This is episode 52 and marks “one year” of episodes (although I missed a few weeks along the way).
In this episode I share more on the topic of acceptance and fame.
This is episode 52 and marks “one year” of episodes (although I missed a few weeks along the way).
In this episode I share more on the topic of acceptance and fame.
Look at what's happened to me. I can't believe it myself. Suddenly, I'm up on top of the world. Should have been somebody else, believe it or not. I'm walking on air. Never thought I could be so free, flying away on a wing and a prayer. Who could it be? Believe it or not? It's just me.
Amjed:Welcome. Today is going to be an interesting episode.
Amjed:Hope you enjoy Hi this is Amjad, a simple, beautifully broken man living in a complex world. Join me as I navigate the dark and bright spots of life, sharing vulnerably and reflecting deeply along the way. May you find some benefit here that is through me, not from me. I must warn you to enter at your own risk, for in this room my humanity is showing.
Amjed:Welcome my fellow humans to episode 52 of my humanity is showing. Today marks a pretty big landmark for me, or milestone. When I first decided to embark on this adventure, I told myself okay, do it for a year, just commit to a year. Do a year, let's see what happens, and after that you can decide if you want to do another year or what do you want to do. And even though the year anniversary was back in October, because I had missed some weeks, I did not complete 52 episodes. However, today is the 52nd episode, and so this would be if I had not missed a single week. This would have been one year on this episode. So I consider this my one year anniversary for the podcast, in that it is a a year-long journey. Like I said, it's been a little bit more than a year, but 52 episodes Wow.
Amjed:I was talking to some folks the other day and just said I can't even imagine. I can't. I didn't think. When I first set out, I wasn't sure that I would do it. I don't have a really good track record for being consistent on anything, and so the fact that I've kept this going is despite all the doubts and the fears and I was looking at my stats a few minutes ago, I get on average about 10 to 15 listens per episode. I know I whine about that in every one, but just I don't know if it's a whining or what it is. But maybe in that there's one or two people that are really connecting, or maybe it's the 10 people that are really connecting and it's not so much about the numbers as it is just trying to reach the people that really need to hear the message. And if there's some hope in my story that would help someone, then that's why I set out to do this. And yeah, I could feel like that call to shame as I was looking at the stats and I noticed, like the first three episodes there's quite a few downloads and then it just trickles down after that and drops down until like the 20s and stuff. And it makes me wonder if that's a sign that you know.
Amjed:People stumble across the podcast. They listen to the first episode and they're like maybe I'll listen to one more, maybe I'll listen to a third one, and then after about two or three they're like, yeah, this is not for me and that's fine. I mean, I need to be okay with that is, I guess, what I'm saying so I need to be okay with that, because I'm not doing this for, like, millions of people or you know, with the expectation that it will become really popular or or famous, but just I started this, like I said, to get the word out there to the people that actually may benefit from hearing my story Others like me who have had rough challenges with emotional stability or different things and just sharing my story. And, like I said, if it resonates, it resonates, and if it doesn't, it doesn't, and I need to be okay with that. And it's not about whether or not people like it or not. It's about my concern is about my reaction to that. When I see that and say, oh, nobody loves me, all of a sudden I start turn, I turn into E, or I suddenly become E, or it's like, oh, nobody loves me, nobody cares, you know, and it's, I would rather be the tigger, right, tigger was the guy who was always running around going, you know, bouncy, trouncy, bouncy. The wonderful things about tiggers is I'm the only one, and that's that's what I aspire for is more of that attitude of okay, I may just be unique, I may be, there may be something about me that's just not, you know, in the pop culture, and that's cool. Like I said, even if I reach one person, if there's one person out there in the world who stumbles across this podcast and finds benefit in it, then all of this effort would have been worth it. All of this effort would have been worth it because, you know, I don't know who needs to hurt.
Amjed:I felt led to do this and so I set out to do it, and I'm not sure who it's intended for. I really have not. I've kind of let let that go, let go of that, god. You know, I've just let that go and letting it out there to see what happens and how it all plays out, and not, you know, resisting the temptation to worry about all that.
Amjed:But you know, it's kind of interesting because I was thinking about this topic the other day in that, you know, I, as a person I feel like I have in most of my life I have been obsessed by fame and I can't remember if I've shared about this in an earlier episode, so I apologize if it's a repeat, but I kind of scanned back and didn't see anything. But I don't know, it might be in there, but I struggle with this concept of fame and actually I think I did mention it because I remember talking about I had to look it up the lifestyles of the rich and famous and you know that with what's that guy's name. Anyway, yeah, I think I did do an episode about this and you know that in general for me is like this idea that if they're, if I'm so broken that I or I am so broken that if millions of people liked me maybe I'd be okay or something. It's some crazy innate inside thought that that plagues me. But what if it's only like a handful of people that like me? Does that make me any less worthy or any less important? Or that my problem, my shortcomings, are so big that more people can't like me? But I think in general, like society, I feel like there's this, there is this pull toward that, like you know, I was thinking about even beyond, like the lifestyles of the rich and famous thing that I talked about in the previous episode. I should probably go back and listen to that and just see how different it is from this one. But there's these other shows like E or Hollywood access or you know, there's these other kind of venues. There's like everywhere in the media. There's just this.
Amjed:It's kind of interesting because you'll see people that are quote unquote famous, making you know statements and their quotes are carried through and it's like, oh so and so said this and they're really good quotes, but the only reason they're the quote is popular is because the person's popular, because I'm sure a lot of people have said that and they may not have been the first person to say it and there may be other people who have said it, and they're not necessarily popular for being a renowned philosopher or a thought you know, a thought leader. That that's not the reason. In a lot of cases they're famous for being in the public light primarily for some form of entertainment, whether it be acting or music or sports or some form of entertainment that put them in the spotlight. I think human beings were just obsessed with entertainment. Actually, that kind of leads me to a couple of thoughts.
Amjed:My brother said this one time and I don't know if this is a common thing out there or if my brother came up with it, but I thought it was genius when he said it. And he said if any of you think back to Mount Olympus and all the people, you know, the Titans, the gods that were on Mount Olympus in those early times represented in a lot of ways, the celebrities of that time. And there's a lot of stories in Greek and Roman mythology or in other mythologies where these you know, high figures fall and there's a lot of interest in that and I, you know, I see that a lot in the media now, where you see that you know, there's some famous person who fell from grace, you know, or fell from whatever because they had. And I also have seen that people love good redemption stories where somebody fell but then somehow, through time and hard work or whatever, got back to a stable place. And but there's this, just, yeah, I was reading an article about something yesterday actually, and you know the little ads that pop up in the article and it was like one after another of like, oh my God, you won't believe what happened to this person. Or oh no, you won't believe what happened to this person. Or look at this person now and what are they up to today. And it was just all this kind of negative stories about people that at one time were regarded highly and I guess that's where that thought came to me is like just this idea of that. We're obsessed with watching people fall, and I don't know if that's.
Amjed:I think the way my brother put it to me is. He said that you know, it's in a way, it's like if someone that awesome falls, then you know and I say awesome with air quotes, because maybe they're, you know, maybe they're just the rest of us. They just have a talent or a couple of talents that I don't have or that many of us don't have. They just have a rare talent or a talent that maybe we all have rare talents, but that there's something that the public is drawn to. And so that you know, whatever that is, whatever that looks like, whatever that thing is like when they fall, then it's as if like, like, oh, they're just like the rest of us. See, they're not that different.
Amjed:And for me, what that translates to is it translates to this idea that I just wanna be like everybody else. And one of the things that has really helped me and I don't again I don't remember what I shared in the previous episode, but you know I'll share it here, just in case is there's a phrase that really, really helped me to break out of this quite a bit. I still have some of that, like I said, even when I look at my own stats or whatever, it's like oh you know, I'm not famous, but which is a good thing. Then the other part of my brain is like, well, that's good. Maybe you won't be plagued by some of the challenges that you know, because I was thinking about people that are born into famous families and how challenging that must be. I can't even begin to imagine. But anyway, where was I going now? I lost my train of thought.
Amjed:You know this idea oh this phrase yeah, it was the phrase that I was gonna share that I'm an average person, I'm no better or no worse than anyone else. And when I came up with that was this you know, I started thinking about it. I was like, really, I think and this is just my theory that bell curve that we talk about, you know, there's that famous bell curve in statistics that says and that's a, it's called the normal curve and it's where the majority of people fall in the middle. And then you have some people on one end of the spectrum and you have some people on the other end of the spectrum. So like, for example, let's take singing, right, there's some most of us probably are average in our musical ability to sing and we sing in the shower, we sing in the car, whatever, and we're just kind of in this middle ground. And then there's people that are just insanely talented at that, and you know, I was watching I saw yesterday it was the interview or episode of the Jennifer Hudson show who was just an insanely talented singer and she had Pentatonix on there, which is an acapella group that was also insanely talented in the musical way. And then you have people on the far end of the spectrum who, like myself, maybe I'm not that bad, but you know, if you sort of look at, if I try to do something like that and go on stage and sing, it might sound like a cat dying, you know, just like a really. I actually had a coworker one time who I came in and I thought I thought something had happened because she sounded like she was in absolute pain. I ran over there and I said, are you okay? And turned out she had headphones in and she was singing. You know, and that's about how I sound when I sing and you know. So there's people on the other end of the spectrum, but that's only so.
Amjed:This whole thing I'm talking about with singing, right, and I'm not trying to shame anyone or anything, but I'm just saying this in this one, one dimension, the single dimension, the single thing singing, singing ability, the ability, vocal ability. There is a graph and there's. You can spread people out and you can put plot people on the graph on how they do with that one element and take another element, like cooking. You could do the same thing, do another one, driving. You take these different abilities, these different things. You know IQ or looks, you know like somebody's appearance like, were they really good looking? And I was. You know just, we went to a lecture about the prophet I guess it's Joseph in the Bible, but you know where it's kind of known for being very good looking. And so there's this. You know like, take these different elements, these different dimensions, and you can plot people on the different dimensions. But what happens when you collapse them all?
Amjed:And this is kind of where my brain went, that one day I was like, well, wait a minute If you add it all together all the strengths and all the weaknesses and all the different things that a person can do or not do, that are going well, that are not going well, that you know whatever. Just put it all into a bucket, is it brown? And what I mean by that is, you know it's. I remember when we were kids we used to take the primary colors and kind of put them together and get the secondary colors. So if you remember that concept of you know, if I take blue and red and I mix them, I get purple. And if I took, if I take blue and yellow and mix them together, I get green. And if I take red and yellow and put them together, I get orange. You know, so I can take I know I'm giving you a class on colors but the you know, if I take those primary colors, mix them together.
Amjed:But if I take all the colors and mix them together, it's brown or black. You know it just kind of goes mud color, right, it all blends together and loses any distinction, any that pop that color and brown is often considered like that earth tone. That's just the dull, drab it's associated with, you know, biological functions. I've tried not to go there. In healthcare we sometimes call it like code brown, but you know like it's associated with mud, or just you know like this dull kind of earth tones and there's some really pretty browns. You know that like a rich brown or like a beige, but in general brown is kind of considered this base color because it's just a mixture of all the other colors and you know, if you do enough of it then it turns black. And then that's where, like, really it gets. Or black is the absence of color, but usually or like a dark brown, but if you do an even mix, it's usually brown. At least that's what I remember. I'm not an expert on color, even though I'm pretending to be right now, but I just remember, if I took all the different crayons and color them all in a sheet or map colors, the colored pencils, and you did them, I did them all in the same spot it would turn brown. And so that's my point. Is that or at least to myself, where I came to this realization that I said okay, even if somebody has this one thing that they're just really really good, even if they have five things that they're really really extremely off the chart talented in, but what about everything else? What about all the other pieces of their life and their all their other abilities and all their other challenges and struggles and when are they at and all of those other aspects? And if you pull all those together, are we all just the same? We're just, we just all average out and Maybe I have some insane talent in an area that just is not a popular talent, like, for example, you know, and I'm hesitating because I don't I mean, I definitely don't want this to sound I'm a see, I I Struggle with you know, like Humiliation and not wanting to Rise, raise myself up, and so this, this idea of like, oh, I might have a talent that is really strong in an area, it's just, it's hard for me to even say it out loud, I mean, even though I've thought it at times, but it's hard for me to say it out loud.
Amjed:So what is, what is a talent that I have? So, for example, one of the things that I believe I have is the ability to engage with strangers. So I meet somebody for the first time, I'm out in public, I'm talking to somebody that I've never seen before, and I feel very fortunate and very blessed that I have no trouble Connecting with just complete random stranger people, and I know not everybody has that, not everybody has that ability to just make go out and talk to people. As a matter of fact, you know I think I've shared this story before but so I won't go into details. But just you know the fact that it happens to me all the time that I'll meet people for the first time and we'll start talking and before we're done, if we actually have some time to connect, maybe within an hour or hour and a half, two hours, if I have that much time with a person I just met, chances are we will both share something very, very private and personal with each other, and that I don't think that's normal. I mean when I say normal it's like the middle of the curve, like I don't think that's average, I don't think that's a Thing that happens to everybody. I don't think everybody walks around. It just meets people for the first time and ends up sharing something really personal about themselves and and then hearing something really Personal from the other side. I don't know that that's a common thing. Maybe it is, maybe everybody does that, but to me that feels like a strength, it feels like a gift that I have been given. I Can't take credit from it before it because I don't know where it came from and I don't know how it works and I don't. You know, it's not like something I consciously tried to do or tried to do, it just happens and so Maybe that's just a that. That's where, if you were to look on that one spectrum, maybe I would fall out, farther out.
Amjed:Ability to stand in front of a crowd and talk. You know we're talking about this the other day to work, the larger the crowd, the less nervous I get. So you know, I could be standing in front of, you know, ten thousand people and you hand me a microphone, say, go up there and just talk for a little while. I could probably go up and start talking. I don't know what I would talk about, but I could talk about something. I Know. Not everybody can do that. So that's, you know, because I know many people who tell me like, oh my gosh, that's the most terrifying thing I've ever heard of and, for whatever reason, it's not as terrifying to me. I mean, yeah, I might be a little nervous, but if it's something that I feel like is there, it's really important. Like if you say, just go up there and talk. I can definitely do that. If you say, talk about something important and and how well you explain this is going to make a big difference To the future of the world, then I get. And then I get a little nervous because I want to make sure that I share it in a clear way.
Amjed:But in general, the just, if just, the fact that I'm standing in front of a bunch of people, it does not necessarily make me nervous. And maybe it's because of this whole idea that I want to be seen that I so desperately Want to be seen and and heard. And maybe when I was younger I didn't feel that way. So I'm getting a frog in my throat. I didn't feel that I was seen and heard all the time because I was different. I was the only person of my ethnicity and religion in my school and I've always felt like I was an oddball for like for many years, and I felt like I would come up with ideas and people would just laugh at them and say are you stupid? Why would you even say that's the dumbest thing we've ever heard? And and you know, I don't know as much as I tried to pretend like it didn't hurt. I guess it did, and so you know it. Because of that I've developed this other thing. But or maybe it's not even related.
Amjed:But going back to this thing, that you know I'm no better or no worse than anyone else. I'm just, we're all the same. It's just some of us have different strengths and others have their other strengths, and we all have weaknesses, we all have challenges. We all have high points, low points, at any given. You know, like, even if you take, like just a given point in time, that doesn't necessarily reflect that person's whole life. So I'm just talking about like in a point in time, like right now, today. If you take all of those things and you average it out, then maybe you know folks would all average out. But even if you take but you know I'm sorry if you also take the whole entire life of a person and average it out and then add it in, it becomes even more brown.
Amjed:And yeah, some people, as I'm saying all of this I'm thinking about, there are some people that have made some amazing contributions to society and to life and inventing the light bulb or discovering electricity, or I mean the Wilbur Brothers, like there's so many great inventions and things and changes in society that have had such a positive impact, but at the same time, there's some that have had extreme negative impacts, where the autocratic leaders who have just done horrible things, but whatever that is, again that's because it was very visible and impacted a lot of people.
Amjed:But, you know, and they may be truly on a far end of a spectrum because of that one thing or because of some of those things, but in general, in general, maybe that curve is not as widespread, maybe it's more like tight and close together, with a few outliers, you know, that are out there in the, you know, on the far ends of the spectrum.
Amjed:And the thing is like I've always believed that the majority, or my brain has tried to tell me that the majority of people are like way out there and I just happen to be one of those people that's way on the other end, and I don't believe that to be true anymore. I reject that idea. It's not helpful, it's not healthy, it's not, you know, it doesn't do me any good and I think that's one of the things that pushed me into a lot of depression and struggling with mental health issues is because I bought into that idea that there was something wrong with me as opposed to being open to. Well, maybe I'm just no better or no worse than most people. All right, I wasn't planning to talk about that for so long, so I will stop there and yeah, we'll switch over to the random message of the day and I all right, my bucket ready.
Amjed:I'm mixing up my little fortune cookie messages and let's pull one out, maybe it'll be something interesting. So this one says your faith carries you through difficult times. So this is one that's kind of a borderline. It's not a inspirational message as much as it is a comment, but I mean it's true, I think. Well for me, I will say that I think there is a need for some faith in something, otherwise I won't make it through difficult times.
Amjed:And whether that faith is a religious faith or whether it's just faith in that things are gonna work out, or maybe it's just faith, can be translated as courage.
Amjed:I mean, I know for some people it's faith in their own ability to bounce back.
Amjed:So I mean, I think for me I think it's a combination of maybe all of the above.
Amjed:But I know for some people who maybe don't have faith in a religion, they may read this and just immediately discard it. But I think there's other types of faith and I have to just a little plug here that I have to say that for me I do see it believe that there is a distinction between religion and a higher power or a God, because I can believe that there is a power out there and try to tap into that power, even on the days when I struggle believing that religion is a thing, and so some days I'm really bought in on the religion and other days I'm kind of on the fence. But I still believe that there is something out there, because I've seen it in my own life, and maybe that's a delusional thing, but I just really believe that there has been something out there that's been guiding and protecting and helping me along the way. So, with that, thanks again for joining, and if you found some benefit, I hope you come back, take care.