Lost
TYLER: Welcome to the last Boy Scouts podcast with your host. I'm Tyler Clark.
DANNY: I'm Danny Ocaña.
TYLER: Cool. I'm really excited for today's episode, our premiere episode.
DANNY: Yeah, it's been a lot of a build-up to it. We're excited. Just to get going in the trailer, man been awesome.
TYLER:Yeah, it's really been a long time coming. I'm really excited to start this project with you, Danny, I think we've got a lot to offer men as well as the next generation of men in our podcast. And hopefully, we can condense some of the things that we've learned as human beings as men, and share it with those who may be looking for a little bit of assistance.
DANNY: Yeah, that's the goal. That's the that is the idea behind the podcast, and behind our own journeys, meeting, and helping others is doing the work,
TYLER: doing the work
DANNY: doing the work that needs to be done. Whether you like it or not, it's not always pretty. But it's honest, and it's fulfilling. And that's what we're hoping for. So we start the podcast and you tell me about this story. And it's interesting how we, the last Boy Scouts, is actually started with a Lost Boy Scout.
TYLER: Yeah. So today, we're going to talk a lot about lost. And I thought, what better way to start the show than with a story about a boy scout who gets lost? Cody Clawson is 13 years old. This is an article I picked up in the Washington Post from a few years back, I think it's about 13 years ago, Cody crosses with his troop of scouts, just outside of Yellowstone Park. And he gets separated from his troop
DANNY: getting those badges
TYLER: getting those badges. It's funny. And so, you know, they start a search party and he is lost. And he hears the sound of a helicopter, in the background, and he's like, I know what to do. Get my belt buckle out, and I'm gonna signal this helicopter. And lo and behold, guess who rescues him?
DANNY: Who?
Han Solo. Han Solo, Harrison Ford himself.,
DANNY: Harrison Ford.
TYLER: Harrison Ford picks him up and he goes, I bet you earned a merit badge for this that you did you know what Cody responded, I earned this merit badge last year. So smoke signals merit badge, maybe I don't know how to last man,
DANNY: The Boy scouts That's quality. That's the hope is that you can use those skills you learn right. So in I worked in Cedar City in Harrison Ford, and we had a picture of him on the wall. Because he would come in and he would get his pilot weather briefing from us is what we would give him an in-person briefing of the weather along his path. But we always had a running joke because he's known to have some mishaps with his airplane.
TYLER: Man.
DANNY: Yeah, Han Solo would always tease about that. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah. So the idea of being lost or the feeling of being lost is simple in the form of poor Cody Clawson lost and helping himself and then there are those emotions that come with him and actually being lost and having those areas in your life that you feel lost in and it can be a bunch of things right and when you are lost Have you ever been actually lost? Have you actually ever been lost not like lost in your world or your emotions but actually lost physically?
TYLER: lost physically lost on my church mission my LDS church mission. I served in Montana. And we were out hiking on an off day and just outside of Lolo hot springs
.
DANNY: Oh, Lolo,
TYLER: Lolo hot spring.if you read A River Runs Through It. Lolo hot spring is a quintessential location in that book. And we were right there by that the hot springs and I kind of skiing across some glacier, some snow that was up there. This is in early spring. And sliding down the mountain I realized I got separated from my group, there were five or six of us missionaries out there just enjoying nature. And I look around and I'm like, There's nowhere. I don't recognize anything. I don't see the trail. And I panicked. And I just started running. And I was separated from the group for a good hour until I found the road. And luckily I recognized the road. because I started walking up and that's how I reconnected with the group. But I was on my knees praying for some assistance from the higher powers. Yeah. Be tough to find. find me if somebody would find me or I recognize somewhere I can make a call,
DANNY: man. Yeah, the same thing happened to me. I was young. I was young. I was maybe like nine years old and we had gone to Flagstaff. I grew up in Tempe and when you wanted to out of the heat to go up to Flagstaff, that's what our family did and we went to a picnic area. And the same thing I kind of was walking along and I don't remember exactly what I was looking for. But I was just walking around. And then all of a sudden I realized, I have no idea where I'm at. I have no clue. No, no, no reference. And plus, I'm not even a no, we're near Flagstaff. And we're just in these pine trees. And I'm thinking, oh, man, I, I've done it now. I'm lost. And I have no idea how to get to I don't even know where I'm at. And so I could hear the road. I could hear the highway, like, above me, and I remember thinking, all of everybody tells you to stay put. And I'm TYLER: thinking, I'm not gonna stay posted. No way. Am I staying put, I'm just gonna walk to that road. And from there, I walked to the road, I found the road but I have no direction to go left or right. I have no, I don't know what to do. And so I just remember turning right, walking. And then I came to the picnic area that we were at and thought, Oh, my gosh, I am so lucky. I'm so lucky that that happened. Because when I walked to back to my family, they had no idea that I was gone. Even they had no idea that I was had been gone for as long as the same about an hour, an hour and a half, no idea. They were just doing their thing. And I'm like, I'm not telling anybody about
because they were
TYLER: totally meant to happen.
DANNY: Yeah.
TYLER: I mean, that's such a mindset, right? Like the concept of staying where you are like it defies kind of everything we should we kind of are instructed to as men, like we're supposed to self-rescue, we're supposed to be macho, we're supposed to be there's a lot of this kind of current narratives of masculinity or manhood that you're supposed to be right and staying still and not taking care of yourself is not one of those things.
DANNY: And it goes against like you said, it goes against all of your psyche, like your instinct, you know, I can't sit here. Yeah. And so like, that's just in the simplest form, right? That's like the lowest form of getting lost. But it's it is a very define our definition of that lost feeling. Because you do feel helpless and scared.
TYLER: There are a lot of parallels to being physically lost as there is to being lost in your purpose, right? And I think that's really kind of where I saw this, the topic going today is, as a man, what is your purpose? how do you get lost or as a human being really, you don't even have to be a man, you can be lost as a, as a woman as well,
DANNY: sure, oh, we're not women. So their levels of loss is probably way different than ours.
TYLER: But it's that emotional feeling of like, I know, I'm supposed to be somewhere or something. Or there's these cultural or narratives, there's these stories that are told to us by the groups in which we associate with have, this is what we're supposed to be or this is how we're supposed to live. And if we don't fit in, or we don't immediately see our place in those in those narratives, we can feel lost emotionally.
DANNY: And it's a very vulnerable place to find yourself without a lot of direction, right? Imagine in your story of when you're physically lost, if you truly didn't know what to do you just sat there. You know, the feelings of anxiety and fear would just start to set in. Yeah. And you hope that somebody else notices, but when would that happen?
TYLER: And so in a way, you do kind of have to own your own rescue, you have to take ownership, the concept of loss that is impacted me the most today or frightens me the most today is this concept of kind of position by an American psychiatrist, and professor from Georgetown University by the name of Marty Bowen. Well, I'm not going to try to like describe his work, because I'm not a psychologist, and I'm not, you know, super versed in those but he describes two versions of the self, the fusion self, and the solid self. I first was introduced to this idea through an article on Medium by the angry therapist, John Kim, who happens to be a pretty big mentor of mine. He's, he's the leader of the coaching school I went to, but he calls it the idea of your pseudo self and your solid self, Essentially, the solid self knows exactly what it needs and what it desires whereas the pseudo self is reactive. It reacts to those things that we fuse to our identity that are very superficial that they're not in harmony. And John John uses this great analogy he actually pulls from this great book Fight Club or the movie if you haven't seen such an amazing film. Yeah, haven't seen it. Remind me of the author's name again,
DANNY: Chuck Palahniuk, he's a great writer and I think he has multiple good books too, like really good books. You got to be able to you got to be willing to dive down some dark holes with his books because the book of Fight Club, if you haven't, and we'll we're going to spoiler alerts, we're gonna give some information so we apologize if you're living under a rock And you haven't watched the movie or read the book. We apologize. The book has way good details. That is even like, when you watch the movie again, you're like, oh, man, yeah, there are so many good, lines. There are so many truths, right?
TYLER: The characters. So we start with the first character whom you never learn the name. He's just known as the narrator.
DANNY: And we thought that was weird when I was asking, Hey, what was Edward Norton? Yeah, naming that when we were testing the concept and we wanted to tell the story. We're like, what is so in the movie that the narrator's played by Edward Norton?
TYLER: Yeah. And there's another character that shows up in the movie. Later, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But the narrator has this life, right? He has this life he's going through, right he, he gets up, he goes to his job, he's got the apartment. He's obsessed with IKEA furniture, right? He's like, he's like you, don't you? When you go. When you enter adulthood, you really just don't know a lot about yourself. So you buy a kitchen table, and you're just like, well, at least I got that kitchen table.
DANNY: Yeah, I've got that covered.
TYLER: I got that problem solved. Right. And you buy a sofa, and it's the only sofa you're ever going to need. Right. And essentially, he doesn't really appear to be all that happy.
DANNY: He's very boring.
TYLER: Yeah, very, like just going through the motions. I think a lot of us have can resonate with that for sure. He meets Tyler Durden on one of his many work trips. Tyler Durden, his character in the movie is played by Brad Pitt.
DANNY: Such a good actor. at that moment, like, you start attaching yourself to Brad Pitt. Right? And, you almost lose track of Edward Norton. But he still plays a great part in the movie. And in the book, it even goes into more detail about like, what Tyler Durden brings to Edward Norton. And then you start to wonder, who's the real character? Who are you actually following? Who is? Who is the person? That's the real character? Not the pseudo character, the true side? Is it Tyler Durden? Who has Edward Norton as a pseudo-self? Or is it Edward Norton that has Tyler Durden as a pseudo-self and then watch the movie. And I'm telling you, you will find yourself like, oh my gosh, I don't know who the character is.
TYLER: It's interesting because you'll see that in Edward Norton's life, he starts to see oh, I like the life that Tyler Durden has. He's got the girl. He's got the job. He's got the freedom he starts. You know, he really starts attaching to Tyler as a character because he's not happy in his life. He's been going through the motions. He's been living out the narrative that he learned through his parents. Right? Right. He talks about that in the book. Like he learns this narrative. He was supposed to go to college and move on and go through these motions. And he's really acting from his fused self, right? He's, he's going through the motions, right? He's attached to whatever that narrative is. And Tyler is the complete opposite of that.
DANNY: It is and we as and really as men, know how that feels. We know how you're putting yourself out there. And you mirror some people that you're like, oh, man, I really like that quality of that person that I'm around so you mirror that. And in that whole scenario for ourselves, we have we've had those moments, right? We've had those moments where you are a different version of who you are now, right? Who you are now and that's where I think where you come in with how Martie Bowen's version applies to you applies to Tyler Clark
TYLER: Yeah, so for sure it resonates with me because I definitely fused my identity to a particular religion for right now. I fused my fuse my identity to relationships whether it be my parents or my former spouse, you know when you are John Kim likens you know, he kind of brings us back into your container your life is a container right? And so you start to build a container from yourself for yourself. And this is true for Edward Norton's character, right? He starts to see these cracks in his container or the way he wants his life to be right and in parallel, I saw I started seeing the same thing, right, I saw I saw I'm seeing these cracks and so what am I doing I'm pushing stuff into the cracks that will hopefully fill those cracks and in the case of the platitudes, I used to answer from, from a religious perspective, right? I didn't have the answer. I wasn't sure but hey, I got this organization that has some of the answers so I'll push that in that crack or hey, if I just fill it with this relationship, I can push that in a crack and it gets worse right we can we can push just about anything into those cracks, whether it be drugs, whether it be alcohol, whether it is porn. I mean, men are We're doing that these days where we are, we are pushing things down rather than taking a moment to breathe, and understanding what those things are telling us.
DANNY: Right? And that, in essence, is your pseudo-self, right? That's not your true self. That is your pseudo self, that you're putting all of those, all of those eggs, all those all of that baggage into your pseudo self, because are you developed enough? To take a moment and go? This is not the character is another true character? No, no, there's not a true person, right?
TYLER: We start buying into the cognitive dissidence, because we believe those narratives, right, we believe those narratives, and so we justify it, it's like, it's like the person that gets caught a in a lie, right? They say the person that tells the truth never really has anything to fear. But the person that tells a lie in denial and spends the rest of his life trying to justify that lie,
DANNY: Right.
TYLER: And we do that to ourselves. How often are how many men out there are doing that to themselves? They're there, they're justifying that thing. And when justification stops working, you fill it with something else
DANNY: True. Yeah, you do. And fear. Fear starts to set in right? Fear does start to become a very big fear of, am I going to be found out? Absolutely. Am I going to am I is somebody going to realize that who I'm portraying, is not who I actually am? Because as men, we have a lot of fears. We have a lot of fears. We're told, to be tough. Don't men, don't succumb to those fears. Right. But we do have fears, we have fears that we need to address and that we need to look into and see why are we afraid of them. Why are we scared? Why are we scared to do that or to make that commitment? And then you realize that all these fears drive you to develop yourself to be maybe this person that now you have to reinvent, you have to re-invent. And you have these faults, roles that you're portraying, right? And when we look in and we're we address those faults, roles, and as we get older, and as we become more in tune with reconnection and reinventing, then we can like go, Okay, I need to fix this right away. Right. But something, there's always something that holds you back.
TYLER: The facade, the facade isn't meant to last, right? Like, there's a reason that when you paint something that paint never really lasts, you end up having to repaint it, right? So trauma plays a big aspect in these roles, right? Certainly did for me. And we nobody, nobody kind of escapes their youth or their childhood without going through some form of trauma, whether it's big T trauma or a little t trauma. We'll do episodes about what trauma is in the future. But like, we all have these roles, we the certain core needs, we need to feel wanted, we need to feel loved, we need to feel accepted, and what role or what masks are we putting on to to get validation? In my case, I played all of those roles, right? My body started to show signs I started to break down
DANNY: to sickness, like actual sick, true sickness, and you would have actual sicknesses you would have liked, physical,
TYLER: right? Yeah.
DANNY:Not just emotionally sick.
TYLER: absolutely. It got to a point. Just before my separation and divorce, where I was getting migraines, to the point where I was throwing up, I could time my vomit. What every 15 minutes.
DANNY: Wow.
TYLER: And I went to the doctor and the doctor was like, what? there's nothing to explain.
DANNY: scary how scared were you?
TYLER: I just hated Throwing up like
DANNY: nobody does
TYLER: But it was some of the worst pain that I've ever been in just sitting in the dark. Nothing would keep the throbbing in my head, from stopping. And that is that was really a pinnacle point in my life where I realized, my spouse at the time, you know, kind of gave me not and I won't necessarily say an ultimatum. She just said we need to separate we need to take a break.
DANNY: Yeah.
TYLER: And at that point, I started to take a big long look at myself. And what had I been doing, where was my life, going? I had mapped a certain way, right? And a lot of ways I had it laid out were laid out for me and I didn't really make the decisions.
DANNY: Sure.
TYLER: I played out a checklist that was provided to me rather than authentically creating something for myself
DANNY: Truly your body and your spirit can only take so much, right? Yeah, there is such a thing as checks and balances there is your you can only put on the facade for so long before your body starts to go. No, I can't do that anymore. And what it is is your, your body and your soul, and your spirit start to want to Eve evaporate or sorry. They want to get everything out. That's the vomit. They need to get all out. Okay, I can't I can't keep this anymore. Yeah. And so whether it's physical vomit that nobody likes or whether it's emotional, vomit, crying, screaming, doing something that just gets it all out, get I can't take this anymore.
TYLER: Snapping at your kid's tank, beating down your partner.
DANNY:Oh my gosh, all of those things
TYLER: Right, And the worst thing is, the longer you, the longer you repress it The more likely you are to succumb to real addiction, Because that addiction, you're hiding it, you're hiding behind the addiction, you're using something to numb those feelings. Your nervous system is trying to tell you something.
DANNY: It's true. We, because of our trauma. And because of our youths, we have these ideas of who is supposed to be who we who the world sees us as. And then you're like, Well, why did I learn those behaviors? What brought those behaviors, both of us grew up single mothers, which in itself, has so many crazy dynamics that you've helped me with, like understanding that it can affect every relationship of your life when you're young as a young man like I was when my father left, and now you're trying to fill these roles with your single mom, that you feel like you're supposed to. You feel like you're supposed to. And you feel like that No matter what, I gotta be tough. No matter what. I've got to be a provider.
TYLER: Man up,
DANNY: Man up.
TYLER: How many times do you hear that? Yeah. So true, dude. And I regret every time I've ever shouted that to my son.
DANNY: Yeah, man.
TYLER: Because while there is a certain aspect of owning your own story, and, and finding your own way, sometimes it's not the healthiest thing to do to man up. Sometimes it's healthier to ask for help.
DANNY: Yeah. And, and how do you go about that? And luckily, for you and I we've, for the most part, we've corrected some of those things that happened to us when we were youth. And we are both present fathers in our children's lives, we still make mistakes, like we both say, to our we have to tell our kids, hey, this may be the first time that I'm doing this with you. So we're going to learn together. And it may not be fun, but we're going to do it together, we're going to maybe the first time that I'm being a dad in this situation, and it may be the first time that I'm having to address this, whatever chapter of your life, but I'm going to be here for you. And I'm going to help us through those. And when we understand the mistakes that we have made. We're able to hopefully correct them. Right. And that's all we're trying to do. We're not trying to tell you we're not trying to be like, we know the answer. Because we don't know the answers,
TYLER: right? Like I'm, I'm, I'm humble enough to know that I'm kind of a pain in the ass. But I'm also cocky enough to know that you know, anything you choose besides me. Is it gonna be a downgrade?
DANNY: Yeah. And so we all have these stories that impact us as young men, or that of that, you know, you're like, Man, I remember that time in my life. You can look back and you could be like, I remember that time in my life when I was lost. Did I have a good support system around me? My family was great. I did have good men around me. Did I was able to reinvent myself, recreate myself remake reconnections with the people that I really love. Because when you make the change for last, you may go with some of these characters. You don't want to be around. And some of these people, I don't want to be around. I don't want to be around you anymore. Because I don't it's not helping my journey. And you may have to, like stop some of those. Those characters. Those characters in your life was Tyler, that you're like, Man, I really want to be like that guy. And I want to Yeah, I want to hang out with him.
TYLER: Yeah, I mean, I think self-reflection I think of one of my favorite podcasters and definitely, you know, a positive male role model is Jocko Willink,He always says discipline equals freedom and I agree. But without self-awareness, what are you being disciplined to?
DANNY: Right?
TYLER: Right? So it takes the self-awareness before you can discipline yourself to a routine,
DANNY: And truly males in our society or including ourselves, including ourselves will be the first ones to say that we are lost in moments we there are times, days, and hours, where we're lost. And it's because there's some distortion in how you're supposed to be as a man in our current society and our concerns.
TYLER: So heartbreaking. Have you ever watched any Disney show watch how men are portrayed as fathers in any Disney show? Sure. We grew up with the example of Homer Simpson, right? Homer Simpson is the father that raised most of the 90s men that are out there today with a family guy right? Right. And this is where we're supposed to pull inspiration because men you know, the fractured home is becoming more and more common. The concept of seeing your father go out to plow the fields and or go out and work a job is gone. The rights. The rites of passage from boyhood to manhood have dried up so we're left with this narrative that whoever makes the most money. That's a marker of a man, right? He who has the highest body count when it comes to sexual relations, which are the women are is is the man? Yep, we we normalized locker room talk right now grab them by the…
DANNY: yeah, we do. We do? We definitely do. We definitely normalize like be the be, be be an alpha male. Yeah, be an alpha male. And you're like, Okay, I'll just pretend alpha male. And most of the time you're making these pretending what you see an alpha male because an alpha male doesn't have to tell you, he's an alpha male, he doesn't have to say he doesn't really have to do anything. You know you know, for a fact that that person is an alpha male. And we have these, these narratives and these, these, these movies, you're seeing these characters that you're seeing, and that's not who you really want to portray. Because those characters are the Tyler Durden is you're the narrator where the narrator is of our life, that what you see is what you're the you're looking and you have to pretend, and now you're gonna get sick. And that's when eventually as a man, you have to go, Alright, I need to make better decisions. And I need to make better choices. For my true self.
TYLER: Yeah, man, because it is it's scary to think about right? Like, our decisions, they reflect on our behavior for sure. Our behavior is almost always learned. Right? So the next generation, right, your son? Yeah, my son? They are learning by our example.
DANNY: They are Sure.
TYLER: And so if we don't provide them the example, where are they going to learn that stuff? And we've shared some examples of how men are portrayed. And that's where they're going.
DANNY: They are,or in some of the, like, scary scenarios. They watch something. They watched something that they're learning about their sexuality. Yeah, we don't if I if I'm not talking to my boys about sexuality, if I'm not being honest with them about sexuality, they're going to see it somewhere. Right? And they're going to see it in a place that I may not like. And if they start to dive down that path of porn of how a man is supposed to be in those storylines. Now they treat women like that. And you're like, Whoa, whoa, man.we don't want that badge. We don't want that. We don't want that boy scout badge of that one.
TYLER: Well, it's interesting, right? I remember I had a bunch of friends that were in the WWF. Right, right wrestling. And it was that guy. I remember when it came out that it was fake. Yeah. And the narrative was like, it's entertainment. It's entertainment. It's entertainment. But then like, you, you know, it's fine. It's fake. It's what we know, it's fake. And they coined the term entertainment. But you look at that, like, that same concept is applied to these other things. Well, porn, it's entertainment movies, they're entertainment, but
DANNY: it's not real life.
TYLER: It's not real life. Take, take what you want from it, and no, but actually, we're learning and we're slowly like a frog in a pot, saying that this is how things should Be we're saying this is a story. This is okay. Just because it happened in entertainment, it's kind of a brainwashing.
DANNY: it is brain washing! Yeah for sure and if if that's your character that you're playing if that's who you are is a lost person, then how how do we find? How do we because at the end of the day like I can be a father to my sons I can be a role model to my friends, and just by osmosis of my boys, bring other young boys around. I can be a role model for them but they have a bunch of other characters that they're following as well and you want them to make good choices you want them to be around the people you want them to be this is what I do when I'm lost. This is what I do I breathe. I make sure that my central nervous system. My equilibrium's are as level as they possibly can be because you don't want pe you don't want you don't want high high peaks and you don't want a little low valleys do you want them to be peaks and valleys that you can monitor right and dopamine gives you both and gives you both and gives you an N not just porn alcohol it's not just drugs it can be a girl.
TYLER: I think that is why we are seeing an increase only fans is that you don't even realize you're getting addicted to the job you need to get crazier and crazier and crazier and I think that's what makes our podcast so important another podcast like this so important like we are the best versions of them selves to challenging them to find out who to not man up but man in.
Sign off Banter
Sources:
Harrison Ford Helps Rescue Boy Scout Washington post Article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/07/12/harrison-ford-helps-rescue-boy-scout/7582633e-3d69-4232-89fe-cb99b5220c05/
Your Pseudo vs Solid Self by The Angry Therapist via Medium:
https://angrytherapist.medium.com/your-pseudo-vs-solid-self-848c9743c2a9#:~:text=A%20differentiated%20self%20is%20described%20by%20Bowen%20(1976)%20as%20a,reacts%20to%20those%20around%20it.
