Episode Nine: Freedom | The American Experiment and the Human Experiment

As this episode is released, we find ourselves heading into Fourth of July weekend and the 250th anniversary of the United States. It's a time of year filled with fireworks, parades, family gatherings, and conversations about freedom. But over the last year, I've found myself reflecting on that word in a very different way. Not politically, but personally. Not through the lens of headlines, but through history. Before we go any further, I want to be clear about something. This isn't a political episode. I'm not interested in debating parties, policies, or telling anyone what they should believe. That's not what Becoming the Sanctuary is about. This conversation is about humanity, perspective, and the questions that connect all of us regardless of where we come from.

I've always been fascinated by history. Even as a kid, I found myself drawn to the Founding Fathers, the Revolutionary period, and the stories surrounding the birth of this country. I couldn't fully explain why at the time. There was simply something about that chapter of history that kept pulling me back. Over the last year, however, that fascination became much more personal as I began researching my own ancestry. What started as curiosity slowly turned into hundreds of hours spent tracing family lines, reading historical records, and discovering the people whose lives eventually led to mine.

Along my grandmother's family line, I discovered that I'm a direct descendant of William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony and one of the passengers aboard the Mayflower. I learned that I'm also a direct descendant of Abigail Faulkner, who survived the Salem Witch Trials. Through another branch of my family, I discovered I'm a collateral descendant of John Adams, and I uncovered direct ancestors who fought during both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. Suddenly, history wasn't just something I was reading anymore. It became something I was connected to. These weren't simply names in textbooks. They were human beings who lived through uncertainty, hardship, hope, loss, and impossible decisions. They were ordinary people who had no idea that centuries later someone would still be telling their stories.

As I continued reading about that period of history, one phrase kept appearing over and over again: The American Experiment. I found myself captivated by that word, experiment. An experiment assumes something incredibly important. It assumes you don't already know the outcome. It assumes you're willing to try something that has never been done before, to learn from mistakes, to refine what isn't working, and to leave room for future generations to continue the work. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I don't believe the people who began this country thought they were creating something finished. I think they knew they were beginning something. Something that would be challenged. Something that would evolve. Something they themselves would never live long enough to see completed.

At the same time, studying history also reminded me that remarkable ideas can exist alongside remarkable blind spots. The ideals of liberty and equality were revolutionary, yet slavery still existed. Women were denied many of the rights we now consider fundamental. The Indigenous peoples who had lived on this land for generations often paid an unimaginable price as settlements expanded. Those aren't details we should ignore because they're uncomfortable. They're part of the story. In fact, I think acknowledging them gives us a more honest understanding of history. It reminds us that every generation is capable of extraordinary vision while also being limited by the culture and understanding of its own time.

Rather than judging history from a place of superiority, I found myself asking a much more humbling question. If future generations can clearly see the blind spots of those who came before us, what blind spots do we have today? What assumptions are we making that feel completely normal to us but will one day seem obvious to those who come after? Every generation inherits unfinished work, but every generation also leaves unfinished work behind. Progress has never been about reaching perfection. It's been about expanding our understanding of what it means to be human.

That realization eventually led me away from history and back toward the present moment. Because perhaps America isn't the only unfinished experiment. Maybe being human is an unfinished experiment too.

Every generation faces challenges the previous generation could never have imagined. Today we live in a world of artificial intelligence, endless notifications, twenty-four-hour news cycles, social media, comparison culture, economic uncertainty, and information overload. We know about tragedies happening across the world within minutes. We carry conversations with hundreds of people every week. We are expected to be available, informed, productive, responsive, and emotionally present almost every moment of every day. We consume more information before lunch than previous generations encountered in weeks.

Then we wonder why we're exhausted.

Maybe nothing is actually wrong with us.

Maybe we're simply carrying more than human beings were ever designed to carry.

I think one of the greatest misconceptions of modern life is that more information automatically leads to more wisdom. But information and wisdom aren't the same thing. We know more than ever before, yet many people feel more anxious, more disconnected, and more uncertain than ever. We have access to nearly every answer imaginable, yet we're asking deeper questions about purpose, belonging, fulfillment, and connection. Technology has given us extraordinary tools, but it hasn't removed our responsibility to learn how to use them wisely.

That's where this conversation circles back to freedom.

What does freedom actually mean?

Is freedom simply having more choices? Or is it learning which choices deserve our attention? Is freedom having unlimited access to information, or is it knowing when to disconnect? Is freedom about doing whatever we want, or is it about intentionally choosing the kind of life we want to build?

As I've reflected on my own journey, I've realized that every meaningful chapter of my life began long before I felt certain. Choosing sobriety. Leaving a successful career. Building Thrivewell. Writing a book. Opening Thrivewell Hub. Starting this podcast. Accepting a new full-time position while continuing to believe in a dream that is much bigger than myself. None of those decisions came with guarantees. They came with hope. They came with uncertainty. They came with a willingness to participate without knowing exactly how the story would unfold.

Somewhere along the way, I think many of us stopped treating life like an experiment and started treating it like a final exam. We believe there's one perfect career, one perfect relationship, one perfect timeline, one perfect version of ourselves we're supposed to become. We postpone joy until we feel ready. We postpone purpose until we feel confident. We postpone living until we think we've finally figured everything out.

But perhaps certainty was never the goal.

Perhaps participation was.

One of the guiding philosophies behind Thrivewell has always been a simple question: Why can't it all be true? History can be inspiring and deeply flawed. Human beings can be courageous and imperfect. We can celebrate progress while acknowledging injustice. We can honor the generations that came before us while recognizing there is still work left to do. Those ideas don't compete with one another, they complete one another.

The same is true in our own lives. We don't have to be finished to have value. We don't have to have every answer before taking the next step. Healing isn't about becoming perfect. It's about becoming more aware. More compassionate. More curious. More willing to listen. More willing to grow. The experiment isn't over because we still have work to do. The experiment continues because every generation has the opportunity to become a little more human than the one before it.

As you celebrate this Fourth of July weekend, I hope you'll take a moment to look beyond the fireworks. Spend time with the people you love. Have conversations that matter. Put your phone down for a while. Look up at the sky. Remember that history has never been shaped only by presidents, founders, or famous names. It has always been shaped by ordinary people making ordinary choices with extraordinary intention.

Every act of kindness matters.

Every difficult conversation matters.

Every time we choose curiosity over certainty, empathy over judgment, and community over division, we participate in something much bigger than ourselves.

Perhaps that is the real human experiment.

Not becoming perfect.

But becoming more fully human.

And maybe that's the unfinished work we've inherited.

Not simply building a better country.

But becoming better neighbors, better communities, better listeners, better stewards, and better human beings than we were yesterday.

Because history isn't only something we read.

It's something we're writing.

Every single day.

#BecomingTheSanctuary #ThrivewellEstate #Freedom #AmericanExperiment #HumanExperiment #PersonalGrowth #History #Philosophy #HealingJourney #Mindfulness #Community #Purpose #Compassion #FourthOfJuly #Podcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Becoming the Sanctuary. If this is your first time here, my name is Kelly, founder of Thrivewell Estate and Thrivewell Hub. And this podcast is a space where we explore healing, embodiment, emotional awareness, creativity, human connection, and what it actually means to return to yourself while still living inside a very overwhelming world. As this episode is being released, we're heading into the 4th of July weekend. And this year marks the 250th birthday of the United States. Now, over the last year, I have found myself diving deeper and deeper into American history. I've always been fascinated by history, even as a kid. I was drawn to the Founding Fathers, the revolutionary period, and the stories of how this country came to be. I couldn't really explain why back then. There was just something about that chapter of history that kept pulling me back. Well, then, about a year ago, that fascination became much more personal. I started researching my own ancestry. What began as a simple curiosity slowly became hundreds of hours spent reading old records, tracing family lines, studying historical documents, and piecing together the stories of people I had never met but whose choices eventually shaped my own life. Along my maternal grandmother's family line in particular, I discovered I'm a direct descendant of William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony, and one of the passengers aboard the Mayflower. I learned I'm also a direct descendant of Abigail Faulkner, who survived the Salem Witch trials. And then I also found that I'm a collateral descendant of John Adams, our second president. I discovered direct ancestors who fought during the Revolutionary War, and others who later served during the Civil War. And somewhere along the way, history stopped feeling like something that happened in a textbook, and it became deeply human. These weren't just names anymore. They were people. People making incredibly difficult decisions. People trying to build families, trying to build communities, trying to build a country, trying to leave something behind that mattered. But before we go any further, I want to say something that's important. Very important. This is not going to be a political episode. I am not interested in debating parties, policies, or telling anyone what they should believe. That's not why I'm talking about history today. The reason I'm talking about history is because I think history has one of the greatest gifts it can offer us. Perspective. As I read through journals, letters, and historical accounts, I couldn't ignore those contradictions. The ideals of liberty and equality were revolutionary for their time, yet slavery still existed. Women were largely excluded from political life and denied many of the rights we now consider fundamental. The indigenous people who had lived on this land for generations often paid an unimaginable price as new settlements expanded. Those aren't uncomfortable details we should skip over. They're part of the story. Not because acknowledging them diminishes what was accomplished, but because telling the whole story reminds us that every generation carries both wisdom and blind spots at the same time. That realization actually made me respect history even more. Because it reminded me that progress has never been created by perfect people. It's been created by ordinary people doing the best they could with the understanding they had while leaving behind work for the next generation to continue. And that's when I found myself thinking about a phrase historians use over and over again. And I've been thinking about these two words for the last say eight months, I think. And then if if you haven't watched it, there is now a documentary that is called The American Experiment on Netflix. And I I highly recommend that you watch it because I couldn't stop thinking about that word, experiment. Because an experiment isn't something that's finished, it's something that's continually observed, questioned, tested, refined, expanded, passed from one generation to the next. And I don't think the people who began this country believe that they had all the answers. I think they knew they were beginning something that they would never live to finish. And maybe that's exactly the point. Because I don't think America is the only unfinished experiment. I think being human is an unfinished experiment as well. Every generation inherits questions from the generation before it. Every generation sees something the previous generation couldn't. And every generation also has blind spots the future generations will eventually recognize. That realization has been incredibly humbling for me. Because it's easy to look back through history and ask, how could they not see it? The harder question is this what are we not seeing? 200 years from now, what will people look back on and wonder about us? What assumptions are we making today simply because they're familiar? And what opportunities do we have to become just a little more compassionate than the generations before us? And maybe that's where this connects back to everything we've been talking about this season. Because healing isn't about the becoming perfect, it's about becoming more aware, more honest, and more compassionate, not just with ourselves, but with each other. Which brings me to the next question I've been sitting with all week. As we celebrate 250 years of the American experiment, what does freedom freedom actually mean? And not politically, but humanly. Because I don't know if we've ever had more choices than we do today. More information, more technology, more convenience, more opportunity. And yet, I also don't know if we've ever carried so much invisible weight. Maybe the next chapter of the human experiment isn't simply building better systems. Maybe it's remember how to be better humans, how to listen, how to disagree without hatred, how to build community instead of isolation, how to choose curiosity instead of certainty, how to leave something a little bit better than how we found it. Because perhaps freedom isn't just something we're given, perhaps it's something we practice every single day. And that's what I want to explore together today. So let's dive into that. Um let's really start with that first question. What does freedom actually mean? And honestly, um this episode, like I I I've mentioned in a few of the other episodes um this season, is that I have laid out to be honest, I've laid out five seasons, 20 episodes per season of the topics and how I want this to flow. Not that it, you know, is super rigid, because obviously life happens in between there, and I I want to be reflective at the same time and sharing my story and and what I go through in an attempt to help others and connect others, um things like that. So I was really sitting with the topic that was picked um for this episode, and and it was really talking about the heaviness that we feel, um, the heaviness that we feel in our own self, in the world that we're in today. And I kept trying to really create that outline and and what I wanted to talk about, and specifically how the flow was going to go within the episode. Um, and I just kept coming back to this same, this same question, you know, with with the 4th of July being on Saturday this week. Um, and I remember back, I was in, I was going to school, I was at UMass Amherst, and um one of the electives that I took was political science. Um, and I remember being in in the group with our our TA, because anybody who's gone to UMass knows that those classes are like 300 people. So then you also have a smaller class in addition to the larger class um with a TA. But anywho, I digress. Um and I remember she she asked us if we felt like we were really free. And I'm kind of thinking about that question now, um, right in this moment, because a lot of people they they answered yes. And and I went back to school later, so I was a little bit older. Um, and I remember raising my hand and just saying, you know, I think we're free, but with restrictions. And like I said, I'm not gonna get political, so I won't go too far into that. But, you know, like we need a passport to leave and we need a passport to come back in. And but of course, we need to have this structure and these systems in place, or else it would truly be um just chaos and like the wild west and everybody would be going everywhere. So I understand the need for these ideas and this structure. But again, I I feel that question is is coming up again, um, you know, all these all these years later. And the reason why that question is on my mind is because I don't I don't wanna I'm talking freedom beyond politics, right? Like not in the sense of the rights that we have, or you know, like I said, I'm not getting political, so that's a whole separate topic and conversation. Um but what is it what does it mean to you, right? Um and as we celebrate 250 years as a country, um, why is it that so many people don't actually feel free? And the more that we, you know, grow and and move forward and creating these systems and having all this information, and you know, we're at a time where we've had we have, like I said, more information than we ever have. And and I will fully say this is coming from somebody who is a systems thinker, and I like to create systems. Um, but I think part of why we don't feel free is because we don't have freedom from urgency or comparison or fear or change or rest or freedom to choose our own path, really. Because eventually there's restrictions, you know, we have to we have to make money and we have to be able to to pay bills and we want to be really good at our jobs, and um, you know, we want to be present for everybody in our life. And those all all those things still need to exist, but coming from a systems thinker and somebody who does create automated systems, um, and does understand that AI is here, right? And and we can all we can all boycott it as much as we want. Um, I'm not somebody personally who's boycotting it fully. I try to really limit my use on it. Um, but it is here, and it is a tool that if we don't use it, um, when the rest of the world is, we will, we will be left behind. Um, but again, not looking to debate anything. Um, I'm just trying to speak more in facts because I know a lot of these uh topics are hot topics. So um being somebody who does create systems and um looking at from that lens, you know, I had a really good uh CEO for the last company that I worked at, and he was talking a lot about using these tools um to create more time, not more work, right? And I think that could be part of the reason why we're in this, I don't know what the right word is. It's like we're moving towards technology and systems that should be allowing us to create more time, but instead it's it's creating more productivity and more output on the workload, right? So think about um, you know, in any any sort of workforce, right, that can use any of these systems or automations. And I'm not talking about just technology um, because a lot of what I would create is um systems and that were automated and with dashboards and everything for construction, right? So that's people who are who are using their hands. But what can happen is that we create these systems, we create a pocket of time, right? Or we make it so we can do that workload faster. And it's not like we're using that time to rest or to allow more creativity to come in. We're filling it with more work. Our expectations on ourselves, whether that be from our bosses or from ourselves, the expectations are increased. So now we just have to produce more, we have to put out more, we have to communicate more, we have to digest more, we have to understand more. And I think the fact that people are resisting some of these technologies because they don't want to move too fast. Um, and then you have other people who are diving into these systems because they don't want to be left behind. But I don't think either one of those people are wrong. Um, but again, it's what what are we trying to create? And if we're not moving towards freedom really from ourselves, right, then then what are we even doing? Um, and that's why honestly, a lot of what I wanted to to look at when I was looking at even just my own ancestry, um, and and never mind just history in general. Like I said, I've always been very fascinated with it, not in the sense of my grades. It was something I would I would be more passionate about personally. Um, for some reason it didn't translate uh when I was in school. But I for me to create a space where I was helping people slow down and get reconnected, whether that be with themselves or their community with each other, I wanted to understand how we became so disconnected in the first place. So not only did I have my own pull right towards the founding fathers, um, and just how they how they knew to create what they did. Um, and you know, people coming to a new land and and what they missed, like because they majorly missed a lot. Like I kind of I already talked about a lot of it. Um, and and never mind the people, they missed the land itself, right? And that's something that we're still looking at today. Um, but that's to explain why I wanted to go back and look, because I wanted to understand how did we become so disconnected in the first place? And so that's what I wanted to really understand with us turning 250 years old. Like, what was it that how did we get to here, right? Because we can all acknowledge, again, trying to stay on this fine line of not getting too political, but we can all acknowledge that we're pretty darn divided right now as a whole. And I don't even mean just our country, I mean as humans. Everything is very polarized, everything is very extreme, and and um adjectives and and belief systems and thought processes are are defining us as human beings, where they are just supposed to be adjectives or or things that we um I don't know, they just they shouldn't be defining factors, right? Of who I am as a human. So as I've researched, right, I I thought a good place to look at was my own ancestry. And that's when the records just exploded, right? I was on Ancestry.com and I was doing all this research, and and my uncle on um specifically on my my maternal grandmother's line, uh, there was a lot of work already done there. So I really got to get, you know, quite a few generations back without much work. And the more that I did start going further than what was already there, I started seeing these big connections, right, with the people I talked about, William Bradford, Abigail Faulkner, John Adams, Revolutionary War ancestors, Civil War ancestors, never mind the people that I know, right? Like my grandfather um was a Korean War veteran. And what was interesting for me is how it then became very personal, right? I know William Bradford, right, was not a good man. Um, and I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that just because now he's my, I don't even know, great, great, great, great, great-grandfather, um, that I excuse what he did, right? But still a very significant part of our history. And to understand, right, like we're talking about how do we come back together, I had to see people like William Bradford, and like I said, it becomes more personal. So now I want to understand it even more, right? How, how, even back then, and understanding the context of time and what they thought, but I feel like deep down we do know um the difference between right and wrong, right? And it just feels, and especially the more that I researched even just our founding fathers and how divided everything was, it's like they've just been kicking the can down the hill. And here we are 250 years later, and we're supposed to have all this progress, right? And we we have seen more technological advances in this generation than in the history of humankind. Let me say that again. We have had more technological advances in in this generation than we have in all of humankind, in human history. Yet why are we going in the opposite direction as humans? And I think when we start to look at, right, where once upon a time, all of all of these people, right? The people who have helped build the country, who was here before the country was built, um going back generations, as far back as we as we possibly can, every person once upon a time is an. Ordinary person until they do something that makes a mark on history, that extraordinary choice, whether it's for good or for bad, and and we remember it. But what are we doing with that information? What are we doing with that awareness? Because to be perfectly honest, it doesn't seem like we're doing enough. And how? It's not that it hasn't ever been challenged, it certainly has. Um, but they were creating an experiment, right? Think about how the history went because you have when like the Mayflower and the earlier settlers, right, they came over from England because they wanted to have religious freedom, right? And that's why it was so important to have religion to and I mean freedom of and for religion, right? Um, they came over here, but they were still pretty loyal to Britain. And even up until when we were writing the Declaration of Independence, there was quite a divide. Um, people who still were loyal and they didn't want the independence, but it wasn't something we came here seeking, it was something we decided to create. And I think very much so, that they were creating something that wasn't finished, and I think that that in general is what happens. We all are given, every generation inherits unfinished work. And if we're keeping it about this topic, right, with the celebration happening on Saturday. And where is it that we look back and understand that this is unfinished? I mean, there's you have to understand the order. They they wrote the Declaration of Independence, and then they wrote the Constitution, and then they realized they needed a Bill of Rights, and then they realized within the Bill of Rights, they need to also account that just because it's not listed here doesn't mean you have that right. How did they figure all of that out? How did they have the courage to begin that without having any certainty? And and building something bigger than yourself. And how did all these men come together and agree even through disagreement? Because in from what I thought, I thought they were all sitting at the table singing kumbaya together, and they all signed those those documents that we all learn about and we all understand. I mean, hell, I even thought they came over here for independence itself. So even myself have have misunderstood history and how how much faster we're moving, how much are we slowing down enough to even really just look back and and understand these basic principles? Um, because I think when we look at where a lot of the disagreements come from today, so much of it has to do with ownership. But how much can we really own, right? Stewardship is more like it. Stewardship across generations. If you're in a town that has a ton of history and something happens to it, right? Something happens to the property that you have. Let's take, for example, the manor that's here in town, it's like, well, you kind of had a bigger responsibility than just you. And I think that those type of questions, those matter more than the answers themselves. Is what are we stewarding while we're here? And and what are we heading for? And what lessons are there to learn and and to be better? Um, because there's a lot of room to be better. There's a lot of room to be better. Think about it. I mean, right off the bat, when they get here, the early settlers, there was already people here, right? And I'm not, again, I'm not going to try and convince anyone to believe anything in a certain way. But I do believe that if we understood that it was stewardship, right, more than owning, but the way that we treated the indigenous people, whether or not how we thought they were acting, whether it was civil or they were attacking each other, whatever that is, there was already people here for a long time, thousands of years. So even just how we got here, and to understand that and and to understand that I'm not saying that it's our generation's job to make it right, but we could start being better. We could start acknowledging those blind spots because there was slavery, right? They're they're literally writing in a document, all men are created equal, except for slaves, and then women's rights, right? I mean, that we're going the suffrage movement didn't happen until what the 1920s? So I think acknowledging why this complexity matters is because even when building something so visionary and so great, right? Like a democracy that has stood the test of time for 250 years, what happens when it doesn't hold up anymore? What happens if we keep progressing into this world where we are less and less human? Because, like I said, every generation has blind spots, and we'd be lying to say, and knowing now that I am even a direct descendant of some of these people, that when I first learned that I was their direct descendant, I went, uh-oh. Right? It's like when you learn that you you're related to somebody who's in the Salem Witch trials. Oh shit, which side were they on? Were they were they a victim or were they part of the problem? But the but the thing is, is that humanity is still evolving. And like I said, I feel like 250 years ago to now, we're still kicking that can down the hill. And we are becoming more aware over time. But remember what we talked about a few episodes ago: awareness versus embodiment. We don't need more awareness, right? I mean, maybe a little bit if you don't know the history and and you want to understand how we can kind of pick up the unfinished business and and understand where we could go as a country and how that could affect humanity as a whole. Because right now, I think one of the reasons if we bring it back to what this what this episode was going to be about in the first place was why everything feels so heavy. Like, why is it that everything feels so heavy? Well, because modern life asks more of us than ever before. And we are on an absolute information overload. You know, we already we already talked about AI. It's it's interesting. I in the hub here, um, I have a fictional letter series and it's called Whispers of the Parlor. And the idea of it is that if somebody comes in and they, you know, they're hidden all throughout, and they're supposed to really be where, like, you know, if you if you find a letter, you're meant to find it and and you're meant to read what it says. And a lot of it is the idea, it comes from the time frame of the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Um, so really that Victorian Gilded Age era. And I used historical um accuracy to understand what Whitensville was going through during the time. And the point of the series is that if you aren't ready to talk about anything yet, um, but don't want to feel alone, it's it's to help you feel seen, it's to help you feel held and to be feel held in the container itself. Um, but a lot of when I was doing research, that's the time that electricity was coming to Whitensville and and you know, everywhere eventually. And the more that I was writing these letters and I was researching that, I just I couldn't help but compare it to how we feel about AI now. It's like they're noticing the changes slowly, they notice that things are starting to move a bit faster, they know that more is going to be expected of them. They know, right? Well, we're here in a mill town, okay. So the the whiten um machine works that was here, you know, in the mills and everything. And if you if you know anything about mills, they're always by some sort of water. That's because they were they were powered by steam and water. So electricity coming in, it's gonna get rid of a lot of jobs, right? Now electricity is gonna power these these mills, and it's very similar to how we feel about AI. Um, so it's just interesting to see that parallel. Like here we are, you know, a hundred a hundred or so years later, and um feeling the same fears, feeling the same pressures coming. And so, with all this information that we have, we have endless options. We've already talked about the endless notifications, social media, right? With where we're at, um, just globally and where we are as humans, like the economic uncertainty that we're facing. How to make a decision? When you have that much information, you can really get a lot of decision fatigue because it's really hard to make a decision and stick to it. And then you have the compassion fatigue that really like when you when we get all of this, how it makes us feel to see so many humans, um, and not just humans, animals, right? When we look at these wildfires or anything that is happening, that can our bodies, our nervous, everything can go on overload because it's we're not meant to be seeing all of this bad. We're not meant to be processing all of this bad. It's not to say we don't know that it's out there, but to see it right in our face all the time. And and then along with that, too, like we talked about that we're constant, it's constantly comparing everything and never mind being always available. We're always accessible, whether it be through email or text message or phones or social media or whichever way. I mean, I'm sure there's there's a million more um ways to communicate that I'm probably getting too old to even know they exist. But we have this ability to always be accessible, but never being fully present. So maybe there is nothing wrong with us. Maybe we're just carrying more than humans were designed to carry. So, what are we still building? That's my next question. Because I think honestly, maybe our generations work, right? And like I said, I'm 40, so I'm kind of right in the middle, and some of the younger generation listen up. Maybe it isn't inventing more technology, maybe it's putting more focus on rebuilding humanity because with humanity comes compassion and empathy and community, curiosity, wonder, joy. Think about joy. When did you last feel joy? My mom has a sign that she reminded me of, and and no wonder why um, like all these things are kind of coming a little bit more naturally to me, is because I I have parents that have have pretty much surrounded me in it. She had this sign and she still does. Creativity equals joy, and we've lost that because we're just so busy, and we if you don't slow down enough to let that creativity hit, it never does. So we need to rebuild presence and and listening and belonging and local community, your neighbors, and that's why I built Thrive Well Hub, why I wanted to help people reconnect and why I get so involved in community because it's the kind of world that I want to hope to help create, that's the legacy I want to leave. And then you know, how are you participating in the experiment? Think about I mean, I'll just speak for myself. Every chapter of my life that I started without certainty, my sobriety, leaving my last career, building Thrive Well Hub, writing the book Thrival Core Philosophy, starting this podcast, starting to add another path with this new career, coming in to form one path with Thrive Well building right beside it. Every single one of you has your own experiment, and it's us up to us to finish each of those experiments to take what we've learned and be better and understand being human more. Because life is not a final exam, it asks for direct participation, and the more that we have curiosity over certainty, and like I always say, and my one of my favorite lines that I got when I was in early sobriety, progress over perfection. And I think that as we celebrate this 4th of July, I want you to think about everything that I said. And I do apologize, like I always do, if this rambled on, because I didn't really have a lot of structure for this one. And and I hope this didn't come off political, and I hope I didn't offend anybody. Um, because there's when we look back at these 250 years, I think there's just so much to look at, and there's so many different angles. And I think it just like we said, 200 years from now, looking back, how do we want our future um descendants, right? No, ancestors. Wait, I can't remember which way it goes. It's too hot, it's like 100 degrees today. But who how do we want them to remember us? What is the legacy? Because I'm not gonna lie, these last six years, I don't know our legacy is that great. Um but I do believe that humanity will always prevail, and I do believe that light will always outshine the dark. So I think even within this experiment, you know, I I don't think it's something that we're we're necessarily failing. I think it's just that we forgot we were in an experiment at all. Because freedom is not simply something we're just given, it's something we practice, like same as intuition, same as working on ourselves, and whether it be from our parents or the founding fathers or the indigenous people who came before that, or whoever it was who came before that, we inherit unfinished work and we also leave unfinished work, so the future generations to come, we're always shaping what's next. So I know for me, I choose compassion, I choose curiosity, I choose courage and I choose participation, and I want to leave the world a little bit better than I found it. And becoming the sanctuary begins with how we choose to live every day. So I want to encourage you, because I think at this point we we will probably wrap this up because I'm not sure how this episode is gonna turn out, but we'll see. I'm sure I'll get some feedback if it's not good. But again, this is me just being my overthinking self and afraid of the keyboard warriors where everything is just so politicized these days. Um, but but on that note, um, I really want to encourage you to enjoy the holiday weekend. Really enjoy it. Think about how far we've come these 250 years and try to put your phone away for a while, right? Watch the fireworks, don't take pictures of them. You're never gonna do anything with them afterwards. Nobody needs to see them on social media. Be present, spend time with the people you love, ask someone a meaningful question, and again, be present because remember, history was shaped by ordinary people, and your choices matter too. Okay, so as we celebrate 250 years of what has often been called the American experiment, I hope we also remember something else. Every generation inherits an unfinished story. We don't get to choose the chapters we're born into, but we do get to choose what we add to it. Maybe the experiment was never about building a perfect nation. Maybe it was always about becoming more fully human, more compassionate, more curious, more courageous, more willing to listen, and more willing to leave something better than we found it. Because history isn't just something we read, it's something we're writing every single day. So this weekend, as you celebrate with family and watch the fireworks, or simply take a quiet moment to yourself, I hope you'll ask one question: What am I contributing to the human experiment? And what kind of world do I hope the next generation inherits because I was here? So I think that'll do it. And I want to thank you all so much again for listening to Becoming the Sanctuary. And if there's anybody out there that that you think that this could help or, you know, just find my rambling entertaining, please go ahead and share. Um, but otherwise, we will see you next Friday, and we will be talking about everyone's favorite topic: boundaries, and why they feel so uncomfortable. But other than that, have a great weekend and happy fourth, everybody.