Kay:

Hey there Questers and welcome back. It’s December 22nd. This is episode 252, and we have such a fun quote for you today. We are going to geek out. I’ll let Shila read it. But we just came across the show this year. I don’t want to say it changed my life like Hamilton did because nowhere near could happen like that. However, it’s been a great pastime. Something that easily gets lost. The show is called Outlander and today’s quote comes from a hunky Scottish warrior prince guy named Mr. James Fraser.

Shi:

Jamie Fraser says, “Nothing is lost Sassenach; only changed.”

Shi:

Now, you need to know that Sassenach is the name for Outlander in Scottish. Of course, they’re from Scotland. They’re from the Highlands. The show follows them on some amazing adventures. But this quote here is such a good one. It’s from season four and the first three seasons are on Netflix. If you’re interested, you can go check it out. But we love the show. We love this character, and we love this quote.

Kay:

I know so many of the traditions, and this is Christmas week, so we’ve got to talk about it. So many of the traditions that we have on our own like modern-day Christmas, actually come from Gaelic pagan traditions that were invented in the Highlands. In fact, I was in a Christmas store the other day, looking at tablecloths and the amount of Argyle…I was like, you guys are obsessed with the Scottish pattern. It’s funny how it’s really become almost the symbol for Christmas, that green and red Argyle type that you would normally see on like a Scottish kilt.

Shi:

Well, what’s fun is that the line in the show goes, Jamie says to his wife Claire, “Nothing is lost Sassenach; only changed.” Then Claire says, “That’s the first law of thermodynamics.” And then he says, “No, that’s faith.” So, talk about tying into our theme here. The week is about faith. It’s about celebration. It’s about family and it’s about finding those ties whether it’s the first law of thermodynamics or faith. Because Claire, of course, is a doctor and she’s amazing and all of these things. But it’s also about finding that understanding, and realization, and surrender that when it feels like you’re losing something, perhaps it’s just transformed.

Kay:

Shi and I were talking about this recently in the respect of just the COVID-19 crisis and how it seemed to kind of break things down for a lot of us. Many people are still in the desperate throws of that breaking down. It’s really difficult. I mean, for us, it broke down the certain future and our career path. We hear this from a lot of people. It broke down my family structure. I broke down my career. It broke down my dream, whatever it broke down. But what we’re finding kind of at the back end of this year is the hope in people starting to pick up the pieces from what’s leftover. Because none of that life is destroyed, it’s just different and we’ve got to find a way to make do with the pieces that we’ve got.

Shi:

Right. It can be easy to focus on that lost feeling, especially in something like COVID. We’ve certainly come down with that a little bit you know. We own a restaurant chain; you guys probably know that. I mean, we’re down, not hundreds, not thousands, not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands. We are down millions of dollars in revenue. No joke.

Kay:

It’s not a joke. It’s literally in the seven figures.

Shi:

And the profitability is in red. Truth be told without PPP, we would be completely under. So, it can be easy to feel like a lot has been lost, but it really has changed. It’s transformed quite a bit and things have flown in a different way and we’re so grateful for that. But wallowing in that sense of loss can almost overtake you and it certainly almost overtook us.

Kay:

If we take this out of a business sense many people have the idea that when, from a personal perspective, somebody dies that they’re gone forever. That’s just them gone forever. But what they’ve actually shown now through imaging technology and heat, signatures, and energies, is that there is an energy that actually leaves the body and can travel as a whole, or will dissipate when a person dies. So, the matter that made up the person that was previously combined, the energy combined with the body that created the person isn’t gone, it just changed state and it made it different for you. So, that’s the same thing with fire. Just earlier this year, the California fires that happened blew a ton of smoke in our direction where we both live in Reno, Nevada. But what was that? That was trees. That was bushes. That was probably some animals just in a new form. They didn’t go away. I mean, they went away in the form they were in before, but they turned into ash and got blown in our direction. That Ash is still around. It’s on our ground, it’s in the air, it got into the rain who knows where it went, but the matter still exists.

Shi:

And in keeping this as a perspective shift it can be helpful in those times when things can feel lost for you. So, we would just encourage you in this week of reflection to think about the things that maybe you felt like we’re lost and see how they’ve changed. But I can’t be the one to read the quote again, because nobody does this Scottish accent like you sis. So, let’s hear it.

Kay:

“Nothing is lost Sassenach; only changed.”

Shi:

Ah, so good! Okay. So, we’ve got an Outlander Quest for you today. We want you to head to the Highlands, whatever that is for you, and practice your faith, whatever that is for you. Hey, it’s Christmas week. We’re trying to take it a little easy on you. So, practice a little bit of faith today and if that means that you go watch the first episode of Outlander, that is okay with us too. Are you ready?

Kay & Shi:

Let’s quest!