The Blindboy Podcast - The Driver Theory Test

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

A postcolonial analysis of The Driver Theory Test. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Con is a thought too, you shattered Andrews. Welcome to the Blind Boy Podcast. If this is your first episode, I recommend going back to an earlier episode, or even beginning from the start. Even though there's almost, Jesus, there's more than 200 episodes now, but some people begin from the start. But definitely revisit some earlier episodes, because it will familiarise you with the lore of this podcast.

And if you're a regular listener. If you're a forever Brenda. You know the crack. Welcome. So I've had a turbulent evening. Have I had a turbulent evening? No I haven't had a turbulent evening. I've had an unplanned evening.

So I don't have a driver's license, right? I don't have a driver's license to drive a car if I wanted to. And I'm in my fucking mid-thirties and I'm like, I don't have a driver's license. So I applied, like nearly a year ago, I applied for what's known as my driver theory test. Which is like a multiple choice test that you do to even begin to apply for a driver's license. So I did that because I'm thinking like, like I don't need a car. I don't want a car. Like I have a bicycle, I'm quite like, like I don't, I don't need a car. I don't want a car. Like I have a bicycle.

I'm quite happy with that. Like I like cycling everywhere because it's exercise. It's physical. It's a meaningful journey. So I enjoy cycling. And the only other time I need transport is if I'm doing a gig. And when I'm doing a gig gig I love the opportunity to use public transport I love sitting on a train or sitting on a nice long bus ride because it's really enjoyable

read a book listen to music it's quite peaceful and also I can use public transport in Ireland because I have this plastic bag on my head I'm kind of well known enough that if I did sit down on a bus, if people knew who I was, I don't think I'd have a quiet journey. Because people have sat down beside me on buses and then they take out my book or I can hear them listening to my podcast. And that's fine, they might be lovely, but also there's a huge amount of people on Twitter who like to call me a cunt and i don't think i'd like i'd like to sit down beside one of them but i don't have to worry about that i've got a plastic bag on my head and when i get on a bus i don't have a plastic bag on my head so i have a nice quiet lovely journey so i definitely don't need a car i have no intentions of getting a car

but i think i should have a driver's license I just think why the fuck not what's the worst that can happen get a fucking driver's license so today I got an email that was like your driver theory test is in a couple of days and then I went oh fuck I forgot I even applied for this because I applied for it like six months ago, nearly a year ago because of COVID there's been this huge backlog so that's how long it took to give me a test so today I just freaked out I'm like oh fuck

my driver theory test is in a couple of days and I've done no study for it bollocks so I've spent the afternoon doing fake driver theory tests online and I managed to pass it twice and I managed to pass it twice and I managed to pass it not by learning the rules of the road

and actually studying I passed it by figuring out the structural flaws of the exam itself and specifically the tone of the language so here's a bizarre bias that's present in the Irish driver theory test. It's like 50 questions. Each question has four possible answers. So here's the odd thing. The structural tone of the answers is rooted in the Irish childhood experience of being in primary

school. Okay. Irish primary school okay irish primary school teachers so primary school is from when you're about seven till you're 12 irish primary school teachers has have a specific condescending way of speaking to you and a specific way they choose words when you have a question wrong or if you're late it's a passive aggressive tone that prepares you for Irish adulthood so here's the weird unconscious bias in the Irish driver theory test you're given a question and you have four multiple choice answers the answers that are wrong are all passive-aggressive all the wrong answers sound like an irish primary school teacher is saying them and then the one right answer

sounds like it's coming out of the mouth of a guard and once you apply that logic you can guess your way through all the questions so here's an. Here's an example of the flaws of this test. So one question is, what effect can wet weather have on the vehicle's exterior mirrors, right? So if it's raining, what does that do to the mirrors on your car? Really simple question.

So there's four possible answers. Let's read out the three that are definitely wrong. And I know they're wrong. And I tell you how I know they're wrong, because I can read them out comfortably as a passive aggressive Irish primary school teacher. So option A, what effect can wet weather have on a vehicle's exterior mirrors? A, it has effect see the see the shortness of that it has no effect it has no effect that's clearly wrong that's they're baiting you you're being baited into the wrong answer and you're going to be shamed when you get it wrong like if you're in school and the teacher says what happens when rain hits rain hits the side mirror of your car?

And you answer, nothing happens, it has no effect. The teacher is just going to go, oh, it has no effect? It has no effect, Michael, don't be ridiculous. Have you never been in a car in your life? And then everyone laughs at you. So then option B, what effect can wet weather have on a vehicle's exterior mirrors? Option B, it can short circuit the electrically heated mirrors again clearly wrong clearly the wrong answer because what they've they've painted a charlie chaplin style scenario there the answer to that that question there is slapstick it's

i'd nearly go post-colonial there that's almost like paddy's afraid of electricity. So the answer to that question there is that if it rains on your car, right, the effect that it can have is that your electric mirrors are going to short circuit. Immediately you get this vision of a Paddy in a flat cap, scared of his own car. Didn't it start raining from the heavens above? And there was an old shot, that's this. it start raining from the heavens above and there was an old shot that's this and I got a most unmerciful wallop of

electricity from the side mirror and didn't I do a shit in the seat of my pants. So that's the wrong answer and you can imagine your primary school teacher shaming you for it and you can comfortably hear your teacher shaming you for that answer Oh teacher I think if

it rains on the mirrors of the car, they're going to short circuit. Oh, Michael, will you shut up? Will you shut up, Michael? Cunis, everybody. Cunis, everybody, quieten down. Michael thinks he's going to get electrocuted from the wing mirror of a car.

So clearly the wrong answer. Like I said, if you can imagine the answer, if you can imagine yourself being humiliated by a primary school teacher for reading out that answer, then that's the wrong answer. So then the final answer that's definitely wrong. What effect can wet weather have on the vehicle's exterior mirrors? Final wrong answer. It can keep them clean because that's just fucking ridiculous. What happens if the rain, what happens if the rain goes on your mirror? Oh, it keeps them clean, miss. The rain keeps the mirrors clean.

Now that can immediately be followed up with, Oh, it keeps them clean, Michael, is it? It keeps the mirrors clean. I'd say cleaning mirrors is all you're going to be doing when you grow up now, Michael. Washing, cleaning the mirrors and washing the boot of the car. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you even wipe your own hole? So I can say with utter confidence, all three of them are wrong.

Not because I know the rules of the road, but because they're setting you up for primary school humiliation by the teacher. Whoever the fuck wrote this, whatever civil servant wrote this theory test, they have brain worms. Their brains are stuck within the procedural language of Irish institutions. And then how do you find the right answer? You pick the one that sounds like a guard would say it. So what effect can wet weather have on the

vehicle's exterior mirrors? It can distort the rear vision of the driver of the vehicle. Boom, done, right answer. Because that's the only answer you can hear in the voice of a guard. And the wrong answers basically set you up for primary school humiliation from a passive aggressive teacher. And that's the entire test every single fucking question and i passed it twice using that exact approach so will i be doing that when i take my actual test no i won't i'm actually going to try and do the test properly and study because it's important it's fucking road safety it's road safety but i'm just pointing that out to whoever the fuck designed this test.

You need to, I don't know, get the Brits to write it or something because the wrong answers are structured around a very specific Irish childhood primary school shame that we're all deeply fluent in and then the one right answer is that unnecessarily verbose procedural English that only Gardas use.

Like, get a Dutch person to write it. Dutch people have got this absolutely perfect English. We can't do this. we can't do it we, colonialism post-colonialism, we're still not over the Brits, we can't do it we don't feel that these roads are ours

there's three types of road in Ireland there's the roads the English built and named after some bollocks who committed a genocide in Kenya and then we had to name it after Daniel O'Connell. Those roads they're still going strong. There's the more recent roads that the EU built they're fantastic and then in the middle there's the roads that we built which we built for a donkey and cart and then stuck a 100km per hour speed limit on it. I don't know why we did that.

So we can't handle this. We have to sit this one out. Give it to the Dutch. Get the Dutch to write our driver theory test. We can't do it. We're not really good with kind of logical bureaucracy in general and I put this down to

the fact that we speak Hiberno-English. We don't speak English we speak Hiberno-English which is the English language which is underpinned and informed with the structures

of the Irish language. Like, Irish doesn't have a word for yes or no. Irish, we have ta and níol, but ta doesn't mean yes. Ta means it is, and níol means it isn't. So if someone asks someone who speaks Irish, can you swim? The answer isn't yes. The answer is, I can swim. Or, did you eat?

I did eat. Rather than it being a simple yes or no, it's kind of a positive spin on the verb that was just asked. And this shit is the reason, This is why I'm convinced. Why in Ireland like. Just take the rules of the road. We have a single yellow line. What does that mean?

Single yellow line means don't park. Okay. What's that double yellow line mean? Well the double yellow line. That means definitely don't park. I'm just looking for a yes or no. That single yellow line mean? Well, the double yellow line, that means definitely don't park. I'm just looking for a yes or no. That single yellow line, can I park? You can't park.

Just a yes or no. The double yellow line, can I park on the double yellow line? You definitely can't park on the double yellow line. Or even worse. When, at the start of coronavirus, when our government was responding to the coronavirus crisis, the government said, we've got it all sorted, lads, don't worry. So there's a pandemic. So we're going to need to have a lockdown. But we've got five different levels of this lockdown ranging in severity.

One is the least severe and five is the most severe lockdown very clear five point plan everyone was really happy going fucking hell this is really simple five points five point plan we'll know where we are so as soon as the government announced its five point plan someone asked our leader where are we now? And the answer was, three and a bit. Literally, that was the government's answer. So you've spent all this time creating a five point plan, but we're not at four and we're not at three. We're at three and a bit, yeah? We're at three and a bit.

This is why as well like I remember being in the car with my mother once and she was coming off the main road going towards her house and she didn't indicate and I said to her why the fuck didn't you

indicate and she goes sure everyone knows I live in here sure what can you do with that like what can you do with that so we shouldn't be writing our own driver theory test or even coming up with our own rules for something as serious as the roads because we're just not capable of it because of hiberno english we can't we can't think in binary terms. Yes, no is binary. We don't have that in the structure of our language. So that's how you get single yellow line, don't park.

Double yellow line, definitely don't park. And it's not all bad. I do think that this, the dualism with how we speak English, it's not great for writing the rules of the road but it is very good when it comes to rich storytelling you know being very descriptive with how we tell stories or being very creative with how we write the English language and for such a small population historically

like we're tiny like the entire country is smaller than the population of London for such a small country we're hugely overrepresented with English language writers there's a massive amount of very important

writers in the English language that are Irish and who write in Hiberno English and to illustrate this further they did this thing years ago, where they asked English people to give directions and they asked Irish people to give directions. And

the difference between the two was just hilariously different. I'll play you a little clip now so you can hear what I'm talking about. So they asked the English people for directions first. Excuse me, could you tell me the way to Parchment Street? Hmm. Go down to Smith's and turn left. That's Parchment Street. Thanks you tell me the way to Parchment Street? Go down to Smiths and turn left.

That's Parchment Street. Thanks. Tell me the way to the cut, please. Yes, it's just along here and you're first on the left. Lovely, thanks. And now here's an Irishman being asked for directions. Go left. Past the Mayflower.

Huh? Past the Mayflower. Ah, no, no, you're not going that far down. Oh, right. You only go down a few that far down. Alright. I'll only go down a few doors by there. Yeah. And you'll come to a red building.

You can't miss the red bank, we call it. The red bank. Well, you turn left there. Okay. Pass up. That's the high street. You'll be there on your left. It's what they call the high street there.

Yeah. Well, you don't have to go up the high street. There's no need. You could if you like. But continue up there and keep straight. Okay. You'll come to the turn for Carrick and Shannon. Bypass that and you go straight into the hill. There's a hill in front of you there. And you go straight into that hill. And up there and you're on the hill road. Okay, that's brilliant. So now we'll'll go down here, turn left to the bank.

And a short penny down by the red bank goes... And then left, and then up the road. And keep straight all the way, and you'll see the hill in front of you when you go up. That's great, thank you very much. And you'll be on the hill road then. Fantastic. Thank you. I know. Safe journey to you.

Thank you. Now, that's just fucking ridiculous. That's the most ridiculous set of directions that I've ever heard. And even if I heard them, I don't think I'd be any closer to getting where I wanted to go.

Because he didn't give directions. What he did is he he described the map of the area in terms of probabilities there was no binary yes, no it was probabilities

one sentence in particular was the high street would be there on your left it's what they called the high street now you don't have to go up the high street you could if you liked but you don't have to go up the high street. You could if you liked but you don't have to go up there. That's what that man chose to say instead of saying turn right when you get to the high street. He presented the person with two possibilities. I'm not going to give you the binary left and right. I'm going to give you the quantum superposition of both left and right at the exact same time.

The probabilities of choices that you can make. I'm going to introduce a narrative with a sense of conflict into your day. Because if you say to someone, go up there, the high street is on your left. Now you don't have to go up the high street, you could if you liked. But you don't have to go up there the high street is on your left now you don't have to go up the high street you could if you liked but you don't have to go up there I'm not thinking about turning right anymore because I'm wondering about

what am I missing on the high street and that's just it's just fucking fascinating and now lads like that they're kind of they're kind of disappearing unfortunately

because if you go out the country if you go out the country if you go out the country in Ireland and you ask an owl lad or an owl one for directions you're going to get a response like that you're not getting directions you're getting a rich history of the land which is also intertwined with people's relationship with that land because they might start talking about their son or their brother or who owns what house or why that house is called that house like i was filming during the week with the comedian tommy tiernan and me and tommy were talking about this exact thing we were talking about irish directions and he told me a story

about he was up the country one time and he stopped a fella looking for directions and your man gave him directions like that and he said you go straight go up there and then he goes turn right at the ostrich and Tommy goes what the fuck do you mean turn right at the ostrich? Now Tommy's forgotten about where he wants to go, what the directions are and all he cares about is turn right at the ostrich. And then the farmer goes yeah there's a field up there with an ostrich in there her name is Dolly Parton. Now Tommy's entire journey has been detoured because he wasn't given directions he was given several different probabilities and one of those probabilities was to see an ostrich called Dolly Parton.

Sure, that's the rest of your day ruined. What sane individual is going to pass up that opportunity? And I have a tiny little hot take around why I think this is. And this might be incorrect. I have a tiny little hot take around why I think this is and this might be it might be incorrect but a few weeks back I had on this podcast

a fella called Mán Chán Magan and Mán Chán is he speaks the Irish language fluently and he writes books about the history of the Irish language and Mán Chán told me something really interesting which was because the Irish language and Man Con told me something really interesting which was because

the Irish language developed in an oral culture because the Irish language is quite old it's nearly 2000 years old because the Irish language developed in an oral culture as in there was no writing we needed to

tell stories about the entirety of our environment so every tree and every river and every mountain We needed to tell stories about the entirety of our environment. So every tree and every river and every mountain had to have a mythology around it because this helped us to remember that which can't be written down or recorded in any other way. So when you create massive stories about the land around you and create this massive narrative then nothing can be forgotten so in that respect if someone asks you for directions two thousand years ago you're not going to say go there and take a left you're going to tell the entire story of the area that you're in so that you then pass that knowledge on to the person you're speaking to and they'll remember because they'll know that that tree up there has a ghost in it

and that river over there has got a talking fish and obviously eventually then Irish became a written language but at the time that English was being enforced on us about 1537 it would have started with the the statute of Ireland, an act for the English order, habit and language. So Irish became illegal around the 1600s with the penal laws. Speaking Irish and writing Irish was illegal and you had to speak English. But what that did too, and you had to speak English. But what that did too, that forced Irish back into being an oral language,

because whatever about speaking it, if you were able to write it down, then there's evidence, so you're not going to get caught with a piece of Irish in writing. And most of the country spoke Irish. So I find it interesting that at the same time that Irish was illegal and would have been strictly an oral culture because it was illegal that was also the same time that we were being enforced

to speak English and and that's my hunch there as to how you get something which is a tenet of oral culture when you're asked for simple directions and you give someone a giant story that is a tenet of oral culture but when you do that in the English language in Hiberno English specifically what you have there is the resistance between the two things your brain is thinking by the rules of the oral culture.

Nothing is short, nothing is curt. There's no yes, no. Every answer must contain a rich narrative that tells a story of everything. Because if you don't, information gets lost. So you're thinking orally, but you're speaking English, a language which is legal, is enforced, and can be written down. And maybe that's why the Irish directions are a thing. That's why Irish directions are a thing that we've all encountered at one point.

That's how they came to be. That's how they were handed down. Now that's my half-baked hot take there. And if you know about this shit, give me a mail and tell me what you think of that theory. But take that with a pinch of salt. That's a little theory that I have about Irish directions. You know?

You have to interrogate that. Where are the English people saying, go straight and take a left? And then the Irish people are telling straight and take a left and then the Irish people are telling an entire story about the area with multiple probabilities and another little aside while I'm thinking about it this week Sally Rooney who's probably the biggest writer in the world today Sally Rooney's new book Beautiful World Where Are You came out Sally's an Irish writer Sally writes in Hiberno

English and I read a review of Sally's book and the reviewer spoke about how in Sally's new book so much of it is emails between two characters and how much of the conversation is taken up with describing the respective journeys that they have to make to see each other and describing the landscape and describing their journeys essentially. Writing out maps with words and narrative and when I encountered that analysis of Sally Rooney's new book I couldn't help but associate it with that very specific way of giving directions in Irish where it's so rich and it tells so much

and how that then can be traced to the oral tradition it reminds me too a bit of the first time I had Emma Dabbery on this podcast and she spoke about oral culture within West Africa and how in West Africa where there wasn't a written language people used hair, the patterns of a person's hair, how a certain hairstyle was in parts of West Africa and how different hairstyles told a story about that person, about their ancestors, about their status, about where they come from, about the land around them. Just a different way to, a different way to record history when the written word isn't present like here's here's something i've been thinking about a lot

recently in terms of modern oral culture like a little oral tradition or an oral culture that all of us have participated in and is now kind of gone so when i was growing up we'll say in the 90s television in the 90s and in the 70s and in the 80s, comedy in particular used to rely upon catchphrases. And catchphrases were a really funny sentence that a character might say on a comedy show on TV. And then as soon as the TV show is over and you don't have a VHS and you can't watch it on demand, all you're left with is a memory, a shared memory of that very funny TV show that you watched and that all your friends watched at the same time on television. And then the goal of a catchphrase was that you might put it out on a Sunday night

and then on a Monday morning everyone is using that catchphrase. And that's how a comedy show went viral before the internet. That was oral meme culture. That was how word of mouth made a piece of television popular through catchphrases. Let's take Father Ted for example.

Father Ted was massively popular in the fucking 90s and Father Ted relied upon catchphrases was massively popular in the fucking 90s. And Father Ted relied upon catchphrases. In particular Father Jack. Father Jack used to say. Drink arse feck girls. Now I was a child in school.

But on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Everybody was just saying. Drink arse feck girls. And in offices in Britain and in Ireland. Everybody was saying. Drink arse feck girls. And in offices in Britain and in Ireland, everybody was saying, Drink arsefeck girls. And it only existed because you couldn't whip out your phone and say,

Look at this bit on Father Ted last night. Once Father Ted went out on TV, that was it. You could have recorded it yourself on VHS and watched it yourself, but you can't carry a television around with you. So people needed to relive the shared empathy of humour through repeating catchphrases. Drink arse, feck girls.

Same with a funny film called Whip Nail and I. In the 90s and early 2000s, people doing Whip Nail and eye quotes to each other in social settings was a completely normal thing. Roaring drink arse feck girls all the time was a normal thing to do. Nowadays

people don't do it anymore. Why? Because we have the fucking internet. If something funny happens on the internet you don't need to memor memorize a catchphrase and engage in the shared empathy of humor with your friend by repeating that catchphrase repeating the memory of what you saw that's now gone now you just simply it becomes a meme so the recorded document that is a comedy meme the The funny TikTok that you see,

the funny YouTube video, that's simply what they are. It's a funny video that you can literally share with your friend. But it has eradicated the oral tradition of catchphrases. And I know this intimately because I began writing comedy for television literally at the very end. My first ever TV comedy sketch that I wrote professionally was called The Rubber Bandit's Guide to Limerick. It was in 2010. It was on RTE. And I deliberately wrote the catchphrase, that's Limerick City.

Right? That in this sketch, myself and Mr. Chrome say, that's's limerick city as a deliberate catchphrase and it worked for like a year everyone was saying that's limerick city and the reason was is that smartphones didn't exist yet so people could still go to youtube and re-watch the sketch over and over but they couldn't share it on their phones. The phones didn't exist. You had to go to your laptop or your PC. So that was the very end of catchphrases working. People used to shout that in the street

but now it's pointless. It's done. There's no point in that anymore. And if you're old enough to remember using catchphrases in everyday conversation and how much fun it used to be, it used to be fun. You'll know that what you're doing, you're trying to grasp at a memory. You're trying to do your best to hold on to the memory of something you can't access. You can't watch Father Ted on demand in the office on a Monday.

Fucking friends. Chandler. Could I be any more serious? Could I be? This is all people fucking did. This is all people did. They shouted catchphrases at each other and they loved it. If you did it now, someone would murder you.

Because there's no point. We no longer require that oral tradition we've managed to record it as documented evidence how the fuck did i go from the driver theory test to chandler bing so i'm i'm blaming i'm blaming the inefficiency of the driver theory test and it's overly emotive language on the duality of Hiberno-English I believe that Hiberno-English has made it difficult for the Irish to engage

in efficient bureaucracy and clear communication but it does have its benefits when applied to literature and storytelling this was going to be a mental health podcast I was going to be a mental health podcast. I was going to do a mental health podcast this week, but what I thought was an intro

turned out to be a rambling hot take. But I will be studying for that driver theory test because I want to do it properly. I want to do it properly and safely. Do you know what, though? I actually did pass it, it like nearly a decade ago. I used to drive a car. I used, I had a car for like two years.

And I drove it around the place. And it was when I had, I had a job, like a normal job for a short time, just after I left college, I worked in an office. I worked in the call centre of a mobile phone company. And when I was in the call centre, I ended up having to be removed from the call centre because when I was on the phone, people used to recognise my accent from these prank phone calls that I used to make years ago when I was a teenager but people were recognising my accent

so they had to take me out of the call centre and then they put me into the fraud department and I didn't last very long in the fraud department I lasted only about two months because I was overly horizontal in my chair they had these type of

chairs in the office that you could you could basically go fully horizontal like a bed and I found myself doing that which managed to piss off the upper echelons of the office because they were like who the fuck is this cunt who's horizontal trying to be working in the fraud department and one day I didn't like the job I fucking hated it I hated working in an office it did not suit me at all and I'm glad I worked in that office so I could learn what I didn't like I'm really glad I did I ended up getting fired because one day I used the office printer to print out like 120 pages about the CIA's history of smuggling cocaine in South America and I ended up getting a grilling from management and they're like what the fuck are you doing 120 pages about the CIA what what's wrong with you and I think I didn't even give a fuck about the grid

and all I wanted to do was talk to them about like, the CIA smuggled cocaine in South America. The CIA, there's fucking evidence. There's evidence. And that got me fired. But during that period I had a car. Yeah, I used to drive a fucking car. A Peugeot 206.

Used to sound like Marge Simpson. Because I put diesel into it by accident. And I'd passed my theory test. The first time. But I had one of those provisional licenses. And I never renewed it. So I actually can drive. I actually can.

I may. Well I don't know. It's been a long time. I'm assuming it's like a bicycle. But I actually drove. Like for two years and then I became and then I went into the job that I'm in now

I was like I'm gonna pursue art so obviously pursuing art at the earliest stages of a professional art career you can't have a car or pay for insurance or petrol or anything like that cause it's there's not enough money.

I'm after doing an Irish direction of a podcast. This was supposed to be a different podcast. I had not intended the previous 30 minutes. So I've gone full Irish directions on the entire narrative of what the podcast was. Let's have the ocarina pause. Let's settle ourselves with the ocarina. for addiction and mental health to support life-saving progress in mental health care. From May 27th to 31st, people across Canada will rise together and show those living with mental illness and addiction that they're not alone. Help CAMH build a future where no one is left behind. So, who will you rise for? Register today at sunrisechallenge.ca.

That's sunrisechallenge.ca. It's the most terrifying. 666 is the mark of the devil. Hey! Movie of the year. It's not real. It's not real. What's not real? Who said that? The first O-Men. Only in theaters April 5th. That was the Ocarina Pause.

That means you heard an algorithmically generated advert. Don't know what it was for. I hope it wasn't the Road safety authority i know the road safety authority have definitely taken ads out on this podcast if you're listening road safety authority please get some dutch people to to fucking write the the driver theory test all right and and take on board my post-colonial critique support Support for this podcast comes from you, the listener, via the Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash theblindboypodcast. If you enjoy this podcast, if you're listening to it regularly,

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I can't just leave Follow me on Twitch Twitch.tv forward slash the blind boy podcast Where I do live streams. It's enjoyable, crack. So I'm now not going to do a mental health podcast, because this has been derailed, and there's not enough time left to do an in-depth mental health episode.

I might consider it next week. So for the rest of this podcast, I'm going to just answer some questions, because I'm always getting questions from you, and you're always asking me to just answer some questions. Because I'm always getting questions from you. And you're always asking me to please answer questions. One of them was from Sully. Sully wanted to know. What happened with my barbecue? If you were listening in two weeks ago.

You'll know that I had a. A pre-legal altercation with a Dutch company. Who I'd bought a faulty barbecue from. So I'd bought myself a Kamado barbecue as like a late birthday present. And I'm not telling you when my birthday is because

I know there's people who are just going to fucking get into my DMs about star signs. No thanks. So I got myself a late birthday present of a Kamado barbecue which is it's not even a barbecue. It's like a little small outdoor oven. It's a small little outdoor oven.

They're fantastic that you put some wood charcoal into. And you'll know from listening to this podcast too that I try and eat a plant-based diet for most of the week so for maybe five six days a week I eat plant-based food I don't eat meat um I do this for the environment I do this for the environment because I think most of us moving forward as a society we need to not be as reliant on eating meat as much as we do it's unsustainable it's not sustainable to eat meat every day of the week it's it's just that's not how it's supposed to be so i try and be plant-based most of the time but i can't completely give up meat because it's too fucking tasty and i apologize to any fucking vegans out there. And vegetarians who are making that sacrifice. But I'm just not there yet.

So. Once a week. I make myself a meal. Or twice a week. That contains meat. Usually a lovely Sunday dinner. Like a chicken or a roast beef. So I got myself this Kamado BBQ.

Because. I wanted to do entire roast dinners in it. I wanted. It's a weird looking outdoor oven. About the size of an exercise ball. It's round. And. My plan was.

You just put a bit of wood charcoal in. In the morning. Throw in my chicken. Throw in my roast potatoes. And just leave it with the cover on. For six hours. And it just slowly cooks the chicken and the spuds and you get this lovely roast chicken and spuds with a smoky flavor from the charcoal so it's like an all-year barbecue that you can use with a cover

on it it's not like a summer thing it's you can use this in december outdoors if you want the thing is they're incredibly expensive they're like between a grand and two grand and I was like fuck that no way so big egypt bought a really really cheap one online and then it arrived like smashed up and the company I bought it from are really not wanting to give me a refund just again to big up the Dutch and to reinforce the case that they should be writing our driver theory test

like they're just expertly making an absolute gobshite out of me in perfect English using immaculate bureaucracy and staying within EU law while at the same time creating

a situation where they keep my money and I don't send my Kamado BBQ back but I'm not letting that happen I'm going to be an awkward buy so I've gotten to the, I'm at the passive aggressive state where under EU law I've gotten

to agree to give me a refund if I can send it back to them. But I don't have the original packaging. So now I'm wrapping a big Kamado oven in about two foot of bubble wrap. And sending it back to them. And if it arrives in any way damaged they don't have to give me a refund. So that's where I'm at with the fucking Kamado BBQ. However, when I told my story about my Kamado BBQ two weeks ago,

I got contacted by a listener called Lewis over in the UK. And he has a small little company in the UK that make outdoor grills and pizza ovens and Kamado barbecues they're called freshgrills.co.uk and giving them a little plug because they're a small business and it was it was just really nice really sound to reach out to me and try and help me out and Lewis was like we make Kamado barbecues and they're really well made and they're cheaper than the Dutch lads you went to so I'm going to get my new Kamado BBQ that's of good quality from them freshgrills.co.uk

and hopefully Brexit and customs isn't going to be an issue because I've had my heart broken several times this year because of that I had spices I ordered spices Indian curry powders from England like four months ago,

and they only arrived the other day wrapped in red tape that said opened by customs, because I'm assuming customs thought it was a lot of drugs, so Avril asks, what is the secret to happiness? There's no such thing as happiness. There's no such thing as happiness. There is, unfortunately, such thing as sadness. Now, I'll tell you what I mean by that. So, we tend to walk around life thinking, I will be happy when, I will be happy if.

If only I wasn't in this job, I would be happy. If only I was in a different relationship, I would be happy. If only I lived in a different country, I would be happy. Now that doesn't mean that improving your situation in each one of them circumstances isn't gonna bring you out of unhappiness but this idea that happiness is a state that we can reach that's an illusion that doesn't exist there's there's no such thing as this long-term feeling of happiness that doesn't actually exist if you think back to your life you've never had it what you can have is meaning and if you think back to a time in your life where you perceive

where you're like wow i was really happy then I bet you weren't like fucking thrilled happy non-stop smile on your face 24-7 I bet you instead when you think back to when you think you were happy what you actually had was a sense of meaning and purpose and within meaning and purpose you still have the suffering of being alive within meaning and purpose you still have the suffering of being alive within meaning and

purpose you're still disappointed you're still frustrated you're angry but those negative emotions tend to exist for a reason with a sense of purpose. They are the conflict in the journey that you have in a meaningful existence. Now, like I said, you can have genuine sustained unhappiness. Unfortunately, that does exist. If you're really miserable and you're spending a huge amount of your day

feeling upset about things that have happened in the past or feeling worried or sad about things that might happen if that's your life then you're upset pretty much all the time but when your life has meaning if you're engaged in something that gives you a sense of purpose or meaning then you're if you're engaged in something that that gives you a sense of purpose or meaning then you're not wallowing in that sadness you're not overthinking things that are

outside of your control and the past and the future are kind of outside of our control so what I do is I don't say to myself I would like to be happy. What I say to myself is I would like to be in a position whereby whatever I'm doing in my life is giving me a sense of meaning and purpose. Right now me personally I have that because I have this job. I love making this podcast. I love the fact that I'm writing a new book. So what gives me personally, what gives me meaning is creating. I'm an artist at heart. So if I'm involved in creativity and my creativity is also how I earn a living, then that means I have meaning in my life. Does that mean that I'm

happy all the time? No it doesn't. I get angry, I get upset, I get frustrated but I'm not excessively upset to the point that I'm wallowing and focusing on things that are outside of my control such as the past and the future so within that meaning I do get moments of happiness but there were times there over the fucking pandemic especially when I wasn't able to exercise and the gyms were closed there were times there where I was really struggling to find meaning and then I was upset for a sustained period and my mental health took a hit. The other thing with happiness and meaning is that they're not destinations.

They're not something you reach towards. They're something that happen along the way in the process. So they're very process based. So again, personally, writing a book gives me meaning and happiness. The process of doing it the process of making that book which can take a year or two and within that process is frustration disappointment failure all of this stuff but the meaning that that gives me because it's purposeful meaning I then get happiness in it finishing a book getting to the end point

that doesn't give me happiness that doesn't give me meaning that actually gives me a little bit of anxiety the meaning always happens in the process and that's not just for me that's whatever you do whatever you identify has given you meaning the process tends to be where the fun happens not the end result we convince ourselves that happiness will happen at the end no it's process it's day by day so if you're searching for happiness if you're like i want to be happy shift the goalposts a little bit that happiness happiness that you think you can get, that's an illusion. That doesn't exist. That doesn't exist. Try and find what gives you meaning. Are you someone who gets meaning from other people, from social interaction? Do you get meaning from

animals, from creativity? Do you get meaning from sport? Do you get meaning from animals? From creativity? Do you get meaning from sport? Do you get meaning from helping your community in some way? A lot of people will volunteer to help other people and meaning comes from there. Try and find out what gives you a sense of meaning and purpose and try and make your journey to be one that moves toward there towards that place and that there is happiness and even still within that you're still going to have disappointment rejection pain fear all these things will exist in there but they can exist purposefully but to exist without meaning means that you're experiencing excessive pain

that has no purpose. And I can't tell you what gives you meaning. And some people still need to find what it is that gives them meaning. But meaning and purpose is unique to you. And if you're struggling to identify what is it that gives you a sense of purpose and meaning and fulfillment if you're struggling to identify that within yourself then ask yourself how much of your life depends upon needing the approval of other people is your sense of identity dependent upon how you would like

other people to see you and what's a quick way to find that out how much of your day do you spend being jealous of other people feeling like shit if you find out that someone you know is after

getting or achieving something that you'd like maybe they get a job that you'd like or they have some achievement that you'd like and when they do this you then feel like shit because of what someone else has achieved or if you're looking down on other people if there's people that you know who aren't doing too well in their lives at the moment or they embarrass themselves or fuck up and then you feel good about this, that there is evidence of an external locus of evaluation. That it's possible that your sense of self-esteem and identity depends very heavily on the approval of other people. And that can cloud your perception of who you truly are. Your true self. And when you're in that situation.

Where you can't identify your. Your own needs. Then you'll have difficulty. Knowing what it is that gives you meaning. And you can work on that. And if that's the case. If. You are excessively feel that

in your mind you feel good about yourself when other people approve of you when you live that way externally and the expectations of other people that can be one of the things that will cloud

you from understanding what it is that gives you a sense of purpose and meaning. That right there is known as the ideal self. If you want to hear more of that, go back to my podcast called On Becoming a Person, where I go in depth on that theory. So there's my answer. If you ask, how do you achieve happiness? You don't. You try to achieve meaning.

And that's a very flippant answer that I've just given. It's rooted in a bit of Buddhism and a bit of existentialism. But I'm not taking on board people who might be living with a mental illness, people who might be working through trauma, people who might be neurodivergent. I'm not taking these things on board with that answer. So it's a very basic answer that I've just given there.

That mightn't apply to everybody. Alright, that's all I've got time for this week. That podcast wasn't planned like that. I ended up on a derailing hot take at the start but fuck it I enjoyed it I'll be back next week maybe with a hot take we'll see what the crack is in the meantime

enjoy the creeping September evenings rub a dog and try and have some compassion some compassion for your neighbor, your art. 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

hosts 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.