Speaker 1: We are so attached to the idea of who we are,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's designed by what our parents always
Speaker 1: said about us. But sometimes I find I would get
Speaker 1: so attached to that that then I would be afraid
Speaker 1: to let go because I don't want to lose me.
Speaker 1: I don't want to lose me and me, I know me.
Speaker 1: If I want to lose me, do I love me? Hey? Everyone,
Speaker 1: welcome back to On Purpose, to number one health podcast
Speaker 1: in the world. Thanks to each and every one of
Speaker 1: you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow.
Speaker 1: Now you know that one of my favorite ways to
Speaker 1: learn is by learning people's stories, by diving into their hearts,
Speaker 1: their minds, their souls if they're willing to share that
Speaker 1: and try and understand what we can learn, what we
Speaker 1: can hear, what we don't understand. Maybe there's a part
Speaker 1: of their journey that we didn't know enough about. And
Speaker 1: I've found stories become a huge compass for me in
Speaker 1: my life, and that's why I try and share those
Speaker 1: with you here. And today's guest is someone that I've
Speaker 1: actually wanted to talk to for a long long time.
Speaker 1: I would say I'd probably trying to book this podcast
Speaker 1: for like two years in the making, so I'm very
Speaker 1: very excited this evening. And just so you know, he's
Speaker 1: had a crazy busy day. It is officially seven forty
Speaker 1: five pm on a Monday night when we're recording this
Speaker 1: in New York City. I'm talking about the one and
Speaker 1: only someone who needs no introduction, Trevor. Noah, Trevor, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for doing this. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful to have you in the seat. Finally,
Speaker 1: it's good. I'm grateful to be talking to you in person.
Speaker 1: Most of the time I see you, I'm watching a
Speaker 1: clip of yours online, so this is nice. No I
Speaker 1: really appreciate this. And my interview with you that we
Speaker 1: did when I was out talking about Calm was my
Speaker 1: favorite interview from that whole experience because I felt that
Speaker 1: the questions you asked me were the most reflective. They
Speaker 1: were pushing me, they were challenging me in a healthy way,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, oh, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: want to sit down more and have more of those conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you for you so anyway, but I want to
Speaker 1: start with you. But you know, your book Born at
Speaker 1: Crime is brilliant, brilliant work, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: go through the whole book. I'd love for people to
Speaker 1: read it if they haven't. But I guess what I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated by is human experiences when we were children or
Speaker 1: early on in our lives that shaped us today. And
Speaker 1: I know you've reflected on that a lot, But now,
Speaker 1: when you reflect on it today, what are some of
Speaker 1: the examples of human experiences that you had that you
Speaker 1: think shaped who you are today? Was one of the
Speaker 1: earliest memories. Maybe My mom is a Bible scholar, and
Speaker 1: she reads the Bible every day, not all of it,
Speaker 1: but she moves through it every single day. What I've
Speaker 1: found fascinating is that she's been reading the same book
Speaker 1: for decades now, and every day she'll send me an
Speaker 1: email or a message about a scripture and how it
Speaker 1: pertains to her life as she sees it now in
Speaker 1: this moment, how it has been, and how she thinks
Speaker 1: it will be. And what I found particularly fascinating about
Speaker 1: that is the fact that it's the same book and
Speaker 1: yet it keeps meaning so many different things to her.
Speaker 1: The same story, but it keeps meaning so many different things.
Speaker 1: And I sometimes think about my life in that way.
Speaker 1: Is depending on where I am depending on the moment,
Speaker 1: depending on where I've been and where I'm going, The
Speaker 1: same experience reveals a different parts of me. The same
Speaker 1: experience reveals why I am who I am, or why
Speaker 1: I'm doing what I'm doing, or why I even have
Speaker 1: an idea of who I am or why I am.
Speaker 1: And so recently, maybe since you know you're asking me,
Speaker 1: what is one of these things? What is something I
Speaker 1: think back to how not having shaped how I see
Speaker 1: the world, shaped how I move in the world. You know,
Speaker 1: not having food, sometimes, not having money, sometimes not even
Speaker 1: having luxury items sometimes you know, whether it be clothing
Speaker 1: or cause, whatever it may be. But but recently I've
Speaker 1: I've found myself going man, so much of how you
Speaker 1: define yourself is through the lens of having or not having,
Speaker 1: particularly because of how you grew up. And so it's
Speaker 1: it's not about having or not having now, but it's
Speaker 1: in the small things, you know, It's like how I
Speaker 1: order food or why I order the food that I do,
Speaker 1: in the way that I do it is partially because
Speaker 1: of having or not having. And so I would say
Speaker 1: that's maybe one of the biggest experiences that I find
Speaker 1: has um Yeah, has recently been like just shining and
Speaker 1: lights on how I grew up. Yeah, that's fascinating. I've
Speaker 1: often reflected on something similar, and I've called it gifts
Speaker 1: or gaps they're having or not having. Interesting. So certain
Speaker 1: gifts that I had growing up, like be handed to
Speaker 1: me by my parents or by my family. Oh wow, okay, right,
Speaker 1: then all of the gaps, well, there were gaps, like
Speaker 1: there were things that you didn't have. So whether that
Speaker 1: would be a present parent or a I didn't have
Speaker 1: the latest Nike sneakers or Nike shoes as we would
Speaker 1: call it, yeah, exactly, like yeah, ye American, sound like
Speaker 1: an idiot exactly, Nike and Adidas yes, as I say,
Speaker 1: added as not Adidas. And so those kind of gaps
Speaker 1: And obviously those are very crude examples. But and do
Speaker 1: you find yourself editing those now, Like do you find
Speaker 1: yourself saying, Okay, I didn't have this, and therefore I
Speaker 1: have this behavior. I did have this, and therefore I
Speaker 1: have this behavior. Do you feel like your behavior today
Speaker 1: wants an upgrade because of your new lifestyle or a
Speaker 1: downgrade or you kind of think, no, I'm happy living
Speaker 1: with the same beliefs and values and systems. That I
Speaker 1: had from back then. All I'm constantly trying to do
Speaker 1: is acknowledge them. I try my best to eliminate good
Speaker 1: or bad. I really do. And the reason I do
Speaker 1: that is not because you know, I exist in a
Speaker 1: spiritual world, although I think we all do, but not
Speaker 1: because of that. I think of it more because I
Speaker 1: realized everything and everyone is going to have a good
Speaker 1: or bad you know. So I have yet to meet
Speaker 1: a person who doesn't think some parts of their childhood
Speaker 1: were tough. Yes, but now it's when we compare the
Speaker 1: toughness that that people then say, oh, actually, I didn't
Speaker 1: have it tough. You had it tough and and you know,
Speaker 1: like people will say to me, oh, man, you grow
Speaker 1: up so poor in South Africa and you know, growing
Speaker 1: up in the township and whatever. And I would say
Speaker 1: to them, I didn't feel like this because I would see,
Speaker 1: for instance, the slums in India. I got like, man, yo,
Speaker 1: And and maybe I was lucky, funny enough, because in
Speaker 1: South Africa we had news that was was global, and
Speaker 1: because it was, it was so I think it was
Speaker 1: so broad. I had an awareness, so I didn't think
Speaker 1: what I was living through was the worst possible thing. Yes,
Speaker 1: but now relative to how many other people lived, they've
Speaker 1: put me down at the bottom of a list. Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and yeah, And so I often don't think of it
Speaker 1: as good or bad. I just try and go, oh,
Speaker 1: that happened, that didn't happen because of that, I adapted accordingly.
Speaker 1: You know. So you know there's there's a lot of rainfall,
Speaker 1: so then this plant will start growing in that way
Speaker 1: there isn't as much rainfall, the plant will grow another way.
Speaker 1: Is it good or is it bad? That's oftentimes something
Speaker 1: that's subjective because of who runs the world or who
Speaker 1: tells us how the world should be or isn't or
Speaker 1: you get what I'm saying. Yeah, no, And I love
Speaker 1: that you've simplified it as awareness, because that awareness or
Speaker 1: acknowledgement of keeping it that way is often quite sacred
Speaker 1: to be able to say no, I'm just observing. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying and yeah, it's hard. And you reminded me
Speaker 1: I was. I was nine years old when I first
Speaker 1: visited India. I was born and raised in London, but
Speaker 1: my mum I was actually was born and raised in Yemen,
Speaker 1: and my father was born and raised in India. But
Speaker 1: my parents are in what part of India. My father
Speaker 1: was from Mangalore, which is like southern India, and my
Speaker 1: mother is from Guda, which is northern India. But she
Speaker 1: was born and raised in Yemen, so she moved to
Speaker 1: London when she was sixteen. But when I went to
Speaker 1: India for the first time, when I was nine years old,
Speaker 1: I remember we were in a car and we were
Speaker 1: not well off, so we weren't staying in a fancy
Speaker 1: hotel or whatever, but we had enough money to visit,
Speaker 1: which is significant for the air flight. And I remember
Speaker 1: going in this car and you just sparked this, and
Speaker 1: I remember like stopping at a traffic light and just
Speaker 1: looking out, and I saw these slums, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I'd never seen something like that in London. And I
Speaker 1: saw these little legs poking out of like a barrel
Speaker 1: of a trash can, and I was just and the
Speaker 1: legs looked little like of someone my age like around
Speaker 1: and then slowly I saw her whole body come out
Speaker 1: and it was this girl and she didn't have any hands,
Speaker 1: and she'd just been like trying to scrape the bottle.
Speaker 1: And I remember being nine years old, and she was
Speaker 1: probably like maybe the same age maybe a little less
Speaker 1: like and I remember just looking at her and feeling
Speaker 1: like totally helpless because I was in a car on
Speaker 1: the other side of the highway and I can't go
Speaker 1: and help or I want to, but I also don't
Speaker 1: know what helped means as a nine year old, and
Speaker 1: there was one of those experiences that you know, and
Speaker 1: then I went back. I remember to my hotel and
Speaker 1: I remember hearing like someone was arguing about not enough
Speaker 1: menu options on the buffet, and it was just it
Speaker 1: was as it was like connecting the dots, as you're
Speaker 1: saying of like, you know, when you see your experience
Speaker 1: and then you see someone else's experience, have you found
Speaker 1: that what you did go through that you ever needed
Speaker 1: to process it or heal it, or because you had
Speaker 1: that perspective since day one, that you never needed that
Speaker 1: that it was just like, no, this is my experience
Speaker 1: and I'm used to it. Or were there moments of
Speaker 1: where you had to revisit and I work on healing
Speaker 1: every day. You know. I grew up in a world
Speaker 1: where we almost didn't have the time and all the
Speaker 1: resources to heal, and I think for a long time
Speaker 1: I was very comfortable in accepting that as just being
Speaker 1: my world. Oh that happened, you know, I shrug it
Speaker 1: off and you keep on moving. Yeah, you shrug it off.
Speaker 1: That happened, that happened to you, you know, domestic abuse
Speaker 1: or okay, poverty, whatever it may be, violence in the
Speaker 1: community or at home, whatever. Yeah, that happens. You keep
Speaker 1: it moving. You shrug it off because it is happening,
Speaker 1: and funny enough, you can grow up. And I knew.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a world where I created this
Speaker 1: narrative in my head that it was not bad because
Speaker 1: it was happening to everyone. Wow. So now most of
Speaker 1: my life, you know, is spent acknowledging that it was bad,
Speaker 1: and then spending a lot of time acknowledging how the
Speaker 1: bad created coping mechanisms or tools that I then use
Speaker 1: in my life every single day, and how I can
Speaker 1: accept those parts of myself whilst also not glorify find
Speaker 1: the things that happened. Just sometimes I fight with a
Speaker 1: lot of people when they do this. I fight with
Speaker 1: all my friends, by the way, anyone, anyone. I fight
Speaker 1: from friends with friends back, I fight with anyone, j anyone.
Speaker 1: I'm never grateful for suffering. I'm never grateful for pain.
Speaker 1: I'm never I'm not grateful for those things. What I
Speaker 1: work to be grateful for is the resiliency that makes
Speaker 1: us in my family and our ability to adapt. But
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be grateful for a horrible thing
Speaker 1: that happened to me or the people in my life. Yes,
Speaker 1: because we learned how to deal with it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I would like to live in a world where my
Speaker 1: child doesn't have to develop that tool. Let them, yeah,
Speaker 1: let them, let their tool be. I had to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, how to feel good about myself when I
Speaker 1: couldn't get as many TikTok followers as I want to.
Speaker 1: Let that fine, let that be their tool. But I
Speaker 1: I understand the you know, the esoteric idea. I understand
Speaker 1: what people are saying sometimes, but I'm I'm almost allergic
Speaker 1: to it because I think sometimes what it does is
Speaker 1: it justifies what people are going through, or it justifies
Speaker 1: the idea that we we don't need to do more,
Speaker 1: or people aren't going through something bad. Because it creates
Speaker 1: the best. It makes diamonds, it makes it can create diamonds,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, but what it can also do
Speaker 1: is pulverize a lot of people into dust. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and so diamonds are the exception. I'm often careful to
Speaker 1: think about. You know, Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure you
Speaker 1: understand what I mean. Yeah, I mean hearing you. Actually,
Speaker 1: what I find is that it, at least what I
Speaker 1: took away from that is that it's the same thought.
Speaker 1: It's just a deeper level of the same thought, like
Speaker 1: it's with more clarity. Like it's like, I think sometimes
Speaker 1: we hear that idea of be grateful for everything or
Speaker 1: be grateful for the suffering, and if you don't really
Speaker 1: think that through, you can try and artificially put that
Speaker 1: band aid. Maybe that's yeah, yeah, and you just kind
Speaker 1: of try and like, oh yeah, put the band aid on,
Speaker 1: and put the band aid on of gratitude gratitude. But
Speaker 1: it's like when you internalize then you process it. That's
Speaker 1: when you can what you're doing, which is like clearly
Speaker 1: sectioning it off and saying, I'm not grateful for the
Speaker 1: act of violence, or I'm not grateful for the suffering,
Speaker 1: as you said, but I can be grateful for the
Speaker 1: quality that resilience, etc. Helped me push through. But I
Speaker 1: think that's to me, that's just a deeper, more refined
Speaker 1: thought out of practicing gratitude almost Do you think like
Speaker 1: I've always always wanted to know as, like you know,
Speaker 1: as a monk, are you forced to just be grateful
Speaker 1: for everything regardless of what it is. No, I think
Speaker 1: what you were saying is farm or aligned with what
Speaker 1: I would think like as. And I think that there's
Speaker 1: two parts, right, One is what the philosophy tries to
Speaker 1: share or state, and then it's what you learn in
Speaker 1: the practice of that philosophy. So if you try and
Speaker 1: be grateful, like I just had this, this literally just happened,
Speaker 1: hence I'm talking about it. I just had a double
Speaker 1: ingunal hernia surgery, which means that both my hernias, which
Speaker 1: are on either side of my groin, had to have
Speaker 1: incisions in my stomach mesh. Pretty it's not life threatening,
Speaker 1: but it's massively inconvenient, and I was I didn't work
Speaker 1: for three weeks. This is my first week back at
Speaker 1: work and I'm feeling much. The funniest is when you
Speaker 1: try and you have like a sneeze or a cough.
Speaker 1: The first time have you had this? Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you don't. Funny is when it happens and the first
Speaker 1: time you don't realize how painful it would be. And
Speaker 1: now your body doesn't allow you to cough or sneeze
Speaker 1: or But it's amazing. It's almost funny to what we're
Speaker 1: talking about. This is what I mean, right. It is
Speaker 1: amazing how quickly your body responds to trauma or pain. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's amazing at how quickly it works to protect you
Speaker 1: from it. Because if I said you don't sneeze or
Speaker 1: don't cough for three weeks, it's impossible. Yeah, but one
Speaker 1: cough and one sneeze when you've had your hernie or
Speaker 1: any surgery that's abdominal, your body goes. I never want
Speaker 1: to experience that again. Never. And then you don't you
Speaker 1: know exactly exactly. I know exactly what you mean. For
Speaker 1: the first I was scared that I was going to
Speaker 1: pop my HARNI yes, yes, exactly, Yeah, you go. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so I'm walking around with a pillow, like halfway
Speaker 1: through the day. My wife's like, what are you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm like I might laugh, and she's laughing at me
Speaker 1: and like you can't make me laugh either. Like I
Speaker 1: was like, I couldn't watch comedy for three weeks because
Speaker 1: you can't laugh. It hurt so much. But the reason
Speaker 1: I brought that up was like, am I grateful I
Speaker 1: got a hernia? No? Like, why would I be grateful.
Speaker 1: I've been working out, I eat helped me. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm very I'm a mindful individual, but I
Speaker 1: ended up with this from whatever, from working out everything.
Speaker 1: I'm not grateful for the hernia, but I'm grateful for
Speaker 1: the journey I chose to take during the experience that
Speaker 1: has helped me have new appreciations. And so I think
Speaker 1: the point of at least, I mean, going to what
Speaker 1: you suggested, like, how would a monk think about gratitude.
Speaker 1: I don't think any quality or value was embodied by
Speaker 1: force or by prescription without reflection. Okay, if that makes sense,
Speaker 1: that anything without reflection is practically okay, yeah, not the
Speaker 1: right way to right, that makes sense. No, I like that.
Speaker 1: I really do fight with a lot of people about
Speaker 1: this and no, and I you know, I obviously when
Speaker 1: I say fights, I mean that's how we're using in
Speaker 1: the South Africa. Funny enough in India as well. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you know this. When I was in India, I
Speaker 1: went recently, and when I loved is how people argue
Speaker 1: about everything and like one of the guys who is
Speaker 1: there's a friend of mine now and you know, we're
Speaker 1: arguing back and forth. We're arguing and then like his
Speaker 1: friends steps in and he's like driver, He's like, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, driver, please whip I apologize. You know, he's
Speaker 1: not fighting with you. This is how we do it
Speaker 1: in India. And I'm like, oh, I was like, this
Speaker 1: is idea I want to live in this country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's let's get into it. But this is what I
Speaker 1: I argue with people about sometimes where I say, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have to be grateful for it, yes, because
Speaker 1: I often say and maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong here,
Speaker 1: so I see it I have found for myself and
Speaker 1: maybe for others. Times we are so attached to the
Speaker 1: idea of who we are, the story that we've told ourselves,
Speaker 1: the story that we continue to tell ourselves, who we are,
Speaker 1: who we wish to be, who we should be. You know,
Speaker 1: whether it's designed by what our parents always said about us.
Speaker 1: You're such a quiet child, You're such a lovely person,
Speaker 1: You're so kind, you're so polite, and you go that
Speaker 1: I am I should be, then I you know, whatever
Speaker 1: it may be. But sometimes I find, I would get
Speaker 1: so attached to that that then I would be afraid
Speaker 1: to let go of the things that may be holding
Speaker 1: me back, because I don't want to lose me, Because
Speaker 1: who is me? If I don't have the pain, who
Speaker 1: is me? If I don't have the trauma, who is me?
Speaker 1: If I don't have the mistrust. I don't want to
Speaker 1: lose me me? I know me? What if I'm not me?
Speaker 1: I love me? And if I want to lose me,
Speaker 1: do I love me? And that's what I find the thing.
Speaker 1: So what I've found helps me, you know. And I'll
Speaker 1: say to some of my friends as I go, I
Speaker 1: do not need to live my life believing that I
Speaker 1: would not be me or I do not love me.
Speaker 1: If I wish for these things to not happen, but
Speaker 1: I rather go, I would have learned something else. So
Speaker 1: I learned a different part of my body. I learned
Speaker 1: how to work through pain. I learned how to move
Speaker 1: differently because of a hernia. Fine. Oh, I'm grateful that
Speaker 1: I can learn. I'm grateful that I can recover. I'm
Speaker 1: grateful that maybe I even learned how to rest a
Speaker 1: little bit. Yes, take some time, slow down, jay. But
Speaker 1: I also sit with it and go. But if I
Speaker 1: didn't have that hernia, if I didn't have that trauma
Speaker 1: as a child, I would have had the opportunity to
Speaker 1: learn something else. So maybe my tool wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: used on this, it would have been used on something else.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't diminish me or who I think I am.
Speaker 1: It just allows me to almost exist infinitely and go, Well,
Speaker 1: then I can try to be whatever me exists, you know.
Speaker 1: And you it's like skin It's like, hey, it's like
Speaker 1: we're always losing us, is what I think. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the cells in our bodies are changing all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, I'm always trying that. And it's scary,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, it's scary because I think humans look for
Speaker 1: certainty as safety, yeah, and security and stability. But I
Speaker 1: was going to ask you that, like what you started
Speaker 1: to touch on there, which which which I love, is
Speaker 1: like identity belonging and these are the things that you
Speaker 1: talk about so much in your past as well. And
Speaker 1: what you're basically saying is that, well, if we're open
Speaker 1: to our identity changing and we're open to our home changing,
Speaker 1: I mean, do you still feel attached to a sense
Speaker 1: of home, like what is home to you today? Like,
Speaker 1: how would you how do you think about the word home?
Speaker 1: For me, the true definition of the world home is
Speaker 1: familiar of the family. It's a repeated interaction. That's all
Speaker 1: home is to me. You know. The reason you call
Speaker 1: it my home is because you go back to it
Speaker 1: every single day. If somebody flipped all the furniture and
Speaker 1: the house every day, you find you wouldn't if you'd
Speaker 1: say it doesn't feel like home, but it is your home. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know I think the house, yeah, exactly, my friends
Speaker 1: or my home. The languages you know, I speak on
Speaker 1: my home, the food I eat in South Africa as
Speaker 1: my home. But my home starts to grow, it starts
Speaker 1: to change. You know. I said this to a friend
Speaker 1: of mine when I got back from India. I said, man,
Speaker 1: it felt like home. And he's like, what do you India?
Speaker 1: I said, it's crazy, but it felt like home. You know.
Speaker 1: There are parts of daily ways like this feels like home.
Speaker 1: You know. There are parts of Bangalore, Bengalau where it's like,
Speaker 1: this feels like home. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: It's like and people like, how can it feel like home?
Speaker 1: It's like, well, maybe because part of it is reminiscent,
Speaker 1: you know, it reminds me of South Africa. We have
Speaker 1: an Indian population, it's huge, one of the biggest in
Speaker 1: the world. We have Indian culture. But also it's just
Speaker 1: it's it feels familiar. It feels like home, and so
Speaker 1: for me, that's that's what home means, is a sense
Speaker 1: of the familiar. You know, you can even experience randomly,
Speaker 1: if you travel a lot in a hotel that you
Speaker 1: always frequent, it feels like home. Yeah, so that's what
Speaker 1: you know, that's what home means for me. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: just that you know, and you feel that in New
Speaker 1: York too. When you're here, you find that you have
Speaker 1: that because of that familiarity, you feel like I've always
Speaker 1: see you, and always it seems to me like you're
Speaker 1: always home. I don't know why. That's that's a nice
Speaker 1: thing for you to say. Genuinely, it always seems like
Speaker 1: I never feel like you. You're uncomfortable, I never feel
Speaker 1: like you. But I don't know if that's just what
Speaker 1: you put out, No I would. It's I was going
Speaker 1: to define it. It's contextually sharing now, but my definition
Speaker 1: of home has always been where I feel I'm living
Speaker 1: my purpose. So that's always been my purpose. So and
Speaker 1: I genuinely feel like that where I could wake up
Speaker 1: and be in another city or another country or another seat.
Speaker 1: And as long as this is my like I feel this,
Speaker 1: I'm doing my purpose tonight with you. And that's why
Speaker 1: I'm here. Help me understand. So how would you because
Speaker 1: I can try to understand about what? What would you
Speaker 1: say you feel your purpose is? So my purpose is
Speaker 1: to help other people find their purpose, Okay, And to me,
Speaker 1: my purpose is to be a vessel of being able
Speaker 1: to expose people to a number of different ideas, insights, paths, stories,
Speaker 1: walks of life so that they can find theirs. I
Speaker 1: don't think everyone's purpose looks like mine. I don't think
Speaker 1: everyone's path looks like mine because I think one of
Speaker 1: the best things I got when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: and again it goes back to my childhood experiences, my
Speaker 1: dad was really worried that I didn't read enough and
Speaker 1: I would never be interested in reading fiction books at school.
Speaker 1: So we'd get the fiction books like goose Bumps and
Speaker 1: then later on Harry Potter and all these books, and
Speaker 1: I would never read them and I wouldn't have any
Speaker 1: interest in them. So my dad was worried and my
Speaker 1: mum was worried that this kid's not going to read.
Speaker 1: And now I was back about thirteen going on fourteen,
Speaker 1: and I still wasn't reading a lot, and so my
Speaker 1: dad started giving me biographies and autobiographies, and so I
Speaker 1: read like by the time I was sixteen, I'd read
Speaker 1: Malcolm X Martin, Luther King. Wow. I was also reading
Speaker 1: like David Beckham and Drada L. Johnson because I was
Speaker 1: a massive soccer football fan, and so I started just
Speaker 1: like collecting all these stories. And then, as I told
Speaker 1: you when I said on your show, like I met
Speaker 1: a monk when I was eighteen, and that was the
Speaker 1: story that my purpose felt connected to God. And so
Speaker 1: now I feel I'm like, well, someone's going to listen
Speaker 1: to Trevor story and feel far more connected interest and
Speaker 1: that may spark this kid out there to say, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe that's the kind of direction I want to go in.
Speaker 1: I feel like today where we're exposed to the same
Speaker 1: people online and on TV and streaming, and we're also
Speaker 1: exposed to the same parts of them, that's true. And
Speaker 1: my hope is that this podcast, even if you're seeing
Speaker 1: someone who's famous and popular like yourself. Hopefully people get
Speaker 1: a deeper insight into someone famous and popular, or they
Speaker 1: get to meet someone random who's not famous and popular,
Speaker 1: but it's interesting. So anyway, that's that's my purple. So
Speaker 1: I feel like if I'm doing that in a city,
Speaker 1: in a country, I'm home. And it's because one of
Speaker 1: the famous scholars and you two about your mother being
Speaker 1: a scriptural scholar and like such an avid reader. I
Speaker 1: never met this scholar, but my monk teachers would often
Speaker 1: quote him, and he said that the only place higher
Speaker 1: than like the spiritual realm, and he would be poetry,
Speaker 1: but also you know literal as well, that the only
Speaker 1: place higher than being in heaven or the virtual realm
Speaker 1: is a place you live your purpose. And that idea
Speaker 1: always like connected with me, because then I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: so I could be in the middle of chaos but
Speaker 1: still feel at holds and so it gives me a
Speaker 1: sense of comfort, and you know, that's what keeps me
Speaker 1: going when the day is tough, when things are going
Speaker 1: whatever they are, it's something that comforts me and it
Speaker 1: works for me. If you're spending time with loved ones
Speaker 1: for the holidays, chances are you're going to hear a
Speaker 1: lot of stories, the ones you love to hear and
Speaker 1: the ones you've heard too many times. But have you
Speaker 1: ever wanted to help your loved ones document these stories.
Speaker 1: Story Worth makes it fun and easy to basically write
Speaker 1: a book of life memories. Every week, story Work will
Speaker 1: email your loved one a life related question that you
Speaker 1: picked from their collection, like what's the bravest thing you've
Speaker 1: ever done? What are you most grateful for today? Or
Speaker 1: what's your happiest memory this year? All they have to
Speaker 1: do is reply with the story, and then after a year,
Speaker 1: story or Worth compiles everything into an exquisite hardcover book.
Speaker 1: The whole process is so simple. Get started with your
Speaker 1: loved one for the holidays, and before you know it,
Speaker 1: you'll both be cherishing those timeless stories for generations to come.
Speaker 1: If you've been listening to our recent Friday episodes, you'll
Speaker 1: know how much of an inspiration my mom has been
Speaker 1: on me for my entire life. So when I heard
Speaker 1: about story Worth, I was fascinated with how fun and
Speaker 1: simple it is to create a keepsake book full of
Speaker 1: all your loved one's wisdom. Story Work is the perfect
Speaker 1: Christmas gift for all of your elders, and I'm very
Speaker 1: excited to sit down with the family next Christmas to
Speaker 1: share each other's stories. Help your family share the story
Speaker 1: this holiday season with story Worth. Go to storyworth dot
Speaker 1: com Forward slash jay today and save ten dollars on
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Speaker 1: your first purchase storyworth dot com Forward slash jay with
Speaker 1: you as the one thing. The thread that I've heard
Speaker 1: in you, which I really appreciated, is like literally three
Speaker 1: times you've responded, You've said my friends, my friends. I
Speaker 1: was talking to my friend, Like this person talks a
Speaker 1: lot to their friends, which which is really beautiful because
Speaker 1: you're thinking, wow, that you're a busy person. You're back
Speaker 1: to back. I mean, I remember I was in I
Speaker 1: think we were both speaking at the Charger Book Festival.
Speaker 1: You landed. One night, I message you and I said, Trevor,
Speaker 1: let's do breakfast. You're like, dude, I leave. I was
Speaker 1: there for eight hours. You were there for like six
Speaker 1: or four. And I was like, I thought I was
Speaker 1: there for not enough to like I was there for
Speaker 1: eight hours and you were like, dude, I'm literally leaving tonight.
Speaker 1: And so you're a busy person. But in this conversation,
Speaker 1: so many times you said friends friends friends friends, friends,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, Like how a, who are the friends? What
Speaker 1: are you talking to them about? Like what's your consistent?
Speaker 1: See I'm fascinated by that, because so who are the friends?
Speaker 1: Predominantly my friends are from South Africa, friends I met
Speaker 1: doing different things, all all organic meetings, which I'm a
Speaker 1: sucker for. I'm terrible at making friends, partially because I
Speaker 1: don't trust people easily. I exist in the world where
Speaker 1: I can be friendly with many people, but you know,
Speaker 1: it takes me a while to accept that this person
Speaker 1: is actually a part of my life. And I think
Speaker 1: for a long time it was because and still is
Speaker 1: sometimes because a I have an idea of putting something
Speaker 1: on that person where I may need them means that
Speaker 1: they may disappoint me. And then on the other side
Speaker 1: of it, them needing me means I could be in
Speaker 1: the position to disappoint them, you know. And And so
Speaker 1: as we learn people, I find, we learn what they
Speaker 1: can and cannot do, we learn who they are or
Speaker 1: are not. And it's always situational for me, you know,
Speaker 1: That's that's when I'll call you like a friend. Is
Speaker 1: that I know how you are in most situations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that that that for me is the definition
Speaker 1: of a friend. So you know, I can be we
Speaker 1: use it loosely obviously, but you know I can be
Speaker 1: friends with you and we always meet for lunch, always
Speaker 1: me for But but then I only know you in
Speaker 1: one way. My friends, I start to be able to
Speaker 1: I almost almost store in a vault in my mind.
Speaker 1: I can say, for a fact, if we're friends. If
Speaker 1: Jay was here, this would bother him. He would like that.
Speaker 1: He would probably say this, and that's why he would
Speaker 1: act this way. And that's you know, that's that's how
Speaker 1: I think of my friends. Yeah, so they've been a
Speaker 1: major part of making me feel at home. You know,
Speaker 1: my my my job, stand up comedy is a really
Speaker 1: lonely career, you know. And I remember talking to a comedian,
Speaker 1: it was a few weeks ago, talking about how there
Speaker 1: was like a period where all the stand up comedians
Speaker 1: we're committing suicide, you know, and would be you'd hear
Speaker 1: this devastating story of a comedian that everyone loved. They
Speaker 1: were in a hotel room and then they committed suicide
Speaker 1: and I was petrified because I always think it can
Speaker 1: happen to me. You know, I go that if that
Speaker 1: happened to them, why did it happen? How If I
Speaker 1: don't understand, then what is it? Another comedian, another comedian,
Speaker 1: Another comedian, another comedian. I think being a stand up
Speaker 1: comedian is a really lonely job in that we're traveling
Speaker 1: oftentimes alone. We don't have a band, we don't have
Speaker 1: backup dancers, we don't we don't, we don't travel. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine? And yet every night you're going out there
Speaker 1: and you're making people love, you're having fun with them.
Speaker 1: They come with their families, they come with their friends,
Speaker 1: they come with their loved ones. You leave alone and
Speaker 1: and it's this constant exchange of energy. And what I
Speaker 1: learned was my my friends became that hub. My friends
Speaker 1: became my recharge. My friends became the couch I could
Speaker 1: lie on and say nothing or everything. And thanks partly
Speaker 1: to technology, I've been able to keep in touch with them.
Speaker 1: There's no there's no catching up for us. It's literally
Speaker 1: a running We've got a WhatsApp thread that is now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, fifteen years old, Like literally I can
Speaker 1: go back and search something from maybe ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I can go back on the WhatsApp there and
Speaker 1: go what happened, and I can search and I can
Speaker 1: find it. That's how long we've had the same group
Speaker 1: and the same friends and the same everything. And obviously
Speaker 1: it's grown over time, but that core has kept me.
Speaker 1: You know, I always think, did you end up reading
Speaker 1: Harry Potter? I didn't ever read it. I've watched all
Speaker 1: the movies. Yeah, oh, do you watched it? Okay, I
Speaker 1: watch till movies. I know. I'm a big fan act Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So I feel like your friends in life or your
Speaker 1: Hale cruxes. Oh interesting, Okay, you know, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's people. What we do is we break ourselves into parts,
Speaker 1: and whenever we meet people, we give them a part
Speaker 1: of ourselves. And some people we give more than we
Speaker 1: give others. But we give everyone a different part of ourselves.
Speaker 1: No one in your life has the same part that
Speaker 1: another person has. They may seem similar, but they're not.
Speaker 1: Your mother and father hold different parts of you. Your uncles,
Speaker 1: your cousins, your brothers, sisters, your friends, whoever it is,
Speaker 1: they will hold a different parts of you, and the
Speaker 1: same way Voldemort could use that to come back to life.
Speaker 1: I feel like we can use that wow to come
Speaker 1: back to life. Wow. You know what I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're watch a different movie. Yeah, the Book of my Friend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I always think that is I. I man.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I can be at my worst. I can be
Speaker 1: sometimes I can be lost. Really Jay, there will be
Speaker 1: times when I'll be like, what am I doing? Or
Speaker 1: why am I? I'm stressed, I'm tired, I'm burnt out,
Speaker 1: I feel lost. And I can call a friend and
Speaker 1: no joke. They can say to me, well, the Trevor
Speaker 1: I know, you know, and and I love that they
Speaker 1: say that. They don't say this is who you are
Speaker 1: or not. They go the Trevor I know found his
Speaker 1: joy here. Hey. You know, I've noticed that you're always
Speaker 1: happiest when you do it this way. Hey, I've noticed
Speaker 1: that you know you stress more when you're in this person. Hey,
Speaker 1: can I go man? I didn't know that about myself. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't hold myself that way because I'm always experiencing
Speaker 1: all of me still through my lens. But thank you.
Speaker 1: You freed me, you encouraged me, you held me, you
Speaker 1: loved me. And what then happens is I start to
Speaker 1: find what I need to get back to my purpose,
Speaker 1: to my passion, to whatever drives me. And that's why
Speaker 1: my friends are a big part of that. That is
Speaker 1: that is the core of my world, you know. And
Speaker 1: and it's funny. My mom even used to say that
Speaker 1: to me when I was growing up, you know, at
Speaker 1: a certain age, she said to me, she'd say to me,
Speaker 1: my friend, you know, and I'd be like, I'm not
Speaker 1: your friend, You're my mom. And my mom would say,
Speaker 1: just because I'm your mom doesn't mean i'm your friend.
Speaker 1: She said. There are many mothers out there that I'm
Speaker 1: friends with their child. And she said, I'm your mother
Speaker 1: and I will always love you as your mother, but
Speaker 1: you are becoming my friend. And that stuck with me.
Speaker 1: I realized that friendship is a choice. Every other relation
Speaker 1: we have isn't, and so even your your relatives can
Speaker 1: become your friends or may not be your friends. And
Speaker 1: I think understanding that illuminates a lot of how you
Speaker 1: interact with people in the world. Yeah, I really resonate
Speaker 1: with what I mean, everything you said, But one of
Speaker 1: the things that stood out was that kind of performance
Speaker 1: loneliness and my work mainly started with coaching and working
Speaker 1: with people. And I work with a lot of musicians
Speaker 1: and people who tour and travel, not comedians, but artists,
Speaker 1: and you know, they're performing to like one hundred thousand people,
Speaker 1: eighty thousand people. And then they would always talk to
Speaker 1: me about this and I didn't I didn't really have
Speaker 1: a empathetic experience of it. I could understand it theoretically.
Speaker 1: And then because most of the events I used to
Speaker 1: speak out with, like corporate events or like a business
Speaker 1: event or things like that. And then a few years
Speaker 1: ago when I did my first ever event with my audience,
Speaker 1: and it was in La people who came because they
Speaker 1: followed my work, not because of anything else. It was
Speaker 1: only about two thousand people in the audience. And I
Speaker 1: finished the event and I got into the car and
Speaker 1: it hit me and I was like, oh, like, this
Speaker 1: is chemical. This is definitely a chemical, because you've just
Speaker 1: had thousands of people shouting your name and like loving
Speaker 1: everything you say and all this validation and everything else
Speaker 1: as well you were saying when you were coming, like
Speaker 1: the dopamine that everything. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, this feels weird, Like
Speaker 1: why do I feel like, you know, a sense of loneliness.
Speaker 1: And it was really interesting because I felt like that
Speaker 1: pretty much the whole and I felt like calling someone yes,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't because in London it was too early.
Speaker 1: None of my friends would be away, and so they're
Speaker 1: eight hours ahead because I'm in LA and I'm going,
Speaker 1: oh God, wait the hour for my friend to wake up.
Speaker 1: Two hours. I'm not going to wake him up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night. So I'm waiting there. And
Speaker 1: then all my friends in LA were just at the event,
Speaker 1: so I just saw them, and so they're probably like
Speaker 1: going home, and it was a week night, and so
Speaker 1: maybe then I'm like, I don't want to And then
Speaker 1: I get home and my wife would organize a surprise
Speaker 1: party for me with all my best friends, my closest
Speaker 1: friends in law, and it was like a relief. It
Speaker 1: wasn't even a celebration. I was like, there's a sense
Speaker 1: of relief. I was like, oh, thank God, because I
Speaker 1: don't know what. I don't know what I would have
Speaker 1: done tonight. Man, Like, you know, I understand why people
Speaker 1: turned to drugs. I understand why people turned to I
Speaker 1: understood like it was the first time I was like,
Speaker 1: because you need to numb its. Yeah, you need to
Speaker 1: numbage because you just don't know what to do with
Speaker 1: that feeling. And that was the first time I'd felt
Speaker 1: that way. And I can't imagine, as you were saying,
Speaker 1: for someone who's on tour and traveling every night. Drug
Speaker 1: as I said, my drug was chocolates. I love to up.
Speaker 1: That was like my I couldn't. It's like my team knew,
Speaker 1: my people knew. It's like I'll do the show and immediately.
Speaker 1: And you probably relate to this more because coming from
Speaker 1: the UK in America, they don't really do it. In
Speaker 1: South Africa. Our petrol stations, our gas stations, right, they
Speaker 1: have amazing stores attached to them. Like here, every gas
Speaker 1: station looks like it's already been robbed. You don't want
Speaker 1: to pour gas. I don't like it looks terrible. They
Speaker 1: all look abandoned. Yeah yeah, yeah, they all look like
Speaker 1: a ghost. They really did. Yeah. Whereas where we're from,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, you go and you buy a pie,
Speaker 1: you buy some you do buy a few dreams. It's
Speaker 1: like cooked exactly. It's like, oh, this is life. You
Speaker 1: can get some groceries on though it's a very normal concept,
Speaker 1: and that would be me. After every show I would drive,
Speaker 1: there would be the silence. I couldn't listen to music.
Speaker 1: I couldn't. My mind would just be It's like I
Speaker 1: could hear everybody, but they were gone. And then I
Speaker 1: would go in and then I would buy chocolate would
Speaker 1: be my thing, it immediately, and then I I you know,
Speaker 1: over the years, I would read and I'd started learning
Speaker 1: that you know, chocolate, the dopamine, the sugar, one of
Speaker 1: these things. I was I was correcting a chemical thing
Speaker 1: without realizing it, because it is a it is a
Speaker 1: shock on your body. Everyone nothing. Yeah, it's it's so
Speaker 1: fascinating that that that experience. And I'm sure people have
Speaker 1: that in different ways in their life, Like you don't
Speaker 1: have to be a performance two thousands of people to
Speaker 1: experience that. I think people experienced that in lots of
Speaker 1: different ways. It's beautiful that you've been able to continue
Speaker 1: this tenure WhatsApp chat like that's you know, that's like
Speaker 1: a brilliant achievement. How did you do in such a
Speaker 1: way that when you became unrelatable to people? Like, how
Speaker 1: has that affected your friendships, your life, your relationships, Because
Speaker 1: at one point. I'm guessing. You know, when when you
Speaker 1: come to America, you crush on the Daily Show, things
Speaker 1: are going great, you know, times one hundred most influential
Speaker 1: people like, crushing took some time. But yeah, okay, no, no,
Speaker 1: of course, no, no, no no, no, it tooks it. I
Speaker 1: mean it too, like it actually goes into your goes
Speaker 1: into your question. Yeah, And I just think that there's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing about being so grounded and like, I'm
Speaker 1: enjoying this conversation. It's it's fun. We're like just having
Speaker 1: a real conversation. But at the same time, to a
Speaker 1: lot of people externally, you can start becoming more unrelatable.
Speaker 1: So what's interesting is the reason I the reason I
Speaker 1: put it in, the reason I say the crushing wasn't instant.
Speaker 1: When you're on a journey, people oftentimes will remember the
Speaker 1: beginning of the journey and they will define the journey
Speaker 1: by the way it currently is or how it ended.
Speaker 1: You know, you lived a good life because of how
Speaker 1: your life ended. If somebody is, you know, really poor
Speaker 1: for eighty years, then they win the lottery at eighty
Speaker 1: and then they buy their family stuff and they have
Speaker 1: a good People were like, man, it was tough body.
Speaker 1: We had a good life, did they? Though it's more like, oh,
Speaker 1: we remember that. That ending is what we often remember.
Speaker 1: And to your point of relatable, My journey was really interesting,
Speaker 1: particularly in America, because for many months, maybe even a
Speaker 1: year and a bit, I was hated, you know, by
Speaker 1: many people. Don't get me wrong, there many people who
Speaker 1: loved me, but it was such a visceral understandable, but
Speaker 1: this will response to me as a concept, who are you?
Speaker 1: How dare you? You? On the show what you know?
Speaker 1: And you're trying to establish imagine trying to meet people
Speaker 1: for the first time, but they have an idea of you,
Speaker 1: and they've already decided what the idea of you is,
Speaker 1: and so you you you can't even relate or make
Speaker 1: yourself relatable to them, and then overnight, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: people go, are you crushing it? It's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a really weird space to be in because it's
Speaker 1: it's terrible, and then it's not. But your brain doesn't
Speaker 1: shift that quickly. I remember learning once that the human
Speaker 1: brain and the human body aren't necessarily always on the
Speaker 1: same page. If you're running from danger, if there's if
Speaker 1: there's a threat and you run from the danger. Even
Speaker 1: when the danger subsides, your body's still in the danger.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I think I think they talk about something
Speaker 1: similar in the book The body keeps the score, but
Speaker 1: your body's still there, and your mind goes, hah, all right,
Speaker 1: oh okay, I'm done. Your body's like, oh hot, pumping,
Speaker 1: you know, veins, throbbing, everything is still happening. And you
Speaker 1: know that that was part of my experience. But what
Speaker 1: was interesting was to your points of relatable. I didn't
Speaker 1: even have a moment to exist in relatable. It was stranger.
Speaker 1: You know, don't like different, weird? Why do you say
Speaker 1: words the way you do? You know? What is aluminium?
Speaker 1: All these things coming together and then oh, yeah, our guy,
Speaker 1: you know which I'm grateful for internally grateful. I was
Speaker 1: telling my people everyone, I go, yo, do not forget,
Speaker 1: Do not forget how hard this was, Do not forget,
Speaker 1: Do not take it for granted. But what happens is
Speaker 1: it's not that you don't become relatable or you aren't relatable,
Speaker 1: or it's it's it's how people relate to you. They
Speaker 1: have one idea of who you are, they have one
Speaker 1: idea of of how you are, and It's understandable because
Speaker 1: of how they interact with you. You know. I I
Speaker 1: have two younger brothers, both, in my opinion, far wiser
Speaker 1: than I'll ever be. Always, always, you know, I'll custom
Speaker 1: out and say, you guys, you guys cheated because you
Speaker 1: like took what I did and then you just like
Speaker 1: you leap frogged me, you know. And and my youngest
Speaker 1: brother said one of the most beautiful things. One day,
Speaker 1: we were trying to have dinner as a family, and
Speaker 1: we're taking a quiet moment, and you know, someone came
Speaker 1: over to the table and they're like, hey, can I
Speaker 1: get a selfie? And and this is happening in the
Speaker 1: dinner and you know, and and and someone who was
Speaker 1: with us said, oh, man, that must get annoying. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, I get it. And I said,
Speaker 1: I just don't understand the familiarity and the I don't
Speaker 1: understand it truly. And my brother said one of the
Speaker 1: most interesting things. He said, No, what you're not understanding
Speaker 1: is a disconnect in your relationship, in the relatability. He said,
Speaker 1: You've met them, and they've talked to you, and you've
Speaker 1: had a conversation with them, and so they've built up
Speaker 1: a relationship with you, but they don't understand that you
Speaker 1: haven't been building up the same relationship with them. And
Speaker 1: so they, he said, they're reacting to you as naturally
Speaker 1: as they would had you been conversating with them constantly.
Speaker 1: And so he said, if anything, they're acting normally, you're
Speaker 1: acting weird because they go, hey, Trevor, and You're like,
Speaker 1: who the hell are you? And I'm like, what do
Speaker 1: you mean? We've been friends for seven years? What's you
Speaker 1: on TV? Every day? And just through that Lens he
Speaker 1: helped me understand that it's it's that they were misrelating, yes,
Speaker 1: And that's sometimes what happens to us, I think as
Speaker 1: people is we're misrelating. We have an idea of the
Speaker 1: thing that isn't incorrect from our point of view, yes,
Speaker 1: but is incorrect from the other person's points of view.
Speaker 1: And so that's what creates the conflict, That's what creates
Speaker 1: the disconnect, and that's what creates the loneliness, that's what
Speaker 1: creates the isolation, that's what creates the you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: it creates an environment that doesn't lend itself to familiarity,
Speaker 1: to trust, to relaxation. I think that's where it becomes
Speaker 1: even more important to find your grounding, to find your space,
Speaker 1: to find you. Like my friends know me in the group,
Speaker 1: I'm notorious as the vacation guy. I'm the holiday guy. Really,
Speaker 1: I'm like, where are we going? What are we doing?
Speaker 1: We're making this happen. I shoot out a list and
Speaker 1: everything because I don't live back home. Yes, they all do.
Speaker 1: So I've learned they can take for granted the fact
Speaker 1: that we will see each other, and they might go like, oh,
Speaker 1: did we plan anything for December? Oh we didn't. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: well we'll do. No. I can't take it for granted,
Speaker 1: and so they know I go every year, I'm like, guys,
Speaker 1: what are we doing? And what are we doing here?
Speaker 1: Three times a year we have to be in the
Speaker 1: same place. And doesn't mean we're going somewhere fancy. No,
Speaker 1: we might just find a place a house and we
Speaker 1: sit together and that's what it's going to be. But
Speaker 1: I make it happen because of that relats ability, because
Speaker 1: that is where I can exist. They can exist. I
Speaker 1: can exist, they can exist, you know. Because sometimes what's
Speaker 1: funny is it can go the other way for me.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I will completely be myself with people and they
Speaker 1: won't know what to do with it because they only
Speaker 1: have one idea of me. Yeah, you know. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they'll meet me and travel, hey how are you? Hey,
Speaker 1: hey buddy, gayboll And if I say something back and
Speaker 1: they say, hey, wait what was that, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is all of me. Yeah, they don't have a
Speaker 1: reference point, and I get that, and so I yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's really interesting when you exist in a
Speaker 1: one dimensional space in terms of you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I guess it would be unidirectional, just like you know,
Speaker 1: it's just going in that one direction as opposed to
Speaker 1: it coming back and going you know, yeah, definitely. That's
Speaker 1: such a great answer. I'm one of those people that like, generally,
Speaker 1: if I get enough time to meet someone, or if
Speaker 1: I know someone's going to be in my life for
Speaker 1: an extended period of time, i I hire a new
Speaker 1: person on my team or something like that, I try
Speaker 1: and show them all of me very quick. I don't
Speaker 1: know one of those people that are like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna be as jokey as I
Speaker 1: usually am. I'm gonna expose you to how I choked
Speaker 1: to my wife, Like interest. And I do that not
Speaker 1: as a not as I definitely do it as a
Speaker 1: conscious It's not like it happens. It's a conscious attempt
Speaker 1: at trying to figure out whether this person actually wants
Speaker 1: to be around me or lifting, because I'd rather quickly
Speaker 1: figure out whether I feel chemistry with someone yes, as
Speaker 1: opposed to wait to reveal my full self for them
Speaker 1: to what you said to then let them down and
Speaker 1: then they're like, oh, George, I didn't know you liked it.
Speaker 1: And so I usually warn people I'm like, hey, I
Speaker 1: make a lot more jokes in person than I do
Speaker 1: on Instagram. And so if I'm like and I'm banned
Speaker 1: to a lot because of Britain, and me and my
Speaker 1: wife will ban to a lot. So most people think
Speaker 1: me and my wife are going to get a divorced
Speaker 1: every other day because it is like the one we
Speaker 1: talked to each other because we're both from England. I
Speaker 1: want people to be exposed to that, not because I
Speaker 1: want them to appreciate you or like, I just want
Speaker 1: to know quickly whether whether you vibe with you. Okay,
Speaker 1: but but aren't you ever concerned going the other way?
Speaker 1: Because you may go this is me, this is all
Speaker 1: of me. Yeah, not, depending on your position in life.
Speaker 1: The person may be a certain way to you. Sure
Speaker 1: based on that Sure, because they feel they can't and
Speaker 1: then they reveal themselves, Then what do you do when
Speaker 1: they reveal themselves in a positive or like a challenge
Speaker 1: challenging way. In a challenging way, then well, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying that it's people that I think are going
Speaker 1: to be in my life for a longer period of time.
Speaker 1: And then if it's if it's a team member where
Speaker 1: we don't get along, then we can both move on
Speaker 1: and go out separate ways. I wouldn't do it with
Speaker 1: someone that I am not getting enough quality time. Does
Speaker 1: a monk fire someone? How does the monk fire as well?
Speaker 1: I'm not a monk anymore. I'm I'd love to know
Speaker 1: how it's a monk fight it is? You know what?
Speaker 1: The thing about it is so uncomfortable? Oh it is okay.
Speaker 1: I thought maybe as a monk it was like super
Speaker 1: chill and you just come in and you go. In life,
Speaker 1: everything is happening to you. You know, everything that seems
Speaker 1: bad could be good, and so this as me letting
Speaker 1: you go. But rather think of this as me setting
Speaker 1: you free. Yeah, I think maybe it would be something
Speaker 1: more surrender then you have to end it. That would
Speaker 1: be brilliant, But it isn't comfortable. It's so as in
Speaker 1: I've also been let go, so I know what it
Speaker 1: feels like. Like I've in in a position where I
Speaker 1: think I've been let go poorly, where it hasn't been
Speaker 1: handled well where and I'm very clear on how like
Speaker 1: having one skill set doesn't just naturally apply to everything.
Speaker 1: Being a monk doesn't make me good at recruiting people
Speaker 1: or letting go of people. Those are not transferable skills.
Speaker 1: There's certain elements of compassion and empathy, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: make you good at the start that it will cover everything,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't. It doesn't right, Like I think, to
Speaker 1: give you a very practical example, I felt for a
Speaker 1: lot of a long time that people needed love. Like
Speaker 1: I felt for a long time that I believe that
Speaker 1: if you love people then they will be happy and
Speaker 1: they will feel good about stuff. And I used to
Speaker 1: believe that. And after trying to express love to people
Speaker 1: even in the way they want it so, not even unconsciously,
Speaker 1: but I would try and figure out, how does this
Speaker 1: person receive love? Okay, let me give them love in
Speaker 1: the way they want to receive love. I've realized that
Speaker 1: so many people were not even operating on that level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that all they needed was safety, like they just needed
Speaker 1: a base level of safety. They weren't They couldn't even
Speaker 1: accept or receive love because that was such a lofty,
Speaker 1: deep idea. It's like they didn't understand how someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't know them very well could express deep love for
Speaker 1: them because they've never experienced that before. How do you
Speaker 1: find the correct safety to convey? And what I mean
Speaker 1: by that is we all have a different idea of
Speaker 1: what safety means, you know, going back to your idea
Speaker 1: of you know, when you were saying stability and stability
Speaker 1: earlier in the conversation. One of the wildest discoveries I
Speaker 1: made in therapy was where I was speaking to my
Speaker 1: therapist and I realized I am particularly comfortable in chaos.
Speaker 1: That is where I'm most comfortable. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: in an airport and you know flights are being canceled
Speaker 1: and you know everything's being delayed, you want me rolling
Speaker 1: with you like I'm that is me problem. I solve it.
Speaker 1: I genuinely I find a beautiful hum of peace that
Speaker 1: comes over me when there is chaos, traffic, everything caused.
Speaker 1: That's where I'm comfortable. And yet the flip I also
Speaker 1: discovered was true is that when there's calm, now I'm
Speaker 1: in chaos. Wow. You know. And so I learned that
Speaker 1: I felt safest where most people didn't, and I felt
Speaker 1: the least safe where most people would know. And I
Speaker 1: learned a lot of that came because growing up in
Speaker 1: a home where there was domestic abuse. You you know,
Speaker 1: the silence meant you didn't know anything could happen at
Speaker 1: any moment. What's going on? What's happening? You don't know,
Speaker 1: you don't know. But when something is happening, all you
Speaker 1: have to do is deal with it. Yeah. Wow, I
Speaker 1: mean that, do you get? Yeah? I mean I mean,
Speaker 1: but that's like, that's such a challenging, difficult idea for
Speaker 1: people to grasp because what you're saying is that I
Speaker 1: can hear gunshots at least I know, well, I know
Speaker 1: who is coming from, correct, Yeah? Yeah, exactly, I know
Speaker 1: where to run away too from exactly. You get what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Yeah, No, no, I fully get what you're saying.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying that that is a challenging concept
Speaker 1: for people to get around because if you've not been brought,
Speaker 1: if you've not been raised in a space like that, like,
Speaker 1: that's so much to do with your upbringing. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's what I mean by safety. So that's why I'm
Speaker 1: a yeah. Yeah, So how do you even find that?
Speaker 1: Because you know, I understand what you mean by love,
Speaker 1: because again, how we process it, what our languages are,
Speaker 1: et cetera, or so specific. But even safety, you know,
Speaker 1: my my idea of safety isn't the same as your idea.
Speaker 1: Of course, you know whether it will be in a
Speaker 1: personal relationship, in a romantic relationship. You know. Some people's
Speaker 1: idea of safety is hey, you you text me every day,
Speaker 1: and you exactly you call me to make sure I
Speaker 1: got home and you. Another person's idea of safety is
Speaker 1: you leave me alone when I'm busy. That makes me
Speaker 1: feel safe. You take care of yourself, makes me feel safe,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So how do you then
Speaker 1: find what the person's idea of safety is? Well, I
Speaker 1: think it's what you just said that there's a hierarchy
Speaker 1: of needs, right, and everyone has their different like you said,
Speaker 1: like the base level, and I'm looking at the vaders,
Speaker 1: which is what I studied as a monk, and it
Speaker 1: says that the base level of anyone's motivator is fear
Speaker 1: and anxiety, right, Like people get motivated by fear and anxiety.
Speaker 1: So the lack of fear and anxiety is a sense
Speaker 1: of safety. Right. Higher than that is someone who's motivated
Speaker 1: by results or goals, so they feel safe when they're
Speaker 1: moving towards something. They feel safe when they're driving towards
Speaker 1: a deadline that is clear and active. Another level is
Speaker 1: tranquility and calm, And it's like someone feels safe when
Speaker 1: they feel clarity, okay, right, and so in similar what
Speaker 1: you're saying, like, there's so I think what I realized though,
Speaker 1: was that safety was such a base need of human
Speaker 1: right that until you fulfill that need, it love just
Speaker 1: and this is just experience, right, I'm saying this from
Speaker 1: my experience. I just felt like opening my heart to people,
Speaker 1: or like trying to give love to people in a
Speaker 1: very genuine way, I just felt that it couldn't fully
Speaker 1: be received because I realized most people have probably never
Speaker 1: received love, even maybe from their parents or their family,
Speaker 1: or from the people they expected to love them. So
Speaker 1: when someone unexpected comes along and tries to show you love,
Speaker 1: it's like what is it? What does he want? Or
Speaker 1: what is this going on? Or you know, where does
Speaker 1: this land? And so I was like all right, like
Speaker 1: real it back, you know, real it back it just
Speaker 1: figure out safety first. Anyway, that was at least a
Speaker 1: personal experience. But but but why did we get there?
Speaker 1: We got there because we're talking about this idea with
Speaker 1: you of like you know, talking about relatability. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we're moving through to you know, safety and love and
Speaker 1: then meeting people, and you're talking about how you will
Speaker 1: reveal all of yourself early on that so that the
Speaker 1: person I guess is in the safest space. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's only my method. Again, I'm not saying that's
Speaker 1: right or wrong. It's just kind of and even what
Speaker 1: you said earlier, like you said, like Jay, you always
Speaker 1: feel safe. I think I feel the opposite too. I
Speaker 1: feel most unsafe when I think I'm somewhere and I
Speaker 1: don't have a purpose there. Okay, So if I get
Speaker 1: invited to a place where I don't feel I have
Speaker 1: any purpose, you will see me just like I will
Speaker 1: last like thirty minutes and then I will leave because
Speaker 1: I'm just like, what am I going to do here?
Speaker 1: I'm not just going to shoot the breeze? So do
Speaker 1: you purpose them not doing being in my purpose? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So when I'm in a space like that, I will,
Speaker 1: I will look at I will be there. Of course
Speaker 1: I can. I can have conversations and I can talk
Speaker 1: and everything else. You're not crying in a corner. No, No, yeah,
Speaker 1: I say do you do? Then what I'm asking is
Speaker 1: do you have to work on that? Yes? Absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's a discomfort. Yes, it's a discomfort that I
Speaker 1: have to work on, which is, well, I don't know
Speaker 1: why I'm here, I don't know what my purpose is.
Speaker 1: And then and then sometimes my way of talking to
Speaker 1: myself is you never know. There may be something here,
Speaker 1: and you have to be open today if if if
Speaker 1: I live, if I sit here and I'm close to that,
Speaker 1: then I may never discover anything. If I'm open to it,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll discover something. Maybe I won't. How do you
Speaker 1: find the balance between knowing when to walk away and
Speaker 1: when the opportunity may present itself. I feel like that's
Speaker 1: the greatest challenge in life, because sometimes you find yourself
Speaker 1: at an event, whatever it may be a work event
Speaker 1: of friends, whatever it may be. You go, ah, man,
Speaker 1: i'm not having fun here. I'm not having a good time.
Speaker 1: I'm not. And then as you say the one idea,
Speaker 1: maybe hey, stay in this discomforts and what may come
Speaker 1: from it is something special, which oftentimes can happen. The
Speaker 1: flip is true as well. I stayed there for too long.
Speaker 1: I stayed in that relationship for too long. I stayed
Speaker 1: at that job for too long. I stayed in that
Speaker 1: environment for too long. It was discomfit, and I thought
Speaker 1: I was going to get something out of it. I
Speaker 1: often hear people saying that even you know, they'll they'll
Speaker 1: you know, friends, colleagues, strangers, Sometimes I'll meet they'll say, yeah,
Speaker 1: but I've just I've been doing it for so long
Speaker 1: now and I just feel like maybe there's there's there's
Speaker 1: something and you know. And then I will say and
Speaker 1: I don't know if even if if I'm right, So
Speaker 1: I go, maybe the lesson you're learning is when to
Speaker 1: walk away or how to walk But I don't even
Speaker 1: know this myself. You know, you may leave the thing
Speaker 1: that that's makes me uncomfortable because of that, you have
Speaker 1: a certain er bit of experience totally, and you go, oh,
Speaker 1: that's why I left, because this was supposed to happen.
Speaker 1: You were always confirmed the confirmation bias absolutely, or you
Speaker 1: stay and then something happens and you go like, ah,
Speaker 1: I was always supposed to stay. So how do you
Speaker 1: how do you? How do you know? Or do you
Speaker 1: accept the fact that you don't know? I think that's
Speaker 1: I think you literally just answer you to us on
Speaker 1: the our journey, all right, just yeah, yeah, no, No,
Speaker 1: You're spot on. You don't know, you don't know, right, like,
Speaker 1: and you can only you can. I think it's also
Speaker 1: a matter of time, right I think if I was
Speaker 1: and this is again personal, but there's a difference between
Speaker 1: like if we got here on this beautiful setup that
Speaker 1: we have that you're admiring and you're saying you like
Speaker 1: the energy, and how I do too. If we got
Speaker 1: here on Friday, which was when we first started filming here,
Speaker 1: if I didn't like it on Friday, if I didn't
Speaker 1: like the energy, and I could tell the guests in
Speaker 1: like the energy, I would have shifted the room immediately
Speaker 1: because I'm not going to wait around. If I'm clear
Speaker 1: on something or I'm sensing it. I think jobs are
Speaker 1: harder because they probably exactly and so I think when
Speaker 1: things are tied to your survival, we tend to spend
Speaker 1: longer in them than we probably should because that safety
Speaker 1: again and security is so tied to that. And I
Speaker 1: think that's why relationships, as you've rightly pointed out homes,
Speaker 1: like I was just talking my uncle and aunt, like,
Speaker 1: you know, my grandparents have passed away. They've moved on,
Speaker 1: and you know they've been wanting to move home, they've
Speaker 1: said for many, many years, but now they don't. They
Speaker 1: live in London and they have a house and they
Speaker 1: want to they want to move to a different environment
Speaker 1: they've always wanted. But now they're like, no, no, but
Speaker 1: all our memories in this house, right, And so there's that,
Speaker 1: there's that familiarity, and they're like, no, I don't want
Speaker 1: to leave, even though I don't love this house as
Speaker 1: a structure and as a space, I don't want to leave.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what we do with people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I guess that's a good question for you that
Speaker 1: you've you've obviously had to find home again and again
Speaker 1: you've continued to find it in yourself, Like how have
Speaker 1: you let go of previous identities and personalities and are
Speaker 1: you because that's where we started. Like I think I've
Speaker 1: had to do that a lot of times, Like even
Speaker 1: when you said Monk, and I always say, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not anymore. And the reason I say that is because
Speaker 1: I had to let go of so many parts of
Speaker 1: that identity that don't serve me anymore. There are lots
Speaker 1: of parts of that identity that serve me massively, there
Speaker 1: are lots of parts of that identity that don't serve
Speaker 1: me anymore. Same with same with anything, like any work
Speaker 1: I've done. So I guess today when you're deciding who
Speaker 1: you want to be. One of the things I've taken
Speaker 1: away from this episode for sure I'm talking to you,
Speaker 1: and I've genuinely enjoyed talking to you is we know
Speaker 1: you're a very smart, intellectual, thoughtful person about what's happening
Speaker 1: in the world world. But what I find really beautiful
Speaker 1: and refreshing is that today you're doing the same things
Speaker 1: internally on your inner world. Has that always been a habit?
Speaker 1: You even said today when you walked in before we
Speaker 1: even started recording, you were like day, when I've been
Speaker 1: on all day, I need to just reflect and decompress
Speaker 1: and think about stuff. Has that always been a habit?
Speaker 1: Is there a method you use, is there an approach
Speaker 1: or is it just something you naturally just go into
Speaker 1: the inner world. Although I'm not particularly religious, I would
Speaker 1: have to say growing up religious installed within me the
Speaker 1: idea that I could have conversations with myself and they
Speaker 1: were necessary in order for me to process what I
Speaker 1: was going through. You know, That's what prayer is, in
Speaker 1: my opinion. It's a conversation that you are having multiple
Speaker 1: times a day. You are remembering, you are thinking, you
Speaker 1: are discussing, you are exposing your vulnerabilities, you are whatever
Speaker 1: it may be you are you're doing in doing that
Speaker 1: As a little child, you know, getting on my knees
Speaker 1: and praying. One of my favorite lessons that my mom
Speaker 1: taught me was that your relationship with God is your
Speaker 1: relationship with God. You know, she if I was in trouble,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't say to me, pray in front of me,
Speaker 1: let me hear you pray. No, She'd be like you
Speaker 1: and go and pray. And so what I am grateful
Speaker 1: for in that experience was that my relationship with God
Speaker 1: was then always my relationship with God. It was my conversation.
Speaker 1: It wasn't performative. It wasn't I remember as a little kid,
Speaker 1: she's like asking random questions. You know. I'd go to
Speaker 1: bed and I'd be like, oh god, a man, why
Speaker 1: do I break things all the time? Why? I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is? Like, I mean, you were there
Speaker 1: with me, I don't know why. Why don't you stop me? Sometimes?
Speaker 1: Like you know, you never stop me. I'll just be
Speaker 1: there as a kid, and I would I don't want
Speaker 1: to break things. But then I broke it and I
Speaker 1: knew it was going to break. And now Mom's angry,
Speaker 1: and please try and make it not as angry. But
Speaker 1: I'd have these conversations and I would feel different afterwards.
Speaker 1: I would feel better. I feel like I processed something.
Speaker 1: And that is an element of prayer that I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people take for granted. Is that processing
Speaker 1: of the information that's oftentimes just running away in your head,
Speaker 1: just rarely running away in your head. In that I
Speaker 1: just try and ask questions. I let's tell people, you know,
Speaker 1: I go like, I don't know. If I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm smart, I think I'm I think I am more
Speaker 1: and more confident in being an idiot to be honest
Speaker 1: with you. You know, I have friends who I consider
Speaker 1: smart because I can ask them about anything, you know.
Speaker 1: I have friends who know about, you know, quantum gravity
Speaker 1: and whatever it is, space books. I always got, like
Speaker 1: you're reading spacebooks again. I have friends who know about,
Speaker 1: you know, the deepest trenches of football history. I know
Speaker 1: friends who they're smart in my opinion, but I'm proud
Speaker 1: to say I'm an idiot. And so when you let
Speaker 1: go of that, sometimes what I find is I I
Speaker 1: then enjoy asking questions. Yeah, you know, I and most
Speaker 1: of my work, that's what I'm doing, is I'm asking questions.
Speaker 1: As a comedian, I'm asking questions of how we live
Speaker 1: in society. Why do we accept certain things the way
Speaker 1: we do? And I think it's funny that we do.
Speaker 1: And have you ever noticed how? And that's what a
Speaker 1: lot of comedians do. They're asking a question about something
Speaker 1: that everybody accepts as the norm. You know. I do
Speaker 1: it in my job on the Daily Show. I ask
Speaker 1: questions about how people see politics and why they see politics,
Speaker 1: and you know, whatever it may be. I ask questions,
Speaker 1: you know. I remember one day someone said to me,
Speaker 1: some random person who said to me it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. You know, you came to this country and
Speaker 1: you know, as a Democrat, you probably say, whoa, wait,
Speaker 1: what do you mean as a democrat? In my country,
Speaker 1: we don't have that. Yeah, in many political parties, we're
Speaker 1: not forced into a binary system that's already. You don't
Speaker 1: ask a question, you made an assumption, you know. And
Speaker 1: so even that has helped me. Where I come from,
Speaker 1: there is not just this or that. Yeah, in America's
Speaker 1: it has like a very very play hitting vibe to it.
Speaker 1: It's like, look what that party is doing. I look
Speaker 1: at that and it's like, yeah, but what you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, if you're voting for these things, shouldn't
Speaker 1: you be concerned about what you're going for? Wow to
Speaker 1: your party? Yeah, you know. And so but as a comedian,
Speaker 1: I'm going like, where are the jokes. I'll follow the jokes.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that much, because that's what my purposes
Speaker 1: in that moment. Yea. And this goes to everything I
Speaker 1: do in life. You know, I've been lucky enough to
Speaker 1: work on different projects like yourself. You know, I work
Speaker 1: in tech and work with Microsoft and things. Funny that
Speaker 1: I remember the presidence of the company one of the
Speaker 1: city's like, we're going to call you the chief questions
Speaker 1: off for stuff that's so good because I've been lucky,
Speaker 1: and you know, I love tech, and a lot of
Speaker 1: tech is asking questions. A lot of what I do
Speaker 1: in life is enjoying asking questions and becoming less afraid
Speaker 1: of how stupid you may seem or feel asking the question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's oftentimes what I see with kids. The reason they
Speaker 1: learn as quickly as they do, it's not just because
Speaker 1: of their brains, but I feel like it's because they
Speaker 1: don't have an idea of who they all aren't supposed
Speaker 1: to be, and so they ask questions, and they ask questions,
Speaker 1: and they ask questions, and they ask questions, and they
Speaker 1: ask questions and they ask questions, and so what happens
Speaker 1: is a they get answers, but be they discover that
Speaker 1: the people they're asking the questions off sometimes don't even
Speaker 1: have the answer. They just assumed an idea or the way,
Speaker 1: you know, the way the world was. And I often
Speaker 1: remind myself that if if I become too tied to
Speaker 1: the idea of being smart or being informed or knowing,
Speaker 1: then I'm trapped. I would rather say I try to
Speaker 1: be smart. I try to be informed. But if there's
Speaker 1: one thing I know, I am, well, it's an idiot,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing wrong with that. And I enjoy it,
Speaker 1: you know, because then I can be the smartest idiot
Speaker 1: you've ever met, and I can be the most informed
Speaker 1: idiot you've ever met. And I'm fine with that because
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to be the most natural me. That's
Speaker 1: a that's a good identity. One thing I noticed about
Speaker 1: the way you ask questions in our interview when you
Speaker 1: interview me, but also today, and something I appreciate and
Speaker 1: there is it's rare as I think most people. When
Speaker 1: you were saying, like someone assumed you're a democrat, I
Speaker 1: think most people ask questions in order to either agree
Speaker 1: or disagree with what comes out the other person's mouth.
Speaker 1: But we ask our best questions when we simply ask
Speaker 1: to learn and infer. And so now it's not asking
Speaker 1: to see whether we are on the same page. You're
Speaker 1: just asking to know, because I think what we often
Speaker 1: do is we ask a question and even if the
Speaker 1: base answer kind of sounds similar, we go, oh, we're
Speaker 1: on the same page, like oh me, and you you know,
Speaker 1: we're like we have the same values, and it's like, well, no,
Speaker 1: we don't. We just haven't dug deep enough. And I
Speaker 1: think we're often not patient. And I think that's why
Speaker 1: in so many relationships, in our lives and everywhere what
Speaker 1: you said, you said, a friend is someone who I
Speaker 1: know how they'd be in most situations. And I think
Speaker 1: when you quickly go oh, yeah, yeah, we have the
Speaker 1: same values, we have the same belief system, that's often
Speaker 1: incorrect because we just haven't asked enough questions to infer
Speaker 1: because we really want to feel that hidden us. Yeah
Speaker 1: that does. Actually I feel like that when you ask questions.
Speaker 1: And so I'm throwing that back at you, saying when
Speaker 1: you ask questions. So going back to what we were
Speaker 1: talking about about being an outsider, being an insider, where
Speaker 1: do I find a home? Where do I find familiar familiarity?
Speaker 1: You are familiar with this to a certain degree because
Speaker 1: of moving out of the UK, going to India, you know,
Speaker 1: going on that journey, and then moving from then then
Speaker 1: coming to America. It's another one thing that happens to
Speaker 1: you when you leave home is that you have to
Speaker 1: then either find home or you have to understand why
Speaker 1: this is home, or you have to become comfortable in
Speaker 1: a new space so that it will be your new home.
Speaker 1: And the best way to do that is by understanding.
Speaker 1: Is what I find oftentimes you aren't forced to understand
Speaker 1: if you are in the majority, If the norm is
Speaker 1: your world, you're fine. Yeah. If everyone has your accents, well,
Speaker 1: then you don't need to understand another accent. If everybody
Speaker 1: is your skin color, you don't need to understand another
Speaker 1: skin color. Everybody's your culture, if everybody is your language,
Speaker 1: if everybody's your you know, socio economic class, whatever it
Speaker 1: may be, then you don't need to understand. And so
Speaker 1: what I've grown up with because I grew up with
Speaker 1: a black woman pass a woman being my mother, white
Speaker 1: man swissman being my father, family mixed country, broken up,
Speaker 1: separated because of class, because of race. Predominantly, I found
Speaker 1: myself often having to understand whatever it was language, culture, music, food,
Speaker 1: I did I have to understand. And what I've found
Speaker 1: is that is often the fastest path to home is
Speaker 1: just understanding. You know, hammock is a terrible bed unless
Speaker 1: you understand how to sleep in it. And I think
Speaker 1: the same goes for everyone and everything. Foreign country doesn't
Speaker 1: feel like home until you understand the language, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden things start to work. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: so when I ask a question of you, as Jay,
Speaker 1: I genuinely do it to understand, you know, because you
Speaker 1: know with you, I agree, and I'm genuine trying to
Speaker 1: understand more because the things I may disagree with, Funny enough,
Speaker 1: more is like how I'm living my life, and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to understand more about like how you see and
Speaker 1: then how do I you know, it's not to agree
Speaker 1: or disagree, but more to be like, oh I needn't
Speaker 1: understand this. And then sometimes it'll be with people where
Speaker 1: I don't agree with them, So I want to understand.
Speaker 1: I see the world and it seems so clear to me.
Speaker 1: Can you explain why you don't see what I'm seeing? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's oftentimes what plagues me as as
Speaker 1: a person is I think we live in a world
Speaker 1: now where there are fewer and fewer experiences that we
Speaker 1: all relate to or that we've all gone through, and
Speaker 1: so wild it's great for individualism, and it's great for us,
Speaker 1: you know, living in our own niche, it has robbed
Speaker 1: us of a collective understanding. And so whether it's in
Speaker 1: politics or whether it's in society or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You know, I think it's healthy to disagree, Like you know, Jay,
Speaker 1: I don't think that that's that, But it's another thing
Speaker 1: to say, you know, that's my parking. No, that's my parking,
Speaker 1: versus that's my parking. What parking? Wait, you don't see
Speaker 1: a parking. Well. Now we're in a bigger and that's
Speaker 1: why I feel like society is moving towards as as everything, entertainment,
Speaker 1: social media, all these things become more niche. I think
Speaker 1: we're losing that collective space to be in. And so
Speaker 1: because I've always been outside, because I've never been part
Speaker 1: of I've always been forced to understand why do you
Speaker 1: do that? Why do you say that? How do you
Speaker 1: eat this? You know? So, when I'm in India and
Speaker 1: I'm eating and I go, okay, can you help me,
Speaker 1: help me understand why you use your hand the way
Speaker 1: you do? What are you trying to? Okay? Great chopsticks?
Speaker 1: For the first time, I have to all these things
Speaker 1: as opposed to assuming or even not being willing to.
Speaker 1: So maybe that's why I ask a question the way
Speaker 1: I do is because I just don't understand why you
Speaker 1: see the world the way you do, and once I do,
Speaker 1: I now get to hold two truths. I get to
Speaker 1: see how you see the world. I get to know
Speaker 1: how I see the world, and I may augment my
Speaker 1: way of seeing it, or I'll be able to help
Speaker 1: you understand why I see it the way I do
Speaker 1: because I now understand yours. I don't think I can
Speaker 1: do that if I if I don't ask. Absolutely, That's
Speaker 1: exactly what I'm trying to say, is that when I
Speaker 1: was saying learned, that's what I mean. Understand, Like you're
Speaker 1: asking to learn, You're asking to understand. There's not an
Speaker 1: asking to say, yes, we're the same or nowhere not
Speaker 1: the same. And I've read somewhere when when I was
Speaker 1: looking at this interview about how you were saying like,
Speaker 1: because you've never felt of something, you've always felt outside,
Speaker 1: you've always been able to see the full picture. And
Speaker 1: I was literally just saying this today that I grew
Speaker 1: up in a home where my par 's really agreed
Speaker 1: on anything, and I was always the mediator. Interesting, and
Speaker 1: so I would sit and listen to my mom and
Speaker 1: I would understand how she felt, and then I'd sit
Speaker 1: and listen to my dad and I always had an
Speaker 1: equal level of love and respect for them from their
Speaker 1: individual relationship with me, even though collectively they didn't they
Speaker 1: didn't add it together. And I found that when I
Speaker 1: read that about you, I was wanting to ask you
Speaker 1: about it because I was like, that's where I feel happier,
Speaker 1: learning about people and trying to understand people, because I
Speaker 1: could see both my mom and dad were right in
Speaker 1: so many ways, Like I would sit with my mom
Speaker 1: and be like, how does dad not see that? And
Speaker 1: I would sit with Dad and be like how does
Speaker 1: mom not see that? Like how are we missing this
Speaker 1: part of the picture? And I felt miserably at trying
Speaker 1: to help the situations. But I think that's partly why
Speaker 1: I do what I do today, because so much of
Speaker 1: me was exposed to different opinions. So when I when
Speaker 1: I read that about you, I was like, I'd love
Speaker 1: to know how did you deal with that feeling? Like
Speaker 1: how did you deal with the idea? And I know
Speaker 1: you're saying it flippantly in conversation, but like, how did
Speaker 1: you deal with the pressure and the idea that you
Speaker 1: failed to reconcile? What was happening between the two of them?
Speaker 1: I think two me years to accept that and to
Speaker 1: feel that way, because I think when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: it's what you said, you just accept that this is normality.
Speaker 1: So when I was a kid, I didn't even think
Speaker 1: of it. So this is normal. Parents don't get along.
Speaker 1: I want to help my mom out. I'm a good son.
Speaker 1: I want to help my dad out. You know, we're
Speaker 1: figuring it out. And i'd probably say I spent a
Speaker 1: good part of like at least my adult life, so
Speaker 1: say from well, maybe not even adult, maybe since I
Speaker 1: was ten, maybe from ten to twenty one, like probably
Speaker 1: eleven years trying to fix that and trying to think
Speaker 1: I could fix that or that we could improve it.
Speaker 1: And while things got better. Sorry, just ye to your point,
Speaker 1: because you were trying to create the safety because as
Speaker 1: a child, I feel like there are a few things
Speaker 1: that make you feel less safe than your two parental figures.
Speaker 1: You know. Sorry, but carry on. No, no, no, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, going back to the safety that you're saying.
Speaker 1: You're trying to make your walls because love didn't work.
Speaker 1: It didn't It didn't matter how many Valentine's Days there were,
Speaker 1: It didn't matter how many romantic gestures. It didn't matter
Speaker 1: saying I love you or a love letter, but it
Speaker 1: was safety. Yeah, And so I was trying that probably
Speaker 1: for a good eleven years, and then I think when
Speaker 1: I went off to the monastery, was still there in
Speaker 1: my heart. And then I think while I was there,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I have to let go of
Speaker 1: this because it's not my responsibility, it's not my ability.
Speaker 1: I don't have the powers to fix this, and that's okay,
Speaker 1: and that if I'm able to let go of this,
Speaker 1: then not only would things improved there, I can help
Speaker 1: people who want to be helped as well. And I
Speaker 1: think that was a whole, like, probably like a fifteen
Speaker 1: year journey to get to that, because otherwise you hold
Speaker 1: it as your like, your like responsibility, like this is
Speaker 1: my job almost. And I think that's what many of
Speaker 1: us have done, is we have been burdened with and
Speaker 1: oftentimes subconsciously a job or a role that our parents
Speaker 1: didn't realize they were burdening us with. Wow, you know,
Speaker 1: oftentimes I find it so interesting how the loudest parents
Speaker 1: who aren't good at reading a room will have the
Speaker 1: most shy child, you know, and and then the parents
Speaker 1: who aren't good at being outgoing, and they'll have kids
Speaker 1: who are running and screaming and greeting everybody and talking
Speaker 1: to them because there's this interesting thing that happens in
Speaker 1: nature where I feel like, you know, the child tries
Speaker 1: to correct for what the parent may be lacking. Wow,
Speaker 1: you know. And it's it's really fascinating that you say that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because what happens is, over time, you get to an
Speaker 1: age where then you have to take off you know,
Speaker 1: that armor, take off that cape, take off that that designation,
Speaker 1: and understand that now you've lived that, you've gained the
Speaker 1: tools from it. It's become a lot of who you
Speaker 1: are today, but you have to let it go. And
Speaker 1: that that I find is terrifying, because the only thing
Speaker 1: scarier than accepting who we are is accepting that we
Speaker 1: don't know who we are going to be when we
Speaker 1: let go of the things that I've made us who
Speaker 1: we are today. Yeah, And that's that not knowing as
Speaker 1: simple as leaving a party early. It's that same feeling
Speaker 1: of discomfort of like, did I make the right choice
Speaker 1: if I stayed here? Would it have? If I kept
Speaker 1: that role? Would it have? And Yeah, I was talking
Speaker 1: to a client the other day and she said something
Speaker 1: really interesting. She was saying, I just never grew up
Speaker 1: with an opinion. She goes, I've just never really had
Speaker 1: an opinion. And I've known her for some time, so
Speaker 1: it was a fairly it was a progressed conversation. It
Speaker 1: wasn't the first time and we were talking about it.
Speaker 1: She was saying, well, I've never really had an opinion
Speaker 1: on this or that, and so when people ask me
Speaker 1: what I want to do, or when my partner asked
Speaker 1: me what I want to do, I kind of like
Speaker 1: go along with it. But now I'm starting the question
Speaker 1: like am I living my life or someone else's. And
Speaker 1: it was really interesting because we were really getting into it,
Speaker 1: and I started talking to her about her parents and
Speaker 1: family dynamic, and she said something really phenomenal to me.
Speaker 1: She said that my brother and my dad always used
Speaker 1: to argue and I was the peacemaker, and she goes,
Speaker 1: when I felt pain, I never shared it because it
Speaker 1: would create more complexity, and so I accept that. She
Speaker 1: came to the conclusion that the reason I don't have
Speaker 1: an opinion is because it disturbs the peace. And when
Speaker 1: I don't have an opinion, the piece is kept and
Speaker 1: I was. You know, those are the kind of things
Speaker 1: that we're saying, Like we take the designation of peacemaker,
Speaker 1: you take the role in the designation of whatever I was.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the comedians take on the role of being a
Speaker 1: comedian because you kind of get her and the laugh
Speaker 1: and everyone, you know. And so I think these roles
Speaker 1: that you're talking about are really it's a really beautiful
Speaker 1: way that you said it. That we adopt this job
Speaker 1: and this role and this I think I think we do,
Speaker 1: and I often think sometimes it is necessary. Of course,
Speaker 1: I think it may be evolutionary whatever it is. You know. Again,
Speaker 1: That's why I don't go to it's bad, it's good.
Speaker 1: I go it is. It just is, And in understanding it,
Speaker 1: I realize there's nothing wrong with it being as long
Speaker 1: as you know when to let it go, you know.
Speaker 1: I often think that about seat belts when I'm in
Speaker 1: a call on a plane. Sometimes I forget that I'm
Speaker 1: wearing the seatbelt. I love wearing my seat belts, especially
Speaker 1: on a plane. I buckle it long before they tell
Speaker 1: I'm like in strapped. I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: I love it even when you see it go off,
Speaker 1: that you know when they'll turn the seatbelt like on
Speaker 1: I'm like, what do you mean on it? The whole flight,
Speaker 1: I will be wearing the seatbelt, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: And what will happen? Sometimes I'm so comfortable as been
Speaker 1: the whole time. When we land, we chill, I don't
Speaker 1: rush to get my bags any of that, and then
Speaker 1: I'll stand and the seatbelt will pull me and it's always,
Speaker 1: like I love to myself, it always happens because it's
Speaker 1: because it's really down and it just you know, as
Speaker 1: I jump, I was like, pulls me back down, ias
Speaker 1: giggle and I unbuckle it. And I found myself thinking
Speaker 1: the one that I was like, it's amazing, how this
Speaker 1: this device is brilliant. It saves your life. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, car crash, you know you're you know, plane
Speaker 1: crash on a runway or whatever. I don't know how
Speaker 1: much you'll save you a big one, but still, you know,
Speaker 1: but this thing is it holds you. Wow, it's helping
Speaker 1: you stay in tech. It's helping you stay in the
Speaker 1: place you need to be in. But if you don't
Speaker 1: know how to let it go when you need to,
Speaker 1: now you're trapped. And so that's what I'm constantly trying
Speaker 1: to work on, which is so hard to It's like, man,
Speaker 1: I go like, okay, all right, my sa my safety belt,
Speaker 1: my seat belt, all right. It might be my personality.
Speaker 1: It might be the way I see the world. It
Speaker 1: might be how I've learned to interact with us. It
Speaker 1: might be anything how I eat, how I think, what
Speaker 1: I do, what I don't when I love what I wore,
Speaker 1: all these things and I get that, and I'm always
Speaker 1: just try and ask myself, I, okay, all right, is
Speaker 1: this still your seat belts or has it now become
Speaker 1: a trapping? And I always just have to ask myself
Speaker 1: that question. It's extremely difficult, you know. You just go
Speaker 1: around and around, and sometimes I do you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, I'll i'll, I'll be chilly.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't think I can watch Harry Potter the
Speaker 1: same again, I don't. I don't think I can be
Speaker 1: on a plane the same again. Like, yeah, I love
Speaker 1: how you think. I think. It's so refreshing to hear that,
Speaker 1: And I the biggest thing I'm taking about this is
Speaker 1: just this ability to really question our lives, question things.
Speaker 1: I think. I think that is the purpose of life
Speaker 1: is to start asking questions, and what I loved about
Speaker 1: at least at least the scriptures I started on the
Speaker 1: Eastern side. They're all Q and a's, Like, they're all
Speaker 1: cute question and answer. None of them are like talking
Speaker 1: or lecturing. Ord is, Yeah, yeah, they're all Q and a's,
Speaker 1: And I think that was a big part of how
Speaker 1: we were trained to believe that all inquiry was the
Speaker 1: birth of wisdom. Like it had to be an inquiry,
Speaker 1: it had to be a conversation. It couldn't be a
Speaker 1: lecture or a seminar. And you know, I think when
Speaker 1: i'd sit with you, and whenever I've said with you,
Speaker 1: and whenever I've watched you, which I've admired you for
Speaker 1: so long, I think that the quality of questioning is
Speaker 1: really what we should be more focused on than the
Speaker 1: result and the answers. As you were saying earlier that
Speaker 1: if we asked questions we were actually interested in knowing
Speaker 1: the answer to, we'd actually listen to the answer. But Trevor,
Speaker 1: we end the show with two segments. These are fast segments. Okay,
Speaker 1: you've been more than generous with your time. So the
Speaker 1: first segment is called the Many Sides to Us. Okay,
Speaker 1: and so this you have to answer in one word,
Speaker 1: and there's five questions. So are you ready? I'm ready? Okay.
Speaker 1: What is one word to describe what someone would say
Speaker 1: about you meeting you for the first time? Friendly? Friendly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: friends and friendly two different things, but friendly? Okay? Question
Speaker 1: number two? What is one word to describe what someone
Speaker 1: would say about you that knows you extremely well? Consistent? Nice? Okay?
Speaker 1: Question number three? What is one word you'd used to
Speaker 1: describe yourself? Mercurial? Okay, all right, now I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to ask you expand like that that I was not
Speaker 1: expecting that word that is a very yeah, tell me
Speaker 1: why that word? Like? You can now go off one
Speaker 1: word like I'm consistent in the fact that I'm also mercurial.
Speaker 1: Part of it. Funny enough, I think was not created
Speaker 1: by but as as somebody who has ADHD, it took
Speaker 1: me a long time to learn in life what that
Speaker 1: did to my brain, how that affected how I process time,
Speaker 1: an idea, a thought, an object, any any inquiry that
Speaker 1: I would have could be in some way, shape or
Speaker 1: form affected by that. And I think, funny enough, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a huge misunderstanding sometimes I actually, you know,
Speaker 1: hate how we've created a lot of the conversations around
Speaker 1: the mind is the best way to put it, you know,
Speaker 1: because because of the some of the terms have become
Speaker 1: so wrote and some of the ideas have become so
Speaker 1: simple when they're not. Um. I remember when I was
Speaker 1: young and I was diagnosed with ADHD. They made they
Speaker 1: made it seem like you can't pay attention, when in
Speaker 1: fact it's the fact that you can't choose what to
Speaker 1: pay your attention to. Very good at paying attention and
Speaker 1: so wow, wow, yeah, it's a very nuance, subtle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes a big difference. It makes a big difference.
Speaker 1: And so what what what's been wonderful for me in
Speaker 1: life is learning again how to be grateful for how
Speaker 1: I've dealt with something, not even looking at it through
Speaker 1: the lens of good or bad, but just going it
Speaker 1: is and then understanding it like that, you know. And
Speaker 1: that's what I mean by I think we've really hurt
Speaker 1: ourselves in society with with how we've had some conversations
Speaker 1: because we've made it seem bad or good as opposed
Speaker 1: to understanding because it may not be the same as
Speaker 1: the norm. You know, so is a short person good
Speaker 1: or bad? No, they're just short. And the reason we
Speaker 1: say short is because they're short relative to the general population,
Speaker 1: the same way someone who's tall is tall relative to
Speaker 1: the general population. Now, if you're tall, you may be
Speaker 1: bumping your head a lot more than other people. If
Speaker 1: you're short, you may not be reaching the things that
Speaker 1: people have put at an average height. I think the
Speaker 1: same thing goes for the mind. If you're blessed enough
Speaker 1: to have a mind or a mentality that is of
Speaker 1: the norm, most things will work for you, and most
Speaker 1: things will make sense in life. If your mind isn't,
Speaker 1: that's why they use divergent. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong,
Speaker 1: but you need to understand how your mind will react
Speaker 1: to a world that has been designed in a certain way.
Speaker 1: And so that is why I've learned to understand and accept.
Speaker 1: I go, I'm mercurial again. Was a friend who taught
Speaker 1: me that, and I loved it once I understood it.
Speaker 1: First I was I was like, no, I'm not, I'm not.
Speaker 1: He's like, he's like, yeah, you're mercurial. And I was like,
Speaker 1: first of all, explain the word yeah. And then he
Speaker 1: explained it to me. I was like, I'm not that
Speaker 1: im and then I realized I could could I could
Speaker 1: be two things. I'm extremely consistent. Anyone who needs me
Speaker 1: knows me, they know where to find me, they know
Speaker 1: how I'll be. But I'm also mercurial in that how
Speaker 1: I feel about this on a day and how I
Speaker 1: feel about that's on a day may be more extreme
Speaker 1: than somebody else's range. And so in that again, just
Speaker 1: the understanding and asking the questions of myself, I then
Speaker 1: exist in a space where I understand it. So it
Speaker 1: will be funny is sometimes I'll meet people and they'll
Speaker 1: get distracted and be like, oh, sorry, that's my ADHD
Speaker 1: and that's not what it is. But yeah whatever, you
Speaker 1: know that, like people have done this with everything. Oh
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm OCD. It's like I don't okay, yeah
Speaker 1: that's not what it Yeah. And so we have these
Speaker 1: very limited understandings of these things. Maybe and we've also
Speaker 1: created an idea of them being a bad, correct, good whatever.
Speaker 1: It's like, No, it's just understanding the same thing we
Speaker 1: do with glasses. At some point near Sides said, far
Speaker 1: Side said, I wear glasses now, and then at some
Speaker 1: point it was just that's what it is. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we have a long way to go in the
Speaker 1: conversations we have around the mind, yes, and getting us
Speaker 1: to the same place where when you meet someone they
Speaker 1: can say that to you and you now understand that,
Speaker 1: oh I wear glasses, okay, great, yes, you know, whereas
Speaker 1: I'm sure there was a point was like I wear glasses,
Speaker 1: so you're blind. Now people are just like, oh you
Speaker 1: do you wear glasses or you wear contacts? Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: that's that's who you are. Yeah, And I think that's
Speaker 1: what it is that our vocabulary around the mind and
Speaker 1: of psychology is very limited and your spot on and
Speaker 1: one thing that you said that really struck a Quarde
Speaker 1: was the idea that if the world is designed for
Speaker 1: the average yea, then the challenges that anyone outside of
Speaker 1: it feels broken. And that's where I think we've gone wrong,
Speaker 1: where it's like there's a weakness or a broken It's like, no,
Speaker 1: the world. If the world was designed for right those people, right,
Speaker 1: then we'd feel broken. And it's just that the world
Speaker 1: has been designed for this few people. If you created
Speaker 1: a new planet that was for only people who had
Speaker 1: attain disposition, then it would be a very different case. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I love that. That's a that's a great that's another
Speaker 1: whole two hour comp that's another Yeah, we'll save it,
Speaker 1: all right. Question number four, what is one word that
Speaker 1: if someone didn't agree with you or like you, how
Speaker 1: would they what would they say about you? Not like
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about like an internet roll or stubborn? Stubborn? Right? Okay,
Speaker 1: yeah there that's a good way. Yeah, yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. I like that, all right. Question number five,
Speaker 1: what is the word that you're trying to embody right now?
Speaker 1: Is there like a focus, a presence with a particular
Speaker 1: characteristic or value or believe? Mindful? Great? All right, there's
Speaker 1: a great, there's a fantastic most people struggle with. So
Speaker 1: you did? You hit it out of the park. All right?
Speaker 1: These are the final five. These are easy, one word
Speaker 1: to one sentence. What's the best advice you've ever received?
Speaker 1: Never assume it's a great piece of advice. Second question,
Speaker 1: what is the worst piece of advice you've ever heard?
Speaker 1: Always be yourself? That's really all right times Yeah, to
Speaker 1: be you don't just be yourself. People say they'll relax,
Speaker 1: just be yourself. Yea las, Yeah, you know when to
Speaker 1: be yourself As a better piece of advice, so I
Speaker 1: can give you. That's good. Question number three, what is
Speaker 1: something you used to value that you no longer value? Fame?
Speaker 1: So there was a time when it was important and yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, I think I I thought that it would
Speaker 1: give me something that I searched for my whole life,
Speaker 1: and that was a certain sense of belonging. No, because
Speaker 1: there's a there's a familiarity you have with people when
Speaker 1: you see them. I never cared for through the lens
Speaker 1: of like I'm better, No, but I was like, oh man,
Speaker 1: everyone knows that person, everyone likes that was and you know,
Speaker 1: here I was this kid and I grew up alone
Speaker 1: for so long. I was like, oh, I'll be familiar
Speaker 1: the word fame, you know when you look at the root.
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, that that thing, I'll be familiar.
Speaker 1: And then ironically, as I said, it jumps straight to
Speaker 1: your unfamiliar and so then I realized. I was like,
Speaker 1: oh man, you don't think that it will come from something,
Speaker 1: but rather understand what you're trying to achieve, and then
Speaker 1: you know, figure out how you're trying to get there.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. I love that. Question number four, how would
Speaker 1: you define your current purpose as being a fertilizer four
Speaker 1: everything and everyone I come into contact with. I would
Speaker 1: hope to be somebody who enriches the soil that I touch.
Speaker 1: I would hope to be somebody who improves somebody's life
Speaker 1: in the slightest of ways. Whether it's helping you solve
Speaker 1: a problem, whether it's giving you directions and the streets
Speaker 1: in New York, whether it's making you laugh at a show,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about politics, whatever it may be. I
Speaker 1: would hope to do what a good fertilizer does in
Speaker 1: that it enables the soil to be richer, It enables
Speaker 1: the plant to grow taller, it it brings all of
Speaker 1: the pieces together, you know, it becomes it becomes a food,
Speaker 1: it becomes it becomes a food that creates more food.
Speaker 1: You know. It's it's not a zero sum game. And
Speaker 1: so I would say that that would probably be what
Speaker 1: I'd like to focus on most right now, even for myself,
Speaker 1: because fertilizer even makes self bigger. It grows itself, you
Speaker 1: add more, multitu it and it keeps ongoing. And so
Speaker 1: I think I think even for me, you know, I
Speaker 1: look to try and fertilize as much as I can.
Speaker 1: I love that. That's one of my favorite answers to
Speaker 1: that question we've ever had. All Right, fifth and final
Speaker 1: question of the whole interview. If you could create one
Speaker 1: law that everyone in the world had to follow, what
Speaker 1: would it be? Everyone in the world, right or creates
Speaker 1: a law that said everyone everywhere in the world, randomly, randomly, randomly,
Speaker 1: could be given the lowest person's bank accounts like that,
Speaker 1: it could be like that would be the law is
Speaker 1: that we do this weird system where every whenever, it
Speaker 1: may be every year, randomly, the lowest person's bank account
Speaker 1: can just go out and become everybody's bank account. Wow.
Speaker 1: The reason I would do that is because I think
Speaker 1: if we lived in a society where more people felt
Speaker 1: like their fate was tied to the least of us,
Speaker 1: they would have a little more compassion and think a
Speaker 1: little more about how those people may or may not
Speaker 1: be existing. And that's why I say I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: anyone can't be rich. I'm not saying that. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say anyone can't make as much money as they want. Oh, no,
Speaker 1: go ahead, we should all be doing that, enjoy it,
Speaker 1: go for it. But I would just want us all
Speaker 1: to know that the lowest bank balance, the lowest amount
Speaker 1: that someone has could randomly God, and I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: to everyone. Yeah, it would just have it. It would
Speaker 1: be like ten percent of the population. That's what's going
Speaker 1: to happen. It's the law. Every year ten percent of
Speaker 1: the population, your bank balance becomes what the person with
Speaker 1: the least amount has in that in the in the world.
Speaker 1: And I just wonder how we would live. I genuinely
Speaker 1: would because, yeah, I think sometimes and I understand it.
Speaker 1: You know, capitalism, hyper capitalism, you know this thing we've
Speaker 1: been tricked into believing that in order for you to have,
Speaker 1: I cannot have, as if trading didn't exist long before.
Speaker 1: All of that has tricked us into a world of
Speaker 1: believing that mine is only mine and yours cannot come
Speaker 1: with it. So I wonder what would happen in that space.
Speaker 1: I think, even myself, everyone would pay a lot more attenion.
Speaker 1: You know, how much do you have? We need to
Speaker 1: get your balance up, yeah, because I'm trying to keep
Speaker 1: my life as comfortable as it is. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: feeling that it could be any of us, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: will take it for granted, Jake, like it could it
Speaker 1: could always be any of us. Luck is the most random.
Speaker 1: You can work as hard as you want luck as
Speaker 1: a huge factor. You can be the best luck as
Speaker 1: a factor. You can be the worst luck as a factor.
Speaker 1: So you know, it really could be any one of us.
Speaker 1: And so I don't take for granted that I'm lucky.
Speaker 1: I work hard, I try, and you know, I try
Speaker 1: and shape as much of the environment that my luck
Speaker 1: will exist within. But I never take for granted that
Speaker 1: I'm lucky. Travel is a new thing. I learned about
Speaker 1: you today that you don't just ask good questions, but
Speaker 1: you really answering questions, and that's where people don't by
Speaker 1: the way, right, Yeah, thanks, thank you, thank you. True,
Speaker 1: that's so special. Everyone has been listening or watching wherever
Speaker 1: you are in the world. I hope you appreciated that
Speaker 1: conversation as much as I did. I hope you could
Speaker 1: see that we're genuinely just having a good time and
Speaker 1: getting to know each other and learning and going back
Speaker 1: and forth. But I think there were so many great
Speaker 1: insights in this conversation, and I'd love to see what
Speaker 1: you took away, So please do share them wherever you're sharing,
Speaker 1: whether it's Instagram or TikTok, or Twitter or wherever it is.
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear what you learned, what you took away,
Speaker 1: what you gathered from this conversation, what you collected, what
Speaker 1: you questioned, right, I think that's the biggest thing. What
Speaker 1: did you question? What is a question that you're asking
Speaker 1: that you never asked before today? And I want to
Speaker 1: give a big thank you to Trevor for showing up
Speaker 1: and thank you doing all this time. And I will admit,
Speaker 1: though I didn't do this just the goodest of my heart.
Speaker 1: I came because I remember seeing a clip of yours
Speaker 1: many many, many many years ago, and you talked about
Speaker 1: how we don't know how to breathe. I remember that.
Speaker 1: I remember even watching it. I was like sitting at home,
Speaker 1: like I don't know how to breathe. And since then
Speaker 1: it's it's stuck with me. I was like, one day,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna meet this guy and I'm going to ask
Speaker 1: him to teach me how to breathe. We left to
Speaker 1: do that, I know. No, Yeah, thank you, thank you, honestly, no,
Speaker 1: thank you, man. I appreciate you the best. This is awesome.