Jason Garner: Life Talks To Us. It Grows From A Whisper To A Smack In The Head.
We experience our own lives in high definition. The frustration when we’re already running late, and we can’t find our keys. The moment of irrational hurt when we allow a throwaway comment from a friend to get under our skin. The dissatisfaction of not being where we want to be in life. The taste of that first cup of coffee in the morning. Those sounds and smells that remind us of holidays.
This vast patchwork of feelings, emotions, sensations, macro and micro, makes up our lives. Birth and death, television and toothpaste, allergies and habits, sorrow and joy. Such an intricate mesh of details that only we are aware of.
Because when we see other people, we see them in low definition. What they say and what they do. We don’t see the nuance, the daily battles, the struggles and the confusion, the same things we enjoy and endure day to day, and minute to minute.
This makes it easy to judge others, and hard to be compassionate. It makes celebrities the target of cruel attention when they reveal themselves to be only human. And it makes those whose values, politics or ways of life are different to our own, easy enemies.
How much more powerful, valuable would it be – before we judge or go to war – to ask ourselves, what must it be like to be this person? Could this give us a way to understand where their pain, their anger and their hatred comes from? Could this gives us a way to find a constructive resolution instead of further conflict and pain?
And what if we were to ask ourselves that same question, only this time pointing it in our direction? What must it be like to be us? Could we nurture a sense of awareness with enough objectivity that we might nurture some kind of compassion towards ourselves? To find a constructive solution to our own hurt – even if that is just to learn to let it be – so that we might live a more enriched life, with less suffering, and more acceptance for who we are, where we’ve been, and where we have the potential to go.
This was just one of the topics that we got into when I chatted with Jason Garner, the author of … And I Breathed: My Journey from a Life of Matter, to a Life that Matters. Jason was formerly the CEO of Global Music and Live Nation, and became one of America’s top paid executives.
But after seeking therapy following the death of this mother, he realised that his whole life had been fuelled by fear. And this led him to a journey of introspection to find peace and balance in his life.
I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did.