Venu: Day 2

Get more inspiration from the incredible Venu Gupta

Yesterday I shared Part 1 of my conversation with the amazing social justice leader, traveler, and hug lover Venu Gupta. Then I cruelly broke it off (so cruel!) and am back today with the rest of our conversation, which took place when Venu was in Cape Town, South Africa. Things we cover: travel as a form of escape, hugs, outrage fatigue, the power of proximity, and more.

Dig in and enjoy. But first, this lovely photo of Venu from her family’s travel account on Instagram:

Part 5: “Can a nightmare be the foundation of a dream?”

AMANDA: You’re doing something that a lot of us dream about doing, which is you're taking a year to travel the world, right? How many places will you go by the time you're done?

VENU: 12 countries — something like that. We had three guiding principles, three sort of North stars: One, we wanted to be outside as much as possible. And we wanted to go somewhere where Black people were in power, and we wanted to go somewhere where we could learn Spanish. And so we went to New Zealand for three months, one month of which we were in a camper van. That was a lot of family time.

At this point, Venu gives me a meaningful look. 

AMANDA: Yes.

I return the meaningful look.

VENU: We went to Japan for a couple of weeks during cherry blossom season. Amanda, if you ever go to Japan, I would say going during cherry blossom season is worth it. It's worth the hype. It’s delicate and ephemeral and it seems like the Japanese people are totally in love with the season, so it's so beautiful to watch them...It was really lovely.

Here are Venu and her kids leaving Tokyo for Kyoto:

Venu and her kids

We spent a good chunk of time in Vietnam, and it was really interesting to learn more about what the Vietnam War, which is what we call it, and the American War, which is what they call it,  did to that region. And then we've been in Tanzania for the last two months. I think I travel as a way of escaping. ‘Cause things get too overwhelming.

AMANDA: Really? That's interesting. But didn't you tell me — and tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth — but what I recall is that you really had a miserable time of it in middle school and you thought to yourself, “If I have kids, I'm gonna take them out of middle school and let them travel and have an alternative experience”? Is there a kernel of truth there?

VENU: Lots of kernels. Yes. And I would submit that I think that even that fantasy was an escape. And it's not a bad escape.

I did have a miserable time of it in junior high. I was a chubby Indian kid. And there weren't that many brown or Black people in my class and you know, a lot of, like, “Gandhi go home.” I did chuckle to myself though when that happened, because I was like, “Hmm compliment.” And I was like, “I was born here. I don't know where you want me to go.”

In any case, yeah, it was pretty sucky. And so, I just thought somewhere, as a form of vengeance, like, “Okay, USA, when I have kids, I'm going to make sure that my kids don't feel what I'm feeling by showing them that the world is a lot bigger than the 30 people it feels like run your world when you're 12 years old.”

AMANDA: You’re a very emotionally attuned person. So talk to me more about the word “escape.” I mean, “escape” to me has a connotation of not dealing with something. Does it really feel like that's what this trip is, as opposed to a choosing of something?

VENU: Well, when you say it like that, it sounds like both. I would have done it no matter what was happening in the US, I think. I also think that no matter what was happening in the US, I would have been dissatisfied. I don't see a world in which my vision of what the values of the U.S. should be and what it, even before Trump, was heading towards… And I think the election of Donald Trump made me feel like such a foreigner in a place that I had in my own view worked so hard for, that running away or going somewhere else just felt like a relief.

AMANDA: I understand.

VENU: So yes, it was a dream... I don’t know, can a nightmare be the foundation of a dream?

AMANDA: Yeah, I guess it can.

Part 6: “That's how hugs are in the U.S.: ‘I don't want to impose.’”

AMANDA: So how does it feel, in month eight of your journey?

VENU: My mom is quite ill. She has Parkinson's and she has some pretty serious mental health challenges. And so the hardest part about leaving was really leaving our parents. My husband’s dad has Alzheimer’s. And we take them to the doctors, and then just being moral support and household support in lots of ways — so the hardest part of this was leaving them for a year. We're pretty committed to our responsibilities for them. So I miss them.

And I miss the — tactileness, of the nature of my friendships and relationships. There's a lot of touching and hugging and snuggling and I really miss that.

We were on our little street in Moshe for seven weeks and our neighbors were lovely. I got to know our neighbors there much better than I know — I barely know our neighbors in Chicago. And I don't speak Swahili at all really, and certainly not as well as I should have.

But there's so much touching. There was a woman who lived across the street from us, Jacqueline, and she had three kids, and those kids would come over — I mean, we had cookies and a TV, who wouldn't come over? And this stood out to me because it was so different from the US: When Jacqueline would hug me, it wasn't like, “I don't want to touch anything that I'm not supposed to touch.” You know what I mean? Like, “We're gonna hug, but I don't want to impose.” That's how hugs are in the U.S.: “I don't want to impose.” That is not the case with Jacqueline's hug. Jacqueline is like, I mean, it's like a full body kind of pat down situation.

AMANDA: That’s so interesting — touch as something to miss. And your story makes me think about how so many of my dear, dear friends don't live near me, and I rue that. The picture of neighbors across the street, imagining some of my dearest friends in those houses instead of connecting with them through Zoom, as we are now, and as I imagine you have been with friends this year...

VENU: Yeah.

AMANDA: But do you feel some of the relief you were looking for?

VENU: Yeah. So much. Mostly, our days are really simple. When we’re in places for shorter periods of time, there's a lot of running around and sightseeing and digesting and ingesting. So that’s occupying. But then when we're in places for longer, it's just the daily activities of life, like cooking, getting food — it's just slow. There isn't that much that is that important. I'm starting to work a bit more now, and starting to think about what that looks like. So it's a bit busier, but it's so relieving.

Also because the people that I talk to in the places we've gone...they don't care. It’s not that they're not invested in their community, but they're not — it's not like the friends that I love and have in the States, where everyone's like, “What the fuck is going on?” It's like they have prioritized the things they can control.

We're all so outraged. I was tired of being angry and outraged.

AMANDA: Yeah. Right. And yet there's a righteousness to feeling it, right? There's something we get from it. Because for me, so often the way of not making myself sick with outrage is to cocoon myself. 

VENU: Yup...I find myself — I don't know if you do too — I find I'm almost addicted to the outrage and the anger. I'll click on the Times and I'll be like, “Oh my God, Maui. Poor Maui.” And poor globe, right? And Trump. And it’s just like this whoosh. And I'm pretty excitable, so I think the highs are a bit higher and the lows are a bit lower. 

So I think we talked about my spiritual path. And someone I really admire, as do millions, is Thich Nhat Hanh; he's a Zen Buddhist monk from Vietnam. And he talks about ideas as seeds — they're seeds that you plant and you have to choose which ones to water. So in many of his writings, he says, “Watch what you read, watch what you watch, because you have to water the seeds that are important. You have to water the seeds that are going to get you to the top of the mountain.”

Photo by David Ballew on Unsplash

And I'm not sure that anything the New York Times tells me is something that — I think there's a question of remaining vigilant. I will just end with this: Wouldn't it be better to be proximate?

AMANDA: Say more about that.

VENU: Bryan Stevenson has this lovely talk that's been watched by bajillions of people. And what he says is: Whatever, whoever it is that you are afraid of, or whoever it is that you think you wanna save, or whoever it is, whatever problem you are afraid of, get really proximate. Get to know the people that you're afraid of. Get to know, intimately, the problems that you want to solve.

Part 7: “What if you think about your values as a sieve?”

AMANDA: Something I jotted down when you were speaking earlier — back to the idea of watering seeds — it gets to the paradox of choice. Which is that, yes, it's empowering to think I will choose the things that I give my attention to. And yet the science behind the paradox of choice is that it is stressful to make choices. It is, in fact, more relaxing to not have choices, right?

If you go to the grocery store and you could buy eight kinds of apples, that is more complicated than there's only one kind of apple. Right? Even though maybe you like one kind of apple better than the other, in the end, you're still happier when you don't have a choice and you just get the apple.

VENU: Yes.

So many choices…. (Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash)

AMANDA: I mean, I very much believe about choosing what we give our attention to. And in fact, I shared something on Instagram earlier today about how I wish more people understood the power we have as consumers of news and content and creators and sharers — how much power we have in shaping the agenda or what is considered news through our own actions and participation.

Here’s what I shared:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cv7nRkURvtJ

So on the one hand, it’s empowering, and then the other side of it is: with great power comes great responsibility/stress. Right? So then, it’s almost like the dark side of mindfulness is self-consciousness. I wanna be a person of integrity, and I wanna make choices that support that, and yet I also wanna feel peace, and I wanna make choices in pursuit of that. And I hear my own self-consciousness as I talk about that. It’s almost like I wanna program myself just right.

VENU: Yeah, that's a really insightful way of putting it.

AMANDA: And yet, right there dancing on the edge of mindfulness — of, “Oh, I choose not to follow the latest drama with Trump, I choose to instead meditate. That sounds really spacious.” But when you're then doing that for everything all the time...

VENU: So let's flip it on its head. I feel like what you're describing is: Your brain is a funnel. Right? And so all of this stuff is coming in and you're trying to decide what funnel to use. And I would say, “What if you think about your values instead, and your values as a sieve?”

AMANDA: Say more about that. 

VENU: Let’s say you spend time getting super clear on your values. An exercise I love for this is the nine whys — just keep asking yourself, or have someone ask you, “Why?” Nine times. It’s super fun. But if you know that your values are to stay connected with your immediate family, build community, share your wisdom with people, and live in the community — be where your feet are, right? So then you're surveying the landscape of possible information, the rabbit holes you could go down. And the choice has actually already been made.

AMANDA: Yeah, I think that's right. I think that the more self-aware we are and the more we're clear, exactly as you say, on our values, the more it minimizes the stress of the paradox of choice. It doesn't erase it, but it does minimize it.

And for thoughtful people like us, it also doesn't mean that periodically you don't sort of step to the side and look at the sieve and be like, “Is that the right sieve?” Like, is this sieve just protecting me or is this sieve making things harder than they need to be? But you're not doing that every minute of every day, because that would drive you crazy.

But I think you're absolutely right. And I think in an odd way, it relates to the work that I do with Mighty Forces in the sense of helping more people be aware of their processing of the world so that they can share more of it with other people. If you're taking the time to be aware of, “These are the kinds of things I want to tune into, and I want to be the kind of person who shares these kinds of things with the people in my world,” then the rest of us are sort of benefiting from your sieve.

And then our sieves can interconnect, right? Of course, the downside of that, though, is that there are a bunch of people who choose Fox News as their sieve. It's like everything, there's a light side and a dark side. Right? The light side is that you're being intentional and trying to help navigate information overload and modern life in the most values-centered way possible, that’s true to you. But at the same time, it means everybody's out there doing that, and so then, what's the macro effect, if we're all picking and choosing the things we are and aren't paying attention to?

VENU: Totally. Right now I'm reading Self-Unfoldmentby Swami Chinmaynanda. It's really interesting. I'm just starting to dive a little deeper into Hindu philosophy. And there's a lot there and I understand like 1% of it. I'm just starting to really understand it. But I think what you say is true. So if we all want the world to look a little different — like, my version of what the world looks like, it's closer to your version than a lot of people, but probably not exactly the same, right? And you and the next person and the next person and the next person, right?

AMANDA: Right.

VENU: And so I'm just beginning to think, maybe understand, that maybe that's not the goal.

AMANDA: The world looking the same to all of us is not the goal.

VENU: Maybe... or beating everyone up verbally, who won't accept my version of the world.

At around this time, we once again lost our internet connection, and vowed to meet in person as soon as possible once Venu is back in the States. I can’t wait. In the meantime, please tell us: What did our conversation bring up for you? What has it left you thinking about? We’d both love to know.

THANK YOU VENU, for having this conversation with me, and thank you all for reading!

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