00:01:26.2002021 was a was a really good year for the AFA. It was a very, very special year. We got a lot of great things happening. We saw tremendous activity at all of our Hoffs, but specifically at Thor's Hoff and Baldur's Hoff.
00:01:45.400Baldershoff, this is kind of their first year that they, or last year rather, was their first year that they got their feet under them.
00:01:50.820We got that use permit okayed in December of 2020.
00:01:56.320So 2021 was Baldershoff's first year and did fantastic.
00:02:02.660I was fortunate enough to be able to make it out there and spend some time with those folks several times during the year.
00:02:07.960And what they've done is truly amazing.
00:02:10.840Watching that grow and thrive is fantastic.
00:02:12.980I am very, very excited about things we got coming up, about things we're going to do in 2022.
00:02:19.820And we're just starting the year off right. And there's no better way to start the year off than talking to you guys.
00:02:27.640Look over here on the side. Thank you so much, everybody making time on.
00:02:33.380In your day, on your weekend to join us, I know usually we do this during the week, but I try to rotate it around different days because maybe we'll get a get a different audience,
00:02:41.840get some folks that maybe worker for whatever reason can't make it some of the other times
00:02:46.640so it's great to see you guys here um anybody got questions to start off with this evening
00:03:00.720i know it's a busy time of the year and there's been a lot going on
00:03:03.840I know one thing we got a question about, and I wish that I had a little bit tighter answer,
00:03:19.120but it is something that we're working on in the coming year, was coming-of-age ceremonies.
00:03:25.020And that's something that we've been asked for a very long time. And I wish that I had an awesome
00:03:30.440to roll out to you but i do have some important thoughts on that i think are are relevant um
00:03:43.640it's very important that when we do any kind of any kind of ceremony that it's real
00:03:50.680and that it symbolizes something that we truly and that we truly mean any ritual we do
00:03:55.720all of the all of the value of it comes from intention and if you put real intention and
00:04:02.900sincere intention something it's very different than if you don't it's one reason um in the
00:04:08.240astro folk assembly when we do weddings we only preside over legally binding weddings it's very
00:04:14.200important to us that a couple that comes to us for a marriage not only are they married before
00:04:18.300the gods but they're legally married where they're at where they actually have skin in the game
00:04:22.800it's a legitimate marriage. And by the same token, when we do any form of coming of age,
00:04:31.200the idea is transitioning from one stage in life to the next. Now, one thing that we're working on
00:04:37.540in the AFA is a couple of those, a starting of the process, and then a complete coming of age
00:04:43.760for both boys to men and girls to women.
00:04:50.940It's important that on the other side of that transition,
00:05:10.400And we want that to be, to have meat to it and have weight to it.0.98
00:05:16.480So we want to only perform that when someone reaches the age of 18.
00:05:23.800I've seen in the past these coming of ages where a parent will give a 10-year-old boy a sword and declare it a coming of age ceremony.
00:05:39.280and then, you know, right after the ceremony, okay, it's bedtime. And it's really important
00:05:44.580to me that we don't do that. When we welcome someone as a man or as a woman, they need to1.00
00:05:50.220be treated differently than when they went into that ceremony as a child. And I think that0.98
00:05:55.240something that's always been utilized in the history of modern house, true, has been an
00:06:00.100exchange of, or not exchange, rather, a gifting of a weapon to a young man as they become a man.
00:06:06.400And I like that and I like the spirit of it. But I think something's gotten lost in the way that it's done. Very often we'll see some of these very young teens given a sword. The same young teen would not be given a rifle, would not be given another means of taking life. And it's important that we don't do ritualized action that doesn't have meaning to it.
00:06:31.680So when we hand a boy a weapon in order to make him a man, we're handing him the implement of death and of defending his family with the power to take life.
00:06:45.700And if we wouldn't trust him with that in a very real way, with a contemporary weapon that we genuinely have a fear of, then we shouldn't ape that action with an archaic weapon, because it's really important that what we do isn't pretending.
00:07:01.980What we do is very real. And so those are my thoughts on it.
00:07:05.240But it is something that we're working on and developing. And hopefully this time next year, we'll have a much, much better protocol for that.
00:07:15.700Excellent. So, all right, Sarah, I have a question on the side.
00:07:26.140Some of you may have noticed I've been wearing a stole for the last,
00:07:33.360I want to say since the end of August, but yeah, I've been wearing a stole.
00:07:38.240And a lot of people have wondered about that. It's a new thing in the AFA that
00:07:42.260we're we're getting made it's a process that we've been trying for a long time and
00:07:47.520getting custom work done has taken taken a little bit longer than we had wanted
00:07:51.720but yeah um so the stole specifically that that i'm wearing
00:07:58.140trying to think the best place to start on it okay so the stole in general uh some people have
00:08:04.740noted that it is similar to to what various sects of christianity use that's because it comes from
00:08:10.300a common common indo-european source the stole itself isn't isn't a christian garment though
00:08:17.660christians have chosen to wear it it's a western religious garment and it was it was started and
00:08:25.420popularized by the by the ancient latins as a sign of a certain amount of clerical education
00:08:33.180uh so the stole has a has a built-in religious significance we want to make sure that that we're
00:15:04.820Goethe Daniel Young is asking if I can touch on the subject of oaths and the seriousness to them.
00:15:11.140Absolutely. Oaths are extremely serious. Just like I was mentioning earlier about the coming of age ceremonies, very often in Ausatru, people are excited by the archaicness of our heroism of the past.
00:15:30.400A big part of the warrior tradition is making these big grand oaths.
00:15:35.320So I think we feel like we should or we feel like we ought to make these big, elaborate, grand oaths to things.
00:15:45.200There's nothing wrong with that as long as we take the oaths with the gravity that's due them.
00:15:51.400But the concept of a man being only as good as his word is essential to Ausitru.
00:15:57.060And it's been essential to Ausitru since the very beginning.
00:16:00.400oaths are extremely extremely important and they should never be made lightly they shouldn't be
00:16:08.300made frequently there's something that should be made seldomly and when they're made with the
00:16:14.740greatest of gravity that's one reason that uh we make a point in afa symbols so the afa symbol is
00:16:22.460three rounds one round to the grand symbol one round to the gods one round to our ancestors
00:16:30.140And then in the third round, the round for the heroes, that one tends to be the time that people would make oaths.
00:16:37.540We always tell people beforehand to get those oaths approved by Agothi at the event.
00:16:44.000And the reason for that is we care so much about oaths that we don't want them casually spoken over the horn.
00:16:50.740And we want to make sure when people make oaths, they're very committed to what they say.
00:16:56.360And they don't make oaths that they can't achieve or that we don't believe they're likely to achieve.
00:17:03.920Some said when you make an oath, especially in a ritual context like that, there's a great power.
00:17:08.660If you make an oath and then you achieve what you owe to do, that's a greater thing and has more weight and more gravity to it than if you had achieved that without that oath.
00:17:20.740um but that said i think people when they first get involved in also true maybe they make some
00:17:25.060really some oaths that they didn't consider they'll oath to someone they didn't know for very
00:17:30.100long or to a kindred that they don't know very well and instead of hey i'd like to be a part
00:17:36.260of this for a year and see where it goes hey i'll take an oath to you know participate in this
00:17:42.500relationship for a certain amount of time with certain conditions very often i oath to be your
00:17:47.460sworn brother till the end of time and for all eternity and a really really grand oath
00:17:54.100that maybe when you get to know someone a little bit better or events in your life or events in
00:17:57.940their life change it's an oath that you may look back on and wish that you didn't make
00:18:02.820so be very careful when you enter into oaths um and realize that most oaths are a contractual
00:18:12.660relationship between two parties. It's very seldom a one-sided oath. So it's important if
00:18:18.820you make an agreement with someone based on a certain set of contexts, that that person maintains
00:18:25.180the integrity of their side of the oath as well. It's also something to think about is if you make
00:18:30.500an oath with someone, there can be discussion between the two of you of dissolving that oath
00:18:35.660in an honorable and amicable way, as opposed to feeling bound to something for all eternity. If
00:18:41.320both parties agree to diverge on it. This is a subject that any AFA member that wants to go in
00:18:49.400this in more detail, I'd encourage you to talk to our law speaker, Alan Turnage. This is something
00:18:54.660that he knows a lot about and has a lot of thoughts on, and I think he has a great insight on it if
00:18:59.340anybody wants to dig a little bit deeper into it. Next national event coming up. The next national
00:19:10.160event coming up is going to be Charming of the Plow in Washington State. It's a great event.
00:19:15.420It's been really amazing the last couple of years. I'm heading up to that. I'm looking very forward
00:19:20.040to it. It was a lot of fun last year. I know we've got some leadership coming in from different parts
00:19:26.080of the country. If you can make that, that would be great. You want to contact your local folk
00:19:31.900builder, then get you squared away, or you want to contact Mason Johnson, mjohnson at runestone.org,
00:19:38.760he can get you set up and squared away on that that's a very good question um if a legal minor
00:20:02.760were going to be married would we perform the coming of age ceremony before the wedding
00:20:08.760and does that ceremony prepare the individual for life events first hopefully and that's one of the
00:20:19.240ideas i'm with as far as preparation for life events we want there to be a process and not
00:20:25.480just one day oh i have a kid that's old enough let's get them in the circle and have a ceremony
00:20:30.120what we'd like to do when i mentioned a book ending starting of the process and completing
00:20:34.600the process would be to prepare a young man or a young woman for life events and for entering
00:20:43.640that next phase of their life in a way to where they're prepared mentally, prepared spiritually,
00:20:51.640and ready to take that on. And I think that the responsibility of preparing our young people
00:20:57.480for that change of life event is more important than just that ritual.
00:21:02.760um as far as the if a legal minor were getting married that enters into a legal gray area um
00:21:15.880where i think i'd like to consult our law speaker alan turnage who's like he's also
00:21:20.840a practicing attorney he'd know a little bit better about the implications of that
00:21:25.800um i would tend to think from here that that is a special circumstance where maybe we would
00:21:32.200accelerate that that coming of age if that life event was going to occur but i think that varies
00:21:39.080state by state and like i said when we perform a wedding it needs to be a legal wedding we
00:21:44.040certainly don't practice child weddings so the gray area of someone in that 16 17 category i
00:21:53.080I think a lot of that depends on the state and the area that they're in and a lot of other factors.
00:22:09.920Thank you, Mandy. Mandy gives the man's proper name.
00:22:13.060Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya. And I'm really sorry for mispronouncing your title. No disrespect
00:22:26.840intended. Like I say, that gentleman and his association have been very supportive and great
00:26:39.580insight into ancestral new year's traditions
00:26:45.820i suppose biggest one i have a little bit of insight into kind of goes with oaths is the idea
00:26:50.060of taking uh making new year's resolutions whereas i don't encourage oaths that you can't make
00:26:57.740or that you can't fulfill i think that this is a really good time of year to make commitments
00:27:02.300to accomplish things in your own life whereas othing to other people requires a different level
00:27:08.860of understanding i think making an oath on something that you are capable and willing
00:27:15.180to put in the effort to accomplish is a very good thing to do this time of year and a lot of
00:27:20.700different traditions one is is placing the hand on the yule bore and making oaths on that yule
00:27:27.900bore i know that during yule that's something many of our people participate in um but making
00:27:34.860new year's resolutions resolving at this time of year to fix some things to make things better
00:27:42.060and to achieve absolutely one of our traditions absolutely something that we all should do but
00:27:48.060it's not something that we should do casually even when we just make an oath to ourselves
00:27:53.500or about ourselves it's important that we follow through and that's one of the reasons
00:27:58.780of sacralizing it with making a commitment to it is that we're going to accomplish the
00:28:04.220thing that we say we're going to accomplish and i hope that all of us make resolutions
00:28:09.500And I hope all of us keep those resolutions this time next year and can share with one another how we've accomplished them and can share our victories together.
00:28:18.240But I think those are really important.
00:28:31.000Folk builders, we got a question on what weekend Charming the Plow in Washington will be.
00:28:35.880I can't look it up right now. If one of you guys can post that over in the side chat.
00:33:09.180Sorry, guys, I'm spending a lot of time reading here.
00:33:11.600Anybody got questions, please go ahead and ask them.
00:33:15.400Almost done with this chat on the side.
00:33:17.220I just want to make sure I'm not missing anybody's questions.
00:33:23.480So, I've got a question. What are the differences and commonalities of the AFA and the Norana Society?
00:33:37.220I'm trying to think of the best way to put this. And whenever I address questions about the Norana Society, it's really important to me to separate two things.
00:33:48.600Mark Puryear is is the founder of the Naranis Society and the guy that's put in the majority of the work in the Naranis Society.
00:33:59.660And I want to start out by saying I and I mean this, I genuinely like Mark.
00:34:06.500Mark is a really good guy. He has always been great to me, to my family and to the Astro Folk Assembly.
00:34:12.320I think Mark Puryear is a fantastic guy, not a fan of the Norena Society.
00:34:22.300It's weird in the traditional sense of the word how so many things tonight are connecting and
00:34:29.120building upon one another, but just as I talked about that virtue of victory and of deeds,
00:34:36.420this is my assessment of the norena society but i've not seen activity i don't see a lot
00:34:45.780of the practice of alsatru going on with those folks what i do see is a lot of
00:34:53.780endless critiquing endless scholarly debate on things endless
00:35:00.340pondering what ancient people might have done to do different things but
00:35:06.420All of those things are cool and interesting, and I'm fascinated by what our ancient ancestors did to practice their faith as much as the next guy.
00:35:17.820But that is not nearly as important as practicing our faith.
00:35:23.820Practicing Ausatru is much more important than learning about Ausatru.
00:35:29.680Practicing our belief, and this is where that virtue of victory comes in.
00:35:34.260doing Ausatru, engaging in the gift cycle with our gods, worshiping with our folk is so much
00:35:44.460more important than obscure tidbits of ancient practices by ancient people. And I don't mean
00:35:51.600any disrespect to our ancestors. I certainly hope that 1,000, 1,500 years from now,
00:35:58.180So my descendants will be practicing Ausatru in a way that's relevant to their time, to where they're at. And if they don't ever do things like we did in the good old days back in Matt's day, good.
00:36:13.400If they're doing something that's relevant to what they're doing, if they're honoring their ancestors and their gods in a way that brings them glory and they appreciate, meaning the gods and ancestors, then fantastic.
00:36:28.880They're accomplishing what they're doing.
00:36:30.400Alcetru is about doing and not only do I think the Naranis Society spends far too much time critiquing what other people might do or what they think our ancestors may could have should have done by some obscure bit of archaeology.
00:36:46.400The other thing that I've seen them do, and I've seen this turn in the past probably three or four years, they've become very, very negative.
00:36:54.580They don't just do all this research, but then they want to criticize those of us who are actually practicing Ausatru in all the ways we're doing it wrong.
00:37:04.720instead of venturing out into the arena and practicing it themselves or building something
00:37:09.120they very often as a whole seek to critique and thumb their nose of people who are
00:37:15.360doing activity. And I take offense to that.
00:37:35.440Ross, do I think there'll ever be a Sunday Mass equivalent where folk meet regularly to discuss
00:37:40.980and or listen to a go feed, discuss some specific topics. Absolutely. The more we have,
00:37:49.580and we already see this a little bit in kindreds and small groups, the more we have more of our
00:37:54.760folk near Hoffs, and that means folks moving and getting closer to our Hoffs, but it also means
00:38:00.160as our Hoffs expand and we have more Hoffs, we'll have a better opportunity to get together weekly
00:38:05.600like that, or even a couple of times a week. And I'd love to see that happen. Right now,
00:38:12.880our model tends to be much more get together a couple times a month, or maybe even one time a
00:38:17.240month and, and have one of our, if a bloat, have a sample, have a meal and to celebrate our faith
00:38:23.960and to worship, it would be great. We do have talks at those very often. But it would be great
00:38:29.860to be able to get together on a more regular basis. And that's just an issue of proximity.
00:38:34.440As I've seen, that's getting better all the time, though.
00:38:58.920Zakharov, I do not like the way the Norana Society interprets a lot of things.
00:39:03.960um i'm just talking about mark in the sense of him being a good guy and he's he's a nice guy and
00:39:09.880he's uh he's been very open-handed in uh in dealing very respectful in dealing with us but
00:39:15.400as far as his theology another point i should have made um on differences between the norena
00:39:21.320society and the austral folk assembly trying to think of the best way to put this but because
00:39:31.480so much of their effort is put on finding new obscure bits of lore. I think very often when
00:39:41.280they find one piece that doesn't fit, they try to mold the whole thing around the obscure exception
00:39:49.500that they found. Instead of the plethora of things that say to go one way, if they're the
00:39:55.420only people that found this obscure tidbit to where maybe one guy diverged, they're really
00:40:00.280quick to embrace that. And I think that's, you know, we all have a tendency to want to have our
00:40:05.400own special idea how to do something or to feel important because we know some obscure thing that
00:40:11.260other people don't know. And I think that sometimes they take that too far. And I think that that's
00:40:15.800something they do tend to do. The other thing that I do think is important. So when I talked about
00:40:21.360practice and engaging in that gift cycle, in the Ask True Folk Assembly, our relationship with our
00:40:29.040gods is real and not conceptual. And it's hard to explain this if maybe you haven't had that
00:40:35.420experience in your life, but there's no question to me about the reality of our gods. And there's
00:40:42.440no question to me that the Austro-Folk Assembly has built a relationship with these gods and
00:40:50.820that I'd like to, that these gods are very important in my life. And hopefully I've brought
00:40:57.740myself to their notice in some in some honorable way um
00:41:04.420it's really different when you approach religiosity through
00:41:09.660a relationship scope than through an academic lens
00:41:16.460if it's all a science project then you're not building a real relationship with the gods you're
00:41:24.080you're learning about the gods. And I think that sometimes that's one of the things that
00:41:30.000Norena society does that deviates from the Austro-Folk assembly. They approach the gods0.99
00:41:34.520through academics and through studies and through rehearsed things, as opposed to through open-hearted
00:41:40.520gifting and relationship building between the gods and the folk. And it's much more important
00:41:47.700to me that I convey to the gods my devotion to them and that I receive from them their blessings
00:41:56.880or their favor in some way than it is that I become super knowledgeable about obscure
00:42:06.480bits of their lore but don't have that personal connection in any way with
00:42:11.220between their energy and mine between their heart and mine um and I think it's just a really
00:42:17.060different way to approach religiosity i think that being a having a phd in military science
00:42:25.060is very different than being napoleon i think that studying aussitrew is very different than
00:51:28.580what is my uh general opinion of epstein and maxwell and that whole mess it's gross and i can't
00:51:47.700i can't plumb the depths of what all's going on in that situation um
00:51:58.740i don't know what's fact and what's fiction i know
00:52:03.700it's very hard to me for me to believe when stuff gets when stuff that's very very scandalous all
00:52:12.560of a sudden gets disappeared and we don't hear about it again that certainly makes me suspicious
00:52:16.880of things and anything that that exploits and abuses children is abominable no matter who you
00:52:25.560are it's a terrible thing I don't want to go into the whatever theories about those two people but
00:52:33.280a little bit I do know is is disgusting and should offend all of us the fact that they're connected
00:52:39.600to so many people who do have power in our society is also very very concerning and I think that
00:52:44.840concerns most of us who know any bit about it. So what are some of the goals for the AFA in 2022?
00:53:06.380It's a complicated question because I don't, I don't always want to
00:53:11.380want to show the cards when there's still some things out that we're that we're waiting on we
00:53:17.240always got a lot of things in the back burner that we're working on and that we're doing
00:53:20.440um your top is is huge getting that establishing that doing the dedication building that region
00:53:28.280having a half in florida is going to be a big big game changer for us um i can't go into super
00:53:35.540detail on it just because we don't know and don't have it figured out yet and there's a lot of
00:53:39.260variables. But, you know, certainly once we get in your top, there's also the consideration of
00:53:45.320phrase off that will come after. I can't guarantee anything about that in 2022. But it's something
00:53:52.680that we're certainly looking at and planning on not just acquiring your top, but figuring out how
00:53:58.680how quickly and how responsibly we can go ahead and pay that off is going to be an interesting
00:54:04.920challenge in the coming year um i know we're continuing to watch some growth a lot of what
00:54:12.760i want to see happen in 2022 depends on some things with borders and with international
00:54:19.560rules in response to to people's various things that they're doing labeled under the the covid
00:54:27.640umbrella i know a lot of folks still can't travel internationally but we'd love to see and
00:54:33.800strengthen a lot of our international membership i know it's been very hard for our folks in canada
00:54:38.200not being able to cross the border regularly that's something if that changes in 2022 we have
00:54:43.320some things we'd like to do certainly love to see some better support for our folks in in europe and
00:54:50.440our folks in australia and again finding out what what the governments around the world do with
00:54:56.280different things is going to determine a lot of that what i would like to see is hit a new membership
00:55:01.720high in 2022 we've been growing tremendously not just numerically but in quality in this last year
00:55:08.280a big part of that is we've had a some of you guys may have noticed we've had a big
00:55:12.200influx of people volunteering to be apprentice fold builders and we've had some amazing people
00:55:18.600come through and do amazing things we've got some really thriving afa communities where we haven't
00:55:23.160had before so we're very excited about that and got another side project that we're working on
00:55:30.040that i think you guys will be pretty excited about but i want to find out a little bit more
00:55:33.400about some details before i before i throw it out there but i'm pretty excited about
00:55:37.400what we're going to accomplish together in 2022.
00:56:07.400sorry guys when i start scrolling over on the side it jumps sometimes so i go back and i miss
00:56:26.920something so how exactly do we plan to bring all like-minded whites under both the gods in a single
00:56:32.980banner um this i i don't pretend that that's going to get all of our people to come home to our gods
00:56:44.420and to join us to focus on me but i'd like to think that it does um it certainly is bringing
00:56:49.540people in numbers and it's there's a lot of people that are also true today that weren't this time
00:56:56.420last year there's a whole lot of our folk that are united under the afa banner than there was
00:57:02.500last year. So I'm going to keep doing the very best I can to build the Oss True Folk Assembly,
00:57:08.560to one thing that I think helps for that to be successful is by having real things. And when I
00:57:15.520say real is probably misleading, but tangible things. Are Hoffs being physical, where people
00:57:22.080can go into a physical place of worship, have an address, and as silly as this may sound,
00:57:27.360have a marker on Google Maps that you can type in, you know, Odin's Hoff, Thor's Hoff, or Baldur's Hoff,
00:57:34.800and you can get directions to a place where we're worshiping our gods. That's huge. And it's done a
00:57:41.280lot to legitimize what we're doing, not only in the eyes of our members, but also in the eyes of
00:57:47.680their family and their co-workers and other people in these expanding circles that get to see that
00:57:54.060our faith is sincere, that what we do in the Theostry Folk Assembly is a real sincere thing.
00:58:01.740And in the communities that we're in, those folks get to see that we're a force of good,
00:58:06.020that we got good looking, smiling families doing good things, worshiping our gods,
00:58:13.620and building healthy lives together in those communities. I think the more we do that,
00:58:19.340the more of our people will come home, the more of our people will come back to our gods,
00:58:22.880and more of our people will join under the trihorn banner wow this is far behind i'm reading stuff
00:58:37.520from just when uh when aubrey came on uh you guys have been great i'm glad oh wow it's almost seven
00:58:43.280okay time is flying tonight people have had some really good questions and good stuff they want to
00:58:47.600talk about. Okay. What are my thoughts on anonymity versus using our own real names? Do I think
00:59:10.060there's a level of being personally public where that line is crossed and can no longer be
00:59:16.840anonymous. So this is, I think a lot of us have really strong feelings on this. I want to start
00:59:25.380out first. I get it. It's very, I don't know. I get it. I get that there are many reasons why
00:59:37.500people would want to be very anonymous with their faith, with their interaction with the
00:59:43.940true folk assembly with a lot of things we live in a very scary world i think that we've always
00:59:50.900lived in a scary world but i think that the the fears are different now i think people are very
00:59:56.660scared of information gathering i think uh folks are scared certainly of doxing of being shunned
01:00:04.020for political wrong think certainly in the west that's a huge problem that we face now with this
01:00:10.100deplatforming and cancel culture that we're in i get it folks who've built careers are scared
01:00:17.140of losing careers folks who have young families are scared for safety i think if everybody's
01:00:24.660honest folks are scared of being shunned by their friends and family or being thought of
01:00:30.980as being politically correct or being called names i think a lot of people are scared just have eyes
01:00:37.460on um i don't like that but it's real and it's honest uh and i do understand that
01:00:48.900i think that as much as we can we should not be anonymous we should live our life
01:00:55.940live our faith live our values in the open with our name and our face associated with it
01:01:02.180I think that means we need to be careful of the way we say things and the way we present ourselves.
01:01:09.180I think that when we are practicing openly and doing things openly, it's there's a much bigger, much bigger need to be articulate, to be noble in our speech, noble in how we present ourselves and to be mindful of that.
01:01:29.180that that's something we should be doing anyway and a truth that is uncomfortable for a lot of
01:01:35.660people is the more of us are out there living in the open standing by our values standing by who
01:01:43.180we are and what we believe in we pave the way for other people to be comfortable doing that
01:01:49.180when there's a significant number of people doing that there's safety in that
01:01:53.420when it's just one guy out by himself it's hard there's two or three it's that much easier
01:01:58.140it's two or 300 even easier still when there's thousands tens of thousands millions it becomes
01:02:05.100much easier for those who come after us to be able to to live authentically um i found in my own life
01:02:12.220that the more the more i unify who i am to where there's not you know i'm this guy around my
01:02:21.500friends i'm this guy around my family this guy over here this guy around these people the more
01:02:27.820it's holistic and that all the parts of my life synergize the happier i am the more successful
01:02:36.460i've been able to be in my life with my family with my friends um and just personally i think
01:02:43.020there is absolutely an esoteric truth that the more authentically you exist and the more courageous
01:02:50.140you are with being honest about who you are and what you believe and presenting that well
01:02:57.740there's a certain luck benefit that comes with that and i think we all benefit from that
01:03:02.620so as much as we can i think that being open with who we are and what we stand for is extremely
01:03:09.580important it is courageous and courage is certainly one of the noblest of our virtues
01:03:15.180um so i'm not calling anybody out that feels the need to be anonymous i get it
01:03:21.060but each and every one of you that's not anonymous that's proud that puts your name out and says here
01:03:27.520i am this is who i am this is what i believe this is what i stand for i salute you for that
01:03:32.580and i think that's the way to go and i'd love to see as many of our people possible do that