Thank you. To be completely honest, this series
has been surprisingly heavy emotionally for me.
Surprising because I thought that I had worked
all this stuff out in therapy already, at least
to a large degree. But it's a reminder that our
experiences shape us in ways that will reverberate
through our lives. My therapist has been getting
a regular dose of the days after some of these.
episodes are being recorded when I realized there
was so much more pain or anger to process but
I hope that at least my stories can be of use
to you and as I said from the outset and I'm
very you know clear and I'm set on this right
one of the primary purposes of these episodes
was to try to give by way of my own examples
what it looks like to gain a deeper understanding
of yourself, to discover yourself, what you're
really about, why you are the way that you are,
why you pursue what you do in life. And it's
meant to help my students specifically in getting
a sense of the kind of introspection they'll
have to do to write personal statements for college
applications. Not that you're going to do something
exactly like this, but that you need to have
that sort of insight into yourself to get a good
personal statement out, but also to apply virtue
ethics, if you want it to be applicable in some
ways, to their own lives, right? And I stand
firm on that, right? I have no desire to trauma
dump on any of you. My own shit is my own, and
it's my responsibility, and it is for me to work
through, not for anyone else to carry. Nor do
I desire to connect with you, whoever it is that's
listening, in some deep way. Maybe you can relate
to some of the stories and that's fine, but I
don't want that to be the jumping off point to
some relationship with you, right? I'm not trying
to build anything deeper with you. Sorry, sorry
if that hurt your feelings, right? It might sound
harsh, but I just don't care about... you anonymous
person out there in that way, right? And I really
shouldn't. I think a danger for many teachers,
myself, I've fallen into this trap before, is
that, you know, they sometimes tend to cross
boundaries with students. They really shouldn't.
They tend to get more personally involved with
students when, you know, it's not their place
to do so. So I'll continue to be there for you
and whoever you are and for my students as a
resource. But we're not friends and I'm not your
parent and I'm definitely not your savior. So
don't bother looking for that in me. Rather,
I'd hope that these stories invite you to reflect
on your own life and to be able to tell your
own stories. Like I said, this was meant to kind
of just serve as an example so that you can do
the work yourself of figuring out how you want
to. share your story about where you're from,
where you're at, and where you'd like to go,
whether it's for personal statements, whether
it's to reflect on your life and to cultivate
some of these virtues, as Aristotle might say
it. It's like when I used to listen to Eminem,
I connected to his songs about hating his mom.
In my case, it was my dad at the time. I was
really hating my dad. And how much it sucked
being poor, definitely connected on that. But
I was never a stan, right? I never was like obsessed
with Eminem the person. What Eminem did for me
was allow me to be angry. Just like I had the
permission to be honest about my feelings, right?
To feel everything that I actually felt. To acknowledge
it and in acknowledging it, dealing with it,
right? Dealing with the pain, the anger, the
sadness that I was experiencing. And I just want
to give you the license to feel how you really
feel about your life experiences. And in doing
so, I'm hoping that you find authenticity and
maybe some healing for yourself. I can't tell
you how to tell or write your own story. What
I can tell you is this. It's your story. No one
else's. It doesn't matter if your story is captivating
or interesting or special in the eyes of others,
because it's not really for them. It's meant
for you. And I really want you to kind of hold
on to that, that the story you write for yourself,
it's for you, right? Yes, other people might
end up reading it, right? Let's say in a personal
statement, they might end up reading some things
about your life, but... The discovering the truth
about who you are and what you're about, right?
Like that's ultimately for you to better understand
yourself. And from that understanding, just start
being honest with yourself. And I'm not going
to lie. It's I said this with myself. I know
that it's a painful process because the truth
is that people, all people, I think. to a large
degree, have a kind of bias where they want to
protect themselves. And it makes a lot of sense.
It's yourself. But in protecting yourself, we've
created all these layers and shells and images
or labels that we put upon ourselves to define
who we are, right? These are some of the false
narratives that we write about our lives that...
you know, sometimes haunt us, it's not accurate,
right, but we perceive ourselves in a certain
way, we want to hold on to that perception, right,
I remember when I was taking psychology and learning
about this, right, that people don't actually
want the person that they like to view them in
a pristine way, right, they want others to view
themselves, like, they want other people to view,
view themselves as a view, view you, I should
say, as a as how you view yourself, right? Like
you want your self image to match what other
people see in you, right? So if you have all
these lies that you have about, you know, yourself,
like these images, these labels that you're holding
onto, like you're going to want to kind of protect
it, reinforce it, have other people affirm how
you view yourself. And so when that world shatters,
it's extremely painful. It's extremely painful
because once you shatter those images, those
facades, then you're left exposed. And that's
honestly like the scariest place to be, is to
be exposed. All I can say by way of advice, if
I am allowed to give any sort of advice, is just
to relay what my therapists, multiple therapists,
have repeated to me over the years, which is
to have grace on yourself. I made a lot of dumb
mistakes. And I'm not talking about like years
ago. I'm talking about recent past, like two
hours ago, right? We like to tell ourselves that
there's something we could have done differently.
But the reality is probably that you wouldn't
have done anything differently because you were
who you were at that moment and that time. And
you did exactly what you at that time would have
done. The best you can do now is to take those
experiences and figure out what you want to do
with it going forward. So I hope that this process
of maybe discovering or rediscovering yourself
and finding authenticity and being honest with
yourself so that you can have really accurate
information going forward. that in that process,
in that painful process, I would hope that you
don't look on yourself with judgment. And as
you take this journey, which I hope all of you
do, I hope that you find insight, healing, and
more than anything, lasting inner peace.