3344: The One Illusion We Cannot Afford To Believe In by Dr. Kelly Flanagan on Self-Sufficiency

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[00:00:38] [SPEAKER_00]: This is Optimal Living Daily, The One Illusion We Cannot Afford To Believe In by Dr. Kelly

[00:00:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Flanagan of Dr. KellyFlanagan.com.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Justin Malik, your personal narrator reading to you every single day of the

[00:00:51] [SPEAKER_00]: year.

[00:00:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Your daily dose of positivity?

[00:00:54] [SPEAKER_00]: So with that, let's get right to it as we optimize your life.

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_00]: The One Illusion We Cannot Afford To Believe In by Dr. Kelly Flanagan of Dr. KellyFlanagan.com.

[00:01:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Quote,

[00:01:11] [SPEAKER_00]: We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_00]: Tick-na-out, hun.

[00:01:17] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm on the fifth floor of a hotel in Pennsylvania waiting for an elevator to the lobby.

[00:01:22] [SPEAKER_00]: It's July 4th, Independence Day in America.

[00:01:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Early morning and I'm leaving the hotel to find a cheaper breakfast.

[00:01:30] [SPEAKER_00]: As I wait, I become aware of piped-in music overhead.

[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I hear lyrics that remind me of my wife.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Quote,

[00:01:38] [SPEAKER_00]: Fortune Teller said I'd be free and that's the day you came to me.

[00:01:43] [SPEAKER_00]: End quote.

[00:01:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I instantly reach for my phone, Google the lyrics and the song title is the top

[00:01:49] [SPEAKER_00]: result.

[00:01:50] [SPEAKER_00]: I click out of Google, tap my Spotify app, search for the song and the song playing above

[00:01:55] [SPEAKER_00]: my head is now coming out of my phone.

[00:01:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I enjoy the dopamine rush of immediate gratification and I marvel at the convenience of technology.

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_00]: But mostly I revel in my apparent self-sufficiency.

[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Twenty years ago I would have required the help of a number of people to identify

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_00]: the song, find a music store and purchase the CD.

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I interact with no one.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I can completely ignore how interdependent all of us are.

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_00]: The illusion of independence.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_00]: The truth is, even though I felt like I found my song independently, I was dependent upon

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_00]: thousands of people, perhaps even millions, to make it possible.

[00:02:39] [SPEAKER_00]: The device itself was created by people we'd all prefer to not think about, people

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_00]: working for low wages in horrible conditions half a world away.

[00:02:48] [SPEAKER_00]: I charged the device in the hotel room, drawing on a power grid created and maintained by

[00:02:53] [SPEAKER_00]: thousands of other people.

[00:02:55] [SPEAKER_00]: If all those people decided to quit and go home, the power goes out and suddenly I don't

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_00]: feel so independent.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Another team of people is responsible for the data service I use to stream the song.

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_00]: The apps I used were created by a team of people and are maintained by another

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_00]: team of people, but I don't see them and I don't hear them.

[00:03:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Man, I don't touch them.

[00:03:18] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't look them in the eye, I don't talk to them, I don't shake their hand.

[00:03:23] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have a chance to say thank you, so I feel like I've done it all on my own.

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I feel independent.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_00]: What I feel is an illusion.

[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I listen to my new song in the elevator on the way down.

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I step out into the lobby and look up.

[00:03:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I see families surrounded by luggage, waiting on one thing or another before loading up the

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_00]: car and departing.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_00]: I count 34 people, mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and elderly couples and young

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_00]: businessmen and women.

[00:03:55] [SPEAKER_00]: And 27 of them are staring downward at a device.

[00:04:00] [SPEAKER_00]: 27 out of 34.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_00]: A lobby full of people with each other and yet pretending to be independent.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Entertaining themselves, solving their own problems.

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_00]: A lobby full of people on devices that make us feel like a world unto ourselves, self-sufficient,

[00:04:18] [SPEAKER_00]: autonomous and free of each other.

[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_00]: The illusion of independence on Independence Day.

[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_00]: The freedom of interdependence.

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_00]: The lobby full of device-gazing people is deeply interconnected whether they recognize

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_00]: it or not.

[00:04:35] [SPEAKER_00]: They're connected at an atomic level.

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_00]: The atoms one person breathes out or breathes in by someone else, and a shock of static

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_00]: electricity will transfer electrons from one person to another.

[00:04:46] [SPEAKER_00]: They're connected at an emotional level.

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_00]: When one person is cruel to another, the cruelty is taken in and eventually passed

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_00]: on to another human being.

[00:04:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And they're connected at a spiritual level.

[00:04:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Their imagined independence is adding slowly to a collective sense of loneliness and disconnection,

[00:05:05] [SPEAKER_00]: that is, I think, reaching a tipping point.

[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Yet we continue to swallow the illusion of independence.

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_00]: We believe a rebellion in the Ukraine has nothing to do with us until one day a

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_00]: plane full of people flying to their summer vacation is shot down and a surfaced

[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_00]: air missile confronts all of us with our interconnectedness.

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Why do we always wait on tragedy to remind us of our interdependence?

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_00]: We don't have to wait.

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Fortune teller said I'd be free and that's the day you came to me.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Mysteriously, when someone comes to us and joins us in relationship and we lose

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_00]: some of our independence, we gain freedom.

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Freedom paradoxically always happens in connection to another,

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_00]: because freedom isn't about being independent.

[00:05:55] [SPEAKER_00]: Freedom is about learning to dance the dance of both our independence and our

[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_00]: interdependence at the same time.

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Freedom is about finding the balance between the small me and a bigger we.

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: In relationship to each other, we learn to embrace the reality and the sacredness

[00:06:13] [SPEAKER_00]: of our interdependence while also respecting each other as independent, unique souls.

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_00]: We learn this in romance and friendship and marriage and family.

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_00]: In fact any place where two or more are gathered can become a space in which we

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_00]: touch our independence and our interdependence at the same time.

[00:06:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Any place including a hotel lobby.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_00]: The human dance.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I leave the hotel, find cheap smoothies for my family and then return.

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_00]: The lobby is emptier but all heads are still bowed.

[00:06:47] [SPEAKER_00]: The illusion believed.

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Interdependence ignored.

[00:06:51] [SPEAKER_00]: I get on the elevator and just before the doors close a young boy gets in.

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm tempted to look straight ahead to pretend we're both independent.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, I look down and I ask him where he's from and where he's going.

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_00]: His mouth and his eyes both smile as if he's been dying for someone to look at him

[00:07:11] [SPEAKER_00]: and he tells me.

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And then he does this surprising thing.

[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_00]: This little kid asks me the same question and I tell him.

[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_00]: And suddenly we feel less like strangers, less like an adult and kid separated by decades

[00:07:28] [SPEAKER_00]: and more like two human beings acknowledging the reality of our interdependence.

[00:07:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Two human beings doing the human dance.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_00]: You just listened to the post titled,

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_00]: The One Illusion We Cannot Afford to Believe In by Dr. Kelly Flanagan of Dr.KellyFlanagan.com

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_00]: and I'll be right back with my commentary.

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[00:09:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Think of it, Dr. Flanagan.

[00:09:03] [SPEAKER_00]: I could definitely relate when he said that

[00:09:06] [SPEAKER_00]: if the power goes out suddenly I don't feel so independent.

[00:09:10] [SPEAKER_00]: The power has gone out here a couple of times recently.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing how little we can do or think we can do without it.

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Especially when it's nighttime or dark, but not yet bedtime.

[00:09:22] [SPEAKER_00]: It's like we're just sitting there in the dark wondering what to do now.

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Especially if our phone is on low battery.

[00:09:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Anxiety can kick in.

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And when you talked about people staring at their phones,

[00:09:32] [SPEAKER_00]: it reminded me of something even more scary.

[00:09:35] [SPEAKER_00]: I was talking to my business partner and this idea of staring at screens constantly came up.

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_00]: He was telling me about he, or maybe it was a friend of his, I can't remember now.

[00:09:46] [SPEAKER_00]: They were next to a main road and could see people driving by one by one.

[00:09:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And nearly all of them had their phone in hand and was looking at that.

[00:09:56] [SPEAKER_00]: Often looking down at their phones while driving.

[00:10:00] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a scary thing.

[00:10:02] [SPEAKER_00]: It's one thing to be doing it in a hotel lobby, but who knows if a kid crosses the road or an animal

[00:10:08] [SPEAKER_00]: or there's a big tire in the road.

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Anything can happen.

[00:10:12] [SPEAKER_00]: And it really is frightening that this is the world we live in.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a little sidetrack from the point of this article,

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_00]: but I think it is true.

[00:10:20] [SPEAKER_00]: We're all connected even if we're in our own little bubbles inside a car or not.

[00:10:26] [SPEAKER_00]: So nice one to think about today.

[00:10:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for being here.

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_00]: I've only been able to keep doing this with you coming back to listen and sharing the show with others.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Have a great rest of your day and I'll be back tomorrow.

[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Where your optimal life awaits.