There was a time when your word was your bond. A handshake was a contract. If you said you'd be there, you were there.
That time is gone. We ghost, we flake, we swipe. We treat the one finite resource we have, our time with each other, as disposable.
In this solo episode, Michael Trainer issues a call to become warriors in an age of the artificial. That doesn't mean fighting. It means finding the signal in the noise, and finding the people who would go to war with you.
Drawing on Sebastian Junger's work on the bonds forged in combat, Michael explores why coming home from war can be as devastating as war itself: the loss of knowing, without question, that someone has your back. He shares his own dark night of the soul after a betrayal, when he was drinking, numbing, and lost, and the four years he spent in a men's group that showed up every single week. They didn't show up because it was convenient. They showed up because they said they would.
Michael also explores:
- Why we regulate or dysregulate each other's nervous systems, so choosing your people is a biological decision, not just a social one.
- The lost rite of initiation, and what happens to boys who are never shown how to become men.
- Why people reveal themselves through action, consistency, and accountability, never through what they say.
- The true meaning of the warrior: someone who gives himself to something bigger than himself.
This is a clarion call to rigorous discernment about who is for you, and to becoming the kind of person someone else can count on.
"People reveal themselves through their actions. Who are the people that show up, not because it's convenient, but because they said they would?"
Here's to the real ones.
Michael Trainer has spent 30 years learning from Nobel laureates, neuroscientists, and wisdom keepers worldwide. He's the author of RESONANCE: The Art and Science of Human Connection, co-creator of Global Citizen and the Global Citizen Festival, and host of the RESONANCE podcast.
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