I relish the opportunity to pause. And to invite others to pause with me and enjoy the richness that each person offers. I find endless value in anything that explores the wholeness of people in a truer way. I’m really interested in the divine spark that I believe exists in everything around us — every person, every living element — and I love the fact that if you open the door for people, hand them a microphone, and tell them you’re listening, you can almost always see that divine spark shine through.
Welcome back to Let’s Talk, a series of conversations about life’s biggest questions. Today, I’m grateful and excited to share the final episode of season one!
As this season comes to a close, I wanted to pause and reflect on what these conversations have represented about the experience of being a human in the world in 2020. To help me take a look back, I invited John Young Shik Concklin to return to the show.
In this episode, John and I explore what I’ve learned from interviewing people about living through a pandemic. Despite everyone’s differences, beautiful themes emerged. We also talked about creative process and my own experience getting through this year.
We discussed the reason I love dinner parties, how I access new ideas and potential, the necessity of unplugging, and why I love hearing about the messy unfolding of people’s lives over the tidy narratives they’ll be telling in five years.
This project has been an absolute pleasure, and I’m grateful to every guest for being part of it. I can’t wait to see what form Let’s Talk takes next, but in the meantime, enjoy the show.
Listen above or find us in your favorite podcast app.
On whether or not the pandemic is a life-changing event:
I don’t know if I was redirected to a different version of myself, or if I was just accelerated to a truer version of myself that was always going to emerge. It’s impossible to say. But I can say with certainty that this pandemic has shaped the paths I see for going forward.
John asked what I learned from interviewing people about living through a pandemic, and I responded:
This has been so invigorating and inspiring… All of these people have different experiences, anecdotes, stories, and perspectives. But what I loved were the themes that emerged in all of them. They are telling of the human experience, of what it means to be a person trying their best in the year 2020.
While discussing those themes, we talked about hope:
In the words of Mariame Kaba, prison abolition activist, hope is a discipline. It’s easy to feel helpless in the face of all this chaos. Staying committed to Martin Luther King’s arc of justice is one way forward. Choosing to see the good, even when it’s hard — that’s a discipline.
On the future of Let’s Talk and WE’RE ALL FRIENDS HERE:
I’d like for this to be a place where people can think about the big questions that we don’t always have time to think about elsewhere, that aren’t highlighted in mainstream outlets. I’m seeing more and more people turn their gaze towards those kinds of questions, almost like a gentle but collective awakening. I’m interested to see where that path guides all of us.
If you enjoyed our story about Also Sprach Zarathustra, you can have a listen here.
I’ve interviewed nine thoughtful people about living through a pandemic this year. We’ve had so much fun. Check out Let’s Talk wherever podcasts are found!
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