i'm so fearless it's scary! (part one, friday)

I went to this awesome conference this weekend and have so much to say about it that I'll probably have to spread it over a series of posts. And if you hate reading about it, that's ok, I don't care. I'm fearless now! (Well, kinda. But more on that later.)

So it's been about a hundred years since I sat down to learn anything. Sure I've read books and seen a speaker or two since I was in college, but nothing this intense. The program was Friday night from 7:30 to 10:00, Saturday from 8:30 to 5:00 and Sunday from 8:45 to 4:45.

(Do you see those 8's? I was up at 7:00 on Saturday and Sunday. Going to work this morning felt like sleeping in!!)

But really, it was awesome.

Friday night we heard from Jane Goodall and Al Gore. Dame Jane (yes, she's a Dame) was beautiful. Someone referred to her later as a "living saint" and you really get that impression. She talked to us about her time with the chimps and a little known fact that when she went to Africa, she hadn't ever gone to college. She met Louis Leakey, told him she wanted to work with the chimps and he said, (basically) "Ok, but we only have 6 months for you to find something, or our funding will be cut off. Oh, and you can't go into the bush alone. Our funders wouldn't like a white girl in her twenties in the jungle solo."

So who did Jane Goodall take with her? HER MOTHER. I'm not kidding. So the two of them lived with the chimps and the natives and now she's doing work to save their habitat. Really fascinating and inspirational (and fearless) work.

Then Al Gore came on. And I should mention that the press who were at the event were asked to leave the room when both speakers were presenting. So they were both more off-the-cuff and impromptu than they would be if the press were watching.

Al basically gave the climate crisis speech, but with some interesting additions.

First, a charming little quote: "You win some, you lose some... and then there's that little known third category..."

He spoke about the discovery of "mirror neurons" which are basically neurons that not only fire when something painful happens to an animal, but also when that animal observes the same thing being done to someone else. Think about that for a second. We (ok, monkeys, but come on, how different are we really from monkeys?) get hurt and neurons fire, and then we watch the same thing happen to someone else, and the neurons fire. Isn't this what theatre is all about? Aren't we just drawing on the audience's mirror neurons??

Take it a step further. Isn't this what fear mongering is all about as well? Isn't the media (or the government, or your parents, or your toxic friends) just showing us images of awful things happening so we can live in a state of fear and anxiety? (I'm not arguing that that's their objective, but I am saying that, on some level at least, that's their endpoint.)

So what do we do with this fear? (After all, this conference was about being fearless...) Al argues that we need to reach for Truth to overcome fear. We need to seek clarity in perception so we can overcome the amgydala's "fuzzy" response to fear. Acknowledgement and awareness of fear are the first steps to overcoming this low-level, pervasive, cultural fear.

And as he spoke, I wondered to myself, "Would he be as successful, as charming, as funny, if there were a democrat in the White House?" Hmmmm.... food for thought.

[He said a lot more, and if you're interested in it, let me know, I'll send you an email.]