By Phyllis Wilson
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The podcast currently has 15 episodes available.
We’ve all had a moment where we aren’t just reminded of our parents; we’ve become them.
Maybe it’s a certain gesture, speaking in a certain way, when a particular phrase comes flying–involuntarily–out of your mouth, but we’ve all been there.
The inevitable has happened.
You’ve become your mother. Or your father. Or another influential caregiver from your childhood.
Since this episode is scheduled to air on Mother’s Day, I’m thinking about parents and parenting.
How much of who we are do we owe to our parents? And how much of how they are–and were–do they owe to us?
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We all love a Personality Quiz, right?
You get to see yourself through a lens you may never have considered looking through, and discover things about yourself you never thought about before, and who doesn’t love an excuse to think and to talk about themselves for a few minutes?
There has been a boom of Personality Quizzes and Typology Assessments over the last 10 years, and even more so since the pandemic.
And it makes sense why.
In particularly chaotic and challenging times, we tend to look for something, anything, to help us make sense of things, to make sense of ourselves, and to reassure us that not only are we equipped to survive this chaos, but that we are able to thrive beyond it.
As we’re digging into the questions of who or what can tell us who we are, and the limitations of any person or tool that attempts to do that, I’m thinking about typologies.
Our interest in them, our reliance on them, and what that means–what we’re making that mean–about ourselves and about each other.
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Who are we really?
Are we the roles that we play? The work that we do? Are we defined by our relationships?
Is that who we are?
If I asked you if it was possible for anyone else to tell you who you are, you’d probably say absolutely not! Because you define who you are, right?
Which is true. But it’s also not the whole story.
We all tell others who they are all the time. And accepting or rejecting what other people tell us about ourselves isn’t as simple or straightforward as we might like it to be.
Today, I’m thinking about the complexity of identity.
Yes, we choose who we are, and how much any particular role defines us. But we also can’t disregard, dismiss, or discount other people’s perceptions of us, because they, too, make us who we are.
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With the emergence of the Body Positivity movement onto the global stage via social media in the last 10 years, I’m thinking about our bodies.
More and more (mostly female) public figures are actively celebrating their bodies, or are simply showing up fully with neither explanation nor apology. There is also more and more vocal backlash when they do.
How and why do we identify with our bodies? How much meaning and importance do we place on that identity?
And what are the implications for the lives we live and what we get to do during our short time on this planet?
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Welcome back for Season Two of We’re All Alright.
This season, I’m exploring questions of identity and otherness.
The big question: Can we allow others–and be okay with others–finding themselves and being themselves when who they are is entirely different from who we are, what we prefer, and what we expect?
And where better to start that discussion than with political identity?!
Political identity encompasses how and why we choose to define ourselves as members of, in alignment with, or in relation to, political parties, and how we perceive others who do so, especially those of opposing parties.
What are we really doing when we adopt a political identity? And is it even useful?
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One of my biggest intentions with this first season of We’re All Alright–and really, this podcast’s reason for being–was to explore our relationships with the collective–meaning all of us, all of humanity–and to do that through the lens of stories, headlines, issues, and questions that affect all of us.
And in that exploration, my hope was to remind us all of that connection we have, each of us, with all of us.
One of my other intentions was to help us make sense of the confusion, chaos, and turmoil of the last number of years, as a way of helping us all (myself included) feel better, feel safe, feel alright about our world and the times we’re living in.
But what I’m discovering is that it’s nearly impossible to make sense of this confusion.
Trying to apply logic doesn’t actually work because logic and reason just aren’t what they used to be!
When enough people reject collective truth, as less valid or legitimate than one’s personal truth, it becomes a rejection of the collective as a whole.
And since the same logic and reason no longer apply universally–or even for a sufficiently vast majority–making sense of it all may just not be in the cards.
And that’s when I realized…THIS is the bad place!
Which is where The Good Place comes in.
Today, I’m thinking about two of my favorite episodes of The Good Place and how they illustrate the complications of logic in modern life and what it means to be working to make the world a better place.
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Has there ever really been such a thing as a reliable news source?
The absence of clear communication–or even, it seems, any kind of strategy–is now frequently cited as the biggest failure and missed opportunity of the pandemic response, in the US and around the world.
That lack, along with the absolute explosion of misinformation on social media–to the point that for many, it’s nearly indistinguishable from facts–has me thinking about the media.
What do we even mean when we say “the media?”
And why do we choose one news or information source over another?
If there are no reliable news sources, whose version of events do we trust?
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The injustices done to people inside cults are very real. And yet the perpetrators of those injustices are rarely brought to justice, largely because the boundaries of personal responsibility are fuzzy at best in these cases.
That does seem to be changing though–certainly in the court of public opinion–which we can see in the growing numbers of documentaries, series and podcasts on cults, their abuses, their money-making endeavors, their exoduses and escapes and everything in between.
The popularity and prevalence of these documentaries has me asking, are cults on the rise?
I’m also thinking about my own relationship with cults, or more specifically, cult-thinking, and about how easy it is, not just for any one of us to find ourselves accidentally in or in close philosophical proximity to a cult, but also how easy it could be for any of us–especially those of us who are teachers, coaches and mentors–to find ourselves leading one.
It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.
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If you live in the US and pay even a little attention to the news, you’ll know that Haiti and its people have been in the news a lot in recent months. And unfortunately, none of it’s been good.
From the devastating 2010 earthquake, up to 2021’s presidential assassination and horrific violence faced by Haitian refugees at the US border following another earthquake in August, it may seem like Haiti is in constant strife and turmoil.
As a follow-up to the last episode about immigration, migration and national identity, I invited one of my very favorite people, Samoa Blanchet, to talk about what her home country of Haiti is really like, and for a discussion of how we form perceptions, how they endure, and how we might change them.
Samoa Blanchet is an Acceleration Specialist at The Powerhouse's Playground. She's committed to building a world full of magic and play where the possibilities are endless. She plays her role by actively challenging our perspectives of how things are and most importantly, how WE are.
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Years of continuous news of crisis after crisis at the southern border of the US have highlighted the stark realities of immigration and migration.
The lingering–and still raging–pandemic has claimed the lives of over 5 million people worldwide, and has laid bare the incredible disparities in wealth, education, access to basic medicine, shelter, food and clean water among every nation on the planet.
In this context, I’m thinking about borders, about immigration and migration, national identity and about unity and division in an increasingly global world.
There are vast differences in the experience of traveling, at home or abroad, depending on your nationality, race, gender, class, education and more. Our identities influence our experience of moving between borders, whether you’re going across the globe or across town.
As many of us begin to consider traveling again, to school, to work, to places of worship, what does it mean to spend significant time with people who may not share our values? What does it mean to be able to move freely from one place to the next or not?
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The podcast currently has 15 episodes available.