This week on Acta Non Verba we’re continuing the conversation with LTC (Ret) JC Glick and diving into resiliency and what humans have in common. During our time together JC also continues to explore why quitting is sometimes the best option and how Buddhism impacted in life.
LTC (Ret) JC Glick is a leadership consultant who advises at the strategic, operational, team and individual levels. He has a strong background in leadership development, executive personnel assessment and selection, strategy, coaching, counseling and developing innovative solutions to complex problems.
You can connect with him via his website: https://vetsandplayers.org/
Episode Transcript:
00:26
In this episode of Acta Non Verba, we hear part two of my interview with TEDx speaker, bestselling author, and retired Army Rater Lieutenant Colonel J.C. Glick, a partner and leadership advisor.
00:55
at MVP Development Group and Prodromo’s leadership. In part one, we talked about a military exercise that had a tremendous impact on his thinking and how making and allowing for mistakes is important. He also tells us about unbreakable and why sometimes quitting is the right thing to do. You can hear part one of our interview on episode 23 of Acta Non Verba. In part two, we talk more about why quitting might be the right thing to do. JC also talks about
01:23
understanding what resilience truly is, its attraction to Buddhism, and how we need to realize our commonalities. Sometimes it’s the right thing to do to quit. By creating this absolute creates this conflict that, quite honestly, I didn’t even think about until I was in my late 40s and then had to struggle and realize, oh my God, no, there are times when you quit. I got to tell my kids.
01:53
Sometimes quitting is okay. It’s how you quit, it’s the way in which you quit. And, you know, I mean, the Latin, and you’ll appreciate this, the Latin quite is to set free. So think about that. The word comes from this beautiful idea of to set free. There’s times when you have to set yourself free from something. The difficult piece is to take the technical pause and evaluate, you know, like,
02:20
the cost benefit, like what’s the plus and what’s the negative. And quite honestly, sometimes it’s going to feel uncomfortable. And I think you’ve got to get to that point where you recognize it’s okay to be uncomfortable. Well, it’s an indication that you’re on the right track, if nothing else, whether you use the Ryan Holiday idea of the obstacle being the way or adversity being a gift or that ability to reflect it. It’s so key. And all those things are required to get to that state of mental resilience. Those are the prerequisites.
02:49
like you say, until we’re able to be broken and get down to the bare bones, the brass tacks, now we can start saying, okay, here’s the areas where we can improve. Can you give us some sort of examples of some of the mental resilience sort of tools that you would give to people who were trying to, one, they have the courage to be broken and to look at their shortcomings. What are some ways that they can build back up in a way that will serve them and not turn into this negative spiral of emotions and negative self-talk?
03:17
This is where sometimes I begin to listen to my own advice because sometimes I don’t always listen to it. I think the first thing is it’s okay to admit your mistakes, but I don’t think you can have your mistakes define you. Right, so you can say, I did this, that’s absolutely true, it was a bad choice, I don’t like how that went down, I admit to it, but that doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. You have to internally, a little bit, separate the act from the actor, right?
03:46
A bad decision does not create a bad person. Now multiple bad decisions, or the same bad decision, over and over may define you as a bad person, but a bad choice does not make you a bad person. And I think that’s the first thing is we have to get that into our head is that we can make bad choices. We can be mad at ourselves for a little while, but that doesn’t define who we are. What defines who we are is what we’ve learned from it and how we move forward.
04:15
there are bad decisions that I’ve made that I go, I would never do it that way again, or I would never make that decision again. There are bad choices that I’ve made where I go, I can see where I might make that choice again if I had to. And being able to rationalize that, and again, separate the act from the actor. And then I think there’s an important part of resiliency, which is, what are you trying to build? Do you admit?
04:43
that this is about development? Do you admit that this is about building to the best part? So if you’re learning how to do something, and I would argue we’re always learning, we’re learning about this human condition that’s a constant every day is a learning experience. If we accept that it’s a learning experience, we allow certain mistakes to happen, and we can be more resilient about those mistakes, right? And we can say, okay, well, when your kids learn to walk, every time they fall down, you don’t beat them.
05:13
right? You encourage them to continue to go. And what’s interesting is it’s kind of in us to continue to do that. Like resiliency is built, it’s a natural part of the human condition. Let’s use that example of the child learning to walk. The child doesn’t fall down for the hundredth time and go, you know what, I’m not going to just walk and think, never going to do it.
05:42
They continue to try to, they continue to get up and try to walk. They continue to try to get until they get it. And I think that we have a tendency to kind of work resiliency out of our system, right? By people telling you, you don’t need to experience privation or hardship. And we mischaracterize resiliency with the ability to accept punishment. I think it’s different, right? I mean,
06:11
If you’re in a bad situation that is bad for you, maybe holistically, the benefit of the outcome is less than the cost. Then that’s not resilient. If you stay in it, that’s not resiliency. That’s just stupidity, right? So if somebody said, look, the way you toughen up this part of your head is to continue to bang against the cinder block wall and then you’ll grow a big callus there. That’s correct. You absolutely will.
06:42
But that’s not smart. Like, let’s not do that. And so the person who did it and all of a sudden blood and they’re getting a headache and they go, I don’t wanna do this anymore because I don’t really want a callus. Like getting a callus, I’ll wear a helmet, right? Instead of having a callus that’s really big. That’s okay. So we can’t, you know, there’s so many coaches and so many, oh, you can’t just quit when it gets hard. No, but you can quit when it’s not good for you all the way around.
07:12
when it’s affecting more aspects than positive. And then the last thing that I’ll talk about is really what, you know, you and I are both disciples of Tony Blower. And I think Tony’s view of possible versus probable is probably one of the greatest things in resiliency education. I don’t think that’s how he meant it, but I think that’s what it’s become. And certainly how I see it, which is, you know, if we look at outcomes of things that we’re afraid of,
07:42
and we look at what the possible outcomes are, we’ll be terrified and we’ll never do it. If we then separate the possible from the probable, then all of a sudden it becomes more manageable and we go, oh, okay, I can deal with that. For example, he uses the bar fight example. Like what are all the things that could happen in a bar fight? And you’ll have a list of 150 things, get with a chair, stab, shot, all sorts of they pull you over your head.
08:10
If all those things were going to happen to you when you went into a bar, you’d never go into a bar again. But when you say, okay, what’s probable and he’s done the science, it’s like, yeah, I get tackled or I get sucker punched. Those are two things. Yeah, I think I can live with that out of those possible 150 things. Two things are probable. And what’s always struck me about when we do the possible versus probable, and I do this with Pedro Almas and Jim Stagnito when we do it.
08:39
No one ever has a good outcome from the bar fight. Like, well, I actually am able to talk to the guy and we become friends and I buy him a beer. Or I win and I beat up everybody in the bar. Like there’s never a good story, right? Whenever we’re faced with the unknown, it never has the positive outcome. It’s always the negative outcome that we focus on. And I think that that is also something that we’re conditioned to do. And I think it’s something that we have to change is
09:08
is we’re always like, the worst is going to happen as opposed to, well, actually some good stuff could happen. Yeah. And that’s where Hicks law and all those things come into play where we understand that, okay, these are the highest percentage potentials. Let’s be prepared for those and then not waste our time because again, we can all play the what if game or yeah, but game. We don’t have time for that, especially for moving forward. And I like that the way that you really shine a light on the idea of resiliency.
09:35
There’s a lot of people that wear it like this badge of honor and say, I’m resilient. And they justify that as a way to just keep banging their head up against the wall. There’s also people that mistakenly believe that because you’re resilient or I’m resilient, that that means that they can say whatever they want or try to abuse us. Like we’re at emotional or physical punching bag. And that justifies them to act in such a way. Again, that is, that is not the case. There’s a time to be smart. There’s a time to be strong.
10:04
There’s a time to step away. There’s a time to have the tactical pause and just get out of the way of this freight train or, you know, duck under this emotional drive by that this person has, whether it be chaos in their life, the ability to try to suck your energy or bring you, drag you into that. We can still have empathy, but the empathy that we have to have is for ourselves with our own boundaries to not allow ourselves to be victimized by that. And again, that’s because of intelligence. And the way that we get there is by.
10:32
being victimized by it a few times, making the mistake and saying, right, I didn’t like that. I didn’t like how that affected my life or the people around me. I still care about this person as a person, but I’m not going to get drugged down into it with them. Right. That’s so powerful. Right. And somehow if you don’t accept that abuse, you’re not resilient. You’re not tough enough. And it goes, wait a second. Why would that be? Because I choose not to get beat down.
10:59
How does that make me not resilient? And it’s that balance, right? We’ve got to start looking at, because there are times when we’re unhappy and things are unpleasant, certainly Ranger School. Ranger School was, but I recognized that the outcome was going to be better than the temporary pain I was going through. So it made sense. And there was certainly an outcome that I cost benefit analysis made total sense to me. There are people who quit Ranger School.
11:28
That cost benefit analysis didn’t make sense to them. And I can’t argue that they, for their experience, they were wrong. Right. Um, and I don’t look at them weaker for quitting. It just different path. And it’s that one, not having an absolute judge, right? So, so not being able to say like, well, you quit Ranger school. So you’re weak. No, you quit. You do quit Ranger school. Whole bunch of reasons why you could have done that different path than I did.
11:56
Does it make me better, worse, smarter, dumber? It’s just different. And I think that we have to kind of, we’re on our individual journeys and we’ve got to figure out what that looks like. And I think we’re really quick to judge someone else’s journey. I mean, I did, I did, right? I thought something of the guys who quit Ramco for a long time until I got to be much older and go, yeah, that’s not what it is. That’s…
12:25
man was I, you know, not only was it judgmental, but it tainted the value that I got from those individuals. Absolutely. And you’re like, I try to be as well, that whole idea of Bruce Lee absorbing what is useful, discarding what is useless and adding what is specifically your own. But Zen Buddhism is very much the sort of foundation. When did you sort of discover that path? When you said when you were younger in high school, I’m imagining that you may not have been a
12:55
I was not. I became a Buddhist after my suicide attempts. I really was struggling with, I was a Christian and I have no issue with Christianity at all. My experience with Christianity, I struggled with for a couple of different reasons. One, I really had a hard time when I would come back from combat deployments and everybody tell me what a good person I was and I was good, but I know that there’s a whole bunch of people overseas that think I’m evil and that didn’t jive with me, right?
13:24
I can’t just be good or I can’t just be evil. Like what, you know, what is this thing? And some of the responses that I got when I was vulnerable and became open about my suicide attempts from very Christian people who were very quick to tell me how selfish it was and very quick to talk to me about that. It affected me. And again, I know that that’s not only.
13:51
very good friends. Some of my best friends are Christians. Religion is religion, it’s whatever you believe. But I studied, I reread the Bible, I read the Quran, I looked at Taoism and Taoism. And I really, what I liked about Buddhism was things are, and we give them the value they have. And understanding that the value is a reflection as opposed to a perspective.
14:20
I view this as good, that doesn’t make it good. It means it’s a reflection of what I believe it to be. It doesn’t make that the perspective of everyone. And in the freedom of understanding that things are not good or bad, they just are. And then we give them value. I like that. And then the other piece was, it was about learning from your life, right? It was about learning from the things that happen in your life.
14:49
and being able to learn from events and apply different solutions in the future. And that appealed to me. And just the whole idea, it’s almost Buddhism, traditional Buddhism is almost like the anti-religion, right? Like, hey, you don’t need to go to temple. In fact, the more you go to temple, the less devout you are. And you don’t need to follow the teachings once you get to a certain point because they’re just the raft to help you get over the water.
15:18
I love that metaphor that that Siddhartha made. So to me, that’s it wasn’t put all your hope in this. It was just a good way to treat people. And I think, look, it’s very similar to Christianity, which is about treating people well, very similar to Judaism, which is about doing good for good sake. It’s similar to some parts of the Quran, which talk about, you know, how are we taking care of each other? So religion tends to be one of those things that separates people. And I guess they say I’m a.
15:47
I’m a Buddhist because it helps people put me in a box. And maybe because I don’t want to be in another box, I’ll just say, well, do this. I’ll be this. You’ll feel comfortable. I’m probably more comfortable in this box. But quite honestly, I believe in a creator. And beyond that, I’m very comfortable saying, I don’t know. And I think that’s a good example of how there’s a lot of hypocrisy in anything that’s organized by man, whether it be politically, whether it be.
16:16
religious and I’ve heard the same thing where people will say, Oh, this person that committed suicide, you know, it’s a, it’s a very selfish act, but I don’t think that they have the true pragmatic empathy to say, listen to this person at that moment in their life. Don’t you think that they have gone through all the scenarios? Don’t they think that they feel that there is no other answer? I mean, as you know, when I was injured, I would have taken my life. I absolutely would have. There’s not a doubt in my mind if I was physically able and I couldn’t even do that.
16:47
to imagine there would be some sort of philosophical or religious ideology that wanted to judge me for that and try to make me feel guilty for that when I already have all this other guilt, which is why I feel the way I do in the first place about having even contemplated suicide or even you in your experience. Again, that’s not what you need. You need somebody to one say, I’m so sorry that you got to this point. Again, let’s use logic and say, what has gotten us here? What makes you feel that there is no other option? And
17:15
especially in the veterans community. I mean, my God, even now with pandemic, even with what’s going on, this stuff is only escalating. And without the tools, without, and the thing is, so many people think that the tools that are requisite are on my part if I’m the person who has this feeling of depression, but the reality is there were tools that we all have to have as a community to be able to allow that person to exercise these things.
17:41
We all have to have that empathy. We all have to acknowledge that we’re not perfect. We all have to acknowledge that there has been a point in our lives where we’ve fallen down. And for a lot of people, the reason why they don’t want to fall down, we’ve talked about failure so much, is because of the negativity and the guilt associated with that. Again, the people with the squeaky clean ideas, even the fighters that have like a perfect fight record with no losses, those people usually are not fighting the top fighters because they want to be able to say that they’re undefeated. They want to say that they’re unbreakable.
18:07
And that in and of itself is their Achilles heel for all of these things that could allow them to go so much higher, so much farther, so much more tuning into those capacities that they have. If they’re able to do this from like with one arm behind their back, so to speak intellectually, how far could they go if they were willing to really commit truly to that place to really get in those areas where it is uncomfortable. But guess what? That’s how I’m supposed to be there.
18:32
Yeah, I mean, think of this. It’s the difference in philosophy. Like about the unbreakable brand is it’s not about I can ever be broken. I am unbreakable. If I broken and put myself back together and continue to move forward. Right. That’s what makes me unbreakable. The, the ability to never be broken. It’s kind of like, let’s look at, let’s go back to Buddhism for a second, which talks about, you know, being peaceful and not violent towards others. If I’m a wuss.
19:01
Right or if i’m like a 98 pound weakling and I go I choose not to hurt anybody or hurt anything Is that really the choice that you made or is that just where you are like you you can’t so you don’t So it’s not a choice. You’re just doing what comes natural It’s having the ability to cause violence to others and choosing not to That’s a choice. That’s deliberate. That’s thoughtful. That’s stepping and doing something by decision as opposed to well
19:31
you don’t really have much of a choice. If you’re a wuss, you can’t do anything. So I look at being unbreakable is not about not being able to ever be broken. That’s ludicrous. I mean, Victor Frankl, right? I mean, man serves for meaning. It’s about being broken and putting the pieces back together and moving forward and probably getting broken again and putting those pieces back together. And then you’re unbreakable because you continue to step up.
20:01
You continue to go forward. You continue to plow ahead. And maybe it’s in a different direction, slightly or whatever, but, but based on your journey and that, that to me, that’s about unbreakable. It’s not about always being the toughest, the hardest that it’s about. It’s about when, you know, you’re on your knees and you’re, you’re, you’re crying and you’re like, this absolutely sucks, but I put it all back together. And I go, all right.
20:31
I’m going to take another, and maybe there’s still tears in your eyes, but you take that step forward. And I think it’s a disservice to humanity if we think that unbreakable is never being broken because everybody’s going to break. And I think that’s beautifully stated. And I also believe that all these people that we see, especially the ones with all the false bravado in social media right now, it’s very easy to be, to act courageous when there’s no fear.
20:57
Right? Well, does Tony always tell us, right? Unless there’s fear, there’s no opportunity to actually be courageous. So it’s very easy to be brave when there’s nothing that can truly scare you. But that’s what’s so powerful to me. These people that talk about not, you know, you can’t break me or whatever it is. Those people haven’t actually pushed themselves to a point to where they even know what they’re capable of because they’re afraid of breaking. Whether they say it or not, I didn’t know how strong it was until I was completely broken until everything was taken from me.
21:26
At 40 years old, everybody else is like happy and kids and money and retirement and houses. And I’m like, I’ve given my life to this mission and it’s been taken from me. And as a man, my physical capacity is gone. Not what you got. And that’s the only way I could learn. And it was brutal and it was the darkest I’ve ever been. But had I not had that, there’s no way I could even tap into my potential.
21:54
I realized now I was only beginning to scratch the surface. And every day it’s a journey. Every day is difficult. Every day, you know, writing a book, trying to create something that’s going to help somebody, trying to do something to exercise our own demons so that it doesn’t consume us, to understand that that darkness is within everyone as a human being, as a society, especially a collection of human beings. How can we use these tools, these logic, these logical ideas of understanding?
22:24
being unbreakable, understanding empathy, understanding resilience, and how this is a dance that we all have to play as humans, that we’re in this together, that there are more commonalities than there are separations, and the separations that we have are idiosyncratic at best. And when we continue to just pile onto them, whether it be from a religious or political standpoint, you’re not helping anybody, you’re part of the problem. Again, you’re commander, commander’s intent, right? Everything that we do with that mission,
22:53
should be going that direction. But whether it be a business or a society or a marriage, if you guys don’t have the same mission, no matter what happens, you’re gonna get caught up butting heads and semantics in the process, unnecessarily creating friction where it doesn’t need to be there because we’re not able to have that litmus test that dictates this is where we’re going. All those rest of this bullshit can get pushed aside. Exactly.
23:17
How do we heal this divide in our country? Boy, if we could do that, it would be pretty square away. I think what we’re talking about is the beginning of it, right? Look, I think it’s about, we certainly can have strong ideas about things, and we can certainly have strong principles. But until we listen to each other and talk to each other, and I’m really tired of this, there’s a narrative like, we have to have hard conversations.
23:43
They’re only hard if we’re going at it adversarial. They’re not hard if we’re just learning from each other and we’re being curious. They’re not hard, they’re not uncomfortable. They’re just conversations. So I would like us to have conversations with each other about what we believe. And here’s the great thing. I don’t have to change my opinion. You can present data to me that’s good data and I interpret it one way, you interpret it another way.
24:13
I can still like you, I can still respect you, I can just disagree with you and say, you know what? That’s not really what works for me. And that’s why we have, you know, three branches of government that are supposed to identify those places in social contracts where we just can’t see eye to eye. And we come up with a way to create a social contract that says, all right, well, this is how we’re gonna do it. Since we can’t agree, this is how we’re gonna do it based on our rules. But we jump right to that.
24:42
Right. We just jump right to that. And I can’t think of how many times my opinion has been changed because I’ve just talked to somebody and I went, you know what? I never thought of it that way. That’s great. And it’s been changed both ways. I’ll never forget the guy, Mark Leaden, who talked to me about gender and how I could see, you know, at first I was like, yeah, it’s this way. And he’s like, well, isn’t it possible that the brain could think, I went,
25:11
Oh yeah, it is. Yes. Okay. Yes. Now my idea on gender is completely different. Now, going the other way, I had a very clear perspective on abortion. I thought I was pro-choice. And then I talked to somebody and went, ah, you know what? I can see in some cases, maybe this isn’t about choice. This is about a human life. And that doesn’t mean that I have weak principles or weak morals. It means that I’m able to think and go.
25:39
Some of this makes sense to me and some of this makes sense to me and Now how does this affect and this is the most important part? How does this affect my behavior? right, so With gender I don’t have to call you by your preferred pronouns. That’s a consideration thing Because of what I’ve learned I go, you know what if that makes somebody feel better I choose to do that don’t have to I choose to because I think it’s considerate
26:09
When it comes to abortion, I can think that people who choose to get abortion are still good people and still not like the idea of abortion. So I think that this idea of absolutes and this idea that you have to come down on one side of the fence or the other, otherwise there’s more relativism, is absolutely ludicrous because all morals, quite honestly, you and I have talked about this, can be relative depending on the perspective.
26:37
the reflection as opposed to the actual perspective. And we are allowed to, as thinking human beings, discuss these things. It doesn’t have to be hard. And it’s okay to go, you know what? Disagree. It doesn’t mean I think everything about you is stupid and bad, and just means we see it differently on this. And I think that’s the first step in the divide is let’s just talk. It doesn’t have to be hard. It’s only hard if we’re going at it as adversaries.
27:07
But if we’re going at it as curious human beings who value each other.
27:13
then I’ve never had a negative conversation with people who thought 180 degrees differently than I did. I just go, it’s funny. I have a friend who before the election, I said something like, hey, I saw you on there. He was doing some election stuff and he leans a different way than I do. He said, well, this is the most important election of our time. It’s about the future of our nation and who we are. And
27:41
I said, wow, so if I think differently than you do, I’m that, and you know me. And of the two of us, I’m the one who’s actually served. I’m not saying that makes me better or worse. I’m just saying that even though my actions have led that I believe in the country and what it stands for, if I vote this way, I’m anti-American. That’s ludicrous. The fact that we can have these discussions means we’re Americans. That’s why we fight for the country to have the… I don’t have to agree with you, but I’ll fight.
28:11
to the end for you to have the capacity to do it. That’s it. And I think also, you and I are great friends. If we wrote down a questionnaire and there were a hundred questions, there would eventually be something that we wouldn’t agree on. There would eventually be something that you would like that I don’t, whether it be you like mayonnaise and I like mustard, whatever it is. And if we wait till we get to that point where we check the box and all of a sudden, I don’t like you, or we can’t be friends, that defeats the purpose. And then the whole idea of…
28:39
It’s the different parts of us that make us capable to pivot. Again, in the body, if all my blood cells were red, I have no white blood cells to protect myself. If all my blood cells were white, I have no capacity to transport oxygen. I mean, those are very simple analogies, but again, that shows how we need to have these different ideas. We need to have these different viewpoints, but more importantly, we need to have this middle ground where we can be in a safe place to do this and even say at the beginning, listen.
29:06
And my idea of this, I would love this to this be as raw as it can. And I want to give you permission to just let me have it. And as long as that person is on the same page, then you can have an incredible conversation and uncover a lot of things and possibly get a lot of work accomplished. But like you were saying, if you have a person that comes in and it’s like, you know, we need to have hard conversations. Maybe I don’t feel like having a hard conversation right now. Maybe I have other stuff going on. Maybe I don’t have time for that. Maybe I just don’t have the compunction. I, whatever the case may be.
29:35
So the people that have that, like you said, this adversarial capacity of, you know, I’m going to go after this, I’m going to attack this, I’m not going to stand for this. In my opinion, in my experience, rather, the people that I’ve seen that have that are usually trying to grind an axe, but they’re projecting for a bunch of other things in another arena that they don’t want to face. And if that’s the case, and this gives them the ability to act out, then that’s okay. But it doesn’t mean that I allow you to do that, even though I’m resilient, even though I may have the strength to withstand it, I don’t need to.
30:04
in that way. That’s it. And I think that it sets me up when I hear, well, we need to have conversations. You know what? I don’t want to have any hard conversations with you because it should just be a conversation. You know, I’m not going to have any hard conversations with anybody. I’m just going to have conversations. Some of them are going to be maybe slightly more thoughtful than others. Some are going to be, hey, how you doing today? And some are going to be like, what do you think about this? But I also wonder what’s the desired agenda for the conversation?
30:35
Is it to change my mind or is it to share ideas? Because if you’re talking to win, you’re not really talking, you’re lecturing. And I don’t talk to win. I just, you know, I’ve got some ideas and I know that at any point in time somebody could say something and I’ll go, haha, alright, I like that. And it could change my opinion. And again, doesn’t mean I have a weak moral intellect. It’s not weakness to be able to go.
31:05
Wow. All right. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I like that. And sometimes you’ll say something, I go, I like that, but I still kind of feel this way. So, you know, maybe I’m not ready yet. So powerful. JC I could talk to you forever and I know you’ve got a busy schedule. So many people trying to work with you. Is there a place that our listeners can learn more about you, about your books, about what you’ve got going on about Unbreakable? Where would you send them? Yeah. So if you want to learn about Unbreakable,
31:34
go to your GNC, they’re in all GNC stores and you can go to GNC online. Pedr is our website and vetsandplayers.org is the nonprofit website. So any of those places. And then there is a link on Pedromas Leadership. You can go to Amazon, the books are available on Amazon, but I prefer you go to Pedromas Books with Hatteras Press. And there’s a link in Pedromas Leadership and I’ll make sure that I send you the link for it.
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that as well. Please do. And could you spell Patromos for us real quick? P-R-O-D-R-O-M-O-S. Prodromos. And again, we’ll have those links available on the show notes, but I just wanted to make sure that we get all that out there. But thank you so much. Any parting words for our listeners before I let you go? You know, every time we talk, I feel like I’m a better person. And I hope that when people listen to us talk, it helps them feel like they’re better people.
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I feel the exact same way. And in my opinion, you are the very definition of a warrior of the Buddha tradition. You have the capacity for violence yet you make room for the intelligence and the philosophical notion and the empathy to be vulnerable, to get stronger. And that’s what our society is missing a lot of. So thank you so much for your time, JV. Thank you for being that as well. And I think that’s why our conversations.
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or what they are is because this is what the world needs to be. Great. Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
