also want to express my desire to be supportive of you with any need you have. And I'm sorry I didn't start out better with you. I'd like the opportunity to develop a good relationship with you, the respect. And I'll tell you,
01:14:25
Speaker
People are very welcoming. You know, so beautiful. So many, so many lessons for us to take from this conversation. Thank you, Marco.
Call to Connect and Act for Change
01:14:37
Speaker
Thank you so much. And so for people to want to get a hold of you, is it OK? What would you like me to share your email below or what people want to learn more about either of these topics? Yeah, I'd say make a change in their lives. Yeah, my my.
01:14:54
Speaker
desire is to communicate with people to pass on the baton to the next generation and that's a whole other discussion because the greatest courage that I get today is from the younger generation many people who are in their 20s 30s early 40s who really want to do they want to add to what I'm doing and
01:15:24
Speaker
very spirited in my own life, my own hopefulness has declined as I have watched that no matter how much I plant, so much more gets cut down every day. And I sometimes think that our, well, I think we're on the verge of a global collapse, global social collapse and catastrophic, and that it might actually already be too late.
01:15:54
Speaker
But I'm not going to act as if it's too late. You know, I'm not going to get off this conversation and go get drunk and sob in my beer about how it's too late. No, I'm going to go plant some more trees and embrace young people who want to make the world livable.
01:16:19
Speaker
with or without us. Yeah, it's about taking control of the things that are in our control and not, you know, making, yeah, taking action in those. So thank you, thank you, thank you once again. And I'm sure you'll be getting some people getting in touch with you to learn more about these ways in which they can create this positive impact in the world around them and with the people around them as well. So, gracias. Como cho gusto.
01:16:52
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode and if you feel inspired in some way
01:17:16
Speaker
to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so. Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.