Joel Triska

00:01 Okay. My name is Poonam Dubal, 38 years old. Today is August 14, the day after Joel Triska's 46th birthday. And I'm speaking with Joel Triska, who is my partner. And we are recording in Dallas, Texas, in the room of requirement of our house. So, Joel, I'm excited to do this and to celebrate your birthday in this way.

00:34 Thanks, baby.

00:37 So I want to start off just sort of at the beginning. Tell me a little bit about where you grew up and your childhood, what it was like.

00:46 Hmm. Well, I spent the first 24 years of my life in the Tulsa area. I was born in a hospital in downtown Tulsa, and I grew up in a suburb called Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, which is a pretty big suburb. It's like the third largest city in Oklahoma, which is not that hard. But I grew up in this suburb of Tulsa, which is. It's just I always have to remind people Oklahoma is not. It's like, one of the youngest states in the country.

01:26 I always forget that.

01:28 It's like, one of the last states that got on the quarters right. Right before Alaska and Hawaii was Oklahoma, which was just this gaping hole in the map, the US, where the trail of tears ended for most of most of the country's history. So, yikes. What that boils down to is it's a country that doesn't have a whole lot of culture. There's quite a bit of business that happened, the early 19 hundreds with oil boom and quite a bit of, like, crazy racism that happened with black Wall street and all that. But I didn't learn about any of that, really. I just grew up in a. What felt like this is a normal white suburb. I think I graduated. I went to schools with very few black kids and almost no Hispanics. So now living in Texas, it's just like. It's like a third, a third, a third. And so, looking back, I just. It's very interesting, looking back on my upbringing and how normal it felt. Kind of had that feeling of just, you know, a suburb where there's lots of, like, decent schools, really good sports programs. I played a lot of sports growing up, basketball, football, but mostly baseball and a lot of golf. And so, yeah, it was. It was fun, it was safe. It was not a lot of exposure to outside ideas and people.

03:01 Interesting.

03:02 Yeah.

03:03 So tell me next a little bit about your parents and their families. So where's your mom's family from? Your dad's family? What do you know of your grandparents, if anything?

03:15 I've always said that I look very, you know, if you look at my life. What I just kind of talked about growing up. It looks very vanilla.

03:22 Uh huh.

03:23 But you scratch the surface and you start to get. It's my life. My family starts to get interesting real fast. So my mom grew up in New York, and my dad grew up in LA, in California. So they lived on opposite sides of the country. Both went to college and Tulsa area and settled down there. So that's how I ended up there. My mom's family were. Her parents were first generation norwegian immigrants, and so she grew up in a home that was pretty, you know, semi religious. Methodists. They're Methodists. Up there in the northeast. There's a lot of Catholics. And so if you're not Catholic, Methodism was the primary thing. Lutheranism up there as well. But my mom was the fourth of five children, and there was a lot of mental health issues, substance abuse issues in with her siblings and things of that nature. And so she goes out to college and gets her degree in art and becomes an art teacher. My dad grows up in California with his japanese mom and his father, who was from Arkansas, who was stationed over Japan, and they got married and moved over to LA. And then my dad's dad disappeared when. When he was less than three years old. I can't remember how old he was exactly. And he ended up getting, you know, because his mom was not really into raising a child.

04:58 Well, she had a really traumatic past.

05:01 Well, yeah, she's a survivor of the Nagasaki bombing. So again, like I said, he scratched the surface of my life. It's interesting real quick. And my dad ended up being raised by his great aunt and uncle, his missing father's side of the family, who happened to also live in LA. So he kind of grew up in his own, like, not belonging to anyone fully world, but forced his way through life, the sports. Was a phenomenal athlete. Drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers out of high school.

05:36 Mm hmm.

05:39 Signed on for to get, like, a scholarship to USC, University of Southern California. But the last minute changed to go to this new christian college in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Roberts University. And so that's where my parents met, and that's where I was born.

05:56 Love it. So tell me if you can think of one, one of your happiest childhood memories and then maybe one of your hardest childhood memories.

06:06 Hmm. Happiest childhood memories. I would have to say that it was probably around sports. We played a lot of sports. We were a family that was constantly at practices and games and tournaments. And I can remember when I was 13, started pitching on my team. I was I was kind of a late bloomer. I was not a very big kid, and. But even though I couldn't throw the ball fast, like, it was very accurate, which is very important when you're 13 or 14. And I could throw, like, curveballs and knuckleballs and things like that. And I remember just slowly, over time, my team began to kind of see me as this very reliable pitcher. And I remember coming in against a team that was just as good, maybe better than us. We played a really good baseball team, and they were one of our rivals in the city. And they brought me in at the end, and I got the, quote, unquote, what's called a save, meaning we were leading and I pitched and we ended up winning the game at the end. And they compared me to a very famous baseball player at the time for the Oakland A's called Dennis Eckersley. And so I just remember just feeling so, like, proud.

07:29 On top of the world.

07:30 Yeah. It was amazing feeling. Being 13 and having your peers admire you was a good feeling, especially when it wasn't, like, normal. I was just kind of blended into the mix of things, kind of guy.

07:45 That is a great memory. What about a memory that is more difficult or maybe even a worst memory?

07:51 Mmm. Difficult. Difficult. I remember when I was in 6th grade, I had a girlfriend.

08:02 I don't think I know about her.

08:03 This is quote unquote, her name is Jessica, okay? And, yeah, it's still Jessica. She. But I came home from a baseball game late at night, and there was a birthday party held at a friend's house that I happened to live on the other side of the cul de sac where I lived. One of my best friends at the time, his name is Tom. Still is. Tom also had a girlfriend, and those two girls were friends, and they were both at this party. So I get there late to the party, and everyone's like, joel, Joel, you gotta come to the back. You know. You know, Tom and Misty already did the. Whatever they called it, like truth or dare. 7th minutes to heaven. I don't remember what they called it. I was so confused. But before I knew it, like, within three minutes of getting to this party, I'm still wearing my baseball uniform, and I had taken off my metal cleats so that I could, like, walk in the house. And also I'm out in the backyard, in this dark corner of the backyard by the fence. But Jessica, whom we, you know, we were, quote unquote, going out with each other in 6th grade.

09:06 What does that mean?

09:07 In 6th grade, we maybe hold hand held hands at the time. And we're back there, and I just remember closing my eyes and puckering my lips and then got felt that kiss on my cheek. And then I opened my eyes and she kind of laughed. So I think it was just kind of one of those moments where she was like, I'm not ready for this, or, uh. And. But that night, my friend Tom spent the night at my house. He just gushed the whole night about making out with his girlfriend. And I was just like, what's wrong with me? It was a. I look back on it kind of fondly and laughing now, sure. But in that moment when you're this insecure little 6th grader, I just remember it feeling like the world had just crumpled on me.

09:45 Oh, my gosh. Thank you for sharing that.

09:48 Yeah.

09:51 Tell me about a time in your life, and it can be, you know, as a kid or as an adult, where you felt the most lonely.

10:00 The most lonely? Hmm. Probably when I was in 10th grade, somewhere between 9th grade, 9th grade was the year, that's the year I started getting more involved with my youth group and kind of was diverging paths with several of the people that I considered friends, like in middle school. And looking back now as an adult, I interpret these things differently. But at the time, my little 15 year old brain was like, oh, I have these friends who are getting into, like, parties, partying. That's what I perceived it to be, experimenting with alcohol and girls and parties. And I was going this other route of just this almost puritanical religion, which I don't regret, but it just. I do remember feeling like I was alone, like I was losing friends, that I kind of lost sense of my grounding my identity because I was no longer connected with these people. I went to a intermediate high school that was 9th and 10th grade. It was much larger. So you just generally feel like you are a little more invisible. And so I just remember feeling like I was going down a different path that was diverging from all the friends I had. And that was a lonely year.

11:30 Hmm. Yeah, I can imagine. Especially at that age, we're so relational and the social circle matters so much, and so something like that could rock your world.

11:41 Yeah, I was in between tribes, so to speak. I later established a new tribe with my church youth group, but I was in between tribes.

11:51 So when you were a kid or an adolescent, what did you think your life would be like when you were older? And has it turned out differently?

12:02 Can you repeat that again?

12:04 Yeah. What did you think your life would be like when you were older, as a child, when you were imagining. And has it turned out differently?

12:12 Yeah. Up until I was almost a senior in high school, I hadn't really. I wasn't the kind of kid that had huge, like, really sit down and imagine what I'm gonna do or be with my life when I was younger is, oh, I'm gonna be a professional baseball player. You know, these kinds of, like, dreams that you don't really, they're not practical in any way. I didn't think about them practically. And so I think the first conclusion I came to when I started having to, like, really think about college was, oh, I'm gonna be an architect. And I came to that just simply by going, oh, I'm good at art and math. So it wasn't like, it wasn't a mad imagining of what I'm gonna be when I grow up. And mostly, I think I was just holding on to bits and pieces of stories of what everyone expected, whether they were my parents or people in my church or just cultural culture in general, things that I saw on tv and commercials. I don't know that I ever really thought about it and certainly didn't imagine myself to be going down a route of the religion and becoming a pastor one day.

13:25 Hmm. Wow. And clearly, you did go on to become a pastor and then are no longer a pastor.

13:34 So, yes, that was a long season, and it is no longer the season I'm in.

13:42 So when you think back on your life thus far, what do you feel most grateful for?

13:53 My life thus far? I am grateful for several things that have all deeply contributed to who I am today. My family is one, and I've only begun to appreciate them more and more over the years. I went through a divorce several years ago, and they really showed up for me there in ways that were just. I highlighted how they've always showed up for me. It wasn't like new behavior, it was just behavior that was like, oh, wow, this is who they really are. And now they're showing up in, you know, greater ways along the way. I've had mentors in my life that met me where I was at at the time, and they encouraged me. They believed in me. They saw things in me that I didn't see in myself. And while I don't now, I'm 46, these individuals, I don't believe and think the same way that they do now, but I did then, and that was really helpful for me to feel like I had a path in front of me that someone had already walked on. And so that. That's kind of comforting.

15:13 Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And is there a person who stands out in your mind as being one of the kindest, or is there a moment that you can think of where someone just showed up for you and just such a kind way?

15:31 Sure. I could list. I could take the rest of our time, probably talking about memories.

15:38 Tell me the most impactful one as you remember it now.

15:42 My second girlfriend was when I was a senior in high school. Her name was Mandy. Still is Mandy.

15:52 Some things don't change.

15:53 Some things don't change.

15:54 Yes.

15:55 And we had broken up when I got to college, and I was still very involved in the youth group and the youth pastor at the time. His name is Kelly. It was Kelly as well, and still is Kelly. And. But I remember sitting in his office and just telling him about it and just being so upset because we kind of broke up. Not for. Not because we're mad at each other or any. There was no negative. It was just kind of like, if you think back to high school and college age, there's this idea that gets into. People are dating, like, are we gonna get married? And that was, like, one of those premature ideas that neither of us probably should have been considering, but you didn't know how not to. And I think we just kind of over spiritualized that and believed that we weren't. And so we got. We broke up, even though we both stayed, still liked each other, maybe even loved each other. And so it was very confusing. I was dealing with feelings of grief and confusion that I don't think I had ever experienced up until that point. I'm sitting in the office with my youth pastor, Kelly, and he's one of his. One of the leading volunteers in the youth group at the time. He's just kind of. And I remember, and he said he was gonna pray for me, you know, and he prayed for me, put his hands on my shoulder. We both bowed our heads. He prayed for me, and it was just. It was excruciating for me. I just felt really, really sad and confused. And after the prayer, I looked up, and he had tears in his eyes, and it was clear he was just empathizing with me and feeling my feelings.

17:43 Wow.

17:44 With me. And that was. That's really powerful.

17:47 Oh, my gosh. That's so beautiful.

17:49 Yeah.

17:50 Thank you for sharing that. You've kind of talked a little bit about this, but tell me about the role that religion played in your life growing up.

18:03 So I grew up in a pentecostal church, one of the largest denominations of Pentecostalism in the world, assemblies of goddess. I didn't know what that was growing up in that church. I didn't know what Pentecostalism was and how that was distinct from other christians. I just knew I was a Christian. And I grew up in a church that emphasized healings, miracles, very boisterous and worship and movement, lifting hands and speaking in tongues and these kind of charismatic gifts. I really didn't know. That didn't happen at every church, but that's the church. I think my parents started going there when I was one or two, and I kept going to that church all the way through college and then became the youth pastor at that church for three years.

18:53 Wow.

18:54 After I graduated from college, I was youth pastor there for three years. And that really, religion really kind of stuck with me big time with my 10th grade year, 9th, 10th grade years when I started like shifting and deciding this is kind of my, gonna be the route, I go, sure, this is who I am. And, you know, I look back, I think it's kind of like the purer story of that is just being, feeling like a call towards, you know, life and love and dedication, devotion, these sorts of things. But the shadow side of that is it was egoic as well. There was a part of me that got little hits on feeling like I was right and others were wrong, that I was going to heaven and others were going to hell and I was morally superior. These weren't things I think I would have named out loud. But there's something about that when you're, especially when you're adolescent, that just kind of helps you feel better about making decisions that aren't socially popular.

20:03 Absolutely. And if I remember correctly, you were a teenager who carried a Bible around.

20:10 I decided my sophomore year that I was going to carry my Bible out, not put in my backpack. I was going to carry it around out where everyone could see it. And I did that my 10th grade, 11th grade and 12th grade year every day.

20:25 Wow.

20:26 Every day.

20:27 So, you know, keeping that in mind, kind of on one hand, what, what kind of role does religion or just spirituality play in your life now? What does it mean to you?

20:42 Well, it's so deep in my DNA. I have two degrees studying the Bible and some people, because most people have not gone to an academic route of religion, they don't know. You're also taking a lot of other courses on spiritual practices, history. I went to seminary and studied original languages and culture and just how religion has expressed itself through other countries throughout history and even today. And so to me, it has always been kind of this megaphone. I started on the small side of the megaphone, and it's just been slowly expanding over time as I've become more aware of how other people who are not like me, who call themselves christians, see things and think about things and then finding other people who follow other religious paths, have similar views, at times, sometimes very different views, but still maybe interesting or compelling, running into even atheists who I find some of their views even compelling. So for me, it has been, the phrase I heard years ago was transduced, transcend and include, which is to transcend where I was, but also to include where I was. Not to dismiss it or let go of it, but to integrate it. And so I see religion, generally speaking, religion is trying to codify mystery, to put it in a box, to name it, to describe it, and then to proliferated through people. And I find that I've let go that over time. Even when I was a pastor, that was something I was pushing against. Nowadays, I still see the values of it, but I see very clearly, just as clearly as I see the values. I see the shadow sides, and I see that the areas where it does it, it hurts individuals and in, like, hurts society with some of the things it promotes and unquestionably accepts.

23:06 Yeah. So what are your thoughts on God? Tell me all your thoughts on God.

23:18 So I still call myself a Christian, even though 25 year old Joel, youth pastor Joel might be horrified by the way I see things now. Not horrified, just sad, probably.

23:34 Maybe judging.

23:35 Maybe judging even because it was even Joel ten years ago, might be very uncomfortable. But there's a component when you're a pastor and you're pastoring a community, you can only. I could, I felt like I could only let myself really imagine spirituality to a certain degree. Because if I started, like, going over certain lines, getting too inclusive and too open, then it was hard for me to authentically show up for the job people expected me to do.

24:10 Huh.

24:11 And then it begins to impact your livelihood, impacts the world you have and the friendships and that, you know, all of that you have. And so when I got divorced and then resigned my spirit, all these things that I wanted to pursue, I felt like I just, it was almost like I was walking with this ball and chain behind me that was just kind of like holding me back, like, careful. Don't go too fast, Joel. Don't go too fast. You're gonna. You're gonna mess up your life. And when it all messed up anyways, I just let go of the chain, and I just began to sprint. And so the way I view God now is through. Through the eyes of a mystic. I am a big fan of science. I'm very skeptical by nature, but I also know there's a lot of things we don't know. Even the most brilliant of scientists, the scientists that I love to listen to, are the ones who own the limitations of our knowledge. And I don't believe in traditional doctrines that I was taught as a. As a kid or even in undergrad and seminary, like heaven, hell, atonement, these kinds of classic traditional christian doctrines, original sin.

25:26 Yeah.

25:27 I do not believe in these things, but I do see, there is a. There is something. I'm not even willing to say someone anymore, but there is something that holds all of this together. Whatever that mystery is. I'm comfortable with calling it God, but I'm also comfortable with saying universe or energy. What. Whatever it is. We don't have actual words, in my opinion, that could really describe it.

25:53 Sure. On another very kind of serious, important note, tell me your thoughts on poop jokes.

26:04 I absolutely adore them. As I, when I was a pastor, was kind of known for poop jokes. I intentionally worked them in. Yeah, I even did, like, a podcast one time where I was, like, a pastoral defense of poop jokes because some people were very judgy of it. They thought it was adolescent, or they thought, I'm just like, you guys take yourself too seriously. Or some people got grossed out by it, and I'm just like, you guys. You guys need to, like. Except being humans. Everyone poops.

26:34 They wrote a kids book about it.

26:36 So, yeah, everyone poops. I think poop jokes are the best. But I also was, like, known for constantly referencing Harry Potter in my sermons or CS Lewis. I quoted CS Lewis a lot when I was a pastor as well. But, yeah, I think poop jokes are a great way to help people, like, laugh, be in the moment, but also to help people go like, this guy's not taking himself too seriously. My favorite value of spirituality is humility. I can't stand it when there's someone who's a quote unquote leader or spiritual leader, especially, who doesn't embody humility. To me, it's just like that spirituality is not worth paying attention to.

27:19 Hmm. That's powerful. That's really powerful. I wonder how things would be different in many of our kind of religious and spiritual practices if more people held that belief. So, tell me a little bit about the journey of raising your two daughters. Now, how are two daughters yeah.

27:45 Selah was born in 2008, and she is now 16. Haythen was born in 2011. Yes. And she is now 13. And, yeah, when they were little, it was interesting, you know, their mom and I were pastors together, and so we. We were not making a whole lot of money in that job, and we did not have a lot of options for, like, daycare and babysitting and those sorts of things. We didn't live by a lot, any family. So we would have, each of us would take our day off somewhere in the middle of the week, usually Tuesday or Thursday, so that we could bring them to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Mother's Day out program that we found. But it meant that I got to spend a lot of time with them when they were little. And I prided myself on having more egalitarian views with gender roles in the home. I didn't see myself as the breadwinner or the head of the household, those kinds of old tropes that are patriarchal. I saw myself as a loving father. That's my goal, just to be present and loving father. And so I loved hanging out with them when they were little. I have such fond memories of being there for them, cooking them pancakes in the morning, laying down with them at bed at night, singing them lullabies and praying with them, getting my guitar out, singing songs. Obviously, when we went through. When our family went through a divorce, that changed a lot of things for me and theme.

29:28 Yeah.

29:28 And that was, it was hard to get through. But I also feel like in some ways, it just was great lessons for all three of us about the nature of life. Life changes. Life brings things to us that aren't always welcome to us at the time. But I choose to believe that everything that life throws at us can be leveraged for good. But it just means are we ready to see things in a way that's not rooted in our fear and insecurity? And that's really hard to ask of children.

30:04 Yeah.

30:04 In fact, I don't ask of it, but I did ask of it of myself. And so that meant that I was there for them during that time. And now that we are, you know, this new family, I feel. I feel grateful for that time period of. Of us trying to, like, figure things out together.

30:30 Mm hmm.

30:31 And now we have, like, a new normal, a new way of modus operandi of being. And they are both teenagers and much more complicated than the. The sweet little five and six year olds who just want juice and chocolate. And chocolate.

30:51 They still want chocolate, though.

30:52 Yeah. And will fight to go to bed but can't fight too long because they need lots of sleep and they end up falling asleep at 730.

31:01 So yeah, certainly that is sweet. So for any future generations of your family listening to this years from now, what wisdom would you want to pass on to them? What would you want them to know?

31:21 I mean that is a huge question.

31:25 It is. Give me your like top three.

31:29 Top three life lessons. Life lessons. Maybe I go deep and I go quick deep, quickly deep. I am not going to just say, hey, look both ways before you cross the street or you know, save your money or those all sorts of things are external to me. I think the greatest adventures of life are internal.

31:51 Mm hmm.

31:51 That we focusing on what we can control. And one of them, I think one of the great lessons of life is that I am a always generating my own experience of things. The stories that I tell about things that I see, feel or whatever are creating my internal experience, emotionally and sometimes physically even as well.

32:25 Yeah.

32:25 Because those are all connected. So that's one that it's basically a lesson of responsibility. I am responsible. I'm never not responsible for how I'm thinking, feeling and kind of existing. That isn't to say that I can make things go away, but I can say like I'm going to add, I can like what Buddha calls the second arrow. If someone punches me in the stomach, that's going to hurt and take, knock the wind out of me. But if I start then to add on to that, like this person hates me and I must not be a good person. That's the second arrow. And I've added psychological misery to that. So I'm generating that experience. Another one would be that there's a difference between fault and responsibility. I'm not always to blame for things, but I can be responsible for them. That's taking me a long time to get there.

33:23 That's a really, it's got a lot of nuance to it and it's, I think, hard for most people.

33:30 Yeah.

33:31 To even try to begin to understand or access.

33:34 Yeah, I agree. It took me years to get there. I resisted it. And, you know, spiritually speaking, I would say that's my ego that was resisting it. Egos think in terms of dichotomies, black and white, right and wrong, true and false, but very few things in this existence fit cleanly into those buckets. Sure, most things are shades of gray. And so while I, while it's taken me a long time to get here, it's so powerful and freeing to know that I can be responsible for things without being taking blame for other people not liking me or other people blaming me, or other people having whatever opinions they may have. As a recovering people pleaser, I definitely. That's a lesson that's been very freeing for me. Lastly, I would just say, like, the greatest thing about this life that I know of is love. And I grew up in religion, and there's a lot of religion that speaks about, you know, unknowingly heralds the ego and loves to talk about God's wrath or punishment or hell or guilt and shame and all these sorts of things which are psychologically normal things for humans to experience, but religion has made them, like, given them a normality, and saying, you're supposed to feel these things, and I would argue that these are all. That's folly. It's not. It's not true. It serves certain religious stories. It does not serve people's well being.

35:15 Thank you for sharing this. What about wisdom that you've learned from relationships? What wisdom do you have to pass on about love?

35:31 Hmm? Wisdom to pass on about love that if love has conditions, it's not love anymore. Like, love in its nature is unconditional. You know, I remember hearing about that when I was a kid, that God's love is unconditional, but there were a lot of conditions that I heard that I needed to follow and do and be in order to be approved of.

36:05 Right.

36:06 And it took me a while, a long while to realize, oh, the love that I was taught isn't love. It's not love at all. It's kind of just. It's very conditional and has a lot of strings attached to it, and I don't think it's right to call that love. And so in relationships, when I find those conditions creeping up on me, I have to take responsibility for that. Like, these are. It's usually, you know, my brain's working a certain way. I might, you know, hear you sit in front of me. If there's things that you're doing, saying or. Or expressing to me that I find uncomfortable or I don't see, see the same way. There's all parts of me that can come up and be judgmental about it, to create conflict about it, and I create an experience from a generated experience for myself or feels like we're not as close as we were. And it's taken me time just to realize, oh, these are artificial, they're not true, they're not real. They're just psychological ways that my ego is trying to, like, protect my insecurities.

37:13 Mm. Hmm.

37:14 And so learning to see that in real time. But the North Star here is just to focus on what does love look like here? That's very helpful for me when I'm in a space where I'm kind of spiraling or might fuzzy. I'm not seeing clearly. I might say, like, what is unconditional love? Look right here. Look like here. It's like, stop fucking trying to protect yourself here and defend yourself. That's usually what the space I get to. I'm like, no. I love my partner. I love my kids. I love my friends. Even when they are not acting in ways that it serves me. Love doesn't mean I have to trust them. Some of my friends have proven to not be trustworthy, and those relationships have shifted and changed over time. But I want to be the kind of person that even when I don't trust someone, I still have the capacity to love them. That's. That's one of the things that I want to be true about me.

38:16 That's beautiful. I've seen that. I've seen that very much in you. So tell me very briefly just a little bit about how we met from your perspective.

38:31 Oh, from my perspective, huh?

38:33 Yeah. It's not that different from my perspective.

38:37 Well, it was. I was in the middle of going through my divorce, and we had a think. I had a couple more months before it was finalized. It took eight months to go through that. But at some point, I tried to get on dating apps.

38:53 Mm hmm.

38:54 You know this story? I was on there for 24 hours, max. I got on one called bumble, which I had. I didn't know anything about dating apps, but this was the one where women get to, like, initiate.

39:07 Yeah.

39:07 That at least felt less creepy to me. Like some toxic male out there just trying to, like, bang a bunch of girls that I didn't know. Right. At least they get to initiate it. Yeah. Just the process of creating a bio, picking people pictures, and just how much I got into my head about that. That stupid sliding scale of, like, what's the age I want, like, how far to the right? How far to the left? When do I become weird? It was not comfortable. And then I just was, like, trying, you know, looking at other profiles, swiping and doing that whole thing, and it just felt so dehumanizing to me. I'm turning human beings into brief glimpses.

39:53 Yeah.

39:54 In judgments.

39:55 It's very reductionist.

39:56 It was super reductionist. And I think I had one match. Someone reached out to me and just said something very innocuous, like, how you doing? And I think we had, like, one or two interactions.

40:07 Uh huh.

40:08 And at some point, I ran across a profile that really disturbed me because I was just like, oh, I know them, and I don't want them to know that I'm doing this. So I deleted all the apps. And shortly I say, God talks to me in patterns. So you and I met at mayor, Star Council, the civic organization. But it was, like, 2016 ish right.

40:35 Around that time, I think so, yeah.

40:37 And we were on the same committee together, obviously, we were both married at the time, had no intentions of getting divorced, so there was no, like, romantic connection between us. But I knew who you were and thought you were pretty and impressive. And somewhere along the lines, just because we're in similar circles of non profits in Dallas area, I knew you got divorced. And then a friend of mine mentioned you because he had a connection with you, with some work he did. And he said, yeah, Poonam is over here dropping off some, like, drums. I think he donated. Then I randomly saw you on Facebook. Like, I don't usually look at my feed, and I saw you doing something, and I just remember something in my mind just started to connect. Go, like, why am I seeing poonam so much now? And at the time, I was having these really cool parties at my house with a bunch of guys just trying to, like, continue to. To surround myself with strength and friendship and connectivity. And so we'd have these parties in my backyard at this little house I was renting. And I began to realize, man, I really need some feminine energy in my life that isn't my mom.

41:50 Yeah, your mom is wonderful.

41:53 My mom is wonderful, but she can't fill that whole bucket. And I did not have, like, any kind of romantic or sexual intentions, but I reached out to you wanting to connect with you. I had a very good pretense reason. I was like, I was looking into some meditation. I knew you had done this meditation vip pasta many times, so I was going to ask you about it.

42:17 Sure.

42:18 But I just wanted to have a lunch with a pretty woman and just have intelligent conversation. And then in that first lunch you put together, I was going through a divorce. And we both kind of talk very openly. I think I just appreciate people that are. Have. Are comfortable going deep, quick, and have a high tolerance for vulnerability and authenticity. And so you shared with me all these essays that you had written previously, maybe a year before, because you got divorced two years before I did. And it was like a 200 plus page PDF. And I devoured those, and I think I, from that point on, I was pursuing you.

43:03 Mm hmm.

43:04 Yeah.

43:05 That is mostly how I remember it, too. So.

43:10 Tithing.

43:13 So we have just a couple minutes left. Any. Any final thoughts? What gives you life right now? What gives you hope? Any final things you want to share?

43:28 I feel like I'm in, you know, my getting to my later forties. Now I'm in this stage of life where I've always wanted to contribute to the world, to society. I think a lot about culture. I think a lot about ethics. I think a lot about zoomed out perspectives of what, you know, the evolution of us as a human, as a species. And there are a lot of concerning things that I see. But I've studied a lot of history, too, and I know that every generation has people who are concerned about the human nature and what's happening. And so I try to, I think right now I'm just rooting myself in the slow, steady evolution of humankind, and I want to be part of that. I have hope because I know light and love change things. They do. I've seen them change individuals. So with enough seeds sown, I hope to contribute to the evolution of our species.

44:35 Hmm. May it be so. Thank you for sharing yourself.

44:41 Yeah.

44:41 Love you.

44:42 I love you too. Bye.