Hey, welcome back to What I Learned in Therapy with me, Jamie Lang. What I Learned in Therapy is a podcast about storytelling, about healing, about philosophy and how to make the world a better place. At least these days, it seems that's the focus and today is no different. Quickly, I am a licensed clinical professional counselor. I have an additional master's degree in communication. I own a private practice that lives inside of my healing center called The Vault.
Also, inside the vault is a small yoga studio, and it's connected to my psychotherapy office. So I get to do both. I get to do yoga classes, I get to do yoga therapy with my clients, which means using the breath and the body, somatic experiences to help heal, to help heal. understand and tell a more complete story every time the story occurs. I also offer retreats, groups of women to come to the vault and we study together for a year. Some groups have been together over two years.
The curriculum I built is based on yoga philosophy, Buddhism, and I'm not a Buddhist. I'm not holy in any way, um, and it's about deep philosophy. It's healing. It's community. It's what we all need right now. I also turned my curriculum into a digital course, which is now available. If you'd like to learn more about that, shoot me an email listed in the show notes, or go visit the website where you can read about it, inquire about it, or just check out the other offerings we have there.
So today I'm going to begin with a story.
This story has been told in various forms across different cultures, from Buddhist parables to Middle Eastern folk folklore. It is a story about a king, and it goes like this.
There once was a great king who ruled a prosperous kingdom. He was kind and just, but there was one strange thing about him. He wore a blindfold. From the day he ascended the throne, he refused to remove it. He claimed it gave him clarity, that seeing less helped him rule with wisdom. His advisors whispered behind his back. The people speculated. But no one dared question him. One day, an old sage visited the palace. Unlike the others, he did not bow to the king. Instead, he spoke.
Great king, why do you blind yourself? The king stiffened. I see more clearly this way. The world is full of distractions and illusions. I do not need my eyes to rule wisely. The sage nodded, and then he said, But how do you know the world you rule is real? The king faltered. The sage continued, What if your advisors have changed your maps? What if they tell you the fields are full of grain, but they are barren? What if the people sing your praises, not out of love, but out of fear?
The king felt a deep unease. But he was not ready to face it. I trust my advisors, he said firmly. The sage sighed and left. Days passed, and the king's mind was troubled. Eventually, curiosity got the better of him. In the dead of night, when no one was watching, he lifted his blindfold, and what he saw shook him to the core. The palace walls were cracked and crumbling. The once golden floors were covered in dust.
His advisors, whom he had trusted blindly, had feasted while the people outside starved. The truth had been there all along, but he had refused to see it. The next morning, he walked through his kingdom with open eyes for the first time. The people gasped. His advisors cowered. But the king did not turn away. He knew that only by seeing clearly Could he begin to change things? There was a time in this country when we built things from the inside out.
We started with a foundation, something firm, something unmoving, something that could hold the weight of lived experiences. We built from the core, reinforcing what was essential before expanding outward, because a structure like this could stand the test of time. But when you reverse this process, when you build from the outside in, you create something fragile, something hollow, something that will collapse at the first sign of pressure. This is where we are now. Right now.
A teacher in my state was Told to take down a sign in her classroom She's an elementary teacher. The sign says all are welcome here and Shows various different hands Like hands raised to answer a question in the classroom and each of these hands is a different skin tone. She was asked to take this sign down. Why? Because someone argued, her administration argued, that this was an opinion. And opinions, they said, do not belong in schools. Let that sink in.
She was told all are welcome here is an opinion. Pause. Let that sink in. She was told. All are welcome. Children's hands of various different skin tones. That's an opinion, ma'am, they said. All are welcome here is not a political slogan. It is not a directive. It is not a demand. It is an affirmation of inclusion. And yet this is now considered a negotiable construct instead of a core human value.
We have confused the things that should be non negotiable, the dignity of human beings, the need for safety, the fundamental right to belong with things that are subjective, debatable, optional opinions. And at the same time, we have taken the things that should be questioned, examined, held up to the light, like laws, policies, bureaucratic systems, political narratives, and treated them as immovable truths. We are living in reverse.
Aristotle wrote that a just society is built upon virtue, not convenience, not preference, not power struggles. But virtue, he argued that truth and goodness were objective forces, things to be pursued, not things to be reshaped at will. For Aristotle, justice was not simply about laws. but about the cultivation of moral character within individuals and institutions.
A just society is one in which people do not simply follow rules, but actively embody virtues such as courage, temperance, and wisdom. He believed that when virtue is neglected, laws become mere tools of power rather than expressions of the common good.
When a society loses sight of its moral foundation, it begins to drift into disorder as people chase after personal gain rather than Shared well being a society that builds itself upon Constructs instead of virtue is destined to crumble because it has no real anchor Buddha taught that suffering arises from illusion From mistaking the impermanent for the permanent, the false for the real. Maya, the veil of illusion, is strongest when we forget our core and become entangled in what is external.
Buddha explained that humans become trapped in suffering because they attach themselves to illusions. material wealth, fleeting power, and transient identities. He taught that the path to liberation is seeing through these illusions. Recognizing that what we often fight over, status control, power, winning, external validation, has no lasting substance.
The more we invest in debating constructs, The more we reinforce our own suffering to free ourselves, we must learn to discern what is real from what is merely a projection of our fears, desires, and conditioned beliefs. In this way, negotiating constructs instead of values is a form of collective delusion, an agreement to remain trapped in illusion rather than striving for true wisdom. Hannah Arendt warned that when a society begins to negotiate truth.
When it treats fundamental human rights as topics for debate, it sets the stage for authoritarianism. She called this quote, the banality of evil end quote, not the grand monstrous acts of history, but the slow bureaucratic erosion of what? She argued that totalitarianism does not arise solely from violent oppression, but from systemic dismantling of truth itself. When societies allow truth to be replaced by manufactured narratives, individuals lose their ability to think critically.
She pointed to historical examples where ordinary people believing they were merely quote following orders or quote abiding by policy became complicit in atrocities. She warned that once truth becomes negotiable, people become a detached from their own moral responsibility. This is what makes negotiating constructs so dangerous. It numbs us to injustice, making us passive participants and our own degradation. And this is what we are witnessing right now.
Today, a 10 year old rape victim is denied an abortion, forced to carry a pregnancy her body cannot safely sustain. A woman who suffers a miscarriage is investigated for murder, interrogated while grieving the loss of a wanted. Pregnancy. A woman is denied life saving medical care because doctors fear prosecution under strict abortion bans.
In a recent Congressional hearing, Texas Republican Representative Keith Self misgendered his colleague, Representative Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress, the first elected transgender representative. During the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee meeting, Self introduced Sarah McBride as Mr. McBride. Sarah McBride responded by addressing Self as Madam Chair, attempting to proceed with her remarks. However, Representative Keith Self kept addressing her as Mr. McBride.
Interrupting her, Representative William Keating, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, interrupted to address the misgendering, calling Keith Self out of order. He questioned his decency because Keith Self was trying to remove Sarah McBride's dignity. Keating insisted that Self properly introduce Sarah McBride, but instead, Keith Self chose to adjourn the meeting. These examples are not complicated. These examples are about human dignity. And yet we have made them negotiable. Why?
Because power no longer resides in the ability to lead with values. It doesn't. It resides in the ability to manipulate constructs. Debating the construct itself becomes a form of control. This is why nothing ever feels settled. Because the goal is no longer resolution, it is perpetual negotiation and negation. It is perpetual negotiation of the constructs and the negation of dignity. Our bodies feel safer. When values are clear, our nervous systems relax. We know what is right.
We know where we stand. We know where we belong. We know where we are safe. But when everything becomes a debate, when even the most fundamental truths are up for negotiation, our bodies react with stress, tension, and exhaustion. We are dysregulated, disoriented. It becomes harder to trust, harder to breathe, harder to rest, harder to breathe, harder to move, harder to breathe. Chronic uncertainty rewires our nervous system, keeping us in a heightened state of vigilance.
When trust is eroded relationships suffer not just with others but with ourselves. We begin to question our own Instincts doubting what we know is true. This is not a political issue. It is a trauma issue It is a spiritual issue. A human issue. When we strip people of the ability to stand firmly, we create a culture of instability. And instability breeds fear. And fear, left unchecked, turns to cruelty. Plato's allegory of the cave is the perfect way to understand where we are.
We are arguing over the flickering shadows on the wall, mistaking them for reality, while refusing to turn toward the light, the light of truth, the light of dignity. But the cave is not inescapable. The choice is ours. Will we continue to negotiate illusions? Or will we gather the courage to step into the real world, into real dignity for everyone? This is not a partisan issue. It is a human issue. And like I said, it is a dignity issue. It is a you and me issue. It begins with you and me.
Because the world will continue to negotiate constructs, but you, you can choose to hold onto what is real because in the end, the shadows will never hold us, but the light will.
Thank you for listening. Now please, go spray paint the world with all of your love.