EP000: Introducing You Know Me Now Podcast
Transcript is available here.
I'm Rex Hohlbein and welcome to You Know Me Now, a podcast conversation that strives to amplify the unheard voices around us as a means for better addressing today’s community issues. We do this out of respect for each and every person struggling.
Arcadia
It’s important that we stop dividing and start uniting. This begins by listening to each other. Specifically listening to those that have been pushed away.
For the past 12 years I have met and spent time with thousands of folks living homeless. Countless life-changing-for-me friendships were gained. I learned how destructive and baseless the dehumanizing effects of the negative stereotype are against ordinary people who are just like you and me. People who are trying to survive day to day without basic needs being met. People who are suffering through trauma, often beginning early in childhood. People who have so often been simply thrown away.
Why do we do this to each other? Why do we do this to ourselves?
I don’t believe it is because we lack compassion. Far from it. I think it’s simpler and more reversible than that. In short, we are just not coming close enough to each other to feel the other person’s worth. Our childhood lesson of ‘Don’t talk to strangers’ is still being practiced as adults.
Dizzy Lee Roth
When we are across the street from someone who is different from us, or that we don’t know, our brains are filling us with intellectual information. When we cross the street to come closer, close enough to listen and feel, our hearts begin to provide emotional information. We need both to connect.
When we are across the street from someone who is different from us, or that challenges us, as in homelessness, our brains fill us with intellectual questions. What are they doing there? Why do they have all that garbage? Are they using drugs? Or maybe the most important question of all, am I safe?
However, when we take the time to cross the street, to come closer, the intellectual questions are joined by emotional ones. Such as, Are you okay? My name is Rex, what is yours? Is there anything I can do to be of service to you?
We need both our intellectual and emotional questions to gain the necessary full understanding of each person we interact with. In other words, we need to first connect. To do this, we need to come closer.
We are beginning this Podcast as a place for us all to come closer.
Matthew
It is a place to better understand each other so that we can value each other more and ultimately take better care of each other.
It would be naïve to believe that we can rid our world of conflict, but we do believe that we can learn to resolve these moments of conflict in a peaceful loving manner through the process of seeing each other more fully.
Each person who shares their story here will highlight what they feel is necessary to share and for you to hear. The hope is that a conversation of respect, inquiry and compassion will follow. This type of engagement provides the necessary building blocks for equitable and long lasting solutions.
We all have something to offer and we all have something to receive. We won’t find out what that is unless we come closer and begin the conversation. What are we waiting for?!
What you just heard was a sampling of voices from upcoming episodes. Tomasz and I are excited for all the future conversations this content will bring. In the meantime, while we continue to put this endeavor together, we invite you to join this community on our facebook page and to subscribe to this podcast wherever you get them. We also have a website at www.youknowmenow.com where you can put a face to the voices you hear and also read other stories of people we believe you will want to get to know.
Courtney
I’ll close by sharing a bit about my good friend Dinkus McGank. Dinkus grew up on the Olympic Peninsula, and worked for years as a logger. Everything came to an end for him when a runaway log hit him in the middle of his back. He was medevacked to Harborview Hospital in Seattle, died on the way, brought back to life, had surgery, and was then released to the streets with no job or housing. We became friends when he moved onto the bench along the ship canal below my architecture office in the Fremont neighborhood. He lived there for two years before getting housing and then shortly after, he passed away. His memorial celebration along the canal was attended by many who had been touched by Dinkus and his unique zest for life. One of his often repeated messages to those around him was, “If you aren’t makin one person smile a day, what are ya doin?”
The story does not end here! Join the conversation on the YKMN Facebook Page