Latest / The Masonic Roundtable - Freemasonry Today for Today's Freemasons / The Masonic Roundtable - 0555 - Architecting Meaning

Transcript

The Masonic Roundtable - 0555 - Architecting Meaning · The Masonic Roundtable - Freemasonry Today for Today's Freemasons

• 0:22
  Speaker: Hello.
• 0:23
  Speaker: Hello, and welcome back to the
• 0:24
  Speaker: Masonic Roundtable, a weekly
• 0:25
  Speaker: program where Masons from around
• 0:27
  Speaker: the world get together to talk
• 0:29
  Speaker: about Masonic news and opinions
• 0:30
  Speaker: and a friendly and social
• 0:31
  Speaker: manner.
• 0:32
  Speaker: Um, as a reminder, the thoughts and opinions expressed here are
• 0:35
  Speaker: solely the opinions of the participants and do not
• 0:37
  Speaker: represent any Grand Lodge statements or positions.
• 0:39
  Speaker: Make sure you keep your conversations open for the
• 0:41
  Speaker: public and on the level to interact with us.
• 0:43
  Speaker: We love seeing you live every
• 0:44
  Speaker: Thursday night in Facebook and
• 0:46
  Speaker: YouTube land.
• 0:46
  Speaker: So hello and good evening to all in the chats.
• 0:49
  Speaker: And remember your chats may show up in the show, so watch
• 0:52
  Speaker: yourself and if you can't catch us live, catch us in the replay
• 0:56
  Speaker: or in your favorite podcast app.
• 0:58
  Speaker: As always, you know me, your
• 1:00
  Speaker: lovely host, John Ruark, past
• 1:02
  Speaker: master of the Patriot Lodge,
• 1:03
  Speaker: number nineteen fifty seven in
• 1:04
  Speaker: Fairfax, Virginia.
• 1:06
  Speaker: Next up, we have an almost as lovely host, Jason Richards.
• 1:09
  Speaker: Hello and good evening.
• 1:10
  Speaker: Hello and good evening, Jason Richards here.
• 1:13
  Speaker: Hello past Master Vacation Lodge
• 1:15
  Speaker: number sixteen in Clifton,
• 1:17
  Speaker: Virginia.
• 1:17
  Speaker: I'm glad to be here.
• 1:22
  Speaker: Glad to see you.
• 1:23
  Speaker: And who's also glad to be seen
• 1:27
  Speaker: and not viewed, Brother Joe
• 1:28
  Speaker: Martinez.
• 1:29
  Speaker: Oh, I don't get a lovely moniker.
• 1:31
  Speaker: You are almost as lovely as Jason Richards.
• 1:34
  Speaker: Shut up.
• 1:35
  Speaker: Hi, everybody.
• 1:36
  Speaker: Joe Martinez.
• 1:37
  Speaker: Hello.
• 1:38
  Speaker: Uh, see past master Vanessa
• 1:39
  Speaker: Lodge, number one eighty two in
• 1:41
  Speaker: Manassas, Virginia.
• 1:42
  Speaker: And obviously not as lovely as these other two guys.
• 1:45
  Speaker: So good to be here.
• 1:47
  Speaker: But you know who's even the most fairest one of all?
• 1:50
  Speaker: Um. Snow white close.
• 1:53
  Speaker: It's not Robert, our esteemed colleague.
• 1:56
  Speaker: That's right.
• 1:57
  Speaker: Special guest tonight, brother Joel Bundy.
• 1:59
  Speaker: Hello, hello, hello.
• 2:03
  Speaker: I'm the past master of South
• 2:05
  Speaker: Norfolk, three thirty nine in
• 2:06
  Speaker: Chesapeake, Virginia.
• 2:08
  Speaker: Nice and many more things.
• 2:10
  Speaker: But he prefers to go by brother,
• 2:12
  Speaker: so we're not going to all the
• 2:13
  Speaker: things throw him under the
• 2:14
  Speaker: proverbial bus.
• 2:15
  Speaker: But he's amazing.
• 2:18
  Speaker: You should.
• 2:18
  Speaker: You should meet this guy in
• 2:19
  Speaker: person, so we'll just leave it
• 2:21
  Speaker: at that.
• 2:22
  Speaker: We do like him.
• 2:23
  Speaker: We like yeah, occasionally.
• 2:26
  Speaker: We also like our patrons who support the show.
• 2:28
  Speaker: If you want to support the show
• 2:29
  Speaker: and support free Masonic
• 2:30
  Speaker: education going on for many
• 2:32
  Speaker: years to come, head over to
• 2:32
  Speaker: patreon dot com slash Masonic
• 2:35
  Speaker: Roundtable.
• 2:36
  Speaker: And that's not even free.
• 2:38
  Speaker: Just how about some Masonic education?
• 2:40
  Speaker: Because any Masonic.
• 2:41
  Speaker: That'd be great.
• 2:42
  Speaker: Anything.
• 2:42
  Speaker: Something.
• 2:43
  Speaker: High ticket, Masonic quality, Masonic education, though.
• 2:47
  Speaker: There you go.
• 2:48
  Speaker: You get what you pay for.
• 2:50
  Speaker: So cool.
• 2:51
  Speaker: Yes.
• 2:52
  Speaker: And, uh, Joe, what else is going on in Manassas?
• 2:57
  Speaker: Oh, man.
• 2:58
  Speaker: Let's see.
• 2:59
  Speaker: Uh, esoteric con is still happening.
• 3:02
  Speaker: Um, we have ended in-person ticket sales.
• 3:05
  Speaker: Um, yeah, two days ago.
• 3:07
  Speaker: Two days ago?
• 3:08
  Speaker: Yes.
• 3:08
  Speaker: So, uh.
• 3:09
  Speaker: Let's see.
• 3:10
  Speaker: We've got Jason Richards, Robert
• 3:12
  Speaker: Johnson, Jaime Paul Lamb, Ike
• 3:15
  Speaker: Baker, Billy Hamilton, and Kevin
• 3:18
  Speaker: Homan will be our speakers for
• 3:20
  Speaker: this year.
• 3:21
  Speaker: Um, so brew night, as always, the night before June nineteenth
• 3:24
  Speaker: will be at Sinistral Brewing Company in Old Town Manassas.
• 3:28
  Speaker: Uh, and we've reserved the place for much fun and much libations.
• 3:32
  Speaker: Um, and then twentieth is the actual conference all day fun.
• 3:36
  Speaker: Um, so those of you who purchase tickets, you'll be getting some,
• 3:39
  Speaker: uh, updates and notes from us.
• 3:40
  Speaker: You can still buy virtual tickets.
• 3:42
  Speaker: You just don't get a swag bag
• 3:43
  Speaker: and cool, awesome things that
• 3:45
  Speaker: John is making and all the
• 3:46
  Speaker: wonderful things that Jason is
• 3:48
  Speaker: ordering.
• 3:48
  Speaker: So you don't get that.
• 3:49
  Speaker: But, uh, yeah, you at least get
• 3:51
  Speaker: to see the presentations and
• 3:53
  Speaker: stuff and they're yours to keep
• 3:54
  Speaker: afterwards.
• 3:55
  Speaker: We keep them online for ticket holders.
• 3:57
  Speaker: Um, yeah.
• 3:58
  Speaker: So like I said, ticket sales are over for in person.
• 4:01
  Speaker: Um, we're super jazzed and we
• 4:03
  Speaker: look forward to seeing everybody
• 4:04
  Speaker: on June twentieth at Esoteric
• 4:06
  Speaker: Con woo.
• 4:09
  Speaker: That's exciting.
• 4:10
  Speaker: That'll be good timing.
• 4:11
  Speaker: Yes.
• 4:12
  Speaker: Uh, brother Chad Kopinsky also
• 4:14
  Speaker: was throwing a little bonus
• 4:16
  Speaker: action, but Jason, Jason, and I
• 4:19
  Speaker: will have the distinct pleasure
• 4:20
  Speaker: of going to the gruesome
• 4:21
  Speaker: Gridiron Lodge.
• 4:23
  Speaker: Bruce the Bruce.
• 4:25
  Speaker: Did I say Bruce?
• 4:26
  Speaker: You did.
• 4:27
  Speaker: Bruce and Gorion, I don't know, it's, uh.
• 4:32
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:33
  Speaker: Where are we going?
• 4:33
  Speaker: Jason?
• 4:34
  Speaker: What are we doing?
• 4:34
  Speaker: Because you can pronounce it better than.
• 4:36
  Speaker: John and I are going up to Toledo, Ohio, this weekend for
• 4:40
  Speaker: the Goose and Gridiron Lodge.
• 4:42
  Speaker: It is a traveling lodge that travels around Ohio.
• 4:46
  Speaker: And, um, we are going to give a couple of presentations at their
• 4:51
  Speaker: event, and festive boards will be a lot of fun.
• 4:56
  Speaker: Woo!
• 4:58
  Speaker: Awesome.
• 4:59
  Speaker: Um, you know what also was fun?
• 5:01
  Speaker: What?
• 5:02
  Speaker: The tarot card of the week.
• 5:03
  Speaker: That's right.
• 5:05
  Speaker: It's Joe's favorite moment.
• 5:10
  Speaker: Tarot card of the week.
• 5:20
  Speaker: There it is.
• 5:20
  Speaker: Favorite song?
• 5:22
  Speaker: We've got a special one tonight.
• 5:25
  Speaker: Oh, Lord.
• 5:26
  Speaker: Brand new.
• 5:27
  Speaker: Arrived today.
• 5:29
  Speaker: Oh, no. From Kickstarter.
• 5:31
  Speaker: We're doing it.
• 5:33
  Speaker: Doing it live.
• 5:34
  Speaker: The seventy eight.
• 5:36
  Speaker: Oh my.
• 5:36
  Speaker: Shades of orange.
• 5:38
  Speaker: Wow.
• 5:39
  Speaker: The big, beautiful pocket tarot deck.
• 5:43
  Speaker: You know, anybody can make a tarot deck nowadays.
• 5:46
  Speaker: Yep.
• 5:47
  Speaker: Yep.
• 5:48
  Speaker: AI was used in the creation of this deck.
• 5:52
  Speaker: Amazing.
• 5:53
  Speaker: And here we are.
• 5:57
  Speaker: We have the Two of swords tonight.
• 6:01
  Speaker: When the fifty first state
• 6:03
  Speaker: remains a fantasy, simply
• 6:05
  Speaker: blindfold yourself.
• 6:06
  Speaker: Declare their maple syrup
• 6:08
  Speaker: property of the USA, and call it
• 6:10
  Speaker: a win.
• 6:13
  Speaker: Crap.
• 6:16
  Speaker: Wow.
• 6:18
  Speaker: I, I have to admit, I like the
• 6:20
  Speaker: the callback to the
• 6:21
  Speaker: Rider-waite-smith symbolism of
• 6:24
  Speaker: the blindfolded.
• 6:25
  Speaker: Two of swords.
• 6:27
  Speaker: The maple syrups, new though.
• 6:29
  Speaker: Well.
• 6:30
  Speaker: Yes indeed.
• 6:32
  Speaker: Two of.
• 6:33
  Speaker: Two of swords.
• 6:35
  Speaker: Uh, usually representing a two being choices.
• 6:39
  Speaker: Right?
• 6:39
  Speaker: Um. Swords being usually an intellectual pursuit.
• 6:43
  Speaker: Mexican standoff.
• 6:45
  Speaker: Choices.
• 6:45
  Speaker: Indecision.
• 6:46
  Speaker: Especially.
• 6:47
  Speaker: Blindfolded.
• 6:48
  Speaker: Right.
• 6:48
  Speaker: It's, I don't know.
• 6:50
  Speaker: What am I going to do?
• 6:51
  Speaker: I'm being held back.
• 6:53
  Speaker: So it's a lot going on there.
• 6:56
  Speaker: There's a lot going on.
• 6:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 6:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 6:57
  Speaker: Which is a great segue for tonight's topic.
• 7:02
  Speaker: Right.
• 7:02
  Speaker: How would you relate it to tonight's topic, Jason?
• 7:06
  Speaker: What are we talking about?
• 7:07
  Speaker: I don't know.
• 7:08
  Speaker: I was going to ask what we're talking about.
• 7:09
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 7:10
  Speaker: Architecting meaning is the title of the show where we're
• 7:14
  Speaker: going to talk about, uh, the science of happiness.
• 7:18
  Speaker: How do we define a meaningful life?
• 7:21
  Speaker: Um, and the counterpart, the counterargument of loneliness.
• 7:24
  Speaker: And what does that mean for men in the twenty first century with
• 7:29
  Speaker: hopefully a glimmer of light as it shines forward for the chance
• 7:34
  Speaker: for Freemasonry to shine until twenty forty, twenty forty?
• 7:38
  Speaker: Well, that or until twenty forty, whichever comes first.
• 7:41
  Speaker: That's right.
• 7:44
  Speaker: Prove me wrong, bros.
• 7:45
  Speaker: Prove me wrong.
• 7:47
  Speaker: Well, Joel will still be around in twenty forty, so that's true.
• 7:51
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 7:53
  Speaker: Uh, so I know Brother Joel has done a lot of research and
• 7:58
  Speaker: thought into this area.
• 7:59
  Speaker: And so I'm going to wind you up
• 8:01
  Speaker: and, and let you kind of set the
• 8:02
  Speaker: stage of, you know, how would
• 8:04
  Speaker: you frame this, this topic and
• 8:05
  Speaker: this idea?
• 8:07
  Speaker: I, you know, I think that, um, we as men, we don't really want
• 8:14
  Speaker: to talk about this stuff.
• 8:16
  Speaker: And, and actually one of the best books I ever read was
• 8:19
  Speaker: titled, I just don't want to talk about it.
• 8:22
  Speaker: And it's about male depression.
• 8:24
  Speaker: Wow.
• 8:24
  Speaker: You know, what we, we think
• 8:26
  Speaker: about depression and we think
• 8:28
  Speaker: about, you know, the
• 8:30
  Speaker: quintessential depression
• 8:32
  Speaker: symptoms of crying or and
• 8:34
  Speaker: Antonia, I just don't want to do
• 8:35
  Speaker: anything but men, we're
• 8:38
  Speaker: different.
• 8:39
  Speaker: Sometimes it's just burst of anger or quiet and, and so I
• 8:43
  Speaker: think that, you know, when it comes to emotional health.
• 8:46
  Speaker: I was raised in the South, right?
• 8:48
  Speaker: I was raised in Florida, but closer to Georgia.
• 8:51
  Speaker: You know, I'm a man.
• 8:53
  Speaker: I, you know, I'm not going to talk about anything like this,
• 8:56
  Speaker: you know, rub some dirt on it.
• 8:58
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 8:58
  Speaker: Like bull.
• 8:59
  Speaker: Right?
• 8:59
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 9:00
  Speaker: Um, walk it off.
• 9:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 9:02
  Speaker: And I think that we, that that's
• 9:06
  Speaker: sort of the mindset that we had
• 9:08
  Speaker: until this thing happened in
• 9:10
  Speaker: twenty twenty.
• 9:11
  Speaker: I know I was in healthcare, right?
• 9:13
  Speaker: So in twenty twenty, we know in healthcare we were fractured,
• 9:18
  Speaker: not doing well.
• 9:20
  Speaker: And then we just broke.
• 9:22
  Speaker: We just completely broke in twenty twenty.
• 9:25
  Speaker: And, um, I would see strong men come into my office and cry.
• 9:31
  Speaker: They would just cry.
• 9:32
  Speaker: Wow.
• 9:33
  Speaker: I would go to a unit.
• 9:34
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 9:35
  Speaker: And the whole unit would be
• 9:37
  Speaker: crying because it was so
• 9:39
  Speaker: devastating.
• 9:40
  Speaker: And what was pretty clear was, you know, the the burnout, the
• 9:45
  Speaker: moral injury, the lack of resiliency was was there.
• 9:50
  Speaker: And it just got a lot worse.
• 9:52
  Speaker: And, you know, we, we try to change systems to make things
• 9:55
  Speaker: better for people.
• 9:56
  Speaker: And then, you know, the pandemic
• 9:58
  Speaker: waned and, and that sort of
• 10:00
  Speaker: happened.
• 10:01
  Speaker: But I think that, um, for me,
• 10:05
  Speaker: what, what really turned me on
• 10:08
  Speaker: to working on this problem was
• 10:10
  Speaker: one of my very, very close
• 10:12
  Speaker: friends.
• 10:13
  Speaker: He was approaching seventy, he was a surgeon and he died.
• 10:19
  Speaker: He, he was working.
• 10:21
  Speaker: He never retired.
• 10:22
  Speaker: He never took off.
• 10:24
  Speaker: And then he died.
• 10:26
  Speaker: And it's like, oh my gosh, you know, we need to take better
• 10:30
  Speaker: care of ourselves.
• 10:31
  Speaker: So I started making me think
• 10:33
  Speaker: about, you know, what, what can
• 10:36
  Speaker: we do?
• 10:37
  Speaker: I mean, and I'm looking at all
• 10:38
  Speaker: my Masonic buddies, I'm looking
• 10:40
  Speaker: at all the buddies in the
• 10:42
  Speaker: hospital and other friends and,
• 10:44
  Speaker: and it was something that was
• 10:45
  Speaker: pretty common is, is I found
• 10:48
  Speaker: that people were generally
• 10:49
  Speaker: unhappy.
• 10:50
  Speaker: Yeah, some, some were happy, but
• 10:52
  Speaker: a lot of us as men, we were
• 10:55
  Speaker: unhappy.
• 10:56
  Speaker: Well go ahead.
• 10:58
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 10:59
  Speaker: No, doctor Joel would love to chime in on that.
• 11:02
  Speaker: Um, so I think I think you're right.
• 11:04
  Speaker: And I don't think it's a generational thing, right.
• 11:06
  Speaker: Because I, I've, I've seen, I
• 11:08
  Speaker: obviously didn't experience, um,
• 11:10
  Speaker: twenty, twenty the same way you
• 11:11
  Speaker: did as a, as a healthcare
• 11:12
  Speaker: practitioner.
• 11:13
  Speaker: But I mean, I did see exactly what you're talking about this,
• 11:17
  Speaker: this, um, hiding of depression.
• 11:20
  Speaker: Um, you know, when I was in the
• 11:22
  Speaker: military and you see a lot and I
• 11:23
  Speaker: know, you know, you probably did
• 11:25
  Speaker: too when, when you served, but,
• 11:27
  Speaker: um, we never said we were
• 11:29
  Speaker: depressed.
• 11:30
  Speaker: Right.
• 11:30
  Speaker: Um, we always said we're tired, we're angry.
• 11:33
  Speaker: Um, I'm burned out or I'm just
• 11:36
  Speaker: pissed off or I don't care about
• 11:38
  Speaker: things, you know, we never
• 11:39
  Speaker: could, put into words what
• 11:42
  Speaker: exactly it is we were going
• 11:44
  Speaker: through.
• 11:45
  Speaker: And I think it was more it was
• 11:47
  Speaker: just as equal parts defense
• 11:48
  Speaker: mechanism as it was being able
• 11:50
  Speaker: to find the right vocabulary for
• 11:52
  Speaker: it.
• 11:52
  Speaker: Right, right.
• 11:53
  Speaker: Um, found a weight monster and move on with your day.
• 11:56
  Speaker: Yup.
• 11:57
  Speaker: You do, you do a repeat or two and just, just keep on going,
• 11:59
  Speaker: you know, and then, uh, get your private time in the porta potty.
• 12:02
  Speaker: But, um, outside of those times, um, yeah, no, it's, it's really
• 12:07
  Speaker: amazing how, um, I, I look at personally, I look at two
• 12:11
  Speaker: outlets for, for that.
• 12:14
  Speaker: And one of them is, is Freemasonry.
• 12:16
  Speaker: I've seen a lot of brothers
• 12:17
  Speaker: that, you know, Freemasonry does
• 12:19
  Speaker: become a place where you can be
• 12:20
  Speaker: more open and honest with
• 12:21
  Speaker: people.
• 12:22
  Speaker: Um, and I've seen that happen in real life.
• 12:25
  Speaker: Um, but again, going back to,
• 12:27
  Speaker: you know, um, looking at
• 12:29
  Speaker: different veterans, you look at
• 12:30
  Speaker: veterans today and they're a lot
• 12:31
  Speaker: different than they were thirty,
• 12:32
  Speaker: forty, fifty years ago, you
• 12:34
  Speaker: know, um, just in the stuff we
• 12:35
  Speaker: call psychological issues in the
• 12:38
  Speaker: military, right?
• 12:39
  Speaker: Like back in the day, they called it shell shock and this
• 12:42
  Speaker: kind of stuff.
• 12:42
  Speaker: And now it's called PTSD because we're labeling things
• 12:45
  Speaker: differently so that you can talk about them more openly.
• 12:48
  Speaker: But, um, yeah, that always struck me as odd.
• 12:50
  Speaker: And I, I know I'm guilty of it too.
• 12:51
  Speaker: You know, um, I would always
• 12:53
  Speaker: say, hey, I'm just a lot of work
• 12:55
  Speaker: going on or I'm really stressed
• 12:56
  Speaker: out at work and this kind of
• 12:57
  Speaker: thing.
• 12:57
  Speaker: And I'm, I was masking, masking what was really going on.
• 13:01
  Speaker: So, um, you know, I'm sure you
• 13:03
  Speaker: seeing it on a global scale is
• 13:05
  Speaker: obviously a lot scarier, you
• 13:06
  Speaker: know?
• 13:07
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:08
  Speaker: So I mean, it's huge.
• 13:09
  Speaker: I mean, if you think about emotional health, I mean, I, I
• 13:12
  Speaker: talked about depression real quick and that's not really what
• 13:15
  Speaker: I'm talking about tonight.
• 13:15
  Speaker: But, um, you know, anxiety anxiety is huge and talking
• 13:21
  Speaker: about, you know, generational things, the biggest amount of
• 13:24
  Speaker: anxiety we're seeing is in thirty year old men and younger.
• 13:29
  Speaker: There's a huge amount of anxiety.
• 13:31
  Speaker: Why do you think that is?
• 13:35
  Speaker: The screen.
• 13:36
  Speaker: So so in two thousand, there's a survey and every year they ask
• 13:42
  Speaker: the same question, you know, do you have a meaningful life?
• 13:45
  Speaker: Do you have a meaningful life?
• 13:47
  Speaker: It was pretty static.
• 13:49
  Speaker: In two thousand and eight.
• 13:50
  Speaker: It started to go up and it kept going up and up and up.
• 13:54
  Speaker: And what happened was this is what happened.
• 13:58
  Speaker: And so it's interesting and we
• 14:02
  Speaker: could talk about this in
• 14:02
  Speaker: general, but but it's important
• 14:05
  Speaker: when it comes to the meaning of
• 14:06
  Speaker: your life, the meaning of your
• 14:08
  Speaker: life.
• 14:09
  Speaker: Um, you actually have to have
• 14:11
  Speaker: boredom to think boredom is
• 14:14
  Speaker: important.
• 14:15
  Speaker: Um, and, you know, a hundred years ago, you know, when you
• 14:18
  Speaker: were back behind the mule or whatever you were doing, you had
• 14:22
  Speaker: lots of boredom, you had lots of time to think.
• 14:25
  Speaker: Um, we don't have that anymore.
• 14:28
  Speaker: We are constantly distracted.
• 14:30
  Speaker: I mean, constantly distracted.
• 14:33
  Speaker: Um, there was a study.
• 14:34
  Speaker: It's a Harvard study.
• 14:35
  Speaker: It's crazy.
• 14:37
  Speaker: So they had people and they said, okay, here's the study.
• 14:40
  Speaker: Sit in a room for fifteen minutes.
• 14:43
  Speaker: Don't you do anything for fifteen minutes.
• 14:46
  Speaker: Just sit there and think, you know, whatever you want to do.
• 14:49
  Speaker: Um, but if you can't do that, here's a button.
• 14:55
  Speaker: Push the button and you will
• 14:57
  Speaker: cause a painful negative shock
• 15:00
  Speaker: to yourself.
• 15:01
  Speaker: Okay.
• 15:02
  Speaker: Okay.
• 15:03
  Speaker: So you say you would do that.
• 15:05
  Speaker: I know this isn't Ghostbusters, right?
• 15:07
  Speaker: So it's like, who would do that?
• 15:10
  Speaker: Twenty five percent of women.
• 15:12
  Speaker: Push the button because they couldn't deal with just sitting
• 15:16
  Speaker: by themselves being bored.
• 15:19
  Speaker: They'd rather shock themselves than because we're used to this.
• 15:22
  Speaker: We're constantly distracted.
• 15:24
  Speaker: Wow.
• 15:25
  Speaker: Sixty percent of dudes, sixty percent of men push the button
• 15:30
  Speaker: to shock themselves because they just couldn't for fifteen
• 15:33
  Speaker: freaking minutes, that's all.
• 15:36
  Speaker: We can't be bored.
• 15:40
  Speaker: And the crazy thing is, is when
• 15:42
  Speaker: we're bored, when we're thinking
• 15:44
  Speaker: that's when we're activating the
• 15:46
  Speaker: right side of our brain, that's
• 15:48
  Speaker: incredibly important when it
• 15:50
  Speaker: comes to meaning the right side
• 15:51
  Speaker: of our brain, there's a whole
• 15:52
  Speaker: concept called hemispheric
• 15:54
  Speaker: lateralization.
• 15:55
  Speaker: And you know, we've talked about this for years and years, right?
• 15:58
  Speaker: Oh, the the right brain, they're
• 16:00
  Speaker: the artsy people, the left
• 16:01
  Speaker: brain.
• 16:01
  Speaker: They're the analytic people.
• 16:04
  Speaker: There's a new way to frame that, though.
• 16:06
  Speaker: And the, the left side of the brain is the how.
• 16:10
  Speaker: And men tend to have more left side brain activation.
• 16:14
  Speaker: It's the how building a bridge, you know, I'll do a tractor, I
• 16:19
  Speaker: can I can solving problems.
• 16:21
  Speaker: I can put a hammer to a nail and build something in my house.
• 16:24
  Speaker: That's incredibly important.
• 16:26
  Speaker: That left side of the brain is more of a complicated problem,
• 16:30
  Speaker: you know, complicated.
• 16:31
  Speaker: They're hard to figure out.
• 16:33
  Speaker: But once you figure it out, you can build an algorithm.
• 16:36
  Speaker: You can you can do whatever build code.
• 16:38
  Speaker: And every time after that, you got it.
• 16:40
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 16:41
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 16:42
  Speaker: The right side of the brain is not the how.
• 16:45
  Speaker: The right side of the brain is actually the why.
• 16:48
  Speaker: That's where the, the sort of the why part of your brain is.
• 16:52
  Speaker: And women are much, much more on the right side of the brain.
• 16:56
  Speaker: That's mystery.
• 16:57
  Speaker: That's meaning those are those complex problems, the complex
• 17:00
  Speaker: problem, like, who am I?
• 17:03
  Speaker: What is love?
• 17:05
  Speaker: And, and we as men, we tend to
• 17:08
  Speaker: focus on the left side of the
• 17:09
  Speaker: brain.
• 17:10
  Speaker: How do we do it?
• 17:12
  Speaker: That's why we always have answers, right?
• 17:13
  Speaker: We, we can fix it.
• 17:14
  Speaker: Right?
• 17:15
  Speaker: Whereas many, and I know I'm
• 17:17
  Speaker: generalizing here, but many
• 17:18
  Speaker: women are more right sided
• 17:20
  Speaker: brain.
• 17:20
  Speaker: They're thinking, okay, why, why is this happening?
• 17:26
  Speaker: And, and because language is on the left side.
• 17:28
  Speaker: Sometimes when we think about
• 17:29
  Speaker: that right side of the brain,
• 17:31
  Speaker: we're not able to verbalize it
• 17:33
  Speaker: as well.
• 17:34
  Speaker: So so if we have a relationship with a woman and she's trying to
• 17:40
  Speaker: tell us something, she may not be able to verbalize it well,
• 17:43
  Speaker: but we've got the answer, right?
• 17:45
  Speaker: We, we, we can fix it.
• 17:47
  Speaker: Well, no, we can't fix it.
• 17:49
  Speaker: But but that's really important
• 17:50
  Speaker: when it comes to meaning is
• 17:53
  Speaker: ruminating on the right side of
• 17:54
  Speaker: the brain.
• 17:55
  Speaker: So there's, there's a lot of things that we can do to try to
• 17:58
  Speaker: try to improve that.
• 17:59
  Speaker: And I'll come back and talk about that.
• 18:00
  Speaker: Let me back up just a second
• 18:02
  Speaker: because I want to I want to talk
• 18:03
  Speaker: about a bigger the bigger
• 18:05
  Speaker: picture of what is happiness
• 18:07
  Speaker: itself, right?
• 18:09
  Speaker: Well, we can think about
• 18:12
  Speaker: happiness as a feeling or an
• 18:14
  Speaker: emotion, but that's not
• 18:15
  Speaker: happiness.
• 18:16
  Speaker: That is truly evidence of happiness.
• 18:20
  Speaker: Wow.
• 18:20
  Speaker: Okay.
• 18:20
  Speaker: Um, happiness is actually and and social scientists actually,
• 18:26
  Speaker: uh, Doctor Brooks up at Harvard talks a lot about this.
• 18:30
  Speaker: Happiness has three components
• 18:33
  Speaker: enjoyment, satisfaction, and
• 18:36
  Speaker: meaning.
• 18:37
  Speaker: Those are the three components.
• 18:38
  Speaker: He actually describes it as
• 18:39
  Speaker: macronutrients like fat,
• 18:41
  Speaker: protein, carbohydrate, the three
• 18:43
  Speaker: macronutrients, the three
• 18:45
  Speaker: components of happiness are
• 18:47
  Speaker: enjoyment, satisfaction, and
• 18:49
  Speaker: meaning.
• 18:49
  Speaker: So let me talk about those real quick.
• 18:52
  Speaker: Enjoyment.
• 18:53
  Speaker: Enjoyment is not the same thing as pleasure.
• 18:57
  Speaker: Pleasure is like, oh yeah, well, you know, I had a drink or, you
• 19:02
  Speaker: know, I'm doing whatever I'm doing that causes me pleasure.
• 19:07
  Speaker: That's a part of the brain called the ventral striatum, and
• 19:10
  Speaker: it secretes dopamine.
• 19:11
  Speaker: So I get this little dopamine hit.
• 19:12
  Speaker: By the way, this thing here causes dopamine hits.
• 19:16
  Speaker: So that's why we're looking all the time.
• 19:19
  Speaker: Have you ever been to a restaurant?
• 19:21
  Speaker: And even if even if people are good and they're not looking at
• 19:25
  Speaker: their phones when their partners at the table.
• 19:27
  Speaker: As soon as the partner goes to
• 19:28
  Speaker: the restroom, they get that
• 19:31
  Speaker: dopamine hit.
• 19:31
  Speaker: Why?
• 19:32
  Speaker: There's nothing important there.
• 19:33
  Speaker: There's nothing important, but they get a little dopamine hit.
• 19:38
  Speaker: Pleasure left to itself can be addictive.
• 19:43
  Speaker: Drinking, pornography, those things.
• 19:46
  Speaker: If you do things just by yourself, those aren't good.
• 19:51
  Speaker: But if you take pleasure and you
• 19:54
  Speaker: add people to that pleasure and
• 19:58
  Speaker: create memories, you've taken
• 20:00
  Speaker: your limbic system, sort of that
• 20:02
  Speaker: part of the brain that's all
• 20:04
  Speaker: about emotions.
• 20:05
  Speaker: You've moved it to the front of the brain, where you're
• 20:08
  Speaker: processing it to your C-suite part of the brain.
• 20:11
  Speaker: You've made memory that is now enjoyment.
• 20:14
  Speaker: So the social scientist today
• 20:16
  Speaker: would say that that's an
• 20:17
  Speaker: incredible part of happiness
• 20:20
  Speaker: having enjoyment, not pleasure,
• 20:22
  Speaker: not pulling the, you know, when
• 20:25
  Speaker: you're at Vegas and just pulling
• 20:27
  Speaker: it and pulling it and putting
• 20:28
  Speaker: more quarters in the machine,
• 20:29
  Speaker: but actually having meaningful
• 20:32
  Speaker: relationships with people,
• 20:34
  Speaker: creating memories.
• 20:36
  Speaker: The second thing is satisfaction.
• 20:39
  Speaker: You know, we talk a lot about satisfaction.
• 20:43
  Speaker: Jagger talked about satisfaction.
• 20:45
  Speaker: And, and what Doctor Brooks
• 20:47
  Speaker: would get now is we can get
• 20:50
  Speaker: satisfaction.
• 20:52
  Speaker: We can't keep satisfaction.
• 20:54
  Speaker: So interesting.
• 20:55
  Speaker: So if you think about it, you buy a new car, you get a new
• 20:58
  Speaker: motorcycle, or, you know, I just bought a new bicycle and, you
• 21:02
  Speaker: know, it's like, oh, it's great.
• 21:03
  Speaker: It's wonderful.
• 21:04
  Speaker: You know, next week it's like, oh, it's, it's whatever.
• 21:07
  Speaker: You know, and now I need something else.
• 21:09
  Speaker: So satisfaction is halves divided by your wants.
• 21:18
  Speaker: So if you are like most people
• 21:20
  Speaker: like me, like you and most
• 21:22
  Speaker: people in the world, you just
• 21:23
  Speaker: say, well, if I want more
• 21:25
  Speaker: satisfaction, I want more
• 21:27
  Speaker: things.
• 21:28
  Speaker: I need to have more things.
• 21:31
  Speaker: But those are transient.
• 21:32
  Speaker: So the better way is I want less things.
• 21:38
  Speaker: Instead of having more.
• 21:39
  Speaker: Yeah, you're working the equation.
• 21:41
  Speaker: I want I want fewer things.
• 21:43
  Speaker: Um, I mean, the Dalai Lama said, and I, I wrote it down so I
• 21:46
  Speaker: wouldn't forget it.
• 21:47
  Speaker: We need to learn how to, um,
• 21:50
  Speaker: want what we have not have what
• 21:53
  Speaker: we want.
• 21:55
  Speaker: So I mean, if we think about it, we don't, if we, if we get more
• 22:00
  Speaker: things, we have more things.
• 22:03
  Speaker: It's going to be temporary satisfaction.
• 22:06
  Speaker: Um, the science would say that
• 22:08
  Speaker: satisfaction comes from getting
• 22:09
  Speaker: an accomplishment.
• 22:11
  Speaker: Whatever we have after a struggle.
• 22:15
  Speaker: So think about this.
• 22:16
  Speaker: If you're, if you go to a, a,
• 22:18
  Speaker: um, a school where it's easy
• 22:21
  Speaker: peasy.
• 22:21
  Speaker: You don't even have to show up.
• 22:23
  Speaker: You know, maybe it's a diploma mill school and you get a
• 22:26
  Speaker: degree, but you didn't really work for it.
• 22:29
  Speaker: It's not really satisfying.
• 22:31
  Speaker: But if you go to some place
• 22:32
  Speaker: that's really hard and you
• 22:33
  Speaker: really work really hard, or you
• 22:35
  Speaker: go to a trade school, it's
• 22:36
  Speaker: really hard, or you do something
• 22:38
  Speaker: that's really hard and you
• 22:40
  Speaker: accomplish it.
• 22:41
  Speaker: That's satisfying.
• 22:42
  Speaker: But again, those things can be very transient.
• 22:46
  Speaker: So the, the, the things that you
• 22:49
  Speaker: can do to try to improve that is
• 22:51
  Speaker: to do it with family and
• 22:53
  Speaker: friends.
• 22:53
  Speaker: But that's satisfying.
• 22:54
  Speaker: So that's number two.
• 22:55
  Speaker: Number one, Brother Joe.
• 22:57
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:58
  Speaker: Before you get before you go to
• 22:59
  Speaker: number three, I wanted to, um,
• 23:01
  Speaker: you said something really
• 23:02
  Speaker: poignant and I just wanted to,
• 23:04
  Speaker: to poke at it a little bit,
• 23:06
  Speaker: especially when it comes to men
• 23:07
  Speaker: and what we're talking about
• 23:08
  Speaker: today.
• 23:09
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 23:10
  Speaker: Um, you kind of dance on it a
• 23:11
  Speaker: little bit, but a lot of people
• 23:14
  Speaker: I know, not just men, they
• 23:16
  Speaker: derive a lot of satisfaction
• 23:17
  Speaker: from that sense of achievement,
• 23:20
  Speaker: right?
• 23:21
  Speaker: They've achieved something.
• 23:22
  Speaker: They've earned something.
• 23:23
  Speaker: They status did this right?
• 23:26
  Speaker: Right.
• 23:26
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 23:26
  Speaker: You know, all the lapel pins and all the jewels, right.
• 23:30
  Speaker: Um, but you can be, you can be successful.
• 23:35
  Speaker: Um, and you can achieve those levels of satisfaction, but you
• 23:39
  Speaker: could still not be happy, right?
• 23:40
  Speaker: Because your whole identity is tied to just the sense of
• 23:44
  Speaker: achievement I have to achieve.
• 23:45
  Speaker: I have to win this prize.
• 23:46
  Speaker: Just one more lapel pin.
• 23:47
  Speaker: That's all I need.
• 23:48
  Speaker: One more, one more, just one more.
• 23:50
  Speaker: That's all I need.
• 23:50
  Speaker: So I have a billion dollars.
• 23:52
  Speaker: Is that good enough?
• 23:53
  Speaker: No, I want more billion and one.
• 23:55
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 23:56
  Speaker: So that's that's that whole concept.
• 23:58
  Speaker: There's a name for people that do that.
• 24:01
  Speaker: I'm guilty.
• 24:02
  Speaker: It's called strivers.
• 24:04
  Speaker: Strivers that you want to do more and more and more.
• 24:06
  Speaker: And they do it and they get it, and they're satisfied for a
• 24:10
  Speaker: little piece of time.
• 24:11
  Speaker: And then they got to do something else more and more and
• 24:14
  Speaker: more and more.
• 24:14
  Speaker: And that's why I talked to the Dalai Lama.
• 24:16
  Speaker: I feel called out.
• 24:17
  Speaker: Yeah, Well, all of us.
• 24:18
  Speaker: I it's it's all of us, right?
• 24:21
  Speaker: This is what we do.
• 24:22
  Speaker: So. And it's hard to say.
• 24:25
  Speaker: Um. Hey, you know what?
• 24:26
  Speaker: I don't.
• 24:27
  Speaker: I don't need to have more.
• 24:30
  Speaker: I need to want less.
• 24:32
  Speaker: Um, and so, you know, some
• 24:33
  Speaker: people talk about instead of
• 24:35
  Speaker: having a bucket list, having a
• 24:37
  Speaker: reverse bucket list, what is
• 24:39
  Speaker: more.
• 24:39
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 24:40
  Speaker: Get, get rid of what can I get rid of?
• 24:42
  Speaker: What do I not really need?
• 24:45
  Speaker: And when it boils, you boil down to it.
• 24:46
  Speaker: It's like, okay, I need a meaningful job.
• 24:49
  Speaker: I need a meaningful family, I need friends.
• 24:53
  Speaker: We'll talk about friends in a minute.
• 24:55
  Speaker: But other than that, I there's a lot that we don't really need.
• 25:01
  Speaker: Um, so I think that we, our
• 25:06
  Speaker: culture today is really driven
• 25:09
  Speaker: about achieving more, getting
• 25:11
  Speaker: more.
• 25:12
  Speaker: I need more in my four hundred and three B my four hundred one
• 25:15
  Speaker: K I need a bigger bank account.
• 25:17
  Speaker: I need another car.
• 25:18
  Speaker: I need another bicycle or
• 25:20
  Speaker: another bike or, you know, I
• 25:21
  Speaker: need a bigger house or whatever
• 25:23
  Speaker: it is.
• 25:24
  Speaker: And, you know, I need more lapel pins, you know, and for some of
• 25:27
  Speaker: us in masonry.
• 25:29
  Speaker: Guilty guilty, guilty.
• 25:30
  Speaker: Oh, wow.
• 25:31
  Speaker: There's another there's another appendant body.
• 25:33
  Speaker: I'm going to join that one too.
• 25:34
  Speaker: Yeah, let's do that.
• 25:36
  Speaker: Um, but those don't those don't lead to happiness.
• 25:40
  Speaker: Those lead to temporary
• 25:42
  Speaker: satisfaction, uh, not to true
• 25:44
  Speaker: happiness.
• 25:47
  Speaker: Um, and probably the most important part of happiness
• 25:50
  Speaker: though, is the third part.
• 25:52
  Speaker: Um, and John, I know that you're
• 25:53
  Speaker: very familiar with, with
• 25:55
  Speaker: meaning.
• 25:56
  Speaker: What is the meaning of life really more what is the meaning
• 26:00
  Speaker: of your life?
• 26:02
  Speaker: Because your life might actually be a little bit different from
• 26:05
  Speaker: the meaning of my life.
• 26:07
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 26:07
  Speaker: And there's a, there's two
• 26:10
  Speaker: questions you can ask, two
• 26:12
  Speaker: simple questions.
• 26:14
  Speaker: And if you can answer these
• 26:15
  Speaker: questions, you know, you've
• 26:16
  Speaker: figured out what the purpose is,
• 26:18
  Speaker: right?
• 26:19
  Speaker: So question number one is why are you alive?
• 26:23
  Speaker: Why I'm looking at you guys.
• 26:25
  Speaker: Why are you alive?
• 26:26
  Speaker: Do you know the answer to that?
• 26:28
  Speaker: Uh, do I know the answer to that?
• 26:29
  Speaker: If you do, that's fantastic.
• 26:33
  Speaker: Second question.
• 26:35
  Speaker: What would you be willing to die for?
• 26:40
  Speaker: If you can answer those two
• 26:42
  Speaker: questions, you probably are
• 26:44
  Speaker: close to knowing what the
• 26:46
  Speaker: purpose or the meaning of your
• 26:47
  Speaker: life is.
• 26:48
  Speaker: You know, early on when I started coaching some coworkers,
• 26:52
  Speaker: um, I had a very similar question, uh, to that, to the
• 26:56
  Speaker: first one, why are you alive?
• 26:58
  Speaker: I would ask them like, you know,
• 27:00
  Speaker: why do you, why did you choose
• 27:01
  Speaker: this job?
• 27:02
  Speaker: Right?
• 27:03
  Speaker: And the normal response is, well, because they took my
• 27:07
  Speaker: resume and they're paying me this much and all that.
• 27:09
  Speaker: And I'm like, no, no, no. Okay, tell me more.
• 27:11
  Speaker: Why did you choose this job?
• 27:13
  Speaker: Oh, well, because my bills are
• 27:15
  Speaker: so much and I need to have this
• 27:17
  Speaker: much salary.
• 27:18
  Speaker: And I'd say no, no, the third time.
• 27:20
  Speaker: Why?
• 27:21
  Speaker: Of all the things you could be doing with your life right now,
• 27:24
  Speaker: why are you here?
• 27:26
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 27:26
  Speaker: And it took that that coaching of them a couple times to get
• 27:30
  Speaker: them to say, wait a minute, like, what's my purpose?
• 27:33
  Speaker: Why?
• 27:33
  Speaker: You know, all things being
• 27:35
  Speaker: equal, if you had an equal
• 27:36
  Speaker: amount of salary working in a
• 27:38
  Speaker: completely different career
• 27:39
  Speaker: field, why did you choose this
• 27:41
  Speaker: one?
• 27:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 27:42
  Speaker: And it really helps to open up
• 27:44
  Speaker: that aperture of, uh, the, the
• 27:46
  Speaker: existential questions that
• 27:47
  Speaker: you've been asking is, um, not
• 27:50
  Speaker: just the surface level that we
• 27:53
  Speaker: engage with today, but really
• 27:55
  Speaker: fundamentally knowing what your
• 27:57
  Speaker: purpose is.
• 27:58
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 27:59
  Speaker: And what, uh, Steve Jobs would
• 28:02
  Speaker: say, you know, what's the, the
• 28:03
  Speaker: thing you're going to leave on
• 28:05
  Speaker: the universe?
• 28:06
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 28:06
  Speaker: So, you know, when it comes to jobs, it's interesting you
• 28:10
  Speaker: brought that up?
• 28:12
  Speaker: Um, there's a whole topic in ikigai.
• 28:14
  Speaker: You know, it's a Japanese term.
• 28:16
  Speaker: It's it's like, okay, so what is my calling?
• 28:19
  Speaker: Yes.
• 28:20
  Speaker: What?
• 28:20
  Speaker: What is my calling?
• 28:21
  Speaker: And so am I in a job that really I'm good at, that I love to do
• 28:30
  Speaker: that's good for the world.
• 28:31
  Speaker: And oh, by the way, they're going to pay me to.
• 28:34
  Speaker: So if you can say yes to all those things, then then that's a
• 28:37
  Speaker: that's a good job for you.
• 28:39
  Speaker: But too many of us, um, we're, we're in a job where there's
• 28:45
  Speaker: paying the bills and, you know, and, and maybe we're in a job
• 28:47
  Speaker: where we're building what we call resume virtues.
• 28:51
  Speaker: You know, I'm older than the three of you, so I'm actually
• 28:55
  Speaker: thinking about eulogy virtues.
• 28:57
  Speaker: Nobody's going to say when I'm dead at my funeral, when I have
• 29:01
  Speaker: a Masonic funeral, nobody's going to say, well, you know, he
• 29:04
  Speaker: had so much in his bank account.
• 29:06
  Speaker: And, you know, he had like three
• 29:08
  Speaker: orbea bicycles and they just
• 29:10
  Speaker: bought a cervelo and blah blah,
• 29:12
  Speaker: blah.
• 29:12
  Speaker: Nobody cares.
• 29:13
  Speaker: Right?
• 29:14
  Speaker: They say he was and had integrity.
• 29:17
  Speaker: He was kind to me.
• 29:20
  Speaker: He was generous.
• 29:21
  Speaker: Those are the things.
• 29:22
  Speaker: So, you know, if I can think about my calling, my my itchy
• 29:28
  Speaker: guy, I think that's that's incredibly important when it
• 29:31
  Speaker: comes to figuring out what job I want to have.
• 29:33
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 29:33
  Speaker: I'm gosh, man, you're just firing all neurons today for me
• 29:37
  Speaker: because, um, uh, another book that I know I've introduced
• 29:40
  Speaker: Jason to is a book by Richard Rohr, um, called Falling Upward.
• 29:46
  Speaker: Um, and he talks about in your terms resume virtues versus
• 29:52
  Speaker: eulogy virtues and how the first half of mostly men's life, we
• 29:57
  Speaker: try to establish ourselves.
• 29:59
  Speaker: We get our education, we get our
• 30:00
  Speaker: career, we get our
• 30:01
  Speaker: specialization right.
• 30:03
  Speaker: We try to provide, we try to be,
• 30:06
  Speaker: you know, um, establish where we
• 30:08
  Speaker: are in our career and our lot in
• 30:10
  Speaker: life.
• 30:11
  Speaker: And then there's some transformation that happens
• 30:16
  Speaker: sometimes through trauma that lets us reevaluate where now we
• 30:22
  Speaker: go from black and white to shades of gray.
• 30:24
  Speaker: Right.
• 30:25
  Speaker: And now we're like, well, wait a minute.
• 30:27
  Speaker: We go from the what to the why?
• 30:29
  Speaker: Right?
• 30:30
  Speaker: We go from, what am I doing to why do I exist?
• 30:34
  Speaker: How, you know, what's my purpose in life?
• 30:35
  Speaker: What, what's what's remaining?
• 30:37
  Speaker: Uh, and so it's, it's
• 30:39
  Speaker: fascinating to, to think about
• 30:41
  Speaker: those things.
• 30:41
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 30:42
  Speaker: Because you need both, but you need both, right?
• 30:44
  Speaker: You absolutely have to have both.
• 30:45
  Speaker: There's, there's a great book.
• 30:47
  Speaker: Uh, I know we're talking about a
• 30:48
  Speaker: lot of books tonight, but, um,
• 30:51
  Speaker: David Brooks wrote The Road to
• 30:53
  Speaker: Character.
• 30:54
  Speaker: And so it's twenty fifteen, I think it's a phenomenal book.
• 30:58
  Speaker: And then his intro, he talked about another book that a rabbi
• 31:01
  Speaker: wrote in the nineteen sixties called Lonely Man of faith and a
• 31:06
  Speaker: lonely man of faith.
• 31:07
  Speaker: The rabbi talked about, you know, in Genesis there are like
• 31:10
  Speaker: these two versions of creation.
• 31:13
  Speaker: The first version is like, hey, you know what?
• 31:15
  Speaker: I gotta build something.
• 31:17
  Speaker: I gotta do something.
• 31:18
  Speaker: I've got, you know, I'm in charge of everything, you know?
• 31:21
  Speaker: Um, but then that was Adam one, but Adam two was like, no, no,
• 31:27
  Speaker: you know, I want to be good.
• 31:29
  Speaker: I want to have moral victories.
• 31:31
  Speaker: Um, and I think that both of those are important.
• 31:35
  Speaker: Um, like you said, you know, you, we have to have a skill, we
• 31:39
  Speaker: have to build up a resume.
• 31:41
  Speaker: We've got to be able to provide for our families.
• 31:43
  Speaker: But at the same time, if we do
• 31:45
  Speaker: that at the neglect of I'm a
• 31:48
  Speaker: good man, that's that's
• 31:50
  Speaker: terrible.
• 31:51
  Speaker: And and two, there's been a shift in the United States.
• 31:54
  Speaker: There's been a shift.
• 31:55
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 31:56
  Speaker: From over the last twenty, thirty, forty years of the big
• 32:00
  Speaker: me, me, me me me, me Instead of service, instead of I want to do
• 32:07
  Speaker: things for others.
• 32:07
  Speaker: And I think that's where Freemasonry can come into it,
• 32:09
  Speaker: because in Freemasonry we often are taking care of other people.
• 32:14
  Speaker: Um, we can actually, we, we, we
• 32:17
  Speaker: hear about their woes and their,
• 32:19
  Speaker: their things that are happening
• 32:20
  Speaker: to them.
• 32:20
  Speaker: We can help them.
• 32:22
  Speaker: Um, and I think you before this,
• 32:25
  Speaker: we've talked about this book
• 32:26
  Speaker: called Bowling Alone where, you
• 32:28
  Speaker: know, so many people in the
• 32:30
  Speaker: United States, you know, nobody
• 32:31
  Speaker: does PTA anymore, blah, blah,
• 32:33
  Speaker: blah, all the clubs, Elks and
• 32:35
  Speaker: everything else you're doing,
• 32:36
  Speaker: PTA.
• 32:36
  Speaker: Jason.
• 32:37
  Speaker: I am on the PTA board for my elementary school.
• 32:39
  Speaker: They're the exception, not the rule.
• 32:41
  Speaker: You know how hard it is to find volunteers.
• 32:44
  Speaker: It's true though, and, you know,
• 32:45
  Speaker: and so we're fighting an uphill
• 32:46
  Speaker: battle.
• 32:47
  Speaker: And Freemasonry has this added benefit of having this
• 32:50
  Speaker: incredible philosophy behind it that can help us if if we follow
• 32:54
  Speaker: that path, can really help us.
• 32:57
  Speaker: Um, but, but we're up against
• 32:59
  Speaker: something again, because why do
• 33:01
  Speaker: I need to come to a lodge when I
• 33:03
  Speaker: have this?
• 33:04
  Speaker: Let me just tell you, though, that there is literature
• 33:07
  Speaker: recently that says that young people are now actually going
• 33:10
  Speaker: back to church.
• 33:11
  Speaker: Why?
• 33:12
  Speaker: Because they're finding this dissatisfying.
• 33:15
  Speaker: I've heard.
• 33:16
  Speaker: I've heard that too.
• 33:17
  Speaker: And it's fascinating because it's anecdotal.
• 33:18
  Speaker: And I, I am hyper fixated on
• 33:21
  Speaker: that because it's, again, like
• 33:25
  Speaker: I've seen it specifically, um,
• 33:27
  Speaker: not just church, but like high
• 33:29
  Speaker: church, whether it's like
• 33:30
  Speaker: Catholicism or, you know, um,
• 33:34
  Speaker: these other, uh, ritualistic
• 33:37
  Speaker: type churches, even even, um,
• 33:39
  Speaker: Islam as well because of the,
• 33:41
  Speaker: uh, the rituals that come with
• 33:43
  Speaker: that.
• 33:44
  Speaker: And so it's fascinating to see,
• 33:46
  Speaker: well, why would a generation
• 33:48
  Speaker: that's known to be so, you know,
• 33:51
  Speaker: laissez faire want to fall back
• 33:53
  Speaker: to a more to the structure,
• 33:55
  Speaker: right?
• 33:56
  Speaker: It's fascinating.
• 33:57
  Speaker: Well, I mean, that's yeah.
• 33:58
  Speaker: No, it, it, there was, a I think
• 34:00
  Speaker: we talked about this on another
• 34:01
  Speaker: show, but, um, they've done
• 34:03
  Speaker: surveys for the last, you know,
• 34:05
  Speaker: for the last couple of
• 34:06
  Speaker: generations.
• 34:07
  Speaker: And what they've seen is even
• 34:09
  Speaker: stepping out of religion a
• 34:10
  Speaker: little bit younger generations,
• 34:13
  Speaker: um, more generations, more
• 34:15
  Speaker: recent generations.
• 34:16
  Speaker: Sorry, I stopped having coffee like two hours ago.
• 34:19
  Speaker: Um, more recent generations of
• 34:22
  Speaker: humans are claiming to be more
• 34:25
  Speaker: spiritual than they had been in
• 34:26
  Speaker: the past.
• 34:27
  Speaker: So there's less agnosticism and atheism.
• 34:31
  Speaker: Um, but it's tied less to organized religion.
• 34:34
  Speaker: But in that same vein, we've got
• 34:36
  Speaker: a bunch of young people that are
• 34:37
  Speaker: looking on the spiritual side of
• 34:39
  Speaker: things, and we all know the
• 34:40
  Speaker: answer.
• 34:40
  Speaker: It's because they're not finding
• 34:42
  Speaker: meaning in their current
• 34:44
  Speaker: everyday life.
• 34:46
  Speaker: Right?
• 34:46
  Speaker: You know, going back, I'm not going to lift up my phone like
• 34:48
  Speaker: Joel did twenty times.
• 34:49
  Speaker: But you know, they're not finding meaning.
• 34:52
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 34:53
  Speaker: In, in those transitory little bursts of dopamine.
• 34:56
  Speaker: Right.
• 34:57
  Speaker: And, and I think you said something really important.
• 34:59
  Speaker: Joel, where can young men find that in Freemasonry?
• 35:05
  Speaker: They can.
• 35:06
  Speaker: The tools are there, but it's
• 35:07
  Speaker: not just you walk in the door
• 35:09
  Speaker: and suddenly you become an
• 35:10
  Speaker: enlightened human being, and all
• 35:11
  Speaker: the meaning floods into your
• 35:12
  Speaker: world, right?
• 35:13
  Speaker: Because we've all been to many different Masonic gatherings
• 35:17
  Speaker: where masonry is unfortunately a slice of of the whole right
• 35:22
  Speaker: that's out there in the world.
• 35:23
  Speaker: You've got guys that are just
• 35:25
  Speaker: there to eat green beans, and
• 35:27
  Speaker: you've got dudes there that are
• 35:28
  Speaker: ready to walk the path, and
• 35:30
  Speaker: you've got everything in
• 35:30
  Speaker: between, and you can't please
• 35:31
  Speaker: everybody.
• 35:32
  Speaker: So yep, we did say it once.
• 35:34
  Speaker: Um, but yeah, I think that's the important part, right?
• 35:37
  Speaker: Like people, you've got this whole generation of people that
• 35:42
  Speaker: are really struggling to find meaning and stuff.
• 35:46
  Speaker: We have a vehicle for that, but you still got to do the work.
• 35:49
  Speaker: Right, right.
• 35:50
  Speaker: You know, and that's, that's the dichotomy.
• 35:52
  Speaker: Think yeah.
• 35:53
  Speaker: Doctor Sexton he's a he's an incredible researcher.
• 35:56
  Speaker: He's at Duke, and he talks a lot about culture, and a lot of his
• 36:00
  Speaker: work was about burnout.
• 36:01
  Speaker: But an important thing he said was culture is local.
• 36:05
  Speaker: So you have a you have a lodge where the culture is going to be
• 36:08
  Speaker: very different from a lodge right around the corner.
• 36:11
  Speaker: And so you're right, Joe.
• 36:13
  Speaker: I mean, I think finding, finding a place where you can actually
• 36:18
  Speaker: get that nourishment is going to be important because it's not in
• 36:21
  Speaker: every lodge meeting, chapter meeting, Commandery Scottish.
• 36:25
  Speaker: Right?
• 36:25
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 36:25
  Speaker: You're right.
• 36:27
  Speaker: Uh, but let me go back to, to meeting real quick.
• 36:29
  Speaker: I don't want to run out of time.
• 36:30
  Speaker: I just want to talk about
• 36:31
  Speaker: there's, there's, I know I
• 36:32
  Speaker: talked about a couple of
• 36:33
  Speaker: questions, but there are three
• 36:34
  Speaker: why questions that are probably
• 36:38
  Speaker: pretty important for people to
• 36:39
  Speaker: understand when it comes to
• 36:40
  Speaker: meaning, uh, one is around
• 36:42
  Speaker: coherence.
• 36:43
  Speaker: Um, why do things happen the way they do?
• 36:46
  Speaker: Can you answer that?
• 36:48
  Speaker: And so for some people say it's
• 36:50
  Speaker: because of God or the great
• 36:51
  Speaker: architect, some people will say
• 36:53
  Speaker: it's science, but you need to be
• 36:55
  Speaker: able to have an answer for why
• 36:56
  Speaker: do things happen the way they
• 36:57
  Speaker: do?
• 36:58
  Speaker: And then you need to understand about purpose.
• 37:01
  Speaker: Why am I doing what I'm doing in my life?
• 37:05
  Speaker: Do you know that?
• 37:06
  Speaker: Do you know why you're doing what you're doing in your life?
• 37:09
  Speaker: Yeah, that's a right brain question.
• 37:11
  Speaker: These are why questions.
• 37:12
  Speaker: These are right brain questions.
• 37:13
  Speaker: And many of us don't think about that.
• 37:14
  Speaker: And then the third thing is about significance.
• 37:17
  Speaker: And going back to a question I
• 37:18
  Speaker: asked before, why does my life
• 37:21
  Speaker: matter?
• 37:22
  Speaker: So I would propose to people listening today and for all of
• 37:26
  Speaker: us, myself included, why do things happen the way they do?
• 37:29
  Speaker: Can I answer that?
• 37:31
  Speaker: Why am I doing what I'm doing in my life?
• 37:33
  Speaker: Can answer that.
• 37:35
  Speaker: And why does my life matter?
• 37:37
  Speaker: Those are three incredibly important questions when it
• 37:40
  Speaker: comes to meaning.
• 37:42
  Speaker: If you can't answer those and
• 37:43
  Speaker: you probably, you probably can't
• 37:46
  Speaker: figure out what is your true
• 37:47
  Speaker: purpose and meaning in your
• 37:48
  Speaker: life.
• 37:49
  Speaker: Yeah, you can touch on it, but
• 37:50
  Speaker: those are important big why
• 37:52
  Speaker: questions.
• 37:53
  Speaker: Um, and then, and then the other thing that, that, uh, the social
• 37:58
  Speaker: psychologist would teach us is that to figure out meaning you
• 38:02
  Speaker: have to have struggle.
• 38:05
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 38:06
  Speaker: There's, there's unfortunately, um, there is, there is some
• 38:11
  Speaker: science that says that around every eighteen months we are
• 38:15
  Speaker: going to have something that happens to us that's going to be
• 38:18
  Speaker: unpleasant, unplanned for.
• 38:21
  Speaker: And we got to figure out what are we going to do with that?
• 38:23
  Speaker: How are we going to deal with that?
• 38:24
  Speaker: And every five years there's
• 38:26
  Speaker: going to be what's called a life
• 38:28
  Speaker: quake.
• 38:29
  Speaker: So struggle is important.
• 38:32
  Speaker: And can we deal with that struggle?
• 38:34
  Speaker: Um, you know, and from a science
• 38:37
  Speaker: standpoint today people are
• 38:39
  Speaker: saying, well, suffering is pain
• 38:42
  Speaker: times resistance.
• 38:44
  Speaker: So we know the pain's coming, right?
• 38:47
  Speaker: Well, it can happen every day someone says something mean to
• 38:50
  Speaker: you, but every eighteen months it's going to be a big pain.
• 38:53
  Speaker: Every five years, a really big pain.
• 38:57
  Speaker: Do we just do we say, okay, it's painful.
• 39:01
  Speaker: I'm going to learn from this.
• 39:03
  Speaker: Bring on the suffering because I'm going to learn.
• 39:06
  Speaker: And the resistance is low.
• 39:08
  Speaker: That's what we should be doing.
• 39:10
  Speaker: Um, but too often we don't.
• 39:13
  Speaker: And, you know, I think the Buddhists have it right here.
• 39:16
  Speaker: You know, they say that life is suffering, um, to end all
• 39:20
  Speaker: suffering and desire.
• 39:21
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 39:21
  Speaker: That's right.
• 39:22
  Speaker: So suffering from our attachments.
• 39:24
  Speaker: Right.
• 39:25
  Speaker: And so if you want to end
• 39:26
  Speaker: suffering, we got to get rid of
• 39:28
  Speaker: those attachments.
• 39:29
  Speaker: And then we find ourselves walking down the middle path.
• 39:33
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 39:33
  Speaker: Those are the four noble truths.
• 39:35
  Speaker: And I, I, when I, when I learned that, well, actually, I knew
• 39:39
  Speaker: that before in the Scottish Rite, I learned about balance
• 39:43
  Speaker: and equanimity, right?
• 39:44
  Speaker: About sort of like finding balance in my life, not not
• 39:48
  Speaker: going way over here.
• 39:50
  Speaker: Not going way over there, but
• 39:51
  Speaker: finding a sort of that middle
• 39:53
  Speaker: path.
• 39:54
  Speaker: So for me, that that Scottish
• 39:56
  Speaker: Rite principle aligned a lot
• 39:58
  Speaker: with the four noble truths of
• 40:00
  Speaker: Buddhism.
• 40:01
  Speaker: And then actually, I should have known this before, but I didn't.
• 40:04
  Speaker: Aristotle has golden mean, you know, his virtues were like,
• 40:08
  Speaker: okay, don't go way over there and don't go over there, but
• 40:11
  Speaker: sort of had that golden mean right in the middle.
• 40:13
  Speaker: And so that we've been talking
• 40:15
  Speaker: about the same process and the
• 40:18
  Speaker: same way to, to deal with
• 40:20
  Speaker: anxiety, with stress for
• 40:23
  Speaker: centuries.
• 40:24
  Speaker: And I think it's true.
• 40:27
  Speaker: And, and today, the social
• 40:30
  Speaker: scientists, because they say
• 40:31
  Speaker: psychology is biology, there's
• 40:33
  Speaker: biological reasons for why
• 40:34
  Speaker: psychology happens.
• 40:36
  Speaker: There's, there's things we can do.
• 40:38
  Speaker: Um, and then the last thing for
• 40:40
  Speaker: meeting is you need to find
• 40:42
  Speaker: transcendence.
• 40:44
  Speaker: What is, what is it in your life
• 40:47
  Speaker: that's bigger than you because
• 40:50
  Speaker: you know we're inside our heads,
• 40:51
  Speaker: right?
• 40:52
  Speaker: So for me, everything I think about is here and I'm the center
• 40:56
  Speaker: of my attention.
• 40:57
  Speaker: As horrible as that may sound, that's true.
• 41:01
  Speaker: How can I be bigger than that?
• 41:03
  Speaker: How can I have transcendence?
• 41:05
  Speaker: How would you compare that to,
• 41:06
  Speaker: like, Maslow's
• 41:08
  Speaker: self-actualization?
• 41:10
  Speaker: I would say it's very similar.
• 41:12
  Speaker: Okay.
• 41:12
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 41:13
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 41:13
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 41:14
  Speaker: Why am I here?
• 41:15
  Speaker: And, but I think to your point,
• 41:16
  Speaker: it's, it's even more external,
• 41:18
  Speaker: right?
• 41:18
  Speaker: Is what, what is how do I fit in with the society at large?
• 41:24
  Speaker: Right.
• 41:24
  Speaker: And I think that, you know, a
• 41:26
  Speaker: big part of transcendence is
• 41:28
  Speaker: around faith.
• 41:29
  Speaker: And that could be a typical religious faith.
• 41:32
  Speaker: It could be, you know, your Catholicism or if you're a
• 41:35
  Speaker: Protestant or, or Islam, um, or it can be a philosophy.
• 41:41
  Speaker: And so for many in Freemasonry,
• 41:43
  Speaker: we have this philosophical basis
• 41:45
  Speaker: that we can actually build our
• 41:46
  Speaker: lives on.
• 41:47
  Speaker: And that can be transcendent as well.
• 41:49
  Speaker: Um, but to know that those are
• 41:51
  Speaker: there and to have service to
• 41:53
  Speaker: others, to find beauty in the
• 41:55
  Speaker: world.
• 41:56
  Speaker: Um, you know, I think that one of the ways we can find
• 42:00
  Speaker: transcendence is through nature.
• 42:02
  Speaker: Um, just walking outside, right.
• 42:05
  Speaker: Um, I mean, shinrin yoku is a
• 42:09
  Speaker: Japanese word for forest
• 42:10
  Speaker: bathing.
• 42:10
  Speaker: And it's been shown that a lot
• 42:12
  Speaker: of studies show that if you just
• 42:15
  Speaker: walk out into the woods, leave
• 42:17
  Speaker: your phone.
• 42:18
  Speaker: I won't, I won't pick up my
• 42:19
  Speaker: phone, but leave your phone in
• 42:21
  Speaker: the house, walk out in the
• 42:23
  Speaker: woods, quietly hug a tree if you
• 42:26
  Speaker: want to.
• 42:28
  Speaker: It lowers your blood pressure.
• 42:29
  Speaker: It decreases your cortisol levels.
• 42:31
  Speaker: Your stress decreases.
• 42:33
  Speaker: Um, and you feel happier.
• 42:35
  Speaker: So in Japan, they're actually,
• 42:37
  Speaker: they're doing this, they're
• 42:38
  Speaker: taking a lot of their older
• 42:40
  Speaker: population.
• 42:41
  Speaker: They're, they're saying, get out into the woods and do this
• 42:45
  Speaker: because you will feel happier being out in nature.
• 42:49
  Speaker: Or as our younger generation touch grass.
• 42:53
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 42:57
  Speaker: And then there's, there's moral beauty, right?
• 42:59
  Speaker: I mean, Mother Teresa, I mean, what can I say, moral beauty
• 43:03
  Speaker: service to others.
• 43:04
  Speaker: It's incredible.
• 43:06
  Speaker: Um, there I read an article
• 43:10
  Speaker: where a lot of young people feel
• 43:12
  Speaker: like they're in a simulation,
• 43:14
  Speaker: um, because they don't have
• 43:16
  Speaker: those things.
• 43:17
  Speaker: So it's like, gosh, I, I mean, I saw that movie in nineteen
• 43:20
  Speaker: ninety nine, right?
• 43:21
  Speaker: Kento Reeves in the Matrix.
• 43:23
  Speaker: Um, if you're always on your
• 43:25
  Speaker: phone, if you're always online,
• 43:26
  Speaker: if everything you do, you know,
• 43:29
  Speaker: and there's nothing wrong with
• 43:30
  Speaker: being on the phone, there's
• 43:31
  Speaker: nothing wrong with your
• 43:31
  Speaker: computer.
• 43:32
  Speaker: There's nothing wrong with gaming.
• 43:33
  Speaker: All those things are fine.
• 43:35
  Speaker: But if that's your life, if you're online all the time, it's
• 43:40
  Speaker: like you're in a simulation.
• 43:42
  Speaker: And I think that for for, you know, tonight, because we're
• 43:46
  Speaker: we're talking about Freemasons.
• 43:47
  Speaker: If we get out to the lodge, the
• 43:49
  Speaker: chapter, the valley, wherever,
• 43:51
  Speaker: and just be with other people,
• 43:54
  Speaker: um, or like here tonight, you
• 43:57
  Speaker: know, just, just be with other
• 43:58
  Speaker: people, although it's online,
• 43:59
  Speaker: but I think that being with
• 44:02
  Speaker: other people is incredibly
• 44:03
  Speaker: important and gets us out of
• 44:04
  Speaker: that simulation.
• 44:05
  Speaker: And the literature shows that we will actually be happier if we
• 44:09
  Speaker: can do those things.
• 44:11
  Speaker: So, um, I, I know I talked about
• 44:15
  Speaker: Aristotle and I won't talk more
• 44:17
  Speaker: about him.
• 44:18
  Speaker: Um, I love stoicism, but, you know, we, we, we talked a lot
• 44:24
  Speaker: about, I mean, the virtues that the Stoics talked about
• 44:28
  Speaker: Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.
• 44:31
  Speaker: Those are the, those are the
• 44:32
  Speaker: same four virtues that we have
• 44:33
  Speaker: in Freemasonry.
• 44:34
  Speaker: Right.
• 44:35
  Speaker: So they talk about those in the first century.
• 44:37
  Speaker: Those are apropos to today from
• 44:40
  Speaker: a happiness standpoint, I think
• 44:43
  Speaker: that many Protestants may not
• 44:46
  Speaker: know who Thomas Aquinas is, but
• 44:49
  Speaker: oh my gosh, what an incredible
• 44:51
  Speaker: guy, right?
• 44:52
  Speaker: Thirteenth century.
• 44:53
  Speaker: And he took a little bit of a different a different tack.
• 44:56
  Speaker: And, uh, I don't know, really hardcore people have read Summa
• 45:00
  Speaker: Theologica, but in that he said, instead of following these
• 45:05
  Speaker: virtues, let me tell you about the four idols that people
• 45:09
  Speaker: follow that they think are going to make them happy.
• 45:14
  Speaker: They think these will make them happy, but they don't.
• 45:17
  Speaker: And so even today in psychology, people are asking, are one of
• 45:23
  Speaker: these four things that are important to you?
• 45:26
  Speaker: Because if not, it's your weakness, right?
• 45:28
  Speaker: So if this is your weakness, focus on it.
• 45:32
  Speaker: Money is money important to you.
• 45:35
  Speaker: And, and sometimes that's for
• 45:37
  Speaker: people that are really poor when
• 45:39
  Speaker: they're growing up or really
• 45:41
  Speaker: wealthy because that defines
• 45:42
  Speaker: them.
• 45:43
  Speaker: But you know, it's money.
• 45:44
  Speaker: Is money your false idol?
• 45:47
  Speaker: Um, is it power, you know, power and influence?
• 45:50
  Speaker: Those aren't bad.
• 45:52
  Speaker: I mean, influence is really good
• 45:53
  Speaker: if you can influence for the
• 45:54
  Speaker: good, right?
• 45:56
  Speaker: But is that your idol?
• 45:58
  Speaker: Um, is it pleasure?
• 46:01
  Speaker: You know, is it the sort of hedonic type of thing?
• 46:04
  Speaker: Um, and then the last one is what, what Thomas Aquinas
• 46:09
  Speaker: called, um, sort of honor.
• 46:11
  Speaker: But what we would say is fame, is fame important to you?
• 46:16
  Speaker: Is it, is it is it important for
• 46:18
  Speaker: people that don't even know you,
• 46:19
  Speaker: to recognize you and lift you
• 46:21
  Speaker: up?
• 46:22
  Speaker: Uh, you know, and maybe, maybe
• 46:25
  Speaker: you say, well, well, none of
• 46:27
  Speaker: those are really, but but for
• 46:28
  Speaker: most of us, one of those is
• 46:32
  Speaker: important.
• 46:33
  Speaker: So anyway, go ahead.
• 46:35
  Speaker: No, what I was just thinking, what would Thomas Aquinas say?
• 46:39
  Speaker: Um, in our, our social media world that we live in where it's
• 46:43
  Speaker: like, oh my God, you sit there on your phone.
• 46:45
  Speaker: Look, I held it up.
• 46:46
  Speaker: Um, and see how many likes my
• 46:48
  Speaker: post gets, you know, it's like,
• 46:49
  Speaker: oh, oh my God, I only got twelve
• 46:51
  Speaker: likes, right?
• 46:52
  Speaker: I'm terrible.
• 46:53
  Speaker: I'm a bad human being.
• 46:55
  Speaker: It's all about fame, right?
• 46:57
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 46:57
  Speaker: That's probably about fame.
• 46:59
  Speaker: Um, um, you want people to recognize you.
• 47:01
  Speaker: You know, there's this whole thing about, you know, you.
• 47:04
  Speaker: We have all these friends on Facebook.
• 47:06
  Speaker: Oh, yeah.
• 47:07
  Speaker: Oh, yeah.
• 47:07
  Speaker: I don't do any social media, so
• 47:09
  Speaker: I don't have any accounts, but,
• 47:11
  Speaker: um, you know how many friends on
• 47:14
  Speaker: Facebook?
• 47:14
  Speaker: Those aren't real friends, right?
• 47:16
  Speaker: And, and so, so it's important
• 47:17
  Speaker: to think about, do you have real
• 47:20
  Speaker: friends?
• 47:21
  Speaker: And many of us don't have real friends.
• 47:25
  Speaker: The friends we have may be deal friends.
• 47:28
  Speaker: The difference between real
• 47:29
  Speaker: friends and deal friends are
• 47:31
  Speaker: real.
• 47:32
  Speaker: Friends are probably pretty useless.
• 47:35
  Speaker: They're not worthless, but they're used.
• 47:37
  Speaker: They don't.
• 47:38
  Speaker: They don't do anything.
• 47:39
  Speaker: I mean, you just love them
• 47:41
  Speaker: because they are so important to
• 47:43
  Speaker: you.
• 47:44
  Speaker: Whereas dolphins, they do things for you.
• 47:47
  Speaker: So and this is the problem for men.
• 47:50
  Speaker: And this is where I think masonry can help as well.
• 47:54
  Speaker: There there's um there's numbers
• 47:57
  Speaker: that show that by age sixty,
• 48:00
  Speaker: sixty percent of men, their only
• 48:04
  Speaker: friend is their spouse, whereas
• 48:08
  Speaker: by age sixty, thirty percent of
• 48:10
  Speaker: women say their only friend is
• 48:13
  Speaker: their spouse.
• 48:15
  Speaker: That means that women are making
• 48:17
  Speaker: friends outside of their
• 48:18
  Speaker: partner.
• 48:20
  Speaker: So what do we see?
• 48:21
  Speaker: We see men when they get older
• 48:25
  Speaker: and there's a great divorce
• 48:27
  Speaker: because, you know, they've been
• 48:28
  Speaker: married for thirty years and
• 48:29
  Speaker: they get divorced or their
• 48:30
  Speaker: partner dies.
• 48:32
  Speaker: They have no Real friends.
• 48:35
  Speaker: No real friends.
• 48:37
  Speaker: That is a problem.
• 48:38
  Speaker: It's a huge problem and we see this all the time.
• 48:41
  Speaker: So in the UK it's interesting.
• 48:44
  Speaker: In the UK they actually there's this thing where they actually
• 48:48
  Speaker: they build these sheds.
• 48:50
  Speaker: Not a shed but a shed.
• 48:52
  Speaker: And they actually build birdhouses.
• 48:55
  Speaker: And the wives drive their
• 48:57
  Speaker: husbands to these places and
• 49:00
  Speaker: they get together with a bunch
• 49:01
  Speaker: of other guys and they do stuff
• 49:03
  Speaker: together.
• 49:03
  Speaker: Well, we do that in lunch, right?
• 49:06
  Speaker: So we don't.
• 49:06
  Speaker: There you go.
• 49:07
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 49:08
  Speaker: We need to sit down and look across the table from the people
• 49:13
  Speaker: in our lives and say, I really love this guy.
• 49:18
  Speaker: I really want to spend time with this person, not just go and
• 49:21
  Speaker: have dinner and blah, blah, blah, but really invest time,
• 49:26
  Speaker: you know, in friendship, which is incredibly important when it
• 49:29
  Speaker: comes to happiness.
• 49:31
  Speaker: Friendship takes time.
• 49:32
  Speaker: It's an investment.
• 49:35
  Speaker: Um, and so, you know, I think
• 49:38
  Speaker: most of us as men, we won't
• 49:40
  Speaker: have, you know, five or six real
• 49:43
  Speaker: close friends.
• 49:44
  Speaker: We may have one or two.
• 49:46
  Speaker: But I think that one of the most
• 49:47
  Speaker: important things we can do is we
• 49:49
  Speaker: can sit there and say, I need
• 49:51
  Speaker: friends, I need to have this
• 49:55
  Speaker: relationship.
• 49:56
  Speaker: Um, and so I know we're going to run out of time.
• 49:58
  Speaker: Let me just real quick, because I think that's important.
• 50:01
  Speaker: There was a study in nineteen
• 50:02
  Speaker: thirty eight that's ongoing even
• 50:06
  Speaker: to today, and it's from nineteen
• 50:08
  Speaker: thirty eight nineteen thirty
• 50:09
  Speaker: eight.
• 50:09
  Speaker: Yep.
• 50:10
  Speaker: Wow.
• 50:10
  Speaker: I know.
• 50:11
  Speaker: And so the question was, is.
• 50:13
  Speaker: And in the beginning it was Harvard students.
• 50:16
  Speaker: JFK was one, uh, the Boston Strangler was one.
• 50:20
  Speaker: And obviously they didn't live long.
• 50:22
  Speaker: But what they did was they looked at those people.
• 50:25
  Speaker: Now, those are people that were above wealth, above intellect,
• 50:29
  Speaker: mainly white and men.
• 50:32
  Speaker: But over time they've they've
• 50:34
  Speaker: normalized that because they
• 50:35
  Speaker: have other people that are not
• 50:37
  Speaker: college graduates.
• 50:39
  Speaker: They expanded it to them, to their spouses and children.
• 50:43
  Speaker: So now it's representative of the population at all.
• 50:46
  Speaker: And they said, when these people
• 50:48
  Speaker: get old, what are the things
• 50:51
  Speaker: that they did all their life for
• 50:53
  Speaker: them to be happy and well, happy
• 50:57
  Speaker: and well.
• 50:58
  Speaker: So I know I'm blurring the line
• 50:59
  Speaker: here a little bit because I'm,
• 51:01
  Speaker: I'm going to talk about wellness
• 51:02
  Speaker: too.
• 51:04
  Speaker: And so four of them make sense.
• 51:05
  Speaker: Okay.
• 51:06
  Speaker: Um, having good nutrition, having a healthy diet, not an up
• 51:11
  Speaker: and down, but a healthy diet where you're not eating
• 51:13
  Speaker: processed foods, you're eating whole foods, yada, yada, yada.
• 51:16
  Speaker: That makes sense.
• 51:18
  Speaker: Um, movement and exercise.
• 51:20
  Speaker: That's incredibly important.
• 51:22
  Speaker: So if you don't do any of that, then you probably aren't going
• 51:25
  Speaker: to live to be older.
• 51:27
  Speaker: Um, so that's number two.
• 51:29
  Speaker: Number three is just don't smoke.
• 51:32
  Speaker: Smoking is bad.
• 51:33
  Speaker: Just don't smoke.
• 51:35
  Speaker: Number four is alcohol and other substances.
• 51:39
  Speaker: And in this one, it really wasn't about drinking, period.
• 51:43
  Speaker: It was about drinking to excess or having substance.
• 51:46
  Speaker: And by the way, substance use disorder is a huge problem in
• 51:50
  Speaker: young people today.
• 51:52
  Speaker: Huge problem.
• 51:53
  Speaker: We could talk about that later if we want.
• 51:54
  Speaker: But but that's a that's a big problem.
• 51:56
  Speaker: So those four make a lot of sense.
• 51:59
  Speaker: The next three, I think are incredibly important when it
• 52:02
  Speaker: comes to happiness.
• 52:04
  Speaker: Um, do you have skills to deal with the trauma that's going to
• 52:09
  Speaker: come because you know it's going to come right.
• 52:11
  Speaker: Do you have skills that can deal with that?
• 52:14
  Speaker: Um, many people don't.
• 52:16
  Speaker: Um, so it's about metacognition.
• 52:20
  Speaker: It's how do I take my limbic
• 52:22
  Speaker: system that says, oh my God, I'm
• 52:24
  Speaker: so angry or I'm sad or I'm
• 52:28
  Speaker: fearful.
• 52:29
  Speaker: All those things that when we were, you know, you know, two
• 52:32
  Speaker: hundred, zero zero zero years ago and running from the saber
• 52:35
  Speaker: toothed tiger or whatever.
• 52:36
  Speaker: How do we take those emotions
• 52:38
  Speaker: and then metacognition those
• 52:40
  Speaker: into our neocortex and say,
• 52:42
  Speaker: well, what what is it about
• 52:44
  Speaker: that?
• 52:44
  Speaker: How can I deal with that?
• 52:46
  Speaker: And so for some people, it's prayer.
• 52:50
  Speaker: For some people, it's meditation.
• 52:52
  Speaker: Uh, I think for, for some people it's therapy.
• 52:56
  Speaker: Um, and other people, they do that by journaling.
• 52:59
  Speaker: Journaling is really cool because when you journal, what
• 53:03
  Speaker: you're doing is you're taking your limbic emotions and you're
• 53:07
  Speaker: having to think about it.
• 53:08
  Speaker: So you're moving it into your neocortex and then you're
• 53:11
  Speaker: writing things down.
• 53:12
  Speaker: So. So that's incredible.
• 53:14
  Speaker: Whatever you do, do you have a skill?
• 53:17
  Speaker: And, and they found that people
• 53:18
  Speaker: that were happy and well, at the
• 53:21
  Speaker: end of life, they had that
• 53:23
  Speaker: skill.
• 53:23
  Speaker: They were really good, whatever they did.
• 53:25
  Speaker: Tip number six is constantly learning.
• 53:31
  Speaker: Being curious.
• 53:32
  Speaker: And that's what I love about your podcast, right?
• 53:35
  Speaker: It's all about learning and just
• 53:38
  Speaker: constant learning about new
• 53:39
  Speaker: things.
• 53:40
  Speaker: It could be podcasts, it can be
• 53:42
  Speaker: reading, whatever if you're on
• 53:44
  Speaker: YouTube.
• 53:45
  Speaker: I know.
• 53:45
  Speaker: Here we go.
• 53:46
  Speaker: Jeff.
• 53:46
  Speaker: Don't go doom scrolling.
• 53:47
  Speaker: Right?
• 53:48
  Speaker: Don't just let the algorithm tell you what to do.
• 53:50
  Speaker: Find something that's important.
• 53:52
  Speaker: You know, be, be purposeful when you go in there.
• 53:55
  Speaker: Um, it's like, uh, it's like Wikipedia roulette.
• 53:59
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 54:00
  Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
• 54:01
  Speaker: You keep going article to article and you end up learning,
• 54:04
  Speaker: you know, about a hundred different things in the course
• 54:07
  Speaker: of two hours.
• 54:08
  Speaker: So learning is very, very important.
• 54:10
  Speaker: And these people did that.
• 54:12
  Speaker: They were they were constant learners.
• 54:14
  Speaker: And the last thing and probably the most important thing is
• 54:19
  Speaker: happiness is love.
• 54:24
  Speaker: Nice and and it's love of your spouse.
• 54:29
  Speaker: But look, we don't all have happy marriages, right?
• 54:32
  Speaker: And that is always last.
• 54:34
  Speaker: So if you don't have a spouse, it's love of somebody else.
• 54:39
  Speaker: That real friend, not the deal friend, but the real friend and
• 54:43
  Speaker: those, those are the seven things that this study that's
• 54:46
  Speaker: ongoing even today.
• 54:48
  Speaker: So that if you have those things at the end of your life, you can
• 54:52
  Speaker: be happy and well, so for you young people, you know, that's
• 54:56
  Speaker: what you should be focusing.
• 54:58
  Speaker: I'm looking at you, John.
• 54:59
  Speaker: I know you focus on those things now because then when you get to
• 55:02
  Speaker: be my age, you'll have built up.
• 55:06
  Speaker: You'll be putting money in compounding it, and you'll be
• 55:10
  Speaker: happy and healthy.
• 55:11
  Speaker: We are in a huge friendship recession.
• 55:15
  Speaker: Um, I, you know, I just think
• 55:17
  Speaker: that it's going to be incredibly
• 55:19
  Speaker: important that we focus on
• 55:21
  Speaker: friendship.
• 55:22
  Speaker: And I think we can do that in our lodges in masonry.
• 55:25
  Speaker: I think that's a that's a great vehicle.
• 55:28
  Speaker: We see people.
• 55:29
  Speaker: We're not exactly alike, but we
• 55:32
  Speaker: have this similar philosophy,
• 55:33
  Speaker: this similar foundation that we
• 55:37
  Speaker: should be able to find some
• 55:38
  Speaker: things there for each other and
• 55:40
  Speaker: to build these very, very, very
• 55:41
  Speaker: good friendships.
• 55:43
  Speaker: And I'll just the last thing I'll say is with our spouses and
• 55:48
  Speaker: this is for the men.
• 55:50
  Speaker: Um, I got, I got, I got two minutes.
• 55:53
  Speaker: Right.
• 55:53
  Speaker: So, so there's this whole thing called oxytocin, right?
• 55:56
  Speaker: And it's bonding with oxytocin.
• 55:58
  Speaker: So for women, what do they want from us?
• 56:01
  Speaker: Look at them in the eyes.
• 56:03
  Speaker: Look at them in the eyes.
• 56:04
  Speaker: Okay.
• 56:05
  Speaker: For women, that's incredibly important for them to see us.
• 56:08
  Speaker: Look at them in the eyes.
• 56:10
  Speaker: For us, it's touch, you know, they want we want to be touched.
• 56:16
  Speaker: Um, I think that's important.
• 56:17
  Speaker: It's important to do fun things together.
• 56:19
  Speaker: And then I think the last thing
• 56:21
  Speaker: I would say is it's important to
• 56:23
  Speaker: do very emotional things
• 56:25
  Speaker: together.
• 56:25
  Speaker: Pray together, meditate together, read together.
• 56:30
  Speaker: I love reading my wife poetry or the Psalms.
• 56:34
  Speaker: Those things are very, very
• 56:35
  Speaker: important and it really helps
• 56:37
  Speaker: the bond from an oxytocin
• 56:38
  Speaker: standpoint.
• 56:39
  Speaker: Look, we could talk for hours and hours.
• 56:43
  Speaker: I could listen to you talk for hours and hours.
• 56:46
  Speaker: I'm about to get a blanket.
• 56:51
  Speaker: Um, so I guess I'll, I'll, I'll
• 56:54
  Speaker: leave you with the, the last
• 56:56
  Speaker: segue is how can masonry get us
• 57:00
  Speaker: there?
• 57:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 57:02
  Speaker: I think that masonry has a structure where we come.
• 57:08
  Speaker: And I think that in masonry
• 57:11
  Speaker: there's a lot of things we can
• 57:12
  Speaker: do together.
• 57:13
  Speaker: I think probably the most important thing is to build.
• 57:17
  Speaker: True, True friendships, true friendships.
• 57:21
  Speaker: I think that that the that the
• 57:25
  Speaker: literature would say that
• 57:26
  Speaker: building those incredible
• 57:28
  Speaker: friendships is probably the most
• 57:29
  Speaker: important thing that Freemasonry
• 57:31
  Speaker: can do, because too many of us
• 57:34
  Speaker: are lonely.
• 57:34
  Speaker: Right?
• 57:35
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 57:35
  Speaker: We we, we, you know, you can live alone.
• 57:38
  Speaker: And Thoreau said, you know, hey, I'm in, I'm walking in the woods
• 57:42
  Speaker: and I love it.
• 57:43
  Speaker: Being alone and being lonely are two different things.
• 57:46
  Speaker: So when I think that, you know,
• 57:49
  Speaker: in the lodge, we can bond with
• 57:51
  Speaker: people.
• 57:52
  Speaker: I think that when people can't come to the lodge, sometimes we
• 57:54
  Speaker: forget about them.
• 57:56
  Speaker: That's when they're most vulnerable.
• 57:57
  Speaker: Right.
• 57:58
  Speaker: True.
• 57:58
  Speaker: Go, go do a visit to their house over and over again and say, I
• 58:04
  Speaker: love you, my brother, and just spend time with them.
• 58:07
  Speaker: Uh, they.
• 58:08
  Speaker: Loneliness is so huge.
• 58:11
  Speaker: The suicide risk is much, much greater, especially in men.
• 58:16
  Speaker: So I think that those are things that maybe we can do.
• 58:19
  Speaker: And when it comes back to enjoyment, those are things that
• 58:23
  Speaker: we do together that we we do with other people.
• 58:26
  Speaker: And we actually have memories.
• 58:29
  Speaker: That's, that's a very, very good, um, when it comes to
• 58:32
  Speaker: satisfaction, I didn't talk about this because we didn't
• 58:34
  Speaker: have enough time.
• 58:35
  Speaker: But, you know, one of the things
• 58:36
  Speaker: about satisfaction is doing it
• 58:38
  Speaker: with friends.
• 58:39
  Speaker: So I think truly, when you think about the science of happiness,
• 58:44
  Speaker: what we do in the lodge with our other brothers touches on every
• 58:47
  Speaker: single one of those things, if we do it with purpose.
• 58:52
  Speaker: I totally agree.
• 58:53
  Speaker: Yeah, one hundred percent agree.
• 58:54
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 58:55
  Speaker: Wow.
• 58:55
  Speaker: That's amazing.
• 58:56
  Speaker: So thank you for giving us like a whole lecture of, uh, which is
• 59:02
  Speaker: very pointed, very focused.
• 59:04
  Speaker: Um, and I know personally, I've
• 59:06
  Speaker: got a whole reading list now
• 59:07
  Speaker: that I need to go catch up on
• 59:09
  Speaker: because, uh, you're pulling from
• 59:11
  Speaker: some good sources here, so I
• 59:13
  Speaker: have to, uh, continually learn,
• 59:15
  Speaker: as you said, so I can be a
• 59:17
  Speaker: better man?
• 59:18
  Speaker: Joe.
• 59:19
  Speaker: Any final thoughts and questions for Joel?
• 59:22
  Speaker: Uh, no questions, because we we
• 59:24
  Speaker: can keep him here for another
• 59:26
  Speaker: two hours.
• 59:26
  Speaker: But, uh, Brother Joel, it is
• 59:28
  Speaker: always, always a pleasure, um,
• 59:30
  Speaker: to sit with you and and just
• 59:32
  Speaker: listen to you talk and converse
• 59:33
  Speaker: with you.
• 59:34
  Speaker: Um, I think you touched on so many important points tonight.
• 59:38
  Speaker: We probably could have turned this into five different shows,
• 59:41
  Speaker: um, on each little snippet that you talked about.
• 59:43
  Speaker: But I mean, I think you summing it up was great.
• 59:46
  Speaker: It was we, we tied a bow on
• 59:50
  Speaker: Freemasonry can give modern,
• 59:54
  Speaker: modern people, um, what modern
• 59:58
  Speaker: life, I guess strips away from
• 1:00:00
  Speaker: us, right?
• 1:00:01
  Speaker: Strips away purpose.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker: It strips away friendship or real tangible friendship.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker: Um, and it strips away striving to become better.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker: Right.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker: So masonry doesn't cure our loneliness.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker: It doesn't get rid of our depression, and it doesn't take
• 1:00:17
  Speaker: away all the stressors of life.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker: But I think one thing you said that's super important, that's
• 1:00:22
  Speaker: my takeaway for tonight, is it reminds us that we're not meant
• 1:00:27
  Speaker: to walk this alone.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker: And you need to have a crowd of people of like, mind that you
• 1:00:34
  Speaker: can walk that journey with together, you know?
• 1:00:37
  Speaker: So, um, I think like I said, I
• 1:00:39
  Speaker: think you said some really
• 1:00:40
  Speaker: beautiful things, uh, that are
• 1:00:41
  Speaker: super important.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker: Go to lodge, sit at a table with
• 1:00:45
  Speaker: someone, take a brother by the
• 1:00:47
  Speaker: hand or give him a big strong
• 1:00:48
  Speaker: hug.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker: Um, and in doing so, you'll on the buttocks.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker: That too, but you'll work on yourself.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker: You'll learn that there are others there that can be served.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker: Um, and one thing you said
• 1:01:02
  Speaker: that's super important that we
• 1:01:03
  Speaker: didn't talk about in, in the
• 1:01:05
  Speaker: loneliness part is notice who
• 1:01:07
  Speaker: isn't there.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker: You know, notice who isn't there
• 1:01:09
  Speaker: and, and reach out to those
• 1:01:11
  Speaker: people.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker: So I think that's how the craft can help us, right?
• 1:01:15
  Speaker: It's not a panacea.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker: It's not a magic pill.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker: Um, but I think it gives us the
• 1:01:19
  Speaker: tools to combat some of this
• 1:01:21
  Speaker: stuff.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker: And I'm so grateful that, you know, we got to talk about this
• 1:01:24
  Speaker: with you this evening.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker: Thank you.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker: I very much enjoyed it.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker: Sweet.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker: Jason.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker: Uh, brother Joel, thanks so much for coming on.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker: Um, super, super fascinating and
• 1:01:38
  Speaker: really appreciate you being
• 1:01:40
  Speaker: willing to, to come and share a
• 1:01:42
  Speaker: little bit of your accumulated
• 1:01:45
  Speaker: wisdom and, and knowledge with
• 1:01:47
  Speaker: us.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker: Um. Again, think, you know, we are in a really interesting time
• 1:01:58
  Speaker: right now with, with again, social media and phones and
• 1:02:05
  Speaker: like, you know, thinking about my son, like He's never known a
• 1:02:12
  Speaker: time when he didn't have immediate access to a screen.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker: Right?
• 1:02:19
  Speaker: Right.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker: And like how, you know, for me who joined Facebook, um, in
• 1:02:29
  Speaker: college, um, because it had just started propagating out to, you
• 1:02:35
  Speaker: know, other universities outside of like, I remember when it was
• 1:02:38
  Speaker: the Facebook dot com.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker: Dot com.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker: I was, I was there for that.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker: Man.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker: You're old.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker: It's super old.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker: Um, you know, I, I have to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker: believe my life is so much
• 1:02:54
  Speaker: better because I didn't have
• 1:02:57
  Speaker: that, um, until I was about
• 1:03:00
  Speaker: nineteen twenty.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker: Um, and so, you know, I think
• 1:03:07
  Speaker: there's, no substitute for
• 1:03:11
  Speaker: cultivating real bonds and real
• 1:03:18
  Speaker: friendships.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker: Right?
• 1:03:19
  Speaker: Um. Yeah, we could talk a lot about protocols.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker: Uh, we should do any of that.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker: But, you know, one of the things you just mentioned, um, like
• 1:03:29
  Speaker: instead of texting people, you know, if you want to cultivate
• 1:03:33
  Speaker: real bonds, pick up the phone and just call them.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker: I mean, you know, I know how quaint who calls people?
• 1:03:38
  Speaker: I know, I know that might as
• 1:03:40
  Speaker: well get a quill and write a
• 1:03:42
  Speaker: handwritten letter.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker: Send it by carrier pigeon to.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker: And, you know, there's a lot of
• 1:03:46
  Speaker: literature now that shows that
• 1:03:47
  Speaker: if you get a handwritten note
• 1:03:49
  Speaker: from someone, how powerful that
• 1:03:51
  Speaker: is.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker: So I would say, do it.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker: Oh, man.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker: Hoisted by my not with not with a quill, but just use a pen.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker: Okay, that's good enough.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker: They hand typed email a hand artisan handcrafted.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker: I didn't even use Microsoft Copilot.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker: Locally sourced.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker: Uh, brother Joel.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker: This is amazing.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker: Um, always a pleasure to talk with you.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker: Super much to have the pleasure of having you on the show.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker: So, um, yeah, I definitely want
• 1:04:22
  Speaker: to invite you back to talk
• 1:04:23
  Speaker: about, um, myriad of other
• 1:04:24
  Speaker: topics.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker: Neoplatonism, right.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker: Next time, don't threaten me with a good time.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker: So thanks again.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker: Alright, awesome.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker: Um, let's see.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker: As for me to wrap things up, you
• 1:04:36
  Speaker: know, related to boredom, I
• 1:04:38
  Speaker: found one thing that was kind of
• 1:04:39
  Speaker: interesting was something that
• 1:04:41
  Speaker: jumped out to me was the comment
• 1:04:43
  Speaker: that this generation of kids
• 1:04:45
  Speaker: today will never know what it's
• 1:04:47
  Speaker: like to be lost because they
• 1:04:50
  Speaker: have their phone, they can
• 1:04:52
  Speaker: always get GPS or get directions
• 1:04:54
  Speaker: somewhere.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker: And, and so that implies like,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker: they'll never know what it's
• 1:04:58
  Speaker: like to be bored unless we make
• 1:05:00
  Speaker: deliberate actions to set up the
• 1:05:02
  Speaker: environment where they can have
• 1:05:03
  Speaker: some, some free time and boredom
• 1:05:05
  Speaker: time.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker: Uh, for all the reasons you
• 1:05:07
  Speaker: talked about, for all the good
• 1:05:08
  Speaker: reasons.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker: Um, and listening to the
• 1:05:13
  Speaker: motivations of how do we, um,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker: extol those virtues of, of
• 1:05:19
  Speaker: bonding and for, for the purpose
• 1:05:21
  Speaker: of well-being.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker: Uh, what I, what I started to think about was how a lot of our
• 1:05:28
  Speaker: charges are to, you know, remind brother and aid in reformation
• 1:05:34
  Speaker: or to help them out.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker: And yet it does go a little bit deeper than that.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker: I don't know if we explicitly
• 1:05:40
  Speaker: say it, but I think, um, part
• 1:05:43
  Speaker: of, of being in the fraternity
• 1:05:46
  Speaker: is to coach other brothers,
• 1:05:48
  Speaker: right?
• 1:05:49
  Speaker: We are taking good men and making them better, not just by
• 1:05:52
  Speaker: the ritual, but by the mere fact that we are working through
• 1:05:56
  Speaker: these things together.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker: And I think the more that we own that personally to say that, Um.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker: It's not my job to make just myself better.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker: But if I can make Joel better, if I can make Jason better, if I
• 1:06:10
  Speaker: can make Joe better along the way than the Gestalt is
• 1:06:14
  Speaker: actually, um, better for society as a whole.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker: So, um, yeah, that just that
• 1:06:19
  Speaker: really got me inspired to think
• 1:06:21
  Speaker: more about how do we as a
• 1:06:23
  Speaker: fraternity, not just help our
• 1:06:26
  Speaker: brothers out from evil and
• 1:06:28
  Speaker: danger, but actually shape them
• 1:06:31
  Speaker: into better men through all
• 1:06:33
  Speaker: these things we talked about
• 1:06:34
  Speaker: tonight?
• 1:06:34
  Speaker: So fascinating point.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker: Um, I really appreciate it.
• 1:06:37
  Speaker: This has been a great conversation and I want to thank
• 1:06:40
  Speaker: everyone else for watching and keep searching for more light.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker: Have a good night.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker: Wow.