Michael, Sarah, tell me about your vision.
Wow, you know, what I would love to see in the future
is a world where there's more love than hate.
And I think that all comes from people
just understanding each other.
And this image behind me is a place
that I spend a lot of time
in helping people understand each other,
and also to share kind of what happened
in our history here in the US.
And that is, you know, how we treated a group of people
because they look like somebody that we were at war with.
And the reason why I think this story is so important
is because I find ourselves repeating history.
And 80 years ago,
it happened to be Japanese and Japanese Americans.
Today, it's another ethnic group
that just happens to be doing something too well
or finding that, you know, they're in someone's way
for whatever reason,
or somebody that looks like them
happened to attack our country in a bad way.
And so everybody that looks like them,
they assume are like them.
And so they take advantage of that.
And that to me is really sad
because the US is made up of immigrants,
unless you're Native American.
And so we've all come from other countries.
It's just a matter of when.
And I think it's a lack of understanding each other
that creates this tension and this bias and prejudice
that I hope through communication, through understanding,
and through learning and talking to one another,
we can break these barriers down.
And that for my,
so that's really my hope and vision for the future
is that we'll have more love than hate.
Love that.
Awesome.
And now you're the board president
of the Japanese American Museum of San Jose
as part of your mission to help drive love forward.
And I gotta ask you,
where are you going with your vision?
So in other words,
what steps can people take to move towards that love?
There's a lot of ways that can happen.
I'll give one example.
And that is I'm a huge,
my favorite song right now is by Ed Sheeran.
And it's called, What Do I Know?
Most people have never heard that song before
because it's not radio popular.
But the essence of the song is,
love can change the world in a moment.
What do I know?
And that's the core theme is that it can change the world,
but what do I know?
I'm just a musician.
Right, so go ahead though.
Where are we going with this?
How do we help?
How do we prevent repeating history?
You know, I think it starts with education.
And so I spent a lot of time at the museum as a docent,
and I share this story with anybody
that's interested in hearing about it.
And so as we get visitors coming in,
you know, I share that story.
My day job takes me to Japan a lot.
And with that,
I have an opportunity to present
to a lot of university students.
And so when I'm there in country,
I will share the story with them.
And for me, it's important for them
to also understand that,
hey, this really happened
because a lot of times they never hear about this.
So that's one step.
And then of course, as visitors come to the area
and they come visit the museum,
then we share that story.
So it's just, again,
having people understand what happened,
because a lot of people don't even know this happened.
And it's just a shame for people not to know.
And then to understand why this happened,
and then to prevent it from happening again.
Yes, absolutely.
I'm trying to remember of the name of the movie
that I just watched a few weeks ago.
I don't know if it was Empire of the Sun,
or that's probably the wrong movie.
In it, this man gets engaged to a Japanese girl
and her family gets detained,
even though they're Japanese American.
And she's trying to influence
the person she got engaged to,
his father is one of the generals
and can try to help get them out or whatever.
And it was a very,
I like to absorb content like that.
It helps me understand the paradigm of time periods
that I can't really relate to,
or haven't been through myself.
There's another one about a boy,
can't remember what the name of the movie was,
or something about him being able to move a mountain.
But he ends up befriending an older,
I'll put this in the reference links,
but an older Japanese guy who is ostracized and hated
for no reason.
And the priest has sent him on a mission
to go befriend this outcast.
And it's a really neat story of helping people move
beyond the prejudice and understand who people are.
And yeah, it is education that allows us to get past that.
Yeah, I think it's just understanding and learning.
Because not understanding why people do certain things,
it's a shame, right?
But if you understand their culture
and why they do the things they do,
then you get a better understanding.
And I think a lot of times,
well, even here in the US, right?
Unless we go visit other countries,
we can't appreciate that because we just assume that,
hey, you're in America, so you should speak English.
But if you travel to their country
and you don't speak their language,
then all of a sudden things reverse
and now you know how they feel.
Right, exactly.
It is a challenge.
I lived in Uruguay for two years.
Oh, there you go.
That process, right?
Visiting Mexico was one thing.
Moving to Uruguay for two years,
moving amongst the people was,
especially as a recognized outsider,
you become a target to certain situations.
Exactly, right?
And then, so then you have more empathy, I think,
for people that come visit us here now
because you realize that,
hey, when you were in their country,
they were either nice to you or they weren't nice to you,
but how did you feel?
Yeah, I'll give an example of that.
We were on a park bench.
We decided it was a nice day.
One of the missionaries and I,
we decided to eat our meal at the park bench.
Next thing you know,
we got a group of young men surrounding us
that are giving us a hard time.
If you were like, Jesus says, give the clothes off your back.
You're not even willing to give us your food.
Some of them were getting ready to do things
and I'm wondering like, man, what are we doing in this situation?
At that point, I already spoke the language, right?
But one of my friends,
the day we got to the country, got held up at gunpoint
and he ended up getting hit by the holster of the gun,
you know, going into, you know,
having a concussion and all that, getting knocked out.
So when you're in that situation
where you can't tell who's your enemy,
who's your friend, right?
Are they looking at you and talking bad about you?
Or are they wondering, hey, you know,
who's that gringo over there?
Should we befriend him, right?
You know, should we go talk to him
and should we see if he needs help?
You know, you can't really tell
what somebody's saying in another language.
You gotta become really good at reading body language
and you also just sometimes have to suffer
the consequences of those realities.
So it is so hard and there's such an opportunity for us
as visionary leaders,
those of you who are listening in,
to make space for those who are different than you.
Just be safe, you know, while you do so.
Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, and then be, you know, have empathy, right?
Because you can find yourself in the same situation
and how would you feel, right?
If you put yourself in their shoes.
So, yeah.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.