July 1, 2024 • 37 mins
Dawn Bulchandani is a speaker, writer, and PhD student with three master's degrees (yep, you read that right). She’s currently taking a hiatus from her PHD to focus her efforts on advocating for Gaza. Part of that advocacy includes her passion- leading people from the micro of self-connection to the macro of social change.
Join this inspiring convo to explore how we lose connection with ourselves and how we can return to our humanity. From humming in the grocery store, to sitting on the roof, we ponder the moments that may help us reconnect with ourselves. Does living our fullest, wildest life also create a more equitable world?
Let’s push the envelope and find out.
To hear more about Dawn’s advocacy work, find her on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dawnbulchandani
Music- Blue Dot Sessions: Heartland Flyer Felt Lining Inessential Brass Buttons In the Box
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I just wrapped up recording podcast with someone.
And so here I am on the swing outside.
I wanted to remind everybody, when there is a machine that is dehumanizing people en masse,
daring to in some way rationalize the killing of people en masse,
(00:21):
hold tightly to your own humanity and hold tightly to the humanity of others.
And speak up where you see dehumanization.
Follow your integrity. Follow your compassion. Be brave.
There is a new world ever waiting to be born.
And part of that world wants to be born through you.
(00:45):
Music.
This is the Abbey Normal Podcast. podcast, here to tell you that you're weird and that's normal.
I mean, it's interesting because I think it got a lot more philosophical than I anticipated.
Music.
(01:11):
Today, we get to talk to Dawn, who you heard at the beginning reflecting on this interview.
If you're a regular listener, then you need to know this is a new Dawn,
not Dawn of the Haunted House.
I met today's Dawn in eighth grade on an Odyssey of the Mind team.
So if you're not familiar, Odyssey is a competition for dorks where wit and
out-of-the-box thinking are rewarded.
(01:31):
Dawn comes off as serious, one of those old soul types with the biggest,
bluest eyes you've ever seen.
But I discovered at age 12 that quiet Dawn is not always quiet.
She's sharp, smart, and funny. I haven't seen her for many years,
but when I heard about her work, I thought you all might be interested in this
brand of weird and what she's doing with it.
(01:55):
Hello, my name is Dawn Bolchandani, and I am a speaker, writer, and PhD student.
I also have three master's degrees.
One is in religion, one is in counseling, and one is in Middle Eastern cultures and religions.
(02:16):
I also lived in Israel and Palestine for a total of three years.
So I was in Jerusalem for one year and then Bethlehem for two years,
which is in the West Bank.
She's been working on a PhD in embodied validation, as well as developing a
cohort program called WITH, Walk in Trauma Healing.
(02:37):
I decided to focus on what was just going to be a part of that,
which is 30 days to self-connection.
I'm going to do audios eventually for every day, but I could send you what those
30 points are, and maybe it would just even give you like a helpful reflection
point toward whatever end.
She knows I feel disconnected from my body, so maybe this is a tool to help me.
(03:01):
I went to her website, Dawn Bolch and Donnie, and she's got info about herself
there, and I think it would be helpful to share it. Here's what she says.
I was around seven years old when I remember first telling myself something
like, you have to stay with yourself, Dawn.
You can't let this stuff around you convince you to be someone different or
play along with things you don't agree with.
(03:23):
I honestly don't know exactly where that conviction came from,
but what I do know is it was that conviction that held me afloat through years
of immense pain and pressure to self-abandon.
It was a thin but strong string that tethered me through almost a decade of
depression and intermittent suicidal ideation as a kid.
As an adult, that string was there when I made big decisions that my environment did not understand.
(03:47):
It was there. I was there with myself.
It's not that I did it all perfectly or had it all figured out,
but I did have that strong string holding me to me.
So basically, the program is about getting back to or growing that string.
She asks the question, how do we get self-separate? And then offers the antidote,
(04:10):
how do we develop and keep self-closeness? What does it mean to be self-close?
So I asked Dawn about the program and what she was excited about.
Like, do you want to talk more about that and share what that's about?
So that is also on hold.
I decided not to launch the WITH community, which was really because I wanted
to focus on advocacy for Gaza. Okay.
(04:34):
She paused both the WITH program and her PhD dissertation.
But her work in this area hasn't stopped. It's just shifted to the area of most urgent attention.
In the grand scheme of things, my PhD and the timing of my completion is not
as important as what I can contribute toward advocacy for Gaza.
(04:56):
And what that really looks like for me has been getting more connected with
some peace building organizations, doing some brainstorming with them.
And then naturally, just as it's come up with various speaking engagements I've
had, touching on it where appropriate.
And in the immediate future, in terms of Palestine and Gaza as topics,
(05:17):
not expecting payment or directing that payment to support for people in Gaza.
It was a pretty clear, intuitive decision. As I sat at my computer looking at
my dissertation, my heart was elsewhere. wear.
This episode is not technically about the conflict in Gaza, but it is about us.
(05:40):
She asks this burning magnetic question. How do we get so far from ourselves
that we dehumanize others, that we foment war, that we foment us versus them,
and me versus you, and me versus me thinking?
So that's what we're going to dig into. too.
Something that I am so passionate about is leading people from the micro of
(06:09):
self-connection to the macro of social change.
So what I mean by that is how does our relationship with ourselves,
the way that we self-inhabit, that's my own phrase,
affect the way we are able to enact social change, to alleviate systemic oppression,
to increase justice and a more equitable world for everybody.
(06:33):
Music.
How do we see the micro and the macro and vice versa?
So it's not only this is something that's happening in the world and it's just a thing,
(06:54):
it's this is connected to how we are as
humans and how we embody what
it is to be human I do believe it's all connected like
something I talk a lot about is like how do we get self-separate meaning like
how do we lose touch with who we are you know with our intuition with what we
care about with compassion with you know just who we are yeah what is that and
(07:19):
for me that is the a through line that leads to,
I mean, really all human suffering, but including what's happening in Gaza and
including many people in some way feeling okay about what's happening.
That right there is a lot, right? So can you tease out first this idea of like
(07:43):
self-separate? Like what does that mean to you?
We have been socialized to be human doings instead of human beings.
We become more focused on productivity you know what we produced you know capitalism
has something to do with this or at least this extreme iteration of capitalism that we have and,
(08:05):
yeah we just lose touch with ourselves you know we have jobs we don't love we
act in ways that don't feel true to ourselves you know we outsource our thinking
to a religious system educational educational system, a government system.
It's all of that, you know, and then it's like, people don't know why they believe
(08:25):
what they believe, because it's been like a frog boiling or something,
you know, like, you don't know that it's happening, because it's kind of a slow journey.
And then one day, you're like, I don't know who I am, what I care about, you know.
I think we all have little baby examples of this feeling of being self separate.
I remember the first time I got laid off, I had a rumor that I might be and
(08:49):
this made me feel anxious.
And then I got to the office the day of and thought, maybe I'm not getting laid
off. And that made me feel really sad.
And I realized in the moment, oh, I hate this job and it makes me feel bad all the time.
I actually don't want it and I need to get laid off.
But it wasn't until that moment that I fully discovered how bad it had gotten for me, like that frog.
(09:12):
But here's another trivial example of how we don't listen to ourselves.
Well, the example that comes to mind is the checkered bath mats that I bought
two months ago. That's not the most poignant example.
But I bought pink and white checkered bath mats, Abby.
And they look really cool when you look at them. When they exist somewhere in
(09:34):
the internet, they look cool.
And I like things that are checkered. But when they came and they laid on our
floor, I thought, this would look great in somebody else's bathroom.
And I would probably compliment it in somebody else's bathroom.
But in our bathroom, it's not bringing me joy.
I feel like I'm trying to be somebody else's bathroom. You know what I mean?
(09:54):
And I could have 10 friends come and 9 out of 10 would be like, these look so great.
And I would be like, but I feel sad when I look at them. You know?
Right. Yeah, checkered bath mats might work for other people,
but they do not make Dawn happy.
Self-separation begins early in life when we begin to be socialized.
(10:14):
And the way we are socialized is largely based on our assigned gender.
Growing up in an environment where there was a requirement to self-separate,
you know, the expectation is to self-separate. The expectation is to, you know, whatever.
And so for me, like my journey isn't so much.
And then I was self-separate and I realized that it's more like relentlessly
(10:37):
trying not to be self-separate since I was six or seven years old. Right.
I mean, I'm in full agreement. And, you know, I have my own things that I have
worked through in relation to growing up in the church,
in relation to theology around gender and gender roles that absolutely made me self-separate.
(11:01):
Right. I think I'm still working on, I'm looking for new ways to work on it,
actually, because I feel separate from my body.
And again, I've worked through some of it, like sexuality and that kind of thing.
But I think there's still like this, I don't fully feel like I'm inhabiting
my body in the way that I want to, to have my soul and being all like integrated.
(11:27):
So I don't know, Is that the kind of... I know that's only one piece of it,
but is that kind of what you're thinking?
Yeah. I mean, that's totally part of it for sure. This is how I couldn't wear
pink until I was 30 years old because I felt like if I wore pink,
I was caving into all these tropes that I'd been pressured.
Basically, it sounds absurd, but I know you'll understand this.
(11:51):
If I wear pink, I have less voice than men.
I don't have personal passion. I will not be a disruptor.
And it was like, therefore, I cannot wear pink because I mean,
I didn't agree with that projection.
But that's very much the projection that existed for my mom in particular,
but from a lot of like the environment, you know, and so I was like,
(12:12):
well, I'm not going to wear pink.
Okay, this is really hitting something for me. Dawn said she relentlessly pursued not self-separating.
And not everyone can do this. And I don't mean that it's somehow willpower.
Sometimes our level of trauma requires us to self-separate.
But when I was younger, I was the same as Dawn, pursuing strategies that helped me listen to myself.
(12:33):
You said a tiny little thing about your mom controlling how you dress,
that you weren't allowed maybe or encouraged to wear things that weren't feminine.
And just that one little thing jumped out to me. I was like,
oh, ouch, like that hurts, you know?
Yeah, I am very much a buck the system person too.
And so I think it was when I was probably seven or eight, you know,
(12:56):
when I was kind of like, just no, just like literally physically,
I'm not putting these clothes on, you know?
So if we play this real analogy out, society or or our family,
tell us that the ideal sweet, quiet little girl wears pink.
Some girls then wear pink. Other girls feel that they don't want to be sweet
and quiet, and so they absolutely, under no circumstances, will wear pink.
(13:19):
But now, said girls are women. So what do they do?
Even just interestingly, when we moved to this house five years ago,
Neil and I were deciding on the colors for our bedroom, and we were like,
we really want this dark blue.
And then Neil was like, I think we should just do light pink. you know and
I was like I think I have been set free because
I can say yes to light pink right and I have and I
(13:42):
have no bizarro resistance like
I like I have nothing against I'm actually literally wearing pink that's very
really you know ironic it looks great thank you thank you but it's like I want
to wear pink for years I wanted to wear pink unattached to whatever projection
of pinkness yes yes right through it all wear what you want to wear and like
(14:04):
like, you know what I mean?
I do feel like there's a tendency, especially for me, who is very much like
bucking authority type personality.
There's the piece of like coming to the understanding of why I am resisting
pink as an example, right?
Like seeing the systems that have harmed me based on this idea,
(14:27):
understanding where that comes from, understanding where my resistance to the pink is.
And then there's a piece of, do I actually like pink or not?
Then it's like, once I understand all these components, how do I actually feel about this?
And I'm sure that is an ongoing assessment throughout your life. Yeah.
(14:48):
You're wearing pink too, right? I am wearing kink. That's amazing.
We're using clothing as an example of the broad and deep ways that every little
part of us is controlled.
Another example is the guidance we may get about dating relationships.
To not rock the boat, keep your opinions to yourself.
Yeah. You know, when I was in.
(15:08):
Grad school, well, the second time, I had gone on a date with Sky.
And in a moment of forgetting all history of my interactions with my mom, I told her about it.
So basically, I had gotten into a disagreement with Sky on the date about,
I think it was theology, actually.
But she was like, you know, maybe you should just, you know,
(15:31):
go to a movie or something.
So that, you know, men don't really like to hear a lot of opinions.
I think you're saying a lot of what you think and maybe just go to something so you just don't talk.
She literally said it like that. And I just was like, have you met me first? Right. Right.
In what planet am I choosing that?
(15:53):
And so in what planet is this a good basis for building a meaningful relationship? Yeah.
So in this relationship. I will not be sharing my opinions.
So anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Painful.
Music.
(16:14):
Again, luckily she did not follow that advice. So much of the trajectory,
you know, things that you and I are talking about, about
our experiences growing up and like, you know, at least my language would be
like an outside side pressure to self-separate, squelch the way that you actually
feel, squelch what you actually think.
And then like, to me, it's honestly like pretending, pretend,
(16:37):
play along with these other ideas that we're trying to coerce people into participating
in for the sake of power and for the sake of control.
We learn how to pretend and play along. We behave as objects in a system.
You know, something that I'm passionate about is like, how do we not objectify
(16:59):
ourselves and each other and
how that connects with the micro and the macro? You know, how do we see?
I think many people can't see, for example, Palestinians as fully human,
partly because they don't see themselves as fully human.
And I know people wouldn't say that. They wouldn't necessarily have the self-reflection to say that.
(17:20):
But I do think that that's inherently connected, that if you're disconnected
from your own humanity, you're going to be disconnected from others' humanity as well.
Tell me what you mean by objectification. We use objectification a lot in terms
of sexual objectification.
But what I mean by it is we're just seeing people more as objects than as humans,
(17:42):
more as a cog in the wheel, an instrument toward some other goal,
or they're like a barrier towards some other goal.
Somehow we think like we have our worlds, which are like full of life and humanity
and, you know, our kids and our whatevers, but then somehow someone far away
doesn't have that, you know?
(18:03):
So we objectify them because they are less human in our minds.
They are just like this object that exists in a different environment.
And I mean, we objectify ourselves again, like that's so much of like where
it begins. Like you can't objectify others if you aren't objectifying yourself first.
This is where the harm can come in if we dress for the male gaze,
(18:26):
if we present ourselves on social media only for a specific audience,
if we're constantly thinking about how to make our bodies more appealing to others' eyes.
This is objectifying ourselves, making ourselves objects to be consumed.
The form that this took for Dawn was being productive.
In what ways do you think we objectify ourselves? So for me,
(18:50):
like throughout my life, messages on, you know, efficiency, productivity,
like you're worth more if you're more productive.
You're worth more if you're, quote unquote, getting more done. Rest is for the weary.
You know, my dad used to, like when I was in high school, knock on my door at
730 or something on a Saturday morning. And he'd be like, why aren't you up?
(19:13):
Like, I'm doing stuff. up? Why aren't you up? And I would be like,
this is insane. Where did you get this belief?
Which I know obviously also comes from his own journey with productivity and
just self-disconnection.
But yeah. So for me, I think it was really when I had our first kid,
(19:34):
so eight years ago, I got hepatitis and mono while I was pregnant. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, it was very bizarre and severe. Very. Yeah, I had like a crisis in my
family of origin, which is like what brought it about.
But I mean, I couldn't even put a glass away in the kitchen without sitting
down and taking a break afterward.
(19:54):
Like I had such fatigue and weakness and I was pregnant. I was puking. Yeah.
And so that was like another like great undoing for me in the sense of like,
I can't be productive. reductive.
I can't get a billion things done. You know, I was teaching at a local university at the time.
And so, so much of my days were like, rest, you know, I mean,
(20:17):
it even sounds weird to call it rest because it was more like avoiding movement
because it didn't really feel restful.
It felt like just prevention of utter collapse.
And like, yeah, if I'm gonna go teach tonight, then I need to like not do stuff today.
So that for me was a great undoing around objectification, around my identity
(20:42):
being so stuck in productivity and what I could do, what I could accomplish, what I could get done.
And I don't know if I realized so clearly that that was such an issue for me until then.
I mean, I knew it to some measure, but I've never had a hard time relaxing or having fun.
It wasn't that, but it was like, oh, like my sense of self, my sense of self-worth,
(21:09):
My sense of who I am is absolutely tied to how much I can produce and how much I can get done.
And this is not good for me. This is not good for me.
So in that, realizing I'm really objectifying myself,
I am silencing my real needs,
you know, rest, listening to my body, and pressuring myself to these almost
(21:35):
like false needs of I must whatever produce, get these things done, be on top of everything,
you know, not let anything fall through the cracks.
Yeah, it was like a very painful gift to go through that process.
And then to have a newborn baby.
And I mean, I was like, my gosh, postpartum with our first was really,
(22:00):
really hard, miserable, eye opening.
You know, we didn't really have any support like the friends that had been,
you know, our close friends had all moved within probably, I don't know,
six months or something when she was born.
That really left me kind of like literally sitting on our beige couch,
(22:21):
you know, holding a baby, looking at the wall, like three baskets of laundry
around me and feeling like.
Obviously the destitution of it, but also this very real observation of,
I have done one of the most incredible things I've ever done in growing this
baby, birthing this baby, holding this baby.
(22:41):
And I feel like I'm not getting anything done because there's three baskets
of laundry next to me. Right.
And being like, something is very wrong with how I'm defining my humanity.
I'm seeing myself as an object, you know, again, more than as a human.
And then also being like, why am I, you know, I mean, so much of like those
(23:02):
beginning days of being a mom, like you're just not doing a lot, you know, in quotes,
but you're doing, you're doing more than you could ever do.
Meaning you're, you're healing, you're taking care of a baby that needs things
every 20 minutes or, you know, like, yes.
So just like just realizing that really problematic cultural definition of what's
(23:27):
worth what and what's productive and being like,
if we could remove all this nomenclature around productivity,
the essence of what I'm doing now actually has far more worth than these three
baskets of laundry or, you know.
Music.
(23:49):
Yeah, so that was like a big, horrible, crushing experience for me,
which then, you know, really has continued.
You know, I had a kid every two years. And so that was like the great unraveling
of a lot of that around my worth, my humanity being tied to productivity,
and therefore seeing myself more as an object than as a human.
(24:11):
So now I'm much more able to follow my desire, like lay in the grass outside,
leave a mess in a pile, you know, leave a laundry mess, for example,
in a pile and like follow my humanity.
And it's crazy because it's like when you do that integration journey,
you are not only more embodied in what you're choosing,
(24:34):
but also there's, I don't know, this great irony of like a lot of my research is around energy.
So there's this thing where it's like the purity of our energy gets better,
gets more pure, I would say.
That's not great language, but the quality of it, I guess, maybe that's better.
So it's like if I'm choosing in a moment, you know, like my desire right now
(24:58):
is I'm just going to go outside, be in the sun with my kids,
and I'm going to let this laundry sit.
So often, that will nourish me in a quality of energy that then when I eventually
do scroll back to the three, you know, baskets of laundry, I'm actually going
to do that from a more rooted.
Grateful, embodied place.
(25:19):
Place right and then i just do it and i get it done and there's also
an irony where a lot of times then we're doing that activity with more
joy and satisfaction and we're even
sometimes doing it faster doing it more efficiently because we're
doing it from like this clear place yeah within us and
you you're not sitting there i have to make myself you
know like do this thing right now which is just never going to
(25:41):
produce a well-lived like well-embodied self-connected
life you know when we're constantly making our
making ourselves do stuff that we don't want to do yeah we
we definitely have a big focus on that you know
in learning and development too hopefully we're not using the concept for evil
and not good but but it is about like you need to take breaks throughout the
(26:04):
day go outside ride your bike spend time with your family like pursue your purpose
whether that's you know spiritual or otherwise because then you're going to work harder at work.
But you're also going to have more satisfaction from the work that you do do, right? Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, there's so much to be said about quality, quality of our energy. I like that.
(26:25):
Music.
So if we're not objectifying ourselves, we're able to follow our own desires,
which enhances the quality of our energy, and helps us connect to our bodies.
You know, you mentioned like body connection earlier, but, you know,
the other part of body connection of just being, yeah, figuring out what it
(26:48):
feels like to be at home in one's body.
You know, like a friend of mine said many months ago, she's like,
I think that one of my main life goals is just to feel at home in my own body.
And I was like, yeah, that's, that's gotta be one of them, you know?
And this yeah this is like part of
the weirdness of what we're caught into that almost like our bodies are like
(27:11):
these shells that like we have these little tiny people inside and they're just
like walking the tiny people around yes exactly and it's like that's really
weird and that's really disembodied and it's like that is counterproductive
to embodying our humanity.
So yeah whatever that looks like you know liking the way you laugh or you know
(27:33):
noticing like eye crinkles on somebody, you know, and being like,
oh, that's like a cool part of like,
some of their humanity is showing up, you know, and yeah, obviously,
for women, I mean, that's a whole other, you know, like endless,
endless conversation about how we exist and who we exist for and who our physicality is for.
(27:54):
And, you know, so many of us being socialized toward the male gaze,
you know, like as has been very smartly coined.
And so for a lot of women in particular, that's just going to be like an ever, ever undoing journey,
because you're literally taught that like, what's most morally appropriate is
(28:14):
for your physical body to be chiefly oriented toward others,
which is like, okay, like that's one of the worst roads you could ever go down, right?
Like, like, that's kind of how do we get self separate?
I mean, that's one of the most significant ways that we become self separate
is believing that us or our physicality or whatever part of ourselves exists
mostly for other people and not for ourselves.
(28:37):
That will be an ever undoing journey.
Music.
I asked on if there are practices that she recommends to be more embodied.
You know, people call it like just like nonlinear movement, you know,
like dancing with or without music and like a non, you know,
(28:59):
linear way, meaning like it's just not like a, it's not the tango.
It's not a set dance. It's just moving, right? Yeah.
Even more so if it's, like, outside or near a waterfall, in the breeze.
Like, it's, like, following the unction of what your body wants to do.
Yeah. You know, like, sometimes I'm, like, on a walk, and I'm just,
like, moving my arms and, like, taking up space.
(29:22):
Yeah, you know, noticing how you, just how you're moving through space and time.
You know, the chair that you're sitting in. Yeah.
I think another thing is, is delight, like just being able to follow your delight.
You know, I think delight is something that when we're tapped into it,
it is very visceral and it is very body connected.
(29:45):
It sparks something in us, like in our bodies.
And so paying attention to delight, delight is one of my favorites.
Awe is one of my favorites, you know, going outside with my kids and like squealing
about a ladybug, you know, picking up blades of grass and feeling them or like hugging trees.
Trees you know my daughter like when she was like i don't
(30:06):
know if she was even one yet she would hug trees and she
would say thank you for your electrons again like
just kind of follow what you want to do like yeah and
a lot you know i think there is a lot that does relate with nature because nature
is the organic just being all around us like if we're looking for a lesson on
just being nature is living that lesson you know continuously so yeah engaging with nature,
(30:35):
however you want to you know i got up on our barn roof recently and sat and
i just was like this is what i want to be doing right now and so i bought the
ladder and got on the roof you know.
It's interesting kind of the connection between the
delight and awe and childhood and how like there's that this whole period in
(30:58):
between right where we get like socialized to not do those things to not hug
the tree to not skip about and dance when there's no music and all these things
that like aren't socially acceptable right and.
But for us to be healthy and have healthy connections, like we have to get back to that.
Yeah, totally. You know, like, yeah, I was in this, like, I was a guest speaker
(31:21):
in a group recently, and somebody asked me a question about,
like, what do you see part of the revolution as?
I had mentioned, like, you know, something about a revolution.
And I said, if you're in the grocery store and you feel like gently singing,
gently sing, you know, like, you know, to your point about things we're taught
not to do, you know. And a lot of that's, yeah, simple things like that.
(31:45):
For me, I will be gently singing or even dancing in a grocery store.
In one way, I'm like, I don't really know why I wouldn't. I mean,
I understand the idea of why I wouldn't, but that's what feels enjoyable.
And we're all just here living our lives, living 24 hours in a day.
Why wouldn't we do innocuous things that we want to do, like gently sing in
(32:09):
a grocery store? or no, I mean, really like, because people will call the cops
on you depending on who you are and where you're at. That's why.
But I agree with you in concept.
Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. I mean, it doesn't need to be a musical,
but the point is just, you know, it's just little bits.
(32:33):
I was at the MoMA a while back and saw this astounding musical video installation called The Visitors.
It's set up so that you can walk around or sit and listen.
And after doing that, I had to lay down on the ground.
My rational mind knew that this was not particularly socially appropriate,
but in my complete delight, I followed what my body wanted to do,
(32:54):
be absorbed into the ground and swallowed by the sound.
Don's example of humming in the grocery store is not about rebelling per se.
It's about noticing and following what your body wants to do.
I mean, and even to your point about, you know, like, yeah, somebody would call the cops or something.
But it's like, there are these things that like, we just need to push the envelope,
(33:17):
on those things on like, why are certain things strange? Why are they?
Sometimes the things are the most human are the things that are judged as the least human.
You know, like meaning like, if you're a proper human, you wouldn't be,
you know, singing your favorite song while
you look look at cereal it's like that makes no sense like to
me embodying your humanity is exactly that
(33:39):
if you're a clear-minded person and all the things but
like you know so yeah it's just like it is like pushing those little bits of
an envelope it's you know asking a weird question to the person that you like
buy your coffee from or whatever you know like i'll just add here that dawn
has no problem asking weird questions of the person who serves her coffee or
(34:00):
she passes on the the street.
Her dedication to following how she feels and her desire to connect far outweigh
seemingly random societal constraints.
Music.
Yeah, it's following those prompts. And I think like, that's how we all get
freer is like, follow the little prompts, follow the little unction,
(34:23):
you know, do the little bit weird thing, like, because ultimately,
it's not serving all of us,
in embodying and living out our humanity.
If we're all like, I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want to, you know.
Do the weird and we're just always living like that because again i'm like
years are passing days are passing like let's
(34:43):
go you know like we're not
getting any freer by all that stuff you know and i think those there's an irony
where the more we push those little bits of envelopes we create not just ourselves
but a world a society that is more creative that is more free to whatever,
(35:05):
think the new invention,
live the freer life, better articulate emotional health,
make a scientific discovery.
It's all connected. And do those things, hopefully, from a more relaxed, self-connected place.
That's so much of what we all want, deep, deep, deep down.
I mean, for a lot of people, it's pretty deep in their subconscious, that core desire. Yeah.
(35:28):
But I mean, after like food and shelter is met, we all want that.
Yeah. Just, yeah, more freedom and less objectification.
Are you feeling self-separate? Are you feeling like a human doing and not a human being?
(35:48):
One place to start is to follow the little prompts. Do the weird thing.
Take a sweet moment to lean into awe and delight.
These may seem like small things, but as Dawn says, these things make you freer
and create a society that's more free and creative and compassionate.
So push the envelope.
(36:10):
Next episode, we're going to continue to explore the micro, owning our feelings
and beliefs, and the macro, the systems that we participate in that depend on our objectification.
It doesn't matter what that unit of belief is.
It's about if we can all be pressured to believe this, then we create this thing
(36:32):
that has more power and control.
And if people are willing to give up their own intuition, their own self-connection,
if they're willing to squish what they know is wrong and just do stuff for the
sake of some moral good, then we increase our control.
In the meantime, time, if you're interested in hearing more from Dawn,
you can find her on Instagram, Dawn Bolchandani.
(36:52):
For the past eight months, she shared a lot about Gaza and explains more about the ideas shared here.
She also has a sub stack. If you're like me and sometimes need text to process big ideas.
Music.
Oh my gosh, there's a mouse on our roof. Is it outside or inside? It's outside!
(37:14):
I've never seen that! Oh my gosh.
Music.
I just wrapped up recording podcast with someone.
And so here I am on the swing outside.
I wanted to remind everybody, when there is a machine that is dehumanizing people en masse,
daring to in some way rationalize the killing of people en masse,
(00:21):
hold tightly to your own humanity and hold tightly to the humanity of others.
And speak up where you see dehumanization.
Follow your integrity. Follow your compassion. Be brave.
There is a new world ever waiting to be born.
And part of that world wants to be born through you.
(00:45):
Music.
This is the Abbey Normal Podcast. podcast, here to tell you that you're weird and that's normal.
I mean, it's interesting because I think it got a lot more philosophical than I anticipated.
Music.
(01:11):
Today, we get to talk to Dawn, who you heard at the beginning reflecting on this interview.
If you're a regular listener, then you need to know this is a new Dawn,
not Dawn of the Haunted House.
I met today's Dawn in eighth grade on an Odyssey of the Mind team.
So if you're not familiar, Odyssey is a competition for dorks where wit and
out-of-the-box thinking are rewarded.
(01:31):
Dawn comes off as serious, one of those old soul types with the biggest,
bluest eyes you've ever seen.
But I discovered at age 12 that quiet Dawn is not always quiet.
She's sharp, smart, and funny. I haven't seen her for many years,
but when I heard about her work, I thought you all might be interested in this
brand of weird and what she's doing with it.
(01:55):
Hello, my name is Dawn Bolchandani, and I am a speaker, writer, and PhD student.
I also have three master's degrees.
One is in religion, one is in counseling, and one is in Middle Eastern cultures and religions.
(02:16):
I also lived in Israel and Palestine for a total of three years.
So I was in Jerusalem for one year and then Bethlehem for two years,
which is in the West Bank.
She's been working on a PhD in embodied validation, as well as developing a
cohort program called WITH, Walk in Trauma Healing.
(02:37):
I decided to focus on what was just going to be a part of that,
which is 30 days to self-connection.
I'm going to do audios eventually for every day, but I could send you what those
30 points are, and maybe it would just even give you like a helpful reflection
point toward whatever end.
She knows I feel disconnected from my body, so maybe this is a tool to help me.
(03:01):
I went to her website, Dawn Bolch and Donnie, and she's got info about herself
there, and I think it would be helpful to share it. Here's what she says.
I was around seven years old when I remember first telling myself something
like, you have to stay with yourself, Dawn.
You can't let this stuff around you convince you to be someone different or
play along with things you don't agree with.
(03:23):
I honestly don't know exactly where that conviction came from,
but what I do know is it was that conviction that held me afloat through years
of immense pain and pressure to self-abandon.
It was a thin but strong string that tethered me through almost a decade of
depression and intermittent suicidal ideation as a kid.
As an adult, that string was there when I made big decisions that my environment did not understand.
(03:47):
It was there. I was there with myself.
It's not that I did it all perfectly or had it all figured out,
but I did have that strong string holding me to me.
So basically, the program is about getting back to or growing that string.
She asks the question, how do we get self-separate? And then offers the antidote,
(04:10):
how do we develop and keep self-closeness? What does it mean to be self-close?
So I asked Dawn about the program and what she was excited about.
Like, do you want to talk more about that and share what that's about?
So that is also on hold.
I decided not to launch the WITH community, which was really because I wanted
to focus on advocacy for Gaza. Okay.
(04:34):
She paused both the WITH program and her PhD dissertation.
But her work in this area hasn't stopped. It's just shifted to the area of most urgent attention.
In the grand scheme of things, my PhD and the timing of my completion is not
as important as what I can contribute toward advocacy for Gaza.
(04:56):
And what that really looks like for me has been getting more connected with
some peace building organizations, doing some brainstorming with them.
And then naturally, just as it's come up with various speaking engagements I've
had, touching on it where appropriate.
And in the immediate future, in terms of Palestine and Gaza as topics,
(05:17):
not expecting payment or directing that payment to support for people in Gaza.
It was a pretty clear, intuitive decision. As I sat at my computer looking at
my dissertation, my heart was elsewhere. wear.
This episode is not technically about the conflict in Gaza, but it is about us.
(05:40):
She asks this burning magnetic question. How do we get so far from ourselves
that we dehumanize others, that we foment war, that we foment us versus them,
and me versus you, and me versus me thinking?
So that's what we're going to dig into. too.
Something that I am so passionate about is leading people from the micro of
(06:09):
self-connection to the macro of social change.
So what I mean by that is how does our relationship with ourselves,
the way that we self-inhabit, that's my own phrase,
affect the way we are able to enact social change, to alleviate systemic oppression,
to increase justice and a more equitable world for everybody.
(06:33):
Music.
How do we see the micro and the macro and vice versa?
So it's not only this is something that's happening in the world and it's just a thing,
(06:54):
it's this is connected to how we are as
humans and how we embody what
it is to be human I do believe it's all connected like
something I talk a lot about is like how do we get self-separate meaning like
how do we lose touch with who we are you know with our intuition with what we
care about with compassion with you know just who we are yeah what is that and
(07:19):
for me that is the a through line that leads to,
I mean, really all human suffering, but including what's happening in Gaza and
including many people in some way feeling okay about what's happening.
That right there is a lot, right? So can you tease out first this idea of like
(07:43):
self-separate? Like what does that mean to you?
We have been socialized to be human doings instead of human beings.
We become more focused on productivity you know what we produced you know capitalism
has something to do with this or at least this extreme iteration of capitalism that we have and,
(08:05):
yeah we just lose touch with ourselves you know we have jobs we don't love we
act in ways that don't feel true to ourselves you know we outsource our thinking
to a religious system educational educational system, a government system.
It's all of that, you know, and then it's like, people don't know why they believe
(08:25):
what they believe, because it's been like a frog boiling or something,
you know, like, you don't know that it's happening, because it's kind of a slow journey.
And then one day, you're like, I don't know who I am, what I care about, you know.
I think we all have little baby examples of this feeling of being self separate.
I remember the first time I got laid off, I had a rumor that I might be and
(08:49):
this made me feel anxious.
And then I got to the office the day of and thought, maybe I'm not getting laid
off. And that made me feel really sad.
And I realized in the moment, oh, I hate this job and it makes me feel bad all the time.
I actually don't want it and I need to get laid off.
But it wasn't until that moment that I fully discovered how bad it had gotten for me, like that frog.
(09:12):
But here's another trivial example of how we don't listen to ourselves.
Well, the example that comes to mind is the checkered bath mats that I bought
two months ago. That's not the most poignant example.
But I bought pink and white checkered bath mats, Abby.
And they look really cool when you look at them. When they exist somewhere in
(09:34):
the internet, they look cool.
And I like things that are checkered. But when they came and they laid on our
floor, I thought, this would look great in somebody else's bathroom.
And I would probably compliment it in somebody else's bathroom.
But in our bathroom, it's not bringing me joy.
I feel like I'm trying to be somebody else's bathroom. You know what I mean?
(09:54):
And I could have 10 friends come and 9 out of 10 would be like, these look so great.
And I would be like, but I feel sad when I look at them. You know?
Right. Yeah, checkered bath mats might work for other people,
but they do not make Dawn happy.
Self-separation begins early in life when we begin to be socialized.
(10:14):
And the way we are socialized is largely based on our assigned gender.
Growing up in an environment where there was a requirement to self-separate,
you know, the expectation is to self-separate. The expectation is to, you know, whatever.
And so for me, like my journey isn't so much.
And then I was self-separate and I realized that it's more like relentlessly
(10:37):
trying not to be self-separate since I was six or seven years old. Right.
I mean, I'm in full agreement. And, you know, I have my own things that I have
worked through in relation to growing up in the church,
in relation to theology around gender and gender roles that absolutely made me self-separate.
(11:01):
Right. I think I'm still working on, I'm looking for new ways to work on it,
actually, because I feel separate from my body.
And again, I've worked through some of it, like sexuality and that kind of thing.
But I think there's still like this, I don't fully feel like I'm inhabiting
my body in the way that I want to, to have my soul and being all like integrated.
(11:27):
So I don't know, Is that the kind of... I know that's only one piece of it,
but is that kind of what you're thinking?
Yeah. I mean, that's totally part of it for sure. This is how I couldn't wear
pink until I was 30 years old because I felt like if I wore pink,
I was caving into all these tropes that I'd been pressured.
Basically, it sounds absurd, but I know you'll understand this.
(11:51):
If I wear pink, I have less voice than men.
I don't have personal passion. I will not be a disruptor.
And it was like, therefore, I cannot wear pink because I mean,
I didn't agree with that projection.
But that's very much the projection that existed for my mom in particular,
but from a lot of like the environment, you know, and so I was like,
(12:12):
well, I'm not going to wear pink.
Okay, this is really hitting something for me. Dawn said she relentlessly pursued not self-separating.
And not everyone can do this. And I don't mean that it's somehow willpower.
Sometimes our level of trauma requires us to self-separate.
But when I was younger, I was the same as Dawn, pursuing strategies that helped me listen to myself.
(12:33):
You said a tiny little thing about your mom controlling how you dress,
that you weren't allowed maybe or encouraged to wear things that weren't feminine.
And just that one little thing jumped out to me. I was like,
oh, ouch, like that hurts, you know?
Yeah, I am very much a buck the system person too.
And so I think it was when I was probably seven or eight, you know,
(12:56):
when I was kind of like, just no, just like literally physically,
I'm not putting these clothes on, you know?
So if we play this real analogy out, society or or our family,
tell us that the ideal sweet, quiet little girl wears pink.
Some girls then wear pink. Other girls feel that they don't want to be sweet
and quiet, and so they absolutely, under no circumstances, will wear pink.
(13:19):
But now, said girls are women. So what do they do?
Even just interestingly, when we moved to this house five years ago,
Neil and I were deciding on the colors for our bedroom, and we were like,
we really want this dark blue.
And then Neil was like, I think we should just do light pink. you know and
I was like I think I have been set free because
I can say yes to light pink right and I have and I
(13:42):
have no bizarro resistance like
I like I have nothing against I'm actually literally wearing pink that's very
really you know ironic it looks great thank you thank you but it's like I want
to wear pink for years I wanted to wear pink unattached to whatever projection
of pinkness yes yes right through it all wear what you want to wear and like
(14:04):
like, you know what I mean?
I do feel like there's a tendency, especially for me, who is very much like
bucking authority type personality.
There's the piece of like coming to the understanding of why I am resisting
pink as an example, right?
Like seeing the systems that have harmed me based on this idea,
(14:27):
understanding where that comes from, understanding where my resistance to the pink is.
And then there's a piece of, do I actually like pink or not?
Then it's like, once I understand all these components, how do I actually feel about this?
And I'm sure that is an ongoing assessment throughout your life. Yeah.
(14:48):
You're wearing pink too, right? I am wearing kink. That's amazing.
We're using clothing as an example of the broad and deep ways that every little
part of us is controlled.
Another example is the guidance we may get about dating relationships.
To not rock the boat, keep your opinions to yourself.
Yeah. You know, when I was in.
(15:08):
Grad school, well, the second time, I had gone on a date with Sky.
And in a moment of forgetting all history of my interactions with my mom, I told her about it.
So basically, I had gotten into a disagreement with Sky on the date about,
I think it was theology, actually.
But she was like, you know, maybe you should just, you know,
(15:31):
go to a movie or something.
So that, you know, men don't really like to hear a lot of opinions.
I think you're saying a lot of what you think and maybe just go to something so you just don't talk.
She literally said it like that. And I just was like, have you met me first? Right. Right.
In what planet am I choosing that?
(15:53):
And so in what planet is this a good basis for building a meaningful relationship? Yeah.
So in this relationship. I will not be sharing my opinions.
So anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Painful.
Music.
(16:14):
Again, luckily she did not follow that advice. So much of the trajectory,
you know, things that you and I are talking about, about
our experiences growing up and like, you know, at least my language would be
like an outside side pressure to self-separate, squelch the way that you actually
feel, squelch what you actually think.
And then like, to me, it's honestly like pretending, pretend,
(16:37):
play along with these other ideas that we're trying to coerce people into participating
in for the sake of power and for the sake of control.
We learn how to pretend and play along. We behave as objects in a system.
You know, something that I'm passionate about is like, how do we not objectify
(16:59):
ourselves and each other and
how that connects with the micro and the macro? You know, how do we see?
I think many people can't see, for example, Palestinians as fully human,
partly because they don't see themselves as fully human.
And I know people wouldn't say that. They wouldn't necessarily have the self-reflection to say that.
(17:20):
But I do think that that's inherently connected, that if you're disconnected
from your own humanity, you're going to be disconnected from others' humanity as well.
Tell me what you mean by objectification. We use objectification a lot in terms
of sexual objectification.
But what I mean by it is we're just seeing people more as objects than as humans,
(17:42):
more as a cog in the wheel, an instrument toward some other goal,
or they're like a barrier towards some other goal.
Somehow we think like we have our worlds, which are like full of life and humanity
and, you know, our kids and our whatevers, but then somehow someone far away
doesn't have that, you know?
(18:03):
So we objectify them because they are less human in our minds.
They are just like this object that exists in a different environment.
And I mean, we objectify ourselves again, like that's so much of like where
it begins. Like you can't objectify others if you aren't objectifying yourself first.
This is where the harm can come in if we dress for the male gaze,
(18:26):
if we present ourselves on social media only for a specific audience,
if we're constantly thinking about how to make our bodies more appealing to others' eyes.
This is objectifying ourselves, making ourselves objects to be consumed.
The form that this took for Dawn was being productive.
In what ways do you think we objectify ourselves? So for me,
(18:50):
like throughout my life, messages on, you know, efficiency, productivity,
like you're worth more if you're more productive.
You're worth more if you're, quote unquote, getting more done. Rest is for the weary.
You know, my dad used to, like when I was in high school, knock on my door at
730 or something on a Saturday morning. And he'd be like, why aren't you up?
(19:13):
Like, I'm doing stuff. up? Why aren't you up? And I would be like,
this is insane. Where did you get this belief?
Which I know obviously also comes from his own journey with productivity and
just self-disconnection.
But yeah. So for me, I think it was really when I had our first kid,
(19:34):
so eight years ago, I got hepatitis and mono while I was pregnant. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, it was very bizarre and severe. Very. Yeah, I had like a crisis in my
family of origin, which is like what brought it about.
But I mean, I couldn't even put a glass away in the kitchen without sitting
down and taking a break afterward.
(19:54):
Like I had such fatigue and weakness and I was pregnant. I was puking. Yeah.
And so that was like another like great undoing for me in the sense of like,
I can't be productive. reductive.
I can't get a billion things done. You know, I was teaching at a local university at the time.
And so, so much of my days were like, rest, you know, I mean,
(20:17):
it even sounds weird to call it rest because it was more like avoiding movement
because it didn't really feel restful.
It felt like just prevention of utter collapse.
And like, yeah, if I'm gonna go teach tonight, then I need to like not do stuff today.
So that for me was a great undoing around objectification, around my identity
(20:42):
being so stuck in productivity and what I could do, what I could accomplish, what I could get done.
And I don't know if I realized so clearly that that was such an issue for me until then.
I mean, I knew it to some measure, but I've never had a hard time relaxing or having fun.
It wasn't that, but it was like, oh, like my sense of self, my sense of self-worth,
(21:09):
My sense of who I am is absolutely tied to how much I can produce and how much I can get done.
And this is not good for me. This is not good for me.
So in that, realizing I'm really objectifying myself,
I am silencing my real needs,
you know, rest, listening to my body, and pressuring myself to these almost
(21:35):
like false needs of I must whatever produce, get these things done, be on top of everything,
you know, not let anything fall through the cracks.
Yeah, it was like a very painful gift to go through that process.
And then to have a newborn baby.
And I mean, I was like, my gosh, postpartum with our first was really,
(22:00):
really hard, miserable, eye opening.
You know, we didn't really have any support like the friends that had been,
you know, our close friends had all moved within probably, I don't know,
six months or something when she was born.
That really left me kind of like literally sitting on our beige couch,
(22:21):
you know, holding a baby, looking at the wall, like three baskets of laundry
around me and feeling like.
Obviously the destitution of it, but also this very real observation of,
I have done one of the most incredible things I've ever done in growing this
baby, birthing this baby, holding this baby.
(22:41):
And I feel like I'm not getting anything done because there's three baskets
of laundry next to me. Right.
And being like, something is very wrong with how I'm defining my humanity.
I'm seeing myself as an object, you know, again, more than as a human.
And then also being like, why am I, you know, I mean, so much of like those
(23:02):
beginning days of being a mom, like you're just not doing a lot, you know, in quotes,
but you're doing, you're doing more than you could ever do.
Meaning you're, you're healing, you're taking care of a baby that needs things
every 20 minutes or, you know, like, yes.
So just like just realizing that really problematic cultural definition of what's
(23:27):
worth what and what's productive and being like,
if we could remove all this nomenclature around productivity,
the essence of what I'm doing now actually has far more worth than these three
baskets of laundry or, you know.
Music.
(23:49):
Yeah, so that was like a big, horrible, crushing experience for me,
which then, you know, really has continued.
You know, I had a kid every two years. And so that was like the great unraveling
of a lot of that around my worth, my humanity being tied to productivity,
and therefore seeing myself more as an object than as a human.
(24:11):
So now I'm much more able to follow my desire, like lay in the grass outside,
leave a mess in a pile, you know, leave a laundry mess, for example,
in a pile and like follow my humanity.
And it's crazy because it's like when you do that integration journey,
you are not only more embodied in what you're choosing,
(24:34):
but also there's, I don't know, this great irony of like a lot of my research is around energy.
So there's this thing where it's like the purity of our energy gets better,
gets more pure, I would say.
That's not great language, but the quality of it, I guess, maybe that's better.
So it's like if I'm choosing in a moment, you know, like my desire right now
(24:58):
is I'm just going to go outside, be in the sun with my kids,
and I'm going to let this laundry sit.
So often, that will nourish me in a quality of energy that then when I eventually
do scroll back to the three, you know, baskets of laundry, I'm actually going
to do that from a more rooted.
Grateful, embodied place.
(25:19):
Place right and then i just do it and i get it done and there's also
an irony where a lot of times then we're doing that activity with more
joy and satisfaction and we're even
sometimes doing it faster doing it more efficiently because we're
doing it from like this clear place yeah within us and
you you're not sitting there i have to make myself you
know like do this thing right now which is just never going to
(25:41):
produce a well-lived like well-embodied self-connected
life you know when we're constantly making our
making ourselves do stuff that we don't want to do yeah we
we definitely have a big focus on that you know
in learning and development too hopefully we're not using the concept for evil
and not good but but it is about like you need to take breaks throughout the
(26:04):
day go outside ride your bike spend time with your family like pursue your purpose
whether that's you know spiritual or otherwise because then you're going to work harder at work.
But you're also going to have more satisfaction from the work that you do do, right? Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, there's so much to be said about quality, quality of our energy. I like that.
(26:25):
Music.
So if we're not objectifying ourselves, we're able to follow our own desires,
which enhances the quality of our energy, and helps us connect to our bodies.
You know, you mentioned like body connection earlier, but, you know,
the other part of body connection of just being, yeah, figuring out what it
(26:48):
feels like to be at home in one's body.
You know, like a friend of mine said many months ago, she's like,
I think that one of my main life goals is just to feel at home in my own body.
And I was like, yeah, that's, that's gotta be one of them, you know?
And this yeah this is like part of
the weirdness of what we're caught into that almost like our bodies are like
(27:11):
these shells that like we have these little tiny people inside and they're just
like walking the tiny people around yes exactly and it's like that's really
weird and that's really disembodied and it's like that is counterproductive
to embodying our humanity.
So yeah whatever that looks like you know liking the way you laugh or you know
(27:33):
noticing like eye crinkles on somebody, you know, and being like,
oh, that's like a cool part of like,
some of their humanity is showing up, you know, and yeah, obviously,
for women, I mean, that's a whole other, you know, like endless,
endless conversation about how we exist and who we exist for and who our physicality is for.
(27:54):
And, you know, so many of us being socialized toward the male gaze,
you know, like as has been very smartly coined.
And so for a lot of women in particular, that's just going to be like an ever, ever undoing journey,
because you're literally taught that like, what's most morally appropriate is
(28:14):
for your physical body to be chiefly oriented toward others,
which is like, okay, like that's one of the worst roads you could ever go down, right?
Like, like, that's kind of how do we get self separate?
I mean, that's one of the most significant ways that we become self separate
is believing that us or our physicality or whatever part of ourselves exists
mostly for other people and not for ourselves.
(28:37):
That will be an ever undoing journey.
Music.
I asked on if there are practices that she recommends to be more embodied.
You know, people call it like just like nonlinear movement, you know,
like dancing with or without music and like a non, you know,
(28:59):
linear way, meaning like it's just not like a, it's not the tango.
It's not a set dance. It's just moving, right? Yeah.
Even more so if it's, like, outside or near a waterfall, in the breeze.
Like, it's, like, following the unction of what your body wants to do.
Yeah. You know, like, sometimes I'm, like, on a walk, and I'm just,
like, moving my arms and, like, taking up space.
(29:22):
Yeah, you know, noticing how you, just how you're moving through space and time.
You know, the chair that you're sitting in. Yeah.
I think another thing is, is delight, like just being able to follow your delight.
You know, I think delight is something that when we're tapped into it,
it is very visceral and it is very body connected.
(29:45):
It sparks something in us, like in our bodies.
And so paying attention to delight, delight is one of my favorites.
Awe is one of my favorites, you know, going outside with my kids and like squealing
about a ladybug, you know, picking up blades of grass and feeling them or like hugging trees.
Trees you know my daughter like when she was like i don't
(30:06):
know if she was even one yet she would hug trees and she
would say thank you for your electrons again like
just kind of follow what you want to do like yeah and
a lot you know i think there is a lot that does relate with nature because nature
is the organic just being all around us like if we're looking for a lesson on
just being nature is living that lesson you know continuously so yeah engaging with nature,
(30:35):
however you want to you know i got up on our barn roof recently and sat and
i just was like this is what i want to be doing right now and so i bought the
ladder and got on the roof you know.
It's interesting kind of the connection between the
delight and awe and childhood and how like there's that this whole period in
(30:58):
between right where we get like socialized to not do those things to not hug
the tree to not skip about and dance when there's no music and all these things
that like aren't socially acceptable right and.
But for us to be healthy and have healthy connections, like we have to get back to that.
Yeah, totally. You know, like, yeah, I was in this, like, I was a guest speaker
(31:21):
in a group recently, and somebody asked me a question about,
like, what do you see part of the revolution as?
I had mentioned, like, you know, something about a revolution.
And I said, if you're in the grocery store and you feel like gently singing,
gently sing, you know, like, you know, to your point about things we're taught
not to do, you know. And a lot of that's, yeah, simple things like that.
(31:45):
For me, I will be gently singing or even dancing in a grocery store.
In one way, I'm like, I don't really know why I wouldn't. I mean,
I understand the idea of why I wouldn't, but that's what feels enjoyable.
And we're all just here living our lives, living 24 hours in a day.
Why wouldn't we do innocuous things that we want to do, like gently sing in
(32:09):
a grocery store? or no, I mean, really like, because people will call the cops
on you depending on who you are and where you're at. That's why.
But I agree with you in concept.
Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. I mean, it doesn't need to be a musical,
but the point is just, you know, it's just little bits.
(32:33):
I was at the MoMA a while back and saw this astounding musical video installation called The Visitors.
It's set up so that you can walk around or sit and listen.
And after doing that, I had to lay down on the ground.
My rational mind knew that this was not particularly socially appropriate,
but in my complete delight, I followed what my body wanted to do,
(32:54):
be absorbed into the ground and swallowed by the sound.
Don's example of humming in the grocery store is not about rebelling per se.
It's about noticing and following what your body wants to do.
I mean, and even to your point about, you know, like, yeah, somebody would call the cops or something.
But it's like, there are these things that like, we just need to push the envelope,
(33:17):
on those things on like, why are certain things strange? Why are they?
Sometimes the things are the most human are the things that are judged as the least human.
You know, like meaning like, if you're a proper human, you wouldn't be,
you know, singing your favorite song while
you look look at cereal it's like that makes no sense like to
me embodying your humanity is exactly that
(33:39):
if you're a clear-minded person and all the things but
like you know so yeah it's just like it is like pushing those little bits of
an envelope it's you know asking a weird question to the person that you like
buy your coffee from or whatever you know like i'll just add here that dawn
has no problem asking weird questions of the person who serves her coffee or
(34:00):
she passes on the the street.
Her dedication to following how she feels and her desire to connect far outweigh
seemingly random societal constraints.
Music.
Yeah, it's following those prompts. And I think like, that's how we all get
freer is like, follow the little prompts, follow the little unction,
(34:23):
you know, do the little bit weird thing, like, because ultimately,
it's not serving all of us,
in embodying and living out our humanity.
If we're all like, I don't want to rock the boat. I don't want to, you know.
Do the weird and we're just always living like that because again i'm like
years are passing days are passing like let's
(34:43):
go you know like we're not
getting any freer by all that stuff you know and i think those there's an irony
where the more we push those little bits of envelopes we create not just ourselves
but a world a society that is more creative that is more free to whatever,
(35:05):
think the new invention,
live the freer life, better articulate emotional health,
make a scientific discovery.
It's all connected. And do those things, hopefully, from a more relaxed, self-connected place.
That's so much of what we all want, deep, deep, deep down.
I mean, for a lot of people, it's pretty deep in their subconscious, that core desire. Yeah.
(35:28):
But I mean, after like food and shelter is met, we all want that.
Yeah. Just, yeah, more freedom and less objectification.
Are you feeling self-separate? Are you feeling like a human doing and not a human being?
(35:48):
One place to start is to follow the little prompts. Do the weird thing.
Take a sweet moment to lean into awe and delight.
These may seem like small things, but as Dawn says, these things make you freer
and create a society that's more free and creative and compassionate.
So push the envelope.
(36:10):
Next episode, we're going to continue to explore the micro, owning our feelings
and beliefs, and the macro, the systems that we participate in that depend on our objectification.
It doesn't matter what that unit of belief is.
It's about if we can all be pressured to believe this, then we create this thing
(36:32):
that has more power and control.
And if people are willing to give up their own intuition, their own self-connection,
if they're willing to squish what they know is wrong and just do stuff for the
sake of some moral good, then we increase our control.
In the meantime, time, if you're interested in hearing more from Dawn,
you can find her on Instagram, Dawn Bolchandani.
(36:52):
For the past eight months, she shared a lot about Gaza and explains more about the ideas shared here.
She also has a sub stack. If you're like me and sometimes need text to process big ideas.
Music.
Oh my gosh, there's a mouse on our roof. Is it outside or inside? It's outside!
(37:14):
I've never seen that! Oh my gosh.
Music.
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