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June 1, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:04:57
779 How not to take out your past on Stef

A very honest listener opens his soul

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Time Text
Hello? Hey, how's it going?
Alright. Switching back here.
Alright. So, everything up and running.
Everything is up and running. Thanks so much for taking the time.
This, I think, will be very interesting.
And I hope you don't mind if I stop at an introduction just in case this ends up going out as a podcast.
Generally, I prefer, if possible, right, if it's useful in general, to release it as a podcast.
So don't confess to any horrible crimes.
And you'll have a chance to listen to it.
And if you feel that there's something, you can either ask me to edit it or we can ditch it completely.
That's my preference if it's useful to others, so just so you know.
I understand. I've got a lot of benefit from these, so if you find it worthwhile, yes, that'd be great.
So, do you mind if I read the email that you sent me and then I can ask some questions?
Yeah, go ahead. Fantastic.
Okay. Hi, Steph.
You sex god of the ancients.
Oh, sorry. Wait. That was Jason W. Smith.
Sorry. I'm just kidding.
I'll edit out your name. All right.
Hi, Steph. The donator medallions.
which the website should.
When it first came out on Greg only, as far as I knew, I pretty much felt embarrassed for Greg.
Never mind that it was a tad gay.
I think more than a tad.
It was just glaring.
He was the only one, and the timing of it with the troubles felt atrocious.
The troubles being, I assume, the board conflict with regard to Ilse and so on, right?
But I soon tuned it out.
I certainly couldn't begrudge you showing some appreciation for a reliable supporter.
I was happy with what I'd received in response to my donations.
I really thought I was just keeping up with a podcast rate of 50 cents each, but I got goodies as well, and that was awesome, just for those who don't know this, for those evil people listening out of sequence.
What he means by that is that I certainly do appreciate donations, 50 cents a podcast, for the people who listen, but also I send novels and an audiobook I would rather have donations for the podcasts rather than just sell the audiobooks and the books.
So that's sort of what he meant by that.
And then 765 came out and aside from being blown away by it, thank you to the listener by the way, it naturally brought the topic to mind again.
I remember, and this was the podcast where I was chatting with the gentleman about his feeling of underappreciation with regards to his donation and my response to it.
Is that correct? Yes, that's correct.
Thanks. I remember thinking Peshaw.
Is that correctly pronounced?
Peshaw. There's no need to feel jealous, excluded, etc.
Yet, I think I was denying a bit of the same feeling myself.
Then a few days later, when the first Neil images were appearing...
Actually, do you have this email? Yes.
You know, there's not much point me reading your email.
Why don't you take it from here? Okay.
I was just on the third paragraph, I think, which is...
Then a few days later...
I had shut off my Firefox, but...
Okay, I'll keep reading it.
No, no, no. I've got it here in two seconds, I'm sure.
Okay, no problem. It's not like people have heard enough of my voice.
I haven't heard enough of my voice already.
And my lovely, shaky, nervous voice will be...
It's entertaining. Don't worry, there's only about 2,000 listeners.
It's nothing. That's all.
Just kidding. Look, I mean, it's not a show or anything.
No. What is going on?
Okay. Oh, gosh.
Yahoo is deciding now is the time to try 15 additional features at my expense.
Okay, so where were we at?
Then a few days later, when the first Neil Diamond images were appearing, I was involved in an interesting exchange on a thread with you and Greg and Nate.
I'm editing as I go along here.
I was enjoying the back and forth and feeling like I was finally participating in this discussion.
It was almost a bit of a high.
Then you invited Greg and Nate by name to a Skype chat and any others who want to join in.
And I just crashed.
The bottom fell out of my skull.
I had a strong physiological response that I'm able to partially dredge up right now, and right now.
A surge of sensation down my limbs, increased heart rate, sweating, and I thought, if I hadn't unlearned how to cry, I think I would cry now.
As much as I wanted to sit with the emotions for a while, I had clients to see shortly, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to gather myself in time if I let those feelings flow freely.
When I managed to get back to thinking about my response again, it was easy to dredge up the feelings of rejection.
I later listened to the Skype conversation that you and Greg and Nate, I believe, had, and many of the points I'd raised in the chat were brought up and responded to as if they were brand new.
So I thought to myself, are my posts invisible?
Do I communicate so poorly?
I wondered. What it made me realize is that I was indeed feeling left out or marginalized.
Much as the listener in 765 described, though I won't say identically so.
I looked back at the chat and saw that I was the participant who did not have a Neil Diamond decal and wondered if that were it.
Do I not contribute enough financially?
I didn't really want the medallion, but now that everyone has it, do I look like a hanger-on that isn't contributing?
As much as I hate collectivism, the one group I dearly love to belong to is an organic one based purely upon mutual voluntary association, and here it is, and I intensely felt rejected by it.
Stewing a few more days made me admit that I haven't participated at the level that others have.
I have not been remotely as open.
I couldn't honestly say that I'd allowed myself to be rejected or accepted by this group.
I could not, and still cannot, see where I fit in all of this.
Arrgh! It's still so bothered by external validation.
Sorry, I hate to be a director, but there wasn't really any passion.
I'm sorry. That's more accurate.
Once more, we're stealing now.
Is this method? I'm sorry.
When you came out with the $200 line for diamond status, I was further perplexed as I'd hit that long ago.
Then I realized that I'd made most of my donations through eGold, and there's the phone that I'm going to ignore, and that might be why you didn't know.
So you've changed that, and of course nothing changes for me.
I'm pretty damn sure this isn't about donator icons, but they've been a catalyst for me, at least.
I'm sorry to interrupt. When you say, so you've changed that, what you mean is that the icon that you wanted is there?
Well, yeah. You updated that glaring omission.
But, of course, that really doesn't change anything for me, which is no surprise.
So, to summarize, proxy embarrassment for Greg, denial of feeling rejected, intensely feeling rejected, intense feelings of confusion, what's going on here?
Right. Well, I mean, I really, really appreciate you sending me this email.
And the reason that I wanted to talk to you about it is that this is not uncommon.
Like, I don't want you to feel crazy.
I don't want you to feel like, why is...
I mean, unless you have a real fetish for Neil Diamond, why is the absence of a Neil Diamond photo bothering you so much?
I know it feels crazy and I know it feels destabilizing and I know it feels like a very exaggerated response to a minor stimuli.
But it's perfectly healthy and it's perfectly normal.
And there's a lot of this going on at the moment, both in sort of my personal emails and in some of the posts on the board.
So I wanted to give a description of what may be occurring for you and then ask you a little bit about your history and this and that.
And just see if we can sort of make some sense out of what may feel a little bit like a crazy and destabilizing surge of feeling.
Does that make sense?
I mean, of course, that was my initial response.
It was crazy destabilizing.
But with the help, again, of the person at 765, where clearly I'm thinking, I'm not the only one circling around these kinds of feelings.
And I remember Greg even kind of showed a little discomfort when he first got those things.
So this whole topic is relevant.
I know I'm not totally insane, but...
But yes, the strong physiological response that I had was very surprising.
Now, if you could indulge me a little bit and tell me a little bit about your own personal history of recognition.
I mean obviously you're very intelligent and eloquent and your language skills are very high, your reasoning skills are very high.
So in your childhood, in your family, you had a lot to bring to the table.
I mean parents of any rational demeanor would be very honored and excited and thrilled.
To have a child of your abilities in the household.
So if you could tell me a little bit about your personal history with feeling valued and validated and recognized so that what you bring to the table, because it's not just that you have these abilities.
I'm not sort of trying to praise you here, but I think that's very good reasons, I think.
This is my theory, and I sort of want to run some facts past to find out if it's got some basis to it.
I mean, not only do you have a lot of intelligence, but, you know, Charles Manson was apparently very intelligent as well, but you have a very good soul, right?
I mean, so you have an enormous amount to bring to the table in terms of your family or your history.
What was your experience of the recognition of all of those treasures that you sort of have within your personality when you were growing up?
Oh, boy. That just doesn't even seem to be something that was on anyone's radar.
Yeah. I bet you it was on your radar.
It probably was, yes.
As I mentioned in an Ask a Therapist not too long back, performance for me, pride for my parents or my mother actually, was always just, what are your grades?
How are you shining out in public?
Not really anything to do with me.
Right, so the question was, are you adding to our shallow, status-based ego gratification?
Are you a well-polished ornament?
Are you a dog that can play the piano to some degree more than who are you as an individual and we take delight in you irrespective of what the general standards are of good ornamentation?
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I was, you know, the whole, you know, I don't know, living vicariously through me, you know, or, you know, I was going to, Go out and become a doctor and get rich and come back and take care of my mother and things like that.
That's what my life plan was in her eyes.
Right, right. Which uses your life and plan in completely opposite context, right, in a way.
Because it's not your life and it's not your plan.
Exactly. And it's not even a plan.
It's a narcissistic expectation or whatever.
But I certainly, I don't want to quibble too much, but I certainly understand what you're saying.
And so how did that show up, right, in your life?
When you would, I mean, I would imagine somebody of your intelligence, you'd sit and you daydream or you'd think about stuff, you'd read about stuff, you'd see a movie, you'd listen to some music, you'd get excited about something.
What would happen then when you would feel the impulse to share what gave you joy with your family?
Often it was, I mean, when I was really young in like elementary school age and things like that, that was really encouraged, sharing that information and But then it became more, you're a know-it-all, or are you just going to sit there and keep your nose in your books?
I remember when I first got my first Walkman, and I wore it around all the time.
Oh, is that how you're going to live now?
And a lot of sniping and smartass.
I was a smartass a lot.
I got called that a lot.
Sorry to interrupt, but can you remember an example of how it was encouraged when you were younger?
And you said, would you say up until around the ages, the grades of sort of five or six or seven?
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, that's when my parents got divorced, or my mom kicked my dad out type of deal.
That's when, you know, everything went to hell.
But just...
I was very interested in astronomy, and so she got me astronomy gifts, and she would encourage me camping out on the back porch and talking about the stars and whatever.
And did she sit down? Again, I'm sorry, I just want to make sure I get a complete picture, so I really do apologize for interrupting, but was it that she would go through the books with you?
Did she look through the telescope with you, or did she sort of hand it to you and say, well, if this is what you like, I support it?
No, actually, when we were younger, I mean, She spent a lot of time with me on that stuff.
Not that we talk about it in depth, but it wasn't a dump and run type of situation.
But it was almost more like, you need to learn this.
There was a pushing aspect to it as well.
I mean, yes, she did happen to find a couple areas that I was interested in, but there was definitely the fill my brain with factoids kind of approach.
Again, not that personal, what are you really interested in, let's really talk about it.
Definitely not that. So she wouldn't ask you, what is it that you find thrilling about astronomy?
And I went through the same phase.
I mean, I loved it. I measured sunspots.
I bought a telescope and all that.
And of course, I loved it because for me, it was great to think that my mind was big enough to conceive of the universe, which was huge.
Like, it made me feel big and strong and knowledgeable and so on.
But nobody ever asked me, why do you like it?
Yeah, no, that was not asked.
Not at all. And do you remember that question when you bought The Walkman, did people say, tell me what you love about music, tell me what you love about listening?
No, no way. And do you remember that question at all where anybody in your childhood would ask you why you liked something?
No, no. Definitely not that.
And do you remember any situations where you tried to explain to somebody when you were a kid why you liked something?
No, no. I really don't recall any of that.
So you lived a kind of – I mean you kind of lived like an orbiting lifestyle, right?
So you had this family that you orbited like in a sort of airless reaches of the upper atmosphere where you were sort of both visible to each other but there was no real contact in terms of trying to – I mean it's not your job to try and understand your parents because you're a kid, right?
Yeah. There were people who said, yes, he's orbiting, and look, he's shiny, and look, he likes these things, and so on.
But there was no sense of the why, right?
There was the what. You know, what you like.
And your parents could probably rhyme off what you liked.
But I'm not really sure, if I understand what you're saying correctly, that they could tell anybody why you liked.
Like, what motivated you to like these certain things?
No, there's no... And I know that is true just from very young.
Just... Knowing that I never had that kind of connection with my parents, even by the age of five, I know that my memory is there.
I do not recall any sort of connective bond with my mother or my father that I would share things like that with them.
There was nothing like that. Right. Now when you say share things like this, can you think of other things that you did share with them that would be personal?
No. I mean, it just wasn't that...
No, I didn't grow up with that kind of life.
I mean, I already see how different that is with my daughter and I now.
I mean, I just didn't get to sit and wonder with my parents and just talk about, you know, things that weren't immediately practical or, you know, on their agenda.
No. Right.
And of course, I mean, I believe myself that we end up learning about ourselves or being curious about our own motives when other people ask us why we like certain things or why we dislike.
I mean, when you ask your children, why do you like this?
Why do you not like this? It's not a cross-examination.
It's a way of helping the children to understand that they don't just have to surf their own emotions and desires like the silver surfer, but they can go in, right?
They strap on a scuba gear and go in and find out what is the root cause of these things, which is very, very important, right?
Because otherwise, we end up being just dominated by our feelings to the point where we either end up acting out in a hedonistic manner or shutting down our feelings because we don't know where they come from and they feel overwhelming, right?
So the reason that we ask our kids, why do you feel this or tell me why you feel that or what excites you about astronomy?
What's the feeling? It's so that they can learn to understand their own feelings, right?
So that they can sort of work with their feelings in a productive partnership rather than either feeling overwhelmed and shutting them down or not being able to figure out the cause, right?
And the reason that I'm asking these questions is because There were a few statements that you made in your email, and in particular, the statement that you said, if I had not been forbidden to cry or taught not to cry, I would have cried, right?
So tell me a little bit about, if you don't mind, I mean, I don't want to open you right up, it's up to you, but if you could tell me a little bit about what you meant by that statement, that might help as well.
Well, I mean, you know, it's kind of a joke, you know, now, for...
A lot of men in general that, you know, oh, men don't cry as adults.
And I was looking back on my history with crying and, you know, realized that it used to be the case that, like, in my...
I remember during my teenage years when I was still at home that any time I would have Any sort of argument with my mother, I would start to well up.
And she would see this, and then she'd mock me.
Oh, you're going to cry now.
Oh, is the big boy going to cry now?
Yeah, exactly. And now, with my wife, it's kind of a joke that Jason doesn't cry.
Don't want to open that can of worms.
But yeah, it's...
And I look back, and the only times I remember crying...
As even a little kid, or the latency period, as you call it, was when I was physically hurt in some way.
But emotionally, yeah, I was trained to stifle that pretty regularly, pretty early on, pretty viciously.
Right. I mean, and for a lot of men, like, there are two acceptable situations where you can cry.
One is the death of a parent, and the other is if you actually have, like, bones sticking out of your flesh or something.
Yes. That's sort of allowed.
Like, if you're dying or somebody has just died, that's possible.
But you have to cry in a manly way, like a frozen-faced marine single-tier trickling down as the taps plays in the middle distance with bagpipes and stuff.
You're allowed that kind of stuff, right?
But you're not allowed to have the full-on toddler blubber, right?
Exactly. Real family dog, too.
Right, right. Family dog, absolutely.
I think, I mean, just to correct you on one minor thing, I would say that you said that you don't want to open up this can of worms, and I certainly do understand that as an impulse, but I think that you do, right, because you sent the email to me, right?
And again, I'm not trying to sort of say that you're being manipulated by your unconscious, but I think that you at least want to have the freedom to...
To be able to feel emotion to that depth, right?
I mean, there's nothing wrong with tears.
Tears can be very powerful and that kind of sadness can be very instructive.
And there's, to me at least, a kind of beauty.
is a very powerful and helpful emotion.
So I think that probably what is happening just in this immediate instance is that you do want to be able to reclaim that because you don't want to continue to be emotionally crippled by your mother's hostility and sadism of many years past, right?
I mean, because that really lets her win, right?
And we should do everything in her power not to let bad people win, right?
So if your mother did this horrible stuff, which is really, really unbelievably destructive, right, to mock a child for crying, the British phrase is, oh, here come the waterworks, right?
So when people inhibit our capacity to feel deeply by attacking our feelings, I mean, they really are sending us out crippled and rudderless into the world, right?
And of course, you've achieved an enormous amount entirely to your credit, but I think that, and this may be, how old is your daughter, if you don't mind me asking?
She's four and a half, almost five.
Right, four and a half, almost five.
So I would guess that what is coming up for you...
It's something like this, that in combination with the conversation that you're listening to in these podcasts, with the fact that your daughter is reaching an age where...
reaching the age that you were when things began to turn in your family.
I mean, nobody chastises a baby for crying.
I mean, I guess they do, but the baby doesn't care, right?
Well, and actually, I would say that, yeah, I mean, I still think that this stuff with my family happened even earlier than five years old.
I mean, and I... I did things raising our daughter now that were certainly not done when my parents were with me.
What do you mean? Well, my mom was of the variety that I didn't want to breastfeed because I didn't want you to get dependent on me.
You had to cry it out through the night rather than in your own room from the get-go rather than be comforted regularly.
Things like that. You may have seen other people on the board mention attachment parenting, but it's just a kind of acknowledging that your child's attempts at communication are valid pretty much from the get-go.
Right, for sure, for sure.
But I would imagine that the verbal component of it, because until four and a half, it's sort of four or so, it's kind of tough to be verbally attacked when you're a kid.
It's just bewildering. But your reasoning and language skills are developing to that point where you can begin to be truly manipulated.
And so it's a possibility that part of this is coming up both because of the stimulus from the show and also because your daughter may be.
It's possible, right? I ended up breaking up from a long-term relationship that wasn't productive at 32, which was the same age my father was when he left my mom.
There do tend to be these kinds of parallels in life, and I don't want to put too much stock in it.
It's nothing mystical. It's just the unconscious working its way through.
So was there anything else that you wanted to add about that or anything that we missed?
Other than everything, right?
Well, I might chime in that you can verbally abuse children, even, I would say, from two to three years old.
I mean, I've just even noticed in my, you know, I've had to unlearn a lot of just even sarcasm, the cruelty of sarcasm to children that are, you know, not old enough to understand it.
It's very confusing and I think it's debilitating.
And, uh... And just the small manipulations that you can do with language, even before children, like you're saying, at four and five, where they really get what's called the theory of mind, where they really understand the full power of language, I still think they can be...
I fully agree, and thank you for pointing that out.
I think that's an excellent point.
I wasn't clear at all. What I meant was that you can yell at a child.
You can even scream at a baby, and the baby's going to be terrified.
I mean, I don't mean to say that the children live in this biosphere of immunity until that age, but I think at the age of four or so, you can begin to make the child attack himself.
So you can attack the child verbally, and the child at that point has an ego strength enough to internalize it and attack himself.
There's a reason that they don't send the kids to Sunday school before the age of five or so, because they won't get the whole Jesus died for your sins and original sin and so on.
You can't get children to attack themselves.
They can't internalize that attack mechanism until they reach a certain age.
So yes, I think that's an excellent point.
I can see your point as well.
Individuation and self-awareness or ability to self-attack, like you said.
Yeah, you have to differentiate yourself from others before others can stimulate you to attack yourself, and that's why a lot of the stuff occurs at that age.
So, I'll put forward a minor theory, and you can let me know what you think, because I'm noticing a lot of this stuff, which I consider to be enormously great, that's occurring.
The question is...
Well, there's a couple of questions when these kinds of feelings come up.
The question is always, why now?
And the other question is always, why with this person?
Now, obviously, vulnerability with your parents is a suicide mission.
I mean, this is just a way to go in and get yourself punched in the gut repeatedly, right?
I mean, there's no – having eaten a whole pizza, right?
It's like with your parents' vulnerability and saying, I'm upset by something you did is a suicide mission to – and I don't mean that even in that overdramatic a sense, right?
Like I mean it would be like jumping off a cliff voluntarily.
Emotionally, is that reasonable or is that too strong?
Absolutely.
I mean especially with respect to my mother – Not so much with my father, but definitely with my mother.
Now, with your mother, do you feel vulnerable and don't express it, or do you not feel vulnerable at all when you're with her and have no desire to express it?
Oh, I'm not at all with my mother at all anymore.
My mom's very similar to yours, and I mean, the histories are frighteningly similar.
I don't even know where she is now.
She has fallen off the face of the earth.
Good for you. I mean, it's really...
Yes, it's...
I kind of defood in stages without your guidance.
It's been prolonged.
Right. No, good for you.
I mean, in particular, for your own mental health and the health of your marriage.
But most particularly, you have taken a toxic element, a highly toxic element, out of your Your child's life, right?
I mean, that's the good for you.
It's obviously you, but your child is a million times going to be a million times happier and healthier because of this.
So, okay. Now, when you are in situations with somebody where a vulnerability may occur, as did occur with the board stuff and the donation levels logos, do you feel that experience in other areas of your life and don't express it?
Or do you not feel, was this a surprise and like came out of nowhere in a sense for you?
I don't get myself in that kind of situation very often anymore, if ever.
With my wife, I will tend to shy away, though I've been trying to work on letting that out more.
Right, like pushing it out more.
Yeah, exactly. Grab the chains and...
Right, get the boat hook.
We're going to wrestle some feeling out here.
Tow trucks. So, yes, I mean, that's...
High anxiety usually comes up and that's what, you know, I've been able to work on some degree is, yeah, actually letting that out and not letting my, you know, My assumed responses of the other person, the attacks or just even hurting their feelings necessarily so much, just still at least letting myself let that out.
And how hard an email was this to write?
Oh, I can write them all day.
It's hitting the post button that seems to be the difficult part.
You're not a lawyer, are you?
I was just thinking, because, you know, the hair splitting?
No, I mean, what I mean is to send.
Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, just terribly painful.
I mean, a year ago, I wouldn't even have written it, let alone sent it.
Right, right. Well, I mean, I think it's magnificent.
Honestly, I know how horribly difficult that is, and what a nail-biting experience that is, and how you are really voluntarily, with no shielding, approaching the furnace of your first punishments, right?
I mean, and voluntarily feeling like, great, I get to throw myself in the oven, so I know that it's a really, really hard thing to do, and I certainly do appreciate it.
I think one of the things that's occurring in the community, and I certainly don't mean to throw you into the general soup, right?
I mean, the specifics with which you communicated are fantastic, and it's more than a lot of people are doing.
But I think that what's happening is that...
Now that people have had a longer term relationship with me and with the board as a whole, but we'll just talk about me for the moment because I'm the one who's getting this kind of stuff thrown at me, which is, again, I don't mean this in any negative way.
I think it's great. But I think that you felt that it was very stressful to write and to send the email, but I think that you would have been very surprised if I had written back to you and said, oh, stop being such a whiner.
You know, suck it up. You know, I sent you novels.
Yeah. Oh, yes.
And I mean, I told myself that before.
It's like, why don't I just send this damn thing?
What's the worst thing that Steph's going to do?
Not respond? And I know that you're not even going to do that.
So... Or if I do, it's not going to be because I don't care.
I just will have forgotten or 50 other emails have come in in the hour since or whatever.
It's a PC, correct. So it is because I was not or have not acted in a manner similar to – let's just say your mother because we don't have time to get into your dad – Because I don't act in a manner that is similar to your mother, that you were able to communicate what you felt to me.
Yeah, precisely. Just like the listener in number 765, exactly.
Right, right. Now, on the plus side, right, I mean, and this is not an insignificant plus, right?
So, I mean, you should really, I think, take this as a badge of honor.
On the plus side, you said, this is what I feel, which is fantastic, right?
That's a level of self-observation that is very sophisticated, and you should not take that lightly.
That is enormously powerful, because some of the stuff that I get is, you know, Steph, you bastard, you didn't give me a logo.
You know, that kind of stuff, right?
I didn't want to give a logo.
Yeah. Right, right.
So, I mean, you have an observing ego to the point where you say, well, the feelings are out of whack with, you know, so I'm going to tell Steph how I feel, but not act out how I feel, you know, because Steph is making me feel anxious or weepy or whatever.
I'm not going to act it out as if Steph is, you know, hitting me with a poker or something like that.
So that is fantastic, right?
I mean, if I got more of those, that would be great.
But one thing that I found that is very interesting is that When you have – I mean, let's just talk about two basic relationships, one of which is very important in your life, the other which is pretty tangential.
The important one in your history is your mama.
The tangential one is with me or with the podcast or whatever you want to call it.
Now, you were able to express anxiety, stress, the feelings that you were feeling.
You were able to express those to me.
But you weren't, and wisely not, you would not express those to your mom, if that's fair to say, right?
Yeah, at least not until the raging, you know, late teenage years when I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.
And I was large. Right, and then you wouldn't be vulnerable, you'd be angry, right?
Exactly. Right, right.
So the interesting thing, of course, is that when you have a healthy relationship in your life, like your ability to email me, that healthy relationship...
It has a lot of stress and tension that it evokes, right?
Because it's a difference.
It's a huge difference from what came before.
So whenever we have negative experiences with our parents, as children, we tend to do two things, right?
We universalize them and we internalize them.
Now, both of those are contradictory, but we're kids.
We're just trying to survive, right? So we universalize them like everyone does this.
And we internalize it like, if I were better, this wouldn't be happening.
I mean, those are the two most common responses.
I was much more towards the universalization than I was towards the internalization, but it usually happens at some level in both relationships.
So then when a healthy relationship comes along, then what happens is that all of the assumptions, right, all of the assumptions that have been universalized and internalized based on our prior relationships End up being provoked by the healthy relationship, if that makes any sense. Yeah, just total dissonance there.
I mean, I guess you don't want to say...
Right, which reawakens all of the feelings that occurred within the earlier relationship, which we have repressed because there was no way of changing it, and we were kids, and we weren't going to get away, and we couldn't fight, and we had no power.
So we repress all those feelings.
And the reason that I think it's so important to talk about, and this is not in particular to you, who I think did the right thing in emailing me, But what I'm concerned about with people as a whole is that when they come across something like this conversation...
It's like they have a virus in them that attacks healthy tissue.
It's like cancer, right?
Actually, cancer doesn't really attack it.
I think it just swirls or it reproduces.
But my concern is that, and this is where the fulcrum I think is in personal growth that is really challenging, which is that when people begin to have healthy relationships in their life, their tendency is to act out The dysfunctional relationships in the realm of the healthy relationships, which when they're suppressed and don't have any, and I'm not saying you don't have any, I'm just like talking in general, right?
But when those bad relationships and the effects thereof are suppressed, then they don't end up acting out that sort of stuff because it's just totally repressed.
I mean, there's something kind of elemental that's missing, right?
Which is probably what your wife nags you about from time to time, but they don't tend to act out that stuff.
But when a healthy relationship comes along, It provokes a lot of almost anxiety and hostility and tension, and that gets channeled into the healthy relationship.
And that's the weird thing when you're on the receiving end of this.
It's weird because you know that people are expressing negative things to you because you're healthy.
Yeah, exactly. Because you're a positive.
You know what I mean? Because I'm not going to attack back.
Right? People will act out hostility towards me or whatever, right?
Now, again, you weren't acting out, so I wanted to talk about you in particular because this to me seems like a very positive and healthy thing to do and healthy way to approach it, which is to say to the person, right?
Because, you know, I always say that the first virtue is honesty.
And the reason that I wanted to talk about this email with you personally is because, I mean, that was an amazingly honest email.
Right? Like, magnificently, like visible from space, glowing, honest email.
Because you said, I'm feeling these things.
You know, I know that it's not rational, but here's what triggered it, and blah, blah, blah.
And all of that is perfectly honest, right?
The Steph, you bastard, you didn't give me a donation icon, is also honest in a way, but it's acting out, right?
And so I'm sort of concerned, and I wanted to sort of highlight this, and I'll stop talking in a sec, but I wanted to highlight this for people just to say that When you have a healthy relationship coming into your life, and I think, I mean, I really do think that just because of my own experience with therapy,
be my abilities as a psychologist and a philosopher and, you know, Christina, who watches my back and keeps me well-counseled, I think we have a radiantly healthy potential here as a community and as a relationship, right, which hopefully will spread through your kids, through your wife, and through other things that you do in your life.
So it's not even like people are getting from a dysfunctional relationship to a slightly less dysfunctional relationship.
Like this is a night and day contrast, I think, for a lot of people.
And I think that a lot of people are going to feel that impulse to attack the healthy relationship because they know that because of the health in this relationship from my side, they're not going to get attacked back.
And the great temptation then is to unload all of the anxiety and stress and frustration and anger and terror and so on on the healthy person because you know they're not going to attack back.
And that's a really dangerous moment.
And I'm not saying that you were on that line, but I just wanted to point it out for people as a whole.
That's a really dangerous moment, right?
Because that's what your parents did with you.
Right? Yes. They had someone who couldn't fight back.
I won't fight back because I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going to let myself, although it's tempting, don't get me wrong, I'm not going to let myself do that because that's not what I've committed to with my life.
I want to make things better in the world.
As I said on the board, philosophy is about learning that there are far better ways to fight fire than with fire.
But when you are in the situation with somebody who's engaged with you, who's not going to fight back, either because they're a kid and they're totally dependent on you, or because they're virtuous and trying to act with integrity and aren't going to fight back, It's almost supercharged, right?
Like all of the frustrations and problems from prior relationships end up rolling down that channel towards the new, healthier relationship.
And I say healthier because we're both adults, right?
I mean, if I was your kid and you were not as smart and self-aware as you are, right, then...
And the innocence or the lack of ability to fight back that I was feeling, you would end up acting out some of the hostility and some of the negativity and some of the fear.
So I just sort of wanted to point out that when a healthy relationship comes into your life – and again, I'm not characterizing all of your relationships, which I don't know, but for most people – When we've had difficult paths, a healthy relationship comes into our life.
The great temptation is to sort of push all of the old bad feelings and it happens involuntarily, as you know.
You're not sitting there going, hmm, I know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to take this Neil Diamond thing and blow it into a supernova, blah, blah, blah.
It just kind of seizes you, right?
And it just kind of takes you over.
And I want people to be aware of that just so that they understand what's happening.
Why all of these intense feelings come up when they encounter a healthy and positive relationship?
Does that ring true or make any sense to you, or is that totally skyrocketing?
Well, that's exactly what I was asking at the end of the podcast.
I mean, you know, not even, you know, like I said, I was feeling embarrassment for Greg.
I was, you know, denying feelings.
I was feeling a lot of strong things, and yeah, why is this happening?
That was my, you know...
I sat with the feelings long enough.
I thought about them long enough to think, okay, well, I know this is not Steph attacking me, or all this silly donation labeling stuff is not about me, but yet I'm having this strong reaction, what is this about?
That was my question, and that does make sense.
You're going to be a vent for all of these feelings that we've not been allowed to feel.
You are going to naturally kind of attract that, draw that negative out just because now we can finally, I find you safe to let that out with.
For sure, for sure.
I mean, and so what happens is there is a part of you, right?
There's a part of us that gets frozen in time when we encounter significant opposition to our true selves, which we all do endlessly when we're kids and sadly all too often when we're adults as well.
So, you know, we grow, right?
We grow, we grow. But when we encounter a significant opposition to our natural selves, right, this is the catalyst, this is the projector of the false self, right?
We create this false self which says that I'm going to obey my parents because they have power, and then I'm going to pretend that I'm obeying virtue in a universal way, right?
That's what our parents demand, right?
Parents don't want us to obey them because they have power, because that makes them feel like bullies.
They don't want to feel like bullies because they are bullies.
So they don't want to feel like bullies because then they wouldn't be bullies.
They'd feel bad about it. So parents want us to obey them and they threaten us with power, with disapproval, with hostility, with negativity, with physical or emotional or verbal attacks or whatever.
But they want us to obey them.
Because they are virtuous, right?
So they say, well, I'm just a messenger of virtue.
But the reality is that we obey them because they scare us.
It's like the line out of Mommy Dearest.
When you said Mommy Dearest, I wanted you to...
Yeah, that's right.
So they want us to respect them as agents of virtue, but they bully us with the weapons of aggression and humiliation and so on.
I know that for myself, when I would actively try to evade my mom, or when I would look at her with sort of terror or whatever, that's when the attacks would redouble, because she would be looking in a mirror.
She would be looking in a mirror and it's sort of hard for your conscience to kind of miss that your child is like scrambling away from you and trying to hide under a table or whatever, right?
So when somebody is kind of evil that way, what makes them the most enraged is for somebody to say, I am terrified of you.
Now, there may be certain, I don't know, because I didn't have a dad, like the macho guys who are like, oh yeah, well, I am that big and strong, blah, blah, blah, right?
But But certainly for moms in particular, right?
They don't want to look in that mirror and say, my child is genuinely terrified, right?
Because, of course, they were genuinely terrified as children and they repressed it and so it comes out again when they attack their kids and so on.
And so that is where, you know, we get stuck, right?
Because there's a fundamental lie that we have to live and have to believe, right?
You can't fake it. You have to believe it, which is that...
You know, my parents are mere representatives of some deeper or higher principle.
That's what they demand, that we believe that.
I mean, just otherwise they'd be completely insane, right?
Nobody wants to say, I relish my evil, right?
They always want to say, well, I'm trying to make my kid good.
I'm trying to be a good parent and I have to beat them.
I have to beat my kid because my kid is going to otherwise turn out to be bad and I'm going to be a bad parent.
So everybody puts on this armor of virtue at all times.
And so we get totally stuck in this lie, which is that we're actually just terrified, but we have to believe that it's virtue.
So we get thrown in prison, but we have to believe that it's justice.
Not just an evil prison guard, but justice is a principle that ends up with us in prison.
So I think that principle stays frozen within us until we encounter a different methodology, like a different way of dealing with things and with doing things.
So how did you feel on the podcast where, I don't know if you've heard any of the ones, where I was very emotional or weepy or anything like that?
Well, those were, you know, pretty powerful ones.
The one I recall, you leaving your job of some sort, you know, and of course I just had a whole bunch of theories about what you were being weepy about, but...
Yeah, I mean, that was not something I'm used to seeing, obviously, in a man of my age.
And so that was eye-opening as well.
You know, I've been obviously thinking about the crying thing quite a bit for the past few months, so...
For sure, for sure. Now, what were your feelings, though, when I was crying?
And obviously, there was like, you couldn't see below the steering wheel that I had diapers on or anything.
So, what was your feeling?
I don't do videos anyway, so.
Right, quite wise.
Although, that one, I think it was the Humiliation Podcast.
I think that may be worthwhile you having a look at just because you might as well, you know, put your face right in the fire, right, as far as seeing the visual as well as the...
When you did hear me weeping, what was your experience of that?
Oh boy. I don't remember feeling embarrassed.
I certainly wasn't mocking.
Do you want me to cry now?
Yeah, turn it on, please.
Just like, you know, wow, he's really feeling something very intense here.
Well, actually, probably what I felt, and I've had this before, is like, why don't I feel like that?
Why don't I... Boy, that's dredging up a memory from, I don't know, about ten years ago, where I was listening to a song by the Waterboys, and I almost broke down crying, just on a car ride with my wife.
It's like, Why don't I feel like this guy feels in the song?
Why can I never feel like that?
And that would be probably, you know, gosh, this guy's just leaving a job that, you know, he doesn't like that much.
You know, he's having, you know, these really strong emotions, and yet they seem wholly appropriate.
Why do I not feel that?
I guess that's, I feel like I'm missing out on something there.
Did you, and do you, sorry, go ahead.
No, please. No.
Well, do you genuinely not know why you don't feel that?
Like when you say, why don't I feel that?
I mean, is that something that, I mean, maybe 10 years ago you didn't.
When that occurs for you now, do you know why you don't feel those things?
Oh, certainly. I mean, I know that I'm not allowed to feel those things.
I mean, like I said, I unlearned how to cry.
Those things were squashed in me for a long time, and I'm Just now, really trying to get back in touch with them.
Unfortunately, the only feelings I had been feeling were the rage.
That was what I would feel.
Of course, even when you feel rage, you feel guilty about feeling rage, and then you try to suppress that, so I've been not doing that.
There's been progress in that area where I say, oh, wow, why is this little thing enraging me?
Okay, well, I would If they ask a therapist, I'd mention being ignored was...
It's all part and parcel.
But yeah, I mean, I guess if I was to answer that question right now, that's why I don't feel those things, or did not.
Right, and I would take a minor quibble with the use of the phrase that you unlearned how to cry.
Was that the phrase that you used?
Well, yeah, that's the phrase I used, so I'll take corrections.
Right, and that is a very civilized phrase, right?
But you were brutalized for crying.
I mean, I don't want to sort of...
I know it sounds, maybe it sounds like an exaggeration, but when we are very vulnerable and we are crying and so on...
To attack someone at that state, it creates an enormous amount of scar tissue, right?
It is an enormous amount of scar tissue that is created, especially, of course, in the somewhat testosterone-laced culture that we live in, where men are supposed to suck it up and be soldiers and blow up.
But, I mean, it really was...
You were numbed through brutalization.
I mean, that's sort of the phrase that I would work with, because I think if you say unlearned, you know, like it's sort of like, well, I was sort of...
I'm scolded for crying, and so I sort of tried to avoid it.
But I think if you understand the depth, I mean, obviously you're a person of great passion, right?
Otherwise you wouldn't miss it, right?
I mean, I don't miss my math ability because I don't have it, right?
So I don't feel like there's this big gaping hole where my math degree should be.
But obviously you have the capacity for great and passionate and powerful feeling, which is not true of everyone.
I mean, I don't think it's universally true.
We all have passions to certain degrees, but...
You must undo, right?
But because it was attacked so strongly and because you feel that something is missing, right?
So you know deep down that you have the capacity for great and rich and deep feeling, which you're missing, right?
Which would make your life much more rich.
So the first thing that I would do if I were you, and there's no switch, right?
Sadly, right? There's no switch that turns us back on.
But the first thing that I would do if I were you is to really recognize and respect The brutality of the attacks that occurred at you and the verbal attacks from moms, I mean, they're poison, right? I mean, in general, women do have an ability, and some men have it too, but women in particular, I found, have an ability to just say the stuff that, you know, it's like an arrow straight through the heart, right?
I mean, there's an exquisite verbal sadism that...
I've experienced more from women, and it's just because of dating, right?
That's just sort of my... But I've not experienced it quite as much from men, but it certainly does happen from men, where, you know, they just...
It's like a laser precision arrow that goes straight through you, and that is incredibly destructive.
Because if you weren't really brutalized, right, then, in a sense, you're just cowardly, if that sort of makes sense.
Like if the stimulus that kind of undercut your capacity to feel was not very strong, then either your capacity to feel was not very strong or you kind of gave up without a fight.
But I would submit that given the depth of your feeling and of your intelligence, that you did not give up without a fight, that you were vanquished by 10,000 warriors and that it was something that was extraordinarily and persistently and repetitively brutal on you. warriors and that it was something that was extraordinarily and And I think that eases a certain amount of tension, at least it did for me when I understood that, because it meant that it took 10,000 men to bring me down.
So clearly there's a lot of strength in me and there was a lot of brutality that was poured on me for that.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, that is definitely a more direct way of stating what happened.
Right, and there's a reason why you put it in a more civilized manner, which is it helps you to avoid the feelings, right?
The feelings of the agony.
I mean, and it is agony when you're in pain.
It's like if you've just had a tooth pulled out and somebody jabs a needle into the gum.
I mean, that's really bad.
When you're already vulnerable, when you're already crying and emotional and you need somebody to be there and tell you everything's okay, when they then take that opportunity to twist the knife in, I mean, that's like somebody stamping on the cast that's on your leg, right? I mean, that is incredibly brutal and sadistic.
And that was what gave you this aversion.
But the aversion was as the result of the worst conceivable torture, right?
I mean, I think that, again, I know it sounds exaggerated, but I think that if you get just how for 20 years of your life or, you know, longer, if you stayed in touch with your mom longer...
That whenever you were emotional, you were brutalized by somebody who had historic power over you of near-godlike proportions.
We can never resist our parents.
It is completely impossible to resist the power that our parents have over us until our dying day.
Because you just can't shake 20 years of first impressions, and you can't undo the effects of being under the power of somebody to that degree, and we'll never be under anybody's power again to that same degree in our life.
So it's an extraordinary, immense, fathomless disparity of power, and if we were brutalized when we were helpless for that long, you can never undo that kind of power over you.
And so I think if you recognize the incredible danger that you were in, and the enormous amount of sadism and brutality that was inflicted upon you, then I think it can help you to understand a little bit more, not that something is missing from you, but that something was nearly killed in you.
Nearly, right? And that letter is the nearly, right?
Because if you'd acted out, then it would be like, well, you can't come back, right?
But the letter that you sent me was the nearly, and that's, I mean, amazing.
But I think if you have more respect for the pressure and brutality that you experienced, the hostility and the power differential that you experienced, I think that you can have, obviously, more sympathy for yourself, but...
I think then the anger is not going to be just frustration that you feel that something's missing, but, you know, if the bullet takes off your earlobe, you can go, holy crap, like three inches to the right, I would have been dead.
And then the fear that you feel afterwards makes a lot more sense, right?
Yeah, I'm going to have to listen to that last part again, but, I mean, you know, that's stuff that has been rolling through the broadcast for quite some time, but, yeah, internalizing that and really...
Applying it is another matter.
Right, and that's one of the reasons why the donation stuff is happening now.
And one of the reasons why the donation stuff is happening now is that, I mean, obviously, it is a little nerve-wracking for some people to get public acknowledgement of their generosity, right?
And it is generosity.
I know that I put out a great podcast that's unique and blah, blah, blah.
But it is not the easiest thing in the world to shove some money over the Internet of some guy, right?
It's not always the easiest thing in the world.
I fully recognize that.
But I think that – I mean, there's two reasons for me, just in case you're interested, why I wanted to do this stuff now is obviously there's a DRO theory around social pressure, which I was curious about, right?
Whether or not when people's donations were made public or not.
Um, whether that would affect people's donations behavior, right?
And, and I, I agree with you.
200 is a low cutoff for some of the extraordinary generosity that I've had, but, uh, I didn't want to put in, you know, I had a, I had a logo of Aristotle's bust and philosopher God was going to be for those who'd give it even more, but I wanted to talk, I wanted to send an email out to people ahead of time just to make sure I didn't really freak them out too, too much. Um, so there was that aspect.
There's also a full disclosure aspect, right?
Because there was a lot of conflict on the board and, uh, I wanted to make it clear that the people who were donating were the people I was supporting, right?
So that nobody could say, well, you were hiding that or anything like that.
So I wanted that to be clear to people, right?
So that if they wanted to accuse me of bias, they could do so with full knowledge of, you know, the fact that Niels never gave me a penny after saying that my podcast had made him weep with joy for a year and a half.
It's not inconsequential, right?
Yeah, that was shocking to learn, I mean, but then not so shocking, so.
Right, right. They're not so shocking.
But I wanted people to get public positive acknowledgement.
That's not easy for us.
It's not easy for people who have great intelligence and sensitivity who've been brutalized in the past.
Public acknowledgement was always really risky, right?
Unless it was merely ornamental, you know, like, hey, mom, I won the science fair prize or whatever.
Well, that's great, honey. I'll put it up here on the mental piece.
And then we'll actually ask you what you did, right?
I'm more interested in the ribbon than I am in my son's intellectual progress, right?
Precisely. Yeah, we're really not used to this.
Right, right. And I felt that now because we've...
When was the last time we did economics, right?
I mean, we've been talking about a lot of highly personal and highly sensitive stuff.
And I felt that now was the right time to give people public acknowledgement.
Because in the past, public acknowledgement...
Was either you get attacked for it, right?
For whatever reason, right? Some parents are jealous or whatever.
Or it's even more frustrating because you get praised for the wrong thing, right?
You get praised for the wrong thing.
I remember when I was, I don't know, about 14 or 15, I took a course in computers.
That was, I think, a first, it was like a high school course or something like that.
I was 13 or so. And it turned out it was like how to read and write blocks of data to a floppy disk.
And I basically spent the time in the back programming games and never graduated.
But my mother would like fixated on this.
My son is taking adult courses in computer science, blah, blah, blah.
And she didn't have any clue what I was doing, why I liked it, why I liked the computers, what was good.
She just didn't care, but she really liked – so even that level of acknowledgement was actually more annoying to me than not because it was seized on for all the wrong reasons.
And something that I treasured at a personal level was used as a medal of honor for somebody I really despised.
Exactly.
So I got a complicated relationship to that.
So public acknowledgement is still something that I'm working on, but I felt that it was sort of time to do that on the board so that people could get a little bit more used to it because we need to have that pride, I think.
I mean, if we're going to go out for those who are interested in that and try and really make a difference in the world, positive acknowledgement is something that we need to be proud of what it is that we're doing and what it is that we've done.
So, I mean, it's one of the reasons why I wanted to put it out now.
Yeah. Yeah, I knew there was some connection with how I'd experienced what was called praise in the past.
You know, praise for basically obeying me or meeting my parents' needs, which always felt, of course, really wretched.
So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Okay. Well, that's great. How do you feel that this level of explanation has gone?
Obviously, we can't do the whole topic, but do you feel that this has sort of given you some framework to work with this feeling or this reaction?
Yeah, certainly. I mean, I need to get back in therapy again and really, I guess, find someone that either knows how to do it or really force the issue of going back and really re-experiencing Those brutalizing moments, I guess, to really understand...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Well, I was just going to say, I mean, I've yet to finish planning the how-to-do-it stuff, right?
Because I've given a lot... I've thrown a lot out there about stuff that's wrong.
And, I mean, at a political level, I've said, you know, here's how a free society will work, which is great.
It won't be anything we'll experience, but it's great for the next couple of generations.
But... What I haven't done, and I'll just give you a brief taste of it now, what I haven't done is how do you reclaim this stuff?
How do you get back? I would say that the mental journey, at least the one that worked for me, is that...
It's important to go back and re-experiencing it.
But of course, who knows what that means?
If I say to you, go back and re-experience it, it's like, that's great.
Do I take a blue pill and jump in a time machine?
Or what the hell are you talking about, BCF? What the hell are you talking about?
I need to go find my race car shirt and my Legos.
Right. Or you get in the Calvin and Hobbes transmogrifier and go back.
I've come with a stuffed tiger to save you.
I think that everyone has a different way of doing it.
And for me, it was writing. I would write dialogues and so on and try and re-experience it that way.
But the key thing is that you don't want to regress.
You don't want to go back and re-experience the trauma.
I mean, just to use highly metaphorical language, for which I apologize, and also I'm sure I get lots of emails from engineers saying that this metaphor isn't correct to the third decimal place.
You have to go back and re-experience the trauma, but not re-inflict the trauma.
And what I mean by that is that it's worth sort of sitting down and thinking about your childhood With your adult self present in the memory, if this makes any – and again, this is really – who knows, right?
This could be like smoke three joints and it's all better.
But what I mean is that you don't want to go back just as a child and re-experience because that's just re-traumatizing.
I wouldn't even know how to do that, frankly.
That would be very odd to me.
I would say that you do.
You get the pictures of yourself out as a kid and you just sit back and think about yourself from your earliest memory forward.
It's not like you don't remember anything that happened before you were 18.
You remember all of this stuff.
You go back and you just sort of remember.
Really, the future is just about remembering.
Changing the future is just about honestly remembering the past so that you can change.
You have to know where you've come from in order to change your direction, right?
Because you may be going in the right direction and you don't need to change it.
But it's really about going back and thinking about your past and remembering, right?
I mean, remembering. You can picture your mom's voice.
In fact, earlier in this conversation, you did a fantastic imitation.
I got a total picture of your mom from like one phrase imitation of your mom, right?
So you can totally picture your mom's voice.
You can totally picture your reaction to it.
But you don't want to go back...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. You have to go back to the parts of you that are frozen in time with the knowledge and abilities that you have in the present.
Because you can't alter the past, but you can sort of thaw out the assumptions that you naturally and logically made based on the stimuli that you have.
Because now you have all of the adult knowledge and wisdom and freedom, right?
So you don't want to go back and re-experience, just re-inflict.
But to go back with your adult self and observe...
The fear that you experienced originally, along with the knowledge that you have as an adult, I think the fusion of those two things together thaws us out of some of the frozen attitudes that we have in the past.
Yeah, and that's very interesting.
You mentioned the pictures. I just did that night before last.
Went back and was looking through the family albums, trying to say, what did I feel back then?
Back to the memories, or back to the age I don't really recall anything.
Right. So, I need to do that and sit with that a bit more.
Okay. Well, I mean, obviously, therapy can help with that.
But there's some stuff that we can definitely do on our own.
And, you know, feel free to bore people, right?
I mean, your wife will be happy to talk about this with you, I'm sure, right?
She sounds like a great person.
And your wife will be happy to talk about this stuff with you.
And I always feel like when I talk about my own past, like, well, I don't want to bore you.
But actually the stuff that happened to us that's very personal is not boring to other people, right?
They want to know us.
They want to understand us, right?
They want to know what makes us tick.
And, of course, they want to help us as well.
So, you know, take the time to talk about this with your wife and so on.
And I'm sure she'll be very interested.
Yeah.
I got to give her that chance, don't I?
Well, I think so.
I mean, you know, you want to have as rich and deep a marriage as possible, right?
And, you know, feel free to, you know, to bore her.
Yeah, I'm sure I've never done that before.
He's right. Absolutely.
Well, thank you, Steph. Well, I'm glad it helped.
I mean, at least I hope it helped.
Have a listen to it and let me know if you feel that it's okay.
I'll edit your name out, Sally.
I mean, I'm certainly...
I can give you my...
Like, go ahead now.
I'm fine with that. And do you want me to take your name out or should I leave it?
You can leave it. That's fine.
I don't think there's anything too incriminating there, so...
Okay, and do let me know.
Keep me posted, right? I mean, as you go forward in this journey, I know it seems kind of incomprehensible about how to start, but once you do find, and the key is different for everyone, but once you do find the key, it could be a smell, it could be a ball that you see a Canadian tire or whatever that you feel that you want to buy.
It could be anything that's the key back to unlocking this and moving forward, but you keep looking, you'll definitely find it.
All right. I will do so.
Well, thanks so much. I really do appreciate this.
And again, a magnificent letter.
I mean, that's a Hall of Famer.
And if you don't mind, I'd like to post that as well on the board.
It's up to you, of course. Oh, yeah.
That's fine as well. Okay.
Well, thanks so much. And keep me posted.
Thank you. All right. I will.
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