Prepare for the Life You’re Meant to Live With Chaplain John Fox | A Bit of Optimism

1. 0:00 – 1:34

   Intro

   1. SSSimon Sinek0:00

      How do you know when to walk away from the wrong path?

   2. JFJohn Fox0:03

      Start to prepare. Like, these are your passions. Do something. Like, if you wanna write, join a writing group. Get yourself ready for when that step comes. You're not gonna be able to make the step because you have no preparation for it. So I would say if you have some other passion, do it as well, and like real- like seriously so that you're preparing yourself to be able to do it as what you do.

   3. SSSimon Sinek0:23

      I love that. Sometimes the life we're living isn't the life we're supposed to live, but sometimes the life we're living is preparing us for the life we're meant to live. The question is, will you be prepared when the opportunity to pivot strikes? John Fox was. He spent 25 years in high finance, climbing the corporate ladder and collecting all the traditional markers of success, but beneath lived a quiet ache, a pull towards something more meaningful. So he started doing what he thought was preparation for the next thing, even though he didn't know what the next thing was. Through his church, he started doing community service, and then the right time came. He left finance to become a chaplain. He wasn't fleeing his old life. He was stepping into a new one, and he was prepared. As a chaplain, he felt called to work with those who need him in a hospital, a hospice, a homeless shelter, and a jail. And talking to John reminds me that our lives are so much bigger than the thing we're doing right now. This is A Bit of Optimism. [upbeat music]

2. 1:34 – 2:25

   Chance Encounters at Brunch

   1. SSSimon Sinek1:34

      John, thank you so much for coming in. This is y- you are one of those magical human beings who I would describe as the joy of serendipity. I was at brunch with a friend, sitting at the bar-

   2. JFJohn Fox1:46

      Mm-hmm

   3. SSSimon Sinek1:46

      ... of a restaurant, and sitting catty-corner to us having brunch was you, [laughs] having your brunch, thinking that it was gonna be a nice peaceful time, but for the fact you were thrust into conversation with the two of us. Honestly, you were so inspiring and so, such a delight to get to meet. I wanted to share your story and your philosophies with the world, which is why you're here today, so thank you for coming in. You went from high finance, [laughs] you went from a finance career, and you are now a chaplain.

   4. JFJohn Fox2:17

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SSSimon Sinek2:17

      That is not the normal career path for I would imagine either most finance people or most chaplains. First of all, what took you to finance? Let's start

3. 2:25 – 4:14

   25 Years in Finance: Success Without Fulfillment

   1. SSSimon Sinek2:25

      there.

   2. JFJohn Fox2:26

      Sure. I mean, it's, neither of those is as unusual as you might think. Uh, although a lot of my friends also thought, you know, "You're the only person who ever did this," and I'm like, "I'm not at all." The stranger thing in a lot of ways is that I did work for 25 years in finance because, uh, when I graduated from college, I decided to go to grad school in English, but I had a math background, and I didn't wanna go straight to grad school 'cause I thought I was gonna be in academia for the rest of my life, and I wanted to live in New York. So I got a job at an investment bank in New York 'cause that's what was in New York, was things like that. Uh, and I didn't even know what an investment bank was, but they didn't really care about that. Like, I read a couple of books because they're like, "We'll teach you everything you need to know." They didn't really want you to have studied finance beforehand. They just wanted you to be, like, capable of the work in whatever, you know, ways that they saw that. I did that job for a couple years. I, um, applied to grad school. I, uh, actually then spent most of the next year in Paris between the job and the going to grad school because I also just wanted to do some more stuff before I went back to school. So I liked the intellectual challenge of the work. I do like math, even though I'm not doing anything like that anymore, and I, I... It's also just when you have a job where you're being rewarded for showing competence and mastery in something, then that's also rewarding in its, in its own way.

   3. SSSimon Sinek3:51

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   4. JFJohn Fox3:52

      I, I mean, it was a little bit of an accident, but it's not an accident that I really regret or didn't enjoy.

   5. SSSimon Sinek3:58

      Did you ever imagine that you would end up, you know, in the clergy? Was that ever, like as a young boy or even as a young man, like, "One day, one day, you know, that, that's where I wanna go," or did, did it, did you sort of fall into it?

4. 4:14 – 5:06

   Growing Up in Church Without Feeling Religious

   1. JFJohn Fox4:14

      Y- yeah. No, it wasn't either. Like, I was... I mean, I grew up in the South in the 1970s, and so I just grew up in a world in which everyone went to church. Uh, and I didn't even know any people who weren't like, you know, Protestant Christians until I was in high school. Uh, I didn't... And like even Jewish and Catholic people, I didn't... I mean, I, I knew that there were people around us, but I didn't actually personally know anyone because of that's what the world was like at that time. Church was a very social thing at that time.

   2. SSSimon Sinek4:42

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JFJohn Fox4:42

      So I didn't, I don't recall having a whole lot of religious or theological thoughts, but I was in a church, and I liked it.

   4. SSSimon Sinek4:49

      Got it.

   5. JFJohn Fox4:49

      I thought in my 20s about going to seminary because I was really interested in the Bible. I was really interested in... I, I mean, I just grew up in that environment, but I also thought I never wanted to be a pastor on a church staff. So I thought, "What's the point?" And I, I didn't, I didn't do it for another, like, 30 years.

5. 5:06 – 7:24

   When Loss Forces You to Rethink Everything

   1. SSSimon Sinek5:06

      So 30 years go by. Uh, you have this s- a, a successful career in finance. I mean, you were in it for 25 years, you said, right? Could you have stayed in finance? Like, what, what was, what was going on in your, in your mind that you thought... I'm so curious of that transition.

   2. JFJohn Fox5:22

      So when I was around 30, a whole bunch of things happened to me that caused me to think about what I was doing in life. Uh, my mom got a serious cancer diagnosis, uh, and, uh, uh, passed away like four years later. Uh, I had a couple of relationships in my 20s that did not, that I had more f- hopes for than was realized. This previous picture of my life that I'd had for, like, a while of, you know, going, getting a PhD in English and being a professor had not worked out, and I was working in something thatI liked for the reasons I mentioned, but that didn't s- I was like, "Is this the point of life? That you just make money so you can, like, save for retirement and retire and go on vacation and eat in restaurants?" And so I, I guess I had what you could call a midlife crisis, although I was, like, 30. I thought, "There has to be something else." And since I had grown up in that church context and I actually was studying, like, religious literature, religious poetry, uh, in grad school and had kind of hung onto a lot of those questions, I thought, "Well, I know what that is. Maybe I'll go back and see what that's like." So I didn't go to church a whole lot in my 20s. Uh, I mean, I didn't have some deconstructive crisis. I just didn't, it just really wasn't a big part of my life. And so I went back to church, and then over the next sort of 20, about 20 years, I became slowly, and more quickly at times, more involved in that. And a big part of that was being involved in, like, interfaith community development work with poor people in the Bay Area and with asylum seekers. Those were the main things. And as I did that, I thought, "Okay, I think when I leave this work, I wanna go and do that."

   3. SSSimon Sinek7:03

      So you were doing both simultaneously?

   4. JFJohn Fox7:05

      But, like, volunteering.

   5. SSSimon Sinek7:06

      Right, right.

   6. JFJohn Fox7:06

      Like community volunteering.

   7. SSSimon Sinek7:07

      Right.

   8. JFJohn Fox7:08

      But I thought, "I think that that's what I see as a... Like, this is giving me a lot of sense of meaning." Uh, and I did a lot of things to have more sense of meaning and community usefulness or whatever. Every year it was easy to say, "Well, I'm

6. 7:24 – 12:59

   Preparing for a Life Change Long Before the Leap

   1. JFJohn Fox7:24

      just gonna make money for one more year." And then suddenly in, like, January 2015, there was an internal reorganization in my company that was sort of sparked by some external things. No one saw it coming. Like, we, we had a lot of mergers and combinations and spin-outs, and it was a constantly changing environment, and I've had to reinvent myself multiple times. But this time was, it didn't seem as good to me, and I felt like this was the sign that I had been waiting for, that I... So I decided very quickly, within like two or three days of this reorganization and seeing what was gonna happen, "Okay, this is the time." But I didn't know what I was gonna do because I had been doing this volunteering stuff, but I wasn't quite, I wasn't really ready to not have a job. I wasn't, I didn't really wanna retire. And so I spent several months talking to people. I talked to a career counselor. But I had also started this practice the summer before as part of that religious life of something called Praying the Hours, where you have a prayer practice where you pray at differ- at specific times of the day. So, you know, some people s- in some traditions it's, like, three times a day. In, like, Islam, it's, like, five times a day. I think the, the Catholic priest or, or monastery tradition is, like, seven times a day. I did one that was four times a day, and I did use a, a lot of the structured material. You could almost think of that, like, one person I know called it, like, priming the pump. Like, you're reading, like, scripture. You're reading devotional material. And then there's different practices. In the morning, often you're doing a prayer for other people, like intercessory prayer. In the middle of the day, uh, a process of asking questions, trying to, if you have something that's going on in your life, trying to, uh, be open to hearing something about that, what you should do. At the end of the day is often a kind of review of the day. Where did you feel most connected? Where did you feel most love? Where did you feel less connected and less love? And just sort of understand that and also kind of forgive yourself, uh, let go of those things, and go into the night and the new day in a, you know, a new process.

   2. SSSimon Sinek9:35

      I, I wanna say this again 'cause I actually... It's beautiful. So the morning, what w- what was the morning?

   3. JFJohn Fox9:41

      Uh, it's mostly praying for other people.

   4. SSSimon Sinek9:44

      So morning is for others. Lunchtime?

   5. JFJohn Fox9:47

      Is for, you know, discernment is a word we often use. Uh, but if something's going on in your life, to create a space for openness to kind of let go of things and create a space to hear something about what you're trying to do.

   6. SSSimon Sinek10:03

      So start for others, then discernment and open, and openness. The afternoon was?

   7. JFJohn Fox10:08

      So that one was less some specific purpose.

   8. SSSimon Sinek10:11

      So that was where- wherever your, your heart felt like-

   9. JFJohn Fox10:13

      Wherever, yeah

   10. SSSimon Sinek10:13

       ... where... And then the, and the evening was sort of a gratitude, finding where there was love, finding where there wasn't love, sort of taking the day in, the summary. So you're s- you're, you're still at the bank. You're, you're still working. You, you, you knew after two or three days this wasn't it. You took the sign of the restructure to be like, "Okay, I gotta figure this out." You didn't wanna retire and just volunteer. You still wanted to do some sort of work. But you sort of, you started this practice much more, uh, conscientiously. You're d- you're having your four time a, a day prayer sessions and, and, and, uh, and take it from there. So, and then-

   11. JFJohn Fox10:47

       Well, so I started that in the summer before, and I didn't know why, but I had started a lot of practices to say, "What does it feel like to do that?" A lot of people have this structured prayer practice.

   12. SSSimon Sinek10:56

       Yeah.

   13. JFJohn Fox10:56

       A lot of traditions have it. Mine did not.

   14. SSSimon Sinek10:58

       Yeah.

   15. JFJohn Fox10:59

       So I was like, "What is it gonna be like?" And I didn't know why. And the way I saw it was... And the reorganization, a lot of things that had happened in my company, we had seen coming. They had been planned. I had been part sometimes of the, the planning around an acquisition or something.

   16. SSSimon Sinek11:13

       Mm-hmm.

   17. JFJohn Fox11:13

       But this time no one saw it coming because no one... It wasn't foreseeable-

   18. SSSimon Sinek11:16

       Right

   19. JFJohn Fox11:16

       ... what happened. It had to do with people changing their roles and in, in a way that they didn't even know they were gonna do. And so the way I saw it was, well, none of us knew that this was gonna happen, but the way that I would phrase it is, "But God knew it was gonna happen, and so put this prayer practice in my heart because it was like, 'You're gonna need it.'" And so I had it.

   20. SSSimon Sinek11:37

       So the unexpected-

   21. JFJohn Fox11:38

       Practiced-

   22. SSSimon Sinek11:38

       ... unforeseen was the sign, because everything else we can prepare for, we are aware. But i- if something unexpected happens, God knew, so you should, you should-

   23. JFJohn Fox11:47

       And got me prepared

   24. SSSimon Sinek11:48

       ... got... You should, you should pay a- pay attention to the fact that this is happening is, is the sign, is the, is the message. And how long were you working at the bank while sort of now changing the way you saw the world, changing the way you saw your life?

   25. JFJohn Fox12:01

       More than a year. But I, in the summer, IAfter talking to all these people and doing these practices, uh-

   26. SSSimon Sinek12:09

       And looking, preparing for change, figuring out what change was gonna look like

   27. JFJohn Fox12:11

       ... yeah. I was just thinking, "Should I change to another company in this industry? Should I change to another industry?" Like, what kinds of things? And I was praying about that, and I wasn't hearing anything. And then I ran into, as I was also investigating these kind of community opportunities, the community development, c- it's called community economic development sector in the Peace Corps in some countries in South America, or in Latin America, uh, broadly. And so I did it.

   28. SSSimon Sinek12:36

       Mm.

   29. JFJohn Fox12:36

       Uh, I applied. Uh, it was like a two-month process or so to apply, interview, and then they gave you a country. You don't get to choose your country. And I accepted it the next day. Like, there was no question if I was-

   30. SSSimon Sinek12:48

       Wow
7. 12:59 – 17:20

   Peace Corps & Seminary: Preparing for a New Life

   1. JFJohn Fox12:59

      two years and three months. And during that time, I had a lot of opportunity 'cause I was living in a, in a rural village in a developing country. I had a lot of time. And I mean, I was working, but I had a lot of time. And I had a lot of time to think about what came next. And I also talked to some people. I had what's called a spiritual director at the time that, uh, I met with, like, once a month and helped me through some processes of, of making decisions, uh, and thinking about things. And that's also when I thought, well, I'd thought about going to seminary, and I have become this, I was led into this-

   2. SSSimon Sinek13:38

      Yeah

   3. JFJohn Fox13:38

      ... by my life of faith and practice. And so I looked more into that, and I, I learned that half of people these days who go to seminary don't become religious professionals of any kind. Like, I had not gone in my 20s because I thought, "Well, I don't wanna be a pastor." But half of people nowadays go to a lot of seminaries so that that kind of process of religious formation can inform and guide their business career, their career as an artist. They don't... I mean, I'm not even saying they don't become pastors. They don't become any kind of religious professional.

   4. SSSimon Sinek14:13

      Hm.

   5. JFJohn Fox14:14

      So I thought, "Well, I'll do that." And that's the place where I'll figure out the next thing that comes next, uh, in the context of that formation and with people who are also going through that process.

   6. SSSimon Sinek14:27

      Yeah. You said when you were young you went to church, 'cause everybody went to church, and it wasn't really religious. I mean, obviously it was religious-

   7. JFJohn Fox14:35

      For some people it was-

   8. SSSimon Sinek14:36

      But for, you know-

   9. JFJohn Fox14:37

      ... and for some people it was very social though

   10. SSSimon Sinek14:37

       ... for you it was very social, and you liked the people. There's common values, shared perspective on the world, and so there's that community aspect. Um, uh, and, and I guess some degree of predictability as well. A- and so now you join the se- the seminary, um, and then w- you went w- w- which state were you in when you went to seminary?

   11. JFJohn Fox14:56

       So I ended up in Pasadena.

   12. SSSimon Sinek14:58

       You ended up in Pasadena.

   13. JFJohn Fox14:58

       Because when I was going through that process, which the spiritual director helped me with another Ignatian process for making decisions, then I was like, oh, I lived in New York when I was in my 20s, and I loved it. It was the goal of my whole, like, childhood, was to grow up and move to New York. But then I was like, after 25 years in California, I'm just too California.

   14. SSSimon Sinek15:17

       [laughs]

   15. JFJohn Fox15:18

       Like, they... I thought of these two seminaries, even though a lot of people would see them as kind of different, as both large, urban, multi-denominational seminaries that, uh, have, underlying their religious formation, have a big focus on social justice. And so to me they seemed like very similar places, although one is the kind of, was the headline seminary of the kind of liberal mainline tradition for the 20th century, and the other one is an evangelical seminary, and I went to the evangelical one.

   16. SSSimon Sinek15:47

       And w- when one graduates seminary, do you be- is that, is, do, do you get, like, a graduate degree, or are you ordained? Like, what's the terminology when you graduate seminary?

   17. JFJohn Fox15:56

       Well, uh, it depends on your tradition. You know, if, in my tradition, y- uh, ordination is something that's done by a church or a denomination.

   18. SSSimon Sinek16:05

       Okay.

   19. JFJohn Fox16:05

       And a church within a denomination, uh, and seminary is an educational process.

   20. SSSimon Sinek16:09

       Okay.

   21. JFJohn Fox16:10

       In-

   22. SSSimon Sinek16:10

       So you got a degree?

   23. JFJohn Fox16:11

       Yeah. In some traditions, seminary, like Catholics, uh, I think... Well, s- s- I've known a lot of people working as a chaplain in the last few years in different traditions, and in some traditions, seminary and ordination are more tied together.

   24. SSSimon Sinek16:24

       Okay.

   25. JFJohn Fox16:24

       But not in mine.

   26. SSSimon Sinek16:25

       Okay.

   27. JFJohn Fox16:26

       Uh, so many people, if they're not gonna be pastors, they never do get ordained.

   28. SSSimon Sinek16:29

       Okay. So, and so you were not ordained?

   29. JFJohn Fox16:31

       No, I am, because to be, to go through the process of chaplaincy formation and board certification, you have to be ordained or endorsed.

   30. SSSimon Sinek16:40

       Okay.
8. 17:20 – 23:19

   What a Chaplain Actually Does

   1. SSSimon Sinek17:20

      those who are-

   2. JFJohn Fox17:20

      So a chaplain is, like, a clergy person who works outside of a church.

   3. SSSimon Sinek17:24

      And so let's be clear. You're not a priest or a pastor. You are a chaplain at a hospital and-

   4. JFJohn Fox17:29

      A hospital. I also do some hospice chaplaincy. I have been working for six years, all of this is part-time, in a homeless shelter. Uh, and also s- some in the LA County Men's Central Jail.

   5. SSSimon Sinek17:44

      Okay. So hospital, hospice, homeless, and prison.

   6. JFJohn Fox17:48

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SSSimon Sinek17:48

      You are a chaplain-

   8. JFJohn Fox17:49

      Or jail, yeah

   9. SSSimon Sinek17:49

      ... jail. You are a, uh, a chaplain in, in all of these places. Um, is one of them sort of your main gig? Uh, is... [laughs]

   10. JFJohn Fox17:57

       I mean-

   11. SSSimon Sinek17:58

       [laughs]

   12. JFJohn Fox17:59

       ... the... I, I work more hours in the hospital.

   13. SSSimon Sinek18:01

       Okay.

   14. JFJohn Fox18:01

       Uh, so I never intended to work in healthcare, but there's a process of clinical pastoral education that you have to do as part of certification as a chaplain. AndMost people do it in a hospital. Hospitals have organized programs around it. Medicare, uh, pays for... It's like a residency that you do.

   15. SSSimon Sinek18:20

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JFJohn Fox18:20

       It's much less intense than a medical residency, but it's the same kind of model. Most people do it in a hospital. And so I applied to hospitals. I learned later you can do it in other ways, and I probably should have, but I worked at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown LA in the Westlake area near, near downtown. And I fell in love with that hospital, with the staff there and their commitment to serving the downtown community. There's a lot of, of poor people that go to that hospital. There's a lot of homelessness. There's a lot of addiction and overdoses. There's a lot of kind of diseases of poverty, like diabetes that, that is not well managed.

   17. SSSimon Sinek19:01

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JFJohn Fox19:01

       And just a lot of things that... So I never expected to work in a hospital, and I don't think I would have stayed in a hospital if I'd worked at more of a kind of suburban middle-class hospital because I do feel like, you know, like, you know, middle-class people need spiritual care, too, but just not from me. Like, that's not what I think I'm, I'm... That's not the community I think I'm called to be with. And so, uh, but working in that hospital, there's... In a hospital, I mean, hospice, it's all, like, end of life, but in a hospital, that's a significant, like, I'd say a quarter to a third of the time. And people will often say to me, because I go in as a chaplain, I don't necessarily use that word, but they'll be like, "Oh, I'm not religious." But they'll talk because I'm like, "I'm just here to listen, and whatever you mean by spiritual, whatever gives you strength and hope and meaning, uh, if there's anything that I can do to listen to that and, and, and be with you there." You're definitely not allowed to evangelize in a hospital, and I mean, I, I don't wanna do that anyway, but it's, you'd be fired. And people will then at the end of our time, sometimes people are talking to me for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, sometimes an hour, then people will say, uh, "Oh, can you pray for me?" And I'm like, "Oh, but, uh, so how do you do that? What... Like, uh, they said they weren't religious." And they're like, "Oh, I'm not religious, but I definitely believe in God." And-

   19. SSSimon Sinek20:31

       [laughs]

   20. JFJohn Fox20:32

       ... they, because they... And they'll say things like, "Religion isn't, doesn't come from God. It's something made up by people," because so many people have been hurt by churches.

   21. SSSimon Sinek20:40

       Yeah.

   22. JFJohn Fox20:41

       And most people, especially, this is LA, most people grew up in a Christian, Catholic or not Catholic context.

   23. SSSimon Sinek20:48

       Mm-hmm.

   24. JFJohn Fox20:49

       Uh, the vast majority of people, and they still adhere to that context, but they no longer want to participate in that community. And they're like, "I, I have my own relationship with God." And I personally don't think that's the, that is as, as enriching and fulfilling a way to live your relationship with God by yourself.

   25. SSSimon Sinek21:11

       Mm-hmm.

   26. JFJohn Fox21:12

       I do think that for me, we need to be with each other in these things. We need to do them together, and we need to shape each other together in them. But I don't give advice, you know, in these contexts. So if that's what a person at this point in their life is, is telling me that they want support in, then that's what I'm gonna do.

   27. SSSimon Sinek21:31

       What's so interesting is all the data shows that, you know, religion is in decline. Like, people are less religious, but the, it's because the question is flawed, right? "Are you religious?" "No." "Do you believe in God?" "Yes." You know, and to your point, which is people are, are defining religion as the organization, the church, the stuff, and I, I'm n- that's not me. I'm, I'm not into that, and I'm not into that community for what, for whatever reason, but I still have my... I'm spiritual. I have my practice. I believe in God, whatever, however people are defining it. But to your point, which is perhaps part of the challenge in our modern day and this sort of increasing rates of loneliness is, is, and you're, you're sa- you're, you're putting it, and it's your own experience, which is a belief in God should be a communal thing. It is more enriching as a communal thing. And, and people s- it sounds like even just meeting you in hospital, sort of, dare I say, a chance encounter, they're learning, they're learning the value of faith by sitting with you, asking you to pray for them, knowing that somebody is thinking about them and willing to pray for them. What a beautiful thought that to have the confidence and knowledge that somebody is praying for me. We're not even always 100% sure our friends like us [laughs] let alone to believe that someone is praying for my well-being, that sense of care that I matter, that somebody's willing to take time for me. I... It's a small but very powerful thought. There's a little insight in there. Can you share a, a story, a specific story of someone you helped in any one of those places that you work, um, early when you made this transition to become a chaplain, that sitting with this person, you realized, "I made the right... This is for me. This is, this is where God wanted me. This is where I'm supposed

9. 23:19 – 26:36

   The Moment John Knew He Was Meant for This Work

   1. SSSimon Sinek23:19

      to be"?

   2. JFJohn Fox23:20

      Yeah, that's actually a good way of asking the question. One thing I remember early on was a woman who was about 60 years old who had lived in another state. Her, uh, two daughters had graduated from college and were beginning their adult lives, and she and her husband moved from this southern state to California, to, to LA, to continue their work at... They, I mean, they both had sort of secular jobs, but they'd been very involved in a spiritual movement, and they came here because there was a branch of it here in LA, and to start the next act of their lives. And s- right after she got here, she found out that she had a stage four cancer diagnosis, and there was gonna be no next act. And one thing I learned about inIn chaplaincy formation was this thing called countertransference, which is basically the idea that, uh, the patient is, or the, the client or whatever is creating things in you. It's kind of the opposite of the idea that the, the patient is projecting things onto you. It's that you, your care is being created by things the patient is invoking in you. And this has happened to me a number of times, but my mom also, she was 57 when she was diagnosed, and she passed away at 61. Sh- it was like there, it brought a lot for me. Now, this was, uh, like 20 years ago with my mom, so I'm not saying that this was a open wound at the, at the moment, but I realized there was a lot of things in be- in being in that experience, and I was with her for about 15 minutes when someone came in to, like, check her blood pressure and, uh, sh- something else. And I just waited, and then she talked to me for more than an hour. And at the end she said, "Wow, I didn't even think I needed you when you came in. Like, I, I, like, I guess I had more to get out than I thought." And it's interesting that a lot of times when women who are around that age or even younger are thinking about the end of their life, there's so many of their thoughts are about, "What will my husband do? How will he survive?" And a lot, uh, much more than their fear of their own death. Another woman I saw that summer was younger, and she actually sent her husband out of the room, and he was actually really angry, but she said, "He won't let me talk about what I wanna talk about. He'll say you're giving up if you're talking about the end of your life, and I'm not giving up. I am not giving up, but I need... It might happen, and I need to talk about that with someone, and he won't let me talk about it." And it's very often when you ask, what is a chaplain doing if people have families and church and whatever, there's a lot of things that you will say to a person who's a stranger for a lot of reasons. They don't, you don't have a relationship with them that where they're trying to get things as well. You don't have to deal with being around a person after this who knows all these things about you. People have even explicitly told me that, "I, I'm glad that I won't see you again-

   3. SSSimon Sinek26:33

      [chuckles]

   4. JFJohn Fox26:34

      ... be- after all the things I've told

10. 26:36 – 34:13

    Why Strangers Open Up More Than Loved Ones

    1. JFJohn Fox26:36

       you."

    2. SSSimon Sinek26:36

       So many thoughts. What was it about her that made you realize you were in the right place, doing the right thing, you'd made the right choice?

    3. JFJohn Fox26:44

       W- so it's what can a stranger do? That's what I didn't understand. I understood that I was drawn to exploring this path.

    4. SSSimon Sinek26:51

       Yeah.

    5. JFJohn Fox26:51

       But until I started doing it, I was like, "What..." And then I realized, oh, there's no one else she can tell this stuff to.

    6. SSSimon Sinek26:59

       Yeah.

    7. JFJohn Fox26:59

       There's no one else who will listen to it, and there's no one else who will understand it, because everyone else in her life is working out their own issues with her, and her husband is mainly working out the loss of her-

    8. SSSimon Sinek27:12

       Yeah

    9. JFJohn Fox27:12

       ... for him, and that makes it difficult for him to be present for whatever's going on with her, and because she was a person who took care of other people, that's why she said at the end, "I did-- I guess I had a lot to get out. I didn't even know that."

    10. SSSimon Sinek27:27

        Yeah.

    11. JFJohn Fox27:27

        Because everything she said for the first, like, 15 minutes was about other people, and then she started to talk about herself.

    12. SSSimon Sinek27:34

        What's also interesting is there's a connection that the two of you had. I don't know if this is coincidental or if this is important, but she had a whole plan for what her life was gonna be until that wasn't the plan. Like, and you s- said you, you were put on your path in part because you thought you were gonna be an academic. That didn't work out. The relationships that you thought you were gonna have, those didn't work out. You lost your mom. All of these expectations and plans of what the future, what, what you imagined the future was going to be for you, for whatever reason, it, none of it worked. Even the, even at work, where, like, all of the planning and meticulousness of what the future's gonna look like and future planning, and in a, in a heartbeat it was all turned upside down. That there's that connection as well, which is, "I thought this was my plan," until it wasn't.

    13. JFJohn Fox28:23

        I think part of the thing about being a chaplain maybe is that in my role of it, I'm not trying to fix anything for anyone, and a lot of times what people wanna talk about is not fixable, and that's why their family sometimes doesn't wanna listen to them, 'cause they're... A lot of times your family and people close to you, and not just people close to you, but anyone you talk to practically, often when you tell them about the hard things in your, their, in your life, they feel helpless.

    14. SSSimon Sinek28:51

        Mm.

    15. JFJohn Fox28:51

        And they don't like that, and they, they want an impulse to fix it somehow, even at things that are obviously not fixable, like death.

    16. SSSimon Sinek28:59

        This thought that it's so hard for people to open up about unfixable or unchangeable things and, and, and it's, it's very hard for people to hold space for it, because it's the listener that feels powerless.

    17. JFJohn Fox29:17

        Mm-hmm.

    18. SSSimon Sinek29:17

        "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help you."

    19. JFJohn Fox29:19

        Mm-hmm.

    20. SSSimon Sinek29:19

        And I guess there's a guilt associated with it, which is, "You've come to me. You're opening up to me. You're sharing your darkest or deepest thoughts with me, and I don't know what to do." And that p- powerlessness or guilt damages the dynamic. Where do you... Why do you not feel powerless?

    21. JFJohn Fox29:42

        One thing I realized during my, during my 15 months of this residency, uh, uh, with... 'Cause it's a supervised process where you do 10 hours a week of group process and 30 hours a week of, like, clinical time, and you're with other students and a educator who's certified to do this. And one thing I realized is more things about my personality that I already knew but I didn't realize, and one thing that a lot of people in my context use as a personality system is called the Enneagram, and I am a five, which is not super common for chaplains. Most chaplains are a two, which is like a helper.

    22. SSSimon Sinek30:23

        And which one is five?

    23. JFJohn Fox30:24

        So five is called an observer or an investigator, and one thing... So the strength of thatFor chaplaincy is that you're just, a, a person like me is just really interested in learning things. Learning things for my own sake and independence, but also just listening to people. Uh, and I also, to some extent, it'll probably sound weird, but I kind of don't really believe in the truth. Now, people don't like it because obviously I'm a committed Christian, so in some s- strong sense I do believe in a, in the truth, in some very strong sense in a lot of ways. But I just very constitutionally in my personality, I think almost every important question in human life, there's no single correct answer to. There's like a-

    24. SSSimon Sinek31:14

        For example?

    25. JFJohn Fox31:15

        Like what are valuable things to do in the world? You know, what are, um, what are valuable ways of being present with and caring for each other? Different people have different answers. It's kinda like Isaiah Berlin talked about the incommensurable goods.

    26. SSSimon Sinek31:29

        What's that?

    27. JFJohn Fox31:30

        And so meaning that there's no way we're gonna find some system of good and virtue that is, uh, universal to all people. That there are good virtues, ways of life, ways of being present in the world, ways of caring for each other, ways of improving our community that are just so different from each other that they can't be put on the same scale. So, and this is where people often get into conflicts like, uh, I mean one example that I learned about when I was taking a class on Islam and we were reading about, you know, the Western idea during some of the, like, the certainly Afghanistan, but I think also other wars after September 11th, that we're liberating the women in these societies from the patriarchal structure of the societies. And I was reading some of these, like, Islamic feminist authors, which is, it, it's not, a feminist is almost the wrong word because we think of Western feminism, because what they were basically saying is, "Okay, we agree with you that there are elements of our society that are patriarchal, and we wanna talk among ourselves about how to be liberated from it, but we do not want you to do it for us-

    28. SSSimon Sinek32:42

        Mm

    29. JFJohn Fox32:42

        ... by killing our men."

    30. SSSimon Sinek32:43

        Mm.
11. 34:13 – 41:23

    From Making Money to Finding Meaning

    1. JFJohn Fox34:13

       Yes. So I have thought about that, uh, for, in some different ways. One way that's interesting to me is I met a person, uh, a few years ago that we didn't know each other at all, but we were having very personal conversations, uh, once a week. And we got to know each other well over the course of a couple of years. And he said to me in one of the early conversations, learning about what I was doing, he said, "Wow, you really like to help people." And I was like, "Wow, I, I just would not describe it that way." Like, I don't think I'm doing this work because I really want to be a person who helps people and, or because I want to help pe- like, I just didn't, that's not a description I would apply to myself. I did this work because I felt like this is the kind of world that I wanted to live in, and this is the kind of community that I wanted to live in, and because it made me feel more whole. And I didn't even, I just didn't think about it as self-sacrificing service, and I still don't.

    2. SSSimon Sinek35:23

       I don't think service has to be self-sacrificing, and that's part of, I think that's part of the problem, that people think they, like in order to serve, you have to sort of suffer or give something up. But, and, and you, only you can answer this, which is the bankers you worked with, the finance people you work with, the analysts you work with, you know, were they happy with, w- were they, uh, like th- this is what life is supposed to be? Or could you see that there was a, that this w- this, this had a timeframe that they too would come to some sort of realization that there's gotta be more to life than this?

    3. JFJohn Fox35:56

       S- some people, uh, were.

    4. SSSimon Sinek35:59

       [laughs]

    5. JFJohn Fox35:59

       Especially some of the most senior people were l- got a huge amount of reward from being extremely successful in a very competitive field and being extremely well-rewarded for that.

    6. SSSimon Sinek36:15

       Were they happy?

    7. JFJohn Fox36:16

       So, uh, I mean, that's-

    8. SSSimon Sinek36:18

       [laughs]

    9. JFJohn Fox36:19

       ... uh, you know, I, I don't know because, uh, those people, I knew them in a sense well-

    10. SSSimon Sinek36:23

        Yeah

    11. JFJohn Fox36:23

        ... and spent time with them. Uh, but I wasn't really part of their f- like social world or whatever, and very few of them lived in California. They were mostly in New York or London. But most people I knew, if you asked them what makes life meaningful, their, their work and the reward of their work-Would be a way of... Like other things were the most meaningful things in their life. Very often family was the most meaningful thing, but family in the context of a community a lot of the time. But also people had hobbies and that were very meaningful to them. But you have to pay your rent, was the view that a lot of people honestly had. And it was a really eye-opening thing to me when I was in this business career and I read this book by that management, that guy Peter Drucker.

    12. SSSimon Sinek37:15

        Yeah, yeah.

    13. JFJohn Fox37:15

        Uh, and he, and he said, and it was called like The Effective CEO or something, and he said, "There's no personality or formula for being an effective CEO." He said, "I've met people where this is the most important thing in their life. I've met people where this is how they pay their money, and their hobby is the most important thing in their life, and they would never say that they get meaning from this job. And they're highly effective because they have oriented their organization around meeting their objectives. And one of their objectives is to have a lot of money and financial security. And they know that's why they're doing it." And, uh, for me, that wasn't enough, but it was a, it was a significant part of it, was not being financially... 'Cause I didn't grow up in a, like a really well-off family, and I grew up in a family with like a decent amount of anxiety around money. Like we weren't super poor, but, and I didn't wanna live that. I just didn't want that, which is part of the reason that I worked in an industry that paid a lot of money, was because I didn't wanna live with economic anxiety.

    14. SSSimon Sinek38:15

        F- financial goal setting is, uh, a series of finite games where once you reach one goal, you know, the person who wants a milli- who makes a million, wants three, the person who makes three, wants five, the person who makes 10, wants 20, the person who 20, makes 50. That's how it goes. It's a series of moving goalposts.

    15. JFJohn Fox38:36

        Yes.

    16. SSSimon Sinek38:36

        And-

    17. JFJohn Fox38:36

        That's why I had to get kicked out

    18. SSSimon Sinek38:37

        ... and, and um, and, and, and what I know from my work is that's not an infinite game. That's a series of moving goalposts, which always feels like it's never enough. It always feels like, um, you're never fulfilled, you're never satisfied. And, and for those who, uh, rationalize that, you know, gotta pay the rent, like holy cow, how much is your rent? Um, but more importantly, what happens when you have to leave work at some point? If your whole identity and-

    19. JFJohn Fox39:09

        Mm-hmm

    20. SSSimon Sinek39:09

        ... reason for being is the goal setting, the paying the rent, whatever, however you wanna say it. "I lo- I love the game..." But when that is removed, then what?

    21. JFJohn Fox39:21

        Mm-hmm.

    22. SSSimon Sinek39:21

        And I've seen so many people, and usually the more senior, the more successful, the more I see this, obviously, which is they're either very bored because they're good at it. Like it was exciting at the beginning, but they have fear of change. They don't know what they're gonna do next, or their whole identity is wrapped into this thing. And when they have to leave, literally identity crisis is the thing. I know this one CEO who, big CEO, big company, blah, blah, blah, and he, he left and he was talking to a friend. There's this big fancy f- party that he would go to every year, and he wasn't invited. And he says to his friend, you know, uh, "Did you get your invitation?" And the guy goes, "Yeah, of course." He goes, "I didn't get mine. I, I wonder if it got lost." It never occurred to him that they were never, ever inviting him to the party. They were inviting the CEO of this company to the party, and quote unquote, his invitation went to his replacement. You know, the next guy. It ne- it didn't occur to him that he, he's not invited. And the i- and I, and to see him go through this crazy identity crisis 'cause he'd so intertwined his en- his entire reason for being with this job that he had. So people who truly, like family, community, hobbies, anything other than the s- something that truly is infinite. I could do this forever, and it would never run out, and I'm not moving the goalposts. Uh, d- James Carse, the guy who wrote Finite and Infinite Games, a theologian [laughs] .

    23. JFJohn Fox40:45

        Okay.

    24. SSSimon Sinek40:45

        Uh, um, he was a philosopher and theologian, and in the mid 1980s defined these two types of games, finite g- games and infinite games. Finite games, baseball, football, known players, fixed rules, agreed upon objectives.

    25. JFJohn Fox40:56

        Oh, yeah, yeah.

    26. SSSimon Sinek40:56

        You know, infinite games, known and unknown players, r- changeable rules, and the objective is to perpetuate the game. I got to meet him before he died, and I asked him very simply, you know, like, "How did you, how'd you come up with that?" I mean, that's a truth. You know, that happens every 100 years that somebody comes up with a truth rather than just a theory. Oh, I just noticed there's a picture of me and him right there. And he said when his kids would play ping pong,

12. 41:23 – 44:06

    What It Really Means to Be Seen

    1. SSSimon Sinek41:23

       there was... Which is a finite game. There's a winner, there's a loser. There was always fighting at some point, and there's always accusations of cheating at some point. When they would draw or play with Lego, kids would come and go. It would go for hours. It was always quiet. People would join, they would leave, they would come back again, 'cause there was no goal or end. And he realized that we were so obsessed with finite games, we were so obsessed with zero sum, we're so obsessed with winners and losers, you know, that we've completely forgotten the joy of play. And I would argue that hobbies, family, community, service are play. Which is there's no end state. And there are finite goals within, obviously, obviously, but the satisfaction comes from the, the... I mean, you go in, you come out, you talk to some people, you miss other people, but there's a, there's an intense joy that comes from helping stay in the game, being in the game. You know, you, the t- the term community keeps coming up as we talk, and, and the feeling seen. And I, and I go back to what, what you said before, which I found the thing that I've, I'm taking away from this conversation with you, which I find overwhelmingly powerfulWhich is that somebody sees me, not likes me, not knows me, right? But somebody sees me and wants to pray for me. 'Cause these aren't your friends, these aren't your family. 'Cause we usually think that you have to fall in love with someone or have a deep lifelong relationship before I matter enough that somebody would care about me and pray for me. But that somebody just sees me for who I am as a human being and is willing to take time out of their very busy day to pray for me, I find overwhelmingly powerful, and turns on its head the notion of what it means to feel seen, which is deeply understood, which is not really what it is.

    2. JFJohn Fox43:28

       Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, so I do-

    3. SSSimon Sinek43:32

       'Cause people feel seen when they sit with you, and though you can't solve their problems, and, and, and, and, and this is what I'm learning, which is your ability to let go and accept that I can't fix, I can't change, and the reason you have no frustration and the, the reason you have no, no guilt is because you, it seems from, from the time we're talking, it seems that what you have defined your role as my goal is to make this person feel like they matter and feel seen.

13. 44:06 – 50:45

    Building Communities That Actually Work

    1. JFJohn Fox44:06

       So this is making me think... So I agree with what you said, and this is making me think one thing that I struggled with. I was working in community development in the Peace Corps, and I, I had been working in community development, although not necessarily using that name, before, uh, in, with poor people in the Bay Area, and like I said, also asylum seekers, but that was a little bit different. And I learned later, and I took a couple of classes on community organizing, and that there's kind of a war in between community organizing people and community development people. Community organizing people say to people who work in community development-

    2. SSSimon Sinek44:48

       What's the difference?

    3. JFJohn Fox44:48

       So one is you're, you go into a community and you, uh, listen to people to learn what's going on, and you walk alongside them in participation.

    4. SSSimon Sinek44:57

       And that's organizing or development?

    5. JFJohn Fox44:58

       Development.

    6. SSSimon Sinek44:58

       Okay.

    7. JFJohn Fox44:59

       And so the idea is... And, and also a kinda Christian community development idea is that you go and be present with people, and you, you live in their community, and you learn their stories, and they learn your story because you're actually there.

    8. SSSimon Sinek45:14

       Right.

    9. JFJohn Fox45:14

       You're not just there as an outsider or as a helper or fixer. And then you, in the kinda Christian version, you take those two stories and the third story of, like, our, our, our Christian life, our scripture story, and you weave these together and set off with the people on a shared journey in a different direction because you've all changed each other. And community organizing is trying to address structural problems, and the organized people so that they can address problems that can't be addressed in that way. And what they say can be, this is a kinda cartoon, but they can say, "Community development people are just putting an endless series of Band-Aids on wounds that will be inflicted over and over again." And community development people can say to community organizing people, "You're just another form of colonizing conquest where you come in and save people and fix their problems." That's so disempowering. Like, and the, a big part of the international community, like, international community development called in that name f- in, like, the mid-20th century was you go to, into people's communities and you're like, you either say one of two stories. "You all lack resources. You lack knowledge, money, technology, whatever it is. We have them. We'll give them to you." Well, that's certainly not how Europe developed. That's not how the US developed, where some aliens came and gave them all the things they were lacking. And it's so disempowering to people to be like, "You just lack, and we're gonna give it to you." The other story is, "You're helpless victims of systems of injustice, and we will work together with you to, to remove the injustice." Well, that's also extremely disempowering to people.

    10. SSSimon Sinek46:56

        Yeah.

    11. JFJohn Fox46:57

        And I think, for me, I accept you're not necessarily going to change systematic injustice by being present with people, but I just can't do that other thing. I just, I just want to be with people, even if it's not as effective. And my professor of community organizing in seminary said, "That's a false choice." Like, you don't have to accept these false choices. And, like, we don't have to decide. We only do one-

    12. SSSimon Sinek47:25

        Like organizing, like organizing or development is not a binary system, you have to pick one.

    13. JFJohn Fox47:28

        Uh, yeah. That we need to do both, and we need people who do both.

    14. SSSimon Sinek47:32

        Or, or, or neither.

    15. JFJohn Fox47:34

        Uh, well, this was a class on community organizing-

    16. SSSimon Sinek47:36

        [laughs] Fair enough

    17. JFJohn Fox47:36

        ... so it wasn't about people who don't do anything.

    18. SSSimon Sinek47:39

        [laughs] What have you learned about yourself since you became a chaplain?

    19. JFJohn Fox47:46

        I guess I would say some are just the way I think about helping people with their spiritual and faith questions, but that's kind of almost-

    20. SSSimon Sinek47:55

        But that's not about you

    21. JFJohn Fox47:55

        ... secondary. Well, it, it is because it's made me think about the way I understand those questions in my own life and, and meaning. But I also think one thing that I learned in the, the residency was that my, my observer investigator type, one of the strengths of that is that it, it makes you genuinely interested in people. It makes people feel like you listen to them and you're not judgmental, and, uh, often does make people feel that because of that, you are able to be present and support them and help them w- even without trying. But the downside of that personality type is that I'm not very in touch with my feelings, and I realize that more and more going through that process and being with people who are in a different situation. It caused me to look back at my life and realize, I don't know what I feel about something when it's happening. It's often hours or even the next day. And, like, I would leave a movie, for instance, and people would be, "Well, what did you think about such and such?" Or, "What did you think of that, that movie?" And just to be social, I would often just make something up. Or, like, I'd go to an art museum and someone would say, "What was your favorite part of it?"I would have no idea. I mean, one time I went to the African American Museum and Expo Park with a friend who I've known for decades, and then afterwards we were having dinner with her partner a few hours later, and I talked about how it had been a really powerful experience because of these things. And my friend got really mad and said, "You didn't tell me that." And I was like, "'Cause I didn't know it until just now." Like, I didn't know what I was feeling when I was there.

    22. SSSimon Sinek49:24

        Mm.

    23. JFJohn Fox49:24

        And so the problem is I have the same feelings as other people, and they influence how I care for people, but I don't know what they are. And so one thing that helped me, and at one of my closest friends in that process who I'm still friends with, she's a hospital chaplain, she's very different from me. Uh, she... And she said, "It's all head when we're talking about these things with you." 'Cause this is a group formation process. It can be brutal.

    24. SSSimon Sinek49:51

        Yeah.

    25. JFJohn Fox49:51

        It can be extremely brutal, part of it, because people are, like, taking you apart and telling you what they see, and you have to write these narratives of pa- of, like, patient contact. And then people are like, "Why'd you do that? And I noticed they said that and you didn't pay any attention to it, but then you brought up this other topic," things like that, that you're like... Uh, and she said, "It's all head, and I want to know what d- where's your heart in this? Where's your... Like, what, what are you feeling about this?" And she said, "Because I can't trust someone unless I know their heart." And I was like, "Oh, that's so interesting for me," because one of the frustrations... We are good friends, but one of the frustrations with her was that she couldn't explain why for things. And so for me. And I was like, "See, I can't trust people. You can feel anything, and I can't trust people until I know why. Why is that an okay thing to feel? Why is that the right thing

14. 50:45 – 1:07:37

    The Emotional Cost (and Gift) of Chaplaincy

    1. JFJohn Fox50:45

       to feel?"

    2. SSSimon Sinek50:45

       You wanted more head and she wanted more heart. She's a, she's bleeding heart. It's on her sleeve at all moments. Inability to explain. You can understand, but maybe you don't feel in the moment.

    3. JFJohn Fox50:57

       Ri- or the problem is, the biggest problem is that I do feel, but I don't recognize it-

    4. SSSimon Sinek51:02

       Yeah

    5. JFJohn Fox51:02

       ... and it's influencing what I do.

    6. SSSimon Sinek51:03

       Uh-huh.

    7. JFJohn Fox51:04

       And so one of the things that I tried to do, I'm never gonna fix this problem in the sense that I don't believe you can fundamentally change your personality.

    8. SSSimon Sinek51:11

       Yeah.

    9. JFJohn Fox51:11

       Uh, and but I do think you can live healthily or less healthily into the personality that you have. That's what you can do.

    10. SSSimon Sinek51:19

        Yeah.

    11. JFJohn Fox51:19

        And one of the things I learned is to pay more attention to my body. Because when I feel my chest tightening, when I feel things like that happen, when I feel my breathing changing, then I'm like, "Something is happening, and it's gonna affect the way I am with this person, and I better slow down and make some attempt to understand what's happening."

    12. SSSimon Sinek51:38

        Oh, this is so magical. You know, I, I, I'm been accused of the same as you, living too much in my head and, and I remember a friend of mine asked me, "Howie, do you feel?" I said, "Well, I'm tired and I'm a little frustrated," and you know. And she goes, "You... " Goes, "No, I, I asked you how you feel, not if you got enough sleep. You know? Like, how do you feel?" "Feel fine." "That's not a feeling. Fine is not a feeling." And I realized how inarticulate I was to explain a feeling. And so then she asked me things, "Tell me how you feel below the neck." And I was like, "What? Like, I'm supposed to tell you a word that captures whatever, you know..." And she said, "No, I want you to explain your physiology, you know?" And I was like... And you use these terms that I've never used before, like, "I can feel my breath shortening. I can feel my heart pounding. I can..." And like, what am I supposed to do with those things? How do I process those things? And I think for someone who's learning to understand their feelings, not to try and label the feeling per se, that comes a little more, that comes, that, that take, takes a little more skill and comes a little later. But to recognize one's physiology in the moment and just say, "I don't know what this is. I don't know how to label it, but I better pay attention. This is a thing," uh, is such a good lesson. You did say, however, that you have people that you work with, clients, patients, uh, that there are some that you just walk away and cry.

    13. JFJohn Fox53:05

        Mm-hmm.

    14. SSSimon Sinek53:07

        That's immediate.

    15. JFJohn Fox53:09

        Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, it, it, it is. But I mean, there's times when we encounter such a fundamental human tragedy that, that we just feel overwhelmed, you know, by like the person who's in their 20s who said, "I feel like my life is-

    16. SSSimon Sinek53:31

        Yeah

    17. JFJohn Fox53:32

        ... over almost before it began." The person can't see where they can go.

    18. SSSimon Sinek53:36

        Is your job to help them see that it's not over?

    19. JFJohn Fox53:38

        Well, it's definitely not in the hospital.

    20. SSSimon Sinek53:39

        Yeah.

    21. JFJohn Fox53:40

        Because one of the things that people have to realize trying to help people in the hospital is you, you have to be very careful about intervening because you're gonna leave that person.

    22. SSSimon Sinek53:48

        Yeah.

    23. JFJohn Fox53:48

        You, you can't go into a room and intervene in someone's life and walk out of their life forever. If you are in a hospice situation or to some extent in the jail and certainly in the homeless shelter, you are committing to be there with them on their journey. And then once you get to know them, you can risk pushing them. But you cannot do that in a hospital, and that's the great danger. Like this woman that I was just talking about, one day she came back and she'd just seen someone who had had a baby and had, was giving it up. And so after the baby was born and they took it to the nursery or whatever, the nurse said, "You need to see this baby." And she's like, "I don't wanna see it. I'm giving it up. I don't wanna see it." And the nurse was like, "You have to. You will regret this for the rest of your life if you don't see it." And this friend of mine who's the chaplain was there, and she was telling me she didn't say that because, uh, I mean, by this time we've been doing this for like a year, and she was like not going to do something like that. But it tore her up to, the idea that a person would not want to see that baby. When she was telling me the story and it, there was a huge amount of emotion in this story about what this woman was doing and what she thought about it. But she also had to kind of try to help the nurse to not force things on this patient.

    24. SSSimon Sinek55:01

        To let, to let go, yeah.

    25. JFJohn Fox55:02

        And that... And I don't blame the nurse. I think-

    26. SSSimon Sinek55:05

        But this is what you mean about truth. Like, there's no right or wrong hereThough we all think-

    27. JFJohn Fox55:09

        Oh, that's true

    28. SSSimon Sinek55:10

        ... you know, though, though many people have already formed in their head there is a right and a wrong-

    29. JFJohn Fox55:15

        That's true

    30. SSSimon Sinek55:15

        ... the reality is, if we're really, really, really honest with ourselves, is there's no truth here.

Episode duration: 1:07:38