“Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you,” – Teach Different with Geronimo of the Apache Tribe

Transcript

Dan Fouts (00:10)

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Teach Different podcast. We have a quote today, really profound one. Will make us think about really big things here, from Geronimo of the Apache tribe, deference to Native American heritage and culture. There are so many wonderful, profound quotes that we have in our library, that’s growing, and this one is just fantastic. It’s about wisdom and peace and living a life the way you want and in the most meaningful way. This is a really, really great one. We’ll get to it in a moment, but first with the Teach Different method, we’re going to start with that quote. We’re going to see what Geronimo means by this, just trying to put the claim into our own words, into our own setting, our lived experiences. We’re borrowing the philosophy of Geronimo for 15 minutes here, and we’re trying to apply it to our own life. And that’s the beautiful thing about these philosophy quotes, that they connect with our own realities in a beautiful way. We’re then going to look a little differently about it. Do a little counterclaim. I don’t want to say disagree with it, as much as you’re trying to see the world from a different perspective than what is said, but here’s the key. It has to make rational sense. You have to believe the counterclaim, not just say it, but own it for a little bit, and that’s what opens your mind and leads to those organic questions that come as a result of it. That’s the method. That’s what we’re practicing. Here we go. Geronimo. Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life, the creator, intended for you. Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you. Steve, what do you think? What are your first thoughts on this one?

Steve Fouts (02:27)

I got a lot to say about this. This is obviously saying that good things come when you allow an external force outside of you determine your path. Don’t get caught up in your own feelings about your life and what you should or shouldn’t do. Wisdom and peace come from you living the life that’s already kind of set  out for you. It’s almost like you’re an actor in a play and you don’t choose your role. Your job is to understand your role and let someone else produce this and applying that to life. And one of the questions I have, and I’m going to get right to an essential question, maybe we’ll come back to this, But I’m wondering if wisdom and peace refers to internal individual sentiments, or is it wisdom and peace of the world and everyone getting along together? Because this quote could be read in different ways. Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you. I’m thinking it means individual wisdom and peace, but I’d like your opinion. There’s mine.

Dan Fouts (03:56)

I think it may mean both. I see the individual side of it, but also the larger society side to it. Wisdom and peace come from when you start living the life the creator intended for you. Definitely an internal wisdom and peace of the individual is necessary to achieve before you can expect a society to evince those values. So it does start, I think, with the individual. If that’s what he means, I’m agreeing with that. Definitely. Beautiful quote. Look beyond yourself. It’s look, look beyond yourself to see how the world works. And then instead of trying to control the world, dominate it, use it, exploit it. Instead, think of yourself as a human being whose job is to plug in to an existing framework that you did not create, that the creator intended for you. And here’s where metaphysics and the big picture God thing, Native Americans, of course, had a very different view of God. This feels like a version of God here.

Steve Fouts (05:27)

It’s definitely religious. Allow yourself to fit in. That’s what’s going to give you happiness. I think a lot of people associate happiness with something that you individually obtain. And you have to do it on your own sometimes. And you have to, you know, define your own life and be ambitious and accomplish things and get achievements. And then you’re going to be happy and you’re going to be peaceful. But this is saying, you know what? Take a shorter road, spend your time figuring out where you fit in and then your struggles And your labors will come to an end. You almost like ride the wave. Let the wave carry you. It’s very, it’s always naturalistic these Native American quotes, they’re always like alluding to nature and these things that are so much bigger than we are. And if we try to fight it and say that, you know, we’re something other than nature and that we’re not part of something much bigger than we are. That’s where unhappiness is, and that’s where we start mistrusting each other and mistreating each other.

Dan Fouts (06:49)

And that’s where we start controlling. This is what makes me think of the idea of controlling. When people start controlling too much, their own happiness, their own acquisition of things, they start controlling other people and environments and getting frustrated. They’re not letting the world go. And again, that there’s a lot that goes into this. It depends on how you’re brought up in a family, what you’ve seen in a family, the things you’ve experienced in your life, the hardships or other people mistrusting you and you having bad experiences. It’s very hard to kind of sit back and say, well, wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you. So figure out what someone else gave you and then plug into it. That’s very, very difficult. Very, very difficult to do when you feel a need to control what’s going on in your immediate environment.

Steve Fouts (07:58)

This is the bridge to the counterclaim right now, because if you take environments that are difficult, and that you certainly didn’t deserve to be in, that are completely out of your control, and you are suffering, you are unhappy, you know, this is, I’d say the counterclaim to this is wisdom and peace come Not when you start living the life that it appears that you’re supposed to be living, according to the creator, but wisdom and peace come when you start separating yourself from your sufferings and from this difficult environment and try to obtain at least an inner peace in the midst of storms. That to me, you could argue, That’s, that’s when wisdom and peace come, when you actually separate yourself from very difficult circumstances. There’s the counterclaim.

Dan Fouts (09:02)

Yeah. When you embrace a sense of agency and control over yourself to deal with an otherwise out of control universe that is making you unhappy. I think of meditation here. Maybe I’m misreading this, but if you’re meditating, you’re essentially trying to shut out the world and communicate within yourself what you have control over to shut things out. And that, that gives wisdom and peace. There’s a balance here. This is where a question is coming up here.

Steve Fouts (09:44)

Well, I got one. How do you find the life the creator intended for you?

Dan Fouts (09:49)

How do you find that life?

Steve Fouts (09:51)

What do you do?

Dan Fouts (09:54)

What’s the roadmap?

Steve Fouts (09:56) 

Right. And maybe the roadmap is to detach yourself and start developing your own internal criteria for your own success. Start judging yourself and not expecting that your creator is judging you or other people are, but you really take control of your own destiny of some type, at least you think you are.

Dan Fouts (10:24)

What does wisdom and peace look like? How do I know when I’ve achieved wisdom and peace? Is this something that you achieve and then you stick with, or is this an ongoing, evolving, malleable definition that I have to constantly be vigilant in trying to pursue?

Steve Fouts (10:53)

The answer has to be a combination. I’m thinking back, when I was in college, I went to Washington DC on an internship. I thought I was going to get into politics and get into that culture, and I just completely was repulsed by it. And I would just like sit in my room and read books, like philosophy books, because that’s the only thing that interested me. And it wasn’t the life that I thought I was going to lead, right? So I could say though, that my creator wanted me sitting there and reading and not taking part. you know, in that culture at that moment and that I had a greater, I don’t know, path or I had a longer path to discover what I really wanted to do. And if I would have tried to fit into that culture against my own will, it would have taken longer for me to actually find that life the creator intended for me, because I would have been doing something that I shouldn’t have been doing, didn’t want to do. So, you know, again, it’s all how you, how you mix this stuff.

Dan Fouts (12:11) 

Yeah, I agree. It’s a mix. I think students and adults of any age in a setting of a conversation would have a lot to say about Geronimo’s wisdom here. Wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you. Very deep, very thoughtful. This is great.

Steve Fouts (12:35)

And it’s going to bring up religious questions.

Dan Fouts (12:38)

Sure.

Steve Fouts (12:39)

You know, you’re going to have students and really anyone who’s maybe agnostic or atheist and they don’t even kind of see life as understanding a creator and they’re going to rebel at this. You know, but it’ll be important to have people next to them who they like, they respect, they know, say, you know what, no, I actually have a different way of looking at that. I see my life as something that’s much greater my purpose than anything I could ever ascribe to it. And that’s the heart of the conversation right there. That’s the exposure.

Dan Fouts (13:17)

And that’s where you learn other people’s perspectives and you leave the conversation more aware of the world and other people. All right. Well, this has been great. Love the quotes from, from Native Americans. It’s so all encompassing and so thoughtful and things that all of us can apply our lives to. So thanks everybody. We will be touching base soon with another episode. But for this one, Geronimo, wisdom, wisdom and peace come when you start living the life the creator intended for you. Take care.