Transcription
I've got 15 ridiculous things that society still accepts as normal. This is from Upworthy. People share 15 ridiculous things that society still accepts. And here they are.
Some people find them absolutely ridiculous. I'm going to play a little game with you all. Instead of reading the whole article, you can read it if you want. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. I'm going to read them off and then you're going to tell me if you think it's normal or ridiculous.
Number one, the expectation that women have to wear makeup. Is that expectation normal or ridiculous, Katie? Ridiculous. Totally agree. TK? Same. Yeah. Yeah. Why is it ridiculous? I don't know.
>> [laughter] >> I I don't I don't know. I I Again, it's a very cultural thing and I I think we can gain a lot of information on why it's ridiculous when we go when we travel. Right? That's one of the benefits of traveling. You're like, "Oh, people don't live like we do." Actually, they might be living better. What can I learn from that?
>> Yeah. If you go to so many other countries, there aren't women spending $500 a month on makeup and skin care routines. $500 a month?
>> I mean, and again, like if that's your thing, fine. If I get it. I I am glowing. It could also be sweat. Um and that's fine. But to to have the expectation um that women should always wear makeup um I think I will say as a woman it stinks. And I have been told I remember maybe 10 years ago again, kids were like one and two. I was very sleep deprived and I showed up to work without makeup. Um I actually thought I looked pretty good. I was like, "Well, I put on some skin care or something." And my And everyone's like, "Oh, honey, are you okay? You look sick." And I was like, "My face looks sick without makeup?" And that really made me I think number one start wearing less makeup because
>> [gasps] >> I don't want to cover my face Uh-huh. like a mask. Right. You know, I want to like enhance what's already there. You know? And there's some maybe semantics there, I don't know, but Mhm. I don't I know. I walk around without makeup all the time. And I'm telling you it's very freeing. Cuz again, it's you it's you I'm comfortable in my skin. Like I could do this podcast without makeup and be fine. And people would probably say, "Ooh, Katie, you would look better with makeup."
>> Wow. I've been told that. Hey, you would look nicer with a little more makeup. Well, I think you respond to that Right. Right. You're nice according to whom and on what expectations? And I do agree that I think the expectation that women have to wear makeup is absurd. I think there are two other expectations that are also absurd that are correlated with this. One is that women shouldn't wear makeup. That's a much lower expectation, but I had much There's some people have that like like it's all or nothing. And it's like, "I prefer my wife to not have makeup on, but I don't have the expectation you better not wear makeup." No, that's what what do you want to wear? There's another expectation though, men shouldn't wear makeup. And it's like I've been on TV enough times to know that like they will put makeup on you and just cake you in makeup when you're doing some of these appearances. And as as if it's not masculine. But at at its best, you're enhancing your features or maybe you're like just David Bowie and you're just painting stuff on your face. And
>> Why not? Isn't that interesting how some of the most masculine men are also a bit androgynous, especially from back in the '80s and '90s?
Number two. Faking workplace passion. Mhm. Is that normal or ridiculous, TK, to fake workplace passion? I'm going to say not ridiculous on this one. Tell me about that. Um I I I I get I get the reasons, right? Um I I think there is something important about being honest with yourself, uh you know, and not overselling some passion that you have for a job that you don't really have. It's okay to be like, "I'm just working this job for money." But part of what it means to work at a job
>> Mhm. is to exercise the discipline in spite of how you feel of treating that customer as if they are the most important person in the room for the moment that you're interacting with them. And if you're being honest, you know that deep down inside you don't have that feeling all the time. Sometimes you're talking to people and you're putting up with them, you're tolerating them. You would never spend time with them if you weren't getting paid to deal with them. You don't necessarily like their attitude. And what do you do? You exercise the discipline to engage them respectfully to treat them as if they and their concerns are important because I think that's part of being professional, right? Like I'm I'm passionate about fixing this problem for you. I'm passionate about making sure you're happy when you walk away. And so I I think the idea of like uh you're just working that job for the money overlooks what is involved in getting the money. Money is a reward for solving problems for other people and creating value for them. And so in order to get somebody to take their money and put it in your pocket you've got to show you've got to provide a base level of like passion for them and what they care about on their terms. And like the word passion indicates, that's a willingness to suffer for them. And I think you do need to fake that if you don't feel it. When I managed a bunch of retail stores, I had an employee once who had a constantly resting bothered face. And he he I wanted to say, "Hey, can you like smile when you're talking to the customers?" He goes, "Are you paying me to smile?" I said, "In fact, I am paying you to smile." And so every time I saw him after that, if he wasn't smiling, I would say Let's call him Dave here. "Hey, Dave, I'm paying you to smile." And like eventually he kind of got it like, "Oh, yeah, yeah. This is part of making the interaction with customers pleasant is like I am here to smile. It's customer service." But even if you're not in a customer-facing job, you want to work with people that are more pleasant to be around. I I will take pleasantness over competency most days um because it's possible to be to be competent, but to like no one likes working with you, right? Um but if you don't have the skills for something, you can often develop those. I mean, when we hired Savvy D, I had no idea how to how to work a board or or to Well, he he could work a skateboard, but not a a recording board or to do any of the stuff that he's doing now, managing our live events and things like that. But I was like, "Oh, yeah, I'm hiring the person here. And he'll figure the other stuff out."
Number three is having to justify turning down an invite. TK, I got to turn to you on this one because you're great. You never have to justify turning down an invite. In fact, you seem seem to avoid it altogether. Although I agree that society makes you feel like I need to have a really good excuse if I'm going to say no to this person. But you seem to avoid that. Yeah, I mean, I I just say I can't do it. And and I don't believe it's a lie when can't means something other than physically impossible. Right? Because I can always make sacrifices and stretch myself and compromise my health in order to do what you're asking of me. But when I say I can't do it, that means I have a great reason for being unavailable to what it is you're asking me to do. And if this is someone that I love, I respect, and I I want to do do things for them in the future, I will say something like, you know, "But but keep inviting me. Keep asking me because this is something I would like to participate in the future. I'm just not able to do so this Saturday." Or or and and I also express gratitude. Like instead of justification, how about gratitude? Like, "Oh man, thanks for thinking of me. I appreciate that. Like my wife and I have plans that weekend, but it means a lot to me that that you thought of us." Yeah. You may not even go that far a lot of the time though. My wife and I have plans. You might just say, "I can't I can't do it." Yeah. Yeah. And really what you're saying there is a form of I won't do it because if I did do it, I'd be compromising something else in my life. And so it's totally honest.
Number four, why we can't judge the dead. I didn't like this one because I don't want to judge the living either. But like there is this uh So I think it's totally normal to not want to judge the dead, but I also don't want to judge the living. I do it all the time, but I I don't want to unnecessarily criticize someone whether they're alive or dead because it's a type of poison in me. Uh so whenever I find some sort of Yeah, we Yeah, I'm not going to judge someone now that they're dead. Like I'm not allowed to say anything bad about them. Well, no. If there's a compelling reason to do so, that's fine. But I I don't want to just go around now they're dead, so I'm going to start talking crap about someone because they're [clears throat] they're they're dead. They're not going to hear it anymore. What do you think, Katie? You going to talk smack about me when I die?
>> you said that cuz I my mind immediately went to like historical figures like Hitler. I'm like, "Well, I'm judging that guy." You know? Like so I I guess my mind didn't see it as like more accessible people
>> [laughter] >> that I've known or something, but more like historical or celebrity figures who are Mhm. um I think also I mean, even though they're dead, they probably even when they were living they're used to a lot of judgment perhaps. But and I guess I glean from that like we're learning. Yeah. You know, by studying these people that are now dead. Yeah.
>> Don't make the same mistakes. Don't, you know? Don't be that type of person. Yeah, anyone who's a public figure I think is totally open to that. Um although I I get there is a sort of public sentiment that like Oh, yeah. There's timing on it. If someone is just died this morning, it's not like, "Well, here's the 15 things they did wrong. Let me show you their Facebook posts." It's like, "All right, calm down." Hey, but you know, and and you know, we Wizard of Oz, right? Or even in Wicked like the "No one mourns the wicked." You know, it's like she's dead.
>> [laughter] >> And everyone was like, "Yay!" When we watch that as children, I don't think we're thinking, "Aw, why are we mourning? Why why are we kicking the dead while they're down?" So, there is something that we do understand about, you know, celebrating the end of tyranny marked by a particular person's death who stood for something bad. So, this is one that I'm sympathetic for, you know. Um I I I think that the difficult part is this. For anyone that you think um isn't worth that, there is someone who think thinks that they are, right? So, for every death that you mourn, someone might be celebrating that death and vice versa, you know. I think there's a flip side of that. You can also celebrate the death that you're mourning. You know, you think about the other cultures or even like in New Orleans, the second line bands who get behind a funeral procession and there's 200 band members and there it's a it's a party, it's a celebration. And yes, there's grief involved in it, but the grief that celebration still makes room for the grief as well.
Number five, influencers creating in public. Well, as a person who is a little bit influential and has created things in public, I still think it's ridiculous. Um I can't do it. [laughter] I took a selfie um sipping a coffee and I was like, I feel like such a doofus right now. It was so demoralizing to me. I don't find any enjoyment. And no one even saw me. I was just like, what if someone sees me going like this real fast, you know? Like it's it's not my thing. Yeah. But I understand why people do it, I guess. Maybe I don't. Yeah. I wonder how much of that ick that we experience is sort of cultural and the other one is like, I don't want to feel like a a try hard. But then if you also become a culture rated like if you from the time you're a baby or on TikTok cuz your parents forced you into slave labor, um then all of a sudden you're used to it. You're you're part of the Truman Show. I'm worried that our kids who are our kids' age now, they they've they've seen screens all the time, right? And even us as parents who are relatively responsible with that stuff, they're steeped in a world that is, I guess, more performative than ever. And I'm saying this into a microphone right now. So, I want to be really clear. I talk more on Tuesdays, the day we record this podcast, than the other 6 days a week combined and it's not even close. I don't know if you experience that as well, TK, but you probably talk a lot more on Tuesdays than you do your average day of the week. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I spend I I I talk a lot on Tuesdays and I spend the rest of the week trying to avoid having to talk.
>> [laughter] >> So, we're all introverts. Yes. Yeah, you're an introvert, too. Oh, yeah. I have to recharge by like silence, which is very hard to do with kiddos. Um but my husband really respects that and he he knows like after this, I'm just going to need to like not talk. Is he an extrovert? Yes. Okay. Okay. So, he has to find that that interaction that that where he gets his charge elsewhere. Yes.
>> [laughter] >> Maybe through coffee, I don't know. Not going to be me, honey. Love you, but The issue I challenge about all these is that I I I think they're both ridiculous and not ridiculous, you know, every single one of them. I know and I know we're playing a game. But you know, with this one it says it's turning public spaces into personal film studios for content creation, which is fine, and then getting mad when the public does public things and interrupts said content creation. I resonate with that. We we filmed some stuff over the Beverly Center and I'm like, I wish all these people would not interrupt the video I'm trying to film about consumerism, all these damn consumers out here.
>> [laughter] >> So, I get it, man. I I understand the frustration, but I also realize how ridiculous my frustration is.
Number six, why we always have to be reachable. That is an expectation that is totally normal and is totally ridiculous to me. Needing to be reachable But here's the here's here's the truth.
>> [snorts] >> I'm the one who created that expectation in other people.
>> Yes. If I'm always reachable, then I created the expectation that no matter when Katie wants to reach out to me, she can reach out. And of course then if I'm frustrated by her reaching out to me, it's like, well, whose fault is it, Josh? Did you did you set the expectations? And sometimes you have to adjust those expectations or adjust those boundaries and that's difficult to do without an ultimatum, but I prefer to have the boundary beforehand, so I don't have to have some sort of ultimatum.
Katie, do you think um we're more reachable now than ever and that's a a type of digital clutter? Yeah, mental clutter. Mhm. For sure for me. Um there [clears throat] are many days, you know, 4:00 or 5:00 I used to joke was like the kids' witching hour when they were little, but that's also my witching hour. Like my battery is at 10% and if I hear my phone like a text come through, all of a sudden, because of my mental world at that time, instead of feeling like, "Ooh, who's texting me? Who could this be?" I'm like, like it's like one more thing on my list and like my face goes red and like steam comes out of my ears. Um and all that to say, at some point soon, I am going to go back to a landline, for sure. Wow.
>> Yeah. Let's go.
>> I'm not saying like no cell phone, Yeah. but I am saying not being accessible accessible and you know, that for me that's like airplane mode. When I get home with the kids like that 4:00 to 7:00 p.m., Yeah. I really try to keep it in airplane mode. And again, people aren't trying to be disrespectful. They have questions, you want to get together, hey, can you do this? What's And that's great, but it's it again, it's it's a lot, I think, [clears throat] in this world to always be accessible and then again, it's like because of my personality, I'm like, "Oh, I waited too long to respond. Are they going to be mad at me?" And then it's more mental clutter and then I overthink and it's just like if I can just x-nay that mental clutter for 3 hours so that I can hang out with the kids, go for a hike, cook dinner without distractions coming from that. It's a real There's so much freedom in that, even if it's just a small window of time.
TK, I'm going to do one more here from this list, the very last one, number 15. And we'll put a link to this in the show notes if you want to explore the whole thing. Saying you're fine when you're not. Is that normal or ridiculous, TK? Just give me one word answer, normal ridiculous. My one word answer is KT.
>> [laughter] >> I do this all the time with my husband. I'm fine. Are you okay? I'm fine.
>> [laughter] >> I don't know. Yeah. I I I do it, so I have to say it's it's ridiculous, I guess. I don't know. Just be honest, but there's some circumstances where it's socially unacceptable to be like, I am not okay right now.
>> [laughter] >> And Katie is the winner of our game, normal or ridiculous. That's the first and last time we've ever played this game. Hey, I hope you enjoyed that highlight from the Minimalist Private Podcast. If you'd like another one, click here. If you'd like the minimal episode, click here. Or if you'd like to dive deep into full maximal episodes of our private podcast, check out our Patreon. The link [music] is in the description.