 teacher's capability. This is the time to go down in Texas way before you were born. Okay, okay. And my mother, before she died. How old do I look? What's that judgment for? Well, my judgment is I'm 70. Okay, okay. That was when I was young. All right, all right. In no way are you that age. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. All right, so like I said, five-minute timer. Got a belief that any two people that have a conversation, is there anything that really motivates you? Anything you think is true? Anything you strongly believe? I strongly believe I need to turn down my email. Anything you want? Love your hair, by the way. That's such a great color. Thanks. Yeah. It would go with your pop there. Yeah, thought it popped today. Trying to decide, frankly, I'm working in a political campaign and I thought at first this must be what you were doing. Oh, no. And then I thought what a great pop idea. Oh, really? Okay. To engage people and talk to me about that campaign. So I'll probably take a picture of this before we're done. Sure, not a problem. But that's not really my agenda. I just wanted to see what you're up to. Go for it. I'm all for every political. As long as you're positive. No. I don't want to try politics. I've been dealing with politics all day. I know, right? I strongly believe that. Anything that you think is really should be everyone should do anything like that. Community, whether that's Lexington, the larger US or whatever community needs to I don't want to word this make a much greater priority in helping people uncover their innate abilities and help them develop those to their fullest. Whoa, that that is a mouthful. Yes, it is. It sounds like you, can I try to rephrase enough? Yeah, sure. You want every single person in Kentucky to go out and try to make people reach their full potential? Well, they don't have to go out. They can do it in their family. They can do it in neighborhood. They can do it in their children's schools. They can do it in their church. Okay, okay. They can do it in a pub. They can do it in a bar. Although usually that doesn't work all around. You want to knock that out real quick? So the goal of this is just to have a chance to think about something that you strongly believe. So I guess, you mind telling me a little bit more about this? Why did you come into this belief or how did you get to here? I grew up in a family of people who were deeply religious. Okay. And they were also innately good teachers. Oh, really? Either one of them was a certified teacher, but they taught Sunday school and my dad coached anything they did. They were all about what can we do to help develop whoever just we're working with. Okay. They worked with interracial churches and helped developing their Sunday school teachers capability. This is a long time ago down in Texas, way before you were born. Okay, okay. And my mother before she died was... How old do I look? What's that judgment for? Well, my judgment is I'm 70. Okay, okay. That was when I was young. In no way are you that age. I appreciate it. Okay. You see what I look like when I don't shave. So... So I was going to say, my mother who'd studied a little Spanish worked at a migrant center where people came up to pick cotton and she went up there to help them learn English as a second language. Okay. That was when she was in her 60s. Sure. So that's the background I grew up with. And I have a degree in English in a minor in education, which I don't really use as a job anymore. But, you know, I think everybody needs to develop their capability like you're doing right now with this project. Why do you think that's important? And I normally gently challenge no matter what... Okay, no, that's okay. I don't feel that as a strong challenge. Why do you think that's important? Because I think there's a lot of neurobiology or more cultural biology that says this notion of survival of the individual. There's awful lot of other research that says we don't survive unless we survive collectively. Oh, interesting. Okay. Don't survive unless we survive collectively. Yeah. Yeah. Unless... Unless we survive in community. Okay. And I grew up in what started out to be a small town in Dallas and turned into a suburb. Sure. And this whole notion of what is a community is disappearing. And our community is do you believe the same thing I did? Yeah. That's not what it used to be. Okay. It used to be we live next door to each other when it was a small town where I grew up. If you did something wrong, your parents knew about it before you got home. You know what I'm talking about? So I grew up in a really small city. We're militaries and women around the place. But I had to move to a place where we're the only black family in the entire city town. There you go. And it kept me out of trouble because everybody knew who my mom was. And they'd be like, what's Tyrone doing here? You're supposed to be home, aren't you? Your mom's waiting for you. I was like, oh, sorry, I was trying to paint a wall. I was like, no, no, no, no. You go home. So yeah, you get that a lot. Yeah, we're into the military. So my mom and dad are both army. I got my family in the Navy, Air Force. I think Marines is the only ones that we aren't in. Well, sort of my family. My dad was in the Navy. My brother was in the Air Force. I've got a nephew who's at Fort Bragg right now, although his station is Fort Campbell, who's a black helicopter pilot. And, you know, they've moved around some in the military tries to create community for the people they're moving around all the time. Because if you're getting moved, it's hard to make new friends when you're grown up. Are you saying then that people who are living alone or solitary or more individual aren't living through their full potential? And is there any benefit at all to living by yourself or having a more of a solitary mindset? Could that be healthy for you? No, I'm not necessarily saying that I live alone. Okay. And I've lived alone for a long time, but I have a community. Okay. That's interesting. I have a family of choice. I have a family of birth in Texas and North Carolina. Okay. But I have a family of choice here of people that I've known for years. Okay. You know, if I got sick or years ago, I had a friend who had hepatitis C and died in the medicine and waiting for a liver transplant. We had a care group just like cancer patients do who went over there every day. Before she went into the hospital, we went to her house every day, prepared meals, helped do all that kind of stuff. Just like churches do still for many people, but a lot of people are on church these days or they go to a church where people don't routinely do that kind of stuff. What's your opinion of churches, by the way, or like churches that are out now? I think they're the good, the bad and the ugly. Good. You want to score that or what? Do you need to say more about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a little bit. We still got some time. All right. I think they do provide a sense of community for a lot of people. Not everybody has a lot of churches you go in and nobody is too big. They don't know each other. Yes, you get that a lot too. I grew up in a church that was really heavy on doctrine. So we had the positive side of community, but if you didn't follow the doctrine, you were going to hell. That's kind of the negative side. Do you think it would be better to have, for example, in the church that you had just mentioned, the community outreach presence and maybe less of the doctrine or the doctoral dogmatic approach to thinking? Do you think they both need to be there or is one more important than the other? Well, you're asking somebody who does not go to that church anymore. Okay. So for me, and this is typical of my generation. I grew up in the 60s, early 70s. We tell you in the right. We're more about spirituality and the experience of spirituality than we are about the doctrine. Okay, very cool. And I have, you know, I've done some practice on meditation and some other things that are away. I mean, I believe that there's something bigger than we are. I believe that there's some way to tap into that. You could do that in music. You can do it in sports. Some people have a Zen experience doing sports. You can do it sitting down and playing the piano. Anything that takes you out of yourself and gives you the sense that there's something bigger than you are. Is that something bigger, the community, or is it more of like an agent that's like controlling things? I think it's both. Oh man, that's so interesting. And I don't know whether it's controlling that my sense is that something bigger is whatever the life principle is in the universe. What's, what is, I don't know what that means. What's life principle in the universe? Sorry, we are out of time. So anytime you want to go, just totally fine. You want to do five more? I can do as much time as you're willing to go. Okay, that's fine. But life principle of the universe, could you? I don't believe in a totally mechanistic, I don't believe it's just, well, let me start at the beginning. Okay. Um, whatever is here had to come from somewhere. Okay. It's hard to imagine coming from somewhere without some sort of first cause. Okay, yeah, I know it's hard to think that, yeah. Okay, so to me first cause is that whether it's a being, whether it's an entity, an organizing principle, or whatever, could it be, could it be God, whatever, whatever term you want to use for that? Is it okay if it's something that we just don't know yet? Absolutely. Whether it's an agent or not an agent, it could just be an unknown. Oh yeah, I mean it's sort of like if you go back and look at how ancient people would describe God or what we thought about how the universe works, they didn't know as much as we do, so they define things differently. Right. We don't ever, we don't have a, we don't know everything there is to know. It would be nice if we did, maybe you'd kind of scare you. Not certainly not as interesting. But you know we're still learning and our whole vision of how the universe works and all that stuff may change. But go back to the one principle is I work a lot with healthcare and there's a lot of research that says people who are disconnected and whether that's living alone or whether you can have a lot of married people who are disconnected. Yes. They live in the same house and they're not connected. Yep. If they are emotionally disconnected they're more likely to have physical health problems and then we're likely to have mental health problems and then we're likely to die prematurely. Even if they are in the same house they can still have that. Oh yeah, that same house can create a lot of stress. Oh, that's true too. Yeah. Okay. All right. What a pleasure. Are you taking a course or is this just... It's a personal hobby. Can I ask just one last question? So with regard to like the life principle and like the meditation, okay just a quick summary. I think it's really cool how you have like this motivating belief that makes you want to go out and help people and like connect with each other and that this idea of like this greater community that you can like tap into and get energy from. That's really, really inspiring. I hope you keep that up. Thank you very much. Do you want to take a picture of this set up? Yes, that's okay. Yeah, go ahead. I'm vacating this chair. He's not trying to convince me to do anything. He's just... He's not. No, we just had a chat. No, we just had a chat now. No, no, no. Yeah, you can talk about anything. I didn't even get your name. I feel so bad.