Shownotes
Relationships often descend into pointless bickering.
The hill you'll die on is a way to clarify what's worth fighting for and what is a pointless argument.
Transcript
Welcome to honest talk about heartbreak, dating and relationships, relationships, the podcast helping you navigate your path to happy ever after with your host, Rob McPhillips. Tonight, we're talking about the Hill you'll die on, and that probably sounds a little bit. It's not very descriptive. Thing, but really what it's about is. What? What are you really willing to fight about and what is a meaningless fight for you? So the saw her look at where did it where did it come from the Hill that you will die on?
And it seems to be seems to have come from 1969, in 1969 in the Vietnam War, it was a battle for a hill and. The Americans lost, they say, six hundred and thirty Marines or. What more infantry and Viet Nam say fifteen hundred. And essentially, they were fighting for a hill that had no strategic value. That had no real benefit, and they gave up on it when it got when it became hard to. To win, so it was Edward Kennedy who is a senator then who named the Hamburger Hill because basically the infantry men who were killed were basically treated like mincemeat.
And so the hill that dying is represents. Like, if you have to if you have to, like in the military, having a hill is an advantage because it's hard to fight. And so to win, to win a hill means that it has to be something worth conquering. Now in relationships. All the fights that you're going to have were fighting for. Or are they just something you've got in the pattern of squabbling about, are they mean meaningless battles?
And then. In life, there's really. Fights that. The gain is not worth fighting. But there has to be something. That powers your life, something that's important to you. Because if you don't have the hill that you're willing to die on. Then. You don't really have something that gives you is going to give you a source of passion and enthusiasm. So the idea of the Hill that you go down is about having some sense of purpose and it's also having some sense of identity about what your life's about.
So these are the things that become our North Star. So. First, though, I'm curious because you were talking about what you are passionate about when you were young. So does anyone want to share what they want you to be because I didn't hear anyone else's. OK, and I got my sherry, so we were talking about so I really do need to also with job rules actually, but when I was really young, I liked I had the dream of traveling quite a lot.
So I wanted to see the world. And I was like because I felt like such a big world and I want to see it and get to know it. And I always felt the best way to meet other cultures and understand them. And then it kind of evolved. And I really started with journalism, but I always been passionate about animals, which is something I haven't mentioned. And I did quite a few rescues when I was back home. So that lasted until I moved to the UK and only at the age of 15 I thought of becoming a social worker.
So I wanted to do something that was meaningful and help others. So yeah, I think that was that. And so far it remains like I still want to travel loads. I still love animals and I want to work will help as much as I can. And I still work in care in the health care sector, so. I'm still doing all of those things, so. Well, I wanted to be everything that I read as I was explaining to my group, so any book that I read that was really so I went from medicine to archeology to veterinary medicine to God, he knows anything.
And of course, it was a bit of a what you call it, a toss up things that girls are supposed to do versus things that girls weren't supposed to do became part of the family thing, but that I ignored.
And so eventually I became a marine zoologist, then an aquaculture aquaculturist, growing fish. And now I do science and technology, so I've gone all the way around, so, yeah, so now I do a science and technology policy. So I look at strange and emerging technologies, robotics and A.I. and genetics and lovely, wonderful, futuristic things, which I absolutely enjoy. Good. So what's changed is the general question, what's changed from childhood to now?
Reality. A healthy dose of reality. So is it reality or. So when I was young, I wanted to be a professional footballer, you know, like lots of kids, then somewhere along the lines I realized, one, that maybe I didn't have the skill. And to do more than that, I wasn't prepared to work for. But then also the other things coming to your life, so there are competing forces that tend to moderate or modulate whatever the word is, moderate your your passions.
You know, some of your passions, because they start to compete for time and attention and also passions to. OK, um. OK. So one of the questions not to discuss now, but for later. Is the things that moderate and the things they stopped and the things that changed all by. Real. Or are there things that we put in? So. Is it really reality?
Sorry, can you repeat the things again, the things that the things that stopped us, were they really barriers? Or were they challenges that we weren't even prepared to to work enough for or we give up on our dreams because they became challenged? I think in some respects it was more of a compromise. Some things are based on compromise, but I also think that there are some things that you can't control. For example, competition in the workplace or in education, you may wish to do something a particular course, but you can't do it because the competition is so great, that's out of your control.
Well, that moderate that changes, that's the bit that's the problem I'm thinking about. Right. So the competition. Means it became it became harder, right, but someone has to win, and if it's really your passion and if you went all out and really committed to it. It depends on the stage of life that you're at, because when you're at home with your parents, the conditions that you live in, in other words, with your parents, for example, if it's a very competitive thing that you want to do and see your parents can't afford it or they can't afford extra tuition to enable you to compete, then then that's not something that you can control.
It's it's a reality which Templar's which has to temper your behavior or your your ability to realize your passion. And then you have you have more choices to make in terms of whether you really want to do it and you can afford or you make the sacrifice in terms of. You know, time and money, yeah. Thanks for that opportunity, is that as well and what you say about sacrificing sort of things to do the yeah, I want to get is, is that.
When we believe the reality more so, there are really always examples like the pursuit of happiness in that film, where Will Will Smith is now, where he finds all the odds, spaceplane, true story. And you always hear like Olympians who've had every hardship and yet they found a way and I kept going. Is it just that we start to believe reality more than the opportunity? Is it what sorry, is it that so it seems so hard to achieve and so we can rationalize that by saying, you know, it would take too much, there's too much competition is is I need to have motivation, all of those things.
But the one like the one percent or the one person that's really dedicated. I mean, when you if you think about.
Someone like I mean, I don't know his story, but Michael Spinks or someone like that who's so committed, I think Lewis Hamilton has a similar story. I think he. His father, his father worked three jobs to raise. And I'm trying to think of other people like that, but there are people that despite every you know, they should have just listened and should have given up by all rational reason, but they still found a way.
Anyway, to start off, I just want to try we'll try something different, but before you go, Rob, there is another side to that in that haven't missed out on a particular path that you really desire. You embark on. You have to embark on another journey, so to speak. I hate that word. But for what it's worth and in some instances, there are people who have found greater fulfillment than the original passion that they thought that they could not live without, because that happened to a friend of mine who in my class at high school A-levels, he failed all of his day lives that we did because he wanted to do sciences.
He wanted to be a doctor. But he was very he was very he was a very committed Christian. And even at high school, he had started preaching at church. And on the failure of the A-levels, he decided that he was going to go into the seminary to get his education and he rose to become the second highest in his denomination in the church eventually. And became a principal of the seminary that he went to. Whereas if he had chosen to send his senses, he would have been mediocre at best, probably.
Yeah, yeah, that that's really what I had not excited or waiting for in that way. But, yeah, it's really about is it sometimes is the right thing to give up and to try something else, because sometimes things that we have an interest in or a passion for are only to lead us to something else. But sometimes we give up on the thing, and I don't think there's only one thing like he's not a. It's not something that if we miss that, then we always miss the boat.
But I think the key distinction is, are we given up for practical reasons because we think it's too difficult or are we giving up because it's a real change of passion? Right. So we're just going to try something else to start with, everyone sitting comfortably. So and if you want to put the camera off for this, fine. So maybe you should just sit relaxed and. Focus on your breath so you can breathe in for inches for four.
Come out through the mouth, right? Rainfall. Outfight. Enfold. Outside. Now, imagine that your life is like a train line. Lie down on the floor. And imagine that you could float up. So you could see the whole line from beginning to end. From where you are. And imagine that you're looking where you are now. Looking down at you, that's down in the line. And you can see from where you are in certain things, so relationships, certain roles that you have to play certain ideas and beliefs and keeping your chin down.
Even you limited stock. And from where you are, just see if you can see which ones those are. And then. Look and see the ideas and the opportunities and the relationships and the roles that. Are about. That could energize you and lift you up. Which video of which could. And then when you when you've looked at that and when you're ready. Just float to the end of the line. And then look down and think about.
When your life reaches the end, what are the things that will really matter to you? What will you really care about? And then as you float back. Think about which of the things that holding you back. Will impact on that. And which of the opportunities are there things that. Could help you rise higher. Open sea, see? And then when you're ready to fly back to new. OK, if everyone's ready, I'm going to go into two breakout rooms.
And. Just to talk about. What do you think is holding you back now, what is going to matter and what opportunities are there for? Your muted we can join, you're going to we're discussing. We can break up, break record. OK, so yeah, I'm going to you're going to get a link when they when it says it's going to close. Just carry on your conversation. It's just like a one minute warning. Welcome back.
So we were talking in the breakout rooms and. All of life, how we experience it is is about the reality that we see. And the meaning that we make between that and all of that is a story. Everything that we perceive. Like the temperature, like when we see someone doing something, how we are, all of that is all of perception. Is. Factual, but we can't operate on facts, and so we have to make those facts into some kind of story.
And the story that we tell determines our experience to the story that we tell is the difference between giving up or being. Lewis Hamilton or someone who's fought for every. Obstacle, I'm thinking when I'm talking about them and come to mind, Frederick. I can't I can't remember his name, but it was a famous slave, and so basically his story was that he was born.
Illegitimate son of a slave. She'd been ripped off by the master. So he was banished to another plantation. And so he's someone that really should have had no. No chance of ever achieving anything but just through circumstance that the plantation he was on had like a Connelly, the wife of the master was quite kindly and taught him how to read. Which was actually against the rules, and so he was later he told others, and so he was banished for for doing that because they weren't allowed to read.
And. He waited years and eventually was able to find to escape, and he escaped and one day he was like this group took him in to look after him. I think in New York, and they put on talks and gatherings. And one day you stood up and talked and he just had a talent for telling stories. And so anyway, this was hardest that he became ultimately he became he one of the president's advisers and campaigned for the abolition of slavery.
I don't know if anyone knows. Historian Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass as the one you know, the one that Trump said he knew that he's a good guy to lie, wasn't it?
But such an inspiring story. And so there's and it's like Victor Frankl in man's search for meaning, talks about in the concentration camps, how some people were crying. Some people were mean, some people were happy. Some people were sad. They all depended on the story, in his words, the meaning that we might have of the circumstance.
So. Really? What's what what really matters to us is the story that we tell and there's a story that will make us miserable is a story that will lead to failure, is a story that will make us give up. There's a story that will make us better. If you look at things like the red pill theory and there's a feminist equivalent, I can't remember the name of it, but all these kind of manganaro my. And all of these are stories that people have made of reality as they see them.
Which have led them to be bitter, which has led them to be isolated and cut themselves off. And then there's other people who through every kind of hardship for every kind of. But. Everywhere where life told them that they couldn't do it. They still kept believing, they still kept trying and eventually. Found success. And so the difference is all about the stories. So. OK, so we got a small group tonight so we can either stay here and talk about stories together.