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Transcript

The World Beyond Our Own Story · Infinite Threads with Bob Barnett

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Infinite Threads.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Bob.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday, we turned the mirror toward ourselves.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: We talked about self-awareness,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: recognizing the fears,
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: habits, memories, and old wounds that we carry into a room with us.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Today, I want to turn the mirror back around because once we understand ourselves
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: a little better, we have more room to notice everybody else.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I call that outward awareness.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's related to empathy, but it isn't quite the same thing.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Empathy asks us to enter another person's experience.
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  SPEAKER_00: Outward awareness begins by remembering that the experience is there.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of life can be lived inside a very tight circle.
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  SPEAKER_00: We wake up thinking about what we need to do We drive somewhere thinking about
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  SPEAKER_00: where we need to be.
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  SPEAKER_00: We stand in line wishing the person ahead of us would move just a little faster.
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  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make us selfish, guys.
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  SPEAKER_00: It makes us human.
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  SPEAKER_00: But if we stay inside our own story too long,
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  SPEAKER_00: everybody else can begin to look like background scenery.
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  SPEAKER_00: The driver in front of us becomes traffic.
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  SPEAKER_00: The cashier becomes part of the checkout line.
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  SPEAKER_00: The stranger in the waiting room is simply another person taking up a chair.
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  SPEAKER_00: Outward awareness changes that.
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  SPEAKER_00: The cashier has already had a day before we walked in.
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  SPEAKER_00: The driver ahead of us is going somewhere that matters to them.
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  SPEAKER_00: The stranger in the waiting room has a story that began long before we entered the building.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to know the details.
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  SPEAKER_00: Remembering that those details exist is enough to change the way that we move through the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I think that matters now more than ever.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have access to more of other people's lives than any generation before us.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can watch joy and suffering unfold on the other side of the world while sitting
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: at the breakfast table.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: You would think, you would think that that would automatically make us more aware, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it does and other times there's just simply too much.
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  SPEAKER_00: A tragedy becomes a headline.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thousands of people become a number.
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  SPEAKER_00: We scroll because the human mind can't emotionally carry everything that it sees.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I understand that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Outward awareness is not asking us to carry the whole world every day.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's asking us not to forget that the world is real just because we can't carry all of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: That applies close to home too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone around us may be carrying For an aging parent,
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  SPEAKER_00: another person may be frightened about a child.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somebody may be wondering how they're going to stretch the money until payday.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they may look completely ordinary while all of that is happening.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's worth remembering.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not because we should assume everybody is secretly falling apart either.
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  SPEAKER_00: It simply gives us a reason
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's one of the practical forms of kindness.
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  SPEAKER_00: Leaving room.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not deciding immediately that we know why someone acted the way they did.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not assuming our view of the moment is the only view available.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday we talked about the stories we create inside our own heads.
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  SPEAKER_00: Outward awareness reminds us that other people are living stories too.
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  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes those stories cross hours for only a few minutes.
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  SPEAKER_00: A conversation that felt ordinary to us may matter enormously to somebody else.
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  SPEAKER_00: A little patience
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  SPEAKER_00: A smile
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  SPEAKER_00: at a stranger may be forgotten by us before we reach the parking lot.
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  SPEAKER_00: They may remember it all afternoon.
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  SPEAKER_00: The opposite is true too.
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  SPEAKER_00: A careless word can travel.
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  SPEAKER_00: The tone we use with somebody can follow them into the next room.
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  SPEAKER_00: We've talked a lot about the weave, and this is one of the simplest ways to see it.
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  SPEAKER_00: People affect people.
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  SPEAKER_00: A parent comes home tense after a difficult day.
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  SPEAKER_00: That tension reaches the family.
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  SPEAKER_00: The next morning, some of it may travel to school or work.
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  SPEAKER_00: Something that began in one place Moves through several lives.
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  SPEAKER_00: But kindness can travel the same way too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone offers that exhausted person a little grace.
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  SPEAKER_00: They carry less frustration home.
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  SPEAKER_00: The house feels different.
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  SPEAKER_00: Something good moves through the weave instead.
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  SPEAKER_00: Guys, that fascinates me.
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  SPEAKER_00: We don't always know where what we give the world ends up.
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  SPEAKER_00: Outward awareness means becoming conscious of that possibility.
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  SPEAKER_00: We start asking not only, how does this affect me?
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  SPEAKER_00: We begin wondering, what happens next?
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  SPEAKER_00: That question can change the way we understand people.
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  SPEAKER_00: It can change the way we look at disagreements.
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  SPEAKER_00: It can even change the way that we think about larger problems.
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  SPEAKER_00: Public conversations have a habit of turning human beings into categories.
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  SPEAKER_00: And once that happens, it becomes easier to talk about those people.
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  SPEAKER_00: We can argue about an issue without ever having to imagine what life feels like
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  SPEAKER_00: for someone caught inside it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Outward awareness puts the people back into the picture.
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  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't tell us what opinion that we must have.
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  SPEAKER_00: It means we have more of the picture before deciding what we think.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's wisdom in that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
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  SPEAKER_00: It may seem simple, but really we overlook it all the time.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes life looks very simple from a distance.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then we get close enough to see the people involved.
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  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly it becomes more complicated.
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  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that that makes us weaker or less certain of ourselves either.
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  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it simply means we've noticed more.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want outward awareness to become only about pain.
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  SPEAKER_00: There's also a lot of goodness happening around us too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somebody's checking on a neighbor today.
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  SPEAKER_00: Someone is helping a child learn something new today.
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  SPEAKER_00: A person who has been struggling may finally be having a better day.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's good to notice that too.
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  SPEAKER_00: People are laughing together somewhere.
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  SPEAKER_00: Somebody has just received the news they've been hoping for.
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  SPEAKER_00: A stranger is doing something kind that will never become a headline.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's part of reality too.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you know it's happening right now too.
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  SPEAKER_00: If we only notice what is broken, eventually we begin believing everything is broken.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that isn't accurate either.
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  SPEAKER_00: Awareness needs enough room to notice both.
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  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why I keep coming back to connection.
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  SPEAKER_00: Once we look for it, it is everywhere.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not some perfect web where everybody understands everybody else.
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  SPEAKER_00: Human beings are far too complicated for that.
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  SPEAKER_00: But our lives do touch.
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  SPEAKER_00: We influence people without knowing it.
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  SPEAKER_00: We carry pieces of other people with us.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that brings us, well that brings us to tomorrow.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: We began the week with empathy.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Then Compassion.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday we looked inward through self-awareness.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: And today we widened the view.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow now.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tomorrow we come to the thing moving underneath all of it.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Love.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not as a slogan, not as a sentiment.
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  SPEAKER_00: Love as what can happen when we truly see another person.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Care about what we see,
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  SPEAKER_00: understand ourselves well enough not to get in the way,
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: and remember that our lives are connected to something larger than our own story.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: For today, maybe it's enough to look around a little more carefully.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: The world is full of lives that we know almost nothing about.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Each one is carrying a story as real and complicated as ours.
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  SPEAKER_00: When we remember that, the world stops looking so much like scenery.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: It starts looking like, well, it starts looking like a weave, right?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love you guys very, very, very much, and you know what I need you to do.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: Go out and pass that on, okay?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Later, gators.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Every story, every voice.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: In this love we all rejoice.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Infinite Threads, here we go.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome your friends, enjoy the show.