Essence And Death - L,L,&L W/ Glenn Ambrose

Welcome to Life,

Lessons & Laughter with your host,

Glenn Ambrose.

Hey everyone,

Welcome to the show.

I think I'm all set up here.

So today is going to be a very different show.

We'll see how it goes.

Let's see if you guys ever actually hear this.

I'm recording it now.

Which is.

.

.

What's the date today?

It is January 9th,

2023.

So yeah,

This is going to be a very different show,

I think.

Because I found out a close childhood friend of mine passed away yesterday.

Unfortunately,

This is nothing new.

A lot of my friends have passed.

This one hits extra hard,

Honestly.

The last one hit pretty damn hard too.

That was about five years ago.

This one,

It's just.

.

.

There's such formative years.

It's wild thinking about all the stuff we experienced together and things we went through and how we're there for each other and stuff through high school.

My main years with my friend Jesus was from freshman year of high school to senior year of high school,

Really.

We're together every day,

Just about.

Not counting school,

We're together there too.

The friendship carried on after that to some degree.

When I moved to Florida,

I lost touch with a lot of people.

But lives happen and we go on.

The interesting part is that the love is eternal.

It doesn't die.

With this loss,

I had it on my calendar to do a podcast today or sometime this week.

I figured I would do one today because of the difference of it,

The feelings that I'm feeling.

In the past,

I've talked a fair amount about death because I think it's a good example because it's so extreme.

If you can deal with death in a good way,

Which all of us need to learn to do because we're all going to experience death.

That's the other reason why I like it as an example because it's universal.

Everybody dies.

Everything dies.

Every plant,

Every animal,

Every person.

We're all going to deal with losing loved ones,

Every one of us.

We're all going to die ourselves.

The fear of death creates a lot of foundational problems in how we interact with life because we're so busy fearing death.

You can't live fully out of fear.

You can't.

If you spend a lot of subconscious or unconscious energy trying to figure out how to avoid death,

Then what happens is you hold yourself back from experiencing life.

I think it benefits us all to deal with our own mortality as we walk through this life.

Just foundationally,

Everything is like that.

You have to deal with the foundational issue which drives our behavior.

I've said about parenting.

One of the first things I learned when I got sober and was stepping up to be a father was that you can't parent from guilt.

Why?

Because the guilt is underneath and it will drive your decisions.

If you're feeling guilty as a parent,

You're going to let your kids get away with things when you shouldn't.

You're going to not be consistent because it will drive your behavior.

If you're harboring guilt,

It definitely will do that.

It's the same thing with this.

If you haven't dealt with death,

It will affect your decisions.

It will affect on how you interact with your life.

I think it's beneficial for us all to deal with it.

In the past,

I've talked a lot about,

Like I said,

Using death as an example of reframing and looking at things in healthy ways because we can never heal from anything.

We can never get through anything unless we have an appropriate,

Realistic outlook on it.

It doesn't mean that we don't experience pain or sadness.

That's kind of why I want to do that now.

I'm deeply sad today.

I'm deeply sad.

Just sad,

Man.

Just heartbroken and sad.

That's appropriate.

That's realistic.

It's okay.

I'm not ashamed of being sad,

But I don't feed it and say,

I'm sad.

We have a tendency to demonize whatever we don't like.

If you break up with a boyfriend or a girlfriend,

We tend to demonize them and make them bad so we feel like we're the good one.

We do that with everything.

We do it with death.

We demonize death like it shouldn't have happened and there's something wrong in the universe that it happened.

Then we wonder why we can never heal from it.

That's not true.

That's not reality.

The reality is none of us have a guaranteed amount of time here.

I don't give a crap what the circumstances is.

I don't care if it's a disease,

An accident,

Suicide.

It doesn't matter.

None of us have a certain amount of time that is guaranteed to us.

We don't know.

This idea that somebody shouldn't have died is absurd.

It's just not reality.

It's an emotional attempt to deal with things on a surface that we don't like.

I don't like the fact that my friend isn't here anymore.

It makes me extremely sad,

But I'm not saying that there's something wrong with the universe that it didn't happen.

It's ridiculous.

I'll experience my sadness,

And I'll allow myself to feel it,

And I am.

I spent a lot of today crying and reminiscing.

This is in the middle of a podcast,

So I'm going to reel it in so I can continue speaking.

Just saying that,

I wanted to start crying.

He had a profound effect on me,

Which people in our lives often do,

Which leads me into the essence part of the podcast.

There's something in the back of Michael Singer's book,

The Untethered Soul.

I was just on a little walk with the dog,

And I was thinking I should grab that.

I've got the book back here,

But I'm not going to grab it.

You'll get the idea.

Basically,

In this part of the book,

He talks about death being the great equalizer.

When death comes,

You can't say,

I wasn't ready.

I'm not going to have the exact words that he uses,

But I think he says something about racism or something.

If you think that one group of people is better than another,

Death comes to all of us.

It's the great equalizer.

It wipes out all our false images and things,

And it just shows us reality.

That's what I'm seeing.

I'm paying attention to the thoughts that come up.

I'm paying attention to the memories.

I'm paying attention to why I feel so sad.

Why I feel so sad is because of my friend Jesus's essence.

It's who he was.

I truly believe that if I want to honor any situation,

I try to learn from it because I think that's how we can honor it.

I want to honor my friend's memory.

I want to honor his life by learning from it and becoming a better person.

I'm noticing why he was so special to me.

Anybody that knew him knows this stuff,

But for those of you who didn't,

It was his essence.

It was who he is.

At this time in human history,

We spend so much time bickering and cutting people out of our lives because they disagree with an opinion of ours.

We don't see things the same way,

So we cut them out of our lives.

We're so independent and divided and divisive towards one another.

None of it matters.

All the crap that we're arguing about in society,

It doesn't matter.

It's times like this where I want to use this,

And I want to share it with you so maybe you'll use similar circumstances in your own life.

You don't necessarily have to go through it.

This is something I learned right when I got sober.

You don't actually have to go through crap to learn from it.

You can actually go learn from my crap.

When I'm going through something,

If I'm explaining it to you,

You can actually learn from my experience.

You don't have to wait until you experience it yourself.

Sometimes it's easier then,

But you don't have to.

I'm trying to honor him by using all this stuff that's coming up to learn to be a better person.

It's the essence that's what's important.

Does somebody agree with me?

Oh,

I have to be surrounded by like-minded people.

Of course you want to hang out with people you get along with.

Of course you want to hang out with positive people.

I'm not talking about that.

What I'm talking about is the attitude towards it.

The attitude towards other people,

About stupid stuff,

About,

Oh,

I disagree with who you think should be president.

Who cares?

Are they a kind,

Caring person?

Not because of,

Oh,

Well,

I don't agree with what I think their political person that they want in office,

I don't agree with what that person says.

Therefore,

If this person likes that person to be in a political office,

Then I can't like them either because then they must stand for everything that they stand for.

Like,

Oh,

My God.

Can you guys follow that?

Do you know how much foolishness you have to go through to get to a level to cut out somebody you love out of your life because of their political standing?

Well,

This means,

And it's all done on an unconscious level,

This means that they stand for that.

You know this person.

Sometimes it's a family member or a longtime friend.

You know this person.

They must be seeing something different.

Let them.

Who cares?

It's the essence of somebody that's so important.

When I look back on my friend's life and,

You know,

We got really close.

Well,

We started hanging out in junior high,

But then we got really close freshman year.

And,

I mean,

Not everybody understood him in the high school,

And he didn't give a crap,

Like,

You know,

For the most part,

Which was impressive in itself.

He veered away from peer pressure,

Societal pressure.

He marched to the beat of his own drum and unapologetically,

And it was beautiful.

And that's something that drew me to him.

And that's his essence.

That's,

Like,

Who he was.

This is what's important.

This is what we need to work on as fellow human beings on this trip called life.

We need to work on our essence.

You know,

When I look back on his life,

The things that I remember is,

Like,

Unconditional love,

Unapologetically standing up for what he believed,

Being an amazing friend.

Like,

Just we'd be out at a mall,

And he'd be walking down,

And all of a sudden something would catch his eye,

And he'd be like,

Oh,

Hey,

We got to go in here for a minute.

And we'd be like,

What?

It'd be like a woman's story,

You know?

I think I remember this specifically one time,

But he did different variations of this.

And I think we were at Searstown Mall in Lemons to Mass,

If I remember right.

And he just,

Wait,

We got to go in here.

And he goes,

And he starts talking to a lady that worked in there and gets this thing and buys it.

It's like,

What was that?

What are you doing?

And he goes,

Oh,

Well,

We're just walking by,

And I saw this dress in the window,

And it just reminded me of my sister.

And at this time,

I forget which sister it was.

He's got five.

But I was like,

But he goes,

Yeah,

So,

You know,

It just reminded me of my sister.

It's like perfect for her.

This is exactly like whatever,

Her style or her color or I think she'd look great in it,

Whatever.

For some reason,

It caught his eye.

And he walked in at the drop of a dime,

Walked in there and bought the thing.

And it was back then,

You know,

This was in the 80s,

Early 80s.

It was expensive.

It was probably like 50 bucks or something,

You know.

And we're high school kids,

You know.

And he didn't think twice.

He just bought that thing.

And I said,

You know,

I think it was me.

Somebody said to him,

Hey,

Like,

Oh,

Was it her birthday?

And he was like,

No,

I just knew that she'd like it.

So I got it.

And he looked at us like it was such a stupid question,

You know.

It was such a stupid,

Like,

No,

It's not her birthday,

Like,

You know.

But,

You know,

He was raised where they didn't celebrate holidays and birthdays and stuff.

And this is how it came out to him.

He just did things like that.

You know,

One day,

I don't,

I wasn't with him.

He was out with some of the other guys,

I think.

And I think he swung by my parents' house,

If I remember right,

When they got back in town probably.

And he's like,

Here,

I want to give you this.

And he gave me this stuffed toad.

For those of you who don't know me from childhood,

In high school,

My nickname was Toad.

And everybody knew me as that.

So there was this stuffed toad with a cigar sticking out of his mouth.

And I don't,

It might have said something funny on it,

You know.

But it was this big-ass stuffed animal.

Again,

Probably somewhat expensive.

I saw it,

Thought of you,

You had to have it.

Like,

Who does this?

You know.

And it wasn't always money,

You know.

He'd just show up.

It was,

That's just the kind of guy he was,

You know.

And that's what I mean by essence.

It's who he was.

Like,

So what is that?

Buying things for somebody,

Even though it's not a special occasion.

What is the essence of that?

What is the energy of that?

What is that an example of?

What is that a symptom of?

On a deeper level.

That is a symptom of somebody who actually cares about other people.

You have to care about other people to think of them.

Otherwise,

They just wouldn't be on your mind.

So he actually cared and loved people and wasn't afraid to show it.

Just because he felt it.

There was no societal standard to follow.

There was no rule to follow.

And he never second-guessed it.

For a moment.

Not a moment.

It was just,

Here's a way to express my love.

It's perfect for them.

Express.

It was just like a machine.

Boom.

Boom.

It was really profound to watch.

I mean,

I would see stuff like that.

And I would literally ponder it for days.

Because it would catch me,

Man.

It was so profound.

It was so out of the ordinary.

The 80s lifestyle of excess and fast and party.

And 90 miles an hour.

And we were pretty wild.

And wild and all this stuff.

And then all of a sudden it was just pure love shots.

Just boom,

Boom.

And,

Yeah.

I've pondered it for the last 40 years,

Man.

Seriously.

I mean.

It has come up as an example of unconditional love.

It has come up as an example of how we should be celebrating Christmas.

I used to think about Jesus at Christmas and birthdays.

Especially Christmas.

Because everybody goes so out of their minds with the gift giving and the stress of the holidays and all this crap.

And it was just like,

It was so,

To me,

It was so much more beautiful watching him do it spontaneously.

Than seeing what people have turned Christmas into.

So I would think about him whenever that subject came up.

40 years later,

30 years later.

I would think about him and how he was such an example of that.

And that's what was so beautiful is he was an example of things.

He didn't say stuff.

He just had his way of doing things.

And he did that.

And if anybody questioned it,

He would tell you what he was thinking.

But he was never trying to get you to be like him.

You know?

Like it was.

I kind of feel a little bit weird sharing this.

But I mean I'm 55.

This was many,

Many years ago.

I don't think.

It's just that it's personal.

So that's why.

When I was in high school,

Like there was lots of sleeping around going on.

You know?

It's not everybody,

Of course.

But I did my share.

And a lot of other guys that I knew did too.

And Jesus was a very good-looking guy.

Had tons of female attention.

Especially from the older girls.

From junior high through.

And he was never with a woman.

He was like,

No.

No,

I'm waiting until I fall in love.

And when I'm with the woman that I'm going to marry.

That's when.

That's what that's for.

And no,

He never shamed me.

Or anybody else.

For being the teenage boys that we were.

And doing what we were doing.

But it was just his thing.

That's what was so cool about him.

Is he had these morals and these ways of looking at things.

And he just embodied them unapologetically.

He just.

It was just so matter-of-fact to him.

I don't know when he developed these mentalities.

I don't know how he locked onto them so firmly.

But it was beautiful.

Because it spilled out into my life.

It helped me.

I don't know.

I think I was a decent person.

I like to think I was.

But I was so wild.

It's kind of hard to keep track of some of it.

But I think I was a good person.

I tried to treat the girls that I dated with respect actually.

Even though we were sleeping around.

I didn't play games with their heads.

Or do anything like that.

They were teenagers.

They were doing the same thing I was doing.

I tried to treat them with respect.

If there was a girl that wasn't in a position where she was ready for that.

In a relationship.

I tried not to force that.

For the most part.

I think I tried to do that.

I'm sure I wasn't perfect at it.

But he was.

He was.

And I think that his level of respect for women.

And even though I was like.

Hey,

You do your thing.

I'm not doing that.

But I respected it.

I respected it.

And I respected his outlook.

And how he lived his life.

Even though it wasn't the way I was interested in living my life at that time.

This is the type of person he was.

And this is the type.

What I'm talking about here.

Maybe I should just kind of sum it up.

So you can kind of tell that I'm not just telling stories about him.

For no apparent reason.

What I'm trying to express is that.

It's the essence of who we are.

It's the qualities in which we embody.

That make us who we are.

And that people can connect with.

And that people remember about us when we're gone.

Not the.

Did I get in arguments with him?

Absolutely.

And you know the funny part is.

I guess this proves my point.

I can't remember one argument that I had with him.

I can't remember one.

I remember having them.

Vaguely.

Even that I don't remember that well.

But I don't remember a topic.

I don't remember any argument that we had.

Like what it was about.

I have no idea.

Why?

Because we loved each other.

That's why.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what it was about.

We got over it.

And we loved each other before.

And we loved each other after.

You know.

And we had times of being there for each other.

When crap was really hitting the fan.

I remember that.

It was just like.

Man.

I don't.

It's weird.

I don't.

I just remember him being there for me.

One dark,

Dark,

Dark moment.

I don't know what was going on.

But it was.

I dropped into this dark moment all of a sudden.

And all of a sudden Jesus was just right there.

He was just right there.

And he wouldn't leave me.

And I remember one night.

He was in that place.

You know.

It's so weird.

All the stuff we experienced.

We were cruising around in a bunch of cars.

Following each other around town.

And we stopped.

And Jesus was in a mood.

Which he had his moods.

But Jesus was in a mood.

Like a deep,

Dark mood this day.

And I was looking at him.

And I'm like.

You all right?

You all right?

And he was like.

You can pick up on it.

Especially if you know somebody well.

I just looked at him.

And I was like.

Something isn't right here.

So we stopped somewhere.

And he gets out.

I think we all got out.

And everybody was getting back in.

We're going to go to McDonald's or something.

And everybody is loading in the car.

And Jesus says.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I'm going to stay here.

I talk about the violent side of it and stuff like this,

Especially my personal experience,

The violent side of it.

Not everybody was like that.

It's just that was the direction I ended up going because I thought I needed to.

I couldn't figure out another way.

Talk about wonderful people.

My God.

Just a blue-collar town.

A lot of our parents were very similar in their beliefs,

I think,

Because we catch the same crap no matter whose house we went over.

There was a level of consistency growing up there.

We were wild,

Wild individuals,

Always into something that we shouldn't have been into.

It was still good people.

People still had your back unconditionally.

It was amazing.

It was such a wonderful place to grow up.

I loved my high school class.

I loved my high school class.

I think we had a great class.

It wasn't just our class.

There was people older and younger that had the same vibe.

It was just good people.

Even the ones that I look back on and I didn't get along with,

Say,

In high school,

I look at them and there might be one or two that I'm like,

I'm not sure.

It seemed like their character,

Kind of like the backstabbing type and stuff like that.

Backstabbing to me is a weak act.

Those people,

You never know because they could break in a good direction if they're around the right people or they could break in the wrong direction because there's not that much strength to them.

There's a couple people,

But I harbor no ill will that was many years ago,

But as a general rule,

Just about everybody I know was a really good person.

We had some of the others,

Too.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm talking about my friends.

I'm talking about the general majority of who we grew up around,

The kids you played baseball and basketball with and football and different ages and stuff.

There was a consistency of a type of person that seemed to exist there that I just value so highly because of their essence.

People fought because there was a ton of testosterone or they thought they needed to for some reason or whatever.

That type of stuff happened,

But that was sporadic here and there.

That wasn't life.

Life was a bunch of people that came from seemingly good families with similar values and just down to earth,

Salt of the earth,

Good people.

I've met tons of good people all around the world.

I know it's not just there.

I live in the Dominican Republic.

There's tons of good people here.

I don't know that I think the world is filled with mostly good people,

But boy,

It's nice to be able to flashback to the childhood and just feel that way about the people you grew up around.

I don't know if everybody has that,

But boy,

It's a very high value thing for me because I can model my life after most of the people I know.

Their essence,

Not always their choices.

I'm king of making stupid choices,

Especially back then.

Even back then,

People were questioning my choices.

It was the essence of them.

It was their strength of character.

It was their moral fiber.

It was their if something went down,

You knew they had your back.

There was no discussion.

They came flying in like a missile.

It was awesome.

It was awesome.

We're very independent,

Very strong,

Which I'm sure was very frustrating for the faculty at Gardner High School.

We're just trading stories.

A story came up online and we got a hold of some Everclear alcohol,

Grain alcohol,

And everybody just drank too much and throwing up and passing out at the school dance.

We all got in trouble.

They pull a bunch of us into the office.

I'm not sure why they pulled me in.

Probably because I was just friends with everybody that did do some of these things and got caught.

I was usually smack dab in the middle of trouble and usually drinking.

They dragged me in too.

I don't know.

I get brought into the vice principal's office.

I don't know if the principal was there.

I think so.

There was the football coach because some of us were on the football team.

There was a police officer.

You walk in and it was like,

Wow,

You guys are pulling out all the stops to try to intimidate us.

This was a big thing.

It was because it spilled out into the public unlike it normally did.

The first thing they said,

Are you a man or a mouse?

I just started laughing.

I knew what they were trying to do.

They were trying to get me to rat on myself and my friends.

They were saying only you got to stand up and tell the truth and take the consequences of your actions to be a real man.

I was a 17-year-old kid in high school trying to get away with drinking at a dance.

This wasn't a man or a mouse moment.

This was I ain't ratting myself out on my friends.

That's what that moment was.

You could see the frustration when I started laughing at them.

I can see through your game.

No,

I won't be ratting nobody out nor myself.

Thank you.

It didn't work.

We all got suspended.

This was another example of Jesus.

Jesus catches wind of what's going on and he's pissed.

What?

They didn't have proof of a lot of this stuff.

They're dragging everybody in.

It was during football season.

We're going to miss a football game.

That was the only thing that bothered me about it.

I was and Jesus comes storming in.

What's going on?

I think if I remember right,

He bursts right into the office.

Somehow,

He got in there and he was like,

Why are you calling in all my friends?

What's this all about?

They were drinking at a dance.

I was drinking at a dance.

Why?

Lots of people were.

Why am I not in trouble?

You're just harping on them and you're using the sports to try to get to them and all this stuff.

He was pissed.

He just saw it as an injustice.

If he saw something as an injustice,

He was going to stand up against it.

He did.

He just was like,

If you're suspending them,

You're going to suspend me because I was drinking at a dance.

We don't have any proof.

I just told you there's your proof.

He made them suspend him.

We have a picture in our high school yearbook of a bunch of us suspended all for five days,

Holding our hands out.

One of my friends got three days.

It's a classic picture.

This is how he was.

He came rushing in and just was like,

That's his essence.

Stand up against.

Hey,

I stand for this.

I don't even care.

When you look back on it,

It was some kids drinking at a dance.

Did he really need to come in and stand up for us?

Probably not.

We didn't need him to stand up for us.

We're going to get suspended anyway.

Nothing really got solved by him doing that.

That's not the point.

That's not why he did it.

He did it because at that moment he didn't agree with what was happening and he was going to stand up against it.

He did.

That I respect.

It's these qualities.

These qualities of standing up for what you believe in.

Integrity.

Doing what you believe in whether or whether or not if somebody's watching.

That's integrity.

Just honesty.

Strong moral fiber.

All these things.

These are the things that we need to work on within ourselves and embody to the best of our abilities.

These are the things that we need to pay attention to in our loved ones like family and friends.

Look for those things.

Look for those spouses,

Kids.

Look for those things.

Oftentimes in our society now we sit back and we have judgment about everybody else and then as soon as they misstep we cut them out of our lives because they didn't act in a way that we deemed appropriate.

It's all this separation and arguing and exclusion instead of this inclusion.

Instead of letting go.

We're not all supposed to agree.

I've said this a million times.

I don't know where we got this idea that we're all supposed to agree on everything.

We never have agreed on everything.

We never will agree on everything.

We are individuals.

What we're supposed to be doing is when we disagree about something go,

Oh,

Okay,

Well,

I disagree with you.

You have the right to your opinion and then going and having a slice of pizza.

That's what we're supposed to be doing.

Instead we turn it into a hill to die on and we end up alone and we wonder why we have no friends.

Look for what you want to see and right now we're looking for diversity.

We're looking for arguments.

We're looking for holes in people's armor and then as soon as we see somebody with one,

As soon as we see one we label them as that.

Oh,

They screwed up with this.

They didn't do this right.

They like this political candidate.

They blah blah whatever the hell it is and we go that's who they are as a person.

No,

That's just an opinion on a specific topic.

That's not who they are as a person.

Look for who people are underneath.

Look for integrity.

Look for honesty.

Look for somebody to have your back.

Look for somebody to reach out when you need help.

Reach for somebody that has strong convictions even if they're not the same as yours.

Respect that in people.

Respect their qualities.

Years ago I made a list and I put it on my desk and I was noticing these qualities,

The essence of things and I decided I wanted to make a list of things that I valued in people.

I made a list and some of them were similar to the ones I mentioned now.

Integrity,

Honesty,

That type of stuff.

Strong character,

Whatever.

I made this list and then I just left it there.

I just thought that that was an interesting list to make and then every once in a while I would see that paper or I would come across a situation in life where I wasn't sure what to do.

I would look at that paper and I would read all the attributes that this person had,

This imaginary person.

It was just a list of values that I appreciated in human beings.

I go,

Well what would a person that had these attributes,

What would they do?

Then I would choose and I would do that.

Probably six months,

A year goes by.

I'm not even paying that much attention to that paper.

All of a sudden one day I do.

I look at it and I just start reading it for no reason.

I'm like,

What?

All of a sudden I start recognizing those attributes within myself and I was shocked.

I was like,

Oh my God.

I'm reading and I'm like,

This actually could be a list of my qualities.

How did I get here?

When did this happen?

That's how you build your self-love.

That's how you like yourself.

That's how you become a good person.

I recommend everybody make a list of the values you respect in somebody else and then just try to behave like that person.

Make decisions like that person.

If you want to make decisions based in love,

Then do that.

When you catch yourself making decisions based in fear,

Be like,

No,

That's not the person I want to be.

I want to be one that makes decisions out of love.

When there's a controversial situation and people might give you a hard time if you speak your truth,

Do you want to be strong and have integrity and not let social conditioning sway you?

Or do you want to be the person you want to be?

Do you want to be the person you want to be?

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That death is natural.

It's the most natural thing there is.

And if you deal with your own mortality,

You're going to live your life more full.

And if you deal with your own and other people's mortality,

Then you're going to be able to get through the grieving process.

No matter how long it takes.

You know,

Different situations,

Different people,

Different lengths.

But as long as you stay open to the possibility of healing,

Then you can heal.

When people lock on and they hold on to their suffering like,

I'm suffering extremely because I love them so much.

No,

You don't understand.

I'm suffering extremely because I love them so much.

As long as people are holding on to that,

You're never going to heal from that.

And that's not what the other person would want for you.

They're at peace now.

They're sitting there going,

Dude,

Let go of me.

Please.

I love you.

I want you to be happy.

They don't want you suffering for eternity.

And it doesn't mean that you love them.

It just means you're refusing to heal.

That's what it means.

So just understand that death is going to happen.

Go through the process.

No,

Don't rush it.

Feel it.

That's what I'm doing.

I'm feeling it.

And I'll be crying more.

And I don't know how long it's going to last.

However long it lasts,

It lasts.

And I'm going to allow it.

But I'm not going to hold myself there.

That's the difference.

You can't hold yourself in the grief.

You can't justify your grief and say,

No,

I'm supposed to feel this way.

I'm always going to feel this way.

It's always going to be horrible because I love them and it's bad.

Whoa,

Whoa,

Whoa.

No,

No,

No.

That's not reality.

That's just self-induced torture.

If you just open up and allow it,

Honestly,

Yes,

I'm sad.

Yes,

I'm grieving.

Yes,

This is horrible.

Yes,

My heart is broken.

Yes,

I don't know when I'll ever get over it.

Yes,

I can't even imagine myself getting over it at some point.

Some deaths are like that.

It's okay.

You don't have to imagine yourself getting over it at some point.

All you got to do is just be realistic where you are.

Okay.

All right.

Yes,

This is how I feel at this moment.

Hopefully,

Someday in the future,

It will be less.

I don't know.

That's all you got to do is leave the door open.

You don't have to say,

Yes,

I will heal at some point.

If you can't imagine yourself healing,

Then don't imagine yourself healing.

That's okay.

But don't say I never will heal.

Don't say that life will never get easier because then you're locking yourself into.

That's self-induced suffering.

That's what I don't want for you guys.

There's enough suffering on this planet,

Especially right now.

Don't self-induce it.

Please reach out.

Reach out.

When we're struggling,

Man,

The internal is the hardest.

People can't see what's going on inside of us.

If you're struggling with something,

Please reach out.

I've been to hell and back and I can tell you there's other ways you can turn anything around.

That's going to do it.

I've got to wrap up.

Thank you guys for listening.

Blessings to all of you.

Just honor those that passed by becoming a better version of you.

I think they'd want that.

Peace.