Greetings and a warm welcome back to Intersections. Our whole passion here is the dissolving of boundaries, the integration of all different dimensions and aspects of life, humanity, creation, and in doing so, we typically, make a foray in the podcast in one discipline, one domain, somebody who's coming from the world of art or science or social impact or what have you.

Today is going to be very unique and special in that regard because, the individual that I have the joy of bringing into our midst is somebody whose whole work in life is to integrate and assimilate multiple disciplines and do this kind of fusion in order to help us explore what our full potential could be individually and collectively. This is not any one domain as much as the integration of profound possibilities that exist across domains.

Our guest today is Krista Tippett. She has been a journalist. She's been a diplomat. She is a sought after public speaker, Peabody Award winning broadcaster, and a New York Times bestselling author. Among the books she's published is "Speaking of Faith", "Einstein's God: Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit", and "Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living." Krista is the creator and host of the acclaimed public radio program and podcast, I'm sure many of you are aware of and following, called On Being. It has featured many luminaries, including Desmond Tutu, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Mary Oliver among others. It facilitates a new kind of conversation, a conversation about religion and spirituality, ethics and some of the larger questions about the meaning and every aspect of life.

In 2014, President Obama, here in the United States, awarded Krista the National Humanities Award at the White House for thoughtfully delving into the mysteries of human existence.

It is a joy to have Krista with us, and so let us welcome her into our midst.

Hi, Krista. Thank you for joining us.

I want to start by just celebrating one of the quests that I see so central in your work, which you so thoughtfully articulate and live, the merging of the inner with the outer. It's a point of deep connection between us because, while I studied your work just by way of introduction for you, I grew up in India, and then I moved to the United States at the age of 21. I have often introduced myself saying, I grew up in a country where I was very blessed to experience a lot of inner beauty. But from the outside, at times it was a little bit of a mess. And I come to the United States and I see razzle dazzle. I see a lot of outer beauty. And then over time, I discover that from the inside, it can be a little bit of a mess. In some ways, my passion, my hunger over the years has been how to integrate these two. How can we preserve and protect and advance outer beauty, but do it from a place of inner beauty so that the outer becomes a natural, organic, sort of an expression of the inner.

You talk about that and unpack that and encourage people to go in that direction in such beautiful and articulate ways. Thank you for that. Can you speak a little bit as to at what stage in your journey did you recognize the centrality of both of these tracks in life? And then at what stage did it emerge to you that these don't have to be like two separate pursuits, so you don't have to choose one over the other, but that they ultimately should merge into the one same thing?

There's a lot that you've just shared, which has some very translatable insights for our audience. I just want to respond to that before we move forward. There is this awareness that you share of, on the one hand, being in a place that materially seems to be very accomplished, very much at the top of one's game. This is just the kind of dream that people are trained to and want to pursue in college and in modern life. And yet, you were listening to some form of subtle stirrings that were arising from within. I like to call it that, we learn from experience, but there's outer experience, but also there's inner experience. We put a lot of emphasis on outer experience, but we don't really pay homage to some of these more intangible, at times just kind of pulls and intuitive sort of pushes and things that we experience from within. And you were honoring them. Then, some form of place and practice of quietude allowed you to listen to that voice away from the din of outer demands and pulls. I think that is really powerful in what you're saying, a recognition that we don't have to be in a sense shaped by the priorities and values of our peer group on the outside in case we feel a different kind of stirring from the inside.

On that front, you're kind of achieving it all. But then yet you're feeling like, if this is a game I keep playing, this is where I will end up just like them. I like to say that people are like "living museums." Each of them is showing you that if this is the life you live, then this is where you will be and this is where you'll end up. So each person is a lesson for us to learn, and you are learning those lessons from studying and interacting with those people, and then you start to make some bold moves. What an instructive set of pieces that any or all of us who are still questing for that can take from your story.

Thank you for sharing that. What year were you in Yale Divinity School?

Okay. We have a few crosscurrents. I was at Yale 1988 to 1989. I just finished college and had come over for graduate school. I was at SoM, the School of Management. All I remember is, it was a beautiful campus. And of course, I remember a lot of things academically. I'm trying to remember what things I remember socially since we were in different academic disciplines. There was Naples Pizza.

Thank you. That's so beautifully put. It sparks a topic that I want to raise with you, which I was going to do later, but I think, why not do it now since we are at that stage of your life path where we're talking about higher education and the universities. And I realize we've skipped over the college part, but let's include college also into this frame.

Krista, you've spoken about the power of ritual and virtue. For example, you've said and I quote you, "There are pieces of intelligence about human behavior that neuroscience is now exploring with new words and images. What we practice, we become. What's true of playing the piano or throwing a ball also holds for our capacity to move through the world mindlessly and destructively or generously and gracefully. I've come to think of virtues and rituals as spiritual technologies for being our best selves in flesh and blood, time and space." So beautiful!

I'm thinking that, societally, when we think about all the shifts and challenges and changes that are going on, what a missed opportunity. When you think about this temple of education, which is higher education, here are these kids who are coming of age and they are now pulling away from the family, so they can actually be themselves. They can pull away a little bit from family influence, and yet, they're not getting too distracted and embroiled and burdened by the demands of needing to earn money and raise a family of their own, and quest for success in the material world and all of that. This period in their life is sacred and beautiful and laden with possibilities, right? Like from the age of 18 to 22. But perhaps when they come back to graduate school as well, there's another moment of escape from the world to prepare themselves. And with what's unfolded, for example, on college campuses recently with the Israel-Palestine conflict in the world that has caused its own turmoil on campuses, as one of several examples. There's also an increasing awareness that there is a strong focus on just preparing yourself for a career as though that's what education was meant to be. A career factory. You cannot think there've been some op eds and some reflections on that, that have come across elsewhere recently. Over the last few years, it has made me as somebody who's involved with academia at some level, I used to be a full time professor of practice at Columbia. Over time, now being an adjunct as I work more in my institute with a strong draw towards education, towards the development of the human capacities in us, I'm feeling just an increasing sense of mission that we got to do something to open up and invite society to take a fresh new look at what was at the root of the university system, both in the East in what I saw in India as well as in the West, with the Greeks and others who founded this civic virtue character, self-discovery, coming out as better human beings in who you are, preparing for a world which was perhaps, going to be complex and challenging.

Isn't this a perfect time when you have all these years and this energy and this raw material that can be molded for us to actually aspire to have universities stand for something, come from a place of certain shared values, create certain experiences that can help get people to embody, not just intellectualize a good life and all of that. Anyway, thoughts from you on that.

I think that in the past, there was, to an extent, colonialism, imperialism, a view that certain communities and races and regions of the world were in some ways superior to others, maybe closer to God or something. They had the right values, and that's where they were perhaps materially otherwise stronger. We have grown in some valuable and important ways in respecting, appreciating, honoring the diversity of communities, values and lived histories, etc. in the world today, and so we moved away from that imperialism and colonial view to more of a relativism view. Then in the relativist view, basically everyone kind of decides and chooses their own values, and we should have respect and appreciation for each tradition, culture and community as though everything is perfect. If I stand for a certain identity, I'm meant to be a votary for that identity and everything about that identity is great. And you better not be critical of anything about it. So we're living in that kind of space where we're all walking on eggshells, really sensitive about critiquing anything. None of us has the right to propose anything as being of universal import, in terms of values, because then it suggests that I'm imposing my view on you. But what that is doing is it's getting us to live in a very constrictive space where we are actually banishing more truth than we are embracing because yes, it is true that, on the one hand, have gained something beautiful in embracing, acknowledging, appreciating, honoring all these various traditions, but we've also lost something in not having something to ground us.

And so, I wonder if there is an evolution from imperialism to relativism to universalism, and what would that universalism be? And could universalism be something which allows us to be very united at the core, but very individually expressive on the outside? Is there a model in nature, and I think there is, right? And you also are on that search and the quest and talk about it. I think that's a missed opportunity right now for universities that they're not opening themselves up to.

Now, let me test and connect this with spirituality. Again, it's kind of like a taboo topic in the mainstream classroom. You can talk about it in the School of Divinity or maybe have one class in the core curriculum, but in a mathematics class, in an engineering class, in a business school class, or in law, you don't talk about spirituality, right? The thesis that I want to propose is that, is it possible that individuals today are advancing and changing much faster than institutions are? So when you were talking about the student at Princeton etc. What I'm noticing is that the America that I came to, which, by the way, is quite different from the India that I left behind. The India I left behind was a place where they were seeking to basically be all embracing by honoring, respecting and celebrating every tradition and every faith, and saying, "You got that prophet. Let me borrow some of the qualities of that prophet. In fact, let me take an image of that prophet and put them on my altar, because I love that dimension of the infinite, ineffable spirit that I'm now seeing through your prophet. So let me add that." That was the India I came from. I come here and we have this divide between the secular and religious. We recognize the religious to be these 13 different religions, right? Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, etc.. And the idea is that, that's a very divided world. And so those of us who are more educated on the secular side, more modern, we would just shut that part out from our lives.

What I'm noticing today is that it's a very different kind of world, but we haven't acknowledged it in our institutional spaces, and that is that there is a whole community of people who are very spiritual and these people are getting very warmed up, drawn and inspired by these kinds of quests, ideas and questions. Some of them are on the secular side, i.e. they don't necessarily have a single church or denomination or scripture, but they're drawn to these questions. Then there's some of them on the religious side, who, while they may be deeply affiliated with a congregation, when they're in the congregation, they're celebrating and appreciating the community and the scripture and the teaching and the grounding and all of that. But they're also, if any of the preachers there is telling them that we are the chosen ones and that our path and our prophet is, in fact, the only way to get to a good afterlife, they're listening to it from one ear and they're taking it out from the other, because they have friends, who they love, who are from the other faiths, and they have members of their own family who are marrying into those other faiths, etc.. And so, that's what I'm noticing when I'm interacting with people, my students and others, I'm finding that actually, if you're courageous enough, even in these environments, in business school, law schools, to gently, carefully, thoughtfully offer some kind of universal invitation in a way that honors in Mother Teresa's language, the idea that I love all faiths. But I'm in love with my faith. There is such a beautiful commingling of spirits that comes from that. And that's the missed opportunity that actually there's a large number of people who are in the spiritual bucket now. What can we do to create spaces for that?

I'll close it out with just one last thought and turn it to you for reactions and thoughts, which is that, Krista, I think you have been one of the key catalysts of that. I want to thank you. There's, of course, an ocean of humanity out there, and many are playing their own roles. But for having recognized that quite early, for having put it out there for crossing all kinds of social, religious and political divides in the world, to create a space and a place for this quest in humanity to be honored, I'm just so grateful because I'm entering into this in recent years and finding a much more receptive space for this part of the traditions, people like.

You were very invested in inviting people into their soul. I want to test that out with you as well as another of those possible universals. I started to discover that in my teaching and work at Columbia, where I had this class on personal leadership, the idea that before you are invited to lead others, you are being invited to lead yourself, inspire yourself and change yourself and evolve yourself, etc. I had these 5 energies, partly inspired by mind, heart, body, spirit, partly by the yoga traditions of India, what they call Karma yoga, Bhakti yoga and Jnana yoga and Raja yoga. Purpose, wisdom, love and self-realization. And then I added a fifth called growth. Then a few students would come up to me, 2 or 3 years into it and say, "Sir, you are really helping me get in touch with my core." That's interesting. I know you're really drawn to the fusion of mysticism and science. So, one of these mathematicians who came out of India who was really a mystique, but with the vocation of a mathematician, Ramanujan, in the 20th century. Are you familiar with him?

A beautiful soul. By the way, he would wake up in the middle of the night and write down these intricate equations, which sometimes have taken years for people to figure out what they were, prove them and validate them. But he would say, "The divine just came to me and has given them to me. So I have to write them right now." That was his creative craft. But anyway, he once said, "To me, the number 1 represents the essential unity of spirit. And the number infinity represents the infinite outer manifestations of spirit."

So, this notion of the core, I was like, "Wow! Maybe at the very core of my 5 energies, I can start talking about the soul, but I can start talking about it through the language of the core, since that might be something this modern generation might be more receptive to." And so I started to do that. And it's been a beautiful journey actually, over the last 10 years.

I'll tell you what I mean by that. Today, I can go into almost any bank or pharmaceutical company, private equity or something, and I can just say that within each of you is a core, and that core is a place beyond ego and attachments and insecurities. And when you are there, you're doing your most noble work. You're on a hero's journey and you feel very connected with life and with the world and all of that, and you drift into it and you drift out of it, so you're not always there. And then I say, "There's nobody who has come to me ever, and said, Hitendra, I don't have a core." Or, "Hitendra, I'm always at my core." Nobody says that.

You said, spirituality can sometimes be a little bit vague, exactly what is it? But maybe there's a way, just like Martin Luther King took the idea of nonviolent civil disobedience, and he codified it into 6 very precise principles. Maybe there's a way for us to play on this and come up with very precise, appealing principles that everybody intuitively recognizes to be, "Yeah, that's me."

I love that. It's something I've definitely been learning. Abraham Lincoln is an example of somebody like that I've just found so inspiring. On the one hand, quite a mature inner state. But then, he was thrust into a certain period in human history, a certain level of human consciousness around him, which was evolving and growing, but still was coming from a much more basic place than where it is today. And of course, we still have to grow a lot. But the mindfulness and care with which he crafted every word and made the choices of when he should strike which node, in terms of his talks and speeches and when he should keep quiet and all of that. The Gettysburg Address, the first inaugural, second inaugural and so much more storytelling as his tool and craft and all of that. The great pause, where he didn't actually give any speeches for over a year because the country was so emotionally charged etc. It definitely was a very humbling thing through that to realize. Even Mandela, even in prison, learning the Afrikaner language, learning their history so that he would be better prepared to empathize and connect and then gradually inspire them to feel reassured that he's not the enemy. So I agree with you. It's a very spiritual thing.

There's another thing that I just want to quickly test with you. You talk about politics and the grand arena of the world in which American power in that moment in Europe, where you were seeing it be practiced and expressed in certain ways and all of that. One of the things that pained me, in times past is, I'm obviously deeply invested in America. I love this nation. It embraced me at a certain critical formative hour in my life. Gave me a scholarship, invited me here to a world of possibilities and has just been a beautiful extension of my family. And yet, on the other hand, when I hear things like, for example, this is what is in America's interest, our foreign policy is based on what's in America's interest. What's jarring to me about that is that, in a sense, like the mystic and spiritual inner of what I drew from India was something which suggested that nothing can be in the interest of the microcosm, which is not in the interest of the macrocosm. Everything is connected with everything else. And so, if we actually have zero sum games where we are doing something in the interest of our own selves in a way that is actually deleterious to others, that means we haven't searched hard enough for the right solution yet, because that solution can't be sustainable and it is somewhat a little bit self-serving and selfish, right? So this notion of integrativeness and connectedness and also almost solutions arising not just from the intellect, but from first getting into a state of being and then somehow, you get these eureka moments, these insights which are much larger than the two dimensions in which you've been operating so far. And then, of course, you still have to think about how to translate that into practical action and communicate that to a flatland where people around you are still living in the two dimensions. So there's a lot of that thinking to be done. But that's when I see the real breakthrough thinkers in any discipline are able to do, access another dimension almost in answering those moral questions.

I'm drawn to moving us from the conversation about what's happening in the world to, perhaps relatedly, a lesson that we can take from you. Over the years, you have developed a capacity to be of tremendous import to truth seekers who are trying to wrestle with these hard questions. You talked about how a nation that continues to see itself as just great without also recognizing that along the way, it's a work in progress, and it needs to evolve, grow and learn, and greatness is not an entitlement, right? If we apply that at the individual level, I can sense and see that you see your own life as a work in progress, there's more layers of the painting that have been gradually sort of emerging over the years. Can you share how you go from the spark of a certain new thought, idea, a concern about the world, something that you would like to be able to have some clarity or conviction on to be able to lend your voice on and then all the way to the other side, where it's flowing very naturally from you, it's something you're very comfortable putting in print, and or in conversations like this that you have in a broader public arena, knowing that carries a lot of import. Your words there and your ideas there are things that at some level you're holding yourself accountable for. And yet, there is the moment where it's just a question or it's just a suspicion or an idea, are there periods of silence that you engage in to get those ideas to get clarified? Are there mental tests that you take your ideas through? Is there journaling or writing that you do? Are there any trusted set of advisors, guides or muses that you have conversations with or, small little places like Chris Rock, in the comedy world, he has a club in New Jersey, apparently, where he goes and tests out his new humor. I share that sometimes with students this notion that even some of our leadership and communication skills can be at times just quietly tested before we put them out there.

So anyway, there are so many ideas you put out there, which are very inspiring for the world. I'm curious if you could share one example of how that journey has made for you?

Yeah. It's beautiful. I love the central role you're giving mystery to the portal through which we get a chance to live out a full potential. I mean, if you don't have a sense of mystery, and if you think of everything in very definitive terms about what life is. It reminds me of another pathway beyond physics and poetry, for example, that I've stumbled into in my podcast. I'm not sure if you had him actually on yours. If not, then I'm sure he'd be just a wonderful guest for you to have, Craig Foster. He made this Oscar winning documentary, "My Octopus Teacher."

His thesis is that we get exposed to so much nature. Instead of just wanting to try to get even more experiences, more mountains and oceans and things, if we just took a little piece of nature and just kept going back to it, to your point about listening, you just start opening your eyes and ears to more of the mystery of nature that is present there than you may have passed by it a hundred times, but not paid attention to kind of thing. That's what happened to him when he did this deep sea diving. He just did this one small little zone, and he kept going back there and over time befriended this octopus and everything. It's almost like Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel-like moments where you have the fins of this dolphin touching the hand of this human being. It's so beautiful!

I want to take for our audience, an exhortation from what you're saying that regardless of what discipline you're in. Some of us could be folks in private equity, in law, in medicine or what have you, not to feel like if they have some of the stirring, they need to sort of become Krista, in terms of like taking a big, bold move of the kind you did to in that very resilient, tenacious way, keep fighting for like a possibility to get your radio show out because you really believe that was the cause. But I think part of what you've discovered is that these capacities can be manifested in any or all professions and moments in life, isn't it? And so if it is in fact the right thing for somebody to pivot and pull back and do something fresh and new, that's wonderful. But there is this other invitation also in your work, isn't it, of just honoring, beautifying and engaging in the mystery of wherever you are, wherever nature puts you?

Are you familiar with Paul Hawken?

Yeah. Because, what you're saying just reminds me of what I learned from him. I had him on my podcast as well. Like you're saying, he is just such a beautiful soul!

I felt that in what you're saying, it resonates with a large number of people, but there are some who are still skeptics about environmental change and all of that. Then I think for them, the language he uses can hopefully cast a wider net to bring them into the movement. He talks about regenerative versus extractive. How nature is regenerative. It's always not just extracting but it's also giving back. Then there's a cycle that gets formed and all of that. And yet, our way of living in modern lives is more extractive. What I loved about the insight from that is that it's not just necessarily extractive in the way our relationship with the planet is being formed today with big business etc., and how much recycling and things like that, but also then that whole extractive mindset gets to intrude into our family life, our relationships, even our relationship with our own body; we're wanting to extract pleasure and joy but not give back health and rejuvenation. In relationships. you wrote about it in your very beautiful, thoughtful live commentary about your marriage and then and where things went from there and you talked about how you reflected on it and realized that you were wanting to find love because you wanted to be loved. So, there's that extractive sense, which is, by the way, something I've gone through as well in my early 20s and had a real struggle in a relationship and heartbreak and all of that. Then when I came out of that, I asked the infinite, divine mother of mine, what happened? Then, I got this whisper that, "Listen, if you're looking for intimacy and connection and understanding and all of that, that's me, that's your relationship with me. I'm speaking to you through every loving and nurturing voice and looking at you through the eyes of everyone who comes. If you can open yourself up to a slightly impersonal but not possessive, but still sort of a very loving connective tissue with the world, and suddenly you get into a whole different space." Of course, it's a journey. None of us make it overnight, but at least it's a model, and it's a quest. It's a North star for us to be going.

Krista, we have precious time, it is my prayer and hope that we can come together and perhaps do a part 2 of this at some point in the foreseeable future. Much as you have so many important things to pour your energies into in the times ahead. But can I maybe invite your children into the space and ask you in the joy, the magic and adventure of raising children, what's been your biggest growth? Your biggest lesson and what have you learned from your children and from raising them?

I like to do thought experiments. As you're saying that, the thought experiment coming to my mind is, imagine if you're, like, a gardener. Imagine if there's some new species from some exotic land that has fallen in your hands, some seeds or something, and now you're just tending to that. You're watering and you gradually see it come up, but you have no capacity for preconception that, "Oh, it's going to be like that rose here, or it's going to be like the daffodil there," because you just don't know what it's going to be. That's the impression I'm getting from what you're saying that you're appreciating and experiencing, in every season, it's showing some new color, some new expression. How beautiful!

As we start to close out, I want to refer to a recent newsletter of yours, and you wrote about how you'll be turning 64 in a few weeks at that time, and you talked about how it's crystallizing in your mind and moral imagination that this is what you're here for. Then you state, "The nourishing of those who insist on pursuing the highest qualities of being human and on being of service to healing and transformation on a long horizon of time." I find that last phrase to be very powerful and worthy of double clicking on.

You mentioned John Paul Lederach, you mentioned him as your teacher and companion in this journey. You say how he said to you that the task in working for, for long term evolution, this is also the way it works in the natural world is to attend, not to what has arrived, but what is being stitched.

Can you talk a little bit about this thinking that is emerging in you about having you, me, all of us be really looking at that long arc, seeing ourselves perhaps as some kind of link in some chain, and not feel like we can only take on projects and do things which have tangible closure and outcomes within X months or years? Anyway, thoughts?

I love it. We were as a family in Botswana safari several years ago and it was beautiful. We were looking for all the amazing animals and things and passing by these little mounds. At some point I paused, pointed to our guide and said, now tell me about this mound here. He said, "Oh, I was wondering if you'd ask." It's a termite hill. Then I said, "Okay, tell us about the termite hill." And he did, and it was mind blowing, to your point about nature and mimicry, to discover the tremendous capacities of these termites, for whom it takes about 60, 70 years for them to build these mounds, which are the tallest, natural life built entities from a living species out there besides trees. Each termite has a lifespan of less than 12 months, so it's about 60 or 70 generations that it's going to take to actually build that thing with all its intricate tunnels and air conditioning and specialization of soldier termites versus construction worker termites, it just blows your mind to understand the selflessness, organization, genius, multi-generational capacity to sacrifice. Anyway, it is just reminding me of your point about mimicry in nature and what we can learn from that.

As we get to closure, I have a question for you. I want to invite you to have the last word. So I'm going to sign off by just offering a short little story to you and then invite you to share your response to my question. The question I have for you is, with all the beauty and grace with which you pursued so many life changing things not just for yourself, but for so many of your listeners and others in decades past with where you are today, what are you most looking forward to in the decade ahead of your life? What are you most looking forward to? And as you think about what you may share on that, let me then sign off by just sharing this. You mentioned Einstein. I don't know if you know this little moment where once he wrote to Gandhi because he'd been watching some newsreels of Gandhi, and he said, "Mr. Gandhi, I noticed you're folding your hands like that in what I assume is a form of Indian greeting. So can you explain what that is? What is the significance of that form of greeting?" Gandhi described it to him in the following way. That's in a sense my greeting to you as we bring this to closure. He said, "Namaste means, I honor that space within you where the entire universe resides, that space where there's only wisdom, love, peace and joy." I honor the space within you, where when you are in that space and when I'm in that space, then there is only one of us.

So thank you. Such a joy. Keep doing all this beautiful work. I am hopeful that some incredible, tangible additional gains will accrue to society in the months and years ahead as we disassemble and reassemble the world order in our own lifespan, our own lifespan. And yet, I know that you will leave footprints in the sand of time, which over centuries and generations ahead will matter a lot to the future.

That's so beautiful. You're right. We didn't do 'joy' much justice in our conversation so far. So I'm glad we are culminating with that. I've been studying Mother Teresa among other great lives. One of the things about her that really struck me is the point you just made. One of the Missionaries of Charity says that the first condition they really have and they're reviewing applicants for the path of that monastic order is, is this person cheerful? Mother Teresa would say that, "Look, these people we are serving are already suffering so much. So they don't need to see your sullen face." There is this documentary, films that I've seen with her looking at a small little child, who's clearly been starving, who's had real hunger and they've been rescued and all of that. And yet she's just looking into that little child's eyes and saying, what beautiful eyes. And she's bubbling with almost like a joyous kind of connection. Anyway, I love your idea that, yes, let's acknowledge the fact that there is a lot of struggle, uncertainty, challenge, question, etc., in the society around us, but that does not in any way take away, in fact, it even further strengthens the case for us to start from a place of joy. That's what I'm hearing you say.

You too. So beautiful! Thank you Krista.