The One Reminder I Keep Coming Back To

2020 came in like a hurricane. A global pandemic. New discussions, community divisions and national debates about racial imbalance and privilege. All of this pointing to the fragility of our discourse with one another.

What does it look like to enjoy the journey in the middle of hurricane season? At the same time, what does it look like to live a life of contentment without becoming complacent?

On this episode, Fletch dives into the Fletchifesto to discuss what it means to enjoy the journey. Along the way he shares some great music and a podcast that he thinks you will like even more than theMangoTimes.

Quietly making noise,
Fletch

SHOW NOTES:
The Fletchifesto - check out each of the life quotes.
Wired Magazine: Steven Levy Interviews Larry Brilliant
Music by Jimmy Buffett:
Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On
One Particular Harbor

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

music playing

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Welcome to the Mango Times Podcast. This is Fletch, and I'm the writer and editor for everything you read and listen to here on the Mango Times. On this podcast, we're going to discuss anything and everything that we experience together here on this crazy planet. So join me as I talk about different aspects of culture, from great movies to great music to everything we love to binge watch online together. And I'll do my best to entertain you as I share my perspective on life as a husband, dad, and grandfather to a big, loud family. So sit back as I grab a cup of coffee and my favorite dog and quietly make some noise. Welcome back to the Mango Times podcast. This is your host, Fletch, and this is episode 20. Enjoy the journey. We're going to dive back into the Fletchifesto, my friends. We're Talking about what it means to enjoy the journey. But first, here we are in the middle of the pandemic. We're still here. It's summer 2020, so whenever you're listening to this, in my neck of the woods, we're still sheltering in place. Actually, we're not sheltering in place. We're not sure where we are right now, but the state of California is getting ready to probably return to a shelter-in-place mode, to start restrictions again. You know why? Because most people where I'm from, at least the county I'm from, are idiots. They couldn't put on a frickin' mask. They couldn't stay in. They had to go to Target. They had to go to Walmart. They had to go to... You name it. They had to go out. And they had to argue about... They're civil liberties by not wearing a mask. So, you know, I just read an article yesterday in Wired magazine. You can go to it. It's wired.com. Stephen Levy interviewed Larry Brilliant. And I've been talking a lot about Larry Brilliant. He's an epidemiologist that helped eradicate smallpox off of the face of the globe. So he has a voice I want to hear. I mean, he was involved in getting rid of a virus globally. And the question was, you know, What have we found in the last three months? They interviewed him at the beginning, you know, back in March, and now they're interviewing him again. What have we found? How are we doing? And, you know, he basically said we started well, and then we just failed because we couldn't hold to the plan. So, folks, put on a damn mask. Protect your family. Protect your friends and your neighbor. Let's just do what's right. You know, in the story of the Good Samaritan, don't be the priest, right? Be the good Samaritan. Be the Samaritan who walks across the street and helps the person who is struggling and does the right thing. That's what putting on the mask is. It's, hey, you know what? I could ignore this whole situation. I'm going to walk on the other side of the street like the priest. But the Samaritan jumped in and took care of their fellow man. I'm getting fired up. Look at this. We just got started on this, and I'm already fired up about masks and not masks. But I mean, there's been a lot. I've been telling people when your year, when 2020 starts out and you have a global pandemic, you have racial tensions leading to riots, leading to a declaration of change, to mask wars, to hospitalization wars, to shelter in place wars. And that wasn't the biggest part of your year. you know it's been a crappy year. And a lot of you know, we started off January, the end of January, with my son Nate having a brain tumor, emergency surgery at UCSF. That was all pre-pandemic. And then we led into one of my favorite people on the planet, my brother-in-law Jeff, going through another round of chemotherapy for cancer. And those alone are We're a big year. And so today we're talking about enjoy the journey along this year, along this path. I'm going to be talking about how you enjoy the journey in midst of all those other things. So I'm sitting here. I'm sipping on some Harney& Sons tea. If I haven't talked about Harney& Sons tea, this is a recommendation from my wife. She's the one that got me started on it. I'm drinking Scottish Morn. If you think you like caffeine in your coffee or your tea, you need to get a cup of Scottish Morn tea. I'm enjoying a new tobacco as I sit here with you, a long Golden Lake. by Reiner Tobacco in my Savinelli pipe. It's just a classic Savinelli Roma, one of my favorite pipes ever. And so, are you ready? Let's dive in to enjoy the journey. But first, I've been sharing music with you on every episode. And this song specifically talks to our topic about enjoying the journey. So I'm going to crank it up now. You can enjoy it. It's been one of those songs that's kind of held me over through this pandemic. It's been part of my chill out playlist that I've made. So I'm going to put it on and then

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I'll talk to you about it after it's done playing.

SPEAKER_01: 5:38

Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On by Jimmy Buffett Our second son, Nate, had just been born. We were broke as broke could be. We're living in San Francisco. We're trying to move out to the Central Valley and rent a house. And we were renting an apartment in San Francisco. We had no money. It just was a crazy time. And so, you know, those words, if a hurricane doesn't leave you dead, it'll make you strong. Don't try to explain it. Just nod your head. Breathe in, breathe out, move on. You know, this idea of a hurricane coming and leaving you strong. And that's really what we're talking about today. We're talking about enjoy the journey. And there's really two parts to this I want to talk about. Now, if you remember, I blogged about this already on the Mango Times blog when I was blogging through the Fletchifesto, which is just my manifesto. It was phrases that meant something to me. I put it on a poster. I hung it around my office, around my house. I I put it on little postcards. I shared it with friends. I got this because I was reading the Holste Manifesto and at the same time reading the Dutch Bros Mission Statement, Dutch Bros Coffee. If you're not from the West Coast, maybe you don't know what I'm talking about. But Dutch Bros is this very Fletch kind of coffee place, a ton of energy. You just feel like you're hanging out with your best friends when you go through the drive-thru. I mean, you're only with them for 10 seconds. But I figured that company had such a great mission statement, and the Holstein Manifesto was so perfectly worded. I'm like, I'm going to make my own. So I made my own manifesto. I called it the Fletchifesto. And so I've already blogged through this one. This is Enjoy the Journey. And it fits into this topic today because I believe there are two different seasons in life. There's hurricane season, and there's non-hurricane season. And so I'm going to go through both of these. But first, let's talk about hurricane season. You know, when life throws you a curveball, like it has in 2020, for me, I've had several curveballs. But for all of us, you know, we have this global pandemic from the COVID-19 coronavirus, SARS-COV-2. I It has thrown us a curveball. It stopped school. It stopped meeting together in church. Shopping became affected. Toilet paper was on a... Everybody needed toilet paper, but there wasn't any. Restaurants were closed down. Socialization. Grandparents couldn't see their grandchildren. Family members were separated. And everybody was on Zoom. Man, we should have invested in that. You know, there's this huge boulder in the road, and you're trying to decide, should I go around it? Should I climb over it? How big is this boulder? How long is this boulder going to last? And it reminds me of something my wife often tells me. She says, Fletch, this isn't heaven. What do you expect? We're in a broken world full of people, sinners just like ourselves, co-sinners. I'm not pointing at others, I'm pointing at myself. And what do you expect? I mean, what did you expect with the issue of masks? People arguing over... their choice and their freedom, and you can't strap a mask into me. My favorite, my favorite, if you haven't looked it up, is the woman who's arguing at a city council meeting, and in public, she says, the same reason I don't wear a mask, I don't wear a mask for the same reason I don't wear underwear. Things need to breathe. All right, that's way too much information at a city council meeting. But I would love to have been there, because I would have laughed. I mean, that's pretty funny. That's a great statement. Um, But this idea of privilege, I mean, we've been through these racial riots where people are arguing over the term Black Lives Matter. I love that we've broken that down to semantics. You know, I can't support Black Lives Matters because as an organization, have you been to the About Us part of that website? Okay, all right, all right. Okay, my great word, what's that word we call it? not word guru, but scholar of semantics, can we just say black lives are really important right now? And I think you knew that's what I meant, but you're arguing over an organization, about why you can't support an organization, when really, I was just hoping we could agree to the general term Black Lives Matter. I get it. Some people are all into the organization, and I'm being offensive to them. I'm not trying to separate over an organization. I'm just the term. I can't support Black Lives Matter. All right. Okay. I remember a time when people used to chant, drain the swamp and lock her up. I didn't argue over semantics. I wasn't saying, really? There isn't one career politician in all of Washington doing something... that's good on behalf of the people that they represent. Really, you just want to drain the swamp. That's it. That's all you want to do. You know, lock her up. I mean, we get tied into the semantics of this. I knew what they meant. They wanted to see change in Washington. Great. Fantastic. I can support that. I understand what they said. They were very upset with a candidate from the other side of the election. I get it. but really to boil it down to just those terms. So, you know, again, what do you expect when these boulders hit the road? In hurricane season, what do you expect? And I think what we're called to do is to enjoy the journey regardless. That no matter what God brings us along our way, He's asking us to be joyful in the midst of the journey. I can think to a specific section of scripture where it says, consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds, because you know the testing of your faith will develop perseverance. So that's hurricane season. Enjoy the journey. All right, I want to get to non-hurricane season. But before we get there, let's take a quick palate cleansing cultural break, a chance to breathe, and I'll be right back.

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So

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You know, one thing I found is that people who listen to really good podcasts, listen to a lot of really good podcasts. You know, I've been listening to podcasts for over a decade now. And I laugh because some of the very first podcasts I listened to, I remember the first one I listened to was a podcast about the television show Lost, where a father and son basically broke down every episode every week. I loved it. That's how I dove in. And from that led to another and another and another. Well, I want to share one with you off of my own podcast subscription list that I love. And it's by Mike Rowe. You remember Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs? He has a podcast called The Way I Heard It. And he describes it this. It's, these are short mysteries for the curious mind with a short attention span. You know, he's going after the fact that we don't like to listen to long stories. So I'm going to say these are 10 to 15 minute long episodes when you're listening to them. And he'll break down a popular story from history. He'll just come at it from a Or he'll share a part of the story that you didn't know. So these are very reminiscent of the old Paul Harvey radio spots where he would do the rest of the story. Remember Paul Harvey? And you'd say, and that's the rest of the story. You know, it's always some, you know, just... Like the birth of Coca-Cola, how it actually started. Patrick Henry's wife being insane. I remember a story about Franklin Pierce who accidentally ran over a woman. There was a president who had hidden jaw surgery upon a boat in the middle of the Hudson River that they hid from everyone. So it's those kind of stories. Mike Rowe is brilliant. He's got this great deep baritone voice remember he was trained as an opera singer and that's what gives him a great voice for television and radio and podcasting so you definitely should give it a listen again it's The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe take a listen and tell me whether you like it all right so we've talked about hurricane season enjoy the journey in the midst of the hurricane what about non-hurricane season What about when life is all rainbows and ponies and marshmallows? You know, life is just going well. Why do we have to enjoy the journey then? And the point is, is that it's a journey. There's a quote I used by C.S. Lewis in my blog post that says this. Our Heavenly Father has provided many delightful inns, like a chateau, Our Heavenly Father has provided many delightful ends for us along our journey, but he takes great care to see that we do not mistake any of them for home. And that's my point. You know, it's that idea of just hitting a point of complacency, and that's different from contentedness. You can be content and not complacent. You know, as there's no hurricane going on, are we supposed to To shelter forever. You know, that's the idea of a cove. When you're sailing and the wind is ripping, you pull into a cove where there's no wind, and it's a peaceful, pleasant harbor. Oh, I should have used the song One Particular Harbor by Jimmy Buffett, but I didn't. That's okay. But there's this

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one particular harbor So far but yet so near Where I see the days as they fade away, finally

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disappear. But this idea that in the midst of life, we don't just stop, but we continue enjoying the journey. And that's part of what I've said before about life being an adventure. We've already talked about that on the podcast, and I've already blogged about it. But this idea that... You know, everything's an adventure. Going to the store is an adventure. Every time I go in the car with the kids, I tell them it's an adventure. You know, maybe we're just going to get an ice cream cone. Maybe we're going to go to the hardware store. Well, maybe this is the encouragement you need on this podcast episode to enjoy the journey and remember that it's a journey and don't get stuck. Don't get... complacent. You can be super content and not be complacent. Well, that's what I wanted to talk about today. Enjoy the journey. That's why it was included in the Fletcher Festo. I often... have to preach this to myself. That's why it was included, because I will get mired down in the weeds. That's, in fact, why I created this playlist of songs that encourage me in the midst of a pandemic. So as we wrap this show up, I'm going to play a second part to breathe in, breathe out, and move on. As you're listening to it, remember, I'd love to hear from you. You can go directly to the Mango Times and hit the Let's Connect button on there, and it can send a secure email directly to me. I'd like to hear if this was something you needed to hear, or if you, in fact, think I'm wrong. And Black Lives Matter is something you can never support. And your freedoms are being taken away from a mask. I'm not mocking you. I understand that there are people that want to share their opinions. Feel free. Just email me right on there. You can catch me on any of the socials. Just go to AtTheMangoTime. So that's Facebook.com. I bought a cheap watch from the crazy man Floating down Canal I bought a cheap watch from the crazy man

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It doesn't use numbers or moving hands, it always just says now. Now you may be thinking that I was half, but this watch is never long. And if I have trouble, the warranty said, breathe in, breathe out, move on.

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You have been listening to the Mango Times podcast. Everything written and produced on this is by Andy Fletcher. If you're going to use it, steal it, borrow it, or share it on the internet, please just let me know. I don't care. I just want to know where my voice is being used out on the internet. And as a bit of a disclaimer, don't forget, everything I recommend on this podcast, you should use discretion. Choose whether you should watch it, listen to it, eat it, try it, go there. But when you do, don't forget to quietly make some noise. Thanks for listening.

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According to my watch the time is now The past is dead and gone Don't try to shake it, just nod your head Breathe in, breathe out, move on Don't try to explain it, just bow your head Breathe in Yeah