[00:00:00] Patrick: I broke my neck. I should have died. I was in a car accident 12 years ago. I drove drunk. I made a really bad mistake. People tell me they're sorry. I broke my neck. I'm like, ah, it's, it's kind of the best thing that ever happened to me. As weird and dark as that may sound, and I wouldn't ever wanna not have it had happen in my life.
[00:00:16] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death. Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach. In this episode, my guest is Patrick Lin Infante. As you've already heard, Patrick should have died in a car accident 12 years ago. After that experience. He devoted his life to sharing his story to help others not feel so alone. He has found that being vulnerable helps others to be vulnerable, which bridges the gap between us. Patrick shares with us some of the details about the accident and the long road to recovery, which was more mental than physical. This is a really wonderful episode about healing and transformation.
[00:00:50] Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the podcast, Patrick. Thank you so much for being here. I saw Patrick in a Facebook group. I read a little bit about him and I'm sorry, I'm assuming your pronouns are him, but I learned a little bit about Patrick from the Post and I was really excited to talk to him.
[00:01:08] I'm just gonna get right into it. Can you just tell us though, a little bit about your background, where you're from, how old you are, and anything like that?
[00:01:17] Patrick: Absolutely. Jill, I appreciate you having me on today and my name is Patrick. I grew up in New Jersey and about eight years ago, I dropped everything and literally drove across the country.
[00:01:29] Never stepped foot in Colorado before and became a resident and started a whole new life. And that's kind of where, where I am and where it's brought my life today in terms of being a speaker, being an athlete, be being a musician, kind of everything has kind of transpired since just changing.
[00:01:47] Jill: That's amazing. I've been to Colorado. I haven't spent a lot of time there. It seems beautiful. Definitely very different than New Jersey. I didn't know you were from New Jersey. I feel like I keep talking to people from New Jersey. Not on purpose. We just kind of gravitate to each other. So can you tell me a little bit about it, you said you're a speaker. What do you speak about? What's going on with you?
[00:02:09] Patrick: As we're talking about now is death and life and what we go through during that process. For me, I broke my neck. I, by all intents of purposes, should have died, or doctors and cops, and didn't really have an explanation on seeing what happened to me. I was in a car accident 12 years ago.
[00:02:31] I drove drunk. I made a really bad mistake, and I got thrown outta that car. I fractured three vertebrae in my neck. I ripped all the tendons outta my arm. I was in a pretty bad place for a little while. Speaking kind of just found me over this time. I've always been a musician. I've always been kind of a host.
[00:02:51] I've been in hospitality in restaurants and bars, and kind of always been around this experience, lifestyle, and I don't know, the chicken of the egg, whichever came first. I just started to talk to more people, and started to share a little more of my story. People kept asking a little more to share more of it and go more in-depth.
[00:03:13] I joined the Toastmasters group. I started to actually get a little bit more professional side of practice and training and being comfortable with speaking. And one thing led to another and just kind of found me. I like to share cuz I think a lot of people feel alone or they don't feel like they can relate to people. And the more we share, the more we realize that we have a lot more in common than we realize.
[00:03:38] Jill: That is very true. I believe we all do have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think you sharing the fact that you made a mistake that you were driving drunk, all of us have done it. I shouldn't say that.
[00:03:52] All of us that drink have done it at some point, and I know there are times when I probably should not have driven my car, but I. For a variety of reasons and excuses that at the time seemed valid, and to hear somebody very openly say, I did this, I made a mistake and I almost killed myself. Doing it is important.
[00:04:16] It's important for us to hear that. I'm really curious about what you remember about the experience of being in the accident and realizing it what has happened, that you were very close to having died and I'm sure it was a very long recovery. So if you don't mind sharing some of that, I would love to hear about it.
[00:04:40] Patrick: I would love to go in-depth on that and, you know,, to take one step back. The whole vulnerability is kind of a part of who I am and exactly what you just reflected to me is why I share that I made a mistake. Because if I share that, it's very often something where people feel more comfortable to start sharing themselves and it starts to bridge the gap a lot more.
[00:05:02] The accident itself, I went out a night and I was, I went to like a birthday or something out at a billiards hall, drank probably a couple of pitchers of beer. I don't remember at this point. And at the time I was living probably close to a hundred miles away from where I was hanging out. I was doing an internship at that time or had just finished it, and I was kind of in between moving and was trying to figure what was next in life. So I left that bar. I'd gone to drive the hundred miles home, and really the last memory I had was probably about 40 minutes before the accident, give or take. I actually was driving down the highway and I threw up outside my window as I was driving and I pulled over at a rest stop, got out and I literally thought to myself, oh, that's so dumb.
[00:05:46] I'm gonna have to clean that tomorrow. Like, that's what I was worried about. Like, oh, what an idiot. I'm gonna have to clean up my throw-up. Not the fact that I was driving drunk. And from there, there are about four hours of my life, maybe five hours that just doesn't exist. I ended up driving another 45 minutes or so.
[00:06:04] My car hit a giant rock that splits a four-lane highway, probably 40 feet high and a couple of hundred feet long, and I went up and hit this rock. Kind of launched off of it got thrown outta my car and my car flipped about four or five times. I thought the accident happened about three miles from where it happened, cuz my bumper stayed on the side of the road for like four months as I went to physical therapy.
[00:06:26] So I always thought that it happened in this one spot and because of a drunk driving accident, I had a court date and it got adjourned and I never heard anything for two years. Two years later, I ended up going to court, lost my license, and I got all the pictures of the accident where it happened, and it turned out it happened a couple of miles down the road.
[00:06:45] I actually hit a rock that since I was 10 years old has been respray painted “Jesus saves” on it every single year since I was like 10 years old. Never knew that it had happened there. Never knew anything. Two years later, I was like, wow, okay, go figure. So I got thrown outta my car. My car's on it's roof. I'm like a hundred feet away from it, and a guy drives down the road and rolls over my wheel first, and that stops him from essentially hitting me, just laying.
[00:07:10] Face down in the middle of the highway. In the middle of the night, he calls 9 1 1. I get medevac to Morristown Hospital and I woke up as I was going into surgery. They kind of woke me up and told me, Hey, you were in a car accident. You broke your neck. We're taking you into surgery. Is there anything you need?
[00:07:28] And my response was, oh yeah, sure. No big deal. I just gotta go to the bathroom. I'll come right back and we'll take care of this. Like, no, that's, that's not what's going on here. That's not what's happening. And I went into surgery, came out a couple of hours later and my parents had found out about that at that time.
[00:07:43] That was the last time my mom ever turned her phone off in the middle of the night, and woke up to a voicemail saying, your son's almost dead. He's in the hospital. And then it was kind of start to try to piece together what happened after that.
[00:07:54] Jill: It's, I think every parent's worst nightmare to get that phone call.
[00:07:58] For me, the main thing that I am thinking of listening to that story is the shame and the guilt that I would've felt afterward. That in and of itself, I feel would've been harder for me to get over than even the physical injuries. Is that something that you experienced, or what was yours?
[00:08:24] Patrick: You couldn't be more accurate, the physical side of things took way shorter than everyone would presume and conversations that I've had with people, I was outta the hospital in three days. The insurance company said, sorry, tough. There's nothing else we can do for you. You just have to heal. So, sent me home, but with my mom, who just got laid off from a job of 30 plus years, three weeks earlier.
[00:08:48] So she was home with me every single day. They just sent me outta the hospital, and said, good luck. Go heal. And that was it. Physically, I was back to work because another insurance, disability and worker's ran out. So I was back to work in four months, and even though I barely could do what I was doing within a year, I felt fairly normal.
[00:09:07] But I would say the mental side, I can't fully say that it's fully healed at this point. 12 years later, I, I think it's 90% at least, and I've worked through a lot of it. But yeah, the shame. Knowing that I drove drunk and is that something I hide from people? I've told people in job interviews, but I've not told people till I know them for six months.
[00:09:31] I have done this, done that I, I hide it, I tell it, and I've experimented with all those things to see how I feel about it, to see how the interaction goes, but for putting my mom through that mental kind of obstacle. That was one of the biggest things. I was like, oh man, that was not cool to put my mom through that.
[00:09:52] And on the other side of things, you know, guilt, there's survivors guilt, a term that's used pretty widely in the psychology field. And I've gone to therapy and explored why and what I feel surrounding this because there have been times in my life when I don't feel like I deserve to still be alive.
[00:10:11] I feel like I've made a grievous mistake and there are other people that don't make mistakes that have far worse consequences. And how is that fair in the grand scheme of life? About a year before my accident happened, I lost one of my best friends. My college roommate drove from New Jersey to California, started a new life within a month was in extra roles in films.
[00:10:37] That started and within a month was killed at noon in broad daylight, sitting at a red light, doing absolutely nothing wrong, and a year later I make the mistake that everyone tells you not to make somehow. Not only am I spared, but I'm not paralyzed. I don't have any very limiting factors. I do still have, obviously a little bit of things that I deal with pain and stuff, but I'll take that any day over the alternate realities that could have happened, and it's, it's been a, a decade-long process to try to forgive myself, to try to make peace with that, to try to feel like I deserve to have a good life, to feel like I.
[00:11:20] Am a genuinely good human being despite this one mistake. So the mental side of it, I don't know if it'll ever be healed, if I'm honest.
[00:11:31] Jill: Is that part of why you share your story? Is that something that helps to heal you, that you feel like you're using the experience to do good in the world?
[00:11:41] Patrick: A hundred percent.
[00:11:42] I've dedicated and believed that this life is now of service to other people. It's not about me. I was at a wedding that I wasn't really supposed to be able to go to, but I was healing quicker than my doctor thought. So I ended up going to this wedding about three months after, and the groom’s uncle sat there and he said, man, it's like you're living in the bonus round a wheel of fortune.
[00:12:06] It's like literally stuck with me to this day, 12 years later. And since then, it's always been. I want to know what I can do with this life. I wanna know what a second chance can be. I wanna know how much I can use and try to counteract and offset that feeling of, I don't deserve this by, okay, I have gotten this chance, so what can I do with it?
[00:12:27] And one part, it does heal me by sharing. And on the other part of things, it makes other people realize. Just looking at me, you can think, oh, I'm, I'm a white male in my thirties, I probably have a perfect life. You know, I haven't made any mistakes. I'm great, I'm awesome. And there are just things that blow the surface for all of us that we're all dealing with stuff.
[00:12:48] We've all made mistakes. We've all done certain things. And on two sides of the same coin, I love to prevent someone else from making the same mistake I did. And I know that that's impossible, but maybe I stopped one person or maybe I helped someone. And on the other side of. Whether it's drinking, whether it's any kind of mistake in life, it's not over unless you choose it to be over and you can always come back.
[00:13:10] You can always make do with what you have and move forward. You can always make that choice to say, yeah, this is not the most enjoyable circumstance I'm in right now, but this isn't my entire life’s future, it's just what I'm going through right now.
[00:13:25] Jill: We had talked about when we were messaging each other a little bit about what we all have our coping mechanism to deal with life, whether it's drinking or drugs or shopping or whatever it is that people do, and how the lasting consequences of some of these behaviors, we don't realize it at the moment, and then there's so much shame and so much guilt that's tied with them.
[00:13:58] And it's unfortunate because it holds us back from really living our life the way that we want to live it, by feeling the shame and feeling that guilt rather than just saying, yes, I've made mistakes. Yes, these are things that I would not go back and do again, but I wanna be able to move forward. And holding on to that shame and that guilt really prevents us from moving forward with our lives.
[00:14:21] Hopefully for a lot of us we can use our past mistakes and our past experiences to help other people. Did your experience affect your spiritual beliefs at all, or what were your spiritual beliefs may be before this, and then did they change afterward?
[00:14:41] Patrick: Yeah, I think I've been on a journey throughout my life.
[00:14:44] I was technically raised Catholic. My parents and my whole family. Kind of by the time I was born or by the time I was starting to be a kid, hadn't really stayed in that vein. It kind of drifted and yes, we were brought up like Irish Catholic, and then kind of by the time I was five or 10, we weren't really going to church.
[00:15:08] I never did bible school or Sunday school or anything in that resort. I just kind of grew up and I think, I think at some point I kind of took the stance, of being spiritual, like I didn't want to commit to like a God or commit to like one belief system over another belief system, or I wasn't really sure what I would think about it.
[00:15:35] I don't know if I still have an answer. Christianity definitely comes back and forth in my life. Uh, signs or people I meet or kind of comes back and forth. I am somewhat informed on a multitude of religions. I, I take a lot of them in just to see and taste and kind of see what the similarities are, what the differences are.
[00:15:56] But I definitely, I can't deny that after this event. Like there's something that wants me still here. There's something. You know, both my friend Aaron that I told you about that had passed away and my great-aunt was also had passed away at that time as many other relatives as well. But I know that there were a couple of people up there that were like, it's, it's uh, not your time yet.
[00:16:20] We're gonna, you got some things you gotta do down there and, and this is gonna be a part of your story and you gotta go back and you gotta use this to your advantage.
[00:16:29] Jill: Was your friend Aaron's death really impactful for you at the time, or was it more of an impact afterward because of that survivor's guilt?
[00:16:38] Patrick: Both. It definitely hit me when it happened. It was a friend that we came into friendship kind of later half of college. It wasn't like we went to college knowing each other or met as first friends. It was, we kind of moved in as seniors and got to know each other and he was just a super funny guy and a guy.
[00:16:58] You know, we were gonna have beers and barbecue when we were 50. It was definitely that kind of a friendship and definitely that someone that was gonna be in my life for my life, even if it was just phone conversations or checking up, it was someone that I knew was always gonna be there. And it was one of the, it probably was the first person that I lost that wasn’t a 70-year-old relative, or 80-year-old, or someone that's lived a full life, so to speak, it was definitely the first person that I knew close to me that, wow, you are two years older than me and you just lost your life. Wow. And then it just was two separate mindsets in terms of how they affected me with the survivor's guilt and with the actual event happening.
[00:17:41] But they both were incredibly large impacts on my psyche and how I view the world.
[00:17:48] Jill: Now your beliefs about death and dying when you were younger, was it something that your family really ever talked about? Did you have to face anybody's death when you were younger or was it more as you got a little bit older?
[00:18:03] Patrick: You know, the death thing has always been a funny thing for me because I feared death from a young age. I can't quite tie the story together quite yet in my own brain, but looking. Numerology and human design and like all these things that are out there, there's almost things that say like, this accident was supposed to happen in my life.
[00:18:25] Right? And whether you believe that or not, I trace back to even as early as I'm being like, I wanna say 5, 6, 7. And I would go into my parent’s bedroom in the middle of the night and be like, I'm afraid to die. And I don't know where that fear came from. I don't know where. Or why I had that kind of fear, but it permeated a good portion of my early childhood just being afraid to die.
[00:18:52] And I did see grandmother pass away when I was probably 16 or so, and I watched the last three or four years of her life battling cancer and losing that battle. That was kind of my first. Memorable, not quite adult, but having a memory of kind of watching someone inevitably lose their life over time wasn't a very fun experience.
[00:19:17] Both in that and it was my mother's side of the family. So seeing how that affects her, how that affects her other siblings, and kind of just observing a lot and seeing what that does to people.
[00:19:28] Jill: It can be very difficult on families. It depends on the family, but I find. Often, it can really be something that tears families apart, but I truly believe that when that happens, it's just deeper issues that families haven't faced, that they've shoved down.
[00:19:49] And when somebody's dying, because we're so emotional because we're so vulnerable because. Everything that's happening around us, we can't hold that down anymore. And so it all comes out and everybody's blaming each other and it can get very messy. Unfortunately. Your beliefs about the afterlife, had you really thought about it much when you were younger, do you think about it now? Has it changed a lot?
[00:20:17] Patrick: I don't really know. I think for me it's something. It's never going to be one thing. I think it continues to change and continues to evolve. What I see as I experience through my life, I, I'm, I'm torn between whether there's like an afterlife heaven and whether we get reincarnated, whether there's a timeframe in between those two.
[00:20:42] Like you go to. Heaven for a disclosed amount of time, and then you come back, or if as soon as you die, you're just reset with the next baby that's born. Like I, I'm, I'm kind of not sure what my beliefs are on it, and I'm admittedly kind of happy with that feeling of, I don't know, I don't think I'll ever have the answers.
[00:21:05] I don't wanna sit here and act like, oh, well this is the truth. I know what it is. It's like I, I, I think it's all very interesting. I think there are a lot of things that are hard to explain and our imagination, and our curiosity can lead us to set up those kind of beliefs that there is something after this, there is another experience that we get to have, and I, I'm, I'm not sure what that looks like.
[00:21:29] I don't know if we get to. Do we sit down, with God or whoever it is at the end and like watch the game tape from our life and be like, oh, well this is, this was a good time. Oh, this was a bad mistake. Oh, this is like, do we like rehash all that and take notes or do we just kinda, okay, that was a good time.
[00:21:47] Come on in and now we enjoy like, I don't know. It's, it's definitely curiosity for me.
[00:21:53] Jill: I'm kind of the same where I don't know what I. I have studied a lot of different religions and what they think happens, and I'm okay with not knowing, actually, it doesn't scare me. It, seems like I talk to people that the not knowing is part of what scares them about dying to me.
[00:22:15] I don't know. I think it's interesting. I like to think about it. I like to talk about it and it really doesn't scare me that I don't know. I guess maybe because either way, it's out of my control. It's not like knowing for sure what is gonna be on the other side of this life. It's not gonna change anything right now.
[00:22:34] I'm still gonna die one way or another. For me, I think the biggest part is that I have my husband, I have my children that when I die, whether I get reincarnated with them all over again, it's not gonna matter because it's not them as we are in this life. Yes. And that does not bother me, but it does make me appreciate the time that I have with them now because I know that at some point this time is gonna end and I want to really make the most of this life as I can.
[00:23:12] But it does make me a little sad that one day I'm gonna die and my children will still be here. But of course my daughter last night, said something along the lines of, so it's like me and my husband, my son, and my daughter, something like, I hope that we all die at the same time, all four of us. I hope we all die together at the same time.
[00:23:32] And me and my husband were like, no, no, no, no. We don't want that to happen. If that happens, it's a bad thing, essentially. It probably would be an accident of some sort. We really don't want that to happen, but she just can't imagine living her life without us. Hmm. And I'm like, yeah, but the reality is, I will probably die before you.
[00:23:55] Hopefully not anytime soon, but I'm the parent. We're, we're supposed to, and I say supposed to in quotes because it's not always how it works, but the parents are supposed to die before the children. Yes. And. I imagine living the rest of my life without my mother and even my father. My father and I are not as close, but it does seem strange to me that eventually she's not gonna be here.
[00:24:23] Even though on a logical level, I know that there's still that other part of me that's like, yeah, but one day. She's not gonna be here, and my life is gonna keep going and we're not gonna have experiences together. You know, I'm not gonna be able to tell her the things that I'm doing and whatnot, but I try not to let any of it scare me.
[00:24:44] It's just life. It's part of life. It's part of our existence that we have as humans.
[00:24:50] Patrick: Yeah. Are you conscious of that in real-time? Do you have a good relationship with your parents? Does that affect like, oh, you know, I can only make memories now. Let me be conscious about this while I'm making them.
[00:25:01] Jill: I am conscious of it now. Yes. Was I in the past? No. Yeah. Becoming a death doula and really having to think about death more and have it be part of my daily existence has allowed me to. Even if my mother and I are driving somewhere and we're having a conversation, there's part of me. Is really conscious and understanding of that.
[00:25:27] One day this conversation is gonna be a memory. One day I'm not gonna have this ability to drive in the car with her somewhere and have these conversations and it's helpful for me when you know everybody that you're close with does something that's annoying, right. And so it's really helpful for me in those moments when my mom's telling me the same thing and I'm just like, okay, Paula like, yep, I know this already.
[00:25:54] I've heard this, but then there's a little voice in my head now that's like, yeah, but one day you're not gonna hear her voice telling you the same thing. And it allows me to be more patient and less frustrated and less annoyed and like all the other things that naturally happen and with my father, him and I are not very close.
[00:26:20] So there's part of me that knows that one day he's going to not be here anymore. But really being able to be okay with that in this moment and come to a place where I'm like, but it's okay. We had our human existence together, whatever that was. It wasn't perfect, wasn't bad, it wasn't good. It just was.
[00:26:44] And I'm okay with that. And so I like to think that when he dies that I'm gonna be okay. But I don't know. You don't know what your reaction's gonna be when somebody dies. Until it happens. Yeah. And so I try to be okay with all of it, but I really, especially with my children, there were times, I mean, do you, you don't have children?
[00:27:06] No. Okay. So as much as I love them, your children are the ones that know all of the buttons to push, to really, really drive you a little bit insane. And. It's an interesting experience because before you have kids, you're like, this is how I'm gonna be as a parent. And then when it happens, you're like, oh, okay, so where did this stuff come from?
[00:27:32] Because I am not handling this the way I thought I was going to. But it has allowed me to be in a place where now I can really just love them for who they are. And. Enjoy the experience even when it's not always the most pleasant because I know that one day this is not going to exist, and I knew that even on a certain level before.
[00:28:00] But now, it just feels more real in my being, this knowing so that I don't have to stop myself and think it. It just happens where part of me is like, yeah, you know what? Maybe they're driving you crazy, but if nothing else, if one day they might move across the country, we're right now, we're all in the house together and we get on each other's nerves, and that's okay too.
[00:28:22] So it has definitely changed the way that I move through the world. The more that I've come to terms with the fact that I could die at any moment and any of us can, and I'm gonna be a little superstitious and do the like, knock on wood. Hopefully, it's not gonna happen anytime soon. But I don't know for sure cuz I could be like your friend just sitting at a red light and we don't have control over that.
[00:28:50] And that for me is still. I didn't think I was a controlling person, but there definitely was a level of control that I felt I needed to have over my life. I have my calendar, I have things scheduled. I have things planned. I know where I'm going. I know what I'm doing. That made me feel safe. It made me feel comfortable and there's still that little part with death, it could come at any time, so I have to constantly work with that, letting go of the control.
[00:29:22] Over it because we can't control it to a certain extent, yes, I don't drink and drive anymore. That's something I can control. I try to watch what I eat and stay healthy, but you hear all the time people are healthy and they still get sick and they still die, and it's just, there's only so much you can control.
[00:29:42] Yeah,
[00:29:43] Patrick: Agreed. I'll tell you, look at things. You know what they say, what is it? Fear and excitement or anxiety and excitement are basically the same response. It's just a different way that you're perceiving it, but it, it's essentially a similar, if not the same physiological response. I've gone down the rabbit hole in that whole control thing and how I feel about it and what's going on with it, and I kind of view it in a similar way.
[00:30:07] Yeah, to some degree you're like, oh, I can't control this. Like, nothing is worth anything. Like, oh, I can't make this happen, or I can't, like, oh, I'm so stressed, I, I don't know what's gonna happen. And on the other side of that, it's almost like the most freeing thing ever cuz it's like, oh, nothing I do actually matters.
[00:30:23] I actually don't have control over anything. And even if I wanna do something, it's gonna work out how it works out. So like, who cares? I fluctuate back and forth. Sometimes I feel better about how I feel around that, but, I dunno, it's a practice, right? Some days you feel good about it, some days not.
[00:30:38] Jill: It's definitely a practice and the true letting go is very freeing, but it's very hard to do and it definitely takes practice.
[00:30:48] I practice Buddhism, so I practice meditation and I read a lot and a lot of the Buddhist philosophies essentially are just really about letting go. Letting go of our attachments to everything, including our own physical bodies and our life and everything else around it. And on a logical level, I'm like, yeah, totally.
[00:31:14] I gotta let go. But the actual letting go is a, it's a process. It doesn't happen overnight, but those moments when I feel it, when I can actually be in my body, and I wasn't an anxious person before. But I realize now that I would feel that like anxious in my stomach, like butterflies or whatever you wanna call it, more often than I was even conscious of.
[00:31:43] But now that it doesn't happen, I'm like, oh, this is nice. I kind of like going through life this way. But I get glimpses of it. It's not like I live there all the time, but when I can spend a couple of days really just letting go of all of it, it does feel really good. But that's it. But it's not that even, it feels good.
[00:32:03] It just feels free. It feels relaxing. It feels like a place that I would love to live the rest of my life. And then the superstitious part of me is almost afraid to relax. Because then I'm like, well, if I, if I relax into this, then what's gonna happen? Something has to go wrong if I allow myself to just relax and feel comfort and peace.
[00:32:31] And I don't think that that's true. I don't think, you know, like the law of attraction, I guess. I don't know, whatever those things are, I don't think I'm gonna attract something bad to myself just because I'm relaxing into it. But there's still that part of me, and sometimes I think it's the Catholic part of me.
[00:32:46] I was raised Catholic as well. Where I will never be a good person according to the way that I felt growing up. Yes. Like there's nothing I could ever do because I was born with that sin and I will always be a sinner and there's nothing I could do. And so when I get to those moments when I'm like, No, like I have healed a lot of my shame and my guilt.
[00:33:10] For the most part, I have let go a lot of my self-harming behaviors. I've tried to become a healthier person. I try to go out in the world and do good, so then I feel like, but that means something bad's gonna happen. I don't know. I don't know what to do with that part. Again, it's a process. It's a lesson in life and I'm working on it.
[00:33:31] Patrick: I mean, in a sense is not almost the Buddhism that you were speaking about anyway, it's to be able to let go of that. I just heard something literally like a, a day or two ago about this guy talking about losing his wife later on in their marriage, whether it was 40 years or whatever. And yeah, he was asked, Hey, what do you, what do you feel or how do you feel about your time together?
[00:33:51] Blah, blah blah. And he was like, you know, I think the number one thing is I wish I leaned into the good times better cause. Not leaning into them isn't making this pain of losing my wife hurt any less. It's not making this travesty not happen. It's the bad things that are still gonna happen. So when you have the good things, own 'em, lean into 'em, play with them, have them, because you're not controlling the bad times.
[00:34:18] You're not bringing the bad times in exactly what you said. Good people have bad experiences, period. We all have bad experiences. I feel like a lot of things come back to the present as well, where it's like, yeah, if now sucks. Okay, let it suck now. And if now is great, then let it be great right now. And so many of us have these 32nd interactions that we're bad and we relive that 30 seconds, like a thousand times.
[00:34:45] And instead of just feeling. Shame or guilt for that 30 seconds in that experience. You're like reliving it over and over and over instead of just, that was, then it happened. Okay, move on. Alright. And yeah, it sounds, oh, just, just do it. Right. I live by this. The adage of it's simple, not easy, right? It’s very simple to just say, oh, follow these rules.
[00:35:09] Do this. X, Y, Z. Doesn't mean that it's easy. The way I relate to it is a doctor or a lawyer. How do you become one? It's really simple. You go to school for this many years, you do this, you pass some tests, boom. You're a lawyer, you're a doctor. Does that mean it's easy? No, not, not in the slightest bit. That's just the way I see life.
[00:35:25] You just, the good things are gonna happen. The bad things are gonna happen. My favorite moments are when you can actually recognize something as good right now as you're having it happen and you're like, wow, this, this is, this is a good memory. I'm living in a good memory right now. Oh my gosh, this is awesome.
[00:35:42] Jill: Totally. And I love that it simple but not easy. And living in those moments that feel good and embracing them and really enjoying them and experiencing them, and I do. Have times from the past that, yeah, something that was maybe a few minutes, but I punished myself for years over those few minutes of thinking about it and thinking about it and working it in my head and redoing and all these silly things, and it prevents me from fully experiencing the good moments.
[00:36:19] And it's unfortunate because I'm not, I know I'm not the only one that does that. I think a lot of us move through life and we're not experiencing life, we're just reliving the past in our minds, or worrying about the future, not being in that moment that we're at right now. Good. And. I'm trying and this is why we're having this conversation so that other people can hear us talking about it and hopefully we can inspire other people to try to live really fully present in the moment.
[00:36:53] Especially the good ones. Cuz you're right. Enjoy them while you have them and good moments don't have to be fancy. It's not like most of the really positive memories that I think back even from when I was a child. It's not the times when somebody was buying me things and giving me things. It was the moments that I was spending in my grandmother's kitchen, cooking together and having a conversation.
[00:37:20] Those are the moments that really bring me joy and bring me happiness, and unfortunately, were not taught to really value those moments as much as we should. We are taught to value the purses and the shoes and the cars and the vacations and all the stuff that in the long run, yes, some of that is good.
[00:37:43] Some of it does bring us some pleasure, but it's not the same as that joy that we get from really connecting with the moment that we're in, which is usually connecting with another human. But it's vulnerable to connecting with other humans. And I am, I am right there with everybody else where I have my wall up often.
[00:38:03] Because part of me is afraid to connect deeply for whatever reason. I mean, there are probably a billion reasons.
[00:38:10] Patrick: I mean, we're all afraid you're gonna find out something that you shouldn't find out and it's gonna change the way you view me or who knows what. Even taking a step back, cuz you were talking about like even good and bad, like, Nothing is either one.
[00:38:25] The simplest case of a sporting event, like the same event happened and two people, one people thinks it's good, one thinkscit is bad cuz they're fans of opposite teams, but the actual event didn't change at all. You just assigned it to be a different value and you have no idea what is happening around you.
[00:38:43] Like things are just happening. They're not good or bad, and it's like, You don't know the smallest, bad thing, like, I don't know, you hit a red light or you're late for work, or something. Like, who knows? And like, but you don't understand that like by, by that light changing and you stopping someone else actually got something good out of that, or something else positive came out of that.
[00:39:03] Well, there are lessons to be learned in both good and bad. And as sad as it may be, you learn more out of the bad times or the quote-unquote bad times. Most lessons aren't fun to learn and it just, I don't know. I consciously try my best. Just remove any kind of judgment on what is this event and what's the story behind this event and why is this good or bad in my life.
[00:39:28] And I can't explain the amount of synchronicities and serendipity that I've experienced personally in my life. I don't know that there's a way to like teach people to find more serendipity, but I consciously have had things happen in my life. People that have witnessed it have been like, how did that at what I'm like it, it's what happens in my life and it's what I believe will happen in my life.
[00:39:53] Whether that is someone's faith in God or whether you want to attribute that as something else. Like, I just believe my life's gonna work out and maybe I'm a fool and maybe I'll be 70 and it won't work out at all, but like, maybe that's what's supposed to happen. I don't really know at this point. So, as you said, I, I don't know what's gonna happen.
[00:40:13] Why am I gonna spend time caring?
[00:40:13] Jill: As long as you're feeling like it's working out in this moment, that's the only thing that really matters. And then when you're 70, you're gonna be able to look back at your life. And see that there were positive and negative experiences, but overall have a feeling that you lived your life fully.
[00:40:33] And that's the biggest thing that most people don't live their life fully. They just move through life doing what they were taught they should do and not experiencing life for what it is. Yeah,
[00:40:48] Patrick: I mean, the same thing you just said. People are afraid to be vulnerable. Like, oh, I want to go play kickball with those people, but I'm afraid I'll get made fun of.
[00:40:54] Or I wanna go do this, but none of my friends want to go with me. Can you go alone? You'll meet someone that's actually doing what you wanna be doing anyway. So it's like, yeah, it's vulnerability. Like can you put yourself in a place where this feels weird, but still just go do it and see what happens? Cuz on the backside of those experiences are almost always the ones that you're.
[00:41:16] I needed to do that. That was the best choice I could have ever made. It's just, it worked out as well as I could have made it. I couldn't even have planned it to work out like this. It just happened just because I showed up.
[00:41:29] Jill: Some of the best experiences I've had in life were also the ones that I was so scared to take the step to actually put myself out there. And then once I do and I have this experience, then I'm really grateful that I took the step to do it. But taking that step is hard. I'm not saying it's easy, but with practice, like everything else, with practice, it will get easier. And that's what life is about, is taking the risks and having experiences that maybe.
[00:42:04] You didn't plan to have, because that's some of it too, is sometimes it's almost like stepping off a cliff where you don't, you don't see what's coming. You just know that that next step, and I, that kind of goes with some of the signs and the serendipity and all that type of stuff as well, is, I almost say it's like following the breadcrumbs where I don't know where it's gonna take me, but there are times when I've had an opportunity to do one thing or another and the other.
[00:42:32] Feels right, even though I don't know where it's gonna go. And then that takes me to something else and that takes me to something else. The next thing you know, here I am. And I don't know. I love it. It's, it's easy for me in some ways to say yes, like overall I really enjoy life. Doesn't mean life is perfect.
[00:42:51] It doesn't mean that there are not things I would change, but I have enjoyed. The experiences that I've had in life in the sense that all of them have taken me to where I am now, and I really wouldn't change where I'm at right now. And that's good. I mean, I think it's good.
[00:43:09] Patrick: I think that's awesome. I think more people could say that, but more people don't actually say it.
[00:43:15] And it's the same thing I've said about my life. People tell me they're sorry I broke my neck. I'm like, oh, that's the, it's kind of the best thing that ever happened to me as, as weird and dark as that may sound, it's kind of actually the best thing that ever happened to me and I wouldn't ever want to not have it had happened in my life.
[00:43:29] Like it just is. And when you're talking about the breadcrumbs, I love that analogy and like going from here to here, to here. And I really believe. A lot of people want a complete roadmap. They want like, okay, tell me what I'm getting into. I need to know what I'm committing to. I need to know what’re four steps down the line.
[00:43:48] I need to know who's gonna come in where, and feel like the contrary of adventure, of just punch the ticket. Just get on the plane, get on the train. Just get on the ride because you don't know what you don't know, and you can't just cherry-pick. Good experiences and I only want to pick this one route if I can see the whole entire length of it and know that it's all good.
[00:44:10] It's just not realistic. It just isn't. And there's so much fun to be had and let's just go do something. I don't know what it's gonna be, but let's just go do it.
[00:44:21] Jill: Yeah. That's amazing. This is such a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming on. Is there anything else you want to leave listeners with before we close it?
[00:44:33] Patrick: I think the overarching kind of belief and idea I have surrounding all this is you have way more choice over way more things than you realize. And if you don't like what you're doing, where you're doing who you're doing it with, you can change that. And I think a lot of people get. Suckered into this like network effect where, oh, if I change one thing, it's gonna like send a ripple through this whole thing.
[00:45:01] And yes, that may happen, but that also doesn't mean you can't do that. I just always like to leave with you have the choice and whatever the choice is. You have the choice to get up earlier today, to go to sleep earlier today, to eat what you want today, to go on an adventure today to do anything you want to do.
[00:45:20] You have more control over the choices in your life than you realize that you're making these subconscious, naturally planned choices, but you're making the choice to, what are you wearing today? What are you eating today? Are you showering, you can change what you see in your reality by just changing the choices you make on a daily.
[00:45:41] Jill: I will put the link to your website and your Facebook and all that stuff in the show notes so people can find you if they want to. But thank you so much, Patrick. I really appreciate this. It was wonderful talking to you and getting to know you a little bit. Yeah,
[00:45:56] Patrick: the feeling is mutual. I really appreciate your time and your having me on to have such a valuable conversation.
[00:46:01] Jill: Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Seeing Death. Clearly. If you enjoyed the episode, share it with a friend or family member that may find it helpful. My guest next week is Laura West Laura's a nurse in California and a psychic medium, and in the episode, she shares with us some of what she's learned about death and grief from both areas of her life.
[00:46:20] If you could leave me. Star review on your favorite platform that would help more people find the show that may enjoy the conversations. Visit my website to join my email list. I send one to two emails a month announcing any events I have coming up either in person or virtually. You could also follow me on social media, posting any events I'm doing on my Instagram and Facebook page, as well as a lot of educational resources.
[00:46:42] I'll see you next week for a new episode of Seeing Death Clearly.