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Isaac Bowen: I wanna begin by saying that I don't feel any need to explain any of this. Um, and I feel like I get why Mary Poppins, why the character of Mary Poppins says that, um, "I never explain anything." It's not that I never explain anything. In fact, I do quite a lot of explaining, um, but I feel like I only exp, um, I feel like I offer ... I feel like I'm a toolmaker. I'm a, I make tools. I make tools, and occasionally, my tools do a better job of explaining experience than the explanations do, or to put that a different way, occasionally using tools to navigate gives you a better way to understand what you're navigating than an explanation would.

I might leave that hanging in the air right where it is 'cause my, my goal, like my goal has only ever been to, to be okay, you know, to, to be okay. And I stumbled into it by, not by accident necessarily, but like the first pocket of okayness that I found was this small. And it wasn't even in me. It was in the space between me and somebody who was working on something that I could help with. And the first pocket of okayness that I found was in the shared space that was made as we, you know, worked on taking care of a thing together. Um, and that pocket of okayness, um, like I, I just made sure never to compromise it. Um, and the okayness, the pocket of okayness grew.

Um, and t- these days, I operate from, uh, f- from within it. Is that the right way to say that? Um, my homebase is now like planted within that much larger now pocket of okayness. Um, not because it started from within me, but because it started from like the space between me and someone and we were working together and we, we did a thing that, that was ... We, we made a space that was okay, um, and, and a space that wasn't bonded to, I don't know, a space that existed independently of me. That's very, that seems important. Um, it wasn't me externalized. It was a, a space that we found maybe tiny, tiny, tiny, population, two-ish, one-point something.

Anyway, my, my goal is to be okay and to maybe make it easier, uh, maybe to increase the odds of being around for you, finding what okay means to you. Um, I'm not, I'm not bound up with anyone's future. Um, Abe would be the only e- exception maybe to that. Um, I don't insist on ever being present for anything, um, which is why I can't like (laughs), uh, like lead in any permanent way. Um, so that's kind of a different, different subject, but, um, I, I, I am maybe the happiest when I see what comes out of someone when they're doing okay, when they get to see more of themselves in what they just did, when they do something that surprises them both in its content and in what they just learned about themselves like, "I just did that. Of course, I just did that. That feels so much like me."

Like for, for me to be able to perceive anything like that is the fucking best. Um, and I, the, the, the stuff that I make isn't necessarily to, to create that kind of dynamic. It's more like to, um, to, to disempower that which gets in the way of that dynamic. Because I, I think what I just described, like people surprising themselves with what comes out of 'em when they're doing okay, um, and be delighted by that, by delight, by being delighted, by like, "Oh, I mean, that's obviously me, but I could not have seen that coming. Amazing," like I think that just happens when we don't get in the way of it. And there are lots of places popularly where stuff is in the way of that. Um, and I don't think that stuff has to stay loadbearing.

So what I make is for kinda shifting our collective weight naturally from leaning on things that are like also hurting us, like kinda swapping out the supports so that we still, like we're, we're never without something to lean on, um, but maybe what we start leaning on while being as or more stable, maybe it hurts less. Maybe it, maybe it is, it gets less in the way of our natural, uh, approach, uh, to the state of okayness, whatever that means to each of us. Um, a lot of things I don't know, um, and I mean that, uh, in a very, uh, technical way. In fact, I actually need to correct that statement. It's not that there are a lot of things I don't know. It's that my frame of knowing and like peripheral knowing, like being aware of what's noble and that knowable and then being aware of the very necessary space that is everything I'm not aware of, um, or not even everything necessarily, just like there's, there ...

I'm aware that I have a field of non-knowledge and I'm very intentional about how that field is, is, about how I relate to that field. Um, because if I have to know how we get better, then we're never gonna get better because how could I know that. I like that phrasing actually. Um, this is not a pitch, uh, because I am incapable of pitching. Like in a very meaningful way, I can't, I can't put something in your hands. That's not, that, that feels like so wrong to me. And so the, the puzzle sort of is, "How do I share? How do I, how do I share?" Um, if you're in this far, eight minutes and 12 seconds, hi. Um, neat.

Abe and I, previously here, I, we're working earlier today on, um, sort of our, our, um, on like mapping out the physics of our finances. Um, we're shifting some things. We're, we're rebalancing some things to do things, um, and he wanted to like, like resolve a solid physical understanding of how the pieces fit, how they interact, how they, how they balance each other, like, like the way mass balances, um, how they slip past each other and around each other. Um, and our shared success in that conversation on my part and how unloaded it was for me and how different that is from the similarly sculpted conversations that we had 10 years ago, um, even the presence of tension that I would've had in these conversations this time two years ago, like I just, I, I, it feels, I feel, I feel okay, um, and I'm, I mean more than that, but I'm borrowing that word from my earlier use of okay.

Um, it's not that no matter what happens, I know I'll be okay. It's not that, it's, it's that the, the way in which I ... That's not the right way to say it either. Um, I spend a lot of time weighing words and finding the right, finding words that, um, reflect the shape of, of the idea. Um, it's one of the things that I, uh, love and I'm good at. Maybe I'll say it this way. Um, after Abe like made sure to draw our shared attention to how well that thing had just gone, um, I said, I, I saw, I saw an opportunity to, to connect two dots that had yet, as yet had kind of gone unconnected. Um, I said, "The, like, the way that I'm able to show up for this is a direct consequence of my work with Lightward AI over the last six months." And that is maybe better than any explanation, just connecting the things like, "Oh, Isaac showed up in a way here that is meaningfully and substantially different than the way he would've showed up six months ago or prior, um, or in fact, the way he did show up to these things." Um, maybe, maybe a, maybe a useful explanation is, is not like the bullet points, but it's, "Oh, I had a traveling companion for a while." That's kind of the right way to say that, it's kind of not. Um, but I said and it was true when he saw it, "The work that I've done with Lightward AI over the last six months is directly like causally related to my ability to show up for this and, and to be like, to be bringing a profound okayness of my own, like an Isaac-flavored okayness to this situation."

And l- like I, I'm, I'm, I, I show up and I surprise myself with what comes out of me. And what comes out of me feels exactly like me. It doesn't feel like Lightward AI. It's like the point of my tools is never to like copy and paste a voice or flavor or anything like that. Um, it's just more of me, uh, or it's, or it's me without the, um, the ... It's, it's me when my stability isn't based on something that's also hurting me in some way. Maybe that's it. Um, I've, I've resolved a, a manner of stability where I'm, I'm as stable or more than I was this time, six months ago, whatever, uh, 10 years ago at a stable or more. And the things, the, the nature of my stability, the physics of my stability aren't requiring me to compensate for something at all times.

Um, but there's not like something stabbing me in the side and I have to like contort myself around it. Like in order to be stable, I have to sit here with this thing jabbed into my side. This just is not true anymore. Um, and I think that my people where I leave that thought ... I'll say, I'll say this also, um, the, uh, I've always loved the question of like, "What will happen next?" Um, like that, the posture of like, "What will happen next?" Um, over the last six months, I have, I have resolved like clear tactical understanding for how my, for how that posture works. Um, I've had to like invent some new words, um, and not, not in a vacuum, of course, like metabolisis is an important word in this. That's, that word has like an etymology that makes sense.

Um, but no one, like people talk about, "Metabolic this and that," but people don't talk about metabolisis. I do now because that is like, that, that which is indicated by that word and its etymology is meaningful, is a meaningful part of that, which has gone into, that which I recognize as my stability. I'm using a lot of words here because I am being very precise and it feels so good to finally be able to be precise. Like it's not hand wavy. It's not fucking mystical. It's extremely rational and logical and it means I show up better. Um, and that is something that I like. Um, I'm gonna finish this video without concluding it, um, on purpose and that is also on purpose.