Good Life Project - Yung Pueblo | How to Create Clarity & Connection
Episode Date: September 29, 2022Why is it that, so often, we need to be brought to our knees in order to wake up to, and reclaim, what really matters? And, does that have to be so? These are just a few of the questions we dive into ...with my guest today, Diego Perez, best known for his virtual moniker, Yung Pueblo, which is both a reminder to him to stay grounded in a younger, growth mindset, and also a contained to frame this current season of work as a project that doesn’t constrain his own personal and professional growth. Diego’s new book, Clarity & Connection, shares many of his recent insights about life, meaning, love, work, self-awareness, and of course, clarity and connection.You can find Yung Pueblo at: Website | InstagramIf you LOVED this episode you’ll also love the conversations we had with Tara Brach about wisdom and compassion.Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes.Fireweed: After the devastation of a forest fire, the first plant to grow back is fireweed. Meet people with vastly different experiences who have demonstrated their ability to grow and adapt to whatever challenges life throws at them, and -- like the fireweed -- come back stronger than ever. Listen to Fireweed wherever you get your podcasts.Talk Easy: Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, activists, and politicians. Where people sound like people. New episodes every Sunday. Listen to Talk Easy wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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actually some of your greatest power will come to light in groups. And that's kind of what I
learned was like, as an individual, you do have power, but you can only do so much. When you come
into a group that can share a common cause, whoo, sky's the limit. You know, you can really make
serious change. So why is it that so often we need to be brought to our knees in order to wake up and reclaim what really
matters? And does it actually have to be that way? These are just a few of the questions that we dive
into with my guest today, Diego Perez, who's best known by his virtual moniker, Young Pueblo. Born
in Guayaquil, Ecuador, he moved with his family to Boston where he saw his parents work relentless
hours and struggle with poverty. And he turned
to activism and advocacy at a young age, went to Wesleyan where his life then devolved into
partying and drugs that really threatened to become a way of being as he moved into adulthood.
But in a moment of profound reckoning that would awaken him both to his own need to refocus on
mental health and physical well-being, as well as a different way to live, he re-centered meaning in his work and life. And a quest was set in motion, one that
would eventually lead Diego into a 10-day Vipassana meditation experience that had a transformational
effect and would set him on a path of self-discovery and an ever-deepening devotion to a now years-long,
two-hours-a-day meditation practice,
regular extended retreats, and the pursuit of truth and wisdom.
And now a part of that also involved writing.
And what began as a tool to process his own experiences, well, it eventually became a
public writing practice.
And his words landed in a powerful way, amassing a global audience of millions of people writing
under the pseudonym Young Pueblo, which is both a reminder to him to stay grounded in
a younger growth mindset and also a container to frame this current season of work as a
project that doesn't constrain his own personal and professional growth.
Diego's newest book,
Clarity and Connection, shares many of his recent insights about life, meaning, love, work,
self-awareness, and of course, clarity and connection. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.
It has the biggest display ever.
It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,
making it even more comfortable on your wrist,
whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.
And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,
getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.
The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.
Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual
results will vary.
Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised.
The pilot's a hitman.
I knew you were going to be fun.
On January 24th.
Tell me how to fly this thing.
Mark Wahlberg.
You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him,. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what's
the difference between me and you? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need
a pilot. Flight Risk. Originally from Guayaquil, Ecuador. Yeah, that's right. And then to Boston.
How old were you when you actually made that journey? I was tiny. I was four years old.
And that's when I initially came over with my mom and dad and my brother. And I have a little sister,
but she was born here. My brother was 10 years old when he made the trip.
Yeah. So you're itty bitty. Do you have any recollection or any sense of what it was there
for you? Or it's just sort of like a blur? No, but what's, what's interesting is that there's a clear divide in my memory, um, where I have a tiny amount of fragmented images from living in Ecuador.
Like I have one image of me playing outside, um, with a toy car in front of the house that we lived
in, but my memory has really become crisp and clear and more
movie-like when I got to Boston. And that's probably because I was four years old. So
who knows what's happening in a four-year-old's mind. But yeah, it all kind of really, in some
way, it feels like life starts when I turned four. Yeah. Have you had a chance or have you
sat down with your family or
do you know what inspired the immigration from Ecuador to Boston? I think what really inspired,
I think at that time, you know, my parents just like, they didn't really feel like there was just
a lot of economic opportunity for us. I grew up really poor in Boston, but my mom and dad, the level of poverty that they experienced as children was
to an even much higher degree. My mom, hearing about her growing up, her mother didn't even have
food for her to eat and would actually send her to the homes of neighbors so that hopefully she'd
be able to get a meal from a friend.
And my grandmother, she didn't know how to read or write.
So there was a stark sort of, you know, we were, my parents were really poor.
And then when we got to Boston, my family was really poor because my mom, she ended up working cleaning houses and my dad worked in a supermarket.
Their wages were very low and we really struggled to like, you know,
pay the rent. And there was just a lot of, a lot of financial stress in our house.
Yeah. How did that land with you just individually as a kid, sort of being,
being in that family culture and, and, and seeing that around you?
Yeah, it was quite bewildering because I remember thinking even as someone
who was really young, like the world to me looked abundant,
you know, from what I was seeing on TV,
what I would look out, what I would see outside,
what I would see in the classroom.
And it always seemed like a shock,
like why, like what's happening here?
You know, like how is this abundance not reaching happening here? You know, like, how are, how is this abundance
not reaching my home? And, and it was tough, you know, because a lot, my mom and dad, they loved
each other. They love each other deeply. But a lot of their fights, their disagreements,
their conflict was around, like this struggle to make ends meet. So I saw that sort of structural
pressure, just push onto my family. And it was interesting
seeing the difference between how they used to fight all the time when I was little, but then
as my brother and I got older and we started working and we started adding to the family funds,
and especially now that we're adults and my sister is an adult, my parents don't have that stress.
And my parents, they barely have disagreements these days because their problems were really structural.
They were money related.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm curious how that frames in your mind as a kid.
Like what is important to strive for in life? It felt to me like, you know, in the midst of searching for answers as to like, like
it made me want to study the world.
It made me want to know, you know, like, like why some people have less and others
have more.
And, and that really kind of took me on a journey into activism and into understanding economics,
because that just seemed like a whole nother world that, and that's actually what I ended
up majoring in when I went to college, because I wanted to understand how capitalism worked,
like how some people could have so much and others could have so little.
And is there a way to kind of like balance that out a bit?
Yeah. What was the first step in for you to activism and organizing? Because it sounds
like it actually touched down pretty young in your life.
Yeah. Yeah. I started pretty young. I started early on when I was 15 and my brother actually
introduced me to that world. I got into this organization called Boston Youth Organizing Project, and it was such a special place because there were adults who would support us by teaching us how to organize and like organizing in the sense of like being able to find a common cause for a group of people and strategizing as to how we were going to make our goal come true.
You know, whether that was at the city level or in our, you know, in our schools, we really
like made serious change as young people.
And it was cool because we would, you know, we'd learn how to organize and then we teach
each other how to organize and we would constantly be empowering each other to like make, to make change. And this was all, you know, we were all really young, but it was pretty formative because I got to see pretty quickly how, you know, a group of people can become rather unstoppable if they, you know, have good values and are working together for the betterment of many. Yeah, I mean, what a powerful experience to have,
especially young in life, right?
Because I feel like so many of us,
especially in sort of like the teen years
and the early years,
it's this season where for so many,
you feel largely disempowered.
You look at the world and you're like,
this is a massive machine.
And I see all the people that are running this thing.
And I, like, who am I?
You know, how can one voice seriously make any meaningful
dent in that universe for you to have an experience early on, which showed you that no, actually
like you matter.
It must've been so formative in so many ways, but not the least of which showing you that
you actually can make a difference, which I think is something that so many people still struggle with far into adulthood. Yeah. And it's interesting because we
live in a super atomized society. So it's hard to really come in contact with your power because
actually some of your greatest power will come to light in groups. And that's kind of what I
learned was like, as an individual, you do have power, but you can only do so much. When you come into a group that can share a common cause,
sky's the limit, you know, you can really make serious change. And it was really, you know,
I felt really fortunate to be amongst a group of like really diverse young people who had
the same like economic background. A lot of us were immigrants as well. And we would look at a situation and be like, oh yeah, we can change that. And we would be really
confident and we would go and we would win. We'd win all the time. So having that just showed me
the power of people. Yeah. That's amazing. One of the things that I've often seen, you know,
there are a lot of benefits, I think, to learning those skills and being surrounded by that environment and embodying this notion that you can actually be a part of
significant change. The other curiosity as you're sharing that is there's a phenomenon I've seen
happen with so many folks, me included sometimes, where when you step into a place of advocacy or
organizing or activism, it's really easy to drop into a place where binary thinking dominates the landscape.
It's black or white.
It's us versus them.
There's no middle ground.
There's no gray.
There's no argument.
There's no partial win.
It's like there are only two choices.
And if you're not with us, then you're just against us or you don't get it. And I'm wondering whether that mindset was a part of at least the early days of organizing
and putting energy behind different things.
Yeah, I think to a large extent, there was a lot of that mentality, very strong, like
group psychology.
We'd be working as a unit and we're like,, you're part of us, are you not with us. But I think there was definitely undertones
of compassion there, even if they weren't fully matured, because we were lucky, like, you know,
the adults who are working with us, they were pretty compassionate people, they were never
trying to dehumanize the people who we, who were
targets, the people that we would want to try to get something from. So that felt really formative.
And it felt like the roots of like the kind of the thinking that I try to do now, where,
you know, to me, when I think about love, I mean, love is something that can hold
space for multiple perspectives. And it's something that can allow for complexity. And I think that's
something that is not just growing in the like, activist organizing world, but all over the world,
you know, that we can be able to still function harmoniously without having to like, hate each
other or demonize each other in certain ways. Because at the end of the day, like everybody
makes mistakes, like, you know, we're all incredibly imperfect human beings. And what matters is like, are we
open to changing and being better? Yeah. It's such an important question,
especially in this moment in time, right? Because we're all dropped into this space where there's
so much disenfranchisement, but there's also so much isolation and separatism and dehumanization.
It's sort of like, you know, there's an installation of beliefs and values that rise to the level of identity.
And once that becomes that, it becomes brutally hard to back away from that, even when you're presented with really strong evidence that it's not right.
And I feel like, yeah, I mean, I hope you're right in sort of like,
I feel like we have been dropped into this sea of pain of isolation and dehumanization. And
I'm waiting for that pendulum to swing back towards openness and realizing that we're sort
of like all part of like the same fiber of humanity. It sounds like you may be a little
bit further along
in seeing and stepping into that space than I am at this point.
Yeah. I mean, it's a struggle. It's a struggle to have people who, you know, that there are people
who exist in the world who don't like you because of different facets of your identity. And then
there's also a struggle to be attached to different parts of your identity when in reality,
there's nothing static about you. You know, A piece of your identity that may have been so important to you seven years ago
may mean nothing to you today because you've just grown in so many different ways. And if you were
to attach yourself and stick to that part of your identity, you would actually be limiting your own
flourishing. So I think even within the work that I do within myself,
I've really tried to sort of shift the way I see identity to just to think about it as a
flowing river, because it just keeps moving and it'll move and sort of switch itself up in a way
that can meet the moment as opposed to just like trying to make the moment
fit you, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, it definitely does. So a lot of these seeds were
installed early in you. You end up going to college, you go to Wesley and studying, exploring
a lot of these things. I know you've described that time in your life as one where there was a
big element of the pursuit of pleasure.
And that involved a lot of partying, a lot of drugs,
which is not entirely uncommon, like when kids go to college.
Oh, yeah, very common, yeah.
Yeah, but it seems like there was something else going on with you.
Like there was something underneath that,
that was not just sort of like your typical pleasure-seeking experience.
Yeah, and I think in some ways, you know,
that same root that was in
me is in a lot of people. There was just this like underlying anxiety and sadness that I did
not want to admit to myself. And for whatever reason, you know, it just intensified in me in
particular where I couldn't let go of the party because
the party kept me away from my feelings.
And even after I graduated, I just kept wanting to be in these environments where, you know,
there's a lot of alcohol, a lot of drugs so that I could just, you know, keep avoiding
whatever it was that was happening inside me.
And I couldn't just, you know, I couldn't embrace was that was happening inside me. And I couldn't just,
you know, I couldn't embrace how I was in that moment. And because I couldn't embrace myself,
it just led to this like snowballing of these patterns. And they just became thicker and thicker
over time. And it's tough, you know, because it ended up happening in that college environment.
But there were also a lot of things about that environment that were positive, you know, like,
I was so grateful that I went to Wesleyan because they really helped me learn
how to think. But at the same time, like the,
when I entered into Wesleyan, I really did not know myself.
And because I didn't know myself, I ended up hurting myself.
Yeah. I often wonder about experiences like that, where you have it, you know,
there's a lot of duality in it, you know, on the one hand, you look, there's so much good that comes from the experience.
But on the other hand, there's, you know, there's a lot of struggle that goes along,
along with it for you. What was it that was underneath it that you felt was causing that
sense of sadness or that sense of anxiety?
Yeah, I think that there were these long currents of sort of like insecurity that stemmed from
being a child, you know, like being moved from Ecuador and that were in a place where
I was really surrounded by so much loving family to having like a very small family where it was
because I had so many aunts and uncles and cousins. We were a huge family in Ecuador, but then
coming to the United States. So I lose that sort of emotional base. And then we get put into like
the like the fitness space of like the United States where it's like make or break, good luck, you know? And, and it, we're lucky that we were able to like have a chance at opportunity, but it's only a
chance, you know, it's not, it's nothing certain. And I think that's what a lot of people don't
understand about the immigrant experience. Cause like, I remember immigrating here and
having a lot of other friends in elementary school or middle school whose parents went
through the same journey and their stories are not successes, right?
They continue to struggle because there isn't as much space for accessibility to wealth
or accessibility to good jobs or accessibility to good education.
And it's tough. It's really tough to make it. But I think those that, um,
going through that journey, it just kept like augmenting this sense of not feeling secure
and just like a lot of sadness. Cause it was, it was hard to see my parents struggle so often,
like on a month, month basis, you know, always trying to figure out how
to pay the rent. And I think that that just kind of kept building over time. And I just did not
have the strength, like the internal fortitude to accept how sad I was about it all, about how it
all happened and why we had to struggle and, or, you know, why it even happened in the first place.
But, but when I started noticing, cause I remember these moments like where I would be in
college and I would, um, the party would be over and it'd be like five or six or seven in the
morning. And I'd be in my room before I go to sleep. And as soon as like the alcohol or the
drugs are wearing off, like that's the feeling I would feel. It was just sadness, just bubbling up.
And that's the thing that I was running away from.
Yeah.
I think we're learning so much more these days about the notion of transgenerational
trauma and how a trauma gets passed from generation to generation, sometimes through shared experience, sometimes through just witnessing, sometimes through something that is almost like less tangible,
but it is sort of like this ethereal fabric that transfers those patterns from one generation to
another. And it sounds like that was definitely part of your experience. Yeah. You describe an
experience, I guess it was probably shortly after coming out of Wesleyan, where I was also ignoring my body.
And my body was just could not tolerate any more of this like sort of constant, you know, this constant unhealthiness that I was giving it. And I, yeah, that, that night in particular, I mean, I just
felt like my heart was totally out of rhythm, falling out of whack. I could barely breathe.
And I, um, I felt like my life was like slipping away. I really felt like I was in the balance.
And, um, in that moment, it was like such a, it was was like a long like two and a half three hour struggle
where I was just like on the ground kind of just crying and thinking about my life and
sort of like thinking like should I call an ambulance should I not I was like really
kind of full of shame that I had even got myself to that point. And, and in that moment, you know, I thought a lot
about my parents, about how much they sacrificed for me to be in this country, for me to like,
you know, get to the point where I've gotten in my life. And I felt that I needed to just make
a change because like, and I kept thinking about my time, you know, in the activist world, like
before I ever started doing drugs or
anything like that, and how empowered I felt and how good it felt to help people.
And I was like, wow, I've become so self-centered, only thinking about my pleasure.
And this has led me to such misery.
And in that moment, I decided to just put away the hard drugs and not go back to them. And, and over time, I like sort of weaned myself off of using anything. And now, you know, I just, I drink water and, and breathe air. That's, that's what I do now. The Apple Watch Series X is here.
It has the biggest display ever.
It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,
making it even more comfortable on your wrist,
whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.
And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes.
The Apple Watch Series X.
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Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.
The pilot's a hitman.
I knew you were going to be fun.
On January 24th.
Tell me how to fly this thing.
Mark Wahlberg.
You know what the difference between me and you is?
You're going to die.
Don't shoot him, we need him!
Y'all need a pilot.
Flight risk.
It sounds like also, you know, like a big part of this for you, while not immediate,
you know, like at some point, I guess it was a year, within a year or two, you stumbled
upon this thing called meditation, in particular, Vipassana.
Yeah, that's right. And which is, can be just
astoundingly disruptive and also transformative in a lot of ways. I'm curious how you actually
stumbled into that experience, whether you proactively sought it out. And then
the first time you actually did, you know, a 10 day retreat, what that was like for you?
Yeah, it was, it was interesting. It kind of came to me pretty serendipitously through one of my really good friends in college, someone that, you know, is one of my best friends. And he,
he ended up traveling through India and he was going through a pretty transformational period in his life as well.
And I think one of the families that he was staying with told him about it, and he ended
up doing a 10-day course. You know, I spent a lot of time partying with him. And it's been fun sort
of seeing the evolution of our friendship. Like we've been friends for, you know, more than a
decade now. And sort of seeing its rough beginnings and now
like the, the, the slope, it's steady harmonization in our relationship.
And, but he ended up doing a course and he wrote back an email to myself and three other friends.
And it was all about love, compassion, and goodwill. And I remember being so shocked by that email and so surprised by it
because he never talked about these things before. And I realized at that point, and this was sort of
like about six months after that event that we just talked about, I had already been focusing
on developing healthy habits, on sort of spending time with myself, like really trying to sit with
myself without meditating, but just being with my emotions, even if they were hard. Because I
realized that that was how I got there. I got to that tough point in my life by ignoring the tough
things that I felt. So I was like, okay, let me do the opposite and just be with them. But after I
heard about his meditation experience and him talking about love, compassion, and goodwill, I knew I was like, whatever he got,
I need the same thing. Like I need the same thing in my life. So I ended up doing a course,
I think about almost like exactly a year after that event. And I, you know, that was just one
of the smartest decisions I've ever made. One of the
hardest things I've ever done because that first course is just so difficult. You know, we spend
all of our time being, you know, in our, the thought-based part of our mind and the intellectual
part of our mind, but we don't quite know how to be intentional about experiencing what's happening
in the body and to be able to sort of like reset my mind in that way
or try to reset my mind in that way in allowing it to feel, you know, to feel reality as about,
as opposed to just thinking about reality was just so immensely challenging. But I had never felt
such deep healing before in my life. So even after that 10 day course, I just kept going back
because I knew I was like, even though that was incredibly, incredibly difficult, the returns that
I got from them were from what I got from it was just much higher than the effort I put in. You
know, even though I had put in a bunch of effort, I was like, wow, I feel better than ever before.
So I need to keep going back. Yeah. That's so interesting. A couple of years
back, we had Tim Ferriss on the show and I've known Tim for years. And I remember him coming
to the studio and he had literally just gotten out of a 10 day retreat. And you could see in his eyes
that there was a lot going on. And it turned out for him that it was actually fairly profoundly traumatic.
Yeah.
There was a lot, a lot that came up, a lot that had to be processed after it. He was very fortunate
in that he had sort of like a very wise mentor who happened to be one of the guys during the
retreat who he was able to have access to on almost a daily basis to help process some of
the profound trauma that comes up. But it can be one of those things where it's not necessarily a joyful experience.
You know, but also it's not the type of thing where you walk out after 10 days and you're like,
okay, well, that was hard, but I learned a lot. And now like I'm in a much better place. It's
like, no, it's sort of like you've got 10 days of seeing clearer than you ever have
before.
Yeah.
But now you have to figure out what to do with what you've now seen more clearly.
Yeah.
That's really well put.
And I'm glad that you're, it's funny thinking about the Tim Ferriss experience besides juxtaposed
to like the Diego Perez experience.
Cause and we didn't, he, he didn't meditate
in the same tradition that I did, but, um, but this is something that, you know, I try to be
really sort of cautious about cause I let people know that I'm a meditator and I let them know
that I meditate in the Guanka tradition, but I also let them know that healing is available to
everyone, but how that healing looks or what path or what method
you take totally depends on your personal conditioning. So, you know, there are a lot
of different forms of meditation, light forms of meditation, harder forms of meditation,
but then even if meditation is not your thing, you know, try one of the very many forms of therapy
that are out there, because there are a
lot of ways to process what's happening in your mind, the type of conditioning that you've been
carrying, the trauma that you've experienced. Healing is really available. And there's a ways
to go in terms of accessibility, but it's certainly more accessible than it's ever been.
But it's really critical for you to kind of measure out like, what can I actually tolerate? And what
would be good for me? You know, you should definitely do things that are challenging,
but you don't want to overwhelm yourself. And I think that's to each their own, you know, for me,
I don't think I could have gone to a better place because it helped me see myself and also like
purify a lot of that conditioning that was just so clogged up in my subconscious. And that unbinding work just helped my mind feel lighter. And it's like you said, you know,
it's very difficult to see yourself much more clearly than ever before. But I think that was
just the best medicine that I personally could have taken, but it's not necessarily for everyone.
Yeah. And I think it depends so much also, right, on what are you stepping back into?
You know, like, do you have some form of support structure, whether it's family or friends
or more formal therapy or whatever it may be?
Or are you stepping back into a life and a world and a circumstance where it is brutally
hard and agitating all the things that have brought you to this place and there's very
little support?
I think it's so unique,
the experience of that. And like you said, I love the fact that you sort of advocate for stepping into a process of awakening in a way that is aligned with the truth of who you are
and where you are at any given moment in time. And we're all different. That circumstance is
different for each of us. And it's also totally relevant to the level of trauma that you carry.
Like if you carry like very, very intense trauma, then your pathway into entering yourself
may be something that needs to be a little lighter so that you can process bit by bit
in a way that feels manageable.
Because what you want for your healing journey is you want it to be
something that's sustainable, something that you can do lifelong. But if too much comes out too,
you know, too quickly, and you just feel it overwhelming, and you just want to close that
door, then no progress gets made, you know, so you really got to, you know, find your own medicine.
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I know for you, so you come out of that and this becomes an inciting incident effectively
for what has now become a years long practice for you, a meditative practice.
So it's not just retreat based.
It's not like, hey, once a year, I'm going to dip into retreat.
This is a commitment that you've made for a bunch of years, for a lot of hours.
And along the way, you're also stepping back into your life, I guess,
stepping back to a certain extent into organizing, but writing becomes a part of your experience as
well. And I'm curious how that enters your experience, your work, because it doesn't
sound like it was a central part of who you were or
what you were doing before. Yeah. Yeah. In no way was it important to me. Like writing was never,
especially creative writing was never something that I looked at as something that I wanted to do
or as a possibility for like a future serious endeavor. You know, after I started meditating, I did a few
courses and then I started, I kind of jumped back into that world. I was doing some like
nonprofit consulting and some organizing work on the side with this really great
youth abolitionist group in Boston. And that, you know, felt very sort of nourishing and correct in
the moment. But then I kept feeling
like as I kept, cause I would go to a few courses a year, I would like really make time. Cause it
felt like an important healing period for me to do a few 10 day courses. And also cause I was still
sort of like sampling it. You know, I wanted to really make sure that the healing was real. Cause
I didn't want to be delusional. You know, I know, I was done with being delusional. I was done with the lies. I wanted to be as honest with myself as possible. So I wanted to run
a real experiment and see if this was actually giving me results. And when I started seeing that
it was real and my mind felt lighter and also the intensity of my reaction started decreasing,
you know, I started because it used to go through the same difficulties of life, the same ups and downs. And I noticed that, you know, I wasn't reacting as intensely as before,
but there was something else kind of happening in the background where this like bubble of
creativity started coming up and I could feel, yeah, it was like, it just felt like my mind had
more space and not like bubbles, but like a spring was like
opening up. And I started writing very sort of sporadically at first. Like I remember I wrote a
poem after my first retreat. And then I don't think I really wrote much for like four or five,
six months. And then slowly it started coming. And after a number of retreats, I felt, I was
like, okay, I was like, I think the healing
is real. I know it's real, but I know that I'm not personally fully healed or anything like that,
but I feel like I'm on the journey and I should write about it. Even though I'm not like,
you know, wise or anything like that, I feel like there are perspectives that I want to write about
to try to sort of process the learning that
I'm doing myself. And if I share them, like, let's see if they also resonate with other people.
And that's kind of when it picked up because that's, so I did my first course in 2012, it was
July of 2012. And then I started taking writing seriously. It was like about like
the very beginnings of 2015. So it took a while for it
to get started. Yeah. And you start sharing, you know, it's interesting because I, when you sort
of look at the body of work that you've built and offered publicly over a period of years now,
it's, it's, it's vast. And it also, in a way it defies, it defies description. You look at it and you're like, is it poetry?
Kind of.
Is it philosophy?
Kind of.
Is it theology?
Kind of.
Is it social science?
Kind of.
Is it social commentary?
Kind of.
But it's interesting because you sort of stepped into this space where it feels like almost the fact that you weren't somebody who studied
the written form and devoted yourself to it and the craft and knew all like who had come before
you and the lineage and the structures before that. I wonder from the outside looking in,
it almost feels like it gave you the freedom to just step into it and do it the way that just
felt right to you rather than feeling constrained by
what you thought was the appropriate form stepping into it.
Does that feel landed anyways, Drew?
I mean, I don't think the description has been more apt about what I do.
I appreciate you taking a look at that because it's funny.
I'm realizing now more and more, and especially, you know, looking back at things in retrospect,
the medium did not matter to me.
The message mattered.
And I felt like these reflections were bubbling up inside me.
So I wanted to just put them out there in a way that when, in a way that people could connect with.
And I also like, you know, did sort of do things strategically in the sense that I know
in a time where people are overwhelmed with information, minimalism would be good to combine
different messages with minimalism would feel right.
And then I think over time, it started developing into something that might look like poetry,
but, you know, I'm not an academic poet. Like it's not
the type of like literary poetry type, you know, the things where these journals that people put
out great works, but that's not my style. That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm never trying to
pretend to do that. I'm more so writing in a prose slash like pop poetry format. That's a term that
Lang Lave sort of created a few years ago that kind of like
summarizes this new wave of expression that is more so like about flexibility. And it's just
about how people feel. Like even though, and that's one of the things that's the struggle
of poetry, right? It's like this ivory tower, like, do you have the skills to be a poet? Well,
some people still do these days and they
still write poetry in that format. But now it also doesn't matter because everyone has the right to
share their perspective and some people may be attracted to it. So I feel really sort of fortunate
to be born at that time of creative freedom and also like digital platforms where you can sort of leverage and spread your work and
see if other people find it useful. Yeah. I love that. I feel like we're in this time now where,
you know, the sort of the hallowed ways of like how you're supposed to do things has just kind
of fallen away. And there are certain people who certainly still have a dogged attachment,
you know, to that form and structure. And there's a bit of an ivory tower type of thing that gets wrapped around it. But I feel like the
notion of being able to share in a way that is open and accessible and real is more important
to a lot of people these days, both as a creator and as somebody who might receive what's being
created, then the structure itself, not to say that there isn't a lot of grace
and beauty in the art form and really studying it. I think I read some of the classical poets
and I'm just moved to tears in seconds. And at the same time, I can read something you've written
or read something Cleo Wade puts out there or read something. And it's the feeling. And it's
also the invitation that says this was
written for all of us.
Yeah.
You know, you don't have to have a certain level of education or thoughtfulness or, you
know, like linguistic expertise in order to actually just let it land in your soul and
know there's something true about it.
And I think it's beautiful because we can have space for the people who are, you know,
from that type of like academic rigor that they're creating their written art from. That's fantastic,
you know, keep doing that. But just because popular poetry has emerged and more people now
feel like they even have the right to call themselves artists, even though they weren't
educated in a particular manner.
I think that's also really beautiful. So it doesn't need to be combative. I think there's just there's space for everybody. Just do your own thing and keep going.
Yeah, no, 100%. You also decided to step into that space into the domain with the pen name,
Young Pueblo. And I've heard you describe it, you know, a number of different ways and a number
of different reasons. Most recently, I think I heard you describe it as a project effectively.
Yeah. Yeah. It's totally a project. So tell me more about, about that and what you mean by that.
Cause I'm curious. Yeah. I think, um, when I started writing, I just had the sense that I
could write a few books, not very many books. Like I'll just, I'll write a few and, you know, I want to write because I really have something to say, not because I feel like
my career is dependent on it. So like, I don't, I don't want to be a person who writes like 80
books. Like I want to just write, you know, a good handful, but I wanted to make sure to position
the work within a proper frame. And that was a frame that I was really, was resonating with me at the time, just realizing how human beings, like as a whole, know how to do at a collective level yet. Like the simple, like my favorite example is think about when you were going to kindergarten
and your teacher was trying to teach you the most basic things, like cleaning up after
yourself, not telling lies, not hitting other people, being kind to one another, you know,
these sort of fundamental things.
But if you were to scale that up to the
human, like the level of humanity, we don't know how to do those things at all. You know,
we're constantly, we're destroying the planet with the way that we produce things, we're
constantly harming each other. And there isn't as much space for kindness that, and you know,
kindness and compassion being a real measure for maturity. I think we're growing into that.
And I know that I'm growing into that as well as an individual, but it felt like the idea of
Young Pueblo that all of humanity is young, because Young Pueblo literally means young people.
It felt like just important to talk about these sort of reflective ideas, these pieces that
hopefully spur on self-awareness, and that it could be one of
the very many things that's helping humanity grow up.
I love that.
And I also have this curiosity.
There's like a little thing in my head that's wondering something, which is that, you know,
when you finally step into the space of writing and sharing ideas, and then you say, okay,
so I'm going to step into also this pen name and
it represents a number of different things for you. Was there anything in you that also wondered,
am I possibly using this as a way to hide as well? Oh, that's funny. Yeah, for sure. I think
it was like a skillful method. Like I didn't know that it was going to be this big,
but looking back on that moment,
like the name just really felt right.
And then once, you know,
we get to that place where it's like 100,000 followers,
500,000 followers at that point, I was like, oh, sweet.
Like, I'm really glad that I made,
that I made this name Young Pueblo
because people think Young Pueblo is
famous, but they don't really know Diego behind the creator, behind the words.
And that felt really good because I wanted to set up, even with the Instagram, because it all
started from the Instagram account. I wanted to set things up so that people would really focus
on the ideas and the messages. And it's not the type of account where I'm
trying to like make my face famous. Like that's the last thing I want. I want to hopefully make
these ideas famous and like have them help create positive impact in the world. But I don't, yeah,
I don't want to like aggrandize myself in any way or like, I don't know. That's just not what I'm
trying to do. Like I'm here for impact, but I'm not here for fame. And Young Pueblo just feels like it was just a smart call.
Because now, you know, when I go out, people don't, they don't recognize me in the street
or anything like that.
And I think that's healthy.
Yeah, I love that.
I know a lot of people think about how to step into a social space or share their art,
share their words,
their thoughts, and there's a fear wrapped around it.
And I think the hiding can sometimes be hiding from a place of fear, but also hiding from can also be a positive thing in terms of like, well, let me just build healthy boundaries
around this and do what I can both just to protect me and my humanity and my ability to be present in my life, but also to make it not about me and make it about the ideas.
Yeah.
And it feels like that was really the deeper motivation or at least part of the motivation behind it for you.
Yeah, definitely.
I think that's been, I don't know, in a way, I hope, because I don't really, I can't tell
how people are receiving things, but I hope it sort of decentralizes me as a creator and
more so makes different pieces about all of us.
You know, we've all felt heartbreak.
We all know what sadness feels like.
We all know what the excitement of entering a new relationship is like.
So hopefully we can find the generality
of the human experience inside of those words.
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
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Let's dive a little bit into some of the ideas in your new book, because what started for you
as a way to share regular ideas and thoughts on social platforms, eventually turned into your
first book, Inward, a couple of years ago, and now into this next book. And I guess before we
even get into the ideas, my curiosity is, so the name of the book is Clarity and Connection. The first one was Inward. What was it inside of you that made you say,
it's time to write a next more substantial thing and this is what it needs to be?
Oh, I liked the challenge and I knew that was the direction I was heading in because I was enjoying
minimalism for a while, but then I very naturally started noticing that I was enjoying minimalism for a while,
but then I very naturally started noticing
that I was just writing more.
And I was like, let me not curb that.
You know, let me just let it flow and see what comes out.
I still try to be rather sharp with the amounts,
the amount of words I use.
I don't want to be like overly wordy
because I think even with, you know,
the clarity and connection that,
that book has a lot more short essays.
But even those are trim because I'm still trying to maintain that sort of like young Pueblo quality.
But yeah, I mean, the new book has like three or four times the amount of words as the first book. but it's still sort of appeasable in the manner that it's like you can open it up to any page and
read a few pieces and get a lot for your day to think about.
Yeah. It's interesting because when I read what you've been writing and you compare this to
then InWord and then to years of things that you've been posting online,
there's an efficiency of language that feels like it's actually become more efficient over time.
I don't know whether you feel that or whether it's been an intentional practice.
I'm a huge fan as a writer of Hemingway and his just astonishing efficiency and use of
language.
He could throw out five words and break your heart open.
It feels like from the outside in that there is a devotion of craft
around that for you.
Is that accurate?
Oh yeah.
Oh, there's definitely, I mean, it's, it's a lot.
I think when I first started spending intentional time thinking, okay, let me hone this voice
as a writer that has never really stopped.
I'm always like when I come up with a piece or an idea, like, and I'm reading
my work, what I'm doing is just striking out words left and right. I'm just like trimming it down,
trimming it down to just be as clear as possible. Because there's a few things I try to keep in
mind. Like not only am I trying to make it accessible to any reader of any education level,
but I'm also trying to make it accessible to people who,
you know, because English is the lingua franca of the world, right? The whole vast majority of the
world, that's the way the world functions is through English a lot of the times. And a lot
of people in the world know a little bit of English. And I try to, you know, right now that
I have a global audience, it's like, hopefully I can make something that, you know, someone who has studied English for a few years can still get something out of this piece.
That makes a lot of sense.
So the topic of the New Book, Clarity and Connection is, you know, you realize really quickly diving into it that a really big, big topic is the notion of accumulation.
Accumulation on a couple of different levels,
but talk to me a little bit about this.
Yeah, there's, I mean, and I've really like,
I've really owe this idea to the meditation, right?
To learning from SN Goenka and Seadju Bakken.
And you really, once you start meditating,
you start seeing how every reaction the mind has actually
accumulates a little pattern in the mind, right? It makes an imprint and it adds up over time.
And this is something that became so clear to me during like 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020,
where it was just like, wow, like, you know, all these reactions,
I'm just like encoding all of these ways to repeat these same patterns in the past. So basically,
like if I've reacted in the past with a lot of anger, then I'm much more liable to react with
anger in the future. And realizing that the mind is malleable in that way where it can accumulate things.
It can actually also let things go. And that's our gateway to healing. And I found that so like,
you know, I find it so hopeful and it's like a real sigh of relief that I can actually let
things go. And through different methods, you know, we can actually peel back that
system of accumulation and, of accumulation and feel lighter.
Yeah.
I mean, because you really reflect if you think about the process of meditation and
not all meditations, but certain approaches to meditation, for sure.
It's not about stopping the flow of things into you.
It's about allowing them in, but also being equally free and allowing them to just process themselves out.
It's about non-grasping as they move through. It's about noticing and identifying. And,
and I, it feels like, you know, that's the macro lens for what you're talking about in the context
of the way that thoughts and feelings and emotions accumulate inside of us. And instead of making it
a trap, um, like opening the door, making it more like, you know, the wind blowing through a screen door on a summer porch or something like that. thinking about it as something that's really sort of bliss oriented, that we're just doing it to
become happier. And with a lot of different meditations from the Buddha Dhamma, sort of
from the orientation of the Buddha, happiness is an ultimate goal, but the way to get there is
through purification, right? You're trying to purify the mind, clean it out of all this like
junk that you've accumulated over time. So you're not necessarily going to be happy immediately,
or you're not going to be like super joyful all of the time. It's about being real with what's
happening in the moment and developing a sense of equanimity where you can observe what's happening
without reacting to it, without craving or without aversion. And you can be with what is. And through that
ability to be a quantumist, a lot of happiness does emerge from that. A lot of joy does emerge
from that, from just being able to see reality without constantly projecting onto it.
Yeah. You break the book into these five different parts. You start out with a look
at self-awareness. There's a piece you write on numbness and dissociation. I wonder if you,
do you happen to have a copy of the book with you?
Would you be open to reading?
Yeah.
Can you tell me what page it is?
Yeah.
Page 11, actually, was the piece I was thinking of.
After the trauma, I shifted into survival mode.
Unknowingly, I shielded my being with numbness.
Numb to letting others in.
Numb to my inner turmoil.
Numb to accepting what happened.
Unknowingly, I fell into a cycle of craving.
Craving safety.
Craving nourishment.
Craving no more pain.
My reactions were large and loud. Anything that did not go my way was perceived as a potential
threat. My focus centered on protecting my delicate sense of self. I had little energy
to place myself in anyone else's shoes. It took the constant feeling of dissatisfaction and the exhaustion of never feeling at ease for me to start pulling myself out of my disassociated way of living and finally say enough to a constant state of defense before awareness.
I feel like that speaks to so many elements of the moment that so many people are
in right now. Yeah, it feels common. It's, um, I took a, like, you know, thinking back to different
hard moments in my life, but I also, I remember writing that and thinking about like, what does
trauma feel like in the body? Like from my own perspective and from others as well,
to see what that, like navigating that process
really feels like.
And also from hearing, you know, from my own story,
from hearing the stories of others,
there's that point of like dissatisfaction
with the patterns that you've accumulated
that sort of fuels you to really start going inward. Yeah. So one of the other
things that you explore is it comes out of the category of what you call unbinding,
which I think is kind of a fascinating word. Tell me what you mean by that.
Sort of similar to the point that I was making before about how we accumulate things.
A lot of times these things
we accumulated get knotted up into patterns. So for me, it felt like the pattern of running away
was something that was just so thickly knotted up that when I started doing the opposite of that and
spending time with my emotions, even when things got hard and turbulent inside of me,
it felt almost like I was trying to
break through a wall because all those patterns were so knotted up together. So I really had to
put a lot of effort into just doing something as simple as being with myself, as sitting down with
myself and not trying to run away. And in a way, it does feel like those knots that we tie, we have to do some intentional
unbinding of those knots.
Yeah.
I feel like so many of us are in that process right now.
And there's an assumption that I think a lot of folks make that you speak to in this section,
which is this notion that says, let me put my life on hold while I get this figured out,
while I do the healing work,
and then I'm going to come back like a healed rock star, and then I can start living again.
Yeah.
And you argue against this approach.
Yeah. It's not my favorite approach because you only really find out if you've been successful
in your healing by how well you navigate the ups and downs of life. By trying to like remove yourself from life,
you won't know how much progress you've really made.
And you almost have to like let yourself
be in the present moment and let life test you
to see have my reaction levels changed?
Am I being more compassionate?
Am I actively taking care of my self-love
and honoring my boundaries even during difficult moments? And yeah, I think removing yourself from life doesn't really support you and making as much progress as you can. flash to, you know, the Buddhist path is always fascinated me because they've carved out two
paths, you know, the householder approach and the monastic path. And there's this really
fascinating acknowledgement of the fact that some people are going to go and spend a lot of time in
solitude or remove themselves from society. And others are actually going to stay completely
immersed in civil life around them. and that you don't actually have
to step out.
If you make that choice, if it's right for you, there's a way to do it.
But if you also choose to be completely immersed in life as it happens and swirls around you
all day, there's also a way to do it that way.
You can be present in that life and also present in your own unfolding, in your own process
of liberation and collective liberation without having to
extract yourself from it. And I always thought that was so prescient, the way that it was so
clearly identified and there was almost like a permission given to live and also do the work.
Yeah, I think it's quite beautiful. If you look back to the really like, you know, the suttas
of that sort of encode the Buddhist teaching, rather the earliest sources of the Buddhist
teaching, there are a lot of different householders that become very enlightened.
From Anathapindaka to Chitta, there's just different people that the Buddha talks about,
men and women who just sort of take that next level leap. And they're still householders,
you know, they don't necessarily take robes and become monks. And there's nothing, you know,
the work that I'm putting out there is nothing against being a monk, if that's what you so desire.
That's actually a beautiful thing to be able to give your life, you know, because what do monks
do? They're sort of like donating their lives in service of the Dharma, which is beautiful. But if that's not for you, that's great. It's also not for me. I like being married and I like being able to move about my life in my own way. But that does not stop you from making serious process on the path of liberation. Yeah. Which also brings up really actually the next
thing that you focus on, which is the fact that so often, you know, we're actually not doing this
in isolation, that we're doing this in relationship with ourselves and with other people, with those
that we love, with intimate partners. You're right. It's not about finding a partner who has
flawless emotional maturity. It's about finding someone who can match your level of commitment, not just to the relationship,
but commitment to heal themselves so they can love better, see more clearly and have
more presence.
Tell me more.
Yeah.
I mean, and that's, that's the slow learning that, um, that I've been doing from just being
with my wife, you know, cause we, I think a lot of these pieces that I
wrote about partnership, they emerged pretty directly from the experiences that I've had with
my wife and how we've moved into just like a whole different phase in our relationship now,
where like the first part of our relationship when we were young, right? I was 19 and she was 18 when we first
got together. But that first part of our relationship was really tumultuous and turbulent.
We didn't know ourselves. We didn't know how to treat each other well. We kind of sort of stumbled
through those years. You know, there was a lot of like a connection was, was real,
but it wasn't yet deep. And it had no emotional maturity because I think your connection only really can get super deep when you are able to open up those layers of yourself by getting to
know yourself. And then you can then share, you can share them with another person and see how
you can better harmonize together. But ever since we both started meditating, she's a serious meditator too.
She's gone through these same transitions as well. And we've have found that a lot of times
when we used to fall into arguments, fall into conflict, a lot of that intensity has been removed
so that when we have, you you know what we used to have
arguments now they're more like discussions or they're disagreements so that there's more sharing
and more of us trying to understand each other's perspectives as opposed to trying to win over each
other or you know like trying to one-up each other in different ways. A lot of that, and in no ways is our relationship perfect or anything like that.
You know, we still have our struggles, but we have more tools with which to properly
like process our struggle.
And our primary tool is our own personal inner work that helps us just be more compassionate,
be more aware and be more, you know, just stop projecting onto each other all the time.
Yeah.
And I feel like those same tools allow us to maybe grasp our own past selves a little bit less, you know, and past selves maybe meaning five minutes ago. You know, the position that we argued fiercely for last week, you know, I think the practice
sometimes allows you to zoom the lens out a little bit and kind of like when somebody
counters that position and you believe it strongly, rather than just say, okay, it's
time to put the shields up and defend like crazy.
You're kind of like, okay, that's, you know, I identified strongly with this set of beliefs
or this thought.
And maybe I still do, but let me at least hold
myself open to the possibility that there is a different point of view here. And it's, you know,
so it's not that we're just completely surrendering ourselves to being remade on a daily basis, but
maybe we hold on a little bit less lightly along the way. But you know, one of the things that I'm curious about is what
happens when two people are in a committed relationship and one is deep into a process
of growth and one either isn't at all, or they're on a much different path or the pace and the
commitment is profoundly different because that also can create its own sense of friction. Yeah, that's a great question.
I think I've seen a lot of examples in my life
of people being in really profound, deep relationships
and also walking different paths.
Some people taking the path of therapy really seriously
and getting a lot of benefit from that,
but then they're not so much into meditating. And I've seen relationships really sort of blossom. I do see
the challenges. I remember the one challenge in particular in my relationship was when I felt this
very big aspiration to start meditating two hours a day because I was getting so much for meditating.
I was like, I got to keep this going on you know, on a daily basis, really spend time on it
to keep this experiment going. And I started doing that before my wife. And there was a bit of a sort
of an odd moment where, you know, she had started meditating as well, doing the 10 day courses,
but she wasn't quite ready to start meditating two hours a day.
So I think for a number of months, I'd say for about five, six months, I just, you know, just,
just felt really committed to it. And, and I kept going and eventually, you know, she was moving at her own speed. She also wanted to do this, but she didn't feel quite ready. And I tried my best to
not push her or anything like that. And I tried my best to not push her or
anything like that. And I made sure that she, you know, she was okay with my decision to take time
from our time together so that I could spend it on myself. And she was really supportive of that.
And eventually things sort of clicked for her and she felt like she was ready and she started.
But it was interesting seeing the opposite of that, where when, so she was done smoking
marijuana before I was, she just was, you know, it wasn't really serving her.
And then for me, I felt like I needed a little more time with it.
And there was this period where she had totally stopped and I kind of kept smoking for a few
more months.
And she gave me the gift of her patience, right? Where she was just like,
you know, do your thing. Like, I know you want to stop and just like, you know, find your time,
move at your own speed. And that really helped me because I was able to feel like I didn't have a
lot of pressure hanging over me. And I was really able to work out things within myself and really
see that, you know, this really is not serving me anymore. And it's actually like limiting the depth of my meditation. So I, you know, I felt really
committed to going deeper. So I ended up letting it go. And that was also really beautiful. But
even realizing that we really do move at our own speeds. It's a hard thing, but an important thing to embrace in long-lasting,
committed relationships because, yeah, you're not going to heal at the same speeds. You're
not going to rest at the same speeds. You're really your own individual person.
Yeah, which brings communication really front and center and openness and vulnerability,
which I know are topics that are dear to our heart also. And it also really points to the very title of this book,
Clarity and Connection. At the end of the day, it all circles back to that. And it's almost like,
you know, connection is to a certain extent, the byproduct of a devotion to seeing more clearly
in the first place, and then communicating what you see and also being open to that being
communicated back to you.
I want to ask you about one other thing before we start to wrap our conversation and something
that I know I've heard bubbling up in your conversations more and more recently, but
I'm guessing it's something that you've been nailing on for a long time, which is the notion
of what you term structural compassion.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's, um, it's funny.
I've been like that term.
Um, it's a term that hasn't been like fully developed yet.
I don't think anybody, and nobody really owns it, but to me, I see a lot of structural
harm in the world where a lot of different systems kind of crash upon each
other. And a lot of people end up getting hurt for different, like if you take economic inequality,
right, all around the world, that there are just so many people who just struggle to make their
material ends meet. And it's not like, you know, they're not like lazy or anything like that.
They're just like, they're just stuck in a poverty trap. Cause I, and I know from firsthand, like I know how hard
my parents worked and how they literally were not able to leave that poverty trap until my brother
and I became older and started adding funds to the family. You know, these, these, these structures
that we exist in and when you can take that to not just from economic inequality, but you know, these structures that we exist in, and you can take that to not just from economic inequality, but, you know, racism, you can even look at climate change or, you know, patriarchy. if we are able to sort of turn them upside down and intentionally inject compassion into the
situation, I hope that we can create something that we can call structural compassion and be
able to recognize that in different areas where people are being either oppressed or hurt in some
manner or another, we keep our eyes open to that and we stay active in trying to just uplift all people. Because I really,
I see a transition happening in this century, hopefully, where we expand our idea of human
rights to include that people are no longer suffering in this intense way, in a material way,
so that they're, you know, can be educated, have healthcare, have these sort of simple basic
rights fully met globally around the world so that we can all live well.
Because, and then, and I think a lot of people fear that because immediately they think like,
oh, this is like some strict form of communism, but it's like, no, it's just, we're just
humanizing the world.
We're just trying to, you know, help all people live well.
And that doesn't mean that
some people aren't going to be wealthy, you know, people can still benefit from the things that they
create. But we do want to sort of remove that intense struggle that a lot of people go through,
like, you know, there's still people dying from hunger, people dying from simple diseases that
could be fixed, and people suffering from different forms of racism and this onslaught
of climate change that's about to befall us.
How are we going to be able to interact compassionately with each other so that we can support all
of us flourishing and living well?
Yeah, that is a big question.
But the notion of structural compassion, I just like that.
Yeah. It paints an image because we know that there's a lot of structural harm, but
let's move to a structural compassion.
Right. Yeah. It's like, what would the systems of compassion to operationalize it at scale be?
It's a really interesting question. Yeah. It feels like a good place for us to come full
circle as well. So hanging out in this container of a good life project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? much equanimity as possible. I think equanimity has been the real, the treasure that I've found
in this life. And I think it means, you know, spending time meditating. Like I go to courses
really often, but I would like to, as I get older, to go to more and more because I get so much from
that. And because I get so much from that, I'm able to give more. Thank you.
Hey, before you leave, if you love this conversation, say that you will also love the conversation that we had with Tara Brock about
wisdom and compassion. You'll find a link to Tara's episode in the show notes. And of course,
if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite
listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable,
and chances are you did since you're still listening here,
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Just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know,
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together with more ease and more joy.
Tell them to listen.
Then even invite them to talk about what you've both discovered.
Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that's how
we all come alive together.
Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.
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Mayday, mayday.
We've been compromised.
The pilot's a hitman.
I knew you were going to be fun.
On January 24th.
Tell me how to fly this thing.
Mark Wahlberg.
You know what the difference between me and you is?
You're going to die.
Don't shoot him, we need him.
Y'all need a pilot.
Flight Risk.