Technology
Wielding my Humanity
In this episode of the Roots and Refuge podcast, host Jessica Souritz explores the complexities of being human in today's world. She reflects on her personal journey of self-discovery and the imp...
Wielding my Humanity
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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Hey there, darlings. Welcome to the Roots and Refuge podcast. I am your host Jessica
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Souritz. My friends call me Jess and I hope you will too. And here on my podcast we talk
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about all things home-steady. Growing food, by growing gardens, raising animals, preserving,
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preparing and enjoying that food, and most importantly, trying to live mindfully in relationship
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with each other and with the earth. I am considering changing that intro. The last handful
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of podcast episodes, probably the last ten or so, that I have posted, have been more in
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the line of where I'd like to go, which is obviously really focusing more on that last
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bit of being in relationship with each other and with the earth. I don't feel like you
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can homestead without becoming aware of yourself as you are in relationships. I know it has
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certainly brought relationship alive to me in an incredible way. I have found myself in
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this recent season, just really exploring my own humanity and really just hungry to understand
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that. I am finding that this podcast is just my favorite outlet to share that. So I don't
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know. Thinking about a new intro, it has taken me like two and a half years to memorize that one,
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so maybe we'll just stick with it. Today, I want to talk to you kind of frankly about where I am
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and process a little bit of the place that I've been in and some of the goals that I'm setting
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for myself. And I think that this will be a beneficial conversation because if I'm going through
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a process, I know I'm not the only person on earth that's going through it. There's been a
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little radio silence here for the last couple of months. I came home and shared. We'd just gotten
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back from going to a festival, the beginning of June, and came home to a little bit of a whammy,
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got sick, and then I had to have my wisdom teeth out. My husband hurt his elbow, which whenever
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both adults are down on a farm, it is rough. Our kids actually helped us a lot there. There was
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about a week that we really needed a lot of hope and our kids helped a lot taking care of the
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animals and everything alongside us, but having to do some lifting and all of that. It's been,
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it's been, it's not been a hard, hard summer. It's been a little trying. I've been incredibly
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thankful that we downsized last year. It has been nothing like the crushing summer of last year,
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but a hot and long summer. The weather broke yesterday. Gloriously, I went outside today,
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and it was like 72 degrees, and I swear to you, I almost started twirling and singing this
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out of music, just twirling through the fields. It has been rainy all day, and I don't mind at all.
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I went out today, and Jeremiah was working in the just steady, I mean, I wasn't in downport,
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it was very steady rain. He was soaked all the way through. He was burning a big burn pile,
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and he was putting fixing a fence where the cows had got out, and I was like, hey, you know,
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you're working in the rain, and he looked so happy because it wasn't a hundred degrees outside.
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Like, I mean, just the joy on his face, and he's like, I don't even mind, that's raining. I'm
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completely unbothered by that. The heat has been oppressive this year. We moved to South Carolina
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four years ago, let's see, four years ago on July 26, so we just celebrated the four-year
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anniversary of us being here. We bought our land seven months before that, and had started
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coming and working on it, but we physically moved our family four years ago. And this has been
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by far the hottest summer that we've experienced since being here. And my garden's toast, it's
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beginning of August, that's to be expected in the South. I've been noticing all the gardens in my
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surrounding area that I rubber neck when I go by. They're pretty much getting tilled under now.
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People have pretty much called the garden season quits. The plants are just, they've died because
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it's just been so hot. But of course, I'm gearing up for the fall garden, and here in South Carolina,
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I appreciate the fall and winter season. More than I ever did in Arkansas, of course, it was
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more of a gamble in Arkansas, because it got colder there in the winter. Here, it's pretty
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guaranteed that I'm going to be able to grow a lot of food over the winter, and it's just so nice.
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It's so, I miss the tomatoes. I love the tomatoes. That is the sad part of seeing the summer go,
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the melons, those sorts of things. But I can eat rutabagas and be happy and not be sweating
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in a hundred degree weather. So today, that's kind of a physical update, but when I went radio
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silent a couple of months ago now, there was the very practical point of dealing with important
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health issues and being in a low reserve, low capacity place and prioritizing my children,
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namely. We've had a good summer, even though we've been limited. We've had some good times going
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down to the beach for the day and enjoying some fun stuff and time with friends and all of that.
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But I have been pondering this thought, and I guess kind of the bottom came out for me this summer,
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and I really started asking myself the question, what do I want to do with my life? What do I want
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my life to look like? About a year ago, I started asking the question, how are you supposed to be a
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human? How do you do that? How do you be human? And that sounds so silly. It's such a simple question
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that it sounds dumb. Like a lot of people wouldn't even take the time to ponder that. But what I was
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really looking at is the fact that we live in a culture that is not particularly
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it's not super conducive to healthy humanity. You know, we're expected to work in such a way to
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support ourselves. I mean, we live in a world that no longer is friendly to a one-income household.
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We are expected to push our bodies past the point that we're caring for them. I mean, the food
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that we have widely available to us is very detrimental to our health in a lot of cases.
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And frankly, we're not really taught how to be human. We don't really have tons of great examples
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of how to be human. And a lot of times maybe say you're dealing with some health issues or you're
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dealing with some pain in your body or some weight issues or something that you look at and you go,
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I really want to change this because I recognize that I need to regain some more health here.
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And so you go online and you Google, how do I eat healthy? Trying to figure out how to be a
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healthy human has got to be one of the most frustrating experiences of anything that I've ever done.
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Because you can find people adamantly telling you in every single opposing camp that they've found
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the right way to do it. And I think so many people have just thrown their hands up because
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it almost seems easier to just go with the flow and go with the low hanging fruit and go the easiest
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way that you can find in all the decisions that you make. How you're going to live, what you're
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going to eat, how you're going to sleep, how you're going to move your body, how you're going to
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raise your kids, what's important in your relationships, you know, where are you going to get your food,
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how are you going to take care of your pets, what are you going to do for your vacation,
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what are you going to spend your money on, what are you going to spend your time on, what are the
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things you're going to have. I mean, these are all things that we have to just figure out in the day
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today, life of being human. And if you try, if you're saying, okay, I want to try to figure out the
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toxicity of my of my life. I understand that probably some of the things that I'm consuming or
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that I have in my home probably aren't the best for me. And you say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to
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address this and you just get absolutely bombarded with mixed up information. And so many people
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have just thrown their hands up and they're living in survival mode either because they never were
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empowered to try to live in a healthy and a holistically healthy way or they tried and it was
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of myself. How do you, how do you be a human? What does that look like? And I started thinking like,
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okay, there are some basic things in being a human that I feel like are non-negotiable. Like for one,
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you actually do have to sleep. I mean, that's a given. Everybody's like, yeah, obviously you have to
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sleep. But I know that there were seasons of my life where I especially with my children
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really small and I was just very, very overwhelmed during the day of being touched all day and
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needed all day that when I finally got them in bed at night, I was so desperate for some time
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to not be needed and not be touched that I would stay up sometimes like one in the morning. A lot
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of times reading or watching TV or something like that. And then I would sometimes sleep like a
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broken four, maybe five hours tops before I was starting my day over again. And I lived in that
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kind of like sleep deficit for years. I mean, I was also still even at times getting woken up
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through the night by children. I lived with insufficient sleep for a really long time. And that
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actually is very, it's a very detrimental to your health to like not get enough sleep over a
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period of time. You know, I had another season where I was dealing with just a ton of inflammation
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in my body. And it was before I had my kind of like health come apart a few years ago. And I woke
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up routinely like every couple of hours every night. And I mean, for a couple of years, I did not
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get sufficient sleep. And I had just taken that as just a fact of my life as if it was something
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that I was just going to power through and and and just thought, okay, well, it's fine. I mean,
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I just don't sleep well. You have you have to sleep. That's how your body renews itself.
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Food you have to eat food like obviously you have to eat food like if you don't put calories in
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your body after a certain period of time, you're you're going to die. But you know, you can put
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calories in your body that have really no nutritional value. And for a good long while, you can feel
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like your body is still functioning like you can still move. You may be really exhausted, but
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you're you're still alive. Obviously, you're not wasting away. You're not starving to death.
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But if you're not nourishing your body, eventually, there are going to be issues that come in.
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And you have to eat. You have to nourish your body. You have to put fuel in your body.
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Another thing that to me has become like a non-negotiable part of being human. The sleeping
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thing, the eating thing, we I have to maintain my relationships. And I do not think I'll
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expound on all of these things a little bit more, but I really just want to list them off right now.
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I have to maintain my relationships. These for me are the basic things of survival. And by
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maintaining my relationships, I for me, I'm considering my household first and foremost, you know,
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my husband, I have my children, I have grown children, and I have dependent children still.
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And for me, it's both of those things. You know, it's my it's my very close friendships where
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there is reciprocity and where there is, you know, connection that is mutually beneficial. Like,
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I help people. They help me. And I don't mean just like we help each other out with a helping hand,
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but the emotional connection is mutually beneficial. And when I say I have to maintain those
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relationships, like I would not be well without those relationships. And keeping those relationships
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healthy and whole is really part of my purpose in being a human. I believe we were made for
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relationship. And therefore it is imperative. Now, there are more things that go into being a human,
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obviously. Like I think that we need work that has purpose. I think that we need to experience
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purpose. I think that on a very, I think we are very spiritual beings. And, you know, for me,
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personally, I absolutely have to prioritize time that I can be face to face with God, that I can
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be in a place that I am walking in that intimacy because that fuels my soul, that fuels the depth of
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me. It feeds me in a deep, deep way. And just as much as I need to sleep and eat, you know, in
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maintain, I say maintaining my relationships, I kind of, I kind of put that spiritual relationship
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underneath that umbrella and relationships are super important. There are other things. But I,
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for me personally, the things that I have landed on that are the absolute imperative that I realized,
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I'm compromising on these things. It's sleeping, eating, and maintaining relationships.
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For me, that's the things that I have been first addressing. That's not to say that I won't find
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other things that need to be addressed once I really establish security in these places. But I
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kid you not. I have spent the last year putting more effort into it than I would even care to admit.
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Auditing the areas of my life with where how I sleep, how I care for my body, how I nourish my
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body and in turn nourish my family because I'm responsible for that also. And then how I maintain
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my relationships with the people that are that are near to me and with the Lord.
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And that has been so challenging to actually look at that and actually say, I'm going to set a
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standard here and I'm going to hold a standard here. When I talk about setting a standard,
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I'm actually referencing in biblical times when an army would go out to battle. They would raise
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a standard and what that standard was was like a flag or a symbol that would it was a form of
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communication to the advancing army, the group, what the orders were, what standard they were fighting
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under, what they were fighting for. And it was a form of communication that in the midst of battle
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that standard could be looked to and followed. And for me, when I talk about raising a standard
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in my life, I'm not saying, oh, here's the rule and I'm never going to fall short of it. I'm saying
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that in the midst of the battle, whenever life gets loud, whenever things get hard, whenever I have
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a summer that a bunch of things come up at the same time and it's really easy to fall into survival
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mode and fall into the default of forsaking my humanity and the things that are most important as
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a human. At that point, I'm going to look to that standard and remember, no, no, no, no, this is
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what I'm actually going for here. This is actually the thing that I'm on this battlefield for in the
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first place and raising the standard that I will not sacrifice my humanity and being human in a
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healthy way as intended has been incredibly difficult because we do not live in a world that is
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conducive to healthy humanity. I've said many times that I believe we were made for a garden
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and we're living in a battlefield. We are daily given the opportunity to be triggered into
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fight or flight mode if we are engaging with media. We have incredible pressure because of the
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economy that we live in and the society that we live in financially. That's something that
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is just builds a lot of pressure and it's really easy to say to a person, hey, you should really
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make sure that you're eating nourishing food but whenever food is so insanely expensive that people
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are having anxiety every time they have to go in the grocery store telling a person that
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can feel very empty. I'm really not sitting here pointing out to anybody else saying, hey,
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you should raise the standard or hey, I'm not coming from a judgmental place. I'm telling you,
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this is what I've been doing imperfectly but steadfastly and it has challenged me and grown me
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in an incredibly beautiful way. Are there nights that I didn't get a good night's sleep?
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Obviously, yes, absolutely. With children and farm and different things and the fact that sometimes
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we just watched play next too many times on TV and there are things that sometimes I didn't
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prioritize the sleep. Sometimes we went and ate out while we were on the road coming back from
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the beach and ate food that we definitely didn't feel great the next day. Sometimes my relationships
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have definitely taken the back seat but as a whole, that standard is there that if we step off
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of the standard that we're going for, if we get confused or if we get mixed up or if we default
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to survival mode, we can quickly regroup and get back onto the path that we want to be on.
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Now, what these things have looked like for me, I'm just very practically, for instance,
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saying I will prioritize sleeping. The biggest challenge for that for me is like get off the
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dang screens in time for your mind to settle down and your body to actually sleep. I have put
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app blockers on my stuff so that if I wake up in the middle of the night, my mind will get to going
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and the worst thing that can happen is for me to pick up a screen because then I'm fully awake
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and I'll be awake for the next two hours. It has really been just exercising the discipline
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to choose sleep even when I would much rather do something else. It's saying no, I am going to
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prioritize this for my body because it makes a massive difference in my overall physical health
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and my overall mental health, my overall emotional stability and I think that this is something
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that I know I'm not the only one that deals with this, but the habit of staying up way too late,
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waking up the next morning really tired, struggling to have a routine that actually serves you
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because you're exhausted. Obviously, the repercussions of that over an extended period of time and
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what that does to your health over an extended period of time, I know I'm not the only person that
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is making those small compromises that actually end up kind of stealing from me overall.
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So that's just been something that I've held in place. I'm going to go to sleep at night,
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I'm not going to stay up too late. The app blockers come on, I'm not going to look at a screen
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after a certain point in the evening and I'm not going to look at a screen until a certain point
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in the morning. That has helped me massively. The food thing, it has been a point of telling
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myself, okay, I am going to choose nourishing foods. I have a major sweet tooth. For me, it's not
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so much junk food and super processed foods. I think I kind of overcame that a while ago. Of course,
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we have a farm, we have all the stuff, but man do I love sugary stuff and sweet stuff. I can very
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easily fall into that and the other thing is that I can very easily fall into conveniences.
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Especially this summer as we've had some difficulties that we've had to go around,
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instead of falling into the conveniences of processed food or things like that, I've really
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been trying to say, hey, it's completely okay if we eat really simple stuff, but let's try to
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keep it in a world that's going to nourish our bodies. And then the idea of managing relationships,
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this is not once as fits all by any means and I think that it is ever changing season to season,
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what your relationships are going to need. And I have gone extensively over the last
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handful of months here on the podcast about understanding your own heart and creating a culture
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in your family and not living out of survival mode, not living in a fight or flight. And I think
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all of those things go so much into managing relationships. So it's going to be really hard to
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sum this up in a short little blip of what this looks like. But really, I believe that managing
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relationships first and foremost, you have to be aware of yourself, how you're showing up in
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the relationships, you have to be aware of the needs you have and the needs of those around you.
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And just be aware of how you're engaging. This is the image that I have in my mind.
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So random. But do you guys remember that 70 show where all the guys, all the kids would be down
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in the basement. And of course, they're all sitting around in a circle smoking, which when I first
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watched the show, I was a child and I had no idea that that was being alluded to. But they're all
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sitting in the circle and the camera is in the middle of the circle. And it is turning around to
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all of them. And the way that I view managing relationships is that when I'm sitting at the table,
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and my husband is at the table, my children are at the table, my close friends are at the table,
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and I'm sitting and I'm looking at all of them. Obviously, I am experiencing that place at the
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table from my first person perspective. And we really have to realize when we are engaging with
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anybody or anything, like I even think of this way when it comes to my animals. I think this way,
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when it comes to my garden, my farm and the soil and all these things, I mean, you really can take
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this, you can take the idea of awareness and relationship and managing relationships very far.
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You are in relationship with everything. That's how God made it. I mean, God made the earth to be
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in balanced relationship. But we're all in a first person perspective. Like I'm recording this
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podcast right now. You're listening to it. And you are in your first person perspective right now.
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You may be driving your car with your kids in the back seat of the car. Well, your kids are
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riding in the back seat of the car right now. You know, when I'm sitting at the table, just because
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the perspective I have of the table is from my head, it does not make it the most important
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perspective. It's just one of them. And so I feel like when it comes to managing relationships,
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the first thing you have to do is take the perspective, the camera, so to say, and put it in the
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middle of the table where it's going to look around at each person and you have to be willing to
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consider your relationships from that vantage point. And when you look at your marriage from the
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vantage point of the middle of the table and you see yourself and you see your spouse and you
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understand that you are both having an experience, a valid experience. You have to take responsibility
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for how you're showing up at that table. When I look at how I'm engaging with my cows, like
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if I were to go to my cows daily, if we were to go to these animals and milk them, but never put
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food in the bucket, never put hay in the hay feeder, never put water in the water trough. If we were
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to go and take in that relationship daily, how long do you think we would get anything if we were
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not also going with our hands full to give? If what they were taking out of the relationship was
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not held as in high of priority is what we were taking out of the relationship. Obviously, if you
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don't feed your cows and give your cows, you don't give your cows water, and especially when it's
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hot as it is, they're dead in 24 hours. If they go completely without water in super high heat,
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they're not going to last very long at all. If you feed your cow insufficiently, you don't give
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her the minerals that you need and you continue milking her over time. She's going to get skinnier
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and skinnier and skinnier and the milk's going to get less and less and less. And then she's
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going to be prone to illness and all these things and you're looking at losing your cow. It's very
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important that when you go into a relationship, you are aware of what you are asking for. You are
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aware of what you are bringing to the table. You are aware of your engagement in the relationship.
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Because if you are going into relationships with your first person narrative, is if everybody else
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doesn't have theirs also, it's going to become very toxic and ultimately very unfulfilling.
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Relationships are not great just because we get what we need out of them. Relationships are great
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because we get to experience our humanity as it is intended. We are meant to be in relationship.
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Therefore, when we are aware of ourselves and we are going into relationship proactively,
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because we were made to love and we were made to steward and we were made to care for things.
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I was made with my very human design. When I'm caring for my children, I was made for them.
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I was made to mother them. In my relationship with my husband, I was made for love.
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When I'm caring for the earth, I was made to steward the earth. I see all of these relationships
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opportunities for me to actually live out this beautiful expression of what humanity gets to do.
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And obviously, there's so much to managing healthy relationships. It's not simple. It's not easy.
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But if I had to make a summation at all of what I've been doing for the last year,
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it has been pushing that camera out to the middle of the table and seeing my own interactions and
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seeing how I am actually showing up in those places and saying, I want to treat these opportunities.
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These relationships is an opportunity to really be a human in the most beautiful way.
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And so this leads me to this summer where we come home and I basically had to drop a lot of
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stuff. You don't have all these goals. I was in the middle of doing this daily video challenge.
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And I'm like, I'm killing it. I'm feeling awesome. It's like the best gardening year. I've had
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in a while. My garden is so lush. Everything is so fruitful. We go out of town. We come home. It's a
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heat wave. And then I get this infection. And it's like, oh, I'm fine. But then I get it on this
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medicine. I can't go out in the sun for a week. Okay, well, I'll be okay. It's been two weeks since
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I've really been out there. But then I have to get my wisdom teeth out and then Jeremiah gets hurt.
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And then, you know, recently Jackson just located his elbow. Asher gets sick like, bam, bam, bam,
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and it really felt like getting a wind really knocked out of my sales. And I had to let go of some
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the areas where I really felt like I was conquering because the pesky standard was still raised.
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And when it came down to it, I made a commitment that I would not forsake my humanity
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in order to keep up with the inhuman standards of this world. And I'll be completely frank.
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We had to tighten the belt on a lot of things this summer. I didn't work as much. That means I
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didn't have as much money. And yes, whenever you don't have as much money, you have to tighten
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about. Thankfully, we really set our mind to downsizing a year ago and paying off debt and all these
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different things. So it didn't absolutely crush us to be in that place. But it was uncomfortable. Like,
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it's uncomfortable seasons are not necessarily bad. For me, I choose to see the gratitude of this
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uncomfortable season that wasn't crushing. But I had to make this choice. Okay, wait, how do I be a
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human? What's the most important parts of my humanity? What are the things that I absolutely am
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not willing to forsake? Now, I have come up with this new idea this summer. And this is a truth,
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this is a truth for me. Like, this is something that I have come to say, wow, this is powerful.
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I'm a content creator during the season that AI is coming vastly into the world in a really big
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way, which means that I, like many of my peers who are content creators in this time, have been
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questioning really over the last year, since this become apparent that AI is going to change
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our world and is changing our world and is going to even more vastly in the next handful of years.
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I've been saying, what do I do? You know, I personally, you know, making content and getting it out
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there, the algorithms change every couple of years anyway. It's never a concrete thing. It's never
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a steady thing. There is always this pressure to perform for the algorithm to keep showing up even
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when you don't feel like it to keep producing something because feeding the algorithm is how you get
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seen. And with AI, I just, I can see so much change on the horizon. And I know that personally,
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for instance, Facebook as any sort of like place of to find value is, in my opinion, I mean,
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just completely desolate now. When I get on Facebook and I scroll through, like it used to be that I
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could go on and I could see old friends and like relatives and the people that I was Facebook
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friends with. Now, like literally all I scroll and it's literally AI pictures, AI stories, and maybe
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some of that stuff is shared by some of the people that I know. But I vary, I would say maybe 15 or
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20% of what I see is actually a value to me. Like a lot of it is junk. It's algorithm driven stuff.
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If I, if I so much is slowed down on an ad once, you know, I'm inundated with that forever.
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And in their just fear everywhere you look like all these algorithms are pushing fear. All these
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algorithms are pushing this AI slot and AI has created a, I do not think AI, I don't even know
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how to say that. I want to say I don't think that it's inherently bad. I think that it probably
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has benefits as a tool that, you know, can be beneficial in some applications. I think that it is
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already being wildly misused and I feel like it is extremely alarming to see what is happening
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in our world because of artificial intelligence and how, you know, I used to get on certain social
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media platforms and feel like I was connecting with community and it's getting fuzzier if that makes
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any sense. Like it feels less human. And while I have been pondering this question of how to be
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human and I've been holding these like standards of very basic things like sleeping and eating and
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and staying in connection with the people around me. I've been thinking, Jessica, are you crazy like,
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like this isn't conquering, like this isn't dreaming, this isn't thriving, like, and the truth is
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is that you cannot have huge dreams without foundation. And I really feel like I was brought back to
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a place that said, hey, let's get the foundation right because your humanity is so important right now.
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You know, so many of the standards that we are expected to uphold are truly inhuman.
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The level that we are expected to push ourselves to keep up with the pace, you know, people talk
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about the rat race, it is truly inhuman. How many people are dealing with health issues because
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they genuinely do not have time to sleep and eat to move their bodies. How many people are dealing
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with depression because they genuinely do not have time to be outside in the sunshine. How many
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people's families are falling apart because they genuinely do not have time to invest what is necessary
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in those places to maintain healthy relationships. And then on top of that, you add this highly
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addictive media culture where we carry phones around in our pocket, the average American spends seven
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hours a day looking at screens, like seven hours a day. So already we're push past the point
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of really healthy human balance. And then we add that one, which robs more of our sleep and more
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of our ability to really care for our bodies, more of our ability to really care for our relationships.
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And it is wild to me that we've come to this place now that saying, hey, let's reclaim the
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foundational basics of being a healthy human and that that sounds like radical to do. And if you
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will actually assess your life, maybe some of you guys are not here. I admittedly, I have a lot
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going on. Maybe I'm struggling with this more than the average person. Maybe I'm just imagining
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that everybody is struggling with this to make myself feel better. I actually don't think that's
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the case because I see the fruit of a lot of people's lives and a lot of it is not healthy.
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So I really actually think that if everybody would stop and say, hold on, let me raise these
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standards and let me assess my life where I'm overextended. Let me assess my life where I am leaking
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my energy. And I think one of the first things that has to be addressed is our push in this
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in human world for numbness. We were not made to live the way that humans are living right now.
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Like we were not made to live to have all the horrors of the world fed to us in headlines every
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single day. We were not made to live to carry the trauma of all of these these situations. Your
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body is not wired for that. Your mind is not wired for that. I read an article this morning
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talking about the direct link of mental illness in young people to how young they were when they
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got a smartphone. How young they were when they were plugged into the internet on a consistent
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stream and that there was like such a massive jump in increase that if a child had access full
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time access to the internet and a through a smartphone, you know, they had very regular input
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of the internet engaging with social platforms before the age of 13 versus after the age of 13.
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Their mental health in their late teens and early 20s was drastically worse off if they were
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given younger access to that. We are living in a giant social experiment. No generation ever before
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us has had access to the information that we have been given access to in the last 20 years.
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I mean, I remember when I was in high school people had cell phones but there were no smartphones.
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Smartphones did not come out. Let's see. I remember seeing, which this was Apple. This was the first
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iPhone. I remember seeing the ad for the first iPhone. I was nursing Asher in bed. I lived in
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Knoxville, Tennessee. I was young when I was 21 when Asher was a little baby. And I remember
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because I called my dad, you know, on my little flip phone at the time. It was what I had.
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And my dad used to say when I was a kid, well, one day people are going to carry little computers
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around in their pocket. And people are going to have access. And, you know, of course, the internet
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really kind of took off big whenever I was a, you know, teen young teenager. And it was still
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dial up. You know, you came home from school to get on AOL IM and you had to wait for the
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bing, bing, bing, bing, all that stuff. I remember my dad saying, man, oh, yeah, you know, in your
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lifetime, people are going to carry around little computers in their pocket that they're going to
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have access to the internet and all kinds of stuff. They're going to be able to have cameras
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and radios and all of that stuff in this little computer in their pocket. And I remember the first
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ad for an iPhone that I saw, which I guess that would have been, I think it was 07 or 08. Asher,
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I was still nursing Asher. So I was within, you know, the first little over a year of his life.
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And I called my dad and I said, hey, dad, they're coming out with that thing that you've talked about.
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You know, they're coming out with a little computer in your pocket. And that changed the world forever
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and we did not know. We did not know then the drastic effect that that was going to have. I remember
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rewatching the Gilmore girls for the first time. Within the last handful of years, it's been since
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we lived in South Carolina. And I had watched Gilmore girls as it aired. And I was the same age as
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Rory Gilmore. So I watched this as it was coming out and it was like present time. It wasn't like
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an nostalgic show. It's just the world as I lived in it. And I remember rewatching that and had you
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asked me before I rewatched that show, I would have been like, you know, I wouldn't have thought
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anything of it. When I rewatched it, I was like, wow, this is like a time capsule because it was
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the world before everybody was looking at a phone. It was the world whenever there was still drama
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over the message on the answering machine. It was the world where there was still tension with
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the lack of getting a call back or being able to instantly communicate. And it struck me how
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different the world is that I live in now versus that I grew up in. And it struck me just how much
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changed in the last 20 years. And you know, right now I am, you know, I have a public platform. And so
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I do get more feedback than the average person. But the amount of pressure that I receive regularly
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from people demanding stances, demanding opinions, demanding all of these things. And I do think
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that it is important to stand up for the things that you believe in, which is why I'm talking about
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this stuff because I believe that this is so important. And if I have to choose one thing to
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stand up for, I will stand up for our humanity, being something that we absolutely have to defend
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in this world so that we do not lose the impact that we could have on it, that we do not lose
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our opportunity to live full lives and engage in healthy relationship and actually have a legacy
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because truly, if you don't care for your body, your life is early. If you don't care for your
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relationships, you lose them. And in a world where we are being so inundated by information,
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we are, we have an incredible temptation regularly to just numb in any way that will stop
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the pain and the stress and the strain that is caused by too much input because we were not
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created for that. And I think any single person who comes and tells me that they're dealing with
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extreme fear, I suggest for them to turn off the media period, like turn off social media,
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turn off the news, whatever it is that you are consuming. Or if you're consuming media that has
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you really, really on edge, start watching it 10 days after it airs. Start watching it 10 days,
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if you still need that information, start watching it a few weeks later. When it's no long,
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when you're no longer hearing, this is about to happen and this is about to happen and this is
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about to happen because you want to know, you probably don't even want to watch it a month later.
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You probably, it probably actually doesn't have that much appeal to you in watching a month later,
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because all the speculation is gone because the things that we're being speculated about now have
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some sense of resolve. Obviously, not everything is getting resolved in a month. There are lots of
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things up in there. We're living in a really crazy time. But we have to manage the state of our
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inner world so that we can responsibly engage with the world around us in healthy relationship. It
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is that matter of putting the camera out and being like, how am I coming to the table here? Am I
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actually any benefit to my community? Am I any benefit in my relationships? Am I actually
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bringing something to the cow? Or am I just showing up expecting the milk? Like, this is really important.
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And for me, this summer, the thing that has really fallen, fallen, all the little things that
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fall into the wayside, and I've been like, no, I'm going to hold the standard of keeping the
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foundation of my humanity as healthy as possible. And I started looking at media. I'm a creator.
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I started looking at all of this. I started really seeing just the absolutely inhuman standard
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that we are plugging our brains into regularly. And it's made me question everything that I make.
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It's made me say, I did a Patreon Live last night. We have a Patreon. And on our Patreon,
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it has multiple tiers. I don't know what they all are. It's like $3 and $10.
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And when I created that, I just made everything the same. You don't actually get more for paying
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more money on the Patreon. Because I know that some people to them, they say, I want to give $10
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a month to this. And it's worth it for me. And $10 a month is fine. But for some people, $3 a month
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is what they have to give. And I've just, I strongly feel, I don't want to monetize someone's
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fomo. I don't want to dangle something right now. I said somebody's, somebody's reaching. And while
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yes, I do have to make money for the things that I create. I want it to be as accessible as possible.
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So, you know, I said, okay, let's just make a low tier. And if that's what people feel comfortable
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doing, they can get the stuff too. And I was sharing this last night. And I've just, as I've been
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pondering all the things that I create, I want to create value for the world. I want to live in a
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glass house and give people a look into the life that we're living. I want to encourage people
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that they're not alone in prioritizing their humanity. I want to say, I don't believe it's selfish
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to make sure if you feel like the plane is going down to put the air mask on yourself and your
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family first. Because it's very difficult to help anybody else if you are actually in survival
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mode. It is not for me a point that I want to put blinders on to the needs of the world.
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It is not for me a point that I want to put blinders on and just live in self protection.
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To me, that's not thriving. But to say that I could build anything substantial without making
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sure I have the strong foundation that what is right in my reach has been tended well.
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That's foolish to think that you can do that. You cannot build on sand for a foundation.
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You have to have a solid foundation. And so, for me, there has been this thing that I have come to.
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And I am not even 100% sure yet what this looks like. But I am moving forward in my life wielding
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my humanity. I believe that humans were created in the image of God to bear the image of God.
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I believe God is love. I was created to bear the image of love. I think that my design,
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how I was made was was made with intention and purpose. And it is not a flaw that my body needs
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to be cared for. It is not a burden that my that my body needs to be cared for. It is not a burden
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that relationships require effort. It is not a problem that I was actually not wired to consume
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all the concerns of the earth. That's I can't look at that and say, oh, that's a flaw. I should just
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buck up and try harder. I'll stop being so fragile. It's just the truth. It's just the truth of our
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design. And so, I am going to choose to say my humanity is the intention of Yahweh. My humanity
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is not a flaw. It is actually a beautiful thing. And if I will if I will purpose within myself
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to protect this and feed it as much as I possibly can within the demands of the reality that I live
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inside of, I believe that that is going to make me more I believe it will yield more purpose in
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my life, more opportunity in my life, more blessing in the life of those that are around me.
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And in an increasingly disconnected and strangely uncanny, unreal feeling world, your humanity
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is a gift. It is a it is a gift to the people around you. Your your realness, your emotion,
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the things that you actually feel, the ideas that you have, what you are able to create, how you
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show up to that table. It is it is worth being aware of in protecting. So if you find yourself in a
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place where you're like, I feel numb, I'm feeling the pressure to compete in an inhuman world. I'm
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feeling the pressure to push and show up in a way that everything in me is screaming. You can't do
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that. Listen to your listen to that voice inside of you that says this is too much. This is too much.
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Protect the peace that is inside of you. Protect the peace that is inside your home. Invest in the
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areas that take care of the basics because you can't ignore them forever without consequences.
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And that that's where I've been. I've been settling in myself this summer to just wield my
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humanity. And that means it means having limits. You know, I can't do all the things that maybe
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wish I could do. You know, sometimes I have to choose. But a lot of times it means saying, no, I'm not
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going to numb out. I'm not going to do him scroll tonight. I'm going to go to sleep so I can wake up
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fresher in the morning. And no, I'm not going to immediately pick up the news. I'm going to get up.
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I'm going to make a nourishing breakfast. And then I'm going to sit on the front steps. And I'm
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going to listen to the birds sing. And I'm going to take this 15 minutes before the busyness of my day.
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And because I'm not exhausted because I didn't go to sleep. And I'm got my nourishing breakfast
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when I'm delicious coffee. I'm going to feel fully alive. Not numb, not hiding. I'm going, I'm going to
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to be a fully alive human in a world that is increasingly less conductive to that. And I think
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that it may take more effort for us to choose that. But I think that it would be very worthy
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thing to choose. So thank you guys for hanging out with me today. As I ponder the inner workings of
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my heart. I hope it is helpful to you. I bless you. So much.