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Moments with GENE
33 Plays7 months ago
"Just have the courage to be yourself, for heaven's sake!"
Wise words gleaned from decades of observation and experience! I know my friend, Gene, as masterful storyteller, writer, author, musician, tennis player, father and husband ... and I find out even more in our conversation!
Many years bring much wisdom and Gene's colorful stories and vibrant life remind us all of what having the courage to have a few tomatoes thrown at you for a good laugh can do to foster the freedom and creativity that has kept him flowing ...
But it hasn't been without deep heartbreak as well ... listen in:
Thank you for supporting my work with "Moments with MEN!"
Contact me with comments, insights or to continue the discussion with me on your own episode ...
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Transcript
Introduction and Topic Overview
00:00:05
Speaker
Hi, everybody. I'm Lizzie Kay. Welcome to another episode of Moments with Men. I am here today with my friend, Gene. Hi, Gene. Welcome. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for sharing some time with me. We are
Gene's Upbringing and Masculinity Messages
00:00:24
Speaker
going to talk today about different expressions of masculinity and what it means to be a man.
00:00:30
Speaker
in this society from your perspective. Okay. Okay. So as we do, let's just kind of start with some demographic information. Where were you born? What kind of family did you grow up in? Blah, blah, blah. Okay. Yeah. I grew up in Northwest Shore, Ohio, a town of about 12,000 people, about an hour south of Toledo, Ohio, and an hour east of Fort Wayne, Indiana. So that puts it right up in the Northwest corner of Ohio. The town itself was almost idyllic at the time.
00:01:00
Speaker
It looked like Main Street and Disneyland back in the day. Most of the people in there had German or Dutch names. I guess that's the great immigration in the 1990s and they sort of settled there. It was a very prosperous little town with a lot of businesses. It was a great time to grow up. We could ride our bicycles anywhere, do anything we wanted. If I had to be across town,
00:01:30
Speaker
And it was about what we called supper time then, we call it dinner now. Somebody had come out and say, Gene Myers, you need to get home because your mother's going to be looking for you. It was that kind of a town. So I grew up, I had two brothers, both younger than me, four and six years younger. Parents were, my dad worked, my mom was a homemaker like they used to do back in the old days, you know.
00:02:01
Speaker
Blue Monday meant washing and ironing and all that stuff. All the homes were heated with coal in those days, and it's surprising I'm still standing here or sitting here today because I can recall my mom wiping down all day walls every spring with a paint gray clay-like substance, and it would be totally black, which meant we were breathing that all winter long in our schools, in our churches, at home, everywhere.
00:02:31
Speaker
But it was a great place. And I grew up in a wonderful town. Wonderful. OK. So that gives us a little context, this idea like town that you grew up in. Very much. I remember being in a town like that, too, where you could ride our bikes all over town. They'd whistle across the block to make dinner time. There you go. Like that. That's OK. That stopped him from chewing his bone.
00:02:59
Speaker
Um, so, um, so, all right. And then what, how did you, what were some of the messages you heard? Like, did you hear any, some people didn't hear any, right? What were some of the messages you actually heard from people telling you a father, grandfather telling you, this is what it means to be a man. Oh, sure. Uh, basically I was taught that, um, uh, kind of a stiff upper lip, you know, uh, big boys don't cry, you know, that kind of thing.
00:03:30
Speaker
I was taught to be true to the family. That was one thing. Don't do anything to harm your family name. That was very important, and that was kind of the time, I guess. I was taught to honor womanhood by my father. He said, you know, our job is to honor them. That's the word he used.
00:03:59
Speaker
He didn't say take advantage or anything like that, but he said, you know, don't do anything that's going to cast bad descriptions on your mom or myself. So, and at that time, as I grew into a teenager, uh, if anybody got pregnant, Oh my God, you know, the whole shock and everybody, both, both, uh, were pariahs.
00:04:28
Speaker
They just were shunned by society, almost an Amish-like type of a thing. So, as a result, I guess you could say, like St. Paul says, it's up through the woman to keep the man's morality. And they did, you know? We were very much afraid of that, first of all, but the women also were afraid.
00:04:57
Speaker
And so we were, you know, proven proper, I suppose you would say. Wow.
Teenage Years and Societal Expectations
00:05:05
Speaker
Okay. Probably different than how a lot of people grow up today or come of age today, right? Where anything goes and wow, really anything goes. What we thought about it all the time, you know. Yeah. Oh, you could think about it and actually. Well, we didn't.
00:05:24
Speaker
We kind of kept that to ourselves, you know. I can remember the thing for me, and most boys my age, when the girls started getting breasts in like the eighth grade. It was, whoa, that was a very attractive thing. I wonder if I could touch one of those. No, you can't touch one of those. What to? Yeah. But anyway, that was kind of the first inkling
00:05:52
Speaker
that because when I grew up, the boys and the guys were about the same, you know, we played baseball together, we did a lot of things together. But at that time, going through puberty is when all the changes happen and all the chemistry changes too. Okay, so that's interesting because I'm thinking about how, you know, boys, you, people around you at that time came of age and started, like you said, the first inkling, the first little spark, the first, you know, things that start happening.
00:06:21
Speaker
And then how were you, were you guided through that? Were you just feeling your way through it? Because I really am very big contrast to how it is now when boys get the first little inkling. You know, look at what's around them now as compared to what was around then. And how did you like navigate that? Well, part of it was self-control. And the self-control was- I'm sorry, could you say that again? Self-control.
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah, put into us by fathers and mothers saying, hey, don't do that. Don't you dare even think about that. Well, we did think about it, but we were afraid to do anything about it. And I think the girls received the same counsel too. I often thought once I had a daughter, I thought, you know, maybe that's the way God punishes guys like me. They give us daughters because you don't trust anybody.
00:07:21
Speaker
Any of the boys that come around, you go, I know what you're thinking because you're thinking the same thing I was thinking. Yeah, my dad doesn't think. But unfortunately, unlike today, I didn't get to act out. Okay. I was afraid to. Yeah. And so was everybody pretty much the same? Like your friends, everybody was? Yeah. There's one story and there's a, the guy that I've known
00:07:50
Speaker
longest of my whole life. We were toddlers together. He got MS in his mid-20s and he handled it for a long time, but he's been dead now for maybe 10 years. But I mean, he really fought the good fight. But now he was a guy that as we grew into teenagers, heck, that's, I did not. So that meant he could maybe take some girls out to the drive-in theater, the passion pit we called it, you know.
00:08:20
Speaker
And there was a girl in my class by the name of Sarah. And Sarah was very well endowed. And so just a year or so before he died, his name was Phil. He said, you know what, I took her out of the drive-in and I touched her breast and he said, my ears still rain from how hard she hit me.
00:08:46
Speaker
Wow. Wow. So it was different then. I was going to say the same thing. So it was different. I had self-control. Phil apparently did not, but Sarah took care of it. Well, no, I think it's interesting. I don't know how many women would actually haul off and hit somebody today. You know what I mean? I mean, I think it's different on both sides, perhaps. Especially those ages, you know? Oh, yeah.
00:09:14
Speaker
Oh yeah, so I didn't really have a girlfriend until I was I think a senior in high school. Okay. And I had a girlfriend. Okay. What did that mean different to you to have a girlfriend? Oh, I guess it was somebody to go to the dances with you. Okay. Mostly somebody to make out with that was pretty cool. Okay. So that was okay. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
00:09:40
Speaker
And let's see, she and I dated pretty much all through college. And then she wanted to become a flight attendant, which she did. And then I got out of college, and I went off to work, and she went off to be a flight attendant. And it was just kind of a mutual party, you know? Nice. I used to tell people to be nice. So yeah, she dealt with me. OK, so you went off to work.
00:10:10
Speaker
You're like in the work world. Yeah, world of work. I've heard some few stories here and there. I know you were in, I don't know what industry, but you know, a man's world, so to speak, right? And making your way very well through that. So how did that shape, you know, you as a man, the work world now that you asked for it? Well, let me think. I started work. I actually went to work. I was hired in Chicago and went to work in Detroit.
00:10:41
Speaker
And what I did is I was a field engineer, and I was mainly in different automotive factories. At that time, the automotive industry in Detroit was booming. And of course, I met a lot of young guys like me, and at the time it was all, you know, suits and ties, hats and everything, and professional women. And so, yeah, it was a whole different experience for me.
00:11:12
Speaker
Now, dealing with women who were professional, I did have one thing that was kind of frightening, though. In those days, they had office parties at Christmas, and they were kind of wild. What happened in years later is, you know, too many people were drunk, got in accidents, so, you know, companies became liable for what happened. But in those days,
00:11:38
Speaker
So our main office was up in the 38th floor of the Cadillac Tower, downtown Detroit. And here I was, just about a year out of college, and the guy that was the head, there was an engineering head and a whole head, and so the big boss.
00:12:03
Speaker
And I imagine he was probably in his early 40s, you know, and most of the guys who were in executive positions were 30s, 40s, something like that. Well, anyway, his wife, also in her 40s, made a play for me. Scared the crap out of me. Scared the crap out of me. But that was a brand new experience, you know, and Mrs. Robinson's.
00:12:32
Speaker
And fortunately, I ran off. Well, because you had learned something earlier in life. Control. Looking back to that, right? Yeah. Well, I can't say that the idea wasn't attractive, but I thought, oh my God, what could happen? Nothing good could happen. Yeah. I could get fired. I could get caught. Oh boy. Exactly. Anyway, that was an unusual experience for me and different at
Creative Expression and Rebellion
00:13:01
Speaker
the time.
00:13:02
Speaker
Yeah. So how was the, okay, because like I also know you as an artist, right? A storyteller, a writer, a musician. And so there are these two worlds. Some men, you know, especially having made it in the corporate world in that way, either don't have, maybe they just don't have that artistic side or they've shut it down. How did that come to be? Was it always there?
00:13:28
Speaker
I was always a storyteller. From the time I was a little, I used to tell my brother's stories. And then I'd even write them when I was in high school. We always used to have an essay contest in high school. I never, I know mine were the best. But I never won a thing because it was how a patriot treats, you know, behaves in the United States of America.
00:13:56
Speaker
Yes, you know, all that kind, well, I always took the opposite side, not the opposite side, but avant-garde, maybe. You know, it was more of a Jack Kerouac type of a writer, and that wasn't all appreciated. I was looked at as a smart aleck, which I probably was. I still am. Okay, so then, all right, but some people would shut down being
00:14:24
Speaker
called that or, you know. And I'm getting to the, like, because there's some courage in being who you are and expressing both of those essences within you. There's a courage in that. And I'm kind of getting to that point where I think it takes that. And is there, you know, some of these expressions of masculinity that people have been funneled into, you know, it might take some like courage to break out of that in a way and express, like if you want to write, write.
00:14:53
Speaker
For instance, one of the gentlemen I talked to, Seth, he actually found that as a way to express himself because he was having no other way to do it. So I don't know. I think some of that is within a lot of men right now, but they got things to fix and they got a routine and their group would give them labels or whatever if they decided to explore that right now.
00:15:23
Speaker
My, I'm a little bit of an outlier in that, you know, things to fix and I'm capable of that, but I don't particularly like to do it. And so I would procrastinate until, ah, I got to get at it now. And I do it now. My brother loves anything mechanical. When he was a little kid, he was always taking apart everything. And much to my dad's chagrin, who could never put him back together again,
00:15:51
Speaker
But I wasn't driven that way. I was driven more toward acting out, I guess, because I thought if anything was funny, it was okay. For instance, my brother sent away, remember in the days when you could send box tops out and get something? Well, Rice Krispies had three little characters called Snap Crackle and Pop. And you could get a hand puppet.
00:16:19
Speaker
okay if you send in so my brother did that but I thought this thing was fantastic so uh we had a little electric train and uh one time I was playing with it and I had pop right here and I kept running the train off the track and pop was doing it and laughing maniacally and my mother came in and said if you're not going to play nice you know you're going to have to go to your real
00:16:46
Speaker
It wasn't me, it was Pop. I didn't do it, you know. And later, there were other incidents involving Pop, but one day Pop ran away and never saw him again. No. I wonder what happened. But no, in terms of, I guess, writing or any kind of an art form, oil painted in high school,
00:17:15
Speaker
I wasn't that good at it. My dad was a fantastic artist. I was more of a cartoonist, I suppose you would say. But anyway, I did it and I found that to be fun. I liked it a lot. When I was a senior in high school, we had what was called Senior Day. And on Senior Day, the senior class in front of the school and all the townspeople wanted to come to the theater, you know, would
00:17:45
Speaker
put on little skips. And so, hey, I mow down for that. And so we had to audition. So the guy that was going to do it, we did a kind of an Everly Brothers parody. We called ourselves the Avery Brothers, who were kind of an infamous pair of brothers from a neighboring town that the school people didn't get, but the students got it. So we knew when they said Avery Brothers, they know exactly
00:18:14
Speaker
And so we did a parody of a song called, we learned a couple of chords on a guitar, some basic harmony, and did a song like Kiss a Fire, but it was a little kiss a fire. I touch your lips, that's when the trouble starts a-brewin'. I can't resist the brand tobacco you are chewing. You know, that kind of silly kind of stuff. But we arranged for the other guys in the crowd when we were finished to just shower us with tomatoes and rotten fruit and stuff like that.
00:18:45
Speaker
but nobody knew about this so it caused a big stir and since that day we were the last to add no more senior day ever again that was it you shut it down so that's kind of like this huge metaphoric story of you know we're gonna be ourselves and be our guard and unique
00:19:11
Speaker
and literally throw rotten tomatoes because- And they missed us too. And all of that and it's fun and we're thinking out, it's so Aquarian. I'm gonna, I can't help but bring it back to Australia today. I'd love to look at your chart. There has to be some Aquarius or some Gemini in there because it's very free electron. It's very unique. It's like, I do it my way and it's way outside of what anyone would think. It's not an either or. It's like, no, it's way over here. And then literally shut down.
00:19:41
Speaker
And not only shut it down for you, but for everybody. Even when you know there's going to be punishment, you do it anyway. That's the Aquarian way. Because there were people on stage and a backdrop, and they were all dressed up. And we didn't get hit at all, my partner and I, all this stuff went around. Of course you wouldn't. And it's actually for that higher consciousness. It's for the purpose of showing everyone. You could think way above all of the other
00:20:11
Speaker
There's a purpose for it. This is my point of this, is that on the astrology wheel, there are 12 different expressions at least of the masculine, not just one, two, or three, not just the provider, nurturer, father, elder figure. And one of those is the aquarium. It's like, let's throw rotten tomatoes while we're playing music, like at us. Not, no, we must not have rotten tomatoes. I'm like, that's another expression,
00:20:38
Speaker
you are that so every place is needed and it's valued but that's that's what i'm saying is so metaphoric that that story says no it's not valued because that doesn't fit in and now we have a mess to clean up well it was uh we looked at it like it was funny and the audience loved it i mean it was hilarious okay so the audience loved it you probably liked that feeling
00:21:05
Speaker
which kept you going because it wasn't like you learned your lesson from that and you should never have rotten tomatoes again or fun on stage or express your uniqueness. You just like use it as fuel, it seems like. How did you fit all that uniqueness into the corporate world?
Balancing Corporate and Artistic Passions
00:21:23
Speaker
How did you balance these two things? I was always a good communicator. And I could communicate and I had a good sense of humor. And that goes a long way.
00:21:36
Speaker
I was pretty good at reading people. And later on in life, I worked with behavioral scientists. And so I could read people pretty well. I understood that most, my job was to try to create beneficial change as defined by whoever you're working for, I suppose. Yeah, it was. So, but I quickly understood through a behavioral scientist by the name of Elizabeth Moth.
00:22:05
Speaker
Moss Cantor, who taught me that society breaks down sort of into three areas. You have the avant-garde people. They love new things. Anything new, man, they're there. And they're about 25% of the population, roughly. 50% are mainstream. Mainstream aren't against new things, but they want to see if it's going to be successful. If they think it will be successful,
00:22:35
Speaker
They will adapt it and make beneficial change to whatever it was. And then the third category is something called lagers. They hate change. You know, the last people to get on the train before it pulls out of the station, but they have, they're at about 25%. But they have a purpose in society too, because had there been more lagers in Nazi Germany, maybe, you know, that wouldn't have come. But so if I wanted to get a,
00:23:04
Speaker
some kind of a beneficial change. I knew I had to go to the avant-garde because they would jump on it right now. But they never stay with you because they're always on to something else that's new. But I used them to try to capture the mainstream people who would watch it. And if it looked, they would improve it. These other people, you don't worry about. And most people in industry are trying to get change. They'll go for
00:23:33
Speaker
If we can change those people, we can change anybody. The thing is you can never change them. Leave them alone. They'll come along according to their own or you'll set them free. Interesting. But that was kind of my background. Okay. You kind of brought some psychology and kind of an artwork into that as well. But I always wrote, you know, even though I, uh,
00:24:01
Speaker
It might not be a humorous magazine article or a book or something like that. In industry, there's all kinds of opportunities to present technical papers at places like Amsterdam or Borneo, where you stand up in front of people and present what you've got. And that was a lot of fun. And I got to do a lot of that. Very interesting. So you always wrote.
00:24:30
Speaker
And that's some, you were talking about technical papers, but you were also always writing, you know, personally. Oh, yeah, I did that too. But I would bring the personal stuff into the technical stuff. You know, the whole idea is to try to reach people. And you have to know your audience, try to figure out what they are looking for. And if you want to present something for the good of the earth,
00:24:59
Speaker
but you're dealing with people who don't give a damn about that, you know, then you have to figure out where their hotspots are and to write the paper and to direct it that way if you want to change it. Right. So that just takes some, you know, connection with that, you know, human aspect, not all logical, it's not all, you know, up in the head, which now brings me back to my premise of this whole thing, where we're so easy to say,
00:25:27
Speaker
men are the logical ones, women are the emotional ones, you know, meaning men are in touch with their emotions, they're not in touch with any of that, you know, human psychology kind of stuff. And means we're very easy to dismiss them when they do present anything about it. So you, you know, it interested you enough to even study behavioral sciences and weave it in as, as part of what you were doing in the professional
00:25:54
Speaker
And that's why I'm asking about that writing going on in the background, because I feel like that is an outlet that you have had as, you know, even being out in a man's world and being taught, you know, how to be a man, even certain things said to you. But you had this writing and artistic thing kind of going on as a way to put it out, whether it was ever published, whether it was ever, you know, and I still see that.
00:26:20
Speaker
So now we're going to wrap it around to kind of today because I see, you know, I haven't read everything that you've put out there, but I see a lot that you put out there and this is very full of emotion. OK, for sure. And then, you know, knowing the interview I just did with Seth, he's 26 and just finding that way to express. So I feel like you've kind of always had this little, you know, I'm using that word outlet because it's very visual right now, this outlet over here of writing.
00:26:49
Speaker
as this way to say, look, I can be this way in the business world, but here's where that emotional flow can go. So do you see, okay, so you're agreeing with me. So do you see where there are people around you, men around you, people you've witnessed that just don't have that? And I worked with a lot of them. And I worked for a lot of them.
00:27:17
Speaker
But when it came to a crossroad, if I'm going to be me or I'm going to buckle down to the man's, you know, I was willing to be fired. And I was several times. Didn't bother me at all. Right. Wow. Because in a way, you didn't mind tomatoes being thrown out.
00:27:44
Speaker
We encourage that yeah, no, I'm just saying you were like, okay with being You know not fitting. No, I don't I don't try to fit. I mean I love life. I really do Hate to know here. I am in that close to the end of it and I hate that the fact that's gonna end because I really have enjoyed this life and I've had a lot of experiences that
00:28:10
Speaker
Most people never get to have it. I've just tried to enjoy every second of every day and be true to that. Now, have I blown it a lot? Oh, hell yeah.
Life Reflections and Success Measures
00:28:23
Speaker
You know, one thing that I have found myself, and my kids have been willing to tell me that, by the way, my daughter's birthday is today. She's the same age you are. Oh, happy birthday.
00:28:41
Speaker
But I guess that when push came to shove, you know, I was going to err on the side of being compassionate, or I didn't ever want to hurt anybody. That doesn't... But when you're in a corporate world sometimes, you know, if you're a manager, I was taught
00:29:11
Speaker
You hire, fire, and train. I looked at it differently. Yeah, those are some things you do. But the main thing for me was to realize that I wasn't really value-added. The people actually doing the work were the value-added people. I was value-added, but that but was what obstacles are in the way of them
00:29:40
Speaker
completing a job when I talked about the silos, you know, and the matrix. And so I thought that a manager's job was to find out what those obstacles were and get them out of the way so that people could actually, the performance of the whole, that's what you're looking at. But the reward system in the United States is for the individual, you know, but you want the whole to,
00:30:09
Speaker
succeed for the benefit of whoever the customer is, who's ever receiving your goods and service. And if you do that, you stay in business, which is actually what you're looking for, I think, you know, or at least I was. So I looked at it in that way. And also whenever I had a star performer that somebody else in another organization, a lot of very parochial managers, no, no, no, I'm protected. These are my people.
00:30:38
Speaker
Uh, I would ask the individual, would you like to do that? If he or she said, yes, I would, I do everything at my power to help him because I knew down the line, you know, that would benefit me. Yeah. It's looking at it selfishly, but I didn't do it for that reason, but I never wanted to. You know, I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do.
00:31:07
Speaker
spiritual context that actually is and it all comes back. But that was me and like I said I'm a little bit of an outlier. I've never been guided and pushed by the things that were supposed to be success in business. It came but it wasn't really what I was looking for. I was looking for quality of life all that time.
00:31:36
Speaker
And the writing and other things with a quality of life, but you know, it helped me because of good communication To get their money. I've never cared about you know If I could If I got a bonus if I could Help somebody else with that idea. It was it was just wasn't my driver and still isn't
00:32:04
Speaker
Well, you know, I want to point out right here because I've in this exploration with different people, I'm really kind of trying to define because I don't think everybody's always so clear about what do you mean by masculine energy and feminine energy? It doesn't mean a man and a woman. We all have masculine, feminine within us. And so I think this is a great example. Everything that you've said is to say that the masculine energy is the actional energy, meaning I will take action on
00:32:34
Speaker
standing up for my authenticity, on standing up for my quality of life. I will not just be a receiver of whatever, that's the, I will not just be, and not that the reader just receives whatever, but I'm just not gonna take the line they give me and walk that, you know, which means I will have to take action. I will have to get fired if I have to. I will have to actually write, put a pen to paper. I will actually have to
00:33:04
Speaker
Again, have the courage to take a risk, to do something different than what's being said to me. Now, having said that, I don't think everybody, that's sometimes a long jump because you were kind of, I think your essence, again, is probably already in your chart. You were cut out to be that way already. So for some, it might not be very easy. They're very staid. They like tradition. It's hard to change. But to me, it's really parsing out
00:33:34
Speaker
But that is the masculine energy that a man, just by being born a man, actually has within them already is that action.
Masculine Energy and Personal Truth
00:33:42
Speaker
The ability to go, I have an arrow, I'm going that way. And in the Jungian philosophy, he really says to know your sword and know how to use it. Meaning, this is what I like, I'm gonna write, I have to do that. And that even though men may be busy,
00:34:04
Speaker
or very active in their careers or whatever, sometimes action isn't directed at that risk-taking of being authentic. Sure. Right? You know, I get a lot of it from my dad. I told you my dad was very artistic. He was an engineer and he could do calligraphy like you can't believe, any kind of writing. I mean, the guy would do it freehand.
00:34:33
Speaker
He was a good artist, but he was an engineer. And there's a lot of engineers. I have my undergraduate degrees in engineering as well. Although my best subjects were English and history, not math and science, but it was a way to go at the time. You know, it was, you can make a good living if you have that degree in engineering. So like, okay.
00:34:58
Speaker
You know, I'm a kid, what do I know? And my dad was that way, and my dad was an engineer. No, my mother, my mom was very smart. She went through high school in three years. She got an offer of a scholarship to the University of Michigan, Scholastic. Well, mom didn't get those things. And she was very practical, very pragmatic, and my dad was kind of the dreamer. Okay.
00:35:26
Speaker
where my brother is also graduate degrees in engineering, much more like my mom. He's very practical and likes to take things apart and see how they work. Or I'm more like my dad. My dad acted in community theaters, you know? He got involved in a group called the Freemasons. Have you ever heard of that? You know why? Because they have all these rituals where he's acting. They're putting on costumes and doing things. We love that kind of stuff.
00:35:56
Speaker
He loved that. He loved his art. He loved his lettering, whatever he could do. But so I think I get a lot of that from him. I guess we received genes a little more from. Now, my brother looks like my dad. I don't. I look like some kind of a half-breed. But. Well, that's what I was going to ask is, like, where did you get or that side, you know, where you kind of saw
00:36:24
Speaker
more of an emotional expression, because theater is very much emotionally expressive, even if it's not your own at the time. It's studying of the human psyche. Oh, yeah. But, you know, I had a charm childhood, I guess you would say. And I had a good role model in both of my parents. And I guess I hadn't thought about it a lot in my life, but it turns out
00:36:54
Speaker
I'm like like a lot like my father, uh, although, and maybe he gave me this, you know, he was from the depression generation. Well, man, if you had a job, cause they were out of work so much. Well, when I came up, everything was nice. You know, like the prep school kid that inherits his father's company. I was not afraid to, uh, just be who I was. I wasn't afraid to be fired because.
00:37:23
Speaker
There were a million other jobs out there. And if I got an interview, I can get the job. Okay. Yeah. Different times. Yeah. Totally different. Totally different. Yeah. Um, so, okay. I got a couple of questions then. Have there been times that you have felt like, so you've always had this outlet, this ability to allow whatever was coming through emotionally to flow, but have there been times when you were very aware that that was not happening when there was a dam or a knock? Yeah.
00:37:55
Speaker
You know, I can't think of one. I know there has to have been some. I used to have the habit of, as soon as I got up and right, most of it would be rubbish, but I didn't care. It was a brain dump. No judgment. But once in a while, you really did a job. I did that this morning, talking about planned obsolescence.
00:38:22
Speaker
you know, automobiles in the 70s were such a junk because they were designed that way because they wanted you to consume one every two years. So they give you and that what the Japanese and the German did because people got sick and tired of it. They said we're not going to put up with them or an American business as well, you know, tough shit. There's nowhere else for you to go because the rest of the world would decimated by World War Two and we're the only industry. Thirty wins in a row all by four or five.
00:38:52
Speaker
But people finally got fed up. And a couple of inspired American businessmen went to Japan and taught them. And all of a sudden, the most popular cars today, Toyota and Honda, are the top sellers in this country. Now, Detroit and the rest of American industry did get it for a while.
00:39:18
Speaker
Peters and Waterman wrote a book in search of excellent in 1982 when the American business turned around and they got quality. We got to, the customer is all important. We got to do that. But then the great downsizing. And they got rid of these veterans and brought up people who hadn't been trained, over appreciated that. And the accounting mentality is back. You know, this has been happening. I'm studying Southwest archeology from thousands of years ago.
00:39:44
Speaker
time a memorial or you know, come up and we know a better way. Now we're going to shift everybody that way. So how's it been for you then being someone who's been, you know, more free flowing with your emotional expression throughout your life? How's that been like in a man's world for you? How's it been received? Because I don't know if it's so well received. Maybe it's been
00:40:06
Speaker
Different times, yes and no for you. Cause it, you know, a longer space. I have never, and this is where I'm a little bit of an outlier. You know, I'm a polite person. Maybe I was raised to be polite and I wouldn't intentionally hurt anybody's feelings, but I'm not going to be dishonest either. But I never put my value in what others thought of me. I don't want him to think ill of me. You know what I mean?
00:40:36
Speaker
I want him to think well of me, but I'm not going to prostitute myself. You know, if you like me, that's great. But if you're kind of a, I hate to say a sphincter boy or something like that, I couldn't care less. Well, you know, and again,
00:41:02
Speaker
I live in a place where you can see out here the whole city, the kind of matrix, the world that says things are this way or that way. And then I have mountains and nature out on the side. And I kind of refer to that as the mega trillion dollar machine that says, no, you got to do this and this and this and this. And I think it's become, I feel like it's become like so refined now that it's becoming harder unless you're, uh, you know,
00:41:29
Speaker
I won't even get into that, but I think it's coming harder in some ways to just be that outlier. Oh, I think so. I just read this thing about the word, to rebell, means to change the frequency of something. Like I'm going to ring the bell in a different way and change the frequency, but we even turned that into a bad word. You're a rebellious teenager. That's bad for you to be rebellious.
00:41:58
Speaker
And it just really just stuffs everybody down. And so what would you pretty much they, I think today's world is really a lot harder and because they, I don't know who they are, uh, encourage, discourage free thinking. They want you to conform and you can see it in the politics where people
00:42:26
Speaker
they don't think for themselves, there's a lot of learned ignorance. I'm doing this because the ideology tells me to not because I don't want to think about it. You just tell me what to do and I'll do it. That type of a thing. Um, I see it in industry where they used to explain to people, train them and what they wanted in, you know, how to align toward the customer side. Now,
00:42:54
Speaker
They don't train people so much. They think they're going to be self-trained because of their electronic age and kind of expect that. And they just want to plug them into cubicles as droids to work. Therefore, when you have a situation today, remember at the 1970s, automobile people got sick of. Now, let's say your rider heater breaks down after five or six years.
00:43:22
Speaker
They're only guaranteed for five, but in my experience, they've lasted 20 in my dad's look. But now they say, well, it's supposed to. People just accept it. It's supposed to happen. It's supposed to go down, and I'm going to have to spend thousands of dollars to buy a new refrigerator or something. Well, my parents' refrigerator lasted before I was born until after I left the house. But now they'll break down, and you're... But the people accept it. They don't complain.
00:43:50
Speaker
So you've seen this, I say this all the time. It only takes one generation or two, and now we believe a refrigerator only got to last a certain amount. And you've lived through that one generation or two, and you've watched it. Excuse me, I'm going to finally take this up from my dog. It's making no sense. Well, the old memorial is gone anyway. It's searching for more. So to me that's, it's kind of, to me it's sad.
00:44:18
Speaker
It brings up sadness for me to see because you had more freedom. So, hey, we're just going to be this. My buddy's going to be that. We're going to do all these different things depending on what we decide. And now in one generation or two, cubicle, you get fed the data and told how to vote, how to feel, what to take, what not to take. But everything's cyclic, you know, and that's why societies fall.
00:44:45
Speaker
And ours won't be any exception. I mean, it's going on since the beginning of time. Oh, don't make me get cosmological and astrological on you because we really are a great turning of the ages. And I hope, you know, even just conversations like this, there again, a lot of men are like, what am I just going to be in a little cubicle now? And like, I guess so. And I hope, you know, even somebody hears like, I don't know, maybe I'll just like not do that. I will be more my avant-garde self that I feel inside.
00:45:15
Speaker
and not be afraid to get fired, get ousted. But what we have still, we have the arts, we have music, we have self-expression, we have acting, and you know, that's still there. They haven't stamped that out. But the creativity that I was allowed to have in the look-a-day world, I don't think so much anymore. We were encouraged to do that. Well, some of us were.
00:45:44
Speaker
and sometimes, but it's a time now where it's driven by accounting. And you know, this is the way you need to be. And so your topic about men, very much, if you could get today's guy in here that's had me by background, I have you'd probably hear a totally different story. Yeah. So next, I would love to have that right to hear from that perspective. Cause you've, you know,
00:46:14
Speaker
had that time when, you know, you've also seen one or two generations where, you know, it was expected we had freedom and liberty to choose whatever path we wanted to take. And then two generations like freedom, nobody has freedom anymore. They just expect that we don't have that and that you have a prescribed way. And I feel like it's a time of great change. It still takes courage. For my brother, Jim, four years younger,
00:46:45
Speaker
would fit in today's generation because his thinking is kind of that one. My brother, Tom, my kid brother, your age, not your age, my wife's age, my ex-wife's age. He was one of the best musicians I've ever known. But my parents tried to stamp, my mom especially tried to stamp that out of it because you cannot make a living doing this.
00:47:12
Speaker
And he said, well, I don't care. I like my music. Right. You know, he toured, you know, he wrote and he was very successful, but it got, got stamped out of him in a very young age. And today he's bitter because of that. And when I talked to him, I said, Tom, there's no point being bitter. You made the choice. Why didn't you talk to me or enlist me? I would have been your advocate. Yeah.
00:47:41
Speaker
Why didn't he? I don't know. Probably because he wasn't supposed to. Okay, well here we go. We're going to bring it right. Well, yes, okay. So that we can all learn from this now and go, hey, like guys, this is really what it's coming to is that everybody I've talked to is like this, this singular guy sitting here going, let's get together and talk. I'll be your advocate. Let's talk about like one night. Let's just talk about grief. I don't know how to talk about grief, but let's just talk about it. Um, because there isn't anywhere to do that. Maybe they're not writers or artists and
00:48:12
Speaker
So, because they don't have the freedom to express at this, in this way, unless you're going to be like, like I said, expressing way out there. Yeah, you just wrote up something. Grief, that's another example. And, you know, I lost my life about 14 months ago. And a lot of, you never get used to it. People say, oh, in old time, you'll be like,
00:48:40
Speaker
It's just like it was yesterday, but what has helped me is I've written a number of poems that are a person that means something to me, songs that express that. And, you know, I'm very, very blessed and happy that I had the experience that I did.
00:49:09
Speaker
Not at all happy that it had to come to an end, but it comes to an end sooner or later. But my plan was it was going to be me. So I wouldn't have to go through this because women are better equipped to go through this. Well, that's what I believe, you know, because you go around and say some church, you see all these windows are sitting together. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, it's it gave me or is giving
00:49:39
Speaker
I think I got most of that out of my system, although maybe not. If it hits me someday, I'll continue to express it that way, but it helps. It helps with the grieving process. Absolutely. I can feel that. I've heard it. You actually performed some of your poetry here one night.
00:50:06
Speaker
Even though in conversations like this, I always tend to do what I'm hoping we're not doing is overgeneralize and kind of say, oh, you know, men, but let's do that for a minute in general. What would you like to say to men or offer to men advisement? Cause you have the right to advise men at this point to say, I would say just have the courage to be yourself for heaven's sake still. Yeah. We have to be governed by society. I mean, we're all awful.
00:50:36
Speaker
As people we are, we can't go out and start shoplifting or like they're doing in California. Ah, it's keeping me down. So I owe all, I can go in there and steal what I want. No, I'm just saying, if you could sit in a quiet room and just think about what is value to you in life, what is it that gives you joy? Think about what that is and
00:51:05
Speaker
and have the courage to go for it. It's not always going to be easy because they'll say, well, maybe you can't make a living that way or something like that, but there's always a way. You don't have to prostitute yourself and give up yourself because, you know, this life goes by very quickly, like a blink of an eye. And what a terrible waste to go through and
00:51:35
Speaker
at the end of it be so unhappy because you haven't had the courage or maybe not maybe the courage is the wrong word haven't had the haven't taken the time to sit with yourself and say what is value to me now you know and that comes to you where it comes from what we've been talking about comes from parents through mentors
00:52:06
Speaker
I don't mean you should be psychotic. And there are some of those people out there, but, you know, hey, I want to go murder people, you know. But just a little things. What gives you joy? It's helping people give you joy. Just drawing a sketch gives you joy. Just going for a hike in the woods.
00:52:33
Speaker
Uh, does, uh, being a blackjack dealer, just being an accountant, whatever, you get joy from that. Uh, we got so involved with, and we society, I suppose, and we have to exist. So there's always that time or gather with making a living that we forget to live.
00:53:03
Speaker
until, and we realize it when it's way too late. Fortunately, I haven't had it. Now, have I screwed up? Man, but I had the opportunity to do that. Right. I mean, I have probably, oh man,
Self-Awareness and Authenticity
00:53:20
Speaker
I would say 80% of my experience is probably failure, but that's 80% of learning that I got to do. And again, there's not as much leeway.
00:53:30
Speaker
in this society, I think, to just, look, I make mistakes and I'll fix them, I'll get back on the horse, whatever, and keep going, you know? And that's a lot of different reasons for that. But yeah, that's, okay, well then, and we talked a little bit before we came on today that I feel like when men or the males in this society have been, you know, glued into a shoe, then that's just the way it's gonna be.
00:53:58
Speaker
And then now we come up with these generalities that, you know, men are a certain way and women are a certain way. Then I feel like women have also been trained how to see men. I just heard it the other night and a group of people where a woman was so easy to say and no judgment. This is just what's come up. It's the product of the machine. Okay. Where she just said, oh, men don't express their emotions. That's true. True enough. They don't, but at the same time, it's so general to say, well, not so that all men don't and some men,
00:54:28
Speaker
really do. Some men are the emotional component. Look at your father and your mother. The male was the emotional component of the relationship, but we're so easy to say, oh no, he's not. So with that little preface, what would you say to women then? To kind of help, let's don't put each other in these categories. How can they? I think they've had the same
00:54:57
Speaker
problem that men have, but being guided from it from a different point of view. Guys aren't always good at expressing their emotions for reasons we talk about, but some express them differently, like in me through writing or something like that. With women, I would say women, now I take this from my mom's point of view, you know, the most influential
00:55:26
Speaker
And my mom and dad were really in love while they were a love story, but totally different. But I thought my mom was a very logical person and I've known as many women that I think are quite logical, professional women. Now, I think they're more empathetic.
00:55:55
Speaker
than men tend to be. And I don't know if that's in the chromosome or where that comes from. But I think that is a fantastic benefit that a humankind gets out of that. Because they make men better by being empathetic. Because a guy will tend to fly off the handle and they kind of reel them in. But at the same time,
00:56:22
Speaker
you know you want to say to women maybe don't be so judgmental so quick to judge judgmental is okay but quick to judge maybe not I mean yeah we got a judge but if they could express their displeasure maybe or maybe it isn't displeasure just something they don't like express that to the guy tell him because and guys get into this too but
00:56:51
Speaker
We can't read each other's mind. But I think sometimes, with my, in my marriage, it was, what, did you realize, you know, that you should have, and I go, gosh, you know, I did. I said, so if I'm screwing up, please tell me, because I'll go on doing the same funky thing. And if you would be more forthwith to me, and now,
00:57:21
Speaker
Uh, sometimes guys aren't easy to talk to either. Right. You're open to receive that, but not everyone is. You know, a funny thing to me, I was taught coming up through grade school with the maturity level of girls is about two years older, two years more than men as, as we grow. Uh, and for that reason, I suppose that's why you see older men marrying younger women because they tend to be more mature.
00:57:51
Speaker
What I noticed about women, and I'd given that right up through high school, right up through the bar scene, you know, in your 20s and 30s. But women can be so gullible. I mean, in this way, I'm a guy sitting here, and I'm sitting this other guy, telling us, feeding this girl a line, I'm going, oh my God. Is she going to bite? And she does.
00:58:19
Speaker
They're too quick to trust. That's one thing I would say with the women in their interaction with strange men. Don't be quick to trust. Make them prove it. That would be my advice. That's much to my daughter. Right. That's really interesting because you're kind of like really marrying this masculine feminine energy within each other. It's like, you know. Well, guys can't help it.
00:58:49
Speaker
Yeah. You know, we're wired that way. Ooh. There's a nice looking girl, I think. You know, I'd like to have some action with her. Action. There's the masculine quality, the action. Yeah. Okay. And they're thinking that. And I suppose it comes from back in when you were supposed to procreate or something like that. Or the, you know, the, uh, the stag in the herd has all the females, you know, the strongest one gets them all. So that's kind of breaded to us too, I think.
00:59:18
Speaker
And it tends to be a competition among men. Right. That's the primal thing. To me, that's the matter. It is a primal thing. We're parsing out what is primal and what is now programmed into this is how to be a man, not that. But I think that is primal. And, of course, without the women, they're human beings. We cease to exist. The men had to have kids.
00:59:44
Speaker
That would be it. No matter what they tell you, right? Anything that hurts, you know, when I've been to the, we all have. You're into a physician, you got an A or pain, is it a one to 10? And I told, I said, with me, it's a zero or a 10. I don't know the difference. It's either pain or no pain. It's a diode with me. So, okay. So kind of the same thing, but it's interesting because
01:00:13
Speaker
Everyone else have asked that question about what to say to women and had certainly not come up to not trust men so easily. Make them prove it. And I can say that as a man who's been on that side of trying to sell something, you know, so make them prove it. But that's different than considering every man toxic, which has certainly gotten to a level that I try to... There are toxic men. Of course, there are toxic women too.
01:00:43
Speaker
Um, but I like that because you really, I love it. You brought it back around to these, um, kind of original definitions of this masculine feminine. The masculine is going to have the sword, the arrow, the actional part, the thing that wants to go towards something and have action with something. And the woman being the receptacle doesn't have to receive everything.
01:01:10
Speaker
Right? We can be discerning. That's kind of... You should be discerning. Right? Yeah, don't. Because I think what ends up happening... Don't spend your time with anybody that decreases your quality of life. If it's not value added to you as a woman, don't get involved with it. That's what I would say. Watch a guy, judge him, and, you know, fairly. No, I just had an experience, by the way.
01:01:39
Speaker
There's a lady that I've known for 49 years. I worked with her. I always liked her.
Relationship Insights and Communication
01:01:46
Speaker
We got along good. She was like one of the guys, you know. She was a terrific athlete. She was an Olympian in 1980, but Carter canceled the Olympics. So she made the team, but didn't get to go. So when Kay died, we kind of got in touch again. She lives on Balboa Island in Newport Beach, beautiful place. And so,
01:02:09
Speaker
I made contact with her again just because we were friends. She's very attractive. Could it be more than that? I wondered about that. But once we were together, it was obvious, you know, we're just not a match. Because she told me, she said, well, you know, you're going to have to come to me. And I said, I don't want you. And so we said, we're friends. Yeah, there you go. Right.
01:02:39
Speaker
because at a point it gets to be so obvious that the priority is only what enhances you and makes you feel joyful or happy in your life or just what you kind of said to guys like go ahead and do that now. Well you know and you know what are you seeking to mate? Hopefully somebody that completes you you know I took a Hermann brain dominant cyst once and they find out the best parents are ones that are really kind of opposite because you're seeking to make a whole person.
01:03:07
Speaker
if you're in an honorable relationship. Kay and I certainly had that because of a medical condition that she had. And sex is a big part of marriage. And first of all, it's a lot of fun. Who doesn't like that? But I've been celibate since 2005. And I don't care. It didn't make me love her any less.
01:03:38
Speaker
No. Not at all. Again, interesting because I was just thinking about that, you know, about spending time with people and how we kind of do it now. We do the physical part and then we try to fit, make everything else fit because we did that physical part. It was such before the first date, so the pressure's off. Yeah, and then we try to make the other fit into some work that I had been a dream once.
01:04:03
Speaker
And then criticize and judge each other because they're not fitting into this thing because we have sex one time I'm twice or whatever or said we were gonna do this and here again at this time in your life and even in the last conversation I had about you know, really being so intentional about even that energy and then if I'm not like taking the action in that way, I may become a priest
01:04:33
Speaker
then it's like the world doesn't end. You know, the relationships don't end and they don't know. Yeah. There's a lot of focus on, on that. And back to the young, you know, men coming up now, how much focus there is with men and women on that. Wow. You know, to where are they even really able to make that relationship like you're talking about, you know, without that it's challenge, you know? Yeah. You know, um,
01:05:01
Speaker
But when you're young, we probably had the same challenges. And I think back, I was really a dumb ass. I cringe when I think of, part of the problem with having a good memory is you remember some stuff you'd rather forget. And so when I look at some of the younger people today, I can kind of put myself empathize.
01:05:29
Speaker
But yeah, you just have to let them go screw up. But if you could give them some little piece of advice to save you the pain or maybe the stupidity, yeah it is. Ignorance is one thing, stupidity is another one. Sometimes we choose to be ignorant because it suits our purposes. And so yeah, in the maturing process, I don't know,
01:05:59
Speaker
I still think, who has more fun than people? Right. Who has more fun than people? I don't know. That's a good thing. So do you have a son? You have a son. I do. You do. I have a son, a daughter, who like her birthdays today and a son whose birthday will be two weeks from today. They are three years apart. Peggy's your age. Jeff is three years younger than you. OK. Yeah. And he's way more mature than I am.
01:06:29
Speaker
No, he didn't have to go through three marriages. He's in his third. Sometimes I find that smart. In his case, he'd be a good guy for you to interview. Yeah, okay. Because he, I mean, he lets his heart on his sleeve and from the time he was a little, he was the happiest guy and trusts everybody. Okay, so I was going to ask you, we started the conversation saying what were the messages you got from your father, grandfather?
01:06:59
Speaker
about how to be a man. What have you told your son? Oh, I told Jeff. I said, you know, and I explained to him about the things I went through and I tried to help him in his life, make good decisions, be involved with him, but knowing that you got to set him free, you know. So I said, just whatever you do, don't embarrass your mother, you know.
01:07:27
Speaker
She's a really kind soul, one of the best people I've ever known, maybe the best. And he knows that too. But he always had a good level head on his shoulder much more than I did. He can rein it in more than I can. So he's, although my family and Kay's family were all very athletic,
01:07:56
Speaker
Kay was a heck of an athlete. She was a 5.0 tennis player. She once in a race beat Ralph Mann, who was an Olympic gold medalist in high school. In high school, they used to make the guys run off against her in sprints. So anyway, when they used to give the old strength tests, she always rated up 150% weight. Anyway, so Jeff gets that from her. He's natural.
01:08:25
Speaker
at everything. He's automatically good at everything. But he's also very humble, you know, and he's very, he's a great teammate. And finally, in his marriage, you know, he's always had girlfriends older than him. Even in high school, he went to a prep school in New England, and his girlfriends raised a year or two older.
01:08:55
Speaker
They'd come to him because he was attractive. And he looks kind of like Brad Pitt. That helps. But no, it's him. But he'd be a great interview for you. But the first one, she was in the marriage. She divorced. I think she was two or three years older. She was a stunt boy in the movies.
01:09:23
Speaker
If you ever saw the movie Coneheads, she was the one doing the dive. She was a diver, high diver for USC. You know, a gainer with a half twist or so, whatever they call it. That's what she did. So, you know, she pursued him and she was very attractive. And Jeff is very trusting. And so, you know, it was a disaster.
01:09:52
Speaker
The second one, she was a, she designed swimming suits for Sports Illustrated, stuff like that. Another kind of powerful woman, but disaster. Finally, the third one, she had never been married before. She's very much, you'd like her, because she's very much into spiritual stuff and into the body, you know, movement. And so, you know, she's one of those that can stand here and put her other
01:10:29
Speaker
really meld well with what you do. But she's a couple years older than Jeff, but they got married in 2009, and boom. But she'd never been married before, and she said, before I went into this, I was worried, because here was a two-time loser, you know. And she's very, people think sometimes she's stuck up, but she's not, she's shy.
01:10:58
Speaker
If you will, you should go out by yourself. You have to kind of bring her in. But they have a wonderful marriage now, and a little, or not little, Labrador. But it took him three times to get it right, but he finally did. But I don't think it was his fault. If it was, he was very trusting. And I kind of taught him to be trusting.
01:11:25
Speaker
So I might have misled him a little bit. And I didn't help him when I saw things that were off. And I did that to my brother, too. My brother, Jim, lives in Palm Springs, and he was married before to a gal who just was a beautiful girl but just had a toxic personality, just when it was in those old movies. You know, that villain that's, you know, they come down in a vill.
01:11:54
Speaker
He couldn't see it. I mean, when he got married, all the groups were taken over and under bets on how long it was going to last. And he said, why didn't you tell me? And I said, you know, Jim, I should have, but I was afraid to burst your bubble. And that was on me. I should have. But finally, he got it right, too.
01:12:19
Speaker
yeah there's a little bit of that i can hear weaving through the story especially with your son you know like when i'm like hurt or you know you can so easily some of my energy too i can so easily feel how others feel that i don't want to hurt them and then so then i will sometimes have the courage to just go there you go i know it's hard sometimes especially if you care for that person but that's a person you should really be honest because it ends up not being so i didn't give
01:12:48
Speaker
my son and enough advice that I should I should there are other things I screwed up you know wanting him to have his own way but I gave him guy the lion's eye and he was good he was a good kid both our kids were really well behaved weird kids so cool well it's kind of new and okay of course but as well but yeah it does takes courage too right so I have courage in some areas but over here I didn't like speak up and put my
01:13:18
Speaker
My two cents in there, I know it's so hard, I can't imagine, look, I'm a great parent because I have no kids. You know where I can say, whoa, you know, you just got to do it like this. But no, it's got to be that fine. They don't come in a manual. They don't. See, this is why I didn't do it. My son, you know, went to freshman year at Edison High School in Huntington Beach. For his next three years, he went to a prep school.
01:13:47
Speaker
the morning school. So I lost him, you know, a good three years before he was supposed to. Yeah, yeah. Because he loved it. Yeah. And his best friends are not his college friends, it's the guys he went to prep school with because they were in that all together, you know. They had to wear tights and coats. Yeah.
01:14:08
Speaker
All right. So what can, what can men do in general to like build up this courage? I think they're just kind of beaten down a little bit. You know, I do. I feel like they're either, they're either acting out of like drive, you know, gotta do, gotta do, but you know, maybe the courage to go, you know what, not doing this and doing that.
01:14:28
Speaker
The guys that said, what can we do? How they get support? I don't feel like there's a lot of support in that. Like that. Is a male friend going to come to them and go, hey, you've got to get out of this. You're not living, living well. I think a lot of them get so caught up in talking about themselves. They're trying to do a sales job, not just to me, but to other guys. They're always, they think what they're doing is so self-important and frankly, it's
01:14:58
Speaker
For him. So they're trying to what? Prove validity? Is that it? Prove validity? But they need to have self-awareness. Right. And that's what they do not have. So you were just saying, go within yourself. Find out what it is you love. And when we're out here telling everybody what we're doing and how we're proving ourselves and accomplishing out there in the world, we're not in here. Listen. Right. And that's where I think a lot of guys make a mistake.
01:15:28
Speaker
Last night, I went over to Romans Oasis. There was a young lady there who teaches line dancing. In fact, there's three of them. And I wrote a song for him called, Sisko's. We did down there, but I changed the tune a bit. And I wanted her to choreograph a dance that would go with that song. So I played it for him. She was listening to it. I'll play it for you before we leave. But there was a guy there with me.
01:15:58
Speaker
that I use for a handyman sometimes. Because there are some things I know what I can't do. Because I've screwed up doing it. And for instance, electrical stuff. It scares the crap out of me. But this guy has good knowledge. But the problem is, we're sitting there with another guy and some ladies that we all know. He doesn't. And he's constantly got to talk about what he's doing. And he's just driving everybody nuts.
01:16:27
Speaker
And I talked to him, I said, Eric, you got to have a little more self awareness in that. You're just born, you want people to like you. I understand that. And I understand you like what you do. Oh my gosh, you know, you can have a dimmer switch. You know, it's not all the way off the floor and all the way on the floor. You got to listen to. That's the human condition. I want to be liked, I want to be known, I want to be seen, I want to be loved, all of that. And I feel like
01:16:57
Speaker
That is really what is behind a lot of that Acting out the over talking the over speaking the keeping the shield up, you know I'm not gonna cry in front of my guy friends cuz they'll think I'm gay or something, you know, and well and it's when you're in a Presence of other males. Yeah, I get it's a competition. Yes competition. That's right. Don't have a competition Yeah, Rainer Dan because this guy's got something of value too that you might learn something
01:17:27
Speaker
This is what I feel. I feel like if we're not listening to each other, if you guys are allowing this emotional life to come through, you're actually missing out on some richness with each other. Absolutely. You know? Because there's a lot more there than, you know, you're really being allowed to... Most guys are so caught up in what they're doing, and it's not necessarily something that gives them joy. Right. It's just what they're doing.
01:17:58
Speaker
Talk, talk, talk. This one says, that's nothing. That's the first one that comes out of his mouth. Hi, blah, blah, blah. That's nothing. Right. Oh, by the way, they do that on date too. So when you're out on a date, you're like, okay, well, we're not even asking me anything because I want to continue validating themselves. If you have a date like that, do not have a son. Exactly. In fact, this is over.
01:18:26
Speaker
Now, will they listen? Not always. Well, you're just a bitch. Yeah, that's okay. That's another thing. My mantra has been, say what you want. That's a defensive mechanism, guys do, so they don't have to take responsibility for other things. There you go. We're good at that. That's, I mean, that's a human thing. But, you know, in this day and age of like, I kind of admonish a lot of my women and all those women rising, feminine only kind of stuff.
01:18:56
Speaker
to say, well, let's use what we've learned in all of our spiritual work and turn around and hand out the hand and say, you know, we'll soften our way all the way around so that guys have that ability to, and they don't have to keep going up. You know what I'm saying? You know, we've grown up in a patriarchal society. I mean,
01:19:20
Speaker
Way back when, there were goddesses, too. Oh, I know. Again, don't make me cosmological, Dean. If you take a look at Christianity, Islam, Judaism, the Eastern religions, they're pretty much patriarchal. It's been thousands of years. And it is a change.
01:19:42
Speaker
It is arising of these energies, but it's more, we're going into what my mentor calls a golanic age, golanic, G-Y-L-A-N-I-C, where it's more cooperative and collaborative. That's what you want. It's not an either-or. There was matriarchal societies before. That's where the word husband came from. You're the house bond. If you notice in the canine field, the alpha, the hyenas, is usually a female.
01:20:12
Speaker
Right. So that's where the term comes from, alpha female. Right. So, and I'm just kind of saying, let's stop with the one or the other, you know, and one against the other, um, and leaving men out. See, we go to our women's circles and we do our women's thing and that has a place for that. And then have their times and places, but we really got to start. I hope it works because I think there's so many generations
01:20:40
Speaker
of men and women becoming empowered going, hey, we've been screwed all these years, little land figuratively, and we're not going to take it anymore. But yes, and that is true, but now we're still going to have a society. So, you know, if you read the Old Testament, it will say, when you were wandering the desert, there were
01:21:03
Speaker
4,000, but that meant there were 4,000 men because women and children did not count. They were shadowed. They were property. Right, right. And it has been thousands of years of that. And that's been the Kali Yuga and the matriarchal societies weren't necessarily better other than they were other creators of life. And so, okay. But, but they were still enslavers.
01:21:27
Speaker
They were still, the matriarchs were still the ones that said, you go out in the fields and you do this. Now come and disseminate me and then go back out into the field and you have nothing to do with children. Well, you know what? Men probably stood up and said, you know what? I'm actually stronger than you. So we don't like this anymore. Same as what we're doing now. So instead of one or the other, let's take what we learned. And now, because no creation happens without both coming together. Do you remember there was a cartoon movie called Ants?
01:21:57
Speaker
And anywhere was a society of ants here, which they had a lot of males, but as we know, the ants are all females, you know? Because they kicked the male out as soon as the queen starts laying eggs, same with the bees, you know? But in this movie, ants, these grasshoppers were like motorcycle gangs, and they were in there bullying them until the ants figured, hey, there's thousands of us and one of him. As soon as they figured that out, you know,
01:22:26
Speaker
Grasshopper's days were nothing. Things start balancing out. Yeah. So, okay. Is there anything else you can add to this conversation to wrap it up? To be a value? I don't know. Or do you want to give us a little... I don't know, it's just...
Manners, Respect, and Miscommunication
01:22:47
Speaker
You see it from a different vantage point. Remember what Red Skelton used to say? Bye-bye for now. It got blessed.
01:22:56
Speaker
And someone would say, be kind to each other. I can't over say this, the simplest things in life are good manners. Just have good manners. Respect who you're with, male, female, whoever it is. But we're not taught so much good manners anymore. No, exactly. But I don't know
01:23:25
Speaker
what the future has for us. I told you, I love life. I certainly have regrets, but I've learned from them, I hope. But I live for the present and the future. I don't let the past drag me down, but I do remember it, because there are some invaluable lessons there. What's going to happen to society? I expect it. Again, it's sickly.
01:23:54
Speaker
I think, you know, there's always an up and a down. Will the American society fail and fall someday? Probably. You know? So we better work together, right? To create something new again. Well, there was a guy by the name of Robert Ringer, who was a writer, and he talked in 1977, he said, you know, about how toxic politicians are. And he says, right now,
01:24:22
Speaker
These guys are masters at getting you against each other. But they're very much the same. He said, we should call them. And they were, in fact, the Democratic Republican Party of Jefferson's day. And they split over slavery. Democrats wanted it. Republicans did not. That's where they split one. But now, Ringer says, they're the same.
01:24:44
Speaker
They're tricking you, they're acting, they have this ideology just to get you going. Meanwhile, they're getting wealthy. I tell you, there's a whole nother podcast on this one. And in 77 he said, you know what, it's already too late. It's too late. We're falling and we can't go back. So they're doing that on that massive scale. Are we just going to sit back and go, yeah, do it to us. No, it's going to take one by one.
01:25:11
Speaker
man, woman, coming together, talking about this, going, I don't think they're right that we're actually pitted against each other. I don't think they're right. I think, look at us, we're talking. And we have these different experiences and we don't believe them because of these real experiences we've had. And that we can start dropping the labels that say, well, if you act this way, then you are that. And that's the point of this, because you're not. Everything today is short term expediency. That's what we got to get rid of.
01:25:41
Speaker
you know in a male-female relationship you can't have that it's got to be somebody you have mellow free flowing conversation and feelings with that makes you feel good and so you just did too because short term expediency means wait you're having a reaction i don't like it i need to stop that right now where could i just sit back and go wow
01:26:08
Speaker
having this really interesting reaction right now for 90 seconds and it'll change in just a minute and i'm gonna be fine right because we want to fix things so fast that we dismiss this expression one thing i used to do when i ran a meeting well two things first of all i didn't allow uh telephones in conference rooms one time in Oklahoma City or pocket city i guess it was one rang it was in there and i pulled it out the hall i didn't allow that because i they're so rude
01:26:38
Speaker
The other thing was, let's say you and I are having a disagreement. I said, okay, it's okay to disagree. But before you express your point of view, you have to recite back to that person what you thought he or she said to their satisfaction.
01:27:01
Speaker
If once you say blah, blah, blah, and they go eat with people, yeah, that's exactly what I said. Okay, now you make, or no, that's not what I said at all. I meant this. You'd be surprised how much agreement there is. We don't communicate our agreement. How many arguments have you had? That's not even what I said. That's not even what I meant. And it goes on. And that's part of married life. Oh, I know I've been there. So, well, you know,
01:27:31
Speaker
I really appreciate this time, Jean. Mine too. Thank you. A broader perspective from a different time, from different experiences, from a long-term marriage, from raising son, from living really in both worlds of this, what I call the corporate man's world. I know there were women there too.
01:27:54
Speaker
and artistic life that really helped you have this outlet to where you don't really even remember a time of being, you know, blocked up, damned up with those feelings where people are living that daily all the time now. And, and your advice to, to say, no, have the courage to, to express and, and go first, go within yourself and find what that is. And then be actionable. That's the masculine energy. Be actionable to do it.
01:28:23
Speaker
Find out where your joy is and focus to that, but not if you have to be rude to somebody
Kindness, Libertarian Views, and Gratitude
01:28:34
Speaker
else. One of the things libertarians talk about is you should adhere to natural law as long as it doesn't negatively affect somebody else.
01:28:52
Speaker
You know, you want to smoke dope, go ahead. Right. But don't do it if it's going to offend somebody else. Yeah. It's fine. Natural law. Yeah, be kind. Yeah, be kind. Have good manners. Good hygiene and all that. Yes, that's part of being kind. And joyful with each other.
01:29:14
Speaker
Thank you so much, Dean. I really appreciate you spending moments with you and more moments to come, I'm sure, as we share some music and poetry and writing. Thank you very much. Oh yeah, we're sure a lot. And let's do this again, you know? I think sometimes as we have this conversation, more settles in and more thoughts come up and I'd love to have you back and let's talk about it again. Yeah, I'd like you to talk to my son now. Okay. I think I'd be revealing. Okay, I'll let you be my agent. All right. Hook us up. All right, thanks everybody. Thank you.