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Session 20230603

Mary’s Talk

“One Choice at a Time”

Saturday, June 3, 2023 (Group/Brattleboro, Vermont)

Participants: Mary (Michael), Ann (Vivette), Ben (Trae), Christina (Melian), Eric (Doren), Hazra (Lettecia), John (Lonn), Karen (Turell), Lynda (Ruther), Mark (Liam), Melissa (Leah), Veronica (Amadis), Xuan (True), and Yvonne (Zarla).

MARY: I usually do a little bit of a talk before the dead guy talks, so that’s what I’m going to do. So anyway… So I have two amazing subjects to share. Some people already know because I already shared it. Some people don’t know, so that’s why I going to share. But anyway, so the first one is about a—

(Group laughter)

ANN: What is going on?

KAREN: That was hysterical.

MARY: Mimi has the ball and she dropped it, and it went over here, right next to Sigourn. And Sigourn went like this: “BING!” and got rid of it. (Group laughter) She just looked at her. She looked at Mimi and she looked at the ball and she was like (does an action).

ANN: Oh, that’s hilarious.

MARY: That was pretty funny. (To Mimi) Here you go. So anyway, so…

So earlier this year, I had an amazing realization. I (sighs)… Okay, here’s the back story. My daughter’s car got stolen and she was really, really, really upset and… But before it got stolen, she had already been like kind of losing it and she had not said anything to me, which I wish she would have, but she didn’t. And she just was not coping very well.

And so anyway, so a lot of her bills got skipped because she just wasn’t coping, so then her car got stolen. One of the bills that got skipped was her insurance payment, so her insurance lapsed and so they didn’t pay for the car. Which is the car that’s in front of my car right in the driveway, because when they finally found it, first they thought that it just had the catalytic converter taken off, but it ended up that they took the whole, entire exhaust system from the engine to the tailpipe. So it would’ve costed twelve hundred dollars to replace the catalytic converter, but to replace the entire exhaust system it’s going to cost five thousand dollars. So that’s why her car is sitting here, waiting for us to get the money to fix it, which we have to get the money to fix it because it’s a brand-new car and so she still has four more years of payments on it. So it’s not like, you know, you could just trash it or whatever. No. That’s not going to happen.

So anyway, so that had happened and then she… You know, she and I had a conversation and she was really upset and I said okay, well you know what? I’m going to take back all the bills again and you can chill and that way, you know, you don’t have to be so stressed out and whatever. I used to pay all her bills, but then she started taking them back. Well, now I’m paying them all again, which that’s fine. I mean, I’m okay with that.

But earlier in the year when this all happened, I had this moment where I was feeling very sorry for myself and going in a “Woe me” mode and “I have to pay for all of her bills now again, and so it’s like I can’t do what I want to do.” And I had, before that, I had gone in a direction of putting my hours down to four days a week and taking off three days a week so that I could do my quilting. And so this all happened and I was like, “Well, great, now I don’t get to take off three days a week and I’m going to have to work more,” and I was just really pissing and moaning and feeling really sorry for myself.

And so I was standing at my dining room table, which is ginormous, and on the table I had— okay, you guys have all been upstairs and you’ve seen the Jacob’s ladder blocks hanging? Okay, well before I had put them into blocks. I had all the pieces for that cut, and I had a hundred piles (chuckles) of the pieces, to make the actual Jacob’s ladder blocks. And I had them all organized in rows and whatever, and they were, like took up a huge amount of my table. And I’m standing by my table and this is right in front of me. I’m not seeing it at all. I’m just… all I am doing is being consumed in my own thinking, and not seeing anything and just feeling really bad and feeling really sorry for myself and whatever.

And all of a sudden – I don’t know why, but I just kind of blinked and looked down and I saw all this fabric on the table, that I had already put together and cut and organized and whatever. And I was like, “Oh! This is such a metaphor. It’s directly in front of my face and I wasn’t seeing it before.” But then I saw it, and I was like, “Oh my god! What am I thinking? This is insane.” All right. If I had enough time to do all of that, then I have plenty of time. I don’t have to worry about I don’t have any more time or whatever. I was like, “Oh, I so need to stop feeling sorry for myself.”

And then I had this realization about choices, and about everything is all about one choice. One choice at a time. That I can make a choice, and it’s like things we don’t even realize are choices, but they are choices. It’s like I was standing there looking at the table and thinking about it and I was like, “Well, I could make a choice to look at what’s right in front of me or I could make a choice to keep being in my head and feeling terrible.” So I can choose what I actually feel. I can choose what is like, what influences my day or whatever.

I know it sounds very elementary, but in the moment it was like such a revelation. I was like, “Oh my god! I actually can choose everything and everything is about one choice at a time.” And it really like hit me that what Elias says about, you know, every choice is, no choice is bigger or smaller than another choice. They’re all just choices. It doesn’t matter if you’re making a sandwich or whether you’re buying a house. They’re all just choices.

It finally sunk in and I was like, “Oh my god! I think I get this. I think I understand what he’s talking about.” And so I started, I was talking to my friend Frank, who has also been a client of mine forever, and I was telling him all of this. And he was like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He was like, “But that’s all good in theory.” He was all, “But you know, it doesn’t hold up with everything.” And I was like, “Oh my god, how can somebody be so smart and so stupid at the same time?” And he was like, “Are you calling me stupid?” And I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I am. This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.” And he says, “What are you talking about?” I go, “You are the perfect example of everything I’m talking about.” And so I started to say to him, “First, I seem to remember about six years ago you talking to me and telling me that you wanted to not work anymore and you wanted to be rich.” And he was like, “Yeah,” and he said, “Mm-hm.” And I said, “And then you decided to sell your business.” I said, “And then your business partner was not really in agreement with you, and so you kind of hemmed and hawed for a while, but then you finally made a choice and you decided to sell it.” He was like, “Yep.” And I said, “And you sold it, and you stopped working and you sold the business for millions and you became rich.” He was like, “You’re right.”

And I said, “Oh! No, I’m not done.” (Group laughter) I’m like, “No. Then you said you wanted to live in Hawaii,” I said. Because he goes to Hawaii all the time. He loves Hawaii. He lives in Chicago. And I said, “So then you said you wanted to live in Hawaii but you couldn’t move to Hawaii because it was too expensive.” I’m like, “And then you were kind of looking and you were looking at this particular house, and you said, ‘Yeah, I can’t buy this house. It’s like two million dollars.’” And I said, “Why not?” (Laughs) “Like you’re a millionaire now, so you could. You’re rich. You could buy it.” And so he did. He bought the house and at first he was renting it, and so he was making money while he still was living in Chicago.

But then – because I’m still not done (laughs) – then he was in Hawaii and he wasn’t at his house that he bought. He was staying… I don’t remember if he was staying in a condo or whether he was staying at a hotel, but whatever, he was renting someplace. And he decided to go to, he always goes to get a massage. And he decided to go someplace different, not to the place that he goes to normally. He just made a choice to go to a different place.

Okay. Before he did that, he told me, he goes, “Now if I could just like meet this beautiful, young Chinese girl that would fall in love with me, life would be perfect.” So he chooses to go to this new massage place and what happens? He meets Lugi. (Laughs) And he asked her out on a date that same day, and they have been together ever since that for two years. They’re going to get married.

Okay, so I said, I go, “Do you see that you’re the poster child for what I’m trying to say?” I’m like, “One choice, and you chose to sell your business and you stopped working and you got rich.” And I said, “One choice and you bought this house in Hawaii.” Which he now lives in, and she pretty much lives there too. (Chuckles) Yeah, he stopped renting it and he moved into it, and he lives there most of the time now instead of living most of the time in Chicago. But I said, “And one choice, to go to a different massage place, and you met Lugi.” I’m like, “I think you’re just proving my point, and you’re the one who’s telling me that it doesn’t work that way.”

MARK: In theory.

MARY: Right. I go, “Yeah, it does work.” I’m like, “It’s real.” And so…

So I have been like talking to myself about this every single day since then. I’ve been reminding myself every day that everything is all about one choice, that—

MARK: When did this start?

MARY: In February.

VERONICA: And who was this? Is this Frank?

MARY: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

VERONICA: Yeah, he’s been with you a long time.

MARY: Yes. Yes. Yes. And so yeah, I’ve been reminding myself, because you know what? We forget. You know, you get a revelation and you’re so excited, and then you forget about it and you don’t remember what that was even about or whatever and so we don’t like do it. But I was determined that I was going to remember this and that I was going to actively be making one choice at a time, and making choices that I want to make.

Because what I realized is that we are so conditioned to make choices to deny ourselves, instead of to give ourselves what we want. We are just totally conditioned. We’re like, you know, our whole lives we make choices that are not what we want, for whatever kind of reason I mean. But we’re constantly making choices about what we don’t want, and not making the choices about what we DO want. And so I was like, “No, that’s not happening anymore.”

Just like you were talking about how you’re not like putting up with shit anymore. (Group laughter) For real. It’s like why? Why put up with crap? (Group laughter and chatter) You know, why not just go in the direction of what makes you happy? Why go in directions of putting up with stuff or making choices that you don’t really want because you think that, you know, is the better thing to do or whatever? Says who?

So I’ve been like trying to pay attention and remind myself about this every single day. And then – okay, so this is where it really gets good, is that I decided I wanted to try to make choices about my health and about my body. Okay, well this is going to sound really stupid, but it’s real.

I don’t know why, but for some reason I have this perception that it’s harder to make choices about health and my body because I don’t know that works. I don’t know how any of it works! But for some reason, when it comes to my body (laughs) and health, I don’t think I can do that. It just seems harder. And so… AND I don’t believe. It’s not like I can say – well, I could say it, but it won’t work. I could say, “Okay, I’m not going to be in pain anymore and my back is going to be healed.” I have a crack in one of my vertebrae and one of my disks is obliterated and so I’ve been on synthetic pain medication for the last five years, and because that’s what orthopedic doctors do nowadays, they don’t do surgery anymore. They put you on pain medication and physical therapy, because they have learned that doing surgery on that kind of an injury makes it worse in the long run so they don’t do it anymore.

So okay, I could say, “Well, that’s what I’m going to do,” but I mean I don’t believe it, so it’s not going to work. And I don’t know how to go in a direction to make things better. And I, about six weeks ago, started seeing a new doctor who is an osteopath, which I never even heard of and didn’t know what it was until I started seeing him. Which I still don’t know what it is. He does not explain it, so I don’t know what an osteopath is. And it isn’t what they tell you on the internet. Well, it probably is but he doesn’t do what they tell you on the internet. And I found out that I actually have quite a few clients that go to osteopaths also and their doctors don’t do what he does. But he insists he’s not doing energy work, because he actually got offended when I said, “Are you doing energy work?” And he was like, “No! I’m doing osteopathy.” Okay. (Group laughter) And what does that mean? I’m like, “But you still didn’t explain it.” But it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t explain it and I’ve just decided that he’s a wizard and I don’t care.

So anyway, I realized – how does that tie in? – that I don’t necessarily have to know how to heal something, and I don’t necessarily have to know how to make a choice in relation to my body. Me, myself, I made a choice to go to this doctor and HE knows what he’s doing and I trust him. I didn’t trust him at first, but I did, with the whole one choice thing, I did make a choice to not be skeptical and to not anticipate what he was going to do or what he wasn’t going to do. I was making a choice to not anticipate him failing, because normally I expect that. I don’t really trust doctors anymore and I didn’t know what this doctor does and so I thought, “Yeah, okay, this would be a real good place for me to be not trusting, so I’m going to choose to just let it be and just go with however he, whatever he does.”

Which the man is a wizard, let me tell you. I went to him the first time, he did an eighteen-minute session with me. He has this table that you lay on your back on, and it’s covered in fur. It’s really soft. And he puts a pillow under your head. And then he just does nothing! He just touches your hair. He doesn’t even touch your head. (Group chatter) He doesn’t even touch your head! He just like touches your hair and he doesn’t move his hands. No movement. Nothing. (Group chatter)

Yeah, well whatever you think it is, it isn’t what he’s doing. (Group chatter)

No! It’s just a regular bed with fur on it. It’s just like nothing, okay? And he doesn’t move his hands. And then he goes down to my feet and he touches my feet, like barely, lightly. I’m not even kidding. Less than thirty seconds, like maybe twenty seconds and doesn’t move. And then he like goes, moves up and puts his hand under my back and one under my neck for about thirty seconds, that’s it, and doesn’t move his hands. And then he goes back up to my head. Okay, that’s it. And then he says, “Okay, you can get up now.” I’m like, “Okay, this is so weird!” And I sit up.

I was so dizzy. This was like the worst case of the spins you could ever possibly have. I swear I felt like I was going to puke all over his floor. And I said, “Is it normal to feel dizzy?” And he said, “Yep.” He’s over at his computer now and he’s typing away. And I said, “Um, is it normal to feel really sick to your stomach?” He’s like, “Yep.” Takes his wastepaper basket and puts it over next to me (group laughter) and says, “Try to hit that.” (Group laughter) I’m like, “What is up with this guy?” So I finally like get a little bit composed. He has no bedside manner. So I finally get up and I go put my shoes back on, and he says, “Okay, so I don’t want you to do anything for three days, and if after three days you’re in a lot of pain, then call right away and I will have you come in again.” And I’m like, “Okay.” And he said… And I said, “So, can I walk the dogs?” He’s like, “No. They’ll live. Nothing for three days.” I’m like, “All right.”

Okay, from where I was at, where the table was, to the reception where he says, “I want you to go to the reception and make four more appointments.” I’m like, “Okay.” And I said, “Four?” and he’s like, “Yeah, you’re a mess.” (Group laughter) I’m like, “Great. Thanks.” And so the reception is like about to the dining room wall over there, okay? Not far. I get up. I walk from there to there. I thought I was going to die. I was in so much pain that his receptionist, who’s his assistant, says, “It’s okay, Mary. Just sit down. Don’t worry. This is normal.” I’m like, “What isn’t normal around here?” (Laughs)

MARK: More pain than when you got there?

MARY: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Huge! Huge! I get home. I’m like dying, or I wish I would. I was in so much pain. There was no way I would have been able to walk the dogs anyway, because I was dying. And I had decided that I was going to call him on Monday and say, “Cancel all my appointments. You broke me. You’re horrible. I’m never going to recommend you to anybody. You’re awful.” And I was like, “I hate him.” (Group laughter) And I really, I was like, “I really hate him.”

And so then, two days went by and I was dying. The third day, I decided I’m just going to go upstairs. I’m just going to sew and try and get into a zone and not think about anything. I go upstairs. I realize that I was in the middle of cutting the fabric for Frank’s quilt. (Laughs) And so – oh! And Debbie was here, and she was upstairs sewing. And so I said, “I’m just going to finish,” or “I’m going to cut for a while and then, you know, I’ll go sit down and sew.” Okay. So I go over and I’m at my cutting table. Everybody’s been upstairs. You see where my cutting table is. I’m up there, cutting. I’m like really concentrating on what I’m doing. I’m not paying attention to anything except what I’m doing. And then I feel this twinge and I think, “Oh! Okay, I’d better run downstairs and take a pain pill before this gets bad.”

And so I turn around and I look at the clock, and it’s been three hours. And I’m like, I said to Debbie, I go, “Is that the right time or did my clock stop?” (Laughs) She’s like, “No, that’s the right time.” And I’m like, “So I’ve been standing there for three hours?” I haven’t been able to stand in one spot for more than like fifteen, twenty minutes at a time for years without having to sit down or whatever. I mean because it just… Standing and not moving is just a killer for my back. So she’s like, “No, you’ve been really concentrated.” She’s like, “You really are focused.” I’m like, “Um, right now I probably could take a Tylenol, one, and I’d been fine.” I’m like, “That’s impossible! It’s like a miracle!”

And I’m like, “Okay, so forget everything I said about my doctor, because now he’s my new best friend and I really like him.” I’m like, “What?! This is insane!” Well, so now I’ve been back to see him three more times since then. Usually each time I go, the first day I’m in a lot of pain but then it goes away.

And actually, when I first started seeing him, he asked me, he said, “So what do you hope to have happen?” And I said, “Well, at the very least, I’d like to be able to maintain with my physical therapy and my medication as it is now,” and I said, “Which is unlikely,” I said, “because I’m going to have to call my primary care doctor and tell her to up my dose and up my amount from 3 to 400 and from 4 pills to about 6 pills a day,” I said, “because it’s just getting worse.” And I’m like, “Which, you know, I expected,” I said, “because my orthopedic doctor said this would happen.” And he’s at his computer again, and he’s talking, like mumbling. He’s like, “I don’t agree with orthopedic doctors anyway.” I’m like, “Okay.” I’m like, “Well, we’ll see.” And I said, “So, you know, at the very least that’s what I’d like. I’d like to maintain what I’m at now, instead of having to increase.” And he said, “At the best?” “Kind of like to reduce and maybe even stop taking my pain medication altogether.”

We’re not there yet. A miracle didn’t happen yet. (Laughs) But I am taking one less pill a day than I was. So instead of 4, I’m taking 3 and that’s huge. So it is working. Which I knew something was happening, because I was in so much flipping pain the first two days. I mean, even though I wanted to kill him, I was like, “Well, he’s doing something. I don’t know what he’s doing, other than killing me, but…”

But I realized that now, the second time I went, I also realized that I needed to make a choice not to go in the direction of thinking that I would jinx myself because it was too good to be true, that things were actually turning around and working, and that it would only happen that once and that, you know, probably wouldn’t happen again, that was probably just a fluke or something. But because I’m skeptical about everything and I know you will find out, even though I let the dead guy talk through me, I’m probably one of the most skeptical people you’re going to meet. (Laughs) Like not a real woo-woo person. (Laughs)

Anyway, I was really like, “Okay, this is probably just too good to be true,” but I still was thinking, “Okay but no. Make one choice to just try to trust the situation. If you can’t trust him yet, then just try to trust the situation.” So I did and it worked, and it’s kept working.

And now I’ve seen him four times altogether and it keeps working, and it keeps getting steadily better. It’s not all the way there yet, but it’s definitely in a movement getting better. Now I did ask him this last time if he can help with sleep, because I don’t sleep, and he said yes. And I’ve been paying a lot of attention to see. What I’ve noticed—okay, I expected, when he said yes – see, here I go again. I should not be expecting things. And now I will make a choice not to be expecting, but I did. When he said yes, I kind of expected that okay, after that treatment that I would be able to sleep. Well, that’s not what happened.

But what I did realize – it didn’t happen the first night, but it has happened each night since then – that it’s not that I’m actually sleeping, but what normally happens is that I get into that twilight sleep and then something will wake me up all the way, and then I can’t get back into that twilight sleep, so then I’m just stuck. But what I’ve noticed is that since then, I have been able to stay in that twilight sleep until the morning. I’m not waking up all the way. So even though I’m not like sleeping, sleeping, I’m also not waking up all the way. So that’s different. So that’s progress.

MARK: When you say twilight sleep, are you like aware that you’re not awake but you’re not asleep?

MARY: Yeah. I can hear everything. Yeah. No, I’m aware. Yeah, when you go into like a twilight sleep, it’s like—

MARK: I know what you’re saying. No, I’ve done it. I just didn’t know that’s what it was.

MARY: Yeah. I’m still aware of everything. I can still hear everything.

MARK: It’s kind of weird.

MARY: It is. It is. Well, that’s as good as it gets with me. I probably have—

MARK: So you don’t have deep sleep?

MARY: Never. Well, I shouldn’t say never. Maybe once a year, I might actually get into an actual sleep. Which he asked me, because he was being skeptical when I said I don’t sleep. And he was like, “Okay, well explain to me what does that mean, you don’t sleep.” And I said, “I get into a twilight sleep, and that’s as far as I can get. I can’t get past that.” And I told him, I said, “And I was told by my therapist when I was going to her that some types of PTSD do this, that it creates sleep problems and that they can’t fix that. And so what they do is they give you sleeping pills, which I don’t take.” And he said, “So how long has this been happening?” And I said, “Mm, since I was a little child,” and I said, “This has been happening my whole life.” And I said, “And I’ve just gotten used to it and I just know that as long as I don’t get up at night, even though I’m not asleep, and even when I wake up, I mean from the twilight sleep, if I don’t get up then I’m resting. And so then when I get up in the morning, I’m fine and I can function all day just like, you know, anybody else that sleeps all night. But that’s because I’m used to it. I’ve been doing it my whole life.

And so I said, “Yeah. No, this is a real thing and it’s been happening my whole life.” And I said, “This is what the therapist called being super-hyper-vigilant.” And I have client who is a sleep – what is he? – he’s a sleep—

MARK: Expert?

MARY: Yeah, he’s like… He doesn’t call himself a therapist, but’s that’s kind of what he is. But he deals with sleep disorders and he actually did a couple of sessions with me. It didn’t work. (Laughs)

MARK: Is that because of your skepticism, or…?

MARY: No, I really tried. He gave me some exercises to do and I did them, and I really did try but it just didn’t matter. And I think that my therapist was right, that you know, some PTSD is just too much and you just can’t get past it. You can’t fix it.

But anyway, the point of all of it was even with sleep thing, I noticed that I was being skeptical and whatever. And so I was like no, don’t do that. Be just… Make one choice to move in a direction of trusting something. Even if I can’t trust me sometimes, if I can trust something, that’s good enough. And it works. So there you go.

MARK: Can I ask you a question?

MARY: Yeah.

MARK: Because that’s an incredible story. (Mary laughs) It really is, and my question is do you think a lot of us parallel that story? Or some of us?

ANN: Oh, I do. For sure.

YVONNE: All kinds of stuff like that has been happening.

MARK: The only reason I ask is because in a… I mean, it’s amazing actually. In a recent session, the major topic for me was trusting about my health. Trust in my body. I’m like you—

MARY: Yeah, I don’t trust my body. (Laughs)

MARK: No, I’m serious. I’m like, I don’t know how to do that.

MARY: I don’t either.

MARK: I don’t know how to trust my body. So… Anyway, I had kind of the same thing. It’s like a choice, you know. It’s not kind of, it is. But I had this like epiphany after the session and it was how do I do that? How do I trust my body? And I simplify it, because I like shit real simple. And so I don’t question how I’m breathing. I don’t question how I’m walking. I just do it.

MARY: Do it.

MARK: So what’s the difference?

MARY: Yeah.

MARK: Is that…? You know, is that trust? To me, it has to be.

MARY: Well, yeah.

MARK: So somehow in my mind, I don’t know if it’s right, you know, but again I like simplicity. So I just said all right, I’m going to make this choice, whether I believe it or not. (Laughs) Because I’m having a hard time with it. If my body can breathe on its own, it can walk on its own, it can do this other shit and fix this and...

MARY: Yeah.

MARK: Do whatever.

MARY: Yeah. I think for me, I do, I do believe that to a degree. But then with something like you know—

MARK: But I needed an example. I couldn’t—

MARY: Right.

MARK: I couldn’t just say that in my head and say oh…

MARY: Right. I think that, to a degree, I can go there but there’s things like you know, okay, I have a cracked vertebra. I don’t believe that that just fixes itself.

MARK: That’s like me. I’m still in a place of do I, if you ask me do I actually trust my body, do I believe that 100%, no. But I’ve got to start somewhere.

MARY: True. And that’s, that’s what I mean, is that if I can’t trust me with something, I just am like trying to find something I can trust. And I do trust this doctor. And I do see that—

VERONICA: And you’re accepting his whatever.

MARY: Yes. And I see that I AM making a choice in relation to my body by going to him, that that’s a choice. And so that’s just as good of a choice as, you know, something else. I mean it’s kind of like also he said something about he gave me some herbal thing for sleeping, and I was like, “Yeah, okay, well I don’t really believe that that works.” And he said, “Well, you believe that I am a wizard, so the wizard is giving you wizardy things.” He was like, “So believe that.” I was like, “Pffffft! Okay.” (Laughs) I was like, “Good one!”

So you know, I don’t know. (Laughs)

VERONICA: Elias talked about magic (inaudible) intending.

MARY: Yeah.

VERONICA: So if the body consciousness is dependent upon you—

MARY: Right.

VERONICA: — who is essence, then that will work. And you ought to know.

MARK: Yeah, you definitely ought to know. (Mary laughs)

VERONICA: Right. Because (inaudible) arthritis. (Group chatter) And you know what? The morning that I was going to pick up my crystals, right, to do my meditation, I mean I bought a special bed, a special chair, because I couldn’t get up from a chair even.

MARY: (Inaudible)

VERONICA: And the crystals (inaudible)

MARY: (Speaking about one of the dogs) She will eat it.

VERONICA: Yeah. I’ll never forget that. I mean, I tell that to people when they complain, so that makes them believe. (Group chatter)

MARK: It sounds like the emphasis that you’re trying to tell us is on trust. Choice and trust.

MARY: Choice,

MARK: But trust too.

MARY: Well I guess, yeah.

ANN: I asked Elias once. I said, “What is the secret to the universe?” and he said, “Choice.”

MARK: Choice?

ANN: Is the secret to the universe. Just for a fun question.

YVONNE: Choice and trust, didn’t he say?

ANN: No. He said choice. (Group chatter) He said choice. (Group chatter)

MARY: Cool. Cool. Well, all right.

ANN: Okay.

LYNDA: Thank you, Mary. (Group chatter)

(Mary’s talk ends after 51 minutes)

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