(Auto-generated)Welcome back, welcome back, you wonderful people who matter so much to me.
Hello very, very much. I'm WS Walker and when I sat down and really thought about it,
thank you for coming to my book reading. Sure, we may not be catching each other's
glances as I look up from the page. We may not have the sound of a busy Davis kid in
the background, but to me, a little bit, it feels like I got to read my book directly
to everyone that tunes into this, which I cannot tell you what a tremendously just wow
of a feeling that is. So if this episode sounds a little more directed at you in my tone than
before, then you only have yourself to blame for making me feel like that. How dare you.
Please, please continue to dare. Thank you for that feeling. That, uh, that'll be fuel.
So quick recap. We know to empty our cups in order to receive what's actually being
said. We know that we're really clever when it comes to communicating and sharing ideas
and expressing ourselves. And we know our nonverbal communications or body face movements
and wordless sounds. They're the primary form of expression when it comes to emotions. And
we learned that every emotion has its own set of pretty easily recognizable nonverbals,
except for one emotion, which is easily argued to be the most important one, love. Now I'm,
I'm sure some of you took guesses at it and it's difficult, isn't it? It's, it's like
there's this fog of confusing thoughts when you try to answer that one. So are you ready
to learn the answer to the riddle of the missing sound? No. No, you're not. Not yet. Look,
I would love to tell you what the answer is right now. Just lay it out, but I need to
pour a bit more into your cup before I can give you that, or it will not land where I
need it to land. It just, it won't have anywhere near the same impact. It needs to get you
through the punch in the gut that is chapter eight. That chapter is a giant reveal and
the seconders will know what I'm talking about. And you're going to need a run up to get through
that one. Now the chapter we're about to read is, is a bit of a departure from the topic
that we closed the last chapter with. It may seem disjointed, but I promise you, I'm building
the foundation of a structure that we can climb to the answer of the riddle and a whole
lot further. We're at the base of the pile. Let me show you the way up. Chapter two,
Cacophony and the Granddaddy Fear. Okay, so first let's acknowledge a not so simple truth.
This is a truth that can be pretty scary if you're not ready to hear it. The world that
we live our entire lives in is a conglomeration of every single decision made by every single
human being that ever lived. They slash we have shaped every aspect of tradition, society,
entertainment and knowledge. Whether we want it to or not, every single decision and indecision,
because choosing not to choose is still a choice, has an impact. And we as incredibly gifted as we
are as a species have nowhere near the site to understand the overall impact of any of those
decisions. Regardless, you make decisions and you get to be a part of the shaping of that world for
billions of other people. You, you matter so much. You are a part of so many lives that you'll never
even meet echoing out into the entire future of the human race. Now, we live in a very unique
position in dimensional space. We live fully in the first three dimensions of space being
three dimensional creatures. But we also exist within the most infinitesimally thin slice of
the fourth dimension, time. The word now describes a constantly moving position. Imagine all of time
at once like a giant sculpture and our position ever moving through it, marching forward and never
reversing its progress. If we lived as fully in the fourth dimension as we do in the first three,
we would see time all at once. We'd be able to move freely within it backwards, forwards,
fast or slow. But that's not the existence that was given to us. Either we're moving through it
at a consistent rate over which we have no control, or it's moving through us and we still have no
control. Either way, everything behind us is still there, left behind as we're pulled along,
but every bit is real as what is happening now. We call this position that we're stuck in the
present, the trail we leave behind, the past, and what has yet to be revealed from our position,
the future. And what is so very fascinating about that particular position is that we find
ourselves staring basically into a void ahead of us. A clear-cut path behind us, but no way of
seeing what the next moment holds for us and what decisions must be made. Is it danger? Is it good
fortune? And other people have free will as well, making decisions and who's to say they're not gonna
have their path come crashing into the routes you're taking, knocking you off balance. We are all
effectively blind pilots, but we are clever, and boy are we imaginative. We utilize our imaginations
in these instances, and fear is something that we live our lives by. Fear is what sets up most of
the guardrails that govern which paths we see as possible avenues that we can take in our day-to-day
life. As M. Night Shyamalan once stated, fear is an imaginary world that you build for yourself,
and that you live by way of its rules. But all fears, no matter what flavor they come in, they
all originate from that one source fear, the grand daddy of all fears, the fear of the unknown.
Think about it. You've never been afraid of something that's already happened, only that
it'll A. happen again, or B. that as a by-product, something else undesired will occur as a result.
Once something you were afraid of has occurred, the very moment that becomes seen and known,
we've ceased to fear it. In other words, say you live in a small village, and there's rumors of a
dragon in the area, and you're terrified that the dragon might discover your village, right? Well,
one day the dragon lands and discovers your village. The moment that this is known to you,
are you still scared that the dragon will discover your village? No, that's already done now. So then
your brain fills up quickly with the next offerings from our fear of the unknown. Will it eat us? Set
fire to our thatched rooftops? Crush us underfoot? Recite Vogue on poetry? And it doesn't matter if
the fear predicted the situation correctly last time, if it demands to be heard, it's gonna be
heard and it's gonna be felt. So much so that those that have let fear firmly take the steering wheel
in their life choices, they don't often feel as if they have a choice in the matter, and have a
tendency to feel trapped in their options for choices. And many of us are taught to give that
choice over to fear. And we've seen a lot of education centered around making sure that we
know that we cannot trust someone we haven't already vetted. It's a well established fact that human
beings have free will. And as a result, we're not going to always make the choice that's statistically
the most likely choice to be made. And to a mind that roots its actions in fear and probability of
outcome because it can't see past right this very second. This is a very, very real threat. Human
beings can't be predicted and how they may affect personally designed paths. Sure, we have rules and
consequences, laws and punishments to help increase the probability that people would hear to
certain behaviors, therefore increasing our ability to make accurate predictions about what
they're likely to do or not do. And we put up fences and door locks and security shutters to
make sure it stays that way. But we are a species that cannot thrive without one another. And so we
find ourselves at constant odds. Add to that that most are moving in pursuit of my own path, and it
should be an absolute emotional disaster for each of them, which it both is and isn't. But we'll get
to that. So point being for the moment, we fix our eyes heavily on probability and predictive
thinking as a way to see further than our position in time. But even the most astute of us can't
predict one 100 of the total impact one singular decision will have. We make educated guesses, but
we're trapped in a very limiting viewpoint. You see, our brains are typically somewhat faulty,
and accurately recording memories. And the future is an unknown, one on which we paint what we
predict and hope for, and one on which we project our fears in order to plan for what may come and
then start erecting our life's guide rails. And we soldier forth at a pace that we cannot choose,
completely blind to the paths and obstacles in those paths that are coming up. But humans adapt,
we can't see the future. So we build a way of life based on predictability and protection. Door
locks and work schedules, insurance and legal consequences. And one of the most necessary
components of this style of living is picking a path, choosing a path to call our own. In a system
of life that experiences time as we do, it's almost instinctual to design your plan and act
according to it. To paraphrase Donald Miller in his book Blue Like Jazz, I never actually thought
it and I never actually said it, but I damn sure acted as if I was the main character of this story.
Most of us move through this life believing ourselves to be the protagonist, and sometimes
treating the rest like the supporting cast. And of course you do. It's a story that you view in
first person, and you get to decide what your character does. If literature hasn't done it
enough, film and video games certainly cemented the idea that the character that we see the world
through the eyes of is the main character. We often become very focused in these plans,
however big, standard or small they may be. So much so that I believe the bulk of most people's
planning is done automatically, without giving it much thought at all. But you'll have quite a lot
of unpredictable obstacles in that path. I'll be referring to the plan that one plans for themselves
as my own plan from here on. Just a heads up. Now as I've already mentioned, we interact with each
other on a constant basis, and very little of those interactions are predictable. And if what
we choose to do, say or be affects someone else, it effectively alters their own personal experience,
their emotional state, or the paths that they now have available to them to choose from, which
similarly affects those that they interact with from there on and on and on it goes. And every
change and decision that you helped affect bears your signature. You are partially responsible for
all of them. Imagine one of those fireworks that fires the large bulb into the air that soon
explodes into several fist size burning balls. Now imagine each of those balls after a moment
explodes into several more of the same size bulbs that in turn explode into several more bulbs. And
imagine this continues forever. Each bulb is unique. Sometimes a bulb is a dud, and sometimes it
explodes into hundreds or thousands or even millions of bulbs. There is no way to predict
how each decision will explode or what harm or benefit it may bring. And with all this focus on
the paths we choose for ourselves, that kind of chaotic cacophony of cause and effect can be
terrifying. I use cacophony because that fireworks visual is representing just one single action and
decision from one person over 7.7 billion are adding to that fireworks show all the time. One
that approximately 101 billion people have already been contributing to. Anyone can affect you
without deliberately meaning to eliminating paths that you would like to take or denying things that
you would like to have for yourself. So what do we do? Well, this dichotomy between human beings
needing each other and the determination to minimize the world's random fireworks show effect
on our own chosen trajectory is dealt with by most people by reducing trust and by more broken
empathy than we'd ever feel comfortable copying to. We choose who we let in and how many of the
defenses we've erected both mentally and physically the chosen trusted people are allowed to pass
through. This often comes from a place of getting to know someone well enough that you feel you can
predict them enough to keep yourself out of harm's way. They show no patterns of them being
distrust worthy or dangerous to your path and so they can stay. And the more love that one has for
that person, the easier it is to trust them and vice versa. Even if we get hurt badly by a betrayal
of our trust, we are compelled to eventually get back out there and love and trust again. Why is
that? Well, put simply, we're compelled to love. It's one of, if not the, best feeling we are
capable of experiencing. The grandest and most motivating of motivations. And that's chapter three.
You know, I wanted to start including something at the end of these that people could easily skip
past if they aren't interested in hearing anything other than the book being read, but you know,
something fun I could offer. And then immediately after I had that thought, I had this idea. I was
actually typing out some stuff I wanted to go over at the end and came across another one of
those words that just universally, every time I try it, every time it just looks wrong. The spelling
of it just always looks wrong to me. And I know that that's something I share with a lot of people.
I know there's a lot of people out there that have that constantly plaguing their lives. Anyways,
I thought that I would share a new one every end of podcast, just as a fun little thing. And I guess
it's somewhat related. It's writing related. Yeah, that's a stretch. I'll share one of those each
time. And I was thinking, I, well, I'm not thinking I created a subreddit called r slash always looks
wrong. Yeah, no spaces and drop the one that just plagues your life in there and let go of it. Let
it let it go into the ether and let it be read over the airwaves. And I know, you know, the word
I'm talking about, it's the one that you go to spell and you're just no matter how many times
you learn it, you write it out and it just, it looks wrong. And then you go, you finally, you
tried a couple of ways and then you look it up and you're looking at the word and you're just like,
that can't be how they spell that. That doesn't look right. That's the kind of word I want from
you guys. And for today, I'm going to give you the one that has plagued me my entire life because I
swear, I want to swear so bad that I saw it at one point that I learned the spelling of it as L I S C
at some point, but the word is license and I don't know why, but it will always look wrong to me. I
gotta tell you, I am dying to hear which ones you guys have. Okay guys, so if you get a chance,
jump on our slash always looks wrong. Find out how many of us share your burden. And that's,
that's pretty much it for me. Thanks for coming to my reading. You can check out the YouTube
channel at youtube.com slash could help. You can contact the podcast that will help mail at gmail.com
I come talk about this stuff, ask questions, hear what others think at our slash the laughing matters
on Reddit. And you can stay up to date with the show's Facebook page of facebook.com slash I could
help. So go get out there and send out some fireworks that just keep bursting. Be sweet. Bye everybody.