Simple questions for one hundred people. Welcome to the experiment. I'm Bill Correll, and this is my investigation, my research project to gather data from one hundred beautiful human beings for the sole purpose to see what actually happens across the interviews. Now, the questions are fixed and all the interviews will remain consistent with the variable being the actual
participants themselves and their answers. It says, if Dave, I'm having you come sit on my portion, share your thoughts so I can learn about people now looking forward to what we're going to know after we're doing with this whole thing and have interviewed one hundred people. But in the process, I'm very interested in your story and what life is like for you. So I'm I'm gonna just go ahead and get get started here. What is your full name?
My full name, Bill is David Joseph Anthony Roberts, and I have two middle names, and there's a story behind that. I like that there's a story behind that. Joseph was the middle name that my mother gave my mother and father gave me at birth, and then they added Anthony onto it because that was my confirmation name, and there was this typical. It was typical in the Catholic Church, and I went to that we would take our confirmation name as part of our full name and so on.
My enhanced driver's license is David Joseph Anthony Roberts. But I always tell everybody my middle name is Joseph, because it would take me too long to explain why I got two middle first names.
So you're you're initial are DJR.
DJR yes, and I don't usually go by that acronym, but now I might have to, just because you dub me with that DJER.
You can put that on your business card now, thanks thanks to me. My confirmation name is Joseph.
Another met the path of alignment for the two of us.
There you go. My mom, her birthday was the nineteenth of March Misa twenty first, and I think the twentieth is, you know, Joseph's day, so there's something about that. But my mom converted to Catholicism.
Yeah.
I was born Catholic, raised in the Catholic Church, went to one room schoolhouse, was an altar boy, and then what I was old enough to walk away from organized religion, I did. And now I consider myself in the words of one of my favorite authors, Kent Nurberne, to be
are all as spiritualists. So I take a little bit of Buddhism, a little bit of Native American teachings of animals and nature, a little bit of ecotherapy, and that formulates the framework that I have to create awareness of myself and my relationship to the world around me.
So I like that, and I really think that that's a journey that all of us go on as we get, you know, to different parts of our life and things don't necessarily seem to make sense to me. Be a blind believer if you will. But was the Mass still in Latin when you were an ultra boy?
Yeah, it was.
Thankfully I didn't have to learn Latin, but there were parts of the Mass of worm Latin.
Now.
I also was raised in I'm half Lebanese as well too, So another church I went to was a Maroni Catholic church and the Mass was in Lebanese. But I didn't understand Lebanese, so you know, I could just kind of go off in my own little world and think about something else. And because I didn't understand the language.
So well, we had these really cool laminated cards in front of us when we were Altra boys and you go down.
A to you know, yeah, I just basically lip synced everything with the mass.
Built exactly exactly. It was performance art, wasn't it at the age of eight.
Yeah, very much.
So I hadn't been hadn't looked at it like that until you just mentioned it. But yeah, it could be considered a form of performance art.
So, uh, DJR, what's your favorite nickname that most people don't know?
Well, I had a high school English teacher at Notre Dame High School in Utica, New York, where I'm from. His name was Dave Brown, great sense of humor. He gave everybody in his English class nicknames. He gave me the nickname of Oral, for the famous evangelist Oral Roberts.
Roberts.
Yeah, so every time he would see me, he would, you know, he would just do one of these, you know, raise his hands and do the heel sign and call me, you know, call me Oral. So that was my nickname in high school. I certainly don't go by that now, but not too many people know of my high school history. So you're the first one I've told.
Well, it's our secret, okay.
Well, yeah, and that, and how many of our listeners you have listening to this podcast, it'll be their secret too.
So hopefully it'll be a few million at some point.
I hope.
So if a few million could keep my sacred great.
They're sworn to secrecy. Now, Okay, guys, you got that, So I love it. And what oral is that something that stayed with you for a while or it kind of went away when you got out of high school? Kind of deal.
Kind of went away when I got out of high school because when I went to college, I left that part of my history separate. And when I got to college, I realized that, you know, nobody really cared as much about what you did in high school is as we thought they were going to do. So it was more about, you know, planning for the present, you know, looking at the future. So my high school years never came up as a topic of conversation at all, built.
And I suspect you weren't all that interested in everybody else's high school career either. No.
You know, I kind of learned at a young age to kind of mind my own business, because I tell people I have enough trouble minding my business, much less minding somebody else's business. So I just learned to be respectful of boundaries and not really pry too much into other people's personal lives.
Excellent.
So, Dave, when did you first notice what color hair you had?
That's a good question, I would. I really had to struggle with that because I never really took notice. I mean, I always knew I had brown hair, but honestly, I first began to notice that my started. I went from like blonde when I was a little kid to now like I'm brown here. I look back at pictures and anyways, I think as we get older, I had to speak
for me. I tend to look at my past. That's part of I guess determining, you know, the milestones in my life and you know, looking back to see, at this point, have I made the impact that I want to make in my life. So doing that, I looked at all childhood pictures and I realized that my hair had a variety of different transformation of colors. I was blonde and then eventually it turned into brown. And now I have had phones on it, so I have a
receding hairline. So so yeah, very distinguished for seeding airline and so essentially I began to notice not so much the agent when I first noticed my colors, my hair, but the different transitions that it took from childhood to now.
Yeah, mine's been transitioning now for almost twenty years, and this is all the more it seems to want to go.
So yeah, I mean for me, I mean, I got a ways to go to get to get to this diseasy, tap looking beard. But we both share a lot of a lot of white, which I think is a distinguished color.
I really do as well. I mean, what else would you go go with? Right, That's right?
White?
White is also is pure you know what it's you know, it's it's purity, It's pure spirit. I mean, look, I mean just you could tell who we are, the essence of who we are, just by the color of our beards.
I couldn't agree with you more. And I'll tell you what with that in mind, being as pure as you and I are. What's your favorite thing to do to intentionally waste time?
To intentionally waste time, I like to play jin Rummy on my iPad and and I'll usually do that at the end of the day at night when I want to just kind of relax, especially after I put in a full day of you know, doing you know, doing stuff for school because I teach it as you know, I teach it all local University of Utika University in the Pratt School of Art. I teach psychology courses and dutt dying and Bereadman and Utika University as well as
care of the human spirit. So after putting in a full day of prep grading, I just kind of in just doing other stuff, you know. I just like to kind of unwind and just play mindless gin Rummy and imagine myself as a gin Rummy champion of the universe.
There you go. Yeah, it sounds like some fantasies that I've had about holding poker.
So yeah, yeah, it's but you know, but that that's kind of what I do, just a waste time.
I'm looking forward to this one. What's your favorite movie to watch alone?
Well that was an easy one for me to answer. Field the Dreams with Kevin Koshner beautiful and I'll tell you why, Bill.
One.
It is just just the acting with Ray Liota and the other actor who I blanket on his name, but I love his voice and I forget he just died recently and I'm blinking on his name.
James Earl Jones, James.
Earl Jones, thank you, thank you for that. Just a great cast. And also the end of the movie where Kevin Costner has a catch with his father and this and I cry like a baby every time I see this because my father left me when I was five years old, left me and my mother. My mom raised me as an only child. So every time I see that photo, I see that the end scene where Kevin Costner asks his father, Dad, do you want to have
to catch? Because that was the one thing that he just he refused to do because of conflicts that he had had with his father, and you know, as far part of the storyline. So when he does that, it's like there were days Bill that I wish I could have gone back on my past, seen the ghost of my father as a young man and just had asked him, you know, you know what contributed to you leaving? And I realized now wasn't because he left me because he didn't love me. He left me because he did love me.
He just his history did not allow him to stay in a traditional marriage. His history was one of you know, you didn't shut down roots, particularly if emotional attachment was asked of you. If emotional attachment was asked, you booked. And I think he did the best he could. And I realized after about fifty five years, you know, after he left, I realized that he left because he did love me. He did not want to interfere with, you know, with my mom and and in mine and my development.
And but every time I see that movie, I got watched it one hundred times and I'll still have the same reaction with the scene at the end of the movie. So that's why that movie is my favorite to watch alone because I can just be with my emotions cry do I do what I want to do with that? And it's a movie that I like to watch alone because it's like, at that moment, I'm also bonding with my father.
That's that's absolutely amazing and uh and very wonderful, and I'm pleased for you. You know, that's a special gift that he's given you to be able to connect with him in that way.
Yep. Yeah.
And and I look at that as I'm bonding with with the memory of who I believe he could have been, and you know, I think who he is now in spirit.
I firm.
He's one of my He's one of my, I think, greatest teachers today.
You're always listening for him, aren't you.
Mm hmm.
And I love him as much. I love him as much as the mother who raised me for all of my wife.
Yeah, I get it, I really do. And I mean beyond the the euphemism of I get it, I'm getting it at a gut level.
Yep. Yep.
That's gone now too, Dave and h That's what I'm saying to you. You know, would I love to have a catch with him again? Damn straight?
I would?
Oh yeah, yeah, And I think we all yearned for that, no matter how long it's been or how short it's.
Been, and no matter what the shortcomings were of the way you know, your childhood went. So you get one dad, you get one mom, and when they're gone, nobody over takes their place.
Yep.
All right, this one. It's the first time I've asked a college professor, so I'm really kind of interested how this is going to go. If you were to have an action figure made of view, what superpower would it have and what color would its uniform be?
I leave it to you to ask me. This is tough of a question for the first time, and I had to think about this. But for me, I would
want my superpower to be invisible, yep. And my colors would be lavender because that is the favorite color of my eighteen year old daughter, Jeanie, who I think, as you know, during our introductory call, she transitioned and I call transition from the physical plant of this spiritual plane at the age of eighteen on March first, two thousand and three, of a very rare and aggressive form of cancer.
And that was your favorite color. I would also use green because that's a color of camouflage and that's typically associated with invisibility. The reason I would pick invisibility is I like to be able to kind of like not say much when I'm I'm but I like to observe, so I'd like to be invisible doing it. I like to kind of take a look at the landscape around me, take everything in, not respond to it right away, but just take it in and respond to it when the
time is when the time is right. So it's part of me kind of like like liking to be invisible, not having people knowing what I'm doing, but yet I'm being able to blend in and observe what I see going on around me, and then try to integrate it into my own my own reality or my own you know, my own perspective or belief systems. So it would be invisibility.
I like it. So when you when you, I'm assuming that there will be times when you'll be visible.
Well, yeah, when I'm teaching, I'm very visible. When I'm doing my podcast, I'm very visible, you know. So I'm I'm very visible when I'm doing that, or when I'm doing speaking and you know, speaking or workshops, I'm very visible. But there's a time to be visible and there's a time to be invisible. So it's learning for me. It's learning to find a balance, and it's learning that not
everything that I see requires an immediate comment. For me, I can simply withhold that comment until the time is right, until the timing is wrong.
For some people. Yeah, that's superpower for some people, right there.
Mm hmm.
The ability to hang back and realize you don't have to catch every ball that gets thrown.
That's right.
I mean, we could choose to let some balls go by. We can choose to drop a couple of balls.
Absolutely, So one last question, would you have a cape?
Uh?
No, I think if I had a cape, it would take years of therapy for my students don't see that, especially if I had tights. So part of the visibility bill is just not being that obvious. So I would probably wear just just a hoodie, jeans, you know, you know, with maybe lavender and green hues, and then just become invisible at will, just blend in with the surroundings.
Yeah, there's there's the makings of a new serenity prayer right there. You know, Lord give me the you know, the strength to be visible when I should be and invisible when I'm not, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Right, Yeah, you got it.
So, and I tell my students because you know, I kid around saying if you saw me dance, there wouldn't be enough therapy for you to want to see that either. So I'm not going to bust a move in class just for fear of unless you sign a disclaimer notice first, and I'm not responsible for any changes in your metal as a result of seeing what you just saw.
And post a five thousand dollars bond, right.
And post a five thousand dollars bond yep, and and it makes sure you know, and I would probably have to change my phone number two or email addresses or something just so their parents would have trouble finding me.
Another part of.
My technological need to be invisible. I could do that on a technological standpoint, from a digital standpoint, to be invisible.
Let's tell the truth, ladies and gentlemen, that's just playing hiding out right.
You've got it. You got it.
You got a.
Time for for for every everything in the season, right, every season.
You got it.
You got to know one to hide, and you got to know when to be invisible or hide, and one to be visible.
All right, So now we know what a superhero is like. For a college professor, excellent.
Well, I can't speak for all college professors. I'm sure they would have a different, different version of that, but for me, it's invisibility. And one of the best pervisor I ever had. He was He was an next Navy seal commander and he was a social worker. So you want to talk about a combination of our skills. He knew how to build teams, he knew how to put people in places to succeed, and he always preached about
being invisible. He spoke to the clients that we dealt with at the addiction center that we worked in, be invisible, do your job, don't draw attention to yourself. And that always stuck with me. That always stuck with me. Is that that the importance of being invisible?
Yeah?
So did you draw attention to what you need to draw attention to and not to any behavior that's going to detract from the mission.
That's a famous Pacino saying in The Devil's Advocate, never let them see you coming, Daniel.
That's right now. Let him see you coming, Dan Oh, yep. And that's it. And you know, always the element of surprise.
So what did you want to grow up to be when you were five years old?
Dave?
Well, Well, when I was five years old, Bill was about survival for me, because that's about the time that my father had left. And in fact, the last memory I had of my father before he left was my two uncles pitting him up against the wall and threatening to do bodily harm to him if he had hurt if he'd hurt my mother again. And I was in the kitchen. I remember, I was five years old. I was eating a baloney sandwich. And I saw this, and that was the last memory I had of my father.
I think he left shortly after that. So at five years old, it was you know, we moved around quite a bit.
You know.
My mother was always worried that my father was going to come back and take me and from her, so we moved around.
So really.
I didn't really it was more about survival during those years. But I can tell you when I was about ten or eleven years old, I wanted to be a lawyer because I watched Perry Mason. Yes, and I love the way Raymond Burke conducted business, and I said, boy, I grew up to I grew up, I want to be just like Raymond Byrne. I wanted to be lawyer. That never happened. Obviously, my career path went to a different way, different,
different direction, which I'm grateful for. But when I was ten years old, I wanted to be a lawyer just like Perry Mason.
Funny when you say Perry Mason, immediately in the back of my mind, I hear you're run.
Er, Yeah, you're on her yeah, or I hear are I hear Della, or I hear Paul. I need this, you know, with this famous sidekick Paul Drake and Bella Street and Raymond Burrow is a great actor. I don't know if he ever truly got his due, but he was really a great actor, and he did some really great character roles and he was one.
Of my idols.
Definitely, I agree with you one hundred percent. He was a formative influence on my life as well. Another watching his show.
Another point of alignment.
You got it. So what's your greatest accomplishment?
I had to think about this because you know, I don't know if I've had the greatest accomplishment yet. I think I've had a series of milestones. If I look at what I've accomplished, and I would have just assume go from that tack one, it's being a parent, you know, to three really great children. I've got two young two boys. One older is forty one years old, his name is Dan, and another younger son thirty five. Janine, who would have been forty, was the middle child. So I had the
privilege of raising three great children. So I'm a grandfather four times over, a great grandfather twice over. So those accomplishments in terms of categories of family are meaningful to me. As far as work, you know, I think you know, you know, in education, I was, I was able to get my MSW after a twenty five year journey doing it,
you know. So, I mean there's a variety of different If I had to say a great accomplishment, this is going to sound but it's actually re engaging in life after my daughter's transition, and and re engaging in life with purpose and acceptance of the fact that, you know, my life wasn't going to be the same anymore. And I think I could, I could.
That to me was a.
Very pivotal accomplishment for me because everything else kind of grew after after that, you know, I was able to do other things and use my teaching background and education background to you know, to provide to provide service, and do workshops, provide education on the grief journey. So so
that's kind of a multi categorized answer. But the other thing is if I said I had the greatest accomplishment, this is my greatest accomplishment, I avoid that because to say that for me would give me an excuse to stop learning and growing, so and I don't. So that's why I don't say this is my greatest accomplishment. I think there's more in front of me. I've got a lot more to learn. I've got a lot more to
learn from everybody around me, young and old. And my greatest accomplishment I think has yet to be to be written, and may never be written in this lifetime and may continue in other lifetimes.
Yeah, I think that's you know, healthy advice as far as I'm concerned. It's sage to appreciate the moment for what it is and move on.
Yep.
Like we see so many kids who they peak in high school, or they peak in college, and then they go out into the world having done great things, you know, academically or in sports or something of that nature, and you just can't replicate that high out there in the world, and they turn to other things.
You know now, And I think the more diverse experiences we have, the more that we can allow ourselves to have, the more learning stays fresh, the more we're excited about learning, and the more we're excited about continuing to grow.
The key, the key to a long, happy life is ongoing growth and development and engagement.
I really believe that. I think research has shown that engagement equals longevity. If we're engaged in life. You know, we're engaged with people that it extends our life more, extends the quality of our life more. I have no illusions that I'm going to be immortal. I know at some point I'm going to be dancing in another dimension. But before I do that, I want to have the best quality of life that I can for as long
as I can. And the way that I can see doing that is through engagement both with mind, body, and spirit.
Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate you, and I also want to acknowledge your decision somewhere along the way to get back on the horse of life, because you could have made another decision, and what was authentically you decided that No, we're not done yet, We've got some more stuff to do.
I didn't do it, and I didn't do this by myself. I mean, before we're gonna we're going to embrace transitions in life to their growth. We don't do it in a vacuum. We do it with the support of others, and I have the support of many many individuals align the White Belt.
I agree. It's the same philosophy we talk about. You know, death is something that you have to do alone. No, there's a whole community of people that's that's there, that's going through and living that experience with you. It's just not something that they can articulate what it's all about, or what it means or anything else. But they are every bit as much a participant as you were, Yes, both coming in and going out right. Absolutely, Yeah, I
love that. I appreciate what we're what we're putting out there, because everyone in our world is grieving something.
Yeah.
I mean, if you live long enough, you're not going to get through life unscathe and there's good There's going to be challenges and you and the quality of our life is determined by the way we address challenge, by the way we transcend it. And I was saying this, I was recording a podcast yesterday with somebody that experienced a loss. We were talking about that we have no control over the challenges that are going to befell us in this life. Well, we have control overs how we
respond to him. And you're right, we have a choice. We can choose to respond, or we can choose to stay stuck, you know, And we can do that, and particularly after we've we've kind of let the pain of grief envelop us. We got there's a moment of truth. Do I want to move forward? Do I want to stay stuck? And a lot of people would look at me and probably disagree with that, but it's true. We have a choice in terms of how we choose to handle challenge.
Yeah. Yeah, you know the yelled Jim Morrison quote that nobody gets out alive. Uh huh, And he died before he could add the next sentence, which is, and they're going to rough you up pretty good before you get there.
Yeah.
I remember what he Allen saying, something to the effect that I'm not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when.
It happens, exactly. You know, that's like a Groucho line too.
Or Yogi bearism, either one of the two.
So yeah, that's the kind of thing that you really don't want to be there when he visits, you.
Know, That's right.
Yeah, I just well, and there's also I think there's been accounts that actually the spirit leaves our body, but just shortly before the body physical body dies. So maybe when he Allen knew something we didn't.
Yeah, it'd be an interesting question to ask him when he's on my podcast.
Don't you think? I think so too.
You know, we just have to dial one eight hundred Pearly Gates exactly if we can get him down there.
What are you if you're listening? Man, it's not to sign a bill.
Or today, either one of us. Well, we'll stay in communication. We'll get it. We'll get it done. I got it, So, Dave, who's your favorite person to listen to?
Oh?
Man, I love voices. Voices will draw me. And Morgan Freeman. I can listen to Morgan Freeman all day. He's just got that very gentle present. John John, Uh, you know we just talked about him earlier. John, you know what I'm talking about.
James Earl Jones.
James Earl Jones, Thank you sorry, James, all right, But the James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, these are voices I could listen to our and like can listen to these guys anytime any day, just because of their presence, their voice, their knowledge, and they're very unassuming and humble as they presented. The other person who you might not even think would be on anybody's list is Neil Pierret, the late great
drummer of Rush. I've seen interviews with him. The man is brilliant and he's a brilliant They called him the professor because of his brilliance and creativity with with with drums, in writing, he's also one of He's a great writer as well to an adventurer. And a lot of people may not know that knew that about him, but I
could listen. I could listen to him all day too, not only his music but also his interviews, and he would be one guy that if I had a wish in terms of who I could have dinner with, Morgan Freeman and Neil peartt would be two of the people that I would want they have dinner with, you know, and just pick their brains.
I will take that under advisement. I've always been a Getty fan, you know, no doubt about it.
Yeah.
I've not heard Neil speak, but I'll put it on my list now.
Yeah.
I mean you can look at interviews he's done about about drumming and about everything else, and he's just very He's just brilliant. His books are as brilliant as a lyricist and drummer he was. He was a brilliant writer.
I mean a lot of his books of ghostwriter travel Travels on the Healing Road was a book that inspired me because he experienced two tragedies in his life where his wife and daughter transitioned within ten months with each other, and he the family that he knew was obliterated within ten months. So he took a fifty five thousand mile road trip commune with nature, documented the trip and to find himself and he did.
That's another whole podcasting in and of itself. We'll get together and we'll do a freelance one on that. That's a heck of a notion to make a decision to go take care of yourself for a while.
Yep.
I don't know a lot of people that would would be awake enough, you know, to decide to be able to do that.
You know.
He made that decision a year and a day after his daughter transitioned, that he was just going to go on the road. He told he told gedty Lee and Alex Liefelin, consider me retired. And he went and basically to and in his words, to determine the type of person he wanted to be in the type of world
he wanted to live in. And I always used that quote in my dat dying in Bereatman class and in talks that I do, because that speaks to what everybody needs to do when they're experiencing life altering challenge, whether it's due to laws, dud to death, or due to other types of challenge. We have to determine who am I now? What kind of a world do I want to live in? What kind of a world do I want to create for myself? Now that everything at the landscape of it is primarily altered?
Well said, Well said, So please complete this sentence, Dave. When I grow up, I would like to.
Be like Maury Schwartz of the Tuesdays with Maury Fame with Mitch Album. Maury Schwartz, as you know his he was. He was a professor at Brandeice University. He Mitch Album was one of his favorite students and Mitch and Maury was Mitch's favorite professor. Mitch took five courses with him. They had office hours on Tuesdays, so therefore when they reconnected again, it was Tuesdays with Maury.
And Maury.
Did something in the nineties that probably nobody would do, and then it was considered a visionary. He was dying and he wanted the world to know how this is how you die, and so he Ted Copple did a series of interviews with him and lessons on Living. Mitch Album wrote the book which became one of with Maury, which became one of the with the best selling memoir as far as I know.
In history.
And Maury Schwartz taught us not so much how to die, but taught us how to live while you're dying and how you can use your end of life chapter as another means of spiritual growth and introspection. And I thought it was I show that I have the book as part of required reading from my Dead, Dying and Bereathment class. I show the lessons on Living interviews and it's like his lessons thirty years later, Yeah, thirty years later or
more than thirty years later, are still relevant now. And I've had students tell me that I wasn't even born when Maury Schwartz was around, but his teachings resonate with me.
It's a measure of a classic, isn't it.
YEA.
I told my students that I could be as eighth the good of a teacher as he was. I'd be a happy man, you know. And that's and he was he was to meet a counselor he was another one, another person you would put on my list for dinner that I would love to have a conversation with.
Absolutely. Well, there's also an element of how good the student is too, and I suspect you were a damn good student of his.
Yeah, I still am, you know, I still he's still you know, every time I read his book in great papers that are.
That are a part of the.
One of the Britain assignments is based on the Tuesdays with Mary book, it's almost like I hear his voice in my head, you know, as I'm great and I consider him to be a partner in crime with me in terms of a and a partner of teaching the course because I take a lot of you know, a lot of his what he did to connect with students, and I try to imolate that as well too.
Can you feel it?
What do he neil?
What do y?
Yeah? What do he neil?
They're all smiling at us right now.
I think, I hope so, because well we remember their names and we talk about them, they're never forgotten.
That's exactly right. So the last person unders your name, the last time yeap, beautiful. So it's a very interesting line. But what's the most important thing in life to you right now?
Well, I think you know, I look at it now, I'm sixty nine years old. I feel good. But I also know that there are more winters behind me than they're in front of me. Yeah, and so, and I'm very very conscious of that. So it's the live each day to the fullest. It's to be the best father, grandfather, great grand father. I can be the best professor, I
can be the best husband I can be. It's just to live life to the fullest, live it with compassion, live it with a giving heart, and be grateful for every day that I can sit up and take nourishment. So that's what what I I The most important thing in life to me right now is too because I wake up every day and I think, I thank the Lord for well, thank thanks for letting my body work, Thanks for giving me another day to do what I'm passionate about. Thanks for giving me the day yesterday to
do what I was passionate about. Thanks for liking let me wake up today, because it isn't a given. I mean, you know, sometimes I'll ask myself, why was I allowed to grow older, Bill, you know, especially when I've seen, you know, my daughter transition at a young age, and individuals who are younger than me are transitioning all the time, and I'm thinking, what's so special?
But you know.
It's, yeah, that's a question that's going to have to remain unanswered because I don't.
Have to answer to that. I don't think anybody does.
I might know once I get to that next dimension and there's a review of my life to say, this is why your life is orchestrated the way it was. This is why we gave you X number of years to do what you needed to do. This is why your daughter is only given eighteen years to do what she had to do, because in sacred law, eighteen years is enough for her soul to learn the lessons that had to learn, for her to teach through her presence, and now it was time for her because in the
after life, we don't need a riskwatch. You know, we don't go on physical time. From what I've read about the afterlife, we don't do that. So eighteen years in sacred law is maybe is a long time, but in human law isn't. In human law, their lives are just beginning, so.
The lovely thought. And sometimes you might find out that there is no why no.
And you know, I tell people build.
Some that says shit happens yep, well, and.
The other the other day.
I tell students, I tell my students anybody, we have to learn to live with some ambiguity. We're not going to you know, we have to learn to live with the unknown. Yeah, And we have to learn to live with the mystery. And I mean Native Americans talk about
the great mystery. And I believe in one of Kent Neurburn's book, Wisdom of the Stones, Life Lessons from the Native Way in Neurburn is one of my favorite writers, and he's respected Native American culture because he writes authentically about the culture and he doesn't write it from the perspective of being, you know, being being a white man. He tries to reflect very very accurately the traditions and
their works. And one of the things he talked in the Wisdom of the Stones there was a lacoat elder that he's said, you know, life isn't a puzzle to be solved, it's a mystery to be honored.
And you know, and a.
Lot of times it's difficult to understand that when you're going through the throes of and really of early grief. But as I look back on it, Yeah, it is a mystery to be on it because we're not going to have the answers to everything that we want, and we just have to embrace the mystery and accept that
it is a mystery. We're not going to find out until it is our time, and it may not be our time on earth, and may be our time when we get to another dimension, when we find out exactly what are why we were allowed to to do what we did and live as long as we did, and we embraced we were embraced the path that we did.
Yeah, there's a Buddhist tenant also that says that the path to wisdom is where you stop learning and when you can sit and dwell in a question without needing to have an answer. Yep, you don't need wisdom any longer either. And once you dwell in the quiet, you silence your mind. The answers come to you anyway. Yeah, And it's it's not like explain explaining what happened, it's like explaining what you do next.
Yep, exactly.
And even if the answer is there's no answer. But Atlicia discovered that in the quiet of your own mind.
Absolutely, and when you can be with that, you're a powerful human being, you know.
Ye, yeah, and that's the path to acceptance.
Yeah. So here you are. You've got good Lord, probably hundreds of thousands of wise cliches and just all sorts of prescriptive things that you've worked with until they're no longer cliche. They're actually tools, you know, which is really remarkable.
And you you traffic and live in the coin of the realm, being death drat, dying in bereavement and being kind of a sherpa for people who those are scary words for I can to ask you this one, with all due reverence and respect, what would you like to leave in the world after your life is done?
Dave?
Well, you know, one of the things I would like to be remembered to the extent that people will remember.
And I you know, I don't want to be forgotten.
I want to And I think that's a fear that every a lot of us have, is we're going to be forgotten once we're gone. And I'm not expecting people are going to have their names, you know, uttered from their lips, you know, twenty four to seven. But I wanted I would like to be remembered. I would like what I believe I've left that I've taught to my students, to my children. I want those lessons to go on
long after I do that. I want those lessons that continue to live in and be passed on to others, because if those lessons are passed on, we will live in in the hearts of others. And that's that's really what I want. I would I would like to have happened in the world, is just to leave that type of you know that Hey, you know, Day taught me a couple of things, and I think I can I can use that moving forward and I sent onto something else. And if that happens wherever I am, I'll be I'll
be satisfied with that. That was a life well lived for me.
Yeah, it sounds to me I would label that as like, you know, legacy technology for living, uh, you know, for here's the tools, ladies and gentlemen, A minute to learn, a lifetime to master, you know, kind of like chess.
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.
I used to play chess, then I got out of the halb. Now if you asked me how to play chess. Now, that's like not even in my remote memory bank my hippo campus. I couldn't go far enough my hippa campus to bowl that out. So that is long.
That's long out of short term and long term memory.
Yeah, I actually love it. I think the whole notion of having the distinctions that you do at the ripe old age or young age of sixty nine, however you regard it, it's it's kind of a healthy way to sit and try to make sense of what's going on. You know, do do you go to the baker much?
Do I go to the baker?
Yeah, as far as I have a couple of really good places locally, then I'll go for good cookies and muffins.
Well, here's the thing. When I was growing up, we had a baker in our community, and that woman was fantastic. Every time we went to go see here, if we bought twelve of something, we always got a thirteenth one for you, kind of like the old Chinese restaurants, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, with four you get egg roll, you know, or there's some free fried rice in there or something like that.
But here's your Baker's question, which is a little off track to everything that we've been talking about so far. But what do you say is the thing that most people misunderstand about you?
Well, you know the old saying, don't mistake my kindness for weakness. Yeah, I think a lot of people don't understand that I may know more about a situation that I'm letting out about because I try to observe, and I very much I will quietly and not do it with any fuss. If I will quietly back away from individuals who no longer value me or organizations who no longer value me, and I'll do that, and I'll come up with a very legitimate reason in writing for that
to happen. But as I've learned, you know, you know, in the work we're working world, the reasons that people state that they're doing stuff on paper isn't always the reasons that they're doing it. It's kind of like more like a cover story. So I may not say a lot, but I pride myself, and I'm not saying this with any arrogance. I just pride myself on knowing what's going on and maybe not revealing that I do until the
time is right. A lot of people think, well, Dave isn't saying much, so he's probably in agreement, or he probably isn't aware of the full the full scope of the issue. But I'm aware of it. I'll just choose to not say anything about it because to say it in that setting may not be the right place to do that. So I may hold that, sit with it and give my opinion in a way or my observation in a way that I think it's going to be more heard and it's going to allow me to continue to stay invisible.
Sure, yep, all things in their own time, right, Yep.
I mean I'd like to draw attention to the things that I do, but I don't like to draw and do attention to myself.
Yes, I'm with you. Produce a result and let people appreciate the result, and whether they give you credit for it or not, it kind of doesn't matter, does it.
No, it doesn't because I think the other thing is my supervisor. I'd mentioned before who best supervisor and mentor I ever had in a workplace. He taught me, he said, never take credit for other people's accomplishments. Always give credit where credits due. So when I became the middle management middle manager supervisor, middle management supervisor, and the director come up and say, you know, you really did a good job with us so well, it wasn't me that did it.
It was you need to give the credit to this person, to the staff person who did it. She came up with the constants, she came up with the design, and she did the intervention. I said, I just signed off on it. I said, you need to give her credit where credits to because she made both of us look good doing that.
You can credit me for being brilliant for hiring her, and exactly, I'm trying not to get in her way.
Well, you know, that's one of the things that I think is kind of a misguided assumption from leaders is that good people can be a threat to a leader. And said, that's further from the truth. If you think good people are a threat to you, then you're insecure as a leader or you're not really a great leader at all. The best leaders I know are the ones that have people around them. They put people around them want are better than them. They have more skills than
they can complement their deficiencies. They give them a task, They're very direct about what happens what they need happen, and they just let people do their jobs and they're a resource. That's what vice supervisor is. Who is again the next ex and Navy Seale commander and CSW. He knew how to build terms teams, you know, how to put people in. Everybody had a role, everybody knew what their job was.
We just had to.
Pull together, pull our strengths together for the good of the team. That's what he taught us. Yeah, and that's what I And don't take credit for something you didn't do.
Yeah. Again, there's so many things that we're talking about that I actually think we could talk for hours and hours and hours on any given subject that we've we've covered today. So absolutely, Yeah. I just have one kind of a question to sort of tie this all together.
Are there any like last thoughts that you've got or maybe something that you thought of after you were speaking in a particular area you just want to leave with people to consider or as you know, kind of like thought a thought gift.
Yeah.
I think sometimes people underestimate the impact that they have on others. And to a tell individual, don't underestimate the impact that you have on anybody in your life. It may be as simple as opening up a door for somebody who's having a bad day or is thinking of completing suicide. It may be just doing something nice for somebody. It'll have to be major. But understand that everything that you do has an impact somewhere, and you may never
know what that impact is. But as long as you are leading with love, genuineness, and integrity and compassion, you're going to have an impact on somebody. And trust that when you put what you put out is gonna multiply. And if you put out love and compassion to somebody else, or to show love and compassion and as to another person down the line, and that's what's going to make the world a more peaceful, inclusive, and tolerant place if we all do that, one person at a time.
Great message. I appreciate it, Dave. Do you have any questions of me?
No, I think this is a This is a whole lot of fun. I had a great time to talk with me that this is different from podcasts that I'm used to doing. You know, obviously you know with with just in terms of my background and my you know, my history with grief and loss and doing work with
in that area. But this has been great because these are these are great questions, and this gave me an opportunity to also talk about things that I might not have considered otherwise, but also are a big part of who I am I am and much of which strives the service work that I do now. So thanks for that.
You're entirely welcome. It is my privilege and pleasure. I appreciate having you on today. Thank you for that. And I think before we sign off, I just want to, uh remind everyone that we're not in this, uh, we're not in this in this journey alone. There are people in your life that you should reach out to, uh
text message, telephone call, maybe an email or something. Just let them know that your life works because you're they're here, and if they ever need you, they should always call you before doing anything that's life changing because you'll be there for them. With that said, Dave, thank you very much. It was a pleasure having you as a guest on my porch. Thank you so much.
Bill is great. Share on a porch with you next time. We got to do an early morning once so we can both have coffee on the porch.
We do pretty well with our coffee don't we I do.
That's something that is a staple. That's one of my only vices I think I have is coffee.
I'll tell you what I have other vices. But I really love my coffee.
There's me, me too, me too.
All right, Well, God bless you man and and and and be well.
Thank you Bill, you too.
Bye.
For now.
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