Kay:

Okay, gang, you know, we’re back at it again. It is a terrific Tuesday. This is April 13th, episode 332 and we have a quote for you today that is just so beautiful from the one and only author Amy Tan.

Shi:

Amy tells us, “Then you must teach this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”

Kay:

Ooh, such a good quote. Now, the first part’s a little bit confusing I think but we left it in here because it is so important. So, we’re just going to take this one sentence at a time. The first sentence of the quote says, “Then you must teach this same lesson.” So, clearly, at this point, she’s probably already talked about the lesson of how not to lose your hope, but this particular sentence is so important because learning and teaching are tied together.

Shi:

They truly are and you actually deepen your learning when you go to teach something, and you likely know this from your own life experiences already. Learning something oftentimes becomes a passive activity, something you absorb, you find interesting, but when you have to become the active participant in that information and be the one who teaches it, who disseminates it, who provides and gives it to others and guides them through it, it becomes something more deeply ingrained in you biologically, physically. Now you’re having to speak it and take on this role that allows you to see yourself in a different way and absorb the information in a different way. It allows you to pass on your spin, your take, your reflections, your impressions of a pretty dang powerful lesson.

Kay:

So glad that we let this first sentence in here. It of course pertains to the rest of the quote, but the other two sentences here are so deep. I have a feeling we’ll spend the rest of our time, but we had to get this lesson here at the beginning because it is such a good one in teaching to learn. So, the second session sentence says, “How to lose your innocence, but not your hope.” Okay. Let’s talk about definitions.

Shi:

Innocence.

Kay:

Okay. So, the definition of innocence is lack of guile, sly cunning or intelligence, or corruption of purity.

Shi:

Okay. So, lack of guile or corruption…

Kay:

Or purity.

Shi:

…or it’s purity. So, innocence, we think of a child. You think of the innocence of youth, the innocence of inexperience, just the innocence of that kind of getting hardened by life, learning some of those lessons. That’s that innocence, that before a car ever gets driven. It’s innocent, it just has never hit the road yet and that’s truly what we’re talking about here. So, we are going to lose our innocence as time progresses.

Kay:

There’s, there’s no way around it.

Shi:

There is no way around it, what we don’t have to lose is hope.

Kay:

Well, the car is going to drive down the road of life whether you like it or not. So, having the understanding that that innocence is going to go away because we can’t lack the exposure forever allows room for hope to bubble through, not necessarily tied to innocence. Now, as hard things start to happen in life, from personal experience, it can be difficult to overcome them, but hope can really bring that through. The definition of hope is grounds for believing that something good may happen. So, finding those grounds, choosing hope for believing that something good may happen, really, it ends up coming down here.

Shi:

It does. It’s that belief. It’s that feeling, it’s that ability to cheer yourself on, to give yourself something to see that might not be there, or to believe in a possibility and this loss of your innocence but keeping your hope right. How to lose your innocence, but not your hope. We’ve probably had these experiences before where you trusted someone, or you had a relationship, or you had a business deal, or you had some moment where you got burned or you got stabbed, or you got hurt and that knee-jerk reaction is to close off. Oh, I guess that doesn’t work. Guess people really are bad. Guess the world really is just stacked against me, life isn’t fair. So, there is this nuance to getting that life experience and continuing to stay hopeful because we’ve all seen the hopeless people and likely we’ve all been the hopeless people too, at some point in our lives, but finding the way to get hurt, but not closed down.

Kay:

Yes. Okay. Now we have to take the final sentence and we’ll be fast about it, but she says, “How to laugh forever.” Now, one of the ways that Shila and I have learned to laugh forever is to always carry the knowing that someday you will laugh at it. That was something we reminded ourselves of this time last year, in 2020, it was March. Our businesses were drowning. We were underwater from the pandemic shutdowns in our community. Things were very, very difficult but we kept saying to ourselves, one day, we’re going to look back and laugh on all of this. Recently we reopened a meeting agenda that we had a meeting from a year ago around this time with our whole restaurant leadership team. The meeting notes were so dire that frankly, all we could do was laugh at the agenda.

Shi:

Look how we came full circle on that. Laughter has so many scientifically proven benefits, but it also helps indicate that you have that hope, that belief, that ability to take things lighter, to see things in a different way, another tool for your pocket that you can keep. Kay and I like to say it’s just another chapter in the book.

Kay:

Yup.

Shi:

So, as things come up, you can always think of things in that term.

Kay:

All right, Amy Tan tells us, “Then you must teach this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.”

Shi:

All right. It’s a Laughing Quest today.

Kay:

Ha-ha.

Shi:

Ha-ha. Today, we want you to find a reason to laugh amidst all of the obstacles you may be facing. Laughter creates good feelings, which even in the face of corruption can inspire hope. Remember smiling and laughing releases dopamine even if it feels forced, which means you’ll feel even happier and hope-ier once you do. Are you ready?

Kay & Shi:

Let’s quest!