Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning

Seth Fleischauer (00:01.234)
Hello everyone and welcome to Make It Mindful, Insights for Global Learning, the podcast for globally minded educators seeking thoughtful conversations about how education can adapt to an ever-changing world. I'm Seth Fleishauer, former classroom teacher turned founder of an international learning company specializing in the teaching of global learning. Together we explore the interconnectedness of people, cultures, and systems and how these relationships shape transformative ideas in education. Each episode features educational change makers,

whose insights lead to practical solutions and lasting impact. And this week on the podcast, we have our third Chris in a row, Chris O'Shaughnessy. Chris, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Chris O (00:41.826)
Thank you so much. And it's nice to hear that I come in a string of curses. I'll make sure we'll have a shout out thank you to you at the meeting.

Seth Fleischauer (00:49.338)
I mean, honestly, at this point, like, I kind of just want more, you know, like, give me some more Chris's. Let me see how far I can take this. Right? That's, that's... Were you ever Christopher? Was it always been Chris?

Chris O (00:58.318)
Pretty far. We're a vast network.

Chris O (01:07.0)
You know, I have such a long surname that I almost always have gone by Chris just because if you do have to say the whole name, that's just, it's too much. It's too much.

Seth Fleischauer (01:16.542)
as a fly shower, I totally hear you there. Yeah, all my kids name, there is no one in my family with a first name of more than two syllables. We do that intentionally. So Chris, it's so funny, when I reached out to you, I knew that you worked internationally. I saw that you were based in Belgium, in Brussels. When we first talked, you were, I think in UAE, where were you in the Middle East?

Chris O (01:18.158)
Hahaha

Chris O (01:25.848)
Probably wise.

Chris O (01:41.558)
Yeah, it was in Dubai. So yeah, UAE.

Seth Fleischauer (01:42.874)
Okay, yeah, and you were like on your way to Singapore and then you're like, yeah, and I stopped by in the United States sometimes and I asked you your home base and it's Beaverton, which is right around the corner from where I am in Portland, Oregon. So we actually got to meet in person the other day, which was a treat and a delight. I enjoyed learning a little bit more about your work, what you do, why it is so impactful for third culture kids, which is a term that maybe some people haven't heard. So I wanted to start

Chris O (01:52.29)
Be pretend!

Seth Fleischauer (02:12.07)
by unpacking what exactly that is. You've spent a lot of your time working with TCK's third culture kids. So for those who are less familiar, how would you define what that is and the experience of it? Like what are the strengths? What are the challenges that define the experience of a third culture kid?

Chris O (02:31.042)
Well, it starts with cross-cultural kids, which thankfully is a gorgeously self-explanatory term. So cross-cultural kids are kids who have multiple cultural influences. They're cross-cultural. And TCKs would really be a subdivision of those. And so TCKs share in common with cross-cultural kids that they experience multiple cultural inputs during their formative years, but what makes them distinct and why they get sort of that

Seth Fleischauer (02:37.586)
you

Chris O (02:59.022)
subcategory is the addition of a fair amount of transients. So the two defining characteristics for a TCK would be multiple cultural influences during developmental years and a higher than normal degree of transients. So stereotypical TCKs come from military brats, missionary kids, kids whose parents work in international education on location in various places. Diplomatic Corps produces TCKs.

international business, produces TCKs. There's quite a few different sources of them, but it's those two main ingredients. And the reason we call it third culture kids, which actually gets very confusing because I've definitely had kids who've said, well, I'm a seventh culture kid. My mom is Australian. My dad is Venezuelan. I was born in Belgium. I've lived in Singapore. But it's less a numbering competition and more the idea.

Seth Fleischauer (03:41.66)
You

Seth Fleischauer (03:45.254)
Yeah.

Chris O (03:55.242)
that everybody has at least one first culture, which we would say is your paperwork culture, for lack of a better term. So everyone's got at least one paperwork culture, probably where you issued your passport. And then second cultures would be the cultures you experience. And lots of people have multiple second cultures. And when you add transients into that, it basically means that you usually have to spend time discreetly.

in multiple different cultures. So the third culture acts as almost like the imagery I like is a hallway. That third culture is a hallway that connects the different rooms, which could represent the different cultures that make up your life. And it's not that they just all get mixed together. It's not that you're just a conglomeration of the cultures that make you who you are. It's that you actually have to keep them separate for your life to work. So the super quick example I always use is

German family I know who live in Tokyo and send their son to an international school So when he wakes up in the morning, he's in the German cultural room of his existence. He's German So he's at home. He speaks German. They have brochin for breakfast. Everything is wunderbar But then he takes the metro in order to get to school So he steps out of that German cultural room and into the Japanese cultural room

And it's not just the language that changes. It's what's considered polite, the amount of personal space, it's skeptical, all kinds of things. Then he arrives at the international school, which is taught in English. And again, more than just the language changes. It's also a different set of values and customs and beliefs. And so in one day, he has to transit between three different rooms for his life to work. And those rooms stay relatively separate. And so he spends a lot of time in sort of the hallway that connects them. So when we say third culture kids,

We basically mean people of the hallway who transit between different cultural experiences on a regular basis.

Seth Fleischauer (05:49.54)
the hallway. That sounds creepy, I think... I mean, could it be a bridge instead of a hallway? Why does it need to be covered? it... Yeah. The people of the promenade. And you yourself were at TCK, and so you know the experience well.

Chris O (05:52.334)
I know it's hard to make it sound exciting. I would love to make us a flag, but the hallway just doesn't make for a very inspiring emblem, I feel.

Chris O (06:04.318)
What is the, let the air in. A promenade, if you will.

Seth Fleischauer (06:18.234)
When we talked the other day, we talked about your work with international schools and some other entities that have elements of third culture kids and families. We talked about how you come in and you talk about the strengths and challenges. You talk about character development and empathy, resilience, transition and change management. These are all things that are particular to this experience, but not unique to this experience.

you made the argument that a lot of these things are skills that are becoming more and more relevant to people who are not third culture kids and to the larger population as a whole. And that's the story I'd like to tell here today to kind of unpack what you mean by that and how the lessons you've learned in your work could potentially impact classrooms anywhere. And so let's start with that, like strengths and weaknesses peak. So these are students who

Chris O (07:08.75)
Mm.

Seth Fleischauer (07:14.962)
Who have that experience that you described of a different home culture than the one that are experienced? It's experiencing at school even in that Story that you told there's a distinct culture even in the the the subway car on the way there, right? and that's different from the one that they meet at school where they are a conglomeration of hallway people people of the promenade

Chris O (07:40.718)
You

Seth Fleischauer (07:41.938)
And so obviously there's a lot of strengths there that you can imagine of being able to come into situations that are unfamiliar being able to like code switch and and we What what are some of the like? Weaknesses though. Those aren't as apparent to me, right? Like what would be things that are drawbacks of that experience because I hear that I'm like that that kid's gonna be able to go into any room and and function and and communicate

Chris O (07:57.71)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (08:09.686)
and have empathy for the people that are in there because that's what's helped them to survive this entire time. What is the drawback of this experience?

Chris O (08:19.042)
I think that there's a few drawbacks and again, they're interesting because I genuinely do think they're spreading. And I think it's important to start from sort of the commonality that any way that a child is brought up is going to have strengths and challenges. So being a TCK comes with strengths and challenges, just like every other situation, whether it's demographics, location, what have you. There's some strengths to growing up on a farm.

as opposed to in a city. there are some strengths the other way around, some challenges both ways too. And so for TCKs, what makes them interesting is that the challenges do seem to be spreading. So some of the ones that come to mind very quickly that I see a lot of commonality in are, and we can just start with identity. One of the big challenges for TCKs is that a lot of the terminology that we use for identity and resolving a sense of identity is in.

incredibly important for psychological health, for social health, for all kinds of things. But the language is often missing for third culture kids. If you don't have even that term, you probably would end up defaulting to a bunch of terms that are pretty universally used elsewhere. So you could go by race, by nationality, by all kinds of things. But when you have multiple cultural inputs and that degree of transience, lot of that language doesn't quite fit. So we often joke about the fact that for TCKs,

One of the most terrifying questions is if someone says where are you from? Which is an incredibly common question across the globe The difficulty is for a TCK there can be five true but distinct answers to that because When you're asking where are you from? Are you saying where were you born? Where do you live now? Where have you lived longest? Where are your parents from? Where do you feel at home? And for a TCK they could have a different answer for each one of those interpretations of the question

So I think one of the challenges really is that we need to expand some of the language that we use, some of the framework we use for identity. And I see that growing as well. think that identity has become far more complicated for everybody. Some of the terminology that we use can be confusing. For TCKs, sometimes the terminology is downright oppositional. You may not look like where...

Chris O (10:38.742)
you currently live, even if you feel at home there. You may not sound like where you currently live, even if that's where it actually feels at home to you. And those having to deal with how you harmonize those sort of things. And I see it in mainstream culture too. I mean, if you think about some of the ideals that we now espouse on a global level, they can actually be incredibly confusing. We can say in the same breath, we can tell people, listen,

We wanna put aside our differences so that we can come together and tackle global level problems. We go, yes, yes, yes, that's very good. And we'll also say, and we wanna make sure and celebrate unique and diverse individual culture. We go, yes, yes, yes, that's very good. Those are diametrically opposed. You can't celebrate something by putting it aside by definition. And by putting it aside, you're inherently not celebrating it. And yet we want both. And I'm not saying we can't do both. I'm saying that

linguistically and even conceptually, it's going to take a little more creativity and that faces, that's what everyone is facing. And it's something that we've seen in TCKs for a while. Another really obvious one that I think has spread a lot is conflict resolution. When you grow up in transience, you learn that people, for lack of a better term, are disposable. If you're moving yourself every few years or you're in a location where other people move every few years,

you can pick up pretty quick that you don't have to fix anything. If you just wait long enough, they'll move or you'll move. So you just learn avoidance. But that's not really, we do need healthy conflict resolution skills. And that's something that we've seen creep into mainstream culture. And it's not necessarily because of geographic transience on your, someone else's part. It's because of social media and how ubiquitous it's become and how it overlaps with the real way that we interact. So even if

Seth Fleischauer (12:07.954)
You

Chris O (12:31.724)
the friends around you aren't moving or you're not moving, if they upset you enough, you can just unfriend, unfollow, delete, block or unsubscribe. And so everyone, because of technology, now has the power to make relationships disposable. So it's another example of, yeah, a challenge that we've known about for a long time in TCKs that we now see absolutely spreading in mainstream culture as well.

Seth Fleischauer (12:55.728)
And you've illustrated some of the critical issues with culture today, right? I mean, this idea of how do you forge your own identity within the context of a collaborative collective, and we're looking to be able to accomplish these things together, but speak to each individual identity within that. And how do you celebrate your own identity within that collective?

while not coming up against other people in a way that's going to make you want to bow out of the conversation, which is an easier and easier thing to do. So you've outlined these problems for us. Let's talk solutions. How do you approach these things with third culture kids and how is that applicable to the population at large? And I'm talking specifically about, well, let's start with

Chris O (13:39.138)
You

Seth Fleischauer (13:53.51)
conflict resolution resilience. This is a huge topic in schools everywhere across the world, whether they be monocultural or multicultural. How do you approach that within the context of the TCK experience?

Chris O (14:08.258)
think that for the most part, I almost always like to start with kind of a foundational idea that I got from one of my professors in university, and I quote it all the time because I think it's that good. And one of the things he said to us was, in life, one of the best things you can learn to do is devote time to learning to process intellectually what you do intuitively. And I think that that really is the root of a lot of these things. So if we take conflicts, for instance,

intuitively we all figure out a way to deal with conflict and it's just that lately for mainstream culture and for quite a while for TCKs what's available to us is an incredible amount of avoidance and that is a way to deal with conflict. know that conflict is unavoidable in life, avoiding it is an approach.

So I think one of the things that we often try to do is to outline and frame what the other approaches are. Because intuitively, if we find one that works for the most part, there's less motivation to switch it up and try something different. And if you've gone for years, being able to just avoid conflict, being able to unblock or be able to block, unsubscribe, delete, or moving or having someone else move, that system works. So you don't put a lot of effort into finding alternatives.

even if there are alternatives out there that might be more appropriate for different situations. So I think arming people with the language and framework is really important. And there are loads of different, thankfully, you know, marvelously clever people have been having, you know, scratchy head meetings for years about how we solve conflict, but even just providing, you know, simple language structures, being able to say, look, competition, you can break it down one way into five simple ways that the five main ways we deal with conflict are avoidance,

competition, conceding, collaborating, and compromise. so providing that language, it allows people to begin to analyze what they're doing intuitively, to look at a situation and go, if there are these options, which one did I use? Which one could I have used? So a load of it really is making people aware of the tools available to them. The reality is we don't know what we don't know. And once we're presented with some more tools, we can make better decisions. But loads of people

Chris O (16:29.73)
don't know to even look for tools because avoidance, you know, it works. It comes with some pretty big drawbacks, but if it's all you've got, that's all you're gonna keep doing.

Seth Fleischauer (16:40.506)
What I'm hearing is essentially adjusting the cost benefit analysis. Because if you not only have to do a thing, but you also have to figure out how to do a thing, that's a greater cost. If you at least have the framework with which you can, OK, this is the path I could take, that might lower the barrier to actually taking that path. But I think that

Chris O (16:47.502)
That is, that's a good way to put it. That's a good way to put it.

Chris O (16:55.768)
Yeah.

Chris O (17:02.988)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (17:09.99)
That's when the cost benefit analysis is still not lowered to the extent that avoidance isn't the easiest thing to do. I think that's when the resilience piece comes in. And it's this idea that you can get knocked down and you can get up again and you can go and you can do the hard thing. This is something that I think, you know, I was wondering at what point I was gonna become a grumpy old man. And I feel like the discussion of like resilience and

Chris O (17:20.654)
Mm.

Chris O (17:26.947)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (17:38.86)
And kids these days definitely catapulted me into that. And the thing is that I think they're onto something in some ways. The pandemic gave us this opportunity to look around, our lives in a way that perhaps we did not have the objectivity to because we were too in the rut. And that same consciousness was experienced

Chris O (18:03.896)
Mm.

Seth Fleischauer (18:08.53)
by young people and young people are looking at their mom who like slaved at a job to like get a promotion for their entire life or like suffered through familial relationships for the sake of loyalty to family and like what did it get them, right? Like they're trying to learn from the...

Chris O (18:31.287)
Mm.

Seth Fleischauer (18:34.15)
the lessons of their elders to see that like maybe some of these things didn't really work out for you and therefore they're not worth committing myself to in terms of like committing to a company or a job in a way that like perhaps is an unhealthy, you could interpret it as an unhealthy work-life balance, perhaps staying in relationships longer than they will in order to be able to like

Chris O (18:44.664)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (19:03.026)
create some boundaries and like stick to those boundaries. Like there's so much mental health language going around right now that people are aware of what's going on inside them. They understand what they want and what they need. They're able to articulate those things. And because they're able to do all that, they can kind of set up this little world for themselves that is a bit more ideal than what their parents might have done.

But missing from that world is compromise. Right? Is this idea that like, sure, all of those wants and needs are well and good, but ultimately you are a person who lives within a society that requires people to come together and collaborate and compromise. And so you're not always going to get everything that you want. I mean, there are times when you can be, what's that Buddhist term? Skilled means, right? There's this skilled means.

Chris O (19:31.874)
Mm.

Seth Fleischauer (20:01.694)
of being able to find that exact middle path where the compromise is almost not even apparent to anybody because you've met so precisely in the middle. But part of compromise is resilience. How do you get someone to be able to be resilient when they're so aware of what's not working for them?

Chris O (20:27.99)
Yeah. man. mean, answering that is that's a whole set of workshops in and of itself. But I think, you know, I think that the quick version, you know, if I honestly think the same sort of thing that once again, starting with processing intellectually what we do intuitively. and in that, think that first of all, I've always found resilience itself, it's too big a word and it encompasses too much. and the fact is

what we mean when we say that is, I mean, you said it well, our ability to get back up when we stumble. I think it's worth breaking it down with language so we can process intellectually what we do intuitively and realizing there are different types of resilience. There's some great work done by a Dr. Wong who wrote a ginormous paper and talked about different types of resilience. basically created a taxonomy of resilience, which I think is incredibly helpful because if you can

pull resilience apart and look at different types. It helps you hone in far more specifically on areas where both you might be really strong and so you can continue to grow those and areas where you might be weaker. So some of the ones that I use frequently are talking about how we have, we've got emotional resilience, which is really our ability to tolerate discomfort. We've got relational resilience. How will we ask for help when we need it?

and how well we recognize when other people need help. We've got behavioral resilience, which would be our coping mechanisms. You know, the ability to say, I know what I need right now, so I'm going to take a while and cool off before I, you know, what have you. And then cognitive resilience, you know, our ability to plan ahead, our ability to think through things and sort of not just be reactionary or impulsive. And those are all different components, but they're all types of resilience. And I think

That's the first step is again, providing language so that we can process intellectually. I think the second step is the reality is resilience is like so many other things. It's a bit like going to the gym and building muscle. Just the only way, the only way. And believe me, if I'd found another way, I would be rich by selling it. But the only way to really build resilience is to go through measurably and manageably increasing difficulties. It's the only way to build muscle as well. We build muscle.

Seth Fleischauer (22:37.586)
Thank

Chris O (22:50.188)
by lifting something that's just a little bit heavier than's comfortable. And it does, it causes a little bit of damage to our muscle fibers. And then our body builds in repairs, which is, I mean, in some ways scar tissue, but ends up being more muscle. So your muscle gets bigger because you strained it just a bit. And obviously, if you go too far, if you overload yourself, you're gonna hurt yourself. The same is true in building resilience. It takes measurable increases.

difficulty so that you build up that resilience muscle. You go, Oh yeah, I did. So I did get back up after that. Maybe I can get back up after something even bigger. And I think, you know, saying all of this, it's, it's worth bearing in mind, you know, to join the, to join the curmudgeonly old man club. Uh, I mean, we have seen a decrease in resilience and to me it's interesting to look into why. And one of the things that I really think has happened for, uh, for younger people through no fault of their own.

Seth Fleischauer (23:26.802)
Hmm.

Chris O (23:46.99)
is that they have just unfathomable amounts of ability to numb. Just unfathomable. And that's a pretty dangerous thing if you're trying to build muscle. I mean, look at the power of screens. Screens will numb boredom and awkwardness and loneliness. You can numb all kinds of things with a screen. And young people now have grown up with access to a screen from an early age. And so for old people like me,

who didn't have an iPad when I was a kid, when I was bored, that just had to do with being bored. I mean, the worst thing you could do is complain about it. If I told my parents I was bored, they'd be like, well, I'll give you something to do, and I would have to do chores. So it spurred creativity. If I was lonely, I mean, that's a pain, but it's a great teacher for how important interdependence is. If I was awkward,

That is a pain, but it's a great way to motivate me to refine my social skills. So the fact that we can numb all of those things now means we basically, it's the equivalent of taking the small weights out of the gym of life that kids nowadays through no fault of their own, that's very, very important. If someone handed me an iPad when I was a wee one, I had a plate on it too. It just wasn't available to me. That is the only difference. But what's available to them has incredible numbing power. And so because they've been able to numb,

They haven't had the practice on dealing with these pains. And so, you know, all of the, all of the 10 kilo weights are missing. All of the five kilo weights are missing. All of the two and a half kilo weights are missing. And so they get out to the gym of life and are thrown, you know, a 250 pound weight. That's right. We're doing metric and Imperial in this gym. They're thrown that. And of course it's going to be, yeah. Translate for everybody here.

Seth Fleischauer (25:34.13)
spoken like a true TZK.

Chris O (25:39.32)
But it is that you get thrown that way and you have no, they haven't had the ability to practice. So I think that's something that we need to add back in very, very intentionally.

Seth Fleischauer (25:47.546)
Yeah. And what I'm hearing, I like the metaphor and what I'm hearing from you about how to get those weights back in the weight room is a combination of essentially metacognition, right? Understanding, observing what you're doing. think you said, you know, intellectually, intellectually describing the things that are intuitive to you. Being able to like have that, that self-knowledge, self-awareness and being able to articulate that, but also within a framework.

Right? So there's some information here that's part of it. And then using all of that to practice in ways that that recruit those those smaller muscles. Right. Like I think I think of some of the work that I do in my spiritual path of like trying to get to know my authentic self. And there are these things that I

Chris O (26:15.245)
Hmm.

Chris O (26:26.722)
Yeah, absolutely.

Chris O (26:37.198)
Mm.

Seth Fleischauer (26:40.42)
recognize sometimes they're they're painful, they're uncomfortable, there are threads that I think that if I were to just let it all out that it might destroy some relationships, it might, you know, change my life in a material way that I'm not prepared for, right? So then the question is, how do I, how do I lift those five pound weights?

How do I practice and just get that part of myself out into the world so that I can feel that I'm in a greater degree of authenticity than I would be if I just continued to suppress it, but I'm not just going around setting fire to things. And I think about that in the context of what you're talking about, where it's like, where are those moments of...

Chris O (27:15.447)
Right.

Seth Fleischauer (27:27.502)
of slight difficulty that you can get through. And I'm thinking of an example of my daughter. My daughter was dealing with a situation where she would think that if her friend, she would have these awkward silences with her friend. And the awkward silence would happen and then her friend would be like, okay, well, I'm gonna go hang out with someone else.

and she'd go hang out with someone else and then she'd see them talking or having fun and she'd like in her head she's like they're talking about me and how boring I am or talking you know saying something mean about me like this is the whole story in her head and I showed her that scene from Pulp Fiction with Uma Thurman and John Travolta talking about uncomfortable silences which like always stuck in my head that diner scene and then I was like you know

Chris O (28:13.326)
Ugh.

Chris O (28:17.079)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (28:19.706)
The next time you have an uncomfortable silence, like I've talked to her about this before, like, see if you can come to the present moment, right? Like see if you can take whatever's going on and you can reduce it to this moment right here. So you're not thinking about what has happened. You're not worried about what will happen, but you are aware in your senses of like, what is around you.

and what is happening in your body, what's happening in the environment, what's happening everywhere, and not in a judgmental way, but just experience it and see if you can sit there for a little bit rather than in this anxious space of like, I better say something or else my friend's gonna leave me. And she tried it and it worked and I...

Chris O (28:55.683)
Hmm.

Chris O (29:04.802)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (29:07.74)
can't believe it worked. So I was like, she's gonna have to practice that. I was just like, that's hard. Being in the moment, that's a lifelong skill that you practice, right? But she was like, yeah, I just sat in this moment of what was happening right now. I didn't worry about whether or not she was gonna lead me. And then in this case, she remembered that scene from Pulp Fiction and she told her friend about it. But she's been practicing.

Chris O (29:11.48)
what I did.

Chris O (29:34.03)
That's fantastic.

Seth Fleischauer (29:37.018)
this, this skill of like, don't panic about what's about to happen. Just be there and then wait for like the inevitable monkey brain thought to come in and then you have something to talk about. and, and it was that it was that, that little discomfort, right? How can you put this into practice in your life in a tiny little way that will, that will, that will be the, the metaphorical equivalent of that, of that two and a half kilo weight, right? Yeah.

Chris O (29:49.154)
Yeah.

Chris O (30:03.99)
Yeah. that's good. That's very practical application.

Seth Fleischauer (30:08.474)
Yeah, yeah, I'm killing it right now with my tween. been awesome. So what else about the TCK experience do you think can be generalized to the general population at this point? The work that you do, you think that it's critical not just for TCKs who are navigating these cross-cultural experiences, but for anybody because when it comes down to it, whether that

Chris O (30:10.253)
Ha

Seth Fleischauer (30:33.872)
Whether culture has a country attached to it, we are all in some ways, TCKs, right? Like we are all bringing a culture from home and seeing different cultures at school. Obviously, cultural cues reinforced in like a monocultural environment more so than like at an international school. But again, there are all these different identities we're bringing in. What are the things about the TCK experience that can, the lessons learned that we can share?

with everybody to help them navigate this hyper aware time of ours.

Chris O (31:09.89)
Yeah, well, think adaptability is a big one. And, you know, that's, one of those, it's a big word, just like resilience. But I think it's always been something people like. I mean, it's, I don't think I've ever heard it as an insult. I don't think anyone's ever said, well, you're so adaptable. I, no, you know, it's always been seen, I think. Yeah, I mean, you could see duplicitous,

Seth Fleischauer (31:32.9)
I guess the flip side of it might be two-faced, huh? Maybe? Yeah. Yeah.

Chris O (31:39.938)
But I think even, you know, broadening it beyond personality, adaptability, I think is going to be already is so much more essential than it probably probably already was because we things change so quickly. And I think about, know, this affects all students, not just TCKs, but I feel like the word unprecedented has completely lost its meaning. know, young people now have lived through an unprecedented global pandemic, the unprecedented rise.

technology to broadcast and communicate the unprecedented explosion of AI technology. Just every, they're probably, they probably just wish for some precedent. Like precedent would probably be nice at this point, but because of that, they really are. They, think the, you know, one of the, one of the kinds of resilience we talk about is motivational resilience. You know, why, why do you get back up? That's an important part of resilience. And that, that took a huge hit.

Seth Fleischauer (32:21.298)
Hahaha

Chris O (32:38.028)
just because young people now watched as loads of things that would have been familiar, unshakable, and certain were wiped away. know, everything from the simplistic to, you know, graduation ceremonies. There was a chunk of kids who didn't get to do that, and an even bigger chunk of kids who watched and said, my gosh, like those, that class before me or that whoever, they didn't get to do that. Like who would have ever thought that was a questionable thing? That was...

there are so many certainties that became uncertain. So I think adaptability is huge. And the rate of change we're experiencing just absolutely requires us to be adaptable. often, my friend Jerry, whom I do a podcast with, we had a discussion once and he's just a couple of years, I think he's only a few years older than me. And he says, he talks about how, you know, when he needed to keep in touch when he was younger.

I think he talks about, you know, keeping in touch with who would become his wife. You know, this, this girl he thought was cute who lived across the country. They wrote letters, they wrote letters to stay in touch, like physically wrote letters and then on paper and then, you know, slobbered on a stamp and someone took it for them. which means that he shared a form of long distance communication with people stretching back for centuries. mean, 100, 200, 300 years before that is the same way you would have kept in touch over long distances.

Seth Fleischauer (33:42.386)
Like on paper?

Chris O (34:04.128)
And just between he and I, just in the span of a few years, my main form of communication for long distance was email. And so a trend that lasted for centuries was replaced, but it was replaced by a trend that only lasted for decades. I mean, we still use email, but it is not the default for casual communication. know, that lasted for decades. Then texting became free. You know, I'm old enough to remember when you had to pay for texts. think in, I think in

Seth Fleischauer (34:19.132)
Hmm. Kinda. Yeah.

Chris O (34:32.576)
I wasn't in it, but I think in the US you might even have to pay to receive. I don't know. You paid money to text and as soon as that became free, that quickly became the de facto, you know, communication and full keyboards and

Seth Fleischauer (34:43.344)
also full full keyboards. My daughter has a dumb phone. She texts very slowly. Yeah.

Chris O (34:50.03)
And we did we all got really good at it, but we did so that's you know Communication trends that lasted for centuries were replaced by ones that lasted for decades and even texting You know, I would I would argue it's it's definitely been under threat or at least you know replaced as dominant by apps a multitude of apps and there's a new So there's a new platform every day who knows what's gonna survive. So trends that went for centuries lasted

you know, that long, but then we're replaced by trends that lasted for decades, replaced by trends that lasted for years, replaced by trends that last for who knows how long. So our rate of change has sped up incredibly, which makes adaptability absolutely essential. And adaptability is tied into, you know, that, that everything adaptability is almost a catchall for your, your cross-cultural communication skills, being able to see from other perspective.

your conflict resolution skills, being able to do more than just avoid when things get uncomfortable. All of it, it encompasses all of those things and finding ways to help people build their adaptability I think is really important. And I think there's two sides to it. There's the framework side, the language side, and then obviously practicality. So, know, linguistically, I would argue my thought, my...

my revolutionary thought that, you who knows if people would agree, but I'm going with it, is that, you know, on a wider scale, what's gonna help adaptability is if we change the way we even view culture, because for millennia, we've looked at culture as a very zero-sum game. For millennia, history has taught us that culture is survival of the fittest, and everything from empires and colony to wars to usually culture is survival of the fittest. That's our history.

Trying to be more tolerant, that's a pretty new invention in all honesty. That only goes back maybe a century or so. The idea that, you know, cultures don't have to be at each other's expense. But I think we still view it in many ways as zero-sum game. lot of the fear that we see surrounding, you know, others or different or foreigner is because we are viewing culture as zero-sum. We think that the more foreign influence there is, well then that's less space for my culture and that makes us defensive.

Chris O (37:10.114)
And I would argue we have TCKs who are living proof that culture doesn't have to be zero sum. Our expressions are, you know, we have limited time. Sure, that's a zero sum game. That's a limited resource. But the fact that TCKs on a daily basis exists and interact in multiple cultures without it being at any one culture's expense. I'm a dual national of the UK and the US.

I don't think they come at each other's expense. That's an easy one. Those two seem to get along now. We had some tea incidents in the harbor, but that's fine. But even people with, you know, what would seem to be less compatible cultures, TCKs, they still make it work. They're willing to expand their language, their framework, their conflict resolution, all of these things in order to make that work. So I think on the intellectual side, learning to move beyond seeing culture as a zero sum game.

I think that's going to be a huge help. And to couple with that in a practical sense, I think we need to, we need to find the ability to, to Institute, learn from and appreciate intentional inefficiencies. because that is, that's a gym is the ultimate intentional inefficiency. So we already do it. You know, I always give the example. If I went back in a time machine to medieval times,

Seth Fleischauer (38:24.388)
You

Chris O (38:30.798)
and stepped out in England in the medieval time period, stepped out of my time machine and said, hello peasants, I'm gonna open a gym. They wouldn't know what that is. And I'd have to say, I'll explain it. We have treadmills so you can run and go nowhere. And peasants would be like, no, thank you. If I run, it's because I have to get somewhere quick. And you'd say, okay, it gets better. We have weights that you can pick up and then put right back down. Doesn't that sound great? And at that point they would burn me as a witch.

Seth Fleischauer (38:46.437)
Hehehehe

Chris O (38:59.47)
Because that would make no sense. Why would you run unless something was chasing you? Why would you pick stuff up just to put it back down? But we do. We go to gyms. And what we've done is we basically created an intentional inefficiency. And it is running nowhere, picking stuff up and putting it back down is stupidly inefficient. But we do it because physical exertion isn't tied to our survival anymore. So we've reintroduced an intentional inefficiency so that we can compensate for something we technologically moved past.

And in all honesty, we just need to keep doing that. are loads of, mean, screens are a technological advancement and it's taken some things out of life. So we do, we need to find those intentional inefficiencies so that we can add back in what we technologically have moved past in order to still be healthy.

Seth Fleischauer (39:45.202)
Yeah, those little things here and there that can reintroduce those smaller weights. I love that. I could talk to you about this for many more hours. I feel as if we've reached the limit of the attention span of my listeners. So perhaps I'll have you back, but we'll definitely continue the conversation offline. Thank you so much for being here. You mentioned your podcast. Give us a quick like, what is that all about? Where can we find it?

Chris O (39:51.404)
Yeah, exactly.

Chris O (40:14.35)
So my podcast is called Diesel Includee Unpack the World. And it is, it's with my buddy Jerry Jones. And we talk about basically issues for the international cross-cultural expat TCK, you know, that kind of sphere of things. We're nowhere near as organized as your podcast. So, you know, if your listeners wanted to check it out, just be warned listeners. My podcast is really, it's free flowing. The editing is really just me taking out.

Seth Fleischauer (40:36.434)
It's free flowing. Yeah.

Chris O (40:42.636)
two hours of Jerry and I giggling. So, you know, so you don't have to listen to those giggles, but they were there. So it is, it's good fun.

Seth Fleischauer (40:48.38)
Well, I really, I appreciate the way that you can dive into some of the more like abstract concepts and discuss those with intelligence and experience, bring it back to the reality of it. I've enjoyed what I've heard so far, so definitely recommended. And then you also have a website. What's your website?

Chris O (41:07.982)
It is www.chris-o.com because nobody is gonna ever type out O'Shaughnessy, nobody. So it is, just chris-o.com.

Seth Fleischauer (41:19.78)
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for being here, Chris. Thank you to our listeners for dear judge. have something.

Deirdre Marlowe (41:28.413)
Yeah, I just wanted to say that growing up 100 years ago, as I did, that collaboration and compromise were the only ways that TCKs could succeed in whatever environment they were in. We didn't have the luxury, which you refer to as challenges that kids have today. And I'm wondering if something can be

Chris O (41:40.846)
Hmm.

Chris O (41:46.232)
Hmm.

Deirdre Marlowe (41:57.855)
done with that because I went to this, right, it just, was listening to you and I was saying, well, what about the Renaissance when things changed and culture went all over the place? What about this? What about that? it's not, mean, the Renaissance is longer ago than my childhood, but it's still, I think that there's maybe a little too much doom and gloom.

Chris O (42:00.27)
It's the hope of the dream.

Chris O (42:07.406)
You

Chris O (42:12.77)
Yeah.

Deirdre Marlowe (42:27.143)
in what you're suggesting.

Chris O (42:29.6)
Well, and I hopefully it didn't come off as doom and gloom because I think what I'm suggesting is actually I'm a very hopeful person. I again, we created gyms to, build in some intentional efficiency we needed. And I think we're going to keep doing it. I think that, I mean, I don't want to live in a world without screens. love screens. I mean, it lets us do exactly what we're doing right now. They're not going to go anywhere. but I do think it's worth being wise enough to understand when

technology gives us great things. It takes some things as well. That's always been the case. And yeah, there's been huge sessions of upheaval in the world and we as people have gotten over it. They're coming, I would argue, more fast and furious now, but that's why I think focusing on resilience and I think focusing on building those skillsets comes from a hopeful place, a hopeful place that says, we've gotten...

to some great places, it's cost us something. So let's work that out. Let's go ahead and let's keep on going.

Deirdre Marlowe (43:32.465)
and it's still important to stand up to the unprecedented.

Chris O (43:37.366)
Yeah, because it probably isn't going to stop. The unprecedented, will probably keep on coming. Ironically, the unprecedented is probably actually a precedent.

Deirdre Marlowe (43:44.883)
Right, but we need more Luddites in the world. don't mean literally. I just mean people who can see the scope of things, that everything is not in the present. know, everything incorporates some of what we're for and some of what's coming. And I think that that's important as well. And congrats on working with Vita like that.

Chris O (43:49.365)
Hahaha

Seth Fleischauer (43:50.961)
Maybe

Chris O (44:04.227)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (44:11.089)
Yeah, I was shocked. I was like, can't believe that worked.

Deirdre Marlowe (44:12.723)
That was, I don't know if I ever would have shown my 12 year old daughter.

Seth Fleischauer (44:18.886)
I didn't show her Pulp Fiction, I showed her the four-minute scene from Pulp Fiction.

Deirdre Marlowe (44:22.578)
okay, okay, i was gonna get like waa-

Chris O (44:24.334)
Editing, editing.

Seth Fleischauer (44:26.724)
No. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Chris. Here, let me, I'm just going to record the outro real quick. One second. Thank you to our listeners. If you want to check out Chris's work, please check, look into the show notes, check out his website, check out his podcast. Thank you to our editor, as always, Lucas Salazar and my advisor, Deirdre Marlowe. If you'd like to help the podcast, please.

do tell a friend, leave us a rating or a review. remember, if you want to bring positive change to education, we must first make it mindful. See you next time.