Kahran and Divya talk about authenticity, and get into discussing grace, trust and more.
This one is reminiscent of one of the earlier episodes of Thinking on Thinking where we talk in depth about the nuances of certain ideas.
Kahran and Divya talk about authenticity, and get into discussing grace, trust and more.
This one is reminiscent of one of the earlier episodes of Thinking on Thinking where we talk in depth about the nuances of certain ideas.
The voice I use on Instagram is different from Twitter, which is different from LinkedIn. Every digital space has its own gravitational pull on who you become.
The more I notice how I shift my voice across platforms, the more I notice it. It's like a metaphorical tie I can't stop tightening around my neck.
Hi, I'm Divya. Hi, I'm Karyn. And this is... Thinking. I'm thinking.
Welcome to episode 6 of season 5 of Thinking on Thinking. Today, Karyn and I talk about authenticity and all the different shapes it may take at work in social media, in relationships and more specifically with ourselves. And we get into some really deep discussion about trust and grace. We hope you enjoy.
Recently, I've been thinking about how, especially because I'm like slightly more active on Twitter now and I can like distinctly see the voice I would talk to people on Instagram is different from the voice I would use on Twitter, which is different from the voice I would use in LinkedIn. Like, it's almost like, you know, when you go to an academic setting, there is a certain
way you'd speak. Like last weekend when I was at I am Bangalore, I just like catch myself almost about to swear but not swear because I'm in like an academic setup. It is just like so weird. How is my brain keeping track of this information?
You know what I mean? Yes. I know exactly what you mean. I had an example in my life last night, which I will tell you in a second. But no, yeah, I think don't you feel like we've always done it in all contexts, right?
You've talked differently with your parents than you do with your siblings than you do with your friends. Correct. Except that like, I was just surprised to notice it that like it exists in the digital spaces context as well.
And it is really tight. Like even when I try to be more playful and more relaxed on LinkedIn, every fiber of my being doesn't want to be, it wants to be uptight and like, you know, have a tie that it can tighten around my neck. And I'm like, I never wear ties.
Why am I behaving like this? You know, like it's a metaphorical tie, but you get what I'm trying to say. Like, I have no idea. It's just like, and it's now one of those things that the more I notice it, the more I notice it.
Twitter to me feels like rage bait through and through. Like everything is supposed to aggravate. And I'm like, okay, I'm not going to write something that is aggravating because that's not my personality. But I just find myself framing things especially.
And it's also interesting. It doesn't happen when I write my bug logs on threads and just post them on Twitter. But if I open Twitter interface and I write something, I have to like re-edit it a few times just so that like it sounds a lot calmer and more chilled out, which would be more my vibe rather than being like, oh, everything sucks and the world sucks, which is more
Twitter vibe. This makes sense to me. But I would contend to you that I feel like spaces often have an expectation of behavior associated with them. Like the example I was thinking about was I was at this party and it was a queer space
and I was hanging out with these gay gentlemen. And at one point I called someone dude and he called me out. He was like, you know, the last time a gay man called me dude was like a decade ago. And I was like, that's so funny. It's like because it is he was right, right?
Like it's not something that normally comes out of my mouth when I'm with like queer men because there's just a certain way you talk and there's a certain way you interact. I mean, you'd be far more like when it calls upon a queen than you would be on duty. How do you refer to them? Yeah, I would just say there's a lot more appropriation of like, like feminine pronouns
and like characterizations when like queer men are together. Interesting. Dude or like man is like a very straight. It's also just like kind of something that I think maybe it would be like a straight passing kind of a vernacular.
I think because we were talking about something that I wouldn't normally be thinking about in those contexts, right? And so then it was just my mind went into a different place. And so anyway, that's what I was kind of thinking about. And I think there's an expectation of certain types of conversations or certain types
of behavior in certain contexts. And then with that, there's a vernacular. But I think about it in like queer spaces. I think also maybe in like religious spaces, there's probably a similar not that I've spent very much time in them.
I mean, I would imagine that that exists everywhere. Like there is a certain I think it is Paul Graham's essay about cities and how each city has its own voice. Like it'll try to certainly whisper it in your ear and you need to find a city that has the same voice sort of that you agree with in a certain sense.
I think he took example of like various US cities and like how SF sounds different from LA sounds different from New York. And like, you know, a certain kind of personality would fit right there. Like there is a certain way, for example, like in Bangalore in Hsr, you go to any cafe. There would be like five conversations happening, which are like startup
people talking to each other about some new idea. There will be three conversations happening about funding or finding a fund or like, you know, just running out of your fund or something like that. Like and like, you know, the remaining people would be like, oh, maybe I should get into the startup business, right?
Like it's all very start upy. And I'm sure that like, you know, if in New York you were going around in the Broadway area, it would be much more in the theater and like, you know, that musical vibe kind of a thing versus like in Mumbai, it's also slightly different because it's like a lot of people are doing a day gig, but then their dream
life is of becoming a musician or becoming a singer or becoming an actor. Right. And so they are like, you know, moonlighting as that particular thing. So there people have this double life kind of at least some people that I came across. I remember why I didn't really jive very well with me, but it
was just interesting. So I, and that's what I mean. Like I understand physical spaces having that, but it was just so strange to notice how strongly it impacted like in a digital space because see, if I go from Bangalore to Delhi, there is still like a transition period, but on my phone moving
between LinkedIn and Instagram is like, you know, half a second. I think it's very telling though, that you said that when you look at Twitter first, that's when your behavior changes, because I think that's what causes you to context switch. Right. Like when you've written the post and then you go to post it without having
first switched into that context, then it doesn't have the same impact. No, no, it's also because threads is a lot more chilled out. What if you wrote the post before you went on the platform? I wonder if it would feel different actually. That's a good question.
Like if we use tweet deck or something, right? Like some, or if I use just notion and copy paste with the thing. Well, does it feel more or less authentic? I don't know. See, this is where it's strange.
Instagram doesn't feel less authentic to me or at least the way I use it. Like whatever my little corner of Instagram is to me, it feels authentic. Right. Like there is a good line between expression and privacy and I share what I want to share, but in the voice that I want to share.
Twitter and LinkedIn, I don't think feel as authentic. I'm trying to figure out how to make Twitter feel slightly more real to my voice. LinkedIn, I'm like, I wonder if it's going to be an uphill battle. Do you feel like there's corners of LinkedIn in the way that there's like corners of Instagram or corners of Twitter?
You wonder about that. Have you experienced it? I don't know if I do. Right. I think LinkedIn has more of this notion that we are all in conversation on certain
topics versus you're in conversation with certain people about topics. Whereas I think Twitter and Instagram more feel like the other notion, right? You're in conversation with certain people about a multitude of topics. Whereas LinkedIn to me more feels like talking about several, a few topics, but across everyone.
That is so interesting because yeah, you are onto something here because that's what LinkedIn feels like. There are certain tones that are okay. There are certain topics that are okay, but don't talk about XYZ here or don't talk about ABC in these ways here.
And like it just feels inappropriate. Like even if you're congratulating someone, right? Like on Twitter or like Instagram, you might say, yes, Queen. And like, oh my God, fire emoji, fire emoji, fire emoji. That reaction is not going to be the one that one gives on LinkedIn.
It's going to be like clapping hands. Great. Congratulations, Kahran, on getting the new job. We are so excited for you. Instead of being like, you know, on Twitter, like, oh my God, so excited.
Right? Like, and it's just interesting. And like, you wouldn't rant really, right? You would only rant with a purpose on LinkedIn, but just to be like, oh, I had a bad day is just, it wouldn't feel appropriate.
Like you'd want to explain why you had a bad day. There needs to be a lesson or a moral or something, right? There, otherwise, there would just be like, why are you doing this? So I wonder in this case, there is the platform and there is the people who are coming on the platform for a particular use case or with a particular thought in
mind, where do you think these norms of the particular platform come from? So I think that the algorithmic choices actually make a big difference here, right? So in LinkedIn, there's a lot more consolidation of ideas around topics where it will pull from industry leaders and it will pull from people you know, but there's a lot of consolidation around this is a topic that people are talking
about, here's different perspectives on it. Whereas if you look at other platforms, Twitter doesn't really do that kind of consolidation at all, unless you go seeking out a certain topic. And then Facebook kind of would or Instagram kind of would a little bit, right? Sometimes it'll group if it senses that you're into something at that moment.
But it's not about that, right? It's about showing you what your friends and people you follow and maybe people that Facebook or whatever algorithm thinks you might like, but really on singular pieces of content, we think you might like this, we think you might engage with this and here are similar things you might engage with from a feeling point
of view almost much less from a cognitive point of view. And I think that LinkedIn has gone this cognitive point of view in its grouping. And because of that, it just encourages a different kind of thinking and behavior. It's less trying to connect with you emotionally. Sometimes cognitively emotionally, right?
Sometimes people write these like heart wrenching stories, but they still kind of engage with you cognitively first and then they connect with you emotionally. Whereas I think when I look at the other platforms, it's much more of a emotional connection first, which drives us in kind of behavior. And I would argue that emotional connection first comes from algorithmic choices
about how content is group displayed and promoted to you prioritized. That is so interesting. So I was thinking maybe I could write an article about it, but I think you should write an article about this. No, because like that feels like a very good point.
It's also making me think of like, if I were to think about how the graph search works like that Facebook did, right? And how they have done the connections. Remind me, by the way, how they did the connections. I forgot it's been a long time.
It's kind of like, you know, searching through a web by closest path between two web points rather than thinking about a database. Every interaction is a note or every piece of content is a person is a person is a note. Exactly. So in case of Facebook, every person is a node.
And I wonder if like, you know, in case of LinkedIn, from what you are saying, like it's more like it's treating rather philosophically, it's treating each idea as a node or each type of idea as a node rather than it being about, like, you know, oh, these are the people and this person. So even like people who become LinkedIn influencers, they become influencers
because, oh, this person talks about product management with AI, right? Like they don't become a celebrity just because they are a celebrity. It's LinkedIn influencer for a particular very niche topic. But it also made me think of there was this one tweet that I read. Just this person was like, I want somebody to recommend me competent spawn movies
where all the characters are very competent. They are smart. They use their brains to solve problems. And there is nothing idiotic. Nobody runs after the monster, you know, in the dark without any resources or
something like that. But it was very interesting because like one, I found the term very interesting. Like there is a specific kind of K drama that my sister and I both like, which you can actually put in the competence bond, but it's more like hard work. Like, yes, we can do it.
Like we call it gambateshows. Gambatesh the Japanese word for yes, you can get it. Right. Like we just like that a lot, but it made me think of that. But also I feel like it's almost like LinkedIn is competence porn made social media.
Everybody's like so busy talking about what makes them competent. Yeah, that's really interesting. It makes me wonder a little bit about how that content would change the training for something like an LLM because it's a certain flavor of content, right? And it's actually a lot of new idea generation or at least commentary on previous ideas,
which if you were trying to train an LLM on how to be quote unquote creative or at least still kind of like push ideas forward, it might be an interesting place to use as a training repository, probably. Who knows, Microsoft is not really doing it. But to your previous question of authenticity, I don't know.
It also made me think of like when I was examining my feelings about all of these platforms, it also made me think of am I authentic in any of them? Like to some extent, there is that existential question also, right? Like where if somebody asks you, do people know the real you? Sometimes your brain will be like, but do I know the real me?
Does anybody know the real me? Do you feel like you're authentic? Well, that's what I was about to say that in my mind, at least, I think it's related to that question we were talking about before we started recording, which was when are you deciding between what you want to do and when are you
deciding between what you perceive as available to you? And I think it's an interesting question. And for me, it was coming up more in the terms of relationships, where how much am I thinking about what is it that I want right now versus what is it that is available to me from this other person?
And I'm going to decide on my options based on that. Being able to answer that question for yourself outside of the questions of what is available or what are the restrictions of this moment, I think is a lot of that question of authenticity. It's interesting.
So like recently, my therapist and I have been like, you know, working a lot on random things like this look like random things, but what it has sort of come together into is like this feeling of I have a very good measure of how I am feeling where I am at emotionally, psychologically, in terms of my energy reserves, in terms of everything else, like at any given moment, I just have a
much better idea of where I'm at. I think that has actually given a lot larger sense of authenticity and being true to myself, right? It's like, I think a couple of sessions back, she gave this example of either you can have this concept of this is who I am supposed to be.
And you can like, you know, piece it together, seeing all the traits that you like best in the world. And you're like, okay, this is what I'm supposed to drive towards. It's very interesting because this is a metaphor that a lot of really smart people around me have used, that I looked at all of the people around me found their best
qualities and I made this Uber Munch, right? And she's like, sure, you can walk towards it and that can be a target. But like authenticity is also about being able to see where you are at right now. And like being fully attuned to that as well. It's interesting that you say that, like, you know, it's for you, it also shows up
as like, you know, how attuned to your own needs are you, regardless of the context that you are in? Yeah, I was thinking a little bit more about the first part of what you said. And I have to reconcile it with the second part. But I think in the first part of what you were just saying, it was really interesting
to me because I was thinking about it in terms of our podcast. And what is it that I've been able to do to try and like help them be in an authentic space? And I feel like you can sometimes suss out, like there's certain things that people are able to speak from that space more easily. So for me, I think like personal finance, maybe strangely, is a place that I can speak
from very authentically, because it's very important to me to kind of share that knowledge. And so when I speak about it, I like to be able to speak from a place that I feel very comfortable. And to me, that's a place that I feel very authentic. And then I think if you're in that mindset, sometimes you can kind of lead people from there to things that they feel maybe a little more insecure about.
But because they're already in this, like speaking from this space, it's easier. So I was just thinking about that. That sounded like maybe I misinterpreted what you were saying a little bit. But when you're a near therapist or kind of like working through it, you're almost like starting from this place of like, where do you feel the most comfortable
in who you are and kind of expanding from there? Did I reach with my read a little bit? No, actually, it's a lot more. Well, in some ways, but not exactly. So see here, you are doing the like as the host, you are doing the work of looking out
for what is feeling authentic and what is sounding authentic. And then you are guiding them towards this thing. And she is sort of like helping me feel what is authentic. Right. So like separate the expectations from the experience. Because with you, for example, I feel like you can speak very easily,
authentically about yourself professionally, right? Being able to talk about the types of work you do and being able to talk, especially I think when you're you're explaining something, right? When you're breaking down a problem and you're helping someone think about how can this be done, you're able to kind of just speak from this place.
That's very, very true, right? You're not you're not looking at saying, how is this information going to be interpreted or how is this person going to perceive what I'm saying or perceive me because of what I'm saying, right? Like, you know, those vibes don't come up at all.
So I was kind of curious where I feel like I wonder, do you feel like you would be able to, I don't know, let's say you and your therapist were talking like in that space. Do you think it would be easier to then talk about things that you feel less certain about? Oh, so she's not helping me talk about those things.
She's helping me stay authentic in my life. So it's an experience of authenticity rather than an experience of expectation and not about talking. So like my therapist is really not about talking as much. She like picks up things from very small amounts of data.
And then she's much more about go do this homework of implementing it in the rest of your life, right? But this is also interesting because if you think about, if there is a recency bias of being more authentic while talking about something, it definitely would be easier to talk about something else as well.
But at least I have noticed with myself or even the people that we have interviewed that like there are certain things where either people become rehearsed or they become shut down. Once somebody shuts down, it's really hard to sort of push them out of it, which is the opposite, right?
So there's a recency bias, I would argue for authenticity, but also a recency bias for the opposite, which is like you've been in a space where you didn't feel authentic or you felt this is a place where you had a rehearsed answer and you needed to give that answer. And then you're into this rehearsed part of your mind.
I wonder if it is just that because I also feel like sometimes you have a harder line around what you would allow yourself to experience. So like, for example, what's what's accessible to you is what you're kind of saying, right? Yeah, if you have a very fixed idea of like, what am I supposed to
allow to do? It's very hard for somebody else to change it up. And the moment you would approach that thing, you can easily clamp up. And I think it's also dependent from person to person. Like there are some people where talking to them 10, 15 minutes about nothing.
They would very easily just like, you know, keep talking about stuff. And then eventually you can just go into more substantive conversations and that tone sort of like stays. There are other people where like, you know, maybe until you go in deep, they can't talk more deeply about stuff.
But the moment you start diving in, they can actually be authentic and they can give their true readings on things and true thoughts. Like I feel like I'm also that kind of person where like, you know, once you actually start asking me deep questions, I find it very easy to give an authentic answer to something.
But I also feel like there are other people for whom it's really difficult to access. I also don't know if I agree with your characterization fully because I was just thinking about some of our guests. So if I just think about some of the people that I interviewed, one of my friends early in the season was a poet and I feel like we started off talking
about her poetry and it was really interesting because I think and to be fair, poetry is a place that you have to kind of speak from some authenticity, especially if you're talking about your own poetry. But I think then we talked a lot about examples in ways that they illustrated different choices she had made.
So I think at one point she was talking about how she decided to call herself an ocean poet and what does that mean? Right. What does that mean to her and how does that reflect her interest? It was just interesting how she told stories around it.
But as I think about maybe one of the first interviews I did, there I feel like another great friend of mine, she and her wife started this underwear company. And we ended up talking a lot about her, the stories of her life in a way that it was just about the stories and they were incredible stories and they were so interesting.
But we kind of went away from, just asking her, how did those shape who you are? And I think it's interesting how both were authentic, but they were different flavors and I don't know how to characterize what exactly that difference is. But to me, it still feels like you're speaking from an authentic place, but whether it's revealing more about who you are and why you make the choices you
make, I don't know if I would call that authenticity or not. Maybe it is authenticity. It's just like the level of meaning that you're trying to put into the information that you're sharing. I don't disagree with that.
But I don't know, have you like had those interviews where you felt like afterwards, oh, there was more here and I couldn't dig deep enough. That's exactly how I felt with that interview. I think that maybe authenticity is not the right word for me, like, you know, for what I'm trying to get at, but it's that, that like, are you able to dive
into a place that doesn't see the light of the sun very often? I don't know. In the queer community, I feel like we talk about showing up with your full self. Right. And I think that there's some aspect of that to me a little bit, right?
It's like, how much are you feeling comfortable to kind of be everything you want to be? Yeah, I want to ask you this thing. I don't know if you have experienced it, but I have felt it. Even though I'm not as embedded in the queer community as you are, like far,
probably we have like two orders of magnitude difference between us. But I've also felt like there is an expectation of a certain kind of performance that would certify that you are a queer person. And I'm like, I cannot embody that performance at all. Like that just does not feel like me.
It's like how Hannah Gadsby says in the net, where do the quiet gays go? And I'm not a quiet person, but I think I am a quiet gay in a certain sense. And it just feels like I just can't be that person in those groups. And so my full self is not welcome here because my full self does not overlap with people's expectation of what a full self would be.
I hear you on that. And I think so it's interesting about a decade or so ago, I was really into the notion of making a queer venue or queer space because I felt like there weren't enough variations in them. Right.
Like I wanted a space that would be fun to just go hang out and you wouldn't necessarily have to like dance or have really loud music. And I think what's interesting to me, at least in New York, and I think New York is maybe a little bit ahead on these things, is that there has been this explosion of queer spaces in the last decade.
Right. The one of the parties I went to for Pride was at a place called House of Yes. And House of Yes is usually queer women, mostly there. It's very different. The vibe, like no one is really touching when they're dancing.
Like everyone has space between them. The music is like often soul based. And like there's just lots of different kinds of music. Right. It's not necessarily these like thumping beats coming at you.
It's more chill. But a big part of the venue is outside. There's like a whole space that you can get food while you're there. Right. Like there's just people are very friendly and people are kind of doing what they want.
There's not this like by way of contrast, maybe I would contrast with a lot of the venues that are closer to me, which are just really designed for gay men. And when you go, there's a lot of half naked men. There's kind of this expectation you're going to be very fit. You're going to be like rubbing against people and you have to kind of be in that
mood and want to do that. I think that there had been this kind of consolidation towards that sort of vibe. And I think that happens initially because a lot of the drivers of partying, I think initially in the queer community can be gay men. But as more people come out and become more accepted with them,
I think there's more creation of different kinds of spaces. I think so, at least looking at New York as an example. It's happened a little bit in Seattle and then I think about Bangalore or think about venues in India. I don't think it's happened as much.
Those are still mostly very party centric venues. These kind of ideas that there might be spaces that are queer, but are more to chill and they're more even designed for like this kind of Gen Z crowd, which is like maybe queer, maybe like just having a good time. Maybe they don't care about labels.
I don't know. I guess there's a long way of saying that I hear you. I think that there may be hope in creating spaces that do feel more authentic or more accepting to more kinds of queer people, but I don't know if they fully exist today. Okay, going back to the original thing.
Yes. Is there a particular definition of authenticity or fullness or like, you know, what it means to be a particular kind of person? Because like even how I described authenticity is like, oh, there needs to be this feeling of we have gone in deep where the sun doesn't shine.
Things that like, you know, don't see the light of day normally. And I don't know, right? Like maybe somebody doesn't have that. It's hard for me to believe it personally, that like people don't have parts of their psyche and parts of their thoughts that they don't share with anybody.
And I would like to know those thoughts. But I wonder if there are people who don't have that. I changed therapists a few months ago and I kind of had trouble getting into it with my new therapist. Right.
I just felt weird a lot of the times about sharing things. And she told me something, which is like, you know, we don't know each other really. Right. It's going to take a while to build trust. And once you build trust, that's when you start to feel more comfortable
sharing kind of those parts of yourself that you feel maybe more ashamed of or more uncertain about. So I don't know. I think to me, I agree with you. And I think oftentimes it is a question of trust.
Right. It's a kind of a question of like, how much do you feel safe with this person to kind of share those parts of you? And some people just have a higher trust bar. And of course, some people, I think also bring more trust to situations. I think you and I have been blessed to kind of be people who do bring a lot of trust to
situations. So people do feel comfortable with us. Some people started negative, you know, or just having a day where they don't feel very in a place that very trusting. That's so interesting that you phrased it like that because it's almost like
both parties can bring trust to the table. I think so. I've always thought of trust as a personal, like it's a personal resource. So I bring my trust and you have to bring your trust. So it's interesting to think about it as like a communal resource.
Oh, no, it's it's a bill. It's I totally think it's bill. I think you have a starting place of how trusting you are. Right. But then the trust in a relationship, I think a hundred percent is built. I have some new friends I've made in the last few months.
And yeah, it's been really interesting to realize, like how easily when trust hasn't been built on a really strong or long foundation, where like small things can kind of just rock it, right? We were like, oh, what did that mean? Was there an implication to this?
Whereas with people where you have a history, where you have built trust, you're like, oh, this person was tired, right? They were being a dick because they're having a bad day, not because this relationship isn't what I thought it was. How interesting.
And that last part, I added some other thoughts in there that are not just about trust. I think part of it is also about, I don't know, how stable you feel in relationships generally and how reactive you kind of are to things, right? How much do you take in new information and allow that to kind of shift your worldview versus how much do you kind of have a solidified sense or model?
And then you kind of use that information as a small input. So recently I've been thinking about this idea of giving grace and like how much grace do you want to give to somebody, including yourself? And it feels like what you are saying is like trust is a big factor in how much grace you're going to give to somebody in a relationship.
But then so is longevity and like the amount of information you have and the amount of headspace you might have and like how many repeated behavior patterns you might know from this person. And like, you know how they behave, there is some sense of security, right? Like there are a lot of other things.
And that just made me think about how much grace is required to be authentic. Being willing to give yourself grace. Even if I show up with whatever I want to show up with, whatever are the consequences I would have the ability to absorb them. Say a little more when you say grace, how you're thinking about it.
And right here. So like, let's say if, you know, we start a conversation and you say that you have a grumpy face, let's take an example, right? The chances that after so many years of knowing you, my brain goes into you've had a bad day versus you don't want to talk to me.
I'm going to think much more on the side of you had a bad day. But if I meet somebody new and they have a grumpy face while talking to me, I'm going to imagine that they don't want to talk to me, right? So like the relationship bears most of the load while on the other one, like I can take offload the load of any negative affect from the relationship because
I'm like, oh, I have information I can give grace. And with extension, I'm seeing authenticity is about relationship between me and me. So like experience of self and the observer self. Does that make sense?
So when you're saying grace here, you're more saying almost tolerance or forgiveness. Yeah, I don't mean grace in the religious sense. Oh, no, no, I didn't think that I was having a buffer. If that feels like a less loaded word.
Yeah, I guess I was thinking about it in terms of people who like do things with grace, which I think is a different. Not that, right? Not poise. Yeah.
I guess I was thinking a little bit about the poise aspect of grace, because I think there is authenticity in that, right? It's this willingness to kind of do that last 5% or 10% to get it to that final point of high value or high quality that no one cares about except for yourself.
And I think it kind of to me, in that sense of grace, there is that notion. But now let me think about it how you are saying. Hmm. It's interesting because grace, I feel, is actually not as much a relationship thing in my mind.
I think it's much more of a capacity that you bring to situations. It's like how much resilience do you have in that moment for things that might be jarring for you or might be different or might be unexpected? How interesting. Grace is like, I would say 90% relational to me.
How? Right? Because if you had a bad day, it doesn't really have to do with that relationship. Of course. But like their trust would also like, you know, be affected is how I'm going to put it.
I think you're saying from the other person's side, I'm saying for you yourself. So let's say I show up after having a bad day and then you are very short with me for some reason, right? And, you know, maybe there was something we were supposed to do or something has fallen behind, right?
And my ability to kind of normally I can just kind of like, oh, except if you have a little bit, she has a lot of work going on or something. But maybe on that day, because I was very tired or whatnot, right? I didn't have that much buffer. I didn't have that much ability to kind of like approach the situation with
grace, even though we have so much trust in our relationship. So this is so interesting that you are saying approaching a relationship with grace or approaching a situation with grace. While I am saying giving grace to the other person, I think we're using the same word for two different things.
I think we're talking from different actors point of view, but go on. Go on and finish with that. So for me, in this case, how should I say, like your tolerance and your resilience to a certain like behavior would vary. Like on a day to day basis, depending on like, you know, like for example,
today I'm sleep deprived. I'm tired. So like my voice is a little bit croaky and like, you know, similarly, I'm sure that like, you know, if I try to get myself to work, I'll become cranky as well. But that is different from like the security I might feel with a certain
person and how likely my mind is to go into doomsday scenario, whether about the relationship or about the person. So for example, I am very unwilling to give grace to my ex-partners in many cases, especially the ones who have been like mean to me, and it has nothing to do with how I'm feeling at the day.
I might actually be more kinder to a random stranger that I bump on the street and I might be like, I'm so sorry, let me help you if I drop something off yours, even if I am having a bad day. Right. But like my ex-partners can find me on a great day and I still will not feel
particularly generous towards them. I might contend that there's a trust level, right? So there's been like really an erosion of trust in that situation. And then you have an ability with your, you know, your personal grace quota to kind of raise that situation.
But if the relationship has a trust brometer and that trust brometer is so low, then it doesn't matter how much grace you can kind of bring to the situation and what capacity you have that day because the relationship has starting from such a poor place. That's a fair thing.
Except that, like, you know, we are thinking about it oppositely. I know. I am thinking that, like, you know, I'm a very trusting person or like, you know, my baseline of kindness is very high, but like, I just cannot give the grace to the person that they would require.
So like, I can't be bothered to put the effort. Being nice to people can sometimes be emotional labor, even if it comes naturally to you. I'm not saying that being mean to people is also not labor. Some people choose to do it, but like, that's also labor. Like sometimes, you know, apathy is the easiest path.
At least that's how I experience it. If we were to think about podcast and interviewing, we could just ask people questions and they could give whatever answers, right? Like most people that we talk to, they are professionals. They have like, you know, had these conversations many times, right?
Like they could just say, even your friend who was a poet, she has probably had those conversations about her poetry many times. You could just do the quote and quote bare minimum and have like an apathetic affect towards going deeper or trying to find more meaning, right? Like this job of doing meaning making with another person is a lot of work.
I think like that's the space that I'm sort of like thinking from. Do you feel like it's a similar space as the motivation or work involved with helping someone grow, right? And giving them feedback and yeah. And you feel like there's you have to have a high level of trust in that
relationship in order to want to help someone grow. Is that a fair extension? Trust in the person, not in the relationship. And a certain sense. I don't know how exactly to explain the difference, but it's like I work with
my sister, not because she's my sister, but because she is who she is. And I trust her abilities. Oh, I see. That makes sense because a relationship can have many different angles to it. So it's not really the relationship.
It's trust in that person's ability or trust in that person in that moment. The erosion can happen on relationship lines, though. I was thinking about how I definitely have relationships where I can still bring a lot of grace to them and have a lot of tolerance and forgiveness, but I won't necessarily invest in giving feedback anymore.
So I just don't care enough, right? It's like two, it's I feel apathetic about it, right? It's like, it's fine. It's going to take too much energy from me. And so I was thinking about it in that way.
If I feel that way, am I coming around to your notion that the trust is the thing in the relationship of the grace is the quota? I wonder about that. Like it's interesting. We were like, we started from authenticity and we went into trust
in grace and the difference between these. Like it's reminding me of one of our old episodes that we did between kindness and niceness. Like today's episode had very much that flavor. Yeah.
And but I don't know if I feel like they're really that separate because I think in order to show up authentically, you have to kind of have trust in yourself and trust in the situation and also be able to kind of whether we want to call it grace or like buffer buffer. But I think even it's something else.
It's like, it's kind of this like tolerance for the world, I think. I'm going to show up how I want to, regardless of how things are going to shift because of that, right? Even if that maybe hurts these relationships or hurts these situations, I have trust in maybe my ability to kind of repair them.
That is so interesting because and this has been like a long time since I've ever talked to anybody about it and we should definitely do a different episode on this. But I've always had this like notion of there are people who live their lives by hostile world hypothesis, apathetic world hypothesis or support a world hypothesis. Like the world is out to get me.
It doesn't care or like, you know, universe is behind me. Oh, I can definitely see that as I was just thinking about some of the people I met over the course of pride. There's like people who definitely fall into all three of those camps. And you can tell just from how the way they dress up and the way they behave
and the way they walk in the streets. It would be like really, it's been a while since I've thought about it. But like, it would be interesting to discuss it. Yeah, it reminds me of something I realized is I will often have this soundtrack in my head a little bit of like wondering what people are thinking of me
when I'm walking on the streets in New York. And I've been trying to move it a little bit to be like, oh, this part of my brain. You can also just think about those people, right? We don't have to take it to what are those people thinking about me? They'd be like, what are the things they're wearing?
What are the choices that are being exhibited by the things they're marrying and the way they're moving and whatnot? So it's interesting because I've been cognizant of myself and then constantly also like other people, right? You can tell when people notice other people, right?
When people say hi to their friends versus they always are like, you know, walking and not looking around. And it's just a different way of thinking about how is the world going to affect me and how are people going to interact when I am being, I don't know, which one is more authentic?
Is it authentic to be like in your own world or is it authentic to kind of be present with other people? Or is that just both are authentic depending on who you are? The music is by Akshay Ramu Halli of BTRPT Music. Editing is by Beatnik.