Ep 3. The Forgetting (and Remembering) — Field Notes Radio

My daughter's preschool teacher said it every morning, to a room full of four-year-olds.

We do what we have to do before we get what we want to do.

I understand why she says it. You want them to wash their hands. You want them to sit through circle time without dismantling it. But somewhere between preschool and adulthood, the teacher got replaced. A boss. A culture. A voice inside your own head that still has her exact rhythm.

And most of us never stopped following the rule. We just forgot it was ever a rule. We started calling it the truth.

That's what this episode is about. This one goes underneath the productivity systems, the five-year plans, the calendar — down to the belief installed before anyone was old enough to question it: obligation comes before desire, duty comes before self, you earn your presence before you're allowed to have one.

I trace where that comes from. I talk about records, and what happens to a life when the parts that made you never get written down. I tell you about a 24 year old named Lydia Lee, and the line she said that I have not stopped carrying since: the question was never whether I belonged. The question was whose permission I was going to ask.

And I get into Ram Dass, and the idea that we are all G-d in drag. Which sounds like a bit until you watch it happen in a Field Note session for the fiftieth time. Someone stops performing. Something older than the performance comes through.

At the end, I ask you to write yourself a permission slip. People have cried doing this. People have laughed like they got away with something. What they got away with was themselves.

The forgetting doesn't have to be permanent. Somebody has to keep the record of the walk.

[Listen to Episode 3: The Forgetting →]

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