Podcast | Ready To Be Strong Ep.14

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Transcript

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Tania Israel: Welcome to Ready To Be Strong. I’m Tania Israel.

Pema Rocker: and I am Pema Rocker.

Tania Israel: Together we’re broadening our minds, opening our hearts.

Pema Rocker: And strengthening connections to face the challenges of living in a divided world.

Tania Israel: In this episode, we’re checking in on where folks are a few weeks after the election. ​

Pema Rocker: It’s good to be back here with you. It’s been a couple weeks and I have missed you.

Tania Israel: Aw. I have missed you too, Pema. It’s so good to be here with you, 

Pema Rocker: You have been on some really big adventures though, and I listened to your solo episode where you were sharing about being in Hazelton and your stories of canvassing while you were there. I’ve heard you talk about canvassing before and once in my life I canvassed, and yet when I heard you tell your stories, they were kind of brand new to me. There were so many facets of a single,what I was perceiving as a single purpose. It really broadened my mind. So I’ll give you a couple of examples and then I’d love to hear you talk about them. So like, I was so moved by the detail of your questions.

You were very clearly there representing your side vote for Harris, and there to get out the vote. And yet each time I heard you tell about the ways that you engaged with different voters in your telling. You met mostly Trump voters and what came of your meeting them was your curiosity. An earnest curiosity and kind like for lack of a better word, the core word is like a love for them.

Like, oh my gosh, you’re gonna vote. That’s thrilling. Parenthetical to self, self quietly. I wish you were voting for Harris, but loud voice. What has you, you know, like what has you voting for? Like, what’s important to you about that? And I could hear your earnest engagement. And then I could hear how your focus kept coming back to, oh my gosh, you’re ready.

You could consider volunteering if you wanted to. Like, not only is our vote, a thing that counts. But there are lots of ways to engage. There’s lots of conversations to have. You had somebody join you to help you have conversations in another language, in neighborhoods where you didn’t speak that language, that was amazing and you had somebody interested in working at a polling place.

And it all started from asking, “Are you voting? And can I ask you how you’re voting?” I was just really moved by the breadth of the relationship that came from what in my mind is, has a single purpose, which is to get out and vote. 

Tania Israel: Oh, Pema Rocker, thank you for listening to those stories. I would say it’s not necessarily that I mostly talked to Trump voters, but I think the stories that I told were mostly that because, I mean, this is funny, when you’re canvassing and somebody says like they’re voting for the candidate who you want them to vote for, you’re not like, oh, explain that to me.

You know, like, like you don’t ask for somebody to tell you the reasons that they’re planning to vote for Kamala if you’re out there getting out the vote for Kamala and, and honestly, like you don’t always ask the reason somebody’s voting for a different candidate unless you feel like maybe they’re movable or if you’re me and I really do wanna know. So you’re definitely picking up on something there with my genuine curiosity. You know, one thing I’ve been thinking so much about is how to think about these conversations that we have with people across political disagreement, and I’ve been thinking about how those other people are such a resource for us that if we don’t understand why somebody would think a different way or vote a different way, then. they can help us. And if I just think about this other person as a resource, like, oh, they can help me to understand why somebody would vote for Trump, then I am delighted for the opportunity to engage with them and hear more from them about that. And it feels like actually they’re being very generous by sharing that with me.

Pema Rocker: And how does it feel? So like from a political intelligence perspective from a crossing crossing a, you know, what is that phrase, crossing a divide or you just used a great word, speaking across disagreement. It feels like out there on the ground they’re a great resource. I can learn a lot from them, but to me there’s also something deeper, which is oh, who are you? How, how are you? Like, you’re, you’re breathing the same air I am right now, and we’re living in this same system together. It’s great to hear what makes you tick.

I guess I wanna add that in terms of I hear so much depth in your relationship that you strike up with people and so much appreciation and earnestness.

On the very top level, they stand out as a resource for expanding your mind. And then at the heart level, it’s, it’s a, it’s just an earnest, you know, appreciation for who they are and how we all belong here.

Tania Israel: You know, it’s so easy, I feel like, to be dismissive of these kinds of cardboard caricatures that we have in our heads about people. And when there’s a three-dimensional person in front of you, even if they’re saying the things that you would expect that caricature to say. I’m like, okay, but there’s something more here. You know that, that I feel like I experience them more in their full humanity. ‘Cause you know, when you’re at somebody’s door, I’m always feeling like, I’m intruding a little, you know, like I, like I should try to make it as quick as I can. And so it’s not always really an ideal conversation opportunity.

But also while I was at Hazelton, I struck up a conversation with this guy at a pub and we talked for like 45 minutes with him sharing more about where he was coming from with things. And he was from Texas and he was more conservative and he was pro fracking and none of which I am. And I was like, oh, this is so interesting and I’m really going to use those skills that I talk about so that I can understand more where he’s coming from.

And I really felt like I did. And you know, then after, you know, listening and reflecting for, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes when I actually told him that I was there volunteering for the Harris campaign and shared more about where I was coming from. It’s like we had already made a connection there and he like, I wasn’t just a caricature and he wasn’t just a caricature that, that, there was really something about that.

Now, I will say also, something that makes it easier for me to do this in these circumstances is that I don’t have people in my family who are in a very different place politically about most things, and I, in my community and my friend group also don’t have those areas of disagreement. So I don’t feel like I am being exposed to it all the time, but it also doesn’t feel like I’m being afflicted by it all the time. And so I can kind of go in with this you know, positive energy into this, that I think if I felt like I was confronting it constantly, I would be way more exhausted.

Pema Rocker: Mm-Hmm. I think that speaks to where so many of us sit on a spectrum and how there’s a role for each of our abilities or each of our availabilities at different times. And I think it’s pretty great that there are people in your circumstance who don’t have it coming at them, and they’re, and you’re free to engage without baggage. Like it really moves the, it really moves the conversation.

 Let me ask you this. How have you been doing since Hazelton?

Tania Israel: So I have been spending a lot of time trying to figure stuff out and articulate something helpful. I’m like, okay, with everything that’s happened, is there something that I have to offer that will be useful to other people? So, you know, I did a couple episodes of the podcast, the one with you, and then the one with Lama Yasha, and then the one with the Hazelton Stories.

And then I did a blog post about Hazelton. ’cause I was like oh, I want people to see all the pictures of these people who I’m talking about. And so I, so I was writing that. And then there were these, you know, I’ve been talking with a lot of people since the election about what they make of it and who they’re mad at and, you know, all of these things.

And, and I’ve just been digesting it and I’m like, all right, what can I say that might be beneficial? You know, right after the election there were lots of analyses coming out about the data and, you know, the demographics of the voters, and it just, it felt like it was so much and, and then there was like a lot of forward-looking stuff too.

Like, okay, who are Trump’s cabinet picks and what’s gonna happen? And all these predictions and. I was like, okay, how should we be dealing with all of the media overload? You know, we just kind of went from the stress of the media overload leading up to the election, to the stress of the media overload debriefing the election, and then predictions going forward.

And I heard so many people say like. I am just tuning it out. You know, that that’s, that, that’s a choice that a lot of people made. And it’s, you know, even if people were tuning it out, they, they, you know, still stuff was seeping in that was distressing. So, I did some thinking about like, what do we do in terms of taking in the media?

I, I, I wrote this piece on Psychology Today blog that was about if you’re sitting on a train like some people like to sit backwards. Some people like to sit forwards. I like to sit backwards because when I’m sitting forwards, I feel like just as soon as things come into view, they disappear. And when I’m sitting backwards I can sort of, you know, keep things in my line of vision longer it seems.

And I. So I was thinking about this in terms of are you looking backwards toward what happened in the election and trying to make sense of it? Are you looking forward toward what’s gonna be going on? You know how, how, like looking at our crystal ball, trying to figure out like what is gonna happen in the next Trump administration?

Or are you just shutting the blinds where you’re like, I don’t wanna see any of it, and. One of the things that I noticed is that sometimes I, I found this picture I had taken of our mutual friend Lisa, 20 some years ago, and she’s on a train and, and you can see her reflection in the window, and I was like, oh, yeah.

There’s all of this stuff rushing past that we can pay attention to, either looking to the past, looking to the future, or just, you know, shutting it out. But maybe one of the really important things is paying attention to. Ourselves in that and noticing what we’re doing, noticing how we’re reacting to that landscape out there, and noticing even if we decide to shut the blinds. Taking that opportunity to think, okay, if I re-engage, or when I re-engage, or when that information seeps in anyway, how do I wanna respond to it? And so that this might be a moment for us to think about how we are taking in the media. And so that’s, that’s one angle that I thought, all right, maybe this is, something helpful to to think about is how we’re taking in the media now. I mean, I wrote a lot about, and talked a lot about how we were taking in the media before the election, so it’s a different moment, but sort of the same challenge that we’re having. 

Pema Rocker: Several things have floated through my mind as you have been talking. So the media is how most of us ramped up to the election and the media is how most of us have been, you know, riding the waves since the election. talked about folks turning off the media since the election.

One thing that I have been aware of in the media well before and since has been we’re going to hell. Not a Christian conservative hell, but like if things are going down, our nation’s going to incinerate any second.

Everyone will lose services and sanity. Um, I don’t mean to laugh. There’s some serious fear there. Because of, we have, we’ve seen willingness in certain areas. My point is, how fast do people react? Like I’m noticing that there’s fear. There’s the same fear there was before the election, and now it feels extra because now the gates are open for all of those fears that were a future possibility to now become reality.

However, at this very point, there’s still a future possibility and there’s a question of, well, what’s going to happen? And. I guess my question is how much can happen inside the question of the same fear and the same, wondering what’s going to happen?

Tania Israel: Yeah, there, there’s so many things that can stoke our fear and the media you know, keys in on those in part because then we’re, we gobble it up, you know, in terms of the media. Like we really tune into the things that are connected to fear and it gets us amped up and it keeps us amped up and it’s just not a great place to be.

I have to say, as we’re talking about this, I’m kind of kicking myself ’cause I realized, oh my gosh, the thing I should have said in that piece that I wrote is, like take this opportunity to stop looking out the window and turn toward the person sitting across from you and have an actual human interaction.

You know? Like we’re all there on the train together and we’re all just looking out the window. And what if we actually turn to the other people on the train instead?

Pema Rocker: Yeah, what will the conversation be? I feel like in almost every conversation we have, I bring it back to fear and I’m kind of bored of myself in that conversation and I also, you know, hear, hear it, hear it in all of us. First it was fear of how the election was gonna go. Now it’s fear of how it’s gonna go since the election and since there’s so much opportunity for Trump to continue the chaos that he started back in the first administration. I say that specifically because of his appointments that he’s making and the appointments that he made in the past, like it seems pretty bent on chaos versus coalescence.

Like I’m feeling exhausted by fear and when I’m feeling exhausted by fear, I just wanna slow down the speed of the tumbleweed and let it bounce against the wall it finally hits, and then ask what’s next? Where have the seeds fallen out? What do I need to tend, and what do I need to pull out? Where do I step into action?

Tania Israel: Mm. That is. Such a great question and it actually, so, another piece that I wrote in the last couple weeks when I was trying to figure out what I had to say was the title of this, this is up on Medium. It’s called When an Election Gives You a Shellacking Make Decoupage

Pema Rocker: Can you tell us quickly what Decoupage is?

Tania Israel: Oh, yes, I can. So, I mean, and you know, it’s a, it’s a riff on what life gives you lemons make lemonade. And so I was thinking, okay, well this election was a shellacking. What do you do with shellac? Well, you can, you can cut out pictures and textiles and d and fabrics and things, and you can decorate an object with them. And then you put the shellac on it. And that is what decoupage is.

It’s an art or craft project kind of thing that you can do. I personally have never done decoupage , so I had to then figure out how to play out my metaphor that I created.

Pema Rocker: Being the granddaughter of a mid-century woman I was enshrined in like, like decoupage was all around everywhere. And yeah, the shellac just holds all the art in place, holds all the craft in place, 

Tania Israel: Oh, that’s fantastic. You, you have more familiarity with decoupage perhaps than I do. But what I did know about decoupage  is that it’s layered. I. And it’s on, usually on a three dimensional kind of object. You know, rather, you know when, when other things are sort of on a flat surface. And so there’s some dimensionality to it, there’s some layering to it.

And in the process of doing decoupage , you’ve gotta select what you’re going to put in it. And I thought, well, maybe that’s a way for us to approach, just the media, the analyses, everybody else’s thoughts and feelings about all this is just to kind of take the pieces and be selective about that. Like maybe we wanna take some pieces that are really familiar to us and maybe we also want to say, you know what? I would also like to bring in some other perspective and make that part of the picture that I’m creating of what happened with the election or what’s going on in our country, or whatever that question is that we might be having, that we’re trying to, trying to answer about the current political landscape. And when we do that, it’s gonna be kind of layered and it’s gonna be kind of three dimensional and, and it’s gonna take a little bit of time and focus to create that. I was, I was just thinking about how I, I don’t think of myself as a crafty person but I do make friendship bracelets. That’s sort of my crafty limit.

And, but it seems that. These days, there’s no limit to what you can do with the friendship bracelets, thanks to Taylor Swift and the Swifties. So, when I’m making friendship bracelets, it’s really sweet and calming, and I was thinking about that process of creation. You and I have talked about this some, you know, the, the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation.

So maybe that’s a way that we can think about our not just media consumption, but how we’re taking in everything that’s going on that can we do it in a way that feels intentional, that feels creative, and that brings some dimensionality to our understanding of things. 

Pema Rocker: I am thinking of that term creative as something next to or separate from what do we wanna create? We can create a thing, we can create a movement, we can create any number of things. And when I think about that term, creative, there’s so much generativity there. It’s like an actual something in motion.

It speaks to a behavior or a possibility. And I wanna say that, if the opposite of war is creation. I wanna also say that the timeline of creation is often, it often comes immediately after destruction, especially if you’re talking about war. And so you can say that creation is part of destruction.

It, it grows it, it gets created, it grows. It thrives, it dies. And it gets created again out of what it has you know, become ashes about or composted. So I, I wanna, I guess I’m saying that because there are so many folks I have listened to who are ready to just take that decoupage and throw it against the concrete and break it all.

And then there are people who are ready to take those pieces and put them back together in a new shape. Or put them back together in an old shape. I guess I wanna give space to the destruction part of the creation and the re and then also give space to the recreating part of the creating, especially from this point of view that every four years there’s an election and it seems like we have similar, if not the same urgencies and just like.

Terrible questions and needs that are not getting met and that are getting fought about every four years, and it seems like they get worse every four years. It gets more painful. So if I can put that all on a spectrum or like all on a timeline, that’s gonna make me breathe a little better right now.

And also give space to the people who are just ready to chuck it. And then also the people ready to recreate.

Tania Israel: Oh, well now I’m realizing that decoupage may not have been the only art metaphor for this, because as you’re talking about it, I was like, oh wait, there’s this other thing. There’s this Japanese art where you take a broken thing and you put it back together. And so I just looked it up while you were talking.

It’s called Kintsugi which means join with gold. And so you actually like, you know, let’s say you’ve got a bowl that’s broken and when you put it back together, you don’t try to hide the cracks. You actually work that into the. aesthetic of it by bringing that in. So maybe that’s also a way to think about things, you know things are, things are kind of broken right now in our country in a lot of things going on in the world.

But what if we can actually join things back together in a way that the joining of it isn’t, we don’t try to make that invisible, but that there’s some beauty in the repair.

Pema Rocker: That is beautiful itself, that concept. I, I, I’m thinking about this timeline again, creation and destruction on the level, on the level of a timeline. And it’s making some, making me think of something else we’ve talked about. So first of all, I’m gonna share this image. I also wanna give props to the people who tape their car bumpers together with duct tape and get to the next point they need to get to get to the job.

You know, I want to like that might not be that craft. But it’s possible that once they get to the job, something else comes of it, like the income or eventually enough of the income to get the next car or whatever it is that’s required to make it to the next level in the game of life, let’s say.

But from a timeline perspective, I was thinking about trauma and loss. That crack in the ceramic that you’re talking about, filling it with gold. Sometimes the trauma feels so painful and there’s, we’re just at such a loss. The only thing at hand is duct tape. There is no gold.

And, and yet we’re gonna use the duct tape if we need to. And I know that I, myself, I’ve come to know myself in my response to other people’s loss and traumas. I’m not exactly a triage person. I’m not exactly there immediately. Sometimes I am, depends on my availability, but usually my emotional availability is like, alright, I see that that person has a lot of people around them.

They have some resources. They don’t need me right now. And I don’t know how available I am to this level of trauma. But I do know that no matter what happens, I will typically come later after the emergency, you know, after a funeral, after everyone has left, I’ll come in and inquire and maybe even just enter the room and maybe just sit in the room in the silence where all of the voices have left and that makes me think that’s a little bit of duct tape too. But the longer we sit together. So I guess my, my initial point is we all come in at a different place on the timeline to support or to recreate, to tape the break back together or to redefine it entirely redefine the craft entirely, the object entirely. So yeah, we’re all on that. We all kind of respond from different places on the timeline. And I guess I wanna say that of creation to that. Like when I pair trauma and loss on the same spectrum or the same timeline as that, I think okay, eventually that glue that has held, held the break together with time and meaning and learning from being together, learning about each other, because we’ve been sitting together so long now, learning about what we need next because we’ve been seeing together what we don’t have anymore and how we want to go forward with what we can make, that feels like the gold in the crack. It feels like it. It turns into this gold that holds the crack together. So we are still carrying the brokenness, but we’re also carrying the kind of beautiful aspect of the healed part of it.

Tania Israel: Oh, that’s so great. That’s so great. You can put things back together with gold or duct tape. And I’m thinking, wow, this is, this conversation is just a choose your own metaphor conversation. So I’m going to, I’m gonna bring in one more, and I’m gonna take it back to those conversations at people’s doors in Hazelton. Because, you know, as I was sharing those stories on the last episode of the podcast,I was like, you know, I am just so imperfect at doing this. Having these conversations, I’m like, oh, I should have said this, or, you know, it, it’s very easy to, to afterwards feel like, oh, there’s this thing I should have done. But I was thinking, you know, at the door, they’ll give you a script, but I don’t, you know, I don’t think, I don’t, I don’t necessarily go with the script. I’m, I’m doing more improv, and I thought, well, that’s kind of what we’re all doing right now. We’re all just doing improv. We don’t know what’s gonna happen and so we are just responding to other people.

But bringing to that some skill and some presence. And one of the big rules of improv is that ‘Yes, and’ people.” So somebody says, oh, here we are in a spaceship. You don’t say, no, we’re on a boat. You know, you go with the space, you say, yes, look, I can see Mars up ahead. You know that you lean into the places where you can connect and build on where other people, what other people are offering and. So maybe in this moment that we have after the election, before the inauguration, when we’re all trying to figure out what are we doing with ourselves right now? Maybe we’re doing decoupage. Maybe we’re duct tape taping our bumper together. Maybe we’re all doing improv, but there are a lot of ways that we can bring our creativity and our presence and our connectedness. 

Tania Israel: I’m Tania Israel, professor, psychologist and author of Facing the Fracture. 

Pema Rocker: And I’m Pema Rocker, creative coach and author of Ash and Spirit. Make your choice.

Tania Israel: Are you ready to be strong?