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Come, well come, well come, well come, Welcome.
Home, everybody.
This is Angela Raie, Andrew Gillim and Tiffany Cross. You are tuned into this week's mini pod.
So.
I don't remember how this question came about in Miami. I know it was in Miami, and somehow we started talking about the shallow end and the deep, and I think Andrew said that it was safer in the shallow.
Yeah.
I wonder if that indeed is the case. And so.
I am hoping that we can discuss some of these I have some questions that I that I want to ask, y'all. I think the first thing is to talk about, like what it is frowned upon for someone to be deemed as shallow, right, Like if someone is like.
Oh, there's a shallow what is that? What does that mean?
Like?
What does it mean for someone to be shallow? To you, tiff what does it mean You're like, oh, this person is shallow?
What does that mean? That everything is surfaced?
I guess like if you you can't even have a philical sophal, yes, if you if you can be philosophical.
I think that Tiff might be shallow today.
They cannot have a philosophical discussion, Like they couldn't even participate.
That we cannot have a serious They're making me laugh.
You're.
Doing anything.
It's just like they can't have a philosophical discussion.
I'm not looking at you all and.
When you like, they're not engaged on anything beyond what I would consider like bee even if we're talking about like celebrity gossip, like it it's stays at you know.
Celebrity gossip.
If we're talking about rap lyrics, you know, like everything is just kind of of who cares? But can I say though, I have a friend who doesn't read any news. All of her information comes from like Instagram. You know, she is a mother, but she is like the embodiment of love. And I think these two things are related because I think it's easy to go through the day and maybe through life being joyful when you're oblivious to
all the misery happening. And I've read this in a book somewhere, and they said that humanity does not function on human kindness. It actually functions on human callousness. Because if any of us ever truly confronted the monstrosities that happen every day as human beings, we would not be able to function. So there is some safety perhaps in staying in the shallow.
But even your friend who reads who doesn't read papers, doesn't necessarily mean that she's shallow.
Are we talking about substantively.
Shallow, Like, yeah, she's joyful, intimactually shallow, or we say, are we saying that there is there more than one way to be shallow?
Yeah, I think people who find it difficult to choose not to or don't have the ability to see or understand subtexs. Yeah, like beyond what is said and what is obvious, that there's a refusal, either deliberately or an absence of ability to see beneath. And there's some people, I think who use the tool of shallowness simply as that a tool.
Yeah, like a defense mechanism.
Or I will get you coming the other way. It's sort of like you won't see me coming. It's sort
of like you won't see me coming. So you've ever been in community with people who you may have relegated to the category of shallow, not deep, not the person you're gonna go to for a real conversation and then in an instance, you happen to listen or you happen to hear them in something that they have said really pricked your consciousness because it isn't on the superficial it is they sort of had a moment where they revealed that I'm as deep as you. I can go there
if I want to. I choose to keep this relationship where it is so that I don't have to do this is that and the third with you, and I think that I have experienced people who have used the veneer of superficiality as a way to cover for what I've come to learn as a much deeper thinker, analyzer, and quite frankly operator, yeah, you know, and an operator to their benefit right in their interests.
One of the things I'm thinking about now because it's like if you contrast between somebody who is shallow and someone who is deep, at least theoretically, or maybe they vacillate between the two. The person who I was just thinking about is Congressman Bennie Thompson. He is not shallow at all, but he says things that feel sometimes that feel very surface, like he can reach you at USA today and it has you know, some shakespeare like meaning, and it doesn't even sink in like that until later.
We were having a conversation recently, and I'll speak more vaguely, but I was in trouble because he felt like I wasn't reaching out the way that I should.
And he was right, and he was just like something like you know.
I was like, So I called him the next or a couple of days later, and I said, I'm just calling to check in. I don't want anything. I just wanted to make sure you knew that I was here. And he was like, yeah, I'm just telling you to just check in every now and then. And he was like he was making fun of me. He's like, I talked to your dad more than you. My dad calls all of them all the time. On a surface level, on a shallow level, it sounds like just tapping in
every now and then is a very shallow point. But is it actually isn't like it it is. There's a ton of depth attached to it. When you check in with someone, it creates attachment, it creates relationship, and it ensures that people know just what's going on in people's
everyday lives. When you don't check in with someone you don't necessarily know they need surgery, or you don't necessarily know that someone in their family is struggling, or you know, there are all of these different layers that you miss from what it feels like a relatively shallow touch.
Yeah. Also, I find with those shallow touches, it might appear, if you want to categorize it that way, that those touch ins also provide just that nugget, like something happens in the course of that extrage. Yeah, that again might transform the battle that you might be in. He may not be as clueless about the battle as you're fighting as you think. He is, maybe more tuned in you
never is. And where you choose to check in, Yeah, he may be the South, And something that he says may be the South that you've been looking for and you just didn't know it. I found with my father that while he didn't talk a lot to us, right unless it was a directive, that when he did choose to say something, he was really saying something and I didn't always get it. He'd say, he'd have to say,
don't take no wood Nickels off. Nobody Nickel You're right, they don't exist there is no wood Nickel, right, it didn't spend And in other words, it's like, don't be tricked, don't be fooled, don't be you know whatever. I've shared this when I talked about my own testimony where he says, you know, son don't believe the hype like the hype music. Yeah, if you believe what they say good about you, you believe what they say bad, and you'll be a slave to them both. And I had no way to see
that properly at the time. But his advice thenn was as prescient, you know, as ever. And if I would have applied it properly, sometimes you need the experience, you know, of what not to do before you appreciate that, you know, the advice. But but it had I known, man, it would have been. But most people would have thought my daddy was just his nickname was Sonny, you know, almost like you know, you know, bright and cheery. He never met a stranger. In fact that my graduation is like
oh two little times. So many people you know, get around to your dad right to get around and touching me and meet everybody. So you just thought it was just happy, happy, you know, good, go lucky and and truth. He was an observer, very perceptive of people, incredibly aged and wise, you know, advice and so even in this conversation about what's deep and what's superficial, a lot of people who think they're deep ain'cent at all exactly the yeah, very confused.
Makes a good point.
She's like when she was around all these like heads of state and you know, high profile people, it's like, you, some of y'all ain't that smart.
And I used to have that.
I mean, we say imposter syndrome, but I think imposter syndrome is when a white man came along and told you weren't good enough to do something, and it stuck with you because you don't you're not born with that. And I remember feeling like every one around me must know something that I don't until you start talking to folks and it's like, yeah, I actually know more than you. Yeah, but what I don't know I can learn, but you ain't gonna learn what I know. You know, some things
that we know is just by osmosis. I think I choose to be shallow on something. I have to go out of my way to force myself because I have to be honest on days it might be a random Saturday where I don't read anything. I might read like a book of work of fiction, but my spirit does feel a little lighter when I don't.
Do you just here's the question, because this is the second time now when referencing deep or shallow you go right in to like, yeah, like and well reading something. So your friend who you said is so loving, but you're like, she doesn't read anything.
She's not shallow, she's really deep.
Right, But then you said on your shallow days, you're not reading something. I wonder how we then define that's good? Yeah, you know depth, like it's death just book.
That's why I said subtext because I couldn't get to the knowledge place because I thought, I don't know that it is.
Oh, I don't know that it is about our degrees or what we real or how much information that sort of thing. I think. It's like what you see is not you know, the ability to sort of discern what you see isn't what it really is. And that applies across you know, the range of subject matter, so on and so forth. That it takes work to investigate a subtext.
It takes effort. You have to put energy the expenditure of energy into trying to figure out what somebody's trying to communicate to you or what they're saying without saying it. So I think a lot of us really do choose in different relationships at different moments whether or not we just want to keep this there or if we're willing to go the layers beneath, and so maybe we're not perpetually any of it.
That I think is so true because when I consider the people who are like vulnerable off top, to me, that's deeper than someone who is like, hey, how.
You doing you good?
You look good?
That's very surface.
But someone who can say, man, you know I've been going through a lot, you know, behind all my taxis I got, my kid is struggling like they're they're putting it all on the surface, but they've done the work for that stuff to come out. I think that's so different, and that is a form of depth. And so that is my question. When we consider the space that we're creating on this podcast or the people that we want to be in the world, is it really safer on
the shallow end? Is it safer in the shallow for us? Then in the deep, where you know, on the shallow end.
Are you really known?
Can you really be yourself in the shallow when you know your multi dimensional and.
Have all these layers?
Like?
Is that really safe where you're not yourself? Is it safer for you Angela in the shallow?
No?
No, I'm a scorpiogret.
Yeah, like I need to to staring to see my soul. Yeah, you know, and I want to see yours. And I would prefer if I didn't have to navigate through some crazy forests and some booby traps and stuff to get there.
I think for people who I know and love, I'm like you, I want to be known. But I have to say that is fairly new for me. You said this to me a while ago. Angela and I had two fights. We had one fight, No, we had to who was the second one?
The second one we aired? Andrew was like, can we all just get along?
People in the comments funny on Andrew they like, I love the way Andrew handles Angela and Zif They're.
Like, okay, I don't have literally.
Our first one was over a guy, and you remember we were at lunch and it was.
It wasn't my potential boot.
That sounds like you like Monica was, he don't deserve your ass.
Yes.
Angelo's point was he doesn't deserve you, not even to breathe your air.
Yes, she was right for the record, but imagine that.
But what no much offensive? But I said it and I echo it now. But what you said to me, which I had this message, I'm Tiffany Cross, and I approved that message. But what you said to me at the time, I had not heard before. The question hadn't been posed to me before. And you said, I wonder when you come home to yourself?
Dot dot dot.
There was some other stuff after that, but I thought about that, what does that mean to come home to myself? Because I had been in a shallow with myself for a long time. But when you go deep. Our other sister friend, Latasha Brown, said this to me. I'll go over laughing to cry, and I do.
It's good.
Latasha said this to me.
Latasha Brown, she was telling me when I was going through a lot, and she said, you know.
You this sounds mean, but she is a body of love.
And she said, it's like you have a bowl of shit and you have put flowers on top, you spray perfume on top, and you present that.
To the world.
But this is like, this is okay, and you present that to people who you want to get to know. But the thing about shit, you can't cover up shit. And until you deal with that shit deep inside, you have to clean that out first for those flowers to really bloom. And I hope this encourages somebody today because that is when I realized, oh, this is the journey home to myself.
It's not this happened to me and I'm moving on.
It's like, no feel your feelings, stick in your feelings, be self, your friends, the people around you reflect back to you who you are. See that ugly reflection and work on it and clean it out and come home to yourself. Because you leave home and you go out there and work through all your trauma that your parents in childhood on intentionally, and then on that journey home back to yourself, it's like, oh, let me get rid of this, get rid of this ship, and let flowers boom.
So I'm recently in deep with myself, but for a long time, even unbeknownst to myself, I was in the shallow. I ain't even excaded to get that.
I appreciate the trust, all right, y'all, we're going to take a quick break and be right back. I think for me, I I definitely took a long way round to the invitation for people to know me more deeply, and one because I didn't think people were that interested and right it was, you know, I sort of saw myself as a production wheel. What can you put out,
what can you put out? Give me more? You know, you know, that sort of thing and therapy, largely thanks to Angela, you know, and our Jay's insistence of sitting down and just sort of figuring out how to come home to myself, and that when you do that, you are a lot less concerned about people's thoughts, perceptions, feelings
about you. Not in a disrespectful way, but just in a way that, you know what, I'm gonna do this thing, and I'm gonna do it because it's in my pleasure, not because this is what your expectation is of me, this is what you want from me, or I'm not in a performative state, but rather if I come up to you and you and I engage in something at a deeper level, it's simply because it was in my pleasure at the time. And if we don't get to that.
I'm not being superficial with you. I'm just saying, what's up, how you doing. I hope all this well and I'm moving on, and you should as well. We had a positive encounter, because we did, and I do wish you well, But I I didn't open an invitation to know that the world was upside down for you, partly because everybody doesn't deserve that. Have me earned that from you? Everyone it shouldn't be treated to that. And I don't think that is a denial of yourself. I don't think that
is a departure from who you are. I don't think that is putting on certainly if you're acting without expectation. I'm not doing this thing because I want this thing to be said back to me in return. I didn't do that thing for you to compliment me. I didn't give that speech for you to be wild bowed over and say, oh, you're an excellent speaker. I did it, and I said it, and it came out that way because it was in my pleasure, it was in my truth.
I stood there and if you get something from it, good, and if you didn't, that's okay too, because I did it not in service to that but in service to me, and by being in service to me that God knows it, I believe it will bless beyond.
Yeah.
Wise, there was no intention of doing it that way or doing it at all, and therefore it wouldn't have happened. So I think we choose the moments at which we have our reveals, whatever those reveals may be. And I don't want to judge them those reveals. It's just that's where you and I are with each other, and we might encounter each other on another day and we may be someplace different because you may be someplace different and your expectation of me may be different at that time.
But what I like about this conversation is, I think where we're going to get leading to is that we're taking the value judgment off of the the shallow from the depth, yeah.
And exploring what it means.
I appreciate you saying, is it the second time you brought up reading something or like knowledge and what I perceive it to be. But that's not really the shallow or the deep like that's just you know.
It's the form of it. It's intellectual depth. But is there there's there's another kind that I think results in real human connection, right like timcy that people will say means into me see and can you do that If there's a shell or there's a layer, or there's a barrier that really, you know, maybe came as a result of a very deep, deeply wounded place, but it's created a barrier that feels very shallow. We talk about creating
a safe space here. We can't create a safe space here for our podcast if we're not safe spaces for ourselves as co hosts and also as individuals. And that is a regular journey and return home to yourselves. I also don't want to take credit for that. That's a yachty saying to return Yai home to ourselves, but it is a regular return. Like you think about going home every single day, you have to go and check back in every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, Like where am I?
Right?
Am I still? Who I say? I am?
Am? I? You know?
Where are my conflicts? Where are my flat sides?
Every single week on this podcast, I feel like there's something glaring where I'm like, oh my god, I see my hypocrisy here. I'm I'm gonna call it out so I can be accountable to y'all our listeners and keep growing. That is also a return home to myself. And you were talking about the reveal we're revealing. We literally are shedding layers, you know, every every day, probably multiple hours in a day, we're shedding these layers. And so my hope is that in this conversation that will never end
because we're constantly waiting a little bit deeper. We hope that you all will consider what depth really means and how you can wait in and out of the shallow, but making sure that you know how to create safety for yourself.
So that's safety.
Yeah.
Can I just say one more thing when you were talking about creating safe space for co hosts, to me, that's the easier part.
Creating the individual part is the hardest part, like.
Being at peace internally and seeing your hypocrisy. You know, when you watch yourself, when you hear yourself and it's like, oh, that is something that I have to sit in.
Yeah, I have to address, I have to deal with.
I have to unpack and come out better on the other And I don't know that we have an answer to the question. It might not be safer in the deep in, but you have to learn to be comfortable in the deep in with yourself because that's your home.
Yeah. Welcome home, y'all. Welcome yeah, all.
Right, thanks for listening to you guys. Please please please remember to rate, review, subscribe, and tune into our regular episode on Thursdays. We Welcome home, y'all. Native Land Pod is the production of iHeartRadio and partnership with Recent Choice Media. For more podcasts iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.