The Blindboy Podcast - Bermuda Pube

Episode Date: March 25, 2020

Part 1. The Irish man who sparked a war in Burma because of shoes. Part 2. How I cope with my anxiety around the Coronavirus Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Brenda Fricker is sticking biscuits in the letterbox. Brenda Fricker is sticking wisdom in the letterbox. She's the four postmen of the apocalypse. Brenda Fricker is thinking thoughts. If you think the thoughts that Brenda Fricker thinks, your head would explode. Brenda Fricker is sticking biscuits in the letterbox. Brenda Fricker's head explodes.

That was a poem submitted this week by Hollywood actress Brenda Fricker, which she wrote about herself. Thank you very much for that, Brenda. How are you, you glamorous men and women? Is that a new pair of slacks? Your frock is dashing. What's the crack? Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. I just want to start by saying thank you so much to everybody who sent me lovely supportive messages last week.

It truly warmed my cockles I got some lovely messages because as you know last week I postponed a gig because of the coronavirus and got effed in the A by Boris Johnson that's a bit vague isn't it that's a bit vague if you didn't listen to last week's podcast

it's like what the fuck is he talking about you cancelled the gig and were sodomised by Boris Johnson I cancelled the gig I postponed it I mean sorry I postponed my London gig and as a result of Boris Johnson's foolish foolish public health policy I was left penalized I postponed a gig in London

because of the coronavirus and because of that it wasn't covered, by insurance, so he incurred, some massive expenses, as a result of, Boris Johnson, being a bozo, bojo the bozo, the messy headed,

Tory toddler, gull bag, and I just want to say, thank you so much, for everyone who sent me, a little DM, or a comment on Twitter, or Instagram,

or whatever, I got a lot of lovely, just fucking lovely, supportive messages, and I just want to say, I got a lot of lovely, just fucking lovely supportive messages, and I just want to say it meant a lot, even if I didn't get to reply to all of them, it just, it was that, it gave me that lovely sense of community that I wanted from this podcast, to see how many people were just being sound, were just being lovely and sound, so thank you so much, and thanks for the lovely feedback for last week's podcast, which was me chatting to Limmy, we all needed a chuckle last week, we all needed

a chuckle, and we needed something to take our minds off the world. So God bless you all or dog bless you all, whatever the fuck. I've been having a productive week. As I mentioned I'm currently in the process of trying to begin streaming. Which is, it's like live camera stuff. Live camera stuff on the internet. But I want to do it properly with a proper setup. So my equipment arrived. I've been messing around with it all week. I did something today which I was very proud of,

so in order to do, to shoot properly with a fucking, with a camera and do it live, I want the lighting to be nice, you know, I want the ambience and the lighting to be nice, but my face, or my bag rather, has lit properly so when you're when you're filming and using a camera you need to light your face and i didn't really have a proper light that you'd use for illuminating one's face while filming the best ones used are the ones that like like makeup artists would use you know those ring lights but i just didn't they were like 200 fucking quid and also currently with the stress that's on the kind of delivery system like everyone's in quarantine so everyone is ordering shit so i didn't trust buying a fucking light online.

And then possibly waiting. Two weeks for it to arrive. So. Because I was restricted. I got to have some fun with creativity. And I had a kind of a. A shitty. This shit fucking LED light.

That I bought. About a year ago. Maplin was closing down in Limerick so I stuck my head in on the last day and I saw this LED desk lamp that you plug in with USB and it was like a fiver so I bought it and I got that right

and then I got a fucking milk carton. Not a carton, but what's the one where it's a plastic bottle? It's not a bottle and it's not a Tetra Pak. I got a two liter Tetra Pak plastic milk receptacle. Cut the top of it off with a scissors, right? And the plastic of Tetra Pak milk, it's kind of like grease proof paper you know it's not fully see-through it's what's the word i'm looking for it's like a plasticized fog

or a smog on the horizon do you know what i mean i'm unnecessarily complicating it now you know what a milk bottle looks like when there's no milk in it or a tetra pack plastic milk carton so i got that a two liter one cut the head off it stuck it on top of my fucking led and it works perfectly as like a 200 euro makeup artist light diffuser so i was very happy with that, I was very happy to have had a problem, and then use lateral thinking to solve it, and was like, fuck it, look at these results, I've just beat the system, you cunts, do you know what I mean, so, and as you know as well, but this, I kind of just do that, I like, i've been recording in my bedroom for fucking years and

when you're doing it that way you have to just make things work you have to use whatever's around you to replicate a professional environment so sometimes i just do that out of habit because i don't know any different like i my I've got a large sock over it instead of spending a hundred quid on a fucking a proper foam thing a pop a pop can't think of the name of it I fucking talking to a sock as you know and now when I start live streaming my plastic bag will be illuminated by a 5 euro LED light underneath a fucking

milk bottle so I was chuffed with that it's a lovely feeling, it's a great feeling to have a problem and use creativity and solve it and be like fuck yes there's the results so I had a productive problem solving week

and filling my filling my days with little tasks like that do you know what I mean so last week I asked you I said would you like a podcast which deals with the anxiety which all of us might be feeling as a result of the coronavirus and coronavirus, coronavirus, the coronavirus and the measures that are brought in as a result and all of this a lot of us are experiencing anxiety and i asked you would you like me to do a fucking podcast where i speak where i speak about it and how to cope with it and how to manage it and it was a resounding yes.

I got fucking tons of people saying. Yes yes please do this. A lot of people their anxiety is flaring up. Because of the situation. So some people then were like. No I just want a distraction. Shut the fuck up about the coronavirus. Don't talk about it.

So I'm going to do a half half. What I'm going to do do is the first half of this podcast is gonna have fucking nothing to do with the coronavirus could be a completely separate uh topic and then the second half of the podcast i will what what i'll do is i'm gonna speak about how I'm managing my anxiety, how I'm coping, how I'm viewing the whole thing. Right. Because that's always with mental health stuff. As you know, when I speak about it, I just think it's more responsible if I speak about my experience.

If I speak about my experience and what I'm doing um and what's kind of unique to me and then if if you if you relate to that then that helps you but I think that's the best thing to do and I always do that anyway I I'm not into telling people what to do I don't know how ethical or responsible that is but I'll speak about my experience and I'm doing quite well despite the objective challenges of my reality my lived experience is one of happiness because I'm applying my techniques and I'm doing okay so I'll talk about that so before I continue to what I want to speak about first, I know a lot of you are going to be listening to more and more podcasts, or looking at Netflix,

or whatever the fuck, you know, to pass your time while you're in self-isolation, while you're in self-isolation so what i've done is like because this i'm on the fucking i'm on the 200 and something podcasts with this fucking podcast so what i've done is on spotify i have made a playlist of my favorite episodes of this podcast which I'm still kind of adding to, but it's called the Official Blind By Podcast Playlist, and you'll find it on Spotify, and give it a little follow. So what I have is, I've gone back through all 230 or whatever podcasts,

and picked out the ones that I enjoy the most. If you're just starting listening to this podcast, or if you want to recommend this podcast to a friend, and you don't know where they should start, then this playlist, the official Blind Boy Podcast playlist on Spotify, go to that, and you can send that to a friend, or you can go to it yourself and listen back to some podcasts for the past three years all the my music podcasts are in there the history of disco most of the mental health ones are in there too transaction analysis and cognitive behavioral therapy so give that a follow on spotify the official blind by podcast playlist yart and recommend it to a friend I fixed my squeaky chair alas

I have not remedied other general noises that the chair makes that creaky fucking thing it's like fuck is that it's not as offensive as a squeak or a creak that's unacceptable

so I'm always interested in Irish people who make strange impacts on the world, you know, I don't know why, I covered it a little bit a few podcasts back, I'd found this old book called Irish Footprints Across Europe, I don't know why. I covered it a little bit. A few podcasts back. I'd found this old book. Called Irish Footprints Across Europe. And. It just.

It was. This dude wrote it. And he was. Trying to document some. The impact that Irish people make. Around the world. I suppose it's because we're not. We're not we're not because we haven't colonised anyone

the impact that we make it's much more of a person by person impact rather than a collective impact like for fucking Spanish or for the Brits it's like what impact did you have well it's like we took over entire

countries and changed how they talk and their customs and eradicated their cultures we don't we didn't do any of that we just certain people left Ireland and reached all the corners of the globe

and made little quiet impacts that often get lost to the history books so anytime I find one of these kind of situations that you could describe as queer or odd I love to learn about them and talk about them so one person I found out about recently before before I talk about it, let me set the scene. The country formerly known as Burma, which we now know as Myanmar, but I'm going to refer to it as Burma because that's what it would have been called during the events that I'm describing. So, Burma is a country that kind of borders both India and China.

And Burma was colonized by the British because the British colonized India and they considered Burma to be a very important conduit between India and China so the British did their thing and they colonized the area and I'd say the Brits called it Burma right but what I want to speak about is shoes. The significance of shoes in Burma slash Myanmar and the Brits. So I'll set the scene. It's the early 18th century. And this is the height of expansionism in the British Empire.

and this is the height of expansionism in the British Empire. And what the Brits liked to do in what they referred to as the Orient is they were meeting civilizations that were quite developed and that had pre-existing hierarchies and structures. So the way that the Brits colonizedized it wasn't complete and utter immediate war were taking over your country it was a snaky diplomacy it was pretending that they were friends first and then eventually double crossing and taking over everything for themselves so burma was strategically very important for the british the brit the British had India right but Burma is between India and China it's got India to the or China to the north so for as a trade route Burma

was essential to the Brits so what the Brits would do is they would send envoys to a country so they'd send envoys to Burma envoys of incredibly posh British admirals and dukes and lords and what have you you know and they would first have to meet the king of Burma and they'd do so in that polite gentlemanly way but the thing is with the king of fucking barma is barma is a buddhist country so in order for these posh brits to first meet the king of barma they not only had to take their shoes off but they had to crawl along the ground on their bellies just to be in the king's presence so imagine these like britain at this time is the wealthiest nation in the world the most powerful colonial power in the world incredible arrogance unbelievable colonial arrogance and you have all these posh pricks crawling along the ground on their bellies to have to speak to the King of Burma to try and open up some type of trade agreement or diplomatic relations or whatever with the King

of Burma. And they're on their fucking bellies talking to him, knowing full well that as a very racist society, they look down on the Burmese people. They see them as backward savages. So, after a while, the Brits are on their bellies talking to the King of Burma and the Brits say, this is after a couple of visits now, the British envoys just go,

we're not fucking having it. We're meeting you now. We've met you five or six times. We don't come from, in our our country you don't crawl along your belly barefoot in order to meet someone that's quite demeaning within our culture that's very demeaning the most we'd do is take our hat off to somebody or if we meet our own monarch we might go down on one knee and kiss their ring so the brits were like no fucking way not having it i don't give a shit what your culture is we are not crawling along in our bellies barefoot

anymore to meet you and what they used as a defense is they said when we go to siam which is what we now refer to as thailand when they met the king of thailand the king of Siam they didn't have to take their shoes off they could meet them on kind of British terms so it became a real problem between Britain and Burma right

because the king of Burma is going I don't give a fuck where you're from I'm the king of Burma so when you meet me you take your shoes off and you crawl along the ground so it became a diplomatic kind of fight it's like now the Brits and the king of Burma not no longer have a dialogue because the Brits are like we're not going into that into his fucking court if we have to take our shoes off and crawl along the ground and the king of barma is saying well those english cunts aren't coming in unless they do it so you now have a breakdown in

communication which the brits then uses it as an excuse for, all right, well, you won't talk to us. Let's start a war. So this is 1820-something. Burma's already a very wealthy country because, like I said, they're between India and China, so they're quite wealthy from trade. So they put up a good fight, a decent fight, but ultimately the British win this war in 1820 something and that begins now british rule in barma so barma now is ruled by the british

so the brits got rid of the king of barma but the problem with this is um like i said burma was it was a very very buddhist country and the relationship that the king of burma had with all the buddhist monks in the country was it was very important the king of of of burma kind of financed and patronized the monks and once the king of Burma was taken away by the Brits it led to a crisis in Buddhism where it's like who's gonna pay to for the pagodas who's gonna mind the monks it's they separated the monarchy and religion so you had all this this buddhism in the country and it has no they cut the head off it basically so the people ended up gathering behind it and having this crisis of what does buddhism mean in Burma now because we no longer have a monarch to patronize it from the top down so the brits also because what one of the things that led to this war like i mentioned was the brits having to take off their

shoes and crawl along their bellies because this was one of the sticking points that led to a breakdown in diplomacy that led to war the brits kind of took it personally so when they started their rule in burma they now created new cultural rules around shoe wearing okay so it was sensible for them when they come into a culture to show a degree of respect to the religions within the country they're colonizing. So in Burma, within Buddhism, if you walk into a Buddhist temple in Burma in the 1800s, you have to take off your shoes. It's a Buddhist temple. You have to take off your shoes. But now that the Brits are ruling, the Brits set up new rules, which basically said, only if you are Burmese must you take off your shoes. But if you're a white European, if you're a British white European, you can walk into a Buddhist temple with your shoes on, but you'll take your hat off.

is obviously incredibly hurtful to the people of Burma who have reverence and respect for their Buddhist temples to see all these fucking British soldiers walking around in their shoes it's ideological

why did the British do shit like that? The same way the British did in Ireland you take away the language take away the culture if a british person can walk into a barmese temple wearing their shoes it sends a clear signal that we fucking rule we rule and we're better than you and we don't have to take our shoes off and your religion isn't even real because we're christians and that's the real religion your buddhism that's just bullshit we don't that's why we can wear shoes because there would be no retribution we've got christ

on our side so it's a hugely racist policy that the british have in burma of we can wear shoes we'll take our fucking hats off we will walk into your temple and acknowledge that it means something to you by taking our hats off but fuck you we're not taking our hats off we will walk into your temple and acknowledge that it means something to you by taking our hats off but fuck ye we're not taking our shoes off ye can take your shoes off so the wearing of shoes in Burma in the 18th century

it takes on a whole new meaning that's not now just religious it's classist and it's racist okay and it services British white supremacy

basically a strong disrespectful reminder of who's in charge similar shit was happening in Ireland at the same time in 1826 under British rule you you know, if you wanted to speak the Irish language or play an Irish sport such as hurling, it would have

been shut down pretty quickly and referred to as savage and illegal because it's the ideological force of power. Power isn't just performed by by soldiers brutally it's an entire ideological system that reminds people of you know through language and ritual and culture who the fuck is in charge and what is considered savage and what is considered civilized so let's go back to Burma and fast forward about 70 years to 1900 so at this point you know Burma has been under British rule for the bones of a century and the wearing of shoes is now ingrained in society and culture as a racial hierarchy and caste and in temples and pagodas like there's literal signs outside that say take your shoes off if you're Burmese, but if you're British or European, you don't have to take your shoes off.

Okay, so it became a signifier of your status in society. And as a result, it's passionate and heated and emotional so here's the interesting irish connection that i'm going to bring in to this story about the country of burma and burma under british rule and the relationship with shoes and bare feet and status and class and race so there was a chap born in ireland and as far as you know his name was Lawrence Carroll. He would have been born in inner city urban slum in Dublin. We don't know where but the inner city slums of Dublin in the 1850s would have been pretty tough going. So he was a working class Irishman who I believe first became a sailor and he fucked off out of Ireland.

He became a hobo in America. So kind of lived... Hobo is kind of different to homeless in the context of the 18th century. It's a transient homeless person who moves from place to place, taking jobs usually via the rail network. So he became a hobo but then what makes this lawrence carroll chap from dublin so fucking interesting he's the first ever western person to be ordained as a buddhist monk the first ever white person to become a fucking buddhist monk is a lad called lawrence carroll from dublin born in

1850 something and he took the name damaloka and whatever happens he ends up in burma as a buddhist monk in a temple in 1901 so becoming an actual buddhist monk and being the first white person to do it which is obviously unheard of because he's the first fucking white person to do it to become a buddhist monk like he's no longer dressing as a westerner he starts to he has to wear the fucking robes of a buddhist monk which in 1901 is really fucking strange and isn't done and people don't know how to react to it because in barma specifically in a society where we said that you know europeans dress a certain way and native burmese people dress a different way. To have a white person barefoot as a Buddhist monk, it really causes a weird situation within the structural hierarchy around shoes. Now, it's worth noting too that this Damiloka, Lawrence Carroll from Dublin, he was also, he was quite radical.

He would have been very, very anti-colonial. He's an Irishman, so he's also aware, like he's not a fan of the British, because he's seen what the British colonialism is doing in Ireland. So he's radicalisedized outspoken he has did a lot of writing a lot of anti-colonial writing this person is a rebel as such an outspoken rebel he's also you know a Buddhist who is a you know a Buddhist monk, takes a vow of poverty, of chastity, you know, compassion, but is also passionately angry

because he understands what is truly right and what is wrong. And, you know, there's a quote that he was very outspoken about the bible the whiskey bottle and the gatling gun so he viewed uh missionary christianity as wrong because missionary christianity would have been used by the british as a way to colonize and eradicate cultures you bring in christ you remove the religion that's in the area that you're colonizing and then you use christianity as a weapon of coercion

so damilocca from dublin he's not into fucking christianity he's not into christian missionaries he's not into alcohol of course he views the destructive forces of alcohol and the Gatling gun the Gatling gun being the British machine gun which in 1901 again the politics of the machine gun in 1901 is quite interesting the British used to used to have an actual policy of, like the machine gun, the Gatling gun, which was the, I think was the first ever gun, the Maxim gun.

The machine gun was a British invention. I don't know if the first one was the Maxim gun or the Gatling gun, right? But anyway, guns were the thing, but all of a sudden you now have this new technology called a machine gun, which is one weapon that can kill a thousand people right and it was so dangerous that the brits had an actual policy of you must never use a maxim gun or a gatling gun machine gun on a white person like the brits took on the zulus in africa with the machine gun and would just

mow down hundreds and hundreds of zulu warriors with who'd have spears and bow and arrow and they just mow them down kill them all with one fucking gun but they'd never use the gun against another white person until world war one and if you ask uh the brits they'll say well the Germans did it first we had no choice so the Gatling gun in 1901 and this is why Damilocca is speaking out about it it's not just a gun it's this unique vicious weapon

of British colonialism that is used against what they deem to be savages people who don't have access to humanity. It's okay to use a Gatling gun on quote-unquote savages because their humanity is not Christian in your opinion. So Damiloc is speaking out about the Bible, the whiskey bottle, and the Gatling gun. So, as you can imagine, very anti--british very anti-colonial but a buddhist

a buddhist monk the first fucking westerner ever in burma so one day in 1901 what happens is damaloka is in a pagoda um which i i assume is a type of buddhist temple but he's in a pagoda. Which I assume. Is a type of Buddhist temple. But he's in a pagoda. And what happens is. A policeman walks into. The pagoda in their shoes. Now the policeman's allowed to do this. Because.

The signs say that only Burmese people. Must take off their shoes. But Damiloka. Just says fuck this. Take your shoes off. To policeman policeman goes I believe the policeman was Indian but because they were an actual officer for the British they don't have to take their shoes off but Damiloka's like fuck that it's a Buddhist temple take your fucking shoes off and it caused a unique problem because essentially what you have there is is Damilocca used his privilege as a white European to call out an injustice like he's a

white European who's barefoot telling a police officer who's part of the British Crown Forces to take their fucking shoes off in the pagoda. So a crowd kind of gathered around and were like, is this fucking Buddhist monk actually telling the policeman to take his shoes off? Because they've known 70 years of that's not what you do. And also the people are going, holy fuck, that Buddhist monk is white. What the fuck is going on here? So because it was such a strange and unique situation, it led to a thing called the shoe controversy. I think it was called the shoe question.

There was a newspaper article written about it. And it inspired more Buddhist monks in Burma to start challenging Brits and policemen and people of power to now take their fucking shoes off when they went into temples. And remember, you have to bring this back to when the British first colonized Burma and they refused to take their shoes off for the Buddhistdhist king so this business of shoes it's not just about shoes it's both religious and nationalistic it's about independence it's about

identity as a people it's about removing getting the brits out basically. So it's not just shoes anymore. The symbol of shoes means so much more than just religion. So it became a real passionate and important thing for the people of Burma to now really challenge this business of if you step into a pagoda or a Buddhist temple, everyone takes their fucking shoes off doesn't matter who you are you must take your shoes off and the brits tried to fight back a bit but they eventually realized we can't win this one so what happened is and as well the like the monks were taking down the signs and putting up new ones so instead of the sign now saying uh only barmese people must take their shoes off they were putting up new ones so instead of the sign now saying uh only barmese people must take their

shoes off they were putting up new signs that just saying take your fucking shoes off whoever it is take your shoes off so the brits folded on it and were like this isn't this is a this is a fight that if we fight this too brutally it will internationally look very very bad so the Brits said grand we'll all take our shoes off and it then that small victory around shoes led the Burmese people it led to a Burmese nationalist movement for independence where they kind of went well fuck it man if if we won the battle of the shoes then what more can we get and it's seen as a real starting point for eventual Burmese independence which was won and that's why the place is now Myanmar um now I'm cautious around telling that story because I don't want to have

like this this white savior narrative where this white fucking lad from Dublin is responsible for Burmese independence that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is that a lad from Dublin an Irish man who grew up in a country controlled by British rule

under the boot of Britain went to a different country, saw the people as his contemporaries, didn't identify with the colonial rulers, because they're the same colonial rulers that are fucking over Irish people, instead identified with the struggle of the people there, adopted their customs and traditions, but used his privilege as a white european

to stand up in maybe a way that had he not have been a white european if it had been a burmese person who would have attempted that would that person have simply been met with immediate execution and death he used his privilege to stand up in that moment so it's i'm not trying to say that he's like this white fucking savior like dances with wolves who led the native people he didn't he stood up and used his privilege to go this is fucking wrong and i don't know i think that's a cool story and what I also find interesting too is is it's been suggested that a huge part of his inspiration was to understand that you can use religion native religion effectively as an anti-colonial tool. Because like in Ireland with Catholic emancipation.

People identify with a religion if they're told that that religion is lesser by a colonial power. But also religion is a very sensitive thing. Even in 1900. thing even in 1900 if the people unite like the people in ireland unite under under catholicism for catholic emancipation when they unite under a religion right the religion is we'll say in ireland catholicism is bigger than fucking ireland so if the brits come down too hard on it, like they did with the penal laws, it just looks bad. It looks bad to all the other Catholic countries. And then other Catholic countries might want to come in and help. So similarly, with Burma, with the business with the shoes, and with people uniting under Buddhism,

if the Brits crack down too hard on an issue of religion you don't just piss off the Burmese you piss off every other fucking country which has respect for Buddhism and they say that Damaloka

understood this and this was a kind of a cornerstone in his revolutionary thinking so it's just an interesting story i thought i'd tell you to entertain and take your mind off the world there you go so now we will move where are we is that 40 minutes now we're going to have the ocarina pause ladies and gentlemen I've got a nice little one here

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a leather embroidered strap I don't know I'd say someone gave it to me at a gig I have a lot of ocarinas now and I have an Aztec death whistle which I think we could do without the Aztec death whistle for a couple of months

but this beautiful ocarina oh bye so there you go, some adverts, also, if you listened last week, you know I gave a particularly impassioned plea for ye lads to support me on Patreon, and I'm going to do it again this week, because as you know, we're in the middle of this coronavirus bullshit what's this going to sound like in a fucking year do you know what I mean, in a year

talking about the pandemic when someone listens back to the podcast do you know what it's going to be like this is why I fucking hate why I'm cautious about even mentioning the coronavirus do you know like when it's june and you see something to do with christmas and you're just like get it away from me no that's what this would be like so i'm trying i but i can't not

mention the fucking coronavirus so if you're listening from 2021 apologies for emotionally triggering you so anyway what'll they be doing in 2021 ISIS will start gluing prosthetic shins to dogs

I mean I'll be freaked out by comically tall corgis but uh the fuck was I talking about Patreon yeah look here's the crack coronavirus I fucking

so look mass gatherings are banned for a long time so all my live podcasts have had to have been postponed until a few months anyway I won't be doing live podcasts for a few months lads and that's uh absolutely devastating to my income also because I postponed a gig in London it wasn't insured so I'm left with a gigantic debt so I'm in a tough old situation financially at the moment and yeah it's tough going so last week I put out a big plea for you to really support my fucking

patreon if you don't do it and I'm doing the same this week um yeah so look if you listen to the podcast a lot and you're enjoying it just to understand that uh it takes a long time to make i put it out for free um and if if you can afford to pay me for it please do and the way to do this is go to patreon.com forward slash the blind buy podcast and you become a patron of the podcast and you know for the give me the price of a cup of coffee or a pint once a month that's all it is just once a month and you're you're paying for me to put in a lot of work and provide content and now that all my live income is gone this I this is what I need to pay my fucking bills and to pay that debt and to stay out of trouble.

So if you're sitting on the fence and you're going, oh, one day I'll do Blind Boys Patreon. If you can afford it, if you can afford that pint, please do. Please do. You'd really be helping me at a time of need. If you can't afford it, that's fucking grand. That rule still applies, lads. If you can't fucking afford it, there's that rule still applies lads if you can't fucking afford it there's no pressure please don't be feeling guilty all right this is for the people who reckon they can like i got a lovely mail last week from someone who was like

they heard my plea last week and they're like i i still have my job. Coronavirus just means that I'm working from home. So what this person did is. They gave me a portion of the money. That they would have been paying. On parking their car. Which I thought was a lovely fucking gesture. And it was really nice. And I really appreciated it.

So. That's the. Now. Now is the time. I really really need patrons for the podcast. To keep it going. And. To fucking. For me to be podcast to keep it going and to fucking for me to be able to pay my bills and live

so please do consider it and yeah if you can't prosettilise the podcast just either give it a review on iTunes fucking recommend it to friends that's the best one

yeah the other shitty thing about this quarantine that we're all in is i rely massively on word of mouth for this podcast especially people at work in offices you know people at work going i listen to this podcast on the way to work so it spreads around offices that's kind of gone now so people are going to be listening to more podcasts because we're all trying to fill our time because we're in self-isolation so recommend the podcast to a friend and go to that playlist the official blind by podcast playlist on spotify and send that one to a friend so they then have what i've picked to be the best episodes for them to listen to um so that's about it really that's about it lads thank

you very much for listening to that so the first half of the podcast was about the irish buddhist monk and as i promised you i'm going to speak about the coronavirus, anxiety around it, mental health, how to manage, how I'm managing my mental health and anxiety around the coronavirus. If you don't want to fucking hear that, because you're sick of hearing about the coronavirus, because it's all anyone's talking about, I'll talk to you next week. Alright, that's grand. But for anyone who wants to continue listening you can continue listening i'm not going to say anything frightening or scary or catastrophic all right that's not my game i'm here to speak about management and coping and calmness and meaning all right so if you are listening to this don't be worrying about is blind boy gonna say some fucking shit that's gonna make me upset for the rest of the day no I am not absolutely not so

right how do I deal with, I'm someone who, I don't live with anxiety but I'm somebody who once did with extreme panic attacks and anxiety. So I have the type of personality and the type of thought process that can lean me towards panic and anxiety so usually what i say around panic and anxiety if we take the cognitive behavioral therapy approach um cbt would say that anxiety depression these things are caused not by what is happening, but your reaction to what is happening, your views and beliefs that you have about what is happening. Okay. And for most of the time that works. When we experience anxiety or discomfort, it's because of our own thought process it's stuff that's not happening it there are fantasies that we're inventing ourselves which is convenient because then

you can work on how you're thinking about things how you're thinking about a situation and then you can alleviate and remove the anxiety by changing your thinking from rigid and extreme thoughts to thoughts that are more flexible but what do you do now that we have you know we we're all in self-isolation because there's a fucking global pandemic right none of us have lived through this we haven't had this before this is a new one for all of us so now how how do you if anxiety and depression and anger are caused by not why what not by what's happening but how you view what's happening. How do you now manage it when what's happening is actually a scary thing?

And what I do there is there's many different schools of psychology psychology is is is I'm not a religious person but I use psychology and psychotherapy the way that a religious person would turn to the Bible will say now I don't mean supernatural it's just when I'm searching for a way to understand my emotions and my feelings I turn to psychology so

for something like the coronavirus CBT is helpful to a point but I have to go further I have to go to things like existential psychology and Buddhism in a way as well because a lot of existential psychology and humanistic psychology it's just kind of Buddhism but in a more clinical version of Buddhism

that isn't, it's not religion. It's not religion. So, firstly, I acknowledge and accept what's happening. So, as I say many times before, life contains suffering. In order to exist as a human being and participate in what we call life you're going to suffer suffering is part of it now joy and happiness and laughter they're also part of life in fact they're most of life but suffering is also a part of life that it it's a given it is a given of existence so right now with the coronavirus the world is now collectively suffering to not be able to leave your house because there's a virus that's suffering You're being denied going outside and meeting people.

You're worried about the safety of people you love. You're worried about your own safety. So right now, I'm suffering. You're suffering. Suffering is a given of human existence, right? The situation right now. The objective reality. Is that.

It's painful. It's not nice. It's not pleasant. For there to be. A virus. That we don't have immunity to. That's not pleasant. It is going to go away.

Alright. It's not. It's not forever. It's going to go away. But right now the objective reality is that. It's unpleasant and we are suffering. But. Does that now mean.

That every moment of my existence. Has to be extreme suffering? Panic and anxiety are examples of extreme suffering. Okay? They tend, panic, if because of this coronavirus business and the news, you're in a state of panic and if you're in a if if because of this coronavirus business and the news you're in a state of panic and anxiety which means that you're continually fearful on edge worried all right that for me constitutes unnecessary suffering okay suffering is a part of human existence but there is also avoidable suffering so my job myself for my mental health at this moment and what's what i'm doing to cope i don't want any unnecessary avoidable suffering, okay, and panic and anxiety are

avoidable, they're suffering that I can avoid, so what I do, I tend to, I'm not going to say that like when this fucking coronavirus shit, when it arrived in Ireland and it was all over the news, that I didn't have moments of panic and anxiety. Of course I did. That's a natural response to a negative situation. I absolutely did have slight moments of, oh fuck, we're fucked, oh this is terrible oh no what will i do um but because because i've i've overcome panic attacks and anxiety and and deal with it all the time my default i don't as a default when when anxiety and panic comes up in me I can actually recognize it for what it is I can understand hold on a second I'm not concerned about what's happening I'm not worried

about what's happening I'm panicking I'm experiencing anxiety so I can spot these things and I go that's not useful it's okay to feel it right now but I can spot these things and I go, that's not useful. It's okay to feel it right now, but I can't run with it. I can't live with this and allow this to define my day. And often I find panic and anxiety present themselves, right? When we refuse to truly acknowledge and accept the objective reality of what's happening. truly acknowledge and accept the objective reality of what's happening. When we don't truly acknowledge that suffering is occurring and we kind of have suffering in the corner, but you don't want to stare at it and you're looking away

and there's this internal voice inside you that wants to be like this is a dream it's not happening this is a dream how can this be happening that's that's when panic takes hold that's when panic and anxiety takes hold so what i did is i said i accept it right now in my life is a time of suffering. And when I say suffering, again, I'm taking it from psychology and Buddhism. Suffering just means bad shit is happening. I mean, I'm not in physical pain, but I'm suffering. You're suffering.

My freedom is restricted my livelihood has been taken away a huge portion of it I'm left with the uncertainty for the future no one fucking likes that I'm worried for the safety of people I love who are vulnerable to the virus, I now have a brand new handful of bad problems that I didn't have last week and these things are unavoidable, right? So acknowledging, the first step for me was acknowledging this fucking exists this is objective reality right now isn't pleasant okay panic and anxiety i find especially existential anxiety it tends to become overpowering when you're not truly accepting and acknowledging what's actually happening when this coronavirus fucking when it comes on the news and you see everything around you and it doesn't feel real and you feel like you're in a film or you're in a dream and there's this part of you this like an itchy emotion that wants to wake up

from a dream or that wants to say wants to. Say this isn't happening. This isn't happening. Or this part of you that wants to. Crawl into a fucking ball. You know. That's when anxiety and panic takes over. And you can. Lose control of.

Your emotional discipline. Right. And. That's when anxiety and panic kicks in and and the way to not allow that to happen is you truly accept and understand that i am alive and i exist and in order to be a human being i have to accept that suffering is an inevitable and unavoidable part of being alive and right now the world is suffering that's a given that's what's happening like it's it's an interesting thing a lot of people right now are turning to nostalgia like people in their early 20s,

at the moment, there's this, there's this video game called, Animal Crossing New Horizons, which everyone, in their fucking early 20s, is playing, and it's interesting,

the desire towards it, because, people who are, who are, we'll say 25 and under, Animal Crossing New Horizons, is a is a it's it's part of a series of games called animal crossing the first one was like in the early 2000s so people in their early 20s are gravitating towards this video game because it reminds them of a video game that was

around when they were under the age of six. And, all right, it's a video game and it's fun, but what nostalgia always tells us is when you seek comfort in nostalgia, what you're looking to do is return to the safe part of your childhood. What makes nostalgia tempting is you want to go back to being three and four where there is no pain in the universe because your ma and da controls what pain is. When you're a child and bad shit is happening, you can go to mammy and daddy and you can say, I'm suffering. And mammy and daddy come along and say, well, I'm going to fucking stop the suffering.

But when you're an adult, there's no one to stop the suffering. When you're an adult, suffering is an inevitable part of being alive. So when we find ourselves wanting to play fucking Animal Crossing, yeah, it's a fun game, but it's that attempt to alleviate suffering it's it's you want to go back to the womb you want to go back to being a toddler when someone bigger than you could make everything okay I'm not saying there's anything wrong with playing fucking Animal Crossing I'm saying have awareness around your gravitation towards nostalgia because the force behind it is it's a way to moderate and control emotions

people in their fucking thirties might all of a sudden flick on Netflix and decide that Harry Potter is a good idea something about watching Harry Potter gives you that warm fuzzy feeling I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it do it

but have an awareness around is what you're searching for to return to a place where you can crawl into a ball and have an adult say to you everything's going to be okay where I'm going is I have to sit with the reality that

I don't really know what's going to happen I know that right now I can manage what's within my control and I'm not looking for a mother or father figure to tell me everything's going to be okay. I have to be an adult and go, I am an adult and I am suffering because life contains inevitable suffering.

And when you do that, right, I'm not being negative. When you do that, when you accept and acknowledge that reality currently is suffering, then you move to a grounded place where you can actually look around you and go, certain things right now are outside of my control. The coronavirus existing is outside of my control. It's outside of your control. Having to socially isolate is outside of my control it's outside of your control um having to socially isolate is outside of my control having to stay away from people who i love and me having to stay away from them to protect them is outside of my control right and i accept that these things are outside of my control. So now I move my attention towards what is in my control.

What's certainly in my control is no matter what happens in my life, I have absolute control over my attitude towards it. No one can take that away. When you find yourself in a situation of panic and a situation of anxiety, then it's like you've given away that control. But it's like, no, no, no, no. I have complete control over how I react

to situations that are outside of my control. Like if we look at the the panic buying that people are doing going into the supermarket and all the food is fucking gone like that there is a classic it's like a sickness of our society

like there's no evidence whatsoever that we have to worry about our food supply none like in a country like Ireland the food's going fucking nowhere there's going to be plenty of food and no shop is going to run out of food

no shop is going to run out of toilet paper yet people still are now I understand, look i'm going to the supermarket once every two weeks i'm going in once every two weeks to get two weeks worth of shopping simple as that because i'm avoiding the supermarket because i'm socially isolating so i get it some people are going in and they're buying two weeks of food and that's fair enough that's what i'm doing but i'm not taking the piss i'm not being greedy and a minority of people are going into the supermarket and buying a ton of shit they don't need and what that tells me as a symptom

of our society and what i find interesting is we're a society that's been raised with the religion of consumerism and consumerism is and i've said it before when your desires far outstrip your needs okay and we the the kind of the mouthpiece of consumerism is advertising advertising isn't about selling you things it's about selling you a better version of yourself okay so the people who are panic buying they're not purchasing things because they think they need them what they're actually doing is they have been we as a society have been conditioned to receive endorphins and feelings of pleasure and feelings of being a better person through the simple act of purchasing. And these people are trying to control and regulate and manage their emotions by engaging in acts of purchasing goods. Which is a uniquely capitalistic way

of managing internal emotions and why am i saying it because again it's it's another opportunity to if you find yourself going to the shop and arriving home with like what the fuck why do i have an entire tray of yogurts that are going to go off to ask yourself is this actually about having enough food to survive or are you trying to moderate and control something that's beyond your control what are you not facing what are you not staring down that when you try and turn away turn away it expresses itself as panic buying so have an awareness around i suppose irrational expressions of anxiety and again remind yourself life is suffering right now we're suffering and to acknowledge

and accept it and now manage and look at what's inside your control so a big thing i've been doing is searching for personal meaning right within the situation i found myself in so i can't leave my gaff that's grand i'm in my gaff all day now so i'm going right what what have i been procrastinating what have i been putting off so now i'm giving myself a load of little tasks to do to give myself personal meaning so for me it's setting up this streaming thing um i'm really enjoying like i said i go to the supermarket once every two weeks but for me it's a huge opportunity now to i'm changing how i'm cooking I'm rationing my food I'm really thinking about meal planning I'm

buying thinking about nutrition I'm trying to arrive home from the supermarket in a really responsible way where all my foods are like staple foods canned goods that won't go off

rice pasta things like that, not pre-cooked stuff, and I'm getting really disciplined with my cooking, and I turn it into something that's actually genuinely enjoyable, it's genuinely enjoyable to, It's genuinely enjoyable to... Like, I know if I have carrots, celery and onions, these are three ingredients that you can keep for two weeks in the fridge and these three ingredients are the base of five or six different stews.

So a little choice and planning like that it's fun it's enjoyable so i'm getting great personal meaning from doing something like that i'm i'm taking great personal meaning in self-isolating and doing it not for me even though look i don't want to fucking catch the coronavirus um i've got asthma i really don't want to catch catch the coronavirus I've got asthma I really don't want to catch the coronavirus so I'm doing everything in my power not to get it but my driving force

is I'm taking great personal meaning and enjoyment in being really good at not giving the coronavirus to someone else so if i self-isolate and don't interact with other people now i have the privilege to do that because i don't have to go to one some people still have to work and i appreciate that i can do my work from home so i can really, really self-isolate, not meet other people. And I can know when I go to bed and I, when I get up in the morning, I go to bed,

I can truly say to myself today, I definitely didn't get near the coronavirus and I definitely won't give it to another person. So that there, when I wake up in the morning is my number one big job my and I take it on a day-by-day basis my job tomorrow morning when I wake up is to not come in contact with the coronavirus and to not give it to another person okay that's my job and I do that by self-isolating and I'm choosing to care deeply about that task about that big task right because it's an act of compassion I'm doing it for love for other people I I'm gonna work real hard to make sure that i don't catch it and give it to another person especially a vulnerable person and every day that i go to bed and know that i definitely didn't come in contact with it i go to bed with a sense of meaning and a sense of

accomplishment and a sense of purpose then i set myself other goals in the morning based around my self-isolation like i said the business of me and food the other job i have is to is to feed myself right but i'm feeding myself off rations essentially i'm going to the shop once every two weeks so now i have to be incredibly creative about how i feed myself i have all these basic ingredients so every morning it's like a new task and goal going how can i give myself nutritious delicious food today based on these staple ingredients that I have. So that's now a journey that I can get meaning from, you know. Then I'm going, okay, I'm not going to give coronavirus to someone else and I've fed myself fantastically in a challenging situation

which demanded creativity and thinking. Then the other goal is what tasks have i been procrastinating that i now have the opportunity to do because i'm stuck at home so for me it's trying to set up this streaming thing and then a lot of other jobs that i've been putting off that i can fucking boring shit that i can do and i give my full mindful attention to it and i go i'm gonna do this to the best of my ability and do the best version of it that I can so I'm finding tasks setting goals and giving myself challenges and stories and narratives which give that then gives my day a sense of meaning and when you have meaning and purpose in your day no matter how no no no matter uh it doesn't matter that you're living in an objective reality of suffering when your day has meaning you don't experience unnecessary suffering

in the form of panic in the form of catastrophizing like that, that's a... A lot of panic comes from catastrophizing. Worrying about what might happen. Okay? Worrying about, what if I get coronavirus? What if someone I love gets it? You know? What if,

after it's all over, I don't have a fucking job? These are real things to worry about, but... If it's outside of your fucking control if it's something you can't control right now you have to take responsibility to not allow it to define your day you have a responsibility there to go what the fuck am i giving my energy in self-isolation to these things that are outside of my control and haven't happened yet and may not happen?

The only thing I prepare for is I buy enough food to last me two weeks. That's what I prepare for. And I'm not interested in preparing for the next two weeks until two weeks' time because I'm focusing on what's in my control and what's not in my control if it's not in my control i'm not gonna i'm gonna stop myself if i'm getting too emotional around it and i search for meaning in my day the other thing i do around the coronavirus is you know um be mindful how much social media you're consuming you know if you're going on social media all the time and it's you're seeing things that are making you anxious or you're

seeing the media having clickbait headlines again take responsibility around your behavior there and don't go on social media that's what i'm doing now again going on social media is my job don't go on social media that's what I'm doing now again going on social media is my job um being on twitter a lot is my job but when I see people who are there's some people on social media who just their way of managing their anxiety is to be unnecessarily negative or to pass their anxiety onto other people that that is something that i see you see people online being very catastrophic in their wording and their thinking and really liking to focus on things being quite bad i just mute these people i don't want them in my timeline because it's not useful what's useful is the

information that's coming from experts similarly if if you are someone who goes onto social media and when you're on social media what you want to do is express your sense of panic and anxiety if you want to type we're all fucked this is awful this is terrible really think twice about doing that because while i understand that in the moment it can release some anxiety energy as you do it you're just making things you're you're not helping other people someone else with anxiety is going to see your status your status which is about something that doesn't exist. It's about a projection of the future that you've coloured heavily with your own sense of panic.

But when someone sees that on the timeline alongside news headlines, we don't separate the two and we internalise your status about how fucked we are as news and then you've just panicked another person so let's all take responsibility that we're not don't forward the fucking whatsapp message that's probably fake don't go on to facebook or twitter to scream into the void about how terrible you think everything is you're not acting in the benefit of your community right there when you do that you have to just go hold on a second is this worth typing

or if it's really bothering you you got to ring up that person in your life who you care about and who you love and who will listen to you and understand that they're going through the same shit and maybe have a conversation about your panic but don't broadcast it on social media it won't help you, it won't help other people but I am

I'm choosing to focus on there is a silver lining to the coronavirus thing and that's what I'm choosing to focus on right there is a silver lining now i want to be very careful in how i say this because i don't want to come across as a fucking an eco-fascist or like fucking trevelyan in the irish famine like when the irish famine was going on and loads of people were fucking dying. Trevelyan said he believed that the famine was like a gift from God

and that it would be beneficial in reducing the population. And some people are doing that type of take and like, no, fuck that. I'm still, I'm very sad about what's happening. And I don't, I'm not saying, when I say that there are positives, not positives, when I say there's a silver lining

to this coronavirus thing aside from any fucking pandemic of a flu, right, and that's what this is it's the pandemic of a flu which experts are telling us 80% of people are going to get a mild case of it and 20% will find themselves in intensive

care and 5% will die, when I look at the silver lining of a situation which is outside of my control, like global warming is a huge issue, you know i talk about climate change a lot the environment fucking loves coronavirus lads all right my hope for coronavirus is that it's going to be this decade's 9-11 in that when 9-11 happened it changed fundamentally how we live our lives how we move how we operate okay um whether it changed for the better i don't know but it made strong changes to how we travel in particular it defined the last decade 9-11 and security and everything that came about as a result of it and i'm hoping that coronavirus is going to be this generation's 9-11 in terms of a huge incident of global impact that now changes how we behave. But I think we need a kick up the fucking arse regarding climate action. And coronavirus could be that kick up the fucking arse.

The entire world is shutting down now for three or four months. We're not producing as much carbon as we would be producing. The environment is going to benefit from that period whereby we all fucking relax from going out in our cars and industry slows down. The environment is going to love that okay also what it's doing is that there's certain ways of operating specifically in business and these things exist simply because that's how things are done and they haven't been questioned a lot of people in offices and in industries all around the world

are realizing now how many jobs actually needed to how many meetings could have been an email how many jobs required a person to come into an office instead of staying at home do you know what I mean? So. The things that we need to do. In order. In order to fucking. Truly. Stop climate change. We need this massive.

Change in how we live our lives. we need to move around less we need to use less airplanes we need to not be in cars as much and traveling back and forth to work we need to do more stuff remotely these are all positive things for the environment and the coronavirus crisis could be one of those things that makes people go fuck it change isn't so hard all along do you know so i think there's huge benefits in that respect and i'm choosing to focus on that some people say how can you have hope in a time like this of course you can have fucking hope this is going to pass coronavirus is going to fucking pass it's not pleasant it's not it's it's currently we're suffering but for most of us lads ultimately it's like you're being asked to sit on your arse and

watch a load of fucking watch a load of tv sit on your arse watch TV and listen to podcasts and to and by doing that you're as important the job that you're doing is as important as a nurse or a doctor if you sit on your arse and don't contact other people you are preventing the spread of infection and then now you're making the job of the doctor and the nurse and frontline workers easier frontline workers right who are in a completely different situation to me frontline workers who are out there risking their lives working their fucking arses off what we all need to do is to make sure that we don't give them more patience this whole flattening the curve business we chill the fuck out we sit back we don't contact other people and you keep the numbers down low so that the health care system can actually manage them. Another positive,

I said, I don't mean, I mean, another silver lining of this crisis is governments have been forced, unfortunately because it's an emergency, but governments have been forced to look towards some socialistic principles. In Ireland this week the government are temporarily introducing more or less

universal basic income people are going to receive 350 quid a week the employer is going to receive money to keep that personnel in their job our health system has been effectively nationalised, private hospitals have been

absorbed into the public hospitals anyone who uh get gets coronavirus in ireland is not going to receive a medical bill now more than ever the coronavirus has shown the world that we're all in this together and that you can't have like the reason coronavirus is hitting us so hard isn't necessarily because of the virus it's because of the years and years of inequality that have happened because of neoliberalism our health system is strained because of underfunding and underfunding because the powers that be want to privatize it you know we're kind of realizing that if we'd have lived in a more compassionate society where health, housing, education, unions, pensions, where all the crutches of society are funded by the taxpayer

so that when someone falls into trouble... Socialism is a system that acknowledges that suffering is a given of human existence. Okay? And when i say socialism all right don't be listening to fucking jordan peterson telling you that it's soviet russia what i mean is using tax money right our taxes so that everyone has a sense of equality so that if you get sick it's not coming out of your own pocket so that if your children want to go to college it doesn't matter that you're not rich that they can get the same education as everybody else it just means

equality for health care education and housing all right that's what social social democracy is now more than ever the coronavirus is showing the world that this is the way forward because governments are now actually going oh fuck the only way we are actually going to be able to cope with this thing is if as emergency measures we introduce the tenets of social democracy we introduce universal health care uh universal fucking basic income uh they've told the banks to stop asking for mortgages for three months there's been a rent freeze all the things that people have wanted for that the governments say oh we can't do that you could never afford it all of a sudden they're able to do it so it's the coronavirus has called the bluff on governments

who when they've been asked to do the compassionate thing have said compassion is impossible we must follow the market rules and be neoliberal their bluff has been called by this so that for me is a positive going forward you know

look that's all I can really say on it um my thoughts around this look i'm living in the same world as you are and i'm trying my best so my thoughts around it might be a bit scattered and in a few weeks i'll have a better a more streamlined view of it but what i can say is I'll have a better, a more streamlined view of it, but what I can say is, yeah, last week I panicked a bit and I had anxiety, of course I did, alright, it was a frightening and new situation and I ended up with a giant debt and I don't know where my income is coming from, worried about people I i love several horrible things happened to me last week and several horrible things happened to you last week okay and this is the reality that

we must face but i won't because i care about myself I will utterly accept responsibility and take control for what I can control and what I can control is no matter what happens to me in life I have full and utter control over my attitude towards whatever the fuck it is that's happening. Alright. And acknowledging and understanding that is truth. That gives me the power. And the self confidence. To get up in the morning. And now set myself some tasks and goals. That I will mindfully approach.

With passion and gusto and meaning. And then I'll go to bed having achieved some goals and feeling good about myself and now you don't have to have the goals either right these are my goals this is what i want to do and it's unique to my personality I want to set myself the challenge of cooking myself nutritious meals on a skeleton fucking, on rice and all this shit. That's me. I like cooking. I get meaning from it. You don't have to do that.

You can have fucking pizzas in the oven if that's what you fucking like. Alright? Similarly, like, I'm a creative person. So a huge amount of my meaning is going to come from art, maybe you're, maybe that doesn't do it for you, you have to find your own thing, what if your thing is watching fucking Netflix, if that gives you a sense of meaning, then you fucking do it, just make sure you do it passionately, whatever it is you're doing, do it passionately, sure you do it passionately whatever it is you're doing do it passionately if it's getting more rest do it passionately and don't allow the time to be overcome with anxiety and panic and given

unnecessary energy and so an unnecessary suffering to things that aren't happening or haven't happened yet or outside of your control that's basically it and my reality, my objective reality is unpleasant but my subjective lived experience

is pleasant for the most part of it, pleasant. I'm having good days. Despite everything that's happening, I am having good days, and I'm not having days that are full of depression or anxiety. So, and a good book to read, and that's a bit bleak, but a good book to read for this,

and where I'm taking a lot of this from is a psychologist called victor frankl and i did a podcast before on victor frankl i can't fucking remember the name of it but i'll find it and i'll put it into that playlist victor frankl wrote a book called man's search for meaning um you'll be able to get it as a PDF. Viktor Frankl was put into a concentration camp and he basically, the book is about how he managed to survive a concentration camp by finding a sense of personal meaning, even though his reality was a million times more horrific than what you or i are dealing with with

a fucking pandemic this is a jewish man who was in a death camp okay and his book is about how he founded a school of psychology based on his experience about how finding personal meaning got him through it on a day-to-day The only expectation of you or me is to cope. If that's your one goal, right? If you don't want to have a bunch of smaller goals and you want to wake up in the morning, you say to yourself, what's my goal today? My goal today is to cope because that's all, that's all that can be expected of you today i am going to cope and just know this shit's going to be it's going to it's going to be gone the coronavirus is going to be gone and in a year's time we'll be laughing about it you know i don't mean that in a cynical way i mean that in a way

that laughter is an essential and important part of the human condition too. And it's how we manage grief. And it's one way that we can manage grief and one way that we can understand our emotions. And laughter is a way that we can access opinions and thoughts and feelings about things that other mechanisms won't allow us to do. But, you know, China's returning to fucking normal life at the moment china have had three three months of lockdown they've done it properly and life's returning to normal so this isn't forever it's for a couple of months and it's going to be frightening and it's going to be unpleasant and someone you might know someone you know might die you might catch coronavirus these are all things that might happen but if they're not happening right now

then it's none of your business you focus on coping and acknowledge the pain acknowledge the suffering and say this is the price you pay for love this is the price you pay for laughter this is the price you pay for a beautiful fucking sunset this is the price you pay for laughter this is the price you pay for a beautiful fucking sunset this is the price you pay for the sound of birds beauty exists and so does fucking darkness and

it's it's part of the tapestry of human existence and i can't tell you why that is we just know that's the one thing we fucking know all right look that was a bit of a fucking ramble it was a bit of a ramble i hope you took something from it the reason it was a ramble is that I don't have coherent fucking ideas, I don't really have strong coherent ideas about it, I'm playing this by ear the same as ye, and also it was a ramble because when I speak like that, it's not only for the benefit of ye. It's a personal diary for me. It helps me process my feelings and emotions too. But we'll be grand. We'll be fucking grand lads. Alright. We'll be grand.

Do what you're told. Do not catch it. Do not give it to another person. Listen to experts. Only. Yart. I'll be back next week. With some non-coronavirus related nonsense to keep you entertained and distracted. You got it.

Rock City, you're the best fans in the league, bar none. Tickets are on sale now for Fan Appreciation Night on Saturday, April 13th when the Toronto Rock host the Rochester Nighthawks at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton at 7.30pm. You can also lock in your playoff pack right now to guarantee the same seats for every postseason game and you'll only pay as

we play. Come along for the ride and punch your ticket to Rock City at torontorock.com. Arges, cunts. Thank you.