When The World Is Dark and Cold...

Mike: 00:00:00

You've landed at Spark Launch, the Guide star for embracing what it means to be Neurodiverse. I'm Mike Cornell, joined by CEO of Spark Launch, Chaya Mallavaram.

Here we navigate mental health triumphs and tribulations from all across the spectrum, charting a course of the shared experiences that unite us and discovering how to embody the unique strengths within neurodivergent and neurotypical alike, igniting your spark and launching it into a better tomorrow.

: 00:00:31

Hello there. I'm Mike.

Chaya: 00:00:33

I'm Chaya.

: 00:00:34

There's a lot going on right now, and I wanted to talk a little bit about that for this episode.

So this is a little bit different than I guess we would normally get into, and I don't necessarily know where I'm going with this, but I do want this episode to address all that's happening right now. I think, to put it lightly, when I say a large section of this world, particularly this country, is having a prolonged anxiety attack.

Maybe disassociated a little bit. Yeah, that was definitely me last week, on top of some other stuff that would then later happen, personally.

But it's hard to react differently when it feels like love and empathy lost a battle when futures are uncertain and futures are very bleak. That's how I've been. And I'm not usually one for kind of ra Ra shows of hope and positivity. As we've covered in, I think our second episode is.

It's hard right now, feeling a lot of deep fear for ourselves, for others, for things we might not be able to come back from, you know, such as climate change, you know, et cetera.

So while I have found a modicum of comfort in, you know, wanting to mobilize, get myself in gear a little bit, and really fight for others tooth and nail.

And I'll speak more on this, probably, but, you know, I like to rebel and resist, and I'm a punk metalhead at heart, but it's still hard right now for everybody, and everybody's really going through some. Some stuff. So let yourself grieve and be morose and find your creature comforts right now. Like, I get it. I'm right there with you.

Taking care of your mental health right now is not an easy task, and that's why I want to talk about this. Misery has a way of connecting people. Total strangers who may never meet, but are sitting and stewing in the filth of the moment.

At the same time, something. Something that has come to me during this very, very awful period is this is so.

This Is very on brand for me, but also like kind of embarrassing is thinking about a comic book I like. It is Frank Miller and Klaus Janson's Daredevil: Born Again.

I won't bore anybody going into like excruciating detail or anything of this, though I could. And you know what? If I did, I could make everyone cry, I bet. But I won't do that.

But it's a story in which quite a few characters are brought to their absolute lowest. A drug addled Karen Page sells Matt Murdock's secret identity for a hit.

Information that eventually makes its way to Wilson Fisk, the kingpin, who then systematically destroys Matt's life, Separates him from his friends, his home, his city, Crushes his spirit before crushing his body. When Fisk attempts to finally end Matt's life, he fails. Ultimately, Matt survives. All white, barely.

Matt though, who survives, who has like gone through this purgatory, who's then gone through hell and finds himself kind of drifting in the afterlife. He's had everything crumbled around him. It's not the same Matt who's nursed back to health.

And when Fisk learns he survives, he crystallizes it perfectly with one phrase, which is a man without hope is a man without fear. From where was once a burnt out, kind of on the edge of a breakdown.

At all times, human being stood this, this version of Matt who's almost serene, reliance, confidence, forgiving, and has no limits. So I keep coming back to that. No hope leads to no fear.

And yeah, while hope may come and we fight for hope, we fight for one another and for making things better because others throughout history have been here and fought tooth and nail and it would be a disservice to them to not be loud and angry. It's also okay to feel hopeless. Fearlessness can come without hope. And that's kind of how what I've arrived at currently.

Now this will kind of morph probably over the course of weeks and definitely into January and then over the next four years. You know, a positive or negative, that's how I'm feeling.

But just as someone who wants to speak out into the ether, something I've repeated a few times in the last has been when the. When the world goes dark and cold, keep your fire burning so others may know where to stay warm.

And hopefully we can all keep that going and be there for one another. Keep your tribe safe and know to reach out, you know, talk to one another, talk to us, talk to anybody and just keep the fires burning.

Chaya: 00:05:20

I love, I love the Analogy fire. Keep it burning. Others can find you. Yes, keep it burning. And I have. The way I see things are. Have changed over the years.

And the more I understood myself, the more I studied my. Myself, the more I took that internal journey. And so I now do things to work with myself, to honor myself. So for me, the way I see hope is.

Hope is equal to expectations. This is the vision that we have. And that's something in the future, right? So.

So over my life journey, I realized that we must detach from expectations. Not to say that, not to be optimistic, because we have to be optimistic. I mean, otherwise there's no going forward.

But to detach from expectations and do everything that you can at that moment to keep that light burning, to keep that fire lit. Because that expectation is what will make us not function at a hundred percent.

Because we are carrying that burden of fear with us, and we don't need it. So I consciously, because I understand this formula, I do things to not carry any kind of burden.

And that's why I meditate, so that I can dump all, but dump the baggage so. So that I can be fully present in this moment. Because the only control that I have about myself is this moment.

And if I carry the burden of the future, which is unknown, because we have no control of what's going to happen, even the very next moment in my driveway. Driveway or in my backyard either, we have no control.

So knowing that I can carry that fear, but it is natural for the fear to come, to generate inside of. Inside us. Those feelings are natural because we are human.

And for me, the only way that I'm able to deal with that and live fully in the present is through meditation. And I wish somebody had taught me this when I was younger, when I had so much of anxiety, because I.

Because since I did have anxiety, I know that I could not do things at that moment that I could have otherwise. So that baggage takes away your battery power by 60%, 70%. And then you're operating at just this, like, really low capacity of maybe 10%, 20%.

But I want to be at 100% every single moment, because that makes me happy.

And so for me, what's really worked is through meditation, where you learn to release those emotions with love and compassion, even to the people that you might absolutely dislike. And that is empathy, empathizing that people are different, people's values are different, people's upbringings are different.

And so we don't know what's going on with other people and why they did things a certain way. And so having that empathy towards others and towards our own selves, we can just release that to our hearts.

And that way, that feeling has left our body. We've converted that fear into compassion, into empathy somehow within your. Within ourselves. And we release it. And then it's beautiful.

All I can say is that feeling that's inside of us is somehow so much better because we're not. We're not carrying that anger and frustration fear inside of us. It's. It's just left our body.

: 00:09:39

Somebody said something a few days ago. It was about something else, but I liked the quote a lot. Somebody I know. And it was about anger and rage.

And in certain scenarios, you know, all energy has some sort of purpose. Even when it doesn't have a. Can be found a use. Even if it has no direct purpose, it wouldn't regroup it elsewhere.

And that's how a lot of systems work. A lot of living systems, energy that maybe is used up elsewhere and now doesn't have any other function can be rerouted somewhere else.

And that energy can be reused to renew something. And I think about that in regards to a lot of the rage and sorrow and fear that I feel now and I.

A lot of other people are feeling is looking out for ways to redirect it, to reroute it, not to don't feel the need to stamp it out or not utilize it. It can be utilized for beautiful things. It can be utilized to turn things around, one would hope, can be used to mobilize yourself, to be involved.

It can be used to create a voice. And you know, it might be a little bit hard right now in the immediate aftermath to like, have that feeling.

So maybe now, you know, you need to reroute it into just things to bring some joy or some happiness to you. That once again, going back to those creature comforts, whatever they may be, but that, that stuff is still only temporary.

And you have to be careful about where that energy goes. So reroute it somewhere else. That can be useful for what you're feeling. I'm a big fan of righteous indignation. That's.

I think that's like my default mode is being righteously indignant. And I think a lot of that energy, a lot of that fear I can reroute into those areas and hopefully be used for something halfway decent.

As you know, I'm at. I'm kind of also at the point where I don't feel like I have much else to lose at this juncture.

So once again, it goes back to that quote That I like. You know, a man without hope is a man without fear. And that's why I don't think. I think there's.

I've said this time and time again, I think there is beauty in pessimism. And saying that there. Something can come with having.

Like something good can come from having no hope is beauty out of pessimism is all we can do is keep going. There is. I don't know if I've ever brought it up on this podcast before, but there's a quote that I really like, and it's a.

It's a, like, Asian proverb that's. It's bandied about a lot, you know, probably ends up on a lot of posters, people misunderstanding it, you know, whatever.

It's fall seven times, rise eights. On the surface, obviously. You know, it still sounds empowering on the surface, where it's like, oh, you. You get back up after being knocked down.

It's the deeper meaning of it that people miss and the larger meaning of it that people miss.

And that's why I like about it, which is you have gotten up seven times and you've been knocked down that many times, but you are getting up again, knowing obviously based on the history you're going to get knocked down again. That is the more likely scenario that's about to happen, but you stand anyway. And that's kind of what I feel right now. Love got knocked down.

Love can get back up.

Chaya: 00:12:59

I love it. You talked about rerouting energy. I want to reiterate the fact that energy is limited within us, so how you use it is up to you. And.

And it needs to be spent wisely by channeling it into love. That's the only way we'll actually be happy about it. If we show our anger outwardly, I promise you that it's going to come back and make you unhappy.

And so somehow we have to convert that into something nice. Create beauty out of pain, as Mike said, because then there is meaning to it. Create a solution out of that.

This podcast itself was created out of the pain we all experienced, but it is not rage. So there is a difference. And so the way it comes out of our bodies matters.

And so if it's just sitting inside of us, it can manifest into mental health and physical health problems. So it needs to leave our system. And the way it leaves our system is up to us.

Our way of expressing it can be poetry, it can be art, it can be an essay, it can be a podcast. It. The choice is always ours. And so we have to learn to sit with the emotions and then. And see how we can express it.

And so it's so important, I think, for all of us to take that in our journey and work with our emotions and turn that into a song that somebody would enjoy. Maybe not everybody, but somebody's going to enjoy or just be yourself, not even others. You would enjoy that and be proud of it.

And you also, Mike talked about creating beauty from pessimism, so that I see that as transformation. Transformation happens only when you experience deep pain.

That pain is so hard that the only way out is to actually become a butterfly from a caterpillar. So I don't see pain as a negative thing as long as we transform from it. So it's up to us what we make out of that pain. And that's the beauty.

That's how we evolve and we start growing and have higher perspectives of life. And so we should welcome that pain, sit with it, not try to numb it, not try to shove it under the carpet, but to understand it.

Pain always has a message. And so what is that message? And that message is to us, to me, if I'm experiencing that pain, I have a message. There's a message for me.

So it is important how we create beauty out of that pessimistic feeling. I don't see that as pessimism, personally. It's. It's pain. Right. But. But it's important to acknowledge that.

: 00:16:02

Yeah, yeah. You know, imagine we were all. All of us wearing boots and all stood up at the exact same time. The sound that would make would be deafening.

And think about that.

When I've had to think about that, when I just kind of want to curl up into a ball because I don't know if everything's just going to fall apart and, you know, anybody. We can only live in so many unprecedented times at one. At one period of our lives. But here we are. And there has been a. It's.

There's been a great many people who've, in the face of unrelenting sorrow, have been able to stand up and face something that is greater than them and become greater than that thing. I think of, like Tiananmen Square standing up against a tank, you know, things of that nature.

And I think we owe it to ourselves and each other to take care of ourselves and each other. We are the collective and the stand for the collective and not be silent. And love can take any number of forms.

Whether or not it's creating, you know, if it's creating something, if it's protesting, if it's you know, throwing something, whatever, you know, it can feel, it can look like anything. It's how you want to make it look.

And, and that, and that's kind of just where I'm at is that place of just going back to creating a little fire in the, in the dark. And hopefully if we create enough, it blots out the dark and warms up everything.

And that is my thoughts on that and the horribleness that we are heading into, but we are heading into it together. So I hope someone listening to this was at least able to feel a little bit connected to knowing others are feeling the same way.

So thank you for joining us. Thank you for listening. You can of course always find us sparklaunchpodcast.com, sparklaunch.org and subscribe.

Please rate and review us on any place you listen to podcasts. I am on Instagram @followshisghost. Also on Facebook. Chaya is @the_sparklaunch. And you can also find us on LinkedIn.

So thank you once again and we will see you next time.