Latest / Truth + Conversation / Truth + Conversation - The Beginning
Transcript
- # Show Notes We are creatures of language. That might sound obvious, but most of us never really examine what that means. Language is not simply something we use to communicate with other people. It is woven into our experience of life. Every thought, emotion, certainty, disappointment, resentment, ambition, fear, loss and hope exists inside some kind of conversation. And if you step back far enough, you begin to see something much bigger: your entire life is in conversation. That is the foundation of *Truth + Conversation*. This podcast is not about motivation. It is not about positive thinking. It is not about hacks, quick fixes, neuroscience, behavioral science, or the latest list of tricks for becoming happier, more desirable, more successful, or more productive. Those subjects may have value, but they are not this inquiry. This is an examination of the conversation your life already is. Not your life story. Not the collection of facts and events you use to explain how you got here. The conversation. The atmosphere you live in every day. The assumptions you rarely question. The recurring emotions and behaviors that feel completely natural because they are consistent with the conversation you have become. For all intents and purposes, you are a conversation. A conversation that thinks. A conversation that feels. A conversation that experiences itself as completely aligned with what it already knows to be true. That is why this show exists. Every week, we will bring a particular conversation to life and examine it from an ontological and phenomenological perspective. The intention is not to give you more answers. It is to enrich, deepen, challenge and expand the conversation you are currently living inside so that new possibilities—and new actions—can become available. There will be no guests. It will be you, me and the issues of real life. The struggles. The places where you have stopped. The resentment you cannot seem to shake. The self-sabotage you keep repeating. The fear, avoidance, disappointment, grief, powerlessness and frustration that continue to show up no matter how much you already know. This is practical philosophy, not academic philosophy. The work is informed by thinkers such as Heidegger, Sartre, Husserl and Gadamer, but the point is not to study philosophy. The point is to use distinctions from that tradition to illuminate the life you are actually living. Because the things we struggle with are often far less unique than we imagine. Your circumstances may be specific to you, but the human experience underneath them—want, fear, failure, loss, desire, anger, shame, avoidance, hope—is shared. That is where the conversation becomes powerful. The direction of this podcast will also come from you. If there is something in your life that keeps happening, something you cannot get traction with, something you are ashamed of, angry about, powerless with, or simply unable to move beyond, bring it to the show. Email **[connect@garyjohnbishop.com](mailto:connect@garyjohnbishop.com)**. Tell me where you are stopped. Tell me what keeps happening. Tell me where you have no traction. Tell me what continues to send you down the same dead end. Anything you send will be treated with respect and, where necessary, anonymity. The purpose of *Truth + Conversation* is simple: to enliven, deepen and expand the conversation that you and your life already are, so that you can see more, confront more, and create movement where there was none before. Every episode starts somewhere. Maybe the next one starts with you.