Latest / That Old Trope with Nathaniel Kressen / Trusting Safety is a Bitch

Transcript

Trusting Safety is a Bitch · That Old Trope with Nathaniel Kressen

• 3:12
  Foreign.
• 3:26
  Welcome to another episode of that old trope, sponsored by Pan Am Airlines.
• 3:31
  Pan American Airlines flying low even on a bright, bright blue day, right into the studio at Che Peacock.
• 3:41
  Ah, to take flight.
• 3:46
  What a beautiful concept.
• 3:51
  We're gonna dive right in.
• 3:52
  We're gonna record this episode in the height of Pan American Airlines flying low on a blue, blue day, and sirens coming down the thruway over here in Brooklyn.
• 4:02
  We're gonna focus on something that has been core to the personal journey these past couple weeks, especially since my therapist, my dear, sweet, beloved therapist, asked me to consider how I wanted to use this space and invited me
• 4:15
  to be more vulnerable.
• 4:17
  And I have stripped back, stripped away the idea of being the caretaker, the creator, to see what's left.
• 4:25
  Now, there is a big part of me that resents people who don't do the internal work, who don't look inward, who don't examine why they act the way they do, what things are there that are tough to deal
• 4:38
  with, that are nonetheless influencing their actions in, you know, very real ways with interpersonal relationships and all that.
• 4:45
  I resent the fuck out of that.
• 4:48
  Not looking inward, behaving unkindly, being less than empathetic to how actions affect people.
• 4:55
  It really.
• 4:56
  As a sensitive dude, as a person who does do the interior work and tries to do the best I can in every situation, I resent the fuck out of people who just kind of fly.
• 5:06
  And at the same time, I can, you know, empathize with not wanting to look interior, not wanting to look internally, because there's a lot about this work that is just, simply put, a bitch.
• 5:22
  It is a bitch to try to examine oneself and understand what is driving one's actions.
• 5:31
  I'm at a point where my big white whale, the big thing that I'm going after, not professionally, not creatively, not interpersonally, not anything.
• 5:42
  Just working on me is trusting safety.
• 5:47
  Let me tell you, trusting safety for me is a bitch.
• 5:50
  My current state.
• 5:51
  I've talked a little bit about this in previous episodes.
• 5:54
  My current state is entering one of prioritizing joy and calm.
• 5:59
  And as my therapist, who I'll speak to shortly after recording this episode.
• 6:04
  Hey, fellas.
• 6:05
  Hey, fellas.
• 6:06
  Therapy rocks.
• 6:07
  Therapy makes you a strong man.
• 6:09
  You want to be fucking masculine?
• 6:11
  Go to therapy.
• 6:12
  Show them what you're worth.
• 6:15
  So me as a mainly man going to therapy, I've weathered some storms.
• 6:21
  I've gone through some big stuff.
• 6:24
  And now that the storm has somewhat passed, you know, very much passed, and there are blue, blue skies.
• 6:30
  It's the chance to look at, you know, if I'm a ship in a storm and I'm being rocked back and forth and I'm just focused on surviving the storm and then the storm is over, time to take stock
• 6:40
  of the ship.
• 6:41
  Now that I'm on calm waters, now that I'm in the harbor, let me look at what needs to be repaired, let me look at what I need to strengthen up, take care of, attend to, give some TLC to
• 6:54
  in order to hit that point on the horizon that is beckoning and calling me.
• 6:59
  Because that is how I make sure that not only I can survive future storms, but I can make it to new destinations.
• 7:06
  Now that I have calm waters and I have the chance to do what I want, do I have the balls to deal with the things that are still in me, that still influence my perspective on the world?
• 7:20
  My ability to show up in relationships, how I want to weather tough relationships and maintain a smile on my fucking face as often as possible and own the moments where I have to be a little bit low and
• 7:33
  work through things, but meet everything with my full self and be proud of how I show up.
• 7:40
  So that's where I'm at right now.
• 7:41
  And my big thing is trusting safety.
• 7:45
  So I don't know how to trust safety.
• 7:49
  I don't know how to trust it because in my childhood, anything at any moment could go wrong and often did.
• 7:59
  I spent more Christmases in the hospital either with one member of the family in there or two members of the family in there than I care to try to count.
• 8:10
  How many years out of my childhood, You know, outside of Christmas season, the gift giving season, it was no piece of cake either.
• 8:23
  My sister needed constant care and not just, you know, during moments of storm, but during moments of calm too.
• 8:35
  There was always something that was urgent, always something that was needed, always something that was life or stakes death, quite literally, life or stakes, life or death stakes.
• 8:48
  And accordingly, my needs often came second.
• 8:53
  My needs were often forgotten altogether.
• 8:56
  My the impact on me was to feel alone.
• 9:02
  It was to feel unseen and un understood and uncared for.
• 9:06
  And that's not to say it was all doom and gloom.
• 9:10
  There were some things that the folks in my life did show up for and did create for me.
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  I went to arts high school in large part because, you know, a person in my family showed up and helped make that connection possible and encouraged me to do so and encouraged me to follow this interest.
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  I went to basketball camps because they were sought out for me.
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  Even though there were long traffic patterns and all that.
• 9:32
  There are Things I can point to where I was looked out for and was supported.
• 9:38
  And there was also a constant push pull where it seemed like no matter, you know, what I might do to try to make the people in my life okay, there just was nothing in my power that could do
• 9:54
  it.
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  And I was made to feel like if I only did something different, if I only behaved differently, if I only held my needs in check, if I only.
• 10:03
  If I only.
• 10:04
  If I only, then, yeah, maybe things would be better, not just for me, but for everyone.
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  So I did.
• 10:12
  And that holding on to my needs and holding on to my awareness of what as a person I held as value, I held as, you know, just being able to take up my own space.
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  I held that in check for years and years and years.
• 10:32
  And it's not to say I always buried my needs, but they were kinda.
• 10:35
  It was a fraught relationship.
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  Because I'm a person who, when I want something, I second guess it.
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  And I wonder if I'm allowed to have it.
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  I wonder if I should feel shame about wanting it or guilt about wanting it or whatever, whatever, whatever.
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  And through this process of healing, post fire, post divorce, it's been a grounding into owning that I am a person just in my own right.
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  Not as a creator, as a caretaker, but just as a person.
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  I have value.
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  I have inherent value as a person.
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  I'm allowed to want things.
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  I'm allowed to need things.
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  And this is a lesson I'm learning at the ripe old age of 42.
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  So when I say that trusting safety is a bitch, trusting safety is hard.
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  It's in large part because what I want more than anything else in this season is calm.
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  I want calm and joy.
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  I want safety.
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  I want it so fucking bad, dear listeners, fake listeners, that every fiber in my being is trying to fuck it up.
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  That's not to say it's every fiber, but there are parts of me that want to fuck it up.
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  Because that is what I know.
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  What I know is extreme.
• 11:45
  What I am craving is calm.
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  And so as I've been mining over why is it all this FOMO coming up, why am I drawn to pursuing things that I might or may not want when I have something that I absolutely, desperately already want and
• 12:00
  have and feel calm with and feel supported by, and I see a future and all these things, why, if I have this in grasp, am I chasing something that I am not even sure about and where I've come
• 12:13
  back around to?
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  And maybe some folks among you have already gotten there before me?
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  Because often it's easier to see from the outside in.
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  It's a.
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  It's a bit of sabotage speaking, because I don't know what it is to just trust safety and not worry that it's going to fall out at any moment.
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  With my marriage, which, you know, lasted a long time, I got married young, married for 15 years, together for 18, I thought I had found my forever home.
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  I looked forward to being old together.
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  And as it's come up in a couple conversations recently, when one person, when people go through divorce, there's grief.
• 13:02
  There's grief over losing that person in close proximity.
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  There's grief over stability and familiarity.
• 13:11
  There's grief over the love that's been lost, the grief over the early days when things were good and the middle days when things are good and the recent days when things were good.
• 13:18
  You know, there's never.
• 13:19
  It's never all bad.
• 13:22
  Sometimes it's all bad.
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  But, you know, in my case, it wasn't.
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  There was always some good.
• 13:29
  But the real grief comes from the life that you expected would come, that is no longer possible.
• 13:36
  And Michael touches on this in the Beta Boy Breakdown in one episode.
• 13:41
  I forget which one it is.
• 13:42
  Maybe it's Two Woke Cucks, the first episode, but it's a moment where you maybe because I threw a title like 2Wokeucks out there, beta Boy Breakdown is about masculinity in the manosphere and self examining ourselves as men in
• 13:59
  America in today's age and other men in America in today's age and just trying to unpack what is going on here.
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  And how might we begin to talk as humans again and think through things that are being fed to us in a way that's a little bit more critically thinking as opposed to swallowing and regurgitating back out.
• 14:19
  So something he said is there comes a moment where the life you imagined you were going to live, that you assumed and knew in your bones you were going to live is no longer possible.
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  And not only do you have to process that, you also have to figure out what to do instead, what to do next, how to shore up oneself and one's life now that everything just fell out.
• 14:50
  So, unfortunately, I'm pretty well versed at that crisis mode.
• 14:54
  I can navigate probably any hospital in any language pretty seamlessly with my eyes closed and hands tied behind my back.
• 15:01
  Just tell me, give me a working direction on my compass and my ship will get there, storms or no.
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  And I would really like to let go of that part of me.
• 15:15
  It's okay that I can ask for directions on occasion.
• 15:18
  I don't need to hold it all together.
• 15:20
  I don't need to have every hospital be my bitch or I am just being a bitch to stress, anxiety, fatalism, self sabotage, self sadness, sad, sad, low, low, low.
• 15:42
  I would like to let go of that and begin to ground into, you know, oldest trope in the world, gratitude.
• 15:51
  I would like to feel gratitude and calm for a while, maybe forever.
• 15:58
  Because I've lived a life that has been punctuated by extreme.
• 16:01
  And there are still things in my life and people in my life that bring extreme.
• 16:07
  And I can't, you know, affect or control anything other than my own perspective and my own actions and my own reactions to others actions and show up how I want to show up in the world, Take ownership over
• 16:19
  my mood, take ownership over my grief, take ownership over what I hope to build and.
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  And just fucking do it.
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  So I'm learning to trust safety, even though trusting safety is a bitch.
• 16:31
  My home.
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  My home is a representation of calm.
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  And I forget the name of the pyramid, but my, my therapist brings it up where there's a hierarchy.
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  It's somebody's hierarchy about need, core needs, and how they build up like a pyramid.
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  And the bottom one is safety.
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  The ground level is safety.
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  It's the bedrock on which everything is built.
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  My home to me is an oasis of calm.
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  I've made it that way.
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  I lived here for a long time with my ex.
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  And living with another person means balance and compromise and working in tandem and, you know, overlooking messes and causing messes and, you know, like it's a navigation routine.
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  Anybody who's had a spouse or a sibling or a roommate knows this to live by oneself.
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  And this is really the first time I've ever lived by myself in my adult life.
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  Really in my life.
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  I had a brief apartment for about a year and changed before moving to a different one where I took on a roommate and then I was with my ex.
• 17:39
  This has been the first time that I have faced head on with true loneliness while truly alone.
• 17:46
  I felt lonely while around other people, but this is the first time I've grounded in while living alone and learning to sit with it.
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  This is the first time I've had ownership over decoration decisions.
• 17:58
  And as you'll hear across the different podcast shows that we're doing, when I talk to people, especially like, there's a vibe going on.
• 18:05
  There's a vibe going on at Shape Peacock with a giant peacock mural and art all over the walls, some of which I've made, some of which I've purchased over the years.
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  A color coded bookcase over here.
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  Branches, dried branches inside.
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  A whole backyard oasis that feels like a Zen garden.
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  Now there's a vibe.
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  There's a vibe.
• 18:25
  And not so long ago in the grand scheme of things, four years ago and change, there was a fire next door that threatened to take everything.
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  And I talk about that day with fire as you know, trope as trope can be the best day of my life.
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  Because that threw me into PTSD for a long, long time.
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  And I imagined very quickly I went straight head on into the fatalism that I was about to lose my home.
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  I was going to about to lose all my prized possessions.
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  I knew I wasn't going to let my pets go, even though, oh boy, one of them, one of the cats hid while there were firefighters going in and out of the apartment.
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  And I couldn't find him.
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  And I had to leave him behind.
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  I had to leave him behind and save my other two and wait outside in the 10 degree weather without a coat.
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  Not feeling the cold because it was that time to move.
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  He was okay.
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  But unfortunately did pass away a few months later.
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  Never really recovered of the stress.
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  Went back into an illness he had had previously with a thyroid.
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  His name was Porter.
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  So my home, my oasis, my sweet, sweet home that I'm in now almost never existed.
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  It took looking head first into the prospect of losing it for me to actually go on a healing journey that's brought me to right to this, you know, this chair, this desk, this home, this connection with you.
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  Dear listener, thousand true fans.
• 20:04
  I wouldn't be here as me if that fire hadn't happened.
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  I probably would have combusted in one way or another.
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  I almost did combust a few times along this healing journey.
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  And now I got calm waters and I'm looking around some days sometimes, including yesterday, where it still feels like storm.
• 20:23
  It still feels like storm because the storm has been internalized and the storm needs to be exorcised.
• 20:33
  I do pretty well these days in showing up in situations and not letting the storm take over, not letting my pettier character traits get the better of me as often as I can help it.
• 20:49
  But I'm dealing headlong with some stuff right now that makes me not want to be around people that much because energies are kind of feeling a little bit like knives and that ain't good.
• 21:01
  So kind of narrowing the scope a little bit these days.
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  So I go to my home and I think about this fire that nearly took it.
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  And I also go to my home and the fact that the foundation was sinking in a corner of it throughout the last months of my marriage, maybe the last year of my marriage, the foundation was literally sinking.
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  And we didn't know it.
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  We weren't dealing with it.
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  There were clanks from.
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  From a heating vent over here, like sharp clanks every now and then.
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  And finally when it was looked at, it was like, oh, yeah, this has to be.
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  You know, there's really something happening.
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  And there's part of me, when I think about that, that wonders, like, how much of my safety do I just give away?
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  How much.
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  How much of my calm do I just give away?
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  Because I can't be bothered.
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  I can't be bothered to focus on the hard thing that may require work on my part in order to shore up my safety in my home.
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  Resistance is kind of futile.
• 22:10
  You know, either one lives in a situation where things are not being dealt with and in whatever time and manner of their choosing start to go wrong.
• 22:20
  And one can pick up the pieces and sweep them under the rug and do whatever they want.
• 22:26
  Maybe when things like the fire happen, it takes head first dealing with everything, but otherwise just skate on by.
• 22:38
  I was talking to my partner last night about the way that we're wired.
• 22:43
  And she put some good words to it.
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  She said, maybe we're people who really enjoy examining all the parts of ourselves.
• 23:00
  All the parts of ourselves, all the sadnesses and emotions, all the hidden depths, all the feelings, all the colors in the paint box.
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  Maybe we're people who need to examine this because we like it.
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  It's how we're built.
• 23:15
  So these low nights, these low days, the ones that are full of introspection and uncertainty and kind of jagged edges out of nowhere, when there are calm skies around, maybe that's just because it feeds us and it feeds
• 23:30
  the art that we make and it feeds who we are when we're not making things.
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  And maybe, maybe that's just who I am.
• 23:39
  Maybe that's just who I am.
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  Maybe I need to go deep and dark because I'm someone who likes to understand myself.
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  I like to know what drives my actions and what is coming up.
• 23:54
  And at the very least, as someone who has spent years and decades and basically my whole life feeling some semblance of the emotion that started this whole thing off, which is safety is not to be trusted.
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  And I've seen myself chase, I've seen myself question.
• 24:16
  I've seen myself betray and hurt my better angels.
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  Maybe looking inward and figuring myself out a bit more.
• 24:29
  Maybe that's a necessary step to cue the Real Graceland, the real fucking bliss state that I'm grounding into right now.
• 24:38
  Maybe the way I preserve it, maybe the way I build it, maybe the way I build things on behalf of others and continue to just live a full life in the way I want to value forward life, positive
• 24:50
  spin life.
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  Maybe this is the necessary step, the necessary steps, the necessary life component.
• 24:59
  Maybe looking inward and doing the work is what I'm supposed to be doing.
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  So I can keep on saying, trusting safety is a bitch, or I can say, trusting safety is hard for me, but I'm committed to it and the evidence has shown for a little while now that I'm a person
• 25:16
  who can build.
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  I'm a person who can build something safe and maintain something safe and care and show up and try it out and listen and respond and cultivate and support the male and the female sides, all those different kinds of
• 25:34
  intuition that are inside all of us.
• 25:36
  Maybe I can drive and maybe I can curate.
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  Maybe I can identify and maybe I can take action on behalf of.
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  Maybe I can listen and maybe I can speak.
• 26:12
  So this one recording, this episode has itself been a little bitch, because I'm in it.
• 26:24
  I'm in a moment right now.
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  I'm processing some shit right now.
• 26:29
  And this is a project.
• 26:32
  It's not the thing.
• 26:33
  The thing is my life.
• 26:34
  The thing is a whole ecosystem of not only creative outlets and projects in this company and friendships and relationships and like, family and all these things.
• 26:46
  Food when I can remember, Laundry when I can get it done.
• 26:50
  A job that I'm preserving, a future I hope to build.
• 26:56
  Big changes, small changes, stuff saying the same.
• 26:59
  Boredom, loneliness, happiness, joy, ingenuity, invention.
• 27:04
  All this shit is happening at once.
• 27:08
  And I have committed to doing an episode, a week of that old trope.
• 27:14
  Now, there may come a day where I come on here and I tell you I don't got it.
• 27:20
  Today I can own that possibility.
• 27:26
  But I kind of like the idea of staying current and staying consistent even when it's hard, just showing up and maintaining an open line.
• 27:36
  Because I don't know if this is mostly for me.
• 27:40
  I don't know if it's mostly for the listener.
• 27:41
  I don't know if it's mostly for anything, but it feels true and it feels like it's discovering what it is while I do it.
• 27:49
  I think it's a good touch point, as I myself, selfishly, am growing as a person and figuring out how to ground in and do the thing, the thing being life.
• 28:04
  But I've run through the content that you know, I had built up so that I could have a Runway with which to launch not just this show, but other shows as well.
• 28:19
  I've run through this Runway.
• 28:21
  I'm recording this basically a week and a half before it will go live.
• 28:24
  I still have to edit the one that goes live in three days.
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  And that's okay, because really, once again, because really, this thing is mine to create, and nobody knows what it's gonna be.
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  I don't know what it's gonna be.
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  There is no supposed to be.
• 28:43
  This is just the thing of this season.
• 28:46
  Part of the thing of this season.
• 28:49
  So it's gonna be unwieldy, it's gonna be stressful at times, it's gonna be happy at others.
• 28:54
  But bottom line, it's a safe environment.
• 28:57
  I'm creating my own safe space to share all of myself and discover and be curious and share.
• 29:06
  Because why not?
• 29:09
  Why not?
• 29:09
  In this age where, like, we're literally living in something, transforming, it's nice to get a dose of the human.
• 29:24
  It's nice to feel connected.
• 29:25
  As the Pan American Airlines fly ever lower, taking folks from place to place on a blue, blue sky, perfect visibility into all the engines and compartments, knowing that they're all taken care of and they shall fly safely from
• 29:41
  place to place.
• 29:44
  Unless, of course, you know, said airline was sponsored by a foreign entity and brought in for personal use in a public capacity.
• 29:58
  Hey, folks, decades from now, pulling up the lens, pulling up the lint fabric over this, this here archaeological dig.
• 30:11
  Check the.
• 30:11
  Check the release date.
• 30:12
  There's some public things happening.
• 30:15
  There's some.
• 30:16
  There's current events.
• 30:20
  I think in the context of the world we're in, owning our own space and our own journey with clear eyes and a full heart.
• 30:31
  Can't lose.
• 30:31
  You know, I think that that's a worthwhile endeavor, even if I don't know what it will turn up and churn up, and it's a fucking bitch to deal with.
• 30:40
  I think that cultivating and working on behalf of safety, a safety that can truly be preserved no matter what the external circumstances are.
• 30:53
  You know, maybe that's worth a quick touch point before I tie a bow on this.
• 31:01
  We actually are made to feel like trusting safety is impossible.
• 31:06
  Right?
• 31:07
  Right now, both between current events and constant marketing that makes us either fear loss of something or whatever else we're made, we're cultivated to feel that safety is not possible, which is sad.
• 31:27
  Which is really.
• 31:28
  That's the opposite of what society should be doing.
• 31:30
  We should be getting better at this.
• 31:32
  We should be feeding and Clothing people that need to be feed and clothed.
• 31:36
  We should be housing people that need to be housed.
• 31:39
  We should be looking out for one another, not stepping over one another.
• 31:44
  We should be thinking about ways to make life possible and affordable and fruitful and thriving for people, especially kids.
• 31:53
  Kids who will grow up to become adults and have ways of thinking that are colored by the way that they were raised.
• 32:04
  The kids who are being forgotten now will end up being the adults who chase later.
• 32:12
  I dare say a bunch of us in this generation feel that.
• 32:17
  And there's not a whole lot to chase after except the next big product or the next big experience or the next big thing or the show that everybody's talking about or, you know, whatever.
• 32:33
  There's a thing that comes up in the Beta Boy breakdown where it's like, what is a man?
• 32:37
  What is the purpose of a man these days?
• 32:38
  If we were meant to be providers and protectors and we're in an age where there is no saber toothed Sagar to take out, you know, outside the cave, there's.
• 32:50
  There isn't really a way to protect.
• 32:52
  And the way that incomes have gone, income inequality has gone, it's very hard to, you know, provide.
• 33:01
  With rising costs and flat wages, what do we do?
• 33:08
  What is a man?
• 33:09
  What's a man's purpose?
• 33:10
  And to that extent, what's a human's purpose?
• 33:13
  I was raised by women.
• 33:19
  What is it to be?
• 33:20
  The caretaker, the provider, the adventure seeker, the adventure creator, the curator, the teacher, the role model, the advocate, the disciplinarian?
• 33:38
  What is it to be a human these days among other humans?
• 33:41
  What is it to be a human these days among oneself?
• 33:48
  It may be hard for me to show up at this mic every week.
• 33:52
  It might be hard, but I'm committed to trying.
• 33:58
  Because I think that maybe if I honestly engage with some hard fucking shit, maybe there's a vicarious element that makes others encouraged to do it too.
• 34:14
  Maybe that's grandiose thinking on my side to think that I can have any impact on how you think.
• 34:21
  Maybe it's worthwhile to show up and not know and be be even as I am forever becoming.
• 34:41
  So sure to put a cap on it.
• 34:46
  Let's take the frame of trusting safety is a and say trusting.
• 34:52
  Trusting safety is a stud.
• 34:56
  It's a rock star.
• 34:59
  Trusting safety.
• 35:01
  Trust.
• 35:01
  Trusting safety.
• 35:06
  We can say it till we believe it.
• 35:09
  Trusting safety is a good thing.
• 35:13
  Trusting safety is a good thing.
• 35:19
  Trusting safety is a good thing.
• 35:22
  If you'll excuse me, I'm going to sky hook my way over to Pan Am Central over here.
• 35:37
  They got really great peanuts on board, Sam.