Transcript

Trudging... · Wanzology

Hi, welcome to another episode of WANZ-OLO-GY!!! I am your host, The Wanz and coming to you from WANZ-0-MATIC Studios in lovely Shoreline, Washington! (whatever) We made it another week. What do we do? There is a lot going on in this world right now. So much so that I am just resisting this temptation to just go off about what is happening in the world, namely in this country, but I'm not going to, because this is not my platform of political, whatever you wanna call it. This podcast is to help expand the listeners' fences as far as thinking. I’m providing you with a box. My box of how I think of things, and it may be different from the way that you think of things, but the whole point is to get you thinking differently than you already do. Not because you have to take it all in and adopt everything like that, no, changing minds is not my job, but it has been said more than a few times that I have a very unique way of looking at the world. Been a few places, done a few things, learned a few lessons. If there's anything that, the book that I wrote, #THEBOOKOFWANZ, which is available on Amazon.com, that book showed me that I actually knew some things. It's made up of tweets that I collected after being on the road with Macklemore for two and a half years. Sharing some of the inspirations and just general thought things because if there's one thing that I do know about people, they tend to think a lot. And I don't know about you, but I don't mind thinking differently just to see what it's like. I don't pretend to know everything. My dad used to say, “Why don't you stop acting like you know every damn thing?”, yeah pops. So there is a group that I kind of hang out with. They read this passage that has this phrase in it, “…and surely you will meet some of us as we trudge the happy road of destiny.”, I focus on the word trudge. Why? Because trudging is not walking, it's not running, it's not skipping, it’s not meandering, it's trudging. The definition of trudge is very interesting, trudge: walks slowly and with heavy steps, typically because of exhaustion or harsh conditions. Harsh conditions. What do you think is a harsh condition? Another definition might be: to walk or march steadily and usually laboriously or even to walk slowly with a lot of effort, especially over difficult surfaces or while carrying something heavy. Trudge. You ever feel like you're trudging through life? A day, perhaps? You ever feel like the day is never going to end? You ever feel like this part of your life is not the most enjoyable part of your life? Things just tend to be going really bad. I had a friend of mine earlier tell me everything was fine until somebody that they were depending on to appear for them and do something, they had to quit because they had an emergency they had to take care of and my friends left scrambling trying to figure out, “Oh crap!! What am I gonna do now?”, and it's like, wow!! I hate feeling like that. 'cause I want to help, but I'm trying to not propose solutions as much as I usually do because I figured out that maybe people don't need them. They don't need me to suggest a solution unless they want one. What a novel concept. Waiting for someone to maybe ask me what I think rather than me just telling you what I think. I'm working on it. It's definitely a work in progress, but anyway, to feel like you're trudging. I mean, I definitely think the month of January of 2025, everyone was trudging like mugs. I kid and joke around and I say, “Yep, January was the longest week I can remember!”, because it just felt like it just never ended!! “Laboriously, walking slowly as if carrying a load.” Now, I'm not sure who I'm talking to right now, you could be a young person in, in secondary school, maybe just going to college, you could be just striking out on your own for your first time, maybe you're a, you're a middle-aged person who's in the midst of raising a family and trying to hang on to everything and be part of the middle class or whatever. Just trying to make it from day to day. Maybe you're older and have done all the work that you really want to do and you're trying to retire, I don't know. But what I do know is that everyone at some point goes through this phase where it just ‘feels’ bad. It isn't bad, it just ‘feels’ bad, right? There are days when you know the sun is shining, but because of the clouds, you can't see it. So you wish it were sunny, but it's not. There are days when an hour feels like three hours. Just getting from 9:00 AM to noon has just taken all the wind outta your sails. So how does that tie in with the happy road of destiny? What the hell is that? Figuratively speaking, the happy road of destiny is what is coming for you. We as a species are always striving, always pushing, always trying to do things. Some of those things are improvement, some of those things are not improvement. Some of them are just plain wacky. Some of them are way, way out of our comfort zone, but we try to do them anyway and the results determine whether you keep trying or whether you're just gonna take a break or whether you're gonna quit. But you're only responsible for the effort that you put in, and if you don't think that something's going to work, if you don't think that your life is worth something at this moment, that you're trudging. I think that's a problem. I'm not saying that you gotta be happy go lucky and skipping down the yellow brick road, I'm not talking about that at all, what I'm talking about is the ability to change your attitude, your perspective, if you will. You have the power and the privilege to change your perspective any damn time you feel like it, you don't think so? Think about one emotionally painful thing, I'll give you a second, find a memory that is for you, painful or difficult that you don't like very much. Now think of what a puppy looks like or a baby bird. Think of what it looks like when the sun comes up and there's mist over the grass of a huge field and the air is crisp. Imagine what a newborn baby looks like. Very different from painful, right? Very different. That's an example of how there are many, many, many, many ways to change your perspective, to reset your emotional system. Time is always moving forward, you really don't have a choice of whether you're going to stay with it or not. You just have a choice of what you're going to do while time is passing. If you're just sitting around thinking about time passing, I guarantee you, it feels slower. Didn't you ever have that experience? You get to work and you got all these things to do and you're just humming and putting things away, and you've come up with all this stuff and created all these little things, and all of a sudden it's like 12:30 quarter to 1:00 PM and you haven't had lunch. “Wow, the day's going pretty fast!”, as opposed to the other days that you come in and you sit down and you try to do something and it doesn't work and you try to get motivated to do something, maybe I need some more coffee, and you go somewhere and get some more coffee or tea or whatever, you come back, you start working on something and no, that's not gonna work, and your phone buzzes, and I can't take that call right now, and you keep trying different machinations of trying to put things together and figure out this and nobody's returning your email and you look up and it's only been 45 minutes since you got there. It can be very discouraging. For me, the greatest trick that I play on myself has to do with songs. There are just certain songs that I. I can just recall them at a moment's notice. There are certain memories that go with certain songs. If I have my wits about me, I understand where I'm at and what's going on, and I feel like I'm trudging just a little too much, I will think of the first Song of Earth, wind and Fire “I Am” album. “In The Stone” is the name of the song, and that song always changes my mood: “I found that love provides the key Unlocks the heart and soul of you and me Love will learn to sing your song Hey, love is written in the stone”, It's one of the best songs that I've ever heard. That's one of the best records that I've ever heard, and every single song on it has an emotional connection to my emotions, even “Boogie Wonderland”, disco ‘nightmare’ that it is, it's amazing how they put it together. I just wonder at it!! It could be “Blurry” by Puddle Of Mud. It could be “YYZ” by Rush or “Limelight”, it could be “Moten Swing” performed by the Count Basey Orchestra, it could be “Sightless Bird” by Bobby McFerrin, I don't know how these songs just figure out how to get to me, but they do and when they do and I try to recall them, it takes me away from whatever moment I was in. I'm not saying that you have to have a bucket of songs in your head, what I'm proposing is what if you had two or three dynamite memories, dynamite experiences that always make you happy, could be graduation, could be the birth of a child, could be playing Frisbee with a dog, could be sitting with a cup of tea watching the pouring rain, or in front of a fire making s'mores with kids. It doesn't matter what it is, but you only need to pick like one, two, maybe three of them. How you train for this is you think about'em a lot, multiple times a day. Remember when you graduated and you walked up on that stage and they handed you that diploma that was empty, but it was the symbolism of, I HAVE NOW FINISHED HIGH SCHOOL!!, the symbolism, what did that feel like? Was it disappointing? Was it depressing? Was it painful? I doubt it. Maybe you remember your first kiss, maybe you remember getting the job that you always wanted, maybe you remember getting married or getting divorced. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's something that you can consistently think of at the drop of a hat to change whatever state your mind is in. Trudging. The happy road of Destiny is, as you can tell, by the verb “trudging”, It involves movement, action, deliberate action and Lord knows, if you're laboriously taking steps through the minutes of your day, why not make those laborious steps a bit more entertaining for you? Why not let your-self entertain yourself? What's the worst that can happen? Destiny is going to come for you whether you like it or not, how do I know? Experience. Every day that I wake up, I'm experiencing destiny. Every time that I move from here to there, I'm experiencing destiny. Every time I lay my head down, turn the light off, and take that last big exhale before I go to sleep, I have fulfilled destiny and so have you! Give yourself some credit, there are many who don't make it ‘this’ far. Find yourself two, maybe three really happy memories from any time in your life and use them as you trudge the Happy Road of Destiny. Thanks for hangin’ with me today. That is this episode of WANZOLOGY! If you dig the podcast, don’t keep it to yourself. Maybe tell somebody, okay? And you know what, hopefully we will see each other again or hear each other again very soon. Take care of yourselves. I'm out.