Reframe | Quarantine Chronicle Ep3
Lucas joins Parker and Jacob as they discuss being months deep into quarantine and what their personal lives look like and feel like as well as what it’s like at Stoked.
Transcript
PARKER: Hey everybody, it is episode three of the Quarantine Chronicles. My co-host Jacob Jones here, and I'm Parker Gates.
Today, we have our good friend and teammate Lucas Artusi joining us. What up, Lucas?
LUCAS: What's going on guys?
JACOB: Your name sounds fancy when said in it's full like--
PARKER: I know, right? It's a great name.
LUCAS: Not even my parents called me by my full name, like not even when I was in trouble. They just had, like, a special way of saying my first name where I knew that, like, it was getting real.
JACOB: What was it?
PARKER: Can you repeat it? Yeah.
LUCAS: My mom would just look at me and be like, "Lucas."
JACOB: Ohhhh.
JACOB: My kids, they don't believe me yet when I do that.
I know that-- I know that they're very young, but man, like, any kind of like, I've tried, "Henry James," or usually what my move now is, I just go, "Boys!" That works.
Yeah..
PARKER: That's good. Did you grab that from a movie? I feel like there's like an old western movie.
JACOB: Oh I'm sure.
PARKER: Like Hang 'Em High or Fistful Of Dollars or some shit like that?
JACOB: Because you'll be talking to one of them, they'll ignore you, you're talking to the other one, they ignore you. They're rough housing together, or whatever it is they're doing, that you need them to stop doing it, so at some point, you snap, and you just go, "Boys!" And then they kind of do that, and then you go, "Sit down!"
LUCAS: I just can't wait for one of them to James Van Der Beek, Varsity Blues you, and just tell you that they don't want your life.
JACOB: "I don't want your life."
PARKER: Nice, nice.
JACOB: Yeah Lucas, good to have you.
PARKER: Lucas, yeah man, it is nice to have you. We've-- the beta on this is, that we've been getting together and chatting a little bit about more, the inner experience of going through, I'd say COVID but I guess specifically, I think more and more we're talking about the experience of quarantine.
More than we are COVID right. So that's where a lot of this comes from so uh we have a couple questions we've been running by everybody, so it's kind of fun to like, compare and contrast some of these.
LUCAS: Oh boy.
PARKER: I know right. The first thing though, I guess I'm just curious about, I mean, like, we're at a more interesting time now, because there is some kind of shift happening, where you know the federal government is relaxing regulations, and each state is able to make its own decisions.
And then for us here in Nashville, it's not even the state's decision, but it's the city's decision. And so I'm curious is, like, as we start to, like, enter this shift, where are you at with that? What's that-- what's that like for you?
LUCAS: I mean I'm in Texas, so I'm in one of the states that, you know, is getting ready to reopen, I think tomorrow is like our official reopening day. And Monday was the second highest, you know, number of deaths that we've had in the state, right.
PARKER: Really?
LUCAS: Yeah, so it doesn't feel like great timing, to say the least. I get it, like, I get the situation's really dire for a lot of people right.
And, you know, I think the gap between the haves and the have nots, especially in my home state here, is pretty big, and, you know, there are a lot of people who are, you know, in a precarious situation to begin with, right.
They were hand to mouth, or close to it, and so I get the desire to go back to work, and to sort of like bring everything back online, and get money back in people's wallets, and food back in their pantries, and so I totally, totally get that part.
But there's too many question marks around it still, for me to be comfortable, and I think what's that quote from Men In Black where Agent K is sitting on the bench next to Agent J, or whatever it is, and he's like, you know, "A person is smart, but people are dumb," and that's like, I think that's just the perfect encapsulation of what's going on right now, is that there are a lot of smart people, but in aggregate, like, we're just all kind of scared animals, right.
And so I'm a little worried about what happens when the taps kind of get opened up again, and everybody just rushes back to doing what they were doing before, and, you know, I'm concerned about that.
PARKER: First of all, life lessons from Men In Black, I didn't see that coming, so--
LUCAS: You're welcome.
PARKER: Jacob, what about you, man? So we're-- I mean today is the-- no, tomorrow's May 1st here in Nashville, which is where we move into what is considered "phase one" here, where a lot of businesses can open back up at a certain capacity. Where's your head at dude?
JACOB: Similar to Lucas, man. I, well, for one, actually Parker, and I'm confused about this, but my understanding is that we can't get to "phase one" until we have two weeks of declining new cases.
PARKER: Oh shit. Maybe I've got it wrong.
JACOB: And so that would be-- we had our biggest spike in Nashville of new cases last weekend, so if I'm hearing it correctly, "phase one" isn't going to be until at least mid-May for us, and then that plan, our plan as a city, is really, it actually feels very thought out, and thoughtful, and complex.
So we'll see how that works. It's a social experiment that I'm not looking forward to, but we're all gonna have to-- we're all gonna have to endure here.
It's interesting, like, your the comment, like, I've actually said that before, in conversations, like people-- a person is often can handle nuance really well, and is smart and emotionally intelligent, but people in general are not usually, and so there's a tension here between like the health and the economy that, it's totally okay to hold two different ideas in your head at the same time, and two different desires.
And we just generally have a really hard time with that, and people pick sides. Hopefully there's less picking sides in this, it feels like everybody, you know, every-- a lot more people are on the same page about how we can all help one another.
But I've been thinking a lot about that, there was an essay from the head of philosophy at Patagonia that was kind of going around that I actually sent you guys earlier today. His point-- he used the example of a dam. That's a really interesting point.
He's like, "So back in my career in the 90s, one of the highlights as a writer for Patagonia was I was charged with writing about this specific dam in California to get the awareness so that it would be removed."
Because it was an old dam, and it wasn't providing any electricity, it was really, it was blocking this river that was having all kinds of ecological effects.
And he wins the campaign, and the dam gets removed, and as they shut off the turbines, the engineer was like, shuts it down, and it kind of coughs, and it stops to this silence.
And the engineer was like, "It's a lot like a death rattle," you know, it's over. And he-- this guy from Patagonia who spent his whole life campaigning for wildlife, and, you know, everything that Patagonia stands for, was like, at that moment, it was-- you're taking all of this human ingenuity and all of the industrial revolution and all of this design, and work power, and things the world has never seen, and it's kind of marvelous.
But you're also giving nature a chance to come back and heal, and he was comparing it to the current moment, which he's like on one hand, the sky in southern California was a shade of blue I've never seen before, and I've lived here my whole life.
But on the other hand people are hurting, and they're all-- a lot of the progress of their careers, and their standard of living, has sort of been halted, and so you have to kind of-- I don't know, I wrestle with it every day on like, how I feel.
Like, I feel very fortunate I'm not underwater, my family is healthy, and so I'm in a privileged place to be able to consider it, but I think that's the tension that's been inside my body for weeks, is personally I actually feel fine, like everything with my family feels good, work feels good, my wife and I are enjoying a lot of this time, but like something's under the water that's just like, it's all of it, right.
It's the news, it's the uncertainty. The uncertainty is starting to get very heavy. It's like you're adding a sandbag to it every day.
LUCAS: Can I go full consulting and say three things that that makes me think of?
PARKER: [LAUGHS] Yeah.
LUCAS: The first thing it makes me think of is, you know, this idea that I love of, like, bounded rationality. That like based on everything that you know, and everything that you've learned, and the way that you understand the world, you behave really rationally, right.
And that's true for me too, like based on everything that I know, and everything that I've learned in my sort of worldview, I behave extremely rationally, right. And predictably, based on my own set of rules. The problem is that, what you know and what I know are different, right.
And so our rationalities collide with one another, and I think that's what we're seeing at scale is, like, you've done the calculus in your head of, like, what's acceptable risk, and what can I stake and what feels like off limits, and I've done that calculation, and Parker's done that calculation, and everybody else on planet Earth has done that calculation, and everybody's math is different. And we're coming up with different answers, and they're all colliding at scale with each other.
And I think, like, that happens day to day, you know, but we just don't see it a lot of times because this is a situation that we haven't encountered before. That's thing number one.
Thing number two that it made me think of is, like, you know, I think there's a sadness to this, and I feel it-- I remember really clearly like the generator story reminded me of like when they retired the space shuttle, like there's this marvelousness of what humans can build, and the scale at which we can build it, like, we are the most successful tool using species on Earth and, like, we built some amazing tools.
And also, like, we've kind of screwed up along the way at doing that, you know. I think we've done-- there's been an environmental and a human cost to the way that we've built a lot of the things that we've built, and I think, like, you know, in many ways the sort of economic consequences of this virus are a testament to the places where we got it wrong, right.
And I try to remain optimistic that, like, we'll get it right, and, like, the next version of the space shuttle that we build will also, like, I don't know, clean the atmosphere on its way up, right, or whatever metaphor you want to use.
So that's the second thing it reminded me of. The third thing was like, there's this-- there's this concept that I really love, it's like a philosophical concept that comes from Japan called "mono no aware".
Have you heard of it? It's this-- I'm probably going to misrepresent it and so one of the listeners, I'm sure, is going to comment on it, but like, it's this sort of, like, wistfulness about the impermanence of things.
Like, you can admire something beautiful, knowing that it's impermanent, right. And there's both, like, a wonder and a joy to it, and a sadness to it also, because it is impermanent, right.
And I feel like my sense of that, at like, the impermanence of things, and, like, this sort of, like, joy of what they are in the moment, and, like, the beauty that they hold, and also my sadness that, like, they are impermanent are on full display, and, like, you know, turned up to 11 right now.
Like it just it feels like everything's being held in an open hand instead of a closed fist these days. And so it's just a really interesting kind of time to be alive and appreciating things in a different level of detail, and so anyway those are my three things.
And I'm done, so thank you very much for having me on the show.
PARKER: Not so easy buddy, not so easy. So that begs the question for me, what for you, Lucas, has grown out of this time? Like what is-- yeah what has like flowered or flourished during this time of quarantine?
LUCAS: I think a sense of, like, what, like, who am I doing this for? Right? I think we do a lot of things in our lives that we misattribute who the recipient of it is, right. And, you know, I do a lot of things because I think I'm helping somebody else, but really they're self-serving, right.
Like, even though they come from a desire to want to help, like, it's a self-serving desire to help, and so, I think, like, you know, when I think about reaching out to people, like, that's the thing that a lot of people have been doing lately about, you know, like let me reach out to, like, a friend that I haven't talked to in a while, or whatever it is, right. And I think that there's a lot of that that's wonderful right, like, the opportunity to build social connection is great, but I think what I've grown is like a sharper sense of, like, what's the real reason that I'm doing this?
Am I doing this because I care about that person, and I want them to know that I'm here for them, and that I love them and that, you know, I'm able to sort of like step in if they need something?
Or am I doing it because it's, you know, there's something about the way that our relationship has gone that, like, doesn't feel right, and so now I'm trying to self-soothe, and it's not really-- it's not really about them, it's about me.
It's not to say that it's, you know, that when that thought comes up, it's like, "Well I shouldn't reach out to this person, right?" but it's just this, like, much more keen sense of, like, what's the real reason why I'm doing these things, right?
And I think people are feeling that in the same way about, like, what's the real reason that I killed myself working every day, right?
Or what's the real reason that I, you know, decided to dress a certain way, or look a certain way or whatever?
Like, I feel like a lot of the artifice, and a lot of the facades of, like, the way of the space shuttle that we've built, you know, in terms of like, the way that we work, is coming down a little bit.
And we're starting to see a little bit more of, like, what's the-- what are all the mechanisms behind the scenes, right?
Like, where are all the gears, and all the different pieces that are moving, and I think we're starting to see the machine a little bit for what it is.
Which is a really interesting place to be right, like, it's going to be interesting to see what changes come out of this, and also what doesn't change coming out of this. Of what remains exactly the same.
JACOB: It's so lovely to realize the things you don't need. Like, I feel like this is a common vibe right now, because I've talked to quite a few people about it, but like, just from little things to big things, it's like we're in this--
I hope that, I hope this for myself, and I hope it for those that I care about, that like, we get to like a back to basics, at least some level of back to basics mentality.
It's like, sure there's, like, I'm gonna plant a garden, which is wonderful or support my CSA, or, you know, really, really clamor into my family and friends, and like, that's one-- that's amazing, but also in addition to that, like, what do you not need?
And like, what were you consuming before that, really, like, you can tell now that it's been ripped away from you that it added zero value to you.
And like, maybe you worked extra hard to have the extra resources to consume those things.
PARKER: Totally.
JACOB: Now, maybe you don't need to. I mean, everything might be just fine if we all stop being so busy, and just concentrate a little bit more on enjoying life.
Which so sounds corny and basic, and whatever. But it's the same kind of vibes you get, maybe, from like a great vacation, or a great experience that, like, changes your lens, or reminds you of the way you used to feel.
But this one is, it's mixed with fear, and so it's not only am I noticing spring a lot more, because I'm spending more time outside, and I'm watching my kids run around, and I'm sitting on my porch, and I'm working, but I'm not dying over here or anything.
It's also mixed with, "Man, this can all be taken away tomorrow," like, I could get this, and my body could react funny. There's been anomalies.
That's totally possible. My dad could get it, Molly's dad could get it, and then I would be dealing with a very close, personal, you know, tragedy, probably.
Like, so it's like tenuous, it's like, I feel totally-- I'm not affected directly, but it's right around the corner possibly.
And I'm enjoying this downtime, so it's a weird-- it feels like a weird-- everything's a weird tension with me today. Sorry, it's all I can do. [LAUGHS]
LUCAS: I also think that there's the, like, this is something I struggle with, too, is like how privileged I am, right. And how little I have to complain about, and yet how frustrated I can still be, right.
PARKER: Right.
LUCAS: Like, I'm not worried about having enough food to eat, but there are a lot of people who are.
JACOB: Right.
LUCAS: You know, and so, does it sometimes make me grumpy to sit in front of a Zoom call all day? Yes, you know, does it also-- am I also so grateful that I don't have to worry about, like, having food to eat, or a place to stay tonight, right?
Yes, absolutely, and I think to the point that you made earlier, Jacob, like, you know, two things can be true at the same time, right?
And it's just interesting how much, maybe that's another thing that's come out of this for me, is like how much I'm allowing those things to cohabitate with each other.
Like, thoughts that are totally incongruous or cognitively dissonant normally, then I'm just like, "There's a space for you, and a space for you.
There's a space for you to feel incredibly privileged, right. And there's a space for you to feel incredibly frustrated that, like, the things that you enjoy doing are taken away from you, right, or that you have to do them in a different way," and I think that, like, the ability to see both sides of that coin I'm hoping is a sign that I'm moving in the right direction of, like, you know, evolution as a human being, but we'll see. We'll see how everything shakes out.
PARKER: It's been interesting. I've come across Keith Yamashita twice in this past week. So for listeners that don't know who that is, he's one of the founders of SY Partners.
He's the I-- or the Y in "SY". And so one, he's been hosting a weekly series which has been really good, and one of the exercises that they had us try in this weekly series was this idea of, like, writing down all the roles that you play.
And so I've been trying this the last few days, and so I do it on, you know, trying it on a daily basis this idea of, you know, waking up every day and thinking about the roles that I want to play that day that are important to me.
And it's interesting to get really clear about that, and I'm only able to get clear about that because there is so much less noise, right?
And, so that's one thing and then so-- they also partnered to do this weekly series, it's called This Human Moment, if you haven't heard it yet, but in This Human Moment, they've also partnered with Meditative Stories, so big shout-out to them, because they're rad.
But I went back and listened to an old Meditative Story where Keith tells the story of having a stroke, and the impact it had on his life.
And he was not the first person I've heard say this lately, he was kind of referring to, like, this moment of clarity, this pause in his life, that allowed him to be like, "Alright, I am at a certain age, how do I want to live, kind of, the second half of my life?"
And he said for the previous whatever 25, 30 years, he'd been so busy, and hustling so hard, that he didn't pay attention to that.
He wasn't really being intentional, and he specifically mentions, you know, how he kind of interacts with his kids, and his family. And how he really needed that to change.
And so I'm 46 years old and so I've been kind of thinking about the same thing. It's like, man, I'm halfway through, if I'm lucky you know, how do I want to be in a relationship with my parents, and with my wife, and my siblings?
And I spend so much time thinking about how I want to be in a relationship with you guys, right, and with clients, and it occupies nine or ten hours of my day.
And I'm kind of waking back up to how my priorities are a little bit at a kilter, and so easy for that to happen. So how to get those back in there for that second half of life has been on my mind a lot.
Alright, I got one more question for you, Lucas. We've been talking about this, kind of the sense of, like, lack of control, or powerlessness, and what that's like.
Because it's a little bit different for everybody, and so certainly, there's things that we can control, that for most of us, we gravitate towards, because we want to experience some sense of control, right.
So whether it's, you know, I'm controlling what I eat or I'm controlling my exercise, whatever the thing is, but I'm curious as to like, as you look at the broader issue that we're having globally, what's that like to experience, like, that kind of, that lack of control, or that kind of powerlessness? Is that relieving for you? Is it anxiety inducing? Like, what is that, what's that like?
LUCAS: I'm a helper personality, so it's deeply upsetting to me, right. Like, there's this sort of, you know, you like, watch the news and it's just, like, heartbreak after heartbreak, right.
And you're like, what can I do? What can I do? What can I do, right? And, you know, I, like, even having some skills that I feel like would be helpful in this situation, but still not feeling like there's a clear place for that to exist.
For that to be, and, you know I had this conversation with Alexis, my partner, a few weeks ago, and we were talking about that, and one of the things that we sort of agreed on was, like, maybe the best thing that we really can do right now is stay out of the way, right?
Like, maybe the kindest and gentlest and most humane thing to do is to create space, and safety and security, you know, until the situation sort of flattens out a little bit right?
Like, truly participate in flattening the curve, and, like, that requires you to sort of check your ego, and I think we've had conversations, I think, on this team about this, where there's, you know, there's a sort of hedonism and like, you know, a sort of treadmill of, like, nicer car, nicer house, you know, fancier vacations, all these other things, and it's really easy to sort of like, turn your nose up at that, until you realize that, like, your desire to help, and to always be helping, works in the same way, right?
Like, "Oh, I helped one person, but I could help two. I helped two people, I could help four. I helped four, I could help eight," and it's like, at what point is it enough to satisfy that need to, like, help?
And like, you know, Bill Gates right now is probably thinking he could be doing more, right?
PARKER: Right.
LUCAS: Like, I'm sure he's so frustrated by that, and I try to remind myself of that all the time, is that, like, you don't get off that treadmill, just like set the incline higher, and the speed higher, until you're at a dead sprint off the side of everest, right? And like you die exhausted, right?
PARKER: Yeah.
LUCAS: And so I think the nice thing about it is, like, the circle shrunk a little bit. So it's not, like, thinking about the world, it's thinking about, you know, what's in your immediate circle?
And I think, especially for, you know, a lot of people, and I think, you know, maybe designers are more susceptible to this because of our natural, you know, tendencies toward being really empathetic, but I think that there's this far-sightedness that we have, right.
And like, things look really small from far away, right. And so your impact when you look at it from far away is really small, and that's really frustrating if all you're doing is like looking out at the horizon and seeing your impact, and you're like,
"Man, I am just really not moving the needle, right?" But if you just sort of, like, flip the other lens down, right, and start looking at what's close up to you, like ,the impact can be huge.
The impact on your immediate circle, and, you know, the people that you care about, the people that you work with, your clients, your co-workers, whomever it is, and so I think, like, shifting that focus is hard, but it's been a good salve for the sort of pain of not being able to help at scale. You know, you can either be-- you can either be a kiddie pool that's a mile wide and an inch deep, or you can be a diving well that's an inch wide and a mile deep, right?
Like, you know, and, sort of, what do you want your impact to look like? Because most of us are time- and/or resource-constrained, right?
So it's, you know, where do you want to maximize that, and how thin do you want to spread it out?
JACOB: A couple weeks ago, I emailed Lucas just checking in, and he said, "Yeah man, I gave blood today. Felt like I was spitting in a hurricane," and I thought, oh wow. It's a really good way to describe that feeling of-- but then I thought, at least you told me how you felt.
LUCAS: I guess that's true, yeah. But I still went home from that, and, you know, apart from getting, like, the Oreos, and feeling like, maybe, maybe I helped somebody out, like, I was still, you know, I was like, "Well they only took one unit of blood.
Like, why didn't they take two? They could have taken more," like, I could have done more, what else could I do? "Do you need, like, an extra arm, I'll cut mine off. I'll give it to you." It's like, where does it end, right?
PARKER: I appreciate that reframe though man, that idea of, like, it's that old-- there's, like, some old poem from the 70s or something about the starfish, right. And with the starfish, right, okay, so you know what I'm talking about.
LUCAS: Yeah.
PARKER: But there's that whole thing, it's like, it mattered that starfish, and so I appreciate the reframe. It's like, even how we show up energetically towards each other, because everybody's having a rough time with this, so.
Yeah, maybe I'm not, you know, maybe I don't get to be a healthcare worker, and I'm not on the front lines, or building houses for, you know, people who don't have a place to live.
But yeah, how I treat the people around me, family, friends, coworkers, etc. can be radically important in a time when everybody's freaked out, you know.
JACOB: That's a really good way to end this, because we're, like, almost 30 minutes, but also, I want to just double down on that, and say I really resonate with that, Parker, because earlier this year, when I was thinking about my own destiny, I was like, "Okay, I really want my kids to think that I had some kind of involvement in helping with climate, and the world," I really-- it's just important to me, and so I'm not a scientist, I'm not a farmer, I'm not any of the things that are more obvious, I'm not an engineer.
But I thought, like, my superpowers, if I have any, are a little bit around storytelling, and bringing people together, and so I started knocking my head around, how I could use those to tackle that problem.
And since COVID, that's kind of what I've been brainstorming myself here, is like, what stories of people going back to basics, or doing whatever that would be worth sharing, can I do, you know, maybe this summer, I don't know.
But, like, I'm not beating myself up that I'm not a healthcare worker, or that I'm not on the front lines, or that's just not, that's not something I've trained to do, but I can still have a role. I can still add my own thing to the pot. It will just look different.
PARKER: Word up. Dudes, thanks a ton for taking a little time to hang out, and explore the inner landscape during COVID-19. It's good to see you guys.
LUCAS: It's a weird place in there.
PARKER: It is a weird place in there dude.
