Welcome to season two episode. Twenty two of the Jordan Be Petersen Podcast, I'm Mikhail Petersen, dad's daughter, collaborator eldest. And the pollution that is the most afraid of house. Centipedes weekly update Actually, there's not much very weakly update mom. In Pennsylvania. When you remember have surgery, we'll know, a more next week. Hopefully, that's when I can tell you that life will return to normal or whatever is considered normal in the Petersen Household if you're wondering what was up with mom, I recorded a cue unaids, it's on Youtube, where I explain what happened this year, bed just type in Mikhail Peterson's, like you, nay, into Youtube, and it should pop up if your interest please enjoy this podcast recorded with two meal Giovanni in Toronto, Canada, when we return

dad's conversation to kneel Giovanni hurry. Everyone today, I have the good fortune to be speaking with Gmail Giovanni Meals, a throne he's an author lawyer It is the host of the road home podcast, which was launched. For two thousand and eighty recently completed. The seven province spoke to her visit thousands of young men across Canada in partnership with the Michael Pinball Clemens Foundation. Is thirty: one years old, Robin Toronto area, raised by a single mother. Consider illiterate high school age. Sixteen had the highest rates of Humber College by the age of eighteen scholars. To Yale LAW School by twenty. Two was a lawyer by the age of twenty five. He started off whole law school in Toronto worked with J D Vance through hillbilly elegy started on

profit in Ohio, corporate lawyer, Tories, yellow p leader of peace, reform and voter education initiatives, he had a book published by Harper Collins last spring cannon. The book was why young men rage race and the crisis of identity? U S international publication by Saint Lawrence Press may two thousand and ninety he's also and, unfortunately, being diagnosed with cancer battling stage for Non Hodgkin's lymphoma cancer, you non chemo be drugs and undergoing radiation therapy. Since February, So we have a lot of things to talk about meal and I saw restart conversing as a consequence thanks a lot for making the time to talk with me. Did you for the invitation? So why would start with with your book in your tour the booking Actually, just a month after I was dying, cancer, so there is

it's it's been last last year, a lotta highs and lows like the highs have been incredible because I've had the privilege of you know like be able to go around and speak to people about my book. In my ideas, certainly not as large audiences is. You have been able to go to places in the country that I think young men need to hear stories of self empowerment and why individual agency can accomplish and shared, though that that experience with in areas where I think books are often not seen is relevant to the lives of everyday people. I think I have been able to learn a lot about the disconnect between the literary industry and, everyday Canadians, and I think that's true in other countries as well, where book, sometimes aren't written for an audience of people who might most benefit from those ideas, and I feel probably shipping it around and talk to people about

The struggles young men face the tools that are often given to them. In terms of how come struggles and all the tools they find in the absence of better options is it's been a heck of an experience you now. I think something very humbling about. Carrying what you think about it. Quite honestly, its in, there is a responsibility that comes with to take, opportunity, an audience and do something meaningful with it. And I've tried my best to do that with the Balkans. I'm excited to die in other countries next year as well. So you said something interesting about books and and something worth delving into a bit? You know that the number of people, the proportion of people who buy books is relatively small and it's not like books are everybody's friend so that

active literate audience is actually rather small minority of people in one of the things that quite cool about you, tube, let's say and also about podcast- is that it enables people who might be intimidated by books, but who are perfectly capable understanding relatively complex ideas to access, them another way, and it is, too bad. That reading is a minority taste, because, while it such an effective mean communication, but at least these other chance have been opening up I agree, and I think perhaps most effectively books are a conversation starry on the idea of putting ideas out there and then being able to go to a city you ve never been before, and people have of a star the point which they can engage you and talk about their lives and your life, what similar, what different does that? Maybe the most powerful part of a book We actually think a lot about it in the sense of the most robot, for example like the Bible and tax like that which

I think their greatest power is in trying to offer some sort of share a merely universe for people of different backgrounds and ancestry? Reason in different parts of the world to kind of come under right and I feel like with a book you have that ability, I hope, which is to tell a story where you have no real, say power who picks it up, but you hope that its powerful and truthful enough, that whoever picks it up is going to feel like they are part of that that conversation, so You could outline for us the main points of your book and also talk about how it grew out of your experience, be part of, what's really quite remarkable, about your biography. Is the apparent at this juncture between your status hypothetically, is illiterate aged sixteen and then no are very high academic achiever by the age of eighteen like so I'm curious about the interplay, I'm curious about that period, about how that happened and and and and what it meant

and also about the journey that you took so to speak, on the road to writing this book. Yeah when I was sixty I would maybe describe myself as someone who is in the depths of despair. I was really angry person father had left him. Family, my mom, was raising me into younger sisters by herself, I was, a neighborhood where I saw What I regarded as a lot of unfairness, things like racial profile, these officers disproportionate. Poverty, lack of job opportunities. This is in the suburbs of Brandon, where most of the people in my neighborhood were newcomers the country are children of newcomers, and I was caught up having being weighed down by a perspective, encouraged hopelessness, victimization in my life, So I was a cognitive capable young man, that's how you go from here,

the directive a year law student in less than six years by, was was missing? Was the desire to show that that those good parts of me to anyone You think it was exactly that produced that sense of despair, air that possessed you when you were sixty mean you you're lying. Some of it. You know you lived in a neighborhood. There was well, namely neighbourhood and, and in you saw what you regarded as manifests shall unfairness, but then it is obviously the case to that for some reason, when you decided to I dont know if you drop that aid or transcended it. You did something different and all of a sudden, your life took off in in a variety of extremely positive direction like how do you? How do you account for that? initial possession by that set of ideas and even more importantly, how do you account for the fact? You somehow managed to let's say escape it, so

for my situation. I think this describes out my pure group as well. Not have father around and in the kind of its function that that often comes with what in a position where we were looking at a lot of the wrong places for cultural leadership and pop culture right your PA gangster movies things like TAT, filled the void in our case, so the tools. I was given to understand my life too lay in my frustrations tools that encouraged me to I think live in this with a certain kind of victim identity, as my default right that I could For example, we believe that being a gangster and criminal was acceptable for me, My peers, because we experienced unfair

the way the world treat us determine the kind of morals that we picked up right so as justifiable revenge in some sense against denies our system, or a minimum of wines, are becoming. Just u lower the expectations of yourself right. You walk around thinking that what you know to be good is something that you have to achieve have to strive for goodness, because the world put you in this unfair position and therefore anything is possible case everything's. Ok, so how much of that and I'm curious about that to mean that its common, it's a curse when human attitude to adopt that serve perspective and no plans. People have reason to be doubtful about the appropriateness fairness of their life and their situation, but did you know there's two things there get tangle? gather, I think, and one is a sense of thwarted justice right. That might be the optimistic viewpoint that people look out in the world and they see that it's unfair and that bothers the morally and

nothing wrong with being bought it that way. But the problem to is that adopting that victims patients stance and worse, maybe adopting a stance that, devise a certain amount of anti social or criminal attitude towards society, given its unfairness also provides young people That's a young man in this case with an excuse not to do their best, not to put effort into anything, and I think that that that excuse is often masked by self justice Asian, that's associated with the hypothetical stressed striving for justice in August. It's one thing to be upset about social injustice but the thing to use that as an excuse not to strive forward and right there's a psychological element in a sociological element there that replacing so tell me what think about that. Then tell me how you progressed despite

having not attitude accepting them. Attitude or having it inculcated, yeah, I think you're exactly spot on you leg like later on. In my life- and I was in university student, for example, I would all the same arguments over again, but they but you here, differently when you have the privilege an opportunity of being at a university right When you hear about how rigged the world in that history is burdened you in and an opportunity is fleeting because of what looked like a where your parents come from any universe, environment, people take those. As you know, They found themselves on the back for making those assertions because they think there, virtuously. Looking at the the problems of the world that we often overlook or take for granted. But when you're in the thick of it. When those problem, these- are your life when you

the a choice to make everyday. Do I tell myself it's worth: do my homework in going to school, or do I just stay home and smoke weight in the basement? Do I make the to see how the little bit of agency I might have in a difficult circumstance, could make the difference of where my life turns out. That's so Yes, you do not have those who lose talking points become a potential, poisonous Morel moral environment, free linen because You know, there's a psychological concept that my friend J D writes about hillbilly elegy in the context of poverty Malaysia can learn, learn how to write. I think that's a lot of it, which is you dissociate your actions and behaviors with the outcome of of what you experience in life and when you get to that point. It's really hard to find the motivation to work harder believe that there's meritocracy at all in the world around you But the funny thing is about learned helplessness. You know- and this is

looking at it. Really reasonable for us to delve into is that in the animal in the animal experimental world, which is where the concept of learned help this emerges? What happens is that produce, learned helplessness when you do you you punish an animal. For any sort of active behaviour, no matter what it does, it's hopeless and it and truly is hopeless right cause. The animal keeps trying, but every time it tries to do whatever it to do. It ends up being punished, and sooner or later it will just cease to act, and that has been put forward, at least in part as a model. Depression and- and I think there is a certain amount of validity to that, although depression is very complex concept, this situation, you're describing is somewhat different because what you pointed out was that when you were sitting at home as easy as an adolescent, let's say- and you had to say between doing your homework and putting forward here,

mode of agency, however forceful that might have been an justifying doing something, like slim, north to smoke dope and avoiding your responsibilities you could justify. The avoidance by making reference to the fund little unfairness of society, but that is not the same as actually having try. Really hard a dozen times or a hundred times had failed each time. It's like it's more. Like the premature function of learned helplessness and I do see this very frequently among young man is that they they have adopted this attitude that the world is such catastrophically, unfair place and life is so unjust in its fundamental essence that there's no sense even trying to begin with, you only a fool: if you do that, I agree, I think what happens. Is you see other people's failings or other, the young men, whether they're your peers, were people even just listen to

music, music, greasy on television or whatever the case you see attempts and failures evidence of your own right, and so, if Everybody you know has struggled, for example, to go to college or university, then that is in some way. You try right. You don't see a distinction between your own efforts and those of other people, That's how I describe my mentality at the time, which is, for instance, I heard you go on, turn on the news and see a story about, let's say like when I was really young. Kid had seen. Ronnie King beat up by police officers in LOS Angeles right and that could stick with me and began an example of what someone like me would have gone through, but for not being there at the time, and so you see that very important. You internalize that as an instance of well

like me when we walk around the street. We get treated that way by cop, so I might as well have gone through that too, because I see that as an example of me, potentially exert at you a certain myself and society and then paying the price right shoulder emulate those re. So that's that's the the price paid for for adults A certain dimension of identity, and don't you think, it's inevitable to do that some degree because we do belong to different group identities, but you're, saying that you you classified yourself, let's say or you saw yourself in the same group as someone like Rugby king. You saw that the group that He was attributed to you. You believe that that was a very

group attribution and then drew conclusions that weren't favourable to your own striving and that, but that also still sets you up so that you're not really testing yourself against the world right you're, starting out with these assumptions about about the primacy of group identity. Let's say Now you curious about that too, because you also talked about the negative consequences of fatherless and one of the, so I'm inferring from now you see a link between the presence of our father and an antidote to that socialism, by my wife by popular culture group identity, something like that We know that fabulous, Miss isn't good for people by any by any measure. It's it's a catastrophe. Yeah. Well, I think like it, if you're in there that that frame of mind where instances of group identity starchy, tell you something about yourself.

Then having a man in your house whose knocking being up at the cops is automatically were too complicated. Right having a man in your house who looks after risk and go to work in an and takes responsibility for his family, his community, who shows you how to love a woman and be kind to people that is not an end in a complication, in other words, you that my otherwise think that every other man who's. Not your data, something a teacher about who you are yeah, ok soldiers amounts activity centres, as I showed the ideas something like if and I believe like one of the things I ve noticed about kids, who are Let's say neurologically it intact, so so maybe the desert there's lots of reasons why people can develop psychological disorders and some of them physical, but imagine that you take a child whose physically healthy and you put them, in a given environment. My my

Intuition has been that child. Needs to have at least one horse, role model within ah imitation distance, Sometimes he or she can sort of peace that together fragmentary also from popular media images. You know the images the heroes in movies and so on, but it's really helpful to have at least one person in your immediate environment who is manifesting the pattern that characterises individual success, and so maybe it something like it positive role model isn't there. Then the easiest default is to a victimized group identity. That seem reason. I think it's regional, especially here if you're look community and you share an identity that has been we strongly associated with victimization in the first place? And I think that's a big part of it is young when when I was a kid who thought it myself as a black man, the media,

came with a certain kind of baggage of historical and present day victimization. And because my father is black, my mother's white. So him being on and in some ways being my my kind of connection to the two, a black family being gone, I was there vulnerable to how blackness is being presented to because, didn't, have a black person I'll show you something different and the black is that I was presented was one that was deeply tied to victimization right. And one that was constantly excusing, poor behaviour we might have made not more than any other group of people by associating any poor behaviour we might have with history right. So, if this idea that you are inheriting lower limitations of yourself and your behavior and and you know what it would look like just to look in the mirror and nazi victim. Without even be right, right, we're in another

so provides that avenue for justification that we already described, and so ok. So so, let's look at this two ways: there's an old psychoanalytic idea of secondary gates, and so, if we're going to be critical in our analysis about victimization culture, we might ask what what benefits does it bring to the people who adopted so and even of those can and when I mean benefits, I dont mean long term iterative high quality benefits, I mean short term pay off. Let's say you know how it is. If you have work to do, and you avoid it, that's a short term pay off its benefit and because you don't have to do the work now there's medium to long term cost, but I am very curious about about the the Ellen the victimization culture that justifies, I think, social and avoid behaviors, probably the right way of putting it now know where I grew up. I grew up in a working class community and I have

friends and associates who were ranged from no pretty decent kids to pre solidly. Landed in the delinquent camp and generally, more delinquent types had a whole handful of my for their behaviour and and its a dangerous to have those rationalizations at hand because most, of anti social behaviour or avoiding behaviour for that matter, very bad, medium to long term strategies so anyways. What negative psychological elements of yours do you think the victims? Zation narrative supported and what positive aspects did it suppress. Well it the negative ones is supported. Were one wanting to be mad at my circumstances and not see anyway, I might be responsible for changing them right

so just I was. I was justification is looking for that justification. The other thing that does- and I don't know who is unique to me because I think it's their variations of everybody, but it just means that you don't feel the bird of solving a problem right me It is hard to walk around feeling like if you work we'll be harder. If you listen to people who about you, if you you know just made the effort and put the time in that, maybe things could be different. That makes you knew you feel response, and went, and that comes at the possibility of failing write me a dear to think that you, you could- someday, and if you don't get it, then you failing yes, oh that's another interesting thing about that. Assumption of Lord helplessness is that if you, if you don't try Homer Simpson Toolbar. If you never try, you can't fail

Exile right rate, so which is very comical so those that was definitely, I would say, like a negative part of my thinking, that wanting to see myself as a victim support it there is a positive step that it cannot push down. Ah, I think if it meant that I For example, was willing to put my mom through some really. I did some really good all situations where she had to stress and worry about me and what I was doing and I would later learned that I have a positive power to actually burn vow. To her life and to make things easier for her to help raise my sisters and things like those strength that I had those are that there is a desire for responsibility and to be part of a family that I had that I was I didn't learn about myself until a later on, because I

couldn't see myself as someone who assets right went straight to offer he has always about water we're doing to me. Yet about how I might positively affect somebody else or a minimum not now you re right well, which is definitely something well yeah, so one of the things it's interesting with regards to the conversation about responsibility because one of the things that been talking to audiences about all around the world. Now is the idea that maybe we, find the sustaining meaning in their life. Precisely through the adoption of responsibility- and you know you talk about real to be terrified of responsibility, and I think those are valid reasons. What if you try and fail Firstly, when there's a fair bit of evidence around that that might be the most likely path, And it is in some sense, because you have too often try a lot of things Were you succeed, even if you turn out to be a successful person, but the price that you pay for it? and having that responsibility is that that is

where you find the meaning in life that can buttress you against the fact that life is unfair and and and and what would you typified by suffering and also by malevolence and betrayal. In oh, you talked about covering later in life that you could be a positive answer to your family in that's a big. Discovery, man, it's really some to be able to wake up in the morning we're in the middle of the night. Think, while you know at least I'm doing think positive for the people that love me it does not have that's really a bad thing. Absolutely the other thing is you? U Utah you kind of now a lot of the people in your life who might have really important thing society right and my position, some genuine wisdom by because what they're saying doesn't line up with the ideology you unknowingly, in most cases clung to strongly you don't hear them and so on.

Good people in your life that actually might be able to teach you something and and but the right idea in your hand, plain to see that will grow into something beautiful those will become less important EU and instead, the folks here, are manipulated in some cases who won? to tell you negative things and wants to believe that you can do something unpleasant like you might you aren't? You are destined to suffer until the evil. Miranda has collapsed. People will tell you that variations of that message are the that, you you hear from an end That's because when I look back, there were good people in my life and our people, who am I cool who did you really well and errors in fact, maybe most people in my community made a really good decisions and care for each other. And it really good things in your eye was trapped in a world where I can see that they don't even exist in my narrative about my life, those people, were either anomalies or they just didn't. They were not part of my worldview at all here, while the thing

Two is the people who start down the bad road. Let's say the bad road say: that's characterized by irresponsibility avoidance and and like a kind of Rule rebellion cruel and counterproductive rebellion; no there also. They also tend to be quite Lloyd and irritated by counter examples, and so they are likely to manipulate. Someone see younger person, for example, or their peers into participating in, behaviors that aren't in anyone's best interest because they don't want the counter examples around and why would you with you, you don't want to be. You don't have your cynicism proved wrong? That's too shouted ring, you know, even though it would be the best thing for you, absolutely right that actually right the transition I want of experiencing, where I get out of high school and in kind of fine. My voice comes out,

some things that were completely unintentional right so I get to this point in great eleven after I rewrite the literacy tasks now we have to take in Ontario public schools. I am finally considered literature. That means I can finish high school and I get very desperate to earn money, because I didn't see a future where I could earn money legally. I thought I would have to be a criminal and I genuinely believe that was my destiny and so come close to buying a gun and ask a friend for it. He called me a price. He says. Let me know when you and I go home and on a day I thought I was going to feel. Like a million box, as I finally have this tool, criminal enterprise that I have been looking forward to and I wind just crime my eyes out and I was devastated. I was scared and I thought I found out, I had a gun, she might go.

Upon me and is only me I know that. That's interesting, so part of what call doubtful to you when you were making well I ve been a life. Changing decision was the violation of the of the intimate relationship that you have, the love that you had that your mother had bestowed on you, so you are young. You felt deeply. All appearances that you are betraying that what else brought you to tee because you said you know you felt you thought that one possibility was that you'd feel somewhat triumphant at finding mounted this task in joining the account outcast, but that isn't how your conscience responded. No, my conscience responded with with fear knowing how owning a gun sends you into a spiral I had seen. Other people go go down

you know when you own again as a young man, especially in a if you intend to use it, you want the problems of people who have guns and all of a sudden just to walk around the street. You feel like you have to carry a gun on you for your own safety life. If you look at the lives. You young men who wind up either victim, the perpetrators in inner city game, violence? Those are often young men who are committing what they call retaliatory by yes right. It is a web of responding to trauma and and killings, and I was very scared. I would be in the middle of something like that The other thing that really bothering me was a concern that I was so angry. I police officers for how I'd seen through my father when I was a kid and the tree that I had experience in terms of being followed around at the mall or followed home from the bus. Stop and seeing things like I mention here, the Ronnie King, beating and having not be part of

how I saw how the wing worked and represented a certain kind of Almost like a disturbing right of passage right as a black man, I felt like well in that the student means- are growing up, because people are supposed to think you're, dangerous and a criminal and so yeah. You know, there's even something about that. That's true, because I think that people are supposed to think that dangerous when you grow up. The question is: what do you do with the dangerousness so there isn't here, because you don't want to be naive and weak, it's not help absently there have not out? There has to be a pathway, the strength that isn't associated with catastrophe. Yeah. Well, in my case, I felt like I had already I had already felt like I was being treated like someone who carried a gun around there is something that really where I was almost disgusted by myself with the idea that I might validate that stereotyped by then doing that thing rhyme

an insular dislike conflicts is if it was a mix of shame that I felt right a mix of, here in a certain sense of you don't worry that I might never be able come back from that decision, and so what the pie in fact all the head on me, is I want isolating myself from my social network like Friends I had who I spent years talking tough, earth and sharing against her fairy tales and- and and things like that, I wonder just be. It will show my face around them, scared, they would think. I was upon a check in so you decided not to purchase the gun as a consequence. I do not know okay and so that in my life change really quickly, because all the p, whilst giving class. I didn't want to see any more and the you live smoking drugs earth? I didn't want to hang out with and the people who I wasted so much of my time with the people who we call

evaded. That kind of victimization identity together no longer were part of my life, except for a few hours. Airs and so Unknowingly put myself in a situation where I could just think about the world differently I started to go to class seriously for the first time and I wasn't it soon overnight, but I finished attitude, through a nice will the graduate on time- and I just so badly want to get out of that building of the high school. So I just left and I and the way to leave us to Western get my credit. So I graduated, I wonder about Humber College because in one of the transfer programme less, let's get her that in a bit more detail because its critical remarkable story. So ok, so you had a choice, point your life and and This point was whether or not you are going well, come armed and dangerous. Fundamentally, you can take that particular path,

you decided not to get a crisis of confidence you you decided not to and that any that allowed you or forced you hard to say which too alienate you from your peers, but there must be very lonesome like how did you put up with that. Yeah, it wasn't easy is actually one of the hardest things that I talk. With young men who are going through similar experiences, is I'm describing in terms of negative peer pressure. It's really hard to accept being alone, and now I dont know why I was able to do it quite on Lee, because I looked back- and I think I'm not sure I thirty one- I could do it yeah right about one thing: it's it's it's quite because it it'll it's a huge. Transformation not only to start buckling down at school especially at that age, because you know you had sixteen years of not being disciplined, let's say and also

isolating yourself from your peers at a point where arguably nothing more important than that Peer Association, so what, if you mother make of this, I mean all of a sudden, you weren't, seeing your friends and you were studying a mean. She must be shocked. I'm not sure she knew what was going on to be honest, because. We didn't communicate much like will. In the same house, but she was so busy just trying to get next day and pay the bills in and make sure we had a house in and thing needed that I didn't, really have an adult in my life who providing any supervision right. Worrying. For example, my mom never signed off burned in all four years of high school. She never signed off those papers, you're supposed to sign in knowledge and saw your kids are poor card, because I would forgit and bring it in an and she never said anything because she wasn't paying attention. I didn't say anything to her, and so we have this this period of time, where we were just

its passing in the night we had barely any interaction by she still. Rather there is a phrase you use in your conversation with them a group of boys. The BBC Radio Boxing club. Were you say you need someone in your life who represents the light at the end of the tunnel and That's what my mom was to me like. Even when we didn't talk, even when I was a rare her for picking father and and and and and putting him in a situation right apparent who rejected me and I resolved to her for it, and yet she Still have this belief in me that went away this belief that so point meal could be better than he's proven himself to be right, so she was ass. Interesting, so wasn't just her was also the fact that you had something around that actually had more faith in you than you did exact young and I think that such a key partner three where, if you really believe that from apparently, if you get that from both,

it's your unbelievably fortunate, but you desperately needed from at least one person. Some gotta go in you yeah, so that's the reason I get comfortable. I guess with with loneliness, is You know- and this is, I think, the role that the internet I think still plays in people's lives, which is when you break away from us from a from a in person, social network out of school or workplace or whatever the case The internet becomes a place where you can find it. Alternative social network and, in my case I was on these. You have these like him. Message boards all the time when I was a kid I was, always online reading about here pop, and I can spirit theories, and I got I have been a lot of on like nation of Islam Doctrine and agenda Those are using their especially helpful. To be honest. In some cases I think they deleted. My ability to shake off the victimization identity I adopted by weight.

You do for me was just gave me an alternative place to belong and Sonya. Became the social networks I had were online relationships and I was part of how I was able to adjust away from my friend circle was that I just had, just stop on the internet that I could. Go to in and feel like I've connecting with people in another way now also now you said something resting. You said that you really wanted to get out of that building and they speak, about your school, but the way that you chose to get out was to Pat graduating Pass was to accomplish the tasks now. Why in the world, did you decide to? That was a good idea. I suppose that's also because I wasn't sure when ass, I would do. I got the point you. I was a kid who I do. My great ten sit career project. My careers project, sir. And I was going to be the Canadian shook night right whose a gangster who started a record label that produce Tupac and soup dog in these guys. That's what I thought

my future is gonna be like and when that gets like taken from you, cause you realize you're, not that this game of chicken, even playing with yourself You're going to lose, and so you get off the train tracks, really know what else to do, and I just thought I have to just walk the path that was available to which was the case. Go through school. They will not out. There is a brilliant observation. I think, because one of the things that people are born don't ask me when their when their directionless as well What should I do, and the answer is, will you take the best path is laid out ahead of you if you don't have an option staying where you are staying in, despair or not. Moving forward is a very bad option if you have a bad pathway forward or sub optimal pathway forward, let's say, but it's at least four that's the one you should choose, so you decided that you are going to buckle down and get the hell out of school and you're going to by housing, yeah. Why? I don't know I didn't feel like I was choosing to do

I passing I just thought that was my way out and ignores sure how else to get America's. If I dropped out, I don't know what else I would do so in the MRS Schreyer, a rush out, my I'm only I'm working as a dishwasher red lobster, I'm taking. Classes I'm taking day classes I'm trying to get out of my circumstances as quickly as I can these counselor says to me. Will you don't qualify for many people, you were streamed in the envy applies. Which was what we call Ontario which mean conquering the university gotta go to community college. But you re just so bad, there's, no community college program you could get into except for what they call, a general arts and Sciences programme, which in some ways is almost like a great thirteen used to be in Ontario, which is you learn a lot of the things you should have learned a great while, but didn't so go into that programme, and I would say why. Why

what change for me immediately in terms of my academics was this: is this time I had polish professors, who said to me here. You gotta riotous twenty I say you get to decide what is about it seems so simple, but it was extra for me, because what I meant was pardon me that was interested in your hair ha the nation of Islam and conspiracy theories, and all this up as do on the internet that no adult had ever seen before. Now, my mom, I teachers, no one had ever seen a part of me that could fit critically curiosity, intellectually, the party me and end the version that was going to school merged for the first time. Well, thank cause us, that's! That's the huge advantage of higher education is that its exact should have read So in our scenario- and that's when I try to tell young men over time is like you might be going through a hard time in high school

it's hard, sometimes to know how life could my is going to be different if you just stay the course, because you have no reference point to explain it, but in my case, it was. It was absolutely a meaningful shift like the idea that I could write twenty pages about no Malcolm X, or about Tupac, like all of sudden writing ability that I had never shown people before started to come out and My analytical thinking and all he was just give flowed autonomy and literally in less than a year, I went barely getting out of high school, saying screens and all Humber College and and now it is not something that ever felt deliberate. I was just kind of stumbling around in the dark and hoping things are going. Look out for the better, my mom For example, when she came to my graduation Humber what she was shocked. I got of the president's model for higher grades that she had no idea that I was actually a completely

a person like that. You said something interesting to about what you were doing in high school. You said that you were attending clause during the day and night, and you were working as a dishwasher dishwasher, Yes, I'm ok, so that's interesting to because one of the things that's very useful, I think, to point out to people we are in a situation that analogous to the one that you find yourself in, is that there is thing to be said for trying to make yourself so busy that it's absolutely ridiculous. You know to take A big bird. That's part of that burden of responsibility. Like ok. Can I go to school during the day and can I go to school at night, and can I also work at a job? Can I do all that? Because the answer is that seen this time and time again with underground? to start work in my lab sector already taking a full court, load in their busy at some of them- also have work? You know they have.

On jobs, and then they come and work in the lab, and so then there so busy that is just ridiculous and then they have to get organised and they can't waste time and their grades almost inevitably go up, not down yeah. And it is one of those things were before you get. Point where you get busy like that. You have no idea your capable yeah right of accomplishing so many things and then it starts to become normal to achieve right, it's normal to say, Oh, I can set out an accomplished something in a given day argument: Why also becomes it also becomes something that's really interesting to experiment with, because once you start Once you start realising that your capability for responsibility exceeds your original expectations, you start to become curious, but what the limitations of that arts, like, oh what I can do a lot more than I thought I could, or the people told me I could or that I was willing to believe how much more could I actually

do. If I really got my act together in got discipline dislike, there is up purposes What what are you made out of hand? How do you find out- and I think, we need to find out, as you certainly have funds the a young man you probably have to find out. I was a person in general, but it's absolutely crucial for young men to find that there is far more to them than they think You can't find that out without burdening yourself. You're right and it is it, is it it's the opposite of what we were talking about earlier in terms of that fear of failure right, because it's saying I'm going to push myself to the limit and more were that line of failures and because you not from that no you're running towards where it exists, little the funny thing is about running towards that line. Is that as you walk. Words it it receives and as you You get more discipline the probability that you'll feel it smaller, smaller perfect exam of the pathology of avoid right, because avoidance of that just makes you weak absolutely

you, the transition from Homer College York University? is just kind of a continuation of why you're describing right? It's it's it's! It's! running to the line, and it's me continue to say: ok, maybe twelve years user evidence I have being a really poor students. Could be proven wrong with every assignment than I do I'm leaving that if I try and this class and I get any and all of a sudden getting a stops being on the internet, it starts to become normal right, an end and then, when you don't get in a or be or whatever, you're you're hoping for you start to feel stay of disappointment, because you actually have high expectations of yourself and you prefer There is who didn't know you back when you were a novel, getting into trouble. They only know you is the guy who came into their class and try hard and so they start to speak to you as someone who could do really well to hear your life, because one of the things that so lovely to about about about being able to

was to somewhere knew. You know, because you can leave your past identity behind you, I've such a relief. When I moved from the little town that I grew up in, even because I went to a community college for the first two years, my education as well in hand experience that was while years, is more dramatic by quite a substantial margin, but they're not dissimilar I was so relieved when I got the college that I could start to write and think about things that I was actually thinking about, that it was like a complete transformation, but also had chance to leave my old persons they behind these at least some of it. You know some of it some that I didn't want to carry a head with me and then that's another thing about moving forward in the world. Is that you can leave the old and insufficient you behind. That can be hard on you and hard on people around you too. But man, it's it's such a relief. It's in it. It's such a. Why is life itself, I would say, is the opposite of despair is absolutely right

as much as you can create the circumstances for that to happen in your life. Even if you dont have a chance to move somewhere new or go to a new school or or get in job, but but just conveys yourself. That renewal is something you get to decide and get to control. I mean it's. It's So how are you, and what always, instead of being a victim, is too is to notice all of a sudden that you have the capacity to transform yourself, despite leads to a large degree, despite external circumstances or or terms even as a consequence of leveraging them because it isn't always obvious that that having an impediment is a catastrophe. Sometimes it's it's. What would you call the call to action. It's a challenge we and in some ways the with the child? during periods of my life that we ve heard her voice. A road map for what I would do it with the remainder, my academic career, which is

pursue opportunities rocket imagine going back in time in solving some of the problems I have experienced right and in that I studied international development and nonprofit management at your I went into the lot agree because I thought the law was was relevant to my life and in so far as it is The difference in how I wound up and how some of my peer group did in that. I was lucky to not be involved in the legal system, so I mean it was a call to action for me. I think you gave me the d motivation by us, the toughness I would need to to push forward and do things that. Yeah. I had good reason to believe were impossible, because the victim narrative is something like, while you're so little, compared to what arrayed against you in all of its historical catastrophe, right which like the evil, father you're. So little that you don't have a chance- and that's that's not good, because you're not that little

what's a rate against you isn't that big? I mean it's not that it's big, because it is big. But that you're nowhere near as little as you might have been in taste to think exact and I think I think what you describing is very like. I think most people here that and would agree with you. But they just selectively applied to different people in our society like. They want to see how some of us, because of of our circumstances that that's less true for some than others and that's why you and that's the only it really makes you wonder where the true racism is yeah, and I went away you and as they travel around Canada and I go to other countries, and I speak to young men who are in some way The very difficult circumstances I see over and over again how they being denied that that belief that its being told that belief is somehow competing with recognition of unfair

yeah. I heard that do John Henry is in its new form, Follow identified by psychologists is the belief among minority young men that personal effort and sacrifice and responsibility actually produce positive outcomes. It's actually exactly reasons that you just described, because it runs counter to the victim and oppressor. It's actually being treated by people now is a form of psychological disorder. Yeah. Why In that light and when you, when you, when you say those things right when you go to people who are indifferent, circumstances and remind them even to some small agree that Individual agency might matter right that it could affect their outcome, They do not have their not destined to us to a life of suffering, people repeat their life. You will get a threat.

Right, they feel like you. Undermining the narrative that they desperately want to be true, which is that young man has to suffer until everything a stranger right now, Until we get rid of capitalism, men and patriarchy and white supremacy in all these other evils. Right, cortical, evils of our society that you you you. You will you can not how good life until then, its first doubtless and asking people who sit around and wait for a kind of activists. Class too, create is utopia for them. I find it to be very immoral and it s very bothersome, because I see I see you at the beach. Obstacles I have to getting my message out. Two young men are people who I would survivors victim, celebrate authors, rights people who really really want to celebrate when we're losing, because it it fits their narrative idea,

that might help us win or a lot less attractive. Yeah. Ok. So now you went off to York in and what happens when you went to New York. Well, I always jokingly saved. My life are really boring, surely quickly, because I really just study, I did everything I was supposed to do. I may I am actually surprised by how hard I was able to work in for years. I would I too All I was very careful about picking classes than I thought would build on the momentum. I had picked up side. To study, subject matter that connect two things I previously learned because still had a certain insecurity about going to from where I had proven myself. You know I dont know if I could have taken in economics, class or biology, class or psychology, because those are just subjects. I didn't come that I wasn't sure I could handle. So I was very careful about picking things. I thought I could do well things out.

Free time, I was thinking about right, so issues around a poverty and discrimination and activism, and you know such tackling social issues, whether that was in the canadian content. Your elsewhere. Those things that I comfortable, where, as I pick classes that fit not more, and, as I got more and more come confident myself, I started to branch out into other areas are take an e class our classy marketing for non profit organizations are things like that and I I had you my whole life up to that point was on one street that I steals avenue asked, which is on the north Toronto. You were my mom layered Humber College in York. University are all off the street, so my world was very small in the sense that the same bus routes I had taken as a teenager, the same bosses I took to homer and the same buses I took to York, I

very much in a comfort zone there right, because I was saying to myself: ok this is the world. I know the world I understand, I can be sick. This will in this world, and so I clung to it and I d really do much to branch out. I still worked in restaurants, as line could dishwasher. I worked in warehouses. Even getting s. I do think, for instance, to apply to live procedures, internship were to work out the you wouldn't have known. I then you know like when you come from about like that. It's you know when I to. You develop Berta. I didn't know any people without a graduate degree. I didn't know how to go about doing that, and so the idea that I could do that was really something that was quite new. You don't The pathways you know I mean you can figure them out, but all right in your meal. You know you just don't know how you dont know what basic steps to take. You know exactly

there was this idea I came across in in one of the international development classes I took bite. Apology concept called the capacity to aspire rise from art, after I, and why you- and he did it- stop because he uses it to explain how people achieve social mobility in India and applying really well to my liking. The two, which is no your imagination, grows with, with the more paths you see in front of you, and we all my have a similar destination in mind in terms of what a good life looks like right a better house about her car, some loves me, someone to love but some of us have a better sense of the directions, the steps it takes to get to that destination than others, and I an idea stuck with me, because I help explain both the day.

As for myself in some of my peers in university, who were more accustomed to opportunity but also explained the difference between me and my friends. We're not in university and we're not making some of the good choices, I wasn't were still dealing with the consequences of how we grew. Why have this programme aided? I developed with my colleagues, called future authoring program that helps people Mika, developing for their life. Along some of the dimensions you mentioned, but then, and then also to put it, there are implemented strategy we ve never been able to tell if the utility The programme lies more in walking people through an actual the actual process of developing a and a genuine strategy or suggesting to people that their actually capable of doing that, right so and I often think it's the ladder it's like because

the idea that you are a self transforming agent is an unbelievably powerful idea. If, if you could, if, if it grips you, or, if you allow it to grip, you that might be another way of thinking about it better, but it, but it It is certainly an idea that you cannot have or that you can be prematurely cynical about which I think is well. That's that monsieur cynicism, is really what the victim net narrative feeds and I think it Its unbelievably mentally damaging to the young people, it really hurt, So it's so you went to York and you did real well and then how did the idea of law school hop into your minded and did you we have encouraged, but for that and you had to go right. The all sat in all of this is quite a daunting process. It is, I It was actually very practical decision for me because I de around and saw that no one who studied what I studied at York was getting a job in the field. In many cases were

in the same jobs after they graduated that they had when they were a student. So I talk to myself, I need more education MIKE I lost you. I felt like I had given up a lot to get to that point. Like I, I lost a lie. The friends I grew up with I worked really really hard. I I changed my life in a way that it felt like bearing on Myself- and I was- sorry to become nervous that the bat might not pay off. If I'm twenty, you with university degree and no job, but I have a bunch of that right and so law, school and business school were the things I thought about in terms of their, playing on some of my strength in the sense that I can read and write well by this very practical and that they lead to a job like there's they're supposed to prepare for actual work. I wound wonder: writing the law school admissions test. First of the two and

I did really well car shockingly. To be honest, I do not expect to do so. Well, it was the first standardized test, I'd ever done well on, and I was just in an age to the point where I did not write the business school test, because I was didn't want to test mild how'd? You know I just take it. Take what you do you now and then because my whole life isn't steals Avenue West. I was expecting to go to the law school at York like that was just a fit. Where I was comfortable. I knew boss? I will take to get there. You know the the limited experiences. I had made like even going to Universal Toronto, seem like a foreign world to me The idea of going downtown was like this. It is not a place for people like me should behave. I just didn't feel comfortable there. You know, and so I thought I was gonna fly York in and if I had been admitted there luckily I would have definitely

but I had this like chance meeting with History- Professor David Blight, he at yale- Where I was speak? There is a town in Southern Ontario called Buxton. North Buxton, which is found, did by famine You came to Canada from the underground rail road and they host. Conference every year at one of the churches that they set up. So I presenting some research. I had done on black Canadians at this conference. The other professor, who is the Keno, showed early enough to hear my presentation in and after I was done, he walked over to me. He said that was really good. What are you gonna do after graduation? I said to him why I wrote the Elsa. I think I'm gonna go to law school He said to me: you should apply Yale and I thought link this guy was a superhero to me because he was teaching at a university that I only seen on television you now, and so In my mind s eye, I said to my car, you sure light and use I tell you is I gotta think you'd be a competitive applicant and I was like louse.

Oh yeah, you visiting me outweigh the yacht, were hit his belief in me in that chance, interaction where I've never seen him since like, but we only directly for a couple of minutes, but that meant so much that I thought. Why is this? I think that I have that ability I might as well. Harvard in Colombia and all these other schools, because he knows what he's talking about right he's like superhero from Yale apply everywhere and I get in everywhere, ass Jesus that must have been a shock. Yeah, it was wouldn't lottery like I just know pioneering. I was I I yeah. My dear I envy you will tell my mom that not only do I get into those schools by You know their generous financial aid policies would mean that we would actually be able to afford meaning we will have to pay anything because we have no money was like she, I think everything she ever wanted for me came true in that moment now and it was a really yeah

Special special day here, no kidding, that's quite there. That's great the miraculous situation that its men yeah, And in its one, where I consider myself very lucky and fortunate to be able to have walked down that path, a brave man, you did do the applications you put in you know like there's good fortune, therefore share, but it's not. I could just it's not a lottery body is in a sense you, when you bought marketing, it's a new sure, yeah yeah yeah, thereby lotta tickets, to amass right. That's that's! Right now and any eyes I describing the bat I made myself it paid off right. The idea that I would ever be I now would have an education where I could choose the job I had, and I wouldn't just be good. In whatever was available to me. I mean that is really what I was looking for right, like that kind of stability, where I could say I'm unemployable person there Nigel challenges my mom went through. I will not have to go through

I might even be able to do something for her and other people right, getting there are attending Yale man. Ok, so so now than anyone to Yale how'd you, Would you. I do well. I had a different kind of experience, though you know, like I really kill myself for four years studying at York to get there. And part of the appeal for Yale to me was you. I read those stories by in a bill Clinton where, while he was getting a lot agree, he was actually living in New York or Arkansas or in London like yours, place where, if you didn't want academics to be your primary focus, you could be doing other things and has the grating system is generous and because the culture there is encouraging of you to kind of being full in whatever way you can be, and so I I was very alien environment to me and I- and I think you are

back- and I think some of that bravery you just credited me with- and I feel like. Maybe I was a little less brave there, because I really do comfortable there in a way that I never got used to being around wealthy people is really hard for me in terms of the ceiling inadequate. All the time you that's, why had problems with with those Ivy League schools is that you know it it's funny, because almost everyone who ends up at one of those schools feels inadequate. He's on one dimension right because, no matter how rich you are, there's someone richer and if you're rich you're, not as smart as your roommate and if you're smart- is your roommate you're noticed smart ass, your professor and you're very weird institutions, because they aggregate people who are remarkable across a number of dimensions, and so everyone who attends them tends to feel like they have him Oscar Syndrome, Reno, stout among the undergraduates at Harvard there used to be an smartest kids in their classes and then, when they show up

Harvard you know they were no longer guaranteed to be smart. Person in the room, that's for sure yeah. I think I exactly what I observed that, yes, we hopefully for me, I I feel before whose into worried about getting about the great you know like that. Wasn't really the concern for more so as the concern was I he felt uncomfortable with with what I size like privilege, right again I I I in some ways felt like in danger of being a sell out right of being someone who grew up with very little, and and being welcomed with open arms by this, like opulent institution that was surrounded by people who are living like, I used to write, the near revolves around Yale right, very Yale. You particular particularly striking that way, an asshole and so you are around campus and walk out of campus. I would see that young men living like I used to live would be so

by Yale Security all the time or would be treated in very hostile away any time they came to close to some of the buildings and just I was really unsure what to do with you. You d embraced. I do you do just our sucking up to the professors and become a part of seen or or is there another way and an eye? I spent three years trying to figure that out and I'm not sure I really did what part of how I reckon sounded always I took as part of a project. You can work as a volunteer high school teacher. From the local neighbourhoods, and so cities, constitutional law too great a loving gray, twelve kids at some of the rough high schools and that was my way of feeling. Like whenever you was giving me, I was immediately trying to give it back to somebody else. I didn't I do know how asked her to him

like it hurt seems like a good approach. How did that work out for you will worked well in the sense that I did get a lot of you know unique in and amazing opportune as a young student, and I didn't, I think, have the chance to be useful to a lot of other people at the same time, So the balance I think I was able to strike, But I certainly look back and think you know there if I was a little bit more prepared if I knew people who could have Introduce me oriented me to that environment. I think I could have. Done more out of it in the sense that I would have known what actually mattered like you spend just as you met you described that that that collection of remarkable people, have done so many things part of how they cope with their inadequacies of their feelings of inadequacy. Is there

they are so prone to group. Think right, because the way you deal with feeling inadequate is to just try to be like everyone else, but their right, and so you wind up in this, like I did by, for example, Yale prides itself on the diversity of its student body coming into an entering law school class right, so all that schools. They went to in their experiences in the countries they worked in another and yet more than half of your students the same job in the graduate, though big law clerks working for a fancy, judge some sure and then most of those. People will then go on to work at a fast you offer and so it is this this process where, if you can from a different place, and you try to resist. The group think you're going to inevitably graduate feeling, like you missed out, because you're going to be reminded of all the amazing things your classmates are doing and you're not sure. If walking a differ. Path, is gonna pay offer you re you're thinking. So why did you take that courtship? I didn't

the job at the fancy law firm in Manhattan gonna kick myself for that for the rest of my life, and that was, What was weighing, on my mind, graduated like I was so stressed out his eyes like I am. I gonna regret how I played this hand. So what happened? What I want to talk a little bit more about about what happened after you left Yale. You ended up at all eventually but article there, but I also wanted to turn the topic to do something slightly darker as well. I mean you ve also been suffering from a very. What would you well, a burdensome illness for the last year, burdensome and terrifying illness for the last year, and I wanted to touch her Least a little bit because it's it's It's a hell of a second part to the story that you just told right, because you, u emerged from

a very desperate initial orientation to a degree of remarkable six. I would say academically and practically you gonna, walk up to you know it's like you, you ve done all this work, new players, altogether together and you ve helped put the world right and you ve changed your attitude. Then, all of a sudden when things are going well for you, you don't you get you get cut down and I'm I wanted Go back to that, I want to go to that and because curious about how how you're cold without an how your managing it. But let's talk about what happened after you left Yale. First. When I left you, I just I try to work in the corporate world and do the community service, an activist work that I was very passionate about, because Canada is a hard country and one of the biggest differences I would say between coming back

after graduation persisting in the. U S is where you can career for yourself. There's a lot more options in the union's to me, a professional advocate for youth, or You work on some of the issues were describing at a research centre or to do you know this enough in Canada is its, Is this a few options? A lot of them are government oriented, which is something I have always been a bit cautious out, I'm not a big fan of how down the lot of Canada works because of the the power our governments have, and so I I have a hard time feeling like I fit in so the the the way I thought would work best for me. The honourable way to approach that problem, in my mind, was all earn our my cheap with management, consulting job or corporate law job and then work with youth and work with police officers. The change policies and things like that on the weak.

In the evenings- and I did couple of years and it was exhausted, hurry is hard to do everything and I wonder to hear teaching at York University because I thought it was a way for me to do those things. I was passionate about full time. I found now, as I'm sure you know that universities also or are not places that you get to always focus on being useful to other people the work I wanted to do. I had a hard time bouncing with the expectations of playing up two of you, mercy politics in on. You know fee. Doing research, and I are orbit How did you research, I didn't think, would actually be helpful to anyone. You part of academic pursuits that I dont think are immense. We relevant to people in our society who, who would benefit most from Polly, research and so

It was hard to balance all those things too, and I was in the process of figuring all that out. I suppose, when I got diagnosed with cancer when I was a couple of years into teaching, and it happened at a time where I was already hoping to have a rethink. What I would be doing with my career, because I didn't feel like university life- was the long term solution for me and then cancer hit me and give me a lot of talk later. I guess I wrote: on that and think about what I want to be doing when I get healthy again so yeah, so you so you have stage for on Hodgkin's lymphoma. Yes also cause spinal frack. So it's really quite the catastrophic mix of of symptoms and that That's been that's been you ve been being treated for that, since, February. So the first question is: how did you find? What were the symptom

that led to your diagnosis. And how did you find? How did you find out what what was wrong yeah? Well, you were the things people say about matters that we don't seek, help and I guess I might be an example of that, because you, I had a pain in my neck for months, and in my lower back our money- and I just like do you know he could seriously. I just thought I'd, while I just thirty, neither maybe these authorities hygiene. I got yeah and back problems and never you'd, never leap right to the catastrophe. Yes, I wound up going to the hospital to get it looked at and I also had a soul lymph nodes notes, I also didn't take seriously, because I just thought I'd like how universality deal and turn those things are related because in the the lymph nodes in my lap side is where

a tumor has started to grow and that tumor are and that now that the key spreading from that mean tumor into some my bones and the net payments He knows feeling were caused by the cancer cracked, the visa two two parts of my spine, one in the neck, unwanted back, so I wound up I didn't emergency room visit, which I thought was gonna, be fairly simple. I thought yeah, I Didn'T- have a daughter so the emergency room, thinking ass, you get antibiotics prescribed to me for the lymph nodes, peace when an I wound up being held for a week because they do want to testing on what was going on and that's how I basically found out of our hands about the cancer. I was out pretty high risk of paralysis at that point because of the injury and the past already the spinal cord being affected faithfully that didn't happen and in a weird way, my bones round a kind of fusing together, so

there never be normal again, but their stable enough that I will have those problems at least, but I went through thy chemo and radiation for most of the last ten months, and I'm just four months ago I finish up and it's you It's been, spin intense. I think I revisited a lot of the the harmful places at my mind, used to be when I was younger. The temptation to be like resentful yeah, I put down work into my career and to have this happen. In prime earning years. I'm tat my income cut drastically when you're the by far are the biggest breadwinner in your family, the first one to finish university in first want to become a professional and and I M in there is apparently they really want to go back to the place where I could just see myself as a victim and be angry at everybody in being re God and be angry at life for four. No,

you have a problem with that is the. Then you end up with the illness and being angry at God and at life the witch which, like it's not it's not like, I'm making light of your motivation for a feeling that way, because you know that that's that's a, however, to have happened and it it's it's it's it's a blow That would destabilize anyone in the fact that you started reading The exact same, dark places is anything but surprising in all. I think what surprising mostly is that you didn't stay there, Yeah, but what if you really ill people, you know it's, it's it's really bad have the illness that's for sure and in it can be mentally bad, but to also have that, in better you and bring back you're cynicism and make you not so much desperate as as rage filled. An angry doesn't help the illness at all

make your situation worse, and I think worse, for everyone around, you was well that's also something terrible about being sick. Is that you tend to feel like you're like an intolerable burden on the people around. You is well it's another bit of guilt. You have to bear with being he'll yeah it's absolutely right and I I that that that that dark place, was, was tempting for a lot of reasons, but but one of which was it it just made it made it Second sight: you have no one to get matter right who who who's the face of that right, you want to find someone to boy like you want to have something to point two and say this is, cause of my misfortune. I'm in it's not like. I had you know lung cancer, something where it's like all you know I smoke too much or.

Have some sort of behaviour I can associate with being ill? The doktor told me I was sick. She said to me: you asked How is it possible that I'm the sick, I dont get it? I have no problems and she said you just now, fuck yeah, random stupidity of life- and I think, that's a hard thing to accept for sure but when he also did was just kind of life there was a. There is a message that I needed to hear from people when I getting out of the dark place when I was younger right when I was. High school, I need you, leaving the only people to think I had a brighter future and I thought I might have I needed people who still have it can unwavering face, that I could be helpful to the world. And when I went to diagnose, I needed that still like I need, that just as bad like I needed that sense of from people that you're not just

like burden that now your mom has distressed about you and it's not like. She has already have a whole bunch of other. To worry about is that despite this ill You still have a lot to offer the world people who had that message me you're one of them, you send me an email. Thanks to a mutual friend shortly after I got diagnosed, and it matters right in matters and people say to you that as you said earlier, it is a call to action that you ve got. You got as your personal catastrophe now that you have to deal with and in doing so, you're gonna learn a lot about yourself and what which are capable of general unit, on your luggage capacity to aspire. You know what it's like this idea that you should battle alone against insuperable odds is, in some sense, an idea that it's got a certain amount of hopelessness about it under some circumstances, because there are times when you battle and you lose

and it is even the case that you lose. You battle as forthrightly in courageously ass. You possibly can, but the truth of the matter is that there is a better strategy. That's the thing is that. First of all, the strategy works most of the time or if any strategy is going to work, that's going to be the one and nothing is life, and so not every strategy ever works a hundred percent of the time, but is still the best you have, and you you you decided apparently too rescue yourself from the second descent into the the whole of hell, yeah despair. Let's say to continue to try to aspire forward despite the fact that you'd been thrown another tremendous obstacle, the ash always what's what's been really good for me. Is I really focused on being around people who have their own challenges.

And I created a lot of the young men I spend time with since my boy come out for putting my mind in a place that was actually positive and productive. Spend time with boys, are going through the challenges I had when I was a kid far worse. In many circumstances, I spent help you we fighting poverty or abuse kid. You are in foster care system, kids, who have not even a mom that I was a blast harry right at an end being around those young men, young men who have come out of jail and are trying to do something different young men who, who are our fear, how to a girl on the spot, because they now have a kid. They have to be worried about me. Be around those young men in every city. I've been able to travel to have has really made it hard for me to just for myself and also for me to discount why. I dont know where my physical health goes from here, I'm still not even remission. Yet by

It's really hard for me to have to put myself at the centre of a victim narrative, which I know is tempting and I've talked to other cancer patients who are similarly tempted to look back at life that way and just say, you're still, a bunch of young men who I could be useful. And the idea that I might say something to a guy who just got out of jail or a guy. Who does it he can be a good student or a guy who you're isn't a university where he feels in over his head, Maybe I could say something I could change thinks about himself in his best passport forward. Like that's been, that's been worth living for quite honestly, and that makes The cancer feel so irrelevant by comparison yeah. Well, that's it the thing to have accomplished as far as I'm concerned, but I think it's dead right You know I mean life is a hopeless business and we all die in the end. The question is: what do you do Do you do in the interim and everything- that you can do to put things

the more positive places is a credit your integrity fundamentally and its integrity associated with the meaning that does sustain you and very dark times absolutely, and I think I, The confidence that I had no individual agency and personal responsibility in the power of how you choose to think about the war and how you interpret the adversity go through. The conference I had enough from growing up in from the academic research, I've dawn and the life I live has only grown exponentially since I've been sick because I never see it in my own life on a regular basis, but I also get to see and people who are facing far more severe physical challenges than I am people who should I share our hospital room with people who I see when I walk through the cancer centre, and it's like see what they have to tell themselves

the rules they have to live by to have to get through that the challenges they face on a day to day basis and get to somewhere positive and constructive and am ass. Yours incredibly, aspiration and it certainly makes it me frankly delimited patients I had four people undermine or want to downplay the importance of that that way of looking at life, and that way renting yourself to the world that patients is far better than it was before, and it wasn't I was very tolerant that you know before I got sick either. Well, you know it seems to me that that's probably a pretty good time to bring this discussion to a close. What do you think? What else is there anything else that you have to tell people mean I'm kind of curious about how you had the opportunity to talk to all these young men or how you taken that opportunity. While I would have been your people who read the book and want me to come, speak too

students or youth, that they work with but has also been because a couple of charities, big brothers, big sisters and the PIN box its foundation, both of whom, with young men across Canada and also in the United States and other countries. They organised opportunities for me to come, speak two young men who they think we would benefit most from hearing young men who are struggling to find their way we're having a hard time school who don't hap rise of or mentors so that's a lie. The opportunity comes from his. You know. People whom I guess my story does Reynolds and eight or would resonate having alighted is people who also recognise the institutions, their part of might not understand young man or know how to respond to their needs, because the problem that you have tackled head on in many cases, I think they recognise the need to encourage young men to do well, but dont know how to do it, because

the conversation around encouragement of men has my view been been undermined and poisoned in many ways. Even we have a prime minister here in Canada, just intruder who goes to international summits and recklessly speaks about men using new the buzzwords that he thinks you're gonna get him in applies when he has about the dangerousness of working men. Exactly I know absolutely appalling What will you when you live in a country where that passes as leadership of your nation? No kidding? people, I think dont know what to do about the struggling young men. They see who were actually are. You know They didn't symbolise male privilege in the ways that our Prime Minister might might think they do right and so people are looking for other ways to engage and speak about young man, and I now want to crimes, must alert encouragement go along ways. I mean I've been stunned by over the last year. It you know

covering how rarely so many people are encouraged and how starving, they are for a few genuine words of encouragement and, while it said like you said, even when you met the professor, who told you that you could maybe apply to Yale, is just that chance encounter a few Words- and you said that you know you ve- also realized how important the things that you say might be to people and that You some strange to go, and even you know during your current times of tat Let's say it is so important to put forward a message encouragement to young man and say: look it I'll get your act together. For Christ's sake, there's a lot more to you than you think and the world's crying out for you. It needs you and that's that responsibility, there's nothing about that. That's noble or or justifiable, even though you have your reasons to feel in better did victimized. That's not the point, of course, the world's harsh and brutal,

but you're someone who might be able to prevail. Nonetheless, that's really something. Yeah, I would say not just something, but in some cases everything again That's right, it's! Sadly, France, that's exactly a difference between giving the wrong the best you have to offer in ensuring giving the well nothing yeah. Well, then, you might be older. Luis DE have a clean conscience not somehow men than at that the most valuable thing of yeah. That's for sure, look Jimmy. A pleasure talking to say you appears yeah you for your time. As luck and I'm best luck, I'm I'm I'm hoping think things go well for you, but its remarkable story that you told it's really something on multiple dimensions, and so like me, power to poverty as far as I'm concerned- and I hope that launched people watch this and realise that, like you did that there's a hell of a lot more than than meets the eye. I hope so too,

good, I hope we meet again meet you. Thank you. Doctor Pearson, you bad man, they're talking with yeah, hey. Let's take a look at your book, one more time, ok all right there We cannot allow in the end the U S and other countries next year great, why man raised its identity and rage race in the crisis of identity, why young man, rage race and the crisis of identity yeah? Alright? Well, I hope I hope you get a massive boosting sales as a consequence of you all right: give your mama a for me. I will do she'll be very glad to know that we have a chance to talk about her to write child care he found this conversation meaningful, you might think about picking up dad's books, maps of me the architecture or is it where best seller twelve rules for life- an antidote to chaos. Both of these works does much deeper into the topics covered in the Jordan me Petersen, Podcast see John,

petersons dot com for audio evoking text links her pick up a book, the european favorite books, our. I hope this plan cast. If you did, please leave a rating apple pie, gas for comment, review or share this up said with a friend. If you didn't like don't leave a review, we're trying to keep it five stars. Thank you, next week's pod gas is going to be a twelve rules for life lecture from July. Twenty eight twenty eighteen recorded in it Benton Alberta, I'll next week, and hopefully all have good news about my thanks for listening follow me on my Youtube Channel Jordan, be Petersen on Twitter at Jordan, be Petersen on Facebook at Doktor, Jordan B, did and evinced Instagram Jordan Dog be DOT. Peterson details on this show access. I belong information about my tour dates and other events, and my the recommended books, sound on my website? Jordan, be Petersen dork My online writing programmes designed to help me we'll straightened out their past

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