Latest / bit of a Rambler / 037 My Disclaimer

Transcript

037 My Disclaimer · bit of a Rambler

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Kai, and I am a bit
0:03
Speaker 1: of a rambler. I like to travel, learn and tell stories.
0:07
Speaker 1: And today is my disclaimer episode because I give so
0:11
Speaker 1: much advice and I share so many stories. I talk
0:16
Speaker 1: so much about the world, and I don't want to
0:19
Speaker 1: give the impression that I think I'm always correct or
0:23
Speaker 1: completely knowledgeable about any of this. You don't have to travel,
0:26
Speaker 1: you don't have to travel like I travel. You don't
0:29
Speaker 1: have to teach English or any of this. This is
0:31
Speaker 1: just how I understand the world. My life is pretty
0:35
Speaker 1: good right now, and I attribute that to the decision
0:39
Speaker 1: to go teach English in China, which led to owning
0:42
Speaker 1: my companies and then learning about travel and learning how
0:46
Speaker 1: I liked to live. But I didn't do that myself.
0:50
Speaker 1: I couldn't have done that unless other people had done
0:53
Speaker 1: it before me. And there were other systems and institutions
0:59
Speaker 1: in place that I I joined and learned from but
1:02
Speaker 1: didn't start up myself. So I constantly remind myself how
1:07
Speaker 1: lucky I am to be where I am, even though
1:12
Speaker 1: I made the choice to leave my home country, start traveling,
1:17
Speaker 1: and start learning things, which I do think is key.
1:21
Speaker 1: Most people can't just depend on getting lucky. It wouldn't
1:25
Speaker 1: have really mattered unless I was living at this exact
1:29
Speaker 1: moment in history. So many things had to happen for
1:33
Speaker 1: me to get to where I am now, where I
1:36
Speaker 1: am pretty content with how my life turned out. English
1:40
Speaker 1: teaching itself is a great example, because I just happened
1:44
Speaker 1: to be living at the time. English is so popular globally,
1:50
Speaker 1: you know, the lingua franca of the world in business
1:53
Speaker 1: and casual society and transportation. Happens to be accessible enough
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Speaker 1: that I can easily travel to other countries in a
2:02
Speaker 1: couple of hours and start teaching it. And the developing
2:05
Speaker 1: Internet is coming along, so I can look up all
2:09
Speaker 1: the jobs in which I can teach English, and where
2:13
Speaker 1: I can teach English, and how much money I can make.
2:16
Speaker 1: Visas are mostly online, super easy. If I was born
2:19
Speaker 1: fifty years before, it would be so much trouble to
2:22
Speaker 1: travel and start teaching English, and there wouldn't be many
2:25
Speaker 1: English schools available, and I wouldn't be looking up any
2:28
Speaker 1: of these jobs online. And if I was born fifty
2:32
Speaker 1: years later, I mean, automatic translation is probably going to
2:35
Speaker 1: make English teaching much less popular than it is now,
2:40
Speaker 1: or the ad for the school itself like I got
2:43
Speaker 1: that ad because I decided to check Craigslist in the
2:48
Speaker 1: middle of playing Mario Kart on a day I had
2:51
Speaker 1: just been let go from a job from a probationary
2:54
Speaker 1: period where I didn't work out, which has never happened before.
2:58
Speaker 1: Could have posted that ad in the correct section of
3:00
Speaker 1: Craigslist instead of the wrong for sale section, and I
3:04
Speaker 1: never would have seen the ad, and I probably never
3:07
Speaker 1: would have taken advantage of that or a similar opportunity.
3:10
Speaker 1: I could be still working, maybe as the manager of
3:14
Speaker 1: a sandwich store, barely making ends meet. But because I
3:18
Speaker 1: happened to be home, and I happened to want a
3:21
Speaker 1: video game controller, happened to list the advertisement in the
3:25
Speaker 1: wrong section of Craigslist. Oh, and I happened to be
3:29
Speaker 1: born in a country whose first language is English, so
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Speaker 1: I spoke English natively. So many things had to happen,
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Speaker 1: Like statistically, I should have been born in China speaking Mandarin,
3:42
Speaker 1: but I wasn't. I just happened to be born in
3:45
Speaker 1: a country where the native language is English, and that
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Speaker 1: affords me this opportunity to escape from a life of
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Speaker 1: capitalist strictures and corporate drudgery. And again, transportation is a
4:00
Speaker 1: bailable so I can escape societal drudgery as well. The
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Speaker 1: awareness of how uniquely beneficial being able to teach englishes
4:10
Speaker 1: right now really makes me treasure how my life turned out,
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Speaker 1: and it's really important for me to hold this in
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Speaker 1: my mind, since it's so easy to become spoiled by
4:24
Speaker 1: the privileges of my job. And I know it is
4:27
Speaker 1: because after a certain amount of time, years but sometimes months,
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Speaker 1: living such a convenient and rewarding lifestyle that English teaching
4:36
Speaker 1: affords people, all of my friends at some point began
4:41
Speaker 1: to complain about non issues, things that they would never
4:44
Speaker 1: think about if they were still struggling in the United
4:48
Speaker 1: States to survive, but because they have more money and
4:52
Speaker 1: free time than they know what to do with teaching
4:54
Speaker 1: English abroad. It's easier to make mountains out of molehills
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Speaker 1: when you don't have any sence to climb anymore. In fact,
5:02
Speaker 1: a large reason why I left China was because I
5:07
Speaker 1: felt myself starting to complain about things that I know
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Speaker 1: I didn't really care about. I was starting to make
5:14
Speaker 1: mountains out of molehills because I had shortcut to the
5:19
Speaker 1: end of capitalist success, which is what I had been
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Speaker 1: falsely told was the aim of life, and I began
5:26
Speaker 1: to rest on my laurels and critically, I all of
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Speaker 1: those mole hills. And I know I'm not the first
5:33
Speaker 1: person to think about teaching English abroad. I turned down
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Speaker 1: opportunities in college to teach abroad that I heard about.
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Speaker 1: I knew friends who went to teach abroad, and I
5:43
Speaker 1: didn't look into it. I heard about teaching abroad when
5:46
Speaker 1: I was looking for jobs, and I'm not sure what
5:49
Speaker 1: my thought process was, but I feel like it was
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Speaker 1: something like, nah, it's hard, or like now, I don't
5:54
Speaker 1: know how to do that, even though the ads sounded
5:58
Speaker 1: like I do now. I can teach you how to
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Speaker 1: move abroad, I can teach you how to teach English,
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Speaker 1: telling you this is an opportunity, you should try it out,
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Speaker 1: and I just didn't until that chance AD appeared at
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Speaker 1: just the right moment where I was ready to take
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Speaker 1: a chance on traveling and an interesting coroll area is
6:18
Speaker 1: rather than being spoiled, which is something I was trying
6:22
Speaker 1: to leave behind when I left China. The reason I
6:24
Speaker 1: went to China, A huge part of that was that
6:26
Speaker 1: I knew American capitalist society was the wrong track for me.
6:33
Speaker 1: I worked at a few jobs, and although I was
6:36
Speaker 1: successful at them, I never felt fulfilled in any sense
6:40
Speaker 1: of the word. So that made me ready to take
6:42
Speaker 1: this chance. I was sure that the places my American
6:47
Speaker 1: businesses were leading me were incorrect, and that AD means
6:52
Speaker 1: that people did this before me again, which I also
6:56
Speaker 1: keep constant in my mind. I met this woman who
6:59
Speaker 1: travel to China back in the nineteen seventies, when Malzdoon
7:03
Speaker 1: was still alive. She showed me a scrapbook. Beijing looked
7:06
Speaker 1: like a couple blocks of concrete in the middle of
7:10
Speaker 1: a jungle. And then I lived there fifty years later,
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Speaker 1: and it's the sprawling urban metropolis you see in newspapers.
7:19
Speaker 1: And she went to China by herself fifty years ago.
7:24
Speaker 1: I don't even know what she was doing. I think
7:25
Speaker 1: she just wanted to visit, and she just lived in
7:28
Speaker 1: China like a badass for a couple months, or maybe
7:31
Speaker 1: she lived there for a year, I can't remember. She
7:33
Speaker 1: didn't teach English. Also, I don't know what Maybe she
7:36
Speaker 1: was Cia, who knows. And then the guy who put
7:39
Speaker 1: up the AD, he started a school before I did.
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Speaker 1: And when I got to China, there were already hundreds
7:45
Speaker 1: of schools, And that's why teaching English is such a
7:48
Speaker 1: great opportunity, because there are jobs everywhere. But the reason
7:53
Speaker 1: this is such an easy and accessible career is because
7:58
Speaker 1: other people did a lot more work than I did,
8:01
Speaker 1: and they already started up these schools everywhere. So at
8:03
Speaker 1: this point, if you're a native English speaker or I,
8:06
Speaker 1: have to do is plug yourself in. But that's not
8:09
Speaker 1: because it always was that easy, or it's always going
8:13
Speaker 1: to be that easy. It's just that right now there
8:17
Speaker 1: is an opportunity to go teach English and make as
8:21
Speaker 1: much money as you want in dozens of countries. And
8:25
Speaker 1: if travel and experience is more important to you than money,
8:29
Speaker 1: or you already have enough money, you can visit any
8:32
Speaker 1: country nearly any country in person and go teach English.
8:36
Speaker 1: Or you can live in any country and teach English online.
8:40
Speaker 1: So even if it's a country like Denmark that has
8:43
Speaker 1: such high English levels they don't really need as many
8:46
Speaker 1: English teachers, you could still go live there and just
8:48
Speaker 1: teach English to Asian students online and make your money
8:52
Speaker 1: that way. If you've always wanted to live in Denmark
8:55
Speaker 1: or England or some other English speaking country. So I
9:00
Speaker 1: constantly keep in my mind that I am enjoying the
9:04
Speaker 1: fruits of labor put in by people building these systems
9:08
Speaker 1: and institutions and being brave and smart far before I existed.
9:14
Speaker 1: And when I tell these stories, I also have to
9:16
Speaker 1: bear in mind that I am wrong all the time.
9:18
Speaker 1: So whenever I talk about something I know according to
9:21
Speaker 1: my experience, or some objective fact, like how cheap it
9:25
Speaker 1: is to buy a ticket to Asia relative to the
9:28
Speaker 1: prices people think it is. It's three hundred dollars to
9:32
Speaker 1: fly to Asia, a lot of people think it's one
9:35
Speaker 1: thousand dollars, Or how simple it is to get at
9:38
Speaker 1: teaching English as a foreign language certificate, how simple the
9:41
Speaker 1: processes and right now, those facts are very relevant for
9:45
Speaker 1: anybody who is having financial trouble or just doesn't like
9:49
Speaker 1: to work in the US, like I don't. So I
9:51
Speaker 1: want to share those facts. But I could have those
9:56
Speaker 1: facts wrong. Sometimes I'm well aware that I make mistakes,
9:59
Speaker 1: because I make them so much that I'm constantly reminded
10:02
Speaker 1: of how I'm not right all the time. So I
10:05
Speaker 1: like sharing objective information like the ticket prices or what
10:08
Speaker 1: a TEFEL certificate is, or how many jobs are available
10:11
Speaker 1: right now, how much money you need to travel indefinitely.
10:15
Speaker 1: But behind all of that is knowing that's what's true
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Speaker 1: right now in this moment, and like everything that's going
10:24
Speaker 1: to eventually change, maybe not anytime soon, but whenever I
10:28
Speaker 1: share information about visa lengths or what a TEFL certificate is,
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Speaker 1: or how many jobs anything like that, anything, I know
10:37
Speaker 1: that I'm telling a story from a spot in history.
10:41
Speaker 1: When I have a conversation with someone and they're asking
10:43
Speaker 1: me questions about how to travel, my explanation of how
10:48
Speaker 1: to travel is a lot like reading a Civil War letter,
10:53
Speaker 1: Like that's that guy's perspective of that situation that day,
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Speaker 1: at that time time. And even though we're alive now
11:02
Speaker 1: two hundred years later, one hundred and sixty whatever, we're
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Speaker 1: not at the end of history. We are living right
11:10
Speaker 1: in the middle of a bunch of things happening. There's
11:13
Speaker 1: been millions of years before, so it's going to be
11:16
Speaker 1: millions of years after us. So something that seems normal
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Speaker 1: or you've heard about a lot of times, like teaching
11:23
Speaker 1: English abroad, is actually remarkable in the fact that you
11:27
Speaker 1: can just access it easily and it's so relevant and
11:30
Speaker 1: profitable right now. Awareness of opportunities is crucial, and it's
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Speaker 1: so easy to see the world through a clouded lens
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Speaker 1: or misunderstand I know I do misunderstand the world around
11:45
Speaker 1: me because I already have preconceived notions about what something is,
11:49
Speaker 1: because I forget how unique and rare my time on
11:53
Speaker 1: the earth is, my brief time on the earth. So
11:56
Speaker 1: it's easy to see something and mistake it for something
12:01
Speaker 1: else because of my flawed and limited understanding. Like I
12:06
Speaker 1: spoke the wrong word in China for years. Many times
12:10
Speaker 1: over I would discover, oh, that's not what that word is,
12:14
Speaker 1: and I had just been saying the wrong word for
12:16
Speaker 1: three years or five years. I wish I could remember
12:20
Speaker 1: what it was. There's one I learned like a couple
12:22
Speaker 1: weeks before I left China, and I had lived there
12:25
Speaker 1: for six and a half seven years, something like that,
12:28
Speaker 1: and then someone just mentioned it in the right way
12:31
Speaker 1: and it clicked for me, and I said, oh wait,
12:34
Speaker 1: it's And I was able to learn a new word
12:38
Speaker 1: right before I left. I remember one. For three years
12:41
Speaker 1: I was saying boufeiro something like that, like not fat meat,
12:46
Speaker 1: and everyone was like, yeah, okay, And then one day
12:49
Speaker 1: I heard someone like the owner talking to another person
12:53
Speaker 1: of the restaurant and the owner said show row, and
12:57
Speaker 1: I knew show meant thin like a person, and it's thin,
13:00
Speaker 1: and I was like, excuse me, show ro, show ro
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Speaker 1: is that like thin meat, that's boufero. They're like showro
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Speaker 1: mayo fearro. Thin meat doesn't have fat. And I had
13:12
Speaker 1: been trying to learn the word for lean meat for
13:15
Speaker 1: three years and locals told me there was no way
13:17
Speaker 1: to order lean meat, and restaurants all the teachers I
13:20
Speaker 1: knew who spoke Mandarin said there was no way to
13:24
Speaker 1: order just lean meat, and I just accepted that Chinese
13:27
Speaker 1: people never ate lean meat. They always mix fat in
13:30
Speaker 1: because they like the different textures. Turns out I just
13:32
Speaker 1: didn't know the word, and I wasn't asking the right way,
13:36
Speaker 1: and people weren't understanding what I was asking because they
13:39
Speaker 1: were all living in a world where everyone knows the
13:41
Speaker 1: word show row, and no one would say buffero, no
13:45
Speaker 1: one would say not fat meat. So I'm very aware
13:47
Speaker 1: that I am wrong all the time, and I can
13:50
Speaker 1: make mistakes, and I cannot understand something for years before
13:54
Speaker 1: it finally clicks, and I really want to share a
13:57
Speaker 1: lot of this information. All of these podcast episode odes
14:00
Speaker 1: are about and I want to make it interesting by
14:02
Speaker 1: attaching my own understanding and experience to each little nugget
14:06
Speaker 1: of information. But don't assume that I believe I'm always
14:09
Speaker 1: correct in everything I say, because I am confirming here
14:13
Speaker 1: that I am not. Even when I say Beijing, I
14:16
Speaker 1: still say Beijing, and it's Beijing. It should be the
14:19
Speaker 1: first tone. But I'm just so used to saying Beijing
14:22
Speaker 1: that whenever I talk about China and living in Beijing,
14:25
Speaker 1: I use the wrong tone. Or assuming that there would
14:29
Speaker 1: be a bunch of curry in India, and then when
14:30
Speaker 1: I arrived at Bubeneshar, everyone told me, oh, no, we
14:33
Speaker 1: don't eat curry here. We had a bunch of like
14:36
Speaker 1: soups and dishes and all that, but curry is this
14:38
Speaker 1: British thing and Indians don't really eat it. Now, that
14:41
Speaker 1: was just one state. I don't know if that's throughout India.
14:43
Speaker 1: But finding out that even one state in India just
14:46
Speaker 1: didn't eat curri. It wasn't in any of the stores
14:49
Speaker 1: or anything pretty surprising for me. I realized all over again,
14:53
Speaker 1: as I've learned many times, that if Indians don't eat curri,
14:59
Speaker 1: I don't know an anything about India, and that was
15:02
Speaker 1: really funny to find out. It's like, what's the fundamental
15:05
Speaker 1: fact about Indian cuisine? Cuisine is usually the first thing
15:08
Speaker 1: I look at at a country and I was like, well,
15:10
Speaker 1: there will be curries around, And then I get to
15:12
Speaker 1: India and everyone I ask is like, we don't really
15:14
Speaker 1: like Carrie. That's kind of a just a mix of
15:17
Speaker 1: our different dishes that the British colonial menu sort of bastardized.
15:22
Speaker 1: I probably asked like twenty people before I believed everybody
15:26
Speaker 1: that there was no car that kari wasn't popular in Buboneshar.
15:30
Speaker 1: But I love discovering things like that that I'm so
15:33
Speaker 1: wrong about or so uninformed about, because I know I'm
15:36
Speaker 1: about to get another piece of the puzzle that's going
15:40
Speaker 1: to broaden my mind and let me appreciate the world more.
15:43
Speaker 1: Or they say one OSDs in Guatemala, they pretty much
15:47
Speaker 1: say ola all times of the day. In Panama, you know,
15:51
Speaker 1: they don't say jianjiao for potstickers. They say zajiao. If
15:54
Speaker 1: you're in a different province in China, some people don't
15:58
Speaker 1: visit the beach ever, but a fifteen minute walk away
16:01
Speaker 1: to a different town. In that town, they jump in
16:03
Speaker 1: the river every night. I know it's okay that I'm
16:06
Speaker 1: wrong a lot, because lifestyles, cultures, countries, provinces, towns, people
16:11
Speaker 1: are so vastly different and intertwined, interconnected and complex. In
16:18
Speaker 1: the north of China get chicken, pork and beef. In
16:21
Speaker 1: the south of China they sell those meats and puppies,
16:25
Speaker 1: giant salamanders and Asian alligators. Even the same places are
16:31
Speaker 1: completely different month to month, not to mention year to year.
16:34
Speaker 1: When I go back to visit China, I went to
16:37
Speaker 1: visit my old town that I lived in for a year,
16:40
Speaker 1: by Jiatuan, and when I got there, it was mountains
16:43
Speaker 1: of rubble. They had demolished the entire town and it
16:46
Speaker 1: was just little pieces of gravel. And I thought, I
16:49
Speaker 1: knew what that part of China looked like, that part
16:52
Speaker 1: of Beijing. I thought I was intimately familiar with that
16:56
Speaker 1: section of this country, and it had been erased and
17:03
Speaker 1: left by the side of a highway in piles of
17:06
Speaker 1: rebar and gravel. So anytime I get asked for clarification
17:10
Speaker 1: or are you sure da da da da, I'm as
17:13
Speaker 1: sure as I can be about this or that. There
17:16
Speaker 1: are websites online that tell me exactly how long visa
17:18
Speaker 1: stays are. But I know that visas can change. They
17:23
Speaker 1: usually don't even during crazy political situations. It's very rare
17:27
Speaker 1: for visas to be withdrawn or shortened, but I'm aware
17:32
Speaker 1: that can happen. So even if I've checked a hundred times,
17:36
Speaker 1: when someone asks me, well, how do I get a
17:38
Speaker 1: visa to Da Da Da, I check. Actually, this just happened.
17:41
Speaker 1: I was just helping someone go to China for the
17:43
Speaker 1: first time, and it turns out the process is way
17:46
Speaker 1: easier than it was last year. There is an eVisa
17:50
Speaker 1: method now to get your visa for China as a
17:53
Speaker 1: US citizen, which was not accessible for the decade that
17:57
Speaker 1: I was there on and off, and even the last
18:00
Speaker 1: time I went just to visit, if you wanted a
18:03
Speaker 1: visa to China you had to go in person to
18:06
Speaker 1: an embassy somewhere. Now you don't. So always in the
18:10
Speaker 1: back of my mind, I try and remember that things
18:12
Speaker 1: are always changing, and I can be as accurate as
18:17
Speaker 1: I know how to be, but I might not be correct. Also,
18:22
Speaker 1: I'm healthy, That's amazing. I constantly think my body out loud,
18:27
Speaker 1: like I say thank you to my body. I acknowledge
18:30
Speaker 1: how lucky I am to be healthy. I don't do
18:32
Speaker 1: a whole ritual, but I will absolutely say thank you
18:36
Speaker 1: to my body now and then, just because my legs
18:39
Speaker 1: and arms still work, my organs appear to be functioning,
18:44
Speaker 1: and I know that my health can end any day, anytime,
18:47
Speaker 1: for any reason, and I have no real way of
18:50
Speaker 1: predicting that. Not really. You can go to bed and
18:53
Speaker 1: wake up with a collapse lung, or you can go
18:55
Speaker 1: to the hospital one we can go the next week,
18:57
Speaker 1: and your diagnosis can take a from negative to positive
19:02
Speaker 1: or positive to negative. Our bodies are finite, brittle, fragile
19:07
Speaker 1: things that can be completely healthy one day and collapse
19:11
Speaker 1: the next. It's great that I'm healthy at three forty
19:14
Speaker 1: seven pm today, but I don't take my health at
19:17
Speaker 1: three forty seven pm tomorrow for granted. I take advantage
19:22
Speaker 1: of the utility of my body, which is actually funny
19:25
Speaker 1: because right now I'm sitting in a tiny audio studio
19:28
Speaker 1: not doing it. But I go out every day and
19:31
Speaker 1: walk and exercise and marvel at the fact that I
19:35
Speaker 1: can hop up on the wall and walk and look
19:39
Speaker 1: at the Pacific Ocean. Both my eyes are still working.
19:42
Speaker 1: I still have my hearing. You know, I don't think
19:45
Speaker 1: I'm going to be the one who stops aging after
19:48
Speaker 1: forty years old. And I know that I don't want
19:51
Speaker 1: to avoid experiencing life because I'm afraid of life ending
19:56
Speaker 1: one day. I'm very aware, and I have been so
20:00
Speaker 1: I was very young that life will end one day,
20:03
Speaker 1: and I'm so lucky to be enjoying every day that
20:06
Speaker 1: I have. I remember being very young, like in elementary school,
20:11
Speaker 1: and thinking forward twenty years or thirty years, and just
20:14
Speaker 1: thinking how the day I was living then in elementary
20:18
Speaker 1: school was going to be a long gone memory at
20:22
Speaker 1: some point, and so I should enjoy that day. And
20:26
Speaker 1: I'm still I still have that mechanism in my psyche,
20:31
Speaker 1: all of these things that might seem normal to me
20:33
Speaker 1: the job I worked, or my past time is playing
20:38
Speaker 1: video games, all of these things, walking, just going for
20:41
Speaker 1: a walk after dinner. Every time I do something that
20:45
Speaker 1: I think is routine, I remind myself, you are able
20:49
Speaker 1: to do this right now, and you will not always
20:51
Speaker 1: be able to, and you weren't able to before This
20:54
Speaker 1: world could collapse into a war. That country can close
20:57
Speaker 1: its borders. I missed the window to visit Cuba because
21:01
Speaker 1: they opened briefly and then closed again. So even something
21:03
Speaker 1: routine like an evening walk after dinner, I remember, this
21:08
Speaker 1: is so great that I get to do that. I
21:11
Speaker 1: love feeling the ground and looking at the trees and
21:14
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff. I try and appreciate the
21:17
Speaker 1: world around me as much as I can, because everything
21:21
Speaker 1: is changing all the time, and if I like a
21:24
Speaker 1: moment i'm in, that is a precious moment. And I
21:29
Speaker 1: think that way about traveling too. I can't believe how
21:32
Speaker 1: accessible the world is right now. I can travel to
21:35
Speaker 1: nearly any country in the world one hundred eighty countries
21:40
Speaker 1: or so without a visa. I can get visa on
21:43
Speaker 1: arrival or that kind of stuff, and the ones I
21:46
Speaker 1: need a visa for I can get an eVisa almost
21:48
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of the time, and I'll get to
21:51
Speaker 1: that country in a few hours, maybe a day, if
21:54
Speaker 1: I'm going to the absolute other side of the world diagonally.
21:59
Speaker 1: And I know that that's just because of where I am,
22:01
Speaker 1: when I was born, where I was born, all of
22:04
Speaker 1: this stuff. So I'm very aware that anything I know
22:09
Speaker 1: for sure is incomplete. We cannot know even ourselves because
22:15
Speaker 1: we are changing constantly and accepting that is a strength.
22:20
Speaker 1: I can interact with the world honestly and experience life
22:24
Speaker 1: around me with a minimum of dilution through my expectations,
22:29
Speaker 1: because I'm aware that my expectations are based on a
22:33
Speaker 1: very limited set of guidelines from one geographic spot at
22:37
Speaker 1: one time in history, and do not reflect some sort
22:42
Speaker 1: of objective truth. Just because I've experienced them often, just
22:47
Speaker 1: because I grew up with forks does not make forks
22:51
Speaker 1: more inherently correct than chopsticks. Whenever I think, ah, that's
22:56
Speaker 1: not how you, then I try and think, oh, maybe
22:59
Speaker 1: it is, Maybe that's correct, Maybe that's as correct as
23:03
Speaker 1: what I think is correct. And most of the time
23:05
Speaker 1: it is, and most of the time it doesn't even matter,
23:08
Speaker 1: because how can you worry about anything when you're alive
23:12
Speaker 1: for such a brief period of time in such a
23:15
Speaker 1: limited set of circumstances. And how can I ever think
23:19
Speaker 1: I'm correct when I'm experiencing life the whole world through
23:25
Speaker 1: two eyes and one processing brain in one tiny spot,
23:30
Speaker 1: one tiny room, when the whole world is out there.
23:32
Speaker 1: I couldn't possibly think I am correct about everything when
23:37
Speaker 1: there's no way for me to know half of a
23:39
Speaker 1: percent of everything so thank you very much for listening.
23:44
Speaker 1: I had a great time talking about this stuff. It's
23:46
Speaker 1: humbling in a very good way to recognize how insignificant
23:50
Speaker 1: I am compared to the cosmos, and how limited my
23:54
Speaker 1: understanding of anything is compared to the institution of existence
23:59
Speaker 1: in the universe. From that perspective, I think it's critical
24:04
Speaker 1: to recognize opportunities around us and take advantage of the
24:10
Speaker 1: opportunities we are able to, because every moment of our
24:14
Speaker 1: lives is a brief flash of light in an infinitely
24:18
Speaker 1: empty sky as far as I can see. Anyway, I
24:22
Speaker 1: hope you're having a great day. Thank you very much
24:24
Speaker 1: for listening. I will talk to you soon. You can
24:28
Speaker 1: contact me at a Bit of a Rambler at gmail
24:30
Speaker 1: dot com or all thesocials so long.