So Little is Known…
So Dave tell a little bit about yourself.
I could answer that in terms, when I was younger that would be considered black and white in clarity, when I was in school I was a student, I was on a quest or a journey to find myself. I thought I could find it in the reflection of life and character portrayal that the theatre arts offered. However, I realized very soon that the theatre became a series of masks that I would wear when I was on occasion and that I was quickly losing my self-identity. I wanted to be married, to have children and be rich at one time, I wanted to go back to believing in everything, it looked simple and easy on my mind. But now, that I am older I realized that life and the world in general would no longer let me go and do that.
So after “50 thousand tears” and being the hero for others I came to the end of my road and in the night reached the bottom. I kept dying over and over and over and couldn’t reach that breakthrough moment. My talent and thoughts in my head, there were so many directions that I could add or obtain if I put my mind to it. Yet, one would think that was a super way to go in life, being able to do almost anything but for me I was drowning. When my life brought me to the end of my second marriage by her death, I realized I couldn’t go anymore. Isolated and in my mind a lot, the open doors of my thoughts would bring doubt. Now that my life brought me to this point, I just wanted to sleep. Before I completely became undone, I began reaching out to others to help me.
I began to collect a village of people who I could ask for help when I couldn’t do it anymore. So in terms of that, New Orleans was my spot. I wish I could say doing that caused all my wounds to heal. But there were still more times of tears than the time I needed to gain the traction I needed to move out of the mud holding me down. But in the process of making the effort to live and work in New Orleans, I would imagine a place where I would have my sanity back and that was better than telling myself I was done.
When a new sweetheart came into my life it was during my birthday. I was working because I really didn’t know anything better to do to fill the time. When she came into my life I was not really looking forward to love or anything that could eventually bring me out of my depths. I was glad that she didn’t give up.
To wind this up, I eventually moved back to New Mexico when my son was old enough to go to college and my sweetheart mentioned that moving back to New Mexico would help me to get my career back on track. In many ways nothing like that ever occurred, I tried to get my old job back but I think they saw my white hair and thought I was too out of the loop or others thought I was too old.
However, when the pandemic hit I realized something, I could be the voice that brought back reason and during a world of pandemic I could speak words that everybody could understand. Words that could in fact save people, words of truth, words that help people to reject the fear of living and bring out the desire for change.
Now Albert Einstein failed at least over a thousand times in his lifetime so tell the audience about some of your failures, secondly what did you learn from them, and lastly how did you embrace your failures conquer your disappointments in order for you to become a great man shaping the future and fulfilling his destiny?
I look at my failures and a series of paper flowers that got crushed in the process of transformation into something real. Not many ideas that I had survived the transition process. But and this took a while for me to remember, my dreams and failures were just clouds that move along and that my heart was the uneven trade in the balance. And for me, going back to the place of knowing nothing at all will allow the warmth of a new dream to come out and perhaps that will be the one that survives.
Now tell me what values, morals, and principles you live by in order for you to continue to walk in character and integrity. What is it?
My God returned to me salvation, but I was still a lost voice and very much felt forgotten. I realized that personal charity and offering my voice to strengthen my community would be the direction that I needed to take. So in that way, I realized that was the direction that I could go and return to my salvation and it became my song and my hope.
The transparency of seeing life that way brought me back to some of the old feelings I had when I was younger. I wanted to go back to believing in everything and yet I had to define what that everything was. That became the new journey. I had to find the softly spoken words that I could bring my heart back into a place to singing to myself. It was then that I would sing to others the words that I was given – my portion. I realized that was enough to change and revolutionize how others would look at themselves. That people could be heroes of their own lives and leave doubt behind.
What words of wisdom did you receive when you were a kid? And from that sound advice, what had you applied from that in your life?
I would like to say I lived in a home of nurturing parents but my parents were troubled themselves. And in the process created an environment of rampant chaos, my environment became a series of events that I had to somehow overcome and find my own green-space. I was a very sick boy growing up surviving three major illnesses, I felt very much out of control at a time when I needed to feel in control of my personal living environment.
The house where my family lived when I was young, eventually changed to new living conditions and locations, and at times we lived in communes filled with strangers and that is how I first arrived in New Mexico. I came to know New Mexico, went to high school and then to college in Santa Fe. As for my brother, I am glad to say, one day we decided to stop fighting like dogs. I realized that I loved my brother very dearly and eventually, he became a very important person in my life as I got older.
The greatest lesson I had to learn when I was under that pressure for so many years was that I can create a green space, a place that I could begin to live and breathe. I am not saying I was popular, in fact I wasn’t. During the time when I was a teen, others my own age or younger felt the peacefulness I had created and wanted that for themselves. And in so doing took over and created the reasons I felt out of control all over again. Eventually, I realized that although I wanted to become a hero for them, the reality was – I was not. I couldn’t even begin to understand.
What words of wisdom would you give younger people and older people struggling in life?
I would say listen to the reason in my podcasts because those words are stronger and come from a place where I have grown – from the place of rain clouds. To open up a place for someone to talk to. To find a place to smile again. To realize some of those thoughts that were gathered along the path way of experience are really dead and no longer breathing. It’s not that we are broken and need fixing, it’s that we need places to find our own way and come back to that place of belief and that that is a good thing. It takes so much to get there.
What is one of your most proudest moments of being a father, if there are several, explain.
That my daughter, wandering along in her own life struggles, came into a place where she could find healing. She became a Doctor of Oriental Medicine and heals others and is no longer afraid of the world. That is huge.
My son, he also came from a place where he had to find his identity and find the rapture of living when so many things that a child needed had been taken away – both of his biological parents died at different times in his life and his breath was in the finding of the direction he needed to take. He learned through the dreams of others and then took his own dreams and pursued them.
If you could sum up three words that a young man could live by, trying to navigate in life, what would it be?
I have never had only three words to summarize anything. I think that is my trouble. Too many strings of memory and thoughts to really center in on only one thing. I am just glad I am finally in a place that I can will my pain away for a while and find my way – I hope that helps others to know that what I see has more to come. The future has not been written, so if I stop the pain and if I am willing to stop it from coming in again, that is pretty good.
Now John C Maxwell said it best Dreams require down payments dreams are free but the journey isn’t what does your dream means to you and how much you are willing to invest in it.
I know what he is meaning by that, but that is a little bit like saying, pay your dues and great things will happen. I have found that more of a euphemism these days. In reality we are living in a harder world than what our parents had. I could lay out the blame but that rarely helps.
The journey is not so much in the travel time it takes to make your dreams come true but in the willingness to travel the path to get to those dreams in order to perform the necessary activity to see those dreams come to life. The point in the pathway that leads you along is the struggle, we fight deep inside ourselves. Others looking from outside tell you, I have never seen you do that before and I doubt that you can ever do it. Just make the house payments and get a better job.
But they never see the struggle going on inside, the force that wants to remake your identity. So the question becomes, are you willing to feed it and have the necessary power over your life to take that step. Believe when others can’t. That is the “on and on” burning deep inside you.
With so much negative news out there why did you chose to go the positive route for your podcast.
I felt that the future could be pretty good. We just needed to find our own personal green-space to grown our imaginary life and change the paper flowers into what’s real.
Last question what legacy you want to leave behind so when people mention your name, what would they say about you.
That Dave passed through the doorway of his own unreal story and brought out what was real for him and found his happiness in the process of breathing again.