“We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are.” – Teach Different with Max De Pree – Change

Transcript

[00:00:00] Steve Fouts: 

All right. Welcome to the Teach Different podcast. I am excited and for anyone who’s new to this production. Really quick, the Teach Different Method, quote, claim, counterclaim, essential question. We’re gonna agree with the quote, we’re gonna share experiences, we’re gonna disagree with the quote a little bit, share some experiences, let a natural conversation flow. And then hopefully we can come up with some really thought provoking questions at the end. And this is, this is how we roll. So here’s the quote we got from Max De Pree is the guy’s name. Now, I was looking this guy up real quick. He was a business leader in America in like the seventies and eighties. He wrote some books and he got a really good reputation for being a really good leader within a business. He had a lot of people that looked up to him and I looked into one of the businesses he ran was a business called Herman Miller, which actually makes office furniture. And I went like this and looked, I’m sitting in a Herman Miller chair and I, it is just like, that’s a coincidence. But this guy was really impressive on a lot of different levels, and he obviously came up with a thought provoking quote.So here we go. All right. We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are. We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are. Tree, what do you think? And introduce yourself.

[00:02:02] Tr33: 

What up, Teach Different podcast, man. It’s your boy Tr33. Um, I’m an artist. I’m an activist. Uh, social change advocate, youth advocate, gun violence advocate from Chicago. I’m also an artist. Um, and can you say the quote one more time? Yeah.

[00:02:17] Steve Fouts: 

But before I do that, what kind of artist, uh, hip hop do you rap?

[00:02:21] Tr33: 

Hip hop artist. Yeah.

[00:02:24] Steve Fouts

Okay, so we got something we can talk about after this podcast. Alright. Here’s the quote. We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are.

[00:02:36] Tr33: 

Cool. So, first thing I think about is how I feel like a caterpillar always wanted to fly. That’s why it becomes the butterfly. So you, even if you don’t even know your destiny, I feel like life is always pulling you towards your destiny. So on that path, it’s gonna be like driver. There’s gonna be levels that you have to outgrow. It’s gonna be things you have to outgrow. It’s gonna be phases that you’re gonna have to go through. And then once you begin to, even once you, especially ’cause a lot of us don’t know our purpose. We don’t even know that we are moving towards that one way or another. But once you actually can see it, see your purpose, and see it clear what you wanna do outta life, and you start to try to obtain that, that’s when you realize that, yeah, it’s a lot of adjustments I have to make. It’s a lot of growing I have to do, and it’s worth it. Like, uh, another simple form of it is exercise. It is like, okay, I’m this amount of pounds. I wanna look this way. I gotta stop eating those burgers at night. I gotta hit the gym. It’s like, it is not really that. It’s not really that hard to grasp. It’s like, sadly, that’s the way our universe is created. It’s set up like you’re not about to really get nothing you want without some type of effort, without some type of alchemical changing of something to something else. Like diamonds. Diamonds start off as cold, but then under all that pressure, they become diamonds. The atmospheric pressure around the cold had to change it. For it to become the diamond. So it’s like everywhere you look out into, like again, like Jarvis said, everywhere you look out into Mother Nature, we see this, we see that a shedding has to happen for growth. It’s,

[00:04:32] Steve Fouts: 

I love the nature examples. That’s really good. Like I can, let me put this out there. Does anybody, anybody have anything in their mind right now about yourself? Or even someone that you know really well that you know is undergoing a transformation or did undergo one or some realization that hit you, where you, you get to a point and you look back and you’re like, okay, that’s what I used to be. Now I’m this, and it’s just, it’s seismic. It’s just a transformation.

[00:05:12] Tr33: 

Anything coming to mind myself being a, um, gun violence survivor, I was paralyzed at 18 years old. Uh, the person I was before being paralyzed was a drastic, completely different person. I want to say four or five days after waking up in the hospital, having to accept my new reality. Uh, with that I had to shed my old self, my old concept of self, uh, my old concept of what’s cool, all this stuff because I, uh, I actually had formed a negative view of myself that was detrimental to my, uh, livelihood. And that was, uh, fueling my depression. ’cause I only saw myself as a broken human being because my legs didn’t work. So it made me depressed and all these different things. And I had to, uh, just shed that concept I had to shed that I identity, uh, I had to find a new identity. That’s when I realized that half of us don’t even really know ourselves. Like, Hey, we could, that’s another topic, I don’t wanna go down. But yeah, half of us don’t even really know ourselves to even know that we even need to grow out of things. And it sadly takes for a lot of traumatic stuff that happen to certain people, for them to even get in the space of realizing that, oh, hold on. I don’t even know who I am because a part of my identity was attached to this thing that has now dramatically been taken from me, whether it’s friendships, relationships, whether it is, uh, jobs. Some people put their whole identity in their job and lose their job. And now it’s like, who am I? Am I, if I’m not a fireman? It’s like grow out of that con, that’s the same thing, the comfortability of what you’re used to and find that there’s more to you. And to find that once, once we go out, once we get out of the comfortability of what’s familiar. We find that we are limitless beings. Like we can do and be whatever the heck, whatever we want.

[00:07:21] Steve Fouts: 

That’s right. Hey tree, when you, are you still paralyzed?

[00:07:27] Tr33: 

Uh, yeah.

[00:07:28] Steve Fouts: 

And it’s been, how long since that happened?

[00:07:32] Tr33: 

Been 13 years.

[00:07:34] Steve Fouts: 

So when you look out at people, do you see that a lot? You look at people and you’re just thinking. You have no idea like who you are. You know, you’re, you’re kind of green, you feel like you’ve got all these problems and you’re complaining, but you’re not, you’re not facing yourself. Like you don’t really know what’s important. I’m just trying to, I’m just trying to think of the reality that you’re in right now and how you view other people.

[00:08:13] Tr33: 

Yeah. It’s, um, I wouldn’t say sad, but it is. I don’t really know how to explain it. It is like comforting, yet peaceful, yet kinda sad at times because it’s like, by me knowing these things, I can’t be affected by someone trying to quote unquote mistreat me or wrong me because I understand them to, to a level where they don’t even understand themselves. I understand that your action of mistreating me or verbally saying something negative to me or whatever is more than likely stemming from a root of something you got inside of you. So I look at life at people, not from a, I’m above type of space, but just my awareness is above, and that’s due to the grace of God putting me in a position. To be able to see things like that. But, uh, yeah, it’s definitely, um, but there are people that think this way and have this awareness as well, but just the majority of the world now, the masses, we kinda sleepwalking out here. And, uh, yeah, just seeing people, I mostly be feeling, sorry to be honest.

[00:09:23] Steve Fouts: 

Are you trying to wake people?

[00:09:28] Tr33: 

I was, I was.

[00:09:31] Steve Fouts: 

But now are you feeling like…

[00:09:33] Tr33: 

No, I was like. It’s more I now, I feel like it could just happen organically and, uh, I’ll just be like, you know, like a lighthouse. I’ll just be a beacon of light. If you see it, see it. If you don’t, you’ll find your own light. But I feel like trying, I feel like when I was trying to wake people up, I was kinda like forcing it. And that’s not a good thing to do on people to like push your idealisms and your views just onto people to let ’em see it in their own time, but yeah.

[00:10:10] Steve Fouts: 

Yeah. Well look, let’s flip the script. The conversation is heating. Okay? This is the one, this is the part where we’re gonna kind of think about the other way to look at this and maybe disagree with this a little bit. So I’m gonna read it again, then we’re gonna, we’re gonna come from a different angle. We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are. We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are. Why is that not necessarily true?

[00:10:52] Tr33: 

I’m gonna stand, I’m gonna stand 10 toes with a disagreement ’cause I’m gonna say it like this. What if you can argue that, you know, some people believe that, uh, everything is mind, right? Uh, some like, uh, metaphysics or something like that, quantum physics, a lot of these scientific things are telling us that our reality is the mind literally. So if that being the case, um, how do I have to change who I am, if all I have to do is change how I think? And it’s not really necessarily a change of me, but more so a change of my belief in what I’m doing because it says like I have to change who I am to get what I want correct, or something like that. We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are, right? What if what I want, I already have. And the idea of you wanting is an illusion.

[00:11:52] Steve Fouts: 

There you go. Okay. Can I pick that up? Do you know anyone who is cool? They’re a good person. Even go think back when we were all younger, someone who like maybe was your friend in middle school or high school, and they ended up turning into something that was. Kind of, uh, not authentic. They had a realness to them. They were an authentic person, but they got caught up in thinking that maybe they wanna go and make all this money, or maybe they wanna go and get all these clothes and try to be the person on the block that everybody’s looking at. Or they’re like out of their self. They’re trying to change. They’re trying to like, be something different. They’re trying to shed skin, but you wanna stop him and go, dude, you’re cool. Just chill. Why are you trying to be something different? You’re already a diamond. Mm-hmm. Am I, am I, am I catching what you were saying Tree, a little?

[00:13:07] Tr33: 

Yeah. Like, like how a person can, a person can, um, change to their detriment. Change ain’t always good. Change isn’t always. That’s what I’m saying. Life tends to have this flip, floppy duality to it. Like one thing on one hand, something can be good, but on the other hand, that same thing cannot be good. So change can be good if you’re changing for the better. But if you are like, uh, for instance, I got an example. I’m gonna use an example of real life. I’m just gonna not use names ’cause this is a real story, but a friend of mine, brother moved from out of town back to Chicago and basically joined street stuff. You know, started doing street things and getting into street gang activities type of situations, and, uh, started disrespecting a deceased person that he had no knowledge of knowing. But it was him trying to come to the city and become like his brothers. He changed and now he’s in an uncomfortable situation because it’s like, do I stay the game playing, game streaming gamer from the suburbs that I am, or do I mold now and become this tough gangster street kid who teases people on the internet and he had an uncomfortable decision to make. Sadly, he chose to become the chameleon of the, into the negative energy, which caused him his life. And now you, the person that gets they life taken, the person that was the most furthest from this real beef at all. And you just put yourself in it and changed and molded yourself to fit what these people were doing just for it to inevitably lead to your demise. So no change. Change actually can be bad. Like if you change for the wrong reasons and if you shed good things and pick up negative things, destruction is coming your way, gang, like nothing else. Okay.

[00:15:16] Steve Fouts: 

You just made me, you made me think of this here. You remember this method Tree. This is your first, I think, chance to do it full fledged, right? Quote, claim counterclaim. We’re doing the counterclaim right now, right? Essential question is the last part, what you just said. Tree made me start asking questions in my head, and here’s one I came up with. How do we know if the change we’re going through is good for us?

[00:15:55] Tr33: 

One way. I got one way. I don’t know. This might not be every way, but here’s one way. One way to know that the change that you’re experiencing is good for you is if the change isn’t harming anyone. If this change within you hasn’t caused, doesn’t bring anyone else harm, then you good. But if this change has now disrespecting your mom or disrespecting people like doing things that you normally didn’t do and causing harm to others.

[00:16:30] Steve Fouts: 

Would you include harm to yourself? Like think of someone getting caught up in drugs? Yeah, like if you’re, if you know you’re getting hurt, you’re hurting yourself, you might not be hurting other people, but that’s another sign correct? Yes.

[00:16:45] Tr33: 

Yeah, yeah. Harm to you and harm to others. If it’s causing harm to you or harm to others, that’s a sign that this isn’t a good chance.

[00:16:52]  Steve Fouts: 

That’s straightforward. No, I appreciate this and this has been, this has been good fellas. You know, we, uh, like I really enjoyed this wonderful surprise. Paris. I mean this…

[00:17:05] Tr33: 

Yeah, likewise. This is great. I’m honored. Uh, I don’t know what happened last time when he was telling me that was going on last time. I think I missed it or I dunno what was going on. But this is amazing man, and I would love to, uh, come in more often and, you know, build.

[00:17:20] Steve Fouts: 

Absolutely.