Oshri Hakak on Mental Health, Creativity, and Hope

In which Dan sits down (in person!) with Oshri Hakak (@oshrihakak), children's author, mental health advocate, and all-around deep thinker about the world we live in. Oshri collaborates with NAMI Westside Los Angeles (@namiwla) to talk with students young and old about the importance of breaking the silence around mental health and strategies for taking care of ourselves and each other. He's also a prolific author whose books are beautiful and poignant for children and adults alike.

Mentioned in the show:
National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI)
NAMI Westside Los Angeles
Oshri Hakak's books, including Harry and the Hamster Wheel
Oshri's Children's Mental Health Toolbox

Music: gingersweet by massobeats [via No Copyright Background Music]

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When you make a children's book and a parent is reading a book to their kid right before they go to bed, that's gonna be one of the most malleable repeated circumstances of the human psyche. A child in the safety of their room with a parent or caregiver before bed, before they sleep. And so for me it's very, very sacred that, okay, then they're bringing your voice, they're bringing, they're bringing your words, your images into the space of that moment.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

I'm also really excited about today's episode because this was an in-person interview. It's so rare for me to get into the same room as my guests, so this was a real treat for me. As you might know, I'm a middle school teacher, and at one of our recent middle school town halls, we were visited by Oshri Hakak, a children's book author and school program coordinator at NAMI West Side Los Angeles, part of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, with more than 600 local affiliates that are working in communities to raise awareness and provide support and education that was not previously available to those in need. I was so struck by the way O'Shri communicated with our students about mental health, what it is, what it isn't, resources, coping strategies, and healthy routines. We've had a real sea change in recent years in how we talk and think about mental health, and I thought this was a perfect time to invite him on the show to give us a primer on teen mental health and his own unique perspective on how we can all be part of the solution. And as it so often happens on this show, it turns out my guests are way deeper and more interesting than I even imagined. And my conversation with Ostri went in some really interesting directions, including, but not limited to material sourcing for our phones, dreams, the power of music, and hope. It's almost unwieldy at this point. So I began by asking Oshri if he could define mental health.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

It's a really good question. And it is a slide in our presentation, so maybe I've been like training myself to, you know, but but in our presentation, we talk about well, it's uh the ability to it's how we feel, how we act, uh the ability to feel good and enjoy life. I always say I tell the kids not doesn't mean we're gonna enjoy life all the time, but it means that when difficult things come up, um, that we'll be able to be able to navigate them. So mental health is like the dimension in which those feelings and choices of uh experience exist. And I I kind of look at it as um there are people who lean into words, are more comfortable with words like spirituality. People like to talk about mindfulness, uh, people like to talk about uh certain kinds of uh yoga or meditation. And I kind of I tend to throw it all in the same bucket as mental health. And if I'm talking to an audience or engaging with people, what I'm trying to do is sensitize to where they're at and what kind of words are gonna um resonate the most to get into the underlying meaning of like how are we gonna feel good about life, feel fulfilled, feel like we're supposed to be here. Uh some people, the word mental health might sound really sterile. Some people, spirituality might sound really floofy, right? So um, but I do look at all those kinds of things sort of in the same buckets. Like, and it kind of boils down to how you're doing and how you and and patterns of how are we doing throughout the day?

SPEAKER_02 4:43

To what extent do you think discussions like this are still stigmatized? I feel like when we were kids, people hardly ever talked about this stuff. And it feels like there's been some real progress in just people's willingness to be open about mental health. But in your in your experience, how much of a stigma still exists around mental health?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Here also, I think I live in a bias because I'm really lucky to work with an awesome team who connects with awesome people and schools like yours that I presented at, where they're inviting the conversation in. So, you know, where I tend to engage professionally, they want to bring the conversation in. But I think it's pretty when you hear, I don't know, you flip on the news, which I don't do all the time. Uh if you flip on, I don't know, just a lot of media, it looks like there's just there appears to be to me a lot of stigma. And there's so much information coming at us at any given time these days that it's hard to get a read. But it certainly looks like we are not doing a great job as a society at addressing mental health enough. So at least I can objectively say it's still too stigmatized because we're not opening up enough about it. Uh, and of course, I mean, I can give personal anecdotes too of you know, coming into schools and having kids, you know, at times saying, like, why are we talking about this? You know, are you here to diagnose? I feel like us is I feel like this is stuff we should just be uh kind of sucking it up and and keep it on going. Why do we need to hear this? So I do hear that once in a while, but overall, like I'm I again I'm quite biased because I go in to schools and I'm I am welcomed. But you know, I think of even last year, our ending the silence program, we reached about 4,000 kids, which was great. And I think in uh LA County, uh LA County, there are about 1.3 million kids. So I'm thinking about you know, yeah, it's still too stigmatized. I can go on, I can ramble, I'm passionate about it, I can look at this from all sorts of angles. So that's why you're here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Yeah. Um what was school like for you? And then maybe leading into how did you get into this work?

SPEAKER_00 7:31

The things that I've had to make meaning of in my life were, I would say, uh, one of the biggest things was loss of my brother uh a little over 10 years ago uh to a heart condition. Um I have a my scoutmaster when I was 16. My scout master uh ended his life after terminal illness. Um so, but I I would say the the closest, most intimate experience that brought me into this was definitely my brother, is he really suffered severely from um mental health conditions. And I say that very broadly, not even to keep a secret. Um he was in, I think there's a psychiatrist he had seen for years who had been prescribing him medications. After about six years, my parents asked the psychiatrists, this was so many years ago, the parents asked the psychiatrist, can you die? What have you been diagnosed? What's he been diagnosed with that you've been medicating? And the psychiatrist said, Oh, I I actually can't say for sure. So he'd been medicating him on a diagnosis that he acknowledged he wasn't sure what it was, which is if probably if my I mean that was that's like a target for scrutiny if there is anything, but my parents, obviously our family was in so much upheaval that you know they'll you're not trying to, it's not about punishing anyone, just trying to help people and figure things out. So I would say experience uh you know, experiencing vicariously my brother's mental health challenges, that was really big. Experiencing the grief around the the loss of him about uh 10 years ago and navigating that. Um and then also, you know, as a children's book author and illustrator who creates materials and programming around mental health for kids, also this um awareness that my healing was in a lot, it is in the my processing of this stuff. So um, you know, probably had I not had my art and music writing to lean into, it would have been, I don't know, maybe impossible to process, you know, loss of of my brother. Um certainly don't know how else I would have done it if I hadn't had these outlets. So, you know, then going full circle, it brings me back into making not making sense of things, but making meaning out of.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Talk just a bit about your work now. What what's your work consist of? Uh, you get around to schools, as you mentioned. Um, what's what's a week like in your life uh working for NAMI?

SPEAKER_00 10:33

Yeah. Uh well, first working with NAMI has been like the best job. It's been so good. Um I really love I really love it. And um, and I I say that as someone who avoided like any kind of like real institutional backing for like many years. So you know, and I went to school for psychology, I went then I went to business school.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

School bill. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

I went to school for undergrad for psychology, I went to business school, and then I've had a kind of a meandering trajectory that I've always felt authentic about, but a lot of things clicked into place once I touched base with NAMI and started working with them. So as the school program coordinator, I coordinate and present ending the silence presentations. That's kind of at the forefront of my job, which is uh it's about an hour-long presentation on mental health, how to end stigma, how to encourage um kids, middle schoolers, high schoolers to open up around their mental health and uh you know help them develop the courage to have the conver, well, first the awareness that they should at some point be able to find an angle to open up those conversations, to explore what's happening inside of them, and then also giving them some tools for how to do it. And I always tell students that, you know, I may be, because I also present these and I love doing this presentation as I did with their school. I always tell them that, you know, I'm visiting for a brief window of time. The people who's the people who really hold the most potential for influence and impact for their mental health are their fellow students who are sitting with them for hours a day, several days a week, several months out of the year, right? So I really just try to instigate that sense of care and openness and compassion. Um, and the other part of my, so that's ending the silence, and then the other part of my work has been uh developing a children's mental health toolbox. So NAMI nationally there are about uh 600 plus chapters of NAMI around the country. And uh the organization was started by actually parents who wanted to figure out how to better resource care for their um their children who are struggling with mental health. So anyway, coming back to now, most of the programming NAMI offers nationally is for 18 years old and up. It's support groups, it's um education for family members, for people going through mental health challenges, and their family members who are in places of support for them. So ending the silence is the key, like one of the key youth offerings we have, but it only goes for middle school and high school. And then there's uh a relative dearth of materials and programming for the 12 and under range. So we're it it's where it felt kind of kismet when I connected with uh our director and um program coordinator, so Aaron and Elizabeth, who I work with, because I'm a children's author illustrator, and that's how I connected with them. We didn't know I was gonna be in this role. Um, I didn't know. Um had they pitched it to me, I probably wouldn't have understood and or been interested. But but then I got to do a lot of the presentations, and then um eventually there became a space, and and I and I I really enjoy it. But anyway, so besides ending the silence, I've been creating uh materials and programming for kids 12 and under, um, which has been really fun. So that looks like uh children's books, um, activity packets, affirmation cards, coloring sheets, um, videos of the children's books. And uh so in a given week, I might be creating and developing materials, I might be coordinating people for school visits, I might be working on a children's book project, um, or I might be tabling and sharing NAMI resources uh times as well. Or well that basically covers it. Or meeting people to talk about that. That's all.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

Yeah. Do you get the feeling that schools are doing a decent, good, fair, poor job of addressing mental health? I think as you said, you're you're there for a moment. A snapshot. Yeah. You must see some patterns and be able to make some generalizations, some lessons. What do you what do you see when you go into school?

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Yeah, uh, good question. And and I was before this job, I have worked at times as a sub and TA for schools where I've spent long longer amounts of time in different classrooms. And uh one of the things, the one of the words that's coming up now that I've seen and uh experienced uh in uh different schools is uh overwhelm. And I don't know if it's the busyness of the lifestyles we live, uh if it's the uh you know effect of our phones, if it's uh the you know, you were talking to me earlier about a trip to Yosemite with the kids, right? That you took. So if you don't immerse yourself in environments, ecosystems outside of the cement encasement, it it is, I find, dysregulating. Uh, and in a way that if you and if you if you don't sometimes remove yourself from that sitting, you don't know because you're right, it's like the fish in the water asking what this water. And also I don't think we know exactly what to do. I think the challenges, especially around technology, I don't think that can be highlighted enough with respect to like how that's changing the mental health landscape. So, you know, all we can kind of do is sometimes look at blaring examples of how we've how we're we're messing up, but I don't see a lot of great examples.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

I mean, I think you're really on to something when you talk about space and time and busyness. Schools feel that crunch, and we often are just rushing through one thing after another, and there's not space for what you're talking about. And we we could do a whole episode on phones and technology. I do I I did kind of want to get your thoughts on this before we start talking about your your books and your and your work and your music. You know, the last year, as one example, the the Surgeon General of the US put a report out saying that teens are their mental health is suffering greatly because of phones and social media, though also saying that well, some teens, some adolescents might actually benefit because of the connections they can make online, right? It's it being complicated. Also, you know, statistics are hard to to uh unpack if it is still a relatively new phenomenon. What's your sense about phones, adolescents, teenagers, technology in general?

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Oh man, I want to give you an answer that might feel kind of wild. Is that okay? Okay. Um it might meander like some of these others if you're all right with that. But the first thing that comes up for me, actually materials resourcing. And I think about, and unfortunately, and a little bit shamefully, like I don't know that much about our materials resourcing for our phones. I just know that it's quite bad. And there are horrible labor conditions that are employed to give us these devices to make our lives really convenient and stress-free. Right, right, like, right, I don't know, whatever it's doing. I mean, they no doubt there's some remarkable capacity, you know, here uh enabled by these devices. I think about um the resourcing, and if there's like slave labor or something like slave labor going into the creation of something, and there's an economy of a product or device that relies on that. I know we talked about fluofy and we talked about like sterile views of the world and fluofy views, but I do believe energetically something's gonna pass on. In the like you can't have a really imbalanced, messed up foundation of production for something, and then have something that has only benevolent outcomes from it. So, and I would say energetically, something's passed forward, you know, and and we know this even like in the these devices are made with with planned obsolescence too. So there is that kind of economic addictive quality to it. Um, so that's like the foundation. Like, well, if I'm not saying we shouldn't, we should also look at like what's happening in front of our faces and stuff, but I think if we totally leave that out of the conversation, then it's kind of like um I I have some conviction around it, and I'm humble enough to say like how that all works out together, like uh and how energy transfers or passes forward. Like, I don't know exactly how it works, but I really believe it does. So um, and then looking at, well, is like the technology good or bad, and obviously there's so many, like it's incredible we can communicate around the world. We could plan this meeting over our computers and you know, and confirm details a couple of days ago and change the times and meet at the same place at the same time. And uh I think there has to be like some kind of checks that we start to develop um that are that monitor like how are we using them and also the grown-ups. It's easy to say, like, hey, you know, our kids are being messed up by these devices. But there was one of my colleagues, Jalissa, was talking to me. I wish it knew more info about us, but there's a recent study they did. It's looking at the it was the perception of kids of their parents' phone use, and it wasn't very good. And it wasn't very um aligned with how the parents directed them to use their phones, you know. And we look at okay, kids being dregulated, um, like let's also look at the adults and the inner child or the inner children of these adults and look at like the degree of violence and violent adult behaviors that are sometimes condoned and sometimes defended and in um you know even at a global scale. And you know, and I get okay, like let's come back, let's boil back down to kids because that's a thing that we can that we can begin to chew on. But um it's a really big, it's a really big uh it's a big conversation. And I think you did have another episode that talked more specifically about this, so maybe people should should check it out. There's someone else who can yeah, yeah. Thanks for that.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

You brought up Yosemite, the trip that we took to Yosemite. Uh and it sort of to me feels a bit like that, sort of this antidote for everything you just described about phones and the economy of phones. There's something very um tactile, earthy about your work. Um a love of art, a love of nature, a love of music. I could you just talk a bit about how you got into being a children's author and maybe highlight a couple titles that you think have been uh maybe well received in schools or in homes?

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Absolutely. Um well, first I go to my mom, who was a second grade teacher for 24 years in L A U S D and uh collected so many children's books. So I was always around them growing up, but it wasn't like necessarily, if there was anything dream-wise, I always felt like there's something I was supposed to create that was for grown-ups and kids, but looked like a children's book. And this was kind of a faint idea that kind of lingered in college. And I think there I was too um, I would say like creatively blocked up. Like I didn't see uh I didn't see at that time focusing that much attention on creativity as acceptable. And you know, so I was like, well, if I do that once by the time I'm, you know, I'm I'm out of my body, then that'll be good. But um, you know, something changed in my early, early mid-20s, I would say. And I decided, okay, I'm gonna focus on my art. And because I've been an artist my whole life, and I'm just gonna really go for it. I'm gonna be an artist. And for a couple of years I really hustled in the gallery space. And there were some successes, but I didn't feel successful. And more than that, I didn't feel motivated to become successful in it. So it's okay not to be successful uh in something you want to be successful, as long as you you feel like, all right, I'm gonna do this. But I didn't, I didn't feel like any intrinsic motivation in that realm. And then I also uh, this is a funny anecdote. I I did hire an agent once for two months to um help share and distribute my art. And uh into the middle of the second month, she said, you know, um, your art is too happy for the art world. Yeah, part of me was like, Well, that's good feedback, and a part of me was like, Well, you could have told me that before you decided to take my payments. I appreciate the transparency now, yeah. So um I so I knew though, so it was a little disillusioning, like that realm, but I knew I wanted to create art. So I said, okay, I'm gonna continue to make daily art, which I've been doing pretty much every day for the past 12 years. I make daily word art. I draw something, I write something. And so now it's been like over 4,000 days or something I've been doing that. And during this time, I mean I had lots of career um bends and um windings. And I would ask, well, what do I want to, what what do I get the most intrinsic fulfillment out of with respect to my art? And if I want to impact something with my art, like what would it be? And over you know, years of just continuing to create without it looking like any career that definitely like my family would see as something they could cognize. Uh it came down to children's books because when you make a children's book and a parent is reading their kid, they're they're reading a book to their kid right before they go to bed. That's gonna be one of the most malleable repeated circumstances of the human psyche. A child in the safety of their room with with a parent or caregiver before bed, before they sleep. And so for me, it's very, very sacred that, okay, then they're bringing your voice, they're bringing, they're bringing your words, your images into the space of that moment. Sometimes many times, because some children's book get read many times over and over. So, right? So, you know, and also for a teacher reading to a class, right, they're bringing your voice into the rearing and education of these kids. So I thought, well, okay, what what what better use of my art and what more fulfilling? And and then it also became um then less results-oriented because it was so fulfilling. I'm like, oh, cool. A couple of my friends read their books to their kids, that's great. Like, I didn't need I didn't need to become best selling. It just felt so good, or felt so good for me to read uh books to my nieces and nephew.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

How do you how do you conceptualize your books and how do you construct them in a way that helps children?

SPEAKER_00 29:22

One, I think the the opportunity with uh a children's book is that it there's a necessity, if it's gonna be good, it's gotta distill a lot of information or something that may be very complex. It's gotta distill it into a simplest form, right? It could be a metaphorical world, it could be imagistic, or it could, I don't know if that's that may be the first time I've used that word, but it could be right, a world of image that distills this message, uh, or words. And I actually think adults learn better that way too. That's why adults love memes too, right? We love, right? It's like just words and pictures, and not that many words and not that complex a picture, right? So there's something in that engagement that is really powerful, I think, for all ages. So I say my books are good for age two to 202, right? There's there's that inner child that's reachable through these kind of poignant distillations of complex ideas. And when I come up with an idea, so I at home, I'll tell you a little about my process. At home, I have a whiteboard. I'm not like Mr. uh, I wouldn't call myself Mr. Categorical Organizer, but I need some way of organizing that works consistently. So part of my method, I have a whiteboard. It has right now probably a list of about 40 different titles on it. And every time I finish a title, which for me that's when I order the printed proof, the first proof of it, I raise it from the whiteboard. And then I'll underline the next two or three that I want to work on at a time. Um and I want to get my energy to. And those I really feel I kind of check in with my body, like what do I, what does my body feel like making? Because that's so important. Like I've had projects, because I wasn't sensitive to that, I've had projects sit for years or months, which is fine. But if you don't make it, it's even better if you don't make it your goal to finish it. Because then you're not not only will it be marinating and not happening yet, and maybe it just needs that time for ripening in your psyche and in your heart, but then you're you're then some on top of the time, which is okay, you're gonna feel bad about it, right? So I was that that's been like a working method, and the last couple of years have been really um, I would say prolific in the way that I've put out um probably 10 to 12 books in the last year or two. Um and I have a night, and and and they're also all so there's they all seem unique, they all feel unique, and the process for each one is very authentic and unique. And I do get better each time at kind of knowing like how to go from beginning to end. Uh like what are my internal, like emotionally, what am I going to be facing, you know, and how is that interface with other obligations I have? Um, and how um also relating to people like I work on projects with, right? Like getting better at choosing who to collaborate with. I love collaborating on children's books. So getting good at identifying, like, okay, well, what's the rhythm of this person? If I give this person words that I've written, for example, if I'm asking an illustrator to work with me on something, uh, if I give them words that I've written, is someone, is the vibe like it will be done in the next year or two, or is it the vibe that it'll be done in the next six months? And then knowing that early on will give me, will free up energy, right? So um anyway, I think I answered more than you wanted.

SPEAKER_02 33:48

Can you talk about you said you've you've prolifically published 10 to 12 books in the last year? Can you uh do you mind highlighting one that you're particularly proud of?

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Uh I really like this one. I brought a copy of it too. This is the the most recent one I had printed, uh Harry and the hamster wheel. Um this was a product of my friend Cecilia and I were uh the co-authors of this book, and we're we're like voice message buddies, like pen pals. She's in Copenhagen. So we'll uh send sometimes very long voice messages just chatting about life and processing things.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

And I love this though. Apropos of what we were talking about earlier, the first page, I believe, Harry was hurried, and Harry was harried, and Harry was tired. Yes, overwhelmed, man.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Yes. And this is about it's kind of about me. So because she so in these voice messages, sometimes she'd hear like the the stress, you know, that I was experienced as I was processing life and chatting. And she would say, you know, and she'd say, Oh, you know, you're on your hamster wheel or whatever. And you know, she said, Oh, today I'm on the hamster wheel. And then, you know, it became, oh, you know, what's what's this hamster's name? Oh, it's Harry. Oh, let's make a book about it. So we've done a couple projects together. Uh, you know, there's always like a little lesson, but I like to think that it's not in a way that's too like academic or or stale or sterile. Um, and um, yeah, so that's Harry and the hamster wheel. Anyway, I love it.

SPEAKER_02 35:22

So school ready too, with the reflection questions at the back. Thank you. The artwork's interesting. The art is is it a photo art on top of a photograph?

SPEAKER_00 35:34

All of the above. Yeah, so the little fodder on the bottom that is uh it's it's mixed media. So I used paper and felt, and then I photographed the paper, and then I cut it out digitally on my iPad. So the cutouts, except for where it's like a bunch of tiny pieces. I actually fo I cut up a bunch of pieces of paper into little pieces and I photographed them. Yeah. You also have a have some musical aptitude.

SPEAKER_02 36:05

Music's important to you. Yeah. And I know I know this because we had at our middle school town hall that you presented at, you brought out your flute. This is what this is a flute? Yeah, it's a kind of a flute. It's an Irish tin whistle. Irish tin whistle, I think you said that that day. And it was it was really fascinating because when you get a a hundred plus middle schoolers in a room, they're just dying to be to laugh about something. Yes. Right. And anything can set them off. Any level of discomfort can set them off. You brought up the tin whistle, and they really enjoyed it. And I was in the back of the auditorium, and and I just thought, this could have gone a million different ways. And it went, it was it was beautiful. Um what does music mean to you into the work that you do um with kids? And uh maybe you could play something for us.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

Yeah, yeah, I'd love to. Uh how about I play something first and then and then I'll absolutely hopefully the words will find their way somewhere. Thank you. So a lot of my so I've been playing Woodwin instruments uh I'm thirty-seven. I've been playing Woodwin instruments for twenty-seven years, uh, since I was ten. Most of the the the first sixteen years of that was basically purely Western classical music. Uh and even after playing oboe for like 14 years, so between 12 and 26, I always felt like I was kind of okay. Um But I also knew I was supposed to do more with it. I was like, you don't want to do something for that long and just feel kind of okay, right? Especially if you're like giving it focus and attention. So when I started improvising when I was uh in my middle twenties, I found, oh, I'm actually a lot that comes to me a lot more naturally. Uh because I'm a visual person. When I read notes, um I kind of get distracted by the visual instead of focusing on the sound. So um a lot of I spent many years playing for meditations for meditation groups um in yoga classes and those type settings. And so I I like to think of when I play music, and I do play some classical music now too, but uh as a call to consciousness. And there is one story, there's something that kind of kept me going. And it goes into a little bit of a dark space, but um it kept me going when I was in those years of feeling just kind of okay and not feeling like I was really expressing and sharing anything as meaningful, even though I loved to play. Um that was when so when I was 16, I think I mentioned earlier my my scoutmaster passed away. My scout master um died by suicide. And um I was uh senior patrol leader of our troop at the time. So uh I was set to lead us up and help bring everyone, went up to a Boy Scout camp in the Sequoias, like within a week or so after. And he had packed the trailer, so he'd wanted us to go. He knew what he was gonna do, and um he um and he wanted us to have that time together, and and we we did go up. And I think it was my first night or so up in the Sequoia, and I had this dream that he so he was a medical doctor, a little background, he was a medical doctor, and he had been terminally ill for like eight years, the whole time not having a life expectancy of more than six months. So, like I can't imagine that like the harrowing like experience that must have been, right? Eight years living on a thread like that. So he uh anyway, I had this dream that our whole troop was uh surrounding and gathering around his wife, who was also really active in our troop. And it was after he passed, as it was in reality, but we were gathering around her because he had left this really thick document. It was like and it said um it was titled like it was a medical document that he had printed out, and it said something like the panacea, do you pronounce it?

SPEAKER_02 41:58

The cure, yeah, panacea.

SPEAKER_00 42:00

That's what I thought it was. I was trying to sound fancy. Panacea, you know, I put the accent on the second syllable. Panacea towards all illnesses. That's what it said, and all, you know, and and I inferred it to be okay, uh, psychological, physical. And so we're like so eager. Like, what what what is it? What is the panacea to all to all illnesses? And we're flipping through this packet, and we see it's like a very um like properly printed uh medical document with like a lot of templates where like information should go about describing this treatment, and it was all blank, it's all blank, and she's flipping through it, and everything was blank except for the template. And then we get to the last page, and he had just scribbled on the bottom, it was the only thing written there. He scribbled the word music, and that was the end of my dream. And so when I had those times of really doubt of like, what am I doing playing an instrument? Uh, like when I feel like everyone's better than me, um, it took me 14 years to develop a sense of like I can play in front of every anyone comfortably. It took a long time for me to for my anxiety to dissolve a lot of playing in front of people and messing up so many times to be able to feel like I'm contributing something. So that dream was really important in keeping me going and motivated during that time. So I said, no, there's something that is healing that's supposed to come out of this. Um that's that's not just for my enjoyment that I'm supposed to share. So are you hopeful? I I'm laughing because um I have a lot of I have a lot of family in the Middle East. Um and I wouldn't even get into like back. of that because that could be a whole we could talk about that for a few hours or a family uh in the Middle East and I have people who are like family who uh societal conditioned has aspired conditioning has aspired to pit against us to pit against each other and I don't so I in other words I care about everyone suffering there I like I I don't I can't block my heart out and he said am I hopeful and a a few months ago uh one of my friends from who similar uh family background as me called me up she said oh Shri how do you like maintain hope and like you seem really hopeful how do you maintain hope because I've been looking at your art and I said oh like that's good you think I'm hopeful it's like well you your art's too happy yeah right I'm yeah I'm like okay I'm glad I'm glad you got the impression that I'm hopeful um and I read something recently and I won't get the exact quote right but hope is like it's a it's a practice and it's something to commit to rather than just a current state right so uh I practice I try to be present and look at possibility as long as I'm in my body I'm supposed to be looking for compassionate possibilities of compassionate humane healthy outcomes so that's like it's my habit and sometimes do I do I like watch uh you know the Godfather three late at night because because like I really don't want to deal with my thoughts. Why that one? Because that happened last night because like yeah that came out I'm like wow like oh this is a long movie and about halfway through I'm like I can't watch the whole thing tonight and then I was like but this is pretty good you know they said the third one wasn't supposed to be good but I actually I I kind of like it. So so anyway I I think like hope is is like the MO right it's not like always the um reality of sensation. You know sometimes I feel really angry and frustrated but I think that's where I feel really fortunate to have art and to be able to create because that's that alchemy of being able to take something that gives me that sense of despair sense of anger sense of of uh overwhelming sadness and frustration and sit with it and see what my mind and body want to do with it when I sit with it for long enough. The way I connected with um Nami it was through a book I I wrote and a friend illustrated called Stay Alive and it's about suicide awareness and prevention. I wrote that book during a really dark upsetting phase. I wasn't uh I wasn't suicidal I didn't have much suicidal ideation um but it was a heavy space you know uh like there were definitely dark thoughts that came through at that point not not to the point that when I say not ideation and not suicidal I mean I wasn't on the point of action and I wasn't worried about myself in that way. But the container of thoughts was really difficult to hold. And um and then I thought of a book idea like in the middle of just taking a walk which is I find really healing to do taking walks um I took a was taking a walk and I said oh I should write a children's book like or like not a children's book but something that looks like a children's book called I should call it don't kill yourself and and the juxtaposition of like the lightness of a children's book and the um the heaviness of the topic like made it made me laugh I made myself laugh with my thoughts and I and there was a little aperture out of that shadow there. And I shared it with a friend I shared the idea with him just because you know like oh how funny it was this thought he said Osher you should actually do that because when when I was in high school I I struggled with suicidal ideation and I think that book could actually really help people. So I changed the name to Stay Alive you know but um but that's where I think it's I feel really fortunate to have space to create whenever I hear people are want to create or have ideas in their minds I always nudge them. I'm like oh you should actually write that book you should you should practice that song you should write that song you should make that painting I always elbow people into like doing stuff because you know the one one thought that can come is well isn't there enough like inspirational stuff life um affirming things out there like why what do I have to contribute but well the world's still pretty messed up so maybe there's not enough out there maybe we need to keep feeding that relentlessly and unrepentantly just feeding that creative spark that calls for life and um so that's that's my take on whether I have hope or not.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

Yeah I mean I want to thank you so much for taking the time uh you know I I usually end my episodes with uh kind of a solicitation for advice for listeners um I'm not even quite sure how to phrase the question here though I feel like your uh your lens is so wide um in a really beautiful way but I wonder maybe if we kind of come back to the very beginning of the conversation your work with kids in the mental health space for teachers for guardians parents kids listening what do you say to them about as you say the world feels pretty messed up um what advice feels like too pathetic a word but what what do you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 50:45

For some reason what's coming up is this like maybe it's because you you're pro to me like oh you're you you have a broad lens or what but I'm like oh there so there's a cabolic word called the clipa klipa I might be saying it wrong but this is like the shell of reality right this is like the uh illusionary aspect of the world we live in right and what um is preventing us from seeing the true nature of things and and then the phrase is coming up like find the the cracks find the cracks or the opportunity to make the cracks in that obstructive shell and that can look like and I'm gonna share a couple little tiny stories which are look like a couple things and I shared this one with the kids too. This was just a few weeks ago um I was at a public library and there was it was during the heat wave and there was uh a man who appeared to be unhoused who was eating a sandwich in the lobby. So the security car guard came up to this man who was in the lobby eating a sandwich and he said no no eating in the building and I didn't guy didn't have a place to go it appeared and there was a heat wave outside and I was kind of passing through so I observed the interaction and the guy wasn't the guard wasn't particularly hostile but he he you know he made an assertion and the guy followed it and it wasn't a brusque situation on the exterior but you know I I regretted my role in that within three minutes of just walking by and I thought you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna like accost the security guard aggressively but I really regretted not circling back and just have a whisper like hey there's a heat wave going on like do you think you might just just let him have his lunch you know in a place that he can avoid that um I really regretted it. The only thing I don't regret about that experience is that I can share my regret as a story. But you know I didn't in that situation I didn't I wasn't present enough with my compassion to step up in a way that I could act on it. And there was an opportunity to and I have a little regret about that. To me it feels important and it's not enough to heal like the broad lens of things like one instance but I I do carry hope in the way that if we practice finding these cracks to fill with consciousness and compassion and awareness then you know we then like we have a chance at um at healing healing our our existence so um I would say like then wrapping it up like pause I think for me a breath and a pause you don't have to stay on that hamster wheel like if you slow it down if you step off for a minute you're gonna be okay pause you're having a concern about something concern about mental health of a loved one your own mental health your own physical health pause and see what that see what that brings you thank you so much it's been a pleasure thanks for listening I hope uh whoever listens to this I hope I hope it's fun I hope you have a good time with it