A (0:00)

How's it going? A number one chill spot on the Internet. An audio experience. In hindsight, feeling good. I got this like little reishi mushroom tea this morning and very strong. It's, it's, it's very potent and I'm feeling good. I'm actually back in my studio. It's the first time I've been here in two weeks. Wow, two weeks. But it's good because school just started again. So you know, my daughter is now in her last year of grade 12. Crazy. I have a child who is in grade. Not a child, a teenager who was in grade 12. Man, most people who meet me think my daughter is my sister. That happened to me like a week ago. You know, we're grabbing some like bubble tea and the girl at the counter, like every time I walk in she's like heinz, how you doing? Oh my God. Like she's very friendly, she's very good. Energy. I love that. I love those little moments throughout the day like when you just, just sharing like spontaneous energy with you know, the people you see. You know I, a long time ago I made an intention that, you know, man, like I go to the same grocery stores, the same markets and I'm often, you know, standing there in front of the same people like, like create micro connections with these people and it actually really does a lot for my life. You know, I just love walking around my neighborhood and just having those conversations and you know, walking in and someone putting like, hey, how you been? I'm like, how you been? It's like, oh, I love, man, I love the new earrings. You know, just good energy. But the, the girl working at the bubble tea place, she legit thought my daughter was my sister. She's like, no way. How old are you? Well, I was like, I, I have my daughter really young. I'm not going to talk about it. You know what I'm saying? Even my daughter, she's always like, yo. All my friends, like their parents are like like in their 50s and 40s and 60s. I'm like, hey, we, we, we, we a young little duo. It's feeling good. But we hear back in the studio because she's in her final year at grade 12, so my studio is actually right by her school. And so since I moved into the city, downtown Vancouver, my studio is actually, it's a little bit of a ways, it's like 40 minute drive so I find it hard to get here sometimes. But now that she's in school, you know, I drive her to school every day. So we locked in Expect the podcast to be consistent. I know I've said that before, but don't worry, don't worry. We. We. We getting into a bit. Beautiful rhythm these days. Beautiful motion, you understand? Everything is coming together. Everything is how it should be. Nothing is in your way. Everything is on the way. You know, lately there's a phrase that has been bothering me. It just hasn't been sitting right with me. I'm only human. I'm only human. I'm only human. I'm only human. What do you want? Just human, you know, like, I get the intention behind it. I understand the graciousness in those words, the softness we offer ourselves when we fall short, as we should. You know, we say when we've made a few mistakes, we've been blindsided, when our best intentions didn't line up with our actions. I know we all been there. I've been there. You've been there. When we're disappointed in ourselves, when we feel guilty for not living up to some invisible standard of perfection. And then we, like, sigh, we shrug, and we're like, I'm only human. And yes, it is true. But we can be so hard on ourselves. Can we? We truly do hold ourselves sometimes to these illusions of flawlessness. Flawlessness. Flawlessness. We compare ourselves endlessly. Oh, my God. I saw myself doing that this morning. Beautiful morning. And then I was reading something and someone was sharing a story of this business they launched, and I was like, man, that's something I would love to do. They already did it by that. And I just found myself in this, like, cycle of comparison, and I grabbed my. And I say, focus on your own path. Your path is beautiful. Every failure that you have experienced, that you have been through. And those failures, they were immersive experiences, aren't they? You feel them. We hold them dear in our hearts, sometimes to regret. But no, those failures, we learn. We educate ourselves, we learn, we refine ourselves. The law of refinement. And sometimes when we feel that regret, it's good because we feel it. So we don't repeat those patterns of pain again. Understand? And then we come back to I'm only human. But it's not the phrase itself that bothers me. No, because I agree with it. Yeah, we are only human. But it's the tone that's often expressed through it. You know, I'm a firm believer in how we say something is just as important in what we say. You know, I say things all the time on this podcast in hindsight that you already know. But it's the way I say it that allows you to remember it. It's the tone, it's the intention, it's the cadence, the way we speak. Right? It's important. The power is in the tongue. If you asked a friend or a loved one or a family member out to like a beautiful dinner experience that you prepared and planned with intention and thought and care, a beautiful night on the town, and you ask somebody you know to join you and really you're doing this for them and they're just like, yeah, sure, yeah, whatever they said, yeah. But the lack of enthusiasm or curiosity, it just wouldn't sit right with you. Right. We communicate in many different ways. Body language, tone, frequency, words. And the frequency behind I'm only human sometimes seems to be used as a way to shrink ourselves. As if being human is a flaw, as if it's like something less than or as if the very thing we are, the very miracle of our own experience, is just an excuse. To be human is to feel the entire range of existence, to experience the full spectrum. To be joyful, to be devastated, to be angry, to be forgiving, to be lost and to be fully present. To be broken and then to rebuild again. It's a full experience, raw, powerful, and unfiltered. I believe to be human is to fall down and rise back up again. To imagine a better future, not just for ourselves, but the cool thing is for the generations to come. We are all benefiting from the sacrifices of millions before us who use their hands, you know, their voices, their energy to pull a better vision for the world into reality. We are the only beings, as far as we know it, who can reflect on our own existence, who can look in the mirror and ask, like, yo, who am I? Why am I here? What am I capable of? Self exploration is so important. Make sure you do it. Spend time with self. Silence. Let it breathe. Let it pour into you. People will displace sometimes the ugliest of behavior to even the ones they love out of, like, anger or jealousy. Or they may do something extremely petty and then just write it off as like, I'm just human. That's just how I am. You know, lately there's actually been on the Internet, like, some controversy around a woman named Sadia Khan. And I think she gained, like a lot of popularity on her advice into like, dating and specifically speaking into like, what men think and want. Now. I don't like dunking on people. I don't. If y' all notice, I like. I just don't do it. I don't talk about other People, you know, like jumping, jumping into drama to score points or views. It's just not what I do or not what I like to do. So I'm not going to get into the details of, you know, whatever her controversy is or why people are claiming for her to be a fraud. But what caught my attention, her behavior to the backlash. Man, she was like hurling insults, personal attacks to everyone who were in her comment section, just crashing out on them, just like full out war, like high school drama type of stuff. Something you would think a psychologist would be able to rise above because that's what she claims to be, a psychologist. And then there's this Canadian YouTuber named Abba who interviewed her and asked her about this and she said, that's just my nature. Ask my husband. I get very angry and then I get very ugly and I attack. It's just who I am. That's just how I've always been. And that right there, that right there is what I find the issue with when we accept and proclaim, that's just how I am. I'm just human. So I fall victim to my lowest ways. And I'm like, no, why normalize your lowest behaviors as if it's your standard? This is a disservice to what being human is. I think many of us have the wrong view of what being human is. You know, I know we get a, A bad reputation, the human race. And like, you know, you hear it, Humans are a plague. Humans are destroying the earth. Humans are selfish, greedy, destructive. And I just don't see it that way. Although, yes, those things are true. I see humanity as like cosmic teenagers. And like this whole timeline of the universe, we're still very young, still awkward, still trying to figure things out. You know, many teenagers, when they hit an age, they start to test the limits, they start to rebel. You know, some of them, they start to smell, you know, and they think they know it all and they just attempt dumb. You know, we all been there. And human beings, I believe, like the collective is kind of like in that same state, you know, like we developed nuclear bombs and blue up and then we're like, oh, okay, maybe this isn't so good after all. It's literally kind of like a kid who puts their finger in the electric socket, you know, Humanity, yeah, we're stumbling, we're making mistakes. But what else does a teenager do when they're growing up? They try, they fall, they learn, and they mature as they get better. So it's not I'm just human, it's I'M human. I like to look at how far we have come already. Like, think. Think about it. Travel back, like 150 years. That's not even a blink in cosmic time. And all of the universe is literally. It's not even a blink. We were riding horses then taking steam trains, like pushing bicycles. If you try to explain FaceTime to your great great grandmother, she would have looked at you like you lost your mind. Like you're delving into witchcraft or something like that. We went from horses to space travel in under two centuries. We went from handwritten letters that took weeks to deliver to instant global communication. Some you. You're all over the world. Some of you are in South Africa, some of you in America, Some of you are in Ireland right now. Tuning into me, an individual in Vancouver, bc, Canada, at the moment, through an audio experience. What? Instant global communication? How does this even work? There was a time that when you wanted to listen to music, you had to physically be in the room with musicians. There were no recordings, no playlists, no speakers. If you missed the performance, you missed the music. Now we can stream nearly every song ever recorded from a device that fits in our pocket. That is not just human. That's like magic, y', all, and that's just technology. But, like, morally, we have grown as well. And yeah, we have a long, long, long, long ways to go, you know, like a long way to go. But again, we're like teenagers in this universe, man. We might even be more like babies. Like, 150 years ago, slavery still existed. And yeah, there's actually parts in the world today where injustice still remains. But the global consensus is that freedom is a human right. Centuries ago, if you were accused of witchcraft or something, you could be tortured or killed just if you have a different belief. Now, people today practice spirituality openly, from traditional religions to meditation to astrology. Right. Not too long ago, women couldn't even vote that everyone was just like, yo, they shouldn't vote. That's crazy. In 1990, nearly 40% of the global population lived in, like, extreme poverty. Nearly 40%. In 1990, that's like almost one in three people. Now it's 9.9%, which I think is still too high. But that is proof of incredible progress. Right? You understand? And the cool part is we actually have the knowledge, the resources, and the ability to eliminate that number altogether. If humans come together and figure this out, and then we've gone to create, like, countless medicines to combat diseases and extend lifespan. Like, what? I'm just human? No, we're humans. We're at the point where they're saying we're only two decades away from reversing age and being able to live forever. Very sci fi. Not sure if I want that. But regardless, humans, this is what we do. We make mistakes, we stumble, but we evolve. We were once in the jungle at the complete mercy of nature. Then we innovated and used the elements of nature to create homes for ourselves. We innovate, we rise, and then we figure out a way to create comfort not just for ourselves, but for the next generation. You know, think about it like we were once literally cavemen. How is that possible? How is that possible with all the comforts and the life that we live? Airbnbs, planes. And to stand. You have a computer in your pocket that gives you access to all information. But at one point, we were living in caves and in the jungle. This is why I don't like the tone of I'm just human. Because do you not see who you are, what you are? Do you not understand what is within your nature? You have the power of imagination and action. Every intention, every discovery, every leap forward was born in the mind of someone who refused to believe. I'm only human. Everything starts in the mind, except for nature. But we could say nature started in the mind of God. But the airplane, the Internet, the cure, the song, the story, the chair, the desk, the mic that I am speaking into right now, it all existed first, and the imagination then was pulled and formed and manifested into reality by human hands. You are a part of the same species that built the pyramids. We still don't know how those were built, that painted the cathedrals, that split the atom, that cracked open the DNA code that sent satellites into space to observe the cosmos. But when people say, I'm only human, I'm only human. I'm only human. It's often not about achievements or mistakes. It's usually about our emotions and how we travel through them. We lash out in anger, we say something cruel we can't take back. We act recklessness out of jealousy. Maybe you get drunk one night and just do some really silly things that you regret. The next week you may crash out and be like, well, I'm human. My emotions need to live. But the truth is we ran from the responsibility because fear got the best of us. The responsibility to observe ourselves, you understand, to lead with love. So we leave with love. And then when the dust settles, when the damage is done, we just throw our hands up in the air and say, well, I'm only human. But if we can evolve in our technology. Why can't we evolve in our behavior too? Again, think about how far we have come in just 150 years. From horse carriages to space travel, sending letters by boat to FaceTime. If we can do all of that, why can't we learn to transcend our anger as well? Why can't we learn to move through anxiety without letting it define us? Why can't we grow into forgiveness instead of revenge? Why can't we have a culture on the Internet that when controversy hits, people pause and think. They don't jump to conclusions, they don't attack and send death threats, just to be honest. We have a culture on the Internet that is just like stoning witches back in the day. It's very primitive. We are still very primitive with our behavior on the Internet. But I imagine the day when this is not the norm anymore. People pause and respond and say, that is a human being too. Let me not assume, Let me not jump to conclusions. Let me not try to tear down another individual, to lower them so I can feel better about myself too. I can see a day that when we evolve our systems to benefit humanity and not rob us of our attention just for profit, one day we will realize that everybody's well being is our own well being as well. We're not just human, we're humans. The same intelligence that built skyscrapers can build inner stability. The same imagination that invented airplanes and built bridges to connect individuals across the ways, and the same imagination that invented airplanes can envision peace. We've proven again and again that humans can transform the impossible. You know, I remember a long time ago, someone I was with, they lied to me about something. And I felt very disrespected. And the truth is, my feelings in that moment were real. They were true. I was hurt, I was angry. But the way I reacted, that wasn't it. You know, I had a little crash out. I was yelling, I was raising my voice, I was just letting it all spill out with no direction. And then that individual stopped me. And they looked me straight in the eye and said, is this how you respond to conflict? What if we had kids? Is this how you. Is this what they would have to hear? And in that moment, I was like, whoa, yeah, you right. Something clicked. Because even though a wrong was committed, I could see that my reaction had no pause, no love in it. It wasn't productive. It wasn't even about solving anything. It was just me vomiting. How I felt that day. I promised. I made a promise to myself. Never again. You know, I could feel my feelings. I can honor them, but I don't need to destroy the room with them. And since then, I've become pretty much a master at observing my emotions and then responding. You know, I've been through some of the toughest times and then cooled them off of grace. I've been able to handle other people's anger, their revenge, their crash outs with calm wisdom, you know, with intention, with love, and not allow my ego to take over the room, not allow my pride to feel too bruised that, you know, I say something that I will regret the next week. And I've seen how that energy can just settle fires instead of feeding them. And at this point, I would say it's one of my greatest skills, being able to choose no matter what is happening around me, no matter what, how much heat life throws. I've learned I don't have to match the chaos. And trust me, man, I've been tested. I've been through the fire. But because of that one moment where someone checked my reaction, I started to shape a new way to move. I invented a calmer path for myself, one rooted in wisdom, not eruption. And honestly, that ability to respond instead of explode, it's one of the coolest things. You know, when I was in Jamaica, my family was crashing out in all different ways at once. Cussing, yelling. It's kind of. It's kind of in the culture in Jamaica. You know, everybody yells, everybody crashes out. You know, people don't like to feel just disrespected. There's a lot of pride. And in the middle of, like a heated, heated crash out, like this one was on fire, I pulled one of my family members to the side and I said, you know, you escalated this whole thing with your reaction. And he looked at me and he said, yeah, but they did this. And I said, no, you actually assumed. And then you attacked. And then they felt disrespected and threatened, so they attacked back. And then before, you know, know, really turned into, like a vomiting match of nothingness. The whole thing could have been solved so much easier. But he pushed back, and he's like, I'm angry, and I'm allowed to express my anger. And I said, yes, you are, because you are a human being, of course, but you are not allowed to use people as punching bags for your anger. You've trained yourself to release your anger in the quickest way possible through your mouth, hurling insults, saying things that you regret weeks later, saying things that caused division. For years, I've seen family members crash out on each other and not talk for years. I've seen one instance where it literally took one family member on their deathbed or the two to come back together. That is unnecessary. Anger can move through many different channels, can move through your mind, your heart, your body, your patience. Expression is supposed to be medicine, not poison. It's supposed to free you, not chain you to the same cycles. You know, anger is not the enemy. It's energy. It's a signal. It's a flare that something's wrong, unfair, or unsafe. And the way we channel the energy determines whether it becomes a weapon or a bridge. You know, some people punch walls, some people curse each other out, Some people shut down completely. But rarely do we stop to ask, is this expression actually serving me? Is it serving us? True expression at the end of the day should leave you feeling lighter, not in regret. It should bring understanding. It should create space for solutions, not close the room with silence or hostility. If you think about it, when a musician pours their pain into a song, it doesn't just release their own tension, it heals the listener, too. When an athlete channels their frustration into training, their body transforms, their discipline sharpens. And when a writer turns heartbreak into poetry, suddenly thousands of strangers feel less alone. That is expression. That's the alchemy of emotion done right. So why would we settle for the lowest form of expression, the quickest reaction, the careless words, the easy punch? When we are capable of turning anger into art, frustration into fuel, sadness into depth, and conflict into connection? All we have to do is retrain ourselves to stop glorifying destructive expression as just being real. You know, like, you'll see, like, certain celebrities just crash out. You know, you see, like, I don't know, let's say, like, Cardi B and Offset crash out on Twitter. And people be like, I love Cardi. She's so real. She keep it so real. But the truth is, her children have to see that. Imagine watching your parents beef online, saying disgusting things, wishing death upon each other, revealing each other's dirty secrets on the Internet for everybody to see. And then the kids go to school and the friends bring it up and tease them about, like, you know what I mean? Is that the cost of being real? No, that's the cost of crashing out and not understanding and being able to observe your emotions. It doesn't mean suppression. It just means choosing how you want to respond. Because every time you express yourself, you are planting seeds in the people around you. Seeds of peace, seeds of chaos, seeds of healing, or seeds of harm. And those seeds grow you know, I was telling my friend the other day, he has a, he has a daughter, 2 years old, and I told him, I'm like, yo, what I've learned so far, because I have a 16 year old turning 17, is that, like, I rarely, like, tell my daughter what to do. You know, like, I don't tell my daughter, like, be a nice person, be a kind person. Like, you know, like, obviously I tell her things to a certain extent, but I show her through my actions. You know, this year I've had an issue with my car. My, my, the tires on my car. Three times they've gone flat while we're driving. And every time that happens, I've had to spend about $1,000 to go get it fixed. I got a Tesla. It's like, it's a headache. You can't get just like a normal tire. You got to bring into the Tesla dealership all of that. Next thing you know, they're like, oh, we can't just patch it up. You need to replace the whole thing. It needs a rim. It's, it's a headache. But anytime my daughter sees me in a stressful situation, I always use it as an opportunity to promote solutions. So when the tire pops, I'm not screaming and being like, ah, f this. Ah, no. Oh, my God, now we're gonna be late. I always immediately say, man, that's okay. And I look at her, I look at her and I'll say, you know what's cool? I should say what I'm like, that we're in a situ. We're in a position to take care of this, right? We have the resources to take care of this right now. That's all right. We're just going to pull over and I'm going to figure this out. And obviously I'm stressed out, but I take it as an opportunity. And I just reaffirmed to her, everything's going to be all right. It's just a little delay in our day. Everything's going to be all right. I remember one time I just had to order, I had to order a Uber, hop in the Uber with her, bring her to school, stop at Subway, grab her lunch, bring her to school, drop her off, and then Uber back. Then call a tow truck, bring the tow truck to another city, sit in Tesla for three hours, get it fixed, and then come all the way back and pick her up from school. My whole day was dedicated to that. And when I picked her up with the tire on, I'm like, look at that. You see how it is we're rooted in solutions. And that's just how I'm always, I always am with her. The last time it happened, which just last month, I was like, oh, no. You know, I was like, oh, no, the tire again. And she, she looked at me and she said, it's okay, everything's gonna work out. And I'm like, exactly. Everything's gonna work out. We retrain ourselves. When I was younger and stuff like that happened, I'd literally just be like, ah, you know, like victim mentality. Like, well, why me? All at the universe, you know, like, frustrated, you know, I never really been like a super outward, outwardly angry person. But like, that quickness to just go into solutions and like, choose how you respond and use it as an opportunity to teach others is beautiful. The problem is we train ourselves through habits and patterns to react in one way, and then we validate it with, well, I'm just expressing myself. But if your expression always leads to more damage in its wake, then what's the point? Isn't the point of expression to release and to heal? You know? Now, now that we live in a society with so much technology, so much power in our hands, we have a duty to raise our morality and our emotional intelligence to a level that can respectfully honor that power. Otherwise, we will, like, destroy ourselves with AI we act like technology is meant to evolve, but our emotions are meant to stay raw, primitive, and undefined. And I disagree with that. We've been given these emotions not as prisons, but as teachers. Not as a default, but as a design. We can design our anger. We can transcend it. Fear is human, but so is courage. Anxiety is human, but we can design presence feeling. Revenge is human, but we can design our forgiveness to limit and excuse ourselves to, well, I'm just human is a rejection of who we really are. If early scientists had said, well, I'm just human, I'll never understand disease. We'd still be dying from infections we can now cure instantly. Every breakthrough we've ever made happened because someone refused to accept the limits of what it means to be human. There were humans that looked at the birds and said, only the birds can touch the sky. Right? Until someone developed an airplane. So why, when it comes to ourselves, our fears, our emotions, do we stop? Why do we say, well, I'm just like that. I'm just an angry person, or I'm just an anxious person. I'll always be anxious, or I'm just someone who holds grudges, or I'm just someone to crash. I seen someone the Other day on Threads, who got out of a breakup, and they were like, oh, I crashed out. That's how I get over somebody. I crash out. Heavy. Ah. And everyone's like, yeah, that's how you do it. Yeah, just crash out. Just be vengeful. No, I'm only human. No, you're a human being. You have the ability to transcend and create peace for yourself and for others and to not repeat the patterns of pain those cycles again. Don't just say, that's just how I am. That's false. That's actually sad. You're a human. A human being with the ability to transcend all obstacles. It's easy to say, I'm just human. I worry. But if we built machines that can navigate galaxies, we can surely learn to navigate the galaxies inside ourselves. We can give our nervous system a new experience. You know, a little bit of breath work, prayer, meditation, therapy, movement. The In Hindsight podcast. These are not luxuries. They're technologies for the soul, Tools for inner. Inner navigation. We reject ourselves when we act like our worst moments are our default setting, as if we don't have the ability to design ourselves, as if we are powerless to evolve, but we're not. You can transform revenge into motivation and forgiveness, Fear into courage, chaos into clarity. You can pause and respond before you react. How often do we hear people say, I had to get them back. I'm only human. But revenge is cycled. Pain, it doesn't heal, it doesn't resolve. It just passes the wound forward. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is freedom. Not freedom for them, but freedom for you. It's not easy, is it? No. But nothing worth evolving into has ever been easy. I believe emotions are our oldest technology. Before we built machines, before we invented tools, we had these feelings. They were our first compass, our first way of knowing the world. But just like we upgraded our tools, we must upgrade our relationship with our emotions, too. We don't have to be a prisoner again to anger. We don't have to drown in anxiety. We don't have to be petty puppets. We can learn, we can adapt, and we can rise. Because to say I'm only human while refusing to transcend is to deny what being human actually means. We are not static. We are not meant to stay the same. We are meant to grow. So when I hear someone say, I'm only human, or if you're about to say I'm only human, I want you to flip. I want you to flip it, because being human is not an excuse, it's a declaration. Instead Of I'm only human. Let it be. I am human. I am human. And yes, I make mistakes. Yes, I need some grace. Yes, I will fall. Yes, I will have regrets. We're not saying it was shame, but. But pride. Not as limitation, but as liberation. Because to be human is to be a fragment of the cosmos. Made conscious. You are literally stardust that learned how to think, how to create, how to love, how to dream, how to breathe. And your heartbeat, your presence matters. Your choice matters. Your creations matter. Every action, every word ripples outwards in ways that you can't always see. And your imprint is already weak, woven into the fabric of this existence. So the next time you catch yourself sighing and saying, I'm only human, as a default, with no intention to rise or realize the ability you have to transcend oneself, stop and breathe, and reframe it. I am human, and that means I am capable of more than I know. I hold the spirit of resilience, the spark of creation within me. I am part of the cosmos unfolding. Being human is not a limitation. It is the greatest responsibility in the universe. And you don't know, in hindsight, everything got to be all right. That was a longer one for y' all today. Since I've been gone for a while, we gonna be here more consistently again. Because I'm here. I'm in the studio. We locked back in. We got a good rhythm. I am human.