Episode Transcript
Transcript - In Exile
FAWN: [00:00:00] Are we living in exile? If we look at exile in an emotional reality, it would be people living in the same place but not seeing each other. Constant communication, but no real connection, fear of vulnerability, identity, confusion. I mean, those are some things that come to mind. The question for today is, are we living in exile and what's one fix we can implement this week?
Thank you for tuning in. Here we go.
Welcome back to our Friendly World, everybody.
MATT: Hello.
FAWN: over the years, over the decades, I've been thinking about all the different ways that, people are lonely. This is way before the internet, way before people had phones, social media, all of that. People blame that. I blamed families.
Being forced to comply to this, status quo of like, Hey, as soon as your kids turn 18, [00:01:00] they're losers if they're gonna still stay at home, they better go out and do everything. My idea is if every person in the family has to start all over again,
think about what that does to the economy. It's good for everybody else, but it's not good for individual families. So each child has to buy a new fridge, buy a new apartment, house, linens, towels, refrigerator, food, insurance, the car, all these bills, right? They basically start from scratch and I feel like it totally makes the family poor.
But if we were to stay together, I'm not saying we all live in a tiny house together or anything like that, and I'm not saying, oh, they shouldn't go and be educated, but why is it that every, there's separation in so many ways that you have to leave, go far away to get an education or I understand, [00:02:00] well this university has this, this university specializes in this.
But does it really though. Especially nowadays where you don't even know what jobs are going to exist. So what are we spending $300,000 for for an for an education to find yourself? I'm sorry. You can find your, you are right here.
MATT: Oh,
FAWN: and I know what you're gonna say, Matt. Go ahead and say it. Didn't I leave the family at 18? Go ahead. Yes, I did.
MATT: Well, if you
FAWN: already know what
MATT: I'm saying,
FAWN: I had to Okay. I, I had to. And then I also, like, as I'm talking to you guys, I hear my own inner dialogue and I hear my own 18-year-old self saying, well, no, it's good to travel.
It's good to go to universities and get away, travel the world, be on your own, so you understand. Um, no, that's the narrative that we have been fed to believe in such a way that we think it's [00:03:00] our own personal idea rather than it being implanted in us. So we're not having the village, we're not having community.
I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist. Go ahead Matt. You say something.
MATT: Well, it's been happening for a very, very long time. I mean, America was almost founded on this whole sense of, I, we gotta get outta here, period. Pilgrims, Puritans, you know, even. People fleeing from, famine and war and a million other things.
So it's almost like we start in this really challenging place because nobody has a thousand years of history in one spot. Who's European or African? The only people who do are the first Nation peoples and well, there you go.
FAWN: Europeans have thousands of years,
MATT: not here.
FAWN: No, not in the United States.
MATT: Not here. That's the key.
FAWN: Yeah. We're new. We're a brave new world. I get it. But, okay. Can we go back and revisit what exile actually means? cause Okay. I forgot to mention this [00:04:00] little part of why I am talking about this subject today. For decades I've been thinking about this village, and where is it?
I never had it. I pretty much raised myself, and then, when we raised our kids, like no one ever babysat for us. No one was there really.
MATT: Right.
FAWN: Not even at the hospital. They almost killed us. So where's the village? I don't know. So, but. I was thinking, okay, well we created all of this, as humans with our egos.
We created this separation like, I'm gonna do this myself. I'm going to create this. I'm going to create my own thing. I'm gonna go over here and be independent. But for the first time ever, after all these decades of working on this project, I started to think, what if? What if there's like a spiritual reason for this, and what if we are in exile?
And what is it exactly? Exile basically [00:05:00] means there's a hiddenness, there's a disconnection, things not appearing as they truly are. We notice families fragmenting relationships becoming transactional. Loneliness increasing. All this is happening. The question is, are we in exile?
What is the bigger picture here? Do we need to sit by ourselves and connect to some inner part of ourselves as like a, a kind of a reboot in order to, remember what our true power is? Why are our connections hidden and how, how should we respond within that hiddenness? Like how, how do we act if the conditions of confusion, hardship, and that separateness are part of a greater design, which is what I'm thinking, like this is part of a greater design, like a greater power.
How do we use our free will? Behave with each other. Is this like a [00:06:00] yin and yang? The light and dark, the good, bad. If it is, then there appears to be the separateness here. So how do we use our innate powers to transform the separateness into connection?
Real unity has meaning if separation is possible. So without separation, we wouldn't know what it's like to be together. And why it feels so good to be together and why we really need each other, why we need to be together. When the distance is felt, reconnection is chosen.
if we're automatically connected, love wouldn't be an achievement. Friends wouldn't be meaningful.
So question, are relationships actually getting worse? Maybe the expression of relationships are getting more fractured. The awareness of what's broken is [00:07:00] getting stronger at the same time. There's less commitments there's more disposable relationships, there's increased loneliness. There's surface level communication replacing like something deep
truth wherever you look for truth, in conversations or, or politics or anything. Trying to get your medical health in order, it feels like truth has become harder to hold. Relationships have lost stability. This audacity has increased and not in a good way. And every structure that I can think of.
Has become so weak. So that's the bad stuff, but what's improving? Because I'm trying to figure out positives here and I'm trying to come up with a solution, Matt.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
FAWN: So I'm looking at things that are improving. people are talking about their feelings more. That's good. questioning unhealthy patterns.
Good. Seeking authenticity. We want authenticity. Right, right. Even especially with AI now, [00:08:00] Refusing to stay in empty or damaging dynamics. We're seeing exposure in society, dysfunction is surfacing the cracks are becoming obvious. Celebrities we used to admire or gurus we used to admire false prophets, all of that. It's all being exposed, right? I mean, and it's dirty and it's unnerving. But it's part of the process. So if we look at the grander picture, it's like, okay, things are getting cleaned up.
Things look worse right now, but I feel like things are getting better. So we're in a moment where this disconnection is being exposed so that real connection can finally be built. For so long, Matt, we were the only ones talking about the loneliness epidemic, you know?
Right. And people would give us such grief
MATT: mm-hmm.
FAWN: About saying that. But now, more podcasts are popping up and more people are talking about it so we don't look [00:09:00] so crazy.
MATT: True.
FAWN: we're in a moment where disconnection is being exposed so that the real connection can finally be built. When things are at the darkest is when light. Is about to break through, and I think we're at that breakthrough.
I wanna be more solution based instead of always pointing out what's wrong here.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
FAWN: I wanna do more of it, Matt. So anyway, before I get into a solution, one solution that has helped me the past week, any comments on my tirade just now?
MATT: I blame Catcher in the Rye, but that's a whole other story.
FAWN: Why?
MATT: Because it almost romanticizes this notion of like individuality, too much individuality, too much separation, too much. I don't give a hoot.
FAWN: I mean, that was probably one way that it was fed to us. Right,
MATT: right.
FAWN: In literature.
MATT: Yeah. [00:10:00] Absolutely.
FAWN: And it was one of those things we had to read in school.
MATT: Right.
FAWN: And in school, I mean, weren't you told you better, you better have your act together at 18. You are on your own kid.
MATT: I was never told that, believe it or not,
FAWN: but I remember your mom saying, I'm turning your room into a sewing room.
MATT: Yeah,
FAWN: I know, but so it's like, you're not welcome back here to, to me that's the, that's the impression I
MATT: would, I would have, and I lived there until I was 25, so.
FAWN: You did?
MATT: I did,
FAWN: So, is it just my negative thinking? I mean, do you feel like you had the village then at home?
MATT: No, definitely not. But I understood the, the goods versus the bads. And I was willing to, I was willing to, I accepted the bads to, to, you know, have the advantages.
FAWN: Okay. I feel bad now.
I feel like I'm the only one.
MATT: Like, but I did leave to go to school. Right? I left for four years.
FAWN: Yeah.
MATT: Boom, boom.
FAWN: So you weren't there until you were 25?
MATT: Well, and then I moved back home, and then I was there until I was from 21 to 25. Yes.
FAWN: Okay.
MATT: [00:11:00] So from 18 to 22 summers. Then from, or 21 and then from 17 to 21 actually, and then from, you know, 21 to 25.
FAWN: Alright. So am I being negative, man? Am I being delusional about
MATT: No, I, I, I think you're right. I think there's a lot of that happening, but the other thing I'm discovering is that when you actually finally get someone one-on-one, and people feel like they can breathe. People are willing to open up and it doesn't even matter who they are.
It's, it's a weird thing. I think that when I'm generally genuinely interested and when I am being a hundred percent authentic and I'm one-on-one, I can, I. Talk to someone. I can listen to someone about anything and people are willing to go all the way off on their weird meaning magical things that I've never thought about.
FAWN: Alright, well here's where my negative thinking comes in and my [00:12:00] complaining self comes in. How do you even find that one-on-one? Most of my friends are not near us at all. There are thousands of miles away. I, and I've talked about this in our podcast before, it's in every aspect of our society is what I've noticed.
Like architecture, things are designed in such a way where we can't really hang out together. Where you don't see your neighbors and if you do, you wanna get away from them. Like our neighbors here. They are so nosy for the wrong reasons. If they were nosy and actually cared about us, oh my gosh, I would welcome that.
And I did until I realized they're trying to be friends because they're trying to gain something from the property value or, you know what I'm saying?
MATT: Right.
FAWN: Right. And it was heartbreaking. So, so architecture is set up in such a way where we can't, finances are, I feel, I mean, I don't know. Are we the only poor people around?
And I'm sorry, I know you don't [00:13:00] think we're poor, but honestly, if you look at the numbers, we're not wealthy at all.
MATT: Well, I never said we were wealthy.
FAWN: Okay. But we can't afford a vacation. We don't know how to pay for the children's colleges. So just even going out to coffee is a big feat.
How do you find the people one, and how do you hang out with that one person and then you go back again, going back to architecture. Oh, oh. And you need money to hang out, right? So a coffee is expensive,
MATT: right?
FAWN: And you better not be hungry. 'cause then wait, ordering food.
Don't leave the house hungry. It just feels like there's so many barriers. And then when you return back home, you are in your bubble. And if you live in most places, you are also in the bubble of your vehicle, your car.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
FAWN: So as soon as you leave this person's sight, you cease to [00:14:00] exist in a way.
We were just at a dinner last week and one person was struggling with, a family member being ill and everyone was like, what do you need? How can we support you? Do you need food? Do what do you need? We're here, right?
MATT: Mm-hmm.
FAWN: But I feel like as soon as that person goes back home and everyone gets back to their busy routines.
It's kind of out of sight, out of mind for the most part. And I was having an argument yesterday about this whole thing about education and families being fragmented in this way, and this person is older than I am and talking to me like I'm not supporting education. He's like, people, your kids need to get an education.
I'm like, what? Who are you talking to? Of course they need an education. I'm not against education. I'm against having to be in debt for $300,000 and the kid moving to some other part of the world because that's what they're [00:15:00] told needs to happen for them to be successful. That's a narrative I refuse to allow into our family and he was talking about how.
He's so proud of certain family members because they go to homes for the elderly and help people with dementia and everything.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
FAWN: I'm like, that's wonderful. That's so cool. However, we don't do that for our own families. So you're going to take care of a stranger. Is it out of guilt really? I can see how it's made, it's done with love.
Absolutely. But how come we don't do that within our families? How come the village isn't here? How come the grandparents aren't living with us? How come the parents aren't living, living with us? And I'm not, again, I'm not saying like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but being together next door, you know, nearby, I'm sorry, went on another tirade. Back to you, [00:16:00] man.
MATT: We interact with different people in different ways, so you know, getting back to how do you get to that one-on-one? It's expensive, it's spendy, it's a million things. Fortunately or unfortunately, as the case may be. There's work, there's school, there's, you know, other points in time where you can make those connections.
You know, places you have to be, you have to wait in line at the DMV, you have to, you know, go to work and you sit next to people. Your child has a play date and so you hang out with the other parent or whatever it is. So not necessarily money is involved. and then you take a look at other people.
You know, there are people like Mr. Wizard. He lives next to his brother-in-law. His mom is in like two towns over and he sees her all the time. And he vacations with family. So it is possible. It just seems pretty unlikely and pretty uncommon now.
Bill and Debbie. [00:17:00] I love seeing them. I enjoy talking to them and I hang out with, you know, I like hanging out with Bill and we can just go on a ride on our bikes, bicycles.
FAWN: But it's not a village.
MATT: You're right. It isn't.
FAWN: He does. He doesn't know anything about our lives.
We don't really don't know a lot about his life day to day. I feel like you know people when they, when you know what they're eating.
MATT: Well, he eats like crap, so there you go.
FAWN: No. So what I'm just saying that we don't have meals together.
MATT: Right.
FAWN: You know, that, that's, for me, it always comes back to food. So when we're not sharing a table mm-hmm.
Then I really don't know you.
And then sharing a table when you go out for a coffee again, it's, it's, it's so expensive and
MATT: contrived.
FAWN: What do you mean by contrived here? Explain it.
MATT: Just you're, you're limited to whatever it is the place has on their menu. For instance.
FAWN: Also, can you really talk about stuff? Because nowadays, like if someone overhears you say something and it's taken out of context, there's no privacy and there's more of a [00:18:00] shield up I feel on guard when I'm out there, I
MATT: gotcha.
You certainly need to be judicious in your moments when you do do that.
FAWN: Do you have anything else to add? Because I wanted to wrap up with something I've been trying this week, and every time we close the show and we hit the stop button, you are like, oh, I had these other things to say. Matt is pointing to, his notes and there's nothing on there
MATT: because I can erase it with the Pressable button.
FAWN: All right. You've definitely said your piece. I feel like I've just been a negative nine. I have
MATT: said my piece
FAWN: alright, to not be a negative person. I this whole week. So, each time I see them, i'm so upset, and I just wish that we could be in a better place,
So the past week I've been trying something. Every time I get upset, I think about the fact that everyone has value, that everything happens for a reason. This person is so selfish and annoying [00:19:00] and downright disrespectful and in our personal space.
so as I'm having these thoughts, I'm like, okay, how can I, take this disconnect? Make it better.
So I'm like, okay, what's their value here? So we had pipes burst, flooded, okay? And had it not been for this nosy neighbor. In the beginning when she would just like come into our house and stuff and look at everything and be judging everything.
This one day she pointed out, oh, by the way, this is your water. Valve for turning on and off the water for the whole house.
MATT: Mm-hmm.
FAWN: And it was just one little blip inside of like this whole history we have had with this woman, But because of that, we knew
where to go to turn off the water. We wouldn't have known, it
MATT: would've taken a, a much, much, much longer amount of time.
FAWN: I mean, honestly, it doesn't look like a water valve to me. It, it looked [00:20:00] like not a water valve period. So I'm like, well, thank goodness for that.
She brought a blessing. That's one of my fix it ideas. Mm-hmm. Instead of being so negative about why we're so disconnected and everything, I'm trying to find ways that our connections are actually there and beneficial, and I hope I've been that way for her. You know, I definitely feel like I, I try to offer her so many things, but I mean, I don't know.
I hope it's reciprocal. I hope that I am of benefit, but what I'm gonna do from now on is always think about the beautiful value everyone has, even if you despise them. Right.
MATT: Fair enough.
FAWN: Do you have a little fix it idea to bring to glue the fractured relationships? To bring the puzzles back together so we're not an exile.
MATT: Right. I know. I know. And everything in my heart points to not letting [00:21:00] them become fractured. So no, I don't.
FAWN: There's a lot happening that's hidden from us, there's a saying that says, may the miracles be obvious to you. There are miracles around us all the time. Mm-hmm. We just don't know why. We don't know why we stubbed our toe when we walked across the room, but there's a reason why you did.
We don't know the reason.
MATT: True,
FAWN: right? But when we find out the reason life becomes magical. So I think asking the world out there. Please show me, let me see what's hidden.
MATT: I got you. Actually, something just came to mind that, that happened this week. Our neighbor on the other, uh, our other neighbor, a package was mistakenly delivered to our front door, and I took it to her front door because that's what you do. That's what neighbors do. but I didn't like stick it at the garage.
I didn't throw it at her front door. There's a lot of things I could have done to be a meaningful feeny about it. [00:22:00] And of course the instant I put it down, she cracked open the door and was on the phone and it felt very accidental and I was just like, okay. Then I didn't say a word, I didn't do anything.
But I think small acts like that help mend craziness.
FAWN: Okay. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna shut up. Alright.
Have a lovely every day.
MATT: Be well everyone.
