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Nov. 14, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:15:12
911 Unenslaving (A Listener Conversation)
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Time Text
Hi, how's it going? Hi.
Hi, Steph. How are you doing? I'm just fine.
I'm just fine. Good to talk to you.
Can you hear me alright?
Is everything fine with the volume?
Everything's just great. And I'm coming through okay?
Yeah, you are, actually.
I'm a little bit of Skype here.
I've upgraded the sound card I used for these calls, so it should sound a little better.
Oh, nice. So yeah, where should we start?
Well, let me just start by saying, and I just want to put this out there, you have final say on this, but if you could just sort of make up names or whatever, just in case this would end up going out as a podcast, if we talk about stuff that would be useful enough for other people, and you listen to it and like it, I just wanted to mention that ahead of time, but of course that's up to you in the final circumstances.
Right, right, definitely. I've listened to your other conversations, so I'm familiar with that.
I always want to be annoying and just make sure that it's fully clear up front.
Definitely. But I'm all ears.
Listen, what's going on?
What can I do to help? Well, like I emailed to you, that was a couple of weeks ago now, and then I was reconsidering whether to talk to you about it or not, but I'm having lots of issues.
I have thrown my...
I interrupted you right at the beginning, but you're getting quite a lot of the P on your mic.
If you could maybe just, you need to just talk a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right, because I'm getting a lot of, they're called plosives or whatever, like where you get the P and that.
Right. Okay, sorry, go ahead.
Okay, I'll try this and let me know if it's still a problem.
The issue that I have is dealing with, well, I'm in school, I'm in college, and I'm 28 years old.
I've been in and out of college since I graduated high school at 18.
I'm on my third area of study, which everything was going fine until just recently in this past month.
I've kind of fallen back into some old patterns of Problems with working and ambition problems with school is the big problem.
Let's see, where should I go from there?
Mainly just wanting to start to procrastinate on some projects and then I start to just have very large emotional blocks and resistances to just getting going on work.
I try to distract myself and I try to do just about anything so that I don't have to start my projects, which of course then every day I procrastinate makes it feel that much worse and then that makes it that much harder to get started and it seems like it's kind of like a spiraling cycle.
And this just recently has gotten bad enough that I've actually just missed some projects and just had to let them just slide by and just completely not even complete them, which is very Which is very odd for me.
I don't have intellectual troubles in school.
It's actually very easy for me.
But it's these blocks that come up that I just feel like I want to do anything but this and I just want to get out of the situation that are really holding me back.
This has happened before with my last area that I studied, and I had thought that this time now that I had picked a major and I was well on my way to getting done, I had picked a major for what I thought were decent reasons, for honest reasons that I wanted to work in this field and whatnot.
And I hadn't done that in the past.
I hadn't really thought through these processes very well about what should I study, what should I do with myself.
But now the same, I thought that those feelings in the past when they came up of resistances to work were dealing with that I was in the wrong area.
And so once I figured that out, I thought that they would have just gone away, but they haven't.
And they've just started coming up now.
And they're a real hindrance for me to move past this because I don't want to be in school.
I want to be out working. So yeah, I guess that's my introduction, I guess.
Thanks, and I don't mean to, I sort of drank in everything you said, but I'm still getting a lot of heavy breathing on the microphone.
If you could just sort of move a little bit further away or turn it away from where your breath is coming out, I just wanted to mention that so I can concentrate on what you're saying.
Now, this is good, sorry to interrupt, this is good that you're getting this, right?
I mean, there's an old sort of thing or belief that is out that says, that goes something like this.
Usually, the third marriage works out.
And it's not just because you're old and you can't attract anyone else, but also because you have problems in your first marriage and you can blame the other person.
And then you have problems in your second marriage, you can blame the other person.
But when those exact same problems crop up in your third marriage, then if you have any chance to sort of figure out the causality, then you're going to say, huh, well, the odds are starting to look pretty good that it's something to do with me.
So I was just sort of reminded of that because you said this is your sort of third marriage.
Area of study.
So it's good that you're able to see that this is something that is occurring within you.
I think it's also very good that you're asking for help because motivation is a slippery fish, right?
I mean, when motivation is with us, there's nothing we can't do.
And when motivation is not with us, there's nothing we can do.
Right. And you can't directly control motivation, right?
You can't say... I mean, I guess you can, I don't know, listen to disco and go for a run and get pumped up.
But then the moment you sit down, isn't it just...
It drains away from you again, right?
Well, yeah. The hard part is it feels like I have...
I should be able to do it.
It's not hard. It's just some simple assignments.
They're really simple for me.
Once I'm actually focused, these things are very simple for me.
Just sit down and do it.
What's wrong with you, kind of? But it's...
Not that easy, obviously.
Well, intellectually, you have no problem.
And just, you know, in case anybody else hears this, this gentleman is a long-term listener and a very generous donator, which is why I will do anything to help him that I can.
You know, the quicker I get him into the working world.
No, I'm just kidding. Exactly.
But intellectually, you have no problems with the material, if I understand you correctly.
Oh, definitely. That's not an issue at all.
And how close are you to graduating?
If everything could go well with this semester, I would have three more semesters after this.
And how do you feel about that?
The sooner I'm done the better.
Well, and that having been said, it will be basically a year and a half calendar-wise, if I understand it right, like you've got to do another semester, and then that will take you through to the summer where you get, what is it, three or four months off, and then you have to do another sort of, I guess, two-thirds or three-quarters of a calendar year, and so you would end up in, what, 2009?
It would be sort of May 2009 that you would be done?
Right, except I will be probably taking courses over the summer as well.
But other than that, that's correct.
Okay, so it's a ways, right?
Yeah. I'm not trying to make you feel even worse.
If I could only get this final book report done, I'd get my doctorate.
It's not that, right?
I mean, you are sort of not quite in the middle, a little bit over the hump of the middle, but it's a ways to go, right?
Right, right. And this is a field that, whether you want to say the field or not, it's up to you, but this is a field that you are enthusiastic about and interested in and so on, right?
Yeah, that's fine.
I can save the field. I decided now to be in computer science because I was actually thinking software engineering would fit my personality.
It seems to work out for me.
I'm interested in coding, and I think that would be good.
And I want to work in industry and whatnot.
My last major was physics, and that was all sorts of confusing of...
Well, I can try to work an industry job, but that's kind of hard with physics.
You're kind of an engineer, but then there's the academia thing, and that was all kind of foggy and gray.
But I feel pretty good about the area that I'm studying, and I'm fairly motivated once I get started in my work.
It's that getting started is the problem.
Okay, and I'm going to just ask a bunch of different questions.
I do have a sort of methodology, but it may not appear evident and maybe not even in hindsight.
But you've been listening to this show for, I guess, almost since the very beginning, if that's right, isn't it?
No, I've gone through all the podcasts, but I started later and I had to frantically catch up.
But it's been, I think, almost a year now.
Right, so you're pretty in-depth.
And I was just doing the calculations.
I still owe some people some feedback on the board for a contest.
But it's about two and a half years of a college degree, full-time, a free-domain radio, right?
So this is not an insignificant body of work that you have chewed through.
And of course, I take some credit, but I've got these brilliant listeners and these call-in shows and these conversations and so on.
So you've chewed through kind of like another...
Two-thirds of a degree through Free Domain Radio, right?
Whether I protest at all yet is another thing to say, but that's an ongoing thing, of course.
But yeah, definitely. Lots of content and lots of ideas.
So how does...
And obviously, nobody puts up with me for that long unless they really do love or have an affinity for philosophy.
So how is it that you see your interest in the philosophical side of life fitting into your life as a whole?
Oh. Because we are looking at having some excellent minimum wage jobs opening up at Free Domain Radio in the 4C. No, I'm just kidding.
But how is it that that's going to work into your life?
Are you living kind of a double life at the moment, like a secret life of philosophy and then a, like, you know, by day computer science student, by night, the philosophical avenger of the ages?
I mean, where is this conversation fitting into your life?
Oh, it's been life-changing, really, for me.
I've defooded. I have no contact with really any of my family save one aunt anymore.
That's via email. My wife, I've been married for three years.
My wife is also an avid listener.
She's gone through the whole podcast.
Subsequently, we've both gotten into therapy separately.
Wait, I'm sorry to interrupt you for just a second.
I just felt a shudder where I was.
And I think it's because having heard that a woman went through the whole podcast series, I think the Earth just shifted a little in its orbit.
So we might as well just note this for future physicists to know that where the unraveling of the space-time continuum started, it was really this moment.
So please go ahead.
Yeah, she's just as gung-ho about it as I am.
It's been so eye-opening for us.
And then I've been in therapy for the last half of a year, trying to...
Mostly it's been trying to unravel my foo situation and all the mess that was there because of that, or is still there because of that.
So yeah, I mean, this is a daily...
There'll be conversations pretty much...
On a bi-daily basis where my wife and I will talk about some of these issues or just try to have a, we're starting to be able to get a hang of the real-time relationship a little bit.
It's still, you know, it's a challenge.
Well, sorry, just by the by, I mean, if it's something that you guys want to take up and I'm sort of offering free thingies to do with that, just sort of that I would pillage then for the book that I'm working on right now, the real-time relationship book is the next one.
Oh, that's right. Like, Untruth is about your relationship with those in the past, and UPB is about your relationship with reality in the present, but the real-time relationship one is about your relationship with everyone in the future, right?
So it's sort of like the last part of the trilogy, and I don't want to make up all of these things or just pillage my own marriage, but, you know, so if you guys want to, just something to mention, you can float it out and see if you'd be interested.
Yeah, we'll have to talk about it and see.
I saw that you posted that on the board recently.
So you talk about it with your wife, and obviously you have a therapist, which is great, but what else?
Sorry, the reason that I ask is that you have this relationship with your wife, which is great, this relationship with the therapist is great, but your future work environment is going to have nothing to do with either of those in a primary or fundamental way, if that makes sense?
Right, exactly. So what I mean is how do you anticipate the relationship between this conversation and your working life in the future?
I had thought that I would most likely have to keep them separate because work was work and this was a part of my life outside of work.
But I guess I'm not quite sure what you're asking.
Well, you're going to have this relationship with your wife and you're going to have with friends or whoever, you know, as you move forward in life, right?
This is a very core part.
And this is core to you.
It's not core to, you know, it's core.
It's not like, oh, I'm interested in this website or I'm interested in these podcasts.
I mean, what we talk about. It's pretty foundational to a human being's spiritual or soulful or all-being existence, right?
So it's not like a hobby, right?
I've always sort of nagged people about this, you know, that it's not like a hobby.
And it's not like, I'm interested in this kind of philosophy, like you like pastrami over rye or something like that.
We are interested in curiosity and science and ethics and all of the meaty stuff that's right down in the core, right?
So you have deepened yourself.
Enormously through your pursuit of the truth, right?
And this conversation has facilitated that to some degree, but most of the work, of course, is yours, and this is particularly true because of your relationship to your therapist.
So you have deepened yourself and broadened yourself enormously, enriched, you know, yourself enormously, and you've created a very different future from where you may have gone without this kind of enriching or deepening or whatever.
How are you going to split that and be shallow business guy at work and deep, spiritual, soulful guy, philosophical guy everywhere else?
I wasn't really thinking of, that's more of how I used to think of occupations and work in the past and recently had been more of the work was just a vehicle to earn a living to live my values and possibly have a family and discuss these things and act on them.
I hadn't really thought of And just so you understand where I'm coming from, I'm not saying you should.
I'm not saying that you, you know, what do you care what I say, right?
But I mean, my opinion is not like, well, you have to go to work and you have to convert everyone to free domain radio donators.
Certainly that's a viable option.
No, I'm kidding. But you don't, I mean, I'm not saying you have to do any of that and so on.
It's just that I think fundamentally...
You need to look at how your own depth, which is highly unusual in the realm of the business world, in the realm of the software world, and so on, how is it that you're going to integrate the depth that you have explored over the past year or so with your future life?
And again, you may say, and you may be perfectly comfortable with, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you, and you may say, oh, totally separate, I'm going to go to work and I'm going to ignore In a sense, everything that I've learned over the last year in therapy and in philosophy, and I'm going to pretend like I just never heard any of it, and then when I get home, I'm gonna fire up that part of my brain again, right?
Like, I got two processors, I'm gonna shut one of them down for eight or nine or ten hours a day, and if I have to go on business trips with people, I won't mention anything philosophical, I won't talk about politics at all, I won't talk about economics or art or anything like that.
I mean, you could say that it's going to be a clean split, right?
Of course, I think that can be dangerous for people who've come from difficult pasts, right?
Because Lord knows we're all pretty good at living the old double life, right?
And I'm not...
Again, there's no right answer about this, but in terms of your own motivation, it's something to...
You have an opinion about this somewhere in you, right?
in that sort of massive monster-wise part that we all have, you have an opinion about what it's going to be like to live as if you didn't know philosophy for a good half of your waking time.
And we have more to talk about.
That's just a place...
I'm not kidding. Up against the wall and give me an answer, damn it.
I'm just saying that that's a place where you might need to examine what your fundamental belief is about...
How is this going to work in your life?
You're young, you've got another 40 years in the work field.
Are you going to be able to live as if you don't know stuff?
For 40 years, right?
I mean, given that you come from a past where we all had to hide what was going on in our families and so on, that can be risky.
And then that's just something to examine.
That would be my suggestion. But again, I'm not going to sort of press you up for an answer now because that takes a certain amount of...
And you may just want to talk about it with your wife or...
Or just sort of imagine, you know, what's it going to be like in meetings when people bring up crazy stuff or say, I voted for George Bush, I couldn't be happier, and, you know, the war on terror is great, and, you know, how is it that you're going to live in that environment without ending up with a seriously chewed-off tongue, right?
So that's just something to mull over, but let's look a little bit more at the emotional side of things that's going on for you, right?
So if I understand it right, you get this...
You want to do it, you know you can do it, you're interested in the subject matter, but when you sit down to do it, is it that you feel resentful or you just don't care?
Well, it's probably a little bit before sitting down to do it.
I try to...
It's like the idea comes up that, okay, I need to get started on some work right now.
And then it's just kind of...
Well, it depends on what's been happening lately, but sometimes there's just anxiety right then.
The second I think about actually getting started on something like this, I'll start to feel anxious.
Okay, and sorry, that's a good place to pause.
It's a good place because there's your feeling, right?
So is it when you contemplate sitting down to work on this, you start to feel anxiety, right?
Yes, sometimes.
generally we feel anxiety because there is a kind of disaster scenario that goes on, right?
Right, right.
Right, so I mean, I'm frightened of my teeth, right?
Just for various reasons, right?
So if I get a twinge in a tooth, like I eat the popsicle and my tooth twinges, I'm like, oh my God, I'm going to lose another tooth or something like that, right?
Because I had a crack that had to get removed.
So I spin out these disaster scenarios and I have to sort of say, okay, well, evolutionarily that was a good idea to be bored of after teeth, but you've got healthy teeth and blah, blah, blah.
So there's some disastrous scenario that occurs for you when you sit down or when you even think about doing this, right?
So what is the worst thing in the world for you with regards to this degree or not getting it or bombing out or whatever?
What is the scenario that...
How does that play out if that occurs?
Like if you just can't do it.
Intellectually, I'm sure you can, but just emotionally.
If your motivation goes away, you bomb out of school, like what is the...
What plays out from there?
I'm pretty much like ending up being in a dead-end job doing kind of nothing and no real prospects for future kind of advancement in work and being able to be reasonably successful.
That's what seems to kind of go into my head, I think.
And what kind of job would that be?
Probably any of the number of just random odd jobs that I worked over the past few years in between school.
Just more of that, basically, like a coffee shop or...
Oh, like temp or something like that, right?
Right. Or, you know, you could maybe work up to be a manager at Starbucks or something, you know, or something along those lines.
I think that's what ends up popping into my head is the likely...
And I don't think that that's what happened, even if I did drop out of school.
But... That's where my mind goes, I think.
Either you get your degree and you do something reasonable, or you just work no end jobs.
Okay, okay. So basically, to some degree, your future success depends upon you getting this degree.
I mean, you getting this degree, which means that it depends upon you fulfilling somewhat arbitrary assignments handed to you by other people, right?
I think that's a lot of my problem with school is that they are arbitrary and they do feel arbitrary because I could be working in a field and learning the same things while I'm getting experience and getting paid.
Maybe not at the same rate that I would start with the degree, but part of it feels like, well, I've put in all this time and effort into quite a bit of schooling in various areas.
I should finish something and make that time worth it.
Right, so then in a sense, if you bomb out of school, then the last half decade or six years or whatever off and on that you've spent in school has been, you know, a monster waste of time and this and that and the other, right?
Yes, exactly. Right, so there'll be a certain amount of bitterness and, you know, what the fuck that would come out of that, right?
Right. Right, okay.
So you certainly do seem to have two options, right?
Which is... I force myself to do this thing, which I fundamentally can't make myself want to do, right?
The challenging stuff with intellectual work, I can't make myself do a good podcast.
Lord knows I sometimes publish when I shouldn't, right?
But I can't make myself do it.
I mean, I either get the inspiration or I don't.
It's not a toothpaste tube you can squeeze stuff out of, right?
I mean, it's... So inspiration, which is sort of required for you to finish your degree, is not something that you can summon.
You don't want to be in the academic gulag, you know, like breaking rocks with your bare hands for another year and a half, only to end up being qualified to do something similar in the working world, right?
So that puts you in kind of an impossible situation, right?
Either I bomb out of school, resentful, wasted half a decade of my life, end up working in Starbucks for the next 40 years, and basically eyeing the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge every time I drive past.
Not that that's a geographical reference, I don't even know where you live.
So that's on the one side, and on the other side it's like, well, my inspiration is leaving me, and I can't complete this degree without some kind of inspiration or enthusiasm, right?
Right, right. That's pretty accurate.
So that totally sucks.
I mean, that really sucks.
And my God, what a terrible situation to be in.
I mean, absolutely, completely and totally a terrible situation, right?
So, you know, full empathy points for that.
That is really, really tough. Well, it's kind of paralyzing, too.
Well, sure. Sure.
I mean, if you...
I mentioned this in a call-in show recently, right?
This girl I read about in a fiction book when I was younger who didn't have her books for class and couldn't go back to get her books because then she wouldn't be let into the class because she was late and couldn't go to the class without her books because then she'd be kicked out.
So she had no way to win out of those two situations, right?
Yeah, that's right. So, and of course there are more options, right?
There are more options.
Like you could bomb out of school and you could be an entrepreneur.
Right. Again, I'm not saying right or wrong, right?
But you could do that, right?
You could say, well, unfortunately I've become too self-actualized to obey people of inferior wisdom and intelligence.
Therefore, the only choice that's left to me is to be an entrepreneur.
The thought has crossed my mind, but I don't even know where to begin with that area.
I've never been around anybody that does that sort of work, so I don't even know where to start.
But the idea has crossed my mind, definitely.
Well, there are practical things which we could talk about another time that you could do, which is you would go to the venture capitalists in your neck of the woods and you'd be able to find them in various places.
And you would say, look, I'm finding, like, I'm a really smart guy.
I love philosophy. I love economics.
I'm very good with a computer.
I'm halfway through my degree and I'm 28 years old and I want my life to begin.
So I just want to go and I want to throw myself into something and really get going.
There's ways to get into the entrepreneurial world, which is more than Workopolis, where you can just say, I'll go and work at some small startup company where I'll get some real responsibility within 6 to 12 months.
There's lots of ways to do it.
If you're not the guy who's going to be the idea hamster in your garage and create the next Apple or something, there's ways to do that if that's something that you wanted to do.
But of course, The paralyzing nightmare about that situation is, well, I was right about two of my degrees, now I'm wrong about this degree.
What happens if I go and start an entrepreneurial company or go and do something entrepreneurial and then, lo and behold, my goddamn motivation skips town six to twelve months after I start that too, right?
So, what is your ideal?
Like, if you could, you know, you won the lottery, you could snap your fingers, have anything that you could conceivably want as far as your life and career goes, what would be your absolute and perfect ideal?
Like, you'd drop it without the moment's hesitation to go and do it.
That's a tough question. I think I do like the idea of starting a company and working in that area, but the problem is, of course, the idea to base it around.
I mean, I've had little ideas here and there, flirting around, but actualizing a full idea and manifesting it into a company seems mind-boggling.
Well, and it's important that you don't know, right?
And that's not a criticism.
It just is important to sort of jot down, if you have a piece of paper, I don't know what I want.
Right? And I don't mean that like, you know, oh god, what am I going to eat for breakfast or anything like that.
What I mean is, if you don't have an ideal, you don't have a compared to what, if that makes sense.
Yes, right. Right, that's true.
Okay. And that's kind of, when you don't have an ideal, what you do is you look for that which is offered, or that which is shaped or defined by other people.
Right. So if you don't have an ideal woman, you'll just look around and pick someone that you like.
From the people who are around you?
And who's available. And who's available and, you know, who's drunk or whatever, right?
So if you don't have an ideal woman, then you won't have it compared to what?
And then you'll choose, but it's not really a choice, if that makes sense.
Right. Right.
It's like, if all I get is a menu with three items on them, then how do I know what my favorite food is?
So let's go back to the feeling that you have when you consider this kind of stuff, right?
Is the feeling like, I don't know if I'm going to be inspired?
Or I don't know if I'm going to want to do it?
You mean like getting a project done or something?
Well, when you say that you feel anxiety when you...
are contemplating or you get assigned something and you're contemplating it.
So it's, um, think of, I think about getting started and then I feel, sometimes feel pretty anglish, uh, Anxious about that, but immediately after that the problem where I get really stuck in is kind of a hopeless, dread feeling at that point.
I don't even know what that means, but it doesn't go anywhere from there usually.
I feel tired, I feel exhausted, I can't even think about trying to get started.
It feels like it's draining me just even thinking about working myself up to do this task.
Right, so it dwarfs you in a sense, right?
Like it totally dominates you?
Yes, yes. You feel pretty small relative to the overwhelming negative, as you say, this almost existential horror and despair.
It dwarfs you in a sense, right?
Like it overwhelms you. Again, I don't want to put words in your mouth.
I just want to sort of make sure that I understand the emotional experience that you have.
Right, right. That's what works.
And even if I'm working up to, you know, for a few days, thinking about getting started, once I'm done with this current project, I'll get started in a few days on that.
And it's almost like I slightly obsess about it over those days.
I'm not getting started. When am I going to start?
But then I try to get started, and that doesn't work.
When you say it doesn't work, does that mean that you can't concentrate, you can't focus, you just don't know, like nothing comes to you?
Or like you're staring at the computer screen, you've got an algorithm to write or something like that.
Is it just that nothing comes to you, you don't even know how to begin?
Do you feel like you've just lost most of your higher capacities?
Like what is it that occurs? No, I don't even get to the point where I sit down to get started.
I mostly distract myself.
I mostly try to find something else, anything else to do rather than.
My God, no wonder you have so many podcasts.
No, no, this was before.
This is more recent.
Okay.
So you'll find your ways to avoid that, right?
Yes.
I mean, even as something as crazy as I cleaned the ceiling fans the other day because I didn't want to get started on work, like something ridiculous that I obviously don't like to do.
Nice, nice. Now, tell me a little bit about your childhood and how achievement or success or completion was viewed in your family.
Completion? Well, I grew up on a farm, actually, and I had to do A lot of work for my parents.
I was forced to do quite a lot of work for them.
Mostly my father. Completion was just...
it was a non-negotiable, non...
it didn't really... my feelings about the work, which I hated and I tried to express in many different ways, didn't really seem to ever matter.
It just had to get done, and it was about as simple as that.
Okay, and let me, I'm going to get Mr.
Annoying Guy here, but if you'll bear with me.
I absolutely guarantee you that you did not hate the work.
Okay. I absolutely, completely and totally, I mean...
And I say that, I mean, I worked a lot as a kid and I had my first job when I was 11 and so on.
And there were times where I disliked certain aspects of the work, the times when I had to get up earlier than I wanted and so on.
But I guarantee you that you didn't dislike the work in and of itself, right?
So if you'd had a family who loved you, who explained to you why this was necessary, who didn't exploit you, who didn't use you, who tried to make it as fun as possible, where you felt a valued part of the team and all this, that, and the other, right?
Then you would not have hated the work.
Right, right.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
It's not the work that you hated, right?
And it's important to differentiate between those two things.
You're right. It was a lot of bullying about the work to get me to do it, and if I didn't like how it was going on, it was turned on to me in that it was my fault.
I was a lazy kid, whatnot, things like that.
Right, and again, let's just simmer in that for a little bit, because the most heartbreaking thing about this kind of do-this-do-that-step-and-fetch childhood is that children so unbelievably want to help I remember my nieces, and this is going back, I guess, more than 10 or 12 years.
I remember taking them when I lived downtown.
I didn't have any in-house laundry.
So, you know, every six months, whether I needed to or not.
No, I'm just kidding. So what I would do is I would go to the local laundromat, and I was babysitting my nieces.
I had them for the afternoon and the evening, and I had to go and do my laundry because, you know, it was becoming truly Pasteur-like.
And so I took them to the laundry.
They were fascinated. They wanted to help.
They were curious. They were frightened of my underwear, but then so was I, so I can't blame them for that.
But literally, I remember my niece, who was like five years old, wanting to know how to fold, wanting to know how to help, wanting to know how to sort.
And they wanted to, and that's because I made it fun for them, right?
And they wanted to help.
Children love to feel valuable.
They love to feel like they're participating in the family.
They love to feel like they're providing value.
Right? So, this is so important to understand.
It wasn't the work that you hated. It wasn't growing up on the farm that was hated.
It was the fact that you were bullied that you hated it.
Right? It was your parents that you hated.
It's the way that you were treated. And that's what's so heartbreaking, is like, I would love to help, and you're taking away my desire to help this family by screaming at me, by yelling at me, by calling me a bad kid, by calling me names, by putting me down. You are taking away something that I really, truly want and treasure, which is a voluntary desire to help this family.
And it started so young that I can't even remember life Being that I wanted to help, I don't even remember that, really.
It was always, as far back as I can remember, it was waking up with dread and that I would have to do this work and blah, blah, blah.
Well, again, sorry, again, I've got to pause you, and you need to separate these two things, because this is very much bound into what is happening for you at the moment, I think.
Okay. Well, you say, I woke up hating the work, right?
It's not true. You woke up hating the bullying.
Right, right, right. The work was used to dominate you, right?
Definitely. At what age did you start working on this stuff?
Some godforsaken Charles Dickens thing, right?
I mean, not as much as when I was 16, but I remember doing hours and hours of gardening when I was 6, spending long summer days doing lots of gardening, like getting up early in the morning and whatnot.
Even before I was old enough to do machinery, farm work, whatnot, I would be out who knows what.
You do realize that is complete and total child abuse, right?
Right. I do.
Don't laugh. Like, seriously.
This is complete and total abuse of a child.
Children should not be little nimble-fingered slaves to the parents.
Right. I know. And that shows...
To basically breed for the sake of labor is unbelievably exploitive and destructive.
And was your family, like, staggeringly poor?
Were you, like, eating the feet on the chickens or something?
No, they got by fairly well somehow.
I'm not sure how they seemed to manage their finances, but we weren't poor.
We weren't definitely wealthy either.
But they could have hired some illegal labor, right?
Well, if it was available, this was in a part of the country where there really wasn't any.
But they could have done something, I think, yes.
Well, they could have hired, you know, when you were six, they could have hired a 16-year-old for relatively little money to do this work, right?
Right, but then the virtue of the family farm comes into it and everybody chips in and all that kind of stuff gets thrown onto it, so...
Well, but you didn't choose, right?
See, they chose to have a farm, right?
They chose to have a farm, they chose to have children.
You didn't chose to get born into this freaky Charles Dickens farm environment, right?
Right, exactly. But everybody chips in.
It's like, I'm six! Who chips in?
You want me to do your taxes too?
Like, this is ridiculous! So everybody chips in is very much focused on we are going to use the work that is required that we could easily pay somebody to do and get a tax deduction from it.
That would be a write-off because it's the cost of doing business.
But the problem is you can't bully employees.
You understand? This is really, really important to understand.
It wasn't that the work needed to be done.
It wasn't that there was nobody who could do the work.
The reason you were given the tasks is because if you bully employees, they quit.
So it wasn't about the work.
It had nothing to do with the work.
It's not the work you hate.
It's not that the work had to be done by you.
It had nothing to do with any of that.
The work is the club.
To pound you down.
Right, right.
Now, I am not too surprised that you have problems with motivation.
They definitely seem linked to me intellectually, but I'm not connecting with the feelings of this yet to really see through these issues.
Well, we've just talked about it for four and a half minutes, so we'll get there.
I mean, everybody's, you know, I now understand how to open the piano bench, but I can't play a sonata.
I understand. I mean, that's okay.
I mean, you get to listen to this again.
You get to sort of think about it.
You're in therapy. We'll work that out, right?
But it's important to make the connection first.
That you were never allowed to express the natural motivation of a child.
The natural motivation, desire to help.
People who are adults will do almost anything you ask them to, and they will do almost nothing that you tell them to.
This is why statism doesn't work.
Because it just breeds resentment.
Right, right. So you were in a situation where work equaled abuse.
Work was a tool of abuse.
And not even always implicitly.
like there were times when I did something wrong not work related just in the who knows little crazy rules that my mother had and they would use tasks as punishment also so go out to this huge field by yourself when you're a kid with a ho and we're not even gonna tell you for how long and just be like kind of dwarfed by it and You just need to hoe and weed until they didn't even set a time limit.
It would just be you go out here and then later on they would come and get me but I wouldn't know when that was going to be and it felt overwhelming because it was so large.
They would use that as punishment as well as day-to-day things that had to get done.
Sure, sure, sure.
No, I mean, you grew up in a slave factory sweatshop.
I mean, and if you can imagine, right, and just to understand the difference, and I know that you've done a lot of work with your parents, but just so you can understand the environment that you're in, if you have a child, a precious little child with little hands and little feet and toe-headed hair and, you know, those beautiful eyes and that little mouth, and you have a child of six, Who wants to play, who wants to work, who wants to connect, who wants to have fun, who wants to talk, who wants to listen.
And you send them out in a field with a hoe as punishment to dig around in the dirt for God knows how long.
I mean, can you imagine doing that to your child?
No. Wouldn't that, like, nobody could pay you enough to do that to your child.
A billion dollars would be like, no thanks, that's okay.
Just thinking about that gets me angry.
I mean, it's infuriating.
Right. It is.
It is infuriating and it is savage.
It is savage, this kind of environment.
Um... And a farm life is primitive.
I mean, the farm people are primitive.
There's a brutality and a primitiveness.
Eugene O'Neill writes about this in some of his earlier plays.
But there is a real brutality to this kind of farm life.
There is a kind of boys don't cry kind of environment that is just savage.
And, I mean, you, of course, as an intelligent and sensitive and, you know, deep child, was tossed into this pygmy village of monsters, right?
So that's doubly tough, right?
Because you weren't cold and brutal enough to, by nature, right, to sort of grow into that as a sort of horrible personality structure.
But for you, when you are told to do something, what is, I mean, because you're given an assignment, right?
your your Your resentment has got to be somewhere, because this is unconscious for you still, right?
You say, I hated the work, right?
But you hated the people.
I mean, the work was like, you hate the guy who hits you with the club.
You don't hate the club, do you see?
Right, right. So for you, there's this club moving in midair.
You can't see the person behind it, right?
So if you raise your folks at the club, it's the innocent.
The club is innocent in the interaction.
You grab a rolling pin and hit a kid, the rolling pin doesn't go to jail.
That's not how it works.
It's the person behind it.
So you've conflated these things and say, I hate the job, I hate the work, I hate this task, I hate being told what to do, and so on.
But that's not true. I mean, again, it's just important to differentiate.
And there's obviously good reasons why you ended up hating the work rather than your parents, because the work wouldn't abuse you, but your parents would, right?
So it was safer. You had this hostility and rage, which was perfectly healthy, but you focused it at the work rather than at the people.
Because work is going to follow you for the rest of your life.
When you're your own boss, you're just a slave to more people because you've got customers and employees and so on.
So the tasks are going to come rolling off the conveyor belt for you for the rest of your life.
No matter what you do, even if you go work in Starbucks, the tasks are going to take out the garbage, clean the coffee machines, do this, do that.
The tasks are going to come rolling off you for the rest of your life.
And if your emotional energy from a child is bound up in the tasks rather than the people, Then this is never going to end.
you are forever going to be sick, sweating your guts out in a garden.
Because what's happening is, again, this is my hypothesis, but what's happening is that you are this is my hypothesis, but what's happening is that you are looking at these tasks and you are experiencing the same emotions that you had when you were a kid and got
Am I way off? This is my guess, right?
But does that ring true at all?
There's some similarities, definitely.
I mean, it's hard to remember back to how I felt all the time, but there were definite mornings where I knew I had a large project and I would be tired and I would, yeah, I would feel dread and just kind of a lot of depression when I was a kid, a lot of just hopelessness.
Like, when's it going to end?
When is it my turn to do what I want to do?
That kind of stuff. So there's some similarities.
But tell me where the differences are, right?
Because, I mean, if it's not the same, I don't want to send you down a garden path and end up doing more therapy, right?
So tell me where the differences are.
Because when you talked, I was surprised that the...
That's why I sort of went to your past, right?
Because when you said about your assignments...
You said in dread, you know, and horror and so on, and that's a very strong reaction to an assignment as an adult, right?
I mean, and that's not to say that you shouldn't feel that.
That's obviously something that you do feel and very strongly, and it's an important thing to feel in the process.
But if it's not the same as the dread that you felt when you were a kid, then sort of step me through what's different about it.
Well, I mean, obviously I know that they're different.
I know that this is something that I'm choosing to do for four reasons.
For my life, for my livelihood reasons.
I'm sorry to interrupt, but what I meant by that question was you said the emotions are different.
The dread that you feel towards an assignment in the present versus the dread that you felt to a slave task as a kid, you said those two feelings have some similarities for the differences.
So I don't mean the intellectual differences in terms of what you understand intellectually.
I'm talking about what goes on in your gut.
In the present versus what went on in your gut in the past when you were a kid and the assignments came flowing fast and furious.
I don't know if they do feel different at the start.
I can distract myself now and so then I don't feel it for as long because then I didn't have the option and I would be doing the work and just Be hating every minute of it and just kind of never got out of that hopeless feeling from when it started.
Sorry to interrupt, I also guarantee you that you tried to avoid it when you were a kid.
Yeah, I actually remember sometimes even doing that, but I would get yelled at or whatever.
Right, right. This is a delicate game, it's a dance that we all play when we're kids.
In order to retain some autonomy...
We have to resist our abusers.
But we can't resist them too much, otherwise we get physically injured or emotionally scarred to the point of no return, right?
So this is a kind of dance, right?
And you see this, I mean, the history of slave plantations is full of this, right?
So slaves would always act dumb, like they couldn't understand, they'd get things wrong, and so on.
But they couldn't be so incompetent that they'd get beaten or sold, right?
But they had to express their resistance in some manner, right?
Yes, that feels very familiar, actually, for me.
I think I would purposefully confuse some of the instruction and not understand on purpose because I didn't want to understand.
Right, and I also guarantee you that your parents gave you contradictory instructions as well.
Yeah, I have some memories of that, but not...
And then no matter what you did, right, then you're screwed, right?
And that, of course, is because the work is abuse, right?
It's just the bat they happen to grab.
It could be anything, but this is in their world, it's work, right?
Right, right. So, for...
And the reason that I sort of went to the childhood and asked about the similarities of feelings, and again, listen to this and let me know what you think, but let's just go with the thesis for the moment, which seems to have some validity that there's a similarity in these feelings.
Because what's happened is that when you get these assignments now...
What's called your locus of control is now exterior to yourself.
So instead of you choosing this field and choosing these courses and whatever, maybe you did research on the professors or whatever, now it's something that you're helpless in the face of.
Does that make sense? It does, yes.
And that's got to be childhood.
Because that's got to be a conflation of early childhood experiences.
Because what you're feeling now is actually what did happen for you when you were a kid, right?
Right. But what's happening is the choices that your parents inflicted upon you when you were a child are now crossing wires with the choices that you are making as an adult and you are reacting to your own choices as if they were your parents bullying I guess I don't know how to not do that.
Well, listen again. I mean, this is everyone's tendency and I fully understand it.
It's like, okay, I got it.
Now, what's the solution, right?
When you get it, that is the solution, right?
And that takes time, right?
But the first thing to understand, and again, I apologize for this because I know that you're a very brilliant fellow, but I'm going to have to speak to you as if you're somewhat retarded.
So I apologize to that.
Sure. Go right ahead.
But The reality is that your choice of careers has nothing to do with your parents.
Nothing. Not a smidgen.
In reality, psychologically, unconsciously, the wires are crossed.
But in reality, you are choosing, and we can assume for the moment that it's for the right reasons.
You can sort of figure all that stuff out for yourself.
I'm sure it is, right? But you enjoy this career.
You enjoy this field.
You want to work here. This is your choice, right?
So when you look at that assignment, you say, I wanted this.
Not, this is being done to me.
I want this assignment.
Because this assignment is one step closer to a real paycheck.
And God knows I'm getting close to 30 and it's about time.
I want this, right?
I want this. This is the thing that get so many people messed up all the time, and this happens all the time, I know, not in your marriage, but in people's marriages and love relationships, right?
They get so mad at their partners.
But you need to look at your partner every morning and every night and say, I want this.
I want this person in my life.
Now, if this person happens to be somebody who's abusive and so on, then you still have to say, I want this.
It's just not a healthy one, right?
It's like a one for heroin or something, right?
Right. Right, so when you wake up in the morning and you look at your, you glance down over the list of classes you've got to go to that day, I want these classes.
I have chosen these classes.
I want these classes.
Give me the, I'm paying for these assignments.
I'm paying for these assignments.
You bought an MP3 player, right?
Some time back? Yeah.
What do you have? Oh, it's just a little cheap...
Which one is it now?
Little Sansa cheap ones that are just good for listening to podcasts.
Fantastic. Okay. So you wanted that MP3 player and you went out and got it, right?
Yep. Now, you don't wake up every morning and say, I resent this MP3 player.
That was forced upon me.
I mean, you might say, gee, it would be great if I had an 80 gig Arcos or something like that, but you don't sort of wake up every morning and say, god damn, this MP3 player totally dominating me, totally bullying me, I can't believe how this thing ended up in my life.
Right. I'm glad to have this MP3 player!
Because I chose it, I want it, I went out and got it, right?
Which is, you would have paid almost any amount of money to avoid spending time with your family when you were a kid, right?
Oh, absolutely. I tried to run away at four.
Absolutely. But you realize, of course, that both in terms of the cost of your education and lost income, you're spending about a hundred grand a year to be at this school, right?
Yes. So you want these assignments.
They are your choice, right?
You choose the behavior. You choose the consequences.
I choose to upgrade my education.
I choose to go back to school. I choose to switch from physics to computers.
I have chosen this.
I want it. It is not being forced upon me.
I can stop anytime I want.
This is a place for me to play because I want it to be here.
Right, right.
No one's forcing me.
I can leave any time.
I can walk and go join the Peace Corps with my wife, of course, and do whatever I want.
I can become a hot air balloonist.
I can make balloon animals.
I can paint with my feet.
I can do whatever I want because I'm an adult and I'm over 21 and so on.
There's no draft, right? So wherever it is that you are as an adult, you have chosen that and to conflate it With what occurred for you when you were 6 or 10 or 16 is to not defoo.
Right. Right, because it's one thing to say to your parents, I don't want you in my life physically.
It's another thing, and a more important thing, to say to your parents, ghosts, that I don't want you In my mind anymore.
I don't want you coloring and conditioning and taking away the color and vivacity from my decisions.
It sounds so simple, but man, is it difficult for me at least to fully grasp that emotionally.
Well, of course, and I can tell you why if you like.
Of course. It's because you were trained to not do it.
To not do what? You were trained to not imagine what it was like to want anything.
That was the purpose of the endless tasks of the erasure of the abuse.
You were actively punished for imagining anything that you wanted.
Nobody ever asked your opinion about what you wanted, right?
Not at all. Right.
And if you express the desire that was counter to the endless fucking busy work that you were being handed at the age of six years old, what was the response?
Punishment of one form or another.
Absolutely. What do you mean you want to go swimming instead?
We all pitch in in this goddamn family.
Now get to work. Stop being lazy.
I'm working. Your sister's working.
Your brother's working. Your mother's working.
You're working too. Right.
Is that a fair approximation? Well, not so, like, boisterously outward, but just more insidious, more like, you lazy little, you know, like that kind of stuff.
Like, how could you? You're blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing.
You're making your mother's hot! God, lazy kid, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Right, so you were actively punished for wanting anything.
Except for little trivial things that didn't matter, then that was of course okay.
But in every area that mattered to me.
Well, what sort of things were...
Was it okay for you to have a preference in?
Well, it was... I'd written about this a while back.
It was turned back on me that I wasn't allowed to show a preference every day, but then there would be this, like, we need to go out for your birthday to a restaurant, and you need to pick.
And even if I didn't want to pick, you have to pick.
And so it was totally turned on me that I... Wait, wait, wait.
I'm sorry. I remember this post.
Right. You realized just what you skipped over there, right?
Probably a few things, but...
Go back over the sentence, because you're saying this is an example of when you got to choose, right?
Well, I was forced to choose, if that makes any sense.
Do you think it makes any sense?
No. Whether you want to or not, you're going to choose this goddamn restaurant.
Yep. Well, that's what you call choice?
Right. Well, no, I don't know.
Or maybe I do. Well, but what it means is that you're still trying to rescue your parents.
And this is what we're all programmed to do.
We're all little parental rescue robots, right?
Because that's how we survive. But you say, well, I was not punished for making choices, but then I was, given choices in certain things, they weren't that important, but then I was forced to choose.
Do you see what I mean? That it was an unmitigated hell from horizon to horizon.
That there was no place where you were encouraged to have a choice.
And there was no place where you weren't punished for having a choice.
And I guarantee you that when your parents said choose, you sure as hell didn't feel like it was a neutral choice that they would be happy no matter what you did.
Oh, absolutely not.
Right. Right. So there was no time in your childhood where you were not punished for making a choice.
Right. Or sometimes taunted.
That would be another way that it would come out, but teased or whatever for little things.
Yeah, like if you choose Chuck E. Cheese, it's like, aren't you a little old for that?
Or something like that. There's always some nonsense that goes on, right?
Yeah, definitely. So you faced an unending stretch of punishment for making choices.
And if you were offered a choice, it was a trap.
To further undermine, right, so you were told, well, you can't make any decisions of your own because all your decisions are bad and selfish, right?
And then it's like, oh, okay, here, make this decision.
Oh, sorry, that's the wrong decision.
See? That's why we don't let you make decisions.
Yeah. Right, so I don't know, and this may be, again, something you talk about in therapy, but I don't know why this occurs for you at this point in your education, and you say, this is the third time, right?
but I guarantee you that at some level when you get these assignments somebody's handing you a hoe because that's the emotional reaction that you're getting right
Right, right. And that means that there's a world of pain that seems at the moment for you Bottomless and endless.
But when you break through that ice of brutality that you grew up with and you get to actually make a decision in your life, it's going to be very painful.
Because all of the suppressed fear and humiliation and rage and hurt And vulnerability, when you actually commit and accept the decision, and I'm not saying you never do this, I'm talking about with your education, the stuff that's torturing you right now.
When you embrace the decisions that you've made in the field that you've chosen, it's gonna hurt like hell, because all of those suppressed feelings of Being bullied, of being humiliated, of being controlled, of feeling enraged, of being belittled.
That's all going to come out. That's what you're avoiding by recreating these feelings, right?
By avoiding the choices, right?
So you make these choices and then you say, well, these choices are unconsciously, you're saying, well, they're imposed upon me and I resent them and I'm going to avoid them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But that's because if you accept The choices that you've made and are happy, and it sounds like these are great choices.
You're not saying I'm going to go and do an Indy 500 race on acid, right?
I mean, these are good choices. I'm getting an education in a field that I enjoy, right?
If you embrace those choices as your choices and you welcome those assignments as the result of your choices, of the things that you want in your life, that is going to cause you a great deal of pain, right?
And that's really what you're avoiding.
Not the assignments. Because you went through some seriously bad shit.
Some seriously ugly bullying and you basically were fucking birthed in a salt mine.
That's so crazy.
What was that? You were a slave.
That's ugly, ugly, ugly stuff.
And it felt like that when I was a kid, but of course everybody's telling me contrary, and so eventually it got pounded into my head that this is normal, this is healthy, this is good, and it's so hard to reconnect with that.
I remember what it felt like.
I hated it every moment.
What do you mean you remember what it felt like?
You're still feeling it.
You feel it when you get these assignments, right?
Because you don't say, These assignments are what I choose.
I have given up a lot of income to be here to get these assignments.
I want these assignments, like I want my wife, like I want my health.
They come rolling down at you, and you're basically looking at these assignments like Indiana Jones looks at a big bowling ball, right?
Thank you.
Thank you.
And you don't own your decision anymore to be at school and to voluntarily.
You knew there were going to be assignments when you signed up, right?
Of course. And it didn't even start this way.
It just seems to creep in after a while.
Of course, of course. It does seem to creep in.
And you need to assert, and to some degree, this is just a matter of brute willpower and there's all of the emotional sensitivity and so on, but you're in therapy so we don't need to talk about that.
But there's just a kind of brute emotional willpower to say, I am gonna own this goddamn choice to be in school and to get these assignments.
I've worked hard to get here.
I finally found a field that I really like.
I am gonna own this and defend this choice of mine.
And when the old bullshit comes in about me being a slave and me being resentful and me feeling bullied and pushed around, I'm gonna honor those feelings as things that happened years ago.
But I'm not going to let them poison the choices that I myself am voluntarily making.
I'm not going to enslave myself now just because I was a slave in the past.
I'm not going to turn my choices into bullying demands because they're not.
Right.
You've got to fight to get out of prison, right?
It's as if I don't even remember that they are choices to begin with.
They're just there. And that's your training, right?
That's not a deficiency. This is your survival mechanism, and it was a damn good one, and you should be very proud of it.
But this is not because you've got low self-esteem.
This is just your training. If somebody hits you every time the song Ave Maria gets played, and it gets played a lot, then of course you're going to flinch whenever Ave Maria comes, not because you're frightened of the song, but you're frightened of the people.
And not because you have low self-esteem, but because that's what you're trained to do over and over again for years.
So you're trained to view everything that happens to you as a bullying thing, and you're trained to disown your own decisions, because it's horrible and agonizing and reveals the brutality of your environment to try and make any decisions.
And nobody who's a kid who's six wants to run around beating their head against a wall.
But you've got to fight this situation.
This is your territory, right?
This is your future, your adult life.
This is your territory. This is the territory that is the foundation for the economic security of your family, of your own future happiness.
This is your territory, and you've got to fight for it.
You've got to fight the ghost of the past.
You've got to fight the aches of history, and you've got to stake your claim.
on your life, your choices, your education, your future.
This is your choice, not theirs, not their imposition, not their enslavement, not their brutality, but your choice.
And you've got to fight for that.
Right?
Because it's not going to come.
You're not going to own it without a fight.
Because the ghosts of your brutal history are very strong.
And, of course, that's not because you're weak, but because, by God, they were very strong.
As you say, the difference between you and I, I mean, other than many of the other differences, is that my brutal parents did not receive endless social reinforcement.
That's why it's harder for you in certain areas.
It's harder for me maybe in other areas, but in this area, right?
Because you faced not just dysfunctional parents, but a dysfunctional universe where your parents were lauded and you were derided continually, consistently, and I guess perfectly, right?
Right, right. And it's been really hard in my adult life to not feel broken, basically, not feel like there's something seriously wrong with me.
I look around and there's people of, you know, not very intelligent people just seem to just be able to get their work done and not even have to think about it.
What's wrong with me? That's how it feels anyway.
I totally understand that, but you've got to fight that too, right?
Because they just have different problems, right?
The reason that they don't feel weak is that the Mount Everest that they climb are little hills, so they just look very strong, right?
But I guarantee you these people are not examining their histories, they're not examining their family relationships, they're not part of a revolution to make a better world by reforging the human spirit to the image of something higher!
I bet you they're flowing 99.9% with the cultural currents that drive everyone off the cliff.
It just looks easy for them because they're swimming with the current towards a doom that hasn't hit yet, right?
But you're swimming against the current and you're saying, Jesus Christ, I'm a terrible swimmer!
It's like, no you're not!
Right.
Right.
But that's my suggestion, you know, just wake up and it's going to sound, feel cheesy as hell.
But just print it out, put it right next to your computer.
My choice. My choice.
That's your mantra. My choice.
My choice. My choice.
Not imposed. Not bullied.
Not somebody else's.
Not abusive. My choice.
My preference. Right.
Again, that sounds so simple.
This is not going to be that easy for me, actually.
I can already see it. It's interesting.
Well, and I'll tell you this, right?
I mean, I guess I've been sort of firing nugget after nugget into your brain.
I have to stop because my gun is overheating.
But I will tell you that the first thing that you gravitate towards is not the joy of enlightenment, but the difficulties of implementation.
That's not a good idea, right?
I mean, I would certainly invite you that you may have gotten more truth, again, through your honesty and participation.
You may have gotten through more truth in an hour than most people get in a lifetime.
And I think if we have made the correct connection, and I think we have, this should be something that you can be enormously pleased about.
Right. Because, yeah, you've got to work to get, but at least you've got a compass now, right?
You're not just lost in the fog, right?
You know what the issue is.
You know a way of approaching it.
You've got a therapist. You've defood, right?
You're coming down the soft side of the mountain, right?
And you've got a compass and you know where you're going and you've got a connection and you've got a future, right?
Because if this conversation works and you go for it, right, then you could end up not working at Starbucks for the rest of your life and you could end up an entrepreneur and you could end up a millionaire or you could end up a happily employed professional.
This could be a fork in the road, right?
And all you're saying is, well, yeah, but it looks like there are some stones in that path.
No, seriously, right? I mean, ask your wife how positive you are about enlightenment, right?
I bet she'll have something to say, right?
Because the first thing you do is you say, well, you know, it's going to be difficult, or I don't know, how do I connect with it, or what do I do next, and so on.
It's like, shouldn't she be basking a little bit in the glow of enlightenment?
I mean, just a tiny little bit, right?
You're right, you're right. And I think I felt that way right away, but something in me had to shut it down, I think.
Well, you know what that is, right?
And it's not that complicated.
And again, when I say not that complicated, I don't mean easy to think of, right?
Right, right. I guess I'm not sure.
I mean, it seems like it has to do with enthusiasm for a preference, and then that just didn't work when I was a kid, so I'm not sure.
Well, again, when you listen to this, you'll laugh, right?
Maybe the laughter will come when you listen to this, right?
But it's obviously clear that enthusiasm was punished in your household.
And again, this is just me, the nagging parrot on your shoulder, right?
Fubar! Fubar!
This is the nagging parrot on your shoulder, and the nagging parrot is, it's your family, right?
I-F... I... I-Y-F-S, right?
You know they used to say, keep it simple, stupid, or it's the economy, stupid?
And I have to say this to myself all the time, too.
It's your family, stupid!
But when you say, gee, you know, I have a tough time feeling enthusiasm, or I feel it and then it goes away, the place you go to is you say, well, what happened when I was a kid and when I was enthusiastic?
Eye-rolling, sneering, contempt, withdrawal, laughter, put-downs, humiliating.
Like, we know the whole litany, right?
Yeah, mockery, mostly.
Yeah, mockery, for sure, right?
So you feel this enthusiasm and then it's like, well, yes, but, you know, I guess I shouldn't really be that enthusiastic because it's going to be tough.
Like, oh, the oxygen, it bleeds from the room.
And I guarantee you want to deal with that before you have kids because kids will come in like a freaking freight train of enthusiasm in your life, right?
Because they just love everything.
They love to get up in the morning. They love toys.
They love sunshine. They love grass.
They love birds. I mean, they love everything, right?
And that's why they have to be so horribly crushed by, not by you, right, but by the nihilists among us.
But you absolutely, I mean, before you have kids, you want to deal with this enthusiasm thing, but you'll deal with it because this is the gateway, right, to your...
Enthusiasm just means I'm happy with my choices, right?
But you have to get them as choices first.
Right, right. I think I can see that.
Wow. Well, this is great.
Look at that! He's enthusiastic!
And I'm actually on the moon, so that's good.
No, that's good. This is giving me something to work with, which is really nice.
Well, I wanted to, like, I mean, as I said, you've been such a wonderful supporter of the show, both in terms of your posts and your emails and your financial support that, you know, I wanted to give it my all as far as this problem went.
Because I just want you to know that I'm just so incredibly grateful for the opportunity that you've given me, right, through your support and generosity of what I'm doing, that I wanted to give you everything I had as far as trying to help you solve a problem.
Because you've enabled me to live a life that I'm madly enthusiastic about.
So I'd like to return the favor by inflicting enthusiasm on you, so to speak.
Right, right.
I'm I'm kind of foggy headed right now, so sorry.
I'm having a hard time finding words.
What that means is that we should stop talking.
I'll try to quit when I'm ahead at least once in my life.
I'll stop now.
I'll send this to you.
Have a listen to it. I think that you did fantastically in this conversation.
I think you'd be incredibly proud of what you did and what you accomplished.
I think it would be a great podcast, but have a listen to it and let me know what you think.
I will. I will, definitely. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Anytime, man.
Keep me posted about how things go, okay?
I will, definitely.
And give my best to your wife, who I'm glad she's listening to.
Absolutely. Okay, bye.
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