SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to Traveling Companions Stories of Becoming. This is a podcast about the in-between. Those threshold moments when we can no longer go back to who we were, and who we're becoming isn't yet clear. If you've ever stood in that space or find yourself there now, you're not alone. I'm your host, Jenny Snyder. I am delighted to be with Lance Huffman, who is a former colleague and dear friend who has been a fellow traveler in this territory that we're going to explore today. And Lance, I'm just really excited to have this conversation with you today. So welcome to the podcast. And I'll let you introduce yourself in whatever way you'd like.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Thanks, Jenny. It is let me also say it's a delight to be here in this magical ethereal space where we get to talk across a continent and across an ocean. It's great to see you and chat with you again. Yeah. I don't know where to start. I didn't prepare a bio for myself. Being retired, I'll say that I don't feel like I need to cite my resume anymore. That doesn't feel like an authentic version of who I am, but I will say that I'm a retired educator. And that's how you and I met. I've been saying lately that I'm a retired teacher, even though I spent the last 10 or 15 years in leadership. Um, I taught more than I did anything else. So I was a high school history and English teacher for a long time and loved that. But since retiring, I'm exploring. I guess I could say I'm an explorer. I don't want to give away too much what we're gonna chat about, but I'm I'm an explorer of both inner and outer worlds, and sometimes a mentor, and sometimes a coach, and sometimes a sometimes I'm just lucky enough to be a guy sitting on a couch reading a book, which is uh how I am finding myself many, many days these days. Um I'm also a bit of a worrier, I think the way the world is. I find myself in a state of worry and anxiety at times. Um, but that's also instructive to my soul. Yeah. Yeah, I I could tell you more, but I think it'll unfold over time. If people feel like they need to have my credentials, I I went all the way through college to the highest levels you can go and learned a bunch of stuff about things that I don't talk about very much. Okay. But they all help point me in a direction to be here now in this moment. So yeah. Maybe that sounds like too mysterious of an introduction.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Hopefully, people's interests have been piqued here. So we'll we'll we'll see where we where we go today. So Lance, we begin each of these conversations with um a framing question. And so I will ask you the question and um feel free to take it in whatever direction you'd like. Um what was a moment in your life when you could no longer go back to who you were and who you were becoming wasn't yet clear?

SPEAKER_00 3:28

I mean, it's such a rich question. I have a moment in mind that I'll get to, I'll get to in just a second. But I I think one of the one of the benefits of aging is that I can look back um with a kind of perspective I haven't had in a long time, and I look at my life as many, many of those kinds of moments that I perhaps unwittingly, maybe unconsciously, certainly, maybe not even, maybe even against my will. I crossed a threshold and never went back. But I didn't, I wasn't that conscious of it. I wasn't that aware of it happening, and I think that is a commentary on the world we live in. But recently, I think the best example I can give right now is a recent one. And as I said before, I retired from a career in public education just about a year ago. And you know, I I left the office and they had the sort of requisite goodbye ceremony. There were some balloons, and people shared some memories and gave me cards and some knickknacks that I had to later throw away because what am I doing with these things? Um, and I got right in my car and drove into the wilderness and was with a small group of people who had known me for a while, and we were all engaged in a multi-dict, it was about a week and a half of doing a vision quest and a fast, and um, we were out on the land by ourselves, supporting each other from a distance. And there was a day when I was out by myself on the land where I held a kind of ceremony, a kind of really honestly kind of a funeral for the self I'd been, for the person I had been to that point. And it was I think all rites of passage have this kind of moment. Um and I was going into it somewhat trusting that this was the right move to put to rest this way of being that I had been for probably my whole life, but certainly my whole adult professional career. And if I could just back up for just a second and tell a small story about that. I a year before I had met a former student for a coffee, and I was with his partner, and he's a brilliant therapist now and a guide. And so is his partner. And I told him, because he knew me from my career, and he knew it was coming to an eventual end, that I was getting closer. And I said, uh, I said, to be honest, I feel like it's over already, and it's been over for a while, and I but I'm carrying this corpse, is what it felt like. I said, I feel like I'm honoring this one who's worked this way for 30 years, but I no longer feel like him. And so I'm honoring him by carrying him across this finish line, which is going to be at least another year of work. And Madison, my friend's partner, who's also a brilliant god, said very compassionately, said, That sounds hard. That sounds really hard to carry an entire person, your entire person. Do you think it's time to maybe bury that corpse? And I held on to that for the next year, and it wasn't clear that I was going to be retiring in a year, but I did. And I finally held that ceremony on the land. It was in a beautiful spot on a cliff near Bears Ears, Utah. And I held an all-night vigil for the letting go of my old self, and I had no idea who was gonna emerge on the other side of that, and which is terrifying. Yeah, if I'm honest. Oh, yeah. It's like I know this one that I've been, I know, I know him. Um, I'm comfortable with him. But I also knew he wasn't me anymore. And so I ceremonially and with as much gratitude as I could muster, I buried him and let him go. And then emerged from the wilderness to this small village of people who were there doing their own versions of this and also supporting each other and me. Um, I emerged as one becoming this new version of myself.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

So, and that was just a year ago. That was just a year ago, and uh it's been well now it's been a hell of a year. Yeah, so that's um there's that's probably a good place to pause because it's a big it's a big story, but there's probably a lot more to say.

SPEAKER_01 8:50

As you were sharing that I have this image of you carrying this this corpse and that language really struck me. What did it feel like to be carrying that corpse?

SPEAKER_00 9:16

It was I mean, it was not one thing now that I'm reflecting on it. It felt heavy and exhausting. I was exhausted. It also felt like an act of service to the one of me who had been on this journey for this long and who I was not dispensing with from any position of um uh anything other than love and gratitude. So I wasn't trying to let go of this one or get rid of is a probably a better, I wasn't trying to get rid of this one of me. I was trying to honor him. Um but it was heavy, it was and it was exhausting. Um there were times I would get up and go to work, and it would feel like I was wearing a lead suit. It was so heavy to to go to keep going into a place that I knew I was relatively done with. Um so yeah, I mean, we don't ideally we don't bury the beloved dead with anything other than gratitude and grief and love. And that's what I was trying to do. But I was probably also holding on to something because it it feels like it was bigger than me that I was honoring. I was I was honoring my family by carrying that corpse. I was honoring my mother, uh, who was also an educator, who passed um just a few years ago when you and I were working together, you know, about that time. And um, so I was honoring her and I was honoring uh all the educators in my family. So it felt like an act of service, but but at some point a burden too heavy to carry.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Yeah, and that lead suit. I j I I just feel that heaviness as you were describing that. You mentioned the honoring, honoring and acknowledging yourself, that part of you, and your mother, other members of your family. Um what felt important about honoring that legacy?

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Well I I have a story in my own in the way I shape reality that's about my mother and the role and modeling she played for me, which is a life of sacrifice. Uh she sacrificed for us, for me and my brother. She was a very dedicated mother, public educator in Arizona, which means she wasn't for a long time paid very well. So she had multiple jobs to a single mom. And also she sacrificed for the many thousands of children that she served over her career. Um, and for a long time, for most of my life, that was the model of how one should be self-sacrificing for others, for the bigger, for the bigger world, and for ideals. She was for justice and for um the eradication of poverty and for um students who didn't look like her. So everything about her life I can imagine in this noble, beautiful way. And she never got to do some of the things that probably her soul was calling her to do in the world. I think she fashioned a life as best she could to uh honor her values and honor the values of her soul and her spirit, but there were still things she didn't get to do. And uh so that there is a nobility in my family, and I think in this culture around self-sacrifice, but that also, for me at least, it also uh hid away the cost of self-sacrifice that that the self in fact can be sacrificed um on the altar of living a good life and living an important life. So the honoring of her and my brother who's an educator and my daughter who's an educator um is an honoring of how how deep that sacrifice can be. And I'm so grateful for the sacrifice of my mother. Um so much so that it informed my whole career, but I'm also honoring that it ends, that there's a there's an end to that way of living and there's an end to that life. And if we're lucky enough and fortunate enough, and I think that I am largely because of her sacrifice, if we're lucky enough, we get to step into a deeper version of ourselves um and something that might be more whole and a little less sacrificed. Uh I don't think that uh I still think self-sacrifice has tremendous moral and soulful value. Um but it's uh it's and I don't I don't think the replacement for self-sacrifice is selfishness. I think there's a deeper form of becoming that puts us still in service to the greater project of being. And um I just didn't get I didn't see her get to do that as much. Um I want to make my life, the rest of it, another way to honor that sacrifice that she made.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Yeah. It was struck by something you said just a moment ago about the cost of that self-sacrifice. Um, seeing the value in it, but also seeing the cost. And I'm curious, what was the cost of that self-sacrifice for you?

SPEAKER_00 16:18

I mean, it's a really tangible thing for me. This is it's uh so I'm happy to talk about it. I but it's it's not theoretical, I guess I could say. Um when I was on the land and I was letting go of this old self, I engaged in other ceremonies where I was able to call upon visions from my own soul, from the land. And what I both realized and possibly remembered was that I have a there's an artist inside of me. Um there's a creative, there's a um, I like to write, I like to I've taken up drawing, which was something as a retired person is maybe a cliche, but also a beautiful opportunity. You'll find me in my extra guest room watercoloring landscapes, probably. Um but when I was young and I I really wanted to sing and I wanted to play music, and we were told in my family quite clearly that is not in the cards for us. We are not musical people. Uh and when you're told that when you're young, young enough, it's it's gospel. It becomes gospel. You don't, you don't ever, I didn't ever treat it as something that could be doubted. It seemed quite obvious that we were not musical anytime we would sing a Christmas carol as a family. Uh and it wasn't until late adulthood I heard a teacher who I worked with who was a music teacher, and I told her that. I said, I'm I'm not a musical person. And she said, um, you know, she stopped what she was doing and looked at me pretty sternly and said, That's not a thing that you're saying. Everybody's musical. Anyone can learn music. This is not something that I and I was pretty sure I was genetically or biologically predisposed to not be musical. And she didn't convince me right away that was pretty much you were skeptical, yeah. I was quite skeptical. So I didn't pursue these things. Uh I didn't pursue a life of creativity. I didn't pursue a life of art. I didn't pursue a life of making music because all of those seemed it's almost hard for me even to say it now, but they seemed like frivolities in my in the story of my life. Like I don't have time to do those kinds of things. They're frivolous. All I can do is the self-sacrifice, the service. I didn't call it self-sacrifice at the time, I called it service. Um, there's too much important service for me to do. And I I've learned, I've since learned about myself that there's a voice inside of me. There's a one of me, a small one of me who thinks he's got his best, my best interests at heart, who really does care for me, who is trying to keep me small so I don't get hurt. And so that all of my needs continue to be met. And he's been along for the ride my whole life.

SPEAKER_03 19:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

And he is the one who's probably told me all along, no, you have important work to do. This is not important. You have important work to do. Be an educator, change the world, save a kid, whatever it is you're gonna do. Not recognizing that one's job was not to recognize the cost. That one's job was to try to protect me from harm. And it took a lot of work for me to be able to wrest control back from that little one who was on guard all the time. And start to remember that creativity and art and music and poetry can also save the world.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

Um, and save myself because the self gets to be. So, yeah, I uh there's a part of me that looks back after the ceremony, after the ritual letting go, the ceremonial letting go of this one of me. There is a part of me that looks back on that life and doesn't recognize it. There's a part of me now that looks back on that 31-year career and remembers it, but almost remembers it as somebody else's life. Because it is gone. And this was a one-way threshold, which I some part of my soul knew when I was doing it. When you were in it or both, both in the lead up and in it. I knew this was big, and I was there was that little one in me was probably yelling pretty loud to not go forward with this ritual, this funeral, because there would be no going back. Um, but so I'm reminded of David White, the poet, who says something along the lines of what is the promise to yourself that it would kill you to break? And that's the I think in a healthy culture, I probably would have made that promise decades ago. But I'm grateful that I got there at all. And the promise to myself was that I will not sacrifice my soul for a life of a noble narrative.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Yeah. Where are you now in relationship to that part of you?

SPEAKER_00 21:59

I'm in a Apprentice. It's a tough and humbling place to be post-retirement, to like step back into apprenticeship. I wrestle daily with what my particular art, my particular creative expression will be. Sometimes I think it's not just a product, not like a song or a poem or a story, but rather a way of being with other people. Um that's a that's happening inside of me, but it's really mysterious. It's quite mysterious. Well, I don't have clear answers because there was a part of me immediately after that ceremony that wanted to run full speed in the opposite direction of my career and say, I won't have nothing to do again with teaching. I will have nothing to do again with leading in a learning way. I understand why I was thinking that. And uh so is there a way for me to be creative in my in a in an educational way that has nothing probably nothing to do with the school system.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Yeah, so lots of questions. Lots of questions. I'm learning different modalities for supporting people and their own becoming. That's one thing. I do draw a lot as a try to get better at drawing. I I write poetry. I just reached out to a Luthiers school in Phoenix, Arizona. Uh Luthiers build guitars and I think technically Luthier's build anything, any stringed wooden instruments, violins, cellos. Um, but this is one of the best regarded guitar-building schools in the country. And if I can find the time and the money and it seems to fit, I might go become a luthier. But that would be in service of creating a beautiful thing, more so than any, I don't need another career. I'm not trying to become that. It would be another kind of apprenticeship. So I'm I'm in a stage of learning.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

Yeah, what you're sharing really resonates for me. I think about my own journey of devoting the bulk of my adult life to a career that I can look back and say, yeah, that was meaningful. I did things that were important to me. And stepping away from that impulse to say, okay, that was then, and now I'm going to push that away and become something else. And I think where I am is picking up these pieces and going, wow, well, there was actually some good stuff in there. How can I hold those parts of me, maybe with less driven energy or less of that kind of drive, but in service to something.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Yeah, thanks for saying that. It's good to hear that my conundrum isn't entirely a solitary one. Yeah, I think about how at times how viscerally I just want to get rid of this past. Which is interesting because I never, I shouldn't say never, but I I enjoyed my career. I felt good about what I was doing, and I felt like I challenged systems that needed to be challenged. I didn't too often completely sacrifice my values or anything for the career. Um and yet I still wanted to run away from it. And now I look at it, I think, well, I don't want to be wasteful. I feel comfortable holding a space with people in it and facilitating discussion or presenting. So I'm realizing gratefully that so much good did come from the thing that I also let go of.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

And so, in that process of sifting through and saying, maybe these parts I can let go of, these are parts I want to continue to honor and to bring into the world. I am curious, what are the parts that you were letting go of?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah, as you're asking that question and reflecting on just the last few minutes, our conversation, I'm thinking about why I was doing what I was doing. What was driving it? And it's not one thing, of course. It's not one psychic identity I have, but it was a lot of it was scarcity thinking, a notion that like this is a very secure work. Um probably a lot of self-doubt. I had a lot of self-doubt in my life that am I a good enough person? Am I uh am I am I doing, am I earning my keep in this realm? Um, which, you know, I thankfully have had some really deep work, done some deep work in the last few years to realize that goes all the way back. That's multi-generational. Yeah. I know my grandparents, I particularly know my mother. And the stories that she gave me about my own existence, which she imparted to me with such care and love, but also gave me a burden. Like you have to earn your. She never said it this way, but I internalized a message of you have to earn your right to exist in this realm. And if you don't, well then maybe the heavens have made a mistake in allowing you to even exist at all. So you have to earn your right, you have to be good, you have to work hard, you have to do, you have to sacrifice yourself. So those are the parts I'm most letting go of. There were other parts that are like, this is there is there is something bigger than me. There are these children who need to be educated well, who need to learn to think for themselves and become members of their communities. And serving that felt good. So I feel grateful that I found a way to answer these fairly dark voices in my life that that doubted my right even to exist. I found a way to answer those in a way that served others. But I I am actively trying to let go of this notion that I need to earn the right to exist or earn the right to belong, or that I'm good enough. Um and you know, probably deeply psychologically that's good enough for what? Good enough to earn my mother's sacrifice, perhaps? That all of her sacrifice wasn't for nothing. Um and those are heavy things to carry.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Yeah, that energy poured into I have to demonstrate or validate or earn my sense of worth and value. My existence. Wow, that is heavy. Yeah. And as you were sharing that, I was just reflecting on my own experience and trying to tease out that part of me that was the good girl. I gotta do this because it's expected, my worth is derived from what I do and the achievements that I have accumulated. And I'm really drawing a distinction between that way of being and a more embracing of our whole. And as you let go of these parts, what is being revealed of you?

SPEAKER_00 30:31

I mean my initial response was to say you'd have to ask someone else because they're the ones seeing me. But then I realized, well, that's just another version of the old story. Like there are things being internally revealed to me. This might feel a little off base or you know, out of left field or something. But one thing that has been revealed to me is I have a deep well of sadness in my life. Um and I'm not it's taken a while, but I'm not uh upset about that. Um jokingly, I might say with my partner that I enjoy being a sad person. Uh, but it makes a kind of sense to me that that I I feel things quite deeply in this world, and it's difficult for me sometimes to navigate because I see a lot of pain and injustice, and those things feed this deep well of sorrow that I have. Um what's also I guess been revealed is that sorrow and joy or grief and love are not antithetical to each other. They're not they in fact feed each other. To to love is to invite grief and to experience joy is to um beyond a different different part of the sine wave where sorrow will eventually present itself too. So these are interweaving and interwoven realities and that are inside of me. And I think what has also been revealed is that my own sorrow opens me up to more empathy and compassion for others. I'm a better listener than I used to be. Um, something I tried to pride myself in before, but by letting go of so much certainty and embracing and trying, and the certainty is also a form of control, letting go of control of how things are and accepting that some of it is kind of awful at times and painful at least, has humbled me in a way that's made me a better listener. And I guess what's also been revealed to me is that I have some talent for drawing and for playing music. And you would have had to, I don't know what would have convinced me 10 years ago that was a true thing about me. I wouldn't have believed it. But it does seem that there is some truth to the fact that I have just like the music teacher told me, yeah, I have some musical skill or musical talent. Still takes practice.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

Reflecting on and hearing your journey from I'm not a music person, and I know that to be true because I've been told that, to hey, I'm discovering I have some creative capacities, music, drawing, art. Wow, that's traveling a distance there.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Well, and if I'm reflecting back on how I would get there, quite a bit of it has to do with letting go of comparison. Because I look at I have friends who are accomplished artists, and I'm like, look at this bird I drew. And I think I hear patronizing tones, and they're like, oh, that's sweet. Um and I see what they draw and paint, and I'm and I'm blown away. Uh and the same goes with music. I might write a song or sing a song, and then I hear somebody else sing it better. And I if I let myself go down that path, yeah, that I'm not as good as that person, or I'm not as good as some imaginary standard. Well, I'll never get out of bed if I do that. Yeah. I mean, that's of course not. Did you ever read the book The Artist Way by Julia Cameron?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

No, no, I did not.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

It's a really sweet book and with some really practical. I read it many, many years ago, but I I came back to it. It's interesting how these seeds are planted for decades before they emerge from the soil. But she did these creativity workshops, and uh, she said she'd get a lot of people who were retirees and uh you know found new newfound time on their hands and they want to try these things. And one guy, this resonated so deep with me. One guy said, Do you know how old I'll be when I finally get good at this? And Julie Cameron said, the same age you'll be if you don't. So why don't you just get started? And that's such a that's so resonant because there's a part of me that's like, it's too late. It's too late. I'm in the second half of my sixth decade, I'm in my late 50s now, and it's too late. I can't become any of those things. I needed to start a long time ago. And maybe that's true, and it's the goal was to become something. I don't know, by now, but but that's not the goal. The goal is for me to live in harmony with my soul's desires. Um, and I don't have to be as good as anybody else to do that, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:03

I just have to give myself some permission to be yeah, and so if the story before was I'm not a musical person, and I know that to be true, what is your story now?

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Yeah, and I'm so glad you picked up on that first part, the old story, because that's exactly yeah, this is a true thing. I know this to be true, and and now I know it not to be true. There's a lot of becoming that's happening. I am in the becoming. And so the story now is that I've entered into a kind of adulthood that has nothing to do with age, it has everything to do with this passage that we've been talking about. And the task at this stage of adulthood is learning, this apprenticeship, is becoming. And part of the tradition that I'm in that's working through this particular task, the thing that is important for this stage of life, says it this way. How do you finish the sentence? I am the one who. And so with my guides and my therapists and my coaches and all these people, there this entire army of people helping me become who I try to become. They will have the answer to that regularly. And it's often something like I am the I am the one who sparks imagination. I am the one who uh helps people imagine a deeper version of themselves. I am the one who um who creates beauty in such a way that it sparks a desire for people to become whole. Something like that is the but none of those sound quite like a job, you know? Yeah, right, right. It's hard to see that on a job description, right? Yeah, so in our world, we have to learn delivery systems for that gift, for whatever that gift is. And so the story is that I am becoming the one who helps others through imagination and beauty and art and creativity, imagine who they want to be in this world. Um, and then the delivery systems are me learning to deliver or to write poetry, me, me practicing drawing, me playing my guitar. Um, and finding where possible, finding elders or masters who can teach me these things. Um that that's the story I'm living into now. Um and it's humbling. You get all the way to a doctorate and you think you know a bunch of things, you know. Yeah, all the way to the top of some ladder that's set up against the wrong wall, and uh and I think, holy cow, I'm a beginner.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Wow. So this new story that you're living into as an apprentice, creating beauty, sparking imagination, and inspiring others, how does it feel in this moment to sit inside of that story?

SPEAKER_00 39:20

I mean, in this very moment, talking here with you, sitting in just gonna name, I'm sitting in my office on the Colorado Plateau in northern Arizona, talking to my friend Jenny, who's on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Um, it feels good because I trust you and the space that you're holding. It feels good to say it out loud. I'm also aware that other people might listen to this. And for me to say these things out loud is also terrifying. That there's a oh no, somebody might ask me to sing something now. Oh, somebody might ask me to draw them a bird, and and I'm like, oh, shoot. Um, so so it's exhilarating to say it out loud and to feel into what it's like to be this deepening new version of myself, and also really, really delightfully terrifying. Delightfully terrifying, kind of in the way that a roller coaster is. Okay, like, oh, like I chose this, I got on this ride. This isn't something being done to me. Um, so I can be terrified with a smile on my face.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

What does the terrified part feel like?

SPEAKER_00 40:50

In my body, it feels buzzy. It feels like uh there is a part of me that's sort of you know putting me on alert. There's an attempt. This part is not in charge anymore, one way to put it. It's trying to like pull me back and say, like, don't say too many risky things. Don't don't put yourself too much out there. That's dangerous. But I just feel that one in me and not note that he's there, and I appreciate him looking out for me, but he's not steering the boat anymore. And it's also, you know, it's sometimes when I can get back up in my head and I do the my head thing, which I'm that's where I'm usually comfortable. I realize that some of the things I just said wouldn't be terrifying at all to a lot of people. People who identify as artists and creatives. What's this guy talking about? What's terrifying about that? I think they know. Well, lean into your soul's true desire, say it out loud to people, and now you're on the hook. Somehow in reality, you're you you made it a little I've made it a little bit more tangible, a little more um I'm I'm accountable to my own words.

SPEAKER_01 42:08

And you know what you just said there a moment ago, like saying it out loud, leaning into it, oh my God, you know, that I'm gonna be on the hook. That seems counter-cultural in a lot of ways, going back to what we talked about in terms of that external shaping, or and to say I'm gonna step outside of that.

SPEAKER_00 42:40

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think in our I do think it's deeply countercultural. I think you're absolutely right. There is a narrative about what I should be doing right in my retirement years. And to my ears, it sounds something like being put completely up to pasture. And I'm not ready for that. It's like you're done, you can enjoy yourself while your body still lasts, and so go do that. But slowly and inevitably you're going to decline into non-existence, and and you're not really a functioning part of this thing anymore. Um, because we don't have a we don't have a culture of elders, we don't have a culture of true adults. We have people who've grown old, and I'm now starting to count myself among them. And to say I'm going to lean into being to doing something that all adults do in healthy cultures, which is learn to deliver my soul's gifts back to the community. What are you talking about? Get out there and get a tea time, or schedule your next cruise, or downsize into the condo, whatever it is you're planning to do, whatever it is we plan for you to do is what you should be doing. And we don't know about this soul hoo ha. Keep talking about. So yeah, I think it's deeply counter-cultural. And I think what makes it really difficult is there's nobody here. This is a source of grief for me. There's nobody here as you and I are stepping into this period of there's nobody to grab us. There are no elders who are like, thank you, come along. Uh we've been waiting for you to enter into space, we're gonna help you transition. I don't want to say there are no elders, but then we're not a culture of elders. And so we uh we're left a lot to our own on this. And it's um that's I think if we were a healthier culture, I think these transitions wouldn't be scary in the same ways that they are because they'd be expected and they'd be supported by a community.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Yeah. Lance, I just really appreciated our conversation. I um really I was right alongside you for the journey that you shared. And while I have my own version of it, uh much of what you shared I felt deeply. And I am sitting in my own version of those questions. And yeah, I've appreciated this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 45:21

Well, thank you for asking. Thank you for inviting me to talk to you about this, and thank you for asking such provocative questions that pushed me back into this. What is it that I'm doing? And it's been delightful, and I'm thrilled to be on this journey with you. Um sometimes I think how lucky I am that I of all the all of the random things that could have happened, that I ended up on the planet at the same time as you, yeah, and in the same office as you for long enough for us to get to know each other. And then also at a time when we have this technology where we can keep talking to each other. I'm so grateful for it.

SPEAKER_01 46:04

Yeah, I am too. Absolutely. And we'll continue to be walking down the road together and uh look forward to that.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

As Ramdav says, we're all just walking each other home.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

I love that. So as we wrap up, I usually ask, where can folks find you if they want to get in touch?

SPEAKER_00 46:33

Yeah, yeah. I think the easiest way, of course, is email. People can email me at my name, lance.huffman at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_01 46:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:40

And you can follow me on Instagram, which I'm learning that the young people use some young person somewhere saying, oh buddy, this guy's old. At Lance Huffman. Okay. Um you can find me on Instagram there. And I'm learning to become more active on that test to share the things that matter to me. These algorithms, of course, are shaping all of our reality. So I'm trying to put things out there that are uh good and positive and inspiring.

SPEAKER_01 47:09

I will put those links in the show notes and I will also include a link to the artist way that you mentioned in our conversation.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

Oh, great. Uh yeah, it's a good book.

SPEAKER_01 47:23

Thank you for being here today with us in this space. If something here resonated, I'd love to hear from you. You can find a link to reach me in the show notes. And I'll see you on the next stretch of the journey.