Sharing stories is the key to bonding. We explain the difference between sharing and telling a story. Then we get to the bad sharing which is another kind of storytelling/sharing (gossip) that destroys our bond, and we use Twitter as an example of how our society has lost the ability to connect. In this episode, we have a solution to bring us back together again.  There is a way out of this. There is a way to have a better life, to have a beautiful society. And it's not as hard as you think. You don't have to figure out how to move mountains. You just have to sit in simplicity

#Twitter, #gossip, #bonding, #connection, #storytelling, #misinformation, #crazy, #stupid, #the art of friendship, #land of Shinar, #The story of Babel, #Tower of Babel, #fragmentation, #confirmation bias, 

TRANSCRIPT

The Gossipy Friend
[00:00:00] Fawn: Yay for us. Hi everybody. Yay for us, meaning all of us together listening right now. Hi everyone. Guess what? I was partaking in a very boring conversation yesterday
[00:00:15] Matt: was
[00:00:15] Fawn: that with me? You were there, but you were not the reason for the boredom, but you were. I think we were all contributing to the boredom because neither side wanted to talk about anything.
Because one side lives and believes radically different than ours. All this
[00:00:32] Matt: would be yes, yes. The call
[00:00:34] Fawn: with family
[00:00:35] Matt: family.
[00:00:36] Fawn: So as the conversation was being had on speakerphone and the whole family's at the table, I must admit that I was zoning out ( Matt exclaims sarcastically) and we are surrounded by boxes in our kitchen, at the moment, there was one box that was in front of me and it had in big, big letters "BELONG", like belong B E L O N G. And I started to play like, oh, what other words can I make out of belong? And so I realized with belong, you can create "ONE GLOBE". We all belong to one globe. So I was tripping out on that, the whole conversation; one global. Am I the only one tripping out on that?
Isn't that great?!?!
Anyway,
[00:01:20] Matt: you know, actually, nevermind.
[00:01:21] Fawn: No, go ahead.
[00:01:22] Matt: Well, I wrote a computer program because that's what I do. And I programmed peoples, I programmed all of the house names of the house into it. And as it turns out, if I scramble up the letters in ALLEGRA, it actually spells like a genus of birds or something random.
I mean, it's weird. Yeah, nobody else's full names came out to
anything, but,
[00:01:43] Fawn: but collectively our names come to "FAME".
[00:01:46] Matt: Well, that's the first letter of each
[00:01:48] Fawn: that's as complex as I can get.
[00:01:50] Matt: I understand.
Oh my God. I should get all the letters together. Scramble them up.
[00:01:56] Fawn: Okay. Stop. So we digress. We have digressed even before we have started, we have a really good show today.
Oh, well, you know, show we have a really important topic we want to talk about. We're really eager to get into. So I'm going to start. And then Matt, you come in. Okay. Matt is covering his mouth cause I told them don't you interrupt me? Let me, let me get my thoughts out first because I am the Chewbacca. I can't play games with people. If you interrupt me, or if you disagree with me or if you win, I get really mad, I, I can't function after that in a normal way.
Matt is looking away. All right. So here we go. Initially, we were going to talk about the, what did we call it initially? The title we were going to use
[00:02:47] Matt: "The Disagreeable Friend" ,
[00:02:48] Fawn: "The Disagreeable Friend" , and as we were delving into it, I realized, oh my goodness, this goes back to what we learned some years ago that, people get labeled as crazy or stupid.
Right? When you are no longer able to understand someone's viewpoint, those two words destroy everything. And it gives you free reign to say, I'm not going to listen to you because you're crazy or you're stupid. As we were delving into this and doing a lot of thinking about it, I realized we should really be calling it "The Gossipy Friend".
So here we go guys. Here is my, my take on it. And then you tell me what you think.
"The Gossipy Friend," and the gossipy friend I'm going to label really, I'm talking about social media, the gossipy friend, and how it has destroyed our bond.
Why friendship is so important and can save our society, especially right at this moment in time.
There's a story that most people know. It comes after Noah building the Ark, when they landed on land, they formed a city.
And the story of a city where everyone's spoke the same language and they were able to create everything; that nothing was impossible for them. That was their society. But eventually the city was destroyed because the society reached a point that even though the people all spoke the same language.
People were not able to communicate or understand each other, even speaking the same language, having the same experiences, something happened to break all that apart. Usually there are three ingredients, I think. There are three ingredients that hold a bond for us as a family, as a collective. I'm talking about friendships.
Friendship to me is key for family, for everything. The core of every institution for me and why I'm doing what I'm doing with this podcast, with everything I'm talking about over the years, the core of everything from my point of view is friendship. You can't have family without friendship. You can't have a marriage without friendship. You can't have society without friendship. You get what I'm saying?
These are the three components that exist to hold this together, to hold this bond together. One is experience. For example, being in a field with a certain expertise. That everyone trusts like a teacher or a doctor; someone who's studied something and you have faith and trust in this person to do their job or to lead.
Number two is like an elder, an elder doesn't have to be someone old. It means someone wise that can lead a community that can bring people together. That's number two. Number three of the bond that I'm talking about that needs to happen, the third component would be shared stories.
The only way we can really relate to one another is to share a story. If you tell a story it's like quite superficial . But if you share a story, you get all your senses in there and you can understand the person's point of view, or I can get you to understand my point of view because, in describing something to you, I bring you right there with me and you can understand where I'm coming from or where I came from.
And you have empathy and you have an understanding.
So in sharing my story, I would use all my senses to tell you about my experience. For example, I'm trying to think of an example of a story right now. All right. Um, a couple of days ago, I was so here's my story from a couple of days ago, I was summoned for jury duty. Matt is shaking his head. Um, I went and on the jury notice, it says jury duty is , one day, maybe three days. We get there.
And in this room there's like almost a hundred people in there, all jurors. And I'm getting nervous because one it's been a while since I've been in a room with that many people like close, except for the airport and the airplane. And two. I'm very fearful of the law. Like institutions like that, like hospitals, government buildings, I always feel nervous, uncomfortable. Because I'm an empath, I can pick things up that most people can just shrug off. I can't shrug it off. I pick up on people's emotions. I go to the grocery store, I'm touching something that someone else has touched and I feel that person, it sounds absurd, but that's how, that's how I am.
Friends who become friends with me at first, think it's funny or I'm making it up. Until they see firsthand. No, I can't look at this movie because I, I, I'm not able to live normally after seeing an image that may last only a few seconds. I can't look at violence. It's not entertainment for me. It's scary to me. It is heartbreaking. And I'm not using those words lightly. It's heartbreaking to see someone else get hurt. It's not entertainment and I don't need to go there. I already feel the injustices of the world. I feel all of that. So it's not necessary. I digressed. So here I am. I'm hoping that I won't be called and then they give us more information.
It turns out that what we're going to be part of, is a murder trial. I'm like, oh my God. Out of all people to get picked, I am the worst person. I can not be non-judgemental I cannot be non-emotional. I cannot be logical. I'm purely emotion. That's how I am very, very emotional. Anyway, I'm like, well, maybe they won't pick me out of a hundred people, they wanted 38 and then from 38, they were going to go to 14. Well guess who was front and center sitting two and a half feet away from prosecution and what do you call the other side? The defendants prosecutor. Oh my God. And then the judge, and I don't know what my demeanor was, but guys I was sitting, I was in the front row.
And when you come, in at the, the, the way I was noticing the way the prosecution and the defendants, even, I think the judge that didn't, wasn't really looking at her at that point, but I felt like we were being scanned in a mystical way. Like scanned, like the people, the lawyers, every single person coming in, they were doing it so fast and so methodically, so robotic in a way that it scared the hell out of me, that I was like, what are they picking up on every person and how are they able to do it so fast? They're makinging judgments right there on who they want and what your demeanor is and who you are. Like, God knows what they've been trained to pick up, but it made me really scared that whatever it is about me is being judged right now.
And so, and then they're asking me not to judge. I was sitting there in the front row. I had my bag with me that had , hand sanitizer, um, my phone that was turned off, I had some paper and a pen, you know, like normal stuff you would have in your bag. I was holding onto this and I looked down and you could see my white knuckles.
I was clasping my hands together, trying to not cry because I was so scared, but I also, I was feeling in my heart, I was trying to figure out what happened. Someone was murdered. Oh my God. I, I, um, I was distraught immediately. And so then they tell you you're not allowed to speak of this to anyone. You're not allowed to read the paper.
You're not allowed to go on the internet. You're not allowed to watch the news. You're not allowed to speak to anyone in your life about what's happening here. I'm like, oh my God, I can't. I am going to explode. Like I, I'm just gonna, I, I, I can't deal with this. I cannot handle with the amount of stress I've lived in my life. Um, I'm not a normal person that can cu .
What's the word, Matt? I can't
[00:11:26] Matt: compartmentalize
[00:11:27] Fawn: compartmentalize, things like that. I'm an emotional person.
[00:11:33] Matt: Right.
[00:11:34] Fawn: Um, anyway, needless to say, I started to have a panic attack and. And, um, I w I, I raised my hand and I went up to the judge and they saw my demeanor that they shouldn't be working with me
[00:11:52] Matt: to say the least.
[00:11:53] Fawn: I mean, I'm laughing because out of, um, nervousness, because I mean, I felt so many things. I felt sad and I felt scared because I, I can't do this. I can't judge someone else's life and condemn them or not condemn them. I don't think that I can be... Um, like I said, I, I can't, I cannot, we put my emotions to the side to make a decision.
Anyway, um, they excused me. And when they said, I don't know if they said you are excused, I didn't hear it. So I kept sitting there. I went back to my seat facing the prosecution. And then, then someone took my seat and I still didn't get it. So I ended up moving to the side of the courtroom and then the judge was like, she called out my name and that terrified me.
I'm like you told everybody my name and she's like, get out,
I'm sweating and I'm telling you this, but you see, I just shared a story with you. , but I'm sure Matt, where you able to be in the courtroom with me?
[00:12:58] Matt: Yes.
[00:12:58] Fawn: So that's sharing a story. It's vulnerable. I don't like to tell people that I'm this emotional. I don't like to share my vulnerability like that, but I'm doing it.
I'm, I'm stepping over my zone of comfort to tell you this story, to share something with you, so you understand. That's what sharing a story means. And I think that's one of the most important things in friendship. And, to me, friendship means a bond. It is family, it is society and that's what's most important.
And I think that's why this podcast is so important, because when people, hear that, we talk about the art of friendship. They're like, oh yeah, it's some fluffy show where we preach to you, how to make friends. No, it's about sharing stories of life and that's how we bond. And that is the art of friendship.
So back to the gossipy friend. So those are the three components; experience, leadership and sharing. Social media and the retweet button comes in because we were reading this article and it was talking about that. It was talking about how social media has made people stupid and it and used the word stupid.
I'm like, okay. Article. I understand what you're saying, but it was so depressing reading this. was it not, Matt? It was scary and depressing.
[00:14:30] Matt: Absolutely
[00:14:31] Fawn: much like "The Social Dilemma" it's like, yeah. Thank you for telling us the truth that we already knew, but you kind of left us hanging you, you created this and then you're just going to say, I don't know.
[00:14:43] Matt: This is what's happening, guys. Okay. Let's
move on.
[00:14:45] Fawn: That's not helpful. Okay. Show me the story, but bring it back up with a solution or a thought of a solution. You know what I'm saying? So we were reading this article and, and I, and we totally agree because years ago when we started this friendship movement, we said, look, guys, you have to get off the computer.
So that's why we started the, the matchmaking service for platonic friends. We said just because you have likes and follows. You would think you have friends, that's not it guys, you're being lulled into this lie that you have community, you know? Sure. You could have a business and you have all these friends following you, providing you with something, but that's not true friendship right there. And so we were like, Hey, come on. Let's figure out. Remember the art of friendship and remember the art of meeting one another and the art of the beauty of recognizing one another. In-person. And maintaining that bond in life, right?
Arm in arm, eating together and making jokes together, walking together, looking at the sunrise or the sunset together, sharing a drink. Come on. That's what we're talking about. We want to get there. Right? We want to get back to that. The feeling of safety, you know, like the world is a safe place,
[00:16:09] Matt: right.
Exactly.
[00:16:10] Fawn: Getting back to this social media and the retweet button, and also the like, and the share button as I was looking at this, I realized, wow, words are spread. The words that are spread, will eventually end up completely changed. And so leading to logic versus emotion where emotion always trumps logic, which is what Matt says.
[00:16:36] Matt: We say that all the time,
[00:16:38] Fawn: you taught me that. Emotion trumps logic and creates a whole new world of anger because anger is destructive and anger is what feeds this beast. Very rarely do people gossip about high, energetic, loving, positive things. The truth is that the negative scary stuff is the stuff that sells in a society that is so controlled by fear.
You better buy this. If you don't buy this, your life will be horrible
[00:17:11] Matt: or your children's lives will be horrible.
[00:17:13] Fawn: Right? If you look at commercials, almost all of them have a fear component in there. So you're pulled you're propelled into rushing to get this thing because you're scared.
Right? And it's a lie. It's a way to feed whatever this is, that's not working in our society and I'm not saying you shouldn't go out and buy stuff. Oh my gosh. I want to buy all kinds of shiny stuff and make things even more beautiful. But when you're controlled by fear, that's not okay.
And eventually whatever you boughtout of that fear, you always have that target on it that reminds you of fear, fear of fear. And eventually you're going to want to get rid of that. And where does it end up? In the landfill? Going back to what gives you joy, you will eventually you will snap out of that trance that you were put into buying this thing.
And you're like, I don't want this. It doesn't bring me joy. And it's just such a waste.
When you have enough gossip, eventually all trust is lost, completely lost. And that's the problem today. We don't trust anything.
I want to show you how friendship is really the key, and we don't need anything, but that one friendship, it doesn't matter if it's democratic autocracy.
So there comes a point like now where we realize that all along, all the stories we have been told are ridiculous, from doctors, you know, we go to the doctor and now we don't trust the doctor because the doctor, we realized things have changed so much that they don't even know .How many times Matt have we gone to the doctor and we say, we've discovered this.
And they're like, I don't know anything about that.
[00:19:05] Matt: Well, there's so much,
[00:19:07] Fawn: but we can't trust them anymore. And they're so wanting to be right. That they want to stick to what they know and say, this is the right way. But we know that there are other ways. I go to the acupuncturist because I appreciate the 3000, 5000 years of experience. And yet the modern medicine, beautiful medicine technology medicine that we have now, which is wonderful.
Doesn't know a lot. So I've lost my trust
[00:19:37] Matt: Knows different things. Let's be careful.
[00:19:41] Fawn: So from doctors to teachers. We don't trust the school system. We homeschool, we have we're original homeschoolers because we've seen, you know, we both come from families where there are teachers, and we've seen firsthand how ridiculous the school system is.
So we're like, no, don't trust you. And then you have the government as well. And we all have been experiencing that. So I'm not going to get too much into that. So we have to turn to ourselves. Which gets us into this lonely place that we're in right now, starting all over to find friends, family that we can build life with.
It's not easily done. It's like dating all over again. Remember we said that years ago we were trying to find good friends and we're like, oh my, I was like, oh my God, Matt. He's like dating all over again to find you, but we're just trying to find friends to have dinner with, to share a conversation with, and we would meet people and we'd say, yay, we found the one.
And then we're like, oh no,
[00:20:44] Matt: I've never said we found the one it's because people we can
get along with.
[00:20:48] Fawn: I was thinking, we found the ones. Yay. And then total sheer disappointment in the middle of the date, thinking, how are we going to get out of this? And I'm sure they were thinking the same about us. It just, it was dating all over again.
And finding most people that are embedded with major issues and don't have the capacity for friendship. So you find people you're trying to date, you're trying to make friends, but most people don't seem like they're in the right head space or they don't have the capacity to be searching for friends because they're dealing with fires in their lives.
Emotional fires, physical fires. There's a lot happening for everyone. And no one has the luxury of saying, ah, I would like to go to brunch today. Or go shopping for a pretty dress today, or guys, what would you say
[00:21:40] Matt: go shopping
for a pretty dress of course, no. Um, there aren't days that those occur though.
[00:21:46] Fawn: Yes. I'm not, I'm not trying to be like, this is all of life, but just bear with me. Okay. Just bear with me. We can share our stories. No, we can't. I don't think so. We can't share our stories and create a bond because communication is so twisted right now, communication has been completely destroyed much like going back to that story of Babel.
[00:22:12] Matt: Yes. It's the tower
of Babel.
[00:22:14] Fawn: Okay. Take a look at our society, like, think about all the movement. We move around nomadically looking for the right community, the right place to live with the right job. Everyone's always moving. Even if you live in one place, think about it. How easy is it to just get on a plane and end up a few hours later on the other side of the globe, it's constant movement.
And then when that happens, I feel like we become homesick in this new environment, missing the connections we had with others, looking for anything that resembles a home that we once knew, which leads to this term, confirmation bias, which is the tendency to find any minuscule amount of evidence that could resemble what we remember, what gives us comfort ,that resembles what we want to believe. You can think of this with like normal politics, but you can think of, think of it as dating, or making a new friend. You see someone and you're so desperate to connect. You know, first glance, this person is bad to the bone, right?
Let's think about the dates. I'll speak for myself. I would see a guy I'm like, oh no, this guy, you, you gave me the term freight train. This guy is a freight train, but because I'm so wanting connection, I'll find any minuscule little head of a pin evidence to say, this guy is my man and I will hold on to that.
[00:23:58] Matt: That's a little scary,
[00:23:59] Fawn: but that's how we are now. I'll speak for other, my friends who also, when we were dating, same thing. Think about it when you meet someone, you know, it's not the right fit, but you, you just want to connect so, so badly that you'll find anything, anything to latch onto, and then you create their whole vibe it becomes that for you until a few months later, it comes crashing down because that's not who they were. There's another way to describe it where you think, this person's always late . And then you think of yourself and you think, well, I'm always late because I have a very important excuse.
So I'm not a late person. I'm late because this happened to me. Whereas you're just as guilty as being late. It's kind of, isn't it kind of like confirmation bias, the same example where you can twist it around to make it more comfortable for yourself. And make yourself like the good guy. Well, yeah,
[00:25:01] Matt: you can resort facts to suit any viewpoint.
And
[00:25:05] Fawn: you can, it's kind of like saying like, like I've told you I've come across people who make a racist judgment about someone and I'll say, wow, that's my background. And they'll say to me, oh, you're not one of them. What, you're not one of that.
You're one of us, I'm sure you guys get the point. I think that the best way out of this trap is to go against the feeling of comfort and seek out people with opposing views and ideas.
And I think this is what we need to do especially in the United States,
it's the dating metaphor again, to date the person you normally wouldn't date to find true love. How many times did I date the same guy over and over again, hoping for different results. And then I met you and you were so different than everybody else that I was not into it at first. I was scared. I was like, no, I can't date this guy. Thank goodness. Thank goodness that I felt the love. And I realized, oh my goodness, this is, this is it.
Because let's face it. If your track record for dating has results that are not good. How's that working out for you? So same with our society right now, we can find the people that we think, think just like us or against the same people that were against that they're outraged by the same things we are outraged by it's that whole gossipy thing that has taken over.
We're losing track of our connections because we're so angry and so heated by this gossip thing that has spread that we're not able to communicate anymore.
Let's go back and visit the word crazy and the word stupid. These labels, these words will shut it all down. In the United States, when we went to Iraq, we were fighting the "terrorists". I'm using air quotes. The reason. It felt like , the rhetoric that I was hearing, the words that I was hearing in the media, I was constantly hearing crazy,
[00:27:30] Matt: right.
[00:27:31] Fawn: The word crazy. And especially, dealing with certain family members that are so opposite politically than us. Their justification for harming this other group was they're crazy. They're crazy. They need to be taken out. They're crazy. We tend to label human beings as crazy when things get uncomfortable, when we don't want to be in their shoes when we don't want to hear their stories.
So we label them as crazy. It's like looking at a baby who is crying for something and we're like, well, that baby is crazy. What no. That baby is needing something, is trying to communicate to you. And the longer that you ignore this baby, the louder, the screams will get. Well, that's humanity. You can't label them as crazy.
You have to understand why they're doing things that they're doing. They are human beings. And I'm not trying to say that I'm justifying horrible things like killing each other. I'm not doing that. Please understand. What I'm trying to say is it's a desperate reaction. It is a desperate end to something that has gone for many years, many decades, many centuries that have gone unheard, they've gone ignored.
the only way out, in my opinion, the only way out of this mess, is to listen and to understand. We need to relate to the point of view of an opposition. You know, the crazy and the stupid, they must be stupid. Don't get how stupid they are. No, believe me, there are many people out there. I've looking at the TV, shaking my head, saying the same thing.
Like these people are ignorant. At the same time. I do realize there's a road that led them to this behavior, to these words that they're using. And I need to understand that
because through this chain of gossip, it is their frustrations,
all of our frustrations that has led to all the fights and the fragmented society that we have right now. I don't think changing politics is going to help. I do not think that getting rid of social media will help. I think what helps is
realizing how to tell a story and realizing how to listen to someone's story and get back to that connection. I think that is key. And that's why we're doing what we're doing. That is why I am here with you every week, trying to get back the art of friendship.
[00:30:16] Matt: Wow. That was a lot of stuff. I had to be quiet for a really long
time.
[00:30:20] Fawn: It wasn't a lot of stuff. 37 minutes worth it's because I maybe pontificated on extra things to make my point clear, but it's really not
[00:30:29] Matt: about no, and I, I get it. I get it. It's just, there's so much to circle back to unfortunately, or unfortunately, see, I would say.
Moving away from friendship for just a second, moving towards society, societies, typically successful society, you know, going all the way back to Babel, which actually was a real thing and a real tower and a real everything. And the story and the Bible does have historical facts behind it. There is a city I want to say it's Babylon,
[00:30:58] Fawn: but I'm not sure.
No, it was like, it starts with an S H S H I N a R. Shinar.
[00:31:04] Matt: Anyways. I remember looking at this city, actually in a God, one of the millions of books in my parents' house, anyways, there was a tower and the legend says that they were building a tower that was going to reach heaven and God was like, no, we're not going to have
this.
[00:31:22] Fawn: Yeah. I think that's man's perspective saying, God will say that God wouldn't say that, but I think they were trying to, they were achieving perfection. And that might be we're achieving a utopia that
[00:31:33] Matt: might be don't know, but so God took and scattered them to all corners of the globe and gave them 75 kajillion languages Merry Christmas.
[00:31:43] Fawn: Is that what the Bible said?
[00:31:44] Matt: Yeah.
[00:31:46] Fawn: So the way I understood it was, they all had the same language, but they were splintered it all. So, yeah, I think it's man, that, that says God's splintered at all. I think the people splintered it all,
[00:31:59] Matt: well, again, sometimes the Bible, you know, if you choose to read it, not as absolute fact, you view it as this is stuff that happened, but maybe not in this way,
[00:32:12] Fawn: we are God's
[00:32:14] Matt: again.
Who knows. Um, but anyways, what we're looking at is, societies typically have, God, what is it? And it's hectic to say, but they typically have shared blood. They've spilled blood for the same things. They have shared gods, which is very tricky in today's society. And they have shared enemies.
[00:32:36] Fawn: Right. And it's that shared enemy that unites them.
[00:32:39] Matt: Exactly. But if, if you take a look historically way back when I'm part Scandinavian, part German, that gives me the Viking heritage. But, you know, at one of the shared stories that the Vikings had, they had a lot of them was about their God of war and justice and the God of war and justice, Norse gods are messed up.
But anyways, he didn't have an arm. Well, what happened? Well, he put his arm into the mouth of a Wolf because they want her to put a leash on him. And that was the only way that he could get them to trust him. And so he bit, and he lied to him and he bit off his arms, but in the process,
[00:33:13] Fawn: yes.
Could the mouth of the Wolf be gossip,
[00:33:16] Matt: anything could be anything. Right. But what's key here is that if you were raised on this story, on this folklore, Then you knew that you need to sacrifice whatever it took for the good of your tribe. And as a shared story, as a shared ideal, as a shared everything, all of a sudden your society started banding around this stuff.
And what we see now is we're unwilling. Everybody has their own point of view, which is great and is proper and is a million other things, but sometimes. Somebody jumps into an argument in the middle of all their assumptions. Can
[00:33:55] Fawn: I interrupt for a second? I understand that you saw, you brought up the word sacrifice.
That's true because
Norse
[00:34:02] Matt: we're big on sacrifice.
[00:34:04] Fawn: Well, yeah, I mean to achieve, a bond, like to keep that bond stable, you have to sacrifice, but when you reach a point where you're so stretched thin, you have nothing to sacrifice anymore. And I think that's the problem because we don't have that capacity anymore.
[00:34:23] Matt: Right. I get it.
I totally get it. We need to,
[00:34:27] Fawn: we need to recharge.
[00:34:28] Matt: Yes, exactly. I was about to say, we need to figure out how we can enter into a world of compromise into a world of trying to understand.
[00:34:37] Fawn: So listen, this is what I'm saying when you are heard. Have you ever been so distraught and so angry or distraught?
Let's just say so emotional. And then someone shows you kindness in a split second you're recharged.
[00:34:54] Matt: Yeah, absolutely. I've I've had one or three of those moments and they came at very pivotal times for me. That was very good for me. Absolutely. I've been there.
[00:35:02] Fawn: So
you see there's hope
[00:35:04] Matt: absolutely.
[00:35:05] Fawn: In a split second, guys.
Things can change for the best, but I'm sorry. I interrupted you. Figure out we're talking about sacrificing. I
[00:35:14] Matt: was, but I was talking about how societies coalesce around certain ideals and certain things. And that happens both on the societal level and on the one-to-one level where people actually communicate with each other, they share their hopes, their fears, their dreams.
And even if the other person doesn't share it, they at least listen and they try and understand and understanding comes over time and comes perhaps even over repetition. That's part of friendship and that's why it's important. And I've always had friends who were different than me.
Um, and I dunno if that's just because I'm so flipping different, it's hard to find someone who is like me or, or what that story really looks like or I'm, or I gravitate towards people who are different than me, but I really like having my challenges, having my beliefs challenged, my challenges believed no, my beliefs
challenged.
[00:36:04] Fawn: Yeah. Your challenges believed right.
[00:36:07] Matt: Well, that's true
sometimes, but, um, yeah, it's just, I think
it's like it's funny after speaking with the fam whose beliefs are very different, it made me focus back in, on of all people, Walter Cronkite. We don't have a Walter Cronkite.
[00:36:27] Fawn: Well, I mean,
[00:36:28] Matt: he kind of this and he was, he was a newscaster and he was like the newscaster, he was CBS newscaster. And when he said that the war in Vietnam was not winnable.
Boom, all of a sudden it was about how the heck do we get out of Vietnam? It wasn't about more investment or any of the rest of it. It was how the act, how the H do we get out?.
[00:36:50] Fawn: Well, here's a person that was respected. He had authority. He was an elder in the community. But now, because no one is heard everyone is speaking and it's not the logical speaking.
It's purely emotional. And you have so many, so many, ah, so many tweets and I'm going to use the word tweet, but I'm, I'm talking about there's so many versions of something and we're purposely being flooded with gossip that is not true at all so that we can't communicate anymore so that we can't bond anymore, that we can't understand or hear each other anymore because there's too much.
And most of it is just garbage.
[00:37:40] Matt: And there is a lot of it. Do you know? I found out he was like the first newscaster, who actually got a whole half an hour to talk about the news on TV. Cause before that it was only 15 minutes. That's on the news. In the course of
[00:37:56] Fawn: a broadcast 15 minutes a day, every day.
Well,
[00:38:00] Matt: I'm sure there was probably some something in the Mo um, I think there was something in the morning and then something in the evening.
[00:38:05] Fawn: Sure. There was local news and the
weather,
[00:38:07] Matt: but you also got your news from the newspaper and you know, you got it from a authoritative
sources
[00:38:15] Fawn: and now it's 24 hours a day, but
[00:38:17] Matt: it's also it's it's information from random.
non- accredited sources. So it's a tricky thingto distil truth
[00:38:26] Fawn: it's basically, gossip, it's taking a heated, heated idea and yelling about it and creating a mob mentality around it because you keep spreading it, retweeting it, sharing it over and over and over again. And even if it's written down word for word in a tweet, the symbolism, the vibe of it, the emotion of it
will completely change the meaning or the meaning maybe originally was intended for not so good purposes, but it will spread like lighting a match to a very dry field of tumbleweed.
[00:39:03] Matt: Right? Absolutely because you know, let's not forget that Twitter, Facebook. All these kinds of technological organizations that they're there to make money.
They're not there to share truth. They're not there to build community. They're there to make money. And so they're going to go down whatever path moral or immoral that will generate the most revenue. And sometimes it's even the most revenue on a quarter by quarter basis. Things get real scary there too, because it's all about, we only care about the next three months. We're not trying to build something wonderful where they're making money.
[00:39:40] Fawn: And it's like really Twitter, Facebook, all that stuff was initially started by one group on the far right and one group on the far left. And was it like 9% of the population on each side basically started these conversations, their ideas.
It was by wealthy white people, all the tweets and all the Facebook stuff. And now it's dispersed to everybody yelling, but the conversation, the rumor, the gossiping was initiated by a really suspect group, if you asked my opinion that have nothing to do with the majority of people that are living in our society.
[00:40:21] Matt: Right. And there's a whole thought behind how that happens and yeah. Like, yeah, I can, I can, yeah. I can tell a story. Margaret Atwood writer of the Handmaid's Tale should be an unimpeachable resource. She was a second wave feminist, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She tweeted, wrote a letter, wrote a, did a something.
Random person was accused "Me Too" stuff. And she said he deserves to have an inquiry and they deserve to come to the truth. Whatever that truth is, FLAMBEED by saying, we need to go through a process and figure out if this guy is actually guilty. FLAMBEED... said she was, she wasn't a real feminist. She's not a post something, something from.
Jesper saying dude should
to be tried,
[00:41:13] Fawn: like I said, like how you always say emotion trumps logic.
[00:41:18] Matt: Hello. Right. And in this case, it's, it's about, if you question your own sides, beliefs as a moderate, the radicals will FLAMBE you. And that's what we're looking at. We're looking at a definite pull away from things in the middle.
[00:41:36] Fawn: So they know the correct thing is to look at someone with completely different views than yours. And that's the key to uniting our society. They know that, but then you're not allowed to do that.
[00:41:50] Matt: Well, I'm
going to give something up. If I, you know, to get to the middle, typically you have to sacrifice something, but the other person needs to sacrifice something.
[00:42:00] Fawn: And they don't and really nobody has any means to sacrifice anything anymore because
[00:42:04] Matt: everybody's so exhausted.
[00:42:07] Fawn: So once again, if we get back to friendship in a split second, you will be regenerated, but you have to come to the very basic, basic point of having very limited outsourcing of things around your life.
Just come to the basic point of having a human to human connection without any other influences.
[00:42:30] Matt: I can't argue with that. You know, I think it's, it's definitely important to speak with those people that you don't necessarily agree with to try and understand, to try and undersatnd. And, and to try and find common ground, I've found common ground with people that I, I don't know.
I have literally, aside from the fact that we both program nothing in common with,
[00:42:54] Fawn: and here's the thing, Matt, we can't have the story be about politics that we can't have the story be about the story that we're all fighting about. It has to be a story that goes to the basic basic values. The story of what you ate.
The story of how you felt today, going into a situation today, the story of, oh my goodness, I am not fit to handle a jury trial, but these other people thank goodness think so differently from me that they're able to do that. But sharing the stories; we're not talking about politics,
we're talking about the basic core human emotions,
[00:43:35] Matt: right? We're talking about the things that unite us as people, not the things that divide us as, I don't know, thinking, I don't know, rational, blah, blah, blah.
[00:43:44] Fawn: How you love, who you love? What are you good at? What is your hobby?
How do you see the world leave politics out of it, but how do you see, what did you see today? I saw this craziest looking squirrel today. Crazy.
I saw the weirdest looking squirrel today. Pointy ears. It looked like he had gone to the beauty parlor and put red highlights on his head or hers.
[00:44:16] Matt: I'm not sure what else I have to share.
[00:44:18] Fawn: ' cause we keep an open mind because we came to the conclusion. Really. There is a way out of this. There is a way to have a better life, to have a beautiful society. And it's not as hard as you think. You don't have to figure out how to move mountains. You just have to sit in simplicity. It's really, as simple as that, just look at someone and allow them to share their story because trust me, no one wants to keep talking about politics after awhile
[00:44:53] Matt: and share your stories.
[00:44:56] Fawn: Yeah, you have to be vulnerable. And so this is different than sacrifice because you're not really sacrificing, but you are being vulnerable. And who cares, what other people think, right. You're afraid to share your story because you're afraid of how people talk about you, which leads us back to this concept and this whole mess we're in.
Well, if you don't care about it, if you don't care what someone thinks of you, because really it's like, okay, well, I'll go back to the dating metaphor. If you're ready to have children, and you're still single, and you're looking for someone to partner with that also wants children. You know, they tell you never talking about that on, on the first date.
I kind of disagree. I mean, yeah, you should get to know the person first, but yeah, you don't want to waste time and you lay it all out there. This is what I am. This is who I am. This is what I would like. This is my focus in life. And if that turns them off, well, thank you. Let's let's get rid of that.
Like immediately.
[00:45:59] Matt: What does it
fail quickly
[00:46:01] Fawn: fail quickly, move on because you will find your true goodness. You will find what you're looking for faster. You don't have to waste three months or six months or 10 years being honest and being vulnerable is a win a winning situation and being honest and being vulnerable and sharing your story,
it's a win for society. That's what we're about. Thank you so much for listening to us. We love you so much. We ask you to please contact us, go to our friendly world podcast.com. Reach out to us. We will reach, reach you, and we want to connect with you. We want to talk to you and discuss ideas with you, please.
There's a free gift waiting for you. Please go to our website, our friendly world podcast.com share, be a part of our family. And again, thank you so much. We love you. We'll talk to you in just a few days, and we're here for you in the days between just reach out to us. Love you be well. Bye bye. Bye.

Let's look at the word, the concept, and the root of Ikigai, which is about giving everyday meaning and joy. Let's look at the Ikigai. The word Ikigai comes from Iki meaning, life and gai, meaning, value.

Ikigai can be interpreted as the values in your life that make it worth living. We're going to talk about how that relates to work, in the corporate world, in the business world, and most importantly, how that works in our lives; with our friendships with our families, with the joy in life. This episode is about Ikigai, joy, happiness, life purpose, how we see the world, Who and What we love, how we make a difference, where we excel, passion, values, possibilities, gifts, the value in life, the art of finding true friendship, the art of friendship, and moving towards a meaningful life.

Ceremony, what does it really mean? What is it? What is a daily ceremony? It's an intentional routine that's connected with how you start, how you move through, or how you end your day, the goal of ceremony is to be aware of time passing, but not to stress out about it;to observe it and notice that it counts. The little things in life, count.

Why do we have ceremony? They make life's, essential moments. They may reflect our beliefs, hopes, our traditions, culture, and spirituality. It's a way to bring people together and provide a sense of belonging. A ritual is defined by psychologists as a predefined sequence of symbolic actions.

Rituals make us less anxious. Ritualistic practices can help to bring a degree of predictability to an uncertain future. They convince our brains of constancy. It brings about a sense of predictability.

TRANSCRIPT

The Art of Ceremony

[00:00:00] Fawn: Hi, welcome back. We've got a good one for you today. Folks. We've got a great one for you today. Folks. Welcome back everybody to our friendly world. Today we're talking ceremony and I have a whole thing I'm going to go through and Matt's probably going to get mad at me because that's what he does. He has his notes.

I guarantee you I've become divergent. So I'm going to start first. And then Matt, you're just going to have to like flow with it. Here we go. The art of ceremony, ceremony as a work of art, I'm here to comfort you. We're here to comfort you, the opposite of people saying; I'm going to challenge you to something.

So today I'm going to comfort you with something it's the opposite of, I'm going to challenge you to do something because we all have enough that we're challenged by. Thank you very much. We're challenged enough, taxed enough, overworked, overtired, overdone, We need comfort. There's so much out there

that could seem so out of control. Like you have the feeling the sense that there's no rhyme or reason to anything that the world is crazy, if you look at it through the news, or if you listen to certain people. Life can seem out of control, like there's no sense to anything.

For us, we just went through a ceremony of the end of life ceremony. Matt's mother passed away. And so I'm looking at Matt's dad and I got an email from your brother, basically saying, you know, this is what dad's been going through. Over the years he's felt a sense of losing control.

He gave me a whole list of things that your dad has lost control of. in life, with his body, with just everything in life and that's his perception, right? We all can look at life and we can see things differently depending on how we look at it. What is our thought form? What is our belief system?

Our belief systems can create a whole other life from one incident to another. So today we're talking about the art of ceremony and how ritual, ceremony, all of that can really help us with friendship, with feeling connected with turning our lives around and creating the life that we really want.

So I looked at the etymology of first ceremony, and then it led me through all these other words and all these other roots. And it's really interesting. So bear with me. I'm going to start with some explanations of what these words are and when you really look at the meaning of something so simple, like one word, bringing something down to one thing, simplifying it to one tiny aspect will actually give you some great Epiphanes will bring you some clarity

to some big questions in life. So looking at the word ceremony first, I looked at ceremonial and I'm like, really like, w it doesn't really explain it. It just says belonging to( in a religious way), ritual. Ceremonial practice. Ceremonial means connected with. Constituting or consisting of, or fit for a ceremony. Let's look at the ceremony. Ceremony comes from, late 14th century. It's a religious observance, a solemn, rite, from old French and directly from Medieval Latin, it means holiness, sacredness, awe, reverand, like a sacred ceremony.

Ceremonious, the adjective form, circa 1550s relating to outward forms or rites also of persons. Punctilious in matters of formality. Oh my goodness. Punctilious until they asked me, I have no idea. Okay. Punctilious means showing great attention to detail or correct behavior.

So ceremony is relating to outward forms of, or rites also persons punctilious in matters of formality, full of show and ceremony. Okay. Let's figure out what ritual actually means. Ritual adjective form 1560s pertaining to, or consisting of a rite from French or directly from Latin ritualus I'm not sure how to pronounce, uh, it's relating to in religious aspects , relating to like religious rites, religious observance or ceremony, custom usage. Ritual the noun came in in the 1640s. It's , defined as a prescribed manner of performing religious worship. From the 1650s, really basically a book containing the rites or ordinances of a church, also the external forms of religious or other devotional exercises often in that sense of like, um, just like a mere ritual, like forgetful of meaning. Right. It's just,

[00:05:43] Matt: uh, yeah, I came across that too, for sure. And it's interesting that all of these definitions all revolve around kind of Europe and

[00:05:51] Fawn: religion. We're looking at the etymology, which comes from the European, the Latin, the French.

[00:05:58] Matt: But if you, if you take a look at, you know, the power of the church really had during that time and who had the time to create ritual and ceremony back then because the peasant was busy taking care of feeding himself

[00:06:12] Fawn: with, it

gets me to our topic today because we're going to get into that aspect because I don't want to get into the religious aspect.

I want to get into the peasant cause we were all peasants.

[00:06:25] Matt: And again, the other thing that brings it up is, you know, I remember I've read in books where like, religion is kind of the only God, God help us, but entertainment that people had back in say the middle ages, So church was something bigger than a worshiping God, which of course is huge, but it was also, bringing together of community inside of social conventions and social norms.

And they're also kind of emphasizes the church has power over like removing pagan traditions.

[00:06:59] Fawn: Absolutely. It was all about control. It's about controlling the masses. It's about kind of like, um, yeah, just. Making sure that you have authority over the mass consciousness, right? To bring about that sense of belonging and connection in that you behave a certain way, but we're going to get away from all that.

We're going to talk about really how ritual can improve your emotional and everything kind of wellbeing in life. Specifically with friendship, but let me just get back to the other meanings of rite. R I T E early 14th century, it's a formal act or procedure of religious observance performed according to an established manner from Latin ritus.

R I T U S is it's a, it's a custom usage especially a religious observance or ceremony source also have Spanish, Italian, R I T O Rito, which perhaps is from the PI root R E, which means like when you have the root R E it , designates like the meaning to reason, count, count on the notion of. To count to observe carefully.

And that's, that's where the true, beautiful sensation of the meaning of ceremony and ritual that we're going to talk about today comes from, because it's all about carefully observing; something you and I talk about all the time, pay attention to trifles, right? Which in martial arts, you were taught like pay attention to the little detail, the little details that people will ignore.

You know, the magic in life. What are you glancing over that's there trying to give you a message. So then we get into the whole term Rite of passage, which came about in 1909, that term Rite of passage, which is the marking the end of one phase, and the start of another in an individual life. It's translated from French and it's coined by a French anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep. I don't know how to pronounce his last name, please forgive me. But if we look at the root R E the root R E it comes from the Proto-Indo-European root meaning, which means to reason, count. It's a variant of PIE root AR I know this sounds like absurd to get into the such details of it, but like it's, it's, it's really profound.

Check it out. So "AR" means to fit together. And then we get into Sanskrit Sanskrit, R A D H "RADH". And that means to succeed, accomplish. You get into Greek "arithmos" number amount, the Latin R E R I to consider confirm you get into old church Slavonic. "raddit" R a D D I T to take thoughts, attend to. You going into old Irish, "im-radim" to deliberate, consider; Old English

oh, what's the sound when the a and the e go together. It's R a E D The A and the E go together. What's that sound?

[00:10:47] Matt: see to me like the word Gaelic, G a E L I C is Gaelic. So I would go with an a

[00:10:54] Fawn: but Raden radon. Yes. Okay. So all English, um, R a E D a N means to advise, counsel, persuade, read; Old English, Old High German.

R I M means number. Irish R I M rim means number and then this word came up as I was looking it up and I tried to look it up further and I got nowhere, but this is really interesting. So it said Old Irish, R I M means number. And then this word "Dorimu" D O R I M U means "I Count". I count.

And that really struck me because, you know, again, going back to a person who's not taken seriously, a person that's ignored a flower, that's ignored, a situation that's ignored, a little sign in the universe that goes unnoticed. And for this to come up, I count, you know, that's what ceremony is to me. Water, using water, drinking water,

being able to splash some water on your face in the morning. That is a ritual. That is a ceremony.

So going back to ceremony again, what does it really mean? What is it? What is a daily ceremony? It's an intentional routine that's connected with how you start, how you move through or how you end your day, the goal of ceremony is to be aware of time passing, but not to stress out about it;

to observe it and notice that it counts. The little things in life, they count.

Why do we have ceremony? They make life's, essential moments. They may reflect our beliefs, our hopes, our traditions, culture, spirituality. It's a way to bring people together and provide a sense of belonging. A ritual is defined by psychologists as a predefined sequence of symbolic actions.

Rituals make us less anxious.

Ritualistic practices can help to bring a degree of predictability to an uncertain future. They convince our brains of constancy consistency is constancy or word constancy.

[00:13:20] Matt: I don't think so.

[00:13:22] Fawn: You know, it makes your brain calm down.

[00:13:24] Matt: I completely get it.

[00:13:25] Fawn: It brings about a sense of predictability.

When you can't predict anything,

[00:13:31] Matt: right

[00:13:31] Fawn: it tricks your brain into going with a certain rhythm. That's what it does. And there are all these studies that show that, like, for example, singing of a song before any high pressure situation lowers your heart rate and anxiety levels, you know, they put groups, people into two different groups and.

they ask them to do really stressful things like public speaking, but like doing a huge speech in front of a very big crowd. And they did this thing where they had one group do some sort of ritual and they had them go through that ritual. And then the other group, they were just asked to sit quietly before they went up.

And so they measured everything. They measured their heart rates, everything. And the ones that went through a ritual had absolutely lowered, heart rate. They had lowered physiology do Francis physiological. They had lowered physiological anxiety.

Rituals create some semblance of order to regain control. That's why I think so many people turn to religion because when life seems so absurd and you feel like you're not in sync with anything, it's a way to, it's kind of like getting into a groove somehow, but that's where we have to be careful because there are groups out there like cults and all these, like, I think of hazing.

Right in college. Why do people join groups? Because they want a sense of belonging, right? When you feel out of control, when you feel like you don't fit in anywhere, you tend to join groups and look at the world today, look at how we don't even want, we don't even know what truth is because when people go through hard times, they migrate towards a group that they could feel

they belong to because they feel seen and they feel heard and that's a ritual. Like they become part of a ritual and that ritual could be good or bad. It could be like promoting hate and it, that ritual could be creating a beautiful ceremonial way to honor life, all life.

[00:15:42] Matt: Well, yeah. I have to say that, from an evolutionary view point, it certainly makes sense to get together under, you know, way back in the day to get together around a communal fire, to tell communal stories to then have rituals like in Finland,

there's a whole ritual where they light these huge bonfires because of course bonfires keep the evil spirits away. You know, is it truth? Is it not truth? There are societies out there where, a mystical figure will, you know, you call on them to bring rain. And all these things, all these situations that may be, feel like things are out of your control will all of a sudden, you're, you're coming together as a community behind this figure,

and we're going to have rain. We're gonna, we're going to keep the evil spirits away and all the rest of it. I totally understand the whole focus of ceremony and the comfort that it brings because, we do say, we're stronger together and that's absolutely true and that's,

comes from an evolutionary viewpoint because you're less likely to be victimized if you're in a large group by outsiders.

[00:16:49] Fawn: So now let's get into the rituals and the ceremonies of our daily lives, and the art of ceremony. How can we do that? One is going back to the little thing I read. I count, you know, your life is a ceremony.

Your life is a ritual. Going back to, I count, it's to really recognize what you do on a daily basis and looking at it and thinking, is this a beautiful ceremony or is it something that I can just disregard and get rid of? Is it really. Is it really helping me

[00:17:24] Matt: or

even is this something that I managed to do every day that I just do?

And I just go through the motions of doing it because it's what I have to do, brush my teeth, et cetera, et cetera, first thing in the

morning.

[00:17:36] Fawn: But if you do that with intention, it creates a better life. So

[00:17:41] Matt: for example,

intention and joy,

I think,

[00:17:43] Fawn: well, or just intention, it doesn't even have to be joy if you can give it proper attention.

For example, there's that study. That's done on maids that work in a hotel. I don't remember all the details, but they were told, Hey, have you noticed that the amount of movement that you do with your body, you know, changing the sheets, , bending over constantly all day, you're actually a more active than a professional athlete.

Like on par with like an Olympic style training athlete. And once they were told that, and once they like put that focus on that thought, they noticed that these people working in the hospitality field that did the cleaning of the rooms and everything that their bodies started to change immediately.

They didn't change anything else, but they put the focus on well, yeah, I do move around a lot. , the inches around their waist shrunk. Like they lost weight. Do you know what I'm saying? They didn't change anything. They didn't change their diets or anything, but they just put that intention on.

Wow. I do move around a lot. So yeah, brushing your teeth and as you're brushing your teeth, knowing you have teeth, you're taking care of yourself. It provides a greater benefit, right? Again,

[00:19:04] Matt: it's joy, you know, in, in saying that as a maid, you work out as much as a professional athletes.

You're like I do that. That makes you on some level, hopefully feel good. Hopefully you're not like, oh my God, I do. Um, so there's

joy.

[00:19:22] Fawn: There's it is the word joy. or is it? Pride or attention?

[00:19:27] Matt: Well see, see joy is not one of the seven sins, but pride is so we'll go with

joy.

[00:19:31] Fawn: I don't believe in these sins that some man put together probably in, in the, in the name of religion.

I think pride is a very necessary thing. I'm proud of my body. I am proud of the work that I do. So look, can we just forget that I'm going to reframe it? Yes, no, I don't think pride is a sin at all, but getting back to friendship. So we're going through all this. I'm trying to get back to the basics of the basis.

I'm trying to get to the base, the base of it, which is ceremony and really learning what it is, relearning, really looking at what the definition is, so that we can look around and see how we have ceremony, how we have ritual in our daily lives, so that we can have that ripple out into friendship, into all the relationships that we have.

Using ceremony to create better friendships to create better relationships, period. Do you know what I'm saying?

[00:20:41] Matt: Absolutely.

[00:20:42] Fawn: And you know, once we get through brushing your teeth is a ritual, right? The way you get out of bed, the way you walk as a ceremony, like everyone has a different strut, right?

It's it's a ritual. How you walk as ritual. How you dance the way you dance, why you dance is a ritual, the songs that you listen to that move you through the day that is ritual. Right? So we can go through that and then elevate it to, okay. How do you set up the life around you? I always talk about when you come into our home, you're smacked on the forehead gently

by these hearts that are floating from the ceiling. It's a way that we welcome you into our home. The way we offer you water or tea or lemonade, or in Matt's case, a certain IPO IPO. Oh my

[00:21:39] Matt: Lord. And definitely not an IPA either. Cause I'm not in India. Pale ale guy. I'm a Belgium,

[00:21:44] Fawn: whatever the beer thing term is another acronym for you.

A libation it's ceremony. It's really. Right the way we meet each other, the way we greet each other is ritual. All that that we ignore is so important. It's the key to nurturing friendships. And before that, it's the key to inviting a friendship. So that's it. That's what I want to talk about from now on is the art of ceremony.

The art of ritual. It is a work of art. Your life is a work of art.

[00:22:21] Matt: And again, I'm just telling you saying all these things that you're describing. You're bringing joy to yourself that then extends out. It's not pride. It's joy, it's happiness. It's, it's all the rest of it. What is wrong with the pride? There's nothing wrong with necessarily pride. It's just joy

[00:22:37] Fawn: sin. It is no, it's not.

Oh.

[00:22:40] Matt: From a Christian point of view, it's a sin.

[00:22:42] Fawn: That

is ridiculous.

[00:22:44] Matt: Besides. Anyways for me, ceremony revolves. It's like, there's different kind of facets for me on ceremony and ceremony brings belonging, obviously, cause communities come together. Uh, sometimes some, and this is where we get to sometimes.

And sometimes it brings belonging. Cause some of your rituals and ceremonies are individual, obviously. Sometimes your ceremonies revolve around remembrance, remembering an event, remembering a person, remembering a place, remembering a time. Sometimes it's about a blessing. So your blessing, you're getting a blessing from, there's a, there's a ritual.

There's a ceremony in, um, I don't know where, oh my goodness. It's somewhere in Asia where a priest tattoos you. And as he's putting a tattoo up serious, full-time a hundred percent going to have his tattoo, the rest of my life, as he, as he puts it on you, he's chanting and praying over it. So again, blessings, blessings for good harvest, blessings for, fill in whatever blanks you want, for rain or for whatever.

And then also ceremony revolves around, an understanding that you're ending a phase and beginning a new one. So it's that, that, that ceremony, but ceremonies in intent, original intent is to bring joy. over, over the cynical ages, we've turned it into oftentimes ceremony is kind of going through motions.

[00:24:15] Fawn: Okay. That's very nice, Matt. Well done, but going back to the pride. So are you saying it's a sin when I tell our children, I'm proud of you?. It's a sin? That is ridiculous.

[00:24:27] Matt: It's not a sin for you to say that you are proud of them. It's a sin for them to take pride in

[00:24:33] Fawn: that's bullshshshsh.

[00:24:35] Matt: Let's not focus on, like, I please don't make me defend a to patriarchy B you know, Christian values through the ages.

Okay. I'm just saying,

[00:24:45] Fawn: why did

you even bring it in?

[00:24:46] Matt: Because it's fun.

[00:24:47] Fawn: No, it's not fun. So anyway, we're just going to leave it here today with a thought of like, what is, what is ritual for you,

Revel in it, and relax and be joyful about that and be proud of the rituals that you have in your life by noticing them and honoring. And looking at what you can possibly get rid of that's not serving you. Let's get rid of that. And the ritual have an opposite ritual of something negative. Like if you're looking at yourself and going, look, you can look at yourself and go, wow. Hello? Hello. Hello. Let's switch it up. So that's, what I want is to not challenge you, but to comfort you in that.

And we're going to continue on with the art of ceremony and we're going to build it. And we're going to create a beautiful friendship ceremony around the world. A total work of art that will transform our society. That's what we're here for. Do you have anything else? Did I totally derail you from what you wanted to talk about?

Totally derail

[00:25:58] Matt: me. Absolutely not first. Absolutely not. Um, yeah. One other thing to understand, as far as ceremony and gathering is that the people that are seen and the people that are heard. Which again is a powerful force. Again, it's kind of a overwhelmingly repetitive. I think thing that happens in our podcasts is people feel the need to be seen in people feel the need to be heard and people feel

the need to belong.

[00:26:23] Fawn: And also there is a certain aspect that you can't see, you can't touch, but you can feel connected to that. True. You know, you can think about it in many different ways. Like having end of life ceremony; it's done so you can still have a connection to the person

[00:26:38] Matt: the ritual is there to connect you with a person that has made a transition. You can look at it and so many different ways. It is. It is above all about connection,

Abs

absolutely.

I just like to take just one brief moment and describe one or two of the, uh, ceremonies that either I've done or I do.

[00:27:01] Fawn: Do tell what?

[00:27:02] Matt: So when I graduated from high school, which is one of those, I guess, rites of passage for me, it's like literally that type of ceremony, the Rite of passage ceremony involves kind of a first phase a middle phase and an end phase.

And the first phase is really takes us into the ceremonial remembrance. And so I remember everything that transpired. Inside of like my quote unquote normal education, my kindergarten elementary school, junior high school and high school. And there's a sadness there because that time has ended. And then there's the actual kind of exuberance of the party because we had a little, you know, even just going to your high school graduation, it's an uplifting moment

surrounded by all your classmates, et cetera, et cetera. And then the next phase is really looking forward. But what was interesting for me and thank goodness my parents were mellow, was that my cake, first of all, I wanted it as dark as possible. And I wanted it just to read, which is gruesome now that I think about it was like rip Matt, which was just like, say goodbye to that aspect of who you were on some level, because you're about to enter into the next phase.

[00:28:22] Fawn: Hold on for, so we have so many of our friends that are not from the United States and non English speaking. So rip means rest in peace. It's what they put on tombstones when people

die.

[00:28:35] Matt: Over and over again, when you hear somebody dies rest in peace. Yes. So anyways, so that's an example of a ceremony that happened God, when I was 17.

And then a more kind of recent ceremony is, something I've discovered that I do, and it's every morning before I start work and I work at home. When I, when I put on my headphones, Quite nice and a little, they were a little spendy. I take a moment just to look at them and go, oh, and then I put them over my ears and I pick something music.

That's going to move me that day. And I'm very deliberate. It's always something new and it's always something I start from. It's not like a start in the middle of anything. And for me it's never a podcast or anything. It's very much a piece of music that I know is going to move me and really that sets the tone for my work day.

So that's, again, an example of a, of that's a much more personal ceremony, but that is one that I adhere to every day. And then I have gotten now I think about it. Oh my goodness. So then the first thing I do is I plan out my day and have to plan out my day and God help you if you want to add a meeting after I've planned out my day, because it just confuses me.

Right, but that's literally the next thing I do. And that's kind of one of those Benjamin Franklin used to do that. He would literally plan out his day at the beginning of each day and then, take care of everything he needed, he felt he needed to take care of while I'm listening to my cool tunes.

[00:30:08] Fawn: Okay. I have two things to add. Okay. As another example of two more examples of. Um, I've talked about this before, but when I worked at the Aveda corporation, one of the chemists then I was friends with would, would tell me how, and I would see it too, because first of all, everything was immaculate in the chemistry department.

Right? Of course it has to be. My friend would completely meticulously clean his desk top and bottom . At the end of the Workday. And he said, it's to honor the next day, because he doesn't want to start the day with a mess. Like all this stuff that the other day presented, you start with a clear plate and you give that day a certain respect of starting fresh, starting new.

There's a certain reverence in that there's a certain holiness in that, a full on holiness and that which leads me now to the second example. Our friend, Heather, the advisor, she came onto our show a while ago. She'll always tell me and remind me, reminds everybody is how you start is how you finish, which is exactly the example of my friend with his desk.

But let's say you're moving from one town to another town. Always leave on good terms. Always say a thank you. Make sure that you have not one negative charge on what you're leaving behind because guaranteed it will manifest it will. It will come about all these same issues that you left with a bad charge with ;a negative charge,

it will go into your new life. So how you start is how you finish. So to leave a place to, to leave a place. Yeah, this is the example I leave with good intentions and a sense of honor and a sense of gratitude and a clear slate before you start something new. And that is ceremony. Yeah. So there you, haven't something to ponder something to celebrate.

Oh, my goodness. Be proud. Be proud. Proud is good. we love you. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you in a few days. Talk to you later. Bye-bye bye.

It was about the ceremony. It was about the experience. It was about the grief. It was about the, it was about my mom. It wasn't about these random people. I don't care really don't care. And honestly, don't care. So that's me, but just be careful with your words out there folks. Cause the problem is, is my dad said you are a disappointment, not that very disappointing or I'm disappointed that you're not coming.

He said you are a disappointment. Because that's his attempt to define my entire being versus defining an action. So just be careful, be careful at work. I was told very early on by somebody who wasn't particularly wise, but God, he nailed this one. You never say, you know, Bad. You say the work you did today was bad because it's inherently different.

You're not ascribing value to the person you're ascribing value to the work the person produces. It's entirely different.

This episode is about the friends who are disappointed; the people you can't please, and how to follow your own guidance in life.

TRANSCRIPT

Fawn: I have things on my mind, and I don't want to lose it because yesterday I said, let's talk about this on the show with, with, with the outbursts that I have been having that I was holding in for a few days. So let's get going before I lose my nerve or just lose it, like whatever. I don't know.

Um, all right. If you're about a quick, hello, you're bound to disappoint everybody at some point. So don't worry about. When people say they're disappointed in you, that disappointed friend, not only that today is not about the disappointing friend or, um, well, maybe disappointing friend that could be you.

We're going to use ourselves as an example to talk about what we're talking about today to really convey the message out there that you're bound to disappoint others in life. Okay. It has very little to do with you is, is my understanding, because I'll tell you the whole thing and we're going to use ourselves as the example.

Matt is leaning back and kind of bracing himself because it's mostly about him today. Um, bear with me. So it's not just the disappointed friend. It is the self-absorbed friends, the distraught friend, the born. Okay. I'm going to put this in quotes, "born of an older generation" friend, the "stuck in the old way" friend. Here we go. So, like I said, living life, living your authentic life, living, what you think is right for you and your immediate surroundings from your perspective, no one else can see your perspective, but you, so when you make decisions based on that, and it's not to say that you don't you're, uh, you're not

caring about other people or other situations, you know, most of us are. And that's what makes some decisions so gut wrenching, that's why certain situations in life are so hard. And you waste a lot of time going back and forth because you do see the other perspective, but no one very few people, especially these days have the capacity to put themselves in your shoes and really understand where you're coming from to have compassion, not only for themselves, but for you and why you're making the decisions that you're making.

Saying that that's one of the reasons why people get disappointed when you realize really you are responsible for your life, you are responsible for the decisions that you make. You are responsible for seeing your perspective and you have to live by that. And there are consequences. So what does that really mean?

They're disappointed in themselves the people that are mad at you, they're disappointed in their own life situations. And I want you to understand that. So we're w I'm going to, I'm going to start this story and give you all the different examples of this. I think it's really important to talk about because no one talks about it. When people are disappointed in you and they tell you, you are a disappointment, it is so hurtful

and you can go into a spiral and it can destroy you, which is what happened to us.

But don't let it destroy you. I want you to listen to this and, and know that you are a good person, that it's okay. Let me just get into it. Okay. So guys, Matt's mom became ill rather quickly. And you know, we, we talked with the family at least one or two times a week. We don't live in the same state

[00:04:07] Matt: and this is, we've been talking to them once or twice a week for years, since

[00:04:12] Fawn: 2015.

And

[00:04:13] Matt: so my mother re recently became sick.

[00:04:17] Fawn: So. It was Matt's mom's birthday. And then a week later she woke up and I had to be taken to the hospital. We, we had these Saturday morning dates with them, the whole family on the phone, and we would talk for sometimes two and a half hours,

every Saturday, like clockwork. One Saturday, we called and the phone kept being busy and we could sense something had happened. And so the story goes from there. Um, from the hospital, we were talking to Matt's mom and, um, when things were getting really bad and even from the beginning, she was saying she was ready to go.

She wants to go. And the whole family was like, no, please don't go. No, no, no. And she was fighting with your dad, you know, saying George, I told you I want to go. I don't know what the, what words were said, but apparently it was, it was not pleasant for your dad. I think he was thinking.

[00:05:18] Matt: Like it ever could be. . .

[00:05:20] Fawn: Well,

I mean, was he yelled at,

[00:05:22] Matt: um, I'm sure he was, there was, there was a lot of pain

involved,

[00:05:25] Fawn: so of course.

For a month and a half, there was extreme anguish for everyone, especially for your dad. And you know, your dad is a planner. You're a dad is a great provider. You're a dad is one of, probably the smartest people on the planet. Like literally a rocket

science

[00:05:47] Matt: completely lives in the world logic.

[00:05:51] Fawn: But from a, you know, from a different mindset, You know, our conversations had to be carefully critiqued before we had them.

Right. Like your mom would be the buffer. Like she would, she, she always was, you know, kind of real man, like George. Yeah,

[00:06:10] Matt: well, yeah, it reminds me of Kyle. What was that? Ben Stiller movie meet the parents where the mom would say muskrat when the father was starting to step out of bounds, it felt like my mother performed that role.

She didn't say muskrat, but she might as well.

[00:06:26] Fawn: Yeah, she, she didn't have a code word, but she would say, George, you know, So, all right. So we were talking and she specifically said, and we didn't want to anyway, because we, we have our own beliefs and everything, but she said, I don't want the girls to see me this way.

So don't come. And so anyway, and because of everything you went through, Matt, we were not only experiencing your moms experience. But we were reliving what happened with you in 2015. And so, and so are the girls, so like all these things came back

[00:07:10] Matt: when 2015, I was, I was in the hospital, things were looking terrible and I'm fine now, but yeah, things were looking

terrible.

[00:07:19] Fawn: Yeah. Matt had a miraculous recovery, but basically he, he, I think you did die, right? Like you kind of crossed over a little bit. Well, it was bad guys. I don't even want to talk about it because I still have insomnia because of it. Like I can't sleep. It was trauma to say the least for the whole, you know, for the girls, for me, for you, obviously.

Um, so we, we couldn't revisit that because we're still living through the trauma of what we experienced. We tend to, because of, especially because of what happened, we don't, we try not to put too much emphasis on the physical things, you know, like even Christmas gifts or birthday gifts and stuff like that.

We're not about just the gift, the per you know, the physical thing. We're about experiences. We're about, you know, not holding onto the physical form too much and trying to be more light about it on many levels. So that's why one, because of the trauma, neither one of us could handle seeing your mom like that.

And two, it just, it wasn't, it wasn't healthy for the girls. It was not healthy for you. And also we were able to call several times a day and be there and provide levity for the situation. So we were right there as opposed to like what we'd be there would be in the way we'd be like constantly like just driving back and forth.

Whereas if we're on a call, there is no crying. The girls were like losing it the whole time, you know, but when they were on the phone, They were the, the granddaughters, they were like, hi grams, high gramps, you know, hello, uncle Jeff, you know, whatever. Like, you know what I mean? It was like, what they needed was for us to be light for us to be there with them at an instant, you know, instead of the driving back and forth.

And I'm still making excuses because of what was said to us. So I'm trying to explain to you all, and I'm sure maybe some of you are looking at us like we're evil for, for saying, okay, well we're not going to go be by her bedside. Right. So this is how the story starts. Am I saying it? Okay. My like talking too much right now.

[00:09:48] Matt: You're good.

[00:09:49] Fawn: All right. So what happened was, things started to escalate with your mom with her health and she was no longer coherent. Like, we couldn't understand what she was saying. They, they had her in hospice care. And I think the hospice care worker had her own beliefs in what should be done.

Right? Like, um, the entire family needs to be here right now. And so she it's a long story, but basically we felt like, wow, she fully expressed to us what she wanted, you know? And then all of a sudden there's the caretaker saying you want them here with you. Right. And she would mumble something and then the word yes

was made to come out. Like, yes. You know what I mean? And then that led to Matt's dad saying, okay guys, I want you to come right now. And so we, we, I mean, in that instant while he was still on the phone and like, with like telling the girls grab the luggage, so they brought all the luggage down. I'm like, okay, go take showers.

So we're not going to have the ability to take showers for a couple of days, maybe because we're going to be on the road, traveling, get trying to get there. We don't know where we're going to stay. So like, get ready. You're everything ready. And we did. And while they were doing that, I was on the airline trying to find tickets.

Basically would've cost us like $5,000 to go that day. And we would have had to figure out what to do with your job. You didn't even tell your job what had happened until days later after your mom actually passed away. So, no, no, no, no.

[00:11:33] Matt: That's, that's not entirely true. I did tell key people what was

[00:11:37] Fawn: yeah, but the crew didn't know.

So when you're experiencing hardship, the whole crew didn't know because they weren't sharing that experience. You didn't tell everyone what was really happening.

[00:11:48] Matt: Right. Because it's very hard to describe. So you tell the key people and you expect foolishly that people actually talk and people don't anymore.

[00:11:57] Fawn: You assumed that they would, and they didn't. Okay. And so what happened was, after making all the reservations and all that stuff, and you know, it's not like we have a ton of money. So $5,000 was a big chunk. And that was just for, I think, airline tickets right. For that day. So, um, we got on the phone with your dad

who had gone out to lunch. So we didn't know who he was sitting with. We do know we were on speaker probably. Right. Probably. And so w you know, it was the first time, I think you cried in front of your parents I think twice in your life, you've cried in front of them as an adult.

So you were crying to your dad trying to plead with him, please understand. I don't think it's a good idea for me to come for us to come for the girls to come for us to come. And he basically said that you're a disappointment and

[00:12:59] Matt: I'm very disappointed in you is what

he said.

[00:13:02] Fawn: I'm very disappointed in you.

And so, okay. You know, we immediately knew hurt people hurt, you know, he's in a lot of pain, but he's just the kind of person also that has no filter. That he could have a little bit of Asperger's maybe that was never diagnosed. I mean, just the word this man, the way he speaks is quite offensive, racially on all levels.

For me, like it's really hard to have a conversation. Like the patriarchy is strong with this man, as well as racial issues from his perspective. Um, so w whatever, then we felt like, okay, here we are. Again, once again, the outcasts of a family, we have been there before. This is why there was a big rift with us in the, in the past.

So it's like, wow, here we go again. Um, so dealing with all this and. Uh, another thing I want to say that was brought up through this whole story was, have you ever had a friend that speaks about you in not the greatest of ways? I think we all have, we all have had the feeling of people talking behind your back, and there are friends who do that constantly.

And you always know when you meet people they know, when they all look at you, you see the hatred from their eyes and these people don't even know you. They've never spoken to you, but you can tell an instant the first time they actually physically lay eyes on you that, oh wow, this person has preconceived notions of who they think I am.

And that happens a lot with your dad's friends. Your family friends that have never met us, but when they do, you can see that judgment all over them. And it's not my imagination guys. Like you can tell, wow, there's hate or there's I don't know. The only word I can think of is hate. W what, what would it be? Do you know what I'm talking about, Matt?

Yeah,

[00:15:25] Matt: absolutely. Absolutely. And so much of it is. Um, because they do talk because they express themselves because they live in both and that's just it. What other perspective do they have?

[00:15:40] Fawn: When

we talk we, we give our perspective and another person's perspective. I've always done that when I was in therapy as a teenager, I always gave my family's perspective first.

And then I said my perspective, but that's how I roll. That's how I do it. And, you know, once again, assumptions, I assume most people are the same way. I don't know.

So. All right, so we fly down. Matt's mom passed away, guys. We fly down, get everything taken care of where we're there. We're there. We're suited up in our best clothes. And I mean, we didn't have best clothes, but we bought best clothes. Elle and Allegra were in suits. I was in a suit. You were dressed up, shoes, shined.

Allegra was wearing a 16 piece suit. You know, the, the suit, the vest, the jacket, the trousers, the tie, the pocket handkerchief. The coat, the whole thing. Totally beautiful. Elle was in a suit. I was in a suit totally like respectable, respectful. We're standing there. We're at the funeral outside. And before we walk to the actual church, we're walking across the parking lot and I look inside the.

It was like on the outskirts of the church, there was a room or something before you go into the chapel area. And there was a man in the dark doorway guys. I don't know how to describe this to you, but I felt like I was watching the "Days of Our Lives" soap opera, because this guy was just kind of like staring at us cross, cross the parking lot.

And I said to myself, please, God, don't, don't let that be the preacher or the priests, whatever the, they call them and that particular religion of that church. And, um, I'm like, he can't be it because he felt guys I've had Tourette's about this for ever since we came back home like turrets, and I'm afraid to say the things that I actually said describing this person, because I don't want to offend anybody but sloppy

was one of the words that's in there describing this person and unceremonial, um, it was just weird and the way he was glaring at us, I'm like, okay, well, it's probably my imagination. So we kept walking. I'm holding onto you guys. We're holding hands and we stand, we, we saw your, your sister and she said, don't go in there yet.

Okay, fine. We're going to be out. Um, it was an open casket and they're like, you she's like don't, don't just don't I'm like, okay, no, we're not attached to the physical. We don't need to see that. You know what I mean? Like, I it's it's okay. It's not necessary. It's not necessary because we still feel her. I, I was dreaming about her.

I've been, you know, we're, we're still, we don't because again, because of the experience that we have had in our lives, we try to not focus on the physical that we don't think that there's a separation. And we try to hold onto that, especially after what happened with you, Matt. So we're standing outside, we're greeting people that are coming in.

People are kind of ignoring us. And again, whatever, it's not about us, it's about everybody else. Right. So we're not going to take anything personally until that priest or whatever he is. What do you call him in that religion? Pastor, the pastor comes, I'm like, oh my God, it is him. That's the guy who's heading this whole thing up fine.

And um, he says, hello to everyone ignores us. And then he mad dogs. What is, what does mad dog mean? We always use that term. I really don't know what it means.

[00:19:55] Matt: Uh, stare down with almost, you can feel, you can feel the ground. Now, if, when it's with a person, you can't hear the ground, but you feel it like the bearing of the teeth and the,

[00:20:06] Fawn: so it's a term that we use when we go out in public.

Sometimes we can feel that with people and we always use the term mad dogging. He's mad dogging me, or this person mad dogged me. So he began mad dogging our kids. He looked at Allegra, which is our youngest. Right. And in her full on respectable suit and tie that she was wearing all adorable. Adorable. Yes.

She's all girly, but she's all like, that's her style. That's Elle's style, you know, that's kinda my style too right now. And so mad dogged us just wouldn't even look at us in the eyes, just looked at our suits up and down. Like he was smelling, foul something. Like smelling something bad. Didn't even say, hello, he knew your name, whatever.

So I'm speeding it up. We're at the ceremony we're sitting in the front row and, hespoke and spoke and spoke. And then when it came down to talking about your mom's kids, of course, he gets to you, he's like, oh, what's your name, mark? Uh, uh, he, he said two M names But Matt I'm like, okay guy, I know, you know his name, what is that about?

Anyway, it was just, it felt sloppy to me. And then when he was done, he came towards us. He had to cross our path. So I said to him, thank you for the service. He wouldn't look at me and he kinda, he mumbled something and he walked on like, wow. Okay. So that's our experience. Now, this pastor was that what you call him a pastor, the family loves him, which is great because they need someone.

They need someone to be in their circle. Perfect. But like, this is what happens when you talk smack about people and even a pastor, should, you would think would have the grace and the love. Isn't that their work to be about love and embrace everyone and realize there are many perspectives to something and you are a grieving child as well.

Have the decency to look at us as human beings. I mean, and then as we're going all over the place, I'm like, is this a racial thing? Because obviously we're the darkest people here. Is it because my background is not Christian, I'm Jewish, what is it?

What is it? What is anyway? And then I stopped myself and I thought, you know what? Let it go. This is about these people. They're all in pain. Even the pastor, obviously, because he doesn't have the capacity for love. And so we were sitting there and behind us is the church and all the people that are in it.

And I swear to you all I kept hearing was whispering. Cause you know, everybody whispers in church, but it was a weird whisper. And because of our situation, because of our, like so much gossip about us in particular, like. You and me, Matt and the girls. And because we're so different, we're an interracial family.

We were on the outs with the family for a few years. And I'm sure everyone got to hear about that from only their perspective. Like we were just rotten kids that did them wrong. God knows. I don't know. But like I turned to Elle and all I have to do is just look at the kids and they know that I'm looking at them.

So they always look at me like, yes... We communicate through our eyes and we had our masks on and everything. So I look it Elle and I said two words, the whispering. And she looked at me and she, I could tell she was smiling and she's like church gossip.

I'm like baby girl. Yeah. So it's not just me. Like we could feel, you know, the whispering was, um, it was intense and it's intense to have your back to it. And there's nothing you can do, but sit with your back to that. You're very vulnerable to have your back against the enemy. , so that's what happened.

And we just want to talk about the fact that hurt people, hurt. Watch out when people make things about themselves. The sloppiness, the judgment that people hold, the inability to hold ceremony.

We go through life. Everything is ceremonial; making a cup of coffee is ceremonial, making food is ceremonial. Everything. Death is a ceremony birth as a ceremony. Oh, weddings are a ceremony. We've talked about our wedding ceremony and how beautiful it was, but how there was a brawl in the midst of it, two brawls and how people take the opportunity to use ceremony as a means of retaliation, as a means to letting out all the garbage out and flinging it around like you're at the zoo trapped in a cage.

Do you know what I mean? Matt is just staring at me. I have no idea what

he's thinking.

[00:25:37] Matt: I'm just letting her go, folks.

[00:25:40] Fawn: I'm almost done. I'm almost done, but you know, having the grace for understanding, of a pain other than your own

not holding on so much to the physical. Just let it go. Let go of the past harms let go of the preconceived notions that people have on you. It's not yours to hold on to just let it go.

[00:26:03] Matt: I do not accept delivery,

[00:26:06] Fawn: right? People giving you gifts. You don't have to accept it. You can say thank you.

Well, you don't have to take it. I'm just thinking just the small amount of time that we experienced what we experienced at this particular ceremony. I felt like it was a really important for me to talk today to you all about when people express disappointment in you, be it, you're not the sex that they wanted you to be.

You're not living the life they have planned out. You don't match anything that resembles their life. You have a sexual orientation that doesn't match the church's idea. God knows the list is infinite. I want you to know that you're not alone, that we all receive that kind of judgment from other people.

And it's really incredible to me. I love all religions. I do. I studied all religions. I respect them all to a point when they start misbehaving and saying what God deems acceptable. That's just man's perspective, man. The patriarchal perspective;

the human physical form, the limited view of life perspective. I'm here to let you know, please remember the beautiful light that you are and that's it. Matt, what do you want to say? I may jump in there again, by the way,

[00:27:33] Matt: uh, see, versus me my experience with the whole thing, because I grew up Lutheran, um, And I, I always carry myself around in a little bubble and I always talk about my theory of the onion and how there's so many layers.

So, you know, I only present outer most, very tough layers of the onion. So my experience was completely different. I didn't hear people gossiping. I didn't, I wasn't focused on that. I was focused on what was actually going on. And, you know, ignoring everything else and, you know, that's, maybe that's just a defense mechanism and maybe that's just, who knows, who cares. To me, it wasn't about any aspect of anything and other people's judgment.

It was about the ceremony. It was about the experience. It was about the grief. It was about the, it was about my mom. It wasn't about these random people. I don't care really don't care. And honestly, don't care. So that's me, but just be careful with your words out there folks. Cause the problem is, is my dad said you are a disappointment, not that very disappointing or I'm disappointed that you're not coming.

He said you are a disappointment. Because that's his attempt to define my entire being versus defining an action. So just be careful, be careful at work. I was told very early on by somebody who wasn't particularly wise, but God, he nailed this one. You never say, you know, Bad. You say the work you did today was bad because it's inherently different.

You're not ascribing value to the person you're ascribing value to the work the person produces. It's entirely different. So yeah, don't say you're a disappointment. It's just wrong. And yeah. It's funny. I thought the show today would be all about ceremony, but no,

[00:29:49] Fawn: well, no, it, it, I just had to give the background info.

I know I was just, it should be about

[00:29:55] Matt: seven. It was a lot more focused on what

[00:29:57] Fawn: ceremony is. Let's get into ceremony. What is ceremony?

[00:30:00] Matt: Well, ceremony is in this. Ceremony is an action performed only formally with no deep significance. That's one of the definitions.

[00:30:11] Fawn: Are you kidding?

[00:30:11] Matt: That's one of the definitions of that's one of the definitions it's like

[00:30:16] Fawn: to be.

It is a horrible, wrong inaccurate definition. Once again,

[00:30:22] Matt: what it's a conventional social gesture or act of courtesy. Hmm. So shaking hands as a ceremony. It doesn't mean necessarily mean anything.

[00:30:34] Fawn: See anything that's written by the patriarchy for me again,

[00:30:37] Matt: it's like a second, third definition. Come on. All

[00:30:39] Fawn: right.

It's not the first

[00:30:41] Matt: definition. Go ahead. And just, I was very focused on what ceremonies are and that kind of, to me, it kind of broke into kind of three, three basic ceremonies, opening ceremonies, closing ceremonies, and interestingly. And it's probably the better term for it, but I just describe it as like the tea ceremony, Japanese tea ceremony, because it's, it's its own thing versus an opening ceremony and opening ceremony for us is like a birth.

It can be, you know? Um, and, and we get into sticky, tricky stuff because there's an opening and closing all at once when you graduate. From, you know, a school because you're closing this and maybe opening and you are opening something else. So that's where things get difficult. And of course there's opening ceremonies for, you know, stores.

There's typically not closing ceremonies for stores, but you know, the

[00:31:37] Fawn: reason that that's a ceremony

[00:31:41] Matt: doesn't count

[00:31:42] Fawn: Yes it does...75% off yay!

[00:31:45] Matt: Yay. Anyway. And that's just kind of where I was coming to it from. I mean, there there's some ceremonies have deep significance, but typically that deep significance is invested by the people who are doing it.

So like a baseball game has an opening center. Dun dun da and a lackluster, I think closing ceremony, but the opening ceremony, they announced the players and maybe the players come out on the field. It's been a while since I've been to a baseball game, but it's certainly a football, they do this and then a closing ceremony, you know, thank you for coming folks.

Bye bye. But, um, you know, Yeah. Again, the investment is from the people involved the participants, and if you're there to gossip, then you're going to have a action performed only formerly with no deep significance, right? If you choose that, then that's what you're going to have. Now me, I had a lot deeper of a significance.

The pastor not withstanding because yeah, he was sloppy.

[00:32:49] Fawn: Everything is ceremonial. For example, when we give gifts or when we receive gifts, we don't just hear, well, I guess tearing of a present is ceremonial too, but like with us, Matt, the girls, and I will get a present and will meticulously slowly open it without hurting the wrapping. And we first Marvel in the shape of it.

You know, we hold that.

[00:33:18] Matt: I got to guess what it is.

[00:33:19] Fawn: And then we, we like look at different angles of it and we say, thank you many times. We don't just tear into it. But if that's your ceremony, that's perfectly great. This is our way of ceremony with a present. Well, I guess anything you do is what I'm trying to say is ceremonial.

Everything should be done with reverence, with thoughts , with, mindfulness,

[00:33:41] Matt: what everything you do should be mindful. Because the other thing I wanted to talk about is, so my best friend told me from the beginning that I should go, I should go. I should go. He didn't say he said, I think you'll be sad if you don't.

I think if there's any unfinished business, you should, you should go. And I heard him and I made sure he understood that I heard him.

But he let it

go.

[00:34:09] Fawn: And again, this is his perspective. He would have been sad not to go. He chooses to live life the way he does, because his way of ceremony completely different than ours. Right. Right. And it's like, I was trying to equate it to in a lighthearted way, like the prom, everyone always said go to the prom.

You'll regret it for the rest of your life if you don't go. And I always knew in my heart, no, I will not regret. I don't want to go. And because the whole society was like telling me, Fawn, you need to go to the prom, you will regret it for forever. So I got, I paid money. I had my hair done. I paid money.

I got a dress. I paid money to, you know, pitch in to this big limo with my friends, you know, all this stuff. And the whole time. I could've used this money. Cause you know, first of all, you guys know my story, but like I was on my own right after graduation, I was on my own, getting myself to college, paying for my own college, paying for my own rent, everything I'm like, wow, I could've used this money for that.

And I didn't have a good time at prom because for the same reason I didn't want to go because first of all, high school was not fun. Why would I go to a big, expensive thing at night? You know, deep in my heart, I knew what was correct for me. It wasn't my ceremony, it's other people's ceremony. And it's other people's idea of what ceremony should be.

And that was a great lesson for me. It was financially expensive, but it was also spiritually, a very Expensive lesson to learn. You know, society could be telling you this, but if you know, in your heart, if you know, in your soul, what is right for you, you need to go with that. So I went to the prom, I realized I was right.

I shouldn't have gone, but I learned that. And I'm grateful for that lesson. However much I paid for it, it was worth it for me to gain that understanding, that society could be telling you what's right. But you know, what is right and correct for your life. And that's my message.

Do you want to go on with ceremony?

[00:36:33] Matt: I'm good. Follow your heart folks.

[00:36:36] Fawn: You're a good person. You are a good person just because you don't live life the way people expect it of you don't let that hurt you. Don't let that make you feel less than. You are not less than. You are an amazing light in the world.

Usually when people express disappointment, really everything comes to how they feel about themselves, how they feel about their circumstances in life, because think about it when you're really at peace, when you are good with your life and someone does something that is not in sync with how you live.

Are you disappointed in that person? Really? You kind of let it go and you would have compassion for that person. while saying to yourself, wow, they don't see it the way I see it. They don't maybe have my perspective and that's it. You don't stomp on the person and say that they are less than, it's just a different perspective.

And especially as a friend or as a parent to have the capacity, to just be good with your own life and your own decisions and respect other people's decisions and not let it hurt you. Much like I'm telling you do not let the actions of the ones that are disappointed, hurt you and dim the lights that is you and your life.

And I'm, as I'm saying this, I'm kind of hoping that you all are still our friends and you're not looking at me like I'm some evil person.

[00:38:12] Matt: But again, you've got to let go of

that aspect,

[00:38:15] Fawn: but I'm just telling you how I feel anyway. I know, I know because I, I do, I do want approval. We all do. And it hurts when we don't get it.

It hurts when people don't understand our choices. Yes, that is

[00:38:29] Matt: true. That is true. And I guess it's more baked into my DNA, certainly with regard to parental units and parental social structures like church for me to have a nice thick skin around it and not worry about it.

[00:38:44] Fawn: That's just it though. It's an outer layer skin and deep down, I know you, you have a kind, a gentle heart

that's very sensitive,

[00:38:52] Matt: that's true. But it never gets there. It never does

[00:38:55] Fawn: honestly. Well,

[00:38:58] Matt: I mean, yeah. Okay. Maybe it's stung for a second, but. God, he has told me I'm a disappointment, any number of times. And you know, I can either choose to curl up in a ball or I can choose to be magnificent and I'd much rather be magnificent.

[00:39:12] Fawn: And that, that just, it doesn't just go for parents, but that's where friendship starts. It's how we're raised by our families. And how we are grown, how we grow within families and how we're treated in families is the setup for how we treat our friendships out there in the world. I'm letting you know friends that you are magnificent and you are loved and you are a great light and even a greater light.

If you're living life in a way that most people are not, if you're living life to a tune that you have, created, you're making beautiful music and people may not understand it. They may not understand how to dance to it, but guaranteed, they will just keep going. And you'll find us. You'll find ones that can groove with you and understand and respect you and can appreciate your style of music that is you. That's it.

I do wish though, because I don't curse on the air that you could have heard all that I said yesterday, it felt good. It felt good to just release it and be so blasphemous because

[00:40:25] Matt: in the traditional sense of the word, I

[00:40:26] Fawn: suppose, Well, I w I didn't say anything about God. I just said something about some sloppy person that was putting on some garb.

That's supposed to be a representative of, you know, it's ridiculous. It is just,

like I said, you know what? Let's do a whole series on the art of the ceremony, because I mean, I'm not Lutheran, but the whole time I was like, let me up there. I would like to hold a ceremony. Let me, do you know what I mean? Like really? This is your job, man. Wow. Anyway, I hope this is one reason. I'm glad that your family doesn't know

we have a podcast. Oh dear. I hope they haven't Googled this. And if you have. If you're listening. We love you so much. Thank you for listening, please let us know what you think. Reach out to our friendly world podcast.com. Talk to you in a few days. We love you.

[00:41:26] Matt: Careful with your, with, with saying you are, anything and accepting don't accept.

[00:41:32] Fawn: Words,

have power.

[00:41:34] Matt: Yes, they do.

[00:41:35] Fawn: Good and bad. Love you. Talk to you later. Be well, bye.

How can a compliment open the doors to friendship or even save someone's life? We discuss in this episode of "The Art of the Compliment" as we understand the ways to establish joy, kindness, and sincerity and see how a compliment is an invitation to a beautiful friendship. What is the difference between COMPLIMENT and COMPLEMENT? We discuss this question and much more.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Fawn: you complete me Hello? Hello. Hello. Welcome back. Are you ready for a very intense, not intense in a negative way, but an in depth topic, a topic I'm actually going to teach a course on

[00:00:14] Matt: super serious.

[00:00:16] Fawn: It's not super serious, but it has a lot of moving parts and it's quite deep actually.

[00:00:22] Matt: Would you

it more nuanced?.

[00:00:23] Fawn: I don't like that word, but it's the art of the compliment.

[00:00:32] Matt: Oh, dear.

[00:00:32] Fawn: Much like when you come into our home and all of the different homes we've had since the big house we used to own that, you know, through the pitfalls of society, went to hell and ever since then, we've been so gunshy. Ugh, gunshy. We've been so resistant on owning property ever again because of what happened in the financial crisis some years ago, that is, seems to be happening again.

But whatever, we've moved a lot since then, and it's never been a place that's been ours, it's been some rentals and some of them have been ugly, depressing, just ugly , gray. It started with the first apartment we had after we lost the house.

it was Valentine's day. We've said this story before. Sorry, but quick refresher. It was Valentine's day. Matt had this job with this horrible person there that was stressing him out so much. It was awful. It was horrible. It was Valentine's day. And. I was teaching our little, little, little girls and I decided, all right, let's do an art project.

We cut hundreds of hearts out of different kinds of paper, different colors, everything. And then I got like sewing thread and I attached them to the hearts and I hung them on the ceiling.

I taped them on the ceiling in the entryway. So when Matt came home, he had to walk through this hall of hearts. So many hearts and they were low enough where his forehead would get touched by a heart walking through. And so when you come in, you're touched by these hearts and when you're leaving to go out in the world, once again, you're kissed by these hearts a reminder, if you will, of how much we love each other or love, you know, what I'm talking about.

Okay. So a compliment is the same thing. It's to remember the joy. It's to remember the kindness it's it's too. It's like when you come over to our house, besides the hearts guaranteed, you'll be offered something immediately. You're not even inside yet. And we're offering you a beverage of some kind.

That's what we do. And I think that's what the compliment is that I think for me, that's what the compliment is. It is the offering to a friend. In a relationship it could be, the relationship could be a friend. It could be any situation, but a genuine compliment is what offers nourishment for you to welcome someone in.

So we were looking at the etymology of course, of the compliment. And it's very interesting because I want to say, you know, you complete me and that's basically what it means. So a compliment, let's start with a noun. It's an act or expression of civility, respect or regard an act or expression of civility.

Now here's where the Johnson definition comes in, which is really messed up. And I think that's why people have so much trouble with the compliment because that is the act or expression of civility usually understood to include some hypocrisy. And it means less than it declares. I think that's why people, one reason why people don't compliment, because it feels so disingenuine that it's just, you're just sucking up to someone to get something, right?

Or they used to

(Matt laughs) It can

[00:04:20] Matt: be, It can feel that way.

[00:04:22] Fawn: Well, sure. And it's also like words are so misused or overly used. So once you hear a certain words, you're like "eeek" , how to harness that truth in everything. All right. And how it totally opens up this beautiful gate to this beautiful relationship, beautiful friendship, and how you can complete me.

All right. So in the 1570s, compliment is "that which fills up or complete" by 19th century, the meaning extended to an expression of praise or admiration, meaning a present or favor bestowed a complimentary gift. This is from 1722. Now in the 1690s, it became a way to manifest kindness.

Here's how I don't know about other languages right now. Like as far as etymology goes and like really getting into things, but here's where it gets really. Um, like I was talking about it. It's complicated. It's complicated socially, but check this out. So one little tiny difference of a letter in the word compliment, changes the meaning.

So compliment with an I C O M P L I M E N T it's a noun or verb it's to give, you know, it's like to give a compliment or the act of complimenting; I'm complimenting your cooking skills or I'm complimenting a job well done. Right. But if you use the other word complement, it sounds exactly the same, but it's spelled differently different meaning.

So this other one is with an E. C O M P L E M E N T has a different meaning. Complement: this one with an E means, bringing to perfection, having no deficiency, perfect in kind or quality, finished, ended, concluded. Why are you laughing at me? There's another one. It's also a musical term. It's also a mathematical term.

Ooh. You tell me the mathematics. Why don't you try to remember it while I try, while I explained the musical term, which is from the circus circus, 16 hundreds, full quality or number, full amount, musical sense of simple interval that completes an octave from another simple interval. That's probably the same as math though.

Right? Math

is music.

[00:07:07] Matt: I just remember. Yes. Uh, I just remember something called the two's compliment, but I don't know what it is. I'm terrible that way. I D I don't remember. It's, uh, I th I think it's a series of numbers, but it's irrelevant.

[00:07:20] Fawn: We don't

have our phones here. We should look it up. Go get your phone.

What is that?

[00:07:25] Matt: I don't know.

[00:07:27] Fawn: Well, anyway, so, much like offering a beverage to someone, I think a compliment is a way to welcome someone in. It's to bring joy. It's to bring kindness into a situation. And usually I noticed this about you, Matt. And when we lived in Washington state, we would do this quite often where, well, first of all, you started this because you have the ability to look at someone and notice things that a person does that will go completely undetected by most people.

It's the martial arts skill in you where you can notice the trifles that are so invisible to most people, 99.9% of the people and you stop and you trip on it. And then you'll usually come to me and describe what you saw and, um, and I'm blown away. I'm like, how could I have missed that?

You were right. Oh my God. So that's what, that's the art of the compliment. And that's why I'm saying it's so complicated. Cause it's kind of martial artsy. You have to notice things. Why are you roll your,

[00:08:36] Matt: I wouldn't say it's

martial artsy

[00:08:37] Fawn: it

is because it's noticing things around

you.

[00:08:40] Matt: Well, certainly I think step one is absolutely paying attention and you should always pay attention, especially as those people around you who mean something to.

Good

or bad,

[00:08:52] Fawn: but even if they, if, even if you don't know them, most of these cases that I'm remembering throughout the time we've been together, we don't know these people and you notice all these remarkable things that they do or the way they are. And then, so you would point them out and then we would run over there and praise that quality and the person would get so happy because they wouldn't.

What happened is they received. What we all look for is validation of who we are that we're seen and we're appreciated.

[00:09:30] Matt: Right. And, and that's just it. I mean, I'm seeing constantly through messaging on, you know, TV and other media is we all have this deep seated need, not a want, but a need to be seen at this point.

[00:09:45] Fawn: Right. And unfortunately, the way we are seen is this manufactured way of being seen. If you look at most actresses in movies and television, they all look the same. They do. And when one actress comes in that has a completely different look and she becomes a mega superstar, then everyone else starts getting the plastic surgery or whatever, to look like that, the hairstyle to look like.

And when we compliment someone, it feels like we're complementing a job well done on achieving this look or achieving this manufactured status quo kind of a thing. And that's not what I'm talking about complimenting. I'm complimenting the core of things, the true essence of something, not the obvious hairstyle,

not the obvious, um, job well done, right? Things that go unseen.

[00:10:44] Matt: I would never compliment somebody on their looks. I mean, I may compliment somebody on like a piece of clothing

[00:10:52] Fawn: or no, I, I compliment and looks all the time.

[00:10:55] Matt: I tend

to compliment

actions.

[00:10:58] Fawn: Maybe it's harder for you to compliment on looks because you're a man, but I feel it's a, it's a.

Responsibility of mine to compliment someone's looks especially women, but I'm not going to do it in like the misogynistic, uh, approval of society kind of way. You know, I go for, I go for the depth of it, like the true beauty of a person that requires an inner and then is that is obviously showing on the outer is what I'm saying.

So anyway, but for example, like I remember like we would, we would just, you know, like simple things, like, I'm just trying to give you examples of like compliments, but like things that go unnoticed. Can you think of something that goes unnoticed? Because we we've done it so much and I, but we haven't been out in a while out and about honestly, that it's, it's hard to come up with.

Exactl instances of how we would do it to give you examples of this. But I think, I think, you know what I'm saying? I think, you know, the feeling of something genuine, right? I mean, like we would go out to eat and someone amazing would bring us our food and the way they graced us with kindness.

Hospitality. It was a beautiful human interaction. Right. And we made it a point when the person didn't even know, we would go back to that restaurant and emphatically explain to the owner of that restaurant, what an amazing human being that person is. Not just that they did a great job. You are so lucky to have that human being, working with you in that business.

Right. So that's a compliment. Right? Right. But we would also tell the person while we were in their presence when they were bringing us a drink or food, we would exclaim our, good fortune and being in their company and being so thankful they brought us this amazing food. Do you know what I mean?

But we would also notice anything about them and like talk about it. Right. That's a

compliment.

[00:13:15] Matt: I got ya. Look. Yeah. That's that, to me, that's the key, you know, there's a couple keys to, complimenting somebody, you know, obviously paying attention, uh, obviously being truthful and genuine cause saccharin compliments or icky, uh, being super specific.

And, , perhaps the most important, none, not necessarily the most important, but one of the other interesting kind of aspects of it is, mix it up as far as, um, you know, if somebody hears, you know, every day did it that, uh, I really like your dah, dah, dah, well, mix it up. Say, Y it's like, I like your shoes.

No, tell him why. I like those shoes. They're bold. And it's not even that hard. I mean, gang genuine well.

[00:14:02] Fawn: Yeah. All right. Well, but then you're complimenting a shoe rather than the person I know. I know, I know I it's, it's complicated, but if it's truly heartfelt, the shoe is the person's personality. Right. So that's okay.

But there there's so many ways. There's so many ways to open this door and the art of the compliment is a beautiful gift. And there are so many ways we can explore this and this is what we're going to get into. And this thing , I'm putting together, but today, just for today, I want that to be the forefront of our consciousness is what we're noticing out there.

What are we noticing about the people in front of us. You may not even know that person.

[00:14:51] Matt: Well, what are the

good things we're noticing? Cause that's just, it it's, it's not about merely noticing who a person is, what a person does, et cetera, et cetera. it's really trying hard to focus on the good aspects and because what we focus on grows, the more good we see in others, the more good we see in

ourselves.

[00:15:12] Fawn: Yeah. I mean, obviously this is, I think why our culture in America especially is under so much duress is because there is no genuine respect. when we lose love and respect for each other, this is how we finally die. That's a quote from, that's a quote from Maya Angelou.

[00:15:34] Matt: Ouch.

[00:15:35] Fawn: But it's true.

[00:15:36] Matt: I'm not saying it's not true.

I'm just saying ouch,

[00:15:39] Fawn: but like, it's also a way to diffuse a situation. Like I remember having a conversation with your dad years ago, he was still pissed off at you years decades still pissed off and still he's, he's always pissed off at you, but like, I mean, were you a teenager when you bought your truck, you bought a Toyota.

[00:15:59] Matt: I bought a Mazda. I wasn't even smart enough to buy a Toyota. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No, actually the guy at the Toyota dealership pissed me off, so I couldn't buy a Toyota and, you know, shame on shame on him, shame on me. But yeah. Yeah, nevermind. Anyways, I bought them. Yeah. Right. Exactly. I bought a Mazda truck.

[00:16:19] Fawn: Well,

he was still pissed off at you. He was still upset with you. Totally upset with you decades later because you did not buy American. Right.

[00:16:30] Matt: Of course we have, we have a Japanese car now, too.

[00:16:32] Fawn: And so, so he was still holding onto that, of course. And he was getting all heated and loud when I was talking to him.

Right. And. All of a sudden it happened naturally. So I'm not, I don't want you to think that I was manipulating the situation. It happened naturally where I was like, wow, I'm not getting anywhere, anywhere with this conversation. He just wants to express how upset he is. And I think deep down in me, somehow I realized his, his point of anger.

It was beyond not buying American and his ideals of how life should be. It was that he wasn't heard. Right. You didn't follow his guidance. You didn't follow his way of living like everything about you, probably is in defiance of who he is.

[00:17:30] Matt: Wow. Oh,

well, if he chooses to project that way, that's fine. I certainly think I certainly owned that for some, some amount of time, but I've let that go hopefully,

[00:17:40] Fawn: but I think, okay.

Maybe that's coming out of my mouth wrong. I'm not, I'm not trying to disrespect you or your dad, but I just noticed in a split second. Wow. He feels maybe invalidated. Do you know what I mean? Because you didn't do what he expected. Right? Right. And so in that split second kind of the validation invalidation thing that came up, all of a sudden these words came out of my mouth.

It was not, I w I did not anticipate to say anything like that because I was getting mad at him for being mad at you. But by the grace of something, these words came out of my mouth. And I said, I really think that I didn't even say, think I said, oh my goodness, you have been such a beautiful provider for your family.

And he just, everything changed. Everything changed. It was about providing for him. Well, for him, it was about,

[00:18:44] Matt: that is one of his getting down to the core of the onion of who he is that is very important to him.

[00:18:50] Fawn: Right. And so, but it was a compliment and it was genuine.

[00:18:56] Matt: And you noticed,

[00:18:57] Fawn: I noticed and maybe no one ever thanked him for that in that way.

Maybe. I don't know. I can tell you, is that fighting kind of conversation that was happening completely got turned around, right. By a compliment that was genuine. Right. Because I realized, oh my goodness, this man, his sole mission is in his family life is to make sure everyone is provided for

[00:19:26] Matt: right.

And everybody. Yeah. Everybody makes smart decisions and everybody is provided for, for sure. And, you know, even you just talking about that in a way of diffusing conflict, I always describe that we're both dealing, you know, certainly at work, we're both, we're both, uh, playing out the hand that we're dealt because sometimes you just end up in this naturally kind of combatitive situation with people and sometimes you can diffuse that

by finding something that, you genuinely appreciate or like about that person. And one of the ways that I seek to diffuse these kinds of situations, where you just end up just conflicting with somebody is a explaining where your own head is at, so that they get a sense for where you're at and B before any weirdness has a chance to happen, because there are people who you will conflict with just kind of happens.

Um, getting to know that person as a person. So that maybe you can lightening it you know, I've, I've been in, experiences, previous positions where I was working with somebody and he just drove me nuts all the time. I would say, Hey, what do you know about X? And he would say, oh yeah, I can help. I can help you with that.

And he couldn't. Drove me nuts, but we had talked beforehand and I had gotten a sense for who he was as a person. I didn't necessarily, you know, I didn't agree with his political affiliation. I didn't agree with his, um, really any aspect of his life, but we could still talk about things like I knew we loved this truck so we could talk about his truck and I knew he loved to do of all things

uh, he did sports. And he was very competitive doing it. And you know what, be interested a little bit in everything. So I would ask him questions about things like that. And I would find out interesting nuggets, but the fact that I would dig into that, it kept us from really exploding later and it kept, and it was because I paid attention

[00:21:33] Fawn: and really the key to everything is paying attention

[00:21:37] Matt: to a lot of things.

It's definitely paying

attention

[00:21:39] Fawn: , but you have to pay attention. Yeah. Like we were looking at a I'm sorry, go ahead.

[00:21:44] Matt: And you have to be genuine and sincere. Yeah.

[00:21:47] Fawn: Yeah. Um, there so many ways also to offer up a compliment to gift someone that. It comes in many ways. It doesn't necessarily have to be with words.

Although, one of my favorite words, sometimes when I don't feel like talking and, and, you know, because it's now a zoom culture, sometimes I'll just type in yay with an exclamation point, right. Or, you know, talking about praise. That's another way to compliment. I mean, just like applause. If you look at babies and they do something amazing, which they do at every day of their lives, because everything is new and like they're learning something.

It's like, everything is a major accomplishment. Learning how to swallow a blueberry properly is a major accomplishment. Remember the first time our baby ate solid food, not milk. We invited the neighbors over

and this was on Bainbridge Island where friendship was very obscure. So they were looking at us like what?! We're like, yay. She ate blueberries, you know, like they were not having it. They were like, whatever, but do you know what I mean? But like, so just applause is great, uh, to congratulate someone, you know, the word congratulate means to wish joy.

It is to wish joy. Amazing. You know, they're life, Is to be celebrated. I mean, even like we're going through a major hard times right now, you and I, and Elle and Allegra hard, like crying hard, but we're still able to enjoy and see the gifts in it. So no matter what's going on, right. You can, there is something to notice that is

of great amazement for everyone when you pay attention to it. Yes. Right. Um, but like, you know, a simple, thank you. Thank you. When it's heartfelt, when you're feeling it much like smiling, you can smile and just stretch your lips out and bare your teeth. That is scary folks. But if you're smiling and you're feeling something that is genuine.

As simple as that, you don't have to go searching. You have to just access a feeling. There's so much, there's so much we can get into with the art of the compliment, but that's just, those are just a few things to wet your whistle. Is that a term to just get the, to prime, the pump, to, to start to initiate the whole process, opening the doors to

a whole other friendly aspect of our world is the art of the compliment.

[00:24:52] Matt: Now there is another aspect to complimenting and that is,

A compliment is a conversation and we need to bear that in mind. Me personally. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Okay. So every single academy awards show, I think you're shown time and time again.

How not to accept a compliment and receiving an award is receiving a compliment. Obviously the first thing they do is they thank everybody who worked with them and I get that and totally, yes, no quote unquote great movie is made without the support of a village. I get it. But where I go a little nutty is you can't say, oh my goodness, you're nominated for best picture.

How does that feel? You know, or, you know, and it's like, oh my God, it feels so amazing. But there's so many other people who, you know, so many other great movies. Why can't you

just say, thank you?

[00:25:51] Fawn: Women, especially when you compliment a woman, have you noticed that they'll turn it down immediately and then when you reinstate it, when you retell them, like, no, I'm serious.

And then it gets into a battle. Like they get upset and they're like, no, I'm like, whoa,

[00:26:09] Matt: they immediately have hesitate

which is the worst part,

[00:26:14] Fawn: they discount it.

[00:26:15] Matt: Yes. Sometimes, but sometimes they have to hesitate and then they have to find something to compliment on you.

[00:26:20] Fawn: Yeah. This is not re gifting and gifting guys.

When you get a gift, just be joyful about the gift. You don't have to send the person a gift immediately right back, it destroys the whole thing.

[00:26:34] Matt: Obligation destroys compliments

[00:26:36] Fawn: obligation destroys everything.

[00:26:38] Matt: It has a nasty habit.

[00:26:40] Fawn: Well, yeah, like, yeah, except, oh, and also it brings me like accepting a compliment. That's another whole, that's another day. That's another big conversation. The art of accepting a compliment, which brings us to complimenting your own self. Right? Like we used to. Not we used to, we still do love listening to a certain comedian, but he would say, you know, he'll get up in the morning and he'll say, damn, I look good today.

You look like all of five foot four today, you know? Yes. In my case, I look all of five feet tall today or, you know, just, wow. I did a good job here just to, in your, in your own spirit, in your own conversation to yourself in your own mind, how are ways you can compliment yourself? And why is it that we're so against doing that?

We're afraid to compliment ourselves. We're afraid to accept a compliment. What is that? Where did that come from? I shall investigate

[00:27:53] Matt: well in Australia, they talk about tall poppy syndrome where the tallest poppies are the ones that get plucked and put into flower arrangements . So the shorter poppies are the ones who get to live and the tall poppies are the ones that get pulled as it were.

And that might play into that. But you know, for me, yeah some mornings I'm like, you know, I try and be more thankful for things. And in the process of being thankful, it makes me feel good. You know, there's, there's a certain endorphin release in giving someone a genuine compliment that they get and just saying, oh my goodness, thank you so much.

Doesn't cut that in pieces, but saying, well, you know, really? Or, oh my goodness. Yeah. Look at your, um, um, um, um, shoes. They're very nice too. You're. You're you're cutting their ki man. You're like destroying their energy. Just accept

[00:28:50] Fawn: it.

Yeah. Cutting ki. Reminds me high school guys. High school. There was a popular girl in our high school, like it was combat.

So the popular girl you may think of was not what you think of in movies. Like the popular girl. Yes, she was pretty, but she was like scary. Like she, she was violent and like, you know what I mean? She, ah, It was battle. It was like being in jail. Do you know what I mean? Like, there were certain people who would like just attack you.

Um, but I remember I was standing there with someone I knew, and this is someone with a little mousy, you know, like it's a theme that plays throughout my educational career. Like I would be friends with someone that was very, very like weak or skinny or, you know, picked on. And so we were standing there together.

This girl that was like very weak and skinny. Um, not that there's anything wrong with being skinny, but she was, I'm just saying she was very low key. Do you know what I mean? Her personality was low-key. She was quiet. Um, so here comes the popular girl and the friend I was standing next to, it was looking at the popular girl, the scary, popular girl, like scary as in like she'll shank you right.

Okay. And so she comes up to her like in her face, the popular girl to this quiet girl and is like, what are you looking at? Right. Fighting words. And so my friend so gently, and so like instinctively, like it just naturally came out.

She immediately said, With like such, I was looking into her eyes while she was doing this because I was like, oh my God, because I already got trash pickup fighting with this popular girl, like a few months before I was like, oh my God, am I going to get more trash pickup in a second? Um, but so I was looking at her trying to figure out, oh my God, what's the next move.

Right. But this girl like totally like her face. Totally like, um, Open, um, eyebrows, relaxed, everything, and just looked at her and said, I was looking at you, totally admiring you. I think you're really pretty. And this person, the popular girl, her mean demeanor, everything about her changed in an instant, because it was, it was a genuine compliment.

Sure everyone would tell her she's pretty. Cause she was pretty, she was the most popular girl in school, blah, blah, blah. But, but it was genuine, it disarmed this crazy situation. Right. But it was genuine. It wouldn't have worked

any other way.

[00:31:45] Matt: Yeah. And that's that's the key is genuineness. Yeah. As a matter of fact, my goodness.

Yeah. High school, high school is a funny time. Isn't it? Yeah. I remember. Two compliments. I, I got one. I, I actually got one. Then I got second hand. And the first compliment I got was from a parent and they were like, oh my goodness your hair is like, so I don't know what was the word. It was like soft or clean or perfect or whatever it was.

And I was sporting long hair in high school, so I was in trouble. And then the other compliment I got was through my mom actually, who heard it from the parent of somebody I was in class with. And they were like, yeah, Matt, Matt looks really tough and gruff, but he's a really good kid.

And you know, these, these are the things that stick with you because they're genuine because they weren't asked for because yeah, they were just, they were just lovely

[00:32:39] Fawn: and you never knew the best compliments are from strangers. You know, sometimes I have described the scene before I'm going to say it again.

Cause it was, um, it was like a gift from an angel. I was at a grocery store parking lot, very crowded. And our kids were very little and it's, it's tough wrangling, a whole bunch of groceries going through like, um, you know, a certain, uh, A certain parking lot that I don't want to mention that certain people go to, to buy groceries.

Their mentality is definitely very selfish. Right, right. And so maneuvering that. You know, people don't pay attention to how they're coming and going the way they're driving, the way they're pulling out of the parking lot. So when you're a mom and you're carrying all these groceries and you have two little kids who are like that, you're trying to wrangle and keep

safe in this environment, you know, so that was happening and I turned it into a song or something. I don't remember exactly what we were doing, but we started laughing. But at the same time, I was like holding everybody and kind of like, you know, describing the world around us that was kind of dangerous at the moment, but treating it like ha ha you know, like keeping it safe and fun.

Again, I don't remember exactly what it was, but this is what I do remember: when I reached the car and I opened the hatch to put this stuff in, as I was putting the stuff in and the kids were still like, kind of running wild and I was trying to hold them together towards me. This woman came up to me I had never met before and she gets in my face and she's like, and she said, I want to let you know what a great mother you are.

And I paused, and I almost wanted to cry because you know, you don't always, most of the time you don't feel like a good mother. Right. Most of the time you feel guilty. Most of the time you feel like you're messing things up, you know, you said the wrong thing, you had the wrong tone. You should have been doing this while you were doing this other thing.

Um, all this is constantly going in your head and we were going through a really hard times back then. So, you know, once in a while I did yell at the kids, but every time I did apologize, you know what I mean? Like I made sure I never did what I did again, but I'm a human being. And the kids, you know, I would have talks with them, but I always felt bad, nonetheless, that I did maybe once in a while would lose my temper.

You know what I mean? Especially in a parking lot, which didn't happen that day. Right. But I, I do remember one time I did lose my mind in a parking lot because I got so scared that one of our kids was about to get run over by a car. I got scared. Okay. And I yelled. And so that's what I remembered when she said you're such a good mother.

I want you to remember that. Like, it was prophetic that she said that to me. And I think she even described why she thought I was a good mother, but like I was in shock. Um, but it was heartfelt. I could tell. And she crossed the parking lot to tell me, cause I watched her go again, like cross to go back to her car.

Um, but. I don't know how long after that something bad happened. And you were in the hospital, we almost lost you. You almost died. So we were going through a lot. And so one day, um, at home we just had messed up neighbors. They were racist. They were mean they were nosy. You know, they never offered to help when they saw the ambulance has come and take you away.

They just looked at it like they were watching a movie. Right, right. So, um, when things were okay, when you were safe, when you were okay, but you were still in the hospital. I was just mad at the world.

Right. And then. Something happened. And I was, I came down to the little patio area that we had and there was like, um, a toy and I threw, I threw the toy. I threw it at the wind chime. Like it hit the wind chime. I didn't throw it on purpose. I was just trying to clean up and it hit this thing hit the wind chime.

So it sounded like maybe like broken glass. I don't know. So long story short, the neighbor called the police. Right that I was abusing the children, which was not at all the case. The police came and I was in shock. I was like, what? And they were like, yeah, we heard that. Um, the neighbors think that you're doing something to the kids.

I'm like, what? And they're like, we're going to have to see the kids. I'm like, okay. So the kids were right there. The kids come in, all smiling and offering the cops sushi.

And literally the whole thing lasted not even 30 seconds. The cops were like, obviously this was a misunderstanding, um, have a good day. But that, to this day, that was years ago to this day. Anyone who knocks on her door I'm traumatized every day. But I always remember that compliment I got from that woman.

Right. You're good. It was like an angel. She was, she specifically said, I want you to remember you're a good mom and that saves my life.

Sorry. So you'd never know. I think the most important compliments are the ones you give to strangers. So don't be afraid to whatever comes into your heart, you feel like saying, just do it because you'd never know.

[00:38:58] Matt: Definitely true.

[00:39:02] Fawn: You never know how it could help someone. Can you close it out?

[00:39:09] Matt: I'm not sure I can. Oh my goodness.

It's a lot of emotions obviously circled around this, but just pay attention. Be truthful, be genuine, be specific is another good one. And when somebody gives you a compliment for goodness sake thank

them.

[00:39:32] Fawn: Yeah. You just have to say, thank you. And then you'll get used to it.

[00:39:36] Matt: Or like, thank you. You're so sweet or et cetera, but yeah, absolutely.

Just be grateful.

And don't learn from Hollywood.

[00:39:45] Fawn: What do you mean?

[00:39:46] Matt: It's an honor just to be nominated. Oh my goodness. No, just say, oh my goodness. Thank you so

much.

[00:39:51] Fawn: And do it with a, a genuine heart with a gentleness. You know, I've heard this story about, um, oh, I'm blanking out on her name, a very famous Broadway actor, female.

But she, at the end of her performance, you know how they throw roses, someone threw roses and it hit her on the head really hard. And it had thorns and everything. Cause she was still thankful for the roses, but like, it's kind of like the compliment. Make sure you point it a certain way.

[00:40:28] Matt: Don't try and beat somebody in the head.

[00:40:30] Fawn: Think about the velocity,

all that. Anyway, I can't talk

[00:40:37] Matt: my voice. Well, no. And that's another aspect of complimenting someone is don't leave it with something maybe left unsaid or even said, like, oh my goodness. She looks so youthful

[00:40:48] Fawn: because you're not, you lost weight. Why. That's not a compliment folks. Okay. How about just you look

[00:40:58] Matt: good.

[00:40:58] Fawn: Anyway, I want to stop it here. Um, so be have that in your consciousness, the art of the compliment and, um, I mean, be thankful for just general term now, like, Ugh, but just, just have it be in your consciousness. What you notice, especially the things that go unnoticed, like mothers, all the things that mothers do go unnoticed.

If you could just point out one thing how amazing that is even you Matt. I love that in the morning, you just take care of stuff. Thank you. It's very thoughtful of you. I appreciate that.

[00:41:42] Matt: You're welcome.

[00:41:43] Fawn: You know, like people were used to seeing every single day, day in and day out, especially people at work to compliment things that go unnoticed, look out for the things that go unnoticed.

That's it. We love you. Thank you for listening. Please go to our friendly world podcast.com. Is that it? I feel like we've had so many different websites, please reach out to us. Subscribe. Tell everyone what we're doing. Okay. Talk to you later. We love you. Thank you. Be well,

bye.

We discuss the art of conversation as the basis for the art of friendship, as we share three main components for conversing (Invite Insight Incite). We explore social-emotional learning and how we can feel and dance together no matter how difficult the topic of conversation or the particular life situation we may be in.

#conversation, #Invite, #Invitation, #Insight, #Incite, #TheArtofConversation, #Social-emotionalLearning, #Theartoffriendship, #ESL

https://www.ourfriendlyworldpodcast.com/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Fawn: Welcome

back to our friendly world, everyone.

[00:00:03] Matt: Hello

[00:00:04] Fawn: Reflecting on the art of friendship, we are starting a conversation on the art of conversation. I'm gonna start with some definitions. First, obviously conversation. Let's look at that.

It's a noun the use of speech for informal exchange of views, ideas or information simple. Right?

[00:00:25] Matt: Sounds like

it.

[00:00:26] Fawn: Well, you know, I always try to have conversation, but you really have to get a feel for what's going on and you have to get a feel for what the person is going through and where they stand in life.

Do they have a very strong core, a strong sense of self. I wanna say that previous generations didn't have that, or they didn't have that once they started experiencing a lot of other stresses, a lot of other things that would cause them to stretch, for example, having children or just, you know, Obviously with having children, it causes you to be thinking of other people and having your lives have this inter dance back and forth.

I'm just talking about this because everything you're going through with your family right now, right? Your mom is passing. People under duress or under stress.

Start misbehaving and there's no. Oh, here we go. Matt's going to start. Um, no, well, I'm keep it easy. The apologia starts coming in. So, you know, when you're speaking with someone, they don't hear what you're saying. When you speak to a crowd, when you're speaking to one person, they only can understand through a filtered process

of their own experiences in life for them to understand what you're saying. So they're not hearing what you are saying. They're hearing only from their perspective. So for example, if they're used to looking at certain shades of blue all the time,

[00:02:08] Matt: welcome, and to that show,

[00:02:10] Fawn: and then you come into. What do you mean?

Welcome to that show. I'm trying to say

something.

[00:02:14] Matt: We talked about how colors in different societies

are different.

[00:02:18] Fawn: Yeah. But what I'm saying is if you're used to looking at a certain shade of blue as an example, right. It's just a total random example. And then I come in and I say, oh, I found a great blue jacket and you immediately go to the blue you're used to thinking about, but I found a blue that is not even in your reality. You're only capable of hearing and envisioning the blue that you know of and not the blue that I know of. So you have to get, you have to put all these things into perspective. I actually started thinking about this years ago, because when I worked with Horst, Horst Rechelbacher owner, the CEO of Aveda.

That's one of the things he would say to the crowds all the time, he would give the most amazing talks. Amazing before there were Ted talks, amazing talks. And one of the things he would always tell people is, as I'm talking to you, the audience, you're not hearing a word I'm saying because you're only hearing through your perspective.

And it's very, I don't remember the words he was saying. Haha. Um, but he was basically saying that. You don't hear what I'm saying. You only hear what you are able to hear from your perspective, from your baggage, from your life experience. So keep that in mind when people are experiencing hardship. So I'm not a believer of being quiet, but in this instance , I would say this is a good time to be quiet and just listen to people and try not to speak too much.

For example, I got into a fight with Matt because I was trying to soothe him during the time, obviously right now with family and, and it's very, it's a very sad time. It's a challenging time. It's a stressful time. I was trying to say something to soothe him. He completely misunderstood what I said and was no longer even wanting to hear what I was trying to say.

He just wanted to fight. And it's because he needed, this is my assessment of people, not just with Matt, he needed comfort. And when people are beyond stretched past their elasticity beyond their ability to stretch or bend, they will snap, and you just. You have to kind of get a feel for it.

And there are times to be quiet. And I think I'm going to go back on what I said a little bit on a previous show. There are times to be quiet because you really need to hear someone. And I was having a conversation with some friends. We were talking about previous generations seem to be acting up right now.

They're not unable to hear their children. And I think it's because they're under so much stress that. Because you don't have a strong sense of self, maybe from that generation, you become parents earlier. Like our parents and their parents had children early, so they didn't really get a chance to explore their core; to explore who they really were, how they can handle different situations. and once you have children, I think there comes a time where they turn into children under times of stress. And I think everybody does that. Everybody turns into a toddler and it's hard to always be the parent and have someone lash out at you.

And you just not fight back and not react, but still hold them in a loving way, even though you hate them in that moment. Which has happened to me with you, Matt. I hated you a few days ago, like I was done, but at the same time, I understood where you were coming from and I understood that you needed comfort and you were not able to understand what I was saying.

You weren't able to hear the conversation because your baggage at that point, your capacity at that point was filled to the max. And there was nothing but stress. Do you wanna say something before I go into the other definitions?

[00:06:34] Matt: Well, of course

I do. Oh my goodness. Yeah. I wanna circle all the way back to, you know, realize shared vocabulary.

Some of us, you know, it it's a different thing. And when we talked about, uh, the episode, we started talking about colors. There are societies out there who don't even identify colors further than light colors and dark colors and on and on down this interesting spectrum, which makes it an interesting thing to attempt to communicate.

In addition, if somebody is a native Spanish speaker, there is no way they're gonna buy a car called Nova, because that means won't go. So understanding communication issues. And these are, these are, these are drastic and humongous, but it can even be more subtle from region to region in the us. Yeah.

[00:07:22] Fawn: Right.

Absolutely. And you have to, we have to remember that we're all so much more interconnected than ever before. That we have to keep, keep all these things in mind. Like, for example, in a lighthearted way. I remember years ago I was listening to an interview with Salma Hayek, and it was one of the first big movies she did in the United States.

And they called her, um, what's the term sex bomb? Like a sex, a sex pot? No, it had to do with bomb, like sex. Uh, she's a sex, but anyway, it was, it was, I forget the word now she

[00:08:00] Matt: a bombshell?

[00:08:01] Fawn: Yeah. Yeah, I think that was it. Okay. And she thought, oh no, that's terrible because she thought bomb like destroyer.

[00:08:11] Matt: We bombshell.

I mean, that's, that's kind of, I, I always envision, like if you take it and go abstract it away to its raw form, to me, it's a big crater in the ground, which I know that's not a bombshell either, but that's what, that's what I

equate it to

[00:08:23] Fawn: well, like, okay. So I don't wanna really get in, get into this aspect too much today because I wanna talk about the art of conversation and I know this is a part of it.

I just, I don't wanna get stuck here. I'm just saying, oh no, my phone is ringing there are. Hmm.

[00:00:00] Fawn: But moving on, I just wanna say it's not only with culture. It's about a sense of capacity, which we always talk about. Right. How much capacity does a person have? You kind of have to get a feel for it. And it's something that you, I don't know. Is it innate Matt? I mean, I think babies are kind of born with a sense of what's going on.

Like they know when to coo. Their whole appearance takes on the appearance of the parent that may, that they may need to have the parent be more attached to, you know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Like babies end up looking like the dad, if the dad is aloof a little bit. So the dad looks at the baby like, oh, it's one

of me,

[00:00:47] Matt: right?

Welcome to evolution, right? It's the whole. Like baby's eyes are a little bit bigger and, you know, babies start to, I guess they coo and smile and all that kind of stuff, as a way of almost forcing their parents to attach to them and the scream that's again, evolutionarily designed because when the baby needs something, so

[00:01:09] Fawn: that's a form of now that's a form of conversation right there.

[00:01:12] Matt: Absolutely. It's a very raw form.

[00:01:14] Fawn: So I wanna say that we're born with it. So everyone is born with the ability to sense a situation and sense how to communicate and sense how the conversation's going to go. With tone, with sound, with words, with whatever, with expressions

there's, um, there's a lot involved in a conversation. It doesn't even have to be with words. You can have a full on. Conversation without a word being spoken.

[00:01:43] Matt: Right.

Right. And that's why video chat and things can convey so much more information than can be conveyed in just like a, an audio phone chat.

[00:01:52] Fawn: So let's continue on. Part of a conversation I think there are three eyes. There's so many eyes actually like there's me, me, me, me, me and there. So I, I brought it down to three i's. The letter I.

Three of the things I'm gonna choose for today with the art of conversation for having an art of friendship is incite, insight, and invite. So it's probably gonna start with invite and then insight and then incite, all right. Let's, let's start with invite.

Look up the word invite, you get the definition. explaining insight using insight to describe what invite means, but it's a, it's a request. It's a participation of. It's to increase the likelihood of. Now my definition is to bring in, to call in, to embrace, to bring in that's the definition of invite, right?

The other thing, I think that works , in forming a conversation is insight; the ability to see; seeing into something or a situation or someone; to understand. It's about intuiting. It's about discernment. It's about feeling the inner nature of things. And by things that could be people, it could be the situation, but that's insight.

And to incite I N C I T E it's to put into motion, to move to action, to spur on it's I guess in our culture, it means to stir things up, Usually when you incite, you are inciting a riot or something. Right. Does it always have to be so negative? Like does it always have to be a riotous?

[00:03:51] Matt: No, it doesn't.

But people have a hard time really with stillness, with quietness, with incite, because, you know, I can incite new ways of thinking

[00:04:01] Fawn: These three things invite insight and incite are ways to explore a conversation. Can you have a conversation? And still incite someone? Incite as in like stir things up and have it be friendly. Can you still have a cordial situation?

Someone once said invite not incite, but I think once going back to what I was saying before, once you're comfortable with your core, once you know who you really are, once you know your yourself, once you have what was, what, how did I explain it? Like previous generations don't really, didn't really get to explore their core.

Right. Um, of who they really are, so they can get thrown off by words or a situation. I think that's when you can say invite, not in incite because you're afraid the person may snap. Right. But I think once we become comfortable with conversation and have enough conversation happening that our muscles become very, flexible.

We're more elastic. We're more elastic in our emotions, our heart, our flexibility is, is open to be comfortable with hearing something you may not be comfortable with or being open to hearing something that is so out of your realm of understanding at the moment that you won't get upset, but you'll be open and curious and not get so bent out of shape, not take things so personally where it's like a dagger hitting you and destroying you.

So incite, that word uh, I'm like, it can go either way because I would love to have conversations with friends and, you know, I've always imagined having a big, long table, which we do, but we are not using it for friends right now, but like having a big, long table where everyone is eating together and playing music and having conversation, I would like to have not only insightful conversations, like I can see something, but like to be,

to have that incite, like to have that action, to have things be stirred up. I want that, not in a negative way, but in a good way.

[00:06:26] Matt: I,

I got you. Um, you know, it can be something as simple as when I was in junior high school, they wanted us to sell the dorky candles inside of glass containers and go door to door.

And, and the guy came in and he gave his pitch, oh my goodness, was I ready to go sell, sell, sell? Unfortunately, I still had a full day of classes before I went out to go sell, sell sell. And by that time I had lost it, but that is, he was trying to incite us to sell. Which is at least not so feel so negative, like inciting a riot, but just, you know, inciting new ways of thinking, incite new ways of dwelling on things.

Absolutely.

[00:07:05] Fawn: And the art of conversation, really conversation. Another definition for it is living among . It's about familiarity. It's about intimacy. And just going back to that when you are comfortable in that, when you're comfortable within yourself and you are comfortable with getting to know someone, it's not going to turn into a tumultuous kind of situation.

And I think that's where the art of conversation comes in. And really we're getting into social, emotional learning SEL. Right. And unfortunately, I don't think we talk about that enough in our culture, in our society, social, emotional learning. We're all about high IQs. We're all about scores for tests in school.

You know, how smart are you? What are your points? What are your numbers? What's your grade point average, but we never talk about the emotional IQs and just learning. Learning the art of the social emotional interactions, because there are so many cues like the baby, there are so many cues you can say, well, baby, can't have a conversation.

Well, indeed they do have conversation with you. It's through eyes. And if they can't see it is through sound through noise through, through creating body movements. There's so many ways to communicate. A deaf person can totally communicate. You know, I always talk about the art of the voice. The voice is an amazing tool to get information across, but

it's not just the voice. There are other amazing tools that we use. In the there's so much in this beautiful package of a conversation. And we have so much, so much we can use, we have so many tools and I really want to explore the entire art of conversation. I think that's key. It's the key to friendship it's and you know, and I always say friendship is the key to everything and really it's conversation.

You can't have a good friendship without good conversation.

It helps you deal with change. It's dealing with separateness interconnectedness. It's dealing with a sense of entitlement. Do not underestimate your capacity, your energy to create a ripple of good that will vibrate and resonate across the world; putting your consciousness towards wellbeing for all of humanity.

The power of you is immense. Your power is immense. You have so many, we all have all these tools. and we need to shine them, get 'em all shiny, again, to put them to use again and empower each other to transform the world where it's about love, beauty, nourishment, joy. All this can happen through conversation is what I'm saying.

[00:10:09] Matt: And sometimes the conversation is literally like firing something off across the void and not ever knowing what kind of ripples that it, it ends up generating. We've all had that moment where somebody's connected with us when we're in a challenging state, let's say, and it really touches us.

And maybe we don't have the capacity at that point to even communicate it back to them. Mm-hmm but it's still important.

[00:10:34] Fawn: And I think one of the reasons why people don't instigate a conversation is when they're afraid of rejection. Like we were talking about this. We were talking about why is it that, um, we're always, it seems like, it seems like guys, I don't wanna sound like a jerk, but like, it seems like that we're saying to, to each other in the privacy of our home, it seems like we're just saying, Hey, we're the only ones that seem to start a conversation.

You know what I mean? No one else calls us first. No one else texts us first. So I was telling you, you were saying, oh, look at you, you're so popular. We get so many texts every day. And really it's because I text people first, right. I, I go through this whole ritual where I scroll the phone and I'm thinking about each person.

And I say something to that one person. and then, then the conversation starts and then all the texts come rolling through and they're all great because they're all feel good texts. Or even if someone's having a hard time. It's still a bonding moment and that's a feel good thing. Even if I'm having a terrible time, it's still a feel good moment because we're connecting.

Right. Do you know what I mean? I was raw enough, open enough to say, oh my God guys help. Do you know what I mean? Right. Yeah. But I'm not so needy where I'm just like a vampire about it. I'm just like, get a load of this, help. Like what would you do? oh my God. What's happening? Do you know what I mean?

[00:12:10] Matt: Absolutely.

Uh, to. What was it? It was probably a number of weeks ago now, but, uh, I, I just decided to text people, you know, happy daylight savings time or happy daylight savings day or whatever. It was just being stupid. Cause I look for excuses to just pop off and the people look for excuses to just pop back and everybody, I texted texted me something back and they were all a little, a little snarky or a little funny.

Right. It was good. , it's just a way of saying, Hey, I see you over there. And that's what we're really looking for. Right. As a society we're looking for, Hey, I see you. And I'm getting this message more and more

often

[00:12:47] Fawn: it's like jumping into a lake or a swimming pool, and it's hard because it's gonna be cold and it's uncomfortable.

But once you jump in the water's fine

[00:12:56] Matt: or, or being the first person to ask a girl to dance in elementary school,

[00:13:03] Fawn: Yeah, I prefer my water thing.

[00:13:06] Matt: I know. I,

[00:13:07] Fawn: because once you

jump in, you're like, yay. It's so much fun. The water's fine. I didn't really go to dances. So I think you were more social than I was in junior high and high school.

Oh yeah. I was

[00:13:19] Matt: super social. No, I was that guy in the corner going, gee, I wish I could, or

[00:13:24] Fawn: I think I only went to one dance if you don't include the prom, which I, by the way, I wish I had never gone to prom. People always say like, oh my God, you're gonna regret it, if you don't go. And I was thinking the whole time,

I don't wanna go. I don't think I'm gonna regret it, but I think the pressure of society saying you're gonna regret it for the rest of your life. I'm like, okay. So I spent all this money. Okay. And I went the whole time, I was like, no, I wish I hadn't gone .

[00:13:53] Matt: Dang.

[00:13:53] Fawn: Honestly, seriously. I had things to do. I did not have a normal childhood I had things to do.

I'm serious.

[00:14:01] Matt: I get it.

[00:14:01] Fawn: I was working, I had jobs. I was trying to get money together. I was trying to get my situation together so I could go to college. Right. I had no help from family. Mm-hmm I had things to do. I did. I spent all this money on, you know, sharing a limo and getting a dress and hairdo for what, you know, I was not into it.

[00:14:23] Matt: I completely get it. I went to one formal dance, not at my high school either. I got invited by a girl to her high school. That was kind of an obnoxious, annoying, interesting, fun situation. Although the pictures were God awful. I'm really, really sorry, Patty. She was fine. I was terrible. I was just bug eyed, but anyways, um, I don't know.

I, I don't know if I regret it, but I didn't rent a limo. Borrowed mom's car. I I'm I'm yeah. I did rent a tux, but that's, as far as it went and I got a, I got a cute little, oh my God corsage thing for her, but that was it,

[00:14:58] Fawn: babe. I'm glad you went to whatever that was, but we're getting off track okay.

So this is the art of conversation. Yes. And I think, I think I just wanna leave it at that. What I challenge, you know what , you know what, forget it, scratch that word challenge. What. What I think we should do is really look at how we approach conversation. But first, think about what you think about conversation.

What is, what does conversation mean to you? And maybe we need to reprogram what we think it is, and be more, I guess, insightful about picking up cues from another person. You may have to use your super spidey senses to understand. Or to get an insight on what the other person is going through. So you may need to navigate gently or jump in there and be wildly conservative, not conservative.

What's the word? Conversational, but just jump in

[00:16:03] Matt: Yeah, absolutely feel, feel it you've, you've gotta kinda, you gotta kinda let go of your inhibitions and just, you know, for me it would be something like, Hey, happy national cheese day or something. And maybe that begins, maybe that sparks a conversation or, you know, um, I saw this on the news and maybe think of you or who

knows,

[00:16:23] Fawn: I think we

should also get into maybe the next show or the next day, another day.

Let's talk about the art of the invitation. Because how you invite yourself into a situation, how you invite a situation to come into your life, how you invite a friend over how you invite someone for coffee, how you invite someone to inhabit a space with you. That space could be walking out there in the world.

It could be studying together. It could be anything. But I think the invitation is now the next step to really understand what is an invitation starting with yourself. What do you want to invite in your life? What kind of friendship do you wanna invite into your life? What kind of people do you wanna invite?

And when you invite them, what's it gonna look like? You know, are you going to, let's say like going back to our home. Wherever we move to, we always have a forest of hearts hanging from the ceiling. So the person gets kissed walking through the hallway, coming into the home. They get kissed on the forehead by all these hearts that hit 'em on the forehead because they're moving through a forest of hearts and it could be all kind of different hearts.

It could be made out paper. It could be whatever, just something beautiful to remind the person to kind of anoint them. With love, you know, that's how that's one way I decided to bring that in. That's how I chose to invite Matt into our home one day when he was coming home from a miserable job, you know, he would get kissed not only by us, but by all these hearts and also leaving your home, inviting yourself to go out in the world.

You're kissed by those hearts again. So it's a constant reminder of the invitation. We're inviting love. What do you want to invite? And that's it, invite insight and incite,

[00:18:32] Matt: indeed. And honestly, I think the key to that is sincere. And from you uniquely, you know, what is uniquely you, how can you best express your sense of hospitality and welcoming and love, frankly?

We should be definitely sharing the love, spreading love to our friends,

[00:18:52] Fawn: I think you're right. Even before the love, spreading authenticity, you may not be feeling love at the moment, but if it's authentic and if it's not like vampire ish, you know, if you're able to give while you're getting, do you know what I mean?

If it's a dance, right? You can't dance with someone that's constantly like pulling you. Do you know what I mean? And taking that's that's that's combat, but it's give and take, like, you know, you walk backwards and then you walk forwards and you walk back and forth together. That's I think a good conversation.

Right. And then that's just the beginning of the art of conversation. Let us know what you think. I think I wanna wrap it up. Okay. That's a, I mean, that's, that's quite something to think about. So just be mindful of the art of conversation. I think that's the key to world peace guys. Come on, love you. You wanna close it up or do you wanna say something else?

I'm good. You're good. Be well, you're not mad at me for saying I was mad at you.

[00:19:59] Matt: We can get started

on

[00:20:00] Fawn: that, but what's the point? No, you're just gonna do the apologia, which means you're just gonna defend yourself when you were clearly wrong. Combat combat. All right. Nevermind clear love is winning.

Stop it. Oh my God. He just did an Aikido move in the air and I felt stop it. Oh, um, alright. We'll talk to you in a few days. Please reach out to us. Go to our friendly world podcast.com and leave us a note. If you wanna have a zoom date, please let me know I'm here. All right, love you guys. Talk to you later. Bye.

Our Kindness expert, Barry Lane is back to remind us that "Kindness is Truth, Kindness is Freedom."

Barry soothes our nerves with his sweet songs (two new songs as we record live in Barry's studio - the second song is way at the end, so make sure you catch it) and words of wisdom as we navigate a possible WWIII, Civil War, life... and shows us HOPE and reminds us that everything is going to be OK.

There are two new songs as we record live in Barry's studio - the second song is way at the end, so make sure you catch it.

Barry: https://forcefieldforgood.com/

Barry's book: 

https://www.amazon.com/Force-Field-Barry-Colleen-Mestdagh/dp/1931492298/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491102856&sr=8-1&keywords=force+field+for+good+barry+lane

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matt: Um, yeah. So how am I doing well? Um, yeah, um, challenging, um, to be honest, uh,

[00:00:08] Barry: what's going on?

[00:00:09] Matt: Yeah... So my mom right now is in hospice, so she's transitioning and I'm not dealing with it. Well, So an episode on kindness is going to be especially kind of challenging for me. Um, one of my favorite shows, which shouldn't be one of my favorite shows, but it is; it's "After Life" with Ricky Gervais , which is about a man who loses his wife and is falling over the whole time.

And the only time he cries um, in the show, cause he's, he's, he's a, he's just an ass to everyone. Like he has so much hate and so much rage and so much, and he just doesn't care anymore. And he's like, and he starts crying and they're like, oh, don't cry. He's like, it's not the world I have a problem with it's kindness

I can't handle.

[00:00:56] Barry: That's interesting.

[00:00:57] Matt: So when somebody is kind to him, it kind of tears apart, this big ginormous shield he has around him, so he can't be hurt. Um, and that's kind of where my head is at. I'm kind of going bouncing back and forth. Um, you know, my kids, they understand, but don't understand. And, and yeah, it's, it's, it's hard.

It's been, it's been challenging so

[00:01:22] Barry: Is your mom nearby?

[00:01:23] Matt: No, my mom's in California. And, you know, my mom has said specifically that she doesn't want the kids to see her in this state. So I've been staying away too. And it's not, it's not, it's not a case of unfinished business or you know, there are things I wish I would have said that I never said it's just sadness.

So anyways, so if you see me drinking a lot, drinking helps because if I drink something, then you know, I can compose myself better.

Oh, I'm sorry. Not, not, not drinking beer. Just drinking water or drinking coffee. It just helps me to recenter

[00:02:01] Barry: thinking is. Uh, are you going to go just

to see her soon or

[00:02:07] Matt: no, I probably won't know.

[00:02:09] Barry: Okay.

[00:02:09] Matt: And I don't think there's, there's an amount of vanity there. Yeah. And she's kind of 95% checked out right now anyways.

So it's, it's a very, all over the place thing. So anyways, I just wanted to make you aware of that. Yeah. If I draw away or I mute my microphone or any of the rest of that kind of stuff, I just, I don't want you to think as you it's so not you.. We love having you on the show and you know, it's going to be a great show.

Uh, cause you're a great,

[00:02:41] Barry: we talked about it yet yeah. But what I thought, what I was thinking is just, we do a lot of songs, different songs and stuff, but that we just kind of do it natural. If someone comes up, I could play it. That

[00:02:52] Matt: kind of thing. I gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah. Anyways,

[00:00:00] Fawn: Ooh guys, there is a lot going on. We need, we need a visit from Barry. We need our friend Barry Lane. Do you remember https://forcefieldforgood.com/ Barry Lane; professional children's speaker spreader of kindness, Barry lane

writer, illustrator, musician, Barry lane.

Remember

Barry, we need you. Welcome back Barry.

[00:00:31] Barry: Well it's great to be

[00:00:37] Barry singing: back.

We are one family.

[00:00:45] Fawn: Sailing on...

Sailing on

[00:00:47] Barry singing: blue sea deep blue sea. We are

[00:00:52] Barry: one family

[00:00:54] Barry singing: sailing up the deep blue sea, Be kind to be free. We are stars We are stars

[00:01:09] Barry: in one sky sky. We are birds. We are

[00:01:14] Barry singing: bird

[00:01:16] Barry: in one tree

in one

[00:01:18] Barry singing: tree

[00:01:20] Barry: We are stars in one sky

[00:01:24] Barry singing: we are birds in one tree, Be kind to be free

[00:01:34] Barry: take by hand, come with me, come with me.

[00:01:40] Barry singing: Dream of all we can be. We can't be

[00:01:47] Barry: Take my hand and come with me Love is truth

[00:02:02] Barry singing: Love is truth. It's the key. It's the key, know your heart, your heart. You will see, you will see. Love is truth Know your heart and you will see ...Be kind to be free .

[00:02:24] Barry: We are one family,

[00:02:35] Barry singing: family. hand in hand

[00:02:41] Barry: we all see,

[00:02:42] Barry singing: we see (seek said my Fawn) see

We are all one family Be kind to be free

[00:02:59] Barry: everybody

Be kind to be free.

[00:03:09] Fawn: Yay, Barry. Thank you. You guys, this shows you, when I hear a song, I hear completely different words. Like you were saying some other word. I was saying some other words you were saying the correct word Matt. And I was saying some other word. Oh my goodness. Uh, Barry, thank you. You know, there's a sign right by our door, Barry.

It was one of the last visits we had before the pandemic. I feel like. our friend Holly was going, going back home to California after visiting with us. Matt was at work and the girls and I were waving to Holly after hugging her goodbye. And we said, be careful out there Holly. And she stopped

She turned and looked at us and she said, guys, the world is a safe place. I'm like, oh, it struck me. Cause I'm like, be careful and be careful, be careful. Right. And so in that same spot that I was standing, I put a chalkboard up right by the door and it says the world is a safe place. And every time I look at it, it reminds me of what to focus on and what to bring in.

But it also, at the same time simultaneously I read while I'm reading the world as a safe place, I always in my heart, I feel like I'm reading the world is a kind place and be fitting. Totally. Why we're speaking with you is because you are the ambassador of kind, Barry, thank you so much for being with us.

There's so much, so much going on. The world is on the verge of, I mean, I can't believe I'm saying there's WWIII (World War 3), the country's on the verge of civil war, you know, even before that it was, it was already happening. I mean, a shooting every day. , it feels like emotions are running very thin and have been for years now around the world and it's become so volatile that it's really important for us to really gather around with our friends and focus on

kindness. And that is why we have our beautiful friend Barry here with us today. The show today is not really that thought out. We're just going to have heart to heart talk on kindness. Where do we begin? How, how do we, I mean, first making sense of it, you know, and then making sense of things that are happening around the world.

After everything we've been through as a collective with a pandemic and everything with social totals, like in everybody's face this time, social injustice, economic hardship, hardship. I said, heartship. Um, you know, what do we do? How. What do you do when in your face? It seems like things are hopeless.

Is it hopeless to have kindness rule around the world? Like, is it a possibility? Barry is smiling and that's why, why that's why he started looking at his beautiful face. I wish we had video. He's smiling. He is smiling, this knowing beautiful wisdom kind of smile. What are you thinking?

[00:06:35] Barry: I'm thinking that when I get depressed, I like to compare centuries.

When I go back to the 20th century and look up what was happening instead of 2022, 1922. And that was a time after world war one when the countries were, it had this giant, we were in had a world war in this century. So we're off to a good start. But the other thing is that the league of nations which was a very troubled enterprise, but at first, the first attempt to do something that we see now working very well, which is economic sanctions and the whole world, instead of ganging up with armies to gang, up with banks and all this other stuff to crush the tyrant, crush the, you know, this guy that's living in like Napoleonic Europe, in his head and who's trying to invade another country and, and wow, you know, what's happened is that the armies of peace are out there doing pretty good, you know, and I'm not trying to say there aren't a lot of problems, but boy, this is a great model to go on.

You know,if we can do it get this guy under control through our economic stuff,

[00:07:52] Fawn: you know, and you know, you know, what's so I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt. Can you please hold that thought? But like, it just reminds me, but what's so weird is, as a peaceful kind of person, who doesn't want to fight, unless it's a martial arts kind of moment, then you know, then I'm all in.

If I have to, um, I'm cheering for violence, I find myself and then I feel really guilty, Barry. I'm cheering for the violence because you know, I'm seeing, I'm seeing these totally tiny little skinny ballerinas holding arms and going to battle. I'm like: Yeah. And then I feel terrible and disgusted with myself for, I feel like I'm perpetuating it.

Do you know, do you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

[00:08:40] Barry: I know what you're saying. I'm wondering if I would join the Ukrainian army if I was a Ukrainian man, man, I probably was. I was point cause it's self defense people like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie back in the day they, they said we got to put up, we got to stop fighting for unions and fight against the Nazis

now when they, when they went to war over in Europe. And I think this concept of a just war is when it's about self-defense, you know, when you kind of the difference between defending yourself versus, uh, kind of being kind, um, just self self-defense versus kind of, um, uh, the kind of wars that we've had, which are just kind of almost Imperial enterprises, you know, go off to Afghanistan or those kinds of things,

[00:09:27] Fawn: different.

The Canadians

[00:09:29] Barry: marched on the U S right now, or something like that. Canadians with a no. All

right.

[00:09:36] Fawn: Yeah. You're like our neighbors, our family. I mean, that's, what's happening is, and it's always, what's happened. It's always going to war with family, your, your brothers and sisters. It's it's in the Bhagavad Gita.

It's the same thing. It's going to battle with people really that are your brothers and sisters, and it's wild to

[00:09:57] Barry: yeah. The first victim in any war is truth. Right. And love is truth. So love is the first victim in any war. And, you see what's happened in Russia, they've gotten rid of all the news channels and stuff and all these great stations, uh, people that were spreading truth about what was going on and, uh, truth wins in the end.

Always wins in the end. I believe.

[00:10:24] Fawn: Thank you. I will, I will hold

[00:10:26] Barry: on. Gandhi's famous statement, you know, there'll be tyrants and for awhile it will seem like their mind is, you know, it's a house of cards. Russia's a house of Putin is a house of cards I should say. And, um, that it's going to, it will be it, the sad part is what's happening.

That the amount of suffering that has to happen, it appears has to happen.

[00:10:52] Fawn: Part of the suffering is also the confusion and the polarity of it all, you know, for example, like I said, I'm here, here. I am thinking, yeah, I would fight. Right. And then here I am also looking at the grandmothers that are totally throwing down and fighting. Grandmothers.

Right. And I'm looking at women. , I saw some footage of women taking the Russian soldiers. Like they had them in custody. And they were feeding them whatever food they had and giving them something hot to drink. And you could see the soldier was clearly beaten up. Right. And here they aren't totally nourishing them and saying, look, this is what's really happening.

The soldiers didn't know what was happening. They didn't know that they were caught up in lies also. They didn't know what they were doing. Right. And so these women were explaining, look, this is what's happening. And using their own phones to give to this Russian soldier, to have him call his mom and let her know that he's okay.

It's beautiful. Right. And that, and then at the same time fighting and killing these people like killing each other. It's I think it's that kind of, um, polarity. That really messes up everyone. If you think about it, it is so confusing and it's, so this what's the word combobulated, discombobulated combat.

I can't pronounce that word. discombobulate. Is it a word? It, this, this, we use

[00:12:30] Matt: it for, I've used it forever. I don't know if it's a real word. Um, but like, in my mind, it's like, it's so hard to be kind to like the Russian army. It's hard. It's hard to even contemplate being kind, but it's easy to be kind to this soldier in the Russian army that's standing in front of me because we're just people.

[00:12:56] Fawn: Um, that's kind of where my head that's where again, Aikido comes in, right. You're there to protect your attacker. Say what now. That's what Aikido teaches us. Our martial arts. Oh, my goodness. So Barry, like,

[00:13:12] Barry: so the

positive again, I'll say it w we have the re the fact that, you know, that story that are, that everybody is a journalist today with their phones.

If you see these remarkable videos, all that is is helping, you know, yes. It's showing truth what real truth and the Russian people are starting to get it too. I mean, it's, even though their media is so,

[00:13:36] Fawn: so I think that love, I really want to research the whole truth business. It is really complicated and, oh, by the way, another thing was a grandmother who took down a Russian drone with a jar of pickled tomatoes,

[00:13:54] Barry: she,

[00:13:55] Fawn: she flung it at it and brought it down.

[00:13:58] Barry: Yeah. That's kind of like, um,

those are the images that stick with people and, show that. That people have this great power and truth is like, is a power. and, there's love that, during war you don't think of, uh, of love Mr. Rogers, when he talks about looking to the helpers to everywhere you look, you see this incredible solidarity of people in the Ukraine.

And if we could get that at a time when it's not war for the whole world, we'd have a lot of, you know, that would be a very hopeful thing for the whole world. Some aliens attacked or something. The whole world would become the solid group of people, but, uh, war brings out the worst and the best in people.

[00:14:47] Fawn: it is the perfect timing for kindness because it's when. Things are really, really bad is when kindness is most powerful. Isn't it Barry?

[00:14:57] Barry: Yeah. And some of the memes on the internet. I don't remember the exact wording, but it was something like war is people who don't know each other, killing each other because of people who know each other, but don't get along.

And, and, um, uh, the famous world war one, truce, you know, 19 whatever year it was. Uh, do you remember that Christmas, the Christmas truce, these guys were killing each other, the Germans and the French, and because of Christmas, they took a three-day break and they just got out of their heads. They exchanged addresses, they played soccer and they actually, um, the officers had to actually force them to get back into the trenches.

Cause nobody at that point, everybody kind of knew each other. And, and um, so I think that, uh, One example of just how outdated war is as a thing, the more information people get, the less likely they are to go to war. That true information

[00:16:00] Fawn: that is true. And I think that's, that's the problem today.

And that is the biggest weapon is truth. It's the biggest weapon on both sides. For example, you know, everywhere, especially in the United States, truth is just, uh, it's a trigger word because what is truth? And nobody knows because we're also faced with so much propaganda. And so, so many versions of truth, if you will.

I don't know. But one of the, like for example, I was listening to an interview with this young man who has a young family and he was calling his father in Russia from the Ukraine. His family is in Russia. His parents are in Russia and he was trying to explain to him what just happened and what is happening that their house was bombed that, you know, all this stuff is happening.

And his father said, no, it's not. And he's like, dad, I'm, I'm seeing it with my, with my I'm right in the thick of it. Like, and his dad kept saying, no, you're wrong because his truth was so different than his son's truth, his son. And, and he was saying that he had, he just had to stop talking to his dad and he's, you know, he could have been dead the young man the next time, you know, there w there may not have been a next time, but lucky enough, he actually called again called his dad again and kept doing it.

And little by little, very little by little, his dad started to be open to believing him, but for, for a father, for a parent, not to believe their child's truth, that is deep. I mean, that is the worst kind of weapon to, to have, have, and look, what's happening to the United States. We're all so divided over what truth is.

[00:17:59] Matt: Welcome

to the world of the moral imperative though, because everybody in order to, I think stay sane, not be crazy in the clinical term. We have to believe that we're doing, we're acting in a moral way when we know we're acting in an immoral way and we know we're acting consistently in an immoral way inherently, we know that that's wrong, whatever moral means to a given person, right.

Because yeah, morality, unfortunately, or fortunately it is an absolute, but it's sometimes impossible to quantify. And by the way, for those few people out there who are heavy metal fans, I have to say Sabaton released a new album, "The War to End All Wars". It's about the great war. It's about world war one.

And they have a song called the "Christmas Truce" and they do talk about that event that happened. And it's, it's quite a beautiful song, but wow.

[00:18:55] Barry: Look that up.

[00:18:56] Matt: It's one of those like, Ooh, I don't know. Definitely not your style, Barry.

[00:19:02] Fawn: I was, I was wondering how you were going to bring heavy metal in, into this episode.

[00:19:07] Matt: Well, no, I was, I was actually going to mention the Christmas Truce before, before Barry did actually, because yeah. What we're seeing with the European war, we're seeing a lot of, yeah, it's, it's

very eerie.

[00:19:19] Barry: Those are courageous acts of kindness. And the funny thing is even the most insane dictators are leader like Hitler or Putin, they have to create lies that create truth, their own version of truth. You know, um, you know, the famous one was in Poland, you know, the same area of the world, actually back in world war two, when there were went to invade Poland, he couldn't do it because there was no reason to, so basically Putin's using the same playbook.

He says that a German speakers that live in Poland that they're being persecuted. And, there was a German radio station that was attached and they got the Polish army uniforms. They got, and they brought all these concentration camp prisoners and they dressed them in these uniforms and then killed them all, put them by the radio station and then said that, you know, it had been attacked by these Polish soldiers to start the war.

And the name of the, uh, operation, the code name was "Operation Canned Goods" it's like there was this, uh, so even people with no moral compass, they realized that they can't influence the world without having morality. So they actually use their, um, they play, they play the world course like a con man does.

Right. But they know that they believe in truth too. They don't really believe in it, but they believe that everybody believes in truth. So they, they, they need an excuse to do their terrible things and so forth. And, uh, and, uh, and, uh, so I have a song that's called, it's a new song called "Manners Politeness and Love."

And it sounds incongruous to be singing at a time like this, but there's a point there's a line of the song that I love, which is be kind to be free. and the world will see that love is truth and hate is just a lie. I think that, uh, there's a kind of a bravery, it takes what I was saying to Fawn, we were talking earlier in the week that there's a bravery to be kind; a courageousness in a world that's gone really to the dark side. And, uh, so this song is about the everyday things that we can do to, when I talk to kids about this, we talk about what manners, politeness, and love are. And they're basically, they're not just rituals, you know?

And I was in the south one since everyone's so polite that I'm here, we were talking to this guy who said, "yeah, you'd be polite too if you've got a backhand across the face, as two year olds just said something rude",

not that kind of polite, this the kind of true politeness, uh, one of the things that Tim Snyder in his book on tyranny says is the 20 things to do at a time like this. One of the things he says, look, make eye contact with people, especially people that you don't agree with constantly be, be there for them.

So they see you're a real person. And it's true that what's really true is what's happening between you and I, not what you heard on on the radio or something. So it goes like this: (Barry begins playing the guitar and singing)

manners

[00:22:38] Barry singing: politeness and love

shine like the stars high above

when the sky grows dark, is it light you must think of

manners, politeness, and love

how are you

today? You're welcome.

Don't worry. We'll find a kinder way.

Open your heart to the sky. Remember your when

and your why

Be kind to be free and the world will see love is truth and hate is just a lie. Thank you. Sorry. How are you

today,You're welcome don't worry. We'll find a kinder way.

Yeah.

[00:24:11] Fawn: Thank you so much, Barry. Yeah, we will find a kinder way. Barry this is why I love talking to you. Anytime something happens, I get a text from Barry, after the major shootings here in Colorado at the supermarket Barry sent me the kindness notes in the midst of it all.

Like when things just seem so unkind and horrible, Barry always sets us straight. We will find a kinder way. Let's just remember that. And, and the truth, you know, your heart always knows the truth. You can feel it. You can always feel when something is not true. Don't you find like a long time ago, I had a friend who was very, very spiritual, um, religious, she's east Indian.

It was actually in India, we were walking around and out of the blue. She's like Fawn. And for those of you that are not religious, just bear with me, just think about it on a, on a universal scale. But like, out of the blue, she like got really thoughtful and we were shopping for saris. Do you know what I mean?

Like, we weren't at a temple or anything. We were shopping and she, she looks at me she's like Fawn, do you know when something is from God? Like, and I was, I was, I was thinking of how to reply. She's like, let me tell you, so I'll tell you what she said. She said, you know, it's from a place like that because you feel a lightness and, and I think that's the truth.

Isn't it? Barry? Isn't it meant like when you, when you are faced with something. You always know in your heart what the truth is, for example, you know, I don't know if it's me just being super psychic, but do you all feel this? Not that you're not psychic, but like bear with me. So someone is telling you something and it's an obvious lie.

Don't you find that your brain kind of like a computer pauses?

[00:26:22] Matt: (Matt laughs) As we all pause.

[00:26:27] Fawn: No. Do you, do you feel a pause because something doesn't quite click together,

[00:26:33] Matt: right? Well, I don't necessarily pause, but you're right. I enter into the state of very, very confused, especially if this is somebody whose opinions and knowledge I trust and they're telling me something, I know isn't true.

It's. You hit that world where it's like, wait, something doesn't fit. There's a puzzle piece. I've got one puzzle piece left and it doesn't fit in my puzzle.

So what's going on

[00:26:54] Fawn: and it doesn't have to be this like, um, propaganda kind of stuff. Like you ask someone, how are you, your friend? How are you? Fine.

I'm fine. Hi. How are you? And you know, that's not true, right. Even if you don't know what's going on, you're like, whoa, really?

[00:27:09] Matt: Right. And then of course, then the person makes the decision whether or not to actually tell you what's really going on, but

[00:27:14] Fawn: you know, you know, in your heart.

[00:27:17] Barry: Okay. And you're a total psychopath, but most people aren't.

And, uh, the, uh, one of my favorite things to watch on YouTube is "The Behavior Panel" I don't know if you've ever watched that these, these four guys. Oh, they're amazing. Therefore guys that consult all around the world with world leaders and their interrogators and they, they do videos. They show videos of people and they just tell you

uh, whether they see deceitful behavior and their eye movement to Nick, it's kind of like that show lie to me that was on TV or whatever, but they, uh, they're very good at it. But one of the things people do when they lie, like people who have done horrible things, they, they start doing this thing where they, they move back and forth or they stroke their arm.

It's called self soothing and behaviors. Cause people are like, uh, they're afraid. My feeling about that is people are, um, truth is like a safety in a way, you know, and it's unsafe uh, to be in a world without truth. And so they sooth themselves, this is why villains have nervous ticks, I think in movies, in this kind of a, a thing about it.

And that, that makes them kind of feel uncomfortable. Even people who know, they know they're lying and that kind of thing, and truth is something much more, um, uh, you can live there. Uh, it was, uh, I don't know who said this, but you're only as sick as your secrets, in life, you know? And, you know, Dostoevsky they ask you, you're talking about Russians and "Crime and Punishment" a great novel about a guy who figures out he can murder his landlady and get away with it. And that would be in life. And there's all these justifications for it. Just kind of, not a very nice person and that kind of thing, that whole novel is about uh, basically this guy who has to reckon with what he's done. And so it sort of rips them apart and it becomes redeemed in the end, but it's like he needs faith to even, to be able to reveal the secret and that kind of thing.

And it's really, one of the great Russian novels . And I think one of the things about Russia is there are a lot like America in a way, it's a big country and they think big, even though they never had democracy, when they do , they're going to be a great democracy. It's a funny thing to be saying right now, but, um, they're going to be a country like Ukraine in a few years, I believe.

And, uh, I think we made a huge mistake after the Berlin wall came down. We should have done much more to woo them into the European union. It was so bizarre. I lived near Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There's Russian submarines off the coast, still patrolling, and you know, and we're still the Soviet union's gone

and yet there's still all these things happening in the world. We haven't done enough to dismantle all that nonsense, you know? And what Putin did almost seemed like a guy doing like a comedian today doing mother-in-law jokes or something. It's just seems so out of time, you know, what he did in the Ukraine, is so 19th century, you know what I mean?

It has the quality of that man. And as a country, as a world, um, peace does not come by everybody singing kumbaya, that kind of thing, people are still going to be part baboons part bonobo. They're going to, they're going to be part peaceful and part nasty. And, but peace comes when the peaceful part becomes a real commitment to the whole world.

And if you don't want to look at something positive, you know, you can look to that. Um, you know, that, that family, that family, that fed the Russian soldier, but you could also look to all these companies that are actually losing huge profits by pulling out of Russia and doing all this stuff. This is huge.

I mean, that's like a very positive thing. And one of the things that we're so upset about is we have so much more information too today that we know about, we're much more conscious of all the things that are going on in the world, so that doesn't really make it any better but I think it makes it, uh, you know, when Victor Frankl who wrote the "Man's Search for Meaning" was in the concentration camp, you know, one of his, uh, it's the only positive memoir, uh, of that experience that I know of; positive in that you walk away going, wow, this guy learned a lot there.

One of the things he did is he imagined himself lecturing about that experience, 10 years later and which he actually did. He wrote a book about it and so forth. And I think that's one way to find peace is to look ahead and then look back and say, WOW This was a time when the entire world, except for China, that's another story, but got together and basically said, you know, enough, this is not behavior that we can have in our world.

And, uh, that's a great model for peace.

[00:32:28] Fawn: Yeah, I mean, am I wrong? Did I hear this right? But like when the fighting started, even the Taliban said, whoa, we don't need to be doing this. The Taliban!

[00:32:40] Barry: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I think that it's a, that's the positive part of the story, I think. And, uh, the history of what this is going to be.

This is a really important period. And on a bad day, it feels like history is going to end, you know, but on a good day, we can look back and say, wow, this is where we learned that you can, one person, just one person in the world can't destroy the lives of millions. They can try, but we're gonna, you know, fight back ,

should have a song about

[00:33:17] Matt: that. We're going to fight back and we're, we know we're going to be shown that we're not alone in standing up to this, I think is also key

[00:33:28] Fawn: and there are many ways to quote unquote, I don't like the word fight here, you guys, but there are many ways to create a better world. You don't necessarily need to pick up arms unless they're your own arms.

And you're hugging somebody. And I sound like a total outdated hippie. I'm sorry, but do you know what I'm saying? Like, there are ways, there are many ways you may be in the midst of battle, but you can at the same time hold what you want in the future. Hold, the feeling of kindness and hold the feeling of a harmonious society.

It's very easy for me to say in our kitchen right now, a kitchen that is stocked with food and

[00:34:15] Matt: coffee,

and we can't hear conflict in the distance or

anything.

[00:34:18] Fawn: I mean, we can feel it. Yes. And I mean, we still see conflict. I mean, you know, here too. I dunno. It's hard. And then the guilt thing comes up and what you were saying at the beginning of the show, Matt is then when you do face kindness, when you do see kindness, it breaks you because you just want to

weep,

[00:34:40] Matt: I don't think it breaks you in.

Uh, okay. So it seems like it breaks you in a bad way, but I think it breaks you in a necessary way. Yeah.

[00:34:50] Fawn: And necessary a way like a, how a mother or, you know, a parent, a loving person holds a baby and the baby starts sobbing, you know, like when you fall and you skin, your knee, when you're little, right. And then someone is really kind to you, that's when you start crying.

Right. That's when you realize, oh, that's right. I have so much pain. You know, there's always that pause where you hold it together. And then as soon as you're met with an embrace and maybe that's why, what, you know, Barry, you were talking about the villains, how they rock back and forth, or like they fidget like that.

It's kind of like being embraced by, by a mother and by mother, I mean a loving source

[00:35:34] Barry: yes

[00:35:35] Fawn: everybody's seeking.

[00:35:37] Barry: Yeah. It's like the villain's lulaby. It's their nervous twitch,

[00:35:42] Fawn: oh my God. The villains lullaby.

[00:35:44] Matt: Oh man. See, I just continually think about the time where you were in deep trouble and you just played with a piece of lint in your pocket.

[00:35:53] Fawn: Must you bring that up? Oh my God.

[00:35:55] Matt: I'm not going to say

what it is. I'm just going to say that's what you notice yourself doing as a kindergartner

[00:36:00] Fawn: hold on. Now we have to explain what that is. We can just go, we can't leave our friends out there. Not knowing. This is very, very embarrassing and disgraceful about me.

Something about me that is very disgraceful. Do you guys want to hear it?

[00:36:16] Matt: No

shows about kindness not meanness

[00:36:21] Fawn: well. Oh, but I have to now I'll just, I'll just make a brief, I won't get into the gory details, but I was in kindergarten and I beat up a little kid for no reason, but. I just had a villainous kind of thing come take over me over an eraser at the table. And I beat up this kid and then I walked away like nothing ever happened.

And then later that kid comes like stumbling back, holding his head. Cause I beat him on his head and the teacher was right there. The whole class was against me. And the only comfort I had was going in my jacket pocket and just holding my lint, the lint in my pocket was my only, only friend. But in that time, although I was the total villain, I, I knew I had what I had done and I knew the injustice that I was responsible for and I really needed comfort.

And I think that's why I ended up lashing out the way I did was because things were so bad in my life at that point.

And, you know, some people don't have a lint to turn to. I had my lint,

[00:37:33] Matt: well, I think everybody finds some thing once they come to that absolute breaking point. And for some people, you know, this is why people get so devoted to their pets or because they do provide some element of that soothing,

[00:37:51] Fawn: unless you don't like a Hitler or Putin,

[00:37:56] Matt: Hitler loved

dogs,

[00:37:57] Barry: Hitler had a dog.

[00:37:58] Matt: I mean, and that's the most messed up trivial thing to remember, but, and there were concentration camp guards who fed birds and, you know, on and on and on, uh, Yeah, it just, there's, there's a lot of really messed up things we can talk about and, and these kinds of trivial kind of things, but, you know, in the face of so much, I think just moral sense of wrongness that kind of sinks into your body.

You need to do something to feel good. Hmm.

Or at least something to say you're not alone or something to S to, to be brave. Or, you know, now for me personally, and I tell people this and nobody ever believes me, but I don't believe in quote unquote secrets. If I tell you something and you tell the whole world, I feel like that's on me for even like thinking maybe I could trust you with it or whatever.

The fact that I tell somebody means that I need it to get out for whatever reason. And what that person chooses to do with that information or what that, whatever, I mean, you know, if they choose to broadcast it to the world, then that's what they choose to do, because I've already made a choice to share that information with someone else.

So, you know, I, I, you, you kind of lose control and this is one of the things people it's, one of the really insidious bits of truth is that there's such a desire to share truth. And there's such a hunger for just genuineness and truth in the world that on some level, doesn't matter if it's like really evil or scandalous or anything else, it's just, it gets out there.

And for me to then what, be mad at somebody that I cared enough about to share a truth with. Wow, that seems like just it, you know, I, I always say poor on me, but it's it's yeah, it's just. It's hard to explain, but that's kind of my philosophy. I just don't believe in

secrets.

[00:39:52] Fawn: Do you think that's why bank robbers end up telling people what they did?

[00:39:56] Matt: Well, there is a again, yes, there's a desire to share.

[00:40:00] Barry: This is, uh, uh, one of the Bahai writings is probably hidden words. It's one of the, is, uh, I forget I don't have it right in front of me, but it, that justice is, is God's gift to people because through it, you'll see through your own eyes and not to the eyes of another.

and that it's sort of a gift because it allows you. It's something that exists. That truth actually exists in the world. Yes. Yes

[00:40:31] Matt: he does. Once

[00:40:33] Fawn: Barry's dog my goodness.

[00:40:36] Matt: Hello

[00:40:37] Fawn: It's Barry's dog, everybody.

[00:40:38] Barry: Well, when it gets too small, this is like one of those things and it's just, I'm afraid of I'm choking on it. Right?

[00:40:45] Fawn: What is your dog's name?

[00:40:47] Barry: His name's Rishi, which means Ray of

light in Sanskrit He's part Bichon and part shih tzu. So I call him a shit's on,

but he's a beautiful doggy

and

dogs are like in cats. Now, there there's such comfort in times like this, It takes you out of yourself and They take you out of yourself and, and just simple compassion, you know, um, I have a song called be kind that I do with kids. And one of the lines is teach your kitty how to purr, scratch your neck and pat her for help your doggy wag his tail.

Your sweet love will never fail. There are ways of practicing love, you know? I mean, and I imagine in war time, it's more, it's more than probably a may, will accentuate that, you know, that because you're literally protecting them. Were meant to,love and it's what makes us feel safe now, whether it's a puppy or some lint in your pocket, ,

[00:41:56] Fawn: it's.

I was going to say, or just finding beauty, finding beauty, bringing beauty in in some way, I always go back to Martha Stewart, who right after nine 11, someone asked her, what do we do? And she said, well, go find a flower, bring it in, put it in a vase. Whatever you're surrounded in, like wherever you are, try to make it as beautiful as possible.

Start with your immediate surroundings and make that better. So it could be, it could be taking care of someone you love, like your dog, right? And it could be taking care of a plant. It could be taking care of just something really simple whenever you have, make it better and nourish it. So nourish your home, nourish your own self, nourish your loved ones, with whatever you can find, whatever you can create.

[00:42:52] Barry: Yeah,

[00:42:53] Matt: absolutely. And, and providing comfort to people around you. Like I want to say the high point for me this past week was me sharing interesting information with people. I used to work with people I haven't, hadn't connected to in a while and actually giving them information, that's going to help them out.

That was the highest point of my week. It wasn't getting something or, you know, having an awesome pastry or anything else, you know, that was the high point. And then, you know, kind of the second high point was getting, getting a hug from one of my little girls.

[00:43:29] Fawn: Can I tell you mine too? So I had a high point because of what, what obviously is happening around the world and within our family, with the passing of your mom and everything, you know, I, um, you know, there's so many things that have been happening at the same time.

And so my kind of high point came from one of the low points and, you know, I always say it's really, it's really important for you to figure out the people in your life, what role they play. Is it a number one, number two, or number three role in friendship, for example, what kind of friend are you and what kind of friend do you really have going back to again, Aristotle and the Nicomachean ethics of friendship.

Like there's a friend, who's friends with you because of how they feel around you. There's the second type of friend who is friends with you because of what they're getting from you. And then there's the third friend who is friends with you, regardless, because they just love you. You're ugly. You're happy.

You're upset. It doesn't matter. They're just in, in love with you. And that's the true friend. Right. And it's hard because sometimes even me it's, you know, even though I've been working on this for a long, long time, it's hard to realize, oh, this person is not what I thought. Right. Which is fine. Everyone has a kind of friend that is that particular kind of friend for this thing or that thing.

Do you know what I'm saying? And

[00:45:06] Matt: there's nothing wrong with having a huge quantity of these kinds of what do you want to call it? Level one and level two friends.

[00:45:12] Fawn: Yeah, absolutely. Nothing wrong. Yeah. There's, you know, there's room for everybody, but if you're thinking, oh, this is my number three friend. And then things happen and you're like, ah, Oh, well, so for example, my low point this week was I texted two of my friends that are like sisters to me.

Right. And I said, first at first I sent a GIFF, a GIFF or JIFF, whatever know I sent them the little tiny moving pictures and it was this cartoon character, totally sobbing, crying like inconsolable. And then after that, I said, I feel so alone and scared right now. And all I get is a text that says you're not alone.

And I never got another text or anything again. Right. Crickets, crickets, yet people I didn't expect to even like be there or anything. They were there constantly with phone calls and texts with prayer. With healings. Right. You know, like, and I didn't even ask them, you know, I didn't even like tell them, Hey, I feel alone.

[00:46:33] Barry: I think

that, uh, yeah, I think that we learned about friendships through the ones that evolve. The ones that are transactional turn into something else, you know, um, you know how friendships can be like, that person is dependent on you, but you're not dependent on them. You know, they go, you don't go to them when you're vulnerable.

And I had a friend like that who, um, you know, we were friends, but a lot of it was me being like, uh, a sounding board to him, you know, to whatever. And then my dad died suddenly. Um, right after my second daughter was born and it was very, it was really painful time. And he came to the funeral and we went for a walk and we still remember. I knew exactly where we were the swing set, where like, when we used to, when I was a little kid, I used to hang out and he just he's, he was, he just sort of put his arms around me and I just wept, you know, and it was like, uh, you know, I, I didn't even know I was going to do it.

You know what I mean? It was like just this moment. And, and that transformed a friendship from then on, of course at that point, um, you know, and I think today with texting and all the nonsense that we have, there's a lot more transactional relationships, you know, they, oh, I read this book called "Reclaiming Conversation" by

Sherry Turkle and she talks about how people will go through their texts and they text back to the people that are more high status first. And then they go down the line. If you hear from him in two days, you'd know that you're low on their friendship list, that kind of thing. And I think that kind of transactional stuff is so much easier to do through texting.

Right. But in real life, you know, you know who those people are usually, you know, people that show up and those that don't, you know, that kind of,

[00:48:38] Fawn: but at the same time I have to defend the texting Barry because that's all we have.

[00:48:44] Barry singing: Yeah.

[00:48:44] Barry: I'm not saying it's bad. I'm saying it can create that kind of world to

[00:48:50] Fawn: make it more easier.

I have some friends and you know, all we have is text and WhatsApp because that's what we have because we're so far away, distance wise, like physically. But I feel them holding my hand. I feel their embrace. Wendy, I'm talking to you, Martine. I'm talking to you, you know, I, you know, yeah. I don't, I don't want to tell you, I want to embrace that as well, because you can feel it much like the truth.

You can feel a genuine friend holding your hand. You don't have to be there physically. And I think that's what trips people up sometimes. Like they disappear because they feel like, oh my God, I have to do this grand gesture that I don't have the capacity for. But really all it takes is a simple text, but like just something to acknowledge that you're still there.

You're there with them. You know, I am still holding your hand through this mic. I am holding your hand to you listening. I'm holding you. I'm holding you. I'm I am embracing you. I'm not going to let go. Feel that, 'cause that's the honest truth. Well, much like truth, you know, like, you know what uplifts you and you know, what's a lie,

so in a text you can tell there's discord or if it's holding hands, why are you looking like that again?

[00:50:20] Matt: I hear a, I hear a clock.

[00:50:22] Fawn: Yeah. I've been hearing a tick, tick, tick.

[00:50:24] Matt: Are you wearing, are you wearing a wristwatch?

[00:50:27] Barry: Oh, oh no. What it is and take this thing out. Hey, putting this was cluck in lake office.

[00:50:36] Matt: I'm sorry.

[00:50:37] Fawn: I just started hearing it as an editor now of, you know, a podcast. I hear everything and I've been noticing it this whole time and I've found it quite, um, soothing, soothing. Yeah. Oddly, oddly Erie at the same time, because of what's happening in the world.

[00:50:55] Matt: Right. Well, no,

[00:50:57] Barry: it's going to sound like an episode of 60 minutes during this

[00:51:01] Matt: and there you go.

I'm sorry. I just completely derailed us . We need to get back.

[00:51:05] Fawn: No, that's fine. That's fine. It's all. It's all good. It's all good. It's all conversation. So Barry. Oh, Barry help

[00:51:14] Barry: I could do like

a song. There's two songs I wanted to do, but one, maybe I do the one that I did. You talked about a little earlier, which is called, "Be Kind"

it's really simple. It's a Calypso song and it kind of has a beat by

[00:51:30] Barry singing: we'll try it.

[00:51:31] Matt: Oh, he's pointing at us. I think he wants us to do.

[00:51:34] Barry: Yeah. Yeah. You guys slap it on the table.

[00:51:38] Fawn: Oh, I can't hear the beat. I can't hear you thumping. No, it's funny. It goes out the sound good. Yeah, the sound

[00:51:46] Barry singing: goes out.

[00:51:47] Barry: I'll just try it, see how it goes

Be

[00:51:57] Barry singing: kind.

[00:51:57] Barry: Be kind to someone

[00:52:05] Barry singing: cut

out to her

for.

How does smile

to someone

sit beside me. I'm the rock.

This girl or boy

will know what's right then

car.

[00:54:34] Fawn: Yeah. Hey,

[00:54:38] Barry singing: it's a Calypso

[00:54:38] Barry: song.

[00:54:40] Matt: And you know, honestly, when I'm kind on a, one-on-one kind of like. I get this like mischievous, like my brain, different parts of my brain fire that don't necessarily fire in some and by fire, I just mean neurons. But, um, that, you know, when you're kind of just doing what you're doing, you're just kind of going through your day and doing whatever it is you're doing.

There's a certain, I don't know, there's a not fun-ness to it. And there's a funness to kind, there's an uplift. There's a mischievous for me is mischievous. I don't know if that's for everybody. Totally. But I always feel like I'm doing something a little bit naughty,

[00:55:17] Fawn: actually the random acts of kindness, or you do something and you run

like random acts of kindness. It just uplifts you for a while. Yeah. Yeah. Why does it feel mischievous? Cause I know exactly what you're talking about. I feel the same way I'm like, and then I have to run. Why what's that? That's that's that's another topic that's deep. That's deep.

[00:55:44] Barry: Yeah, it could be the just there's

no, I think a lot of what people do in life is transactional.

You're doing, trading things with people, but kindness for its own sake, sort of like, uh, it's uh, the line in my other song, open your heart to the sky. Remember your, where in your why. Where are you? Why are you here? That kind of thing. And I think that kindness is a way of saying that you don't work for it.

You're not an employee of kindness. You're not a friend who trades things with each other, but you're doing it out of just a pure, there's like a purity of motive that I think makes us realize our, why, you know, I think that that's, that's one of those and the mischievous part, I think that's kind of like.

You're a rogue. You know, if you're living in a world where everything is, you're thinking about it, people get set to pay a hundred thousand dollars to go to college. So they be in debt and fearful their whole life about money and all these other things that prey on our lower brain that make us feel fight or flight response to the world.

Whereas kindness as a way of escaping that. When you're kind, you don't need money to be kind, in order to be happy, you know, to a certain extent, we need kindness. Kindness is like, uh, I think, it, fulfills an existential primal need.

[00:57:09] Fawn: That is perfect.

That is the perfect way to hold that thought. Let's just stay here right here. This the world needs you. The world needs. Help the world to be kind. And remember, make eye contact. It is all about what is happening between you and me. Hold it right there. That's where kindness lives and that's the ripple that will be created and go all around everywhere.

Let's just hold that and we will talk again in a few days, Barry. Thank you. Thank you for this beautiful reminder. Thank you for the truth. Thank you for your kindness. You are an exceptional, beautiful, loving friend. We are so lucky. We are so lucky, Barry, thank you

[00:58:11] Barry: to be with you guys. So thank

[00:58:13] Fawn: you. We love you so much.

[00:58:15] Matt: Absolutely. And if this isn't enough for you, because God knows it isn't for me, we do have an earlier episode with him.

[00:58:22] Fawn: We do, and it's, there's a link to it right in this episode. And remember, go to forcefield for good.com. You will find Barry's work. He is an amazing speaker. He goes around and speaks with children and he, he he's, I'm telling you, he is the ambassador of kindness.

I'm not kidding. He is an amazing writer, illustrator, obviously songwriter and a musician, a phenomenal human being. https://forcefieldforgood.com/. Check him out, get his music.

[00:59:01] Barry singing: Thanks guys.

[00:59:02] Barry: It's been really a pleasure just hanging out with you at this real difficult time. I know that, uh, in the end everything's gonna work out great.

That's

[00:59:12] Fawn: what I think kindness will prevail Barry.

[00:59:16] Barry: Yes. Kindness will always prevail if we let it. And I think we have to practice it. It doesn't take much, it can get a kitty or a dog to start and starting your neighbor next. It's something that grows in time and protect your ability to love because that's where the, that's the heart of who you are.

[00:59:42] Fawn: Yes. Protect your ability to love very much. Love you guys. Thank you so much.

[00:59:49] Matt: And remember you're not alone.

[00:59:51] Fawn: Make eye contact. It's all what's happening between you and me. Love you.

Flowers evolve to be attractive to bees so that they can pollinate and they can reproduce themselves, which is if there's a lot of competition in the flower world, this is why you have such stunning orchids. It's because there's so much competition for bees because they can only pollinate so much in a day; the brighter and more colorful flowers attract the bees.
But where did the perception of color come from and why is there such angst about color in our conversation and our lives?

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/friendlyspace

Transcript

[00:00:00] Fawn: Color is a wild thing. It comes up a lot. It's very complicated. Yes. We're recording, honey. I I've always been confused by it in photography terms because each color has a certain temperature and it's so scientific. Why are I have so many questions? And we have so many topics I wanted to discuss today, but I'll try to stick it to one.

Stick to one thing, not stick sticking to one thing, but I don't know, is this what started our color conversation? I was telling you about this person that I really like his artwork. I really like on Instagram and I usually don't follow or want to buy paintings. You know, I don't even hang up our own artwork because

be cause I feel like there's so much information and there's so much loudness happening, not loudness as in aesthetics, but loudness as an information and talking that's happening. I feel like the furniture talks to me. I feel like when there's art or a photograph, well, photograph is art, but when there's something on the wall, it's constantly communicating with you and I need some quiet, right.

Because I'm already; bear with me folks, but I already feel like even just sitting, I feel like I'm hearing and understanding, or at least taking part in whatever is happening in the world, I'm hearing it. You know what I mean? Does that sound totally off the wall? I don't want to sound too. Woo.

[00:01:40] Matt: You know, for me as a individual, I don't like wearing logos.

I don't like wearing logos on my shirts. I don't like wearing logos on my jackets. I don't like wearing, you know, let alone a band name on it.

[00:01:54] Fawn: That's because it's talking to other people it's not talking to you. Is it talking to you?

[00:01:58] Matt: The thing is, is that I feel the need then to defend whatever it is I'm wearing.

So like it's like I could never get a tattoo because I'd have to defend that forever.

[00:02:10] Fawn: That's a different subject. What I'm saying is things that speak to you. I guess tattoos are speaking to you, but you're saying a logo that you're wearing. Do you don't want that because it speaks to other people.

[00:02:23] Matt: It also speaks to me though,

[00:02:26] Fawn: but do you hear it while you're wearing it?

[00:02:27] Matt: I do.

[00:02:28] Fawn: Even if you're not seeing the little,

[00:02:30] Matt: because

[00:02:31] Fawn: mark,

[00:02:31] Matt: anybody can go up to you and say, Hey.

Right.

[00:02:35] Fawn: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But what I'm saying is actually hearing things, I'm hearing like a population of thoughts I'm picking up on things, right? So when there's a, when there's a, a piece of art on the, on the wall, it's constantly talking to me, I guess you're saying the same thing.

[00:02:54] Matt: I'm saying the same thing.

Okay. It's weirder. When you wear clothes, you're constantly having a conversation with the world and you have to be present and understand the conversation you're having at that

given moment.

[00:03:08] Fawn: Yeah. And that's another subject we've talked about is how, style and choice of wardrobe clothing can bond you or break you from relationships.

Yes. So fashion is a big deal, but today we're talking about color. And it started, I think, remind me if I'm wrong. But I think the conversation about color with us happened because of this artist on the Instagram. He posts these beautiful cubistic Picassoesque amazing paintings and they're always in black and white.

[00:03:44] Matt: Okay.

[00:03:45] Fawn: Or at least just monotone. And there's one time he posted and he said, I like to paint in black and white, the faces that I'm painting, because I don't want people to see color. I don't see color. And this is what he was saying. He was saying he doesn't see color like that, that he wants people to look at faces and not see color, but see the beauty of their soul.

I really like this guy. And I usually always compliment him and thank him for his wisdom because he always offers such wisdom in his posts, just like one line or two lines. But this time his, his, his, uh, I don't know, a bit of naive ignorance or maybe just ignorance or not wanting to understand fellow brothers and sisters who obviously are not Caucasian.

I understood that. Oh wow. This guy is not, he's not one of us like, meaning one of me, do you know what I mean? Like all of a sudden I sense the division and I sense that, oh my God, he's one of, he could be very firm in his belief cause I never heard a reply. And I, I don't know if, if I got muted after making the comment that I made, which was.

I love my brown face and I love the colors of my brothers and sisters. And I want, I wish not. I want, I wish people would love and appreciate the colors and see them and acknowledge the colors and capital AND and, also love and appreciate my soul and our soul. Right. And I never heard back.

[00:05:37] Matt: Right.

[00:05:37] Fawn: Pure silence.

I'm like, wow, is this is this I might, did I turn into one of those that got, had to be completely erased off of comments and like that you never, you're not familiar with Instagram, but like, you know how, like you can erase someone's comment and the whole thing goes away. Right? Right. Well, I think so.

Anyway, I still don't understand social media myself. I don't want it. I didn't want to turn it into a fight. All I'm saying is, please don't say I am color blind, or I want to not see color. That is so for me disrespectful, it's like, it's like when I remember I had, I would tell you guys about the guy I was engaged to, who had a really racist, racist mother and here I come.

Right. And, and she would make. W most hurtful comments about me, about my family, about the world out there in general, you know, like, um, someone, um, I never saw these people, but someone was moving into like quote unquote, her neighborhood and we were standing in the driveway and she goes, oh God, look, the Alibaba's are moving in.

And, um, I, that was towards the end for me of like really the beginning of the end, realizing I can't marry into this. This is what, what kind of trash this right. And I looked at her, I said, oh, you mean like me? I don't remember exactly what I had told her. And she gave me one of those famous infamous lines.

Oh, well, you're not one of them. You're one of us. I'm like lady, I don't want to be one of you. I am not one of you. Um, do you look, I don't want to like get into the bowels of the toilet here. I don't, I want to keep the vibration of our show very high, but I think that's where a conversation with color started.

Right. And then you took it to where you take it.

[00:07:47] Matt: A color is... talking about race issues with you as always very tricky are always very sticky because I am aware of how gosh, darn pale I am

and how I had interesting upbringing.

[00:07:59] Fawn: Yeah. But one of the things I love about you is that you are very tall; you are my opposite. What I love about you is you had such understanding and understanding as in you were well enriched with all cultures. Well, I won't say all cultures, but a lot of culture in you, you knew things that

I thought only people from my background would know of, because it's an our like inner circle because no one pays attention to us or if they do, they call us crazy or, you know, "other" and what made me intrigued when we were becoming friends was whoa, you know, this, you know, like you knew, you knew a lot about the middle Eastern culture and then

you would say that you didn't, you always had this, uh, wanting to understand more or like, not assuming that you did, like you were walking around as an, as a cultural encyclopedia, you know, like your brother does that your brother will like read something or hear something. And then he's the expert on that because he has, he is a genius, like IQ wise, but he's not a social genius.

No social IQ, no emotional IQ, right? I won't say no, but it's low. His genius book levels, smart level is very high. You, one of the things that made me receptive receptive is that the word, like I looked at you and I, I felt open. I felt safe. I felt safe to express and just be with you and be myself. Because I sensed love in you.

Not, I'm not saying love for me. I sensed a love of life and everything that life entails in you. So yes, you are white and I'm not going to say, yeah, you're not one of them. You're one of us. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you have a genuine rich love for everything.

[00:10:16] Matt: Yeah. And I could never hear myself saying something like, oh no, you're not one of them.

You're one of us, although I just said it there. Right. But my

goodness.

[00:10:25] Fawn: Did you ever say anything like that before you met me though?

[00:10:29] Matt: See, everybody wants to point to those points in time where, you know, they did good. Like you never hear from the guy who buys and sells stock about the terrible stock trading made you all hear about the great trade, the one great trade they made.

So we tend to edit our lives to provide the most optimistic kind of views of things. But, you know, I have to say that my peer group, my you know, even from a young age, uh, was not particularly white Anglo-Saxon

Protestant.

[00:11:03] Fawn: That's true. You always felt more comfortable with a mix.

[00:11:08] Matt: Exactly.

[00:11:09] Fawn: Um, you know, it's interesting when I thought you were going to say like, people who make comments, like I'm not racist, because look at you, I'm tolerating you.

Like I had so many people telling you that. I had, I've had your family tell me

that.

[00:11:25] Matt: Oh my goodness.

[00:11:27] Fawn: But not, that's no joke. I'm not exaggerating." I'm not racist. I'm tolerating you aren't I?" Like, and they didn't do it in a, sarcastic.... They weren't trying to be sarcastic. They were trying to be like, look at me.

I'm. What's the word for what, what do they think they are when they think that they're not racist? Like when they think they're tolerant,

[00:11:47] Matt: but tolerant is a scary word right?

[00:11:49] Fawn: Tolerant is

terrible. It's like, I'm putting up with you. Oh my God. You tolerate something that annoys you is toleration. That's... words are funny.

So going back to color though, which is related to why we're talking about this words and colors, right? You dove deep into where really, um, the description of color comes from, can you take it away? Cause you actually did your, I tried to do the research, but then I got mad and then I stopped.

And I was actually about to say, let's not do the show on color because I'd rather talk about this other thing that I want to talk about. 'cause I couldn't, I could not the information you sent me, pissed me off.

[00:12:35] Matt: Well, I get it. As soon as we talk in the fifties with researchers, white men researching, are there going to be white men wearing, wearing their crisp white shirts and their ties with their glasses and they're balding hair.

[00:12:49] Fawn: And it's not just from the fifties. It's like some guy gets on a ship and goes over there and he's like, look what I discovered. I discovered. This, you know, like they become the owner of something. They think they discovered it. Well,

[00:13:03] Matt: do you know what I mean? I get that and what, okay. They weren't anthropologist or sociologist.

Right. But that's just it, they were going, looking for meaning.

[00:13:13] Fawn: Yes, they were going, looking for meaning, but from my perspective, they were going from a state of ignorance looking for meaning and how much. You have to take a deep look at yourself. How open are you to other colors and other, other, anything, when you go into something new? Are you aware that you have a very myopic view of things, very limited scope on things.

So, all right, you're going to go to this culture, this Indonesian culture or this culture that is definitely, so, seems so different from yours, that their skin color is different. The way they dress is different, they have a completely different language. They have a completely different understanding and expression of life.

So you're going to go in and suddenly write down, oh, this person's word for this is this word. Really, unless you were born in that culture, you're not going to know the nuances of the language and you think they're going to share it with you, a white person coming from some university. I know Matt is rolling his eyes right now and looking at his watch, but let me just go off on my rants and then you can tell me what you discovered.

[00:14:30] Matt: Oh and then you'll let me talk?

[00:14:31] Fawn: Yeah. So what I'm saying is see, now I lost my train of thought. Let me go back. Let me think. So there's white guy goes to like, like, let's say an island with a culture that is darker in complexion. Okay. Like I already went through the list. Right. All the ways that it is different from his European culture that he's coming from, I'm saying, unless you were born with this language. Unless you have been raised within this family, how do you really know the nuances of language?

So you have a few people telling you or translating for you. That is not enough to totally understand. So my question to you is how long were these guys? Was it more than one guy is a one guy.

[00:15:20] Matt: Can we at least describe what that, hold

[00:15:22] Fawn: on, hold on. Well, let me just finish. What I'm saying is how did he, or they know that this in fact was the end all be all of words and translation.

And so he goes back, he goes running back to his university in his pinstripe suit and says, look at this, they have a word for brown, which is this, look at that it's coffee. Really? How, how factual is that? So, anyway, go ahead and

nevermind.

[00:15:55] Matt: Thank you. So anyways, you have two sociologists. Sociologists slackers complete and utter slackers.

They got to write a paper and crank it out. And this is, again, this is slackers. I will, I will tell you why they're slackers. And again, this is me completely projecting into them and God, their names don't care. Anyways, they get 20 people bilingual who speak another language who came from a different culture.

They get 20 that's, 5, 10,

20 people.

[00:16:27] Fawn: Where do they get these people from?.

[00:16:28] Matt: I don't know, probably hanging out in. I think it was, it doesn't matter. Hanging, probably hanging out in the town that they were, they had to concoct a paper. And so they asked them, they provide them with a paint chip sample set. And they say, can you pick out all the colors and tell me what the colors

[00:16:47] Fawn: are?

So I remember looking at this, um, all right. So it was literally like a huge spectrum of paint chips, because so basically like five to 10 different shades of yellow. Um, right. Every color. It was kind of like every

[00:17:04] Matt: color in the spec, every, not every color in the spectrum, but a lot of colors in the spectrum

[00:17:09] Fawn: from variations and degrees of a one particular color within that.

Right. Okay. Got it.

[00:17:14] Matt: Okay. And they got 20 people, so, you know, God knows they probably scrawled with a crayon on a piece of paper for the original experiment, because it was 20 people. Come on and. And they asked people to pick out the colors.

[00:17:27] Fawn: What do you mean, "They used a crayon"?

[00:17:28] Matt: Well, I'm just saying it was a very low budget experiment at first.

Okay.

[00:17:33] Fawn: So it wasn't like a high-tech because we've got 20, we're

[00:17:36] Matt: talking to 20 people. Okay. And we probably talked to 20 people over the course of a week. We wrote our paper and we presented it right. Rock on. But what they discovered was that when was this, this was in like the fifties. So what they discovered was, the first colors that every society understands are dark and light. So this is dark and this is light, not necessarily black and white, but this is a light color. This is a dark color. That is the initial kind of level that people, that societies are in.

[00:18:14] Fawn: Then they come to a conclusion for why that is.

[00:18:19] Matt: We'll get to that theoretically. And then. Uh, step number two, all of a sudden things are dark. Things are light and things are red.

Why red?

[00:18:31] Fawn: How did they, how did they get to red?

[00:18:34] Matt: We'll talk about that. And then once you got past dark and light red, then you either got to green or yellow was actually discerned as a unique color.

And then the next level is green and yellow combined, or rather green and yellow are now represented. So now your color palette looks like dark, light, red, green, and yellow, and then you add blue and then you add brown and then you add quote-unquote the rest of the colors, which I guess takes us to a more contemporary palette, which gives us like purple, purple, orange, gray and pink.

Now, every single culture has a way of saying, let's say blue, because come on, blue is color of the sky. Right. But what they were looking for was the succinct, tiny word for it. When I learned Spanish, for instance, slacker teachers didn't teach us marron, which is brown. They taught us color de cafe, which is color of coffee was brown.

And I don't know why. Yeah.

[00:19:44] Fawn: In Farsi brown is "Gahveh" which is coffee.

[00:19:49] Matt: So they make the argument that if your language is comparative, that means brown doesn't exist as a color. Wait, what? Because brown is a succinct, teeny, tiny little word that doesn't refer to anything.

[00:20:04] Fawn: What?

[00:20:05] Matt: Yes.

[00:20:06] Fawn: Why?

[00:20:09] Matt: That was their criteria.

[00:20:10] Fawn: What can you back up? Hold on. I think you lost me and I went to a race racist point backup and say it again.

[00:20:22] Matt: Okay. They're not saying that cultures don't have a word for bro, have, you know, a phrase for brown, what they say is they the word for brown is a conjunction of many words. And it's not its own succinct word. That's what they were going for. Like pink doesn't refer to the color of a Carnation or the color of, you know, a certain sunrise or anything like that.

For

[00:20:51] Fawn: example, blue in Farsi is ABI. OB means water. When you put an E sound at the end of a word, it means coming from or looking like. So it's watery is blue in Farsi. Obee referring to water.

[00:21:13] Matt: And similarly, I think in Turkish, the, um, the way you say brown is you're describing coffee.

[00:21:19] Fawn: Yeah, same, same with Farsi.

And it's the same.

And That's what I learned in Spanish too,

[00:21:23] Matt: so that's kind of the evolution. so dark, light, then red

[00:21:28] Fawn: see, I'm sorry that doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. Hold on, hold on. It doesn't make sense to me. And this is where I get my, my antenna goes up because how much of this is this white guy's perspective of language?

Because I mean, you were saying that blue. There's water and then there's this guy and they referred to that and there's definitely a color for blue. Right. But hello, brown is the earth that we are walking on. So why not?

[00:22:00] Matt: So why not call it earthy? Yeah, right. Again, this was their look

take on it,

[00:22:07] Fawn: like I said, and this is where I started to tune myself always on what you're trying to

[00:22:11] Matt: categorize.

Cause this is what welcome to the Greek tradition. We love our categories and this is what the white guys were Greek is actually interesting because this was originally discovered by somebody who later was the prime minister of England, or I'm just going to be terrible with names today, but he evaluated Homer's works and he noticed that.

Homer did not describe color. Very, you know, Homer did not describe color the way we describe color.

[00:22:40] Fawn: So like the Odyssey. Yes. Talking about the

ocean,

[00:22:44] Matt: the ocean is the color of wine. Yeah. I don't understand why, because that was the closest kind of metaphor that he had.

[00:22:52] Fawn: You know, I

saw that he just, he didn't say it's the color of wine.

I think it was like it's they said that in the Odyssey, it was like, the ocean is like wine. It didn't say, did it say it's like the color of wine?

[00:23:05] Matt: He went through

color and there was no orange and no blue anywhere, but, and purple was the color of sunset and sometimes the color of water and sometimes the color of dawn.

Alright. Or a purple ish color.

[00:23:22] Fawn: It's on how you look at it though.

[00:23:25] Matt: The ocean in a

[00:23:26] Fawn: nutshell, well, the ocean could be the color of wine. If, if someone is killing whales or dolphins, it turns blood, right. Or the ocean could be the color of wine if the sun is setting and you hit the light, just at a certain perspective, and you see a red cast over the water, right.

And I remember being a kid, some teachers saying the water isn't really blue, the ocean, isn't really a blue, it's a reflection of the sky that makes you think is blue. Is that true?

[00:23:56] Matt: I couldn't tell you. I mean, it is interesting that if you pour yourself a glass of water, it's not blue. It's clear

[00:24:02] Fawn: if you take ocean water and put it in a glass of wine and a glass of wine and a glass of water, it isn't blue, right?

[00:24:10] Matt: Unless there's a lot of, well, no, it can be a little brown if there's a lot of sand in there, but if it's, you know, based on what is actually floating in the water,

[00:24:20] Fawn: All right. Well, I don't like brown being disliked that I'm mad and that's where I tuned away from that. From studying whatever reading, looking at what you sent me, I'm like, this is garbage, right?

I don't like being, I don't like brown being other because hello, am I not always the other, do I not have to check other and every box I fill out for what race are you other? They never said brown. Well, they said that it's not relating to anything. It doesn't exist. You said brown doesn't exist. That brown is maybe like coffee, but it's not sky.

Do you understand what I'm saying? Very confused. Now. Didn't you say brown didn't exist?

[00:25:04] Matt: I'm saying the word

for brown.

[00:25:06] Fawn: I'm not saying you did, by the way, I'm saying. In this research, by this person,

[00:25:12] Matt: if you have a culture that only sees that only describes colors succinctly, and again, the word as succinctly as dark and light, right?

They're not going to say they're not going to point up at the sky and just say, oh, well, that's a light color. They're going to describe it that's the sky or that's, you know, or they may describe something that is blue as being the same color as the sky or a color that the sky has

or whatever.

[00:25:42] Fawn: But you see, this is what I'm talking about.

This is why I love photography. But when I was studying at university, I tuned away from it because it is just, I mean, we got into the temperatures of degrees of color. Oh, my God, I'm getting a special light meter for color to measure color. You know, I understand for sure, like it's a science, but , it pissed me off then to just, just looking at it from a photographic, scientific point of view, trying to get the room to look

as close to as what the human eyes seeing, and not have the colors be way off base. You have to measure things. It's not, I don't know. Maybe I don't know. It still pisses me off. I don't understand what you said about brown. I still don't. I think I'm emotionally stuck on what you a word or a word or two that like stuck in my head and I didn't hear everything you had to say about brown.

[00:26:45] Matt: So we have an arbitrary word., "blue" Right or an arbitrary word, or while oranges are required, we have an arbitrary word, yellow, right? Yellow in, in English, yellow doesn't have really have a root. It doesn't really have a prefix or suffix. Yellow is just yellow and that's just one of those things we learn. It doesn't have anything to do with sunlight or I dunno, what

[00:27:14] Fawn: else is yellow?

The basics. So we're not talking about butter yellow, pale ales is talking about yellow. Okay.

[00:27:23] Matt: All right. Right. Okay. And that's all they're saying is as a culture, they notice different kind of steps. And if you have a color wheel that, that, where you identify five different colors, colors in quotes, because it starts with dark and light.

You identified dark light, red, green, and yellow as a culture. And they notice this around the world. They notice this kind of universal tendency in some 85, 89% of cultures around the world. Now I'm jumping ahead of myself because at this point in time, they're slackers and they talked with 20 different people. Right.

And they kind of came up with this kind of scheme. Well, everybody flipping unloaded on them because they call them slackers like 20 people who aren't natives, who are no longer native speakers, they're bilingual speakers and the whole bit. You guys didn't do your legwork. So then they did their legwork.

They got thousands of people across the world. They talked only with native speakers. They had people go out with paint, chip samples, and they gathered all this data and they crunched it all together.

[00:28:34] Fawn: And then what happened?

[00:28:35] Matt: They, they found that the, it lined up fairly closely with the 20 people. So. Kind of the order that I gave is actually from the thousands of people, it's not from the 20 people.

So they discovered that this was a universal trait. This is how, if you think about it, this is one of God knows how many different ways people have of describing their environment.

[00:28:57] Fawn: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting. What else do you have to say about it? I could, like, I don't want to diverge I'm going to stop myself.

[00:29:06] Matt: Well, they started trying to describe that the hows and whys of how we went from, because obviously every culture, well not obviously, but 89% of cultures probably started out with just a differentiation between dark and light and then to red.

So why, why was red first?

[00:29:24] Fawn: Well, red is common throughout humanity. It's blood.

[00:29:29] Matt: Well, why are most barns red?

[00:29:32] Fawn: Well,

[00:29:32] Matt: you told me why in America is because back in the day, people wanted to paint their barns because it helps protect them from weather, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So they go and they would get paint.

Well, early on easiest paint to make, as it turns out is red because red is red paint is created via iron and iron is one of, if not the most common element in the soil. Common Element in soil is red. So not only do you have blood, not only do you have meat for you carnivores out there and not only is the sunrise and sunset have red kind of tones on it, but the most common element and the most common paint is red.

[00:30:17] Fawn: I remember driving through.

they call it the Bush, but like driving through Ethiopia and there were no roads. So we were basically on sand dirt, and it was this beautiful light shade of red. Right. And then we have the red rocks in

Colorado,

[00:30:36] Matt: red sand beaches in Hawaii. Really.

[00:30:40] Fawn: I've never seen the only one there on our honeymoon.

See

[00:30:43] Matt: red sand,

oh no, maybe it was red dirt red.

[00:30:47] Fawn: Oh, red dirt. I remember you said sand. I went to the

[00:30:51] Matt: beach sand. What's the difference, woman!

[00:30:53] Fawn: My God. Yeah. That's where we got the really great snowcones.

[00:30:58] Matt: No, they were shaved ice

shaved ice,

whole different animal,

[00:31:02] Fawn: never again. I mean, we still, that was amazing how they did that.

It was amazing

[00:31:10] Matt: Hawaii.

It's not like, it's not like hot enough there, but Hey, we digress. Okay. Unless you want to talk about colors on shaved ice

[00:31:18] Fawn: that's. Okay.

[00:31:21] Matt: So anyways, so red and also red is very, very, is a very striking. You know, red is seen. In point of fact, Lenin. When I was reading about Lenin, we're talking about Vladimir Ilʹich Lenin of the Russian revolution and the whole Bolsheviks and all the Russian craziness.

He became a revolutionary because he was at a protest, not minding his own business, but not being a front runner, but Lenin had red flipping hair and the cops noticed him.

[00:31:52] Fawn: Oh, ginger.

[00:31:54] Matt: He was a ginger and the cops noticed him. So he had to go into hiding. And basically at that point, his only he had, he had two options.

Well, three options. He could, he could surrender to the police, which not really an option. He could flee the country. Challenging. Or he could overthrow the whole country. So he chose number three, which is bizarre, but Hey, there you go.

[00:32:13] Fawn: All, because of the hair color,

[00:32:16] Matt: that was what, one of my textbooks espoused.

And God knows because every view of history is slightly different disagree with that. But man had red hair, man definitely noticed at a protest rally.

Anyway. So red is a striking, shocking

[00:32:35] Fawn: color. Okay. Right.

[00:32:37] Matt: All right. And then the hypothesis was green or yellow.

Okay. And here's the fun one. So why the differentiation? Well, as it turns out, things look yellower at certain elevations, certain longitudes and latitudes as the, as the sun curves is their theory. Yeah, which is why green things take on a more yellowish tinge or greener things take on a greener tinge. Oh

[00:33:05] Fawn: my goodness, Matt. This is why I never liked living in Southern California.

I kept trying to describe to people. It's like kryptonite for me. And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like the color. I can't stand the color in Los Angeles. It is this yellow, green color. That is my kryptonite. I can't, I hate that color. I never use the word hate hardly ever. I don't, but it was like, I had no energy and, you know, for a person that's very visual and, and no one understood.

They're like, what are you talking about? But it was a, it was a yellow, green, do you know what I'm talking about?

[00:33:47] Matt: And now I do, now that we don't live in LA

[00:33:49] Fawn: anymore. Right. That's why I love the Pacific Northwest because it was blue, green, like the atmosphere is that color. Anyway. Sounds a weird, but it's true

[00:33:59] Matt: for me.

Ha shocked her today.

[00:34:02] Fawn: You didn't

shock me. What do you mean shocked her

today?

[00:34:07] Matt: I painted that very clear picture and

[00:34:11] Fawn: me, but I can. I can come commiserate. You did not allude. Oh, the man, the husband illuminated me. What would I do? How would I know how to tie my shoes without you?

Good Lord, honey. Go on. Get.

[00:34:28] Matt: So that gives us green or yellow. And then the other follows closely in hand the other, the other for green or yellow, depending on their longitude and latitude. And then the rest of them kind of flow from an industrialized society, the blues blue to brown to purple orange, gray and pink.

And that was, that was the theory.

[00:34:51] Fawn: So is that it? Are you done? That's enough. I'm done for now. I don't know what to add to that, other than this, have you noticed that people who live at a certain, I guess, latitude, longitude, latitude. Which one is latitude this way. I don't know.

All right. I'll just say this people up in the north are afraid of color, but if you look at their weather, it's very monotone gray. Like let's look at Amsterdam, right? Let's look at Seattle. It's gray. It's cloudy. Most days you don't see the different colors in the sky because you have a cover of a blanket of white that turns into a gray, you know, it's very monotone and their sense of decorating is the same way.

Like there's not a lot of color within these cultures if they were to be left to their own devices. That is that if they don't mix with other friends around the world who come from different cultures, Come from different parts of the plant where the sun is different, the light is different. Unless you mix with those cultures, I've noticed that homes and furniture, even food is very bland.

No. Think about it. And all the, oh, I probably sound so racist right now, but, but if you go further to the lower half of the hemisphere, there's so much more vibrant colors in pottery, and just looking at the sky, the houses, although then nevermind. Well, let's look, but then there are parts of Europe, but then w what did they do?

They conquered other areas, maybe they came back and said, oh, let's paint some purple houses and pink houses and put them all together. You know, like, well,

purple's

[00:36:47] Matt: a trick, but let's talk about food for a second. And let's talk about bland food versus spicy food. Right? Well, typically what you want is you want edible food and at when things are warmer, the food spoils.

So you put more spices on, so you can't taste that the meat is turning.

[00:37:11] Fawn: What does this have to do with the color?

[00:37:12] Matt: This has to do with spicy versus bland food.

[00:37:15] Fawn: Okay. Well, what, what, w where are you

[00:37:17] Matt: going? That's it, that's all I'm going, because I can, I can talk to that. I can't talk about why colors aren't as profuse, other than purple.

Purple is tricky, because certainly in England purple was reserved for royalty. It's a Royal color, because it was so hard. To get to

[00:37:33] Fawn: get. Yeah. But where did they get it from?

[00:37:35] Matt: Hello? They got it from octopi. What's that

[00:37:38] Fawn: octopus that they got from there. Octopus

[00:37:42] Matt: sync. Really? I thought that was black. That's how they originally got

[00:37:46] Fawn: it.

I thought that was black, I

[00:37:49] Matt: guess it's. Purple enough.

[00:37:51] Fawn: Hmm. Well, I was gonna say is usually things that are so rare, like certain jewels or even spices it's because you're going to the Southern hemisphere and the light is different and there's more color there. And there's more there more things growing because there's more sun probably.

Right. Or there's just the perfect combination of light, that makes you grow different things that grows more life than if you were in the north. Yes,

[00:38:20] Matt: absolutely. Cloud cover. Flowers evolve to be attractive to bees so that they can pollinate and they can reproduce themselves, which is if there's a lot of competition in the flower world, this is why you have such stunning orchids.

It's because there's so much competition for bees because they can only pollinate so much in a day.

[00:38:42] Fawn: Uh, so the brighter and more colorful attract the bees. So why do you think that humans are not like that? Why are humans so afraid of color? Okay. I'll say this

[00:38:58] Matt: is a huge prejudicial statement right there.

[00:39:01] Fawn: Hello. Why are Northern Europeans or Northern American areas? And you know, why is the Northern hemisphere so afraid of color.

I mean, I can take it to what's happening right now. You know, you have people that are fleeing middle Eastern countries or island nations with people that look like me darker than me. And they're not, they're not welcomed with open arms.

Why is it when, uh, oh, European Caucasian looking country is in trouble. And I, you know, first of all, we should help each other. We're all brothers and sisters, your arms should be open to humanity. However, look at how one group gets treated. I just saw a stream of things that have been happening in the past, even in the recent past of how darker people that are fleeing for their lives are kicked at the border.

And, and I'm not talking about just here in the United States with Mexico, I'm talking about Europe, how cruel people are to these people saying we have no room for you, but if they look like them, then it's like, they're there with open arms, with toys, with food, with hot and cold drinks. You name it, opening their homes to people.

I'm not, I'm not trying to make a total blanket statement. Not everybody's like that saying, you know, you, there's no room here. Don't come here, but it just seems to be the prevalent thing. Why are people so afraid of color?

Why are people afraid to have wild colors for furniture? How about that? We talk about furniture and design.

[00:40:45] Matt: We can talk about cars too, if you want.

[00:40:47] Fawn: Well, I know cars because the police will stop you tend to stop you when you have a brighter color. If you're a gray, you kind of can. Um, or is it the other way around?

If you have a gray car, your insurance is higher. Wasn't that the case.

[00:41:04] Matt: Wow. Really?

[00:41:05] Fawn: Because I don't know.

[00:41:07] Matt: I think that yellow car, you look like you're traveling faster than you actually are.

[00:41:10] Fawn: Really?

[00:41:11] Matt: Yes.

[00:41:12] Fawn: Hmm.

[00:41:13] Matt: Yes.

[00:41:14] Fawn: Because it grabs your attention.

[00:41:16] Matt: Yes.

[00:41:17] Fawn: So that the cop is more likely to look at you. If you're a brighter.

I don't know, this is all very complicated, like

[00:41:25] Matt: bees and flowers, right?

[00:41:28] Fawn: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I swear, I heard a long time ago. If you have a gray car, your insurance is higher. Okay. Maybe because you blend in, I blend into the asphalt. Do you know what I mean? Like,

[00:41:45] Matt: aside from your headlights tail lights, Well, I

[00:41:48] Fawn: mean, if you're driving during the day, right?

[00:41:51] Matt: Well, we have daytime running lights, so I, in a lot of cars do,

[00:41:55] Fawn: but maybe if you're looking from above, maybe, I don't know, folks, guys, I don't know. It's like, this is going all over the place now. Isn't it. but like, look at us, look at how different we are. We back in the day when we actually bought a house, we don't own the house anymore, but we rent.

We bought a house. And the first thing we did after we like, you know, clean everything and change the floors, we put every color possible on the walls. We were like, please let's add some color.

[00:42:30] Matt: Well, we wanted brightness. We were in Seattle. So we wanted that's what I'm saying

[00:42:34] Fawn: is possible, but everybody else was gray.

Like we had a color. What was she called? A color consultant analyst. And she, she put up gray stuff. I'm like lady. And,

[00:42:46] Matt: and yet though I loved it. Our bedroom was espresso,

[00:42:51] Fawn: it was espresso. We had a Moss green wall. We had a pale ale, very bright

[00:42:58] Matt: yellow. We had a divine ale. It was fine. It was called the paint company was called divine.

So yes, we had divine ale,

[00:43:06] Fawn: but like, and then our furniture was every color. Yes, it was, it was, um, and yeah, we're, we're, we're like, um, Cirque de Solei, you know, all the beautiful colors and wild things happening in the home. Um, all right. I don't know. But there you go. That was our conversation this week was just the meanderings of why and how.

[00:43:32] Matt: What's interesting though. The one thing that they discovered is there is a universality to at least 89% of the world and how we choose to evaluate color, which means that on some level we're all somewhat alike in how we discern these portions of the world, maybe tiny little slices of the world.

You know, if you start thinking about it, we're all a lot more alike than we are different.

Not to get into the sound bite of, I don't see color and all of that kind of, you know, jibberish.

Even the way we see color is similar.

[00:44:12] Fawn: Is it?

[00:44:13] Matt: I'm making that assertion.

[00:44:16] Fawn: I just said these people are afraid of color. So obviously they don't see color the way I do. They don't love color the way I

do

[00:44:23] Matt: they may be afraid of the color green, but it's still the color green.

[00:44:26] Fawn: I don't know. All right. What do you all think?

[00:44:30] Matt: Oh my goodness. We're just going to agree to disagree

[00:44:33] Fawn: here. I'm not saying I'm disagreeing. I'm just saying I don't even know the point of it. I honestly, I've been talking about it all my life color. I, whatever, man, I just, I don't know.

[00:44:47] Matt: Whatever, man.

[00:44:50] Fawn: All right, let us know what you think.

Reach out. Please reach out to us. Our friendly world podcast.com. We are working on things we're doing some giveaways. When you sign up, I'm working on a gift. When you sign up to our website, you'll be gifted with this project I'm working on. And for those of you, who've already signed up. Thank you.

I will send you all the gift as well. Please sign up our friendly world podcast.com. Check it out, check out my photography, work, check out the interviews we've done; the articles that have been written about us. If you want to find out more, there's something we have been working on for years in creating a friendship summit.

We're working more on that. Reach out to us. We want to talk to you in person. Love you. We'll talk to you soon. Be well, thank you so much. Love you. Talk to you later.

Social penetration was theorized in the seventies by two sociologists trying to figure out how people become friends and attempting to categorize different kinds of classifications of friends. We break down five stages of friendship today to better understand our relationships.

#ErwinAltman, #universityofUtah, #DolmasTaylor, #universityofDelaware, #socialpenetrationtheory, #sociology, #orientationphase, #affectversuseffect, #deepfriendships, #relationships, #stablestage, #de-penetrationstage, #conceptofself, #society, #friendship, #spiritualconnection, #socialmedia, #zoom, #exploratoryaffective, #socialexchangetheory, #successproposition, #costsandrewardsofrelationships, #Aristotle'sNicomacheanethics, #cottoncandyfriends

Transcript

[00:00:00] Fawn: Here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Hi everybody. Welcome back. Hello. Welcome to our friendly world. Have a beautiful every day. Are you having a beautiful day, a beautiful evening. Beautiful afternoon. Um, do it. Hi everyone. So Matt, Matt's going to kick it off today with a horrible, horrible, nasty title.

[00:00:26] Matt: Thanks for that

[00:00:27] Fawn: I mean, you didn't make it up, but go figure the patriarchy did, right? From the what? 1950s, seventies, 1970s. Same difference.

[00:00:37] Matt: Seventies was a very different time than the fifties.

[00:00:39] Fawn: So who are these guys? Erwin Altman of the university of Utah. And Dolmas Taylor of the university of Delaware. We have no idea how these guys knew each other.

Were they friends? I don't know. Do you know? Absolutely.

[00:00:53] Matt: But they were researchers. Yes.

[00:00:56] Fawn: Sociologists. So check it out, guys. Take it away.

Matt,

[00:00:59] Matt: social penetration theory.

[00:01:02] Fawn: ewe.

[00:01:03] Matt: Yeah, exactly. There is a little aspect of, oh dear.

Would you rather, it was called the social diffusion theory because diffusion is perhaps a, perhaps a nicer way of saying

[00:01:15] Fawn: I was thinking about it in the bathroom, I was thinking, what if we called it the social dance theory, but it was close to STD. It was S D T

I think either way, this kind of, whatever we're talking about can go awry.

[00:01:32] Matt: As most things, I suppose. Can

[00:01:34] Fawn: Go for it?

[00:01:35] Matt: Social penetration theory as, um, theorized in the seventies. This is two sociologists getting together, trying to figure out how people become friends, is very Greek in that they're attempting to categorize different kinds of classifications of friends. And honestly, on some level, it all feels very intuitive, but they, it is an objective theory because they actually did do experiments to quote unquote, prove what it is we're talking about.

[00:02:03] Fawn: I thought it was all experimental. I thought it was all experiments being done that it wasn't a one-on-one case basis. It was purely

scientific.

[00:02:12] Matt: But that's just, it, you start with your theory and then you attempt to prove it. I don't believe they started with a completely blank canvas to try and understand how people become friends.

[00:02:22] Fawn: So I don't know, in the different categories thereof. Okay. So start from the beginning. Give us a quick definition of what this is.

[00:02:28] Matt: It's defining different categories of friendships and how you move from one category to another category.

[00:02:36] Fawn: And what all that means. So let's get into it. Let's go. I'm ready.

[00:02:41] Matt: Okay. So they described five stages or steps and stage one is orientation. This is the stranger on a train stranger on a plane. They said stranger on a train, which I thought was funny. I think of it, a stranger on a plane where you're just kind of, you're kind of in this position where you're next to somebody for an hour.

And if you start the conversation, it's the types of things you usually talk about. So it's very small talky. It's very non intimate and they describe.; They have this whole theory of people are like onions and I do too, but people are like onions and what you see on the outside is the simplest kind of non-subjective things like, you see if somebody's, male or female, you see, what race someone is, how tall they are, that kind of stuff.

And that's the kind of initial things you get into with small talk, you know, where are you from? These aren't opinions, these are just things.

[00:03:38] Fawn: So this is the first layer. This is called the orientation stage and orientation, that onion, they,

[00:03:45] Matt: they referred to it's the internal personal stuff. It's where it gets weird.

[00:03:50] Fawn: So how's this different than the onion. Okay. Are you going to get into that? Are you going to explain how is what you're just taught the five stages,

[00:03:57] Matt: the stages are you and someone else.

[00:04:00] Fawn: But isn't that the layers of

the onion?

[00:04:02] Matt: Well, it's what you choose to reveal about yourself. All right. Nevermind. Yeah. And it's all fluff.

[00:04:07] Fawn: It's all messed up. Okay. Anyways, let's keep going. Okay.

[00:04:10] Matt: So once you get past this orientation phase, I think we've all, I think we all have a fairly keen

[00:04:14] Fawn: understanding of what that I don't, because I don't have small talk. So when we talked about this, I said, well, yeah, well, this is how I operate. And every single time you're like, well, it doesn't include you.

'cause you said I'm weird like that.

[00:04:28] Matt: And that's, that's the problem here folks is there are moments in time where I think I very much fall into the quote-unquote standards, but Fawn rarely does,

[00:04:38] Fawn: which is a problem,

[00:04:40] Matt: which isn't a problem. It's hard for you to understand how other people process,

[00:04:44] Fawn: right. It is.

So I don't have small talk. Orientation stage for me is I scan the person. And I can feel their entire life history and I'll get into it immediately. The stranger on the bus or the train or the plane.

So that's first stage for me, but I don't count. So I'm just going to try to be quiet, so, okay. What is small talk honey explained to me?

[00:05:10] Matt: Well, what is that? Okay. Strange. Where are you coming from? Where are you going to, what are you going to do there? That's small talk.

That's small talk,

[00:05:19] Fawn: is small talk also the weather.

[00:05:21] Matt: Yes. Small talk is the weather

[00:05:22] Fawn: is small talk. How about those Mets?

[00:05:25] Matt: Yes.

[00:05:25] Fawn: Okay. All right. Cool.

[00:05:26] Matt: Yeah. Oh, I don't follow baseball. There's like, there's no judgment there. You're just, it's very, fact-based kind of back and forth and you're and if somebody offers an opinion, it's not going to be odds are, you're not asking about deep your, your.

Deep seated core beliefs. And they're not talking about their deep seated core beliefs because

[00:05:46] Fawn: you're not invested you. Don't like there's a, there's a total division, right?

[00:05:51] Matt: It's, it's rare that small talk leads to somebody trying to convert you to Buddhism or Christianity or whatever. Cause it's small talk.

You're just hanging out.

[00:06:01] Fawn: Okay.

[00:06:02] Matt: So then they describe the next phase. Is this exploratory effective. And again, welcome to sociologists. They love sticking big words that seem like they mean a lot. It kind of means the next phase.

[00:06:16] Fawn: Okay. So it's called exploratory affective affective with an a, so I always have to look this up affect versus effect. Affect with an a a F F E C T is a verb effect is the noun.

And it's the quantity, the it's the consequences of an affect So effect is the outcome of an affect. Does that make sense? Yeah,

[00:06:45] Matt: it does, Affect as a verb, effect as a noun, but on some level, it doesn't matter. These are just words that they chose to attach to the next stage.

[00:06:53] Fawn: Well, then if you're going to think about it like that, nothing matters.

Who cares, everything was just words and numbers.

[00:07:00] Matt: There you go.

[00:07:00] Fawn: Okay. It's step three. Wait, is this three or two? I'm sorry. So this one is called. Why aren't we talking about, I thought three was affective

[00:07:10] Matt: don't jump ahead, woman.

[00:07:12] Fawn: I'm sorry.

You

[00:07:14] Matt: we're on stage two, which is, oh,

[00:07:15] Fawn: I see.

[00:07:16] Matt: Exploratory Affective.

[00:07:18] Fawn: Sorry.

[00:07:19] Matt: Thank you. This is what happens when I attempt to leave the show folks

anyways. So this is where you start to get more real with each other. This is you are more intimate. You can get into moderate topics. Now there's a lot of hot button topics right now that people won't touch particularly kind of red vs. Blue topics. This isn't those types of things.

This is. Yes. Go ahead.

[00:07:45] Fawn: Explain to me what this is, because obviously, I don't know, because I'm an uncouth in that manner. So start revealing inner-self little by little. How does that work? Can you explain me an example?

[00:07:59] Matt: It's a delicate dance.

[00:08:01] Fawn: Which I know nothing about. Right. So can you explain it to me?

[00:08:07] Matt: Uh, when you choose to reveal. So again, let's talk stranger on a train and let's talk about going through this,

[00:08:14] Fawn: hold on, stop. Stop. How about if I'm the stranger and you're coming to me, you've done the small talk. Now we're going to go to stage two exploratory affective. So I'll just be quiet. So you show me what that is because obviously if I'm, well, I need to learn.

I don't,

because they don't understand.

[00:08:33] Matt: I get it. Unfortunately, this is scientists attempting to categorize labels. Um, and honestly it's an infinite spectrum, but this takes us into, so you're a stranger. We've had our small talk. Where are you going? Where are you coming from? Wow. That's a, that's a cute skirt or whatever, you know, that kind of stuff.

Where'd you get it? That kind of stuff. Now, all of a sudden unrequested by you, maybe I start showing you pictures of my kids. So I'm making myself more vulnerable. Okay. Cause you could be like, oh my God, that's an ugly child.

[00:09:07] Fawn: Or would it be safe to say I just experienced this. I'm trying to think of something I don't know, or

like

[00:09:15] Matt: me maybe revealing that, , I served in the military or, you know, where all of a sudden people start to have a pre judged notions.

[00:09:24] Fawn: What if you had an extraordinary day and you start saying, let me tell you about what just happened to me. Like the weirdest mysterious, coincidence just happened to me. Would that be okay or is that too far?

. Well, you're,

[00:09:36] Matt: you're moving into the more intimate stage. So yes, it's totally okay.

[00:09:39] Fawn: Would this fall into the exploratory affective stage?

[00:09:43] Matt: It depends on me. And it depends on you, honestly, this is all feeling out. This is more like I'm kind of feeling you out as far as, your opinions on things, but like opinions on stuff that I kind of don't care if we disagree,

[00:09:57] Fawn: basically. You're just revealing your inner self little by little, like your inner self rather than the weather outside.

Yes. Okay. I got it. I think I got it. Okay. Okay. Sorry for interrupting.

[00:10:09] Matt: It's totally fine.

[00:10:10] Fawn: I just want to learn now.

[00:10:12] Matt: Here's where it gets fun most. Oh, it's almost painful to say this, but most friendships stop here. Most friendships stop here.

[00:10:21] Fawn: That's just it. And that's where I'm always saying, is this a true friendship because yeah, this is still an acquaintance level, isn't it?

It's still

[00:10:29] Matt: very acquaintancy. Absolutely. And this can be work relationships and this can be, even familial relationships or in-laws style relationships or room mate kind of relationships. They can stop here where, you know, you're basically just kinda like, yeah, how's it going? And you know, I'm not, I'm not here to criticize

basically.

[00:10:53] Fawn: Is this the one where you were explaining it as this is your opinion that this is the friend zone? Yeah.

[00:10:59] Matt: There's definitely the friend zone.

[00:11:01] Fawn: As in, it's kind of related to dating all these different stages. But this is the friend zone, meaning not friendship, friendship, the way we're talking about, but like you're stuck in the friend zone.

It's not going to go anywhere else. Right.

[00:11:14] Matt: And this is stuck in the friend zone. Now this is the path to a real romantic relationship, but you're not there yet. And you may never get there. Yes, it's exactly what we're

describing.

[00:11:25] Fawn: So can we take this talk and not refer

to it as a romantic relationship, but still treat it the same way you explore or romantic relationship, the romantic relationship in this case, being your romantic ideal would be that you would find your best friend.

Okay. That's

[00:11:43] Matt: fine. Does that make sense? Right. And, and no, going to a dating metaphor. I mean, uh, a romantic relationship is a friendship is a very close, deep friendship. It's a bond on many, you know, on 85 other levels, it exists as well, but on that level, it does exist.

Once the subtle nuance is the exploratory effective. Hold on.

[00:12:08] Fawn: Wait, wait, are you moving to step three right now? No. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You said something really interesting about step two, which was again the exploratory affective stage. And when you mentioned that this is the safe zone, you said something really profound to me and it

[00:12:28] Matt: explains later on in our conversation.

[00:12:30] Fawn: No, no, no. It's still about this particular stage though. I know, but, but you said this is where people can't hurt you. And I think, and I think that's why people are afraid to really reveal themselves and to have true friendship, because it does require some work to have a true friendship and that work could be being, revealing, revealing yourself

[00:12:59] Matt: where you have to make yourself vulnerable in order to really deepen a friendship or relationship.

[00:13:05] Fawn: The fear of being hurt keeps people at this superficial stage. Can I call it a superficial stage?

[00:13:15] Matt: I mean, we don't want to call it a superficial stage, but yes.

[00:13:18] Fawn: Okay.

I'm done. So, okay, stage three.

[00:13:21] Matt: Yes. So exploratory affective in their minds can turn into the affective stage. And again, this all, to me, there's an infinite levels of nuance and subtlety and a million other things. And you can drift in and out of different stages at different times and all the rest of it.

[00:13:37] Fawn: So this is

[00:13:38] Matt: affective.

So this is just a straight up affective stage three. And this is where all of a sudden you start really getting criticism. And you start arguing about aspects of your core beliefs,

[00:13:51] Fawn: because this is where you have now shared your personal and private matters .

[00:13:56] Matt: So you're starting to share the things that you hold more deeply.

Yes.

[00:14:02] Fawn: And this is where you said criticism com arguments. So

[00:14:06] Matt: it doesn't sound very, it doesn't sound very, um, uh, Friendly does it.

[00:14:11] Fawn: It makes sense though. Remember when we had our first big fight and one of our friends congratulated us,

[00:14:19] Matt: congratulate you. I didn't hear about it, but you were there.

[00:14:21] Fawn: What you there? I thought you were there. She congratulated us and said, well done. Now you can move forward. And I said, what the hell are you talking about? It's over? And she said, well, now you've had your argument and your criticism. Now, and now I can see what she meant. Like we moved to stage three.

Well, honestly, because we didn't want to separate, even though we had these criticisms and arguments.

[00:14:50] Matt: And the other thing that you learn about the other person is how they fight.

[00:14:54] Fawn: Oopsies

[00:14:55] Matt: And I always described this to different people, who are just getting into a romantic relationship.

It's like, when you do have a big fight, do you throw everything you can at the person to hurt them? Are you taking every piece of knowledge that you've ever learned about this person and you just want to hurl it back at them and hurt them. Or do you want to talk about what you're arguing about and are you going to be respectful and are you going to be mindful?

And are you going to, not go for that because there is literally, and I believe this every single relationship that I have with the exception of my wife, because I think we have a very different, much more evolved relationship. In every relationship I have. And that includes, you know, the boss, I just met a week ago to, the grocer up the street who checks me out to friends I've had for years texting him.

Well, you know, like, uh, God, but I believe that there's a series of 10 words I can string together that will terminate that relationship. And, it's not necessarily things I believe. But,, if I go into my boss and I say you're a no nothing do nothing ridiculous cartoon of a person, I'm probably going to get fired.

And that's an extreme example, but I believe that exists in just about every relationship. So when you fight, there's that string of 10 words you can put together. And if you do, then you're done. And if you choose not to, if you choose to be respectful, if you choose to be mindful, if you're just going and arguing about what you're arguing about, but you're trying to be respectful on both sides.

And this is a two way street, then, your relationship has a chance to further deepen. Otherwise it's done.

[00:16:41] Fawn: Thank

you. I went through this a few years ago with the yoga people. They were disrespectful. We reached a point in our friendship where we had reached such intimacy. And then all of a sudden they threw nuclear bombs at me during a conflict that was involving our group.

Right. And that was it. Like, and they, they thought they could just go back to normal. That's how they treated each other. They could throw out these destructive words. But in their own families, they would just get on with it and never expressed any kind of communication about why that was said. They just pretended it wasn't said.

Right.

[00:17:21] Matt: And again, familial relationships in-laws, people you work with and are going to continue to work with. Cause I just described a scenario where I would stop working there, obviously. They're different and they don't follow these rules because in many ways you're kind of in prison with them.

And your only choice is to sever all contact or continue to figure out how to make it. Okay.

[00:17:42] Fawn: Got it.

[00:17:43] Matt: And yeah, I'm not a figuring out how to make it okay kind of person.

Affective relationships actually also lead us into this is where romantic relationships can be given, which is kind of fun.

[00:17:56] Fawn: So, yeah, that makes sense. When we had our arguments, that's when we developed our marriage actually, well,

[00:18:03] Matt: that point predicated on, I mean, you don't have to duke it out and you could have, you could have

deep seeded friendships or deep friendships with people. You've never argued with , you

[00:18:16] Fawn: can, you can balance the criticism

[00:18:18] Matt: It's a bellwether though, of things because you're now throwing out things that might be controversial.

[00:18:24] Fawn: Right. And if you can maneuver it without getting burned, I don't know how else to describe it, but if you can handle the criticism and the arguments and the relationship still survives,

or it flourishes actually,

[00:18:37] Matt: but this also leads us to why people who agree on everything can have deep friendships because they can reveal all these inner things about themselves. But the other person is basically in the exact same boat so they reveal the exact same thing.

[00:18:52] Fawn: That's kind of

boring.

[00:18:54] Matt: You know, I'm not going to argue that,

[00:18:56] Fawn: I would prefer to have people that I totally don't understand for a little bit.

Because I want to grow like that,

[00:19:02] Matt: Sometimes friendships are just a case of two people who just agree on everything and there's nothing wrong with that. You know, maybe they grew up in the same small town and lived there for 40 years and

[00:19:11] Fawn: I just don't

think you can grow as human beings like that.

You can't

stretch.

[00:19:15] Matt: We're talking about friendships. We're not talking about personal growth.

[00:19:18] Fawn: Well, for me, friendship And personal growth go hand in hand and again, so that's me once again,

[00:19:24] Matt: and this is tricky. Because I'm not going to disagree with you on that level. I agree on many levels, but I can have a friend who I just agree with.

There's nothing wrong with that. I dig

that.

[00:19:34] Fawn: I don't know that to me is just an acquaintance though. You know? No. What if, like we always talk about this, like how people get in trouble because they're surrounded by yes men or yes women. Yes. Yes. Yes. You just want to agree all the time.

[00:19:49] Matt: Me that's different.

Okay. You know, I'm a, yes, man is someone who says yes, regardless of what they believe,

[00:19:57] Fawn: but it's the same outcome. If you're both, if both sides are constantly in agreement, then everything outside of that agreement is other. And therefore you have separation. Therefore you can't have a society that can easily.

dance together. That's a problem.

[00:20:16] Matt: Yeah. But I'm not talking about all friendships should be this way. I'm just saying it's okay to have a friend who's just like you.

[00:20:24] Fawn: Okay.

[00:20:25] Matt: Or even many friends. It, it just, you get into a mindset of too much self-belief that you're right. If everybody always agrees with you.

So that takes us. Okay. So we started an orientation then exploratory affective then affective, and then the next level number four, stable, which wow. It's a place where things are just on the level. I mean, they're really not, but now you're in a place of honesty, like almost complete honesty, spontaneity. And I think most importantly, you've gotten to a point where you can predict your friends' emotional reactions to various, to be scientific stimuli, but to various things that you might bring up.

[00:21:17] Fawn: Again,

this seems kind of superficial, but it makes sense

[00:21:20] Matt: because it's no other person. Now, this person has chosen to share a lot of a lot. If not all, not, I don't think we actually ever share all of what we are, but they've shared most of what they are with you when you shared most of what you are with them.

[00:21:35] Fawn: I'm sorry. I'm going to interject, but like every single one, I have a major disagreement with right here.

[00:21:41] Matt: Of course.

[00:21:42] Fawn: I don't think, first of all, I, but you're right. Like you were saying, what did you call me today? No, stop it. What'd you call me today? You said, what'd you call me when I said, am I, you said you don't

count.

[00:21:56] Matt: I did say you don't count. Yes I did folks!

Like, whatever,

[00:22:01] Fawn: whenever we can, we, can you explain, can you. Why did you say, I don't count because it sounds horrible. And

But you didn't mean it like that

[00:22:10] Matt: in computer programming, there are these things called edge cases, which are where everything's kind of backwards or it could never happen in the real world, or it's so rare to happen in the real world that maybe we don't take it into account.

It's like theories are good for 80% of the people. 89 or 90 or 95 or 99.9. But it's rare you can find something that's for a hundred percent of the people, other than stuff like you breathe air it's has it's like these really kind of course fundamental things.

[00:22:44] Fawn: Therefore you get people like me who don't fit in.

Yes. Who is the odd

duck?

[00:22:48] Matt: Yes. Who doesn't understand why they don't fit in.

[00:22:52] Fawn: So true. So stable stage, some of the deepest personal thoughts, beliefs and values are shared and reactions of the other person is predicted by the other person. Well, I was going to say, I can never predict unless I get into a psychic mode.

I can't predict what someone's going to say. I'm never going to hold that on anyone, because I feel like every human being is an ever evolving, changing. Second millisecond after millisecond. I am, I'm never going to say, this is how this person is going to react. I don't have that ability. I'm I'm not, I don't even want that.

So I will never hold anyone to that, to, to say, this is what they're going to be thinking, or this is going to be their reaction.

I don't do that

[00:23:43] Matt: action as to how you're going to think. I'm not necessarily a hundred percent accurate, but I'm probably accurate

more often than not.

[00:23:48] Fawn: But you're saying this is the majority.

Society is this way. So let's just go with that.

Leave me out of it.

[00:23:54] Matt: And you're in when you have a stable friendship or relationship

[00:23:58] Fawn: again, I don't think my friends ever know where I'm going to, what I'm going to do next. Honestly. Do you, do you honestly, do you, can you really read any

[00:24:09] Matt: emotional reactions?

Right. Okay. So wait a second. Wait, I know that if I was to make pancakes. And I was to leave flour everywhere in the kitchen, like just a thin layer of flour, everyone in the kitchen. And I left every pot and pan out that I used. And I made crap pancakes. I know how you're going. React

to that.

[00:24:34] Fawn: My lips here are disappearing, folks.

Remember when I told you when a person's lips disappear, that means they don't like what they're hearing. Okay, fine. I

get it.

[00:24:44] Matt: Okay. I mean that, I know what emotional reaction you're going to have when you come in the kitchen, it's not going to be wow. Pancakes.

[00:24:51] Fawn: Yeah,

but again, that's a very general, like big example talking about complex and they get

[00:24:58] Matt: more complex as you get into more and more

of it.

[00:25:02] Fawn: I see. I don't like scientific studies because things change all the time, but

[00:25:07] Matt: here's the thing, things change all the time. And while they do describe five levels, each level has an infinite number of nuances to it. Got it. So it's like, you're moving from, you're moving from, you're moving from blue to violet.

You're not in stage fourmoving to stage five here and you're in this element, this asset, this hue of violet.

[00:25:33] Fawn: Are you bringing the chakra system into play now, honey? Nope.

[00:25:37] Matt: Nope. It's all about pickles and

chakras.

[00:25:39] Fawn: Oh, Guys chakra is the chakra of the Meridian Shakra (pronouncing with an sh sound) means cucumber everybody in the yoga world.

So when people say your "shakra" your throat chakra (pronouncing it with an sh) you're saying your throat cucumber it's it's Chuck like chocolate. Okay, bye. Next,

[00:25:59] Matt: hold on. So stable relationships, spontaneity also factors, which is fun. I don't think I mentioned that. And then we get into. And this is just kind of the catch all last basin

to me.

[00:26:13] Fawn: What stage are we at right now? We're in the stable, which is four. Okay. Are you, are you moving on to five by now? Okay. Let us know where you're going. I'm

[00:26:21] Matt: getting just the catchall honestly. And that's they call it God. How? Because it is social penetration theory. This would be the de-penetration stage

can't help it. It's just funny. And that's just what it is. , and different points in time, different words and words are funny and aren't funny, but anyways, um, and that just is when you start like withdrawing from the friend, from whatever stage you are in the friendship. And so you can literally go from a stable relationship to a exploratory affective. You can actually just regress all the way back.

[00:27:01] Fawn: So number five, relationship starts breaking down. , negative emotions, negative talk starts coming in.

[00:27:09] Matt: Right? Well, this is like if we've gotten to a place and you and I disagree about something that turns out is very, very important. You think you shouldn't have to shower every day.

And I do now I'm kidding. We're talking about really more deep seated things that you just have a fundamental disagreement with. And I don't want to even talk about what an example of one of those, cause everything, everything in there is incendiary,

[00:27:29] Fawn: so, okay. So anything more to say on this? So that was stage five.

That would be stage five. But then they showed the onion and they said there are six, six layers,

[00:27:42] Matt: six layers of who you are is what

they believe.

[00:27:45] Fawn: So the sixth one, the layer would be your, what, your inner self, your inner

[00:27:51] Matt: most self, which is concept of self concept of self. Yes. So, you know, depending on how you view it, it's like I am the center of the universe.

The world will die at my end, that kind of stuff. And that's really, you know, we start getting very Freudian Jungian or something.

[00:28:09] Fawn: Um, excuse me, this whole thing is very Freud. And I mean, look at the stages. You're like, you meet the person and you're like, Hey, and then you get closer and then you get to this stage and then there was penetration.

And then there's de-penetration. It's this is purely from a patriarchal, Freudian. And I don't like, this is, this is the act of sex basically, but we're taking it to a friendship level or they were trying to talk about a friendship level, but like seriously talk about Freud.

[00:28:44] Matt: They shouldn't have called it.

Well, yes.

[00:28:48] Fawn: Welcome to the patriarchal society

[00:28:50] Matt: anyways, but now circling back now that we're, now that we've talked about the five, I'm only really interested in the four, when things start to fall apart, things start to fall apart. And that's what it is. And it's going to stop where both parties are going to be happy with where the relationship stops.

So either you stop completely talking to each other, or you go from being best as buddies to just talking about like, oh yes, and the weather was this and your kids are doing what and just strictly kind of a fact-based thing. But anyways, not that

yes.

[00:29:23] Fawn: Do you think you can go from four back to a one with the same people?

Yeah. So like you developed a friendship and you're like, no, no, no, no, no. Here we go. So you think you can go from five to one, so the, it starts breaking down. Right? Right. And then can you, with the same people go back to the one, which is pure small talk.

[00:29:45] Matt: Yeah. But again, I think in many ways it's so easy to just cast someone adrift so that you kind of have to be in that situation where this is somebody who is in your sphere enough. So you have to like play nice. So maybe this is someone in church. So you see them in church every Sunday. And you talk before the sermon begins. You know, you talk before, um, the service begins and you talk for five minutes when the service ends

[00:30:15] Fawn: friends though, like with major friends, who've known each other for years.

Life happens. Things happen. The world changes and you find yourself going different directions and you have fundamental disagreements and you don't want to give up this beautiful person. So you go back to the small talk. Maybe I can see that. I mean, I can't handle that, but I can see that happening.

[00:30:39] Matt: Well, not for me, but

[00:30:40] Fawn: what do you mean not for you?

Are you making fun of

me?

[00:30:44] Fawn: I didn't get

[00:30:45] Matt: it. If they have to ask you blown it folks. Anyways, now what's interesting is again, in their postulating, they postulated that the orientation phase and the exploratory affective phase require proximity; require you to be close to that person. Now in the 1970s, being close to somebody meant actually occupying a similar physical space.

It involved, you know, uh, you're in the same carpool group with your kids, your attending the same karate class, your again in church. I mean, you see these people frequently, but what's interesting is the world has evolved from this state.

[00:31:27] Fawn: Yes, yes. To both.

[00:31:33] Matt: You know, there are things that are, have gotten much more, much more better, and things that have gotten much more, not better,

[00:31:38] Fawn: much more better, babe. I did. Oh, my Orwellian today then. Okay. So what's your point?

[00:31:45] Matt: Well, what does, I wonder what proximity really means nowadays?

[00:31:50] Fawn: Yeah. The past week we've been talking about is zoom

approximate enough. I was talking to some friends and they were arguing with me about; I don't think there's an epidemic of loneliness. So I don't see your point. And they were saying that their case is that the last two years, so many people have become friends over zoom (so have I), but their theory is that that means the end of the loneliness epidemic is here because there are plenty of people on zoom.

And I said, well, good for you, but no, it's like getting married and you're in the honeymoon stage. And you were like, well, I found a partner so there, you know, I got it. But then what happens when you get into the deeper realms and you have the arguments? Do we, as a society truly have all the tools? Do we really understand the art of friendship to know how to

maneuver and dance and move through together through the arguments and the disagreements, just because you've finally found a friend, great. That's wonderful. I just think that our society really needs to take a good look at the art of it all and understand how to maneuver and how to really hold someone; hold someone's beliefs , and not let it shatter you.

Do you know what I mean? But let it, let it surprise you and elevate you and expand you.

[00:33:21] Matt: Absolutely. No abs absolutely. But it's kind of weird. I was approaching this a much more superficially. I was just talking about whether or not proximity; if zoom really zoom, social media, email messaging is sufficient to kind of negate this whole 1970 style view of what proximity means. I mean, does that mean that you're in proximity to one another?

[00:33:46] Fawn: I say, yes. I say yes to a degree. I think after a while though, I totally want to be with people in person. I definitely have people that I consider sisters and we've been on zoom for two, two years. Right. Because we're all scattered around the planet. I cannot wait to get together with them, but I have to say, yeah, I would say yes, zoom is definitely being in the same room, but it's also, you can look at it at a spiritual level.

If you're connected, if you have that kind of connection, that spiritual connection, it is being the

same room.

[00:34:22] Matt: Well, it gets fun because we're talking about kind of, I'm talking about the first two levels of a friendship or relationship, which is orientation and exploratory, oh God, a term exploratory affective, which is where you're still not sharing the core fundamental beliefs.

They believe that proximity is important now where it gets interesting is proximity is not important for the later two stages affective and stable. However, they require effort. They don't require proximity, whereas stage one and two require proximity, but don't require effort. And by effort, I mean, like you have to stay in contact, on some level you have to come up with some way of staying in contact with that person, some way of staying connected to that person.

[00:35:13] Fawn: This is where the, advice would come in from my older friends when I was dating. Keep it light. They would always say don't reveal too much on the first few dates. Keep it light. And I think that's where the one and two are. Correct?

[00:35:29] Matt: Absolutely.

[00:35:30] Fawn: You're not going deep and heavy and philosophical about anything.

You're just, just have a good time, but, you can totally have a good time and be deep.

[00:35:41] Matt: You can tell me, have a good time and be deep, but it's easier early on when you're starting to discover things about the other. If you don't start by going super deep. You start by talking about favorite TV shows and favorite musical styles, and that starts to lead you into an argument about maybe political beliefs.

And other more deep seeded things.

What's interesting is the social penetration theory came in the seventies and there's an even earlier theory.

God help us now, this one, fortunately, isn't so poorly named it's called the social exchange theory.

[00:36:19] Fawn: Yeah, I

like that much better.

[00:36:21] Matt: Yeah. And it's bred from the fifth. And what's interesting to me as a computer programmer

[00:36:26] Fawn: it's bread?

[00:36:27] Matt: Bred, bred out of the fifties. So it's no B R E D not B R E a D. So it was born out of the fifties.

It's probably born out of the late forties, but that's a whole other story. And this is, as a computer programmer, this is the days where computers were so fascinating and they almost describe our interactions like computer programs, because a computer program can model a specific part of the world.

So it's a convenient little snippet and they started talking about like risks versus rewards and they talk about, Yeah, basically risks versus rewards and why we choose to do thing "A" over thing "B"and it's very terse and it's very, almost like if this action then that action always.

So they talk about this whole concept of a success proposition, which is, if I'm rewarded for a given action, I'll repeat it. So as a baby, if I giggle, then, I get thrown up in the air or whatever, you know, uh, my parents clap their hands. So I know if I giggle that it'll happen, but it all seems like there's so many environmental factors to it, that things become tricky. But this starts to kind of dictate, they believe dictating our behavior. So if I'm in a relationship with someone, I know if I do X, then I'll get Y back and it's very transactional.

[00:37:52] Fawn: Okay. Are you ready for my theory? Do you have anything else to add?

[00:37:56] Matt: We'll not the success proposition of things, but then they talk about stimulus and that's kind of the other counterpoint.

It feels like to the success proposition, which is, the more often I get a given stimulus the more likely I'll respond to it, I'll do something about it. Which is interesting. And again, it kind of refers to us as this kind of one dimensional critters, but it's a convenient way of looking at things.

And then the last one, which destroys everything I just said is the more often I receive an award, the less valuable it becomes.

[00:38:26] Fawn: Let me know when you're done. I'm done. All right. So here's my theory. I just came up. You know, originally my theory was we have a problem with friendships and relationships because of the nuclear family, because of the way that we decided, especially within our culture here in the United States, because of the way we work, because of the way we have to make a living because of the way certain values came into place.

Like, you know, a job is more valuable than a relationship because I have to feed the family. So I'm going to go over here. I may not see you, but I'm providing the family with food and shelter by working over here. And that's totally acceptable because you have a job to do. You can't come over for Thanksgiving.

Oh, that's okay if it's a job, but it's not okay if you don't feel like it. Do you know what I'm saying? Are the way we treat our children and our elders in our family, the way that society was structured because of the way we have to make a living, the way that children are born and immediately placed into daycare, the way that elders reach a certain age and they're put into daycare.

That separation; I think the loneliness epidemic stems from that. And it's not just a loneliness epidemic, but just like looking at relationships, that's where it comes from. The way we treat ourselves, the way we treat family is the way we treat our friends. And now listening to the social exchange theory, I think.

What'd you say that came from out of the 1940s and fifties? Yep. It's interesting to me because what they are valuing here is costs and rewards of relationships.

[00:40:15] Matt: Yep.

[00:40:15] Fawn: And when you go back, like our foundation for what we're talking about here with friendship is Greek and it comes from Aristotle. It comes from Aristotle's Nicomachean ethics.

When he talks about friendship, he said there are three kinds of. There is a friend that is friends with you purely because of the way they feel around you. So they feel a certain way being near you. That's why they are your friend. There's a second type of friend who is friends with you because they're getting something from you.

Right. And then there's a third friend who has to do with pure love. They just love you as a person as a whole entity, which means if you're in a bad, bad mood, they love you. You're going through hard times. They love you. You're laughing. You're having a good time. They love you. You've hit it big with money.

You're now a multi gazillionaire. They love you. You're a broke and on their couch. They love you. That's the number three friend.

[00:41:17] Matt: Right.

[00:41:17] Fawn: You can morph and trans morph in any shape and they love you. That's the number three friend. I think here with the social exchange theory, where there is such an emphasis on costs and rewards and losses and gains, this is I think, where our society went into trouble, because this has subliminally or not, has become the norm or the means to success is always looking at the losses and the gains in a situation; that you look at everything in life as: is it going to benefit me or not? And I think that's not a good way to look at things.

[00:42:02] Matt: Well you also have to take a look at the world of the ancient Greek versus the world of now.

And, you know, honestly, I, again, theorizing on the fly here, folks, but the world of the Greek, it was almost like everybody in your proximity, you're in this, familial type relationship that you couldn't, you can't break out of. And so some people you stick in the acquaintance zone and some people you stick in the, I love you zone. And some people you stick somewhere in between, but you kind of can't escape them. And where we sit now, Anybody, I don't want to be friends with, I can unfriend on Facebook. I can not go to that market anymore. I can.

[00:42:44] Fawn: I understand that.

[00:42:45] Matt: I can deny them on my phone

are

[00:42:48] Fawn: you done? (Matt

[00:42:50] Matt: laughs).

[00:42:51] Fawn: I got it. I got though all the ways that you can disconnect. What I'm saying is what we're saying with the art of friendship is that our muscle for handling conflict and handling a loss and a gain is just so specific that there's no, it's just easy to just neglect. And it's also easy to just stay in something that doesn't work for you because it doesn't require a lot of momentum, a lot of work, so I can stay in a bad friendship.

'cause, I don't want to work at it and use my muscles to know that I deserve better than this or the other way around

[00:43:33] Matt: so yeah, I would, I would argue that it's easy for me to terminate a friendship. Yeah. I can just find another one exactly.

And find another, because

[00:43:40] Fawn: , we live in a disposable society. We don't go through the motions of truly knowing ourselves and valuing ourselves. So that we can just look at a person, not take everything so personally,

[00:43:53] Matt: right. I just, yeah. Going through the motions was a painful way of putting it, but I understand where you were going with it, but it's not going through the motions.

It's actually going through the voyage of self-discovery to figure out who you are. Going through, the motions makes it sound like it's just kind of, I'm just doing this just to do it. Syntax: it's not a problem.

Were describing that if you don't know you, if you don't truly know yourself, it's hard to have friends and you're right. But you said going through the motions of finding yourself,

[00:44:19] Fawn: that's all. I was just going, I'm going back to the stage where we come into conflict, right? We have disagreements. Yes. I am saying if we are truly in your center. Spiritually in all ways, right? Physically, if you're a totally centered, it won't bother you, that Susie can come and say something outrageous to you.

You can still love her. You don't have to be best friends with her, but it won't rock you. It won't, it won't angrify you as much. That's my own personal word. ANGRIFY

[00:44:57] Matt: Honestly. I think people are maybe too sensitive at this point, as far as, you know, if you disagree with me on this one point

that's kind of important to me, it starts gaining an importance in your own mind if you disagree with someone about it.

[00:45:11] Fawn: Well, do you know why? My, my belief on why that is is because we are now in a constant state of confusion, everything is so confusing. And I think it's made to be that way in our society deliberately for a sense of control over the massive population.

But if you're, if you're constantly confused, you can't really know what your center is anymore. So I'm saying it's important to just be centered and not become so effected by someone else. And therefore you can have the capacity to be friends with someone else because you're not going to get hurt. And it sounds like I'm being superficial.

Like, it sounds like we're going back to the orientation stage where you're just having small talk. But what I'm saying is you can go deep. As long as you're centered. And I think this is maybe another show. See, this is why I should not talk so much because now I'm not going off on a completely other tangent.

[00:46:09] Matt: I think that's fine. Again, wordsmithing it. I don't know if I would necessarily put it out that way. In what way would I say not going to be hurt?

[00:46:18] Fawn: Well, that's what you said. You said. Stage number. I think it was two,

[00:46:23] Matt: but I think you can stay in the safe

[00:46:26] Fawn: zone. You don't get

[00:46:27] Matt: hurt. Right? I think you can go further and you can stay in a zone that's further than this friend zone, so you can be hurt.

But if you know yourself, you can stay friends with them. You can still

[00:46:38] Fawn: get majorly disappointed.

[00:46:39] Matt: Yeah, absolutely. But that doesn't mean you can't, hang out, you can't be friends with them.

[00:46:45] Fawn: All right. So those are the stages.

[00:46:47] Matt: Yep.

[00:46:48] Fawn: You can be friends, not be friends. You can have superficial friends. Can we call them, Cotton Candy Friends?

How about that?

[00:46:56] Matt: ahhhhh...cotton candy,

[00:46:56] Fawn: you know, just fun, but there are friends for every situation. I've always said this even your best, best, best friend may not have the capacity to be your friend at every stage in life. They don't have the capacity for that. That's why it's important to have a community. Because Holly may not handle my whatever I'm going through that may be heavy all the time. So I need to talk to a Bertha, spread it out a little bit, right?

[00:47:29] Matt: Yes no argument.

[00:47:30] Fawn: But the joy that should be going to everybody.

[00:47:33] Matt: Yes.

[00:47:33] Fawn: So every time you have something wonderful happen, call everybody up, text everybody up and say, yo, this happened. Do you know what I mean?

Right. The really heavy stuff. I think that we should be judicious

[00:47:50] Matt: selective

[00:47:50] Fawn: and parceling it out here

and there

[00:47:53] Matt: but it's important to get it out. Absolutely.

[00:47:57] Fawn: Yeah. I thought I could wrap this up. Like I thought I had a pretty little bow, but I think that's it. What do you think?

[00:48:05] Matt: Certainly interesting.

Certainly something to consider. I thought it was fascinating that certain aspects of friendship, at least to these guys requires proximity and proximity shifts all the time, but it still does. And then the others definitely require effort. So if it was me and the big lesson I take away from this is for the people I want to stay close, to get close to. A) I have to make myself vulnerable. B) I got to put in some effort

[00:48:32] Fawn: and the effort is actually fun.

But you have to do it.

[00:48:35] Matt: Right.

[00:48:36] Fawn: All right. That's it I think, let us know what you think. Reach out to us, you know, our site, https://www.ourfriendlyworldpodcast.com/contact/ there's a little button to support our show https://www.buymeacoffee.com/friendlyspace. Let us know how we can support you.

I would love to have zoom meetings in person with you. All you have to do is email me the email is on our website https://www.ourfriendlyworldpodcast.com/contact/. Reach out we're here waiting for you. All right. We love you. Thank you so much for listening again. Wendy, love you! Talk to you later. Bye.

When is it OK to be quiet? When someone is hurting, is it OK to be quiet? When you know there is injustice, do you go about your day and just focus on yourself? If you lived in Europe before WWII and you noticed your friends and neighbors disappearing, would you go about your business and think, "Oh well, I am going to focus on my own breath and well-being and that is the outside world I have no control of"?????

In our previous episode, our guest kept saying that we are not responsible for the world and that we are only responsible for ourselves. I TOTALLY DISAGREE. Although I know it is essential for a person to be well centered and strong in order to help others, I feel that we are interconnected and that we are here in life, together, and even if it is through some unseen force, I am here to help and provide comfort and support for all of life.

Our talk today comes out of the last episode we did with Sharon  Caren. I got really quiet. for those of you who know me, well, I usually will just state my opinion, and stand up for stuff. But out of respect for Sharon, I got quiet because I also felt like maybe I was being misunderstood and as I was feeling more and more upset, I got quieter because I did not want to fight with our guest. I respect her and I think she is a wonderful healer. I just did not like that I got quiet and that I did not speak up (although I did try).

This episode is my chance to discuss the ramifications of quiet as well as the good ways of quiet as we use the beautiful children's picture book by Deborah Underwood  (Author), Renata Liwska (Illustrator), to steer our conversation about this topic. I introduce you to The Quiet Friend". Please email me and let me know your point of view.

https://www.ourfriendlyworldpodcast.com/contact/

Transcript

[00:00:00] Matt: It was running the whole time, this little stopwatch, that we keep track of how long the show runs. And I had it on yesterday cause I was on the exercise bike and but it was running. And so when I took a look at it this morning, it was still running.

And so when I actually hit stop and then restart in my head, I hear a little voice going: "oh man!" so like the little, the little man in the computer thought he was doing something super cool and useful going, oh my God, I can't believe the stop-watch is running this long and this long and this long and getting more and more excited.

And then he finds out that I, the quote-unquote user just boom, boom. And he realized everything was pointless. And so he's like, oh God,

[00:00:39] Fawn: Poor guy.

[00:00:40] Matt: I

[00:00:40] Fawn: know. See that's adorable. I don't

[00:00:45] Matt: like being

[00:00:45] Fawn: adorable. There was a little person in there, like no, the little person in their hip, and now I'm seeing the little person in there is adorable, like running, keeping your time for you.

Exactly. And you so nonchalantly. I don't need that anymore. See, that's how I thought about the paperclip guy. Do you remember the pay-per-click guy?

[00:01:08] Matt: He might be coming back.

[00:01:09] Fawn: Clippies coming, but I loved Clippy.

[00:01:12] Matt: I didn't like Clippy, but there was this genie that I saw once in a conference and the genie would like do magical things for you.

[00:01:20] Fawn: I love that.

[00:01:21] Matt: I prefer that to Clippy, a paperclips.

[00:01:24] Fawn: Yeah. I love the paperclip. It helped you with word documents. If it sensed that you needed some help, this paperclip with big eyes would show up with the eyebrows, like filled with expression. It would show up and help you.

Like, do you need my help? And I always needed Clippy's help. And because I didn't understand how to do any function. Right. Like everything was a fight that when Clippy showed up and it calmed me down and I almost would like be weepy, like, thank you, Clippy. Thank you, Mr. Paperclip.

So it was this little paperclip with arms and legs and big eyes. It was so adorable. The

[00:02:04] Matt: first time I saw him click him away and say, never bring him back.

[00:02:09] Fawn: So rude! Poor Clippy, I love Clippy. And then they got rid of him. I guess everyone felt like you did well. That's like the shows that I love out there.

Any show I love gets canceled,

[00:02:21] Matt: quote, unquote, snarky and smart and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's very easy to cast something down. It's hard to raise something up.

[00:02:30] Fawn: So check us out. We've already digressed from the show. We haven't even started. Good morning, everybody. Good evening. Good afternoon. Hi everybody. Welcome to our friendly world.

This show today. Our talk today, it comes out of the last episode we did with Sharon Sharon Caren. I got really quiet. for those of you who know me, well, I usually will just, I have a foul mouth and I'll, I'll, uh, I'll state my opinion, you know, and I'll fight for stuff. Right. But out of respect for Sharon, I got quiet because I also felt like maybe I was being misunderstood .

And it was going to turn into a fight. I felt like, because I don't know, there were so many emotions there. So doing that and by the way, I edited it a lot. Sorry guys. I usually don't. I usually leave everything in and I make sure that if there are some distracting sounds in the background, I get rid of those, you know what I mean?

But, and then I have to edit to make sure that transcripts are somewhat decent. So if someone is hard of hearing, they can actually read what was being said. That's my editing process that takes forever. But in this case, I actually took out a chunk of stuff that was said.

So I took it out because I just thought if someone comes in, who's never heard our show before. It was not, it was not okay . Does that make sense? Do you agree? I mean, you have not heard the final, final edit yet, this led us into a lot of conversations this week with friends, because I was feeling so distraught over

should I edit? Should I even not even run the episode? What should I do? Am I being disrespectful to Sharon? I feel like I'm being disrespectful to humanity for not speaking. And the whole thing came out of this concept and this concept being that it doesn't matter what's happening in the world. You're just responsible for yourself.

You need to center and be okay within yourself. Don't worry about anything on the outside world. I highly disagree with this. I understand that you have to be centered first. I understand you have to be healthy of mind, body and spirit before you can truly help anyone else. I'm going beyond that. I'm not living there guys.

I am worldcentric in my, my desire. I am here because we're all interconnected. We are interconnected. So why are you just going to say, I'm just going to take care of myself and my own vibration. No, I am here to help. I am here embracing all of us as one.

Your body is my body, and there was such a disagreement on the episode and it wasn't going to go anywhere if I argued. So I just got quiet. Because I didn't want to argue. And also because I don't, I didn't want to be disrespectful. And I felt like, you know, me, Matt, like I don't fight well, I'm like a Chewbacca.

I am, I don't know how to debate very well. You're a great debater. I can not do that. I will turn into a maniac that will want to break things. So while this happened, I'm trying to calmly understand how to maneuver this thing. How do I maneuver? How do you talk to a friend that is not even a hearing what you're saying, assuming that you're some dumb ass, please forgive me.

If you have kids, Martine makes sure the kids are out of the room. I may curse today. I may. I'm sorry. I already said one bad word. I apologize. But do you know what I mean? Like, so I forgot what I was saying. What was, I think, how do you. I just, how do you deal with someone that thinks that you're ignorant, that you don't know what the hell they're talking about?

And in fact, you very well know what they're talking about, and you're trying to explain your view. I got quiet. I ended up talking to some friends trying to understand Sharon's perspective. How can we have a conversation.

And am I hallucinating? Like, did she think this of me? Or was she just trying to explain this is her work? And she just wants to stick in a very one dimensional way to what she always talks about.

Things that need to be discussed in our society right now. Right.

[00:06:59] Matt: Right. But these things are uncomfortable to discuss. And you know, were you and Sharon in a place where you had gotten to that level of depth, were you past the acquaintance aspects of friendship and had you actually started getting into all that kind of stuff?

[00:07:16] Fawn: We're not close friends. We just met recently so I don't know.

[00:07:20] Matt: And there's, there's also a presumption, I think in society in general, some cultures more so than others, but the older you are, the wiser, you automatically become.

Which is a fallacy,

[00:07:32] Fawn: That is so not true, yeah, you're right. It's a fallacy.

[00:07:35] Matt: They talk well, I've talked and people talk, but in certainly in my profession, it's like, you can have your first year, five years in a row because you're learning all brand new stuff, all new terminology, all new philosophies, everything. And so, you can actually stay in that beginner's, skill, not a beginner mindset because a beginner mindset is important, but a beginner skillset for a long time in your career, depending on, the paths you take.

And I think that this happens with people also in general. It's like, if you're never challenged, you don't

grow.

[00:08:07] Fawn: Remember that. So you're are you, I'm sorry. I'm spacing out. I think I listened to 50% of what you just said, because I'm still so emotional about what happened in that conversation.

So please forgive me. So I'm just going to equate it to something, but I think I only heard 50% of what you just said. So here's the thing, it's kind of like what they taught in martial arts, that when you become a master black belt, you go back to white belt. So you're always a beginner, right?

[00:08:36] Matt: There's beginners.

And then there's beginners. Yes.

[00:08:38] Fawn: So the way I've always operated is going from a state where someone , would think if he didn't know me would think I was ignorant. If you didn't know me would think that I was so innocent, you know, like, I don't know what I'm talking about, or I don't know this subject where in fact I have studied it, but it's and it's in everything

you know, like it's in baking a pie with a friend who has never seen you bake a pie and doesn't know that, Hey, um, I have actually worked as a professional pastry chef. Right. And then you invite them over to make pie and they think you've never made pie, but you haven't said, Hey, look, I'm actually a professional, but I just stood there and go, okay, what, what's the next step?

What's the next step? And they treated me like, wow, you don't know how to bake, you know, and many years later still thinking that they taught me how to bake, but I'm not going to say you didn't teach me how to bake. Do you know what I'm saying?

[00:09:38] Matt: It's again, it's a beginner mindset. It's like, okay. I've always approached the problem from way over here on the left.

And this time I'm going to approach the problem all the way over here on the right. And see if I end up in a better place or worst place or just, I get better understanding of what's happened.

[00:09:56] Fawn: What are you saying? I can't concentrate today. What are you saying?

[00:09:59] Matt: Well, okay. So you know exactly how you would make a pie, right?

And the pie turns out, looking exactly the way you expect it to. Case in point. When my mom bakes pie, an apple pie, the crust is a big dome over this thinner layer of apples because she doesn't pre cook the apples. So the apples baked down inside the crust and the crust hardens. Whereas normally when a person bakes a pie, that crust is right on top of the

apples.

[00:10:30] Fawn: Well, it's not,

[00:10:31] Matt: well, you're still making a pie, you're still making the pie. But if you went through and, and were instructed by say my mom, you would be like, just because you wanted to learn a different way to make a pie.

[00:10:43] Fawn: Yeah. But you're like, you're diverging from what I'm saying, what I'm saying is the person treats you like an imbecile because they think that you don't know how to bake a pie.

And they, they Lord that over you. Like they are the master and you're nothing. That's what I'm saying. And that w that is one of my deal breakers is if someone cannot see the depth of each human being the depth of me and in our friendship, it's a deal breaker. That's one of the things that starts crumbling in our friendship, that if they keep that up, and assume that about me. I'm assuming they, then I assume that that's how superficial they are, that they're not really seeing. I'm like, I can't have that kind of person in my tight inner circle because they're not seeing, they're not listening. They're not hearing, they're not paying attention. You know what I'm saying?

That's what I'm saying. I don't want to get into the crust and the dome and all that, because really today we're talking about the quiet friend and, and of course this came from the last episode, right. And I've always said, quiet is there's good and bad to quiet. There's very dangerous, quiet. And there's good quiet. And of course when Sharon was talking, I wanted to say, I wanted to bring up all these instances in history and modern day of why we shouldn't be saying, I'm just going to stick to my own vibration. I'm just going to take care of myself and the world; I can't change the world. I so disagree with that. I got really upset.

And so I got quiet and it was the bad kind of quiet. Right. And you know, me, Matt, when I get quiet, you better watch out. I'm not saying this against Sharon. I'm just saying that there are different forms of quiet for me. I'm a big meditator. So I am quiet, but best believe if there's a, there's a situation where there's a fight, let's say an argument and I get quiet,

it's not good. So as I was saying, what I wanted to bring up with Sharon was the cases in history, for example, talking about all the different genocides that have occurred on the planet with so many different cultures.

So you're going to be quiet about that. So there are people being killed right next door to you being plucked away and made to disappear. And you're just going to go, ah, I'm just going to focus on myself. What no! I wanted to get into these aspects. And because I'm so angry, I'm going to bring in a children's picture book into our conversation today, because I don't want to talk about, I don't want to bring in the genocide.

I don't want to bring in all the horrible atrocities that have happened to say, look, this is my point. Okay. Let's because we all know we're we're past that. So I'm just going to go straight to the point. And I'm going to use "The Quiet Book" as our example today.

Do you know that book as a children's picture book. I love this book so much. I bought two copies. We have a beautiful library of children's picture books. And as I was buying. For Elle and Allegra when they were that age, right. You're

[00:13:57] Matt: buying them for Elle and Allegra.

[00:13:58] Fawn: The truth is I was buying them for myself and I'm still buying them.

of all the books that I read, they're the ones I turned to for advice. Children's picture books have the most beautiful messages in them. The quiet book by Deborah Underwood, this book, the illustrations are beautiful illustrated by Renata Lisky L I w S K a what? A beautiful book. So I'm going to go through this book.

We're going to go through the examples of quiet, talk about them a little bit, and then after that we're getting into good, quiet and bad. Quiet. Okay. Okay.

The book opens up: the first one awake quiet. You know, like when you wake up to a, an epiphany, when you wake up in the morning or you're the first person, perhaps in your group to have a realization that this is wrong, or this is right, but it's, it's a new thought form.

All of a sudden, a different perspective that quiet,

[00:15:02] Matt: I woke up actually this morning with a full moon beaming on me. So that was,

[00:15:08] Fawn: I was there and I asked you, are we going to go insane? Like, isn't there, isn't there a thing that says folklore

[00:15:13] Matt: that says, if you sleep under a full moon, you will go crazy. But yeah.

Anyways,

[00:15:19] Fawn: there's the jelly side down quiet.

[00:15:21] Matt: Well, that's

my poor little guy inside the device when I hit reset on the stopwatch.

[00:15:27] Fawn: I mean, oh man, when, when, when something happens and you're like, oh man, but it's not just the oh man, not only did your sandwich fall down, but the jelly side down fell down. So not only do you have to pick up the sandwich and you don't get to eat that sandwich anymore because it's dirty now, but you have to clean up the floor several times because it is so sticky and gooey.

So there goes another 20 minutes right there and you're still hungry; the jelly side down quiet.

Don't scare the robyn quiet. Remember? We lived on Bainbridge island for awhile. We had a house there. Remember when we would walk out and all of a sudden you'd see something. And then something was this beautiful deer.

You're both frozen, just staring at each other and you don't like, I didn't want to move because I didn't want to scare the deer. I wanted the deer to stay. Right. And the deer probably thought, oh my God, this person could have killed them. Right. But that quiet, that exists while you're like staring at each other.

[00:16:35] Matt: Yeah. For me, it's slightly different because I remember I was at a park with my buddy Mario and would probably throw on her Frisbee. I don't remember. But all of a sudden this squirrel came running past, hold on. This is where it gets a little sad. His poor little head was in a chip bag and he couldn't get it out.

And he was freaking out because he was hearing all this craziness. And so we had to be so quiet and I tried to grab that bag and I couldn't do it because I just wasn't fast enough. But Mario did it. So that was really flipping cool. It

[00:17:06] Fawn: good of Mario.

Others telling us secret quiet. No good.

[00:17:13] Matt: Secrets are

double-edged swords

sometimes there are good secrets.

[00:17:16] Fawn: So this is the, this is telling, hold on. This is telling a secret quiet. So you're whispering, right? Right. If you go either a good or bad, I mean, that's for the followup conversation, but I was teaching Allegra some math. Right. And it was hard. There were tears that day, right? You had a tantrum.

[00:17:38] Matt: Yes, I did.

[00:17:39] Fawn: Allegra was crying. Then I had a tantrum towards you. Like, what are you doing? Can't get upset. She doesn't understand it. So Allegra and I went over, so this is our little secret. We were going through the math book. And it was hard, but we were, I was breaking it down. The way I teach is very rogue, by the way, thank God for homeschooling because I would get fired if I was a regular teacher in school.

So I whispered in her ear a secret about math, and I said, math is your bitch. And I whispered that in her ear, she started laughing. But that's our little secret, like a whisper things like that

[00:18:19] Matt: now to be fair. I also spent time with her that day on math. I know I had a good time doing it.

[00:18:24] Fawn: Okay. But like everybody had to calm down

But

[00:18:26] Matt: I did have a tantrum first, but anyway, I did.

[00:18:29] Fawn: All right, next next

coloring in the lines quiet when you're trying to just figure something out and you know how to do it, but you're just doing your work. I love that quiet.

[00:18:41] Matt: Well, yeah, when you're focused on a task and you know, you know that task and there's no real question about that task. So you just go for it.

[00:18:50] Fawn: Thinking of the reason you were drawing on the wall quiet. Ooh. When you've done something

bad

[00:18:58] Matt: self introspection, like when you do something self-destructive for sure was like, why did I do that?

[00:19:05] Fawn: I haven't had that kind of thought in a while.

[00:19:08] Matt: Well, no, I remember that

[00:19:10] Fawn: knock on wood.

[00:19:11] Matt: When I was, when I was really little, my parents had these wooden chairs or rather they were upholstered, but they had wood on the sides.

And one day, I don't know why I grabbed a paperclip and I just started gouging the side of it. And it was like, I think it was, it was somewhere in close to my space and not around their space, but then later they brought the chairs down. And every time I saw what I had done, I was like, oh man, I think I got yelled at, but it wasn't, it wasn't good enough because I still felt guilty.

[00:19:43] Fawn: Okay. Hide and seek quiet when you know, you're both playing the game and it's like, you know, that

[00:19:54] Matt: kind of quiet going to hold someone's hand in the movie theater, like yeah. Nevermind.

[00:20:01] Fawn: Last one to get picked up from school quiet. Oh my God. That's me. And not just about, this is not about picking, getting, did you, did I, did you want to say something else about the last quiet?

Why are you looking like that? Because it's a sad, quiet. Well,

[00:20:17] Matt: it's like everybody, else's like having fun like la la la la and then one by one, they

disappear and then

[00:20:23] Fawn: yeah, but the thing is, this is what I was experiencing this week was the last one being picked, quiet. Like everybody else's career has become successful and here I am, I'm still sitting here working, working, working, praying, praying, praying, hustling, hustling, hustling, and you know, it's like being the last one, picked up from school, quiet and you feel like you're the only one left. Everything seems to be a struggle.

I have to keep reminding myself of all the wins, you know, of all the gifts, but still feeling like, oh, I'm the last one left,

[00:21:00] Matt: right? I was never the last picked up, but in college, like the finals week was Monday to Friday. No big deal. On Monday, a certain percentage of people would disappear from school because they were done on Tuesday, another percentage would disappear. And so slowly but surely the school would empty out. And I remember once or twice, I was there on a Thursday and Friday, and it just felt like no one was there.

[00:21:26] Fawn: Yeah. It's like, nowadays let's bring this back to present time. What are you feeling present time each quiet that I'm going to bring up from Debra Underwood's book.

Let's stick with modern day. So when you're listening to these, just think about what's happening now in that sense of quiet. Acknowledge what you're feeling. So like I'm feeling left behind with career and everyone else seems to be totally soaring, right?

So that was getting picked up from school quiet.

Swimming, underwater. Quiet I love that. Oh my God. I haven't been swimming lately. So, well, just think about the feeling. Think about the feeling of swimming under water. You have entered another realm, another world, and everything is slower. Everything sounds different. It's still quiet at first. But then in that quiet, you start to notice all these other sounds that you would never experience outside of the water. It's beautiful. Everything is in slow motion. You can slow life down, but then you realize, wow, that's life under here all the time.

And you can access it anytime, you wish.

Should I go on? Yeah. Pretending you're invisible, quiet. Let me tell you I've done this so many times that it was on auto mode. And then one day I was like, why does everyone ignore me? I stand in line. People constantly cut in front of me. Like they don't even realize I'm standing there.

And I realized, oh my God, I practiced the art of being invisible in crowds. Like, so I wouldn't bring attention to myself right, for so long that I forgot to take that program off of myself. And I had to revisit that and go, okay, I want to be noticed now.

[00:23:09] Matt: Well, yeah, there are two ways that people practice being invisible.

One is blending into their surroundings and the other is being invisible, being truly invisible. So if had you chosen to blend into your surroundings, which I think for you is difficult

[00:23:23] Fawn: impossible,

[00:23:24] Matt: then people would have still noticed you on some level, they would have still registered your existence, but you were so focused on people not seeing you.

Right.

[00:23:33] Fawn: Lollipop, quiet. Ah, I would say tiramisu. Quiet. Oh my gosh. When you something that's so delicious when you're, it's really interesting. I'm sorry. I'm cutting you off. Hold on to your thought, but like sitting at a table and usually there's loud ruckus conversation, but when everyone's eating, that's when, you know, everyone needs to eat, like everyone was hungry and it's kind of sweet.

Like it's sweet when, especially if you're the one who, who has made the delicacy, the meal, and all you hear is quiet nourishment is a special kind of satisfying, appealing. What were you going to

[00:24:10] Matt: say? Can I talk about, for me not lollipop, it's more about ice cream bar, quiet, but. Where you're just so focused on and there is a time element to it because obviously your ice cream will melt and get all all over you.

So

[00:24:24] Fawn: there's that stress of, I got to enjoy this really quick. There's no stress, baby. Oh, there's stress for me. Like I want to make it less. I want to make it last, but I don't want to, I don't want to quickly like, cause it's dripping

okay. First look at your new hairstyle, quiet first look.

[00:24:47] Matt: Okay. So I have long hair. I've had long hair forever, but once upon a time, about six years ago, I shaved my head bald.

[00:24:56] Fawn: That was a little tough. That was tough on all of us. I know. Yeah.

[00:25:00] Matt: That was a little tough to look at. Take in. Right. But anyways, as long again, so.

[00:25:07] Fawn: Um, but yeah, that, that incident where you're, you just feel remorse or just upset or, or

[00:25:15] Matt: you're just coming to grips with how you look, because you can just look completely different

[00:25:19] Fawn: or you can say in that quiet, like, is this really me?

Wow. It's beautiful. Right? Exactly. It could go either way. It could go either way.

Sleeping sister quiet. Okay. Let's I mean, we don't, we don't, we don't have to take these literally like sleeping sister, quiet. Yeah. When things are just peaceful. Quiet. Next. Oh,

[00:25:46] Matt: okay. Here. Um, I wake up super mega early and by super mega early, I mean like 4, 4 30.

I'm just a Nutter. So it's about not waking you up when I get out of bed.

[00:25:58] Fawn: So like tiptoeing around,

[00:26:00] Matt: which of course inevitably fails. I inevitably stub my toe fall over something or knock into something. But yeah.

[00:26:07] Fawn: Remember when Elle was just born and we were so tired, we just wanted her to sleep. And I remember this one day we finally tucked her in and she finally fell asleep.

You go over to, to take off your trousers, your jeans and all the change you had in there. And we had hardwood floors, they all fell out and it, it seemed to go on for hours, like in the rolling, like once they stopped bouncing the rolling in all different directions. It's

[00:26:41] Matt: funny. Now

[00:26:45] Fawn: I could not, I mean, okay, right before.

Okay, right before you yell, surprise, quiet.

That moment, yes.

[00:26:57] Matt: That moment of exploitation where everything's just quiet for sure. I can equate that very easily to my hole in one in disc golf. Cause I can't let that go. I love that. I throw a hole in one once. I remember after I released it and I watched it just that stillness right there as I watched it curve and went straight in and then just that sense of complete disbelief.

Right.

[00:27:22] Fawn: It was awesome. Uh, and also like if you're with a bunch of people, the fact that you're in unison like that excitement,

[00:27:29] Matt: nobody could believe I did

[00:27:30] Fawn: it, but like let's just go to a surprise party situation. It's like having a song that you're all singing together in perfect pitch, perfect harmony. And that sense of quiet, you all have. And you instinctively know when to yell, surprise together. It is such a sense of collaboration , you know, it's sweet.

All right. Making a wish, quiet. I love that. Like it's a respected the world, the universe, your friends, respect that.

Like, let's imagine you're blowing out your birthday candle and you're making a wish right before you do. That sense of honor and respect that occurs in that silence. I love that.

[00:28:15] Matt: Absolutely. You know, I remember I would, there's, there's a particular nursery rhyme that goes along with when the first star you see and you make a wish on it.

And so I would say that, and then people around me would get quiet as I actually made my wish Starlight star bright first star I see tonight. I wish I may. I wish I might have the wish I wish tonight. Tick, tick, tick. Good.

[00:28:38] Fawn: Ready for the next one?

[00:28:40] Matt: Yes.

[00:28:41] Fawn: Top of the rollercoaster. Quiet. Oh my God. To me, I associate this with like the eye of the hurricane, quiet when it's quiet, but you know, some stuff is going to go down. It could be good or bad. Right. But right before the storm, quiet is what it reminds me of. Going to the top of the rollercoaster where, you know, all of a sudden there's going to be a drop. Some people could be happy about it, but me personally, I'm like, I hate roller coasters. I'm like, oh

[00:29:09] Matt: gosh. Yeah. I like roller coasters. And honestly, for the longest time, I actually thought that they built a pause when you hit the top. But it turns out it's just probably my mind spinning at like a hundred miles an hour at that moment.

You're at the top going

awesome.

[00:29:24] Fawn: And then you're dealing with, would it be inertia? Does inertia work for gravity like that? Do you know what I mean? Like you think you're going one way and then you get pulled over to this way and your body goes this other way. Nevermind. But like, it know I tend to, I tend to take things to the stressful level, but it could also be beautiful.

Like the quiet on top of the rollercoaster is all of a sudden seeing a beautiful view. But for me, that quiet is, oh, there's going to be a drop or, oh, how am I going to make it down this mountain that have climbed or. Where do I go next? Where are we headed? That kind of quiet that you're suspended; suspended in time suspended in between.

The next one is best friends don't need to talk quiet. I love this because, it's good to have a partner in life because there you're a witness in life. So you don't have to explain the same stuff over and over again, like, you know, the history, you know, what's up.

So when something else happens, you all have the same point of reference. So you don't have to waste time discussing what happened in the past. You just know and you move forward from there. I love that. Best friends. Don't need to talk quiet. How about you?

[00:30:47] Matt: That's just it, you develop shorthand certainly on.

So how I like to think of it with, with your friends, with your partner,

for sure.

[00:30:55] Fawn: Well, you can just move on with life. You don't have to go regurgitate something.

[00:30:59] Matt: Although sometimes I feel a need to explain then you're like, I know,

[00:31:03] Fawn: right. I don't understand why you need to explain it again, but

yeah, I get it. Yeah.

Next one is surprise visit from aunt Tilly quiet. When someone shows up that you're not expecting quiet, I could go good or bad. Like whoa. Something just showed up.

[00:31:21] Matt: That is

definitely true.

[00:31:24] Fawn: Let's see. I'm trying to think of present day. Like, well that happened. I can't think of anything right now.

Cause I feel like it happens a lot

[00:31:32] Matt: I have one. Did it just happen recently? So, um, my sister's husband sent us a gift for Christmas. Did not expect it didn't even know who it was from. It just came in a box. It wasn't wrapped in

[00:31:45] Fawn: They Amazoned us.

[00:31:46] Matt: They Amazoned us., but I had to basically take a look and start looking at how I return it in order to find out who sent it.

And I was like, who is this? And then click, click, click. And then it clicked over,

[00:32:01] Fawn: okay, next do iguanas bite, quiet. Like you go into a situation. You're like, oh oh, is this going to bite me or will it be nice? So you come face to face with something in life. It's not the case. Like. Do you bite, you can take that with a job with everything.

Like, I feel like I go through that all day, every day Do iguanas bite? Right?

[00:32:31] Matt: Absolutely. And when you start a new job, you really get a sense of what the job is really going to be like in your first week. And it, you tend to be quieter your first week, I

[00:32:40] Fawn: mean, you know, you've the first time you meet someone, like the first time I met you, I thought you were a motorcycle gangster.

I thought you were some crazy, like, um, violent looking person, you know what I mean? And I had the same reaction, like, what what's he doing? Well, well, I thought, well, maybe it's not. Do you know what I mean? I was still starting to learn about Aikido. I didn't really know how peaceful it was. I just saw you.

I'm like, oh my God.

Okay, next. Before the concert starts quiet. Oh man. Lord, we brought up concert. Matt, Matt is in, a realm right now. Okay. Do you want to pontificate or shall we go

[00:33:24] Matt: on,

is it a certain bands I've seen, an interesting number of times and they start their show in much the same way. Like you hear the sound check and the sound check is always the same you can actually hear, and it's not the singer doing the sound check.

Somebody else. I hear

[00:33:36] Fawn: it in my head right now. The violin is checking the P the tuning, the whatever you call it.

[00:33:42] Matt: And then typically, um, every band has their own kind of, uh, an intro. Like what's interesting is like, I remember Rush. They like to do the three Stooges. Hello, hello, hello. And then everything gets quiet for a second.

And then the crowd starts to cheer and then the lights go on and they start, oh. Cause like, you know, you're about to be treated to an experience,

[00:34:08] Fawn: right? You, that that is a beautiful metaphor for. Every day, all day life. If you think about it.

All right, next one. Here's here's me trying not to hiccup quiet.

So this was me on our last episode, but the hiccup was like, I was just trying not to say anything kind of quiet because I felt like it would have been just a bunch of hiccups and not heard or understood because I couldn't finish the thought. I couldn't finish the sentence.

[00:34:40] Matt: Well, I just think about it literally because ladies and gentlemen of our audience, I have the loudest hiccups in the world.

[00:34:46] Fawn: They are very scary. I

[00:34:48] Matt: literally sounds like I'm breaking something inside my body. It's that loud and it doesn't hurt and I really enjoy it, but there are ways you can do. I do, because it's like, it's almost like a lion's roar. It's like, here I am. And because it's quote unquote involuntary, cause it is.

Yeah, I can't control it. However, there are ways you can keep your hiccups from making noise. And so I'll do that in instances, but if I'm talking all of a sudden that,

[00:35:17] Fawn: okay, but trying not to hiccup quiet when things need to be quiet and you need to see you're diverging when you need to be quiet and you are hiccuping.

Right. You know, I, but I needed to be quiet even though every instinct in my body and my spirit was saying, no. All right, try not to hiccup quiet as a challenge. Good Lord, which is us. Now, we're going to have like five shows based on the fact that I couldn't speak on one episode.

First snowfall, quiet.

I love this when things shift and all of a sudden little snowflakes are falling. If you've ever been. in a snow falling situation. Everything is quiet. I can always tell, like when I go to sleep and I wake up in the middle of the night or I wake up early, early in the morning, usually at all times of the night, we can hear traffic, but when there's snow, everything is muffled.

Everything is turned down even people's emotions. And the quiet is so beautiful that you can hear every snowflake touching another. It is beautiful. First snowfall, quiet. Anything to add. Matt has nothing to add to this one.

All right. Car ride at night, quiet. They could go either way. For me, it's terrifying.

I don't like driving at night, so I'm very quiet. My eyes are big wide, right? I just want to get to wherever we're getting. But yeah, car ride quiet either again, it can go either way. It could be, uh, a very blissful feeling or a kind of a stressful feeling, but you don't want to make noise cause you don't want to distract or you don't want to make noise because it's so mysterious and beautiful,

[00:37:16] Matt: right?

No, no, no, absolutely. I used to get in my teens, I would love going and just jumping in the car and driving because I had my own space and I had control and I had.dot dot. And then later when we lived in LA, I actually really enjoyed like first thing in the morning going for a ride. And I remember one time I rode my bike swear to goodness from, um, my place, which was in west LA to Dodger stadium.

[00:37:45] Fawn: You've talked about this so many times it was

[00:37:47] Matt: empty. It was just, there was, there was,

[00:37:52] Fawn: I think that is one of your most favorite moments. It was a life. Cause you keep bringing it up. Okay. It's just, there's a lot to it, but you're taking things so literally

[00:38:02] Matt: I know I can't help it.

[00:38:04] Fawn: I'm

I'm yeah. You take things literally.

And I'm like, isn't this life, what's a metaphor. Okay. Let's keep going.

Too many bubbles, quiet. Now this is the scene in the book where there are way too many bubbles in the bathtub and it's overflowed on the ground. So you have beautiful bubbles. Lovely. And then you notice, oh my goodness. It's everywhere.

It's on the floor. It's probably going to go to the next floor underneath you. It's beautiful, but oh,

[00:38:35] Matt: well it's feels like a cavalcade of fun in our kitchen when we're baking. Sometimes stuff

[00:38:41] Fawn: is everywhere and it's not quiet though.

[00:38:46] Matt: Well, the moment you realize that flour is everywhere, it can get quiet.

[00:38:51] Fawn: But I like, yeah, an overflowing of abundance, quiet. Like how are you going to manage it? Quiet. All right. Next one is

Storytime quiet.

And from here, the book goes into tucking into bed, bedtime, kiss. What flashlight sound quiet and then deep asleep quiet. And that's the book.

So now let's get into the quiet friend. I've always said when I'm bearing my soul to you, when I'm telling you something that's been so painful for me, and I've just opened up my entire life to you or my entire pain to you.

If you are quiet, it really throws me off the deep end. It's not okay for me. Yet, we have friends that are psychotherapists and psychologists who say that quiet is space that's good. And I'm saying, well, if I was your client, I'm telling you right now, you better not be quiet. Once I tell you a, B and C of like major trauma.

If you're just sitting there staring and nodding at me, I'm about to have a major way worse panic attack than I already do have I can't have you be quiet. I need you to tell me something, make a sound, make a sound to let me know that you heard me, that you understand my pain. Don't be quiet please.

[00:40:25] Matt: But there are those thoughts that go out that, that they just need.

Just a moment. They need a beat or two beats or three beats to just echo. No, I

[00:40:37] Fawn: have. But that needs to be really carefully thought out because usually it's not just a few moments, it's just pure silence. And that is horrible. Yes. Because let me tell you, coming from a person that has experienced trauma, I have been alone in that you feel like you're in a black hole, you feel like there's no life.

There's nothing. Can't hear anything you can't see straight. You can't, you're stuck. You're in a continuous void. So if there's more silence after I've thought of a way to express what I'm going through, that doesn't help. And I'm talking not only for myself, I'm talking about what is happening in the world today.

If you're silent about it and just looking at it, it does absolutely no service. And this is where the fireside chat comes in. That we're going to have in a couple of weeks. Is, we're going to bring in some friends that have different points of view from what I'm saying, you know, they totally think the opposite and I'm, I'm the kind of person that's like, no, I need, if someone expresses something to me, I'm not going to let them be alone.

I wouldn't say I'm going to say something. I want to make sure that they feel my embrace. Even if it's me not saying anything best believe you will have my arms around you, caressing you, holding you. And if you don't want to be held like that, that I will find out another way that space appropriate for you yet, I'm still holding you, letting you know that you're not alone.

And I think, I don't know what's happened in our culture and we'll discuss this on our fireside chat, which by the way, if you want to be a part of, send me an email that you want to be a part of this. We're going to have a big zoom meeting about this, a whole bunch of people talking about this subject.

So I forgot what I was saying. What was I saying? Fireside chat.

Well,

[00:42:38] Matt: those moments of silence.

[00:42:40] Fawn: I just want the different points of view of course. But my point of view is it's not okay to be quiet. The violence against humanity every single group. Why are we quiet? What, so you're now you're going to go on your own mode and go.

I'm just going to take care of myself. Take care of yourself. Yeah. Make sure you're good. But,

[00:43:03] Matt: but that's not what you were talking about when you started it. You were talking about when somebody reveals something and if you're quiet immediately after somebody reveals something very personal as what you don't like, and now you shift,

[00:43:16] Fawn: I did shift gears.

Sorry. I'm very heated about this topic. It's not just for a few moments. It will go on forever. I hate that. It's not okay. Right. Why am I even bothering talking to you? Right. If you're just going to sit there and stare at me, it's not helpful, but I'm sure you know, our friends totally disagree.

I know for a fact that they do, but they're not here right now. I'm just letting you know, just think about that. We've had so many people tell us that silence is what they need. People have enough silence . So I'm sorry. I digress.

So there are good quiets and bad quiets, you know, like the good quiets or the magical quiets of seeing a beautiful forest creature.

You've come face-to-face with, that's a beautiful, quiet, right? It's magical. Gossip quiet. We experienced this a lot. Like I could not believe the gossip that would happen and it hurt my feelings. Not because of the gossip, because I really have no secrets. Like I don't care. Right. But what hurt my feelings was, wow, you could be talking to me and you're going to listen to this person talking about me instead of having a conversation with me that kind of quiet is some BS being left out, quiet. Being ignored quiet that's might be the worst. That's the worst.

So mad. You're so mad. Quiet. I don't know if that's good or bad, because if I were to unleash my fury in the moment of a rage, it, first of all, you probably wouldn't understand a word I was saying, but also I'll say some things that are like nuclear bombs. You know what I mean? Like horrible can't retract, right?

Um, yeah.

[00:45:05] Matt: Right. And honestly, you know, from the number of times you've talked about the Tibetan monks

[00:45:11] Fawn: who. They keep it all in and they go straight for

[00:45:14] Matt: compassion and they go, they try and make it okay. As opposed to really expressing, I mean, every once in a

[00:45:20] Fawn: while, explain that. Hold on. So we're talking about, you have every right to feel rage.

You have every right to feel anger, but you won't allow yourself to, because you're going to go straight to experiencing compassion for this person. If you go straight from not experiencing the rage and just going straight to understanding and love and compassion, forgiveness, it's not okay.

You need to at least acknowledge that you are, you have felt wronged because it will show up in your body. Right. And in what Matt is bringing up is a study Dr. Mario Martinez did on Tibetan monks who have the highest case of diabetes because he figured it out it's because of not experiencing this emotion of rage.

And going straight to love and kindness, meditation compassion. I didn't mean to cut you off. I just wanted to

[00:46:15] Matt: explain that's fine. And you know, you need to, you need to express yourself.

[00:46:21] Fawn: That's all. There are different forms of not being quiet.

There are different forms of showing what you think is a better way. I can equate it to photography. I definitely photographed countries that were at war that there was violence happening, but I knew I had lots of friends, acquaintances,

peers, that that was their job. , they were war photographers. I chose to focus on something else. I never would have a gun in my photographs. It was about beauty and love.

I have my focus, I have my way of getting a message out and my friends have their way of getting the message out.

Well,

[00:47:07] Matt: your photography's about seeing yourself or coming to an understanding that people are people and there is a universal feeling language, whatever you want to call it. I mean, people everywhere and people are proud of their, you know, fathers are proud of their sons and daughters and, you know, sons and daughters are respectful to, you know, there's so many kind of similar traits in general in people tend to ignore when they're the enemy.

Yeah.

[00:47:42] Fawn: You can't. Yeah. When you say someone is crazy, you're, you're putting up that silent wall. And you're ignoring them and it's

[00:47:52] Matt: disrespectful almost a different kind of quiet too. Yeah,

[00:47:55] Fawn: exactly. You're not going to hear them. Exactly. Exactly. So labeling someone like that provides such deafening silence that will actually create more violence.

So a particular group does not get heard. Guess what? Much like a toddler, much like a baby that needs attention that needs something vital. If you're not going to hear, if you're not going to be attuned to that baby, that baby needs milk, that baby needs something. Right, they will start screaming louder and louder.

Right? Yeah. We're all children. Back to the photography thing, my whole point is, if you really look at the photographs and I've. Totally crucified for this. Like I'm the worst photographer. Why do you have the people looking in the camera all the time?

It's because if you look at people's eyes, you will see herself. Right? And I can't believe I have to say this out loud after all these years, you know? Cause I, I don't want to say that would, that's what I'm, that's the feeling that I wanted people to have is when you look at someone, when you're talking with someone and you have eye contact, you see yourself, but be careful, don't put yourself on this person, see them for who they are.

Once you go through all those things, it's just seeing them, then you'll see yourself. But don't see yourself from the very beginning, see their pain, see their joy, see everything like you're watching a movie without being attached to them. And then you'll realize that's me. That's me too.

That's why I like photography. It's quiet. That's why I like still photography. It is quiet, but in that quiet, there's a lot of things being said, a lot of music, understanding. There's a lot of story.

[00:49:56] Matt: Well, yeah. Person's eyes show their entire existence.

You know, you can see that written on a person's face, their entire existence. So obviously there is a lot of noise as it were, and it's not noise. It's stories. It's, you know, hardships, it's joys, it's everything. It's the human condition.

[00:50:16] Fawn: The quiet friend is a very complex friend. Don't misunderstand the quiet friend.

Don't underestimate the quiet friend. That quiet friend could be a quiet revolution. That quiet friend could be a quiet, beautiful, loving, friend. That quiet friend could be the one who has known your experiences and could be your witness and is your witness friend. That quiet friend could be your enemy shunning you quiet friend.

I'm saying the quiet, friend is a complex friend and that's the quiet friend. I think that's it for me today. We are going to have a tableside chat about ways to be quiet and ways to not be quiet. And the consequences of that. We're going to have a fireside chat. If you want to be a part of it, email me by going to our friendly world podcast.com and join us for a zoom.

We're going to talk and just to have a fireside chat like around the campfire, a whole bunch of us talking and expressing our ideas and our experiences. We're going to do this more often. Again, just a private zoom, our friendly world podcast.com. Thank you again, KJ Nashville and Rachel Chevallier for the cups of coffee

you got us. Thank you. So love you and appreciate you, please. If you like our show, please, we don't do commercials. We don't do ads like that. Any kind of support you could give us will is truly so appreciated. If you could buy us a cup of coffee, there's a, there's an app on our, on our site, our friendly podcast.com.

Again, thank you so much for listening, always. We'll talk to you in just a few days. Thank you. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye.