Staying Yourself In Babylon

The world can rename you without ever touching your birth certificate. It can do it through praise you start chasing, criticism you start believing, trauma you didn’t ask for, or a culture that rewards you most when you feel yourself the least. So we start somewhere simple and brave: I ask “How are you, really?” and we slow down enough to answer with honesty, breath, and a body that has been holding more than it admits. 

From there, we move into identity, not the identity on application forms, but the quiet self that shows up when your values collide with the environment around you. I reflect on Daniel in Babylon, where the pressure to assimilate doesn’t begin with obvious harm, but with opportunity, training, and subtle renaming. We talk about the labels we carry that were never ours to keep, the cost of belonging that feels conditional, and the moment Daniel “resolved” before the miracles, before the lions, before the spotlight. 

We also name the modern Babylons that whisper instead of shout: approval, productivity, perfection, people pleasing, and the exhausting urge to be understood by everyone. I share the difference between stubbornness and resolve, why solitude can be reunion rather than loneliness, and why healing is not always an exit. Sometimes the win is staying yourself right where you are, keeping your center while you live, love, and serve in the real world. 

If this conversation gives you language for what you’ve been feeling, subscribe, rate the show, and share it with someone you love. Then send us a message from the link in the show notes: how are you, really?

Transcript

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An Honest How Are You Check-In

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Hey my people, uh how you doing? How are you doing today, my dear mindful partners? You know, we hold each other's hands here on this journey that is healing, on this partnership that is showing up even when life feels uncertain. We are partners in discovering a becoming isn't linear, it is not a straight line, it is messy, it is beautiful, it is human. So, how are you? You know I would say really. So really, how are you? Don't give yourself a polite answer or the person sitting beside you a polite answer. I know everybody says, What do you want me to say after? I'm fine, I can't deceive someone, but if you're sitting with someone that you trust, or someone that has a little bit of liking to you, or you have a little bit of liking to them, you could say, just pause for a moment and just give an honest answer, and I'll go first. How am I? A little a little bit under the weather, if you can hear that from my voice. My voice is just coming back, so I'm a little bit okay. Should I do this or should I not do this? But my headspace, it's it's 80%. Yeah, my eighth headspace is 80%. So if you're listening alone, um I've helped you. So now if you want to pause to answer that question, that's okay. Maybe this is just one of those rare moments when you have to ask that question, and I'm giving it permission to ask yourself that question and leave within that question and whatever comes for you. If it's too heavy, it's okay to put it aside and just say, I'm fine for now, and then revisit that answer when you have an alone time. Someone is saying an alone time in this busy world. Yes, you can create an alone time for you, even if it's going to the bathroom to get that alone time. So, the whole of July and uh the whole of July, I started the series I thought I called internal dialogue conversation starters. Apparently, I have been calling them the wrong thing. My executive producer gently interrupted me in one of our production meetings and said, To me, Shay, these aren't really conversation starters. And I look at him, I'm like, what is it going with this? Then he smiled and said, I think these are really conversations that are helping you find yourself. Of course I laughed. Why? Because Guy was absolutely right. Over the past few weeks, you've patiently watched me sit with Uncle Gideon, Uncle Job,

From Conversation Starters To Self-Finding

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Uncle Jake, and of course most recently, Mama Sarah. Every single one of them quietly returned something to me, not because they solved my life, but because somewhere inside their stories, I kept meeting another Tomishi, some Tomishi that I knew, some that I was just meeting for the first time. And maybe that's what healing has been doing for me all along. Not helping me become someone else, uh, but helping me meet the people I have been, the person I became to survive, and the woman I am still becoming. I know that the term becoming is becoming has become such of a fad. It sometimes is almost facetious when I hear I am becoming, but in this sense, it is truly welcoming the woman that I had to survive, and the woman that I am still becoming. Three years since Mindfully Witsumiche entered this world. How beautiful is that. So thank you for walking with me. So now shall we arrive? You know what's coming. Relax the shoulders. Yes, didn't it? No, yeah, relax them. You were holding them up. Notice your jaw and relax your jaw if you're holding any tension there. Allow it to soften and take a slow, really slow breath through your nose.

SPEAKER_00 8:37

Hold it and let's exhale together.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Do you want to try that again? But a little slower this time.

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Breathing for one, two, three, four, and breathe out for five,

Arriving With Breath And Body

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four, three, two, and let it go.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Feel your feet resting on the ground, notice the chair beneath you, or the steering wheel in your hands. Remember, there's nothing to fix here, nothing to achieve, nothing to perform. Just simply arrive. Today's conversation is sweeting me. You know one, it is one that has been following me for quite some time. Identity. Not the identity we confidently ride on application forms, he, she, he, uh, no. Not the identity people assign to us, not the pronouns, but the quiet identity that only reveals itself when our values begin colliding with the cultures around us. What happens when you find yourself living an environment that slowly asks you to become someone else? Where do you go? Who do you become? And perhaps the more difficult question is, who do you refuse to stop being? I

Identity When Culture Renames You

SPEAKER_01 10:44

know what my neat answer should sound like. I go to God. And to be honest, I do. But if you've been working with me long enough, you also know how suspicious I've become of neat answers. Finding God did not erase my humanity, if anything, it introduced me to my humanity. Face didn't stop me questioning who I was, it simply gave me somewhere safe to ask the questions. Identity crisis didn't only belong to teenagers or people going through midlife crisis. Sometimes the quietly beginning childhood, sometimes they are born from our stories of origin, sometimes from trauma, sometimes from success, sometimes from the expectations people place upon us. And sometimes they arrive simply because you've grown. And the version of yourself that brought you here can no longer take you where you are going. Some stayed, some quietly disappeared, some still visit every now and then. It is an interesting thing. Which is probably why today I've invited my extended family members into the studio. Uncle Daniel and the three Hebrew boys. Not because of the lions, not because of the very funnest order. I maintain Uncle Nebu Nebuchadnezzar must have been high on Chi Persomo. I'm just saying, because how? How can you say, tell me my dream and interpreted? Someone was high. Anywho, I'm interested in something much quieter for young men trying to remember who they are while leaving the world determined to rename them. They were actually renamed, but that's not the point of this conversation. And somewhere in that story, I met another version of myself. So let's start at the beginning. Long before the lion's den, long before the blazing furnace, long before the songs were learnt in Sunday school, there was another story, a quieter one. Jerusalem had fallen. People had been taken from home. Young people, bright people, gifted people were selected and transported to Babylon. Imagine that moment. Imagine that for a moment. Everything familiar,

Daniel In Babylon And The New Name

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gone. The language around you has changed. The food smells different. The customs definitely unfamiliar. The people who understand your jokes are no longer nearby. Even your future no longer belongs to you. And Babylon does something fascinating. It doesn't begin with chains, it begins with education. It offers the best schools, the best opportunities, the best training. Nothing about that sounds threatening, does it? Until you notice something. Babylon isn't only teaching them, Babylon is introducing them to a different story about who they are, or who they could become. Like I said earlier, one of the first thing Babylon did was change their names. It reminds me of the song that I wish I could I could actually sing it, but my voice is quite crocky, like I said earlier. So no. New names, new identities, new expectations, as if to say the person you were before you arrived here no longer exists. Not with words written on paper, but with experiences. Well, there was a time they gave me Joanna without any baptismal um ceremony, but my name became Joanna at some point. Pain has tried to rename me. Trauma has tried to rename me. Depression has tried to rename me. Success has tried to rename me because I really really really am afraid of that one. Failure gave me a name. Other people's opinion have certainly tried to rename me, but that one perhaps you've experienced that too. Maybe no one literally changed your name, but somewhere along the line, someone handed you a label. Too emotional, too loud, too quiet, too much, not enough. Difficult, strong, broken, and after hearing it often enough, you slowly began introducing yourself to yourself using their vocabulary. I wonder who gave you your first name that didn't belong to you. When I think about my life, I remember school. You know those report cards that always seem to say the same thing. But there was again, Tomishe is intelligent, but talks too much, laughs too much, gets distracted, needs to show, cold, always another but now. Before my teachers come after me, especially that teacher that wrote to me she needs to work more on English comprehension. I know they were trying to help. This isn't about blaming them, uh, it's about something much quieter. I wonder what happens inside the mind of a child who repeatedly hears, you are wonderful, but at what point does a child begin edicting herself or himself before the world gets the chance? I didn't know that, but I was slowly learning that belonging sometimes felt conditional. But this but not so much, speak, but not too loudly, lead, but make other people comfortable, shine, but don't outshine, exist, but don't inconvenience anyone. Maybe that's why Dino's story speaks to me, because Babylon wasn't asking him to stop being intelligent, it wasn't asking him to stop being gifted, it wasn't asking him to stop succeeding, it was asking him to succeed, actually, but as someone else. And those two are different, different invitations. There is a sentence in the book of Daniel that I have read many, many times. This time, it wouldn't leave me alone. Daniel resolved. Not after the miracle, not after the promotion, not after the lion's den, at the very beginning, Daniel resolved. I sat with that word, resolved. Not reactive, not defensive, resolved. Identity have discovered isn't usually protected in dramatic moments. It's protected in quiet decisions nobody applauds, the conversations you refuse to betray yourself in, the boundaries no one else sees, the values you hold when compromising would make life easier. Perhaps that's what Daniel was doing. Not preparing to become a hero, but simply deciding I will not lose myself while I am here. Maybe that's a conversation we're truly having, trying to have today. Not how do I survive Babylon? And I have a lot of Babylons in my life, trust me. But how do I remain myself without hardening my heart while living in Babylon? Toby is laughing, wondering what Babylon is for her. So, because Toby is laughing, let's take a breath. Before we go any further, why she captures her laughter. Not because I'm tired, but because I really want her to find out why she's looking for Babylon's day. Anywho, because identity work deserves spaciousness. Taking that slow breath, including you, Toby, and notice where your body is making contact with a chair. Where is your feet at right now? Notice your breathing without trying to change it. No, don't slow it down, just notice it. And then gently ask yourself what labels have I carried that were never mine to keep. You don't have to answer immediately, just notice what the quiet label. Arises. I will be right back. When I was younger, I thought identity was becoming you something you discovered once. Like finding your house. Oh, there I am now. I'm not so sure. These days, identity feels more like a relationship. One you keep returning to, one that keeps asking. Are we still telling the truth? I've also realized something else. Babylon rarely asks us to become bad people. It simply asks us to become people who no longer need to pay attention to ourselves. Be easy, successful, efficient, productive, available, visible, useful. Until one day someone asks you, How are you? And you genuinely don't know. Because you've become fluent in managing your life, but you've lost the language for meeting yourself. That's why I love solitude so much. People love fun and assume solitude means loneliness. For me, it is reunion, not running away from people, coming home to myself. If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know I've told you before that as a little girl, wherever the adults become too loud, I would quietly disappear into a corner. And that time I thought I was escaping, or they thought they were punishing me. Looking back, I think I was searching. I didn't have the language then. I only knew something inside me needed quiet. Perhaps that little girl wasn't withdrawing from the world. Maybe she was protecting a conversation that hadn't yet found words. Daniel had that kind of quiet strength. The scriptures don't tell us he argued with everyone or with anyone. They don't tell us he announced his convictions every morning. He simply left them. At least that's how he reads. There's something deeply peaceful about people who don't need to perform their values. They don't spend their lives proving who they are. They simply remember.

Resolve Versus Stubbornness

SPEAKER_01 27:30

And maybe that's what has been changing in me. There was a time when I desperately wanted people to understand me, to approve of me, to agree with me, to see me correctly. That was huge for me. How people perceived to me say, Yeah, don't get me wrong, I still feel good to be understood. I'm human, of course. But I also learned something liberating. Not everyone has to understand me, for me to remain myself. That sentence, that sentence, I'll repeat it again. Not everyone has to understand me for me to remain myself. Took years to grow. Yes. It took grief, therapy, definitely my faith. Mistakes, joy, depression, healing through conversations like the ones we're having here. One episode at a time. That's why Daniel's resolve moves me so deeply because resolve is different from stubbornness. There are some people who say now you're an undue girl, you're supposed to be stood up. No, resolve is different from stubbornness, stubbornness refuses to listen. Resolve listens carefully and still knows where home is. Can you hear that difference? One is rigid, the other is rooted. One is afraid of change, the other simply refuses to abandon its center. So I found myself asking, what is the center of my life now? Not my career, not my diagnosis, not even my gifts. Who am I? When all the titles become quiet, who remains when no one is applauding? Who is Tsumish? When the microphone is switched off. Today they feel like an invitation to become someone new. But to sit with the woman God had been patiently introducing me to all along. Maybe that's your invitation to not to reinvent yourself, not to manufacture a better version of yourself, but to gently ask what parts of me have been waiting for me to come back. Maybe before we leave Babylon today, that's the question I'd love for you to carry. Not into your journals yet, into your ordinary lives, into that meeting, in traffic, when that yellow boss crosses you over, or when somebody doesn't use their indicator light, and you wanna into school runs, into offices, into your kitchen, yes, into the silence before you fall asleep. Who am I becoming because of where I am? And am I becoming someone I can still recognize? We'll take a pause, just a very short pause, then we will meet Uncle Nebu Nebuchadnezzar because I feel he has been asking the wrong questions all along. I've been wondering something. What if Babylon isn't always a place? What if sometimes Babylon is an environment, a workplace, a formula system, a friendship, a culture, a season of life, any place that quietly rewards you for becoming less of yourself? Most of us will never understand or stand before a king demanding that we bow before a golden image, but many of us have stood before such quieter altars, the altar of approval, of productivity, of perfection, the altar of people pleasing, the altar of what will they think, and if you're honest, those altars can be much harder to recognize because nobody calls them idols anymore, we call them normal. Babylon doesn't always shout, sometimes it whispers, just the sons, don't make it awkward. Everyone does it. This is simply how the world works now. You're overthinking it, relax. And little by little, without noticing, we begin negotiating with ourselves, not because we're bad people, because we're tired, we're exhausted because we want to belong, because standing alone can be exhausting. Maybe that's why I love Daniel so much, not because he never felt pressure, or he did, but because he remembered himself before the pressure arrived. That changes everything. He remembered himself before the pressure arrived. I've learned that I cannot wait until I'm standing in front of my own lions to decide who I am. I cannot wait until life becomes difficult to begin asking what I value. Those conversations have to happen in quieter rooms over ordinary cups of tea while needing bread, if you make bread every day like me, while driving home from work, while sitting in traffic, or while listening to mindfully waitsumishe. Long before Babylon asks the question. Maybe that's why that's what these conversations have been doing for us, not preparing us for some form of Bible trivia, preparing us for ordinary Tuesdays, if the meeting where everyone laughs at something that doesn't sit well with your spirit, the relationship that slowly asks you to become smaller, the promotion that costs more than your salary can ever repay, the compliment that quietly becomes your identity, the criticism that always becomes your name. Babylon is really dramatic. Most days it's simply ordinary. Let me talk about criticism and a compliment here. When I first started presenting, I remember my boss that day, the first day I presented on radio, Likon Koba walked up to me and said to Michael, oh what you did was great, but do not let the compliment get to your head and never let the

Modern Babylons And Quiet Altars

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censure that is criticism get to your heart. And it's over 25 years now, and I carry the advice as an albatross. Perhaps the question better question will be what am I rehearsing today? Because whatever I repeatedly practice, I will continue or eventually become. Not standing before a king, but in a quiet place where all lasting courage the kings. A heart that has already made peace with itself. Daniel did not leave Babylon. Read that again. Daniel did not read Babylon. He stayed, he worked there, he learned there, he served there, he exiled there, he even influenced kings there. Daniel's victory wasn't escaping Babylon, it was remaining Daniel inside Babylon. I think that's where I've misunderstood so many things in my own life. For years I thought healing meant leaving every difficult place, leaving every difficult conversation, leaving every painful memory, leaving every uncomfortable season. But life has taught me something gentler. Sometimes healing isn't an exit. Sometimes healing is remaining yourself where you are. I love, I disappoint people, I disappoint myself sometimes, and in the middle of all of that, ordinary living, the same question keeps returning to Michelle. Can you remain yourself here? I think that's the invitation for all of us. Live in the world, love the world, serve the world, but don't surrender the quiet place inside you where your name still sounds like your own. As always, this isn't about getting everything right, it's about showing up. One honest conversation at a time, one gentle breath at a time, one quiet active remembering at a time. So until the next time you decide to play an episode of Mindful Who Tumische, be kind to yourself, be curious about yourself and wherever life finds you this week, maybe you have the courage to remain yourself. I am Tumishe. So before we go and say my final goodbye, finally finally my brethren, for this episode, I need to ask you a small favor. Could you please share not just this episode but the whole mindfully Tomishi experiment? I would also love for you to raise the show and follow us anywhere you listen to podcasts. Thank you. Also, if you need to share your thoughts or just want to answer the how are you question in the judgment free zone, check the show notes. Just above it, you'll see a link that says send us a message. And we'll get your message and we can work together with how are you or any thoughts that comes to your mind. A special thank you to Toby for working with me through Babylon today and making producing this episodes and bringing them to you quite easy and fun. Love yourself, love your neighbor, love your country

Healing Without An Exit

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above all of this. Love God. Stay mindful, we're going to be able to get a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit more.