You Can Share A Past Yet Live Two Truths

Are you reacting to what’s happening or to the story your nervous system learned to tell about what’s happening? That question sits at the center of this reflective Mindfully With Some Shadow Space session, where I slow down with you to look at perspective as the quiet force shaping grief, conflict, certainty, and even the way we interpret ordinary objects. 

I start with what I heard from listeners after a series on societal narcissism: stories of loss, dismissal, and the strange ways people police grief. From there, we widen the lens to the psychological weight of modern life. We’re overstimulated, carrying a firehose of information in our pockets, performing our opinions in public, and forming instant judgments before the facts arrive. When everything feels urgent, we don’t just think faster, we harden faster. 

Then we ground the idea of perspective in two stories. One comes from Bones, where two siblings share the same childhood yet walk away with different truths. The other is personal: a clock I saw as flames chasing time, while my friend saw open palms trying to save it. That single image opens into deeper work around origin stories, emotional safety, survival mode, and why some of us notice danger first. We end with a practical mindfulness invitation: breathe, slow perception, and try a beginner’s mind, because certainty can be the biggest obstacle to understanding. 

If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review. What do you see first when you look at your own life right now: flames or open palms?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hello, mindful partners. Welcome to Mindfully With Some Shadow Space where we pause long enough to notice ourselves and the stories we tell about the world around us. A few weeks ago, I rounded off a series on societal narcissism. At the back of my mind, I knew I had only scratched the surface, and the responses I received from listeners confirmed that. Some people wrote about grief, partners who had lost loved ones being told how they should speak about the dead. Children who lost parents being told, at least you lost yours when you were already an adult, as though adulthood somehow exempts you from pain. But anyone who has ever

Welcome And Why Perspective Matters

SPEAKER_01 1:07

lost a parent knows this. Sometimes the pain is not only about the lost self, it's about the questions that remain after the person is gone. The what ifs, the only is. Maybe, maybe one day we will explore that conversation fully, but not today. Today I want to talk about something that sits quietly underneath many of our reactions to life. Perspective. From grief and societal reactions to the narratives we build around our past, perspectives quietly governing how we see people, events, and even time itself. From a television scene, a simple wall clock, and two different childhood experiences that become mirrors for one central question. Are we seeing flames or open palms? Maybe what we see is not just about the object in front of us, but about the stories, the shape, the eyes looking at it. Sometimes when I speak about how we respond to things, I truly worry that I may be sounding overly sensitive. But the truth is this. And at the same time, ordinary people like you and I, those who are off the microphone, those who are off the world stage are pushing back. Or maybe not pushing back. Yet, as we say in Yoruba, TBT Re Daye. And I am sure you're tired of me constantly using this aphorism on this show. It probably has become cliche, but cliches become that because they spell the truth. The world was created with or on the basis of good and bad. The good compliments the bad, the bad compliments the good. You cannot understand the good until you have seen the bad, you cannot understand the bad until you have experienced good. Right now, we're not even sure if you are witnessing the World War III or simply watching this generation's version of the age old disagreements playing out again. But beyond politics, something else is happening to us. Something quieter, something psychological. We are overstimulated. Human beings were never designed to process the amount of information, opinion, outrage, and entertainment that not lives in our pockets. Social media has quietly become a kind of social currency. I've said that before, because without it, some interactions almost feel incomplete. It is no longer news that employers now search the digital footprints of prospective employees before hiring. Some people protest this, and that's fair, because it feels like an invasion of privacy. But in some ways, it's simply the evolution of the old analog system of three references when applying for a job.

Overstimulation And Social Media Reactions

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Your social media has now become something like a public character witness. And in those digital spaces, our responses are constantly on display. Hot takes, instant outrage, opinions formed before the facts even arrive. We are watching each other leave, reacting to each other leave, sometimes even leaving through each other. It reminds me of one of my favorite metaphors. The baboon laughs at the balding ostrich forgetting the huge bold patch on his own behind. Perspective. To try to explain how perspective shapes the stories we believe, I want to share two stories. One comes from a television series, and the other from my own life. If you have watched the series Bones, you may remember the character Temperance Brennan Tempi, for sure. She's a or Bones for short, according to Booth. She's a brilliant anthropologist, exceptionally intelligent but socially awkward. Socially, she struggles. She hides behind science because logic feels safer than emotions, safer than connections, safer than vulnerability. Her world view is extremely precise, very black

A TV Story About Two Truths

SPEAKER_01 7:28

and white, until one day her mother's remains are discovered in her own laboratory, the Jeffersonian. Suddenly, the story she had told herself for years begins to collapse. There is a powerful moment between Brennan and her brother Ross when they talk about their childhood. The book leads through the same family history, but the meanings they carried from that history were completely different. Listen carefully, I invite you to listen carefully to their exchange.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

What's your excuse, Russ? You're the one that left me. You need someone to blame you, chose me. I was 15 years old. I was 19. My parents were gone. My sister hated my guts. Everyone's telling me that she'd be better off in foster care. You didn't even ask. I tried to you wouldn't talk to me. You still wouldn't be talking to me if mom's bones hadn't shown up. And I kept trying. Every year, every year, on your birthday. You're the one that gave up. You turned your back on me and you made yourself a new family.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

That, if you want to watch it, is uh season one, episode 22, I think. Same parents, same childhood, same origin story, but two different interpretations of the same life, and both of them were right. Later in the series, Brennan says something that stayed with me or stays with me all the time, and she says, us scientists must rely on something more human than logic. Because sometimes logic alone cannot explain the stories we tell ourselves. Now let's move on to the second story. This one happened in 2016. I was visiting a friend and in a house there was this unusual clock. The clock you are now looking at on this episode's cover. When I looked at it, what I saw were flames, tongues of fire chasing time. It looked as though fire was trying to swallow the clock, and I remember wondering, where exactly is the time running to? What will time do with all these flames chasing after it? Then my friend looked at the same clock and said something that completely changed the image for me. That moment that is. She said, What if they're not flames? What if they are copped arms trying to save time? Now, both of us are language students, so you can imagine

The Clock That Looked Like Fire

SPEAKER_01 10:49

the debate that followed. But that moment stayed with me for a long time because that is exactly how perspective works. Two people can look at the same object, the same event, the same history, and see completely different meanings. This clock taught me something about perspective when I saw flames, chasing time, and my friends saw open palms trying to save it. The same clock, the same moment, but we had different stories. And even today, this is word about 10 years after, yes, exactly 10 years after, of after all those years, I still see tongues of fire. My brain has refused to convert them into palms, trying to save time, and perhaps that is another lesson about perspectives. Sometimes we can understand another person's view without abandoning our own. Let's pause for a moment. Take a slow breath and ask yourself quietly, what story have I told myself about something that might simply be my perspective. Now, back to my clock story. What stayed with me was not a debate, of course. It was the realization that two people could look at the same thing and see completely different meanings, flames or open arms. And perhaps the reason we saw different things had less to do with the clock. And more, or even everything to do with our origin stories. You see, my friend grew up in a home where positive reinforcement was the language of the house. I did not. I grew up learning how to survive and using observation as how to survive. Perhaps the clock was never just about the flames again or the palms. Maybe it was about two nervous systems shaped by two different stories. One nervous system learned to survive, the other learned to feel safe. And yes, later, I'm still learning that not every moment requires survival. Sometimes time is not chasing us, sometimes it is simply waiting for us to notice it. And survival has a way of training

Origin Stories And Nervous Systems

SPEAKER_01 14:07

our eyes to notice fire first, leaving you on a constant fight mode. Yes, later, after therapy, reflection, faith, and the practice of living mindfully, I can tell you for a fact that I am still learning that not every moment requires survival. Sometimes life and time is not burning. Sometimes it is simply waiting to be held. This is where mindfulness comes in. What mindfulness does, and this is where your journey is very real, is it slowly retrains the nervous system to leave more in the present time, not survival time, not anticipatory time just now. Which is why mindfulness practices often focus on things like breathing, noticing the body, slowing down perception. These are gently telling the nervous system you are not being chased right now, so breathe. Perspective shapes the beliefs we carry, some believes empower us, others quietly

Mindfulness And Beginner’s Mind

SPEAKER_01 15:54

limit us, some help us engage the world with curiosity and compassion, others lock us inside invisible bubbles. In truth, none of us will ever fully understand the countless worldviews that exist across cultures and histories. Debates about tolerance will probably never end, but perhaps there's something we can practice, something simpler, something humbler. What if we approach life with what many wisdom traditions call a beginner's mind? A willingness to admit maybe I don't know everything about the situation. Because sometimes the greatest obstacle to understanding is not ignorance, it is certainty. When what we think we know stands in the way of what might actually be true. So the next time you find yourself reacting quickly, pause. Ask yourself a simple question: Am I seeing flames or open palms? Because sometimes the world does not change when we win arguments. Sometimes it changes when we become curious enough to question the stories we tell ourselves. If I'm being honest, I suspect many of us, especially those of us raised in environments where survival was daily language, we might see flames first. Not because we're negative people, but because our stories trained our eyes that way. Many of us grew up in homes where love was present, but emotional safety was not always the same thing as love. Where provision existed, but tenderness sometimes struggled to find its voice. Where children learned very early to be strong, long before they learned it was safe to be soft. In many of our homes, strength was the currency of survival, but living mindfully is teaching me something slowly. Not every moment is asking me to survive. Some moments are simply asking me to notice that time is still here. So if you look at the clock for this episode, what do you see? Flames or open arms? And what might that say about the story your eyes have learned to tell? Thank you very much for sitting with me on this well quite reflective episode. You remember that when I came back, I did say that I was becoming and trying to understand what becoming was. So you and I together on this journey, and if anything this episode resonated with you in any way, follow, share, give us a like. That gives us a little more visibility, and I truly would appreciate it. Then if you think it supports your journey, join the WhatsApp group. The link is in the show notes, and you and I can continue and maybe we can help each other gain more clarity. You know it by now, so let's say together love yourself, love your neighbor, love your country. Above all of these, love God, He's the essence of your being. I am Ulu Watsumishe.