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Barry Lane, the ambassador of love and kindness, troubadour for loving-kindness is with us again, this time from Uvalde, Texas. Barry travels all over the place and he not only teaches kindness, but he spreads kindness everywhere. He goes to schools. He works with children, he's given TED Talks.
In this episode, we discuss what is stronger love or hate? How do you mend a broken heart? Where to find love when it seems all we see is a "prickly cactus"?
Everybody is operating from some sort of trauma. Everyone has pain. Everyone's doing their best going through whatever they're going through. EVERYONE is literally operating at their highest capacity. Now, that may not mean that they're operating to your standards, to your standards, they're just operating from the best way that they can live. And that goes with friendship.
Barry is visiting with the children and teachers who were inside the massacre at Uvalde and we take some time to discuss how we can heal, and how we can be there for each other to create a loving world despite what we are experiencing that is far from kind. We find out where love lives. We take a love pledge.
This episode will soothe and nourish you. Barry sings to us. Make sure to listen to the very last song at the end of the episode. It will help.
#WhatIsStrongerLoveOrHate #Uvalde #LoveIsEternal #HealingABrokenHeart
https://www.ourfriendlyworldpodcast.com/a-kind-world-with-special-guest-barry-lane/
To Reach Barry:
https://www.barrylane.com/
https://www.forcefieldforgood.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzimmQaLzo8
Love and Hate and How to Heal a Broken Heart with Barry Lane - TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] FAWN: Hello everybody.
[00:00:01] MATT: Hello.
[00:00:01] FAWN: Welcome back. We have a beautiful, beautiful surprise for you today. Our friend Barry is back. Barry is here. Hi Barry.
[00:00:12] BARRY: Hi.
[00:00:13] FAWN: Great to be back. So good to have you back. You all know Barry came to visit us when we moved. Barry is a dear friend of ours, he's a family member. He's also been on our podcast before, a few times.
[00:00:26] FAWN: A couple times, right? I wanna say the first one was, um, I think it was February 28th, 2021, . And then the last one was when we were going through total hardship. It was April of 2022. And we were talking about hardship in the world and how you can still find happiness and kindness even though the world is in such turmoil.
[00:00:50] FAWN: And we talked about love, of course. Barry, of course, if you remember, if you don't just go back to the previous episodes, the links are in the notes and on our podcast. Type in Barry Lane and you'll find the other episodes, but what you associate with Barry, our friend Barry is a kind world.
[00:01:13] FAWN: He is the ambassador of love and kindness . He's actually, what were we riffing on? The Ambassador and trubador for loving kindness. The Jim Morrison of Kindness,
[00:01:30] MATT: Open Door to Kindness, which led us to Jim Morrison of the Doors.
[00:01:35] FAWN: Of course. Sorry. Sorry guys. We were totally having a conversation before we actually pressed the record button.
[00:01:41] FAWN: So Barry is here. Everyone, welcome back Barry. Hi Barry.
[00:01:45] BARRY: Thank you riders on the storm
[00:01:50] FAWN: Barry travels all over the place and he not only teaches kindness, but he spreads kindness everywhere. He goes to schools. He works with children,
[00:02:02] MATT: he's given TED Talks.
[00:02:03] FAWN: You could find more about Barry, just go to forcefield for good.com. Everything, all the links are in our show notes . So we've been talking to Barry. We talk to Barry all the time. Thank goodness. We love him so much. So what we were riffing on yesterday was. The following, what is stronger love or hate?
[00:02:24] FAWN: Which is something Matt talks about all the time. , what is stronger love or hate? How do you know this? How do you mend a broken heart, which we also got into last week, how do you mend a broken heart? Uh, where does love? , how do you find love in all the wrong places? How do you find love in all the wrong places?
[00:02:48] MATT: Oh my goodness. That sounds like Country Western Song, .
[00:02:52] FAWN: And the big question, should we even look right? That's a big one, right? Wow. Of course we should, but it's interesting. Should we or shouldn't we? I don't know. Let's talk to Barry. Barry. Hello. Welcome
[00:03:05] BARRY: back. I was thinking about that song when, when I, whenever I think of that song, I think of Eddie Murphy doing his riff on that song.
[00:03:14] BARRY: Eddie Murphy. Yeah, he did. If you're looking it up, you'll see it online. He looking for love in all the wrong places. Is
[00:03:21] FAWN: that when he did his own album? Is that his singing album? Yeah,
[00:03:24] BARRY: he had this voice he used to do, he had this kind of voice, but, but uh, yeah. It's funny because that song. actually. When you think about that song, what do you think about, you think, what's the wrong place to look for love?
[00:03:38] BARRY: You know, of course a song like that might be don't find your boyfriend or girlfriend in a bar or something like that. But maybe the deeper level of that is do you look for love and that prickly person that you just met, you know, or who, who said something unkind to you or whatever. And um, I always think of Anne of Green Gables when I think of
[00:04:00] BARRY: that kind of thing. Anna, I know that that's one of Matt's favorite books. Hey, I have
[00:04:05] MATT: read Anna Green Gables. Okay. We have, I have, I have two daughters. So it's really, it's important to, you know, look at, you know, seminal works for young readers, period. And that was one I did not read as a young man. Or as a
[00:04:19] MATT: young boy.
[00:04:20] MATT: Oh,
[00:04:21] BARRY: wonderful. Well, you know, there's a school marmee lady, I don't even know where her name was. I, I didn't even read it. I just watched the PBS show, . Uh, but the, uh, but there was a school marmee lady that always gives Anne a real hard time, and she's busting her chops all the time, and she's trying to do creative teaching in a school that, you know, she wants all the trains to run on time and she's just being nasty and she's so unkind to her.
[00:04:45] BARRY: Right. And even. , uh, her reaction to her is she doesn't like, she doesn't take revenge on her. She says, just come to Green Gables and coming to Green Gables you see the layer, she starts to unlayer that woman and you start to see underneath her prickliness. I was just in Tucson yesterday.
[00:05:05] BARRY: Underneath that prickly cactus inside, there's all this sweet juice that's just... in Israel that's what they call Sabras. They call people who live in Israel, young people sabras, which is after the cactus, in other words, on the outside, the rough and rugged on inside their sweet and juice. And, and you start to see her face change and everything about her changes, when she learns to let down that thing, you know?
[00:05:32] BARRY: Our society trains people I think to "other" people like that, those are the people, people backed by about, do you believe that woman, what she said to her, you know, Anne would be like talking trash about her all the time to other, if she was like, you know, on Facebook, you know, do you believe that lady?
[00:05:48] BARRY: She says, think she's a teacher, or she does, is like ragg on the kids, whatever. What's wrong with her? You know, whatever. But you know, no, she. , she looks for love there, you know, and certainly she finds it because sometimes you find what you're looking for. Um, sometimes , it's as simple as that.
[00:06:08] BARRY: Yeah. You find it what you're looking for.
[00:06:13] MATT: Well, yeah. Especially for me, I think
[00:06:15] MATT: like the more prickly the person, it's like once you actually. get into it and really get a sense of starting to understand them, those can be the most loyal people. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . And they're so strong in their beliefs, and they're so strong as far as like rushing to defend you and everything.
[00:06:35] MATT: I mean, they're very honest and open because, you know, here I am, deal with
[00:06:40] FAWN: me, . Mm-hmm. , I think they're more open because it's rare to have someone actually give the time, give them the time of day. You know, it's rare to have someone just be there and not have judgment and just be there and keep gracing them with attention, right?
[00:07:00] FAWN: You know, with a loving, kind, soft silent gaze. You know, without any judgment. And I think that when they realize that you're doing that, yeah, they are loyal to you. And I think it's also, the whole thing comes about of people not being noticed as kind when they're, they seem prickly is because there's such a lack of time.
[00:07:25] FAWN: And I think people just don't give it enough of that. They don't give enough time to get to know a person, and they have very good reason for being prickly. You know, they have been hurt so much. But I think if we just allow for that grace that it shows up on both sides. Uh, they open up and we end up seeing something amazing, and if we just keep going through, always in a hurry, not noticing the beauty,
[00:07:56] FAWN: right. Then. Yeah. We miss all these beautiful people that are quite lovely, right. Barry .
[00:08:06] BARRY: Yeah. It's sort of a, I, how would you describe it? You know, I, and I worked a lot my, most of my career, I still do. I work with teachers about teaching writing, and elementary school teachers are very different than high school English teachers, , , high school English teachers,
[00:08:23] BARRY: they can be like, you know, like storm troopers for grammar or whatever it is, right? But they tend to, but they also tend to have a much higher sense of themselves as professionals, which is a good thing sometimes, you know, I think sometimes, and I think they can be a lot more prickly.
[00:08:40] BARRY: And I think sometimes people are prickly because they have, like you say, cuz they have a good reason to be. And so maybe someone like Brene Brown, I think I heard her talk recently and she talked about like, um, can we assume that everybody is doing the best they can? As soon as you make that assumption, as soon as you make that assumption, all judgment
[00:09:05] BARRY: is just disappears. But, it's so easy to other, you know, I, yes. I want to make this bumper sticker that said more mothering, less othering. . Well,
[00:09:16] MATT: uh, Fawn says all the time, everybody's working at their highest capacity.
[00:09:21] FAWN: Someone told me that I remember being mad at someone and I wanted this person to be on my side about it and go, yeah, Fawn, that was terrible.
[00:09:29] FAWN: Oh, but they didn't, they're like, they're doing the very best they can. I'm like, how can you say that about this person? And I don't remember what the situation was, but it happened a lot with different people. And she basically told me, look, everybody's operating at their highest capacity. So, and then it made me think of all the other people that I've met who, who mentioned that, you know, this is before the term hurt people, hurt people
[00:09:57] FAWN: became known, but like for example, I was working at a design studio and there was this one vendor who would come in and show us whatever we needed to work with, with tiles and things like that. And he was so gruff and he was so mean. He was mean . And one of the designers I worked with just turned to me and said, you know what?
[00:10:19] FAWN: I think he's in pain, physical pain. Oh. And as soon as she mentioned that the next time we saw him, he was in pain. Like no amount of, um, no amount of, uh, medication could relieve the pain he was in and it was constant and he had to still work and go meet people and drive across town and Right. Lift heavy things and be kind constantly cuz he was in sales.
[00:10:47] FAWN: You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. . . But as soon as he realized that, we realized that he was nice to us. . .
[00:10:54] BARRY: Because you
[00:10:55] MATT: were nice to him.
[00:10:56] FAWN: Well, because we realized something was going on, right? We realized something beyond the superficial like robotic thing that we all have to go through cuz you have to work and you have to present a face and you have to get your job done.
[00:11:10] FAWN: You're not a human being. Do you know what I'm saying? Like you have to just get your job done, suck it up. Right. And like, don't show your, don't show any emotion. Don't show your true self. Get the job done well, you just have to get the job done right? And so anyway, that's where I first heard that. And then, then I heard from our other friend who was like, look, everyone's doing their best.
[00:11:34] FAWN: And made me think of like the family I grew up with. And I'm like, yes, that's something I've been thinking about my whole life, but I only thought about my family, but that's really the whole world. Everybody is operating from some sort of trauma ev. Everyone has pain. You're a human being. You're gonna have all the flavors, you're gonna have all the emotions living on planet Earth and everyone's doing their best going through whatever they're going through.
[00:12:04] FAWN: They're literally quite operating at their highest capacity. Now, that may not mean that they're operating to your standards, to your standards, they're just operating from the best way that they can live. Do you know what I'm saying? Absolutely. And that goes with friendship. Like I have the highest standards for friends, and I've come to realize that
[00:12:30] FAWN: most people don't have the same standards I do. And as soon as I can come to terms with that, then I actually can find friends better because there's less pressure that people feel from me and there's less pressure that I feel from the world.
[00:12:46] BARRY: I think it's a, I've been teaching kids about . UMBUNTU mm. You guys say it? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. like a bun bun, but, but yeah. 2, 2, 2, 2. It's cool. It's a cool, it has a word that has three Us in it, very in English, but it very rarely have that. How do you spell it? And it's a word, U M B U N T U. It's I can't do it.
[00:13:20] BARRY: I can't do the clicks. But it's a Kosi word, South Africa. It's a word that Desmond Tutu always talked about in South Africa, which is the Umbuntu spirit of the people. And this is what I've learned, actually wrote a song about it. Do you wanna hear the song?
[00:13:34] FAWN: Yes, please.
[00:13:37] BARRY: Oh yeah. Okay. Here's a song it's called.
[00:13:41] BARRY: it's called The Umbutu Song, . So in English, we don't have a word for this. You'd have to almost say a whole paragraph. You'd have to say it's about seeing other peoples as if they are you. You could say a simplest way I've heard it put is I am because we are, And I said that to my wife, who's my best song critic, Carol Lee and I, and she said, well, that's true, but it's also true that we are because I am.
[00:14:09] BARRY: And, and, uh, so here's the song. It's called
[00:16:38] FAWN: Thank you, Barry. Ah, it's always
[00:16:41] MATT: nice to have a performance on the show.
[00:16:44] FAWN: Thank you so much, Barry. We love you so much. So let's go back to the first question. What is stronger love or hate? . Mm
[00:16:52] MATT: God. It's difficult to weigh in, isn't
[00:16:54] FAWN: it? What does that even mean, that question? So when you pose that question, Barry, what were you thinking?
[00:17:01] BARRY: Well, I do this to kids all the time. Actually. It's a part of the work that I do with the force field for good, especially with old, older kids. It's not a question you wanna pop on a kindergartner all the time. But it is, it's one of the, those great philosophical questions. And , in elementary school, almost unanimously, kids will say love almost.
[00:17:19] BARRY: Mm-hmm. by reflex, you know? Right. Uh, unless there's things going on in, in town and things are happening, and I can give examples of that, but I'm working in Uvalde, Texas tomorrow. Mm-hmm. going back again. I was there in September, you know, and there they had a quite, it was like a Voldemort experience, right.
[00:17:40] BARRY: That happened there. If you know the Harry Potter books, where there was a very, of course, horrible thing. Uh, you know, horrific thing that happened and continues to happen so many places in America. And so the next question, so I was at a school in Minnesota, but before I went to Uvalde, I
[00:18:02] BARRY: didn't know how to prepare cuz here is September. Well how do you prepare for something like that? Basically school ended after the shooting. And here we are going in September and I'm gonna be the first person to meet all these kids and teachers. And uh, how do you prepare for that? And, uh, The only way I realized it wasn't about me doing a performance. I realized I had to get all ego out of the way and just make myself like a hollow reed.
[00:18:28] BARRY: There's a high prayer. It goes like this, oh God, make me a hollow reed from which the pith of self hath been blown. Sort of like, how do I become a channel for healing or for God's light or for whatever you want to call it. You don't have to use the word God. You could say just the force of light and for healing.
[00:18:48] BARRY: And so I prayed and prayed about that and some amazing things happened there, which I'm not gonna go into all of it, but I would say, because of that, experience, but, Two months before I had gone to a school in Minnesota and I'd asked the question, what's stronger love or hate? And this was a fifth grade class that they were older kids.
[00:19:09] BARRY: And this little girl goes, well hate because hate can crush your heart. And then I thought, wow. And then that stuck in my mind. I, I try to, Wow. You know, talk more about it with her, with the class. And we talked about it more and tried to, to make a good pitch for love , like Right, of course. But salesman.
[00:19:31] BARRY: Salesman. But now, but it, but it stuck with me that question, and I thought, and when I went to Uvalde in September, I got the answer you to that. I got the answer. And in other words, the answer, you can get the, you can say, well, love is stronger because of blah, blah, blah, or, and it is, it's love is, but I got the answer and I can share that with you guys.
[00:19:53] BARRY: Yes, please. After this, After this commercial break, ,
[00:19:57] FAWN: excuse me. . Uh,
[00:20:00] BARRY: oh dear. No, no. It sounds like a, it sounds like I have the answer, but the answer is really more of a question, which is, uh, the answer is that love, when you have love in your heart. So one of the things I do with kids, do a little meditation.
[00:20:17] BARRY: We sit and, um, my friend, um, Michael Jolly, he created this wonderful meditation app, which I'll give a plug for. It's called Solu, s o l u l s o l u. And it's, you can get it on your phone and uh, whatever. And we sit and I have kids, we do a, a pledge allegiance to their heart. The very last class I taught in Uvalde, which kind of.
[00:20:44] BARRY: Uh, something magical happened. Uh, um, I wrote on the board, I pledge allegiance to my heart and I said, what if we wrote a pledge allegiance to my heart cuz I was in, this is Texas, you not only do the pledge allegiance to the country, you do the pledge to Texas too. Wow. They have two pledges they do in the morning.
[00:21:06] BARRY: And uh, and I remember, you know, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God, which was put in by Eisenhower, by the way, indivisible or we used to always say invisible . One invisible nation that no one can see. , uh, with liberty and justice for all, you know.
[00:21:28] BARRY: And I said, what if we did a pledge for the heart? So I put my hands, but instead of doing one hand, do both actually hold your heart, you know, that expression hold your heart in your hands. And we do that when we sat. And this is how this work has gone for me, cuz I started doing that when I heard a friend of mine, Helen Matheney, she has some work she does called Be Kind.
[00:21:52] BARRY: It's like a thing. And she told me there's some in Vietnam doing this heart meditation with kids and just watching kids with their eyes closed, with their hands, holding their heart is a much very powerful image just to see. So I said, what if we wrote a pledge alegiance to his fifth grade Uvaldi Dual Language Academy?
[00:22:11] BARRY: They speak English and Spanish. Wonderful school, by the way. I said to them, let's write. Can we write it? I said, yeah, what would the first line be? And this is totally unedited. These are just kids raising their hand. First line: "I will always be true to myself". Wow. Next line another kid puts hand up: "I will show Grace to myself and to others."
[00:22:38] BARRY: Kind of like Anne of Green Gables did to the Mean Lady . Uh, and the next line, love this little girl. She goes:" love will always matter." And then she pauses for a minute and goes, "even when I'm mad". , . And then, and then this next hand goes up in the back of the room, actually had this on video. Somebody videoed it for me.
[00:23:02] BARRY: This the last line, last hand goes up and goes, "I won't let the sun go down on my anger." And then, so all I did was add the final line, which is "I will choose the kinder path." I will choose the kinder path. I will choose the kinder path. I did it like a mantra three times. So put your hands over your heart and repeat after me.
[00:23:28] BARRY: I pledge allegiance to my heart. I pledge to, I pledge allegiance to my, my heart. I will always stay true to myself. I, I will always stay true, true to to myself, myself. Love will always matter. Love. Love will always, always, always matter, matter. Even when I'm mad.
[00:23:49] MATT: Even, even when, when I'm mad,
[00:23:51] BARRY: mad , I won't let the sun go down on my anger.
[00:23:57] BARRY: I
[00:23:57] FAWN: will not let the sun, sun go
[00:23:59] BARRY: down, down on my anger. I will choose the kinder path. I will choose, I will choose the the kinder path I, I will choose the kinder path. I'll choose the kinder path.
[00:25:13] BARRY: Yes,
[00:25:14] FAWN: always. We have a thing when we fight someone in the house has to say love is winning . And sometimes we end up yelling it because as soon as we hear it, it kind of makes us laugh. But we're still mad. Even when I'm mad love is
[00:25:29] MATT: winning.
[00:25:33] BARRY: when you think about it, people when they kind of, when. When they fall into what Eckhart Tolle would call unconsciousness with Eckhart Tolle, refuses to use the word evil, which I think is good in a way because evil almost makes it too much of a power. You know, it makes it like, oh, there are these bad villains everywhere.
[00:25:54] BARRY: You know? And maybe there are people who you could call define it evil, but the reality is, uh, unconscious is probably a, more accurate description, you know, because it's really, they're not conscious of their heart or their, or. of, of Umbutu spirit or whatever. Even even the our wonderful golden rule do unto, unto others as you'd have them do unto, unto you.
[00:26:20] BARRY: It, it assumes that there are others. You know, it assumes that, uh, you know, sort of like if it was the Umbutu golden rule would be do unto unto us as you'd have do unto, unto us . It wouldn't assume the othering of the world, you know? Right. And. . And when you make those kinds of, there's a power there that's like Jedi level power to be able to wield that in the world.
[00:26:45] BARRY: That was Martin Luther King level power or Mandela. When he gets outta jail and says, I'm not gonna, you know, he's not gonna go, you know, payback's a bitch. He's not going to take it out on you guys. He's gonna say wait a minute. We all make ourselves. We are all one.
[00:27:02] BARRY: And, we saw what your hate did to you, and we're not gonna let that hate do it to us to crush our spirits and, uh, and your heart. So you need to build a roof over your heart. So everyone take your index finger now, you guys, and make a heart out of your index finger on both hands. , look at me.
[00:27:22] BARRY: Uh, yeah. Make sure you're doing it right. Yeah. . Yeah. You got, now you see you've got the extra fingers. Put your extra fingers on top and now your heart has a. a roof over its head. You know your heart. So there's a song I wrote called Quiet Your Mind, and the, the last verse of that, it was written for Uvalde before I went.
[00:27:43] BARRY: And the story, I don't know, uh, the story about that song is that, uh, I wrote a draft of it and my first draft was more like, Kind of a 60s song and all you need is love. It was kind of like that. And I showed it to my wife and she said, well, it's not very good . And I said, I said, why? She said, because you can't tell kids that everything is okay when horrible things have happened, when their whole lives have fallen apart when their parents are divorced or where they're, someone's died or people have been shot or just horrible things .
[00:28:18] BARRY: People's world does fall apart. So one of the verse, so she wrote the rewrote the whole, she's amazing. She, she doesn't write, but she rewrites amazingly. Um, there's a verse called, that goes like this, that she wrote, like, uh, there's a calm voice deep within me that whispers in my heart, ear, heart, ear. Uh, when I learn to breathe more slowly, I can teach myself to hear my own inner stillness,
[00:28:47] BARRY: my own peace of heart, my own loving kindness when my world falls apart. And that line, my world falls apart. She said, could, is that a line in a kid song? You know? And, and we, and I realize, yeah, it is. You know, I, I quiet my mind and leave the past behind. Breathe in, breathe out. Be right here where I can find myself beyond time.
[00:29:17] BARRY: and I have nothing to fear. And that, that, that's what this song is about, that myself, beyond time, that kids can stand in the truth of the most awful moment and find peace in their heart, and adults can do that too. Mm-hmm. . And yet it's, uh, it sounds glib to say it, but it, uh, there's a great truth there that you can crush a heart
[00:29:46] BARRY: but all the love. So now when I do the heart meditation with kids, I have them do what you just did. Make your heart, put it over your heart, and we'll listen to the tones. And then slowly ra, think of all the people that put love in your heart. You know, your parents, your sister, your dog, your children, your, I don't know what else, who else?
[00:30:10] BARRY: and, uh, just think about it while you hold your hand over your heart and then make the heart, and then they raise the heart slowly up to eye level and they look at the world through the love in their hearts. And what does the world look like now? You know, just like Lady in Green Gables, when she come, goes to Green Gables and she comes back and all of a sudden she's a different person.
[00:30:36] BARRY: She's seeing the world through this love that she found in her heart. So the very last thing you do, I want you guys to do this too, is hold the heart, your heart, close to your heart, and then watch me. We're gonna do it like, this is like basketball. It's like a, about just basketball. Like this. Just throw. Make your heart open and throw all the love away like confetti.
[00:30:58] BARRY: Go 1, 2, 3, go with your, and you gotta wiggle your fingers when you do it too. You get maximum spread on the love maximum. And this is what I say to kids, and this is the great lesson I learned in Uvaldi in September and I'm going there tomorrow again. That song that about the Heart pledge was the very last class I taught there.
[00:31:20] BARRY: And so I'm going back with that, armed with that, to come back into this group of kids and talk about, the lesson I learned was that you've given all your love away. I say this to kids, uh, do it with like, like 400 kids in a, in a cafeteria. You've given all your love away. Now, now your heart is loveless, right?
[00:31:40] BARRY: There's nothing left, and, and I just wait, and this girl goes immediately, hands will go no, you have more love now.
[00:31:51] MATT: You're wrong Barry .
[00:31:53] BARRY: Wait a minute. If I give you all the money in my wallet, would I. , I'd have, I'd be broke. You know, uh, what, how could this be? And, and this little girl, oh my gosh, this little girl in this, in the school in San Antonio, the next week after Uvalde, she looks at me.
[00:32:12] BARRY: She had like pink hair with glitter. She's one of those glitter kid had glitter all over her face. She looked at me and she goes, uh, LOVE IS ETERNAL. Hmm. Love goes on. And then she takes her hands and she starts making a window. Forever and ever and ever. , forever and ever. You guys do it forever and ever. Forever.
[00:32:35] BARRY: Forever
[00:32:36] FAWN: and ever and ever. Hallelujah. Forever.
[00:32:40] BARRY: Hallelujah. Forever and ever and ever. Yeah. And, uh, and that is the lesson now that I get to teach kids, uh, because now I know the answer to that question, but hate can crush your heart.
[00:32:55] FAWN: Which also, leads us to healing a broken heart, can we get more into that?
[00:33:02] FAWN: How do you heal a broken heart?
[00:33:06] BARRY: Wow. Oh boy. That's
a
[00:33:08] MATT: great question. I've got, I've got my own. Very long-winded, not long-winded, but I have my own answer for
[00:33:14] FAWN: this. Well, well, okay. I want, I wanna hear, I wanna hear yours, of course, Matt, but I wanna hear Barry's, I mean, Barry's now, I mean, going to ground zero, right?
[00:33:24] FAWN: For the second time since the shooting. since the massacre, since Horrible. What? Okay, so these kids, these kids that you're talking to, experienced all of this, what do you say? What, how, and how do you, how do you heal or broken heart? , you know, a lot of us.
[00:33:48] BARRY: That's a great question.
[00:33:49] FAWN: I mean, and a lot of us are, you know, I find that a lot of people disappear when people go through hard times.
[00:33:54] FAWN: People disappear. We, Matt and I have found this to be true in our lives. Like when horrible things happened to us, all of a sudden, people that were our best friends, supposedly they just disappeared. We never heard from them again. They don't know if we're alive or anything. And I think one of the reasons that happens is because people don't know what to say.
[00:34:18] FAWN: And when someone is grieving and you go to them, you end up saying things that you've heard said, and they just sound so, um, canned. So you end up not wanting to deal with it at all because inevitably you're gonna say the wrong thing. , inevitably, you're gonna look foolish, or the person may lash out because that's what they need to do.
[00:34:41] FAWN: But you have to be prepared for that and not take it personally. There's a lot going on, and I think there's a lot going on. I think most people don't have the capacity to deal with it, so they'd rather not, you know, we're all, we've all done
[00:34:55] BARRY: this, I think. Yes, and I think the, the helplessness that people feel in, in presence, You know, real tragedy and horror, but the people really, we forget that the only thing people really need is you, not anything but that, your presence.
[00:35:15] BARRY: And, uh, and, um, I can say from personal experience when my, when my dad died, um, I have a good friend, Tom Genick. Um, I think I've talked about him on the podcast before. Yeah. When, and he. Came to, it was one of these friend, you know how friendships evolve over time. You know, at first, like he was my friend, but I wasn't really his friend that much.
[00:35:40] BARRY: I kind of, mm-hmm. , you know, he was a roommate. He had a certain way of being in the world that was great and it could be difficult sometimes, just not for any real reason. But, but, uh, I didn't know how that we were that friends, but we maintained the friendship over time and.
[00:35:58] BARRY: He came to me when my dad died and we walked to the playground near my parents' house and, and I didn't know what to say or what to do, and I just stood with him and he put his arms around me and I just wept. Um, and uh, after that moment, our friendship just totally changed. It was like, now we were totally equal.
[00:36:19] BARRY: We were like, he was my friend and I was his friend, and it was just like something happened and I realized it was just friendship has nothing to do with all the things we think it has to do with it. There's a, there's another level channel or, or whatever that's going on about just being connected with that person and just connecting. And in Uvalde the kids.
[00:36:42] BARRY: It's sort of, I, I, I was trying describe it in a sentence or two to people when, when I got back, cuz a lot of people wanted to know what it was like. And we have, uh, I'd posted some pictures and stuff of being at the Rob Elementary where the shooting was, where this is incredible outpouring of just stuffed animals everywhere and flowers and just, it's like this giant shrine to, pain and horror and um, but up to love the love of
[00:37:11] BARRY: these souls that were lost. And, um, and so how do you, uh, I described it like hog, the next Harry Potter novel, after all, when they go back to Hogwarts with their stuffies, you know, after the war, you know, and they have to recuperate from the PTSD and all that stuff. And, or to find some healing in themselves.
[00:37:34] BARRY: And, uh, and. , it happens in, uh, being able to tell your story over and over. I once worked with a Cambodian refugee years ago teaching writing, and teachers should complain. Yeah, he always tells all these stories, but they're different every time. Of course, they're different every time because telling the story is what's important and finding the truth in the many versions of the story.
[00:37:58] BARRY: A lot of it is about just sitting with kids, them telling the stories, and being able to find, , a connection and just to be there, you know, the difference between sympathy and empathy, I guess that is what you're talking about Fawn, I think the sympathy is when you say, ah, I'm certainly sorry that happened to you.
[00:38:18] BARRY: You poor loser, . You know, it can be, you know, it's, you were separate. It's othering that person. Right. Empathy. So the very last day when I was in Uvaldi, I did a, a workshop with teachers and. , I sang the song," Quiet Your Mind." And, uh, my, I quiet my mind, but I started to talk about it and I just burst into tears.
[00:38:41] BARRY: I just, not, not just tears, but like heaving sobs and, and I said, what happened here should not have happened, you know, and, and, and just how honored I was just to be in the presence of these teachers who went back into the classroom. It, it was like, beyond heroic to be able to, to take their pain and fear even, you know, and, uh, P T S D.
[00:39:08] BARRY: And there were stories of teachers, uh, who could not bear, the door being open, you know, a door, they'd be in the room and just feel if that door is open, uh, you know, go into panic. And the kinds of things that happen when you have to face all the, the limbic systems, kind of, you know, , you know, continual sense of threat, you know, um, and, uh, but to be able to do that and to go back in and to hug these kids, and the only reason they did it, not because of their salaries or their protecting their pension, the only reason they did it is because there was kids needed them.
[00:39:47] BARRY: And. . I remember just walking casually down the hall and the woman I was with said we had a nice talk with a teacher and she told me afterward that woman's son died in the shooting. And uh, and she was a teacher and she went back in to be with her students to be in. Uh, and I just remember thinking just how these type of events make you realize the bonds that hold people, teachers teaching to me is a calling. It's not a job. And that, uh, these kids need them. Um, so how do you mend the heart? That's the question. Telling the story, being there, you know, or climbing into the pit with them, that's what, I didn't do that till the very end, that last day when I felt
[00:40:35] BARRY: like, I had to, I felt this connection, with these teachers realized that that's really what they have been doing. And, uh, and, you know, actually feeling what, or being there for them, you know, I guess that's what it is. What Tom did for me at the playground when my dad died, uh, maybe is, is it do that for these kids, be there for them.
[00:41:02] BARRY: and, uh, these kids, the other thing I noticed is that these kids were doing it for each other. So much. So many kids, they all bring stuffies with them wherever they go and they, they're, they're like loving each other and they're stuffies, you know? And, um, I was just in a classroom. My great friend Sean, Sean Taylor, great fourth grade teacher in Tucson.
[00:41:24] BARRY: He gives his kids at the beginning of the year, they get their own stuffed animal to take care of. They have to feed it and they put it in their cubby holes. And uh, and uh, and that kind of care, that practicing caring for each other is, is really the key to, to healing.
[00:41:42] FAWN: Which leads us to where does love live?. How would you answer that? Where does love live Barry?
[00:41:50] BARRY: You want me to do it in Jim. My Jim Morrison voice, he lives on Love Street . Hey, uh, where does love live? Love lives. Um hm. Love lives in the spaces, the places cracks within the broken heart.
[00:42:15] BARRY: So the heart is crushed. But there's love, uh, the love is still, when I say the kids is, if your heart is broken, is the love still there? Yeah. Anyone that's had to grieve for a loved one. And when you see, I see these really heartfelt tributes to great people, one of them that died recently as my friend Kevin Locke.
[00:42:36] BARRY: He's a Lakota Sioux dancer. He's traveled around the world, over 90 countries, bringing the spirit of of love and connection to people. And, uh, he died the day I, the week, the two days after I got back from Uvalde. And the same day that my dad died, and he was like a spiritual mentor to me.
[00:42:59] BARRY: Kevin Locke. Yeah. Let me give you a quick example of him. He comes to this elementary school. He was performing at Millbury College and he came to our elementary school as a, as a gift, a friendship to do a free hoop dance with the kids. And the elementary school has a giant picture of a, of an Indian chief guide because, the school mascot is the Raiders.
[00:43:24] BARRY: So I think, oh God, this is so embarrassing. . And he looks at the picture and he talks to the kids, you see the feathers and he used it as a PowerPoint to talk about the nobility of the human spirit to know your higher self. So he took that image, which is what I would call degrading or just awful and he just used to, tell kids about the power of their nobility, of the spirit that they have. , so Kevin Locks, uh, that kind of, the fact that he, and because of that lesson 10 years later, I wrote a song called No, you're By Yourself, which I do with kids. Take it off the shelf, give it room to play every single day.
[00:44:08] BARRY: Forget about the fight, forget about othering other people. Reach for what is right. You can teach yourself to fly like the eagle when you wanna cry. And that's the lesson.
[00:44:25] FAWN: Thank you so much, Barry.
[00:44:27] FAWN: So with that, let's be on our way and step out into the world and remember everything that. we learned from Barry.
[00:44:35] FAWN: Sounds good. Thank you,
[00:44:36] BARRY: it was a great gift to talk with you and Matt now, simply because I got to talk about it and to recenter myself, and try to prepare myself for it. I always feel it's like Jonah and the whale, you know, Jonah, God says to Jonah to go to this place and talk, to talk good stuff, you know, and Jonah says, now I'm gonna go somewhere else.
[00:44:59] BARRY: And then the. Spits him up on the shore in the place where it's gonna be. And you helped me to kind of, uh, recenter myself there. And, I'm going to bring the lessons of the heart and that your heart is like a fortress, that you can stand inside and feel your feet beneath you whenever you try to quiet your mind.
[00:45:21] BARRY: So those lessons of love that happened in the cracks, in people's hearts, I'm reaffirmed in my mission to do that by simply being able to tell you about it and to understand it through talking, understand it myself. So I thank you for this opportunity,
[00:45:40] FAWN: Barry thank you for speaking with us and all of our friends.
[00:45:44] FAWN: And I just realized, Matt, you always talk about the difference between love and hate. Yes. I don't know. I feel. , do you even wanna talk about your identification with that or your explanation for the difference between love and hate, which is greater? I just feel like in this situation that, I mean would you even, I don't know.
[00:46:08] FAWN: Because the, the gravity of the situation uvalde the gravity of the situation. That happens unfortunately all the time in the United States. and around the world, the wars around the world, the hatred around the world, right? The gravity is so immense that, sometimes I feel like I don't wanna say anything cuz whatever I say sounds ridiculous, right?
[00:46:31] FAWN: So I'm kind of afraid to say, Matt what do you, could you tell everyone what you always explain after
[00:46:38] MATT: God? I, I, I look at Barry like a student looks at a teacher. He's a, he's, he feels like my mentor. So, For me to say anything feels like I'm putting a little scoop of frosting on top of this beautiful, well decorated cake that, that, that Barry has provided for us as far as a feast goes.
[00:47:00] MATT: Got it. So yeah, alls I can really say is, you know, ridiculous pithy sayings, but one that sticks out to me in particular is shared joy is increased, shared pain is lessened.
[00:47:16] MATT: and that's all I can
[00:47:17] FAWN: say about it. So you don't wanna get into the love thing? No. Okay. . I mean, I, I understand, I understand. I would just
[00:47:25] MATT: feel like a cartoon after Barry. I
[00:47:27] FAWN: feel you. I feel you . Well,
[00:47:31] BARRY: uh, it's been a real, it's a real joy just to talk with you guys. Just, it's, uh, what you're doing with your podcast to me is, About opening up hearts, which need to be opened.
[00:47:42] FAWN: I'm so grateful for your friendship, Barry, you, you make me feel like I can keep walking. You give me strength. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you. I love you so much. Thank you. We love you the whole. Love you guys. We love you so much. So
[00:48:06] BARRY: to, and I'll, you'll be with me and I'll, I'll report back on another later date.
[00:48:10] BARRY: What happens this time? Cuz it's seems to be an evolving journey. Let's see. Other thing about it? There's no real answer. I mean, Matt was saying, felt like it was being glib or was, and I, I feel that way too. It becomes, I think it's really, it's an evolving story. You know, stay tuned. You know, stay tuned cause this is not stay there you go.
[00:48:32] FAWN: All right. To learn more about Barry, of course, remember forcefieldforgood.com. Link is in the show notes. Alright, everybody will talk to you in just a few days. Take care again, reach out to Barry, reach out to us. There's love all around and we can make it through. Love you guys. Bye. Be well
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