Latest / Understanding Yourself: A Framework For Change / Why I Love an Album That Was Never About Me

Transcript

Why I Love an Album That Was Never About Me · Understanding Yourself: A Framework For Change

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Understanding Yourself.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Ben Lennon.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is a collection of stories, ideas,
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: and conversations designed to help us better understand ourselves
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: and maybe experience life a little differently.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being here.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Let's begin.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Why I love an album that was never about me.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: What authenticity can teach us about being human?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: People are often surprised when I tell them my favorite album is Reasonable Doubt by Jay-Z.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: On the surface, it doesn't make much sense.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't grow up in the Marcy projects.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I never sold drugs.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't trying to escape poverty.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I grew up in a middle-class subdivision.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you looked at only the facts, there isn't much about Jay-Z's story that resembles mine.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, I've probably listened to that album hundreds of times.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: The older I've gotten, the more I've asked myself why.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: At first, I thought it was the lyricism, the storytelling, the production, the wordplay.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Those things are certainly part of it, but I don't think they're the real reason.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things I've said for years is that we love rap when it's authentic.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Not because we can fact-check every lyric.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Not because we've lived the same life.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: We love it because we can feel authenticity.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's something about truth that cuts through everything else.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can hear it.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can feel it.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's true far beyond rap music.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's why certain books stay with us.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why certain movies make us cry.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why we never forget some teachers.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why some conversations change our lives.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Authenticity has a way of bypassing our intellect and speaking directly
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: to something much deeper.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's what Reasonable Doubt does for me.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if every story happened exactly the way Jay Z tells it.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, that's not what keeps me coming back.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: What keeps me coming back is that it feels honest.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like someone wrestling with ambition,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: identity,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: fear, success, regret, and the question of what finally makes life feel like enough.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Those aren't drug dealer questions.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: They're human questions.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've never stood on a street corner selling drugs,
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: but I know what it's like
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: to chase something I believed would finally make me feel whole.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: I've never had to choose between the streets and legitimate business,
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: but I've wrestled with ambition,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: identity, approval, and the question of how much is enough.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I've never lived Jay-Z's life, but I've lived the human experience underneath his story.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's why great art lasts.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: The details belong to one person.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: The emotions belong to all of us.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've spent years working with people whose lives look nothing like mine on paper,
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Different childhoods, different addictions, different trauma, different mistakes.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And yet underneath all those differences, I keep hearing the same questions.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Am I enough?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Will anyone ever really know me?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Why do I keep doing this?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: What am I actually looking for?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: Those aren't recovery questions.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're human questions.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why certain songs feel timeless.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Not because they're about our lives, but because they're about our humanity.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: As I've gotten older, I've noticed something else.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm less interested in what Jay-Z accomplished.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm much more interested in what he was searching for.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: That realization has changed the way I experience almost everything.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Books, movies, music, conversations.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm no longer asking, do I relate to this person's life?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm asking what part of being human is this person helping me understand?
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: My fiancee Jen once said something I'll never forget.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: She's not a Jay-Z fan.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: She couldn't tell you the difference between reasonable doubt and the blueprint.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: One day she looked at me, smiled, and said, I love that you love him.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've thought about that sentence a lot.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't pretending to enjoy the music.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: She wasn't trying to become a fan.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: She simply loved seeing something bring me joy.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's one of the purest expressions of love there is.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Love doesn't always require us to understand someone else's passions.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it simply asks us to delight in the fact that they have them.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's also why great art matters.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Not because everyone will love the same songs,
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: but because every once in a while someone creates something so authentic
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: that another human being living a completely different life I think that's why
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: the greatest art survives generation after generation.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not because everyone shares the same experiences, because everyone shares the same humanity.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the person who helps us understand ourselves looks nothing like us.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he's a rapper from Brooklyn.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes he's a Jesuit priest.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes she's an author.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's a friend.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: The details change.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: The humanity doesn't.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why the stories that change us aren't the ones that look the most like our own.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're the ones that help us recognize ourself and someone else.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's what great art has been doing all along.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Not telling us someone else's story, helping us understand our own.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: If this story resonated with you,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love for you to read the written version on my Substack, Understanding Yourself.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you'd like to continue exploring these ideas with me,
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be honored if you'd join me there.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, keep asking better questions and keep understanding yourself.