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Speaker 2: We need kind of like a consumptive pyramid of how
Speaker 2: much toxic news we can tolerate. Maybe it's good to
Speaker 2: know some of what's going on in the world of
Speaker 2: politics where people are yelling at each other, or some
Speaker 2: of what's going on in the world of culture where
Speaker 2: people are yelling at each other. But if you eat
Speaker 2: too much of that, it's going to poison you.
Speaker 3: Wow, welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great
Speaker 3: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 3: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 3: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 3: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 3: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 3: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 3: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 3: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 3: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 3: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 3: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 1: What if the way we approach change, both in others
Speaker 1: and in ourselves is all wrong. What if instead of criticism,
Speaker 1: we learn to lead with compassion. Tim Shriver, a lifelong
Speaker 1: advocate for inclusion and dignity, shared something with me that
Speaker 1: stopped me in my tracks. Oppositional energy creates oppositional energy,
Speaker 1: simple yet profound. Think about it. How often do we
Speaker 1: try to force change only to meet resistance. In today's episode,
Speaker 1: we explore how seeing the world through the lens of
Speaker 1: the Special Olympics transformed Tim's understanding of humanity. We'll dive
Speaker 1: into stories of profound resilience, the hidden gifts of those
Speaker 1: often overlooked, and how feeding the good wolf in ourselves
Speaker 1: might be the key to creating a better world for everyone.
Speaker 1: I'll also share a moment where I stumbled, Yes, I
Speaker 1: accidentally compared people to octopuses or is that OCTOPI I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, but it taught me something deeper about perspective, humor,
Speaker 1: and grace. By the end of this episode, you'll walk
Speaker 1: away inspire to see people and yourself in a whole
Speaker 1: new way. I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one
Speaker 1: you feed. It's time to feed the good wolf. Hi, Tim,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Delighted to be with you and your wolves.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's a real pleasure to talk to you. As
Speaker 1: I dove deeper into your work, I liked you and
Speaker 1: your ideas more and more and more.
Speaker 2: So that's nice. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Think there's a lot of great stuff to talk about here,
Speaker 1: but we'll start in the way we normally do, which
Speaker 1: is with the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with
Speaker 1: their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other's a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandchild stops. They think about it for a second. They
Speaker 1: look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to know what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 2: Well. I mean, first of all, I think it's a
Speaker 2: beautiful story. It has this quality of intimacy when you
Speaker 2: think about this child and this elder wondering and thinking
Speaker 2: about these questions together, the goodness and the evil in
Speaker 2: the world, how we prevail, how we make decisions. So
Speaker 2: I think it's a beautiful parable. You know, when I've
Speaker 2: heard it in recent years, Eric, it's always reminded me
Speaker 2: that the good wolf within us feels malnourished. You know,
Speaker 2: I've worked in the Special Olympics movement for basically all
Speaker 2: my life, in one way or another, as a teacher.
Speaker 2: For a good part of my life. I feel like
Speaker 2: I've had a front row seat for people who are
Speaker 2: just doing beautiful work, just giving of themselves, full of compassion, zeal, energy,
Speaker 2: a determination to change the world in the most hopeful
Speaker 2: and positive of ways. So I feel like the good
Speaker 2: wolf in me has been fed at a banquet. But
Speaker 2: I look around me and I talk to people, my children,
Speaker 2: you know, my friends, people I know and care about.
Speaker 2: They feel so discouraged and so beaten down by the
Speaker 2: incoming messages and the culture. And I think that, you know,
Speaker 2: if I were extending this metaphor, I would say the
Speaker 2: evil wolf, the bad wolf, is stuffed to being engorged
Speaker 2: almost with food, overfed, and the good wolf is sort
Speaker 2: of over in the corner, starving for food. And I
Speaker 2: think it's just an invitation for us to remember that
Speaker 2: we have the good wolf within us, and that feeding it,
Speaker 2: both for ourselves and for others, is a recipe for
Speaker 2: changing the course of the future.
Speaker 1: I love that idea, and I think there is a
Speaker 1: real need for all of us to think about what
Speaker 1: we are feeding ourselves. I mean, obviously food is one thing,
Speaker 1: but if you are what you eat, in many ways,
Speaker 1: you are what you see and what's around you. And
Speaker 1: if we don't make an effort to look for the
Speaker 1: hopeful side of things, we don't see it. It's tacked
Speaker 1: on to like a two minute thing at the end
Speaker 1: of fifty eight minutes of awful news. Yeah, you get
Speaker 1: the two minute, cute little story. And I've just found
Speaker 1: for myself I have to actively seek that out on
Speaker 1: a regular basis in order to feed that good wolf,
Speaker 1: because it's not what shows up at the top.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think you know you're pointing out this
Speaker 2: issue of like managing our incoming, like we manage our calories,
Speaker 2: or we manage our salt or our sugar, we manage
Speaker 2: our fats or our meats or whatever. We think of
Speaker 2: that sort of intuitively. This is what we do for ourselves,
Speaker 2: is what we do for our children. Don't eat too
Speaker 2: much of this, don't drink too much of that. But
Speaker 2: we're increasingly in a moment in which we are coming
Speaker 2: to realize we also have to manage what we consume
Speaker 2: at the level of our minds and our hearts. We
Speaker 2: have to actually manage it the same way we'd manage calories,
Speaker 2: or the same way we'd manage fats or sugars or whatever.
Speaker 2: I met this teacher once and she said, you know,
Speaker 2: she's so positive, so positive, bubbly, enthusiastic, tall, she's a
Speaker 2: special education teacher. And I said, well, how do you
Speaker 2: stay so positive? She said, I get up in the morning,
Speaker 2: ath you said at four thirty, and I have changed
Speaker 2: the last year. I don't let anything into my heart,
Speaker 2: into my mind through my phone that feels like a
Speaker 2: toxin to me. I do my exercise, I read my
Speaker 2: meditations and prayers, things like that. I don't let anything
Speaker 2: else in. And most of us don't think that way.
Speaker 2: We think, well, let's click on this, and let's click
Speaker 2: on that. We don't think it's poisoning us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's a key.
Speaker 2: Is poisoning us.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we've got a whole new challenge, Like you
Speaker 2: know that food pyramid that we used to see, uh
Speaker 2: in schools and stuff with you know, this much carbohydrates
Speaker 2: and this much fast as much we need, kind of
Speaker 2: like a consumptive pyramid of how much toxic news we
Speaker 2: can tolerate. Like maybe it's good to know some of
Speaker 2: what's going on in the world of politics where people
Speaker 2: are yelling at each other, or some of what's going
Speaker 2: on in the world of culture where people are yelling
Speaker 2: at each other, or maybe we need to know some
Speaker 2: of that. But if you eat too much of that,
Speaker 2: it's going to poison you. Yeah. Yeah. You need something
Speaker 2: that's going to remind you that there is peace within you,
Speaker 2: that there is a wholeness out there in the world,
Speaker 2: that there are people filled with compassion. That's what I'm
Speaker 2: trying to do with Need a Lift, you know, which
Speaker 2: is the podcast I've been working on the last several months.
Speaker 2: I'm way behind you, but trying to we are aligned,
Speaker 2: you know, And what I'm looking for is people who
Speaker 2: are looking at situations where there's pain and bringing purpose,
Speaker 2: looking at situations where there's despair and bringing hope, looking
Speaker 2: at situations where it looks like things are overwhelming. But
Speaker 2: these are people who are finding the inner resolve, Like
Speaker 2: their inner life is strong. You know, they've found a
Speaker 2: spiritual kind of or an emotional foundation that allows them
Speaker 2: to navigate hard incoming negativity and transform it into something
Speaker 2: hopeful and you know, devoid of hatred and contempt. So look,
Speaker 2: I agree with you. We need a lot more attention
Speaker 2: to what we consume through our minds and our hearts,
Speaker 2: and we need a lot more attention to identifying those
Speaker 2: people who will inspire our minds and our hearts to
Speaker 2: believe in ourselves and in each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you say, somewhere, I found myself over and over again,
Speaker 1: confused by the strength of people who seem to be
Speaker 1: experiencing both pain and triumph at the same time. Say
Speaker 1: more about that.
Speaker 2: Well, I think one of the riddles of people who
Speaker 2: have the good wolf well fed is that it often
Speaker 2: gets fed in moments of turmoil, in moments of stress.
Speaker 2: You know, there's the line from one of the spiritual
Speaker 2: teachers this say, is you know, no great spiritual progress
Speaker 2: is made in times of comfort. So many of the
Speaker 2: people I've had the privilege I meet moms, for instance,
Speaker 2: who have children, let's say, with down syndrome, who were
Speaker 2: told from the moment of birth, your child doesn't matter,
Speaker 2: your child's going to be a burden. Your child isn't
Speaker 2: going to be able to make you proud, you know,
Speaker 2: to have friends, to go to school, to learn to read.
Speaker 2: All these messages that these moms and dads are bombarded with.
Speaker 2: And I come into their lives, and what do I see?
Speaker 2: I see this youth ouge smile. I see this endless optimism.
Speaker 2: I see this kind of almost invulnerable hopefulness, like nothing
Speaker 2: can beat them up, Like you can't say anything that
Speaker 2: would sap their spirit of its energy. So I wonder,
Speaker 2: you know, that's a strength that's been refined in a
Speaker 2: fire of difficult and challenging and often oppositional energy. But
Speaker 2: they come out of it. Many times, not everybody, you know,
Speaker 2: and many of us have these experiences in small ways,
Speaker 2: and we get bitter and angry, yeah, and resentful, And
Speaker 2: we all do that. I mean I do it when
Speaker 2: we see people who have had these experiences and come
Speaker 2: out of them seemingly with hearts that are almost exploding
Speaker 2: with love. I think to myself, Man, I'm in the
Speaker 2: presence of greatness, you know. And it may just be
Speaker 2: a mom with a eight year old little daughter who has,
Speaker 2: you know, down syndrome, bringing her to a fifty meters dash,
Speaker 2: But man, does she radiate the kind of energy I
Speaker 2: want to live in.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting what you're describing there. And I've heard
Speaker 1: you talk elsewhere about you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that the Special Olympics, doing all that work taught you
Speaker 1: was to look at people from a different angle than
Speaker 1: the one we societally normally do. And this is a
Speaker 1: crazy analogy I'm about to make here, but you're talking
Speaker 1: about a type of capacity in these people that reminds
Speaker 1: me of when I think about octopuses. And what I
Speaker 1: mean by that is they have an intelligence that is
Speaker 1: so different than ours that is just fascinating. They can
Speaker 1: make their skin change color instantly. I mean, I could
Speaker 1: go on and on about them, but it's this completely
Speaker 1: different type of capacity, and I think what I've gotten
Speaker 1: from your work is learning to see that capacity in
Speaker 1: people who may have intellectual disabilities or other types. There's
Speaker 1: a quality of heart that could be found there that
Speaker 1: a lot of us that are going about our day
Speaker 1: and our you know, quote unquote more normal may not
Speaker 1: have as much.
Speaker 2: Of Yeah, I think you know the irony. I think
Speaker 2: you're right. I'm not sure about how octopuses work, so
Speaker 2: I'm going to I'm going to let your listeners figure
Speaker 2: out how to google ad and figure out where that lands.
Speaker 2: But it makes sense to me. And this is often
Speaker 2: the tragedy that people who have experienced great rejection developed
Speaker 2: the capacity for great acceptance. You know, what is the
Speaker 2: unique gift that people with intellectual differences often bring to
Speaker 2: the table. It's their common experience of having been often rejected.
Speaker 2: And again that's not a good thing, that's a horrible thing,
Speaker 2: but it often has nurtured in them a kind of
Speaker 2: a tenderness and a gentleness and openness to people that
Speaker 2: they themselves might not have experienced from others, but that
Speaker 2: they themselves develop and give back to others. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a quality in people aria I would say, you know,
Speaker 2: in the good wolf side of us, maybe we all
Speaker 2: have it at some level that just kind of doesn't
Speaker 2: hold our weaknesses against us. I would say, if you
Speaker 2: go to a special Olympics event, there's not a single
Speaker 2: person in the crowd who hasn't at some level discriminated
Speaker 2: against people with intellectual disability. Right. I mean literally everybody
Speaker 2: there has in the back and sometimes very much in
Speaker 2: the front of their mind, thought, these people are too different.
Speaker 2: I can't hire them. I don't want to live with them.
Speaker 2: I don't want one of them in my family. I
Speaker 2: don't want them in my child school. Maybe they haven't
Speaker 2: said it, but they felt it, and the Special Olympics
Speaker 2: athletes know they felt it. And yet when they look
Speaker 2: across at the person in the stands, or at the
Speaker 2: persons serving water at the finished line, or the person
Speaker 2: helping to line the field, our athletes just seem to
Speaker 2: have the capacity to go, I get it, but I'm
Speaker 2: still okay with you. I'm still going to give you
Speaker 2: a hug. Yeah. And that's not restricted to people with
Speaker 2: intellectual challenges, for sure. But that quality, which I've learned
Speaker 2: in many ways from them, I believe to be central
Speaker 2: to feeding the good wolf. I believe that when the
Speaker 2: good wolf is fed, that part of us has this
Speaker 2: big capacity not to give people a pass when they
Speaker 2: make mistakes, but to kind of let them know that
Speaker 2: we get it to maybe challenge them, if they've made
Speaker 2: a mistake, to change without hatred, without acrimy, without name calling,
Speaker 2: without brutality, without a vicious need to humiliate the mistake maker,
Speaker 2: but instead kind of with an open, welcoming sense in
Speaker 2: which here we are, now, this is your chance to
Speaker 2: grow through what you've just done or experienced. You know
Speaker 2: where we're really good as a culture at calling people out.
Speaker 2: We're not so good at helping people change and finding
Speaker 2: ways to rehability people. We're good at throwing people in jail,
Speaker 2: you know, emotional jail, physical jail. We're not very good
Speaker 2: at helping people come back. In my view, this Special
Speaker 2: Olympics community is really good at helping people rehabilitate so.
Speaker 1: They would get over an idiotic podcast host comparative octopuses.
Speaker 1: You don't have to worry about it.
Speaker 2: No one's good. I mean, it's a good point. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but I mean, seriously, let's just say, let's just say
Speaker 2: you'd made a big blunder here. You'd said something and
Speaker 2: you thought, oh my god, I can't believe I said that, which,
Speaker 2: of course everyone has done that, right, I've done it
Speaker 2: a million times. I'm like, oh, No, I can't believe
Speaker 2: I just said that. You know, it's special Olympics.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody's like, yeah, I don't worry about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know there's there's a part of us
Speaker 2: this is no, no, no, they Garrek made that terrible
Speaker 2: analogy to an octopus. He should be shown at the
Speaker 2: door and should be told and you should boycott his
Speaker 2: you know whatever, make it up. You know our athletes
Speaker 2: are not Yeah, I don't think that's going to work. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm not showing anybody the door. I'm inviting him to
Speaker 2: the next race.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's beautiful. And I think you're talking about how
Speaker 1: we have a tency to call people out. I think
Speaker 1: that there's a thing that's been on my mind a
Speaker 1: lot ever since me too really got a lot of energy,
Speaker 1: but in general, and we talk about cancel culture. And
Speaker 1: I've thought about this since I was twenty five years old,
Speaker 1: and you know, starting to recover from heroin addiction is like,
Speaker 1: what does it mean to get a second chance? When
Speaker 1: do we say, hey, that person learned from that thing
Speaker 1: and they changed. They like you said, they're rehabilitated in
Speaker 1: some way. And I think that's a really tricky thing
Speaker 1: to figure out in individuals, in our own lives, but
Speaker 1: also culturally, it's very difficult to sort that out. And
Speaker 1: I think as a culture we're starting to reckon with
Speaker 1: that idea a little bit more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I'm curious because you've went through the
Speaker 2: experiences you've gone through, and the addiction and the bottoming out,
Speaker 2: I guess is the right way to put it. But
Speaker 2: you use your own language experiences. Do you think those
Speaker 2: experiences have made you more capable of seeing through the
Speaker 2: weaknesses and others or beyond the mistakes that others make?
Speaker 2: If I made some terrible gaff on this show, are you,
Speaker 2: because of your own journey less likely? Then you might
Speaker 2: otherwise have been to say, God, that guy was a disaster, Jesus,
Speaker 2: get him away from me.
Speaker 1: I think so, you know, we all have natural capacities,
Speaker 1: and I think one of my natural capacities is to
Speaker 1: try and see and understand the backstory of anyone and
Speaker 1: the belief that what people do make sense to them,
Speaker 1: So why does that make sense to them? But absolutely,
Speaker 1: if you screw up as often as I screwed up,
Speaker 1: and you know, was a homeless criminal, you know, and
Speaker 1: just an active, outright criminal to fund my habit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there is a certain amount of learning to
Speaker 1: forgive yourself, which I think translates into learning to forgive
Speaker 1: others or at least understand others. So yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I don't know who I'd be if I didn't have
Speaker 1: that experience, because it's unfathomable. But yes, I think that
Speaker 1: is an element that is really important, is when we
Speaker 1: can forgive ourselves. I think there's some synergy and it
Speaker 1: goes both directions. You know, learning to be kinder to
Speaker 1: ourselves helps us be kinder to others. But I also
Speaker 1: think learning to be kinder to others can sometimes translate
Speaker 1: back to learning to be kinder to ourselves, a bi
Speaker 1: directional relationship, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the guests on Nita Leff just required
Speaker 2: a conversation with her yesterday, Reverend angel Kyoto Williams, you
Speaker 2: know who grew up had a dad as a firefighter,
Speaker 2: wonderful parent, but also had a caregiver who abused her
Speaker 2: as a little girl. And she was describing to me
Speaker 2: the experience of the abuser and of her dad and
Speaker 2: her dad's inability to protect her, and she described it
Speaker 2: all as sort of seeing in them a certain helplessness
Speaker 2: seeing that they were caught in a web of experiences
Speaker 2: that they themselves couldn't get out of at the time.
Speaker 2: It doesn't excuse the abuse. The abuse was destructive and painful,
Speaker 2: but she saw a little bit more of their backstory yep,
Speaker 2: than just their mistakes. Yeah, and you know, there's this
Speaker 2: tension I think, you know, whenever we talk this way,
Speaker 2: it's like, wait a second, are you saying that it's
Speaker 2: okay to abuse people and not have the met to movement? No,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that. Are you saying it's okay to
Speaker 2: be you know, in some ways abusive of people with
Speaker 2: intellectual disabilities or race or culture or gender or whatever. No,
Speaker 2: it's not okay. But if we want to heal those wounds,
Speaker 2: if we want to stop that kind of abuse, how
Speaker 2: we go about doing it is not necessarily clear. I
Speaker 2: don't think and just saying hey, Eric, you are terrible,
Speaker 2: You are a criminal, you are a heroin auty. I mean,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, that doesn't bring anybody
Speaker 2: to recovery.
Speaker 1: It doesn't because I think this is a very nuanced
Speaker 1: area that we don't really know how to do, because
Speaker 1: it's variable on people is this idea of when you
Speaker 1: tend to come at someone right with criticism, that person
Speaker 1: is almost always going to get defensive right and defend themselves.
Speaker 1: You see this with alcoholics and addicts all the time.
Speaker 1: If somebody is just riding them to get into recovery,
Speaker 1: they're having to justify to the other person why they
Speaker 1: do what they do, which is justifying it to themselves
Speaker 1: in some way. You leave somebody in an addiction with
Speaker 1: a little bit more space. Most of those people know
Speaker 1: there's a real problem, right, but they won't admit it
Speaker 1: to anybody else if the admittance is, you know, being
Speaker 1: attacked and shamed and all that. And yet at the
Speaker 1: same time, when you have somebody who's in active addiction
Speaker 1: like that, you don't pretend nothing's happening, you know. I
Speaker 1: talk to families a lot, and I've gone through this
Speaker 1: with people I love who've been in an addiction. What
Speaker 1: what's the right way to late to somebody who's an
Speaker 1: active addiction?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: The tough Love movement I think missed a lot of things.
Speaker 1: It got some things right, but I think it missed
Speaker 1: some things.
Speaker 2: You know. I was talking to a friend of mine
Speaker 2: who works in the addiction space. And she put it
Speaker 2: this way, she said, you know, whether we're dealing with
Speaker 2: addiction or whether we're just dealing with our brothers and sisters,
Speaker 2: or our spouses or whatever, oppositional energy creates oppositional energy.
Speaker 1: That's a great phrase.
Speaker 2: It's pretty simple. If I say to you, Eric, why
Speaker 2: the hell are you wearing your hair that way, You're
Speaker 2: likely to say, well, you know, because you and it
Speaker 2: just become indignant, you know, like it's just oppositional energy
Speaker 2: creates oppositional energy. And you know, threatening energy creates defensive energy.
Speaker 2: It's it's just almost inevitable. You treat someone with contempt,
Speaker 2: you create an almost immediate and almost impulsively irresistible desire
Speaker 2: for revenge. Yep. So you know, if you want to
Speaker 2: disintermediate the problem that's causing the addiction or the abuse
Speaker 2: of women or children or anybody else, it's unlikely to
Speaker 2: work if all we do is name and shame and
Speaker 2: humiliate the person who's Again, it's hard to say this
Speaker 2: because people that have done abusive and horrible things, you know,
Speaker 2: the impulses we got to name and shame and humiliate
Speaker 2: them because we got to get them to stop. And
Speaker 2: I get it. I'm just not sure we have a
Speaker 2: very good track record of having that work.
Speaker 1: You nailed it in a phrase. We're not good culturally
Speaker 1: at how to rehabilitate people. And part of the problem
Speaker 1: is that some people just don't want to be rehabilitated.
Speaker 1: Right if the behavior continues to go on, there's no
Speaker 1: real choice.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you got to step in. You've got to
Speaker 2: create boundaries. You got to put people in jail if
Speaker 2: they're violent, you got to put people out of your
Speaker 2: life if they're abusive, and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: But you know, one guy, I was reading this quote
Speaker 2: from Pharrell Williams, and I've used it a lot to
Speaker 2: try to teach people around dignity issues. Is it goes
Speaker 2: on quite a bit at the beginning, but in the
Speaker 2: end of the quote he says, even with people I disagree,
Speaker 2: I'm wishing them the best. You know, it's okay to
Speaker 2: set a boundary to say, hey, look, Eric, you and
Speaker 2: I've been friends for twenty years, but what you've been
Speaker 2: doing in the last five years I just can't keep.
Speaker 2: I've got to create a boundary. We're not going to
Speaker 2: talk now. I'm kind of done. But to carry that
Speaker 2: boundary with a feeling that I'm hoping for the best
Speaker 2: for you on the other side of your life, of
Speaker 2: our life, of this friendship that I've ended to me.
Speaker 2: That's kind of the spiritual magic. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love that. I know someone who has a very
Speaker 1: difficult family relationship, and there their mantra has sort of
Speaker 1: become innimum contact, maximum sympathy, right, Like it's beautiful, Like
Speaker 1: they've just decided that like, to be around that person
Speaker 1: is to be abused. So yeah, I need to minimize that,
Speaker 1: and yet I can try and keep my heart open
Speaker 1: to them as a person, which is really really difficult
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I guess my point is, like here we are
Speaker 2: on this podcast talking about this that needs to be
Speaker 2: a national conversation. Yeah. I think like when we talk
Speaker 2: about the good wolf, you know, to the extent we
Speaker 2: want to feed the good wolf, that wolf within us
Speaker 2: needs some food around this gift, this quality. How do
Speaker 2: we set boundaries, stand up for principles, work for justice
Speaker 2: by whatever definition we are given to understand justice. How
Speaker 2: do we do all that with a lot of empathy
Speaker 2: and a lot of love yep, instead of with a
Speaker 2: lot of hatred and a lot of revenge. Vindictiveness. That's
Speaker 2: a good challenge for us. All.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw a clip of you talking and you
Speaker 1: said something about when you fight for your principles, add
Speaker 1: one additional principle, and that principle is while you fight
Speaker 1: for your principles, treat others with dignity. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: love that idea, which is really good. You're part of
Speaker 1: something else called the Dignity Index. Can you share a
Speaker 1: little bit about.
Speaker 2: What that is? Yeah. The Dignity Index is a little
Speaker 2: tool we created. My colleagues Tom Rosshirt and Tammy Pifer
Speaker 2: created this tool that allows us to score the language
Speaker 2: we use when we characterize people with whom we disagree.
Speaker 2: So it's basically, if you and I, Eric, let's say
Speaker 2: we don't agree on pick anythought the border. You want
Speaker 2: to have open borders and I want to build a wall,
Speaker 2: so we disagree. The Dignity Index would let us score
Speaker 2: how I treat you, not how I treat the issue,
Speaker 2: how I treat you. Do I call you a name,
Speaker 2: do I consider you to be evil? Do I characterize
Speaker 2: you as inferior to me, as stupid, as uninformed, as selfish?
Speaker 2: Or do I go even farther and say your position
Speaker 2: is so dangerous that you don't actually deserve to live.
Speaker 2: You need to be that's the language of war. Or
Speaker 2: do I go up the side of dignity and do
Speaker 2: I say, you know, Eric, you've got a position. I
Speaker 2: got a position that that would be kind of an
Speaker 2: equal time we each need a chance to Or do
Speaker 2: I go to the top of the dignity scale, which
Speaker 2: is an eight, which is you and I don't agree,
Speaker 2: but I will never violate your Eric, your dignity under
Speaker 2: no circumstances, no matter how much we disagree, I will
Speaker 2: always do my best to make sure you know your
Speaker 2: dignity is intact around me so we can score you. Now,
Speaker 2: it's objective. It's not like a Trump voter scoring Kamala Harris,
Speaker 2: or a Kamala Harris voter scoring a Trump voter, or
Speaker 2: somebody trying to catch a Senator this or Minister that
Speaker 2: in a mistake. It's it's just an objective score and
Speaker 2: it's pretty reliable. It doesn't matter whether you're right or left,
Speaker 2: or you know, rich or poor, or black or white
Speaker 2: or straight or single or whatever. You can score pretty objectively.
Speaker 2: And what's been so exciting about it, Eric, is that
Speaker 2: when people learn it. You can learn it in ten minutes.
Speaker 2: It's not like complicated. It's a pretty simple scoring tool.
Speaker 2: When you learn it, you start to have what we
Speaker 2: call the mirror effect. You start to see yourself. So
Speaker 2: instead of saying, hey, look, Eric, he's done all this
Speaker 2: bad language. He's like a three on this or a
Speaker 2: two on that or six on I start to see, hey,
Speaker 2: you know what, tim is a two? Like I just
Speaker 2: use two language when I was talking about my cousin.
Speaker 2: I can do better than that, you know. And you
Speaker 2: start to realize that how you treat someone is very
Speaker 2: central to whether or not your ideas prevail, because when
Speaker 2: you treat someone with contempt, you make an enemy for
Speaker 2: your cause. So if I want to argue to you,
Speaker 2: we got to build a wall. We got to build
Speaker 2: a wall, you idiot, I've immediately made you into an
Speaker 2: enemy of the wall, right as opposed to winning you over,
Speaker 2: because I think I'm winning you over by calling you
Speaker 2: a name. But you know, all you have to do
Speaker 2: is let people stand back and watch and they go
Speaker 2: of course, that's not going to work.
Speaker 1: There's the relationship expert John Gottman, who's been around a
Speaker 1: long time and I'm familiar with his work a little bit.
Speaker 1: I don't know it a lot. Yeah, I think he
Speaker 1: had like you know, the four horsemen of like the
Speaker 1: relationship Apocalypse or something right, and one of them was
Speaker 1: certainly contempt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: It destroys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's cancer to our relationship.
Speaker 1: It totally is.
Speaker 2: And it's cancer to a culture, as it turns out,
Speaker 2: and sadly, you know, when we look at the data,
Speaker 2: we are living in a culture that normalizes treating other
Speaker 2: people with contempt when you disagree with them, instead of
Speaker 2: a culture that penalizes people for treating people with contempt
Speaker 2: when they disagree, we reward them, yes, so we create
Speaker 2: this vicious cycle of incentives to be more and more
Speaker 2: contemptuous instead of the alternate sycle. This is why I
Speaker 2: say the evil wolf or the bad wolf is overfed
Speaker 2: and the good wolf is emaciated. When I get likes
Speaker 2: and I get popular, and I get more power and
Speaker 2: attention by being contemptuous, then you've created all the wrong
Speaker 2: incentives for the good wolf.
Speaker 1: It's really true, and it's really hard to resist that
Speaker 1: if you're someone who's trying to get attention in the
Speaker 1: public eye a little bit, right, Like you know, I
Speaker 1: want people to listen to the podcast. So I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get attention, and there are ways to do it
Speaker 1: that would be much more effective, knowing what we know
Speaker 1: about the algorithms. And it's a difficult temptation to resist.
Speaker 2: It is it is, And that's why we need subcultures
Speaker 2: that create a counter incentive where and I think this
Speaker 2: is you know what you're trying to do. You're creating
Speaker 2: a listener community. I'm trying to join you at your
Speaker 2: listener community, invite you to join mine. Small cultures maybe
Speaker 2: there's five thousand, maybe there's twenty five thousand, maybe there's
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand, yep, And they create s upcultures of
Speaker 2: people who go, wait a second, that's the world I
Speaker 2: want to live. And I want to live in a
Speaker 2: world where my ideas are explored, where people I agree
Speaker 2: with or listen to, where people I disagree with or
Speaker 2: better understood, where we come to solutions that actually work,
Speaker 2: that we can implement, that we can solve our problems
Speaker 2: for ourselves and our families and our community. Like I
Speaker 2: want to live in that world. I don't want to
Speaker 2: live in that other world. So I'm going to opt
Speaker 2: for Eric's podcast as part of my community. It's not
Speaker 2: going to be the same as the one hundred million
Speaker 2: likes you'd get if you know, called someone by the
Speaker 2: most officious names possible.
Speaker 1: Compared them to an octopus or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, but you know, these things change over time.
Speaker 2: Human beings, we create cultures, we change them. I think
Speaker 2: we're at a point where millions and millions of Americans
Speaker 2: want to change. They just don't know how to do it.
Speaker 2: They don't know where to look. And thank god, some
Speaker 2: of them are looking to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's change direction a little bit. I want to
Speaker 1: talk about something that you explored a little bit in
Speaker 1: your memoir for listeners who don't know your background. Right,
Speaker 1: you're part of the Kennedy Shreiver family. You're part of
Speaker 1: a very well known, very successful, very ambitious family, and
Speaker 1: you talked about when you were younger the pressures you
Speaker 1: felt to actually measure up in that family. And you
Speaker 1: also talked about how to sort out your accomplishments, you know,
Speaker 1: feeling like maybe they're just because you were, you know,
Speaker 1: related to the Kennedys. Now that I think your memoir
Speaker 1: was twenty fourteen, which means you probably wrote the book
Speaker 1: in something like twenty twelve. It's twelve years later, thirteen
Speaker 1: years later, Where do you stand with that today? Talk
Speaker 1: to me about, you know, sort of how you worked
Speaker 1: through that and any evolution that's happened in you sort
Speaker 1: of sense the memoir.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, thanks for taking a look at it. That book,
Speaker 2: Fully Alive was my attempt to do kind of three
Speaker 2: different things. One is tell the story of the athletes
Speaker 2: of Special Olympics and the effect they've had on changing
Speaker 2: my life. The other was to tell the story of
Speaker 2: how my family, largely my mother and her siblings, contributed
Speaker 2: to creating a movement around and unlocking the gifts of
Speaker 2: people with intellectual disabilities. And the other was to tell
Speaker 2: my story. I'd say on all three fronts, I feel
Speaker 2: a good deal of I guess what I would say
Speaker 2: is I felt like I got a lot of head
Speaker 2: nodding when I talked about that book. When I talked
Speaker 2: to people about the gifts of people with intellectual disabilities
Speaker 2: and how they in effect taught me the gift of
Speaker 2: how to be free to be myself, people go, oh, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've been to a specially I know what you mean.
Speaker 2: I know what you mean. What I did learn is
Speaker 2: that's not a gift you learn as an idea. That's
Speaker 2: a gift you practice as an experience. Right, So I
Speaker 2: go back. You know, our local Special Olympics Unified basketball
Speaker 2: program starts in two weeks, second week in January. I
Speaker 2: can't wait for the Saturday. It's the same way. If
Speaker 2: you know, some people look forward to going to the gym,
Speaker 2: you know, practice building up their abs or their shoulders
Speaker 2: or whatever they're building up. I look forward to going
Speaker 2: to the Special Olympics practices to building up my sense
Speaker 2: of my own freedom and my own dignity, and to
Speaker 2: learn from those athletes. I'd say it with respect to
Speaker 2: the story of my family, you know, President Kennedy, my
Speaker 2: uncles Teddy and Bobby, my mom, my grandparents. I feel
Speaker 2: proud that at least some people know that a good
Speaker 2: part of that family history is not just about political success.
Speaker 2: It's about the tenderness and heart that was infused in
Speaker 2: that family system by my aunt Rosemary. She's the missing
Speaker 2: piece in most of the stories that people tell about
Speaker 2: President Kennedy and about my uncle Bobby and my uncle
Speaker 2: ted and so on. They tell the story of big
Speaker 2: legislation and speeches and dramatic events and tragedies. But I'm
Speaker 2: glad that at least somewhere in the record Rosemary's role
Speaker 2: is remembered or at least has been shared.
Speaker 1: I loved that part of the book because I actually
Speaker 1: do know a little bit about Rosemary, because President Kennedy
Speaker 1: was part of a big movement to sort of shut
Speaker 1: down the big institutions implement community mental health. And we
Speaker 1: could debate a long time whether that was a good
Speaker 1: move or a bad move.
Speaker 2: It was a good move, but anyway, go ahead, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1: Well, well, Lesley, Yeah, that's certainly something we could debate.
Speaker 1: I think in principle it's a good move. I think
Speaker 1: the follow up to it that was supposed to happen
Speaker 1: did not happen, which created a crisis. Anyway, my point being,
Speaker 1: I've heard about Rosemary a little bit in that context,
Speaker 1: but I loved hearing more about her. Maybe you could
Speaker 1: just share a couple minutes of her story and a
Speaker 1: little bit about your sort of thesis that the tenderness
Speaker 1: and the kindness that the Kennedys have came from interacting
Speaker 1: with her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you've got it. I mean, my mom was
Speaker 2: one of nine children, my grandparents, my grandfather was very
Speaker 2: successful in business in the twenties and thirties and forties
Speaker 2: and up into the fifties. He's made a huge fortune
Speaker 2: by those standards. Those did not, you know, by today's standards.
Speaker 2: I suppose it's only a modest fortune. But still he
Speaker 2: made a lot of money. And he and my grandmother
Speaker 2: are well known for their three sons, Jack who became
Speaker 2: the President of the United States, and my uncle Robert
Speaker 2: Francis Kennedy became senator from New York and Attorney General,
Speaker 2: and my uncle Ted Kennedy became center from Massachusetts. That's
Speaker 2: the story. That's the narrative, rich patriarch, big Irish Catholic family,
Speaker 2: three gigantically successful boys, and then you have the tragedies
Speaker 2: of the murders and so on. What's missing in that
Speaker 2: story is the birth of Rosemary Kennedy, who, unlike all
Speaker 2: of her eight brothers and sisters, had an intellectual disability.
Speaker 2: And in nineteen twenties America, a wealthy family with a
Speaker 2: child with intellectual disability sent that child to an institution.
Speaker 2: That was the end of it. Doctors would have said,
Speaker 2: give up the child, pretend like you did nothing happen,
Speaker 2: go home. Take care of your other children. This child
Speaker 2: will be taken care of well somewhere else. Just move on,
Speaker 2: And they chose to keep her at home. So each
Speaker 2: of Rosemary's siblings, including my mom, grew up looking across
Speaker 2: the table at a sister who had no school to
Speaker 2: go to, who had no friends, who had no childcare program,
Speaker 2: who had no doctor, who had no recreation program, who
Speaker 2: had no summer camp. And my view is that my
Speaker 2: grandmother and my grandfather, in keeping her at home, taught
Speaker 2: her siblings that they had to be able to see
Speaker 2: what the world didn't see. The world saw Rosemary as
Speaker 2: a zero. They knew she was beautiful, they knew she
Speaker 2: was funny, they knew she was gifted. So they learned
Speaker 2: to see what the world couldn't see. They learned to
Speaker 2: see human dignity where the world saw human nothingness. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so they didn't talk about it a lot. But my
Speaker 2: view is that when President Kennedy gets up at his
Speaker 2: inauguration and says, you know, ask what you can do
Speaker 2: for your country, it's because he knew that when people
Speaker 2: are asked to give of themselves that they get their
Speaker 2: best selves in return.
Speaker 1: He knew it, like he'd done it his whole life
Speaker 1: with his own sister.
Speaker 2: Every time he was asked to take care of Rosemary,
Speaker 2: to include Rosemary, to take her with you, he knew
Speaker 2: it was to his benefit that he had this beautiful sister.
Speaker 2: So at some level, the lessons that my uncle Bobby
Speaker 2: taught that my mom, who you know, started this camp
Speaker 2: for children with special needs in her own backyard. I
Speaker 2: mean nineteen sixty two. She had like the four phone
Speaker 2: calls in the spring. You know, her brother was the president.
Speaker 2: She was working on trying to policy change. And the
Speaker 2: fourth mother called her and said, you know, missus driver,
Speaker 2: there's nowhere for me to take my child. None of
Speaker 2: the camps will take my child. And she said, yes,
Speaker 2: there is. You bring your child in my house. I
Speaker 2: damn it, you bring your child here. There is going
Speaker 2: to be a summer camp. It's going to be in
Speaker 2: my backyard. Now where does she get that resolve? That
Speaker 2: fire that you know? Where did that heartfire burn from?
Speaker 2: It burned from knowing her sister deserved those chances and
Speaker 2: didn't get them, and she wasn't. She couldn't tolerate having
Speaker 2: another mother tell her there was nothing. So I kind
Speaker 2: of feel like the hidden spiritual energy in that family.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm not saying to lionize my mom
Speaker 2: or her brothers and sisters politically. I'm saying that, you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of people come up to me still, you know,
Speaker 2: President Kennedy's been gone sixty plus years. They still come up, Oh,
Speaker 2: I so admire your uncle. I so you know when
Speaker 2: he was president, or your uncle Bobby. He's my roma,
Speaker 2: you know. And I think what they're telling me is
Speaker 2: there was something in those boys in that generation. There
Speaker 2: was some quality in them. And when I think about
Speaker 2: what that quality was, it was Rosemary's heart beating through them.
Speaker 1: It's a really beautiful idea, and it makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense in that we are deeply shaped by the
Speaker 1: experiences that we have, and we're deeply shaped by what
Speaker 1: we're taught about how to handle those experiences. And it
Speaker 1: seems pretty clear that that generation of Kennedy's was taught
Speaker 1: to treat her with dignity, to treat her with respect.
Speaker 1: And they also, like you said, they got to see
Speaker 1: her who she was.
Speaker 2: They got to see her the world couldn't see her. So,
Speaker 2: you know, if you're a political leader and you're trying
Speaker 2: to say, hey, our country. You know, we're talking about
Speaker 2: the cycle of contempt right now. I mean I want
Speaker 2: to be able to say, hey, gang, which is what
Speaker 2: you're saying. Don't you see you've got a good wolf?
Speaker 2: Come on? I know you do. You know this because
Speaker 2: of your own life. You know, even in the depths
Speaker 2: of your own despair, there was something in you that
Speaker 2: was still there, that wanted to be healthy and strong
Speaker 2: and contributing and compassionate and good to yourself. You know
Speaker 2: it was there, right. I don't have to explain it
Speaker 2: to you. I have to read a book about it.
Speaker 2: You don't need a lesson plan to unpack it. You
Speaker 2: know it. So when you speak to an audience, or
Speaker 2: when you're speaking to your audience here on this podcast,
Speaker 2: you're telling me, I know you've got it in you.
Speaker 2: Come on, I know you've got it. Don't trust me,
Speaker 2: You've got it. And that's what I think my uncles did.
Speaker 2: They said to the country at a time, at different
Speaker 2: times when it needed to hear it. Hey, America, you
Speaker 2: can do this. We can take on civil rights. We
Speaker 2: can work to create extend healthcare. We can build a
Speaker 2: more peaceful future. We can volunteer and create connections to
Speaker 2: people all over the planet in service a piece.
Speaker 1: I know we can do this.
Speaker 2: So they knew at some level to trust their gut
Speaker 2: on these things, and not just to trust the polls,
Speaker 2: and not just to trust what people ask of their government.
Speaker 2: Most of the political rhetoric we hear nowadays is all
Speaker 2: about like, is the government delivering for people what they want?
Speaker 2: It's a very good question, and if it's not, it
Speaker 2: needs to be fixed that. There's a second question, which
Speaker 2: is our people giving to the country what they can.
Speaker 2: And that's just as important. But almost nobody asks it
Speaker 2: but my uncles and my mom and her siblings, her sisters.
Speaker 2: I think they did ask it, and I think they
Speaker 2: asked it because Rosemary told them to. Even though Rosemary
Speaker 2: never wrote a book, Rosemary never gave a speech, Rosemary
Speaker 2: never started a company, Rosemary never excelled in a test,
Speaker 2: Rosemary never won an honor ever, nothing her whole life.
Speaker 2: On that, all those measures of success she had nothing.
Speaker 2: But on the most important measure of success, did she
Speaker 2: inspire the hearts of people that she touched? I think
Speaker 2: she gets an A plus plus.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about another idea that runs throughout your work,
Speaker 1: which is the idea of inclusiveness. Talk to me about
Speaker 1: what inclusiveness means to you. Why is it so important
Speaker 1: to you?
Speaker 2: Well, I think, you know, the tendency we have as
Speaker 2: human beings is to sort, you know, like good, bad, friend, foe,
Speaker 2: you know, tall, short, smart, stupid, all those decisions we make.
Speaker 2: And you know, sometimes we're classifying things that are good.
Speaker 2: You know, if somebody's six eight, maybe they play center
Speaker 2: on the basketball team, and if somebody's five eight, maybe
Speaker 2: they play point guard. It might not be the other
Speaker 2: way around. So that's all okay. But what happens, I
Speaker 2: think is that we slip from sorting in order to
Speaker 2: make sense of the world to sorting in order to
Speaker 2: create hierarchies in the world. I like you, you're good,
Speaker 2: you're desirable, You not so much, and we start to exclude.
Speaker 2: And we often exclude by when we judge books by
Speaker 2: their cover, when we judge people by blunt instruments. If
Speaker 2: you have a low IQ, oh, not desirable. Sorry. The
Speaker 2: Special Olympics movement is in two hundred countries. You know,
Speaker 2: there's five million athletes volunteers that do out fifty sixty
Speaker 2: thousand games a year. Every single one of them is
Speaker 2: a rebellion against the tyranny and the brutality of exclusion
Speaker 2: and judgment and contempt. And every one of those events,
Speaker 2: whether it's a little swimming race or a bowling competition
Speaker 2: or a skating competition, or attract me, every one of
Speaker 2: them is an invitation to say, when in doubt, when
Speaker 2: you have the option, when you have a choice, try
Speaker 2: to choose to be inclusive. That's it. Do your best. Yeah,
Speaker 2: choose to include. That's the message. The healthcare benefits of
Speaker 2: joining a community, of opening yourself to others, So being
Speaker 2: a part of civic organizations, religious organizations, political organizations, social
Speaker 2: cause organizations. The benefits to our health, to our hearts,
Speaker 2: to our brains, to our souls are enormous when we include.
Speaker 2: But we have so many messages about who to exclude. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, don't hang out with those people. I can't.
Speaker 2: People say this to me. A lot of my friends
Speaker 2: are democrats. I spend a lot of time in Republican
Speaker 2: circles working on this dignity work. You met with them,
Speaker 2: I met with them. I spent thirty years in special Olympics.
Speaker 2: What do you think I am? I mean? I got
Speaker 2: the basic message. The basic message is have your heart
Speaker 2: open to everyone. So this inclusion message isn't you know.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes it gets distorted as a political agenda
Speaker 2: or fight between this group and that group. And the
Speaker 2: Special Olympics world, inclusion is all about relationships. It's all
Speaker 2: about being open to another person. It's not about saying
Speaker 2: I'm better than them or they're worse than me, or
Speaker 2: I need to force you to let me in or
Speaker 2: I need to force you to get me out or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's just all about saying, you know, and when I
Speaker 2: meet Eric, we come from different places, we wear our
Speaker 2: hair differently, we have different stories. Be inclusive if you
Speaker 2: can try, just try to listen, try to find the good,
Speaker 2: try to see what their gift is. If you find
Speaker 2: the gift, celebrate the gift. That's the Speciallympics message. You know,
Speaker 2: we have a lot of people who can't use language
Speaker 2: to express themselves, who can't necessarily run unassisted when they're
Speaker 2: running a race. But in the Special Olympics movement, those
Speaker 2: are not the right measures. The measure is meet, train,
Speaker 2: play and then find something to celebrate. Because if you
Speaker 2: have no words and it took you forty five seconds
Speaker 2: to run fifty meters and you work really hard to
Speaker 2: do that, and you trained hard, and you have your
Speaker 2: coach there with you. I'm telling you, the crowd will
Speaker 2: cheer louder, and then they cheer to the final four
Speaker 2: because they'll know they're in the presence of a gift.
Speaker 2: And it may not be the gift you see when
Speaker 2: you watch the NBA or when you watch the Olympics,
Speaker 2: but man, is it a gift. It's a beautiful gift.
Speaker 2: So maybe that's a long answer, Eric, I'm sorry for that,
Speaker 2: but you know, choosing to include is good for us
Speaker 2: as human beings. It's good for our physical health, it's
Speaker 2: good for our emotional health, and it's certainly good for
Speaker 2: you know, I would argue our political health at a
Speaker 2: time when our country is really hurting. You know, people
Speaker 2: are really scared of each other, and they're threatened by
Speaker 2: each other, and they're fearful or fearful of one another.
Speaker 2: We're fearful of the future because we're fearful of one another.
Speaker 2: We need a little dose of wisdom from the special
Speaker 2: Olympics community that just says, hey, you know what, you
Speaker 2: don't have to gree on everything, but try it ont
Speaker 2: be inclusive, do the best you can try a little
Speaker 2: harder if you've tried already, and give it another shot,
Speaker 2: because there's something good in that person, you just got
Speaker 2: to go find it.
Speaker 1: I've heard you talk about this, and you talk about
Speaker 1: this idea of you know, every one of us wants
Speaker 1: to be part of a circle that includes a. C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis talked about this, right, like everybody thinks there's like
Speaker 1: an inner ring of if you just got into that,
Speaker 1: you know, and once you're in that, you know it
Speaker 1: never really ends. But you say that this idea of
Speaker 1: seeking belonging in that way is backwards. We get the
Speaker 1: sense of belonging by giving it. And I think you're
Speaker 1: talking about seeing with different eyes and seeing that it's
Speaker 1: good to be part of a group, even if it
Speaker 1: doesn't have the social status that many of us are
Speaker 1: seeking and chasing.
Speaker 2: M h, I mean status. You know that some of
Speaker 2: the most insecure people in the world are people who
Speaker 2: have the highest social status. Why because they're always and
Speaker 2: that they're going to lose it. Yeah, And I mean
Speaker 2: I've been very privileged and blessed to be able to
Speaker 2: be around people with enormous political and financial power. But
Speaker 2: I got to tell you a lot of times they're
Speaker 2: not very happy, and a lot of times they're quite
Speaker 2: unsettled and insecure about themselves. And you think, why is
Speaker 2: this guy he's got a billion dollars? Or why is
Speaker 2: that person insecure just came here in as private jet,
Speaker 2: or why is she insecure? She's not a cover of
Speaker 2: magazine and everybody adores her and admires her. And it's like,
Speaker 2: those are not the things that deliver. That's the false
Speaker 2: programs of happiness. You know, like, if only I get
Speaker 2: a lot of approval, I'll be happy, It doesn't work. Right,
Speaker 2: If only I get a lot of control over other people,
Speaker 2: I'll be happy, also doesn't work. You know, what works
Speaker 2: for happiness is deep, enduring, honest, authentic relationships. That's it.
Speaker 2: I mean, the social science will tell us that, religion
Speaker 2: tells us that philosophy tells us that that's it. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: we all need our basics, you know, we need food
Speaker 2: and shelter and things like that, and we need to
Speaker 2: be in a situation where we're not at risk of
Speaker 2: losing food and shelter in these things. But after a
Speaker 2: fairly basic security around, you know, basic goods, after we've
Speaker 2: achieved a fairly modest level of security. The only thing
Speaker 2: that contributes beyond that to happiness is relationships. And it's
Speaker 2: not like whether you're the head of the Rotary Club
Speaker 2: or the Lions Club, or the Democratic Party or the
Speaker 2: church council or whatever it is. It's not that you're
Speaker 2: the head of it. It's that you're in it. You
Speaker 2: know that you're feeling and seen and understood by other people.
Speaker 2: So you know, this is a hard lesson for us
Speaker 2: to learn. But stature does not convey happiness. It's kind
Speaker 2: of a scientific fact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We've only got a few minutes left here,
Speaker 1: and there's two things I would love to get through here.
Speaker 1: The first is a question that we could spend an
Speaker 1: hour on. So I recognize i'm setting myself up, but
Speaker 1: people talk about how polarized the country is. I love
Speaker 1: history podcast. There's one called The Rest is History. It's
Speaker 1: a couple of English guys. It's great, and they're doing
Speaker 1: this long series on nineteen sixty eight, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: you know is the year that your uncle was assassinated.
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King was assassinated. And I'm looking at that
Speaker 1: and I'm looking at our current times, and I'm thinking
Speaker 1: I keep hearing again and again, this is the worst
Speaker 1: it's ever been. I just don't know if that's true.
Speaker 2: What do you think? Well, I go with John Lewis,
Speaker 2: who said towards the end of his life, I was
Speaker 2: at a speech. He must have said it a million times.
Speaker 2: He's in. Anybody who thinks things haven't gotten better hasn't
Speaker 2: lived my life. Yep. So, the year I was born
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty nine, there were probably two hundred thousand
Speaker 2: Americans living in institutions with intellectual disabilities. Today they're basically
Speaker 2: are zero. The year I went to school in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty five or six, there were no children with intellectual disabilities,
Speaker 2: and any school in America pretty much except segregated schools. Today,
Speaker 2: almost every school, public school in America has children with
Speaker 2: intellectual developmental disabilities in the school. That's a big win.
Speaker 2: So I'm just looking at it from the point of
Speaker 2: view of one group population. I think that you could
Speaker 2: say the same thing about black Americans. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: long way to go on all these things. We don't
Speaker 2: shrink from the severity of the challenge by acknowledging the
Speaker 2: enormity of the change.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a beautiful way to say it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and our country, I look around, it's more inclusive,
Speaker 2: it's more diverse, it's more wealthy, it's more loving. I
Speaker 2: mean like when I was a kid, I would never
Speaker 2: say I love you to another guy. I barely said
Speaker 2: I love you to my own mother. And now I
Speaker 2: hear that from friends all the time. My kids when
Speaker 2: their friends come over the oh I love you. I
Speaker 2: mean you could say that's a small thing. I think
Speaker 2: it's a big thing. Yeah. So I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot of things. I think the country's more diverse. There's
Speaker 2: more attention to mental health than there ever was. There's
Speaker 2: more support for a whole diverse way of raising families
Speaker 2: that women and men are finding their ways into. So, look,
Speaker 2: we've got big challenges. We've got a mental health crisis.
Speaker 2: We've got an income inequality crisis. We still have persistent
Speaker 2: and almost unforgivable discrimination in our country. We have a
Speaker 2: long way to go. But I'd say probably there's a
Speaker 2: billion people in the world. I'm just going to say
Speaker 2: this because it's a crazy number, but I'm guessing there's
Speaker 2: a billion people in the world. If tomorrow you told
Speaker 2: them they could move the United States, they'd say yeah
Speaker 2: they would. Yeah, maybe two they'd come here in a heartbeat.
Speaker 2: Why Because still we do represent an enormously privileged way
Speaker 2: of living, enormously privileged type of government. And I got
Speaker 2: more than my fair share of complaints about our government.
Speaker 2: I got a lot of complaints about a lot of things.
Speaker 2: But I don't for a minute let it convince me
Speaker 2: that we have that may progress and certainly in my
Speaker 2: lifetime I'm with John Lewis, We've moved forward in many,
Speaker 2: many ways.
Speaker 1: Yep, I totally agree. All right, last thing, you talk
Speaker 1: about a miracle, and I love this. You said a
Speaker 1: miracle is not a manipulation of the laws of nature
Speaker 1: and history. It can also be a way of describing
Speaker 1: a dramatic change of mind and heart at the most
Speaker 1: fundamental levels of reality. Say anything you would like to
Speaker 1: in close in. But I just think that's such a
Speaker 1: beautiful idea.
Speaker 2: Well, I hope it speaks for itself. Because miracles, the
Speaker 2: premise is unchanged about who causes them. I think miracles
Speaker 2: are a function of how receptive we are to seeing
Speaker 2: the infusion of reality with the laws of the spirit,
Speaker 2: the laws of the spirit which transcend and are matched
Speaker 2: by the laws of nature. They don't disrupt, in my
Speaker 2: view of the laws of nature, but they operate alongside them.
Speaker 2: So when human beings fall in love, it's a miracle.
Speaker 2: They don't think in love, they don't plan in love,
Speaker 2: they don't decide in love. They fall. We fall, And
Speaker 2: we can fall in love this afternoon with a walk
Speaker 2: with a child. We can fall in love with a
Speaker 2: tree that's changing colors. We can fall in love with
Speaker 2: a chance to see someone in an intensive care unit
Speaker 2: being cared for by a nurse with tenderness that's unbounded
Speaker 2: by professional training or compensation or rules. We can fall
Speaker 2: in love with when the heart overtakes us and reminds
Speaker 2: us that we're citizens of yet another dimension of reality.
Speaker 2: I guess that's the way i'd put it. We're all
Speaker 2: destined for something beautiful, and we come from something beautiful,
Speaker 2: and a miracle is when we see it. It's there
Speaker 2: all the time. I mean, it's just there all the time.
Speaker 1: Well, that is a beautiful place to wrap up, Tim,
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed this. This has been great. I wish
Speaker 1: we had two more hours to go.
Speaker 2: But thank you so much, Eric for thinking and working
Speaker 2: and playing around with some of the ideas that have
Speaker 2: been living in my head for a long time, and
Speaker 2: I'm grateful for the you do and hope that our
Speaker 2: efforts that need a lift to kind of create another kind.
Speaker 1: Of pod sister or pod brother of yours that.
Speaker 2: Will compliment what you're doing. And hopefully I had the
Speaker 2: voices of people on need a lift contributing to feeding.
Speaker 1: The good wealth. Thank you so much, Tim, Thank you.
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