20 Years For What?

But I want to give you some initial highlights from my trip about recharging and just revitalizing my spirits, and then dive fully back into the headlines, which there are many and I don't even know which ones to start with thirst, But what I will say is that thank you all so much for your well wishes and your thoughts on how to recharge and being so wonderful with regard to recognizing that even you know, those folks that you may rely on for news on a day to

day basis also require rest. And I do my best to offer to you all advice that I think will help you, but then also turn around and wanting to take my own advice, and what I will say is this rest and restoration should not just happen one week out of the year. It should be a daily practice. And I'm coming back to you feeling so recharged and so relaxed because I make self care a part of

my daily routines. And while it's really great to take a full on break and to be able to just be in the sun and connected with friends and you know, just rest, do nothing right, like just lay by a pool, it's also important to just think of the ways in which we continue to overwork ourselves, grind ourselves, and wait until we are at our most depleted to say that

we need a break. I think I'm coming back so recharged and feeling like just on a high, and not coming back in a way where I'm like, oh my god, I wish I had another day or a week of vacation, because I genuinely don't. I think that happens when you wait to feel like your thread has broken, that you have, you know, literally given all that you can and now you're completely depleted. I think that that's the wrong way to take vacation. I believe in the practice of daily

self care. What are you doing for yourself? How do you start your day, How do you end your day? What are you doing in between when you're in your moments of deep frustration. I will tell you this, I was really of myself because over the weekend many folks know that I was up in Martha's Vineyard, That's where I was doing my holiday, and the hurricane Henri was heading our way, and I wanted to leave a day early because I felt like, you know, driving headfirst into

a hurricane may not be the best. And you know, my friends that I was with were just like, no, it'll be fine. You know, they're blowing this out of proportion.

Needless to say, when we wake up on the next day from when we should have left, all of our fairies were canceled and we were left scrambling to figure out now what we were going to do if we couldn't get off the island, if they didn't open up the fairies, like where they're going to be hotels available, knowing that you know, now everyone who was not able to get on the island was also going to need accommodations. And during that time, I, you know, I was frustrated

and annoyed. And what I did as opposed to what I have done in the past is I did some meditations, I did some deep breathing. You know, a person that I was with said, you know, if I you're a much better person than me, because I would have been waving my finger doing a whole bunch if I told you so, I told you so about leaving early. And I said, my response was, what would be the point of that? Who does that help? It doesn't make me feel anybody just because I happen to have been right,

because it doesn't change the present situation. Right, The only thing that will change the present situation is to keep like a calm head recognized that we're all safe, and we're all together, and regardless of decisions that could have been made better, they weren't. So what are the decisions that we're making now, and how are we going to

operate and kind of move through? And I will tell you that twenty nineteen Danielle, twenty eighteen Danielle would have had a whole melt down, would have been angry and miserable and frustrated and just made a frustrating situation ten times worse. And what I've learned over you know, the almost two years of being invested in a regular if not daily, I you know, will miss a day here and there, But a daily meditation practice is that it has changed the way in which I show up in

friction situations. And I don't say like in fight or flight moan, but in situations where there is friction, right, and I recognize that our attitudes can change those friction moments into fore alarm fires or into you know, more of a bomb right where you're like, this doesn't have to be like this. We can recognize that everything is frustrating. We can recognize that there is friction without making the

situation worse. That does not mean ignoring right what is happening, but it means that you can choose how you decide that you want things to unfold moving forward. And for me, I am just so grateful And I'm sharing this because I feel that I see real time, daily affirmations of the steps that I have taken to better my emotional, spiritual and physical well being. Right, and that we have more power then we recognize that we do. And again,

it doesn't mean you're not frustrated. It doesn't mean that you're not angry. It just means that I'm not going to allow those negative emotions to cloud how I find myself out of a situation or make it worse than it actually has to be. So at the end of the day, it was, you know, we were able to leave the island and able to do so safely and

just do it later. We were able to enjoy each other for a few more hours before everybody's you know, splits and goes their separate ways post vacation, And it was just an opportunity for me to do real time reflection on the growth that I feel like I've had as a person and how I approach situations and want to not be reactionary, not wanting not to be explosive, wanting to be you know, remain calm and thoughtful and be able to move through and choose joy over misery. Right.

And I don't feel like we recognize in every moment of our lives that we that our emotions and how we feed into them are a choice, right and in a lot of ways. And this is let me provide the caveat. I'm not saying if you have if you are somebody that has mental illness or suffers from you know, I depression, all of these different things that like you're

making an active choice. Know I'm saying for people who do not have those what can be seen as impediments to that way of thinking that Yeah, we can choose to be pissed off, we can choose to let things go. We can choose to find better ways to communicate our needs without their being yelling, without major frustration and disruption. And what I realize for myself is that I am choosing to be better each and every day and seeing that applied in real time situations where I know that

I could have shown up differently makes me proud. And I think that it's important to take those moments and say, oh, all this like quote unquote, do in the work. And we got to do the work. And healing is a constant state of being right. It isn't something that is one and done, but that it does happen and it is happening. And I felt really good about that. So,

you know, I hope that you all enjoyed. And I could see that there was lots of conversation that was happening underneath the episodes that we recorded and the interviews that were recorded for you all to enjoy while I was out, tell me what your favorites were folks that you would like to hear more from. I saw some people bought some plants and were inspired by the conversations with the various brilliant plant folks that I had on just trying to infuse some of my different and varied

passions from politics with all of you. So I'm really glad that folks enjoyed the conversations, got things out of the interviews, went and bought some plant babies of your own, and really reflected on the kind of life that you want to be living. We all had the ability to design the lives that we want. Some of us may not be able to change things immediately in the moment.

We can change how we think about them. We can change how we give, what we give power to, what we give energy to, and what we choose to take energy away from. Those are active choices that we can make. And I think that for me, the goal is to be able to always come back from vacation excited to get back into work, excited and feeling like I'm rested enough to dive back in and give you guys my best. And so that was my trip in a nutshell, all right.

So now we go to the news. Dear God, the disaster, the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding in Afghanistan is like nothing I have ever seen before. And listening and reading about, you know, America is a really compli cated, an interesting country to be a citizen of and to be critical of. And then listen to the ways in which we have devastated other countries, communities of people for twenty plus years. Right,

it's been twenty years since the war in Afghanistan began. Right, because initially we were headed to Afghanistan for what to find those that were responsible for nine to eleven, And after being attacked in nine to eleven and watching the towers fall and watching a plane go into the Pentagon and the families who were destroyed and lives were destroyed, and all of these things, understanding that you should not

make decisions when anger and passions are so high. The only person who you all know that voted against going to war in Afghanistan, one person out of the entirety of Congress, was Barbarly Congresswoman Barbally at A, California. She has been on this program before and she is honestly, when I was working on the hill, one of my favorite members of Congress because she's always been very clear headed about who she is, who she represents, and what she stands for. And that is why she is a

long serving member of Congress. She was a sole member to vote against the war in Afghanistan. And why was that because without a clear path in and a clear way out, what was America doing in Afghanistan? What were

we going to disrupt? How is it that there are so many American lives, right members of our military who over the course of twenty years, who died for the work that they were doing in Afghanistan, interpreters, health providers, humanitarian people, all because they were working under the guise that they were building an infrastructure for a country that

was going to assume that control of itself. So how is it that when this current president, the fourth president to lead this war, that weeks after the announcement is made that we are pulling troops out, that the entire operation, the entire work you build Afghanistan to a place that it could stand on its own, crumbled right before the

eyes of the world. Because when you're watching these scenes of I mean thousands of people trying to run on to a tarmac, to save themselves, to save their families. When you hear the stories of women literally given birth in mid air or on the tarmac, you see the please of these people for safety. It's like, what the

fuck was America doing? What were rebuilding there? How is it that after twenty years and countless, countless lives lost, this is what the men and women and people who have been serving, this is what this is the legacy. It crumbles in a matter of weeks. And now the Taliban is able to use America's withdrawal as a win

because what else would you? What else if you are a terrorist entity and you are seeing that all of these countries around the world are sending in planes and people are fleeing because they're running from you, How is that not seen as a huge win. And again with the finger waving of this administration and administrations of pass like the world will remember you. These motherfuckers don't care

how the world sees them. They are literally going door to door and killing the family members of people who worked for the United States and trying to aid the creation of a democratic country out of the grips of terrorists. They're going door to door and they're killing, calling for the killing of the brother of a language interpreter. They're going on hunts for women and killing them for not

abiding by Sharia law. Like so to wave your finger from a podium and try and and and call what some some morality, some moral center to people that literally put out multiple beheading videos a fucking day, what are you doing? And honestly, the question is on everybody's mind is what was the United States doing? What did these people risk their lives for to fight alongside the United

States for what? Only to end up on a tarmac hoping to God that the next plane that lands you and your family members can get on to go where. Because you know, folks, I got to tell you this too. What is getting me with these videos and the pictures, the heartbreak and the devastation is that I can't imagine it. I can't even wrap my mind around what these people

are feeling. Because I want you to think to yourself, right now, you're in your home, you're in your apartment, you're in your dorm room, and an alert comes through your country is being completely and totally destabilized, and within days, if not weeks, the terrorists who you thought had been pushed out or at least had lost power, are now back. You are now sitting maybe on your couch at the kitchen table, kicking it with your friends in a dorm room.

You get this alert and you have but a few days maybe to pack up whatever it is that you can carry, leave your country of origin, to get on a plane to go to an unknown destination with a bunch of people who you are now in solidarity with on this plane, who you may not have known other than the fact that you are all American. Right, thinking about this from your perspective, Now you're on a plane and you are going where to do? What? To build? What with what? I can not imagine the fear. I

cannot imagine the grief, just the shock. And this is what is happening right now. The United States to this day has evacuated I think somewhere within the last day, sixteen thousand people they evacuated in twenty four hours. The question that is being asked you to Jake Sullivan, who's the National Security Advisor and others, is are these just Americans that are being evacuated? Are the people who risk their lives to work alongside in a multitude of capacities

with the United States. Are they being evacuated? Have these people been identified? You're telling us that there is a deadline of a week. You have until August thirty first to get out of Dodge, And then what are we keeping up the pace of evacuating sixteen thousand people every single day for the next week. Is that going to be enough? And what happens after that deadline passes? Do we just say, well, here's hoping that you're not slaughtered? So to think about I'm sitting and I'm looking around

at my apartment. What the fuck am I grabbing? Do I have time to unite with my family on Long Island and flee together so we're on the same plane, or do I just risk it and if I have the ability, I just get on and hope to God because now I have no way to connect with them, right because what access do they have to anything? That is it? For Today's Woke a f daily podcast To hear more from me, including five full hour long shows every single week, exclusive guest interviews, and more. Support me

on Patreon at Patreon dot com. Slash Woke af Power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fuck,