Life Uncut - Have Our Boundaries Destroyed Our Sense of Community?

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Hey lifers!Did you grow up in a house where you could openly chat about things like s3x? We’re on opposite ends of the scale on this one!Britt has reverse manifested and ended up with a pretty grim case of food poisoning.We end up having a chat about how we each feel about manifesting and goal setting.If you have kids, do you experience ‘mum guilt’? Laura has a work commitment that means she can’t make something that is important to Marlie Mae. We speak about the expectations on parents these days when they’re also trying to juggle work.  Fleurine Tideman recently wrote a substack titled 'Enough with the boundaries; losing my stepfather showed me the community we're sacrificed for our so called 'boundaries'.She told the story of her step father who was battling terminal cancer when she noticed how much the neighbours and friends stepped up without even being asked to.  We spoke about our shift towards outsourcing everything so we don’t feel indebted to others and how we all seem to focus more on convenience. We asked: Do you think our inclination to set boundaries has removed our sense of community? Does the idea of someone dropping over unannounced feel warm or anxiety inducing? Do you know your neighbours? Do you agree that in order to have a village, you have to be a villager? You can read Fleurine’s substack here. You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode was recorded on Camaragal land. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. Brittany has gastro. No, hey, firstly, I just had this thought. I often forget the stuff that we talk about on here. I forget that my biggest fan in the world is my dad. Papadoni listens, shout out he listens to every episode does he listen to every single one still every episode he gets up at 4 30 a.m every day to work out to do his pull-ups yep to do his pull-ups but big big times he's keeping fit and he listens to the podcast and i often get messages from him you know if he is inspired by an interview or he gives me really good feedback like he genuinely listens

he's like hey britty i loved what this such and such said in this episode and it was really thought-provoking it was interesting to hear your guys opinion on this and it's always like quite deep you know good feedback solid feedback we stan a supportive daddy that's nice down the day he was like I heard you had a little bit of fun at the laser clinic sorry what I remember when I was talking about laser getting laser and the blowing air was on my vagina and I said it was ticklish and he's like he's like hey Brittany it's good to know what you're keeping maintenance down there like he just jokes about it I'm like I just forget that my dad listens to this so we cut a different version of the audio that's just for your dad and we'll we'll cut out anything to

do with body or sex with Ben like we're just an amended version but also it's game of your dad to say anything like you can listen they're the conversations you don't bring up they're the ones that you don't mention nah there's not my family's one of those families there's six of us my parents be married 48 years or something and that would be a dinner table conversation like there's nothing that is off limits like the idea of talking about sex and all that stuff we were such an open family which I love now I love and I didn't realize it was so open at the time I thought it was normal like it just created an environment where you could talk about anything and like my parents it used to make us cringe but we would know when they'd had sex growing up not as kids but as

teenagers I'm disgusted for you and I was like oh Laura and I shudder in divorced parents totally but as teenagers you just know that come out dad give like mom a little hit on the bottom and you'd know and I'd be like you guys had sex didn't you and dad would be like yeah we did mom would be like Tony not in front of the kids like it was just that kind of a family and I get now as an adult that that I was a minority and actually I drove my friend to work today and she said you know how rare it is to have your family unit these days like to have parents that are still together for so long and that's still like each other and still like each other and still attracted to each other yeah lots of parents like live amicably and like they co-parent and

And they're like, you know, they're in the comfort stage happily. I've never related to something you've ever said less. Same. Same. I literally have never. You're like broken homes. I'm like, I've never once seen my parents, even thinking all the way back when, tap each other on the bum

in a cheeky way. If anyone wants to talk about parents fighting over child support, like I can really relate to that. Slide into my DMs. If anyone has like a three-month period where they didn't see their parents speak, I'm with you. You know what's so funny? Really? I can't imagine.

My dad, you guys all know Terry Byrne. He lives on Magnetic Island. With the koalas. He lives with the koalas. He's like one with the koalas. No Wi-Fi. No, absolutely no Wi-Fi. Oh, actually, he might have it now.

He's definitely got a mobile phone. Every day I get a nature update from my dad. He still doesn't really understand what a podcast is. He calls it a pod book. I actually love that so much. And I never, ever have to worry about him hearing or knowing anything that I say or do. So that's fine. I'm in the clear with Terry Byrne.

I'm in the same boat and my dad doesn't know that I have ADHD. We created a whole 10-part mini-series about it, but I was like, it's fine, he doesn't have Instagram or he doesn't know how to listen to podcasts, so I'm in the clear. Should you just maybe send him a link? Would you? No. There's probably things in it Keisha doesn't want him to hear,

to be honest. There's a lot in it that I don't – yeah. What, like that time that you got the lip flip and couldn't give a blowjob? You don't want your dad to hear that. This is my career, aren't you proud? Something else I did want to say is, and I know that, Laura, you're going to hate what I'm about to say. Why?

Well, I was because it's about, like, manifesting. I don't hate manifesting. We can talk about that in a second. But, like, I don't hate it. I have reasons to dislike the version of manifesting that's kind of touted. Yeah, well, this is like an anti-manifest. Manifest probably isn't the word, but you know how a couple of weeks ago we were talking about how I had said Delilah's never been to the hospital.

she has never been sick before and then three hours later I was taking her to the emergency vet and I was like wow I willed that into fruition that day I did it again a couple of days ago so on the weekend I was talking to a girl and we were talking about food poisoning that day I have not talked about food poisoning in like it's not something that comes up right and I literally said to her she's like careful you don't get it when you go to Bali and I said oh yeah I've been to Bali loads I don't get it I was like I actually don't get food poisoning like I couldn't tell you the last time I got food poisoning. And she's like, wow, you're so lucky. And I was like, yeah, I must have guts of steel. So then all of us go out as a group that day on National

Carbonara Day, mind you. It was also the late celebration for my birthday, but I think we were celebrating Carbonara Day. It was a week later celebration for Laura's birthday, but it was also National Carbonara Day. I only know that because Carbonara would be the meal that I had on my deathbed. Anyway, so we went to this amazing restaurant, like quite high end, quite classy, quite expensive and i was like the carbonara is going to be amazing waited an hour and a half for it they were very slow we did have a 5 30 booking because that it was so it was actually so busy that that's the only time we could get in it's like a geriatric booking isn't it we were like we'll take it's not a geriatric it's a parenting booking well they had 5 30 or 8 30 when i went

to book and i knew us well enough to know which of those options 5 30 is the mum time slot okay No, but 5.30 is also my time slot. I don't want to go out and start the evening at 8.30. It was quite expensive. Like it cost me a couple of hundred bucks for the meal. And then I got home and that carbonara did me so dirty that about four hours, almost to the minute, I got this pang in my stomach and I was like, what's that? I was like, oh, that doesn't feel good.

Within 10 minutes, I was on all fours in the bathroom, both ends, like heaving. They're the moments where you're happy you live on your own. No, they're the moments I want. Yes. Like I don't want Ben to be seeing that, but also someone to help you in those moments would also be good. Like don't come in the room, don't see it, but like slide me stuff under the door.

I'll never forget. I'll never forget when I used to. I mean, so everyone, we have a new videographer. Vanessa, welcome to the team. We've been keeping her in the background for a couple of weeks. Our video editor, Vanessa. So Ness and I have lived together for, I mean, we were housemates like when I went on The Bachelor, right?

so we lived together for a really long time. Yeah, this job's nepotism. Yeah. She's my child. We've been like the closest friends for over a decade now. A decade? Eight years. Almost a decade, yeah.

And Nessa's wife, Jess, we all lived together before that they were like a married couple and one night Jess got food poisoning so bad but I was like, is she okay? Open the door up. There was Jess like poor thing in the midst of both ends dying. It's so bad. She still hates me and will probably hate me telling that story. That's okay.

I love her. It's been seven years since. She was like, looked at me like she was an animal and was like, get out! Because no one needs to see that. I picture Gollum from Lord of the Rings. No, it's like Brian's face. There was another type of ring that was on fire. Not a dress of any of us.

The ring of fire. Well, I did message. So I was heaving in the bathroom for a long time and then it sort of faded down a little bit and I crawled back into bed like my Gollum and I messaged the group and I was like, is anyone else sick? Is anyone else feeling sick? Messaged Keisha privately. Like he was like, are you sure it's food poisoning, not something else?

And I was like, bro, if you saw me right now, you would not be questioning that. The only thing though is, and like, you can't say that I'm going to hate this. I don't think you manifested food poisoning. These moments to me are coincidences. I know that there's been two of them recently. Even someone who's really into manifesting would say that that's not how manifesting works. Well, it's also, and I'm joking, it's the anti-manifest anyway.

It's like thinking bad things and bad things will happen. Yeah. Yes. There's got to be something in that, but I've been doing it a lot lately. For anyone who's really into manifesting, please don't think that I don't think it has a purpose. I just don't like the simplified version of it. I don't think that it is like, think good thoughts and you're going to get out of situations. I think there are a lot of complexities in the lives that we all live. And I think that it is a luxury in a lot of times to be

able to prioritize manifesting. That's not to say that I don't think you should have goals and work towards achievements and whatnot. The thing I don't seem to resonate with is that I often will hear people and I think it is like a different type of goal setting right you know you've got the thing that you want written down or maybe you say it or however you actually go about manifesting and then if you achieve it sometimes I think that if you label it as manifesting I'm like are you taking it away from the fact that you worked really hard towards something like you are the reason that that happened so don't put it down to like some spiritual thing you made that happen for yourself and does it maybe take away from like your sense of pride about that or your

sense of feeling like you had determination to reach a certain goal or achieve something that you wanted? Well, I don't look at manifesting like it's spiritual. I look at it as a step in achieving goals. It is just another step, whether it's subconsciously, it makes people chase that goal harder when you've written it down and you're working towards it and you're thinking about it all the time, because that's a big part of manifesting, right? It's like thinking about it, looking for it, working for it. Then you see opportunities that you might not have seen before. You take opportunities you might not have seen before. And it all comes back to that idea of like really putting into fruition what you want so it's not that you sit at home and we've

spoken about this so much but I believe Ben's new football job came off the back of manifesting and that's a whole another chat and that's not just manifesting but I taught him how to do it it was definitely a move that was not on the cards in any capacity and we didn't think was possible for a multitude of reasons but I taught him how I do it to write it down and think about it and then off the back of that he did things that he probably wouldn't have done otherwise just because it's in the front of your mind so it's it's just about another step in the road to achieving a goal yeah and I guess maybe it is the difference in how people describe it like I look at it as it's a goal-setting activity I think I struggle with some people will agree with me and some people

absolutely won't and that's totally fine like please know that me disagreeing with it is not me shitting on people's beliefs around it if it works for you fantastic totally but there is like a lot of conversations if you've really gone down the manifesting research about like raising your vibrations and like, you know, putting it out into the universe. And there is a spirituality element to it for a lot of people. And I think that is probably the side of it that I struggle with. Don't get me wrong. I think like good mental health is important. Having all of your goals set out is so important for keeping it front of mind and achieving things. I just don't use that terminology. I don't use high vibration, low vibration. It doesn't resonate with me and with

my like skepticism that's all there's also that thing i've just googled it because i couldn't remember what it was actually called it's i could be mispronouncing this the beta mainhoff phenomenon also known as the frequency illusion and that's when you think about something then suddenly you notice it everywhere yeah like it's a proven psychological concept this is very similar to the theories around angel numbers and don't get me wrong like i said some of this stuff i do believe it and some of the stuff i like find it contradictory in myself but angel numbers if you start seeing you know 111 or 1111 or whatever that there's quite a few of them they all mean different things they are meant to mean different signs and there's this belief that it is it's

spirits guiding you in the direction the universe showing you that you're on the right path or trying to redirect you or to reassure you there's loads of different kind of affirmations around it but it is also something that when you become very aware of your brain is wired to look for it there's this amazing I think I've done it with you guys a while back but I might even try it now I went through a really really shitty time in my early 20s like a really bad mental health space I remember I was sitting at my work desk and I was just crying at my laptop and my boss came over and he was like what's going on I've just gone through a bad breakup but it was like a lot of my mental health I think at that age of my life was was revolved around my relationship which

wasn't particularly good and he took me into a boardroom and he was like hey I just really want you to listen to this experiment this activity and I was very negative I was like very upset about everything that was going on in my life, not just my relationship, but the flow and effect that it had had in every facet of my life. And so unless you're in a car, do this activity with me now. Close your eyes. This is fun. Close your eyes.

Don't be on a cliff walk now either. Yeah. If you're somewhere safe, like in your house, in your room, whatever, close your eyes. Okay, on the count of three, I'm going to ask you to open your eyes and look around the room for every single thing that you can find that is brown. You have to really focus. Close your eyes, Keisha. Focus on everything that's brown. Really remember the specificness of it, the textures, the colors of the brown,

because I'm going to ask you to recite them. So you've got like three to four seconds. I'll tell you when to close your eyes again. Okay. Open your eyes. Look for brown, brown, brown, brown, brown, brown. Look around behind you. Look everywhere. Brown. Close your eyes. I want you to tell me everything that you saw that was green keep your eyes closed the only things that I can label that are green are because we're in this room consistently and I just know the things that are green I know that parts of the podcast machine are green I know that there's a plant behind me but I would not have if we were in an unfamiliar room I wouldn't be able to tell you those things can you think of any one thing that's not something you see every day that's green

no okay open your eyes and then look around the room for things that might be green that you wouldn't have necessarily noticed like over there there's a green thing on my coffee cup your coffee cup there's a green tape on the camera the thing is you train your brain to only see what it is that you're looking for so if you're looking for the brown in your life i.e the shit in your life you will only see that version of it your brain doesn't have the capacity to focus on multiple things and so when we talk about this idea and this is i guess my version of manifestation it's retraining your brain to focus on the things that are positive or a good and i'm not saying you know toxic positivity but like really looking for those things because if all you're seeing is brown

you will only see brown you will never see the green but that is the psychology behind manifestation it's the whole thing once you've written it down and you're thinking about it you are looking for those things and those opportunities when they present themselves that you wouldn't normally look for if it wasn't front of mind i'd be so interested for anyone who actually just did that activity like tell let me know how it went did you like because when I did it in the room that day I looked around and I you know recalled all these brown things and then I opened my eyes and like right in front of me was this little pot plant that had been there the whole time this plastic green pot plant and I just hadn't seen it I hadn't seen anything and the more I

looked around the room the more I was like oh my like I really had just completely discarded all of those things and it really helped me to rewrite how I see things when I'm going through challenging negative times in my life yeah yeah I mean that was a weird tangent we didn't even plan to talk about manifestation today but here we are no but then like just so we know I am joking when I said I manifested my diarrhea and my vomiting like just to be clear I had a bit of your carbonara and I also felt a little bit sick and that's why I asked you yeah I was like oh we're food sharers I don't know if I do want to completely like shame and blame the carbonara because we did also have prosciutto that it could have been. I ate the prosciutto and I was fine. It was a cup

an hour ago. Anyway, something has been going on in my life from, I feel like there'll be other parents out there, particularly probably mums who can resonate with this. It is Easter hat parade week. I wish that we did these kind of thing for work. Remember last Halloween when I got dressed? I just want to add a little bit of novelty. Like how cute would it be if we were all sitting here in our Easter hats. Guys, it would be good social content, okay? It's like the time it was Halloween and Keisha wore little ghost buns. And the people loved them.

I didn't quite know what they were. It took me so long and it was halfway through the record that you were like, dude, they're ghosts. And I thought you just kind of dressed up like a little lamb in the prairie for the day. I didn't know. I didn't know and I didn't want to ask. But, Keisha, we're not stopping you.

If you want to come in here in an Easter hat. I can't do it myself. I'm 31 years old. I look like an idiot. But even if there's three of us doing it, we're all still 30-year-olds doing Easter hats. I'm almost 40. I have a hot glue gun at home and I'm ready to go. Come on over. You can rumble tonight. I would love to do arts and crafts with the girls. So it's Easter hat parade week. We are,

I've got to go back to Kmart tonight to go and get more things so that I can do like the most epic Easter hat. Tonight is the hot glue gun night. It's the whole thing. I've got to make one for Lola, even though she doesn't even have one at her preschool. And then Marley's got very specific theming. I feel like the Easter hat in our household is turning into the cake creation in like the Hamish Blake's household. It's like the equivalent. Who has put the specifications on Marley? Is the school or Marley?

Oh, Marley. Oh, so what did she ask for? She's a creative genius. We've bought all these different toys that are getting stuck on the hat. She wants green crepe paper to go around it so that the bunnies look like they're sitting in a field. Then she wants Easter eggs. She wants plastic ones but also real ones stuck onto the hat.

The whole thing is just like what do you do with them afterwards, right? You sit them in the cupboard. I have like one cupboard that's just full of fucking Easter hats I don't think you have to keep them. I don't reckon. I have a business idea. We could have like an exchange Easter hats each year. Easter hat swap.

Yeah. Because then you never have to make one for your kid again. You just get one that's, fuck yeah, that's brilliant. You upcycle, recycle. It could be like the sisterhood of the travelling pants, but the Easter hat. And you've got to leave like a letter about your experiences in the year. I love this.

Did you win the year priorly? Where did you place? Because it's competitive. Where did you place? Because we won top three. But it's got to be tiered because if you're a really good Easter hat maker and then you swap with someone who's a shit hat maker, you get stitched up. I'm creative and competitive.

So both of these things I take seriously. But actually, the reason why I wanted to talk about this isn't so much about the Easter hats, although I'm sure we all have very fond memories of being in school and the Easter hat parade. It is the duality of being a working parent and also having your kids do something that they're really excited about at school. And we had a moment this morning. so obviously we're making the hat tonight excited excited excited the parade's on Friday it's at 9

45 and I can't go because I have a photo shoot for Tony May on that's been planned for ages long before I knew that the Easter hat parade was on and it's all paid for and I can't cancel it I explained that to Marley and she was so upset but then to make matters worse Matt also has something that he can't move so she was in absolutely hysterics the solution is Nana is going to go we're very lucky living with Ellie that Ellie steps up to the plate in the instances where we're not able to do it but I think that there's this increasing expectation on our generation of parenting to be available ever present to be ever present at things that are in working hours and I try so hard like I would say that we do make it to 90% of them but the

disappointment that they feel and the disappointment you feel as a parent when you aren't able to move work things. Like you feel like you're not doing a good job and you feel like, what kind of trauma am I creating in my child that I wasn't there for these key moments when every other parent is going to be there to see their kid do something that they're so excited about? Yeah, but I don't think every other parent is going to be there. And I think it's an unrealistic expectation to expect parents to be available consistently through school hours. It is not the norm. And I know the expectations are increasing, but I just think that we probably need to take a step back from that and say, hey, you know what? Most families that I know are dual workers. Both parents go to

work. Not everybody runs their own business. Not everybody has the luxury to have one parent stay home full time and still earn enough to live in the economic climate that we're in. It's not a luxury. Some families, it's actually financially more viable for a parent to stay home and take care of their kids, then put them in daycare. There's so many reasons why people have the setup that they have. Totally. But there's so many people that do have to go to work as both parents and that is just like I just think to my childhood one of four kids and my parents both worked jobs that meant that they had to go to work if my parents were leaving every time one of the four kids has something to attend neither of them would

work like it would be impossible and they came to the things that were really important or if they could move their work around but I turned out just fine like it doesn't it did you I guess the thing though is is with that and this is probably like the big question that you ask as a parent is what defines something that's really important the easter hat parade is something that's so important to her molly doesn't care about sport she's got cross country on wednesday she's like i'm not running don't come i'm not running around the school i hate running but an easter hat parade is something that is like deeply exciting for her but like she is absolutely stoked on it and it's something that we're doing as an activity together like she's really proud of it and she's been

talking about it for weeks and so i guess in this instance this is something that is important to her. And normally I would move mountain and earth to try and be there. But this one, I physically can't move. Like there are moments where you just have such immense guilt and you're like, I know that I'll make it up in other ways, but it's a really shitty thing to try and juggle when you've got to do it all. I think this is actually a flow on effect. Like we know that we're the therapy generation. We like to psychoanalyze everything. We like to unpack out trauma. And for some people that is real trauma. For some people it's trauma with a little T. I think that there's been this shift in the way that our behavior can be you know in our romantic relationships if we had an

absent parent or if we had you know a parent that wasn't emotionally engaged with us and we we kind of know what the flow and effects of that are but also that has a scale you can have a parent that is completely emotionally absent and completely physically absent or you can have a parent that's not able to go to one little thing that their child is wanting them to be at because they have other responsibilities or other commitments that they can't get out of and I think that we've kind of almost equated them to be the same and like the flow and effects for the kid are going to be the same and that's probably why you feel guilty because you're like oh you know I'm not able to be present for every single thing that she wants me to be therefore you even

made a joke of like how's this going to fuck her up in the future you know the reality is is when we were growing up our parents missed a lot of things because it was just the that was just the way it was you know and we kind of just had to accept it I guess the other question is is like disappointment is a reality of life obviously you don't want to be disappointed by your parents that's a terrible thing to feel let down by. But have we almost over-corrected in some ways where we're so fearful of ever allowing our kids to feel a sense of disappointment? And maybe I'm saying this to make myself feel better. I am probably self-soothing with this anyway, but is that something that is like, if it is meted and it is infrequent, a level of disappointment

is something that every kid has to experience from a resilience perspective because people aren't able to show up for every single thing, every single time. 100%. I'm sure there's parents who will disagree with me, but I get that. I'm trying to make myself feel better, guys. No, but it's not. I completely agree with you. There's reports on it.

Kids need to feel levels of independence, pain, discomfort. They need to be able to feel emotions so they know how to correct them and what to do with them. Like if we are telling them how to feel all the time and how to do things all the time, if a kid's trying to tie his shoelace and we don't let them figure it out and we just do it for them, like all of these little things matter. But part of life is feeling discomfort and trying to work it out. And disappointment, like you just said, perspective is really important.

And maybe that is what people teach their kids more because there are kids that don't have families at all. So it's about maybe putting things into perspective. There's kids that don't go to a school that would never have an Easter hat parade or kids that don't have a roof over their head. So maybe it's just broader conversations. Having said that, maybe something you could tell her is that Ellie will FaceTime you or something.

So without physically being there, you'll watch it live. You're going to see her walking down, but just from a distance. So she knows that you're still watching it happen, but you're physically not there. And maybe that is like a way to meet in the middle. So she knows you're watching because she'll feel that pride when she's walking down in a hat. Let me say though, like, thank God for excellent grandparents who step up. Like that's the village, right?

That's the village that you need around you because it is so hard to do it all when you are working full time and you have kids and everything else. I'm no busier than anybody else. Like everyone else is juggling so much as well. but when grandparents want to be grandparents and they step up to the plate and they can play that maternal role in a family it's or paternal role you know it's it's fucking wonderful makes a big difference you know i know that like obviously so ellie's lived with us for like the last year now almost and at the start so many people were like oh my god living with your mother-in-law that's

crazy and to be honest i was cautious about how it was going to be you know i was unsure but the benefit and the love that those kids get because they have their grandparent in the household it's been the most incredible experience like i love it so much i feel very very grateful something that i wanted to talk about and it really ties into the conversation we were just having around having the village around you or a sense of community i came across a substack article and i sent it in the group chat because it really hit me the content of this it's written by a woman, Florine Tideman. She's a writer who contributes to PopSugar, Marie Claire, and it is titled Enough With The Boundaries Already. Losing my stepfather showed me the

community we are sacrificing for our so-called boundaries. Very much, I would say that we are the generation that speaks so much about boundary setting and the importance of boundary setting. We're also a generation that has had some of the highest rates of loneliness and disconnection. I really wanted to read you some of this, but before I do, just to set up what this Substack was about. Florine, she recently lost her stepfather and she helped support her mum through his battle with brain cancer. And she was there side by side caring throughout his palliative care journey. And what she witnessed was the incredible community that her stepfather and her mum had around them during this time. Neighbours popping over to walk the dog,

people dropping off food, people just really showing up in droves. And I guess it made her ask the question as to whether that would be something that she would receive if she was in this position. Has she built a community and this sense of community around her? And I'm not talking about your best friends. I'm talking about your neighbors. I'm talking about people who were within the same street as this couple who lived there because they had this real sense of localized community as well. This is what she had to say about it. And it is this conversation that has a cross comparison of generations. She wrote, I have amazing friends in my life. Don't get me wrong. I am privileged to call such strong and interesting people my friends. And they were

there for me throughout this time. I'm not trying to imply that they are anything less than a solid support system. Rather, I'm trying to share an observation about millennials and especially Gen Z as someone on the cusp of both of these generations. While we have close friendships, besties and more, we don't quite have that community. We wouldn't drive each other to the airport. We'd expect someone to take public transport or get an Uber. Why give up more time than it would take them? We just don't see the sentimental touch of dropping someone off or picking them up at the airport. We look at the cost of our time. We prioritize practicality over sentimentality. And I guess the big question I had around this is definitely about community,

but do you think that we are the generation that is so obsessed with this sense of convenience and boundary setting over a sense of collective community so funny you say that because i had this exact argument with ben last night so when you said the the airport pickup we don't take people to the airport anymore we've missed that sentimental touch the argument believe it or not that i'm having with ben is so tomorrow i'm flying to italy i'm playing 24 hours it's a big flight and it's two and a half hours drive away from where ben lives and ben's going to drive two and a half hours to Milan to the airport to get me but then the airport's an extra hour 15 minutes from Milan so it is a huge effort so he's trained all day he's doing all this he's driving to Milan

and he has said like let me know exactly when you're landing and I will drive the extra hour and a half to get you and we had this argument about him saying I love you I'm going to come pick you up and me saying I love you I'm not going to let you come and pick me up but I absolutely think that is a product of what we value in this generation. And for me, I think time and convenience definitely, whether it's right or wrong, definitely is at the forefront of what's important to me other than that sentimental touch. Well, I think one of the things I really love that she wrote in this was that she has the privilege to call such strong and interesting people her friends. And there is no doubt that in hard times, our friends rally around us and our friends are

there for us. But I guess this idea of having accessibility to our friends whenever we want to is something that we definitely don't have in our generation anymore. For example, if your friend was just to pop over unannounced, completely unannounced on a Saturday, not text, I think the majority of us would find that very odd or we would find it an inconvenience. I'd find it intrusive because almost every day we've got plans. We've got things that we've organized. We're such a busy hustle culture. I don't want to say of a generation because I don't think that Gen Z is any different to millennials. We are constantly doing things and constantly have plans. We are like absolutely diarized for the nines. So I think like for most people, we know that it would be

an inconvenience mostly to just pop over to someone's house. But I think that that's very different from generations ago when that was something that wasn't necessarily seen as an inconvenience. I would say for the most part, a lot of people listening to this podcast wouldn't even know their neighbors, wouldn't know who their next door neighbor is. Yeah. Last night I saw there was I went down into my garage to park my apartment building and it's not huge apartment building I don't know one two nine maybe nine and there was a girl in the downstairs that I had never seen before and she was trying to close the garage door and I could see her looking for the button and I was like hey she's like sorry do you know how to close the door and I'm like yeah I was

like did you just move in like welcome she's like no I've been here two years I'm upstairs and we had never seen each other never spoken we introduced ourselves to each other and she said we should get you up for a drink sometime and i was like yeah you know what we should and then i went inside and i was like wow that's weird no neighbors ever invited me over for a drink i think it depends on where you live obviously like if you're in an inner city and you live in apartment building it's probably going to be different to people who live in suburban areas or people who do live in it there are neighborly streets i don't want to discredit everything i've lived in every version of it i know who my neighbors are now i've lived in incredibly friendly streets and

I think COVID changed that slightly. I think people who lived in, maybe you lived in a cul-de-sac or you lived in like a quiet street because there was nothing else to do. People became friends with their neighbours during that period. And I think that that was like a pivot point for a lot of people. But I would still say that the vast majority of young people don't have any idea who a lot of their neighbours are. Yeah, I think it kind of comes down to the convenience piece that you were talking about. And yes, if you flip it, like the reason I don't necessarily want to go and knock on my neighbor's doors is because I don't want to be an inconvenience to them like I don't want to impose myself on them and force them another part of this article I also think

it's because nothing's fixed these days we move around like whereas back in the day you might live in a house for 19 20 years you know people we are far more transient in terms of how our living arrangements work especially at this period of our lives there was another part of the article she said wouldn't it be nice to know that you don't have to arrange a pet sitter to know that a neighbor could come over just to water your plants and not see it as an intrusion. We have apps for everything that we once relied on neighbors for. And it's because it's an exchange. I think we now don't want to feel indebted to people. We don't want to feel as though we're putting them out and that they might be able to hold, well, at least this is how I feel.

They might be able to hold that over me. I would kind of, in most situations, I would rather just pay someone and have that exchange be very, very clear. But I think it's in the convenience of that and the lack of having to feel an emotion about that interaction that we really have had this decline in a sense of community. I don't think it's comparative. Like I think it's very hard for us to sit here and compare and say the community aspect has changed because of course it's changed. A lot of what it comes down to is the fact that our parents' generation, when you finished work, you finished work. You didn't have the internet. You did not have apps. You didn't take your work home. Some jobs obviously did, but most people that went to a

nine to five when you got home you were at home for the afternoon your kids were playing in the front yard when you saw your neighbor's kids in the front yard you knew your neighbor was home like it was just a different time now everyone is on a hustle everyone has something else to do and they have access to the ability to do it like Laura you run your own business you're always going to be working on that there's always something for you to do at home you said something interesting for it when we were talking about the unpacking of this concept you said we have community that we opt into now if you want community you go to the gym and you see your friends there or you see the people that you want to touch base with or you might go to a sporting

thing or whatever you opt into your sense of community yeah the response to that is something that was written in the comment section of this sub stack and to have a village you have to be a villager and I guess the problem with having the opt-in communities it means that when something big happens in your life if you do go through a tragedy or a death or let's say you have a baby and you're going through terrible postpartum, if you have always had an opt-in community around you, then they don't opt in when you're in a time of need because you haven't been there to support throughout the other times when other people required it. They probably have their own sense of community elsewhere. Yeah. And I think what I mean by that is we want community that is

convenient. And when we opt into it, I don't mean we opt into it. It's like, hey, I need help now. So let me, that's not what I mean. So I'll use my gym as an example that I go to, because I think gyms and like running clubs and exercise clubs or tennis. I think, well, I think that they are probably the main place people go to get their community in our day and age. And my gym, it's called Virtus. It's in Bondi Beach. It is an amazing gym for community. And I've only discovered that in the last year, but what it is, is everyone goes to the gym every day, right? So the community is there. It's not opt-in. It's opt-in that you get to choose what time of the day you go. But when you are there and I have seen it at this gym, this is why I'm using it as an

example, when somebody needs something or is going through something, the people or the way that they turn up for each other, it almost is cult-like, but it's like, Hey, these are one of our own and they need this. Like, let's all jump in and help them. Let's support them. Let's raise money for this. And that is when everyone does opt in because of the community, but it's not opt in. Like I need something now help me. When I say opt into your community, it's that it's like, Hey, it's 6 PM. I'm ready for some community. I don't want my neighbor to pop over, but I'll go to the gym and I'll meet these people. And that's what I think we mean as a generation. We're not going over to our neighbors to sit and have a tea anymore and form the community. We're forming it

on our own timeframe. I think also, like, I mean, we can talk about neighborly versions of this, but I think religion played a massive role. People went to church, they had their church communities. You know, a lot of people and a lot of our generation have, you know, moved away from religion. I know not everyone, obviously, but there is definitely a push towards being more agnostic or even atheist. There's actually a stat that we got about this. Historically, churches synagogues mosques and temples provided a strong sense of community but in the 2021 census over 38 percent of australians reported that they were non-religious and that they didn't attend any of those institutions i think when i read this like it definitely made me question my behavior

and not in a way where i was like i need to radically change everything so that i had this community around me are you starting a church i have my own cult of laura burn i guess my thing is, is obviously I have my husband. I have a really, like we are so close. We do everything together. My husband, Matt, that sounded weird. You guys know exactly who it is. I have really good girlfriends in the same way that this woman, Florine, describes that she has really close friends around her. But I definitely am someone who is guilty of prioritizing convenience over, you know, I'm not the one who's putting my hand up to run to the airport to go get someone if they can get an Uber. You know, maybe I feel like slightly guilty for that in some ways,

but I think it is because we stack our work schedules so heavily. We stack our life schedules. We make excuses for it because we've got two kids and we're parenting and everything's always busy all the time that it's hard to make space to be inconvenienced, I guess. And I think like that's something where I read this and I was like, oh, I am guilty of being this person. And I don't say that as though that's an isolated thing. I think a lot of people would read that and go, I would do the same. I have friends over for dinner. I'm not cooking them dinner. I'm ordering Uber Eats you know I know that that is fine and I know that no one's judging me for ordering it but there wasn't the sense of time I didn't spend time creating something that was a really well

thought out meal that I knew my friend was going to love I was just like come over and I ordered I think I often opt into convenience because it suits my life at the moment yeah I think I mean what you're talking about is that you prioritize other things and I think that that could be because of the particular life stage that you're in because that was my immediate thought when I read this too I was like how am I showing up as a villager I will actually put my hand up and say I'm pretty good at doing the airport pick up and drop off I think you're a great villager Keish if I was out of all my friends you're the first person to go I will do that for you and I'm like but why you don't need to and I personally have a sense of I don't want to inconvenience you and I

and exactly what you described earlier on I don't want to be indebted to you so I will not ask for things because I don't want to exploit that either yeah I mean I was thinking about this last night I so appreciate you saying that because it's something that I really I guess I did grow up in a church so maybe it's actually because I had those values and like that sense of community was really instilled in me my mum was incredibly social as well so we had family groups around us all the time growing up I would just say you're a good friend I wouldn't give the church that credit to be honest I think you're just a good person that's and maybe you've been raised well because you were at the church maybe yeah I think it's a value system that is like a lot of

religions this isn't specific to the religion I grew up amongst I think that this is across every religion you know I know that in the bible there's a lot about you know doing things for thy neighbor and it's all about caring about each other and and having a moral code that you will operate under so that you're not hurting the people around you and and maybe it is the fact that we've had this increase in technology that has made us feel more connected through the technology rather than physically connected to other people there's a lot of research on the fact that that's not the same you know there's a lot of research on the neurotransmitters that release in your brain and they're not the same as when you're in person physically sitting with

someone but I also think that you develop this really deep sense of community with people in the moments you don't expect the gradual hanging out with each other and you know we drive to work together and that's when I have some of my most deep and meaningful conversations with you because it's just in the accidental nature of things happening and things coming up and and I really do think that I've lost that in almost every other aspect of my life but Keisha, I have a question for you and I think it comes into the conversation around boundaries in this. Would you define yourself as a people pleaser? I hugely would have defined myself as a people pleaser. In fact, I only feel as though I've been able to create boundaries in

my life in the last year to year and a half. And I would say that since leaning into this concept of boundaries, you say no to things more often. And that's not, I'm saying this not as a criticism. I'm saying this as like, it was an eye opener to me. I feel like I'm someone who has a lot of boundaries in place to preserve my time. And that's something that I worked really hard on. Don't get me wrong. When I say like, I'm not going to go out of my way to do X, Y, Z, don't, please don't think I'm an asshole. I also never have expected anyone to go out of their way for me. It's not a take situation. It is a completely unreciprocated, like I'm fine. I'll get a taxi. I'm fine I'll do this I'm so deeply independent that I don't expect anything from anyone else

and I guess like what I took from this sub stack and what I think is so interesting is that people who don't have this willing sense of like strong boundaries that we've all been told we are supposed to have still are the people that show up in this way because they're so much more open and it's exactly how she described herself in this first paragraph a chronic people pleaser they're so much more open to do things for other people for the joy of how that makes that other person feel? Yeah, actually, I was thinking about this last night because a lot of the whole boundary setting and that kind of thing, if people haven't listened to Cloud, I became more aware of it when I learned that I was masking in a lot of situations and that perhaps the reason I was doing

those things for other people, or I was at least offering, was more so about because I didn't want them to view me in a negative way. I don't think I did it for the most genuine reasons. I don't think I did it because I was like, hey, this is a village and this is what we do for each other. but I read this one thing and I was like, fuck, that's what it is. It's a term that researchers call crowded loneliness. So it's the emphasis on hyper-individualization and personal boundaries that may lead to prioritizing yourself over shared responsibility. Basically, it means that you can be around people a lot and you can kind of be in these crowded environments, but you don't actually feel a meaningful sense of connection. And I think that that's maybe where I'm now learning to put

boundaries in place in a much better way and it's leading to much more meaningful connection I'm more specific with the people that I want in my village and that I will bend over backwards for I don't know if that's because I realized throughout the course of time that maybe things I would be willing to do for other people they wouldn't be willing to do for me and so I've kind of started to create a little bit more distance in those situations that seems like a bit of a selfish way to think about it but not really well I think it isn't just natural that if you don't feel it's a two-way street you're probably going to be like oh actually if you're not going to show up for me I probably don't need to show up for you as much but yeah exactly which

comes back to the whole to have a village you've got to be a villager yeah the last thing I wanted to question you guys on is whether this is a life stage thing do you think that it's fundamental shift in the way that we now connect with each other because of technology and because of this you know therapy culture that we've got or do you think it's just more reflective of the stage that we're in. And when we get older, we might have more free time and therefore we will kind of put more time and effort into community. I can't wait to play lawn bowls every day when I'm like 70. I hope that as my life is less busy, because I feel like I am currently in the thick of my life. Like I can't imagine being 50 and still running at this pace. I think I'll have a heart attack

and die. Do you know what I mean? Like I don't imagine having little kids and running multiple businesses and trying to keep a husband happy and like living with my mother-in-law. Like I already feel like I'm so overstimulated by the requirements. And I would dare say that so many people who are at our phase of life feel the same. I hope that when I'm 50 or 60 and my kids are older, I have time to put into these things. And maybe then I will have more accessibility to it. The only thing is, is do we become a product of what we have conditioned ourself to be for so many years? You know, do we just become a product of like, okay, well now I have time. I still don't have community and I'm just lonely like is that the end goal I don't know I don't

know I think it's a really interesting one for so many people to have a think about and please go like I said we're going to link it in the show notes the sub stack so that you guys can go and have your own thoughts on it as well but it's a really fascinating read it's time for second sweet what is your suck of the week my suck of the week is and I mean I'm just a very blessed suck. Shitting and vomiting simultaneously from both orifice? Obviously that was it. But no, we can't use that twice. I am flying to see Ben in the morning. I'm getting picked up at 3am in the morning. So I have to get up at 2am and I have not packed. And I don't know why I do this. I just have this aversion to packing. I detest it. How long does it take you to pack? Surely packing

takes like one hour. No, not when you're going for a couple of weeks and you're taking so much, I've got to take so much equipment over for the podcasting cameras setups lights how long do you reckon it takes you to I am a last minute packer but I will pack for my entire family myself maximum if I've got to pack for everyone two hours maximum it'll take me a couple hours for sure and then you've got to get your house ready you've got to throw everything in the fridge out you've got to make sure everything is warden you've got your plant food and all this stuff got to get Delilah out and pack up her stuff it's just like one of those things that I put off to the last minute and I hate it and I don't know why I do it because now I'm going home tonight to sort out my

life I've just realized I know I've got Delilah but am I also expected to water the plants again if I call if you can okay if I call over I'll call but I'm not responsible you need to stop taking responsibility because then it just means that you have to replace you replaced it last time that's expensive that's like that's a debt you don't want to get a bargain though that's a debt you don't want okay what's your sweet for the week don't talk around water in my plants we just spoke about community yeah when did you ever water just put it outside in the garden can you put it outside in the garden it's been raining a fair bit it'll be fine i mean i can i guess your fiddle feet will do better underneath a tree in the garden than what it will do in your house where you're gone

they don't need to be moved anyway my sweet is i'm seeing ben tomorrow well on that we'll be doing a record next week so we are taking a holiday break at the end of next week but next week we'll be doing one record with brit in italy Yep, I will be coming to you from Italia. Yep, and with all the Cabanara and no gastro that you can possibly have. What is your suck? My suck for the week, to be honest, I don't have a suck this week. And the reason for that is because the weekend just passed.

We got to go down to Aladala and spend two nights in the house. We wanted to go, so like as if you're not across it, we've been doing this renovation. I'm sure you are. We've literally not talked about anything else for nine months now. I think they're across it. I reckon everyone's across it. but we like the house is almost finished we've started to get furniture in we've like all the

appliances have been installed so we went down there on friday and we spent friday saturday sunday down there with the girls so that we could test everything out and make sure that it was like livable and things actually worked the way that they said they were going to work so that we can spend our easter holiday down there so where i'm so stoked i honestly it felt like a dream walking into the house and seeing it finished and like seeing it so so close to completion because i I haven't seen it since Matt was in the jungle. I went down there while he was away. So it's been for me like almost two months since I've seen the house.

Yeah, cute. And it was amazing. The girls had their own sweet bedroom and like it's all really come together. So next week I'll be able to update you guys properly on how that is going down because we're going to be recording from Aladella. Amazing. I'll be in Aladella. But that's it from us, guys.

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