Gratitude Blooming Podcast
Inspired by nature, art and gratitude, the Gratitude Blooming co-hosts Belinda Liu and Omar Brownson bring fresh and diverse perspectives to well-being. For us, heartfulness is the new mindfulness. Gratitude Blooming was inspired by the artist Arlene Kim Suda and her 100 Days of Blooming Love art project. Hear from culture keepers, creators, healers, leaders and so many others who share their emergent practices to build the beautiful world our hearts know is possible. Please rate, review and subscribe. New conversations each week. We want to hear what you're grateful for. Learn more at www.gratitudeblooming.com
Gratitude Blooming Podcast
Reimagining Democracy as an Everyday Practice of Listening, Speaking & Asking
How do you find hope and personal empowerment in the face of war and political unrest?
According to Lea Endres, the CEO of NationBuilder, democracy is the least violent form of government currently known to humans. It's a system. It's also an idea. And it lives in our imaginations.
Research shows that when citizens are actively engaged in showing up for their community, it can actually turn the tide in countries that have slid into authoritarianism. Human beings will not endorse or advocate for violence against another group until they have dehumanized that group. Dehumanization is a prerequisite for violence.
Lea reminds us that we each have personal power and agency. When institutions fail, it's actually civil society that can bring us back into a healthy balance.
For our second live podcast series, we reimagine democracy as an everyday practice of listening, speaking, and asking questions in a new way to humanize one another and build our muscle of empathy.
Tune into this raw, inquisitive conversation with our live audience, the Gratitude Blooming team, Jim Herr from the Democracy Center, and Lea Endres from NationBuilder.
Enjoy the captivating intro and closing beats of the Taiko drummers from On Ensemble to notice more fully with your heart.
Share your perspective as you experience this practice with us at hello@gratitudeblooming.com!
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Share your thoughts and comments by emailing us at hello@gratitudeblooming.com. We love hearing from our listeners!
Hello Blinda.
Speaker 2:Hi Omar, it's wonderful to have Arlene here in studio as we replay our event that just happened.
Speaker 1:This is our Empathy and Democracy series. This is the second one up a four-part series in collaboration with the Japanese American National Museum and the Democracy Center. It was incredible to have our special guest, leah Andres, along with the Taiko drummers and, you know, some of her team from Nation Builder and all the people who showed up and really get to explore the pop-up art installation, the conversation and the practice of really how to speak. You know, listen and ask right and like. How do we speak from the eye, how do we listen for resonance and ask those open-ended questions that are not leading, that really allow sort of new kind of reflections to emerge? And so we hope folks enjoy this second live recording of our Empathy and Democracy series.
Speaker 2:And we hope to see some of you back in February for our third event in LA hey.
Speaker 1:Cheers.
Speaker 2:Enjoy, hi.
Speaker 5:My name is Jim Hur. I'm the director of the National Center for the Preservation of Democracy here at the Japanese American National Museum and it's my pleasure to welcome you to our second edition of the Empathy and Democracy podcast with our friends from Gratitude Blooming. Give them a nice round of applause. I've gotten to become very close to this team, although I've known Omar for probably what do we think like 15, 20 years now, and he's gotten me into a lot of predicaments over the years. So I wanted to return the favor in a way. One of those predicaments was he asked me to be on the podcast almost a year. Well, he asked me about a year ago and we did it, I think in January or February. And so I went back and I was re-listening to some of the podcasts and listening to some of the newer ones, and that's when I started to get this idea in my head of like there's something here with like gratitude and democracy in our civil society and through, if you listen to the podcast, you know or maybe they don't know pulling back the curtain a little bit. In other podcasts I've done, I've been they do a pre-interview. With this there's none. You just kind of jump into it. You pull a card and the universe delivers what it's supposed to deliver for you that day, and so we get into this conversation and then everything just started like kind of clicking, like empathy and the need for empathy, especially in our society. We here at the Democracy Center have been in the process of relaunching and so we've been trying to think about what it is that we want to do, how we want to engage audiences, how we want to engage people, and we kind of look to many different things centered around the arts, centered around the Japanese American experience which the Japanese American National Museum collects in terms of story and history and people, and we contemporize that for other audiences and we look for solutions to what's going on in the world today. It's not just simply talking about things endlessly, but where can we find solutions? And we want to find for us. We want to find them in unusual places, and this is certainly not a conversation that people are used to having around democracy, especially in the world today, especially when we seem so fractured. But I think that's exactly why we need to have these conversations, the Democracy Center.
Speaker 5:For me personally, the work is very important because, growing up as a mixed race kid in a time and a place where my parents couldn't get married in my father's hometown and I sat at a segregated lunch table and I was made to feel what other people could have.
Speaker 5:I couldn't have A career in government.
Speaker 5:A career in politics was just something that I was discouraged from because I wasn't white or I wasn't white enough, and so I don't want any kid anywhere to ever think that they don't have that possibility in their lives Not any person and that we should all understand that, no matter what we look like or where we come from, who we worship, who we love, what our economic status is or what our immigration status is, in this society, in this country, we all have rights and responsibilities to make sure that democracy endures, and that's what we want to do at this center, and we thank you for joining us on this journey tonight.
Speaker 5:It's a very special one because we have a band behind me. I feel like I'm like Jimmy Kimmel or something. I got this band and now everybody's going to expect that there's going to be a band behind us every time we do this. But we're really excited because on ensemble and yet I have difficulties saying that because every time I start to say it, my philly accent comes out, so I want to say one. So the on ensemble, the on ensemble is celebrating 22 years of just amazing artistry and performance. So we're just going to take a moment to relax, to arrive in this space and enjoy this wonderful performance by on ensemble.
Speaker 2:My name is Arlene and I am an artist at Gratitude Blooming, along with Belinda and Omar. I wanted to create a bridge between this beautiful performance and the art outside and then the talk that we're going to see today. We have art that covers these themes that we like to think of as the virtues and values of what it takes to be human. We have a collection of cards that there's 39 different themes in this set of cards. We're trying to imagine how can we blend that art with the work that is happening here at the Democracy Center, and what arrived was reimagining voting booths as reflection booths that give you an opportunity to really practice these themes. So what you're going to see out in the reflection booths are a sampling of the themes, and they're also on the stickers that we have, and we created these as almost like badges about how are you going to show up for democracy, how are you going to show up in your life, and so we hope that you'll choose one and wear it and have conversations with each other about them.
Speaker 3:Arlene has just shared the intention of this beautiful art experience that you all entered into and we felt this music, this energy of the drums, helping to clear the space in our hearts to be available for the discovery that can come from discomfort. So just take a moment to just breathe into that, just being present in our bodies in this moment, just clearing space for discovery, what can come from being with the unexpected of the moment. I know we didn't expect this live podcast to emerge from Arlene's 100 Days of illustrating these plants, but they then became 39 themes in this physical card deck. That now became a podcast and I'm going to invite our dear friend Omar here to come and connect with Leah.
Speaker 3:So the two of them are going to have a conversation about democracy and what is that practice, and I would love for the two of you to share. What value from the garland of fearless gratitude did you pick as a beginning of this conversation? I picked trust, which I just felt like I really needed. Walking in here and it leapt off the page and, I have to say, embracing the unexpected, that, the drumming I'm still like what just happened to me the second it started, I felt like it hit my heart in this very intense way and I was like, oh, I might start crying, which is an interesting way to start this experience. So I'm just naming that in terms of trust. I'm rolling with it because it's still very present for me.
Speaker 1:Well, I picked mystery and it was not coordinated with Belinda. And I think I've been doing a series right now with this guy named Bayo Okomalafé and it's called Dancing with Mountains, and he invites us in this moment to sit with the cracks. Oftentimes we want to jump to conclusions, we want to find solutions, and his invitation is just sit with the cracks and be present. And so to me, the cracks are the unknown, and not rushed to fill them up, because sometimes, when we fill things up, we don't actually leave room for something new to emerge. And I think, in some ways, why are we having these conversations? Is that we want new things to emerge. We've done the old ways many times now, and I think Jim, in inviting us to be a part of this conversation, he's inviting us to participate in a particular way. He's inviting us to participate not just in a conversation, but through art in particular, and I think that's really the bridge for this conversation around empathy and democracy is how can art express what we don't quite yet know? Part of what I love about poetry is there's lots of gaps in it, there's lots of cracks, and it leaves room for us to find our own interpretation and to find our own ways forward. And so I'll accept Arlene's invitation to read the poem and really I think it was Arlene, as we were talking about the pop-up art installation and I was sharing some ideas, she's like oh, my sounds like you have a lot of ideas. Why and Leah knows this as well why don't you take some time to think about it? And so, instead of using my normal sort of like very analytical part of my brain, my sort of strategy side, I was like, let me write a poem and sort of see what wants to emerge. So the poem is called the Plant is Present and I'll read it twice.
Speaker 1:Here we are, lost in the wild of climate and inequality, trying to reconnect to our humanity. Maybe in the flower petal we can see our hearts. Maybe in the pollen we can smell our soul attracting. The plant is present here, watching, listening, growing, breathing still. Imagine flowers in voting booths growing out of composted constitutions, checking the box to our humanity. Just one more time. Here we are, lost in the wild of climate and inequality, trying to reconnect to our humanity. Maybe in the flower petal we can see our hearts. Maybe in the pollen we can smell our soul attracting. The plant is present here, watching, listening, growing, breathing. Still Imagine flowers and voting booths growing out of composted constitutions, checking the box to our humanity. And so it was beautiful about writing this poem. I was like, oh, I can put a flower in a voting booth. That's something within my power, my control.
Speaker 1:And so I reached out to the county voting registrar office and I was like hey, I'm an artist and I'm doing this collaboration with the Japanese American National Museum around empathy and democracy. Could I borrow a couple of voting booths? And they were like sure. I was like, oh, I'm going to call myself an artist way more often now. And then it was just beautiful invitation from Arlene to literally express myself, not just through the words but through this art installation, and invite the plan to be present so that we could pause and greet this plan and have the plant, in many ways, greet us. And so when we had our second sort of series and we were thinking about who we wanted to invite, immediately I was like, I know who we need to invite and Leah Endress, who is a dear friend, a longtime activist and, in the last several years, a co-founder and CEO of a software technology firm focused on democracy and leadership. And so when Arlene extended the invitation for me to express myself as an artist, I was like, well, that's an invitation that we can share with Leah, which is can you be an artist tonight?
Speaker 1:And what is the art of practicing democracy? And really, because this is something that we often forget, democracy is something that we have to create each and every day. It's not something that's actually inherited and set down in tablet and stone. It's something that we actually have to live and embody, and so the question then becomes like how do we do that, how do we live and embody the practice of democracy? And so, to answer the question, I'm going to pull a card this is real time, folks I'm going to flip them upside down and I'll let you pick.
Speaker 3:This is wildflower and it says trust. Trust that all shall be well. Can you allow space for resolutions to emerge, even in difficult situations? Trust that all shall be well. Can you allow space for resolutions to emerge, even in difficult situations? Yeah that's my truth and it's really muscular and challenging to do that. It's not easy to trust.
Speaker 1:I would love for you to also define what is democracy from your perspective. And you run a technology company that's not just here in the US, it's worldwide. Presidential campaigns have been led on it around the world, and so it really technology is this new and very growing tool, but it's a tool. And I think the way I talk about technology sometimes it's how I imagine early humans were with fire, Like, oh, fire, very cool. And then they burn down a forest and like, oh, I just need a small fire to cook a meal. We're like, oh, technology cool. And then we burn down democracy and we're like, actually no, we just need a little bit of technology or something for us to solve our problems.
Speaker 3:I had this opportunity to collaborate with Jim Gilliam, who's our founder, my co-founder. He's been a brilliant technologist and he was an engineer and really gifted, and so we joined forces to build a company and an organization. And for me it was really about answering the question like, how do you scale equipping people? Because for me, I was sort of used to traveling and being in different spaces and trying to equip, in whatever way I could be helpful, folks on the ground, wherever they might be, and this idea of marrying educational infrastructure and practice alongside technological infrastructure was really compelling to me. And so that's what we've been doing for the last 12 plus years.
Speaker 3:Somehow, and I think, because the premise of Nation Builder is infrastructure that helps leaders around the world build community and organize and really lead. It's inextricably linked with democratic practice, that's, we're building infrastructure for democracy. And so it's very ingrained in the work, this idea that moving people to action, forming community and leading those communities so that they can do something, they can create change. And so for me, when I think about the definition, to try to circle all the way back to where you were, yes, it's, first of all, the least violent form of government currently known to humans as an architecture, it's a system, it's institutions. It's also an idea. It lives in our imaginations. It has to. But, to your point, when we first started talking and we were in the conversation around democracy and empathy for me I was like we have to. I want to be in spaces where we're talking about the practice, not as just being, and I think we should transform voting booths everything that you just said about what's possible there and how that shifts our imagination and we have to help reimagine the daily life of a democratic practitioner, because it is not just running for office or voting in, you know, once every few years, it is every single day when we're encountering our, you know, fellow human beings out in the world. It's the choices that we make about how to engage with them in a pluralistic, democratic society.
Speaker 3:And I think one thing I'll say briefly is that you know it can seem far away like this, if you want to frame it as a fight between democracies and authoritarianism. It can seem far away, but the data is really clear about what happens. When citizens practice like, when we're engaged and participating and doing our thing and building communities and showing up, it can actually turn the tide in countries that have slid into authoritarianism. That's the thing that helps them come back and be considered democracies. When institutions fail, it's actually civil society that can pull countries back from having slid into authoritarianism. It's that's extraordinary. We have so much power. We have so much power.
Speaker 1:I'm curious about, because when things fail right, you're talking about what's slipping into sort of authoritarianism or what have you. Oftentimes it's power right and fear right. And I think part of what I've come to appreciate about the practice of gratitude is, when I first started with gratitude it was like pause, notice something good. And that really just on my own personal, as a founder and entrepreneur as well like you have a go, go, go sort of mindset, and just pausing and noticing good was like oh, I can actually be a little bit more patient, I can be a little bit more kind. And as my practice of gratitude has deepened, my definition of gratitude has evolved. So at first it was like pause, make good visible. And then it was like, oh, okay, I'm actually making a lot of things invisible, right, because what we make invisible we take for granted. And so then my practice was like, oh, fearless gratitude and this is why we have the fearless gratitude garden here is really the practice of becoming aware of what am I making visible and what am I making invisible, and not judging it as good or bad, it's just.
Speaker 1:This is maybe where a little bit of my fear is hiding, and how do I sort of bring that in the shadow into the light and my definition of gratitude and evolve, because this isn't just really about the practice of making good visible. This is really about the practice of noticing with my heart. How do we do that? How do we notice with our hearts when we see what's happening around the world right now? There is violence, there is sort of this desire to react with violence right when we talk. This morning you said something about I just feel afraid. So how do we pause just to notice our emotions? And what is that sort of experience like for you?
Speaker 3:So you mentioned, obviously, the violence is happening right now, and that's I mean, I think that's part of what happened for me with the drumming is just wanting to cry, which has been really present for two weeks. So the thing that I think is so important for us to hold collectively is that human beings will not endorse or advocate for violence against another group until they have dehumanized that group. Dehumanization is a prerequisite for violence, because if we're gonna be in spaces, many of which are fraught and really difficult to navigate, one of the most important things we can do is in order to hopefully honor someone else's humanity as honor our own. And so that pause that you're talking about, that muscle to be able to say what am whoa, what just happened for me, what am I experiencing right now? I think that that first, it's hard to listen, it's hard to ask good questions, it's hard to even speak authentically if we're first not present with what's going on for us.
Speaker 3:Omar, I have known you for a while and we met in the context of doing work together and I, if I were to have guessed which of my friends and colleagues in the movement, so to speak, was going to at some point help to co-create a beautiful company, community organization art project about gratitude. It would not have been you, my friend. I think the reason being right is that you were really focused on what I would consider the headspace that you were deeply gifted at strategy, very incisive. There was sometimes an edge to that incisiveness that was both clarifying and like sharp. And this journey you've been on I would love to hear how you came to the place where you recognized and are experiencing the clarity around practice in the way that you're practicing, not just with gratitude, but I would say like your own self discovery and journey. How did you come to that? Because I think when in the heat of building and doing and creating and everything that you were doing when running organizations, how did that happen?
Speaker 1:When you hit your head against the wall enough times, you realize like hmm, this wall's not moving.
Speaker 1:And I wasn't. I was accomplishing things in the external world that we're supposed to the right schools, the right jobs, the right titles but I wasn't the human being that I wanted to be. I wasn't the dad that I wanted to be, I wasn't the husband that I wanted to be, I wasn't the leader that I wanted to be, and so I felt like something had to shift, and so for me, it was like I'm willing to walk away and I did from a lot of those things. There's a great book by the columnist David Brooks called Second Mountains, and so I was on the top of the mountain and I was like, well, this isn't as cool as everybody said it was going to be, and so I decided to walk down, and that practice was a practice, right?
Speaker 1:And it's like what is it that you can do? And just for anybody who is into habits, reminders, routine rewards, like, what are those things that you can do each and every day? It was my 49th birthday a couple months ago and I saw this mural on the wall and it said dream, believe, achieve. And I was like, well, that feels very familiar. I've done that a lot in my life, but in this stage of my life I want to do it differently, and two things came to me. One was what's it look like to dream beyond what I can achieve? And then, second was what's it look like to dream, believe, receive, to move from a place of achievement and into a place of receiving, because you trust that word that you picked. You trust in the abundance of the universe. The scarcity is a mindset, right? Not enough, I'm not enough, never enough. Who's good enough?
Speaker 1:We dehumanize ourselves oftentimes more than we dehumanize others, and so what does it look like to live with that compassion and to live with the shadows that we each hold and to be like hey, that's part of my beauty too, though, if I could like wave a magic wand right of moving from this illusion of separation.
Speaker 1:Right like this is why nature is so important to the gratitude blooming work, because it reminds us that everything is interconnected right, and that we're not alone like that's. The big myth is that we're alone and separate in our either suffering or in our joy or our accomplishments, and when we sort of then all was. You know, we were just in Guatemala and we had an opportunity to stay with this Mayan family and the host mother started talking about Mayan cosmology and she said we believe in harmony. Everything is connected. So if the water is clean, then I am clean, if the trees are healthy, then we're healthy, and so the great myth of humanization and dehumanization is that we are separate and when we realize that we harm someone else, we're harming ourselves. Right? That's to me, is that constant sort of reminder of like I am in community. I am part of something greater than myself. That's what gratitude is like. Gratitude is that constant reminder that I am part of something bigger than myself.
Speaker 3:Like, if we just ask someone a question that's ideally open-ended, like a how or a what question, then you know you shared it and then our the ideal situation is that there's someone on the receiving end who's basically just saying tell me more.
Speaker 3:And we just got to hear beautiful wisdom from you. And I think that's the dream, right is that together we can create that space for each other to feel heard. I don't know how many of you feel like you could remember the last time that you were truly heard, not just like listen to kind of or someone's and maybe trying to solve the problem with you or for you, or flips it back to them and makes it about themselves or, you know, tells you it's going to be fine or whatever. But actually there's a lot of power in just asking a question that you don't know the answer to or have any judgment on what the person is going to say and make it really open and then listening to them, and you know you can do that, obviously do that through our body language, and you know like it sounds like you had a really clear moment in your journey where you were like I'm not the you know partner, father, leader that I want to be, and I'm going to do something about it.
Speaker 1:That reminder is that we can do something about it, right, like we can actually make. You are helping to build a company and a culture just unto nation builder. Right that is practicing to speaking from I statements right, listening with that sort of empathy, asking questions that are open-ended. Bye, then, not where you're trying to lead someone to the answer that you think is necessary for them.
Speaker 3:I don't know if you'll notice this, but I was. I did a thing, which was I just reflected back to Omar something he said earlier and used the sentence stem. It sounds like this, and then he was able to keep talking. So we're gonna try that on as well as we get into this with some of those like sentence stems. That can just really help Create space for folks.
Speaker 5:I Think we talked about this on a couple of the podcasts that, like it's really hard for me to reach, reach across the aisle or reach across a room to somebody who I feel Does not think I should be here. So how, using the tools that you use, how would you go about doing or that, or how can I begin that process of reaching out?
Speaker 3:That's a deep one. To start with, just to say I mean my first Responses like you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. You know what I mean. So, like, if that's genuinely You're moved to do that and to have that conversation, that's a beautiful thing. And also we have to trust our own, in our own timing. So it may not be that moment. You know, if it is.
Speaker 3:The thing I think that's beautiful about the open-ended question vibe is that it's just about curiosity. So, for example, if you're with somebody that you deeply disagree with, showing up with like I want to tell me more, like how did you, how did you get there? What's your journey been like that? Has you sitting here? Just that openness, it's it's and just for for, like pro tip, any question that we ask that starts with is our do or did. Like, did you blah, blah, blah, do you? This is, you know it's a yes or no answer. So like, do you agree with so-and-so, you know? And so if you're genuinely coming for sitting in a place of inquiry and you like Want to have that conversation with that person and again like, honor your own, like, if it really you really want to, then that place of curiosity and and and, asking how they got where they got or what Happened in there in their you know journey, such as a there or anything, what, how, vibes.
Speaker 5:Who hurt you in life?
Speaker 3:You know, whatever, whatever, whatever's coming through, I will say to, like, just for on the tactical, like the technically, why is also an open-ended question? It's just, can you know we, we get a lot of wise, and so people sometimes feel, you know, put on the spot or defensive, yeah, they can't feel really defensive. That was a great question.
Speaker 3:Thank you the premise of democracy and that the democratic practice is like we, we're all here, we're all here. So if we're all here, then we have to pull each other closer, because the only other thing is we're pushing each other away further and further, into the margins or into the shower, however you want to articulate that, and so, like the hope is, what does it take to pull each other Closer?
Speaker 3:and the first thing is to acknowledge, like I don't want to be around those people, you know what I mean like a no thank you, and I don't want to be in the same space, especially if we feel afraid or we feel like they don't want us. You know what you just named, so?
Speaker 3:well, I think it was from the podcast with Simon cynic, where some of this really germinated this idea of in a democracy, we're all supposed to move together and Yet right now it feels like we're just very willing to leave people behind so that I can get where I want to go 100% and and I can I just say, like that's my great, my fear, when Omer and I were talking about this earlier, because that's where a lot of you know Extremism, particularly political extremism, and radicalization, happens, and so it can literally be the difference between someone going down a rabbit hole and we can't like get to them and our ability to invite and it takes a lot to do that and I'm again, we have to like check what it works for us in that moment, if that's even possible. And you know, also being communication with our community and being Like I am not there right now, someone else needs to do that. So, but that motion, I don't know another way, like if I knew another way, I'd be like cool, cool, cool, let's do that, but I I don't know another way. You know cuz, like when we throw people away, there's no way. Thank you, leah and Jim, for modeling the, the discovery that can come from the discomfort of, you know, not knowing what's gonna emerge in the moment of a question. And so now what we're gonna do is actually really practice being present for each other, like how can we really listen to the people that are next to us, and many of us are coming With people that we already know. So our hope is that you can discover something new about each other just by listening in this new way.
Speaker 3:This conversation is particularly important For me. You know, I steward land in a rural area in Northern California where I constantly feel like I'm out of place, and it's been really interesting to humanize people who I politically strongly disagree with, but they're like my plumber, they're my contractor, you know, and so this is very real to me, right? You know, in the life that I live and and many of us are coming with people that we know well and so this feels, you know, safer. And you know this is an invitation to practice with people that you're close with to eventually Take another step. You know someone that you might not feel comfortable with. How can you listen to their human experience in this new way? So this is really the invitation to practice in this safe space and then to try this with someone on the street or someone that you know you're like. Oh, they kind of get on my nerves.
Speaker 2:How can I listen to them differently?
Speaker 3:and see what happens. So this is the invitation for now and beyond, and Just as plant a seed, just connecting with this theme of fearless gratitude. You have ten themes in your packet and I invite you to start the conversation with another person by just sharing, you know, the card that resonates with you and, as the person that's listening like, really hear the person that's speaking and Ask an open-ended question related to what they're saying and notice what comes up when you hear that response from Asking a question that you don't really have the answer to, as a form of being present and seeing each other in a new way.
Speaker 4:Hello, I'm Sasha. I feel like I kind of have like a little bit of a leg up because I work at NationBorder and we practice this every day, but we I picked vulnerability as the card and in the conversation it was really helpful to reflect back on when I feel safe being vulnerable and when I don't, and how that shows up in Workspaces and non-workspaces, because I was in conversation with one of my colleagues. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 10:I'm Soltry. I'm an avid gratitude blooming fan and Practitioner for the last what four years now. So I also got vulnerability. So you made me courageous in sharing. Once I heard yours, but it felt like a conversation where we weren't thinking about what we had to say next or how we could be of support. It didn't feel performative. It felt like we were both very present and I felt seen and heard. So Thank you, and I see you.
Speaker 6:Hi, I'm Kim. I was in a work conversation. I work in philanthropy and I was in a work conversation where I was Pushing for the idea that a couple of set of grants needed to really focus on black students and got a little bit of pushback and walked out of the conversation not certain whether I had been hurt at all. And then the next day we walked into a staff meeting and the lead of our team walked in and said I have slept on it and this is what we're doing. We're gonna go forward on this and center black students, which was great and part of what made it feel heard Was it wasn't just a platitude sandwich, it was a here's the word the road forward with action.
Speaker 9:I'm a fairly anxious person and often I'm in my head about how I seem, how people are seeing me, and the act of genuinely asking a question out of curiosity and wanting to hear the response, and hearing like such a beautiful response and take me, then it completely takes me. It calms my, my soul and my mind, and so it's a nice reminder to truly listen to someone else because it is calming for one's anxiety.
Speaker 11:I'm Jennifer and I was in a work training recently and they said that when folks are listening generally, the natural things we tend to do is we tend to first listen for similarities, like something that vibes with something that we know, or we listen to try to prepare ourselves for what we're going to say, and that there is something called transformative listening, where you really just kind of absorb what the person is saying. You try to be ultra, super present, and that's essentially what I tried to do. And speaking with Gail, who I adore, to just make sure, even though I heard some things, I was like, oh, I recognize that I know somebody do that too I didn't but to just sort of let's let me just hear and be present and just take in everything that she says.
Speaker 3:I love the fearlessness in the room.
Speaker 12:Yes, so I got the card. Growth and for me at least, growth connects a lot to learning and last year I had a teacher who my English teacher who I did not agree with on a lot of things, but no matter what I said in class or how our opinions differed, I always felt like he listened and was open to new ideas, which I think is really important and helpful, especially in an educational standpoint. And I was talking to him recently, recently, and he he was saying oh, I like how you add your characters because I'm writing a short story and how their personalities help round them but also cause problems for them and a person, and I think, especially connecting to growth, how a person changes and how they are, is what makes them whole and what makes them grow.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Thank you proud dad moment right there.
Speaker 3:Those reflections were amazing and I think, just a reminder that you know, democracy isn't somewhere out there, it's like right here and we're. We're creating it together. So just thank you and thank you all for for having me.
Speaker 5:Thank you for coming. So my expectation for the first podcast was that we would leave with all the problems of the world, saw like it was gonna Be an hour and a half and we would be getting ready for our Nobel Prize. And that's not how it happens. Just like flowers, it takes time to grow and bloom. But I think some of the stuff that we talked about today, and especially the conversation that you two had, is the evolution of this conversation.
Speaker 5:At the beginning, you know, we kind of level set this process for the podcast and and what and how we were going to approach this, and I think this conversation and the next two to come, the next ones in February, february 10th, so mark your calendars is Starting to make these connections and making an understanding how everything is interconnected, how we help people see things differently, because with that, they will think differently, and if they think differently, they feel differently, and when they feel differently, they will act differently, and I think that's that's what we're trying to do. That's what we're trying to get to. If you've enjoyed this conversation, please tell your friends, your family, look for us in social media. Democracy at Janum is the democracy centers, instagram and, I think across all of our social platforms. Shoji, do you want to introduce everybody real quick, because I don't think we had a?
Speaker 8:chance to do that. To my right, we have Anne Hunter ishikawa on vibraphone, abe Lagremus Jr on ukulele, masato Baba on Bué, and then this is Sumie Kaneko, all the way from New York. She will be singing and playing this beautiful instrument here. This is called the.
Speaker 7:Koto, and then this is Sumie Kaneko, and then this is Sumie Kaneko, and then this is Sumie Kaneko, and then this is Sumie Kaneko, and then this is Sumie Kaneko, and then this is Sumie Kaneko, and then this is Sumie Kaneko, and then this is Sumie Kaneko.
