A Mason's Work

[00:00] So you probably have a friend, maybe you don't see them often, maybe it's been months, but
[00:06] when you do, you finally sit down together with nowhere to be and nothing to prove, something
[00:12] happens.
[00:14] The air changes, your shoulders drop about half an inch, and part of your brain that's
[00:19] always running the calculation on how your words are landing and whether or not you said
[00:23] the right thing and whether or not you're coming across the right way goes quiet.
[00:30] Not silent, just quiet enough that you can finally hear yourself think, you know that
[00:36] feeling, you've probably had it.
[00:38] Probably also had this other one, that moment where maybe it was physical, maybe it was creative.
[00:43] You were in a conversation that caught fire in a way you didn't plan.
[00:47] You went for a run and everything just felt aligned.
[00:52] Where what you were doing and who was doing it felt like the same thing for once.
[00:59] where the effort dissolved into motion and time did the thing that it does.
[01:06] Maybe like when you remember when you were a kid, it just stretched out.
[01:10] When you stopped watching it, you just kind of flowed.
[01:13] Uh, and that moment of complete presence where the performance requirements dropped, uh, was
[01:21] just you doing the thing fully.
[01:24] Both of these experiences feel different on the surface.
[01:30] One's relational and one is solitary.
[01:32] One's about being known by someone else.
[01:35] And one's about being lost in something larger than yourself, but they're really both of the
[01:39] same experience.
[01:41] There are both moments when the weight lifted the, the chains.
[01:46] And that's the exact same word for them.
[01:48] Kind of went slack for long enough that you remember what it was like to be free.
[01:56] The question we're going to talk about this week is a simple one.
[01:59] It's not simple to answer, but it's simple to ask.
[02:02] What are the chains?
[02:04] Where did they come from?
[02:06] What would it cost?
[02:07] And would it be worth it to finally put them down?
[02:09] Here's what I want to propose.
[02:14] The only real work, the only quest that actually matters across the length of your life is becoming
[02:21] free, not free from obligation, not free from responsibilities.
[02:28] That's not freedom.
[02:29] That's abdication.
[02:31] The man who walks away from his responsibilities in the name of authenticity hasn't found himself.
[02:36] He's just found a more comfortable way of getting out of the problems he thinks he's created.
[02:42] In freedom, I'm talking about, um, this interior experience, this freedom to respond to the conditions
[02:49] in your life from what is actually true in you, rather than from a script you've been running so long
[02:59] that you forgot you wrote it.
[03:01] It's the freedom to show up in a room, any room as the same person.
[03:06] Not identical in every context.
[03:08] The way craftsmen use different tools and different work, but continuous, uh, plumb, if you will,
[03:16] recognizable to yourself, not performing for one version here and containing another version
[03:22] of yourself there and putting guardrails up over here and wondering at the end of the
[03:27] day, why you're so tired and all you did was talk to people.
[03:29] That freedom is the main quest, uh, of life.
[03:35] Everything else, the relationships, the work, the lodge, the self-development practice, everything
[03:39] we've ever talked about on the show.
[03:41] Those are all kinds of sub quests and expressions of this main one.
[03:46] They're important quests.
[03:47] Every one of them I believe in, and you should too, but they all roll back to this central question.
[03:57] Um, this is important.
[04:03] You want to be able to gain this freedom, this agency, because for most people, they've been
[04:14] doing this work in type of costume.
[04:18] Most people don't question this directly, not because they're, you know, in curious or because
[04:25] the costume is, uh, you know, anything in particular, what really has happened is this script that
[04:33] we tell ourselves is so pervasive that it stopped feeling like a script and it kind of got paved
[04:42] over and turned into what we think is our personality.
[04:45] But there's something underneath, uh, and when nobody needs anything from you, all of that
[04:53] script kind of falls away.
[04:55] You've probably had this experience like we talked about in the beginning.
[04:59] So we're going to work to uncover this stuff.
[05:03] Uh, as we do, there are some things that we need to have, uh, an honest sort of conversation
[05:10] about, uh, first things first, um, with mental health stuff, uh, get mental health help.
[05:22] If you need it, how do I know I need it?
[05:25] When the thoughts or emotions that I'm experiencing involve harming someone else or harming myself,
[05:31] that's a immediate indicator.
[05:35] You need to talk to somebody who kind of can help you through this, uh, asking for help,
[05:40] getting and seeking aid in these situations is not weakness.
[05:45] It is strength.
[05:46] It is, uh, there's, there's no benefit here by toughing this stuff out.
[05:51] You're not going to, you know, have resilience through this process in such a way that you're
[05:58] going to gain capacity meaningfully.
[06:01] You're just going to get yourself more tired.
[06:03] And then as you get tired, your impulse control wears down.
[06:07] Getting help here is the single greatest act of courage and kindness to yourself and everyone
[06:15] around you.
[06:16] If you need help, seek it.
[06:19] When we start getting into some of these things, these stories we tell ourselves about the way
[06:23] the world works and the way we work and the way we have to change in order to adapt to the world.
[06:27] We think we see strong emotions are going to come up strong things.
[06:32] You're going to have strong feelings.
[06:34] That's a good indicator.
[06:35] You're doing something right here.
[06:37] But again, in the event that it exceeds your capacity to safely process, get help.
[06:45] In fact, you should probably get help anyway, if only for efficiency sake.
[06:51] There's a good chance that a mental health practitioner can help you move through this
[06:53] stuff at twice the rate of speed of self-development.
[06:57] You're still going to have to do the work.
[06:59] The work amount is the same.
[07:00] So don't be afraid that you're taking the easy way out.
[07:04] It's whether or not the work is bashing your head against the wall or getting skillful
[07:10] guidance and advice.
[07:12] As we go through this stuff, we're going to try and surface what the cost of putting on
[07:19] all of these stories and masks is to interact with the world.
[07:23] All of these sort of shims, these layers that we've added to our daily experience that leave
[07:30] us drained and de-energized by the end of the day and out of touch with who we really are
[07:36] as people.
[07:38] Not all masks are bad.
[07:39] Not all of our adaptive behaviors are awful.
[07:42] We're going to get into all of that over the course of this week.
[07:45] So to be clear, we're going to try and increase our freedom.
[07:52] And in the process of doing that, it's going to bring up some stuff that we may need to deal
[07:56] with and we may need help to do that.
[07:59] And you may not.
[08:00] And either way is entirely okay.
[08:04] We're going to work together.
[08:05] And to the extent that, again, this stuff gets too heavy.
[08:11] Don't be afraid to reach out to a mental health professional and get the help you need.