You
One today I have the good fortune to be speaking with Jamil. Jivani
Jamil is a Torontonian. He's an author lawyer
Activist and host of the road home podcast, which was launched just recently
December 2018
He recently completed the seven province book tour visiting thousands of young men across Canada in partnership with the Michael pinball
Clemens foundation
He's 31 years old grew up in the Toronto area raised by a single mother
Considered illiterate in high school at age 16 had the highest grades at Humber College by the age of 18
Scholarship to Yale Law School by 22 was a lawyer by the age of 25
He's taught at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto worked with JD Vance author of hillbilly elegy
To start a non-profit in Ohio corporate lawyer at Tory's LLP leader of police reform and voter education
Initiatives. He had a book published by HarperCollins last spring in Canada
The book was why young men raged race and the crisis of identity
U.s. International
Publication by st. Martin's Press in may 2000 nineteen
He's also
And unfortunately being diagnosed with cancer
Battling stage four non-hodgkins lymphoma cancer being on chemotherapy drugs and undergoing radiation
therapy since February
So we have a lot of things to talk about Jamil and I so we're going to start
We're going to start conversing as a consequence. So thanks a lot for making the time to talk with me
Thank you for the invitation
So, why don't we start with with your book and your tour
Yeah, well, it's the book came out
Actually just a month after I was diagnosed with cancer. So
The it's it's it's Bennett last year a lot of highs and lows like that
The highs have been incredible because I've had the privilege of you know
Like you being able to go around and speak to people about my book and my ideas
Certainly, not as large audiences as you have but you know been able to go to places in the country that I think young men
need to hear stories of self empowerment and what individual agency can accomplish and
shared though that that experience with in in areas where I think
You know books are often not seen as relevant to the lives of
everyday people I think I've been able to learn a lot about the disconnect between the literary industry and
Everyday Canadians and I think that's true in other countries as well
where
books
sometimes aren't written for an audience of people who might most benefit from those ideas and
I feel very privileged today and we'll go around and talk to people about
the struggles young men face the tools that
are often given to them in terms of how to overcome those struggles and
Also the tools they find in the absence of better options. Do you have a copy of your book just behind you?
You should maybe hold it up so that we could all see it. Yeah. Yeah, let's take a look
Yeah, so here's the book. The the US Edition will have a similar cover and
Yeah, it's been it's been it's been a heck of an experience
you know, I think there's something very humbling about people caring what you think about anything quite honestly, so it's a
And there's a there's a responsibility that comes with to take
the opportunity of an audience and do something meaningful with it, and I've tried my best to do that with the book and I'm
Excited to do that in other countries next year as well. So
You said something interesting about books and it's something worth delving into a bit, you know
the number of people the proportion of people who buy books is relatively small and
It's not like books are everybody's friend
so that
The act of literate audience is actually a rather small minority of people and one of the things that's quite cool about YouTube
Let's say and also about podcasts is that it enables people who might be intimidated by books
But who are perfectly capable of understanding relatively complex ideas to?
Access them another way and it is really too bad. That reading is a minority taste because
Well, it's such an effective means of communication. But at least these other channels have been opening up. I
Agree and I think perhaps most effectively books are a
conversation starter
You know the idea of putting ideas out there and then being able to go to a city you've never been before and people
have a
Starting point in which they can engage you and talk about their lives and your life and what's similar and what's different? That's a
Maybe the most powerful part of a book to me
I actually think a lot about it in the sense of you know, the most read book for example
like the Bible and texts like that, which I think their greatest power is in trying to offer some sort of
shared kind of moral universe for people of different backgrounds and
Ancestors and in different parts of the world to kind of come under write and I feel like with a book you have that
Ability, I hope which is to tell a story where you have no real say or power and who picks it up
but you hope that it's
Powerful enough and truthful enough that whoever picks it up is going to feel like they're part of that that conversation
so
Maybe you could outline for us the main points of your book and also talk about how it grew out of your experience being part
Of what's really quite remarkable about your biography is the apparent
disjuncture between your status
Hypothetically as illiterate at age 16 and then no a very high academic achiever by the age of 18
It's like so I'm curious about the interplay
I'm curious about that period about how that happened and and and and what it Manton but then also about
The journey that you took so to speak on the road to writing this book
yeah when I was
16 I I would maybe describe myself as someone who was the the depths of despair, right?
I was a really angry person. My father had left my family
My mom was raising me and two younger sisters by herself
I was in a neighborhood where I saw what I regarded as a lot of unfairness
You know things like racial profiling by police officers
Disproportionate poverty a lack of job opportunities. This is in the suburbs of Brampton where most of the people in my neighborhood were
newcomers to the country or children of newcomers and
I was kind of I think being weighed down by a perspective that encouraged
Hopelessness and victimization in my life. So I was a cognitively capable young man
that's how you go from, you know illiterate to a Yale Law student in less than six years, but
What was was missing was the desire to show that that those good parts of me to anyone?
So what do you taking was? What do you think? It was exactly that?
produced that
sense of
Despair despair that possessed you when you were 16
I mean you you outlined some of it, you know
You lived in a neighborhood that was well an immigrant neighborhood and and and you saw
What you regarded as Manifest social unfairness?
but then it's obviously the case too that for some reason when you decided to I don't know if you dropped that idea or
Transcended it
You did something different and all of a sudden your life took off in in a variety of extremely positive directions
Like, how do you how do you account for that initial possession by that set of ideas and then more importantly?
How do you account for the fact that you somehow managed to let's say
Escape it
Hmm. So for my situation
I think this describes out of my peer group as well not having a father around
And and the kind of dysfunction that that often comes with
put us in a position where we were looking at a lot of the wrong places for cultural leadership and
Pop culture right hip hop gangster movies things like that filled the void in our case
So the tools I was given to understand my life, too
Explain my frustrations were tools that encouraged me to I think live in us with a certain kind of
Victim identity as my default right that I could for example lit
Believe that being a gangster and a criminal was acceptable
for me and my peers because we
Experienced unfairness, right the way the world treated us determine the kind of morals that we picked up, right?
so it's justifiable revenge in some sense against an entire system, right or at minimum it winds up becoming
Just you lower the expectations of yourself, right you walk around thinking that
What you know to be good is something that you don't have to achieve you don't have to strive for goodness
Because the world has put you in this unfair position and therefore anything is possible. So we think so. Ok
So how much of that I'm curious about that?
I mean that it's a common it's a common human attitude to adopt that sort of perspective and you know
plenty of people have reason to be
doubtful about the
Appropriateness or fairness of their life in their situation but that you know, there's two things there that get tangled together
I think and one is a sense of thwarted justice
Right and that might be the optimistic viewpoint that people look out in the world and they see that it's unfair and that bothers them
Morally, and and there's nothing wrong with being bothered that way but the problem too is is that adopting that?
Victimization stance and worse maybe adopting a stance that justifies a certain amount of antisocial or criminal
Attitude towards society given its unfairness also provides young people
That's a young man in this case with an excuse
not to do their best and not to put effort into anything and I think that that that
excuse is often masked by a
self justification that's associated with
That hypothetical stressed striving for justice
You know because it's it's one thing to be
upset about social injustice
but it's another thing to use that as an excuse not to strive forward and
Right because there's a psychological element and a sociological element there that are at play. So so
Tell me what you think about that then tell me how you progress despite
Having that attitude accepting that attitude or having it inculcated
yeah, I think you're exactly spot-on, you know like later on in my life when I was a
University student, for example, I would hear all of the same arguments over again
but they but you hear them differently when you have the privilege and opportunity of being at a university right when you hear about how
rigged the world is and that history is burdened you and and an
Opportunity is fleeting because of what you look like or what your parents come from
in a university environment people take those as
you know, they pat themselves on the back for making those assertions because they think they're
Virtuously looking at the the problems of the world that we often overlook or take for granted
But when you're in the thick of it when those problems are your life?
When you have a choice to make every day
Do I tell myself it's worth doing my home working going to school or do I just stay home? And
Smoke weed in the basement do I?
Make the effort to see how the little bit of
Agency, I might have in a difficult circumstance could make the difference of where my life turns out. That's a
Yes, you know that's when those talking points
Become a potential
You know kind of poisonous moral environment for you to live in because
maasai collage achill concept that my friend JD writes about hillbilly elegy in the context of
poverty in Appalachia called learned helplessness
right, and I think that's a lot of it which is you disassociate your actions and behaviors with the outcome of what you
experience in life and when you get to that point
It's really hard to find the motivation to work hard or believe that there's a meritocracy at all in the world around you
All right, but the funny thing is about learned helplessness, you know
And then this is something that I think it's really reasonable for us to delve into is that in the animal in the animal?
Experimental world which is where the concept of learned helplessness emerges what happens that to produce learned helplessness
What you do is you you punish an animal for any sort of active behavior
No matter what it does
It's hopeless and it and it truly is hopeless
right because the animal keeps trying but every time it tries to do whatever it's going to do it ends up being punished and
sooner or later it will just
Cease to act and that has been put forward at least in part as a model for depression
And and I think there's a certain amount of validity to that. Although depression is a very complex concept
the situation you're describing is somewhat different because
what you pointed out was that when you were sitting at home as a as an
Adolescent let's say and you had the choice between doing your homework and putting forward your your motive agency. However,
forceful that might have been
and justifying doing something like
Slinking off to smoke dope and avoiding your responsibilities
You could justify the avoidance by making reference to the fundamental unfairness of society
But that isn't the same as actually having tried really hard a dozen times or a hundred times and failed each time
It's like it's more like the premature presumption of learned helplessness. And I do see this very frequently among young men
is that they they've adopted this attitude that the world is such a
catastrophic ly unfair place and life is so unjust in its fundamental essence that
There's no sense even trying to begin with that. You're only a fool if you do that
Yeah, I agree
I think what happens is you see other people's failings or other other
young men whether they're your peers or people you even just
listen to in the music and music or you see on television or whatever the case you see their attempts and failures as
Evidence of your own right?
And so if hmm if everybody
You know has struggled for example to go to college or university then that is in some way you trying right?
You don't see a distinction between your own efforts and those of other people
not that's how I would describe my mentality at the time, which is for instance I could
you
Go on
Turn on the news and see a story about
Let's say like when I was really young kids seeing Rodney King got beat up by police officers in Los Angeles
Right and that could stick with me and become
an example of what someone like me would have gone through but for not being there at the time right and so you see that
right empal and you internalize that as an instance of
Well people like me when we walk around the street we get treated that way by cops
So I might as well have gone through that too because I see that as an example of me
Potentially exert, you know asserting myself in society and then paying a deep price for it, right? So it should emulate those right?
So that's done. That's the the price paid for
for adopting a certain dimension of identity and I mean
I think it's inevitable to do that to some degree because we do belong to different group identities
But you're saying that you you classified yourself
Let's say or you saw yourself in the same group as someone like Rodney King
You saw that the group that he was attributed to you you believed that that was a valid group
attribution and then drew
Conclusions that weren't favorable to your own striving and that but that also still sets you up so that you're not really testing yourself
Against the world, right? You're starting out with these assumptions about
About the privacy of group identity. Let's say it now you
curious about that too because you also talked about the negative consequences of fatherlessness and
One of the so I'm inferring from that that you see a link between the presence of a father
And an antidote to that
Socialization by by what by popular culture group identity something like that
I mean, we know that fairness isn't good for people by any spy by any measure. It's it's a catastrophe
Yeah, well I think like if you're in that that that frame of mind where
Those instances of group identity starts you tell you something about yourself then having a man in your house
Who's not getting beat up by the cops is?
Automatically what a complicated right having a man in your house who looks after his kids and goes to work and and takes responsibility
For his family in this community
who shows you how to love a woman and be kind to people that is a
Complication of
An other world view that might otherwise think that every other man who's not your dad has something to teach you about who you are
Yeah, okay
so that's identity centers a lot in that so the idea is something like
If and I believe this like is one of the things I've noticed about kids who are let's say neurologically intact
so so maybe these are there's lots of reasons why people
can develop psychological disorders and some of them are physical but imagine that you take a child who's physically healthy and
You put them in a given environment. My my intuition has been that a
Child needs to have at least one
positive role model within
Immitation distance now. Sometimes he or she can sort of piece that together
Fragmentarily also from popular media images, you know
The images of the heroes in movies and so on but it's really helpful to have at least one person in your immediate environment
who is
manifesting the pattern that characterizes individual success
and so maybe it's something like if that positive role model isn't there then the easiest
Default is to a victimized group identity. Does that seem reasonable? I
Think it's reasonable, especially if you're if you're from a community and you share an identity that has been
very strongly
associated with victimization in the first place and I think that's a big part of it is
You know when you when when I was a kid and thought of myself as a black man
that immediately came with a certain kind of baggage of historical and present-day victimization and
Because my father is black
my mother is white so him being gone and and in some ways being my
My kind of connection to the to a black family being gone
I was
Very vulnerable to how blackness was being presented to me
because I didn't have a black person house showing me something different and the blackness that I was presented was one that was
Deeply tied to victimization right and one that was constantly excusing
any poor behavior we might have
maybe not more than any other group of people but but associating any poor behavior we might have with
History, right? And so it's this idea that you are
inheriting
low expectations of yourself and of your behavior and
And you don't know what it would look like to look in the mirror and not see a victim, right?
Would that even be right great where I didn't know it also provides that Avenue for justification that we already described
And so okay. So so let's look at this two ways
well, there's an old psychoanalytic idea, you know of secondary gains and so if we're going to be
critical in our analysis about
victimization culture we might ask
Well, what benefits does it bring to the people who adopt it so and you know those can and when I mean benefits
I don't mean long-term
iterative
high-quality benefits, I mean short-term payoffs
Let's say you know how it is if you have work to do and you avoid it that's a short-term payoff. It's a benefit and
Because you don't have to do the work now. There's a medium to long term cost but
I'm very curious about about the the element of victimization culture that justifies I
Think antisocial and avoidant behavior is probably the right way of putting it now
You know where I grew up I grew up in a working-class community
And I had friends and associates who were who ranged from you know?
pretty decent kids to pretty solidly planted in the delinquent camp and
generally, the more delinquent types had a whole handful of rationalizations for their behavior and and
It's it's very dangerous to have those rationalizations at hand because most forms of anti-social behavior
Or avoidant behavior for that matter very bad medium to long term strategies. So
anyways
What negative psychological elements of yours do you think the victimization narrative?
Supported and what positive aspects did it suppress?
Well it the the negative ones is supported were
What it
wanting to be mad at my circumstances and
To not see anyway, I might be responsible for changing them, right? Yeah, so
Justification for I was looking for that justification
Yeah
the other thing that it does and I don't know if it was unique to me because I think it's they're
Variations of it in everybody, but it just means that you don't feel
The burden of solving a problem, right?
I mean, it's hard to walk around feeling like if you worked a little bit harder if you listen to people
who care about you if you
You know just made the effort and put the time in that maybe things could be different that makes you you you feel
Responsible for that and when and that comes with the possibility of failing, right?
Yes, Gary to think that you you could do something and if you don't get it, then you're failing out
yeah, so that's another interesting thing about that that
assumption of learned helplessness is that
if you don't try
Huh as Homer Simpson told Bart if you never try you can't fail
Okay, great. Right, right, so which is very comical
So that was that was definitely I would say like a negative part of my thinking that wanting to see myself as a victim supported
In terms of the positive stuff that it kind of pushed down. I think it
meant that I
For example was willing to put my mom through some really
I did some really difficult
situations where she had to stress and worry about me and what I was doing and I would later learn that I have a
positive power to actually
Burn value to her life and to make things easier for her and to help her raise my sisters and things like that
Those are strengths that I had
those are that is a desire for for responsibility and to be part of a family that I had that I was that I
didn't learn about myself until later on because I
I
Couldn't see myself as someone who had assets right who had strengths to offer
Yeah, there's always about
What other people were doing to me? Yeah, not about how I might positively affect somebody else or at minimum not negative. Right, right
well, which is definitely something well, yeah, so one of the things it's interesting with regards to the
Conversation about responsibility because one of the things that I've been talking to audiences about all around the world now is the idea
That maybe we find the sustaining meaning in their life precisely through the adoption of responsibilities
And you know you talked about reasons to be terrified of responsibility
And I think those are valid reasons what if you try and fail
especially when there's a fair bit of evidence around that that might be either the most likely path and it is in some sense because
You have to often try a lot of things before you succeed. Even if you turn out to be a successful person
but the price that you pay for abandoning that
responsibility is that that is where you find the meaning in life that can buttress you against the fact that life is unfair and
and
What would you call typify by suffering and also by malevolence and betrayal, you know?
You talked about discovering later in life that you could be a positive asset to your family and that's a big discovery, man
It's really something to be able to wake up in the morning or in the middle of the night and think well
you know, at least I'm
I'm doing something positive for the people that love me
To not have that's really a bad thing
Absolutely, the other thing is you you you tone you kind of tune out a lot of the people in your life who
Might have really important things to say to you right who might possess some genuine wisdom
but because what they're saying doesn't line up with the ideology you've
unknowingly in most cases
Clung to so strongly you don't hear them
and so the good people in your life that
Actually might be able to
Teach you something and put the right idea in your head and plant a seed that could grow into something beautiful
those people become less important to you and instead the the folks, who are
manipulative in some cases who want to tell you negative things and want you to believe that you can't do something like
Like you might you are you are destined to suffer until the evil system around right has collapsed
people who tell you that or variations of that message are the folks that you you hear from and and
That that's sad because when I look back there were good people in my life
and there were people who at my school who did do really well and
I would say in fact maybe most people in my community made really good decisions
And cared for each other and did really good things
And yeah, I was trapped in a world where I couldn't see them
They didn't even exist in my narrative about my life
Those people were either anomalies or they just didn't they were not part of my worldview at all. Yeah
Well, the thing is too is that people who start down the bad road?
let's say the bad road sake that's characterized by irresponsibility avoidance and and
Like a kind of a cruel rebellion a cruel and counterproductive rebellion, you know
They're also they also tend to be quite annoyed and irritated by counter examples and so they are likely to manipulate
Someone else a younger person for example or their peers
into
Participating in behaviors that aren't in anyone's best interest
Because they don't want the counter-examples
around and why would you if you you don't want to be you don't want to have your cynicism proved wrong because that's too
Shattering, you know, even though it would be the best thing for you
Yeah, absolutely. Right? I think that's absolutely right and the transition I wound up experiencing
Where I get out of high school and and kind of find my voice
comes out of some things that were completely
You know
Unintentional right? So I get to this point in grade 11 after I rewrite the literacy tests that we have to take in in
Ontario public schools I am
Finally considered literate. So that means I can finish high school and I
get very
Desperate to earn money because I didn't see a future where I could earn money legally
I thought I would have to be a criminal and I I genuinely
Believed that was my my destiny. And so I come close to buying a gun and I asked a friend for it
He quotes me a price
He says let me know
When you want it, and I go home on a day where I thought I was going to feel like a million bucks
cuz I finally had this tool of a criminal enterprise that I had been looking forward to and I wind up just
like crying my eyes out and I was devastated and I was scared and I thought
If my mom found out I had a gun she might give up on me and disown me I was okay
So that's oh that's interesting
so part of what called out to you when you were making what would have been a life-changing decision was the
violation of the of the
intimate relationship that you had
The love that you had that your mother had bestowed on you
So you were yeah
You felt deeply by all appearances that you were betraying that what else brought you to tears because you said, you know
You felt you thought that one possibility was that you'd feel somewhat
triumphant and finally managing this task and and joining the that the cast of outcasts, but that isn't how your conscience
responded
No, my conscience responded with with a fear knowing how owning a gun sends you into a spiral
I had seen other people go go down
You know when you own a gun as a young man, especially in a if you intend to use it
You wind up having?
problems with people who have guns and all of a sudden just to walk around the street you feel like you have to carry a
Gun on you for your own safety. Like if you look at the lives of young men who?
Wind up either victims or perpetrators in inner-city gang violence. Those are often young men who are committing what they call
Retaliatory bond. Yes, right. It is a web of responding to trauma and and killings and I was very scared
I would be in the middle of something like that
the other thing that really bothered me was a
concern that I was so angry at police officers for how I'd seen them shoot my father when I was a kid and
the treatment that I had experienced in terms of being followed around
The mall or followed home from the bus stop and seeing things like I mentioned, you know
the Rodney King beating and having that be part of
How I saw how the world worked and and and it presented a certain kind of
Almost like a disturbing rite of passage right as a black man
I felt like well when that happens to you
That means you're growing up because people are supposed to think you're dangerous and a criminal and so yeah
You know, there's even something about that
that's true because I
Think that people are supposed to think that you're dangerous when you grow up the question is what do you do with the dangerousness?
You know, so there is a yeah because you don't want to be naive and weak it's not help. Absolutely
But that there have a path there has to be a pathway to strength that isn't associated with catastrophe
yeah, well in my case it felt like I had Ari I had already felt like I was being treated like someone who carried a
gun around and there was something that really where I was almost disgusted by myself with the idea that I might validate that
stereotype by then doing that thing, right and
and and so there was this like conflate it was a it was a mix of shame that I felt right a mix of
fear and a certain sense of
You know worrying that I might never be able to come back from that decision
And so what the positive effect all of that had on me is I wound up isolating
Myself from my social network, like all the friends I had who I'd spent years talking tough with and sharing
you know gangster fairy tales and
And and and things like that. I wound up just not being able to show my face around them
Like I was scared they would think I was a punk. I'm a chicken
So you decided not to purchase the gun as a concept, I do not know
Okay
And so and that that and my life
Changed really quickly
Because all the people I've skipping class are that I didn't want to see anymore and the people I was smoking drugs with I didn't
Want to hang out with and the people who?
You know, I wasted so much of my time with the people who we cultivated that kind of victimization identity together
No longer were part of my life except for a few outliers. And so I
Unknowingly put myself in a situation where I could just think about the world differently and I started to go to class
Seriously for the first time and I wasn't a good student overnight
Like I finished I had to do day school in night school to graduate on time
And I just so badly wanted to get out of that building the high school. So I just left and
And the way to leave was to was to get my credits
So I graduate I wind up at Humber College because in one of the transfer program
Let's go through that in a bit more detail because it's pretty quite a remarkable story. So
Okay, so you had a choice point in your life and and the choice point was whether or not you were gonna well become armed
and dangerous fundamentally
Yeah and take that particular path and you decided not to you had a crisis of conscience
You decided not to and that in the that
Allowed you or forced you hard to say which to alienate you from your peers
But that must have been very lonesome. Like how did you put up with that?
Yeah, it wasn't easy and this is actually one of the hardest things
that I talk about with young men who are going through similar experiences as I'm describing in terms of negative peer pressure is
It's really hard to accept being alone
And I don't know why I was
Able to do it quite honestly because I look back and I think I'm not sure at 31 I could do it
Yeah, right exactly. That's exactly what I'm asking
It's it's it's quite because it's a it's a huge transformation not only to start buckling down at school
Especially at that age because you know, you had 16 years of not being disciplined. Let's say and also
isolating yourself from your peers at a point where
Arguably there's nothing more important than that peer Association
So and what did your mother make of this?
I mean all of a sudden you weren't seeing your friends and you were studying. I mean, she must have been shocked
I'm not sure she knew what was going on to be honest because
We didn't communicate much like we lived in the same house, but she was so busy. Just trying to
You know get to the next day and pay the bills and and make sure we had a house and and everything we needed
That I didn't really have an adult in my life who was providing any supervision. Right, right
For example, my mom never signed off for in all four years of high school. She never signed off those papers
you're supposed to say I'm acknowledging you saw your kids or poor card because I would just Forge it and
Bring it in and and she never said anything because she wasn't paying attention
I I didn't say anything to her
And so we had this this period of time where we were just ships passing in the night that we had barely any interaction
but she still revered there was a phrase you used in your conversation with a
Group of boys for the BBC radio at a boxing club where you said you need someone in your life who?
represents the light at the end of the tunnel
Yeah, and that's what my mom was to me
like even when we didn't talk
even when I was angry at her for picking my father and and and and and
Putting me in a situation where I had a parent who rejected me and I resented her for it and yet she still had this
belief in me that never went away this belief that
Some point Jamil could be better than he's proven himself to be right. So she was that's interesting
So it wasn't just her. It was also the fact that you had someone around that actually had more faith in you than you did
Exactly. Yeah, and and and and I think that's such a key part
Yeah, I agree when you really need that from a parent a if you get that from both parents
You're unbelievably fortunate but you desperately need it from at least one person. Someone's gotta believe in you
Yeah, so that the reason I get comfortable I guess with with loneliness is you know
And this is I think the role that the internet I think still plays in people's lives
Which is when you break away from us
From an in-person social network at a school or a workplace or whatever the case
The internet becomes the place where you can find an alternative social network and in my case
I was on these, you know, these like hiphop message boards all the time when I was a kid
I was always online reading about hip-hop and like conspiracy theories and I got caught up in a lot of
like Nation of Islam
doctrine and propaganda and
Those ideas were especially helpful to be honest in some cases. I think they delayed my
Ability to shake off the victimization identity I had adopted but what it did do for me was it just gave me an alternative?
Place to belong and so yeah those became the social networks
I had were online relationships and
I think that was part of how I was able to adjust away from my friend
circle was that I just had a bunch of stuff on the internet that I could I
Could go to and feel like I was connecting with people in another way. Okay now also now you said
Something interesting. You said that you really wanted to get out of that building and that
speaking about your school
But the way that you chose to get out was to path to graduate and pass was to accomplish the tasks
Now why in the world did you decide that that was a good idea. I
Suppose that's also because I wasn't sure what else I would do like at the point
You know, I was a kid who I did my grade 10
career
Project. My career's project saying that I was going to be the Canadian Suge Knight, right?
Who's a gangster who started a record label that produced Tupac and Snoop Dogg and these guys?
That's what I thought like my future was gonna be like and when that gets like taken from you
Because you realize you're not this game of chicken. You've been playing with yourself. You're going to lose it
And so you get off the train tracks
you don't really know what else to do and I just thought I have to just walk the path that was available to me which
Was okay. So go through school. Hey, well that that's a brilliant observation
I think because one of the things that people have often asked me when they're when they're directionless is well, what should I do?
And the answer is well, you take the best path that's laid out ahead of you. All right, if you don't have an option
Where you are staying in despair not moving forward is a very bad option if you have a bad pathway forward
Or a suboptimal pathway forward let's say but it's at least forward then that's the one you should choose
And so you decided that you were gonna buckle down and get the hell out of school and you were gonna do it by passing
Yeah, well, I I don't know. I didn't feel like I was choosing
To do it by passing. I just thought that was my way out and I wasn't sure how else to get out
Alright because if I dropped out, I don't know what else I would do
So in the process of trying to you know, rush out right? I'm I'm I'm working as a dishwasher at Red Lobster. I'm
Taking night classes. I'm taking day classes. I'm trying to get out of my circumstances as quickly as I can
Guidance counselor says to me but you don't qualify for many programs
You were streamed in the in the applied system, which was what we call in, Ontario
Which means you can't go to university you've got to go to Community College, but your grades are so bad
There's no Community College program. You could get into except for what they call general Arts and Sciences program
Which in some ways is almost like what grade 13 used to be in Ontario
Which is you would learn a lot of the things you should have learned in grade 12
but didn't and so I go into that program and I
would say
What what what changed for me immediately in terms of my academics was this is the first time I had college professors
Who said to me?
Here you've got to write this, you know, twenty page essay you get to decide what it's about and it seems so simple
But it was a breakthrough for me because what that meant was the part of me that was interested in
You know hip-hop and the Nation of Islam and conspiracy theories and all that stuff
I was doing on the internet that no adult had ever seen before. Nope
My mom my teachers no one had ever seen a part of me that could think critically that had
Curiosity intellectually that part of me and and the version of me that was going to school merged for the first time, right?
Well, thank God that's that's the huge advantage of higher education is that is exactly what should happen, right? So absolutely. Yeah
Yeah, and that's what I try to tell young men
all the time is like you might be going through a hard time in high school and
It's hard sometimes to know how life could mine is going to be different if you just stay the course
Because you have no reference point to explain it
But in my case, I it was it was absolutely a meaningful shift like the idea that I could write 20 pages about
You know Malcolm X or about Tupac like all of a sudden
the the writing ability that I had never shown people before started to come out and
My analytical thinking and all it was just it flowed out of me and literally in less than a year
I went from barely getting out of high school
Say getting the highest grades in all of Humber College and and that was not something that ever felt deliberate
I was just kind of stumbling around in the dark and hoping things are gonna work out for the better my mom for example
When she came to my graduation
At Humber like she was shocked that I gotten of the President's Medal for highest grades
Like she had no idea that I was actually a completely different person by that point
Well, you said something interesting too about what you were doing in high school
You said that you were attending classes during the day and at night and you were working as a dishwasher?
As a dishwasher, right? Yes. Yeah, okay
so that's interesting too because one of the things that's very useful I think to point out to people who are in a
Situation that's analogous to the one that you found yourself in is that there is something to be said for trying to make yourself
So busy that it's absolutely ridiculous
You know to take on a big burden that's part of that burden of responsibility. It's like, okay
Can I go to school during the day and can I go to school at night?
And can I also work at a job?
Can I do all that because the answer is I've seen this time and time again with undergraduates who start to work in my lab
It's like they're already taking a full course load and they're busy and some of them also have work
You know, they have part-time jobs and then they come and work in the lab
and so then they're so busy that it's just
Ridiculous and then they have to get organized and they can't waste time and their grades almost inevitably go up not down
Yeah, and and it's one of those things where
Before you get to a point where you get busy like that you have no idea you're capable
Yeah, right accomplishing so many things and then it starts to become normal to achieve right? It's it's normal to say
oh, I could set out and accomplish something in a given day or
Well, it's always it. It also becomes it also becomes something that's really interesting to
Experiment with because once you stir once you start realizing that your capability for responsibility exceeds your original expectations
You start to become curious about what the limitations of that are. It's like Oh
Turns out I can do a lot more than I thought I could or that people told me I could or that I was willing
To believe how much more could I actually do if I really got my act together and got disciplined? It's like there's a
Purpose it's like what?
What are you made out of?
And how do you find out and I think you really need to find that out as a you certainly have to find that out
As a young man, you probably have to find that
I was a person in general
but it's absolutely crucial for young men to find out that there was far more to them than they think and
You can't find that out without burdening yourself
You're right. And it is it's it's the opposite of what we were talking about earlier in terms of that fear of failure, right?
because it's saying I'm gonna push myself to the limit and
Explore where that line of failing is and because you're not running from that one. No, you're running toward you where it exists
Absolutely, and the funny thing is about running towards that line
is that as you walk towards it it recedes and
As you as you get more disciplined the probability that you'll fail gets smaller and smaller
Perfect example of the pathology of avoidance right because avoidance of that just makes you weak
yeah, absolutely and
You know the the transition from Humber College to York University
You know, it's just kind of a continuation of what you're describing, right
It's it's it's it's running to the line and it's me continuing to say okay, maybe that 12 years of evidence
I have of being a really poor student
Could be proven wrong with every assignment that I do
right and leaving that if I try in this class and I get an A and all of a sudden getting an A stops being
The an anomaly it starts to become normal, right?
And and and then when you don't get an A or a B or whatever your you're hoping for
You start to feel that sting of disappointment because you actually have higher
Expectations of yourself and your professors who didn't know you back when you were a knucklehead getting into trouble
they only know you as the guy who came into their class and tried hard and so they start to speak to you as
Someone who could do really well - yeah
Because that's one of the things that's so lovely - about about about being able to go off to somewhere new, you know
Because you could leave your past identity behind you
I found that such a relief when I moved from the little town that I grew up in even because I went to a community
College for the first two years of my education as well and I had an experience. That was well
Yours is more dramatic by quite a substantial margin, but it they're not dissimilar
I was so relieved when I got to college that I could start to write and think about things that I was actually thinking about
That it was like a complete transformation
But I also had the chance to leave my old personality behind at least at least some of it, you know
some of it some of it that I didn't want to carry ahead with me and
and that's another thing about moving forward in the world is that you can leave the old and insufficient you behind and
That that can be hard on you and hard on people around you - but man
It's it's such a relief. It's and it's such a
Well, it's life itself. I would say it's the opposite of despair
And that's absolutely right and I as
much as you can
Create the circumstances for that to happen in your life
Even if you don't have a chance to move somewhere new or go to a new school or or get a new job
but but just
Convince yourself that renewal is something you get to decide and get to control. I mean it's a it's it's so it's so
Part of being a victim is to is to notice all of a sudden that you have the capacity to transform yourself
Despite at least to a large degree despite external circumstances or or sometimes even as a consequence of leveraging them
Because it isn't always obvious that that having an impediment is a catastrophe
Sometimes it's a I mean, it's what would you call it? It's a call to action. It's a challenge
Absolutely, and in some ways the the the challenging periods of my life that we've covered
provided a roadmap for what I would do with with the remainder of my academic career, which is I would pursue opportunities where I could
Imagine going back in time and solving some of the problems I had experienced right and and that I studied
international development and nonprofit management at York
I went and did a law degree because I thought the law was was relevant to my life and insofar as
It made a difference and how I wound up and how some of my peer group did and that I was lucky to not be
involved in the legal system, so
yeah, I mean it was a call to action for me and I think it gave me the the
motivation but also the the toughness I would need to to push forward and do things that
You know, I had good reason to believe we're impossible, you know
because the victim narrative is something like well you're so little compared to what's
Arrayed against you in all of its historical catastrophe, right which is like the evil father
you're so little that you don't have a chance and
That's that's not good because you're not that little and what's arrayed against you. Isn't that big?
I mean
It's not that it's not big because it is big but it's that you're nowhere near as little as you might have been
enticed to think
Exactly and I think I think what you're describing is very like I think most people hear that and would agree with you
but they just selectively apply it to different people in our society like they want to tell some of us because of of our
Circumstances that that's less true for some than others and that's what yeah. Well, that's the sort of thing
It really makes you wonder where the true racism is
Yeah, and well
You know and as I as I travel around Canada and I go to other countries and I speak to young men who are in
In some cases very difficult circumstances. I see over and over again how they're being denied that
That belief that it's they're being told that that belief is somehow
Competing with recognition of unfairness. Yeah. I heard that despite John Henry ISM
It's a new form of pathology identified by psychologists as the belief among
Minority young men that personal effort and sacrifice and responsibility will actually produce positive outcomes
It's actually for exactly the reasons that you just described because it runs counter to the victim and oppressor narrative
It's actually being treated by some people now as a form of psychological disorder
Wow, yeah Wow
Yeah, and and and that like and and when you when you when you say those things right when you go to people who?
are in difficult circumstances and remind them even to some small degree that that
individual agency might matter right that it could affect their outcome that they do not have they're not
Destined to us to a life of suffering
people
There are a lot of people get it threatened by that right and they feel like
You're undermining the narrative that they desperately want to be true
Which is that that young man has to suffer until everything else changes right that until we get rid of capitalism
and and patriarchy and white supremacy and all these other evils right quote-unquote evils of our society that
you you
You you will you cannot have a good life?
until that is first dealt with
and asking people to sit around and wait for
a
Kind of activist class to create this utopia for them
I
Find that to be very immoral and very bothersome because I see I see you know
The biggest obstacles I have to getting my message out to young men are people who I would describe as you know victim celebrators
Right people who really really want to celebrate when we're losing
Because it fits their narrative but ideas that might help us win are a lot less attractive
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So now you went off to York and and what happened when you went to York
Well, I always jokingly saved my life got really boring really quickly because I really just studied and did everything I was supposed to do
I like I am actually surprised by how hard I was able to work in those four years
I would I took all I was very careful about picking classes that I thought would build on the momentum
I had picked up so I I want to study subject matter that would connect to things I previously learned
Because I still had a certain
Insecurity about going too far from where I had proven myself, you know
I don't know if I could have taken an economics class or a biology class or a
Psychology class because those are just subjects that didn't come that
I wasn't sure I could handle so I was very careful about picking things. I thought I could do
well things that in my free time I was thinking about right so issues around poverty and
discrimination and activism and you know such
Tackling social issues whether that was in the kind of Canadian context or elsewhere
Those are things that I felt comfortable with and so I picked classes that fit that mold and as I got more and more
Confident in myself. I started to branch out into other areas
so take an econ class or a class and marketing for nonprofit organizations or things like that and
I
I had a
You know my whole life up to that point was on
one Street that I that steals Avenue West which is on the north end of Toronto and
You know where my mom lived Humber College and York University are all off this street
So my world was very small in the sense that the same bus routes
I had taken as a teenager were the same bus as I took to Homer and the same bus as I took to York
I I got very much in a comfort zone there, right because I was saying to myself, okay
This is the world. I know this is the world. I understand I can be successful in this world
And so I clung to it and I didn't really do much to branch out
You know, I still worked in restaurants as a line cook and a dishwasher. I worked in warehouses even when I was getting aids
I didn't think for instance to apply to like a prestigious internship or to work at your you wouldn't have known on that
You know, like when you come from about like that, it's you know when I went to
University of Alberta, I didn't know any people who had had a graduate degree. I didn't know how to go about doing that
And so the idea that I could do that was really something that was quite new
You don't know the pathways, you know, I mean you can figure them out. But if that's not right in your mill, you know
You just don't know how II don't know what basic steps to take. You don't exactly yeah
There was this idea I came across
in in one of the
international development classes I took
But it's an anthropology concept called the capacity to aspire
from Arjun Appadurai
NYU and
It stuck with me because he uses it to explain how people achieve social mobility in India and I think it applied really well
to my life in Canada too, which is you know your
Imagination grows with with the more paths as you see in front of yourself
And we all might have a similar destination in mind in terms of what a good life looks like, right?
I want a better house a better car
Someone who loves me someone to love
but some of us have a better sense of the directions the steps it takes to get to that destination than others and I
And that idea stuck with me because it helped explain
Both the difference between myself and some of my peers in university who were more accustomed to opportunity
but it also explained the difference between me and
My friends who were not in university and we're not making some of the good choices
I was and we're still dealing with the consequences of how we grew up
well
I have this program that I developed with my colleagues called Future authoring program that helps people make a develop a vision for their life
along some of the dimensions you mentioned but then and then also to
Put together an implementable strategy and we've never been able to tell if the utility of the program lies more in
walking people through an actual the actual process of developing a vision and a genuine strategy or
Suggesting to people that they're actually capable of doing that
Hmm, right, so and I often think it's the latter
It's like because the the idea that you are
Self-transforming agent is an unbelievably powerful
idea
If you could if if it grips you right or if you allow it to grip you that might be another way of thinking about
it but
but but it it is certainly an idea that you cannot have or that you can be prematurely cynical about which I think is
Well, that's that that premature cynicism is really what the victim that narrative feeds and I think it's it's unbelievably
mentally
Damaging to two young people. It really hurts them
Okay
So you went to York and you did real well
And then how did the idea of Law School pop into your mind and and then you have encouragement for that?
I mean you had to go write the LSAT and all of this. It's quite a daunting process
it is I
it was actually a very practical decision for me because I
Looked around and saw that no one who studied what I studied at York was getting a job in the field and in many cases
Were working the same jobs after they graduated that they had when they were a student
So I thought to myself I need more education
Like I lost you know
I felt like I had given up a lot to get to that point
Like I I lost a lot of the friends I grew up with I worked really really hard. I
changed my life in a way that I
felt like betting on myself and I was starting to become nervous that the bet might not pay off if I'm
22 at the university degree and no job, but I have a bunch of debt, right? And so
law school and business school were the things that I thought about in terms of
their playing on some of my strengths in the sense that I can read and write well, but they seemed very
practical and that they lead to a job like theirs they're supposed to prepare you for actual work and
I wound up writing the law school admissions test first of the two and
I I did really well kind of shockingly to be honest. I did not expect to do so well
It was the first standardized test I had ever done well on and I was just you know
and and I it to the point where I did not write the business school test because I was
Like didn't want to test my luck
I just thought okay like take what take what you can get, you know
and then
Because my whole life was on Steeles Avenue West I was expecting to go to the law school at York
Like that was just it fit where I was comfortable. I knew what bus I would take to get there
You know the the the limited
Set of experiences I had made like even going to University of Toronto seemed like a foreign world to me. I
The idea of going downtown was like this is just not a place where people like me should be hanging out
I just didn't feel comfortable there, you know, and so I
Thought I was gonna apply to York and if I had been admitted there
luckily, I would have definitely gone but I had this like chance meeting with a
history professor David blight
He yelled where I was speak. There's a town in southern Ontario called Buxton North Buxton, which was founded by
families who came to Canada from the Underground Railroad and
They host a conference every year at one of the churches that they set up
So I was presenting some research I had done on black Canadians
At this conference and the CL professor. Who was the keynote?
showed up early enough to hear my presentation and after I was done he walked over to me and he said well
That was really good. What are you gonna do after graduation? And I said to him. Oh, I I wrote the ELSA
I think I'm gonna go to law school
he said to me you should apply to Yale and I thought like
This guy was a super hero to me because he was teaching at a university that I'd only seen on television, you know
Yeah, and so in my mind it was like I said Tim like are you sure like?
And he was like tell me you know, he's like, yeah, I think you'd be a competitive applicant and I was like, wow, so
Yeah Wow
Yeah, like hit his belief in me in that chance interaction where I've never seen him since like it
But we only interacted for a couple of minutes
But that meant so much
that I thought wow if this guy thinks that I have that ability I might as well apply to Harvard and Columbia and all these
Other schools because I mean he knows what he's talking about, right? He's this like superhero from Yale
And so I apply everywhere and I get in everywhere Jesus that must have been a shock
Yeah, it was like winning the lottery like I just yeah. Nope. I'm high. I was yeah. Hi. I
And like, you know and then being able to tell my mom that not only did I get into those schools, but you know
they're generous financial aid policies would mean that we would actually be able to
Afford it meaning we wouldn't have to pay anything because we have no money
Was it like she I think like everything
she ever wanted for me came true in that moment, you know and and it was a really
Yeah, it was just a special special day. Yeah, no kidding. That's quite that that's quite the miraculous situation. That is men
Yeah, and and it's one where I say to myself very lucky and fortunate to be able to have walk down that yeah
Well brave too, man. You did do the applications you put in, New York
That's you know, like there's good fortune there for sure, but it's not like it just it's not a lottery
Well, it is in a sense you but you bought lots of tickets and you that's true. Yeah, yeah
Okay. Yeah, you gotta buy a lot of tickets to it. That's right
That's right that's right now and and you know as I described, you know the bet I made on myself it paid off, right?
I mean the idea that I would ever be
like I I now would have an education where I could choose the job I had and I wouldn't just be
Given whatever was available to me
I mean that is really what I was looking for right like that kind of stability where I could say
I'm an employable person the financial challenges my modeling through I will not have to go through and
I might even be able to do something for her and other people right? No kidding
There's someone that's what attending Yale met for me. Okay, so so now then then he went to Yale. How'd you do at Yale? I
Did well I had a different kind of experience though, you know
like I I really killed myself for four years studying at York to get there and
Part of the appeal for Yale to me was you know, I had read those stories by you know
Bill Clinton where while he was getting a law degree?
He was actually living in New York or Arkansas or in London
like Yale was a place where if you didn't want academics to be your primary focus you could be doing other thing and
because the grading system is generous and because the culture there is
Encouraging of you to kind of be impactful in whatever way
you can be and so I
It was a very alien environment to me and I and I think you know
I look back and I think some of that bravery you just credited me with them
I feel like maybe I was a little less brave there because I
Really didn't feel comfortable there in a way that I never got used to
Being around wealthy people was really hard for me in terms of just feeling inadequate all the time. Yeah
Well, that's one of the problems with those Ivy League schools is that you know what? It's funny
because
Almost everyone who ends up at one of those schools feels inadequate
At least on one dimension right because no matter how rich you are
There's someone richer and if you're rich, you're not as smart as your roommate and if you're as smart as your roommate
you're not as smart as your professor and like they're very weird institutions because they aggregate people who are
Remarkable across a number of dimensions and so everyone who attends them tends to feel well like they have impostor syndrome
I really noticed that among the undergraduates at Harvard
Because there used to be in the smartest kids in their classes and then when they'd show up at Harvard, you know
They were no longer
Guaranteed to be the smartest person in the room. That's for sure
yeah, I think that that's exactly what I observed that you know, I mean thankfully for me I
Feel before so I wasn't too worried about getting a bad grade, you know, like that wasn't really the concern for me
What more so was the concern was I really felt uncomfortable with what I saw is like privileged. Right? Like I'm I I I
in some ways felt like in danger of being a sellout right of
being someone who grew up with very little and
Then being welcomed with open arms by this like opulent
Institution that was surrounded by people who were living like I used to right
I mean the neighborhoods around Yale. Right, right
you know particularly particularly striking that way and absolutely yeah, and so, you know
I would walk around campus and walk out of campus and I would see that you men
living like I used to live would be stopped by Yale security all the time or would be treated in a very
Hostile way anytime they came too close to some of the Yale buildings and it just you know it
I was really unsure what to do with them
do you do you embrace that do you just start sucking up to the professors and become, you know part of that scene or
Is there another way and I I spent three years trying to figure that out and I'm not sure I really did
What part of how I reconciled it?
All was I took a I was part of a project where you could work as a volunteer high school teacher
In some of the local neighborhoods and so I used to teach constitutional law to grade 11 and grade 12 kids
Some of the rougher high schools and that was my way of feeling like whatever Yale was giving me
I was immediately trying to give it back to somebody else. I didn't I didn't know how else to to
Well, that seems like a good that seems like a good approach. How did that work out for you?
Um, well it worked out. Well in the sense that I did get a lot of you know unique and
Amazing opportunities as a Yale student and I did I think have the chance
To be useful to a lot of other people at the same time
so the balance I think I was able to strike it but I certainly look back and think you know they were if I was
a little bit more prepared if I knew people who could have
Introduced me and oriented me to that environment. I think I could have
Gotten more out of it in the sense that I would have known what actually mattered like you spend
just as you met you described that that that
collection of remarkable people who've done so many things part of how they cope with their
inadequacies or their feelings of inadequacy is
They they are so prone to groupthink
right because the way you deal with
feeling inadequate is to just try to be like everyone else but better right and so you wind up in this like like like for
Example Yale
Um prides itself on the diversity of its student body coming into an entering law school class, right? So
all the different schools
they went to and their
Experiences and the countries they've worked in and all that and yet more than half of Yale
students will have the same job when they graduate they'll be law clerks working for a fancy judge some sure and then
Most of those people will then go on to work at a fancy law firm. And so it is this this process where
If you come in from a different place
And you try to resist the groupthink. You're going to inevitably graduate feeling like you missed out because
you're gonna be reminded of all the amazing things your classmates are doing and you're not sure if
Walking a different path is gonna pay off for you, right you're thinking to yourself. Well, I didn't take that clerkship
I didn't take the job at the fancy law firm in Manhattan
Am I gonna kick myself for that for the rest of my life?
And that was what was weighing on my mind that graduated like I was so stressed out because I was like am I gonna regret?
How I played this hand, you know, okay. So what happened what I want to talk a little bit more about
About what happened after you left Yale you ended up at Tory's eventually
But because I articled there but I also wanted to turn the topic to something slightly darker as well. I mean you've also
been suffering from a very
What would you call it?
well
I'm burdensome illness for the last year
burdensome and terrifying illness for the last year and I wanted to touch on that at least a little bit because it's a
it's it's a hell of a
Second part to the story that you just told right because you you emerged from a very desperate
initial orientation
To a degree of remarkable success. I would say academically and
Practically and then you got walloped, you know
it's like you've done all this work and you've put yourself together and you've helped put the world right and you've changed your attitude and
Then all of a sudden when things are going well for you
You know you get you get cut down and I'm I want to go back to that
I want to go to that and because I'm curious about how how you're coping with that and how you're managing it
But let's talk about what happened after you left Yale first
Well when I left DL I just I tried to work in the corporate world and do the
community service and
kind of activist work that I was really passionate about because
Canada is a hard country. I mean one of the biggest differences I would say between
Coming back here after graduation versus staying in the u.s. Is where you can
Create a career for yourself. There's just a lot more options in the joints to me a professional
Advocate for youth or to work on some of the issues we're describing
At a research center or to do you know this and that in Canada?
It's it's if there's there's few options. A lot of them are government oriented, which is something I've always been a bit
cautious of I'm not a big fan of how
Top-down a lot of Canada works because of the the power our governments have and so I
had a hard time feeling like I fit in so the
The the way I thought would work best for me the honourable way to approach that problem in my mind was I'll earn I'll earn
my keep with a
management consulting job or a corporate law job and then
work with youth and work with police officers to change policies and things like that on the weekends and in the evenings and
I did that for a couple of years and it was
Exhausting. I mean it was hard to do everything and I wound up taking a job teaching at York University because I thought it was
A way for me to do those things. I was passionate about full time
I found out as I'm sure you know that
Universities also are not places that you get to always focus on being useful to other people
you know the work I wanted to do I had a hard time balancing with the expectations of
playing up to kind of the university politics and
You know see, you know doing research that I or or being tempted to do research. I didn't think would actually be helpful to anyone
and being part of academic pursuits that I don't think are immediately relevant to people in our society who
would benefit most from quality research and so
It was hard to balance all those things - and I was in the process of figuring all that out. I supposed when I got
Diagnosed with cancer I spent at that point. I was a couple of years into teaching and
It happened at a time where I was already hoping to kind of rethink what I would be doing with my career because I didn't
Feel like university life was the long-term
solution for me
and then cancer hit me and it's given me a lot of time to I guess like reflect on that and think about what I
Want to be doing when I get healthy again?
So yeah, so you so you have stage 4 non-hodgkins lymphoma
Yes, and that also caused spinal fractures. So it's really quite the
Catastrophic mix of of symptoms and that that that's been that's been you've been being treated for that since last February
So the first question is, how did you find? What were the symptoms that led to your diagnosis? And how did you find?
How did you find out what what was wrong?
Yeah, well, you know, I you know, one of the things people say about men is that we don't seek help
I'm I guess I might be an example of that because you know, I had pain in my neck for months
And and in my lower back or my and I just like didn't, you know take it seriously. I just thought alright
Well, I just turned 13. I thought maybe this is what 30 spike. You know, you got yeah
Yeah and back problems. And yeah, well you never you'd never leap right to the catastrophe
Yeah, so I wound up
going into the hospital to get it looked at and I also had a
soul and lymph nodes
which I also didn't take seriously because I just thought like how you know, it's not a big deal and
turns out those things are related because in the the lymph nodes on my left side is
Where a tumor had started to grow and that tumor?
Or and that the cancer aren't spreading from that main tumor into some of my bonus
and the neck pain and back pain I was feeling
Were caused by the cancer cracked
the the
Two parts of my spine one in the neck and one in the back
So I wound up at an emergency room visit which I thought was going to be fairly, you know, simple
I thought you know, I didn't have a doctor
So I went to the emergency room thinking I was gonna get antibiotics
Prescribed to me for the lymph nodes being swollen and I wound up being held for a week because they had to do a bunch
Of testing on what was going on and that's how I basically found out about camps about the cancer
I was at a pretty high risk of paralysis at that point because of
The injury and the possibility of the spinal cord being affected
Thankfully that didn't happen and in a weird way my bones wound up kind of fusing together
So they're never gonna be normal again, but they're stable enough that I won't have those problems at least
but then I went through like chemo and radiation for most of the last ten months and I'm just a
Couple months ago. I finished that up and it's you know
It's been
It's been intense. I think I revisited a lot of the the harmful places that my mind used to be when I was younger
the temptation to be like resentful
Yeah
You know
I put a lot work into my career and to have this happen in prime kind of earning years
To have my income cut drastically when you're the by far the biggest breadwinner and your family the first one to finish
University and first one to become a professional
and
I and I and there was a part of me that really wanted to go back to that place where I would just see myself
as a victim and be angry at everybody and be angry at God and be angry at
life for
You know
Yeah, the problem with that is that then you end up with the illness and being angry at God and at life
yeah, you know which which like it's not it's not like I'm making light of your motivation for feeling that way because you know that
that's that's a hell of a thing to have happen and
it's it's
it's it's a blow that would destabilize anyone and the fact that you started revisiting that same dark places is
Anything but surprising, you know, I think what's surprising
Mostly is that you didn't stay there?
Yeah, but watch if you really ill people, you know, it's it's it's really bad to have the illness
that's for sure and it can be ultimately bad but
to also have that in bitter you and bring back your cynicism and
Make you not so much desperate as as
rage-filled and angry
Doesn't help the illness and all it does is make your situation worse and I think worse for everyone around you as well
that's also something terrible about being sick is that you tend to feel like you're a like a an
Intolerable burden on the people around you as well. It's another bit of guilt. You have to bear along with being ill
yeah, I think that's absolutely right and I
That that that that dark place
Was was tempting for a lot of reasons but but one of which was it just made it made it, you know being sick
It's like you have no one to get mad at right. It's like who's the face of that, right? Yeah
You want to find someone to blame like you want to have something to point to and say this is the cause of my misfortune
And it's not like I had you know lung cancer or something where it's like, oh, you know
I smoked too much or I have some sort of
Behavior I could associate with being ill I mean when the doctor told me I was sick
She said to me, you know, I asked her like how is it possible that I'm this sick? I don't get it
I have no problems and she said you know, it's just bad luck. Yeah, that's a hard and um stupidity of life
Yeah, and I think that's a hard thing to accept
For sure
But what it also did was just kind of like there was a there was a message that I needed to hear from people
When I was getting out of a dark place when I was younger right when I was getting out of high school
I needed people to believe in me
I need people to think I had a brighter future than I thought. I might have I needed people who
Still have that like an unwavering faith that I could be
helpful to the world and
when I when I got diagnosed I needed that stent like I needed that just as bad like I needed that sense of
From people that you're not just dislike burden
Now your mom has to stress about you and it's not like she doesn't already have a whole bunch of things to worry about
It's that
Despite this illness you still have a lot to offer the world and people who had that message
I mean, you're one of them you sent me an email
thanks to a mutual friend shortly after I got
diagnosed and
It matters, right it matters when people say to you that, you know, as you said earlier
it's a it's a call to action that you've got a you've got as you know, a personal catastrophe now that
You have to deal with and in doing so you're gonna learn a lot about yourself and what you're capable of
just you talk to write a book on capacity to aspire, you know, and it's like
the idea that you should battle on against insuperable odds is
In some sense an idea that it's got a certain amount of hopelessness about it under some
circumstances because there are times when you battle and
you lose and it's even the case that you lose if you battle as
Forthrightly and courageously as you possibly can but the truth of the matter is is that there isn't a better strategy
That's the thing is that
first of all
the strategy works most of the time or if any strategy is going to work that's going to be the one and
Nothing is certain in life. And so not every strategy ever works a hundred percent of the time, but it's still
The best you have and you you you decided
Apparently to rescue yourself from the second descent into the hole of hell despair. Let's say to
Continue to try to aspire forward despite the fact that you'd been thrown another
tremendous obstacle
Yeah, well, what's what's what's been really good for me is
I've really focused on being around people who have their own challenges, you know
and
I credit a lot of the young men I've spent time with since my book come out for putting my mind in a place that
Was actually positive and productive, you know
I've spent time with boys who are going through the challenges
I had when I was a kid far worse in many circumstances. I spent time people who are fighting poverty or abuse
kids who are in the foster system kids who have
Not even a mom that I was a Boston
Alright and and being around those young men
Young men who've come out of jail and are trying to do something different young men. Who who who are
figuring how to grow up on on
The spot because they now have a kid they have to be worried about right
I mean being around those young men in every city I've been able to travel to has has really made it hard for me to
Feel sorry for myself and also hard for me to discount what?
You know, I don't know where my physical health goes from here. I'm still not you know in remission yet, but
it's really hard for me to
Put myself at the center of a victim narrative
Which I know is tempting and I've talked to other cancer patients who are similarly tempted to look that at life that way
And to say there's still a bunch of young men who I could be useful to
Yeah, and the idea that I might say something to a guy who just got out of jail or a guy who?
Doesn't think he can be a good student or a guy who?
you know is in a university where he feels in over his head and that maybe I could say something that could
change how he thinks about himself and put his best foot forward like
That's been that's been worth living for quite honestly and that makes the cancer feel so irrelevant by comparison
Yeah, well that's a hell of a thing to have accomplished as far as I'm concerned but I think it's dead right
You know, I mean life is a hopeless business and we all die in the end that question is, what do you do?
what do you do in the interim and
everything that you can do to
Put things in a more positive place is is a credit to your integrity
Fundamentally and it's integrally associated with the meaning that does sustain you in very dark times
Absolutely, and I think that you know the confidence that I had in
You know individual agency and personal responsibility in the power of how you choose to think
About the world and how you interpret the adversity you go through the confidence
I had in that from growing up and from the academic research I've done and the life I lived has only grown
Exponentially since I've been sick because I now see it in my own life on a regular basis
but I also get to see it in people who are
Facing far more severe physical challenges than I have people
Who should I share a hospital room with four people who I see when I walk, you know through the Cancer Center
And it's like and I see what they have to tell themselves
the you know the rules they have to live by to
have
to get through the the challenges they face on a day-to-day basis and get to somewhere positive and constructive and
That's you know, it's incredibly inspirational and it's and it certainly makes it meet, you know, frankly the limited patients
I had four people who undermine or want to downplay the importance of that that way of looking at life and
that way of
Orienting yourself to the world that patience is far thinner than it was before and it wasn't like I was very tolerant of that
You know before I got sick either
Well, you know it seems to me that that's probably a pretty good time to
Bring this discussion to a close. What do you think? What else? Is there anything else that you have to tell people?
I mean, I'm kind of curious about how you had the opportunity to talk to all these young men or how you've taken that opportunity
Well, a lot of it has been, you know people who read the book and want me to come speak to
students or youth that they work with
but it's also been because a couple of charities Big Brothers Big Sisters and
The pinball Clemons Foundation both of whom work with young men across Canada and also in the United States and other countries
They've organized opportunities for me to come speak to
Young men who they think would would benefit most from hearing from a young men who are struggling to find their way
We're having a hard time in school who don't have primary support or Mentors
So that's where a lot of the opportunity comes from is
you know people who I guess
Feel like my story does renders innate or would resonate I think a lot of it is people who also recognize the institutions
They're part of might not always understand young men or know how to respond to their needs
Because and this is a problem that you've tackled head-on in many cases
I think they recognize a need to encourage young men to do well
But don't know how to do it because the conversation around encouragement of men has in
My view been been undermined and poisoned in many ways. I mean, even we have a prime minister here in Canada Justin Trudeau
who you know goes to international summits and
recklessly speaks about men using
You know the buzzwords that he thinks are going to get him an applause
Yeah, that's what he was talking about the dangerousness of working men
Exactly. I know and it's absolutely appalling
Yeah, well when you in and when you live in a country where that passes as leadership of your nation, no kidding
You know people I think don't know what to do about the struggling young men. They see who who actually aren't you know?
They don't symbolize male privilege in the ways that our prime minister might might think they do right? And so
People are looking for other ways to engage and speak about young men and I yeah
Well at trying some words isn't her would go a long ways
I mean I've been stunned but over the last year at you know discovering how
rarely, so many people are encouraged and how starving they are for a few genuine words of encouragement and
Well, it's it's like you said, even when you met that Professor who told you that you could maybe apply to Yale
It's just that chance encounter a few words
And you said you know
you've also realized how important the things that you say might be to people and
That that's led you some strength to go on even, you know, during your current times of travail
Let's say it is so important to put forward a message of encouragement to young men and say look
you know get your act together for Christ's sake there's a lot more to you than you think and the world is crying out for
you it needs you and
That that irresponsibility. There's nothing about that
That's nobler or justifiable. Even though you have your reasons to feel embittered and victimized. It's not the point of
Course the world's harsh and brutal, but you you're someone who might be able to prevail nonetheless
And that's really something
Yeah, I would say it's not just something but in some cases everything yeah, that's right assembly for instance
that's exactly yeah a difference between giving the world the best you have to offer and and
Giving it the world nothing. Yeah. Well, then you might be old but at least you have a clean conscience
So it's not some head man
Yeah, then that that's maybe the most valuable thing about yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. Look Jimmy. Oh, it was a pleasure talking to you
Same to you. Dr. Peters. Yeah. Thank you for your time look and I'm best luck, and I'm hoping things go well for you
But it's remarkable story that you told it's it's really something on
multiple dimensions and so like more power to you as far as I'm concerned and I hope that lots of people
watch this and
realize that
Like you did that there's a hell of a lot more to them than meets the eye I hope so, too
Good I hope we meet again
Me, too. Thank you. Dr. Peterson. You bet man good talking with you
You too, all the best. Yeah same to you. Hey, let's take a look at your book one more time
Okay, okay. All right
Available in Canada now in the US and other countries next year great why your latest?
identity and
Rage race in the crisis of identity why young man rage race and the crisis of identity? Yeah. All right
Well, I hope I hope you get a massive boost in sales as a consequence
All right fan
Taking or give your mom a hug before me I will do that
she'll be very glad to know that we had a chance to talk about her -
All right. Ciao
Take care